review of tina's cafe on july 3, 2004

We were all a little apprehensive about this Tina's Cafe thing we were going to be doing. I mean, c'mon, the fuckin' event was called Tina's Cafe for Khrist's sake. What were we gonna have? An entire audience of jumpy fuckin' tweakers or a shut-down audience of N.A. graduates? We had our guests lined up: activist Michael Angelo, writer Mattilda, and this generation's Lester Bangs, the one and only Don Baird. And we had our venue: Magnet, the gay man’s drop in place on Castro Street. But would it all come together and make any sense?

The person who was instrumental in getting me involved in this in the first place, artist, dj, and long-time rabble-rouser, Steve Fabus, was providing musical atmosphere before and during the show. After he asked me and I met with the boys from tweaker.org, I jumped at the chance to simply create a dialogue that was not judgmental or accusatory but open and informative.

Well, the first thing we did after getting the chit-chat part of the evening started was field a few questions from the audience. It was a hoot and really warmed up the crowd. Then our first guest Mattilda, who had written a book called Pulling Taffy, came on and read from his new offering. He was wearing these pink pants that I had a hard-on for, I'll tell you. Anyway, he was very funny and rather spot-on in his observations about the Cult of Self-Medication.

Then came Don Baird. I've known Don for 12 years or so, and he is one of my favorite writers. He writes mostly about rock music but he is a great storyteller and a hilarious sage for these crazy days we live in. Don's piece about the perils of the straw (and the pipe and the point) and the absolutely stupid fuckin' things we might find ourselves doing was so funny that I was afraid I'd laugh my eyelashes off. You can read his tale, the one called “Booty Bump,” on this very web site for yourself and see what I mean.

Next we welcomed Michael Angelo to the stage. Michael has put his pretty little neck on the chopping block more than once about this issue, even being the subject of a television exposé on methamphetamine use that was edited to suit the alarmist message of the TV producers, never mind that the actual interview he gave was not that way at all. At Tina’s I asked him and he talked about his involvement with needle exchange and his work with the Rigz campaign put out by tweaker.org. As usual, he was dressed to maim, if not kill.

When the evening was through, we all felt it was a good virgin effort. Personally I'd like to see a larger turn out so we can really get this harm reduction ball rolling. The next Cafe event is August 7, 2004 with Kirk Read, Tom Orr and Scott Upper. See you at that one, hmmm?

Joan Jett-Blakk