Vulgarian Rhapsody gives a whirlwind tour of San Francisco’s fabled queer bohemia in the waning days of the 20th century, as the city’s budget bon vivants work to save their eccentric lifestyles in the face of tech gentrification  The year is 1999 and cheap rent in San Francisco is a thing of the past thanks to a mysterious development people are calling the “dot-com boom.”An annoying gay barfly (Harris) and a moody drag-cabaret singer (Maxine) struggle to make ends meet and to hold on to their eccentric lifestyles in a hyper-gentrified city they barely recognize. 

When Harris is thrown out of his apartment by Maxine, his long-suffering roommate, a crisis ensues. Unable to rent a place of his own on a telemarketer’s salary, Harris tries to finagle one after another of his deeply bizarre and quasi-dysfunctional friends into letting him share their lodgings. Meanwhile Maxine needs to find a replacement for Harris, which would be a lot easier if she weren’t a frighteningly moody drag-cabaret singer with a small substance abuse problem. Can these marginalized misfits find a place for themselves in their newly hyper-gentrified technology-driven new world order?

Available from Three Rooms Press.

ALVIN ORLOFF is the author of three previous novels, I Married an Earthling, Gutter Boys, and Why Aren’t You Smiling? in addition to Disasterama! Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977-1997, a LAMBDA Literary Prize Finalist for Best Gay Memoir. Orloff currently lives in San Francisco and works in the heart of the historic Castro District as the proprietor of Fabulosa Books

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto with a focus on tourism, lifestyle, entertainment and community issues. He has written several travel articles and has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He’s willing to take on any assignments of interest, attend parties with free booze, listen to rants, and travel the world in search of the great unknown. He’s eager to discover the new, remember the past, and look into the future.