April 14, 2016 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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

Vol. 46 • No. 15 • April 14-20, 2016

Lottery for SF LGBT senior housing nears

by Matthew S. Bajko

T Rick Gerharter

Friends from Fremont watched the 2015 San Francisco LGBT Pride parade.

SF Pride plans take shape

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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fficials with the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee are preparing for this year’s parade and celebration June 25-26. Improvements in crowd flow and other areas are planned, the entertainment lineup is being developed, and funds are being raised to pay for it all.

George Ridgely, executive director of the SF Pride, said in response to emailed questions that he doesn’t anticipate the crowds being “quite as big” as they were at last year’s events, which came immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples may legally marry in all 50 states.

However, he said, “We hope to see that level of enthusiasm and participation again,” and organizers are working on improving crowd flow.

“We are making changes to the layout of the celebration at Civic Center, but most of those changes are in the back-of-house production areas,” Ridgely said. “Stages and venues will remain in the same locations they have been for many years.”

Details about main stage entertainment headliners aren’t available, but he said, “We are close to making some announcements, hopefully in the next few weeks.”

One detail announced this week is that the stars of the Fuse TV series Transcendent will serve as celebrity grand marshals. Bambiana, Bionka, LA, Nya, and Xristina are a group of young, talented trans women who are expected to be in the parade.

In related news, SF Pride released the names of additional community grand marshals and other honorees. They include: Mia “Tu Mutch” Satya and Fresh White, who are grand marshals; Mike Shriver, Lifetime Achievement Award; Deana Dawn, Audrey Joseph LGBTQ Entertainment Award; Joanie Juster, 10 Years of Service Award; Sally Miller Gearhart, Pride Freedom Award; Mercedez Munro, Pride Creativity Award; and the St. James Infirmary, Pride Community Award.

(The Bay Area Reporter will have more on the honorees next week.)

One development that could have an imSee page 17 >>

he application process for apartments in San Francisco’s first LGBT senior housing development will open in a little more than a month, with the lottery to select residents likely to be held in late June.

The $16 million renovation of 55 Laguna, known as Richardson Hall, is a joint venture between Openhouse, a nonprofit LGBT senior services provider, and Mercy Housing California, which develops below-marketrate housing. The former college building will house 40 apartments, one of which will be set aside for a resident manager and eight will be designated for people living with HIV at risk for homelessness.

It is the first phase in an estimated $40 million project that will result in 119 units of affordable senior housing split between two buildings. An additional nine units are being built than what had been originally proposed by reconfiguring the layout of the second building.

Located at 95 Laguna, it is slated to open in the spring of 2018. It will have 79 apartments, 14 of which will be designated for people living with HIV or AIDS. One unit will house a resident manager, with the rest awarded by lottery.

It is expected that in late May, the official date has yet to be determined, applications for 55 Laguna will be made available for those seniors 55 and older who wish to live in one of the 31 units that will be awarded through the

Rick Gerharter

Construction continues on the 55 Laguna senior housing project.

lottery. A different selection process will be used for the apartments set aside for seniors living with HIV or AIDS. Due to anti-discrimination laws, the city can’t restrict straight seniors from applying to live at 55 Laguna. City officials, however, expect that several criteria being put in place to select the residents should benefit LGBT applicants.

Monthly rents are expected to range from

$821 for a studio to $1,146 for a two bedroom unit.

Gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener told the Bay Area Reporter that the normal 28-day period to apply for the lottery would be reduced to just a week for 55 Laguna.

“Seven days is sufficient to get a very strong response from the community and get people into See page 17 >>

Kim, Wiener outline priorities at Senate debate

by Matthew S. Bajko

I

n their first public debate in their race for San Francisco’s state Senate seat, Supervisors Jane Kim and Scott Wiener staked out a number of different policy stances on housing, transit, and police reforms.

The two Democrats are running to succeed gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who is termed out of his Senate District 11 seat this year and has endorsed Wiener in the race.

They have agreed to a series of debates leading up to the June primary, with the first one, held Wednesday, April 6, drawing a standing-room-only crowd to the city’s LGBT synagogue Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. The Alice B. Toklas and Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic clubs and the Bay Area Reporter co-hosted the nearly 90-minute debate.

Throughout, Kim and Wiener clashed over who would be the best candidate to represent the city’s progressive values in the Legislature.

“San Francisco should be the last place to send another moderate Democrat to Sacramento,” said Kim, who represents District 6 on the Board of Supervisors and is seen as the more liberal of the two candidates.

Wiener, a gay man who represents District 8 at City Hall, countered that the same argument was used against Leno when he first sought a seat in the state Assembly in 2002.

“His opponents said the same thing, ‘You are a moderate.’ Mark Leno is one of the most progressive members of the state Legislature and so will I be,” said Wiener. “I look forward to representing our great progressive city in the

Rick Gerharter

Supervisor Jane Kim, left, makes a point during last week’s state Senate debate with Supervisor Scott Wiener at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav.

California state Senate.”

How to address the steep price of housing in California and the increasing homeless population in many of the state’s cities was a major theme of the debate. Both candidates back reforming the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict their tenants if they want to exit the rental business.

And they both argued the state could be providing more incentives to cities to build belowmarket-rate developments.

“It is not acceptable some towns won’t build affordable housing,” said Wiener. “We need to make sure San Francisco and Oakland are not expected to solve this on our own. The state Legislature can provide those incentives.”

Kim pointed to her co-sponsoring a ballot measure this fall that would tax luxury housing in San Francisco, generating $32 million for the city, and called for the creation of a regional housing trust fund to ensure developments that

{ FIRST OF THREE SECTIONS }

have been approved have the financing they need to be built.

“I’ve taken on affordability in the city. It is the number one issue,” she said. “Whether creating more affordable housing or protecting our existing tenants, I feel I have been able to demonstrate my record of being a fighter for our middle-class and working-class residents.”

On the issue of homelessness, Wiener came out against the “right to rest” legislation currently before state lawmakers because it would prevent San Francisco and other cities from banning people from setting up tents on sidewalks or in parks.

“I don’t believe our state should be hamstringing our ability to deal with our public spaces,” said Wiener, adding that, “we do not need the state to force us to allow people to live and reside on our streets.”

He said doing so “is not humane” and that the city needs “to transition people in those tents to shelter, to housing.”

Kim said she supports the bill because it is a “response to the hateful policies being used in our city to criminalize homelessness.”

She agreed that tent cities are not humane, but added that, “neither is sweeping them when we have nowhere else to put them. If we as a city want to sweep tents, great, then let’s have a place to offer all those individuals and families living in those tents because they have nowhere else to go.”

On transit matters, both candidates voiced support for more funding of public transportation systems, from Muni to BART to Caltrain, and extending the under-construction Central Subway See page 16 >>

6 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-20, 2016

Volume 46, Number 15 April 14-20, 2016 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Seth Hemmelgarn CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Tavo Amador • Race Bannon Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Brian Bromberger • Victoria A. Brownworth Brent Calderwood • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Belo Cipriani Richard Dodds • Michael Flanagan Jim Gladstone • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell • John F. Karr Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Max Leger Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Paul Parish • Sean Piverger • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel • Khaled Sayed Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Sari Staver • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Ed Walsh • Cornelius Washington Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Jay Cribas PRODUCTION/DESIGN Max Leger PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Lydia Gonzales • Jose Guzman-Colon Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd Jo-Lynn Otto • Rich Stadtmiller Steven Underhil • Dallis Willard • Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.829.8937 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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<< Open Forum

t Senior housing close to being realized

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GBT seniors who are interested in living in the apartments at Openhouse’s 55 Laguna Street project need to start working with case managers now to determine whether they qualify for the 39 affordable units that are expected to come online this fall. As most people know, Openhouse’s journey to create the LGBT-welcoming housing units has been a long one, even

by San Francisco standards. But housing is a critical issue here and the fact that construction is almost complete on the first phase of the project is welcome news.

It’s important that qualifying LGBT seniors – those age 55 and over – start the process immediately. Applications will be available in May and a lottery for the units will take place in June. It is likely that there will be thousands of applicants because there are few restrictions.

Openhouse, like other housing providers, can’t discriminate so the units at 55 Laguna cannot be reserved exclusively for LGBT people. The project is being developed with a focus on LGBT seniors, but it’s possible that few LGBT seniors will get a unit through the lottery if there isn’t a large enough pool of applicants.

Lots of straight seniors in the city are in dire need of affordable housing too, and most of them don’t care if they live in a building focusing on LGBT seniors – they’ll take anything. These units aren’t subsidized, meaning that tenants are expected to pay the full rent, although Openhouse is accepting Section 8, Hous-

ing Opportunities for People with AIDS, and other rental assistance programs. According to Openhouse’s website, rent ranges from $821$893 for a studio, $879-$1,019 for a one bedroom, and $1,055-$1,146 for a two bedroom, but those amounts are subject to change.

Openhouse’s idea for LGBT-focused affordable housing started 17 years ago and since then, the need has only intensified. We do support Openhouse allowing seniors who live outside of San Francisco to apply. Over the years, LGBT seniors who could no longer afford to live here had to leave the city; securing an affordable apartment at 55 Laguna is a chance for them to return.

There will only be 15 units available for the general public, because 40 percent of the units are set aside for

residents of District 8, or those living within a half mile of 55 Laguna. Additionally, eight units are set aside for chronically homeless elders living with HIV, which will not be part of the lottery.

In 2018, Openhouse will release another 79 units of affordable senior housing and there may be different selection criteria.

The housing and affordability crisis has severely affected many seniors in San Francisco.

Moreover, many LGBT seniors don’t have the luxury of family members to rely on. This generation of LGBT elders came of age in the closet, and many at that time did not have children of their own. Over the decades those trends have changed – now many more samesex couples and LGBT singles are starting their own families and/or are closer to their biological families than in years past.

But LGBT elders today still face discrimination in some senior facilities from staff lacking proper training to help their LGBT residents. Part of Openhouse’s mission is to provide training to help other service providers create welcoming, supportive, and safe environments for LGBT seniors. As noted in the San Francisco LGBT Aging Policy Task Force’s report two years ago, many LGBTs face isolation in their senior years, and living at a place like 55 Laguna will reduce that. It’s too bad that there isn’t more affordable housing for our elders. With the opening of 55 Laguna later this year, however, a first step will be taken, and we hope that LGBT seniors will benefit from it.

In order to do so, they need to apply for those units and get into the lottery.t

The Hormel Center at 20: An appreciation

by Jim Mitulski

during his Senate confirmation hearings because he was accused of promoting ne of San Francisco’s greatest treawhat the Christian right described as sures is located in the Civic Cenpornography because this offending (to ter, across the mall from City Hall. It is them) item was in the collection made a place where history is preserved and possible by his philanthropic largesse. sometimes history is made. More than This tribute is also a personal one. Most a museum for books, it tells the oftenof my life I have been a minister but I untold story for the diverse communities spent an amazing period serving for more that make up San Francisco. You don’t than a year as the LGBT outreach coordineed a passport, proof of citizenship, a nator of the Hormel Center. I think of it driver’s license, a voter registration card, as a break from religious work but I defia diploma, a credit card, a mortgage, or nitely served in a sanctuary of liberation. even an address to access the rich reThat year I saw Kirk Reed debut his first sources there. The San Francisco Public book with a dramatic gesture, opening the Jane Philomen Cleland Library is a temple of learning where all volume and blowing white powder from A portion of the ceiling mural at the James C. Hormel events are free, and all are welcome. it – at the height of the anthrax craze. I LGBTQIA Center.

Of particular interest to our comsaw Sarah Schulman workshop a new play munity, one of the library’s unique assets in collaboration with Theater Brava, and been the famed college where Allen Ginsberg celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. witnessed Will Daugherty and the Elecand his homosexual cohort of beatniks had Founded as the James C. Hormel Gay and Lestronic Frontier Foundation sound the alarm matriculated, further increased its appeal. bian Center, it was recently renamed the James about the Patriot Act and its chilling effects on Having failed to find any reference to homoC. Hormel Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, the free exchange of knowledge. I helped bring sexuality in the public library in my small town Queer, Intersex, and Allies (and advocates and together Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, Barbara Gitin Michigan, one of my first stops in college agender) Center, because it more accurately detings, and Kay Lahusen (there was a little comwas Butler Library in the center of campus. I scribes the breadth of the collection. It is a library, petitive tension there), the four great pillars of wasn’t disappointed in one regard: homoand accuracy of information matters to staff and Lesbian Liberation, for an event in which we sexuality was listed in the card catapatrons alike. The new name reflects the passion also raised money for a public library in logue – with this notice: see Sexual of its custodians that it remains a living resource, Alaska whose own fledgling gay colPerversions. Today a curious dynamic and changing as the community whose lection had been shut down by local young person does not need to story is honored and recorded there. authorities. I saw the innovation of seek out information in a private The Hormel Center didn’t just happen by Michelle Tea’s Radar Readings, and library at an elite institution and accident. Visionaries like Steve Coulter, Kathy hosted a pioneering conversation have their uneasiness reinforced Page, and Chuck Forrester, to name a few, were between FTMs and butch dykes. by how the information is determined that the new main library would I met authors like Susan Sontag, guarded. Anyone can walk into include a world class collection of materials Red Jordan Arobateau, Lucy Jane the San Francisco Public Library that relate to our community’s contribution Bledsoe, Daniel Wolfe, and E. and have access to the keys to to shaping the broader culture, without fear Lynn Harris, and was moved to their freedom. These collections are still rare of censorship, a hallmark of the American tears to see the largest crowd ever to that point in settings like this. One tribute to its success is public library system. The new collection crowd out the Hormel Center and spill into the how many times it has been successfully repliwould be marked clearly for what it was, not main library when Bishop John Shelby Spong cated in other public libraries today. You don’t shrouded in euphemism or shaming language. spoke, even though no Episcopal Church in San have to be a scholar or already educated or pass The housing of the collection would reflect the Francisco would allow him to do so. That’s what through the scrutiny of a judgmental person’s liberation trajectory of our movement. Not libraries are for. gaze in order to browse here. You just have to buried in a back corner, the Hormel Center, Next week we celebrate the birth of the possess an open and a yearning mind. which bears the name of its principal donor, evolving James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center.

Thanks to creative and dedicated staff like James C. Hormel, has its portal in a coveted Treat yourself to a visit, and acknowledge with the founding manager, Jim Van Buskirk, himcorner location. The Hormel Center’s main gratitude this great resource that even in 2016 self a part of the history of LGBT San Franreading room contains just a taste of the entire is a rare gem.t cisco and a feature of its literary scene, and his trove, and is itself an artfully designed tribute Jim Mitulski is the interim pastor of successor, the equally talented Karen Sundto same-sex love through the ages. If you have Metropolitan Community Church of the heim, who had proven her mettle by turning never visited the center, go spend an hour and Rockies in Denver. He has been the pastor the Eureka Valley branch library into a minitake in the ceiling mural that depicts in names of historically gay churches in Berkeley, outpost of liberation during her tenure there, and images and in bold and beautiful light a San Francisco, Guerneville, Los Angeles, the Hormel Center contains not just books but chronicle of a people who had previously been New York City, and Dallas. In 2001-2 he an esoteric collection of photographs, films, consigned to the shadows. served as the outreach coordinator of the archives of organizations as diverse as ACT UP Forty years ago I was a freshman at CoJames C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center and the Feminist Bookstore News. It’s all here. lumbia University. I chose this school in part at the San Francisco Public Library, There is even a rare copy of a 1970s artifact, the because it had been the host for a few years of through the generosity of the Friends “Cunt Coloring Book,” which almost cost Mr. well-publicized “gay dances.” The fact that it of the San Francisco Public Library. To Hormel the ambassadorship to Luxembourg contact him, email revmitulski@gmail.com. was a men’s school in New York City, and had

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Letters >>

LGBT center’s deficiencies

April 14-20, 2016 • Bay area reporter • 7

The articles announcing the remodel of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center failed to discuss whether the center had addressed the structural deficiencies in governance and leadership responsible for implementing such a failed design in the first place [“SF LGBT center redesign takes shape,” April 7, and “SF LGBT center readies for remodel,” January 31]. A zebra is a horse designed by committee, and the original community center proposal was built with the cornerstone of including a high capacity performing arts and meeting space. Such a model is workable in San Francisco, evidenced by the success of the near-contemporaneous Jewish Community Center. The self-interested neighbors on the board in the planning

stages rejected this due to parking and traffic concerns, but they both failed to create a feasible updated financial model and shoehorned poorly designed windowless offices in a shell designed for something else. It is easy for a board chair to look around and say, “this office is just not rentable,” but the best-laid strategic plans fail when they are willfully blinded to the more fundamental weaknesses (and self interest) of those creating the plans. If the leadership has avoided such an introspective process, it should sigh with relief that the renovation is funded by tax credits taken from the pockets of already overtaxed San Franciscans.

Thomas J. Busse San Francisco

Berkeley, SF may ban city contracts in ‘hate states’

by Matthew S. Bajko

share their local ordinance with the other members of the Mayors Against Discrimination group.

B

erkeley and San Francisco could become the first two cities in the country to not only ban city-funded travel to so-called hate states, those with LGBT discriminatory laws, but also prohibit city agencies to contract with companies in those states.

Lesbian Berkeley City Councilwoman Lori Droste and gay City Councilmen Kriss Worthington and Darryl Moore are co-sponsoring legislation that would impose a moratorium on city publicly funded travel to North Carolina, Mississippi “and any other state which enacts similar legislation that discriminates toward the LGTBQ community.”

Their legislation, to be heard at the council’s April 26 meeting, would also urge the city manager “to refrain from entering into new contracts and consider discontinuing existing contracts with businesses headquartered in North Carolina or Mississippi.”

Worthington, in an email to the Bay Area Reporter, noted that, “Travel bans and contract discontinuations have been effective tools utilized to pressure state government officials into preventing the enactment of discriminatory and immoral legislation.”

At Tuesday’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting, gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener announced that he plans to introduce legislation later this month that would not only ban city-funded travel to, but also contracting with, states that enact anti-LGBT laws.

“San Francisco needs to take a stand to show these states that these kinds of laws are unacceptable, and that we mean business. There need to be economic consequences for states that attack our community,” stated Wiener.

According to Wiener’s office, San Francisco would be the first jurisdiction to outright ban city-funded contracting with companies that are headquartered in states with homophobic and transphobic policies and to ban the purchase of goods and services produced in those states.

The ordinance will contain “a limited process,” according to Wiener, where a city department could appeal to the city administrator to be allowed to bypass the ban “based on certain findings.”

And it will codify into city statute that city-sponsored travel is banned to states with LGBT discriminatory laws. Santa Clara County was the first to institute a travel ban policy last year, and a bill banning statefunded travel to hate states is now before legislators in Sacramento.

The Berkeley City Council is also being asked to support the state legislation, Assembly Bill 1887 authored by gay Assemblyman Evan Low (DCampbell), when it votes on the proposed local legislation from the trio

Wiener introduces LGBT data law

Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington

of out council members.

Wiener first disclosed that his legislation would also address city contracts and not just travel during last week’s state Senate race debate he had with District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim. He is working with Mayor Ed Lee’s office to craft the legislation. It comes after Lee banned by executive order cityfunded travel to North Carolina and Mississippi after those states enacted anti-LGBT laws.

Lee last week also announced the formation of a coalition with mayors from across the country committed to fighting against LGBTbased discrimination. A founding member of the group is Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who last week instituted her own city travel bans to the two Southern states.

Yet to formerly join the mayoral coalition, or push to see his city enact similar travel bans, is San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who would need to work with the City Council to restrict city-funded travel to “hate states.”

In a statement to the B.A.R. Liccardo said, “Every American deserves to be able to live their lives without fear of being harassed or persecuted for their identity. The discriminatory law recently enacted in North Carolina is an affront to not just the LGBTQ community, but to the principles of equality that we in the United States have long stood for. I stand in solidarity with those who have condemned and are seeking to overturn this unjust law.”

The B.A.R. also inquired with the office of San Jose City Councilman Ash Kalra, who has been an outspoken ally on LGBT rights and tangled with former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed over his lack of support for marriage equality, on if he would support working with Liccardo to enact a travel ban.

Spokeswoman Roseryn Bhudsabourg told the B.A.R. that, “Councilmember Kalra has always been a staunch supporter of LGBT rights (and) absolutely supports joining other cities in standing against discriminatory legislation.”

San Francisco officials plan to

Wiener did introduce at Tuesday’s board meeting legislation that will require a number of city agencies to collect LGBT demographic data.

The B.A.R. had reported last month about Wiener’s decision to move forward with the law, which has been under consideration for years. The city’s former LGBT Aging Policy Task Force had urged city officials as far back as 2012 to add questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to various forms and surveys city departments and agencies use.

The panel included LGBT data collection among the recommendations in its final report issued in 2014.

And several city departments, such of public health and aging and adult services, have already added LGBT questions to questionnaires they use.

Under Wiener’s proposal, city departments and contractors providing health care and social services would be required to collect and analyze data concerning the sexual orientation and gender identity of the clients they serve. Answering the questions, however, would be voluntary for the clients.

The legislation would specifically apply to the departments of public health; human services; children, youth and their families; aging and adult services; and the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

If adopted, the departments would have two years to submit a report to the city administrator that includes analysis of the data and identifies all services and programs where LGBT people are underrepresented. The agencies would also be tasked with developing plans to make their services and programs more accessible to the LGBT community.

“Data collection helps us improve services for many underserved and disadvantaged parts of our populations. With this information, our city can better serve our LGBT community,” stated Wiener.

The legislation will be heard later this month, or in early May, in committee before going before the full board for adoption.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 an LGBT legal group’s endorsement in the race for an SF court seat.

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

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

Barry Schneider Attorney at Law

family law specialist* • Divorce w/emphasis on Real Estate & Business Divisions • Domestic Partnerships, Support & Custody • Probate and Wills www.SchneiderLawSF.com

415-781-6500 *Certified by the California State Bar 400 Montgomery Street, Ste. 505, San Francisco, CA

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<< Community News

8 • Bay area reporter • April 14-20, 2016

Startup delivers FESTIVITIES PrEP in California

t

by Liz Highleyman

process via text messages, email, or phone. alifornia residents can Eligible users must then now get PrEP delivered complete lab tests for HIV, to their door via Nurx, a webhepatitis B and C, kidney based app that also provides function, and pregnancy birth control. Clients can get if applicable. Nurx also a prescription for Truvada “strongly suggests” testing after undergoing laboratory for chlamydia, gonorrhea, tests to ensure that they are and syphilis, Gangeskar said. not already HIV-positive and People who are already have normal kidney function.

HIV-positive need combi“By making PrEP more acnation treatment, and using cessible to high-risk users, the Truvada alone can lead to Nurx app has the potential drug resistance. Since teto be a game-changer in the nofovir can cause kidney Nurx co-founder and CEO Hans Gangeskar, fight to end the epidemic,” problems, people with preleft, and co-founder and physician Edvard said company co-founder and existing kidney impairment Engesaeth talk about their medication delivery CEO Hans Gangeskar. should not take Truvada. service in a YouTube video.

A San Francisco PrEP reCDC guidelines call for PrEP searcher talked about the benusers to receive an HIV test efits of the delivery app. include lack of awareness, stigma, every three months, and “The Nurx service is designed to and a shortage of doctors who are STI screening and kidney funcmake PrEP, contraception, and sexwilling to provide it. tion monitoring at least every six ually transmitted infection testing According to a recent report from months. more available to diverse clients,” the Centers for Disease Control and Nurx blood and urine tests can Dr. Robert Grant of UCSF, a leadPrevention, a quarter of gay and be done at any LabCorp location ing PrEP researcher who is advising bisexual men and a fifth of people nationwide. To simplify testing the company, told the Bay Area Rewho inject drugs in the U.S. may be further, the company is looking at porter. “It will be especially helpful eligible for PrEP; adding at-risk hetdispatching phlebotomists to clifor people who live outside of major erosexual men and women brings ents’ homes to draw blood or using cities and have more difficultly findthe total to over 1.2 million. mail-in blood test kits. ing a PrEP provider.”

It is difficult to estimate how If the physician decides a client Even in San Francisco, Grant many people have used PrEP, since is eligible for PrEP, a three-month noted, PrEP clinics are stretched to this information is not centrally supply of Truvada is prescribed and capacity by increasing demand. collected. But experts estimate that delivered to the user’s address. PeoBut others are skeptical about a perhaps 40,000 people in the U.S. ple in the Bay Area can receive PrEP service that provides medication are taking it. Locally, both the San by courier within 24 hours; elsewithout in-person visits with a Francisco AIDS Foundation’s Strut where in the state, pills are shipped doctor. clinic and Kaiser Permanente San via the postal service.

“While the goal to improve acFrancisco have prescribed PrEP for Nurx changes around $15 for cess to effective HIV prevention more than 600 people – mostly gay delivery on top of the cost of PrEP. tools is admirable, removing any men – with no new HIV infections Truvada retails for about $1,500 per or all direct contact with a physiamong those who use it regularly. month and is covered by Medicaid cian or medical provider is not,” Nurx aims to help close the gap, and many insurance companies, said Michael Weinstein of the Los enabling more people to easily acthough copay and deductible poliAngeles-based AIDS Healthcare cess PrEP. cies vary widely. Gilead provides Foundation, who has been critiThe San Francisco-based compayment assistance for eligible cal of PrEP. “At a time when [STI] pany – dubbed the “Uber for birth people. rates are skyrocketing, particularly control” – is backed by the startup “Billing insurance is done directly among young people using hookup incubator Y Combinator and angel by the pharmacies and labs that we apps like Grindr and Tinder, we investors. It launched its app to prowork with, rather than by Nurx,” challenge the wisdom and ethics of vide birth control and emergency Gangeskar told the B.A.R. “We walk an app that allows people to order contraception last December and our users through the billing proa drug to prevent HIV as readily as began offering Truvada in Califorcess for PrEP, as it can definitely be ordering pizza.” nia at the end of March, with plans tricky.” to expand to other states.

Closing the gap “We hope to make PrEP more acMixed opinions The U.S. Food and Drug Admincessible to those that need and want The Nurx founders believe elimiistration approved Gilead Sciences’ it,” said Edvard Engesaeth, a medical nating the need for face-to-face Truvada (tenofovir/emtricitabine) doctor trained in Norway who cointeraction with doctors could imfor pre-exposure prophylaxis in July founded Nurx with Gangeskar. prove access to PrEP. 2012. Studies of gay and bisexual Interested users complete a health “Using the Nurx app allows a men and transgender women have profile on the Nurx website and patient to speak about their sexual shown that Truvada reduces the risk answer questions about their risk history in a much more open way of HIV infection by more than 90 factors and sexual history; a mobile and it gives them the freedom to be percent if used consistently. phone app is also being developed. completely honest without the posYet despite its proven effectiveNurx partner physicians review the sibility to feel judgment from anness, only a small proportion of information to determine if clients other person in the room,” Gangespeople who could benefit from are eligible, and doctors and clients See page 17 >> PrEP are currently using it. Barriers can communicate throughout the

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2 arrested in Nix hit and run case

by Cynthia Laird

S

an Francisco Police announced this week that they have arrested two men in connection with a fatal hit and run accident last November that left a gay man dead.

Dennis Nix, 60, was killed November 22 when a car collided with his scooter in the city’s Ingleside district.

Brendan Wallace, 32, of Broadmoor, in unincorporated San Mateo County, and Heinz Raino Cortado, 34, also of Broadmoor, were arrested in connection with the case.

Wallace was taken into custody at his place of employment in Mountain View. He was identified by police as the driver of a silver-colored Mercedes used in the collision. Cortado surrendered to SFPD officers at the Broadmoor Police Station April 8. He was identified by police as the getaway driver of a second car that allegedly picked up Wallace after the accident.

Courtesy SFPD

Brendan Wallace

Courtesy SFPD

Heinz Raino Cortado

Wallace was booked on vehicular manslaughter, felony hit and run, and providing false information to peace officers. Cortado was booked on felony accessory to the hit and run and providing false information to peace officers.

Wallace entered a not guilty plea Monday in San Francisco Superior Court, according to Alex Bastian, spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. Cortado’s arraignment was set for April 14 at 1:30 p.m.

The arrests followed what police

called “an extensive investigation” by the department’s Traffic Collision Investigative Unit.

The accident occurred at 2:32 a.m.

Sunday, November 22, when Nix was riding his scooter south on San Jose Avenue approaching the Monterey Boulevard exit. A light-colored sedan struck him, police said, and Nix was pronounced dead at the scene.

Nix was a longtime certified financial planner. He was active with the San Francisco FrontRunners, an LGBT running club, and other gay sports organizations. He had left a FrontRunners holiday dinner the night of the accident.

Although arrests have been made, police said that the incident is still under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact Sergeant Michael Alexander at the TCIU at (415) 553-1641 or Text a Tip to TIP411 and begin the text message with SFPD or anonymously at (415) 575-4444.t

t

Community News>>

April 14-20, 2016 • Bay area reporter • 9

SF library’s Hormel Center readies for 20th anniversary

Jane Philomen Cleland

Karen Sundheim, director of the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center, sits in the center as she prepares for a new exhibition that opens April 23.

by Sari Staver

A

new multimedia exhibit on queer history and culture opens at the San Francisco Public Library this month, marking the 20th anniversary of the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center.

From April 16 to August 7, “Queerest.Library.Ever. #Hormelat20” will be on view at three locations in the main library at 100 Larkin Street, as well as at the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial branch at 1 Jose Sarria Court, near 16th Street and Pond in the Castro.

The center, located on the main library’s third floor, is named after gay philanthropist James C. Hormel. It was the first of its kind in the nation to focus on collections documenting LGBTQIA history and culture. Hormel donated $500,000 toward the establishment of the center, which was more than matched by donations from around the world.

When the center originally opened, it was called the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center. Library spokeswoman Michelle Jeffers said that the center was recently renamed, which “has been subtly reflected in the materials for this exhibition.” In addition to lesbians and gays, the center’s name now incorporates bisexuals, transgender people, queers, and intersex people. The A represents allies, advocates, and asexuals, Jeffers said.

In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Hormel, 83, probably best known as the first openly gay U.S. ambassador, serving in Luxembourg from 1999 to 2001, said that 20 years ago, “the notion of having a space specifically dedicated to a constituency was novel.”

At that time he added, the LGBT community was “played down” by the mainstream media and “almost uniformly depicted negatively.”

As a young man, “trying to figure myself out,” said Hormel, “I looked in vain for publications that showed that gay people have value.”

So, he said, when he first heard about plans to create an LGBT library collection, “I thought it would be a terrific opportunity to possibly make a very large difference in the lives of people.”

The upcoming exhibition includes rare posters, photographs, correspondence, documents and objects, all selected from the center’s archival collections of personal papers and organizational records, according to Karen Sundheim, center director.

Sundheim, 60, who has been head of the Hormel Center since 2007, said that in the past year or two, the library has received several “very important” archival collections, including one belonging to the late Rikki Streicher, who owned the iconic lesbian bar, Amelia’s.

In an interview with the B.A.R., Sundheim said that Streicher’s widow, Mary Sager, gave the center 10 photo albums with political and sports mementos going back to the 1960s.

“This is something we’re very proud to be able to show,” Sundheim said.

Other well-known names represented at the center include archives from lesbian pioneers Anne Bannon, Barbara Cameron, and Anna Livia, said Sundheim.

The opening event for the anniversary celebration is entitled, “Teens and Queens,” a multi-generational program that takes place Saturday, April 23 at 2 p.m. in the main library’s Koret Auditorium.

The opening event includes a performance by the Rising Rhythm Project, honoring voguing legends, followed by other performances cel-

ebrating LGBT pioneers and youth.

Other events are also planned.

On May 17, at 6 p.m., the annual Lambda Literary Awards finalists reading will be held in the Latino Hispanic Community Room at the main library.

On June 2, at 6 p.m., the Hormel Center will feature lesbian author Jewelle Gomez, who will read from her book The Gilda Stories on the occasion of its 25th anniversary.

On June 7, at 6 p.m., author Michelle Tea and writer Juliana Delgado Lopez will discuss lesbian and queer literature in “From Sleaze to Classics” in the Koret Auditorium.

And on June 8, at 6 p.m., there will be readings by La Pocha Nostra, La Chica Boom, Chinaka Hodge, and Aya de Leon in the Koret Auditorium.

Other highlights include: “Celebrating Our Past/Creating Our Future,” an exhibit that looks at relationships between lesbian authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers at the Jewett Gallery at the main library; “How We See Ourselves,” which includes alternative gender expression and vintage physique photographs and drawings; “How We Come Together,” an exhibit featuring community groups, bars, and entertainment; and “How We Effect Change,” an exhibit featuring

activism and politics.

During the 15-week celebration, an exhibit documenting four components of the center’s history will be on display. It includes “Making of the Mural,” which documents how the spectacular ceiling mural came about; “How the Hormel

Happened,” recounting the genesis and development of the pioneering affinity center; “Reversing Vandalism,” showcasing art projects created out of vandalized library books and “LGBTQI Shades,” highlighting the See page 18 >>

UNDER ONE ROOF, AND DOWN THE STREET. Kaiser Permanente is now open in Mission Bay.

2016 WINNER Kaiser Permanente, Best Healthcare Provider Bay Area Reporter’s Readers Choice Award

Thank you, Bay Area Reporter readers for again choosing Kaiser Permanente as the “BEST HEALTH CARE PROVIDER” in 2016.

At Kaiser Permanente our doctors are focused on more than practicing good medicine. They take the time to really listen. And give all members the personalized, culturally sensitive care they deserve.

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<< Business News

10 • Bay area reporter • April 14-20, 2016

t

Gay demographer trades data sets for wine vats

by Matthew S. Bajko

G

ary Gates achieved national renown for his pioneering demographic studies on the country’s LGBT community. Nowadays he is looking to make a mark in viticulture.

Having retired earlier this year from the Williams Institute, the LGBT think tank housed at the UCLA School of Law, Gates has turned his focus from data sets to wine vats. He and his husband, Mike Beary, are coowners of Mandrake Wines based in Santa Maria, California.

“I would call it a new project in retirement ... career seems a little too much and hobby not quite enough,” Gates, 54, who lives with Beary, 47, in Seattle, told the Bay Area Reporter.

The couple teamed up with two longtime Santa Barbara County winemakers, Josh Klapper and Alex Katz, who are both straight, and produced a 2013 vintage Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon, the first 1,600 cases of which were released late last year.

“Given my retirement, the timing seemed perfect. I’ve been devoting a fair bit of time now learning more about the business side of winemaking, especially marketing and distribution,” explained Gates. “Later this year, I plan to spend time at the winery during harvest to start to learn more about the actual winemaking process.”

The full name for the winery’s inaugural release is Lady of the Mandrake Cabernet Sauvignon, whose label depicts a woman with arms crossed above her head and a torso that morphs into the roots of a vegetable.

It explains that the lady in question refers to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and pleasure, “attributes that we like to associate with our wine,” wrote Gates in an email. “Mandrake has a deep red color and is designed to have a ‘luscious’ flavor profile that evokes the traits associated with Aphrodite.”

The Mandrake root, he added, “is also said to have magical and mystical properties (see Harry Potter), something that we’d like to think is true of our wine.”

They did “pretty extensive research,” said Gates, to make sure they didn’t run into any legal troubles and picked a unique name, as “there are just a lot of wine names out there.”

The couple have long been oenophiles, with Gates’ first forays into Napa Valley occurring in the mid1980s when, working as a software engineer, he would travel to Silicon Valley to work on a project.

“My husband is also a wine aficionado, so our 21 years together have included trips to several wine regions in California and now in Washington, France, Italy, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand,” said Gates.

Cynthia Laird

Diverse Families offers a line of dolls – and books – that reflect the diversity of today’s families.

James LaCroce

Mandrake Wines’ inaugural release is Lady of the Mandrake Cabernet Sauvignon.

After moving to Los Angeles in 2004, one of their Realtors had given them a gift certificate to Sona, a popular restaurant where Klapper was the sommelier. The trio struck up a friendship, and soon thereafter, Klapper launched his own winery, now called Timbre.

“Through our friendship with him and his business partner, Alex, we started to develop an interest in getting involved in winemaking and jumped at the chance to partner with them on the Mandrake project last year,” said Gates.

They sourced their grapes from a single vineyard in the heart of the Paso Robles wine region. After being aged for 12 months sur-lie – French for “on the lees” – in a combination of stainless steel tank, French oak, and American oak barrels, the wine was given an additional 12 months to finish in bottle before being released in October.

As described on the winery’s website, “the wine is dark, with a rich aromatic bouquet of black cherry, cassis, and sandalwood. The palate is rich and delicious, with notes of blackberry, plum, cigar box, and marzipan, and finishes with a hint of cocoa powder and clove.”

About 19,000 bottles were produced and are available for purchase, at $25 each, online via http:// www.mandrakewine.com.

trouble finding the right gift for Beckett, the son of her stepdaughter, Lisa Wise, and her wife, Cameron Cohen.

“When Cameron and Lisa were pregnant with Beckett, I was thinking, ‘Oh, what can I buy?’ I wanted something really special for him,” recalled Katz, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist who lives in Boise, Idaho.

She couldn’t find anything she liked, so inspired by a dream, Katz decided to create her own line of dolls and illustrated books for children who have same-sex or mixedrace parents.

“It sounds kind of silly, but I woke up out of a deep sleep and had in my mind a family of dolls on a dresser,” said Katz, 64. “Wouldn’t that be the coolest thing, if kids in LGBT families have dolls that look like their family?”

Under the name Diverse Families, Katz created a line of child and parent dolls that cost $49 and can be ordered online at www.diversefamilies.com. The company also sells dolls that can be donated to a local shelter for $49 that it will match doll-for-doll.

Picture or coloring books, created

by Katz and illustrated by Alison Hershey Manes, sell for $10 each.

Customers can also have the dolls custom made to resemble their own

family members by submitting a photo ($89) or create their own doll from a menu of options such as hair, eye, and skin color ($59).

“The most popular have been the custom dolls where people send a photo in and dress them the way people want them to be dressed. You can add special touches like nose rings, tattoos, or beards,” said Katz.

“We got a really cool request from a mom with a deaf girl who wanted a doll with brightly colored hearing aids. Those are the most fun when you can be creative.”

The New York native has her own diverse family. In addition to her stepdaughter’s family, Katz’ daughter, Sabra Katz-Wise, lives with her wife, Julie Keller, in Boston, and another daughter lives in London.

The family is a mixture of natural children, adopted children, children with medical issues, and multiracial members.

“What I grew up thinking was a family is not a family anymore,” said Katz. “But the products on the shelves, for the most part, and books in schools, for the most part, are showing your basic white, twoparent family.”

Rachel Linquist, who also lives in Boise and had been selling her own custom-made dolls on Etsy, where Katz discovered her, designs the line of eco-friendly dolls. The women launched Diverse Families in November, and Katz is now focused on marketing the brand.

“It has been overwhelmingly positive. I get lots of people saying it is such a cool idea, so great, so needed,” she said. “We just have to translate that into sales.”

Gay-owned caterer expands focus

La Bonne Cuisine, a gay-owned catering company based in Oakland, has expanded its business to tap into

Psychologist’s family inspires doll line

Wanting to be a dotting grandmother, Sharon Katz was having

Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

White Crown Photography

Christophe Kubiak, executive chef of La Bonne Cuisine Catering, and his husband, Sebastien Sanges, celebrated at their wedding two years ago.

the growing trend of companies providing lunch to their employees.

Paris-born chef Christophe Kubiak, 49, launched the business 21 years ago, and for the first decade, focused on catering corporate events. In 1997 his now husband, Sebastien Sanges, 38, bought half of the company.

“It was successful out of the door, but we grew very slowly,” said Kubiak, who moved to the Bay Area in 1993. “We grew over the course of 20 years. We never advertised, so it was all word of mouth.”

The couple added weddings in 2006 and now caters up to 45 weddings a year. They ask that couples have a catering budget of at least $7,000 when engaging their services.

In January the company, which now employs 26 people, began offering drop-and-go lunch catering for offices at $9 per person. Companies are required to sign up for at least three days a week and for a minimum of 50 people.

The meal includes two salads, two entrees – one meat and one vegetarian, one starch, and one vegetable.

“Most do not want dessert,” said Kubiak, noting that in many workplaces today there is a “wall full of snacks already. I don’t think people can take more sweets.”

The service, said Kubiak, is ideal for those employers who want to provide such a perk for their staffs without having to have a cafeteria on site.

“Our volume has been getting higher and higher and has allowed us to access good produce but keep the price low,” said Kubiak. “They don’t want to spend a huge amount of money on food, so you have to find a balance. We don’t make money per person but on the volume.”

Plus, the food “is fabulous and made by a French chef mostly,” added Kubiak. “And gay, but who is not gay in San Francisco?”

The company being gay-owned has benefited from being certified as such by the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

It allowed La Bonne Cuisine to vie for and win a $100,000 catering contract from the Super Bowl 50 host committee through its diverse supplier initiative.

And the company is pitching its catering services to local companies, such as PG&E and Google, that have their own initiatives to contract with minority- and LGBTowned companies.

“They have specific programs if you are a minority-owned business, especially gay- or lesbian-owned, trying to give you an advantage in the vendor side,” said Kubiak.

To learn more about La Bonne Cuisine and its catering services, visit http://www.LaBonneCuisine. com.t Got a tip on LGBT business news? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or e-mail m.bajko@ ebar.com.

t

Community News>>

April 14-20, 2016 • Bay area reporter • 11

LGBT Japanese gather for Bay Area conference

by Heather Cassell

A

n estimated 160 people recently turned out for Tadaima, the Bay Area’s first-ever LGBT Japanese-American conference, which was held at San Jose State University.

Tadaima, which translates to “I’m home,” is a common call and response Japanese greeting, explained Bonnie Sugiyama, 39, a gender queer individual who was the main organizer of the conference.

“It’s been really great to be able to bring this opportunity to talk about these issues of multiple identities that people have because they really do have an impact on how we grow up and how we come out or how we are treated by society,” said Sugiyama.

The April 2 conference addressed topics such as coming out, being transgender, Japanese-American and Hawaiian LGBT identities, family, Japanese-American queer art, Buddhist and Christian faiths, and the Japanese-American LGBT movement.

Congressman Mike Honda (DSan Jose), who has a transgender granddaughter, kicked off the daylong event telling the audience that the LGBT experience is a “journey toward normalcy.”

It is that experience and journey that helps families and the wider world expand its understanding of “who we are and how we think” and it “allows people a place to be so they can say, ‘I’m home, I never left,’” Honda said prior to the first panel discussion, which included his daughter, Michelle Honda-Phillips.

Honda’s granddaughter, Malisa Honda-Phillips, was also in the audience.

Michelle Honda-Philips was joined by mother and son activists Marsha and Aiden Aizumi, and another transgender person, who asked not to be identified, on the “The Journey to Living Out Loud” panel.

The panelists discussed their experience of acceptance from the parent and the transgender child perspectives. Some of the advice they offered was that parents and others would make mistakes and sometimes be “unintentionally offensive” during the transition.

The mothers on the panel talked about fear, family honor, as well as taking responsibility for their own journey, keeping an open heart and gratitude.

In the face of the lack of information and resources, Honda-Phillips said that parents of transgender children must recognize the “insistence, persistence, and consistence” of a child’s gender identity to “shift our culture and allow them to explore the gender spectrum and help them find their voice.”

“Through this journey I realized that I can best honor my family by standing next to my son,” said Marsha Aizumi. “I would hope that they would look at something like this ... [and] would make them proud as well.”

Honda-Phillips agreed, speaking proudly of her daughter.

“Living out loud is our only choice. She is worthy of standing tall and proud of who she is,” she said.

Aiden Aizumi told the audience that from his perspective as the child transitioning that he didn’t consider his parents’ experience. He didn’t really allow them to have their own process while he was discovering his transgender identity. So, he wasn’t always compassionate.

He advised other transgender

Jo-Lynn Otto

Bonnie Sugiyama was one of the main organizers of Tadaima, the Bay Area’s first-ever LGBT Japanese-American conference.

individuals to pause, consider their parents and family’s process and allow them the space and compassion to go through their own experience.

In spite of the challenges through his transition he said he felt grateful for having his parents’ unconditional love and access to the medical services he needed. He said that he was aware that many other transgender people don’t always have what he had.

The panel was a hit among attendees, said Sugiyama, who is also the director of the Pride Center and the Gender Equity Center at San Jose State University.

“I think what we’ve seen has been amazing,” said Sugiyama, who modeled the event after the Okaeri conference, a similar LGBT JapaneseAmerican gathering in Los Angeles in 2014. “People have been really engaged with the different topics that have been talked about.”

Identifying issues

One of the issues that Sugiyama heard throughout the conference was the fact that the JapaneseAmerican LGBT community is very small. Not because there aren’t queer Japanese-Americans, but simply because the Japanese-American community overall isn’t migrating to the United States as much or creating large families, said Sugiyama.

“For me, only having met a few people, I can only imagine how ... a general community member must feel maybe a little isolated,” Sugiyama continued. “So, creating this community, an opportunity for folks to meet each other, was one of the things that was really important to us.”

A.T. Furuya, who was one of the presenters for the “Community Building for Trans/Gender Nonconforming/Non-Binary/Gender Queer Nikkei/JA People” workshop, agreed.

“This is important for me because our communities are so small,” said Furuya, who self-identifies as a queer trans person. “Being able to connect with other folks who share a kind of common – at least one common – aspect of our really diverse identities is really important.

“Being in this space, for me, is powerful to see other queer API people and the resistance and resilience,” said Furuya, who was excited about seeing the different generations coming together and listening to the different conversations happening at the conference.

“Being able to deconstruct and unpack the oppression that we face as a community, whether that is oppressing your Japanese-American identity, or your sexuality, or your See page 18 >>

<< Community News

12 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-20, 2016

t

Conference looks at mental health grant-funded projects

by Elliot Owen

G

rant-funded learning projects conducted within various segments of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and two-spirit community to help mental health providers were the focus of a recent conference in the East Bay. Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services held the conference showcasing 13 mental health learning projects.

The learning projects, conducted over an 18-month period between 2014 and 2016, were funded by the Mental Health Services Act Innovation Grants Program, a funding component of the Mental Health Services Act passed in 2004 which allocates money toward expanding California’s county mental health systems.

The learning project conference, held March 24 at UC Berkeley, was the latest in a series of three presenting Innovation Grants Program-funded projects that take different approaches toward mental health practices.

“These are learning projects that help mental health providers learn how to serve consumers and clients better, and help the county system learn from their strategies and projects,” ACBHCS Innovation Grants coordinator Linda Leung Flores told the Bay Area Reporter. “Alameda County is so diverse, and we’re always looking for ways to improve our services. The LGBT population in particular is growing and so are the needs, and we need to include more culturally-specific ways to

serve this group of people.”

The 26 projects highlighted at the conference – attended by 200 people – were geared toward two target populations: isolated adult and older adult consumers and their families, and LGBTQI2S clients and consumers.

The LGBTQI2S project grantees ranged from LGBT-specific service providers to general mental health organizations. With the goal of developing an innovative tool that ACBHCS and other providers can apply toward more culturally competent LGBTQI2S-affirmative care, each project focused on either a welcoming toolkit, program design, or training curriculum.

The 13 LGBTQI2S projects garnered $900,000 total from the Innovation Grants Program with individual grants ranging from $35,000 to $200,000.

Welcoming all identities

The conference’s morning session included a panel for grantees with projects that addressed mental health provider welcoming strategies that fall short in affirming LGBTQI2S identities.

Present on the panel was Leslie Ewing, executive director of the Pacific Center for Human Growth, a Berkeley-based LGBT mental health care provider and community center that received an Innovation grant for the project: ACBHCS Welcoming Toolkit Update.

“Alameda County’s welcoming toolkit is a document that’s half procedure and half policy for staff people

Elliot Owen

Representatives of the Overall Wellness Movement project attended a recent conference and include, top row from left, minister Katheren Campbell; the Reverend Janice Sommerville; Kristee Haggins, Ph.D.; and the Reverend Doretha Williams-Flournoy.

Bottom row from left, the Reverend Dr. Donna Allen, minister Karen Lord-Nixon, and the Reverend Dr. Toni Dunbar.

and providers to use when they greet and welcome people from a vast intersection of communities,” Ewing told the B.A.R. “And there hasn’t been an LGBT component to it.”

Based on the project’s findings, recommendations made to ACBHCS included allowing clients and consumers to choose their personal pronouns and preferred name, having on-hand comprehensive resource lists for LGBTQI2S micro-populations, and installing gender-neutral bathrooms in facilities serving the public.

Kristee Haggins, Ph.D., senior associate at the California Institute for Behavioral Health Solutions, a mental health nonprofit, echoed the need for an ACBHCS welcoming toolkit revamp. The panel in-

cluded a project of CIBHS called “Alameda County Peer Support in Congregations: Welcoming Toolkit Feedback.”

“We wanted to ask if it really fit for the community,” Haggins told the B.A.R. “We know that an awareness of populations of color that are also of low socioeconomic status is something that’s important to the LGBTQ population in particular.

That’s one thing [ACBHCS] wants to be thinking about.”

The project used a collaborative of five Alameda County churches with congregations that are primarily African-American, LGBTQI2Saffirming, and “radically-inclusive of all identities,” Haggins said, “which means some of their leader-

ship identifies as LGBTQ.” Through field testing and focus groups conducted both in and outside religious settings, the churches gathered information used to make recommendations to the current ACBHCS welcoming toolkit.

Recommendations produced by the project included making multigender identity, multicultural, and multi-age images visible to clients and consumers; having clinicians who are skilled in navigating the complexity of LGBTQI2S identity and spirituality/religion available; and employing homophobia-free security guards.

LGBTQI2S-affirmative training

After the panel, attendees broke out into groups to attend workshops held by grantees with projects centered around training curricula and program designs.

With nearly 20 years of experience training mental health care professionals, it’s no surprise the Pacific Center secured three additional Innovation grants around that skill, and presented those projects during the conference’s workshop segment.

The three projects documented the organization’s existing training strategies for peer group facilitation training or LGBTQ cultural competency within service provision practices.

“The idea,” Ewing said, “is that these projects will soon be in the public domain and other agencies and organizations can adapt or See page 17 >>

North Carolina: Common sense

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

S

ince North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2, which, among other things, criminalizes trans restroom use in state facilities and schools, a number of things have happened.

Most devastatingly, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed that state’s House Bill 1523, which goes even further on transgender bathroom use. Not only does it include similar language to North Carolina’s new law, but it also grants businesses, employers, and schools immunity from any action from the state regarding usage of

so-called intimate facilities.

It also bars any punishment for therapists and physicians who opt not to treat transgender people. I want to stress that while lawmakers were clearly talking specifically about trans-specific needs, this could have far-reaching consequences, effectively shutting transgender people out of any health care whatsoever in the state of Mississippi. HB 1523 includes a host of other anti-LGBT provisions dealing with marriage, adoption, and other issues.

Several other states, emboldened by North Carolina and Mississippi, are looking at bills of their own. Tennessee has reintroduced the previously

shelved HB 2414, while Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Missouri have bills or ballot initiatives in the works. I suspect there will be even more by the time you read these words.

But back to North Carolina, which is bearing the brunt of the backlash – for now.

According to numbers released by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, the law could cost the city over 89,000 hotel room stays due to canceled, lost, or hesitant events and organizations. If one assumes that is a loss of $100 a night, that’s a total of $8.9 million in forfeited revenue just to Charlotte hotels alone.

PayPal has opted to cut a major expansion project that was in the works for North Carolina, to the tune of 400 jobs, while Lionsgate Home Entertainment and A&E Networks are pulling film and TV projects from the state. Oh, and as an additional loss, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have canceled a tour stop in the Tar Heel State. Bryan Adams and Billy Ray Cyrus have also stepped up, canceling planned shows in North Carolina and Mississippi.

Lawmakers in North Carolina have attempted to strike back.

Congressman Robert Pittenger (R-North Carolina) has attempted to paint PayPal as hypocritical, citing the company’s business dealings in countries that criminalize homosexuality, while Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest (R) attempted the same by noting that PayPal has gender-specific restrooms in its global operations center. Meanwhile, Congressman Mark Walker (R-North Carolina) called Springsteen a “bully” for not playing in the state, and has opted to welcome instead upcoming shows by Justin Bieber and Def Leppard.

I’m not going to waste space explaining how it is not bullying not to perform in a place where you disagree with its politics, or how having gender-specific restrooms somehow means you cannot be

Christine Smith

trans welcoming. Instead, I want to take a moment to look at one of the larger arguments McCrory and his cronies have put forward about their reasons for passing this law.

McCrory has, at every turn, tried to declare that the law was one of “common sense,” a reaction to the supposed overreach of trans protections in Charlotte.

On McCrory’s personal website, he spoke out on a page titled “The Faces on NC’s Commonsense Privacy Law,” saying, “The city of Charlotte passed an ordinance that would require businesses to allow anyone of any gender to enter any bathroom or changing room at any time.

“This same ordinance was voted down by the city council last year because of concerns it went too far, allowing men to use women’s restrooms and opening the door for sex offenders and pedophiles to exploit this opportunity as they have done in other states,” McCrory continued.

“Despite concerns from lawmakers and Charlotte residents, the Charlotte City Council passed it anyway.”

As he has done before, McCrory’s facts aren’t quite up to snuff. For example, his link to show how sex offenders have done this in other locations goes to a Washington state news report on a protester who disrobed in a women’s locker room as a way to speak out against a Washington law. In other words, lacking

any real-world examples of such behavior, trans opponents have been forced to make up their own and exploit examples of inappropriate and illegal behavior.

McCrory and others pressing for these laws continue to pursue a “big lie” strategy, believing if they frame them as gateways for pedophiles and sex offenders, people will accept them. In many ways, they’re right: humans are easily swayed by arguments that their wives and daughters – note that they never concern themselves with boys and other men in any of this – will be victims thanks to a runaway government and agenda-driven leftist activists.

Let’s talk common sense, though, as this is the term they like to invoke.

If you are faced with someone who appears male, then one would, naturally assume they would use a men’s restroom. Likewise, if someone appears female, they would naturally use a women’s restroom. Let’s also assume that these same folks know they are members of the genders they are presenting as. The wide judgment would be that these folks should use restrooms appropriate to their gender identity and expression – which is exactly what the original Charlotte ordinance covered.

Meanwhile, there are, of course, laws that already exist that cover what happens when a predator attempts to enter facilities of any gender to commit a crime: they are arrested and charged, and no amount of them shouting “I’m transgender” can change that.

What McCrory and his ilk are doing, therefore, are making up laws that are unnecessary and single out a population that will be further victimized by them. Meanwhile, they cause harm to their state and political careers, all while not dealing with real issues faced by their constituents.

Now who’s not using their common sense?t Gwen Smith thinks it’s time to flush these bills. You’ll find her at http://www.gwensmith.com.

If you’re living with HIV, you may face another clinical challenge to healthy aging

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For additional trial details, see the full Prescribing Information at EGRIFTA.com.

a

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SELECTED RISK INFORMATION What is EGRIFTA ®?

• EGRIFTA ® is an injectable prescription medicine to reduce the excess in abdominal fat in HIV-infected patients with lipodystrophy. The impact and safety of EGRIFTA ® on cardiovascular health has not been studied.

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EGRIFTA ® may cause serious side effects including: • Serious allergic reaction. Stop using EGRIFTA ® and get emergency help right away if you have symptoms such as a rash over your body, hives, shortness of breath or trouble breathing, swelling of your face or throat, fast heartbeat, and feeling of faintness or fainting.

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A Transformation From Within

IMPORTANT PATIENT INFORMATION The following is a brief summary only. See complete Prescribing Information at EGRIFTA.com or request complete Prescribing Information by calling 1-844-347-4382. This information does not take the place of talking to your doctor about your medical condition or your treatment.

What is EGRIFTA ® (tesamorelin for injection)?

• EGRIFTA ® is an injectable prescription medicine to reduce the excess in abdominal fat in HIV-infected patients with lipodystrophy. The impact and safety of EGRIFTA ® on cardiovascular health has not been studied.

• EGRIFTA ® is not indicated for weight loss management.

• It is not known whether taking EGRIFTA ® helps improve compliance with anti-retroviral medications.

Do not use EGRIFTA ® if you: • have pituitary gland tumor, pituitary gland surgery or other problems related to your pituitary gland.

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• Injection-site reactions. Change (rotate) your injection site to help lower your risk for injection-site reactions. Call your healthcare provider for medical advice if you have the following symptoms around the area of the injection site: • redness • bleeding • itching • rash • pain • swelling • irritation The most common side effects of EGRIFTA ® include: • joint pain • nausea • pain in legs and arms • vomiting • swelling in your legs • rash • muscle soreness • itching • tingling, numbness and pricking These are not all the possible side effects of EGRIFTA ®. For more information, ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist.

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Manufactured by: Jubilant HollisterStier General Partnership, 16751 Trans-Canada Highway, Montreal, Québec, Canada H9H 4J4 Distributed by: Theratechnologies Inc., 2015 Peel Street, Montreal, Québec, Canada H3A 1T8.

EGRIFTA® and EGRIFTA ASSIST ® are registered trademarks of Theratechnologies Inc. © 2016 Theratechnologies Inc. All rights reserved. 190-01-12/15

Community News>>

t Castro merchants, residents complain about police

by Seth Hemmelgarn

M

erchants and residents of San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood told police and other officials that they are exasperated with slow responses, or no responses at all, from officers when they call for help to deal with homeless people, shoplifters, and other neighborhood concerns.

At the April 7 meeting of the Castro Merchants business group, members dedicated most of the time to public safety issues. Police said that with staffing shortages, it’s hard to dedicate patrols to the area, but one department official pledged to get a beat cop in the neighborhood almost immediately.

Gay Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose District 8 includes the Castro, said, “I know the situation is very frustrating,” but despite what some advocates for the homeless have said, “there are places for people on the street to go.”

Wiener, a Castro resident, said everyone supports expanding shelters, mental health services, and other assistance, and “it’s not about criminalizing anyone.”

However, he said, “until we have the fortitude and the backbone to deal with the behavior on the street, we could invest another billion dollars, and it’s not going to help.”

He said tent encampments on the city’s sidewalks are one of the problems that need to be uniformly prohibited, in accordance with the law.

“Until we actually start addressing the issue in a consistent and proactive way,” the problem is “never going to go away,” Wiener said.

Wiener, who’s running for the District 11 state Senate seat, said at the meeting that his comments weren’t meant as a criticism solely of the police, because it’s something the whole city needs to deal with.

After hearing complaints about the lack of police responsiveness and the desire for beat cops, Deputy Chief Michael Redmond said, “We don’t have the staffing” to say police could provide beat cops for 24-hour coverage.

“We’re just treading water handling calls for service,” he said.

However, he said, “There will be some beat officers starting up here tomorrow.”

Redmond added, “There’s a lot of frustration in the room, and that’s not acceptable.” He encouraged people to have “direct communication” with Mission Station, which oversees the Castro and other neighborhoods Redmond said, “Those response times are unacceptable. No one should have to wait that long.” He

April 14-20, 2016 • Bay area reporter • 15

Rick Gerharter

A man slept on Market Street near Castro Monday afternoon.

said he would talk to Captain Dan Perea, who heads Mission Station but wasn’t able to attend Thursday’s meeting.

“Captain Perea works his butt off,” Redmond said.

Wiener said, “This is not about criticizing Captain Perea. ... He tried really, really hard,” but “there’s so much going on in the Mission” overall. The district sees some of the highest levels of crime in the city, and Wiener said the Castro doesn’t get the attention it needs. He talked about people injecting drugs in Harvey Milk Plaza,

DogFest benefit coming to Duboce Park

among other problems, and he said more officers are needed.

For years, Wiener has been working to boost the police department’s staffing levels. Redmond said there have been more police academy classes, and it’s a priority “to get more cops in the Mission,” not necessarily to make arrests, but to increase police visibility.

Redmond also told those gathered, “It’s important we educate you a little bit on how to talk to dispatch,” so that calls are prioritized correctly.

He also sought to assure people that the sit-lie law, which bans people from sitting or lying on public sidewalks, is being enforced and police keep track of who’s admonished, although some at the meeting ex-

pressed doubts about that.

Another police official urged people to get a restraining order if someone is repeatedly causing problems, since that could help lead to that person being arrested if they violate the order.

Redmond also added, “There’s some education we have to do with some of the judges,” since sometimes, “They think we’re making things up.”

He echoed Wiener’s comments that more services are needed.

“If we push them from your store, they’re going to go to someone else’s store,” Redmond said. “... We can’t arrest or cite our way out of this.”

In an interview after the meeting, Miguel Lopez, an owner of Sui Generis Designer Consignment, which has two shops in the Castro, said the different entities involved in addressing neighborhood concerns “don’t have communication between them.

Everyone doesn’t know what’s happening with the other one. They have to address that ... in order to better serve the community here.”

Like others at the meeting, Lopez worries about the safety of his employees, especially when it comes to having to confront potential shoplifters and similar situations.

He also said the meeting opened his eyes to how common the problems are.

“I thought it was just me, or maybe there were a couple more businesses with the same issues, but I was overwhelmed today that everyone had something to say,” Lopez said.t

compiled by Cynthia Laird

T

he ninth annual DogFest, a benefit for McKinley Elementary School, will be held Saturday, April 16 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Duboce Park, located at Duboce Avenue and Noe Street in San Francisco.

The event includes something for dogs and their human families alike.

There’s the “Everyday Dog Show,” that canines can enter in several categories, as well as competitions in tricks and costumes. Registration for the dog contests is $20.

For kids there will be bouncy houses, face painting, and carnival games. There will also be plenty of doggie vendors and the Rescue Zone will have adoptable dogs on hand. The master of ceremonies will be Daniel Handler, author of the Lemony Snicket books.

McKinley Elementary School is a public K-5 school at Castro and 14th streets.

Duboce Park is very popular with dog guardians, and was voted as the city’s best dog park by Bay Area Reporter readers in the paper’s recent Besties poll.

For more information, visit http://mckinleyschool.org/dogfest/.

Lambda Legal to hold benefit in SF

Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund will hold its San Francisco Soiree Friday, April 15 at 6 p.m. at City View at Metreon, 135 Fourth Street.

The evening will highlight some of Lambda Legal’s ongoing work for LGBT people and those living with HIV. Tickets are $300 and can be purchased online at http://www.lambdalegal.org/sfsoiree.

SPUR forum will focus on in-law housing

SPUR, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, will hold a forum on

San Francisco Columbarium

THE cemetery for cremated remains in the CITY! Jane Philomen Cleland

A group of dogs prepared to play recently at Duboce Park.

in-law housing Tuesday, April 19 at 12:30 p.m. at its offices, 654 Mission Street in San Francisco.

Panelists on “Making Room(s) for our In-Laws” will include Lori Droste, a lesbian who is on the Berkeley City Council; Rachel Ginis, with Lilypad Homes; and Darin Ranelletti, with the Oakland Department of Planning and Building.

Organizers noted that secondary housing units are a compact, flexible housing type that provide many kinds of benefits to individuals and families at many phases of life. Secondary units can be added nearly anywhere, they said in a news release, without having significant impact on a neighborhood’s character of function, organizers added.

Many cities around the Bay Area are revisiting their regulations to allow and even encourage secondary units.

The panel will discuss three places where these changes are already happening.

Pre-registration is not required.

Admission is free for SPUR members and $10 for non-members.

For more information, visit http:// www.spur.org/events/2016-04-19/ making-rooms-our-laws.

Tenderloin Museum to hold volunteer fair

The Tenderloin Museum will hold is second volunteer fair Thursday, April 21 at 398 Eddy Street (at Leavenworth).

The evening begins with a reception at 6:30, followed at 7 by presentations from local organizations that are seeking volunteers.

Participating groups include: Larkin Street Youth Services, which works to create a continuum of services to inspire youth to move beyond the street; Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, which operates several social service programs; Shanti Project, which works to enhance the health and quality of life for people living with terminal, life-threatening, or disabling illnesses; Skywatchers, which works to engage Tenderloin residents as storytellers, performers, and audience members; and Code Tenderloin, a start-up workforce development and job-readiness program that places people into entry-level jobs and internships at the city’s Mid Market tech companies and other local businesses.

The event is free. To RSVP, visit the Facebook event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/ 1670948106492012/167095141982 5014/.

See page 18 >>

Planning for the inevitable is easy to “put off.”

Meet Your Neighbors

You’ve made choices throughout life.

You’re invited to mix and mingle with the people who will one day share your permanent San Francisco address.

Why let someone else Wine & Cheese Open House make this one for you.

Friday, July 19, 2013 2—5pm RSVP Required: (415) 752-8791

I’d be proud to help you 1 Loraine Court—San Francisco, CA 94118 find your special niche in history.

Call Mary Regan (415) 336-2419 Reserve your niche in history!

Visit us at 1 Loraine Court, in the Richmond District COA 660

Serving the LGBT Community with Pride!

<< Sports

t Nothing could be finer than to pressure Carolina 16 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-20, 2016

by Roger Brigham

I

t should be obvious to even the most casual of political observers that the strides social equality and justice have made in recent years have triggered a Neanderthal backlash – a backlash from which sports has no immunity.

North Carolina has triggered headlines and protests ever since lawmakers there convened a special session – their first such special session in 35 years – to override the actions of local progressive communities that offered civil rights protections to LGBT individuals.

Under the new law, which became effective a day before a recently enacted non-discrimination bill was set to take effect in Charlotte, transgender men and women are now required to use the restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the

gender listed on their birth certificates – not the gender in which they live their lives.

In the private sector, some companies have canceled business expansion plans in the state as a protest, entertainers have called off concerts, and municipalities have canceled convention travel plans. Sports, however, are caught in this quagmire of conflicting state and federal regulations, Title IX, their own nondiscrimination policies – and the desire to do the right thing.

On April 6, USA Rugby said it was reconsidering allowing any playoffs or championships to be held in the state because of the new law.

“USA Rugby, the national governing body for the sport of rugby in the United States, and our partner, the National Small College Rugby Organization, would like to

express our deep concerns over the recent legislation passed in North Carolina,” the organization said in a news release. “Our philosophy is one of inclusiveness, tolerance, and belief in the dignity of the athlete regardless of one’s personal beliefs.

USA Rugby, NSCRO, and all of our rugby partners on and off the field, and the more than one hundred thousand registered USA Rugby members we represent, respectfully request the North Carolina Legislature repeal laws that effectively warrant discrimination against certain individuals. Without such action, we will be forced to reconsider North Carolina as a future viable location for our playoff competitions and our national championships.”

If the North Carolina law is not repealed or ruled unconstitutional, next year’s NBA All-Star Game, which is scheduled to be played in Charlotte, could became a testing ground of the league’s commitment to non-discrimination.

Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry, who’s from North Carolina, gave a rather muddled and noncommittal response when asked

Former NBA star and current TV analyst Charles Barkley

about the law, merely calling the intersection of discriminatory state laws and the NBA policies “interesting.” Others were more outspoken.

Former NBA star and television commentator Charles Barkley, a consistent supporter of LGBT rights, said if the law stands, the game should be moved.

“I think the NBA should move

the All-Star Game from there next year,” Barkley said on CNN. “As a black person, I’m against any form of discrimination – against whites, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, however you want to phrase it. I think the NBA should move the All-Star Game from Charlotte.”

Detroit Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy agreed.

“We went through this,” Van Gundy told reporters this week.

“People had their rationale for discriminating against blacks back in segregation. I don’t care, religious liberty and all of that – look, that’s the same stuff that people brought up during the civil rights movement.

They’ll try to justify it with anything they have. We shouldn’t have the right in our country to discriminate against anybody and especially in this situation. And I think the league should take a stand.”

What the NBA has taken could be described as more of a crouch than a stand. Shortly after the law passed, it issued a statement saying, “The NBA is dedicated to creating See page 18 >>

Wide restraining order issued to trans woman in Castro

by Sari Staver

A

H. Gregg Stratton Born April 18, 1948 – Died December 20, 2015 Gregg Stratton was a devoted lover, partner, soulmate, constant companion, husband, - you name it - to Wally Bowman for over 39yrs! Since April 2015, he had been battling a rare form of cancer under the guidance of one the most remarkable and amazing teams at the UCSF Oncology Hospital at Mission Bay. It is with a great deal of disbelief and sadness that, despite the heroic efforts of both Gregg and his team, his journey on this planet came to an end on Sunday, December 20, 2015.

Gregg was born the son of Herbert and Helen Stratton in Visalia, California. He spent his childhood near the ocean in Shell Beach California, from the time he was 4, until he transferred to UCLA from Cal Poly. He spent his younger years body surfing at Avila Beach during the summers, and playing with his best friend who lived right up the street. He came from a family of avid readers and Gregg was no exception. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in computer mathematics. After college, he joined the Peace Corps and taught math in Ghana for three years. Upon returning to the U.S., Gregg followed several of his Peace Corps friends to the Bay Area to begin a new chapter in his life. Gregg was a successful software consultant, working for many local and foreign companies over the years. Gregg volunteered his computer expertise to help organize the first Gay Games in San Francisco, and even wrote a computer advice column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Gregg was humble, generous, and lived his life with great integrity. He will be remembered by his many friends and family for his infectious laughter and as a most remarkable, loving, giving, and beautiful man. In recent years, Gregg could be found most Saturday mornings volunteering in the kitchen at Project Open Hand helping prepare meals for those who were homebound. From the moment he met Gregg in 1976, Wally knew that there could never be another man that would make him feel so happy and complete, and someone he wanted to share a life with – 39 years and those feelings never changed! They were still in love and devoted to one another and continued to feel joy and pride to be in each other’s presence, and to experience the fun, happiness, honor, and respect of their relationship. Together, they were most proud of their beautiful home, their many travels at home and abroad, and most of all, their families and the many loving friends they had garnered over the years. They were able to marry in 2013, at the Napa home of long-time friends, Lonnie & Bruce Payne-Clark, when marriage equality became legal.

He is preceded in death by his parents, Herbert and Helen Stratton. He is survived by his husband, Wally Bowman; sisters Harriet Stratton Morelan and Helen Stratton Hubenthal and husband Fred; and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews. A memorial will be held Saturday, April 16, 2016 at 11am at Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco. Donations in Gregg’s memory can be made to your personal charity, or one of Gregg’s charities: Project Open Hand, Open House, Maitri, The National AIDS Memorial Grove, and/or, Horizons Foundation

transgender woman was ordered to stay away from a wide swath of the Castro district for three years after a judge granted a restraining order after she repeatedly harassed people.

Patrick McClellan, 25, who community patrol officials said identifies as a trans woman, was also sentenced to a year in jail after pleading no contest to misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest and being a public nuisance.

McClellan was arrested in mid March after being the source of numerous police calls over the past several years, according to Greg Carey, chair of Castro Community on Patrol, a walking neighborhood watch organization.

In an interview with the Bay Area

<<

Senate debate

From page 1

line, which will stop in Chinatown, out to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Asked about changing the state rules on how the city can regulate the use of public bus stops by private commuter shuttles, neither candidate fully answered the question.

While she voiced support for the shuttles, Kim argued they should be based at central hubs around the city that can be accessed by public transit.

“We all take Muni. We all walk to work. These other workers can do the same thing,” said Kim. “These workers can take a bus to the hub and then a shuttle to work.”

Wiener countered such a hub system would be unworkable, as there would be little support from those living nearby proposed locations. He argued the shuttles not only reduce congestion on local highways but also reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.

“If we want people to get out of

Reporter, Carey said that McClellan from visiting McClellan has made nuthe section of the Castro merous death threats to bound by Sanchez to the people in the Castro. east, Collingwood Street to Carey said the court the west, Market Street to order says that McClellan the north, and 19th Street is eligible to spend 90 days to the South, according as an inpatient at Walden Alex Bastian, a spokesHouse, a residential beman for the San Francisco Courtesy SFPD havioral health treatment District Attorney’s office. center, as soon as a bed Patrick McClellan If McClellan is found anybecomes available. where in this area in the Eileen Hirst, chief of next three years, she is substaff for San Francisco Sheriff Vicki ject to immediate arrest and possible Hennessy, confirmed that McCleladded jail time, according to Bastian. lan is in custody, but could not disMcClellan was also charged with close whether she was in jail or in resisting arrest, battery upon an ofWalden House. ficer and emergency personnel, and In addition to the jail sentence, contempt of court.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge At press time, McClellan’s attorRoss Moody on April 4 issued the ney had not returned a call from the three-year stay away order forbidding B.A.R. seeking comment.t

their cars, we have to give them as many options as possible. Shuttles are a part of that system,” said Wiener.

The two differed on Mayor Ed Lee’s plan to tear down the I-280 flyway that leads into Mission Bay in order to build more housing and reroute how the planned highspeed rail system reaches its terminus at the city’s new transit center being constructed along Mission Street near the Financial District.

“I do not support the tearing down of 280 as currently proposed,” said Kim, who called for requiring any developments built on the land created include 40 percent affordable. “Before we take down a corridor used by drivers, we need to have an alternative in place.”

Wiener said, “In terms of 280, I want to see what the analysis shows before jumping the gun and making a political decision that we shouldn’t tear it down.”

The two also differ when it comes to allowing San Francisco police to use Tasers, with Wiener in support

and Kim opposed.

One issue they agreed on is that the state should cover the cost of gender reassignment surgeries for transgender inmates.

More than 200 people attended the debate. Jason Galisatus, a San Francisco resident who leads the Peninsula Stonewall Democrats, told the B.A.R. he felt Wiener, whom he is supporting, had the strongest performance.

“Scott demonstrated a clear understanding of the policy issues facing all San Franciscans and Bay Area residents,” said Galisatus. “I look forward to seeing what he will accomplish in Sacramento.”

Matthew DeCoster said that he is undecided in the race, but after seeing the candidates at the debate, he is “leaning toward Kim” because he feels she will be “more pro-renter in general.”

He added that he “was happy both are talking about keeping people in their apartments and not just build more, more and more housing.”t

orado-Colorado Springs before moving to the Bay Area in 1980, where he earned his Ph.D. from the California School of Professional Psychology. He worked in various nonprofit agencies over the next 25 years.

Tom is survived by his husband and partner of 28 years, Roger Ritland; longtime friends Les Bonus and Carlos Zamora; sisters Martha and Linda; brothersin-law Danny and Joe; nephews Shawn, Dylan, and Noah; niece Shannon; and

many other friends and relatives.

Tom loved animals, especially the four cats he and Roger raised together. He was vocal, enthusiastic, eccentric and opinionated about everything that mattered to him. He could be simultaneously impertinent and caring and was an unforgettable character to anyone who was lucky enough to meet him. We are left with sadness tempered by fond memories of his energy, intelligence, and the many good times we all shared with him.

Obituaries >> Thomas J. Ossenbeck

November 19, 1953 – March 2, 2016 Tom died in his San Francisco home after a difficult six-month battle with lymphoma.

Originally from Cincinnati, Tom attended Ohio University and the University of Col-

t <<

Community News>>

SF Pride

April 14-20, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 17

Over the years, SF Pride has also worked to do a better job collecting donations at the gate. Attending Pride is free, but there’s a suggested donation of $5 to $10, which helps pay for expenses and support nonprofit community groups.

In response to a question about whether any changes would be made to encourage more people to contribute as they enter the festival area, Ridgely said, “We have actually seen a slight increase in donations over the past two years. We are looking at potential changes to our gate donation structure, but again, no plans have been finalized. The changes we are making to improve access and egress will also help in raising funds at the entry gates.”

SF Pride’s budget this year is $2.3 million, which includes celebration and parade production costs and year-round operations. Corporate sponsors have so far pledged almost $1 million, $200,000 in registration

fees have been collected, and organizers are getting $73,000 from the city’s Grants for the Arts program, Ridgely said.

Since 1997, SF Pride has provided over $2.5 million in grants to community groups. Part of that is through working with donation and beverage partners, who provide volunteers in exchange for funding. The deadline for donation and beverage partner applications is April 22. Applications are available at http:// sfpride.org/community/application.

Ridgely noted that this year, which is themed “For Racial and Economic Justice,” marks SF Pride’s 46th an-

CIBHS secured a second Innovation grant for “Alameda County Peer Support in Congregations Collaborative: Education and Peer Support AKA Overall Wellness Movement.”

The “O-Well” project used the same ministries involved in the CIBHS welcoming toolkit project and was geared toward reducing stigma associated with mental illness and creating adequate peer support resources for LGBTQI2S people and their families.

An outcome of the O-Well project was a set of program curricula consisting of various peer and congregation training and support components for people doing community work with LGBTQI2S individuals, primarily of color, with mental health issues.

Two de-stigmatization training programs were created: Mental Health First Aid and Wellness Recovery Action Planning, or WRAP, which were applied within the churches’ own congregations and the larger community.

“The idea for the Mental Health First Aid training is to spread knowledge about mental health and how to take care of yourself,” Haggins said. “For WRAP, we got the folks out there doing the work and service strengthened in their own mental health because you can’t serve if your well is dry.”

In addition, four support groups that met specific community needs were created: Mental Health First Aid and WRAP support groups; the Well-Abled Ministry, or WAM, support group; and Brothas Rising, a support group specifically for trans men.

Between the two Innovations grants, CIBHS secured just over $136,000.

Community Health for Asian Americans, a Bay Area mental health provider, was another organization awarded an Innovation grant for a project that presented an innovative program design during the conference’s workshop segment.

The project, “Oyate Tupu’anga: Healing Indigenous Two Spirit and Takataapui Communities,” documents the community organizing and cultural work Bay Area LGBTQI2S Pacific Islanders and Na-

tive Americans having already been doing with each other.

Using an intergenerational core support group, the project brought together LGBTQI2S Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, populations at-risk for social isolation, to learn and practice cultural traditions.

“We learn to pray in our own native languages,” Loa Niumeitolu, CHAA Pacific Islander community health advocate, told the B.A.R., “or pray in English in a way that calls in the ancestors and uses indigenous knowledge because a lot of us don’t have that anymore.”

The group’s other important practices included songs, chants, drumming, gathering around food, relearning the roles that LGBTQI2S people have traditionally held in Pacific Islander and Native American communities, and taking those practices to outlying community gatherings.

“Some of our leaders feel this is an important way for us to heal, heal our mental health and chronic illnesses,” Niumeitolu said.

“It’s a real way for us to heal from colonization.”

The two communities have a long-standing working relationship with one another in the Bay Area

that’s based on supporting each other in activist initiatives. Pacific Islanders and Native Americans also share similar traditional values, historical traumas, and present day community challenges like high incarceration, infant mortality, addiction, and teen pregnancy rates.

“Pacific Islanders have been forced out of our own lands to come here to Turtle Island,” Niumeitolu said, referring to the term for North America that some indigenous groups use.

“The native people here have also lost land. As native people of our own land, we’re able to recognize how Native Americans honor their land. That’s something we respect because it’s a value we were taught back home. Reaching out to the people of this land to learn and move forward makes us happy because that’s what we want back home – self-determination and sovereignty.”

Other Innovations grantees included Asian Community Mental Health Services, Lavender Seniors of the East Bay, Our Space LGBTQ Center, Horizon Services (doing business as) Project Eden, and Seneca Family of Agencies, all of which presented their projects at the LGBTQI2S mental health conference.t

convinced this tool will help the populations that are actually most vulnerable to HIV and are not accessing PrEP in large numbers yet, namely young gay black men and transgender women of color.

“PrEP is more than a pill, it’s a program,” Picket continued. “The ongoing HIV and STI testing, sexual health and adherence counseling, medical monitoring, and the ability for an individual to regularly interact in person with health care providers to address holistic health and wellness issues beyond HIV prevention are all very important facets of PrEP provision. How will this app support and enhance this

connection rather than disrupt it?”

Ken Almanza from AIDS Project Los Angeles Health and Wellness had similar misgivings.

“Working mostly with people of color, I find that frequent human interaction is a necessary component for my clients,” he said. “You would be surprised how many patients end up accessing mental health, dental care, and other necessary services while in our clinics. PrEP is an amazing bridge for clients to learn about other services available to them.”

Nurx is attempting to address these concerns by partnering with community organizations, medical

providers, and other resources to reach the populations that should be taking PrEP. “Nurx was pretty enthusiastic about connecting to discuss designing a system that will reach and improve the lives of people struggling to access safe, competent health care,” said Brandyn Gallagher of Outshine NW, a Seattle-based organization that promotes LGBT health and equity. “Nurx has the potential to revolutionize health care in a way that actually centers personal empowerment rather than centering traditional provider-patient power dynamics.”

Grant said that Nurx will help

those who can’t always get to a doctor.

“I think the service will be particularly helpful for people who have difficultly scheduling or keeping medical appointments, including young people, single mothers, and busy professionals,” he said. “It will also be attractive to people who are afraid of doctors because of negative judgments they have experienced in the past. Success in freeing ourselves from HIV transmission can occur if life-preserving sexual health services become easy to access for diverse and active people, which is Nurx’s goal. I hope staying free of HIV and AIDS becomes as easy as ordering a pizza.”t

to restrict applicants to 55 Laguna to those seniors living or working in San Francisco. He is pushing for the city to adopt legislation that would make the restriction be the policy for all new affordable housing developments.

“We have many residents of this city who are at serious risk of losing their housing. We need to take care of our residents first and foremost,” Wiener told the B.A.R. when asked if he agreed with the decision to allow any senior to apply for 55 Laguna. “My view is that San Francisco residents should have the highest priority for accessing affordable housing in San Francisco, period.”

the lottery will be picked at random.

Starting in order of their selection, those applicants will be screened to ensure they meet the eligibility requirements before being assigned a unit. Those approved are expected to move into the building by October.

“What is really important for people to take away from this is everyone should apply,” said Kilbourn.

“It is a way to facilitate people who live in the area to stay in the area; that is the whole purpose, right?”

Over the last three years, Openhouse has seen 1,200 people attend its housing workshops about how the city’s lottery system works for allocating affordable senior housing. The agency has compiled a mailing list of 3,300 people interested in 55 Laguna, and an email list of 2,500 people.

“The calls are coming in more than we can handle. The buzz is out there,” said Kilbourn, adding that the agency hired an outside firm to help it handle the increased volume.

Openhouse has set a target of getting at least 3,000 LGBT seniors to apply to live at 55 Laguna. While it acknowledges the lottery system can be a “daunting” process, Openhouse is offering assistance to help people fill out the application.

Gay San Francisco resident Ray

Rudolph, 65, is one of the seniors who plans to apply. The longtime Openhouse volunteer lives nearby the 55 Laguna site in a rent-controlled apartment and turned down moving to a senior living complex operated by Mercy Housing near Mission Bay. “I am hoping for 55 Laguna. I would like to give that a shot,” said Rudolph, who is HIV-positive, but due to having a home, likely doesn’t meet the criteria for the units set aside for seniors living with HIV. “I am hoping that because it is a district preference lottery as well, and I live right around the corner, I am hoping my chances are very good.”

Polk Gulch resident Joy Abounds, 66, a lesbian who lives alone in a rent-controlled apartment, also plans to submit an application for one of the 55 Laguna units. But she sees the lottery system as being a gamble and is unsure of her odds.

“Lotteries have not been very successful for me in the past,” she said.

“I am going to stay positive, and we’ll see what happens.”

And despite 55 Laguna meant to be for LGBT seniors, Abounds said she expects to be competing in the lottery with many straight seniors. The site, being near several transit lines and just blocks away from two grocery stores,

makes it highly desirable, she said.

“I really think a lot of non-LGBT people will be applying for this, I really do,” said Abounds.

Kilbourn stressed that the more LGBT people who apply, the better the chances are that the residents at 55 Laguna will be from the LGBT community.

“This is one of those moments where the community turning out, as I know and we all know it can, will really make all the difference,” he said.

Wiener agreed, saying he has made it “a very high priority” to alert LGBT seniors about 55 Laguna and how to apply.

“Our LGBT seniors have so many housing needs, and it is very important to me personally that this project have a lot of LGBT seniors living there,” he said. “We are aware of our legal obligation to be fair and nondiscriminatory and we will comply with the law. We will also make sure LGBT seniors know about the project and how to enter the lottery.”

Anyone interested in learning more about the upcoming lottery can join Openhouse’s email list by completing the online form at http:// www.openhouse-sf.org/join55 or by calling (415) 530-2783 between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. weekdays.t

pact is a shooting that took place at the 2013 festival. Two men who were shot at the event sued the SF Pride committee, claiming security at the event had been lax. One of the lawsuits has been settled, while the other one is scheduled for trial in November.

An attorney in the case that settled, which involved shooting victim Trevor Gardner, had suggested that the hundreds of thousands of people who attend the annual Pride festival should have to go through metal detectors and have their bags checked.

Asked last week if there were any changes to security he could share, or whether there would be bag checks or metal detectors, Ridgely said, “Security plans have not been finalized,” and SF Pride officials “continue to work closely” with police on logistics. He declined to say whether the lawsuits have had any impact at all on SF Pride’s plans, citing the pending lawsuit.

A common complaint about SF Pride is the gaps between floats and other contingents in the parade.

Ridgely said that this year, organizers “plan to implement changes throughout the parade route, in particular the dispersal area at the end of the parade,” in order to “im-

prove flow and egress. As with every year, we are keeping a close eye on construction in the staging area and the dispersal area to anticipate any impact it may have on the flow of the parade; and we continue our messaging of best practices to everyone participating in the parade to help us mitigate gaps between the contingents.”

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cured by the Pacific Center brought in $400,000 for the organization.

From page 1

Mental health

From page 12

change them how they see fit.”

To complete the three projects, the Pacific Center worked with 22 other organizations that also work with LGBT-identified people. During the process, Ewing said, the information exchange was mutually beneficial.

“We learned just as much or more than we taught,” she said. “There was also some racial, ethnic, and class-based core work that came out of this. Sitting at the table and working things out was a very good experience for us.”

Ewing, who is also chairperson of the ACBHCS’s Pride Committee, an all-volunteer group of providers that meet to discuss improvements in responding to the county’s LGBTIQQ2S needs, hopes the county will continue its receptiveness to new strategies.

“There’s a familiarity with the work we’re doing that’s not fear-based anymore,” Ewing said. “We’re learning to speak each other’s languages. It’s our hope that we’ll be a part of implementing some of this with Alameda County down the road.”

The four Innovation grants se-

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Startup

From page 8

kar said. “It also allows them to ask a wide variety of questions before and after their prescription has been approved instead of being rushed through a traditional office visit.”

But some advocates feel a regular relationship with a health provider offers important benefits.

“I do see this app as a potentially powerful tool for people in rural areas, or for folks who live in places where PrEP access is especially challenging,” Jim Pickett from the AIDS Foundation of Chicago told the B.A.R. “However, I am not

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LGBT senior housing

From page 1

the lottery,” said Wiener. “Openhouse has been doing great community outreach for years on this, so people will be able to get into the lottery.”

Openhouse Executive Director Seth Kilbourn, however, told the B.A.R. that the window to file an application for 55 Laguna could be open for 10 weekdays. The Mayor’s Office of Housing, which will oversee the lottery, is still finalizing the details.

One thing that has been decided is the lottery will not be restricted to seniors who either live or work in San Francisco, as Kilbourn decided against doing so. Due to LGBT seniors being displaced from the city, whether due to high housing costs or being evicted, Kilbourn felt it was important to give them a chance to move back at 55 Laguna.

“A significant number of people who come to our programs come from the East Bay. This is where their community is,” he said. “I felt giving them the opportunity to move back here would be the right thing to do and be well received by the community.”

The decision is not one supported

by Wiener, who late last year had told the B.A.R. he expected the city

Innovative and inclusive programing

District 8 residents given preference

The city has adopted a rule that restricts 40 percent of the units in new affordable housing developments to be awarded to people who live in the supervisorial district the project is located in, or within a half mile of the site. Thus, at 55 Laguna, 16 units will be available to seniors who live in District 8, which includes the gay Castro district.

Those District 8 residents not selected will then be placed in the lottery for the other 15 units. According to Openhouse, 400 of the people who apply for

Finances

See page 18 >>

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

18 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-20, 2016

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Hormel Center

From page 9

photo history project documenting the Bay Area’s queer communities.

In addition, the Eureka Valley branch will feature “Queer & Quirky: OBJECTifying Ourselves,” a display of artifacts demonstrating

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Japanese conference

From page 11

gender identity, there’s so many different things to unpack,” said Furuya. “So, coming together like this and being able to see even the diversity of our own community [and] how we identify” was thrilling.

Issues for future exploration include LGBT Japanese and other Asian Pacific Islanders’ immigration issues, the limited community, and whatever else the community raises, said Sugiyama, who hopes to have a conference every other year.

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News Briefs

From page 15

SF civil grand jury seeks volunteers

It’s that time of year again as the San Francisco Superior Court is seeking volunteers to serve on the civil grand jury for the 2016-2017 term.

“San Franciscans who want to make a difference in our city should apply to become a member of the civil grand jury,” Judge Gail Dekreon, chair of the court’s civil grand jury committee, said in a news release.

The civil grand jury is independent and selects its own topics for investigation. Past civil grand juries have examined the assessor-recorder’s office, the city’s whistleblower protection ordinance, affordable housing, and the fire department.

In order to serve, volunteers must be U.S. citizens; at least 18 years of age; have lived in San Francisco for the past 12 months; have no felony convictions; and be able to communicate in English.

The term runs from July 1 through June 30, 2017. After the initial screening, volunteers are interviewed by a panel of Superior Court judges who select a pool of 30 jurors. From that pool, the 19 sworn jurors and 11 alternates are randomly selected.

Interested people should be able to commit time consistently throughout the one-year term. The civil grand jury usually meets once per week, with additional meet-

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Jock Talk

From page 16

an inclusive environment for all who attend our games and events.

We are deeply concerned that this discriminatory law runs counter to our guiding principles of equality and mutual respect and do not yet know what impact it will have on our ability to successfully host the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte.”

The NCAA can expect calls for it to withdraw all tournaments from the state until the law is repealed, as member schools from outside the state must be concerned about traveling to a hostile environment, just as concerns were raised when similar laws were considered or passed in Houston and Indiana.

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SF Pride

From page 17

nual event, and there are also other “significant anniversaries,” including the 40th anniversaries of the Dykes on Bikes motorcycle contingent and Frameline, San Francisco’s international LGBT film festival. The 50th anniversary of the Compton’s Cafeteria riot is also approaching. During the August 1966 riot, transgender patrons stood up against police, who had been called to quell a distur-

the relationship of queer culture to dominant American culture, including a Gay Bob doll, Queer Trivia game, and a rare 1600s broadside.

For those who are unable to visit the library, there will be an online exhibit, with many rarely seen programs and materials. At press time, the link was not available.t Honda praised the conference as being a positive event for the community.

“It’s something that is healthy,” he told the Bay Area Reporter.

“It’s probably a communal process of getting healthier. Everyone will grow from it. When they leave to be able to share and grow from there and sort of affect the greater nikkei community,” Honda added, referring to the native Japanese community.t For more information, visit http:// www.tadaimabayarea.org.

ings and interviews scheduled as necessary.

Applications and more detailed information are available at http:// civilgrandjury.sfgov.org. The deadline to apply is May 13.

Forum on creating equality in national park system

As part of its speaker series, the National Parks Conservation Association will hold a discussion titled “Telling America’s Story: Creating Equality in the National Park System” Thursday, April 21 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, 114 Sansome Street, Suite 600 in San Francisco.

The NPCA is holding forums this month about the history of the 1969 Stonewall uprising and its campaign to create a national park for Stonewall in New York City’s Greenwich Village.

There is no cost to attend but pre-registration is required for the free ticket and can be done by visiting https://www.eventbrite. com/e/telling-americas-stor ycreating-equality-in-the-nationalpark-system-tickets-24290921801.

People who cannot attend can sign an online petition asking President Barack Obama to create the first national park site honoring the LGBT community by visiting https://www. change.org/p/president-obamacreate-a-national-park-for-stonewall.

For more information, go to https://www.npca.org/advocacy/5a-national-park-for-stonewall.t Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. That directly contradicts the new North Carolina law targeting LGBT people. Critics fear that taking students to the state under its current laws could lead to those schools being found in violation of Title IX. Faced with similarly homophobic situations in the past, sports have collectively hemmed and hawed, expressed concern and protests – and not changed a damned thing as it sent its athletes out to play and collected ticket and television revenues as reward for their indifference.

Sports also likes to bill itself as a unifying fore for social justice and progress.

Time to put up or shut up.t bance. The exact date of the riot has been lost to history.

“The LGBT movement grew out of the civil rights and women’s rights movements of the 1960s, and our theme in 2016 speaks directly to the continued intersectionality of our collective and continued struggles for equality and social justice,” Ridgely said.

Others associated with this year’s Pride parade and celebration didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.t

t

Legal Notices>> NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINSTER ESTATE OF GRACIELA C. CARRENO IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-16-299673

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of GRACIELA C. CARRENO. A Petition for Probate has been filed by AMALIA P. CARRENO in the Superior Court of California County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that AMALIA P. CARRENO be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: May 04, 2016, 9:00 A.M., Rm. 204, Superior Court of California, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102, Probate Department. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined by section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250.

A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for petitioner: Mr. Robert P. Garcia #047867, 2588 Mission St., #226; Ph. (415) 648-3060.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 SUMMONS: FAMILY LAW, SAN DIEGO COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: SANDRA BJORK RUDOLFSDOTTIR YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: KEVIN ANTHONY NASH CASE NO. D-559231

Notice: You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below.

You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and petition are served on you to file a response (form FL-120 at this court and have a copy served on the petitioner. A letter, phone call or court appearance will not protect you. If you do not file your response on time, the court may make orders affecting your marriage or domestic partnership, your property, and custody of your children. You may be ordered to pay support and attorney fees and costs. For legal advice, contact a lawyer immediately. Get help finding a lawyer at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www. courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), California Legal Services website (www.lawhelpca.org), or by contacting your local county bar association., at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia. org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association.

NOTICE: Restraining orders are effective against both spouses or domestic partners until the petition is dismissed, a judgment is entered, or the court makes further orders.

They are enforceable anywhere in California by any law enforcement officer who has received or seen a copy of them.

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

The name and address of the court is: SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO, CENTRAL DIVISION, FAMILY COURT, 1555 6TH AVE, SAN DIEGO, CA 92101.

The name, address, and telephone number of the petitioner’s attorney, or petitioner without an attorney, is:

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036998400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NOMAN COFFEE CO, 438 TEHAMA ST #B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed NICHOLAS DANBY, ALEX REYES, RUBEN MARQUEZ & DIEGO GOMEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/15/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036993300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUSHI HON 2598 HARRISON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed MINS GROUP, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/15/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036979200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE WOMEN’S BUILDING, 3543 18TH ST #8, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed THE WOMEN’S CENTER2 INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/93. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/08/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037003300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUSHI RAW #3, 682 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NEW CONCEPT SUSHI INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/21/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036984700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AD ART, INC; AD ART SIGN COMPANY; AD ART ELECTRONIC SIGN SYSTEMS; AA SIGN & LIGHTING MAINTENANCE, 150 EXECUTIVE PARK BLVD #2100, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed AD ART, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/30/03. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL, 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036989400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE PORK EXCHANGE, 1471 17TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SOALFOOD INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/14/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036992700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOL AMBIANCE, 5522 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed FLORAL AMBIANCE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/05/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/15/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037003000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KAYLA JEANNE AESTHETICS, 1905 UNION ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed KNKI LLC, (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/24/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036990900

Date: 01/27/16; Clerk, by A. THOMPSON, Deputy.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 9TH ST PUB, 399 9TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CITY COMMERCIAL INVESTMENTS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/23/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/15/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036987400

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL, 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036998500

KEVIN ANTHONY NASH, 3875 FLORIDA ST #20, SAN DIEGO, CA 92104; (619) 384 - 9130.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036998300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ROOH, 333 BRANNAN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed GOOD TIMES RESTAURANTS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036992800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: INOODLES, 1650 HOLLOWAY AVE #SB106, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed INOODLES2 LLC, (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/15 /16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036469400 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: FLOURISH SKIN CARE AND WAXING, 1905 UNION ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123.

This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by KNKI LLC (CA).

The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/06/15.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035854600

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: KAZU TRADING CO, 1333 PACIFIC AVE #K, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by GARSON LAU. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/27/14.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036621100

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: YUMWOK, 1650 HOLLOWAY AVE #C134, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by INOODLES2 LLC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/07/15.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 STATEMENT OF WITHDRAWAL FROM THE PARTNERSHIP OPERATING UNDER USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-032269000

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: SUSHI RAW #3, 682 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business was conducted by a general partnership and signed by NEW CONCEPT SUSHI INC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/23/09.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037019600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: YOUNGS IMPORT EXPORT, 238 TEDDY AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JASON YOUNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/28/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/28/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036979300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GEMS, 120 PORTOLA DR. #9, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GEORGIA MCDANIEL. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/08/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037019800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LA PETITE NAIL SHOP, 601 KANSAS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BOI CAM CO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/28/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037005200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THUNDERDOG; THUNDERDOG DESIGNS; THUNDERDOG PET CARE, 4620 17TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ERIC FLANIKEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/02. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/11/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MAI CUISINE, 185 CHANNEL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94158. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed GENJI PACIFIC, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/17/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BLONDI’S; EUROGIRLS; EUROPINK; CALIFORNIA CATERERS, 537 JONES ST #2166, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VITA CAMPISI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/22/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/22/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037002600

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037003600

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037022700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LA MOTO JAVA, 498 9TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed MIKE RITTER, ANALUCIA MERCEDES CARRERA & KIMBERLY DANNER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/21/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: A-GAME EXPRESS LLC, 615 JOHN MUIR DR #420, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed A-GAME EXPRESS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUNNY’S GLOBAL SHOPPING, 467 7TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed QING ZHENG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/29/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/29/16.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAIGON BARBEQUE, 331 THORNTON AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed ACCENT HOAHUU DO; TINA LUONG; HOANG Q. NGUYEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/24 /16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037007700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CROWDTORCH; LAUGHSTUB; TUNESTUB; ELECTROSTUB, 660 MARKET ST FLOOR 4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed VENDINI INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/03/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/23/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037018000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HEALTHSHERPA; HEALTHSHERPA INSURANCE AGENCY, 530 BRANNAN ST #202, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed GEOZONING INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/06/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/25/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037016200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SFREALESTATE.COM, 6033 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA. 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SFREALESTATE ENTERPRISES (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037022300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POKE BOWL, 1250 OCEAN AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, 94112. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed POKE BOWLS INC. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/29/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037002200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WASH CYCLES, 2241 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CHACHINGLY LLC, (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037000400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PANERA BREAD, 301 KING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 95158. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed PAN NORCAL LLC, (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/07/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/18/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037027300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CHITCHAT THERAPY, 1352 BROADWAY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALYSE EBERHARDT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/31/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/31/16.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037027400

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037006900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ONE LOOSE BUTTON, 333 ONEIDA AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed REBECCA BRADSHAW. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/22/16.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037014400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SWITCHED ON AUDIO, 88 RIVERTON DR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BRANDON BATTAGLIA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/30/06. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/16.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037014900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SCULLERY, 687 GEARY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SCULLERY INC. (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/24/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/16.

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APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-032424600

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: SUPPORTIVE LEARNING, 2639 MCALLISTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by CHARLES J. ANDERSON. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/09/09.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-033486300

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: WILDWOOD PASTRY, 709 BUCHANAN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by CHARLES J.ANDERSON. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/13/11.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037045700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOURMONADE, 5027 DIAMOND HGTS BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VICKTOR STEVENSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/31/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/31/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VAL DE COLE WINES AND SPIRITS, 906 COLE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BEHROOZ PEJOOHESH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/12/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/12/16.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037029300

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037040600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TOOLS OF OUR TRADE, 1367 SAN BRUNO AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ERIN SINGER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/16/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/31/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KATHRYN WOODS; KEW GARDENS, 780 27TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KATHRYN ELIZABETH WOODS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/28/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/07/16.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037027200

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037043600

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APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037027600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BUBU’S HOT SAUCE, 48 LANGTON ST #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed YHC HOLDINGS (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/31/16.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FIELDWIRE, 459 GEARY ST #500, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed FIELDWIRELABS, INC. (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/05/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 707 SUTTER, 707 SUTTER ST. SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed JP GROUP INC (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/31/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/31/16.

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APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037035700

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037028300

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HAPPY MOVING, 81 MINERVA ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed XINGCHUAN SU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/08/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/08/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037035600

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: H. G XU SERVICES, 751 STOCKTON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed HONG GEN XU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/16. The 415.861.5019 FAX 861-8144 PHONE FAX 861-8144 statementPHONE was filed with the City and County415.861.5019 of San Francisco, CA on 04/05/16.

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APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037030700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ACUTE SALON, 3913 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LINDA M. THOMAS-MAYFIELD. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/01/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037043000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: REID’S TAILORING, 2124 UNION ST #B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed YALI WU & WEI BIN LI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/11/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036301500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TERRI L. K. FLEMING, EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATOR AND PARENT COACH, 1809 9TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TERRI FLEMING. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/30/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/31/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CUTIE PIES, 1750 MONTGOMERY ST 1ST FLR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARIA DEL PILAR ALVARADO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/11/16.

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: PACIFIC HAIR STUDIO, 1538 PACIFIC AVE #115, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business was conducted by a general partnership and signed by ATIYA OWENS & IOANNA IOSIFELLIS. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/11/2015.

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Vanquished worlds

Vol. 45 • No. 15 • April 14-20-2016

by Richard Dodds

Blazing energy at the ballet

by Paul Parish

S

San Francisco Ballet dancers Frances Chung, Jennifer Stahl, Dores André, and Joseph Walsh in choreographer Justin Peck’s In the Countenance of Kings.

an Francisco Ballet is sweeping towards the end of its season with two mixed bills that opened last week playing in alternation through this Sunday’s matinee, to be followed on Sunday See page 30 >> night by a one-off farewell performance for three star male dancers.

David Bicha is one of the performers in The Untamed Stage: Weimar Berlin Kabarett, Scrumbly Koldewyn’s new musical for Thrillpeddlers.

T

he ascendance of the Nazis in Germany and the first onslaught of AIDS in America both swept swathes of edge-pushing entertainment from the stage. Two musicals opening in the coming week look at the music, the cultures, and the performers in spotlights that See page 30 >> were soon to be dimmed.

Erik Tomasson

davidallenstudio.com

Ground control to Major Tom

by Sura Wood

M

ixed-media sculptor Tom Sachs is a true original. An early turning point in his career came in 1994 with his Christmas window display at Barney’s New York, where he created an unconventional nativity scene noteworthy for its replacement of the Virgin Mary with Hello Kitty, a horse stable emblazoned with a McDonald’s logo, and Bart Simpson in triplicate substituting for the three kings. That work, Sachs’ first moment of international exposure, was emblematic of his pointed satire of consumerism and a wicked sense of humor.

See page 22 >>

Lt. Samantha Ratanarat and Cdr. Mary Eannarino perform the first tea ceremony on the surface of Mars in A Space Program, created by Tom Sachs and directed by Van Neistat.

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

Phoebe D’Heurle

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<< Out There

22 • Bay area reporter • April 14-20-2016

The full Puppini treatment

by Roberto Friedman

I

t was no surprise to any of their fans, Out There very much included, that the Puppini Sisters sold out their Bay Area Cabaret show this coming Sunday (April 17, 5:30 p.m.) at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont San Francisco. So Bay Area Cabaret folks have added a matinee Puppinis performance on Sunday at 2 p.m., and are also hosting a special High Tea fashion show with them. These are the exclusive U.S. dates for the Puppini Sisters on a tour celebrating the release of their High Life CD (Millionaire Records).

The Venetian Room is the famous cabaret spot at the Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St. high atop Nob Hill. Tickets for the 2 p.m. matinee ($60) are still available online at bayareacabaret. org or by calling (415) 392-4400.

Also, on Sat., April 16, at 2 p.m. in the Fairmont’s Laurel Court Restaurant, Bay Area Cabaret will host a High Tea/High Fashion event celebrating Puppini style and welcoming the singers to town. Vintage attire is encouraged. Attendees will

MARIN

hear them sing an a cappella number and see an array of fashions by local vintage-fashion enthusiasts.

Reservations for the afternoon tea ($75, with $40 tax-deductible) may be made at the website cited above.

The Puppinis – Emma, Marcella and Kate – harmonize their vocals in retro, Andrews Sisters-like stylings.

One spin of High Life had OT fully committed to their musical aesthetic. You’d expect their harmonizing to work wonders with “Accentuate the Positive” (Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer) and “Hit the Road Jack” (Percy Mayfield), and you’d be right. But applying the Puppini treatment to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (Robert Hazard) and “Changes” (David Bowie) reinvigorates those songs as well, and that’s not even to mention what they can do for “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (Redd Stewart/Pee Wee King). We’d call that a mouthful times three.

Laughing matter

In this brutish political season of wanton immigrant-bashing, we bring word of a great opportunity to enjoy

C E N T E R

PR E S E NTS

Neil Berg’s 106 Years of

Richard Todd Adams

Jeannette Bayardelle

Rebecca Pitcher

Anthony Fedorov

big laughs for a good cause – namely, helping Bay Area immigrants and their families. The Comedy Night for Immigrant Rights, featuring talented comedians Marga Gomez, Johan Miranda, Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, and Nato Green, will transpire on Thurs., April 28, at 7 p.m. at Fort Mason Center, Building B, in San Francisco. Tickets ($45 general; $100 VIP, including a reception): call (415) 408-7355 or go to comedy-night-forimmigrant-rights.eventbrite.com.

Russian emotions

Spotted on the faboo operaqueen blog Parterre Box: “Longtime Friend of the Box [internationally successful countertenor] David Daniels writes on Facebook, ‘Over the years, I have often been asked why I feel my sexuality is anyone’s business and why I am so open about it in print. “‘In Moscow today, I did an interview for the Bolshoi. The young woman interviewing me asked me the usual questions – Handel, countertenors, updated productions, conductors, recitals vs. opera, etc. – then ‘off the record’ asked about my sexuality, even though she would lose her job if anything were printed. At the end of our interview, she informed me she had a wedding picture of [his husband] Scott, me and Justice Ginsberg on her desk and was asked to remove it. This, obviously, completely caught me off-guard. As I left the interview room she teared up and hugged me and thanked me. To say I was humbled would be an enormous understatement. This is a day I will not forget anytime soon.’”t

Courtesy Bay Area Cabaret

The Puppini Sisters bring their High Life tour to the Fairmont San Francisco.

Carter Calvert

Sunday, May 1, 3 pm $65, $45, $25

MARIN CENTER • SAN RAFAEL • MARINCENTER.ORG Josh White

Lt. Samantha Ratanarat loads soil samples onto the LEM after completing an extra-vehicular mission in A Space Program, created

by Tom Sachs and directed by Van Neistat.

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Tom Sachs

From page 21

Sachs is a practitioner of “bricolage,” the building of functional contraptions with found or accessible objects some might call junk that are playfully refashioned into something new and unexpected.

Comparisons to Pixar’s romantically inclined trash collector WallE inevitably spring to mind. Sachs has made Knoll office furniture out of phone books and duct tape, a baby-blue “Tiffany” Glock pistol, a “Chanel” guillotine, an orange cardboard “Hermes Value Meal,” and the “Barbie Slave Ship.” After NASA and space, Barbie dolls are a fixation. So he built one of his own.

Since 2007, Sachs has been finetuning a DIY Space Program whose last iteration, Space Program 2.0: MARS, sent a pair of female astronauts on a make-believe expedition to the Red Planet. For the project, Sachs and his team constructed a

technologically sophisticated outerspace mission by hand with lowtech materials like tape, glue and plywood, and put on a live performance-demonstration on the vast floor of New York’s Park Avenue Armory in 2012. It featured childlike animated planetary diagrams, a hovering rescue helicopter (one of a dozen reconditioned 40-year-old toys called VertiBirds), a modified, 23-foot-tall Apollo lunar module, a boom box blasting James Brown, cultish training films, a shaky globe from geography class representing the view of Earth from space, a bank of video monitors – standing in for Mission Control – that occasionally flash an “Applause” sign or helpful hints like, “Mars Approaches!” or, “Crashing Will Terminate our Mission!” Let us not forget the fully stocked vodka bar, a must for keeping interstellar travel mellow.

Licensed pilots and scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory informally consult on Sachs’ projects,

and high-end designers like Nike and Prada aid in producing lab coats, space boots and other accouterments essential for funky space odysseys.

The Armory event was documented by Sachs’ frequent collaborator Van Neistat for the 72-minute film A Space Program, though Space Oddity might have been a more fitting title. Both an introduction to his idiosyncratic process and a primer on his unusual cast of mind, the faux doc opens at the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission Theater in San Francisco on April 15. It’s a unique experience for the audience and something of an apogee for its creator, who is part amateur engineer, part overgrown kid playing out imaginary space-ranger scenarios in the backyard with invented props and an artist’s rigor. Maybe this is how SpaceX CEO Elon Musk got his start. In September, Sachs, whose Lower Manhattan studio he likens to a “teaching hospital,” will bring Space Program Europa: Tea Ceremony to YBCA. It will occupy the museum’s entire campus and freeze its reflecting pool with liquid nitrogen. Drilling is involved.

I spoke with Sachs recently. Here are excerpts from that conversation.

Sura Wood: Was the Barney’s installation a turning point?

Tom Sachs: I did the Hello Kitty Nativity on a lark. Like everything else I make, it’s an expression of my life. It was about how rampant consumerism has eclipsed spirituality and religion, which was my experience growing up. It was my protest piece.

What’s the role of humor in your work?

The humor is really important.

No one ever got laid by boring someone.

Have your early training in architecture and working for Frank Gehry informed what you do?

Working with a master like Gehry See page 25 >>

JOURNEY THROUGH A

RAINFOREST THE DEEP SEA AND OUTER SPACE

all in one day

3D Earth: Rainforests Explore the Amazon in a new 3D show.

Step inside a 4-story rainforest dome at the only aquarium-planetarium-rainforest-living museum.

Get tickets at calacademy.org

25654_CAS_BayAreaReporter_Rainforest_9.75x16.indd 1

3/30/16 5:32 PM

<< Theatre

24 • Bay area reporter • April 14-20-2016

Mansion family values

by Richard Dodds

I

t’s supposed to be the tour of a celebrated mansion, but it’s more like a journey into the mind of its indecent docent. That would be Weston Ludlow Londonderry, a curious fellow indeed, who channels a repressed Id into architectural descriptions featuring, among other things, an appreciation for the abundance of rear entrances. Not much need of a Freudian expert to analyze that.

The full name of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s new play is A House Tour of the Infamous Porter Family Mansion with Tour Guide Weston Ludlow Londonderry, written as a site-specific production for Z Space with an actor-specific role for Danny Scheie.

This combination of playwright and actor is a heady one, joining the efforts of one of the Bay Area’s brightest playwriting talents with those of the region’s arguably best character actor. They play to and off each other’s talents, offering something akin to a wild abandon that’s been finely tuned for an immersive experience.

Julie Schuchard

Danny Scheie, as tour guide Weston Ludlow Londonderry, takes audiences on a journey though a peculiar mansion in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s A House Tour at Z Space.

An audience of about 50 that has been milling about Z Space’s lobby suddenly discovers that the play has begun without the traditional shuffle off into the theater. In a preppy blue blazer, with an official-

looking insignia sewn onto the chest pocket, Scheie suddenly appears on the scene as our tour guide, collecting tickets and giving us a primer on Hubert and Clarissa Porter’s romance that began 155 years ago

at an end-of-season ball – “the last chance to find breeding partners,” Londonderry says of the socially secondary Hubert and Clarissa.

With introductions out of the way, our guide officiously starts a tour of their mansion through, of course, the back door. Over the next 90 minutes, we are led through a maze of rooms and hallways that suggest, in Sean Riley’s massive set design and Jason Eagan’s impossibly complex direction, the skewed sense of grandeur of its original occupants. But we quickly learn that House Tour is not so much about a house as it is about the guide, who reveals bits and pieces of his tightly wound inner workings through his tour narration. The audience becomes one of the instruments Londonderry plays as part of the personal chamber orchestra of his mind.

Scheie is seamlessly at one with his character, as moods can turn from fussbudget gentility to irrational discipline in a beat. As Nachtrieb’s extravagantly wrought wordplay tumbles forth from Scheie,

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whether flirting with realism or diving into the absurd, we begin to suspect that Weston Ludlow Londonderry is not quite as authentic as his blazer emblem would suggest.

Maybe it’s his private conversations with Frederick, a tiny bird no one sees, or perhaps it’s his disparaging comments about fellow tour guides Morgan, Emily, and Todd, who, we gather, don’t approve of Londonderry’s interpretation of history.

It all comes to a head in a breakdown that, quite literally, has our tour guide disappearing into the distance. When we are released to resume our unguided lives, the experience begins to feel like a fantasy.

Did it really happen? Where were we? And who is Weston Ludlow Londonderry? The last question does find a sort of resolution, but it furthers the wonderful disorientation of A House Tour.t A House Tour will run at Z Space through April 23. Tickets are $22$33. Call (866) 811-4111 or go to zspace.org.

Fashionista fling

by David Lamble

I

n The First Monday in May, a new film about New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, we watch a coterie of celebrities – boy pop-singer Justin Bieber, Cher, actor George Clooney (in tux, sans tie) and hundreds more – strut, imbibe and mingle, all to raise a heap of cash for a great institution. At night’s end the Met’s coffers are $1.2 million richer, and the museum is poised to open its doors so that 800,000 patrons can see the fashion exhibit China: Through the Looking Glass. Funds raised provide the operating budget for the Met’s costume department nestled in the basement, which normally flies under the radar for even the city’s most informed fashionistas.

At such a tony event, populated by a crowd so upscale that the only personage missing is the Queen of England, you wouldn’t think there’d be much to fuss about. But even the evening’s hostess, Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief for American Vogue magazine, wonders aloud whether the museum is lowering its standards for the sake of commerce.

“Fashion can create a dream, fash-

“Fashion is still considered by most people as in the female domain. I think that’s why many people still dismiss fashion as art.”

–Andrew Bolton, Met Costume Department curator ion can create a fantasy, but there might be a question whether fashion belongs in a museum like the Met.” Wintour, with her pageboy haircut and penchant for wearing sunglasses indoors, has a no-nonsense executive manner that brooks no fools. Daughter of an English newspaper baron, Wintour is so famously bossy that she’s believed to be the model for Meryl Streep’s caustic fashion editor in the 2006 satirical film The Devil Wears Prada. Checking the guest list for the openingnight bash, Wintour notices the name of an annoying young celeb.

“Do you think he can be pried away

from his cellphone for the evening?”

Wintour barks to an assistant, who meekly replies, “I hear you loud and clear!”

Director Andrew Rossi enjoys poking his camera around the corners of august institutions. His 2011 film Page One gave readers of The New York Times an insider’s peek at how “the Grey Lady” is put together, from editorial meetings to the everyday routines of the paper’s elderly photographer Bill Cunningham, who at 80+ years still tools around Manhattan on a one-speed Schwinn. Cunningham makes a brief cameo at the end of First Monday, soaking in culture for his photos.

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Anna Wintour, Andrew Bolton, and Wendi Murdoch in The First Monday in May.

The film’s other leading character is the aging but still boyish Met Costume Department curator Andrew Bolton, who oversees the largest collection of fashion garments in the world. He sighs, “Fashion is still considered by most people as in the female domain. I think that’s why many people still dismiss fashion as art.”

With its behind-the-scenes, allaccess-pass peek at today’s uneasy

alliances of old money and pretty faces, First Monday allows us to imagine that we’re temporarily part of one of the world’s most privileged minorities. But Rossi should have figured out a way to get some of the industry’s hot-button topics, animal rights and the underrepresentation of racial minorities in the business, into the film’s otherwise engaging dialogues.t

giggling. With gold hair, pale skin and blue eyes, the Canadian actress looks like an albino plaster saint.

Nonetheless, she manages to snap little Lakshmi clinging to her prison bars in an upstairs window. After a good start, Gillian disappointingly turns over the case to a capable but slow-moving Indian bureaucrat.

David Arquette is allowed to play a minor heroic role in the guise of a john casing the joint. The best sequence in the film is Arquette feigning physical passion while lying chastely alongside Nayar Saikia, in order to hornswoggle the demonic madame of the brothel. Pause here to praise this magnificent actress, Susmita Mukerjee, who manages to portray the nasty Mumtaz with relish, even as she hints at the character’s own inner demons. Mukerjee has the slightly protuberant eyeballs that can be so effective on stage or screen. Witness Angela Lansbury. If only anyone else in the film had her acting technique.

As a melodrama detailing the sale or kidnap, sequestration, drugging, raping, and gradual habituation

into a life of sexual slavery, Sold veers in and out of Marquis de Sade territory, sometimes looking like a how-to manual, then correcting course and resuming the sermon.

The presence of North Americans is, I guess, necessary to get white people interested in the plight of young women in Nepal and India, but white hats don’t fit American heads anymore, and their roles in the film are entirely trumped-up, not to say insulting. Why couldn’t there be a nice American villain for a change?

Despite the creaking genre tropes deployed, or because of their sincerity, I’m glad I watched Sold. I’m glad Emma Thompson stuck her name on as executive producer. Since film is the medium of propaganda par excellence, usually deployed in service of the worst causes, it’s refreshing to see someone daring to tell a simple story about a known evil so dreadful all I want to do is ignore it.

Just because it’s cliché doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay attention to the plight of Innocence in the grip of Corruption.t

Lakshmi to the rescue

by Erin Blackwell

M

elodrama is a theatrical genre invented by the French to bring stories of class struggle to the stage. Gone are the kings and queens of classical tragedy with their fatal passions and heroic submission to Fate. Melodrama is the arena in which the black hats fight the white hats for control of a coveted resource like food, money, love, liberty, or all of the above. In the Noir version, nobody wins. In the Goody-Two-Shoes version, Innocence triumphs over Corruption. Of the latter persuasion, the new movie Sold, a kind of travelogue through child sex slavery in India, opens Friday at the Sundance Kabuki.

The young heroine of Sold (Nayar Saikia) is named Lakshmi, after the Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune, and prosperity. Her mother is shown to be a devout lighter of candles who takes courage from her faith. The pubescent girl, an unspoiled farmer’s daughter from Nepal, is unwittingly sold by her unemployed dad to a brothel in Cal-

Matson Films

Lakshmi (Nayar Saikia) has been trafficked into a prison brothel in director Jeffrey D. Brown’s Sold.

cutta. Throughout her ordeal, which lasts for most of the 97-minute runtime, Lakshmi’s mother appears to her in dreams, hands firmly joined in prayer position. Lakshmi similarly worships a small brass figure of the goddess. Thus, the film propagates the efficacy of strong female role models in whatever guise.

A different kind of goddess is Gillian Anderson as a dyed-blonde photographer looking for a National Geographic cover in the Calcutta slums. Her ruse? Going in drag as Mother Teresa. Yes, you will recognize the blue-and-white nun’s garb.

What a stunt, but Gillian attempts to dignify the screenplay by not

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Books>>

April 14-20-2016 • Bay area reporter • 25

Arabian knight

by Jim Piechota

Guapa by Saleem Haddad; Other Press, $16.95 rounded in themes of sexuality, belonging, exposure, and selfacceptance, Kuwait-born author Saleem Haddad’s debut novel Guapa encompasses the life of a misunderstood Arab man who harbors dreams of coming out, expressing his personal freedom, and finding happiness through love and familial approval.

But these ambitions are far-reaching for someone living in a country ravaged by the threat of civil war, constant internal strife, and violent intolerance of queer culture.

Much like Sahan Namir’s remarkable 2015 Iraq-set novel God in Pink, which movingly chronicled the experience of being gay and Muslim, Haddad’s story takes place in the current conflict-crisis state of the Middle East, tracing an eventful and jarringly bad day in the life of Rasa, a young media translator who has made a complicated, irreversible mistake. “There is everything that has ever happened, and then there is this morning,” he laments.

“I’ve crossed the red line with Teta.”

Teta, his paternal grandmother who essentially raised Rasa, is overwhelmed with shock, sadness, and rage after catching her grandson in the throes of passion in his bedroom with Taymour, his secret lover of three years. Taymour rushed out that night, and is now terrified that his own heterosexual cover will be blown as well.

The bad day doesn’t end there.

Maj, Rasa’s best friend, a defiant drag queen and star of the underground drag shows at local gay bar Guapa. finds himself in jail after being arrested in a gay moviehouse.

The three people Rasa loves the most are in turmoil, so he frets and explores the city searching for answers.

Rasa’s clandestine love for Taymour seems to dominate him most.

It’s an all-encompassing passion and one that he obsesses over. Do they have a future together, could it all come crashing down? Only in the book’s brilliant final section are readers made privy to what is really happening to Taymour, and in this context, Rasa’s desperation makes

G

<<

Tom Sachs

From page 22

gave me the confidence to do not what’s probable, but what’s possible.

Why the obsession with space exploration?

You go to other planets to better understand your resources here on Earth, and answer, Where do we come from?, Where are we going?

Science and religion are on a parallel course to answer the same existential question: Are we alone? In the film, Dr. Kevin Hand, a leading astrobiologist, says that if we don’t discover life in our solar system he might have to return to organized religion. I thought it was a great line.

You’ve said that “making it is a way of having it.” Is that why you’re attracted to bricolage?

Since I was kid, I’ve been making the toys I wanted to have. Later, when I wanted a camera or a BMW, I’d do my best to make my own version of it. I’ve made my own Brancusies and Le Corbusiers, and even my own space program.

Were you influenced by TV or sci-fi movies like The Martian?

sense. He also wrestles with the disappearance of his mother and the enduring impact of her glaring absence.

For all its good intentions and lucid prose, the novel has a few issues.

Haddad inexplicably cloaks the name of Rasa’s Arab home country as well as the American college he attended for several semesters.

The reasons for this remain unclear throughout the narrative, as well as in press interviews he’s given, and this nebulous quality has a distancing effect on the reader. There are also pages of dense interior musings that stagnate the flow of a novel that shines in its final chapters, which involve a bittersweet marriage and the truth behind Teta’s late-night discovery.

Tense, tightly wound, and effectively written in Rasa’s first-person perspective, this powerful novel angles itself off what some consider the shame of the homosexual experience, but also from an oppressive Middle Eastern society. While there is bliss from the liberation of coming out as a member of the LGBTQ community, there can also be dire consequences and life-long reactions, as Rasa discovers. In Haddad’s world, where Rasa and Taymour had to hide out in a grocery store to shield themselves from sniper fire, there is great unrest, but for his characters, just as much confusion and unresolved angst.

Haddad explores this through a variety of multifaceted characters in a locale that, while not identified, reflects the kind of dark unknown we have all had to surmount to reach daylight.t Of course. I’ve watched every science fiction movie and the original Star Trek series. I loved The Martian.

It’s a great triumph of bricolage – working with available materials and pushing those to the limit – and a testament to do-it-yourself culture.

Do you have anything in common with modern space entrepreneurs?

Ultimately, we all have the same problems of engineering, public relations, physics. But my efforts are more towards the storytelling, which is equally important. There’s a reason why, in the late 1960s, NASA sent human astronauts to space instead of monkeys or robots. Getting people into those suits helped the public identify with space.

If you had the opportunity, would you board a rocket ship and voyage to another planet?

The most welcoming place on Mars is more dangerous than the top of Everest or the bottom of the ocean. I think the Earth is one big, warm, wet kiss, and I want to spend what’s left of my short life exploring every inch of it. And by the way, I’m way too neurotic to survive. I’d be a liability.t

LAURA OSNES

KAREN MASON

NICK ADAMS

April 22 - 23

May 6 - 7

June 10 - 11

For tickets: feinsteinsatthenikko.com Feinstein’s | Hotel Nikko San Francisco 222 Mason Street | 855-322-2738

<< Out&About

O&A

26 • Bay area reporter • April 14-20-2016

Thu 14 Violeta Luna @ CounterPulse

Thu 14 The Addams Family @ Berkeley Playhouse Brickman, Elice and Lippa’s fun musical adaptation based on the Charles Addams characters. $25-$40.

Various times thru April 17. 2640 College Ave., Berkeley. (510) 8458542. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org

Anne Boleyn @ Marin Theatre Company Howard Brenton’s new version of the life of Henry VIII’s second wife, based on alleged banned books discovered decades later by King James. $10-$58.

Thru May 8. Tue-Sun 7:30pm. 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. 388-5208. www.marintheatre.org

The Boys From Syracuse @ Eureka Theatre 42nd Street Moon’s new production of of the classic Abbot, Hart, Rodgers musical comedy adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. $25-$75. Wed & Thu 7pm.

Fri 8pm. sat 6pm. Sun 3pm. Thru April 17. 215 Jackson St. 255-8207. www.42ndstmoon.org

Colette Uncensored @ The Marsh

Brainiaxis

by Jim Provenzano

S

ome of our best friends are artists. They scribble away, tickle the ivories, sweat in the dance studio, rehearse an extra hour, paint until dawn. Much of the time, they –er, we– are on Right Brain overload. So the best Left Brain logical thing is to go see, hear, and listen to their works. For plenty more choices visit www.ebar.com

Violeta Luna @ CounterPulse 35th Floor: Another Stor(e)y Above and Beyond Her Fall, Luna’s performance work about people and nature, and their corporate violators. $20-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. 80 Turk St. www.counterpulse.org

Fri 15 An Act of God @ Golden Gate Theatre Sean Hayes ( Will & Grace ) stars in the touring production of David Javerbaum’s hilarious Broadway comedy about God, who explains, well, everything. $45-$125. Tue-Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm. Sun 1pm & 6:30pm.

Thru April 17. 1 Taylor St. at Market. www.AnActofGod.com shnsf.com

Boris Godunov, Iolanta @ Cowell Theatre New Opera NYC’s inaugural SF performance of the classic Russian operas by Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. $20-$150. 7:30pm. Also April 16. Fort Mason Center, Marina Blvd at Buchanan. www.nonyc.org

Lori Holt’s new solo show tells the story of the famed French novelist’s pioneering feminist life. $20-$100.

Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru May 14.

1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

On Clover Road @ The Rueff SF Playouse’s production of Steven Dietz’ thriller about a lost mother and daughter. $20. Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm. Thru April 16. Upstairs studio at The Strand Theatre, 1127 Market St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus @ Davies Symphony Hall Tales of Our City: Our Lives, Our Heroes, a special concert with choral music, the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, and special guest Armistead Maupin reading passages of his novels. $25-$75. 8pm. Also April 15, 8pm. 201 Van Ness Ave. 3924400. www.sfgmc.org

The Untamed Stage @ Hypnodrome The new musical by Scrumbly Koldewyn takes us back to Weimarera Berlin, with a Cabaret/Cockettes styled two-act show of songs, dances and bawdy pre-Fascist abandon, with special guest performers each night. $15. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru May 28. 575 10th St. at Bryant. 377-4202. www.hypnodrome.org

Spice Racks @ Castro Theatre

Bay Area premiere of David Ives’ adaptation of Jean-Francois Regnard’s 1708 comedy about greed, love and lust. $35-$50. Tue & Sun 7pm. WedSat 8pm. Also Sun 2pm. Thru May 15.

2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 8434822. www.auroratheatre.org

Peaches Christ’s latest dragstravaganza, a parody of the Spice World film (screening after the live show), features Honey Mahogany, Anna Phylactic, Cheddar Gorgeous, Peggy L’Eggs, Katya Zamoldchikova and others. Adutls only. $37-$120.

3pm & 8pm. VIP tix include drinks and reception. 429 Castro St. www.peacheschrist.com

The How and the Why @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley West Coast premiere of Sarah Treem’s ( House of Cards) drama about two women biologists who clash over evolution and gender theories. $35$45. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru May 22. Harry’s UpStage, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 8434822. www.auroratheatre.org

Sat 16

Buyer & Cellar @ New Conservatory Theatre Center J. Conrad Frank stars in Jonathan Tolin’s hilarious solo show about an actor working in Barbara Streisand’s underground shopping mall. $20-$45.

Thursday night pre-show trivia & piano with Joe Wicht thru April. Thru April 24. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level.

861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Dancers We Lost @ GLBT History Museum Dancers We Lost: Honoring Performers Lost to HIV/AIDS , a new exhibit of photos and ephemera, curated by Glenne McElhinney, about Bay Area dancers who died of AIDS. Thru Aug. 7. 4127 18th St. www.dancerswelost.org/exhibit/ www.glbthistory.org

Deal With the Dragon @ The Costume Shop Kevin Rolston performs his threecharacter solo show with a different take on gay lives. $25. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru April 16. 1117 Market St. brownpapertickets.com/event/2194657

Stephen Schwartz’ mega-hit Tonywinning musical based on the novel about the ‘other story’ of Oz and the witches Glinda and Elphaba. $80$238. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat & Sun 2pm. Sun 7:30pm. Thru April 16. 1192 Market St. www.wickedthemusical. com www.shnsf.com

Sat 16

Creole Carnival @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley Haitian Roots, Vintage Samba, Jamaican One-String Mastery and other musicians perform a a combined concert as part of their 38-city tour. $12.50-$56. 8pm. Bancroft Way at University, UC Berkeley campus. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

Hamlet @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ new innovative production of the classic Shakespeare tragedy includes performers (who’ve learned the entire play) pulling their roles for the night from Yurick’s skull!

Previews thru April 20. Wed-Sun thru May 15. In repertory June 10-Jan, 2017. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

San Francisco in Ruins @ Tenderloin Museum

Julian Shendelman hosts Trans Voices @ Strut

Wicked @ Orpheum Theatre

Andrew Hinderaker’s strikingly staged drama about a gay athlete, disability and recovery, with a drum corps and dancing football players. $25-$100.

Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri &Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm, Sun 2pm. Thru April 30. 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

The local gay author reads from and discusses his new book of poetry, How Ghosts Travel; with free drinks. 7pm.

470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

Mon 18

Exhibit of paintings by local artist Jacinto Castillo depicting old San Francisco. Free/donations. April 16: Christian Cagigal performs as part of Atlas Obscura Day, 6pm. $15-$20.

Volunteer Fair April 21. Tue-Sun 10am5pm, $6-$10 ($15 includes walking tour). 398 Eddy St. 351-1912. www.tenderloinmuseum.org

Second Time Around @ The Marsh Charlie Varon and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud perform Varon’s storytheatre work about seeking human connection in a high tech world. $35$45. Sat. 8:30pm Sun 2pm. Thru April 17. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Razjeá Bridges at Youth Speaks Finals @ Davies Symphony Hall Daniel Schaefer

Youth Speaks Finals @ Davies Symphony Hall The 20th anniversary of the teen and young adult spoken word festival includes readings, open mic and Bay Area champions. 7pm. 201 Van Ness Ave. www.youthspeaks.org

Sun 17 Oscar de la Renta @ de Young Museum Stylish new retrospective exhibit of the world-famous fashion designer’s gowns on display, as well as archival photos and materials; Thru May 30.

Other exhibits of modern art as well.

Free/$25. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.famsf.org

Pierre Bonnard @ Legion of Honor Painting Arcadia, thru May 15. Also, World in a Book, A Princely Pursuit and other exhibits. Free/$15. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave. 750-3600. www.legionofhonor.famsf.org

Mon 18 Marvin Werlin @ Strut The 86-year-old gay artist’s exhibit of paintings blend contemporary style with mythological symbolism. Thru April. 470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

Trans Voices @ Strut SF

SF Hiking Club @ Little Yosemite, Sunal Park Join GLBT hikers for a 7-mile hike in Sunol Regional Park between the Sunol and Ohlone wildernesses Hike to the scenic gorge of Little Yosemite.

Bring water, lunch, layers, sunscreen, hat, sturdy boots. Carpool meets 8:45 at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores.

505-6258. www.sfhiking.com

A night of music, poetry and comedy by trans artists, with host Julian Shendelman, Kay Nilsson, Cam Awkward Rich, Mya Byrne and Natasha Muse. Free. 8pm. 470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

Tue 19 John Wood @ Arthaus

Thu 21

The Lake, new paintings by the Bay Area artist.

Thru June 25. Tue-Fri 11am-6pm. Sat 12pm5pm. 411 Brannan St. www.arthaus-sf.com

Feminists to Feministas @ GLBT History Museum Feminists to Feministas : Women of Color in Prints and Posters, a new exhibit of illustrations depicting LBT women of color from the 1970s to today. $5. Thru July 4. Reg, hours Mon, Wed-Sat 11am-6pm.

Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

The Lion @ Strand Theatre

Colossal @ SF Playhouse

James J Siegel @ Strut

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre April 14: SF Green Film Festival. April 15, Big Trouble in Little China and Never Too Young to Die. April 16, Spice World with a Peaches Christ dragstravaganza (See Sat.). April 17: Dr. Strangelove, The Spy Who Loved Me, and The Madness of King George.

April 19: Laura and Mike’s Murder.

April 20: Green Fest closing night, with Born Free and Not Without Us. April 21: SF Film Festival, Love & Friendship. $11-$16. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

The Heir Apparent @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley

Julien Poirier @ City Lights Bookstore Alonzo King LINES Ballet @ TBCA RJ Muna

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The Bay Area poet reads from his new collection, Out of Print, with Elaine Kahn. 7pm. 261 Columbus Ave. www.citylights.com

Benjamin Scheuer’s award-winning solo musical about coming of age and the redemtive power of music. Thru May 1. $22-$55. Tue-Fri 7:30pm. Sat & Sun 2pm & 7:30pm. 1127 Market St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Will Durst @ The Marsh The political comic’s updated solo show, Elect to Laugh: 2016, adds topical jokes about the bizarre election season. $15-$100. Tuesdays, 8pm. Thru June 7. 1062 Valencia St. 282- www.themarsh.org

Wed 20 Chamber Works @ Taube Atrium Theater Musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra curate two eclectic and intimate nights of music and song featuring the 2016 San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows, who perform works by Franz Schubert, David Conte, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Benjamin Britten, Joseph Haydn, Lou Harrison and Shinji Eshima. $35. 8pm..Veterans Building, 4th floor, 410 Van Ness Ave. www.sfoperalab.com

Reverend Billy @ City Lights Bookstore The amazing performance artist and anti-consumerism activist reads from and discusses his new book and album, The Earth Wants You. 7pm.

261 Columbus Ave. 362-1901. www.citylights.com

Smack Dab @ Strut SF The fun monthly talent show, with host Dana Hopkins, featured performer Anastasia Kuba and the Nothing Light Project, plus open mic (sign-up 7:30). 8pm. Free. 470 Castro st., 2nd floor www.strutsf.org

Thu 21 Above and Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Showgirls @ Oasis D’Arcy Drollinger’s restaging of the high camp rock musical about a singer’s rise and fall, with lots of sex, drugs and original live music. $25$35, $250 Super groupie front row VIP tables. Thu-Sat 7pm. Thru May 14.

298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Alonzo King Lines Ballet @ YBCA The local innovative dance company’s spring season includes new and repertory works; collaborations with jazz musicians Charles Lloyd and Jason Moran. $30-$65. Gala, April 23. Thru April 30.

700 Howard St. 978-2787. www.linesballet.org www.ybca.org

Bill Graham and the Rock & Roll Revolution @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Exhibit of photos and documents of and about the prolific rock concert promoter. April 21: Exodus Party, a celebration of Passover and music, with funk band Hibbity Dibbity, DJ mash-ups, cocktails and a light show; $75-$135, 7pm-12am. Other 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

Black Virgins are Not for Hipsters @ The Marsh Berkeley Echo Brown’s hit solo show about desire and doubt moves to the company’s East Bay theatre. $20$100. Thu 8pm Sat 8:30pm. Thru April 23. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley.

282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Hella Close @ Books Inc. Stories of Intimacy by Sex Workers, with Aria Sa’id, Lyric Seal/Neve Be, Natalia Garcia and T. Lathika. 6pm.

2275 Market St. www.booksinc.net

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Music>>

April 14-20-2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 27

Orchestral maneuvers before touring

by Philip Campbell

A

fter a three-month hiatus from the San Francisco Symphony, Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas returned for an entertaining and informative interview with The New York Times in SoundBox at Davies Symphony Hall. For the last two weeks he has been back on the podium at DSH leading typically thrilling performances of musical programs that will be repeated during the orchestra’s East Coast tour beginning this week. The opening concert at Carnegie Hall, on Wed., April 13, is a slightly disjointed split between several obscure but seminal works by Aaron Copland and Robert Schumann’s darkly magnificent Symphony No. 2.

Before launching into Copland’s spiky Orchestral Variations recently, MTT cautioned us to fasten our seatbelts. For listeners accustomed to the composer’s more accessible “prairie” style of Americana, it was good advice, but game SFS audiences can roll with the punches, and after a suitably moody quarterhour spent with the serial work Inscape, everyone was primed for the appearance of Israeli soloist Inon Barnatan and the knuckle-busting Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

Barnatan ripped through the bracingly jazzy Concerto with precision and style. The influence Copland would have on a generation of composers, notably Leonard Bernstein, was clearly displayed in the energetic synergy between soloist and conductor.

The Schumann Second was being recorded for the SFS Media label as part of the much-anticipated complete set of symphonies, and it didn’t disappoint. MTT is showing a wonderful feeling for these much-loved but often misunderstood masterpieces. Taking a characteristically lean

Spencer Lowell

Dario Acosta

San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas.

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke: perfectly focused tone.

and more transparent approach to Schumann is the hallmark of MTT’s approach, and his willingness to linger during expressive moments adds insightful personality. The slow third movement was deeply satisfying.

Last week MTT and his loyal band quietly tore the house down with stunning performances of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). I pray that by the time New Yorkers hear it at Carnegie, the orchestra and soloists are still capable of maintaining their intensity. The concert began with a very slow and shadowy rendition of Schubert’s Symphony in B minor, Unfinished, that set the mood for a reflective and emotionally draining experience.

best moments came during lighter moments, and there is no denying that he has the kind of pipes that cut through a big orchestra. He can thrill without engaging us much, but in the context of MTT’s actual interpretation of the demanding score, his performance proved satisfying.

The real depths of Mahler’s feelings were left to explore by mezzosoprano Sasha Cooke in a rendition that left the audience numb with emotion. A favorite of local audiences and MTT, Cooke continues her remarkable ascendance with a voice that seems more beautiful with each new hearing. The closing Der Abschied (The Farewell), as long as all of the other songs combined, was both an exercise in musical

MTT’s understanding of Mahler is still expanding, years after the completion of the remarkable recordings with the SFS. Originally, Das Lied was set to disc with male soloists Thomas Hampson, baritone, and Stuart Skelton, tenor. This time the tenor was New Zealander Simon O’Neill making an overdue SFS debut. His stentorian sound has made his international reputation, and his stated fondness for the style of an earlier generation of singers, most notably the great Jussi Björling, has created a lot of buzz locally.

Unfortunately, I find more power than beauty in O’Neill’s instrument, and his voice has a slightly dangerous quality that seems to threaten to go off the rails when it is pressed. His

purity and a sublime meditation.

Cooke’s perfectly focused tone was meltingly lovely, and her intense involvement softly shattering.

Too bad the orchestra can’t release this latest version as an addendum to the complete SFS Media set, but KDFC is rebroadcasting the concert soon, and listeners can at least hear the awesome performance. Lucky East Coasters will also see the moving visual side of the event.

Before MTT returns from the tour, dynamic Pablo Heras-Casado keeps the orchestra busy with some exciting bills that end the month of April with a premiere work by popular Mason Bates and a personal favorite, the Shostakovich Symphony No. 9.t

UA NBINHIBITED O U T S E X A Celebration of Animal Reproduction With Jules Howard

Esther Perel May 15 • 7:00 PM

April 21 • 7:00 pm

Sold Out Watch the live stream at jccsf.org/ondemand.

Googling Sex

Sex, Jews and Videotape:

Discover the jaw-dropping reality of sex in the animal kingdom.

With Seth Stephens-Davidowitz Find out what big data says about how much sex we’re (really) having.

May 2 • 7:00 pm

What the Movies Reveal About Jewish Sexuality

With Peter L. Stein

May 31 • 7:00 pm

FOR A FULL LISTING VISIT JCCSF.ORG/SEX Eugene & Elinor Friend Center for the Arts • Richard & Rhoda Goldman Center for Adult Living & Learning

• 3200 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94118

<< Books

28 • Bay area reporter • April 14-20-2016

Luczak’s love affair with Whitman

by Gregg Shapiro

tions of Whitman change, he remains remarkably resilient.

T

he Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips (Squares & Rebels), the sixth book by deaf gay poet Raymond Luczak, takes its inspiration from a remark Oscar Wilde made after he and Whitman met more than 130 years ago. In the book, Luczak moves back and forth in time from the present day to Whitman’s time, comparing the life of a gay poet then and now. Luczak, the author and editor of almost 20 books, most recently QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Gregg Shapiro: Can you trace your awareness of Walt Whitman to being a gay man or a poet first?

Raymond Luczak: I wasn’t truly aware of Walt Whitman until the mid-80s, when I was attending Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. When my friend Melainie and I were walking around the city one day, she said that Whitman had lived there during the Civil War, and how she really liked his poem “We Two Boys Together Clinging.”

She had seen a picture of the older Whitman and his boyfriend Peter Doyle, a streetcar conductor, and was impressed by how they looked directly at each other.

I don’t remember which edition of Leaves of Grass I read for the first time, but after plodding through his lugubrious introduction, I was like, “Okay, I get it.” Then I read his opening shot, “Song of Myself.” I went, “Whoa!” The poet had conjured a vision of what America could be.

Having read Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, I saw how a poet could be directly influenced yet remain distinct from his predecessors. I’d never spotted that kind of transparent influence in a writer’s work before, so that was a revelation.

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Courtesy the author

The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips poet Raymond Luczak.

More than a decade later, when I began to research developments in Western poetry for my book How to Kill Poetry, Whitman returned to my consciousness. In hindsight, he’d always been there, waiting for the right moment to reveal himself. Once he arrived, there was no turning him away. His shadow had finally crossed mine.

What are the challenges of writing a book-length poem?

I was in the throes of feeling an intense ache for a certain gardener. I didn’t know whether I should write about him. When I reconnected with Whitman and researched his life prior to writing the poem “America’s First Coming Out,” I saw that he, too, was a man of earth.

What changed everything was com-

ing across a spectacular quote in a letter Wilde wrote to a gay friend after meeting the poet: “I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips.”

The prospect of such a startling title was like being given permission to write about my unrequited affections for the gardener, and for Whitman himself.

I’d never intended to write a book-length poem. I thought it could be a chapbook about learning from Whitman how to love again.

But the more I learned about how Whitman lived as a gay man, the more he seeped into the heartbeat of my poem. What did it mean to love back then? What about now? I wanted to learn how he could seem to love so extravagantly in a more repressed time.

What’s so fascinating about

Whitman is how much of a harbinger he was of not only the American identity, but also of other identities.

I believe he is the first American poet to delineate clearly what being an American meant; no more aping the Brits. When he self-published the first two editions of Leaves of Grass, it wasn’t standard practice to include a picture of the author. But there he was, not in a proper suit but in everyday laborer’s clothes where he showed a little chest fur. This shocked a lot of readers; the way he had his hand in one of his pockets was almost obscene. A sharp-eyed scholar, Ted Genoways, noticed that Whitman must’ve had the original Samuel Hollyer lithograph gradually modified each time to make his bulge a bit more (how do we say this delicately?) hung. Both radical faeries and gay bears have embraced him; it’s hard not to compare him nursing dying Civil War soldiers to those helping those affected by AIDS. No matter how our percep-

Your line “The electricity between us made me sing” is an allusion to Whitman’s “I sing the body electric.”

Leaves of Grass has had a number of editions, but my favorite is probably the second edition (1856). The first edition startled many people, yet he must’ve felt buoyed enough to include a few more homoerotic poems the second time around. I think Whitman has created perhaps 20 to 25 great poems in his lifetime, more than most poets could hope to ask for, and there are many astonishing phrases throughout the rest of his oeuvre. I made note of such phrases with the intent of quoting him in “America’s First Coming Out,” but when that poem got too unwieldy, I retained only a few direct quotes. I wove some of my unused favorite quotes throughout the fabric of my book instead.

What do you think Whitman would think of your book?

He would’ve been astonished to learn that his work is still being read and celebrated 160 years later. He would’ve been stunned to see how much easier it is to sell a book of poetry, and one that is openly gay.

He would’ve also been enthralled by the Internet, and seized upon it as a democratic platform where writers and readers could connect directly. But more than that, I think he’d have been shocked to learn that anyone can write honestly about sex without the fear of being policed or losing their jobs. His jaw would’ve crashed at the floor from seeing the ease of downloading porn. He’d never have recovered.t

The riddle of Emily Dickinson

by Tim Pfaff

W

alt Whitman and Emily Dickinson occupy secure positions as the two great poles of American poetry, perhaps of modern poetry.

Whitman is generally recognized as one of the great gay poets, while Dickinson remains, in the popular imagination, the demure, sexless, homely, housebound “Belle of Amherst” who sat at her desk in a quiet New England home writing cryptic, self-regarding verse. Jerome Charyn is not the first to think otherwise, but in his new book, A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century (Bellevue Literary Press), Charyn argues persuasively that Dickinson’s

two great loves – passions, really – were women.

It would be a dreary book if his entire point had been to out her. In fact it’s his second volley in a sustained effort to re-envision the poet, following his 2010 biographical novel, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson. Although serious and deeply informed, A Loaded Gun is not a scholarly book; if anything, it’s an attempt to free the existing scholarship about Dickinson from the confines of the academy. It is less literary criticism than threnody, a bold, loose-limbed, Whitman-like prose-poem lamenting the constrictive previous, but still prevailing, notions of Dickinson and lauding

instead a wild woman of words.

Charyn says, repeatedly, that Dickinson is a riddle that will never be solved, and we’ll likely never know whether Dickinson acted on her sexuality. But he leaves no doubt that she had a sex life, if only in her fevered imagination. Her verse, he writes, “was the poetry of a renegade, who could unsex herself if she had to, masquerade as a man, or shift from sex to sex, like Virginia Woolf in Orlando. Her letters read like a catalogue of seductions, and her poems are often fired up with pain, in the coded language of a failed love affair, real or imagined. She was in love with Susan Gilbert, however we may define that love.”

Drawing on research by Carol Smith-Rosenberg, Charyn notes, “Women [in 19th-century America] had their own signs and symbols, their own love codes. ‘Girls routinely slept together, kissed and hugged each other.’” “Still,” he writes later, “most critics were completely unprepared when Rebecca Patterson published The Riddle of Emily Dickinson (1951), a book that redefined this village spinster as a sexual outlaw, who had a romance with another woman, Kate Scott.”

What fascinates Charyn more than any imagined sex is Dickinson’s elliptical “coding” of it and much else. You can feel how much Charyn would have liked to break that code, to devise his own, definitive annotated version of Dickinson’s Lexicon. But what readers get is not the thrill of the peeping tom but the deeper excitement of entering the labyrinth of the poems, these “telegrams from the moon.” Charyn

quotes the letter in which Dickinson writes, “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”

There’s nothing dull about his depiction of the sexual tiger in Dickinson’s tank, ever burning bright, but Charyn puts her poems in the refracted light of numerous other perspectives as well. He is at his most acute about the poems not as texts but as things, the written objects she composed with scant thought of posterity. He leaves you hungry to feel the poems in Dickinson’s own hand, many of them fragments left on the backs of envelopes and other scraps of paper, later bound (stabbed, really) by hatpins and handed to others for whatever guardianship they preferred. Whenever possible, he’s

touched them, and his reports back from that frontier consider the famous dashes (he calls them “violent”), the word spacings, the eccentric spellings and the literal shapes some of the poems and fragments take as composed on three-dimensional paper surfaces.

There are asides, on downstream Dickinsonians from Joyce Carol Oates to the mid-20thcentury artist Joseph Cornell, who made shadow boxes. The most “devastating” of them is Toward the Blue Peninsula (for Emily Dickinson) Dickinson), which incorporates a daguerreotype of what may well be Dickinson with Kate Scott around 1859, the relatively recent discovery of which haunts these pages. “It is,” Charyn writes, “according to [Dickinson scholar] Christopher Benfey, the single most trenchant response, in all of American art, to the meaning of her life art.”

Even second-hand, that’s a modest assessment from a writer whose new book is another such response.

A Loaded Gun is an invitation to meet Dickinson on the dizzyingly high ground of her imagination from a fellow writer who has done just that with his own writing. It’s ecstatic and sometimes repetitive, to the point that the reader occasionally experiences ecstasy fatigue.

But, it turns out, there’s method in the collective madness. “Dickinson wasn’t a madwoman, but she was maddened with rage – against a culture that had no place for a woman with her own fiercely independent mind and spirit,” Charyn writes. “[She] had to reinvent herself or be stifled and destroyed by all the rituals around her.”t

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Film>>

April 14-20-2016 • Bay area reporter • 29

How green is my festival

Vanessa de Smet

Scene from I Am Chut Wutty, playing the San Francisco Green Film Festival.

Columbia Pictures

Scene from Born Free, playing the San Francisco Green Film Festival.

by Erin Blackwell

D

enial gets you through the day.

It’s one of the things humans excel at, as it encourages risk-taking.

Doing dangerous things despite evidence that destruction will probably ensue is more fun for the doer than for the witness or the search party or the clean-up crew. As a witness to the stupid risks that greedy corporations take with the resources of this, our only planet, Earth, I tremble daily at the consequences to my fellow creatures and our common, overlapping, interconnected habitat. Once a year the San Francisco

Green Film Festival addresses my tremors. See their films April 14-20 at the Castro, Roxie, 518 Valencia, and across the Bay. In 1966, a film called Born Free found a wide audience for its story of an African lion cub raised by white humans in Kenya and eventually, successfully returned to the wild. I watched it last night on my laptop, and reader, I cried. Born Free, based on a 1960 memoir by big cat conservationist Joy Adamson, is no doubt an idealized portrait of herself and husband creating an ideal human-animal bond thanks to his posting as a game warden. As

ideals go, it’s a perennial that exists in every human culture throughout time, something to be aimed at and worked for.

The two actors, real-life husband and wife Virginia McKenna and Will Travers, will be present at the screening of Born Free (Castro, 4/20, 6:30 p.m.). Remarkably, they have followed in Adamson’s footsteps for 50 years, creating their own Born Free Foundation to further the work she pioneered. Rarely does fictional reenactment so happily transmogrify into actual action in the world, and for such a worthy cause. But all has not “ended” hap-

pily. Joy was murdered in 1980, her husband nine years later. Things are worse than ever for their beloved lions, who need about 100 square miles to call their own, a land grant puny humans increasingly resent, resist, and renege on.

Actress Virginia McKenna is very blonde-blue-eyed and speaks with a cut-glass accent in a parody of Englishness although the original Joy Adamson, née Friederike Viktoria Gessner, was Czech. McKenna is as trim as Tippi Hedren (another lionfancier off-screen) but without the phobic reaction, being totally, 100% in love with her Elsa. Her charmingly bearded, boyish, and thoroughly tame husband George (Will Travers) never seems to have anything to do except indulge his wife’s whims in favor of their oversized house cat.

Actually, the heroic humans matter less than the onscreen lions, who are adorable, magnificent, and pitiful, as the script demands. Africa looks great.

Conservation is also preached in I Am Chut Wutty (Little Roxie, 4/17, 6 p.m.), in which Cambodian com-

munity activists take on corrupt loggers and rubber planters in the Prey Lang Forest. Sonic Sea (Main Library, 4/19, Noon) champions the ocean’s need to hear itself think.

In Pursuit of Silence (Little Roxie, 4/16, 1:30 p.m.) explores the absence of silence on dry land. A film from France directed by Luc Jacquet (March of the Penguins) profiles pioneering glaciologist Claude Lorius as he contemplates global warming in Ice and the Sky (David Brower Center, 4/19, 7 p.m.) from the depths of the Antarctic.

In order to bridge the gap between spectating and acting on behalf of the planet’s future, the Green Film Fest is serving up free booze at its Fest HQ at 518 Valencia Friday through Sunday at 5 p.m. Their brochure says “a sip,” so approach this invitation with liver conservation in mind. You must be able to pass for 21 and possess a ticket or a festival pass, which are a steal at $80 for six screenings. Join in the conversation and who knows, maybe do something worthwhile for this incredible ecosystem that nourishes us all.t

A Brian Wilson state of mind

by David Lamble

DeNiro did to become the older Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. In addition to the extra pounds, Dano exudes a joy for life that sets us up brilliantly for his later slide into depression (portrayed

by John Cusack). There’s also Dano’s uncanny ability to mirror Brian’s bouts of paranoia, like the scene where he freaks out while on a commercial airliner and has to be restrained.

Paul did such a good jump at gaining pounds we actually had to do a bit of trimming in the days before the shoot, but it worked out great. He’s such a natural that he just takes things in an easy way. I don’t mean to downplay the work that Paul does, but he doesn’t make a big deal about it, he’s not egotistical.

T

he deluxe Blu-Ray edition of Love & Mercy, one of the B.A.R.’s 2015 Top Film picks, performs the nifty trick of providing us with three genius-level Brian Wilsons: two great actors and the real guy, who wrote a new Beach Boysworthy song for the occasion. “I was standing in a bar/And watching all the people there/Oh, the loneliness in this world,/Well, it’s just not fair./ So love and mercy to you and your friends tonight.”

When you have the greatest actor of his generation, the oval-faced, 31-year-old Paul Dano, channeling America’s most enigmatic pop genius, you have the ingredients for a scary good ride. Toss in John Cusack as a broken, aging pop-princeturned-Hollywood-recluse by an abusive shrink (scene-stealing Paul Giamatti), and you have an absorbing, only-in-California story.

In a nifty opening sequence, director Bill Pohlad, with the assistance of Israeli film guru Oren Moverman and co-writer Michael Alan Lerner, condenses the nowfamiliar Beach Boys origin-myth story. Brian Wilson inspires his brothers and cousins into forming a high school band, Kenny & the Cadets, that would launch a series of AM radio-promoted hits. Dano put on 30 lbs., took piano lessons and radiated a naive sweetness to show how a prodigy deaf in one ear could create a revolutionary approach to pop, leading to the brilliant Pet Sounds. Love & Mercy depicts how a beaten-down Wilson reclaimed his pop throne and his life after years of pills and isolation, including three

How did you select actors to play the other musicians in the original Beach Boys?

We tried to get guys who could sing a little bit, but we really wanted good actors. They were all wonderful, especially Jake Abel, who plays Mike Wilson, he’s a real standout.

years in the 1970s when he seldom left his bed.

My chat with director Pohlad unfolded during the film’s debut at the 2015 San Francisco International Film Festival. Pohlad was the innovative producer of UK director Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, also co-starring Dano.

David Lamble: I loved your take on Brian Wilson and the “California Sound” he developed with his kinfolk in the early 60s.

How did you get hooked on the Wilson family band?

Bill Pohlad: At first I was very much a Beatles guy. I confessed this to Brian: I had an appreciation for the Beach Boys, but it wasn’t until about 15 years ago that I latched onto the Pet Sounds album and was truly hooked. Then this project came along, and I really dove in.

Let’s talk about Paul Dano as the younger Brian. His weight gain here recalls what Robert

Then there’s John Cusack, as the older Brian. The whole notion of switching back and forth between Dano and Cusack, as we observe the challenges faced by a young and an aging Brian Wilson, is amazing.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted Brian to be played by two different actors, and by not coordinating their performances I could let each be his own Brian without forcing either of them to match the other’s physical affectations or choices.

A brother who could appear as a

heavy in the piece is Mike Love.

Mike was just a regular guy. He had a good gig going, and suddenly his cousin [Brian] starts going off in this other direction, wanting to be more creative. Mike just wasn’t like that. I was trying to show the different stakes each of the men in Brian’s life had: his shrink, his father.

That is a delicious double whammy: you had Paul Giamatti play “the shrink from hell” bookended by “the father from hell,” something for Brian to survive.

Without trying to create cliche villains, I wanted to demonstrate the forces Brian was up against, what he had to overcome to become his own man and a great mature artist.

These men had dilemmas in their own right in wanting to become more successful, more famous than they were. They saw this genius and wanted to hook into that. It’s an odd kind of character flaw or human frailty.

We are left looking at the wreckage of a life and wondering what happened to the former boy genius who ironically is the only surviving member of the clan.

Sadly, the other members of Brian’s family have passed on. You’d have thought Brian would have succumbed. Instead he’s the last man standing.t Special Features: Deleted scenes; A California Story: Creating the Look of Love & Mercy; A-Side/BSide: Portraying the Life of Brian Wilson; audio commentary by director Bill Pohlad and screenwriter Oren Moverman (Lions Gate)

<< Theatre

30 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-20-2016

<<

t

Berlin Kabarett

From page 21

Come to the ‘Kabarett’

The Untamed Stage: Weimar Berlin Kabarett, opening first, is a new collaboration between formerCockette Scrumbly Koldewyn and the Thrillpeddlers troupe that has found considerable success reviving Cockettes musicals. The first act is made up of new songs by Koldewyn and his collaborators aiming to recreate the sounds and styles that were flourishing in the pre-Nazi kabarett movement that added gallows humor and political satire to more familiar notions of cabaret entertainment. The second act is a musical parable titled The German Thing to Do that explores themes of belonging, sex roles, pseudo-science, fascism, and fear-mongering.

Inspired by Ute Lemper’s recording Berlin Cabaret Songs, made up of songs from the kabarett-era canon, Koldewyn first presented a version of The Untamed Stage in 1998 at a North Beach nightclub. “Unfortunately, for this 2016 production, obtaining the performing rights are very complicated, so I decided to create new material in the style of the 1920s Berlin songs,” Koldewyn said. Also a fan of the musical Cabaret, Koldewyn didn’t want to draw comparisons, choosing “to carry the irony and the explicitness a step or two further.”

Both Koldewyn and director Russell Blackwood were further motivated by a UC Berkeley professor’s pictorial book Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin. “It further inspired Thrillpeddlers and myself to put together a show that reflects the relevance of Weimar Berlin to present-day San

Courtesy Dan Seda

Dan Seda will star as Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz, having its West Coast premiere at the Great Star Theatre.

Francisco,” Koldewyn said, “where the denizens might be too intent on being entertained and distracted to take note of a rising tide of hatred and fear in the rest of the country.”

The Untamed Stage, which takes its name from Trude Hesterberg’s celebrated Berlin-based cabaret of the Weimar era, will run at the Hypnodrome through May 28. More info at (415) 377-4202 or hypnodrome.org.

An Aussie in Chinatown

A new musical-theater company is moving into a very old theater for its production of The Boy from Oz. The Peter Allen bio-musical, which provided Hugh Jackman with a knockout showcase on Broadway in 2003, will help return Chinatown’s Great Star Theatre to more mainstream uses after a topsy-turvy history dating back to 1925. This is the second SF production for Landmark Musical Theatre,

which made its debut last year with Tomfoolery at the Eureka Theatre.

The Boy from Oz, opening April 23, follows the journey of Australian performer Peter Allen, for whom an infatuated Judy Garland provided an opening spot in an Asian concert tour as well as matchmaking a marriage between Allen and her daughter Liza Minnelli. The musical’s creators use songs from Allen’s songbook, including “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” “I Honestly Love You,” and “I Go to Rio,” to chronicle his rise from middle-of-the road lounge act to a disco-glitter Liberace who for years remained teasingly coy about his sexuality for darker reasons, the musical reveals, dating back to childhood in Australia. His career had begun slipping when Allen died of AIDS in 1992.

Dan Seda, a recent East Coast transplant, is starring as Peter Allen.

The only Equity member in the cast, in addition to a performer, his credits include organizer for LGBT and AIDS events, a life coach and yoga instructor, and what he terms “a natural-born psychic empath.” Connie

Peter Allen, left, got his big break through Judy Garland, who also maneuvered a marriage between him and daughter Liza Minnelli, one of the stories told in The Boy from Oz.

Champagne, the Bay Area’s premier Judy Garland channeler, is playing Garland, a character who gets to sing several of Allen’s compositions. As does the Liza Minnelli character that Kat Robichaud (a long-time Minnelli interpreter as well) is playing.

Jon Rosen, who has directed around the Bay Area, is staging The Boy from Oz for the still-young Landmark Musical Theatre. Upcoming announced productions include The Drowsy Chaperone and The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd.

This marks the West Coast debut of The Boy from Oz as well as a high-profile return for the Great Star Theatre, which in its 91 years has hosted Chinese opera, Hong

Kong action films, and an assortment of cabaret and variety shows.

Amid periods of vacancies, several efforts at reopening the theater for live performances have been announced and faded away amid financing and permit issues.

Now magician and entrepreneur Paul Nathan is at the helm of the non-profit organization running the theater of about 400 seats, which reopened in the last year with such offerings as Dark Cabaret, Misfit Cabaret, and Frank Oliver’s Twisted Cabaret. But The Boy from Oz, running through May 15, is billed as the first full-scale musical to play the historic theater. For ticket information, go to landmarkmusicals. com.t

Erik Tomasson

San Francisco Ballet dancers Jahna Frantziskonis and Max Cauthorn in Christopher Wheeldon’s Rush.

Erik Tomasson

San Francisco Ballet dancers Maria Kochetkova and Gennadi Nedvigin in George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations.

<<

SF Ballet

From page 21

Program 7 is the highlight of the year so far. The whole show was sharp, beautifully projected, imaginative in the extreme, with three one-acts that contrasted in thrilling ways, each true to its own logic and fascinating in its own way – like a perfect meal at a great restaurant.

Justin Peck’s highly anticipated world premiere In the Countenance of Kings brought down the house, and was followed by an even more exciting performance of Balanchine’s Theme and Variations.

For New Yorkers the news is that Peck, the new kid on their block, had a bigger success here than Alexei

Ratmansky, who’s been their reigning choreographer since he defected from the Bolshoi a decade ago. When SFB showed Ratmansky’s blockbuster Shostakovich Trilogy here last year, we all went away stunned.

But the SFB premiere of his Seven Sonatas, to Scarlatti’s intimate piano pieces, seemed trifling and enjoyed at best a succes d’estime. They danced it without style, without the internal dynamics that Ratmansky can be seen in YouTube videos asking for: suspended motion, with one part of the body already falling towards the next step while another yearns in the other direction, which embody in movement the dissonances in Scarlatti’s Baroque music.

Ratmansky did not make his

work on our dancers, nor did he set it on them. Peck did make his ballet here, and though it’s a West Side Story-esque, dazzling, high-spirited romp, he’s inspired the dancers to fill it out with such blazing energy that it swept us all away. The dancers get it. We never had a moment to catch our breath, we never knew what was coming next, and after it was all over we did not know what had hit us – but no question, we loved it. A very small child sitting near me was agog all the way through.

As Balanchine once did with Serenade, Peck has exploited the speed dancers can get to now, and orchestrated turbulence into an image of the surging urban world. He’s used a cheerfully pulsating score by Sufjan Stevens called The BQE (the BronxQueens Expressway). As Stevens’ rhythms dart about and tumble into 5/4 jazz waltzes, the dancers change directions like birds, dart among and through each other on paths we see but don’t have time to register.

And at times the picture clears, with star turns for six principal dancers. Peck has made an important role for Joseph Walsh (“The Protagonist”), a great dancer whose clarity and power make him the man in the crowd we can best identify. And he has made a star of Dores Andre, unveiling a presence who, when you look at her, you suddenly feel like you’re about to cry. The other men are Gennadi Nedvigin, who has a hilarious waltz with Frances Chung, and Luke Ingham, who squires Jennifer Stahl.

Program 7 opened with Christopher Wheeldon’s Continuum, a thoughtful array of tableaux, many of them yoga poses, set to clangorous music (etudes for piano by Gyorgy Ligeti). The tension between the high-brow noise and the calm of child’s pose, table-top, plank, and cobra fascinated me.

On Program 6, Helgi Tomasson’s Prism made us wonder why the ballet was so well-admired when it pre-

miered at New York City Ballet in May 2000. SFB danced it efficiently but without style, except for Taras Domitro in the scherzando finale (it’s set to Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto), who brought wonderful brio and snap, enough to make things brilliant and save the day. The first two movements had many good moments from the corps (Diego Cruz, Max Cauthorne, and Francisco Mungamba, especially), but overall it was dull.

Christopher Wheeldon’s Rush closed Program 6 with fizzy energy and sharp, intriguing pictures. It’s brilliant, but Bohuslav Martinu’s 1930s score is so tangy, the piece lacks the joy it would need to lift the evening to put it over the top.

Program 8 arrives at the end of the month. Onegin, a tempestuous, full-length romantic-story ballet (music by Tchaikovsky), extends into the first week of May, and then no more ballet until a putative appearance in Stern Grove at the end of the summer.t

35

36

On the Tab

37

Kurtis Wolfe

NIGHTLIFE

Leather

EVENTS

SEXUALITY

PERSONALS Vol. 46 • No. 15 • April 14-21, 2016

www.ebar.com V www.bartabsf.com

Laura Osnes

Broadway star returns to Feinstein’s

by Jim Gladstone

“I

had never planned to perform in a cabaret setting,” recalls two-time Tony nominee Laura Osnes, recalling her 2012 debut at the ne plus ultra of such venues, The Café Carlyle.

“Someone from there got in touch with my agent and asked if I’d do it.”

See page 32

>>

Laura Osnes at The Café Carlyle in Manhattan.

Bestie-winning vocalists (L-R) Veronica Klaus and Connie Champagne with host Shawn Ryan after the show.

Besties Best photos by Gareth Gooch

T

he Bay Area Reporter’s 45th anniversary & Bestie Awards sixth party, held at multi-Bestie-winning nightclub Oasis on Thursday April 7, brought together readers and performers, staff and celebrities, all in the spirit of celebrating our local talents, businesses and community leaders, as well as our own publication.

See page 33 >>

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Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

32 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-21, 2016

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Laura Osnes (right) with Rebecca Luker in Cinderella.

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Laura Osnes

From page 31

nes says. “But part of the impetus for this new cabaret act that I’m doing at Feinstein’s is to let people see that there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes; that performers have failures as well as successes.”

“I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady are among the selections Osnes will sing at Feinstein’s, accompanied on piano by her music director, Fred Lassen.

Despite the fact that her last Manhattan role was Polly Peachum in Threepenny Opera, it’s clear that Osnes tastes run toward the wholesome.

“I still haven’t seen The Book of Mormon,” she confesses, though she has twice appeared as a featured vocalist with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. “I did do Cabaret in high school. It’s not something that I would typically be up for. But it’s part of being a stage performer, getting to be different than yourself, getting to act sexy.”

As a PG-leaning Christian, how does Osnes feel about working with a significant number of gays and lesbians in the New York theater world and knowing that Broadway musicals have a large gay fan base.

“I love my job and the people I work with,” she says. “In my heart, I know that God put me here to love, not to judge.”t

“I was so nervous,” Osnes says of being asked to headline a venue associated with the gimlet-eyed cosmopolitan likes of Elaine Stritch, Bobby Short, and Eartha Kitt.

Regularly cast –and admittedly typecast– in ingénue roles including South Pacific’s Nelly Forbush and Cinderella on Broadway, the 30-year-old, devoutly Christian Minnesota native felt anxious that “I wouldn’t be enough” to fulfill cabaret audiences’ expectations of sophisticated confessional entertainment.

“Cabaret is so much more vulnerable,” says Osnes. “To me, it’s vastly different than the theater, where you’re in a costume with a character to hide behind. The intimacy of it is an amazing opportunity for audiences, but it Laura Osnes’ album, Dream a Little was nerve-wracking for me.”

Dream, recorded at the Carlyle.

“My confidence has grown a lot,” she notes of the subsequent In the show, called Paths Not Takfour years, during which she’s deen, Osnes presents songs she hasn’t veloped three additional cabaret had the opportunity to sing in stage sets. “It’s been two years since my productions, several because after last Broadway show.” She’s slated making final callbacks, she didn’t Laura Osnes performs her cabaret to return in a new musical, The show, ‘Paths Not Taken’ at Feinget cast in the roles.

Bandstand, next year. “I’ve been stein’s at the Nikko, April 22 (8pm) “Part of Your World” from The able to grow more comfortable with & 23 (7pm). $45-$65 ($20 food/bevLittle Mermaid, “Heather on the concert and cabaret performances erage minimum). Hotel Nikko, 222 Hill” from Brigadoon, “Til There where I really have to put myself out Mason St. (866) 663-1063.

Was You,” from The Music Man, and there.” www.ticketweb.com That said, notes Osnes, “I’ve worked Norah Jones and Sarah Bareilles songs in my cabaret shows, but do tend to stick to theater songs.

That’s what I love and that’s what I know. I do try to find ways to connect them to stories from my life to make them more personal than they’d be in a show.”

Osnes’ love of theater music has been lifelong, beginning with playing a Wizard of Oz munchkin in second grade. Continuing to appear on stage through high school, she enrolled in college as a music theater major, only to drop out after a year to “do the work I was studying to do.”

Yet a performing apprenticeship at the Minneapolis Children’s Theater Company and roles at the local Chanhassen Dinner Theaters are not obvious paths to Broadway stardom.

It was during a run as Sandy in the dinner theater’s production of Grease when Osnes was spotted and cast as a contestant in the television competition, Grease: You’re the One That I Want. As a winner, Osnes got to play the role on Broadway, where she was quickly recognized as more than a television gimmick.

(The overall production fared considerably less well, described by The New York Times as “a musical set in a high school that feels like a musiLaura Osnes with Jeremy Jordan in Bonnie & Clyde. cal put on by a high school.”

“I’ve had a charmed career,” Os-

ilable @

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

April 14-21, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 33

Gareth Gooch

Gareth Gooch

Best Drag King Alex U. Inn (kneeling, right) with his Kingdom! crew, who surprised with a congratulatory banner at the show’s end.

<<

Best Male Cabaret Performer Jason Brock wowed the crowd with his song.

Besties Best

From page 31

The show, introduced by Oasis coowners D’Arcy Drollinger and Heklina, included host Shawn Ryan, who opened with a song, accompanied

by Tammy L. Hall. Ryan’s witty jokes carried through the prize giveaways and proclamations by supervisors Mark Farrell and Scott Weiner.

Other entertainers were all Bestie winners, including Veronica Klaus, Connie Champagne, Jason Brock and Alex U. Inn, whose closing medley with Kaylah “Mailman” Marin and the Kingdom! crew brought the audience to its feet. Grooves continued with Bestie-winner and Polyglamorous DJ Mark O’Brien.

For the full last week’s issue with lists of all the Bestie winners, and numerous feature articles, visit: https://issuu.com/bayareareporter/ docs/bayareareporter_april_7_2016 and http://ebar.com/.t

Gareth Gooch

Best Male DJ MC2 gets some love from “Patsy and Edina” (Christian Heppinstal and Terry McLaughlin of Absolutely Fabulous; Best Live Nightclub Show).

Gareth Gooch

Mark O’Brien spun warm grooves before and after the live show.

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34 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-21, 2016

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

Josh Grodsky Long-time HIV Survivor makes SF Cabaret Debut

by David-Elijah Nahmod

T

hroughout his life, San Francisco native and longtime HIV survivor Josh Grodsky has dreamed of a career in cabaret and musical theater. The 58-year-old’s dream is now coming true. After several years of singing during open mics at Martuni’s, Grodsky is making his debut as a headliner. On April 15, he’ll bring his one-man show, Even Mad Men Need Love to Society Cabaret at the Hotel Rex. Grodsky describes the evening as a “jazzy trip on a train.” He’ll be crooning popular tunes from the mid-twentieth century.

“I’m pursuing my dream at this time because I will no longer settle

for a life of regret,” Grodsky told Bay Area Reporter. “Singing is about the only thing remaining of me which I feel I can still do reasonably well. Singing is the gift from God I have to share with the world. Singing is what I do. I do it for love. If I never make a dime from it, I’d still do it because music is great therapy and medicine in my life!”

Grodsky worked at nine-to-five office jobs during his earlier life. In recent years he’s struggled against a variety of HIV related health issues. He’s collected disability since the early 1990s, but he survived.

His survival played a major role in inspiring him to pursue his singing.

He said that he was born in the city “during the Beatnik era, when rents

were cheaper,” and has lived in a variety of locales: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Florida, and Brazil. Throughout the years he never lost the desire to return home to San Francisco.

“I was able to return to the City with the assistance of a HOPWA voucher and got my first studio apartment in the Outer Richmond in 2009,” he said.

“Coming out was difficult for me, since coming from a Jewish/Catholic background I had guilt in stereo!

But after starts and stops, I officially came out when I joined the San Francisco Gay Men›s Chorus in 2011 and I sang with them for three years.”

Grodsky’s story is similar to that of other longtime HIV survivors.

“I think I sero-converted when living back in the City in 1982,” he recalls.

“I finally tested positive in 1987, so that makes this over 30 years I’ve been living with the disease. I’ve been on every cocktail and suffered from many side effects, including neuropathy from Zerit, kidney stones from Crixivan, diabetes from God knows what, and of course, a life-long battle Josh Grodsky with depression before any of the other diagnoses hit.” ing ‘healed’ from it. San Francisco As with many who were has that power to heal you. To take diagnosed with HIV during those the ‘wretched refuse’ and to help early years, Grodsky endured a make them whole again.” number of close calls.

Grodsky will perform songs from “I almost died, losing vision, hair legendary composers such as Harand teeth and was down to 40 Told Arlen, Jules Styne and Johnny cells in 1994,” he said. “I spent the Mercer. He’ll be joined onstage by next 20 years planning to die. The Dave Austin and His Trio De Swing, only reason that makes sense to my who will provide the music. Grodlong-life and relative health for the sky’s set will include “Give Me the moment is this desire to perform.”

Simple Life,” a song he refers to as And so, in between monitoring “wishful thinking.” his health, Grodsky honed his craft “I’ll also perform ‘This Could Be at Martuni’s and with the Gay Men’s the Start of Something Big,’ a great Chorus. When he steps out onto the mid-1950s tune from around the Society Cabaret stage, it will be a time of my birth,” he said. “And ‘Balmore than a musical debut.

“Even Mad Men Need Love is going to be a fun, mostly upbeat show,” he said. “I’ll leave the audience with a great parting message about love. And part of my story is revealed during the show. My big reveal, and what might explain why I’m finally able to start pursuing my dream at this stage in the game, is my chronic depression and be-

t

lad of the Sad Young Men,’ perhaps my darkest/most revealing tune of the evening.”

Grodsky added that he’s saddened to see the music of The Great American Songbook all but disappear from the contemporary landscape.

“I’m fixing to water it, give it some light, jazz it up and let it bloom again,” he said. “It still deserves to be heard.”t Josh Grodsky: Even Mad Men Need Love: An Evening of Songs From the Mid-20th Century. Friday, April 15, 8pm. Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter St. www.societycabaret.com

Josh Grodsky at a recent Martuni’s night.

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On the Tab>>

April 14-21, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 35

On the Tab

Take Me Away @ Circus Center The circus school presents another in its series of cabaret-style gymnastic, aerial and clown shows, with live jazz music and drinks. $15-$75 and up.

8pm. Also April 16. 755 Frederick St. 759-8123. www.circuscenter.org

Uhaul @ Beatbox

April 14-21

D

isco dancing, drag deligh ts, beers a bustin’, bros and Blues, gals and garage bands. Get out.

Fri 15

The popular women’s night (3rd Fridays) brings all the fun lesbians to the dance floor, with DJs Lady Ryan and Motive. $10. 10pm-2am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Sat 16

at Sissy Nobby performs sis Swagger Like Us @ Oa

Beatpig @ Powerhouse Juanita More! and her crew’s cool combo of drag, leather and music. $5.

9pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

GAMeBoi SF @ Rickshaw Stop

Spice Racks @ Castro Theatre

Disco Daddy @ SF Eagle

Peaches Christ’s latest dragstravaganza, a parody of the Spice World film (screening after the live show), features Honey Mahogany, Anna Phylactic, Cheddar Gorgeous, Peggy L’Eggs, Katya Zamoldchikova and others. Adutls only. $37-$120. 3pm & 8pm. VIP tix include drinks and reception. 429 Castro St. www.peacheschrist.com

After taking LA by disco storm, DJ Bus Station John once again turns the famed leather bar into a dance sensation, this month with a tribute to ‘one-hit wonders.’ $5. 7pm-12am. 398 12th st. www.sf-eagle.com

Sun 17

Daytime Realness @ El Rio The popular patio party (3rd Sundays) takes on a Victorian “Around the World in 80 Gays” theme, with shots Heklina and Tom Temprano, DJs Stanley Frank, and guests Siobhan Aluvalot and Guy Ruben; drag acts K Color, MGM Grande, LOL McFiercen, Au Jus, and Mason Dixon Jars; BBQ, too. $8-$10. 2pm-8pm. 3158 Mission St. www.facebook.com/ DaytimeRealness www.elriosf.com

Femme, Xtravaganza @ Balancoire Weekly live music shows with various acts, along with brunch, mimosas, champagne and more, at the stylish nightclub and restaurant; shows at 12:30pm, 1:30pm and 2:45pm. After that, T-Dance drag shows at 7pm, 10pm and 11pm. 2565 Mission St. at 21st.

920-0577. www.balancoiresf.com

M83 @ Fox Theatre The Grammy-nominated pop band, led by Anthony Gonzalez, performs. $43. 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave. www.ilovem83.com www.thefoxoakland.com

See page 38 >>

The popular monthly gay Asian dance night. $8-$15. 9:30pm-2am. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com

Miss Castro Country Club Pageant @ Everett Middle School Edited for space. Complete listings at www.ebar.com/bartab

Comedy Noir @ Balancoire

Thu 14

Valerie Branch’s weekly comedy night, where she embodies her faux queen character Pia Messing for some offbeat wit, along with guest performers. $5. 8pm-10pm. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.com

Baloney @ Oasis

The gay all-male revue returns with a sexy new Spring show. Enjoy conceptual striptease numbers and specialty cocktails. $25-$50. 7pm. ThuSat thru April 16. 298 11th St. www. sfbaloney.com www.sfoasis.com

Bulge @ Powerhouse Grace Towers hosts the fun sexy night. $100 cash prize for best bulge. $5-$10 benefits Groundswell Institute, the queer retreat camp. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Circle Jerk @ Nob Hill Theatre Porn stud Kurtis Wolfe leads the interactive downstairs sex party (before his April 15 & 16 duo shows with Draven Torres). $15. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. Also Fridays 7pm-2am.

1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Station @ SF Oasis Take off for a cosmic grand slam of space oddities and glitter galaxy creatures, with DJs Stallion and Princess VuVu, performances by Rahni NothingMore, Lachrymose Scurrum, Vain Hein, Krylon Frye, The Living Earth Show, & Galactic GoGo boys Ben & Nion. $10. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Storm Large @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The vivacious singer from Pink Martini performs with her new band. $45$65. 8pm. Also April 15, 8pm, April 16, 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. www.ticketweb.com

Fri 15

22nd Anniversary @ Hole in the Wall The rock music, dude-cruisy bar celebrates two decades and two years. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Ain’t Mama’s Drag @ Balancoire Weekly drag queen and drag king show hosted by Cruzin d’Loo. Mar. 25 features Donna Personna and many other acts. 8pm-10pm. No cover. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.com

Freeball @ Powerhouse Let your goods swing free at the gym shorts and sweatpants night, hosted by hotties Daniel DeLage and Element Eclipse, DJ Riley Patrick and superhot gogo stud Claudio Boser. $5. 10pm2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Kurtis Wolfe @ Nob Hill Theatre The hunky porn actor returns to the famed strip club. Sex shows with Draven Torres at 8pm & 10pm. $25. Also April 16. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Friday Nights @ de Young Museum Season 12 of the fun art parties returns, with the Oscar de la Renta exhibit, flamenco-jazz pianist Alex Conde, fashion films and mixed media art-making stations. 5:30pm-9pm. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, www.deyoung.famsf.org

Kuckaw @ Starry Plough, Berkeley The popular Bay Area funk band performs music from their new CD, with Sweet Plot. $10-$15. 9pm. 3101 Shattuck Ave.m Berkeley. www.thestarryplough.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland Enjoy Latin, hip hop and electro, plus hot gogos galore, and a big dance floor.

April 15 is a big Selena tribute, with look-alike contest and a tribute show. $10-$20. 9pm-3am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Midnight Show @ Divas Weekly drag shows at the last transgender-friendly bar in the Polk; with hosts Victoria Secret, Alexis Miranda and several performers. Also Saturdays. $10. 11pm. 1081 Polk St. www.divassf.com

Some Thing @ The Stud

There can only be on Recovery Queen, the LGBT sober space’s fun drag contest, hosted by Ivy Drip and U-Phoria, with judges Olivia Hart, Frida K-Hole and Terry Beswick; plus DJ Hardhat. $15-$20. 7pm pre-show, 8pm pagenat,. 450 Church St. www.castrocountryclub.org

Mother @ Oasis Heklina’s weekly drag show night with different themes, always outrageously hilarious. April 16: a Hawaiian “Get Lei’d” theme. $15. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Rockstars Beer Bust @ The Edge The SF gay softball team’s fundraiser includes $10 all you can drink beer, Jell-O shots and the entire team. 4pm7pm. 4149 18th St. www.edgesf.com

Sat 16 Ivy Drip hosts the Miss Castro Country Club Pageant @ Everett Middle School

I am the future of the LGBT community.

I’m 26 and transitioning.

I have a lot going on - I don’t need to be mocked, misgendered, or marginalized, and I don’t have time to hunt out news that matters to me.

That’s why I read EDGE on my Android tablet.

I’m being true to my future - and that’s where it will be.

Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. $7.

10pm-3am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Swagger Like Us @ SF Oasis The monthly queer hip hop dance party features New Orleans Bounce act Sissy Nobby; DJs davO, ValG. $10. 10pm2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.swaggersf.com

The person depicted here is a model. Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

36 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-21, 2016

Kurtis Wolfe

by Jim Provenzano

H

e’s not only hot, muscled and hung; Kurtis Wolfe is one porn actor who’s smart about the business. In a short time, Wolfe has made a name for himself as a young man who enjoys his work. He’ll be at The Nob Hill Theatre for three nights; the Thursday, April 14 Circle Jerk, and two nights of live sex shows with Draven Torres April 15 and 16. Wolfe, 26, shared his thoughts, experiences and opinions on a diverse array of subjects, proving he’s got both brains and brawn.

BARtab: In a previous interview, you discussed the fallout of the Rentboy shut down. A year later, has your escort work returned to normal, with your Rentmen listing?

Kurtis Wolfe: Prior to the RentBoy shut down I was advertising very heavily on both RentBoy and RentMen. When the horrendous seizure of the RentBoy site happened, my advertising was still online and viewable for everyone. Based upon my experience, the industry adapted very quickly in shifting their strategies for advertising and continuing operations as normal. Many escorts like myself saw no fluctuation in business and others were unable to adapt in order to continue doing business. Like in any business, one needs to continually evaluate your environment and your business to make any necessary changes to improve.

t

Sexy, savvy stud’s back at The Nob Hill Theatre

don’t actually live in the Lone Star State. However, when I am back in Austin, I am very happy to call it home. The attitude and overall environment of Austin is very laid back and relaxing while maintaining a very serious attitude when it comes to business. Austinites know how to balance work and play. But most of all, everyone that has moved to Austin in the last decade has had one sole purpose; creating a better life for themselves. It really shows amongst those people who have decided to embrace our very unique culture of food, music, traditions and lifestyle.

I have been asked countless times if I wrestled in high school or college and the simple answer is no.

Throughout high school I played baseball and in college I was more focused on weightlifting. I receive many compliments about my ears as well as my freckles. During my childhood I was consistently teased when it came to my ears and absolutely hated them while growing up. Over time I have learned to embrace their “adorable” characteristics. The minor differences in ourselves is what makes us unique and special. No one honestly wants to be normal anyway.

Have you had relationships off-screen or offstage with other guys? Is that difficult to maintain?

While in the industry I’ve had a previous relationship, and I am also currently in a relationship with another man. As long as your partner is understanding of the industry and what happens, your line of work won’t be the cause of any issues. Right now I’m currently doing a long distance relationship and while that has been difficult, we have been making it work by planning several trips to see one another either in our home cities or traveling to somewhere new.

Life is an adventure and we’re both making sure it’s a fun, exciting, interesting and overall thrilling ride in itself.

A lot of performers are doing bareback sex, what with Truvada and PrEP becoming more commonly used. Do you have a preference?

You’ve also discussed, of I have yet to do a bareback all things, tax returns and a sex scene for a studio and I smart business perspective would be open to the idea of on your work in videos and filming such a scene. Currently escorting. Several local porn my biggest gripe when it comes actors here in the Bay Area to producing bareback conmaintain other steady jobs. tent is the inconsistency when Can you discuss what seems it comes to testing models for like the ‘new sensible porn STIs/STDs. I personally take actor?’ And does it break Truvada as PrEP and feel comMark Henderson stereotypes about guys in the fortable working with an undeKurtis Wolfe business? tectable model for a bareback The current stereotype of scene. men in the porn business is that However, as we all know, they do nothing else other than have Truvada does not protect against Was your first scene with Derek sex on camera. It is often viewed by the other STIs that are increasingly Atlas? Can you share your personthe general public as a last resort to becoming more and more drugal decision to make porn, from the making ends meet in order to survive. resistant. Playing safe, frequent testidea of considering it, to finally Most intelligent men in the industry ing and being mindful and underbeing on a set? utilize their porn career more as a standing how specific STIs/STDs My first duo scene in the indusmarketing move towards something are transmitted are very important try was with Derek Atlas and was much bigger they are currently doand will play a vital role in reducfilmed the day after I had filmed ing or will be doing sometime in the ing transmission and creating a safe my solo scene with RandyBlue. I future. That could range from escortworking environment. started out in the industry as a live ing to creating your own products or webcam model while I was in gradmedia. I would personally say that The Nob Hill Theatre has a uate school. At the time I needed a most men in the industry are breaklong history of showcasing porn job that was flexible to help pay for ing the public stereotype of the male actors. What can fans look forthe rent, groceries, etc. After several porn star and are often utilizing that ward to at the Thursday Circle months, a recruiter for several of the career as a supplement to something Jerk and Friday and Saturday studios saw me and referred me over else they are doing. shows? to RandyBlue.

As with my previous performancYou also have other businesses. es at Nob Hill Theatre, the audience You’ve obviously become versaAny details on those, like Buck members won’t find just the normal tile, sexually. Do you think the days Wild Studios? run of the mill shows, but someof ‘top-only’ actors are going away?

I manage and own several busithing that’ll keep you hooked and I started out in the industry as a nesses, one being Buck Wild Stubegging for more. Draven and mysole-top because that is how I was in dios, which is a subdivision of my self love delivering an exceptional my personal life. As I became more advertising and media company performance and we plan on bringcomfortable with being versatile, Enflame Media. Buck Wild Studios ing that same level of dedication to I was open to the idea of filming started as a management company our shows this weekend.t versatile scenes with Randy Blue. for webcam models in the industry.

Consumers in today’s market will Read more with Kurtis Wolfe on We helped new models get quickly expect versatile performers. Many www.ebar.com/bartab started in the industry by filling out studios will only hire new models as the necessary paperwork, negotiattops only as a potential marketing ing higher earnings rates and even gimmick until they feel it is time to Kurtis Wolfe performs live sex providing equipment for models debut their other skills on camera. shows with Draven Torres at the to utilize so they could deliver high Nob Hill Theatre, April 15 & 16, quality content while performing.

When I mentioned to a friend 8pm & 10pm. $25. 729 Bush St. at who’s a porn fan and also a former Powell. 397-6758.

How is life in Austin? You’ve www.thenobhilltheatre.com wrestler, he wrote back, “OMG! said you love it, but what about The one with the adorable ears!

Follow Kurtis at that city is special?

Ask him if he wrestled.” He said twitter.com/kurtiswolfe Life in Austin is absolutely amazyou have a wrestler’s look and instagram.com/kurtis_wolfe ing when I’m actually there! I travel body. Do you get compliments so much that it often feels like I about your ears?

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

April 14-21, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 37

Rethinking Kink Education

Rich Stadtmiller

Public demonstrations like this at the 2015 Folsom Street Fair have the context of an audience that expects to see such activity.

by Race Bannon

A

mong the cornerstones of the modern leather/kink scene are the vast amount of educational opportunities available. Classes. Workshops. Demonstrations. Conferences.

Everywhere you turn there is relatively easy-to-access kink education. Certainly here in the Bay Area we have a plethora of such education options.

Throughout the organized kink networks, especially among BDSM practitioners, you consistently hear of the need for such education within our ranks.

At the same time, we also often hear that we need to do outreach education to those outside of the kink networks to bring them into the fold.

Lastly, there are those efforts to educate the general public about who we are and what we do.

Are some of these efforts less than effective? I think so, and here’s why.

First, let me discuss education within our ranks and how we do that education.

I would like to suggest that we are possibly over-educating ourselves to the point where even the most experienced of kink practitioners are starting to feel that if they aren’t forever adding to their set of play skills they are somehow not meeting

some sort of community standard.

I even heard one person utter, in all seriousness, that every respectable kinkster should be attending classes ongoing, forever. When I challenged them, they were steadfast that anyone who did not attend classes regularly should be shunned. I was shocked.

In such cases we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Especially when it comes to kink technique classes, we foster a sense among many that BDSM and the range of kink is just about skills and, at times, what essentially amounts to fancy parlor tricks. We encourage the notion that one must continually up the ante in terms of variety and extremes of play.

This does not sync with the average kinkster’s daily experience or needs.

Most kinky folks have a very specific set of desires and needs for their erotic play. Typically, they’re quite simple and basic.

They don’t need to see yet one more way to tie someone up or stimulate nipples. What they mostly need are insights and support on how to best meet, bond, connect and navigate within the BDSM and other kinky subcultures.

I’ve also heard more times than I can count that many people have reached the point where they only attend classes because they are so-

Rich Stadtmiller

A flogger, held by Harry Kong, Mr. SF Eagle Leather 2016, left, was auctioned off, but not used, at an SF leather fundraiser at 440 in January 2016.

cializing opportunities, but is a class really a good socializing opportunity? No. Why not reduce the number of those classes and get creative? Let’s promote more in-person socializing opportunities in their place, something we desperately need as our physical meeting spaces dwindle and our virtual connections increase.

In addition to the one-off classes available locally in most major American urban centers, we’ve also wholeheartedly adopted the standard business conference model for many of our bigger national and regional educational events. However, what we do is not always so easily presented in such a format. What we do is more about interpersonal connection than it is about information and skills. Shouldn’t our big gatherings be figuring out how to foster this rather than pushing out the same, often regurgitated, information and skill set many of the attendees have seen many times prior?

Why not create learning play parties with an interactive and mentored approach? Why not create socializing settings where kinksters feel empowered to share knowledge, insights and experiences with each other as learning and growth mechanisms. Why do we feel obligated to pack conference education tracks so full that it becomes a challenge to attend all but a fraction of the classes?

Kinky folks tend to be a creative bunch. Why aren’t we leveraging that creativity to come up with new socializing and educational events rather than offering up yet one more cookie cutter, templated version of the same event. We’re not really serving the needs of the community by rigidly sticking to old models.

Second, what about education we do as outreach to bring people into the kinkster networks?

When I see supposedly educational kink demonstrations take place at public venues, especially non-kinky venues, they concern me.

Do we really want the average person witnessing a complex and nuanced BDSM or kinky scene? The general public has no context in which to position what they see. Even those who might be kink curious can actually be turned off and discouraged by witnessing such play before they’re ready to fully understand it within a more robust overall context.

An argument that’s often made is that such public displays bring new people into the kinky scene. I disagree. I don’t think they generally do. I think they often amount to side show carnivals for the viewers and an exhibitionistic opportunity for the players. Nothing more. I don’t think much education actually takes place.

I think it’s far more important to provide places in which interested people can come, learn and explore in a controlled and secure environment.

Some say we want to make it easy for newcomers to come into the scene. Sure we do, on some level.

But to spoonfeed the general public kinky scenes done outside of an understandable context doesn’t do that.

Yes, make educational, learning and support opportunities known to the public. But if someone doesn’t have the motivation and drive to expend at least the effort it takes to show up at a more private, controlled event, do we really want them in the scene in the first place? Does this not encourage the casual dabbler while discouraging the more engaged players? What value does this bring to the overall community?

Finally, we need to educate the general public about who we are and what we do.

Let me say this loud and clear.

The general public does not need to know the specifics of what kinky folks do. They simply don’t. When gay men ask for acknowledgement

and acceptance they don’t delve into the nuanced details of butt-fucking.

Nor should we as leatherfolk and kinksters feel the need to give outsiders a deep dive look at our erotic practices.

All we want from the general public is a basic understanding of what we do and why we do it, and to make dialogue and awareness prevalent enough so that we can do what we do undisturbed. That’s it.

We really don’t need anything else from the general public and to ask for any more is to invite problems that don’t need to occur.

I know much of what I’ve said here is controversial. I know many within our ranks have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo for the educational efforts as they’ve developed over the past two decades or so.

And what I’ve offered here is not meant to suggest that we don’t need education. We absolutely do. I have championed and participated in

countless educational events over the years and support them. So perhaps even I’m culpable in fostering some of the missteps I see in such efforts.

But my current opinion is that we need a major rethink in this area.

When you stand back and examine the amount of time, effort and resources that are poured into kink education, I think they’d often be better allocated elsewhere. While I certainly want to see education events continue to happen, I’d like to see us err more often on the side of using some of the money and people hours to help erotic adventurers meet, socialize, and yes learn from each other, in more casual and organic ways.t For Leather Listings, please visit www.ebar.com/bartab Race Bannon is a local author, blogger and activist. www.bannon.com

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38 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-21, 2016

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On the Tab

From page 35

Red Hots Burlesque @ PianoFight The saucy women’s burlesque show now serves brunch before and after the show, with bottomless Momosas $15-$25. 2pm. Weekly thru May 29.

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Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. $45.

11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square.

395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550 Weekly two-stepping and linedancing fun, with lessons and DJed music (not just country). April 10 is a special 18th Anniversary Party, with free admission. 5pm-10:30pm. Also Thursdays. 550 Barneveld Ave. www.sundancesaloon.org

Mon 18

Drag Mondays @ The Cafe Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko’s weekly drag and dance night, with 9pm RuPaul’s Drag Race viewings. 9pm-1am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Hysteria @ Martuni’s Irene Tu and Jessica Sele cohost the comedy open mic night for women and queers. No cover. 6pm-8:30pm.

4 Valencia St.

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany’s weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm, with 9pm RuPaul’s Drag Race viewings. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Tue 19

Wed 20

Thu 21

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6pm-10pm. 21+ only. 1025 Columbus Ave. www.bimbos365club.com www.homeboxoffice.com/apps/rsvp/ gotoRSVP/GOTSF

Juanita More! presents a new weekly scenic happy hour event, with host Rudy Valdez, DJs Vin Sol and Rolo. No cover, and a fantastic panoramic city view. Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell St. www.starlightroomsf.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre

Man Francisco @ Oasis

Celebrate and fundraise a the 3rd annual party for the website created by former Bay Guardian staff, while enjoying cocktails, light food, and the panoramic view. $35-$1,000.

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Game of Thrones Challenge @ Bimbos 365 Club

Strip down as the strippers also take it all off. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

OutLoud @ SF Oasis Joshua Grannell’s fascinating storytelling series continues, with Landa Lakes, Javier Suazo, Joe Wadlington, Frida K-Hole and Kevin Rolston telling tales of teenage lust. $10. 7pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Floor 21 @ Starlight Room

The sexy, funny weekly male burlesque show returns with a few new handsome talents; choreographed by Christopher James Dunn; Mr Pam MCs. $20. 2 Twodrink min. 9:30pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Pussy Party @ Beaux Ladies night at the Castro dance club.

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48 Hills Gala @ Starlight Room

Above and Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Showgirls @ Oasis D’Arcy Drollinger’s restaging of the high camp rock musical about a singer’s rise and fall, with lots of sex, drugs and original live music. $25-$35, $250 Super groupie front row VIP tables. Thu-Sat 7pm. Thru May 14. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Thu 21

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Bill Graham and the Rock & Roll Revolution @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Exhibit of photos and documents of and about the prolific rock concert promoter. April 21: Exodus Party, a celebration of Passover and music, with funk band Hibbity Dibbity, DJ mash-ups, cocktails and a light show; $75-$135, 7pm-12am. 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

Maria Konner @ Martuni’s The musically marvelous trans diva performs blues, jazz and rock with her 3-piece trio, plus open mic, no cover, and delish cocktails. 6:30-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St.

Sexitude @ Oasis The fun popular retro-style aerobic dance class and party. Bring your neon Spandex, leg warmers and get physical, then have cocktails. $8.

9pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

Shooting Stars

April 14-21, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 39

photos by Steven Underhill Manimal @ Beaux

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otness sizzles on the platforms and on the dance floor at Beaux’s Manimal. The gogo-tastic Friday dance night starts off your weekend with hot gogo guys and a diverse crowd. Weekly 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com More event photo albums are on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife. See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at www.StevenUnderhill.com.

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