The end is near for the Plush Room. After a brief stay of execution, the owners of the York Hotel, where the venerable, stately, red velvety night club is located, now say the club will close for good on Feb. 2. Rising star Shawn Ryan, described by some as "the gay Bublé, plays the Plush Jan 11-13. Varla Jean Morrison aka Jeffery Roberson, known as a risqué drag artist (is that not redundant?), will swish onto the Plush stage, Jan 24-26 & Jan.31-Feb. 2. So the Plush ends with a bang, not a whisper. Word of the Plush's demise sent shock waves through cabaret community all over the world. Meanwhile, construction continues on a new downtown club, The Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko. The two Jersey Boys who run Rrazz have booked the inimitable Nancy Wilson into the Herbst Theatre on Jan. 19. Wow. Nancy Wilson rarely performs here, and we need all the class we can get. ...
... Catbox populi: Kitten on the Keys aka Suzanne Ramsey, the SF burlesque star, is back in town after tearing up the U.K. with her uke, her voice, her piano playing and her outrageously naughty shtick. ... Speaking of outrage, Sharon McKnight has been getting much praise for her show from the irreverent crowd -- our kind of people. It's aptly called Songs to Offend Almost Everyone. La Sharon, a first amendment rabble-rouser, as she says, boasts her program is designed to agitate "minorities and majorities of every persuasion." ... I think it's about time we stand up for drunks. After all, they can't stand up for themselves.
On the topic of matters offensive, Dominic DiGrande hosted 13 offensive linemen from the San Francisco City College Rams for an all-they-can-eat lunch last month at Dominic's Gold Mirror Restaurant on Taraval. It was to celebrate the Rams' Norcal championship victory. Dom is a former Rams running back, and the boys kept running back to fill their plates. This reminds me of Bozo Miller, the famed Bay Area trencherman, who would appear in the Guinness Book of Records from time to time for the enormous amounts of food he could eat. One day, in 1963, he consumed 27 two-pound chickens at the old Trader Vic's. .... Mark Klaiman & Virginia Donohue, the husband & wife team who own the very successful Pet Camp are also celebrating. Pet Camp got the first-ever Small Business Award from the SF Chamber of Commerce. Mark & Virginia are happy campers. "It's an amazing honor," she purrs, "it's a privilege to take care of people's dogs and cats." ...
Will Original Joe's, the jewel of the Tenderloin, ever reopen after that devastating fire in the kitchen? That's still unclear. Owner Marie Duggan is still dealing with the insurance company about the costs of the extensive water damage. John Harris, the legendary barman at O.J.s, says Marie is determined to reopen. John says the 2nd annual
gathering of the Choirboys of St. Joseph's in the Tenderloin started out at Lefty O'Doul's. Choirboys? Like Joseph Wambaugh's Choirboys. "This is a group that only O.J.'s could spawn," John intones. "The extended membership consists of bookies, bartenders, cops, lawyers & degenerate gamblers." Are all gamblers degenerates? "They tend to misbehave when confronted with what Mark Twain used to call 'insect authority.' Collectively, they are very much like Boston Blackie whose motto was 'Friend of those who have no friends, and enemy of those who make him an enemy.' John Harris certainly has plenty of friends. ...
I admire John for his unrepentant love for San Francisco. He lives easily in the old times as well as in the disorderly New World Order, which is not what most of us ordered. John uses his hiatus well -- lunch at Red's Java House, and dinner at Sam Wo's, but he really wants to go back to work. I hope some old-time solid establishment hires him for a few shifts at lunchtime. I like talking to him. ... Yes, that was James Dallesandro, the author of 1906, on the picket line outside The Disney Store at Union Square, drawing attention to the writer's strike. Other writers with Jim were Band of Brothers Emmy-winner Erik Jendresen, Dave Peoples, who wrote the screenplays for Unforgiven & Blade Runner, and North Beach's Philip Kaufman, who directed The Right Stuff and The Incredible Lightness of Being. Why Disney? Because it's notorious for its mistreatment of writers. Joan Didion despises Disney, and calls it "Mouseschwitz." ...
Peter Laufer who got drummed out of the culture corps at Berkeley’s KPFA for being too reasonable, began his new Sunday morning radio show on Green 960 last month. It turned out to be his last show on that station. Clear Channel announced 70 layoffs nationwide. Someone, give this man a show. ... Veteran broadcasters Don Mozely, Ronn Owens, Carter B. Smith, Mike Cleary and Belva Davis are among those inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. KCBS traffic reporter par excellence, Ron Lyons, was honored posthumously. Frank Knight, longtime announcer at KCBS, also died last year. I'm pleased to say that I worked with Frank and with Ron. They both loved radio passionately. Frank had a huge collection of old-time radio shows. The aforementioned Boston Blackie was only one of them. And you remember The Shadow: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart’s of men?”
Sharon Anderson, the painter with the barbed wit, still laments the loss of Norman Mailer, who died last year. Infuriating the feminists, Sharon quipped, “Gee, I was available to beat up his wife while he was in the hospital.” Sharon’s got lines guaranteed to offend everyone. Passing through Whittier, Nixon’s home town, she observed that all the clocks there are eighteen and a half minutes slow, and no one can figure out what happened to that time. Nixon knew, we don’t, we never will. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? …
Bruce Bellingham , author of Bellingham by the Bay, is often seen lurking about the tawdrier spots of San Francisco, nestling in the soft underbelly of menace and crime. You may e-mail him at bruce@northsidesf.com
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Friday, January 11, 2008
Here Come Those Oversensitive Jersey Boys
I saw finally "Jersey Boys, the spirited homage to one of the great groups of the 1960s, the Four Seasons.
This Jersey Boy was not moved to tears. It was full of "But it's for the neighborhood, Frankie, choo know what I mean?" My glowing memory of Hackensack is about going to court over a trumped-up marijuana charge as a kid. My poor mother. They dropped the case, which really was just harassment. Truth is, they happened to catch me on a night I really wasn't guilty. I was always guilty of harboring insurgent political ideas. There were too many right-wingers in my part of New Jersey. I couldn't wait to get free of it, and cross the river to New York, where I went to college -- for about ten minutes.
Though I moved to San Francisco as a teenager, I will never be a native San Franciscan. I will always be a Jersey Boy.
Still, Jersey Boys, which is a slick, high-energy show replete with Manasquan muscle music, doesn't depict the New Jersey I knew as a kid. Well, only peripherally. Frankie Valli and the Boys from Bergenfield lived a few towns and worlds away from my semi-rusticated childhood. There were farms in my little town. The farms are now. Now it looks like Bel-Air, and is just as pricey. I never talked in the dialect of hoodlum-speak, and I don't know anybody from New Jersey who does. As for the "mobbed-up" experience alluded to in the show, my oldest brother did date a lower-echelon Mafia Princess for a long time. How he got out of that alive, I'll never know. Actually, I do know. Over the years, I had wondered how brother Paul could mistreat Linda so badly and not be punished ruthlessly by her dad and brother, who were in the construction business. Or the deconstruction business. I was just a kid but even then I knew they were tough customers.
The Sopranos are too close to home, my former home. I have never seen The Sopranos. Why? I saw it as a kid.
There are great things about New Jersey. John Pizzarrelli, the great jazz guitarist/singer, played here the other night. He's a Jersey Boy. His wife, Jessica Molasky, a Connecticut girl, sang with him. John's Jersey Boy Brother, Martin, played the bass. It's family. Choo know what I mean? Pizzarelli's biggest hit is I Like New Jersey the Best. It's clever, it's witty. Dorothy Parker, the doyenne of rapier wit, was born in New Jersey. She never forgave her parents for it. And New Jersey's Thomas Edison could have been there to record her kvetching on one of his wax cylinders. She would never forgive me for saying that.
Yes, Jersey Boys takes me back, in an unsentimental way. (I'm more like the Bob Gaudio character, the Four Seasons' songwriter) in the show. He tells the audience: "I don't give a f--- about THE neighborhood. I didn't have a neighborhood. My neighborhood is where I am now.")
San Francisco is where I am now. It took some time but I, like most East Coast transplants, went through New York withdrawal. I was guilty of the obligatory complaints, "The pizza isn't as good here, where can you get a decent bagel in this town?" Whine, whine, whine. Other than that, I could not complain about anything in this once-sparkling, affordable city. San Francisco will be all right if the givers outnumber the takers. It's still a great town. And I'm loyal to my neighborhood, Nob Hill, even if it's a slum. Yes, that's a joke. I wouldn't say nothin' bad about the neighborhood. It's my neighborhood. I gotta stay loyal. Choo know what I mean?
Sure ya do. Bruce Bellingham has lived in San Francisco for 38 years, and is still getting the hang of the local lingo. Torment him at bellsf@mac.com
######
This Jersey Boy was not moved to tears. It was full of "But it's for the neighborhood, Frankie, choo know what I mean?" My glowing memory of Hackensack is about going to court over a trumped-up marijuana charge as a kid. My poor mother. They dropped the case, which really was just harassment. Truth is, they happened to catch me on a night I really wasn't guilty. I was always guilty of harboring insurgent political ideas. There were too many right-wingers in my part of New Jersey. I couldn't wait to get free of it, and cross the river to New York, where I went to college -- for about ten minutes.
Though I moved to San Francisco as a teenager, I will never be a native San Franciscan. I will always be a Jersey Boy.
Still, Jersey Boys, which is a slick, high-energy show replete with Manasquan muscle music, doesn't depict the New Jersey I knew as a kid. Well, only peripherally. Frankie Valli and the Boys from Bergenfield lived a few towns and worlds away from my semi-rusticated childhood. There were farms in my little town. The farms are now. Now it looks like Bel-Air, and is just as pricey. I never talked in the dialect of hoodlum-speak, and I don't know anybody from New Jersey who does. As for the "mobbed-up" experience alluded to in the show, my oldest brother did date a lower-echelon Mafia Princess for a long time. How he got out of that alive, I'll never know. Actually, I do know. Over the years, I had wondered how brother Paul could mistreat Linda so badly and not be punished ruthlessly by her dad and brother, who were in the construction business. Or the deconstruction business. I was just a kid but even then I knew they were tough customers.
The Sopranos are too close to home, my former home. I have never seen The Sopranos. Why? I saw it as a kid.
There are great things about New Jersey. John Pizzarrelli, the great jazz guitarist/singer, played here the other night. He's a Jersey Boy. His wife, Jessica Molasky, a Connecticut girl, sang with him. John's Jersey Boy Brother, Martin, played the bass. It's family. Choo know what I mean? Pizzarelli's biggest hit is I Like New Jersey the Best. It's clever, it's witty. Dorothy Parker, the doyenne of rapier wit, was born in New Jersey. She never forgave her parents for it. And New Jersey's Thomas Edison could have been there to record her kvetching on one of his wax cylinders. She would never forgive me for saying that.
Yes, Jersey Boys takes me back, in an unsentimental way. (I'm more like the Bob Gaudio character, the Four Seasons' songwriter) in the show. He tells the audience: "I don't give a f--- about THE neighborhood. I didn't have a neighborhood. My neighborhood is where I am now.")
San Francisco is where I am now. It took some time but I, like most East Coast transplants, went through New York withdrawal. I was guilty of the obligatory complaints, "The pizza isn't as good here, where can you get a decent bagel in this town?" Whine, whine, whine. Other than that, I could not complain about anything in this once-sparkling, affordable city. San Francisco will be all right if the givers outnumber the takers. It's still a great town. And I'm loyal to my neighborhood, Nob Hill, even if it's a slum. Yes, that's a joke. I wouldn't say nothin' bad about the neighborhood. It's my neighborhood. I gotta stay loyal. Choo know what I mean?
Sure ya do. Bruce Bellingham has lived in San Francisco for 38 years, and is still getting the hang of the local lingo. Torment him at bellsf@mac.com
######
Saying Something Nice Never Cost Me Anything
by Bruce Bellingham
For Sharon Anderson
Each year, a friend of mine makes a resolution for the New Year. She says she will try to be a kinder person.
This is always beguiling because she is already the kindest person I know. I always point that out. And she always explains patiently, kindly, "It's in the trying, Bruce, that really matters. If you try to be kinder, then that's enough to be a better person."
Nothing is more irritating than a person kinder than I trying to be kinder.
I mean, enough is enough, already.
Lately I have been surrounded by kindness. My friends are compassionate people, the people at this newspaper are very nice. Even the mailman, Conrad, is a terrifically thoughtful fellow. I'm drowning in a sea of civility.
Not so fast. There are also plenty of abrasive, nasty, unkind people around for me to keep my wits about me. The government is not kind, if I can personify the government. The government can be as odious as it like, and figures no one is going to do anything about it. That's because very few of us do anything about it.
"I'll respect the government," Mark Twain says, "when it earns my respect."
Now, that's the spirit. Who's working for whom? Why are there homeless people on the streets of San Francisco? Why was the Gulf Coast virtually abandoned after Katrina? There's so much indifference in the world. It's very unkind.
The Sikhs have a saying. It goes something like, "Before you open your mouth, remember to say something that is only necessary and kind and true."
The operative word here is "and." I would be pleased with myself if I could adhere to any of those three adjectives, "necessary, kind, true."
But I am rarely pleased with myself.
My kindly friends try to remind me to be kind to myself. Allen Ginsberg reminds me: "Be kind to yourself, it is only one and perishable of many on the planet." For some reason, I rarely think I am a person that I should be kind to. My anger is often meted out to me. Why that is, I m not sure. I'm not even sure why I'm angry sometimes. Turning to St. Francis, San Francisco's patron, I can take this to heart: "It is in pardoning that we are pardoned." I'll try to take that "pardon me" a little more seriously.
Now, there's a tricky part in the message from St. Francis. Sure, it's about being kind and nice and forgiving and all that sort of thing -- but it means that you cannot expect anything in return. When I think hard about that, I have trouble thinking of an instance when I helped somebody and really, really wanted nothing for my trouble. I didn't come up with this by myself, mind you. I'm talking about nothing in return -- no dough, no thanks, no accolades, no mention in the media, no pat on the back, no murmured nicety when I'm not around. It is to expect nothing in return at all. This is very difficult and truly holy stuff.
"Be kind to the heroes that have lost their names in the newspaper," writes the poet.
So my holy friend, not so religious, just holy, who sends out and receives about 300 Christmas cards every year, is talking about being kinder in a way that is without conditions. To seek less every year, and give more.
I suppose I could try to be kind like that. "Be kind to your disappearing mother and father ..." I heard someone say the other day that her greatest hope was to be as kind as her parents were. I was astonished. I do know this: we're going to need more kindness in this coming year.
In case I fail this conviction, I'd like to apologize in advance, if you don't mind forgiving me in advance.
Bruce Bellingham interviewed Allen Ginsberg for his high school newspaper when Bruce was 14 years old. This could account for all of his Ginsberg allusions. Ans maybe illusions. Perhaps we'll forgive him for that. Let him know. His e-mail is bruce@northsidesf.com
#####
by Bruce Bellingham
For Sharon Anderson
Each year, a friend of mine makes a resolution for the New Year. She says she will try to be a kinder person.
This is always beguiling because she is already the kindest person I know. I always point that out. And she always explains patiently, kindly, "It's in the trying, Bruce, that really matters. If you try to be kinder, then that's enough to be a better person."
Nothing is more irritating than a person kinder than I trying to be kinder.
I mean, enough is enough, already.
Lately I have been surrounded by kindness. My friends are compassionate people, the people at this newspaper are very nice. Even the mailman, Conrad, is a terrifically thoughtful fellow. I'm drowning in a sea of civility.
Not so fast. There are also plenty of abrasive, nasty, unkind people around for me to keep my wits about me. The government is not kind, if I can personify the government. The government can be as odious as it like, and figures no one is going to do anything about it. That's because very few of us do anything about it.
"I'll respect the government," Mark Twain says, "when it earns my respect."
Now, that's the spirit. Who's working for whom? Why are there homeless people on the streets of San Francisco? Why was the Gulf Coast virtually abandoned after Katrina? There's so much indifference in the world. It's very unkind.
The Sikhs have a saying. It goes something like, "Before you open your mouth, remember to say something that is only necessary and kind and true."
The operative word here is "and." I would be pleased with myself if I could adhere to any of those three adjectives, "necessary, kind, true."
But I am rarely pleased with myself.
My kindly friends try to remind me to be kind to myself. Allen Ginsberg reminds me: "Be kind to yourself, it is only one and perishable of many on the planet." For some reason, I rarely think I am a person that I should be kind to. My anger is often meted out to me. Why that is, I m not sure. I'm not even sure why I'm angry sometimes. Turning to St. Francis, San Francisco's patron, I can take this to heart: "It is in pardoning that we are pardoned." I'll try to take that "pardon me" a little more seriously.
Now, there's a tricky part in the message from St. Francis. Sure, it's about being kind and nice and forgiving and all that sort of thing -- but it means that you cannot expect anything in return. When I think hard about that, I have trouble thinking of an instance when I helped somebody and really, really wanted nothing for my trouble. I didn't come up with this by myself, mind you. I'm talking about nothing in return -- no dough, no thanks, no accolades, no mention in the media, no pat on the back, no murmured nicety when I'm not around. It is to expect nothing in return at all. This is very difficult and truly holy stuff.
"Be kind to the heroes that have lost their names in the newspaper," writes the poet.
So my holy friend, not so religious, just holy, who sends out and receives about 300 Christmas cards every year, is talking about being kinder in a way that is without conditions. To seek less every year, and give more.
I suppose I could try to be kind like that. "Be kind to your disappearing mother and father ..." I heard someone say the other day that her greatest hope was to be as kind as her parents were. I was astonished. I do know this: we're going to need more kindness in this coming year.
In case I fail this conviction, I'd like to apologize in advance, if you don't mind forgiving me in advance.
Bruce Bellingham interviewed Allen Ginsberg for his high school newspaper when Bruce was 14 years old. This could account for all of his Ginsberg allusions. Ans maybe illusions. Perhaps we'll forgive him for that. Let him know. His e-mail is bruce@northsidesf.com
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