No More Conversations
222 Hyde is reopening. It’s had a high rate of turnover even by the standards of San Francisco, where bars and clubs are bought and sold for a song or the slightest infraction. This time, the fire marshal exacted his revenge—granted, the place always was a firetrap. A thumbnail-sized dancefloor in the basement brings nobody up to any codes.
Most of my favorite early-period San Francisco memories are from 222 Hyde, where all my friends DJ’d before they became pretentious drama nerds and totally abandoned me. Just kidding, I’m not Claire Fisher. They moved to New York or fucking Oakland, which might as well be Westeros, or in a notable case didn’t move at all but switched girlfriends and got pretty much a whole replacement Facebook, as that bitch went all HUAC on his old associations.
You could flask more readily at 222 Hyde than at most other places with practically no staff, and bringing the DJ a slice of pizza was never easier.
No other bar-club identifies as strongly or as personally with the lolsomely indulgent SF electro scene of 2006-2008. For a few of its slightly older members who never thought much of emo or punk, that period of chunky Justice-y bass and garbage-disposal distortion was a resourceful replacement: rock music for people who don’t like rock. (It worked in the converse, too: dance music for people who don’t like dance music.) My iTunes over time gradually rid itself of these insipid bangers, of Kill The Noise and Le Castle Vania; we had to medicate our tastes the same way you’d treat an STD, and we’re all in better health now.
I remember being upstairs at Blow Up when it was still at Rickshaw, looking out over the crowd while some local luminary (Public?) remixed Metallica, everyone just madly starkly raving, and feeling myself felt up by a thrilling silliness. I mean, as embarrassing music stories go it beats having to tell people I ever went to Warped. At least the fashion was higher.
Lights Down Low used to be held at Hyde and the most insane shit would go down. It’s still the only time I ever took my shirt off in public, which is probably in a dossier somewhere.
But at some point the better of us got jobs or moved in with our girlfriends or cut up our AmAppy honors card or decided Gameboy/Gamegirl is a really unsustainable band name. LDL left during one of several 222 shutdowns and became nomadic; it also moved in a more progressive direction, thematically. Thank fuck.
Hyde kept interchanging the authentic strains of house with disco, bass and other world dance hybrids, bringing in Icee Hot, which is still the most relevant regular party in San Francisco. Then the bar-club closed again, I started to lose track at some point, and sent Icee Hot to Public Works, where a lot of the old Hyde crowd presumably migrated. Public Works is a great space but alarmingly close to the freeway and that part of the Mission just dies really late. At Hyde you can feel the city prowling, and even the crackheads are historically friendly. For crackheads.
Tonight Hyde reopens with a bunch of legendary rave shit. It’s been opened way up spatially and there’s even a bar downstairs now. I don’t care I just think its funny.
