Italo Disco in San Francisco ... ?!

this place is amazing. super small, super packed, dim red lights, and the best music i've heard in this city.

Friday April 14th, 10pm-4am: "The Rod" at Deco Lounge: DJs Bus Station (The Tubesteak Connection/ Double Dutch Disco) + Jef = Leopard (Smut Hut/K-Y) slip you "THE ROD" every 2nd Friday @ Deco = Lounge, the Tenderloin's newest old-school watering hole. Water your = hole with $3 drink specials, then enter the notorious Wet Jockstrap = Contest! $100 cash prize for the winner, bar tabs for the runners-up. = Jox available, or wear your sleaziest/cheeziest fave. Enjoy 3 floors of = heavy cruising + hard cocktails, with dancing to '70s/'80s bathhouse = classics + no-wave rarities til 4am! $5 all nite, 10pm-4am. Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin St. at Turk

tomorrow - Charles Ives Holidays Symphony conducted by MTT @ 8pm, Hecker / Curtis Roads / Yasunao Tone @ 11pm

Fuck it's awesome.

I was there last night and I am still giddy about this. I have been searching for something like this out in the city since I moved here a year ago. Last night was like Christmas morning for me, and such excitement caused me to drive on the sidewalk with only two drinks in me. (Sorry guys.) I may have to return to the TL for a redux tonight...

Cruising? Eh, it wasn't really crazy or anything. I mean, it is a gay bar, and there are plenty of guys there to get laid, but it's still a dance night. In fact, I would imagine that there are several straight music dorks there, myself included.

Personally, I think it's silly to pick up on the term "cruising" when so many other nights are only two steps away from the "bitches and blunts" mentality of Top 40 rap. However, unlike most of these scenester nights, with shameless self-promotion and false promises of decadence, Tubesteak Connection actually delivers GOOD music.

For further information, check this out. And check this out.

With an attitude like that, anybody with sexual energy is probably avoiding you.

This Italo disco night sounds fuckin' sweet; who really gives a shit if the bill says "Lets fuck"?

-- QuantumNoise (heavy_music200...), April 14th, 2006

I don't really care that it says 'let's fuck'... but at that rate, why don't you just say 'let's drink,' too? i mean, why the fuck else do people go to clubs? to make friends? chat about the weather? it just sounds like a kinda lame directive.

also, i'm giving you a guarantee that you are not required to "cruise" if you go ... but you may be required to dance!

Call me naive but people do seem to go to clubs for other reasons than "heavy cruising" and "hard cocktails". I mean, not all clubs ( and gay clubs) are going to have the atmosphere this place is going to have when those jockstraps get soaked.

Also, was the word "cruising" big in the late-70s and early-80s when this music was big? Maybe they're using it as a kind of retro-affection. Al Pacino would be able to tell us.

well, you definitely got me there.

Kontrol! (feat. Pan/tone) @ the RX Gallery.

Their parties are always great fun, definately techno. Then there are always other things ... Beauty Bar, etc.

Kontrol is awesome. That's where I'm headed this weekend.

And don't forget Matthew Dear is playing BOCA on 4/22.

I've been listening to his Audion stuff a bunch, and it's pretty heavy.

http://music.sfweekly.com/Issues/2006-04-26/music/music3.html?src=music_rss

Let's Get Physical
Bus Station John spins rare vinyl into golden opportunities
By Brock Keeling
Article Published Apr 26, 2006

"You can be a mess here," DJ Bus Station John says as the bartender serves up another round at Aunt Charlie's Lounge. Having helped revive the sleazy and sexually charged gay club scene in San Francisco, one that nearly died almost a decade ago, he should know.

It's been just over two years since Bus Station John started "The Tubesteak Connection" at Aunt Charlie's, a porn-ish weekly of hi-NRG and disco curiosities that began as a showcase for John's enviable collection of late '70s and early '80s gay bar and bathhouse beats. Today his party is a yardstick by which others are measured, also marking its dive-y venue as the epicenter for Thursday night frolicking. "It brought a whole new crowd to the Tenderloin who would never normally come here," says bar manager Joe Mattheisen, adding that the place is regularly filled to capacity come midnight.

Since then, John has helmed two other disco-heavy club nights — the larger and more sexually aggressive "The Rod" at Deco Lounge (every second Friday of the month), featuring a tongue-in-cheek wet jock strap contest, and the early '80s New York City soul-laced "Double Dutch Disco" at the Transfer (every third Saturday of the month). The Bus Station trinity is coveted for both the music and the crowd it attracts. His scrappy and nerdish patrons are refreshingly prone to cruising and getting smashed. But what ultimately makes his events unique is a hard-to-pull-off retro vibe that abstains from irony. His mixed following (well, "[m]ixed only in the sense that it's a mixture of all kinds of queers," as he bluntly puts it) come to enjoy the music, to get loaded at a deliciously sordid locale, and, well, to maybe fuck another boy.

By his own admittance, John doesn't think of himself as a normal DJ. "I don't have the skills ... I'm not Mr. Beat Scientist, or whatever," he says. In lieu of seamless sets, he's more of a mix-tape-ish guy, with no kind words for the new mash-up sound. Instead, he'll break out the most oddly beautiful disco and new-wave rarities this side of time-traveling capabilities. Club promoter and writer Marcia Gagliardi gushes, "[H]e is truly old school — and it extends to his value system, too ... a total cream puff of a guy, with disco sprinkles on top."

Having lived in San Francisco since 1987, John has seen the city go through everything from AIDS to dot-com hedonism to today's Internet-ification of the one-night stand. "There are very few old-school gay dive bars left; they're dying out everywhere," he pines. He blames the downward spiral on the dawn of the Internet age, where the proliferation of personal ads substitutes for in-person flirtation. John's clubs bring back that old personal touch.

It's a touch that extends to his coveted record collection, the source of which he's notoriously tight-lipped. Award-winning DJ Jefrodisiac admits, "I've never ... heard a San Francisco DJ and thought, 'I wish I had those records,' except for Bus Station John, period." John is also quiet about where he gets his splendid porn collection, pages of which he uses for flyers and as a garnish for the walls and bar tops at his clubs. The late '70s, handlebar-moustache-heavy images work twofold, setting a tone for not only the era but also helping typically rigid hipsters to loosen up. And although the scene he attracts is typically frequented by chic and wrinkle-free throngs, John equally cherishes the rare moment when generations collide, when "someone my age or older comes up and says, 'Oh my God, I haven't heard this in 20 years. Thank you.'"

gf's bday is thursday so we are heading up to celebrate con ritmo. anyone else down?

http://www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Seems like it still is going on.

hope no one minds a little self-promo:
http://www.westaddradio.com/fdisco.jpg
(should read "Larkin" btw)

I'm coming to San Francisco (and LA and points in between) first week or so of August. Who wants a guest DJ from Queens, NYC? What's going on?

yay!

some djs or clubs doing disco related events:
cameron octigan (starter of thread - regular thurs nights. is it called Jump Rope again?)
travis tk (posted here once or twice, does gun club and i think a regular night at http://www.myspace.com/222hyde)
http://www.rxgallery.com/
Egyptian Lover & Newcleus are gonna be at Mezzanine August 4th.

Come to San Diego and play Dos-Tres, Sweeny and Stirmonster did!

:)

http://www.myspace.com/viceversaclub

I don't think we're gonna make it to San Diego. I like some of those flyers though.

QUEENS

i highly recommend a dan selzer gun club night.

i second that!

i've heard his sets are pretty solid

I just learned San Diego isn't far from LA. Is that true?

Let me tell you about Queens. First of all, I'm the only person I know who hasn't DJ'd PS1 Warm Up, so a big WTF to that. Second of all, still waiting for my invite to the Water Taxi Beach. Hello, I LIVE IN QUEENS! I'm just not on the map anymore, boo hoo.

But lets talk about what Queens is REALLY about. Let's talk about Sidetracks on Queens BLVD. One of the bookers there actually came down to Dazzle Ships when DJ Loda was in town because he read the write-up in Time Out, said he likes to check out the old-school DJs. This guy was a classic DJ from the early days of disco, knew all those guys you can read about in Love Saves the Day, back when disco was as much about italian dudes from the island as it was anything else. But I think it's a pretty mainstream house/club/KTU kind of scene there, I don't know if they're looking for vintage Walter Gibbons mixes. Then there's Jackson Heights, the center of the gay latino community, from what I hear it's all salsa and whatnot, but what about freestyle? Where's the new version of the Fun House? What DO they play at the Bum Bum Bar?

Anyway, I didn't mean to derail this thread. I'm down for DJing in Queens.

dan, might you bring me a sonic youth sampler in SF?

trade you for some Red Balune, no?

san diego is a 1.5-2 hr drive from LA

which could also be a trip stuck in traffic from one neighborhood of LA to another

like from yr house to the corner store sometimes

FUCK LA THIS IS SF

(not to malign PS1 as I've now been offered 2 really good gigs that I have to miss due to travel, bummer).

Haven't really set anything up yet so may be just as well...records are heavy and it sucks bringing them on the plane.

Ship them UPS "Media Rate" from a location that has a UPS account.

I'm always greatly amused/puzzled by this - how did Italo become so linked to gay subculture in the US? Over here, the Italo scene in the 80s (as well as the Italo-retro club nights of today) were almost exclusively hetero, working class types driving Capris, Mantas and Camaros. And it wasn't much different in Italy at the time either...

Same way disco became linked with the gay subculture here.

Italo Disco in San Francisco

dan plz do something in l.a. so i can come.

Same way disco became linked with the gay subculture here.

Italo never had the whole It's Raining Men/I Will Survive gay diva angle though.

It did have it's aggressive menergy style though, remember one of the first major italo records is I'm a Man by Macho.

HELLO!

http://www.dreamchimney.com/tracks/artist_images/16587_image0_20070706_auto.jpg

hey dan, i'd love set something up for you in SF. can't promise anything though. let me know the dates you'll be in town.

and for anyone interested, we'll be playing some italo, along with other things, at the Attic this Saturday.
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f204/saulgravy/IMG_3024.jpg

uh the Attic is in San Francisco, BTW. 3336 24th street. and it's free.

i'll come! what are the "other things"?

"other things" like electro-funk, old house, weird disco, club classics, and whatever we want, really. come by and say "hi!"

For all of the ages?

It is not.

i'm playing records tomorrow night at Double Dutch (16th & Guerrero) with cameron octigan :-/

So, are there any great clubs in Milano playing cosmic hippie music from the late 60s?

how did you find this thread?

Cameron Octigan never wrote me back!

Still a tiny chance I get to play in San Fran but probably not. California's loss.

i'll talk to him tonight for you.

http://acuterecords.com/NFREDNTS.jpg

i'm gonna ask you if you can play some hip hop

I'm bringing some hip-house.

Just found out Bus Station John is djing NY for the first time tomorrow. Man am I outta the loop. It's at the Trophy Bar which is a really cool bar with a tiny dance space and pretty bad sound unfortunately.

this lived up to the hype. really under-attended though! but the music was relentless amazing

went to Aunt Charlie's this week despite BSJ's absence, and DJ Steve Fabus fuckin tore the lid off the place. really happy that i went. here's more on Steve: http://www.djsportal.com/en/pioneer/index.php?id=fabus