guerrilla queer bar is the underground gay party that’s hit san francisco’s nightlife like a tongue-in-cheek tornado. summed up by its witty mantra “don’t clone, colonise”, this roving monthly extravaganza annexes hitherto straight bars (and the occasional “gay bar that time forgot”, as one organizer puts it) and pumps the place full of hundreds of gay boys and girls, turning the place into queer territory for the night. each party has a different theme – like the fetishfest that transformed the w – through both theme and venue are announced at short notice via email, often the day before the event, to preserve an element of surprise. the men behind the parties maintain s similar mystique, but it isn’t to be shy or chic: they offer only their first names when giving interviews to avoid turning the events into a cult of personality. “we don’t want people to feel like they’ve coming to our party,” explains hunter, “we want them to feel like they’re coming to the party.”

guerrilla queer bar was the brainchild of hunter and five friends, who were tired of the same old same old san francisco scene. they all agreed on one thing, as james another of the founders, explains: “there were plenty of other cool bars in the city, but it was just too bad they weren’t places you could go and cruise and meet cute boys.” the friends briefly toyed with opening their own place before realising it would be quicker and easier to cuckoo their way into someone else’s.

the tentative first steps came in may 2000, when they corralled friends into coming out for karaoke night at tango tango, an old-school -- and often deserted -- gay bar. the trial run was a raucous success (almost a hundred revellers turned out to drink and lipsync), but the next event, in the heterosexual party vortex of north beach, was a flop. "people were ccared off by the location, " james explains. yet the boys didn't give up. they regrouped and relaunched with a party at a kitschy, touristy tiki bar and haven't looked backl now almost 2500 people receive the monthly newsletter and most gqb invasions number in the hundreds. the highest profile of these was march 2001, when an irish tourist cheekily contacted the organisers and asked for a personal party for him and his boyfriend while they were visiting the city. his chutzpah paid off: the boys created a fictitous holiday, st patrick’s day (honouring the patron saint of drunken sex mistakes) and appointed the irishmen grand marshals of her parade-cum-pub-crawl. the evening’s theme song? “oh tranny boy.”

thought gqb road-tested its concept in a queer venue, the best reaction often comes from straight bars. “our crowd’s really nice and mellow – and we tip well, so the bartenders love it!” laughed hunter. the w was happy to host the unofficial event – in fact some staffers were on the mailing list and had quietly tipped off colleagues in advance.

but when the irreverent invasion descends on a gay nightstop, it isn’t always welcomed. james recalls an evening at the powerhouse, one of the best-known leather bars in san francisco, when the gqb posse turned up for the bare chest calendar contest – dressed in preppy sweaters and slacks. “when one guy asked the bartender why it was so crowded,” he remembers, “the bartender sniffed, “i don’t know, it’s all the sweater people.’ “yahoo doesn’t go ape over the guerrillas, either: it briefly suspended the group’s site for unexplained “objectionable” content before an avalanche of angry protests shamed it into changing its mind.
yahoo’s reaction is even stranger when you consider that guerrilla queer bar’s camp irreverence isn’t a cover for any political agenda. “the most radical thing is that we’re not making any money off of it,” hunter notes. the boy’s aren’t looking to stage confrontational, queer nation-style kiss-ins; it’s much more about cocktails and cruising in the novelty of new revenue. thought gqb has much in common with michael alig and his club kids in early 1990s new york (who’d often invade local mcdonald’s restaurants en masse in full regalia), in many ways the concept could only have come from san francisco. hunter points to the performative element in the city’s social life plus its role as an internet incubator. but while local web-savviness made the gqb email list instantly workable, it was also the prime problem against which the boys were reacting.
“some of the single ones among us had been doing the online dating thing,” hunter continues, “and there was a concern that maybe guys weren’t going out anymore because they were having their sex delivered. we wanted to get people meeting face to face again, as hooking up that way is much more fun.” either way, gqb has now exported its camp and costumed san francisco sensibility to fourteen more cities across america – and after only seen months, the group in denver run by [billy trix] has 2000 people on its mailing list.

through the original organisers have passed on daily duties to a new group of enthusiastic amateur party planners, most are still involved in some way. james says that future plans include an active attempt to include more women – t the moment, he admits, most events are around 90 percent male. he’s excited about the speed tricking event they’re mounting for valentine’s day (“a hoot”, he tells me later. “my boyfriend and i treated ourselves to a valentine’s three-way!”); and also the major party to mark both the group’s three year anniversary and the expected verdict on the contentious lawrence and garner vs. texas sodomy case. “we never say too much about our events in advance,” he confides, “but it’s a going to be sodomy-themed.” he pauses and chuckles. “come to think of it, most of our parties tend to be sodomy-themed.”