by ruggy j. on When it comes to cutting a rug in a loud, dark cave of a nightclub, you won't find many better places to get loose in SF than Mighty. They've got some of the best sound in the city, it's never too hard to get in off the street and into the club, and they have a surprisingly efficient coat check that will leave you in line no longer than a couple of minutes no matter how busy the queue might be. Win!
by Erin F. on When I moved to Philadelphia in November 2008, I was a recent college graduate slaving away in retail. I had the great fortune of being able to transfer with my job selling fashion eyewear to a store in Philadelphia. In the Gallery. My boyfriend and a friend, at the time, both quietly gave me the side-eye for happily accepting a job at the Gallery. My first visit to the Gallery, before starting my job, was okay. It was new, busy, and close to the holidays. When I first met my only other co-worker (other than our manager), a fellow early-twentysomething female, I asked her, "Well, do you feel safe working here?" Expecting a casual yes. "No, not really", she replied. Fortunately, a Philly police officer took a shine to the girls working at our store, and would come by and sit in our store and chat for a while. And the nice man who manned the jewlery kiosk across the way kept an eye on us, too. My store did not do much business and a few weeks after I left for my new job, it closed. Business is dismal, theft is high. I worked in the Gallery for six months. I saw what may have been a gang war in front of my store (a kid had to be rushed out on a stretcher, I'm pretty sure he was stabbed in the neck), I saw people casually smoking cigarettes as they walked by, I smelled human smells I never thought possible. I became familiar with the regular creeps (Coco, for example, a he-she who dropped by for a daily primping in our big mirror). I had to wear my winter coat indoors on cold days at work because the cold air would somehow come directly into our store and the heat never worked. BLOWSSSSS. I give the Gallery two stars because one star is solely for the Taco Bell. I will never go to the Gallery ever again. Six months there thickened my skin. It stinks, the air has been circulating in there since 1983, it is stale and ghetto and not the bomb.
