My first reaction was "Oh, Mary, it takes a fairy to make something tacky." I sat down to watch while I waited for my friend to show up. It was blustery and chill in San Francisco this weekend, and the performers had difficulty controlling their fans in the wind. All of them were middle-aged, including the woman who joined them soon after I arrived. She was the only one who really coped with the wind.
As I watched I took pleasure in the sight of these older, mostly bearded men playing, seriously but lightly, laughing as the wind blew their fans over their heads from time to time. I remembered, not for the first time, that the music and the pastime are old-people stuff now. "Lay All Your Love On Me" was recorded in 1980, almost forty years ago!
It must have been tiring, but they kept going for quite a while; they were still at it when my friend turned up fifteen minutes or so after I got there, and for some time after. They didn't draw much of a crowd, but those who paused to see were appreciative, some singing and dancing along -- including some family groups. I noticed one little boy who stood stock still, watching warily but intently, while his father encouraged him to join in. I expect that after they left, the boy relaxed, and opened up about it. Some little kids did right there. The amateurishness of the performance was part of its appeal: if they'd been a Rockettes-style precision line of drag queens, people would still have enjoyed it and danced and sung along, but I doubt the same fellow-feeling would have been there. It's tacky, but it's also lovely, and I was charmed by these people having such uninhibited fun, exercising our Constitutional right to be silly.
