Neptune Landing

      Boosterism is the art of propping up a municipality when all the metrics point against living or doing business there. Boosters come up with all sorts of reasons why you too should adore their beloved and decrepit hometowns. If anything, San Francisco suffers from the opposite problem; it's a city of anti-boosters, one that prefers neither promotion nor introduction. Many old-timers, in fact, wish to stop the eager and curious from pitching tent here, a reaction I've noticed in other West Coast boom towns like Portland and Seattle. Many seekers do come here for a short while before turning around. It's an obligatory pit-stop for many American dreamers.       What for me started as a cross-country experiment has slowly turned into my life. March 21st marked my four years here in San Francisco and last Tuesday I turned 37. While this may not make me an absolute sage about the inner workings of Fog City, I have been paying some attention to the wild par...

      The most indie night I've had in weeks was at Smack Dab , a monthly-open-mic-night that has been running since 2003. While I've popped into other open-mics scattered around the city, Smack Dab was certainly the best-organized and best-lit. Its new location is on the second floor of Strut at 470 Castro Street, the public health clinic smack dab in the Castro (disclosure: I am NOT getting paid by Strut; I just think it's a healthy and interesting new space). Open-mic participants seemed to rally around the theme of public health, praising Magnet (now Strut) at every available turn. The take-away is that Smack Dab is a sober and perky addition to a scene that takes place most often in dim and dank watering holes.       Facilitated by hosts Larry-Bob, who also keeps the  SF Queer List Serve , and Dana Hopkins, promoter-extraordinarie, Smack Dab brings together some of the queerest and wackiest independent acts in the Bay. The level of ...

      The fun and flirty Castro neighborhood has a new arrival. Named " Strut ," the 3-floor-edifice at 470 Castro Street is the fresh home of salubrious health for San Francisco's community of gay, bisexual and transgender men. Strut shares the same building that houses Blush, the Wine Bar, where just two doors down is the corner Walgreens, which is perfect for those patients who need to use the pharmacy (one of the few things that Strut does not contain on-campus). Neptune Landing was able to chat with Matthew Denckla, a long-time public health activist and board member of both Strut and its benefactor, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, about the building's inception and how it's a game-changer for SF's queer community.   Strut Exterior       First, the basics: Strut is a larger, enhanced version of the old Magnet, Castro's drop-in-clinic for gay, bi and trans men's sexual health. Like Magnet, Strut is an invented name. The idea for Strut b...

      The seasonal shift from the warmth of summer to the crisp fall always feels overly dramatic and strangely dangerous to me. I adore autumn and the festivities of Halloween and Thanksgiving, and yet I also experience an uneasy sense of dread.       Daylight savings disrupts my body’s natural rhythm. I’m hungry before lunch and my dogs are confused when we go for a walk. I’m reminded that my normal daily routine is simply an illusion perpetrated by the clocks that surround me. I suddenly feel out of sync with ordinary Time-Space; I’ve entered the mysterious landscape of a dream.       In times of uncertainty, I turn to my tarot cards for guidance. With the recent supermoon and lunar eclipse events, the wisdom of Moon card (number 18 in the Major arcana) seems especially appropriate right now. Here’s the Moon card from the Thoth tarot deck: Compare this imagery with the Moon card from the more traditional Rider-Waite...

      Jet lag and a feeling of loneliness did not leave me with a favorable first impression of Amsterdam whose uniform grayness and tight sense of organization I felt respectable but suffocating. It didn't help that I got lambasted on the 17 tram by an unhinged derelict. In San Francisco we have our fair share of crazies on the MUNI but they are usually berating the universe in general. This French-speaking guy directed his ire on me and my one regret was moving to another part of the tram rather than sticking up for myself.       Adding to the insult was a humid density to the City of Canals, similar to a bad day in New York (not surprising given their shared history) of heaving throngs and claustrophobic architecture, boorish tourists and locals clad in black. An obligatory trip to the Sex Museum and a "coffeshop" in Rembrandt Park proved to be elusive distractions –– I left the latter because of the horrific R & B blasting from the strategica...

"We'll always have Paris."           The above quote given by Humphrey Bogart's character Rick Blaine in Casablanca could easily reach beyond the personal and speak to the collective, to the fact that Paris belongs, permanently, to each and every individual across the globe, a place on the opposite end of a boom-and-bust-town. Her heavy energy and organized infrastructure won't be blown away by some big, bad wolf. Rome may be the "Eternal City" but Paris knows too that it is staying put, that her edifices of steel and marble and stone aren't going anywhere soon (unlike the flights of her 80 million annual suitors). We'll ALWAYS have Paris.   Notre Dame Cathedral       We rolled into Paris's Gare du'Nord, a transportation crossroads, on a Monday evening. The best early decision we made was NOT to purchase a 1-day or 4-day Metro Pass but to instead pick up a book of ten metro rides for 14 Euros each. At today's currency rate (...

      For the last 8 months, my cohort at the Shaman's Way have spent one full Sunday a month in San Francisco's wooded Presidio, walking the Inka Medicine Wheel. We are now at the mid-point of our walk although 'walk' may be too generous and dignified a term. For the first four months, we tiptoed around The South, meeting Sachamama, the Serpent Goddess, and going to the place of stripping old skins and identities. The latter four months we've been trudging through The West, meeting Lady Jaguar and facing the darkness of both ordinary and non-ordinary reality and the faulty workings of our own selves. While The South was about letting go of fixed notions, The West has trained us to walk without fear in a world that can be egregiously unsafe.       Before you dismiss this description as new-age gobbledygook, please know that shamanism is the oldest "religion" known to humankind. Many are loathe to pin it as such, preferring the term "technology,...