Vanilla Pride - The Ultimate Rebellion.

In a matter of hours, San Francisco will host its most irrelevant, boring, outdated event – the Folsom Street Fair. While we now have a viable alternative opportunity during Pride Week thanks to the increasingly popular Gay Shame, unfortunately there is not a local Folsom Street Fair alternate. We desperately need one. That’s why tomorrow night I’m puttin’ on my Dockers and heading to Kansas City for the fifth annual Blandfest, the nation’s definitive vanilla-appreciation event. This year promises to top 2006’s landmark event in Dubuque when they dedicated the glorious Mullet Wing at the Hairdo Hall of Fame and the Alberto VO5s put on a kick ass concert.

This year the event will include a reunion of Hootie and the Blowfish, an Up With People retrospective and two simultaneous cinematic galas – the Tom Hanks Film Festival in Country Club Plaza and the Sandra Bullock Film Festival at Crown Center.

The Alberto V05s rock the house at Blandfest 2006

As a true renegade and rebel, Junk Thief would much rather be at this edgy event in Kansas City instead of the tedious gathering in SOMA. I mean, how many times do you need to see a 68-year-old guy show off his pierced scrotum while a group of onlookers gape with the dogged orthodoxy of a bevy of elderly Rotarians from Toledo going through their weekly rituals? What’s that, oh right, that 68-year-old guy with the pierced scrotum actually is a Rotarian from Toledo.

So indulge me to once more give my take on the Folsom Street Fair. In 1962 it would have been fiercely renegade and shocking. By 1970 it would have reached a stage of still being mildly edgy but bordering on mainstream assimilation. By 1989 it had attained near retro relevance of paying homage to a long lost age. By 2002 and the post dot-com bust, it had attained the hollow pathos of a group of mourners continuing to put on a funeral years after the corpse was permanently planted six feet under. In 2007 it is, in a word, pathetic.

Mind you, I have no problems with sex, kink, innovation, freedom, self-expression and individualism, none of which will be on display at this event. It's just a bunch of technology and rituals. If I want that I'll head over to Best Buy and blow the one cute member of the Geek Squad. Perhaps it comes down to what I consider to be the major differences between creativity and sexual innovation in California and the East and Europe. As with many things, California seems to be obsessed with technology and not content or concept. As anyone can tell from the sloppy design of this site and inept editing of Junk Thief TV, I’m much more a concept and content sort of guy. Sure we all need our share of technology, but it’s not what I want curled up next to me at night.

So that’s why I’ll avoid the lame rituals on Folsom Street this weekend and opt for the Big Vanilla in Kansas City. It’s a good reminder that vanilla is too often misnamed as a non-flavor while the foul, fecal stuff called chocolate is revered as something holy. In its pure form, vanilla is neither bland nor white. And while an excess of chocolate will give you zits, a big gut and a headache, too much pure vanilla will give you a glorious, giddy high. But, of course, Vanilla Pride should not be repeated. As with any true, renegade act, it should be committed once and allowed to sear itself into our memory. To repeat it would turn it into ultimately banality, something the Folsom Street Fair organizers should have realized 25 years ago. And don't even get me started on body "art"!

UPDATE: News flash from Omaha, home of the Alberto V05s. The reason the above photo of the 5s has only four men is because Ralph Burnside, their counter tenor, has left the group and will be running a spanking booth at Folsom Street Fair. Obviously, this was horrifying for the group, but they've persevered and reformed as a quartet named the Blandies.

Whose Fried Orthodoxy Tastes the Best?

Sometimes my live friends and blog friends that live in less urban venues tell me that they are envious of me living in big, sophisticated San Francisco with all it's great culture and outdoor activities. Mind you, on any given day I am very happy here and agree that it has many amazing things to offer. But seeing some recently entries by bloggers such as Eva Deadbeat and C.B. at the Mangina Monologues (yeah, great name, isn't it) about going to state and county fairs. I really need to just get in the Saturn, head over the ridge and check out some of the fun in Solano or Yolo counties which I hear put on some great county fairs.

When I was a kid in Oklahoma, I particularly loved the finale of the livestock competition which was a cattle fashion show, with a cow coming out in a wedding dress in that. Now I've never seen anything that cool in San Francisco.

Reading C.B.'s venture to the fair in Minnesota, I noticed his mention of buying a deep fried Snickers bar on a stick and thought, oh surely that's a joke. A quick Google search revealed to my horror that there is such a thing lurking out there, waiting to lure in the clueless. Maybe my "Gravy on a Stick" idea actually has a market.

Actually the very thought of fried chocolate makes me nauseous just writing it. I have a pretty severe chocolate allergy, and just being around the stench of any form of chocolate makes me want to gag. When I hear people crave for it, even go to spas where you can be slathered in that filth, I absolutely think the world has gone mad. Coke, Pepsi and other colas are almost as offensive to me and make me think of what it must be to drink motor own with a cup of sugar. I rarely like sweets of any kind, and consider sweetened coffee or tea one of the greatest crimes against humanity. I don't think I've had a pack of sugar or sweetener in my house in about 25 years. Yep, that's why I'm such a salty guy.

Despite these aversions, I feel really deprived of those state and county fairs. San Francisco has plenty of fairs and outdoor events, some of which are really worth going but many of which I avoid like the plague. I have not been to the Pride parade in at least 15 years but would pay top dollar to be directed to a Shriners' Parade. Watching a bunch of fat guys in their 60s in tiny little cars is 100 times more entertaining to me that yet another tedious viewing of Dykes on Bikes.

Then we have the Exotic Erotic Ball, Up Your Alley, Hairison Street Fair, Castro Street Fair and the wretched grand daddy of them all, Folsom Street Fair. I've been to most of them about once and hope I never have to endure any of them ever again in my life. I'm not that much of a prude, am supportive of people having a safe haven to embrace their sexuality, support affronts against conformity, etc. etc. All the same, once you've seen a dozen or so overweight 65-year-old men strutting around to show the world their pierced scrotums, you really don't have a need to see it again, especially when you know that there is a fried Snickers bar out there calling your name.

All of these things, as well as groups such as the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, which I am sure were a riot back in 1977 but have since settled into a repetitive, self-righteous, conformist orthodoxy that is as boring as their supposed targets underwritten by the Vatican. Similar thoughts go through my mind when I walk through the Haight. With all it's feral scruffiness, it still feels like a Disney-fied scruffiness with a cast born a good two decades after the Summer of Love fitting into the same costumes that probably should have been put into the wax museum eons ago.

If you've questioned the dominant paradigm, changed it and created a new one, ultimately you have come back to square zero and start the process all over again.

Are the Lazy Bears Early?

Okay, Junk Thief is confused. Was this the celebration of the Year of the Pig or an early celebration of the wretched Lazy Bear/Folsom Street Fair/Up Your Alley events? Pigs..Bears? Okay, I got lost on the difference...