- A Pride-weekend party with the potential to blossom.
- If San Francisco's Pride parade and related events have become a "party for straight teens," as the local interest site SFist lamented in 2015, it's because most of the queer folks have somewhere better to be. Why would you watch Apple employees in white T-shirts waving identical mini-Pride flags when you could be grinding gay bodies at the veteran drag queen Juanita More's annual Sunday party?
Now in its 15th year, Juanita MORE! is one of the few major Pride-weekend parties to entirely benefit an LGBT organization. This year, the proceeds went to TRUTH, a program for trans youth—which forgives the watery $12 margaritas. (Juanita MORE! raised more than $77,00 across the weekend.) The venue, located at 620 Jones Street in the Tenderloin district, was a huge open balcony nestled between towering apartment buildings. Though ravers could take refuge from the punishing sunlight in a cool indoor bar, the dance floor was always so packed that getting through it was a ten-minute ordeal. This led to people swarming the stage, making it near impossible to catch a glimpse of the DJs.
Thankfully, the sound was crystal-clear and the music, delivered by Horse Meat Disco, was all smile-cracking disco hits, from Grace Jones's "Warm Leatherette" to Sylvester's "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)." (A convincing Sylvester impersonator helped out on that one.) This wasn't a party about showcasing obscure records, but about celebrating the history of queer dance music in the most delightfully cartoonish way possible.
The daytime party was preceded, for the first time ever, by an evening party, which took place in the former location of Bill Graham's legendary rock venue Fillmore West, a little further down Market Street from the Pride parade. This was the first music event to be held at the space, now occupied primarily by a Honda dealership, since 1971. "When I first walked in it was still an auto body shop," said More. "But I walked into that room and felt the energy of all the people that had been there." That may have been so, but the pair of formidable speakers that curved halfway up the wall couldn't disguise the fact that the room's natural reverb was so booming that the textural elements of the music all but vanished.
Despite the efforts of a blinding confetti cannon and bisexual lighting, the evening session was a more spartan affair than the goofy and glamorous daytime party. The DJs, Kim Ann Foxman, Jasmine Infiniti and Gavin Rayna Russom, erred on the side of purist techno and there were a lot more gaps in the crowd, as well as a lot more bodies standing idly around.
But any issues with Saturday owed more to it being an unproven event in an unproven space. It's clear that Juanita More can throw a hell of a party, so if the Saturday were to also become a yearly occasion, it could blossom into something special, once the kinks are worked out. As the event's marketing director, Matthew Lindgren, told me: "The work for next Pride begins this week."
Photo credit /
Shot In The City Photography