THE SCENE AT the last show at the below-the-radar and high-above-Taylor-Street venue Tenderloft Dec. 6 boiled down to one singular sensation: the unnervingly steady drops of rainwater plick-plocking from a fire escape rail onto my head as I stood outside. It was kind of like clubland water torture. Compound that with the fact that it was midnight and none of the evening's bands, which included Radio Berlin and the Boy Explodes, had gone on yet. Inside, the dance floor was deserted, and a few low-energy partygoers were skating listlessly to and fro on the homemade skateboard ramp. The drizzle – and general aimlessness – was beginning to short-circuit my remaining nerves.

It's too bad when you're so burnt by the holidays that you can't even appreciate things like an indoor skating ramp in the middle of the so-called inner city. But that's the way it goes sometimes – a million flowers, like so many above- and below-ground art and music spaces, live and die uncelebrated. Not that I could eke out the hype for this un-permitted spot. My eyes were bleary; the weather was dreary. The space was calling it quits, and the economy was still nursing the longest hangover ever. Let's call the whole Xmas season off.

Then again, when I manage to sidestep the raindrops, things also appear to be livening up, despite the winter doldrums: Terrance Alan – San Francisco Late Night Coalition organizer and the president of the city's Entertainment Commission – has been doing his part laying the groundwork for a nightlife revival. Not only is he opening a new club called the Blue Cube in the next few months, but as a member of the SFLNC, he has also been working on a resolution to change the last-call time at bars and clubs from 2 a.m. to as late as 4 a.m. The SFLNC brought the resolution to the commission last week, and the details are being fine-tuned before it goes to Assemblymember Mark Leno in January.

Alan told me the SFLNC researched last-call times around the country and found that according to the National Traffic Safety Administration, traffic fatalities were lower in cities where the last call was anything but 2 a.m. "For the nightlife crowd, 2 a.m. is early," he told me on the phone on a recent Saturday afternoon, chatting as he walked to breakfast. "They go out by 11 or 11:30, they show up at bar, and they have an hour and a half to drink, and at some places they leave at 2 a.m., so they're out on the street after slamming a bunch of drinks."

Extended partying hours at after-hours clubs, Alan added, would not only address a public safety issue but would also make the city more competitive as a tourist destination.

Since I had him on the phone, Alan was more than happy to dish the scene as he sees it. Judging from the entertainment permits that pass through the commission, he predicts a new wave of clubs joining Arrow, Mezzanine, and Club Six amid the pigheaded jaywalkers and shattered crack pipes of Sixth Street. The nightlife infusion might even touch the lower Tenderloin, near – surprise, kids – ye olde Tenderloft. "I'd predict that in five years, that'll be the heart of entertainment in San Francisco," he said, singing the praises of the area's central location and proximity to BART and Muni.

Back so fast? Rare is the older "lady" who will fess up to her real age, let alone nail down the month. But then ex-Fastbacks bassist Kim Warnick is far from a run-of-the-treadmill woman rocker. The 44-and-a-half-year-old drops into Slim's on New Year's Eve with her new band, Visqueen, and she's damn proud of every month under her belt. "Show me another 44-year-old woman who's going around playing shitholes – and I'm sure they're out there, and god love 'em – but you better love it, is all I'm saying. There's definitely other things you could be doing," she told me from her Seattle home.

Warnick has been playing with Visqueen songwriter-guitarist-vocalist Rachel Flotart and drummer Ben Hooker for the past two years. The pair asked Warnick, then working on her 23rd year in the Fastbacks, to join – and after hearing their punky yet arena-rockin' songs, and loving them, she did.

She had only played with the Fastbacks in the past. For a few months she continued in both groups, until Fastbacks songwriter Kurt Bloch began talking about working on new songs and touring more energetically. Playing with Visqueen, Warnick said, "made me realize that maybe I had kinda come to the end of the road with the Fastbacks, not that I didn't and still don't love that band. But we had talked about putting more into the Fastbacks, just trying to take it up a notch, and I wasn't willing to do it."

After 23 years it wasn't easy to break the news to the rest of the band.

"Of course I was wondering, 'Down the road, will I regret this decision?' " Warnick said. " 'You play with different people, and when it isn't all shiny and new, will I be unhappy there and will I be bummed that I quit?' That hasn't happened."

Visqueen's first album, King Me, a wide-screen splatter of epic punk-pop, has gone into a second printing, and they've recently completed their first seven-week U.S. tour. As for Warnick, she tends bar at the Cha Cha Lounge in the King City when she isn't out, and she hasn't cut ties with her Fastbacks exes. She reports Bloch is playing in a side band called Sergeant Major and Lulu Gargiulo has been spending time with her small child. "Lulu misses playing," Warnick says sympathetically, sounding like a bit of a rock 'n' roll earth mama herself. "Sometimes she feels jealous, but I'll tell her, 'Lulu, you'd hate it. We're playing to nobody, and we drive nine hours to do that.' "

'How' annoying Bay Area DJ and Nickie's BBQ stalwart Cheb I Sabbah recently filed a copyright infringement suit against Bollywood distributors of the film Plan for the unauthorized and uncredited use of his song "Kese Kese (How ... How)" in the thriller, which is expected to be one of the biggest Bollywood hits of 2004, according to the Web site Indiatimes.... We last heard from former Devo dude Mark Mothersbaugh in the scores for the movies Good Boy! and Thirteen. Next he's expected to be hanging out and holding forth at the Jan. 10 opening of his art exhibit, "Beautiful Mutants," at the Capobianco Gallery, 1841 Powell, S.F.... Members of Cirque du Soleil allegedly were out in force and in our faces at the Rawhide Dec. 14. The Bay Guardian's Deborah Giattina reports that some unnamed crew members were getting their clowns on, heckling veteran torch singer Bambi Lake, who was performing with Anna Oxygen and Fauntleroy. The spoilsports didn't capsize Lake, who has appeared with Black Flag and the Stranglers and is apparently accustomed to tough crowds, but who knew there were so many jerks with the cirque?