Beach Blogger Babylon:
Earlier this week, the good people at Beach Blanket Babylon asked a bunch of Bay Area bloggers to come see the show as their guests. BBB publicist Charly Zukow had read about my exploits for the San Francisco International Film Festival and asked me if I might coordinate a similar effort for Beach Blanket. I agreed.
BBB is the longest running musicial revue in the world. Begun one early summer as a variety show in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, it was supposed to run six weeks. That was 32 years ago. Beach Blanket has filled Club Fugazi on Green Street (renamed Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd.) Wednesday through Sunday since 1974.
What is it? Basically a giant stew of old rock n’ roll songs, pop culture references, bad puns, playground innuendo and giant hats. Asking if it’s “good” misses the point. Corny, exaggerated,and loveable, Beach Blanket is simply too content being what it is to criticize. Or dislike. Rationally thinking it through is like trying to explain the appeal of the wind. It’s no longer in question. It’s a force of nature.
BBB is produced by Jo Schuman Silver, the handpicked successor to creator Steve Silver, who died in 1995. Ms. Silver greeted us bloggers with her staff and crew, many of whom have been with the show 20 years or more. Her cast, after a long day of rehearsal and performance answered our questions, posed for pictures and welcomed this little invasion of citizen media (“The bloggers are coming!”) with warmth and kindness.
Ms Silver: Oy, what an angel. Charly had said to me that there are few San Franciscans as nice as Jo which is where my nasty old skepticism creeped in. The women has success the size of an ocean, knows everyone in town and has her work given standing ovations 5 nights a week. How could it not go to her head?
It hasn’t. Jo Schuman Silver is as sweet, as generous and as real as they come. She welcomed us all like family into her living room, eager to learn what we were all about, delighted to talk about the show, its history and how creator Steve Silver still inspires them all.
I drove home that night, through the quiet streets of my adopted home. Steve Silver had found a little spot here for the uncomplicated pursuit of zaniness and making people happy. Friends and loved ones carried on his vision both with respect and an eagerness to always stay current and learn. Us bloggers are part of a later era in this city’s history, one of risk and self-expression fueled by technology and change. Perhaps before tonight I had thought we were part of two different San Franciscans, the freak-filled 60s and the microchipped 90s and onward. Being welcomed into the home of Beach Blanket Babylon made me feel like we were same city, where hard and fun were not mutually exclusive, where joy and silliness were taken seriously and where the williness to learn and grow from one other, instead of blindly defend our own version this “home on the hill” make San Francisco great.
Herb Caen once said “San Francisco isn’t like it used to be and it never was.” How right he was. This city, like myth, spreads, evolves, dies and is reborn. Its wonder is that even the constants–the bridges, the cable cars and yes, Beach Blanket Bablyon–both endure and live with us everyday. Under the eaves of their long history, there is room for each of us, room to be part of that history instead of swallowed by it.
I feel like I made a friend in Ms. Silver and her show tonight. I hope to see them all very soon. And though it may seem hoary to say, I thank Beach Blanket Babylon for reminding me, in the words of Tony Bennett why I live here.
“My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco
Your golden sun will shine for me”