Tingle Tangle at Bubble Lounge

Wednesday, August 27, 2008.  I prefer going out on a weeknight.  As the saying goes, going out on a weekend is for amateurs.  And these people, Earl Dax and crew from NYC, they are no amateurs.  Reeking of filthy glamour, old school lower east side east village grit, drag, grant money, and performance art, equally at home in a squalid bôite de nuit or an endowed museum like the Weimer New York show at SFMOMA, their worldly entourage recalls a day when Klubstitute reigned supreme over San Francisco's theatrical underbelly.  But ensconced in the yuppified, gentrified, bottles-on-the-wall Bubble Lounge, beside $40 entrée sidewalk café Zagat rated tourist spots, (and the Scientology Center, as Mike Albo noted), what could one expect other than an internationally known promoter being ejected from his own event?  

A cavalcade of performers, LaJohn Joseph, drag artistes, that skinny boy (who sang with Justin Bond at Weimar New York) with a Hank Williams croon, all circulated and performed and transported me to earlier decades.  Their power exulted, making high and low art cross, intersect, intertwine, and become indistinguishable.  Here are people who could rock Trannyshack but have long CVs and NY Times reviews to their credit.  And this little Bubble Lounge tries to court the art scene and doesn't know when they've got it for real.  

There was free drag too.  And a wide variety of looks in the crowd, from flapper to dapper to calamity.  I hope this night continues, at any venue in San Francisco.  Maybe Oakland.  This dessicated city, where people flyer their websites, needs this kind of live performance blood.  And it brought out people I'd not seen in ages, who could smell something interesting and essential going on, enough to head out to North Beach.  Again, by forcing people to make some effort to go out, it gets people dressing up again and excited about an evening of entertainment.