Is Strut Queer Open Mic the Most Unique Open Mic in SF?

“I hesitate to use the phrase Safe Space because, sometimes I don’t always know what that means”. 

Said Matthew Beld as I interviewed them at the Rite Spot on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s an important question. What does that mean outside of therapy and small, private enclaves where people can gather knowing that no outside forces of condemnation or violence will occur?  More importantly, what does it mean when one is co-hosting a queer open mic in a public place? 

To perform in public, especially as a comic, is to never really be in a safe space. It’s a lone expression on an empty stage hoping to provoke that most difficult of responses – laughter. It requires an audience to actively respond rather than passively witness and more often than not, the comic is faced with sullen apathy. Crickets, they say. Worse, can be the vocal rejection shouted out from the back of the room into the silence after a joke fallen flat. This reality is true for every one who dares to do stand up comedy. It is, of all the arts, the one that potentially requires the most courage. But it can be even more daunting for a queer person claiming space on that stage. 

Loretta Mary Aiken known best as Moms Mabley. “She came out as a lesbian in 1921 at the age of twenty-seven, becoming one of the first openly gay comedians”. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

It’s why Matthew, who co-hosts the STRUT Queer Open Mic with with comedian Cynthia In Public, wanted to try it. They wanted to try it as an act of bravery and also as an affirmation of a burgeoning identity. 

Matthew grew up in Southern California amongst Mormons. Despite receiving a full ride to Brigham Young University Matthew chose instead to go to the University of California, San Diego. Initially, the major was poly-sci with a focus on law but they grew concerned that fellow students, who might become colleagues, were too theoretical about the subject at hand, “the heart and humanity of what we were studying wasn’t being recognized, and so I switched to the literature program with a major in journalism”. But being a fierce reporter was not to be. For one thing, print journalism by then had, “gone off the cliff and it wasn’t financially viable as a career path”, but more importantly, Matthew had no desire for, “bulldog reporting. If someone I was interviewing was in any way evasive, I didn’t dig in. Instead I would ask them, ‘What’s your favorite pie?’”. 

The literature program provided a great opportunity to write and to also write about Coming Out as a gay man. “I wrote a memoir and also a lot of heavy, introspective poetry with lines like, ‘I burst into flames when he looked at me…’”, said Matthew with a goshdarn, good laugh at that long ago stanza. “There was a lot of referencing Sylvia Plath and delving into trauma but it helped. It’s a rite of passage for a lot of queer writers.”

Matthew went on to explain how they got into performing:

“I moved to San Francisco in 2010. I had never had a wild period before. I was very buttoned up but I had great great fun partying for the first time here in the Castro. It was fun but unstable, after a year I was done. However, right around that time I went to Bawdy Storytelling founded by Dixie de La Tour. She did a call-out to the audience to tell a story but I was too shy. Later, I emailed her and went through the caring process she provides for bringing voice to an experience. Bawdy was the first time I performed in front of a live audience. 

I told the story about “Trevor the Bad Domm”. It was about a male dominant I had met up with in San Diego. It was a really bad date, just head to toe bad. After spending a night of karaoke with his friends and then back at his place – he pulled out a dog leash. I stated that I didn’t feel comfortable with that but he used the leash anyway. In the story I describe having a Wonder Years moment of reflection. It was an out of body experience, one that ultimately was fine and also ultimately, funny.

I ended up telling a story at Bawdy every few months over the next few years but I hadn’t really considered comedy yet”. 

Beginnings are significant and it was with Bawdy and then Sub(Mission) shows that led to Matthew not only performing in many different events as both a writer and a comic storyteller but also being part of the notoriously hilarious organization – Killing My Lobster. That’s how I met them. The KML space is right across the street from the Rite Spot and on Tuesdays one can see, from the street, great folks working on their craft and cracking each other up through the upstairs windows. Then certainly, it is tradition for them to come over and have a drink afterwards. 

Photo of Killing My Lobster across the street from the Rite Spot. Ginger Murray.

Let’s talk about the, “they, them”. Anyone who has lived in the Bay Area or attended Mills College, (wink), will be familiar with this important revolution in pronoun terminology. The pronoun revolution is not location specific but as with many other important cultural shifts, San Francisco has been in the vanguard, in fighting for awareness around gender labeling. Matthew came out initially as a gay man and explored that identity for many years but recently, as in the last five years, they came out as non-binary. “I don’t have a good label necessarily for my sexuality because it starts to get complicated. Gender is so tied to it. I’m attracted to men so I don’t know what that means for my sexuality but I feel very queer so I just say that”. Matthew also looks very fantastic in the vintage 50’s dresses that they often wear for performances. 

Which brings us at last, to the queer open-mic at Strut. 

Baruch Porras-Hernandez, comic extraordinaire wanted to foster a new program post the pandemic. He was able to make this happen since he’s the Community Arts Events Manager at Strut, which houses the world famous queer sexual health clinic Magnet – both of which are programs of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. He explains: 

“I love my job here at Strut, bringing queer people together to enjoy art is one of the most fulfilling jobs I’ve ever had. Anyone who is queer and is an artist in San Francisco knows how important queer spaces are for making and creating. I was at a show run by Paolo Bicchieri when a young queer writer who had just moved to San Francisco asked me where they could read their writing. I felt stumped, I kept saying “Oh you can go to… oh no they closed…Oh you can go this show…oh that show lost their venue”.  All the venues I was going to suggest no longer existed. 

I decided to create the new Strut Queer Open Mic to add to the spaces a queer performer could go practice, network with other performers, and create community. I reached out to writers and comedians Cynthia In Public and Matthew Beld, two artists I’ve worked a lot with in the past, who I knew had the energy, the spark, the charisma and most importantly the youth to run a queer open mic space”.

Ha!, youth. Matthew is approaching 40 but as Baruch says, “7 years is a long time in gay years”. 

Truthfully youthful co-host Cynthia began using comedy as a tool to help family and loved ones laugh during tough times. But it was the catalyst of leaving an abusive relationship, being in a car accident, and changing jobs all within the space of two weeks, that led Cynthia to doing stand up for the first time. “After years of telling myself to do it, finally doing it was a moment of catharsis, joy, and therapy that I needed. Now, stand-up comedy is my passion and mode of story-telling”.

Cynthia In Public. Photos by Baruch Porras-Hernandez

“Matthew and Cynthia work so well together, I’m so happy I got them to meet and they create a lovely, joyous space to perform. And the best part is, I don’t have to host the show!” Baruch has already long proved his chops as a host running the San Francisco Queer Open mic at Modern Times Bookstore which sadly closed and so he’s happy now to help support the new hosts and be the bartender. 

Lest comedy be too much spoken of here, the Open Mic is exactly that. It’s open to all forms of performance including music or just reading, perhaps, a favorite Sylvia Plath poem. Says Matthew, “We want to stress that it’s a variety open mic. I often read my written work whereas Cynthia has got the comedy down. It could also be a great venue for baby drag artists. I would never ask a drag performer to get In Face for it. It’s a free show and no one is paid. But if they are already In Face, they could come and do a five minute number and get some practice in front of a good crowd”.

Because a very good crowd indeed fills that room. It is very much a queer space.

“You don’t have to be as concerned about heterosexual reactions or heckling. The baseline is that the audience will probably understand gender and sexuality in a way that you don’t have to worry as much about being a queer person presenting. It’s all about your work, your art. Obviously, there is risk and vulnerability with any expression. Art is so subjective and art is so expansive. I back off from the phrase ‘safe space’ only because we can’t guarantee that someone won’t say something up here that might be innocuous but still triggering. But Strut is a very supportive room and it is very much an open, honoring space encouraging acceptance. We encourage anyone of any identity. We do, however, heckle straight people. But it’s all done with love”. 

So says Matthew but Cynthia says, “Of course we also let straight people in, but they have to use the back door and wear a bell for easy identification”. Oh those darn comics.

I mentioned Matthew’s good, goshdarn laugh earlier. It is sincerely a wonderful laugh. The kind that comes from the whole body – throat and belly and a mind acutely aware – enjoying all that is potentially amusing in a moment and even in one’s own past efforts. It’s the kind of laugh that everyone wants to hear after nervously and yet, courageously sharing themselves on that stage for the very first time. 

Because the Heart is very much in it too. 

So go and sign up to have your own five minutes of star time. Or go and support even if you’re hetero – you might just be delightfully heckled. 

The New Strut Queer Open Mic is every third Tuesday of the month. 
470 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA 94114
7pm to 9pm. 
Sign ups are at 7pm – in person 
(There is often free wine poured by a very handsome pillar of the SF Queer community).