San Francisco Gay Landmarks Pass with 2018

The Nob Hill Theater is no more.  The nice guys, who owned and operated it, retired and sold the building and went south to spend their golden years in the desert.  In its closing days, the place was open to the public and everything, that wasn't nailed down, was offered up for sale.  While I detected a number of curiosity seekers, the bulk of the crowd consisted of men who ventured there with a purpose: to review, remember and touch the final curtain.  There was no curtain at the Nob Hill, actually, and the theater is much smaller than I had remembered.  Probably only about 50 could be seated at any given time and the stage was intimate and reachable, so important to its ends.

So many years have passed since I was last a paying customer there, that the mirror cracks with this confession: I paid money I had struggled to earn, to watch the legendary Chris Burns perform his dildo routine on that very stage.  As I revisited last month, that whole era came back, and in a very bittersweet way, as Chris (or Danny, straight out of Vallejo) was very much a local San Francisco character, seen bopping around town on his motorcycle, a regular at the Eagle usually in jeans and a ripped tee shirt slit down to his waist (decades before these latter queens), having ventured out from his digs in the faded lavender Victorian next to Stomper Boots.  Chris worked for San Francisco's Falcon Studios and Bijou Studios, and did some down and dirty work for LeSalon, but I liked him best in 'Room Service Plus' (by Sid Roth), filmed on location at the fabled Coral Sands motel down in LA.  I think I may still have that video somewhere, in its VHS format, but I've never seen his donkey fuck video, rumored for so long that it is part of the local folklore for those of us who have survived to this day that the Nob Hill is no more.

I never ventured to the back room, designed for more intimate entertainment, but that had nothing to do with the Nob Hill management.  I don't like sex with my clothes on, so the back room never interested me.  And don't ask about the 442 Natoma, although I'm glad for its presence and am a little anxious that it might not survive this year.  I admit to being sentimental, but I don't understand why it's not a consistent thing with me.  For example, on more than one occasion, I had the chance to see Armond Rizzo at the Nob Hill, but I just couldn't get it together...and I like Armond as much as I like Chris Burns.  Anyway, all the inventory at the Nob Hill theater boutique was for sale, as were the furnishings in the 'Green Room' apartment in the back (was there a nice little deck out there or am I just wishing?), and a lot of props, including the stuff used by Rafael Alencar, who was the last of a long list of great acts who made the Nob Hill so special.  I did buy a little concrete planter box, which has nothing to do with porn.  Like I said, I am sentimental in some ways.

Another gay San Francisco landmark that didn't make it to 2019 is the famous Gump's department store.  I go back to the older store just off Union Square where the clerks wrote the sales in long hand and took it to the cashier personally, and brought back your receipt or change with your purchase carefully wrapped.  There was never a rush at Gump's (except at the After Christmas sale) and people in a hurry wouldn't bother with Gump's.  It was so, so, nice. While the ground floor housed jewelry, couture and a lot of high class decorator junk, there was the furniture and interior design department on the second floor, where the boys, clad in suits, sat at their desks and carried out business in a nice, low key style.  I guess it was too low key for the corporate people who bought the store from the Gump family, because the interior design department didn't make it to the newer, glitzier location.  Anyway, it's all gone now, and sadly missed.  So long, 2018.