Hearsay
Guerilla Queer Bar DC Takeover, SundayMASS returns to Five, Green Lantern
Queer boys and girls for a straight bar…
Sunday Mass sets a date for its return…
A helping hand at the Lantern…
Can you imagine some of your favorite gay bars frequented by straights? Perish the thought, you say with a shudder, those people have their own bars. But what of that scant thimble-full of gays who insist that all bars be as gay as gay can be? What of them? Just who are these takeover artists, you ask? Officially they’re known as the Guerilla Queer Bar DC Takeover, but Hearsay wonders aloud if they’re not just a bunch of drunks looking for that one last drink. Here’s how it works. Each month the group plots a takeover for one night of a different straight bar. Why just this past Friday, Amy "A Is For Type-A" Mulry, Karl "Queer Beer" Jones and Chris "Fox" Trott took over Nick’s Riverside Grille, a bar across from the "fancy-shmancy Georgetown Loews movie theatre," as the organizers mapped it. Actually, a better reference point is the restaurant Sequoia, since it was just around the bland fountain in the bland Washington Harbor Waterfront donut. There, on the bar’s outdoor patio, a hundred or so queers sweltered in that evening’s nighttime August humidity and breathed in the boat exhaust. Wouldn’t it be swell to have an outdoor gay bar such as this? “Yes, yes!” Kevin "Big Green" Corbett responded, as though on his third faked orgasm of the evening. (No, no, Hearsay coughed back.) “If only it were closer to the ‘hood, and with a better view of town,” Robert "Push Out" Pullen mused. “Oh geez, you’re never satisfied,” replied his partner, Ron "Sing It" Whitney.
This is how straight it was: The hundred or so gathered gays were overheard chatting about the Olympics and the beauty of the Olympian male form (some even talked of the Olympian female form, but they were tied to a nearby cross and burned alive). The hottest Olympic topic: almost-hometown hero Michael "Wanna Fondle My Medals?" Phelps and the make-you-melt meaty Romanian gymnasts, who are actually all of two feet tall, just like Ewoks without hair (well, being Romanian’s they were shorn for the horse pommelling occasion). Oddly, the TVs at the bar were all tuned to — not the Olympics, but football. Football? Hearsay didn’t even know football was played in the summer. A straight tipster told Hearsay that the football game was actually a tape loop of “That great play of ’89, when Joe Namath hit a home run.” The little college-aged tipster — who was wearing a pink shirt, a sweater wrapped around his midriff, and claimed his girlfriend’s name was Muffy — went off snickering to his friends. But Hearsay had the last snicker. It followed the boy into the bathroom and promptly shoved a cucumber up his butt. (Hearsay carries around all manner of tubular vegetables for just such an emergency.) Most of the straights passed by Nick’s Riverside Grille and marched right over to the neighboring Tony & Joe’s, a place where real men gather and talk about things like beer, football and babes. Apparently the hets don’t want to hang with the homos. Which just means organizer Mulry and co. have their work cut out for them in planning the first hetero takeover of a gay bar. But she’s up for the challenge: she says it should happen by year’s end (and she’s aiming for a popular bar on 17th Street she says), although nothing is set as of yet. Until then, the best way to stay in the guerilla loop is to check out its megillah at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/guerillaqueerbardcÂ…
Time now to issue hosannas and hallelujahs: behold, the second coming of DC nightlife’s holiest party — and naturally with that attitude, also its most devilishly sacrilegious. After its highly publicized hiatus launched exactly two months ago, SundayMASS DC‘s moment of silence to reflect on the sins of illegal substance use has now ended. Amen. MASS will return Labor Day Sunday, September 5, when it will open its doors yet again at its favorite house of worship, Club Five. And as before, everyone is welcome to take communion at this Church of St. Soileau — as in resident DJ and co-founder Blaine “Texan Toast” Soileau. But there have been some changes, church rector Stephen "Giddy Up" Weber reports, the most obvious of which is a more reasonable time to commune. The party now starts at 8 a.m. and lasts until 2 p.m. That accommodates what Weber says was the vast majority of congregants who forwent their Saturday bar-hopping to be fresh and ready for "Sunday School." Weber wouldn’t reveal many of the other changes. "We certainly have other surprises in store, but sharing all of them would only lessen their surprise impact, right?" Right. But he did say that Soileau’s and his original partners in sacrament, Shawn "O" Bannon and Tony "U" Winthrop will come down from their new home in Massachusetts for the Labor Day "resurrection," among other unexpected guests. Oh yeah, and Weber said there would be de-facto lesson plans on the dangers of drugs. If Hearsay may, it would like to offer then your first Sunday School lesson right here: Gina has no rhythm, Tina ain’t your friend. It’s Vodka — only Vodka — that remains pure and true to the end. Forever. And ever. Ah, men. BurpÂ…
And finally, Hearsay’s Good Samaritan of the Week Award goes to Greg “Mama Rose” Zehnacker, owner of the Green Lantern. Last weekend, a pretty young waif visiting from Wyoming entered the bar with a mildly unsavory sort. The waif, though intensely inebriated, resisted the unsavory sort’s advances, though the unsavory sort reportedly took the boy’s pocket money, leaving him bereft of funds and lost as a stray little lamb. Enter the gentlemanly and benevolent Sir Greg, who escorted the boy back to the nearby youth hostel. The next morning, Greg arrived back at the bar to find a note of thanks taped to the door, along with a $20 bill. Those
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