October 23 2014 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

Funds to help LGBTs find housing

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Vol. 44 • No. 43 • October 23-29, 2014

Stewart Party planned to celebrate highlights new Castro Street marriage work by Cynthia Laird

he state’s first lesbian appeals court judge cautioned against stereotypes and used her first speech since being appointed to the bench to talk about her prior work Deborah Craig on same-sex marriage at a recent din- California Appeal ner in Oakland. Court Justice Justice Therese Therese Stewart Stewart, who sits on the California Courts of Appeal, 1st District, was the keynote speaker at the Women Lawyers of Alameda County’s annual judges’ dinner Thursday, October 16 at Scott’s Seafood Restaurant in Jack London Square. See page 10 >>

by Matthew S. Bajko

The Castro sidewalk and street improvement project is nearly complete; on Wednesday construction crews continued work at the intersection of Castro and Market streets.

No date for LGBT shelter by Seth Hemmelgarn

ith winter approaching and problems continuing for LGBTs in the city’s homeless shelters, a space designed to be welcoming to the gay community is still without an opening date. “There’s definitely been a lot of frustration from everyone involved about how long it’s taken,” said Wendy Phillips, executive director of Dolores Street Community Services, which will operate the proposed 24-bed space at 1050 South Van Ness Avenue. “We are literally doing everything we can. All these processes take time.” Advocates and elected officials have been pushing for the shelter since a March 2010 Board of Supervisors hearing in which several LGBTs told of harassment they had experienced at the city’s shelters. Since then, the project has been mired in city bureaucracy, with many of the hurdles related to obtaining permits from city agencies. “I can’t wait to call you and tell you when the opening celebration is going to be,” said Phillips, who’s been up-front about the struggles her agency has faced throughout the process. She said DSCS, which already operates one shelter at 1050 South Van Ness, got the permits it needed from the Department of Building Inspection in July, then updated the cost estimate. “It was a lot higher than it had been previously,” Phillips, a straight ally, said, “primarily” due to modifications required by the Mayor’s

o celebrate the improved look of Castro Street in the heart of San Francisco’s gayborhood, city officials are hosting – what else – a street party. A portion of Castro Street will be shut down the evening of Thursday, October 30 to mark the completion of a $6 million streetscape improvement project that has brought wider sidewalks, rainbow crosswalks, new street trees and See page 10 >> Rick Gerharter

B.A.R. election endorsements SAN FRANCISCO RACES State Assembly Dist. 17: David Chiu Dist. 19: Phil Ting Board of Supervisors Dist. 2: Mark Farrell Dist. 4: Katy Tang Dist. 6: Jane Kim Dist. 8: Scott Wiener Dist. 10: Malia Cohen SF School Board Mark Murphy Jamie Rafaela Wolfe Emily Murase

Rick Gerharter

Wendy Phillips from Dolores Street Community Services stands in the courtyard of the future LGBT homeless shelter facility on South Van Ness Avenue.

Office on Disability. She and others have been working to cut the costs. A specific dollar amount was not available. Dolores Street has approval from the Mayor’s Office on Disability to complete the project in phases. Phase one would include the shelter site itself, while work such as including Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant parking spaces can wait, since “our shelter resiSee page 9 >>

SF Community College Board Two-Year Term William Walker BART Board, Dist. 8: James Fang Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu Public Defender Jeff Adachi Judges SF Superior Court Office 20: Daniel Flores

OTHER BAY AREA RACES Oakland Mayor: Jean Quan Oakland City Council, Dist. 2: Abel Guillen Berkeley City Council, Dist. 7: Kriss Worthington Berkeley City Council, Dist. 8: Lori Droste Emeryville City Council: John Bauters El Cerrito City Council: Gabriel Quinto Peralta Community College, Area 7: Richard Fuentes East Bay Municipal Utility Dist., Ward 3: Marguerite Young East Bay Municipal Utility Dist., Ward 4: Andy Katz Richmond City Council: Jovanka Beckles San Mateo County Harbor Commission: Robert Bernardo CALIFORNIA GENERAL ELECTION Governor: Jerry Brown Lt. Governor: Gavin Newsom Attorney General: Kamala Harris Secretary of State: Alex Padilla Treasurer: John Chiang

State Assembly (Bay Area) Dist. 15: Elizabeth Echols Dist. 18: Rob Bonta Dist. 24: Rich Gordon Dist. 28: Evan Low Congress (Bay Area) Dist. 2: Jared Huffman Dist. 3: John Garamendi Dist. 5: Mike Thompson Dist. 10: Michael Eggman Dist. 11: Mark DeSaulnier Dist. 12: Nancy Pelosi Dist. 13: Barbara Lee Dist. 14: Jackie Speier Dist. 15: Eric Swalwell Dist. 17: Mike Honda Dist. 18: Anna Eshoo Dist. 19: Zoe Lofgren CALIFORNIA PROPS Yes on Props 1, 2, 45, 46, 47, 48 SAN FRANCISCO PROPS Yes on Props A, C, D, E, F, I, J K, No on Props B, G, H, L

Remember to vote on November 4!

{ FIRST OF THREE SECTIONS }

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<< Community News

2 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

Hundreds turn out for LGBTQ Connect

by Khaled Sayed

newcomer to San Francisco heard about a housing opportunity. Another woman sought vet services for her dog. They were just two of about 400 people who turned out for the city’s second annual LGBTQ Connect event. Modeled after the city’s popular Project Homeless Connect program, LGBTQ Connect, held October 17 at the LGBT Community Center, is a one-day, multi-service event for members of the LGBTQ community who lack stable housing or face barriers that contribute to current or imminent homelessness. Scott Talon, 20, arrived in San Francisco from southern Humboldt County. “I just moved down here 12 days ago,” Talon said, “and I’m trying to make it here. I’m staying with friends right now, but I’m here trying to find what resources are available to me that can help benefit me.” Talon, a gay man, found out about LGBTQ Connect through his friends, and when he got to the community center he was introduced to Larkin Street Youth Services. “I don’t have any current permanent housing situation here,” he said. “I had to sleep one night in my car, which wasn’t wonderful.” Moving to the big city always excited Talon, however, it is a big adjustment for him. “It is super complicated,” Talon said. “I’m not used to the city life yet. It is total culture shock to me. I’m used to trees and greens fields as far as the eye can see. My nearest neighbor up [in Humboldt] was a mile away. This is totally different and new, which I love, but I’m not entirely in sync with it yet. I’m hoping

Y A D I L HO IDES GU

Khaled Sayed

HOPE director Bevan Dufty, in pink shirt at right, welcomes people to the second annual LGBTQ Connect event at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.

to find services that would provide me with better care and access to my HIV status. This event is awesome.” One of many goals of LGBTQ Connect is to improve access to services for San Francisco’s queer homeless population. Some of the services offered included dental and vision care, HIV testing, housing applications and workshops, food, hygiene kits, youth services, medical care, videography, mental health services, legal counseling, California identification cards, acupuncture, voice mail accounts, employment counseling/job placement, and addiction services. Last June, the biennial San Francisco Homeless Point-In-Time Count and Survey was released and, for the first time, included statistics on LGBT people. The report found that out of a total of 7,350 homeless people, more than one in four (29 percent) identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or “other” for a total of 2,132. “That result really demanded a

response,” said Bevan Dufty, a gay man who is director of the Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement, or HOPE, program for Mayor Ed Lee. Dufty said that many LGBT people don’t consider themselves homeless, even if they don’t have stable housing. “Maybe they are couch surfing, maybe they are staying with an exboyfriend. So we called it LGBTQ Connect, so people won’t feel any kind of stigma coming to us for help.” Kara Zordel, MSW, is the executive director of Project Homeless Connect. “Since last year’s homeless connect survey we were determined to bring many services to the LGBTQ homeless community,” Zordel said. “In one day they can receive anything from a smile, a hug, a song, or a meal to health services like getting their eyes examined, or dental [serSee page 10 >>

Shanti celebrates 40 years of providing support

PUBLISHING NOVEMBER 27 AND DECEMBER 4 Advertise your business to the the readers of America’s longest continuously published and highest audited-circulation LGBT newspaper! Reach more than 120,000 San Francisco Bay Area consumers this holiday by displaying your holiday goods and services in the Bay Area Reporter’s annual holiday guides, publishing on both Thursday, November 27 and Thursday December 4. Appear in both holiday guides and receive our lowest rates and a FREE 30-day online banner ad campaign at www.ebar.com. SPACE RESERVATIONS DEADLINE IS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20 AT 5PM. To reserve your space or more more information, call 415-861-5019 or email advertising@ebar.com

Khaled Sayed

Janice Mirikitani, left, applauds as her husband, the Reverend Cecil Williams, accepts the Nancy Pelosi Lifetime Achievement Award at Shanti’s 40th anniversary gala. Behind Williams are former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Shanti Executive Director Kaushik Roy.

by Khaled Sayed

he Reverend Cecil Williams and his wife, Janice Mirikitani, both longtime community leaders in the fight against income inequality and health concerns, were honored by a nonprofit that’s been helping LGBT and ally clients since before the AIDS pandemic. Shanti, the nonprofit that pioneered the model of providing emotional and practical support as a way to enhance clients’ quality of life, celebrated its 40th anniversary at an October 18 gala at the Fairmont Hotel. Hundreds of people attended the benefit. Shanti is a Sanskrit word mean-

ing “inner peace” or “tranquility.” The agency was founded in 1974 by Charles Garfield, Ph.D. The nonprofit organization’s mission of providing practical and emotional support is both a philosophy and a set of techniques. Kaushik Roy, Shanti’s executive director for the past six years, is a former Shanti volunteer. Roy received his training 10 years ago, he said. “Some of the most meaningful things we can do for someone else are oftentimes – more often than we ever imagine – also the most simple,” Roy said. “I remember Dr. Charles Garfield, the founder, tellSee page 9 >>

SmArT, eFFeCTive LeADerSHiP Vote with pride By noVeMBer 4

daVid Chiu

SCott wiener▼

ASSembly, DISTrIcT 17

SuPervISOr, DISTrIcT 8

Mark Farrell SuPerviSor, DiSTriCT 2

katy tang

SuPerviSor, DiSTriCT 4

Malia Cohen

Mark Murphy ▼ BoArD oF eDuCATion

SuPerviSor, DiSTriCT 10

CarMen Chu

ASSeSSor-reCorDer

niCk JoSeFowitz BArT BoArD

Carol kingSley

SuPerior CourT JuDGe

propoStion e CreATinG A HeALTHy SAn FrAnCiSCo

aMy BaCharaCh CiTy CoLLeGe

rodrigo SantoS CiTy CoLLeGe

thea SelBy

CiTy CoLLeGe

USe the FUll alice endorSementS below when yoU vote San FranciSco candidateS Assessor-Recorder: Carmen Chu

board oF edUcation

Supervisor, District 2: Mark Farrell

city college board oF trUSteeS Amy Bacharach, 2-year seat Rodrigo Santos, 4-year seat

Supervisor, District 4: Katy Tang Supervisor, District 8: Scott Wiener▼ Supervisor, District 10: Malia Cohen Superior Court Judge, Office 20: Carol Kingsley BART Board, District 8: Nick Josefowitz

Mark Murphy▼

Thea Selby, 4-year seat aSSembly candidateS State Assembly, District 17:

State candidateS Governor: Jerry Brown

local ballot meaSUreS

State ballot meaSUreS

YES

PROP A: Transportation Bond

YES

PROP 1: Water Bond

YES

PROP B: Muni Funding

YES

PROP 2: Rainy Day Fund

YES

PROP C: Children’s Programs

YES

PROP D: Retirement Benefits

PROP 45: Make Health Insurers Justify Rates

Treasurer: John Chiang

YES

PROP E: Creating a Healthy SF!

NO POSITION

PROP 46: No Position

Attorney General: Kamala Harris

YES

PROP F: Pier 70 Redevelopment

YES

PROP 47: Reform Sentencing

NO POSITION

PROP G: No Position

YES

PROP H: Against Playgrounds

PROP 48: Approve Tribal Gaming Compromise

YES

PROP I: For Playgrounds

YES

PROP J: Raise Minimum Wage

YES

PROP K: Affordable Housing

PROP L: Outdated Transit Policies

Lieutenant Governor: Gavin Newsom Secretary of State: Alex Padilla Controller: Betty Yee

Insurance Commissioner: Dave Jones

David Chiu

Board of Equalization, District 2: Fiona Ma

State Assembly, District 19: Phil Ting

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tom Torlakson

▼ indicates that the candidate is LGBT

Get Involved, Get Our Endorsements

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Building Coalitions in San Francisco for Over 40 Years

Paid for by Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club PAC FPPC #842018.

<< Open Forum

4 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

Volume 44, Number 43 October 23-29, 2014 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Seth Hemmelgarn CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Tavo Amador • Race Bannon Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Brian Bromberger • Victoria A. Brownworth Brent Calderwood • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Belo Cipriani Chuck Colbert • Richard Dodds Michael Flanagan • Jim Gladstone David Guarino • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Max Leger Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Elliot Owen • Paul Parish • Sean Piverger Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Khaled Sayed • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Ed Walsh • Cornelius Washington Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Jay Cribas PRODUCTION/DESIGN Max Leger PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Lydia Gonzales • Jose Guzman-Colon Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd Rich Stadtmiller • Steven Underhil Dallis Willard • Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.861.5019

Send Big Soda a message – yes on E

ou’ve no doubt been bombarded with mail and TV ads urging a no vote on San Francisco’s Proposition E, the sugary beverage tax. These ads are trying to scare voters into believing that their grocery bills will go up, even if they don’t buy sugarsweetened beverages, or that there is a fundamental right to drink soda. There is not. In one of the TV ads a woman says, “There are a great many things to be concerned about ... than whether or not I decide to drink a soda.” Guess what? That’s not what Prop E is about. She, and everyone else, can drink all the soda they want, but it will cost a little more if Prop E is approved; it is hoped that the increased cost will decrease consumption. Prop E, which we endorsed last month, imposes a 2-cent per ounce tax on all sugar-sweetened beverages. The revenues generated by the tax, estimated from $35 million to $54 million, are earmarked to fund health, nutrition, physical education, and active recreation programs. It needs two-thirds voter approval because the money is paying for specific programs. It’s critical to understand that the members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who voted to place Prop E on the ballot did so for two reasons: combating obesity and diabetes, particularly among children. Currently diabetes and obesity patient caseloads are straining the resources of San Francisco General Hospital and therefore increasing city health care costs. This is not a money grab by the supervisors; the funds would expand recreational activities and health and nutrition services for San Franciscans. This is a public health measure aimed at preventing disease. San Francisco has a long and proud history of landmark legislation and often leads the country in public health issues. Back in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan couldn’t even utter the word “AIDS,” doctors, nurses, public health officials, and politicians here took action, authorizing millions of dollars in city funds to develop what

by David Scher and R. Scott Oswald

NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

Bay Area Reporter 44 Gough Street, Suite 204 San Francisco, CA 94103 415.861.5019 • www.ebar.com A division of BAR Media, Inc. © 2014 President: Michael M. Yamashita Chairman: Thomas E. Horn VP and CFO: Patrick G. Brown Secretary: Todd A. Vogt

News Editor • news@ebar.com Arts Editor • arts@ebar.com Out & About listings • jim@ebar.com Advertising • scott@ebar.com Letters • letters@ebar.com Published weekly. Bay Area Reporter reserves the right to edit or reject any advertisement which the publisher believes is in poor taste or which advertises illegal items which might result in legal action against Bay Area Reporter. Ads will not be rejected solely on the basis of politics, philosophy, religion, race, age, or sexual orientation. Advertising rates available upon request. Our list of subscribers and advertisers is confidential and is not sold. The sexual orientation of advertisers, photographers, and writers published herein is neither inferred nor implied. We are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

would become the “San Francisco Model” for fighting and preventing HIV/AIDS. That model saved many lives, prolonged others, and has been replicated around the globe over three decades. In 2010 the Board of Supervisors confronted a different issue related to childhood obesity when Supervisor Eric Mar introduced legislation that bans toys in kids’ meals at fast food restaurants. The law passed 8-3 despite opposition from thenMayor Gavin Newsom. Dubbed the “Happy Meal ban” after the name of the popular McDonald’s children’s meals, Mar was laughed at by a lot of people – The Daily Show broadcast a hilarious segment with him talking about the ban in early 2011. Since then, Mar’s foresight has become a national trend, with McDonald’s and other fast food chains adding items to their menus like apple slices and smaller portions of French fries. “This is a big change that the industry is acknowledging responsibility for childhood obesity and moving in the right direction,” Mar told the Chronicle at the time. To keep moving in the right direction, we urge voters to consider the long-term effects of sugary beverages on the city’s residents, especially kids. The soda industry has been losing customers – and revenue – for years, as more consumers become concerned about their health

and choose to drink water or non-carbonated beverages. That’s one of the reasons why companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola are diversifying and buying up non-soda beverage companies, including bottled water brands like Dasani (Coke) and Aquafina (Pepsi). Both companies even offer versions of their signature brands using “real sugar” (instead of highfructose corn syrup), potentially creating even more public health issues. The soda industry is terrified of ballot measures like Prop E, and is pouring millions of dollars into campaigns to defeat them. So far, the industry has been successful. Locally, a beverage tax was defeated in Richmond two years ago. One of the supporters of that tax was Taylor Peck of the Fizzary, an upscale soda store that has outlets in the Mission and the Haight. Recently, Peck told the Chronicle that this year he is against Prop E. Peck said the difference between his position now and two years ago is because San Francisco “is my city and the one I care most about.” We care deeply about San Francisco, too. Kids who are obese at 8, 9, or 10 years old are being set up for a possible lifetime of struggle to lose weight, which is not easy, or years of medications, insulin injections, and other treatment if they’re diagnosed with diabetes. And while diabetes doesn’t “go away,” with weight loss and lower blood sugar levels it can become much more manageable, according to UCSF. “Eating a healthy diet, being physically active, and losing any extra weight is the first line of therapy,” the UCSF website on diabetes states. “’Diet and exercise’ is the foundation of all diabetes management because it makes your body’s cells respond better to insulin (in other words, it decreases insulin resistance) and lowers blood sugar levels.” People disagree about taxes all the time. But don’t buy the misleading hyperbole of the multi-billion dollar beverage industry. If soda consumption decreases because of Prop E, that would be a good thing. The larger goal of expanding recreational opportunities and focusing on healthier eating will benefit all San Franciscans. Help our kids get healthy – vote yes on Prop E.t

Grabbing the bull(y) by the horns

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Lance Roberts

LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad, Esq.

here is no doubt that workplace bullying is a problem in our society. In a 2014 study conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute, researchers found that 27 percent of Americans have suffered abusive conduct while at work; 21 percent of those polled witnessed bullying; and an astounding 72 percent are aware that on-the-job bullying occurs. In this same poll, the WBI found that less than 20 percent of employers took action to stop workplace bullying. As evidenced by the WBI’s report, and to highlight during October, which is National Bullying Awareness Month, there is a severe disconnect between the numbers associated with those being bullied and the employer’s response. Moreover, a 2011 report issued by the Center for American Progress shows that members of the LGBT community experience workplace bullying at significantly higher levels. This requires that employees educate themselves on the protections available to them in the workplace. Since 1994, congressional efforts at passing legislation to protect against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity have repeatedly failed. But this lack of explicit federal protection does not mean that it is open season to discriminate, harass, or otherwise bully members of the LGBT community while at work. A recent 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in Prowel v. Wise Business Forms Inc. provides an illustration of a so-called gender stereotyping claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that is likely available to LGBT members. There, the court talked about how the plaintiff, a gay man, was harassed by his colleagues because

of his “high voice,” his being “well-groomed,” his propensity for discussing “things like art, music, interior design, and decor,” and, as stated by the court, his “push[ing] the buttons on his nale encoder [a machine] with pizzazz.” Certainly, the vast majority of LGBT employees who suffer bullying or harassment are not being bullied because they use a device with “pizzazz.” And an even larger percentage are likely going to be uncomfortable with casting themselves as “overly effeminate” males or “overly masculine” females just so that they can be protected in the workplace. In our view, LGBT employees should not have to suffer such an indignity only to avoid being treated unfairly by their employer. Fortunately for California employees, there is a robust protection scheme in place at the state level. For example, the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act explicitly protects employees from discrimination based on, among other things, gender, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. The California Supreme Court has made it clear that state law protects those “who identify themselves as homosexual, who defend homosexuality, or who are identified with activist homosexual organizations.” Moreover, the California Civil Rights Act of 2007 protects those employees working in state government, and the 2006 Non-discrimination in State Program Activities Act prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in stateoperated or -funded services. The question then becomes, what should an employee who is being bullied do in order to protect him or herself? We think the following three items are crucial to ensuring your protection in the workplace.

Document the harassment. Keep a contemporaneous log of any harassment or bullying that you experience in the workplace. Be sure to date each entry and describe in detail the “who, what, when, where, and how.” Disclose and be specific. You should disclose the bullying to your supervisor or to human resources in writing and be specific. It is one thing to say that your supervisor is being mean to you or that he or she is giving you an impossible workload. It is quite another to say, “I believe that I am being bullied because of my sexual orientation.” The purpose here is to engage in what is referred to as “protected conduct.” The latter (“I am being bullied because of my sexual orientation”) will likely give rise to a claim of retaliation should you suffer an adverse employment action; the former (“My supervisor is giving me too much work”) will likely not serve as protected conduct and cannot be the basis for a subsequent claim of retaliation. Continue engaging. Once you have made your disclosure to human resources, it is important that you continue to focus on your work and not give the company a so-called legitimate business reason to terminate your employment. Moreover, you have a duty to cooperate with any company investigation into your complaints of bullying and harassment. Finally, if you quit your job, you will lose a substantial amount of leverage and have a much more difficult time should you need to proceed to litigation. We strongly encourage employees who are suffering discrimination to contact an attorney. But if you remember these three points and are aware of California’s laws against discrimination, you should be able to insulate yourself from harassment by your employer and grab the bull(y) by the horns.t David Scher and R. Scott Oswald are with the Employment Law Group.

Letters >>

October 23-29, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 5

Campos campaign’s dirty politics cross the line

In recent weeks, tens of thousands of political mailers have been sent by a mysterious independent expenditure committee called Nurses, Teachers and Working Families United to Support David Campos for Assembly 2014. The mailers attack Campos’s opponent, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, for work Chiu allegedly did as a co-founder of an online technology company, Grassroots Enterprise. The accusations are that 14 years ago, Chiu drafted the platform of a right-wing organization and supported an anti-gay agenda. As former LGBT Grassroots Enterprise colleagues who worked with Chiu, we are completely disgusted by these tactics. The accusations in the mailers are entirely false. A thoroughly committed straight ally and lifelong Democrat, Chiu has fought for equality alongside our community throughout his entire career. Chiu headed up Grassroots Enterprise’s San Francisco office, where 40 percent of our employees were LGBT. In addition to Democratic and labor organizations, the Sierra Club, and the American Civil Liberties Union, our firm’s clients included the Human Rights Campaign, Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, and International AIDS Trust. To imply that the work we did in those years hurt the LGBT movement would be laughable if it wasn’t so offensive. Chiu has continued to fight for LGBT causes as an elected official. During his six years as president of the Board of Supervisors, Chiu has supported funding to backfill federal cuts to HIV/AIDS programs, ensured services for LGBT youth at nonprofits such as the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center and Larkin Street Youth Services, helped shore up the finances of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, advocated for the reunification of LGBT immigrant families, and appointed outstanding LGBT city commissioners. Chiu’s record as an effective leader and a committed straight ally is the reason this publication – the oldest and largest queer newspaper in the Bay Area – endorsed him over Campos, a gay man. As the Bay Area Reporter wrote in its endorsement of Chiu: “[o]n every issue affecting the LGBT community that the board has taken up, Chiu has been on our side.” For us, these attacks are old news. A fringe candidate tried to use them against Chiu in his first race for supervisor in 2008, and the media completely dismissed the attacks; interestingly, Campos supported Chiu’s 2008 campaign for supervisor. The Campos campaign has dredged up these stories because there’s nothing in Chiu’s record as board president they can easily attack, and Campos doesn’t have much of a positive record of his own to run on. We ask that the Campos campaign denounce this independent expenditure, and apologize for suggesting to San Francisco voters that Chiu is in any way right-wing or an enemy of the LGBT community. As president of the Board of

Supervisors, Chiu has been a staunch advocate for the progressive values that define our diverse, tolerant city. For six years, Chiu has worked to bring the people of San Francisco together and move a more united city forward. At the end of the day, that’s far more than we can say for his opponent. John Crandon, Kevin Edwards, Valerie Hendrix Shane Mayer, Christen Penny San Francisco

No on Prop G

There they go again. Once again well-funded special interests are asking voters to stick it to property owners. This time around the latest outrageous money grab is a blatant plan to implement legalized extortion. Proposition G, the so-called anti-flipping proposition, is on the November ballot and will affect most properties in San Francisco. Proponents claim it will exempt single-family homeowners. The truth, however, is that those single-family homes with in-law units are indeed intended to be a large slice of the shakedown. Proponents claim Prop G curbs what they call abuses of the Ellis Act, a state law that allows owners of buildings to get out of the rental business. The proposition imposes a heavy tax on those selling their building within the first five years of ownership. The surtax starts at 24 percent and is lowered every year until it disappears at the end of the fifth year. In San Francisco the medium price of a home is approximately $1,000,000 so the surtax would be $240,000. This tax goes into the city’s general fund for the politicos to do whatever they want with it, nothing goes to housing. Couple that gouging with the last money grab where a landlord must pay the difference between the evicted tenant’s old rent and the rent paid for the new abode for two years. That particular law is in litigation with a federal judge asking the city of San Francisco how it came up with such a preposterous formula. Prop G could also be in litigation for years but the surest way to kill this lasted attempt at property theft is to defeat it at the ballot box. I foresee the disappearance of single-family in-law rental units should Prop G pass, reducing dramatically the housing stock in San Francisco. The large investors can afford to wait out the five-year limitation but mom and pop cannot. Look at the Venn, a large new building on Market Street. The completion of this building was delayed until the economy got better. Even the tall crane looming on the vacant lot remained in place until the better times started to roll. I was always scared to drive under it. In San Francisco, where prices are very high, developers and house flippers will just add that surtax to the price of the property, making properties more expensive. Vote as you see fit but be informed. Don’t just vote to follow the pack. Get the facts at www.stopthehousingtax.com. Al Rodriguez San Francisco

‘Freak’ out at sober space Halloween party compiled by Cynthia Laird

he Castro Country Club, a sober space in the gay neighborhood, will hold its fifth annual Harvest Fest Freak Show and benefit Thursday, October 30 at the Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa Street (at Potrero Avenue) in San Francisco. The evening will be hosted by Heklina of Trannyshack and feature Alaska Thunderfuck from RuPaul’s Drag Race as the special guest. The party, taking place the night before Halloween, has a “freak show” theme and is a fun and light-hearted celebration of the country club’s past, present, and future. The evening begins at 6 p.m. with hors d’oeuvres, mocktails, and “freaky” fellowship, followed by a four-course dinner, silent auction and show beginning at 7. Tickets are $75 for general admission, and $125 for VIP seating and special favors. To purchase tickets, visit www.castrocountryclub.org, call (800) 838-3006, or stop by the country club at 4058 18th Street. The Castro Country Club is fiscally sponsored by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation but is entirely self-sustaining. Donations made via the website specifically support the programs and services of the club.

Barry Schneider Attorney at Law

family law specialist* • Divorce w/emphasis on Real Estate & Business Divisions • Domestic Partnerships, Support & Custody • Probate and Wills www.SchneiderLaw.com

415-781-6500 *Certified by the California State Bar 400 Montgomery Street, Ste. 505, San Francisco, CA

Everyone is welcome! Contemplative. Candlelit ambiance. A peaceful time for prayerful reflection.

Sunday Twilight Mass

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For people with busy weekend schedules.

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100 Diamond Street @ 18th, San Francisco, CA 94114 (415) 863-6259 mhr.org

Tenderloin Tessie holds talent show

The folks behind Tenderloin Tessie, which provides holiday dinners to those in need, is trying a new benefit, the Tenderloin Tessie Talent Show, Saturday, October 25 at Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco, 150 Eureka Street. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.; the show starts at 5. Tenderloin Tessie board President Michael Gagne expects a wide range of talented performers, though he cautioned that some of the material “will be a little PG-13.” Drag queen Alaska Thunderfuck will Tickets are $12 per be the special guest at the Castro person or $8 for se- Country Club’s Halloween-themed niors, low-income, benefit. people with disabilities, and kids. to 3 p.m. both days. Kids of all ages All proceeds will are invited to don costumes and go toward the nonprofit search for special Boo candy treat organization’s dinners, stations throughout the zoo. Casper which are served on Thanksgiving, the Friendly Ghost will be on hand; Christmas, and Easter. other activities include puppet For more information, contact shows, magic shows, bounce houses, Gagne at (415) 584-3252. and crafting tables. There will also be a “Haunted Nature Trail” and the SF, Oakland zoos put “Creepy Crawly Critter Adventure. the ‘boo’ in Halloween All are invited to watch the aniZoos in San Francisco and Oakmals enjoy holiday-themed treats. land will have spooky adventures and Activities are free with zoo adplenty of treats as they both hold fammission, which is $17 for adults, ily-friendly “Boo at the Zoo” events and $11 for children ages 4-14 Saturday and Sunday, October 25-26. (San Francisco residents are $14 for The San Francisco Zoo will hold its celebration from 11 a.m. See page 6 >>

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<< Community News

6 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

DV data show few same-sex cases in SF by Seth Hemmelgarn

ctober is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and for the first time, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office has released some of the domestic violence data it’s been collecting electronically as it works to modernize its systems. The data, provided to the Bay Area Reporter at the paper’s request, show that about 3 percent, or less than one in 10, of the domestic violence-related cases charged involved same-sex defendants and victims. Of the 238 incidents charged from October 2013 through August 2014, only eight were same-sex. Six of those involved men, while the other two cases were women. Assistant District Attorney Marshall Khine, who was then the managing attorney for the DA’s Domestic Violence Unit, said in January it was “hard to say” whether there’s underreporting. “It could be that there are fewer domestic violence cases in the LGBT

community,” Khine said, adding, “I certainly have no doubt that in every community, far more goes on than is reported.” In response to emailed questions earlier this month, Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the DA’s office, couldn’t say how many cases have been referred to the agency but not charged, whether they involved LGBT or opposite-sex relationships. However, Bastian said, “Domestic violence cases involving same-sex couples can be more challenging as it relates to self-defense claims, particularly when both parties are of similar size and weight.” Hediana Utarti is the community projects coordinator for San Francisco’s Asian Women’s Shelter, which offers a shelter, a crisis line, and other services for people who are experiencing domestic violence. Despite its name, the agency is open to all survivors. Utarti said in a recent email exchange that her agency hasn’t completed statistics for 2013-14, but “we

Rick Gerharter

Assistant District Attorney Marshall Khine

usually support about 66 to 70 clients a year” inside and outside the shelter. Last year, the group served four LGBT survivors, and this year, there are nine, she said. The increase “has something

Courtesy SFPD

Former Twitter engineer Dana Contreras pleaded guilty earlier this month to charges stemming from domestic abuse.

to do with the fact that our LGBT population has become more comfortable to call a non-LGBT agency” such as hers, Utarti said.

Some findings

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The way the charging data were entered makes it hard to do a quick analysis to find what the most common charges were. In the majority of cases, multiple charges have been lumped together, and inconsistent data entry is another hurdle. However, a look at the data indicates causing bodily injury to or battering a current or former partner are the most common violations, regardless of orientation. Same-sex cases aren’t by any means concentrated in the largely gay Castro neighborhood. Two of the cases are from the Mission police station, which oversees the Castro and other neighborhoods, but there were also reports made from the Tenderloin and other districts. The data don’t include people’s ages. The DA’s office didn’t provide victims’ names or outcomes of charged cases. There are some cases where the genders of the people involved aren’t clear. For example, one relationship is listed as “Dating cohabitants.” One case of LGBT domestic violence drew national media attention recently. Dana Contreras, 33, a transgender former Twitter senior staff engineer whose name is also listed in court documents as Dana McCallum, pleaded guilty to domestic violence earlier this month and was sentenced to three years of probation after agreeing to a plea deal. Her sentence also includes a 52-week batterer intervention course, among other terms. Domestic violence in the LGBT community is often ignored, and in an interview, Contreras’s wife said there’s “largely” been silence from

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News Briefs

From page 5

adults and $7.50 for children.) Kids wearing costumes get $1 off admission; visitors who wear orange and black through the World Series will receive $1 off admission. The zoo is located at Sloat Boulevard at the Great Highway. For more information, visit www.sfzoo.org. The Oakland Zoo has teamed up with the Bay Area Science Festival for its “Boo at the Zoo,” which will feature Halloween treats and science-themed activities. There will be spooky scavenger hunts for kids, costume parade, up-close animal encounters, freaky interactive stations, face painting, and a wildlife theater presentation focused on creepy crawly animals. “Oakland Zoo’s Boo at the Zoo is a great way for families to celebrate Halloween in a safe, fun, enriching environment,” said Erin Harrison,

the LGBT and feminist communities about the case. She said both she and Contreras, who are in the process of divorcing, have been advocates for the communities, but “they’re afraid to process” what happened. Contreras’s wife, who asked that her name not be published, said officers were “very helpful” with her and took her to San Francisco General Hospital, and she’s received free trauma counseling. Contreras’s attorney has previously stated that neither she nor Contreras would comment on the case. Services can be lacking for defendants, though. Bruce Atwater, a gay criminal defense attorney who’s representing a man charged in one of the San Francisco LGBT domestic violence cases, said, “nothing has been offered to [the defendant] in terms of services.” He said therapy or a support group “would be something that would be good to have. It’s just as traumatic for the alleged perpetrator as it is for the alleged victim. ... Domestic violence isn’t necessarily a one-way situation. It’s often back and forth.” Atwater’s client, who didn’t want his name published, said he’s been falsely accused in the case, and he said his former partner has harassed him. He’s sought counseling on his own. The man’s ex-partner wouldn’t agree to an interview. Many of the people on probation for domestic violence in San Francisco take part in state-mandated 52-week batterer intervention programs, but there’s a lack of data showing whether the courses are effective. Both Public Defender Jeff Adachi and District Attorney George Gascón have expressed a lack of confidence in the programs.

Referrals

There were 87 cases overall where the DA’s office didn’t charge the defendants but instead, in most of those cases, moved to revoke probation. Among those cases, five, or almost 6 percent, involved people of the same sex. Four involved men, one involved a female couple, and one involved a man and a transgender person. (The data don’t specify whether the transgender person is male or female.) The data don’t show what crimes the older cases were based on. Additionally, the DA’s office didn’t file charges in some instances but referred those cases to other offices. “At times, we have insufficient evidence to charge a case,” Bastian said. “However, if the suspect is on parole or probation in another county, we refer the case to those respective agencies.”t senior manager of marketing and events at the zoo. The fun takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days. The costume parade takes place at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Admission prices are $11.75 for children and seniors and $15.75 for adults. Parking is $8 per car. Boo at the Zoo activities are included with general admission. The Oakland Zoo is located at 9777 Golf Links Road, off Highway 580. For more information, visit www.oaklandzoo.org.t

On the web Online content this week includes the Bay Area Reporter’s online column, Political Notes; the Jock Talk and Out in the World columns; and a story on a lesbian journalist who’s apologized to the trans community. www.ebar.com.

Politics>>

October 23-29, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 7

Special district races attract out candidates by Matthew S. Bajko

number of special district races in the Bay Area, for seats on community college boards, a water utility oversight panel, and a harbor commission, have drawn out candidates this election cycle. While the contests are considered down ticket races and often attract little notice from the media and voters, the elections offer LGBT candidates a chance at serving their communities and laying the groundwork to run for higher office someday, if they so choose. On the Peninsula a gay man, Robert Bernardo, along with his straight colleague, James Tucker, are seeking re-election to their seats on the San Mateo County Harbor Commission, while a bisexual marine biologist, Nicole David, is among the quintet challenging them this fall. The five-person commission has oversight of two marinas, the bayside Oyster Point, which features East Bay ferry service, and the seaside Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay. “I want another term because I am not finished with the important work at the harbor district,” said Bernardo, 46, whose partner of 22 years, Dave Swenson, 55, works for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and is a Naval reservist. One of Bernardo’s key areas of concern is paying down the district’s debt, which now stands at $5 million, he said, and had been $20 million when he was first elected four years ago. “Basically, if we continue down this path of fiscal sustainability it means we will pay off the debt one year ahead of schedule,” said Bernardo, a South San Francisco resident who works for the Port of Oakland. “Within three years we will be debt free. How many public agencies and special districts do you know are debt free?” He also wants to help steer development of a strategic plan for the harbor district, something he campaigned on during his first race and should be completed in 2015. “Why is this important? This is going to be the blueprint for the future of both harbors,” Bernardo said. “The plan will address our finances, operations and environmental programs.” David, 46, lives in Half Moon Bay with her husband of nearly eight years, Jay Davis, an environmental ecologist. They met at the San Francisco Estuary Institute where she has worked for 16 years and Davis is the lead scientist of a regional water quality monitoring program. “I would love to have the opportunity to bring people together around safe and healthy harbors that are financially well-managed for commerce, recreation and wildlife,” said David, who grew up in Berlin, Germany and moved to California in 1998. “And improve water quality at our beaches and make them safe for swimming again. And provide support to the local fishing community. Fishermen deserve more support than they are currently getting.” On her campaign site she highlights the findings from a civil grand jury report released this summer that called for the dismantlement of the harbor commission due to mismanagement. While she disagrees with the call to dissolve the district, David said she does believe it is in “disarray.” “It is very focused on their internal fights more than the overall good for the community,” she said. Should David and Bernardo emerge victorious, there would be an LGBT majority on the commis-

Courtesy Bernardo for Harbor Commission campaign

San Mateo County Harbor Commissioner Robert Bernardo

Courtesy David for Harbor Commission campaign

Nicole David is running for a seat on the harbor commission.

sion, as lesbian graphic designer Sabrina Brennan won election to the body in 2012. While Brennan is not supporting her colleagues’ re-election bids, she has endorsed David, whom she had backed last summer to fill a vacancy on the commission due to the death of a member. But the other three commissioners opted instead to appoint former commissioner William Holsinger to the seat; Brennan had ousted him from the oversight body in the 2012 race. Holsinger is now running to fill out the remainder of the term through 2016. Brennan is backing one of his two opponents, Tom Mattusch, whom she believes can “lead the harbor district in a positive direction,” as she wrote in a recent email sent to her supporters. Brennan also wrote that she is backing David because of her “great passion for the ocean and bay.” While Bernardo, who is not endorsing anyone in either of the races, told the Bay Area Reporter he “is feeling confident” about his re-election chances, he has been the target of an online campaign that wants to see the three incumbent commissioners defeated. The website http://www.fixourharbors.com, which is linked to a Twitter account of the same name, features a photo of Bernardo with disgraced suspended state Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), who has pleaded not guilty to federal racketeering charges and is accused of promising political favors for campaign contributions. It charges that Bernardo “lacks knowledge about critical issues, demonstrates unwillingness to consider stakeholder input, and rubber stamps staff recommendations which result in poor harbor management and wasteful spending.” The mudslinging is a marked change from his first race, said Bernardo. “Not from me, though. I have run a completely positive campaign,” he said, adding that he didn’t know why he had attracted such strong opposition. “It is a district people don’t even know about.”

Oakland college, water district races

Across the bay out candidates are running for seats on the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees and the East Bay Municipal Utility District Board of Directors. Richard Fuentes, 32, who had worked as legislative director for former Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, is seeking the college board’s Area 7 seat, which covers parts of Oakland and the city of Emeryville. The current officeholder, Abel Guillen, who identifies as Two Spirit, is seeking an Oakland City Council seat this November. Guillen has endorsed the other candidate in

Courtesy Fuentes for College Board campaign

Peralta college board candidate Richard Fuentes

the college board race, Julina Bonilla, a former Oakland public school teacher, to succeed him. Two years ago Fuentes unsuccessfully ran for an Oakland school board seat. That race helped him connect with voters who not only remember his name, said Fuentes, but think he is now running for re-election even though he did not win. When he now knocks on doors, which he has done in every neighborhood covered by the college district seat, Fuentes said, “I am not introducing myself to people but saying hello to people I have met over the years.” His three main priorities are making sure the college district’s students have “strong pathways” to transfer to four-year schools and career opportunities, as well as promoting the district to community members. “We need to increase enrollment numbers and champion the excellent programs we have at the colleges,” said Fuentes, who with his partner, Sean Sullivan, is working to open a gay bar in downtown Oakland.

Jane Philomen Cleland

EBMUD candidate Marguerite Young

Andy Katz, 33, who is bisexual and earlier this year abandoned a run for state Assembly, faces no opposition for his re-election to the EBMUD board’s Ward 4 seat. He represents the cities of Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, El Cerrito, Kensington, and a portion of Oakland. Also running for the EBMUD board is Marguerite Young, 58, who is seeking to oust Katy Foulkes from the Ward 3 seat she has held for two decades. The seat spans a section of Oakland, the cities of Piedmont, Orinda, Moraga, and El Sobrante, as well as portions of Richmond and Pinole. A lesbian and former director of Clean Water Action, Young lives in Oakland with her teenage son. The single mother, who has an identical twin sister, grew up in Kensington and has lived throughout the East Bay. Young told the B.A.R. she decided to enter the race because she has cared deeply about water policy issues her entire career and feels EBMUD can be doing more to address the impacts of the state’s current drought and prepare for future

impacts due to climate change. “Because the decisions we need to make in the next several years on how to manage our water supply in a time of coming, or maybe certainly happening, climate change are critical,” she said. “I want to help make the tough decisions we need to make to maintain our quality of life while the world is changing.” She noted that the agency has underfunded maintenance of its current system, fixing only 10 miles of pipe along the 4,000-mile-long system each year. It is discussing boosting the number to 40 miles a year, but that still falls short of what is needed, said Young. “While, certainly a big increase from what they are doing today, all that does is really put the district in a type of groundhog day forever,” she said. “They are never really catching up or solving the problem.” Having spent months knocking on doors and coordinating phone volunteers to staff phone banking operations, Young said she is feeling hopeful of her chances come November 4. “I am sure if people pay attention to this race that I think I will have a lot of support. And that, I hope, translates into support on Election Day,” she said.t Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column looked at out CA legislative candidates’ campaign donation totals. Keep abreast of the latest LGBT political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes. Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8298836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

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<< LGBT History Month

8 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

Scores of LGBT sites eyed for landmark status by Mathew S. Bajko

National Park Service project has identified hundreds of potential LGBT sites across America that could someday win federal landmark status. The list, which as of late September was nearing 400 places, runs the gamut from gay bars and bathhouses to places of worship and LGBT community centers. It includes the homes of prominent LGBT individ-

uals, such as the late gay civil rights leader Bayard Rustin’s New York City apartment, and several gayborhoods, such as San Francisco’s Castro district and the hamlet of Cherry Grove on New York’s Fire Island. Last October, as part of its National Park Service LGBTQ Initiative, the federal agency issued a call to historians, preservationists, and archivists who specialize in LGBT history to suggest sites that warrant being listed on the national register or designat-

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ed as historical landmarks. Megan E. Springate, a queer archaeology graduate student at the University of Maryland, has been compiling the sites on an interactive online map that now contains nearly 300 places of import to the LGBT community. As the Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco’s gay newspaper, reported in January, Springate is working on a National Historic Landmark LGBTQ Theme Study and proposed framework for the National Park Service. This past May Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell publicly acknowledged the park service’s LGBT initiative at a ceremony at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. The site of a riot in 1969 credited with launching the modern civil rights movement in the LGBT community, the gay bar is currently the only LGBT-associated site that has been designated a national historic landmark by the National Park Service. “I am very pleased the park service has come around to wanting to recognize queer historic sites and I want to do everything I can to help them get those sites processed,” said Mark Meinke, 66, a gay man who founded the Washington, D.C.based Rainbow History Project. Meinke has been assisting Springate with her work to locate properties with LGBT historical value that could be nominated for various federal landmark status. He is also working on nominating the building Rustin lived in at 340 West 28th Street in Manhattan for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Rustin’s partner Walter Naegle, who still lives there in the couple’s apartment, is supportive of the landmark status proposal. Because the park service does not recognize individual units, Meinke is working on gathering support from other residents of the co-op to have the entire building be listed on the register. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union built the property in the mid-1950s to house workers in the industry as well as low- or middle-income New Yorkers. The park service has given the entire complex a “declaration of eligibility” for landmarking status, said Meinke. “Rustin moved in in 1962, a year before the March on Washington, and lived there until his death in 1987,” said Meinke, who expects to present his proposal in March to the New York State Historic Preservation Office. “It should be considered for a national landmark historic status. But the first step is to place it on the National Register of Historic Places, which is a common path to take.”

Five properties recognized

According to park service officials, only five properties in the country have been granted some form of federal historic preservation recognition specifically due to their relationship to LGBT history. In addition to the Stonewall Inn being deemed a National Historic Landmark, there are four sites presently included in the National Register of Historic Places, described by the park service as “the nation’s inventory of properties deemed central to its history and worthy of recognition and preservation.” The quartet comprises the Dr. Franklin E. Kameny Residence in Washington, D.C. (listed 2011); the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut (listed 2013); and Fire Island properties the Cherry Grove Community House and Theater (listed 2013) and the Carrington House (listed 2014). Kameny in 1957 was fired from his federal government job for refusing to answer questions about his sexual orientation. Considered “the father of gay activism,” he died in 2011 at the age of 86. Pulitzer Prize-winning author CA BRE# 01346949

Rick Gerharter

A mural of the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk is painted outside his former camera shop in the Castro.

A historian is working to list the Manhattan apartment building where Bayard Rustin, right, lived with his partner, Walter Naegle, on the National Register of Historic Places. Naegle still resides there.

James Ingram Merrill, a celebrated American poet who died in 1995 at the age of 68, and his partner, David Noyes Jackson, who died in 2001 at the age of 76, bought their Stonington home in 1956. Merrill wrote almost all of his important works, including 25 volumes of poetry, three plays and two books, while residing in the house. The Carrington House is considered “an important link” in Fire Island’s development as a gay resort area on the East Coast. The Cherry Grove property opened in 1948 and is considered the country’s “longest continuously operating gay and lesbian theater.” The next listing will likely be the Chicago home of Henry Gerber, who in the early 1920s formed the Society for Human Rights, the first American gay civil rights organization. As the B.A.R. reported earlier this year, the federal landmarks program is working with University of Michigan at Ann Arbor Professor Michelle McClellan on the nomination for Gerber’s house. Parks officials are eager to see more properties related to LGBT history be nominated, but the agency relies on public individuals to submit the required paperwork before it will consider a property. And a key requirement is having the backing of the current owner(s) of the site in question. Designation as a National Historic Landmark, for instance “actually takes some time (it’s a three to five year process); this is compounded by our need to negotiate with property owners (who must agree to nomination and potential designation),” explained Alexandra M. Lord, Ph.D., branch chief of the National Historic Landmarks Program. “That said, we have received a few inquiries regarding some potential sites.” One site that is frequently mentioned as worthy of receiving federal landmark status is 575 Castro Street in San Francisco where the late gay Supervisor Harvey Milk lived, operated a camera shop, and headquartered his campaigns for public office. The property is listed as a city landmark but has yet to be

nominated for national recognition. Local preservationists are first waiting for the completion of a historic context statement for the city’s LGBT community, expected to be finished in early 2015. The local planning document is considered the first step toward preserving places and structures of significant LGBT historical value and is often referred to by government agencies when determining requests for historic preservation designations. “I am less anxious about reaching the point of having sites in San Francisco listed on the national register or be nationally landmarked, that will be fairly readily accomplished,” said local historian Gerard Koskovich, who is on the advisory committee for the historic context statement project. “It is places outside of San Francisco that need an extra boost and helping hand. That part of our history is less well known, and it is intriguing to me to learn about those sites outside of San Francisco.” Koskovich, who has also been helping Springate locate LGBT historical sites for her National Park Service project, said one step federal officials could take is to update the listings of already landmarked sites so that their ties to LGBT history are added and highlighted. “A strategy many of us are looking at is the amending of the historical description of sites already listed on the national register. A number of which, including here in San Francisco, have a gay history connection but it is not mentioned in the original designation,” he said. “It is easy to imagine the national register, with 80,000-plus listings, has dozens if not possibly hundreds of sites already listed for other reasons that also have a significant LGBT history.”t For more information about the National Park Service LGBTQ Initiative, including a link to the interactive map of LGBT historic sites, visit http://www.nps.gov/ heritageinitiatives/lgbthistory/. To read the B.A.R.’s earlier story, go to http://ebar.com/news/article. php?sec=news&article=69379.

Community News>>

October 23-29, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 9

SF aims to add LGBTs to housing wait lists by Matthew S. Bajko

s LGBT seniors, youth and people with HIV and AIDS find themselves increasingly priced out of the city, San Francisco officials are aiming to increase the number of LGBT people on wait lists for affordable housing units. The Mayor’s Office of Housing recently awarded a $220,000 twoyear grant to the LGBT Community Center and Openhouse, which provides services for LGBT seniors, to fund programs that will help LGBT applicants navigate the often confusing wait list system. Currently, there is no central database for people seeking affordable housing to use. Instead, they must seek out below-market-rate units, whether to purchase or rent, on a project-by-project basis. The process is “not simple or straightforward,” said gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, who pushed for the funding allocation. “I had a serious concern not enough people in the LGBT community know how to access the city’s affordable housing program,” said Wiener. “A lot of LGBT people, frankly, haven’t given a lot of thought to get on to wait lists for affordable housing. Those wait lists can take a long time to clear.” Wiener said he hopes the LGBT nonprofits will use the money – $110,000 per year – to spearhead affordable housing education efforts similar to those that have been successful in other minority communi-

LGBT shelter

From page 1

dents don’t actually have cars,” Phillips said. She added the city office’s staff has been “very supportive.” The nonprofit has to have funding identified before it can begin construction. Phillips and others are trying to calculate how much money they need, and they’re “not totally sure” when the renovation work may start, she said. Carla Johnson, who’s the director of the Mayor’s Office on Disability and a lesbian, expressed support for doing the work in phases. “I know they are anxious to move forward as quickly as possible to start construction now that they have a permit,” Johnson said.

Problems persist for homeless LGBTs

While work on establishing the shelter has continued, the problems facing homeless LGBTs have persisted. Alessandra Coñate, 35, who identifies as intersex and pansexual, has been homeless for two years and is staying at Next Door, a shelter on the cusp of the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Coñate said during a recent incident at the shelter, another woman called her a “faggot” during an altercation over a request for some hot sauce and said she’d have her husband beat her. Coñate said she “felt trapped” and poured tea on the woman. (It wasn’t hot, she said.) According to a staff report of the incident, the other client acknowledged she had “directed a homophobic slur” toward Coñate. Both women reported the in-

ties who have a longer history assisting people in need of BMR units. “I have seen other communities do a terrific job educating their community members and getting people on waiting lists, particularly the Chinese community and the Russian community,” Wiener told the Bay Area Reporter. “I concluded we needed to make an investment in helping the LGBT community emulate the success of the Chinese and Russian communities in educating people and helping people get on the waiting lists.” The funding will allow the two LGBT nonprofits to expand their current housing programs. Since 2011 the LGBT center has been helping LGBT people navigate through the process to buy BMR units. As the B.A.R. noted in a 2013 article, the center’s housing program has organized bus tours for clients to visit available BMR options. Now, instead of working solely with prospective homebuyers, the center will also be able to assist people looking for affordable apartment rentals. The services run the gamut from financial literacy and addressing credit scores to making sure clients have their necessary paperwork in order. “The goal is twofold, to make sure people in the community know about affordable housing opportunities and can access them,” said the center’s executive director, Rebecca Rolfe, “and to also make sure people know when they enter a lottery, and if they are selected through the lottery system, they are really eligible to become ten-

Shanti

From page 2

ing us that we are not going to be doing anything complicated. In Charles’s words, what Shanti does for our clients, in another time and place, is what neighbors did for one another.” Shanti has operated for years on the belief that loneliness and isola-

Alessandra Coñate

cident to staff. Initially, they were given a “verbal warning” and told to stay away from each other, Coñate said. But the next day, she was told she would be discharged, and the other woman was allowed to stay. Coñate was ultimately allowed to stay at the shelter. Coñate believes her discharge was related to her identity, based on what she’s seen at the organization. In her two years in the shelter system, she said, most of the problems she’s had “have just been verbal confrontations.” Staff “are always speaking to me in a condescending way, always speaking to me like I’m subhuman.” Most of the problems have been with Next Door, she said. She recalled an incident at the shelter in April when she used a women’s restroom. A staff member called her “sir” and told her she was using the wrong bathroom, said Coñate, who has breasts and wears feminine clothing. “I kind of just blew it off and figured it was a mistake on their part, tion are risk factors for health just as significant as smoking, and science is now realizing that has been true all along, Roy said. “It is a very interesting time to be turning 40 right now,” Roy said of the agency’s anniversary, “because in recent years the fields of neuroscience and biology have concluded what Shanti’s staff and volunteers intuitively knew all along, and that

Rick Gerharter

Supervisor Scott Wiener, center, shown here speaking with Noe Valley residents Jane Oyugi and Mark Collins at the Noe Valley Harvest Festival October 18, helped secure $220,000 for the LGBT Community Center and Openhouse to help LGBT people get on wait lists for affordable housing and senior housing projects.

“We are expanding our housing workshops to get the whole senior community much better educated on how affordable housing units work,” said Seth Kilbourn, Openhouse’s executive director. “We are on a fullon campaign over the next year to expand that outreach and make sure any LGBT older adult in the city who wants to learn about affordable housing at 55 Laguna will be able to do so.” Even people who are not facing a housing crisis currently, but may need to move sometime in the future due to an eviction or mobility reason, should get themselves on the wait list now, said Wiener. “Even if someone is stable in their housing it may make sense for them to put their name on the list,” he said. “This is not just for seniors but other age groups and people who can benefit from affordable housing.” Brianna Varner, 39, a transgender woman who moved to the city six months ago from Houston, Texas is just the sort of LGBT resident Wiener hopes the funding will benefit. Currently housed in a shelter, Varner has worked with a case manager to get herself on at least one housing wait list. The system is “perplexing,” Varner told the B.A.R. “It is kind of hard to do.” She said she would take advantage of the LGBT nonprofits’ housing programs. “If I could benefit from it and if it would help me, I would go participate in it,” said Varner. “I would like to have my own apartment because I have never had one and stuff like that.”t

ants in the various options.” As for Openhouse, it is building 110 units of affordable LGBTfriendly senior housing at the former UC Berkeley Extension campus a block away from the LGBT center. Officials with the agency have long expressed concerns about having LGBT seniors already in the city’s housing wait list pipeline before the first units at the 55 Laguna redevelopment site become available in 2016. Any senior, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, will be able to apply for them. The agency is working collaboratively with the LGBT center, said Rolfe, on educating LGBT seniors about the various housing options they can access. “There are different options avail-

able for seniors that are not available to the general population. They are looking at making sure LGBT seniors know about, and have access to, specific senior housing options,” explained Rolfe. In its October email to clients, Openhouse noted it “assists community members with housing workshops, housing resource groups, and other housing opportunities as they become available.” The agency hosts housing workshops four times a month, with the next one scheduled to take place Friday, November 7. The meetings help participants learn how to apply for housing through the lottery process, understand how placement on waiting lists works, and explains the screening process used by property owners.

or maybe I would just educate them a little bit,” she said. She continues to stay at Next Door because she has a stay away order from another shelter involving her “significant other,” and her options are limited. A message left with a Next Door official wasn’t returned Monday. Last June, the biennial San Francisco Homeless Point-In-Time Count and Survey was released and, for the first time, included statistics on LGBT people. The report found that out of a total of 7,350 homeless people, more than one in four (29 percent) identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or “other” for a total of 2,132. According to Bevan Dufty, a gay man who serves as director of Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement for Mayor Ed Lee, the city has 1,150 homeless shelter beds. This time last year, the number was the same. Currently, 97 percent of the beds are full, he said. Coñate, who called her situation “very temporary,” said the planned Dolores Street shelter would make it easier for people to “feel safe and not feel like they have a continual uphill battle just to get basic needs met.” She’s “a little disheartened” at the length of the process leading to the shelter, but Coñate said she understands there are “a lot of hoops” shelter backers have had to go through.

The B.A.R. has endorsed Chiu in the Assembly race.

Gay Supervisor David Campos, whose District 9 includes the proposed shelter site and who led the March 2010 hearing that spawned the project, has seemed quiet about the work publicly. But Phillips said he’s “absolutely” been helpful.

“His office has really been helping us a lot with the whole thing,” including recent assistance in trying to get lower costs on construction work, she said. “They’re bringing whatever resources and influence they have to bear,” Phillips said of Campos and his staff. “They’re helping us advocate to expedite any city processes that can be expedited.” Campos said, “We have been trying to push the various agencies and different community-based organizations to move as quickly as they can.” Like Phillips, he pointed to higher construction costs. The hurdle now “is a challenge that is facing every construction project in San Francisco,” he said. “ ... It is a lot more expensive to build something in San Francisco than it was a couple years ago.” Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who’s running against Campos for the 17th District Assembly seat being vacated by termed-out gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, said of the shelter, “I have not heard Supervisor Campos mention this on the campaign trail or in any of the many public forums where we’ve appeared together. I certainly support any and all efforts to address the plight of homeless LGBT residents,” including youth, he said. Campos, whose campaign website doesn’t mention the shelter, said he has talked about the shelter while campaigning. He also bristled when questioned about the issue. “I would hope there’s some fairness in the coverage,” he said. “The [Bay Area Reporter] has not been the kindest to me and my office. ... I hope that there is fairness and objectivity.” He wouldn’t give any examples of the coverage he found problematic.

is that the loneliness and isolation so many of our clients face, those are not just difficult circumstances, but rather they are in themselves risk factors; health challenges with big consequences, just like smoking and obesity or lack of exercise.” Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown presented the Nancy Pelosi Lifetime Achievement Award to Williams and Mirikitani of Glide

Memorial United Methodist Church, where Williams had long been the pastor before his retirement. Williams mentioned his longtime work as an ally to the LGBT community. “Two of the first groups I related to in the city,” Williams said. “One was the African American community and the other was the gay and lesbian. I chose those two groups years ago because I knew that I couldn’t live as a

person, as a human being, as minister, as a clergy person, as a person who is trying to change the world; I could not change the world if I cut off segments of the community.” The James C. Hormel HIV Client Community Spirit Award was given posthumously to Stu Smith, a former Shanti board member and volunteer

Campos involvement

Training

An ongoing concern among LGBT homeless people and their advocates has been ensuring that shelter staff are trained to work with LGBT clients. Phillips said DSCS staff were going through LGBT cultural competency training even before the agency took on the gay-friendly shelter project, and it’s been “ramped up a lot.” About 50 percent of the group’s shelter staff are LGBT, she said. Nicholas Kimura is a straight ally who volunteers at the Coalition on Homelessness and helps people having trouble in the shelters. Kimura said many issues go unreported because clients fear retribution, and a lot of the concerns come from transgender women who feel “harassed” by other clients and shelter staff, who “can be outnumbered 50 to 1 at times.” He said, “I don’t think the city’s doing enough to train” staff and shelter supervisors in working with LGBTs. Kimura said staff have even made transphobic statements in front of him, such as “These are men, they shouldn’t be here.” Dufty said that at a policy forum held earlier this year a number of speakers identified problems related to transphobia and other concerns related to shelters. He said at that forum, shelter providers “said they felt they didn’t have the tools they needed to improve things.” Dufty’s worked with a local nonprofit to develop LGBT sensitivity training for shelter staff and clients, and he’s linked the group with officials who oversee the system.t

See page 10 >>

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

10 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

Stewart

From page 1

Stewart, 57, said that when she was hired as San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s chief deputy, she wasn’t expecting to work a lot on LGBT issues because the city had been in the forefront on LGBT rights cases “for a very long time.” In the late 1990s, during the city’s legal fight over the equal benefits ordinance, which requires city contractors to offer the same benefits it offers to employees’ spouses to employees’ domestic partners, Stewart helped defend the law pro bono while she was at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk and Rabkin PC. “What I didn’t see coming,” she said, was that the city “doesn’t limit itself to what it can do.” In February 2004, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered city officials to issue marriage licenses to samesex couples, “despite state law saying otherwise,” Stewart said. From that point on, Stewart was one of the key litigators in the city’s legal battle over marriage equality. That culminated last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a technicality that nullified Proposition 8,

LGBTQ Connect

From page 2

vices.]. There are so many people on the street. They are alone, and coming in here today will give them sense of community.” LGBTQ Connect employs a community organizing approach, so that it can draw the broadest crosssection of community members. “There are at least 1,000 volunteers here to help. They give their day to help out at the San Francisco LGBT center to make this event happen,” Zordel said. Zordel said several types of people checked out the event. “There are three different type of homeless we come across often,” Zordel said. “The first group who are falling upon hard times, and they are couch surfing. The second group who are chronically homeless – often they have some type

Castro Street

From page 1

furniture, and several historical elements to the 400 and 500 blocks of the gay business district’s main thoroughfare. Gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener is using $10,000 from his office budget account to pay for the street closure permits and other costs related to the event. It is a way to give back to merchants and residents, he said, who have been impacted by the project, which was supposed to be done by the end of September but experienced several delays. “This project is transformational for Castro Street. It is a permanent improvement to the street that ev-

Shanti

From page 9

who died earlier this year. It was accepted by his partner, Dave Earl. A special tribute was also given to Garfield, Shanti’s founder. Jonathan Patrizio, a technical adviser at Mobiquity Inc., is a longtime Shanti volunteer. He moved to San Francisco from Edinburgh, Scotland in 1994 for a temporary work assignment that became permanent. “After a year living in the city, I wanted to find a way to give back,” he said. “So an ex-Shanti volunteer friend of mine took me to a Shanti volunteer appreciation event in the summer of 1995. I was so impressed by the people I met there, I decided I had to train and become a volunteer.” Patrizio has been matched with the same client since 1995.

California’s same-sex marriage ban. Gay and lesbian couples began marrying in the Golden State a couple days after the court’s decision. “We went from outlaws to inlaws in the space of a day,” Stewart quipped. In recent weeks, Stewart noted, the number of states legalizing same-sex marriage has increased dramatically, as federal courts strike down state marriage bans. But she noted that a recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case that overturned marriage bans in Idaho and Nevada relied on a sex discrimination case. Marriage bans, Stewart said, are based on gender stereotypes, which carry over into the larger society. “It drives me crazy that you can’t find girls clothes without hearts and princesses or boys clothes without trucks and primary colors,” Stewart said, referring to clothing for babies and toddlers. She said that her wife, attorney Carole Scagnetti, upset her mother when she was little and had a friend cut her long hair short, like a boy’s. To Stewart, society is more tolerant of girls being tomboys than boys being effeminate. As an example, she cited the 2008

Yes on Prop 8 campaign, when ads played to specific genders and traditional parenting models. And she mentioned the “real men and boys don’t cry” stereotype that can lead to bullying. “We all have stereotypes, but what’s important is what we do with them,” Steward said. In introducing Stewart, lesbian Alameda County Commissioner Elizabeth Hendrickson pointed to Stewart’s “stellar” resume and noted that both of them served on the board of Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom back in the 1980s. When Hendrickson first became a court commissioner, she and now-retired gay Judge Hugh Walker “held down the LGBT contingent” on the Alameda County bench, she said to laughter in the audience. It was significant that Governor Jerry Brown nominated Stewart – and elevated gay appeal court Justice James Humes – the Friday of Pride weekend, Hendrickson said. “That wasn’t an accident,” she added. And Hendrickson grew somber when she noted that many of the gay men who helped start gay legal organizations like BALIF died

during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. “You have to have your own compass,” Hendrickson said, referring to guiding principles. “You’re going to be okay with her on the Court of Appeal. She has that compass, which many of us do in this room for other reasons.”

of health issues or addictions and they have been on the street for a very long time. The third group are fixed income. They sleep in single room occupancy rooms and they are not stably housed. What is really shocking is that homelessness is not only affecting the youth, but many LGBTQ homeless are older people.” Among the people who were at the LGBTQ center was Christina, who didn’t want her last name published. Christina, 28, known on the street as Homing Bird, comes from Marin originally and has been in San Francisco living on the streets for over three years. “I learned about the event a few days ago,” Christina, who identifies as LGBT, said. “Someone handed me a flier. I’m interested in getting pet care for my dog. He gets seen by vet services pretty regularly but he has some issues with his eyes that make me worried, but other than

that I was going to check out the legal services they offer here.” Tamara Cole, 48 and disabled, is known on the street as “T.” Cole, who also identifies as LGBT, has been in San Francisco a little over two years. “I volunteered last year to help out,” Cole said. “I wasn’t able to volunteer this year because I have a sketch convention this weekend and I have been working on my sketching.” Cole had been living in homeless shelters and SROs. “I’ve got an apartment today,” Cole said. “I was living in the shelter after I survived Oakland shelters. I was beaten by a tweaker. I didn’t know what that was, but on my way to my room I was attacked and badly injured.” New to the city and stranded, she had to stay in San Francisco instead of going to San Diego. After her inju-

ries she wasn’t able to work, she said. “I lost my job. For more than 20 years I used to be a professional caretaker for senior citizens 75 years and older, so they could live independently,” Cole said. “I came to California after a domestic violence case, to feel safe. On my first night in San Francisco I was robbed at the Henry Hotel I was staying at on 6th Street.” At LGBTQ Connect Cole received food, a haircut, and a tune-up for her wheelchair, along with opportunities to move into an apartment. “I’m getting a haircut so I can look good for the sketch convention this weekend,” Cole said. “I’m also getting food and dental care, and HOPE introduced me to homeless outreach, which gave me a stabilization room. So no more shelter.” Project LGBTQ Connect was sponsored by Blue Shield of California.t

eryone is going to benefit from and the neighborhood put up with a lot of construction over the last eight months,” said Wiener. “So when you complete an amazing project that was challenging to get through and will have future benefits, it is important for the community to celebrate.” Not everyone is pleased, however, with the plans for the street party. During their monthly meeting in October several Castro business owners complained about having parking be restricted on the night prior to Halloween, one of their busiest shopping days. “It feels like a real slap in the face,” said Terry Asten Bennett, whose family owns Cliff ’s Variety on the 400 block of Castro Street.

The store not only had a car smash through its front doors the Monday following Pride, requiring a new entrance to be built, but has seen sales decline during the course of the street work. “I am sucking dust right now,” said Bennett, who complained to Wiener that it was a “total failure” on his part to close down Castro Street on a night that marks “a chance for me to bounce back.” Patrick Batt, a co-owner of Eureka Cafe nearby Cliff ’s, noted that “the minute you take away parking business dies” on Castro Street. He favored waiting to celebrate the new upgrades until early November. Castro Merchants President Daniel Bergerac countered that the party is aimed at attracting media atten-

tion so people around the city and Bay Area “know the Castro is back open for business” just in time for the holiday shopping season. While it is expected that all of the streetscape work on Castro Street between Market and 19th Street will be done in time for the party, Wiener told the Bay Area Reporter it is likely some repaving of Jane Warner Plaza at 17th and Castro streets will not be finished until early next month. The street celebration, which will include a ribbon cutting and blessing by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, will be from 6 to 8 p.m. October 30. Castro Street, from 17th to 19th streets, and 18th Street, between Hartford and Collingwood, will both be closed to vehicle traffic between 5 and 8:30 p.m. that day.t

“I was a volunteer group facilitator for 10 years, supporting other Shanti volunteers from all walks of life,” he said. “It’s so exciting to be part of a long-standing and valuable organization. Every community needs a local Shanti to ensure that nobody faces a life-threatening illness alone.” A volunteer and client, Chip Supanich is also a Shanti board member. “I have been a client since about 2000, but my volunteering with Shanti began in 1997 and continues to this day,” Supanich said. “I heard about Shanti through friends who had AIDS in the 1990s and had their own Shanti peer support volunteers. I noticed that there was something special about the relationship they had and I was curious, so I started volunteering with the agency in their activities program. I became a peer support volunteer in 1998, and switched to be a client when

my own medical situation changed in 2000, and I needed support.” Among the services Shanti offers is its LIFE program, a 12-week workshop designed for gay and bi men living with HIV/hepatitis C co-infection. LIFE, which stands for Learning Immune Function Enhancement, provides participants with the knowledge, motivation, skills, and support necessary to make lasting changes in health behaviors that can support immune system functioning and increase quality of life, success of treatment, and tolerability of treatment and side-effects, according to Shanti’s website. Supanich graduated from the LIFE program in 2007. “I have received so much loving support from Shanti, that it is imperative for me to give something back,” Supanich said. “Also, I have seen and

continue to see lives transformed because of the programs at Shanti. People grow when treated with compassionate care, and they grow through their experiences at Shanti, as have I.” Alexander Rivera, a program assistant at the Achieve Foundation, became a volunteer after moving back to San Francisco in 2004. “A friend introduced me to Shanti, and I immediately knew I wanted to become a volunteer,” Rivera said. “It is amazing to know that Shanti has been serving the San Francisco community for 40 years. This is a milestone that not many organizations are able to celebrate.” Over 600 people attended the event, which raised half a million dollars, according to Roy. Shanti’s budget for this year was more than $3.1 million; Roy’s annual salary is $107,000, he said.t

Honorees

Paula Rasmussen, a member of the WLAC board and master of ceremonies, presented several awards to judges and attorneys. New Alameda County Superior Court Judges Ursula Jones Dickson and Alison Tucher received incoming jurist recognition, while Judge Joan Cartwirght was recognized for her 23 years on the Alameda County bench and her retirement earlier this year. Alameda County Superior Court Judges Gail Brewster Bereola and Yolanda Northridge were honored as Women Jurists of Distinction. Attorneys Margaret Gannon, Aundrea Brown, and Lise Pearlman were recognized as Women Lawyers of Distinction. Finally, attorney Alice Beasley, who retired seven years ago, received the Velvet Hammer Award.t

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036065000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE STATE GARAGE, 818 LEAVENWORTH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109 . This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALAIN ETCHEVERRY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/29/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/29/14.

OCT 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036065600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SEN BEAUTY SPA, 1734 LOMBARD ST #A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BICH TNGOC HUYNH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/26/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/29/14.

OCT 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036058000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: F & S TRANSPORTATION SERVICE, 240 GRAFTON AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SAM GUOCHENG YU & FENGLI MA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/24/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/24/14.

OCT 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036058800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUPER SAVE SUPERMARKET, 4517 3RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed AOE SUPERMARKET, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/24/14.

OCT 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036054200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LA CHIDA, 2948 FOLSOM ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed LA CHIDA LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/22/14.

OCT 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036059500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OZ; OZ PIZZA; 508 CASTRO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed KAYSEKI, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/25/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/25/14.

OCT 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036051300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WISE CORPS, 6555 DANA CT, CASTRO VALLEY, CA 94552. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed MODO CORPUS, LLC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/19/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/19/14.

OCT 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550643

In the matter of the application of: PATRICIA RAMOS, 334 NOE ST, #2, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner PATRICIA RAMOS is requesting that the name PATRICIA RAMOS, be changed to NINA RAMOS HARRISON. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 11th of December, 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036035600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JDESIGNBUILD, 77 LEESE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JUSTIN WALSH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/28/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/10/14.

_ OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014____ FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036062900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MPOWER CONSULTING, 1045 LAKE ST, #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MELINDA LEE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/26/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/26/14.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014

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Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036052800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: COLLINS AND ASSOCIATES, 49 MISSOURI STREET, #7, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CARY S. COLLINS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/08/09. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/14/14.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036044500

OCT 16, 23, 30, NOV 06, 2014 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035412000

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036068000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RAFFI’S JEWELRY, 888 BRANNAN ST, #2015 #126, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RAFFI KHATCHADURIAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/30/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/30/14.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036070600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PROCAM PRODUCTIONS, 222 MONCADA WAY, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL ANDERSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/29/99. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/01/14.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036073300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AUNTIE LAN’S, 1031 OCEAN AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LAN FONG ENG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/30/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/02/14.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036040500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAN FRANCISCO FARMERS MARKET, 4929 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed DALY CITY MARKET (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/12/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/12/14.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036067300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KUMON OF BERNAL HEIGHTS, 3403 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed DCCT SOLUTIONS, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/29/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/29/14.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036067800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FOG CITY MULTIMEDIA, 50 SAN GABRIEL AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed FOG CITY MULTIMEDIA LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/30/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/30/14.

OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550635 In the matter of the application of: VAN MATTHEW PRATHER, 584 CASTRO ST, #683, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner VAN MATTHEW PRATHER, is requesting that the name VAN MATTHEW PRATHER, be changed to AELGYRR MATHUIN SONSTEGARD. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 18th of December 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 16, 23, 30, NOV 06, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036082800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUPER GARAGE SALE, 1343 POLK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VENA SHOTIVEYARATANA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/08/14.

OCT 16, 23, 30, NOV 06, 2014

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FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036087500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 500 ENTERTAINMENT, 17 PROSPECT AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOSEPH BARTHOLOMEW. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/19/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/19/14.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BENT, 759 CASTRO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TAYLOR CUFFARO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/16/14.

October 23-29, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

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The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: SEN BEAUTY & SPA, 1734 A LOMBARD ST., CA 94123. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by HAI TUAN NGO. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/02/13.

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OCT 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036080000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DE ROSA BROS. PARKING, 916 CHESTNUT, ALAMEDA, CA 94501. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JASON PAICH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/07/14.

OCT 23, 30, NOV 06, 13, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036093800

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O&A

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Vol. 44 • No. 43 • October 23-29, 2014

www.ebar.com/arts

Living in high aristocratic style by Sura Wood Tapestries from the series The Occupations of the Months from Houghton Hall, along with the uniform of the 4th Marquess of Cholmondeley and a coronation robe worn at the State Opening of Parliament in 1937 by Sybil, Marchioness of Cholmondeley. Also in the right background is the throne of the Prince of Wales.

step back in time, and for most of us a vicarious step up in class, Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House, the latest decorative arts exhibition at the Legion of Honor, is a stroll through history, art, culture and architecture via several generations in the life of one of the grandest aristocratic mansions in England. Designed in the 1720s for Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Britain, the fortunes of Houghton Hall, located in Norfolk where white deer still graze on expansive, welltended lawns, rose and fell with the fate of those who possessed it. See page 23 >> Rick Gerharter

Partenope: Can you Handel it?

Danielle de Niese as the title character in San Francisco Opera’s Partenope.

by Philip Campbell

he San Francisco Opera’s latest foray into the challenging and musically rich world of Baroque opera opened last week with George Frideric Handel’s Partenope. The well-cast, attractive, and exceptionally witty production, first staged at English National Opera in 2008, won an Olivier award as Best New Opera Production in 2009, and it has obviously held up well during the interim. See page 17 >>

at the Venetian Room Fairmont San Francisco Tickets: www.bayareacabaret.org

SIERRA BOGGESS 12/7 - 5 p.m.

JOHN PIZZARELLI & RAMSEY LEWIS 3/21 - 5 & 8 p.m.

BOBBY CONTE THORNTON 5/31 - 5 p.m. LILLIAS WHITE w/Billly Stritch 5/31 - 8 p.m.

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{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

<< Out There

14 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

Paging Mr. Turner by Roberto Friedman

ecently found in the arts pages of The New York Times: “The honor of the week’s best film [at the New York Film Festival] belongs to Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner. Its artistic title character is magnificently embodied by Timothy Spall.” Veteran tourists in London know what it means to go see the Turners at the Tate. The Tate Museum houses the world’s largest collection of oil paintings, watercolors and sketches by the 19th-century artist Joseph Mallord William Turner, better known as J.M.W. Turner. But little has been known about his personal life until now, with the esteemed British director Mike Leigh’s biopic Mr. Turner. Besides illustrating Turner’s love of light and how it plays off the sea and ships and mountains, Leigh depicts the painter as bouncing from one sexual relationship to another. It’s the role of a lifetime for Timothy Spall, a regular in Leigh’s acting troupe who won Best Actor honors at the Cannes Film Festival and is on many critics’ short list for an Oscar nomination. Meanwhile, an exhibition of Turner’s works is coming to the de Young Museum in San Francisco in June 2015. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics, the Mostly British Film Festival will be showing Mr. Turner at 6:30 p.m. on Thurs., Nov. 13, at the Vogue Theater, more than a month

before the film begins its regular run. Best of all, Spall will be at the Vogue for a Q&A following the screening. The event is free, but you must e-mail your request for tickets (two is the limit) to voguersvp@ gmail.com. You will get a confirmation, which you should bring to the theater that night. You will also get a preview of the Mostly British Film Festival, coming up on Feb. 12-19, 2015, and be able to buy a festival pass at the discounted price of $100. Sounds like a pretty good deal to us.

Late shows

Jeanette Yu

Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics

The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive [BAM/ PFA] has announced the closing performances for its aftergallery-hours program L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA. As BAM/ PFA plans to close its Brutalist-style galleries building to the public in late December in preparation for its move to a new building in downtown Berkeley in early 2016, the December L@TE offering will be its last. Here’s the promo: “Fittingly, the L@TE series will finish where it began with a performance by the iconic composer/ pianist Terry Riley on Dec. 5. Riley opened the series in November 2009, and he has since returned every fall but one to perform. A trailblazer of Minimalism with a breadth of influence that spans across the classical, electronic, and rock worlds, and a devotee of Hindustani classical music as well as

Timothy Spall as J.M.W. Turner in director Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner.

the wild beast. In the poetry, say, of Keats or Baudelaire. In the films of Judy Irving, whose lyrical documentary Pelican Dreams opens Friday at the Balboa. Irving, 68, who lives on Telegraph Hill married to the human protagonist of her 2005 hit The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, meets me in the hallowed recesses of legendary independent-film publicist Karen Larsen’s stronghold in South Park.

I’m always delighted to visit the vault, lined with DVD and VHS, where interviews are strictly monitored for time. As a starving journalist, I luxuriate in free lukewarm Frenchpress coffee, and nibble on a raisin cookie I discover came from Safeway. No matter. The context and pretext transform the humble offering. I hadn’t seen the film before speaking with Irving, which is just as well, because the film is too beau-

jazz, Riley remains one of the most dynamic compositional voices of the past century. Always highly anticipated, his performances possess an intimate character, with patrons seated or lying on the floor with pillows and blankets, surrounding the artist and his piano. Earlier in his career, Riley was known to play extraordinarily long sets, often running deep into the night and into the next morning. Approaching his 80th birthday next summer, Riley will perform for a lengthy three hours, joined by his son, guitarist and composer Gyan Riley.” Before this last in the series, Dalalæða: Music for Cellos & Electronics plays on Nov. 7; Inverness, CA-based musician and composer Jeremy Harris performs on Nov. 14; and pioneering avant-garde composer Pauline Oliveros and Thingamajigs

Performance Group play L@TE on Nov. 21. You can find the complete listings at bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Symphonic riches

This week, the San Francisco Symphony’s Oct. 23 & 25 concerts (Thurs. & Sat.) include longtime SFS pianist Robin Sutherland, much beloved in the community, taking a solo turn in Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 3. SFS concertmaster Sasha Barantschik is leading the entire program, and he’s also soloing in “Summer” from The Four Seasons, as well as performing a Bach Concerto for two violins with another SFS violinist, Dan Carlson. As a SFS spokesperson confided to Out There, “We’re always excited when our musicians get to take center stage, especially a musician as

San Francisco Symphony pianist Robin Sutherland at the ivories.

popular as Robin!” Besides the Vivaldi and Bach, the program includes Tchaikovsky’s Sextet in D minor for Strings, Op. 70, Souvenir de Florence. Both concerts begin promptly at 8 p.m. This is also one of the Symphony’s “split weeks,” in which they offer a second program as well, with maestro Christian Zacharias conducting Copland’s great Appalachian Spring. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, Morton Feldman’s Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety (first SFS performances) and Haydn’s Symphony No. 93 in D Major complete the program. That’s on tap at Davies Hall on Fri., Oct. 24, at 6:30 p.m.; and Sat., Oct. 25, 8 p.m., at the Mondavi Center, UC Davis. For more info and tickets for both programs, go to sfsymphony.org.t

A tale of two pelicans by Erin Blackwell

t’s a fine line between human and animal, threatening to break down at any instant, which is why homo sapiens has devised taxonomic categories to ensure those other people out there with hair, claws, eyes, and lungs like ours stay in their place. Every once in a while, that fine line disintegrates, and we behold our natures mirrored in

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These pelicans are notable for their spiky haircuts.

tiful for words. And I’ll tell you why that is. Because Judy erases the line between human and beast. Sure, she’s the one with the camera. That dreadful separation from wild nature is something no human can transcend. But Gigi, as she came to call the world-famous California Brown Pelican who stopped traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge, was allowed to direct the picture. A word about pelicans. They are the only bird with a totipalmate foot, i.e., all four of their toes are united by a web. They use these feet to walk, paddle and incubate their eggs by standing on them. They were once thought to feed their young with their own blood. In heraldry, a pelican “in her piety” appears over her nest with wings extended, wounding her breast, from which fall drops of blood. This fable made the pelican a symbol of charity. Nothing quite so outré occurs in Pelican Dreams, but the underlying theme is compassion. Judy Irving is one of those hardboiled Bay Areans capable of practicing her compassion in the midst of cruel realities. After tow-truck driver Joe Carver captures Gigi on the bridge by dropping a towel over her eyes, an event memorialized by one of many cellphones deployed during Gigi’s standoff with traffic, Irving meets up with her at the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center. Wildlife rehabilitator Monte Merrick, another compassionate realist, diagnoses Gigi with dehydration, thinness – in a word, starvation. Gigi, temporarily banded “Pink

193,” is placed in an aviary with others of her kind, where she preens her feathers, eats anchovies from a plastic tub, and generally waits to be strong enough to be released back into the wild. That means, strong enough to fly well. “Living in the wild is being an athlete at the top of your form,” says Merrick. While that’s happening, Irving turns her camera on another pelican rescue operation in which Morro, Chorro, and Toro live in a couple’s backyard. Morro, emerging as the most clearly rendered pelican character in the film, illuminates the people whose lives he touches. I said Gigi directed the picture, in that she focused the filmmaker’s attention on her species. Serendipity did the rest. This is the essence of Irving’s m.o. “I film stories unfolding in real-time. I don’t know what the outcome is going to be. It can be nerve-wracking. I let Reality dictate to me what and where I should film. And hope to God it’s going to work out.” Thank Goddess, it did. Pelican Dreams is a wise, careful, graceful, loving yet levelheaded tribute to one of the greatest birds on the planet. We are extremely fortunate to live so near to them. You can watch their magnificent flights along the coast at Ocean Beach. We need reminders we merely share, we do not own planet Earth. We need to protect these ancient and fabulous creatures so they can continue to inspire and delight us.t Plays the Balboa Theater in SF, Rialto Cinema Elmwood in Berkeley. More info: pelicanmedia.org.

Theatre>>

October 23-29, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 15

Demon barber of wartime London by Richard Dodds

f you’ve always wanted to see Sweeney Todd, you probably have. Several times. But TheatreWorks makes a strong case for another shave and a haircut at the hands of the demon barber of Fleet Street. And for the curious who have somehow missed seeing this masterful musical on stage, the case for a visit to Mountain View becomes closer to compelling. This production comes with a concept that resets the action from the gritty London in the throes of the Industrial Revolution to WWII London during the Blitz. But that’s more ostensible than actual, for what director Robert Kelley posits in a singular interpolated line – “We can do this show down here” – is that a theatrical troupe made stageless by the bombings has set up shop in an Underground station doubling as a bomb shelter. In other words, the story being told still takes

place in the Victorian era even if props, scenery, and costumes are improvised by what the 1940s actors have to work with. It doesn’t make much difference that Mrs. Lovett wears a snood and peep-toe shoes in Fumiko Bielefeldt’s mix-and-match costumes, and Andrea Bechert’s imposing tube-station set could’ve as easily been in service in 1900 as 40. But the mighty bones of composer Stephen Sondheim’s and librettist Hugh Wheeler’s collaboration still find dark and treacherous life in Kelley’s smart, steady, and somewhat tempered staging that suggests rather than illustrates the bloody doings. The cast is uniformly in sync with the penny-dreadful spirit of the piece, and the leading players each have their own way to bring something special to the proceedings. As the vengeful Sweeney Todd, who lost his wife and daughter after being wrongly imprisoned, David Studwell creates an imposing char-

David Studwell and Tory Ross, as a vengeful barber and his meatpie-baking accomplice, plan strategies in TheatreWorks’ production of Sweeney Todd.

assistant Tobias. Jack Mosbacher exudes purity as noble seaman Anthony, while Mindy Lynn is properly angelic as his beloved Joanne. Lee Strawn’s Judge Turpin is effective without exuding the typical oleaginousness, and Martin Rojas Dietrich plays henchman Beadle Bailey with a fluttery comic demeanor. Air-raid sirens replace the shrill factory-whistles that are usually used to punctuate scenes, and wartime paraphernalia spreads out from the stage into the lobby. The sounds and glow of bombs dropping outside the shelter help accentuate the musical’s final descent into murderous mayhem, but we are never really displaced from the original milieu of Sweeney Todd. Nor should we be.t

acter, and his voice has booming intensity. As his accomplice in murder and meat pies, Tory Ross makes Mrs. Lovett more of a naturalistic

Sweeney Todd will run through Nov. 2 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $19-$74. Call (650) 463-1960 or go to theatreworks.org.

Kevin Berne

character than a grotesquerie, and this helps make more plausibly moving Spencer Kiely’s mother fixation in his role of the simple

Bloody rites by Richard Dodds

his was a week for Grand Guignol, the theatrical form specializing in gore and grotesquery, first with a trip to TheatreWorks’ Sweeney Todd, and the following night to the 15th annual installment of Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest. While the bloody geysers of the original 1979 Broadway Sweeney are only symbolically rendered in the current TheatreWorks production, don’t expect Thrillpeddlers to palliate the plasma. Applause and laughter may have replaced the fainting and occasional vomiting of a century ago, but Thrillpeddlers can still knock an audience for the occasional loop with its graphic special effects. That is certainly the case with the centerpiece attraction, The Bloody Debutante, that goes to oh-no-theydidn’t extremes. Scrumbly Koldewyn’s oratorio has a Carrie kind of vibe as a young woman (Roxanne RedMeat), humiliated at a dance, seeks revenge. “Her date was a jerk so she went berserk,” sings a chorus of a secret society that, don’t ask me how, takes up her cause. The result is that the jerk (Earl Alfred Paus) winds up missing an appendage that the debutante repurposes as a penetrative weapon. Noah Haydon directed and choreographed the

elaborate piece, but it’s unclear who should be credited with the disturbingly realistic makeup job done on the jerk-date’s lower pelvis. Perhaps that would be prop designer Yusuke Soi, whose work is a critical component of the entire production, or busy costumers Birdie-Bob Watt, Dwight Overton, Diego Gomez, Julian Gutierrez, and Crystal Why. The Bloody Debutante is one of the four principal pieces that make up the current edition of Shocktoberfest. In Rob Keefe’s opener The Taxidermist’s Revenge, first presented at the 2006 Shocktoberfest, Birdie-Bob Watt is a delightfully maniacal, addled taxidermist who believes his craft should be considered art. With the help of an unwitting young chemist (Hayley Nystrom), he goes to extremes to prove his case to members of an arts academy. Russell Blackwood, who also serves as our contagiously gregarious host for the evening, is the director. The second piece dates back to Edgar Allan Poe’s 1854 short story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether” that then became a play that Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris added to its repertory at the turn of the century. Thrillpeddlers’ permutation is written and directed by Paulo Biscaia Filho of Brazil’s Vigor Mortis company, and stars

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Andy Wenger and Damien Chacona play feuding collaborators in Deathwrite, a short play they co-authored for the 15th edition of Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest.

John Flaw as the wild-eyed director of an asylum and Burna Palmeiro as an earnest journalist come to write a story about the doctor’s revolutionary “system of soothing” treatment. This piece turns on an easily predicted premise with a gross-out finale involving the reporter’s gagging efforts to ingest a dinner roast of questionable origins. The evening’s simplest piece comes last, and it is the best of

the lot. Andy Wenger and Damien Chacona co-authored Deathwrite, and they play feuding co-authors of a novel that promises to make them rich once it reaches the publisher. An argument over how to divvy up credit and royalties leads to a comically ingenious game of murderous one-upmanship that variously involves a poisoned cocktail, a gun, an axe, a garrote, and even a hand grenade. Blackwood

directs this little gem. Shoktoberfest wouldn’t be complete without the lights-out spook-show finale, a tradition that Thrillpeddlers regulars aren’t so likely to find spooky as the bloodred cherry on top of the cake.t Shocktoberfest will run through Nov. 22 at the Hypnodrome. Tickets are $30-$35. Call 377-4202 or go to thrillpeddlers.com.

Show business by John F. Karr

ou sing all the songs, and can probably hum the dance arrangements. But how well do you remember the actual words of classic Broadway musicals? They’re the bedrock – as the Library of America’s new collection of librettos has it, the scriptwriters “were the hearty standard-bearers in the evolution of this uniquely American art form.” So get ready to read them in the handsomely boxed, two-volume anthology American Musicals (over 1,400 pages; $75), which is subtitled The Complete Books and Lyrics of Sixteen Broadway Classics. The Library of America doesn’t kid around. The LoA had the foresight to engage Laurence Maslon as editor. He’s the host of the weekly radio program Broadway to Main Street, wrote The South Pacific Companion, and cowrote Broadway: The American Musical. If I have a criticism of American Musicals, it’s that Maslon, whose recent 2,000-word essay on the cultural

and historic confluences of Carousel was a high point of a recent issue of Opera News, wasn’t allowed to preface the LoA collection with a similar essay. He’s allowed a mere four-page introduction, which is, alas, duplicated in the second volume, in which he can offer a brief (very brief) history of the form’s evolution. He can tell us that the first volume highlights the works in which the musical attained a maturity of form, and that the second volume celebrates a revolution in content. Fortunately, Maslon is allowed to summarize each show’s production history, and offer the contextual notes we’re so curious about. He even has room to include the various Introductions and Prefaces of several scripts’ original publication. Most of the shows included have been previously published, though they’ve been long out of print. In this volume, they’re emended and corrected. Strenuous skill has been extended on Pal Joey in particular, which has been newly restored. Like

As Thousands Cheer (the revue in which Ethel Waters introduced both “Heat Wave” and “Suppertime,” and which is published here for the first time), no existing text fully reflects the state in which the show was first presented. It’s no wonder Pal Joey has always presented book trouble in revival. The difficult reconstruction is explained, briefly, in Maslon’s notes. Texts for the oldest shows have been taken from typescripts associated with each show’s original production. In at least one case, this is the Stage Manager’s “Bible,” the call book of cues from which each performance of a show is run. A whole lotta sleuthing was done to assure these scripts accurately contain the productions as they were on their opening nights. The shows selected for inclusion chart the form’s evolution, from the groundbreaking, serious-minded Show Boat (the first American musi-

cal-theater score and script of scale, scope, and ambition) through the mid-century shows that comprised the Golden Age: those quintessential musical comedies Guys and Dolls and Pajama Game, and their more sophisticated descendants My Fair

Lady, Gypsy and Fiddler on the Roof. Having returned to serious subject matter, the collection closes with latter-day pioneers of form and subject, Cabaret and 1776. It’s a treat to have On the Town (although it’s still available in The New York Musicals of Comden and Green, where it’s accompanied by a treasure trove of archival photos). Ditto Kiss Me, Kate, without the mangling of a recent revival, and Finian’s Rainbow, with its fanciful takes on Jim Crow politics and American economics. Should I have discussed the number of gay people involved in creating these shows, or the overt or oblique references to gaiety within them? I had longed to be snappy, erudite. But c’mon, 16 musicals spanning 50 years. I think I’ve done well just letting you know American Musicals exists. Your move.t

<< Film

16 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

The end of American innocence

by David Lamble

n CitizenFour, documentarymaker Laura Poitras catches that rare moment in the making of a reluctant celebrity, the moment before a beautiful young man – on the cusp of 30, but still looking like a distracted grad student – becomes a digital-era debutante. But Edward Snowden’s “coming out” party is a tad impromptu – downright bumpy, in fact, as he stumbles out of the shadows from idealistic NSA whistleblower to expat fugitive and temporary houseguest in that bastion of free speech, Putin’s Russia. Snowden at first resists Poitras’ entreaties to record his Hamlet moment as his huge data-dump plants him forever on the White House’s enemies list: “I’m not the story.” Quickly, he surrenders to his making-of-a-martyr moment and starts to unburden himself of the reasons behind his spy-guy apostasy, pausing periodically for a shave and hairgel update. Snowden’s now-familiar bombshell, that the NSA has a backdoor into all our secrets, across all platforms, is not CitizenFour’s only disturbing message. The film shows that this era’s Daniel Ellsberg (the 70s Pentagon Papers leaker) is likely to be hounded down the corridors of time by a liberal president as ruthless in his own way about silencing leakers as Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. CitizenFour represents the final abandonment of American innocence about how much of our freedom has been traded in for national “peace of mind.” In a most insidious way, Poitras’ intimate conversations with Snowden reveal how difficult it will be to move the bar back. In the film’s final frames, we are shown a freshly coiffed Snowden from a distance, as he adapts to a shrunken existence

Courtesy of Radius-TWC

Whistleblower Edward Snowden in filmmaker Laura Poitras’ CitizenFour: this era’s Daniel Ellsberg.

with his girlfriend. In the mid-60s, David Janssen was American television’s most captivating loner. The Fugitive was an escaped death-row inmate known to millions of viewers as an innocent man doggedly eluding his lawman pursuer, and equally persistent in hunting down the actual killer. 72% of TVs in use caught the final episode, in which Janssen’s Dr. Kimble was exonerated and the guilty man executed. Sadly, the hero of CitizenFour is guilty as hell, and likely fated to spend his prime years in legal limbo as most of us switch channels. Snowden’s last testament is eloquently put to Poitras’ camera. “To me, it comes down to state power as opposed to the people’s ability to resist that power.” Listen Up Philip Actor Jason Schwartzman is a really nice guy. How do I know this? During my pre-digital, audiotape back pages, Jason and I were standing in a hotelroom doorway chatting about his then-new black-comedy turn, and he noticed that my arm was hurt-

ing from the strain of holding an ancient Luftwaffe recorder. “Let me help you with that.” He is one of the largest talents and smallest egos among the Coppola clan. Fortunately, this nice guy is nowhere in evidence in Schwartzman’s pitch-perfect turn as an egomaniacal Manhattan novelist in writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s uncompromising, just funny enough Listen Up Philip. While it’s not necessary to the enjoyment of this quasiroman a clef to know just how much this director worships novelist Philip Roth, it doesn’t hurt to understand that Schwartzman’s Philip is fueled by bad-boy character traits possibly downloaded from Roth’s youthful follies, small-craft warnings for multiple girlfriends and whatever male friends stood by him. In the case of the film’s Philip, Schwartzman is a hilariously awful boyfriend: taking over his photographer girlfriend’s apartment as if it were his own; treating his longsuffering publisher even more shabbily. Refusing to do any publicity for

TriBeCa Films

Jason Schwartzman as Philip Lewis Friedman in director Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip.

his second novel, Philip wanders around Manhattan as if potential readers attended seances to channel his special glory. Eventually, even Gotham City is insufficient to contain his ever-expanding self-appreciation, and Philip takes up with an older male mentor. Ike Zimmerman, an astutely realized character from British veteran Jonathan Pryce, fleshes out the Roth theme by channeling the now-retired literary titan in his dotage. Ike kicks off the film’s second half by inviting Philip to spend a kind of live-in sabbatical at Ike’s Upstate summer cottage. Perry and cast refuse to indulge popular cliches about the pitfalls of this particular form of male bonding. One of the hardest things to pull off on-screen is virtue, a mostly nonblinkered good deed, which is what Ike extends to Philip. Genuinely admiring the younger man’s voice, Ike sets about warning his would-be protégé-successor about the longterm hazards of the younger writer’s boorish, take-no-prisoners approach to virtually everyone except Ike.

Warning: Listen Up Philip’s acerbic, abrasive, abusive humor works best when Schwartzman’s unpleasant little shit is making life unbearable for all in his path. Perry makes the bold choice of having Philip disappear for about a third of the action, and sadly, the scenes we spend alone with girlfriend Ashley (a competent if unexciting Elisabeth Moss) fall flat. This one-trick-pony knows only one master. Schwartzman has a physical appeal that grows on you slowly. Especially helpful are latefilm close-ups into his beautiful dark eyes. It’s a career high and possible Oscar nod from a stellar Bay Area screen talent. On balance, Listen Up Philip is a significant upgrade from Perry’s ambitious second feature, The Color Wheel. But otherwise it’s sort of like middling Woody Allen without the master onscreen. Woody fans will compare this film’s Philip Roth references to Allen’s uneven but ambitious 1997 Roth homage, Deconstructing Harry. It’s really a matter of taste: see one, rent the other.t

Is Paris burning? by David Lamble

arch, 1974. It’s been raining like hell for 10 of my first 17 days in San Francisco, and I’m getting cabin fever. On a rare dry night, I hit the not-yet-historically-protected Castro Theatre for a thriller, Fred Zinnemann’s pulse-racing take on Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal. As I luxuriate in the made-up fun of seeing how Michael Lonsdale’s French cop will avert Edward Fox’s bisexual sniper’s bid to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, I realize why the greatest joy at the movies is often a painstaking account of a great crime thwarted. Now the Paris-loving German director Volker Schlondorff ups the ante on disaster averted with Diplomacy, a psychologically nuanced account of how a not particularly nice human being – German General Dietrich von Choltitz (Niels Arestrup), loyal to Hitler – betrays his own atrocity-riddled war record by saving Paris from an unspeakable fate. The General has help from a world-weary but astute Swedish diplomat, Consul General Raoul Nordling (Andre Dussollier). Adapted from Cyril Gely’s stage play

(by Gely and Schlondorff), Diplomacy (opening Friday at SF’s Opera Plaza, Berkeley’s Shattuck Cinemas and the Smith Rafael Film Center) is an 88-minute battle of wits between two weary opponents that is part chess game, part marathon boxing match. Director Schlondorff hooks us from the get-go by affording Nordling an entrance worthy of Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula. Nordling succinctly explains what’s at stake as he prepares to surprise the General in his office lair. “Europe was consumed by war. We were all going to die. After the landings, the Allies marched on Paris. The German planned to destroy, to raze everything. Especially Paris. Nothing was to be left standing. The Fuhrer’s orders.” Schlondorff ’s battle-plan is to embed us with a creature with blood on his hands. Quoting actor Niels Arestrup from the film’s production notes: “He was responsible for the destruction of Rotterdam and the deportation of Jews from Russia. He was not the kind of man you’d want to spend your holidays with.” The filmmakers humanize the monster by giving him serious

/lgbtsf

Jérôme Prébois

Niels Arestrup as General Dietrich von Choltitz in Diplomacy, a film by Volker Schlöndorff.

bouts of asthma, and having Nordling bait the trap with the promise that the General’s family might be secreted out of Germany and spared Hitler’s wrath. The cat-and-mouse game between the men is firmly built on the historical evidence: the Germans had land mines positioned on the great Parisian landmarks the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre-Dame Cathedral. Why would even the Nazis want to destroy the world’s most beautiful capital? Apparently Hitler had so admired Paris when he marched in as

its conqueror that he was determined to build Berlin on an even grander scale. Now that Berlin was in ruins from Allied bombings, this grieving lover would exact his revenge. Like most great cinema ticking time-bombs and most successful battle plans and boxing-ring strategies, Diplomacy works by softening us up with astutely placed body blows: explicit descriptions of how Nazi land-mines would destroy the city’s bridges, thus allowing the river Seine to complete Hitler’s diabolical plan. Some of us may recall the threat

that Hurricane Katrina posed to an American Paris, New Orleans, with the Mississippi floodwaters substituting for human malevolence. The casting is sublime, with the leads Arestrup and Dussollier bringing their strategies and personal chemistry from the stage play. Queer viewers may also relish the saucy supporting role by openly gay German actor Robert Stadlober, last seen in these parts as the lovestruck homo boy camper in the 2005 German LGBT camping adventure Summer Storm.t

Dance>>

October 23-29, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 17

Swans in heat

2pub-BBB_BAR_102314.pdf

Jeff Busby

Australian Ballet company members in Swan Lake: bad behavior & excruciating staging.

by Paul Parish

hy is it so hot in here? Isn’t it hot in here? Am I coming down with –? Oh no, it’s just the first act of Swan Lake embarrassing me again. The prince has just snubbed his bride at their wedding. She’s desperate, she’s throwing herself at the best man, she’s kissing him! She looks at the prince – wait, oh my God, she’s wrapping her legs around the guy! The Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake, presented in Berkeley by Cal Performances last weekend, had much to admire – but since the first act kept giving me hot flashes, I stumbled out into the lobby at first intermission in a state of shock. I’d been prepared for a wacko Swan Lake. There have been so many recastings, re-set in the Regency as a bodice-ripper, or in an insane asylum, or in Mad King Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein, and some great ones: Matthew Bourne’s homoerotic version with all-male swans. I thought I was grownup enough for an acceptably risqué updating of Princess Odette to Princess Diana (which, in fact, Bourne’s version alluded to). But Graeme Murphy’s excruciating staging had so much bad behavior (very well-mimed by the performers), I kept flashing on my father’s terrifying mother mortifying us all at family gatherings. I was in shock when the curtain came down, and though the next three acts sort of made-up for the ballet’s first impression, it was nearly 3 a.m. before I could get to sleep. Swan Lake is a Gesammtkunstwerk: when Tchaikovsky wrote it,

Partenope

From page 13

Christopher Alden’s marvelously stylish, often risqué and endlessly inventive direction moves Handel’s rarely performed romantic comedy forward in time some 200 years to the glittering 1920s Paris of salons, Surrealists and sexual ambiguity. There are lots of references to the art world of the Dadaists, Marcel Duchamp, and especially American modernist Man Ray, that sleekly define the look of the production (set designer: Andrew Lieberman) and allow some surprisingly timeless and insightful looks into the moral ambiguity of the confused (and often confusing) characters. Handel’s libretto surrounds the

in reaction against Wagner’s Lohengrin, he was still green in judgment, and he wrote way more than he needed to, or than any choreographer has ever been able to use. But the music is magnificently doomladen, moodier than any adolescent, and the Berkeley Symphony, conducted by the Australian Ballet’s Music Director Nicolette Fraillon, made that music pulse, throb and break our hearts. When they got to Act III, they played the section that Balanchine re-choreographed as his Tchaikovsky Pas De Deux more ravishingly than I have ever heard it played by anybody. The company has every gift as players: they can act, they use their whole bodies when they dance, and they have very strong technique. Best of all, they all have a lovely softness and ease in the way they move, which makes them seem like a world unto itself. They cast a spell. Their toe shoes are silent, the women’s feet kiss the floor, and their arms betray no anxiety or strain, but rather extend beseechingly, like wings. Men and women alike have great power in reserve, and move elegantly, on a large scale. The men do this even in Olympic-scale efforts, lifting each other and the women heroically, with a generous spirit and no visible effort. The guys do tremendous lifts, tosses and catches as if they were nothing. You want her to run backwards, then throw herself at me, and I should stop her in midair? No problem. You want her to lie down on top of me, and I’ll press her up in a planche to arms-length? No problem. At one point in the

first-act wedding scene, party guests were getting thrown overhead as if they were nine-months-old, and the ladies were as delighted with it all as if they were toddlers. In short, they have energy to burn. This is not polite dancing. They’ve got power-lifting, ballet, and contemporary techniques; they can slide across the floor like Gene Kelly, kick like Bruce Lee. Moreover, they dance the classic steps – pas de basques, temps de fleches – with the classic lilt and easy flow of weight that belong to these steps. The principals can pout like Meryl Streep, seethe like Glenn Close, do the slow burn like Alan Rickman, and gloat like Snow White’s wicked stepmother. I wish I hadn’t had to see them in an indefensible interpretation of this classic, but I have great respect for the performances they gave us. The principals were very fine indeed: they were Madeleine Eastoe (Odette), Kevin Jackson (Prince Siegfried), and the slinky Lana Jones as the Prince’s gloating mistress. The courtiers often overacted, though the doctor (Tristan Message) who came at the end of Act I to take our fragile heroine away to the sanatorium (in a direct quote from Streetcar Named Desire: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”) had a wonderful tenderness and authority about him. And the necessary authority of the Queen was wonderfully rendered by guest artist Shane Carroll. I’d love to see them again. They have a legendary production of Don Quixote. May they bring that next time.t

titular (oh-la-la) soprano role with a collection of suitors – one of whom is a woman dressed as a man – keeping tabs on one another; a handsome prince who has left her at the altar; one who starts as her sworn enemy; and a would-be Casanova who hasn’t the courage to tell her. Sounds more like Offenbach than Handel, and Alden picks up on the deliciously sly possibilities with every trick and physical joke he can find appropriate to the period. The Roaring 1920s certainly keep Partenope’s busy salon energized with le jazz hot. Martinis, the Charleston, voguish posing, and visual takes borrowed from the cinema of Harold Lloyd and glamorous Hollywood musicals fill the stage with amusing detail. It takes awhile

for the audience to match the musical content to the direction, but by the time the final curtain falls, everyone is in synch with the amazing matchup. Alden is naughty, brilliant and sometimes a little adolescent in his humor, but the whole concept works to clarify a sometimes bewildering but good-hearted story about the war between the sexes, and the battle between reason and emotion. The cast is uniformly excellent, with soprano Danielle de Niese returning to the War Memorial in a deserved starring role, and favorite countertenor David Daniels looking and sounding terrific as her preferred suitor. There are some

CMY

See page 23 >>

9/23/14

9:18 AM

<< Music

18 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

The Tosca that Harvey heard by Tim Pfaff

arvey Milk’s last night at the opera, an institution he adored, was on Nov. 25, 1978, two nights before he was murdered. The opera was Tosca, which features throughout the film Milk as Harvey’s favorite (the recording he favors: no less than Maria Callas’). But in Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay, Harvey gushes about hearing his favorite diva, Bidu Sayao, on that fateful night at the War Memorial. Why Black made that change is anyone’s guess; would Sayao’s name have been more familiar to opera novices? In fact, the Tosca that night was Magda Olivero, and opera queens were out in force. I remember seeing Harvey, in celebrity mode, sitting in General Director Adler’s box. It was relatively early in Harvey’s term as San Francisco supervisor, but deep into the “second career” of Olivero, who was 73 or so, depending on which birthdate you used. This year on Sept. 8, Olivero died in Milan, at 104. Internet rumors had it that she had sung publicly in her 99th year, which no one who heard her would doubt. She made few studio recordings – though her

febrile Liu in the first-ever complete, 1938 recording of Turandot is worth hearing – and god knows what live “pirates” will pour out of the vaults now. The latest of them is a live Tosca from Verona on July 26, 1962 (Bongiovanni), where you can hear what the excitement was about. Even for people more than willing to suffer through inferior sound for a blazing performance, this recording has its challenging moments. But the long-suffering are rewarded with an incandescent Tosca that leaves no doubt about how the Italians once did it. It’s less a difference of technique than of style, but by the final curtain it’ll seem a shame that a Tosca sung this freely today would hardly be tolerated. From the penetrating if distinctively feminine initial offstage “Mario, Mario,” it’s clear that Olivero will be a Tosca to reckon with, but her careful building of the part, not a single note a throw-away, is astonishing to follow. The more acute the singing gets, the less you think of it as performance, so complete is the spell it casts. During his tenure, Adler did not allow encores of arias in a performance, insisting that repeats were never as good, and

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there wasn’t one in 1978. But after a shapely “Vissi di arte” in Verona, Olivero assents to the cries of “bis” (“again”) and outdoes herself with a steadier, more concentrated, even more expansive one. Yet she’s merely the center ring of a rich vocal circus. Tito Gobbi, Callas’ peerless Scarpia, in potent voice, is the ideal foil – malevolent, oleaginous, chillingly assured – for Olivero’s sophisticated, more impulsive but no less dangerous Tosca. I’ve never heard the frenzy, on both sides, of the unpremeditated murder better realized. Even in their company, mainstay tenor Flaviano Labo claims vocal laurels with a pealing, red-blooded Cavardossi. There’s a terrific bis of “E lucevan le stelle,” and three bonus tracks give more of Labo’s splendid singing, from a 1964 Il Trovatore. The previous year, Georg Solti, in

his first year as music director at London’s Covent Garden, began a new Wagner Ring. Even the staunchest admirers of Solti’s studio Ring (Decca) concede that its last installment, the 1965 Walkuere, is its weakest link. His live Walkuere of Oct. 2, 1961, in arrestingly good sound (Testament), would make a canny substitution for Solti Ring completists. The conductor was literally dodging rotten vegetables outside the Royal Opera House at the time, and during rehearsals for this Walkuere, had the decisive falling out with Heldentenor Jon Vickers, who made good on his vow never to work with the conductor again after the run. Despite such stresses, Solti is on good behavior in the pit, delivering a vivid Walkuere without the extremes of tempo and decibel that were to mar some of his other Wagner recordings.

For his part, Vickers is as blazing a Siegmund as you’ll hear him anywhere, and his singing is captured in almost anatomical close-up. One can only assume he was kneeling in front of the downstage mikes for the Todesverkundigung. If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to share the stage with him, this is your chance. Vocally and dramatically, Claire Watson is his true twin, interpolating the Leonie Rysanek scream as Siegmund draws Nothung from the oak. Hans Hotter, who also directed the show, is sometimes in his 1960s wooly voice, but his Wotan remains authoritative, the second-act monologue one of his most hair-raising. Rita Gorr delivers the thunderclap Fricka you always knew she had in her. Solti later used the little-known Anita Valkki as the Third Norn, but here she’s an ardent, accurate Bruennhilde.t

Gays in the ’hood by Brian Bromberger

There Goes the Gayborhood? by Amin Ghaziani (Princeton University Press, $35) “ his is the only place to be ourselves, to be with people who are like ourselves and not be looked down on,” is a key theme expressed by an anonymous resident of Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., featured in University of British Columbia associate professor of sociology Amin Ghaziani’s new book, There Goes the Gayborhood? In the last few years there have been articles in newspapers and blogs about the purported demise of gay neighborhoods or “gayborhoods” (including the Castro), with LGBT people leaving and straight households arriving. Ghaziani wanted to see if this observation was true, and if so, why. The book is a history of gayborhoods, considers what the future might hold for them, and analyzes their present plight. It defines a gayborhood as having a distinct geographic focal point, a unique LGBT culture, a concentration of selfidentifying gay/lesbian residences, and a cluster of gay-owned or gayfriendly commercial spaces. Gayborhoods were born following WWII, after thousands of gays and lesbians were discharged from the military and settled into cities that had housed military bases, as many LGBT did not want to return to their provincial and bigoted small towns. Sociologist Manuel Castells documented that the rise of gayborhoods was “inseparable from the development of the gay community as a social movement.” One could say they were the physical embodiment of gay communities. Their appeal came from their being a beacon of tolerance, secure havens from antigay violence, a place “from which they could resist all things heteronormative, and a self-controlled territory in which they could incubate

an oppositional consciousness.” So freedom and safety were their chief assets. They also cultivated sexual subcultures, fostering a sense of sexual liberation, so one could find friends, hook-ups, or spouses. Gayborhoods have supporters as well as critics. “There’s an old saying among realtors that if you want to improve a neighborhood, rent to a gay man” is a quote from the president of the Greater San Diego Business Association. Gayborhoods have also been attacked as gay ghettos, or as activist Urvashi Vaid called them in 1995, “more spacious closets.” Are gayborhoods the victims of their own success? The chief challenge to gayborhoods is that gay life has moved beyond the closet. “Post-gay” people profess “that their sexual orientation does not form the core of how they define themselves, and they prefer to hang out with their straight friends as much as with those who are gay.” Does this new gay paradigm, typical of teenagers and young adults, render the gayborhood obsolete? To answer this question, Ghaziani looked at 617 newspaper articles across the US from 1970-2010, analyzed demographic trends from the 2000 and 2010 US Censuses, and interviewed 125 gay and straight residents of Chicago (particularly Boystown, where he lived). Gayborhoods are de-gaying because sexual orientation is receding in primacy for how many of us define ourselves. So it is just as easy for LGBTs to leave the gayborhood as it is for straights to move into them. But many straights prefer to live in a “diverse neighborhood” rather than a “gay neighborhood,” leading Ghaziani to conclude that some straights who live in gayborhoods may not be as politically progressive as they think. Post-gay does not mean post-discrimination, and almost all LGBTs say

we have not reached full equality with heterosexuals. People of color, smalltown gays, and transgender individuals still see a need for gayborhoods as safe harbors. So gayborhoods are not necessarily declining, as gayborhoods have become entertainment districts or marketing assets for cities. The criticism that the Castro is turning into a gay theme-park for tourists is an example of this cosmopolitan shift. Ghaziani argues that gayborhoods are growing, not ending, being reimagined into new possibilities as vibrant cultural enclaves. Ghaziani provides no easy answers to the questions he has posed. While he gives strong evidence that gayborhoods are continually evolving entities, he underemphasizes the economic reasons for why established gayborhoods such as the Castro are losing LGBTs: the rents are unaffordable, except for the well-to-do. Gentrification alone cannot explain why gayborhoods are changing, but it is a stronger factor than Ghaziani is willing to admit. Still, this critique doesn’t invalidate his conclusion that gayborhoods today still offer exciting sexual, gender, and spatial expressions for both LGBTs and straights, reinvigorating cities in a new era of urban and social innovation.t

<< Out&About

20 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

Out &About

O&A

Noises Off @ Shelton Theater Michael Frayns' hilarious theatre comedy of onstage and backstage pratfalls. $20-$48. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Oct. 25. 533 Sutter St. at Powell. (800) 838-3008. sheltontheater.org

Pastorella @ Exit Theatre Stuart Bousel's comic intrigue play about actors (gay and straight) wrapped up in backstage romances and obsessions. $20. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Oct. 25. 156 Eddy St. theexit.org

Project Mah Jongg @ Contemporary Jewish Museum New exhibit about the popular Chinese game and Jewish culture's affection for it. Thru Oct. 28. Also, Designing Homes : Jews and Midcentury Modernism, an exhibit of architectural, furniture, dinnerware, photos, and interior design in postWWII. Also, Hardly Strictly Warren Hellman, thru Oct. 18. Other exhibits, lectures and gallery talks as well. Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. thecjm.org

Sat 25

Le Chat Noir

Octoberly by Jim Provenzano

emember when you were in grade school and you made leaf prints with tempera paints? How about the crayon scribbles you covered with black paint, then scratched out Halloween cartoons? No? You didn’t get creative in grade school? Too bad. Well, these people did, and their art is a bit more complicated, but just as earnest and fun.

Thu 23 Armistead Maupin @ SF Public Library The celebrated local author of the bestselling Tales of the City series has an onstage discussion about his books (the first of which is the tenth annual One City One Book selection) with local gay author K.M. Soehnlein ( The World of Normal Boys). 6pm. Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin St. lower level. www.sfpl.org

Author Events @ Modern Times Bookstore Oct. 23: Gentrification Forum with Richard A. Walker, Brent Plater and Diane Serafini, 7:30pm. 2919 24th St. 282-9246. www.mtbs.com

Brian Copeland @ The Marsh The prolific solo performer returns with two of his shows in repertory: Not a Genuine Black Man (Thu & Fri 8pm) and The Waiting Period (Sat 5pm). $30-$100. Thru Nov. 22. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.com

Conversation Series @ Lake Merritt Senior Living SF Public Library's Karen Sunheim shares a slideshow and talk about Bay Area LGBT history, with items from the Hormel Collection's archives. 3:30pm. 1800 Madison St., Oakland. www.thelakemerritt.com

Ego, Insufficiency @ Z Space Director Andy Jorden stages two plays by Dr. Carl Djerassi, accomplished author, playwright, and scientist (inventor of the birth control pill), on the anniversary of the playwright's 90th birthday. $20-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Nov. 7. 470 Florida St. (866) 8114111. www.zspace.org

Lest We Forget @ YBCA Remembering Radical San Francisco, a films series of documentaries thru Oct. 26. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Oct. 23: The Black Cat (8pm) and The Raven (6:45, 9:20). Oct. 24: Ghost Busters (7:30) and InnerSpace (9:30). Oct. 25: Bay Area Science Festival, with the Mythbusters guys, BahFest and Quiz-o-tron 9000. Oct. 26: 2001: A Space Oyssey (2:30, 8pm) and The Tree of Life (5:20). Oct. 27: 2001: A Space Odyssey (7pm). and Guiseppe Makes a Movie (10pm). Oct. 29: Halloween (7:30) and Strange Behavior (9:!5). Oct. 30: InForum with Marissa Mayer (Yahoo CEO) and Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO). 7:15pm. $12. 429 Castro St. 6216120. www.castrotheatre.com

Thu 23

Shocktoberfest @ The Hypnodrome Thrillpeddlers' 15th annual Halloween season shock theatre presents the new horror, song and puppet-filled show, The Bloody Denutante, Isabel's Zombie Holocaust and other acts. $30-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. (special Tue & Wed shows Oct. 28 & 29). Thru Nov. 22. 575 10th St. at Bryant. 377-4202. www.thrillpeddlers.com

Yeast Nation @ Victoria Theatre Ray of Light Theatre company's West Coast premiere of Tony Award winners Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman ( Urinetown ) lively new comic rock musical, set three billion years ago, about yeasts. Yup, yeasts. $25-$36. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm. Thru Nov. 1. 2961 16th St. at Mission. www.rayoflighttheatre.com

Fri 24 Alien She @ YBCA Opening party for the first exhibition to showcase the impact and ephemera of the Roit Grrrl movement and culture. Free-$15. 8pm. Exhibit Tue-Sun 12pm-6pm. thru Jan. 25. 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

An Audience With Meow Meow @ Berkeley Repertory Theatre Musical comedy features songs, sequins, satire and star Meow Meow. $29-$89. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Oct. 19. Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.BerkeleyRep.org

Las Chicas de Esta Noche @ Brava Theater Center Living La Vida Evicted, Rene Yanez' story, song and dance performance about displacement, featuring Lulu Ramirez, Persia Vicky Jiminez, the drag performers of the closed Latin nightclub. $15-$20. 2781 24th St. brava.org

Die, Mommy, Die! Lois Tema

Dance Theatre of San Francisco @ Cowell Theatre

Red Wolf @ the Flight Deck, Oakland

Fall season of the collaborative dance company premieres new works by Mark Foeringer, Sandrine Cassini, Milissa Payne Bradley and Dexandro Montalvo. $20-$45. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Fort Mason Center, www.dancetheatresf.org

Amy Sass and Anthony Clarvoe's very adult sexually-charged take on the Red Riding Hood (Adults only). $15-$40. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm Sun 7pm. Thru Nov. 8. 1540 Broadway, Oakland. (510) 473-8867. www.raggedwing.org

Dia le los Muertos @ SOMArts Cultural Center

Songs and Sorrows @ Oakland Museum

Visions at Twilight, a group exhibit of Mexican Day of the Dead-inspired art, shrines and installations. Oct. 24: Gathering the Embers: The Spirit of Home, a multi-disciplinary storytelling performance. $8-$10. 7pm. Exhibit Thru Nov. 8. 934 Brannan St. www.somarts.org

Dias de Los Muertos 20th Anniversary, a group exhibit of the Mexican-themed art. Thru Jan. 4. Oct. 24, a special outdoor public mural unveiling; Day of the Dead celebrations Oct. 26. Free/$15. Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Glass Pumpkin Patch @ Cohn-Stone Studios, Richmond 25th annual exhibit and sale of beautiful gourd-shaped glass sculptures will be the last, ending a quarter century of pumpkiny decorative beauty. Harvest your faves Fri. & Sat., 10am-4pm thru Oct. 26. 560 South 31st Street, Richmond. (510) 234-9690. www.cohnstone.com

Ideation @ SF Playhouse Aaron Loeb's darkly comic play about corporate consultants undergoing a dubious project. $20-$120. Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm & Sun 2pm. Thru Nov. 8. 450 Post St. 6779596. www.SFplayhouse.org

Party People @ Berkeley Repertory Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, and William Ruiz's music and theatre stage adaptation of Black Panthers and Young Lords veterans who reunite at a young activist art opening. $29-$79. Tue-Sat 8pm (Wed & Sun 7pm). Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Nov. 16. 2025 Addison st. (510) 647-2900. berkeleyrep.org

Terror-Rama @ Exit Theater Awesome Theatre's production of Nicholas C. Pappas and Anthony R. Miller's satirical clash of modern day feminism vs. '70s-era slasher flicks. $20. 8pm. Fri & Sat thru Nov 1. 156 Eddy St. www.awesometheatre.org

Welcome, Foolish Mortals @ Glamarama, Oakland Fun and spooky group exhibit of artwork inspired by Disney's Haunted Mansions, curated by Flyyn DeMarco. Exhibit thru Nov. 3. 6399 Telegraph Ave. (510) 655-4526. www.glamarama.com

Women's Spiral Dance @ Masonic Temple, Orinda Daughters of the Goddess Womyn's Temple presents their annual seasonal ritual dance; includes a crafts marketplace. $23-$29. Opens 6:30pm, program 7:30pm. 9 Altarinda Road, Orinda. www.DaughteersoftheGoddess.com

Sat 25 Among Dreams @ LGBT Center

Die, Mommy, Die! @ New Conservatory Theatre Center J. Conrad Frank (Katya SmirnoffSkyy) stars in the local production of Charles Busch's campy comic play about a Hollywood family's tragicomic exploits. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Nov. 2. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Chelsea Rae Klein's multimedia exhibit of works that interpret the once-closeted lives of LGBT military members, and the anniversary of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. An online archive of the exhibit includes bios, photos and multimedia. Thru Nov. 11. 1800 Market St. www.amongdreams.com www.sfcenter.org

Do I Hear a Waltz? @ Eureka Theatre

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi

42nd Street Moon's production of the rarely seen Rodgers-SondheimLaurents musical, about a lonely tourist in Venice, stars Tony nominee Emily Skinner. $25-$75. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri 8pm. Sat 6pm. Sun 3pm. 215 Jackson St. 255-8207. www.42ndStMoon.org

Thu 23 Yeast Nation

The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Out&About>>

The Chat Noir @ Modern Eden Gallery Group exhibit of realist and dreamlike paintings of black cats. Thru Nov. 1. 801 Greenwich St. www.moderneden.com

Dia de los Muertos @ Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts Annual exhibit and fundraiser includes 12 altar displays and installations, live performances, food and desserts, DJed music, comic Mario Montes. $45-$70. 6pm-9pm. 2868 Mission St. 821-1155. www.missionculturalcenter.org

Evening of Hope @ City View, Metreon Project Inform's annual benefit features A Night of Lifesaving Fashion, condom couture gowns, cocktails, culinary delights, VIP after-party, DJs Kidd Sysko and DCM, live auction packages. $200-$500. 6pm. 135 4th St. www.projectinform.org

Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English House @ Legion of Honor Exhibition drawn from the collections of a quintessential English country house. Built in Norfolk in the 1720s for England’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall features suites of grand rooms conceived by architect William Kent as settings for Walpole’s old master paintings, furniture, tapestries and Roman antiquities. $10-$18. TueSat 9:30am-5:115pm. 34th Ave. at Clement. www.legionofhonor.org

Sun 26

October 23-29, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 21

Skulls @ California Academy of Sciences

Dogpatch warehouse is now a museum store, gallery and program space. Exhibits include Celebrating AIGA (the American professional organization for design). Mon-Fri 9:30am-5:30pm. 2569 Third St. 7730303. www.sfmcd.org

Exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth, including the new popular exhibit of animal and human skulls (thru Nov. 30). Special events each week, with adult nightlife parties most Thursday nights. $20-$35. MonSat 9:30am-5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. calacademy.org

Enter the Mandala @ Asian Art Museum

Woods to Wildflowers @ SF Botanical Gardens

Celebrating AIGA @ Museum of Craft and Design

Enter the Mandala: Cosmic Centers and Mental Maps of Himalayan Buddhism (thru Oct. 26); Dual Natures in Ceramics: Eight Contemporary Artists from Korea (thru Feb. 22, 2015). Other exhibits as well. $15. Thru Sept. 14. 200 Larkin St. www.asianart.org

Leading Ladies and Femme Fatales @ Walt Disney Museum Leading Ladies and Femme Fatales: The Art of Marc Davis, including original drawings of Cruella DeVille, Tinkerbell and other iconic characters; thru Nov. 4. 104 Montgomery St. www.waltdisney.org

See blooming floral displays, trees and exhibits. Also, daily walking tours and more, at outdoor exhibits of hundreds of species of native wildflowers in a century-old grove of towering Coast Redwoods. Free-$15. Daily. Golden Gate Park. 661-1316. SFBotanicalGarden.org

Thu 23 Armistead Maupin

Tue 28 20th Century Salon Photography: A Tribute @ Robert Tat Gallery Group exhibit of vintage photography by famous artists like Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and others. Thru Nov. 29. 49 Geary St. 781-1122. www.roberttat.com

Book Club @ Magnet Samuel Delaney's science fiction classic Trouble on Triton is discussed; dress uop for the costme party, with tricks, treats and prizes. 7:30pm. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

Meditation Group @ LGBT Center Weekly non-sectarian meditation group; part of the Let's Kick ASS AIDS Survivor Syndrome support group. Tuesdays, 5pm, 1800 Market St. www.letskickASS.org www.sfcenter.org

Movie Monster Salon @ Community Miracles Center

Wed 29

Creature Comforts and Sublime Mysteries, a day-long workshop and activity day with classic horror clip screenings, crafts activities, miniperformances and more, focusing on the iconic monsters of cinema. $75 includes materials and light snacks. 10am-5pm. 2269 Market St. 9025638. www.monstermoviesalon.com

Art/Act: Maya Lin @ David Brower Center Exhibit of new works by the sculptor/ designer (Vietnam Memorial). Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. Sun 10am-1pm. Thru Feb 4, 2015. 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley. www.browercenter.org

Peter Berlin @ Magnet

Thu 30

Exhibit of photographs and autoportraits by the reclusive '70s art porn model; curated by Eric Smith and Mark Garrett. Thru Oct. 31. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

Semi-Famous @ The Marsh Don Reed's new solo show, SemiFamous: Hollywood Hell Tales From the Middle, includes tales of panicridden auditions and almost being shot by the Secret Service. $20-$100. Sat 8:30pm, Sun 7pm. Thru Oct. 19. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender @ Presidio Officers' Club Lisa Wolpe's solo show –a hit at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival– takes on the question of gender roles and performance in the classics. RSVP. 7pm. (Master class Oct. 26, 6pm). 50 Moraga Ave, Presidio. www.sfshakes.org

Sweeney Todd @ Mountain View Center for the Arts TheatreWorks' production of Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical mastepiece about The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a serial-killing barber in the 19th-century; reset in 1940s London. $19-$74. Tue & Wed 7:30pm. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Also Sun 7pm. Thru Nov. 2. 500 Castro St., Mountain View. (650) 4631960. www.TheatreWorks.org

The Tempest @ Buriel Clay Theatre African American Shakespeare Company's modern-day production of the Bard's classic, with toxic waste and environmentalism added to the stormy mix. $15-$34. Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Thru Nov. 9. AAACC, 762 Fulton St. www.african-americanshakes.org

La Femme

Mon 27 10 Percent @ Comcast David Perry interviews local and visiting community members of note. This week, Perry speaks with Dr Marcus Conant about the current state of the AIDS / HIV pandemic. Perry also talks to Kishore Hari, Director of the Bay Area Science Festival. 11:30am & 10:30pm. Also Sat & Sun, 10:30pm. Channel 104.

1964: The Year San Francisco Came Out @ GLBT History Museum New exhibit focusing on San Francisco's emerging gay culture at the time of the pivotal LIFE magazine feature "Homosexuality in America." Reg. hours Mon-Sat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm5pm. ($5/free for members). 4127 18th St. 621-1107. glbthistory.org

At Large: Ai Weiwei @ Alcatraz Island The internationally acclaimed Chinese sculpture's exhibit of seven sitespecific multimedia installations; the largest art exhibit ever hosted by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. $18-$30. Daily except major holidays thru April 26, 2015. www.AiWeiWeiAlcatraz.org

Butch @ Austin Gallery Butch: Not Like Other Girls, the local installation of Los Angeles-based SD Holman's touring photo exhibit of butch women. By appointment thru Nov. 18. 799 Castro St. 282-4511. www.austinlawgroup.com

Steven J. Levin @ John Pence Gallery Exhibit of landscape, still life and touching figure studies by the talented realist painter. Thru Nov. 1. Mon-Fri 10pm-6pm. Sat 10am-5pm. 750 Post St. 441-1138. www.johnpence.com

Anthony Friedkin: The Gay Essay @ de Young Museum Exhibit of photos, and an audiovisual installation, by the Los Angeles artist who focused on gay underground culture of the late 1960s and early '70s in SF and LA. Thru Jan. 11, 2015. Lines on the Horizon : Native American Art from the Weisel Family Collection, thru Jan. 4, 2015. Free/$10. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoungmuseum.org

Gay Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels LGBT night at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the "Godfather of Skate." Actually every night is gay-friendly, including Saturday's Black Rock night (Burning Man garb encouraged). Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5. Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Hell in the Armory @ SF Armory Kink.com presents an adults-only Halloween-themed haunted house tour in their basement, Thru Nov. 1. $45. Various times. 1800 Mission St. www.HellintheArmory.com

Jason Mecier @ Glamarama The prolific mosaic artist's new exhibit of selected celebrity portraits (many seen on TV and in films) must be seen up close to be truly appreciated. Thru Nov. 9. 304 Valencia St. 861-4526. www.jasonmecier.com www.glamarama.com

The Boyfriend @ Eureka Theatre 42nd Street Moon's new production of Sandy Wilson's send-up of 1920s musical comedies, with three girls on the Riviera in search of love and adventure. $25-$75. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri 8pm. Sat 6pm. Sun 3pm. Thru Nov. 16. 215 Jackson St. 255-8207. www.42ndStMoon.org

Science Exhibits @ The Exploratorium Visit the fascinating science museum in its new Embarcadero location. Free$25. Pier 15 at Embarcadero. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm (Thu night 6pm-10pm, 18+). 528-4893. exploratorium.edu

Sony Holland @ Level III The acclaimed jazz vocalist performs with guitarist Jerry Holland. Weekly 5pm-8pm. Also Thursdays & Fridays. JW Marriott, 515 Mason St. at Post. www.sonyholland.com

Testament @ Geary Theatre American Conservatory Theatre presents Seana McKenna in Colm Tóibín’s lyrical solo play about a mother whose son's been taken by fanatics. $20-$120. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun matinees. Thru Nov. 23. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Unmasked @ Contemporary Jewish Museum The LGBT Historical Society's annual gala fundraiser includes drinks, food, live entertainment and a dazzling array of LGBT historicallly-themed silent auction items, plus wines, and travel packages. $75-$125 and up. 6pm-9pm. 736 Mission St. www.unmaskedgala.org

Thu 30 La Femme @ Slim’s French electro band with retro inspiration ( Psycho Tropical Berlin ) performs. Sego and Future Twin open. $15-$40 (with dinner). 9pm. 333 11th St. 255-0333. www.slimspresents.com

David Johnson @ Harvey Milk Photo Center Retrospective exhibit of the accomplished local photographer, who was Ansel Adams' first African American student. Tue-Thu 4pm-8pm. Sat & Sun 12pm-4:30pm. Thru Oct. 19. 50 Scott St. www.harveymilkphotocenter.org

Donna Minkowitz @ SF Public Library The veteran lesbian journalist reads from and discusses her new "magical realist" memoir, Growing up Golem: How I Survived My Mother, Brooklyn and Some Really Bad Dates ; presented by Keshet, Congregation Sha'ar Zahav and the NorCal chapter of the NLGJA. 6pm. Hormel Center, third floor, main library, 100 Larkin St. www.donnaminkowitz.com www.sfpl.org

Harvest Feast @ Verdi Club The Castro Country Club's annual fundraiser holiday dinner, with host Heklina, and Alaska Thunderfuck a Halloween "Freak Show" theme; plus a silent auction. $75-$1000. 6pm10pm. 2424 Mariposa St. at Potrero Ave. (800) 838-3006. www.castrocountryclub.org

Magic Parlor @ Chancellor Hotel Whimsical Belle Epoque-style sketch and magic show that also includes historical San Francisco stories; hosted by Walt Anthony; optional pre-show light dinner and desserts. $40. ThuSat 8pm. 433 Powell St. www.SFMagicParlor.com

Spookeasy @ Great Star Theatre Halloween-themed stage show transforms the entire theatre into a spooky holiday costume ball, Vaudeville stage acts, trapeze performerers, puppets, cocktails, doors pre-show 8pm, show 9pm. costume ball and dance party afterwards. and a festive Barbary Coast party atmosphere. $55-$65 (VIP $99). Thru Nov 2. 636 Jackson St. www.SpookeasySF.com

Stranger Than Life @ Cartoon Art Museum The Cartoons and Comics of M.K. Brown (thru Feb 15). Other exhibits and events. Free-$8. Tue-Sun 11am5pm. 655 Mission St. 227-8666. www.cartoonart.org

Terry Furry @ Loakal Art Gallery, Oakland Vulnerable Gods, an exhibit of the gay artist's Greco-Roman myth-themed paintings. Mon-Sat 11am-6pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 560 2nd St., Oakland. www.terryfurry.com www.ebxloakal.com To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section, online at www.ebar.com/bartab

<< TV

22 • Bay Area Reporter • October 23-29, 2014

She kissed a girl, and liked it by Victoria A. Brownworth

V is just so good this season, we could be watching around the clock. Gone are the days of “there’s nothing on tonight.” The problem is, it’s more like going into an ice cream shop where you want everything. In the TV ice cream shop, one of the first flavors we want is Jada Pinkett Smith. Prior to Fox’s fabulous Gotham (the best of the comics-to-TV shows this season, which doesn’t mean we aren’t also glad to see Arrow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returning this month), we’d seen Pinkett Smith in some iffy movies and some so-so TV. We sort of liked her in TNT’s HawthoRNe, but that show was a little too sweet for us, especially when its main competition was Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. Edie Falco is hard to compete with on any day. But on Gotham, Pinkett Smith is anything but sweet, and she has no competition. As mob boss Fish Mooney in the dark world of Gotham City, she stands out as both powerful and hard-edged. You don’t screw with Fish Mooney. Pinkett Smith is a revelation. And one of the latest reveals is: she likes girls. Be still our hearts. Last episode she interviewed two young women for position of chanteuse and more in her nightclub. Two gorgeous young singers – dark hair, sultry, fantastic performers – auditioned. This scene was right out of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Fish asks one of the singers, “Do you like boys or girls?” The singer hesitates, then responds, “Boys.” Fish: “Pretend I’m a boy.” Oh. The next singer gets the same question, and also says boys. Fish says, “Seduce me.” The young woman, Liza, says, “You’re joking.” “I never joke,” Fish says, and we know she means it. Liza sang, then she came over to Fish’s table. Sat on it in her ultrashort denim skirt and black fishnet stockings, tossed back Fish’s drink, then kissed her. Really kissed her. Then walked out. In a later scene, Fish puts both women on a rooftop together and has them fight for the job. Liza (Mackenzie Leigh) wins, flattening her competition. What will happen between her and Fish? We can’t wait to find out. As long as it’s not what happened between Renee (Victoria Cartegena) and Barbara (Erin Richards), because whatever that was, it was bad. Yet the sparks still fly between them, even though Barbara is with Det. James Gordon (Ben

Mackenzie) now. James was nonetoo-thrilled to discover a detective he works with had been with his girlfriend before him. So many reasons to watch Gotham. The lesbians are just one. Likewise there are so many reasons to watch ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder, and the hot gay sex? Yikes. The scenes we saw on the Oct. 16 episode with the addendum from one participant, “This thing he did with my ass made my eyes water,” were not like anything else we’ve ever seen on network (and maybe not cable, either) involving two men. HTGAWM creator Peter Nowalk, an out gay man, said he wanted to make gay sex as commonplace on TV as straight sex. He’s doing it. He’s also not averse to having middle-aged women get their freak on. In this same episode, Elizabeth Perkins, who is a very attractive 54, was romping for the camera. And the show’s star, Viola Davis (Annalise), 49, is having an affair as well as flirting with a student, and oh yes, she’s married. Alas, HTGAWM just saw its first gay suicide. So much happens on this show. In that same episode Annalise discovers a selfie of her husband’s penis on the phone of a murder victim who was also his student. We see Annalise pull off her stylish wig, revealing her real hair beneath. She peels off her false eyelashes, then wipes off her makeup in one of the most gut-wrenching evocations of peeling back the layers we can remember seeing on TV. When Sam (Tom Verica) comes home, she asks him the nine words ABC had been promoting for a week: “Why is your penis on a dead girl’s phone?” Tune in Oct. 23 to find out the answer. We really love this show. It follows another fave, Scandal, which is, according to Ellen’s wife, actress Portia de Rossi, “My absolute favorite show of all time.” De Rossi was a guest on the Oct. 16 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live talking about her new role on Scandal as Elizabeth North, head of the RNC. She was also talking about how she is never going to have children, which was refreshing if only as a counterpoint to women always being asked when, when, when are they going to have babies. Speaking of Scandal, Cyrus (where is Jeff Perry’s Emmy? Seriously!) may still be mourning his husband’s murder, but he’s still a man, after all. So sex remains on his bucket list. We have to applaud Rhimes for getting men over 50 to take their clothes off. Meanwhile, Scandal star Kerry Washington posed for the cover of Allure maga-

zine sans make-up. We’re pretty sure that’s not completely sans, but she’s both setting a good example and looks amazing. Back to Rhimes: she was a guest star on Fox’s The Mindy Project on a episode titled “The Devil Wears Land’s End.” We love Rhimes, we love Mindy Kaling, we loved this episode. There is a scene between Mindy’s nemesis, Dr. Jean Fishman (Niecy Nash), and Jean’s girlfriend, Deborah, that is such perfect lesbian drama, we thought we were watching a home movie.

Copper tone

Gay cops are still a taboo subject, Fox’s sitcom Brooklyn Nine Nine notwithstanding. Southland and Six Feet Under had gay cops, as did the soap One Life to Live. Rookie Blue has a lesbian cop. But there are no gay cops on any current police procedural drama. Straight people can accept gays in some roles, but not in others. A furor has erupted over last week’s episode of the long-running CBS cop drama Blue Bloods, which took on the subject, and how taboo it remains. The show did a very serviceable Jada Pinkett Smith filming on location job of exploring why gay cops stay for Fox-TV’s Gotham. closeted. There was even a lesbian ogy, as well as forcing Frank to kiss nun, Sister Mary. his ring. Blue Bloods, which (inexplicaThe episode peeled away varibly, as it’s a pretty violent show) is ous layers of discrimination gay deemed “family friendly,” became a cops face. Their fellow officers feel lightning rod for conservatives bebetrayed. Their families disown cause the show folded Catholicism them. No one wants to work with into the storyline. The right was them. Hazing and bullying become up in arms calling the show, which commonplace. Many are driven off showcases an Irish Catholic famthe force by the abuse. In the Blue ily of cops, anti-Catholic. Since we Bloods episode, older cops, includare Catholic, we can speak to this ing Henry, make anti-gay comissue: Speaking the truth about the ments. An argument about whether Church is not “anti-Catholic.” Ask or not gay cops belong on the force Pope Francis. breaks out at the Reagans’ dinner Blue Bloods revolves around the table, with Danny’s and Erin’s kids multi-generational Reagan family, appalled by the anti-gay tone of which includes the Police Commistheir great-grandfather. sioner of New York, Frank (Tom When the gay bashers are caught, Selleck); his father, Henry (Len Carone is the son of a suburban police iou), a former commissioner; son chief who had regaled the detectives Danny (Donnie Wahlberg), a howith a series of Adam and Stevemicide detective; another son, Jaime style comments about gay cops. It (Will Estes), a rookie beat cop; and was a difficult episode to watch. The a daughter, Erin (Bridget Moynavictim, a veterinarian, dies of his inhan), an assistant district attorney juries. But while he is still fighting for Manhattan. It’s a close-knit famfor his life, his mother tells Danny ily of practicing Catholics. So when a story about him as a child that is a cop witnesses a gay bashing – beheartbreaking. “Everyone loved my cause he was in the gay bar where son,” she tells Danny. And we can it happened – and is outed because see why. he’s the material witness, the cop’s Bill Donohue, well-known hosexuality becomes a major issue, for mophobe and president of the the media, the commissioner, the Catholic League, sent out a press gay cop’s partner, the Church and release about the episode. (Insert the Reagan family, because Danny eye-roll here.) This stood out to us: caught the case. “The Bible is ‘anti-gay.’ That is the The gay cop is Latino and a logical conclusion that unfolds in Catholic, but the media wants to this episode. The show also misknow how the commissioner can represents the sexual abuse scandal: support gay cops when he supports almost all the molesting priests were the Church. The episode presents a practicing homosexuals. Moreover, tense scene where Frank gets bomthe scandal ended in the mid-1980s, barded with questions about the thus showing how far behind the gay cop in a press conference. “The times the show’s writers are.” Catholic Church condemns homoWhere to begin? There was no sexuality as a sin, and you, commismention of the Bible in the show. sioner, are famously Catholic. How Traditionally, Catholics aren’t big do you line up your anti-gay faith Bible readers anyway. Jesus said with your role as an equal-opportunothing about gays. The Blue Bloods nity employer?” The commissioner episode is compelling, and if rightreplies: “What my men and women wing websites and professional do in private is their own business.” homophobes like Donohue are The reporter responds, “So you crying foul, you know the writers only condemn homosexuality on got it right. The haters are enraged Sunday?” because the gay characters are symFrank lets out a heavy sigh and pathetic as well as realistic, and no says, “Well, I do believe the church is one of merit in the episode hates gay a little behind the times on this. But people. Not even the Cardinal, who then, I still miss the Latin Mass; so admits he agrees with Frank. next question.” The lesbian victim in the Oct. 15 It’s a superb scene, as we see episode of Stalker wasn’t a cop, but Frank struggling with that very conher father was. The episode opened flict, his faith and his personal beat her wedding, as her cop dad was liefs, which are clearly at odds, since walking her down the aisle to her he’s not anti-gay. Frank’s comment bride. This was another example of about the Church being “behind the gays behind the camera (Stalker is times” on gay issues has his friend Kevin Williamson’s new baby) putthe Cardinal demanding an apol-

ting gays in front of the camera. We really like Stalker, although sometimes we worry that it is a primer for actual stalkers. We had been afraid Dylan McDermott would ruin the show like he did last season’s Hostages, but he’s doing a good job of presenting a multi-faceted character who is both detective and stalker. McDermott makes that creepy dichotomy work without every being cringeworthy. Speaking of cringeworthy, we saw some awful stuff on ABC’s Tim Allen sitcom Last Man Standing. We’re going to say right up-front, we hate this show. We have no idea why people think Tim Allen is funny. Here’s what the show had on their Columbus Day episode: Allen taking shots at gay people and Hillary Clinton. As well as women, repeatedly. “You [women] are like firemen who are arsonists,” he tells his wife. It was his contention women start all fights. Insert sound of no laughs here. Then mom made a Rosa Parks joke. A Rosa Parks joke. On a show with no black people. Then there was another joke from Allen about bringing the old battleax to a sale because the store has stuff for wives, too. These jokes in 2014? How are there still people who find homophobia, racism and misogyny funny? With Halloween fast approaching, you want to get your freak on with American Horror Story. Ryan Murphy has outdone himself here, and if you had clown fear before, you may never sleep again. Or you may find the best costume to wear for Halloween. We tried to resist Showtime’s new drama The Affair, but we have a thing for Maura Tierney, so we had to start watching. It’s as good in its way as Fox’s Gracepoint, which has made us fall in love with Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) all over again. Speaking of being in love, CBS is forcing us to break up with one of our favorite lesbian-bi-pansexual characters, Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi) on The Good Wife. Panjabi is leaving the show this season. How will we live without those leather miniskirts and kohl-rimmed eyes? The new season of The Good Wife is sheer genius. Out gay actor Alan Cumming, who plays political strategist Eli Gold, is beyond brilliant. No one has perfected the moue the way he has. We can’t wait to discover what happens with Alicia’s gay brother, Owen (Dallas Roberts), now that it’s been revealed his lover is 1) married, 2) Palestinian, 3) a porn star. When Owen walked out, was it because he didn’t know, or because he didn’t want Eli and Alicia prying into his personal life? We were blessed to have caught Shia LaBeouf on Jimmy Kimmel Live telling the story of how he got arrested in June for disrupting Cumming on Broadway in Cabaret. Blessed, because it was one of the most amazing, funny tales we’ve ever heard on a TV talk show. Just imagine LaBeouf grabbing Cumming’s ass in those leather shorts he wears in the play. Here are 10 new shows you should be watching now, not just for gay content (although always a plus), but because they are too good to miss: American Horror Story: Freak Show, Gracepoint, The Affair, Peaky Blinders (Netflix), Selfie, Gotham, HTGAWM, Blackish, Jane the Virgin and Stalker. We didn’t mention Ebola, but since it’s not going anywhere and the hysteria is just beginning, we know there will be time. So for Ebola coverage, fab new shows, and material to rile up the homophobes, you know you really must stay tuned.t

t <<

Fine Art>>

October 23-29, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 23

Houghton Hall

From page 13

At one time or another, it was rented out as a “shooting estate”; was almost torn down; endured long periods of benign neglect; or was nearly sold due to the expensive upkeep. Now both artifact and family home, it’s occupied by descendants of the original owners. How do they keep the place warm in the chilly damp of England? Well, radiators, of course, in addition to those fabulous, lorrysized fireplaces. The man behind the home’s sweep and grandeur, the textured richness of its marbled, soaring, vaulted ceilings, stately columns, mahogany furnishings and acresized doors interwoven with classical statuary and art, was William Kent, a genius of early Georgian design and proponent of the Palladian style. A painter, interior designer, landscape gardener and architect, Kent absorbed much from his travels to Italy as a young man, and transplanted elements of Rome’s Baroque palaces and mythology to jolly old England. It took 19 years to complete the Houghton from inception to completion. The show occupies seven galleries, several of which attempt to approximate various rooms in the mansion. Conceived of as a 40-foot cube, the Stone Hall is a vast entryway of white marble and stone with discreet black accents and ornately carved ceilings. It was a paean to the splendors of Ancient Rome, whose wealthy inhabitants weren’t known for their restraint. But it’s an exer-

Nick McCann

A view of the Saloon at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England.

cise in minimalism compared with the adjacent, opulent, gilded Saloon state room, with walls covered in crimson silk velvet, known as caffoy, and upholstered furnishings to match. The original fabric cushioning gilt mahogany chairs and stools is 300 years old, and has miraculously survived. Sumptuous as the preceding chamber is Spartan, this space, an homage to Rome, was dedicated to Apollo, god of the arts, and Venus, goddess of beauty. Kent’s

design for the Dining Room, where gluttonous revelers consumed copious amounts of venison and other game washed down with gallons of claret and beer, was an ode to Bacchus. Also included are sculptures, tableware, floor-to-ceiling tapestries, handsome soup terrines and a punch bowl – gifts of the King, a coronation gown and train of red velvet and ermine, a double-sized gold snuff box and a selection of

18th-century British paintings by Gainsborough and Hogarth, as well as works by Frans Hals, Artemesia Gentileschi, Diego Velazquez and others. Unfortunately, what we cannot see are the 250 paintings that Walpole’s grandson was forced to sell to Catherine the Great of Russia in 1779, to pay off his grandfather’s debts, which were in the neighborhood of 50,000 pounds. The collection became the foundation of the Hermitage Museum. The exhibition will no doubt capitalize on and benefit from the popularity of Downton Abbey, and the public’s fascination with the waning British aristocracy and their rambling estates, titles, leisure time and priceless possessions, but its intended audience might find it a let-down and kind of flat, literally, as in two-dimensional. Murals representing library shelves stacked with books, or one of a giant marble fireplace, just don’t cut it. The scale of this extraordinary home doesn’t readily translate to a museum setting. In fact, a television program or, in this case, digital footage on display screens more effectively conveys the awe-inspiring qualities of the interiors and the experience of actually being in the space. Although the house has remained in private hands, it found a savior in Sybil Sassoon, later Marchioness of Cholmondeley, who cultivated

the literati, loved the house, studied it and meticulously renovated and restored it when not racing her Bugatti sports car with her husband, the Earl of Rocksavage. Nicknamed “Rock,” he was heir to Houghton and reputedly the handsomest rich man in Britain at the time. A highlight of the show is a gallery focused on the Sassoons’ collecting. Sybil and her brother Philip were educated in Paris and patrons of John Singer Sargent, who painted a number of works in this room, including a Velazquez-flavored portrait of Sybil (“Countess of Rocksavage”) posed against a black background in a long, flowing garment, The Spanish jewelry she wore in the striking picture mysteriously disappeared. Sargent, whose profitable relationship with the Sassoons lasted nearly a quarter-century, also painted Sybil’s elegant mother (“Lady Sassoon”), and sketched other family members in charcoal. The artist’s “Head of a Gondolier” hangs on a wall above a coffer (ca. 1700), an astonishingly gorgeous, compact trunk made out of ebony, tortoiseshell, stained horn, gilt bronze and other exotic materials, and created by Andre-Charles Boulle the elder, a status furniture designer who was an 18th-century version of cabinetmaker to the stars.t Through Jan. 18, 2015.

BAR 3.75x5 online appointment ad v3.indd 1

8/15/14 10:17 AM

Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Philippe Sly as Ormonte in San Francisco Opera’s Partenope, George Frideric Handel’s Baroque creation.

Partenope

From page 17

delightful standouts in the rest of the ensemble, notably tenor Alek Shrader as Partenope’s enemyturned-supporter, and most especially countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo making his SFO debut in a part that makes both extraordinary physical and vocal demands. Mezzo Daniela Mack as the jilted Rosmira looks convincing in drag despite the pencil moustache, and she is also obviously at home in a real girl’s dress after the, how shall we put it?, reveal in Act III. Her voice is steady and full-bodied, and her acting is believable. Like all the characters, Mack’s Rosmira gets plenty of opportunity to show off, and she nails her arias with rich tone and crisp ornamentation. Shrader also has a fine voice that

combines both power and purity. He proves himself to be adept at physical comedy, whether lying on his back in a yoga posture or singing one of his difficult arias through the transom window above a locked water-closet door. Cute-as-a-button Anthony Roth Costanzo beats him with arias sung while falling upstairs, tap dancing like Fred Astaire, and declaring his love shirtless from a balcony. He also isn’t afraid to customize his voice to the part, injecting a whining nasal quality that clearly isn’t his natural sound. As the captain of Partenope’s guards, current Adler Fellow Philippe Sly is changed here to be her gay best friend, and while he gets fewer moments in the spotlight, he is always an attraction. Wait till you see his get-up before the duel in Act III!

Of course, we have come to expect elegance and excellence in David Daniels’ Handel performances, and he doesn’t disappoint. His Arsace has some of the loveliest music in the score, and he relishes every moment with an often-wistful quality that touches our hearts. Danielle de Niese has the looks and vocal allure to make Partenope a signature role, and despite a few (really only a few) moments of slight breathiness at the top of her register, she sails through the long evening looking and sounding every bit the glamorous vamp. Conductor Julian Wachner in his SFO debut keeps things moving right along, while highlighting some very pleasing detail. If you think Baroque opera isn’t your cup of tea, Partenope just might change your mind and switch you to champagne.t

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Treat yourself to Skulls. Now through November 30. This Halloween, come face to face with flesh-eating beetles and hundreds of animal skulls in this revealing exhibit. Get tickets at calacademy.org

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PERSONALS Vol. 44 • No. 43 • October 23-29, 2014

Bridget Everett

The motorboating merry-maker by Jim Gladstone “I understand the comparisons that people make between me and Bette Midler,” says dynamo diva Bridget Everett, whose chaotic song-and-schtick merrymaking will be in full effect at the Independent this Sunday night, October 26. “I mean, she’s great, I’ll take it. It’s flattering.” Newsday wrote, “In the history of raunchy broad originals, which includes Sophie Tucker and Bette Midler, we now have Bridget Everett.” And the New York Times did the math: “Multiply the mouthy, flesh-jiggling Bette Midler by one hundred…” See page 27 >>

Bridget Everett

ROAD SHOW POP-UP GAY BAR’S AUTHENTIC—AND APPROPRIATED—FUN

Andrew Inadomi

by Andre Torrez

High atop Twin Peaks, the BAAAHS bus entertains Pop Up Gay Bar revelers.

“It’s like liquefied Christmas Ham!,” one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence exclaimed to Sister Selma Soul as they sat at a large table with a small group for cocktails. Both were sipping from a scorpion bowl and one of them was appropriately decked out in bondage gear, since it was the kickoff of Folsom Street Fair weekend. She posed for a few photos. My favorite was the absurdity of a tiny straw plunging through her gaping open-mouth ringlet. Everyone laughed. The gaudily-garnished drink was described as being too sweet, but matched our tiki-themed surroundings. We were inside the Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill for the September installment of Pop-Up Gay Bar. If you were around San Francisco during its original dot-com boom, the Guerrilla Queer Bar (GQB) pop-up events that ran from 2000 to 2003 were legendary in their own right. Simply put, they were artful, DIY-staged events where groups of gays would infiltrate straight bars and random locations, unannounced and en masse as a way of community building. See page 27 >>

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

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26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 23-29, 2014

Dallis Willard

Scenes from the dueling Pop Up Gay Bars, clockwise from top left: Pop Up Gay Bar’s visit to the Tonga Room. Leather daddy at The Tonga Room. Enjoying a cocktail at the Tonga Room. A panoramic view of Pop Up Gay Bar’s recent Twin Peaks event. The dancing crowd on Twin Peaks. Dallis Willard

ebar.com Tony DiCaro, Inset: Bryan Vincent

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Road Show

From page 25

Predating the flash mob and lasting much longer, it was considered to be activist nightlife and took its cue from Popcorn Anti Theater (a travelling theater troupe) and had other prank-based influences. Original organizers Brian McConnell, along with Sister Selma and some others, decided now would be a good time to reprise their concept. Little did they know, another unrelated group had a strikingly similar plan. “People have a tendency to stick to their comfort zone and neighborhood. This was to encourage people

around the country. There is a tech aspect to Pop-Up Gay Bar, but it’s a basic email list in order for the group to announce a change of location in case there’s trouble with a particular bar or venue. McConnell said rarely does something like that happen, but ironically, the old SoMa leather bar, The Loading Dock, had kicked them out years ago due to an “uptight” owner. “It freaks them out a bit when they see 100 people at once.” McConnell said. “But if the bar staff is serving drinks efficiently, then they’ll be making money.” The economics behind it all seemed simple enough.

October 23-29, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

ble car never happened, but we did make it as far as the Li Po and then back to the Tonga to see if the line died down, which it did. Friday’s happy-hour crowd was densely populated with so many tourists and normals that even the Sisters, along with very few leather daddies, were outnumbered or barely noticeable. This event needed something to boost attendance and to get numbers to reflect its more prominent origins. In fairness, this was only their second outing after August’s ferry ride from San Francisco to Oakland. But by the end of September, McConnell and his compatriots would find their much-

The Welcoming Committee’s Daniel Heller and Mary Pitek. Pop Up Gay Bar’s Brian McConnell.

to explore the city, like a field trip,” said McConnell. He talked about today’s overcomplicated apps, which had nothing to do with the original incarnation since smart phones weren’t a thing yet. However, in a short amount of time, technological advances have allowed for the type of community-building he envisioned to grow

Bridget Everett

From page 25

That said, if Everett ever does a number about wind and wings, it’s more likely to be about flatulence and cellulite than spiritual motivation. And her in-your-face, boobsakimbo performances –in which audience participation has been known to include mouth-on-belly motorboating– are pretty much the polar opposite of “From A Distance.” “I’d love to be compared to John Belushi or Richard Pryor or Millie Jackson,” says the suddenly indemand Everett, who’s just coming off a critically-acclaimed run of her new show, Rock Bottom at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York. “Animal House is one of my favorite things in the world. I love performers who are larger than life, slightly unhinged, and have an element of danger to them.” Unlike Midler, whose most outlandish stage routines fall within the sequined air quotes of showbiz selfconsciousness, Everett, 42, performs with a vital rawness. She writes the bulk of her own material, and her raunchy double-entendres (more often single entendres, actually) are delivered not with a wink, but with a very real lift of her skirt. There’s a joyous, carnal ferocity to Everett’s act that frankly, isn’t all an act. Everett grew up in Manhattan, Kansas, one of six children –three boys, three girls– of a music teacher mother and a largely absent lawyer father. “Everyone in my family is really funny,” said Everett. “But I couldn’t keep up with my mom and my older siblings, so in school, I became a real wiseass, always trying to make people laugh.” Some of the calmest times in a houseful of boisterous children came, she recalls, when “my mother used to get drunk and play the piano.” “She encouraged my love of music, but also my love of drinking and having a good time. When she got pissed off, she would go around

But while the lines at the Tonga Room were long (too long), things didn’t seem particularly queer. I signed up for the email list after being tipped off to the story about the group’s tourist-trap, indoortropical getaway. For the sake of spontaneity, the full itinerary usually isn’t revealed until the week of. This particular outing planned on hitting up Chinatown’s Li Po Lounge before taking the cable car to the Hyatt Embarcadero. The ca-

needed rallying cry. “It sucks watching a for-profit startup steal something you and your friends created as an ad-hoc community event.” McConnell was referring to a Boston-based group called The Welcoming Committee (TWC), which launched their own Guerilla Queer Bar pop up series in San Francisco earlier this month. They’ve been doing it on the East Coast for seven years, and while they may share the same name as the old

the house saying ‘motherfuckershitterasser.’ And that’s how we all talked at home. I just did a show in Kansas City and my mom, who’s turning 80 in a couple weeks, came down with my brothers. When I did my song ‘What I Gotta Do to Get That Dick in My Mouth?”’ she jumped right in and sang along.” Despite attending Arizona State University on scholarship for a vocal performance degree, Everett ultimately realized that her vague plan for a career in the rarefied arena of opera might not be the right fit for her hybrid personality of songbird and sailor.

Alas, this left Everett with an unclear plan for what to do with herself, and much of her early 20s was spent in a soul-sucking Phoenix miasma of waitressing, karaoke bars, weed smoking, and hard drinking. After being sexually assaulted at the end of a long night’s partying, Everett realized she needed to make a major life change. In 1997, the girl from Manhattan, Kansas headed for New York to sort herself out and find a form for her talents and sensibility. While struggling to pay her rent as a waitress over the next decade –Everett left restaurant work alto-

Richard Mitchell

Bridget Everett with Kenny Melman

event, they do things slightly different than their predecessors. McConnell wrote about the history to the rebel event for Medium.com. “Besides the issue of commercializing it, we felt like it was a truth in advertising issue,” McConnell said. Aside from taking the name, he alleged that TWC didn’t really have a grasp on the concept of what ‘guerrilla’ means since it had been said the bars and venues they infiltrate are now getting a heads-up before they arrive. TWC’s founder Daniel Heller and McConnell both admit to having met in September. McConnell said Heller wanted to meet under the “pretense of learning more about GQB and [Pop-Up Gay Bar]”. Meanwhile, Heller called his organization an LGBTQ activist movement that also happens to be part of a growing cohort of “missiondriven, for-profit social enterprises.” Heller added that TWC is also in the process of ramping up their partnerships with non-profits. As for cluing the bars that they’ll be popping-up ahead of time, Heller justified it by explaining that his version of GQB had grown so much in other cities that when you shift from 30 to nearly 1,000 people showing up at events, tipping venues off helps accommodate the needs of the customers. In one instance, he said that a nightclub’s staff even received diversity training in advance of the group’s arrival. “We were actually pretty amazed they had the audacity to do that in San Francisco, like nobody would notice,” McConnell said, still referring to the name. “He did not tell us that he was just going to steal the name and trick people into thinking

it was us.” According to Heller, McConnell seemed excited during their meeting about TWC’s plans and even offered to help. McConnell did say that more options were a good thing for the community. “The term GQB is used by dozens of people across the country in lots of different ways,” said Heller. “We don’t claim to have created it, nor do we claim to own it.” He never uses names, but Heller wrote in an email that the criticism against him and TWC by one of the “old organizers” was “bizarre.” The two organizations went head to head with events held on the same night, October 3. While we didn’t get an account of the TWC version of GQB’s event at Public Works; the original group had 70-degree nighttime temperatures atop Twin Peaks during a heat wave to celebrate (thanks to the cooperation of police who allowed an initial estimated 100 people, which would grow to about 300) have a party with music until BAAAHS (Big Ass Amazingly Awesome Homosexual Sheep) or a mobile disco-art-Burning Mantype vehicle would take party goers to Land’s End and then moonlit views of Sutro Baths. As of now, both organizations plan on continuing outings and events with a stated focus on LGBTQ community-building and/or building equality. But it’s clear they have opposing ideals on how these goals should be achieved.t

gether just three months ago– she frequented downtown piano bars and cabarets, ultimately connecting with Kenny Melman. Melman was the Herb to Justin Bond’s Kiki in their then-emerging, now legendary duo act; a rough-edged, poignantly comic blend of monologues and music that inspired Everett with a sense of shape for her own future work. Ten years later, in collaboration with Melman and Sex and the City creator Michael Patrick King, Everett had developed her first fulllength solo act for the non-profit Hell’s Kitchen production company, Ars Nova: At Least It’s Pink, was a comedic autobiographical grenade featuring original Everett tunes such as “Canhole,” a tribute to, well, arse nova. “The audiences were mostly gay guys and people who identified as queer,” recalls Everett. Pink attracted major New York press attention –this is when the somewhat misleading Bette Midler comparisons kicked into high gear– and packed 150-seat houses of theater folk and downtown types for two and a half months. But it didn’t set fire to Everett’s career as she and her avid supporters expected. “All these nice people were coming to the show and telling me how much they loved it,” she recalls. “But nothing came of it.” It was not yet time to give notice at Ruby Foo’s. “I’m kind of half cabaret, half punk rock,” Everett says, acknowledging that she slumped into a period of depression post-Pink, realizing that her singular style did not easily fit any pre-conceived mainstream niche. While continuing to wait tables, Everett honed her material and performed a monthly gig at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater with her band, The Tender Moments—the bassist is Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz. “I became much more confident in myself as a performer and a songwriter,” says Everett of her Tender Moments gigs, which eventually led to the Public Theater commission-

ing Rock Bottom, a successor to Pink for which Everett collaborated with Broadway composer couple Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. During the development of Rock Bottom –which ended its acclaimed six-week run on October 11– Everett simultaneously began to gain national recognition thanks to the support of comedian Amy Schumer, a major fan. Schumer has booked Everett as an opening act for her stand-up concerts and also featured Everett as a guest on her Comedy Central program, which led to Everett’s contract for an upcoming special of her own on the channel. “I can’t thank Amy enough for the exposure,” says Everett. While music-based performers are not a favorite of comedy club bookers, Schumer’s endorsement has helped Everett secure gigs and introduce herself to audiences in a whole new set of venues. She says her fan-base is becoming more diverse, too. “Now, a lot of young straight women are coming to see my shows. They feel liberated by the tone and the content, and I love that.” With a full evening’s worth of fresh material just launched in Rock Bottom, and much of her older work about to be committed to perpetual on-demand viewability via her Comedy Central special, this Sunday’s show at the Independent will likely give San Franciscans their last chance to jump on the Everett bandwagon (or jump on Everett, which sometimes happens at her gigs) before it rolls into mainstream consciousness. “There will probably come a point,” says Everett. “Where I shouldn’t be motorboating people.” Well. If she insists. And if she promises to never sing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”t

Bridget Everett, featuring Hank and The Cupcakes. Sunday, Oct. 26, $20. 8pm. The Independent, 628 Divisadero St. www.bridgeteverett.tumblr.com www.theindependentsf.com

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28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 23-29, 2014

Fall festivities

by Donna Sachet

he National Lesbian/Gay Journalists Association Northern California chapter recognized local writers in the event room of Bloomberg’s local offices last week. We often take for granted the talent that local writers bring to our LGBT publications, informing us with stylish, painstakingly researched text. This year the 2014 Excellence in Journalism Honorees are the Bay Area Reporter’s own Matthew Bajko and KGO/ABC7’s Sergio Quintana and the Bob Ross Scholarship Award goes to Susan Cohen currently studying at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. A special In Memoriam Award was presented to the late Stu Smith whose credits include writing for the Bay Times and television work on Face2Face and The Drag Show. Accepting on his behalf was Dave

Earl, his devoted partner and a man of few words, but endless dignity. At the conclusion of the awards, Marga Gomez, having just stepped off a flight, raised the crowd’s spirits with timely and topical humor, bringing the event to a delightful end. We then dashed to Lookout for the release party of Gypsy Love’s new music video Kaleidoscope. It’s bound to be a hit, full of the energy, optimism, color, and genuine love that exudes from Gypsy and her infectious music. The bar was packed with well-wishers, including Gary Virginia, Deana Dawn, Kippy Marks, Louie Marco, Nicolas Bettinger, Patrik Gallineaux, Day Casper, Jeff Doney & Xavier Caylor, and DJ Tweaka Turner. Leave it to Steven Satyricon to devise an original way to celebrate his birthday last Saturday at a private home in Noe Valley. Besides the usual potluck and camarade-

Gypsy Love with Louie Marco at her music video premiere at The Lookout.

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rie, each guest was asked to bring a specific story about their friendship with Steven, which would be videotaped for posterity. Hilarity ensued! Beyond the laughter, Steven was also reminded of how many lives he has touched and how deeply he is loved by so many. Later that day, we headed to the 30th annual HRC Gala on the arm of Rafael Mandelman at the elegant Westin St. Francis Hotel. This organization has a long history in San Francisco, not without its critics along the way, but under the new leadership of Chad Griffin, we are seeing new traction, broader support, and decisive strategies for the future. As an indication of their success in reaching a broader spectrum of the LGBT community, the crowd was one of the most diverse in age, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity that we’ve seen at this season’s many annual galas. We chatted with John Marez, Jim Hormel & Michael Nguyen, Frank Woo, Linda Scaparotti, Georg Lester, Rick Hamer, Christopher Vasquez, Mark Rhoades, Alex Walker, Cliff Wong, Matt Herrick, and Shaun Haines. The onstage line-up was full of heavy-hitters including stirring speeches by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Prop 8 plaintiffs Kris Perry & Sandy Stier, and Academy Awardwinning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who boldly challenged San Francisco to live up to its reputation as a refuge for LGBT youth. Gibson Dunn accepted the Corporate Equality Award for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm, Cecilia Chung received the Charles M Holmes Community Service Award, and Barb Young received the Ally for Equality Award, presented by her brother and surprising the audience with a stage appearance by her husband, legendary San Francisco 49er Steve Young. Lenny Broberg did another masterful job with the live auction, raising thousands of dollars in minutes with humor, heart, and skill. After that, we beat the crowd to The Café for the birthday celebration of Cleve Jones, hosted by Juanita More and attended by an incredible mix of Cleve’s friends and supporters. We caught up with Sister Roma, BeBe Sweetbriar, Sal Rosselli, Ken Henderson & Joe Seiler, Tim Paulson, Leo Volobrynskyy, Rich Hamer, Skye Paterson, Erin Lavery, and Arthur Allione. At the perfect moment, Joseph Rocha in full Marine dress uniform presented a birthday cake as friends sang the traditional song, led by Jonathan Groff of HBO’s Looking. Something tells us that the look of complete delight on Cleve’s face was 100% authentic! We should have more ceremonies and events like this recognizing our pioneers, leaders, and creative geniuses while they are here with us to enjoy the adulation. Nearly wrapping up the boundless season of annual galas were last week’s AIDS Legal Referral Panel’s 31st annual From the Heart at the Julia Morgan Ballroom of the Mer-

life-threatening illnesses by providing one-on-one peer support for 40 years. Their elegant event utilized the tireless talent of auctioneer Liam Mayclem, saluted their founder Charlie Garfield, and then recognized the extraordinary Shanti supporter Stu Smith and community leaders Reverend Cecil Williams & Janice Mirikitani of Glide Memorial Church, who accepted the Nancy Pelosi Lifetime Achievement Award with grace and poise. Truly these are two angels who walk among us! And Tommy Taylor, thank you for your gentlemanly company all night. As the whirl of fall galas winds down, we send heaps of gratitude to all Steven Underhill those who do the heavy Donna Sachet with Rafael Mandelman at lifting for these complex, the Human Rights Campaign’s gala. carefully staged and timed extravaganzas. From the chants Exchange, Breast Cancer scores of volunteers in advance and Emergency Fund’s This Old Bag: that night to the speakers, entertainThe Power of the Purse at the Benters, technicians, and hotel employley Reserve, and Shanti’s 40th anees, it takes a well-oiled machine to nual Compassion is Universal at the execute the events we enjoy. Fairmont Hotel. And thank you to that core group Sometimes the parade of annual which we see at nearly every one of galas seems endless, but each of these important fundraisers, hostthese organizations depends heavily ing tables, buying tickets, bidding on its signature event to generate a in the auctions, and fueling the significant portion of its revenue, as night with your energy. We see you well as defining its mission and puband we thank you. And we would lic image in the community. ALRP be remiss if we did not note that provides life-changing free or lowboth the BCEF and Shanti events, cost legal assistance to people with held on the same weekend, were coHIV/AIDS just when they need it chaired by Bahya Oumlil-Murad, a

Steven Underhill

Honorees at the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association event

most and their gala recognized law firms and individuals who have helped them with that worthy mission. That ballroom is simply spectacular and a suitable home for such worthwhile agency. BCEF provides emergency financial assistance to low-income individuals battling breast cancer so that they can focus on their health rather than financial hardships. Their creative gala offering handbags from celebrities, local luminaries, designer boutiques, and luxury stores at auction generates tremendous revenue in a fun-filled environment and again, Lenny Broberg’s auctioning talents made sure no dollars were left on the table. And Shanti has been enhancing the quality of life for persons with

polished lady with a great sense of humor and a huge heart. The City is richer and more caring because of her commitment. Coming up: The Castro Merchants invite one and all to the official ribbon-cutting and celebration of the newly refurbished Castro business district on Thurs., Oct. 30, 6-8 P.M. Castro and 18th streets will be closed off, an entertainment truck will be located at the epicenter, and all the new bells and whistles of the street improvements will be on full display. Other neighborhoods across the country, once clearly identified as LGBT, may be losing their signature elements, but our Castro is here to stay, welcoming all to celebrate the rich diversity that makes us proud to call it home!t

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Cleve Jones steps up to the platform at his birthday celebration at The Café.

Janice Mirikitani (left) and Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church accept their awards at the Shanti gala.

Read more online at www.ebar.com

October 23-29, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Steven Underhill

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BARtab

The Bay Guardian’s Celebrity Twitterature featured D’Arcy Drollinger (center) and Heklina (right).

Literazzi Lit Crawl highlights by Jim Provenzano

With more events than ever before, only three round on the schedule, and dozens of venues, it was difficult to pick which events to attend at the tenth annual Lit Crawl, the Saturday night buffet of literary readings held at bars, cafes, galleries, bookstores and even a laundry or two, up and down Valencia and nearby cross streets. Sponsored by Litquake (its 15 this year!), the night culminates a ten-day festival of events. For some kind of consistency, we ended up at events sponsored by likeminded publications. We started the night off at our own event, of course, BARtab’s fifth annual reading at Martuni’s. Kevin Sessums (Dot 429 Editor, Mississippi Sissy author, Vanity Fair contributing editor) started things off with a dramatic reading from his forthcoming book, I Left It on the Mountain. Mark Abramson read another nostalgic chapter set in one of San Francisco’s gay bars in his touching memoir For My Brothers, and Nomy Lamm shared a wild story of teens and The Torah from her novel-in-progress. Yours truly read from my latest novel, Message of Love. For the second round, we simply had to take in the Mean Tweets reading at Beauty Bar. D’Arcy Drollinger, Heklina and others queens read deadpan interpretations of crazy celebrity tweets (Amanda Bynes, Rihanna, etc.). Former Bay Guardian publisher Marke Bieshke hosted, and kept the ambiance festive, despite the tragic news of the weekly’s abrupt demise only days before. Dinosaur Magazine corralled some fun stories from its latest contributors at their event held at La Movida Wine Bar (which also hosts readings twice a month). No less than performance icon Anne Magnuson (whose tale told of the strange plastic surgery world in Hollywood) and former Extra Fancy frontman Brian Grillo were among the readers. Martin Meeker (author of the gay history book Contacts Wanted) shared a story with his electro band partner about their Coachella gig. So many other fascinating readings took place, with many participants gathering at The Chapel for the closing party. Be sure to plan to attend as many of these events as you can next year. There’s nothing better than smart literary people enjoying shared company in clubs.t www.litquake.org

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Kevin Sessums at Martuni’s.

Ann Magnuson at La Movida Wine Bar.

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Nomy Lamm reads at Martuni’s.

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30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 23-29, 2014

Pussy Party @ Beaux

★

Women's happy hour, with all-women music and live performances, 2 for 1 drinks, and no cover. 5pm-9am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Queers Unqorked @ Mission Cultural Center

Thu 23 Big Freedia @ Mezzanine

utumnal fun continues, leading up to the World Series and Halloween. We’ve added an extra Friday so you can make plans to carve out your schedule for the big night.

Thu 23 Bay Area Young Positives Party @ Center SF Miz Eva Sensitiva hosts a night of drag, drinks and fun, with Kylie Minono, Bebe Sweetbriar and other acts. $30-$35. 7pm-10pm. 548 Fillmore St. www.baypositives.org

Beats Reality @ Trax Resident DJs Jim Hopkins and Justime welcome guest DJs and play groovy tunes. Weekly, 9pm-2am. 1437 Haight St. 864-4213.

Big Freedia, Double Duchess @ Mezzanine

Martha Wash @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The vocal legend makes her debut at the intimate nightclub, performing pop R&B and dance classics. $35-$50. 8pm. Also Oct. 24. Also Oct. 24. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Mary Go Round @ Lookout Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes host the weekly night with DJ Philip Grasso, gogo guys, drink specials, and drag acts. 10pm-2am. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge

The Queen of Bounce and the local duo perform with Saturn Rising, Workalook and Angor Republic in a groove-adelic night. $20. 9pm. 444 Jessie St. www.mezzaninesf.com

Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys and hilarious fun. Oct. 23: Robyn & Florence + The Machine & Bjork tribute night. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Bulge @ Powerhouse

My So-Called Night @ Beaux

Grace Towers hosts the weekly gogotastic night of sexy dudes shakin' their bulges and getting wet in their undies for $100 prize (contest at midnight), and dance beats spun by DJ DAMnation. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Club Yass @ City Nights Frisco Robbie presents a new 18+ LGBT weekly night, with live sets by guest performers, DJ TwistMix, with a Latin room up front, gogo guys and gals. $10. 9:30-3am. 546-7938. www.sfclubs.com

La Femme @ Beaux Weekly ladies' happy hour at the Castro nightclub, with drink specials, no cover, and women gogos. 4pm9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Heklina hosts a new weekly '90s-themed video, dancin', drinkin' night, with VJs Jorge Terez and Becky Knox. Get down with your funky bunch, and enjoy 90-cent drinks! '90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Nap's Karaoke @ Virgil's Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover. 9pm. 3152 Mission St. 8292233. www.virgilssf.com

Fri 24

Fuego @ The Watergarden, San Jose Weekly event, with Latin music, halfoff locker fees and Latin men, at the South Bay private men's bath house. $8-$39. Reg hours 24/7. 18+. 1010 The Alameda. (408) 275-1215. www.thewatergarden.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar. 10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Thump @ White Horse, Oakland Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests. 9pm-2am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com

The intimate groovy retro disco night with tunes spun by DJ Bus Station John. $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

VIP @ Club 21, Oakland Hip Hop, Top 40, and sexy Latin music; gogo dancers, appetizers, and special guest DJs. No cover before 11pm and just $5 after all night. Dancing 9pm-3am. Happy hour 4pm8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

Fri 24 Bad Girl Cocktail Hour @ The Lexington Club Every Friday night, bad girls can get $1 dollar margaritas between 9pm and 10pm. 3464 19th St. between Mission and Valencia. 863-2052. www.lexingtonclub.com

edgeoneth

Digital Wildlife @ Café Flore DJs Justime and Collin Bass, with guests M*J*R* (BAAAHS) and Jason Kendig (Honey Soundsytem) play grooves at the new weekly fundraiser for Comfort & Joy, the queer Burning Man theme camp. $5$20. 9pm-2am. 2298 Market St. www.digitalwildlife.org www.cafeflore.com

The popular video bar ends each work week with gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials. Check out the new expanded front lounge, with a window view. 4067 18th St. 8614186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Manimal @ Beaux Las Chicas de Esta Noche @ Brava Theater Center

Leaves ch but you c to bring y entertain

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun

Hollie Cook @ Leo's Music Club, Oakland

Bartender shakes it @ Beaux’s My So Called Night

Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. 12pm-2am. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

The duo band performs as part of their U.S. tour. LXURY, My Nu Leng and Vin Sol also perform. $15-$20.628 Divisadero St. 7711421, www.gorgoncity.com www.theindependentsf.com

New weekly LGBT and straight comedy night hosted by Dan Mires. $10. 8pm. 2111 Franklin St. Oakland. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

Thu 23

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall

Gorgon City @ The Independent

Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland

The UK singer, formerly of The Slits, performs music from her second solo album. Latin Dub Stars also perform. $10-$12. 9pm. 5447 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.holliecook.com www.clubleos.com

Queer LifeSpace presents a glam benefit for LGBT mental health care services, honoring queer youth activits, with The Daria Johnson Four performing jazz music, hosts Sister Roma, Juanita More, David Campos and others, art galleries showcasing Dia de los Muertos, with hors d'eouvres, wine, beer, soft drinks. $25-$30. 6pm-10pm. 2868 Mission St. www.eventbrite.com

Gogo-tastic night starts off your weekend. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Show Boys @ Nob Hill Theatre The new artistic male burlesque show (twice monthly) features a hunky ensemble of male erotic dancers, singer Raquela, and drag acts Bebe Sweetbriar, Ruby Starr and Sadaisha Shimmers. BYO unopened booze, and have fun. $35. 7pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Some Thing @ The Stud Mica Sigourney and pals' weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Sat 25 Birdcage Follies @ The Arc SF Miss Galilea and The Arc's monthly drag show takes on Halloween, with Patrice, Daft Nee Gesuntheit, Sondra St. James, Tia Dora and more. Drinks and food available 8pm. Show 9:30pm. 180 11th St. 350-3999.

Bootie SF @ DNA Lounge Celebrate eleven years of the weekly mash-up dance night, with resident DJs Adrian & Mysterious D. No matter the theme, a mixed fun good time's assured. $8-$15. 9pm-3am. 21+. 375 11th St. at Harrison. www.BootieSF. com www.DNAlounge.com

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland DJed tunes, gogo hotties, drag shows, drink specials, all at Oakland's premiere Latin nightclub and weekly cowboy night. $10-$15. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Club Rimshot @ Bench and Bar, Oakland Get groovin' at the weekly hip hop and R&B night. $8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com

October 23-29, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 31

Halo @ Mezzanine Micha Skye and Micky Friedman DJ this XOXO Entertainment circuit party, where skimpy space-themed Halloween costumes are encouraged. $40-$50. 444 Jessie St. www.xoxopresents.com www.mezzaninesf.com

Halloween Runway Massacre @ Beatbox Juanita More and Locoya Hill's third annual costume ball, with collaborations from many event promoters, includes DJs The Carry Nation, Nina Flowers, Will Automagic, Nita Aviance and more. $25. 10pm6am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com www.juanitamore.com

Mr. Daddy's Barbershop Leather @ 440 The contest for the sexy barbershop's title holder includes some leathery showmanship. 3pm-6pm. 440 Castro St. www.the440.com

Sing-Along Saturdays @ Martuni's Join Joe Wicht for the weekly night of top 40 rock and pop sing-alongs. 9pm-1am. 4 Valencia St.

Tim Hockenberry @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The local singer-pianist with a heartfelt vocal style performs new and classic songs. $25-$40. 7pm. Also Oct. 26. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Karaoke @ The Lookout

Meow Mix @ The Stud

Paul K hosts the amateur singing night. 8pm-2am. 3600 16th St. at Market. www.lookoutsf.com

The weekly themed variety cabaret showcases new and unusual talents; MC Ferosha Titties. $3-$7. Show at 11pm. 9pm-2am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany's weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Dress Design: Jack Macenroth

On the Tab>>

Zombie Walk @ Jane Warner Plaza Dress up as a zombie, or just scream and run from the Halloween mob of undead. 2pm. 17th St. at Market. www.facebook.com/ SanFranciscoZombieWalk

Beer Bust @ Lone Star Saloon

The popular Castro bar hosts its weekly softball team beer bust fundraiser. 3pm-7pm. 4086 18th St. 431-8616. www.sfmixbar.com

Big Top @ Beaux Joshua J.'s homo disco circus night returns, now weekly, with guest DJs and performers, hotty gogo guys and drink specials. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.BeauxSF.com

Brunch @ Hi Tops Enjoy crunchy sandwiches and mimosas, among other menu items, at the popular sports bar. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

GlamaZone @ The Cafe Pollo del Mar's weekly drag shows takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Jock @ The Lookout The weekly jock-ular fun continues, with special sports team fundraisers. 3pm-7pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Liquid Brunch @ Beaux No cover, no food, just drinks (Mimosas, Bloody Marys, etc.) and music. 2pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

henet.com

Sunday's a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Unicorn @ Powerhouse The drag and art show features Phatima Rude, Laundra Tyme, Mikey Striker, artists: Joe Valliere, Tea Castro, Grace Towers, Diago Fuqing Gomez, Uel Renteria. $5. 6pm-10pm. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Mon 27 Drag Mondays @ The Cafe Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko's weekly drag and dance night. 9pm-1am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Sat 25 Halloween Runway Massacre @ Beatbox

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland Mondays and Tuesdays popular weekly sing-along night. No cover. 8:30pm1am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 6523820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Singer extraordinaire Jason Brock hosts the weekly night, with your talented host –and even you– singing. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Showdown @ Folsom Foundry

Weekly women's night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle

Beer Bust @ SF Mix

Piano Bar @ Beaux

Switch @ Q Bar

The ursine crowd converges for beer and fun. 4pm-8pm. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

hange with the seasons can always count on EDGE you the best in LGBT news, nment and sexy photos!

Strip down at the strip joint while onstage strippers entertain. $20 includes refreshments. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Weekly game night for board and electronic gamers at the warehouse multi-purpose nightclub. 21+. 6pm12am. 1425 Folsom St. www.showdownesports.com

Sun 26

The classic leather bar's most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. 3pm6pm. Now also on Saturdays! 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops

Sat 25 Evening of Hope’s Condom Couture Fashion Show @ City View, Metreon

Monday Musicals @ The Edge The casts of local and visiting musicals often pop in to perform at the popular Castro bar's musical theatre night. 7pm-2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pmclosing. 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

No No Bingo @ Virgil's Sea Room Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni's Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone). 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www. dragatmartunis.com

Underwear Night @ 440 Strip down to your skivvies at popular men's night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Tue 28 Betty Who @ The Fillmore The cool pop diva performs with Joywave; Great Good Fine Ok opens. $20. 8pm. 1805 Geary Blvd. (800) 745-3000. www.thefillmore.com

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey's Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night. Oct. 21: Scott Capurro. One-drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

Gay Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels LGBT night at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the "Godfather of Skate." Actually, every night is gay-friendly, including Saturday's Black Rock night (Burning Man garb encouraged). Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5. Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Hell in the Armory @ SF Armory Kink.com presents an adults-only Halloween-themed haunted house tour in their basement, Thru Nov. 1. $45. Various times. 1800 Mission St. www.HellintheArmory.com

Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Wed 29 Betty Roi @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The French chanteuse performs her new cabaret show, Under Paris Skies. $15. 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Bromance @ Beaux DJ Kidd Sysko spins tunes for the bro-tastic midweek night, with $2 beer pitchers, beer pong, $1 shots served by undie-clad guys. It's like a frat house without the closet cases. 8:30-10pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Dare 2 Bare @ Club OMG New weekly underwear night includes free clothes check, no cover, and drink specials. 9pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Drag Spooktacular @ White Horse Oakland Ana Mae Coxxx and other talents -The Rebel Kings and Follies and Dollies- perform Halloween-themed acts; enter the costume contest. $5. 9:30pm-2am. 6551 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Dream Queens Revue Enjoy the classic drag show with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, Sheena Rose, Kipper, and Joie de Vivre. No cover. 9:30-11:30pm. 133 Turk St. 441-2922. www.dreamqueensrevue.com

Good Times @ Bench and Bar, Oakland Olga T and Shugga Shay's weekly queer women and men's R&B hip hop and soul night. No cover. 8pm-2am. 510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com

The Kills @ The Fillmore Enjoy Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart's vivid post-blues music live. Baby in Vain opens. $35. 8pm. 1805 Geary Blvd. (800) 745-3000. www.thefillmore.com

Miss Kitty's Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm. 424 Cortland St. 647-3099. www.wildsidewest.com

See page 32 >>

<< On the Tab

32 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 23-29, 2014

Harvest Feast @ Verdi Club

On the Tab

The Castro Country Club's annual fundraiser holiday dinner, with host Heklina, and Alaska Thunderfuck a Halloween "Freak Show" theme; plus a silent auction. $75-$1000. 6pm10pm. 2424 Mariposa St. at Potrero Ave. (800) 838-3006. www.castrocountryclub.org

From page 31

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle Kollin Holts hosts the new weekly comedy and open mic talent night. 6pm-8pm. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Wed 29

Queer Salsa @ Beatbox Weekly Latin partner dance night. 8pm-1am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Unmasked @ Contemporary Jewish Museum

Red Hots Burlesque @ El Rio

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall

Women's burlesque show performs each Wed & Fri. Karaoke follows. $5$10. 7pm. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com

The weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

Rookies Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Watch newbies get nude, or compete yourself for a $200 prize. Audience picks the winner. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Trivia Night @ Harvey's

Sony Holland @ Level III The acclaimed jazz vocalist performs with guitarist Jerry Holland. Weekly 5pm-8pm. Also Thursdays & Fridays. JW Marriott, 515 Mason St. at Post. www.sonyholland.com

French electro band with genderqueer stage show and retro inspiration (Psycho Tropical Berlin) performs. Sego and Future Twin open. $15-$40 (with dinner). 9pm. 333 11th St. 255-0333. www.slimspresents.com

Madhouse @ Feinstein's at the Nikko Radiotheatre's spooky audio play, with multiple performers and sound effects,about really mad men! $35-$50. 8pm. Also Oct. 31. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Halloween-themed stage show transforms the entire theatre into a spooky holiday costume ball, Vaudeville stage acts, trapeze performerers, puppets, cocktails, doors pre-show 8pm, show 9pm. costume ball and dance party afterwards. and a festive Barbary Coast party atmosphere. $55-$65 (VIP $99). Thru Nov 2. 636 Jackson St. www.SpookeasySF.com

Fri 31 Adam Killian @ Nob Hill Theatre The talented muscled porn stud returns with a sexy costumed strip and live sex show. $25. 8pm & 10pm. Also Nov. 1. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Angels and Demons @ Club 21, Oakland Fifth annual cotume party at the popular Latin club, with hip hop, electro and house grooves. 8pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. www.club21oakland.com

Bowloween @ Lucky Strike A party with bowling, food, drinks and costumes. 9pm-2am. 200 King St. www.bowloween.com

Buy a drink and get a wooden nickle good for another. 12pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

www.thenobhilltheatre.com

all 10pm shows are sex shows!

La Femme @ Slim’s

Spookeasy @ Great Star Theatre

Wooden Nickel Wednesday @ 440

$200 cash prize

Thu 30 Photo Credit: Raging Stallion

showtimes @ 8 & 10pm

The LGBT Historical Society’s annual gala fundraiser includes drinks, food, live entertainment and a dazzling array of LGBT historicallly-themed silent auction items, plus wines, and travel packages. $75-$125 and up. 6pm-9pm. 736 Mission St. www. unmaskedgala.org

Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (BALIF) and the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area (AABA) hosts a costume ball fundraiser for LYRIC. $25, $100 and up. 6pm-9pm. 508 4th St. www.balif.org/event-1746427

Weekly screenings of vintage music videos and retro drink prices. Check out the new expanded front window lounge. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 8614186. www.midnightsunsf.com

WED Nov 5th @ 8PM

oct 31th & Nov 1st

Unmasked @ Contemporary Jewish Museum

Way Back @ Midnight Sun

Nob rookies Hill Theatre night

adam killian

BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly night of trivia quizzes and fun and prizes; no cover. Oct. 8 is a special birthday party for gay rights activist Cleve Jones. 8pm-1pm. 500 Castro St. 4314278. www.harveyssf.com

Halloween Eve @ Drake Lounge

Creatures of the Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences The themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun, tonight includes a special Halloween event with hostess Peaches Christ, drag acts Chaka Corn, Velveet Whore-Mel, Exhibit Q and others, monster makeovers and spooky fun. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

GAWK Party @ Tikka Masala Jon Suger hosts a pre-Halloween night of music with Pieces of the Night and Dark Satelite. No cover. 8pm. 1668 Haight St.

Halloween Eve @ Drake Lounge Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (BALIF) and the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area (AABA) hosts a costume ball fundraiser for LYRIC. $25, $100 and up. 6pm-9pm. 508 4th St. www.balif.org/event-1746427

Tue 28 Betty Who @ The Fillmore

Magic Parlor @ Chancellor Hotel Whimsical Belle Epoque-style sketch and magic show that also includes historical San Francisco stories, is now in its third year; hosted by Walt Anthony; optional pre-show light dinner and desserts. $40. Thu-Sat 8pm. 433 Powell St. www.SFMagicParlor.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys. Oct. 30: A Nightmare Before Halloween. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Pre-Halloween Extravanganza @ The Café Costume contest, gogo hunks in costumes, and a show by Ricky Lips. $8. 9pm-2am. 2069 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Cosplay Halloween Ball @ Hotel Kabuki Frolic (fursuit furries) joins forces with the Cosplay peeps (Anime, scifi, superheroes, cartoons) for a fully costumed (required!) night of revelry in the hotel's spacious ballroom, with a cash prize costume contest; DJs Philip Adrian, Sean BASS and Neon Bunny. $25 (gen. adm.)-$130 (VIP open bar). 21+. 7pm-1am. 1625 Post St. www.CosplaySF.com

Halloween Party @ Lexington Club The popular lesbian bar goes all out with a costume contest, DJs Ponymane, Cameltoe and Blackblood. Cash prizes in the costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am. 3464 19th St. www.lexingtonclub.com

Spooktacular Howloween @ Balancoire Dance party and drag show hosted by Galilea, with Angie Myma, Tiger Lily and Pat N Leather, with DJ Jack Rojo. No cover. 9pm2am. 2565 Mission st. 920-0577. www.balancoiresf.com

Sugar @ The Café The Castro dance nightclub’s Halloween costume party. 9pm-2am. 2069 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Trannyshack Halloween @ Beatbox Heklina and Peaches Christ join forces for another hilarious horrorific Halloween drag show and dance party; DJ MC2, a costume contest, and acts by Fade Dra, Raya Light, Fauxnique, Cookie Dough, Rusty Hips, Clammy Faye, Bea Dazzler, Fruit Bomb, Exhibit Q, Dina Isis, RoxyCotten Candy, Precious Moments, Cousin Wonderlette, Rice Rockettes. $20. 9pm-2am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com Want your nightlife event listed? Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event. Event photos welcome.

Read more online at www.ebar.com

October 23-29, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 33

A-hole quotient by John F. Karr

he traffic goes both ways, you know, so I’m certainly appreciative when a reader entertains me. Such was the case this last week, when I found redheaded yum yum Johnny V. giving a 30-minute tell-all at QueerMeNow. Johnny is candid and sunny while endearingly revealing he’s not an intellectual. Scrolling down the comments from real people just like you and me that follow Johnny’s post, I came across one that mentioned me, and not flatteringly.

and glistening. I’ll risk being rude and point out that pair’s non-stop unison panting begins to sound like they’re giving a performance instead of uniting in sex. They’re hot, although they could be hotter. Al Malek returns for a second scene, bottoming for impressively severe Sean Duran as well as he topped Johnny. Shawn Wolfe, cuter than ever with his hair longer and curlier, tops an intense Mike De Marko. The movie’s finale alerts us to almost new newcomer David Benjamin, and Austin Chandler, who comes to RS via a couple

welcomes from Chandler, which is followed by spermy kisses, a most tasty dessert to a well-presented, if standard, meal of a movie. Filthy Fucks is the first RS production filmed in the company’s new Las Vegas studio. Which means that instead of the warm atmosphere of woodwork and red San Francisco brick that was their local studio, we’re in a cavernous warehouse, all concrete and all grayish off-white. It’s kind of anti-atmosphere. And now it’s time for me to talk out of the other side of my mouth. At infrequent times in the past, I’ve praised some Gay for Pay (G4P) performers, and lauded some bi guys, as pioneers in the field of sexual fluidity. Then, while reviewing the documentary, I’m a Porn Star, I once again trotted out my various canards/dislikes/apprehensions against G4P performers. Well, which will it be? My cousins and I played when we were kids in the maze of gardens surrounding the Bahai Temple, in Wilmette, Illinois. Emblazoned on a banner outside the building was the faith’s motto, One Planet, One People. That struck me so deeply, that it has ever since been my utopian dream of World Peace. A couple years later, when I investigated Bahai, I found it was a Jesusbased religion, and dismissed it. But I never gave up on One Planet, One People. It’s a line of thought that influences my feeling about gay politics, and, yes, G4P boys. Many gays cherish their feeling of being The Outsider. I think that’s a position forced on us by str8 people. When we’re assimilated (and why shouldn’t we

RagingStallion

Johnny V and Abraham Al Malke in a bit of on-set horseplay in Filthy Fucks.

The commenter wrote, “I figured he,” meaning Johnny, “must be sketchy when that resident A-Hole (Karr) at the Bay Area Reporter raved about him.” Of course, my initial praise for Johnny was based only on his looks. I had no idea at the time what he was like personally. The note-poster assumes that Johnny’s dumb and an asshole because he thinks I’m an asshole and I liked Johnny. Isn’t that some sort of guilt by association? It means that every performer in porn I’ve ever said I like is an asshole. As the online pundits say, LOL. No doubt my asshole quotient will go up when I say I enjoyed Johnny’s second scene within the Raging Stallion mega-studio, in the Steve Cruz directed Monsterbang movie titled, Filthy Fucks. His partner is swarthy, finely furred Abraham Al Malek, who wields a mighty, uncut cock. It sure gives Johnny a rise. Johnny energetically straddles that cock, and is an inspiring sight as he gets royally railed flat on his back, with his pecs and lats and traps and biceps hugely pumped

RagingStallion

Shawn Wolfe pummels Mike De Marko in Filthy Fucks.

RagingStallion

Handsome David Benjamin heats up Filthy Fucks.

of breeder flicks elsewhere, and brings with him a killer-sized cock. They’re entertaining young men involved in –surprise!– a flip fuck. Another surprise is the mouthful of cum that Benjamin gleefully

The Bahai Temple is exotic architecture in Wilmette, Illinois.

be?) we won’t be outsiders, just regular folk. Sounds so relaxing to me. Sex doesn’t have to be a thing that sets us apart. The part that G4P boys play in implementing my Impossible Dream is that, even if they’re advancing the ideal of fluid sexuality for something as base as monetary gain instead of some high toned philosophical platform, their actions are spreading the acceptance of a behavioral pattern, our behavior. They are envoys to the world outside our immediate community. Their voice, and their children’s votes, will help ease gay entry into the broader world. And that’s when we become part of One People. I can hear you groaning, “But nobody watches porn to see politics in action.” Which brings me back full circle to the complaints about G4P gents I had originally voiced. It’s an issue I can’t resolve. But I can tell you my gut feeling. Having gay sex is something most gay people have to fight for—psychologically, legally, sometimes even physically. It’s just too insulting for the battles of one’s life to be trivialized by a guy who has gay sex to earn a buck.t www.RagingStallion.com

/lgbtsf

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34 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 23-29, 2014

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Shooting Stars

October 23-29, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 35

photos by Steven Underhill

Local luminaries came out to celebrate Shanti’s 40th anniversary gala (see above) And hunks galore helped raise funds at the AIDS Emergency Fund’s Bear Chest Calendar Men Casino night. (see below). For more info on these and other events, read this week’s ‘On the Town’ by Donna Sachet!

See more event photo albums on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife and on www.StevenUnderhill.com. See this and other issues in full page-view format at www.issuu.com/bayareareporter

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com or email stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com