Pop-Up Gay Bar creates instant community out of chaos

Patrons mingle as Pop-Up Gay Bar takes over Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon at Jack London Square in Oakland. Patrons mingle as Pop-Up Gay Bar takes over Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon at Jack London Square in Oakland. Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Pop-Up Gay Bar creates instant community out of chaos 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

"Let's get these fairies on the ferry!" Brad Holland, one of the 30-plus members of the inaugural Bay Area Pop-Up Gay Bar, shouts to partygoers as they board for the crossing from San Francisco to Oakland.

"Someone was going to say that eventually," Brian McConnell, a software developer and the innovator behind the concept, says with amusement. As a drag-trinity of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence herd passengers aboard for the trip to a trio of Oakland destinations, McConnell notes the perfect weather for the first of the "adult field trips" he envisions for the less than month-old website and e-mail list www.popupgaybar.com to facilitate. "It's the kind of day to go discover something."

Pop-Up Gay Bar is a reinvention of a movement McConnell helped create more than a decade ago. During the first wave of dot-coms in the early 2000s, it was known as Guerrilla Queer Bar, but the basic premise remains consistent. Via a group e-mail list, members can organize or join an outing where they take over a venue with a group of fellow members, all for the joy of getting away from their usual watering holes with some newly made friends. Guerrilla Queer Bar arose not only from a desire for new frontiers but also a sense of displacement that was occurring during a time of rent hikes and shutterings of long-established businesses.

"Does that sound familiar?" Sister Selma Soul, the Sisters' liaison for the pop-up asks, noting the parallel circumstances of then and now.

Although Guerrilla Queer Bar eventually spread to more than two dozen cities, the escapades had ceased in San Francisco by the time McConnell started exploring a new website.

"We had great events," McConnell says. "We started small in the beginning, like today, but eventually we would get a couple hundred people."

Thinking globally

The venues were usually off-the-beaten-path destinations for the gay community, one of the more noteworthy being a Folsom Street Fair takeover of SoMa's W Hotel bar. "That was a madhouse - probably 200 guys, some in leather gear, overrunning the first floor," McConnell reminisces. "By the time guys started taking bamboo out of the floral arrangements to whip each other, the bartenders gave up."

This time, McConnell is thinking globally. In the three weeks since the website debuted, members from more than 45 countries have joined the e-mail lists, which are sorted by city and ZIP code. In an era of GPS apps, it's an intentionally old-school model.

Amid the fun, a question arises: Are "gayborhoods" like the Castro a dying model for community?

"I miss the power of the ghetto," Robert Ortega, a 30-year Castro resident, says of what he sees as the end of an era brought on by rising housing costs and the loss of gay businesses.

"The Castro has no buzz anymore," Fraydo Felipe says. "It's all nail salons and tourist attractions. I don't want to spend my disposable income there," which is what led him to discover Pop-Up's website.

As the group disembarks in Oakland, they're met by additional members, bringing the party total to 40 as they head to their first stop, Beer Revolution. Sister Nancy Drew Blood, who lives adjacent to Oakland's Piedmont neighborhood, joins the afternoon procession to stop No. 2, Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon.

'A social model'

Wherever the Sisters lead the group, fun and photo requests follow, even at a detour to an adult bookstore. After Heinold's, the group dwindles down to less than 20, and they end their day at nearby Home of Chicken & Waffles.

McConnell talks excitedly about upcoming pop-ups. He wants to revisit the fun of Folsom by turning a yet-to-be-chosen "tourist trap" into a leather bar for the night and, fittingly, also has a tour of former gay bars in mind as another pop-up.

"What's really exciting is that pop-ups could catch on in small towns that don't have full-time gay bars," McConnell says, mentioning Vallejo, Concord and Stockton as ideal local candidates to utilize the website. It's a social model he continues to find relevance in when it comes to community building.

"When you put people in a chaotic situation," McConnell says, "it removes boundaries."