August 28, 2014 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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Manslaughter conviction in park death

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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man who had been accused of intentionally choking to death another man in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park in 2011 was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter this week, but jurors Courtesy SFPD acquitted David Mu- David Munoz Diaz noz Diaz of murder.

In addition to the manslaughter conviction, Diaz, 25, was also found guilty of arson, mutilating human remains, and destroying evidence in the death of Freddy Canul-Arguello, 23, whose charred, mostly naked body was found in the park near a melted recycling bin just before 5 a.m. June 10, 2011.

After the jurors announced their verdict in San Francisco Superior Court Tuesday, August 26, some indicated that they had deliberated most on whether to convict Diaz of seconddegree murder or involuntary manslaughter.

They also could have convicted him of first-degree murder. The 10 men and two women had deliberated for more than five days over one week after listening to three weeks of testimony.

Diaz, who wore a blue shirt and a dark suit and tie Tuesday, sat up straight throughout the reading of the verdicts and looked grim.

Outside the courtroom, juror Prudence Hull, 63, said, “We felt that involuntary manslaughter is in fact part of the murder charge,” but the evidence wasn’t enough to support a conviction on first- or second-degree murder.

Hull said jurors “ruled out fairly quickly” that there was premeditation on Diaz’s part in the killing of Canul-Arguello.

“I don’t think he walked into the park that evening intending to kill this person,” Hull said. She added, “You never can see into the heart of another person. We had to just look at the evidence.”

Much of the court testimony had been focused on fractures to cartilage in Canul-Arguello’s neck, and Hull said jurors felt “a lot of force” had been used to kill him.

She said she and other jurors spent “a good bit of time” deciding between second-degree murder, for which there was “a strong case,” and involuntary manslaughter. She said there was “enough reasonable doubt that we did not all agree” on convicting Diaz of second-degree murder.

During the trial, Diaz, who’s been in custody since his arrest in July 2011, testified through a Spanish interpreter that he and Canul-Arguello had met up in the Castro just hours before the death, decided to have sex, and walked to the park.

They performed oral sex and other acts on See page 17 >>

Vol. 44 • No. 35 • August 28-September 3, 2014

Castro LGBT history plaques to debut Workers from Ghilotti Construction get ready to install the Christine Jorgensen plaque in the Rainbow Honor Walk in the Castro District.

by Matthew S. Bajko

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wo decades after first being conceived, a history project honoring LGBT people will debut in San Francisco’s gay Castro district next week.

Known as the Rainbow Honor Walk, the project consists of 20 bronze plaques memorializing deceased LGBT individuals who left a lasting mark on society.

The honorees, 14 men and six women, run the gamut from musical legends and beloved artists to LGBT rights pioneers and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

“Twenty years ago this idea came to me.

It is incredibly moving to me to see the hundreds of people who came together over the years to make it happen,” David Perry, a gay local public relations professional, told the Bay Area Reporter this week as he surveyed

the sidewalk along Castro Street where the plaques will be installed.

Perry is putting the finishing pieces together for the official dedication of the first batch of plaques, scheduled to take place at 11 a.m. Tuesday, September 2. Both Perry and Tom DeCaigny, a gay man who is the city’s director of cultural affairs, will make remarks at Harvey Milk Plaza that morning.

See page 17 >>

LGBT groups respond to Ferguson Rick Gerharter

by Elliot Owen

St. Louis. Fueled by the nature of the shooting, the treatment of Brown’s body, and the police department preserving Wilson’s anonymity until nine days after the shooting, Ferguson residents called attention back to one of America’s largest problems – racism.

During the first week, demonstrators were met with police in riot gear, armored vehicles, K-9 units, assault rifles, smoke grenades, stun grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Scattered reports of looting and property damage surfaced, as did accounts of press censorship and police brutality.

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he shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri has prompted LGBT organizations across the country to join others in raising questions around the circumstances of his death in the almost three weeks since the incident.

Brown, 18, was fatally shot by police Officer Darren Wilson around midday August 9. His bleeding body was left lying facedown, uncovered for a time, in the street for four hours while neighborhood residents, including children and Brown’s family members, looked on, horrified.

Communities respond Elliot Owen According to news reports, at But Ferguson hasn’t been alone. least six different bullets caused Protesters gathered in front of the Phillip Burton Federal Building Expressions of solidarity have over a dozen different wounds and United States Courthouse in San Francisco Tuesday, August 26 ranged far and wide. On August to demand justice for Michael Brown and others killed by police. The 15, Palestinian groups and indiincluding two through his head.

Police officials said Brown as- rally was organized by handsupunited.org. viduals signed a letter expressing saulted Wilson and a struggle for solidarity with Brown’s family as the aggressor, ultimately shooting and killthe officer’s gun ensued ending and the people of Ferguson. The ing Brown while he was either surrendering or with Brown fatally shot. According to the Los same day, the National Hispanic Leadership running from Wilson’s first shots.

Angeles Times, a handful of witnesses, includAgenda publicly called for justice and extended In the subsequent days, protests to the ing Dorian Johnson, who was walking alongcondolences to Brown’s family. On August 19, shooting erupted in Ferguson, a working-class side Brown when the incident began, negate OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates repredominantly African American suburb of Brown as the antagonizer and place Wilson See page 18 >>

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Crime data show declines, stability

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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any have expressed concern about crime in the Castro and Duboce Triangle neighborhoods recently, following the death of a gay man who was attacked on Church Street and a shooting near 18th and Collingwood streets earlier this month, and a hate crime at the Pink Saturday street party in June.

But data on incidents pulled from the San Francisco Police Department’s website and analyzed by the Bay Area Reporter show that overall incidents have largely decreased over the past six months or remained stable.

The B.A.R. aggregated data from crimemapping.com, which contains data reported to police and is available through the San Francisco Police Department’s website.

One area the paper reviewed was the half-mile around 18th and Castro streets from late February through late August.

In March, there were 30 incidents of assault or battery, while in July, there were eight. Through August 20, there were 10.

The most common type of case was “noise nuisance.” In March, there were 52, while there were 37 in July and 41 through August 20. The area saw a total of 1,106 incidents.

Bryan “Feather” Higgins, 31, was found on the ground near 100 Church Street the morning of August 10. He died three days later after his family removed him from life support. Police had not announced any arrests as of Wednesday morning, August 27, but they recently released video footage they say shows another man starting to attack him.

Within one-fifth of a mile of the middle of Church Street, there were 12 cases of assault or battery in 10:17 AM March. July saw 13 such cases, and through August 19, there were two.

Petty theft, which can include shoplifting, accounted for 24 incidents in March, eight in July, and five through August 19. The area saw a total of 439 incidents during the time period the B.A.R. reviewed.

‘Extensive’ problem

Gay Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose District 8 includes the Castro and Duboce Triangle, talked about crime in the area in a message he posted to Facebook August 13, the day Higgins died.

Rick Gerharter

Tina Beachy participated in an August 13 vigil in Duboce Park to memorialize Bryan “Feather” Higgins, a Radical Faerie who was severely injured and taken off life support. Some residents have expressed concern about crime in the area.

Wiener said “the tragic attack” on Higgins was “another example of the very real public safety challenges we are facing in the Castro/ Upper Market area. The problem is extensive, and the vicinity around the Market Street Safeway has real issues.”

Wiener said he and others were working with police “to address the day-in-day-out criminal behavior we are seeing. We get numb about it, because we see so much,” but “When you allow criminal behavior to go unchecked, it inevitably escalates and leads to violence.”

He wants to get the SFPD back to full staffing. He noted that even as the city’s population has grown, “the city didn’t fund any academy classes,” and the department has “shrunk” to less than 1,700 officers.

The city charter mandates 1,971.

Weiner pointed to his own efforts on the board to pay for academy classes, “but, until we re-grow the department, we need to make do with what we have, and that means smart use of resources to nip in the bud criminal behavior before it escalates like this.”

But asked in an interview about needing more staff, police Captain Dan Perea, who oversees Mission Station, said, “I have what I need to get the job done right now.” He applauded Wiener’s efforts and said, “We’ve got a lot more cops than we had three years ago,” adding, “We’re not understaffed. I have over 100 cops working at this station.”

However, Perea, whose station includes parts of the Castro and Duboce Triangle, said, “When we get more cops, that’s going to increase our ability to maintain public safety and address” other issues.

He said cops in his station “are very proactive,” but they cover, “a very busy district.”

When there are “a lot of calls for police service, then we become a little more reactive than proactive. ...

People are calling for our help and we have to get there.”

Many of the statistics in the area around 18th and Castro look positive. Perea said he’s particularly “happy” to see a decrease in car burglaries.

“That’s been one of the things we’ve really been proactive on and focused on,” he said. The effort has enabled police to arrest “some of the bigger fish” who’ve been responsible for many burglaries.

The area has also seen a reduction of incidents marked “assault/battery.” Recently, Perea said, there have been four officers Thursday through Saturday nights focusing on nightclubs his station oversees. He said concerns include people who are drunk and “not happy,” and who are “going to start something.”

Alan Beach, 48, a gay man who’s lived in the Castro for 21 years, serves as president of the Castro/ Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association. Asked about any changes See page 3 >>

Witness describes attack on gay man

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

lmost a week after releasing photos of a person of interest in the death of a San Francisco gay man, police still have not made any arrests.

Bryan “Feather” Higgins, 31, was found unconscious near 100 Church Street August 10 and died in the hospital three days later after his family took him off life support.

Last week, police released a video that they say shows a man chasing Higgins across Church and starting to assault him.

As of Wednesday morning, August 27, there had been no arrests, according to police, but a man who said he witnessed the attack told the Bay Area Reporter this week that Higgins had been antagonizing people nearby just before the incident.

Through in-person and email interviews, John Stone, 44, of San Francisco, said he went to the area that morning to get breakfast at St. Francis Lutheran Church, at 152 Church, which starts at 7:30 a.m.

Stone said he saw a man he later learned was Higgins “acting really off the wall.”

He said Higgins, who lived a couple blocks away, was “confronting people” who were in line for break-

Courtesy SFPD

San Francisco police released this video image of a person of interest in connection with the death of Bryan Higgins.

fast and “making a lot of noise.” He was saying things to the effect of, “I am every gender and no gender,” and he’d also spilled a couple people’s coffee, Stone said. Others asked Higgins to calm down, but he refused.

Eventually, a man who was in the line appeared to be “pretty well fed up” and started “having some words” with Higgins, Stone said.

They moved away from the rest of the crowd, and Stone heard the man say something about Higgins “fucking with everybody,” but Stone hung

back and couldn’t hear much of what the men said to each other.

He remembers thinking he was “pretty sure this guy is about to get his ass kicked if he doesn’t back up and leave,” he said.

The men walked up Church Street, with Higgins walking backward, “still up in the guy’s face,” Stone said. They made their way up to the concrete island in the middle of the street, then crossed over back on to the sidewalk, in front of the Out of the Closet thrift shop at 100 Church, he said.

Stone said the man, who had been wearing “a dark jacket,” took it off to reveal a red hoodie.

He said he the man threw “a couple of punches,” and “I thought I saw a couple of kicks.” The man punched Higgins “above the waist,” but Stone seemed unsure of exactly where. “It wasn’t his face,” he said.

Higgins ended up laying on the sidewalk, and the man put back on his jacket and returned to the breakfast line, saying, “Well, we won’t hear any more of that for one morning,” Stone said.

Stone approached Higgins. “I didn’t see any blood. I didn’t see any visual trauma,” he said. After another man said, “It looks like he’s dead,” See page 17 >>

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Community News>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 3

SF Pride Committee pays it forward

by David-Elijah Nahmod

T

he 2014 San Francisco LGBT Pride parade and festival was one of the biggest in the event’s 44-year history, and organizers and community nonprofits celebrated last weekend when $164,608.33 was distributed in grants to participants in Pride’s community partner program.

George Ridgely, executive director of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, as it’s formally known, explained the process by which the monies raised were divided up.

“Beverage partners receive a share of proceeds from the beverage booth they staff at the event,” he told the Bay Area Reporter. “Pride shares 50 percent of the gate donations collected by the gate donation partners. Each partner’s exact allocation is based on the number of volunteer hours they recorded at the event.

We had 67 community partners this year. The largest donation was just over $7,000, the smallest was $500.”

Last year the Pride Committee was able to distribute slightly more money, at $174,000.

The Pride board was joined by community partners and friends for an upbeat check granting party Saturday, August 23 at BeatBox in the South of Market neighborhood. As KISS-FM’s Christie James spun classic dance tunes, revelers ate, drank, and celebrated. The party was hosted

by Swirl Radio’s Michelle Meow. A

<<

Crime data

From page 2

he’s noticed in the Castro in the past six months, Beach said, “I know people are talking about [crime] a lot more,” but “I don’t know if people are just more aware of it, or it’s things are more high profile.”

One frequently discussed case has been a hate crime against a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and his husband at this year’s Pink Saturday street party, which the Sisters organize and draws thousands of people. No arrests have been announced in that case.

Beach said his “biggest concern” in the neighborhood “is the parking lot behind Walgreens and [the club] Toad Hall.”

Beach said the shooting earlier this month, in which the victim wasn’t injured and one person was ultimately charged, involved that lot, which draws people who are “partying after the bars close” and “causing a general neighborhood nuisance and disturbance.”

He’d like to see the lot gated off and closed during certain hours, a tactic used to address problems at the parking lot by the Castro Theatre several years ago when there were similar problems there.

The lot by Walgreens is an area “we want to keep an eye on,” Perea said.

City of St. Francis

Perea also said he hears “a lot” of concerns about “certain groups of people who hang out in Jane Warner Plaza,” the street park at Market and Castro streets, which people have complained about for years because they feel it draws homeless people, especially youth.

“Some of these younger people who are homeless, we’re trying to steer them to services,” Perea said, but the “common refrain” is, “This is the life I choose.”

“Our position is that if you break the law, we can issue citations, we can make arrests,” he said, but just looking out of place isn’t illegal.

Perea said, “There’s some people that don’t like the way they look.

They don’t want to see them hanging out all day. ... I understand ev-

Courtesy: SF Pride Committee

San Francisco Pride officials and representatives from numerous nonprofits crowd the stage at BeatBox Saturday, August 23 as checks were distributed to the community partners.

member of the Pride board, Meow, whose real name is Michelle Sinhbandith, also co-anchored the June 29 parade’s televised coverage for KOFY with Bay Area Reporter society columnist Donna Sachet.

After thanking the Pride board and staff, Meow introduced Marsha Levine, the board’s vice president and longtime parade manager. Levine gave out purple ribbons for the parade contingents that were considered Pride’s best for 2014. The contingents were judged by members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, including judge coordinator Sister Merry Peter, Saint Joe Terranova, Sister Hellen Wheels, Sister Rosemary Chicken, Sister Tilly Comes Again, Postulant Krysstian Mingle Tingles, Sister Wilma Tizgro, Sister Iva Surerybody is entitled to their opinion,” he said, but “it’s not for us to decide who belongs in a certain area. It’s a public space.”

If people aren’t committing crimes, “We won’t ever tell them to move, because it’s unconstitutional. We won’t do it,” he said. He noted San Francisco is “the city of St. Francis,” who was known for his kindness, and while police enforce the ban on people sitting or lying on sidewalks during certain hours, among other laws, “We have to respect people’s rights and show a little compassion, as well.”

Dennis Richards, 51, who’s gay and has lived in the Duboce Triangle neighborhood for 14 years, said while there may not be an increase in crime incidents overall, at least anecdotally, “Clearly, there’s been a difference, and it’s been negative.”

“I think the population of folks who are doing the crime is increasing,” he said, while “the nature” of incidents, which include drug dealing, “seem more brazen.”

He said the area behind the Safeway and near the Muni tracks offers “anonymity” and “a place to hang out and be bad.”

Richards noted the area around Church and Market is “at the juncture” of Mission, Northern, and Park police stations, and that can make it tricky when trying to get help from police, who say things like, “That’s not our precinct” and give callers “the run around,” he said.

He said his neighborhood should be overseen by one police station, and it should be Mission Station.

“We’re really part of the Castro,” he said.

Perea, who noted police district boundaries are reviewed every 10 years said, “We’re happy to police whatever assignment we get.”

Police Captain Greg McEachern, who oversees Northern Station, and Captain Raj Vaswani, who’s in charge of Park Station, didn’t respond to emailed questions.

Dennis Roybal is the resident manager of a large apartment building at 400 Duboce Avenue, near where Higgins was attacked.

Roybal said, “There’s a lot of activSee page 9 >>

prise, and Sister Bumblebee.

The winners were: the AIDS and Breast Cancer Emergency Funds for Absolutely Fabulous Award; Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center for Absolutely Outrageous Award; and community grand marshal Tommi Avicolli Mecca and the Housing Rights Committee for the Abso-

lutely Fabulous Theme Contingent Award. (This year’s theme was “Color Our World with Pride.”)

Gay state Senator Mark Leno (DSan Francisco), trans WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning, trans author Janet Mock, and trans community leader Miss Major Griffin-Gracy were all recognized as Absolutely Fabulous individuals for exemplifying the spirit of the parade.

Other ribbons were shared by multiple organizations.

Meow then returned to the stage to hand out the checks.

“I have to take my jacket off, there’s so many hot people here,” she quipped, as the crowd laughed and applauded.

Recipients included the AIDS Housing Alliance, Bay Area Young Positives, Dykes on Bikes, Oakland Pride, Bay Area Derby Girls, Bay Area Young Survivors, Bay Area Women’s and Children’s Center, and more than 50 others.

AIDS Housing Alliance Executive Director Brian Basinger was thrilled

by the check his organization received.

“AIDS Housing Alliance/SF is thrilled with the over $1,500 raised by our participation in Pride this year,” Basinger said in a statement emailed to the B.A.R. “As our organization continues to expand, these funds provide critical cash flow to help fuel growth. We successfully achieved funding for 61 permanent rental subsidies, targeting at-risk LGBTQ and HIV seniors at imminent risk of losing their homes. If we are awarded the contract to deliver those subsidies, these funds and other donations, will help us reach our goals.”

The crowd cheered as each organization’s representative took to the stage to happily accept their check.

The small BeatBox stage couldn’t fit all the recipients, so some of them stood in front of the stage for a group picture with Meow and a beaming Pride board President Gary Virginia, who stood beside a giant mock check representing the total amount of the grants.t

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<< Open Forum

4 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

Volume 44, Number 35 August 28-September 3, 2014 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Seth Hemmelgarn CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador Race Bannon • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Brian Bromberger Victoria A. Brownworth • Brent Calderwood Philip Campbell • Heather Cassell Chuck Colbert • Richard Dodds Michael Flanagan • David Guarino Peter Hernandez • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Michael McDonagh David-Elijah Nahmod • Elliot Owen Paul Parish • Sean Piverger • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Khaled Sayed • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Ed Walsh • Cornelius Washington Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Jay Cribas PRODUCTION/DESIGN Max Leger PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • Rick Gerharter Lydia Gonzales • Jose Guzman-Colon Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd Rich Stadtmiller • Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.359.2612 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad, Esq.

AHF’s misleading ad campaign

T

he AIDS Healthcare Foundation has never been a fan of Gilead Sciences, which makes the AIDS drug Truvada. It has held protests outside of Gilead’s offices, and has consistently criticized the drug maker, mainly over the cost of its medications. Truvada, of course, is the drug that people can take as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. And yes, it is expensive. The cost of taking the pill once a day as an HIV prevention tool can run about $1,300 a month. While Gilead has a patient assistance program to help those who can’t afford Truvada, the high cost of the drug has been the subject of ongoing debate among PrEP advocates and others for several years.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead’s Truvada combination pill for PrEP in July 2012. The two drugs in Truvada, tenofovir and emtricitabine, have been approved for HIV treatment for more than a decade and are considered safe and well tolerated. Tenofovir can cause impaired kidney function and bone loss in some people, but so far it has shown minimal side effects in PrEP studies.

PrEP got a major boost when a drug trial revealed significant results. The international iPrEx trial found that daily use of Truvada reduced the risk of HIV infection for gay and bisexual men and transgender women by 42 percent overall, rising to more than 90 percent among participants with blood drug levels indicating regular daily use. That last part is important, because as we know, not everyone remembers to take their medications as prescribed. And that’s where AHF is resorting to scare tactics and misinformation in an effort to discourage gay men from taking Truvada.

AHF is running an ad in several gay publications – it appears on the back page of this week’s Bay Area Reporter – skewing the scientific results. As AIDS reporter Todd Heywood wrote in a piece for HIVPlus.com, AHF wants people to believe that Truvada is “only as effective as baseline results from various studies.”

“A baseline finding combines all the results together to come up with an overall efficacy result,” Heywood noted. “But those studies found substantial differences between participants with detectable levels of the drug in their blood and those who did not. But science requires that we combine all the groups – adherent and non-

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AHF has long promoted condoms, and that’s a good thing. But it doesn’t have to advocate condom use at the expense of new prevention tools that have proven to be effective.

These days, our community needs more HIV prevention strategies, not fewer. As we reported last month, mathematical models estimate that widespread use of PrEP could reduce HIV incidence among men who have sex with men by 20-25 percent worldwide, preventing up to 1 million new infections.

Agencies like the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which in May also recommended PrEP for at-risk individuals, need to fight AHF’s ad shenanigans.

So does Gilead. San Francisco has one of the country’s first PrEP demonstration projects, and as more studies are done, more information will become available.

If AHF wants to have a conversation about PrEP we’re all for that. But AHF’s ad is wrong by saying that “there is a major debate going on about the efficacy of the drug Truvada to prevent HIV.” The efficacy has been established, AHF just doesn’t like the results. AHF must be honest with the community and acknowledge that so far, the research in support of Truvada is in – it works.t

AIDS 2014: The beginning of the end of HIV?

by Stephen J. LeBlanc

The most important message was eloquently expressed by UNast month, 12,000 HIV activAIDS Executive Director Michel ists, scientists, doctors, and Sidibe in his address to AIDS policy makers attended AIDS 2014 attendees: “My vision for 2014, the XX International AIDS ending AIDS [by 2030] looks like Conference in Melbourne, Austhis: voluntary testing and treattralia. Headlines from the conferment reaching everyone, everyence were dominated by the tragwhere; each person living with ic downing of Malaysia Airlines HIV reaching viral suppression; Flight 17, which killed six conferno one dies from an AIDS-related ence attendees including AIDS illness or is born with HIV; and researcher Joep Lange and his life people living with HIV live with partner Jacqueline van Tongeren. dignity, protected by laws and The most important story of the free to move and live anywhere in conference got less attention. Inthe world.” ternational AIDS policy leaders While the hope for ending AIDS James Braund are, for the first time, making seis timeless, this statement includes rious specific plans to end the ep- Thoko Njoloma looks at condom dresses that were on exhibit at last something startlingly new. Idenidemic phase of global HIV and month’s International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia. tifying and treating those with wielding antiretroviral treatment HIV has become recognized as the of HIV infected people as the most important tool for reducing ence meetings, satellite meetings, most important tool for doing so. new HIV infections worldwide. and post conference events. Each The biennial International AIDS ConferEfforts for an HIV vaccine, for new attendee received an “exclusive ence is the largest regularly held conference prevention technologies, and for a invitation” to a champagne event on any health issue in the world. The confercure continue, but the new priority with 10 percent discount shopence is part scientific conference, part busifor preventing new infections and ping at an upscale department ness convention, part international developeventually ending global AIDS is store, the invitation illustrated ment meeting, part social scientific meeting, providing virally suppressive antiwith an elegant model in a fashand part global HIV caregiver/patient/activist HIV drugs to every HIV infected ionable crimson dress. networking session, with a fair dose of boostperson throughout the world.

The world’s-fair like atmoerism and show business. Former President The new emphasis for global sphere of the conference has tended to cause Bill Clinton spoke. International activist Bob HIV testing, treating, and suppressing has AIDS researchers to announce scientific and Geldof spoke. Sir Elton John sent a video. A been summarized as the 90-90-90 goals, which treatment advancements at other gatherings. fashion designer displayed beautiful dresses were outlined by UNAIDS in a position paper Instead, the conference is perhaps most immanufactured from condoms. Public buildpublished this year. (see http://www.unaids. portant in providing international AIDS leadings throughout Melbourne were lit deep org/en/media/unaids/contentassets/docuers an opportunity to speak to the world with crimson red and festooned with red banners ments/unaidspublication/2014/JC2670_UNa collective voice in an attempt to direct global in recognition of AIDS 2014. There were art AIDS_Treatment_Targets_en.pdf). The goals, efforts to combat AIDS. events, receptions, dances, dinners, preconferSee page 8 >>

L

Bay Area Reporter

adherent – for one overall efficacy rate. AHF would like folks to believe those low numbers are the top line of efficacy, when in fact they are the bottom line of efficacy.” In other words, AHF is cherry-picking data from the low end of various studies to try and show Truvada isn’t as effective as it is.

There are legitimate discussions going on, largely in the HIV/AIDS and gay male communities, about PrEP. Some men don’t want to have to take a pill everyday, some men would rather use condoms. In developing countries, access to PrEP is marginal at best. AHF’s misleading ad does nothing to further this conversation. And while condoms, unlike Truvada, are effective at preventing HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, the reality today is that some gay men aren’t using condoms. For those men, PrEP is an alternative. (It should be noted that agencies like the World Health Organization, which last month came out with an advisory that people at high risk for HIV should consider PrEP, also state that Truvada should be used with condoms as an additional method of protection.)

t

t

Letters >>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 5

Election season and politicians’ actions

Skimming a recent Political Notebook column, there was a quote in the segment on gay and lesbian San Francisco city commissioners that caught my eye [“Out members join SF oversight panels,” July 31]. Responding to Board of Supervisors President David Chiu’s selection of two eminently qualified LGBT candidates to the city’s appeals board and planning commission, Supervisor David Campos reportedly said, “Election time makes politicians do certain things, and sometimes, the right thing.”

My mouth dropped –I couldn’t believe this sentence was coming from Campos.

For six years, Campos has represented the Mission district in San Francisco while the neighborhood has been plagued by some of the worst examples of the types of eviction and displacement problems we are seeing throughout the city. For five years, Campos did nothing in City Hall to address the housing issues in his district.

However, during his yearlong Assembly campaign, Campos has held hearings to talk about housing affordability, then passed a law to allow tenants to hold hearings about bad landlords, and then passed another law for tenants that was sued and is now bottled up in court. “Election time makes politicians do certain things.” Indeed.

And it’s not only housing issues for Campos all of a sudden. After being one of the board’s most inflexible supervisors for the majority of his two terms, this summer Campos decided to support Supervisor Mark Farrell’s bill to implement California’s Laura’s Law in San Francisco, even though he has long been a vocal opponent to the public safety measure. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence his change of heart happened while his name was on the ballot for higher office.

So maybe Campos was just speaking from the heart?

After all, elections time definitely does make some politicians do certain things, and sometimes it makes them do the right thing. Only one thing is for certain: nobody knows that fact to be true as well as Campos does.

After doing so little for so long, do we really expect Campos will keep fighting so hard for his constituents if he actually makes it to the Capitol? I suppose the good news is that California Assembly members have to face the electorate twice as often as San Francisco supervisors do. Maybe this means that in Sacramento, Campos will be twice as accomplished as he’s been in City Hall. I’d rather not take that chance.

Curt Gerard Robinson II San Francisco

Uplifting news in troubled times

and be uplifted in spirit. Here we have the best of the gay community: the Gay Olympic Games, founded by Dr. Tom Waddell, which were just played out near Lake Erie, Ohio [“Closing notes on an incredible Gay Games,” Jock Talk, August 21]; and the anniversary of the passing of a gay icon, Jose Sarria [“Sarria’s activism recalled a year after death,” August 21], who did more for this planet in a dress than most men have done in a multitude of lifetimes in pants.

There is no doubt in my mind that the gay community is the hope of the world. Some day we will have a gay president, who will concentrate on feeding the world instead of bombing it, and will lead our planet in the nature of being more humane to humans.

In the meantime we have the “Best of the Best” in this community, and we can all be proud of it.

Mary Richards-Rocos Palm Springs, California

Lee Grant’s contribution to LGBTs

Tavo Amador’s review of Lee Grant’s memoir, I Said Yes to Everything, neglected to mention her most important work in regard to the LGBT community [“She couldn’t say no,” August 14]. Her 1985 documentary, What Sex Am I?, which she directed for HBO, was one of the first films to look at transgender people in a non-sensationalized way, and certainly the first mainstream television documentary to do so.

In a time when “transgender” in the movies meant camp (Myra Breckinridge, The Rocky Horror Picture Show), trashy exploitation (Let Me Die a Woman), cross-dressing killers (Dressed to Kill), or straight cisgender men pretending to be women to get a job or an apartment (Tootsie, Bosom Buddies), Grant’s thoughtful, respectful film was a revelation.

Joanna Pashdag Santa Rosa, California

The letter of the law

If Michael Petrelis were to take Joe Mac’s advice and hit the unsubscribe button then he would be in violation of the court order prohibiting any contact with the supervisor or his office [Mailstrom, August 21]. The judge in the case told the assistant district attorney to have Petrelis’s name removed but that is something that hasn’t happened. So maybe Mac’s help should be directed to Supervisor Scott Wiener’s office.

If one isn’t smart enough to locate Petrelis’s campaign Facebook page www.facebook.com/petrelis4supe8 and see that he is running on many issues, one has to wonder why he is voting in the first place.

With all that’s unfortunate to report in this sorry world of ours, just look at the last issue of the Bay Area Reporter

Bill Wilson San Francisco

Oakland to hold Trans Pride Gala compiled by Cynthia Laird

K

icking off Oakland Pride festivities will be TransVision’s Trans Pride Gala Friday, August 29 from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza.

TransVision is a program of the Tri-City Health Center in Fremont.

Tiffany Woods, the program manager, said the gala is open to everyone.

There will be a special awards and appreciation ceremony at 7:45 p.m.

Awardees include City Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, the Oakland Police Department, and community member D’Anne Bruetsch.

McElhaney is a co-sponsor of the event, along with Mayor Jean Quan, Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, and the Bodine Group. Quan and Kaplan are running against each other in this fall’s mayoral race.

In addition to the awards, there will be dancing, networking, and light refreshments.

The event is free.

Other Oakland Pride updates

Another Oakland Pride event is the second annual Pride Breakfast, which takes place Sunday, August 31 at 8 a.m. at the California Nurses Association offices at 2000 Franklin Street.

Sponsored by Oakland Mayor Quan and the East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club, the event includes the presentation of the Oakland Pride Award to gay outgoing Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (DSan Francisco). As the breakfast takes place amid the city’s hotly contested mayoral race, attendees likely will see

Oakland City Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney will be recognized at the Trans Pride Gala.

several candidates and local politicos in attendance.

The breakfast will also recognize the Oakland Pride grand marshals: entertainer Sheila E, community leader Joe Hawkins, and youth advocate Lirio Zepeda. There will be a special musical performance by vocalist and composer Derek Lassiter.

The event is free to attend and a continental breakfast will be served.

For more information, check out the event’s Facebook page, “2nd Annual Oakland Pride Breakfast.”

In other Oakland Pride news, the organization announced a partnership with one of its sponsors, online music streaming service Pandora.

According to an Oakland Pride news release, there will be an Oakland Pride radio station, hand-curated by Pandora. The station will feature a range of music, including 2014 Pride headliner Sheila E, along with past performers Chaka Khan and En Vogue. To listen, go to www. pandora.com/OaklandPride.

Pandora will also have a float in the inaugural Pride parade, set for August 31 at 10:30 a.m. at Broadway and 14th Street.

Another parade contingent will be from the Greenlining Institute.

Members of the African American, Asian American, and Latino communities seeking to work together for racial and economic justice founded the organization in 1993.

“As an organization devoted to diversity in all its forms, we’re proud to be allies of the LGBTQ community and to stand with our LGBTQ staff members,” Greenlining Institute Chief Operating Officer Preeti Vissa said in a statement.

The institute, now located in Berkeley, plans to move to downtown Oakland next year. It has purchased a failed bank building at 360 14th Street and will transform it into a hub for what the organization envisions as an “equity ecosystem.”

Vissa noted that the building will include affordable office space and meeting facilities available to Oakland nonprofits, as well as space to display the work of local artists. Information about the project can be found at www.greenlining.org/360.

Everyone is welcome!

Contemplative.

Candlelit ambiance.

A peaceful time for prayerful reflection.

Sunday Twilight Mass

Sundays @ 6:30 PM

For people with busy weekend schedules.

Protest at Russian Consulate

It’s been just over a year since Russian President Vladimir Putin See page 18 >>

God’s inclusive love proclaimed here!

Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church

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

<< Community News

6 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

Sex-positive workouts draw on attitude

t

Courtesy D’Arcy Drollinger

D’Arcy Drollinger, left, leads a dance workout during a SexiTude class.

by David-Elijah Nahmod

A

fter she won her Oscars and gained both respect and infamy for her political activism, Hollywood legend Jane Fonda reinvented herself yet again. Throughout the 1980s, Fonda was a workout guru, selling millions of exercise videos. Now 76 years old, Fonda remains svelte, elegant, and a force to be reckoned with.

Apparently the workouts did their job, as Fonda appears to be decades younger than she actually is.

Though considerably younger than Fonda, 46-year-old D’Arcy Drollinger has begun a new kind of workout phenomenon. The wellknown gay drag performer, who has appeared on Broadway in musical theater, is now teaching a new and increasingly popular dance and exercise class in the Castro. The class, called SexiTude, offers a positive message: that everyone, regardless of age, gender, sexual identity, or body type has sex appeal. And indeed, Drollinger’s classes include young, buffed cuties dancing alongside their elders, who exercise beside those whose bodies might be considered “less than perfect.” They all share their teacher’s enthusiastic and positive energy.

“SexiTude is what happens when you combine sexy and attitude,” Drollinger said in an interview. “You get SexiTude.

“The word came up during one of the early classes when I was working on selling the routine,” he explained.

“It became a term that I kept coming back to. And the name we used when we’d perform. Over time, the word and the concept became synonymous with the class.”

Drollinger said that SexiTude is a body-positive, sex-positive, agepositive dance experience.

“That was not something I set out to create,” Drollinger said. “It was a very organic process. I had just moved to San Francisco after 13 years in New York. I couldn’t find a dance class that I connected with, so, discussing my dilemma one day over coffee with a couple of friends, I decided that I would start my own.”

Drollinger said he wanted a class that was fun, relaxed, and a good workout, both physically and mentally. For the first class, he rented a studio at the Academy of Ballet.

Sunday morning classes continue to be held at the academy, and Drollinger’s added weeknight classes at Dance Mission on Tuesdays and City Dance on Thursdays.

“Five close friends showed up,” he said of that first class. “Over time the class grew, and with that the cross section of participants grew. I realized that every Sunday morning I was dancing with an amazing mix of people. So many shapes, sizes, ages, and

Courtesy D’Arcy Drollinger

Participants move to the beat during a SexiTude class.

professions. What I saw connecting all of us was the love of dancing and the celebration of expressing ourselves. In that respect it really created itself: I just facilitated by opening the doors and turning on the music.”

Drollinger said that one of the things that set his class apart from others is the time he spends with students.

“I spend time each class working with dancers on emoting, on doing more than just dancing, on selling the number, on expressing ourselves,” he said. “We work on our ‘sexy face’ and our ‘attitude.’ I also encourage people to dress up, to come with some sparkle. Both these things make the class more fun. More importantly, I believe that they actually make people better dancers.”

Wearing a fun or sexy outfit changes the way people move, Drollinger said, and it gives them that extra bounce in their step.

“It’s more fun to do the steps when you’re feeling fierce. One of my mottos is ‘work a look, break a sweat.’ I will admit that I get plenty of people in shorts and T-shirts, and we do get very sweaty. Sometimes all it takes is a pair of leg warmers or that strategically placed wristband to make a look,” he said.

Essentially, Drollinger said, the class provides a good workout in a positive environment, and somewhere in between folks learn a few new dance moves and a little bit more about themselves.

One student said the classes give her the space to “feel sexy.”

“I am, and always have been, a big girl,” said Julia Leeman, a lesbian. “I have wasted away too much of my life feeling shame and discomfort in my own body. SexiTude gives me space to allow myself to feel sexy and fierce without feeling like I need to change my body to do so.”

Drollinger said that his classes are a “melting pot.”

“I would say on average that everyone who comes to my class is non-traditional,” he said. “They may

not all look that way, but they are.

That’s why they come.”

The energy and sense of fun in Drollinger’s class was impressive.

Several of Drollinger’s students talked about their experiences in SexiTude.

Christopher White, 42, said that taking dance classes with Drollinger and becoming involved with SexiTude has been a profoundly life changing experience for him.

“I not only found a way to be physically active in a way that I found fun and pleasurable, but I have found a community, a family, who support me and accept me regardless of my skill level, my body type or my age,” White, a gay man, said.

Brent Reed, 42, said that he found other exercise classes were usually full of younger people.

“I really felt old,” Reed said. “At SexiTude fun and camaraderie come first.”

Stephany Wilkes, 37, is straight.

She said that she likes the Sunday routine.

“Before SexiTude, I never understood why people go to church,” she said. “Now I understand the power in knowing that every Sunday at the same time I will see and dance and rejoice with people who share my values.”

Patricia McFadden, 43 and a mother of two, said she enjoys the “great exercise.”

“I’m not the quickest at picking up the steps, but it is so much fun, great exercise, and everyone is so supportive,” McFadden said. “SexiTude means putting your best foot forward whether it’s in sparkly heel or a beat up tennis shoe.”t The Sunday class is donationbased. Sliding scale prices are $13 for Tuesday classes and $14 for Thursday sessions. No one is turned away for lack of funds.

For more information, visit www. darcydrollinger.com and click the SexiTude link.

t

Politics>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 7

Khanna, Honda campaigns row over gay blood ban

by Matthew S. Bajko

policy since 2008, and a petition he started last year urging the agency to overturn its ban has more than 51,000 signatures.

Tyler Law, the Khanna campaign’s communications director, told the Bay Area Reporter that the candidate also opposes the FDA’s anti-gay policy.

B

lood was boiling this month down in the South Bay stemming from a dispute involving the federal ban against sexually active gay men donating blood.

The contretemps began when a former Republican congressman, Ernie Konnyu, criticized the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee’s decision to endorse gay Campbell City Councilman Evan Low’s bid for a state Assembly seat.

Taking to Facebook August 8 to denounce the business group, Konnyu zeroed in on Low’s push to convince the federal Food and Drug Administration to end its anti-gay blood donor policy.

“How sick is it that a business group endorses a liberal so left that he wants to change the law to allow blood donations by gays,” wrote Konnyu, according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News. “This, even though the current law forbids it since such blood has a risk of transferring the deadly AIDS virus. Yes! Gay pride is worth more with Evan Low than our citizens’ lives.”

Konnyu, as it happens, is a prominent GOP backer of Democratic congressional candidate Ro Khanna, a venture capitalist who is running against longtime Congressman Mike Honda (D-San Jose). And it wasn’t long before Honda’s supporters, including Low, were using Konnyu’s words to attack Khanna.

In a press release sent out August 19 several South Bay LGBT leaders called on Khanna to denounce Konnyu, whom they referred to as “his biggest Republican Tea Party supporter,” due to his “homophobic remarks.”

Khanna’s “continued silence on this issue raises concerns that he may share Konnyu’s views, and I urge him to join me, Congressman Honda, and the thousands of Americans nationwide who would like to see the FDA change its views,” stated Low. James Gonzales, president of the Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee, the South Bay’s nonpartisan LGBT political group, added, “This kind of homophobic rhetoric has no place in our politics, from any politician of any party. We hope that Ro Khanna will quickly condemn these comments by Konnyu and denounce his support.”

Within hours Khanna’s campaign issued a response, calling the attacks from Honda’s camp hypocritical.

“My positions and record on defending marriage equality and the rights for all people is unequivocal.

I believe that any laws discriminating against LGBT individuals are unconstitutional. Full stop,” stated Khanna. “While I am proud of all the support this campaign has received, I find any discriminatory statements from my supporters – whether they be homophobic, racist, or sexist – to be completely unacceptable and not reflective of my or my campaign.”

Khanna went on to complain that Low “has marginalized what could have been legitimate advocacy by recklessly saying that I could possibly agree with discrimination.

MAKE CONTACT

Politicians to march in Oakland Pride parade

Rick Gerharter

Congressman Mike Honda

Courtesy Khanna for Congress campaign

Congressional candidate Ro Khanna

This striking example of hypocrisy represents the worst of politics.

Where were Congressman Honda and Mayor Low when Mike Honda’s Super PAC sent out racially coded and xenophobic mailers? They both remained silent and protected their political interests over the Asian American community.”

Khanna was referring to mailers sent out prior to the June primary by the Working for Us PAC, which accused him of shipping jobs overseas. The candidate, who is Indian American, in turn claimed the hit pieces used racist language and called on Honda to disavow them.

Honda campaign spokesman Vivek Kembaiyan was recently quoted in a Mercury News story calling the mailers “completely counterproductive to our goal of getting Mike re-elected, and we hope that any groups who share that goal will stay out of our race.”

As for Konnyu, he again took to Facebook last week to attack Low, questioning why he is not running against Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), whose district covers Campbell, instead of for state office since the FDA blood policy is a federal issue.

“Does he not know that? Or is this ‘Throw out the FDA blood supply protections’ just flim flam to win the Assembly elections?” wrote Konnyu in all capital letters.

Lost in the back and forth between the two camps is the fact that both Honda and Khanna see eye-toeye in terms of ending the FDA’s gay blood donor ban.

Honda has been critical of the

As evidenced by San Francisco’s annual Pride event, politicians love a parade. So it is no surprise that a number of East Bay politicos have signed up to march in Oakland Pride’s inaugural parade this Sunday, August 31.

According to Pride officials, state Assembly members Rob Bonta (DOakland) and Nancy Skinner (DBerkeley) plan to join the East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club’s contingent. Oakland City Council candidate Abel Guillen, who identifies as Two Spirit and serves on the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees, is also expected to march.

The parade begins at 10:30 a.m. when it kicks off at Broadway and 14th Street in downtown Oakland.

It will end a few blocks later at Broadway and 20th Street near the main entrance to the Pride festival.

Several Oakland mayoral candidates are organizing their own contingents. Mayor Jean Quan, who is facing a tough re-election battle against 14 opponents this November, was one of the first to invite supporters to join her in the parade as part of the city of Oakland’s contingent.

On Tuesday, lesbian Oakland AtLarge City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who is running to oust Quan as mayor, issued an invite via Facebook to join her parade contingent. She also announced she is hosting a pre-Pride party from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday, August 30 at gay club the Bench and Bar, 510 17th Street in downtown Oakland. Tickets are $10 a person.

The morning of Pride Kaplan is hosting her own pancake breakfast at 9 a.m. at her campaign headquarters, 2131 Broadway Street, prior to joining the parade.

The event will compete against the Stonewall Club’s second annual Pride breakfast it is co-hosting with Quan where it will present gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) its Oakland Pride Award.

The Democratic group’s event will be from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the California Nurses Association offices at 2000 Franklin Street. Space is limited, so those wishing to attend are asked to RSVP at https:// www.eventbrite.com/e/2nd-annual-oakland-pride-breakfast-tickets12567562919.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 the Alice and Milk LGBT Democratic clubs’ endorsements of local ballot measures this fall.

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) 8615019 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

www.ebar.com

Join us for our signature monthly networking event!

Make contact and connect with LGBT & Allied business professionals at this month’s Make Contact event.

This month, the Make Contact event is sponsored by Barbary Insurance Brokerage and AMSI Real Estate Services.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2014 6:00pm - 8:00pm AMSI Real Estate Services 2800 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94109 FREE for GGBA Members | $20 for Guests

Since 1974, GGBA is proud to be the LGBT Chamber of Commerce for the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information about this event or to find LGBT-friendly businesses, please visit

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<< Community News

8 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

AHF’s PrEP ad sparks controversy

by Liz Highleyman

A

new ad campaign from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has kicked off another round of controversy about HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, better known as PrEP. AHF argues that the scientific evidence does not support widespread use of Truvada for prevention, while proponents say it is more effective than condoms, which most gay men do not use all the time.

AHF has taken the position that “scientific data do not support the large-scale use of Truvada as a community-wide public health intervention,” according to the ad, which will run in several publications in California and Florida, including this week’s Bay Area Reporter, where it appears on the back page.

“We want the public to know that the government-sanctioned widespread scale-up of PrEP appears to be a public health disaster in the making,” said AHF president Michael Weinstein.

“AHF is now the direct enemy of effective HIV prevention,” countered leather community leader and B.A.R. columnist Race Bannon.

“The science is clear. PrEP works.

The data at this point are irrefutable to anyone paying attention.

Anti-PrEP folks are now the climate change deniers of HIV prevention.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead Sciences’ Truvada (tenofovir plus emtricitabine) for PrEP in July 2012. In May the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that people at “substantial risk” should consider PrEP to prevent HIV infection. The World Health Organization last month also recommended

<<

Guest Opinion

From page 4

simply stated, are by 2020 to achieve 90 percent of all people with HIV knowing their HIV positive status, 90 percent of all people who know they are HIV-positive receiving antiviral treatment, and 90 percent of all those treated having sustained suppressed HIV viral load. According to UNAIDS, with these targets, 73 percent of people living with HIV worldwide will have undetectable viral load. This is three times higher than the percentage of those who are HIV-positive with suppressed viral load today.

The statement that global access to highly effective anti-HIV treatment is not only possible, but is the key to ending the spread of HIV globally, is a radical shift in thinking about the importance of treating HIV infected individuals in the poorest countries.

In 1996, at the XI International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, headlines reported that protease inhibitors and other highly active anti-HIV therapy were miracle lifesaving drugs for those who could afford them. At that time, it was a nearly universally held view among global AIDS leaders that the drugs would have minimal impact on the course of HIV outside of the developed world “because most people with HIV will never have access to them.”

That mindset began to change in 2003 with the commencement of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief under President George W. Bush. PEPFAR sought to dramatically expand anti-HIV treatment in lower income nations. Even under PEPFAR, however, treatment for the HIV-infected was seen as a separate effort from prevention of new infections. The rationale for providing treatment to infected individuals in PEPFAR was to reduce AIDS deaths and the resulting social and political instability, rather than to prevent the spread of HIV infections.

Major scientific support for using

Courtesy AHF

AHF’s Michael Weinstein

PrEP as an option for at-risk gay men.

Gilead itself has so far stayed out of the PrEP controversy. Spokeswoman Cara Miller declined to comment on the AHF ad.

Conflicting figures

The AHF ad features a chart showing overall efficacy in eight major studies of PrEP using Truvada or tenofovir alone in pill or gel formulations. Figures range from a high of 75 percent in the Partners PrEP study of heterosexual couples in Africa to less than 10 percent in the Fem-PrEP study of African women.

“It’s not an ideological question, it’s a scientific question,” Weinstein told the B.A.R. “People have accused us of not being scientific, so we decided to go back to the science and present it as it is, not based on treatment of HIV infected individuals as a central tool in preventing new HIV infections was first published in 2011. (The HPTN 052 trial.) According to UNAIDS, as of 2014, among all prevention interventions evaluated to date in randomized, controlled trials, HIV treatment has demonstrated by far the most substantial effect on HIV incidence. UNAIDS cited interim findings from the PARTNER study that indicate that among 767 serodiscordant couples, no case of HIV transmission occurred when the person living with HIV had suppressed virus – after an estimated 40,000 instances of sexual intercourse.

This is the background for the 9090-90 goals announcement. While the goals are largely viewed as doable, enormous challenges remain.

First, one of the presuppositions of the goal is redefining those eligible to receive treatment in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) under national and international programs. At the present time, the most widely used criteria for treatment of people with HIV in LMICs is to treat those with under 350 CD4 cells. This guideline is believed to triage available anti-HIV treatment to the most ill and about 18 million people are believed eligible for treatment under this guideline. (According to UNAIDS, the world is now on track to provide HIV treatment to at least 15 million people by 2015.) At the end of 2013, the WHO recommended raising the international treatment guideline to anyone with less than 500 CD4 cells. This raises the number of people needing treatment in low and middle-income countries to almost 30 million. Increasing eligibility to all HIV-positive people raises the number of people requiring treatment to 34 million.

Adding 19 million additional people to the pool of those recommended receiving HIV treatment has met with some resistance from governments, funders, and planners. Encouraging people who have

Courtesy AIDS Foundation Chicago

AIDS Foundation Chicago’s Jim Pickett

our interpretation but on the figures in the studies.”

In contrast, PrEP proponents cite efficacy figures in the 90 to 100 percent range for men who have sex with men, the group most extensively studied to date.

The battle of the numbers arises from the different ways researchers can report medical study results.

In randomized, controlled clinical trials the gold standard is “intent-to-treat” results – how well did a drug work among everyone assigned to take it, including people who may not have used it regularly or who stopped early due to side effects or for other reasons. This is usually the primary type of data reported in medical journals.

Intent-to-treat results are thought to better reflect outcomes in the real world. A drug may have strong annever felt sick as a result of HIV infection to take daily antiviral treatment is also a challenge. In one presentation on preventing mother to child transmissions, an HIV activist from Africa stressed that HIV-positive mothers who were not experiencing HIV symptoms should not be pressured into taking medication after giving birth to their babies.

This drew an emotional response from one doctor who practiced in lower income communities and said he wished he had the power to force people to take their medications.

Despite these challenges, the 9090-90 goals are a significant advance in the fight against global AIDS. These goals are the first statement of an international plan to end global AIDS that uses only currently available technologies and an expansion of proven workable programs.

Voluntary male circumcision

The other prevention method that received substantial attention at AIDS 2014 was voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC), discussed in more than 80 presentations and abstracts. Male circumcision has been shown in a number of studies to reduce the risk for men in Africa of becoming infected with HIV through sex with a woman by as much as 60 percent. Implementation of large-scale voluntary male circumcision in Africa began in 2008. According to the World Health Organization, about 5.8 million men were circumcised in 14 priority countries of East and Southern Africa since 2008, with more than half of those circumcisions performed since 2013. The WHO estimates that attaining and maintaining 80 percent coverage of male circumcision in the 14 subSaharan countries could prevent an estimated 3 million HIV infections and save more than $16 billion in future health care costs.

Cure research

AIDS cure research was widely

Courtesy Project Inform

Project Inform’s David Evans

tiviral potency, for example, but if many people find it too inconvenient or too toxic to use regularly, its real effectiveness in practice may be low.

Another method, known as “astreated” or “per-protocol” results, considers only the subset of study participants who actually took the drug as directed. In general, astreated results will make a treatment look better than intent-to-treat results.

iPrEx by the numbers

The community PrEP debate mainly involves conflicting figures from the iPrEx study, which enrolled nearly 2,500 HIV-negative gay and bisexual men and a small number of transgender women at 11 sites in six countries, including San Francisco and Boston in the U.S. Participants were randomly as-

discussed at the International AIDS Conference, but little new science was presented. Former San Francisco resident Timothy Brown (the Berlin patient), remains to date the only person functionally cured of HIV infection. While the therapy used to cure him (bone marrow transplantation with HIV resistant cells) remains an area of study, particularly under sponsorship of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, no results in that regard were reported at the conference.

The AIDS cure research story that received the most attention at AIDS 2014 was the announcement that the “Mississippi baby” (now a 4-year-old child) had developed a detectable HIV viral load after two years of being functionally cured.

This was widely reported as a huge blow to AIDS cure research efforts.

However, the child was never the subject of any clinical trail or experimental therapy, but was instead a baby born HIV-positive, who was put on daily antivirals at 30 hours of age. The child mostly continued this therapy for a year and a half. Thereafter, the child and mother missed doctor’s appointments for about five months and the child did not receive antiviral therapy. For virtually all people with HIV, it would be expected they would have a high viral load after five months with no drugs. When the child returned to the doctor, at about age 23 months, the doctor was very surprised to find the baby had no detectable virus. The child was not put back on drugs and a number of ultra sensitive tests showed there was no detectable virus anywhere in the baby’s body. The child stayed undetectable, healthy, and showed no signs of an immune response to HIV until the positive viral load test in June 2014.

For AIDS cure researchers, the Mississippi child is one example that complete HIV viral suppression without use of antiviral drugs is achievable for a sustained period of time (two years in this case), but

t

signed to take either Truvada or an inactive placebo once daily. The study was blinded, meaning neither the participants nor researchers knew who was taking what. Everyone also received regular HIV testing and a package of prevention services including risk-reduction counseling and free condoms. After the main study ended, participants could continue taking Truvada in the iPrEx open-label extension, or OLE. During an average follow-up period of about a year, the risk of HIV infection was 44 percent lower overall in the Truvada group compared with the placebo group in an intent-to-treat analysis of the main iPrEx study – the figure cited in the AHF ad.

About half of iPrEx participants reported taking Truvada as directed most of the time, and in this group the likelihood of infection dropped by 73 percent. Among people with blood drug level measurements indicating good adherence, risk reduction was 92 percent. A mathematical model later estimated that PrEP effectiveness could reach 99 percent for people who took Truvada at least four days per week.

About 1,600 participants took part in the OLE; three-quarters chose to keep taking Truvada, while the rest served as an untreated control group. OLE participants knew they were getting the active drug and were informed about the data showing that it reduced HIV risk.

In the OLE the overall risk reduction was 49 percent in the Truvada group compared with the untreated group. Among people who had blood drug levels indicating that See page 18 >> that HIV can also apparently rebound from a hidden compartment in the body even when the most sensitive tests available can detect no complete HIV virus.

Social issue

The social issue that drew new levels of attention at AIDS 2014 is decriminalization and destigmatization. UNAIDS has strongly called for destigmatization and decriminalization of those with HIV and of sex workers, injection drug users, and men who have sex with men who are at highest risk of becoming infected. The prestigious medical journal the Lancet released a special issue devoted to HIV and sex workers. Presentations were made regarding how police can work cooperatively with high HIV risk communities to reduce HIV transmission. Decriminalization activists reported back from the first HIV is not a Crime conference that took place in June.

In 2016, the International AIDS Conference will return to Durban, South Africa, which hosted the conference in 2000. This will be only the second time the conference has been in Africa and only the fourth time the conference has been hosted outside of the world’s highest income nations. Africa will be the primary proving grounds for whether the visionary leadership embodied in the 90-90-90 goals can translate into actually reducing new HIV infections and eventually ending AIDS across the globe. South Africa has the highest total number of HIV infected individuals of any nation on earth, with an estimated six million people having the virus. When the International AIDS Conference next invites the world to review and reflect on the response of global leaders to HIV, the toughest and most affected crowd will be sitting front and center.t Stephen J. LeBlanc is a member of the AIDS Policy Project.

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Summer Reading>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 9

Real life stories pervade the LGBT book aisle

by Matthew S. Bajko

R

eality, these days, is pervading LGBT literature aisles in bookstores across the country.

Whether it is the nonfiction section or the latest fiction release, LGBT reading lists are bursting with titles seemingly ripped from news headlines.

Two of the most talked about book releases this spring, for instance, were tomes focused on the federal litigation that struck down Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban against same-sex marriage. Poz magazine founder Sean Strub’s memoir of the early days of the AIDS epidemic also received considerable attention in early 2014.

And the titles keep coming for LGBT autobiographies. In A Song for Lost Angels: How Daddy and Papa Fought to Save Their Family, San Francisco resident Kevin FisherPaulson describes how he and his husband spent a year caring for medically challenged infant triplets, only to have their drug addicted mother regain custody due to the intervention of an anti-gay social worker.

Well-known LGBT media fixtures Diane and Jacob Anderson-Minshal detail how their relationship survived Jacob’s transition “from lesbian feminist to straight white guy” in their memoir Queerly Beloved: A Love Story Across Genders.

With a similar theme is Silicon Valley-based author Sunshine Mugrabi’s When My Boyfriend Was A Girl, described as a “behind-thescenes look at a non-traditional relationship between a bisexual woman and her transgendered husband.”

“I can’t say I see memoir as having become more of a trend. It has always been popular,” said Lambda Literary Foundation Executive Director Tony Valenzuela.

The foundation annually awards the best in LGBT literature, and its contests for best lesbian and best gay memoir are two of the most “popular and competitive ones,” said Valenzuela. This year’s winners were A Heaven of Words: Last Journals by Glenway Wescott, and Body Geographic by Barrie Jean Borich.

Michelle Theall, who lives in Boulder, Colorado with her partner and son, spent years crafting her memoir Teaching the Cat to Sit before it was published this year.

The book recounts her struggle to remain faithful to the Catholic Church while coming to accept being a lesbian.

Her life story is woven around how the parochial school the couple had been sending their son to decides to ban admitting children of

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Crime data

From page 3

ity in the area.” He said the recycling center that had been located at the Safeway had drawn “a large transient population” but since the center closed “the activity level with the homeless has gone down quite a bit.” However, he said, there’s still a problem with people who appear to be mentally ill.

“There are people that scream all night long,” said Roybal, while there are “others that scream all during the day.” One man who “usually hangs out” at Church and Duboce “screams he wants to start a race war.”

He said he calls police “very frequently about the people that sit and lie on the sidewalk,” as well as people who are “passed out drunk” in the bronze chairs in the neighborhood that are designed as public art. There are seven in front of his building.

Police have “generally” been responsive, he said, but “sometimes it takes them a little longer, because I know they’ve got a lot of other things they’re dealing with.”

Cynthia Laird

A trio of recently published books that explore LGBT themes.

Young adult author Cat Clarke

gay parents. It also details Theall’s battles with her devout Catholic mother, who lives in Texas.

“The best therapy in the world was writing this book. It was better than the money I have spent on a shrink’s couch,” said Theall, who first began work on the book in 2007.

At first Theall had planned to pen a novel. She changed course, however, during the writing process.

“When I first started writing a book, it was very much this sort of novel form. It wasn’t very good,” she recalled. “I got to the old adage write what you know. For my first book maybe I just need to go deep and tell my story first.”

At the request of her parents, as Theall details in the book, she changed the names of her family members.

Otherwise, “the pace, the smells, the feeling behind everything ... I don’t have to make anything up. I lived it,” said Theall.

She is now working on a novel tentatively called Winter’s Wake about a brother and sister growing up in foster care in Texas.

“At this point I am saying no more memoirs,” she said.

Based on a true story

Real events are also inspiring writers of LGBT fiction. Timed to the 100th anniversary of World War I this year, Lance Ringel’s historical novel Flower of Iowa is the imagined love story of an American and British soldier who meet in 1918 toward the final months of the war.

For her debut novel Nochita, author Dia Felix turned to San Francisco in the 1990s for inspiration in crafting her teenage protagonist’s coming-of-age story.

Roybal, who’s “over 50” and straight, said, “I would like to see the police be a little more proactive in that location, to do patrols rather than coming out when I call them because there’s a crazy man in front of my building.”

Robert Young III, 30, is homeless, and was sitting outside the Safeway at Church and Market on a recent Sunday night. Young, who’s gay, said he spends “a few hours” in the area “every couple days” for the past two weeks.

He said he hasn’t really seen fighting or screaming, and “I feel safe around here.”

Young wants to establish roots in the city.

“I feel comfortable in this place,” he said, and like Perea, he noted, it’s “the city of St. Francis.”

The city’s Human Rights Commission is conducting an LGBTQ community safety survey. People can take the survey in English at https://www.surveymonkey. com/s/3LHG2J8 and in Spanish at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ CFNRL9L.t

The tragic events that led Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi to commit suicide in 2010 inspired the plot of Cat Clarke’s novel Undone.

“Obviously, the story broke my heart,” said Clarke, who identifies as queer and is in a civil partnership. “When I looked into it further I realized there are a lot of cases like this of online bullying, particularly of LGBT teenagers.”

The issue has troubled her for some time now, said Clarke, who was born in Zambia but raised in Scotland, where she continues to live. Her novel tells the story of a schoolgirl whose gay best friend commits suicide after being outed online by a fellow classmate.

“I think teenagers don’t necessarily realize the consequences of what they say or do online. What they do there can have real consequences in the real world,” she said.

Clarke opted to purposely not tell her story from the perspective of the gay teenager in order to examine the fallout of their decision to take their own life.

“I get emails from teenagers who have thought about killing themselves,” she said. “Reading Undone has made them think again.”

Several LGBT youth have written her to say they came out to their families after reading the book.

“That may seem surprising because this is not a happy ending sort of story. But they have been able to discuss things with their parents they weren’t able to do before reading the book,” she said.

LGBT youth being subjected to reparative therapy, the widely discredited practice of trying to turn LGBT people straight, is at the heart of Jessica Verdi’s novel The Summer

I Wasn’t Me, about a lesbian teen sent to an ex-gay camp.

Verdi, a straight married woman living in Brooklyn, New York, was inspired at first by a snippet of the chorus in Lady Gaga’s song “Hair,” which goes “I just want to be myself and I want you to love me for who I am.”

“I was thinking about that a lot and young teens. Teens aren’t loved for who they are and that is what they want,” said Verdi. “That is pretty universal. We all want to be loved for who we are in some way, shape or form. It just clicked that an ex-gay camp was the right issue to talk about this idea of wanting to be loved for who you are.”

Young adult fiction with LGBT storylines is one of the fastest growing trends in LGBT literature, said Valenzuela with the Lambda Literary Foundation.

“Young adults as a genre, whether gay or straight, is one of those genres that absolutely exploded in the last decade,” said Valenzuela, who credits the growth of LGBT young adult lit to “LGBT people taking our place in the American mainstream ... I think there has been, to some degree, a normalizing of our lives and the fact there are more and more gay kids.”

The young adult lit often involves controversial LGBT subject matter.

Clarke’s other novel, A Kiss in the Dark, is also based on a real news story about a girl who dressed up as a boy in order to go out with a girl she met online.

“I think all experiences are appropriate for young adult novels. I think adults underestimate what the teenagers can deal with,” said Clarke, whose next novel features a bisexual dad. “Teenagers can deal with fairly dark subject matters. As long as it is something that happens in real life that they are reading about, they can

often deal with it.”

Verdi’s first book, My Life After Now, focused on a straight girl living with HIV who is being raised by two dads, each of whom are HIVnegative.

“It is not about her getting the virus but what happens after she learns she is positive. I felt it was a very important story to tell,” she said. “There are not many young adult books with HIV-positive characters, even though young teens are one of the fastest growing groups testing positive.”

Like Clarke, Verdi said she sees no reason to shy away from controversial topics when writing books targeted to teen readers.

“I have no qualms talking about mature subject matter with teenagers. I think they do know what is going on in the world; they live in the real world,” she said. “They are one of the most open-minded groups in our society. My goal is not to preach and not to teach anything, but to do my part in exposing readers to new situations and people they may not know personally or experiences they may not have had personally.”

Since the early 2000s there has been an explosion of young adult lit with gay protagonists, said Verdi.

But the storylines have changed from being coming out tales, she noted, to more complex situations where being gay isn’t the main struggle.

“They have become less and less about the being gay part and just about whatever happens to be going on in the story. The characters happen to be gay,” she said. “I am seeing that a lot more lately. I think it is partially because we need to give teens more credit than we do sometimes. They don’t care who someone is in love with in a book; they just want to read about the love story.”t

What is STRIBILD? STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. It combines 4 medicines into 1 pill to be taken once a day with food. STRIBILD is a complete single-tablet regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses you must keep taking STRIBILD. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. 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 STRIBILD? STRIBILD can cause serious side effects: • Build-up of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency.

Symptoms of lactic acidosis include feeling very weak or tired, unusual (not normal) muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold especially in your arms and legs, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat.

• Serious liver problems. The liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and fatty (steatosis). Symptoms of liver problems include your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice), dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored bowel movements (stools), loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach pain.

• You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or serious liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD 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.

• Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. If you also have HBV and stop taking STRIBILD, your hepatitis may suddenly get worse.

Do not stop taking STRIBILD without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

STRIBILD is not approved for the treatment of HBV.

Who should not take STRIBILD? Do not take STRIBILD if you: • Take a medicine that contains: alfuzosin, dihydroergotamine, ergotamine, methylergonovine, cisapride, lovastatin, simvastatin, pimozide, sildenafil when used for lung problems (Revatio®), triazolam, oral midazolam, rifampin or the herb St. John’s wort.

• For a list of brand names for these medicines, please see the Brief Summary on the following pages.

• Take any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection, or the medicine adefovir (Hepsera®).

What are the other possible side effects of STRIBILD? Serious side effects of STRIBILD may also include: • New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do regular blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with STRIBILD. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking STRIBILD. • Bone problems, including bone pain or bones getting soft or thin, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones.

• Changes in body fat can happen in people taking HIV-1 medicines.

• Changes in your immune system.

Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking STRIBILD. The most common side effects of STRIBILD include nausea and diarrhea. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? • All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection.

• All the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. Do not start any new medicines while taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider.

• If you take hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc).

• If you take antacids.

Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD. • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby.

Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD. • If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed.

Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk. Also, some medicines in STRIBILD can pass into breast milk, and it is not known if this can harm the baby.

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 Brief Summary of full Prescribing Information with important warnings on the following pages.

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STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used as a complete single-tablet regimenmedicine to treat HIV-1 in STRIBILD is a prescription used as a complete single-tablet regimen to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines adults who have never before.

STRIBILD does nottaken cure HIV-1 HIV-1 medicines or AIDS. before. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

I started my personal revolution

I started my revolution Talkpersonal to your healthcare provider about starting treatment.

Talk to your healthcare provider STRIBILD is a complete about starting treatment.HIV-1

treatment in 1 pill, once a day.

STRIBILD is a complete HIV-1 treatment in 1 pill, once a day.

Ask if it’s right for you.

Ask if it’s right for you.

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Patient Information STRIBILD (STRY-bild) (elvitegravir 150 mg/cobicistat 150 mg/emtricitabine 200 mg/ tenofovir disoproxil fumarate 300 mg) tablets ®

Brief summary of full Prescribing Information. For more information, please see the full Prescribing Information, including Patient Information.

What is STRIBILD? • STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before.

STRIBILD is a complete regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

• STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. You must stay on continuous HIV-1 therapy to control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses.

• Ask your healthcare provider about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to others. Do not share or reuse needles, injection equipment, or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them. Do not have sex without protection. Always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom to lower the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood.

What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD? STRIBILD can cause serious side effects, including: 1. Build-up of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis). Lactic acidosis can happen in some people who take STRIBILD or similar (nucleoside analogs) medicines. Lactic acidosis is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Lactic acidosis can be hard to identify early, because the symptoms could seem like symptoms of other health problems. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms which could be signs of lactic acidosis: • feel very weak or tired • have unusual (not normal) muscle pain

• Do not stop taking STRIBILD without first talking to your healthcare provider • If you stop taking STRIBILD, your healthcare provider will need to check your health often and do blood tests regularly for several months to check your HBV infection. Tell your healthcare provider about any new or unusual symptoms you may have after you stop taking STRIBILD Who should not take STRIBILD? Do not take STRIBILD if you also take a medicine that contains: • adefovir (Hepsera®) • alfuzosin hydrochloride (Uroxatral®) • cisapride (Propulsid®, Propulsid Quicksolv®) • ergot-containing medicines, including: dihydroergotamine mesylate (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal®), ergotamine tartrate (Cafergot®, Migergot®, Ergostat®, Medihaler Ergotamine®, Wigraine®, Wigrettes®), and methylergonovine maleate (Ergotrate®, Methergine®) • lovastatin (Advicor®, Altoprev®, Mevacor®) • oral midazolam • pimozide (Orap®) • rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater®, Rimactane®) • sildenafil (Revatio®), when used for treating lung problems • simvastatin (Simcor®, Vytorin®, Zocor®) • triazolam (Halcion®) • the herb St. John’s wort Do not take STRIBILD if you also take any other HIV-1 medicines, including: • Other medicines that contain tenofovir (Atripla®, Complera®, Viread®, Truvada®) • Other medicines that contain emtricitabine, lamivudine, or ritonavir (Atripla®, Combivir®, Complera®, Emtriva®, Epivir® or Epivir-HBV®, Epzicom®, Kaletra®, Norvir®, Trizivir®, Truvada®)

• have trouble breathing

STRIBILD is not for use in people who are less than 18 years old.

• have stomach pain with nausea or vomiting

What are the possible side effects of STRIBILD?

• feel cold, especially in your arms and legs • feel dizzy or lightheaded

STRIBILD may cause the following serious side effects:

• have a fast or irregular heartbeat

• See “What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD?”

2. Severe liver problems. Severe liver problems can happen in people who take STRIBILD. In some cases, these liver problems can lead to death. Your liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and you may develop fat in your liver (steatosis). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms of liver problems: • your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice) • dark “tea-colored” urine • light-colored bowel movements (stools) • loss of appetite for several days or longer • nausea • stomach pain You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD for a long time.

3. Worsening of Hepatitis B infection. If you have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and take STRIBILD, your HBV may get worse (flareup) if you stop taking STRIBILD. A “flare-up” is when your HBV infection suddenly returns in a worse way than before.

• Do not run out of STRIBILD. Refill your prescription or talk to your healthcare provider before your STRIBILD is all gone

BS Page 1

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before you start and while you are taking STRIBILD. Your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking STRIBILD if you develop new or worse kidney problems.

• Bone problems can happen in some people who take STRIBILD. Bone problems include bone pain, softening or thinning (which may lead to fractures). Your healthcare provider may need to do tests to check your bones.

• Changes in body fat can happen in people who take HIV-1 medicine. These changes may include increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump”), breast, and around the middle of your body (trunk). Loss of fat from the legs, arms and face may also happen. The exact cause and long-term health effects of these conditions are not known.

• Changes in your immune system (Immune Reconstitution Syndrome) can happen when you start taking HIV-1 medicines.

Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that have been hidden in your body for a long time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you start having any new symptoms after starting your HIV-1 medicine.

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The most common side effects of STRIBILD include: • Nausea • Diarrhea Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away.

• These are not all the possible side effects of STRIBILD. For more information, ask your healthcare provider.

• Call your healthcare provider for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? Tell your healthcare provider about all your medical conditions, including: • If you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis B infection • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD. - There is a pregnancy registry for women who take antiviral medicines during pregnancy. The purpose of this registry is to collect information about the health of you and your baby. Talk with your healthcare provider about how you can take part in this registry.

• If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you take STRIBILD. - You should not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby.

- Two of the medicines in STRIBILD can pass to your baby in your breast milk. It is not known if the other medicines in STRIBILD can pass into your breast milk.

- Talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements: • STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works.

• Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you take any of the following medicines: - Hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc) - Antacid medicines that contain aluminum, magnesium hydroxide, or calcium carbonate. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD

- disopyramide (Norpace®) - estazolam - ethosuximide (Zarontin®) - flecainide (Tambocor®) - flurazepam - fluticasone (Flovent®, Flonase®, Flovent® Diskus®, Flovent® HFA, Veramyst®) - itraconazole (Sporanox®) - ketoconazole (Nizoral®) - lidocaine (Xylocaine®) - mexiletine - oxcarbazepine (Trileptal®) - perphenazine - phenobarbital (Luminal®) - phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®) - propafenone (Rythmol®) - quinidine (Neudexta®) - rifabutin (Mycobutin®) - rifapentine (Priftin®) - risperidone (Risperdal®, Risperdal Consta®) - salmeterol (Serevent®) or salmeterol when taken in combination with fluticasone (Advair Diskus®, Advair HFA®) - sildenafil (Viagra®), tadalafil (Cialis®) or vardenafil (Levitra®, Staxyn®), for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED). If you get dizzy or faint (low blood pressure), have vision changes or have an erection that last longer than 4 hours, call your healthcare provider or get medical help right away.

- tadalafil (Adcirca®), for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension - telithromycin (Ketek®) - thioridazine - voriconazole (Vfend®) - warfarin (Coumadin®, Jantoven®) - zolpidem (Ambien®, Edlular®, Intermezzo®, Zolpimist®) Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. Do not start any new medicines while you are taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider.

Keep STRIBILD and all medicines out of reach of children.

- atorvastatin (Lipitor®, Caduet®)

This Brief Summary summarizes the most important information about STRIBILD. If you would like more information, talk with your healthcare provider. You can also ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for information about STRIBILD that is written for health professionals, or call 1-800-445-3235 or go to www.STRIBILD.com.

- bepridil hydrochloride (Vascor®, Bepadin®)

Issued: October 2013

- Medicines to treat depression, organ transplant rejection, or high blood pressure - amiodarone (Cordarone®, Pacerone®)

- bosentan (Tracleer®) - buspirone - carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®) - clarithromycin (Biaxin®, Prevpac®) - clonazepam (Klonopin®) - clorazepate (Gen-xene®, Tranxene®) - colchicine (Colcrys®) - medicines that contain dexamethasone - diazepam (Valium®) - digoxin (Lanoxin®)

BS Page 2

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Drew

<< Travel

14 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

New gay clubs enliven Las Vegas scene Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

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Ed Walsh

The newest feature on the Strip is the LINQ, Las Vegas’ open-air shopping, restaurant and entertainment district.

by Ed Walsh

T

en years ago when Mya Reyes, the then-director of diversity marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, suggested a campaign to bring more GLBT visitors to the city, she recalls her boss responded, “What is GLBT? Is that something like a BLT sandwich?”

The invisibility of the gay community that was reflected in her boss’s response was not helped by

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the pervasive apathy in Las Vegas’ gay community not so long ago.

Dennis McBride, the director of the Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas, and an expert on Nevada’s LGBT history, told the Bay Area Reporter earlier this month that the city never saw the kind of activism that other cities experienced.

“Everything about this city was gay except the city itself,” McBride said. The historian noted that the gay influence in the design of the casinos, hotels, and the city’s overthe-top shows was an open secret yet the gay community was generally met by hostility from the political establishment.

But like its seemingly routine building implosions, when Las Vegas decides to change, it often does so very quickly and dramatically. When it came to Vegas’ welcoming of the LGBT community that change came rapidly and it is showing no signs of slowing down.

Just this summer, two new gay clubs sprung up on the famed Las Vegas Strip. One nightclub, Liaison, boasts it is the first gay nightclub in a casino. The club is in the Las Vegas mainstay, Bally’s, and the new club is marketed on signs throughout the property. The other nightclub, Equalibrium, also opened nearby on the Strip across from the Monte Carlo.

A second legendary hotel casino, Tropicana, started an LGBT weekend pool party, Xposed, this summer. The Luxor Hotel Casino has had the Temptation pool party on Sundays for years.

Tropicana’s party is on Saturdays. The city’s tourism office now actively courts LGBTs and many of the city’s major hotels and casinos have marketing campaigns targeted toward the gay market.

Las Vegas’ biggest gay weekend is coming up next week. The trifecta celebration includes Las Vegas Pride, Gay Days Las Vegas, and the lesbian-focused Shedonism. The Pride parade will be in downtown Las Vegas on Friday, September 5, at night when it is a little cooler and when the city can best show off its spectacular lights.

If you can’t get away next week, another huge event is coming up at the end of the year. It is called Evolve, the city’s first international

gay New Year’s Eve celebration.

Evolve includes a number of parties and special events and options for gay-focused tours and excursions.

Organizers hope it will put Las Vegas on the map as the place for LGBTs to welcome in the new year.

Downtown rejuvenation

Aside from Las Vegas’ gay-friendliness, one of the biggest recent changes in the city is the rejuvenation of its once depressed downtown. Starting with the opening of the Strip’s first megaresort, Mirage, in 1989, more and more of the casino business shifted from downtown to the Strip, the section of Las Vegas Boulevard south of downtown, just outside the Las Vegas city limits.

Downtown fell onto hard times by the early 1990s. The revitalization that continues today was heralded in 1995 when four blocks of Fremont Street became a pedestrian mall complete with an electronic sign canopy that provides shade during the day and a light show at night.

The downtown comeback took another huge step forward in 2012 with the opening of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, the new City Hall complex, Discovery Children’s Museum, Mob Museum, Neon Museum, and the renovation of the Zappos world headquarters building. A couple of years earlier, in 2010, fans of modern architecture were thrilled with the opening of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health designed by the world renowned architect Frank Gehry.

Las Vegas’ emerging downtown arts district features a First Friday gallery walk and plans are in the works to build a modern art museum in the area. To coincide with Las Vegas Pride, the very gay-friendly Sin City Gallery will host an exhibit by gay San Francisco artist Suzanne Shifflett next month. “[Gallery owner] Laura Henkel picked September for my show because there are a lot of queer themes in my work,” Shifflett told the B.A.R. last week. “My paintings are very technique driven. The queerness is subconscious. Since my painting process is so time intensive I pick subjects that are visually stimulating to me. Trying not to

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Travel>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 15

draws a big crowd. It’s on Wynn Road near the Orleans Hotel and Casino.

Snick’s, in business since 1976, is Las Vegas’ oldest gay bar. The 24-7 bar is also the only gay bar downtown, and popular with locals.

Accommodations

Ed Walsh

Richard Hooker, left, of Las Vegas Pop Culture Tours, joined Grant Philipo and Babs Daitch of the tours company and historian Dennis McBride at Grant Philipo’s Las Vegas Showgirls Museum.

Ed Walsh

Liberace lives on at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Las Vegas.

make a statement seems to produce a more authentic statement.”

A foolproof way not to miss any of the newest highlights of the city is on a guided tour. Las Vegas’ gayowned tour company, Las Vegas Pop Culture Tours (http://www.lasvegaspopculturetours.com), is a great way to see the sights. The company’s owners, Bab Daitch and Richard Hooker, are perfect tour guides with an encyclopedic knowledge of Las Vegas history and culture from an LGBT perspective. The company offers scheduled walking tours and custom group tours.

The newest feature on the Las Vegas Strip is the LINQ, an open-air retail, dining and entertainment district whose centerpiece is the High Roller, the world’s tallest observation wheel. The wheel opened in March and the LINQ celebrated its grand opening over the July 4 weekend. The LINQ is between Harrah’s and the Flamingo. The Quad Hotel and Casino is part of LINQ and is being transformed into the LINQ Hotel and Casino.

Museums are not the first thing visitors think of when planning a Las Vegas trip, but the Greater Las Vegas area has more than twodozen. One of the best, gayest, and largely undiscovered museums in the city is Grant Philipo’s Las Vegas Showgirl Museum. Philipo is a show producer, director, and designer as well as a former model and showboy. His museum showcases costumes and accessories worn by stars from Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra to Donny and Marie Osmond.

Tours are by appointment only 4 p.m. until midnight and can be arranged by calling (702) 893-9000 or e-mail Grant@LasVegasShowgirlMuseum.com. A minimum $10 donation is requested to help support the museum’s plans to relocate from the mansion it is in now to a larger and more public space.

A couple of the newest museums, the Mob Museum and the Neon Museum, are well worth seeing. The Mob Museum (www.themobmuseum.org) is downtown in a former post office building. It chronicles the rise and fall of organized crime in Las Vegas and throughout the U.S. The Neon Museum (www.neonmuseum. org), just north of downtown, showcases a collection of historic neon signs. If you want to see some of the

city’s best-known performers on the cheap, check out Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in the Venetian Hotel (http://www.madametussauds.com/ lasvegas). It is a smaller version of Madame Tussauds in Hollywood, but unlike the Hollywood museum, if offers a 4-D adventure show that is not for the faint of heart.

Nightlife

The aforementioned Liaison (http://www.liaisonlasvegas.com/) and Equalibrium (http://www. equalibriumvegas.com/) are the city’s newest gay clubs and are prominently located on the Las Vegas Strip. Liaison is open Thursday through Sunday nights and Equalibrium is open Friday and Saturday nights.

The largest cluster of gay bars and nightclubs is in the so-called Fruit Loop, on Paradise Road, just south of the Hard Rock Hotel. That’s where you will find Piranha Nightclub and the adjoining 8 1/2 Ultra Lounge. Next door, the Las Vegas mainstay gay nightclub, Gipsy, is being completely remodeled to include a pool in the hopes of attracting a daytime and nighttime crowd.

Across Paradise Road, the longtime Buffalo nightclub has been replaced by the video bar QuadZ, which is owned by the same people who own the popular SpurLine video bar in Palm Springs.

There are no exclusively lesbian bars or nightclubs in Las Vegas but Free Zone, just across the street from Quadz, has a ladies night on Sundays. The Phoenix Bar and Lounge is planning on a ladies night on Wednesdays starting next month. Phoenix is on West Sahara Avenue, about five miles northwest of the Fruit Loop. The Phoenix used to be the Escape Lounge. You will immediately notice the change by the new fiery motif on the outside.

The country western themed Charlie’s Las Vegas does a good business early in the evening before the nightclubs get busy. It has a famous underwear night on Wednesdays, whereby the bar serves free drinks to customers in their underwear.

Across town, on East Tropicana Avenue, the Las Vegas Eagle has an underwear night on Wednesdays and Friday nights, but not as wild as it was a few years ago.

The weekend nightclub, Share,

WELCOME TO

The Blue Moon Resort is Las Vegas’ only gay hotel and is a great choice for any gay male traveler to Las Vegas. It is conveniently located along Interstate 15, near the north end of the Strip. It is a good idea to rent a car if you stay there. I-15 makes it easy to avoid the congested Strip to get where you want to go quickly. The resort has 45 rooms and suites, a clothing-optional pool, hot tub, and a steam room that stays open 24 hours. (Most Las Vegas resort hotels close the pool at 6 or 7 p.m.)

Blue Moon also has free Wi-Fi and a continental breakfast. With an adult video room, the hotel can be cruisy but it is also laid back and friendly.

The Blue Moon’s free seasonal Sunday barbeque draws a big crowd of locals who visit on day passes.

You will be hard pressed to find a mainstream hotel in Las Vegas that is not gay-welcoming. Many offer websites and advertising campaigns aimed at the LGBT community. Vegas’ newest hotel-casino has its roots in the gay community. The 1,600-room SLS resort is owned by SBE Entertainment Group, the same company that owns the landmark West Hollywood gay bar, the Abbey. It will be the fourth SLS hotel after New York, Beverly Hills, and Miami. The SLS replaces the old Sahara Hotel. But the Sahara wasn’t imploded. SBE gutted and transformed the existing structure into what promises to be one of the Strip’s hippest new properties.t

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For a good overall blog on Las Vegas, visit http://www.gayvegastravel.com. For the city’s official tourism site, visit http://www.LasVegas.com and click on the LGBT Vegas block on the right column.

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<< Sports

16 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

Perception games

by Roger Brigham

W

e knew when the St. Louis Rams drafted gay defensive player Michael Sam in the late rounds of the NFL draft that we would be playing a wait-and-see game in August and September to learn if he survived the various rounds of player cuts (he survived the first round this week) and, if not, what team if any would sign him to a regular-season roster.

We knew, even though it was a thoroughly a-holey thing for him to say, exactly what former head coach Tony Dungy meant when he said he would never draft an openly gay player because of the mediadriven “distractions” the player’s presence would inevitably involve.

We also knew that if Sam found himself on the same playing field against former college rival and media-distraction incarnate Johnny “Football” Manziel in the preseason, as they did in Week 3, that Sam would flatten him at least once and, in the words of Outsports. com columnist Jim Buzinski, ESPN “would have an orgasm.”

What we didn’t know was how swiftly and imbecilically ESPN would interject its own inane and completely gratuitous distraction into this rather mundane NFL exhibition season. When queerconscious sports fans tuned in to ESPN’s SportsCenter the morning of Tuesday, August 26, hoping for some word about whether the Rams had cut Sam or not, a network anchor responded by asking sideline reporter Josina Anderson how Sam was “fitting in” with his teammates.

(If you were shocked when Sam kissed his boyfriend on national television and were upset because it then meant you had to explain to your nephews and nieces why you and their “Uncle” Jack have only

one bed in your two-bathroom apartment, please make sure they are out of the room before you continue to read this column. We must protect the children!)

Anderson’s lame-ass “report” has been captured for all eternity online at deadspin.com. In it, she “reports” that a defensive player she did not identify by name said Sam “is respecting our space” and from the player’s “perspective he seems to think that Michael Sam is kind of waiting to take a shower (so) as not to make his teammates uncomfortable.”

At this point, on my word, my journalism professor from college rose from his grave and uttered: Oh. My. God. While any sports media outlet with a clue about social issues was jumping all over the Internet to blast the ESPN shower report, Anderson seemed blissfully oblivious to how offensive and irresponsible her reportage was. (On Twitter that morning her only post was a question about the Emmy Awards: “Is Breaking Bad that good?”)

Since it is apparent that Anderson is in desperate search for a clue – any clue on any matter – let me help.

Sam did not become gay the day he was drafted. He grew up gay and played every game of his high school and college career gay. He even played his final season at Missouri with his teammates knowing he was gay. In all of those years, there were no reports that he was avoiding showering with teammates, that he was showering with particular teammates, that he was avoiding showering with any teammates, or that any teammates were avoiding showering with him. This dearth of reports is not because of any journalistic oversight, but because a) nobody asked; b) there was nothing to report; and c) nobody gives a shit.

Also, in case this is next on Anderson’s list of inquiries, there were no reports of Sam drilling peepholes in the toilet stalls. See Reasons A-C above.

Anderson won a regional Emmy in 2009 for a story she wrote for a Fox News affiliate in Denver about a Caucasian Arena football player and his wife adopting a baby from Africa and the child’s assimilation into his new family and acceptance by his new Caucasian brothers.

She did not ask the family about their showering habits.

The notion that someone could object to showering with someone who was different – whether the difference be race or orientation – was much debated during World War II when the armed forces began to integrate, and it continued in iterations in civilian life throughout the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

But we needn’t go that far back to find a clue for Anderson to pick up on. Let’s just look at the world of sports since she was born.

Anderson is an African American woman. At the time she was born, around the late 1970s, it had barely become accepted that blacks and whites would be allowed to play on the same field in sports. In pro football, African Americans were not usually allowed to play certain positions (such as quarterback), did not get certain jobs (such as team executive or head coaching positions), and they only rarely were given jobs reporting on the games.

At the time Anderson was born, women were rarely given jobs reporting from football sidelines and they were almost universally barred from entering team dressing rooms with their male colleagues to interview players.

I was one of the journalists fighting to change all of that in the 1970s, and the 1980s (when I was openly gay), and the 1990s (still gay). That fight meant reporting on sexist dressing-room access policies when

ESPN sideline reporter Josina Anderson, in a screenshot from her broadcast Tuesday.

I encountered them. It meant objecting face-to-face to sexist remarks when I encountered them from players or coaches or colleagues or fans. It meant walking out in protest when I saw women reporters being removed from the locker rooms. Yeah, yeah, I was a gay guy with easy access to the locker rooms and shower rooms filled with naked sweaty hunky men, but I’d walk out because, you know – I have a job to do and it was the right thing.

And when we finally got equal access for women journalists, we did not write stories in which we asked athletes if the women were respecting their space when they changed clothes or showered, or the women about which of the men they thought had the best endowments.

To do so would have been unprofessional and insulting. About as much as when Anderson was hired a year ago by ESPN and hip-hop website XXLMag.com responded by noting in its Eye Candy section that “Josina Anderson might be the hottest ESPN reporter ever,” one who was “as fine as they come” with “a killer body.”

“Reports” such as these, whether they come from hip-hop websites or NFL sideline reporters, respect neither the people on whom they report nor the people to whom they report. Anderson’s report was an insult to Sam, it was an insult to the

t

viewers, but most of all, it was an insult to the Rams players. Probably the only one who got a smug sense of satisfaction out of it was Dungy.

Late in the day ESPN finally responded to the criticism of the report, saying, “In response to recent questions about Sam fitting in with the team, multiple Rams brought up the shower topic and we relayed that information as part of our reporting.”

At which point my deceased professor rolled again and uttered: “Bull. Shit.”

Anderson said one player said he thought Sam might be avoiding the showers. Three players she asked directly said they hadn’t noticed anything like that.

So, you want to know what this story is really about? It’s about bored sports reporters who are self-conscious about being out of touch with the social issues of the day who are trapped by the juvenile perceptions and biases of their adolescence who try to become “topical” by asking about the mundane and the irrelevant.

You want to know what kind of place prejudice like that has in football? In the words of the immortal Vince Lombardi, himself a very compassionate and accepting coach who supported the gay players on his team back when nobody spoke of such things, “Winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing.”

And a winning attitude has no place or time for prejudice. Anderson’s report should have said that so far, the Rams are looking like champions.

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association sent a letter to ESPN Tuesday objecting to the report. ESPN President John Skipper said the station had already issued its apology before he saw the letter.

“ESPN regrets the manner in which we presented our report,” Skipper said in a statement Wednesday. “Clearly yesterday we collectively failed to meet the standards we have set in reporting on LGBTrelated topics in sports.”t

Lesbians marry in Russia

by Heather Cassell

singer for a hardcore band by night.

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Australia might recognize some same-sex couples

wo Russians, who identify as lesbians, circumvented the legal system and got hitched in Moscow earlier this month.

The two women caused a stir when they showed up at the civil registry in matching wedding gowns August 6.

Little media attention was given to the wedding until the story began to gain traction around the world this week.

Authorities were unable to halt the wedding based on a technicality that one of the brides is a transgender woman and is legally recognized in Russia as a man.

Officials spent about 15 minutes chiding Dmitry Kozhukhov, 23, who prefers to be known as Alina Davis, and her now wife, identified as Allison Brooks, 19, reported the Moscow Times.

“She called us the shame of the family and said we needed medical treatment ...

I was afraid my pussycat [an affectionate pet name in Russian] would beat the [expletive] out of her,” wrote Davis on her Vkontakte page, a Russian social network.

Still the ceremony went forward and couple was declared married.

The couple believes their marriage sets an “important precedent for Russia,” in spite of recent online threats made toward them for “subverting Russia’s foundations,” wrote Davis, who is a hair stylist by day and

The Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee recently held a public hearing on the Recognition of the Foreign Marriages Bill 2014.

The bill proposes to amend Australia’s marriage law to repeal Section 88EA, which prohibits recognition of same-sex marriages performed in foreign countries. Additionally, a new clause was introduced that explicitly spells out that marriages by two men and two women conducted abroad are to be legally recognized by Australia. A subsection of the clause states that married same-sex couples will have the same rights and obligations as oppositesex couples.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young explained that the amendment to Australia’s marriage law regarding foreign marriages, particularly in recognition of same-sex marriages, was to remove discriminatory laws and bring the law in line with human rights outlined in Australia’s Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011.

If passed, Australian LGBT couples married abroad will maintain their marriage status upon returning to the country.

The deadline for the committee to report on its findings of the bill is September 3.

Courtesy CEN

Alison Brooks, left, has married Dmitry Kozhukhov, right, who prefers to be known as Alina Davis.

Marriage equality advocates explained some of the problems caused by Australia’s current marriage law and how it affects samesex spouses married abroad.

Anna Brown of the Human Rights Law Center explained that same-sex couples married abroad who later split up have to get divorced abroad to satisfy “jurisdiction requirements,” or be forced to stay married in Australia, reported the Guardian Australia.

Another issue is couples in civil unions have to file for dissolution of those unions before being married otherwise their marriage is considered bigamy by law, Brown and Rodney Croome, national director of Australian Marriage Equality, told the committee.

“No one should have to face that

choice,” Croome said. “They’re being forced to make that choice right now, and a really easy solution is to recognize overseas foreign marriages.”

Not everyone is pleased with the proposed bill.

Intersex activists criticized the bill pointing out that the usage of “man” and “woman” excluded individuals who have characteristics of both genders and leaves them no options for marriage or divorce.

Furthermore, it created complications with their marital status and rights and obligations to each other within Australia.

Tony Briffa, the former mayor of Hobsons Bay who is intersex, married her wife, Manja Sommeling, in New Zealand, but in Australia it’s questionable if their marriage would be honored due to the fact that she’s intersex, reported the Guardian.

“Physically I’m not her husband, so it would be very strange, and I’d always be worried about what that would mean in the future,” Briffa said. “Would someone invalidate my marriage?”

She also worries about legal powers in case anything happened to either one of them.

At the hearing, Briffa suggested that gender-neutral word or phrase be used, such as “two people.”

Religious opponents spoke up at the hearing citing their concerns about how the bill would affect children.

Terri Kelleher of the Australian Family Association pointed out that some countries allow child mar-

riages and polygamy and there was no reason to follow the lead of some other countries.

Kelleher believed that if passed, the bill would be the “first step toward legalization of same-sex marriage in Australia,” she said.

According to the Guardian, Faith leaders also expressed concern that the law would open the door to same-sex marriage in Australia and how churches would be affected under the country’s anti-discrimination law if they refused to officiate a same-sex wedding in the future.

Chris Meney, director of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, believed that the bill “would make for very bad law.”

Setting aside the fact that some marriages “break down” and that there is “infidelity,” he said, “We still believe there is something of value in marriage that should be protected as societal consensus. If we start to kick away certain things associated with marriage it’s very hard to say what will stay.”

Bull hockey

M.V. Lee Badgett, who is a distinguished scholar of the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, testified to the committee in a five-page letter. Badgett disproved religious leaders’ concerns about same-sex marriages effects on children. In the letter she highlighted the benefits of same-sex marriage on children and LGBT families.

Badgett is also a professor of ecoSee page 17 >>

t <<

Community News>>

Castro LGBT history

From page 1

Then local LGBT community leaders and honor walk board members will help officially dedicate the plaques in a cascading ceremony at all 20 locations.

“We will have 20 unveilers; it is still being mapped out,” said Perry.

The Rainbow Honor Walk is separate from the 20 historical factoids about the Castro neighborhood that will also be installed in the sidewalk along Castro Street as part of the city’s streetscape improvements currently under construction.

The honor walk plaques are being laid out in alphabetical order, starting with social worker Jane Addams, who in 1931 was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her plaque will be on Castro Street near Harvey Milk Plaza above the Castro Muni station.

Both sides of the 400 and 500 blocks of Castro Street between Market and 19th Street will have four plaques. The remaining four will be located on 19th Street between Castro and Collingwood streets.

Kate Kendell, the executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, will be stationed at the plaque for LGBT rights activist Del Martin, whose widow, Phyllis Lyon, plans to also attend the ceremony.

The plaque for Martin, who cofounded the Daughters of Bilitis with Lyon, will be located on 19th Street near where the couple once lived.

“I think it is absolutely wonderful. Why haven’t we done it before?”

Lyon, 89, told the Bay Area Reporter.

<<

Out in the World

From page 16

nomics and director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Referring to studies she and her

<<

Witness

From page 2

Stone said he went back to Higgins and saw his eyes were “wide freaking open.” He didn’t feel a pulse, but Higgins was “very, very warm,” he said.

Stone called 911 for an ambulance. He estimated he called at 7:30 or 7:45. Police came and tried to resuscitate Higgins but “couldn’t get him going,” and took him away in an ambulance. Stone said he was “one of the last to leave” the scene.

Police asked him “a lot of questions,” he said. He doesn’t think the other man was still there when he left.

Stone said he’d never seen Higgins or the other man before. Police have described the person of interest as a white man in his 20s or 30s. Stone said the man had “very short” brown hair and was about six feet tall. He said the man also wore a baseball cap, but he didn’t recall what it said. Other witnesses that Stone said saw the incident couldn’t immediately be reached.

He said he spoke with a police sergeant about the incident, but the

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Manslaughter

From page 1

each other, and Canul-Arguello asked to be choked, Diaz said. He said he eventually agreed, then noticed at some point that Canul-Arguello had stopped moving. He unsuccessfully tried to revive him, he said.

“I was frightened,” Diaz testified. “... I didn’t know what to do. I was really nervous.”

He said he moved a recycling bin close to Canul-Arguello’s body and lit a fire in it to signal for help.

Assistant District Attorney Danielle Douglas said in her closing arguments last week that Diaz killed Canul-Arguello after he “did some-

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 17

In 1994 Perry first floated the idea to install markers in the Castro in honor of famous LGBT people, but his proposal never gained traction. Then, in 2009, longtime Castro resident and business owner Isak Lindenauer began pushing for the creation of an LGBT sidewalk memorial project that he dubbed the Rainbow Honor Walk.

After the B.A.R. first reported on Lindenauer’s concept in March of that year, he and Perry teamed together to push for its implementation and formed a volunteer committee to help oversee it.

In early 2011 the names of the first inductees were announced, culled from a list of more than 150 people who had been submitted for consideration by the public. They ranged from the internationally famous, such as poet Allen Ginsberg and pop artist Keith Haring, to relative unknowns like Japanese playwright Yukio Mishima.

The list includes three black men: civil rights activist Bayard Rustin;

disco drag star Sylvester James; and author James Baldwin. The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca also made the cut. (The honor walk committee decided to use Sylvester’s first name and Lorca’s middle name, which is his paternal family name in Spanish, in determining the placement of their plaques.)

George Choy, a San Franciscan who was an early member of the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, was picked in part for his AIDS activism and work to support LGBT youth.

Other local LGBT leaders chosen are Harry Hay, who founded one of the first gay rights groups in the U.S. called the Mattachine Society; San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts, one of the first out reporters to cover a gay beat; and Gay Games founder Dr. Tom Waddell.

Other famous authors selected are Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, and Tennessee Williams. Rounding out the group are Christine Jorgensen, who in 1952 became the first person to receive widespread media coverage of her sexual reassignment surgery, and Alan Turing, who cracked the German’s coded messages in World War II but was later prosecuted for being homosexual and opted to be chemically castrated to avoid a prison sentence.

In a stark reminder that suicide within the LGBT community is not a new phenomenon, three on the list – Mishima, Turing, and Woolf – took their own lives. And five were lost to AIDS – Choy, Haring, James, Shilts, and Waddell.

“These people courageously

stood up as openly and self-expressed members of the LGBT community and made the world a better place through their work,” said Perry. “They have walked the walk for human dignity and equality and so created a pathway the rest of us are humbled to tread.”

Spanish-based architect Carlos Casuso won the competition to design the plaques. He is the brotherin-law of Perry, who had no involvement in the blind jury selection process and informed the committee overseeing the project about his relationship to Casuso prior to its approving the jury’s decision.

Mussi Artworks of Berkeley, California manufactured the 3-foot by 3-foot bronze plaques. Lawrence Noble, head of the sculpture department at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, oversaw the creative process.

The $100,000 cost to produce the first 20 plaques was raised privately, with $10,000 raised through two crowd-funding campaigns on the Indiegogo website held specifically for the Sylvester and Turing plaques.

Among the major donors were AT&T, which gave the largest single gift of $25,000, and Marin art collector Ron Collins, who contributed $22,000 on behalf of his gay brother, Donald O. Collins, who died of cancer, by purchasing four artworks by the late Castro neighborhood artist Beth Van Hoesen.

The E. Mark Adams and Beth Van Hoesen Adams Trust bequeathed a number of Van Hoesen’s original artworks to the Rainbow Honor Walk that were put up for sale ear-

lier this year at the George Krevsky Gallery in downtown San Francisco.

“This is the gift that gives twice,” said Collins in a statement to the B.A.R. “The art now hangs in my home and reminds me of my brother, and every time I see it, I know that the funds generated by their sale continue an educational and historic legacy.”

Work on selecting the next 20 honorees for the walk will begin in September when the project’s oversight committee meets to discuss the criteria to use for evaluating the next round of inductees. It is unclear if it will use the same criteria as it did for the first 20, with honorees having to be deceased, selfproclaimed as LGBT during their lifetimes, and made considerable contributions to society.

The plan is to eventually have honor walk plaques embedded in the sidewalks along 19th Street up to Diamond; on a section of 18th Street, and along Market Street north to Octavia Boulevard where the LGBT Community Center is located.

Sometime later this year or in early 2015 the public will again be invited to submit suggestions of people to include in the next installation, said Perry.

“We want to make sure we are as transparent and inclusive as possible,” he said.t

team have conducted observing same-sex marriage and LGBT families in the Netherlands and states within the United States that have legally recognized same-sex marriage, Badgett pointed out that marriage had positive effects on LGBT families and their children. Children gained emotion-

ally, as they were happier, and they felt more protected and secure at home and in society, she wrote.

Badgett pointed out the benefits overall to society of allowing samesex couples to marry by following the money trail. She said that there’s been a direct economic benefit to states and

countries that have legalized samesex marriage. Countries that recognize married LGBT couples who got hitched abroad benefit economically when those couples return. She wrote that Australia would benefit if lawmakers allowed same-sex marriage, referring to the study she published

in 2012 that demonstrated marriage equality would boost the country’s economy by $161 million.

Civil unions didn’t have the same effect on children and their samesex parents. Civil unions are “not a good substitute for marriage,” she wrote.t

sergeant didn’t return the Bay Area Reporter’s call.

Stone, who indicated he didn’t want his sexual orientation published, said the other man didn’t use any homophobic slurs like “faggot” until after the attack, when he “was speaking to others in line.”

Brian Busta, 50, a friend and neighbor of Higgins, has said hours before he was attacked, Higgins had been dealing with “medical issues.”

Saturday, Higgins had been “getting too out of hand” and “running around like a cat in a cage.”

He said police were called twice “so we could get Feather into General [Hospital],” However, he said, police had said they couldn’t do anything unless Higgins was a danger to himself or others. Higgins had taken off the first time and he’d calmed down the second time police were called, Busta said. (Higgins, who was a member of the Radical Faerie community, was also known as Feather.)

People who knew Higgins have consistently remarked on his kindness, and Busta said his friend hadn’t seemed dangerous.

Brian Hagerty, Higgins’s husband, has declined to speak with the B.A.R. The B.A.R. has requested the Department of Emergency Management’s records on calls for service from Higgins’s address around the times Busta said the police were called.

In an emailed response, DEM spokeswoman Kristin Hogan said, “We learned from the San Francisco Police Department that the records you are requesting are under active investigation and we are unable to release this information” per the Public Records Act. “Once the investigation is complete, we can process your request, should you want to do so.”

In response to an email about Hogan’s statement, Albie Esparza, an SFPD spokesman, said the “investigation is active and no other details will be released.”

Esparza has said there were no obvious signs of trauma to Higgins when he was found at the scene, and it wasn’t until a cab driver handed over footage of the “person of interest” in the case begin-

ning to assault Higgins that police began investigating the incident as an attempted homicide and assault with a deadly weapon. Once Higgins died, the case became a homicide investigation. It will likely be months before the medical examiner’s office releases the cause and manner of death.

In response to a records request, Fire Department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said in an email that the incident was reported “as an assault to a 25-year-old male” at 7:25 a.m. “as in front of Out of the Closet” August 10.

The person who reported the assault “indicated that they had witnessed what had taken place between the patient and the assailant,” Talmadge added, but “The assailant had left the scene.”

“The medical crew transported the patient with CPR in progress,” she said.

Staff at Out of the Closet said they don’t have surveillance cameras inside or outside the shop, but the pharmacy at the site may have one.

The building is owned by Maitri Hospice. Michael Smithwick, the executive director, said his organization doesn’t have cameras on the Church Street side, though there is video surveillance at its Duboce Street entrance that wouldn’t “reveal what’s happening down the block.”

The spot where Higgins was attacked is near a Muni stop. In response to emailed questions, Muni spokeswoman Kristen Holland said, “We are always happy to assist our colleagues at SFPD whenever we can,” and referred the inquiries to police. She said Muni has “two cameras in the area of Church and Duboce.”

A representative for the Safeway supermarket across the street from the scene didn’t respond to a phone call from the B.A.R. Dave Walda, the office manager for St. Francis, said the church doesn’t have surveillance cameras.

Anyone with information in the case may call the police department’s anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444, or text a tip to 847411 and type SFPD, then the message. The incident number is 140 665 807.t

thing that caused the defendant to go into a rage.”

Juror Jose De Los Reyes, 39, said Tuesday there had been “such a gray area about what happened in the park.”

However, juror Dominique Leone, 40, said Diaz “is on record as lying” in 911 calls he made and in interviews with police. That “obviously doesn’t help his credibility.”

Bill Morrow, 44, said jurors settled on involuntary manslaughter because there was enough evidence that Diaz had been “reckless” and had known what he was doing was “dangerous,” but they hadn’t seen enough to agree he’d been “consciously disregarding human life.”

Court testimony indicated that the recycling bin had been on top of Canul-Arguello when his body was found. Fire expert Jeff Campbell had testified about various scenarios including the bin being placed on top of Canul-Arguello, but he said the body hadn’t been placed inside the container.

De Los Reyes said there had been “enough evidence” to show that the receptacle had been “inappropriately set on fire,” and that Diaz clearly intended “to mutilate the body and destroy the evidence.” All four jurors who spoke to the Bay Area Reporter are straight.

After the verdicts were announced Tuesday, Deputy Public Defender

Alex Lilien said in a statement, “David is a sweet kid who never meant to hurt anyone. I am relieved the jury was able to determine the truth – that Freddy’s death was a terrible, tragic accident.”

Lilien noted that Dr. Venus Azar, who performed the autopsy, had “testified that Canul-Arguello’s injuries were not inconsistent with erotic asphyxia.”

In a brief interview, he said, “I was a little disappointed” on some of the convictions, since he doesn’t believe Diaz intended to burn the body or destroy evidence, but “the jurors did their job.”

In an email, Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office,

said, “We find it very disturbing that the victim was killed and that his body was subsequently burned. However, we respect the jury’s decision.”

The maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter is four years. However, Diaz, who has already been in custody for just over three years, may be sentenced to less time than that, according to Lilien.

Among the factors in the time he could serve, Diaz may be able to serve time concurrently for the other convictions.

“He’s likely done all the time they could sentence him to,” Lilien said.

Diaz’s next court date is September 3, when Lilien will ask that he be released before his sentencing.t

Author Armistead Maupin has agreed to dedicate the last plaque for author Virginia Woolf, which will be located near the Twin Peaks bar at the corner of Castro and 17th streets.

“A great literary giant unveiling a great literary giant,” said Perry.

This week city workers with the Department of Public Works began installing the plaques Tuesday morning into the sidewalks.

“I just can’t quite believe it,” said Perry about seeing the project come to fruition.

Long time coming

Lack of cameras

For more information about the Rainbow Honor Walk, including a full list of donors to the project, visit its website at www.rainbowhonorwalk.org.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

18 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

<<

News Briefs

From page 5

signed the anti-gay propaganda law and a protest is planned for Saturday, August 30 from noon to 2 p.m. at the Russian Consulate, 2790 Green Street in San Francisco.

According to an announcement of the event on the indybay.org site, organizer Francesca Rojo pointed CLEANING SERVICES out thatCOUNSELING videos have been posted online showing people physically and psychologically bullying LGBTs. “We cannot let Russia get away with such a breach of human rights and we must fight for the rights of our sisters, brothers, and people in Russia,” Rojo said in the post.

People are encouraged to bring flags, signs, chants, and their smiles.

For more information, email francesca.rojo@gmail.com.

HAULING

LEGAL SERVICES AIDS grove scholarship named after Zamora

The National AIDS Memorial Grove has announced that it has named its youth scholarship program in honor of the late Pedro Zamora, an AIDS educator and

<<

PrEP ad

From page 8

they took Truvada at least four times per week, there were no new infections – an efficacy of 100 percent.

However, only one-third managed to reach this level of adherence. People who took Truvada two or three times per week saw a risk reduction of 84 percent, but those who took fewer than two doses had no significant protection.

“Under more or less ideal conditions, the best they could get to was 50 percent [risk reduction],” said Weinstein. “That’s not a big success – that’s a big danger.”

But PrEP proponents interpret the numbers more optimistically.

MOVERS “We know that people who did take the drug had very high levels of protection,” Jim Pickett from the AIDS Foundation of Chicago told the B.A.R. “This drug works extraordinarily well to prevent HIV if you use it.”

And, added David Evans from Project Inform, “Even if it were true that PrEP was only 44 percent effec-

<<

Ferguson

From page 1

leased a statement naming racial profiling as central to Brown’s death and denounced the state’s treatment of Ferguson demonstrators. The same week, the National Domestic Workers Alliance extended support to Brown’s family, condemned racialized state-sanctioned violence responsible for his death, and demanded justice.

On August 12, three days after PET SERVICES Brown’s death, a letter signed by 17 social justice and LGBT organizations was released stating the “[LGBT] community cannot be silent at this moment ... because all movements of equality are connected.” The letter called Brown’s death one of countless “racialized killings that have marred this nation since the beginning of its history.” The letter’s signatories has grown to 68, the San Francisco LGBT Community Center among the most recent.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights was among the first to sign REAL ESTATE the letter.

And,SUPPORT as Executive DirecTECH tor Kate Kendell said, after signing, it still felt important for NCLR to draft an individual statement. But the words didn’t come from Kendell herself; her 18-year-old African American son, Julian Holmes, and mentor to both Holmes and Kendell, African American civil rights lawyer Eva Paterson, wrote them.

“Rather than me write something decrying the events in Ferguson,” Kendell said, “I thought the real power might come from an intergenera-

collect items for the 17th annual Friends of Duboce Park Tag Sale, which takes place Saturday, September 6 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the park, located at Duboce Avenue between Steiner and Scott streets.

The event is a community gettogether that neighbors look forward to for both shopping and socializing.

All proceeds are used for improvements to Duboce Park. The friends group has used money from previous fundraisers to help build the children’s playground that opened in 2000, the Scott Street Labyrinth that opened in 2007, and the youth play area that opened two years ago.

Donations will be accepted at the rental truck that will be parked on Duboce Avenue near the Muni stop at Noe Street Tuesday, September 2 through Friday, September 5 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. and before the event the following day. A list of items that can be accepted is available on the Friends of Duboce Park website, www.friendsofdubocepark.org and click on “Events and Activities.”t

activist who died 20 years ago of AIDS-related illness.

Zamora was 22 when he captivated the nation with his openness, compassion, vitality and charisma when he appeared on MTV’s The Real World 3: San Francisco (1994).

At the veritable dawn of reality television, America watched a young Latino who was openly gay and openly HIV-positive. Viewers saw him living his life with joy and integrity, and trying to make a difference in the world.

“We are heartened that 20 years after his passing, Pedro Zamora’s legacy continues on with the Pedro Zamora Young Leaders Scholarship,” said Judd Winick, Zamora’s Real World roommate and authorillustrator of the award-winning graphic novel, Pedro and Me. Zamora died November 11, 1994.

AIDS grove officials said that the Zamora scholarship is funded primarily through a grant provided by UnitedHealthcare, a long-standing supporter of the grove.

Scholarship applications are being accepted through October 15.

Scholarship recipients will be an-

nounced on World AIDS Day, December 1, with awards ranging from $2,500 to $5,000.

High school seniors, and college freshmen, sophomores, and juniors (ages 27 and younger) are eligible to apply. Applicants are asked to demonstrate an active commitment to fighting AIDS, taking on roles of public service and leadership, and who intend to pursue a career that will have a clear and demonstrable impact on the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

“UnitedHealthcare is honored to support the Pedro Zamora Young Leaders Scholarship Program, which helps the educational efforts of young people who will continue to carry the torch that Pedro lit 20 years ago,” said Brandon Cuevas, chief executive officer of the health care company.

The scholarship program began in 2009.

For an application form, go to www.aidsmemorial.org.

tive if taken daily, that would still be helpful for guys who don’t use condoms. Remember that we would probably approve an HIV vaccine at that efficacy level.”

Weinstein said that AHF intends to follow up with another ad looking at the effectiveness of condoms.

The level of protection in condom studies also varies widely. While effectiveness in preventing pregnancy approaches 100 percent with perfect use, real-world protection against HIV among gay men is lower. A 2013 study by CDC researchers found that men who reported using condoms all the time were about 70 percent less likely to become infected than those who said they use them sometimes or not at all.

One advantage of PrEP over condoms is that it is more forgiving of less-than-optimal adherence.

“Having used a condom yesterday provides no protection if you don’t use a condom today,” said iPrEx principal investigator Dr. Robert Grant from the Gladstone Institutes. But the OLE results “demonstrate that PrEP remains

highly effective, even in real-world circumstances in which adherence may not be perfect.”

Proponents agree that poor adherence is the Achilles’ heel of PrEP, but prefer to focus on helping people take Truvada regularly.

“We agree [with AHF] that adherence is pretty critical, but disagree about what that means in terms of implementation,” said Damon Jacobs, a licensed marriage and family therapist in New York City who founded the “PrEP Facts” Facebook group.

A CVS study of adherence to drugs for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and depression found that fewer than 50 percent of people with prescriptions took their medications consistently, Jacobs told the B.A.R. “But we don’t see Michael Weinstein telling people not to take their blood pressure meds because less that half of people can adhere in the real world.”

There are evidence-based practices shown to improve adherence, including cognitive-behavioral thera-

py and motivational interviewing, Jacobs continued. “Let’s talk about the barriers and what can we do to promote adherence,” he said.

“AHF’s logic that PrEP is a public health failure is based on an assumption that people are not capable of taking a pill daily,” added Megan Canon from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, creator of http:// www.PrEPfacts.org. “We should give people more credit for their ability to make informed choices about their own sexual health.”

PrEP advocates said the drug is a good alternative.

“For those people who are especially vulnerable to HIV infection and are inconsistent condom users or never use condoms, Truvada as PrEP is a wonderful choice to consider,” Pickett told the B.A.R. “Finally we have something beyond latex. Finally we have something that is in full control of the receptive partner. Finally we have something that doesn’t need to be negotiated in the heat of the moment. Finally we have something that doesn’t diminish sexual pleasure and intimacy.”t

tional piece by a longtime civil rights lawyer and my son who is comingof-age in a country that still has deep, deep racism and racial tension.”

In his statement, Holmes reflects on the devaluation of black lives: “It is obvious that the justice system is not set up to protect people that look like Michael and me,” he wrote. “There has been something rooted into the system, something rooted into our minds as human beings that makes this acceptable.

Something that tells police officers with guns that they can fire them off at will just because they have a badge ... They are perfectly fine with having another black boy’s blood on their hands ... This story of Michael Brown’s death is tragic. Not only does it make me angry, it makes me sad. Because with every story like this I see my body lying in the street where Michael’s was.”

Growing up with same-sex parents, Holmes told the Bay Area Reporter that he “has one foot in the LGBT community and one foot in the black community,” and it’s especially important for marginalized communities to support each other.

“When people decide not to speak up about an issue, that’s how things get worse,” Holmes said. “Complacency is just as bad as supporting racism.

If you assume we live in a colorblind society because it’s 2014, that’s when things get swept under the rug.”

Last weekend, Gay-Straight Alliance Network released a statement drawing the connection between systematic racism and the criminalization of young people like Brown,

and called for GSAs across the country to commit to addressing the criminalization of young people in their communities.

While no other Bay Area LGBT organizations have released their own public statements, Norio Umezu of Community United Against Violence said the organization’s internal discussion about whether or not to do so was ongoing.

Rebecca Rolfe, executive director of the San Francisco LGBT center, said the center did not release its own letter citing public statements as “not a strategy we’ve had the resources to pursue on a regular basis.” Similarly, the executive director of the Pacific Center in Berkeley, Leslie Ewing, cited “lack of organizational bandwidth and capacity” as reason for the same. Brown Boi Project was also contacted but could not be reached for comment.

The weekend of August 16, San Francisco hosted the annual American Sociological Association meeting. A group of sociologists, many from San Francisco State University, drafted a statement titled: “Sociologists Issue Statement on Ferguson: 400 Sociologists Demand Justice and Change in Policing Communities of Color.” To date, over 1,400 sociologists have now signed the letter.

SFSU sociology Professor Andreana Clay, a self-identified queer woman of color and black feminist, was central to the statement’s making. Her participation, she said, was rooted in her work as a sociologist and her upbringing – Clay grew up in Missouri and spent her summers

in St. Louis near Ferguson.

The statement addresses police brutality, racialized policing, institutional racism, and anti-blackness as an epidemic in this country and central to Brown’s death. It is timely, Clay emphasized, for allies to speak out, which should include the LGBT community.

“It’s a real opportunity for LGBT organizations to address the violence that continues to happen on marginalized bodies,” Clay said, “and link, not equate, but link the violence targeted upon black bodies to the violence targeted toward queer bodies, specifically trans women of color. It’s an opportunity to talk about how violence is used to surveil queer and racialized bodies; often times those are the same bodies. Just because the ongoing targeting of black bodies, both male and female, in society is what we see at this moment, the mainstream gay community is never far behind.”

The letter also endorses Black Lives Matter, a nonprofit initiative committed to using social engagement to end state sanctioned violence against black people. Currently, 16 states have Black Lives Matter contingents organizing rides to Ferguson to sustain ground-level action. Made up of various professionals, specialists, and organizers, the Bay Area has its own Black Life Matters Ride scheduled to depart August 28.

To donate to the Black Life Matters Bay Area contingent, visit http://www.gofundme.com/df9254.

The campaign ends September 5.t

Items sought for Duboce Park tag sale

Area residents are asked to clean out their closets and garages to

Supporting adherence

t

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035978200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: APPLIED PERFORMANCE SOLUTIONS, INC, 1072 14TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed APPLIED PERFORMANCE SOLUTIONS, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/20/08.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/04/14.

AUG 21, 28, SEPT 04, 11, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036002000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AGESONG AT UNIVERSITY, 350 UNIVERSITY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed AGESONG GENESIS, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/18/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/18/14.

AUG 21, 28, SEPT 04, 11, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550528

In the matter of the application of: PETER MCDONAGH, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner PETER MCDONAGH, is requesting that the name ANGELICA MARIA COCA PEREZ be changed to ANGELICA MARIA MCDONAGH. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept.

514 on the 23rd of October 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

AUG 28, SEPT 04, 11, 18, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035987300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DOMINANT ATHLETIX, 2755 25TH AVE, OAKLAND, CA 94601. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CAREY RYAN ROCKLAND. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/14.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/08/14.

AUG 28, SEPT 04, 11, 18, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036006500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SASHA PRESS, 105 HANCOCK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SALLY SWOPE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/19/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/19/14.

AUG 28, SEPT 04, 11, 18, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035973500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BEST CLEANERS, 1699 UNION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed FENG YONG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/31/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/31/14.

AUG 28, SEPT 04, 11, 18, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036015300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SHELFLIFE RECORDS, 672 TERESITA BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MATTHEW BICE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/25/14.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/25/14.

AUG 28, SEPT 04, 11, 18, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036010400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NINE57 DESIGN, 957 HAYES ST #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed RICHARD LOUIS FITCH & ALEXANDER BUSTOS GARCIA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/20/14.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/21/14.

AUG 28, SEPT 04, 11, 18, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035985400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VIRTUAL WIDE VISION, 564 GROVE ST #564, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed KEVORKOV ARTEM & YEFREMOV ALEXEY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/02/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/08/14.

AUG 28, SEPT 04, 11, 18, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035998500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WINGSPAN INSURANCE SOLUTIONS, LLC, 111 PINE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed WINGSPAN INSURANCE GROUP, LLC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/03/13.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/14/14.

AUG 28, SEPT 04, 11, 18, 2014

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035970300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THOMAS DOHERTY CONSTRUCTION, 51 EAST GATE DR, DALY CITY, CA 94015. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed THOMAS DOHERTY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/29/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/30/14.

AUG 07, 14, 21, 28, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035979000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PINK ZEBRA SF, 3515 20TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JESSE L. KOIDE. 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 08/04/14.

AUG 07, 14, 21, 28, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035967200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TAVO CONSTRUCTION, 2820 25TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GUSTAVO MENDONCA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/29/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/29/14.

AUG 07, 14, 21, 28, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035952700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BLO2GO, 411 SPRUCE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed BLO2GO 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 07/21/14.

AUG 07, 14, 21, 28, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035953200

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AUG 07, 14, 21, 28, 2014 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-032530900

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AUG 14, 21, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550497

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AUG 21, 28, SEPT 04, 11, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550505 In the matter of the application of: LE LE DO for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner LE LE DO is requesting that the name LE LE DO be changed to EDWARD LUY DO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 9th of October 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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AUG 14, 21, 28, SEPT 04. 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035992200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOAL VAULTING, 1420 ALABAMA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NIFER KILAKILA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/25/13 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/12/14.

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AUG 14, 21, 28, SEPT 04. 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035983800

AUG 14, 21, 28, SEPT 04. 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035970400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LIGHT-FRAME CONSTRUCTION INC, 1325 B EVANS AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed LIGHT-FRAME CONSTRUCTION INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/30/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/30/14.

AUG 14, 21, 28, SEPT 04. 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE +A-035993100

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AUG 14, 21, 28, SEPT 04. 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035917000

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AUG 21, 28, SEPT 04, 11, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035956800

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The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/23/14.

AUG 21, 28, SEPT 04, 11, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036001300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WOODENMICE, 1369 HYDE ST #23, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JERRY BRECHER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/97.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/31/14.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TR CONCEPTS & CONSULTING, 444 WOODROW AVE, VALLEJO, CA 94591. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TRACY ROGERS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/18/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/18/14.

AUG 14, 21, 28, SEPT 04. 2014

AUG 21, 28, SEPT 04, 11, 2014

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NEW HIVE DESIGNS, 642 WOODMONT ST, BERKELEY, CA 94708. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL PATRICK BENNETT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/30/14.

AUG 14, 21, 28, SEPT 04. 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035973000

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In the matter of the application of: SAMANTA GURUNG for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner SAMANTA GURUNG is requesting that the name SAMANTA GURUNG be changed to SAMUEL TILAK GURUNG. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept.

514, Rm. 514 on the 7th of October 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TODD WANERMAN EDUCATIONAL CONSULTING, 234 19TH AVE #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TODD MOORE WANERMAN. 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 08/07/14.

August 28-September 3, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

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Vol. 44 • No. 35 • August 28-September 3, 2014

www.ebar.com/arts

What’s coming to art museums this fall

?

by Sura Wood

I

t’s hard to believe, but the fall arts season is upon us.

This year’s slate is noteworthy for the absence of SFMOMA and MoAD; both are closed for renovation, and the Berkeley Art Museum follows suit on Dec. 21.

September is a banner month that heralds the arrival of a portion of the Anderson Collection, amassed by Menlo Park collectors Hunk, Moo and Putter Anderson. Their gift of 121 post-war modern, abstract expressionist artworks to Stanford University is housed in a newly constructed, 33,000 sq. ft. building that opens to the public on Sept. 21.

See page 34 >>

Keith Haring, Untitled (1988), acrylic on canvas, from Keith Haring: The Political Line, coming to the de Young Museum.

Collection of the Keith Haring Foundation

Serious cinema: Fall films roll out

by David Lamble

F

or the serious film buff, Labor Day kicks off an intense season when American filmmakers, studio-based and indie alike, compete like drunken sailors for the eyes and ears of every North American filmgoer. From now until Oscar time (February 2015), Hollywood studio flacks will swear that they care only about “serious cinema.” Even queer-identified filmmakers will convince themselves that God, Oscar, or Harvey Weinstein will anoint them as this season’s film flavormeisters.

See page 30 >>

Theo Green (Zachary Booth) and his mother Celia Green (Patricia Clarkson) in director Tom Dolby’s Last Weekend.

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

ANNALEIGH ASHFORD 4/19 - 7:30 p.m.

LESLIE UGGAMS 11/2 - 5 p.m.

JUDY COLLINS 2/28 - 8 p.m.

3/1 - 5 p.m.

BOBBY CONTE THORNTON 5/31 - 5 p.m.

SIERRA BOGGESS 12/7 - 5 p.m.

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

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

:

STACEY KENT 2/1 - 7:30 p.m.

(4 cri 15 be )9 a 27 nd - IN sa FO ve

Tickets: www.bayareacabaret.org

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ Ana Gasteyer, Liz Callaway 9/27 - 8 p.m.

Su bs

at the Venetian Room Fairmont San Francisco

Courtesy Water’s End Productions/Sundance Selects

<< Out There

22 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

t

Entering the arts season

by Roberto Friedman

W

elcome to the first of two issues of fall arts previews in the Arts & Culture pages. This week, find coming attractions in Bay Area art museums, film releases and TV offerings, as well as a preview of composer Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, coming to the War Memorial as part of the San Francisco Opera fall season. Next week, we finish things off with previews of theatre, music, dance, DVD/Blu-ray releases, and Bay Area galleries. Further down this column are a few more tips as to what’s coming up this fall.

The late-summer theatre scene was buzzing last week with the opening of two touring shows, Berry Gordy’s Motown, and Michael Urie starring in the Barbra Streisand-themed Buyer & Cellar (see this week’s reviews). Gordy was the toast of the town here and in Oakland, where it was proclaimed Berry Gordy Day. With Buyer & Cellar wowing audiences at the Curran Theatre, it’s fitting that the new season brings with it a new Streisand album. Columbia Records announced the release of Partners for Sept. 16, featuring 12 new Barbra duets, many of them Streisand classics, with famous male vocalists. There’s “New York State of Mind” with Billy Joel, “It Had To Be You” with Michael Bublé, “Come Rain or Come Shine” with John Mayer, the virtual duet with Elvis Presley “Love Me Tender,” “The Way We Were” with Lionel Richie, “What Kind of Fool (Am I?)” with John Legend, “People” with Stevie Wonder, “I Can Still See Your Face” with Andrea Bocelli, “Evergreen” with Babyface, and Streisand’s first studio-recorded duet with her out gay son Jason Gould, “How Deep is the Ocean?”

The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus has announced the details of their 37th season, called Journey: Festive, Fearless and Fabulous. It includes their annual seasonal fare Home for the Holidays, with a world premiere by composer Ola Gjeilo, a 1980s nativity scene, and an ugly sweater parade (Nourse Theater, 12/1213; Castro Theatre, 12/24); Love Is, featuring the world premiere of TwitterLieder by composer James Eakin and librettist Anthony Silvestri, and the SF premiere of composer Jake Heggie’s choral opera For a Look or a Touch (Davies Symphony Hall, 4/1-2); and Hello, Yellow Brick Road, a Sir Elton John extravaganza and singalong (Nourse, 6/24-26).

Call (415) 865-3650 or go to sfgmc.org.

Author Christopher Lowen Agee’s new book The Streets of San Francisco:

Steven Underhill

Motown: The Musical star Clifton Oliver plays recording-industry titan Berry Gordy, performing on Berry Gordy Day in Oakland last week.

Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 19501972 (University of Chicago Press) grew out of a research project on the 1960 “gayola” scandal, and includes large sections on the relations between the SFPD and San Francisco’s gay and lesbian communities. During the late 1990s, Agee interviewed a number of postwar activists, including B.A.R. co-founder Bob Ross, for the book.

Tonight (Thurs., Aug. 28) brings a book signing and author Q&A, 7 p.m., at Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St., SF; and there will be another book signing, at the GLBT History Museum, on Oct. 23.

San Franciscan author Monica Nolan presents her latest pulp novel Dolly Dingle, Lesbian Landlady at a

book launch party on Wed., Oct. 15, 7 p.m. at The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St., SF. Hot on the heels of her pulps Maxie Mainwaring, Lesbian Dilettante and Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher, this is the latest installment in Nolan’s Lesbian Career Girl series. Info: (415) 4316800 or thegreenarcade.com.

More to come next week!

Sustainable cuisine

Newly appointed Executive Chef Josua Perez (yes, that’s the spelling of his name, but he prefers Josh) showcased his California cuisine at the Americano restaurant in the Hotel Vitale with a three-course media luncheon last week, so OT put our eatin’ dress on and booked over to the Embarcadero. The first course was a yummy heirloom tomato and watermelon salad, with feta, arugula, and poppyseed vinaigrette.

The second course brought flatiron steak, early girl tomatoes, dandelion greens with herb salmoriglio. Also, pan-roasted Padrone peppers, fried green tomatoes, smoked onion coriander aioli and stone fruit panzanella. Dessert was olive oil cake, peaches, and honey mascarpone. We washed it all down with sauvignon blanc and a nice malbec, so we were some stoned fruit!

One food writer at the table complained that concepts like farm-to-table, locally sourced, sustainable ingredients were becoming clichés as more and more Bay Area chefs adhere to them. But that is what people expect of California cuisine right now, and they’re not bad goals for chefs de cuisine and the diners who love them. Carry on, Chef Josh, we’re bringing our appetite to dinner!t

Fundi’s

TROUBLE IN BLACK PARADISE: Catastrophic Legacy Worshiping the New World Politics of Saving Souls A Sizzling New Self-illustrated Novel: Standard Black Christian Anti Gay Rationale Debunked In A Daring Historical Exposé Available online: Amazon.com Books; Authorhouse.com Locally at: Books, Inc. (Upper Market St.), Crystal Way, Folio Books, Bound Together Books & The Green Arcade.

t

Theatre>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 23

A music industry mogul’s own story

by Richard Dodds

I

f Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, had a fault, it was in caring too much. Too much about family, music, and teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony. Oh, and then there was the matter of erectile dysfunction on his first night in bed with Diana Ross. But she strokes his ego by skipping around the bed singing “I Hear a Symphony.”

As curious as that moment is, it’s one of the few when Motown: The Musical digs beneath a skimmed treatment of Gordy’s rise to an undeniable force in forging a new soundtrack for an era. But in as much as Gordy himself wrote the book for the current Broadway hit, he gets to tell his story his way. And of course we all know that, beyond a self-valediction, it mainly exists as a clothesline on which to hang more than 50 songs – some intact, many in excerpts – from the Motown catalog.

Not only are they songs with wide touchstone recognition, the musical delivers them through facsimiles of dozens of the original performers. If these reproductions can push too hard in staging and arrangements, they are still enough to drive an audience wild, which sums up the reaction of the opening-night audience for the touring production at the Orpheum Theatre. And cheers turned into a roar as Berry Gordy himself took to the stage during the curtain calls, saying a few words and busting some pretty impressive moves for a man of 84.

A 1984 television special celebrating Motown’s 25th anniversary bookends the story, as the musical opens with a sulky Gordy (an intense Clifton Oliver) in the first scene debating whether to attend the show reuniting so many artists who had left his label for more lucrative deals. That sulk is about as dark as the stage Gordy gets. He’s surprisingly temperate, for example, as he accepts Ross’ decision to end their personal relationship and later to jump ship to another label.

Beyond the story of Motown itself, Gordy’s relationship with Ross (who is no diva in Allison Semmes’ selfeffacing portrayal) comes closest to a through-storyline. But neither the child they had together, the fact that she was married at the time, nor his seven other children with multiple wives and mistresses have any relevance in the story being told.

His children, you might say, are the musical acts he nurtured over the years, and it is on them that the focus most properly settles. Between schematic scenes chronicling a mogul on the make, songs come hurtling at us with amped-up arrangements and choreography that only occasionally push the numbers beyond satisfactory replications of, to name just a few, Jackie Wilson, the Supremes, Gladys Knight, Martha Reeves, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Mary Wells, the Four Tops, and even the who-is-that Teena Marie.

Gordy’s libretto and director Charles Randolph-Wright’s staging give occasional attention to the increasingly volatile social issues of the late 1960s. Marvin Gaye wants to record an anti-war song over Gordy’s objection, does so, and scores a hit. In one of the odder stabs at relevance, an angry crowd carrying Black Power signs confronts Gordy over his decision to replace Florence Ballard with Cindy Birdsong in the Supremes.

Was that really a hot civil rights issue?

But these are but footnotes in the show. Motown: The Musical pretty much delivers on what its title promises. The surprise would have been if it had done more than that. And there is no surprise.t

Motown: The Musical will run through Sept. 28 at the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets are $21-$45. Call (888) 746-1799 or go to shnsf.com.

Joan Marcus

Patrice Covington, as Martha Reeves, leads the company in one of the dozens of musical numbers that that make up Motown: The Musical.

<< Film

24 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

t

When real life intrudes on marriage equality

by David Lamble

to explore. I tried to be very empathetic to everybody, including the priest who has to fire his employee.

I

t’s a personal prejudice of mine that I believe well-made fiction films are often far more accurate and truthful portraits of our messy human tribes than even the most scrupulously produced documentaries. A case in point is the latest brilliant fiction from the Memphisraised/New York City-residing filmmaker Ira Sachs.

In Love is Strange, Sachs begins with the nuptials of two 60-something New Yorkers. A painter, Ben (John Lithgow), and a music teacher, George (Alfred Molina), decide to use the passage of New York’s Marriage Equality Act to legally baptize their nearly 40-year union. The film opens with a love fest as friends and family of the couple celebrate a long-overdue public recognition of their life together.

Soon, real life intrudes. George is fired from his job at a Catholic high school, and the couple find themselves technically “homeless,” unable to make the mortgage payments on their co-op apartment. Since none of their friends have space in their own cramped quarters for a couple, Ben moves in with Kate (Marisa Tomei), a novelist; her husband, Elliot (Darren Burrows); and their teenage son, Joey (Charlie Tahan); while George bunks down on the couch of two gay cops (Cheyenne Jackson and Manny Perez).

Suddenly, all bets are off. Ben is particularly hard-hit, as his mere presence in the flat puts a crimp in Kate’s daily writing ritual. At the same time, Ben’s being in the lower bunk of Joey’s bed causes the teen to start resenting his once-beloved gay “uncle,” while also putting the kid’s own burgeoning romantic life on hold.

My phone chat with Ira Sachs, who co-wrote Love is Strange with Mauricio Zacharias (also his writing partner on their previous feature, Keep the Lights On), explored his philosophy and methods as American queer film’s most adroit chronicler of relationships, whether fleeting (The Delta), severely challenged (Forty Shades of Blue), fatally flawed (Married Life), or full of bumps and bruises (Keep the Lights On, a film he concedes was signifi-

Describe the relationship between teenager Joey and the couple, especially with John Lithgow’s Ben, who’s actually taking over Joey’s room.

It’s a film that’s about education with a small “e.” There is this sense of what we learn from each other as family, and one of the things that was so special is the cast I got to work with, who brought a level of humor and comedy that makes them even more life-like. I started writing the film in January 2012, and in that month I went from living alone in my New York apartment to living with my husband, our two kids, their mom, and visiting family members, so I had right in front of me drama and all the comedy that I could hope for.

Jeong Park, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Alfred Molina as George and John Lithgow as Ben in director Ira Sachs’ Love is Strange.

Clay Enos, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Alfred Molina, John Lithgow and Love is Strange director Ira Sachs.

cantly autobiographical). I began by noting that the film was his second outing with screenwriting partner Zacharias.

Ira Sachs: It helps that we’re both family – he’s the godfather of my two-year-old son – and we share a lot of values, similar curiosities about life and relationships and family intimacy, and that’s a very good place to start an artistic collaboration.

David Lamble: Your setup is sublime: a happily-together gay couple for whom marriage should represent the apex of happiness, but for whom George’s firing from his Catholic school job starts a cascade of problems.

The film is an examination of love at different stages in life, and from different perspectives, so you have this older couple (John

and Alfred); you have Marisa Tomei and Darren Burrows, who are very much a couple in the middle of their life; and you have this adolescent played by Charlie Tahan, who is an extraordinary young actor, who’s really learning about love for the first time. We wanted to create a multi-generational family epic, but to stage it in a very cramped New York apartment. For that you need drama, and the issue around marriage equality and the firing that happens at the beginning of the film is really the engine that sets off this examination of love and family and relationships.

You take a direct hit at the Catholic Church. Alfred Molina’s character is fired by the Church for actually getting married to his life partner.

When we started working on the film, I read about a case that happened in the Midwest about a man who married his partner, and then was fired as a Catholic high school choir director. So in a way, my job as a filmmaker is to be a historian.

I’m speaking to things that are of our time. My job is not to judge, but

Growing up, you could probably imagine yourself living the life of an artist, but in your wildest imagination could you have imagined the rest of your current life?

I think your question points to what is so poignant about Ben and George as a couple: Here are two gay men in a relationship who have also lived through the AIDS epidemic and the sort of changing relationship of their culture to their love.

The film begins with a wedding, it contains also the struggle that these two went through personally and as part of history to get to that moment. It’s very poignant that this is also the catalyst of their separation.

This is a film that tries to honor the struggles of their generation.

When I first met my husband Boris Torres, who does the paintings for John Lithgow, he was living in an apartment in the West Village. On the middle floor of this townhouse was a 77-year-old, very eccentric gay man, and on the top floor were two policemen who were a couple. And we lived there, often watching TV together and having meals together, and there was this kind of communal story that I was very moved by. That’s what a lot of people who move to cities like New York build for themselves, it’s how we get through life.t

Spreading Milk’s dream to the South

by David-Elijah Nahmod

You can’t be a homophobic city council member in New York and get re-elected.

You can here.

T

hose of us who live in gay meccas sometimes forget that others don’t have it as easy as we do. With his charming and thought-provoking new film Tennessee Queer, Memphis-based filmmaker Mark Jones reminds us how far parts of the country have to go. Jones’ film has been referred to in some circles as Mayberry LGBT, but the Andy Griffith show, as charming as it was, was never as groundbreaking as the tale Jones weaves. In Tennessee Queer, the fictional town of Smythe comes out of the closet.

The film is about out, proud native son Jason (Christian Walker), who returns home from New York to organize Smythe’s first gay pride parade. He finds support on the local city council. Unknown to him, two of the council members, along with a local minister, are planning on using the parade to photograph participants and “force” them into gay conversion therapy.

Their evil plot backfires. In a tearinducing scene, a hearty band of 30 brave souls marches through downtown Smythe waving rainbow flags.

The film’s most touching moment comes when two teen boys, sitting together on the sidelines, give each

Courtesy the subject

Memphis-based filmmaker Mark Jones.

other knowing glances. They get up, hold hands, and join the parade.

Jones told the B.A.R. that this scene induced tears at screenings of the film in the South.

David-Elijah Nahmod: What is the current state of LGBT equality in Tennessee?

Mark Jones: Memphis and Nashville have ordinances protecting LGBT workers. There’s no marriage,

nothing at the state level.

Is Tennessee Queer based on your own or anyone else’s real-life experiences?

It’s a work of fiction. It’s not anything I’ve experienced. There was a lot of inspiration from local politicians in Memphis, who have been jackasses in providing equality to LGBT people.

Have you always lived in Memphis?

We lived in New York City while my partner was in school. It was cold! Other than that, it was nice to see so many gay bars and gay people as part of the city’s nerve center. It was nice to be in a city where there are so many people like you. We have a nice parade in Memphis, but the parade in New York was huge.

Can you describe gay life in Memphis?

We have a good community, a nice LGBT community center, but there’s an “attack” vibe here. I think that cities like Memphis, and other cities and small towns across the South, are the next wave of LGBT activism.

It’s time we focused on the small towns in Tennessee and Alabama, etc. If you have three to four people in cities like New York commit to going back to the small towns for two years and help, you’d make things better for the kids here.

What is the message of Tennessee Queer?

That one person can make a difference.t Tennessee Queer is now available on DVD.

t

Music>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 25

Susannah’s belated deliverance

by Jason Victor Serinus

A

mere 59 years after its successful premiere at Florida State University in 1956, 87-year-old composer Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah opens at San Francisco Opera on Sept. 6. Playing the role of Susannah will be Patricia Racette, who previously sang the lead in Houston Grand Opera’s 2000 premiere of Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree.

Although Susannah is rightly heralded as one of the greatest American-rooted operas of all time – its music is gorgeous, the libretto (also

by Floyd) echt American to the core, and its 1956 New York City Opera production won it the coveted New York Music Critics Circle Award for Best New Opera, leading to its being chosen to represent American music and culture at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels – American performances in major houses have been few and far between.

Six months before its unveiling in the War Memorial Opera House, the South Carolina-born composer visited San Francisco to join SFO general director David Gockley and a select audience of patrons for a spirited discussion of Susannah and Floyd’s oeuvre as a whole. Gockley, who hosted the discussion, has long championed Floyd’s work, having commissioned his Bilby’s Doll for the American Bicentennial, and staged many of his other operas at Houston Grand Opera. Long af-

Scott Wall

San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley with Susannah composer Carlisle Floyd.

ter Gockley left Houston for SFO, HGO’s allegiance to Floyd continues, with his newest opera, Prince of Players, scheduled for the 2015-16 season.

Based on the story of Susanna and the Elders found in the apocryphal texts of the Christian Bible, the story revolves around Susannah, a young, innocent, and extremely attractive woman who is wrongly accused of seduction. In fact, Susannah is the object of desire and jealousy by the very men and women who condemn her, and the victim of new-to-town Rev. Olin Blitch, whose fire-and-brimstone sermonizing conceals the lust that soon

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Soprano Patricia Racette sings the title role in composer Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, coming in the SF Opera fall season.

leads him to rape her. Yes, we’ve all heard variations of this small-town bigotry many times – as gay people, we’ve often resided on Susannah’s side of the fence – but Floyd’s music imbues the story with a level of suspense and heart-gripping drama that transforms it into high art.

“The idea to do an opera based on the story of Susanna and the Elders found in the Apocrypha was suggested to me by a friend who was a writer, and who had attempted to do the libretto,” Floyd explained. “I had been writing all through college, and I wanted to do the libretto myself. Fortunately for me, he had writer’s block or something like that, so after several weeks waiting for a libretto from him, I decided to do the libretto myself. Thus history.”

One of Floyd’s goals was to bolster the dramatic side of an operatic art that, in the 1930s and 40s, had become, in his own words, “predominantly and almost exclusively a singer’s art-form, with very little emphasis upon acting or the dramatic side of the equation. I felt, as did several others such as Gian Carlo Menotti, that that should be rectified, and the dramatic part of the operatic equation should be addressed. That’s what lured me into going into opera, to see if it could be done.”

Asked if Susannah was created in response to the anti-Communist, anti-homosexual witch-hunts of the

McCarthy Era, Floyd responded in the affirmative.

“In Florida, where I was teaching at the time, there was a state committee, the Johns Committee, that was empowered to find Communists and homosexuals in the state university. This witch-hunt really wrecked people’s lives. I had students who were called into question, but fortunately not dismissed from the university. It was a very dark time, because to be accused was tantamount to being guilty, or at least casting suspicion on you as guilty.

I think I never really absorbed [the nature of the situation] until I did Susannah. Susannah was a response to the terrible time of terror of an inquisition, because that’s exactly what was happening at the time.

“In Germany, journalists are very interested in this connection between Susannah and the McCarthy Era, with very good reason.

Although I tried very hard to make them see the connection between Nazi fascism and the theme of Susannah, they kind of balked at that.

Nonetheless, fascism is fascism, wherever you find it, and it’s the basis of what I was doing in Susannah: false accusation, and a person’s life absolutely ruined as a result.”

Then came an interesting confession of sorts from the son of a Methodist minister whose family followed him from congregation to congregation. When asked what in-

spired him to change the story of Susanna and the Elders from one in which Susanna is vindicated to one that has a much harsher ending, Floyd replied that he wanted to make strong point of what the consequences of such accusations could have on a person’s life.

“I never read the apocryphal story until after I wrote my libretto,” he said. “But it ends very happily, with Susanna being exonerated, and the two elders being hung by their thumbs, or something like that, in good Old Testament fashion. I wanted to show the destruction of innocence, which is one of the most horrifying things we have as human beings. I wanted to have an ending in which Susanna is unalterably changed.”

Whether you will be changed as well depends upon your personal response to Floyd’s libretto and music, and SFO’s singers and production. Members of our community who, bolstered by the recent samesex marriage victories in the U.S., have been lured into a sense of complacency, would do well to spend a few hours in the opera house discovering just how powerful opera can be, and contemplating how easily the tides of history can turn.t Susannah opens on Sept. 6 for five performances at the War Memorial Opera House. For tickets, see sfopera.com or call (415) 864-3330.

Explosions on the ivories

by Tim Pfaff

B

enjamin Grosvenor may have the least enviable job in San Francisco classical music’s opening week: following Yuja Wang at the Symphony. But judging from his previous CD’s sassy, ear-tingling romp through Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which keyboard wizardress Yuja will play in the season-opening gala, Grosvenor will take the challenge right in his teeth. The 22-yearold British pianist’s Rhapsody in Blue CD also features his alternately breathless and breath-taking Ravel G Major Concerto, with which he and the orchestra will round out the week. And in and around Davies Hall, you surely won’t be able to duck Grosvenor’s new solo CD, Dances (Decca). Don’t duck.

There’s nothing to be gained by beating on the “child prodigy” drum.

A startling number of major pianists have broken onto the scene at an improbably early age. (Grosvenor was 12.) What matters is that, roaring into his second decade amid the usual bumper crop of extraordinary pianists, Grosvenor has individuality to match his precocity, and, once you hear him, his distinctive, infectious sound will remain as clear and vivid in your auditory memory as the voice of a front-rank singer – of

Sophie Wright/Decca

Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor knows his scores.

a Pavarotti, even, for me the acid test.

Sometimes when listening to the playing of another keyboard Wunderkind, Evgeny Kissin (age 6), I have the sense that he is drawing the music out of the piano with his fingers, not pushing or pounding it in.

When I listen to Grosvenor, it is as if there are little – and sometimes notso-little – explosions on the ivories, so energized and even electrifying is his touch. On the scale of “does he make it sound hard?” or “does he make it sound easy?,” he’s some-

where between, leaning toward easy.

What he makes it sound is exuberant, irresistible and robustly healthy.

The Dances’ program echoes Grosvenor’s recital repertoire over the last year, and you can tell that he’s lived with this music. It’s so clearly in his hands, bones and bloodstream that, even at its most spontaneous and cheeky, you wouldn’t call it risk-taking. The pianist’s own delight in the music – more than in his own playing, a la Lang Lang – keeps popping up everywhere.

Mere measures into his fleet but never hurried reading of Bach’s D Major Fourth Partita, BVW 828 (without repeats, but not impatiently so), I back-tracked to check whether what I thought I heard at the start – the crispest, most jolting yet inviting of rolled chords – was in fact what I heard. It was, though even on repeated hearings, it’s hard to listen fast enough. From the start, Grosvenor puts you on notice that his is a musical mind as much to be savored as reckoned with.

Pianists have pretty much reclaimed this particular slice of the vast Bach keyboard repertoire from the harpsichordists. Igor Levitt’s new Sony recording of all six Partitas, likely very different in sense See page 26 >>

Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

<< Theatre

26 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

Getting to know Barbra Streisand

by Richard Dodds

H

as anyone ever seen the kind of home-movie snippets of Barbra Streisand that turn up on TV bios, like those of Lucy and Desi clowning around the pool, or Bogie and Bacall mugging as steaks grill on the barbecue? There are virtually no at-ease recordings of Streisand, everything instead coming through a scripted performance, a meticulously controlled interview, or a concert appearance that has even casual banter programmed into a teleprompter. It’s this do-not-enter life into which Buyer & Cellar dares to trespass on tiptoe.

This incursion may be totally

made up, as actor Michael Urie tells the audience before becoming a character who briefly pushes through Streisand’s enameled defenses, but even with this disclaimer it’s easy to buy into this slice of Streisand as created by playwright Jonathan Tolins – and then filtered through Urie’s dazzling performances as all the characters. This is a Streisand painted in small, guarded strokes, but the humor generated

by Urie’s running commentary as an out-of-work actor in her employ, as well as through the love-hate Barbra fanaticism of the actor’s boyfriend, can be enormous.

There wasn’t much advance buzz as Buyer & Cellar arrived off-Broad-

t

way in 2013. Urie, who had played a flamboyantly noticeable character in TV’s Ugly Betty, added a modicum of marketability, but attention was soon being paid big-time by audiences and media, and that little show generated a national tour now at the Curran Theatre.

You don’t have to know much about Streisand to enjoy this show, and anything short of downright loathing can be accommodated.

While a joke about a “mink hat suitable for tugboat travel” will resonate in a smaller circle, Tolins has provided context for much of the story he has created. Ironically, all the atSee page 31 >>

In Buyer & Cellar, Michael Urie plays an unemployed actor hired by Barbra Streisand who finds a way to pierce her facade.

decade, and are suffused with crisply articulated characterization and pitchperfect dialogue. This is a collection to savor and ponder and reflect upon.

The book’s opener, “From the Desk of Hunter B. Gwathmey” follows the winner of a high school writing contest and his disillusionment with the more successful authors he meets as a result of his own minor success. This

tale is followed by “Referred Pain,” in which a lonely wife embarks upon an illicit affair with one of her husband’s graduate students. “First Responder” is also a standout, about a gay man who begins bonding with his brother and achieves the kind of rare family solidarity that comes after years of estrangement and misunderstood emotions.

Joan Marcus

Hints of brilliance

by Jim Piechota

Little Reef and Other Stories by Michael Carroll; Terrace Books, cloth $26.95, e-book $19.95 ometimes great talent wanders around in pairs. This is certainly the case for Michael Carroll, the 49-yearold longtime partner of celebrated writer Edmund White (the couple

S

is approaching their 20th anniversary next year). While White has blossomed into a well-respected figure in gay literary circles, Carroll’s ascent to greatness has just begun, with a debut collection of stories, after years of publishing in literary journals like Ontario Review, Boulevard, and Open City.

The 12 tales in Little Reef and Other Stories were all written within the last

The dramatic and poignant “Admissions” perhaps comes closest to home for Carroll with its autobiographical nature. In it, the younger partner of a gay couple must come to terms with the medical collapse of his older lover, and the opinions and procedural operations of the hospital staff surrounding them. Edmund White has suffered two strokes in recent years, the latest one extensively debilitating him for months (he has since remarkably recovered). The story offers a true representation of the generational gap between Perry and Scott, the story’s two lovers: “Perry had been at Stonewall, helping smash parking meters, screaming at the police. Scott had grown up a Me, narcotized by junk food, game shows, sitcoms.”

“Unsticking,” the final story, is set in Key West and features a juxtaposition of older and younger gay men, with the perceptive, beenthere-done-that aging man cringing in the presence of the unforeseen mistakes about to be made by the adult children who “called girls guys, and everybody of that generation, it seemed, called each other kid.”

Not to be missed, Carroll’s brilliant inaugural story collection sets this talented author up for great things to come.t

<<

Grosvenor

From page 25

and sound, will be snapping at Grosvenor’s heels. But like the best of his contemporaries, Grosvenor has been to school on performance practice, and his playing is stylish in every sense; the shapes of the strongly contrasting dance movements are carefully molded, and each fitted proportionally into the whole.

The Aria and the famous Allemande don’t swoon and sigh as they do in some piano renditions, the first but not the last indications that in his playing Grosvenor respects both the music’s feeling and yours.

What he most brings forward from the harpsichord sonority is an enlivening brightness, without glare.

What’s clear from this Baroque beginning is that you’re in for some rip-roaring fun, none of it at the composer’s expense.

My own “show me” attitude about his Andante spianato and See page 31 >>

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<< Out&About

28 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

Out &About

O&A

Thu 28 To Be Takei

To Be Takei @ Sundance Kabuki Cinema

Motown the Musical @ Orpheum Theatre

The acclaimed documentary about the gay actor ( Star Trek) and activist’s life, directed by Jennifer Kroot. $9.50$13.50. Various times. 1881 Post St. www.tobetakei.com www.sundancecinemas.com

Clifton Oliver and Allison Semmes costar in the first national tour of the musical treasure about the life and career of Berry Gordy, featuring dozens of performers singing and dancing to Motown classic hits. $45-$210. Tue-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7:30pm. Also Sat 2pm. Thru Sept.

28. 1192 Market St. (888) 746-1799. motownthemusical.com shnsf.com

Fri 29

Laboradorable

by Jim Provenzano

I

f you’re among the lucky folks who get one or more days off from work – heck, if you’re among the lucky folks to be employed! – take some time off to appreciate some lovely luscious leisure. Outdoor festivals with a Brazilian, Filipino, and uh, Caucasian flair should help relieve any regrets for not having gotten outta town. Feeling overheated? Several gay-themed movies and plays can help you keep cool indoors.

Thu 28 Buyer & Cellar @ Curran Theatre Michael Urie ( Ugly Betty) stars in Jonathan Tolins’ comic play about an actor working in Barbra Streisand’s Malibu basement mall (yes, there is such a thing). $60-$80. Tue-Sat 7:30pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Aug. 31.

445 Geary St. (888) 746-1799. buyerandcellar.com www.shnsf.com

Christopher Lowen Agee @ Alley Cat Books Talk and reading with the author of The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950-1972, a history book that includes the “gayola” scandal between the gay and lesbian community and the SF Police in the 1960s. 7pm. 3036 24th St. 824-1761. www.alleycatbookshop.com

Derek Jarman, Visionary @ BAM/Pacific Film Archive Screenings of the works of the late gay filmmaker who defied trends and created his own unique cinematic style, most often with explicitly gay themes. Aug. 28: Blue, and Andy Kipton Nye’s short portrait, The Gospel According to St. Derek. 7pm. $4-$6.50. Screenings Thru Aug. 28.

2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley. (510) 642-0808. bampfa.berkeley.edu

From Red to Black @ A.C.T. Costume Shop Rhett Rossi’s New York-set drama about a subway death explores racism. $15-$20. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru Aug. 30. 1119 Market St. at 7th. Thru Aug. 30. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Funny Girl @ Hillbarn Theatre, Foster City The Jule Styne/Bob Merrill/Isobel Lennart musical about Vaudeville legend Fanny Brice (which made Barbra Streisand famous), gets a South Bay production. $23-$42.

Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Sept. 21.

1285 East Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City.

(650) 349-6411. www.hillbarntheatre.org

LGBT Talks @ Commonwealth Club The political lecture hall’s gaythemed events continue. Aug. 28: Harnessing the Power of the LGBT Marketplace and Social Capital to Drive Positive Social Change. Aug. 29: Hollywood and the LGBT Journey with Donna Sachet (12pm). Each $7-$20.

595 Market St. 597-6712. www. commonwealthclub.org

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

Out in the Bay @ 91.7FM Eric Jansen’s LGBT radio show features film director Ira Sachs, who discusses his new gay-themed drama Love is Strange, starring John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. 7pm. www.

OutintheBay.org

Second (and last) larger group exhibit of varied-media works by local artists.

Tue-Sun 10am-6pm. Thru Sept 28. www.hayesvalleyartcoalition.org

California Men’s Gathering @ Santa Rosa The annual weekend retreat for 200-plus men of all orientations to bond, share, explore the true meaning of being a man, in a hilly outdoor setting, with food, crafts, talks, talent shows and outdoor fun. $239-$399.

Registration required. Thru Sept 1. www.thecmg.org/V5/summer.asp

Rapture, Blister, Burn @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Previews for Gina Gionfriddo’s Pulitzer-finalist drama compares the lives of two women –a mother with a family, and an accomplished academic– with a comic feminist flair. Opening Sept. 4. $32-$60. Tue & Sun 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sun 2pm. Thru Sept. 24. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

Sat 30 Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160.

Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. beachblanketbabylon.com

Dan Hoyle @ The Marsh The award-winning solo performer premieres his new show, Each and Every Thing, a multi-character play about the search for real community in a hyper-connected world. $20-$50.

Thu & Fri 8pm, Sat 8:30pm. Extended thru Oct. 4. 1062 Valencia St. at 21st.

282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Cops and Robbers @ The Marsh, Berkeley Jinho “The Piper” Ferreira’s compelling multi-character solo show about his life in the worlds of hip hop (he’s toured with Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes and others) and law enforcement. $20-$100. Fri 8pm, Sat 8:30pm, thru Sept 13. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley.

282-3055. themarsh.org

Thu 4

Pichai Pongsasaovapark @ Misho Gallery Bangkok-based gay artist’s exhibit of abstract paintings. Thru Sept. 20. 680 8th St. 655-1838. MishoGallery.com

Pleiades @ Phoenix Theatre World premiere of Marissa Skudlarek’s play, based on the Greek myth of the seven sisters, reset in a Baby Boomer era of the 1970s, at the height of the feminist movement. $25. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Aug. 30. 414 Mason St. #601. www.pleiadessf.wordpress.com

San Francisco Mime Troupe @ Various Venues Ripple Effect, the newest play produced by the politically-themed satirical theatre company, now celebrating its 55th season, takes on eviction, Google Glass-sporting hipster techies, and economic disparity in the Bay Area. Half-hour music set pre-show. Aug. 28: Troupe Studio Space, 7pm, 855 Treat Ave SF ($20). Aug. 30 at Peacock Meadow, Golden Gate Park, 2pm. Closing weekend Aug. 31 & Sept 1 at Dolores Park, 18th St at Dolores, both 2pm.

285-1717. www.sfmt.org

Wicked @ San Jose Center for the Performing Arts The new touring company of the mega-hit Broadway musical (music

by Stephen Schwartz, based on the Gregory Maguire novel) returns to South Bay; with Emma Hunton as Elphaba and Chandra Lee Schwartz as Glinda. $44-$168 (special $25 ticket lottery each night). Tue-Thu 7:30pm.

Fri & Sat 8pm. Also Thu 2pm, Sun 1pm & 6:30pm. Thru Sept. 14. 255 South Almaden Blvd., San Jose. (800) 9822787. www.broadwaysanjose.com

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Aug. 28: The Lovers on the Bridge (7pm) and Before Midnight (9:20).

Aug. 29: Robin Williams in Popeye (7:20) and Michael Jackson in The Wiz (9:45) Aug. 30-Sept 1: Lawrence of Arabia, prijected in restored 4K high-resolution for the first time (2pm & 7pm). $12. 429 Castro St. 621-6120. www.castrotheatre.com

Act 1, Scene 2 @ 580 Hayes

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Big Joy

Dance Concerts @ The Garage LV Dance Collective presents CODE, a collection of new works about the search of truth and identity and how that is influenced by cultural expectations. Part of RAW (resident artist workshop). $10-$20. 8pm. Also Aug. 30. 715 Bryant St. 518-1517. www.715bryant.org

Dinner @ Mz. Pat’s House @ La Peña Cultural Center Jovelyn Richard’s solo show about a 1930s Cleveland brothel owner takes on racism, homophobia and sexism with a wry comic edge. $12-$15. 8pm.

Also Aug. 30. (510) 849-2568. www.lapena.org

Into the Woods @ San Francisco Playhouse Local production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s acclaimed musical that takes an ‘after Happily Ever After’ look at fairy tales. $20-$120. Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Also Sat 3pm & Sun 2pm. Thru Sept. 6. 450 Post St., 2nd floor of Kensington Park Hotel.

677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Don Reed’s Semi-Famous Patti Meyer

The Taming of the Shrew @ Memorial Park Ampitheater, Cupertino San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s summer outdoor shows commence, with shows in Pleasanton, Redwood City, San Francisco and Cupertino Free. Mostly Sat & Sun 7:30pm, Sun 2pm. Thru Sept 21. www.sfshakes.org

Life Could Be a Dream @ Center Rep, Walnut Creek

Tofu Art @ Glama-Rama Salon

Song-filled musical about a doo-wop band that undergoes problems when a woman manager changes their lives. $37-$66. Tue & Wed 7:30pm. Fri-Sat 8pm. Sun 2:30pm. Thru Oct. 5. 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. (925) 9437469. www.CenterRep.org

Collage + Landscape = Collagescape, the local artist’s new exhibit of works in mixed media, collage and paintings, and a second group exhibit of mixed media work by a dozen artists from California, New Mexico, New York, Sweden, and Germany. Thru Sept. 28. tofuart.com glamarama.com

Love Is Strange @ Landmark Embarcadero

Sat 30

As the summer heats up, EDGE gets hotter! Check out all the LGBT News, Entertainment and Hot photos today!

Alfred Molina and John Lithgow star in the acclaimed new film about an older gay male couple in New York City facing modern challenges. $11$14. Various times. One Embarcadero, Promenade level. (Also Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. www.sonyclassics.com

Twelfth Night @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ production of William Shakespeare’s romantic classic includes live music and a jaunty-sexy staging. $20-$35. Thru Aug. 24. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Frank Pietronigro @ Johnston Gallery Exhibit of gay-themed paintings (“Great American Patriots”) and “Documents,” an unusual installation that uses anti-gay words. Thru Sept.

2327 Market St. www.pietronigro.com www.johnstontaxgroup.com/art

An Ideal Husband, Romeo and Juliet @ Forest Meadows Ampitheatre, San Rafael Marin Shakespeare Company continues its 25th anniversary summer series with William Shakespeare’s classic underage teen romantic tragedy; in repertory with Oscar Wilde’s witty comedy, An Ideal Husband. Ampitheatre open one hour prior to showtime for picnicking; Bring overwear; it gets chilly. $12$240 (season pass) and ‘pay as you like.’ Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 4pm. Thru Sept 28. 499-4488. Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, 890 Belle Avenue, Dominican University of California, San Rafael. marinshakespeare.org

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Out&About>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 29

Sausalito Art Festival @ Marinship Park

SF Hiking Club @ Samuel P. Taylor State Park

Music Concerts @ Old First Church

62nd annual festival of visual art, music (Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, Jackie Greene, Sony Holland, Taj Mahal, Pete Escovedo, Tower of Power and others), food and Marin-styled crafts and fun along the scenic waterfront. $5-$25. Donors VIP gala Fri, Aug. 29 ($300 and up). Sat & Sun 10am-7pm. Mon 10am-5pm. Thru Sept 1. www.sausalitoartfestival.org

Join GLBT hikers for a nine-mile hike along trails that at times will be open with views of the surrounding area, and at times will be shaded by lush trees. Enjoy the scenic view at Barnabe Peak. Bring lunch, water, sunscreen, sturdy boots, layers, hat.

Carpool meets at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores, 8:30am. (650) 6150151. www.sfhiking.com

Aug. 31: Mike Greensill Trio. 4pm. $5$17. 1751 Sacramento St. 474-1608. www.oldfirstconcerts.org

Savor Filipino @ Justin Herman Plaza

Sun 31

Filipino Food Movement and Ramar Foods present the first food, wine, bartender, author, chef, music and cooking workshop festival; free entry, food & drinks for purchase. 10am6pm. Market St. at Embarcadero. www.savorfilipino.com

Brazilian Day & Lavagem Festival @ Casa de Cultura, Berkeley Enjoy live Brazilian music, a beer garden, food and craft vendors and kids’ activities. 9am-7pm. 1901 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley. (510) 528-1958. www.brasarte.com

Oakland Pride @ Downtown Oakland Fifth annual LGBT celebration includes stage shows, an outdoor festival, and, for the first time, a parade. Sheile E headlines the stage acts. The block party’s at 20th St. along Broadway and Franklin, with DJs, performers and gogo hotties from Club Rimshot and Bench and Bar nightclubs. www.oaklandpride.org

Project Mah Jongg @ Contemporary Jewish Museum New exhibit about the popular Chinese game and Jewish culture’s affection for it. Thru Oct. 28.

Also, Designing Homes : Jews and Midcentury Modernism, an exhibit of architectural, furniture, dinnerware, photos, and interior design in post-WWII. Other exhibits, lectures and gallery talks as well. Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

Rainbow Festival @ Faces, Sacramento LGBT Pride block party with three days and nights of events, including concerts by David Hernandez, Chris Salvatore, Expose, Amber, RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants and more.

10am-6pm. Nighttime club events too. 20th St. & K in midtown. www.faces.net

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival @ Esplanade The months-long free performance series continues, with weekend outdoor dance, music and theatre concerts, on various days and evenings. Aug. 31: the vibrant LAbased Grammy-winning band Quetzal (1pm). Sept. 4: Valerie Troutt and Mooncandy (12:30pm). Shows thru Oct. Mission St. at 3rd. 543-1718. www.ybgfestival.org

Tue 2 Anthony Friedkin: The Gay Essay @ de Young Museum Exhibit of photos, and an audiovisual installation, by the Los Angeles artist who focused on gay underground culture of the late 1960s and early ‘70s in SF and LA. Thru Jan. 11, 2015.

Lines on the Horizon : Native American Art from the Weisel Family Collection, thru Jan. 4, 2015. Free/$10. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoungmuseum.org

Bay Area Now 7 @ YBCA Seventh annual exhibit of local and regional artists’ visual, performing, film and video art works. $12-$15 (free for members). Exhibit thru Oct. 5. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.ybca.org

Circle of Life Cabaret @ Martuni’s A C.O.L.T. Following, the disability and LGBT-inclusive theatre company’s music and variety show, includes raffles and tickets to their upcoming shows. No cover. 6:30pm-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St. circleoflifetheatre.org

Gay Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels LGBT night at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the “Godfather of Skate.”

Actually every night is gay-friendly, including Saturday’s Black Rock night (Burning Man garb encouraged). Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5.

Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles @ Cartoon Art Museum Retrospective of various artists’ drawings of the popular comic series; thru Sept. 14. Other exhibits and events. Free-$8. Tue-Sun 11am-5pm.

655 Mission St. 227-8666. www.cartoonart.org

Semi-Famous @ The Marsh, Berkeley Don Reed’s new solo show, SemiFamous: Hollywood Hell Tales From the Middle, includes tales of panicridden auditions and almost being shot by the Secret Service. $20-$100.

Sat 5pm, Sun 7pm. Thru Sept. 7 (moves to SF Marsh Sept 13-Oct. 19).

2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Chomp! @ Conservatory of Flowers They Came From the Swamp, a new floral exhibit of carnivorous plants, includes exhibits, docent talks, and a giant replica model so you can feel like a bug about to be eaten. Thru Oct. 19. Reg. hours, 10am-4pm. Free-$7.

Tue-Sun 10am-4:30pm. Thru Oct. 19.

100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park. 8312090. conservatoryofflowers.org

Gorgeous @ Asian Art Museum

Wed 3 West Wave Dance Festival

New exhibit about 2,000 years of unconventional visualizations of beauty at the contemporary and historical museum. Thru Sept.14. Also, Enter the Mandala: Cosmic Centers and Mental Maps of Himalayan Buddhism (thru Oct. 26); Dual Natures in Ceramics: Eight Contemporary Artists from Korea (thru Feb 22, 2015). Permanent exhibits as well. $15. Thru Sept. 14. 200 Larkin St. www.asianart.org

New exhibit focusing on San Francisco’s emerging gay culture at the time of the pivotal LIFE magazine feature “Homosexuality in America.”

Reg. hours Mon-Sat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. ($5/free for members).

Open Labor Day. 4127 18th St. 6211107. www.glbthistory.org

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

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

David Allen

San Francisco Symphony @ Davies Hall Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the opening night gala concert, with guest vocalist Bonnie Raitt, pianist Yuja Wang, performing works by Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Amercan Songbook classics. $170-$300. 8pm. 201 Van Ness Ave. 864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org

West Wave Dance Festival @ Z Space SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts’ 23rd annual season of the multiplecompany series of concerts by Bay Area dancers and companies, including Harper Addison, Marika Brussel, Elizabeth Castaneda, Amelia Eisen, Alyce Finwall, Christy Funsch, David Herrera, Emma Jaster, Kevin Jenkins, Anne-Renee Petrarca, and Katerina Wong. Sept 3 opening night. $10-$20. 8pm. 450 Florida St. Thru Sept. 7. 626-0453. www.westwavesf.org

William Odiorne’s Paris @ Robert Tat Gallery Photo exhibit of the artist’s 1920s prints of the beautiful French capital.

Tue-Sat 11am-5:30pm (1st Thursdays til 7:30). Thru Aug. 23. 49 Geary St. #410. 781-1122. www.roberttat.com

Thu 4 The soulful singer-songwriter returns to the nightclub-restaurant. $49. 8pm & 10pm. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com

10 Percent @ Comcast

1964: The Year San Francisco Came Out @ GLBT History Museum

Rapture, Blister, Burn

Angie Stone @ Yoshi’s

Mon 1 David Perry interviews Jose Navarette and Debby Kajiyama, co-artistic directors of Oakland’s NAKA Dance Theater, and Dan Demers, artistic director of Hillbarn Theater about their current production of Funny Girl.

11:30am & 10:30pm. Also Sept 6 & 7, 10:30pm. Channel 104.

Fri 29

Big Joy @ Roxie Cinema

Sun 31 Gorgeous, featuring Jeff Koons’ “Michael Jackson and Bubbles”

The acclaimed documentary about poet and gay activist James Broughton screens. $11. 7pm. 3117 16th St. www.roxie.com Also Sept. 10 at Berkeley Art Museum www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Linda Eder @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

Wed 3

The Broadway and pop singer performs her new cabaret show, A Walk Down Memory Lane, which includes Broadway classics and her own music. $70-$85. 8pm. Also Sept 5, 8pm & Sept. 6, 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Jason Brock @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

Napantla Contributors @ SF Public Library

Our local crooner supreme performs at the elegant downtown nightclub. $15. 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

A Midsummer Night’s Dream @ Bruns Ampitheatre, Orinda California Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Bard’s fairy-filled nature romantic romp. $20-$60.

Tue-Thu 7:30pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 4pm. Thru Sept 28. 100 California Shakespeare Theatre Way, Orinda.

(510) 548-9666. www.CalShakes.org

The New Electric Ballroom @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ production of Tony Award-winning playwright Enda Walsh’s drama about the fantasy of youth between sisters determined to live in the past. $20-$30. Wed-Sat 8pm (some Wed & Thu 7pm). Sun 5pm. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Radar Readings presents contributing writers to the journal for queer poets of color, sponsored by the Lambda Literary Foundation. 6pm-8pm. 100 Larkin St., lower level. www.sfpl.org

Wait Until Dark @ Victoria Theatre Circle of Life Theatre, the new disability-inclusive theatre and cabaret company, presents a new and updated production of Frederick Knott’s taut thriller, with a blind actress playing the lead role. $20-$35.

Season tickets $60. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Sept. 21. 2961 16th St. 3924400. www.circleoflifetheatre.org To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section, online at www.ebar.com/bartab

<< Film

30 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

<<

Fall films

From page 21

As a wise man once said, “Nobody knows anything.” This roughly translates into the notion that any one of the 16 fall 2014 releases I’ll mention in this column stands a reasonable shot at, if not the great awards-season brass ring, at least a memorable night out for you and your favorite moviegoing companion. The new releases are listed according to their scheduled debuts on Bay Area screens (dates may change).

September 2014

Last Weekend Tom Dolby, scion of the fabled “Dolby Sound in selected theatres” family, offers a quirky family drama in which an anxious matriarch (a crackling good Patricia Clarkson) has come to the conclusion that it’s time to ring down the curtain on her clan’s eons-old tradition of seeing out the summer at their fabulous Lake Tahoe lakefront estate. This particular weekend, her adult gay son has chosen to bring along his latest trick, although this perky one-night-stand has his own

ideas about how the script will play out. This sharply observed portrait of an upper-income West Coast family is enlivened by a sharp ensemble, including Joseph Cross, notable for his high-wire comic turn in the film version of Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs’ sassy memoir of growing up crazy. (Sept. 12) God Help the Girl Stuart Murdoch (lead singer of Belle & Sebastian) is the director of this Glasgow, Scotland-situated tale of a lass named Eve (Emily Browning), who chooses songwriting as therapy for emotional problems. Winner of a Sundance Jury Prize, Girl opens here on Sept. 12.

The Man on Her Mind This British rom-com is pitched to hopeless romantics, those with high standards and a rich fantasy life. Nellie is enjoying a secret affair with a successful lawyer who, it turns out, is a figment of her imagination. Actually, Nellie bases her superman on wisps of memory of an actual blind date, a chap named Leonard.

As it happens, Leonard is fanning his own fantasies with memories of Nellie. Can these delusional kids be brought face-to-face with the

Argot Pictures

The Pine Leaf Boys in a scene from Berkeley filmmakers Chris Simon and Maureen Gosling’s This Ain’t No Mouse Music.

Amply Releasing

Christoph Waltz as Qohen Leth in director Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem.

absurdity of their predicament?

Based on Alan Hruska’s popular London stage play, the film version is co-directed by Bruce Guthrie and Hruska, with Amy McAllister and Samuel James recreating their stage roles. (Sept. 12) This Ain’t No Mouse Music This 2013 Mill Valley Film Festival Audience Award winner from Berkeley filmmakers Chris Simon and Maureen Gosling follows the travels of Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records, along rural back roads, looking for alternatives to the soulless “mouse music” dominating the pop charts. (Sept. 19) The Zero Theorem They’re back! In this case, the “they” in question are 12 Monkeys director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and two-time Oscarwinning actor Christoph Waltz, this time as Qohen Leth, a reclusive computer genius burdened with existential angst. Leth lives in splendid isolation in a fire-ravaged chapel, awaiting a phone call that he’s certain will provide him with longsought answers. (Sept. 19) I Am Eleven Director Genevieve

Amply Releasing

Scene from director Stuart Murdoch’s God Help the Girl.

Bailey gives 11-year-olds around the world a platform in this anthem to the digital-age doc. (Sept. 26) The Boxtrolls From the PG world of 3-D entertainment for the whole family comes a band of quirky creatures who have raised a human boy called Eggs (the voice of Isaac Hempstead White) in an underground cavern home beneath Cheesebridge. A plot by the film’s villain, Archibald Snatcher (the voice of Sir Ben Kingsley), to rid the world of Boxtrolls gets Eggs fighting mad, and the result is this movie from directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, along with writers Irena Brignull and Adam Pava, based on the book Here Be Monsters

by Alan Snow. (Sept. 26)

October 2014

On view April 24–October 6, 2014 The Contemporary Jewish Museum Plan your visit at thecjm.org

Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism is organized by The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.

Major sponsorship for this exhibition is provided by Osterweis Capital Management, the Jim Joseph Foundation, Maribelle and Stephen Leavitt, and the Seiger Family Foundation. Patron sponsorship is provided by the Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation of the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, Alison Gelb Pincus and Mark Pincus, The Laszlo N. Tauber Family Foundation, and Phyllis Cook. Supporting sponsorship is provided by AIG Private Client Group, an Anonymous donor, Judy and Harry Cohn, Dana Corvin and Harris Weinberg, G2 Insurance Services, Peggy and Richard Greenfield Foundation, Siesel Maibach, Dorothy R. Saxe, and Barbara and Howard Wollner. Participating sponsorship is provided by Shelli Semler and Kyle Bach, Ruth and Alan Stein, and Susan and Joel Hyatt. IMAGES: Alvin Lustig, Paramount Chair, 1948. Upholstery, 37 ½ in. x 37 ½ in. x 32 ½ in. Collection of Elaine Lustig Cohen. Photograph: John Halpern.

George Nelson, Bubble Lamp, 1947. Plastic on wire frame, 33 x 15 in. Photograph courtesy of Modernica.

Essential support for catalog publication has been provided by Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson.

t

Major support for The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s exhibitions and Jewish Peoplehood Programs comes from the Koret Foundation.

Media Sponsorship provided by Dwell media.

Media Sponsor.

Kill the Messenger Two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner heads up an all-star cast in a dramatic thriller based on the true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb stumbles onto the sinister origins of the men who launched the crack epidemic on the nation’s streets. Webb alleges that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S., and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua.

Director Michael Cuesta (Homeland) and screenwriter Peter Landesman’s story, set in California, Nicaragua and Washington, DC, is based on the books Dark Alliance

by Gary Webb, and Kill the Messenger by Nick Schou. In addition to Renner, the all-star cast includes Rosemarie DeWitt, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Pepper, Oliver Platt, Michael Sheen, Paz Vega, Michael Kenneth Williams, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Andy Garcia.

This R-rated thriller rolls out across the country Oct. 10, 17 & 24.

The Two Faces of January Patricia Highsmith fans should be pleased with this suspense thriller starring Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings, The Road, A History of Violence), Cannes Best Actress winner Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man, Melancholia, Marie-Antoinette) and Oscar Isaac (Drive, The Bourne Legacy,

Inside Llewyn Davis). Adapted by Academy Award nominee Hossein Amini (Drive, Snow White and the Huntsman), the film is Amini’s directorial debut.

In 1962, a well-heeled couple (Mortensen & Dunst) come to know an American expatriate acting as an Athens tour guide (Isaac). But an incident at the couple’s hotel puts all three in danger and creates a precarious interdependence between them. A tense and dangerous battle of wits between the two men leads them from Greece to Turkey, and to a dramatic finale played out in the back alleys of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. (Oct. 10) The Green Prince Director Nadav Schirman tells the story of the son of a founding leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas who becomes a spy for the Israelis. Winner of the World Documentary Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and the opening-night film of the 34th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the film opens in the Bay Area on Oct. 10.

Whiplash Damien Chazelle directs this music-school-based drama starring Miles Teller (The Spectacular Now) and J.K. Simmons.

Teller is an aspiring drummer who enters an elite conservatory’s top jazz orchestra, in a film that copped the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Dramatic Feature at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. (Oct. 17) Watchers of the Sky Edet Belzberg directs this examination of the extraordinary life of Polish Jewish lawyer and human rights advocate Raphael Lemkin. Winner of the Editing category for U.S. Documentary and for use of Animation at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, this doc hits the Bay Area on Oct. 31.

November 2014

Foxcatcher Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball) directs Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo in a dark story of the unlikely and ultimately tragic relationship between an eccentric millionaire and two champion wrestlers. This Best Director Cannes Film Festival winner opens on Nov. 21 in the Bay Area.

See page 33 >>

TV>>

t The case of the closeted star A

t the dawn of the television era (ca.1950), many Hollywood stars looked askance at the new medium. Then, in 1951, B-picture regular Lucille Ball became a sensation in I Love Lucy, followed by poverty-row leading lady Gale Storm’s success in My Little Margie (1952). Suddenly, top names like Charles Boyer, David Niven, Dick Powell, Ida Lupino, Loretta Young, and Jane Wyman, Queen of the Bs Ann Sothern, second-string leading men Robert Cummings and Robert Young, comic Red Skelton, and character actors Eve Arden, Spring Byington, and Walter Brennan scored with hit series.

Perhaps the most unlikely movie veteran to find television acclaim was Raymond Burr (1917-93), who as Perry Mason (1957-66) personified America’s best-known fictional defense lawyer. The entire original series has just been released on DVD and prompts a look at his career. While Burr excelled as Erle Stanley Gardner’s brilliant attorney, unequaled at saving his client by exposing the true killer, on a personal level he hid his homosexuality by inventing a tragic past as a husband and father.

Burr was born in Canada. His parents divorced when he was young, and he and his mother moved to Vallejo, California. He made his screen debut in 1946, eventually appearing in over 60 movies and many television shows before stardom arrived. He often played heavies in important films – prosecuting Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951), or trying to murder James Stewart in Rear Window (1954) – or leads in cheapies: battling Godzilla: King of the Monsters. (1956). Gardner was present when actors auditioned for Perry Mason, and reportedly took one look at the big, beefy Burr, and pronounced him perfect.

The show was formulaic, yet audiences loved it. Mason, assisted by his secretary Della Street (Bar-

<<

Buyer & Cellar

From page 26

tention generated by Buyer & Cellar was inspired by one of the most innocuous efforts in the Streisand canon.

My Passion for Design is a 2010 coffee-table book by Streisand detailing her latest home renovations project. Nestled deep in the book is a reference to Winterthur, a decorative arts museum in Delaware that gave Streisand the idea to create a small street of shops in the basement to house a vast array of collectibles. There are no actual customers, or even visitors, except for an occasional appearance by Streisand and an even rarer visit by a privileged guest. But still the shops need a keeper, and that’s how Alex, Urie’s character, finds himself in Streisand’s employ.

<<

Grosvenor

From page 26

Grand Polonaise brillante of Chopin, easily the most familiar work on the program, found me wallowing in that most exhausted of critical cliches: that I was hearing much of the piece for the first time. It’s rarely rippled as seductively, and the cascading phrases at its midpoint run down your spinal chord. The elasticity of line – rubato, to aficionados – is perfectly felt, not perfectly

bara Hale) and private investigator Paul Drake (William Hopper), defended a client accused of murder.

Police Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins) and District Attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman) always thought they would make the charges stick.

Things looked hopeless for Mason’s client, but at the last minute during a dramatic courtroom confrontation, he would reveal the true killer.

Viewers were surprised and delighted. Robert Redford was among the young actors to appear in the series.

In 1963, Bette Davis starred in an episode. The show earned Burr two Best Actor Emmys.

In 1967, he returned with another hit, Ironsides, which ran until 1975. He portrayed a San Francisco Police Chief of Detectives who was disabled and used a wheelchair, a television first. It earned him six Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations.

In 1985, he and Hale were reunited for a television film, Perry Mason Returns. Mason was now a judge, and she was charged with murder. Hopper was dead, so Hale’s son, William Katt, joined the cast as Paul Drake, Jr. The movie proved so popular that he would make 26 more, the last three airing in 1993.

Guest stars included Debbie Reynolds, Jerry Orbach, Jean Simmons, David Hasselhoff, Regis Philbin, Polly Bergen, and Valerie Harper.

In 1993, he also made The Return of Ironsides for television.

In 1949, Burr had been briefly married, but with his newfound celebrity, he invented a more sympathetic heterosexual past. He claimed that his first wife, Annette Sutherland, a Scottish actress, had been killed in the same plane crash as actor Leslie Howard (1943).

As late as 1991, he maintained that his 10-yearold son, from a third marriage, died of leukemia, but none of those assertions have been verified or are likely to have been true. In the late 1950s, he often dated Natalie Wood, who was also a beard for gay actor Tab Hunter, then involved with Anthony Perkins. Burr reportedly resented that Warner Bros promoted the Hunter/ Wood “affair,” rather than his “romance” with her. Veteran Hollywood reporter Bob Thomas said that Burr’s sexuality was an open secret. Ironically, some sources say that Hopper, whose mother was the fiercely conservative gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, left one of his wives for a man.

In the late 1950s, Burr met actor Robert Benevedes. In 1960, they became a couple and remained together for 33 years, until Burr’s death. They owned a successful Sonoma winery.

Burr had lived through the horrendous late 1940s and early 50s, the years of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts and the Red Scare, which linked communism to homosexuals out to destroy the American way of life.

When fame came, he feared public knowledge of his sexual orientation would destroy his career, and he was likely right. It was a vile period in American history. Even today, few gay leading men are out of the closet. Perhaps over the next few years, actors and producers will trust audiences to accept that what they see on screen is a scripted performance, not a reflection of the star’s libido.

Until that happens, however, Burr will be among the many stars who are part of a sad chapter in entertainment history.t

The tinkling of a little bell above the door announces each Streisand visit, and Alex is savvy enough to know how to gradually disarm Streisand without a usual fan’s solicitous demeanor. Throughout their increasingly personal conversations, Alex is quick with asides to the audience that puncture any sanctimoniousness. And what Alex doesn’t puncture, boyfriend Barry does as Alex reports back after each Streisand encounter. Barry even becomes jealous of Barbra as Alex expresses increasing sympathy for the emotional burdens she carries along with her obscene abundance.

Urie is just wonderful as he shuttles among the characters, carrying on quick-fire conversations between Alex and Barbra, as well as with his boyfriend, Barbra’s sour assistant, and a vaguely clueless James Brolin. As Urie tells us

at the start, he’s not going to do a straight-on Streisand impersonation; rather, he indicates her manner through body language and a cautiously weary voice. Stephen Brackett’s staging keeps the comedy sharp as a simple set evolves into various settings, while also letting Streisand have a few genuine moments of fragility.

As we were leaving the theater, my theater companion and I wondered if Streisand might actually enjoy Buyer & Cellar. Our conclusion: No. If she had the kind of selfawareness that would let her laugh at her foibles, she wouldn’t be the Barbra who makes Buyer & Cellar such a maniacally funny show.t

judged, and it similarly informs the rhythms and currents of the darker F-sharp minor Polonaise.

Rubato is one thing, but capturing – or is it releasing? – the sprung rhythms of the mazurka is another order of business, and the only other pianists who have come near what Grosvenor does with three mazurkas by Scriabin have been Polish nationals. The composer’s Op. 38 Valse is flat-out intoxicating. The spangled colors on the palette for Granados’ Valses poeticos and Al-

beniz’s infectious Tango vault over any binding sense of nationalism.

The arresting thing about the disc’s most unashamed showpiece, “Arabesques on Johann Strauss’ By the Beautiful Blue Danube,” is its grace and poise. Full letting go is saved for Morton Gould’s “BoogieWoogie Etude,” which nearly jumps the tracks.

Long before it’s over, this CD is going to slap a smile on your face.

Just imagine Yuja and Benjamin in a playoff!t

ebar.com “DEVILISH FUNNY BONES AND HEAVENLY VOCAL CHORDS!” — LO N D O N E V EN I N G S TA N DA R D

Written by and starring Meow Meow Choreographed by Tiger Martina Music supervision by Lance Horne

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Buyer & Cellar will run through Aug. 31 at the Curran Theatre.

Tickets are $60-$100. Call (888) 7461799 or go to shnsf.com.

PHOTO BY MAGNUSHASTINGS.COM

by Tavo Amador

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 31

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<< TV

32 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

So much TV, so few gay characters

by Victoria A. Brownworth

S

ummer is over in a few days, and come September, the TV season begins. There are 24 new shows, plus a few limited series like Fox’s stellar Gracepoint. A surprising number of the new entries are worth a look.

We’ll highlight some here, and more over the coming weeks. Before we preview the new season, let’s give the old a brief send-off.

We watch ABC’s Rookie Blue because it’s summer, the bodies are buff, the stories are serviceable, and there’s a whole lot of lesbian action.

The Aug. 21 season finale had explosions, killing, and a full-five-minute real-not-fake lesbian kissing fest between Gail (Charlotte Sullivan) and Holly (Aliyah O’Brien, who really does just need glasses to look serious and even more sexy). These two broke up a few weeks back, which saddened us and you, because Gail is the show’s best character. Also, these two are like, you know, real lesbians, and Holly had announced her lesbianism straight up (see what we did there) when she met Gail. So bringing them back together: yes! And as if that weren’t enough, Gail is also starting the adoption process to adopt Sophie, a little black girl whose mother died during a previous case.

So: way to end the season, Rookie Blue, bringing Gail and Holly back together with a super-hot reuniting, and adding a little girl to the mix.

One glitch: in the final five minutes?

Holly’s moving to San Francisco in two weeks. Whut?! And we have to wait for next season to find out what happens? Thank goodness we have so many other shows to take our mind off that cliffhanger.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention the news story of the past few weeks, Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown. We could write a whole column on this. What we want to say is this: Twitter led the news on this story, not TV news, not the networks, not the 24-hour news station CNN. This was a massive and shameful failure of TV news. It also pointed out the dearth of black reporters on the networks, and how problematic that is in telling a story like Ferguson (or any story, since always having the white perspective is not helpful). We’ve complained about TV news dropping the ball on LGBT news for, well, ever. So it’s not especially stunning that they would drop the ball on black Americans as well.

One story that did get broken by CNN – and by black, gay reporter Don Lemon – was the lie reported on Fox News that Officer Darren Wilson had been severely beaten by Brown. That Fox News lie had been perpetuated by Fox commentator Ann Coulter, who alleged there was an X-ray. On Aug. 21, Lemon broke the story that, no, it was all Faux News fiction. This is one more reason we need more black reporters and more reporters from other marginalized communities, like our own.

And now for the fun stuff: the new season. Let’s start with shows we know have gay characters, since – spoiler alert! – there are so few of them.

Comedy is a staple of the new season. There are nearly a dozen new sitcoms, and one thing we are thrilled to see is that several focus on the vastly underrepresented TV population, blacks and Latinos, who are as MIA on the TV landscape as LGBT characters, and often, like gays, the sidekicks to the white protagonists. We are especially looking forward to ABC’s Black-ish, which

is the combined effort of Emmyand Tony-winning actor Laurence Fishburne (Hannibal) and Anthony Anderson (The Shield). Black-ish is being touted as the new The Cosby Show, but it’s really more like Modern Family. It follows a middle-class black family and their issues around being black. Fishburne plays Pops Johnson, Andre’s (Anderson) father.

In real life, Fishburne is only nine years older than Anderson, but we’ll let that slide; it happens with white people on the soaps all the time.

Tracee Ellis Ross (daughter of Diana Ross) plays Andre’s wife Rainbow.

The couple have three children, who are oblivious to race issues their grandfather and father want them to be aware of. Fishburne is hilarious in the previews, and Ross does a great deadpan. ABC is doing their best to help this show succeed, situating it right after their comedy crown jewel, Modern Family. Put this on your watch list.

Gay son also rises

The gayest show this fall isn’t trying to hide its flame under a bushel. The McCarthys joins the Emmy-laden comedy line-up on CBS Thursdays. CBS doesn’t do gay much, so this sitcom is a departure for the network. The show’s creator is openly gay comedian and writer Brian Gallivan, who was a writer on two other recent sitcoms with gay characters, NBC’s Are You There, Chelsea? and ABC’s Happy Endings.

Gallivan also created the web series Sassy Gay Friend. So it’s possible this show may not be cancelled in the first two weeks, like last year’s dreadful gay sitcom on CBS, Partners.

The McCarthys stars Tyler Ritter, son of late actor John Ritter, as Ronny McCarthy, son of the head basketball coach at a local high school.

Dad (Jack McGee, Rescue Me) wants to hire Ronny as his assistant.

Ronny’s mom, Marjorie (Laurie Metcalf, Roseanne), has four kids, but Ronny is her fave. They watch The Good Wife together. (Nice product placement there.) The McCarthys are a working-class family in Boston with working-class problems. Having a gay son and an unmarried pregnant daughter are two of them. This season, sitcoms are heading back to their working-class roots. We hope this show is going to be as funny and watchable as CBS’ Mom, the best new sitcom in fall 2013. So set your DVR. Also on CBS is Stalker, one of the most anticipated of the new series.

It’s the latest show from Kevin Williamson (The Following, Dawson’s Creek), one of the three most prodigious show creators on the tube, the other two being Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes. Williamson and Murphy have been in competition with Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) for best gay show creator for several years now. We’d put Rhimes in there, but no one can confirm she’s a lesbian, so we’ll call her super gayfriendly, since her shows have the longest-running gay and lesbian couplings on the tube.

Williamson’s Stalker is a psychological thriller starring Maggie Q (Nikita) as Lieutenant Beth Davis, head of the Threat Assessment Unit of the LAPD. Dylan McDermott (Hostages) plays LAPD Det. Jack Larsen. They and a handful of other detectives investigate stalking incidents: voyeurism, cyber-stalking, romantic fixation and more. Davis was a victim herself, so she has a special empathy for the victims. Larsen, who has railed against authority in the past, has just joined Davis’ team, having been a homicide detective in

CBS-TV

Tyler Ritter plays gay son Ronny on the new CBS sitcom The McCarthys.

New York. Was he a perpetrator?

The previews for this show are awesomely good. Q is very different in this role from how she was in Nikita, though equally gorgeous.

McDermott is much more palatable than he was in last season’s murky Hostages, but he still has the potential to wreck this.

Williamson’s dark touch is obvious from the previews. Victims are indeed victimized. Williamson never shies away from violence, and stalking is, as many of us know all too well, a violent crime. Williamson gets to that core of fear that those of us who have been stalked feel, that claustrophobic feeling that there is no safe place, no place where one cannot be seen and violated. In Stalker, there are gay victims, not just straight ones. This is a must-see, Wednesdays.

Another must-see is Shonda Rhimes’ latest drama, How to Get Away with Murder. This show will give Rhimes something no other TV showrunner has ever had: an entire block of programming on one night. Thursdays now belong to Rhimes on ABC. The line-up starts with Grey’s Anatomy, in what may or may not be the final season after 11 award-winning seasons. Next is Scandal, the show black Twitter and Washington (and we) are obsessed with, which also has the most complex gay character on TV. Get Away with Murder follows Scandal. Oscar nominee Viola Davis plays Professor Annalise Keating, a law professor at a prestigious Philadelphia university who, with her students, becomes involved in a murder plot.

We have loved Davis since she was a recurring defense attorney on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and played Det. Molly Crane opposite Tom Selleck in the Jesse Stone TV movies. She’s won a couple of Tonys, been nominated for the Oscar a few times, has won the Screen Actors Guild Award, and is remarkable in everything she does. She’s stunningly nuanced.

The preview for HTGAWM is fantastic. Davis just smolders on the screen. She has a sly, I-have-a-secret and you-want-to-know-what-it-is look to her that is just spectacular.

Did we say must-see? Yeah, mustsee. Nothing with Davis starring in it can derail.

Controversy has swirled around NBC’s new drama Constantine.

Based on the characters in the

comic series Hellblazer published

by DC Comics, the series stars super sexy British actor Matt Ryan as John Constantine. NBC and the show’s producers were accused of straight-washing the lead character, who is bisexual in the comic series. The debut episode is written

by Daniel Cerone and David Goyer (Dark Knight trilogy), who are the showrunners. Cerone also created ABC’s Motive, and was a writer for the Emmy-winning Dexter. It was Cerone who started the controversy when he said in July that Constantine would be straight, adding, “In those comic books, John Constantine aged in real time. Within this tome of three decades [of comics], there might have been one or two issues where he’s seen getting out of bed with a man. So [maybe] 20 years from now? But there are no immediate plans.” Tone-deaf much?

Nevertheless, this is one of the most intriguing of the new dramas, and Constantine could still end up with Chas Handler (Charles Halford, True Detective), his “constant companion.” The show airs on Fridays after Grimm, where Hannibal and Dracula, two queer-laden dramas, ran the past two seasons. So there’s still hope.

Early knight

Gotham reeks of noir and something unsettled, which is perfect because the subtitle could be Batman: The Early Years. The Fox drama was created by British screenwriter Bruno Heller, who also created the stellar Rome for HBO, as well as CBS’ long-running The Mentalist. Gotham is based on characters appearing in and published by DC Comics, specifically those of Detective James Gordon and Bruce Wayne, who were created by Bob Kane, and others in DC’s Batman franchise.

Originally, the series was going to be the story of Gordon’s early days on the Gotham City Police force.

Heller expanded the concept to include the Bruce Wayne character and tell the origin stories of several Batman villains, including the Penguin, the Riddler, Catwoman, the Joker and Poison Ivy, among others. The set-up is explained like this: “New recruit Det. James Gordon must solve one of Gotham’s most high-profile cases ever: the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Gordon meets the Waynes’ son, Bruce, now in the care of his butler

t

Alfred, which further compels Gordon to catch the killer. Gordon must confront many of Gotham’s future villains and form an unlikely friendship with Bruce, one that will help shape the boy’s future in becoming the Dark Knight.”

Fox may not be able to do news, but they can absolutely do drama.

Starring Ben McKenzie (The O.C., Southland) as Gordon, and 13-yearold David Mazouz (Touch) as Bruce.

Mondays.

Madame Secretary is getting a lot of pre-premiere buzz. The CBS drama will air Sundays before The Good Wife, making for two hours of powerhouse women. Téa Leoni plays Elizabeth Faulkner McCord, female secretary of state. Tim Daly (Private Practice) plays her husband, Henry. The inimitable Tonywinning Bebe Neuwirth plays her assistant, Nadine Tolliver. Morgan Freeman is also slated to join the cast. The CBS previews for Madame Secretary have the same gravitas with a soupcon of humor as The Good Wife. Barbara Hall is the creator and producer. Hall has been working on the Emmy-laden Homeland, and previously created the quirky and wonderful Joan of Arcadia.

CBS describes Leoni’s Madame Secretary as “shrewd and determined. A college professor and a brilliant former CIA analyst who left for ethical reasons, Elizabeth returns to public life at the request of the President following the suspicious death of her predecessor.” She speaks several languages, and is both intellectual and down-to-earth. If she sounds a lot like a harder-edged Alicia Florrick, you’re getting the picture. Maybe Diane Lockhart, the earlier years. We’re pretty sure Ronny McCarthy is going to be watching this one with his mom, too.

Other new shows coming in October that are on our watch list for future discussion are Fox’s thriller Gracepoint; NBC’s State of Affairs, another Washington drama, starring Katherine Heigl and Alfre Woodward as the first black woman president; Fox’s Utopia; the CW’s The Flash, because comics to TV is super-hot right now; and CSI: Cyber, starring Patricia Arquette (Medium), which will follow The Good Wife for an all-girl antidote to Sunday night football.

Speaking of football, two influential NFL voices, including CBS lead analyst Phil Simms, said they won’t use the term “Redskins” when discussing the Washington team franchise. “My very first thought is it will be Washington the whole game,” Simms told The Associated Press on Aug. 18. Yes. It’s gonna be a great season.

Finally, Ellen returns with a new season on Sept. 8, and one of her first guests will be Anthony Carbajal. While the ALS ice-bucket challenge has been making the rounds on Facebook (Twitter’s been busy with Ferguson), Anthony Carbajal, a 26-year-old gay man, has been taking care of his mother, who is dying the slow death that is ALS. He put together a video about what it’s like to have ALS like his mother. Or like him, since he was just diagnosed.

Carbajal and his video, including a hilarious bit where he does the icebucket challenge in a red bikini top and pink hot pants, were featured on the Aug. 22 Nightline. He also challenged Ellen, and she accepted, and invited him on the show when it starts up. Watch, weep, donate. Carbajal puts a face on ALS, and shows the abject cruelty of this disease.

So for Anthony Carbajal, Gail and Holly, Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy and all the things that make TV gayer than any str8 person wants it to be, especially the haters, you know you really must stay tuned.t

t

Books>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 33

Atheist, out & proud

by Brian Bromberger

Coming Out Atheist: How To Do It, How To Help Each Other, and Why, by Greta Christina; Pitchstone Publishing, $17.95 t is now chic to be atheist, with a 2013 Harris Poll finding that 36% of Americans under 35 identify as atheists, and that the number is increasing. San Franciscan lesbian writer Greta Christina, known for her Best Erotic Comics and blog, has coopted the phrase “coming out” (that has now become a cliché meaning to declare openly something about oneself previously kept hidden) and applied it to atheists, making parallels with coming out sexually. She has collected hundreds of stories, interviews, and conversations, primarily from her blog, to produce, not a stepby-step guide, but a comprehensive handbook on strategies for those wanting to be open about their lack of belief in God. The book is divided into three sections: (1) Why come out as an atheist? The four reasons are: to make your own life better, help other atheists, cultivate other atheists, and create a better world; (2) coming out to different audiences such as family, spouses, work, friends, strangers, the U.S. military, students, parents, etc.; and (3)

I

<<

helping each other come out via role models, building a community, and support networks. One of the virtues of the book is Christina’s understanding that prejudice and anxiety about atheists are real, depending on where you live. She wisely counsels that there is no one right way to come out, because there are situations where, due to safety or financial concerns, it may be better not to come out, delay it for a while, or do it in gradual stages, with the need to support fellow atheists paramount, whatever their timetable.

Atheists may fear rejection, worry they may not be taken seriously, or face anger, even violence, especially if they are active in a conservative religious environment. While LGBT people may feel it can still be a challenge to come out today (though easier than in the past), Christina makes the valid case that it pales in comparison to coming out as an atheist. It is still socially acceptable in many parts of the US to discriminate against atheists, even if legally it may be forbidden. Some of the real-life experiences recounted here are chilling and disturbing, but Christina’s advice, with its breezy, conversational tone, is supportive, practical, and compassionate.

Christina observes that once you

say you’re an atheist, you are directly attacking people’s own convictions, since it is not a difference between saying you like A and I like B, but rather, you like A and I don’t even think A exists! Christina advises people to consider how the news can affect family members and friends, giving them space to have a reaction, even softening the ground first, because for many believers their religion isn’t just an idea, but an identity. Also, loved ones may experience the news as personal rejection: “I don’t love you the way you are.”

There is a stark difference between coming out as queer and as an atheist, because in the former you’re not telling straight people they’re wrong to be straight, while in the latter you’re implying, no matter how nicely you phrase it, that they are wrong to believe in God. While claiming atheists are more gay-positive than the world at large, Christina notes that since religion is a major source of LGBT prejudice, in order to appeal to the mainstream by presenting queer people as just like everyone else, often LGBT organizations and leaders “have thrown atheists under the bus,” by stressing that gays are as

religious as anyone else. Progressive religion now expounds that true faith in God means unconditionally loving LGBTs as well as celebrating their sexuality, which undercuts the slur that they are atheists destroying religious values. Ironically, bigoted religious views on sexuality often start LGBT people questioning religion, and embracing atheism makes them feel liberated about their sexuality. Of course, being queer doesn’t turn you atheist and vice versa, but the two can be closely connected due to a shared religious oppression.

If you are seeking intellectual rea-

sons why you should become an atheist, Christina’s book is not for you (with Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything more suitable).

She assumes you have already made that crucial decision, and contends that arguments about whether God exists, while effective later, can stymie the coming out conversation. One senses that Christina really despises religion, but astutely she has placated her exasperation in favor of constructive advice, which she hopes will gradually wear down “the enemy.”

The chief flaw of the book is that it is verbose and redundant. The same worthwhile points are repeated ad nauseam, and identical quotes by the same person appear in more than one chapter. At 385 pages, the book could easily have been halved and still persuasive. But with a superb resource appendix, including listing organizations and support groups, online forums and resources, video/print blogs and podcasts, as well as an exhaustive bibliography, Coming Out Atheist is probably a definitive guide, providing a witty, common-sense road map for those willing “to be hated for who they are, rather than loved for who they are not.”t

Fall films

From page 30

Men, Women & Children follows the story of a group of high school teenagers and their parents as they attempt to navigate the many ways the Internet has changed their relationships, their communications, their self-images, and their love lives. The film attempts to stare down social issues such as video-game culture, anorexia, infidelity, fame hunting, and the proliferation of illicit material on the Internet. As each character and each relationship is tested, we are shown the variety of roads people choose – some tragic, some hopeful – as it becomes clear that no-one is immune to the enormous social change that has come through our phones, tablets, and computers. (November) The Theory of Everything Eddie Redmayne (Les Misérables) and Felicity Jones (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) headline this true story of the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde. Once a healthy, active young man, Hawking receives an earth-shattering diagnosis at 21. With Jane fighting tirelessly by his side, Stephen embarks on his most ambitious scientific work, studying the very thing he now has precious little of: time. Together, they defy impossible odds, breaking new ground in medicine and science, and achieving more than they could have dreamed. The film is based on the memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen

by Jane Hawking, and is directed

by Academy Award winner James Marsh (Man on Wire). Marsh directs a script by Anthony McCarten (Death of a Superhero) with an all-star cast: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, and David Thewlis. Rolls out beginning Nov. 7.

Explore the exuberant charm of Mary Blair, one of Walt Disney’s most inventive and influential designers and art directors. Blair’s joyful creativity, her appealing designs, and her energetic color palette endure in numerous media, including the classic Disney animated films Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan, and also in the theme park attraction it’s a small world.

December 2014

Mr. Turner Director Mike Leigh explores the last quarter-century of the life of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (Timothy Spall). This winner of the Best Actor prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival opens for Christmas in the Bay Area.t

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104 Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94129 Mary Blair, concept artwork for Peter Pan (1953); collection Walt Disney Family Foundation, gift of Ron and Diane Disney Miller; © Disney | MAGIC, COLOR, FLAIR: the world of Mary Blair is organized by The Walt Disney Family Museum | © The Walt Disney Family Museum® Disney Enterprises, Inc. | © 2014 The Walt Disney Family Museum, LLC | The Walt Disney Family Museum is not affiliated with Disney Enterprises, Inc.

<< Fine Art

34 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

t

Courtesy of Department of Archaeology Museum, King Saud University, Riyadh

Statuette of Heracles, bronze, 1st-3rd century CE, Saudi Arabia, Qaryat al-Faw site, from Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, coming to the Asian Art Museum.

<<

Fall museums

From page 21

Also making news is Ai Weiwei, the fearlessly outspoken political activist/artist who’s controversial both abroad and in his native China, where he has served time in jail. So there’s symmetry in that his latest site-specific installation, wryly titled @Large, will be at the escape-proof former prison on Alcatraz. Given that the artist is not allowed to leave China, it will prove interesting to see how he pulls this gambit off when the project opens on Sept. 27.

The Asian Art Museum’s big fall show, Roads of Arabia: Archaeology

and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, explores the heritage of the peninsula, a cultural crossroads for trade and migration whose mysterious ancient past reaches back a million years. Gold funerary objects from a royal tomb unearthed 2,000 years ago, gilded doors from a holy Islamic sanctuary, stone steles and tools, monumental statuary, Hellenistic bronzes and other recent discoveries are among the treasures in this traveling exhibition. (Oct. 24-Jan. 18) The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Arnold Newman: Masterclass includes 200 vintage black & white photographic portraits of

Summer at the Cliff House

Join us for these Cliff House Weekly Favorites • Wine Lovers’ Tuesday – Half Priced Bottled Wines* • Bistro Wednesday Nights – $28 Three-Course Prix Fixe • Friday Night Jazz in the Balcony Lounge • Sunday Champagne Brunch Buffet *Some restrictions apply. Promotions are not valid on holidays.

The Lands End Lookout Be sure to visit the Lookout Cafe at the Lands End visitor center. Operated by the Cliff House team, the cafe serves a delicious selection of locally sourced grab-and-go items including the famous It’s It originally for sale at Playland at the Beach.

The center, under the direction of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, offers educational and interactive exhibits, a museum store, stunning views, and the amazing Lands End Trails.

Open daily from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Located at Point Lobos and Merrie Way

1090 Point Lobos

415-386-3330

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J. Otto Seibold, Untitled (2014), vector illustration, dimensions variable, from J. Otto Seibold and Mr. Lunch, coming to the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.

famous subjects such as Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Martha Graham, Grandma Moses and JFK, as well as street photography, architectural studies, still-lifes and worksheets by the prolific Newman, an influential 20th-century photographer known for incorporating the habitats of the accomplished, powerful and creative figures he photographed. (Oct. 23.-Feb. 1) Marking the 20th anniversary of the beloved Mr. Lunch books, J. Otto Seibold and Mr. Lunch explores their history and that of Seibold, an innovative children’s book illustrator and East Bay resident. (Nov. 20-Mar. 8) Robert Frank in America, an insightful retrospective at the Cantor Arts Center, consists primarily of unknown photographs from Frank’s early career, before he turned to filmmaking. Mostly drawn from the museum’s collection, they pinpoint the profoundly influential Swiss photographer’s pictorial themes and strategies, and illuminate his extensive work from the 1950s, his observations of the U.S. while on the road traversing the country, and the making of his landmark 1959 book, The Americans. (Sept. 10-Jan. 5) If you can’t get enough of Downton Abbey, Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House at the Legion of Honor may be the show for you. The exhibition, a microcosm of how the 100th of 1% spent their leisure time, stars Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Built in the too-rich-for-you Palladian style in the 1720s by England’s first Prime Minister, it’s considered one of the premiere English country manses.

With furnishings, silver, porcelain, English paintings and objects owned by the hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain. (Oct. 18-Jan. 18) At the de Young Museum, Keith Haring: The Political Line, the first West Coast exhibition of the New York artist’s work in 20 years, utilizes a political filter to assess and organize 130 large-scale paintings, sculptures and a selection of subway drawings by Haring, who dedicated himself to social justice causes from nuclear disarmament, racial preju-

dice and economic inequality to the environment. Haring, whose public art projects have graced city venues, and whose career reached its apex in the 1980s, spoke eloquently as an individual and through his art about the fight to eradicate AIDS and his own illness, which took his life in 1990. (Nov. 8-Feb. 16) Oakland Museum of California’s Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California, yet another partnership with the temporarily gone-butnot-forgotten SFMOMA, examines how artists in the Golden State have influenced and been informed by trends, cultures and the greater artworld. It focuses on four pivotal periods, and clusters of artists, beginning in the 1930s with muralists like Diego Rivera, moving through the Bay Area Figurative Gang and the Mission School to the present. Frida

Kahlo, David Park, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Barry McGee, Wayne Thiebaud, Manuel Neri, Mark Rothko and Chris Johanson are just a few of those featured.

(Sept. 20-April 12) Momentum: an experiment in the unexpected: For its 45th anniversary, the San Jose Museum of Art invited a group of artists from multiple disciplines to “intervene” or otherwise respond to works in the permanent collection by Calder, Tony Oursler, Jim Campbell, Deborah Oropallo and others. A calligrapher, a standup comedian, an industrial designer, a musician, a body painter and a yarn bomber – that’s someone who knits and crochets over public property such as poles, trees and sidewalks – are among the “disruptors.” But alas, no art critics were invited. (Oct. 2-Feb. 22)t

Pete Huggins, courtesy of Houghton Hall

Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, soft paste porcelain painted by Jean Louis Morin, Garniture (1765), from Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House, coming to the Legion of Honor.

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Pacifica

Vol. 44 • No. 35 • August 28-September 3, 2014

www.ebar.com V www.bartabsf.com

Overtures

Divas turn the surfer bar super-gay

by Andre Torrez

I

“

’m gonna go put my penis away. I’ll be right back.”

Camille Tow says this in male form after arriving at a backstage area detached from the main part of Longboard Margarita Bar in Pacifica.

His lanky, topless figure, baring a thin but masculine torso, slips off to a nearby bathroom to make those necessary transformative adjustments.

See page 38 >>

Ana Mae Coxxx’ reflection in mirror as she puts on her makeup.

Dallis Willard

The crowd at 2013’s Oakland Pride.

Oakland Pride East Bay celebrates its LGBT community

by Heather Cassell

O

akland is going to be party central Labor Day weekend as the city celebrates its fifth annual Pride celebration on August 31.

The revived annual festival was originally launched in 1997 until it fizzled due to lack of funding, and competition from the Art and Soul Festival. But the event has been building momentum during the last five years. It’s quickly become the second largest Pride celebration in Northern California, and will attract what organizers estimate will be nearly 50,000 attendees this year.

See page 39 >>

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

courtesy Valentin Carillo

Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

38 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

<<

Pacifica Overtures

From page 37

Cemora Valentino-Devine and Directa Deposit (whose neighborhood bar we happen to be in) are already in the dimly-lit dressing room preparing to hit the stage for Diva!, Ana Mae Coxxx’ drag night.

Yes, drag really happens in Pacifica.

Before the rest of the girls filter in, Cemora’s YouTube playlist wafts through the air from tin-can sounding smartphone speakers. Directa says she prefers silence in the hour it takes her to get ready.

“I get lost in the silence,” Cemora jokes.

The ladies are warm and

welcoming from the get-go.

With a flip of a wig, Directa switches identities. I watch her reflection from a giant, wall-sized mirror and think out loud about how fun it must be to become someone else so easily. Asked how much one of her wigs costs, she responds that the brunette Piedmont bob set her back $30. She’s adorned in an accompanying fringe skirt; perfect for when she sings “All That Jazz” tonight.

Inside the bar, DJ 4 Man is on the decks playing a hyper-speed remix of Madonna’s “Vogue.” He’s here on a trial-run basis. At 9:30 p.m. it’s still early and the bar is mostly empty, but the show doesn’t start until 10.

Ana Mae’s private-dressing area is just feet away from the DJ booth.

Her assistant of the past three or four years, Tami, is on hand to help her get dressed. At least that’s what Ana Mae says over the phone earlier in the day when she spoke with me as Matt Cardigan-Smith.

“Drag is not something I originally wanted to do,” Smith says. This month marks the thirteenth year he’s been performing as Ana Mae, a persona he describes as timeless and elegant.

“I didn’t know I wanted to do drag at first. I worked at a club in Atlanta as a gogo boy.” He said he worked downstairs in the main club, but they were short-staffed one night.

Dallis Willard

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 39

Dallis Willard

Carnie Asada caught in a candid backstage moment.

“[The film] Moulin Rouge was big at the time. They literally put me upstairs in a dress and had me lip sync.

It was fun. It turned into a thing six nights a week.”

A background and a degree in theater made Smith a natural candidate to take on this new stage role. While some of Ana Mae’s emceeing shtick seems to be delivering one-liners and bad jokes that elicit automated laughter from the audience, you can tell she exudes a certain level of professionalism and experience.

It’s noticeable from the way she maintains eye contact with her audience, down to the control she has over her own body. Meanwhile, the other girls leave the stage, strut down imagined runways and accept tips (sometimes delivered via dollar-bill paper airplanes). Ana Mae, on the other hand, stays put front and center and commands attention through presence alone. It’s less interactive, but it suits her character.

“It’s my preference to be in the show rather than organize it,” said Smith. “There’s a lot of drag shows in the city, but we’re spoiled at Longboard. We have so much space.” The Peninsula strip-mall bar reminds Smith of how vast the venues were in Georgia, where he performed in pageants and later, in drag shows. He reflects on how space in San Francisco is limited not only because the bars are proportionate to the city’s smaller stature, but also because of the more recent issue of a shortage of venues.

“The Stud is the only proper stage left that I can think of,” said Smith.

“After Deco closed, we moved to The Stud.”

He laments the closure of Deco Lounge, Esta Noche, and Marlena’s—all of which were havens for drag nights. Each had

<<

Oakland Pride

From page 37

With the theme, “Pride is Oakland. Oakland is Pride,” the LGBT community and their allies are truly proud of their city and vibrant LGBT community.

Oakland’s own Grammy awardwinning artists Sheila E headlines the festival and will show the crowd Oakland’s flavor when she performs songs from her newly released album Icon, an eclectic mix of music from her own record label, Stiletto Flats. She will also march down Broadway as one of the festival’s grand marshals of the first-ever Pride Parade on Sunday (see our interview on page 40).

The festival will also feature talent on the Latin and Womyn’s stages throughout the day from 3P.M. to 5P.M. Sheila E takes the

their doors permanently closed in the short timespan from the fall of 2012 to this past spring. “It’s sad seeing these places go. As far as the bar and club scene goes, I feel like the gay movement has fought to get integrated as we try and mesh, but then we lose the identity of being separate. We lose those institutions along the way.”

Smith quickly acknowledges there are financial reasons for these

bars’ closures and the ongoing pattern that caters towards a more mainstream clientele, but he’s able to pinpoint something else.

“Drag is more mainstream,” he said. “There’s Rupaul’s Drag Race.

There’s far more drag queens than ever before. There are even YouTube videos to learn how.”

Maybe it was only a matter of time before this camp culture spread to a mostly-straight surfer

bar like Longboard’s.

The bar’s owner, Kimberly Lerohl, refutes that label and considers her establishment to be diverse. About two years ago she was at Deco supporting fellow Pacifica native Directa Deposit’s performance when she asked if they’d do their show at her bar. Smith recalls the proposition as almost being like a “joke.”

“If you can make it in a straight bar, you can make it anywhere,” he says. “There are rocky nights.

Sometimes it’s kind of a crazy bar.”

Lerohl says no one’s really ever been rude to the performers on drag night. “Usually. younger people that don’t know what they’re walking into realize it’s not their thing, and then they walk right back out the door. It’s not a big deal.”

Inside the bar there are no more than twenty patrons, including an older man perched mysteriously on a stool wearing a trench coat. Things are in full swing, and the performers give their all; there may as well be hundreds in the audience.

The sound of high heels clacking against the hard floor –or perhaps bone hitting the ground– delivers chills as Camille Tow does a painfullooking version of the splits during a Beyonce song.

I reach for my drink out of reflex because I think my table’s going to get knocked over in the process. In full “gish,” the ladies run through acts; Whitney’s “I Have Nothing,” Dusty’s “Son of a Preacher Man” and even Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” gets the treatment.

Sitting through three hours of

makeup and costuming in vintagesatin gowns may be part of a defense mechanism if not an outlet. Nine years ago, Smith’s partner, Stefan, passed away. Through the extension of the Ana Mae persona, he’s able to deal with the emotions he has trouble feeling.

“Matt doesn’t smile and has a face that looks pissed off. I’d like to be more of an emotional being. Ana Mae allows me to do that.”

He wishes both entities could be more approachable.

“With Ana Mae, people can’t touch her,” he said. “People don’t.

I’m a T-shirt and jeans-wearing kind of guy, and she wants to wear evening gowns to the grocery store.”

As exhausting as keeping two separate wardrobes for two different identities may seem, it’s also something both the public persona and the more private side seem to live for.

“I continued this long because I enjoy the person I’ve created,” said Smith. “I like to celebrate the art of drag. I have a little of everything; gender bending, camp, Broadway.

That’s what makes it fun. We’re all different.”t The next Diva at Longboard Margarita Bar, Pacifica is September 4. Ana Mae Coxxx and her drag crew (Sasha Stephnae, Vanity Ytinav, Ker Hanna, guests Bebe Sweetbriar, Directa Deposit and more) turn the surfer bar into a queen’s paradise at the monthly show. 10pm. 180 Eureka Square, Pacifica. (650) 738-5905. www.thelongboardbar.com

Dallis Willard

Camille Tow shows a lot of leg and a shiny gold belt.

main stage at 6 p.m.

“I love the fact that Sheila E is the headliner this year,” said Christiana Remington, director of the Womyn’s Stage at Oakland Pride. Remington said that the Womyn’s Stage’s theme this year is, “We Run the World.”

Oakland Pride is the piece de resistance for the weekend, but the party really gets started Friday and keeps going throughout the holiday weekend.

“Our parties are so unique. You really don’t get these types of parties anywhere else in the bay,” said Joe Hawkins, a volunteer who is one of the co-founders and former cochair of Oakland Pride.

Hawkins pointed out that what makes parties during Oakland Pride and throughout the weekend unlike anything else seen at any other Pride celebration is the diversity of the audience.

Dallis Willard

Ana Mae Coxxx in a satin blue gown with matching bow in hair.

Oakland has a wealth of hiphop and Latin beats derived from its prominent African American and Latin communities that infuse Oakland Pride giving it a whole different beat and vibe than any other Pride celebration in Northern California, Hawkins said.

Kicking off Oakland Pride weekend and getting the party started tonight (Thursday, August 28) will be a Pride Happy Hour and Karaoke at the Bench and Bar, 510 17th Street, running from 4 P.M to 2 A.M. Several comedians will be out at Club 21 making the crowd roar with laughter, starting at 8 P.M. Gay cowboys will kick up their heels with drink specials and live music

by Codigo V. at the annual Vaquero Kick-Off Party Friday, August 29 at the Bench and Bar starting at 4 P.M. See page 40 >>

courtesy Oakland Pride

Manly men at last year’s Oakland Pride.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

40 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

Sheila E

t

The Grammy Award-Winning hit-maker headlines Oakland Pride

by Heather Cassell

S

heila Escovedo, better known as Sheila E, plans on giving Oakland Pride attendees an eclectic taste of some of her newest works when she performs her hits “The Glamorous Life,” “A Love Bizarre,” and “Erotic City. She’ll also play music from her new album on Sunday, August 31.

“I’m excited. This is the Bay Area.

This is home for me,” said Sheila E about headlining Oakland Pride and being honored as the parade’s celebrity grand marshal in the festival’s first-ever Pride Parade. “When fans come to the show, they are going to have a great show. We are going to bring exciting music – old music, new music – we are going to have a big party.”

The Emmy and Grammynominated Oakland native is celebrating four decades of making music with the recent release of her eighth album, Icon.

Icon is the first solo album by the drummer and percussionist in twelve years, released digitally and on vinyl from her record label Stiletto Flats.

The vinyl has up to four songs not available on the digital album.

This is the second year in a row that Oakland Pride has tapped its local celebrities to headline the festival, which is themed for the second year in a row, “Pride is Oakland.

Oakland is Pride.”

During Oakland Pride weekend, Sheila E will add author to her title with the release of her autobiography, Beat of My Own Drum. Together, the book and album tell the story of her life as a musician and living the socalled “Glamorous Life.”

The album is a collection of a variety of genres from gospel to Latin to pop that reflects the world of music she grew up enjoying listening to and playing. This varied repertory has mostly been shown at her vibrant live performances, rather than on her records, until now.

“This is who I really am,” said Escovedo. “I am all of the above. I feel like I belong to everyone and I love all types of music.”

Sheila E said that she hopes LGBT fans will enjoy the music and be able to relate to the songs when she performs on the main stage at Oakland Pride at 6 p.m. on Sunday.

“To me, we are all human,” said Escovedo. “If I’m just able to share my story and they can relate, that’s a great thing. I’m not trying to prove

<<

Oakland Pride

From page 39

Also Friday night, Latin Explosion features Diva Lola’s Birthday Bash, including an ice bucket fundraiser challenge, and a Latin Pride Kick Off Party with performances by Miss Lulu and Jack, and DJ Carlitos spinning Latin, Top 40 and House at Club 21, 2111 Franklin Street.

The celebrations really get going Saturday night, August 30, making it opportune for party-hopping, starting with Oakland mayoral candidate

Earl Gibson Jr.

Sheila E drumming to her own beat.

Koury Angelo

Sheila E performs at public school in Oakland.

Sheila E.

anything to anyone,” she said.

Raised in an athletic and creative household, Sheila E is friends, mentors (and even lovers) with some of the Bay Area’s famous musician friends.

As a child, Escovedo learned how to play the drums by mirroring her musician father, the legendary percussionist Pete Escovedo.

She dreamed of being an Olympic sprinter before she discovered she was a talented musician, and began touring with her father when she was 15 years old.

At the age of 18, Sheila E had an affair with Carlos Santana, who was married, a relationship which she opens up about in her new memoir.

Escovedo was also Prince’s lover and longtime friend.

Sheila E has toured and worked with some of music’s biggest names, such as Ringo Starr, Marvin Gaye, Prince,

Beyonce, Herbie Hancock, Diana Ross, Lionel Richie, Gloria Estefan and George Duke, among others. In her book, she shares her insights about being a woman in the music industry and growing up in Oakland.

The “glamorous life” wasn’t as it all appears to be.

“People say, ‘Oh the glamorous life; it’s easy and its fun,’” said Escovedo. “Yes, it is fun. I try to make it as easy as possible. But being in the entertainment business is very challenging.”

Escovedo said that she kept her head up high in between jealous comments, sexual advances on her, and sexism in the male-dominated music industry, not to mention many nights away from home touring that she dubbed her address being “101 World.”

“We sacrifice. We give up a lot,” she

Rebecca Kaplan’s Fabulous Pride Party at the Bench and Bar starting at 5:30 P.M. The party is just a warm up for the evening’s offerings.

For queer hip hop performances, fiveTEN Oakland Events’ presents Cakes Da Killer with special performances with Zulu Nasty, Jocquese, and Aima the Dreamer. On the tables are DJs Lady Ryan, Val G, Fusion and Motive at The New Parish, 579 18th Street, from 8 P.M to closing.

La Bota Loca Pride Party presents Tania Soto with Band OBM and a

special performance gets the Latin juices flowing at Club 21, from 9 P.M. to closing.

Club Rimshot’s Stripper Battle, with sexy strippers battling it out on the dance pole all night long, shouldn’t be missed. DJ Rum in the Mixx will spin the beats at Bench and Bar. The weekend also includes an array of parties on Sunday, August 31, with a Pride After-Party in front of Club 21, from 7 P.M to midnight.

La Bota Loca’s Closing Party inside the club includes Banda Cienega live on stage and an expected packed house with DJ Fabricio playing from 7 P,M to closing.

If Latin beats aren’t your thing, head over to the Epic Oaktown Bash at Bench and Bar, for Club Rimshot’s massive Hip-Hop and House party at Bench and Bar with DJs David Harness, Olga T and Rum. And for more fun, the historic White Horse Bar at 6551 Telegraph Avenue features Xelle headlinging and DJ Porn Star spinning starting at 7 P.M. With all these events through the weekend, thankfully, most attendees will have Monday off to recover.t

courtesy Oakland Pride

Cuties at the street fair at last year’s Oakland Pride.

Heather Cassell is a travel and entertainment writer for the Bay Area Reporter and other publications. www.GirlsThatRoam.com

continued, adding that she’s grateful for her parents, friends, fans and music, which she says saved her life.

“If you don’t water a plant, it’s going to die,” Escovedo continued.

“That’s how I feel music is. Music is everything to me.” Escovedo mentioned plans to sign new artists to Stiletto Flats, her record label.

The musician also shares her gift and love of music and the arts through the Elevate Hope Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing music resources for school children.

The Oakland native, who lives in Los Angeles, can often be found in the Bay Area, supporting the foundation that she co-founded with Lynn Mabry. The duo raise funds for Elevate Oakland, a program that brings music and art to Oakland’s foster youth and public schools

through supporting programs and mentorships. Escovedo said she hopes to expand the program throughout the Bay Area.

But this weekend, it’s about performing, and sharing her music, both classic hits and new sounds.t The Oakland Pride parade beings at 10:30 a.m. at Broadway and 14th Streets and it ends at the entrance of the festival at Broadway and 20th Streets, which begins at 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on August 31.

The easiest way to get to Oakland Pride is to take BART and exit at the 12th Street/City Center station for the parade, or the 19th Street station for the festival.

Admission to the festival is $10 for adults and $5 for children ages 12 and under. www.oaklandpride.org

courtesy Valentin Carillo

Valentin Carillo (in grey shirt) and his sexy gogo crew at Club 21

Rick Gerharter

The dance floor at Bench and Bar.

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 41

Anniversatility

by Donna Sachet

G

ayCities and Stoli’s Most Original San Francisco Guy is Spencer B. Last Friday’s competition at Beatbox was splendidly emceed by Patrik Gallineaux and Anita Cocktail and deflty judged

by Brian Kent, Andrew Christian, Pat N Leather, and this intrepid columnist. The crowd was raucous, the competition enjoyable, and the complimentary Stoli drinks incredible. After last year’s first contest, won by gorgeous Nicolas Bettinger, who knew what to expect? Any expectations were exceeded by the professionally run event, the capacity crowd, and Beatbox technical expertise. Spencer wins a hefty prize package, including a New York trip, Andrew Christian underwear, a chunk of cash, and eternal fame!

Congratulations to SF Pride, which distributed more than $160,000 to many local organizations who helped out with entry gates, beverage booths, and other volunteer needs. Those at the party on Saturday at Beatbox were thanked profusely and most left with smiles on their faces and checks in their pockets. Another great indication of the healthy evolution of SF Pride is its outstanding leadership, and the community’s commitment to its success! Check out their next membership meeting; they welcome your input, participation, and support.

Saturday afternoon, we started at the finale of the Imperial Court’s Mr. & Miss Golden Gate contest, held at Balencoire, 2565 Mission. If you haven’t been yet, be sure to check out this spacious club with friendly staff, excellent California/French casual food, and limitless event

David Wong

Guests at the Stoli Guy SF competition at Beatbox.

possibilities. Retiring Mr. GG Nic Hunter & Miss GG Eva Sensitiva had a fun year and stepped aside with a splashy event for the new Mr. GG Colby Michaels & Miss GG Sadie Ladie and Miss Treasure Island Evaluation. Our Reigning Emperor JP Soto and Reigning Empress Misty Blue emceed and performers and revelry abounded. Another successful event raised money for the total that will be distributed at the end of their reign at Imperial Coronation next February.

Then it was off to Cookie Dough’s tenyear anniversary of The Monster Show, relocated from its usual venue of The Edge to Beaux for the night. It was definitely standing room only, as fans of this longstanding show roared with approval for the performers and hosts Cookie and Heklina. Adding to the mania was the crowd arriving from Peaches Christ’s Showgirls event at the Castro Theatre, by all accounts a

Steven Underhill

Florence Henderson and her dancers rocked the Palace of Fine Arts with her saucy song and dance at REAF’s Help is on the Way.

Garaje Gooch

Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 at The Monster Show’s tenth anniversary at Beaux.

tremendous success. We love seeing Beaux lively and happy. Keep them in mind for your next event; they are flexible, cooperative, and sexy.

We trundled home nearly in time for the much ballyhooed seismic event. We hope all our readers are safe and sound. Reminder: put together that earthquake preparedness kit!

As promised in this column for weeks now, the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation delivered another outstanding evening of entertainment at their annual Help is on the Way last Sunday at the Palace of Fine Arts, benefiting Positive Resource Center, Aguilas, AIDS Legal Referral Panel, and Abzyme Research Foundaton.

On the steady arm of dashing Drew Cutler, we joined VIP guests meandering through the spacious lobby reception, packed with silent auction displays, top restaurant samplings, and free-flowing cocktails. Many reminisced about the very first Help is on the Way held in the same location, which included the late great Nancy Lamott singing David Friedman’s title song.

Twenty years ago, many wondered if help was indeed on the way, as the AIDS pandemic spiraled out of control, decimating a generation of creative and talented individuals, and delivering a nearly automatic death sentence to a puzzled community. Barbara Richmond and Peggy Ermet, having each lost their sons to AIDS, refused to sit idly by and, with the help of their friends Ken Henderson & Joe Seiler, created this annual cabaret benefit, and brought top-notch entertainment to San Francisco to raise money for worthy AIDS-related organizations.

Soon additional events were added to the calendar, like Help is on the Way for the Holidays in December, one-night-only cabarets featuring the touring casts of popular Broadway shows, and evenings dedicated specifically to comedy and dance.

Ken and Joe opened this year’s show with recognitions, awards, and a touching tribute to the late Barbara Richmond. At the risk of sounding vain, we must acknowledge receiving the first ever Barbara Richmond and Peggy Ermet Hero Award lovingly presented by our friends Mario Diaz and Patrik Gallneaux. Suffice it to say, it was a magical moment of community recognition, emotional connection, and warm encouragement which we will always cherish.

For the next couple of hours we were swept up in a cavalcade of talent, including dance, comedy, song, and star power! Picking favorites is nearly impossible when you consider Paula West’s captivating voice, Meg Mackay’s masterful delivery, Marta Lledo’s triumphant piano skill, Alex Newell’s showstopping Dreamgirls rendition, and Florence Henderson’s jaw-dropping role as a leather dominatrix!

And that was just in the first half of the show!

Ken Hamal

Eve Volution with newly crowned Miss and Mr. Golden Gate Sadie Ladie and Colby Michaels.

In the lobby for intermission, lively commentary abounded among the likes of Richard Sablatura, Lenny Broberg & Paul Maluchnik, Joel Goodrich, Jeff Doney, John Brosnan, Kevin Lisle, Skye Paterson, Mark Calvano, and Dr. Jerome Goldstein & Tommy Taylor.

The pace accelerated in the second half, starting with a quick and lively auction led by dapper Liam Mayclem, and then a tour de force by Valerie Pettiford, inspiring vocals by Jason Brock, an arresting emotional set by Richard Chamberlain, two amazing dance numbers by John Narvaez & Andrew Cervantes and Wesley Alfvin & Jeffrey Scott Parsons, incredible vocals by Jake Simpson and Maureen McGovern, a Gospel-like group performance by members of the touring cast of Motown: The Musical, and the anxiously-awaited comedy –and unexpected but heart-stopping song– by our favorite Carole Cook.

After the rousing curtain call finale, many exhausted but gracious cast members enjoyed a dessert reception with their admirers and REAF supporters, including Andrew Christian, Dan Glazer, Bob Dockendorff, Bob Hermann & Dan Joraanstad, Milton Mosk & Tom Foutch, Frank

Stein, Ragu Shivaram & Beth Schnitzer, and John Marez.

The Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation is “providing hope and sustaining lives.” Don’t miss their next event, about which you are sure to read right here.

Join Jan Wahl and this columnist at noon tomorrow (Friday, August 29) at the Commonwealth Club, 595 Market Street, as we dish the dirt about Hollywood and the LGBT Community. It will be like “the ladies who lunch,” but with content!

Then on Tuesday, August 2, we join in the unveiling of the Castro Walk of Honor at 11AM. Aren’t we excited to see the incredible improvements in the Castro and finally to have this wonderful concrete recognition of some of the heroes of our movement?

It’s been called “Hell Week,” but we revel in the excitement of Opening Night of the Symphony and Opera, both the same week on Wednesday and Friday, August 3 and September 5. If you are not able to attend, watch for our complete report in the next column. Every San Francisco signature event needs a little drag queen glamor and we plan to provide it!t

Nob Hill Theatre ROOKIES NIGHT SEPT 3 @ 8PM — $200 CASH PRIZE rd

www.thenobhilltheatre.com

R YAN ROSE FALCON STUDIOS EXCL USIVE RICKY ROMAN CO CKY BOYS EXCLUSIVE

SEPTEMBER 5th & SHOWTIMES @ 8PM &6th 10PM

729 Bush @ Powell • Info Line: 415-781-9468 Sunday – Thursday: 11:30am – Midnight Friday – Saturday: 11:30am – 1:30am

<< On the Tab

42 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

eON THE TAeBr f4 mb August 28– Septe

H

Sat 30 Cakes da Killa

The Klipptones @ The Terrace Room, Oakland Joshua Klipp and his talented jazz band perform hot tunes for listening and dancing. 7pm-10pm. 1800 Madison St., Oakland. www.klipptones.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland Oakland Pride weekend and Lola Veronica's birthday are celebrated, along with the nightclub event's 22nd-year anniversary at the Hip Hop, Top 40, and Latin music night, with gogo dancers and special guest DJs. No cover before 11pm and just $6 afterward. Dancing 9pm-3am. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. club21oakland.com

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

Retro-Burn @ Monarch

T

he fall harvest of Labor day weekend fun continues into September.

Thu 28 Beats Reality @ Trax Resident DJs Jim Hopkins and Justime welcome guest DJs and play groovy tunes. Weekly, 9pm-2am. 1437 Haight St. 864-4213.

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

Club Yass @ City Nights Frisco Robbie presents the kickoff party for a new 18+ LGBT weekly night, with a live set by gay hip hop hunk Chris Cali (www.chris-cali.com), vogue master Jocquese of Vogue & Tone, Chanel Fox; Persia MCs ("Google Google, Apps Apps"), DJ TwistMix, with a Latin room up front, gogo guys and gals. $10. 9:303am. 546-7938. sfclubs.com

Fuego @ The Watergarden, San Jose

Pan Dulce @ The Cafe Amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com cafesf.com

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

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle The weekly live rock shows feature local and touring bands. 9pm-ish. 398 12th St. at Harrison. sf-eagle.com

VIP @ Club 21, Oakland Hip Hop, Top 40, and sexy Latin music; gogo dancers, appetizers, and special guest DJs. No cover before 11pm and just $5 after all night.

Dancing 9pm-3am. Happy hour 4pm8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

Thu 4

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

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar.

10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Mary Go Round @ Lookout Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes host the weekly night with DJ Philip Grasso, gogo guys, drink specials, and drag acts. 10pm2am. 3600 16th St. lookoutsf.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

My So-Called Night @ Beaux Heklina hosts a new weekly '90s-themed video, dancing', drinkin' night, with VJs Jorge Terez and Becky Knox. Get down with your funky bunch, and enjoy 90-cent drinks!

'90s-themed attire and costume conest. 2344 Market St. beauxsf.com

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

Some Thing @ The Stud Mica Sigourney and pals' weekly offbeat drag performance night.

10pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Tone of Arc, The Frail, Breakdown Valentine @ Bottom of the Hill Three various bands (disco/deep house, Indie-tronic, electro-rock) perform. $10. 9pm. 1233 17th St. www.bottomofthehill.com

Sat 30

Queer holistic health mini-fair, sponsored by Fabulosa Fest, with products and services, samples, and a daytime dance party with DJ Andre (hip hop, Top 40, gay tunes and more). $5. 3pm-8pm. 3158 Mission St. www.ElrioSF.com

Thu 28

Red Meat @ Beatbox DJs Gur Ruben and DAMnation spin grooves for the return of the gay men's ginger-fest! Redheads get the admiration they deserve! $10 benefits Folsom Street Events. 10pm-3am. 314 11th St. www.BeatboxSF.com

Sing-Along Saturdays @ Martuni's Join Joe Wicht for a new weekly night of top 40 rock and pop sing-alongs.

9pm-1am. 4 Valencia St.

Chris Cali at Club Yass

CRISP , REFRESHING

TASTE.

Beer Bust @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Beer only $8 until you bust. 4pm-8pm.

1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar's most popular Sunday daytime event now also takes place on Saturdays! 3pm-6pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Birdcage Follies @ 180 Eleven Galilea brings the finest old-school drag show to the all new showroom.

Doors 8:30pm, cocktails 9pm, shows at 9:30pm. No cover. Reservations recommended. Proceeds benefit The Arc San Francisco. 350-3999. 180 11th St. www.thearcsf.org

Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland New weekly LGBT comedy night hosted by Dan Mires. $10. 8pm. 2111 Franklin St. Oakland. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Vintage dance music night (rock, soul, garage, pop) for non-Burners, with DJs Omar Perez, Jacob Fury, Mario Muse, Galine Modmoiselle, Derek See and others; 2 floors, 3 bars, cheap drinks. $5. 9pm-3am. 101 6th St. 2849774. www.monarchsf.com

Homochromatic @ El Rio

t

Angie Stone

Fri 29 2nd Anniversary @ Club OMG The mid-Market intimate nightclub celebrates two years; gogos, hors d'oeuvres, drink specials, and cake.

No cover. 9pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

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

Dickslap @ SF Eagle RuPaul's Drag Race queen Milk is a guest performer at the monthly (third Fridays) wild drag, cute dudes, and music night brought on by Nark Magazine; DJs ChipMint; JellO shots, gogos, etc. 9pm-2am. sf-eagle.com

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

Bootie SF @ DNA Lounge Celebrate eleven years of the weekly mash-up dance night, with resident DJs Adrian & Mysterious D. Aug. 30's a Michael Jackson mashup night. No matter the theme, a mixed fun good time's assured. $8-$15. 9pm-3am.

21+. 375 11th St. at Harrison. www.

BootieSF.com www.DNAlounge.com

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland Special Oakland Pride events (see article): DJed tunes, gogo hotties, drag shows, drink specials, all at Oakland's premiere Latin nightclub and weekly cowboy night. $10-$15.

Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Cakes Da Killa @ The New Parish, Oakland

Sun 31 Beer Bust @ Lone Star Saloon The ursine crowd converges for beer and fun. 4pm-8pm. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar's most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. 3pm-6pm. Now also on Saturdays! 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Beer Bust @ SF Mix

LGBT hip hop performers Da Killa and Zulu Nasty, with DJs Lady Ryan, Val G, Fusion, and Motive. $10-$15.

8pm-2am. 579 18th St. at San Pablo, Oakland. www.soundcloud.com/ cakesdakilla www.thenewparish.com

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

Club Rimshot @ Bench and Bar, Oakland

Heklina and Joshua J's combined events merge yet again, with drag acts by Mercedez Munro, Mahlae Balenciaga, U-Phoria, Rahni, plus DJ Ms. Jackson, gogos and drinks. 2344 Market St. www.Beauxsf.com

Special Oakland Pride events (see article): Get groovin' at the weekly hip hop and R&B night. $8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com

Big Top vs.

Trannyshack @ Beaux

Disco Daddy @ SF Eagle The special Labor Day Weekend edition of the disco-happy night goes late, 7pm until 2am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Drag Revue @ The White Horse, Oakland Mahlae Balenciaga hosts the twicemonthly drag show (2nd and 4th Sundays). $6. Show at 9:30pm. 6551 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. (510) 6523820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Full of Grace @ Beaux Weekly night with hostess Grace Towers, different local and visiting DJs, and pop-up drag performances.

No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Hero @ Ruby Skye Gustavo Scorpio and Russ Rich DJ the Labor Day Weekend T-dance. $15$30. 6pm-12am. 430 Mason St. www.industrysf.com

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On the Tab>>

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 43

Honey Soundsystem @ Beatbox

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550

The cool local DJ collective welcomes Chris Cruse from LA. $15. 10pm-4am.

314 11th St. www.homeysoundsystem.com www.beatboxsf.com

The popular country western LGBT dance night; enjoy fun foot-stomping two-stepping and line-dancing. $5.

5pm-10:30pm with lessons from 5:30-7:15 pm. Also Thursdays. 550 Barneveld Ave., and Tuesdays at Beatbox, $6. 6:30-11pm. 314 11th St. www.sundancesaloon.org

Jock @ The Lookout The weekly jock-ular fun continues, with special sports team fundraisers.

3pm-7pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

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

Sunday's a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45.

11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Name That Beat @ Toad Hall

Bromance @ Beaux

BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly musical trivia challenge and drag show. 8:30-11:30pm. 4146 18th St. at Castro. www.toadhallbar.com

DJ Kidd Sysko spins tunes for the bro-tastic midweek night, with $2 beer pitchers, beer pong, $1 shots served by undie-clad guys. It's like a frat house without the closet cases.

8:30-10pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

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

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

Tue 2

City Singers @ Feinstein's at the Nikko New weekly cabaret night, with various local singers performing at the elegant nightclub. $15. 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (855) 636-4556. www.ticketweb.com

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

Michael Brandon hosts the game night and fundraiser for The Community Initiatiuve. 7pm-10pm. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Olga T and Shugga Shay's weekly queer women and men's R&B hip hop and soul night. No cover. 8pm-2am.

510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com

Angie Stone @ Yoshi's

Block Party @ Midnight Sun

Jason Brock @ Feinstein's at the Nikko

Bombshell Betty’s Burlesqueteers @ Elbo Room The weekly burlesque show of women dancers shaking their bonbons includes live music. $10. 9pm. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

Our local crooner supreme performs at the elegant downtown nightclub. $15. 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.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

LGBT night at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the "Godfather of Skate."

Actually, every night is gay-friendly, including Saturday's Black Rock night (Burning Man garb encouraged). Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5.

Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Oakland Pride @ Downtown Oakland

Fifth annual LGBT celebration includes stage shows, an outdoor festival, and, for the first time, a parade. The block party's at 20th St. along Broadway and Franklin, with DJs, performers and gogo hotties from Club Rimshot and Bench and Bar nightclubs. Sheile E headlines the stage acts. oaklandpride.org

Rain Parade @ Brick and Mortar

Mon 1 Drag Mondays @ The Cafe Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko's weekly drag and dance night.

9pm-1am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

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

Meow Mix @ The Stud The weekly themed wild variety cabaret showcases new and unusual talents; MC Ferosha Titties. $3-$7.

Show at 11pm. 9pm-2am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down at the strip joint. $20 includes refreshments. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Piano Bar @ Beaux Singer extraordinaire Jason Brock hosts the weekly night, with your talented host –and even you– singing.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

The Asteroid No.4, Powder, California Raga Association, DJ Joel Gion of Brian Jonestown Massacre, visuals by white light prism. $9-$14. 9pm. 1710 Mission St. 800-8782. www.brickandmortarmusic.com

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

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

Rainbow Festival @ Faces, Sacramento

Monday Musicals @ The Edge

Wed 3

LGBT Pride block party with three days and nights of events, including concerts by David Hernandez, Chris Salvatore, Expose, Amber, RuPaul's Drag Race contestants and more.

10am-6pm. Nighttime club events too.

20th St. & K in midtown. faces.net

The casts of local and visiting musicals often pop in to perform at the popular Castro bar's musical theatre night.

7pm-2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pmclosing. 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Switch @ Q Bar

Diva @ Longboard Margarita Bar, Pacifica Ana Mae Coxxx and her drag crew (Sasha Stephnae, Vanity Ytinav, Ker Hanna, Bebe Sweetbriar, Directa Deposit and more) turn the surfer bar into a queen's paradise at this monthly show. 10pm show. 180 Eureka Square, Pacifica. (650) 7385905. www.thelongboardbar.com

Linda Eder @ Feinstein's at the Nikko

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey's

Gay Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels

The soulful singer-songwriter returns to the nightclub-restaurant. $49. 8pm & 10pm. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com

Ladies' happy hour at the Castro nightclub, with drink specials, no cover, and women gogos. 4pm-9pm.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

A C.O.L.T. Following, the disability and LGBT-inclusive theatre company's music and variety show, includes raffles and tickts to their upcoming shows. No cover. 6:30pm-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St. circleoflifetheatre.org Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night. One-drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

Thu 4

La Femme @ Beaux

Circle of Life Cabaret @ Martuni's

Trim: 8.75 x 7.75 Bleed: none Publication: Bay Area Reporter Live: 8.5x7.5

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

Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Closing Date: 7/1/14 QC: CS

Chris Salvatore at the Sacramento Rainbow Festival

Good Times @ Bench and Bar, Oakland

Bingo Night @ Club OMG

©2014 A-B, Bud Light® Beer, St. Louis, MO

Sun 31

Sat 30 Birdcage Follies Steven Underhill

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle Kollin Holts hosts the new weekly comedy and open mic talent night.

6pm-8pm. 398 12th St. sf-eagle.com

Rainbow Skate @ Redwood Roller Rink Weekly LGBT and friends skate night, with groovy disco music and themed events. $9. 8pm-10:30pm. 1303 Main Street, Redwood City. www.rainbowskate.net www.facebook.com/rainbowskating/

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

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

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall

The Broadway and pop singer performs her new cabaret show, A Walk Down Memory Lane, which includes Broadway classics and her own music. $70-$85. 8pm. Also Sept 5, 8pm & Sept. 6, 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences The museum's weekly cocktail parties continue with drinks, food live music and pop-up display exhibits and docent talks, plus creature, plant and science exhibits. Sept. 4: storytellers W. Kamau Bell, Chinaka Hodge and others; wordsmithing installations and The Bold Italic's temp tattoos and more fun. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.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

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge Retro disco tunes and a fun diverse crowd, each Thursday; now in its tenth year! $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. auntcharlieslounge.com Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

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

Sony Holland @ Level III

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

The acclaimed jazz vocalist performs with guitarist Jerry Holland. Weekly 5pm-8pm. Also Thursdays & Fridays.

JW Marriott, 515 Mason St. at Post. www.sonyholland.com

Trivia Night @ Harvey's BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly night of trivia quizzes and fun and prizes; no cover. 8pm-1pm. 500 Castro St. 4314278. www.harveyssf.com

Sat 30 Joe Wicht at SingAlong Saturdays

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

44 • Bay Area Reporter • August 28-September 3, 2014

A Kiss from a Rose Ryan Rose at Nob Hill Theatre

by Cornelius Washington

T

he late summer sizzle continues at The Nob Hill Theater, with one of the most tantalizing men in porn, Ryan Rose.

As 2013’s “Falcon Man Of The Year,” he’s performed in more than 20 scenes (and counting) for the brand, under an exclusive contract.

The 6’ 3” tall, brown-haired, blueeyed stud rocks cover man good looks and a sexual versatility not

seen in porn in some time. His series of performances this weekend at The Nob Hill Theater (with fellow porn star, Ricky Roman) are a must-see.

Cornelius Washington: Is this your first time performing at the legendary Nob Hill Theater, and what’s it like?

Ryan Rose: This is my first time at Nob Hill, so I don’t know what it’s like yet. All I know is, being with Ricky Roman, it’s going to be epic!

t

Does dancing nude come naturally to you? Are you testing your own boundaries?

Yes, just being nude is natural for me, and I’m always testing my own boundaries.

Did becoming a porn model come naturally to you?

It was always something I wanted to do.

What boundaries, if any, did you test in order to make your first film?

Well, performing in front of strangers with lights and cameras on was strange at first.

What is the first porn film you ever saw?

LOL. I’m a little perv, so I don’t remember.

Who turns you on when you watch porn?

Brent Everett!

What do you do onscreen that you don’t do off, and vice versa?

Everything I do onscreen, I do off.

I’m not acting, I’m not faking. What you see is what you get.

How do you prepare yourself to perform on film?

That’s my secret.

How did you create your porn name?

I’m from Chicago, and Derrick Rose was MVP while playing with the Chicago Bulls; he inspired the Rose part.

Is porn art?

If done right, yes.

Concerning your relationship with Ethan Slade; is it tough to maintain a

Steven Underhill

Ryan Rose at a Falcon party at Mezzanine.

relationship in the porn industry, especially with another porn star, or is that even an issue?

You have no idea, but we are two mature adults that understand the difference between work and our personal lives, and at the end of the day we always come home to one another.

What is your favorite body part on a man?

His torso… and his dick!

What is your favorite body part on yourself?

My ass.

Do you have any fetishes (i.e., sex, clothing, food, etc.)?

I’m open to lots of things and always up for something new.

Who, in the adult industry, do you admire?

That’s a good question. But I would have to say all my friends. I’ve learned so much from them.

What stereotypes about the industry have you found to be true and false?

There are so many, and based on who you’re talking about, some are walking stereotypes and some are exceptions to the stereotypes.

What stereotypes do people have about you, as a porn star?

I’m no stereotype. I walk to the beat of my own drummer.

Who is your fantasy celebrity sex partner?

I don’t have one.

Under the name “Pierce,” you performed in bareback scenes for Sean Cody studios. Have you faced any backlash as a result, especially when you signed on to work with Falcon Studios?

No. What were/are your views on barebacking, onscreen and off, personally and culturally, and have they changed over time?

No comment.

Ryan Rose in a Falcon promo shot.

Ryan Rose on a recent farm film photo shoot for Falcon.

If you could be any superhero, who would it be, and with what super power?

Superman; no question about it.t Ryan Rose does a live strip show, then a sex show with Ricky Roman. $25. Sept 5 & 6, 8pm & 10pm. Nob Hill Theatre, 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www. thenobhilltheatre.com Follow Ryan at https://twitter.com/ RyanRoseXXX

Ryan Rose as Pierce in a Sean Cody scene.

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 45

It’s a Ross-up

by John F Karr

A

s follow-up to last week’s documentary about Toby Ross, let’s look at three of his best known, pre-condom titles—Reflections of Youth (1975), Boys in the Slums (1976), and Do Me Evil (1975).

The first two are comprised of shorts that had been made for mail order, filmed in 16mm and reduced to 8mm, and later bridged together with connecting dialogue scenes. While less than optimum sound recording renders Mike Daniels was the blond, much of the dialogue inau- smooth star of Do Me Evil. dible, what one does hear can be incomprehensible. Or silly, Beach) Bressen told me in that porn way, like a lead in that was a signifying factor to a scene being, “Didja hear about of their youth. I say, get the Not quite but almost younger than springthat kid over there?”

Clearasil, honey, because time—a lad from Reflections of Youth.

As a dialogue director, Ross is to me, youth is a signifying generally the pits. A perfectly succufactor of youth. lent three-way is too quickly interThe ten scenes in sixty minutes rupted in Boys when one guy says, that is Reflections of Youth have “Hey, let’s use the glory hole,” with a somewhat numbing efficiency. the enthusiastic yelp you’d use for, In its third scene, there’s a swell “Hey, let’s make s’mores tonight!” blond whose long cock is nestled And I’m not such a fan of Ross’ in a ginger bush. He’s a plugger trademark natural lighting. It can when fucking a brunet, who sadly add a nice mood if applied here remains pretty blasé. Their sex is and there. But constantly, streaming not quite equatorial, but it is somethrough diaphanous curtains, its where north of mild. The last scene fluttering wash needs to be looked offers eye candy in the very large through. The Tungsten lighting cock of a guy who gets sucked off Ross abjures may be on the harsh with a level of engagement not preside, but I’ll tell ya, it’s better than viously encountered. not being able to see things.

Bill Eld is casually drawn into Ross also has a trademark editthe movie when someone says, ing style, in which a “Hey, do you remember forthcoming scene is Smokin’ hot dude from Boys of Bill, the gym coach?” superimposed over the the Slums.

His star turn is a casuone ending, which then ally efficient jack-off fades away. It’s nifty that is nonetheless built and, of course, fascinatingly at first, but over use an encompassing hung, with a thick mass of curly leads to impatience. survey of his potent hair and a swell ‘70s mustache. The I did appreciate qualifications to starfinal scene features a star-worthy some panning he dom—lush lips, big lad, with a handsome, broad and used in Boys, moving swath of hair, ripped physique, and face. his camera off into darkness to the monster cock.

And then, there’s Do Me Evil, right of his performers, only to have Despite the standard Ross flaws, which stands apart from Ross’ them glide back in from the left, Boys in the Slums delivers some films. Quite simply, it’s more acfurther along in their scene—an okay sex. A much less blithe movie complished. Ross had always advancement of the action that’s than Reflections, I went for its funkdreamt of the sort of theatrical just neato. ier, slightly older guys, and the visdistribution accorded the likes of What I really couldn’t abide ibility of its sex. Filming mostly in a Poole and Arch Brown. This meant was Ross’ use of music. It’s uncellar where runaways or some such a booking at the Nob Hill, and he distinguished, and sometimes dissimilar riffraff are squatting, Ross got it with Do Me Evil. tressing. Usually, it’s just a guitar was forced to use Tungsten lighting, Promotional material for the or Hammond organ noodling and surprise! His images have a not movie tells us it “examines incest, around, muzak that would be rehitherto seen clarity. hustling, suicide, mental abuse, jected by any self-respecting elevaThe sex in Boys is generally more aging and poverty.” And all with tor or grocery store. And it’s just aggressive, especially two twinkish the requisite Ross big dicks. Here’s plain sloppy in Boys when a rock types working their scrumptious how it goes: Older brother abuses song disappears in mid-phrase, cocks atop a pile of old cloths. Also younger brother unto suicide, after and there’s six minutes of silence. good is a more seasoned dude, well which older brother slides into selfThings get nutso in Do Me Evil, degradation—he eats out of with accompaniment ranging garbage cans after relocating from muzak of the lowest order to Skid Row. to symphonies. As my demenThe movie’s sex is surtia continues to set in, I can’t prisingly modern in both recall if it’s Tchaikovsky or performance and filming, Brahms (nor can I remember and Mike Daniels, playing the Italian for window). the Older Brother, is a blond, And what’s going on with the sexy guy well worth a visit. director’s bottoms? Overly pasHe’s a Don Johnson type who sive butt boys are such a curse can, by porn standards, actuthroughout the movies that ally act. Or, act as well as Don one suspects tranquilizers. Or Johnson. When Daniels jacks disinterest. One bottom boy in off, we’re privileged to watch Reflections does give some realong with a voyeur. action, though it’s not perhaps In an earlier article, I said one to rouse us. He looks back I had no idea why Toby Ross over his shoulder right into the hadn’t gotten the endurcamera, with a mildly vexed ing reclaim of some of his look on his face, as if to say, “Get peers. After watching these on with it, then.” at least the first two of these Just about the first thing features, I know the reason. you’ll notice when watching They’re not very good, and is that performers back then they’re not enduring well at hadn’t heard about shaving all. Their technical aspects their balls. As later performers don’t compare to their day’s (and, indeed, the general popucompetition, and their sex lace) have subsequently learned, acts are more proficient than this provides an unobfuscated sexy. They might have once view, reduces the friction coeffifilled a need, but watching cient, and assists in tongue slide. them now was more archeolAnother thing you’ll notice ogy than pleasure. Important is that more than a few of A later ColtStudio photo shows lush-lipped, in the history of porn, they’re Ross’ performers have acne. lean Bill Eld, who solos in Reflections of hardly must-sees.t Pornographer Artie (Pleasure Youth.

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34 • BAY AREA REPORTER • August 28-September 3, 2014

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August 28-September 3, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 47

Shooting Stars STEVEN UNDERHILL PHOTOS BY

Help is on the Way’s 20th

T

he Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundations’ 20th anniversary gala concert brought out the stars; appropriate, given its classic Broadway musical theme.

Hosts Joe Seiler and Ken Henderson announced the honors given to major supporters Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab, and a video of the late cofounder Barbara Richmond was especially touching. Bay Area Reporter On the Town columnist Donna Sachet was awarded for her decades of community activism (see her column on page 41).

The pre-show reception included delicious wines, bubblies, and food from MrCrave Bistro, Allegro Romano and other restaurants, which were enjoyed as guests perused the numerous silent auction items.

From veteran actor Richard Chamberlain to young super singer Alex Newell, openly gay artists shined. But despite the stellar array of talent (Roslyn Kind, Jason Brock, Paula West, Carole Cook, Meg Mackay, Marta Lledo, cast members from Motown the Musical and many others), few could compare to Brady Bunch mom Florence Henderson’s kinky rendition of “When You’re Good to Momma,” with the once-matronly TV icon flogging chorus dancers while clad in a leather bustierre!

For more about REAF, visit www.reaf.org t

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

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

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