March 23, 2009
Bar-patronization routines were affected for the second straight week after the recent regionwide disruption to the gaydar system, a crisis now expected to last well into April, city officials said today.
During the weekend, thousands of heterosexual men and women – unable to make proper going-out decisions without fully-functioning gay-detecting technology – poured into 
bars and restaurants frequented largely by the gay and lesbian community, “fully incognizant that the bars and restaurants are frequented largely by the gay and lesbian community,” said Miguel Davis, director of the Office of the Muncipal Gaydar System.
Despite their knowledge that the city’s gaydar is malfunctioning, the local hetero-based population remains helpless without the the essential nightclub-traffic control system.
“Guys, let’s hit up Barcode tonight, I hear it’s all like techno-remixed showtunes from Abba and stuff,” local resident and heterosexual Rob Schlessinger told friends, the 28-year-old and his peers’ gaydar systems disabled by the March 12 lightening strike on the city’s central gaydar infrastructure. They later took taxis to the nightclub at 6 E. Grace St.
“I bet that chick who I met the other night at Babe’s [of Carytown] will be there,” Schlessinger added. “I think she was into me.”
The municipal gaydar system serves nearly 1.1 million members of Richmond’s straight community, giving them the ability to detect and engage in conversation with homosexuals. Additionally, the technology gives heterosexuals a basic understanding of gay culture and, more importantly, insight into which bars and entertainment venues are labeled as those not meant for – but not prohibitive of – heterosexuals.
The city’s $22 million gaydar system, developed in 1992, has broken down only twice since being installed. Though they know the problems were weather related, engineers have yet to find the root cause of the gaydar outage, but believe there is a severe breakdown of its crucial long-range homomagnetic waves.
The system’s mantenna was also destroyed in the lightening strik
e, Davis said.
“We very much regret the inconvenience to those who rely on the gaydar system, and we encourage those who use this technology to play it safe, and stick to your normal bar and restaurant attending routines,” he said. “You are flying blind out there.”
“I don’t know why we don’t come here more often,” Chad Herdrich said as he grabbed his third appletini of the evening at downtown gay bar Godfrey’s. The Fan resident, a seventh grade teacher and, as of last year, a self-described “homophobe,” said he enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere of the Grace Street establishment, which encourages patrons to remove shirts and dance. “This place is great. It’s awesome to show off the body you’ve worked hard to get, and plus, holy geez, check out that guy’s quads.”
Despite the gaydar system being down, the city said the blackdar, babedar, Mexidar and White-Middle-Class-Anglo-Saxondar systems were all working properly.
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Okay… very well done… I laughed my ass off…
Oh my God, funniest fucking thing I have read in a whilst. You walk such an incredible line between funny and overly offensive, and the outcome is perfect satire.
Um, here’s the definition of gaydar from MSN Encarta:
gay·dar [ gáy dr ]
noun
Definition:
intuition about who is gay: the supposed instinctive ability of gay people to identify others who are also gay ( informal )
Only in Richmond would you get this SO wrong. But it was funny anyway.
Only in Richmond would someone get so self-righteous about something so trivial.
+1 Internet Points for enlightening everyone about the canonical definition of a joke colloquialism!