Bloody hell happens in Lower Haight - just in time for Valentine's Day! Photo by Joshua Rotter.
By Joshua Rotter
Love was the furthest thing from my mind on February’s first Friday, when I attended the “My Bloody Valentine” edition of monthly death-rock club Die, Die My Darling at Underground SF.
No, actually, it was all in my mind. Cross my heart. Since my recent break-up, I’ve thought about nothing else while catching up on TV and the latest snack foods and muting those pesky dating Web site commercials.
Fortunately, none of those shiny happy couples were represented here among the mixed crowd of mortals and ghouls adorned with pallid face paint and penciled-in eyebrows. Here were the disillusioned matched only by the bat cave classics - Bauhaus, Siouxsie, and Cure dirges - spun by host-DJ Jason El Diablo, which reaffirm that love is a bloody affair and no one’s hands are clean.
But there was nothing more symbolic of this than the blood wrestling pool in back. As the inflatable tank was filled with buckets of red paint and contestants began lining up in their skivvies, I threw on a provided garbage bag poncho in expectation of the first blood-spraying match.
“This is blood wrestling with people who are in love,” El Diablo announced. “No matter how you cut it, someone’s getting fucked.”
And as the competitors began thrashing around, repeatedly dousing me with fake blood, I had to agree. In the ordinary world, love is a battlefield, but here it’s a bloodbath. And here, as in most relationships, even winners get little more than the “glory of knowing you look like the king of the dip-shits,” according to El Diablo.
But the host is not entirely hopeless about amorous possibilities. “I wanted to rally against love and the whole Valentine’s Day bullshit,” he said afterwards. “But I also wanted to create a space for people who aren’t in love to meet a boy or a ghoul.”
Die, Die My Darling
First Friday of the month, 9 p.m.-2 a.m., $5
Underground SF
424 Haight St, SF
(415) 864-7386
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Comments (1)
I've never wanted to be Carrie so badly....I just might need to grab my beau and skivvies for a good ol' bloodbath. Finally we have a place outside of Mighty to duke it out.
Posted by T Rex | February 5, 2008 10:54 AM