Bars aren’t just for doing cocaine in the bathroom with your straight-acting gay boyfriend and then watching the San Francisco Giants lose again on TV. No, at one time bars were the place where neighbors met each other, shared local gossip and complained about the mayor. It was where people went for birthday parties and had conversations. Nowhere was that more true than in San Francisco’s North Beach.

But it makes me sick to my stomach to see what’s happening in San Francisco. First they put a GAP on Haight Street, then they made ... More

This is the seventeenth in a multipart series unofficially conjoined to the publication of Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, and the accompanying film series currently being presented by the Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque (in partnership with SFMOMA).

With my frie... More

If you want to find out what’s going on in the San Francisco Art World don’t go to the galleries — go to the bars. That’s where all the artists are. I know because I drank a lot when I lived there. It was easy to do because anywhere you could swing a dead cat — bam — you’d hit a bar! In North Beach alone you have Kennedy’s, Specs, Vesuvio, Mr. Bing’s, Tosca, Grant & Green, the Saloon, Savoy Tivoly, Gino & Carlo, 15 Romolo, O’Reilly’s, Sweetie’s, Hawaii West, Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store, and that’s just half the places I can remember.

Now I know some of you might say “Oh what a shocking admission of guilt he’s just made!” but rest assured, I am a quiet drunk, not the loud kind like others you may know. Besides, way too much emphasis is placed on career and not the act of  creation or the environment where ideas have a chance to get tossed around among friends. Art school is just one place where that happens. It’s worth noting that there a... More