We asked an 8-year Haight Street bartender to tell us what it's like working at the best only best gay bar in the Upper Haight. His story is beneath the cut.
Settle in, it's worth a read.
If you had told me, as a 16-year-old boy living in New Jersey that I’d one day call San Francisco’s famous Haight –Ashbury neighborhood my home, I would’ve said you were crazy. Further reveal that I’d also work there for almost a decade, and I would have laughed you out of the room. It wasn’t that the neighborhood, or San Francisco for that matter weren’t on my radar. My friends and I could loosely be considered northeast hippies- Jersey boys who loved top-40 and wore mall clothes, but would never pass up a jam band or classic rock concert at which we could get drunk and high. I spent many a Steve Miller Band Concert or Phil Lesh and Friends Show either too fucked up on mushrooms or too passed out drunk in my car, to remember. But hey, what I’ll never forget was the atmosphere created at those concerts! A temporary community united in good will and shared experience, bound by an irrepressible love of life and of course, good music. These marathons of boozing and drugging, as my mother once angrily called them, were where some of the best moments of my life played out. We’d get there early to tailgate and often have to be encouraged by security to leave hours after the show ended. The Haight-Ashbury in the late 60’s, for me represented the spirit and fun of one of these concerts, perhaps even more so, because at least there, security didn’t force you to leave at the end. The fact that my parents weren’t cool enough to join what I thought was the rest of their generation and head out to the fabled neighborhood, also gave the place more cache in my mind. I imagined pretty hippie girls offering me joints as I strolled in an out of record stores and head shops. Warm sun on my face, strong acid on my tongue, and sandals upon my feet, I’d wile away the days in a blissful stupor. Did I mention that I thought I was straight at the time? Whether or not my fantasy had any basis in the truth didn’t matter. I knew this was a place where my friends and I could cast off the shackles of our middle-class, extremely homogenized lives. Where, unlike at our Catholic high school, we could grow our hair past ear-length or God forbid, attempt a beard. Where we didn’t have to hide our pot pipes in the backyard so our moms didn’t find them. And where annoying things like homework or personal hygiene didn’t get in the way of getting stoned. In the Haight-Ashbury, we could be hippies as I imagined them, pure and dedicated to the Earth and all her possibilities, not the burnt out mooches who tried to steal our beer at Phish shows. The place represented the dream for my friends and I as we smoked weed in attics, sitting under black lights, listening to Pink Floyd, and hoping not to get caught. The fact that ninety percent of our information about the place was gleaned from television including miniseries like, NBC’s The 60’s, or conjured up as one of our suburban teenage drug fantasies, hardly bothered us at all. We never actually thought we’d go there, assuming the spirit and excitement had ended with the decade. For me personally, it was simply a fun place and time to fantasize about especially when faced with the upcoming specter of college, specifically getting into a good one. I will say that college and the new life it afforded me, took me far away from my fantasies of 1969 San Francisco. Dorm-living, with its lack of parental supervision and 24-hour access to stimulation in the form of other procrastination-prone freshmen, offered ample distractions. Not to mention the fact that I was living first in DC and then in New York during the 911 years and felt a heightened sense of the present as only true fear of armegeddon can bring. I had immediately disliked DC upon moving there, and focused my efforts and imagination solely on getting to New York, where, upon my arrival I began a life that could best be characterized as ‘in the now’. Diving headfirst into the all- night decadence NYC had to offer, I thought little about anything other than my plans for that particular evening. The writing program I’d worked so hard to transfer into became an afterthought, as I began meeting men late night in porn theaters and east village gay bars. If telling them I was bisexual before we had sex can be considered “coming out”, then I guess this was the start of my process. Either way, practically assaulted by new impulses and experiences, it was all my brain could do, to simply function day to day, never mind make life-altering decisions. In fact, it wasn’t until I graduated (barely) and was told by my parents that they would no longer help me financially to live in uber-priced Manhattan that I had to make the inevitable decision that faces all graduates. What the fuck was I gonna do next? Interestingly enough, it was this suppressed homosexuality that first steered my mind back to San Francisco. I had always tangentially known that the city, along with being a counterculture paradise, also was a haven for queers. From time to time, I would hear comics on television and wise-asses at my school joke about all the gay sex that went on there in bathhouses and dark alleys. And though I had never heard specifically of Harvey Milk, I knew the city to be a bastion not just for the gay lifestyle, but also for gay politics. Yet, like many of my generation, I received my most formative impression of SF as an eclectic gay-friendly place from MTV’s The Real World San Francisco. Though at the time, I hadn’t yet hit puberty, I was glued to every second of the lives of those seven strangers, especially, Pedro Zamora, the first out gay man whom I had ever seen on television. I couldn’t have been older than 11 and didn’t remotely identify myself as homosexual, but I saw in him, a kindred spirit, and figured that if he loved San Francisco and it’s famously gay Castro Neighborhood, than it had to be a pretty special place. Of course, throughout my teen years, thoughts like this would be so deeply buried by denial that they were almost forgotten, however, certain things can only be avoided for so long. Ravaged by these long-repressed desires, and deeply conflicted as to the adult I hoped to become, my thoughts returned to Pedro Zamora and his adopted city, at the time of my college graduation. A 22-year-old with a burgeoning gay sex life that was hidden from just about everyone I was close to, I thought SF might be a safe place to explore my predilections more openly. Actually, it was more like bring on the gay guys! I made up my mind to move to San Francisco, particularly the Castro, to see if this homosexual mecca really was everything I had heard, and also to find out for sure if being gay in the daylight was something I even wanted. Naturally, I was careful to tell all of my friends and family that it was the Haight-Ashbury, with its spirit of creativity and individuality that I was truly seeking out. What was I going to say? That I wanted to dive head first into the gayborhood and not come up until I’d scratched every forbidden itch I’d had since childhood. I correctly assumed a white lie like this would at least stop a barrage of questions I was not prepared to answer. Though it wasn’t until I actually moved to the city and came to understand SF a bit more, that I realized I hadn’t been lying at all. In fact the two neighborhoods were incredibly intertwined. More than simply sharing urban borders, you couldn’t have had one without the other! It had never occurred to me that the counterculture I had so admired as a teen would be non-existent without some queer blood and energy, especially in San Francisco. At the time of my impending move, I remember simply thinking it was quite serendipitous that I was able to secure a place to stay with a friend of a friend, actually on Haight Street. Close enough to walk to the gay neighborhood without actually being in it, this meant that I could explore my interests, as well as freely share my address and pictures of my new place with people in Jersey. I realize how ridiculous a concern like this sounds, but at the time, I had been living a double life for almost 2 years and was used to paranoia seeping into every thought. It’s funny the thing’s you’ll do when you’re 22, naïve and starved for identity and adventure. I packed my sister’s extra large duffle-bag she used for sleep away camp and which she made me promise to return, with everything I thought was valuable in the world, boarded a plane on the 12 of October 2004 and moved to San Francisco having never been to the West Coast. I didn’t know a single person except my new roommate and we had only spoken on the phone once to coordinate the move. He would be working until 6pm, about a half hour outside the city, and I of course had arrived at 1pm, which meant that I now had several hours to kill before I could see where I’d be living. Excitement had long overshadowed any irritable feelings about this, and though I had what felt like an in-use body bag, I was determined to make my first few hours in SF fantastic. I asked the cab driver to take me to the park closest to Haight Street, and after his initial shock at my ignorance, he proceeded to tell me about and drive me to the famous Golden Gate Park. Though I had heard it referred to as San Francisco’s Central Park, I had no idea it formed the backbone of the Haight Ashbury! Not only was it the largest green space in the city, but it also provided it’s citizens with culture in the form of museums, a place to sleep at night (this was 04) as well as conduct illegal business, and for residents of the Haight, it could always be depended upon to bring the atmospheric fog it seemed to grab from the ocean and toss down the famous street every evening. As I listened to the cab driver talk however, anxious yet nervous to start my new life, I simply thought, ‘Oh cool, I’ll sit by the Golden Gate Bridge!” He dropped me off at the intersection of Haight Street and her beloved park, and I, tethered to an almost immovable bag, resolved to spend my first hours in my new neighborhood, absorbing its sights, smells, and sounds. Boy did nothing disappoint! After getting over my initial annoyance that I couldn’t see the bridge or any of the Bay from where I’d been deposited, I was first struck by the prehistoric beauty of Golden Gate Park. It’s large twisted Cypress and Pine trees were unlike any I had ever seen on the East Coast, and seemed right out of Jurassic Park! While my nose was initially inundated with the smell of Eucalyptus, it soon focused it’s attention on the pot smoke that was emanating from just about every one of the 20 or so make-shift camps of young kids around me, each exhibiting varying degrees of grunginess. These kids were not even trying to hide the fact that they were smoking AND selling! I saw dog walkers and Frisbee throwers, even families with small children walk by without the slightest turn of head. I was not in Jersey or even NYC anymore! Soon this shock wore off though, and I wanted some! Luckily, a slightly older hippie/mellow tweaker walked right up to me and asked to trade some clothes from my bag for a joint. Already infected by the rebellious yet still communal spirit of the Park, I opened said bag and just began grabbing shirt after shirt to give him. Like a monk entering the Monastery and relinquishing all his earthly trappings, I too wanted a fresh start and at the time, felt I needed to purge the last vestiges of my suburban life. Empowered by the free spirit of my new city and neighborhood, I would eventually realize that it was possible for my two separate lives to coexist together, but this revelation had not yet come. For the moment, I hung out with my new friend, smoking joints, watching him make drug deals, and soaking it all in. By the time my new roommate picked me up in the parking lot of McDonald's, hours later, I was pretty convinced that I had come to the right place. Miraculously, after just a month in SF, I was hired at Trax, the only gay bar on Haight Street. I‘d applied everywhere in the Castro, but as with my living situation, fate stepped in to intervene once again. Completely different from the gay bars I had experienced in both New York City and the ‘Stro, it was a total shock to me that a place like Trax even existed! Here, you heard music other than Britney Spears, you could hold conversations with people, gay or straight about everything from books to politics, and you didn’t have to take your shirt off. I started playing pool again, something I hadn’t done since high school, and became invested in a lot of the sporting events that the locals demanded we play on television every day. I know it sounds crazy to think this was so fascinating, but the fact that gay people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with all sorts of attitudes, interests and hobbies was a revelation to me. Of course, I consider that common knowledge now, however, back then, my only real impression of out gay men, besides Pedro, had been that of super-effeminate male classmates who were mercilessly ridiculed, or hair-dressers, shoppers, and other little birds twittering around fashionable women on television. For the first time in my life, I began to truly imagine redefining gay for myself, embracing both my inner butch man as well as the “sissy” that had caused me such shame growing up. I also began to believe that I might be able to amend, or perhaps even keep my relationships back in New Jersey, if I could ever muster the courage to come out. Looking back, it seems crazy! I had been sleeping with men for over two years, had found the courage to move across the continent, not to mention begun the process of accepting, even loving myself, yet I still could not come out to my friends and family back home! Even though I knew that they loved me, and that they most likely wouldn’t disown me, I still couldn’t get fully on board. This was simply because I did not see how my homosexuality could ever fit into any sort of a shared life with them. For one, my high school buddies and I certainly could no longer socialize together. Where would we go? At the time, having so heavily compartmentalized homos and heteros, I truly believed that gay bars were dark places where you danced to pop music with your shirt off until you found an anonymous guy to fuck that night and ditch in the morning, while straight bars were where you entertained your friends, and lived your real life, however bored and sexually frustrated you might be. Though I should have known that a place like the Haight, so removed from the average societal rules that governed “normalcy” would help me redefine my own. Among the bars and shops of the Haight-Asbury, I witnessed first hand that gay and straight people could live, love, and celebrate together, bound by shared interests and the ever-equalizing need for a strong drink. Of course, had I been open to it, I probably would’ve found this back in NYC, or even perhaps in the Castro, however for my personal story, it had to happen here. The combination of my youthful openness and curiosity, along with the unfettered humanism and tolerance I encountered in the Upper Haight, not to mention the fact that I had a whole continent separating my experimentation from judgment, all combined to set the stage for my long awaited coming out. The transformation that I had fled to SF in search of, had finally come to fruition. Yet, I would immediately learn from the bar’s diehard gay locals that I wasn’t the only one to experience a monumental change. They had watched the Haight-Asbury’s queer nightlife scene slowly dwindle, becoming absorbed into that of the larger neighborhood as a whole. Of course gay men still lived and thrived here, however, in what had become a trend throughout the city, specific gay bars were unable to survive without the safety and strength in numbers that predominantly gay neighborhoods like The Castro or SoMa could provide. The societal assimilation and outer acceptance of homosexuality that were so crucial to my own ability to process and come to terms with it, hadn’t been entirely welcomed by other gay men who had seen their social world be completely transformed. I learned that Trax Bar was now the last of what had once been a hearty breed. In the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s, it had counted itself among at least 8 other gay bars in the Upper Haight alone. Having survived AIDS, speed, Reagan, fires, and quite a few rowdy locals, the gay bars of Haight Street, and their cousins throughout the city’s many neighborhoods, couldn’t combat changing attitudes. Young gay men thought nothing now of accompanying their friends solely to straight bars, or hanging at places dubbed mixed, for the blend of sexualities that could be found among the crowd. And no one could deny the Internet’s power as a new meeting place for horny and or lonely gay men. The assimilation of homosexuality into the broader society, along with its acceptance and emergence as a cultural force, while historically unprecedented and certainly a positive thing (especially for me), had done much to diminish the power of the gay bar as a place of monastic refuge where decadence, debauchery, and above all else, camaraderie could exist away from the prying eyes of an often disapproving public. Queer theory and rhetoric aside, I couldn’t mourn something I had never known, and besides I was just happy to have a job at a gay bar! The fact that my place of employment would be located at the corner of Haight and Ashbury was icing on the cake! I could look out Trax’s front window and see the Peidmont legs, or watch the naked cyclists ride by, oblivious and unashamed of their appendages flopping in the breeze. I couldn’t yet understand what some of the locals meant about something being lost because I felt whole for the first time in my life, and Trax and the atmosphere it created had much to do with this. I’d finally felt comfortable enough to identify myself as a gay man, other than in some trick’s bedroom at 5am. I had come out to myself and created a life that just a year before, I had never imagined was possible. My new neighborhood had offered me more than a home and a job; it had given me a social life. It also was crucial to my own psyche that, while employed at Trax, I was able to tell my friends and family back home where I worked, without having to come out to them before I was ready. They could go online and check the place out, or look at pictures I had sent them without thinking anything other than that the place was a neighborhood bar. That is because my new work place was more than just a gay bar; it was a Haight Street Institution! Trax had been able to whether the storm that felled its contemporaries because of the special atmosphere it created. Holding steadfastly to it’s history, yet firmly able to exist in the present, it was a place where gay men and women felt comfortable enough to bring a date, or cruise for sex, but also where they could hang with their straight friends, and watch the 49’ers. And while the bar remained fiercely proud of and unflinching in its gay identity, those same straight friends were encouraged to come on their own, bringing whomever they liked as long as the guests were friendly and amenable to all. Everyone was welcome at Trax! Straight couples from the Midwest, shoppers up from North beach, bar-hoppers from the Marina, could all walk in on a Saturday afternoon for a bloody mary and a football game without even thinking twice. This was the magic of Trax, and what made me fall in love with it, practically from the very start. Working there, I met Radical Fairies, famous counterculture and gay activists, SF celebrities, everyone from Robin Williams to Cleve Jones and Donna Sachet. Each made me proud to be both a gay man, and a resident of the Upper Haight, filling me with the utmost awe for the individuality, artistry, activism, and resilience that had made this place and it’s people so famously unique. I stopped drawing such emphatic lines between homosexual and heterosexual and began to embrace our interconnectedness rather than simply viewing myself as belonging to a rare and isolated breed. Oh, and did I mention that I got to show up every day for work in a baseball hat, jeans and a t-shirt, stoned off my ass? Not only had I finally found myself, but also, my 16-year-old fantasies were all coming true! Yet, despite all the personal benefits I received working at the Bar, the most special gift by far was getting to know the everyday residents of the Upper Haight, living and conducting their business in the famous neighborhood, some since the Summer of Love. Their amazing stories and fierce love of their community was both inspiring and life changing to me! I started Monday and Tuesday days, and was instantly thrust into the day-to-day life and drama that exists in a place as old as Trax Bar, and a neighborhood as beautifully wacky as the Haight. I listened to their problems, mediated some of their disputes with one another, catered to a few peculiar idiosyncrasies, and above all else made immediate and life-long friends. We talked books and travel, politics and experience, sex and the future. I opened myself up, revealing things I had never shared, everything from my first same- sex fantasies, to the fact that I had always secretly loved Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. In return, I listened to stories about what life had been like here through the heyday of the 60’s, decadence of the 70’s, and AIDS and drug plagues of the 80’s. I heard first- hand accounts of everything from smoking hash with Janis Joplin in the bathroom, to threesomes on the pool table after hours, and perhaps most poignantly of staff camaraderie during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, when nearly everyone on the payroll was sick or dying from the terrible disease. I felt like I was becoming part of a rich and colorful history, and that for the first time, it was as my true self. I really began to feel free of the trappings of judgment, and thus able to break down walls I had erected a long time ago. And speaking of erections, the free-spiritedness that pervaded everything around me, also encouraged me to explore what it was to be a young gay man. The sexual cravings I’d experienced in NYC had not dissipated, but rather I found myself much more apt to embrace, even enjoy them, without the copious amounts of shame and hard liquor that had previously been employed in their suppression. Without all the fear and grief, I could enjoy sex for the first time, much like I had watched my straight friends do for years. No longer a scourge to me, my sexuality became powerful and exhilarating, and you bet I used the cache of being behind a bar to land me as much ass as I possibly could! I wasn’t conflicted or consumed with guilt! On the contrary, I felt alive and free, really for the first time in my life! I no longer needed the comfort of a late night hole-in-the-wall and a brain clouded by booze to hit on men or project my attraction. Now, I could cruise at the market, or on the street in broad daylight, without worrying I’d be identified and properly dealt with. Of course, my judgment was a bit clouded, but I did feel that while homosexuality was tolerated in NYC, here in SF it truly was celebrated, especially amidst the world I had so fortuitously stumbled upon. The colorful and all-inclusive atmosphere of Trax and its hodgepodge of wacky locals could only exist in the Haight-Asbury, and I, aware of this, thanked my lucky stars that I had decided to move here. Though certainly magical, and most definitely part of the tale of a fairy, not everything about life in the Upper Haight was fantastical and candy-coated. Like any neighborhood, it had its fair share of issues, though none more so for me, than the notorious street kids who call it’s sidewalks and open spaces home. While it was great to know that the Haight-Ashbury truly was a sort of Ellis Island for the fringe of society, day after day of fending off requests for anything on my person, as well as patrolling the entrance to the bar like it was a DMZ zone, did take their toll. It could sometimes feel like the neighborhood belonged more to these 21st century “hippies” than it did to the real working people who kept her businesses thriving. Much like the Phish Shows of my teen years, I started to notice a myriad of mooches who flocked here, hands out, ready to take anything they were given, despite appearing able-bodied. I questioned if this was the legacy of the Summer of Love-a bunch of kids on drugs trying to escape reality and their bills by living off the hard work and socially conscious efforts of those around them. Raised to believe that diligence was intrinsic to my value, it was difficult for me sometimes to respect and not dehumanize them. Though no matter how infuriating these street kids could be, they were instrumental, along with the act of slowly increasing my homosexual profile, in bringing about one of the greatest realizations of my life. These kids were not that different from me, especially in the eyes of some of our countrymen. I’ll admit, aside from the sexual urges I repressed with the force of the Hoover Dam, I’d never felt growing up, that I was an outcast or belonged along the perimeter of “normal society”. Like a good Catholic boy, I had always listened to the advice of my elders, very rarely if ever, feeling the need to question the status quo, even when confronted with many of the absurd paradoxes of religion. The same could be said for my approach to interpersonal relationships at school. I certainly would never go out of my way to ruin someone’s day, or point out their oddness, but I wouldn’t exactly stop others from doing so. Rather I would simply avoid kids branded misfits, constantly wondering why they just couldn’t make things easy for themselves and fall in line with everybody else. Not surprisingly, I also never went the route of a lot of children raised in strict religious homes who develop the need to rebel or a counter obsession with the “dark-side”. Pot, hallucinogens, and an occasional ecstasy pill at concerts constituted my rebellious, “I don’t care if I’m going to Hell” faze, and none affected my going to church on Sundays or getting good grades at school. In fact, I have always quite enjoyed the aspects of art and life that many consider to be Pollyanna-ish. Raised by top-40 radio, sitcoms, and Hollywood- happy endings, I often tended to veer away from anything deemed too non-linear, avant-garde, or worse, scary. Yes, I’m sure this was indicative of a subconscious wish to truly assimilate, but hell, while growing up, fitting in with my peers, and staying abreast of pop-culture was a great source of pride and satisfaction for me. Further governed by the rules of the Catholic schools I grew up attending, I also never experimented with crazy outfits, piercings, or hair length. To be quite honest, aside from the occasional curiosity born of forbiddance, I actually preferred the way I looked clean-cut and preppy. Though I did sometimes feign dissatisfaction in order to appear cool in front of my friends, or our public school contemporaries. All of this taken into account, it’s probably not surprising to know that I never endeared myself to the punks, goths, or fringe groups I encountered growing up. Viewing me as sterile or a conformist (names I was actually called), they’d always avoid me, assuming I was one of the very people I had fled to SF to escape. While I knew this to be false, it never much bothered me as my interests weren’t really aligned with this set, and I was not above my own flight response concerning them. For this reason, it was quite shocking to be embraced so instantly and whole-heartedly by many of these same types of people when I arrived in the Haight. It would take a few weeks for me to fully process the fact that I now, as an out gay man was considered an outcast/radical. These kids had embraced me, because to middle America, I was even fringier than they were. Like an Oprah A-ha moment, I became aware of the fact that while I had never considered myself to be outside the norm of society, I was crazy to think that I didn’t now appear that way to quite a large segment of the population. Yet, once again, because I was so emboldened by my life change, opinions like this started to matter less and less. How could one be a societal pariah when they were constantly surrounded by so much love and good-energy? Yes, it came from those deemed “freaks” in some circles, and certainly from people that I might not have been best friends with in high school or college, but who fucking cared! In fact, I could now be Brad 2.0, a combination of his past and present, unable to be categorized, looking instead, to be empowered. I was the same boy who loved all things pop-culture and dressed “normally”, almost boring, but I could still have radical friends or ideas and I could still be an individual. Thus, the same could be said for these Haight street kids. They were as much a part of this neighborhood as me, and in many cases, could be as difficult to pigeonhole. For me to write them off and judge them as freaks, or dregs of society, was to do exactly what the Christian Right does to my own people. Freak was now a relative term, as I had not just a responsibility to my neighborhood, but also everyone in it. I am only human though, it’s not like I became Mother Theresa, sleeping outside on the streets with them. Sometimes, I still even refused their requests for cigarettes or money, but I can say that after my epiphany I never failed to look at these kids as any less than my equal. Even if they were pan-handling on Haight Street by day, only to run back to their rich parents in Marin every evening, they too were still here for a reason. As I learned from my Trax family, everyone came to the Haight Ashbury hoping to find something. Whether it was a sense of community, or simply themselves, these kids were searching just like me. I watched the locals treat them with such compassion and respect, and it was life changing. Who would have thought I’d learn more about the true message of Jesus, not from 12 years of Catholic school, but from living in this evil Sodom? Though my life would eventually lead me to live and work predominantly in the Castro, I would never forget my earliest days in SF, immersed in the famous Haight-Asbury. Responsible for many of the values I consider intrinsic to my adult self, there simply was no shaking this place. In fact, so strong was my pull to my first adopted neighborhood, that I would never be able to fully give up my bar position at Trax. Careful to ensure that I always worked there at least one night a week, this bar and its patrons, along with the Upper Haight itself, would form the longest continuous relationship I had in San Francisco. Yes, I’d come to understand what the locals meant about the power of the gay bar as community center being diminished with our greater cultural assimilation, but I can honestly say that in the case of Trax and myself, this wasn’t true. No matter how settled I became in San Francisco, the bar would remain for me, throughout my 8 years in the city, a home away from home. A constant reminder of the inextinguishable hope that characterized my earliest days in SF, not to mention a refuge from a Castro life that had ironically become at times, too gay, there was no way I could temper her influence in my life. I’d come to the City By The Bay in search of self-discovery, adventure, and gay sex. Boy did I find all three! Yet it was the self-acceptance and open-mind that I acquired along the way for which I am most grateful. They often say you learn the most about yourself in a relationship and I agree whole-heartedly. During our 8 years together, I learned that for me, gay didn’t have to be an all defining logo or classification that determined everything about a person. I also learned that freak could be quite a relative term, used to apply to all of us. But most importantly, I learned how to be more of myself and not fear this. Coming out to my family and finally integrating both the gay and straight aspects of my world, would never have been possible had I not truly absorbed and allowed myself to be affected by the example set by my neighborhood and place of employment. What a stroke of luck that I ended up living in The Upper Haight and working at Trax Bar! How can one possibly quantify the value of something like this? They truly can’t. All they can do is sit back from time to time, light up a joint and reminisce fondly about a place that will forever capture the imagination identity-seekers and adventure-starved dreamers everywhere.
If you had told me, as a 16-year-old boy living in New Jersey that I’d one day call San Francisco’s famous Haight –Ashbury neighborhood my home, I would’ve said you were crazy. Further reveal that I’d also work there for almost a decade, and I would have laughed you out of the room. It wasn’t that the neighborhood, or San Francisco for that matter weren’t on my radar. My friends and I could loosely be considered northeast hippies- Jersey boys who loved top-40 and wore mall clothes, but would never pass up a jam band or classic rock concert at which we could get drunk and high. I spent many a Steve Miller Band Concert or Phil Lesh and Friends Show either too fucked up on mushrooms or too passed out drunk in my car, to remember. But hey, what I’ll never forget was the atmosphere created at those concerts! A temporary community united in good will and shared experience, bound by an irrepressible love of life and of course, good music. These marathons of boozing and drugging, as my mother once angrily called them, were where some of the best moments of my life played out. We’d get there early to tailgate and often have to be encouraged by security to leave hours after the show ended. The Haight-Ashbury in the late 60’s, for me represented the spirit and fun of one of these concerts, perhaps even more so, because at least there, security didn’t force you to leave at the end. The fact that my parents weren’t cool enough to join what I thought was the rest of their generation and head out to the fabled neighborhood, also gave the place more cache in my mind. I imagined pretty hippie girls offering me joints as I strolled in an out of record stores and head shops. Warm sun on my face, strong acid on my tongue, and sandals upon my feet, I’d wile away the days in a blissful stupor. Did I mention that I thought I was straight at the time? Whether or not my fantasy had any basis in the truth didn’t matter. I knew this was a place where my friends and I could cast off the shackles of our middle-class, extremely homogenized lives. Where, unlike at our Catholic high school, we could grow our hair past ear-length or God forbid, attempt a beard. Where we didn’t have to hide our pot pipes in the backyard so our moms didn’t find them. And where annoying things like homework or personal hygiene didn’t get in the way of getting stoned. In the Haight-Ashbury, we could be hippies as I imagined them, pure and dedicated to the Earth and all her possibilities, not the burnt out mooches who tried to steal our beer at Phish shows. The place represented the dream for my friends and I as we smoked weed in attics, sitting under black lights, listening to Pink Floyd, and hoping not to get caught. The fact that ninety percent of our information about the place was gleaned from television including miniseries like, NBC’s The 60’s, or conjured up as one of our suburban teenage drug fantasies, hardly bothered us at all. We never actually thought we’d go there, assuming the spirit and excitement had ended with the decade. For me personally, it was simply a fun place and time to fantasize about especially when faced with the upcoming specter of college, specifically getting into a good one. I will say that college and the new life it afforded me, took me far away from my fantasies of 1969 San Francisco. Dorm-living, with its lack of parental supervision and 24-hour access to stimulation in the form of other procrastination-prone freshmen, offered ample distractions. Not to mention the fact that I was living first in DC and then in New York during the 911 years and felt a heightened sense of the present as only true fear of armegeddon can bring. I had immediately disliked DC upon moving there, and focused my efforts and imagination solely on getting to New York, where, upon my arrival I began a life that could best be characterized as ‘in the now’. Diving headfirst into the all- night decadence NYC had to offer, I thought little about anything other than my plans for that particular evening. The writing program I’d worked so hard to transfer into became an afterthought, as I began meeting men late night in porn theaters and east village gay bars. If telling them I was bisexual before we had sex can be considered “coming out”, then I guess this was the start of my process. Either way, practically assaulted by new impulses and experiences, it was all my brain could do, to simply function day to day, never mind make life-altering decisions. In fact, it wasn’t until I graduated (barely) and was told by my parents that they would no longer help me financially to live in uber-priced Manhattan that I had to make the inevitable decision that faces all graduates. What the fuck was I gonna do next? Interestingly enough, it was this suppressed homosexuality that first steered my mind back to San Francisco. I had always tangentially known that the city, along with being a counterculture paradise, also was a haven for queers. From time to time, I would hear comics on television and wise-asses at my school joke about all the gay sex that went on there in bathhouses and dark alleys. And though I had never heard specifically of Harvey Milk, I knew the city to be a bastion not just for the gay lifestyle, but also for gay politics. Yet, like many of my generation, I received my most formative impression of SF as an eclectic gay-friendly place from MTV’s The Real World San Francisco. Though at the time, I hadn’t yet hit puberty, I was glued to every second of the lives of those seven strangers, especially, Pedro Zamora, the first out gay man whom I had ever seen on television. I couldn’t have been older than 11 and didn’t remotely identify myself as homosexual, but I saw in him, a kindred spirit, and figured that if he loved San Francisco and it’s famously gay Castro Neighborhood, than it had to be a pretty special place. Of course, throughout my teen years, thoughts like this would be so deeply buried by denial that they were almost forgotten, however, certain things can only be avoided for so long. Ravaged by these long-repressed desires, and deeply conflicted as to the adult I hoped to become, my thoughts returned to Pedro Zamora and his adopted city, at the time of my college graduation. A 22-year-old with a burgeoning gay sex life that was hidden from just about everyone I was close to, I thought SF might be a safe place to explore my predilections more openly. Actually, it was more like bring on the gay guys! I made up my mind to move to San Francisco, particularly the Castro, to see if this homosexual mecca really was everything I had heard, and also to find out for sure if being gay in the daylight was something I even wanted. Naturally, I was careful to tell all of my friends and family that it was the Haight-Ashbury, with its spirit of creativity and individuality that I was truly seeking out. What was I going to say? That I wanted to dive head first into the gayborhood and not come up until I’d scratched every forbidden itch I’d had since childhood. I correctly assumed a white lie like this would at least stop a barrage of questions I was not prepared to answer. Though it wasn’t until I actually moved to the city and came to understand SF a bit more, that I realized I hadn’t been lying at all. In fact the two neighborhoods were incredibly intertwined. More than simply sharing urban borders, you couldn’t have had one without the other! It had never occurred to me that the counterculture I had so admired as a teen would be non-existent without some queer blood and energy, especially in San Francisco. At the time of my impending move, I remember simply thinking it was quite serendipitous that I was able to secure a place to stay with a friend of a friend, actually on Haight Street. Close enough to walk to the gay neighborhood without actually being in it, this meant that I could explore my interests, as well as freely share my address and pictures of my new place with people in Jersey. I realize how ridiculous a concern like this sounds, but at the time, I had been living a double life for almost 2 years and was used to paranoia seeping into every thought. It’s funny the thing’s you’ll do when you’re 22, naïve and starved for identity and adventure. I packed my sister’s extra large duffle-bag she used for sleep away camp and which she made me promise to return, with everything I thought was valuable in the world, boarded a plane on the 12 of October 2004 and moved to San Francisco having never been to the West Coast. I didn’t know a single person except my new roommate and we had only spoken on the phone once to coordinate the move. He would be working until 6pm, about a half hour outside the city, and I of course had arrived at 1pm, which meant that I now had several hours to kill before I could see where I’d be living. Excitement had long overshadowed any irritable feelings about this, and though I had what felt like an in-use body bag, I was determined to make my first few hours in SF fantastic. I asked the cab driver to take me to the park closest to Haight Street, and after his initial shock at my ignorance, he proceeded to tell me about and drive me to the famous Golden Gate Park. Though I had heard it referred to as San Francisco’s Central Park, I had no idea it formed the backbone of the Haight Ashbury! Not only was it the largest green space in the city, but it also provided it’s citizens with culture in the form of museums, a place to sleep at night (this was 04) as well as conduct illegal business, and for residents of the Haight, it could always be depended upon to bring the atmospheric fog it seemed to grab from the ocean and toss down the famous street every evening. As I listened to the cab driver talk however, anxious yet nervous to start my new life, I simply thought, ‘Oh cool, I’ll sit by the Golden Gate Bridge!” He dropped me off at the intersection of Haight Street and her beloved park, and I, tethered to an almost immovable bag, resolved to spend my first hours in my new neighborhood, absorbing its sights, smells, and sounds. Boy did nothing disappoint! After getting over my initial annoyance that I couldn’t see the bridge or any of the Bay from where I’d been deposited, I was first struck by the prehistoric beauty of Golden Gate Park. It’s large twisted Cypress and Pine trees were unlike any I had ever seen on the East Coast, and seemed right out of Jurassic Park! While my nose was initially inundated with the smell of Eucalyptus, it soon focused it’s attention on the pot smoke that was emanating from just about every one of the 20 or so make-shift camps of young kids around me, each exhibiting varying degrees of grunginess. These kids were not even trying to hide the fact that they were smoking AND selling! I saw dog walkers and Frisbee throwers, even families with small children walk by without the slightest turn of head. I was not in Jersey or even NYC anymore! Soon this shock wore off though, and I wanted some! Luckily, a slightly older hippie/mellow tweaker walked right up to me and asked to trade some clothes from my bag for a joint. Already infected by the rebellious yet still communal spirit of the Park, I opened said bag and just began grabbing shirt after shirt to give him. Like a monk entering the Monastery and relinquishing all his earthly trappings, I too wanted a fresh start and at the time, felt I needed to purge the last vestiges of my suburban life. Empowered by the free spirit of my new city and neighborhood, I would eventually realize that it was possible for my two separate lives to coexist together, but this revelation had not yet come. For the moment, I hung out with my new friend, smoking joints, watching him make drug deals, and soaking it all in. By the time my new roommate picked me up in the parking lot of McDonald's, hours later, I was pretty convinced that I had come to the right place. Miraculously, after just a month in SF, I was hired at Trax, the only gay bar on Haight Street. I‘d applied everywhere in the Castro, but as with my living situation, fate stepped in to intervene once again. Completely different from the gay bars I had experienced in both New York City and the ‘Stro, it was a total shock to me that a place like Trax even existed! Here, you heard music other than Britney Spears, you could hold conversations with people, gay or straight about everything from books to politics, and you didn’t have to take your shirt off. I started playing pool again, something I hadn’t done since high school, and became invested in a lot of the sporting events that the locals demanded we play on television every day. I know it sounds crazy to think this was so fascinating, but the fact that gay people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with all sorts of attitudes, interests and hobbies was a revelation to me. Of course, I consider that common knowledge now, however, back then, my only real impression of out gay men, besides Pedro, had been that of super-effeminate male classmates who were mercilessly ridiculed, or hair-dressers, shoppers, and other little birds twittering around fashionable women on television. For the first time in my life, I began to truly imagine redefining gay for myself, embracing both my inner butch man as well as the “sissy” that had caused me such shame growing up. I also began to believe that I might be able to amend, or perhaps even keep my relationships back in New Jersey, if I could ever muster the courage to come out. Looking back, it seems crazy! I had been sleeping with men for over two years, had found the courage to move across the continent, not to mention begun the process of accepting, even loving myself, yet I still could not come out to my friends and family back home! Even though I knew that they loved me, and that they most likely wouldn’t disown me, I still couldn’t get fully on board. This was simply because I did not see how my homosexuality could ever fit into any sort of a shared life with them. For one, my high school buddies and I certainly could no longer socialize together. Where would we go? At the time, having so heavily compartmentalized homos and heteros, I truly believed that gay bars were dark places where you danced to pop music with your shirt off until you found an anonymous guy to fuck that night and ditch in the morning, while straight bars were where you entertained your friends, and lived your real life, however bored and sexually frustrated you might be. Though I should have known that a place like the Haight, so removed from the average societal rules that governed “normalcy” would help me redefine my own. Among the bars and shops of the Haight-Asbury, I witnessed first hand that gay and straight people could live, love, and celebrate together, bound by shared interests and the ever-equalizing need for a strong drink. Of course, had I been open to it, I probably would’ve found this back in NYC, or even perhaps in the Castro, however for my personal story, it had to happen here. The combination of my youthful openness and curiosity, along with the unfettered humanism and tolerance I encountered in the Upper Haight, not to mention the fact that I had a whole continent separating my experimentation from judgment, all combined to set the stage for my long awaited coming out. The transformation that I had fled to SF in search of, had finally come to fruition. Yet, I would immediately learn from the bar’s diehard gay locals that I wasn’t the only one to experience a monumental change. They had watched the Haight-Asbury’s queer nightlife scene slowly dwindle, becoming absorbed into that of the larger neighborhood as a whole. Of course gay men still lived and thrived here, however, in what had become a trend throughout the city, specific gay bars were unable to survive without the safety and strength in numbers that predominantly gay neighborhoods like The Castro or SoMa could provide. The societal assimilation and outer acceptance of homosexuality that were so crucial to my own ability to process and come to terms with it, hadn’t been entirely welcomed by other gay men who had seen their social world be completely transformed. I learned that Trax Bar was now the last of what had once been a hearty breed. In the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s, it had counted itself among at least 8 other gay bars in the Upper Haight alone. Having survived AIDS, speed, Reagan, fires, and quite a few rowdy locals, the gay bars of Haight Street, and their cousins throughout the city’s many neighborhoods, couldn’t combat changing attitudes. Young gay men thought nothing now of accompanying their friends solely to straight bars, or hanging at places dubbed mixed, for the blend of sexualities that could be found among the crowd. And no one could deny the Internet’s power as a new meeting place for horny and or lonely gay men. The assimilation of homosexuality into the broader society, along with its acceptance and emergence as a cultural force, while historically unprecedented and certainly a positive thing (especially for me), had done much to diminish the power of the gay bar as a place of monastic refuge where decadence, debauchery, and above all else, camaraderie could exist away from the prying eyes of an often disapproving public. Queer theory and rhetoric aside, I couldn’t mourn something I had never known, and besides I was just happy to have a job at a gay bar! The fact that my place of employment would be located at the corner of Haight and Ashbury was icing on the cake! I could look out Trax’s front window and see the Peidmont legs, or watch the naked cyclists ride by, oblivious and unashamed of their appendages flopping in the breeze. I couldn’t yet understand what some of the locals meant about something being lost because I felt whole for the first time in my life, and Trax and the atmosphere it created had much to do with this. I’d finally felt comfortable enough to identify myself as a gay man, other than in some trick’s bedroom at 5am. I had come out to myself and created a life that just a year before, I had never imagined was possible. My new neighborhood had offered me more than a home and a job; it had given me a social life. It also was crucial to my own psyche that, while employed at Trax, I was able to tell my friends and family back home where I worked, without having to come out to them before I was ready. They could go online and check the place out, or look at pictures I had sent them without thinking anything other than that the place was a neighborhood bar. That is because my new work place was more than just a gay bar; it was a Haight Street Institution! Trax had been able to whether the storm that felled its contemporaries because of the special atmosphere it created. Holding steadfastly to it’s history, yet firmly able to exist in the present, it was a place where gay men and women felt comfortable enough to bring a date, or cruise for sex, but also where they could hang with their straight friends, and watch the 49’ers. And while the bar remained fiercely proud of and unflinching in its gay identity, those same straight friends were encouraged to come on their own, bringing whomever they liked as long as the guests were friendly and amenable to all. Everyone was welcome at Trax! Straight couples from the Midwest, shoppers up from North beach, bar-hoppers from the Marina, could all walk in on a Saturday afternoon for a bloody mary and a football game without even thinking twice. This was the magic of Trax, and what made me fall in love with it, practically from the very start. Working there, I met Radical Fairies, famous counterculture and gay activists, SF celebrities, everyone from Robin Williams to Cleve Jones and Donna Sachet. Each made me proud to be both a gay man, and a resident of the Upper Haight, filling me with the utmost awe for the individuality, artistry, activism, and resilience that had made this place and it’s people so famously unique. I stopped drawing such emphatic lines between homosexual and heterosexual and began to embrace our interconnectedness rather than simply viewing myself as belonging to a rare and isolated breed. Oh, and did I mention that I got to show up every day for work in a baseball hat, jeans and a t-shirt, stoned off my ass? Not only had I finally found myself, but also, my 16-year-old fantasies were all coming true! Yet, despite all the personal benefits I received working at the Bar, the most special gift by far was getting to know the everyday residents of the Upper Haight, living and conducting their business in the famous neighborhood, some since the Summer of Love. Their amazing stories and fierce love of their community was both inspiring and life changing to me! I started Monday and Tuesday days, and was instantly thrust into the day-to-day life and drama that exists in a place as old as Trax Bar, and a neighborhood as beautifully wacky as the Haight. I listened to their problems, mediated some of their disputes with one another, catered to a few peculiar idiosyncrasies, and above all else made immediate and life-long friends. We talked books and travel, politics and experience, sex and the future. I opened myself up, revealing things I had never shared, everything from my first same- sex fantasies, to the fact that I had always secretly loved Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. In return, I listened to stories about what life had been like here through the heyday of the 60’s, decadence of the 70’s, and AIDS and drug plagues of the 80’s. I heard first- hand accounts of everything from smoking hash with Janis Joplin in the bathroom, to threesomes on the pool table after hours, and perhaps most poignantly of staff camaraderie during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, when nearly everyone on the payroll was sick or dying from the terrible disease. I felt like I was becoming part of a rich and colorful history, and that for the first time, it was as my true self. I really began to feel free of the trappings of judgment, and thus able to break down walls I had erected a long time ago. And speaking of erections, the free-spiritedness that pervaded everything around me, also encouraged me to explore what it was to be a young gay man. The sexual cravings I’d experienced in NYC had not dissipated, but rather I found myself much more apt to embrace, even enjoy them, without the copious amounts of shame and hard liquor that had previously been employed in their suppression. Without all the fear and grief, I could enjoy sex for the first time, much like I had watched my straight friends do for years. No longer a scourge to me, my sexuality became powerful and exhilarating, and you bet I used the cache of being behind a bar to land me as much ass as I possibly could! I wasn’t conflicted or consumed with guilt! On the contrary, I felt alive and free, really for the first time in my life! I no longer needed the comfort of a late night hole-in-the-wall and a brain clouded by booze to hit on men or project my attraction. Now, I could cruise at the market, or on the street in broad daylight, without worrying I’d be identified and properly dealt with. Of course, my judgment was a bit clouded, but I did feel that while homosexuality was tolerated in NYC, here in SF it truly was celebrated, especially amidst the world I had so fortuitously stumbled upon. The colorful and all-inclusive atmosphere of Trax and its hodgepodge of wacky locals could only exist in the Haight-Asbury, and I, aware of this, thanked my lucky stars that I had decided to move here. Though certainly magical, and most definitely part of the tale of a fairy, not everything about life in the Upper Haight was fantastical and candy-coated. Like any neighborhood, it had its fair share of issues, though none more so for me, than the notorious street kids who call it’s sidewalks and open spaces home. While it was great to know that the Haight-Ashbury truly was a sort of Ellis Island for the fringe of society, day after day of fending off requests for anything on my person, as well as patrolling the entrance to the bar like it was a DMZ zone, did take their toll. It could sometimes feel like the neighborhood belonged more to these 21st century “hippies” than it did to the real working people who kept her businesses thriving. Much like the Phish Shows of my teen years, I started to notice a myriad of mooches who flocked here, hands out, ready to take anything they were given, despite appearing able-bodied. I questioned if this was the legacy of the Summer of Love-a bunch of kids on drugs trying to escape reality and their bills by living off the hard work and socially conscious efforts of those around them. Raised to believe that diligence was intrinsic to my value, it was difficult for me sometimes to respect and not dehumanize them. Though no matter how infuriating these street kids could be, they were instrumental, along with the act of slowly increasing my homosexual profile, in bringing about one of the greatest realizations of my life. These kids were not that different from me, especially in the eyes of some of our countrymen. I’ll admit, aside from the sexual urges I repressed with the force of the Hoover Dam, I’d never felt growing up, that I was an outcast or belonged along the perimeter of “normal society”. Like a good Catholic boy, I had always listened to the advice of my elders, very rarely if ever, feeling the need to question the status quo, even when confronted with many of the absurd paradoxes of religion. The same could be said for my approach to interpersonal relationships at school. I certainly would never go out of my way to ruin someone’s day, or point out their oddness, but I wouldn’t exactly stop others from doing so. Rather I would simply avoid kids branded misfits, constantly wondering why they just couldn’t make things easy for themselves and fall in line with everybody else. Not surprisingly, I also never went the route of a lot of children raised in strict religious homes who develop the need to rebel or a counter obsession with the “dark-side”. Pot, hallucinogens, and an occasional ecstasy pill at concerts constituted my rebellious, “I don’t care if I’m going to Hell” faze, and none affected my going to church on Sundays or getting good grades at school. In fact, I have always quite enjoyed the aspects of art and life that many consider to be Pollyanna-ish. Raised by top-40 radio, sitcoms, and Hollywood- happy endings, I often tended to veer away from anything deemed too non-linear, avant-garde, or worse, scary. Yes, I’m sure this was indicative of a subconscious wish to truly assimilate, but hell, while growing up, fitting in with my peers, and staying abreast of pop-culture was a great source of pride and satisfaction for me. Further governed by the rules of the Catholic schools I grew up attending, I also never experimented with crazy outfits, piercings, or hair length. To be quite honest, aside from the occasional curiosity born of forbiddance, I actually preferred the way I looked clean-cut and preppy. Though I did sometimes feign dissatisfaction in order to appear cool in front of my friends, or our public school contemporaries. All of this taken into account, it’s probably not surprising to know that I never endeared myself to the punks, goths, or fringe groups I encountered growing up. Viewing me as sterile or a conformist (names I was actually called), they’d always avoid me, assuming I was one of the very people I had fled to SF to escape. While I knew this to be false, it never much bothered me as my interests weren’t really aligned with this set, and I was not above my own flight response concerning them. For this reason, it was quite shocking to be embraced so instantly and whole-heartedly by many of these same types of people when I arrived in the Haight. It would take a few weeks for me to fully process the fact that I now, as an out gay man was considered an outcast/radical. These kids had embraced me, because to middle America, I was even fringier than they were. Like an Oprah A-ha moment, I became aware of the fact that while I had never considered myself to be outside the norm of society, I was crazy to think that I didn’t now appear that way to quite a large segment of the population. Yet, once again, because I was so emboldened by my life change, opinions like this started to matter less and less. How could one be a societal pariah when they were constantly surrounded by so much love and good-energy? Yes, it came from those deemed “freaks” in some circles, and certainly from people that I might not have been best friends with in high school or college, but who fucking cared! In fact, I could now be Brad 2.0, a combination of his past and present, unable to be categorized, looking instead, to be empowered. I was the same boy who loved all things pop-culture and dressed “normally”, almost boring, but I could still have radical friends or ideas and I could still be an individual. Thus, the same could be said for these Haight street kids. They were as much a part of this neighborhood as me, and in many cases, could be as difficult to pigeonhole. For me to write them off and judge them as freaks, or dregs of society, was to do exactly what the Christian Right does to my own people. Freak was now a relative term, as I had not just a responsibility to my neighborhood, but also everyone in it. I am only human though, it’s not like I became Mother Theresa, sleeping outside on the streets with them. Sometimes, I still even refused their requests for cigarettes or money, but I can say that after my epiphany I never failed to look at these kids as any less than my equal. Even if they were pan-handling on Haight Street by day, only to run back to their rich parents in Marin every evening, they too were still here for a reason. As I learned from my Trax family, everyone came to the Haight Ashbury hoping to find something. Whether it was a sense of community, or simply themselves, these kids were searching just like me. I watched the locals treat them with such compassion and respect, and it was life changing. Who would have thought I’d learn more about the true message of Jesus, not from 12 years of Catholic school, but from living in this evil Sodom? Though my life would eventually lead me to live and work predominantly in the Castro, I would never forget my earliest days in SF, immersed in the famous Haight-Asbury. Responsible for many of the values I consider intrinsic to my adult self, there simply was no shaking this place. In fact, so strong was my pull to my first adopted neighborhood, that I would never be able to fully give up my bar position at Trax. Careful to ensure that I always worked there at least one night a week, this bar and its patrons, along with the Upper Haight itself, would form the longest continuous relationship I had in San Francisco. Yes, I’d come to understand what the locals meant about the power of the gay bar as community center being diminished with our greater cultural assimilation, but I can honestly say that in the case of Trax and myself, this wasn’t true. No matter how settled I became in San Francisco, the bar would remain for me, throughout my 8 years in the city, a home away from home. A constant reminder of the inextinguishable hope that characterized my earliest days in SF, not to mention a refuge from a Castro life that had ironically become at times, too gay, there was no way I could temper her influence in my life. I’d come to the City By The Bay in search of self-discovery, adventure, and gay sex. Boy did I find all three! Yet it was the self-acceptance and open-mind that I acquired along the way for which I am most grateful. They often say you learn the most about yourself in a relationship and I agree whole-heartedly. During our 8 years together, I learned that for me, gay didn’t have to be an all defining logo or classification that determined everything about a person. I also learned that freak could be quite a relative term, used to apply to all of us. But most importantly, I learned how to be more of myself and not fear this. Coming out to my family and finally integrating both the gay and straight aspects of my world, would never have been possible had I not truly absorbed and allowed myself to be affected by the example set by my neighborhood and place of employment. What a stroke of luck that I ended up living in The Upper Haight and working at Trax Bar! How can one possibly quantify the value of something like this? They truly can’t. All they can do is sit back from time to time, light up a joint and reminisce fondly about a place that will forever capture the imagination identity-seekers and adventure-starved dreamers everywhere.
