It’s the midpoint of a long, cold summer, and San Franciscans are restless. San Francisco seems to have lost its edge. Now is the summer of our discontent, as Shakespeare might say.
If Shakespeare were here, he’d be worried, too. The arts are in trouble, community theaters have lost their audiences, museums are closing or cutting staff, the Opera is having problems, and Esa-Pekka Salonen has left the S.F. Symphony. Even the venerable Mountain Play skipped a season on Mount Tamalpais this year for the first time in 80 years. The audience wasn’t there.
San Francisco’s formally fabled nightlife has gone dark. The gloom is widespread: D’Arcy Drollinger, the city’s Drag Laureate, plans to close Oasis, a fabled drag club. “We’ve been struggling, like a lot of other venues,” he said. “Our margins are razor-thin.” Ben Bleiman reopened Harrington’s, an old school bar in the Financial District, on the theory that the city was on the rebound. “The fact that we are breaking even is a miracle,” he said. He should know. He’s the president of the city’s entertainment commission…