Drunken louts rout partiers

Halloween in the Castro did not go smoothly, the local paper reported today, 36 hours after the event. As usual, drunken louts outnumbered costumed revellers by about 11:00 p.m., and things got ugly. This is nothing new. Eight and nine years ago when I was in the Street Patrol, we walked the Castro for hours, from about 8:00 pm to 3:00 a.m., on party nights leading up to Halloween. (Depending on what day of the week Haloween falls, people sometimes fill the streets up to two days in advance.) Every time, all the fun costumed people went home by 10:00 or 11:00, while beer-filled youths from the suburbs -- attracted by television news reports showing a fun party -- stream into the district. By midnight the crowd is just as large as it was at 8:00, but now 90% of it is straight and 100% of it is drunk. And of course they get in stupid macho street tussles.

This time four people were stabbed, one's in critical condition. Nobody is saying, at least yet, that the violence was gay bashing. I'll wager it was just dumb drunks. Nobody is more stupid or boring than an aggressive drunk. I really got my fill of them on those patrols.