The Wank Bank is the brain child of a guy I met while Dj'ing an art show for some friends a couple of months back. When someone comes up to you and tells you they are going to throw a party somewhere there is an unspoken rule to follow a checklist of skepticism before you can really give them a sincere look in the eyes.

-Who is this?
- Have I seen them before?
-Are they a Tranny out of Drag?
-Will they pay me?
-Will they pay me?
-If not can I at least get drunk for free?

Luckily, Ryan had good answers for all of the questions. After meeting him a couple of more times here and there and getting trashed with him at a few parties I was confident in this
evening he was trying to throw. Mostly I was excited about its location than anything else.

The Wank Bank is what I call public service. Ryan nor am I getting paid enough for the effort involved but, the party is in the Heart of the Castro on 18th and C-block and I don't know how much you know about the Castro so let me give you a crash course.

The Castro was really fucking cool 30 years ago. Unfortunately though, anyone who was creative, attractive, selling drugs, or rich enough to be getting laid at the time was or is being killed by A.I.D.S. The results of such a genocide on a epicenter of culture was devastating and although the community has mourned for its loses it has never fully recovered. All of those who were killed by the disease were forced to end short their responsibly toward the future of their hard work shaping the gay community. It is not difficult to see who was left over from the 70's and 80's to take on those responsibilities... fuckin' assholes. A walk in the Castro gives you a clue of how stale and whitewashed the culture has become by its current "owning generation." Its not that when Queers get old all they want is a clean neighborhood to walk their dog-shitters around, its that those Queers are the only majority left to take charge of how it all is facilitated.
The majorities drive for the community has become for assimilation as opposed to dissent. Non-profit status, million dollar "community centers," and bars named after citrus fruits.

So what does this have to do with partying? Well, everything.

The older generation responsible for the Castro is acting out against their own children. It Is as if your parents remodeled the house when you were away at summer camp and accidentally replaced your room with a Gym. The dads of the community are forcing their political, economic, and intellectual powers against their own community without really realizing it. By forcing any sort of dirty, unperfected, or D.I.Y creative energy into other parts of town they have made invisible a whole part of our culture, the part that knows how to dress up, get drunk, and fuck, but also hold a conversation about something other than the new Puma line. Gentrifying and polishing-over the most visible destination for an underground culture is having a much larger effect than just making it a comfortable place for you dog to shit. I feel like when someone visits the Castro today and sees its options he/she feels the need to adapt to what has been given. That is not to say that it takes personal will and downright intelligence to know you have to work to find your peers but, there is a bit more to it in this case. There are many people who have adapted to the castro-gay-lifestyle not because that is who they are as individuals but because that is as far as they know how to go into the underground. Some know what other options lie within our community and choose the safety of Castro-gay culture but many do not know. Being queer is becoming a difficult gray area between acceptable and outcast. There are communities that mimic a utopian gay life of domesticated queers and communities that choose to be so underground they find little or no change from decade to decade. But I digress…

The bottom line is that the Castro is dead. Its use as a central point for information and culture is no longer current. Big business and small business alike have turned the community into a dull copy of a straight culture that will not allow us to live amongst.

Angry queers and bitter queens are keeping out the musicians, artists, and thinkers whose radical ways could be making gay life the negative center of attention again! We could be throwing great parties together but instead club owners keep risky art out of their bars and stick to the steady income of mind numbing consumer trash. We could be sharing our own concert spaces and coffee bars but instead business owners allow neighborhood associations to close pottery-barn-door on us. That lack of support hurts too. If history must repeat itself then so to must our actions. If their was a fair level of exposure to all sides of the queer world I would say keep the shock levels down but there isn't.

Its time to gross some people out, tag up some walls, and make some heads roll. Its time to break some laws and make being young and drunk fabulous again...

That is partially what Wank Bank is trying to take part in, along with many little club nights here and there that have been popping up in the Castro struggling to fight the blandlands and the bar. Its hard to accomplish anything substantial without a percentage of their fighting power. Regardless, its been a fun experiment to try to speak where we aren't wanted.

Hopefully pictures will arrive for all of the banks will arrive soon enough to explain this jumbled mess of thought more eloquently.

Ryan is my hero!

Today was my birthday and I celebrated with my first day after giving my work the good old two weeks notice. I got bitch eyes from the bosses but it felt good to know that the evil was in them all along and that I got to see it after I was out of their grip.

Also in celebration of becoming a man I went to see the "new" Friends Forever at CCAC's Design Branch on 14th and Wisconsin. When I got there, the campus security was harassing us to bring our alcohol into the concert area and to not drink it outside. He kept mumbling about all this crap and even when I was communicating that we were on our way inside he was still quite persistent. I have never been encouraged to rush into a venue with outside liquor before, I guess there is a first time for everything.

I am going to spare you all of the details of the embarrassing free-access-style-television show that was being filmed and was the reason for the free concert on campus. Lets just say that it was fucking cold outside and the pre-show entertainment wasn't warming anything up.

I saw Friends Forever play the first month I came to San Francisco about 3 years ago. It was at my friends loft in SOMA (formerly the Clit Stop now just 58 Tehama) and the Hospitals played along with someone else I must've missed. All I remember is how people were talking about how the last band would be performing live and outside in the parking lot. The band was supposed to be from Santa Cruz and they only played out of their tour van. Very fresh to the Northern California music scene and pretty fresh to party life in general I had no expectations.

Lets just say Friends Forever was quite the initiation to the things to come on my new life in a new city.

If you don't know anything about the band already, go check out their DVD of the same name, its become a cult classic over 2 years its been out.

A quick synopsis of a Friends Forever performance is fireworks, lasers, lights, more fireworks, smelly keyboards, spastic hardcore jamming, smelly kids, and more fireworks. Mostly, the band captures a crowd by surprise and the dancing is only led by diehards and fans. Everyone else is usually so shocked about the sensory overload and the dangerously close contact they are making with the action that they are usually stunned still. The band, although they interacted with the crowd and infiltrated the spectators space, created this pulling energy where more and more I felt like we were less watching and more actually responsible for the madness. Needles to say, it fucking rocked my whole world. I'm can't necessarily pinpoint it to exactly that night, but I do know that concert had something to do with my acceptance of beer as a new option toward doing evenings.

So is life that in three years I found myself at another Friends Forever show, about the same time as the last one (late summer), this time 10x wiser, with great expectations, and already a couple of beers into my belly. But, its seems as though the band and I have been going through some changes over the years. Yes, our balls did drop, literally. Friends Forever is no longer the original Friends Forever. Now it is Friends Forever with 3 girls in bikinis as opposed to 3 boys in smelly vegan-kinis. New line up, similar sound, a van, all out Friends Forever energy, and yes more fireworks. I heard rumors about the gimmick that they would be touring with three girls in bikinis but was skeptical of its validity. Its true, but don't get to caught up in the cleavage, these girls fucking ROCK a smidgen harder then the original kids. During their interview before they performed, they mentioned something about not being able to play their instruments and that is why they added the skimpy outfits. Well, I agree, they aren't winning any Grammy’s anytime soon, but they songs fucking rock. I also feel like their energy and the new songs are a little smoother and more accessible. The songs are just as long as the jams I saw a couple of years ago, but there is something clearer in their structure then I remember from the original trio.

Regardless, the legend lives on and if you get the chance go see them. Rent the movie to tide you over until then.

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