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Sisters: Don’t call it Pink Saturday by Seth Hemmelgarn
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he Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have decided that organizers of this year’s event can’t use the name Pink Saturday. The decision Tuesday night, April 14 Rick Gerharter concerning the annual pre-Pride parade Sister Selma Soul street event in San Francisco’s Castro district leaves the city, the LGBT Community Center, and E. Cee Productions with just over two months to figure out what to call this year’s party, which is expected to draw thousands of people to the neighborhood June 27. “The order has voted to retain the name ‘Pink Saturday’ and will pursue a new manifestation of Pink Saturday in a new venue in 2016,” Sister Selma Soul, who coordinated the event from 2012 through 2014, said in an email Tuesday night. “We wish the center the best with their new event in the Castro and look forward to hearing what they decide to call it.” Speaking for the center and E. Cee Productions Wednesday morning, Ruth McFarlane, the center’s programs director, said in an email, “The center will be choosing a new name for the party on Castro Street on the Saturday of Pride weekend. ... The Sisters have asked the center to choose a different name for the event this year. We expect to announce the new name next week.” Despite the vote from the Sisters, which own the Pink Saturday name, it’s likely that many will continue to use that moniker. Following years of concern about violence, in February the Sisters decided to end their oversight of the street party. In March, gay Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose District 8 includes the Castro, announced that the community center had agreed to oversee the event, with help from the city. The center has brought on E. Cee Productions to assist. Soul, who’s also known as James Bazydola, said in an interview last week that she was leaning toward voting to keep the Pink Saturday name for the Sisters. “They’ll still have a crowd,” Soul said of this year’s organizers, and they’ll “still have a great event,” but for more than 20 years, the Sisters “have put all our blood, sweat, and tears” into the party. “I personally don’t want to give up the name.” See page 10 >>
Vol. 45 • No. 16 • April 16-22, 2015
Work starts on LGBT senior housing by Matthew S. Bajko
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raffiti covers the interior walls throughout Richardson Hall, a vacant historic Spanish Colonial Revival style structure at the corner of Laguna and Hermann streets built in 1925 as part of the now-defunct San Francisco State Teacher’s College complex. From a broken window pane in a second floor classroom wafts in the sound of construction on an adjacent major infill development named Alta Laguna where Wood Partners is building 330 units of housing, a portion of which will be below market rate. Soon the banging of hammers will reverberate from inside the abandoned college building at 55 Laguna as crews with James E. Roberts-Obayashi Corp. turn its classrooms and ground floor auditorium into 40 units of affordable housing for LGBT seniors. There will also be a new corner retail space fronting Laguna carved out of the existing building and new offices for Openhouse, a nonprofit that provides services to LGBT seniors that is the driving force behind the project. On Thursday Openhouse and its development partner, Mercy Housing California, will issue a notice to proceed on the rehabilitation of Richardson Hall, estimated to cost $16 million. It is the first phase in the construction of a total of 110 units of below-market-rate
Van Meter Williams Pollack architects
A rendering of Openhouse’s planned senior apartments at 55 Laguna Street.
housing for LGBT seniors at the site. “We are all very, very excited to see this construction and renovation get started,” said Openhouse Executive Director Seth Kilbourn as he gave the Bay Area Reporter an exclusive tour of the building in late March. “There is a lot of excitement and anticipation.” Kilbourn, a gay man who once took a statistics class in the building back in 1989,
said he encountered what looked like a “post apocalyptic” scene when he returned in 2013. “It was quite a mess in here. It looked like people were working in here, and then one day, they up and left,” recalled Kilbourn, who believes the last use of the building was for mock disaster training. As Ramie Dare, a real estate developer with See page 5 >>
Trans people face high costs to transition by Sasha Lekach
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aclyn Mae came out of the closet when she was 21. When she told her family in Indiana that she was a transgender woman, she quickly realized they were not receptive to the idea and decided she had to get out of what she called an “abusive environment” at her mother’s home. A year after telling her family, she moved to New York and then followed her girlfriend, who is also a trans woman, to the Bay Area less than a year ago. “I haven’t looked back,” she said. “I’m not going to let them in my life again.” Now 26, the San Jose resident has turned to the Internet and the goodwill of strangers in hopes of funding her decision to go through with gender reassignment surgery. Although the state’s Medi-Cal insurance will cover most of the costs of major surgery, she is seeking $8,000 for ancillary procedures to make her transition complete. But even with growing government support, far from everything is covered. “Help save a transgirl’s life!” reads Mae’s online crowdfunding page, which has raised $300 so far (http://www.gofundme.com/cf7rxg). Mae’s appeal is just one of dozens of online pleas for money to help support trans men and women with the medical and other costs of their transition so they can physically present themselves, not as the gender they were born into, but as the gender with which they identify. For Mae and others who decide to
undergo surgery as part of things to be covered as well. their transition, this is less a “I’m pretty much doing cosmetic change than a lifeeverything I can or raising saving procedure. Despite the money I need,” said Mae, insurance, total costs quickly adding, “I don’t like taking reach into many thousands money from others.” of dollars. Changes in health care Gender reassignment law have helped assuage the surgery can reach into six mounting costs of transifigures without insurance tioning for both transmen coverage. For women beand transwomen. Through coming transmen, the basic the Affordable Care Act, procedures include surgical many people have become removal of the vagina (vagieligible for coverage and can nectomy) and construction no longer be excluded for of a penis (phalloplasty), transgender care. which can total $100,000. That sounds like a boon Courtesy Jaclyn Mae For men becoming transfor the transgender comwomen, there is surgery to Jaclyn Mae has turned to munity. But the benefits may remove testicles (orchiec- crowdfunding to help raise still be more theoretical than tomy) and create female funds for her surgery and other practical, said Dr. Dawn genitals (labiaplasty), which procedures. Harbatkin, the medical dimay total $75,000. rector of San Francisco’s LyAlthough such basic on-Martin Health Services, surgeries are increasingly covered by insurwhich sees trans patients. ance, that doesn’t include other procedures for “The reality of it is there just isn’t sufficient transwomen like breast augmentation, tracheal medical capacity to accommodate the number shaves to smooth the Adam’s apple, or lengthy of people who want care,” she said. and painful electrolysis to remove hair in unSan Francisco’s Health Plan, the local prowanted places. Transmen often also choose top gram for Medi-Cal recipients, is lauded as surgery to transform breasts into a chest. These one of the most progressive health coverage out-of-pocket costs can run an additional programs. But to qualify, patients have to meet $10,000 to $40,000. Advocates for the trans See page 6 >> community are lobbying for some of these
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