April 28, 2022 edition of the Bay Area Reporter, America's LGBTQ newspaper

Page 1

Richard Labonte remembered

13

Ajuan Mance

ARTS

Possible supe picks

08

ARTS

05

13

'Firebird'

The

www.ebar.com

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

Vol. 52 • No. 17 • April 28-May 4, 2022

GHB: The ‘elixir’ that no one is talking about (but everyone is drinking) by Adam Echelman

Courtesy Twitter

Courtney Brousseau

Still no arrest in 2020 killing of bi transit advocate by Eric Burkett

H

e was only 22 and powered by a strong desire to make the world a better place. On May 1, 2020, he was gunned down in a barrage of gunfire at 14th and Guerrero streets in San Francisco, the victim of what is suspected by police to have been a drive-by gunfight. Courtney Brousseau, a bisexual transit advocate and product manager at Twitter, died three days later after being taken off life-support at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Another man who was also injured in the incident survived. Only moments before the shooting, Brousseau tweeted a photo from the nearby Mission Dolores Park where he had eaten a burrito. “I just ate a delicious burrito in Dolores park and for a brief moment everything felt okay,” he wrote in what would become his final tweet. Two years later, Brousseau’s case is still under investigation according to Robert Rueca, a public information officer with the San Francisco Police Department. However, “We are not able to speak to what the investigation has at this stage,” he added. While continuing to keep tabs on the case, gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said his office hadn’t received any updates. “Courtney’s death was a tragedy for his family, friends, and an entire community that had come to know and love him,” Mandelman stated in an email to the Bay Area Reporter. “The city has an obligation to do everything in its power to provide closure for those close to Courtney.” Jane Natoli, a trans woman who serves on the San Francisco Airport Commission, told the B.A.R. that she’s disappointed to hear police have not yet made any arrests in the case. “Courtney was someone I was just getting to know – that’s the tragic part,” she said in a phone interview. “A life cut short and a lot of people getting to know him post-college.” See page 10 >>

F

ranz Lao had a few quiet hours at work so he left the office to take some meth and drink some G. When he returned to the office later to present at a 6 p.m. corporate board meeting, he was high, but he felt great. “Then all of a sudden the G starts to surpass the meth,” he recalled, “and I started just ‘falling out’ in the board meeting.” To his co-workers, it looked as though he had suddenly become drunk and manic. That was back in 2009, when Lao was using Gamma-hydroxybutyrate, known as GHB or G, every few hours. He got fired after that board meeting and started to use G even more. Jobs were harder to come by as the nation spiraled into the Great Recession. One morning after losing his job, he woke up and went looking for his car so he could go out and buy more G. “I walked around the block – I couldn’t find it,” he said. The next day, he got a letter that his car had been repossessed. Today, Lao, who identifies as gay, has been sober for more than a decade and serves on the board of the Castro Country

Adam Echelman

Franz Lao lives in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s LGBTQ Castro neighborhood with his dog, Cody. He serves on the board of the Castro Country Club in order to help others recover from Gamma-hydroxybutyrate, known as GHB or G, and other substance use disorders.

Club, a clean and sober coffeehouse and meeting space in the LGBTQ neighborhood. He is 48 years old and is soft-spoken

with an unwavering smile, even when he talks about the challenges he faced while using G. See page 10 >>

Glide granted federal historic status by Matthew S. Bajko

G

lide Memorial Church in San Francisco is now an official federal historic site, adding one more property important to LGBTQ history to the National Register of Historic Places. The Keeper of the National Register in Washington, D.C. officially listed the religious institution on March 14. It followed the California State Historical Resources Commission unanimously voting in January to support the liberal congregation’s Tenderloin sanctuary plus an adjacent apartment building at 330 and 302 Ellis Street be added to the register. News of its being approved as a national historic place was shared with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as part of its April 26 meeting packet. As the B.A.R. first reported in 2016, the San Francisco Planning Department used part of a $55,000 Underrepresented Communities Grant from the Department of the Interior to hire architectural historian Shayne Watson to write the nomination for Glide. Watson, a lesbian, had co-written a city report on LGBTQ historical resources that had highlighted Glide’s contributions toward LGBTQ rights. “I’m tickled pink,” Watson said of the listing being officially approved. She credited Glide archivist Marilyn Kincaid for working with her on the extensive documentation needed to support the nomination request. It being listed, said Watson, is

Courtesy Kyle Jarret

Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco is now an official federal historic site and listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

largely due to Kincaid’s “heart and soul and devotion” to the church. Glide’s 91-year-old church and several other buildings its foundation owns were already part of the federally recognized Uptown Tenderloin Historic District created in 2009. At

BREAKING NEWS • EXCLUSIVE CONTENT • ONLINE EXTRAS • SPECIAL OFFERS & DISCOUNTS • GIVEAWAYS

ebar.com/subscribe

the time Glide’s significance to LGBTQ history went unmentioned. As Watson noted in her reports about the church, Glide’s pastoral leaders fostered dialogue between faith leaders and LGBT people See page 11 >>


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.