ESTHER'S ORBIT ROOM

Esther's Orbit Room  today

 In the 1980's,  well before  West Oakland started becoming gentrified, Esther's Orbit Room was the  Dive Of Choice among the pioneering punks, artists, and  early Burners who were inhabiting dirt-cheap warehouses in the neighborhood.   When my all-girl band The Screaming Sirens visited Oakland,  I spent a lot of time at Phoenix Iron Works...which was right around the corner from Esther's Orbit Room, hence, I  also spent a lot of time there. Esther's  was known for making see-though Bloody Marys, meaning that the cocktails were 95% vodka.  The place was so  wild and surreal,  I  appropriated a Disney tagline and began to refer to Esther's  as "The Happiest Place On Earth".   Te geriatric cooks who made the best-and cheapest-soul food ever   would be humping  twenty-something  guys with  dreads or blue Mohawks while dancing to Bell Biv Devoe's "Poison". Under the black ceiling which was  flecked -with gold glitter,  Church Ladies in impressive hats would  rub shoulders with  pimps  and  the crew from Survival Research Labratories.  One morning I was drinking with my friend Steve Heck, patriarch of Phoenix Iron Works, as he  turned down an offer of an under- the- bar blow job from a  dwarf crack whore. I never forgave him for that.

These following pieces are from my book  first book, "Senorita Sin"...and were written on the years in the titles.

ESTHER’S ORBIT ROOM (1988)

 
6:00am in West Oaklanddogs barking off in the distancedown here by the docks, it almost lookslike a post-nuclear movie setBroken windows and burned-down Victorian housesempty lots littered with trashjunked automobiles, overflowing dumpstersstorefronts boarded up with spray-painted plywood

Pucci is opening up the bar at Esther’s Orbit RoomSam Cooke is crooningas she wipes down the barand arranges the retro-rocket red stoolsthat have seen better days...stuffing bursting from the seams

James Brown is screamingan elderly man has a beer and passes out in a corner boothSly And The Family Stone blarePucci pours a line of sloe-gin fizzesfor the crazy rock ‘n’ roll kids who’ve obviously been up all night raving drunk

A rock deal is transacted just inside the doorway

with the day’s first light, somebody spills a drink, a barstool falls over

Percy Sledge is wailingand Pucci doesn’t give a fuckbecause it’s 6:00 in Oakland, Easter Sundaythe after-church crowd will be here soonand they tip real well

ESTHER’S ORBIT ROOM REVISITED (1990)

The Raiders are winningall the guys are clustered around the big-screened TVand Juanita is up there  too, screaming alongand back here near the doorway, sneaking shots of Scotch “My horoscope said I be havin’ good luck.Said I should call my broker.” She takes a furtive pull of her drink and sniffs:“I ain’t got a broker. Got me a bookie,but no broker.” A man in a greasy navy windbreaker slides in, tries to sell her a camera

“It’s thirty-eight millimeter,” he says “Bran’ new!” Juanita cackles-she’s on her fourth shot

“You mean thirty-five millimeter,” she says.

The man leaves, she stares after himpours another shot , pats her copperfoil hair into placesniffs again, adjusts her dentureswith a discreet little slurp and says, ”My horoscope say I be lucky in love this month…butI think I’m just gonna give my bookie a call.”

##

SENORITA SIN

The Screamin' Sirens

Since the age of four, all I ever wanted to be was the Flamenco dance on the inside of the Muriel Cigar box. She was beautiful: long auburn 1940s hair, a tight black corset, yards and yards of tulle and black lace mantillas. The moment I was old enough to defy my mother, the Flamenco dancer kicked her way out of me in flying skirts, fishnet stockings and gypsy hoop earrings. I even died my hair a brassy shade of red, which the hookers in my old New York neighborhood referred to as “Puerto Rican Blonde”. Everyone spoke Spanish to me – even the lady at the DMV handed me the Spanish test without asking. But the only thing I knew how to say was “si”, so I got into a lot of close calls in Spanish Harlem, which was where I

was living at the time. Men hovering around the produce stands would kiss the air as I walked by and make comments so sly-sounding I didn’t have to speak Spanish to know what they meant.

After moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1970’s, I discovered the legendary El Coyote. The restaurant was a Hollywood  landmark  that had opened in 1931, and  over the years  had hosted  famous diners such as John Wayne, Princess Grace Of Monaco,  Loretta Young, and Ricardo Montalban. I discovered El Coyote while reading about the Tate-La Bianca  murders…apparently  Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring  had their last meal there!  I decided I had to try it, and walked into  an amazing den of lurid black velvet paintings flanked by brightly colored crepe paper flowers, seashell-trimmed mirrors, and chandeliers encrusted with  glass grapes…it looked like a Tijuana brothel in the late 1950’s, and I was hooked! 

Fiesta!

The aging hostess and all the waitresses wore  flowers in their hair and voluminous   ballet folklorico  dresses, their layers of petticoats swishing  as they delivered trays of the strongest margaritas in town  to eagerly patrons. The  running joke was that after a double margarita, you’d never notice that the tostadas  were covered with canned string beans and rancid Thousand Island dressing; after two of them, you’d never notice that your prince was a frog!  El Coyote was  full of broke  artists, has-been B-Movie stars, elderly couples, and punks.  My friends and I immediately became regulars, joking that the “secret ingredient” in the margaritas must’ve been Qualuudes- they were that strong.

In full Sirens drag,wearing my Adelita t-shirt

When  I started  my all-girl  punkabilly band The Screamin’ Sirens, our every day look was  saloon girl corsets with  leather and denim biker jackets ,  studded belts  worn over over gay, rick-rack trimmed square dancing skirts or voluminous Mexican skirts, all topped off with a  thrift store kid’s cowboy hat ....or a sombrero. The effect was punky  huera  version of La Adelita, the symbol of the Mexican Revolution. We were so into the La Adelita image, we even called our first album, released in 1984, "Fiesta!".

 At El Coyote, any time I got up  to go staggering to the Ladies Room after my second or third  margarita,  patrons would wave me over, yelling their drink orders to me.  I was always mistaken for being  a cocktail waitress.

 Finally, this became  my own personal last straw, and I decided at that point to – what the hell? – celebrate  the whole California Girl thing and go blonde. My hairdresser sympathized with me as I told her about the perils of being a cigar-box Flamenco dancer incarnate. Three excruciating bleaches later, I was an all-American, Malibu Barbie  platinum blonde.

“There!” I cried triumphantly, 

“No more El Coyote waitress or  Carmen Miranda for me! No more Lupe Velez! Good-by Rita Moreno, Delores Del Rio! Adios, Chita Rivera! No one will ever think I’m a Latina again.”

Just outside the salon door, a shrunken old woman with large earrings, Aztec cheekbones and a mouth full of gold teeth  confronted me.

“You just get your hair done?” she asked.

“Yeah,”

“Oooooh,” she signed, breaking into a smile,

 “Aaay, you look so beautiful… just like Charro!”

##

 The story you’ve just read is from my first  book “Senorita Sin”, which is currently out of print…though  copies of it show up frequently on Amazon and eBay.

 My latest book, “Showgirl Confidential: My Life Onstage, Backstage And On The Road, is available here:

http://www.princessfarhana.com/book_showgirl.htm

 

Photo by Dusti Cunningham, Design: Natasha Vetlugin

A BRIEF AFFAIR

He reminded me of James Dean in “East Of Eden”

or more accurately,  James Dean in “East Of Eden”

… if he’d been dumb, crazy and reckless,and spent half of his life wired

 on cheap Hell’s Angel’s crank and bad wine

working in a booth on the midway of a low-rent traveling carnival

He was sinister and baby-faced, white trash in a black leather jacket

He was from Florida and had eyelashes as long as his criminal record

Dirty blonde hair hanging in his face, he drove a poison green metal flake

’56 Pontiac Fire Chief with a six-pack stashed under the passenger seat

Any sane person would’ve stayed the hell away…but he was the ex of one of my

girlfriends and she was on the East Coast with an ex of mine

So when he burst in on me in the backstage bathroom of the Whisky a-Go-Go

while I applied my lipstick

and told me he’d always though I was cute, I figured everything would be ok

In one swift movement he kicked the door shut and turned off the light

and had me pressed up against the sink

It wasn’t ‘til later that night kissing feverishly in the laundry room at a party in Silverlake

when my current boyfriend (whom I’d accidentally left at the Whisky)

kicked the door down with a cry of triumph, and I realized

 that I might have made a slight judgmental error

The next day I woke up with puffy, tearful eyes

and clothes crusted over with a mixture of Budweiser and ALL Detergent

I didn’t see too much of him after that…or my boyfriend, for that matter

The couple of times I saw my boyfriend he ignored me

The couple of times I saw him he was either brawling or incoherent

Last year, I heard he’d done time for robbing a bank

Oh, well… it was fun while it lasted

# 

This piece  took place in the early 1980’s, and was published in my book

Senorita Sin (1994, Incommunicado Press)