Instant City: Portals of the Past

On the eve of the inauguration Americans endured the final hours of the Bush presidency and awaited the moment he would disappear from the Oval Office. During these hours of limbo a number of folks found refuge at the Elbo Room, where Instant City hosted a reading (and game show) honoring its Fall 2008 issue: "The Disappeared."

Appropriately, the theme of the readings, most from the issue, explored San Francisco's past through both imagined and historical iterations, the realm of not yet forgotten moments and places.

I live on Polk Street, so Alvin Orloff's "The Doomed Glamour of Polk Street," reinvented my perception of the street's former self. By my understanding the Castro of today is a tamer version of Polk St. in the 1970s, a lusty mix of boys and men and urgency and desire. In Orloff's piece humor effectively mediates a boy's aching need for acceptance and compassion.

Jon Longhi's "Bad night at the Chameleon," made me long for more crack-violence and performance art. His pacing and energy brought the story from the page to the stage. It felt at times like a one man show. I'll never be able to go to Amnesia (which was once the Chameleon) without thinking of Longhi's Bad Night.

Kevin Hobson, the night's first reader, began with a piece from the issue, called: "Along the Great Highway," about the Sutro's Baths, but just as I was getting into it he stopped. Something about buy the issue to find out what happens. I did. He continued with a crack-up piece that will resonate with anyone whose ridden a cross town bus in San Francisco. I was dying.

Cynthia Mitchell's "Eucalyptus," starkly contrasted the tone of the other pieces. Sadder and more vulnerable. The story of city kids, who were not street kids. They took shelter from darkest corners of the city, knowing no danger because such a life was the only one they knew.

The evening ended with Charlie Jane Anders' "My Breath is a Rudder." A swirl of perspective and creative possibilities, the willfulness of art and it's relation to the artist. Anders work was amusing ...