Archive Search Results

1. Bouncer

   Don’t try the pineapple truffles

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: November 4, 2009

   I do social work for a developmentally disabled client who loves to play pool. I'll call her Sylvia. She also likes bars, although she only drinks Cokes. Lucky for us, bars and...

2. Bouncer

   Taking flight, back to the nest

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: October 28, 2009

   I dumped my bags down with a thud and sat in the exact same seat I'd taken a week before at the Mission Bar and Grill at SFO. A week ago I was heading for Illinois and my high...

3. Bouncer

   Bouncer’s Five-Year Anniversary Quiz

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: October 14, 2009

   Happy birthday, Bouncer! Five years of stickin’ it to the Man, exposing the wrongs of City Hall, and generally being a thorn in the side of power ... oh, wait. No,...

4. Bouncer

   Back to school, samurai-style

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: October 7, 2009

   Everyone likes a good revenge movie. They are tops on my list, especially old samurai flicks. The best ones take place after the warrior system has broken down, when the ronin...

5. Bouncer

   Gloomy Bloom’s brings out the cynic

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: September 30, 2009

   There comes a time in everyone's life when you try to be less cynical. Less sarcastic. Less glass-half-empty. Less of a douche. For one thing, it takes a lot of energy to...

6. Bouncer

   Dive Bar Time Bandits

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: September 23, 2009

   In case you didn't know, it is possible to travel into the future. All you need are twin babies and a vessel that can go faster than the speed of light (easy-peasy!). You shoot...

7. Bouncer

   Spare Changes in Faith

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: September 9, 2009

   Lately I've been wondering if my strict adherence to atheism is really the correct way to go. There comes a time when logic gets the best of you, and you realize that being...

8. Bouncer

   The Sneaky Teat and Other Sucking Trends

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: September 2, 2009

   It's always interesting to see what strange trends will emerge in American culture. I'm not talking about new dances, looks, or catchphrases. I'm talking about things. Every...

9. Bouncer

   The Googly-Eyed Beholder

   By Katy St. Clair

   Published: August 26, 2009

   Here's a question college professors love to throw out: What is art? I take refuge in Frank Zappa's general attitude about the stuff: I know it when I see it. Last week I...

10. Feature

    The Regulars

    Bouncer visits bars in three very different S.F. neighborhoods and discovers people everywhere all want the same thing: companionship. Oh, and booze.

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: August 19, 2009

    Bars and their patrons have a symbiotic relationship. Bar owners need customers, and customers need their bars. These are the regulars, those folks who come in just about every...

11. Bouncer

    Bad Memories in Little Chinatown

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: August 12, 2009

    Why do negative memories stay with us longer than positive ones? I was recently walking through Chinatown, and remembered being there with my parents when I was a child. I'm...

12. Bouncer

    Aunt Charlie and Uncle Newsom

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: August 5, 2009

    So I'm walking down Taylor Street in the Tenderloin, gingerly passing the drugged-out and the drunken, when I see this guy walking toward me, talking with his hands to the...

13. Bouncer

    Ken Will Help You Move

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: July 29, 2009

    As the saying goes, you really know who your friends are when you need to move house. Ken is my friend, then, because he has helped me move more than three times. He has also...

14. Bouncer

    23 Ways to Stray

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: July 22, 2009

    On one of my trips down to my family's cradle of civilization, South Pasadena, I looked through my grandmother's yearbooks. She was in high school in the 1920s, so it was...

15. Bouncer

    Clueless in the Castro

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: July 15, 2009

    Whenever something big happens in the realm of pop culture, I can't help but head to the Castro. I know that every television within a four-block radius will be tuned into the...

16. Bouncer

    Zen and the Art of Nose Maintenance

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: July 8, 2009

    I've recently been reading a lot about Zen Buddhism, a subject I'd avoided for most of my life. Asian religious thought seemed like such a Berkeley thing to research; those of...

17. Bouncer

    German stereotype engineering at Schroeder’s

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: July 1, 2009

    I was recently on my annual vacation with my mother. We ended up in western Wyoming, floating down the Snake River with an American guide and about 46 German tourists. I guess...

18. Bouncer

    Spying the generation gaffes at MoMo's

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: June 24, 2009

    As I write this, I am sitting on a big sofa in a big atrium in a big hotel in Grand Teton National Park. There is a big picture window that looks out over the big mountain...

19. Bouncer

    The naan, the bitch, and the mall bar at Straits

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: June 17, 2009

    When I was a kid, the most exciting part of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was the beginning of the book, when a child pushes through the back of the wardrobe during a...

20. Bouncer

    The High Tide time capsule

    By Katy St. Clair

    Published: June 10, 2009

    As you get older, some wise old sayings start to make sense. Such as "Youth is wasted on the young." Or "You can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps." Or "Let a ho...