January 14, 2016 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

Castro gets 3 lesbian-owned businesses

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

Vol. 46 • No. 2 • January 14-20, 2016

Rick Gerharter

Juliette-Marie Somerset, left, and Dr. Tri D. Do, chief medical officer at the Wellness Clinic, share a laugh during a medical consultation at the clinic.

API Wellness Center expands clinic hours

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

he Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center has expanded the hours of its recently remodeled Wellness Clinic as it continues to make changes now that it has federal status.

The clinic, housed in a suite of upgraded exam rooms and offices on the fourth floor of 730 Polk Street a short walk north from San Francisco’s Civic Center area, is now open Mondays through Fridays. Its hours and staffing are expected to grow as it ramps up its services in order to care for 4,000 patients by 2017.

“Even up to the last day of the remodel things were disorganized. Once the new signage went up, it felt like we are in a real health center. That was not just my reaction but I also heard that from staff and clients,” said Dr. Tri Do, API Wellness Center’s chief medical officer, as he showed off the upgraded facility last week. “Everything is so new and brought up to the 21st century.”

When it first opened in 2011, the clinic was staffed by volunteers and provided services three days a week. The agency set about upgrading the clinic environs in August 2014 and most of the remodel work, at a cost of roughly $110,000, was completed last October.

“It’s been a huge change,” said Castro resident Juliette-Marie Somerset, 55, a black transgender queer woman who became a client at the clinic last May. “The space has been transformed into a proper clinic.”

Work is ongoing to build out a new space for the clinic’s reception desk and an office for a newly hired eligibility specialist who works with patients to sign them up for health insurance.

There are now four private counseling suites and a dedicated community art therapy studio. API Wellness Center formed a partnership with the University of San See page 2 >>

Campos proposes all-gender bathrooms S

by Seth Hemmelgarn

Supervisor David Campos speaks at a Monday news conference to announce legislation to mandate that all one-person bathrooms have signage that is gender neutral.

an Francisco Supervisor David Campos this week introduced legislation that would require local businesses and city-owned properties to make all one-person bathrooms gender neutral.

The proposal is “something that should have been done many, many years ago,” Campos, a gay man, said Monday at a

news conference on the steps of City Hall.

People who are transgender or gendernonconforming, as well as those who are disabled and are accompanied by caretakers of a different gender, should not feel “afraid” when choosing a restroom, Campos said as he announced plans to introduce his proposal Tuesday.

See page 13 >>

Pets can boost health of LGBT seniors Rick Gerharter

by Matthew S. Bajko

U

p to five times a day Gary Allen can be found walking his dog, Mickey, around his San Francisco neighborhood.

Allen, 63, adopted the Jack Russell terrier in July from Muttville, a dog rescue agency for senior canines. Mickey is more than 17 years old.

“I am indulging him because he is at the end of his life,” explained Allen, who is gay and lives alone, about the duo’s daily walking regimen.

Having never owned a dog before, Allen was acting on the advice of his doctor, who felt a companion animal would reduce his stress levels. It also lessens his social isolation, as people on the street will stop to talk to him about Mickey on their outings.

The exercise he gains from walking Mickey also benefits Allen, who is certified as disabled due to knee problems.

“It is helping with my health,” said Allen.

“Mickey walks slow, which is good for me, and I have lost weight.”

Talk to any pet owner and they will tell you about the joy they derive from their animals, whether dogs, cats, birds or any other creature in their care. Seniors, in particular, say their pets boost their mental and physical health.

Yet aging researchers are just beginning to take notice of how pet ownership can be a boon for older adults, especially LGBT seniors who are more likely to live alone and lack family connections. Their findings are bolstering calls by senior advocates for policies that foster pet ownership

Kelly Sullivan

Rebecca Lockhart shares a moment with Ernie at the Muttville senior dog meet-up that is organized by Openhouse.

among older adults, particularly those who live in assisted living facilities, retirement homes, or rental apartments that ban pets.

“The love and affection pets bring to people are very important,” said Anna Muraco, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

In November, at the 68th annual conference held by the Gerontological Society of America, Muraco presented a study titled “Life Saving in Every Way: The Role of Pets in the Lives of Older Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Adults Ages 50 and Over” that she co-authored

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with Jennifer Putney, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Simmons College in Boston.

They culled through the findings of the National Health, Aging and Sexuality Study: Caring and Aging with Pride over Time, the first national LGBT senior study that the National Institutes of Health first funded in 2009, to create their sample of LGBT seniors with pets. They also looked at a subsample of 59 respondents from the Los Angeles area that they interviewed.

Of the 1,039 LGBT seniors in the national aging study who owned a pet, 49 percent were female. Forty-four percent had at least one pet, and 49 percent of pet owners had a disability.

“Pets help with mental and physical health, provide connection to other people, and give their owners a reason to get out of bed in the morning,” said Muraco. “Pets help ward off depression, and dogs are a good way for people to get out and exercise.”

The LGBT aging study’s lead researcher, Karen I. Fredriksen-Goldsen, Ph.D., who is also listed as an author of the pet ownership study, noted that one of the LGBT senior community groups that collaborated on the Caring and Aging with Pride study requested that it include a question about pet ownership, which it initially did not.

“They said we go into homes of seniors day after day and pets are sometimes their only social support,” said Fredriksen-Goldsen, a lesbian who is the director of the Hartford See page 12 >>

<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

Rain delays Dolores Park opening

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ission Dolores Park, one of San Francisco’s most popular public spaces, is spruced up after a $20.5 million renovation but the reopening party, originally set for this week, has been postponed due to weather. The expanded and reconfigured

20th Street overlook, above, is a part of the reconstruction of the south side of the park, which was just completed and includes the “gay beach” area. The park’s completed northern section opened last June.

Funding campaign set up for teacher shot in Richmond

by Seth Hemmelgarn

had been raised toward the goal of $70,000. crowdfunding campaign An update to the website has been set up to help a from Monday said, “Claire and Bay Area schoolteacher who Lori are both moving forward. was shot in Richmond this Baby steps. It will be a long, month as she was driving with slow road to recovery with proher partner. cedures and surgeries on the Claire Dugan, who teaches journey.” fourth grade at Cragmont ElMark Coplan, a spokesman ementary in Berkeley, where for the Berkeley Unified School she lives, and her partner, Lori Claire Dugan and Lori Dooner in a photo District, said in an interview, Dooner, are being assisted by a that appears on the Gofundme site.

“Claire is in stable but guarded Gofundme page (https://www. condition. The doctors are gofundme.com/claireandlori) there have been no arrests. watching her closely, and at this that was established to help them Dooner responded to a Facebook point the message they give is that with medical expenses and other message but didn’t immediately every 24 hours that goes by is just needs. provide comment for this story. another good sign. But at this point, Dugan continues to recover from The Gofundme page says the it’s a matter of waiting.” her wounds. couple has “a teen son and family Staff are “really concerned how According to the crowdfunding who need them,” but Dugan “will this could impact the kids,” Coplan site, Dugan was driving with Doonget only about a month of paid sick added. er January 2 when Dugan was “rantime while Lori works freelance and “The kids are aware their teacher domly shot” in her face and neck. only gets paid when she works.” is in the hospital, and we’re thinking Dugan wasn’t the intended victim, The family needs help “with medabout her and care for her,” Coplan the site says. The women were then ical bills and living expenses as they said, but officials have been trying to injured in a resulting collision. recover and fight to overcome the keep details of what happened from According to Richmond police, horrific violence that was inflicted students. the incident happened around 23rd on them,” according to the site. Pat The Gofundme site initially inStreet and Cutting Boulevard. ABC Tobin and Trisha Sullivan-Rothberg cluded Dugan and Dooner’s last channel 7 lists Dugan’s age as 52. are listed as the post’s authors. names but they have since been edRichmond police said Wednesday As of Tuesday, almost $50,000 ited out of the main post.t

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API Wellness Center

From page 1

Francisco’s School of Nursing and Health Professions to provide mental health counselors for clients.

Currently, three clinical psychology doctoral students from USF each see up to 10 clients and spend 20 hours a week at the Wellness Clinic. David A. Martinez, Ph.D., an assistant professor at USF who also sees patients at the clinic one day a week, supervises them.

“It is nice to see the transition; the space has definitely improved,” said Martinez. “I think that has been really good for the students and the clients.”

In addition to the three redesigned exam rooms – one is named for the agency’s founding medical director, Jason Tokumoto, and his partner, Michael Sanders – the clinic has brand new equipment. There is also a laboratory area for the storage of blood draws and space to conduct tests onsite for HIV and other diseases.

“We have been on an incredible journey for 29 years as an organization, and I think the last six months have really been an exciting journey for us transforming into a health center where anyone in the Tenderloin, anyone in San Francisco, can get their health care needs here,” said Lance Toma, the agency’s chief executive officer, who in 2007 created a task force that recommended the agency open a free medical clinic.

As the Bay Area Reporter reported in August, the U.S. Department

of Health and Human Services designated the Wellness Clinic last summer as a Federally Qualified Health Center, the only community health center in San Francisco to receive such a designation. The qualification comes with an annual allocation for the next two years of $650,000 to operate the medical clinic, which saw 650 clients in 2015 at a cost of roughly $1 million.

The clinic budget has now grown to approximately $2.5 million. The figure includes medical clinic operating expenses, according to agency officials, as well as funds for integrated non-medical support services, such as case management, behavioral health, and community support.

The clinic staff includes eight case managers, a medical social worker, nurse practitioner and four peer navigators/advocates. It is transitioning from having a second volunteer nurse practitioner and four volunteer nurses to a fully paid staffing model due to the FQHC award.

“We want anyone who wants the kind of approach to health care we have to come and get their health care from us. It is possible now with this designation from the federal government,” said Toma.

Expansion increases patient count

Since expanding its hours in early December, the clinic is now seeing more than 700 clients, 65 percent of whom identify as LGBTQ. Roughly 43 percent of clinic patients live in the Tenderloin, and the clinic sees

people aged 18 to 60 and older.

“We have really hit the ground running. We have gone from a trot to a sprint,” said Do. “We are really able to provide comprehensive health services and see that people have the same provider visit after visit.”

According to the agency, 31 percent of patients who identify as female also identify as transgender women, while 9 percent of patients who identify as male also identify as transgender men.

Among male patients, both cisgender and transgender, 32 percent identify as gay or bisexual. Less than 8 percent of female patients, both cisgender or transgender, identify as lesbian or bisexual.

Ninety percent of clients are people of color, and 45 percent of See page 13 >>

Corrections An item in the January 7 News Briefs, “Glide talk looks at women in prison,” incorrectly identified Lateefah Simon as the current executive director of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Simon is a former executive director of the organization.

In the item, “Opening set for Dolores Park,” the total number of toilets was misstated. There are 27, not including the pissoir.

The online versions have been corrected.

t

Community News>>

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Gay man leads state habeas corpus center

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

gay San Francisco man recently started work as the executive director of a state agency that aims to protect death row inmates’ rights.

Michael J. Hersek, who served three terms as the state public defender, is now directing the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, which is based in the city. Hersek, whose first day was January 4, is serving as acting director as he awaits state Senate confirmation. A confirmation date hadn’t been set as of January 7.

The center works to provide “high-quality legal representation for indigent petitioners in death penalty habeas corpus proceedings” before the state Supreme Court and federal courts, according to a news release. The Legislature in 1998 created the agency as part of the state’s judicial branch. Habeas corpus refers to recourse against illegal imprisonment.

In a recent interview, Hersek said the center’s efforts are “very important civil rights work.”

“When you defend someone who’s on death row against a government that’s trying to execute them ... you feel the weight of doing civil and human rights work,” he said.

Hersek, who’s salary will be about $182,000, said HCRC has a staff of approximately 80, which includes 34 lawyers, plus investigators, paralegals, and others. He estimated the budget is $12 million. Spokespeople for the center didn’t respond to a request to confirm that.

The center provides “an opportunity to lead an incredible team of attorneys and staff who’re doing some of the most amazing work on behalf of death row clients in the entire country,” he said. He’s known many of them for years.

“The State Public Defender’s

“When you defend someone who’s on death row against a government that’s trying to execute them ... you feel the weight of doing civil and human rights work.”

–Michael Hersek Jane Philomen Cleland

Habeas Corpus Resource Center Director Michael Hersek

office handles direct appeal from convictions in death penalty cases,” Hersek said. That agency reviews the trial to look for any legal mistakes that were made.

But HCRC, which has investigators on staff, examines issues that weren’t developed at trial.

“Habeas corpus is a way of attacking a death judgment that goes beyond the record and allows attorneys to develop new facts and present new evidence to the court regarding constitutional violations that occurred at the trial that don’t appear on the record,” Hersek said.

He sees a link between LGBT rights and the issues that HCRC confronts.

“The connection between LGBT issues and criminal defense issues in general and capital punishment is usually lost even on my friends, and I see the government wanting to use capital punishment as a civil rights issue, a human rights issue,” Hersek said.

The topics are “very similar when it comes to protecting the constitutional rights of every individual, every citizen, and I think that it’s

not something that gets addressed within our community perhaps as much as it should be.”

Then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger first appointed Hersek, who turns 53 this month, to the state public defender post in 2004.

He had been serving as a central staff attorney for the California Supreme Court from 1999 to 2004, where he advised the seven justices on criminal law matters. From 1991 to 1999, Hersek was a deputy state public defender in the Office of the State Public Defender.

He said that after almost 12 years as the state public defender, “I felt that it was time for me to move on,” and that the agency’s staff “deserved a chance for a new leader to come in. ... When you’ve been a director for 11 and a half years, you always think maybe there are things I don’t see anymore.”

Hersek replaces founding HCRC executive director Michael Laurence, who left in the fall.

HCRC board chair Charles A. Bird stated, “We are thrilled to have Michael on board. He comes with a wealth of experience; he has more than 20 years representing death

row inmates. The fact that he was appointed to the state public defender’s position twice by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and once

by Governor Jerry Brown reflects the measure of statewide respect he has enjoyed.”

In a statement emailed to the Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi said, “Michael Hersek is an excellent choice to lead the Habeas Corpus Resource Center. He is tenacious and doesn’t believe in giving up. He will fight for justice and will ensure that wrongful convictions and legal errors are corrected.”

‘Costly’ system

Hersek criticized the state’s capital punishment system, calling it “extraordinarily costly, extraordinarily inefficient, and an overall terrible use of state resources.”

When “you realize that money is money not going to education, early childhood nutrition, or the mental health system, it makes you wonder what are we doing spending all these resources for a death penalty system that is so dysfunctional,” Hersek said.

A 2012 study published by the Law Review at Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School and available on HCRC’s website says that since 1978, the state’s system has cost taxpayers “$4 billion more than a system that has life in prison without the possibility of parole ... as its most severe penalty.”

Hersek said one long-standing challenge is “how to get the resources necessary to represent the defendants who are currently without counsel on death row.”

In California, from 350 to 360 death row inmates “are waiting for habeas counsel. Within that group, there are also about 60 awaiting appellate counsel, so there’s a total of about 420 cases that have to have counsel appointed,” he said.

Those cases represent “the culmination of California not spending what it’s supposed to spend to fund the cases to get those men counsel attorney,” Hersek said.

He said he wasn’t yet sure “how the resources within the judicial council are divided among all the entities that need funding and how the judicial council approaches the Legislature for funding” for departments and programs it hopes to grow “or make a priority, so that will take some time to sit down and figure out who the right people are to talk with to start the discussion about getting the resources necessary.”

Earlier this month, Brown’s office announced that he’s appointed Mary McComb, 58, of Davis, to replace Hersek as state public defender. McComb “has served as supervising deputy state public defender since 2010,” according to the governor’s office.

The position, for which compensation is $153,954, requires Senate confirmation.t

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<< Community News

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

ESCAPE TO PALM SPRINGS

New SF sheriff shares plans for trans inmates

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The person depicted here is a model. Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

uring her first full day on the job, newly sworn-in San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy met with advocates to work on updating her department’s policies on transgender inmates.

Ex-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, whom Hennessy defeated in November after his scandal-plagued tenure, announced plans last year to expand educational and other programming for trans inmates and house them based on their gender identity rather than the sex they were assigned at birth, meaning transgender women would no longer be housed with men in jail.

During the sheriff’s race, Hennessy said she supported the changes, but she said Mirkarimi should have done more to get buy-in from staff.

In an interview Tuesday, Hennessy expressed optimism that everything would be finalized within the next three months. She said she’d met with advocates the previous day to talk about changes.

Training to prepare staff for bringing trans women to the women’s jail already has started, and in recent weeks Hennessy has been getting regular updates on that process.

Advocates are “a little concerned about the training,” though, she said, and have “asked if they could enhance the training by providing some of their own.” She agreed to the idea.

Chris Daley, who co-founded Transgender Law Center and now works at Just Detention International, submitted “a suggested procedure for housing” before Hennessy took office, but that document needs to be vetted with her agency’s union, she said.

Hennessy said she’d like to have “at least a pilot program” that integrates

Kelly Sullivan

San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy gave remarks following her swearing in as Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), left, and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) look on.

trans women into classes in the women’s facility “in the next few weeks.”

She’s hopeful the housing policy will be finalized by April.

“I don’t like to rush into things and have them not succeed because I’ve forgotten something or there’s an unintended consequence,” Hennessy said.

She added, “My priority is that people are safe,” and that staff “receive the education they need and the training they need to have the best outcome.”

Work underway

Hennessy said work is underway to set up a meeting with the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Associa-

tion. Like her, the union’s gay president, Eugene Cerbone, has expressed concern about a lack of staff input on the policy under Mirkarimi.

In an email, Cerbone, whose group backed Hennessy in the race, said, “I look forward to meeting with the administration to discuss this matter.”

Daley, who proposed a housing procedure, said in an email that Hennessy “is clearly committed to building on Sheriff Mirkarimi’s efforts to craft and adopt a new policy as quickly as the process will allow.”

Amy Whelan, a senior staff attorney for the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights, See page 14 >>

Brown’s budget brings praise, concern

by Seth Hemmelgarn

C

alifornia Governor Jerry Brown has released his proposed budget, suggesting increased funding for health care and education and boosting the state’s rainy day fund.

But Brown’s $122.6 billion general fund budget plan for 2016-17 leaves much to be desired, according to advocates who want to see spending restored for people living with HIV and AIDS and in other areas.

At a news conference Thursday, January 7, the governor acknowledged such concerns but predicted tough times would eventually come.

“It’s shortsighted to the extreme to embark on a host of new spending,” Brown said.

His office explained the need for more reserves.

“The governor’s budget makes a supplemental deposit of $2 billion into the state’s rainy day fund – boosting the balance from 37 percent today to 65 percent of its constitutional target,” a news release from Brown’s office said. “Building up the fund is the best insurance policy against deep budget cuts in the next economic downturn.”

In an email to the Bay Area Reporter, Anne Donnelly, director of health care policy at the San Francisco-based Project Inform, said, “We applaud the governor’s funding of important health care reform programs and efforts including the Medi-Cal coverage of children, regardless of immigration status.

However, we are concerned that in a year of record surpluses the governor is not restoring critical cuts from previous years, such as cuts to HIV funding.

“Additionally, we are disappointed that the governor is not investing in efforts to end the HIV and viral hepatitis epidemics in California,” Donnelly said.

Rick Gerharter

Governor Jerry Brown

Supplemental Security Income is a federal program that provides a monthly cash benefit to disabled people and others who meet certain requirements. In California, State Supplementary Payment grants augment SSI and help recipients with living expenses.

Courtney Mulhern-Pearson, director of state and local affairs for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said Brown’s proposal to increase SSP by 3 percent would be “the first increase since 2006. While the increase is obviously a welcome one, there’s still a long way to go.”

Gay state Senator Mark Leno (DSan Francisco), chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, praised Brown’s proposal, but expressed concern.

“As California’s economy continues to improve, state revenues follow, which is good news especially for K-14 education spending,” Leno said in a statement shortly after Brown announced his budget. The governor “has introduced another reasonable budget that prepares for the uncertainty ahead and reflects See page 14 >>

t

National News>>

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Obama points to nation’s rifts in final State of the Union

by Lisa Keen

I

n his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama on Tuesday seemed intent on both acknowledging the nation’s rifts and binding together those disparate parts with a “common creed” devoted to democracy.

Unlike in some previous addresses, Obama did not call for specific actions to promote equality for LGBT people, but he did pay tribute to both large and small victories of the movement. He referred to marriage equality once, uttered the word “gay” once, and urged Americans to appreciate and celebrate the nation’s “diversity” and “commitment to the rule of law.” And he included the late lesbian astronaut Sally Ride in his short list of American historical legends. “[W]hen I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen, inspired by those voices of fairness and vision ... voices that help us see ourselves not first and foremost as black or white or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native born; not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed,” said Obama. “I see it in the soldier who gives almost everything to save his brothers, the nurse who tends to him till he can run a marathon, and the community that lines up to cheer him on. It’s the son who finds the courage to come out as who he is, and the father whose love for that son overrides everything he’s been taught.”

Lorri Jean, chief executive officer of the nation’s largest LGBT community and health center, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, called it “Obama at his best.”

“I can remember hearing presidents give speeches that included a line or two that was more historic or that moved me more strongly,”

said Jean, “like when [President Bill] Clinton mentioned gay and lesbian people from the capitol steps in Arkansas the night he first won the presidential election. Or, in last year’s State of the Union, when Obama mentioned transgender people. But I do not remember any previous State of the Union address that has seemed as aspirational and optimistic – that represented the kind of clear-eyed leadership that our nation so desperately needs.”

Jean said she liked that Obama mentioned an LGBT history-maker.

“From an LGBT perspective, I was happy to hear him highlight the fact that ending HIV/AIDS is within our grasp. I liked that he mentioned Sally Ride. And, I was really touched by his use of a coming out metaphor as an example that epitomizes what makes America great,” said Jean.

“Plus, I loved his concept of unarmed truth and unconditional love having the final word. Anytime that happens, our community benefits.”

Rea Carey, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, said Obama’s speech “denounced the politics of hatred and divisiveness” and “reminded all of us of our core American values of dignity and mutual respect in what is a fiercely divisive political climate.”

Both Obama’s address and the Republican Party’s response, delivered by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, spoke against conflicts that target religions.

Obama said he opposes “politics that targets people because of race or religion,” but he said nothing of those who use religion to target people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Haley said that, if Republicans held the White House, “We would respect differences in modern 9.75 in.reference to families,” an apparent same-sex couples marrying. But she said Republicans would “insist

Rudy K. Lawidjaja

President Barack Obama delivers his final State of the Union address Tuesday.

on respect for religious liberty as a cornerstone of our democracy.”

She said nothing of the Constitution’s equal protection clause and attempts by some to claim that personal religious beliefs trump that clause.

Gay Republican leaders liked Haley’s response.

“I was far more impressed by Governor Nikki Haley and her call to ‘respect differences in modern families’ while at the same time balancing that respect with a concern for religious liberty – a position Log Cabin Republicans has long advocated,” said national Log Cabin Republicans President Gregory Angelo. “It was refreshing to see a Republican explicitly acknowledge that on a major national stage.”

Unlike in previous addresses, Obama did not point to special White House guests in the gallery to illustrate issues he talked about in his speech. Two gay men were among the 23 guests seated with first lady Michelle Obama in the Congressional gallery during the State of the Union. One was Jim Obergefell, a lead plaintiff in one of four cases that successfully challenged state bans on marriage for

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same-sex couples. The other was Ryan Reyes, whose partner Daniel Kaufman was killed during the December 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino.

A White House news release characterized Obergefell, who hails from Cincinnati, as an “accidental activist” who challenged Ohio’s refusal to recognize his marriage to John Arthur on Arthur’s death certificate. The couple, who had been together for 20 years, became the focus of national attention in 2013 when they had to rent a private jet to enable Arthur, who was bed-ridden and near death from ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to travel to Maryland so they could obtain a marriage license.

The news release identified Reyes as an “activist” who spoke out to discourage hostility toward Muslims after Kaufman’s death at the hands of two Muslim terrorists.

Another LGBT activist in the Congressional gallery Tuesday night was 32-year-old Alicia Garza, a cofounder of Black Lives Matter, an organization focused on anti-black racism in American society. Garza attended as a guest of her member of the House, Congresswoman Bar-

bara Lee (D-Oakland).

Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin attended as a guest of Senator Jeff Merkley (DOregon), sponsor of the Equality Act. Anti-gay activist and Kentucky clerk Kim Davis was also in the House chamber for the State of the Union, seated in the back row. Davis refused to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court decision that said state bans on marriage for same-sex couples are unconstitutional. She claimed it would violate her religion to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her attorney, Mathew Staver, would not identify which member of Congress invited Davis to the event. (Each member of the House and Senate can bring one guest.

Some can invite two, if they secure an unused ticket from a colleague.)

Guests of LGBT caucus members

Lesbian Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) invited a University of Wisconsin communications major, Britney Woods, to be her guest at the State of the Union address Tuesday night. According to a Wisconsin newspaper, Woods met Baldwin at a roundtable discussion on college affordability.

Guests of other members of the LGBT Congressional Caucus included: Kyla Bursiek, 12, a Boulder student who is lobbying Nintendo to include characters with disabilities in its video games, who was the guest of gay Congressman Jared Polis (D-Colorado).

The parents of U.S. Army Special Forces Sergeant Andrew McKenna Jr., a Rhode Island veteran who was killed in Afghanistan last August, attended as guests of gay Congressman David Cicilline (D-Rhode Island).

See page 14 >>

<< Open Forum

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

Volume 46, Number 2 January 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 • 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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The gun-crazed United States

W

hen President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union address Tuesday night, there was a vacant seat in first lady Michelle Obama’s box to memorialize the victims of gun violence. Joining the first lady was Ryan Reyes, whose partner, Larry “Daniel” Kaufman, was one of the 14 victims of the December 2 terrorist attack at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. Both were poignant reminders of the thousands of lives lost every year to gun violence. Yet Congress, beholden to the powerful National Rifle Association, refuses to act. Despite the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook. Despite the moviegoers gunned down in Colorado. Despite the murders of African American churchgoers in South Carolina. It doesn’t matter how many people are shot or how many of these depressing incidents Americans have to endure – Congress will not even begin to contemplate making laws to regulate the sale and control of firearms.

The killings go on.

This month, a lesbian teacher was shot as she drove her car in Richmond. Both she and her partner were injured in a subsequent collision.

Obama last week, as he put it, took “common-sense steps to save lives and protect more of our children.” He did this through a series of executive orders in response to Congress’ steadfast refusal to take up gun control legislation. While the president is limited in what executive actions he can take, in this case he did as much as legally allowed. Among the provisions the president announced was expanding background checks. Anybody in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks, and the checks are being expanded to cover violent criminals; the president added that this includes sales made over the Internet or at a gun show.

“We’re also taking steps to make the background check system more efficient,” Obama said during his announcement. That includes hiring more people so that applications can be processed faster and upgrades made to the system.

Another executive order Obama announced

Rudy K. Lawidjaja

President Barack Obama delivers his final State of the Union address.

t

phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint, why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?”

This will involve relying on the private sector and will likely take years to accomplish.

Obama is being realistic when he notes that change won’t happen overnight, or even during the remaining months of his presidency.

He noted in his speech that the fight for LGBT rights didn’t happen quickly either; in fact, that work is unfinished. But the president is right when he said, “So just because it’s hard, that’s no excuse not to try.”

A major obstacle is the over-politicized rhetoric from conservatives that Obama and the Democrats are “taking away” guns from Americans. This blatant falsehood is repeated ad nauseum on talk radio and Fox News, then parroted by the GOP presidential candidates and the NRA. Ted Cruz, the new Republican leader in Iowa, has a video showing him cooking bacon on the barrel of a gun. It’s madness.

Will it stop anytime soon? No. Will there be more mass shootings? Yes. But we give Obama credit for trying to shift the conversation, and reminding Americans that they shouldn’t become numb to our gun-crazed culture.

was more help for those suffering from mental illness, to the tune of $500 million to expand access to treatment. “High-profile mass shootings tend to shine a light on those few mentally unstable people who inflict harm on others,” the president said. “But the truth is, is that nearly two in three gun deaths are from suicides. So a lot of our work is to prevent people from hurting themselves.”

Federal mental health records will be submitted to the backRIP David Bowie ground check system, Obama Rock star David Bowie died Sunday after a explained, and the feds will relong battle with cancer. Not many people knew move barriers that prevent states he was ill. He released his 25th album just two from reporting relevant infordays before his death, on his 69th birthday. mation. “If we can continue to Over the years, through music, de-stigmatize mental art, and fashion, Bowie challenged health issues, get folks the status quo. He inspired generain proper care, and fill gaps in the tions of musicians and also exhilabackground check system, then we rated generations of fans. can spare more families the pain As Joseph Patrick McCormick of losing a loved one to suicide,” wrote for Pink News, “His persona Obama said. “And for those in ConZiggy Stardust, created when he regress who so often rush to blame leased Space Oddity in 1969, was a mental illness for mass shootings bisexual alien rock star. The androgas a way of avoiding action on guns, ynous figure became a gay icon.” here’s your chance to support these Bowie, through his performances David Bowie on efforts. Put your money where your and in his life, was not afraid to constage as Ziggy mouth is.” front conventional thinking about Finally, the president talked about Stardust, 1973. the sexes, and his being out about boosting gun safety technology. In his bisexuality decades ago gave confidence to 2013, Obama said, more than 500 people lost his LGBT fans who didn’t see themselves reptheir lives to gun accidents, including 30 chilresented in rock and roll. But they saw themdren younger than 5. “We need to develop new selves in Bowie’s art. In Bowie’s world, it was technologies that make guns safer,” he said. not just OK to be different, it was celebrated.t “If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your

Care not cages: Fighting for trans women’s dignity and freedom

by David Campos and Janetta Johnson

S

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hortly after our historic win for marriage equality, LGBT leaders locally and nationally stated that the LGBT movement now needs to focus on the most vulnerable and marginalized part of our community – transgender people.

The reality is that the transgender community, particularly trans women of color, continues to be left behind. From employment opportunities to housing rights and shelter access, transgender people continue to face tremendous barriers. But one of the most pressing issues is that our criminal justice system continues to arrest and jail trans women at disproportionate levels.

According to a 2015 report by the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, one in two black transgender women in San Francisco has been incarcerated in her lifetime. Another report found that transgender people in California prisons were 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted. Largely imprisoned for “survival crimes” like sex work and drugs, trans people face severe discrimination, abuse, physical and sexual assault, rape, and even death when incarcerated.

They are also too often denied access to reentry programs and rehabilitation programs, both in jail and once released. This has put trans women at a huge disadvantage with regard to staying out of jail.

Last month the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to reject a 384-bed jail facility that would have cost San Francisco taxpayers over $300 million. At a time when half of our jail beds are empty and 80 percent of jail inmates

Carolyn Goossen

Supervisor David Campos, left, and TGI Justice Project director Janetta Johnson

are pre-trial but cannot afford bail, clearly the city should not be investing precious resources in another jail. Rather, we need to focus on preventative measures and alternatives to incarceration that will help vulnerable communities, including the mentally ill and the transgender community.

In 2016, we, as the LGBT community, can best support our transgender community members by advocating for measures that will help them lead free and healthy lives. First, we must continue to fight against a proposal to build a new jail, and work on expanding alternatives to incarceration including mental health services and pre-trial diversion. Second, we need to invest in preventative measures – including housing and employment for trans women. Third, we need to ensure that the housing policies within the cur-

rent jail system are compliant with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, which means that trans women are housed based on who they are and how they identify. Finally, trans women need equal access to reentry and rehabilitative programs – both in jail and once they are out – so that we can lower their risk of recidivism and help them integrate back into the community.

Let’s work together in 2016 to make positive change happen by fighting for housing, resources, and alternatives to incarceration for our trans community members. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, no one is free until we are all free.t David Campos, a gay man, represents District 9 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; Janetta Johnson, a trans woman, is the director of Transgender Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project.

t

Politics>>

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Gay, HIV-positive political aide seeks elected post

by Matthew S. Bajko

H

aving managed the campaigns of two local politicians and worked as an aide to several supervisors, Gary McCoy is now running to serve on the governing body of San Francisco’s Democratic Party.

McCoy is the second gay man living with HIV seeking a seat on the Democratic County Central Committee, referred to as the D-triple-C for short. DCCC secretary Matt Dorsey, currently the only person living with HIV on the oversight panel, is seeking re-election this year on the June primary ballot.

DCCC candidate Gary McCoy “I am ready to have my own voice heard,” McCoy, 37, told the For more information about Bay Area Reporter.

McCoy, visit his campaign website The Castro resident last year at http://mccoyfordccc.com. worked as the senior aide for District 3 Supervisor Julie Christensen, SF Dems poised to denounce who was appointed to the seat by porn condom measure Mayor Ed Lee. In November she lost At their meeting Wednesday, her bid to serve out the last year of January 27, the members of the a four-year term to Aaron Peskin, San Francisco Demowho had served as the Discratic County Central trict 3 supervisor.

Committee are poised McCoy was no to pass a resolution stranger to City Hall, denouncing a Novemas he had served stints ber ballot measure that as a temporary aide to would require condoms gay District 8 Supervibe used on all porn sets sor Scott Wiener in California. and Board President The initiative is London Breed when backed by the Los their full-time staff Angeles-based AIDS needed to take proHealthcare Foundation, longed leaves. In 2014 which passed a similar local meahe served as the campaign manager sure that covered porn sets in Los for Wiener as he sought re-election Angeles County. The agency conto the board. tends the rule is needed to protect Two years prior McCoy was the the health of porn actors. campaign coordinator for Joel But those opposed to the measure Engardio’s unsuccessful bid for say that in addition to condoms it the District 7 supervisor seat. Last would mandate the use of eye gogNovember Engardio, a gay man apgles by porn actors. They also worry pointed to a vacancy on the DCCC passage of the initiative would crelast year who is now running for a ate a “sue-a-porn-star” provision in full term, profiled McCoy in his San state law, as anyone could bring a Francisco Examiner column. lawsuit against those who violate it.

It was McCoy’s first time disclosAnd they are concerned that ing publicly his battles against meth the state’s $6 billion porn industry addiction that left him homeless. would move to another state with Now sober, housed, and married less restrictive policies California to Kory Powell-McCoy, McCoy has already enacted to protect the wants to use the DCCC to advocate health of porn actors. for others struggling with addiction “Worst of all, it’s part of a larger and/or homelessness. narrative to discredit PrEP, and de“I want to help other people in clare it a failure. It’s part-and-parcel my situation, and if it is possible, of ‘PrEP denialism,’ which is hurtto get out of that,” said McCoy, reing the cause of HIV prevention,” cently appointed by Lee to the city’s DCCC member Dorsey, the lead shelter monitoring committee. “I sponsor of the resolution against don’t think enough people on the the ballot measure, told the B.A.R. DCCC are open about their real exDorsey has already lined up perience in the city. I have been in six other DCCC members as cothe trenches, so to speak.” sponsors and has been reaching out The DCCC’s 24 elected seats to local Democratic clubs to also are divided between the city’s two sign on, as the Harvey Milk LGBT state Assembly Districts. McCoy is Democratic Club’s political action running for one of the seats from committee did Tuesday night. But the 17th Assembly District, as are he cautioned it is too soon to say if Dorsey, and Wiener, while Engardio the measure will be adopted by the is running for a seat from the 19th full DCCC. Assembly District.

Austin Padilla, 24, a gay man With most of the current DCCC who is HIV-positive and a foundmembers seeking re-election this ing member of the city’s Getting year, McCoy said he doesn’t see his to Zero committee, which aims to bid as “trying to knock anybody largely end HIV transmission in San off ” the committee. He is more inFrancisco by 2020, has been urgterested in using a committee seat to ing DCCC members to sign on to recruit “more people like me” to the Dorsey’s resolution.

Democratic Party.

Asked why they should, Padilla A number of community leadsaid, “I think, specifically because ers and elected officials, including of San Francisco’s position as one Wiener, Breed, and Assemblyman of the first cities to combat the David Chiu (D-San Francisco), epidemic.” He added that the ballot have endorsed McCoy’s DCCC bid. measure sends the wrong message, As for using the DCCC as a platparticularly to youth. form to seek higher office someday, “It can never be just condoms or such as supervisor, McCoy said it just PrEP. You want to talk about was unlikely. both PrEP and condoms and meet “At one time a little part of me them halfway on what is a realistic wanted to be a city supervisor,” he method of prevention when you admitted, “but now I prefer behind talk to youth,” said Padilla, who cothe scenes.”

chairs the Getting to Zero plan’s Ending Stigma Committee.

Milk club president runs alone

Unable to recruit a female member to serve alongside him as co-president, Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club CoPresident Peter Gallotta plans to seek re-election next week as the sole president of the progressive political group.

As the Political Notebook reported last month, club Co-President Laura Thomas decided not to seek a third term this year.

Thus, Gallotta had been trying to recruit someone to succeed her.

“After many discussions with members as well as current and past leadership of the club, I am running alone for president this year,” Gallotta informed the B.A.R. this week. “ He informed the B.A.R. Wednesday that there are nine women running for board positions on the slate. With Thomas as an ex-officio, there are a total of 10 women out of 19 total positions.

“This is a definite shift from previous representation of women on our board, at least in my time with the Harvey Milk club over the past five years,” wrote Gallotta in an email.

In response to the B.A.R.’s question of who was running for the club’s three vice president positions, he disclosed that Lee Hepner was up for VP Political, Paulina Maldonado for VP External Affairs, and Cynthia Crews for VP Internal Affairs. Hepner and Maldonado are current board members.

There is talk of a potential leadership fight when the club members meet Tuesday, January 19, to elect the new board. Candidates can be nominated up until that day for the board seats.

When asked if she intended to seek the club’s female co-president position or wished to be re-elected as the club’s vice president of political affairs, Mahnani Clay demurred.

Instead, she voiced concerns about the lack of transparency regarding the election and suggested it should be postponed 30 days.

“Friday’s Milk club email explained the nomination process in brief and for the first time. Does not inspire confidence in current leadership’s commitment to a transparent and democratic executive board election process!” Clay told the B.A.R.

Correction

In last week’s column of political predictions, Bevan Dufty sent in the name of the wrong Castro twin for who he believes Hillary Clinton will pick as her vice presidential nominee. He meant to say it would be U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, not his twin brother Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas. The online version has been corrected.t

Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion.

This week’s column reported on the hiring of staff for Santa Clara County’s new Office of LGBTQ Affairs.

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

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

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Business Briefs>>

t Lesbian proprietors set up shop on Castro corner

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

by Matthew S. Bajko

U

pset at Bank of the West’s proposal to take over the entire ground floor retail space in a mixeduse building at the corner of 16th, Market, and Noe streets, Castro business leaders and community members four years ago fought to see a portion of the storefront be leased to locally owned businesses.

Developer Angus McCarthy agreed to set aside 1,300 square feet for smaller retailers, with the bank responsible for subleasing it. The space at 2299 Market Street ended up being divided into three smaller retail storefronts, and the final business soft-opened its doors in early December.

To the surprise, and delight, of many who pushed for such an outcome, the business owners are all local lesbians, one a woman of color.

The first to open, in May 2014, was Skin on Market, owned by Deedee K. Crossett, who lives nearby where the Castro and Mission districts meet.

“If it does come up in conversation, they are surprisingly happy, I think, when they find out I am gay,” said Crossett, who is also the dean and owner of the San Francisco Institute of Esthetics and Cosmetology (1067 Folsom Street). “People want to support not only local businesses but also storeowners from the community.”

Next to open its doors in late November 2014 was Giddy, which bills itself as a “modern day sweet shop.”

Owner Mary Mueller stocks a wide variety of candies, from hard-tofind chocolates to various sours and jellybeans.

“Being a part of a ‘lesbian business presence’ in the Castro has been exciting, adding another layer of support and love from the Castro merchants and neighbors,” Mueller told the Bay Area Reporter. “I have

Jane Philomen Cleland

Wildcraft Espresso Bar owner Theresa Beaumont, right, whips up coffee with employee Mikey Inboxden.

always wanted to see more women out and about and in the Castro and hope in our small way we inspire other women to open shop and do business in the Castro.”

Last month on December 7 was the first day of business for the final store, Wildcraft Espresso Bar. Owner Theresa Beaumont decided to leave her career as a lawyer and open her own coffee shop.

As a lesbian and African-American, Beaumont said she specifically wanted to lease a space in the Castro, where she once lived. She has purposefully sought to hire a diverse staff, many of whom are artists, and believes her business will draw more women and people of color to the neighborhood.

“I am putting my money where my mouth is by opening my business in the Castro,” said Beaumont.

“Because of who I am, I am trying to bring in new people to the neighborhood.”

It is a striking development for the Castro district, which has been accused of being solely the domain of gay white men and the focus of fears that its LGBT residents and stores will be gentrified out by

straight newcomers and formula retailers.

“I think it is really exciting. And to have some lesbian-owned businesses in the neighborhood shows that the neighborhood is welcoming,” said Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District Executive Director Andrea Aiello, herself a lesbian, who advocated for seeing space in the building, dubbed ICON, be set aside for smaller retailers. “Maybe we will have a women’s

bar; you never know.”

Back in 2012 Aiello said no one in the neighborhood ever imagined a trio of lesbian proprietors would set up shop in the building, which is located on a prominent corner in the gayborhood.

“I don’t think anyone was ever talking about that or thinking it could be a possibility,” said Aiello. “I know lesbians really like to support lesbian-owned businesses.

Certainly, I know from walking around in the summer, tourists always ask where is this or where is that.

They are always asking for a women’s bar and we don’t have one. Sometimes they say is there a lesbian-owned coffee shop, and now we can yes.”

A spa for the face

With all three stores now open, Crossett is already seeing an uptick in foot traffic to her shop, which offers its own bar where customers can sit down and speak with the staff on how to treat their various skin conditions.

“The moment Giddy opened, we started getting more activity, and

Jane Philomen Cleland

Mary Mueller holds a jar of candies at Giddy, a modern day sweet shop.

Jane Philomen Cleland

Leon Shanon is a skin therapist at Skin on Market.

now with Wildcraft, we are helping each other with traffic flow,” said Crossett, 42, who last April married Lauren Weymouth three years after first meeting on the annual AIDS/ LifeCycle fundraising bike ride.

Skin on Market is dog friendly “as long as the dog is friendly,” said Crossett, and only carries Dermalogica products. Prices can range from roughly $20 for a breakout cleansing foaming wash up to $185 for a power reach potent moisturizing firming treatment, though the average price is around $50.

It offers a variety of services, from eyebrow waxing ($30 for shaping, $18 for maintenance) and a bioactive peel ($150 per 45-60 minute session) to full face treatments ($80 per 50 minute session) or microzone facial treatments ($35 per 20 minute session).

“People can sit down at the skin bar and we can show them how to take care of their skin. During a normal facial, your eyes are closed and you’re not able to see what is going on,” said Crossett. “Or you are just buying products. Here you can try the products, cleanse your skin right there, and have someone walk you through the steps.”

The store’s clientele is split roughly 70 percent male and 30 percent female. Many people will pop in after the gym or during their commute from work, said Crossett, while a few dads will schedule appointments around their young children’s nap times.

“Men in the Castro are sophisticated, well-educated and also really busy. They seem to like the idea of coming in for a treatment where See page 13 >>

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10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

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New institute focuses on HIV cure research

by Liz Highleyman

U

CSF researchers recently gave an overview of their latest work launching a new Institute for HIV Cure Research, funded by a $20 million grant from amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. Cure studies will also be a key theme of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections and accompanying Community Cure Research Workshop coming up in February.

“We recognize that realistically we’re not talking about delivering a cure to everyone who needs it by 2020,” amfAR CEO Kevin Frost said at the HIV Cure Summit last month on World AIDS Day. “We believe a cure is evolutionary – we want to build the foundations and understand the science of what it takes.”

UCSF was chosen to host the new institute, which will be headquartered at the Mission Bay medical campus, in a national competition.

Frost stressed that the $20 million allocated for the first five years is “a floor, not a ceiling.”

“The San Francisco area has a higher concentration of scientific thought leaders in HIV than anywhere else in the world,” said Rowena Johnston, amfAR vice president and director of research. “The Bay Area has consistently led the way in developing and implementing scientific advances in HIV prevention and treatment, and the potential for this team of researchers to develop a cure is unparalleled.”

“San Francisco has a long and

storied history of response to the HIV epidemic,” added UCSF Center for AIDS Research director Dr. Paul Volberding, who will also head the new institute. “This will bring together a broad team of leading scientists who believe a cure is possible, and that it will happen here.

We’re ready to end this epidemic.”

Scientific foundations

Effective combination antiretroviral therapy, which debuted in the mid-1990s, has made HIV a chronic manageable disease for most people with access to treatment – in many cases using once-daily single-tablet regimens. But the drugs are not a cure, and if they are stopped the virus soon comes back. Even during treatment inactive HIV genetic material remains hidden in the body, and this low-level virus can cause inflammation that contributes to conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

“I don’t talk to any patient who wouldn’t rather be cured than take one pill once a day,” Volberding said at the summit.

The past couple of years have seen some setbacks in the cure field, including the return of HIV in the “Mississippi baby,” a child infected before birth who started antiretrovirals very early and was thought by many to be cured.

This leaves only one person – former San Francisco resident Timothy Brown, known as the Berlin Patient – who appears to have been truly cured of HIV. Brown has no detectable HIV in his blood or tissues

Liz Highleyman

Dr. Paul Volberding talked about AIDS cure research at a recent summit.

more than eight years after receiving bone marrow transplants from a donor with a natural mutation that makes T-cells resistant to infection.

Researchers have tried various approaches to curing HIV, including very early antiretroviral treatment, mimicking Brown’s cure by protecting cells from infection, flushing the virus out of hiding and destroying it – a strategy known as “shock and kill” – and strengthening the natural immune response against the virus.

Many researchers now speak of a “functional cure” or remission, rather than completely eliminating HIV from the body, and most experts think a combination of approaches will be necessary.

“Let’s get to a place where we don’t have to take medications every day, where we don’t have to experience the side effects of the medications, and where we can get our immune

systems to a state where we’re not at a risk of early aging,” said longtime AIDS survivor and advocate Matt Sharp, speaking on a KQED program announcing the new institute. “But overall, of course, I’d like to see HIV completely eradicated from my body.”

The HIV Cure Summit featured an overview by Johnston, followed by the researchers who will lead the four teams comprising the new institute.

“HIV is like a lawn,” Johnston explained. “You can mow it and keep it under control, but that doesn’t get at the roots.”

Warner Greene, Ph.D., director of UCSF’s Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, will head an effort to study how so-called reservoirs of hidden HIV are established and persist in the body.

“Our strategy will be to exploit the innate immune system to help flush the virus out of hiding and ultimately to eliminate its ability to bounce back when drug treatment ends,” said Greene, who is investigating how molecules known as TLR agonists set off immune activation, including activation of the T-cells that harbor latent HIV. “We may not be able to get every last virus, but maybe we can get to a low enough level that the immune system can control it.”

Dr. Mike McCune and his team aim to figure out precisely where HIV hides within specific tissues in the body – including how viral reservoirs differ between men and women – while a group overseen

by Satish Pillai, Ph.D., will work on

better ways to measure hidden virus that is capable of replicating.

Finally, UCSF Professor Dr. Steven Deeks and his team will study how TLR agonists affect HIV reservoirs in the tissues of patients on antiretroviral treatment.

“With the support of the community in San Francisco, I think we have a responsibility to take these [ideas] quickly into the clinic, to quickly identify approaches that we can safely bring into human trials,” Deeks said.

“We’re doing this differently than the traditional academic approach. We want to make an impact, so we’re using a bit of an industry approach to move things into the clinic within the next four or five years.”

Deeks predicted that the “next big game changer” will be long-acting injectable antiretrovirals that last one or two months. “This will have a huge impact on people who cannot take pills on a daily basis,” he said, “but it will not be a substitute for a cure.”

More cure research at CROI

This year’s CROI meeting will take place February 22-25 in Boston. The Community Cure Research Workshop on February 21, co-sponsored by the AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition; European AIDS Treatment Group; AVAC, a global HIV prevention advocacy group; Treatment Action Group; and Project Inform, will feature an overview for advocates of recent advances in the field and community strategy sessions to discuss how to promote cure research.t

Interfaith council plans MLK events compiled by Cynthia Laird

T

he San Francisco Interfaith Council will hold activities Monday, January 18 to honor the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday is observed that day.

This year’s march and parade will begin at 11 a.m. from the Caltrain depot at 4th and Townsend streets and end at Yerba Buena Gardens. People are advised to arrive early.

Once at Yerba Buena Gardens, the sixth annual Interfaith Commemoration Ceremony will begin.

A host of other activities and programs that will take place to mark the occasion can be found on the San Francisco Interfaith Council partner organization’s website, http://norcalmlkfoundation.org/ Events.html.

GGNRA announces beach closures

The Golden Gate National Recreation Area has announced safety closures at Tennessee Valley Beach, Fort Funston North Access Trail, and Marin Headlands Walk-in Campgrounds in response to El Nino-driven storm systems.

The beach at Tennessee Valley is closed now and will be closed intermittently throughout the winter.

The trail remains open, except for access to the beach.

All cliff areas at Fort Funston are highly unstable. People and dogs should stay back at least 30 feet from all cliffs. Due to instability and a precipitous drop to the beach caused by recent storm activity, the north beach access trail has been closed until further notice. Officials said it’s anticipated the trail will remain closed for the winter season. Access to the beach at Fort Funston will only be via the sand ladder south of the hang glider launch zone.

Hawk and Haypress Campgrounds in the Marin Headlands will be closed January 15 to March 31 as a proactive measure due to safety concerns. Both remote campgrounds are typically accessed by bicyclists or walk-in users, and trail access in and out is difficult in an emergency situation. Additionally, both campgrounds are located in heavily wooded eucalyptus groves, where falling trees and limbs are a major concern during high winds.

Before visiting, people should check the National Park Service’s website, http://www.nps.gov/goga and click on the “Park Alerts” tab in red. The public can also call the park during normal business hours at (415) 561-4700 to hear the latest conditions.

Dyke March meeting set

Organizers of the San Francisco Dyke March will hold a meeting

Ma to hold seminar for faithbased groups and nonprofits

Rick Gerharter

Rain didn’t dampen the spirit of participants during the 2008 MLK march in San Francisco.

Thursday, January 21 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Women’s Building, 3543 18th Street.

Last year participants split at the march. The planned route had changed, “causing rupture in our community and resulting in an alternate march from the original route down 18th Street to Valencia,” organizers said in an email.

Organizers said the result called attention to the problem with displacement that queers in San Francisco are experiencing and the need for a larger voice at the Dyke March.

The physical split also made the march look smaller than it was. Organizers said they felt unsupported and that some have not returned to plan this year’s march.

Next week’s meeting is billed as a call for organizers. The Dyke March is scheduled to take place Saturday, June 25.

Studio planned to honor Nix

A nonprofit production company is planning to honor gay business leader Dennis Nix, who was killed in a hit and run auto accident in November.

Archive Productions Inc., which video tapes various community organizations and events, has started

a campaign to raise $5,000 for a new video and sound editing studio that will bear Nix’s name, Executive Director Scott Peterson said in an email.

Peterson said that the production company has been a member of the Golden Gate Business Association for about four years. Nix was also involved with GGBA. “We have not only brought in a number of new members, but also referred business to existing members,” Peterson said.

He noted that Archive Productions is an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff. The Redstone Building, 2040 16th Street, has donated an office suite to the production company, and one of the rooms is planned for the studio. A recording studio takes a considerable amount of special equipment and soundproofing, so Peterson is asking GGBA members and others for donations.

Individual memberships are $25; company/professional memberships are $100. To donate, visit http://shop.archiveproductions. org/5-100-Business-professionalannual-membership-donation-004. htm.

In related news, a memorial for Nix is scheduled for January 23. For details, see page 12.

State Board of Equalization member Fiona Ma invites representatives from the faith community to a free and informative small business and nonprofit seminar focused on the specialized business models of faith-based organizations and nonprofits.

The seminar takes place Thursday, January 21 from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Milton Marks Conference Room at the State Building, 455 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco.

Ma has partnered with gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), Democratic San Francisco Assemblymen Phil Ting and David Chiu, and San Francisco Supervisor London Breed for the event.

“This comprehensive seminar will cover the do’s and don’ts of complying with the appropriate tax laws so that rabbis, pastors, and imams can focus on making people’s lives better,” Ma said in a statement.

Topics at the seminar will include property tax exemptions for nonprofit organizations, filing and compliance for exempt organizations, and an overview of what is taxable for fundraising events and sales.

To register, call 1-888-847-9652 or visit http://www.boe.ca.gov/cgibin/seminar.cgi?FLAG=440. Walkins are welcome.

Surrogacy conference coming up

Our Family Coalition and Men Having Babies will hold their third annual Surrogacy Conference and Expo Saturday, January 23 from 4 to 6:30 p.m. and Sunday, January 24 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street in San Francisco.

Organizers said that this year’s event will feature several new indepth panels, including on insurance, budgeting, and ethics. In all, there will be 24 breakout sessions by See page 14 >>

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Community News>>

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Spitzer’s death draws mixed views on his legacy

by Sari Staver

I

n the wake of the recent death of psychiatrist Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, gay and lesbian psychiatrists have renewed the debate of his legacy.

Spitzer, 83, died December 25 in Seattle. His wife told media outlets the cause was complications of heart disease.

Spitzer was an outspoken and controversial member of the American Psychiatric Association, whose textbooks and manuals had long described homosexuality as a mental illness.

But in the early 1970s, when Spitzer joined an APA committee charged with reconsidering that policy, the association began to gradually shifts its policies, although not quickly or far enough for many.

The APA removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, in 1973.

Later, Spitzer ignited a firestorm in 2001 when he presented a paper advocating reparative therapy for gays and lesbians who wanted to become heterosexual. Such so-called conversion therapy has been widely discredited as stigmatizing and ineffective.

In 2012, Spitzer disavowed the paper, an apology that was too little and too late for some.

The controversy flared up again following his death when many obituaries praised Spitzer’s role as a gay supporter. The New York Times obituary took it a step further, when it included a quote from gay psychoanalyst Dr. Jack Drescher, who said, “The fact that gay marriage is allowed today is in part owed to Bob Spitzer.” Drescher confirmed that quote, which was picked up by media outlets around the world, in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

“I have a very different perspective,” said San Francisco psychiatrist Dr. Nanette Gartrell, a lesbian who’s a former clinical professor at UCSF and the author of over 70 peer reviewed research papers.

Rather than seeing Spitzer as the primary force behind removal of homosexuality from the manual, “I credit the many scientific researchers whose scholarship demonstrated that psychological adjustment is unrelated to sexual orientation, and I credit the LGBT psychiatrists and psychologists who educated the APA about these findings,” Gartrell said.

Others agreed.

Dr. Elizabeth Harrison, a lesbian who’s a psychiatrist in Sacramento and a past president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, credited gay activists – including psychiatrists – who “stepped up and risked their careers to come out and fight the APA.” To credit Spitzer, “is just wrong,” she said.

And gay San Francisco psychiatrist Dr. Robert Cabaj, a past president of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, called praise of Spitzer “revisionist history.”

“Dr. Spitzer was more of a block” in the road in the decades-long fight to remove centuries old prejudicial views about gays and lesbians, said Cabaj.

But other local LGBT psychiatrists took a more sanguine view.

Gay retired UCSF clinical professor of psychiatry Dr. David Kessler believes Spitzer should be given credit for “opening the door” that let LGBT therapists “put their foot into the room” to begin the dialogue that led to change.

After he conducted and recorded

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Dr. Robert L. Spitzer

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an hourlong interview with Spitzer in 1993, Kessler concluded that “by far” the good (in Spitzer) outweighed the bad.

In terms of Spitzer’s controversial stance on the usefulness of reparative therapy to help homosexuals change, Kessler said, “My interview with him was long before that so I really never understood how and why that came about.

But he apologized and I forgive him. Nobody’s perfect, even Bob Spitzer.”

Dr. James Krajeski, a gay retired Corte Madera psychiatrist and a former chair of the committee on homosexuality at the APA, said Spitzer’s life “must be seen in perspective.”

“I don’t think Bob Spitzer did any of this to enhance his career. Had some of his suggestions been rejected by the APA, I think he would’ve looked very bad. All in all, I believe he will be remembered positively,” he said.

sented the paper supporting conversion therapy, which Gartrell noted has been “shown to be both ineffective and damaging.”

“Despite decades of research demonstrating that LGBT people led healthy, happy, successful, fulfilling, and productive lives, Dr. Spitzer only retracted it in 2012,” she said.

None of Spitzer’s actions surprised Gartrell, who first published her views on him in a book, Lesbians in Academia: Degrees of Freedom, edited by Beth Mintz and Esther D. Rothblum.

In the book, and in an interview with the B.A.R., Gartrell said that in 1974 – the year after homosexuality had been removed as a mental illness from the APA manual – she was a medical student at UC Davis and was applying to psychiatric residency programs. She applied to Columbia University, where she was interviewed by a number of faculty, including Spitzer. After reading over her list of publications, he asked Gartrell if she was a lesbian.

When she said yes, he then asked her if she wanted to be a man. “I said I did not,” she recalled.

“When he asked me if I was the butch or the femme in my relationship, I said that I didn’t see the relevance of such questions to my application for residency.

“I also told him that I objected to the American Psychiatric Association’s continuing inclusion of the concept of ego-dystonic homosexuality” in the APA manuals, “without including a parallel diagnosis of ego-dystonic heterosexuality,” Gartrell said.

When Spitzer questioned the usefulness of such a concept, “I said that I had come across many radical feminists who were dissatisfied with their relations with men and wished they could become lesbians,” she said.

“It was very obvious to me,” said Gartrell, that in the interview, Spitzer “saw me through a stereotypic lens that bore no resemblance to the reality of my life.”

When Gartrell’s residency application was subsequently rejected, her medical school mentor called the chair of the Columbia psychiatry training program.

“My mentor was told that the admissions committee had decided that my comfort with my lesbianism – in not considering it a problem – had rendered me incompatible” with Columbia’s training program.

“Did my career suffer?” asked Gartrell. “Well, no, not at all because I had already been accepted at Harvard” for psychiatric residency.

“But I feared for the countless LGBT people whose lives would continue to be damaged by the attitudes of psychiatrists like Bob Spitzer,” she said.t

Different take

But Gartrell has a very different take on those who defend Spitzer’s strategy of trying to implement change slowly.

“One of the things I find so frustrating is that most people believe that homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973 and the story ended there,” she said.

“In fact, as numerous historical documents and prior editions of the APA manual state, a variation on the concept of homosexuality as a mental illness – known as ego-dystonic homosexuality – was retained as a DSM diagnosis into the mid-1980s, despite a complete lack of scientific evidence to support such a diagnosis,” Gartrell explained.

To those who criticized Spitzer for recommending that the APA retain the diagnosis of ego-dystonic homosexuality, rather than eliminate it altogether, Krajeski said, “Bob Spitzer deserves a great deal of credit for helping the APA make some major changes, altering years of tradition.”

Drescher shed some additional light on the controversy.

Spitzer, he said, “was an academician, not a clinician, and did not see patients.”

Like the other psychiatrists interviewed, Drescher said he also “had issues” with Spitzer’s views on reparative therapy.

“Bob was a contrarian,” he explained, “and was also very stubborn so it took him a while to admit he was wrong” and apologize.

“I think the gay community owes a tremendous debt to Dr. Spitzer,” Drescher said. “He wasn’t perfect and, as you know, all our heroes have feet of clay. He had an original mind and he changed the world.”

It was in 2001 that Spitzer pre-

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Robert James Cherry Robert James Cherry passed away at his home in San Francisco on December 21st, 2015.

A lover of nature, skiing, plants (especially orchids), and animals, Jim lived life with no regrets and an in-your-face honesty that his many friends loved him for.

Born and raised in Wyoming, he was the son of Kathryn Adsit and Glen Cherry. Jim is survived by his loving sister and brother, Tara Short and Dave Cherry, Tara’s husband Donovan and his beautiful niece Darrah, his cherished mother-inlaw Mary-Ann King, his very devoted husband John Berge, and his dearest friend in the world, his little dog Smokey. An accountant by trade, Jim is a graduate of Casper College and is a proud former President of the Golden Gate Business Association, the world’s first LGBT Chamber of Commerce.

A Celebration of Life will be held in honor of Jim from 10 to 11am on Saturday, January 23rd, at Sunnyside Conservatory, located at 236 Monterey Blvd. in San Francisco.

Jim is loved by many and will never be forgotten.

Jim - from all your friends and loved ones, each in our own way, we want you to know you are deeply loved and missed, and we look forward to seeing you again someday.

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12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

Good choice

by Roger Brigham

D

ebar.com Scott Rosien (1947-2015) From his early years he loved cars, politics, fishing, biking, and the beach, travel and collectibles.

Scott Rosien passed away at his home in San Francisco on November 23, 2015. He was 68. The cause was prostate cancer.

An attorney by training, Mr. Rosien was also an uncompromising master contractor and interior decorator by avocation for more than 40 years. With a great passion for travel and adventure, Mr. Rosien visited over forty countries on four continents. Among his favorite destinations were Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador, Greece and Turkey, but none rivaled Cuba, which he visited numerous times. He also enjoyed traveling throughout the American Southwest. During his travels he pursued his love – and strong aesthetic sense as a dedicated collector – of vintage travel and industrial posters, 1940’s and 1950’s pottery, modernist furniture, Kilims and Middle Eastern rugs and textiles, still searching until the end of his life for new objects of interest, including during his trip of May-June of 2015 to Morocco and Paris.

Mr. Rosien, an insatiable reader, was also a passionate food aficionado and his self-designed San Francisco kitchen was filled from his travels.

Scott Rosien was born May 4, 1947 in Los Angeles, California. With a venturesome personality, he was an excellent student, and the envy of his friends and classmates. He attended Westwood Elementary, Emerson Junior High and University High School (class of 1966). Mr Rosien studied piano and accordion, attended Latin Club, and was a superb writer coining the phrase, “the irony of fate,” in a school paper about the Titanic.

Mr. Rosien attended the University of California at Berkeley (19661967) as the politically turbulent era of Mario Savio’s lead Free Speech Movement took hold.

Returning in 1968 to Los Angeles, he completed his undergraduate studies at U.C.L.A. (1969). Thereafter, he obtained his Juris Doctor from Hastings Law School in San Francisco (1972). After admission to the California Bar, Mr. Rosien worked in Washington, D.C. in the legal publishing business, then with the Federal Government’s Social Security Administration in Fresno.

He also pursued real estate as a broker in his adopted home of San Francisco.

Mr. Rosien was preceded in death by his father, Nathan Rosien, and his mother, Irma Rosien, a well-regarded artist in Los Angeles.

He is survived by his cousins, Judy Sherman of Morro Bay, Jonathan Sommers of Long Beach, Jackie Justman and his aunt Sylvia Gordon both of Los Angeles. In addition to his family, he had many close friends including Robin Rome, Gregory Lind, Stephen Saltzman, Norman Levitt, David Mattingly, Terry Abrams, Alex Andrianov, and Cyrus Frank.

Finally, and noteworthy, Mr. Rosien was a gifted conversationalist for those who had the luck to know and love him. He held strong opinions, had no room for the foolish or irrational and always kept allegiance to his own sturdy ways of thinking. He could be sardonic - even acerbic - though never at anyone’s expense, only at the absurdities of life. At times his wit was infectious and laughter and mischief were companions he seldom left behind. And never anywhere in the world would he stay in a hotel with the word “boutique” in its name.

A memorial is planned for Sunday, January 31 (1:30 PM) at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, 1218 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles, 90024.

ecisions, decisions. Policy and personnel decisions made off the playing fields always seem to have as much effect on the sports world as the decisions players make on the field. And you don’t always need time to tell the difference between good decisions, bad decisions, and weird are-you-kiddingme? decisions.

There was the decision, for instance, of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association this season to ban students from chanting common inflammatory phrases at games. Real scathing phrases, like “Air-ball,” “We can’t hear you,” and “Season’s over.”

Huh? Having heard the association’s thoughts on free speech, we await its opinion on various other Bill of Rights matters. In the interim, star player April Gehl of Hilbert High, a political commentator in the making, received a five-game suspension for tweeting, “Eat shit. WIAA.” Or the bizarrely nuanced decision last month by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to suspend Sacramento Kings guard Rajon Rondo one game for calling referee Bill Kennedy a “motherfucking faggot” during a game. Kennedy was not publicly out of the closet at the time but came out shortly after the incident. Rondo said what most elite athletes say after they slur gays, which is that they said it in frustration and therefore meant nothing by it. Silver said he would have handed down a longer suspension, but doing so might have triggered questions about Kennedy’s orientation and unintentionally outed him, so the suspension was kept to a minimum.

Again, huh?

So, because Rondo slandered an official rumored to be gay rather

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Curtis Pride, who used to play for the Angels, was named Major League Baseball’s new ambassador for inclusion.

than known to be gay, he got a shorter sentence? The price of slandering a closeted gay man is less than slandering a straight dude or an openly gay dude? Please walk us through this, Adam.

Fact is, the homophobic slur has no place on or off the court regardless at whom it is directed and it should be dealt with immediately and consistently. Three games would make sense.

The target of the slur is not the person at whom it is said, but rather the community bullied and sullied on a daily basis in the darker recesses of the human heart.

Then we come to the quiet, little publicized decision this week by Major League Baseball to promote Billy Bean to vice president for social responsibility and inclusion and give his former position of ambassador for inclusion to Curtis Pride.

Both Bean and Pride faced major obstacles in their pursuits of major league careers in the outfield. Bean did not come out as gay until years after his retirement but since then has worked to ensure baseball be-

Pets

From page 1

Center of Excellence at the School of Social Work at the University of Washington.

Jane A. McElroy, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of Missouri Family and Community Medicine Department, was also asked to add a question about pet ownership in a study she is overseeing focused on the physical fitness of lesbians and bisexual women.

Of the 105 participants in the study, 33 percent answered yes when asked “Do you have a dog in the household that is regularly walked?”

“Not only does having pets provide comfort to older lesbian and bisexual women, but they also support their owner’s health,” McElroy told the Bay Area Reporter. “Walking their dogs naturally supports physical activity, and everyone knows getting off the couch and moving is important for staying healthy.”

During their presentation at the November symposium FredriksenGoldsen led that looked specifically at LGBT aging research, Muraco and Putney noted that there is a lack of long-term studies looking at how pets contribute to their owner’s mental and physical health over time. The women are looking to do their own longitudinal study on the benefits of pet ownership for LGBT seniors.

One concern of the LGBT seniors they spoke with was the financial consequences of owning a pet, as many live on limited incomes. Even the seniors in their study who lived in West Hollywood, which has a city policy that allows residents age 62 and older

James LaCroce, Ph.D.

Bill Ambrunn got Hudson, now 2, after his beloved dog, Fannie, died.

to have two pets, even if they live in an apartment that bans them, worried their landlord would raise their rents if they adopted an animal.

“Housing is a very important issue for seniors,” said Putney.

Obvious benefits

Not all senior housing facilities are

t

comes a more supportive and inclusive sport than what he experienced.

Pride, deaf his entire life, is straight and was once one of the country’s brightest prospects in soccer and played more than 400 baseball games for the Expos, Tigers, Red Sox, Braves, Yankees, and Angels. He is currently the head baseball coach at Gallaudet University, a leading institution for the deaf and hard of hearing that competes collegiately in Division III. “I am very excited to be a part of Major League Baseball as its newest ‘ambassador for inclusion,’” Pride said. “I look forward to working with everyone at the Office of the Commissioner to make a tremendous impact in the baseball community.”

Bean and Pride will work under senior vice presidents Tony Reagins, in charge of youth programs; and Wendy Lewis, in charge of diversity, inclusion, and strategic alliances.

So, what can we expect to be the impact, if any, of these moves?

Well, it affirms an evolution in the fight for LGBT rights in sports. That used to be a rather insular struggle, focused solely on our rights and our acceptance: queers standing up for queers. As homophobic barriers have crumbled, however, the movement has become part of something bigger: an effort to remove prejudices and barriers that needlessly prevent many individuals from being able to participate in and benefit fully from sports.

MLB said Bean “will be responsible for many of the league’s social responsibility initiatives, including oversight of its workplace code of conduct and anti-bullying programming, while continuing to facilitate inclusion strategies with a focus on the LGBT community.”

In other words, we really meant it when we said we weren’t asking for special rights, just equal rights.

Hopefully Bean’s work will lead not just baseball, but other sports as well, adopting more consistent approaches to the handling of homophobic slurs in the workplace.t accessible to pets, they noted, which can be a challenge when older adults can no longer live on their own but refuse to move without their pets.

They suggested that local agencies promote various services to assist seniors who want to have pets, such as providing low cost pet food and veterinary care to dog walkers or people who will clean up after a cat.

Asked by the B.A.R. if their recommendation to seniors is to get a pet, Muraco and Putney both said if they can care for the animal then they should.

“It seems to be yes, if they can do it then get a pet,” said Putney, adding that, “We do have to think about the animal’s well-being. As long as we are paying attention to the wellbeing of the animals, then I think it is a good idea.”

Muraco cautioned that, “Pets do die. So if the person is already faced with a lot of bereavement, they may not want one.”

Bill Ambrunn, 52, a gay attorney who chaired San Francisco’s LGBT Aging Policy Task Force, told the B.A.R. that the benefits of pet ownerSee page 13 >>

Obituaries >> Memorial set for Dennis Nix

A celebration of the life of Dennis Nix will be held Saturday, January 23 from 4 to 7 p.m. in the Green Room at San Francisco’s War MemoMisha Purcell rial Building, 401 Van Ness Avenue (at McAllister Street). Dennis was killed in a hit and run car accident near his home in Glen Park on November 23, 2015. Dennis was a beloved member of the San Francisco gay community known

for his big heart, generosity, and boundless energy. A successful certified financial planner, Dennis was a tireless fundraiser for multiple charities benefiting the gay community. He was an active member of Golden Gate Business Association, Business Network International, FrontRunners, Diving for Live, SAGA North, and Different Spokes. In addition Dennis was an avid world traveler. Dennis’ close friends and family invite all those touched by his life to join us for food, drink, and music as we celebrate the life of this remarkable man.

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Community News>>

API Wellness Center

From page 2

patients are insured. More than 45 percent of the current patients are on some form of Medi-Cal and therefore qualify as low-income.

“We want to serve the folks who are not getting any care,” said Toma, who stressed that people with nonemergency medical needs should turn to the Wellness Clinic rather than go to a hospital emergency room for treatment. “They can come here and access doctors, nurses, case managers and social workers regardless of their health insurance status.”

Clinic patients can also utilize any of the agency’s other services, from a mobile shower that comes once a week to its Trans Thrive drop-in center for transgender individuals.

It also began a PrEP program last

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All-gender bathrooms

From page 1

“Transgender and gender-nonconforming people frequently experience harassment in toilet facilities,” a draft of the legislation says.

“Required use of gender-specific toilet facilities can create unnecessary risk that leads to transgender and gender-nonconforming people being denied access, being verbally harassed, or physically assaulted in these facilities. These experiences, in turn, impact one’s education, employment, health, and participation in public life. This is especially true for transgender women of color, who experience the highest rates of discrimination.”

Transgender Law Center Executive Director Kris Hayashi, a trans man who helped craft the proposal, said Monday, “I have the legal right to use the restroom that matches my gender.”

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Pets

From page 12

ship should be obvious to policymakers and those who care for the elderly, in particular LGBT seniors who consider their pets to be their children or part of their families of choice.

“I know so many older people in the LGBT community who you wonder how they would function without their pets,” said Ambrunn. “My last dog, she went everywhere I went.”

Following the death of Fannie, whom he had for 14 years, Ambrunn in October 2014 adopted Hudson, a now 2-year-old German shepherd mix.

“The same day Fannie died I adopted Hudson.

I didn’t want to come home to an empty apartment,” he said. “The thought was too depressing to me.”

Although the city task force did not make any specific recommendations regarding seniors and pets, Ambrunn said it would make sense to provide seniors help to care for their pets. He pointed to the agency Pets Are Wonderful Support, which recently merged with the Shanti Project and cares for the pets of people facing life-threatening illnesses, as one example.

“PAWS does a great job, but I am concerned as the so-called silver tsunami breaks if there is going to be enough resources for seniors to

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Business Briefs

From page 9

they don’t have to put a robe on or listen to birds chirping and waterfalls,” noted Crossett, who left a corporate job for a career in esthetics.

She first began working at the spa in what is now known as the Scarlet Huntington hotel atop Nob Hill.

Then in July 2002 she opened the school to train others wanting to break into the skin care and spa industry.

“I love watching people do what I

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

year aimed at prescribing the oncea-day HIV prevention pill to young gay and bisexual men of color and transgender individuals.

Asked what some of the top medical needs of its patients are, the agency said primary care issues such as hypertension management, diabetes, and heart disease frequently arise, as do mental health and transgender health issues.

Somerset, president and CEO of Somerset Philanthropic Advisors, told the B.A.R. that prior to moving to San Francisco from Massachusetts last year she had been advised to seek out API Wellness Center to be her primary care provider. Although she had been receiving quality health care back east, after she transitioned, Somerset felt she no longer was fully supported by her medical providers.

“I have always lived in great

urban cities and always had access to excellent health care. But excellent health care, I have discovered, doesn’t always equal affirmative care,” said Somerset, who has private insurance.

So impressed with the medical care she has received at the Wellness Clinic, Somerset last month joined API Wellness Center’s board of directors.

“I like to describe it as we all have our favorite coffee shops we can pop into and feel comfortable sitting in as long as we want. I feel that way about API Wellness Center and the clinic,” she said. “I feel this is a community to me, whether I am accessing clinic services or dropping by for a support group. ... I love the diversity here. I love it really is a center for us all.”

Agency officials are currently negotiating membership in various

health networks and managed care networks so that more clients can select the Wellness Clinic as their “medical home,” said Do, whether they have public insurance, a Covered California plan, or private insurance.

“We are accepting Anthem Blue Cross and Aetna. We can also see any Medi-Cal patients for sensitive health services (reproductive and sexual health),” Do explained. “We are also working with United Healthcare, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of California, the San Francisco Health Plan, and Healthy San Francisco to ensure the broadest access to care.”

The clinic operates on a sliding scale fee schedule, based on a person’s insurance and/or ability to pay.

Currently the fees range from a $20 copay for new patients/$10 for existing patients making less than 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level

to a $50 copay for new patients/$40 for existing patients making between 200 to 400 percent of the FPL. “We want to be sure folks understand that we will not turn anyone away and we do have the power to waive fees for folks who are unable to pay for health care,” stressed Stephanie Goss, the agency’s spokeswoman.

The clinic is open most weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 6 pm. except on Thursdays when its hours are 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

To make an appointment at the Wellness Clinic, call (415) 292-3400 or email theclinic@apiwellness.org Anyone interested in securing the naming rights for the clinic’s remaining two exam rooms can do so for a minimum donation of $7,700.

Contact the center’s development manager Sara Kunitake at sara@apiwellness.org or call (415) 292-3420 ext. 373.t

Campos’ legislation would be “a model for the nation,” Hayashi said.

Jen Orthwein, who’s senior counsel for TLC’s Detention Project and identifies outside the gender binary, recalled a time when a man raised his clenched fist at her as she was exiting a hotel women’s room.

“Experiences like this are not uncommon for me,” said Orthwein, who in a news release explained, “People will yell at me for using the women’s restroom, but I do not feel comfortable using a men’s restroom.”

Joanna Fraguli, deputy director for programmatic access for the Mayor’s Office on Disability, was at Campos’ news conference and talked about how using public restrooms often “requires the assistance of caretakers, family, or friends,” and it’s “always been a quest” to find a bathroom.

Berkeley, West Hollywood, and other cities have already enacted

legislation similar to Campos’, according to the District 9 supervisor, but San Francisco’s legislation would be unique because it would include an enforcement mechanism through the city’s Human Rights Commission and Department of Building Inspection.

Theresa Sparks, a transgender woman who serves as HRC’s executive director, said legislation like Campos’ has been discussed in San Francisco “for several years now.”

The city needs to be aggressive on the issue and “take a leadership role in this,” Sparks said.

DBI director Tom Hui said, “Our department fully supports this ordinance” and would take “every step to enforce it.”

Senior building inspector Rick Halloran said the legislation addresses an issue his agency “has been struggling with for many years.”

Isa Noyola, who identifies as gen-

der fluid and works with El/La Para TransLatinas, urged people to support the proposal.

“Our communities are fighting to exist and survive” and are “constantly being scrutinized in all aspects of our lives. ... We know what we need to feel safe,” Noyola said.

Ken Tray, political director for the United Educators of San Francisco union, said the city’s school district already has a policy similar to what Campos is proposing “and no one blinks an eye.”

The legislation “would help in a very profound way,” Tray said.

The draft of the legislation says besides trans and non-conforming people and people with disabilities, all-gender bathrooms also “provide universal access for families with small children” and “seniors who require assistance or supervision.”

According to Campos’ office, the legislation would allow business

owners to “create multi-stall bathrooms that are also gender neutral.”

Among other provisions, the draft says, “while a person might choose to use an all-gender toilet facility, no one should be required to use an all-gender toilet facility because of their gender identity.”

The draft also says businesses would have 90 days from the time the legislation takes effect to remove gender-specific door signage “and replace it with signage for all genders.”

Additionally, at least one allgender bathroom would have to be available “on each floor in any new building constructed on city-owned land.”

The legislation is co-sponsored

by Supervisors John Avalos, Mark Farrell, Jane Kim, and Eric Mar. Gay Supervisor Scott Wiener also supports the proposal, as does the city’s chamber of commerce.t

place at 2 p.m. the second Friday of the month – four people stopped by for the canine “cuddle club.”

Rebecca Lockhart, 50, who is bisexual and lives in a senior living facility in San Francisco, forgoes having her own dog because of her roommate. Instead, she has been coming to the monthly gettogethers at Muttville for the past 18 months.

“It’s just a real loving environment.

I really like the dogs and I like the contact,” said Lockhart, whose husband, who resides in their apartment, is considering adopting kittens.

The couple’s dog, Charlie Parker, died in 2014 at the age of 18. Because they both have disabilities, it was impractical for them to adopt another dog, explained Lockhart.

She now helps care for the pets of the other residents where she lives.

“I was a registered nurse for 25 years, so it is an easy fit for me,” she said. “I help out as much as I can.”

William Langley, 72, a gay man who lives in San Francisco, had cats and dogs for 40 some years but now prefers not to own a pet. Instead, for roughly two years, he has been participating in the Openhouse outings to Muttville.

“I can still get my dog noogies in,” said Langley, noting that the rescued dogs “need the attention.”

He doesn’t doubt that pets can improve the lives of seniors.

“I have seen a lot of older gentlemen recently retired walking their

dogs they finally got after their long careers. It is fun to watch because the dogs are often walking them,” he said.

Gay San Francisco resident Frank Brooks, 70, started going to the Muttville meet-ups three months ago. He thought about adopting his own dog after he retired in 2013 but his building doesn’t allow pets and he doesn’t want to risk losing his lease even if he received a doctor’s note to have a service animal.

“Dogs are the best embodiment of people without the crap,” said Brooks as a canine companion, Oliver, snuggled in his lap. “I get a lot out of this. This takes care of my canine craving.”

Since 2007 Muttville has offered a special seniors adoption program where it waves its fees for older adults. It has since placed more than 1,000 senior canines with seniors aged 62 and older.

“There are not a lot of statistics but we all know it,” said Muttville Executive Director Sherri Franklin, in regards to the health benefits seniors can derive from their pets.

To learn more about Muttville’s program for seniors, visit http:// www.muttville.org.t

January 27 and focus on multimasking, “a new trend in skincare,” said Crossett, which promotes using different masks on different areas of the face to treat different conditions.

To RSVP for the event, or to schedule an appointment for a treatment, visit the store’s website at skinonmarket.com or call (415) 875-7546.

that harkens to the corner cafes found throughout Paris or Rome, where locals can pop in for an espresso or cappuccino – served at Wildcraft with a shot of Perrier and a small piece of June Taylor candy – and consume it standing at the counter or bar.

“The data says people interact more with a stand bar,” noted Beaumont.

With the Castro awash in new coffee shops, Beaumont stocks sheep’s milk from Haverton Hill See page 14 >>

care for their pets when they need help,” said Ambrunn, referring to the country’s rapidly growing senior population. “I have a 90-pound dog and a lot of my friends couldn’t walk him. Just because you have friends who care for you, they might not be able to care for your pet.”

More research into the benefits of pet ownership could bolster calls for senior living facilities to adopt petfriendly rules, noted Ambrunn.

“The issue that keeps coming to my mind is housing. I can understand there would be some issues around dogs, but if you can’t even have cats,” he said, then having the research to back up claims that pets are beneficial “could get facilities to allow pets.”

Pets will be allowed at the new 110-unit lowincome senior housing project being built by Openhouse, the LGBT senior services agency based in San Francisco. Located at 55 Laguna Street, the project’s first 40 units are set to open this fall.

Those seniors selected to move in will be able to have pets, including dogs, although a deposit of anywhere from $25 to $100 will be required if it’s not a service animal needed for a resident’s health, according to the agency. There will likely also be a weight limit placed on dogs, either up to 25 or 30 pounds; the exact figure has yet to be determined. did: leave a corporate environment and go into skin care,” said Crossett.

To meet what she sees as a growing need, Crossett this year has started a special training for people looking to become barbers. The first class will begin in March, and the school is able to offer student loans due to securing federal accreditation as well as from a state vocation education program overseen by the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology in the California Department of Consumer Affairs.

‘It is such a hot industry right

Kelly Sullivan

Frank Brooks pets King during the Muttville senior dog meetup organized by Openhouse.

“We see the many benefits that pets can offer. For seniors, pets can be life changing,” Joel Evans, the nonprofit’s director of development and marketing, told the B.A.R. “They can offer multiple benefits such as participating in dog walking, which is great for reducing isolation and activity levels. Simply caring for a pet makes seniors feel needed, which improves self-worth, and is known to combat depression and lower stress.”

Recognizing the benefits pets can bring to seniors, Openhouse four years ago began organizing monthly visits for its clients to interact with the dogs rescued by Muttville. At the December meet up – the visits take now,” said Crossett.

With increasing sales at the Castro store, Crossett said she is planning to hire a third skin therapist to assist her two current employees, who are both out people of color.

“When you look at diversity, we have done pretty well. Unintentionally, it happened that way,” she said.

New this year for the shop will be monthly education events, held the last Wednesday of the month, free for customers to attend. The first will take place from 6 to 8 p.m.

A minimalist espresso bar

A key feature of the minimally decorated Wildcraft is its stand bar

This article was written with support from the Journalists in Aging Fellowships, a program of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America, sponsored by The Scan Foundation.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

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News Briefs

From page 10

leading experts.

The conference is based on a format Men Having Babies developed over the last 10 years in several cities. Organizers said the conference features information from unbiased nonprofit organizations alongside a wide range of relevant service providers.

Registration is $15 per person online ($20 at the door), and includes lunch and a networking reception. Proceeds from sponsorship and exhibiting fees will benefit the

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Business Briefs

From page 13

Creamery as one way to offer something unique. For a dollar extra, customers can ask to have their cappuccino (normally $4) made with the special milk – a good alternative for those who are lactose intolerant – or buy a quart to take home ($8 plus a $2 deposit for the glass bottle).

She serves teas from the womanowned, Berkeley-based Leaves and Flowers, which sources its herbal tea ingredients from around California. The honey she uses is from http://www.urbanbeesf.com, which has a rooftop garden above restaurant Quince.

In the coming weeks Beaumont intends to add various broths to the menu and sheep’s milk ice cream.

She has partnered with Neighbor’s Corner, a Noe Valley coffee shop that opened last fall, to supply baked goods and will also be stocking various lunch items.

The name Wildcraft is derived from the practice of wildcrafting, or sourcing craft items locally from nearby woods. It denotes the partnerships Beaumont has formed with Bay Area suppliers.

San Francisco-based Ritual Coffee currently supplies all of her coffee beans, though Beaumont intends to also brew other brands new to the city. Local ceramicist Len Cerella made her serving dishes.

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SF sheriff

From page 4

was at Hennessy’s meeting Monday.

In a brief interview, Whelan said, “I think there’s a lot of momentum now from her office as well as from other folks in San Francisco” to ensure that the city “is a leader, and that we are diverting transgender people from the jails whenever we can, but when they are ending up there, they are being placed consistent with their gender identity.”

Theresa Sparks, a transgender woman who serves as executive director of the city’s Human Rights Commission, said training with deputies in the women’s jail started before the holidays.

“The next step will probably be to train all sheriff ’s deputies and

<<

Brown’s budget

From page 4

his cautiously optimistic outlook for California.”

However, he added, “While I appreciate the governor’s continued conservative approach reflected in his budget, we must discuss the needs of Californians still impacted by the deep cuts of the recession. ... I am eager to work collaboratively with the governor and my

<<

Obama

From page 5

The wife of San Bernardino shooting victim Damian Meins was the guest of gay Congressman Mark Takano (D-California).

Madison, Wisconsin Alderman Samba Baldeh, a Muslim immigrant from Gambia, was the guest

Gay Parenting Assistance Program and Our Family Coalition.

For more information and to sign up, visit http://www.menhavingbabies.org/sf.

New guide on LGBT scholarships available

Go Grad has just released its guide, Scholarships and Financial Aid for LGBTQ Students, which provides a comprehensive list of scholarships for LGBTQ students planning for their higher education.

The guide, available at www.gograd. org/financial-aid/scholarships/ lgbtq, is broken down by subject, “We are not just a coffee shop. I am building a lifestyle brand that is quite distinct,” explained Beaumont, who when asked for her age replied she is older than she looks and offered that she graduated from law school at Northwestern University in 1992. “I don’t think there is anything like us in the Castro.”

Every three months she intends to invite a local artist to display their work on the walls of the 430 square foot space. She plans to have a grandopening party sometime in March.

So far she has felt nothing but welcomed by the neighborhood.

“The reaction from the community has been really supportive and wonderful,” said Beaumont, adding that she has a “real love” for the corner her business calls home.

With the F-Line trolley stops right outside her doors on Market Street, Beaumont hopes the location will be a draw with tourists.

Employees on staff speak French, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese.

“I really wanted to build a world to respond to the world that is here.

Hundreds of thousands of people come to the Castro a year,” she said.

“I want people to have an experience around coffee that is super friendly and an experience where we are engaging with the customers that feels meaningful and genuine.”

and includes pertinent information for applying for scholarships and tips for applying for and securing financial aid.

Assessor lifts limits on marriage license copies

San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu has announced that her office has lifted the temporary limit on the number of official copies of marriage licenses that individuals can request.

The office had imposed the temporary limit due to a statewide shortage in bonded paper. Since then, the office has worked success-

Show on KOFY TV has gone weekly.

The switch for the long-running local cable program began with the Sunday, January 10 show.

“Thank you to KOFY TV, the only network that hasn’t shot me down when I’ve expressed how important it is to tell LGBTQI stories and what it means to the fight for equal rights,” show host Michelle Meow wrote in a Facebook post last month announcing the schedule change.

Meow, nee Michelle Sinhbandith, is president this year of the board that organizes the city’s Pride parade and celebration. Since 2007, except for one year, she has anchored the live broadcast of the parade.

Her show, initially titled Swirl TV, launched in April 2013. It now airs at 9:30 p.m. Sunday nights on KOFY TV Channel 20/Cable 13.

Episodes can also be watched online at http://www.michellemeow. com/ - !tv-episodes-/qali8.

Gay-owned fitness center hosts seminar

fully with the County Recorders Association of California to identify alternative sources that meet state law requirements (state law requires specific security features for official copies of vital records to avoid counterfeit).

Official copies of marriage licenses can be obtained by making an in-person visit, by mail, or via the Internet. The cost is currently $15 per copy. For more information, visit www.sfassessor.org. The Assessor-Recorder’s office is located at San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 190, San Francisco, CA 94102.t “At DIAKADI Fitness, education is a priority. Over the last 11 years, we have helped San Francisco’s most talented personal trainers grow their own independent practices into successful six figure careers within our facility,” stated Billy Polson, who co-owns the gym with his partner, Mike Clausen. “We now want to share these ‘secrets to success’ with other fitness entrepreneurs throughout the Bay Area.”

The gym regularly hosts monthly continuing education group classes for its trainers, with topics ranging from anatomy and fitness program design to lifestyle coaching. Both the National Academy of Sports Medicine and the CHEK Institute teach all of their San Francisco-based continuing education classes at the gym.

This is the first time DIAKADI has sponsored a daylong, multisubject training on business development for trainers that do not work for the gym, located in Suite 102 at 290 Division Street.

The seminar runs from 12:30 to 5 p.m. followed by a happy hour and networking event. It costs $55 to attend.

Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.thebusinessmovement.com/register/.t

This Friday, January 15, the gayowned DIAKADI Fitness Performance Life, San Francisco’s largest personal training gym, is hosting a daylong seminar aimed at helping fitness entrepreneurs build successful businesses and expand their brands.

Titled “The Business Movement,” sessions will include how to boost revenues, drum up leads for new clients, and how to best market one’s business.

Got a tip on LGBT business news? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or e-mail m.bajko@ ebar.com.

It’s clear that many people are keeping an eye on the new sheriff ’s progress on the trans policy.

In a rare joint letter sent January 5 to Hennessy, the heads of the Alice B. Toklas and Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic clubs said they are “very concerned” with transgender inmates’ safety.

“During the campaign, you committed to reviewing the proposed transgender housing policy and working with the deputy sheriffs to ensure communication and consistency in the adoption process,” the letter says. “We all hope that this can be done expediently to ensure that a robust policy that ensures safety and dignity for transgender people can be implemented as soon as possible.”

Asked about the letter, Hennessy said, “I understand their concerns about any delays. I just need some time to get in there and do the work I can do.”

At her swearing in Friday, Hennessy said the sheriff’s office needs to be “a well-trained, professional, humane, and dedicated department.”

She had her staff stand and recite the agency’s code of ethics and said, “Think about what the words mean. ... This is where the rubber meets the road.”

Other officials who were on hand at the City Hall event expressed relief that she defeated Mirkarimi.

State Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) said Hennessy, who worked for decades in the sheriff ’s department, is “no nonsense and no drama.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein (DCalifornia) said, “professionalism and experience really do play a role” in the sheriff ’s department, where staff “long for” those qualities.t

colleagues in the Legislature to fully analyze this budget proposal and deliver an on-time, balanced fiscal plan that sensibly reflects our state’s needs.”

Lesbian Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) also praised the governor.

“California’s budget today is balanced, and it’s in the best position in decades to withstand a future economic downturn,” Atkins stated. “...

The Assembly’s goal throughout the

upcoming budget process is to have California remain the premier example of how you can successfully keep one eye on the pocketbook and one eye on the future. Our last few budgets have proven we can be fiscally responsible and still meet the needs and honor the values of the people of California. This budget will fill that bill as well.”

(Atkins is termed out this year and Assemblyman Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) was elected

this week as the next speaker. He will take over in March.)

Gay Assemblyman Rich Gordon (D-Menlo Park) stated, “Today, we have a multi-billion dollar budget thanks to a strengthening economy and pragmatic fiscal policy. We must continue this prudent long-term fiscal policy and focus our spending on paying down our debt, creating a ‘rainy day’ savings account, and investing in economic growth – which includes investing in education.”t

of gay Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin).

Two high school students, Rida and Salwa Hajaig, were guests of bisexual Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona). Rida is Desert Vista High School’s senior class president, and Salwa, a sophomore, is an honors student.

The office of gay Congressman

Sean Patrick Maloney (D-New York) did not respond to a query to identify his guest.

On Friday, 26-year-old lesbian Ingrid Nilsen, who has a YouTube channel with 3.8 million subscribers, will be one of three YouTube “creators” to “host a live YouTube interview” with Obama. Nilsen says she has questions concerning LGBT

issues and other matters that she hopes to ask the president. And she’s soliciting questions from her viewers.

The White House will stream the YouTube interview live on YouTube and at http://www.whitehouse.gov’s special State of the Union page. The event will begin at 11:15 a.m. PT. People can also submit questions for consideration at #YouTubeAsksObama.t

Lesbian TV host goes weekly

The once monthly Michelle Meow

be able to start the housing transfer from one side to the other,” Sparks said. She predicted trans women would be able to take part in programming “in the next week or so.”

Like Hennessy, Sparks hopes that the housing transition “will happen in the next three months.”

Sparks, who wasn’t able to attend Hennessy’s meeting but did send an HRC staffer, said, “it’s pretty significant” that the gathering happened on Hennessy’s first day.

“It shows everyone the respect she has for the community and how serious she is moving forward with this,” she said.

‘Very concerned’

t

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551759

In the matter of the application of: SUSAN ANNA FROHLICH, 350 ARBALLO DR #12L, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner SUSAN ANNA FROHLICH, is requesting that the name SUSAN ANNA FROHLICH, be changed to SUSAN ANNA CHRISTIANO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 23rd of February 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

DEC 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 21, 2016 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551777

In the matter of the application of: JUAN BOSCO HERNANDEZ BASULTO, 487 VALLEJO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JUAN BOSCO HERNANDEZ BASULTO, is requesting that the name JUAN BOSCO HERNANDEZ BASULTO, be changed to BOSCO HERNANDEZ BASULTO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 1st of March 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JANUARY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-16-551794

In the matter of the application of: VERONIKA Z. CASTELLO BRANCO & LEONARDO CASTELLO BRANCO, 442 VALLEJO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner VERONIKA Z. CASTELLO BRANCO & LEONARDO CASTELLO BRANCO, is requesting that the name ANALUZ Z. CASTELLO BRANCO be changed to ANNALUZ Z. CASTELLO BRANCO and PALOMA CASTELLO BRANCO be changed to PALOMA Z. CASTELLO BRANCO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 3rd of March 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036841100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: COLLECTIVE LINES, 1886 18TH AVENUE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MELANIE HALIM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/17/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/17/15.

DEC 24, 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036835700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FEED THE PRISONERS, 505 CASTRO ST, SAN FRANCISO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BAO QUEC NGUYEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/15/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/15/15.

DEC 24, 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036845200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JZA ARCHITECTURE, 152 LUNDYS LANE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOSEPH Z. ARMIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/18/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/18/15.

DEC 24, 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036843800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PHILOSOPHY DESIGN STUDIOS, 4570 EIGHTEENTH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BRITTNEY ANDREWS. 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 12/18/15.

DEC 24, 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036838200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VIVE LA TARTE, 1160 HOWARD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed DIMENSION HILL FOODS INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/16/15.

DEC 24, 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036805000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TGI JUSTICE PROJECT, 1372 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed JUSTICE NOW (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/25/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/25/15.

DEC 24, 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 2016

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036845800

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036875000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SCHOOL BUS MOVIE; PICTURE A CHANGE, 24 BONVIEW ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed MAXEBOY MEDIA CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/21/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/21/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VALLE’S TAX SERVICE, 1690A VALENCIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed OSCAR E. VALLE ORTIZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/11/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/11/16.

DEC 24, 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036846100

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036869000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOLD LION, 111 TOLAND ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed STURDIVANT VENTURES, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/16/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/21/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HEART OF SAN FRANCISCO AIKIDO; MAINTAINING MOBILITY, 79 MIRABEL AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANNE F. SABLOVE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/04. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/07/16.

DEC 24, 31, 2015, JAN 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036863600

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036869500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MARGARET MARIE DESIGNS, 1546 GREAT HWY #45, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARGARET O’MAHONY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/04/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/04/16.

JANUARY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036864400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HARRY CLAY INTERIORS, 945 LARKIN ST #41, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL S. CLAY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/07/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/07/16.

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036867500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RAINBOW JUSTICE, 674 CASTRO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JEANINE K. REISBIG. 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 01/05/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WINSTON TSAI TRUCKING, 108 CAMPBELL AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WINSTON TSAI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/06/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/06/16.

JANUARY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036851600

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036859800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LOWER FALLS, 2318 36TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SARAH KLEIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/23/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/23/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DANCING MOUNTAIN, 1490 16TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GAYLE SUE ZAHLER. 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 12/31/15.

JANUARY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036841600

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036858100

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

Classifieds The

Counseling>>

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HEART OF THE MISSION COUNSELING, 2261 MARKET ST #478, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EMILY THOMPSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/11/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/11/16.

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036877900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE MINDFUL CLEANER, 2261 MARKET ST #411, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOE ZAMORA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/12/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/12/16.

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036877700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LILIA’S DAYCARE, 4009 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ZHIQIONG YUAN. 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 01/12/16.

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016

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JANUARY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036874600

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JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-034478300

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: COLD STONE CREAMERY, 119 ELLIS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business was conducted by a married couple and signed by CRISELDA DIAZ & EDWIN DIAZ. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/14.

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JANUARY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036858300

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2015

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JANUARY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2015 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035706000

SHELLEY S. FEINBERG, ESQ

City Psychiatry &Wellness

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RASLAYA, 1 BRADFORD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed LAAVANYA LUXURY AYURVEDA 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 12/30/15.

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: SCHOGGI, 87 YERBA BUENA LANE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by SCHOGGI LLC, (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/25/12.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SPUNTINO; CAFFE SPUNTINO, 543 COLUMBUS AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CAFE CALABRO INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/15/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/17/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POPSONS, 330 TOWNSEND, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed B & M BURGER, 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 12/30/15.

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Notice of Availability of Request for Proposals for a Retail Leasing Opportunity for the Pier 29 Bulkhead Building, located at Chestnut Street and The Embarcadero The Port of San Francisco is seeking proposals from qualified respondents to propose potential use(s) for a lease to improve and operate a visitor-serving facility within the Pier 29 Bulkhead Building, located in the Port’s Northeast Waterfront adjacent to the James R. Herman Cruise Terminal at the foot of Chestnut Street on the Embarcadero.

The subject property consists of approximately 20,000 s.f. of interior space located within the Pier 29 Bulkhead Building. The property fronts The Embarcadero and is within walking distance of the Ferry Building, the City’s central business district, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown and North Beach. The property is well placed on The Embarcadero Promenade adjacent to the Port’s recently opened James R. Herman Cruise Terminal, the adjoining 2.5 acre Cruise Terminal Plaza and historic Beltline Building.

The Pier 29 Bulkhead Building has been tested as a successful public destination during the 34th America’s Cup events in the Summer of 2013. Based on the public’s positive response to this temporary use, the Pier 29 Bulkhead Building now is envisioned as a site for a unique destination use and walkup attraction that is “San Francisco Bay Area flavored” that will create and draw activity in the environs of Pier 29. This exciting opportunity will augment the rich experience of cruise passengers, visitors and residents in the Northeast Waterfront and highlight and promote that which is unique to our region and culture.

The Port purposefully is being less prescriptive as to specific uses in order to generate a wider array of creative responses to the RFP. Port staff believes a new combination of unique visitor serving, destination attraction uses can be conceived of and launched in this exceptional space to serve waterfront visitors, cruise passengers and neighbors without replicating a pre-existing waterfront use.

RFP packages will be available from the Port of San Francisco, Pier 1, San Francisco, CA 94111. Interested parties may obtain a hardcopy at Pier 1 or by download from the Port’s website at www.sfport.com. Further information concerning the availability of these documents may be obtained by contacting Mark Lozovoy, Project Manager at (415) 274-0575 or mark.lozovoy@sfport.com.

Submittals must be delivered by hand to the Port of San Francisco, Pier 1, San Francisco CA 94111, no later than 5:00 P.M. PST on Thursday, March 10, 2016.

APPROVED BY ORDER OF THE SAN FRANCISCO PORT COMMISSION

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45 America’s LGBT newspaper celebrates our historic 45th Anniversary this April and announces our 5th annual readers choice awards.

Besties THE LGBT BEST OF THE BAY

20 16

The Bay Area Reporter has been the undisputed newspaper of record for the Bay Area’s vibrant LGBT community since 1971. We’re now the longest continuously-published and highest audited-circulation LGBT newspaper in the United States of America.

Combining a retrospective on some of the impactful stories we’ve covered over the past four and a half decades with our 5th annual readers’ poll, our April 7 issue will prove to be one of the largest and most widely read editions in our long history. Be part of it!

READERS: Begin voting in our BESTIES 2016 poll starting January 28 ADVERTISERS: Call (415) 829-8927 or email advertising@ebar.com to learn more about advertising and sponsorship opportunities associated with our historic 45th anniversary and/or our 2016 BESTIES awards and celebration.

24

Berlin stories

Saul train

22

Out &About

TV New Year

21

O&A

20

Vol. 46 • No. 2 • January 14-20, 2016

www.ebar.com/arts

Queering American popular music

by Richard Dodds

P

erformer-writer-provocateur Taylor Mac is pretty much impossible to categorize, and Mac wouldn’t have it any other way.

But some folks like, say, journalists earn their wages creating images that readers can comprehend. “Ziggy Stardust meets Tiny Tim” became one shortcut descriptor that arose enough to cause vexation. “When people are comparing you, they are sort of passively aggressively saying, ‘You’re really not as special as you think you are.’” And so, Mac created an evening of David Bowie and Tiny Tim songs, visually and vocally presented far from their origins, titled Comparison Is Violence.

See page 26 >>

Taylor Mac, as he is costumed in the first segment of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, will perform six decades from the grand project as part of the Curran Theatre’s Under Construction series.

Kevin Yatarola

Cohen & Cooper: Best buds forever

by David-Elijah Nahmod

A

ndy Cohen, host of Bravo’s popular chat fest Watch What Happens Live, and CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper are coming to the Bay Area. The handsome TV personalities, both openly gay, are touring with AC2: An Intimate Evening with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen. For some attendees, the show might serve as a peek inside their private lives: Cooper and Cohen are best friends.

See page 24 >>

Andy Cohen, host of Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, and CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper: taking it on the road.

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

Courtesy Bravo

SATCHMO WALDORF AT THE

“DAZZLING!”

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<< Out There

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

Operatic offerings to come

by Roberto Friedman

I

ts fall opera season is just recently behind us, and its summer opera season is yet to hit the boards, but this week San Francisco Opera announced its programming for the 2016-17 season that begins this coming September. The company’s 94th season will be the inaugural year for new SFO general director Matthew Shilvock, although its repertory and casting were chosen by retiring SFO general director David Gockley.

The season kicks off on Sept. 9 with Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, featuring the SFO debuts of South Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee, Italian soprano Anna Pirozzi, Georgian baritone George Gagnidze and American mezzo-soprano J’nai Bridges. The co-production from London’s Royal Opera House, directed by Sir David McVicar and conducted by SFO music director Nicola Luisotti, promises to be spectacular verismo.

Further highlights of the season include the world premiere of composer/co-librettist Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber, an operatic treatment of Cao Xueqin’s 18thcentury Chinese novel setting an English-language text by colibrettist David Henry Hwang staged by Taiwanese director Stan Lai and designed by Tim Yip, featuring an all-Asian cast conducted

by George Manahan (opens Sept. 10); L.A. graffiti artist RETNA as artistic designer for a new Francesca Zambello production of Verdi’s Aida starring soprano Leah Crocetto, tenor Brian Jagde, mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk and baritone George Gagnidze, conducted by Luisotti (opens Nov. 5); and French director Laurent Pelly’s production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale with the SFO debut of tenor Lawrence Brownlee, veteran bass Maurizio Muraro, soprano Heidi Stober and baritone Lucas Meachem, conducted by Giuseppe Finzi (opens Sept. 28). Also

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Courtesy San Francisco Opera

Tenor Yijie Shi will play Bao Yu in composer/co-librettist Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber, coming next season to San Francisco Opera.

coming are revival presentations of Janáček’s The Makropulos Case, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and La Bohème, and a new staging of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

SF Opera Lab, the newly formed producing division of SF Opera dedicated to innovative programming, launches its inaugural season this March in the new Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera in the Veterans Building. The winter/spring SF Opera Lab season will include a presentation of The Source, composer Ted Hearne’s new oratorio about Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), the US Army private who leaked thousands of classified military documents to WikiLeaks in 2010. The work for four singers and seven musicians features a libretto by Mark Doten that sets Manning’s words and primary-source documents, including sections of the classified material known as the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary (opens Feb. 24, 2017).

Also coming from SF Opera Lab: La Voix humaine, Poulenc’s searing lyric tragedy (1959) with a text by Jean Cocteau, a one-act, one-character monologue about a woman who, rejected by her lover, engages in a farewell phone conversation with him. Sung by renowned Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci, accompanied by pianist Donald Sulzen (opens March 11, 2017).

Subscription tickets are now on sale: (415) 864-3330 or sfopera.com.

t

Prison music

In a real-life underdog story, the male and female prisoners of Zomba Prison in Malawi scored a surprise coup by receiving a Grammy nomination for the Zomba Prison Project’s album I Have No Everything Here, produced by Grammywinning music producer Ian Brennan. Alongside Titanic names of the World Music genre like Gilberto Gil, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Anoushka Shankar, and Angelique Kidjo, the prisoners are the sole unknowns in the category.

Their record features the voices and songs of inmates from this maximum-security prison. A portion of its proceeds helps fund legal representation and other support. Since the Zomba Prison Project formed in 2013, three incarcerated women have gained release, and two more cases are now under review. The prison is overstuffed to nearly 10 times of its capacity, forcing inmates to sleep head-to-toe like sardines.

Many of the prisoners are incarcerated for such dubious charges as “witchcraft” and homosexuality.

Though Malawi, named the #1 poorest country in the world last February by the World Bank, may seem far away, the antiquated laws of that nation are very real. They carry up to a 14-year sentence for homosexual acts. This is the first Grammy nomination ever for Malawi in the

Inmates from Zomba Prison in Malawi garnered a Grammy nomination for the Zomba Prison Project’s album I Have No Everything Here.

58-year history of the awards, coming up this year on Feb. 15.

Finally, our favorite New York Times correction of the year to date: “Because of an editing error, a picture caption on Wednesday about a concert Laurie Anderson played for dogs in Times Square on Monday night referred incorrectly to dogs from the Homeland Security Department that were there.

While their training led them to sniff people’s bags, they were invited guests at the concert; they were not working.” Understood.t

Soaking wet

NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER

PRESENTS

Courtesy Bruno Gmuender

“Wet T-shirt guy” from Dominicanos: Photographs by Ernest Montgomery.

by Ernie Alderete

Is your identity written in the stars?

I

WORLD PREMIERE

THE KILROY LIST 2015

BY MJ K AUFMAN DIRECTED BY BEN RANDLE

Dominicanos: Photographs by Ernest Montgomery; Bruno Gmuender, about $50 new call my favorite picture in Dominicanos “wet T-shirt guy,” because it features a very solid-looking, broadshouldered Dominican man wading knee-deep through the surf wearing nothing but a black pair of Speedos and a plain white T-shirt. The sheer T-shirt in question is soaking wet, making it virtually translucent, letting us see his skimpy dark swimsuit underneath, and his impressive musculature. The tighter the T-shirt adheres to his skin, the sharper his muscles come into focus. We can clearly make out one nipple and his well-defined six-pack.

His head is bowed, so we see very little of his facial features, which just adds a touch of mystery to his identity, and to the attractiveness of the overall composition. He’s a lovely

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man, but without the T-shirt he’s just another handsome guy at the beach.

With that added layer of texture, the composition reaches the sublime.

The picture is stimulating and exciting, yet also thoroughly cleancut and vanilla. As such, wet T-shirt guy should have been featured on the cover of the book. Instead, we see a ruggedly handsome Dominicano wearing a rosary around his neck puffing clouds of smoke from an unseen cigarette. Since we never see T-shirt guy’s face clearly, it could very well be the same hombre in both pictures.

Another picture features a handsome young Dominicano crouching in his small wooden fishing boat, tall palm trees stretching along the coast in the distance. Dominicanos are the Spanish-speaking residents of the Dominican Republic, which uneasily shares the large Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Frenchspeaking Haiti.t

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1/11/16 11:18 AM

<< TV

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

New Year’s TV-watching resolutions

by Victoria A. Brownworth

H

ow we love the New Year. Tabula rasa. Resolutions. New TV. There’s a plethora of new weightloss shows including ABC’s My Diet Is Better than Yours and NBC’s Biggest Loser: Temptation Nation. Plus, every third commercial is Oprah for Weight Watchers telling us, “Honey chile,” this is the year for our best bodies. Just when we thought Oprah would be our role model for women in their 60s who are still overweight but great-looking.

If losing weight via TV fat shaming isn’t what you want – and seriously, who does? – make some different resolutions with your TV viewing.

One TV resolution we’re making this year is not to give shows more than two episodes before moving on if they are, well, crap. There’s so much really fabulous TV, there’s no reason to tolerate TV you don’t actually love. Remember that when you are tempted to watch whatever is on because someone left the remote somewhere else.

Another resolution we are trying to make is to ditch long-running series (we emphasize long-running) that have consistently ignored LGBT characters and/or storylines.

This is slightly more difficult, as some shows we think are ace (we’re looking at you, Homeland) have had a sketchy relationship with gay characters (remember Dr. Graham, the gay pedophile surgeon? Yeah, that) and we are still watching.

Others we love (The Big Bang Theory) but can’t understand why they have never had a gay character when they are primed for one. In the case of the multi-Emmy-winning Big Bang Theory, couldn’t out gay star and Emmy winner Jim Parsons have suggested it at some point in the show’s nine seasons? But more importantly, why is this show so lacking in diversity beyond Kunal Nayyar’s character, Raj? Going with these two resolutions, we may not be watching another episode of CBS’ new sitcom Angel from Hell, which debuted on Jan. 7.

We want to love this show because it stars out lesbian Jane Lynch (Glee), who can be funny as hell. Also in the cast is Kyle Bornheimer (Worst Week), one of the best and most undersung comic actors out there.

A scene between the two of them in the debut is genius comedic banter.

We wanted more.

But the rest? Not so funny. There are good bits, but the writing is weak and can we say quotidian? So worth a look, but it may not hold up. Following the pitch-perfect Mom, whose season premiere featured a tour de force performance by guest star Linda Lavin, who at nearly 80 is still one of the best comic actresses on any screen, it was a let-down.

We hadn’t set the bar very high for Jennifer Lopez’s new drama series because, well, we’ve seen her movies. We were wrong. The first five minutes of the premiere of NBC’s ultrahyped Shades of Blue are shockingly good.

The only distraction is Jennifer Lopez’s beauty.

Because no matter how they dress her down, sweat her up, screw with her hair, minimize her make-up, she is drop-dead gorgeous.

Super-model gorgeous. Probably the most beautiful woman on TV today. That takes a few minutes to let go of. Fortunately, the show takes her fairly quickly to a boxing ring in an attempt to make her look unattractive. Instead we get the best rough-trade sex scene you’ll see on network (straight sex, but the guy is as hot as she is, and she leaves clothed while he’s left in a towel and his tats).

Shades of Blue is The Shield with a soupcon of Homicide: Life on the Streets, without the super-saturated color, jump cuts or video-realism elements. Which is fine, because we loved The Shield and Homicide, and Homicide’s Barry Levinson is both an executive producer and director here. We kinda fell in love with Lopez’s character, Det. Harlee Santos, in those first five minutes. Santos’ moral lines get blurred, and we’re still thinking about how quickly her reflexes kick in. She’s gritty, she’s real, it’s probably the best acting Lopez has ever done, and the show works because we know, from real life, that cops can be a little violent.

Lines do get blurred, so when she gets in trouble and explains that there are really bad cops out there and she’s not one of them, we know she’s right. Because: Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, just to name a few victims of the other cops.

There’s a scene near the end of the first episode where Sia’s “Chandelier” is playing and Santos is driving

ABC/Ryan Green

Connor Jessup as Taylor Blaine in ABC’s American Crime, season 2.

and the camera stays on Lopez’s face and it’s good. Really good. Also in the cast, the fabulous Ray Liotta, Warren Kole and Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos). Kole is creepy as hell as the FBI agent who has Santos in his sights. There’s more than a hint of white vs. Latina there that is an important element of this story.

Shades of Blue is dark, the acting is superb, and Lopez is definitely the star. Well worth watching.

While Lopez was debuting in SOB, she was playing opposite herself in the premiere of American Idol: Farewell Season. The 15th season of the iconic show got a Twitter tirade from one of the show’s most famous non-winners, Clay Aiken, for being “boring,” but sour grapes.

This may be the best group of judges (lack of drama aside) in the show’s history.

If you’re looking for a good gay storyline, there actually is one you can DVR. London Spy debuts Jan 21 on BBC America. Do. Not. Miss.

It. This is a superb drama in which everything is pitch-perfect. The only thing wrong is that it’s a limited series. Created and written by openly gay author Tom Rob Smith, this series is a gay story, and we do not get many of those. The cast includes a series of Oscar winners and nominees, including the great Charlotte Rampling, Jim Broadbent and the star, Ben Whishaw.

BBC America describes the plot: “London Spy begins as the story of two young men. Danny (Whishaw), gregarious, hedonistic, and romantic, falls in love with the asocial, enigmatic, brilliant Alex (Edward Holcroft). Just as they discover how perfect they are for each other, Alex disappears.” Alex is not all he seems to be, and the Secret Intelligence Service is involved. We don’t want to spoil anything for you here, so we won’t say more except do watch it.

It’s bloody good. And the men are luscious.

Speaking of mysteries, even the White House has been drawn into the controversy over Netflix’s latest series Making a Murderer, which began streaming on Dec. 18. Written and directed by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, MAM is described

by Netflix as recounting “the story of Steven Avery, a man who was imprisoned for the sexual assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen, and who was later exonerated, only to be subsequently accused and convicted of the murder of Teresa Halbach. The series was filmed over the course of 10 years.”

Wisconsin native Avery served 18 years for the sexual assault of Beerntsen. But DNA analysis cleared Avery when it was linked to another man. Avery was released after the DNA evidence was presented. He then filed a $36 million lawsuit over his 18-year imprisonment. Almost immediately after filing that lawsuit, Avery was arrested for the murder of Halbach, a photographer who was last seen on the Avery family property. Did he do it? And if he

did, is the state of Wisconsin liable for turning Avery into a murderer while he was imprisoned for nearly two decades for a crime he didn’t commit? Where does culpability lie?

Netflix has promoted this series like no other, and released the first episode on YouTube the same day the first season was released on Netflix. The buzz has been massive. MAM challenges everything you might think about what justice is, and whether “Did they do it?” has as much relevance as how the justice system works (or doesn’t).

This documentary series is worth watching, but be forewarned: You will want someone with whom to debate the concept of the moral compass after viewing.

A petition to pardon Avery and his cousin Brendan Dassey (also convicted in the Halbach murder, also featured in the series) was started Dec. 20 on the We the People website operated by the federal government. We the People features citizen-created petitions, with the White House addressing those that reach a threshold of at least 100,000 signatures within 30 days. As of Jan. 8, the petition had reached more than 129,000 signatures, and the White House issued an official response: “Under the Constitution, only federal criminal convictions, such as those adjudicated in the United States District Courts, may be pardoned by the President. In addition, the President’s pardon power extends to convictions adjudicated in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and military courtmartial proceedings. However, the President cannot pardon a state criminal offense.”

A separate change.org petition to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had garnered 358,913 signatures by Jan. 8, of 500,000 needed to present the petition to the governor. It’s still online if you want to sign.

Crime scene

ABC’s American Crime debuted Jan. 6, and it’s brilliant. Season 2 is more understated than the first season of this anthology series created by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley, but no less compelling, if less violent. The same leads propel season 2 forward: Regina King, Timothy Hutton, Felicity Huffman, Lili Taylor. Several newcomers (all teens, including lead Connor Jessup as Taylor Blaine) are very strong indeed.

This season the topic is rape. The victim is male. The perpetrators are classmates: boys on the basketball team at the prestigious Leyland School, where Blaine is a scholarship student whose working-class single mother Anne (Lili Taylor) has done everything conceivable to get her boy off the streets of Indianapolis and into classes with the best of the best.

As season 1 focused on race, season 2 focuses on class, although there are also intense racial elements to the story and the cast is half people of color, because when we

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are behind the camera we are in the story. Blaine’s girlfriend is Latina.

The boys who raped him are white and black. But class divides are at the core of everything, as we see in a fantastic scene with Regina King as she sits in her gorgeous home and talks about the low-class status of her son’s girlfriend, who we know is anything but. King won an Emmy for her performance in American Crime last season. Taylor will be fighting her for it this season.

Ridley has taken some risks here in making the victim a boy. No one thinks boys are victims unless the perpetrator is an older man: a priest, a coach or a teacher. This storyline mirrors the 2012 Steubenville rape case, where the 14-year-old victim was portrayed as a slut, and the boys who were convicted were portrayed as victims whose “lives would be ruined.”

Because Taylor is a scholarship student and photos of him nearnaked and obviously drunk and/or drugged are sent via text throughout the student body, he’s suspended for his “bad behavior.” Anne is furious with her son and we feel her frustration, but we know the truth. When Taylor finally reveals what happened to his mother, she grabs him fiercely, protectively, and we know she will do everything in her power to get him justice.

The casting here is perfection.

Hutton is the “boys will be boys” coach who doesn’t believe his team would ever do anything wrong.

Yet in a different scene we saw him videotaping a cheerleader twerking a player. It looks predatory/pedophilic to us. Later we discover he is the girl’s father.

One of the most riveting scenes is between Anne and Evy Dominguez, Taylor’s girlfriend who caretakes two seriously ill parents, including a mother bedridden and hooked up to IVs and oxygen. Angelique Rivera plays Evy. Watch her. This girl is a star. Anne and Evy sit across from each other in a booth in a deserted diner. Anne demands to see the pictures while Evy explains how both she and Taylor were being dissed for their clothes and their phones (yes, in the world of the latest, thinnest iPhone, Evy’s phone is too thick).

She’s angry. We see her simmering rage at the classism.

Anne isn’t interested in these details. She spins through the photos, which are nearly pornographic (the school had refused to show them to her). She blames Evy and her son for whatever happened. Evy gets up and walks out. The power of this series cannot be understated. There are other shows dealing with race, class and misogyny on TV right now, but nothing this deep, nothing where the stories are this interwoven, layered, and compelling. Ridley isn’t lecturing his audience. He’s parting a curtain here, a curtain there.

He doesn’t beat us over the head with the fact that Anne works in a laundromat. We just see her there, with Taylor. Right after we’ve seen Regina King’s Terri LaCroix sitting cross-legged on her gorgeous off-white sectional sofa in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows, richpeople privacy and diffuse sunlight counterpuntal to the darkness of the laundromat. If you missed the opening episodes, catch up at ABC. com. You want to see this.

Also stay tuned for Angie Tribeca, which premieres on TBS on Jan. 17; Billions, which debuts on Showtime on Jan. 17; Mercy Street, also on Jan. 17 on PBS; season 2 of Agent Carter on ABC Jan.19; The X-Files, which returns after a 14-year hiatus on Jan. 24 on Fox; and Lucifer, which premieres on Fox Jan. 25.

So for the best of the best, the newest of the new, and more from the reality show that is Washington, we invite you to stay tuned.t

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Film>>

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

German-language film smorgasbord

by David Lamble

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he 20th Edition of Berlin & Beyond: New Films from Germany, Austria, & Switzerland plays Jan. 14-17 at the Castro Theatre, Jan. 18-20 at San Francisco’s Goethe Institut, and Jan. 31 at Stockton’s Janet Leigh Theatre at the University of the Pacific.

Tom Schilling (born Berlin, 1982) has in recent years joined the ranks of German film actors with an international following. This year the still radiantly boyish Schilling will stand on the Castro Theatre stage to accept the festival’s 2nd annual Spotlight Award in Acting. Two of his films appear at the festival: the cyber-thriller Who Am I - No System is Safe and the international hit A Coffee in Berlin (Oh Boy).

Who Am I - No System is Safe, the Castro opening-night film directed by Baran bo Odar, brings us computer geek Ben (Schilling), whose wish to belong to a rebel group of computer hackers turns into a nightmare when he’s invited to join CLAY (Clowns Laughing at You) by the slippery underground

Courtesy Berlin & Beyond

Tom Schilling will be honored with the Berlin & Beyond film festival’s Spotlight Award in Acting.

star hacker Max (Elyas M’Barek).

Initially overjoyed at belonging to a hip in-group, Ben discovers the perils of a high-risk game where he fears both the cyber cops and his not-so-trustworthy new “friends.”

(Castro, 1/14, 8 p.m.)

Schilling recently chatted with me by Skype. Our conversation covered his career, begun innocently at age six at the insistence of his grandma, and now gathering warp

speed with a series of European hit films including Who Am I and the droll social satire A Coffee in Berlin, winner of six German film awards.

Standing 5’7” in his stocking feet, Schilling has gained a reputation for

support of radical factions, as well as a history of in-fighting among members, is part and parcel of the band’s mythology. Roger Waters The Wall (Columbia-Legacy), the double soundtrack to the concert film, features Waters performing Pink Floyd’s classic 1979 album The Wall in its entirety before adoring audiences in Manchester, Athens and Buenos Aires.

You would think that the classic Vince Guaraldi tunes featured in the Peanuts cartoons we’ve all loved over the years would be enough for when

the beloved characters hit the big screen, but apparently that isn’t so.

Sure, you’ll find Guaraldi favorites such as “Christmas Time Is Here,” “Skating,” and “Linus and Lucy” on The Peanuts Movie: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Epic-Fox Music), as well as selections from Christophe Beck’s score. But for some reason, the people behind the soundtrack also felt it necessary to include throwaway numbers by Meghan Trainor (“Better When I’m Dancing”) and Flo Rida (“That’s What I Like”).

On the second Empire Cast

playing innocent-appearing, boyish protagonists to whom filmgoers can attach their fantasies. I told Schilling how much I was taken with his role as the doomed schoolboy idealist in Dennis Gensel’s Before the Fall, a poetically conceived tragedy set in the dead of winter in a castle turned into a Nazi training academy. From my 2006 review: “A beautiful boy (Schilling in just a pair of undershorts), his lips bloated to bluish red by freezing water, his eyes bidding an urgent farewell, turns into a ghost before our eyes in one of the most startlingly erotic moments in any film seen this year, the climax of a new German history film with disturbing parallels to our own messy times.”

Schilling described the effect of his character’s dramatic plunge to death in a freezing lake as “cheesy,” while detailing how the effect, powerful onscreen, was created. He agreed to appear in Who Am I after finishing the more broadly pitched satire A Coffee in Berlin because he wanted a complete change of See page 26 >>

Screen songs

by Gregg Shapiro

C

lunky technical difficulties aside (someone please fire that cameraman!), The Wiz Live! was a vast improvement on both The Sound of Music and Peter Pan. While the costumes were the real stars of the show, it was wonderful to hear some of these classic songs again. The Wiz Live! Original Soundtrack of the NBC Television Event (Masterworks-Broadway) allows us to enjoy the strong performances (and pass over the others) again. One of the most inspired moments occurs early in the production with the casting of Stephanie Mills (the original Dorothy in the 1975 Broadway production of The Wiz) as Aunt Em, giving the petite powerhouse the chance to belt out “The Feeling We Once Had.” Shanice Williams, who plays Dorothy, is no Mills (but then, who is?) but she holds her own on solos “Soon As I Get Home” and “Home,” as well as on the lead on “Be a Lion.”

Wizardly highlights include Ne-Yo’s Tin Man singing “Slide Some Oil to Me,” Mary J. Blige’s Evillene singing “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News,” and especially Uzo Aduba’s Glinda singing “Believe in Yourself.” Unfortunately, there are some heartless and brainless moments, including the weak new song “We Got It” and Queen Latifah’s lackluster performance throughout.

Spike Lee has a history of stellar soundtracks to accompany his films, including She’s Got To Have It, School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues and Jungle Fever. ChiRaq: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (RCA) joins those ranks. A musical update of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata set in the killing fields of Chicago’s South Side, Chi-Raq earned Lee some of his best reviews in years, in spite of the

controversial nature of the film.

Lee wisely calls on Chicago talent such as R. Kelly (“Put the Guns Down”) and Jennifer Hudson (“I Run”) for the soundtrack. Also worth a listen are “Simple” by Treasure Davis and Kid Ink, “Born in Chicago” by the Bruce Hornsby Band with Eryn Allen Kane and Sasha Go Hard, “I Want To Live” by Kymm Lewis and Sophia Byrd’s “I See the Light.”

As scattered and frenetic as the movie, Music from the Motion Picture Joy (Abkco) features a cross-section of classic rock tunes and standards, as well as selections from the score by West Dylan Thordson, David Campbell and Blake Mills. But what sets this soundtrack apart from other “jukebox” sets are the songs performed in the film, including Edgar Ramirez’s rendition of “Aguas de Marzo” and the Ramirez and Jennifer Lawrence duet on “Something Stupid.”

Jaco Pastorius, the late bassplaying musical genius, is given his due in Paul Marchand and Stephen Kijak’s 2015 doc Jaco, described as “a compelling story of prodigious talent, personal adventures and human vulnerability.” All three of those elements combined in Pastorius’ playing, which comes through on Jaco: Original Soundtrack (ColumbiaLegacy). The 16 tracks consist of Pastorius’ solo work, as well as his collaborations with Joni Mitchell (“The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines”), Weather Report (“Teen Town”), and Ian Hunter (“All American Alien Boy”), as well as others performing his tunes, including Rodrigo Y Gabriela (“Continuum”) and Crosses (“Nineteen Eighty Seven”).

Psych/prog-rock pioneers Pink Floyd are known for controversial band members. The well-publicized decline of Syd Barrett’s mental faculties and Roger Waters’ questionable

album of 2015, Empire Original Soundtrack Season 2 Volume 1 (Columbia), openly gay cast member Jussie Smollett gets things rolling with the strong opener “Born To Love U.” Things come to a crashing halt with the nasty Terrence Howard track “Snitch Bitch.” Thankfully, there’s more good than bad to be found on this soundtrack to the popular Fox series, including Serayah’s “Get No Better (2.0),” the clubby Smollett and Pitbull duet “No Doubt About It,” and Smollett’s closing cut “Heavy.”t

<< Out&About

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

O&A

Thu 14

Take This Dance and Shove It! @ ODC Dance Commons

Empathetic D

ancers whirl through the air, music bounces off walls, stories echo in our hearts. Enjoy arts events you can’t resist, from new works to commemorations of the recently departed.

David Papas

Black Virgins are Not for Hipsters @ The Marsh Echo Brown’s hit solo show about desire and doubt returns. $20-$100.

Thu 8pm Sat 8:30pm. Thru March 5.

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

Gem of the Ocean @ Marin Theatre Company August Wilson’s first in his ten-part African American historical play series, set in 1900s Pittsburgh, gets a local production. $20-$47. Tue-Sun 7:30pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Feb. 14.

397 Miller Ave., San Rafael. 388-5200. www.marintheatre.org

Hard To Be a God @ YBCA Russian auteur Aleksei German’s 2014 cinematic masterpiece, described as “Game of Thrones meets Salo,” gets a rare screening. $8-$10. Thu-Sat 7pm.

Sun 2pm. 7pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Missing Places @ GLBT History Museum Lost and Endangered Queer Historic Sites of San Francisco and the Bay Area, a guest lecture by Historical Society founding member Gerard Koskovich, focusing on processes that have led to the loss of GLBT historic sites and to their absence from public memory. 7pm-9pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Berlin and Beyond Film Festival, thru Jan. 17. Jan. 19: Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight (3pm, 7pm) and F For Fake (5:10, 9:10). Jan. 20: SF Sketchfest presents Found Footage Festival meets Everything is Terrible. $20. 8pm. Jan. 21: Sketchfest presents NPR’s Ask Me Another. $35. 8pm. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Ralph Josiah Bardsley @ Books Inc. The local author discusses his acclaimed debut novel Brothers. 7pm.

2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

San Francisco Symphony @ Davies Hall The Symphony performs works by Beethoven and Dvorak with pianist Emanuel Ax. $15-$185. Open rehearsal 10am. 8pm. Also Jan 15, 16 8pm. Itzhak Perlman and Emanuel Ax, Jan. 18, 8pm ($25-$175). 201 Van Ness Ave. www.sfsymphony.org

San Francisco in Ruins @ Tenderloin Museum Opening reception of a new exhibit of paintings by local artist Jacinto Castillo depicting old San Francisco.

7pm-10pm. Regular hours Tue-Sun 10am-5pm, $6-$10 ($15 includes walking tour). 398 Eddy St. 351-1912. www.tenderloinmuseum.org

Student & Faculty Concerts @ SF Conservatory of Music Jan. 14: Biasini Guitar Competition and Festival, opening concert, 8pm, $30. Several daily and nightly concerts thru Jan. 17. 50 Oak St. 503-6322. www.sfcm.edu

Playwright Sam Shepard’s first published work of poems and monologues gets a wild multitableaux performance installation staging, with 20 performers and live ‘glam rock’ music by (female Black Sabbath cover band) Bobb Saggeth. $12-$15. 7pm. Also Jan 17, 7pm. 1201 University Ave., Berkeley. (510) 8416500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Labyrinth Quote-Along @ New Mission/ Drafthouse Cinema

by Jim Provenzano

Thu 14

Hawk Moon @ Shotgun Studios, Berkeley

Take This Dance and Shove It! @ ODC Dance Commons Showcase of new dances in varied styles by choreographers Shinichi Iova-Koga, Amy Seiwert and Scott Wells, who each perform in their works. $20-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru Jan. 17. 351 Shotwell St. www.counterpulse.org

Visions Into Infinite Archives @ SOMArts Cultural Center Opening event for a new group exhibit of works curated by Black Salt Collective. 6pm-9pm. Tue-Fri 12pm7pm, Sat 12pm-5pm, thru Feb. 10. 934 Brannan St. www.somarts.org

Fri 15 The Art of Jacks @ Strut Group exhibit (Seth Eisen, Jack Davis, Dan Becker, Lord Huckleberry, Doctor Woof!, Lou Rudolph, & Jim James) of homoerotic art inspired by the men’s sex parties, at the new SF AIDS Foundation facility. Thru Jan. 30. 470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

Bowie by the Bay @ Several Venues

Participatory screening of the Jim Henson Studios cult classic starring David Bowie. $10-$15. 3pm. Also Jan. 17. 2550 Mission St. www.drafthouse.com/sf/show/ labyrinth-quote-along

Mexicanos al Grito de Guerra @ Mission Cultural Center We Didn’t Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us, a new visual exhibition featuring 40 artists and collectives from California and Mexico focusing on social movments, immigration and injustice. Opening reception with performances by Entre Zurcos, Chhoti Maa, Paleta Emole, Libre Cltra and Trio Cambio, Jan. 16, 6pm-10pm. Thru Feb 13. $5. Tue-Sat 10am-5pm. 2868 Mission St. www.missionculturalcenter.org

Mother’s Milk @ The Marsh Berkeley Wayne Harris’ solo show, Mother’s Milk: A Blues and Gospel Riff in Three Acts, returns to the intimate stage. $20-$100. Sat & Sun 5pm. Thru Jan. 31. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 2823055. www.themarsh.org

The Mousetrap @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ production of Agatha Christie’s British mystery drama (the longest-running show in modern history). $20-$40. Wed-Syb. Thru Jan. 24. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

PunkkiCo’s performance of choreographer Raisa Punkki’s sixpart ensemble work celebrating the strength and beauty of the female form. $10-$50. Fri & Sat 8pm, Sun 7pm. Thru Jan. 17. 2840 Mariposa St. www.punkkico.com

Sam Lansky @ Books Inc. The gay author of the new memoir The Gilded Razor discusses his story about a teen life of prep school, sex and addiction. 7pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

Tongo Eisen-Martin & Friends @ Modern Times Bookstore Poetry night with Joyce Lee, Cassandra Dallett and Derek Fenner.

7pm. 2919 24th St. 282-9246. www.mtbs.com

Sat 16 Avenue Q @ New Conservatory Theatre Center Those naughty puppets and their human pals are back yet again, in the company’s third revival of the Tony Award-winning musical comedy. $30-$50. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm.

Extended thru Jan. 31. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

SF Hiking Club @ Huddart Park Join GLBT hikers for an 8-mile hike in Huddart Park, a primeval paradise in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Carpool meets 8:30 at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. (650) 740-9849. www.sfhiking.com

Mon 18 Queer Jitterbugs @ Club Deluxe The weekly LGBT-friendly swing dance event return, with lessons, social dancing and fun. $25-$40 for 4-week lessons at 6:30-7:30pm (also ASLfriendly). Free drop-ins 7:30pm-8pm.

Dancing til 11pm. 1511 Haight St. at Ashbury. www.QueerJitterbugs.com

Reigning Queens @ GLBT History Museum Exhibit of 1970s San Francisco drag ball photos by Roz Joseph; with curator Joey Plaster, DJ Irwin Swirnoff.

Thru Feb. Reg, hours Mon, Wed-Sat 11am-6pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Satchmo at the Waldorf @ Geary Theatre American Conservatory Theatre presents Terry Treachout’s acclaimed solo show, starring John Douglas Thompson, about the famed jazz trumpet player’s private struggles. $20-$135. Tue-Sat 8pm. Some Tue. 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Out With A.C.T. Jan. 27, 8pm. Thru Feb. 7. 415 Geary St. www.act-sf.org

SF Restaurant Week @ Citywide Enjoy discounts and special food events at participating eatieries all over town in an eleven-day festival, with a portion of your bill going to local nonprofits. Thru Jan. 31. www.sfrestaurantweek.com

Smack Dab @ Strut The monthly eclectic open mic moves to the new post-Magnet space; with featured performer Jesus U Bettawork. 7:30pm sign-up. 8pm show. 470 Castro St., 2nd floor. 4373400. www.strutsf.org

A Song at Twilight @ Z Below Theatre Rhinoceros’ new production of the Noel Coward play series (1st of three). $15-$35. Wed & Thu 7:30pm.

Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 3pm. Thru Jan. 31. 470 Florida St. www.TheRhino.org

Temple @ Patricia’s Green David Best, known for his wooden temples at Burning Man, has recreated his 37-foot-high intimate sculpture on the tenth anniversary of the original installation, at the Hayes Valley mini-park. Octavia Street at Linden. Thru June. www.sfartscommission.org

The Sprawl @ YBCA Amsterdam-based design team Metahaven’s immersive video installation about the mutation of propaganda. Free/$8. Thru April 3.

Also, Kevin Cooley’s Golden Prospects, a visual survey of water and waste in California. Thru April 3. Also, Won Ju Lim: Raycraft is Dead, thru Feb. 14. $5$12. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Champagne & Starlight @ Circus Center

Salve Regina @ Noh Space

Performances of works by Tan Dun, Dvorak, Prokofiev, Elgar, Ravel and Holst are performed by several student orchestras; Wendy Tokuda MCs. $25-$70 (half-price for under-17). 3pm. 201 Van Ness Ave. www.sfsymphony.org

Montgomery St., The Presidio. 3456800. www.waltdisney.org

Tue 19

Participate in sing-alongs, music nights and more at participating bars and nightclubs (Doctors Lounge, Harlot, 1015 Folsom, DNA Lounge).

12pm-9pm. www.facebook.com/events/50793657 9367603/508306722663922/

Monthly cabaret concert of live music and acrobatics, with a cash bar; 21+. $35-$250 (VIP table). 8pm. 755 Frederick St. www.circuscenter.org/cabaret

Bay Area Youth Orchestra Festival @ Davies Symphony Hall

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Vernacular Vixens @ Robert Tat Gallery

Wed 20 Lev Sivkov @ Herbst Theatre Brian Hatton

Sutton Foster @ Nourse Theatre The Broadway series of interview/ concerts returns with the Tonywinning singer-actress, and accompanist-host Seth Rudetsky.

Proceeds benefit San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Project Open Hand, and San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. $50$100. 8pm. 275 Hayes ST. 392 4400. www.cityboxoffice.com

Vintage Paper Fair @ County Fair Bldg.

Multiple exhibitors offer postcards, posters, and rare paper ephemera.

10am-6pm. Also Jan. 17, 11am-5pm.

9th Ave. at Lincoln Way. www.vintagepaperfair.com

Sun 17 Anderson Cooper & Andy Cohen @ Paramount Theatre, Oakland The gay news anchor and talk show host share ‘Deep Talk and Shallow Tales,’ interview each other, and take audience questions. $57-$352. 3pm.

2025 Broadway, Oakland. (800) 7453000. www.paramounttheatre.com

Robert E. Jackson’s collection of found photos of women (Note: Due to increased lease costs, this may be the gallery’s last exhibit). Thru Feb 6. 49 Geary St., Suite 410. roberttat.com

Wed 20 Greg Cope White @ Books Inc. The author, blogger, television writer and host of the Cooking Channel’s Unique Sweets discusses his new book, The Pink Marine: One Boy’s Boot Camp Journey to Manhood.7pm.

2275 Market St. www.booksinc.net

Lev Sivkov @ Herbst Theatre SF Performances presents the winner of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Competition, who performs works by Beethoven, Brahms, Kodaly, Khachaturian and Britten, accompanied by pianist János Palojtay.

Free (members)-$40. 7:30pm. 401 Van Ness Ave. at McAllister. 392-2545. www.sfperformances.org

Mel Shaw: An Animator on Horseback @ Walt Disney Family Museum New exhibition showcases 120 artworks and designs by the prominent Disney animator, whose own life was full of adventures. Free (members)-$20. Thru Sept. 12. 104

Wed 20

Satchmo at the Waldorf @ Geary Theatre

Thu 21 Curt McDowell Films @ Tenderloin Museum Screening of six short films by the late local gay filmmaker. Reception 6:30pm. Program 7pm. 398 Eddy St. 351-1912. tenderloinmuseum.org

Internet Cat Video Festival @ YBCA Cats! Hilarious, touching and odd feline pet videos are screened at the annual popular festival. $8-$10.

7:30pm. Jan. 23 & 24 at 2pm, 4pm, 7pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

New Strands Festival @ Strand Theatre American Conservatory Theatre’s new works showcase includes dance, theatre, works in progress, readings and music concerts, with after-parties in the lobby. Free. Various times. Thru Jan. 24. 1127 Market St. act-sf.org

Taylor Mac @ Curran Theatre A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1776-1836, the celebrated theatre spectacle playwrightperformer’s new multi-performer show. $50-$75. Opening night Jan. 21, 7pm. Part II Jan. 26 & 27. Special marathon 24-hour concerts Jan. 30.

445 Geary St. www.sfcurran.com To submit event listings, email events@ebar.com Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section, online at www.ebar.com/bartab

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Music>>

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Divo & diva

Distinguished alumna

Another famous artist received tribute last week, and she didn’t have to work for the recognition. At least, American soprano Patricia Racette didn’t have to sing for her supper as she received a well-earned Distinguished Alumni Award from the Merola Opera Program in a ceremony and cocktail reception in the Green Room last Thursday.

The happily married lesbian star (she came out on the cover of Opera News!) moved throughout the party with typical Courtesy SFS warmth and edgy humor, Soloist/conductor Itzhak Perlman performed looking great and makwith the San Francisco Symphony last week ing time for all of her at Davies Symphony Hall. admirers. When she had a chance to speak to the assembled elite, her enby Philip Campbell dearing sense of good fortune and humility underlined her respect iving legend Itzhak Perlman was for her roots as a “Merolini” (1988 the fiddler in the house last week alumna) and former Adler Fellow. as he performed at Davies SymThe unquestioned Butterfly of phony Hall with the San Francisco her generation spoke for a few moSymphony. Acting as both soloist ments about the charting of her and conductor, the beloved violinist was awarded more standing ovations than a visiting rock star, and repeated interruptions of applause that sometimes bordered on the intrusive.

I can’t remember the last time I witnessed a standing ovation upon the entrance of a guest artist, but considering Perlman’s long and celebrated career it seemed fitting; applause between movements of all the pieces on the bill was less appropriate. It added up to a happy night anyway, and despite some critical quibbles, Perlman proved once again that he can still deliver on his name, communicating love through the universal power of music.

Opening the concert with two Beethoven Romances (Opp. 50 & 40), he conducted from his soloist’s chair. It was a brief (less than 20 minutes) reminder of Perlman’s characterful tone and his concentration on the long line. Full-bodied and sweet, there is also a pleasing astringency about Perlman’s sound these days, and his performance of the amiable and openhearted pair was a good way to get things going. It was a little surprising to see him get another standing ovation so early in the night, but when it was accepted that this was likely to keep happening, one couldn’t help thinking, why not? It sort of felt like audience participation, and so, even when Perlman motioned for the crowd to stay still during separate movements of the symphonies, the enthusiastic outbursts continued as something like gestures of support.

Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor, with its immediately recognizable beginning, completed the first half of the bill. Perlman took a very middle-of-the-road interpretive approach; none of that authentic or early-music stuff here, but a big-boned approach proved appealing. There were some imperfect moments with the horns, but nothing too noticeable, and the incisive richness of the SFS strings followed the conductor’s plush shaping with predictable understanding.

After intermission came the meat and potatoes. The Brahms Symphony No. 4 would seem to be a natural for Perlman, and he did made a beautiful meal of it. There were times when he could have been more energetic or cohesive, and one sensed that he might have benefitted from more rehearsal time, but it was a satisfying rendition that showed the famous soloist’s developing proficiency as an orchestra leader.

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path to stardom as Puccini’s most heart-breaking heroine. It was more than interesting to hear how a major talent was spotted early and allowed to bloom in the self-professed naiveté and courage of her youth.

Other speakers noted La Racette’s famous work ethic and her amazing capacity for stepping in and saving the show at the last minute. We have noted that remarkable trait more than once ourselves, remembering her assumption of the title role in Dolores Claiborne as a famous example.

Racette’s memorable repertoire of characters covers the gamut of female experience, and her rightfully lauded acting ability has made each role powerfully believable. Still, it is Cio-Cio-san (Madama Butterfly) that will always remain her trademark, and anyone lucky enough to have experienced her radiant interpretation is likely to agree. The Merola program has nurtured more than one great talent, but Patricia Racette is a real stand-out.

I quipped to her that it might be too soon to be getting lifetime achievement awards, but the delightful diva said, “That ship has sailed.” It certainly doesn’t mean she is anywhere near retirement. She has many more awards to come.t

American soprano Patricia Racette received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Merola Opera Program last week.

<< Film

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

Into the horror of Auschwitz

by David Lamble

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n a new film opening Friday in the Bay Area, a half-starved man carries the body of a dying boy through an environment that defies easy description. “Hellish” doesn’t do it justice. Son of Saul is by any standard a memorable piece of storytelling.

The time is 1944. The place is the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The film’s protagonist (dare we call him a hero?) is Saul Auslander (Géza Röhrig), a man whose tragic fate is to be a member of the Sonderkommandos, prisoners afforded privileges by their Nazi captors if they agree to guide newly arrived prisoners to the gas chambers on the false promise that these prisoners will be fed and clothed before being assigned meaningful work. It was the despicable evil at the heart of Hitler’s “Final Solution” that Jews (and gays, Gypsies, Catholics, Protestants, Socialists and Communists) would not only be murdered, but in effect,

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Géza Röhrig as Saul in director Laszlo Nemes’ Son of Saul.

any memory of them, their DNA and all artifacts, would be obliterated, the human slate wiped clean, without their blood adhering to the hands of their Nazi executioners.

In a scene from director/co-writer Lazlo Nemes’ film, the condemned

man speaks up. His remarks are directed at another Jewish prisoner, a doctor about to extinguish the life of a young boy on his dissecting table.

Saul: “Don’t cut this boy. Leave him as is!”

Doctor: “No. I’m a prisoner like you. You’ll have five minutes with him tonight. But in the end he will burn with the rest. What’s your name?”

Saul: “Auslander. Saul.”

Géza Röhrig, the Hungarianborn actor who plays Saul, discussed his character’s actions in a TV interview with PBS host Charlie Rose. “That’s when Saul’s mission is born. He realizes he belongs to the boy, and the boy belongs to him.

No matter what, he’s going to do his very best to bury this boy. This boy survived the gas chamber, so he beat the system. Nobody was meant to survive the gas chamber. The boy survives, and now is being killed a second time by the Nazi doctor. Saul understands that this death stands out from the other deaths he’s able to [feel]. So he owes this boy, he’s grateful to this boy for [allowing him to feel again]. What good can you do for a dead person, besides burying him?”

Son of Saul’s makers allow us to

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see some prisoners preparing for one of the rare armed uprisings against the Nazi killing machine.

But now, a quibble. Son of Saul is a motion picture with a normal running time, just a shade over two hours. If anything, the subject demands a larger canvas, an epic length, let’s say the scale that German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder allowed his crowning achievement, a 931-minute version of Alfred Doblin’s sprawling novel about a German workingclass district in the 1920s, Berlin Alexanderplatz.

But what we have in Nemes’ film is a human-scale, single-sitting masterpiece. Son of Saul joins the category of essential films on the Holocaust – Shoah (503 minutes), Schindler’s List, The Pawnbroker – that are capable of breaking through our blocked feelings, a singular experience that is meant to shadow or spoil other experiences until its truth can never be denied or forgotten again.t

Grande dame of the British theatre

by Brian Bromberger

Maggie Smith: A Biography by Michael Coveney; St. Martin’s Press, $27.99 h, how absolutely ghastly. “ How absolutely awful. I can’t think of anything worse. I haven’t done anything. I don’t know what it is I do,” gasped actress Dame Maggie Smith when British theatre critic Michael Coveney suggested writing a book about her in 1990. Her reply could have been the same if her intimidating TV series alter ego, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, had been asked a similar question on Downton Abbey. Eventually Coveney wore her down, and Smith gave him her blessing and access.

The book was first published in 1992, with 150 additional pages now updated to include all her recent work.

This biography is primarily a chronological study of Smith’s performances during her 60-year career and critical analysis of her acting style, along with an account of her professional successes and (few) failures. Every stage performance, movie role, and TV appearance is catalogued here, along with minutia related to theatrical history, details of plots, the actors and directors with whom she has worked. It’s written in that dry, often dull, detached tone typical of English biographies.

Those wanting to get to know Smith as a person will be disappointed, as there is little information about her

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private life. A 60 Minutes interview she gave three years ago alluded to her battle with breast cancer, yet that topic is never mentioned in the book. There’s no juicy gossip here. Coveney’s biography depicts Smith as a workaholic with exacting standards, her career being her life. There was probably never any time left for hanky-panky.

Born Margaret Smith (changed to Maggie because there was an actress by the same name in England) in Ilford, Essex, to lower-middleclass parents in 1934, she was raised in Oxford, where her father was a university lab-technician. She was interested in acting from a very young age, but her parents were not supportive and emotionally withholding. After she snuck out at age 11 to see her first movie, The Al Jolson Story, she was beaten by her father. Her dour, puritanical Scottish mother, in a discouraging insult to her, said that someone “with a face like yours” could never succeed as an actress. It seems a lonely, strict, repressive childhood, with the theatre as a refuge.

Eventually she built a successful career in repertory work, leading to her game-changing appearances with Laurence Olivier in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, directed by Orson Welles; and her Desdemona to Olivier’s Othello, both on stage and in the 1965 film, earning her first Oscar nomination. When Olivier was tapped as the first Director of the National Theater, he brought

her along, recognizing her talent but also jealous of it. When they later worked together on Ibsen’s The Master Builder, many critics felt she out-acted him. Her comically brilliant Miss Jean Brodie in the 1969 film won her an Academy Award as Best Actress as well as a Hollywood career, winning a second Oscar playing an actress who fails to win one in Neil Simon’s California Suite (1978).

Her four-year stint in Canada’s

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Stratford Theater in Ontario in the mid-1970s solidified her position as a great classical (mostly Shakespearean) stage thespian.

She had married fellow stage actor Robert Stephens in 1967, and he appeared as her lover who jilts Smith for her student in the Jean Brodie movie. But unlike her, he didn’t become a star, which he deeply resented.

His womanizing and drinking doomed the marriage, despite producing two sons and many stage appearances together.

Divorced in 1975, a few months later she married the love of her life, playwright-director Beverly Cross, whom she had known for over 20 years. They shared an idyllic partnership until his death in March 1998. Her two recent high-profile roles, as Professor Minerva McGonagall (self-described as “Miss Jean Brodie in a wizard’s hat”) in the Harry Potter films and Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey, have made her iconic to younger generations.

Despite these 350 pages, Smith remains an enigma. Along with her friendly rivals Dame Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave, she is now considered, at 81, Britain’s greatest

Andy Cohen

From page 17

“The show is like going out to a bar and hanging out with us,” Cohen told the B.A.R. “It’ll be dishy, a lot of really fun storytelling among friends. We have great chemistry, so we decided to take it on the road. So far we’ve done eight cities, and it’s been great.”

The show will allow audience members to line up at a microphone and ask the guys whatever they like.

Expect the unexpected. Cohen reports that in Boston he was asked how big his dick was. “I couldn’t believe it!” he said. “I said that I was very pleased with it – I think it was a man.”

Cohen spoke to the B.A.R. via telephone as he and Cooper were preparing for their arrival in San Francisco. The duo will appear at the Masonic Auditorium on Friday, Jan. 15, at 8 p.m., and at the Paramount Theater in Oakland on Sunday, Jan. 17, at 3 p.m.

“Being gay has been a non-issue,” Cohen said. “I’ve always been out in my career, 23 years now. It’s always been great. I’m privileged to be the only openly gay talk show host on late-night TV.” As such, Cohen has had the good fortune to interview many gay

Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper: together again.

icons, including the incomparable Cher. “It was great,” he recalled of the experience. “It’s always nice to interview people you love and idolize. Cher was everything I wanted her to be. She was very Cher.”

Prior to Watch What Happens Live, Cohen worked as a producer on CBS News This Morning, 48 Hours and The Early Show. He has co-hosted The View and Live! With Kelly, and is a regular on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and The Today Show.

His platform continues to grow.

Sirius XM radio now offers Radio

living comic actress. Like many other acting geniuses she is complex, an intensely private person, with a gift of mockery, a bawdy sense of humor, a love of good gossip, and a sense of never taking herself too seriously. Her only regret is that her career took her away from her sons, actors Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin. Coveney observes, “Maggie thrives in the company of homosexuals, and has always needed close and confidential gay friends.” Called the Acid Queen by her friends who both admire and fear her, like the Dowager Countess she can be formidable when crossed and famous for her barbs. Accompanying her gay friend entertainer Kenneth Williams as they were visiting Fortnum’s (a London store), Maggie was aghast at the prices in the lingerie department. “Seven guineas for a bra?” she exploded. “Cheaper to have your tits cut off!” One can see how iron discipline and six decades of dedication to her craft make her Downton Abbey character seem so effortless. In a rare print interview she once exclaimed, “Acting is what I do, it’s the only way I’ve lived.”

Her legions of devoted fans on both sides of the Atlantic can be grateful for that decision.t Andy, a pop culture and talk channel that will feature Cohen and some of his other friends.

“Listeners to Radio Andy not only get extended interviews I’m doing with people like Madonna and Seth Rogen, they get every part of my personality,” Cohen explained. “My love of music, politics, pop culture and Housewives, with folks like Sandra Bernhard, Bevy Smith, Amy Phillips and Jon Alter.”

Radio Andy might have a few things in common with the Anderson and Andy Show. “We’ll talk about people we met and people we love,” Cohen said. “We know each other’s great stories.”

Cohen pointed out that what attendees in San Francisco see and hear will not be the same show that greets viewers in other cities. “The shows are different in every city based on what’s going on in our lives and current events,” Cohen said. “It’s a great time and a great date. If you ever wanted to hang out with me and Anderson, this is what it’s like. You’ll leave happy.”t Tickets for AC2: An Intimate Evening with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen ($79.50-$354.50)s: tac2live.com.

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Books>>

January 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Postcards from rehab

by Jim Piechota

The Gilded Razor by Sam Lansky; Gallery Books, $26 s the 27-year-old culture editor at Time magazine, L.A.-based Sam Lansky has the opportunity to interview some of the pop world’s premiere talent. Though Adele, Nicki Minaj, and Madonna have graced the magazine’s pages beneath his byline in just this past year alone, he will be more intimately understood once the his searing, heart-wrenching memoir emerges.

To write a memoir in your late 20s says something about the kind of life you’ve already lived. Lansky’s seamy history, embroiled in drug abuse and prostitution, scorches the pages of an autobiography so eloquently written it actually takes some of the hopelessness out of activities like freebasing crystal meth and downing a medicine

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chest-worth of Ambien and Xanax.

The book opens with the author at 17, “subsisting on a diet of cigarettes and Adderall for months.” He is visiting “dream school” Princeton University with his divorced father, who, a year after moving from Oregon to Manhattan, is already ensconced in a new relationship.

Lansky’s father wants his son to excel academically, but never realizes that the boy would routinely spend his father’s money earmarked for haircuts on street drugs. During a rest-stop break on the road, Lansky indulges in a dizzying smorgasbord of amphetamine derivatives crouched in a handicapped bathroom stall. His high school years spent in an exclusive prep school only served as a backdrop for more of the same.

This desperation permeates much of the narrative, as unsafe fucking in hotel steam rooms and a

rampant succession of online hookups with older men blur into a fever dream of bad behavior, chemical dependency, and random sex. “Each time I hooked up with a stranger, some piece of me clung to a sad little flicker of hope that he would be the one to love me,” Lansky admits.

Years of diligent recovery and psychotherapy would eventually “fully untangle the snarl of pathological self-loathing that drove me into the beds of middle-aged men across Manhattan.”

When cocaine becomes more difficult to obtain, new friend Jesse and an Italian heiress named Sahara become the pill-pushers of his dreams.

When Princeton decides to pass on his admission, things darken even further before any shreds of light. A stint in “stoic, inhospitable” Boston ends with a relapse, where things like this happen: “A guy I didn’t know stuck a syringe into the base

overdoses, episodes of vomiting on the backs of tricks (then laughing hysterically), and general misery. But his father’s decision to force him to attend a wilderness rehab program in Utah proved beneficial, if short-lived.

A second attempt at sobriety while a freshman at Vassar College failed, but a third dance with a 12-step recovery program in San Francisco finally stuck with him at 19, basically saving his life.

Exhaustive yet revelatory, Lansky’s confessional is a raw, tough look at a boy who practically drowned in the airless world of pharmacological abuse, anonymous sex, and emotional emptiness. As a weary reader, I’m glad he lived to tell. As a human with a heart, I need a hug.t of my groin because, he said, you keep going limp.”

Some readers may want to stick their heads in the sand at the sheer volume of substance abuse,

Sam Lansky will read from The Gilded Razor at Books, Inc. Castro, 2275 Market St., SF, on Fri., Jan. 15, at 7 p.m.

and the Rondo even for the most die-hard Brucknerian, the F Major Quintet – composed first in a trio of compositions only Brucknerians would call intimate, followed by the

ones now known as the Sixth and Seventh symphonies – is a work that even those drawn to the grandeur of the composer’s symphonies might find absorbing. Exploiting the sonorities of their gut-strung instruments, the Fitzwilliam, with James Boyd playing second viola, give a detailed, pellucid performance of the piece, one I found completely enthralling despite my long familiarity with the earlier one.

But if you’re new to the piece, get the L’Archibudelli, an even more probing reading that has a greater depth of sound and interpretation without any of the occasional “original-instrument” squeakiness of the Fitzwilliam’s admittedly more lyrical version.t

Bruckner without tears

by Tim Pfaff

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ad timing in the mails alone kept Tenebrae’s new recording Brahms and Bruckner Motets (Signum Classics) off my year’s best list, so I’m happy now to call it the most beautiful recording of 2015. It’s easy to forget that what most people want from classical music is beauty as ordinarily defined, and this exemplary recording of mainstream 19th-century choral music is balm in Gilead.

My reservation about it, going in, was its combination of Brahms and Bruckner. While they’re contemporaneous enough, as composers they’re different at the root level, and I dreaded the anticipated “don’t mix,” which for me is less like oil and water than like orange juice and coffee. But Tenebrae’s transitions are seamless, largely due to Nigel Short’s choristers’ supremely good diction, not just accurate but natural-sounding, providing subtle verbal pointers and reminders (in Bruckner’s Latin and Brahms’ German) of the composers’ respective turfs. Where I thought I’d have to draw the line was the inclusion of “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,” from the Deutsches Requiem, in an organ-accompanied English version, “How Lovely are thy Dwellings.” But it turns out that this choir is incapable of a lapse in taste. “How Lovely” is very lovely, and became my earworm, in English, for a week.

Like its American counterpart Craig Hella Johnson’s Conspirare, Short’s Tenebrae is so solid in all

the essentials of choral singing – tone, intonation, blend, diction, one-mindedness – that you sink into the music, confident it will be delivered without mishap. Like Johnson, Short bothers to make a true program of the individual works. The two composers’ settings of the “Ave Maria,” for example, don’t sit side by side, where they would chafe. “How Lovely” unfolds between them, framed by the two Hail Marys. And to magical effect, Short frames his entire program with “Aequalis 1” and “Aequalis 2,” two haunting trombone anthems by Bruckner.

If you have the now-historical Eugen Jochum recordings of the Bruckner motets, you’re covered, but the seven sung on Tenebrae’s new recording represent advancements in ways well beyond the superior recorded sound. They have a sonic grandeur comparable to that of the Hyperion CD by Stephen Layton’s Polyphony, but with greater concentration and depth. They’re just slightly sparer-sounding, and so yield more. “Os justi” is meltingly beautiful.

The Brahms works in German are late compositions, Opp. 109 & 110, and they have that eloquence of utterance that make late Brahms so rewarding. But the show-stopper is the “Geistliches Lied,” Op. 30.

Highly contrapuntal settings of three verses by the German writer Paul Fleming, themselves aching in simplicity – “What do you want to worry about from day to day?” – the piece began as studies Brahms only latterly thought to publish.

With long arcs of burnished choral sound, the singers of Tenebrae let this remarkable piece swell to a climax as ecstatic as any in a Bruckner symphony.

With his wonderful Bach-Collegium Stuttgart forces, the indefatigable Helmut Rilling released a Haenssler CD of “big Bruckner” choral works, including the Te Deum and the Second Mass. But the point of interest is the centrally placed Psalm 150, a longish hymn of praise for the divine framed by colossal Hallelujahs, so different from their hushed counterparts in the motets. Holding nothing back, the three compositions get soulful performances.

To be fair, nothing in the Fitzwilliam String Quartet’s new recording of Bruckner’s String Quintet and Quartet (Linn), including in its copious notes, calls this the first recording of the works on “original instruments.”

But somehow that “first” got into the promotional materials and has been picked up by every reviewer I’ve read. In point of fussy fact, the first recording of this identical repertoire – plus the single-movement Rondo in C minor for string quartet – on historically congruent instruments and in period-sensitive style was by L’Archibudelli, in 1994, on Sony’s Vivarte imprint.

The correction is important only because the earlier release, now officially out of print, is easily available from the usual outlets, and it’s even better than the Fitzwilliam’s gleaming new one, also in terrific recorded sound.

While once is enough for Bruckner’s apprentice string quartet

I am the future of the LGBT community.

I’m gay.

I’m 55. I’ve been out to my family for twenty years. I married a wonderful woman six years ago, and we adopted a baby girl from Vietnam. My family is everything to me.

That’s why I’m an avid follower of LGBT rights. Not just marriage, either. I want to make sure that I can travel safely, enjoy my retirement and have my child benefit from my life’s work.

I’m the future of the LGBT community. And I read about that future every morning on my work laptop. Because that’s where I want it to be.

The person depicted here is a model. Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

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26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 14-20, 2016

United States, and San Francisco will soon get its first taste, or first six tastes if you will, when Mac appears as the final attraction in the Curran Theatre’s current Under Construction series with audiences and performers on stage together.

Songs from 1776 to 1806 will be performed on Jan. 21-23, and songs from 1806 to 1836 on Jan. 26-27.

Each segment runs three hours, an hour per decade, and there will be a marathon performance of both parts on Jan. 30.

“Each decade is about a different community in the U.S. that is being built as the result of going through a dire circumstance,” Mac said. “So the first decade is built around the American Revolution, and the last decade we’ll do in San Francisco, 1826 to 1836, stems from the Indian Removal Act. I do a lot of research, but I wouldn’t come expecting to learn about American history. Come to experience American culture, the

weight of American culture, and how that weight is helping us become who we are.”

While the specific inspiration for 24-Hour History came from the Tiny Tim-aha moment in Australia, Mac said the truest catalyst goes back to a 1987 visit to San Francisco for the first AIDS Walk.

“I was 14 at the time, a little queer kid from Stockton, and for the first time I discovered queer agency and queer pride. No one had ever talked about anything queer to me other than calling me ‘faggot’ on the playground. People were screaming and furious, and singing and dancing and laughing. A queer community was being built as the result of falling apart in the AIDS epidemic.”

The communities that Mac examines can be coast-to-coast or tiny enclaves, and the songs themselves can be widely familiar or obscure tunes that may have been popular in one town’s taverns. “It’s very hard

to establish a lot of these songs to a particular decade, especially the older ones, so I just say it could have been published in that decade or was about a particular event that happened in that decade or was popular in that decade. There are songs we do to the best of our knowledge how the author intended, and there are songs we tear apart and deconstruct and have a great time doing it. It may be a punk version of an old song, or a ballad version of an Iggy Pop song.”

Mac figures the show is split about evenly between talk and song, and the audience should not expect to be a passive receptacle of the performance. “You don’t just sit there for three hours. We get you up from your seats and get you moving through the space while the performance is happening. We may have the whole audience singing the chorus of a song together or blindfolded or, when we’re dealing with World War I, kind of sitting in the trenches. Because of its oddity, you’re able to gain access to things a little bit differently than you normally would.”

That oddity would extend to pretty much everything about Mac in performance. Each decade requires a different costume, and longtime collaborator Machine Dazzle is always on hand to put Mac into one of his indescribable creations that blend together genders, social references, and items specific to the decade being represented. “During our 1906-1916 decade, that’s when zippers were invented, so my wig is made out of zippers, and when we were doing 1846-1856, when potato chips were invented, the whole outfit was made out of potato chip bags,” Mac said. “Machine is part of the show, and so he’s always there changing me and doing cameos throughout the show.”

Mac describes his voice as “a good legit voice, but it’s not about vocally ‘touching the hem of God,’” as Mac puts it. “I would rather sacrifice polish to expose vulnerability and humanity.

component of the young men’s hatred of the mostly Vietnamese newcomers. A somewhat sublimated theme is in the film’s almost lyrical homoerotic portrayals of the youths. With two German film awards for actors Joel Basman & David Stiesow, the film may prove the launching pad for significant acting careers. It’s a disturbing look at immigrant-bashing that’s all-tooclose to the turmoil currently roiling the Eurozone countries. (Castro, 1/15, 6 p.m.)

The Spiderwebhouse Director Mara Eibl-Eibesfeldt explores childhood fears and fantasies. A 12-yearold protagonist has to fend for himself and two younger siblings when their mother suddenly abandons the children. The director will introduce the film and take questions at its 1/15, 10 a.m. Castro screening.

Head Full of Honey Actor-director Til Schweiger takes a delicate approach to dramatizing a young girl’s appreciation that her beloved grandfather has early stage Alzheimer’s. Having just lost his wife, the older man faces being placed in a nursing home by Tilda’s parents, who fear they can no longer deal with his increasingly erratic behavior. The film, 2014’s German boxoffice champ, runs 139 minutes, in German with English subtitles.

(Castro, 1/15, Noon) Chucks Austrian co-directors Sabine Hiebler and Gerhard Ertl serve up the adventures of Mae (Anna Posch), a young Viennese woman acting out a punk fantasy aided by the possession of her dead brother’s Converse sneakers. Attempting to break into her city’s poetry-slam circuit, Mae survives on a beer diet. Eventually her hijinks bring her a sentence to work at an AIDS center, where she falls for a young man. Based on a novel by Cornelia Travnicek, this edgy youth-themed

film garnered the 2015 Audience Award at the Montreal World Film Festival. (Castro, 1/15, 3:45 p.m.)

Toro Director Martin Hawie offers an unusual buddy adventure.

The Polish-born German Toro (Paul Wollin) dreams of establishing a boxing gym with his Latin friend Victor (Miguel Dagger). Toro pursues his end of the dream by sleeping with women for money; Victor plies his trade as a hustler whose clients are mostly older men.

While the dream of the boxing gym slowly slips away, Victor has to contend with the very real nightmare of drug dealers demanding money.

Preceded by the short Fidelity, Liker Catak’s account of a young Turkish woman, Asli, whose shelter of a political activist attracts the attention of Turkish police. (Castro, 1/15, 9 p.m.)

Jan. 16: The Pasta Detectives Neele Leana Vollmar’s awardwinning children’s feature involves a pair of boys on the track of a kidnapper. Based on Andreas Steinhofel’s bestselling children’s book.

(Castro, 1/16, 11 a.m.)

Tour de Force Christian Zubert directs this moving account of adult bicyclists who discover that one of their members is facing an incurable disease. (Castro, 1/16, 1 p.m.; Stockton, 1/31, 3 p.m.)

After Spring Comes Fall Director Daniel Carsenty digs into the complicated loyalties of a young Kurdish woman who becomes a political informant at the behest of the Syrian government. A fictional x-ray into the often-impossible dilemmas faced by refugees from the Middle East. With director Carsenty in person. (Castro, 1/16, 3 p.m. forum; 4 p.m. film) Family Party Director Lars Kraume creates an arresting family reunion drama that kicks off with the 70th birthday party of the family

patriarch. International premiere.

(Castro, 1/16, 7 p.m.)

A Coffee in Berlin (Oh Boy) Spotlight actor recipient will be onstage to introduce and do a postfilm Q&A. Anyone wishing the full Schilling experience should consult his other major roles on video, including Generation War, the epic TV series detailing Hitler’s ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union; Agnes and His Brothers, about a transsexual struggling for her role in her madcap family, with Schilling as a young pot-planting sibling; and the classic military academy drama Before the Fall, where Schilling’s young officer becomes a conscience-pricker for his aspiring boxer friend. (Castro, 1/16, 9:30 p.m.)

Jan. 17: Iraqi Odyssey in 3D Director Samir takes 163 minutes to describe how his once-prosperous Middle Eastern country has been plunged into war and ruin. Using archival footage depicting unveiled women and stylishly attired men, Samir provides a reality check that may run counter to myths often propagated in Western media. (Castro, 1/17, 1 p.m.)

Ms. Mueller Must Go Parents rise up against controversial grade school teacher. With actress Anke Engelke in person. (Castro, 1/17, 5 p.m.)

Berlin, Symphony of a Great City Silent director Walther Ruttmann delivers a 65-minute portrait of the German capital in 1927, at the crest of the Weimar years and before the ravages of the Nazis.

This silent classic will be accompanied by Berlin rock band ALP. (Castro, 1/17, 8 p.m.)

Jan. 18-20: More than a halfdozen features will unspool in 2016 Berlin & Beyond’s second act at SF’s Goethe Institut Auditorium (530 Bush St.). Above and Below Nicolas Steiner presents an idiosyncratic

Kevin Yatarola

This is how Taylor Mac appears in a 1920s segment from A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, part of which is coming to the Curran Theatre, and which will eventually result in a 24-hour concert.

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Taylor Mac

From page 17

“I had done this play Lily’s Revenge [seen at the Magic Theatre in 2011] with 36 characters and five-hours long, and I felt I needed a palate cleanser,” Mac said recently by phone. “I was in Australia doing Comparison Is Violence, and I came across this guy who was a big fan of Tiny Tim, and he told me about a fundraiser where Tiny Tim performed for 24 hours. I had been wanting to do a show about how communities are created, and something clicked with me. Here I had felt I needed a break, and I came up with the hardest project in my life.”

That project would be A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which Mac will perform in a 24hour concert later this year. He has been performing decadal segments since 2014 at venues across the

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Berlin & Beyond

From page 21

pace for his next work. While many critics were taken by Coffee’s B&W cinematography, Schilling feels it was just an appropriate artistic choice. But the B&W retro look did not influence how he played his frustrated, caffeine-starved dolt, who spends the film getting a series of comeuppances, including the loss of his bank card and humiliating lectures from an ex and his dad.

Jan. 15: The festival features films focusing on the dilemmas of German-speaking youth. We Are Young. We Are Strong. Director Burhan Qurbani embeds us with three characters and their conflicting views of violent anti-immigrant riots that break out in a small town in the newly reunified Germany.

The rioters, mostly underemployed white men, have focused their anger on a newly arrived group of immigrants from Vietnam. By film’s end the Molotov cocktail-hurling rioters will torch a public housing project, spreading panic among its Vietnamese-speaking residents and stirring conflicting emotions among Rostock’s leaders.

It’s 1992, a few years past the fall of the Berlin Wall, and some residents of Rostock, once part of the now-defunct East German Democratic Republic (GDR), are looking for scapegoats as an outlet for their anger. For gay male viewers, several of the male rioters are hyperattractive, including two boys grieving the recent suicide of a friend who leapt from a ninth-story apartment, leaving a note overflowing with despair, not seeing a future for himself in his impoverished community.

We Are Young deftly combines multiple themes that have plagued an otherwise prosperous postWWII Europe. There’s the racist

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Courtesy Taylor Mac

Taylor Mac is a writer and performer who doesn’t like to be compared with anyone who has come before him.

No two performances are ever alike.”

The eventual 24-hour concert will feature 24 musicians, but during the run at the Curran, Mac will be accompanied by a stillimpressive eight musicians. The Curran’s Carole Shorenstein Hayes is a co-commissioner of the project, and Mac hopes to return with the full show when renovations to the theater are completed.

Queer and gender issues will obviously arise in performances of the more recent decades, but does he look for ways to bring them into segments about the country’s early years? “I don’t have to, because I’m one of the biggest queers you’re ever going to see onstage. I’m like a mascot of queerness. So it’s really all about finding the queer door into American history.”t Taylor Mac will perform the first three parts of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music at the Curran Theatre on Jan. 21-23, and the next three on Jan. 26-27, with a six-hour marathon of both segments on Jan. 30. Tickets are $50-$75. Go to sfcurran.com.

portrait of Americans living above and below the great Western desert.

(1/18, 6 p.m. reception, 7 p.m. film, with director Steiner in person) Tibetan Warrior Director Dodo Hunziker explores a disturbing trend in the Tibetan protest movement against Chinese occupation.

Monks are resorting to self-immolation. An exiled monk seeks an audience with the Dalai Lama for spiritual advice. (1/19, 6 p.m.)

Gruber is Leaving Austrian director Marie Kreutzer gives us an egocentric fast-lane guy who gets devastating news from an unexpected quarter. Preceded by short Everything will be Okay. (1/19, 8 p.m.)

A German Youth Director JeanGabriel Periot has assembled a collage of Germany’s fateful tussle with radical youth groups such as the Baader-Meinhof group. A faithful account of 60s German radicalism, previously covered mostly in the films of German queer wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (1/20, 6 p.m.)

Our Last Tango Wim Wenders presents director German Kral’s bio-doc on a fabulous male/female tango team, Marie Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes, as they remember their careers at the end of their lives. Presented with doc short The Last Will, where a young man must meet his imprisoned father to satisfy the terms of his late mom’s will. His dad is serving 25 years for murdering his own brother. (1/20, 8 p.m.)

Jan. 31, in Stockton at the Janet Leigh Theatre at the University of the Pacific: Shorts program (11 a.m.); The Messenger Su Rynard’s doc on the meaning behind endangered songbirds (1 p.m.); Tour de Force (3 p.m.); Our Last Tango (6 p.m.); Who Am I - No System is Safe (8 p.m.).t BerlinBeyond.com.

33

34

JJ Knight

NIGHTLIFE

DINING

SF Sketchfest

SPIRITS

35

Remembering Mr. Marcus

SOCIETY

ROMANCE

LEATHER

PERSONALS Vol. 46 • No. 2 • January 14-20, 2016

www.ebar.com V www.bartabsf.com

Georg Lester

On the Tab

January 14-21 prise and sung-to – com usic – live, mixed put So . ek we is th htlife our highlights in nig ay. aw es d dance the blu on your red shoes an

M

Listings begin on page 30

>>

Fri 15 Steven Underhill

Winter Onesie Party @ Lookout

Protests & pageantry

by Donna Sachet

A

s loyal readers know, we rush to any ceremony at City Hall, that fabulous Beaux Arts styled edifice where so many historic events have taken place. Last Friday saw Mayor Ed Lee taking the oath of office for his second full term and City Hall was decked out for the occasion.

See page 28

Leathermen Bob Goldfarb, Thao Hill and Julian Marshburn at The Armory for the Mr. Marcus tribute.

>>

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

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Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

28 • Bay Area Reporter • January 14-20, 2016

On the Town

From page 27

The rotunda floor was carpeted, as was the Grand Staircase, and huge floral bouquets flanked the center stage. This being a public event, one never knows about seating, but a kind City Hall insider whisked us to a perfect second-row seat in the excellent company of Tom Horn and Xavier Caylor. The Glide Ensemble and Change Band got things started off with rousing music, followed by the St. Mary’s School Bell & Drum Corps, and the San Francisco Boys Chorus.

Unfortunately, after months of preparation, little of the music could be heard over the chants and screams of protestors. There is a time and place for civil discourse, but did they have to rob these talented groups of their moment in the sun?

Emcee and President of the Board of Supervisors London Breed exer-

cised great “grace under fire” as she tried to restore order, but respect and civility were nowhere to be found. Even the invocation, delivered by Father Brendan McBride, and the Pledge of Allegiance, led by David Chasteen of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, were lost in the echoes of the rotunda and unruly protestors.

Nevertheless, the ceremony proceeded, observed by US Senator Dianne Feinstein, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, State Senator Mark Leno, Mayors Willie Brown and Frank Jordan, Treasurer Jose Cisneros, Attorney Dennis Herrera, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, Sherriff Vicki Hennessey, and every member of the Board of Supervisors.

Governor Jerry Brown administered the oath of office as the Mayor’s family looked on. The Mayor then delivered a mercifully short inaugural address, making a few ineffective attempts to acknowledge

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Krewe-do

Krewe de Kinque, the local Donna Sachet Mardi Gras club, celebrated Twelfth Night last Friday at a Mayor Ed Lee, with protestors in the balcony of City Hall, at his inauguration. private home bursting with green, purple, and gold New Orleans décor. Over the past twelve years, this small, allNun fun volunteer club has raised Project Nunway at Club money for many charitable DNA completed our weekorganizations, this year focusend on Sunday night. Eming on Jazzie’s Place, an emercees Sister Roma and Bebe gency shelter for LGBT homeless. Members of the club and Sweetbriar were in fine form guests drank hurricanes, ate and looking splendid in their Creole-themed dishes, and original designs made of recycled materials. The club completed traditional cerwas full of Sisters of Perpetemonies unique to the organiual Indulgence, supervising zation, the nature of which we the silent auction, prepping are sworn to secrecy. performers backstage, greetAmong the celebrants were ing attendees, and generally Garaje Gooch, Ken Henderensuring the smooth success son, Skye Paterson, CoCo of the event.

Butter, Kevin Lisle, SebasThe onstage highlights intian Wilson, Patrik Galcluded Kylie Minono, Mutha lineaux, Sergio Fedasz, many Chucka, and the premiere of of the past Kings and Queens Bebe’s new cover of Dontcha!, of Krewe de Kinque, including complete with sinewy backGary Virginia, Deana Dawn, up dancers and tight choreCockatielia, Dana Van Iquiography. On the steady arm ty, Frank Vera, and Kit Tapaof the dashing Brian Kent, ta, and the current King XII we hobnobbed with Khmera Joe Prince Wolf and Queen Skye Paterson with Donna Sachet Rouge, Patty McGroin, LeanXII Cotton Candy. If the at a Krewe de Kinque party. spirit of New Orleans is your dro Gonzales, and too many cup of tea, this is the group for photographers to name. nist, highly respected leader of the you! Watch for their annual Mardi Maybe we’ll see you later tointernational Leather community, Gras Ball in March. day, Thursday, January 14, as the first Emperor of the Imperial Court long-awaited renovated Dolores of San Francisco, and so much more.

K-pop Park opens in its entirety from Organized by Queen Cougar and The Reigning Emperor 4-7PM with a glow-in-the-dark other key good friends with the goal theme. We’ve waited so long for this Kevin Lisle and Reigning Empress of raising the money to inter his gem of the neighborhood to be full Khmera Rouge hosted the final ashes by the side of the historic Jose available again; let’s check it out!

Special K monthly Saturday event Sarria in Woodlawn Cemetery in This Saturday, we hope to see of their reign at Beaux and it drew Colma, this event brought together you at the Imperial Court’s Winter an enthusiastic crowd of supportLeather and drag, older and youngers. Performers were asked to reprise Ball, Se7en Deadly Sins, at Verdi er, male and female, establishment numbers from early in their careers Club, 2424 Mariposa, 6-10PM, and avant-garde. A continuously and the tips came rolling in. One hosted by the Imperial Crown playing slideshow paid homage to drag queen even incorporated a box Prince Nic Hunter and Imperial Mr. Marcus’ many contributions, of Kellogg’s Special K cereal in her Crown Princess Miz Eva Sensihis wide range of friendships, and hilarious number! tiva and benefiting San Francisco his lasting legacy.

At each of these Suicide Prevention. monthly events, court Besides a wonderful member Joe Prince Wolf evening of entertainhas accepted tips to padment, food, and drink, dle select attendees, so it the applicants for the seemed that the Empress next Emperor and Emwas destined to face her press of San Francisco fate. Fortunately, the othwill be announced at er Empresses in the room that time, continuing rallied to her rescue, subour 50-year tradition of stituting the Emperor for campy royalty, fun-filled paddling, a much more events, and community cooperative and logiservice.t cal victim. Bottom line: money was raised!

The money which these Monarchs have generated throughout their reign at this event, street fairs, title contests, and so many others will be given away to a variety of charities on the night of their official step-down, Imperial Coronation 51, A Space Odyssey, on February 27 at the Gift Center. Given their immense popularity and tireless work this year, this is bound to be one of the best attended in years.

Watch this column for complete details. Don’t miss it!

Cicero Braganca

LOOKING FOR

Various entertainment and speeches rounded out the evening, emceed

by Lance Holman and Galilea. We had opportunities to catch up with Julian Marshburn, Tom Horn, Michael Yamashita, Jim Provenzano, Race Bannon, Audrey Joseph, Mario Torrigino, Patrice Samek, Keith & Gladys Bumps, B.C. Cliver, Berlin Fisher, Jacques Michaels, Alexis Miranda, Misty Blue, CoCo Butter, John Brosnan, Jerry Roberts, Lenny Broberg, and so many more. We offer a heartfelt round of applause to all who had a hand in this tremendous salute to a legendary gentleman. We shall never forget him.

(Editor’s note: for more Mr. Marcus event photos, see page 35.)

the unrest in the room, while maintaining amazing selfcontrol and calm. Faith Ferdi Ates may have offered a benediction at the end, but with all the cacophony, who knows?

We can hear our in-box flooding with criticism already, in sympathy for the protestors, but surely there is a time and place more appropriate to express differences of opinion. No one would deny that San Francisco is facing a multitude of challenging problems. Now that the official ceremonial inauguration is over, let’s get to work!

Sadie Ladie

<<

t

WE’VE GOT THEM ALL

Mr. Marcus tribute

spartacusworld.com/app

Later that night, an extraordinarily diverse group gathered at The Armory in memory of and tribute to an extraordinary man, Mr. Marcus, long-time Bay Area Reporter colum-

Top: Piper Angelique, Mary Wanna, Sadie Ladie and Ronda Pacheco at the Imperial Special K party at Beaux. Bottom: Project Nunway at DNA Lounge.

<< On the Tab

30 • Bay Area Reporter • January 14-20, 2016

Friday Nights @ Oakland Museum

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland

The family-friendly night events returns, with exhibit tours, dancing, food, drinks, and live music. 5pm-9pm. www.museumca.org/2016/ friday-nights-omca-january-8

Latin, hip hop and Electro music night. $5-$25.

9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www. club21oakland.com

Call to Arms @ SF Eagle

Growlr @ SF Eagle The app-happy cruise night, with DJ Colin Bass. $5. 9pm2am. 398 12th St. www. sf-eagle.com

BLUF uniform invasion, with DJ Salazar. $5. No cover if in leather/uniform. 9pm-2am.

398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun

Thu 14 Liquid Sky at At the Movies @ Oasis

Thu 14

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160.

Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. www.beachblanketbabylon.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

At the Movies @ Oasis The movie night screens the classic pre-AIDS aliens in nightclubs cult classic, Liquid Sky. 9:30pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Elemental @ SF Eagle Element Eclipse’s performance, art and talent night. 9pm-1am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Kingdom @ Balancoire Cruzin Da Loo hosts the new monthly drag king show (2nd Thursdays); proceeds go to the Transgender Law Center. $5-$20. 8pm. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Star Trek Live @ Oasis The hilarious popular drag parody performance (with kings and queens) of the original Star Trek series’ episode, “Mudd’s Women,” returns, with Leigh Crow, Honey Mahogany, Jef Valentine, Persia and many other talents. Enjoy special space-age cocktails. $25-$35 and up. Wed-Sat 7pm. Thru Jan. 23.

298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Todd Rundgren @ The Fillmore The veteran rock-pop singer-composer performs at a special celebration of Bill Graham’s 85th birthday; proceeds benefit the Bill Graham Memorial Foundation. $42.50. 7pm. 1805 Geary Blvd. www.thefillmore.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Fri 15

The popular video bar ends each work week with gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www. midnightsunsf.com

Hardbox @ Powerhouse Guy Ruben and One A (Gehno Aviance) play grooves and gogo guys shake it at the leather edition of the cruisy, boxing/boxer shorts night (strip down to boxers for free drinks). $5.

10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Hard Fridays @ Qbar DH Haute Toddy’s weekly electro-pop night with hotty gogos. $3. 9pm-2am (happy hour 4pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Boy Bar @ The Cafe Gus Presents’ weekly dance night, with DJ Kid Sysko, cute gogos and $2 beer (before 10pm). Jan. 15: BeBe Sweetbriar’s release party for her new single, “Doncha,” 8:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Champagne & Starlight @ Circus Center Monthly cabaret concert of live music and acrobatics, with a cash bar; 21+. $35-$250 (VIP table). 8pm. 755 Frederick St. circuscenter.org/cabaret

Brazilian Girls, Dreamers @ Social Hall The NYC-based electronica foursome and the Brooklyn pop trio perform. $26. 8pm. 1270 Sutter St. www.socialhallsf.com

Club Rimshot @ Club BNB, Oakland

Fri 15 Bebe Sweetbriar at Boy Bar @ The Cafe

Fri 15 JD McPherson @ The Fillmore

Manimal @ Beaux Gogo-tastic dance night starts off your weekend. $5. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.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

The new weekly Latin night at the Civic Center renovated nightclub features drag shows, gogo guys and gals, and DJed grooves. 9pm-3am. 555 Golden Gate. www.theempireroomsf.com

Some Thing @ The Stud Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Swagger Like Us @ Oasis JD McPherson @ The Fillmore The rock-blues musician performs with HoneyHoney. $25. 9pm. 1805 Geary Blvd. at Fillmore. www.thefillmore.com

JJ Knight, Colton Grey @ Nob Hill Theatre The two young porn studs pair up for live sex shows. $25. 8pm & 10pm. Also Jan. 16. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 3976758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Ladies of San Francisco @ Club OMG Galilea hosts the new weekly “old school drag show” with guest performers and DJ Jack Rojo.$4.

9pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland

James Wright Chanel, “The Pattie Pie Guy,” guest-hosts the weekly hip hop and R&B night at their new location.

8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Hella Gay @ The Uptown, Oakland

El Mundo @ Empire Ballroom

Comedy Noir @ Balancoire 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

Queer hip hop featuring TT The Artist, with DJs Kelly Lovemonster, davO, Bianca Oblivion and Will Sheridan. $10.

10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom.

795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Winter Onesie Party @ Lookout Suzan Revah’s wild and fun full-piece pajama party raises funds for Queer Life Space; with DJ Bret Law. $5. 9pm2am. 3600 16th St. 431-0306. www.lookoutsf.com

Sat 16

Beatpig @ Powerhouse Juanita More!, Walter and Side Kick’s monthly glam-sexy queer event. $5 benefits the Transgender Law Center.

9pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

DJs Lady Ryan, Balthazar, Najee Renee, Kar Bear and Gstar spin at the LGBTQ dance night. $7. 9pm-2am. 1928 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.uptownnightclub.com

Jacquiline De Muro @ Hotel Rex Society Cabaret presents the singersongwriter with pianist Barry Lloyd.

Cocktails and small bites available. $24-$40. 8pm. 562 Sutter St. www.societycabaret.com

Mascara @ Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy The Castro Country Club, the LGBT sober space, hosts the drag show hosted by Somoa That, this month themed “A New Beginning.” $10-$15.

7:30pm. 4235 19th St. www.castrocountryclub.org

Mexicanos al Grito de Guerra @ Mission Cultural Center We Didn’t Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us, a new visual exhibition featuring 40 artists and collectives from California and Mexico focusing on social movmeents, immigration and injustice. Opening reception with performances by Entre Zurcos, Chhoti Maa, Paleta Emole, Libre Cltra and Trio Cambio, Jan. 16, 6pm-10pm. Thru Feb 13. $5. Tue-Sat 10am-5pm. 2868 Mission St. www.missionculturalcenter.org

Mother @ Oasis Heklina’s weekly drag show night with different themes, always outrageously hilarious. Jan. 16, oneyear anniversary, preceded by D’Arcy Drollinger’s birthday party (9pm). $10-$25. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Saturgay @ Qbar Stanley Frank spins house dance remixes at the intimate Castro dance bar. $3. 9pm-2am (weekly beer bust 2pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Soul Delicious @ Lookout Brunch, booze, sass and grooves, with the Mom DJs, Motown sounds, and soul food. 11am-4pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Lulu Ramirez hosts the drag show and dance night, with Mitzy Lee and Jacqueline Aguilar La Gata; gogo guys, drink special. $6 before 10:30pm. Til 3am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Lena Hall @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

Fri 16 TT the Artist at Swagger Like Us @ Oasis

t

The energetic, super-talented Tonywinning and Grammy-nominated singer-actress and Bay Area native performs her new musical memoir The Villa Satori: Growing Up Haight Ashbury. $50-$70. 8pm. Also Jan. 16, 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.lenahall.com www.ticketweb.com

Fri 15 Lena Hall @ Feinstein’s

t

On the Tab>>

January 14-20, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 31

Queer Jitterbugs @ Club Deluxe The weekly LGBT-friendly swing dance event return, with lessons, social dancing and fun. $25-$40 for 4-week lessons at 6:30-7:30pm (also ASLfriendly). Free drop-ins 7:30pm-8pm.

Dancing til 11pm. 1511 Haight St. at Ashbury. www.QueerJitterbugs.com

Sat 16 Beatpig @ Powerhouse

Underwear Night @ 440 Strip down to your skivvies at the popular men’s night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Tue 19 Block Party @ Midnight Sun

Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Soul Party @ Elbo Room

Femme, Xtravaganza @ Balancoire

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland

DJs Lucky, Paul, and Phengren Osward spin 60s soul 45s. $5-$10 ($5 off in semi-formal attire). 10pm-2am. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

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

Mondays and Tuesdays popular weekly sing-along night. No cover. 8:30pm1am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 6523820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Sugar @ The Cafe Dance, drink, cruise at the Castro club.

9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Sutton Foster @ Nourse Theatre The Broadway series of interview/ concerts returns with the Tonywinning singer-actress, and accompanist-host Seth Rudetsky.

Proceeds benefit San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Project Open Hand, and San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. $50$100. 8pm. 275 Hayes ST. 392 4400. www.cityboxoffice.com

Sat 16 James Wright Chanel guest-hosts Club Rimshot @ Club BNB

GlamaZone @ The Cafe Pollo del Mar’s weekly drag show takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Happy Bowser Beer Bust @ Beaux Meet adoptable dogs at the fundraiser for Rocket Dog Rescue, with MC Sister Maddie ‘Bout You. $10 unlimited Bud Light. Doggie Bag raffles. 4pm-7pm.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com www.rocketdogrescue.org

Jock @ The Lookout Enjoy the weekly jock-ular fun, with DJed dance music at sports team fundraisers. 12pm-1am. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Spillin’ Tea @ Oasis Special MLK Weekend T-dance, with DJs Ruben Mancias and David Harness. $10. 3pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. sfoasis.com

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

Mon 18 Drag Mondays @ The Cafe

Sun 17

Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko’s weekly drag and dance night, 2014’s last of the year. 9pm-1am.

2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Gaymer Meetup @ Brewcade The weekly LGBT video game enthusiast night include big-screen games and signature beers, with a new remodeled layout, including an outdoor patio. No cover. 7pm-11pm. 2200 Market St. www.brewcadesf.com

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.

Karaoke Night @ SF Eagle Sing along, with guest host Nick Radford. 8pm-12am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany’s weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Monday Musicals @ The Edge Sing along at the popular musical theatre night; also Wednesdays. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing.

4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Opulence @ Beaux Weekly dance night, with Jocques, DJs Tori, Twistmix and Andre. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone). 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.dragatmartunis.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar’s most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. Beer bust donations benefit local nonprofits (Check the website for a list of recipients). 3pm6pm. Now also on Saturdays. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Big Top @ Beaux The fun Castro nightclub, with hot local DJs and sexy gogo guys and gals. $5. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.Beauxsf.com

Disco Daddy @ SF Eagle DJ Bus Station John’s super-groovy dance & cruise night, after the beer bust (also Jan. 31). $5. 7pm-12am.

398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Domingo De Escandal @ Club OMG Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez and DJ Luis.

7pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Sun 17 Happy Bowser Beer Bust @ Beaux

Cock Shot @ Beaux Shot specials and adult Bingo games, with DJs Chad Bays and Riley Patrick. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s

Meow Mix @ The Stud The weekly themed variety cabaret showcases new and unusual talents; MC Ferosha Titties. $3-$7. Show at 11pm. 9pm-2am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down as the strippers also take it all off. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

OutLoud @ Oasis Joshua Grannell (Peaches Christ) hosts the monthly storytelling series in the Fez Room, this time with the theme “At Your Service”- waiter tales, with Chris Ohnesorge, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Fauxnique, Rotimi Agbabiaka, Alotta Boutte and Tommy Salami. $10.

7:30pm. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Retro Night @ 440 Castro Jim Hopkins plays classic pop oldies, with vintage music videos. 9pm-2am.

44 Castro St. www.the440.com

Switch @ Q Bar Weekly women’s night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops

Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night. One-drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Gaymer Night @ Eagle

Vicky Jimenez’ drag show and contest; Latin music all night. 9pm2am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Gay gaming fun on the bar’s big screen TVs. Have a nerdgasm and a beer with your pals. 8pm. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Una Noche @ Club BnB, Oakland

See page 32 >>

<< On the Tab

32 • Bay Area Reporter • January 14-20, 2016

<<

On the Tab

From page 31

Underwear Night @ Club OMG

Wed 20 Bedlam @ Beaux

Weekly underwear night includes free clothes check, and drink specials. $4.

10pm-2am. Preceded by Open Mic Comedy, 7pm, no cover. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

New weekly event with DJs Haute Toddy, Guy Ruben, Mercedez Munro and Abominatrix. Wet T-shirt/jock contest at 11pm. $5-$10. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Vanessa Carlton @ The Independent

Bone @ Powerhouse

Impressive pop vocalist-songwriter performs music from her fifth album, Liberman. $25. 8pm. 628 Divisadero St. www.vanessacarlton.com www.theindependentsf.com

New weekly punk-alternative music night hosted by Uel Renteria and Johnny Rockitt. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

t

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops

Mary Go Round @ Lookout

Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes’ weekly drag show. $5. 10:30pm show. DJ Philip Grasso.

3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

B.P.M. @ Club BnB, Oakland Olga T and Shugga Shay’s weekly queer women and men’s R&B hip hop and soul night, at the club’s new location. No cover. 8pm-2am.

2120 Broadway, Oakland. www.bench-and-bar.com

Wed 20 Josh Ritter @ The Fillmore

Josh Ritter @ The Fillmore The honky-tonk R&B singersongwriter performs New Orleans-inspired songs from his eighth album (free download with tickets) with The Royal City Band; Elephant Revival opens. $33. 8pm. 1805 Geary Blvd. at Fillmore. www.thefillmore.com

Latin Drag Night @ Club OMG Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez. 9pm-2am.

43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Man Francisco @ Oasis The sexy, funny weekly male burlesque show returns; choreographed by Christopher James Dunn, with Colin, Darius, Thomas and Jon. Mr Pam MCs. $20. 2-drink min.

9:30pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 7953180. www.sfoasis.com

Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm.

424 Cortland St. 647-3099. www.wildsidewest.com

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle Kollin Holts hosts the weekly comedy and open mic talent night. 6pm-8pm.

398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Pussy Party @ Beaux

Thu 21

Academy of Friends @ Sui Generis The nonprofit known for its annual Oscar gala hosts a salute to this year’s Academy Awards nominees at the designer clothing consignment shop, with cocktails, appetizers, bow-tie tying demos, and door prizes. $20.

6:30-8:30pm. 2231 Market St. www.academyoffriends.org www.suigenerisconsignment.com

Comedy Returns @ El Rio Marga Gomez, Loren Kraut, David Lawrence Hawkins, Sabeen Sadiq and host Lisa Geduldig perform at the monthly LGBT-friendly night of wit. $7$20. 8pm. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

Laura Ellis @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The sultry chanteuse and the darling of the SF Noir City Film Fest, performs modern and classic melodies at the stylish cabaret. $25-$45. 8pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.vintagevoicemusic.com www.ticketweb.com

The weekly drag show with themed nights, gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5.

9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

My So-Called Night @ Beaux Carnie Asada hosts a new weekly ‘90s-themed video, dancin’, drinkin’ night, with VJs Jorge Terez. Get down with your funky bunch, and enjoy 90cent drinks. ‘90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Nap’s Karaoke @ Virgil’s Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover. 9pm. 3152 Mission St. 8292233. www.virgilssf.com

Picante @ The Cafe Lulu and DJ Marco’s Latin night with sexy gogo guys. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG Dana hosts the weekly singing night; unleash your inner American Idol.

8pm. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Sexitude PM @ Oasis D’Arcy Drollinger’s funtastic aerobic workout and dance party. Wear your neon Spandex and leg warmers! $10.

9pm. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels Groove on wheels at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the “Godfather of Skate.” Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm-5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5. Skate rentals $5.

554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Recon @ Lookout Enjoy funky deep house music at the Hump Day event. No cover. 8pm2am. 3600 Market St. at 16th. www.sflookout.com

SF Restaurant Week @ Citywide Enjoy discounts and special food events at participating eatieries all over town in an eleven-day festival, with a portion of your bill going to local nonprofits.

Thru Jan. 31. sfrestaurantweek.com

Throwback Thursdays @ Qbar Enjoy retro 80s soul, dance and pop classics with DJ Jorge Terez.

No cover. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Thump @ White Horse, Oakland

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall

Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests.

9pm-2am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com

The weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm).

Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St.www.toadhallbar.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle Music night with local and touring bands. $8. 9:30pm.

398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Way Back @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of vintage music videos and retro drink prices. Check out the new expanded front window lounge.

9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www. midnightsunsf.com

Buy a drink and get a wooden nickle good for another. 12pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Enjoy whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar.

10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge

Ladies night at the Castro dance club. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Wooden Nickel Wednesday @ 440

Gym Class @ Hi Tops

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge

Thu 21 Laura Ellis @ Feinstein’s

Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night; 10pm-2am.

133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com Want your nightlife event listed? Email events@ebar. com, at least two weeks before your event. Event photos welcome.

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

January 14-20, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 33

JJ Knight The New Kid in Town

by Cornelius Washington

N

ew year, new rules, new studs!

The Nob Hill Theatre has always been the ultimate venue for showcasing the biggest, the brightest, and the best in the world of erotic entertainment. JJ Knight is the perfect representation of what it means to be the modern porn star. Unaffected, but horny; natural, and aggressive. He’s the 21st-century combination of what it means to be a gay male, without the over-art directed physicality. The Nob Hill Theatre’s first headliner of the year is sure to give a Big Bang for your buck. I recommend a front row seat to catch the big meat. Here’s our chat.

people and building relationships– is my favorite part about being in this industry.

What landmark do you want to see here in San Francisco?

I have been to San Francisco twice and got to see the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, but haven’t been to actually see them. But I have always wanted to go to Alcatraz Island and take that tour. Every time I cross the bridges I look over at the island and am just in awe because I want to go so bad.

What type of porn do you want to rock? The scenes are perfectly constructed and fantasy-based or the more downto-earth reality-based sex?

What do you see are the positive Cornelius Washington: You and negative aspects of both? are relatively new in porn.

The type of porn I want to How many scenes have you do is anything my fans want to done and how did you get see. I am a completely advenstarted? turous person and am pretty JJ Knight: I have done at least open to most things. Send me 12 scenes over the past four some ideas. I can tell my agents months since starting in the inwhat you want to see. I feel like dustry. I actually started porn fantasy-based porn can be kind Men.com with one of my still good friends, of a let-down, because you build JJ Knight Jack Hunter, when we were dating something up in your mind for and we were actually working for so long. For it to not be what enough to judge what is being done Jason Sparks at the time and on you expected... But if it is what wrong. Ask me in a couple years and tour with him. Jack got reached out to you expected or better, then it’s that I might have a better answer for ya! by our current agents at Pure Casting much more amazing. More realityand he asked me if I wanted to give it based porn is very “vanilla,” as I You have entered the porn ina try. I said, ‘Sure, why not!’ would describe it, and it can be very dustry at a very interesting time. boring to most people, which is why What do you think about the reHow was your first scene? Did I like the porn that catches peoples’ cent Rentboy scandal? What do it meet your expectations and/or attention. you think the effects this will have fantasies? on escorting?

Wow; my first scene was a stressHave you ever danced comI was actually shooting a scene ful experience! I grew up watching pletely naked before? Was it senwith Jason Sparks the day the Rentgay porn and was always like, ‘This sual for you? Did you enjoy it? boy site got shut down. I personally looks so easy and like so much fun.’

I have danced before, but I have didn’t read too much into the whole But then you get on set and it’s an never danced completely naked. So scenario, so I don’t have too much actual job and we have to perform. this is going to be a first experience of an opinion on this topic. But I I still have a blast on each set, but for me. But I’m very excited that my will say that things like escorting my first time I had hard-on issues stage partner is Colton Grey. He is are topics that have to get treaded and I couldn’t get off like I wanted. so sexy and I know we will put on a lightly on and anyone who partakes So it just made my first experience good show for you guys to see. in it just has to be careful. memorable and horrific.

What is your favorite type of A lot of porn stars list travel as So far, what do you see that is music to have sex to? one of biggest perks of the indusbeing done right and what is beDepends on the type of sex I’m try. What city are you lusting to ing done wrong in the world of having. If it’s intense hardcore sex, visit and/or perform in? porn? then typically some fun rap would It’s crazy; my entire life has been In my personal opinion I think be great. But if it’s sensual passiontravel, travel, travel. I lived in China that porn has come a long way over ate boyfriend sex, then I like softer for two years and visited Paris and the past few years from the outside music like SoMo’s “Ride,” one of my Bali and Amsterdam. But the one looking in. I feel like things are getfavorite songs to have sex to. city I have never been to and have ting better in terms of the talent. always wanted to visit is New York From what other porn stars tell How important do you the Nob City. So, all producers: hint hint! me, there were some divas that did Hill Theatre is in the age of the inTravel is a huge plus in this indusit in the past that made the overall ternet? Do you think venues that try, but being the outgoing person experience unbearable. I haven’t showcase live sex will always be that I am –just meeting a lot of cool personally been in the industry long relevant?

JJ Knight

I think any place that can get porn stars to appear to perform shows like this is a amazing idea.

Porn is great, but after a while it’s like you want to feel like you are part of the scenario. Putting yourself in the same room during the sex makes the experience that much more enriching.

What is your favorite thing to do sexually in your private life that you are lusting to do on camera, and vice versa?

In my personal life, I’m as vanilla as you can get. I love sensual sex that both partners enjoy. The porn side of me really loves being vocal and learning how to practice my dialogue to make sure the viewers enjoy it. I’m trying to learn how to be more vocal to really give the viewers a show.

a tough question because I have worked with so many great guys over the past few months. But there is one guy that I really want to shoot a scene with and he is an exclusive with Nextdoor studios: Markie More. That boy is so sexy and nothing would make me more happy than to shoot a hot steamy hot sex scene with him.

Describe your dream scene partner for your next film.

My dream scene partner? That’s

Read more with JJ Knight online at www.ebar.com/bartab.

How do you think you will feel when you see your name on the marquee of The Nob Hill Theater?

I honestly did not even realize that Nob Hill Theatre had a marquee, but wow! That is insanely exciting. I am definitely going to be getting a selfie with that. Having this experience is once in a lifetime. I’m thankful for Nob Hill for giving me the opportunity.t

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34 • Bay Area Reporter • January 14-20, 2016

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Photos by steven underhill SF Sketchfest

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eaches Christ’s stage show, screening and interview with stars of the film Teen Witch proved to be a hilarious romp at The Castro Theatre, as part of SF Sketchfest, which runs through January 24. www.sfsketchfest.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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Read more online at www.ebar.com

Shooting Stars

January 14-20, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 35

Photos by steven underhill Remembering Mr. Marcus

L

eather and Imperial Court notable folks gathered at The Armory for a remembrance of Leather/Court icon, Marcus Hernandez. The pioneering Bay Area Reporter leather columnist and first Imperial Court Emperor died in 2009, and will be interred in February. Songs, stories and camaraderie marked the event, held in the stylish Victorianthemed Upper Room of the Kink.com space.

For more on the event, see Donna Sachet’s ‘On the Town’ column on page 28.

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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2016 REPERTORY SEASON

JAN 24 – FEB 05

Part of Program 01

Magrittomania

Top: Yuan Yuan Tan in Possokhov’s Magrittomania. Bottom: Vanessa Zahorian and Pascal Molat in Balanchine’s Jewels.

(Choreography by George Balanchine © The Balanchine Trust) // © Erik Tomasson

Yuri Possokhov’s Magrittomania is a clever and colorful homage to the surrealist painter, René Magritte. Also on stage are Tomasson’s 7 for Eight and the North American premiere of Forsythe’s superbly crafted Pas/Parts.

JAN 27 – FEB 06

Part of Program 02

Rubies Set to a driving, jazzy score by Stravinsky, “Rubies”, typically the second work in Balanchine’s three-act abstract ballet, Jewels, sparkles.

BUY TICKETS TODAY!

2016 Season Media Sponsors

sfballet.org Program 02 Media Sponsor