Bay Area Reporter July 1, 2010

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Second win at U.S. Supreme Court

The mother lode

BARtab

In divided 5-4 decision, justices uphold UC Hastings’ non-discrimination policy.

‘Calder to Warhol,’ the Fisher Collection comes to SFMOMA.

Dog Days, Dore Alley Hunks.

see Arts

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BAYAREAREPORTER

see inside

Vol. 40

. No. 26 . 1 July 2010

Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971

Crowds celebrate 40 years of SF Pride Police officers hold back the crowd after a shooting on Pink Saturday.

Shooting stuns Castro by Matt Baume evan Dufty was standing near the main stage at Pink Saturday when he saw the crowd suddenly turn and run. He instantly recognized what had just happened. “San Francisco has a homicide problem,” the openly gay District 8 supervisor told the Bay Area Reporter. “The city has worked mightily to address it, and homicide

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an Francisco’s LGBT Pride Parade and celebration has come a long way. That much was obvious as hundreds of thousands of people gathered last weekend for the 40th annual event. “It seemed like people were having a great time,” said Amy Andre, executive director of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. She said Pride officials don’t have an official crowd estimate, but from what people told her, this year’s attendance seemed up even from last year, when there was an estimate of over a million people. San Francisco police typically do not provide crowd estimates. Sunday, June 27, a diverse crowd danced, mingled, and took photos of each other at the festival in Civic Center amidst numerous food booths and stages offering everything from country and western to Latin rhythms. Blocks away, an hours-long parade with more than 200 contingents, ranging from the Walt Disney Family Museum to San Francisco Leather Pride, rolled by. Also Sunday, the Backstreet Boys were among the crowd pleasers performing on the main stage. Audrey Joseph, who produced the main stage, said in a phone message that on Saturday,

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Jane Philomen Cleland

Matt Baume

by Seth Hemmelgarn

The Trikone contingent was one of nearly 200 in Sunday’s Pride Parade.

Kaplan enters Oakland mayor’s race Speier: 5 years O for ENDA

from employees. Oakland has 776 sworn officers. In interviews and at fundraisakland City Council ing events during the exploratory woman Rebecca Kaplan, an part of her campaign Kaplan has out lesbian who captured said pension reform is one of her the at-large council seat with a retop priorities, even as she acsounding win two years ago, anknowledges it’s not a popular nounced this week that she is runtopic. During an interview at ning for mayor of the East Bay city Sunday’s Alice B. Toklas LGBT in November. Democratic Club Pride breakfast, Kaplan outlined her plans for Kaplan said that she has pressed the city in a series of interviews for pension reform constantly, with the Bay Area Reporter this yet the council has done nothing month. On Wednesday, June 30, about it. she held a news conference de“Here it is a year later,” she claring her entry into the race. said, referring to the city facing a Major candidates in the budget deficit. She figures that mayor’s race include former state pension reform can result in $10 Senate leader Don Perata and million for the city, and the sale Oakland City Council woman of the Kaiser Auditorium can Jean Quan, who currently serves bring in another $15 million toRebecca Kaplan announced her bid for Oakland mayor Wednesday. as vice mayor. Mayor Ron Delward closing the budget gap. Adlums has not yet stated whether ditionally, measures are expected he intends to seek a second term; vice chair of Oakland’s Black Caucus, Joyce Gor- on the November ballot to enact budget reform. the filing deadline is in August. don of the Joyce Gordon Gallery, and the Rev- Should those measures fail, the city is expected to Dellums, who presided over some of the first erend Dr. Harold Mayberry of First AME Church lay off more police officers. same-sex marriages in the state at Oakland City of Oakland. For his part, Perata was critical of the counHall just over two years ago, has seen his popuKaplan, 39, said there is “a seriousness of what cil’s action last week. larity decline since then. needs to happen” in the city that, combined with “They did what they always do,” he said durIf elected, Kaplan would be the first out mayor “my track record” on local jobs and economic ing a brief interview at the Alice breakfast. “Now of Oakland, which has the most racially diverse opportunity, for which she is prepared. they’ll be faced with the same situation next year LGBT population in the nation, she said. AcAmong her top priorities are jobs, public safe- only exponentially worse.” cording to a report by the Gay and Lesbian Atlas ty, and the city’s budget, which has a deficit of bePerata said if the city wanted to get changes in in 2009, Oakland contains the highest number of tween $30 million and $40 million, she said. pension plans, those conversations should have lesbians in the country and has the second-highstarted “before May or June.” est number of same-sex couples. The informa- Budget stalemate Kaplan and Quan have been among the countion was from 2000 census data. The city’s budget mess has attracted national cil members targeted in police mailers that have A Kaplan victory combined with one next headlines and dwarfed other issues as it’s tied in gone to residents’ homes this week. The Oakland year in San Francisco by openly gay Supervisor with public safety. Last week, Kaplan was one of Tribune reported Tuesday that Perata supporters Bevan Dufty – who announced last fall he’s run- three votes against a budget amendment that the are tied to the mailers. Yet Kaplan voted against ning for mayor – would see two of the three council passed 5-3 that starts the process of lay- the budget amendment adopted last week. largest cities in the Bay Area headed by LGBT ing off up to 80 Oakland police officers to help One of her main objections to the amendpeople. address a $31.5 million deficit. The police layoffs ment is that it included revenue from the sale of “I don’t want to run just to run,” Kaplan said. are needed, Council President Jane Bruner said the Kaiser building with no competitive bids. “This is about running to win the seat that is the at the special June 24 meeting, because police de“We shouldn’t undersell ourselves,” she said. head of the executive branch in our city.” partment employees do not contribute to their But the city’s budget troubles come back to Kaplan has secured the endorsement of the pensions, which is a major sticking point. The the police officer issue, and while Kaplan doesn’t Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. She has also been city has requested the police union reopen negoendorsed by Oakland businessman Geoffrey Pete, tiations and agree to a 9 percent contribution page 12

by Cynthia Laird

by Cynthia Laird

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Bill Wilson

Jane Philomen Cleland

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ongresswoman Jackie Speier put a damper on hopes for swift House passage of the Employment NonDiscrimination Act, telling the Bay Area Reporter over the weekend that she doesn’t see the LGBT workplace protections becoming law anytime soon. Addressing the crowd of gay and straight political and community leaders at Sunday’s Alice B. Toklas Congresswoman LGBT Democratic Jackie Speier Club Pride breakfast, Speier said, “Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi is doing all she can to ensure a majority for next year so we can pass ENDA.” Asked later in a brief interview if that meant the House would not vote on ENDA this year, Speier told the B.A.R., “The rest of the year is in question.” “There’s no question ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ will be history this year,” she said. “ENDA, we will have that law for sure within the next five years.” Speier, a Democrat whose district includes parts of San Mateo and San Francisco counties, said she was acknowledging reality. “I’m being realistic,” she said. With Congress leaving Washington,

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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 1 July 2010

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Wilson concedes as Laird moves on to runoff by Matthew S. Bajko gay man running for a North Bay Assembly seat conceded this week after it became clear he had lost the race while a gay man seeking a Central Coast state Senate seat barely survived his special primary race to force a runoff election. Three weeks after the June 8 primary, out Vallejo City Councilman Michael Wilson’s bid for the 7th Assembly District seat came to an end Monday, June 28 when elections officials certified the race, having finished tabulating absentee ballots in the Democratic contest. Wilson had held out hope that he could pull off a victory; on Election Night he was only 520 votes behind first place finisher Michael Allen, a former Santa Rosa planning commissioner. But this week, after Sonoma County issued its final count Monday, Allen’s lead had grown to 1,636 votes. The district includes all of Napa County and parts of both Sonoma and Solano counties. The final tally in the race saw Allen win with 19,399 votes (41.9 percent) and Wilson in second with 17,763 votes (38.3 percent). Third place finisher Lee Pearce, a former Santa Rosa city councilman, received 9,200 votes. Wilson did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. According to several North Bay newspaper accounts, Wilson called Allen Monday morning to congratulate him but stopped short of issuing an endorsement of his candidacy in the general election. “I’ll probably stay out of it and let the people decide, but I’m sure that I’ll be voting Democrat,” Wilson told the Napa Valley Register. GOP candidate Doris Gentry told the paper that Wilson would have been the more formidable candidate in November and expressed optimism she could defeat Allen. Democrats, though, have held the seat, centered in Santa Rosa, for years. The current officeholder, Noreen Evans, is termed out this year and is seeking the state’s 2nd District Senate seat, currently held by her predecessor, Pat Wiggins.

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Central Coast race Former state Assemblyman John Laird, one of the first out gay men to serve in the state Legislature, was able to block his Republican opponent, Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee (San Luis Obispo) from capturing the open 15th Senate District seat during the special primary June 22 by less than 8 percentage points. The final tally came to 61,150 votes (41.73 percent) for Laird and 72,518 votes (49.49 percent) for Blakeslee. The former minority leader of the GOP in the Assembly needed 50 percent plus one to win the election outright. They will now face-off in an August 17 runoff election. The Senate seat became available when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped Republican Senator Abel Maldonado to fill the vacant lieutenant governor post. The GOP governor irked Democrats when he scheduled the special election to fill the Senate seat this summer rather than combine it with the fall general election. The decision was expected to make Laird’s bid more difficult as Republican voters are more likely to come out for special elections. The prediction proved true with Laird’s showing weaker than Democrats had hoped. It has spawned intra-party second-guessing on how Laird waged his campaign and whether the liberal former Santa Cruz mayor was the right person for party leaders to back

Michael Wilson lost his Assembly bid.

in the race. Asked about the critiques by the Bay Area Reporter during the annual Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club’s Pride breakfast Sunday, June 27, Senate President Pro-tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) insisted that his party and its candidate could rebound and beat Blakeslee in the runoff. “There are a couple things to recognize – there was voter confusion because the election was two weeks after the June 8 primary and there was higher Republican turnout,” said Steinberg. “We’re in it to win. We’re taking a short breath and then will develop a path. John Laird is worth fighting for and the goal is to increase the number of Democratic senators.” State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who with Laird became the first out gay men in the Legislature when they won their Assembly races in 2002, also expressed confidence that Laird was still competitive when asked about the race at the Alice event. “It’s very unfortunate that the governor so rigged the results by placing it [the special election] two weeks after the primary,” Leno told the B.A.R. “I will help for the runoff. There are tens of thousands of Democrats who could have voted who didn’t know there was an election. Blakeslee picked up enormous ground in San Luis Obispo County.” In a statement he released Friday, June 25 after it became clear the remaining absentee ballots to be counted would not tip the primary election outright to Blakeslee, Laird defended his campaign strategy and expressed confidence that he would be able to use the next month and a half to turn out more Democratic voters August 17. “They called an election that voters didn’t see coming. They drenched us with $1.3 million in attack TV, radio, and mailings. They cynically took advantage of disproportionately high Republican turnout in the June 8 primary election in order to drive up absentee votes for our opponent,” stated Laird in the e-mailed statement sent to reporters covering the race. “They unsuccessfully tried to sue me for my ballot designation, despite the fact that Assemblyman Blakeslee failed to list ‘legislator’ as his designation – even though that’s been his primary job for the last six years and he made more than $600,000 doing it. It was a perfect storm of factors arrayed against us. But we’ve prevailed and denied my opponent of his planned outright victory.” Both parties and special interest groups funneled more than $3 million into the race as who wins could tip the balance of power in the Senate. A Laird victory would put Democrats one vote closer to being able to pass a budget without GOP support. Laird had tried to tar-and-feather

Former Assemblyman John Laird is in an August runoff for an open state Senate seat.

Blakeslee, who formerly worked for Exxon, as being in the pocket of big oil companies and used the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to play on Central Coast residents’ fears of seeing a similar environmental disaster wash up on their shores. The attacks were central to his campaign commercials and messaging during the lead-up to the June 22 election. Last week Laird signaled he would expand his attacks on Blakeslee to include more issues, from the state’s budget mess to education issues. “In the coming weeks we will talk directly with voters about education, job creation, environmental protection, the state budget and breaking the gridlock in Sacramento. For example, California’s state budget is already 10 days late. Every day that goes by without a budget is a day deeper into the gridlock,” stated Laird, who was a leader on budget negotiations when he served in the Assembly. “Assemblyman Blakeslee presided over the gridlock last year and again this year is central to the problem. We will engage with him on the details of the state budget and the vision for California’s future. Education, parks, local public safety and jobs hang in the balance. Each day of this campaign, I will stand for an end to gridlock as California’s budget process continues to be held hostage by my opponent and his party.” In a phone interview with the B.A.R. Tuesday, June 29 Laird credited his focus on the offshore oil drilling issue as the reason why Blakeslee failed to win the seat outright last month. “That got us to the runoff. Now it is really about broader issues,” said Laird, speaking by phone from Sacramento where he was hosting fundraisers this week. He also expressed confidence that more Democrats would vote in August since they had little reason to go to the polls in June, whereas Republicans were drawn to the ballot box due to their party’s contested races for governor and a U.S. Senate seat. At the same time as the June 8 primary most voters also turned in ballots for the special state Senate race, said Laird. “He got this big bump because people voted in conjunction with the June 8 primary,” said Laird. “We are going to boost the Democratic turnout come August.” In response to Laird’s comments on the election results last month, Blakeslee campaign consultant Jim Nygren ridiculed his analysis on the Fox and Hounds website. “The election day results suggest that the longer voters had to study Mr. Laird’s record, the more likely they were to vote for Sam Blakeslee,” wrote Nygren. “Sam Blakeslee didn’t benefit from the early absentee vote. The early absentee vote kept John Laird from losing outright in the pri-

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by Lisa Keen ne message Republicans tried to hammer away at this week, in an effort to derail Elena Kagan’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, must have struck many LGBT viewers of her confirmation hearing as deeply ironic. They said she treated the men and women of the military as “second-class citizens,” when she stood up for her belief that the law barring gays from the military was “a profound wrong.” And yet gay groups have concerns of their own. Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national gay legal group, shared its concerns over Kagan – though they did so through a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont). The group is worried Kagan might show too much deference to religious objections to non-discrimination laws and not enough deference to existing Supreme Court precedents that have largely benefited gays. But it was Kagan’s actions as dean of Harvard Law School in the dispute over gays in the military that became a large focus of the first two days of her confirmation hearing. Republicans suggested Kagan’s efforts to balance the university’s non-discrimination policy with the military’s need to recruit lawyers amounted to an effort to defy that federal law. More generally, they also sought to label her “progressive,” a term they apparently consider negative. Kagan, 50, initially deflected the effort to stamp her identity with a politically loaded characterization. “I honestly don’t know what that label means,” said Kagan, in response to a question from the ranking minority member, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, as to whether a former colleague was correct when he identified her as a “legal progressive.” “I think people should be allowed to label themselves,” said Kagan. “I don’t know what that label means, and I’m not going to characterize it one way or another.” She also noted that her political views would be a matter separate from what her views would be concerning the constitutionality of a law. “Well, it means something,” said Sessions, “and I would have to classify you as someone in the theme of a legal progressive.” Later in the day, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) said he didn’t know what a progressive is either but that he thinks she’s a liberal. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) asked her whether she is a “progressive in the mold of Obama himself.” Kagan said she’d been a Democrat all her life, worked for two Democratic presidents, and “that’s what my politics are.” Graham pressed again, asking whether she’s “progressive.” “My political views are generally progressive,” acknowledged Kagan.

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On the attack During his time questioning Kagan Tuesday, Sessions went on the attack regarding two laws passed by Congress: DADT, which bars gays from serving openly in the military and the Solomon Amendment that prohibits federal funds to universities that barred military recruiters because of the DADT policy. Adopting the procedure and demeanor of a prosecuting attorney grilling a defendant, Sessions painted a picture of Kagan as complying with military recruiters only under threat of losing federal funds. “You personally opposed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” pressed Sessions. “I do oppose it,” said Kagan, “and I did then.” “And in a 2003 e-mail,” said Sessions, “you wrote, ‘I abhor the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy. ... This is a profound wrong.” “I believe the policy is unwise and unjust. I believed it then, and I believe it now,” said Kagan. Kagan added, however, that she

tried, as dean, to “make sure military recruiters had full access” to potential candidates for the military but to also protect Harvard’s own non-discrimination policy and students, including gay and lesbian students. “I tried to do both of those things,” said Kagan. “But you couldn’t do both,” said Sessions, “as it became clear.” He continued, saying she “participated in protests” against the military policy, said she was “very opposed to two government policies,” and participated in submitting a legal brief “attacking the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.” He also noted that Kagan used a 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision that found the Solomon Amendment to be unconstitutional as an excuse to begin barring military recruiters at Harvard – even though Massachusetts is not a state within the 3rd Circuit. “We were never out of compliance” with the law, said Kagan. She said, after the 3rd Circuit decision, military recruiters were still “welcome on campus, but through the auspices” of a campus veterans organization even though she thought it was appropriate to go back to Harvard’s original nondiscrimination policy. “DOD came to us and said, ‘ignore the 3rd Circuit decision, we’re going to the Supreme Court,’ and we did change back,” said Kagan, referring to the Department of Defense. “We did precisely what DOD asked us to do.” “You didn’t do what the DOD asked you to do,” said Sessions. Kagan held her ground, saying Harvard believed it was acting in compliance, but Sessions interrupted to say, “You stopped complying” and, as a result of that, he claimed, “that season” of recruiting “was lost.” He said Kagan never conveyed its position to DOD “in a straight up way” and that DOD said its recruiters were “blocked, stonewalled, and getting the runaround.” Again, Kagan held her ground, noting that no season of recruiting was lost by the military and that, in fact, in the year to which Sessions was referring, the number of Harvard students recruited by the military went up, compared to previous years. “You decided [the Solomon Amendment] was inappropriate and you reversed it,” said Sessions. “You treated [the military] in a second-class way.” The sparring continued for some time and eventually, Sessions ran out of time (each senator’s time to ask questions is strictly limited). Leahy gave Kagan a chance to make her final remarks on the matter. “My father was a veteran,” said Kagan, “and I had students who served in the military and who wanted to” serve in the military. “I felt the need to defend the nondiscrimination policy,” said Kagan, “and protect students, including gay and lesbian students, who wanted to serve and do that most honorable kind of service.” In a press conference during recess, Leahy said he thinks Kagan’s testimony “lays to rest for good the issue of Harvard and [her] somehow being anti-military.” “I think it’s very obvious that Solicitor General Kagan has shown strong support of the military, has strong respect for the military,” said Leahy. “She’s certainly not anti-military.” Sessions told reporters during recess that Kagan appeared to be “crafting her testimony” to fit a White House spin on the Harvard military recruiting dispute. He said Kagan was responsible for a reversal of Harvard’s willingness to enable military recruiters to visit campus.

Respect for military A number of documents submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee and a number of witnesses scheduled for this week’s hearing have indicated that Kagan has both publicly and privately expressed her respect for the military.

Rudy K. Lawidjaja

Kagan acknowledges she’s ‘generally progressive’

Solicitor General Elena Kagan answers questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, the first full day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

After being attacked for having disagreed with a congressional law – one concerning military exclusion of gay people – she was then attacked for having defended a congressional law – one that had limited corporate funding to influence elections. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) asked Kagan whether she agreed with the Supreme Court’s recent decision, Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. As solicitor general, Kagan’s job was to defend the federal campaign funding law that Citizens United struck down, and she said so. Hatch was taking on the difficult task of trying to defend the Citizens United decision, which has been enormously controversial and had become great fodder for Democrats against Republicans during the first day of the confirmation hearing. Later, Senator Arlen Specter (DPennsylvania) tried to pin down Kagan on whether she considered the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United disrespectful of Congress. Kagan tried to avoid answering the question, and Specter, with apparent frustration and impatience, moved on and tried to get Kagan to criticize specific conservative justices, especially Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, who he said gave the committee “assurances of deference” to Congress and then “there was none.” Kagan repeatedly avoided making such statements. In fact, much of the first day of the hearing on Monday, June 28, was taken up with partisan bomb-throwing, in between remarks in praise of Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), the Senate’s longest serving member, who died very early Monday morning. The political sideshows on Monday may have been due in part because so many political pundits have declared Kagan’s confirmation is virtually inevitable; it may also have been due to the fact that confirmation hearings have become a somewhat predictable series of thrusts and parries with a nominee. Kagan’s own opening statement on Monday was unremarkable except, perhaps, for the fact that she did not make the traditional introductions of individual family members. Kagan’s parents are deceased, but her two brothers were in the confirmation hearing with her. Instead of introduc-

ing them, Kagan, who is not married, simply thanked the “family, friends, and students” who had joined her in the confirmation room and then turned around and looked down a row of people sitting behind her. Republicans made clear on Monday that they would seek to portray Kagan as anti-military, lacking in judicial experience, and inclined toward “activism.” Responding to questions about “activist judges,” from Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kagan said she thinks judges are “always constrained by the law” where the text is clear. But where the text is not clear, said Kagan, judges must look to other “sources of law,” including original intent and “continuing history and traditions.” Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) said he has “substantive concerns” about Kagan’s views on “gay marriage” and other issues. The only other mention of same-sex marriage in the first two days of the five-day hearing came from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island). Whitehouse took the occasion of his opening statement Monday to criticize the current Supreme Court for having taken the “extraordinary” action of “inject[ing] itself into the day-to-day business of the lower courts, issuing an extraordinary ruling prohibiting the online streaming of the gay marriage trial in San Francisco.” Some Kagan supporters pointed to the fact that Senator Scott Brown (RMassachusetts), along with Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), introduced the nominee to the committee as a sign that Republicans can support her confirmation. But it is tradition that the two senators from a nominee’s home state introduce him or her, and Brown’s words fell far short of support. He called her an “impressive and pleasant individual” and said she had “gone far since graduating” from Harvard. Then, he simply reiterated some details from her resume.

Lambda concern In his June 25 letter to Leahy, Lambda’s legal director Jon Davidson expressed its concern about a memo Kagan wrote in 1996, as associate counsel in the Clinton White House. In the memo, Kagan disagreed with a California Supreme Court decision that a landlord could not discriminate against an unmarried couple based on the landlord’s religious belief against

co-habitation before marriage. The California court said the landlord had the option of getting out of the rental business, rather than compromise her religious views. Kagan called that “quite outrageous” and worried that “this kind of reasoning could strip” the Religious Freedom Restoration Act “of any real meaning.” Lambda noted that the U.S. Supreme Court later struck down the RFRA as largely unconstitutional. “It is of great importance to Lambda Legal and our constituents that any individual who would be appointed to the Supreme Court be willing to follow the precedent” set forth in the Supreme Court’s determination. Davidson said that “permitting those with religious objections to flout laws applicable to all others who enter the commercial sector unjustifiably would impose serious harms on workers, tenants and consumers, open dangerous loopholes to protections against discrimination; and contravene crucial state interests in assuring equality for all.” Lambda Legal also took exception with a statement Kagan made last year during her confirmation hearing for solicitor general: “There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.” Davidson said Lambda Legal is “particularly concerned that every judicial nominee be committed to honoring and enforcing the core constitutional guarantees of equal protection, liberty and due process for all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status.” “In order for any nominee to receive the approval of your committee,” wrote Davidson, “we believe it should be clear the nominee will respect these core constitutional principles and, in particular, is committed to following as binding legal precedent cases such as Lawrence v. Texas, Romer v. Evans, and Roe v. Wade. The decisions in all three cases have been critical to improving the ability of LGBT people to ensure equal protection under the law.” As of the end of Tuesday’s hearing, no senator had asked Kagan a question about same-sex marriage. Coburn, without any references, said in passing that he thinks she is progay marriage. Kagan did not attempt to correct that statement. But the last senator to question Kagan on Tuesday, Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), did ask her whether the Constitution’s promise of “We the people” covers legal protection against job place discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The question was not academic. Cardin noted that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act has over 200 co-sponsors and that he expects the bill to pass this year. “I am certain there’s going to be a legal challenge” to that bill, he noted, asking Kagan what her consideration will be in examining such a challenge. “The policy decision,” said Kagan, “is up to Congress and the question that might come before the court – if they are statutory in nature – the appropriate question to ask will be what Congress intended.” It was, as is typical of Kagan, a cautious answer to a controversial question.▼


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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 1 July 2010

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BAYAREAREPORTER Volume 40, Number 26 1 July 2010 eBAR.com PUBLISHER Thomas E. Horn Bob Ross (Founder, 1971 – 2003) N E W S E D I TO R Cynthia Laird A R T S E D I TO R Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Victoria A. Brownworth Philip Campbell • Chuck Colbert • Richard Dodds Raymond Flournoy • Brian Gougherty David Guarino • Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell Robert Julian • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble • Michael McDonagh Paul Parish • Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro • Gwendolyn Smith Robert Sokol • Zak Szymanski • Ed Walsh Dick Walters • Jane Warner • Sura Wood

A R T D I R E C TO R Kurt Thomas P RO D U C T I O N M A N AG E R Tom Dvorak P H OTO G R A P H E R S Jane Philomen Cleland Marc Geller Rick Gerharter Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja Steven Underhill Bill Wilson I L L U S T R ATO R S & C A R TO O N I S T S Paul Berge Christine Smith G E N E R A L M A N AG E R Michael M. Yamashita C L A S S I F I E D A DV E R T I S I N G David McBrayer D I S P L AY A DV E R T I S I N G Colleen Small Scott Wazlowski N AT I O N A L A DV E R T I S I N G R E P R E S E N TAT I V E Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863 LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad

s’ names. ast week’s 8-1 U.S. Supreme Court decision To be sure, there were signs during oral arrejecting a First Amendment challenge to a gument that the case would result in a victory Washington state statute was a victory for for open government. Staunch conservative Justransparency. The ruling upheld the requirement tice Antonin Scalia spoke what many in the for public disclosure of the names of people who community believe when he said, “ ... running a sign petitions to place initiatives or referendums democracy takes a certain amount of civic on the ballot. The case was brought by courage. And the First Amendment does anti-gay groups who sued the state to not protect you from criticism or even block disclosure of the names of peonasty phone calls when you exercise your ple who had signed petitions for Refpolitical rights to legislate, or to take part erendum 71, which would have overin the legislative process.” turned a state law that expanded That’s exactly right. Washington state’s existing domestic Shannon Minter, legal director for the partner law by providing for more rights and National Center for Lesbian Rights, obligations. which joined other pro-equality Given the conservative swing the groups in filing an amicus brief in high court has taken in recent years, E DITORIAL the case, said the court’s decision “is the solid decision, with only Justice a serious defeat for groups who seek Clarence Thomas dissenting, was a to abuse the democratic process to strip rights surprising setback for the anti-gay groups that from vulnerable minorities, and who now wish want to put our rights to a public vote and also to do so in secrecy, without even the minimal achide from public view the individuals who want countability imposed by laws designed to preto do that. They can’t have it both ways, the court vent fraud and abuse.” said. People who sign ballot petitions should exIt was Chief Justice John Roberts who wrote ercise due diligence before they affix their name the decision in the case, Doe v. Reed, and his to the signature line. And they should be preanalysis is on target: “Public disclosure thus pared for their names to become public, no mathelps ensure that the only signatures counted are those that should be, and that the only referenda placed on the ballot are those that garner enough valid signatures. Public disclosure also promotes transparency and accountability in the electoral process to an extent other measures cannot,” Roberts wrote for the majority. “In light of the foregoing, we reject plaintiffs’ argument and conclude that public disclosure of referendum petitions in general is substantially related to the important interest of preserving the integrity of the electoral process.” The decision is also a significant roadblock to a new strategy employed by anti-gay groups, including protectmarriage.com during the federal Proposition 8 trial here in California. The tactic involves the false argument that marriage equality opponents will be harassed and bullied, so names of those who sign petitions to strip away rights from LGBTs should be shielded. Citing that false fear, attorneys for the anti-gay side in the Prop 8 trial called only two witnesses, neither of whom was very convincing. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and halted broadcast of the trial, apparently persuaded by the defendants’ arguments. Given that decision, we are even more surprised by last week’s verdict to allow the release of petitioner-

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ter what the issue. That’s how a democracy operates openly.

Dems put gays in closet During the July 4th weekend, we thought readers would want to know that since the election of President Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee hasn’t changed its pathetic efforts to raise money from LGBT Democrats and our straight allies. Recently the DNC mailed out the latest “2010 Presidential Survey” to Democrats across the country. And once again, there was nothing in the two-page questionnaire that related to LGBT issues. Not one LGBT issue – such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act – is even an option on the DNC’s list of national priorities. We doubt that many people even bothered to complete the survey, and we certainly know that the results are not scientific or in any way representative of the national party. But geez, if the DNC is going to expend all this energy to come up with a survey, at least put our issues out there. Better yet, do away with the survey all together and just send a simple letter. It’s cheaper, and more honest anyway.▼

Reach out after Prop 8 verdict ttitudes change when people learn about discrimination, and this case will open minds,” said Ted Olson in the federal challenge to Proposition 8. We need to continue to amplify the themes underscored during the Prop 8 trial by plaintiffs’ attorneys Olson and co-counsel David Boies, which focused on the inclusion and integration of LGBT people within the legal protections enjoyed by all Americans and framed this current controversy within the larger historical context of past discriminatory laws that have been eliminated. In this way, marriage discrimination against the LGBT community is seen as one more instance of unfounded bias and prejudice that is eliminated and is consistent with the enduring American principle of extending constitutional protections G UEST and fairness to all people. Our response to Chief District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling – expected any day – should be to reach out in fellowship and compassion to those who voted for Prop 8 in 2008, those who did so out of fear and lack of information. Just like the evolution of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and San Diego Mayor and Prop 8 trial witness Jerry Sanders, we need to ensure we celebrate (hopefully) with a grace that allows people to evolve in their position toward marriage equality with dignity and join us as we move forward. We need to ensure we do not view this anticipated win as a zero sum game against our adversaries – but rather the unfolding of a more inclusive, kind, loving country for everyone. Olson, a well-known conservative, has become a hero to the gay community, one of our unexpected allies, and none of that would have happened if supporters of this case didn’t reach across the political aisle and invite him to help. As Rob Reiner said in an August 2009 New York Times article, “Ted Olson? Why on earth would I

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San Francisco Bay Area Publicity Club

A win for transparency

by Molly McKay and Pamela Brown

Best Bay Area Community Newspaper 2006

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want to talk to him? But I thought, if someone as conservative as Ted Olson would get involved in this issue, it would go a long, long way in terms of presenting this in the right kind of light.” Olson then suggested bringing on Boies, his adversary in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case, and together they formed the legal odd couple team that once again may appear in front of the U.S. Supreme Court – this time on the same side arguing that equality under the law is not a partisan issue, it is an issue that all Americans embrace as a fundamental constitutional principle. When asked about this case coming before the Supreme Court, Olson replied, “David and I have both been there before and we have agreed, David will get the support of his justices and I will get the support of mine, and together we should end up with a unanimous decision.” (To see a recap of the closing arguments, visit the Marriage EqualiO PINION ty USA exhibit in the Walgreens display window on the corner of 18th and Castro.) Just as Olson and Boies came together in the legal case, we must also invite and include everyone to come together as a community and we can start with the “Day of Decision” gatherings across the country, planned for the day Walker issues his ruling. The community’s response to Walker’s imminent decision, likely the first of three as the case wends its way to the Supreme Court, provides an opportunity to echo the dignity, inclusion, and evidence in support of our cause. There has been time since the Prop 8 election for the garbage that was generated between family members, neighbors, and even between equality advocates to turn to compost. There are new opportunities to reach out and work together cooperatively and synergistically with everyone at the table contributing their talents and resources. Marriage Equality USA is hosting the coalition website (www.prop8decision.com) to allow community leaders and organizations to

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communicate with one another, post and coordinate their local Day of Decision community response events. MEUSA also is sponsoring statewide coalition teleconference calls to facilitate working together and sharing ideas and perspectives as we take the necessary next steps in eliminating discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Participating in or organizing such gatherings provides a wonderful opportunity to reconnect. To take part or to start up your own event, visit the website. We look forward to working with everyone on this next chapter. And let us take to heart one of the greatest lessons learned from the unfolding of this federal trial: when we reach out to unexpected allies across the aisle, our capacity, our ability to do something amazing – to replicate what Olson and Boies have started with this court case – in our own court of public opinion expands. When we create that kind of inclusive and integrated coalition and community, we don’t just create change, we transform, and in that way equality will prevail. When we are truly together we will win. The future looks bright and if you don’t believe us, check out “Prop 8 Love Stories” written and performed by teenage actors and playing in the Bay Area through July (8lovestories.blogspot.com). All the prior weariness is wiped away watching our future generation reflect the story of our movement so far.▼ In San Francisco there will be a gathering in the Castro on the Day of Decision. A rally is planned from 5 to 6 p.m., followed by a march to SF City Hall (stopping briefly at the LGBT Community Center) for another rally from 6:45 to 7:45 p.m. Further celebration (hopefully) in the Castro into the evening. Molly McKay and Pamela Brown are media director and policy director, respectively, for Marriage Equality USA.


1 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER

LETTERS

The day after Pride

left the neighborhood. One can only imagine when the streets were actually closed to justify the ban on parking. It’s the morning after Pride in San Francisco and my The loss of sales and use taxes, employee productivity tanned, sore body is moving slowly out of bed to the and income is, apparently, of little or no concern to the much needed coffee. We’ve had a month of events and SFPD whose paychecks keep coming and, I’m certain, films and parties all leading up to a very busy weekend, were fattened by all the overtime accumulated that day. full of marching, dancing, connecting with old friends, Here’s a thought for next year: unless MUMC leaderand making new ones. But, I can’t help but ask myself, ship gets some balls on this issue let’s just close the streets what’s it all about and where do we need to go from here? to parking all day thus ensuring no unnecessary employOn the day after, what am I proud of? And what are my ees are scheduled or earn any wages, no taxes are collectwishes for my community? ed or profits made while vehicles have a clear path A local paper says that our celebration has gone mainthrough the neighborhood, and the false promises of later stream. We have corporations that are clamoring to be street closures need not be made by Mission Station. sponsors of one of the biggest outdoor parties in the nation. There are celebrities that are eager to ride in our paPatrick Batt rade so they can push their latest product. We have dancSan Francisco ing and drinking and music. What we don’t have is our rights. A wonderful pink triangle display The general public loves to be entertained by us but Thank you to the Bay Area Reporter for the “call for does not love us enough to support our rights. Mainvolunteers” [News briefs, June 24]. Thank you to over 125 stream America loves our parties but won’t let us marry. volunteers who helped install the pink triangle on Twin The straight world likes to dance to our tunes but won’t Peaks Saturday morning. Never before has the display protect us from discrimination at the workplace or in the been erected in such rapid time. Thank you also to military. We hear the speeches of well-wishers the speakers: Mayor Gavin Newsom; singer and acknowledgement of our struggles, which Andy Bell, who told the “History of the Pink are much more than 41 year’s worth. We didTriangle;” state Senator Mark Leno; Assemn’t just appear out of nowhere at the blyman Tom Ammiano; city Treasurer Jose Stonewall riots or at Compton’s Cafeteria. Cisneros, Supervisors Bevan Dufty and We’ve been marginalized and brutalized and David Campos; Assessor-Recorder Phil abused for centuries. But we don’t see the Ting; and Deputy Lord Mayor Phillip Black votes or the legislation that backs those from Sydney, Australia. Thank you to the words up with action. M AILSTROM sponsors: Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, I fully believe that we should celebrate who paid for the restoration following last our accomplishments of the last 41 years year’s arson; Toad Hall; the SF Pride Committee; Castro but we need to balance that with constant pressing, conLions Club; and the Grand Ducal Court. stant lobbying, and a constant demand for all of our The nighttime lighting of the Pink Triangle turned out rights. Yes, come dance to our music and laugh with us as spectacularly. The searchlights panning the Twin Peaks we poke fun at society’s golden idols. But on the day after sky over the display were dramatically visible. that, recognize us as more than second-class citizens. On The only unfortunate note was the shooting on Marthe day after that, give us all that is promised to every ket Street, which my sister and I were close to; we were American. Let us sit at the table instead of throwing us among the many who were hit by pepper spray or tear gas scraps. or something else that was fired by either the police or Celebrate our pride with us and on the day after that, one of those involved in the fight before the shooting. It give us our rights. took my sister’s eyes several minutes to clear up and stop burning. We had come down from Twin Peaks to see how Kelly Rivera Hart the pink triangle illumination looked. It is a shame to San Francisco have such a lovely day of Pride end on such a tragic note, Street closure hurt businesses but from what we could see it was an isolated incident and not anti-LGBT at all. I’d like to take this opportunity to metaphorically tip my hat and flip my finger to the powers that be at Mission Patrick Carney Station who, in one fell swoop, brought retail commerce San Francisco in the Castro to a grinding halt early in the afternoon on Pink Saturday. Opera has a local plot The inexplicable 6 a.m. closure of the city parking lots Jason Serinus’s puzzling statement that La Fanciulla followed by the 2 p.m. No Parking posters on all other del West is “saddled with a plot whose references seem as streets – save for the heavy hitters on the 400 block of Casrooted in Puccini’s Tuscan birthplace as in Sonora” [“SFO tro Street who saw their parking remain in effect until 4 mounts the golden girl,” June 17] shows a lack of serious p.m. – ensured no money would be made by those busithought, since the opera famously follows virtually incinesses struggling to remain open during these difficult dent by incident the1905 play Girl of the Golden West by times. San Francisco-born David Belasco (1853-1931). In spite of the elimination of parking the streets were The music may be italinate, but few opera plots are fully utilized by vehicles, people used the crosswalks and more local than this one. the only thing missing other than parked cars were shopping bags clutched by cash carrying tourists and other visSteven Abbott itors. This went on until at least 5 p.m. when I, in disgust, San Francisco

Anglican priest at Commonwealth Club compiled by Cynthia Laird he Reverend Dr. Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia Leading Churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, will give a talk at the Commonwealth Club on Tuesday, July 6. The program is part of the club’s LGBT member-led forum. Kaoma will discuss how Africa has become a key theater in the U.S. culture wars, and how the cultivation of African clerics as proxies by the U.S. right has linked the human rights struggles of sexual minorities in both regions. His work exposes how social conservatives in the U.S., themselves in the minority in mainline churches, depend on African religious leadN EWS ers to legitimize their positions as their growing numbers make African Christians more influential globally. Kaoma recently spoke before a congressional hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the draconian “anti-homosexuality” bill before the

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Ugandan parliament. Next week’s program takes place at the club’s offices, 595 Market Street, second floor, in San Francisco. The cost is $12 for club members, $20 for non-members, and $7 for students (with valid ID). A networking reception takes place at 5:30 p.m. followed by the program at 6.

Conservatory of Flowers needs volunteers The Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park’s stunning historic greenhouse full of rare and beautiful tropical flora, is currently recruiting volunteers to lead group tours and conduct school visits. Interested volunteers of all ages are welcome to attend the conservatory’s annual sevenweek training session this summer – a B RIEFS nonstop educational adventure that introduces new volunteers to the expert horticultural staff and provides an in-depth and engaging introduction to the fascinating collection of over 1,700 species of tropical plants. The conservatory is in need of volunteers who can commit to two

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shifts per month for a minimum of a year in either of the following categories: Jungle guides: lead tours for second through fifth grade classes weekday mornings from September through May. Docents: Lead daily free tours as well as special guided tours for groups, educating adult visitors on the conservatory’s collection. The seven-week training program will be held at the conservatory every Monday from July 12 through August 23 from 1 to 4 p.m. There is a $50 cost, which covers all mandatory training materials. Volunteers who complete the course have ongoing opportunities for education throughout the year, including field trips to area gardens, and enjoying insider perks like sneak previews of special exhibits, social activities, free passes, a gift store discount, and more. Bilingual Chinese and Spanish speakers are particularly encouraged.▼ Interested people should contact Erika Frank, director of volunteer services, at (415) 637-4326 or efrank@sfcof.org.

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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 1 July 2010

COMMENTARY

Stand as one think the Idaho GOP has just clearly trumped such a debate. With the possible addition of “naturally born” ome Republicans in Idaho, apto their language, they’ve made it parently not content to see marclear that they see us all as a part of riage laws that bar same-sex couthe same stew, and don’t want us ples from being wed, have decided to somehow tainting their view of martake things one step further. At the riage. Or, more likely, they just don’t Idaho state GOP convention, a panel like “our kind” and feel that barof delegates has suggested redefinring us from marriage will ing marriage as “a bond between somehow make us retreat a ‘naturally-born’ man and back into the closet, away woman.” This would further from their view. push transgender people away Of course, the “naturalfrom any marriage rights ly born” language is flawed. whatsoever. What is a naturally born I’ve talked many male? Someone times about my who possesses a marriage, and the T RANSMISSIONS penis? Someone marriage of some about whom hir close friends of mother’s doctor says, “it’s a boy?” mine who happen to be transgender. Someone who has an “M” on hir For them, as well as my partner and birth certificate? Something else? I, we face the same-sex marriage Chances are, each of these is just as issue on an all too regular basis. We likely to have dozens of exceptions to deal with private companies and any rule about what a person was government entities that at best sim“naturally born” as. Yet I digress: I’m ply want to strip away our marriage not here to write about marriage itand/or identity because their paperself, at least directly. work doesn’t have a handy checkbox So often we seek to put up barrifor our relationships. At worst, of ers, and define exactly what we are. course, they’re actively hostile to us, Oftentimes, this is done by proclaimattempting to directly thwart our ing what we are not. I’ve known more ability to get what is legally, rightfulthan a few non-transgender gay men ly ours. who revel in their own ignorance One thing I’ve also talked about is about transgender issues, not even how there are members of our own wanting to understand why “a guy communities – gay and lesbian as would want to cut his dick off.” I’ve well as transgender – who have arknown plenty of non-transgender gued that the same-sex marriage lesbian women who claim that the issue is not a transgender issue. “penis privilege” of a transwoman While I disagree with that notion, I makes it all the more necessary for

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

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them to bar all transgender lesbians from their events and organizations. I’ve seen transmen similarly treated, with people erasing their identities and viewing them simply as very butch lesbians, or demonizing them for masculinizing their bodies with hormones and surgery. Oh yes, and then there’s the biggie. How many times have transgender people taken the short straw on fights for equal rights for LGBT people? It’s 16 years and counting for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, though the first instance of transgender people being kicked out of a bill in order to get rights for others dates back to the early 1970s. You’d think we’d be used to it by now. Yet this is not a one-sided issue. You’ll find plenty of transgender people arguing that we should not be around gay, lesbian, or bisexual people. The argument tends to be that the latter are all about sexual activity, while being transgender is purely about gender identity. There is a

point to be had in that argument, too. If only it ended there. Instead, it usually devolved into catcalls and jeers about non-transgender people. Assumptions run rampant about how “they” cannot even begin to understand what “we” go through. Offense turns to anger, and no one moves forward. Meanwhile, as we fight among ourselves over who is what, who isn’t what, and who has the “right” to speak for any one group, people like the Idaho GOP delegates take advantage of our own fractured community to attempt to remove all of our rights. Not content with laws in Idaho defining marriage as between one man and one woman, they need to add “naturally-born” to further force all of us – gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender – to lose the right to marry. The thing is, definitions and distinctions only matter to those of us who choose them. While I’m sure the option is out there, I have never been verbally harassed by anyone specifi-

cally for my gender identity, but for my perceived sexual orientation. I don’t get called a “he she” or “shim,” but a “faggot.” I suspect many other transgender people share similar experiences of being called “dykes” and “faggots” far more often than any transgender-specific slur. Likewise, those who are gay or lesbian identified, I suspect you have faced discrimination far more often over perceived gender cues than obvious examples of sexual orientation. Heck, being a naturally-born male who is attracted to others of his ilk could be argued as being transgressive, and outside of expected gender norms, no? When they come for us, it may read like Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famed statement (“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. ... Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up”), or they might just try to take us all out in one fell swoop – but make no mistake, they don’t want anyone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. This is why, to me, it is all the more important that we stand together and celebrate our similarities, rather than fight about our differences. Quite simply, we need to be one people, because those who stand against us already see us as such.▼ Gwen Smith is a bisexual-identified transgender woman in a long-term lesbian relationship who is rarely mistaken for a gay male. You can find her online at www.gwensmith.com.

Euro Court refuses to legalize same-sex marriage “Homosexuals are not even known who they are to be hanged,” he told the Democracy Now radio program. “So, we don’t have executions of homosexuals. Of course, we consider it an abhorrent act, but it is not punished through capital punishment.” A year earlier, speaking in New York City, Ahmadinejad had claimed that “we in Iran don’t have homoplay (hamjensbaz) like you have in your country.” “In our country ... absolutely such a thing does not exist as a phenomenon,” he said. “I don’t know who told you otherwise.” Six other nations have the death penalty for gay sex – Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and, in some regions, Nigeria and Somalia.

n a case from Austria, the European Court of Human Rights refused June 24 to effectively force 40 member nations of the Council of Europe to legalize same-sex marriage. The other seven member nations already allow same-sex marriage. Plaintiffs Horst Michael Schalk and Johann Franz Kopf had argued that Austria violated their rights to marry, to be free from discrimination, and to privacy and family life, as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. But the court decided not to “rush to substitute its own judgment in the place of that of national authorities.” The ILGA-Europe board cochair, Martin K.I. Christensen, said the group was “disappointed” with the ruling but that “Europe as a whole is gradually moving toward full equality for same-sex families.” He said the court also “made various important statements (in its ruling) which will eventually serve to advance legal rights for same-sex families.” Homosexual Initiative Vienna, or HOSI Wien, said Austrian activists had not expected to win the case flat-out because the time is not quite ripe. “That would have been completely unrealistic to expect since it would have been a precedent with indirect consequences for all member states of the Council of Europe,” the group said. “If the court had found a violation in Schalk v. Austria , citizens of ... Russia, Italy, Poland, or Ukraine would also have been able to successfully challenge the ban on same-sex marriage in their countries.” Still, the group had expected a more gay-friendly ruling on the matters of non-discrimination and respect for privacy and family life, which got a 3-4 vote from the court. “It is once again quite obvious that the court is not running in the forefront of social and societal de-

Rex Wockner

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Contingents take part in the 15th Tijuana GLBT Pride March on June 19. The event also included a two-day festival, which was new this year.

velopments,” said HOSI’s Kurt Krickler. “The LGBT movement therefore should not rely on international human rights courts in advancing legal progress for LGBT people; it is rather at the political level that we have to continue to struggle for social change and equality. “We would have expected that the court would have found at least a violation of the right to respect of private and family life guaranteed by Article 8 – in conjunction with Article 14: non-discrimination – of the convention at the time when Schalk and his partner had filed the application as there was no alternative option for them to have their partnership legally recognized,” Krickler said. “Austria only introduced registered partnership for same-sex couples as of 1 January 2010.” Gay marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Mexico City, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.

(ILGA-Europe’s long-form name is European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.)

further appeal. “We know that the [UN] decision we will get is not binding, but we know that a decision in our favor would be disturbing for the BelaruBelarusian activists sian government – and in any case file UN complaint we do not have any other option,” Androsenko said. Two gay activists in Belarus filed Belarus is not a member a complaint with the United of the Council of Europe, Nations Human Rights so the activists cannot Secretariat in Geneva appeal to the European June 20, charging that Court of Human Belarusian authorities Rights, which is where breached their right to other cases have ended freedom of assembly last up when gays’ legal December. rights have been tramSergey Androsenko, chief organizer of Minsk W OCKNER’ S pled in Eastern Europe. Iran punishes gay sex Gay Pride, and Sergey W ORLD with the death penalty, Praded, editor of the Bealthough in nearly all the larusian magazine Gay: cases that have been publicized, the Good As You, were arrested Decemteens and men who were hanged ber 16 while picketing the Iranian were accused of additional crimes as Embassy in Minsk to protest Iran’s well, such as homosexual rape. treatment of gay people. In 2008, President Mahmoud AhThey were fined, the fine was upmadinejad denied that people are held by an appeals court, and the executed solely for having gay sex. Supreme Court refused to hear a

5,000 march in Lisbon About 5,000 people marched in the 11th gay Pride Parade in Lisbon, Portugal, on June 19. Portugal recently legalized samesex marriage but blocked married gay couples from adopting, which became one focus of the march. Correspondent João Paulo from PortugalGay.pt said it’s “a ridiculous situation where a homosexual person can adopt but only before getting married.”

Euro Parliament urges more EU action on trans rights The European Parliament said June 17 that gender reassignment procedures must be accessible through health care plans, and insisted that future European Union gender equality initiatives address gender identity and reassignment. In a report evaluating the EU’s road map for equality between men and women, the parliament also called on EU authorities to include LGBT organizations in future work on gender equality. The co-presidents of the parliament’s Intergroup on LGBT Rights, Ulrike Lunacek and Michael Cashman, said the report “represents a true milestone for improving the EU

by Rex Wockner

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1 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER

POLITIC S

Young Dems’ supe debates the summer’s must-see events by Matthew S. Bajko he city’s hottest political event this summer is shaping up to be the supervisorial debates hosted by the San Francisco Young Democrats chapter. If the group’s recent forum with seven of the candidates seeking the Board of Supervisors’ District 6 seat is any guide, it is going to be standing-room-only for the other three debates in the even-numbered districts up for grabs this fall. Apart from the intense interest in this year’s battles for the board – the winners potentially will select the city’s next mayor if Gavin Newsom is elected lieutenant governor and resigns – the debates are sure to draw packed crowds due to their unique format. To spice things up, the Young Dems are allowing each of the invited candidates to pose a question to one of their opponents, in addition to being asked a specific question by the moderator and those posed by the audience. The result is claws coming out amongst the rivals in the races and a unique look at the candidates’ strategic approaches to the opportunity to quiz a fellow office seeker. “I didn’t want this to be where you sit down and people watch these debates and after a period of time people’s eyes glaze over. We wanted to do something different and engage the electorate so they are informed come November,” said Maxwell Szabo, president of the political club, who noted it is the first time the group’s debate format has been structured this way. “I love to see who is trying to beat up on who. It is a good indication of the dynamics of the race.” The District 6 debate Wednesday, June 23 certainly did not disappoint. Debra Walker, an out lesbian artist, and ThereP OLITICAL sa Sparks, a transgender woman who is past president of the Police Commission, hit each other with tough queries. Right out of the box Walker used a recent newspaper report claiming the law enforcement oversight body has been lax about police misconduct to question why Sparks allowed “dirty cops” to remain on the streets. Sparks, who said the article was factually wrong, in turn suggested Walker is not concerned with lessening the tax burden small businesses face by asking if she backed several new taxes the current board has proposed. Walker, who touts the fact as an artist she is a small business owner, said she is against any measure that “disincentizes” employers from hiring additional staff. Next up was Jim Meko, the gay owner of a printing company, who not so subtly painted Jane Kim, president of the school board, as a carpetbagger shopping for a supervisor seat to seek. Noting he has “been around the district” since the late 1970s, and that Kim, “just moved in a few months ago,” Meko tried to trip her up by asking about a planning proposal known as the Mid-Market Plan. To which Kim shot back that she has lived in San Francisco for 11 years and has “served families and residents in District 6” for the last four years on the school board, whose members are elected citywide. Glendon Hyde, a gay man whose drag persona is Anna Conda, threw an easier question to Kim, asking her how much more bond-related debt the city could afford. And James Keys, who worked as an aide to termed-out District 6 Supervisor

Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check www.ebar.com Monday mornings around 10 a.m. for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column looks at the LGBT candidates running for Congress this year.

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Lydia Gonzales

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

District 6 supervisor candidate Debra Walker, right, talks to fellow candidate Theresa Sparks during last week’s Young Democrats’ forum.

Chris Daly, also questioned Kim on what she would do to improve pedestrian safety in the district. The seventh candidate at the debate, attorney Matthew Drake, also threw a relatively easy question at Kim, inquiring why she does not support a plan to make public employees pay more toward their pensions that Public Defender Jeff Adachi has proposed be on the fall ballot. It allowed Kim to offer up a very union-friendly response that she prefers seeing a deal worked out directly with labor leaders and not via the ballot box. For her part, Kim lobbed a softball to Hyde and asked for his advice on what can be done to help the city’s, and particularly District 6’s, nightlife venues thrive as businesses. To some it was a shrewd move on Kim’s part, allowing her to look above the fray while at the same time preventing one of her main rivals in the race more face time. Kim’s being asked the most questions signaled she is viewed as a strong frontrunner in the race. As the debate’s moderator Melissa Griffin, a San FranN OTEBOOK cisco Examiner political columnist, half-joked at the end of round two, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are done with the Jane Kim show.” “It really demonstrates who the frontrunners are and who is worried about who,” said Szabo. “You saw that between Theresa Sparks and Debra Walker. I found it very informative. They were going right after one another. Whether or not that is the best strategy for the candidates, I don’t necessarily know.” The Young Dems were criticized for picking and choosing from the nearly two dozen people who have pulled papers in the race who to invite to take part in the debate. Szabo said the club sent all the candidates a questionnaire to fill out, and based on the 16 who responded, the Young Dem board decided whom to include in the debate. “Inviting everybody to come makes it extraordinarily difficult” to have an informative discussion within the time constraints of a 90minute debate, said Szabo. Next up will be the District 2 race Wednesday, July 28 at the Golden Gate Yacht Club, 1 Yacht Road in the Marina. Those candidates who have been invited to take part are Janet Reilly, Abraham Simmons, Kat Anderson, and Mark Farrell. So far the club is not extending an invite to current District 2 Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier. Because she was appointed to serve out the remainder of Newsom’s term after he became mayor in 2004 and was then re-elected for another term, the city attorney ruled she is ineligible to run for reelection this year since she has served for six years, and thus under the city charter, is termed out of office.

Alioto-Pier is suing the city to overturn that decision and her case is expected to be heard by a superior court judge July 16. Szabo said unless there is a definitive answer to whether she will indeed be a candidate by the time of the District 2 debate, AliotoPier would not be extended an invite. The debate with the District 10 supervisor candidates is scheduled to take place August 11 and sometime in September the club will host a debate with the District 8 contenders. The club will announce the exact times and locations on its website at sfyd.org. Videos of the debates will also be archived on the site. The District 6 taped debate, with SFGate.com columnist Beth Spotswood and drag queen Pollo Del Mar providing color commentary, is already available online.

SF Zoo Pride campaign bypasses gay press Hi, San Francisco Zoo? It’s the gay media calling. Just wanted to let you know we loved the Pride advertising campaign you rolled out this year. The rainbow made out of various animal hides and skins was a cute visual play on the gay community’s multi-colored icon. And offering families coupons for discounted admission to the zoo is a great gesture during these uncertain economic times. Just wanted to point out a minor quibble about the ads. It seems strange to promote that “Pride lives at” the zoo in the city’s straight press and not include San Francisco’s two gay papers in your media buy. Considering how the LGBT community loves its bears and otters and studs, it would seem our readers are a perfect target audience for your pitch. Plus, if you haven’t heard, having kids is all the rage in the Castro these days. And just so you know, there are no hurt feelings on our part over the breakup of your gay penguin couple Harry and Pepper. If anyone knows how difficult it can be to maintain a relationship these days, it is same-sex couples. We understand from your marketing and sponsorship manager, Danny Latham Jr., that by the time he started talking to the Bay Area Reporter about its advertising rates the Pride media buy was already completed and the budget depleted for this year. He did note that this is an annual campaign, so we do hope to hear from you next Pride season! Yours truly, The Bay Area Reporter ▼

Correction In the June 24 article “NectArena celebrates 10 years,” it was misstated that Jade Williams was a former Army brat. Williams served in the U.S. Air Force for eight years. The online version has been updated.

Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 861-5019 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

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▼ Celebrating a weekend of Pride PRIDE

2010

Jane Philomen Cleland

During the Dyke March Saturday, June 26, drummers with Sistah Boom stop and perform for older lesbians, who traditionally sit in front of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav at 16th and Dolores streets. The march then proceeded to the Castro.

Women gather outside the Elbo Room in the Mission, which was transformed into the old lesbian bar Amelia’s on Sunday, June 27, where a reunion party was held after the Pride celebration.

Andy Bell performed on the main stage at Sunday’s Pride celebration.

Lydia Gonzales

BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 1 July 2010

Jane Philomen Cleland

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PRIDE

2010

Rick Gerharter

People danced on a wall of the San Francisco Public Library during last Sunday’s Pride celebration.

Paulina Rojas shouted with enthusiasm as she marched with City College of San Francisco’s Translatinas Club in the Trans March, held Friday, June 25.

Rick Gerharter

1 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER

Check out the Bay Area Reporter online at:

www.ebar.com

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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 1 July 2010

NATIONAL

NEWS

Election unlikely for Byrd replacement by Dana Rudolph he immediate replacement for Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), who died June 28, will most likely be chosen by the governor, not by a special election – and that is good news for the chances of repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on out lesbian and gay service members. Byrd’s death, at age 92, came after West Virginia’s primary elections were held this year, and state law requires that candidates in special elections to fill vacancies must file during the regular primary filing period, which has already passed. The next regular primary and general elections will not come again until 2012. West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant issued a statement the day of Byrd’s death, confirming that there can be no special election until 2012. At that point, there will be two elections, one for the remaining five or so weeks of Byrd’s unexpired term, and one for the next full term. That means Democratic Governor Joe Manchin will get to appoint a senator to serve Byrd’s term until that election. Byrd had provided critical sup-

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has reduced significantly last year. But it hasn’t gone away. And that problem came to the Castro.” Pink Saturday, held June 26 the night before the Pride Parade, had otherwise gone relatively smoothly this year, with fewer medical emergencies, a single fight that was quickly contained, and public urination curtailed by rapid-response security teams. But at 11:30 p.m., shots were fired near the Chevron at Castro and Market, killing 19-year-old Stephen Powell and injuring two bystanders. Sergeant Troy Dangerfield with the San Francisco Police Department confirmed that Ed Perkins, 20, of San Francisco, was apprehended minutes after the shooting. Initially, Perkins was charged with murder; but those charges were changed to weapons possession this week when it was discovered that none of the shots fired matched the concealed and loaded .357 caliber revolver that the district attorney’s office says Perkins brought to Pink Saturday. The exact relationship between Powell and Perkins is still unclear, but media reports indicate that the two men had ties to rival Bayview gangs. A vigil was held Monday night for Powell at 3rd and Quesada, just a few blocks from an area covered by a city attorney’s office injunction against a gang that operates around a Bayview housing development. The vigil was interrupted by a drive-by shooting that injured two mourners. The SFPD’s gang task force is investigating. Powell is remembered fondly by friends who established a memorial page on Facebook. “Steve was the most warm hearted friends that I had the pleasure of knowing,” wrote one friend. Ellie Miller, an intern in Dufty’s office, attended Stuart Hall High School

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record on gender equality for all – including transgender citizens.” Intergroup vice president Raül Romeva i Rueda said the parliament demonstrated that “the rights of transgender people are of no less importance than other citizens.” “It sent a strong signal, and I trust the [European] Commission will follow our lead and start addressing discrimination based on gender

port in moving forward a measure to repeal DADT. He worked with Senate and House leadership on a provision that would give Congress an additional 60 days to review the proposed policy changes, even after the president, the secretary of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs certify them. That language was included in an amendment to the defense authorization bill that passed the House and the Senate Armed Services Committee (of which Byrd was a member) at the end of May. The full Senate is set to take it up when it returns from recess July 12. With the vote likely to be close, the focus now is on who Manchin will choose to replace Byrd. The most frequently mentioned names in the media have been Nick Casey, the former chair of the state Democratic Party, who has just accepted a federal judgeship, and the new party chair, Larry Puccio, the governor’s former chief of staff. Other names include state Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin; Carte Goodwin, a former counsel to the governor; and former state Supreme Court Justice Richard Neely. No matter who is chosen, most sources see them as placeholders for

with Powell prior to his expulsion in 2007. “He was a good kid,” she recalled. “He was sweet and funny. Very much loved.” As the police investigation continues, community leaders are left to reflect on the street party. In 2006, gunfire at Halloween in the Castro resulted in subsequent cancellation of the event. When asked if Pink Saturday might face a similar fate, Dufty was firm: “No. We’re not going to cancel Pink Saturday. ... It’s clear to me that what took place was two individuals who could have done this in any neighborhood in San Francisco. And it just happened to be there that night.” Sister Viva L’Amour des Hommes and Sister Risque oversaw this year’s Pink Saturday, which has historically been organized by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. L’Amour declined to speculate about future events. “Our focus is still on this year’s celebration, and we haven’t begun to discuss our plans for next year,” she said. “We still need to have a dialogue internally. ... We’ll be meeting very soon to discuss how things happened, what went well, what went wrong, and provide a report back.” Greg Carey, chair of the volunteer Castro Community on Patrol, took a similar position. “We’ll have discussions within our organization about how things went well, or not well,” he said. CCOP coordinated with the Sisters, dispatching teams throughout the event to monitor and report on attendees’ behavior. Dufty, who is running for mayor next year, expects that a community forum will eventually be held to discuss Pink Saturday, but urged patience. “My desire is to wait for two or three weeks,” he said. “I would like to have the investigations completed and the data available.”

identity more explicitly,” he said.

LGBTs take over downtown Tijuana for two days The border city of Tijuana, Mexico, saw its 15th gay Pride Parade June 19 and, for the first time, the march was accompanied by a festival, which ran for two days on three intersecting streets in the center of downtown. Several hundred people joined the parade down Avenida Revolución, the main drag of the city center that once was a raucous, pulsing

Manchin, who has long been seen as a candidate to replace Byrd. Manchin has said that he would not appoint himself to the position, however. Stephen Skinner, chair of the board of Fairness West Virginia, the state’s leading LGBT advocacy group, said he would expect both Casey and Puccio to follow Byrd’s lead on DADT and can’t imagine that any of the other possible appointees would differ. He said his organization has

existing relationships with all of the likely choices, and “we’ll immediately reach out to whomever is chosen.” The LGBT-related record of the possible choices is slim. Goodwin, as counsel to Manchin, and Tomblin, as Senate president, backed the governor in rejecting a 2008 attempt by the Family Policy Council of West Virginia to push through a state constitutional amendment that sought to limit marriage to one man and

one woman. They pointed out that current state law already does so. Fox News reported June 29, however, that state Republicans will continue to fight for a special election this coming November. If they are successful, the likely Republican contender would be Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito. She is the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation – but is seen as a moderate – and the state voted for Republican candidates in the last three presidential elections. Capito is no supporter of LGBT rights, however. She voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2007 and against a 2007 standalone version of an LGBT-inclusive hate crimes act. (She ultimately voted for the defense appropriations bill to which the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was successfully attached.) And, in 2006, she voted for a failed House resolution that would have proposed a constitutional amendment defining marriage in the U.S. as the union of a man and a woman. Most critically, she voted against the Defense Authorization amendment to repeal DADT that Byrd had worked to pass.▼

Changes The pre-Pride party has undergone significant changes in recent years. In 2009, a private security firm was hired to perform pat-downs and bag-checks at the gates. That was in response to demands for heightened security from the SFPD, which was concerned about the Sisters’ plan to expand the size of the party and to add beer booths in the streets. According to Dufty, one of the Sisters’ reasons for expanding the event in 2009 was to increase donations at the gate. Last year’s changes altered the nature of the party, according to CCOP’s Carey. “Up until last year ... it was not widely known outside of the LGBT community,” he said. “But it was highly advertised. There were radio ads, banners, street advertisements. Starting last year, we started to see a higher percentage of non-LGBT participants. ... There were a lot of local non-queer folks who were there this year. ... What we’ve seen this past two years is the local rowdy crowd mixing in with the LGBT crowd.” The heightened security was also a source of concern. “[The Sisters received] community feedback last year that security was too heavy, and there were concerns about the cultural competency of security,” said Sister L’Amour. For this year’s party, the Sisters decided to eliminate beer booths, and with them, the SFPD’s requirement for pat-downs. “We wanted to reduce the impact of paid security,” she said. “We went with the same firm that did Love Parade, and they did a fantastic job. All the feedback we’ve had is that they had a good experience with security.” Castro bars benefited greatly from the elimination of beer booths. “A lot of the bars had had a slower year,” said Dufty, “so [the Sisters] wanted to let the bars do as well as they could.”

“We really want to take it back to the local bartenders,” Sister Sharin’ Dipity Reveal told Castro merchants at a meeting in April. “It will be nowhere near the size it was last year.” In e-mails obtained by the B.A.R. through a public records request, the co-chair of 2009’s Pink Saturday expressed concerns in January about the event’s security costs. “Sgt Limbert informed me that SFPD will charge us 10-B [overtime] for officers,” wrote Sister Barbi Mitzvah in an e-mail to Dufty’s office. “We were told we were grandfathered in and now it appears the city is going to renege on that conversation and agreement.” Two weeks later, Mitzvah sent another e-mail, this time announcing that she would not be returning to organize the event in 2010. “The group voted last night to continue with Pink Saturday, but to the former blueprint of 2008. I know after 2008 the city mandated us with private security which is why we expanded the blueprint and took on sponsorships to pay for it. In this new (old) model it is not clear if they will serve alcohol or not, as it appears it will not happen mostly due to space requirements. However the new team will figure that out.” That was a change from June 2009, when Mitzvah told the B.A.R., “If everything goes smoothly, we plan to continue producing this.” She did not respond to requests for an interview by press time. Although the booths were eliminated, the area of the street closure was reduced, and the event was unadvertised, this year’s crowd was enormous. Official counts are still unavailable, but Dufty estimated, based on conversations with community members, that 200,000 people attended. Like many, Dufty observed an unfamiliar demographic in the crowd. “It seemed very young,” he said, but added, “it still seemed gay to me. It didn’t seem menacing the way that Halloween could feel.”

Although security at the gate maintained a lower profile this year, the Sisters made several improvements to security within the event itself. “We’ve been working very closely with the SFPD leading up to the event,” said L’Amour. “We’ve been talking with the police at least weekly.” The Sisters hired a dedicated 911 dispatcher from the Department of Emergency Services, streamlined communication, and established a first aid station. In addition, CCOP maintained a high level of visibility, working alongside the Sisters’ hired dispatcher. Dufty confirmed that public safety was at the forefront of much of the planning. Just as in previous years, he or someone from his office attended every planning meeting held at Mission Station. The timing of Saturday’s shooting coincided with the official end of the party. Fifteen minutes before shots were fired, the gates were removed and collection stopped, according to the terms of the Sisters’ permit. “At 11:15, the event starts to hand back over to the city,” explained Sister L’Amour. And that was the setting for Powell’s murder: A large crowd, attracted to the party from outside the Castro and having faced minimal security checks, was transitioning from the Sisters’ control to the city’s when shots rang out. “I don’t believe the Castro is dangerous,” said CCOP’s Carey. “But I do believe that people can do a better job of taking care of themselves and their friends.” CCOP is currently seeking volunteers to patrol the neighborhood, assisting individuals and deterring violence. CCOP’s next training session is July 9 at 7 p.m.; interested parties are asked to RSVP to training @castropatrol.org. “As a community,” Carey said, “we take care of each other.”▼

tourist and nightlife district. The avenue has fallen on hard times from a triple whammy that curtailed tourist crossings from the U.S. First, increased border security after 9/11 created hours-long checkpoint lines to get back to the U.S. Then the U.S. started requiring that Americans returning from Mexican border zones have a passport, which most Americans don’t have. Additionally, Tijuana was hit with a violent crime wave in 2008. Although the security situation has improved since last year, the impression per-

sists in southern California that it’s not safe to cross the border. As a result, LGBT residents of Baja California celebrated Pride on their own for the second year in a row, with minimal camaraderie from the other side of the fence. And celebrate they did. The parade was around 10 times bigger than the first one 15 years ago, and this year’s first-ever festival saw LGBT Tijuanans claim the streets of the downtown core for 24 hours. The free party, which ran from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. both Saturday and

Sunday, spanned three large blocks, stretching south, east and southwest from the giant Tijuana arch. Three stages offered live music and artistic performances. Vendors sold art, food, and tchotchkes, while other booths provided organizational and HIV information. Co-sponsors of the festivities included the city and state governments, the tourism committee, a merchants’ association, and a brewery.▼

Senator Robert Byrd, a backer of repealing DADT, died Monday.

Bill Kelley contributed to this report.


1 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER

NATIONAL

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NEWS

Supreme Court upholds Hastings’ policy or the second time in a week, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, June 28 issued an opinion that delivered a small, indirect, and perhaps unfinished victory to policies that have benefited the LGBT community. In doing so, it also gave the community an important symbolic nod: that religious beliefs may not always trump non-discrimination policies. And, it did so with a hostile 5-4 split among the justices. The nod came in an opinion penned by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a majority that included Justice Anthony Kennedy, the obvious swing vote between two increasingly polar segments of the court. The case this week was Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, from the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Just last week, the high court upheld another 9th Circuit decision – in Doe v. Reed – which said a Washington state law requiring public availability of records indicating the names and addresses of people who sign petitions putting issues on the ballot. This week, it upheld the 9th Circuit’s decision upholding a public school’s non-discrimination policy. A Christian student group, Christian Legal Society, had been denied official student group status at UCSF Hastings College of Law.

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June 26, there were “a few technical glitches,” but “all in all, Sunday was a dream.” She added that her staff “rose to the occasion at every turn.” Many people displayed their pride Sunday by wearing rainbow wristbands and necklaces or distributing condoms. Forty years ago, Pride started out as a much smaller gathering to mark the first anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots, where patrons of a New York City bar stood up to police and sparked the modern gay rights movement. These days, there are still signs that people are concerned about politics. A block away from City Hall, a small group of people wore T-shirts that said, “End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” referring to the military’s ban on out service members. Retired Navy Commander Zoe Dunning, who successfully fought her discharge under the policy, was one of the celebrity grand marshals. Nearby, Susa Purugganan, who is 33 and straight, said she’d been to the Pride Parade before, but Sunday was her first time going to the festival. She came to support the community. “It’s really important right now because of what’s going on politically” with LGBT rights, said Purugganan. The celebratory nature of Pride weekend was marred by a shooting in the Castro near the end of the Pink Saturday party. [See story, page 1.] Purugganan said despite Saturday’s shooting, “I’m not afraid by any means,” noting there can be a potential for violence any time there’s a large crowd. Alton G., who didn’t want to give his full last name, looked like he was interested strictly in having a good time. Wearing nothing but skimpy pink briefs with a Blackberry tucked in them, he said he did feel less safe at the event, “but we’ve waited all year for this, so we might as well enjoy it.” Alton, who is 23 and gay, was making his first visit to San Francisco’s Pride celebration. He’d recently

CLS had argued that the public university violated its First Amendment rights when it refused it official recognition and the benefits and resources that go along with that status. The school argued that it treated CLS like every other group when it required CLS to comply with the school’s policy against discrimination based on sexual orientation, religion, and other factors. The majority agreed with the lower courts that Hastings’ non-discrimination policy is “a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access” to student group privileges and resources. In her opinion, Ginsburg said CLS was trying to circumvent the non-discrimination policy and that, she said, was seeking “not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption” from a legitimate policy. “The First Amendment shields CLS against state prohibition of the organization’s expressive activity, however exclusionary that activity may be,” wrote Ginsburg. “But CLS enjoys no constitutional right to state subvention of its selectivity.” “We are thrilled that the court rejected the dangerous argument that anti-gay groups have a First Amendment right to discriminate, even when they are accepting public funds,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which represented the gay student group at Hastings. The gay student

moved to the city from New York. It was also the first Pride for Gail Benson, 37, who lives in El Cerrito and declined to state her sexual orientation. Benson said because there were “people everywhere,” she thought the event was “very exciting.” She said she’d just heard about the shooting, but it didn’t make her feel any less safe. As always, this year’s festivities were free, but many appeared willing to provide the $5 requested donation. The donations help support the over 80 Bay Area nonprofit organizations through the Pride Committee’s community partners program. Donations from the celebration have helped San Francisco Pride give back more than $1.6 million in grants since 1997. Andre said it was too soon to say how much money was collected this year.

Police incidents The Pink Saturday shooting, in which one man was killed and two others were injured near Castro and Market streets, was on people’s minds Sunday. “Our hearts go out to the families of the people impacted by what happened on Saturday night,” Andre said of the shooting that occurred Saturday night, which is organized by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and is not an official Pride event. Police also responded to other calls over the weekend. An incident occurred early Saturday outside 440 Castro at about 1:30 or 1:45 a.m., just after Ray Tilton, a gay man who lives in Santa Rosa, had left the Castro area bar. Tilton, 47, who was Mr. San Francisco Leather in 1990, reported that someone from a passing group of four people had attempted to get the wallet of one of his friends by grabbing the wallet chain. He said he and his friend had a brief exchange about what had just happened when the four people came back to them and one of Tilton’s other friends got punched. He said he tried to step in between them, but he was thrown to the ground. He said one of the alleged assailants got on top of him and put his knee in the middle of his

by Lisa Keen

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

group was an intervenor party to the litigation. “This decision,” said Minter, “should go a long way toward putting a stop to efforts by anti-gay groups to challenge basic non-discrimination policies and laws.” Minter said CLS has been bringing similar cases across the country in a “blatant effort to undermine anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people.” But Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the dissent, saw a march being led by a different drummer’s beat. He chided the majority as going so far as to use a “misleading portrayal” of the facts of the case in order to make a play

for “political correctness.” His dissent seethes against a majority he perceives to be leading a liberal march. “Brushing aside inconvenient precedent,” writes Alito, parodying former Vice President Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documentary against global warming, “the court arms public educational institutions with a handy weapon for suppressing the speech of unpopular groups. ...” In his case, Alito is referring to Christian groups as unpopular. Alito was joined by the court’s reliably conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The case was considered particularly significant to the LGBT community because it tested the ability of some people to ignore laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. CLS would allow gay students and people who would not endorse the group’s stated religious viewpoint to be members of the group. But it would not allow such people to vote or hold office. That, said the university, was discrimination based on sexual orientation and religion. The First Amendment right to religious beliefs has frequently trumped laws and policies banning discrimination based on sexual orientation at the U.S. Supreme Court level. It did so most notoriously in 1995 in a case called Rosenberger v. University of Vir-

ginia – where the Supreme Court said a public university had to provide funding for a campus Christian group’s newsletter even though the newsletter espoused beliefs that contradicted the university’s non-discrimination policy. During oral arguments in April, many of the justices complained about the uncertainty of important facts in the case. For instance, the facts of the case did not indicate clearly whether the school refused official status to the CLS chapter because the group violated the school’s written non-discrimination policy or because the group violated the school’s stated interpretation of that policy – dubbed the “allcomers” policy – that all official student groups must allow full and equal participation by all students. CLS said it was willing to abide by the written policy, by allowing gays to attend its meetings; but it said the allcomers went too far and amounted to interference with the group members’ First Amendment rights to free association and free exercise of religion. The majority stuck to the all-comers policy, noting that CLS and the university had both agreed in the district court that this was the policy used to deny CLS its status as a recognized student group. But it remanded one of CLS’ claims back to the 9th Circuit – whether the university had applied its all-comers policy exclusively against CLS, and not other groups.▼

Obituaries >> Harmon George Fromuth May 8, 1927 – June 23, 2010

Harmon left us shortly following his 83rd birthday, and after 54 years with his partner, Ed Van Egry. He departed Dayton, Ohio when he was 25 and had a blessed life in San Francisco, pursuing as his profession the greatest love, garden design and horticulture. He conceived, created and maintained several gardens for folks in San Francisco and Marin County. Yet his greatest project was in he and Ed’s own back yard, behind their home of 35 years, which he transformed from a weed lot into a series of magical terraced outdoor rooms. Harmon wanted his ashes to return to the earth near his pussycat’s grave, on a knoll near their cabin high in the forested hills above the Napa Valley, where he and Ed had 49 wonderful summers.

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COMMUNITY

Pride back and punched the back of his head. The other three proceeded to punch and kick Tilton in the head and face, among other places, he said. Tilton, who weighs 250 pounds and is about 6 feet, said, “I’m a big guy so it did take four of them to hold me down.” He also said, “There was so much noise and commotion going on by this point I couldn’t clearly make out much of what was being said at all.” Tilton said the 440 staff pulled him into the bar, which had closed by then. He and his three friends then went to an apartment at 17th and Hartford streets to “regroup,” then walked to 17th and Diamond streets, where Tilton was staying. He said as they left the first apartment, the four alleged assailants were waiting for them. Tilton said they were taunting him and his friends, saying things like, “We’re going to get you.” He said he couldn’t remember them saying

Kaplan ▼

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want to lose the younger officers with less seniority, likely to be among the first to be let go, she is adamant that pension reform is needed. “The Oakland Police Department is the only group that doesn’t pay,” she said. She said that the younger officers “have a lot of skills we need.” They tend to be more diverse, she added, and they have been trained under the new rules that the police department operated under as part of a court settlement stemming from the Riders police brutality case. “Losing them, in my mind, is not the right way to go,” she said.

Council record When Kaplan ran for city council two years ago, she had the support of only two of the eight council members, Desley Brooks and Nancy Nadel. She went on to win the atlarge seat with 62 percent of the city-

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mary. Laird’s spin can only be described as factually inaccurate and just plain silly.”

Long, hot summer It is sure to be a long, hot summer for both candidates and their party backers. This week Laird challenged Blakeslee to debate him in each of the five counties that are covered in the sprawling 15th Senate District. Laird is proposing that the League of Women Voters moderate the forums. “The voters of the 15th District deserve more than 30 campaign ads

ENDA ▼

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D.C. next week for its Fourth of July recess, and the summer recess in August, there’s not much time left before members head out on the campaign trail in the fall ahead of the November midterm elections. Speier also said that right now there are 290 bills in the Senate awaiting action that the House has already passed. Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said Monday that the number was now over 300 bills. “A lot depends on the Senate,” Speier said.

Promises, promises Local LGBT leaders reacted strongly to Speier’s comments, calling

Ray Tilton, as he appeared after being beaten over Pride weekend.

Courtesy Ray Tilton

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NEWS

anything anti-gay. He said at that point, a friend called the police. He didn’t know why the police weren’t called before. He said he and his friends took refuge in the doorway of Orphan Andy’s, a nearby diner. At the same time, he said, the four other people sat down at a table at 17th Street Plaza, which is outside the diner. Between 2 and 3 a.m., the police and an ambulance arrived, said Tilton. He said that while he was in the ambulance, the alleged assailants were brought to the door one by one so he could identify them. He said the ambulance driver held his hand during the process and “the police were great.” Tilton said that he and the others were surprised the other four hadn’t run when police arrived. “I don’t know if they were trying to wait for us again to come from Orphan Andy’s or if they were so stupid they didn’t realize we were calling the police,” said Tilton. Tilton said all four were arrested at the scene. Lieutenant Lyn Tomioka, a spokeswoman for the San Fran-

cisco Police Department, said Otis Cooley, 28, of Emeryville; Derek Price, 27, of San Leandro; Laselle Manning, 31, of Mesa, California; and Deonsay Roberts, who will be 19 in July and lives in Oakland were all cited for misdemeanor battery and released. She said their court date is August 23. Tilton has formed a Red Saturday group on Facebook to call attention to violence. He said there are plans to have a rally Saturday, July 3, at 6 p.m. at 17th Street Plaza. Also on Saturday, according to Tomioka, there was one arrest for hit-and-run at the Dyke March involving somebody on a motorcycle. In other events that occurred Saturday, four intoxicated people were temporarily detained, and there was also an arrest for malicious mischief to a police vehicle, said Tomioka. She said on Sunday, June 27, at the Pride Parade, three intoxicated people were detained temporarily; there was one arrest for misdemeanor battery; and there was one citation for having an open container and urinating in public.▼

wide vote; she received 85,000 votes. “I was elected by more votes than any other elected official in Oakland – ever,” Kaplan said, as she and her consultant, Jim Ross, acknowledged that the voter turnout in the November 2008 election of Barack Obama was very high. Nonetheless, a map of those 2008 results shows that Kaplan carried virtually every part of the city. The one exception was the area northeast of Piedmont, but that was the neighborhood of Kaplan’s opponent, former Perata staffer and school board member Kerry Hamill. Regarding her time on the council, Kaplan said she has “felt very good about being there.” A cabaret reform ordinance has been passed, she said, to help development in the entertainment sector. There were live music restrictions that were addressed. A law was also approved that updated downtown zoning, “to attract more economic opportunity to downtown,” she said. Last July, the city council put four budget measures on the ballot in a

special election; all passed, including one to tax proceeds from medical cannabis. Earlier this year, the council unanimously adopted an ordinance to remove an 1879 law that prohibited the wearing of clothes of the “opposite sex.” Kaplan, who wears suits, likes to joke that before the law was passed she could have been arrested because of her attire. On a more serious note, Kaplan said the council approved an ordinance regarding vacant foreclosures, which give the city options in working with banks on vacant properties that are blight. “Politics is very much separate from the day-to-day work,” Kaplan said of her colleagues and the council’s work. “I work with everybody.” Kaplan said she agreed with fellow council member Brooks’s criticism of the city’s budget process. And she said that Brooks has also been involved in efforts to fight blight. Prior to serving on the city council, Kaplan was the elected at-large

member of the AC Transit board. If Oakland is to thrive as an urban center, Kaplan said that a vibrant arts scene is crucial. Already, the city’s new Uptown District is bustling with restaurants and the renovated Fox Theatre. The nearby Paramount Theatre, she said, needs more programming. The board that oversees the Paramount came under criticism earlier this year when gay resident Sean Sullivan led a protest of the reappointment of longtime board member Lorenzo Hoopes, a retired leader in the Mormon Church who contributed heavily to the campaign to pass Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban. Dellums pulled not only Hoopes’s nomination, but those of three other people. The mayor has met with small groups of LGBT people in an effort to find qualified out people to serve on the board. Kaplan said earlier this month that that process is continuing. She

said she has met with the board and staff of the Paramount and other LGBT leaders in Oakland. Specifically, she noted that more programming at the theater would attract a wider segment of the community. “How we make the asset more strongly connected to the entire community, which would bring in more business,” Kaplan said, is something she is working on. “To me, that has to be fixed.” The Paramount, she said, is a “micro-example” of “a gorgeous building in a hopping area” where on “most nights nothing is there.” “We absolutely have to have more LGBT programming but I don’t want just LGBT programming,” she said. “Oakland’s LGBT community is part of the solution to these issues.” To Kaplan, a busy Uptown means jobs. How to accomplish economic revitalization that benefits everybody is part of her mayoral platform. That means “real local hiring policies,” she said, so that the benefit re-circulates in the community.▼

and twice-a-day attack mailers on how either of us would deal with these problems,” wrote Laird in a letter sent to Blakeslee. “As the economy staggers forward, teachers are laid off, local public safety programs are threatened, the middle class is priced out of higher education, and the Central Coast visitor-serving industry is hit by the possible further reduction of open hours for state parks – the voters need to hear from each candidate on their solutions. They need to hear these solutions in a forum that allows for thoughtful discussion and for the public to ask questions of each candidate.” As of press time Wednesday, Blakeslee had yet to take up Laird on his debate offer.

“We are going to keep asking because he didn’t appear anywhere in the primary,” said Laird. “We are going to do our best to meet with him.” Should Laird win, he would be the fourth out person serving in the state Senate. Following Wilson’s defeat, there are now three non-incumbent gay Democrats and two gay Republicans seeking Assembly seats this fall. Currently, the Assembly has two gay male members: Tom Ammiano (DSan Francisco) and Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles). They are both seeking re-election this year.

All five Democrats are expected to win, though former San Diego City Councilwoman Toni Atkins, an out lesbian who briefly served as her city’s mayor, is facing a strong challenge from her gay GOP opponent, Ralph Denney, in their match-up for the 76th Assembly District seat. Denney has twice before sought the seat, and this week he boasted to reporters that he received 53 percent in an unscientific online poll conducted by the San Diego Gay and Lesbian Times, versus Atkins’s 47 percent showing. “I think this poll indicates the growing frustration in this community with the Democrats’ inability to not only deliver on LGBT rights, but also their inability to govern respon-

sibly,” stated Will RodriguezKennedy, president of Log Cabin Republicans of San Diego County, in an e-mail from Denney’s campaign. Should Denney pull off a surprise victory, he would be the first openly gay Republican candidate to win election to state office. State Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) came out this year while in office. No matter who wins the state’s first gay versus gay general election contest, the four-person LGBT Legislative Caucus in Sacramento should number at least seven members come 2011 and potentially could have eight people if Laird wins. Ashburn is not considered a member of the caucus and is termed out of office this year.▼

them a departure from what Pelosi had promised during a phone call she had with them in May. During that May 17 call, Pelosi “was very clear that ENDA would pass the House with enough time to pass the Senate this year,” Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors told the B.A.R. Tuesday. Kors was on that call with Pelosi, as was Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. Both were also at the Alice breakfast. Davis told the B.A.R. that he grew concerned when he heard Speier’s remarks from the podium. LGBT groups have been pushing Pelosi hard in recent weeks to make sure she brings ENDA up for a floor vote. During Sunday’s Pride Parade, Davis said that about 1,200 signs were distributed to other contingents and

those watching the parade. The blue and white placards read, “Pelosi Promised. ENDA Now.” Many were visible along the parade route. “Everything we’ve been told led us to believe ENDA would hit the floor this year,” Davis said Tuesday. Asked for his reaction to Speier’s comment, Davis was blunt. “That means we’ll have five years of people being fired,” he said. “Putting a five-year time limit on the bill feels out of touch.” Kors said five years “is not acceptable.” “This may be the best Congress we have in a decade,” he added. Davis was adamant that a House vote on ENDA must happen this year. “We believe it’s time for movement in the House,” he said. “No vote is a failed vote.”

Despite Pelosi’s statements to local leaders in last month’s conference call, in her video message played at Sunday’s Pride festival, no mention was made about a vote on ENDA. “And as for ENDA, we will not stop working until we pass an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act. This has been a priority of mine for nearly two decades, and your continued advocacy is essential to our success,” Pelosi said in the taped message. Hammill told the B.A.R. this week that Pelosi remains committed to passing ENDA this year. “Passing ENDA this year is a top priority for the speaker,” Hammill said. Kors and Davis both mentioned the current economic downturn and

high unemployment rate among LGBTs, particularly in the transgender community. “In a difficult economic climate, it is abhorrent not to pass protections for some of the most vulnerable members of our community, especially when public support for ENDA is higher than for other priorities Congress has pushed through,” Kors said. Kors also said he was concerned about the midterm elections. “I’m worried LGBT people won’t vote in the midterms” if Pelosi’s promise is not kept, he said. “That would be disastrous for LGBT rights but it’s understandable. People felt they did work, gave money, and lobbied members only to see once again being pushed to the back of the line.”▼

Other races

Arts scene


Two very different gay lives

Honor roll of pansies

SF Mime Trouper

New biography of E.M. Forster & ‘Portrait of the Addict as a Young Man’ are reviewed.

‘Blackbird: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas.’

Rotimi Agbabiaka to star in new SF Mime Troupe production.

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ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT

BAYAREAREPORTER

“Four on a Bench” by Magdalena Abakanowicz, part of the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at SFMOMA.

U

The Fisher king

‘Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection’ at SFMOMA • by Sura Wood new wing, dedicated to the expanded holdings and slated to open in 2016, will help make San Francisco a must-see destination for art-lovers everywhere. Although some of Fisher’s artworks have been displayed at Gap Headquarters over the years, last week marked the first time the col-

lection, which emphasizes painting and sculpture, and strikes an unusually equitable balance between abstract and figurative art, opened for public view. Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection is one of the largest exhibitions SFMOMA has mounted – it occupies two floors of

the museum and the rooftop garden. The 161 works, a fraction of the 1,100 in the collection, comprise a highlight reel to whet the appetite. Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, the man behind the immaculate installation, has devoted, in some cases, entire galleries to single artists, such as one with Warhol’s “Triple Elvis,” “Silver Marlon” and multiples of Richard Mapplethorpe, or dialogues between artists, an approach he applied to his two-part Focus on Artists retrospective for the museum’s 75th anniversary celebration. The current survey attempts to represent the quality, character, range and diversity of the Fishers’ acquisitions, but, more importantly, it reflects, in microcosm, the personal tastes and passions of the couple who spent 40 years building it. Those tastes and passions may not be yours, but among the 56 artists here, who

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Hollywood devouring its own

Judy Garland, as she appeared in A Star Is Born.

Classic studio film series at the Castro Theatre ~ by David Lamble ~ t’s what the Castro Theatre does best: the classicfilm series Hollywood Does Hollywood (through Fri., July 9) screens 19 features. All programs are double features, except for A Star Is Born (Sun., July 4). Find further info at www.castrotheatre.com. Sunset Boulevard (1950) The Everest of Tinseltown satires becomes the first of Billy Wilder’s bitterly funny takes on the American Century. Down on his luck and one jump ahead of the repo man, floundering screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) is adopted by a mad former silent-screen star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), and her loyal former director-turned-chauffeur Max (Erich von Stroheim). Eschewing camp, Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett use Norma’s delusional comeback bid to demonstrate why Holly-

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wood inevitably devours its own. As you marvel at Swanson’s mad queen, savor critic Bernard F. Dick’s comparison of Norma Desmond to Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Tennessee Williams’ neurotic painin-the-neck Blanche DuBois, in Dick’s witty Wilder career appraisal from Da Capo Press. Plays with The Star, with Bette Davis and Sterling Hayden. (7/3) Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Whatever would have happened to Joan and Bette had they not agreed to star in this diva-bashing, torture-porn classic? For director Robert Aldrich, it was definitely a win-win, since IMDB rates it among his three most popular flicks, alongside his macho operas Kiss Me Deadly and The Dirty Dozen. Perhaps only Tarantino could do justice to

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nless you’ve been hiding under a rock, word has reached you that SFMOMA and late Gap founder Don Fisher and his wife, Doris, struck a deal on the disposition of their extensive contemporary art collection shortly before Fisher’s death in September, after plans for a proposed built-from-the-groundup museum to house it at the Presidio Main Post fell through. With the addition of the Fisher collection, a veritable encyclopedia of post-1960 art that’s considered by those in the know as one of the most important such collections in private hands, SFMOMA has hit the mother lode. While visitors familiar with modern art may have a déjà vu sensation of having seen some of this work or work similar to it before, especially in the realm of Pop Art, which, lately, has been suffering from overexposure, there’s no denying that this is a coup for the city and for the museum, whose profile will be raised; a

Rick Gerharter

Vol. 40 . No. 26 . 1 July 2010


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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . July 1 2010

OUT

THERE

Freedom of gay expression W

lasted three minutes and six seconds. The actors’ lips were glued together, so some people felt it shouldn’t count.” The kiss between actresses Necar Zadegan and Traci Dinwiddie was reportedly accomplished with gusto and flair. Way to go: with a big, drawn-out wet one. What a week it was, long, gay days and fog-shrouded nights with the fleet all the way in. Russian sailors in their crisp dress uniforms and darling caps with ribbons cutely tied on back, strolling the Embarcadero in sixpacks. LGBT peeps and our supple supporters taking over Market Street, coalescing in Civic Center for amusements and group spirit. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re just getting started.

Howl star James Franco is all smiles at the Castro Theatre for Frameline 34’s closingnight screening.

Steven Underhill

e can’t remember another feature film that’s based on the creation and reception of a poem, but Frameline 34 closingnight offering Howl was just that. Documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman take as their subject the early years of great gay poet Allen Ginsberg in the 1950s, centered around his writing the epic poem Howl, his famous reading of it at San Francisco’s Six Gallery, and, upon its publication by O UT City Lights Press, its obscenity trial staged in a San Francisco courtroom. Howl star James Franco was in the house at the Castro Theatre screening last Sunday night, and at the afterparty in the San Francisco Botanical Society building. The combination of a poetry reading, court transcriptions and an animated gloss on Howl may prove a hard sell when Howl releases

commercially this September, but the festival screening earned cheers and ovations for the hometown filmmakers and the Hollywood star. Look for the B.A.R.’s own interview with the comely Mr. Franco which will run come Howl’s release. Meantime, pucker up: Elena Undone, a new lesbian movie which premiered at Frameline last Friday night, appears to have broken the record for longest movie kiss – and it’s girl-on-girl! Filmmaker Nicole Conn told After Ellen website she “ended up shooting a 3:24-long kissing that breaks the T HERE scene record for longest kiss in cinema history, originally set back in 1941 by a heterosexual couple. “I discovered that the record for the longest kiss in cinema history – that was organic to a film – was held by an old black-and-white comedy starring, of all people, Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey, in a film called You’re in the Army Now – which

After Tosca We much enjoyed The Tosca Project last week during the Out with ACT performance. ACT launched the Out series in 2000 as the first dedicated LGBT event offered at a mainstream Bay Area arts presenter. Since then, more than 10,000 theatergoers have come to these Out series events. Subscribe to next season’s Out with ACT, which includes such gay fare as Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet and the new musical Tales of the City, based on the beloved SF novels of Armistead Maupin, by going to www.actsf.org/out. We saw some gay friends at the afterparty in the ACT Theater’s downstairs bar. As always, LGBT opinion was varied and vociferous. A couple of gay male audience members commented unfavorably on the show’s AIDS politics – that is, its somewhat simplistic depiction of gay men as promiscuous disseminators of AIDS, in the disco-dancing sequence with Rudolf Nureyev. The boys simulate copulation, then have a threeway with Rudi (who reportedly was as predatory as depicted), who then dies promptly of AIDS. We don’t know if this rather macabre interlude was specifically directed by Carey Perloff; the whole sequence is set to dance, so clearly Val Caniparoli choreographed it, but presumably with Perloff’s overview. Was the scene just a bag of clichés, and its creators unaware of their depiction? It sure was easy to go from the 1970s into AIDS by linking Rudi, who did die of AIDS (some time later) and who was a habitué of Tosca Cafe. One thing’s for sure: there was neither a disco ball nor gay boys dancing the night away in Tosca back then. So

Michael Strickland

by Roberto Friedman

Out There sits enraptured in front of a great Cy Twombly painting at SFMOMA.

we’ll have to excuse the scene on the grounds of poetic license.

Capital culture Out There spent the better part of a week in Washington, DC last month, and among the many pleasures we found there was a table belonging to B.A.R. photographer Rick Gerharter, part of the exhibition The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 at the Renwick Gallery (through Jan. 30, 2011). The show is an interesting appreciation of the artwork created during a shameful part of American history, showing that the artistic spirit lives on, even in times of deprivation and the denial of civil rights. We also found exciting word of an upcoming queer-centric show in the nation’s capital, which we relay for you here: “The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will present the first major museum exhibition showing how questions of gender and sexual identity have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture. Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture will be on view at the museum Oct. 30-Feb. 13, 2011. “The installation begins with late 19th-century works by Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent, and charts 20th-century portraiture with 105 major works by masters including Romaine Brooks, George Bellows, Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe. It continues through the postwar period with works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin and Andy Warhol. The exhibition addresses the impact of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the AIDS epidemic and the advent of postmodernist attention to identities, indicating how portraiture repeatedly negotiated seismic shifts in American culture and society. The show continues through to the end of the 20th century with major works by artists Keith Haring, Glenn Ligon, Nan Goldin, Felix GonzalezTorres, David Wojnarowicz and Catherine Opie.” We’ve inked it into our calendar. We were at dinner with friends at a restaurant in a tony DC neighborhood when one of our dining companions pointed out that the woman who had been sitting at a table direct-

ly in back of us was none other than execrable conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. We think our friend deliberately waited until her party had departed before filling us in, as we might have caused a scene and told her exactly where she could put her Fox News microphone.

Great expectations The size and excitement of the media contingent at the press preview last week for Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection at SFMOMA was indicative of the great public interest that greets the unveiling of this exhibition. The estimable collection of 20th-century art compiled by Gap founders Doris and Donald Fisher greatly strengthens the museum’s holdings and allows the curators to “go deep,” in the words of SFMOMA director Neal Benezra, with works from all facets of the careers of such masters as Chuck Close, Ellsworth Kelly, Anselm Kiefer, and many others. But the strings-attached way that the Fishers bestowed their collection on SFMOMA, whereby it belongs to both museum and estate, with involved stipulations on how and how often the works must be on display, raises questions about how much control rich collectors should really have over their own bequests. Ideally, curators such as SFMOMA’s Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture Gary Garrels, who beautifully installed this preview exhibit, should be given the driver’s keys. Isn’t it enough that the wealthy and well-connected (the Fishers at SFMOMA, Dede Wilsey at Fine Arts Museums/SF) have a huge influence over society’s arts agenda? Let’s leave the real curatorial decisions to museum professionals, who have the education and experience to make arts decisions. Department of too much information: Correction of the week, from The New York Times last Saturday: “A music review on Thursday about a concert on Tuesday night by the singer Adam Lambert referred incorrectly to kissing between Mr. Lambert and his bass player, Tommy Joe Ratliff. During the song ‘Fever,’ they licked each other’s lips; Mr. Ratliff did not merely give Mr. Lambert a quick peck on the shoulder. (He did that later in the show.)” Too much info.▼


July 1 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER

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THEATRE

From Nigeria with love H

Musical interludes Edith Piaf and Noel Coward provide the source material for two summer productions opening next week. The Little Sparrow lands first as Piaf:

Pansy division by Richard Dodds t pays to do your homework before seeing Blackbird: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas, now in the smaller venue at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. Fortunately, writer-performer-designer Seth Eisen has provided a Cliffs Notes shortcut to your assignment in the program, and your enjoyment of this macabre and fascinating homage will be considerably enhanced if you take the time to read it before the show begins. Despite the tutorial advice offered above, what Eisen and director Brian Freeman have created is more phantasmagoria than documentary as it looks at the careers of seven performers, stretching from the 1920s until today, who push at the limits of what the prevailing society considers tolerable in terms of sexual identity. The program notes provide brief biographies of the chosen seven, only a few of whom are widely known, and with a single exception, their stories onstage are conveyed as much by mood as by declamation. That exception is Jean Malin, who opens the show on a set adorned as a funeral parlor and serves as an intermittent emcee. Malin was a star of the short-lived Pansy Craze of the 1920s and ’30s that provided adventure-seeking audiences the newest forbidden fruit. Columbia Records even released Malin singing his own suggestive compositions “That’s What’s the Matter with Me” and “I’d Rather Be Spanish than Mannish,” which Eisen performs with a kind of deadpan panache. Hollywood even found a place for him in two films, before a freak car accident ended his life at age 24. The show grows more impressionistic with its look at the sexually ambiguous Danny Kaye, bookended by a surreally presented Yiddish lul-

Philip Ringler

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Seth Eisen portrays Jean Malin, one of the “pansy divas” he honors in Blackbird.

laby from his Borscht Belt days and a bizarre crypto-drag impression of his wife Sylvia Fine, who guarded his image. She also wrote much of his material, and Eisen does a pull-thestops-out rendition of her “The Lobby Number,” in which he plays all the characters in a parody of movie clichés. Eisen’s singing voice hits its limits at several times over the course of the two-act show, though it is nimble enough for the novelty songs of Kaye and Malin, and can be hauntingly evocative in several of the moody strains woven into the piece. But it can’t handle the soaring falsetto that distinguished Sylvester during his AIDS-shortened career as a crossover disco diva, and Lennon and McCartney’s “Blackbird,” which provides the show with a title song, comes out sounding unfortunately Muppet-y. When Eisen delves into more ob-

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Nigerian-born actor Rotimi Agbabiaka makes his local stage debut in Posibilidad, the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s summer show.

Love Conquers All begins a monthlong run July 7 at the Eureka Theatre. Canadian actress Naomi Emmerson, in the guise of the French singer, talks about her life and performs 14 songs from the Piaf repertoire. Emmerson, also the producer and director, has played Piaf in multiple cities across Canada and the US. Tickets at (800) 838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets .com. Noel Coward finds himself in a

Janna Giacoppo

Agbabiaka, 24, speaks without a trace of an accent. English is the national language of Nigeria, and is what his family spoke at home in Lagos, but when he arrived a decade ago in Katy, Texas, there was still a lilt that helped make him seem exotic to his new classmates. “I kind of milked that a little, and told some tall tales about my killing lions in the jungle,” said the city-raised actor. He quickly got involved with the high school’s theater program, playing such typically American roles as Teen Angel in Grease and the Harpo Marx character in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Being part of the theater crowd, where everyone was considered weird, helped him deal with the gay feelings he kept stuffed far back in the closet. The diversity he encountered at the University of Texas at Austin then helped him to come out, and he thrived in the theater department. Grad school in DeKalb was not as sunny an experience, and for a time he was banned from acting in mainstage productions as punishment for tardiness. He created the Fringebound Homeless to get himself on the stage during his probation. “It’s about a character stranded in an airport, as he flashes back and forward meeting people and doing things that help him determine where to call home,” Agbabiaka said. “It speaks to my experience feeling like I’m straddling various cultures and identities. Where do you find a place in the world that celebrates every single part of who you are?”

that meets at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, and has also arranged to perform his solo show Homeless at is parents wanted Rotimi Agthe SF Fringe Festival this fall. babiaka and his siblings to He created Homeless while a grad have educational opportunistudent, out of frustration with his ties that their native Nigeria could not acting opportunities, but he can only provide, and when he was 14, they sing the praises of his work with the moved to the United States. The great Mime Troupe. adventure seemed to sputter when he “It’s exactly what I want to do,” he wound up in grad school in DeKalb, said, “to do theater that’s fun, that’s achome of Northern Illinois University, cessible, and has a larger purpose. It’s which became Agbabiaka’s been such a playful enviversion of the black-andronment to work in, and white Kansas that Dorothy it feels like everybody is longs to leave. on the same page.” “There was nothing to Written by Michael do, and it was very brown Gene Sullivan and Ellen and dull and the antithesis Callas, with songs by Pat of anywhere I ever wanted Moran, and directed by to live,” he said. FortunateWilma Bonet, Posibilidad ly, there was an Emerald shuttles back and forth City in his future, and as between the stories of soon as a diploma had American factory B ACKSTAGE an crossed his palm in May, about to be closed and he packed up his small an Argentinean councar and aimed it at San terpart where the workers simply took Francisco. over after the facility was abandoned He had visited San Francisco two by its owners. years ago, and he decided then that “The first character you see me as this was the place he needed to live. is Juan, the dashing lover in an ArHe was back for the multi-theater gentine soap opera,” Agbabiaka said. general auditions presented annually The telenovela scenes are an escape for by Theatre Bay Area, and this led to a Sophia, the main character, who’s job offer from the San Francisco from Argentina and now works in the Mime Troupe. Soon after he arrived, factory that is closing. The other he began rehearsals for Posibilidad, or workers listen to Sophia’s tale (based Death of the Worker. With free peron an actual incident) of an Argenformances beginning July 3 in Dotinean factory where the workers simlores Park and continuing into the ply moved in when management middle of September at parks moved out. throughout the Bay Area – the full “My other main character is the schedule is at www.sfmt.org – Agboss, and he has this hodge-podge of babiaka is a working actor who can Eastern philosophies that he claims to call San Francisco home. live by, but when push comes to He has also had time to join shove, he would rather live his life of League of Burnt Children, a queer luxury than do anything to actually performance and literary collective help his workers.”

by Richard Dodds

new spotlight in Cowardly Things, beginning a three-week run on July 8 at New Conservatory Theatre Center. Cindy Goldfield and Scrumbly Koldewyn revisit, revise, and re-imagine how Coward’s work relates to the 21st century, and interpolate current songs that channel the Coward spirit. Tickets at 861-8972 or www.nctcsf.org. ▼ Richard Dodds can be reached at BARstage@comcast.net.


BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . July 1 2010

BOOKS

A gay life A new biography of E.M. Forster he mainstream English literary world was stunned by the 1971 posthumous publication of E.M. Forster’s homosexual love story Maurice. Forster (1879-1970) had written it in 1913-14. He revised it over several decades, showed it to gay writers, but refused requests from admirers like Christopher Isherwood to publish it, fearing it would embarrass his mother and his long-time married lover, Bob Buckingham. In her compelling A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $32.50), Wendy Moffat shows how Forster’s anger over the rampant homophobia in England affected his novels. The book’s title comes from Forster’s explicit notes about male lovers. Edward Morgan (known as Morgan) Forster was an only child born into a middle-class English family. At Cambridge, he was part of a fairly open circle of homosexual writers, although he didn’t have his first meaningful sexual experience until age 37. From childhood he was aware of his attraction to men, but shyness inhibited him. An inheritance and acclaim for his novels Where Angels Fear To Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), and especially A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910) made him famous and financially independent. While working for the Red Cross in Alexandria during World War I, he fell in love with a much younger Egyptian, Mohammad el Adl. He courted Mohammad intensely, and finally bedded him. Mohammad resisted in part because he didn’t understand why Forster would relinquish his status by allowing himself to be sexually penetrated. Their relationship lasted on and off for several years, even after Mohammad married. The ominous legacy of Oscar Wilde’s trial and incarceration for sodomy haunted Morgan. Although honest with other gays and lesbians, he was publicly discreet. He expressed admiration for Andre Gide, openly gay and who in Corydon (1924)

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praised love between males. According to Forster, Gide had two advantages: homosexual behavior wasn’t illegal in France, and Gide’s mother wasn’t alive. The two met, but Gide was indifferent to Forster. When Morgan was hired as a private secretary to an Indian Maharajah, he was candid about his sexual orientation, which was initially disconcerting to his employer. But after a frank discussion, his highness realized it was natural for Morgan, so he provided him with a willing young man – but warned the author not to be penetrated by the youth. Morgan complied, regularly sodomizing his partner. His experience living and working in the Raj inspired his final novel, A Passage to India (1924). All his life, Morgan was critical of England’s provincialism and class system, although he used his position to help friends in trouble and to advance homosexual rights. He thrived in the literary bohemian life, but preferred working-class lovers. In Howards End, he emphasized the need to “only connect,” believing that by interaction, class prejudice would end. Buckingham, a policeman, was much younger than Morgan. He was bright, and enjoyed the world into which Morgan introduced him. Previous biographers have downplayed the importance of Forster’s sexuality in his writing, but Moffat makes it clear it was central. She quotes Morgan’s complaints that he couldn’t write the novels he wanted to because of social disapproval. Hence the 14-year gap between Howards End and A Passage to India, and no novels for the last nearly 50 years of his life. One of the most fascinating elements in Moffat’s scrupulously researched biography is the wide circle of celebrated gay and bisexual men whom Morgan’s befriended: C.P. Cavafy, Edward Carpenter and George Merrill, Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant, John Addington Symonds, Isherwood, Paul Cadmus and his bisexual, married lover Jerry French, George Platt Lynes, John Maynard Keynes, Alfred Kinsey, Lin-

coln Kirstein, the married co-founder of the New York City Ballet and his lover, dancer Jose “Pete” Martinez, Donald Windham, and the sexually ambiguous T.E. Lawrence. As a young man, Morgan visited the elderly Henry James, and intuitively realized he was an intensely closeted homosexual. He was friends with Leonard and Virginia Woolf and her lover Vita Sackville-West. Virginia’s suicide shocked and saddened him. He wondered about D.H. Lawrence’s sexual orientation, but defended Lady Chatterly’s Lover (1928) – its theme of love between social classes was dear to his heart. Forster also argued that Radclyffe Hall’s daring novel about lesbian love The Well of Loneliness (1928) shouldn’t be censored, even though he considered it poorly written. Hall, however, insisted that he refer to it as a masterpiece. While in New York in 1947, he was supposed to meet Tennessee Williams, but the American playwright failed to keep their date. He did meet Gore Vidal, whom he dis-

liked at once. Buckingham and his wife May named their only son Robert Morgan, and called him “Robin.” He died young, leaving a widow and two children. May, a registered nurse, cared for Forster following two prostategland surgeries, and she and Bob were at his side when he died from complications of a stroke. She later acknowledged the truth of his relationship with her husband, although Buckingham wouldn’t. Morgan left money to educate their grandchildren. He had also provided for them generously during his lifetime. Despite his frustrations, Forster’s long life was for the most part happy. Hence, he refused a tragic ending for Maurice, which was expected of the few mainstream novels about male lovers, like Vidal’s The City and the Pillar (48) and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (56). Morgan believed fiercely that two men from different backgrounds could find happiness. Maurice reflects that. Time has proven him right.▼

Pieces of the rock by Tim Pfaff ow much you like, or benefit from, reading Bill Clegg’s Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man (Little, Brown) depends entirely on how much you want to spend a few hours with a crack addict, in particular one of the silver-tongued variety. Now that he’s back in business – witness this much-heralded hardcover return to the industry he says he burned – Clegg, a gay, handsome, budding Manhattan literary agent when crack took him down, can have few writers in his stable as gifted as he. A recovering addict with a nest of cross-addictions myself, I stepped into Clegg’s story sympathetic and curious, and emerged from it grateful. It’s a specific feeling I’ve had before, when a French tourist passing through Luang Prabang, where I was living, completely satisfied my curiosity about opium with words. Opium and absinthe – both with better pedigrees, in my book, than crack – were the substances I sometimes wished I had sampled before others brought me down. During my first year there, every tuk-tuk driver in Luang Prabang wanted to take me to the room behind the blue shutters to try the former. What that Frenchman told me, in extravagant detail, about his experience there silenced my wondering, and not because he made it sound unattractive. Any curiosity I had about crack has similarly been

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Author Bill Clegg: recovering.

quashed by Clegg, who does not make crack sound beguiling. The peril of all drug lore is that addiction is fundamentally boring and repetitive. Clegg’s bazillion trips to the ATM after Midnight (new daily limit), scads of stems, piles of rocks, and lotsa men to get his rocks off with, add up to tedium even with the leavening jolts of paranoia and the seas of vodka to steady the course. But, as promised in its James Joyce-echoing title, his book is not the story of the drugs but of their user, and it is indeed unflattering. Clegg is, we learn early on, the kind of druggie druggies mind. Some gripe about his smoking technique because

“I have, as I always do, scorched each stem with hits that pull too long and flames that are too high. Everyone I ever smoke with will complain about this. And though I will try, each time, to inhale as gently as I can, it always seems like I’m not pulling hard enough, as if the flame is too low, as if I’m not getting enough.” There it is. And, hard on its heels, the even more off-putting narcissism of the true addict. Getting cranked becomes a strip-tease with towels and mirrors: “I will always do this when I get high. I will always think that my torso looks lean and muscled and sexy. I will always, many times, clock myself in the mirror and think, Not bad. I will, to be perfectly honest, turn myself on.” Counterintuitively – and this will be the great disappointment for many readers – Clegg is not particularly good at writing about sex, particularly sex on drugs. But then that seems part of the gritty realism, that crackinduced “horniness” is not always a shared part of the high. On the other hand, the scene in which his tirelessly understanding lover Noah holds his hand and tells him it’s all OK while a hot dealer making a house call fucks him silly is one of the most wrenching passages I know in “recovery” literature. As any addict worth his saltpeter should, Clegg got me good, took me in, time and again with his looping,

by Tavo Amador

Brigitte Lacombe

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MUSIC

Berlioz fantastique he San Francisco Symphony ended its 98th season last week with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas also finishing his milestone 15th year on the podium at Davies Symphony Hall. A scintillating concert, highlighted by the third appearance of an increasingly popular guest vocalist and a fine solo turn by a new Principal Viola player, marked both events with characteristic taste and flair. There was even a product tie-in of sorts (though it wasn’t mentioned or advertised), as the program was solely devoted to Hector Berlioz, the subject of one of the best episodes in the ongoing series Keeping Score: Revealing Classical Music created by MTT with the Symphony. That fascinating DVD is devoted to the history of Berlioz’s masterpiece, the Symphonie fantastique. The orchestra’s season finale offered a wider selection of the great Romantic’s passionate music, including the Roman Carnival Overture, the gorgeous song cycle Les Nuits d’ete (Summer Nights) and Harold in Italy, a sort-of concerto for viola and orchestra. The composer and conductor make a sympathetic pair, and the program was, not surprisingly, a triumph that earned two standing ovations (though I‘m pretty sure they were meant mostly for

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the soloists). Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke made her debut here as Iolanthe in a semi-staged production of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta at Davies Hall in 2009. I caught up with her more recently and fell in love with her bright, warble-free voice (well, the whole package, really) when she appeared in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella in January. I thought she had exceptional talent and star quality then, and her lustrous rendition of the sensuous Summer Nights last week proved a reminder we are witnessing the start of a very promising career. Cooke’s charming good looks (reminiscent of the young Shirley MacLaine) and pint-sized but plucky stage presence complement her beautifully colored and surprisingly strong projection. She has an edge to her voice that is never strident, but perfectly pitched and often genuinely thrilling. If there was anything to complain of recently, it might be her rather generic French accent, the lack of a particularly impressive, or at least darker, lower range, or the two infinitesimal cracks she suffered during two of the songs. Still, when MTT elicited gasps from the audience by genuflecting and kissing the hem of her gown during the curtain calls, I got it totally. She is on the verge of diva status, and he is just as thrilled as we are to witness her rise.

Nick Granito

by Philip Campbell

Courtesy SF Symphony

San Francisco Symphony’s season capper

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke.

San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.

After intermission, another youngster, new Principal Viola of the SFS since 2009 Jonathan Vinocour, appeared as soloist in the absorbing collection of tableaux that comprise Harold in Italy. The monumental Berlioz Romeo et Juliette, Symphonie dramatique was originally planned for the season finale, and I was frankly disappointed when I heard it had been scrapped in favor of the mixed-bag program we were left with, but I couldn’t have been better

appeased after all. Vinocour is an excellent soloist, and he certainly deserves his chair with the orchestra. Playing with strength and delicacy, he made his way through the solo role, sometimes threatened with being drowned out by the large forces behind him, but emerging unscathed and obviously capable of investing his part with characterization, on top of his expert technique. There was no kissing of hems this time around, but MTT looked

mightily pleased anyway. He is always gracious with guest artists and colleagues. Another SFS Principal, harpist Douglas Rioth, made impressive contributions as well, and the brass section hasn’t sounded better all season. Along with some beautifully textured and gossamer string-playing, this was Berlioz the way we want to hear him. What a capper for the 2009-10 season, and all happening on the weekend of Pride!▼

P.T.S.D. (Post-Tony Stress Disorder) by Gregg Shapiro wo recent musical revivals on Broadway featured out gay men in romantic lead roles. Cheyenne Jackson played Woody (no doubt!) in Finian’s Rainbow alongside Kate Baldwin as Sharon. The nearly 65-year-old Burton Lane/Yip Harburg musical, set in the “mythical state of Missitucky,” about a stolen pot of gold, includes classics such as “Old Devil Moon,” “How Are Things in Glocca Mora?” and “Look to the Rainbow,” all of which can be found on Finian’s Rainbow: New Broadway Cast Recording (PS Classics). In the revival of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David/Neil Simon musical Promises, Promises, based on the Billy Wilder movie The Apartment, newly out actor Sean Hayes plays displaced tenant Chuck. Kristin Chenoweth plays object of desire Fran and gets to sing Bacharach/David standards “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Knowing When To Leave,” “A House Is Not a Home” and “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again,” as you can hear on Promises, Promises: The New Broadway Cast Recording (Masterworks Broadway). The cast recording also features Hayes performing “She Likes Baseball” (a must!), and the camp classic “Turkey Lurkey Time.” Catherine Zeta-Jones won the 2010 Tony Award for her portrayal of popular actress Desirée in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music (also based on, or rather “suggested by” a movie, one by Ingmar Bergman). Angela Lansbury received a Tony nomination for playing Desirée’s mother Madame Armfeldt, and gets to sing “Liaisons.” The show’s best-known tune, “Send in the Clowns,” is in the capable hands of Zeta-Jones, and this beloved Sondheim score can be experienced on the double-disc 2009 Broadway cast recording of A Little Night Music (Nonesuch/PS Classics). Race relations and race music are

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the driving forces behind the Tony Award-winning Best Musical Memphis. The songs on Memphis: Original Broadway Cast Recording (Rhino), by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, touch on the blues, gospel and early rock and roll. A few songs, including “Radio” and “Memphis Lives in Me,” have a more modern sound, reminding us that this is a contemporary musical. The Addams Family: Original Broadway Cast Recording (Decca

Broadway) serves to demonstrate how a fascinating concept can go horribly wrong. A musical about The Addams Family, based on Charles Addams cartoons, it even makes reference to the beloved 1960s TV sitcom version. With a cast led by Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and music by Andrew Lippa, The Addams Family never lives up to its potential, due in part to an identity crisis suffered by the immortal Morticia. There aren’t any especially memorable numbers, and worst of all, the brilliant Jackie Hoffman (Grandma) is sadly under-utilized. Wonderland (Alice’s New Musical Adventure), a new musical by Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel), had its world premiere in Tampa, Florida in December 2009. A

modern-day take on Alice in Wonderland, it boasts Broadway actress and cabaret goddess Karen Mason in the coveted role of the Queen. Her “Off with their Heads” number is a genuine showstopper. You can familiarize yourself with the music from the show before it gets to Broadway (if that’s where it’s headed) in its digital-only format via all major digital music providers. Reminiscent of (but better than) the early-70s studio recordings of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock operas Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, David Byrne & Fatboy Slim’s Here Lies Love (Nonesuch/Todo Mundo) is subtitled “a song cycle about Imelda Marcos & Estrella Cumpas.” The allstar cast of performers includes Cyndi Lauper, Martha Wainwright, Nellie McKay, Sia, Tori Amos, Steve Earle, Sharon Jones, Nicole Atkins, Natalie Merchant, Santigold, Florence Welch, and Kate Pierson (of the B52s), telling the story of the deposed Filipino first lady and her former nanny in song. Webber has returned with his latest project, Love Never Dies (Really Useful/Decca Broadway), a sequel to Phantom of the Opera. The doubledisc recording continues the story of opera singer Christine Daaé (Sierra Bogges) and her obsessive paramour The Phantom (Ramin Karimloo), and follows them to Coney Island. Webber collaborator Rice teamed up with Abba’s Benny Anderssen and Björn Ulvaeus in the mid-80s for the musical Chess. Fifteen years later, Anderssen and Ulvaeus achieved their greatest Broadway success with Abba musical Mamma Mia! Based on Swedish novelist Vilhelm Moberg’s The Emigrants series, Kristina at Carnegie Hall (Decca Broadway) is a concert performance of the musical featuring original Mamma Mia! cast member Louise Pitre and crossover opera artist Russell Watson.▼

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MUSIC

Soul of summer nce you get past the lifted Leona Lewis energy of “Yesterday” and the borrowed Beyoncé spirit of “Make My Heart” and “Lookin’ at Me,” Toni Braxton’s eagerly anticipated comeback record Pulse (Atlantic) can’t be beat. Not that there’s anything wrong with those tunes. In fact, they prove that Braxton is capable of being a musical chameleon. It’s obvious that she hasn’t lost her touch with soulful ballads. Possessing a voice and a style as distinctive as any of her contemporaries, Macy Gray has spent the last 10 years trying to make a record that equals her phenomenal 1999 debut On How Life Is. The Sellout (Concord) may not be that record, but it’s every bit as good as 2007’s should-havebeen-bigger Big disc. The raucous and righteous “Kissed It,” on which Gray is joined by Velvet Revolver (!), sounds like a comeback single if ever there was one. Also a pleasure is the handclapping/foot-stomping pseudo-spiritual of “Beauty in the World” and the gospel funk of “Help Me,” the batty tail-feather-shaker “That Man,” and the dizzying effect of “On & On.” The second in an ongoing series by Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Part

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a big-budget remake. Catch this one while the memory of the locally produced Baby Jane? still lingers in the palace. Part of a double bill with What’s the Matter with Helen?, starring Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters. (7/2) The Player (1992) Speaking of the comeback trail, Robert Altman certainly notched his with this all-star

hard to dispute her claim. To her credit, that same passion infiltrates every number, in spite of the fact that James worked with an array of producers. Fortunately, James is enough of a grounding force that the whole thing comes together in a solidly soulful way. As her sizable LGBT following can attest, Joan Armatrading has been blending soul, folk and island-inflected music for nearly 40 years. Her latest, This Charming Life (429), is a massive improvement over the misstep of her previous all-blues disc, and serves as a reminder of the best aspects of her highly regarded mid-70s to mid-80s output. On I’m New Here (XL), his first

studio recording in more than 15 years, soulful sage Gil Scott-Heron merges blues and spoken word into one of the most riveting discs of the year. With the personal poetic expression of “On Coming from a Broken Home (Part 1),” Scott-Heron sets the tone for the revelations to follow. A jarring and very modern reading of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil” precedes the title track, on which Scott-Heron conjures Leonard Cohen. The sincerity of “I’ll Take Care of You” is one of the warmest moments on the album, while the chill of “New York Is Killing Me” is a case of cold-hard blues. A pair of collections by Al Jarreau and Cassandra Wilson focus on the

jazz influence in soul music. Jarreau’s The Very Best of: An Excellent Adventure (Warner Brothers/ Reprise/ Rhino) includes his theme song for the 1980s series Moonlighting, and hits such as “We’re in this Love Together” and “After All,” as well as the new track “Excellent Adventure.” Wilson’s Closer to You: The Pop Side (Blue Note) compiles 11 selections from six of her albums, on which she applies her distinctive interpretive skills to songs by U2 (“Love Is Blindness”), Cyndi Lauper (“Time After Time”), The Monkees (“Last Train to Clarksville”), The Band (“The Weight”), Ann Peebles (“I Can’t Stand the Rain”) and Neil Young (“Harvest Moon”).▼

revenge fest featuring Tim Robbins and Whoopi Goldberg at the top of their game. Among the highlights is a delicious moment where Buck Henry pitches a remake of The Graduate. Plays with In a Lonely Place, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham. (7/1) The Aviator (2004) Film historian David Thompson notes that few have ever sorted fact from hokum in the Howard Hughes legend (one biographer actually went to jail for not trying hard enough), and so it’s no

knock against director Martin Scorsese, screenwriter John Logan and Leonardo DiCaprio’s splendid collaboration to say that The Aviator is several movies in one, and that many will find the first one (the first hour, spanning Hughes’ obsession with the Hell’s Angels, and his messy but fascinating affair with Katharine Hepburn) to be the most amusing, sexy and awe-inspiring. This is a movie so full of marvelous performances and entertaining set-pieces that it’s hard to choose,

but I will. My favorite moment is the captivating sequence where Scorsese (with a nifty assist from editor Thelma Schoonmaker) captures the spectacle of Hughes virtually taken hostage for a weekend with Hepburn’s wealthy, wacky collection of blueblood misfits. You don’t have to know anything about Hughes or Hepburn to appreciate the train wreck of delight when the man of few words and many phobias endures a dinner table of pushy aristocrats, while a large germ-bearing canine chews on the bashful billionaire’s foot as he confronts Hepburn’s imperious mother. “We don’t care about money here, Mr. Hughes.” “That’s because you’ve always had it.” Of course it’s a scene right out of The Philadelphia Story, the Hepburncommissioned Philip Barry play-

turned-comeback-movie-vehicle humanizing “Kate” (astonishingly rendered here by another “Cate,” Blanchett) and lifting her out of Hughes’ frisky embrace and into the arms of Spencer Tracy. Blanchett’s Hepburn is an astute rendering. She dares to do the “accent” and even those ever-so-slightly mannish touches that must have had Hughes wondering who already possessed the pants in this union. At the end of the slapstick weekend, Cate as Kate denounces her whole silly clan (including a camera-wielding exhusband) with the very Hepburnesque line, “You’re a fine group of bullies!” The Aviator plays on a bill with Boogie Nights. (7/5) Ed Wood (1994) Tim Burton and

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strophic of which is a Joycean allusion – not to Portrait, but to Ulysses, no less. “Yes,” he begins a paragraph about an epic binge cum suicide attempt; a few sentences later: “Yes and Yes and Yes as I finish it all and my limbs slow and the great drowsy, long-awaited wave rises, crests, and, at last, crashes down. Yes.” Good golly, Miss Molly. One of the times I put the book down, it was with another familiar sensation. I had had it while reading Blinded by the Right, another confessional with crack-up by another cute young gay writer, one-time darling of the Right David Brock. Brock wielded the kind of candor you find in Clegg: a whiff of implied remorse, a sniffle of apology, but nothing you’d confuse with what we used to call conscience.▼

Two: Return of the Ankh (Universal Motown) is less mind-bending than its predecessor, but no less mind-expanding. The retro soul of “Window Seat” and “Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)” remind us of why we first fell so hard for Badu. The thick beat of “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long” sounds a little more modern, but no less timeless. Like Badu, the gifted Janelle Monáe delights in stretching the boundaries of 21st-century soul music on her full-length debut The Archandroid (Bad Boy/ Wondaland/Atlantic), an ambitious concept album. Whether or not you choose to indulge in the storyline, you will be dazzled at every turn. From the retro disco of “Locked Inside” to the Julee Cruise vibe of “Sir Greendown” and the enticing funk of “Tightrope,” Monáe makes an indelible impression. She’s equally at home in the acoustic (“Oh, Maker”), psychedelic (“Mushrooms & Roses”), jazz vocal (“Say You’ll Go”) and dance (“Make the Bus”) spheres. An astounding and unforgettable debut! Even though she’s a few years shy of 30, and My Soul (Stax) is only her third studio disc, when rising retrosoul diva Leela James sings about paying her dues with such conviction in opener “I Ain’t New to This,” it’s

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nonlinear narrative. The many references to his never-diagnosed urinary problems as a child – nothing to do with ducts; rather, a crippling self-consciousness leading to hours-long bathroom dances and urethral blood – made me put the book down more than once. And the tale – in the book’s most sustained, straightforward, unadorned prose – of his first experience with crack at the hands and other body parts of a much older “silverhaired, handsome man from home” made me cry. The inevitable horrors include cataclysms of language, the most cata-

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scure characters, such as Azis, the openly gay Bulgarian Gypsy whose gender-fuck performances have made him a star in his homophobic homeland, the vocalizing is secondary to the stunning idiosyncrasy of the overall persona. While the show’s songs are a primary means of communication, they become secondary as in the odd little shadowshow tribute to Klaus Nomi, and a haunting puppet representation of Issan (Tommy) Dorsey’s transformation from drug-addled drag performer to Buddhist devotee who founded Maitri Hospice, where he himself found safe haven when he was dying of AIDS.

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by Gregg Shapiro

Blackbird is enhanced by musical director Sean Feit, at the piano in a creepy-hipster guise, percussionist Jesse Olsen, video artist Alanna Simone, and costumes by Jack Davis and Laura Hazlett. It’s an elaborate show tucked into a tiny space, and intriguing enough to send me to Wikipedia and YouTube when I got home to follow up on the introductions made to several of the personalities showcased. During the show itself, mood becomes the medium, and the message is to be found on your own terms.▼ Blackbird: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas will run through July 10 at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. Tickets are $20-$25. For more information, call 786-9325 or go to www.eyezen.org.


July 1 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER

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West Texas noir by David Lamble ven another gritty, filthy, misbehaving man/boy from the brilliant Casey Affleck can’t save The Killer Inside Me, the over-thetop, confusing and at times wretchedly exploitative melodrama from British director Michael Winterbottom. Based on a probably unfilmable novel from legendary tough-guy pulp novelist Jim Thompson, Killer is told from the point of view of a small-town Texas lawman, Lou Ford, who is having a very ripe affair with the town madam, Joyce (Jessica Alba), while deferring marriage plans with his girlfriend Amy (Kate Hudson). “Out here, you’re either a ma’am or a gentleman if you’re anything at

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all, and the Good Lord help you if you’re not!” It’s impossible to comprehend Ford without grasping his psychological back story, which director Winterbottom flubs badly, while providing glimpses of a childhood molestation scene. Unlike Bertrand Tavernier’s audacious Thompson adaptation Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate), where we witness the descent into madness of a nebbish small-town cop (Philippe Noiret), Affleck’s Ford is already a fully operational Neanderthal by the time we first glimpse him. Deciding to ditch the tart in an unimaginably brutal manner, Ford sets up a complicated revenge/ blackmail scheme involving the son of the town’s richest man (Ned Beatty). One thing leads to another, and by film’s end, our sweet Lou has five bodies

Judy in Blu-ray! by John F. Karr veryone I know celebrates the Academy Awards. Not me. I smear my forehead with ash and rend my sackcloth. Because each Oscars telecast marks yet another anniversary of the night they didn’t give it to Judy. There’s some balm in knowing I only have to hold out through April and May to reach June, the month that marks not only the day she was born (June 10) and the day she died (June 22), as well as the day it’s conjectured that her funeral sparked the Stonewall rebellion, but the month in which it’s become traditional for VHS and DVD editions of her movies to be released. This year is no exception, and the release is choice: a Blu-ray edition of A Star is Born (Warner Home Video, $34.99). This newest edition of A Star is Born is the one famously reconstructed in the early 80s, and now re-

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mastered and digitally restored to wondrous luster, its picture crisp and its saturated colors especially brilliant. My god, the opening sequence is a carnival of dazzling reds, the hardest color to reproduce. In the scene, Hollywood’s elite have shown up for a benefit that sizzles in red drapery, red carpets, red dresses, and red sequined showgirls. Go on, dote on each and every sequin. Blu-ray rocks! The release (also available as a standard DVD, $20.59) devotes an entire second disc to nearly four hours of (not Blu-ray) Bonus Content. Though the bookstyle package is handsome and full of color photos, it seems inevitable that without a slipcover or box the discs will suffer slip-and-fall when the plastic spokes break off the hub.

dation and unexpected moxie from a pipsqueak driven to betray his friendship to a legendary outlaw. One can see why Winterbottom was attempted to tackle Thompson, who, long after his troubled life, is regarded in some literary precincts as a kind of missing link between Raymond Chandler and the great Russ-

ian nihilists. That said, the parlor trick of letting our anti-hero simply beat a woman to death on camera – with nothing left to the imagination – provokes a temporary suspension of our moral senses as we await some kind of bigger payoff, which never arrives. Aside from Affleck, there’s an impressive stable of acting talent wasted in this vicious noir dripping with the atmosphere of 1950s West Texas, with its accompanying jarringly sentimental country soundtrack. Let me cite two actors: Elias Koteas as a suspicious, slippery union man who keeps needling and provoking Ford in some delicious moments that ultimately lead nowhere; and Liam Aiken, primo in the role of a sweet, misbehaving kid whose betrayal by Lou is perhaps the bitterest of all.▼

That’s my only criticism of the set, because A Star Is Born is itself nearly beyond criticism. That qualifier concerns the famed “Born in a Trunk” sequence. I guess I’m in the minority here, but I think the sequence is out of synch with the movie it interrupts, stopping the plot cold for an interminable 15 minutes. The producers said the movie was too long, and disemboweled its original cut. And then they said their hatchet job wasn’t lively enough, and, nearly behind the director’s back, stuck in the padding of this number. Go figure. Even so, I’m wowed by the number’s modernistic sets, and its “Swanee” finale is a wet dream of color, design, and performance. As I am wowed anew, watching once again all the qualities that have made A Star is Born so famous. Psychological acuity provides bedrock

base for the thrills and chills of way over-the-top melodrama; its candid, by turns caustic and comic inside look at the industry, years before we began taking the exposure of Hollywood secrets for granted; and its cunning way in letting dialogue and songs covertly flirt with the lives of the performers. Judy Garland is no longer a cultural reference point for a younger generation. Here’s something that tells us just how far she’s receded into history: even a fan such as I found myself thinking at one point while watching, “She looks just like Liza.” Sheesh, it’s the other way around, and whatever Liza is, she’s the merest shadow of her mother. If you scoff at Judy, if you’re too young to know, or if you’ve just not ever seen A Star Is Born, take her and this revelatory Blu-ray experience to heart.▼

Casey Affleck in British director Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me.

and counting on his conscience, which, of course he doesn’t possess. Affleck continues to excel at showing natural-born wimps stepping up to the plate to pull off foul deeds. His astonishing performance in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford allowed us to witness the slow drip of envy, anxiety, trepi-

Irresistible tunes by Jason Victor Serinus Catherine Russell, Inside this Heart of Mine (World Village)

atherine Russell is back. After a long and illustrious career as one of the best back-up singers in the business (she was one of the “coloured girls” who sang “Doo do doo do doo do doo do doo” on Lou Reed’s 1972 hit “Walk on the Wild Side”), “Cat” has released her third solo album of irresistible tunes from earlier times. Beginning with Fats Waller’s classic “Inside this Heart of Mine,” the 12 tracks strut through an era when barbeque was king, brothers were cats, whiskey ruled reason, depression was the name of the game, and music got your farther than the almighty dollar. As rendered by Russell, who can transmit the spirit of this music like few others, these songs are much too good to be forgotten. Take, for example, “Troubled Waters,” scored by the Duke Ellington Orchestra for both Ivey Anderson and Mae West, or the never-before-covered “We the People,” which was premiered by Fats Waller. These are great songs. One minute Cat is swingin’ in “As Long as I Live,” a tune by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen; the next, she’s croonin’ in “November,” a touching ballad by Paul Kahn. The levels of insinuation and innuendo in “Just Because You Can” (“Just because you can doesn‘t mean you should. Just because you should doesn’t mean you can. Oh, if you can’t make it, got to lay back and take it like a man”) are only topped by

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the metaphors of “Long, Strong, and Consecutive.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, or are too horrified to ask, it’s time to join the Christian Family Alliance. They have an answer for everything. On Inside this Heart of Mine, vaudeville, blues, Tin Pan Alley, New Orleans, swing, jive, Delta-blues, and other styles rub shoulders, as Arlen, Ellington, Alec Wilder and other composers let loose. Many of these songs

folsom street fair sunday, september 26th, 2010

were originally performed by Duke Ellington, Peggy Lee, Maxine Sullivan, Howlin’ Wolf, Wynonie Harris, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, and Louis Russell. Russell, who was Armstrong’s long-time musical director, was also Cat’s father. They’re really great. Russell makes every song her own. It’s no wonder she won the German Record Critics’ Award in jazz. Her second album, Sentimental Streak, was called Vocal Album of the Year in the 2008 Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll. Her back-up New York players know well the value of restraint.▼


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Gods and Monsters, part of “Hollywood Does Hollywood,” Fri.

OUT&ABOUT Fri 2 >> Blackbird @ Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory

Circus Bella

Seth Eisen’s fascinating and funny musical cabaret tour through queer cabaret history, from speakeasy singers to Klaus Nomi and Sylvester. $20-$25. 8pm. Thu-Sat (some Sun). Thru July 10. 1519 Mission St. www.eyezen.org www.mcvf.org

Cherry Zonkowski @ The Marsh

Indy pen dance ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ by Jim Provenzano

eeling a tad post-Pride? You’re probably in the majority. How about enjoying the cooling comfort of a gallery, or a relaxing, less amplified park entertainment that isn’t too glaringly patriotic, yet still honors those bewigged fellows who, centuries ago, borrowed a French guy’s essay to start a new country? For a light afternoon of fun theatrical delights safe for the kiddies, and the kid inside you, see Circus Bella at Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, July 3. David Hunt and Abigail Munn’s one-ring circus act features live original music, trapeze, balancing feats on slack rope and rola-bola, contortion, juggling and clowning. They perform their one-hour show with other acts from 12pm-2:15. Mission St. at Third. www.circusbella.com While you’re downtown, several museums are free this weekend, thanks to funding from Bank of America. Get cool and see some Warhols and Stellas at the SF Museum of Modern Art exhibit. www.sfmoma.org (see cover feature, page 17). You can enjoy July 4 San Francisco from anywhere, but if Mime Troupe you want to actually see the fireworks, step outside the city limits. Treasure Island has a fantastic view, but the traffic’s problematic. Oakland and Marin’s parks are perfect, if some of them weren’t closed at night. Then there are all those other thousands of people pushing for that perfect view. Daytime celebrations are an easier find. Fourth of July at Berkeley Marina includes music, dancers, jugglers, a giant water slide, free sailboat and dragon boat rides, and of course fireworks and more at the greenest (and alcohol-free) holiday celebration in the Bay Area. 11am10pm. Free parking at Adventure Playground. Valet bike parking. (510) 548-5335. www.AnotherBullwinkelShow.com East Bay Independence Day celebrations in Jack London Square include a kid-friendly petting zoo, Coast Guard and Fire Dept. trucks and personell, circus acts and for adults, a wine bar, blues music acts, a farmer’s market, arts and crafts. July 4, 12pm-4pm. Broadway at Embaracdero West. www.jacklondonsquare.com For independent theatre while you picnic over the holiday, San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Posibilidad, or Death of a Worker, a play with songs about a factory taken over by striking laborers, plays in Dolores Park. Free. 2pm. July 3, 4 & 5; also Sept. 4-6. Also elsewhere in the Bay Area thru Sept. Dolores St. at 19th. www.sfmt.org Enjoy American classic music, including that of some gay composers, July 4 at San Francisco Opera, Chorus, and Orchestra at Stern Grove. The July 4 concert features bass-baritone John Relyea and soprano Patricia Racette in a Celebration of American Music (Sousa, Sondheim, Gershwin, Bernstein and more). Free. 2pm. Bring blankets, picnics. Get there early. 19th Ave. at Sloat blvd. 252-6252. www.sterngrove.org There’s even something for the sun-shy. For a rarified, almost creepy perspective on barbeques and holidays, see Chris Schiavo’s The Backyard, an exhibit of darkly witty photos of cluttered Queens, New York back yards, at Art Haus, 411 Brannan St. Thru Sept. 30. Tue-Fri 11am6pm. Sat 12pm-5pm. 977-0223. www.arthaus-sf.com ▼

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Hilarious solo show, Reading My Dad’s Porn and French-Kissing the Dog, about growing up in Texas, San Francisco sex parties, marzipan pigs and more. Adults only! $15-$50. (800) 838-3006. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru July 17. 1062 Valencia St. at22nd. www.themarsh.org

Cultural Encounters @ de Young Museum Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo presents local muralists and graffiti artists, with live music by Audiobraille, sound sculpture in the garden and more, all at the monthly first Fridays evening partystyle events. 6pm-9pm. Free. Golden Gate Park. www.deyoungmuseum.org

Friday Night Blues @ Studio Gracia Same-sex swing dancing lessons and social dancing; part of Lindypendance events; 9pm-2am. 19 Heron St. Also, July 3, Haiti Dance-a-thon at the Fillmore Jazz Festival, Geary St. at Fillmore. July 4, the Northern California Swing Championships, with social dancing, lessons live bands and DJed music. For schedule and info: www.SwingChampionships.com

Hollywood Does Hollywood @ Castro Theatre Classic films about filmmaking and movie stars. Tonight, What’s the Matter With Helen? and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. July 3, Sunset Boulevard and The Star. July 4, A Star is Born (Judy Garland version). July 5, The Aviator and Boogie Nights. July 6, Gods and Monsters and Ed Wood. July 7, Myra Breckenridge and The Wild Party. July 8, Mulholland Drive and The Loved One. July 9, The Bad and the Beautiful and The Big Knife. Thru July 9. $10. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Krapp’s Last Tape @ Exit Theatre Cutting Ball’s production of the poignant oneman Samuel Beckett play. $15-$30. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. Thru July 3. 277 Taylor St. (800) 838-3006. www.cuttingball.com

Left of Oz @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Lighthearted musical comedy parody of The Wizard of Oz includes lesbian and gay characters helping Dorothy find San Francisco, and true love; written and composed by Stephanie Reif. $25-$50. Fri-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru July 18. 1901 Ashby Ave. (800) 838-3006. www.leftofoz.com

Midnight Mass @ Bridge Theatre Peaches Christ and her wacky pals do a little show before a screening of the 80s camp rock classic Purple Rain, starring Prince, Appolonia, Wendy and Lisa, Morris Day and The Time, and a lot of big hair. $13. 12am. Get there early. Also July 3. 3010 Geary Blvd. www.peacheschrist.com

The New Century @ New Conservatory Theatre West Coast premiere of Paul Rudnick’s gay comedy. $22 - $34. Thu-Sat 8pm; Sun 2pm. Thru July 11. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level, near Market St. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

The Real Americans @ The Marsh Dan Hoyle (Tings Dey Happen) premieres a new multiple-character solo show based on his road trip to Middle America to explore the profound disconnect in a politically polarized country. $15-$50. Thu-Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru Sept. 25. 1062 Valencia St. at 21st. (800) 838-3006. www.themarsh.org

Speech & Debate @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley

Chris Schiavo’s The Backyard

Stephen Karam’s hit Off-Broadway comedy about three geeky teens, including a gay kid, who fight for truth amid a small town scandal. $24-$45. Tue 7pm, Wed-Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru July 18. 2081 Addison St. (5100 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

Sat 2 >> African Continuum @ Museum of the African Diaspora New exhibit of prints by Bay Area historian Bryan Wiley documenting altars and ritual practices of U.S. African descendants of other countries. $5-$10. Wed-Sat 11am6pm. Thru Aug. 28. 685 Mission St. at 3rd. www.moadsf.org

Animation Exhibits @ Walt Disney Museum See biographical exhibits about Walt Disney, early sketches and ephemera from historic Disney movies. Frequent lectures and film screenings. $12-$20. 104 Montgomery St., The Presidio. www.waltdisney.org

The Art of Dr. Seuss @ Dennis Rae Fine Art Fascinating exhibit of rarely seen prints, paintings, sculptures and a few of the more known drawings by Theodor Geisel, the author/illustrator of the immensely popular children’s books. Ongoing, with updates and new items. 351A Geary St. 391-1948. www.dennisraefineart.com

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi Musical comedy revue, now in its 35th year, with ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25$80. Wed, Thu 8pm. Fri, Sat 6:30, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 5pm. (Beer/wine served; cash only). 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd. 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Birth of Impressionism @ de Young Museum Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay includes approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection and highlights the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, among others. Thru Sept. 6. $10-$25 (free/members). Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.deyoungmuseum.org

Calder to Warhol @ SF MOMA The first public exhibit of some of the works collected by the Fishers (The GAP empire owners), with some pivotal works by Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Chuck Close and others. Other exhibits include visually striking contemporary works. Free-$18. Thru Sept. 19. Fri-Tue 10am5:45pm. Thu til 8:45pm. 151 Thurd St. at Mission. 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org

The Fantastiks @ SF Playhouse Local production of the classic Off-Broadway musical about young love and interfering parents. $30-$50. Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sat 3pm. Thru Sept. 4. 533 Sutter St. at Powell. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Garza, Esta Soy Yo! @ Mission Cultural Center Health adovocate Jose Carlos Asencios tells the bilingual story of how he became Garza, a Peruvian drag queen living in exile in San Francisco; adult themes. $20. 8pm. 2868 Mission St. 305-7404.

Kunst-Stoff Arts Fest @ 929 Market Music, dance, theatre, media and installations in a spacious loft; with Prum Ok, Chin-chin Hsu, Marina Fukushima, Silvia Girardi, Patrick Ferreri and many others. $15. 8:30pm. Fri & Sat thru July 18. 929 Market St. at 5th. 777-0172. www.kunst-stoff.org

Local Wonder @ Tenderloin Community Gallery

Pearls Over Shanghai @ The Hypnodrome Thrillpeddlers’ revival of the comic mock operetta by Link Martin and Richard Koldewyn, performed by the gender-bending Cockettes decades ago, and loosely based on the 1926 play The Shanghai Gesture. $30-$69. 8pm. Extended, Fri & Sat thru Dec. 575 10th. (800) 838-3006. www.thrillpeddlers.com

Point Break Live @ Metreon Action Theater Ridiculous live staged version of the surferbank robber movie, where a chosen audience member plays Keanu Reeves’ role with cue cards. Warning; wear cheap clothes. Rain tarps provided, but you will get wet and/or fake-bloody. $25. 9pm. Fri & Sat. Thru July 31. (866) 811-4111. www.pointbreaklivesf.com

Teatro Zinzanni @ Pier 29 Hearts on Fire is the current show at the theatre-tent-dinner extravaganza with new guest chanteuse Liliane Montevecchi, comic Frank Ferrante, twin acrobats Ming and Rui, Vertical Tango rope dance, plus magic, comedy, a five-course dinner, and a lot of fun. $117$145. Saturday 11:30am “Breve”show $63—$78. Wed-Sat 6pm (Sun 5pm). Pier 29 at Embarcadero Ave. 438-2668. www.teatrozinzanni.com

Wicked @ Orpheum Theatre Mega-hit musical based on the book about the two famous Oz witches as young college roommates. $30-$99. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat, Sun 2pm. Sun 7:30pm. Thru Sept. 1192 Market St. at 8th. $30. 512- 7770. www.shnsf.com

Sun 4 >> Happy Hour @ Energy Talk Radio Interview show with gay writer Adam Sandel as host. 8pm. www.EnergyTalkRadio.com

Independance @ City Nights Jamie J. Sanchez and Jay Santos DJ at the July 4 T-dance. $15-$25. 6pm-12am. 1015 Folsom St. at 6th. www.guspresents.com/ independance

Outlook Video @ Channel 29 LGBT monthly news show; this month, Kathy Wolfe of Wolfe Video, STD screenings in the API community, Harvey Milk Day celebrations, and the 21st GLAAD Media Awards. 5pm. www.outlookvideo.org

SF Hiking Club @ Berkeley, Orinda Join GLBT hikers for a 10-mile hike from Berkeley through the University of California campus, up Strawberry Canyon with great views of the bay, top the ridge into Contra Costa County, then down to Orinda BART where the hike ends after an optional stop at nearby Loard’s Ice Cream. Bring lunch, water, good-gripping shoes. Meet 9:15 at Downtown Berkeley BART. (925)833-1069. www.sfhiking.com

Shanghai @ Asian Art Museum New exhibit about Asian artists from Shanghai, 130 works exploring and visualizing the city’s vibrant and turbulent history. $7-$17. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org

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

Thick @ Club Eight

Art by Tenderloin artists challenging stereotypes about local residents. Fri-Sat 12pm3pm. Thru Aug. 31. 134A Golden Gate Ave. at Jones. www.nom-tlcbd.org

Dance night for muscle men, and those who like them. $5. 11pm-3am. 1151 Folsom St. at 8th. www.eightsf.com

More Glitter - Less Bitter @ Electric Works Gallery

Bebe Sweetbriar hosts an Independence Day show with sailor gogo boys and girls. Porn stud Tristan Jaxx DJs. $3. 9pm-2am. 3600 16th St. at Market. www.lookoutsf.com

Exhibit of fascinating photographs by Daniel Nicoletta from 1975 to the present, including candid photos of Harvey Milk, behind-the-scenes images from the film Milk, and sexy glam portraits of the cast of Pearls From Shanghai. Through July 10. 130 8th St. 626-5496. www.sfelectricworks.com

Pastor Tom Show @ KUSF Dr. Tom Polcari’s LGBT music and talk show. 4pm. Weekly on 90.3 FM.

USO Show @ the Lookout

Mon 5 >> Al “A. Jay” Shapiro @ James Snidle Fine Art Exhibit of original drawings by the late gay erotic cartoonist and creator of Harry Chess and other muscular comic characters. Open


July 1 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER

run. Also, the Rodney Thompson Estate collection. Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. Sat 9am-2pm. 1190 Bryant St. 5520500. www.jamessnidlefinearts.com

The Kinsey Sicks at The Rrazz Room, Tue.

Chuck Drees @ Magnet Exhibit of moody hauntng landscape paintings. Artist’s reception July 9, 8pm. Exhibit thru July. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

Lilith Fair @ Shoreline Ampitheatre

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

Joe Goode Performance Group @ Old Mint Bldg.

Q Comedy @ Martuni’s

Weekly beginners same-sex dance classes in salsa and other styles. Also swing classes on Wednesdays, Standard ballroom Thursdays, $10 each, $35 for series. 151 Potrero Ave. 305-8242. www.QueerBallroom.com

Ten Percent @ Comcast 104 David Perry’s new talk show about LGBT local issues. New times: Mon-Fri 11:30am & 10:30pm, Sat & Sun 10:30pm. www.davidperry.com

Tue 6 >> Buddhist Meditation Classes @ Kadampa Buddhist Temple Tessa Logan teaches drop-in meditation classes. $10. 7-8:45pm. 3324 17th St. 503-1187. www.meditationinnortherncalifornia.org

The Drag Show @ Channel 29/76 New weekly talk show with local drag performers; Zachary Davenport and Stu Smith cohost. Free (with cable). 7:30pm.

The Dresses Project @ Theater Artaud Exhibit of 30 women artists’ group installation of handmade dresses, images, prints, poetry and more, inspired by Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. Exhibit thru July 18. TueSat 1pm-5pm. 450 Florida St. www.katrinarodabaugh.com www.zspace.org

Foto Ada @ Robert Koch Gallery Exhibit of 1930s German photomontages that commented on the Nazi uprising. Also, Miroslav Tichy vintage photos. Tue-Sat.

Exhibit of high fashion, art, and nude prints by the two gay iconic photographers of the 20th century. Tue-Sat 11am-5:30pm, by appointment, and first Thursdays til 7:30pm. Thru July 31. 49 Geary St. Suite 211. www.roberttat.com

Soldiers Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan, photographer Jennifer Karady’s compelling story portraits of American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan create images that tell their individual stories and make visible the psychological impact of war—the nightmares and memories that soldiers continue to experience after returning home. Also, Roll Call, an SF Camerawork members’ exhibition. Thru Aug. 7. Tue-Sat 12pm5pm. 657 Mission St. 512-2020. www.sfcamerawork.org

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s

Queer Ballroom @ Live Art Gallery

Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene @ Robert Tat Gallery

In Country @ SF CameraWork

Heart, Sarah McLachlan, The Bangles, Ann Atomic, Susan Justice, and many other bands perform at the women’s music festival. One Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View. $36-$133. 2:30pm. www.lilithfair.com

David Hawkins, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Dhaya, Cookie Dough, Nick Leonard, Sandra O. Noshi-di’n’t make you laugh. $5-$16. 8pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.Qcomedy.com

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10:30-5:30pm. Thru Aug. 21. 49 Geary St. 421-0122. www.kochgallery.com

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gayfriendly comedy night. One-drink minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

The Kinsey Sicks @ The Rrazz Room Dragapella quartet finally returns home for their first extended-run show in years. Enjoy the camp hilarity and a cappella parody tunes. Some shows share proceeds with Out in the Bay radio show. Go see them! You’ll laugh your wig off. $35. 2-drink min. 8pm. Thru July 18. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 468-3399. www.TheRrrazzRoom.com

Rehistoricizing Abstract Expressionism in the Bay Area: 1950 to 1970 @ Luggage Store Gallery Fascinating exhibit shows how women and people of culture were part of the abstract expressionist movement, but shut out by the era’s bias toward white men. Exhibit thru July 31. 1007 Market St. at 6th. www.queerculturalcenter.org

Yoga Classes @ LGBT Center Fun, friendly weekly classes for beginners or experienced with Bill Mohler. $10-$20. 6:30pm. Also Wednesdays. Room 302, 1800 Market St. at Octavia. www.sfcenter.org www.billmohleryoga.com

Wed 7 >> Gay Skate @ Redwood Roller Rink The weekly GLBT roller-skating night is worth the drive. $7. 8pm-10pm. 1303 Main St. Redwood City. (650) 574-8148. www.myspace.com/ gayrainbowskate

The acclaimed environmental dancetheatre work Traveling Light returns by popular demand. With four stories in separate interconnected rooms, it’s amazing and worthy of multiple viewings. $34-$44. Wed-Sun 8pm. Fri & Sat 10pm. Thru Aug. 1. 88 Fifth St. at Mission. www.joegoode.org

The Last Drag @ LGBT Center First session of a free seven-week LGBT quit smoking workshop, presented by the Coalition of Lavender-Americans on Smoking & Health. 7pm-9pm. 1800 Market St. Register: info@lastdrag.org 339STOP. www.lastdrag.org

Thu 8 >> Abigail, A Rock Opera @ Temple Unusual new rock opera based on the Salem Witch Trials, in particular, young Abigail Williams. $10. 9pm. Also July 8, 29 and Thursdays thru Sept. 23. 540 Howard St. www.abigailtherockopera.com

Another Hole in the Head Film Fest @ Roxie, Viz Theaters Three weeks of new and cult classic horror, science fiction and fantasy movies, including the 1984 colorized rock-scored version of Metropolis, the hilarious slasher parody Tucker & Dave vs. Evil), plus fun opening and closing parties. $10 each- $150 full pass. Thru July 29. Roxie: 3117 16th St. Viz Cinema: New People World, 1746 Post St. 820-3907. www.sfindiefest.com

Comedy Ballet @ The Garage Dark Porch Theatre ensemble’s hybrid dance theatre work. $15-$25. Thru July 18. 975 Howard St. 518-1517. www.975howard.com

Cowardly Things @ New Conservatory Theatre Cindy Goldfield and Scrumbly Koldewyn’s duo cabaret show inspired and including songs by Noel Coward. $20-$28. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru July 31. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Dan Plonsey’s Bar Mitzvah @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Dandelion Dancetheatre’s whimsical postmodern take on the Jewish family ritual, a bar mitzvah for the composer-playwright, with nearly two dozen performers. $18-$22. 7pm. Also July 11, 1pm & 4pm. 736 Mission St. at 3rd. www.thecjm.org

ENTER

TO WIN!

How to Flirt @ Center for Sex & Culture Marcia Baczynski leads a workshop in overcoming shyness, learning skills for social relating, intimacy and touch. $12-$15. 7pm8:30pm. 1519 Mission St. http://cscjul2010.eventbrite.com/ www.sexandculture.org

Passionate Struggle @ GLBT Historical Society Exhibit about Bay Area LGBT historical events and people. Also, Man-I-Fest, an exhibit of letters and documents by FTM transgender pioneer Lou Harrison and friends. Free/donations. Wed-Sat 1pm-5pm. 657 Mission St. #300. 777-5455. www.glbthistory.org

For bar and nightclub listings, go to our new website and monthly print nightlife guide, www.bartabsf.com To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Left of Oz at Ashby Stage, Fri.

Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

WANT TO WIN A PAIR OF FULL WEEKEND PASSES TO LEATHERSIR? Register for free on BARtab at

www.BARtabsf.com. Two pairs of packages will be randomly selected among those who sign up between July 1 through July 17. Participants must be 21 or older. Winners will be notified by July 18.


BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . July 1 2010

LEATHER+

Pride busted out all over by Scott Brogan o paraphrase one of the few Rodgers and Hammerstein songs I actually like, SF Pride was “bustin’ out all over.” This year was the 40th anniversary of the first SF Freedom Day Parade, which became the Pride Parade. Times (and all of us) have sure changed in the last 40 years, but one thing that hasn’t changed is our ongoing struggle for equality and acceptance. Sure, things are much better – no complaints here – but we still have a way to go, so it’s important for us to keep marching and celebrating and being visible. Who would have thought 40 years ago that a mainstay of the TV coverage would be one of our most loved (and tireless fundraising) drag queens, the one and only Leather Empress Donna Sachet? And who would have imagined that our Leather Contingent would be so big – and visible? This year, contingent spokespersons were chosen by the network for filmed pre-interviews, the interviews playing in a picture-in-picture on the TV screen while that contingent went by in the background. Speaking for the Leather Contingent was one of our two elected Leather Grand Marshals, Queen Cougar. Her male counterpoint and fellow Leather Grand Marshal was Steve Ward. Instead of being chauffeured in convertibles, they were led through the parade in pony carts pulled by “human ponies” decked out in appropriate pony-fetish gear. You wouldn’t have seen that on your broadcast TV 40 years ago. Congratulations to you both – and your ponies, too! As with every year, there were seemingly endless Pride events and parties all over the Bay Area. A big highlight was Folsom Friday. Produced in conjunction with the SoMa Bar & Business Guild, the bars and businesses in the new “Miracle Mile” on Folsom (Truck, Powerhouse, Chaps, Blow Buddies, Mr. S Leather, Off Ramp Leathers, and the Lone Star) featured special events and a free shuttle bus. Sometimes the bus can be as festive as the venues. Folsom Friday is a new event that happens each Friday before an event weekend, such as Dore Alley (next month) and Folsom Street Fair. Go to www.folsomfriday.com for details. Mr. S Leather (385 8th St., www.mr-s-leather.com) played host to Mr. San Francisco Leather Lance Holman’s Pride in Unity event. The champagne flowed, leather and kink scent filled the air, and everyone cruised the product and each other, all the while

www.ebar.com

Leather Grand Marshal Queen Cougar and publisher of Bay Woof magazine “Rocket” at the “Pride in Unity” event at Mr. S Leather.

Scott Brogan

Check out the Bay Area Reporter online at:

Scott Brogan

T

Int’l Ms. Bootblack 2020 Jayson DaBoi, Mr. SF Leather 2010 Lance Holman, Int’l Ms. Leather 2010 Mollena Williams, and Ms. SF Leather 2010 Tracy Wolf welcome partygoers to the “Pride in Unity” event at Mr. S Leather.

raising money for Camp Kindle, at very precise “fittings.” Be sure to the nonprofit camp for children visit Mr. S Leather online or in perand young adults affected by son, you won’t regret it. HIV/AIDS. Assisting HolSaturday, we had Pink Saturman were SF’s sexy Mollena day in the Castro and surWilliams (International rounding environs. The Ms. Leather 2010), Ms. SF daytime fun was marked by Leather Tracy Wolf, and Inthe annual Dyke March, ternational Ms. Bootblack wherein our women took 2010 Jayson DaBoi. The over Dolores Park. Consexy and nasty staff of Mr. S sider it a sort of prelude to Leather were on hand to the Dykes on Bikes who L EATHER help with everyone’s special always open the Pride Paneeds. They especially excel

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Coming up in leather & kink >> Fri., Jul. 2: Jockstraps at Chaps Bar (1225 Folsom). Go-Go Studs at 11:30 p.m. Lots of hot men into jocks. Free clothes check if you strip to your jock with the SoMa Guardians. DJ Sam La Belle. Bootblack on duty. 9 p.m. to close. Go to: www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com. Fri., Jul. 2: Open Play Party at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission). 8 p.m.-1 a.m. $25 per person. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org. Sat., Jul. 3: Memorial for Unicorn at the Metropolitan Community Church (150 Eureka). 3-5 p.m. Small party immediately following at the Powerhouse Bar (1347 Folsom).

Mon., Jul. 5: Citadel’s Peer Rope Workshop at the SF Citadel (1227 Mission). Madame Butterfly & Mr. Madame Butterfly host. $10 donation encouraged. 7:309:30 p.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org. Tues., Jul. 6: 12-Step Kink Recovery Group at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission). 6:30-8:00 p.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org. Wed., Jul. 7: Wolf! For Furry Men on the Prowl at The Watergarden (1010 Alameda, San Jose). 4 p.m.-Midnight. Features adult videos of hairy guys, plus a new red zone and club music. Go to: www.thewatergarden.com.

Sat., Jul. 3: Men in Gear at Chaps Bar (1225 Folsom). Hosted by Men in Gear. from leather to sports gear to rubber to boots to military to uniforms to Nasty Pig gear, etc. Featuring DJ Six. Bootblack on duty. Go to: www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com.

Wed., Jul. 7: Dominant Discussion Group at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission St). Doors open at 7 p.m. Please RSVP in the week preceding the meeting to either of these addresses: DJ Mora, MommaD@sfcitadel.org or DJMora.SFLeather@gmail.com. A $5-$15 donation to the host, the SF Citadel, is requested. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Sat., Jul. 3: Trailer Trash Party and Open Play Party at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission). 8 p.m.-1 a.m. $25 per person. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Wed., Jul. 7: Naked Buddies at Blow Buddies (933 Harrison), doors open 8 p.m.-12 a.m., play til late. Go to: www.blowbuddies.com.

Sat., Jul. 3: Back Bar Action at the Eagle Tavern (398 12th St.). Back-patio bar opened to all gear/fetish/leather. 10 p.m. to close. Go to: www.sfeagle.com.

Wed., Jul. 7: Busted! at Chaps Bar (1225 Folsom). This week’s edition: Fisting, hosted by HellHole. Starts at 9 p.m. Go to: www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com.

Sat., Jul. 3: Bearracuda at Deco Lounge (510 Larkin). Party for bears, cubs, and other wildlife. Free massages, great tunes, tasty snacks and friendly guys. $7 cover/$5 before 10 p.m., 9 p.m.-3 a.m. Go to: www.bearracuda.com.

Wed., Jul. 7: SoMa’s Men’s Club. Every Wed., the SoMa Clubs (Chaps, Powerhouse, Truck, Lone Star, Hole in the Wall, the Eagle) have specials for those who have the Men’s Club dogtags. See your favorite SoMa bar for details.

Sun., Jul. 3: Castrobear presents Sunday Furry Sunday at 440 Castro. 4-10 p.m. Go to: www.castrobear.com.

Wed., Jul. 7: Castro Bear Presents Hairy Hump Day at 440 Castro, 7-11 p.m. Go to: www.castrobear.com.


KA RRNAL

BijouWorld

Falcon Studios

July 1 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER

Gustave Caillebotte meets New Jersey Trash.

Sexy porn performer Karl Thomas.

Pornucopia! by John F. Karr was so proud last weekend that I had to spend all this week in a darkened room, with the shades drawn and a cold compress wrapped around my dick. So I didn’t watch a single sexo all week. But that didn’t stop a few random thoughts from tumbling around my brain. First, when The Pizza Boy Delivers, how come the pizza’s never in one of those insulated bags? True, after the guys have sex, the pizza’s gonna hafta be reheated anyway. My girlfriend Vera Similitude rarely makes an appearance in porn, but c’mon, guys. A couple touches wouldn’t hurt. Like the pool boy. He’s always cleaning a perfectly clean pool. I’m not expecting algae or slime. But couldn’t they throw a couple leaves on it? And the plumber never seems to know a wrench from a knitting needle. The only tool he’s familiar with is the one – well, you know. Can we jump to the monthly price of membership websites? Most of them are in the $20 to $30 range. That’s $240 to $360 a year! I’m certainly not the only guy who can’t afford to join more than one or two at a time – and for a short time, at that. I think companies would attract more takers at $10, $12 or $15 a month. A lot of them have been having half-price come-ons. Doesn’t that show what a deterrent those higher prices are?

I

Todd Stevens doing a disappearing act Another example came after the with a large dildo. Karl Thomas is also death of most gay glossy mags. One of in the flick. Don’t get me started on my favorite mags was reborn online. this wildly sexy, fat-dicked, trashy perGreat! But Unzipped.net pegs memformer. He sucked his own cock, sat bership at $25 a month –that’s $300 a on beer bottles, gobbled cum, and year. Insane! A subscription to the when he was just about to pop print mag was only $60 a year. when getting fucked, he’d But enough consumer flip his legs over his head woes. The Pavarotti-Dominand shoot in his mouth. go-Carreras trio may be He lives near the top of gone, but they’re not formy All Time Favorite gotten. Some jokester list (of course, that list is filmmaker has just rean endless role call; leased The Three TenDavid Griffin, anyone?). ners. I haven’t seen it. But I So while checking out got a good laugh from what other movies there the title. are in the Bijou Classics It’s a small jump K ARRNAL from titles to box covK NOWLEDGE series, I was reacquainted ers. Put It Where It with Karl in Young and Counts isn’t a new Notorious, making movie at all, but I’ve just seen the cover whoopee with Marc Saber. Remember of the 1994 Robert Prion movie. As a Marc? Svelte guy with a dolphin tattoo fan of Gustave Caillebotte and his right next to his big dick? (When I was 1877 painting “Paris Street Rainy for many years manning the clothes Weather,” as well as a part-time colcheck at a sex club, guys would regulage-maker, I love the simplicity of its larly come up to my counter, panting, artful juxtaposition. Sorry we had to to brag, “Did you see the hot guy I was put that cockblocking graphic on it, with?” I’d ask which one, and they’d though. Reading about the movie at say, “The one with the mustache and the big dick.” Oh, him, I’d reply, as if BijouWorld.com, I found it was the that description didn’t cover just about first feature in which director Prion reeverybody in the place.) At any rate, quired his performers to wear a conMarc’s a forgotten performer. Even I’d dom while fucking. Pretty late in the pretty much forgotten him. He’s never game, I’d say. But he wasn’t alone in rated a Best of collection, but he lives this reluctance. Most companies resisted safe sex as long as they could. It on in my heart and – oh, I can feel it – was scandalous. I sure remembered in my groin. Can I exchange that cold the movie’s opening scene, with hot compress for a warm hand?▼

Leather + rade. If you missed the Dyke March, you missed a major part of what Pride Weekend is all about. Each year at Pride, we have our “Leather Alley.” This is where, you guessed it, leather and kink folk congregate, provide demos (wanna get flogged for the first time?) and sell product. There was the adult-only Kink Zone behind privacy walls (keep your inhibitions at the gate), and greeting everyone at the entrance were the 2011 Bare Chest Calendar men. This year’s 12, who are hotter than ever, were on hand to sign, sell, and sex-up your 2011 BCC calendar. And let me tell you, the calendar looks amazing. It’s not just that the men are hot (and friendly, too), but the look and feel of the design and photography are worth so much more than the very affordable $20 price tag. Thank their photographer, Joe Mazza (www.themaleimage.com), for bringing out the best in each man. You don’t have one? No problem! They have lots of events coming your way all year. This month they’ll have their booth at Dore

Scott Brogan

page 26

The 2011 Bare Chest Calendar men make a sexy and welcome entrance to Leather Alley at the Pride fair this past weekend.

Alley (aka Up Your Alley), and next month they’re teaming up with Donna Sachet and Lenny Broberg for a new dinner-date auction gala at the Empire Ballroom of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, on Aug. 24. All 12 men will be auctioned off after a formalwear and sportswear fashion show. Go to www.barechest.org/auctiongala/ for

details. I’ll provide more details as we get closer to the event. Now Pride is over 40 years old, and we’re stronger than ever. We have just enough time to recuperate before Dore Alley (Up Your Alley) Street Fair on Sun., July 25. Now, that will most definitely be up our alley – in more ways than three!▼

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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . July 1 2010

ARTS

by Ernie Alderete Wild Ones: The Erotic Photography of Mel Roberts, edited by David Sprigle; Foto Factory Press, $65.

ild Ones, from 2003, the next selection in our series on classic photo-books, is a thick slice of a bygone era in the Golden State. Most of the pictures were taken in Southern California, including at Malibu Creek, Malibu Canyon, Idyllwild, Laurel Canyon, Studio City, Lake Elsinor, Topanga Canyon, the Santa Monica Mountains and other choice outdoor locations. Some were taken at the beach at La Jolla, Laguna Niguel and Zuma, others at poolside in North Hollywood, Bel Air and Brentwood. Model Don Anderson is posed in the nude at the rim of Stone Canyon Reservoir, wearing his hair in a shimmering, shoulder-length shag, looking a bit like, but better than, contemporary teen idol Bobby Sherman. My favorite shot is of a deliciously bronzed and naked Anthony Cimini sprawled on a field of luxurious Korean grass, that kind of lengthy bright green grass that mimics the undulating waves of the ocean. It is magnificent. Nothing artificial or contrived about it. Although it was taken in 1976, it’s timeless, as if it were taken yesterday.

W

Hollywood ▼

page 22

Johnny Depp’s Valentine to the alltime worst filmmaker does full justice to a very strange sensibility without necessarily making you pant to catch Glen or Glenda. Depp gives his most restrained yet perceptive take on a genderbending personality who most likely didn’t fully grasp his own urges. Gods and Monsters (1998) This very loose examination of the private life of Bride of Frankenstein director James Whale is perhaps the best fictional take to date on the Hollywood closet. Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser (probably his greatest performance) and the late Lynn Redgrave all shine. (both 7/6) Myra Breckinridge (1970) No

Wild Ones’ weakest point is its inconsistency. Some of the models are drop-dead gorgeous, their exquisite carnal beauty having survived the march of time, on paper at least. But too many models are gangly, awkward, ill at ease and even dorky. Some of them (Dave Hudson, from 1966) were not posed properly. Dave’s stance shows him to great disadvantage. If he just stood up straight, rather than slumped, the result would have been infinitely better. Scott Weyburn and Dean Cooper are two others who never achieved their full potential. Corny props such as a HeeHaw-style straw hat, an ill-fitting white sailor cap, and a bow and arrow work against the finished product. If you’re a butt man, there isn’t much of interest for you here. There’s only one certified USDA-choice bubble butt, and that belongs to Butch Wallace, the only African American in the collection, in a single superb picture of him floating on an inflatable raft in a swimming pool. The photographer obviously liked blondes. Fair-haired, skinny young men are most of the subjects. But I think the darker-haired guys photographed much better. All pho-

Eschewing camp, director Billy Wilder and his co-writer Charles Brackett use Norma’s delusional comeback in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ to demonstrate why Hollywood inevitably devours its own.

tos are presented in full-page layouts, except eight pictures at the book’s beginning that are displayed four to a page. These are described as flawed in some way, perhaps a damaged or lost negative. But I couldn’t spot anything wrong with them. They are some of the best pictures in the book, especially one of Steve Dupont from 1975 suggestively eating a phallic banana, and one of Roger Clifford all soaped up in the shower, from 1966. All of the young men in Wild Ones are clean-shaven, except for Tom Barham, whose full, dark, wrap-around beard perfectly frames his dazzling smile. His choice, virtually hairless torso creates a superb contrast to his be-whiskered face. Part of the reason there aren’t many bubble butts is the era. This

Mel Roberts

’60s swingers

Anthony Cimini sprawled on a field of grass, from 2003’s Wild Ones.

was an innocent age, before men began to alter their bodies in a major way. Steroids and other chemical enhancements had yet to reach the mainstream. Most men back then would never have dreamed of shaving their bodies. The norm was still the full chest of untrimmed hair. Despite my mixed feelings about Wild Ones, it’s well worth perusing to revive dormant memories. If you dated men in the era of wide-flared bell-bottom pants, peace-symbol

Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.

metric-shaped glass container with ashes, a reference to Albrecht Durer’s 16th-century engraving of the same name. “Sulamith,” a monument “to dead German soldiers and the death camps,” is an oil, emulsion shellac and woodcut depicting a chamber of massive, loam-colored brick arches leading to the fires of the crematorium or the gates of hell, depending on one’s point of view; and, in “Die Meis-

tersinger,” drawn from one of Hitler’s favorite Wagner operas, 13 singers are symbolized by numbers and patches of straw affixed to the canvas with what looks like manure. On the less epic end of the spectrum are Claes Oldenburg’s intimately scaled, elegant deconstruction of the inner chamber of a typewriter, “Study for Typewriter Eraser: Final Position-ROSC Version”; Magdalena

Rick Gerharter

page 17

“Melancholia” by Anselm Kiefer, in a room of his paintings, part of the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at SFMOMA.

Foto Factory sells most of their books via the Internet and mailorder catalog. Definitely check out their website for books, jumbo prints, posters and notecards. www.fotofactory.com

one gets out alive in this truly awful adaptation of Gore Vidal’s cheeky novel. Perhaps the only reason to catch it is for glimpses of Mae West well past her prime and very brave film critic Rex Reed. Myra plays with a new print of The Wild Party, with Raquel Welch. (7/7) The Loved One (1965) While it may not be faithful to Evelyn Waugh, Tony Richardson’s vicious skewering of movieland funeral rites is hilarious and addictive. Once you get beyond Robert Morse’s slippery attempts at doing a posh British accent, you’ll love this innocent’s reckless attempt to make it in a truly cynical scene. Highlights: Liberace’s casket salesman, Jonathan Winters’ nasty “Blessed Reverend” and the most foul-minded love advice columnist ever imagined. Plays with David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. (7/8)▼

Fisher coll. constitute a roster of modern art allstars, from Alexander Calder, Wayne Thiebaud, Agnes Martin, Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Stella and Richard Serra to Jeff Wall, Lee Krasner, Sam Francis, Chuck Close and Cy Twombly, visitors are sure to find their own little stairway to paradise. Or, in the case for this writer, paradise lost: a gallery featuring a half-dozen of the Fishers’ 16 works by Anselm Kiefer, the German war waif with the deranged nightmare visions. A wildly creative “madman” who fuses potent mythologies of various origins with war-machine detritus, soil, the ruins of Nazi horror and delusions of world domination, Kiefer’s sensibility was warped or shaped by a twisted legacy, and though a shadow of darkness threatens to engulf him, his ferocious brilliance remains undimmed. This mini-presentation, by necessity, lacks the expansiveness of the 2006 Kiefer retrospective that these monumental canvases demand, but the artist’s visceral works have the ability to make one quake in any setting. Attached to the flank of the battered-gray, lead sculpture “Melancholia,” a substantially-sized model of a grounded war plane, is a dirty, geo-

belt buckles, love beads, and free and meaningless sex, you might recognize a particular style, if not an exact face. Your deeply submerged memories will be allowed to percolate to the surface.▼

Abakanowicz’s enigmatic wood sculpture “Four on a Bench,” with slender, headless figures standing on top of a wooden plank; and Sophie Calle’s intriguing black-and-white photograph of an apartment building, “Autobiographical Stories (The Bed).” Above the image is a neatly framed, typed paragraph recounting the fate of the bed Calle slept in until she was 17: a tenant lay down on it

and set himself on fire, firemen threw the mattress out the window, and its charred remains, abandoned in the courtyard below, have been immortalized in the photo. The Fishers’ aesthetic pleasure in collecting reaches its apex with Calder’s mobiles, stabiles and wire sculptures, which open the exhibition. The Fishers acquired 45 works by the artist. Like the ingenious “Aquarium,” they’re models of restraint, playfulness and perfect balance. A master of equilibrium and inventor of the mobile, Calder’s genius lay in knowing when to stop. The show’s high point, though, is the inventive, thoroughly delightful grace note that brings it to a close. South African artist William Kentridge’s theater-in-miniature “Preparing the Flute,” a re-imagining of Mozart’s Magic Flute, takes one back to the old-fashioned joy of shadowpuppet theater as the story unfolds through animated black-and-white images projected on a screen while Mozart’s opera floods the senses. Crescent moons, meteor showers and moonlight make for a magical experience. Sit in darkness, fall in love, and feel the rapture.▼ Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection, at SFMOMA through Sept. 19. More info at www.sfmoma.org.


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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . July 1 2010

BOOKS

Word processing by Jim Piechota Harm’s Way by Eric Leigh; University of Arkansas Press, $16

rize-winning San Francisco poet Eric Leigh has produced a striking meditation on the dull pain translated through the ways we damage and injure ourselves and the ones we love, Harm’s Way. With a sure hand, he guides his universal theme along, using a wide array of characters, settings, and moods. This is a debut collection with a literary confidence rarely seen in introductory poetry works, which have a tendency to be self-conscious, obtuse and unwieldy. High praise also goes to the publisher and art designer Liz Lester for the book’s highly artistic cover art. In the opening poem “Homesong,” Leigh reminisces poignantly about the farmhouse of the narrator’s childhood, a place where dogs

P

can be heard “barking their secrets back and forth across the corn.” A widowed blue-collar father shares an empty homestead with just his young son in “Skilled Trades,” and a careless driver strikes a female pedestrian, callously remarking, “I see how her coat has cleaned the door.” The memory of a departed drag queen fuels “On the Day the Last Drag Queen Leaves Town,” as the neighborhood boys “huff gasoline” off her “knockoff Halston” and recognize that she was loved “the way the tree stump loves the ax, because the blade still sees a use in an old piece of oak.” Nearly every piece in this lucid collection leaves behind the bittersweet aftertaste of loss and longing, notably the death of a father or father-figure. The two brothers in “On the Line” who have procrastinated long enough in picking up their deceased Dad‘s property finally reconcile themselves to his suicide by

glasses, lower expectations, and relearn the same lesson we’ll forget tomorrow.” Leigh closes his anthology with somber notes of death and disease ,as his final poems reflect the reality of terminal illness and the malaise of hospital rooms. Yet somehow he finds the words to convey splendor in the manipulative way HIV infects a host cell: “There’s beauty here if you can bear to see it. Look, how one puts a little of itself inside the other, and soon they are inseparable. Are we not the same?” Leigh’s compilation is something to savor. ▼

claiming a few useless belongings; and the narrator of the book’s longest poem, “The Dark-Light of Spring,” is left to pick up the pieces of his father’s passing, his human spirit dwarfed by the powerful memories of the past, noting that “dead fathers make for stubborn ghosts, and ours is no exception.” There is a semblance of levity in the second section: a man who folds his trick’s clothing on the bed prior to devouring his conquest, and a drag bar called the Rhinestone Bullet (“the altar of country queens and false eyelashes”), where patrons “raise our

Heavenly musings by Jason Victor Serinus Paul Adams, Heavens (Lakefront)

ometimes music comes to us at the right time. Shortly before my husband David received word that his aged father, who was bedridden with 24-hour hospice care, had taken a turn for the worse, Paul Adams’ Heavens: Further Explorations of the Dreaming Flute arrived. That night, David was so moved by the beautiful music that he urged me to review it. It was only then that I opened the liner notes and discovered Adams’ dedication “to my mother Paula, her Hospice Care, and the flute that comforted her on her journey home.” If ever I needed validation beyond my own ears and heart that Adams’ music captures the healing essence of transcendent love, and speaks with universal depth and empathy, I now had it. The music of Heavens is as simple and basic as it is soulful. Adams plays wind instruments that come from his exotic collection of flutes, whistles, and Chinese huilusi. These instru-

S

ments may have a limited range, but Adams’ ability to coax magic from them with his evocative, repetitive melodies is profound. He also has the musical wherewithal to vary timbres and deepen the experience by adding gongs, triangles, zither, percussion, and, on occasion, nature sounds. Be-

neath the instruments, the voices of the Eagle Ridge singers occasionally integrate into an ambient, quintessentially New Age soundstage whose extremely large, three-dimensional presentation creates an all-enveloping sense of warmth. Ideal for meditation, massage, reverie, and blissing out, this is a wonderful album.▼


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LEGAL NOTICES NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSE To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: Josho International Inc. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 1801 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA 94121-2206. Type of license applied for:

41-ON-SALE BEER AND WINE EATING PLACE JULY 1, 2010 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: PLOW LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 1299 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107-2919. Type of license applied for:

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NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: Joseph Yousef Dabit. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 896 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA 94109. Type of license applied for:

41-ON-SALE BEER AND WINE EATING PLACE JUNE 17,24, JULY 1, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032828700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Cow Tools Productions, 2261 Market Street, #182, San Francisco, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Susan D. Conley. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/08/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/10.

JUNE 10,17,24, JULY 1, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032828100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 1.BV Health Solutions, 2.Sexual Health Clinics of Northern California, 1246 Castro Street, #9, San Francisco, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed William Bell. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/10.

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BAY AREA REPOR TER . eBAR.com . 1 July 2010

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LEGAL NOTICES City and County of San Francisco For Papers, July 1-2, 2010 CONCESSION OPPORTUNITY AT SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT San Francisco International Airport is accepting submittals for the International Terminal Museum/Gallery Store Lease. The lease premises measures approximately 2,282 square feet in the International Terminal Building, for the operation of a museum/gallery store. The proposed minimum acceptable proposal amount is $125,000.00 and a proposed term of ten years. Bids are due Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 2:00pm. Please visit us online at http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/about/b2b/conces/ or call John M. Reeb, Senior Principal Property Manager, Revenue Development and Management, at (650) 821-4500. THE PORT OF SAN FRANCISCO The Port of San Francisco invites qualified consultant teams to assess and recommend abatement requirements and provide cost estimates for the extent of hazardous materials present in buildings and other structures at Pier 70. This federally funded RFP package can be obtained at: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/purchase (consultant category). Proposals are due Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 12 Noon. CONTROLLER’S OFFICE - EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY 1053 IS Business Analyst - Senior: Under direction, develops and supports the City’s financial, purchasing and fixed assets systems. We are seeking an individual who can work with users of the City’s financial systems to perform technical development, programming, and define business/system requirements. These systems include accounting, purchasing, and fixed assets. The Information Systems Business Analyst - Senior will work within the Programming Section of the Accounting Operations and Systems Division of the Controller’s Office. Employee must be willing to work a 40-hour week as determined by the department. Overtime work will be required. Check our website at www.sfgov.org/controller under “employment” for more information or contact Vicente Centeno at (415) 554-7506. SAN FRANCISCO MTA - EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY 9179 Manager V - The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is currently recruiting qualified candidates for the following position: Grants Accounting Manager. Description: The Grants Accounting Manager is responsible for managing the SFMTA’s cost allocation program and grant revenues and expense activities. The incumbent is also responsible for the single audit and all audits of grants by federal, state, and regional agencies and for implementing grant related accounting and reporting requirements as well as managing staff. Desirable Qualifications: A baccalaureate degree in Finance, Business Administration, or other related field; 10 years experience in managing in any of the following areas: finance, grant administration, capital project accounting, cost allocation plans, audits and financial systems. Please visit our website at: http://www.jobaps.com/sf/sup/BulPreview.asp?R1=PEX&R2=9179&R3=056438 for complete job announcement and information on how to apply for this position. Minorities, Women, and Persons with Disabilities are Encouraged to Apply An Equal Opportunity Employer ART IN STOREFRONTS ARTIST PANEL Saturday, July 17; 2 p.m. Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco 750 Kearny Street (Third Floor), San Francisco Take an excursion into Chinatown! Eat some dim sum, take a walking tour of the Art in Storefronts installations, and then join us for a lively discussion with the artists. The Art in Storefronts programs brings four dynamic installations and two murals to Chinatown on view from June 11 – September 18, 2010. For more information visit: http://www.sfartscommission.org/storefronts The City and County of San Francisco encourage public outreach. Articles are translated into several languages to provide better public access. The newspaper makes every effort to translate the articles of general interest correctly. No liability is assumed by the City and County of San Francisco or the newspapers for errors and omissions.

STATEMENT FILE A-032809200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Scope Architecture and Design, 2550 Baker Street, San Francisco, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Emily O’Keeffe. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/01/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/28/10.

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTICIOUS BUSINESS NAME: #0312921-00 The following persons have abandoned the use of the ficticious business name known as Pinkies Bakery, 1294 Vallejo Street. #5, San Francisco, CA 94109. This business was conducted by a sole propietorship, signed Cheryl Burr. The ficticious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/05/08.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Zooty Designs, 2939 B, Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Laura Tulloss. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/07/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/07/10.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Citizens Band #1, 1198 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company signed Boris Nemchenok. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/09/10.

JUNE 10,17,24, JULY 1, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032819500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Dream SF Real Estate, 150 Manchester Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Beth C. Newman. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/03/10.

JUNE 10,17,24, JULY 1, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032828600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: M Design, 1738 18th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Marlene Duong. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/08/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/10.

JUNE 10,17,24, JULY 1, 2010

JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032805100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 1. Professional Garage Doors, 2. Reliable Locksmith, 2055 16th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Sagy Vaknin. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/26/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/26/10.

JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032801300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Takara Sushi S.F., 4243 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94114-2409. This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed William C.P. Chan. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/25/10.

STATEMENT FILE A-032829000

JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Viva Goa, 2420 Lombard Street, San Francisco, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Nicolau Fernandes. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/10.

NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032831100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Pinkies Bakery, 1196 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company signed Boris Nemchenok. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/31/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/09/10.

JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010

To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: Cafe Zazo LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 64 14th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-4230. Type of license applied for:

41-ON-SALE BEER AND WINE EATING PLACE JULY 1,8,15, 2010

San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Human Resources Manager Salary Range: $106,132 - $129,012 depending on qualifications Filing Deadline: 07/15/2010 c.o.b. The Redevelopment Agency is a state-authorized local entity, separate from the City and County of San Francisco (CCSF) Seven Commissioners appointed by the Mayor and approved by the Board of Supervisors govern the Agency. The agency employs approximately one hundred fifteen (115) full time employees, and five (5) part-time staff. The Redevelopment Agency operates a merit system based human resource program. The Human Resources Manager reports to the Deputy Director for Administration and Finance. In addition to the Manager, the Human Resource Division includes a Personnel Assistant and an Accountant. Position Description (excerpt) The Human Resources Manager is a working position which directs and administers a variety of human resource programs, including recruitment and selection, classification and compensation, benefits and labor relations; plans, directs and participates in staff development, employee evaluation and in-service training programs; and provides human resource and management support to executive staff; Minimum Qualifications: Experience: Six years of progressively responsible professional human resources management experience including significant assignments in the areas of labor relations, negotiations, grievance administration, employee discipline; salary, classification and benefits and human resources policy and procedures. Training: Bachelor's Degree from an accredited college or university with major course work in human resources, business or public administration, or a related field. If you would like to apply for this position you must submit an application packet consisting of a cover letter, resume and Redevelopment Agency job application. You may download a job application from http://www.sfgov.org/site/sfra All materials should be mailed or delivered to the Human Resources Department, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, One South Van Ness Avenue, 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103. Failure to submit all requested materials will result in rejection of the application. Faxed copies or emails are not accepted. No phone calls please

NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: Whole Foods Market California Inc. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 690 Stanyan Street, San Francisco, CA 94117. Type of license applied for:

20- OFF-SALE BEER AND WINEJULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032851800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Intava Hair Salon, 323 Ivy Street, San Francisco, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Lieng Phethsaya. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/18/10.

JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032841200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Hairdoo Voodoo, 3150 18th Street,Suite 324, San Francisco, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Margaret A. Friel. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/15/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/15/10.

JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032847700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Tiagu, 652 8th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Brandon Neustadter. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/17/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/17/10.

JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032837000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Ocean Avenue Tattoo, 1907 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Thomas O McGrath. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/11/10.

JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032854300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Tataki 8 Lounge, 1740 Church Street, San Francisco, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Kenneth Zhu. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/21/10.

JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010

BAY AREA REPORTER 415.861.5019 Email BARadv@aol.com, Or online @ www.ebar.com

STATEMENT FILE A-032806300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Lefty’s at Junction, 2140 Union Street, San Francisco, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Hugo Gamboa. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/27/10.

JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032865900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Mitchell and Company, Law Offices, 1300 7th Avenue,Unit #4, San Francisco, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Brian Mitchell. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/24/10.

JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032837900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Ragazza, 311 Dividadero Street, San Francisco, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Laura Aaronson. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/11/10.

JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032821000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SF Walk With Me, 6016 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Carla S. Popovics. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/03/10.

JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032863600

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTICIOUS BUSINESS NAME: #038366-00 The following persons have abandoned the use of the ficticious business name known as Helios Architectural Glass, 1550 McKinnon Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94124. This business was conducted by a general partnership, signed Constance Levathes. The ficticious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/11/10.

JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032859700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 1.Quickly Fillmore,1522 Fillmore Street, San Francisco 94115. 2.Quickly Geary,6901 Geary Blvd. San Francisco, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Wei Ming Zeng. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/23/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/23/10.

JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032871300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Dr. Minh Vo Chiropratic, 129 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Minh Vo. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/28/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/10.

JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032815000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: IflyCheaper.com, 2235 19th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Diana Tishkovskaya. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/28/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/01/10.

JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Dream SF Real Estate, 150 Manchester Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual,signed Beth C.Newman. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/24/10.

JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032870000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Helios Art Glass, 1550 McKinnon Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Constance Levathes. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/12/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/10.

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1 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPOR TER 29

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