San Francisco Weekly July 25, 2012 : Page 10sfweekly.com Those not singing “We are Family” along with pianist Joe Wicht risk the revocation of their “gay cards.” NIGHT+DAY | SUCKA FREE CITY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Changing Keys from p8 Fair enough. But when the clientele expands to include twentysomething straight women who wouldn’t know Judy Garland from Judge Judy — and blithely assume no one else does, either — great change has most definitely occurred, even within the haunted mansion. In fact, its ability to change sets Martuni’s apart from other San Francisco piano bars — and ex-plains why it’s still extant and they aren’t. The older regulars at Martuni’s light up when recalling the smorgasbord of piano bars that used to dot this city, much as denizens of a sports bar may recall youthful forays to Seals Stadium or getting into Niners games at Kezar for the price of a carton of Christopher Milk. At the Galleon, older gay men would order up medallions of pork with medleys from Oklahoma! for dessert. The White Swal-low was just one of several piano bars on Polk, then the city’s main strip for gay nightlife — and that is the double entendre you think it is — where pledging fraternity boys used to regularly pose for photos in front of the bar while mooning the camera. At Sutter’s Mill in the Financial District, whose décor featured unsubtle images of prospectors dancing with one another, the pianist finished every set by playing “San Francisco.” Patrons would rock back and forth as if caught in The Big One, and someone would always reach up and give the chandelier a swing. “That was high camp,” recalls Bob Johnson. When the featured pianist at Sutter’s Mill took his act to The Mint, they would sing “San Francisco” there, too. But no one swung the chandelier because there wasn’t one. Seals Stadium is a memory, as are 50-cent kids’ football tickets. The piano bars of yester-day are gone, too; The Mint is even a karaoke joint. When San Francisco real estate began commanding ludicrous prices, a number of 10 establishments disappeared, along with the middle-class folks who patronized them. Live entertainment has always been the first item tossed overboard in sinking bars. Americans, through the years, have placed less and less of a premium on live music. A sound system costs less than a piano, and you don’t need a pro to play or tune it. And, hey, when the piano’s gone, there’s more room for tables. Piano bars were already on the ropes when the AIDS crisis of the 1980s wiped out a generation of entertainers, staff, and pa-trons. “AIDS hit piano bars especially hard,” recalls longtime cabaret singer and pianist Houston Allred, who began playing in 1962 after he was denied a job in the office of Vice President Lyndon Johnson for being “seen in the company of a known homosexual.” The ascendant generation didn’t dig the repertoire of pianists who considered Your Hit Parade to be new music. Piano bars showed their age and inflexibility. “The older generation would stay all night and drink a lot,” Allred recalls. “But the kids would meet someone, have one drink, and go off with them.” The piano bars of yesterday kept that “sense of sameness,” catering, in the end, to a dwindling older gay clientele. The reason Martuni’s still survives — and packs ’em in midweek, even — is that it pulls off the delicate act of appearing to never change while, in fact, constantly changing. It’s a wholly different bar on a Monday, when Joe Wicht and a room thick with working performers sing show tunes and standards, than three days later, when Joe Magdalena pulls out a horn and plugs in a disco ball. Martuni’s even changes hour to hour. Not long after Allred plays a Saturday afternoon show to the delight of silver-haired homo-sexual gents who can sing along to “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” Dina Rao, pianist Dee Spencer’s weekend sidekick, may tell a largely heterosexual crowd sprinkled with J ULY 25-J ULY 31, 2012 SF WEEKLY | MUSIC | EAT | FILM | STAGE | Publication List Using a screen reader? Click Here |
