April 13th, 2017 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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Since 1971, the newspaper of record for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community

Vol. 47 • No. 15 • April 13-19, 2017

API Wellness opens Castro LGBT health clinic Fox

Retired Judge LaDoris Cordell

Former judge stars in TV show

by Sari Staver

F

ollowing an impressive 40-year career in the courtroom as an attorney and judge, LaDoris Cordell is making her Hollywood debut.

Last Friday night, April 7, Cordell starred as the judge in the premier of “You the Jury,” a new primetime unscripted reality show where viewers decide the verdict.

The series was taped on a TV courtroom set in front of about 300 audience members.

The eight-episode series, which was taped in Hollywood, features a rogues gallery of highprofile defense lawyers trying civil cases. At the end of each episode, viewers vote on the verdict in real time, via text message or an app.

The show aims to tackle topical issues like gay rights, wrongful death, online trolling, and free speech.

During the first program, the audience voted to convict Gary Giordano of civil culpability in the death of his wife, Robyn, who disappeared in Aruba five years ago. Celebrity attorney Joseph Tacopina represented Giordano.

Cordell is a fan of the program’s approach to courtroom drama.

“First of all,” said Cordell in a telephone interview with the Bay Area Reporter, “I want to emphasize that this is not on the Fox News Channel,” the notorious right-wing cable network. “That’s the first thing everyone says to me. Ewww ... you’re on Fox?” she recalled.

Fox Broadcasting Company, whose local affiliate KTVU broadcasts the show, is a separate division within the 21st Century Fox conglomerate.

But the show is hosted by a Fox News Channel regular, Jeanine Pirro, a former judge who gained notoriety in late March when she called on House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) to step down, hours after President Donald Trump plugged her show in one of his infamous tweets.

Cordell, when asked about her dealings with Pirro, said diplomatically, “We got along very well on the set.”

Cordell, 67, lives in Palo Alto with her longtime partner, Florence Keller. The two, who’ve been together for over 30 years, met in court when Keller was looking for a judge to refer people to a therapy group she was establishing See page 14 >>

Lance Toma, right, chief executive officer of the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, welcomes visitors to the new clinic in the renovated LGBT Community Center. Also on hand were Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, center, and Dr. Tri Do, API Wellness’ chief medical officer.

by Matthew S. Bajko

W

ith the opening of its new primary care clinic in the LGBT Community Center, the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center is touting it as the first “health home” for the entire LGBT community in San Francisco’s gay Castro district.

There is the San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s Strut health and wellness center in the heart of the Castro, but it only provides services to gay, bisexual, or transgender men. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation also operates a clinic in the Castro, but it is only open two days and focuses mainly on HIV medical care as well as HIV prevention.

A block away from the LGBT center is Lyon-Martin Health Services. But it is outside the boundary of the Castro district and only sees women, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, and genderqueer people, according to its website.

“Ironically, the Castro has never had a See page 14 >>

Nonprofits gear up for Give OUT Day Rick Gerharter

by Charlie Wagner

and increase visibility. Horizons will not receive any he LGBT comportion of the money raised. munity’s largest, Donations will be directly and only, national deposited into each nononline fundraising effort profit’s bank account, less – Give OUT Day – is apthe fee assessed by Click and proaching, and those inPledge, which is providing volved with past efforts say banking and card services. that support is needed now The fee is about half that more than ever. charged by other similar Give OUT Day, Thursday, providers and Horizons will April 20, is a 24-hour online allow participants to continfundraising event that aims ue using the platform after to unite donors and nonGive OUT Day. profit organizations from “Organizations can tell Charlie Wagner across the country to raise donors that each organizacritically needed funds. For GSA Network staff are gearing up for Give OUT Day. In front, from left, are tion gets all funds donated the second year, it’s being Tomas Rodriguez, Sarah Hyde, Rhina Ramos, Aldo Gallardo, and Eli Chi. In back, to them,” Doughty pointed produced and managed by from left, are Neda Said, Chris White, David Bracamontez, and Geoffrey Winder. out. And those funds will be San Francisco-based Horiavailable within 48 hours of zons Foundation. the end of the event, accordbecause the vast majority of nonprofits are getOver 23,000 individual donors have contribting only a fraction of the resources they need. ing to the Give OUT Day website. uted more than $3 million to 500-plus different Participating groups receive extensive planHorizons can help them raise money even if organizations in every part of the country since ning assistance, training, market support, and their own fundraising capacity is limited.” the first Give OUT Day in 2013, noted Roger All nonprofits serving the LGBTQ commu- even tips from those involved in previous years.

Doughty, president of Horizons. nity incorporated as a 501(c)(3) or receiving They also have a chance to win bonus prize The minimum donation is only $10. money from a qualifying 501(c)(3), and chap- money through what Horizons calls “Lead“In the current political climate, we know erboards.” Horizons’ partners are covering all ters of PFLAG, GSA Network, and GLSEN are that many people are looking for ways to concosts for the technology platform, participant eligible to participate. tribute to the resistance,” Doughty said, “and Horizons is providing a new technology training and Leaderboard prizes, which range a key part of Horizons’ mission is to increase from $1,000 to $5,000. platform for free. Nonprofits can use it to raise funding nationally for LGBTQ organizations. funds, motivate supporters, attract new donors, See page 15 >> This year Give OUT Day is so important

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What is TRUVADA for PrEP (Pre-exposure Prophylaxis)?

TRUVADA is a prescription medicine that can be used for PrEP to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection when used together with safer sex practices. This use is only for adults who are at high risk of getting HIV-1 through sex. This includes HIV-negative men who have sex with men and who are at high risk of getting infected with HIV-1 through sex, and male-female sex partners when one partner has HIV-1 infection and the other does not.

Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to prevent getting HIV-1. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

What is the most important information I should know about TRUVADA for PrEP?

Before taking TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce your risk of getting HIV-1 infection: u You must be HIV-negative. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1 infection. Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-negative. u Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. If you have flu-like symptoms, you could have recently become infected with HIV-1. Tell your healthcare provider if you had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting TRUVADA for PrEP or at any time while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin.

While taking TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce your risk of getting HIV-1 infection: u You must continue using safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1. u You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP. u To further help reduce your risk of getting HIV-1: • Know your HIV-1 status and the HIV-1 status of your partners.

• Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months or when your healthcare provider tells you.

• Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections.

Other infections make it easier for HIV-1 to infect you.

• Get information and support to help reduce risky sexual behavior.

• Have fewer sex partners.

• Do not miss any doses of TRUVADA. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection.

• If you think you were exposed to HIV-1, tell your healthcare provider right away. u If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

TRUVADA can cause serious side effects: u Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency. Symptoms of lactic acidosis include weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, nausea, vomiting, stomach-area pain, cold or blue hands and feet, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or fast or abnormal heartbeats. u Serious liver problems. Your liver may become large and tender, and you may develop fat in your liver. Symptoms of liver problems include your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach-area pain. u You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or serious liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking TRUVADA for a long time. In some cases, these serious conditions have led to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any symptoms of these conditions.

u Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. If you also have HBV and take TRUVADA, your hepatitis may become worse if you stop taking TRUVADA. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider.

If your healthcare provider tells you to stop taking TRUVADA, they will need to watch you closely for several months to monitor your health. TRUVADA is not approved for the treatment of HBV.

Who should not take TRUVADA for PrEP? Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP if you already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status. If you are HIV-1 positive, you need to take other medicines with TRUVADA to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP if you also take lamivudine (Epivir-HBV) or adefovir (HEPSERA).

What are the other possible side effects of TRUVADA for PrEP? Serious side effects of TRUVADA may also include: u Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider may do blood tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with TRUVADA for PrEP. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking TRUVADA for PrEP. u Bone problems, including bone pain or bones getting soft or thin, may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones. u Changes in body fat, which can happen in people taking TRUVADA or medicines like TRUVADA. Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP are stomach-area (abdomen) pain, headache, and decreased weight. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or do not go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking TRUVADA for PrEP? u All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection. u If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if TRUVADA can harm your unborn baby. If you become pregnant while taking TRUVADA for PrEP, talk to your healthcare provider to decide if you should keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Pregnancy Registry: A pregnancy registry collects information about your health and the health of your baby. There is a pregnancy registry for women who take medicines to prevent HIV-1 during pregnancy. For more information about the registry and how it works, talk to your healthcare provider. u If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed.

Do not breastfeed. The medicines in TRUVADA can pass to your baby in breast milk. If you become HIV-1 positive, HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk. u All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements.

TRUVADA may interact with other medicines. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. u If you take certain other medicines with TRUVADA for PrEP, your healthcare provider may need to check you more often or change your dose. These medicines include ledipasvir with sofosbuvir (HARVONI).

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Important Facts about TRUVADA for PrEP including important warnings on the following page.

TVDC0086_D_9-75x16_BayAreaReporter_p1.indd 1-2

Have you heard about

TRUVADA for PrEP ?

TM

The once-daily prescription medicine that can help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 when used with safer sex practices.

• TRUVADA for PrEP is only for adults who are at high risk of getting HIV through sex.

• You must be HIV-negative before you start taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Ask your doctor about your risk of getting HIV-1 infection and if TRUVADA for PrEP may be right for you.

visit start.truvada.com

3/16/17 4:27 PM

IMPORTANT FACTS (tru-VAH-dah)

This is only a brief summary of important information about taking TRUVADA for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection. This does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your medicine.

MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF TRUVADA FOR PrEP

Before starting TRUVADA for PrEP to help reduce your risk of getting HIV-1 infection:

TRUVADA can cause serious side effects, including:

• You must be HIV-1 negative. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1 infection. Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-1 negative.

• Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include flu-like symptoms, tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin. Tell your healthcare provider if you have had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting TRUVADA for PrEP. While taking TRUVADA for PrEP to help reduce your risk of getting HIV-1 infection: • You must continue using safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1.

• You must stay HIV-1 negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP. • Tell your healthcare provider if you have a flu-like illness while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. • If you think you were exposed to HIV-1, tell your healthcare provider right away.

• If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

• See the “How to Further Reduce Your Risk” section for more information.

TRUVADA may cause serious side effects, including: • Buildup of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any of these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, nausea, vomiting, stomach-area pain, cold or blue hands and feet, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or fast or abnormal heartbeats.

• Severe liver problems, which in some cases can lead to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any of these symptoms: your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach-area pain.

• Those in the “Most Important Information About TRUVADA for PrEP" section.

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

• Bone problems.

• Changes in body fat.

Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP include stomach-area (abdomen) pain, headache, and decreased weight.

These are not all the possible side effects of TRUVADA. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with TRUVADA for PrEP.

BEFORE TAKING TRUVADA FOR PrEP Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis infection.

• Have any other medical conditions.

• Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

• Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you become HIV-1 positive because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: • Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

• Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with TRUVADA for PrEP.

HOW TO TAKE TRUVADA FOR PrEP

• Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. If you have HBV and take TRUVADA, your hepatitis may become worse if you stop taking TRUVADA. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

• Take 1 tablet once a day, every day, not just when you think you have been exposed to HIV-1.

You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight, or have been taking TRUVADA for a long time.

• You must practice safer sex by using condoms and you must stay HIV-1 negative.

ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP (PRE-EXPOSURE PROPHYLAXIS)

HOW TO FURTHER REDUCE YOUR RISK

TRUVADA is a prescription medicine used with safer sex practices for PrEP to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection in adults at high risk:

• Know your HIV-1 status and the HIV-1 status of your partners.

• HIV-1 negative men who have sex with men and who are at high risk of getting infected with HIV-1 through sex.

• Male-female sex partners when one partner has HIV-1 infection and the other does not.

To help determine your risk, talk openly with your doctor about your sexual health.

Do NOT take TRUVADA for PrEP if you: • Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status.

• Do not miss any doses. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection.

• Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months or when your healthcare provider tells you.

• Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections. Other infections make it easier for HIV-1 to infect you.

• Get information and support to help reduce risky sexual behavior.

• Have fewer sex partners.

• Do not share needles or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them.

• Take lamivudine (Epivir-HBV) or adefovir (HEPSERA).

GET MORE INFORMATION TRUVADA, the TRUVADA Logo, TRUVADA FOR PREP, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, and HEPSERA are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

Version date: April 2016 © 2017 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. TVDC0086 03/17

TVDC0086_D_9-75x16_BayAreaReporter_p1.indd 3

• This is only a brief summary of important information about TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection.

Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more, including how to prevent HIV-1 infection.

• Go to start.truvada.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5 • If you need help paying for your medicine, visit start.truvada.com for program information.

3/16/17 4:27 PM

t

Community News>>

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Swim teacher denies child porn charges

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

San Francisco man who worked as a children’s swim instructor has pleaded not guilty to charges including possession and distribution of child pornography.

At Nicholas Hodges’ arraignment Monday, Assistant District Attorney Lili Nguyen said that he’d had well over 600 files of child pornography, including a video where a 7- or 8-year old boy “bound by handcuffs to his ankles” was “sodomized for several minutes.”

Hodges, 28, who worked at San Francisco’s La Petite Baleen swim school, was arrested last Tuesday and is in custody on $435,000 bail. Besides the felony possession and distribution charges, he also faces felony counts of using a minor for sex acts and sending harmful material to a minor, according to sheriff’s department records.

Nguyen said that Hodges had enticed a 14-year-old boy to send him photos, among other allegations.

She said that besides La Petite, where he’d worked since September 2015, Hodges had also had access to minors through his previous work at the House of Air trampoline park in San Francisco and Walt Disney World’s Haunted Mansion.

The materials that authorities found included a video depicting a 2-year-old, Nguyen said. Hodges’ cellphone held more than 100 videos, and he also had thumb drives that contained images of “infants and toddlers being raped and sodomized,” she said.

Prosecutors are “extremely concerned about public safety,” Nguyen said.

She said authorities have received “hundreds of phone calls from concerned parents and relatives” of “boys between the ages of 6 and 7,” and

website, owner and Chief Executive Officer John Kolbisen said, “We are shocked and horrified by these charges.”

Hodges had “passed a 50-state background check that included fingerprinting,” Kolbisen stated, and school officials “took immediate steps to investigate and then terminate” Hodges when they learned of the OPEN 2-4 allegations.

“At this time, we are not aware of SAT/SUN OPEN 2-4 evidence or allegations linking any of our students” to the charges, Kolbisen SAT/SUN said.

A manager at House of Air, where Hodges worked from February 2013 through January 2016, called the charges against him “a big shock.” She Sophisticated SF Architectural View said the company has reached out to Sophisticated SF Architectural View police but hasn’t received a response.

San Francisco Police Officer Robert Rueca, a department spokesman, said, “We have been in contact with them.”

REIMAGINED Spokespeople for Disney World didn’t immediately respond to an REIMAGINED, REIMAGINED after-hours request for comment Monday.

Adam Gasner, Hodges’ attorney,This Edwardian has been newly built from the ground up. The residence blends soaring ceilings, custom lighting, oak floors and Resident Homeowner Lan This Edwardian has been newly builtsolid from the ground up. impeccable The residence said his client has “no prior criminalindoor/outdoor, view ceilings, living tocustom orchestrate a unique, living experiblends soaring lighting, solid oakmodern floors and impeccable history.” In an unsuccessful attempt toence. Spacious Specialist Chef’s kitchen merges with open-concept living and indoor/outdoor, view living to orchestrate a unique,Off-Market modern livingdining experihave Hodges’ bail lowered to $100,000that flows to the deck and to kitchen the sprawling yard.open-concept A second grand ence.

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2-car pkg. Located steps toview the living, City’s dining best schools, parks & more!in Russian Hill, www.noeviewHome.com Offered atshops, $4,495,000 that he’s gay. steps to the|City’s parks & more! www.noeviewHome.com NOEVIEWHOME.COM |best Offered |schools, Offered atshops, $4,495,000 at $4,495,000 Hodges, who appeared in court in handcuffs Monday, declined the Bay Area Reporter’s request for an interview last week.

Hodges’ parents, who were also in court, declined to speak to the B.A.R. Rachel Swann • 415-225-7743 Rachel Swann • 415-225-7743 Police say anyone who “may have TheSwannGroupSF.com Rachel Swann Anthony DeLaCruz Rachel@TheSwannGroupSF.com Rachel@TheSwannGroupSF.com been a victim or have had any suspicious contact” with Hodges should contact the Special Victims Unit at (415) 558-5500. t

I’LL

I’LL

SFPD

Nicholas Hodges

concerns about Hodges are “actively being investigated.”

In a news release last Thursday, San Francisco police said that the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit began an investigation in March of someone “who was uploading and storing hundreds of graphic child pornography files online.”

Hodges was identified as the suspect, police said, and last Tuesday, investigators executed a search warrant on his apartment. They found “numerous media devices belonging to Hodges, which all contained hundreds of child pornography files,” police said.

He was arrested and taken into custody at the swim school. A phone that was taken from him “contained additional evidence of child exploitation,” police said, adding, “The investigation into Hodges’ involvement in children programs is ongoing. Hodges’ employer has and continues to be cooperative and involved in the police investigation.”

In a statement on La Petite’s

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SF public defender writes DA about toxicology concerns

by Seth Hemmelgarn

S

an Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi is continuing to express worries about test results from the toxicology lab at the medical examiner’s office, telling District Attorney George Gascón that he’s “very concerned” that the lab isn’t complying with state regulations.

In a wrongful termination lawsuit filed in February in San Francisco Superior Court, Dr. Nikolas Lemos, the city’s former chief forensic toxicologist, said the medical examiner’s office kept Dr. Luke Rodda on staff even after it was learned that Rodda didn’t meet the requirements to be certified under Title 17 of California’s Code of Regulations, which addresses DUI analysis.

Among its other tasks, the medical examiner’s office performs forensic toxicology analyses on people who’ve died as well as analyses in DUI cases.

In his lawsuit, Lemos said he “begrudgingly resigned” in July 2016, after Christopher Wirowek, who’s now the medical examiner’s director of operations, told him not to tell anybody else about Rodda’s lack of certification and to allow Rodda to perform DUI testing. Rodda has since replaced Lemos, who’s gay, as chief toxicologist.

In his March 21 letter to Gascón – and copied to Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Hunter – Adachi said he’s “very concerned” that the medical examiner’s toxicology lab “is not in compliance and currently may be violating the mandatory requirements of Title 17, affecting both current and future cases.”

KEEP KEEP CALM CALM

Dr. Nikolas Lemos

Among other requests, he asked the DA’s office to “review any cases where Dr. Rodda was the supervising toxicologist, specify remedies, including vacating guilty pleas or convictions after a trial and dismissal of the charges”.

In an interview shortly after he sent the letter, Adachi said, “I remain very concerned about the allegations made by Dr. Lemos, and if it’s true, it calls into question every test that was performed by that laboratory,” not just DUI cases.

“I have reviewed some of the documents where Dr. Rodda signed off on toxicology examinations and testing that was done by the lab, and my understanding of Title 17 is that not only do the individual technicians have to be Title 17 [qualified], but the supervisor who signs off on all those tests must be Title 17 qualified,” Adachi said.

He said it’s also “extremely

disturbing” that his office was “never advised” of Rodda not meeting Title 17 requirements.

Ron Owens, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health, told the Bay Area Reporter that after Lemos left last year, the medical examiner’s office named someone else who has Title 17 qualifications to serve as forensic alcohol supervisor.

But Adachi said it still “makes absolutely no sense” that Rodda, as the chief toxicologist, would be overseeing testing that he’s not qualified to do.

He said he planned to meet with Gascón, and he’s been in contact with Hunter, who’s “promised to cooperate in this inquiry.”

Wirowek, of the medical examiner’s office, declined to comment on Adachi’s letter, citing the “pending litigation.”

In its response to Lemos’ complaint, the city said his lawsuit “is frivolous, vexatious, and unreasonable,” among other things.

Gascón hasn’t issued a written response to Adachi’s letter, but Adachi said in a follow-up email sent to the B.A.R. that Chief Assistant District Attorney Sharon Woo called him and said that because “the chief toxicologist did not do any of the testing himself there is no reason to question what may have happened or the integrity of the testing.”

Alex Bastian, a spokesman for Gascón, said, “Dr. Rodda has not tested nor attested to any Title 17 DUI cases, and it appears as though the lab is in compliance with Title 17.” t

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<< Open Forum

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Volume 47, Number 15 April 13-19, 2017 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Seth Hemmelgarn CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Tavo Amador • Race Bannon Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Brian Bromberger • Victoria A. Brownworth Brent Calderwood • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Belo Cipriani Richard Dodds • Michael Flanagan Jim Gladstone • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell • John F. Karr Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Max Leger Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Michael Nugent • Paul Parish • Sean Piverger Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr •Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Khaled Sayed • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Sari Staver • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Charlie Wagner • Ed Walsh Cornelius Washington • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Max Leger PRODUCTION/DESIGN Ernesto Sopprani PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Jose Guzman-Colon • Rudy K. Lawidjaja Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd • Jo-Lynn Otto Rich Stadtmiller • Steven Underhil Dallis Willard • Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small Bogitini VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.829.8937 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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Haley must condemn Chechen attacks

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ikki Haley, President at the hands of government Donald Trump’s amofficials, there are reports bassador to the United that at least three men have Nations, is overshadowing been killed.

Secretary of State Rex TilOutRight Action Interlerson and, for now at least, national, a global LGBT has become the nation’s top rights organization, stated diplomat. Her forceful statein a news release that the ments against human rights detentions of the men were atrocities has made good use confirmed through indeof an institution that Trump pendent sources. LGBTQ frequently badmouthed on people living in Chechnya the campaign trail. Haley are in extreme danger, Outinitially supported Marco Right stated, and called on Rubio for president, so it the international commuwas curious when Trump nity to “act immediately.” picked her to be the counHuman Rights Watch try’s U.N. representative. stated that a “brutal” camBut Haley has continued to U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley paign against surprise us by having carved LGBT people out a role for herself in the “has been foreign policy vacuum cresweeping ated by Tillerson’s few public comments and through Chechnya.” appearances.

The International Business Now, as reports surface that hundreds of Times reported that the arrests men have been detained in concentration“are being made as part of a widestyle camps in the Russian region of Chechspread anti-gay purge in the area.” nya because of their “non-traditional” sexual A spokesman for Chechen orientation, Haley must absolutely condemn leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied such actions. According to reports, it marks that LGBTQ people exist in the the first time since World War II that LGBT country, which is impossible. But people have been held in concentration the spokesman also indirectly camps. In addition to allegations of torture highlighted the violence and homophobia

t

faced by gay men, saying, “If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return.”

This week, Tillerson is meeting in Moscow with Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin. The meeting comes amid rising tensions after the U.S. airstrike on a Syrian airfield last week, which was taken in retaliation for the Assad regime’s use of sarin gas on children and others, killing 80 people. This portends poorly for future relations between the U.S. and Russia, even after Trump and Putin engaged in mutual admiration during the campaign and Russia meddled in the U.S. election.

Haley was the first senior administration official to speak out against the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its own people, wielding pictures of dead Syrian children, the New York Times reported. She needs to keep denouncing atrocities.

The U.S. can’t take a backseat to gays being tortured, or children being gassed. The international community needs to investigate the situation in Chechnya, and Haley should use her position at the U.N. to keep the issue in the spotlight. t

From resistance to resurrection

by Jim Mitulski

is both in the present and in the future. I so enjoyed aster has a different watching the TV miniseries feel for me this year – because it stirred so many politically and personally. memories. It was like an President Donald Trump’s early Easter present. In fact, election has unleashed a “We are Rising” became the death-dealing force that title of a sermon I preached must be countered head-on recently at MCC-San with the kind of resistance Francisco. that leads to resurrection.

Some of my favorite EasResurrection power is capater resistance-resurrection ble of overwhelming death. memories took place in San The crucified Jesus lives it in Francisco: the Easter story – when that Like the years we took stone is rolled away and the over the gray concrete cross tomb is empty. Love and life on top of Mount Davidson Rick Gerharter have the final word. and bathed it in rainbow Crucifixion abounds in Metropolitan Community colors, creating the biggest the world right now: Arkan- Church-San Francisco held piece of queer Christian art sas Governor Asa Hutchi- Easter services at Mt. Davidson in the world: a huge rainbow son is in a hurry to execute on March 29, 1997. cross over the skies of San eight people on death row Francisco that promised a before the end of the change in the AIDS epidemmonth, before the fatal injection drug the state ic. As protease medications took hold and our uses expires and he can’t get more. Days ago, friends ceased dying in large numbers, this act Trump pulled the trigger on Tomahawk misof resistance was a victory of life over death we siles without a strategy for peacemaking. And celebrated with vigor.

ISIS uses chemical weapons on the battlefield These were the years the Sisters of Perpetin Syria and on Coptic Christians gathered in ual Indulgence fought the Archdiocese of San church in Egypt. We need to see the power of Francisco to gain a legal street permit to cellove that is stronger than death, to feel it in our ebrate their 20th anniversary on Castro Street. own bodies, and see it expressed in the world Archbishop William Levada insisted it was around us. That’s resurrection – and it starts an insult to the church to grant this permit, with resistance. but we stood together and resisted this act of Jesus resisted. He resisted prejudice within bullying. Levada was disdainful of our people himself when he spoke to women in public but we successfully overcame his objections, and to Samaritans, people of a different culmarking a turning point in religion’s ture and religion. He resisted privilege when ability to dictate public policy on he challenged his own family and the religious this issue and on the human rights authorities he had grown up with. He resisted ordinance as well. antiquated customs and he ultimately resisted This was the time when former death. When we celebrate Easter and resurrecCalifornia Attorney General Dan tion, we celebrate resistance.

Lungren closed down the mariI learned the meaning of Easter in San Franjuana dispensaries, leaving our cisco. I found comfort in reciting the words of friends with HIV few remedies Jesus – “I am the Resurrection and the Life” – for comfort or treatment. Durat the funerals of hundreds of people when I ing the period when the cocktail was the pastor of the Metropolitan Communiwas just being tested and refined, ty Church in the Castro throughout the 1980s we resisted, strategically distributing medical and 1990s. I’ve been present at the death of so marijuana through churches and other outlets many people and each time I am convinced in defiance of the law, and provided relief to death is “change” and not “end.” And when we those who needed it. And ultimately, we sucused to sing the old gospel hymn “When We cessfully got the laws changed.

All Get to Heaven” at funerals, it made me cry We knew then that our strength lay in our because I knew the most important word was resistance. Now it’s time to tap into our resis“All” – it’s either all of us or none of us; it is tance again if we want to experience resurrectrue, and I believe it’s true. tion in ongoing sustainable way, and not just I also learned this powerful truth about treat it like a period piece. resurrection: it happens when we stand up for Since Trump’s election and with the exourselves, when we stand up for our dignity ecutive orders he has instituted, increasing and pride, and when we stand together in solistigma is being attached to being a Muslim. darity. I was delighted with the title of Cleve As gay people, we know what it feels like to be Jones’ new memoir “When We Rise” because the subject of scapegoating. Our immigrant it captures that nuance of resurrection that and undocumented friends and neighbors

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are living daily with increased harassment and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. I remember when it was a source of pride to us when San Francisco, in general, and the Castro, in particular, became a sanctuary for people who came without documents from all around the world, fleeing family persecution and seeking treatment for HIV and refuge in the final year or two of their lives. Now is the time to join the Resistance. A proud community survived – allies and friends and those who came after have an obligation to make resurrection possible for others.

I am an HIV survivor – I don’t know how but I am. On Easter I give thanks for being alive, that I resisted death somehow, through luck, faith, the love of my friends, and the support of community. This year I became a cancer survivor, too. Not as serious as some forms, but serious enough, and I know I was helped because I know how to resist. I had sworn to myself that I had not survived in order to be a bystander and watch others be crucified by the policies of the Trump administration. When I saw that the Contra Costa Sherriff David Livingston is cooperating with ICE to arrest undocumented working people I thought, “No, this calls for resistance.” When state Representative Michelle DuBois (D) here in Massachusetts where I now live warned her undocumented constituents of possible ICE activity in her town of Brockton and to stay indoors to avoid entrapment, I thought, “God, give me her courage – embolden me to be a resister like her.”

Easter is the story of a constantly renewing miracle of resistance, rebirth, rebellion, renewal, revolution. And this year, resurrection is about reclaiming the past victories in order to inspire new miracles in the present. The ancient Easter liturgy calls on us to affirm that “that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new.”

Make Easter real for you.

Find some place to proclaim out loud – in a church or somewhere spiritual for you – your gratitude for the gift of your life. And join the Resistance that leads to Resurrection. We need you! Because “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding!” (1 Corinthians 15:54-58.)

Because love and life have the final word. t Jim Mitulski is the interim senior minister of the Congregational Church of Needham UCC in Needham, Massachusetts and was the pastor of MCC and UCC churches in the San Francisco area for 25 years. To contact him, email revmitulski@gmail. com or follow @revmitulski on Twitter and Instagram.

Politics>>

t South Bay officials look to establish LGBTQ archive

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

by Matthew S. Bajko

W

ith interest in LGBT history having grown in recent years, Santa Clara County officials are looking to establish a local archive that would preserve documents and other material relating to the South Bay’s LGBT community.

The San Jose Public Library’s California Room, the system’s repository for local history, will oversee the South Bay LGBTQ Archive.

The history center is housed at the system’s central library, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library.

It would be on par with the San Francisco Public Library’s James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at its main branch. The 21-year-old LGBT history archive’s holdings include LGBT films, books, and the personal papers of numerous LGBT individuals, with a special focus on northern California.

The San Jose library’s LGBTQ archive will focus on Santa Clara County and San Jose in particular, but also accept material related to LGBT history in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties, as all three jurisdictions are linked to the LGBT community in the South Bay and Silicon Valley.

“We are really looking forward to it,” said Erin Herzog, the California Room’s librarian and archivist.

“There should be something already and there isn’t. We are happy to fill that void.”

Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager, the first openly gay member of the board as well as the first openly gay official in the county, having won a local community college board seat in 1992, is spearheading the effort to form the South Bay LGBTQ Archive.

“Unfortunately, we lost a lot of people to AIDS, but as my generation begins to retire, and perhaps move away, I really want to make sure we collect all the materials that are out there,” Yeager told the Bay Area Reporter in his first interview about the project. “Because I don’t

Jo-Lynn Otto

Supervisor Ken Yeager

want people to throw it away. It has to go somewhere.”

The city library’s LGBTQ archive would add to the Ted Sahl Collection of photographs documenting the gay and lesbian community in San Jose and the Bay Area from 1976-2001 overseen by San Jose State University, whose main library is housed with the downtown King Library, located at 150 East San Fernando Street.

Sahl, a straight Campbell resident, donated his trove of 6,000 photos, as well as negatives, to the university after publishing his 2002 book “From Closet to Community: A Quest for Gay and Lesbian Liberation in San Jose & Santa Clara County.”

He also gave the university library his background research, recorded interviews, and working drafts for the book as well as his personal papers, awards, and other ephemera.

The Sahl collection also has materials related to the San Jose Gay Pride Committee and various LGBT newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and books.

By the end of next year Yeager plans to donate to the California Room his trove of papers and other materials he has stored in his home. It includes the interviews he

Letters >> Memories of Gilbert Baker

I believe that Gilbert Baker had a good life [“Gilbert Baker, rainbow flag creator, dies,” April 6]. Helping to unroll that mile-long gay flag and carrying it before the United Nations in 1994 in Manhattan mattered. It was a celebration that included the 25th anniversary of Stonewall and the Gay Games was being held at that same time in the city.

Mr. Baker was at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco at Christmastime dressed in a 17th century wig and a dress that had the largest circumference of any that was seen. The children who were staying at the hotel laughed and enjoyed it. Mr. Baker never seemed to be out of costume.

He was at the forefront of folks who helped put on one of our Gay Pride parades in San Francisco, when it started down by the Embarcadero. “The Year of the Queer” was the theme for that 1993 parade.

How I disliked wearing that shirt, but it was worn for the community.

Ugh, I thought, but what the hay?

Mr. Baker seemed to think it was just great.

Every time we see our gay flag flying anywhere in the world we will remember the man who made it all happen – Gilbert Baker.

Mary Richards-Rocos Cathedral City, California

Sex clubs step up in promoting safer sex

Thank you for publishing Liz Highleyman’s “Getting to Zero effort on track in 2017,” [April 6]. The breadth and depth of San Francisco’s HIV prevention and treatment strategies are evident, and clearly, considerable progress has been made, although more progress must be made in order to reach “zero” new HIV infections. San Francisco is marshaling its considerable resources on behalf of both the HIV-negative at risk and the HIV-positive. For this civic commitment, we must all be thankful, while continuing to do our personal part in this vast mobilization on behalf of our collective health.

One area of the city’s mobilization that was not discussed in the article is the effort to stop new HIV infections through unprotected sexual activity. I know that this is an area that continues to provide our community with challenges, but here again much progress has been made, although it is admittedly difficult to quantify. That said, we need to acknowledge the positive role that Club Eros and other licensed sex venues provide our community, offering us erotic, gay-identified congregate spaces, underscored by the modeling and expectation of safer sexual activities.

John Mehring San Francisco

conducted for his 1999 book “Trailblazers: Profiles of America’s Gay and Lesbian Elected Officials.”

He also will be donating has personal journals he has kept since high school and boxes of documents related to the South Bay’s LGBT political club he co-founded in 1984 known as BAYMEC, which stands for the Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee. Yeager also has a wealth of information he collected last year in preparing his series of essays looking back at the successful fight in 1986 to defeat Proposition 64, a statewide ballot initiative that would have effectively quarantined both AIDS patients and anyone diagnosed with HIV. “I know I was looking for where I wanted to leave all of my records and files when I am termed out,” said Yeager, who will step down from the board in 2018. “I wanted to find a place, so I spoke to the librarian at King Library and they were vey excited to be able to house the history of the gay movement in Santa Clara County.”

His office recently hired two college interns who will spend this summer helping to design and launch the Santa Clara County LGBTQ Historical Archive Project, starting with Yeager’s personal collection. The interns, who will each receive a $6,000 stipend, will work with not only Yeager, but also the Santa Clara County Office of LGBTQ Affairs and King Library staff to coordinate the program.

One intern has already started working on the project a couple of

hours a week and will receive an extra $750 to $1,000. The second intern will begin in June.

The interns, said Herzog, will “basically help us do an inventory and an overview of what kinds of materials are out there and who we should be talking to to get us really started.”

In the meantime, Yeager is working on a new essay series about the fight in 1979 to pass LGBT nondiscrimination ordinances in San Jose and Santa Clara County, and the successful effort by religious groups in 1980 to overturn both laws at the ballot box. He recently put out a request among his constituents for any documents, including copies of the Lambda News newspaper, they may possess relating to that time period.

Lambda News, an LGBT newspaper in the South Bay in those years, extensively covered the local ballot measure fight. (The B.A.R. reprinted in its August 2, 1979 issue a story from the sister publication about the county board’s final adoption of the LGBTQ rights ordinance.) But Yeager has had difficulty finding copies of Lambda News and is hopeful someone has editions of it stored in a basement or attic that could be donated to the library’s LGBT archive.

“I am hoping that the word gets out,” he said. “It is very important for overall history. Our history is just as important as any other group.”

In conjunction with his research into that political fight, Yeager contacted the county supervisors

serving on the board at the time and asked them to come together to recount their experience. This month Yeager and Terry Christensen, the former chair of the Department of Political Science at San Jose State University, will interview four of the five supervisors at the local public access TV station. It is hoped that a special based on the footage, which the county is spending $1,500 to record, will air sometime this summer.

“In the history books today there is no record of gay and lesbian people,” noted Yeager, “so for all practically speaking purposes, it is as if we never existed. So we need to change that; we need to preserve our history and tell our history.”

Anyone with material they would like to donate can contact Herzog at (408) 808-2136 or email Erin.Herzog@sjlibrary.org. Those with records or papers related to Measures A and B can contact Yeager’s office at (408) 299-5040 or email supervisor.yeager@bos. sccgov.org.

The Ted Sahl Collection can be accessed online at http://digitalcollections.sjlibrary.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/sjsusahl. t Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion.

This week’s column reported on a gay man running for a L.A. state Asssembly seat.

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

Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8298836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com

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<< Queer Reading

t Book unearths 16th century same-sex marriage 8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

by Brian Bromberger

W

ith all the talk of same-sex marriages this century, one would think that the idea of two people of the same gender becoming wed was a very contemporary idea. But as Gary Ferguson, a historian and French professor at the University of Virginia, would say, that is definitely not true.

In his recently released book, “Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome: Sexuality, Identity, and Community in Early Modern Europe,” published by Cornell University Press, Ferguson has unearthed a case about a same-sex wedding ceremony in 16th century Rome.

Ferguson, 54 and gay, was interviewed by the Bay Area Reporter via email about this fascinating and tragic early queer marriage and its ramifications for the same-sex marriage debate today.

On a Sunday afternoon in July 1578, a group of men, mostly poor immigrants from Spain and Portugal (but also including several priests and friars) gathered outside a remote church on the outskirts of Rome, Saint John at the Latin Gate, to celebrate a festive marriage between two of its members, Gasparo and the friar Gioseffe. However, Gioseffe, allegedly having taken ill and gone to hospital, didn’t appear. The Roman police, somehow tipped off, arrived and arrested the 11 men, including Gasparo.

Eventually, eight prisoners were tried, found guilty, and subsequently hanged and their bodies burned. The exact nature and purpose of the intended ceremony remain uncertain.

“Some sources describe a marriage celebrated after Mass. Others refer to the giving of rings, a hermit who officiated, even the participants disguised as women,” wrote Ferguson. Apparently the wedding was a kickoff to a large community celebration in the form of a banquet, which the men had been preparing for several days, and eventual public sexual consummation between the partners and likely the others present as well.

When asked how he became aware of this case and why he decided to write a book about it, Ferguson replied, “Since my primary area of specialization is the literature and culture of Renaissance France, I had

Courtesy University of Virginia

Author Gary Ferguson

read the story of this marriage the famous essayist Michel de Montaigne recorded in his travel journal.

Since the story is so unusual and so unexpected, I wanted to explore further to see what I could discover, and that led to this present book.”

Ferguson used fragments of the transcript of the men’s trial (most of it had been destroyed or lost), and documents preserved by Confraternity of San Giovanni for his research. The confraternity was composed of pious laymen whose mission was to minister to and comfort condemned prisoners, especially to get them to make a confession and receive communion before dying, thus reuniting them with the church so they could write letters to relatives and dictate a will, both of which occurred in this case.

Also, dispatches of the Venetian ambassador in Rome, Antonio Tiepolo, contain his testimony of the case, as do newsletters sent from Rome to the Duke of Urbino, Francesco II della Rovere, and the Fuggers, a German banking family.

Ferguson has synthesized the oftencontradictory evidence and through literary detective work has weaved a single, detailed, only occasionally contradictory account.

Aside from having so much available information, what is unique about the case is that rather than following the usual Renaissance pederastic relationship, involving an older partner, who takes an active or penetrative sexual role, and a younger partner, who takes a passive

or receptive one, the men here were of mixed ages and their sexual lives don’t all reflect this usual pattern.

“One of the most important and exciting discoveries about the group is that their relationships and sexual practices were much more varied and flexible,” Ferguson wrote. “Some of them seem to have an exclusive interest in partners of the same sex, for example. There are also older men who are passive or versatile, and older men who have sex with each other. It’s possible to suggest that these kind of behaviors – which historians have sometimes seen as relatively modern developments – were in fact more common earlier than has been thought.”

When asked about the implications of the case vis-à-vis the essentialist/ constructivist debate about homosexual identity, Ferguson wrote, “Some people thought of their desire for members of their own sex as innate, part of their physical constitution; they describe it as something that is ‘natural’ for them or a ‘taste’ they were born with, a defining characteristic.”

He wrote that while that “isn’t exactly the same as a ‘modern homosexual identity,’ it shares significant elements in common.”

Thus it could be argued that what historians would call modern forms of homosexuality did exist in the 16th century.

This evidence, while qualified, would seem to question assertions by the famous gay philosopher-historian Michel Foucault that homosexuality was a product of the 19th century.

Ferguson claimed that while he would respond mostly yes as to these men having had a homosexual identity, “it does depend on how we define these terms.”

“I try to draw out carefully the aspects they share with our modern ideas and the ways in which they are part of a culture that is very different, meaning in different historical periods identities have been formed in different ways, so the men who met at the Latin Gate would require that we not construe it in relatively modern terms,” Ferguson wrote.

He added, “I take seriously the

work of queer critics who remind us that we cannot assume homosexuality as we know it today to be a selfevident or single phenomenon.”

Gay identity

One of the key ingredients of a gay identity is the formation of a rudimentary gay subculture. Ferguson maintained that this group had developed many of those characteristics, “like those established by homosexual men in 18th century Paris (gens de la manchette, men of the cuff) and London (network of ‘mollies’), although less extensive and more fragile,” he wrote.

“They had regular meeting places – notably the isolated church buildings of Saint John at the Latin Gate – shared social activities, and even particular code words to talk about their sexual desires and practices. A man who liked to be passive, for example, was referred to as a commare (literally, a godmother, midwife, close female friend or neighbor, or a gossip),” Ferguson explained.

Further evidence of this subculture could be that during the trial some of the men tried to protect those with whom they had been sexually involved, and tried not to implicate those already in prison with them.

Finally, the purpose of the feast following the wedding was a way to express and build a sense of community, a vital point since such extravagant planning likely increased the chances the men would be caught, Ferguson noted.

As to the wedding itself, Ferguson pointed out that the evidence suggests a handful of motivations.

“Since the friends took the ceremony seriously enough to put themselves at considerable risk, it very likely served to recognize and sanction Gasparo and Gioseffe’s relationship, claiming that such a union should be possible,” he said.

Still, the case, as well as other 16th century stories, proved that marriage has never been a universal and fixed phenomenon, and has long been “a highly contested issue,” Ferguson said.

Just 15 years earlier, the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent had decreed that a wedding had to

be performed in a parish church by an authorized priest in the presence of witnesses, with a pre-public announcement of the ceremony. Previously, from the 12th century on, the only requirement was the free consent of the spouses expressed in an exchange of vows, so no priest or witness(es) was necessary.

While this most likely would have been the format of the Latin Gate wedding, Ferguson explained that it’s also unlikely that had a marriage taken place it would have been a traditional one and not just because it involved two men, but probably would not have been intended as a sexually exclusive arrangement or that the two men were going to live together.

Thus, Ferguson surmised that there may have been a playful element, parodying and subtly criticizing elements of a traditional wedding, “even what today we might call a campy version,” he wrote.

However, whatever the “polyvalent” motivations, the critical factor is that the group of friends was appropriating marriage in their own ways for their own purposes.

This case illustrates how, despite a contested history, there have long been same-sex couples, who not only have claimed the right to marry, but did so on their own terms and were willing to challenge some of marriage’s traditional norms, like sexual exclusivity.

Ferguson even hinted at a more radical proposition. “The participation of several clerics strongly suggests that some members of the church at the time thought that same-sex marriages were or should be possible,” he wrote.

Ferguson said that it’s important to recognize “that there might have been a variety of ideas and attitudes among the group, so I argue that the marriages had not one, but multiple, motivations and meanings.”

“As a result, different aspects of their story have the potential to speak differently to individual men and women today – both to those committed to the ‘normalization’ of same-sex relationships and to queers and critics who want to celebrate and explore alternative relational paradigms,” Ferguson wrote. t

‘Gaymer’ night reaches out to young black GBTs

by David-Elijah Nahmod

Q

ueer African-American young men and their friends clearly enjoyed themselves at the first black-oriented Gaymer night, held recently at Strut.

The event was organized by Black Brothers Esteem and DREAAM Project, both programs of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation that cater to black GBTs. Black Brothers Esteem offers a variety of activities to promote sexual health and well-being among black gay, bisexual, and transgender men.

DREAAM (Determined to Respect and Encourage AfricanAmerican Men) is a youth oriented group (18-30) that is funded by SFAF and the Black Initiative Fund, said Traye Turner, a program assistant for both groups and co-host of Gaymer night.

DREEAM also offers a weekly drop-in group every Friday night from 5 to 8 p.m. at Strut, SFAF’s men’s health center in the Castro.

A group of about 50 men of various ages attended the inaugural Gaymer night March 31.

Some played video games, while one group gathered around a table for a game of cards. Others played board games. Music was played

and non-alcoholic beverages were served along with pizza.

Turner, a 25-year-old gay black man, said he came up with the idea for the game night as a way to get more black men involved.

“The black gay community is underrepresented,” he said. “Gamer nights have been on the rise for years – I wanted to think of something I was familiar with, and that I felt comfortable with to bring people together. People don’t realize that black gayness is a thing, so I wanted to create a safe space. DREAAM Project is about creating safe positive spaces for gay black men.”

Turner emphasized that all were welcome at the inaugural event.

“It makes me happy to see allies,” he said. “There are times when I get emotional looking around the room seeing people having a good time. I want to say ‘you have value.’ There are so many resources here. I feel obligated to do the most I can.”

Darius Bright, 26, who also goes by the name Jovon, spoke to the Bay Area Reporter about why he helped to organize the event. Bright said that he prefers to identify as homosexual.

“Because I don’t fit into the gay culture but I do have sex with men,” he explained. “There are

no spaces for black gay men to talk about and freely share their experiences being black males in San Francisco without meeting resistance to their truths. We chose this building in particular because of a history of blacks being pushed out of the Castro.

We deserve a piece of San Francisco just like everyone else.”

Bright spoke frankly about what he sees as inequality in San Francisco.

“There’s an illusion that because San Francisco is a melting pot that diversity eliminates inequality,” he said. “Gaymer night was organized as a way to provide interaction between AfricanAmerican men and their allies.”

Nicholas Turner, 24, who identifies as bisexual, told the B.A.R. that he was enjoying the evening.

“I love games,” he said. “It’s really significant that gay people today can come together and have fun without having to worry.”

Terence Wilder, 28, is a gay African-American man who serves as DREAAM’s program coordinator. “I want African-Americans and people of color to show pride,” he said.

Wilder spoke to attendees about HIV prevention.

“Blacks are at great risk,” he said.

Erin Lefevre

Daniel Harbin, left, laughs as he plays a game of Cards Against Humanity with Nadji Dawkins during Gaymer night at Strut.

“Look after your sexual health so you can look after others. Knock down the stigma against getting treatment and go get checked out.”

Wilder invited everyone to attend DREAAM Project’s PrEP Rally: The Sparkle Edition Saturday, April 22 from 2 to 7 p.m. at Strut, 470 Castro Street. Like Gaymer night, PrEP Rally will combine HIV prevention education with food and fun. There will be a raffle drawing, a “twerk

battle,” and free incentivized HIV testing.

There will also be performances

by Ms. Lady Bug and DJ Moscone.

More information can be found at the Facebook pages for DREAAM Project and Black Brothers Esteem: https://www.facebook.com/BlackBrothersEsteem/ and https://www.facebook.com/ DREAAMProjectSF/.

Turner said he plans to make Gaymer night a recurring event. t

Community News>>

t LGBT center finds its ‘heart’

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

by Matthew S. Bajko

D

ressed in yellow slacks and a purple bow tie, Gregory Marks was as colorfully attired as the new interior spaces of the renovated San Francisco LGBT Community Center, which debuted a floor-to-ceiling makeover Sunday as it celebrated its 15th anniversary.

Marks, 62, a founder of the upper Market Street facility, served on the original capital committee formed to raise the money to build it. He was among the several hundred people who attended the April 9 ribbon-cutting and rededication ceremony, after which the public got its first look at the $10.3 million renovation.

“For a long time the center was just a rental space,” said Marks, a gay man who volunteered at the center in recent years after losing his job and now works for a local health care foundation. “Now, I feel the heart of the center is here.”

Providing the new pulse for the building are three nonprofits that now have their own dedicated spaces in the building. As the Bay Area Reporter has previously noted, Bay Area Legal Aid’s San Francisco regional office is now ensconced on the entire third floor of the center and has also rented the former ceremonial room on the fourth floor for additional meeting room space.

The Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center on Monday opened its new LGBT primary care clinic on the fourth floor where a warren of small offices rented by local nonprofits had been. (See story, page 1.)

Also on the fourth floor is AGUILAS, short for Assembly of United Gays Impacting Latinos toward Self-Empowerment, which has been a tenant in the building for years. Eduardo Morales, Ph.D., AGUILAS’ executive director, told the B.A.R. that the reduced rent his agency is paying to be in the center has allowed it to continue to operate in the city.

Rick Gerharter

Executive Director Rebecca Rolfe holds oversize scissors and state Senator Scott Wiener holds the ribbon as people cheer at the April 9 reopening of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.

“We looked at other places to go and the cost was prohibitive,” said Morales, who helped cut the ribbon Sunday.

Except for a full-time receptionist, AGUILAS’ other 11 employees, including Morales, are all part-time.

Morales, who also works as a distinguished professor and associate director of the Clinical Ph.D. Program at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, is looking for new revenue sources to expand his agency’s programming.

He noted that he has been able to hire staffers who speak Portuguese in order to provide services to gay Brazilians living in the Bay Area.

And he and his staff are thrilled with their new offices in the building, which they moved into in late fall.

“It’s nice. We get a lot of light, and since we are a small program, it works for us,” said Morales. “If we do expand, we will have to figure out where to get more space.”

Not opened Sunday as scheduled was the new office for Theresa Sparks, Mayor Ed Lee’s senior adviser for transgender initiatives.

The city leased a ground-floor space

in the center that fronts Market Street for Sparks and her two staff members, but they have yet to move in. Sparks told the B.A.R. she now plans to occupy the space by the end of the month.

To many, the repurposed layout of the building makes better use of the center’s 35,000 square feet. New meeting room spaces were built on the second floor, and the entrance and lobby areas were reconfigured to make them more inviting.

“It looks 100 percent better. It is a whole new space,” said Veronika Fimbres, 64, a transgender woman who was a founder of the building.

“It just wasn’t a well-used space.”

The four tenants are expected to provide $500,000 in rental revenue to the center that will cover its operating costs, allowing it for the first time to be financially sustainable.

Thus, center officials will be able to use all of the donations they receive for programs and new initiatives.

“The transformation on the outside is nothing like the transformation on the inside,” said Rafael Mandelman, a gay attorney who in June will be stepping down as president of the LGBT center’s board. t

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Woman in hate crime case convicted of criminal threats

by Seth Hemmelgarn

J

urors in San Francisco have convicted a bisexual woman who’d been accused of yelling “faggots” and threatening several gay men with a knife of criminal threats and other charges, but they hung on hate crime enhancements, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The jury announced its verdict Tuesday morning against Pearly Martin, 30, whose attorney had argued her use of the homophobic slur “doesn’t mean she hates faggots.”

The trial, which took just over a week, stemmed from an April 25, 2016 incident outside Club OMG, a gay bar in the South of Market neighborhood.

During his closing argument Wednesday, April 5, defense attorney John Kaman told jurors that Martin is “part of the community she’s supposedly biased against,” and her use of the word “faggot” during the incident “doesn’t mean she hates faggots. ... It’s just an insult. We should all be familiar with generic insults these days.”

“There’s another world in the Tenderloin,” the neighborhood Martin’s from, and people there speak differently, Kaman said. In that area, he said, “It’s not such a big deal to call somebody a ‘faggot.’”

Kaman also repeatedly brought up Martin’s race.

“When I think of a hate crime, I think of Hitler destroying the

Courtesy SFPD

Pearly Martin

Warsaw ghetto” or the Ku Klux Klan, he said. “I don’t think of a single black woman who happens to be” facing “12 gay people or 12 cross dressers, whatever you want to call them.”

Kaman also said that Martin had been provoked that night, including when one of the people outside Club OMG who was dressed in drag called her the N-word.

He asked jurors to weigh that slur against “faggot.”

“Which word is more charged with emotion? Which word is more insulting?” Kaman said.

He added, “Black people are being killed by the police a whole lot more than gay people, a whole lot more than cross dressers.” If anyone has a reason

to feel unsafe, he said, it’s Martin.

Kaman, who’s a private attorney, said that surveillance footage from Club OMG had showed Martin waving her pocketknife once during the incident, but most of the time she’d kept it by her left leg.

In response to Kaman’s comments last Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Ben Mains told jurors that Martin shouldn’t “get a pass,” and when she’d called the victims “faggots,” she’d clearly targeted them “because of who they are.”

“Saying ‘faggot’ is not just something she throws around,” Mains said. “... She knows exactly what that means.”

He also disputed that Martin had been called the N-word, and he said that being called the slur still wouldn’t have been “justification to take out a knife and threaten to kill” the victims while calling them “the F-word.”

Besides the criminal threats charges and the accompanying useof-a-knife enhancements, jurors also convicted Martin of residential burglary with a hot prowl enhancement, prosecutors said. She was found not guilty on false imprisonment charges.

Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said, “The jury has spoken, and sentencing will follow.”

The maximum amount of time Martin could spend in custody is just over 10 years. Her sentencing is currently set for May 9. t

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<< Business News

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

t

Gay-owned swimwear company seeks designers

by Matthew S. Bajko

H

ave a great idea for a swimsuit design? It could be included in the next collection from Eyegasmic Brand, a gay-owned, Newport Beach-based swimwear line.

Chief Executive Officer and founder Brennon Lamar Jackson is looking to partner with other designers this year as he develops his 2017-2018 collection. Already, more than a dozen people have submitted potential looks, and others can do so through the end of August.

“We will buy their design upfront, and they get a commission on each swimwear we sell,” said Jackson, 30, who lives in Irvine and launched his company three years ago.

He debuted his inaugural collection of swim trunks and briefs last April.

Called the Fruits of Labor, it features brightly colored skimpy briefs ($47) as well as short trunks ($57) adorned in various flowers, such as lilies, orchids, and the bird of paradise.

“I was constantly looking for swimwear and not finding anything I wanted. Either the swim shorts came all the way to my knee, which I don’t like, or were too flamboyant or too cheesy,” said Jackson, who works full time as a senior director of operations for a health care company. “I don’t want to be wearing swimwear with rubber ducks on them or things like that.”

He went live with his website last April, and to get the word out about his brand, he partnered with nonprofit health agencies in Los Angeles; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Miami. Anyone who sought out testing for HIV or STDs was given a code to order the swimwear at a discounted rate, and with each purchase, a percentage of the sale was donated back to the agency.

“There are a lot of male swimwear lines, especially in the Los Angeles area, but we specifically target the LGBT community,” said Jackson, who also tries to hire models from within the LGBT community for his

marketing.

The strategy has paid off, as sales have crossed the six-figure mark, said Jackson, who declined to provide more specific sales figures. His customer base is heavily skewed toward black and Latino men, who account for roughly 70 percent of sales. In the Bay Area, many of his customers live in the East Bay cities of Pittsburg and Richmond.

“Everyone said expect losses for the first three years. But we didn’t,” he said. “A lot of people support us because we support them.”

Around the holidays sales started to spike from overseas customers in Europe, particularly in Spain. This year he has focused his online marketing not only in Europe, but also Australia and Brazil, as each country is known for its beach culture.

“We are trying to get an imprint there before our competitors,” said Jackson.

He now employs a full-time publicist and casting director and is bringing on a brand ambassador “to engage buyers at different trade shows with an eye toward increasing sales,” said Jackson, who is also rebranding his ownership of the company under just his first and middle name.

(For instance, his twitter account is @ brennonlamar.)

No overnight success

His company, however, was no overnight success. After moving to southern California in July 2014 from Houston – his parents worked in the oil industry and moved the family around the globe when he was growing up – Jackson spent $25,000 in savings on his first stab at launching his brand, whose name derives from his hope people will be overjoyed by seeing men in his swimwear.

But he paid an unscrupulous vendor in India to produce his bathing trunk designs, and when the finished

product arrived, it was of such poor quality as to be unsellable. He ended up donating the trunks to local organizations that teach young adults how to swim.

Unable to recoup his money, as the vendor stopped communicating with him, Jackson spent several months depressed.

Then the 2015 beach season arrived, and once again, Jackson hated the swimwear he was finding at stores.

“At that point the flame was reignited, and I decidPhotos: John Knight @fotosmoke ed to pursue it again. I had to get creative,” he recalled, Models wear Eyegasmic Brand swimwear designed by Brennan Lamar Jackson, right. since he was low on cash.

He found a new vendor, this one with an office in (The shirts, with sayings like “Who Dallas, that he could visit, ordered Gone Spank Me Boo?” and “Straight samples of his designs to inspect, used Outta Timeout” cost $24.99 and can those to create a marketing campaign, be ordered at http://www.toogrownand structured a payment plan where tots.com.) he didn’t have to come up with all of The name refers to when people the money at once. And he sought to say certain song lyrics that children address one of the biggest complaints have memorized are too grown up for men voice about their bathing suits, them. that they chafe them.

“I want to embrace it. Those kids “That comes from people using the have character and their own personmesh liner,” said Jackson. “One of the ality, things like that,” explained Jackupgrades I made is our liners are cotson. “I want to embrace their being so ton, just like underwear, so you don’t creative and clever.” have to worry about chafing.”

Jackson also owns the Mogul With the success of his bathing Mindset Academy, a business consuits, Jackson is now expanding the sulting and coaching company that Eyegasmic line to include underwear, “assists people in growing their prowhich should debut in the fall. Going fessional career,” he said. forward, he plans to roll out a new unTo learn more about Eyegasmic derwear collection for fall and winter Brand, visit https://www.eyegasmicand new swimwear designs for spring brand.com/. and summer.

For details on how to submit de“I am also looking at expanding signs for the next bathing suit colinto athletic wear, but I am not sure lection, visit https://www.eyegasmicyet because that market is so satubrand.com/artistdesign/. rated,” he said.

Honor roll This month Jackson, who has an Michael Chertok, president of 11-year-old son who is currently livCongregation Sha’ar Zahav, the ing with his parents in Texas due to his LGBT synagogue in San Francisco, often traveling for work, launched his has joined the Silicon Valley Commuown line of children’s T-shirts. They nity Foundation as its vice president feature different quotes and memes of donor experience and engagement. under the name Too Grown Tots.

A journalist’s journey

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

E

very spring, for the last eight years, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, hosts a convening of LGBT journalists. The event, sponsored by the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and the Arcus Foundation, brings together some 75 or so journalists from across the country, representing both independent and mainstream media voices.

For the last couple of years, I have been one of those voices.

The event is distinctly different from NLGJA’s more public convention in two very specific ways. For one, it is an invitation-only affair. Everyone in attendance is handpicked for the event.

Secondly, the convening is hyperfocused, consisting of two long days of presenters and panels. The presentations always cover a wide gamut of topics, though it became clear that this year had some distinct similarities between the presentations this time.

First off, much more of the content this year focused on issues near and dear to my heart: issues revolving around trans and non-binary people.

This was refreshing, as I have felt a lack of trans-focused content at convenings past, usually getting more out of stolen moments with other trans attendees and presenters.

More importantly, the presentations that included or focused on gender-related content were not simple 101s. There were discussions on covering transgender people of

Michael Nugent

The Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida still carries much emotion nearly a year after the mass shooting there killed 49 people

color, on issues with established media narratives surrounding transgender people, and an in-depth discussion on effectively covering non-binary issues in the media.

I feel it also worth noting that trans and non-binary presenters were not segregated solely on identity-focused presentations.

Second was an age-old issue in journalism: objectivity. In the era of the Trump administration and the many ways it is attempting to roll back rights gains for LGBTQ individuals, it has become even trickier to straddle the line between activist and journalist. This began with our very

first presentation, titled “Objectivity is Dead,” and came up several other times throughout both days.

Of course, this was an even bigger issue given where the convening was held this year. It was a deliberate choice of organizers, who usually hold the event in the northeast United States, to hold this year’s conference in Orlando, Florida. It was just last June that 49 LGBTQ and allied people were slaughtered at the Pulse nightclub on Latin night. It was the deadliest mass shooting of LGBTQ people in the history of the United States, and the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman.

The presentations on the second morning brought this home, with members of the media who reported on the shooting discussing their experience covering Pulse while fearing for family and friends, and a solo presentation by Ricardo Negon-Almodovar, a survivor of the massacre.

Saturday night, after our last presentation and before the closing dinner, we visited Pulse, still closed and decorated with personal memorials from across the world. The site, alongside a fairly busy road away from the tourist crowds elsewhere in Orlando, appears lost in time, with the various makeshift memorials set up in Pulse’s parking lot undamaged by passersby or weather. The area feels

appropriately somber and sacred, in stark contrast to the bright rainbow banners covering the chain link fence separating the lot from the nightclub itself. You don’t leave the site unmoved.

The convening and all these themes also came together in an unexpected way in the midst of the first day’s program. The Rosen Center – the hotel that hosted the convening – had marked one of the restrooms nearest our meeting area as an all-gender facility. This led to plenty of opportunities to gauge the reactions of other guests to such a rebranding. I am happy to report that the all-gender restroom was viewed positively.

Except for one incident.

The hotel had many other events going on, including weddings, a pet convention across the street, several spring break groups, and a large church convention just down the hall from the restrooms.

One of the folks from the church group decided to play potty policeman, cornering a non-transgender woman leaving the all-gender restroom, shouting his favorite verses from the Bible he was waving around. Reports were that this man not only verbally assaulted her, but his gesticulations led to her being struck by his holy book, too.

The hotel staff reacted, adding

He started in his new job March 27, having left Digital Divide Data, which he co-founded and had served as board chair and as chief development officer; it works to find transitional employment in the tech sector for youth from poor families in Southeast Asia and East Africa, as well as for veterans and military spouses in the United States.

Having recently stepped down as CEO of the California CASA Association – CASA being short for Court Appointed Special Advocates for children – John Lipp is now the acting director of the Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter, or FAAS. The longtime advocate for animals at one time was president and CEO of Pets Are Wonderful Support, which assists people living with HIV/AIDS and other diseases in taking care of their pets. t Got a tip on LGBT business news?

Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8298836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

security outside the restroom, as well as another sign directing people to facilities on the level above.

“There are people who apparently can’t control their behavior,” said a representative of the Rosen Center.

“We are here to make sure that we are protecting you, and I have directed our security staff to stand there the entire time you are here.”

As I mentioned, this was not my first such convening, though this was clearly the best one I’ve been to. As an opinion columnist with a long history of transgender activism, the issue of objectivity is slightly different from many of my compatriots in the news department, but I am nevertheless tasked with reporting facts in my work.

Likewise, the trans-related content was of value for me not only to help hone my own writing, but was also good to view on a meta level. The trans community is not what it once was, and it is not stuck in tired tropes. We’re at a different level, and the presentations echoed this. It was refreshing to see this in action, and see that NLGJA and those who put together the program for this year’s convening understand that.

I am honored to have been a part of the event, and even more proud to see those in attendance welcoming trans issues so strongly. We should see more of this. t Gwen Smith salutes her #LGBTMedia17 associates. You can find her at www.gwensmith.com

t International News>>

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

LGBT concentration camps reported in Chechnya

by Heather Cassell

T

wo gay men who apparently escaped from concentrationstyle prisons in Chechnya, where hundreds of men accused of being gay have been detained, tortured, or killed, are speaking out about their experience.

Last week news of mass arrests

by Chechen government officials exploded in headlines around the world and human rights officials confirmed the horrifying media reports. Since then, a couple of former detainees are speaking out to human rights groups and the media.

Novaya Gazeta reporters Elena Milashina and Irinia Gordiyenko, who broke the news, said that the Chechen authorities’ goal was “the complete cleansing of Chechnya from men of non-traditional sexual orientation,” either by death or being forced to leave the republic, according to UpNorth, an Englishlanguage news site serving the Nordic and Baltic Sea region.

This is the first time since World War II that prison camps have been established where LGBTs have been one of the targeted communities, noted some media outlets.

Chechnya is an autonomous, conservative Muslim-majority, and highly homophobic region of Russia led by Ramzan Kadyrov, who’s a former member of the Chechen independence movement and is backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin signed the so-called antihomosexuality propaganda act in 2013, which inspired copycat laws in

Google Maps

The site of an alleged gay internment camp at Argun, a former military commandant’s office in Chechnya

other former Soviet and anti-LGBT countries.

Kadyrov and officials of his government denied the existence of LGBT people in Chechnya and stated gay people would be killed by their families if discovered. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told ABC News that officials were unsure “to what extent the information was true,” adding that it wasn’t the Kremlin’s role to investigate.

Gay escapees from the region, who didn’t want to be identified because of safety concerns, told reporters that there are at least two secret prisons in Argun and Tsotsi-Yurt Village where gay men and drug addicts are being held.

The roundup of individuals perceived to be a “problem” started in December 2016, the men told Svoboda

Ratio Station, reported Crime Russia.

The Argun prison is apparently located in a former military commandant’s office, reported the media outlet.

The two men said that the arrests happened in two waves; one in December and the second started in February of this year. Authorities seized the men’s phones, where they found names of other men and tortured the men for names of other men.

Authorities rounded up the men in their homes, workplaces, and in online and social media stings, they said.

It is unclear how many men may have actually been killed.

Last week there were reports that at least three men were killed during

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<< Community News

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Meeting set for LGBTQ cultural strategy compiled by Cynthia Laird

A

community forum will be held Tuesday, April 18 to discuss the city’s plans for preserving and promoting LGBTQ cultural heritage.

The city recently launched task force to work on the matter, and it will identify priorities, propose legislation, and recommend policy responses.

Tuesday’s forum, to be held from 7 to 9 p.m. at the GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th Street, will enable residents to provide feedback to the work being done on the LGBTQ cultural heritage strategy.

There is no cost to attend.

Tenderloin Stations of the Cross

Father River Sims of Temenos Catholic Worker will again hold a Tenderloin Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, April 14 from noon to 2 p.m.

This year’s theme is “A Place of Grace.” Participants should meet outside San Francisco City Hall at

Easter egg hunt in San Leandro

The San Leandro Improvement Association and the Community Impact Lab will host their first Easter egg hunt Saturday, April 15 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the historic Casa Peralta grounds, 384 W. Estudillo Avenue, in downtown San Leandro.

“To bring a little springtime cheer to downtown San Leandro, the San Leandro Improvement Association wanted to create a family-friendly event that invites the community to bring their families to our downtown and enjoy the season, and with

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Celebrating our Sexuality and Love as Gifts of God Liturgy & Social: Every Sunday 5pm First Sunday Movie Night Second Sunday Potluck Supper Third Wednesday Faith Sharing Group 1329 Seventh Avenue † info@dignitysanfrancisco.org Follow us on Facebook!

Harvey Milk via SF History Center via Curbed SF

Drag queens posed at the 1976 Gay Pride Parade.

the assistance of the Community Impact Lab, we are able to do this,” SLIA President Gordon Galvan said in a news release. “The ‘Egg Hunt at the Casa’ gives families a safe place to do an egg hunt, all while enjoying the historic Casa Peralta grounds in full bloom and decked out in spring decor.”

There is no cost for the event, though kids are encouraged to bring their own baskets. There will be an egg hunt at 11:15 a.m. for children ages 3 and under; and one at 11:45 a.m. for children ages 4 and up.

In addition to the egg hunt, festivities will include face painting, music, story time, and a petting zoo.

For more information, visit www.downtownsanleandro.com.

Legal

holds

SF

Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund will hold its San Francisco Soiree Friday, April 21 from 6 to 11 p.m. at the Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason Street.

The organization’s San Francisco Leadership Council is organizing the benefit, which will include an evening of cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Funds raised will go to support Lambda Legal’s ongoing work for LGBT people and people living with HIV. The group will honor California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and feature Susan Sommer, Lambda Legal’s associate legal director and director of constitutional litigation.

Tickets are $350 and can be purchased at http://www.lambdalegal. org/sfsoiree.

Art fair and fundraiser

Over 50 local artists will be selling their work at Art Attack SF’s new gallery and online store Friday, April 21 through Sunday, April 23 at 2358 Market Street.

The weekend begins with a VIP preview party Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday the art show is open to the public from noon to 7 p.m.

Organizers said that 50 percent of all proceeds will be donated to Kids and Art to pay volunteer artist stipends.

san francisco

Columbariu M Funeral Home and

formerly the Neptune Society

We’ve expanded our services and kept the spirit and tradition.

Art pieces will include impressionist paintings, glass sculptures, and film photographs featuring the themes of hope, resistance, and resilience.

To view and purchase art before public access, email events@kidsandart.org.

FrontRunners to hold 5K clinic

Ahead of the San Francisco FrontRunners annual Pride Run, a 5K race held in June, the group will be starting its Couch to 5K program in an effort to get non-runners off the couch and into their first 5K race.

Gary Pfitzer, secretary of the San Francisco FrontRunners, said that club members will serve as volunteer coaches in the nineweek program, which starts Saturday, April 22. Couch to 5K is a mobile app but FrontRunners will be using coaches to meet with participants in person and guide them through the training program for extra support and camaraderie, Pfitzer wrote in an email.

Coaches are expected to meet with participants two or three times a week. Couch to 5K uses a gentle combination of walking, jogging, and running to build up strength; the idea is that an enjoyment of running is instilled and it doesn’t ever seem like a grind.

See page 14 >>

Queer LifeSpace announces leadership change

by Heather Cassell

THIS IS THE

T

here’s been a leadership change at Queer LifeSpace, a nonprofit counseling agency in the Castro.

Nancy Heilner, the cofounding executive director, has moved back to New Orleans, the agency announced in its March newsletter.

The mental health organization’s new leader is Sarah Soul.

Heilner relocated to the Big Easy, where she lived before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2001, to return to private practice alongside a group of lesbian therapists, she told the Bay Area Reporter.

Soul, 40, who identifies as queer, was mentored by Heilner, and also worked alongside her for six weeks before her departure. Soul took the reins March 1. Heilner will continue advising from Louisiana, she said.

Heilner called Queer LifeSpace the “highlight of my career,” and said that the decision was difficult.

“The thought of leaving Queer LifeSpace and my colleagues was extremely difficult to consider. But I know Queer LifeSpace is in a good place,” said Heilner.

She noted that the organization has developed a reputation for providing quality mental health care and an “excellent” training program for future therapists.

“I know that won’t change,” she said.

Queer LifeSpace Executive Director Sarah Soul

Legacy of good mental health

Heilner, 61, founded the LGBT mental health care organization in 2011 with three of her colleagues: Chris Holleran, Stacey Rodgers, and Joe Voors. All were mental health and substance abuse therapists at New Leaf: Services for Our Community, a mental health organization that folded in 2010.

After New Leaf closed, the therapists first responded to the void of LGBT mental health services by opening the San Francisco Therapy Collective, a for-profit

counseling service.

It specializes in trans-affirming therapy, substance abuse issues, and trauma recovery.

However, SFTC didn’t resolve the dearth of mental health services for low-income clients. Other agencies, such as UCSF’s Alliance Health Project and Lyon-Martin Health Services absorbed some of these services while LGBT seniors organization Openhouse took up the services for older LGBTs. The therapists with SFTC started Queer LifeSpace next door. It started with $25,000 in seed money provided by the collective and an estimated $20,000 in in-kind donations, with a goal to provide individual, group, and couples counseling as well as integrated mental health and substance abuse services, Heilner told the B.A.R. at the time.

The organization’s current annual operating budget is $208,000, according to Heilner and Soul.

Soul’s salary for the executive director position is $12,000 annually, which is $1,000 less than Heilner, according to the nonprofit’s 2014 Form 990.

The proximity made it easier for Heilner, Holleran, Rodgers, and Voors to juggle operating both businesses.

It was a schedule Heilner maintained for six years. During that See page 14 >>

Obituaries >>

Call Robert Hasty

(415) 771-0717

One Loraine Court between Stanyan & Arguello FD 1306

Lambda Soiree

Polk and McAllister streets. The walk is meant to remember that “Christ is crucified daily in our midst in the suffering of those who have no home, health insurance, food, or living wage,” Sims said in a news release. “We are all responsible for each other.”

San Franciscans Against the Death Penalty is also sponsoring the walk.

t

COA 660

Nita Platt September 2, 1947 – March 11, 2017 Nita Platt passed away peacefully Saturday, March 11, 2017 after a long illness, surrounded by family and loving friends. Born September 2, 1947 in Boston, she is survived by her brother,

Allen Platt; nieces; nephews; and former domestic partner, Ida Red. Nita was an active member of the Bay Area LGBT community, involved in Older Lesbians Organizing for Change, Project Open Hand, the former New Leaf Outreach to Elders, and Openhouse.

Living in Sonoma County the last eight years, she volunteered with peer counseling at the Sebastopol Senior Center, the OUTWatch Film Festival in Sebastopol and the gay-friendly Sebastopol Documentary

Film Festival at Rialto, and was proud to participate in the National Conference of Lesbians of Color. Her energy and vitality were contagious. She always encouraged everyone she met to live their life to the fullest, becoming a charismatic friend to many, who will miss her greatly.

A memorial service will be held Sunday, April 23, from 2 to 5 p.m. at Valle Vista Senior Subdivision Clubhouse, 221 Westgate Circle, Santa Rosa, CA. Please RSVP to ninare2@yahoo.com.

t

Community News>>

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

Tax March and Feinstein town hall coming up

by Liz Highleyman

M

ajor news last week included a U.S. missile strike in Syria and the swearing in of Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s pick for the U.S. Supreme Court. Events in the coming week will include the national Tax March and an alt-right rally and counterprotest in Berkeley Saturday, April 15, and Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (DCalifornia) town hall next week.

The April 6 missile strike came in retaliation for a nerve gas attack on civilians in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun two days earlier. The Trump administration blamed the attack on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; the Assad government and its Russian allies have denied the accusation.

As military interventions often do, the missile strike united most Republican and Democratic legislators behind the president. Dissent came from the left and from the nationalist alt-right, both opposed – from different angles – the U.S. interfering in countries overseas while problems remain unaddressed at home.

Several dozen activists protested the strike April 7 at the Powell Street cable car turnaround, a traditional gathering spot for “day after” demonstrations. The action was called by the Answer Coalition, a self-described anti-imperialist group that organizes antiwar protests.

Feinstein town hall

Feinstein announced this week that she will hold rare town hall meetings Monday, April 17 in San Francisco and April 20 in Los Angeles.

A news release from Feinstein’s office said little about the content of the meeting, but town hall gatherings are typically opportunities for constituents to share their concerns with their elected representatives.

“As far as I can tell, Feinstein has never held a genuine town hall during her tenure as U.S. senator,” gay longtime transparency advocate Michael Petrelis told the Bay Area Reporter.

“I believe she’s avoided town halls because too many political animals have sucked up to her over the years, while average voters – until Trump’s election and inauguration – felt their duty as citizens was met when they cast ballots on election day and saw no need to question Feinstein in public forums,” said Petrelis, who plans to attend the meeting. “Direct democracy requires regular town halls not only with our

Rick Gerharter

Senator Dianne Feinstein

local, state and federal elected officials, but also with their aides.”

The San Francisco town hall – scheduled to last only an hour – will take place at 11 a.m. at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center, 2850 19th Avenue. Free tickets are required, available online at https://www.eventbrite. com/e/san-francisco-town-hallwith-senator-dianne-feinstein-tickets-33503512909. No protest signs will be permitted inside.

Feinstein, 83, is up for re-election next year, and while she hasn’t officially announced, early signs point to her running for a sixth, six-year term. Recent polls have seen Feinstein’s support dip, though she remains popular in the state.

A survey by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found that 48 percent of voters thought Feinstein’s running would be “a good thing for California,” but support for Feinstein slipped when voters were reminded that she will be 84 next year, with 62 percent saying another Feinstein campaign would be bad for the state, the Mercury News reported.

The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters in English and Spanish March 13-20 Feinstein has served in the Senate since winning election in 1992.

Tax March and other events

The next big national protest will be the April 15 Tax March. Originally envisioned as a demand for Trump to release his income tax returns, the event has expanded to call for a fairer tax system and oppose tax cuts for the wealthy, according to Our Revolution, a group that grew out of the Bernie Sanders campaign that aims to support a new generation of progressive leaders.

The San Francisco event will begin

Gorsuch takes seat on Supreme Court

with a rally at Civic Center starting at 1 p.m., followed by a march down Market Street. Similar marches will take place in Washington, D.C. and cities across the country. The San Francisco march is expected to be sizeable – perhaps the largest local protest since the post-inauguration Women’s March – with more than 9,000 people indicating they will attend on the event’s Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/events/644516582398449).

Also on April 15, Trump supporters and alt-right activists will hold a Patriot’s Day free speech rally in Berkeley, which will be met with an anti-fascist counterprotest, similar to the clash that took place at a proTrump rally in early March.

The rally, sponsored by the Liberty Revival Alliance, will feature popular alt-right speakers. Members of the Oath Keepers (a conservative organization of current and former members of the military and law enforcement) and a group called 2 Million Bikers have said they will provide security, according to a report in the East Bay Express.

The rally is scheduled for noon at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in downtown Berkeley. In response, Bay Area anti-fascists are hosting a “bloc party and cookout” starting at 10 a.m. at the same location. The weekly Berkeley farmers market has been canceled for the day, reportedly for the first time ever.

“These fascists are coming to our backyard in an attempt to scare us off the streets and they hope to build on this success,” the Bay Area Committee Against Fascism wrote on the East Bay IndyMedia website. “What we do, or do not do, on the 15th will have ramifications across the country.”

On Tuesday, April 18, San Francisco activists are planning a vigil and protest against the reported torture and killing of gay men in Chechnya.

The protest will start at 7 p.m. at the Russian Consulate, 2790 Green Street. (https://www.facebook.com/ events/234814540326817/.)

Recent news reports allege that as many as 100 gay men have been rounded up and sent to detention centers, where they have been beaten and some have been killed. A spokesman for head of state Ramzan Kadyrov denied the reports, saying there are no gay men in the mostly Muslim

Russia-aligned republic.

Also on April 18, local environmentalists and other oil pipeline opponents will hold a protest as part of a week of action calling for defunding the Keystone XL pipeline, which Trump recently approved after years of contentious debate. The march will start at Justin Herman Plaza at 3:30 p.m., stop at banks along Market Street that are involved in funding the pipeline, and end at the Board of Supervisors meeting

at City Hall. (https://www.facebook. com/events/752458551595649/.)

Finally, this year’s Easter party in the park Sunday, April 16, put on by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, will have a more political edge than usual. In addition to the regular lineup of drag queens and Hunky Jesus contestants, the event promises a “Trump exorcism.” The party starts at noon at Hellman Hollow in Golden Gate Park. t

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<< Community News

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

<<

LGBT health clinic

From page 1

health home for the LGBTQ community and their families. So API Wellness Center is here to fix that,” said Lance Toma, the chief executive officer of API Wellness, at an opening ceremony for the new clinic Sunday, April 9. “This is the first health home created by and for the LGBTQ community.”

The agency is comparing its clinic, which opened to patients Monday, April 10 on the fourth floor of the LGBT center, with its counterparts in other major cities like Howard Brown Health (Chicago), CallenLorde (New York City), Los Angeles LGBT Center (LA), Mazzoni Center (Philadelphia), and Fenway Health (Boston).

“Our health needs have gone unaddressed far too long,” said Dr. Tri Do, chief medical officer of API Wellness.

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Former judge

From page 1

for women convicted of stealing.

When asked their marital status, Cordell responded, “We already did that,” referring to previous marriages to men, where each woman had two children and, subsequently, five grandchildren.

Her Hollywood gig began in 2015, when Cordell, just settling into retirement, got an unexpected email from a talent agency, claiming it was looking for candidates to star in an upcoming television show.

After skimming the email, Cordell said she “was ready to delete it immediately,” unsure if it was legitimate and, if it was, whether she was even interested.

But Keller encouraged her to follow up. “It could be an interesting opportunity,” Cordell recalled Keller saying. “Now that you’re retired, you have time” for projects that wouldn’t have been possible while she was working.

During a lengthy series of back and forth emails, Cordell learned that the program producers were looking for someone seasoned and who could control the courtroom. Cordell said she thought, “I can do that.”

<<

News Briefs

From page 12

“We’re hoping that out of this effort, new runners are born,” Pfitzer wrote.

Interested people can email Pfitzer at secretary@sffr.org.

Out and Equal global fellowship program

Out and Equal Workplace Advocates has announced it will launch its 2017 Global Fellowship Program this fall and interested people are encouraged to apply.

The intensive five-week

<<

Queer LifeSpace

From page 12

period QLS began serving about 200 clients and launched programs – including a therapist training program, she told the B.A.R. at the time. She also headed up QLS and the therapy collective’s relocation from its original space, which the San Francisco AIDS Foundation claimed for its Strut men’s health center, to its current location at 2275 Market Street after a bitter battle with SFAF. It was very important to Heilner and her team at Queer LifeSpace that it stay in the “gayborhood.”

“I believe that having a sense of community, a place that feels safe, a connection to others that share one’s struggles will be more

t

The new health center offers comprehensive primary medical care, prenatal care, and full sexual health services including PrEP and PEP provision. It will also provide a range of health care services for transgender patients.

Women will be able to access a host of family planning services, from birth control to the morning after pill.

Through API Wellness Center’s partnership with the University of San Francisco’s School of Nursing and Health Professions, the clinic is also providing mental health services for clients. It plans to add group counseling sessions as the need arises.

The clinic accepts private medical insurance, such as Anthem and Aetna, as well as the SF Health Plan, Medi-Cal, and Medicare. It is pricing its services on a sliding scale, though will not turn anyone away if they cannot pay.

For those buying health insurance through Covered California, the state health exchange formed by the federal Affordable Care Act, they can choose the API Wellness clinic as their primary care provider.

“We know LGBTQ people face significant health disparities and are suffering at a higher rate relative to our straight counterparts. We are proud to be on the ground, doing this work,” said Do, who trained at Fenway Health.

As it ramps up seeing patients, the API Wellness clinic will slowly increase its days of operation. It is beginning with Mondays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and will also be open Tuesdays as of April 25. The clinic will remain closed on Wednesdays but later this spring will open on Thursdays and Fridays.

“We want to start off slow,” said Carlos Bermudez, a nurse practitioner and director of nursing for both API Wellness’ clinic in the center

as well as its clinic in its Polk Street building.

The new clinic has a reception and waiting area, three exam rooms, a lab for blood work, counseling rooms, and a back area for staff.

“It is going to be a great center for LGBT people and for people of color to get primary care services,” predicted Bermudez, a gay man who started working at API Wellness eight years ago and returned six months ago after finishing nursing school.

For the past several years API Wellness Center has been expanding its health care services. In 2015 its Polk Street clinic was designated a Federally Qualified Health Center and was rebuilt as the agency ramped up its capacity to treat more patients.

The satellite clinic in the LGBT center on upper Market Street marks the first time that comprehensive health services are being

offered inside the LGBT center, part of a transformation of the facility that was unveiled to the public on Sunday. No longer largely a renter of meeting room space, the center has leased out two of its four floors to three local nonprofits that offer legal services and HIV prevention geared toward the Latino community in addition to the new health clinic.

“This center is transformed, and API Wellness is so proud to be a part of that future so the health care needs of our community are taken care of,” said Toma.

District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, a gay man who is HIV positive and has long been an advocate around LGBT health issues, said he is “so excited” to welcome an API Wellness clinic to his district.

“It is so thrilling to me you guys have spread from the Tenderloin to here,” Sheehy said at the opening ceremony Sunday. t

During the final interview, which was supposed to last 20 minutes but ran more than an hour and a half, Cordell was asked “why she should be the judge” on the new program.

She responded, “Because I have white teeth and good posture,” but then broached what she feared might be a deal killer.

“You need to know that I’m gay,” Cordell told the interviewer.

Cordell recalled he responded, “That’s great,” surprising her.

“Just five or 10 years ago, being gay might’ve been an issue,” she said.

Several months later, when Cordell learned she was offered the job – over 19 other competing judges – she needed to think about it.

She spoke with the show’s producers “to make sure they weren’t doing anything silly,” she explained.

Once reassured, Cordell hired an entertainment attorney to negotiate her contract, and things got rolling.

Cordell also pointed out that, unlike other courtroom TV programs, this one goes “well beyond” small claims cases.

Cordell said she liked the producers’ approach to using “real cases” that illustrated some of the current hot button issues in society. “Not that landlord tenant cases” and other similar disputes common on other courtroom reality shows

“aren’t important too, but that’s not what this is all about.”

At the very least, said Cordell, she hopes viewers “will get involved” with the judicial process.

“Next time they are called to jury duty, I’m hoping they may be more likely to want to serve,” she said.

The producers selected the cases from those already in court, with the parties agreeing to fire their previous attorneys and accept the litigators provided by the program.

that reviewed operations of the San Francisco Police Department.

Cordell also chaired a task force on racial discrimination at San Jose State University, following a racial bullying incident involving an African-American student.

Given these high-profile appointments, Cordell was a natural for reporters and media producers looking for an articulate spokeswoman for comments about law enforcement, incarceration, and racial discrimination, leading to appearances as an on-camera legal analyst for CBS. Cordell has been a repeat guest at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club events (three times in the past year alone) and has also interviewed public figures before live audiences, including rapper Talib Kweli, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, New York Times columnist David Brooks, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, lesbian tennis star Billie Jean King, and Professor Anita Hill.

Following her 1974 graduation from Stanford Law School, Cordell became the first lawyer to open a practice in poverty-ridden East Palo Alto. In 1978, she was appointed assistant dean for student affairs at Stanford Law School, where she implemented a successful minority admissions program.

After 19 years on the bench, Cordell worked at Stanford University as vice provost and special counselor to the president for campus relations. In 2004, she ran a successful grassroots campaign (without accepting any monetary donations) for a four-year term on the Palo Alto City Council.

The future of “You the Jury” depends on ratings, Cordell acknowledged. A spokesperson for Fox Broadcasting Company told the B.A.R. that the estimates for the first program would not be available until after press time.

“Of course I’m hoping for the best,” said Cordell.

Whatever happens, she said, “It’s been a lot of fun” to be a part of the series.

When the first episode aired last Friday, she and Keller were invited to a viewing party at the home of her “longtime friend and mentor” senior U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson, at his home in the East Bay. At the end of the show, “Florence presented me with a faux Emmy Award, which is now next to our TV at home.”

Cordell, a theatre major in college, said she “never imagined anything like this” would be part of her career.

“But,” she said, “it did and who knows where it might lead next?”t

leadership development program is for visiting fellows from outside the U.S. Its goal is to inspire and empower global advocates to become leaders in LGBT workplace equality in their countries of origin.

The program will take place from September 10 to October 14. Fellows will spend several weeks at Out and Equal’s headquarters in San Francisco and culminates in participants attending the organization’s annual summit, where they can network with corporate professionals in diversity and inclusion from around the world.

In a news release, Out and

Equal said it is looking for emerging leaders from nonprofits and non-governmental organizations worldwide.

Interested people can apply by visiting http://outandequal.org/ global-fellowship-program/. The deadline is May 1.

The Zamora scholarships is a program of the National AIDS Memorial Grove and recognizes, supports, and encourages the educational efforts of young people committed to the fight against HIV/AIDS. The scholarships are named in honor of Zamora, an AIDS educator and television personality who died more than 20 years ago from an AIDS-related illness.

The scholarship program is funded primarily through grants provided by Wells Fargo, Gilead, and UnitedHealthcare.

Scholarship applications are

being accepted through May 1 and can be downloaded from the grove’s website, http://www.aidsmemorial.org. Scholarships will be awarded in August and range from $2,500 to $5,000.

The program is open to all current high school seniors, and college freshmen, sophomores, and juniors (ages 27 and under) who demonstrate an active commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS and taking on roles of public service and leadership.

Questions can be directed to Matt Kennedy at (415) 765-0446 or mkennedy@aidsmemorial.org. t

transgender clients, said Heilner and Soul.

Additionally, Soul shares ownership of her family’s farm in the Central San Joaquin Valley, she said.

Soul is passionate about Queer LifeSpace’s mission and vision.

“I have poured my heart and soul into QLS and watched it be built from the ground up. I want to see it expand and grow, especially during these turbulent political times,” said Soul. “Our community is facing unprecedented vitriol and hate. It is my goal to grow and expand QLS to provide a safe space to heal from the daily micro and macro aggressions we face.”

To proactively tackle the current challenging environment, Soul plans to be out and about in the community, building

coalitions and partnerships and raising the money needed to provide programs to meet the community’s needs, she said.

One program Soul is excited about launching is the client coalition/committee, she said, explaining that it will help raise visibility and share stories of recovery and hope.

“By having a client coalition of people who have received services with us, I hope to further destigmatize mental health care in our community and give people hope,” she said. t

important than ever with the increasing intolerance that the current administration has encouraged,” said Heilner, who also guided the launch of a number of programs.

Currently, Queer LifeSpace sees approximately 150 clients and supports an estimated 16 counselors, Heilner said. She hopes the organization will continue to provide quality services and increase the programs to meet the community’s needs.

Heilner believes Soul, who was one of Queer LifeSpace’s first interns, will take the organization into an exciting future.

“I was lucky enough to be her clinical supervisor and had the honor of watching her grow into an amazing clinician and advocate for our community,” Heilner said.

Used to TV

Television appearances are nothing new for Cordell, who has been interviewed on dozens of different topics following her election to the bench in 1988, when she became the first female African-American judge in northern California and the first female African-American judge in Santa Clara County. (She was appointed to what was then known as municipal court by then-Governor Jerry Brown in 1982.)

Cordell gained national prominence in 2010 when she was appointed to a five-year term as the independent police auditor for the city of San Jose. She served as chair of the blue ribbon commission that reviewed the conditions in the jails in Santa Clara County, and was a member of the blue ribbon panel

Applications open for Zamora scholarships

The Pedro Zamora Young Leaders Scholarship Program is now accepting applications from students interested in applying for the Fall 2017/Spring 2018 semesters.

Soul never really left Queer LifeSpace. After her internship wrapped up, she continued to remain connected to the organization leading trainings, supervising students, and participating in community events and working part-time at SFTC as she developed her counseling skills, said Heilner and Soul.

“She is as passionate about this work as we are – and for that I am truly grateful,” said Heilner.

New chapter

Soul was a public school teacher for more than a decade before transitioning into a career as a therapist, specializing in treating eating disorders, queer couples, families, and individuals for six years. She’s also worked with

To schedule an appointment at Queer LifeSpace, call the intake line at (415) 358-2000, ext. 302. For more information, visitqueerlifespace.com or sftherapycollective.org.

t <<

Community News>>

Give OUT Day

From page 1

Organizations create their own pages within the website and can then send that link to donors via email or social media.

“Give OUT Day is a perfect fit for organizations, which vary so widely in size and scope, and has been shown especially useful for small and midsize organizations that may not have a development department,” said Francisco Buchting, vice president of grants, programs, and strategic initiatives at Horizons.

For the Leaderboards, organizations are divided into categories based on their budget size: three categories for the National Leaderboard, two for the Southern Leaderboard and two for the Bay Area Leaderboard.

Scoring is based on the total number of unique donors, not the amount given. Doughty emphasized that the primary goal of Give OUT Day is to increase the number of donors.

Bay Area leaders

Three Bay Area nonprofits that took part in the 2016 Give OUT Day and were Leaderboard winners were eager to talk about their experiences.

GSA Network has participated in Give OUT Day from the start and this will be its fifth year. GSA Network is “next generation LGBTQ racial and gender justice organization that empowers and trains queer, trans, and allied youth leaders to advocate ... for safer schools and healthier communities,” according to its website (http://www.gsanetwork.org).

“We’ve had more success in the last few years as we became more wellknown by our donors,” explained Geoffrey Winder, co-executive director. “We are geared to social media and lots of our donors are now on social media. This year we’ll be talking more about specific programs like our QYLTS (Queer Youth Leading the South) Action Camp and TRUTH (Trans and gender non-conforming youth storytelling movement) Campaign, a joint project with the Transgender Law Center.”

Winder said Give OUT Day

<<

Chechnya

From page 11

detainment, but experts at OutRight International suggested that as many as 20 men might have been killed.

The arrests and detainment are another level of harassment of alleged gay men who have purportedly had been blackmailed by authorities for years, according to media reports.

Springing into action

The Russian LGBT Network, one of Russia’s leading LGBT organizations based in St. Petersburg, immediately responded to the crisis by setting up a system to assist queer Russians. Last year, the organization helped one man from the region safely relocate, reported Radio Free Europe. However, this is the largest exodus of gay people from the region that the organization has attempted to aid, reported several human rights organizations.

“We have never before encountered information anywhere in Russia that hundreds of people have been detained, tortured, and even killed,” said Svetlana Zakharova, a spokeswoman

<<

Gorsuch

From page 13

Appeals and his prior writings suggest an unfriendly disposition toward LGBT people. His responses to LGBTrelated questions – in the open Senate confirmation hearing and in written responses afterwards – were so carefully worded they could disguise any open animosity while leaving open a pathway to justify rulings against them.

“Does the 14th Amendment require that states treat gay and lesbian couples equally to heterosexual

provides funding for infrastructure projects and is very helpful in acquiring new donors. People can share their “top 5 list” on social media and publicize other organizations, which their friends may not know about.

GSA Network is planning a number of house parties and some staff and board members will have their own sub-pages within the GSA Network main page, an optional capability of the Give OUT Day platform.

Winder said that last year GSA Network saw the largest number of donors ever.

“Due to the current political environment, we are seeing an increase in concern about LGBTQ youth and that has resulted in an increase in unsolicited donations, particularly for programs that impact young people in schools,” he added.

Asian, Pacific Islander EqualityNorthern California is a small nonprofit that is participating in Give OUT Day for the fourth time and has placed on the Leaderboard every year, which is especially noteworthy as it has only two paid staff.

“We challenge ourselves to lift up as many groups as possible, which feels more resonant than the idea of competition,” said Director Sammie Ablaza Wills. “We especially like that this is a national day of giving coordinated with other LGBTQ organizations.”

Its website (http://www.apiequalitync.org) states that API Equality’s mission is to “increase visibility of our communities (and) through organizing ... to inspire and train leaders, establish intergenerational connections, and document and disseminate our histories.”

“Every year presents an incredible opportunity to connect with our supporters,” said Wills, who stressed that, “60 percent of our budget comes from individual donations so Give OUT Day is especially important for us.” The organization is aiming for 15 to 20 volunteers, each of whom will call their friends, family, and mentors.

Due to the April timing of Give OUT Day (last year it was held in August), Wills said there is an opportunity to talk about API Equality’s summer leadership development

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

Charlie Wagner Charlie Wagner

Transgender Law Center staff hold up the trans flag as they prepare for Give OUT Day. In front, from left are Jack Dunn, Elliott Fukui, Wazi Maret, and Ola Osaze. Behind them are, from left, Charlie Flewelling, Ace Portis, Beatrix McBride, Ian Anderson, Jade Mora, and Rahda Rodriguez.

program, which is how Wills first became involved. Also for the first time, API Equality is planning to livestream video three times on Give OUT Day to showcase what the funds raised will be used for.

“In the current political environment, so many communities are under attack so it’s critical to develop leaders to build alliances to take us through this moment and to a better life. We see Give OUT Day as an opportunity to update our donors on the great work we are doing,” Wills stated. “We see an influx of people wanting to get involved and a new interest in volunteering.”

The Transgender Law Center has been at the top of the Leaderboard for several years and that is a source of pride among TLC supporters and staff, according to Ace Portis, director of development.

TLC celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. It works on changing law “so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of gender identity or

expression,” according to its website (http://www.transgenderlawcenter.org).

“On Give OUT Day, we will try to present the holistic story of TLC, including talking about the work our national organizers are doing, plus highlighting our litigation and policy work. With HB 2 in North Carolina, for example, we saw the power of folks on the ground and created an alliance with SONG (Southerners on New Ground),” Portis said, referring to the anti-trans bathroom law. That law was recently repealed, but the new law in the Tar Heel State prohibits entities from enacting their own anti-LGBT discrimination ordinances and leaves bathroom policy up to state lawmakers.

SONG is a regional queer liberation organization made up of people of color, immigrants, undocumented people, people with disabilities, working class, rural, and small town LGBTQ people in nine Southeastern U.S. states.

Portis indicated that even given the current political environment, TLC has not reacted by shifting its

priorities, but instead developed a new set of standards to highlight the true story of gender-variant people.

“TLC has three guiding themes,” Portis explained, “safety, power, and alignment with other movements, like immigration activists.

“TLC strives to always be an incubator of new thoughts,” she added, “and one example would be bringing attention to what it means to be a gender non-conforming immigrant.

We focus on how to take higher-level ideas and make sure their benefits are reaching the people on the ground.”

Horizon’s Doughty said, “We are seeing all kinds of attacks against our community and many of our organizations are facing likely budget cuts. Our groups will need more funds to cover gaps that these cuts are likely to create.

“Last year 49 states plus Puerto Rico participated in Give OUT Day,”Doughty said. “This year we are hoping to get all 50 states, including Mississippi.” t

for the Russian LGBT Network. “I think this is an unprecedented case.”

The organization has received more than 30 letters from people who were detained during the first two waves of arrests, said Tatiana Vinnichenko, chairperson of the Russian LGBT Network.

Human rights experts speculate that the sudden mass arrest was sparked by locals angered by LGBT activists for taking an anti-gay case to the European Court of Human Rights. Government officials denied a request to host a pride event in the Chechen capital city of Grozny, according to media reports.

Diplomats from the European Union, German Federal Foreign Office, United Kingdom, and the United States, along with international LGBT organizations, called for officials of the Russian government to investigate the allegations of LGBT Russians being detained in internment camps in Chechnya.

“We are deeply disturbed by recent public statements by Chechen authorities that condone and incite violence against LGBTI persons,” said Mark C. Toner, acting spokesman at the State Department, in an April 7 statement.

Toner condemned the persecution of LGBT people. He urged the Russian government to speak out against the detainment, demand release of the “wrongfully detained” individuals, conduct an “independent and credible investigation” into reported claims of the mass arrests, and to “hold any perpetrators responsible.”

Human Rights First’s Shawn Gaylord applauded the State Department’s response to the situation, calling it an “important first step.”

However, he urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to make the situation in Chechnya a key part of his agenda during his meeting this week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.

“The situation on the ground is so horrific that Secretary Tillerson must make this a central part of his agenda when he meets with Minister Lavrov,” Gaylord said in an April 4 statement.

“A failure to do so will provide cover for these abuses to continue.”

Gaylord has been monitoring the situation in Chechnya since the beginning of the year.

Jessica Stern, executive director of OutRight Action International, was more forceful in her condemnation.

“The perpetrators of this malicious campaign must be held accountable for the systematic detention, torture, and killings of innocent men in Chechnya,” said Stern in an April 6 news release. “No government should get away with such wanton human rights violations.”

Responding to the international outcry, Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova also asked the Chechnya Prosecutor General’s office and Public Prosecutor’s office to investigate reports of abduction of LGBT people, reported Crime Russia.

The Russian LGBT Network’s free

hotline within Russia is 8 800 555 73 74 or email kavkaz@lgbtnet.org.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association in Europe has opened a phone line for people to confidentially report human rights violations against LGBT people in Chechnya at +32 2 609 54 10 or info@ilga-europe.org.

Amnesty International, All Out, and Care2.org have launched petitions to urge Russia’s government to investigate and protect its LGBT citizens. To sign the petitions, visit https://go.allout.org/en/a/ chechen-100/?akid=14084.2993523. skNcsA&rd=1&t=1&utm_ campaign=chechen-100&utm_ medium=email&utm_ source=actionsuite, https://www. amnesty.org.uk/actions/stop-abducting-and-killing-gay-men-chechnya, or http://www.thepetitionsite.com/ta keaction/285/275/688/?TAP=1007&c id=causes_petition_postinfo. t

couples? Why or why not?” asked Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) in a written question to Gorsuch.

“In Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court held that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutionally protected right to engage in consensual sexual relations and to marry,” wrote Gorsuch.

Gorsuch’s response was not an answer to Coons’ specific question but simply a paraphrasing of what the Supreme Court held in those two cases.

“Does the 14th Amendment require that states treat transgender

people equally? Why or why not?” asked Coons. Again, Gorsuch found a way not to answer: “This question appears to reference pending or impending cases likely to come before the Supreme Court, and accordingly it would not be proper for me to comment further,” he said. “To do so would risk violating my ethical obligations as a judge, denying litigants the fair and impartial judge to whom they are entitled, and impairing judicial independence by suggesting that a judge is willing to offer promises or previews in return for confirmation.”

Coons pressed on, saying the majority in Obergefell stated, “Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, [the children of same-sex couples] suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser.” The majority, said Coons, rejected “arguments made by campaigns to prohibit same-sex marriage about the purported negative impact of such marriages on children.” And he asked Gorsuch, “When is it appropriate to consider evidence that sheds light about our changing understanding of society?” and “What is the role of

sociology, scientific evidence, and data in the Supreme Court’s analysis?”

Gorsuch was again nonspecific in his response.

“Whether and what sociology, scientific evidence, and data a court should consider are questions that are often contested in litigation,” said Gorsuch. “I am unaware of a global answer to these questions. A judge can only take each case on its facts and in light of applicable law.”t

For more information, visit http:// www.giveoutday.org.

Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at Skype: heather.cassell, or oitwnews@gmail.com.

To read the complete story visit ebar.com

<< Legals

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037519700

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037511800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EYEBROW STAR, 2649A MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PRABHA THAPALIYA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/20/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LIN’S ORIENTAL IMPORTS, 1520 TENNESSEE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed LINS IMPORT CORP (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/17.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/13/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037510100

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037500800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GLIIM, 5214F DIAMOND HGTS BLVD #352, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANDREW STOCKETT CAVALIER. 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 03/13/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CONSULERIS LLC, 101 CALIFORNIA ST #2710, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CONSULERIS LLC (DC). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/11/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/06/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037519000

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037512600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OFFICIAL BIZNESS STUDIO, 2200 CESAR CHAVEZ ST #A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL MORGAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/14/16.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/20/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037517600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CREATIVE LICENSE CONSULTING SERVICES; INNOVATION STATION; CLCS, 183 STATES ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed STEVEN A. KOWALSKI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/17/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037511200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LIPSHTICK PICTURES, 34 6TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SERENA SCHULER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/17.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/13/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037514300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BOOZEPHREAKS, 865 SAN JOSE AVE #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BLAKE TUCKER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037508200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NEW FORMALISM, 1501 LEAVENWORTH ST #7, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WEIPEI CHERNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/09/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/2017.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037506900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OCEAN VIEW SPA, 1632 NORIEGA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed RU HAI LIANG & ZHU MING LIANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/07/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/09/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037517200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BLUE WATER TOWING & AUTO SERVICE, 7490 MISSION ST, COLMA, CA 94014. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BLUE WATER TOWING & AUTO SERVICE INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/16/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/16/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037518100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PARTSMARKET; PARTSMARKET PRIME, 350 TOWNSEND ST #405, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed INTERNET 404 TECHNOLOGIES INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/17/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037513900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FLORE, 2298 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed FOCUS 415 CAPITAL INVESTMENTS GROUP INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOOK FISH CO., 4542 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed HOOK FISH COMPANY LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/15/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037519100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POTRERO NUEVO VENTURES LLC, 1032 IRVING ST #973, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed POTRERO NUEVO VENTURES LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/15/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/20/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036221400

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: OCEAN VIEW SPA, 1632 NORIEGA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by ZHU MING LIANG. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/30/14.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037529400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE UPPER HAND NAIL SPA, 3836 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NGUYET NGUYEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/27/17.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/27/17.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037529200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EBERHART, 1575 TURK ST #308, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NYZEINA EBERHART. 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 03/24/17.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037527800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NOVA LOCKSMITH, 1045 MISSION ST #487, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed AVIAD BRACHA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/24/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/17.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037523700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SMALL BUSINESS ACTION NETWORK, 3547 MISSION ST #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed STEPHANIE HIBBERT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/22/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/22/17.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037521100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MOGADOR MOROCCAN CAFE & CUISINE, 105 VALENCIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ABDELKADER CHENBOD. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/21/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/17.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037521200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TEDDY’S MARKET, 298 TEDDY AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed TAUFIK NAGI MOHSEN & ALI MOSA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/09/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/17.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017

Before the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Magistrate Court

t

C.C.

In the matter of:

1. Karina Abitisian I.D. 311915615 2. Arthur Abitisian I.D. 311915680 Both by their rep. adv. Zeev Braz and\or Yiftach Ibn Ezra Of 3 Nirim St. TLV 67060 Phone: 03-6886565 fax: 03-6886566 The “Plaintiffs”-Vs. -Yelena Fisherman I.D. 304233372 Whose address is: 418 25th Ave. San Francisco, California 94121, United States of America The “Defendant” Remedy essence: winding-up of a real estate partnership; receiver appointment; declaratory And in the matter of: Winding-up of a Real Estate Partnership Claim The honorable court is hereby requested to use its authority and provide an order for the winding-up of the partnership in the residential apartment on 59 Jabotinsky St. Bnei Brak known as parcel 82/15 in plot 7361, by way of its sale to a third party. Also, the honorable court is requested to declare that the Plaintiffs are entitled to receive full consideration of the land sale. In so doing, the honorable court is requested to appoint Plaintiffs rep. as receivers of the rights of the Defendant in the referenced land and authorize them to sign in her name and on her behalf any document and\or statement necessary for the transfer of her rights in the apartment to a third party.

Factual Background 1. The Plaintiffs are spouses, Israeli citizens and residents, who in 1994 or thereabouts immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union.

2. The Defendant too was a new immigrant who immigrated to Israel on those dates, yet she has ceased to be an Israeli resident many years ago, since she left Israel in favor of the Ukraine and then the U.S. 3. Immediately following their arrival in Israel, the Plaintiffs and the Defendant purchased the capitalized lease rights in the referenced residential apartment, so that the Plaintiffs purchased 2/3 of the rights and the Defendant purchased the remaining 1/3.

A copy of the apartment’s registration extract is attached herewith and marked “A”.

4. Transaction amount was 316,890 NIS. 5. In favor of purchasing the apartment and in order to fund it, the parties realized their right as new immigrants and took a mortgage guaranteed loan from the Bank of Jerusalem Mortgages Ltd. in the sum of 300,000 NIS, i.e. funding of more than 90 percent of transaction amount.

A copy of the deed of mortgage is attached herewith and marked “B”.

6. Immediately following the purchase of the abovementioned apartment and since she did not manage to settle in Israel, the Defendant decided to leave the country and moved to the Ukraine.

7. Before leaving the country and in light of her rights in the apartment, the Defendant took several steps aimed at waiving all of her rights in the apartment in favor of the Plaintiffs: 7.1. On October 19th 1994, the Defendant signed a power of attorney, authorizing Plaintiff 1 to take any action in the apartment, including its sale.

A copy of the power of attorney is attached herewith and marked “C”.

7.2. On December 4th 1994, the Defendant signed a waiver instrument, in which she renounced all of her rights in the apartment in favor of Plaintiff 1, provided that Plaintiff 1 bore all of the mortgage payment she owed, according to her relative share.

A copy of the waiver instrument, translated into Hebrew and notarized, is attached herewith and marked “D”.

7.3. On December 18th 1994, the Defendant signed an evidenced will, according to which she bequeathed that following her demise all of her rights in the apartment will be transferred to the Plaintiffs, in equal shares.

A copy of the will is attached herewith and marked “E”.

8. It is further noted that prior to leaving the country, the Defendant borrowed from the Plaintiffs the sum of US$7,000, which she has never repaid them.

9. On February 21st 1995, the Defendant left Israel.

10. Indeed, as of the apartment’s purchase by the parties, for approximately 20 years, the Plaintiffs paid the mortgage on the apartment, out of their joint account, when the Defendant did not pay a single penny.

11. In total, throughout loan years, the Plaintiffs paid the lending bank a sum amounting to approximately 600,000 NIS. 12. On October 21st 2014, the Plaintiffs repaid the remainder of the loan and retired the mortgage on the property.

A copy of the mortgage repayment certificate is attached herewith and marked “F”.

13. The Plaintiffs’ attempts over the years to locate the Defendant in the Ukraine have failed, and despite their investment of great efforts and funds they came up empty handed.

14. Several months ago, the Plaintiffs managed to locate and contact the Defendant, through social media, and learned that she currently resides in San Francisco, California, U.S.A. 15. As part of the contact with the Defendant, the Plaintiffs asked her to sign a new power of attorney for them before the Israeli Consul in California, in lieu of appendix “C” [which expired] so they could realize their right, as they agreed, sell the apartment to a third party and move to a larger apartment, yet she refused to do so.

Plaintiffs Arguments 16. The Plaintiffs argue that the Defendant waived in their favor all of her rights in the referenced apartment, prior to leaving the country and against the Plaintiff ’s undertaking to bear full payment of the loan taken by the parties to purchase the property.

17. That waiver is undisputed and was accompanied by the Defendant’s signature of several documents, unequivocally attesting to that waiver, mainly a special power of attorney in favor of the Plaintiffs, authorizing them to sell her share in the apartment in her name and on her behalf.

18. However, the Defendant remained the owner of rights registered with the Land Registration Bureau, and in the absence of a valid power of attorney the apartment could not be sold to a third party.

19. In this state of affairs, the Plaintiffs are held captive by the Defendant and cannot sell their rights in the apartment and improve their quality of life, as they have been wishing to do for several years, when in reality she has no right to enjoy sale fruits.

20. Therefore, the honorable court is requested to order the winding-up of the partnership in the referenced land, by way of the sale of the rights in it to a third part.

The honorable court is also requested to declare that the Plaintiffs are entitled to receive the full consideration.

To do so, the honorable court is requested to appoint Plaintiffs’ rep. as receiver of the rights in the apartment, to put it up for sale and sell it.

21. The honorable court has material and local jurisdiction to debate the claim, in light of its requested remedy and the location of the referenced property.

Yiftach Ibn Ezra, adv.

Representing the Plaintiffs The Tel Aviv-Yaffo Magistrate Court Motion number: 1 Before the honorable judge Avi Shalev Applicants

1.

2.

Respondent

Karina Abitisian Arthur Abitisian Vs. Yelena Fisherman

Decision Based on motion reasoning and according to my authority under Ordinance 500 of the Civil Procedure Ordinances of 5744-1984, a permit is hereby given for process out of jurisdiction according to the Respondent’s address in the statement of claim. Delivery will be made via registered, verified air mail or personal verified delivery via an international courier. Delivery will include the statement of claim with its appendixes, the subpoena, the motion for a permit for process out of jurisdiction with all it entails, and this decision. All documents will be sent in their original form, as well as in a notarized translation into Russian. The Respondent will file a statement of defense within 90 days of receiving the documents and is authorized to appeal for motion annulment within 45 days. Secretariat will process the decision to Applicants rep.

Given today, Kislev 3rd 5775, November 25th 2014, without parties presence.

Avi Shalev, judge

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037517400

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037499500

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037528700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SLAPADAY, 946 GEARY ST #6, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed DEVON JONES & MICHAEL LANGE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/12/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ROBIN, 620 GOUGH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed VERDE LAGO LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/03/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WILLIAM J TRADING COMPANY, 571 DARIEN WAY, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MATHEW QIU. 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 03/24/17.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037528000

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037524500

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037532500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AJC AUTOBODY, INC, 250 NAPOLEON ST #P, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed AJC AUTOBODY, INC. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ARDIANA, 1781 CHURCH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ARDIANA LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/22/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/22/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PEARL PAINTING, 555 CLAYTON ST #28, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BRENDAN JOHN MEERE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/07/07. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/29/17.

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017

MAR 30, APR 06, 13, 20, 2017

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017

Classified>>

t Legal Notices

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

>>

SUMMONS (FAMILY LAW) SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF VENTURA - NOTICE TO RESPONDENT: JENNIFER IVEY, YOU ARE BEING SUED. PETITIONER’S NAME IS TIMOTHY CENICEROS CASE NO. D369912

You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this Summons and Petition are served on you to file a Response (form FL-120) at the court and have a copy served on the petitioner. A letter, phone call, or court appearance will not protect you.

If you do not file your Response on time, the court may make orders affecting your marriage or domestic partnerships, your property, and custody of your children.

You may be ordered to pay support and attorney fees and costs. For legal advice, contact a lawyer immediately.

Get help finding a lawyer at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courts.ca.gov/selfhelp), at the California Legal Services website (www.lawhelpca.org), or by contacting your local county bar association.

NOTICE – RESTRAINING ORDERS ARE ON PAGE 2: These restraining orders are effective against both spouses or domestic partners until the petition is dismissed, a judgment is entered, or the court makes further orders. They are enforceable anywhere in California by any law enforcement officer who has received or seen a copy of them.

FEE WAIVER: If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the clerk for a fee waiver form. The court may order you to pay back all or part of the fees and costs that the court waived for you or the other party.

1. The name and address of the court are: SUPERIOR COURT COUNTY OF VENTURA, 800 S. VICTORIA AVENUE, VENTURA, CA 93009; PREPARED BY MICHAEL D. PLANET 2. The name, address, and telephone number of petitioner’s attorney, or the petitioner without an attorney, is: TIMOTHY CENICEROS, 257 N. LOMITA, OJAI, CA 93023 213-304-0862 Clerk of the Superior Court by J. LUNA, Deputy.

STANDARD FAMILY LAW RESTRAINING ORDERS: Starting immediately, you and your spouse or domestic partner are restrained from: 1. Removing the minor child or children of the parties, if any, from the state or applying for a new or replacement passport for those minor children without the prior written consent of the other party or an order of the court; 2. Cashing borrowing against, canceling, transferring, disposing of, or changing the beneficiaries of any insurance or other coverage, including life, health, automobile, and disability, held for the benefit of the parties and their minor children; 3. Transferring, encumbering, hypothecating, concealing, or in any way disposing of any property, real or personal, whether community, quasi-community, or separate, without the written consent of the other party or an order of the court, except in the usual course of business or for the necessities of life; and 4. Creating a nonprobate transfer or modifying a nonprobate transfer in the manner that affects the disposition of property subject to the transfer, without the written consent of the other party or an order of the court. Before revocation of a nonprobate transfer can take effect or a right of survivorship to property can be eliminated, notice of the change must be filed and served on the other party.

You must notify each other of any proposed extraordinary expenditures at least five business days prior to incurring these extraordinary expenditures and account to the court for all extraordinary expenditures made after these restraining orders are effective.

However, you may use community property, quasicommunity property, or your own separate property to pay an attorney to help you or to pay court costs.

NOTICE - ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE: Do you or someone in your household need affordable health insurance? If so, you should apply for Covered California. Covered California can help reduce the cost you pay towards high quality affordable health care. For more information, visit www.coveredca.com. Or call Covered California at 1-800-300-1506.

WARNING – IMPORTANT INFORMATION California law provides that, for purposes of division of property upon dissolution of a marriage or domestic partnership or upon legal separation, property acquired by the parties during marriage or domestic partnership in joint form is presumed to be community property. If either party to this action should die before the jointly held community property is divided, the language in the deed that characterizes how title is held (ie: joint tenancy, tenants in common, or community property) will be controlling and not the community property presumption. You should consult your attorney if you want the community property presumption to be written into the recorded title to the property.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037515600

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037517100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GALAXIA’S JANITORIAL SERVICES, 781 MISSOURI ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GALAXIA ZAMUDIO MOCTEZUMA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/15/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JUST THE LITTLE THINGS PHOTOS INC, 601 VAN NESS AVE #E805, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed JUST THE LITTLE THINGS PHOTOS INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/02/16.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/16/17.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037527500

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037531700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MAKASERU SF, 1501 CORTLAND AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EVAN CARTER EISEN. 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 03/24/17.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037526900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CAL PACIFIC SYSTEMS, 1591 HOWARD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HYDRA VENTURES, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/28/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/28/17.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037527400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DR. TIRTHA MENDAKE DC, LAC, 350 TOWNSEND ST #275, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TIRTHA MENDAKE WANIGASEKARA-MOHOTTI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/22/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/23/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: INDIAN PALACE, 2154 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed GHALE FOOD INC (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/23/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/23/17.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037530600

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037510400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ONCA UNDERWEAR, 3864 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MELISA JARAMILLO. 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 03/28/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FRENCH PICNIC PASTRY COMPANY, 2565 3RD ST #308, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BETTER BAKERIES INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/15/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/13/17.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037529600

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037543000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FIXUP GROUP, 1829 28TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VIVIANA ANDREA HURTADO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/27/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/27/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PEDAL, 1770 POST ST #104, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an corporation, and is signed PEDAL CAB AND LIMOUSINE TECHNOLOGY INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/03/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/03/17.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037514600

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035730200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FRESH START CLEANING SERVICES, 107 RUSSIA AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LILLIANA BEATRIS FUNES. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/15/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/15/17.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037528400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EXCEL MAINTENANCE, 1180 4TH ST #305, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94158. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EDGARDO A. GOMEZ CRUZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/24/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/17.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: DANCING OCTOPUS HEALTH & MEDIA, 2137 LOMBARD ST #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94125.

This business was conducted by an individual and signed by CASONDRA MARIE SOBIERALSKI. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/20/14.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036517400 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: JUST THE LITTLE THINGS, 601 VAN NESS AVE #E805, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by JUST THE LITTLE THINGS LLC (CA).

The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/03/15.

APR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2017

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ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-552955

In the matter of the application of: BETTINA K. NEUMANN-BALUUSAT, 2082 QUESADA AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner BETTINA K. NEUMANN-BALUUSAT, is requesting that the name BETTINA K. NEUMANN-BALUUSAT, be changed to BETTINA KIRA NEUMANN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 20th of June 2017 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037523500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: T. PRIOR & COMPANY, 39 WESTGATE DR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed THOMAS PRIOR. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/22/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/22/17.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037550600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VISIONAIR RESOURCES, 438 12TH AVE #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SARAH HIGHT MONTAGUE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/06/17.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/10/17.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037550900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: IRVING STREET PSYCHIC, 2151 IRVING ST #205, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JANET ADAMS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/10/17.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/10/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JACK & UGGZ, 355 SERRANO DR. #6J, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOHN E. OLSON III. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/06/17.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037547400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CJ PACIFIC USA, 1140 REVERE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed WELLSPRING INVESTMENT GROUP (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/06/17.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037542500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOLTRON, 30 NIANTIC AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed ROQUE BARON, MANOLO DAVILA, AHKEEL MESTAYER, CHRISTIAN NAVARRO, ADRIANNA MARRERO OCASIO, DANIEL RIERA, RUBEN SANDOVAL, REMI SPIRO, ARTURO BLANCO VILLEGAS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/31/17.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037545900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 10TH AVE LAUNDRYMAT, 700 10TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed BUD HADDAD & MARIA HADDAD. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/05/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/05/17.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037544800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LAW OFFICE OF ASHISH A. BHATT, 29 IRIS AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ASHISH ASHOK BHATT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/03/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/04/17.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037543600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DUSIT THAI HEALING ARTS, 1618 UNION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KANOKWAN CHEWPANICH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/03/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/03/17.

APR 13, 20, 27, MAY 4, 2017

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Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highest circulation LGBTQ newspaper celebrates

d i r P

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Parade your brand around the largest audience of San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ consumers, during their proudest season of the year.

The Bay Area Reporter, undisputed newspaper of record for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community since 1971, is now accepting space reservations for our June 22 San Francisco Pride edition, our largest issue of the year.

Distributed widely throughout SF and the Bay Area, our annual PRIDE edition offers the most comprehensive coverage, and resources, for the estimated 1 million+ people, locals and tourists alike, who attend the annual parade and celebrations.

PREMIUM POSITIONS DEADLINE*: May 15, 2017 Call Scott Wazlowski, VP Advertising at (415) 829-8937 or email advertising@ebar.com * All premium positions are available on a first come, best served basis.

22

Ballet premiere

Time portal

24

Out &About

Rags to riches

22

O&A

21

Vol. 47 • No.15 • April 13-19, 2017

Rhino Entertainment Co., courtesy of FAMSF

Trippin’ through the Summer of Love

by Sura Wood

W Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley, “Skeleton and Roses,” Grateful Dead, Oxford Circle, Sept. 16 & 17, Avalon Ballroom (1966). Color offset lithograph poster.

ith anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love gripping the populace of a certain age, and setting the hearts of marketing executives aflutter, is it being a killjoy to want to put away the bell bottoms, tie-dye T-shirts, and 1960s nostalgia that go with them once and for all, for good, period? I can already spy the debris about to be hurled my way, but this question weighed heavily on my mind as I contemplated entering the time warp that is The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion and Rock and Roll, a huge, festive show that opened at the de Young Museum last week. But whiling away an hour or two at this extravaganza, which is more entertaining event than art exhibition, was such breezy, escapist fun that it mellowed me out. The 400-plus-object show, mostly drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, is also unapologetically superficial, and that’s cool. I mean, when is the last time you’ve been to a museum that quoted Jerry Garcia?

See page 26

>>

Coming attractions

on 2017-18 stages

by Richard Dodds

Adam Pascal, as Shakespeare, feels threatened by a new theatrical form called musical comedy in Something Rotten!, coming in August as part of SHN’s 2017-18 season.

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

@LGBTSF

@eBARnews

Jeremy Daniel

S

easonal greetings continue, this week with news of 2017-18 productions from two more theatrical presenters: SHN, with a slate of seven touring musicals; and Berkeley Rep, with a season that will include both parts of Angels in America and a new musical about the Temptations.

See page 26 >>

<< Out There

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Cultural trifecta

by Roberto Friedman

I

t was a one-two-three knockout punch of San Francisco culture for your gay uncle Out There last week. Let us walk you through our cultural calendar.

Last week’s Tuesday night was a very special evening at Davies Symphony Hall, where music director Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony in a Symphony Pride concert replacing their scheduled tour dates in state-sponsored homophobic North Carolina. The composers represented on the program were all LGBT; MTT himself is out & proud (he brought his lovely husband Joshua Robison to the stage); and the sold-out audience had that special gay vibe that

spells fab-u-lous. We were treated to Bernstein’s Candide overture; out & proud pianist Peter Grunberg’s virtuoso turn with Henry Cowell; a great John Cage snippet; members from the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in a wonderful Meredith Monk chant; the finale from Lou Harrison’s thunderous organ concerto (Michael Hey on keys); soprano Audra McDonald resplendent in Sondheim, Bernstein, Styne (the straight ringer), and the immortal Laura Nyro; Copland’s Lincoln Portrait (so poignant now, with the anti-Lincoln disgracing the office), narrated by McDonald; and for dessert, a muscular Mahler movement. Afterwards, OT was honored to be invited along with B.A.R. music writer Philip Campbell to join the swells in the Wattis

Room for a celebratory soiree.

We’d say MTT and the SFS do gay very, very well.

Wednesday night found Out There among the opening-night crowd for the 60th SFFilm Festival screening of director Gillian Robespierre’s new film, Landline.

We enjoyed this period-piece comedy that takes place in 1990s New York City. Landlines! Record stores! Boomboxes! Mixtapes! Pay phones!

Floppy discs! It really wasn’t that long ago, but feels as far away as Victorian England.

The stellar cast includes Edie Falco, John Turturro, Jay Duplass, and the luscious Finn Wittrock, but the film’s heart and soul are really the performances, playing sisters, of Jenny Slate and Abby Quinn. The glamorous afterparty transpired at the his-

Steven Underhill

Newcomer Abby Quinn, part of the cast of director Gillian Robespierre’s Landline, posed at the Castro Theatre during the opening night of the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival.

t

toric Regency Center. It was a certifiable blast.

Thursday night found us making the scene at the charming Oasis nightclub South of Market for the annual Besties bash, the B.A.R.’s LGBTQ Best of the Bay readers’ choice party, hosted by comedian extraordinaire Marga Gomez, with stellar performances from Veronica Klaus (her last in SF!), Jason Brock, Alex U. Inn & Kingdom, and DJ MC2, with fabulous accompanist Tammy L. Hall. It was a rollicking good affair, and everyone who came in out of the rain seemed to have a great time. OT was happy chilling at a table with our bestie pals Wilder, Jim James, and of course the indispensible Pepi.

We’re rich indeed in masculine company.t

Cézanne & Zola, a bromance

by Erin Blackwell

T

he idea we have of the artist’s life was fabricated in France at the end of the 19th century. It’s a very pretty idea filled with alienation and bottles of red wine, gooey cheese and integrity, naked women lolling on bedsheets, existential crises, and of course, intense hatred of all things bourgeois. If you’d like to watch a two-hour-long cinematic version of this life complete with costumes as featured in now-famous paintings, you’re in luck. A new French film called Cézanne and Me opens tomorrow at Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley.

It’s not easy to make a biopic, or biographical film. Most of them are awful because an assemblage of key moments of a famous person’s long and eventful life has no inherent dramatic focus. Details and digressions dampen dynamic.

The essence or spirit of a personality gets lost in the dutiful shuffle of events. If you want to see a marvelous evocation of art-making that does justice to la vie bohème, watch Moulin Rouge (1953), director John Huston’s hommage to ToulouseLautrec. Alas, Paul Cézanne and his friend Emile Zola, the titular “Me,” are not so well-served by director Danièle Thompson.

Cézanne and Zola are shown at various stages of their painterly and literary careers, respectively. They meet as scuffling schoolboys. They pursue their lone-wolf, iconoclastic careers in Paris, until Cézanne retreats to Aix to stare at rocks and trees. Their mutual admiration and support fray as Zola becomes the voice of his time, while Cézanne keeps busting up canvases that don’t satisfy his idea of perfection, and he grows pitiful in his impoverished pretentions. Their parallel evolutions are told as flashbacks leading up to an inevitable rift, triggered by Zola’s novel skewering his friend, L’Oeuvre (The Masterpiece).

PLAYWRIGHT SANCTUARY

(AUTHORIZED by EDWARD ALBEE) directed by DR LARRY MYERS announces

This backwards-and-forwards scuttling is only one symptom of Thompson’s failure to dominate her fascinating material. There are edits that don’t entirely make sense, and there are changes in tone that seem desperate attempts at entertainment in lieu of coherent style.

Iconic images by French Impressionists come to life at random moments in sudden, distracting tableaux vivants that mock the earnest onscreen pronouncements of these two modern masters. Kitsch spontaneously erupts to undermine the revolutionary project to replace commonplace bourgeois niceties with something more real.

Yesterday’s revolution is today’s placemat or calendar image. Cézanne and Zola’s shared mission to create new forms of art and literature has been transformed, by cruel irony, into a period-piece bromance. All the clichés are fleshed out to the point of absurdity, so that a few deft nudges could’ve transformed this into a very funny film.

There’s no trace of genius here, only posturing, but be grateful for small mercies, there are at least no sex scenes, only evidence of a complete disregard for the subjectivity of the women who serve their men body and soul. That aspect alone is overdue for parody.

The two leads are both named Guillaume, which is French for William. Canet makes Zola very small, thanks to his look of perpetual smugness and his inability to personify quickness of thought or curiosity, those hallmarks of the writer. Gallienne is better as Cézanne, which is to say he moves around more and throws fits, and has large eyes. Neither of them is terribly convincing, chiefly because the scenes they’re given to play are mere illustrations of anecdotes that never rise to the level of dramatic necessity. Judging by this film, the revolution is over, the artistic spirit is dead, all we have left are fragments of a bygone consciousness we can now no longer access.t

FIVE MINUTE PLAY CONTEST (gay history/aids subj matter)

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WORKSHOPS COMMENCING immediately PLAYWRITING WITH SPIRIT & ACTING FOR PLAYWRIGHTS contact: laurencelarry1@aol.com WINNER SF FRINGE PICK & sf bay area ‘BEST PLAY” nominee previous playwright-in-residence EXIT & MARSH SHUBERT playwright with DAVID RABE

“PERIPATETIC, PROLIFIC, QUIRKY, KOOKY” -NY POST PAGE SIX

“one of off bway’s wittiest/ more prolific playwrights” -NY DAILY NEWS

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Guillaume Gallienne as Cézanne in director Danièle Thompson’s Cézanne et Moi.

On the web

This week, find two DVD reviews by film writer David Lamble, “A Wilder Sherlock Holmes” and “Meeting in the boys’ room,” online at www.ebar.com.

t

Theatre>>

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

A musical melting pot returns

R

ags is a musical that has been rising from the ashes ever since its quick Broadway death in 1986, and TheatreWorks, which first helped rekindle the fire with a small production in 1989, has returned to a much-revised version for a full-scale edition at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. It’s an impressive rendering of what has become an emotionally powerful musical that was chosen for this TheatreWorks season very much with current events in mind.

There probably was never a worse year on Broadway than 1986 for made-in-America musical theater. Not a single new American musical played for more than a few weeks, most closing much more quickly than that. It seemed that Rags’ distinguishing historical asterisk might have been the impassioned cast’s impromptu decision to rally audiences from the Saturday matinee to join them in a march down to the half-priced ticket booth in Times Square in a fight to keep the show open. The show nevertheless closed that night after four official performances and six years of gestation. But the critics who didn’t provide commercially helpful reviews were not dismissive or hostile, and Rags never got lost in the forgotten file of its fellow failures of that season.

The musical about the Jewish immigrant experience in the early part of the 20th century – a kind of follow-up to Fiddler on the Roof, which also had a book by Joseph Stein – has been revised and revived at regular intervals over the years to increasing appreciation.

In the years since Artistic Director Robert Kelley staged that chambersized version for the Silicon Valley theater in 1989, the musical has been under construction. Several of its original creators have worked to focus what had been a sprawling story, and what is likely now the definitive version is receiving a full-scale rendering that Kelley has guided with a sure directorial hand and a top-notch cast.

Rags opens on Ellis Island as a group of frightened and confused Russian Jewish immigrants is trying to navigate a cold bureaucratic welcome before reconnecting with relatives who are required sponsors for newcomers. Rebecca Hershkowitz and her 10-year-old son seem stranded on the dock, her husband who made the move five years before nowhere in sight.

A young woman who befriended Rebecca on board convinces her father to pose as her uncle, offering her and her boy a place to stay until she can locate her husband.

The melting-pot metaphor of America is represented in the music provided by Charles Strouse, whose credits stretch from Bye Bye Birdie to Annie. Old and New World sounds come together, often creating a kind of klezmer ragtime for the more upbeat numbers.

There are some typical Broadwaystyle novelty tunes, but because opera star Teresa Stratas was cast as Rebecca, that character’s songs can soar through multiple registers of operatic grandeur. And this production has Kyra Miller as Rebecca, who can take us there vocally, and also deliver the emotional unpinning of this character whose strength and independence grow through a barrage of new experiences, and who believably connects with the talented young Jonah Broscow as her son.

Another major dramatic arc has been built around Bella, the young woman who befriended Rebecca and is struggling to express herself under the roof of her overly protec-

tive father (well-played by Donald Corren, who has a perhaps too-cute duet with a widowed pushcart merchant played with wise humor by Darlene Popovic). Julie Benko combines both warmth and subtle signs of incipient rebellion in Bella, and also powerfully delivers the show’s bitter title song (lyrics are by Stephen Schwartz).

Both Rebecca and Bella have romantic interests that are forbidden for different reasons. Danny Rothman plays a union organizer with steely resolve who tries to recruit, then falls in love with Rebecca – married, but still with no husband in sight. For Bella, it’s a fellow passenger from the boat, played by the spirited Travis Leland, who has taken on the gung-ho spirit of American enterKevin Berne prise, an attitude that her Kyra Miller and Jonah Broscow play mother-and-son immigrants trying to start traditionalist father can’t new life in America in TheatreWorks’ production of the much-revised musical Rags. abide. In one of the show’s still troublesome plot

holes, Rebecca’s husband (Noel Anthony) appears as if dropped from a cloud to complicate her life, both because of her love for Saul and because of his corrupt political ambitions that require de-Semiticification.

Fumiko Bielefeldt’s array of period costumes adds to the production’s atmosphere, and Joe Ragey’s multi-tiered set can be rearranged into numerous locales, including a final scene that this production uses to combine past and present ports of immigration for an effective contemporary statement. Musical director William Liberatore is in the pit bringing a full sound from a nine-piece orchestra that helps give the worthy Rags a chance to sing once more.t Rags will run through April 30 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

Tickets are $35-$86.

Call (650) 462-1960 or go to theatreworks.org.

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<< Dance

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Bespoke choreography at SF Ballet

by Paul Parish

S

an Francisco Ballet is bringing the season into the home stretch.

The grand finale will be Cinderella, opening at the end of the month.

But to give lift-off for that, there’s a very strong mixed bill of one-act ballets that opened last week and runs through April 18. Made for SF Ballet alternates with Swan Lake, and to my mind is the better show to see.

These three ballets – Trio, Ghost in the Machine, and Within the Golden Hour – were all made specifically for these dancers, and they own them.

The movement seems to come from inside them, and despite the stylization and enlarging that classical technique gives the steps, you can still feel a personal impulse in every move they make. So it’s almost a spectator sport; it’s idealized, but it’s very familiar.

Trio and Golden Hour got superlative performances, but we knew they could do that. The big news is twofold: a.) The new dance, by corps dancer/young choreographer Myles Thatcher, is really good, and b.) The stage-sets by Alexander V. Nichols for Trio and for Thatcher’s ballet are firstrate creations of atmosphere, epoch, terroir (to borrow a term from winemaking). A world has been suggested and encompassed, it belongs to the people we see in the ballet, to the very bottom of their being, and it does so without encroaching on their livingroom in any way.

It’s not news that Nichols’ sets for Yuri Possokhov’s RaKu and The Swimmer did everything the choreography needed. But the way Nichols has clarified Thatcher’s aesthetic is worth mentioning, since it is so tactful it might go unnoticed. Sat-

urday night the set drew a round of applause when the curtain went up, before anybody moved. Thatcher has arrived, and the ballet is good.

Not only do the dancers tear into his new work, it is also worthy of them: a big ballet about the struggles of

modern life, how hard it is to do everything you’re personally responsible for, before you can hope to have a relationship with someone you could be responsible to.

But Nichols made it clear: A series of cables, like those supporting

Both photos: Erik Tomasson

Above: Carlo Di Lanno and Dores Andre in choreographer Myles Thatcher’s Ghost in the Machine. Below: San Francisco Ballet in choreographer Myles Thatcher’s Ghost in the Machine.

the Bay Bridge, rises from the stage frame and wraps around a gigantic, fluorescent-light Rooftree at the center of the stage. The cables’ silhouette suggests a Japanese temple, but when we first see them they’re blood red and seem to scream conflict.

“No, I am not moving to New York just because you’ve got a job offer!” seemed to be Vanessa Zahorian’s answer to Joseph Walsh’s offer of his hand. She took it, but she pushed back; in no time he’d thrown her over his head in the splits, and the fight was on. For the first numbers, virtuosic combat was the order of the day, the relentless Minimalist music by Michael Nyman.

But when a follow-spot found the wistful Sasha de Sola center stage, and she started a lamenting solo pleading for sympathy, the cables went pale and receded into the shadows as her drama came front and center. Friends tried to help, first a potential lover (Stephen Morse), who hung in there but finally had to back out as she pulled into a paroxysm of dealing with her demons. When she came round out of that, she found he’d receded into the shadowy strangers at the back.

At this point a remarkable sequence of supporting gestures came from other members of the corps, and a fantastic set of supportive tableaux took shape and dissolved, one after another. Then came another duet, ravishing, to Nyman’s famous “The heart asks pleasure first,” for Carlo Di Lanno and Dores Andre.

Opening night was not so authoritative, but by Saturday, the dancers had found the groove, and the audience went wild. A silver-haired gentleman in front of me leapt to his feet crying bravo, and by the end of

t

the bows, you had to stand up to see what was going on onstage. This ballet should have legs and will give SFB a new face to show to Europe and Asia when they go on tour.

Thatcher has always been able to make young dancers look strong and beautiful and move them through counterpointed trajectories that built big tension and paid off with committed performances.

The dancers would go beyond themselves, and the level of physical excitement in Spinae and Stone and Steel burnt a deep impression in the mind. Dancers like Max Cauthorn, who’s now been elevated to soloist rank but was in those ballets when he was in the school, help to give the work its feeling: this is us, take it or leave it, this is what we’re up against.

Does it ring true for you?

In Trio and also in Golden Hour, Sarah van Patten melted the heart as the ballerina in our company whom everyone resonates with.

De Sola and Andre, with the help of her partners Tiit Helimets and Aaron Robison, show signs of having learned from her, how to reach the heart. It’s wonderful to see the dancers receiving material worthy of their talents and dedication.

Their careers are so brief. Vanessa Zahorian, a technician we could always count on to give us a glorious ride, had a great role made for her

by Helgi Tomasson in Trio, wherein she could let herself go and dance with an open heart. She’s arrived at retirement and will give a farewell performance this coming Saturday in Swan Lake, with her husband, the noble danseur Davit Karapetyan.

We wish them well as they go off to teach young dancers how to make this magic happen for us.t

Artistic temperaments cubed

by Richard Dodds

Y

ou’ve probably run across that scene from Royal Wedding, the one in which Fred Astaire appears to dance on the walls and ceiling when it’s actually the room that’s rotating while the camera is locked into one position. Now imagine that scene staged in an oversized Rubik’s Cube where the revolving permutations grow exponentially toward a number with more zeros than we need bother with here. That may help provide some impression of how Needles and Opium replicates a kind of druggy dream world in which the scenery not only revolves but also evolves as the characters enter and exit variously through the ceilings, windows, trapdoors, invisible portals, and ways probably unknown.

With a title like Needles and Opium, a pharmacological fantasia cannot be unexpected, not that the characters are in mild-altering conditions during much of the 95-minute production. In fact, one of the primary characters never is under the influence, but his state of mind seems to have absorbed various spirits of previous occupants of Hotel La Louisiane in Paris – specifically Room 9, which this French-Canadian voiceover artist always requests when work takes him to Paris. As he takes a bath, he imagines himself marinating in the spirits of Juliette Greco, Miles Davis, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and other existential bohemians who spent time there.

Some of these spirits do appear in writer-director Robert Lepage’s fas-

cinating synthesis of times, histories, places, and personalities that have tangential relationships with one another. Lepage’s works, often created with Ex Machina of Quebec, are internationally renowned. After seeing Needles and Opium, it is not surprising to learn that his credits include two Cirque du Soleil productions.

Not that the current ACT presentation involves anything like the scope of a Cirque show, but the room-sized rotating cube within which all the action takes place is bursting with visual astonishments that approach the transcendent. Some of the verbal transcendence is provided by Jean Cocteau, notably passages from his 1950 essay “A Letter to Americans,” which he wrote on the flight back to Paris after his first visit to New York.

It’s a presumptuous critique, a generalization of a continent based on one city, but it is also exquisitely written and not without truths that have their own resonances in today’s world.

Cocteau is something of an outside commentator to the principal action.

Lepage thought that the fact that Cocteau was making his first visit to America at the same time Miles Davis was discovering Paris, and the fact that both fought addictions that may have refocused their creativity as artists, have earned them a place in the same play. That’s not entirely convincing, but it’s hard to bend out of shape a piece with a shape as malleable as Needles and Opium.

Our main connection to recognizable reality is Robert, a fish out of water in Paris even though he is a French-speaking Canadian. In the studio where he is providing both English and French narration for a documentary about the brief but passionate love affair between iconoclastic chanteuse Juliette Greco and groundbreaking musician Miles Davis, he’s on a comically different

Tristram Kenton

Olivier Normand, right, plays a contemporary character in ACT’s Needles and Opium who always stays in the room at a Paris hotel where such iconoclastic legends as Miles Davis (Wellesley Robertson III) once lived, loved, and bathed.

professional wavelength from his producers. He nearly makes it to the end of the assignment before choking. He claims fatigue, and asks for another chance the next morning, as he heads to Room 9 at Hotel La Louisiane for sleep that a recently broken heart prevents from descending.

Meanwhile, various portals of time and place open as we see Davis and Cocteau drift in and out of the cube, or even slide down its skewed sides, as projections place them anywhere from a pawnshop to the stratosphere to a cockamamie photo shoot for Life magazine. Quebec actor Olivier Normand is excellent as our everyman Robert, his existential crisis in full bloom, and also plays almost unrecognizably the ethereal Cocteau, emphasizing a French accent that is an occasional challenge to decipher. Wellesley Robertson III is kept mute as Miles Davis save for

a few mimed riffs on the trumpet, a choice of verbal silence for no obvious reason.

But the cube designed by Carl Fillion, filled with sounds, lighting, props, and images designed by, respectively, Jean-Sebastien Cote, Bruno Matte, Claudia Gendreau, and Lionel Arnould, is definitely a star of the show thanks to the endlessly imaginative ways Lepage uses it to tell a story tied together by geometric form. At the curtain call, after the two actors have taken their bows, the stage suddenly fills up with the 14 black-garbed men and women who have been invisibly making the magic happen all at the time.t Needles and Opium will run at the Geary Theater through April 23. Tickets are $20-$105.

Call (415) 749-2228 or go to act-sf.org.

t

Music>>

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Where the buoys are

by Tim Pfaff

T

he most frequently asked question after I told people I was moving to Luang Prabang (that is, after “What’s Luang Prabang?”) was, “What are you going to do for concerts?” Given my 30-year dietary supplement of a daily concert or opera, it was a reasonable question, one I had asked myself. It’s turned out that the hard part of living in SE Asia, musically, is the paucity of those soul-buoying musical surprises only the musicmad know and need.

I’ve had one in my 20 years here. One sweltering Sunday evening, as I was returning from a solitary stroll along the Mekong, I heard, from the open second-story window of a French provincial home, the letter duet from Mozart’s Figaro. In its own words, it’s a little “song to the breezes,” and off to Shangri-La it wafted me.

Once upon a time in Munich, where I was on an unrelated music junket, I rounded the corner onto an unimposing side street when out of an open church door poured a heartfelt live performance of Bach’s B-minor Mass. I stood outside, transfixed, carried away not just by the sublimity of the B-minor but by the memory of the first time I ever heard it, also by an “amateur” (in the original sense of the word) church choir, in South Dakota.

I mention all this because something very close to it happened to me listening to the new recording of Bach’s St. John Passion from Apollo’s Fire (Avie). Jeanette Sorrell’s ensemble lives up to its name and is fully, competitively professional, but in its live performance (regrettably not also captured in video, since it was staged) there is no sense of its trying to compete with any other ensemble (all the usual suspects have recorded it) or score performance-practice points, instead just – just! – leaning right into the hearts of its audience. This is why we buy tickets, and CDs. This year the wacky world of recorded music has not waited for Passover/Passion season to pour on the St. Johns, with a halfdozen new ones and counting.

The work has, at last, come into its own as something other than the younger, shorter, lesser cousin of the towering St. Matthew Passion. Now it’s having a 21st-century performance-practice moment as a staged work, pre-eminently in Peter Sellars’ staging for the

Berlin Philharmonic, which makes a solid case for dramatization.

Don’t be fooled by what at first sounds like a tentative entry into the startling open chorus, “Herr, unser Herrscher,” by Apollo’s Fire. It’s the springboard for a drama with a clear – ineluctable, in that Passion manner – arc. The uniformity of commitment and musicianship from all concerned lends it a sense of cohesion, of intimacy, that is an ideal too seldom attained.

Its one conspicuous eccentricity is that out San Franciscan Nicholas Phan sings both the role of the Evangelist and the difficult tenor solo arias. It’s at the farthest extreme from a star turn, and for me it’s the clincher of the real integrity of this reading. The acuity of Phan’s narration of the story and the depth of his reflections on it in the arias bind the performance in a sense of shared mission.

Few voices are as reliable (or beautiful) as Phan’s, which gives him freedoms he takes. In everything he sings, storytelling is paramount. Perfect diction, too, is a given, to which Phan adds a kind of around-the-campfire confidentiality that draws you into the tales rather than talking you through them. It’s a voice born to sing German Lieder, which he does – at last, it could be said, on CD – in his

new Gods & Monsters (Avie), which he has recently toured, locally and to venues as august as London’s Wigmore Hall, where he recently made his debut.

There’s a story in each of the songs about lesser and super humans by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Wolf, and Phan finds the magic (sometimes black) in each. Only in Wolf ’s big-boned ballad “Der Feuerreiter” does he nudge his voice where it does not want to go.

Phan lamented to the B.A.R. that his one-time “baby face” was a hindrance in getting opera roles. The musician in Gods & Monsters, whose cover boasts an altogether more mature kind of handsomeness, has now sufficiently arrived that he might peddle the “Sandmann” lullabies less centrally and avoid song-group headings like “Things That Go Bump in the Night.” He’s long ago won us.

In All Who Wander (Delos), the first solo CD by the out bi San Francisco favorite Jamie Barton, the mezzo lays down serious creds with an opening group of Mahler songs, including the Rueckert Lieder. But as anyone who heard her recent Jezibaba in Dvorak’s Rusalka at the Met knows, she sings Czech like it’s her mother tongue, and her group of Dvorak songs is masterful. To hear for yourself the musical force of nature this woman is, there’s an astounding set of Sibelius songs. In my mind I’ll probably always hear “Svarta rosor” in Flagstad’s voice, but when Barton lets loose with it, memories of Flagstad flee.t

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<< Out&About

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Everything That’s Beautiful @ NCTC World premiere of Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder’s play about a gay couple whose child lives as a girl, until an accident disrupts their Midwestern life. $25-$50. Previews; opens Mar. 25. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru April 23. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. www.nctcsf.org

Leni @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Bay Area premiere of Sarah Greenman’s innovative biographical play about the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whose cinematic brilliance promoted the Nazi regime. $36-$65. Tue & Sun 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sun 2pm. thru May 7. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

O&A Out &About

Overnight @ Flight Deck, Oakland

Thu 13 Emilio Pilliu’s art, part of the Queer Comics Conference and exhibit Opening Party @ Strut

Illustrious

by Jim Provenzano

A

rt in difficult times is more crucial than ever. Go see, do, watch, listen. For nightlife events, see On the Tab listings.

Thu 13

Author Readings @ City Lights Bookstore April 13: Clark Coolidge reads from Selected Poems: 1962-1985. April 18: Barbara Alexandra Szerlip on her biography, The Man Who Designed the Future: Norman Bel Geddes and the Invention of Twentieth-Century America. April 19: On to the Next Dream anthology. April 20: Omar El Akkad discusses his novel American War. Each 7pm. 261 Columbus Ave. www.citylights.com

Daughter of a Garbageman @ The Marsh KGO host and stand-up comic Maureen Langan’s solo show about her family life, and the endurance of working class people. $20-$100. Thu 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru May 13. 1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Noises Off! @ SF Playhouse Michael Frayn’s hilarious farce, about the on- and offstage shenanigans in a theatre company, gets a local production. $35-$85. Tue-Thu 7pm.

Fri&Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm, Sun 2pm.

Thru May 13. 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Primahood @ Center for Sex & Culture Opening reception for an exhibit of drawings and comics by Tyler Cohen.

5pm-8pm. Exhibit thru May 22. 1349 Mission St. www.sexandculture.org

Queer Comics @ Strut

The acclaimed pianist-actor returns with another in his repertoire of music icons. $35-$97. Thru April 30. 2025 Addison St. www.berkeleyrep.org

Opening party for the Queers and Comics Conference (April 14 & 15: www.queersandcomics.cca.edu/), with LGBT comic artists, drinks, Drink & Draw with male models, displays of Kumalicious art by Salvador Hernandez; 8pm-10pm, 2nd floor.

Also, Gay Mens’ Sketch, a group exhibit of works by past and current participants in Mark I. Chester long-running drawing group; see 30 curated years of male nude art. 1st & 3rd floor. Thru April. 470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

John @ Strand Theatre

Radar Reading @ SF Public Library

Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin @ Berkeley Rep

American Conservatory Theatre’s production of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker’s drama about a couple’s increasingly strange stay at a bed and breakfast in historic Gettysburg; co-starring Georgia Engel ( The Mary Tyler Moore Show ). $20-$105. Tue-Sat 7:30pm. Wed & Sat 1pm. Thru April 23. 1127 Market St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

More Than a Roof and Walls @ Tenderloin Museum Artists Alice Combs and Susa Cortez of Root Division discuss their installation art work (6pm-8pm) before the exhibit’s April 16 opening.

Thru April 29. 398 Eddy St. www.tenderloinmuseum.org

Needles and Opium @ Geary Theatre American Conservatory Theatre presents Robert Lepage’s innovative staging of his play combining the drugfueled creative visions of jazz legend Miles Davis, and gay French filmmaker Jean Cocteau. $20-$105. Tue-Sat 8pm.

Wed & Sat 2pm. Thru April 23. 415 Geary St. www.act-sf.org

Maryam Rostami, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski, Kevin Simmonds and Kyle Caset Chu read from their works.

Free. 6pm. 100 Larkin St., lower level. www.radarproductions.org www.sfpl.org

Urinetown @ Julia Morgan Theater, Berkeley The three-Tony-winning musical satire about pee repression and corporate greed is performed by Berkeley Playhouse’s ensemble. $22-$40. ThuSat, 7pm and matinees, thru April 30.

2640 College Ave., Berkeley. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org

Fri 14

The Baltimore Waltz @ Magic Theatre Paula Vogel’s award-winning satire about a whirlwind European journey in search of romance and a cure. $50-$85. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2:30pm. Thru April 16. Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd, Bldg. D, 3rd floor. 4418822. www.magictheatre.org

Ragged Wing Ensemble presents Anna Shneiderman’s drama about how a neighborhood deals with a highrise building that’s suddenly appeared. $25-$45. Fri & Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm thru April 22. www.raggedwing.org

Signs of Hope @ Art Work Downtown, San Rafael Opening reception for an exhibit of political protest art and posters; jazz group Barrio Manouche, local speakers, food and drinks, signmaking workshop. 5pm-8pm. Thru May 5. 1337 4th St., San Rafael. www.artworksdowntown.org

Summer in Sanctuary @ The Marsh Berkeley Al Letson (NPR host) performs his acclaimed solo show about being a creative writing teacher in a poor Florida neighborhood. $20-$100. Fri 8pm, Sat 8:30pm. Thru May 29. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. www.themarsh.com

Temple @ Aurora Theatre U.S. premiere of British playwright Steve Waters’ drama bout the Occupy London movement, and its eventual decline. $32-$65. Tue & Sun 7pm, Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sun 2pm. Thru May 14. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. www.auroratheatre.org

Sat 15

Beowulf @ Aquatic Park, Fort Mason Chapel We Players, the innovative sitespecific theatre company, premieres a work based on the classic story, performed with Inkboat Physical Theatre/Dance and Rova Saxophone Quartet. $30-$80. Various dates and times thru April 16. 1100 Bay St. www.weplayers.org

Carey Leibowitz: Museum Show @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Exhibits about Jewish culture and

by Jewish artists, including Carey Leibowitz: Museum Show (witty pop art with a queer edge, thru June 25). Lectures and gallery talks as well (Fridays 12:30pm). Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

East 14th @ The Marsh Don Reed’s multi-award-winning solo show about his unusual relationship with his father in Oakland. $20-$100.

Sat 8:30pm, Sun 5:30pm. Thru April 15.

1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Godless Perverts @ Center for Sex and Culture Bridgett Crutchfield headlines the tale-telling story hour, with many local writers. $10-$20. 7pm. 1349 Mission St. www.sexandculture.org

Jitney @ Marine’s Memorial Theatre African-American Shakespeare Company’s production of August Wilson’s drama, part of his Pittsburgh Cycle. $32.50. Thru April 16. 609 Sutter St. www.africanamericanshakes.org

Over the Top: Math Bass & the Imperial Court SF @ Oakland Museum

t

Lambda Literary Award Finalists @ SF Public Library

Paired exhibit of works by the LA artist with archival items from the Bay Area Imperial Council royals; thru July 23. Also, Bees: Tiny Insect, Big Impact (thru June). Free/$15. Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Bay Area finalists in the annual LGBT book awards read from their books, including Lynn Miller, Julia Serano, Gloria Joseph, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Andrew Jolivette, Cam Awkward Rich, and Rabih Alameddine. Free. 5:30 reception, 6pm reading. 100 Larkin St, lower level. www.lambdaliterary.org www.sfpl.org

Plastic Camera Show @ RayKo Photo Center

Not Funny! Sad! @ SF Public Library

Exhibit of surprisingly high-quality images taken by local artists with plastic cameras. Thru April 23. 428 3rd St. www.raykophoto.com

Rags @ Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s production of the Tony-nominated musical, by the Fiddler on the Roof team, about 1900s tenement life in New York City. $35-$86. Thru April 30. 500 Castro St, Mountain View. www.TheatreWorks.org

SF Hiking Club @ Mt. Diablo, Huddart Park Join GLBT hikers of the SF Hiking Club for a 10-mile hike along Wall Point Ridge to Rock City at Mt. Diablo State Park. Also, April 16 a 7-mile hike in Huddart Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains (info: 650-740-9849).

Both: carpool meets 8:30 at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. 794-2275 www.sfhiking.com

The Summer of Love Experience @ de Young Museum New exhibit about San Francisco’s historic 1967 groovy era. Also, Stuart Davis exhibit and amazing Modern art. Free/$15. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park. www.famsf.org

Wild Women @ Marin Center, San Rafael Nina Wise, Pamela Z and Amy X share a vocal concert. $34-$43. 8pm. 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. 4736800. www.marincenter.org

Sun 16

The Waiting Period @ The Marsh Brian Copeland’s solo show about buying a gun while struggling with depression, with special free shows.

Sundays, 5:30pm. Donations accepted for the theatre. Thru May 21. 1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Mon 17

Still Here: Portraits of Gay Elders @ SF Public Library Exhibit of artist Ghee Phua’s portraits of senior gay men. Thru May 4. James C. Hormel Center, 100 Larkin St. sfpl. org/hormelat20

Unearthed @ California Academy of Sciences Exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth; new exhibit, From Stone Age to Space Age, showcases minerals through time. Special events each week, with adult nightlife parties many Thursday nights. $20-$35. Mon-Sat 9:30am-5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park.

379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Tue 18 Daniel Cruzon @ Folio Books

The prolific gay author discusses his work with Queer Words host and author Wayne Goodman. 7pm. 3957 24th St. www.foliosf.com

Excuse Me, Can I See Your ID? @ Vessel Gallery, Oakland Group exhibit celebrating Asian American artists. Thru May. 471 25th St. www.vessel-gallery.com

Cartoonists Respond to Trump, a panel of political artists, including Pulitzer Prize winner Don Asmussen and Khalil Bendib, and how they deal with the current bizarre climate. 6pm8pm. 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org

Preserving & Promoting San Francisco’s LGBTQ Cultural Heritage @ GLBT History Museum Community forum with members of the Cultural Heritage Strategy Task Force. $5. 7pm. Also, Lavender-Tinted Glasses: A Groovy Gay Look at the Summer of Love, a new mini-exhibit curated by Joey Cain. Also, Beartoonist of San Francisco: Sketching an Emerging Subculture, featuring art work by bear cartoonist Fran Frisch. $5. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Ten Percent @ Comcast David Perry’s online and cable interviews with notable local and visiting LGBT people, broadcast through the week. Wed 7pm, Thu-Tue 11:30am & 10:30pm. www.ComcastHometown.com

Wed 19

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia @ Berkeley Art Museum/ Pacific Film Archive New large-scale multimedia exhibit about 1960s-1970s counterculture. Thru May 21. Free-$12. 2625 Durant Ave., Berkeley. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

The Mushroom Cure @ The Marsh Adam Strauss’ comic Off-Broadway hit solo show about his attempts to use hallucinogenic drugs for his OCD. $20$100. Wed & Fri 8pm, Sat 8:30pm.

Thru June 3. 1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Smack Dab @ Dog Eared Books The eclectic monthly open mic reading and talent night features UK queer zine maker, comic artist and performer Rachael House. Dana Hopkins and Larry-bob Roberts cohost. Open mic sign-up 7:30pm. Show at 8pm. 489 Castro St. www.dogearedbooks.com

Thu 20

Arisa White, Morgan Parker @ Alley Cat Books Radar Productions’ QueerLit presents the two poets in conversation. Free.

6:30pm. 3036 24th St. www.radarproductions.org

David Gordon and Pick Up Performance Co(s) @ ODC Theater ODC Theater presents the world premiere of Live Archiveography, a retrospective of veteran performancedancemaker David Gordon’s works. $30-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. 3153 17th St. www.odcdance.org

Phèdre @ Exit on Taylor Cutting Ball Theatre performs a new translation of Jean Racine’s classic tragedy of love and revenge. $15-$45.

Thu 7pm, Fri & Sat 8pm, Sun 5pm.

Thru May 21. 277 Taylor St. www.cuttingball.com To submit event listings, email events@ebar.com Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section

Green Film Festival April 20 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 26, 2017

Kaiser Permanente is a proud sponsor of the 7th San Francisco Green Film Festival.

Join us for a wide range of films that bring new perspectives to the environmental movement.

Castro & Roxie Theaters & venues across the city

greenfilmfest.org @KPSanFrancisco

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<< Books

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Ladies of the 80s

by Jim Piechota

At Danceteria and Other Stories

by Philip Dean Walker; Squares & Rebels Press, $6.99 Kindle

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hough the teased hair and neon fishnets of the 1980s may be the stuff of memory for those of us who came of age in that era, it’s always refreshing to read tales inspired by (and thereby memorializing) that heady time of queer exhilaration and blissful excess. Washington, DC author Philip Dean Walker conjures that iconic period in At Danceteria and Other Stories, not only using atmospheric period detail, but also unleashing a cavalcade of notable personalities, many unearthed from the grave, whose talent and outspokenness marked their notoriety.

Fashion doyen Halston flits through the opening story with

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Summer of Love

From page 19

While the Berkeley Art Museum’s Hippie Modernism exhibition appeals to the cerebral cortex, SOL goes straight for the pleasure center and strikes a celebratory chord.

After all, this is a leap-into-summertime show with a happy hook and ideal content for the tourists and locals revisiting their youth who will surely flood Golden Gate Park over the next few months, though many of them weren’t alive when the 60s were in full swing. A little more historical substance and a sense of the texture of daily life before and during that memorable summer in 1967 might have been in order.

Framed by hot pink, tangerine dream and other eye-popping, aciddropping colors, the show’s installations take up most of the museum’s ground floor. The exhibits are a mash-up of art, clothing, jittery hallucinatory films, documentations of Human Be-ins and demonstrations, light shows, examples of community rags like The Oracle, album cover art for 1960s rock royalty, and a preponderance of psychedelic posters – almost too many – displayed throughout and in a recreation of

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Liza Minnelli, who is “bubbling, a bit manic, laughing, like a tall puppet,” snorting lines of cocaine and admiring Ultrasuede love seats used for special guests. With Andy Warhol in tow, they command attention at Halston’s fashion show, then proceed to the dance floor at Studio 54, where they feed off the “predatory crowd, encircling him with gusto and beet-faced bravado, too drunk to be any threat, too bold to be outright ignored.”

A rousing episode stars Freddie Mercury, who works hard to disguise Princess Diana in a “beautiful gent” costume in order to remain incognito while they attend a drag show. “You’re a princess, and I’m a queen,” Mercury purrs. “This is so happening.” Slipping into the club unrecognized, Diana pauses and reflects on how kindly gay men have treated her. “They seemed to sense

Backstage

From page 19

Life after ‘Hamilton’

The country’s founding fathers will be vacating the Orpheum Theatre in August, making way for a musical comedy about the founding fathers of musical comedy.

Something Rotten!, which finished a two-year Broadway run in January, will open the SHN season with it tongue-in-Aguecheek look at the birth of song-and-dance entertainment in the 16th century as a way to undercut Shakespeare’s popularity.

The book, music, and lyrics are by Broadway newcomers, but directorchoreographer Casey Nicholaw can count Book of Mormon, The Drowsy Chaperone, and Spamalot among his many credits.

Four recent or current Broadway musicals with antecedents as movies will follow. An American in Paris, arriving in September at the Orpheum, is based on the 1951 Gene Kelly-Leslie Caron film about a World War II veteran who stays on in Paris to paint, find romance, and dance to Gershwin songs. Director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, known for his work with major ballet companies, won a Tony Award in 2015 for the musical’s choreography.

Aladdin, due at the Orpheum in November, has been one of Disney’s most successful screen-tostage enterprises (its director is the

Courtesy of FAMSF

Patrick Lofthouse, “Love, Staple Singers, Roland Kirk,” April 18, Fillmore Auditorium, April 19 & 20, Winterland (1968). Color offset lithograph poster.

a poster shop, which was a familiar sight in mid-60s San Francisco.

The epicenter of activity that euphoric summer was the HaightAshbury district, a mecca for artists, writers and activists where rents were cheap, ethnic bohemian chic ruled,

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how difficult it was to be trapped in something and not know a way out.”

Rock Hudson accepts an invitation to the White House from the Reagans to have dinner and enjoys the hidden pleasures of the flesh with young men, though admits remaining stymied by the mysterious sickness encroaching on the gay community. Jacqueline Onassis begs to be taken out for a night of playful debauchery at The Anvil, a legendary hardcore NYC leather/sleaze bar on West 14th St. (“assless chaps, harnesses, leather caps, armbands” and colored back-pocket handkerchiefs, remember those?), where a fire-eating drag queen performs her magic on a makeshift stage. Disco legend Sylvester croons “beneath the hot colored lights at the Castro Theatre,” where Bette Midler appears bright-eyed in the audience. Author Walker, a creative wonder, also toss-

es more obscure personalities into the fray. A dazzling Little Edie Beale, ever the sartorial unicorn, appears in these pages “wearing a magenta and brown paisley bathing suit with a turquoise wall hanging wrapped around her head festooned with a

chipped scarab brooch.” Keith Haring enjoys a birthday at Danceteria, where Madonna sings “Dress You Up” and admonishes her friend on the big microphone As Technicolor as these set-pieces are, there are dark clouds looming over each one. The specter of AIDS, which one characters dubs the “Hot Guy Flu,” begins to wreak havoc, and by the end of the collection is well on its way toward decimating entire circles of friends and terrifying those survivors who find themselves standing alone in their wake.

Though it ends way too soon for readers who enjoy literary walks down memory lane, there remains much to enjoy in Walker’s slim yet magnificent debut collection. It’s a delicious treat that manages to be nostalgic, enchanting, funny, glitzy, and emotionally devastating all at once.t

and a stand-out band or ace guitarist might be your next-door neighbor.

Over 100,000 stoned, wildly hopeful young people from across the country, high on a heady brew of freedom, free love, easy sex, and the belief they could change the world, descended on the neighborhood and other parts of the city that were hardly prepared for the onslaught. The haze of memory may cloud the fact that the period could be grubbier, druggier and a tad rougher than how it’s remembered, but a flyer here, offering free lectures on safe sex, how to avoid drug overdoses, arrest and becoming a victim of crime, touches on a seamier underside. In a section called Love and Haight, a wall-sized black & white photograph of the area’s not-yet-yuppified streets and storefronts provides an idea of what it looked like half-a-century ago.

While the aroma of dope won’t be wafting through the galleries, sounds of rock & roll do. The music of now-legendary groups such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Creedence Clearwater was the soundtrack for those times and the people who lived through them. The bands get plenty of play through photographs and album-cover art like the illustra-

tions by underground comics king R. Crumb for Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills LP, their last album with Janis Joplin. Legend has it that the title was originally supposed to be Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills, but the record company torpedoed the idea.

When the show goes deeper it gets even better, exemplified by a short doc in which light wizard Bill Ham, a bearded, white-haired, grandfatherly figure in spectacles, holds forth in his studio, surrounded by projectors and colored paints in petri dishes.

His amoebic, kinetic light paintings, actually four films integrated into a 64-minute loop, pulsate on the walls of an immersive space. In another inventive installation, a box theater, whose red exterior is hung with a row of posters at the top, has circular port windows below them that allow one to peer into the darkness and watch as the posters are animated through the magic of strobe lights. The imagery appears to take flight. Wings flap and lips move – very groovy. A companion video shows the complicated, labor-intensive, handmade, multi-step, multi-person process of turning out posters back in the day was a far cry from our own whipspeed digital age.

The fashions, displayed on mannequins and in glass cases, are a kick.

Rock-star fame had its privileges. Take the hand-embroidered, glass-beaded, goatskin bag in Midnight blue and red with a glowing orange-yellow sun emanating from the center, an accessory custom-made for Janis Joplin

by Linda Gravenites, the singer’s costume designer and roommate. Nothing quite tops Jerry Garcia’s iconic Captain Trips hat, manufactured by 19th-century hatters Dunlap & Company in 1883. Later customized and painted with red-and-white stripes, a miniature American flag planted in its striped silk ribbon, it’s emblematic of the counterculture’s ironic, anarchic spirit. Though immortalized in an image shot by Herb Greene for the Dead’s first album cover exhibited nearby, Garcia laid claim to it for only two years. And who wouldn’t want to step out in the chunky “Sequoia” laceup boots made of appliquéd dyed leather? They actually have redwood trees on them! They were the creation of Rainbow Cobblers, who, when not making shoes, were reputedly a front for a cocaine ring. Ah, those were the days.t Through Aug. 20.

Info: famsf.org.

formances of the entire piece in above-mentioned Nicholaw) as 1992 in Los Angeles. its Broadway run continues into Taccone is also directing the its fourth year. Arriving in May world premiere of Imaginary 2018 at the Orpheum, The Color Comforts, or the Story of the Purple is the tour based on the Ghost of the Dead Rabbit startrecent Broadway revival from ing in October. The play by acclaimed downsizing director Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony John Doyle (Sweeney Todd), Snicket) is a fantasy exploraworking from the musical first tion of ordinary people trying seen in 2005, and itself based to make sense of a chaotically on Stephen Spielberg’s movie comedic world. Gears shift in and Alice Walker’s novel. That November with Lillian HellSchool of Rock, coming to the man’s 1941 anti-fascist drama Orpheum in June 2018, should Watch on the Rhine, which become a stage musical isn’t Schwartz/Thompson Melissa Friedman combines espionage, blackmail, much of a leap, since the 2003 and one family’s efforts to stay Jack Black movie it’s based on Left: Stephen Spinella and Joe Mantello were among the stars of the first out of the fray. is about a renegade substitute full production of Angels in America co-directed by Tony Taccone in 1992, who Rounding out the season are teacher who turns his young will direct both parts of Tony Kushner’s play as part of Berkeley Rep’s 2017two recent works that return students into rock musicians. 18 season. Right: Nilaja Sun returns to Berkeley Rep as part of its upcoming popular artists to the theater.

The surprise is that the score season in her new solo show Pike St., in which she plays multiple characters Aubergine playwright Julia Cho’s is by Andrew Lloyd Webber in as a crisis nears for its central character. new play Office Hour will arrive what has become his biggest in February with a tense story of Broadway commercial hit since the Detroit harmonizers set to their Sara Bareilles made her Broadway a university instructor’s paranoia Phantom of the Opera. hits, with direction by Des McAnuff, songwriting debut with Waitress, about a live-shooter situation that In the spirit of Jersey Boys, Mowho had a big hit turning the Four which continues its Broadway run. resonates off the actions of a mystetown the Musical, and Beautiful: Seasons saga into Jersey Boys.

Current subscribers can renew rious student. Nilaja Sun, whose No The Carole King Musical, now Another big Berkeley Rep event now for the seven-show season, Child… was seen at Berkeley Rep in comes On Your Feet: The Emilio will come in March, when the thewhich includes first dibs on a Feb2008, returns in May 2018 with her and Gloria Estefan Musical, arriving ater presents the first major Bay ruary return of Book of Mormon, solo show Pike St. that focuses on a in September 2018 at the Golden Area production of Tony Kushner’s while season tickets go on sale to single mother in New York – while Gate, which tells the couple’s career Angels in America in more than 20 new members on May 3. Details are she also plays three generations of a story through their music. For the years. Its two parts, Millennium at shnsf.com.

Puerto Rican family as well as varifinal musical of the season, openApproaches and Perestroika, will ous friends and neighbors – whose ing in October 2018 at the Golden ‘Temptations’ & ‘Angels’ be presented in repertory under family faces a life-or-death situation Gate, it’s back to the movies for There may be Broadway aspiraTony Taccone’s direction. It was the in the face of a coming storm.

Waitress, an indie 2007 film about tions for Ain’t Too Proud – The Berkeley artistic director who first Five- and seven-play season an unhappily married waitress, an Temptations, a world premiere that commissioned the work for San subscriptions are now on sale. unexpected pregnancy, an affair will open Berkeley Rep’s 2017-18 Francisco’s Eureka Theatre, and he More information is available at with her gynecologist, and a pieseason in August. It’s the story of co-directed the world-premiere perberkeleyrep.org.t baking contest. Singer-songwriter

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Miss Richfield 1981

35

Leather

Shining Stars Vol. 47 • No. 15 • April 13-19, 2017 Jeff Easton

www.ebar.com ✶ www.bartabsf.com

y n n Fu For drag comic Lad y Bunny,

y n n Bu the perso nal is pol itical.

by David-Elijah Nahmod

O

ne thing Lady Bunny has never been is politically correct. The drag superstar is about to debut Trans Jester, her new one-queen show at Verdi Club on April 13 and 14, which has won raves with the New York City premiere edition. The evening will be hosted by San Francisco drag legend Peaches Christ.

See page 28 >>

Lady Bunny

On the Tab

Sat 15

aw Stop

Gameboi SF @ Ricksh

April 13-20

N

ightlife fun is just outside your door. But whether it’s down the block or across town , enjoying a night out is worth more than a blur ry dance floor selfie… not that there’s anything wron g with that!

Steven Underhill

Listings begin on page 32 >>

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

@LGBTSF

@eBARnews

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

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Jeff Easton

Lady Bunny

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Lady Bunny

From page 27

Trans Jester might push the envelope a wee bit further than many people are used to, “We are forcing everyone to walk on eggshells,” the Lady tells Bay Area Reporter.

“This is stifling discussion.

After the election of Donald Trump we need to have the discussion.”

Lady Bunny is the founder of Wigstock, the outdoor drag show and party that originated in the late 1980s at the East Village’s Tompkins Square Park, and expanded to Bryant Square Park before being held in its latter years on the West Side Piers. Over the years, Bunny has hosted, DJed, and traveled the world as one of the big wigs of queer entertainment.

Bunny promises that, in Left: That Bunny’s got style. Right: Lady Bunny onstage. addition to her trademark song parodies and hilarious The Lady would like us to spend Bunny has taught herself to chill zingers, Trans Jester will offer a little less time in chatrooms, where out. At a time when gender lines insightful social commentary which the nastiness can get out of control. are increasingly difficult to define, she hopes will jumpstart those dis“People tweeted ‘die cis scum’ Bunny admits that she’s been called cussions about our troubled times. to RuPaul?” she asks. “That’s not a “ma’am” when she’s not in drag.

The topics she’ll touch upon will inwinning strategy.”

“I’m in a grey area,” she explains. clude the LGBT community’s proSlut-shaming and fat-shaming “I don’t feel the need to browbeat pensity for infighting and personal are among the trends that Bunny airline stewardesses when I’m out attacks against each other. touches upon. of drag.”

“Look at the alt-right,” said Bun“Here’s what’s happening: if These are definitely not politiny. “Let’s put the infighting on hold someone is slut-shaming you, then cally correct things to say, yet Lady and fight the real enemy. Maybe we it means that you’re getting laid and Bunny has no compunction about could huddle together and like each they’re bitter,” she explains. saying them. “I want my audiences other a little more.” to laugh,” she assures us. “But I also want them to be challenged by someone with a different point of view. My should is not your should:

EXPLORE THE GAY WORLD

Lady Bunny; big wig.

club, I’m going to say it. I’m diseverybody has different shoulds.” seminating information from my Though she promises a lot of point of view on touchy subjects, laughs during her performances, but there’s enough humor so that it there may be a few serious monever seems preachy.”t ments. Bunny notes that in one major city, the local LGBT Center changed the gender signs on their Lady Bunny performs her new restrooms three times. show ‘Trans Jester’ at The Verdi Club; presented by Peaches Christ “I’d rather spend that money on and Fudgie Frottage. $25-$50.

AIDS,” Bunny said, adding that she April 13 & 14, 8pm. 2425 Mariposa is fully supportive of transgender St. www.ladybunny.net equal rights. www.peacheschrist.com “I will fight for them but I’m www.verdiclub.net not going to shut up,” she promises. “I’m not going to stop using words that have always been a greeting because some fat cat at GLAAD decides it’s a slur.

My generation talked about AIDS. Now we talk about silly names.”

When all is said and done, Lady Bunny hopes that her audience will laugh, think, and be more considerate of how we treat each other.

“It’ll be a very eclectic mix of things,” she promises. “I’ll talk about gentrification and of queens gone by. I’ll reminisce about when we weren’t so PC.” She might even, she says, refer to show biz legend Dick Van Dyke as Penis Van Lesbian.

“I’m a comedian,” Lady Lady Bunny with RuPaul at the Season Bunny said. “In a comedy 7 premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Lady Bunny featured in a 1990 flyer for Wigstock.

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Story time Joshua Grannell’s OutLoud shares tall tales

Courtesy Joshua Grannell

Joshua Grannell tells a tale at a recent OutLoud storytelling event.

by Sari Staver

A

fter performing at a handful of local storytelling events, Joshua Grannell realized a lot of his friends and show business colleagues could also spin a good yarn.

Grannell, who most San Francisco audiences know as drag queen Peaches Christ, wondered if he could find enough people to create a show that could regularly fill a room.

In September, 2015, Grannell, a writer/actor/producer, best known for his Castro Theatre drag and classic film extravaganzas, decided to test the concept.

The 43–year-old entrepreneur rented the smaller Fez Room at the Oasis, lined up a handful of performers, and launched OutLoud Storytelling, where half a dozen people have 12 minutes maximum to present a tale related to the evening’s theme, which have ranged from the commonplace (family feuds, road trips) to the unusual (stories that could “trigger” you.)

Now, following sold-out audiences for the first three events of 2017, Grannell clearly has a hit on his hands. With the recent launch of a podcast available on iTunes, Grannell hopes the audiences will continue to build, potentially enabling the show to permanently move into the larger room at the popular LGBT nightclub.

The show’s success is due to the ‘very weird and wild people’ who have told their stories, said Grannell, in a telephone interview with the Bay Area Reporter, following a recent show.

Co-produced with fellow drag performers Peggy L’eggs (Matthew Simmons) and Tommy Salami (Tom Paul Jr.), the three each work their networks to find people who know how to tell a “personal and true” story that will keep the audiences’ attention.

In real life, Simmons is a ‘care navigator’ for the Shanti Project’s LGBT Aging & Abilities Support Network.

Paul Jr. is a floor manager at Oakland’s Magnolia Wellness cannabis dispensary.

On a typical Tuesday evening once a month, the three work the crowd before the show, which begins at 7:30 pm and costs $10.

Grannell usually hosts and offers his own short story to open the evening.

Thus far, only one show, Repulsion, has been “difficult” to sell to audiences, said Grannell. “I like sto-

ries that shock and offend, but ticket sales were difficult on that one,” Grannell acknowledges.

Among Grannell’s favorites have been the night devoted to “Family Feuds” (where Heklina told a story that showed her sweet and vulnerable side), and “Happy Endings,” where performers discussed their experiences with escorts.

One of the most memorable performances ever, Grannell said, was when a well-known drag queen told a story about her habit of collecting fingernail and toenail clippings, discovered by a visiting date.

The March show, “Roadtrips, was clearly a hit with audience, who

rocked the room with laughter and applause.

Grannell talked about being in charge of a bus trip to Reno with 160 drag queens.

Among the other performers, Steven Satyricon, a member of the recently homeless theater troupe The Thrillpeddlers, discussed the foul-ups that occurred when a pair of “decadent hedonistic homosexuals” visited Windsor Castle.

Daphne Gottlieb, a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction, discussed a disastrous trip to a poetry reading at a conservative Arizona high school.

Kat Robichaud, a top 10 contestant on Season 5 of The Voice and creator and star of Misfit Cabaret, a local variety show, spoke of the relief she felt in ending her road trip to the southern United States, “where doors closed one after the other.”

Sari Staver Next up, on April 18, in honor of the upcoming stoner OutLoud’s Matthew Simmons, Joshua Grannell and Tommy Salami. holiday, 4/20, will be “Half Baked” with stories about being “San Francisco is at a critical “As I get older, I’m getting in “baked, bouldered and blitzed,” and crossroads now. People are having touch with the physical toll that bewill feature Alex J. Martinez, Debby a hard time accessing events that ing in drag takes on me,” said GranGoldsberry, Sam Khandagabadi, speak to them spiritually about our nell. “I love performing as Peaches Steven Lemay, and Jerry Lee. shared love for the city and the ecand will do drag, one way or anLooking to the future, Grannell centric people who have made it other, until I’m in a wheelchair. I’ll has decided to broaden the net to special for so long.”t never give it up. But I also realize catch a new crop of storytellers by doing as much drag as I’ve been doannouncing the themes for the rest ing is just not sustainable. I want to OutLoud @ Oasis: Joshua Granof the year. He urges anyone internell hosts the monthly series, this be able to showcase other talent. At ested in the following subjects to time “Half-Baked,” pot tales with this point in my career, I don’t have contact the show producers through Tommy Salami, Jerry Lee, Alex much to prove so I’m able to go their Facebook page.

J. Martinez, Debby Golsberry, where my heart takes me.

Upcoming theme nights include Sam Khandaghabadi and Amber Grannell touched on how such Senter. $10. Tuesday, April 18.

May 16’s Glory Days (stories about creative nightlife shows add to our 7:30pm. 298 11th St. sfoasis.com the lost places and people in San culture.

Francisco we wish had never left us.)

June 20’s event, Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves, will include stories from and about The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Other themed nights include MCs sharing stoCAFE | RESTAURANT | CATERING ries about show emergencies, leather and kink stories (timed with the September Folsom Street Fair). Autumn 4-6 PM DAILY themes include stories from Grannell’s Midnight Mass shows, and those who “fought the law” in police interactions; good, bad and ugly.

“All people, I believe, have MON & TUES NIGHTS a story to tell,” said Grannell.

“Early on, most of our sto288 Noe Street @ Castro | San Francisco rytellers were professional (415) 431-7210 | information @ lamednoe.com performers, because it happens that’s who a lot of my friends are.”

More recently, people who don’t perform professionally have come forward, he said. “They can be every bit as captivating.”

For Grannell, there are a number of motivations for producing OutLoud.

“The attraction for me was about getting to know folks in the community in a new way. “ As a performer, “I wanted to feel more naked on stage,” without the “heavy costume” of drag that provides a comfortable cushion from Best Breakfast & the audience.

Best Late-Night Restaurant “I was talking to (Oasis co-owner and well known drag queen) Heklina, and we agreed it’s a totally new thing for us to appear on stage as our other persona after so many years of Celebrating our appearing in drag. I tend to be intro40th year! verted, which many people find hard to believe. In drag, I can easily go out before an audience of 2000 people, as I often do at events. But put me on stage in front of 30 people as Joshua, and I can be really nervous.”

Also, by producing a small show like OutLoud, Grannell added, “I can do an event without having to freak out about ticket sales.”

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Above: Sari Staver, Below: Courtesy Joshua Grannell

Above: Zelda Koznofski played guitar along with her story at the March OutLoud event.

Below: Bernadette Bohan shares a celebrity encounter at a recent OutLoud event.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Hit or Miss Richfield Drag guidance for the Apocalypse

by David-Elijah Nahmod

I

f you’re feeling traumatized by the events going on in our scary new world, never fear! Miss Richfield 1981 is here to explain it all to you with her own handy and unique survival tips. Miss Richfield 1981 appears on Oasis on Thursday, April 13.

“It all started July 4, 1981, on a simple plywood stage in Richfield, Minnesota,” Miss Richfield 1981 tells Bay Area Reporter. “And like so many beauty queens, I won that title with my natural beauty, my baritone

vibrato and a fire that horribly disfigured all eleven other contestants when Trudy Olson lost control of her flaming batons. So after they hauled off nine contestants to the burn unit, and a couple others to the morgue, I was the only one left to receive the hand-glittered sash, shiny tiara, and a power lawnmower.”

The performer, whose real name is Russ King, says that beauty and hardware go hand-in-hand in his home town of Richfield. He doesn’t want to panic you, but he fears it may be too late to prevent an apocalypse.

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“But I do believe that you can always look your best in a bad situation,” he says. “So most of my advice is a bit after the fact, sort of, ‘Since we’re all going to die anyway, let’s go buy shoes and a handbag!’ And I am well versed in apocalypse experiences, mostly due to the Greyhound when the bathrooms are clogged up with adult diapers. You know that senior discount is popular!”

King’s Oasis show will include audience participation, which is Miss Richfield’s favorite component of the performances.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” says King. “Interaction with the audience also helps fill out the show, because I’m famous for cramming my hour-long shows into 90 minutes. So please bring everyone – relatives, friends and enemies – just think about who deserves it and buy them a ticket.”

Miss Richfield 1981’s message must be resonating with the public, as King’s drag persona has been seen on average in over 100 shows per year. Television appearances include The Tonight Show, The Today Show, and Watch What Happens Live on Bravo. King’s character is also the national spokesperson for Orbitz and for the city of Palm Springs.

“I’m always on the road because the gals at my church in Richfield keep buying me bus tickets to go someplace else,” King explains. “It’s amazing, but every time I get home, there on the screen door of my trailer is another bus ticket to go someplace else.”

King says that he’s touched by the love and support, and wants to assure Oasis fans will be treated to all new material.

“I have new music, new videos, new chatter, and most importantly a new message for our new world we live in,” promises King. “These are some strange times and I do be-

Miss Richfield 1981

lieve I’ve created a fun, toe-tapping program that makes the end of the world a bit more palatable.”

And what’s next for Miss Richfield 1981?

“Travel, travel, travel,” said King.

“And I love it, because I adore making new friends. Next I go to Seattle, Vancouver, Cancun with Atlantis, all before I head to Provincetown for the summer at the Crown & Anchor.”

King admits that constantly being on the road can have its drawbacks, as in making it more

We are the future of the LGBT community.

“The world still has its challenges but things are getting better. From the way we first met on line to marriage equality to our daughter’s upcoming Quinceañera our life together is more fulfilling every day. We keep up with events and entertainment on EDGE, because that’s where we see our future at its brightest.”

The people depicted here are models. Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Miss Richfield 1981

difficult to find a boyfriend.

“You know most single gals in my stage of life are more likely to be killed by a terrorist than find love,” said King as Miss Richfield. “So I’m thinking I might relocate to Iraq to better my chances. Popularity has its penalties!”t Miss Richfield 1981 @ Oasis; The wacky drag comic returns with 20/20 Vision, a campy song and story guide to the future. $25-$35. April 13, 14 & 15. 7:30pm.

298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 31

Smokin’ hot Cigar fetish fun in Vegas

cigar smokers at leather and kink events around the country seem to indicate that gay men are finding the allure of smoking and playing with cigars hotter than ever.

Here in the Bay Area, one of the more active groups to provide avenues for gay men to enjoy cigars is the Bay Area Cigar Buddies (BACB).

JD Girac is the dedicated leader of this group that also has a popular Yahoo group they use as an organizing and connecting platform (www. groups.yahoo.com/group/bayareacigarbuddies).

“The men who like cigars and enjoy socializing are an eclectic group, consisting of leathermen, bootmen, bears, otters, and just regular guys,” said JD, who has organized many cigar social events. “The enjoyment of Rich Stadtmiller smoking cigars is a gregarious expePeople “play” with cigar smoke in many ways. One way is sharing rience as witnessed by the popularthe smoke in a kiss. ity of opportunities for cigarmen to get together.

“On the other hand, quite a few seems to be increasing steadily in

by Race Bannon men are not ‘joiners,’ and resist berecent years. While I don’t have any longing to clubs or thinking of themas Vegas this year is home to the data to reference, my anecdotal eviselves as participating members,” he annual Smokeout, a fun-filled dence suggests that the number of added. “In spite of pressure against and uncomplicated weekend for men drawn to cigars as an enjoyable cigars and smoking, we are men who cigarmen, bikers, leathermen, bears kinky social pursuit and as an erotic like cigars and like the indulgence.” and their friends from all over the fetish has risen considerably over I asked JD what his impressions world. I attended last year for the the last decade. are of how guys see cigars; as a first time, and after this year, I now From what I have observed, most standalone fetish, as a hot look, or plan to never miss it. It’s one of my guys in the leather and kink as another type of play gear? favorite events. communities who enjoy ci“Men indulge in cigar-smoking Local cigar enthugars consider it one style of for various reasons,” he said. “For siast and Media Mansmoking fetishism (also some, it’s an integral part of social ager at Mr. S Leather, known as capnolagnia). interactions and/or private play. For Kristofer Weimer, was As a fetish, its mechaothers, it’s part of their persona and one of the many Bay nisms regarding sexual how they present themselves. It’s a Area men who attended arousal stem primarily statement about masculinity, and Smokeout this year. I from the observation or sometimes dominance or control. asked Kristofer what he imagination of a person A cigar is or can be symbolic, and enjoyed about the event. smoking, either other peoa power object. But sometimes ‘a “What I really enjoy ple or oneself. cigar is just a cigar,’ as Freud said. about Smokeout is the relaxed naOf course, people can enjoy cigars And it’s usually very easy to spot the ture of it all,” he said. “No agenda, entirely for the act of smoking them guys who are posing or conforming just hang around, smoke, joke and with no sexual connotations, but it’s to some idea of trendiness, because swap stories and spit. I also enjoy their connection to the leather and they don’t do it well. Not everyone the sexy mix of guys in and out of kink scene and eroticism generally who is into the leather/gear scene leather. It feels like a clan that everythat fascinates me the most. likes cigars. And not all cigarmen one is equally included in.”

The number of cigar groups, are into alternative niches such as Cigars have been something I events and accommodations for leather and gear.” have smoked and played with Whenever the topic of on rare occasion for decades, cigars arises, the health risks but it wasn’t until May 2013 are occasionally raised. It’s while I was attending Internaknown that regular cigar tional Mr. Leather in Chicago smoking is associated with an that my interest in cigars as a increased risk for certain canmore deeply rooted fetish took cers, maladies of the mouth, hold. and for those who inhale At the time, I was so taken (most cigar smokers do not with my newfound fetish that inhale), some lung issues.

I used my learning more about However, like many of the them as a metaphor for how kinky practices we engage in, I felt most BDSM and kink managed risk, on some level, education should take place. is considered a part of much Check out my blog post titled of what we kink folks do. Ev“How I Learned to Smoke a eryone should be educated Cigar” (you can find it online). and decide for themselves the Men and women from all proper risk and reward balwalks of kink enjoy cigars as ance that’s right for them. an erotic fetish, but the interIf you want to learn about est among a certain segment of cigars and the art of smoking kinky gay men has been prevathem, there are many books lent for a long time. Interest and sites from which you can learn. Enter “about cigars” into any online search engine and you’ll be delivered a plethora of information and resources. And nothing can replace having an experienced cigar smoker show you the ins and outs.

Topics to explore include: the various types of cigars; best cigars for beginners; how and where to purchase cigars; how to properly prepare, light and smoke a cigar; correct storage of cigars, and much more.

Playing erotically with cigars should be approached with caution as you would Both phots: Race Bannon with many other styles of Top: Local cigar aficionado and Smokeout 2017 attendee Kristofer Weimer BDSM and kink play. Since at a recent event at the SF Eagle. Bottom: One of the primary focal points you’re working with a burning of Smokeout weekend in Las Vegas is men gathering around the pool hot element, you don’t want to smoking and socializing. accidentally hurt someone in unwanted ways. Seek out ex-

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perienced leather and kink cigarfolk who can show you the correct, safe ways to use them during your erotic encounters.

One of the challenges of smoking cigars in a dense urban environment such as San Francisco is finding a suitable public place in which to smoke. The SF Eagle outdoor patio is one such location and they have many cigar gatherings taking place at their establishment throughout the year. Smaller, private gatherings

happen throughout the Bay Area. By seeking out fellow cigar enthusiasts you can learn about their locations.t www.lasvegassmokeout.com Race Bannon is a local author, blogger and activist. You can reach him on his website, www.bannon.com

For Leather Events listings, visit www.ebar.com/bartab

<< On the Tab

32 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

Gayface @ El Rio

Queer weekly night out at the popular Mission bar. 9pm-2am. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

Heavy Metal Yoga @ The Stud Yup, yoga at the historic bar. BYO mats and blocks. $10. 5pm-8pm. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Lady Bunny @ The Verdi Club New York’s sassy, saucy drag performer and creator of Wigstock returns with her hit show, Trans Jester, a night of quips and queer song parodies; presented by Peaches Christ and Fudgie Frottage. $25-$50.

8pm. Also April 14. 2425 Mariposa St. www.ladybunny.net www.peacheschrist.com www.verdiclub.net

Lea Salonga @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The Broadway and concert singer performs. $45-$85. 8pm. April 14; April 15, 7pm. 16 at 3pm.

Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. www.feinsteinsatthenikko.com

Mary Go Round @ Lookout Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes’ weekly drag show. $5. 10:30pm show.

DJ Philip Grasso. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Miss Richfield 1981 @ Oasis The wacky drag comic returns with 20/20 Vision, a campy song and story guide to the future. $25-$35. Also April 14 & 15. 7:30pm. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge The weekly drag show with DJ MC2, themed nights and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

A Perfect Circle @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

Egg Party @ Lone Star Saloon

The saucy women’s burlesque show hosted by Dottie Lux will titillate and tantalize. $10-$20. 8pm-9:30pm. 399 9th St. Also Sunday brunch shows at PianoFight Theatre.144 Taylor St. redhotsburlesque.com studsf.com

Community Art Project and Bears of San Francisco fundraiser, with fun egg-coloring activities, Fran Frisch’s Bear art re-installed, and a beer bust. $10. 3pm-7pm. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

RuPaul’s Drag Race Viewings @ Various Bars

Exodus: Let My People Party! @ Contemporary Jewish Museum

Shake Your Pill Box @ The Stud

Boy Division @ Cat Club

Fundraiser for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, with MC Mutha Chucka, and DJs Trever Pearson and Cegan Sabel-Dodge and Lisa Rose. $15-$50. 8pm-12am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

SF Queer Wave dance party this month celebrates Divine, with a pink (flamingos) color code, free admission for Aries folks, plus DJs Xander, Tomas Diablo, Donimo, Daniel Skellington and Starr. $5-$8. 9:30pm-3am. 1190 Folsom St. www.catclubsf.com

Uhaul SF @ Oasis

Cubcake @ Lone Star Saloon

Vibe Fridays @ Club BnB, Oakland

Three’s Company Live @ Oasis The drag parody performances of two new episodes of the campy 70s sitcom returns, with D’Arcy Drollinger, Heklina, Michael Phillis, Matthew Martin, Sara Moore, Marine Layer, Sue Casa & Laurie Bushman. $25-$35 ($225 champagne VIP table). Thu 8pm, Fri & Sat 7pm. Thru April 29. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle Music night with local and touring bands. $8. 9:30pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night. $5. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Junk @ Powerhouse Free coat/clothes check when you strip down to your skivvies at the cruisy SoMa bar, with hosts mrPam and Dulce de Leche, with Steamworks and lube prizes. $5. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Fri 14

The bears & treats monthly party returns, with DJ Trever Pearson. $5.

9pm-1am. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

DTF Fridays @ Port Bar, Oakland Various DJs play house music, and a few hotties gogo dance at the new gay bar’s weekly event. 9pm-2am. 2023 Broadway. (510) 823-2099. www.portbaroakland.com

The popular video bar ends each work week with hot gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials; also Saturday nights. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Hard Fridays @ Qbar DH Haute Toddy’s weekly electro-pop night with hotty gogos. $3. 9pm-2am (happy hour 4pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Hella Gay Comedy @ Club OMG

Ain’t Mama’s Drag @ Balancoire Weekly drag queen and drag king show hosted by Cruzin d’Loo. 8pm10pm. No cover. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.com

Bear Happy Hour @ Midnight Sun Hairy men and their pals enjoy 2-for-1 drinks and no cover. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

The women’s dance night grooves out with a full moon dance night, with DJs Miss Jackson, Silly Syl and Ripley. $20.

10pm-2am. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

House music and cocktails, with DJs Shareef Raheim-Jihad and Ellis Lindsey. 9pm-2am. 2120 Broadway.

(510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Weekly women & queers comedy night hosted by Debbie Devereaux (aka Charlie Ballard). No cover. Open mic, too. 6pm-8pm. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland The Latin dance night includes drag acts hosted by Lulu and Jacqueline, and gogo studs. $10-$20. 9pm-4am.

2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Fri 14 Uhaul SF @ Oasis

Sat 15

23rd Anniversary @ Hole in the Wall All-day and night celebration at the fun SoMa bar, with food, drinks, commemorative pins and more.

1369 Folsom St. www.hitws.com

Beatpig @ Powerhouse Juanita More!’s jaunty drag and butch blend event. $5. 9pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland Latin, hip hop and Electro music night.

9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Club Rimshot @ Club BNB, Oakland The weekly hip hop and R&B night. $5-$15. 9pm to 4am. 2120 Broadway.

(510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

KJ Dana hosts the weekly singing night; unleash your inner American Idol; first Thursdays are Costume Karaoke; 3rd Thu Kinky Karaoke 8pm.

43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Color for Life @ DaDa Bar

Fri 14

Ruthie Foster @ Freight & Salvage, Berkeley

The monthly Gaysian dance party takes on a Cherry Blossom theme. $8-$15. 9:30pm-2am. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com

Golden Dildeaux Awards @ Powerhouse The Golden Gate Guards’ 45th annual fundraiser and saucy awards ceremony; proceeds benefit AIDS Emergency Fund. 7pm-10pm. 1347 Folsom st. www.ggguards.com www.powerhousebar.com

Makeout Party @ SF Eagle

DJs Adrian and guests spin at the mash-up DJ dance party, with four rooms of different sounds and eight DJs. $10-$15 and up. 9:30pm-3am.

375 11th St. www.bootiesf.com

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG

Gameboi SF @ Rickshaw Stop

Weekly show with soul, funk and Motown grooves hosted by Carnie Asada, with DJs Becky Knox and Pumpkin Spice. The yummy brunch menu starts at 12pm, with the show at 1:30pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Bootie SF @ DNA Lounge

Lulu and DJ Marco’s Latin night with sexy gogo guys. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Schmoozefest of business, arts and philanthropy folks at the sylish downtown museum, with food, drinks, a champagne lounge, exhibit viewings, DJs Primo, Boy Young, and King Most, performances by vogue dance troupe House of Prolific; fabulous or business attire, please. $75-$150. 9pm-12am. 736 Mission St. www.thecjm.org

Lips and Lashes Brunch @ Lookout

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun

Picante @ The Cafe

Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. Also Fridays. 7pm-2am.

1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Red Hots Burlesque @ The Stud

The powerhouse soul/blues singercomposer performs. $32-$36. 8pm.

2020 Addison St. ruthiefoster.com thefreight.org

Art rock band, with Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan, performs.

Prayers opens. $60-$80. 8pm. 99 Grove St., Civic Center. www.apeconcerts.com

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall

Mango, Uhaul SF and Soulovely combine forces for a big fundraiser for the women’s march, gogo gals, DJs Bribee, Lady Lu, Lady Ryan $10 and up.

2pm-8pm. 3158 Mission St. thedykemarch.org elriosf.com

Shot in the City

Thu 13

Dyke March Benefit @ El Rio

Weekly drag shows at the last transgender-friendly bar in the Polk; with hosts Victoria Secret, Alexis Miranda and several performers. Also Saturdays. $10. 11pm. 1081 Polk St. www.divassf.com

Ruthie Foster @ Freight & Salvage, Berkeley

23rd Anniversary @ Hole in the Wall

Edited for space.

Full listings at www.ebar.com/bartab

Midnight Show @ Divas

Kick off Season 9 of the popular drag competition show. 8pm at Oasis (cohosted by Honey Mahogany and Sister Roma), Beaux, Toad Hall, Midnight Sun, Port Bar Oakland and other venues. www.logotv.com

Sat 15

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Art benefit for RAMP (Recycled AIDS Medicine Program) at the stylish downtown bar and art gallery, with hosts Emperor Nic Hunter and Miss Eva Sensitiva, DJ Prince Wolf, art auctions and raffles, food, drinks and fun. $donations. 6pm-9pm. 65 Post St. www.rampusa.org www.dadasf.com

Nark Magazine’s monthly smoochfest; fun queers, studs, photobooth and free shots. $5. 9pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Midas Touch @ Club 6 Comfort & Joy presents another of their legendary Touch parties, with a Golden Shower drag revue, Bunny Kingdom fantasy by Chickpea, golden grooves from Steve Fabus, Prince Wolfe, Trever Pearson, Jason Godfrey, J. Maximilian & Allen Craig. Full coat check in the Goldenrod Room. $25-50. 10pm-5am.

60 6th Street. midastouch2017@ eventbrite.com

Mother @ Oasis Heklina hosts the fun drag show with weekly themes. April 15 is a Beyoncé tribute night. MC2 spins dance grooves before and after the show. $10. 10pm-3am (11:30pm show). 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars @ The Café Mahlae Balenciaga hosts a meet & greet with drag performers from the hit show; Alaska Thunderfuck, Katya and others. 4pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Saturgay @ Qbar Stanley Frank spins house dance remixes at the intimate Castro dance bar. $3. 9pm-2am (weekly beer bust 2pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. QbarSF.com

Shake It Up @ Port Bar, Oakland DJ Lady Char spins dance grooves; gogo studs, and drink specials, too.

9pm-2am. 2023 Broadway. (510) 8232099. www.portbaroakland.com

Soul Party @ Elbo Room DJs Lucky, Paul, and Phengren Osward spin 60s soul 45s. $5-$10 ($5 off in semi-formal attire). 10pm-2am. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

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On the Tab>>

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 33

Spice Rack @ Club OMG

Musical Mondays @ The Edge

B.P.M. @ Club BnB, Oakland

The monthly (3rd Saturdays) genderqueer perfornace art dance party. $5. 9pm-1am.

43 6th St. clubomgsf.com

Sing along at the popular musical theatre night; also Wednesdays.

7pm-2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Olga T and Shugga Shay’s weekly queer women and men’s R&B hip hop and soul night, at the club’s new location. No cover. 8pm-2am. 2120 Broadway, Oakland. www.bench-and-bar.com

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room

Castro Karaoke @ Midnight Sun

Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Sing out with host Bebe Sweetbriar; 2 for 1 well drinks. 8pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Sugar @ The Cafe Dance, drink, cruise at the Castro club. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Sun 16

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar’s most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. Beer bust donations benefit local nonprofits. $10. 3pm-6pm. Now also on Saturdays. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Opulence @ Beaux Weekly dance night, with Jocques, DJs Tori, Twistmix and Andre. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Thu 20

Big Top @ Beaux

Shazia Mirza at Comedy Returns @ El Rio

The fun Castro nightclub, with hot local DJs and sexy gogo guys and gals. $5.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. beauxsf.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550

Blessed @ Port Bar, Oakland Carnie Asada’s fun drag night with Carnie’s Angels – Mahlae Balenciaga and Au Jus, plus DJ Ion. 2023 Broadway. www.portbaroakland.com

Daytime Realness @ El Rio Honey Mahogany guest-hosts some Easter fun at the sunshine drag event, with performers Nicki Jizz, Au Jus, Pussy Diet; DJs John F*cking Cartright, Freshie, Carnita. $8-$10. 2pm-8pm.

3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

Disco Daddy @ SF Eagle DJ Bus Station John’s fab disco T-dance salutes Prince’s early years, Part 2! $5. 7pm-12am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Domingo De Escandal @ Club OMG Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez and DJ Carlitos. 7pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Easter With The Sisters @ Hellman Hollow The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’s annual outdoor Easter stage show, with MCs Mutha Chucka, Cruzin D’loo and Kit Tapata, the Hunky Jesus, Foxy Mary and bonnet contests, drag kings and queens, live bands and a Trump exorcism! 12pm-4pm.

Free/donations. Golden Gate Park. www.thesisters.org

Femme Brunch @ Balancoire

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room

Spanglish @ Club OMG Spanish and English drag shows and dance music with DJ Carlitos. 9pm2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

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

Tue 18

Sunday Brunch @ Thee Parkside1

Karaoke Night @ The Stud

Bottomless Mimosas until 3pm at the fun rock-punk club. 1600 17th St. 2521330. www.theeparkside.com

Mon 17

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

Gaymer Meetup @ Brewcade The weekly LGBT video game enthusiast night includes big-screen games and signature beers, with a new remodeled layout, including an outdoor patio. No cover. 7pm-11pm.

2200 Market St. www.brewcadesf.com

Mister Sister @ Midnight Sun RuPaul’s Drag Race review night, with Honey Mahogany, Dulce de Leche and Carnie Asada. No cover. 10pm. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Hella Saucy @ Q Bar Queer dance party at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Sing Till It Hurts with hostess Sister Flora; 2 for 1 happy hour, no cover.

8pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down as the strippers also take it all off. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

OutLoud @ Oasis Joshua Grannel (Peaches Christ) hosts the monthly storytelling series, this time “Half-Baked,” pot tales with Tommy Salami, Jerry Lee, Alex J. Martinez, Debby Golsberry, Sam Khandaghabadi and Amber Senter. $10. 7:30pm. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Una Noche @ Club BnB, Oakland Vicky Jimenez’ drag show and contest; Latin music all night. 9pm-2am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Underwear Night @ Club OMG Weekly underwear night includes free clothes check, and drink specials. $4. 10pm-2am.

Preceded by Open Mic Comedy, 7pm, no cover. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

GlamaZone @ The Cafe Pollo del Mar’s weekly drag show takes on different themes with a comic edge.

8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Wed 19 Bone @ Powerhouse

Jock @ The Lookout

Uel Renteria’s final live band show at the cruisy bar, with Laundra Tyme, Vollmer, Straight Dudes and Younger Lovers; DJ Prince Wolf. $5.

9:30pm. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Enjoy the weekly jock-ular fun, with DJed dance music at sports team fundraisers. 12pm1am. NY DJ Sharon White from 3pm-6pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Queer Tango @ Finnish Hall, Berkeley Same-sex partner tango dancing, including lessons for newbies, food and drinks. $5-$10. 3:30pm-6:30pm. 1970 Chestnut St, Berkeley. www.finnishhall.org

Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht. 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market.

Donna Sachet often hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. $45.

11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Gareth Gooch

Weekly live music shows with various acts, along with brunch buffet, bottomless Mimosas, champagne and more, at the stylish nightclub and restaurant, with live entertainment and DJ Shawn P. $15-$20.

11am-3pm. After that, Femme T-Dance drag shows at 7pm, 10pm and 11pm. 2565 Mission St. at 21st. 920-0577. www.balancoiresf.com

The country-Western line-dancing two-stepping dance events celebrates 18 years! Free, including lessons for newbies. 5pm-10:30pm. 550 Barneveld Ave. www.sundancesaloon.org

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s

Bondage-a-Gogo @ The Cat Club

Fri 14 Cubcake @ Lone Star Saloon

The weekly gay/straight/ whatever fetish-themed kinky dance night. $7-$10. 9:30pm2:30am. 1190 Folsom St. www.bondage-a-go-go.com www.catclubsf.com

Comedy Showcase @ SF Eagle Kollin Holtz hosts the open mic comedy night. 5:30pm-8pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Girl Scout @ Port Bar, Oakland The weekly women’s happy hour and dance night with DJ Becky Knox. 6pm10pm. 2023 Broadway. www.portbaroakland.com

Latin Drag Night @ Club OMG Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez. 9pm-2am.

43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

LGBT Pub Crawl @ Castro Weekly guided tour of bars. $10-$18.

Meet at Harvey Milk Plaza, 7:45pm.

Also morning historic tours on Mon, Wed, & Sat. www.wildsftours.com

Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm.

424 Cortland St. 647-3099. www.wildsidewest.com

Thu 20

420 Bud Drop @ The EndUp Celebration of cannabis from the website GreeRush. 4:20pm. 401 6th St. www.theendupsf.com

Circle Jerk @ Nob Hill Theatre Superhung porn stud Rafael Alencar joins in the interactive playroom fun at the famed strip club, ahead of his April 21-22 stage shows. $10. 9pm.

729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Comedy Returns @ El Rio Shazia Mirza, Bill Santiago, Nathan Habib, Valerie Vernale and host Lisa Geduldig share intelligent humor. $7$20. 8pm. 3158 Mission St. at Precita. www.elriosf.com

My So-Called Night @ Beaux Carnie Asada hosts a new weekly ‘90s-themed video, dancin’, drinkin’ night, with VJs Jorge Terez. Enjoy 90-cent drinks. ‘90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Nice Jewish Boys @ The Residence Keshet’s monthly gay men’s gathering.

7pm. 718 14th St. keshetonline.org

Thump @ White Horse, Oakland Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests. 9pm-2am.

6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

34 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 13-19, 2017

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fter the ribbon-cutting ceremonies and the previous night’s Soirée (see News section), the renovated SF LGBT Center re-opened to an appreciative crowd on Sunday April 9, timed with its 15th anniversary.

Performers in various rooms throughout the Center –and on the outdoor balcony/patio– included Honey Mahogany, Jason Brock, Riya Christie, Aztec dance ensemble Xitlalli, Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, members of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, The Momma’s Boyz, Banda Sin Nombre and others. Stop by the Center for a look or an upcoming event. 1800 Market Street. www.sfcenter.org

Performers and local luminaries at the LGBT Center’s opening included: 1. Aztec dance ensemble Xitlalli 2. Alex Randolph, Tom Temprano, Alex U Inn and Juanita More!

3. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence 4. Honey Mahogany and 5. Singer Breanna Elyce Sinclaire

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

April 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 35

Underhill Shining Stars Steven Besties @ Oasis Photos by

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he Bay Area Reporter’s seventh annual LGBT Best of the Bay readers survey was celebrated at multi-Bestie-winning nightclub Oasis on April 6. The show’s performers included Bestie winners as well. Co-owners Heklina (Best Host) and D’Arcy Drollinger introduced Marga Gomez (Best Female Comic), who shared on-topic wit, then introduced Veronica Klaus (Best Female Cabaret and Band/Musician), Jason Brock (Best ≠Male Cabaret Performer) and Alex U Inn (Best Drag King) with Kingdom/Momma’s Boyz. DJ MC2 (Best Male DJ) spun a groovy ‘60s mix for the Summer of Love theme, and guests enjoyed food from La Mediterranée, and a logo-embossed cake. Oasis, 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com More photo albums are on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife. See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at www.StevenUnderhill.com.

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

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

New Butterfly Experience | Now Open

This spring, watch the Academyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s four-story rainforest begin to evolve.

See butterflies emerge before your eyes and enjoy special spring programming to celebrate the season in bloom. Plus, spot colorful new species among 1,600 live plants and animals from around the world.

Get tickets at calacademy.org The Osher Rainforest is generously supported by The Bernard Osher Foundation.