Sparky's is located less than a block south of Market, east of Castro
on a street I don't readily remember. I headed there an hour early because
I had nothing else to do (got off the plane at noon and I'd already exhausted
the mallrat white-trash potential of Market Street). Sparky's looks upscale,
without having spent an awful lot of money to do it. I prejudged it to be
a guppie cafe. They let me sit with only a cup of tea and wait for people
to come in. The photo, by the way, is of the Sanrio Shop downtown.
Pity they didn't have Bad-Badtz Maru.
Rav3n was the second person at Sparky's. She was wondering if she
was in the right place. She and I met two years ago in Seraphim Gothique's
hotel room at Convergence in Chicago. I wasn't bald, vanDyked or with
contacts, and she wasn't blonde, headshaved and glassesless, but we
recognized each other anyways. As people streamed in, we would wave at
them so they knew this was the right place.
The Organizers of C3 arrived in short order; only a dozen of us had
shown up early, but it was enough for the people at Sparky's to know that
they were in for an interesting night. Pictured here are Ben Colburn, Sara?,
TJ,
Petro, Barb, Tamara, Karl, and Scott?. Petro claims he was at C3, but since
he tends to not show up on film I have no proof of such. I'm missing
some organizers from this photo, but they were circulating in the crowd at
schmoozing speeds.
Friendly Goths With One Devil who is really only a devil because I
was using a flash. I had 400 ASA film, I couldn't help it. Pictured are
DeadDoll/Heather Renee, Rav3n's hair, Nicolas Seizure as the Devil,
April and [who?] whom you can barely see.
Thank you Heather for the names to faces (13 Aug 1997)
A Flare gun photograph. I thought the mirrors would make for good
artsy-fartsy photos. Please give to the "Take Mozai to Photography School"
fund. One surprise did come of this: Michael's eyes have the Devil effect but he's not looking into the flash.
Curious...
When this Couple came in to Sparky's, my neck made cracking noises
as it turned to look at her. What really got my attention, though, is that
he looked very familiar... except I remember him with pale hair instead of
red-pink. I spoke to them at their table and he offered that he recently
appeared in Skin Two
Magazine. I still wanted to use
the mirrors in an artsy-fartsy way, and this time it worked as they gazed
into each other's eyes, blah blah romantic etc.
Oh, here's a moment that's been waiting for two years. When I started to
get around as a net.goth, I used the nick "Moses". People would talk to me
as if they knew me, but I was a newless cluebie back then. In Chicago I
heard about the "moses" that made appearances on EFnet and alt.gothic,
and
moses heard about "Moses". That she's really warm and cool (?) is a bonus.
Pictured here are Jen Bradford, moses, Antler Boy/Dennis, and moses's
fiance is hidden on her left. Yeah, fiance. *sigh*
Two well-known nicknames, EdVamp of alt.gothic and New York City,
and TJ whom
everyone met because she held our laminated tickets. I met EdVamp briefly
in Chicago when silentq (Nicole Aucoin) introduced us, with "and this, is
EdVamp." TJ I met because she had my ticket,
which I promptly lost the next night playing skip rope with my chain belt
and Julie Bloo's chain leash.
I also remember the first group to come in: two oriental women whom I kept
seeing at Maritime Hall with a slave usually in tow. There was no slave
present at Sparky's but I could tell immediately that one of them was a dom.
Must be the way she walked, because she wasn't intimidating at all when we
spoke.
Erina/pagan919 identified herself as "the one who had leashboy in tow
throughout the weekend," and said she organized the fashion show. A link
to her fashion show related web page is coming. (17 Aug 1997)
Sparky's was also where I first spotted nightbird (Robert Hayden), dressed in a smart suit and the only other prominent photographer there. I was certainly more annoying than he was when taking pictures. Pity I don't have a photo of him.