Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 1/31/08 Section: Opinion

Michael Rizzo

Oklahoma City: 39th Street. Buffalo, N.Y.: Allen Street. New Orleans: Rue Saint Ann.

I've lived in each of these cities and never had a problem finding the fruit loop - that intrinsic headquarters of the gay community in any city - Gay Central, if you will. Yes, I will.

San Jose puts the whole notion of a fruit loop up for redefinition.

There's four gay bars in the heart of downtown (and not one lesbian bar): Mac's Club and Splash Bar and Grill on Post Street; Lido (a quasi-queer quarter) on First at Post; and Hunter's on First at San Salvador.

In a culture where size tends to matter, that's a pretty flaccid loop.

55, in drag years

I met Diamond John Lamantia at a business card exchange a few weeks ago.

The Rainbow Chamber of Commerce called it a mixer. And in all fairness, I was immediately informed by several other attendees that this particular mixer was missing the usual luster of the typical get-together.

Anybody queer with something to sell was there. And standing out in that sea were the people in the community who were the real movers and shakers, like John. He had all the luster I needed.

As we talked, I got this image of him as Lola (you know, the show girl at the Copacabana), which is weird because he's not a heartbroken has-been still living in the past. Not at all.

But he's got that glitter in his hair.

He's social elite here in queer San Jose: Emperor No. 32, and former grand marshal of the annual pride parade.

And, he makes the fruit loop every week: Week in, week out.

"If I'm going to be downtown, the launching pad is Mac's," he told me. "Monday night, I go to Lido. Tuesday night - I usually go to Hunter's on Tuesday. Wednesday night: back to Mac's and Lido's, because it has its show. Thursday night, it's back to Hunters and then Friday is Latin night at Splash, which I enjoy very much."

It made me smile. Here was the kind of "gay" I'm used to.

Gay, 18 and kissing boys

Granted, Oklahoma City was special. It had a 16-and-up club (that didn't sell alcohol). Obviously this was the place to be if you were gay and 18 and had never kissed a boy. Which I hadn't.

And the drag shows! Every queen had 10 drag daughters and 3 drag granddaughters. It was insane.

Once I landed a fake, I did the whole tour-de-loop: The Copa, Tramps, Sisters, Partners, Angles, The Wreck. And I kissed a boy (or two).

And not just me - everybody did it. Everybody who was gay and 18 and had (finally) kissed a boy.

I lived there for three years and sure, my routine would change. Months sometimes passed without me ever going out. But if I was out and in gay mode, I was at 39th Street, makin' the loop.

More of a honeycomb?

As soon as I got to San Jose I wondered, "What? Is the loop in San Francisco?" Maybe it is.

"When I turned 21," John said, "I went out to (San Francisco) nightly because it was different for me, and so new, and so exciting. There were over 300 gay bars then in the city. There was so much to do there. When I got off work, I ate my dinner, changed my clothes, and I was off. Sometimes I didn't get home until three or four in the morning."

No matter where it was, for me and John, it was the thing to do. You're gay, you're out: go to the bar. It just made sense.

Hectic Days of Old

Get ready for another Lola image. John used to host the drag show every Monday night at A Tinker's Dam.

That's another of the queer bars around here. It's in Santa Clara, on the whole other side of the cereal bowl.

"It was like a cabaret show," he told me. "I had a lot of young people get their start at my show. I had my regular people and guests would come. Some would sing live, some would do drag - all different people would do different things. It was the place then to go on Monday nights."

He paused. "They still have it now, but it doesn't have the flavor it used to have when I did it. It was fun."

Diving In

I think that when you're constantly surrounded by something because you choose to be, because you like it, something special happens. You start to become part of it, until you are it.

I, too, saw the fruit loop, loved the fruit loop, and became the fruit loop.

New Orleans, Summer 2007: The corner of Saint Ann and Bourbon streets, me, a bar well and a gay bar. It was a classy place where I worked, but most of the time I'd get so plastered I'd just make shots, serve 'em to all the boys and then drag them onto Bourbon with me to do the Electric Slide.

People loved it. I loved it.

Bars there, they don't close. At least not all of them. So after my shift we went to the Pub or Parade. LaFitte's was down the street, and so was Oz.

All the bartenders knew each other. We all came and saw each other. There was Sammy and Chris and Dusty and William and Manny.

We were gay, we were in our 20s and we were kissing boys. It just made sense.

Soggy Cereal

Quarantined in San Jose, what do we have? The Alameda?

I went there. There's a queer center, a gay coffee shop, a bathhouse (shh!). But it's just not the same without the bars.

Dust off the history books and you'll find Stockton Street, where the fruit loop used to be. It's where Renegade's used to be - and 641 and Buck's.

But all the bars were either forced to close down, or the owners died, or they changed locations. Now all that's there are soggy condos.

Most of the San Jose queer community I run into doesn't seem to share my exasperation over the lack of a gay district.

I've only been here five months, and I'm not complaining. This is just crazy to me: a vast queer community that doesn't revolve around the bars?

Where's the drag shows? Where's the foam parties? Where's all the twinks? And barflies? And the strippers?

I guess I'm out of the loop.

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