Bottle Rockets, Booze, and Clown Porn
(From San Francisco's "ETC. Magazine" Spring 2003)
----------------------------------------------------

The Odeon may be the coolest bar in the city, but the
owner, Chicken John, doesn't want your business. RYAN
SINGEL finds out why.

The strangest intersection in San Francisco may be
the crossroads of Valencia and Mission. Here the two
parallel streets somehow converge to form a weird
peninsula, a single-cornered Bermuda Triangle in the
Outer Mission. And fittingly, the apex of this
triangle points straight at the Odeon, San Francisco's
most eccentric bar.
The music critic Greil Marcus once wrote that the
real reason one goes to a club is the slim chance that
something new - something that changes the world -
might happen. The Odeon attempts to deliver that
something every night. But whether the Odeon's version
of the new is what you're looking for is something
else altogether.
Like most Mission dives, the Odeon beckons with a
rectangular blue and red neon sign in the front
window. The Odeon version, however, says "NOPE." In
Odeon parlance, the sign means it's business as
unusual inside.
On a recent Monday, the Odeon hosted Bad Karaoke
night, when inverting the old Gong Show rule, singing
on key will get you booed off the stage. A red-bearded
man in a cowboy-hat swaggered to the mic and proceeded
to slaughter "Jesus Christ Superstar" for five long
minutes. Bad, but not bad enough to earn more than
polite applause.
Later, two women with dyed hair performed a
spirited, off0key take on Bonnie Tyler's "Total
Eclipse of the Heart," a song that qualifies as bad
karaoke just for the line, "We're living in a powder
keg and giving off sparks."
As the women closed in on the final stanza, the DJ
accidentally cut the song short. The women indignantly
soldiered on, a cappella, into the song's slow,
heart-rending final lament for love in the dark. The
bar's other twenty patrons lit cigarette-lighters and
cheered approval for the accidentally bad - a clear
step up from the simply bad.
The Odeon - half bar, half carnival and half
clubhouse - is the two-and-a-half-year-old brainchild
of Chicken John, a former New York gutter punk and
ringleader of the fabulously doomed, possibly
talent-less punk rock Circus Redickuless.
Chicken John said the misson of his bar is simple.
"The Odeon Bar is committed to bringing odd or
unlikely variety acts, bad theatre, burlesque, circus
acts and stupid shit to the people of San Francisco,"
he said, adding that his bar is the center of a
renaissance of art and culture that won't be fully
appreciated for 200 years. Regular entertainment at
the Odeon includes Mark Growden, a muscular
accordionist/singer often compared to Tom Waits; TV
Dinner Theatre, with cross-dressing servers; and
Porn-R-Oke - like karaoke, but performed against a
backdrop of hardcore clown porn.
Behind the bar hangs a neon-colored wheel of
misfortune, which customers can spin to determine what
they will drink and how much they will pay. Possible
drinks range from a Pabst martini to dishwater. Prices
run from ten percent of the money in the customer's
wallet to a dance on the bar - or worse. "I've
actually seen people shoot a bottle rocket out of the
crack of their ass for a drink," said Jennifer
Satariano, and Odeon regular. "You won't find that
kind of antic in any other bar open on a Sunday."
The wheel is a leftover from Chicken John's circus
days. "It's rigged, of course. It always lands on
dishwater and shoot a bottle rocket. It's the
stupidest thing you've ever seen," Chicken John said.
"But the first time you see a bottle rocket shooting
out of someone's crack - that's fucking funny."
On Wednesday night, Dr. Hal of the absurdist Church
of the Sub-Genius took questions from the audience.
Chicken John poured shots of Frenet for particularly
inspiring questions.
Hal, a portly, balding man in his 50s, is more
oracle than encyclopedia. Asked the meaning of the
number 666, he embarked on a discursive monologue that
touched on the number 333, the Holy Trinity, the 33rd
parallel and the underpass near where John F. Kennedy
was shot.
A complicated math question involving prime numbers
won the questioner a shot - from a children's lunch
box.
"Just when you think the show couldn't get any
stupider," said Chicken John.
"Oh, it always can," Hal retorted.
In San Francisco, elaborate absurdist art antics are
often synonymous with Burning Man, the annual,
weeklong weirdness convergence in the harsh Nevada
desert that draws thousands from the Bay Area. Though
Burning Man organizers hold a monthly volunteer
appreciation night at the Odeon, and many of its
patrons make the pilgrimage every year, Chicken John
scoffs at the idea that the Odeon is a Burning Man
bar. "We hate Burning Man." he said. "They take the
city out of San Francisco. This behemoth event steals
all the resources from the city for a party in the
desert."
"I'm an original Burning Man person. I built the
thing. I showed them how to shit in a bucket. Now it's
a multi-millionaire thing. I go there to sabotage it."
Chicken John even sabotages the organizers' monthly
party. The event's description on the Odeon website
reads, "Come watch polyamorous computer programmers in
their late 40s have three sips of Budweiser and sing
classic rock from the '70s in a last ditch effort to
not be exactly like their parents."
It's tempting to call the Odeon 'wacky,' or 'zany,'
or worse, 'wacky, zany.' Predictably, Chicken John
doesn't see it that way. "'Wacky, zany' is more
opposed to what we do than a sports bar is," he said.
Satariano agreed. "It's not really pretentious. And if
it is, it's from an arty, punk rock angle," she said.
Consider the bar's neon "NOPE" truth in advertising.
If you get the joke, and think it's funny, head on in.
Otherwise, take the sign at its word. "I had the crowd
first, then I bought a bar and put the crowd in it. I
created an atmosphere to fill the place with a
respectful audience and really good performers who get
to do what they want to do without being harassed,"
Chicken John said.
Chicken John claims to despise publicity. "Cool
bars, cool bars. Let me tell you what happens to cool
bars," he said. "Marina people come to find a cool bar
to stand around next to the people with purple hair.
Then the purple hair people leave to find another cool
bar and five months later the place is empty and it
goes out of business."
"That's not happening to me. I don't want their
fucking money. I got a good thing going here. This is
like my house. When I throw you out, don't think of it
as getting thrown out of the coolest bar in America,
think of it as getting thrown out of my house."






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