I was really surprised when I heard about this block party. San Francisco’s Death of Fun campaign has been pretty successful so far this year. Congratulations, gentlemen. You have already claimed the life of the future BYOBW block party. That was really brave of you. You almost killed the How Weird block party and don’t think we’ve forgotten about you DNA Lounge. Fuck you and the taxes you pay every year.
So when I heard that there was going to be a new block party under this hostile regime change I knew I had to check it out.
And this is what the Super Hero Block Party looked like at 2:30 PM.
What’s funny is that if this was Sunday Streets the permit would have official expired over half an hour ago.
If this was the Haight Street Fair it would have been packed.
If it was the How Weird Street Fair it would have been in what House DJ Architects refer to as the Barn Building stage of the party.
That’s another Burning Man thing that I had forgotten about. People drag thousands of dollars worth of steel and soundsystems out to this god-forsaken place, juice it up with enough decibels to kill a Godzilla, and there’s like 4 people dancing. Look at that, it’s right behind a MUNI graveyard. This is where old cable cars swim upstream, against traffic, to be gutted, rusted, and then die alone on the outskirts of beautiful Hunter’s Point.
And this was the crowded dancefloor. Let’s go back and check in the BrassTax camp.
Funny thing. I’ve been living in this city for 15 years and I’ve noticed that there’s this one demographic that seems to be permanently stuck on Hawaiian Time. It’s physically impossible for them to get out of the house before 4PM. They’re like the Twilight vampires of the San Francisco scene. I always seem to be out of step with those guys and find myself going to these amazing empty parties in weird locations and then spend half my time taking pictures of the urban decay around me. I know, life of the party…
Vanilla Ice actually lives here. He moved in 2 weeks ago when his next VH1 show fell through and his old lady kicked him to the curb. He was suppose to be performing on the Sunset stage but that fell through as well for reasons unknown to me.
And check out that boardwalk.
I actually had a hell of time taking in my cocktail and beats as the skaters and fog flew past me. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but I thought it was ironic that the first annual San Francisco Street Fair was on the same day as the San Diego Comic Con. I used to go to that back when I was in junior high and it’s amazing to see how what used to be a corny convention of hard-core nerds exploded into one of the major multi-media events of the year. It’s on Goggle’s front page. It’s on youtube’s front page. When I grew up, being into comic books was like being into pedophilia; it wasn’t a very cool hobby and if you wanted to survive you were very careful whom you shared that vice with. Now it’s Hollywood. That’s what’s amazing to me. Anyone can do that. Anyone can take a corny thing and turn that into the next Burning Man, turn that into the Star Trek franchise, turn that into the next major multi-media event of the year.
Seize the day.
UPDATE # 1
Excellent video from Lux Vibes
The Outer Sunset 