February 23, 2023 edition of the Bay Area Reporter

No surprise: No Badlands deal

Many Castro businesses non-LGBTQ owned, survey finds

by John Ferrannini

“Pose” star and transgender activist Angelica Ross, left, led about 50 transgender conference staff and volunteers in a protest with multiple grievances against the National LGBTQ Task Force’s management and planning of Creating Change 35 at the conference’s closing plenary February 20.

Trans TV star leads protest at SF Creating Change confab

by Heather Cassell

“Pose” star and transgender activist Angelica Ross staged a protest against Creating Change at the conference’s closing plenary in San Francisco February 20, unhappy with alleged anti-trans incidents at the host hotels and problems with the conference itself.

On Monday, attendees at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s signature event suddenly received a push alert on the conference’s app around 4:45 p.m. stating that the closing plenary was starting at 5; it was to have started at 5:30.

The nearly 3,000 Creating Change attendees were used to sudden schedule changes four days into the conference and headed to the Grand Ballroom at the Hilton Union Square for the plenary. What they got was transgender conference workers and attendees rising in protest. Ross was their spokesperson.

“I heard that you know, we needed a demonstration and a protest because some shit wasn’t going down the way that it was supposed to go down,” Ross said about the text messages she received from transgender activists working for and attending the conference.

Ross had walked out on stage and sat down with the task force Executive Director Kierra Johnson and fellow “Pose” star Dyllón Burnside to talk about the organization’s future.

But then she stood up and invited an estimated 50 transgender, gender-nonconforming, and intersex conference staff, contractors, and volunteers on stage reading their list of nine grievances

“I’ve been at Creating Change for years,” said Ross, who is a task force policy institute fellow alumna. “So, when my brothers and sisters were telling me what was going on, I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me. This is still going on?’ So, we’re not asking. These are not asks. These are demands.

See page 5 >>

Less than half of businesses in San Francisco’s LGBTQ neighborhood that participated in a 2021 survey conducted by the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District were “owned or managed” by members of the queer community, neighborhood leaders told the Bay Area Reporter.

According to the survey results only 45% of the 129 businesses that responded to it were owned or managed by LGBTQ people.

The B.A.R. previously reported on the survey at the time it was being undertaken. The information was gathered for inclusion in a Cultural History, Housing and Economic Sustainability Strategies, or CHHESS, report, according to Tina Aguirre, a genderqueer Latinx person who is manager of the cultural district. That report is required by the city, which funds San Francisco’s 10 cultural districts.

“We did not disseminate the entire results of this survey publicly,” Aguirre stated to the B.A.R. “Instead, we used it as a data source for our CHHESS report that is currently in development, and I shared key takeaways with OEWD [Office of Economic and Workforce Development] and

MOHCD [Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development] in the last year.”

Aguirre stated, “This information underscores the need for intentional small business support that centers LGBTQ culture and community needs in the Castro district.”

They hoped the survey would be shared with the Castro Community Benefit District, the Castro Merchants Association, the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, and the Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association.

Spotlight shines once again on the late drag artist Doris Fish

by Matthew S. Bajko

Anew book released this month and an upcoming museum exhibit in San Francisco are once again shining a spotlight on the late drag artist Doris Fish, who dazzled the Bay Area and was the grand dame of Sydney’s Mardi Gras Parade during the 1980s. Her home country of Australia is feting Fish this month as it hosts World Pride in conjunction with its largest annual LGBTQ celebration.

“It is time, I think, time to acknowledge what a force of nature Doris was for sure. And the part she played in moving from the drag of the 1950s and 1960s and pulling drag out of where it was – not that there was anything wrong with that – but helping it to evolve,” said Bradley Chandler, a close friend who performed with Fish under the stage name of Miss X. “She was a force in the evolution of drag.”

Fish was the drag persona of Philip Clargo Mills, who was born on August 11, 1952. One of six siblings, he grew up in the Sydney suburb of Manly Vale. A gay man and art school student, he turned to prostitution to make money and became a member of Sylvia and the Synthetics, described as a Down Under version of the famed pioneering drag troupe the Cockettes of San Francisco.

As Craig Seligman, who befriended Mills in San Francisco, recounts in his new biography “Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag,” the origin story of Doris Fish’s name depends on who is telling it. A friend of Mills’ claimed to have given him it due to his “old-lady drag,” while Mills told Seligman it was a nod to the actress Doris Day as well as a cat named Lillian Fish.

PublicAffairs, part of the Hachette Book Group, released Seligman’s book this week in

Australia and it goes on sale in the U.S. February 28. He drew on interviews he did for a profile about Mills that ran in the San Francisco Examiner in 1986, conducted additional interviews with Mills’ family and friends, as well as researched various archives in order to reconstruct not only Mills’ life story but also that of a number of his close friends and drag collaborators.

“Doris was one of the most interesting people I had ever known. If I didn’t tell Doris’ story, I feared no one would,” Seligman told the Bay Area Reporter during a video interview from Perth, Australia in early February. “The U.S. media is centered in New York and was more so then. I felt the story of drag and AIDS from a West Coast perspective has not yet been told.” Mills ended up moving to the City-by-theBay in the summer of 1976, having first visited the year prior. Over the ensuing years Mills would mostly call San Francisco home, but he would make near yearly pilgrimages back to Australia in December to spend the holidays with his parents and extended family.

He would stay for weeks on end in order to also connect with friends and work on fantastical floats and costumes for Sydney’s unique LGBTQ Pride parade. Mills also penned a column for the city’s gay newspaper Campaign.

Knoller denied parole Jake Blount 'The Headlands'

Doris Fish, left, Tippi, and Miss X at Doris’ wedding reception on April 19, 1981.

Dan Nicoletta

Tina Aguirre, left, manager for the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, program associate Samuel Favela, in back, and SFSU sociology students Hanelye Mazariegos, center, and Alejandro Barrientos, right, left the now-closed Harvey’s restaurant in the Castro on October 20, 2021 after collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data from the business as part of a volunteer program with the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District.

Christopher Robledo See

Heather Cassell

No deal yet for Badlands space

by John Ferrannini

The location of the former Badlands in the Castro is in the process of losing its liquor license just as its landlord and prospective new operator have stopped providing updates on the space’s future.

The Bay Area Reporter published a story February 9 based on interviews with Les Natali, a gay man who owns the Badlands property. He said that Badlands, located at 4121 18th Street, could be open again in as little as eight weeks pending an agreement with TJ Bruce, a gay man who owns a number of nightclubs on the West Coast, such as Splash San Jose and Badlands Sacramento. The San Francisco LGBTQ nightclub closed permanently in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic.

Natali also put the B.A.R. in touch with Cheryl Maloney of Vanguard Properties, who said that several would-be tenants are vying for the former Hamburger Mary’s space at 541 Castro Street, which he also owns.

While Natali and Bruce had said a deal was imminent February 9, Bruce confirmed February 10 that a deal had not been signed, and neither returned follow-up calls the next week. Then, on February 21, Bruce stated in a text that “I cannot speak for Les or the business at this time.”

“Please reach out to him directly,”

Bruce added.

Natali did not return a call Tuesday from the B.A.R. requesting comment for this article.

In the meantime, Hoodline reported that Badlands was forced to surrender its liquor license last week due to inactivity, and that Hamburger Mary’s liquor license had been surrendered on October 31, 2022.

Bryce Avalos, a communications analyst with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, confirmed to the B.A.R. that the Hamburger Mary’s license had been surrendered that date.

As for Badlands, Avalos stated, “ABC confirmed [to Hoodline] on Thursday that the surrender request was being processed and the Badlands license would be in surrender status soon. The paperwork has completed processing and the surrender is backdated to October 22, 2022.”

That said, the surrendering of the liquor license does not mean a bar could not reopen at the location.

“If the location is able to immediately begin operations, re-activating the license could be immediate,”

Avalos continued. “ABC looks into

From page 1

a lot of questions.”

“We wish we had more historical data to compare it to and we recommend the survey be conducted yearly,” they stated. “The report identifies some 50% [sic] of survey respondent businesses are owned or managed by LGBTQ people. While that percentage may be troubling to some folks who would like to see the Castro have a more LGBTQ focus to business ownership, we must remember that not being LGBTQ-identified doesn’t mean what it did 25 years ago. Today in our informal meetings with new owners and managers, they chose the Castro, despite not being LGBTQ, because of its diversity and makeup. They can’t think of a more diverse and exciting place to locate.”

The two stated there’s work to be done to make the Castro more inclusive for those who aren’t white, cis gay men like themselves.

“There’s always a lot of talk

the circumstances of the request before reactivating.”

Neither Natali nor Bruce returned Hoodline’s requests for comment last week.

Badlands, which had been open since 1974 and was a nightclub under Natali’s ownership since 1999, closed three years ago, as the B.A.R. previously reported. A Facebook post at the time stated, “Later this fall a new bar, under new ownership, will open in the Badlands location.”

That didn’t happen, but Bruce told the B.A.R. the following year that the space was being renovated.

“Basically the space is just being remodeled. It should be open by the end of the year or early, maybe, shortly after the year ends,” Bruce told the B.A.R. in summer 2021.

“That’s basically all there is to say at the moment.”

Natali told the B.A.R. earlier this month that renovations on the Badlands space are “pretty close to being done right now.” Natali said that Bruce is “going to buy it. He’s [Bruce] going to take over. His attorney and my attorney are going to work it out. He’s going to be the boss and have all the control.” When asked if that means Bruce will own the property at 4121 18th Street, Natali was not clear.

“I don’t want to get into detail about this,” Natali said. “We’ve been negotiating [for] some time and it’s between his attorney and my attorney and this is what we’re working out – that he’s going to be in charge.

People want to know who’s going to

be running the place and it looks like it’s going to be TJ.”

Natali also told the B.A.R. that Bruce would be in charge of renaming the establishment. When asked what he’d name it, Bruce stated, “if it is up to me, it will always be Badlands.”

Controversial past Badlands and Natali had been under renewed criticism in the months prior to the announcement of its 2020 closure due to allegations of racial discrimination that surfaced in the 2000s.

A 2004 report by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission found that Badlands was discriminating against African Americans, but the findings were never official because Virginia Harmon, the HRC executive director at the time, did not sign off on the staff report. Natali and the complainants eventually reached a confidential settlement. Natali has always denied the accusations.

Natali later opened Toad Hall on the site of what had been the Pendulum, a bar that catered to Black LGBTQs.

In an email to the B.A.R. after this was brought up at a June 2020 Black Lives Matter protest held in the Castro’s Jane Warner Plaza, Natali wrote that the allegations “were found without merit and were dropped.”

“We welcome people of all races and all colors and we probably have the largest, most diverse clientele of any bar in the Castro,” he stated at the time. t

and people of color. “We have a lot of work to do, and this report will help with that.”

Survey details

A summary of survey results found that “although businesses were less likely to be owned or managed by queer people, LGBTQ people were employed in most businesses,” with 72% of the participating businesses reporting they had LGBTQ employees.

“Racial diversity was high amongst the businesses in the district with a majority having employed people of color, many of whom were also queer,” the summary continued. “A little over half of businesses employed queer women.”

AIDS Memorial Quilt & Gilead

about how the Castro is changing, or is not welcoming to certain groups, but it’s encouraging that the data show a fair amount of diversity,” Allen and Beswick added. “We want the Castro to be welcoming to LGBTQ folks, BIPOC folks, women and allies especially, and there’s no better way to do that than to have businesses owned or managed by these groups, and employing diverse workers,” they stated, referring to Black, Indigenous,

Eighty-six percent of the businesses had at least one person of color employed, the summary stated, and 53% employed queer women. However, the percent owned or managed by an LGBTQ person was 45%.

The survey did not include 70 businesses within the district’s boundaries, as they were “unavailable or uninterested in the interview,” according to the report.

See page 4 >>

Negotiations have not been completed between Badlands owner Les Natali and TJ Bruce, who wants to open a new club in the 18th Street space.

Scott Wazlowski

Castro Merchants Association President Terrance Alan and treasurer Terry Beswick, both gay men, stated to the B.A.R. that “this report raises

<< Castro survey

Castro Merchants Association President Terrance Alan

Steven Underhill

Knoller again denied parole in SF dog-maul case

by Ed Walsh

Astate parole panel denied freedom February 15 for Marjorie Knoller, the woman convicted of second-degree murder in connection with the fatal dog-mauling of her neighbor, lesbian Diane Whipple, in the hallway of their Pacific Heights apartment building in 2001.

At the conclusion of a nearly fourhour hearing that ended just before 6:30 p.m., the two-member panel of the Board of Parole Hearings said Knoller, 67, presented a danger to society if released and cited her prison record, which included two disciplinary actions against her that included biting a correctional officer in 2016 and refusing to change rooms in 2020.

Knoller showed no emotion after the panel’s decision.

In 2002, a jury convicted Knoller and her husband, Robert Noel, both attorneys in San Francisco, of involuntary manslaughter. Knoller, who was with the couple’s two Presa Canario dogs during the gruesome 10-minute attack on January 26, 2001, was also convicted of second-degree murder. Prosecutors argued that the couple knew their dogs were dangerous but failed to mitigate the danger.

Knoller was allowed to speak at

the hearing. The panel also heard from three people who were close to Whipple They spoke emotionally as they told the panel why Knoller should stay incarcerated. Whipple’s former partner, Sharon Smith, as well as Whipple’s aunt, Roberta Whipple, and Cayce Kelly, the wife of Whipple’s brother, Colin Kelly, spoke. The hearing was supposed to start at 11:30 a.m. but was delayed by three hours. No explanation was given for the de-

lay. Cayce Kelly said that her husband was too upset to speak by the time the hearing got underway. She said his sister never leaves his thoughts and at times the grief is overwhelming.

The San Francisco District Attorney’s office formally opposed parole and Allison Macbeth, assistant chief attorney at the DA’s office, told the panel that Knoller represents a threat to the community and has not taken responsibility for her actions that led to Whipple’s murder.

“The inmate does not consider the consequences of her actions at the expense of the well-being of others,” Macbeth said.

When asked by the parole commissioners if she would own a dog if released, Knoller, immediately responded with an emphatic “No.”

When asked about the devastation caused by Whipple’s death, Knoller responded, “I’ve always felt responsible for Diane’s death, in terms of not being able to prevent it or help do more to prevent (the male dog) Bane from doing what he did and stripping her completely naked in that hallway. But Diane seems to have gotten lost and her loss seems to have gotten lost in the publicity that ensued regarding this incident.”

Knoller said that if released, she

would first go to Sacramento where she would live in transitional housing and then eventually move to Reno, Nevada, because it held good memories for her. She said she would like to work as a lobbyist to protect the rights of both prisoners and guards, work that she did with her husband before she was arrested.

While incarcerated, Knoller was convicted of misdemeanor assault for biting and kicking a guard and hitting a nurse during a medical treatment in 2016. Knoller said that she was unconscious at the time and has no recall of doing that. Knoller’s attorney, Katey Gilbert, later said that no prison staff member was injured in the assault and that everyone returned to work immediately afterward. Knoller said she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the dogmauling and she likely instinctively reacted because she doesn’t like being touched.

Knoller said that she was disciplined for refusing to change rooms in 2020 because the room to which she was being transferred wasn’t ADA compliant with the railings she needed to avoid falls. Gilbert later referred to that as “civil disobedience.”

Victim impact statements

During a time for victim impact statements, Smith fought back tears as she told the panel, “There’s no way to measure the full impact of that loss. It is with deep sadness that I share with you some of the impact this tragedy has had on my life. For years I was in shock. Much of my life became unrecognizable,” she said.

After the hearing Smith told the Bay Area Reporter that like Whipple’s brother, the delay in the hearing was tough for her. All of the participants in the meeting spoke remotely through an internet conference call. Smith said she rented a conference room for the day because she didn’t want to have to speak from her home or workplace and was ready by 9 a.m. for the hearing that didn’t start until 2:30 p.m. She said she felt a weight off her shoulders when the board denied parole. She added that she was concerned that because of Knoller’s age, the board would grant her parole.

The case became an important touchstone for gay rights, thanks to Smith’s efforts. In August 2001, she was allowed to proceed with a civil wrongful death case against Noel, Knoller, and their landlord. It was the first time that a same-sex partner was

<< Castro survey

From page 2

The survey was conducted on weekday afternoons.

“Time restrictions and business hours restricted the ability to collect data in that the Castro includes several early-day businesses or lateopened businesses,” the summary stated. “Several businesses refused to answer if their workers were queer or POC due to their comfort to give this information or lack of this information of the employees.”

Four specific questions were asked: is the “business owned or managed by someone who is LGBTQ/queer?”; “Are there workers who are LGBTQ or Queer?”; “Are there women workers who are also LGBTQ or Queer?”; and “Are there any workers who are people of color (POC)?”

“The subjects interviewed were the owners, managers, or employees of the district’s businesses available to speak with the interviewers inperson at the time of the data collection,” the summary stated. “The interviews were offered in English and Spanish. The responses were counted as ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’ and the interviewers noted additional commentary

allowed to sue for wrongful death, a right that previously applied only to married couples. The case was eventually settled out of court.

Knoller has served over 17 years in prison in two separate prison stints separated by four years of freedom.

In 2002, now-retired San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren threw out Knoller’s second-degree conviction during a hearing three months after the conviction.

“I believe unfortunately, Mr. Noel and Ms. Knoller, that you are the most despised couple in the city,” Warren told the couple in open court at the time. “I don’t believe anyone likes you.”

“In the eyes of the people, both defendants are guilty of murder, in the eyes of the law, they are not,” Warren said.

The judge explained his decision directly addressing Knoller, “There was one time on the stand Ms. Knoller when I truly believed what you said. You broke down totally in the middle of an unscripted answer and instead of crying, you actually got mad. And you said you had no idea this dog could do what he did and you pounded the table.”

In 2008, now-retired San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard reinstated Knoller’s seconddegree murder conviction, ordering her to be taken into custody immediately.

Knoller’s parole attorney cited Warren’s words in her closing appeal to the parole commissioners.

Knoller was stone-faced, showing no emotion as the parole board told her that they were denying her parole. When she was allowed to speak at the beginning of the hearing, Knoller’s voice choked with emotion when she told the commissioners that she didn’t learn that Noel had died until three months after he his passing.

The parole board told Knoller that she would be eligible for parole again in three years. She was last denied parole four years ago, as the B.A.R. previously reported.

Noel was paroled in 2003 after serving a little more than two years, as the B.A.R. The B.A.R. reported in November 2018 that it had learned that Noel died of heart failure June 22, 2018, his 77th birthday, in a nursing home in La Jolla, about 12 miles north of downtown San Diego. His ashes were scattered off the San Diego County coast. t

provided by the participants, as well as observations. Data collected was inputted into a digital spreadsheet after interviews were completed; the spreadsheet calculated the sums of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ responses for the four categories of questions. Then, the sums were converted into percentages for presentation.”

Participating businesses contacted by the B.A.R. did not respond to requests for comment.

Jen Reck, a queer person who’s a professor at San Francisco State University, connected the interns who conducted the research, Hanelye Mazariegos and Alejandro Barrientos, a pansexual woman and a gay man, respectively, with the district.

When asked for Mazariegos’ and Barrientos’ contact information, Aguirre stated to the B.A.R. “Please do not reach out to my previous interns as they are not authorized to represent the district or this work.”

Reck did not respond to a request for comment for this report as of press time.

Aguirre continued, “the project is complete though we may do a follow-up survey in the fall.”

As of press time, they had not responded to a follow-up about when the CHHESS report is expected to be completed. t

“On the 50th anniversary of the National LGBTQ Task Force, it is clear that the organization is still being run through the historically exclusionary paradigm that centers cisgender and white LGBTQ people and their communities and concerns,” Ross said. “This conference is not creating change – not yet, not quite yet.

“It wouldn’t be Creating Change if it weren’t a space where Black queer and trans folks couldn’t make their voices heard,” she added. “I am nothing without my community and we are nothing without our community.”

More work is needed

The Creating Change 2023 Trans Action Collective was organized “in direct response to the ongoing exclusion and erasure of trans, nonbinary, and intersex people in this space,” Ross read from the collective’s statement, flanked by the transgender activists.

The collective of transgender and gender-nonconforming activists working at the Creating Change conference met February 19, the anniversary of transgender activist Sylvia Rivera’s death. They gathered after long hours working behind the scenes at the conference to demand changes and immediate action by task force leaders to address their claims of wrongs that happened at this year’s conference.

Among some of the concerns the collective expressed were incidents of harassment and lack of cultural competency by staff at the Hilton, the host hotel, and Parc 55, the overflow hotel contracted by the task force. There was no system in place for staff, volunteers, and attendees to report incidents, among other logistical and operational issues.

Although support for visuallyand hearing-impaired, as well as non-English speaking attendees, was

present and visible throughout the conference, it was made clear that more work was needed to increase accessibility and inclusivity.

An Asian gender-nonconforming American Sign Language interpreter working on the stage during the protest started crying while signing. Their team stepped in to allow them to participate in the demonstration.

“From coast to coast, there has been an onslaught of anti-trans legislation that has fueled a wave of anti-trans and anti-nonbinary violence and discrimination,” Ross said. “Unfortunately, spaces that were created to hold us in times of crisis like this, such as Creating Change, are a microcosm of what we face in the larger society.”

Representatives from the Hilton, which owns Parc 55, did not respond to requests for comment.

Equity and restitution

Ross laid out the collective’s vision for what equity and restitution look like.

The collective demanded apologies from the hotels, financial reimbursements, future financial aid, fundraising and grant-writing training from funders, and awards recognizing the work of more communities and organizations. Responding to the overcrowded daylong Trans Institute, the collective demanded a separate multi-day TGI conference at the next Creating Change conference funded by the task force, and alternate virtual and smaller conferences around the country. They also demanded better representation of the local queer Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, and those from the southern U.S. in the conference’s programming.

“Our beloved trans ancestor Sylvia Rivera said, ‘You have to be visible. We have to show the world that we are in the world,’” Ross said. “The

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU

UCSF is deeply committed to providing care for LGBTQ+ people and their families that isn’t just equitable as crucial as equity is.

We’re committed to giving you care that’s warm, welcoming, and knowledgeable, too.

That’s why we’re a longtime Equality Leader in HRC’s Healthcare Equality Index and why we offer a uniquely wide range of support for our LGBTQ+ patients and employees.

We look forward to warmly welcoming you and offering the great, supportive care that you and your family deserve.

ucsfhealth.org/lgbtq-care

Trans Institute gathering overflowed with our abundance, and the rest of the conference has benefited from the inherent wisdom that we bring with our presence.”

Johnson, a bisexual Black woman who has led the task force since 2021, apologized for the situation.

“I’m sorry that we had to get here,” she said as Ross returned to her seat for the closing plenary. “There’s a responsibility. I stepped into this position fully knowing we have some work to do.”

Attendees

Conference workers weren’t the only ones unhappy about how Creating Change played out.

Attendees received a push alert announcing two separate debriefings at 8:15 p.m. February 20 and at noon February 21, the last day of the conference. The Bay Area Reporter attended Monday night’s hour-and15-minute debriefing that attracted about 40 conference attendees.

Creating Change Conference director Danny Linden, who took on the role in June 2021, along with the task force’s Mayra Hidalgo Salazar, deputy executive director, and Sayre Reece, senior strategist, listened to attendees as they talked about problems they experienced throughout the gathering.

Many attendees had similar experiences as conference workers with misgendering, anti-Blackness, and anti-Muslim microaggressions from hotel staff, workshop leaders, and other attendees and no way to report the incidents. They echoed the protesters in wanting cultural sensitivity training for hotel staff.

Attendees expressed frustration with logistical issues, such as poor Wi-Fi, a lack of signage and readable maps in the conference app and booklet, small rooms for popular sessions and too large of rooms for other workshops, a lack of food breaks during daylong institutes,

not enough time for sessions, and many canceled sessions. Some were unhappy with how the sessions were presented, describing a disconnectedness from the presenters and desiring more interactive workshops.

Others wanted more networking and self-care events in-between sessions, ways to make it easier using technology to share contacts, and to get out, connect with, and explore the city through the conference.

A Black disabled queer woman said she had to “navigate this space in pain because it wasn’t set up for me,” describing long trips to accessible bathrooms located far away from where she was at the conference, small rooms with no space for her to park her chair inside, and no access to power plugs to charge her electric wheelchair outside conference rooms. “I feel like, why am I even here? This is not for me,” she said.

One man expressed he was excited to come to San Francisco. He anticipated the spiritual sessions would be “energetic” only to be “disappointed.”

“One thing about LGBTQ+ people is that we are so drained spiritually that this could have been like a major opportunity to get that energy back,” said the man, who was disappointed by the spirituality workshops, many of which combined faith and spirituality, lacking the uniqueness of each category.

He said he hopes Creating Change recognizes the difference between faith-based, spirituality, and wellness.

Three Muslim South Asian students expressed their disappointment in the lack of South Asians and Muslims and workshops beyond the one they presented at the conference.

A Spanish-speaking transgender woman described through her translator a bad hotel experience where she was forced to pay the market rate for two nights that she believed she had already booked at the conference rate or be homeless for two nights of the conference. She wasn’t allowed to rebook the rooms at the conference rate.

Task force staff immediately started working on correcting her situation during the debriefing.

One of the two experienced conference organizers who attended the debrief suggested requiring a cutoff for canceling a workshop and tapping into backup experts onsite to fill in for cancellations.

An attendee said they liked some of the social events, such as the game space and ball.

Taking on the system

“Creating Change describes itself as the nation’s foremost political leadership and skill-building conference for the LGBTQ movement and claims to be building a future where everyone is free to be themselves in every aspect of their lives,” Ross said, “but they cannot possibly hope to do so if it continues to exclude its most marginalized community members.” Ross demanded that the task force “not scapegoat its Black and Brown transgender, nonconforming, and otherwise marginalized staff” simply because a Black bisexual woman now leads the organization. “We ... can’t just let them slap her face on the top of this problem.”

“We have to take it to the whole system,” she continued. “We demand that the task force commits to supporting the leadership of these staff members and the labor in a coalition with their communities to shift this gathering to a space that builds towards our collective liberation.”

Ross challenged attendees, “We all call upon the cis folks in this room. Do you love us enough to be angry with us?”

Creating Change attendees who did not attend the debriefs should look in their email for a post-conference survey, Cathy Renna, the task force’s communications director said. She added there will also be other opportunities for attendees to express their concerns and what worked for them. t

Marjorie Knoller sat at a table during her parole hearing on February 15.

Courtesy Board of Parole Hearings.

Volume 53, Number 08

February 23- March 1, 2023 www.ebar.com

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Paul H. Melbostad, Esq.

SF supes must slow down on 12X changes

TheSan Francisco Board of Supervisors is set to consider removing construction agreements from the prohibition of contracting in states that have discriminatory laws that target LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, and voting rights. Chapter 12X of the city’s administrative code, as it’s known, was approved by the board in 2016. It banned city-funded travel to states that enact anti-LGBTQ laws and also prohibited the city from contracting with companies headquartered in those states. In 2019, the board expanded Chapter 12X to include states with restrictive abortion laws, and in October 2021, amended the ordinance a third time to include states that suppress voting rights. The number of states currently on the banned list is now 30.

No state has rescinded an anti-LGBTQ law or expanded voting rights in order to be delisted, while Massachusetts was removed from the banned list in 2021 after changing its laws restricting abortion access.

Now, a proposal by District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí would exempt construction contracts from Chapter 12X. While the supervisor has been working on this for several months, it only received a hearing before the board’s rules committee on February 13, where the panel forwarded it on to the full board without a recommendation. As we previously reported, committee member Safaí and the chair, gay District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, voted in favor, while the other committee member, District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, voted no. The full board is expected to take a vote at its February 28 meeting.

We strongly urge the Board of Supervisors to continue the item and send it back to committee to be considered with another Chapter 12X item. Gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman has a Chapter 12X proposal that he’s been working on for months – a broader plan that might do away with the ordinance entirely – and we think

San Francisco supervisors are looking to repeal part of a city ordinance that prevents companies from states with antiLGBTQ laws from getting construction contracts.

there needs to be far more discussion on the implications of jettisoning Chapter 12X. The construction carve-out from Safaí should be heard at the same time as Mandelman’s plan, and it makes sense that they should be voted on together.

Dorsey told us in an editorial board meeting that the time has come to repeal Chapter 12X because it is costing the city too much money. Construction companies that may provide better value (i.e., lower qualified bids) in those banned states cannot compete for the projects, often leading to more expensive bids from those companies that qualify.

With the city facing a projected $720 million budget deficit over the next two years, Dorsey believes that the law should be changed.

“There’s been zero number of states we’ve influenced to change their laws,” he said, adding that he’d rather see libraries adequately funded and HIV services not cut. Dorsey told us he’s even considering repealing the city’s vaunted equal benefits ordinance, which he acknowledged helped pave the way for marriage equality. It requires companies doing

business with San Francisco to offer the same benefits to domestic partners that they offer to married couples. The other issue Dorsey pointed to is the city itself does not know if Chapter 12X has been a benefit. That’s evident in a somewhat hastily prepared report from City Administrator Carmen Chu’s office that states, “12X’s policy impacts are not clear,” and, “12X has created additional administrative burden for city staff and vendors and unintended consequences for San Francisco citizens, such as limiting enrichment and developmental opportunities.”

For his part, Mandelman, too, thinks Chapter 12X has outlived its usefulness. In a separate editorial board meeting, he said the city’s travel and contracting bans far exceed California’s, which has a travel ban for statefunded travel only. He told us that gay former supervisor Scott Wiener – who introduced the contracting ban when he was on the board and who is now a state senator – has indicated he no longer thinks Chapter 12X is effective. (Wiener confirmed that in a text message to us.) Mandelman gave an example that if the mayor wanted to furnish her office with furniture from a gay-owned company in a banned state, she wouldn’t be able to do it.

“I don’t think the right way to make change is to flip the bird and walk away,” he said. Those may be valid points. But LGBTQand minority-owned construction companies as well as related small businesses in San Francisco were caught off guard by Safaí’s construction contract carve-out, and strongly opposed it at the rules committee meeting. Safaí’s office told us last week that he wanted to go ahead with his proposal because several big multimillion-dollar contracts will soon be set for bid, including construction projects at San Francisco International Airport and for the San Francisco Public Utility Commission.

See

SFAF leads by values centered on justice

by Tyler TerMeer

For more than 40 years now, San Francisco AIDS Foundation has been there for our communities in times of crises: from the early response to AIDS to the current challenges around mpox, substance use, fatal overdose, and more.

Just a year into my tenure as SFAF’s CEO, am enormously proud of the organization our community has built, shaped, and supported – and am grateful for an opportunity to share with you where we are now and where our organization is headed.

Overnight Pet Sitting

16 applicants seek SF drag laureate post

by Matthew S. Bajko

Sixteen applicants are seeking to become San Francisco’s inaugural drag laureate. City Hall officials expect the person to be announced this spring, well ahead of Pride Month in June.

The deadline to apply was last Thursday, February 16. It had been extended by a month in order to give people more time to apply, which included filling out a questionnaire as well as submitting a video recording.

Cornejo did tell the Bay Area Reporter this week that he believed the city was able to attract “some good candidates” to choose from for the post.

“I think it is going to be a tough choice for Mayor Breed and our committee,” he predicted.

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I’ll start by offering a brief reflection on the enormous challenges we encountered in my first year. I think every leader’s hope is to spend their first year simply listening and learning, in order to craft careful strategic plans that best serve the community, staff, clients, volunteers, and other stakeholders across the city. I entered with this hope, and have been able to hear and learn from so many folks involved in our work in the past year. But, I also soon realized there would be a need for quick and decisive action in response to a variety of outside challenges to our work.

In the past year, we actively responded when a fire closed our busy Harm Reduction Center and forced our services onto nearby sidewalks; we pivoted our services and advocacy when mpox became a threat; we pushed forward our safe consumption service advocacy and harm reduction work in the face of political opposition. At every step, we were informed by our values: of justice, dignity, courage, leadership, and excellence, and what would be best for the communities we are here to serve.

In the coming years, the familiar sexual health, substance use, and community programs and services of SFAF will continue and be strengthened by new investments in our staff, our race equity work, and our infrastructure. And, we will continue to innovate to bring the community exciting and valuable new services.

At our sexual health clinic Magnet, we will continue to ramp up the provision of two relatively new prevention strategies: doxycycline for STI prevention (“Doxy PEP”) and injectable PrEP for HIV prevention (“CAB-PrEP”).

We are excited to be a leader in HIV prevention and sexual health services here in San Francisco and nationally, and are excited to expand access to our clinical services at all of our loca-

tions (including our Harm Reduction Center and mobile sites), and through partnerships with other organizations.

For many years, we have been a leader in substance use and harm reduction services for people who use drugs through The Stonewall Project and Syringe Access Services, and more recently through our Pick Up Crew (which offers citywide syringe disposal 12 hours a day, seven days a week). It remains a priority for us to ensure that people have free access to safer drug use and substance use resources, including overdose prevention tools like Narcan/Naloxone, and access to affirming and non-judgmental drug use counseling and support.

But, there are also a variety of new challenges posed by a changing drug landscape in San Francisco that we are working diligently to address.

Rates of fatal overdose have skyrocketed in recent years, in part due to the introduction of fentanyl in the drug supply. One of our challenges is how best to support and care for people who use fentanyl – whether purposely or accidentally – in the face of Narcan supply shortages, changing city services, political apathy, and the many forms of stigma, oppression, and hardship faced by people who use drugs (many who are Black, Brown, and people of color).

In the coming years, we will focus on expanding our distribution of the overdose reversal medication Narcan, providing drug checking services, and educating all in our community

about overdose prevention and response – particularly those in communities who may not have easy access to safer drug use information and supplies. Through our substance use counseling program, Stonewall, we are increasing capacity to serve monolingual Spanish-speakers, and opportunities to engage in low-threshold drop-in counseling. Our advocacy and policy team will continue to push for expanded harm reduction services for people who use drugs, and will move forward with advocacy toward establishing safe consumption services and other policies that improve the health and lives of people who use drugs.

As we have been for many years, San Francisco AIDS Foundation is here for our community first and foremost. Our long-lived community programs – Black Brothers Esteem (BBE), El Grupo Apoyo Latino – and many of our newer programs – TransLife, Ibeji, Hues, the Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network – are looking forward to a variety of new events, exciting communitybuilding opportunities, and even launching a revamped clinical internship program. Our HIV Advocacy Network, or HAN, is building peoplepower to advocate for the needs and rights of HIV and LGBTQ+ communities, and our popular art program at Magnet is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a special celebration and art opening in September.

We’re looking forward to seeing and hearing from you in 2023. Please visit us online at sfaf.org, and sign up for news and events at sfaf. org/signup. t

Tyler TerMeer, Ph.D., is CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, co-chair of the AIDS United Public Policy Council, and also a member of the AIDS United Governing Board of Directors. He is passionate about improving the health of people living with HIV, ensuring that LGBTQ+ people have access to affirming care, and supporting and empowering Black-led organizations and BIPOC leaders. TerMeer has been honored by the White House as one of the Nation’s Emerging LGBTQ+ Leaders and as part of the Nation’s Emerging Black Leadership.

“I think it was a good idea. It gave people a chance to get any questions answered that they may have had and gave people more time to fill out their applications. There were a lot of questions that needed to be answered,” said Sister Roma a member of the drag philanthropic group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who is on the selection committee for the drag laureate position.

The committee members were to meet Wednesday evening to begin the process of discussing the applicants and choosing upward of five individuals to recommend to Mayor London Breed She will ultimately select the person for the position.

“She will have some time to think about it and look over the applications as well. I think we are at least a month out from any announcement,” said Victor Ruiz-Cornejo, a gay man who advises Breed on LGBTQ policies. “I think we will have the person in place well before Pride so they can be part of the various events and whatnot.”

The drag laureate will serve for 18 months and receive an honorarium of $55,000 to help cover the costs of performing their duties. Among the requirements for applicants was that they reside full-time in San Francisco and are at least 21 years old.

The city is not disclosing the names of the people who applied and are now under consideration. Ruiz-

<< Editorial

From page 6

Local small business owners were unified in their opposition, telling the committee that they were not contacted and there was insufficient economic data around the proposal. They also want to know how many of these smaller businesses were brought on as subcontractors for these big projects under the city’s local business enterprise program. In response, Safaí’s office told us last week that the supervisor had been talking with these small business groups.

We’re concerned about the fact that these proposals to radically change or do away with Chapter 12X are throwing away equal rights and the city’s progressive values to save money, even

Roma had encouraged people to apply in a guest opinion piece for the B.A.R. in early February. She said she has been impressed, so far, with the applications she has reviewed, and is hopeful of being able to introduce the drag laureate on the main stage of the Sister’s annual Easter celebration this year, set to take place Sunday, April 9.

“I am looking for someone with experience and somebody with an appreciation for the history of our rich drag culture,” said Roma, “but also someone forward thinking and looking to the future of drag. Someone who has done a lot of philanthropy, activism and fundraising with their platform as a drag performer will also be something I will consider.”

The position is being modeled after the city’s poet laureates, who have served between two to four years in the position. Breed secured the funding for the drag laureate in her budget proposal last year, and it is being administered via the city library since it also oversees the poet laureate program.

San Francisco was the second city in California to initiate having an official drag ambassador. In 2020, West Hollywood was the first known city anywhere in the world to approve the creation of a drag laureate.

Leaders in the Southern California city continue to tinker with the parameters for their position. New York City officials have also suggested creating their own drag laureate post.

As the B.A.R. has previously noted, the concept of having an ambassador

though there are numerous examples where going with the lowest bidder on a contract has ended up resulting in additional costs for shoddy work and missed deadlines. For years, LGBTQ people have been under attack in red states, and that is not in any way abating this year. State legislatures want to ban drag performances and prevent trans youth and their families from accessing gender-affirming care, to name just two current hot-button issues. If LGBTQ San Franciscans travel to these states on the banned list, they could be arrested or denied health care in an emergency. Their partners or spouses could be prevented from being with them in the hospital if that hospital does not receive federal dollars. These ramifications should be considered by the board in any discus-

for the local drag community was first proposed in the draft version of San Francisco’s groundbreaking LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage Strategy released in 2018. It was reading about the drag laureate suggestion in the B.A.R. that led gay West Hollywood resident Scott Schmidt to first bring it to the attention of his city council representative.

City leaders in all three jurisdictions see it as a way to boost local nightlife venues and drag performers whose revenues have been impacted by the COVID pandemic over the last three years. San Francisco’s drag laureate will be expected to participate in and host community events while serving as an ambassador for the city’s LGBTQ, arts, nightlife, and entertainment communities.

The post is also being created at a time when Republican lawmakers in states across the country are banning drag events from being held at public venues and criticizing parents for taking their children to drag brunches or drag story hours at bookstores and public libraries.

“I am just so glad we are doing this as we’ve seen the drag bans popping up across the country.

It is just important for people to know that drag and trans and queer people have always been here,” said Roma.

“We aren’t going anywhere. We certainly aren’t going to allow that fascist homophobia and transphobia to take root here in San Francisco.” t

Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion, will return Monday, February 27.

Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes.

sions. One of Mayor London Breed’s first acts when she took office in 2018 was to decline a trip to Alabama because the state was on the banned travel list. Now, however, she reportedly favors repealing or reforming the ordinance.

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Discussions on such a major change to the city’s policies deserve more than a single committee hearing and vote by the full board. And city leaders should consider Chapter 12X changes together after Mandelman submits his proposal. This piecemeal approach to scrapping support for the LGBTQ community, reproductive rights and voting freedoms, and standing up to conservative states with laws against these rights, is not the answer. t

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SFAF CEO Tyler TerMeer Courtesy SFAF

Six days in February

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

On the afternoon of February 11, a girl by the name of Brianna Ghey was found on a path in Culcheth Linear Park in Warrington, Cheshire, England. Pronounced dead at the scene, she was the victim of multiple stab wounds.

Ghey was a 16-year-old trans girl who hosted a TikTok channel and was known to help other trans folks like herself work around the labyrinthine

National Health Service and legally acquire hormone replacement therapy, or HRT. She also faced years of transphobic bullying, including being beaten at school. I suppose this isn’t surprising, as most trans women have faced similar experiences, and the climate in the U.K. toward transgender people right now is exceedingly toxic, pushed by the media elevating anti-trans voices, particularly from so-called gender critical people who have sought to de-

DISPLAY OBITUARIES & IN MEMORIAMS

monize transgender people, particularly trans women, at every turn. Gender criticals believe that someone’s sex is biological and unchanging.

Even in death, media outlets altered their first reports of Ghey’s killing, removing the word “girl,” and digging up the name she was assigned at birth to add to their reporting. As it is, the U.K. government will do the same to her: gender recognition certificates are not allowed for U.K. minors and, as such, her death will legally be registered to a name and gender that do not reflect the person Ghey was.

On the morning of February 16, two letters were sent to the New York Times, asking the paper to improve its coverage of trans people. One letter was signed by more than 100 organizations, including GLAAD, which spearheaded the effort. The second letter was signed by over 1,000 current and former Times contributors.

Many people believe that the Times, following the lead set forth by the U.K. press, has begun to run regular antitransgender pieces.

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“We write to you as a collective of New York Times contributors with serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people,” the contributors’ letter stated.

The letter cites 15,000 words devoted to front-page coverage debating trans medical care in just the last eight months, exclusive of other pieces present in the Gray Lady. You can read the full letter from the past and present contributors at nytletter.com. (https://nytletter.com/). I’d urge you to do so, as it goes into some detail about what the signatories allege are biases presented by the paper, as well as how this coverage has influenced the battle over trans people in statehouses and courts nationwide.

You can also read GLAAD’s letter at https://bit.ly/3SafcdN.

As an aside, we’ve seen over 300 new bills filed across the U.S. this year attacking trans health care, participation in sports, use of school restrooms, and – the worst of them – bills that are forcibly detransitioning trans people and preventing them from updating their birth certificates and other identity documents.

In response to the letter from the contributors, the Times did three things.

First, it sent a memo via Charlie Stadtlander, the Times’ director of external communications, where he ignored the letter in question entirely, focusing on the companion letter organized by GLAAD, arguing that the Times’ “journalistic mission” was different from the advocacy organization.

Second, it distributed an internal memo, threatening their staff who signed onto the contributors’ letter – again, only citing the GLAAD letter, not the aforementioned one from Times contributors.

Finally, on the morning of February 16, it published an opinion column by Pamela Paul titled, “In Defense of J.K. Rowling.”

I should back up here a bit. While I am sure that Rowling and her Harry Potter franchise needs little introduction, it is her work post-Potter that deserves some scrutiny. Of note is her outspokenness against transgender rights, declar ing, “trans women retain the same pattern of sex offending/violence as males,” adding later that, “it is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence.”

She has also gone out of her way to support many of the same gender critical bigots who have become alltoo-commonplace in U.K. anti-trans discourse, including praising one who compared transgender women

to “blackface actors” who “get sexual kicks from being treated like women.”

This is without even touching on the books Rowling wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, which have included very unflattering and false depictions of transgender people.

Rowling recently had a hand in a new video game, “Hogwarts Legacy,” and a lot of its publicity ended up hinging around her transphobia and the game’s own antisemitic plot line.

I’m of the opinion that the company leaned into that a bit, knowing it could count on an “own the libs” backlash to move copies of the games while the die-hard Harry Potter fans would rationalize their purchase. Even the late reveal of a transgender character to the game – with the obviously male-coded name of Sirona Ryan – was likely a calculated token attempt to appease the critics. Rowling herself has stated on more than one occasion that she views the continued sales of Harry Potter items as a sign that a silent majority agree with her – though the growing tarnish on her own legacy has started to lead to attempts to whitewash her anti-trans views, claiming she was merely “misunderstood.”

Enter the Times, which, on the day after two open letters complained about its reporting, and six days after the brutal murder of Ghey has left the U.K. trans community reeling, published columnist Paul’s defense of Rowling, claiming that, “nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic.”

I’d say the aforementioned statements and actions can stand on their own.

Ghey is dead, killed in a virulent anti-trans climate brought forth by the U.K. media, as well as the money and influence of people like Rowling, who is lending her voice and pocketbook to U.K. gender criticals. We do not need to repeat their mistakes here and fuel any more deaths. t

Gwen Smith is breaking her oath not to write about Rowling in this column. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com

SF to end COVID health emergency February 28

compiled by Cynthia Laird

Adored in SF

Back in San Francisco Mills was making a name for himself via his drag alter ego and as a member of the group The Sluts a-Go-Go. He had formed it with Miss X and Tippi, born Brian Douglas Mead in Cleveland on June 6, 1952, and several other performers and collaborators. They brought their act to Sydney in late 1979 and became a smash sensation there, as Seligman details in his book.

“They all loved her,” recalled Chandler. “Doris had quite the career there.”

Mills was also adored in San Francisco, he added, crediting his friend for carrying the rest of them, including their fellow drag performer and friend Freda Lay, along with him.

“She was the big saucy blonde,” Chandler, 71, said of Fish. “Tippi was the little petite dumb blonde. I was the brunette, the Jane Russell in the troupe, and Freda was the vacuous blonde. We made quite the quartet.”

In 1981, Mills married a lesbian friend in order to obtain his American green card, per Seligman. (He doesn’t name the woman, as she declined to be interviewed.)

The next year he made his debut along with Miss X as drag models on greeting cards distributed across the U.S. by the San Francisco-based West Graphics. It brought Mills a devoted following from coast to coast, as the ones depicting him as a bag lady sold especially well.

The cards, as Seligman noted, “made Doris’ face if not his name familiar nationwide into the 1990s through dozens and dozens of cards and as many personalities.” They also resulted in Mills being invited to appear on several East Coast television shows for interviews.

Throughout the course of his time in San Francisco, Mills would befriend and collaborate with a host of performers, entertainers, and other drag artists. They included the singer and songwriter Connie Champagne; performer Kate Bornstein; events producer and director Marc Huestis, and the late Chuck Solomon, who founded the LGBTQ-focused Theater Rhinoceros and died of AIDS complications in 1991.

Seligman first met Mills via his now husband Silvana Nova, who had starred with Fish in the hit drag soap opera “Na-

From page 8

People can continue to choose to wear masks around others in any setting for added protection and people should respect other people’s choices around their health, the release noted.

ked Brunch.” Huestis had also worked on it, and various episodes of the show ran between 1983 and 1984.

“I think Doris would be delighted, absolutely delighted,” Nova, 72, said of his husband’s book. “There is not one lie in it, which might be a problem.”

In December 1985, Mills started hosting the Gay Cable Network show “The Right Stuff” about entertainment news. Four years later he penned a “must read” weekly column for the gay San Francisco Sentinel newspaper that covered the city’s drag scene as well as his own life, that of his friends, animal rights, and the Sydney Mardi Gras parade. He gave it up in October 1990 due to his declining health from being HIVpositive, which he also wrote about.

The next month then-mayor Art Agnos declared November 3, 1990 as Doris Fish Day in San Francisco. It coincided with a send off party that doubled as a tribute benefit Mills’ friends threw for him at the Victoria Theater in the city’s Mission district. It was called “Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?” lending Seligman the title of his book decades later.

(A video of Fish performing at the event can be found at https://bit. ly/3XRoUCM)

“I didn’t really realize how beloved we really were until decades later when people would start to talk to me about our shows and say, ‘I never missed a performance,’” said Chan-

dler. “She is truly immortal and she sort of dragged us along with her.”

Mills died due to AIDS complications on June 22, 1991, at the age of 38, and his friends buried his ashes by a Monterey Pine tree in the city’s arboretum in Golden Gate Park. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence posthumously sainted him.

By then Seligman and Nova, who both worked for magazines, had moved to New York City. Before becoming a book author, Seligman was an editor at the New Yorker and Food and Wine magazine, and also was a book critic for Bloomberg News.

Snapshot of author’s life

As much as his latest book is a memoir about Fish, it is also a snapshot of Seligman’s life in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

“Doris was emblematic of his times, both as a person whose drag style evolved and a person who brought drag from the fringes to the center, especially during the era of AIDS,” said Seligman, 69, who was born in Louisiana and attended Stanford. “He is also someone who is emblematic of his era, from Stonewall when you still couldn’t tell someone you were gay without fear of violence to a time of the community uniting politically and learning to fight for itself.”

Over the decades since, Mills’ no-

toriety as Doris Fish has dimmed outside of drag circles and devotees of his now cult classic drag sci-fi camp movie “Vegas in Space.” Mills and his friends had spent years working on the film, which had its premiere at the Castro Theatre on October 11, 1991 –fittingly on what is celebrated as National Coming Out Day. It became a film festival darling the following year after first being screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

“If you had gone to any number of drag shows in the early 1990s right after her death, any of the queens would have known who she was,” said Ms. Bob Davis, the founder and director of the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive, which is reopening to the public March 31. “Drag is such a visual thing, and he always looked great, the same with Tippi. Doris’s skill with makeup was just jaw-dropping.”

Davis fell in love with Tippi, and the two moved in together following Mills’ death, though Tippi would soon die due to AIDS.

“I tell people Tippi’s death was hastened by grief for Doris,” said Davis in a phone interview with the B.A.R. She also worked on “Vegas in Space,” designing the sound for the film. As for her relationship with Mills, Davis said they never became close friends.

“I think Doris always viewed me as an interloper. I never became close to her,” recalled Davis. “I wasn’t exactly gay, which may have made a difference; I don’t know. Back then was defined as a transvestite.”

Interviewed by Seligman for his book, Davis years later would approach the GLBT Historical Society about mounting a special exhibit about Doris Fish. Plans to mount it were in the works then the COVID pandemic hit, forcing the archival nonprofit to close its GLBT Historical Society Museum in San Francisco’s LGBTQ Castro district.

Titled “Ego As Artform: the Art and Artifacts of Doris Fish,” taken from one of her performances, it is now expected to open sometime in April and run through July. Davis pulled from her own archive’s holdings as well as from the historical society’s archival materials about Fish to create it.

“Doris, to put her in context, was the reigning drag queen of the 1980s in San Francisco,” said Davis. “But this was the era of the ‘Castro clone.’

Everyone was working on being so masculine, so drag was like swimming upstream.”

AIDS society to rotate all conferences

The International AIDS Society has announced that its three conferences will rotate to all regions of the world and that they will continue to offer virtual participation.

The timing of the exhibit coming so soon after the release of Seligman’s book and the various events honoring Fish in Sydney is purely coincidental, said Davis.

“I felt Doris deserved to be seen,” said Davis. “I had the same feeling that this is someone who we should be remembering in the community. Her memory has slipped away.”

Chandler and his wife, Alison, who both identify as gay but are in a monogamous marriage, had met in San Francisco and wed in 1994. They now live in Phoenix and have three adult children, the youngest twins that currently reside with them; their oldest transitioned and now lives with his partner in Seattle.

The couple will be in Sydney for the World Pride festivities, including the opening concert February 24 with headliner Australian pop sensation Kylie Minogue. The next day Chandler will ride in the parade in a pink convertible Cadillac with others from the ‘Vegas’ film, including Nova.

“I have a pink dress to go with the car,” he said.

Sunday, February 26, Chandler will head to the State Library of New South Wales for a conversation with Seligman and a screening of “Hi Spots in a Low Dive: The Home Movies of Doris Fish,” presented by their friend and director, Phillip R. Ford, who was also a member of The Sluts a-Go-Go. He directed “Vegas in Space,” which will also be screened in Sydney on February 28. Ford, Miss X, Nova, and the film’s musical director Timmy Spence are set to take part in the special event.

Going backwards

Seeing the growing backlash to drag events in America from Republican lawmakers and conservative groups across the country, Mills would be horrified, Chandler told the B.A.R.

“It is going backwards in time. Instead of evolving and creating a new and wonderful freedom in the world, it is trying to put braces on everyone’s brains and keep them from being creative, from expressing who they are,” said Chandler, who no longer performs in drag but will reprise his Miss X persona in Sydney. “It is really tragic, the turn it has taken. But it is not surprising, that is how life is: a roller coaster or pendulum that swings back and forth. It doesn’t mean we can stop fighting.” t

The society stated that due to Munich’s proximity to eastern Europe with its rapidly growing HIV epidemic, AIDS 2024 will feature a third co-chair, Andriy Klepikov, representing eastern Europe. Klepikov will join co-chairs Lewin and Christoph Spinner, the release noted.

John S. Wilkie

August 17, 1940 – February 4, 2023

Jack was born in 1940 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada. In 1964 he graduated from the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. He subsequently obtained his fellowship in Ophthalmology in 1970 at the University of British Columbia. He followed this with a year as a Fellow at the Proctor Foundation, University of California in San Francisco before returning to Vancouver where he practiced Ophthalmology until 1977.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has announced that the city’s COVID-19 public health emergency declaration will end February 28.

born in 1940 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada. In 1964 he graduated from of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. He subsequently obtained his in Ophthalmology in 1970 at the University of British Columbia. He followed this as a Fellow at the Proctor Foundation, University of California in San Francisco returning to Vancouver where he practiced Ophthalmology until 1977.

Jack then returned to San Francisco and became a partner in the Northern California Kaiser Permanente Medical Group until he retired in 1995. He was an active member of critical social justice initiatives, including the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights (BAPHR) and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA), which became the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights (AAPHR).

Along with the declaration, Health Officer Order No. C19-07y, “Safer Return Together,” as well as additional health orders, will also end that day, according to a news release. The moves put San Francisco in alignment with California, which will end its state of emergency the same day, as Governor Gavin Newsom announced last October.

The health department added that it will be monitoring the ongoing national discussions about COVID vaccination schedules and will adjust the existing local vaccination requirements once federal and state recommendations are made.

returned to San Francisco and became a partner in the Northern California Kaiser Permanente Medical Group until he retired in 1995. He was an active member of critical social initiatives, including the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights (BAPHR) and the Gay and Medical Association (GLMA), which became the American Association of Physicians for Rights (AAPHR).

Jack’s love of travel allowed him to develop great friendships across the globe. He established a brilliant life for himself in San Francisco, Honolulu, and Palm Springs, while maintaining lifelong relationships in Canada. His friends meant the world to him and in later years, these friends continued to enrich his life.

Jack’s wish was to live his final years in the San Francisco home he loved. He was able to do so with the unwavering support of his good friend Steve Wissing. Jack will be dearly missed by his sister Donna, her partner Rita, and the many friends whom he loved. There will be a gathering to celebrate Jack, first in San Francisco, and then later in Vancouver.

Local health officials stressed that COVID continues to impact the city.

of travel allowed him to develop great friendships across the globe. He established a for himself in San Francisco, Honolulu, and Palm Springs, while maintaining lifelong relationships in Canada. His friends meant the world to him and in later years, these friends to enrich his life.

Jack was one of a kind. He reminded all of us to enjoy life.

“While the threat from COVID-19 is not over, as both the virus and the tools to re spond to it have evolved over the past three years, San Francisco is now in a significantly better po sition than at any prior time in the pandemic due to the city’s high vaccination and booster rates and the availabil-

was to live his final years in the San Francisco home he loved. He was able to do so unwavering support of his good friend Steve Wissing. Jack will be dearly missed by his Donna, her

ity of effective COVID treatments,” DPH stated.

Health Officer Dr. Susan Philip will rescind the Safer Return Together order, but she intends to issue new orders that will affect hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and other health care and jail settings, the release stated. Under the order, staff in these settings will still be required to wear a mask when interacting with

patients, clients, or people who are incarcerated. Masking requirements for the general public will end, DPH stated. Additionally, masking requirements in homeless shelters for both the general public and staff will end. These changes go into effect March 1, the release stated. Those who operate health care or jail facilities can decide to be more restrictive than local health guidelines and may still implement their own requirements, according to DPH.

See page 9 >>

“Today’s announcement is a testament to the extraordinary efforts of San Francisco residents, and to the progress that we have made collectively as a city to prevent the worst of COVID-19,” Philip stated February 16. Health officials noted that it remains important for individuals to be diligent about their health and the health of others as the virus is still here. People should stay home if they are sick, continue to wash hands, and keep well-fitted masks, such as N95, KN95, or KF94, on hand.

DPH also encourages people to seek out COVID resources such as at-home tests, treatments for those who test positive, and the updated bivalent booster, which is currently free. Information on these resources can be found at https://sf.gov/topics/ coronavirus-covid-19.

In terms of the federal health emergency, President Joe Biden recently announced it would end May 11.

Gay-owned Oakland eatery marks 3 years with giveaway La Frontera Mexican Restaurant in Oakland, popular for its quesabirrias and burritos, will celebrate its third anniversary Tuesday, February 28, and will give away free quesabirrias to the first 100 customers starting at 6 p.m.

When the COVID pandemic hit, La Frontera owner Valentino Carrillo, a gay man, was uncertain if the eatery would stay open, as the Bay Area Reporter noted in a profile on him in 2021.

According to a news release, La Frontera did close for two weeks in March 2020 while Carrillo decided on the direction to take the restaurant.

With a background in marketing, Carrillo reopened and saw the restau-

rant gain in popularity on DoorDash, helping Carrillo go from six to over 20 employees during most of the pandemic, the release noted.

Carrillo also owns the LGBTQ Que Rico Nightclub in downtown Oakland, which opened in 2021, as the B.A.R. previously reported.

He serves on the board of the Oakland Latino Chamber of Commerce and the board of Pridefest Oakland.

He recently received the Latino chamber’s Entrepreneurship and Community Excellence Award.

La Frontera is located at 4481 International Boulevard. The anniversary party runs from 6 to 11 p.m. and will feature a DJ and a drag performance at 9.

The in-person components of the International AIDS Conference, the IAS Conference on HIV Science, and the HIV Research for Prevention Conference will rotate among five world regions – Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the U.S. and Canada – and will not take place consecutively in any region, a news release stated.

AIDS 2024, the International AIDS Conference, will take place in Munich, Germany and virtually next July 22-26. Pre-conferences are set to start July 20.

“The global rotation will help ensure that people from around the world have an opportunity to participate in our conferences in person,” IAS President Sharon Lewin stated. “It will also allow us to shine a spotlight on critical HIV issues in every region.”

The IAS will invite bids from potential host cities in Africa for IAS 2025, the 13th IAS Conference on HIV Science, and from cities in Latin America and the Caribbean for AIDS 2026, according to the release. This year’s HIV science conference will be held in Brisbane, Australia in July. The next research for prevention conference takes place in 2024 in Lima, Peru.

“Munich – Kyiv’s official partner city – offers a safe and welcoming space for conference delegates who hail from this region and beyond, including people living with and affected by HIV,” Klepikov stated.

“AIDS 2024 will provide an opportunity to shine a spotlight on one of the fastest-growing HIV epidemics in the world, driven by a lack of access to health services for people who use drugs and exacerbated by the disruption and instability of the war in Ukraine, mass migration, and faltering economies.”

In addition to the virtual options for conferences, IAS will continue to offer scholarships to ensure that travel and cost barriers don’t prevent people from the most affected regions of the world from attending. It will also offer discounted registration rates for young people and people from lower-income countries up to 90% below the full registration fee, the release stated. For more information about the society, go to https://www.iasociety. org/. For more information on AIDS 2024, go to https://www.iasociety. org/conferences/aids2024. t

Silvana Nova, left, and author Craig Seligman dressed for the “Vegas in Space” 25th anniversary screening in San Francisco in 2016.

Courtesy Craig Seligman

Brianna Ghey Christine Smith

An early COVID testing site operated in April 2020 in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood at Parque Niños Unidos.

Liz Highleyman

Valentino Carrillo stood inside the not-yet-open Que Rico Nightclub and Restaurant in 2021.

Cynthia Laird

Doris Fish appeared in “Vegas in Space” in 1984.

Dan Nicoletta

by Brian Bromberger

If you ever listened to Jake Blount’s (pronounced Blunt) music, it defies description, making it unforgettable. He describes his style as “playing fiddle and banjo from Black and Native-American musicians, mostly in the Southeastern United States.”

Being African-American and gay, based in Providence, he dislikes the ‘old-time’ designation because it basically referred to white musicians for white people. Blount framed his own style as “genrequeer,” meaning it transcends categorization and any one style. Listening to his albums shatters any preconceptions you might have about the typical string band sound.

His backing band is queer and gender-balanced. He notes the majority of Black, old-time musicians he knows are queer, which has an impact on the music created. Blount has met “some opposition by white musicians and folklorists due to his progressive interpretations of traditions,” but observed that at the Clifftop Bluegrass Festival in 2021, all the winners, including himself, were queer and many were People Of Color, meaning a momentous change in this genre is occurring.

For Blount, identifying queerness in musical history is paramount. “When it comes to queer musicians prior to the past 40 years, no one was out. So there are queer musicians all over the place, but we don’t know who they are. That’s part of the reason why I put a song from one of the 1920s blues queens on my “Spider Tales” album – because they were openly queer, a lot of them, but were never open about it, or everyone knew – but it’s a weird situation where people can sort of capitalize off their queerness, without ever owning it publicly. So then it’s not officially part of the narrative.”

Jake Blount

Genrequeer Afrofuturist folk music

In the CD’s press release, Blount observed, “There’s a long history of expressions of pain in the African-American tradition. Often those things couldn’t be stated outright. If you said the wrong thing to the wrong person back then you could die from it, but the anger and the desire for justice are still there, just hidden. The songs deal with intense emotion but couch it in a love song or in religious

imagery so it wasn’t something you could be called out about. These ideas survived because people in power weren’t perceiving the messages, but they’re there if you know where to look.”

However, in his latest CD, “The New Faith,” released by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Blount envisions Black American religious music in a dystopian future devastated by thermonucle-

Noir Town

ar warfare and anthropogenic climate cataclysm. The record is based on field recordings of Black religious services from the early-to-mid-20th century, but composed entirely of new arrangements and subtle rewrites of traditional Black folk songs, especially plummeting the depths of spirituals and original compositions by Blount.

Blount composed the music in the first months of COVID-19 and just after the murder of George Floyd. Isolated from friends and family plus recovering from a bout of long COVID, he comments, “I was consumed with fear, stricken by the concreteness of my own mortality and the collapse of everyday life. I ended up asking two questions: What will this music sound like when I’m dead? What will this music sound like when everyone is dead?”

This roots music concept album incorporating an Afrofuturist vision (based on the sci-fi writings of black lesbian Octavia Butler) occurs in the aftermath of the near annihilation of civilization with descendants of U.S. Black refugees confined to an island camp off the coast of New England.

Most of the songs are recreated lost music from memory using acoustic instruments (guitar, banjo, bass, fiddle), though there are elements of unsettling electric guitar with a harsh, high-pitched droning tone mostly for special effects, as well as looping and digital processing with percussion, layered harmonies, rap, hip-hop, gospel, and falsetto-inflected disco, including spoken moments of recitation by Blount as preacher and prophet like a musical call-and-response.

Not interested in making happy music, he instead manages to elicit anger, grief, and trauma (i.e. slavery, Jim Crow, police brutality) about what we’ve done to the planet with uplifting themes of hope and resilience, that despite a grave, uncertain future, something of us will yet survive.

Blount’s music is the personification of Black spirituality embracing humanism, queer liberation, science fiction, and religious belief. It’s clear from his work, that Blount is as much a storyteller, historian, and activist as a musician, which is why “New Faith” is both thrilling and disconcerting. It’s essential listening for anyone trying to make sense of our world dealing with racism, homo/transphobia, and environmental catastrophe. He not only updates traditional string band music, but opens new vistas and audiences for its future.t

www.jakeblount.com

Read the full article, with music clips, on www.ebar.com

And there is no inherent urgency to Henry’s quest, no ticking clock to reel the narrative in. As the play opens, and recurrently throughout, Henry directly addresses the audience (a clumsy analog to noir’s narrative voiceovers). He’s a jovial, nerdy Google engineer whose father’s decades-past murder doesn’t seem to weigh heavily on him, having already made a hobby of investigating S.F.P.D. cold cases for quite some time before eventually getting around to Dad’s death.

Might Henry’s own story be a case of avoidance and repression? Neither Wong’s affable delivery or Chen’s opening monologue clue us in to such psychological underpinnings.

In fact, when Henry first explains that the victim of the murder he’s currently revisiting is his own father, opening night attendees expressed audible surprise.

What should be an ever-present emotional throughline of “The Headlands” is delivered as just one of several clever plot twists, with little lasting resonance.

The plot’s biggest wallop is a late-in-the-game reveal that, with its tale of bloodline surprises, obliquely links “The Headlands” to perhaps the greatest noir tribute film of all time: “Chinatown.” I wouldn’t put such deviltry beyond Chen’s intention, despite the flaws of “The Headlands,” its still a heady piece of work, wickedly rich in allusion as well as delusion.

by Jim Gladstone

The stars of “The Headlands,” local playwright Christopher Chen’s San Francisco mystery, now playing at A.C.T.’s Toni Rembe Theatre, are the scenic and projection design by Alexander V. Nichols.

The play’s action centers on the Sunset district house where our Chinese-American amateur private eye narrator Henry (Phil Wong) grew up. Nichols’ putty gray street-front exterior elegantly revolves on a turntable, revealing nondescript interior spaces: a kitchen, a staircase, a second floor picture window.

But every wall, inside and out, is brought to life with a shifting veil of video clips and still images, successfully evoking the shadowy, dangerous San Francisco of film noir as Henry begins delving into the fogbound facts of his father’s murder,

more than twenty years earlier.

Between the motion of the set and the fluid rush of imagery, the stage becomes a dreamspace, a none-too-solid San Francisco.

While the geography of Marin plays a symbolic role in the plot, it is Henry’s headlands that the audience is drawn into. The walls between memory, speculation and the factual past dissolve. The projections are Henry’s as well.

This is gorgeous stuff: script and stagecraft in near-perfect harmony (Chen’s written stage directions deftly summarize the conceit that Nichols so handsomely executes). The first fifteen minutes dazzle.

All too soon though, Chen’s excess of exposition and director Pam Mackinnon’s languid pacing undermine the show’s conceptual brio. When the production’s initial flood of cinematic effects subsides, so does its narrative momentum.

Blues, clues

The brooding, existential aspects of the best film noir are, in part, conveyed by movies’ unique ability to fuse contemplative stillness with the relentless hurtle of time running out.

In “Dark Passage,” even as Humphrey Bogart’s character Vincent Parry stoically wrestles with inner demons amid subtle shifts of light and shadow, moviegoers remain forever conscious of a world that continues to rush forward at 24 frames per second. On stage, a frozen moment can last forever. And in “The Headlands,” it sometimes seems like they will.

In halting conversations between Henry and his girlfriend Jess (Sam Jackson, one of the Bay Area’s most charismatic actors, here a bit lost in an underwritten role) and in repeatedly remembered arguments between his parents, George (Johnny M. Wu) and Leena (Erin Mei-ling Stuart), there are pauses so long they feel anti-dramatic.

Despite its title, that classic’s Oscar-winning Robert Towne screenplay had no substantial connection to Chinese-American culture, but Chen’s script draws deeply and insightfully on it, pointing to unexpressed emotions, intergenerational dynamics and secrets kept from children by parents.

“The Headlands” may not live up to Chen’s trickiest ambitions, but it’s an impressive work of intellectual legerdemain nonetheless. Hovering over an impossible intersection of cinematic and theatrical magic, it is sometimes foggy, but always intriguing.t

‘The Headlands’ through March 5. $25-$110. A.C.T’s Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St. (415) 749-2228 www.act-sf.org

Read more, including a review of Magic Theatre’s “The Travellers,” on www.ebar.com.

(L–R) Phil Wong (Henry), Jomar Tagatac (Tom), and Erin Mei-Ling Stuart (Leena) in the West Coast premiere of Christopher Chen’s ‘The Headlands’

Stage meets screen in A.C.T.’s ‘The Headlands’

Kevin Berne

Remembering Olympia Dukakis

by David-Elijah Nahmod

To the general public, Olympia Dukakis was an Oscar-winning actress. But to the LGBT community, she will always be Mrs. Anna Madrigal, the pot-smoking transgender landlady in the various TV incarnations of Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” books. When Dukakis first played Mrs. Madrigal in 1993, playing an LGBT character was still risky for an actor. Yet Dukakis plunged into the role with relish, making Mrs. Madrigal her own.

Dukakis, who, in addition to her television work, performed in more than 100 stage productions and in more that 60 films, won the coveted Oscar for her work in the 1987 romcom “Moonstruck.” A 2020 documentary, “Olympia,” recounts the actress’ amazing life story.

She passed away at age 89 in 2021, leaving behind an incomparable legacy. On March 3 American Conservatory Theater will stage “Remembering Olympia” at the Strand Theater. This tribute to Dukakis is being put together by her younger brother Apollo.

“She often said that Anna Madrigal was her favorite of all her screen and TV roles,” Apollo Dukakis said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “The unconditionally and non-judgmental way Anna had with her friends and the world was a validation to the LGBTQ community. It was maybe the first time they saw someone who reflected their lives

on mainstream television in a positive and life affirming way and it gave them hope and dignity.”

“Remembering Olympia” will offer the audience a glimpse into Dukakis’ private life as well as an overview of her film career. The event will begin with an eight-minute photo montage of some of her stage work, along with intimate glimpses of family and friends.

This will be followed by “You and Me,” a forty-minute two-character one-act play written by Apollo and performed by him and actress Kandis Chappell. “You and Me” will offer a deeply personal look at the relationship between sister and brother. That will be followed by a fifteen-minute montage of scenes from her films.

The montages were put together by Olympia’s children, Christina, Peter

and Stefan Zorich, and were originally shown at Olympia’s memorial service at the Delacorte Theater in New York

City. The evening will conclude with a Q & A moderated by Carey Perloff, former artistic director at A.C.T. Olympia had performed at A.C.T. a number of times.

“I wrote the play ‘You and Me’ with the hope that my sister and I could perform it together,” he said. “But she passed away in May of 2021 before that could happen. We were always looking for a play to act together one more time. We had acted together many times before and she would direct me and I would direct her at the theater we both co-founded with a group of friends back in 1973 in Montclair, New Jersey called The Whole Theater Company.”

That theater company lasted for 19 years and staged productions to national acclaim. It was nominated for a

Missing, kissing, & dissing

by Victoria A. Brownworth

It’s Lent, again. So if you are giving up candy or other sweets for this period of self-abnegation, we recommend some televised confections that won’t break your flagellant commitments, but will still be fulfilling.

Missing Black women

We’re a bit of a Lifetime devotee for reasons we can’t quite articulate, but their true crime-ish movies are usually pretty good. Garcelle Beauvais (“Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “White House Down”) stars in the Lifetime original “Black Girl Missing” as part of the network’s Stop Violence Against Women campaign.

A new PSA for The Black and Missing Foundation will be part of the movie’s premiere, spotlighting The Black And Missing Foundation’s com-

mitment to locating missing persons of color. Black Americans remain missing four times longer than white Americans.

Beauvais is also executive-producing the movie inspired by actual stories of missing women of color. The film details what happens when Cheryl (Garcelle Beauvais) gets into an argument with her daughter Lauren (Iyana Halley) over her desire to drop out of college. Cheryl initially thinks Lauren is simply ignoring her calls and texts, but Cheryl soon realizes Lauren is missing. While she attempts to get help from authorities and the media, they quickly dismiss the case, labeling Lauren as a runaway while they are all too consumed with another case – that of a missing white girl.

Lifetime will also debut the special, “Beyond the Headlines: Black Girl Missing,” following true stories of missing Black women featuring inter-

views with their families and Black and Missing Foundation’s involvement in the cases. Natalie and Derrica Wilson of the Black and Missing Foundation are also consultants. “Black Girl Missing” debuts on Lifetime March 4.

Paris when it sizzles Freeform’s new reality show “Love Trip: Paris” is a fresh take on the dating show genre. It follows four Americans in a Parisian penthouse as they search for love, and it’s queer-inclusive.

Tony Award for Best Regional Theater. But awards meant little to her, according to her brother.

“You know, awards and such didn’t mean that much to my sister,” he said. “It was the work itself that was her passion and that gave her fulfillment. She appreciated the recognition, but her values were elsewhere. After she won the Oscar, when asked what it meant to her, she said she hoped it meant that she would get to work with wonderful actors and wonderful directors.”

Those who attend the show at the Strand will learn about some of Olympia’s other passions.

“Young people unaware of my sister’s career and her influence will learn about one of this generation’s greatest actresses and one of its staunchest activists for LGBT rights, for women’s rights, and a spokesperson for Alzheimer’s education,” he said. “She was a funny lady who, like Anna Madrigal, loved her family unconditionally and without judgment.

I know Olympia will be remembered as a great actress, an impassioned activist, and a beloved champion for gay and women’s rights. But I’ll remember as, next to my wife, the most influential person I ever knew who guided me, taught me, and loved me unconditionally.”t

“Remembering Olympia” March 3, 7pm, Strand Theater, 1127 Market St. $30. www.act-sf.org

Narrated by out gay actor Matt Rogers (“Fire Island,” “I Love That for You”), the series features four principles; Josielyn Aguiler, Lacy Hartselle,

See page 15 >>

Above: Garcelle Beauvais in Lifetime’s ‘Black Girl Missing’

Below: The women of ‘Love Trip: Paris’

Left: Olympia Dukakis Right: Apollo Dukakis

Joanna Tzetzoumis

Left: Olympia Dukakis as Anna Madrigal in ‘Tales of the City’

Right: Apollo Dukakis and Olympia Dukakis in The Whole Theatre Company’s 1982 production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’

Singing the test of time t

by Jim Gladstone

“Aboutthree quarters of the songs I did last night I hadn’t done for an audience before,” said singer Catherine Russell, who had just played the first night of her annual Valentine’s week engagement at New York’s Birdland jazz club when she spoke to the Bay Area Reporter by phone.

“Before I ever record something,” explained Russell, who plays the Fairmont Hotel’s Venetian Room February 26 as part of the Bay Area Cabaret Series, “I always test them out with live audiences, just to see if they work. Luckily, they usually do.”

Part of why they work is that, while new to Russell’s everexpanding concert repertoire, which she estimates at two to three hundred numbers, hers are songs that have already stood the test of time.

“It’s always a mixture of jazz, blues and the Great American songbook,” said the Grammy-winning Russell, 66, whose father was Louis Armstrong’s longtime musical director and whose mother performed with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.

While she’s built her solo career around 20th-century standards, few of which were originally recorded later than 1950, Russell made her living for many years singing in the studio and on the road with pop and rock artists.

She’s toured extensively with Da-

vid Bowie, Jackson Browne and Steely Dan and been featured on over 200 albums by artists including Paul Simon and even Madonna (“Rescue Me”).

“I learned so much working with those artists,” said Russell. “You know it’s not like [the documentary film] ‘Twenty Feet from Stardom,’ where you’re this background singer just waiting for your chance to get up front in the spotlight. I think of my voice as an instrument, as part of the band. It doesn’t matter if I’m singing background or lead. My voice is part of the overall fabric of the tune.”

Keeping great songs alive

Still, when it came time to record her own first album, “Cat,” in 2006, Russell looked back to the music she grew up with and continues to savor today.

“I’m attracted to songs that are uplifting and that have universal themes,” said Russell, “And the great American songbook songs have them.”

“I also have to feel comfortable singing every lyric. So, for instance, I don’t sing ‘The Lady Is A Tramp.’ I just can’t relate to it.”

As anyone who’s seen Russell’s live performances knows, that’s a matter of feminism, not prudishness; virtually every Russell set features one or more swinging blues tunes, chockful of saucy double entendres.

While she’s a great admirer and interpreter of great American songbook composers like Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern, Russell is intent on keeping a torch burning for jazz and blues songs written by sometimes unknown Black composers and sung by Black performers like Ruth Brown, Dinah Washington, Alberta Hunter and Carrie Smith.

“All of those women are dead now. And I’m afraid that their music won’t live on,” said Russell, pointing out that songs originated by Black composers and artists are generally not among the songbook tunes compiled on albums by the likes of Michael Bublé, Rod Stewart or Harry Connick, Jr.

“Have people ever heard of Irene Kitchings?” Russell asked, referring to the Black female songwriter who wrote songs including “Some Other Spring” and “The Ghost of Yesterday,” both recorded by Billie Holiday. “Those should absolutely be considered part of the great American songbook. In my teaching career, I do come across a lot of young people who want

to sing standards and classic material.”

She was delighted to see Samara Joy, who sings from that repertoire, win the Grammy for Best New Artist a few weeks back.

“Hopefully that will bring some attention from younger people and younger singers. But the music business is a behemoth maze,” Russell acknowledged, offering no quick solution to keeping classic pop songs from becoming museum pieces, listened to only by niche audiences.

“There’s always the issue of marketing. Something has to be put in front of you over and over in order to stick, for people to know it. You don’t have to own music by Lizzo or Taylor Swift to know them.”

If you do know and appreciate 20th-century classics – or are ready to be schooled by an expert – Russell hopes you’ll catch her with her combo this Sunday.

“Its always fun,” she said. “I only do songs that are fun to perform for me and the other musicians I play with.”t Catherine Russell, Bay Area Cabaret at the Venetian Room, Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St. February 26. $30-$70. (415) 927-4636 www.bayareacabaret.org www.catherinerussell.net

More solos and sides

by Gregg Shapiro

Lesser-known reissues from a folk rock great, plus new albums from bands you know, or don’t, make up our listening playlist.

The late David Crosby was both a music legend and legendary sperm donor. A founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, Crosby generously donated sperm to Melissa Etheridge and then-partner Julie Cypher for the conception of daughter Bailey and their late son Beckett. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Crosby’s 1971 debut album “If I Could Only Remember My Name…” (Atlantic/Rhino) was reissued in an expanded, double disc set.

The first disc includes the ninetrack original album, as well as the bonus track “Kids and Dogs.” If you’re expecting something even vaguely reminiscent of CSN’s beloved harmonies, you’ll have to wait until the third song, “Tamalpais High (At About 3),” on which Graham Nash makes an appearance. In addition to Nash, Crosby was joined by Joni Mitchell (on “Laughing” and “What Are Their Names”), as well as members of Jefferson Airplane, Santana, and The Grateful Dead. The second disc of the set includes demo and session recordings. www.davidcrosby.com

Primarily known as the former drummer for all-female modern rock sensation Sleater-Kinney, Janet Weiss has a long history of multiple musical projects, including drumming for Wild Flag and Stephen Malkmus’ The Jicks. Still going strong after 30 years, Weiss’ other band Quasi (alongside Sam Coomes) is back with the aptly titled left-leaning, politically-oriented “Breaking the Balls of History” (Sub Pop). Alternately accessible (“Queen of Ears,” “Gravity,” “Shitty is Pretty”), daringly experimental (“Inbetweenness,” “The Losers Win”), nostalgically grungy (“Last Long Laugh”), and featuring a psychedelic freak-out not to be missed (“Riots & Jokes”), it’s cool to

have Quasi back among us again after 10 years.

Quasi performs with Low Praise and Thank You Come Again, Feb. 25, 9pm at the Ivy Room, 860 San Pablo Ave., Albany. $22-$24. ivyroom.com / instagram.com/thee.

quasi

“Colder Streams” (Yep Roc) is the final studio album the Canadian altcountry band The Sadies recorded with founding member Dallas Good (who died unexpectedly in February 2022). Produced by fellow Canadian Richard Reed Parry (of The Arcade Fire), the album contains the band’s blend of cowpunk with vintage rock, best exemplified on “Ginger Moon,” “Stop and Start,” “All The Good,” “You Should Be Worried,” and the exceptional political statements “More Alone” and “Cut Up High and Dry.”

The Sadies perform March 1 at The Chapel, 777 Valencia St. $25. thechapelsf.com / thesadies.net

With “The Candle and The Flame” (Tapete), Robert Forster has now released almost as many solo albums as he did as a member of the brilliant Australian indie rock band The GoBetweens (of “Streets of Your Town” fame). Written and recorded during an especially difficult time (following Forster’s wife Karin’s ovarian cancer diagnosis), these nine songs, including “It’s Only Poison,” “The Roads,” “There’s A Reason To Live,” and “Tender Years,” ring with emotion and resilience. www.robertforster.bandcamp.com

The Bad Ends, a kind of supergroup from Athens, GA, consists of Bill Berry (ex-REM) and Five Eight’s Mike Mantione, along with Dave Domizi, Christian Lopez, Geoff Melkonian. The Southern powerpop quintet’s debut album “The Power and the Glory” (New West) has just the right blend of rocking twang to appeal to a broad audience, with standout tunes including “All Your Friends Are Dying,” “Left To Be Found,” “Little Black Cloud,” and “New York Murder Suicide.” www.thebadends.com

2022 Grammy Award-winner Wilco is anything but a side project for its members. But that hasn’t prevented Jeff Tweedy, Glen Kotche, Nels Cline, John Stirratt, Pat Sansone, and Mikael Jorgensen, from continuing their solo and side work. Wilco’s new album, the double-disc “Cruel Country” (dBpm) finds the group working together as a unit again. Additionally, in many ways, the album is a return to Wilco’s country roots, with some of the band’s electronic experimentation thrown in for good, and updated measure. The “cruel country” of the title is taken to task on the track of the same name (and throughout) with the lyrics “I love my country stupid and cruel/Red/White/And blue,” and on “Hints” where Tweedy sings “There is no middle when the other side/ Would rather kill than compromise.” wilcoworld.nett

Catherine Russell

‘I Have Some Questions For You’

by Gregg Shapiro

Beginning with her first book, 2011’s “The Borrower” and continuing with her 2015 short story collection “Music For Wartime,” novelist and straight ally Rebecca Makkai has created some of the most unforgettable queer characters in contemporary fiction. This inclusion reached a crescendo with 2018’s award-winning and acclaimed novel “The Great Believers,” about a group of gay friends in 1985 Chicago as AIDS was beginning to make its impact felt on the city.

In Makkai’s new novel. “I Have Some Questions For You” (Viking, 2023), she not only features characters that are lesbian and non-binary, she manages to perfectly illustrate the present mood with podcasts and COVID figuring prominently in the story.

Gregg Shapiro: The last time I interviewed you was in 2018 right before your award-winning third novel “The Great Believers” was published. Were you prepared for the reception that the book received?

Rebecca Makkai: I was certainly surprised, and absolutely thrilled. I’m honestly glad that it all happened with my fourth book, rather than my first; I enjoyed and appreciated

it more, and I understand how much luck has to do with it.

Your new novel, “I Have Some Questions For You,” has been appearing on a number of Most Anticipated Books of 2023 lists. What does that mean to you?

There are really two places that comes from. Some of those lists are just about the buzz, and about the audience an author already has, and some lists are made by people who’ve already read early copies of those books. Both types of lists mean a ton to me, and I’m so grateful to know people are waiting for the book. It definitely makes for a more fun book tour, not having to worry as much about showing up to an empty bookstore.

The title of the book comes from chapter 26. Which came first, the title or the chapter? If it was the chapter, how did you know that it was the right title for the novel?

We (my editor and agent and I) searched forever for a title. The book’s working title was “Ninety-Five,” which I liked, but it didn’t do much to telegraph the novel’s tone or content. I found the title late in the editing process, so the chapter title definitely existed first. I like how, as a novel title, it signals the complications and uncertainty at the heart of the narration.

Did you have a particular boarding school in mind when you created the boarding school Granby, the main setting of “I Have Some Questions For You” or is it more of a composite?

Neither; it’s completely made up. I did make a lot of maps, which was fun.

Throughout the book, there is this kind of mantra of victims

and their fates. Were these written all at once or organically as you wrote the novel?

These litanies came about because I wanted there to be some major news story going on, something that really triggered Bodie, but I neither wanted it to be a real story nor one I made up for the book. At a certain point I just said, “Fuck it, it’s all of them at once.” Because that’s so often what it feels

like. I did not write those parts all together; they found their way in as the novel needed them.

As you’ve done in the past, you have incorporated queer characters into “I Have Some Questions For You,” including lesbian couple Fran and Anne, and non-binary student Lola, which is sure to make your LGBTQ readers very happy.

I mean, it would be weird to have a fully populated novel and not include LGBTQ characters. When we look back on high school, it’s interesting to think not only about who we were, but who we were pretending to be. Like Bodie, I graduated high school in 1995, and there were only one or two kids in the whole school who were out. I’ve imagined things the same way at Granby, where Fran had to disguise herself more than most other students just to get by.t

www.rebeccamakkai.com

Read the full interview on www.ebar.com.

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From page 13

Caroline Renner and Rose Zilla-Ba.

They all live in a hotel where all the people they might date also live. So it’s wild and has that “no rose for you” aspect like “The Bachelor” where folks get kicked out of the game.

Per all these shows, everyone is beautiful and buff and trés magnifique There’s a lot of fun, drama, some sadness and tears (but nothing like the hysterics on “The Bachelor”), and Paris! There’s a multiplicity of talents here, a little soupcon for everyone.

“It’s so open to LGBT and the queer community, which is just so exciting to be able to see that in a dating show,” Josielyn told TV Guide. “Myself, being a part of the LGBT community, it just made me feel safe and happy to just date like everyone else and in a comfortable, safe spot.”

Rose added, “There has not been a show that is this inclusive in a dating format. It’s really about love and finding that. [Watch] for representation, for the beautiful views of Paris, and there is a lot of drama as well.”

Rural down under “Rurangi” is a groundbreaking transgender drama series set in rural New Zealand in a fictional small-town

dairy community. It tells the story of Caz Davis (Elz Carrad, who is amazing), who comes home as himself for the first time since transitioning.

It’s absolutely fabulous. Full of incredibly powerful scenes of really deep emotional heft, carried beautifully by the extraordinary cast, “Rurangi” is captivating from the first scene and compelling throughout.

As part of its 15-year anniversary in March, Hulu is making a lot of material available for streaming including the complete seasons 1 and new season 2 of “Rurangi.”

In season two, Rurangi’s culture war intensifies between the transgender activists, farmers, and local Maori, all while ancestors from the past reach out to the living with unfinished business. There are a myriad of conflicts that include Caz’s coming out to his family, a love story he’s part of, the environmental crisis, Maori conflcts: “Rurangi” has got so much in it. It’s mesmerizing.

CNNemies

In the “you hate to see it” category, one of our fave news anchors, out gay CNN host Don Lemon, said some wildly inappropriate and flagrantly misogynist stuff about former UN Ambassador and governor Nikki Haley after she announced her presidential bid on February 16.

“While Don Lemon’s egregiously sexist comments about women being ‘in their prime’ have no place on CNN or anywhere in the news media, this isn’t the first time Lemon’s bias has influenced his on-air reporting,” said Bridget Todd, director of communications at UltraViolet, a leading national gender advocacy group. “From athletes to politicians and even his co-anchors, Lemon has used his power and platform to consistently undermine and demean powerful women.”

Lemon, 56, while sitting between his two female co-hosts, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins, said, “Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry. A woman is considered to be in their prime in 20s and 30s and maybe 40s,” he added. Haley is 51 and the first woman of color to run for president as a Republican.

Many hours later, Lemon tweeted that his comments were “inartful and irrelevant, as colleagues and loved ones have pointed out, and I regret it.” Regretting the blowback is what this sorry-not-sorry apology means. Lemon has already been accused of diva behavior against Collins and Harlow. Lemon was not on air on Friday, replaced with Audie Cornish, the Black woman anchor on CNN+.t Read more on ebar.com.

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Left: Elz Carrad in ‘Rurangi’

Right: CNN’s Don Lemon and GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley

Author Rebecca Makkai Brett Simison

“LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY!

True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.”

—Langston Hughes