It’s a Saturday night in Oakland and I’m at a friend’s shop opening Unity Mart. Jesse, most notably known as DJ Sailor Saturn, previously FoxxxyNewport, and I meet up.
Jesse, self-starter, Bay Area sound selector and underground party scene organizer comes through with a fresh air of optimistic positivity as an effect of survival to a messy ass world we live in. As we’re surrounded by art and friendship he beams with light, unabashedly appreciative of creative outlying communities.
Jesse has the look of a 90s Thunderdom gabberhead with a vintage sportswear obsession which he’s been collecting for years, and an overall aesthetic of poppers, connie, adderall, whiskey gingers, Grindr, cracked iphone screens, and an Addidas fetish.
I met Jesse in the summer of 2015 through a sweet mutual friend and low-key iconic bay area producer Eric/ Demongay. At the time Jesse was singing and performing under FoxxxyNewport, a dark-synth pop project produced by Mr. Kitty. His first DJ set as Foxxxy occurred at the historical Aunt Charlie’s for their legendary drag night High Fantasy, the birthplace of a handful of important Bay Area performers. Meanwhile, Jesse’s passion in electronic genres began to develop his interest in becoming a DJ and party organizer.
Back to present day Oakland 2017, the function starts to fade at the shop opening so we walk a few blocks over to a friends house to drink Pepinos (cucumber gatorade with gin) and chat about the Eros Mix tape and our purposes in life. I ask Jesse to introduce himself to the readers and he says: "I’m Sailor Saturn, the conductor of the Pink Escalade. I have a day job, and you can find me at the gym sometimes. I’m on Bart a lot... I’m just a regular girl, doing regular things with my regular friends.” I then ask the far from regular DJ Sailor Saturn to tell me more about the EM mix which was conceived in his bedroom New Years Eve of 2017.
Tell me about the Eros mixtape
The EM mix to me is defined by femme energy and nostalgia. I wanted to make something not too long but not too short that has texture and variety, the mix being low BPM and escalates to around 140 at it's peak. I want it to be the soundtrack to folx getting ready, being ready, and after partying but feeling gorgeous. The mix has a lot of remixes of songs all of us know, but done in a style that feels authentic to my taste as a selector. It's fun to bring familiar sounds to the dancefloor, but heard in an entirely new way.
As described by my amazing friend, this mix is a BPM journey that you can “get ready to, go out to, afterparty to, and look and feel gorgeous.” The mix also shouts out many locals and friends in the scene that he admires and respects. Through the journey you’ll find Deep House tracks featuring Jersey Club and Break Beat remixes interwoven with local Oakland community influencers like 8ulentina with their track "0000," and friend Demongay with "Pacific 3D," as a shout out to their earlier EP Drowned 4-5 years back, like, been. As Jesse says, “let’s look to people who know the underground and have been doing that for a while”. The importance of paying respects to the folx that built and continue to participate in nurturing the precarious underground is a recurring theme in DJ Sailor Saturn’s practice.
Explain your role in the community. What's your aspiring role in the community?
I feel as content creators and curators we aim to fill voids we don't have. Designers make clothes they wish they could find, producers create music they wish they could hear. I throw parties to make spaces that I wish were there, and mix beats to create soundscapes that make me feel euphoric and inspire that in others. There's a lot of amazing talent in The Bay. I guess you could say I hope to be known for bringing people together. How Juanita, Glamma, and the house of More! can cater to people far and wide. How DavO and Kelly create spaces and bring hot talent and locals together for Swagger, how Grace Towers has constantly evolved her brand and expanded it to include others. These are all folx I look up too.
Jesse plays the role of the content creator, curator, and artist with his monthly Pink Escalade which takes place at the iconic queer bar, The Stud. Around since 1966, it’s hosted a history of drag and non-normative performances, and now it has Pink Escalade. Jesse’s objective towards the monthly goes past getting it to pop off. His goal is to get new people in and to play music made by people that needs to be heard. More attentive details like who’s getting paid and who's getting guest listed are other questions that Jesse critically meditates on in terms of his position of power as a contributor to cultural institutions.
Jesse and I go back in for another drink. A few in Pepinos , we desperately want to listen to WTS by Club Lonely’s Vin Sol. Sadly, the aux cord is broken or something. We clearly want to get more turnt so we rush out and head to Starline Social Club for an event called "Women in Music Bay Area" celebrating mostly women of color in the Bay Area music scene. As we get our life from our girl Namaste Shawty I’m realizing that we're so blessed to be so abundant with wonderful people doing things, and all the more reasons to protect and continue the scene the way that Jesse does. A few shots of tequila later, and lots of life retrieved, we get hungry and walk to Taco Bell listening to WTS on an iPhone speaker. They were closed and it was drive-through only, but a very kind person let us sit in his car and wait in the Taco Bell line with him. Positivity and kindness is so contagious! He even lets us use the aux cord where we finally get to listen to our song. The nice man drove us back to Jesse’s where we spent the penultimate part of the night further mediating our purposes.
What do you want your purpose to be as a public figure?
Any public figure is a living embodiment of their values and aesthetic. I hope to be someone known more for being nice then being bitter, more for meaning well then doing ill, and more for their talent than their controversies.
Furthermore, he states “leave it better than when you found it”.
Make sure to go to the next Pink Escalade on May 24th at the Stud with another fellow Eros contributor Baby J. You can also catch DJ Sailor Saturn this Sunday 5/7 at Skylark for a new monthly DEEP INSIDE (a queer house music party), and Saturday 5/20 Bobby Rohn CD release party at the Monarch.
*All clothing available online at erosmortis.com *
