I've a feeling I'm not in WeHo any more.
I knew I was home when I rounded the corner of Market and Castro and saw completely naked old men standing around in the slight drizzle. I'd flown into San Francisco a couple of hours earlier to come for the huge annual gay leather festival, Folsom Street Fair, which happily coincides - this year - with the very rare performance of my all-time favorite symphony, Mahler's Third, at the SFO tonight, and now I was on my ritual perambulation of the Castro, a place so redolent of memories from my fifteen years living in San Francisco, most of them here in the Castro.
The Castro is the polar opposite of West Hollywood ("WeHo"): in WeHo, particularly on a weekend evening, you see men of preternatural beauty and/or muscular perfection along with a seemingly endless supply of skinny multi-ethnic omnisexual kids. The Castro, on the other hand, particularly on this weekend, is populated with either the grizzled but chiseled, or more sedate but still bearded men who could be your accountant: the former trying to outdo each other in looking like working-class toughs (an image which falls apart as soon as they open their mouths), the latter in the same competition to perfect their German lesbian look (think REI.) (Oh, and not forgetting the nude men. They should really put signs up in the stores: NO PANTS, NO UNDERWEAR, NO SERVICE.) Wearing my usual crisp white button-up shirt, I felt distinctly so not San Francisco anymore.
Almost every time I come here, I notice a new store or restaurant, and sadly notice the demise of another long-term business. But Helen was still in her salon "Perfection for Hair", on Market Street, and I popped in hoping to see her. I wasn't sure she'd remember me, since I haven't seen her in years. I used to get my hair cut in her tiny old salon across the street, and when me and my friends Greg and Steve were looking for a place to film a little short movie called "Rico is Back", I naturally thought of Helen. She graciously gave up her salon to us for a day, and we moved in.
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| The auters of Rick is Back |
I'd made a couple of other short movies (still up on my old website), in the early 00's, and this was to be my biggest, and - hopefully - most professional yet. We had real actors, and casting calls; we had crew of seven, and we even had a dolly for the camera. Greg was the "Director of Photography", Steve the writer and producer, while I played at being director.
The first, and most blindingly obvious thing that came up was how small it was, and - big problem - every single wall was lined floor to ceiling with mirrors, making it extraordinarily for cast and crew, in the tiny, triangular space, to conceal themselves from reflections while the camera was rolling.
Although I'd made the two earlier films, this was my first time directing actors, and it only occurred to me in the days after that I hadn't actually directed the actors. I'd been so concerned with cramming in the overly ambitious series of shots Greg and I had painstakingly planned out without thinking about the mirror problem, that I never took much notice of what was actually getting captured on film. As a result, the movie, even with its picturesque and original film-score, was horrible, with completely fake performances, and cringingly sentimental climaxes. There's a reason it's not on my film website.
A couple of months ago I ran into someone very familiar-looking in WeHo, a muscular Asian guy, and he recognized me too. I think he was actually my stylist when I used to go to Helen's salon. We got chatting, and updating, and reminiscing, and he told me something appalling. I'm going to admit something that I probably oughtn't here for the first time, and that is that in the late 90's to early 00's, I had a popular gay webcam, with a moneymaking private membership. I have probably mentioned this before, but what I'm sure I haven't is that I actually developed my interest in film-making by making a couple of ... errm ... videos of a certain type, which I retailed to my, errm, fans.
Okay, admission over, now comes the appalling part. Although the movie was so bad, I felt I owed it to Helen to send her a copy on CD. But somehow, the CD I sent her was the wrong one, and I think you can imagine what was on it. Helen got to see a lot more of me than she'd ever expected.
When I went into the salon today, to see if I could find Helen, there she was, as beautiful and stately as ever, and it took a few moments for her mind to get into gear (although, no doubt, her lingering shock at the CD helped), but recognition dawned on her face along with a big smile, and we chatted for a while. I asked her about the CD and she was, apparently, gentlewomanly enough to not proceed beyond the opening credits of Ripped Jeans, Baby Oil and Videotape.
Whenever I come here by myself, I'm torn between overbooking myself with friends and feeling flighty, or not prealerting any of them and left hanging. This time I chose the middle path. I'll see the Mahler tonight with one of my closest friends, Steve, who's also visiting for the weekend, go to brunch with my old office mate Heike tomorrow, and hang out at the fair and the dance party (one of my favorites, a charitable vent called "Real Bad") with my best buddies, Randy, Kean, Mike and James.
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| At Folsom, 2006. An example of something I won't be wearing this year. |
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