I can't take my eyes off two girls in red-and-white headbands. Their dance moves resemble those from a workout video, as do their outfits: green and orange sweat shirts, sweat pants with elastic waistbands, and PUMAs. I introduce myself and find out that they call themselves Deb Pop N' Lock and Tiff Snake. Deb is the one with blue leg warmers, and Tiff is the one with pink leg warmers, but that is their only difference. Their faces are smeared with electric-blue eye shadow and bright red lipstick, and their voices contain more than a trace of Valley Girl. They are somehow beautiful.
We step outside the club into the cool air, and they tell me the stories of their lives. They're not related, but they live together in Nob Hill and sleep on bunk beds, rotating the top position every two months. Originally from Santa Barbara, they strongly identify with "mall girl" culture. As their names suggest, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany are major inspirations. They call themselves "anti-indie rock" and worship the members of Journey as gods.
Their top five favorite movies, which they list off in tandem, are:
1) The Breakfast Club
2) Footloose
3) Ferris Bueller's Day Off
4) Dirty Dancing
5) Back to the Future
"In the '80s it came from the heart and soul," says Tiff, stretching her calves in front of the Cat Club's green-and-black sign.
"Some people think we're comedians," says Deb, "but we don't think we're funny. We wear these clothes all the time, and cause chaos wherever we go, but we're oblivious to it. People are like, 'Why are you wearing those clothes?' and we're like, 'What are you talking about?'"
I hear the track change from Billy Idol to Cyndi Lauper, and the next thing I know Deb and Tiff are pulling down their pants. They reveal their underwear. REO Speedwagon emblems adorn the front. On the back, their names are written in dark orange marker.
This is much better than seventh grade. I love the '80s.
It wasn't always like this. I used to loathe '80s revivalists and everything they stood for. That was just a week ago, in fact ...
It all started one foggy morning when I journeyed into the Mission District with my friend Libby Kountzman in search of shoes. Tired of waiting for the 26 Valencia bus, we stumble into Friend's Cafe at Duboce and Valencia. Its fraying, mismatched Oriental rugs, assorted hand-painted chairs, and Army-green couch give it a comfortable, homey feeling. Still, there's something vaguely unsettling here. We get our drinks, sit down, and Libby begins telling me about her latest purchases from Good Vibrations. But I can't concentrate. For some reason I'm beginning to panic.
I suddenly realize, and then verbalize, the problem: "They're playing Great White."
Hollywood ain't paved with gold
It's just a trick of light
Sunset falls on stars of old
And blinds you with its light
"The Angel Song." It bothers me that this song is being played. It was a cherished anthem from my formative junior high years, after all. I bought the cassingle with my own money. I memorized the words and cried to the lyrics. Sure, I had never kissed a girl up to this point, but if I had, this song would have been playing in the background.
Fly lonely angel
High above these streets of fire
Fly lonely angel
Far away from mad desire
OK, so it doesn't make much sense, but that's not the point. The point is that it epitomized my desperate pre-adolescent longings for female companionship. This is not a song to be heard, it is a song to be forgotten. Besides, it was not a "hit." "Once Bitten Twice Shy" was a "hit," and when was the last time you heard that song?
I storm to the front counter to demand an explanation. "Is this on the radio?" I ask the barista, who is quietly making a mocha.
"No," he says, turning around, oddly calm.
"Is it one of those 'Monster Ballad Compilation' things?"
"No," he says, setting his glass down and wiping his hands with a rag. "It is a CD I burned."
The man truly has no bad intentions. His name is Phil Azraei, and he came to San Francisco shortly after arriving in the U.S. from Amman, Jordan, in 1989. Though he wasn't actually living in the United States during most of the Me Decade, he insists that all the best of culture was happening then, including Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bobby McFerrin, Guns 'N Roses, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
He even has good things to say about Ronald Reagan: The Teflon president made many improvements in the economy, the people of Jordan like him a lot, etc. Perhaps this viewpoint is an anomaly. After all, foreigners are often obsessed with tacky American culture.
"Rhythm Is Gonna Get You" by Gloria Estefan comes on as I sit back in my chair.
"Can you believe they're playing this music, Libby?" I ask, staring down at the espresso-sludge remains of my latte.
"Yeah, it's great," she says, and then notices my frustrated scowl. "The '80s are still in, you know."
"Still?" I ask. This is news to me. Bad news.
"Oh yeah. They've been popular for a few years now -- haven't you noticed all the mullets and mohawks? -- but now it's being taken to a whole new level. We're talking feathered bangs, Farrah Fawcett-style."
I'm going to need something stronger to drink.
"Personally I just bought a pair of red and black striped wool arm-warmers, and some more lip gloss. Nowadays it's all about the heavy gloss. And the off-the-shoulder sweat shirt look. It's a shout-out to the bar mitzvah days."
I never wore my sweat shirts off-the-shoulder. I never had a bar mitzvah. I don't know what she's talking about.
"You'll find out," she says, reading my mind and depositing her empty cup in the trash. "Come with me to the Electroclash show tonight."
With most of a day to kill and shoes still to find, we head down the street and wander into the Subterranean Shoe Room, where Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) is playing on the stereo. The store has bright blue and yellow walls; in the back is a console for old video games, including Asteroid, Moon Patrol, Galaga, and Robotron. Old shoe styles -- Adidas Samoas, Converse All Stars, and Pro-Keds -- line the front room.
Selling primarily retro-rereleased and retro-influenced shoes and accessories, the store was opened in January 2001 by two brothers from Oklahoma City. Joshua Bingaman, 23, and Brock Bingaman, 32, fell in love with the Valencia Street location and traveled the country to trade shows to build their inventory. With no advertising budget, they relied on word-of-mouth for new customers. Earlier this year, the store expanded by 1,200 square feet because sales had doubled.
As Libby checks out some pink PUMAs, I talk with Brock, who points out some of the store's most popular items. The Adidas Micropacer II, originally released in 1984, has a pedometer on one foot to record how far you've run, and a small pocket on the other foot for keys or change. A pair costs $185. "It's something the Six Million Dollar Man would jog in," says Brock.
And what's this, navy tennis warm-up outfits made by Fila for nearly $200?
"These are for more educated shoppers. Bjorn Borg himself wore these," he says. "The whole tennis look is in. Shorter shorts, more fitted apparel, headbands, wristbands, visors. Even athletes are looking more retro, like the Williams sisters and the Italian World Cup team. Did you notice their tight, fitted outfits?"
I take his word for it, and ask him the secret to his success.
"Nostalgia," he says, unrepentant, obviously caught up in some of it himself. "People will come into our store, pick up a shoe, and say, 'Man this takes me back to ninth grade. I'm a cheerleader and my first steady boyfriend just asked me to the prom ....' Good times."
Couldn't this all just be a cynical marketing ploy by greedy corporations to pry money out of the acid-washed pockets of professional 24- to 34-year-olds? "Don't you find the Reagan-era, 'Me Decade' materialism appalling?" I ask.
"I think it was a fascinating decade," he says frankly. "There was so much going on in music, movies, and fashion. As for Reagan, I'm not a hugely political person."
Store employees Massan Fluker and Amy Terhar have different takes on the retro resurgence. Terhar suggests that it's reactionary. "The tech bust turned a lot of people off from the idea that newer is always better," she says.
Fluker contends that the revival stems from old-school hip hop music and its culture. "Nowadays, it's all about reissuing," he says, pointing the store's World Wide Web browser at the Lasonic company home page, which features its "Classic Boombox," of the type seen in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. "If it wasn't classic, they wouldn't be selling that big thing."
Whatever the revival's roots, other San Francisco retailers are busily mining it. Witness two shoe vendors -- Harput's on Fillmore and Shoe Biz II on Haight -- and Wishbone, the Sunset boutique that sells leg warmers, arm warmers, fingerless gloves, plastic Pac-Man barrettes, shirts with fake suspenders, and candy from the '80s, including Pop Rocks and Bottle Caps.
"I couldn't have even imagined this a few years ago," says Wishbone manager Joseph Luce, 30, who describes the store's styles as half punk rock/half Tokyo pop. "The '80s are a total thing, a total way to look." Luce is an acquaintance of Paul Frank, the designer whose monkey-faced apparel dominates the store and much of Haight Street. Luce says Frank is obsessed with the '80s and is trying to appeal to twentysomethings who pine for a time when "they were carefree, rode their bicycles with banana seats, surfed, and ate Pop Rocks."
In the words of the Heathers, from the movie Heathers, "Whatever." It's time to get ready for the Electroclash concert.
The line at the Fillmore goes around the block. Most of the crowd is late 20s, female, and heavily made-up. As we enter I gaze at the framed photographs lining the walls and think how few of the fishnet-stockinged, scarved, and mohawked attendees listen to the Grateful Dead or the Doors.
Electroclash is a tour that rose from the ashes of 9/11 in New York City, filling an escapist void with its emphasis of style over substance. A combination of electro, riot grrl punk, and, of course, mall girl '80s, it has disgusted legions of hard-core electro fans but sold out shows all over the U.S. and Canada. Founded by New York DJ and party promoter Larry Tee, the tour this year also features Chicks on Speed, W.I.T., and Tracy & the Plastics.
By 9:30, the mosh pit has started, and the crowd noise becomes deafening for W.I.T. (Whatever It Takes), a three-piece group whose members wear prom dresses and use guitars as onstage props rather than playable musical instruments. On the tour Web site, they have promised "not to let integrity get in the way of our careers."
"Thank you so much," says lead singer Melissa Burns, pushing a wispy blond bang out of her face. "I feel like I just won something."
"You know, Melissa," interrupts brunette "guitarist" Christine Doz, "I was looking in the mirror before we came onstage tonight, and I couldn't help but notice: I think I need my bangs trimmed."
"You know, Christine, that's weird, because I need my trim banged."
Ba-dum ching. Indeed, Electroclash is all about sexual innuendo. Peaches, the self-proclaimed "Queen of Electro-Trash," comes onstage wearing an elbow-length blond wig, pink fishnet pantyhose, and hot pants. She busts a few riffs on her hot-red, rectangular guitar and follows with a slew of come-on moves, pretending to fellate the microphone and feigning cunnilingus with a dancer. For "Shake Your Dicks, Shake Your Tits," she strips down to a purple bra and black shorts that have a large red dildo attached, pretends to vomit blood, crowd-surfs, and smashes a piñata full of candy. She is a strange combination of Madonna and Ozzy Osbourne.
As we leave the club, Libby makes it clear she's had a great time; I say I did, too. "If you liked that, you'll love Fischerspooner," she says. "And Ladytron. I'll burn you a CD."
I'm almost ready to admit defeat. It seems that nearly everyone is celebrating the '80s revival -- and has been for a couple of years now. But why? Can't anyone see the '80s for what they really were, a gluttonous, cynical, corporate ode to the popular kids in the class? And some of us were nerds back then! Some of us are still nerds!
I have one last trick up my sleeve. Some friends will stand up to this trend. They will have no interest in it, for a simple reason: They were barely born during the decade in question. Matthew and Ross are 15. The last time I checked they were really into Britney Spears and *NSYNC. Nothing could be less retro than that.
Or could it? Is *NSYNC retro?
I don't even know anymore.
Matthew Valencia and Ross Millar are ninth-graders at Albany High School. I met Matthew when his family lived in my San Francisco neighborhood and I worked at a local bookstore. His family moved to Albany a few years ago, and there he met Ross, a 5-foot-9 counterpart with an impressive experimental mustache.
I take BART to visit them after school one day, and we check out the new El Cerrito Plaza. We suck on 1-liter bottles of Dr Pepper from Albertsons, and their energy is overwhelming. But it is fun to hang out with them; it reminds me what it was like to be a kid. And I can rest easy knowing that their childhood is an entire decade removed from mine.
"Hey Ben, do you like Harold Ramis?" Ross asks suddenly.
I stare at the ground. He is referring to the director of National Lampoon's Vacation and the co-star of Ghostbusters, both classic '80s movies. I fidget, but play it cool. After all, Ramis directed lots of non-'80s hits, too.
"Oh, you mean the director of Analyze This?" I say. "Yeah, I loved that movie."
"That one was OK," says Ross, "but I'm talking about Caddyshack. Have you seen that? With Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray and Chevy Chase? It's so funny, especially the part where Bill Murray tries to dynamite out the gophers ..."
He is laughing too hard to finish the sentence.
"No, haven't seen it," I lie.
Next come unmistakable signs that my young friends are true '80s aficionados. They love the Cars, Foreigner, Journey, the Fine Young Cannibals, and the synthesizer sound.
"You guys," I say, getting deadly serious. "I hate to break it to you, but the '80s was a terrible time. You weren't alive then, so you don't know, but there was a lot of bad stuff going on. Like Reagan. Man. If you think George W. Bush is evil, that guy was way worse. He was building up nuclear weapons, cutting down trees ..."
"Aww, leave him alone," interrupts Matthew. "I'm a Democrat, but I feel bad for him. I have sympathy that he's sick, for what he's going through."
So that's that. I finish my soda and take account of the situation. I know three things:
1) This '80s trend has been raging on for years now, and shows no signs of abating.
2) It cuts across boundaries of nationality, hipness, and age.
3) By not liking the '80s, it's me who's weird.
I say goodbye to my friends and have a few moments of reflection on the BART ride home. Were the '80s really as bad as I remember, or am I exaggerating? Come to think of it, I really did enjoy ALF. Maybe I should stop being such a curmudgeon.
And that's how I wound up at the Cat Club. I figured I might as well check out the party that is arguably the epitome of the San Francisco retro-'80s scene.
Since opening four years ago, the Thursday night "1984" show has outlasted countless '80s nights at other clubs. According to Cat Club General Manager Randy Maupin, "1984" draws people from all over the city, from blue collar to white collar, from jelly-braceleted Marina girls to Mission punks in tapered jeans. And of course he mentions Deb and Tiff, a "'1984' phenomenon."
Oh yeah, speaking of Deb and Tiff: They don't care about the evils of Ronald Reagan, either. "I think Reagan's a cool guy," Deb says. "Alzheimer's -- that's pretty weird, and the fact that he was an actor is cool."
"Walk This Way" is playing as they leave, and I remember what I was doing when I heard this Aerosmith/Run-D.M.C. synthesis for the first time. I was winning at ski ball in a St. Paul, Minn., arcade.
Those were happy times. I can't really remember what prize I won; was it a cheap tape Walkman? Or a cool He-Man or Transformer imitation toy? You know what? It doesn't matter. If I've learned anything from my retro-'80s explorations, it is that happiness means making up your memories as you go along. Embellish the fun times, flush the bad.
It's what Ronald Reagan would do.
