January 21, 2016 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

Polk Gulch loses gay bar

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GLBT Historical Society gets new ED

Vol. 46 • No. 3 • January 21-27, 2016

Foundation’s $1M donation to Openhouse will name offices after Bob Ross

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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Openhouse Executive Director Seth Kilbourn, left, joined Bob Ross Foundation President Thomas E. Horn and Openhouse program director Michelle Alcedo in front of the future site of Openhouse’s offices, which will be named the Bob Ross LGBT Senior Center.

by Matthew S. Bajko

O

penhouse will name its new offices in San Francisco’s first LGBT senior housing development after Bob Ross, the founding publisher of the Bay Area Reporter.

The Bob Ross Foundation and Openhouse

will make the announcement Thursday, January 21. In securing the naming rights, the foundation has committed $1 million over five years to the agency to help it build out its new programmatic spaces and expand the services it offers to LGBT seniors.

See page 9 >>

Police share frustration over property crimes

Rick Gerharter

by Sari Staver

cessful” unless people are safe. He said that police staffing had fallen olice and local officials told to 1,700 from its high of 2,000, District 8 residents that causing shortages on beats. With they share their frustration at least three new classes of trainin dealing with what they say is ees enrolled in the police acadan uptick in property crimes and emy every year, the city should be homeless encampments in the back to over 2,000 officers by the district. end of 2017, he said.

At a community meeting held Violent crimes in the city have at Noe Valley’s St. James Church decreased by half since the midJanuary 14, officials conceded 2000s, said San Francisco Police that an ongoing staffing shortage Chief Greg Suhr. Shootings have by police has reduced their abilgone from 400 annually to under ity to patrol and that the recent 200, he said. wet weather has hampered their Suhr urged residents to keep evefforts to remove large encamperything out of their car, most imRick Gerharter ments that are blocking sidewalks. portantly their garage door openThe meeting, convened by Su- San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr speaks at a District 8 ers. Suhr said that a typical pattern pervisor Scott Wiener, drew over community safety meeting. would be criminals breaking into 100 residents, including a numa car and using the garage door ber of recent crime victims. The the Board of Supervisors Government Audit opener to gain entry into the home. residents criticized the city for its inability to and Oversight Committee.

District 8 is primarily served by three police catch and prosecute criminals and expressed their Opening last week’s panel was Mayor Ed stations: Mission, Park, and Ingleside. frustrations that none of the city’s approaches to Lee, who demonstrated his recently acquired Mission Station Captain Daniel Perea noted dealing with homelessness seemed to be working. gadget, a remote control key fob protector, one that there had been an increase in package thefts Wiener, who is gay and a candidate for state of the new technology solutions that are said to and mailbox break-ins during the 2015 holiSenate, has said repeatedly that there is “too much” prevent criminals from using amplifiers to copy day period. Perea said that some people have crime in District 8, particularly auto break-ins. a signal and steal a car. attributed such crimes to the increase in the The supervisor will hold a public safety hearLee, who lives in the Glen Park neighborSee page 9 >> ing Thursday (January 21) at 10:30 a.m. before hood of District 8, said, “the city cannot be suc-

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he GLBT Historical Society, which collects archival materials and operates the gay history museum in the Castro, announced this week that it’s selected a new executive director.

Rick Gerharter Terry Beswick, 56, Terry Beswick who since 2009 has been a principal leader at the Castro Country Club, a sober space that hosts 12-step groups, will take over at the historical society in February.

“I am deeply honored and humbled to have this opportunity,” Beswick said in a January 19 news release from the historical society. “I have been inspired by the important contributions and the people of the GLBT Historical Society and I plan to work tirelessly to ensure the organization’s continued success and growth. Our diverse communities are so rich with the stories, the archives and the artifacts of our struggles and our triumphs. It’s essential that we preserve these stories, interpret them and make them accessible today and for future generations.”

Beswick, a gay, HIV-positive Castro resident, is a longtime AIDS activist who was also once an assistant editor at the Bay Area Reporter. He takes over from Paul Boneberg, another AIDS activist who was the longtime historical society executive director. Boneberg announced his departure last April amid calls for his resignation. He had been criticized for his leadership and donor relations.

The historical society last year marked its 30th anniversary. The GLBT History Museum is set to celebrate its fifth anniversary.

Brian Turner, the historical society’s board co-chair, said in an email blast that Beswick “is enthusiastic about queer history and promises to bring a new era of growth and vision to the GLBT Historical Society.”

Turner added, “We are very much looking forward to working with Terry to strengthen our financial base (operating in San Francisco means there’s never enough money!) and move the archives to its new home (stand by for exciting details). And we’ll of course be working together to grow our organization and expand our amazing programs that serve you and society at large by collecting, preserving and telling stories of the GLBT past in resonant ways.”

According to the society’s news release, among other achievements, Beswick coSee page 10 >>

<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

Historic Gangway bar being sold

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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he historic Gangway bar in the Polk Gulch is being sold, leaving what used to the queer center of San Francisco with just a couple of gay or trans bars.

The Gangway, the tiny watering hole at 841 Larkin Street, has been in existence in one form or another for decades. For years, the bar, which has a replica of the Titanic above the door, was one of several gay taverns

near the Polk Gulch neighborhood.

Most of the other bars are gone now, with the exception of the Cinch, at 1723 Polk, and Diva’s at 1081 Post.

According to the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Clover Rose LLC, doing business as Daddy Bones, has a pending license application for the bar.

Breaking Chad Inc. is listed as the corporation’s manager. People associated with the application couldn’t be reached for comment.

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Jung Lee, the Gangway’s owner, wasn’t available for comment, but the Hoodline news site says Lee had already planned to sell the tavern next year. He’s doing it now, though, after losing a lawsuit that a bartender filed over pay. The Bay Area Reporter wasn’t able to locate any documentation of the suit. The Tablehopper site was the first to report the pending sale.

Bob Ames, 58, a Gangway bartender “for eight years, off and on,” confirmed to the B.A.R. that Lee is “in the process” of selling the bar.

Ames, who’s gay, said, “I don’t know anything at all” about the new owners, except “supposedly, two of them came in one night and worked behind the bar for a little bit to get the feel of it.” He declined to share the new owners’ names.

Lee took over the bar’s management after the death of Sukie Lee, who’d been his wife and owned the bar for several years.

Jung Lee, who’s from Los Angeles, “wants to get home and be around his family,” Ames said.

“Like all new owners, they say they’re going to keep it the same,” Ames said of the prospective buyers, but he’s doubtful of that, given “all the other bars on Polk” that aren’t primarily gay anymore.

Business has been “very good” at the Gangway, said Ames, who described the tavern as “a wonderful neighborhood bar.”

In a Facebook exchange, Sal Meza, 43, whose first visit to the Gangway was around 1993, said, “For me the potential closure of the Gangway is a loss because it is the only bar I can think of in San Francisco that is gay and has a truly diverse crowd. There is no other bar in the city where you are likely to hear Latin music and old school funk played consecutively and people would dance, clap, or sing along.”

In an interview, he said the Gangway would also take in other bars’ rejects.

“Half the people you’d find in the

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Rick Gerharter

Patrons of the Gangway bar shared a toast to bartender Matt Wruble, right, Monday, January 18.

Gangway were people 86’d from the Cinch,” Meza, who’s largely stopped going to bars, said.

Coy Meza, 49, Sal’s husband, has also gone to the Gangway for decades. He even worked at the bar, until he retired two years ago. He still hosts celebrations of life and other special events there.

What drew him was the bar’s atmosphere, he said.

“No matter what you look like,” or “what you are, you’re welcome at the

Gangway, as long as you don’t bother anybody else,” Coy Meza said.

People who’d gone to the bar since the 1940s and 50s still went there.

“The stories were so amazing,” he said.

Eric Berchtold, the Cinch’s manager, said he’s “sad to see” the Gangway go, but its patrons “will be welcome” at his bar.

“I don’t think the Cinch has anything to worry about,” Berchtold said. “... We’re still going strong.”t

Man held in trans woman’s attempted murder

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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man accused of trying to fatally stab a transgender woman on a San Francisco Muni bus last January was ordered this week to stand trial on attempted murder and other charges.

Superior Court Judge John Garibaldi’s ruling came Tuesday after video of Brodes Joynes, 55, lunging at Samantha Hulsey, 25, with a steak knife was shown at Joynes’ preliminary hearing.

Hulsey, who’s in Great Britain, didn’t testify, but Assistant District Attorney Brenna Kantrovitz played a recording in which Hulsey told police that Joynes “said he was going to kill” her and her former partner Rae Raucci.

Rae Raucci, 53, Hulsey’s former partner, testified that Joynes, who faces hate crime allegations, had called them “faggots” and said “you’re defrauding me by pretending to be women.”

The footage showed how the January 3, 2015 incident started and quickly escalated after Joynes boarded the crowded 49 bus near City Hall.

The audio was almost impossible to hear in court, but Raucci said that Joynes started complaining about the windows not being open.

Raucci can only partially be seen in much of the footage, but it shows that Hulsey initially paid little attention to Joynes.

Soon, though, Joynes leaned across Hulsey and Raucci to open a window, and within seconds, he took out a knife and swung toward Hulsey.

The bus stopped and Hulsey and Raucci got off. Video showed Joynes lingering for a few moments before Hulsey, who was standing on the street, swung toward him. Joynes leaped off the bus and tangled with the couple, stabbing Hulsey in the chest.

Rick Gerharter

Stabbing victim Samantha Hulsey

After watching the video and listening to testimony, Garibaldi said the allegation that Joynes’ attempt to kill Hulsey had been “deliberate and premeditated” made it firstdegree attempted murder – “a life charge.”

Deputy Public Defender Elizabeth Hilton agreed there was sufficient evidence to support the count of assault with a deadly weapon, one of the other charges Garibaldi soon held Joynes on, but not to back up the attempted murder accusation.

“Every single assault with a deadly weapon is not an attempted murder,” Hilton said.

Among other points, she said that while the anti-gay slurs weren’t audible from the video, Hulsey saying “I’m gonna’ fuck you up, motherfucker” and “Fuck you, asshole” during the incident were. (San Francisco police Sergeant Michael Alexander testified that a 911 caller had heard “a black male” use the word “faggot” multiple times.)

Hilton acknowledged that in the video, Joynes “brandishes the knife See page 10 >>

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International News>>

January 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Taiwan elects first pro-same-sex marriage, female president

by Heather Cassell

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aiwan’s election of Tsai Ingwen, the Southeast Asian island nation’s first-ever woman president who is also pro-same-sex marriage, signals big changes ahead for the country, China, and international relations.

One of those changes could place Taiwan as the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage.

The January 16 election also saw the Democratic Progressive Party win control of parliament for the first time since the country’s founding in 1949. Taiwan has asserted its right with China to self-govern since the 1980s.

Tsai, 59, of the DPP, defeated the ruling party Kuomintang’s candidate Eric Chu, 54, garnering 56 percent of the vote.

Originally, Tsai was running against the KMT’s female candidate Deputy Parliament Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu, but her polling numbers were poor and the party replaced her with Chu a few months ago, reported the New York Times.

The DPP took 68 of the 113 open seats in parliament, compared to the KMT’s 35 seats.

This was Tsai’s second presidential bid. Her first was in 2012. The U.S.- and U.K.-educated former law professor taught at several Taiwanese universities before she was appointed chairperson of the Mainland Affairs Council in 2000.

In 2004, she joined the DPP and was elected legislator at large. She lost her bid for mayor of Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, in 2010, reported the Times.

english.dpp.org.tw

Taiwan President-elect Tsai Ing-wen

“The results today tell me the people want to see a government that is willing to listen to people, that is more transparent and accountable, and a government that is more capable of leading us past our current challenges and taking care of those in need,” Tsai told reporters following her victory on Saturday, reported the Times.

Tsai will take over from President Ma Ying-jeou May 20.

The election is the result of a younger generation’s dissatisfaction with the country’s status quo and relationship with China, which was supported by the KMT. In 2014, students took over government buildings in Taiwan for four days, protesting the signing of the Cross Strait Service Trade Agreement bein. tween China and9.75 Taiwan.

Tsai is more moderate when it comes to China. She pledged during

her campaign to work on improving relations with China, but she was going to “step back” from her predecessor’s “controversial economic policies,” reported the Times.

She’s progressive on LGBT and women’s rights in Taiwan. Tsai openly campaigned in favor of same-sex marriage in two separate videos released on Valentine’s Day and right before Taiwan Pride last year.

“When it comes to love, everyone is equal,” said Tsai in the Pride video.

“Every person should be able to look for love freely, and freely seek their own happiness.”

Tsai’s private about her personal life. She’s never married or had children. She doesn’t publicly identify her sexual orientation.

Taiwan has gained a reputation for being gay-friendly and hosts Asia’s largest LGBT Pride, which attracts upward of 78,000 attendees locally and from abroad. The country has also been making small steps granting more rights to its LGBT community within recent years.

Just this past year alone, same-sex couples were allowed to register their relationships in Kaohsiung, a major port city in southern Taiwan.

A similar registry in Taipei went into effect at the beginning of this year.

Same-sex couples were also allowed to participate in Taiwan’s mass wedding ceremony for the first time last year. Additionally, the Ministry for Health allowed a special interpretation of the country’s Medical Care Act to permit samesex couple’s visitation rights and to make medical decisions for each other recently.

Marriage equality has gained acceptance and momentum in TaiSee page 9 >>

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<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

Volume 46, Number 3 January 21-27, 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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No change created at conference T

he National LGBTQ Task Force is holding its annual Creating Change conference in Chicago this week. Attendees will be able to access a daylong racial justice institute, leadership training workshops, a state of the movement address, and sessions on people of color, transgender people, the gender non-binary, and much more. One program that won’t be taking place, however, would have featured representatives from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And in another change Monday, the Task Force canceled a reception sponsored by A Wider Bridge for LGBT activists from Israel. (After an outcry from Jewish groups and others, the Task Force reinstated the reception the next day.) These examples of political correctness run amok show how some activists badgered Task Force officials into canceling the events because they feared attendees’ “safe space” would be violated or that undocumented conference attendees would be put at risk.

Nonsense.

ICE is not a warm and fuzzy department.

Operating out of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE agents have drawn the wrath of many LGBTQs because of alleged mistreatment of LGBT people in their custody. Only recently, according to a Washington Blade article that broke the cancelation news, has the department developed new guidelines for the treatment of trans detainees, including the requirement that detention facilities provide access to hormone therapy. The conference panel that was canceled would have brought a little clarity to how ICE operates.

“The manner in which LGBTI individuals have been detained for immigration purposes has changed dramatically,” reads the panel description. “Learn what positive steps U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has taken to ensure safe and secure environ-

ments for those in custody. Ask questions and provide input to the people drafting the policies for the agency regarding LGBTI care.”

It’s that last sentence that had us seeing red after learning that the Task Force had caved in to activists. Why not hear directly from the agency that’s charged with immigration issues? What better opportunity to get federal officials on the record than at one of the community’s largest conferences, replete with ubiquitous cellphone video and LGBTQ bloggers and reporters? It would have been a great chance for people involved in policy development to hear from LGBTs. Yes, the Task Force missed the boat on this one. And its actions show why these gatherings are often so onesided, with a feel-good vibe that may make for friendly conversations at the bar but do little to advance equality. It’s as though some activists only want to hear from those with whom they agree.

In the case of the reception, Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey said in a statement that it was canceled because it became clear it would be “intensely divisive.” The organization was accused of being “anti-Jewish” and

“anti-Semitic,” Carey stated, “which is wrong and deeply painful to those of us in the National LGBTQ Task Force family.”

These cancelations are not the way to create change.

Real change involves unpleasant conversations, compromise, a willingness to listen to others, and action – in short, having a dialogue.

In our hyped-up society, you’re shouted down on social media and bullied into silence if you dare say something unpopular or that goes against the prevailing views on your news feed.

Rare is the person who bucks the trend. The Task Force should have kept the ICE panel, and, for that matter, should have invited officials from the Transportation Security Administration, too. The TSA has been criticized for its treatment of transgender airline passengers because its screening protocols don’t always match a person’s preferred gender identity, creating an embarrassing situation that can turn into humiliation, as a woman experienced in Florida last year. But we can hear the howls of protest from the same folks who pressured the Task Force to cancel the ICE panel: “People won’t feel safe.” Well, life often involves uncomfortable situations. If someone doesn’t feel safe at a panel, they can opt not to attend. Their preferences should not trump others who could gain valuable information from or spark a conversation with federal officials. Remember, these bureaucrats don’t often escape their own comfortable environment and they were willing to attend the conference. By disinviting them the Task Force squandered a unique opportunity for the officials to hear directly from LGBTQ people with the goal of improving their policies and standards.

The Task Force had good intentions by scheduling the ICE panel, which likely would have been well attended. It’s a shame that officials were overrun by naysayers, most of whom could have benefited from the diversity of views that the Task Force is usually known for.t

Being gay and having my say

by Mitchell L. Jones

ity added fuel to the fight for equality – namely the gays and the feminists. t’s been a few months since I went According to an essay titled, “A on national television and alTurning Point” by Will Roscoe, lowed talk show host and self-help published in 1960, interestingly, guru Iyanla Vanzant to “fix” my life religious leaders had a hand in gay in front of millions of viewers. Since activism as well. It states: “ ... several then, my life hasn’t been the same. liberal ministers became concerned I cried like a baby on national TV; with homosexual rights and formed Stanz Eyez Photography but I hope my tears offer someone the Council on Religion and the strength in forging ahead to live Pastor Mitchell L. Homosexual. Later that year, CRH their truth for an authentic life. sponsored a New Year’s ball for the Jones Right now, I feel like the revolugay community. When the police tion is being televised, as the LGBT showed up in force and arrested community gains momentum with gay rights, several of the ministers, the outcry that folsame-sex marriage, and even the images of lowed placed an effective restraint on police same-sex relationships on network televiharassment.” sion. We’ve come a long way, but there’s more Because of the efforts of these brave minwork to do. Still, as I sit in my Virginia home, isters, who were on the right side of hisI feel like the timing of my coming out is on tory, I can now live without any fear, the backs of the many nameless and faceless intimidation or second thoughts LGBT activists in the San Francisco area who as a faith leader, and help others put their lives on the line, and pushed the gay come to terms with their faith and movement forward when it wasn’t particularly sexuality, embracing an alternasocially acceptable or politically correct. It’s tive lifestyle. because of their courage and will that we’re As a licensed and ordained able to feel a little more comfortable in our pastor, I am concerned with the skin today. Certain pivotal people, events and increasing disenfranchisement circumstances pushed the gay agenda forward, of many gays and gay leaders and the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s because of a lack of acceptance continue to reverberate to this day. by the church.

I have to admit, growing up in Virginia, I Although society is becoming more acceptwasn’t aware of San Francisco’s imprint on gay ing of gay people, gay rights and even gay marrights and the gay movement until I watched riage, there still lingers the stigma of being gay, the biopic Milk about politician and activist especially in the black church. And it’s because Harvey Milk. In 2009, as a gay pastor, I was of homophobia in the faith community that finally coming to terms with my sexuality and many African Americans in the LGBT commudiscovering a new path to spirituality and renity suppress their truth and hide in the closet ligion with God. Yet, after watching the film for fear of religious shaming and rejection. and doing more research on Milk’s life and Religious leaders preach at a fever pitch that San Francisco, the city resonated with me with affection toward the same sex is an abominaa sense of progressiveness, and a “back to the tion, according to Old Testament scriptures future” connection. in the Bible. And because of these teachings, I wasn’t born when the gay rights movemany in the African American LGBT commument came to life in San Francisco during the nity are sidelined, diminished, and conflicted 1960s, yet, its impact on my life and others is in their faith. significant. In fact, the gay rights moment is exWell, Vanzant “fixed” me. After getting betremely impactful to me, especially within the yond the shame, hurt, unforgiveness, and concontext of spirituality and ethnicity. The civil fusion about my sexuality, I’m now in a good rights movement was led by religious leaders place to allow God to use me as a vessel of hope like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X; and and light for members of the LGBT commuother groups feeling marginalized by the majornity. I realized there are myriad opportunities

I

to support this “liberation” for all people, specifically with special emphasis on LGBTs. I feel renewed. As a pastor, my calling is the same, but my mission is crystal clear: to affirm the pursuit of happiness for gay people like me.

I’m really impressed by the gay activism of San Francisco in the 1970s. Because of their social and political activism, there was “a mass coming out of gay people” who dealt with police harassment head on,” according to Roscoe’s aforementioned article.

The greatest freedom realized both directly and indirectly from the San Francisco Movement is the ability to worship. There are many houses of worship that welcome and affirm people of all ages, colors, creeds, religion, sexual orientation and ethnic background.

We must truly worship in a spirit of acceptance and truth, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

As mentioned earlier, the church often pushes its gay members aside, and casts us into eternal damnation. I believe this negative receptivity is steeped in the tradition of fear, ignorance, control and manipulation.

As a man of God, who happens to be gay, I offer loving support and empowerment from God to anyone who seeks his word. We all have a greater purpose on this earth, and we deserve the right to discover that purpose through fellowship within our chosen religious affiliation. And this fellowship doesn’t have to take place in a church, temple or sanctuary; but God is present when two or three people are gathered together in fellowship, kinship and love. (Matthew 18:20)t Pastor Mitchell L. Jones is a gay pastor and appears on OWN’s Iyanla: Fix My Life.

He launched a new LGBT advice column called “Ask Pastor Jones” on his Facebook fan page to address questions about faith and sexuality as well as other LGBTQrelated questions from friends and followers on social media platforms. For more information, visit http://pitch.pe/1Nr537u. For an interview with Jones, see the Bay Area Reporter’s Sampler column at http://ebar.com/ news/article.php?sec=news&article=71037.

Follow Jones on Twitter and Instagram at @AskPastorJones.

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Politics>>

January 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Battle brewing over SF housing density proposal

by Matthew S. Bajko

A

battle is brewing over a proposal that would allow developers to build denser developments in various San Francisco neighborhoods in return for including increased amounts of affordable housing for low to moderate and middle income residents.

Known as the Affordable Housing Bonus Program, it would award projects that include higher amounts of affordable housing than what is currently required with such development incentives as increased density, heights, and limited reductions in other zoning requirements, according to city planners.

The target would be for at least 30 percent of on-site units to be set aside as affordable. As it is now, developers of buildings with 10 or more units are required to set aside 12 percent as below-market-rate if provided on-site or they can pay an in-lieu fee to the city toward the building of affordable housing elsewhere.

But opponents of the program fear it will lead to the demolition of the city’s rent-controlled housing stock, ruin the character of the neighborhoods covered by the proposal, and lead to the loss of various structures of historical importance.

Mayor Ed Lee and District 4 Supervisor Katy Tang formally introduced the density bonus proposal last fall. It came out of a housing work group the mayor had organized in 2014 to look at ways to solve the city’s affordable housing crunch.

In includes additional incentives for developers of 100 percent affordable housing projects.

In recent years rents and home prices in San Francisco, as well as throughout the Bay Area, have skyrocketed as the local economy has boomed. A lack of housing inventory as well as an ever-growing influx of new residents seeking careers at hi-tech, social media, and sharing economy firms have combined to drive the spike in housing costs.

During his re-election campaign last year, Lee made housing a top priority and helped pass a $310 million affordable housing bond. He has also been a vocal supporter of seeing underdeveloped parcels throughout the city be turned into large mixeduse developments with housing over ground floor retail spaces.

The planning commission is scheduled to vote on the density bonus proposal at its meeting next Thursday, January 28. The Board of Supervisors would then take up the proposal, and District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener has already said he will support it.

“We are required by state law to adopt this,” Wiener told the Bay Area Reporter. “It is important for us to create something that works for San Francisco.”

He noted that, “The density bonus will allow us to incentivize developers to do 30 percent or designate 30 percent of their units as permanently affordable for both low income and middle income.”

But housing activists contend the density bonus program could lead to a further reduction in the city’s rentcontrolled housing stock. They have been demanding that buildings with rent-controlled units be excluded from the program. Board President London Breed is sponsoring an amendment that would add such a provision to the program.

“My concern is rent-controlled buildings could be torn down and

Barry Schneider Attorney at Law Rick Gerharter

The heights of buildings such as those that house Harvey’s bar and other businesses on Castro Street could increase under San Francisco’s Affordable Housing Density Bonus program.

those tenants could be displaced. In the Castro it also means displacing a small business on the ground floor,” said queer housing rights activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca.

“You are looking at long-term tenants in the Castro and businesses being displaced then them putting up housing that is market rate and some affordable. It is questionable how affordable they will be.”

At a talk he gave last week about LGBT historical sites in the city, historic preservationist Gerard Koskovich said that the housing density proposal “evokes” for him the redevelopment plans city leaders instituted in the 1950s that devastated minority neighborhoods like the Fillmore.

Even if buildings with rent-controlled units are spared, he pointed out that three sites with ties to LGBT history faced with demolition do not include housing and thus would be covered by the density bonus incentives. One is Polk Gulch diner Grubstake, a haven to transgender and gay male sex workers in the 1960s.

The others are the Elbo Room on Valencia Street, which formerly housed lesbian bar Amelia’s in the 1980s and prior to that several gay bars; and upper Market Street bar Lucky 13, which was the site of several gay bars and in 1977 was where Harvey Milk held his victory party after being elected the city’s first gay supervisor that November.

Should the density program be adopted, Koskovich predicted, “One of the outcomes likely will be the annihilation of legacy LGBT businesses and historic sites.”

The fear of seeing the program reduce the city’s rent-controlled housing stock is overblown, contended Wiener.

“It is almost impossible to get a permit to demolish rent-controlled units that have not been red tagged already,” said Wiener. “We will see this kind of development play out overwhelmingly on empty lots, gas stations, or parcels not already housing.”

Those arguing against the program, he said, are against seeing any new housing be built in San Francisco.

“And we are in the predicament we are in because we have not produced enough housing as our population has grown,” said Wiener. “If we don’t build housing as the population grows, we end up with astronomical rents. And that is terrible for low and middle income people.”

The planning department has been hosting a series of meetings throughout the city to explain the density bonus program and gather feedback

from the public. On Thursday (January 21), it will be hosting the District 8 meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Parish Hall at St. Philip the Apostle Church, 725 Diamond Street just off 24th Street in Noe Valley.

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Milk club re-elects male president

Despite talk of a last minute attempt to defeat him, Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club President Peter Gallotta secured a second term Tuesday night to lead the progressive political group.

As the B.A.R. noted on its blog, hours prior to the election Mahnani Clay, the club’s former vice president of political affairs, announced she would nominate attorney David Waggoner to return as the club’s male co-president and Kin Folkz, a black and indigenous Choctaw twospirit queer woman, to serve in the female co-president position.

Yet Waggoner said he had too many personal commitments this year to lead the club, while Gallotta rejected having Folkz serve alongside him as co-chair due to not knowing her all that well. In the end, Gallotta said no other candidates were formally nominated either before or at the meeting prior to voting.

A majority of the club’s members supported the board slate Gallotta had nominated. Although the club will not have a female co-president this year, women now hold 10 of the 19 board positions. It is an increase from years past, noted Gallotta.

In a post on Facebook in which he thanked the club’s members for their support, Gallotta said the evening was “very special” for him.

“I am honored to serve as president with an amazingly talented executive board in what is shaping up to be one of the most important years for progressive politics in San Francisco,” he wrote. “This has been a big learning experience for me, and my hope is that this year we can work together to make a more inclusive, transparent, and participatory Harvey Milk club. This is my pledge. Thank you for this honor.”

East Bay LGBT Dems to host Barbara Lee

The East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club is hosting a breakfast reception for Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) that will also feature gay former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank.

San Francisco’s two LGBT Democratic clubs, Milk and Alice B. Toklas, have joined on as co-sponsors of the event. Other hosts include Assemblymen Tony Thurmond (DSee page 9 >>

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<< Commentary

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

My David Bowie

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

S

omething magical happened in my life late in the evening of December 14, 1979. For years I was used to watching the television in my parents’ front room quietly every Saturday evening, watching Saturday Night Live into the wee hours. It was a ritual of mine from the first season well into the show’s much leaner years in the 1980s.

The guest that night was Martin Sheen, and while I can recall a couple of the comedy skits, they did not even remotely have the lasting impact that the musical guest would.

Performing that night was David Bowie, who played three songs.

Most point to his performance of “The Man Who Sold the World” as the highlight of the night, or perhaps his puppet-like performance of the then-current single, “Boys Keep Swinging.” But it was his first song that would forever change the mind of this one young kid living in the suburbs.

I had heard of, and heard the music of, Bowie before that night.

You could not avoid tracks like “Space Oddity” on the rock radio stations of the time. I enjoyed the song well enough, but it was just another tune blaring out of my yellow Panasonic Panapet.

Bowie’s first performance that

night was the song “TVC-15,” a sci-fi story about a man whose wife ended up trapped inside a holographic television set. At the time, though, I had no idea of the story behind the song: all I had was the spectacle unfolding on my television screen.

Front and center was Bowie, who hit the microphone wearing a bluishgray men’s style top and matching A-line skirt, while one of the backup singers pantomimed walking a bright pink poodle – with a television screen embedded in it – as the other pretended to read a newspaper.

They too wore skirted outfits: one in black and the other in red.

I would later learn that these two were Klaus Nomi, a countertenor known for avant-garde musical performances, and Joey Arias, a cabaret singer and drag artist.

I had by this point in my life already gained a rudimentary idea of what being transgender was, though my knowledge was – to say the least – very limited, and focused largely on transsexuality. The notion that someone could wear an outfit like that, while still appearing male, and be celebrated, was mind-blowing. It was simply nothing I’d ever heard of back in 1979.

Over the ensuing years, of course, my knowledge of things trans grew by leaps and bounds, as so did my knowledge of Bowie. I went through

a very heavy Ziggy Stardust period, two and a half decades after Bowie had hung up the platform boots and pancake makeup, spending my idle hours poring over his lyrics and style.

At the time, I was hip-deep in my own gender transition, and took a lot of strength from listening to Bowie’s many albums.

“Life on Mars” gave me life, while “Rebel Rebel” gave me the power to make it out the other side.

That coincided with when I first started to write for the Bay Area Reporter in 2000, and needing a name for my column, I reached back to that moment in 1979, as Bowie sang the two-word chorus for “TVC-15”: “Transition/ Transmission.”

So Transmissions it is to this day, thanks again to that one moment where Bowie opened my eyes and showed me a world I never imagined existed.

That he was in a blouse and skirt for his SNL performance was a bit of a lark, concocted after Arias and Nomi found their matching dresses on a pre-show shopping spree.

It wasn’t anywhere near the first time that Bowie would challenge gender, having started with crossgender presentation on the covers for Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold the World.

Christine Smith

He did these one better for the arrival of one of his best-known personas, that of Ziggy Stardust. With a shock of bright red hair and a face full of makeup, his platform boot-andjumpsuit wearing androgynous space alien trod into the heart of a generation of fans who felt out of place. He embodied the outsider – and doubly so for anyone who felt alienated due to their gender or sexuality.

This continued into his Aladdin Sane character, with the nowiconic lightning-bolt-across-the-eye makeup. Even to the end, Bowie seemed to exist in a place beyond traditional gender roles, or, more

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succinctly, in an identity that existed by his own rules.

He would appear in female personas in the video for “Boys Keep Swinging” as well as the 2013 clip for “The Stars (Are Out Tonight),” crossing personas and characters with the equally androgynous actress Tilda Swinton.

That video also featured Andreja Pejic, a transsexual model.

Bowie is gone now, taken from this planet on January 10. He’s yet another victim of cancer, gone too soon from this place.

In the wake of his passing, many have commented on how everyone has their “own” Bowie, much like how fans of the television series Doctor Who have a preferred actor for the eponymous lead character.

I wish I could claim it was the androgynous Ziggy Stardust that started me off as a fan, with his golden moon disk and flaming red hair, as well as his fluid sexual and gender identities.

For me, though, it will always be the Bowie who invaded my television set that December long ago.

Godspeed, Starman.t Gwen Smith wishes she could have given him a hug. You can find her online at www. gwensmith.com.

AIDS grove awards six scholarships compiled by Cynthia Laird

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he National AIDS Memorial Grove has awarded six undergraduate students each with a Pedro Zamora Young Leaders Scholarship for their commitment to active roles of public service and leadership in the fight against AIDS. The scholarship is named in the honor of the late AIDS educator, activist, and reality television pioneer

who died more than 20 years ago from AIDS-related illness.

This year marks the largest distribution of funds from the program with a total of $40,000 awarded to six undergraduate students, some of whom are two-year scholarship recipients with $5,000 awarded in 2015 and 2016, according to a news release from the grove.

The six recipients will each receive $5,000 to support their educational goals as they continue to provide much needed leadership and community service in HIV/ AIDS public awareness and prevention, public policy, and treatment and support for people living with HIV/AIDS. “We are pleased to see the growth of the Pedro Zamora Young Leaders Scholarship and see first-hand how our support is helping the next generation of leaders who are actively engaged in AIDS-related work,” John Cunningham, executive director of the National AIDS Memorial Grove, said in the release.

Scholarship recipients include: Raymond Jackson, who is working on his associate degree in business administration at Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey. Jackson’s goal is to work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its global health economics de-

partment. In addition, he is working as a peer educator at Project WOW, part of the North Jersey Community Research Initiative, where he has the opportunity to share his personal story of living with HIV and educate his peers of the importance of protecting themselves.

Adrian Nava, who is a secondyear recipient and third-year student at the University of Denver. He plans on completing his bachelor of arts in international studies and sociology.

Uzo Okoro, who is a senior at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, majoring in public health. She plans to attend medical school at Brown.

Abdon Orrostieta, who is a second-year recipient and junior at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He volunteers with Latino Salud, a nonprofit community- and minority-based HIV agency that provides HIV rapid testing and linkage services making Ryan White Treatment Modernization Act support and other medical services accessible to HIV-positive individuals.

Shira Smillie, who is a sophomore at the University of Richmond in

Courtesy PRNewsFoto/National AIDS Memorial Grove

Chanel DeLaney, left, and Mark Ng greet scholarship recipient Abdon Orrostieta at the National AIDS Memorial Grove.

Virginia double majoring in American studies and Latin American Latino and Iberian studies. Shira works at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing on an HIV/STI prevention program for black youth with mental illness.

Manuel Venegas, who is a two-year scholarship recipient and first-generation Mexican-American college student at the University of Washington in Seattle. He serves on the Seattle LGBT Commission and hopes to

strengthen his voice as a community advocate, and leverage his perspective as a person openly living with HIV. The scholarship program began in 2009 and is funded primarily through grants provided by UnitedHealthcare, Wells Fargo, and Project Inform. For more information about the scholarship program and the AIDS grove, visit http://www. aidsmemorial.org.

See page 10 >>

Neighbors rally for Castro fire victim

by Sari Staver

E

Steven Underhill

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Rick Gerharter

Medardy Westrum looks over the blackened ruins of his kitchen.

ight months after Medardy Westrum canceled his household insurance, a fire in his Castro apartment destroyed almost everything.

Now, friends are crowdfunding to help him get back on his feet.

Westrum, 74, a retired fabric designer, was vacationing in Thailand on December 16 when a one-alarm fire broke out in his one bedroom apartment at 20th and Collingwood streets.

See page 7 >>

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Community News>>

January 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

API Wellness Center CEO wins sabbatical grant

by Matthew S. Bajko

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he CEO of the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center in San Francisco has won a sabbatical grant and plans to take a temporary leave from the nonprofit agency later this year.

Lance Toma, whose previous job title as executive director was recently changed, was among six other leaders of Bay Area nonprofits awarded an O2 Sabbatical Award

by O2 Initiatives. Begun in 2014, the awards are given to “exceptional leaders” of nonprofit agencies in San Francisco and Alameda counties.

According to O2 Initiatives, each year it plans to hand out up to six awards, which come with $40,000 for the awardee’s organization toward the cost of a three-month sabbatical. An additional $3,000 sti-

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Castro fire victim

From page 6

When Westrum, a gay man, logged onto his email from his friend’s apartment in Bangkok, “my landlord sent me a note that he was very sorry to tell me that my apartment had been totally destroyed,” he told the Bay Area Reporter in an interview.

“For a few minutes, I was in total shock and disbelief,” he said. “Then I just started crying.”

The landlord, Ted Liebst, who lives upstairs, said Westrum’s smoke alarm alerted him to the fire, which apparently started in Westrum’s bedroom. The fire department responded within four minutes after the 3:40 a.m. call, but most of Westrum’s possessions were damaged by fire, smoke, or water, he learned.

A spokesman for the fire department said the blaze was under control about 45 minutes later. The cause is still under investigation.

“I couldn’t decide if I should get on the next plane home or just stay away until I could move back” into the apartment, said Westrum. His Bangkok hosts urged him to stay put for a few weeks while he made long distance arrangements to put his life back together.

With nowhere to live in San Francisco (all three units had to be evacuated) Westrum contacted friends in the city, “who have all been so amazing” in extending help, he said. Liebst promised to repair the building as soon as possible, but the renovations will take at least seven to nine months. In an interview, Liebst confirmed Westrum’s account.

In the meantime, Westrum had no insurance and realized his monthly Social Security checks and savings would probably not be adequate to pay for his living expenses until he could move back into his rent-controlled apartment.

Friends, including Matt Levine, launched a Gofundme campaign, which so far has raised $4,640 of the $15,000 goal.

When Westrum returned to San Francisco in mid-January, his first visit to the damaged apartment, “started the tears flowing again,” he said.

A few things that were salvaged went into storage and, other than that, “I have the clothes in my suitcase and my car,” a 1988 Acura with 90,000 miles, which was stolen and recovered two weeks before the fire. Dozens of his antique fabrics were sent to a specialty dry cleaner in Hayward, and people there felt they’d be able to restore them, Westrum said.

With demolition scheduled to begin in late January, Westrum began to research options that might be available. Gay Supervisor Scott Wiener put him in touch with a city agency that is helping him search for an interim apartment and friends offered him clothes and a place to stay.

pend is given to the agency to cover the cost of hiring an interim leader (or leadership team) during the executive director’s absence.

O2 Initiatives also offers coaching in partnership with CompassPoint and, at the request of award winners, may also grant up to $7,500 to pay for ongoing professional development at their nonprofit. The money is meant to help the agency start a Staff Professional Development Fund that would be an ongoing line item in its budget.

“The stresses and demands of nonprofit leadership can take a toll on even the most energetic of executive directors. Intellectual, creative, emotional, and physical burnout pose a risk to the health of these individuals and the organizations they lead,” states O2 Initiatives on its website. “A sabbatical rejuvenates

these individuals so they sabbatical sometime after may return to their orgaOctober. The award stipunizations with renewed lates his leave must begin vigor and perspective.” no later than January 1, In the last two years 2017. several leaders of LGBT Once complete Toma nonprofits have taken sabintends to return to leadbaticals after leading their ing the agency, which agencies for prolonged provides various health Jane Philomen Cleland terms. Some have returned services to LGBT people to their jobs, while others API Wellness as well as straight clients, opted to resign. many of whom are people Center CEO Masen Davis left the Lance Toma of color who live in the Transgender Law Center, city’s Polk Gulch and Tenas did Carolyn Laub from the Gayderloin neighborhoods.

Straight Alliance Network. Positive “I’m fully committed to leading Resource Center Executive DirecAPI Wellness Center toward our tor Brett Andrews and Our Family long-term vision of health, wellCoalition Executive Director Judy ness, and equality for everyone, Appel both returned. especially people of color and the Toma, who will mark his 10th LGBTQ community. I’m taking the anniversary leading API Wellness sabbatical to support myself and Center this fall, intends to begin his my organization in building the

resilience, sustainability, and capacity to meet this goal now and into the future,” Toma told the Bay Area Reporter. “In fact, the point of the O2 Initiatives program is to ensure nonprofit leaders stay in their roles.

I am not leaving API Wellness Center. I am definitely returning after my sabbatical.”

During his three-month absence, the agency as of now plans for its chief financial officer, Yvonne Watson, and chief medical officer, Dr. Tri Do, to fill in for Toma.

“Our executive leadership team and the organization will take advantage of executive coaching and sabbatical planning support from CompassPoint prior to the start of the sabbatical period to ensure we are prepared to lead in Lance’s absence,” agency spokeswoman Stephanie Goss told the B.A.R.t

“It could’ve been worse,” said Westrum. “Nobody was hurt.”

Westrum said he has learned from the experience.

“One message I would like to get out,” he said, “is that for a city as rich as San Francisco, the resources for someone like me are pretty much non-existent.”

He said that a Veterans Administration social services office told

him that housing assistance was only available to those who’ve been homeless on and off for at least a year. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “You would think they’d want to prevent homelessness.”

Westrum grew up in rural Washington state but had his eye on San Francisco after he visited an aunt who moved to the Bay Area. He attended night school at the Univer-

Now, he is wondering whether he might return to personal training.

“I’m asking around,” he said. “It’s an option.”

“I’m still in shock,” said Westrum, looking around his apartment. “All my artwork is gone.”

“But,” he added, “I survived.”

Westrum’s Gofundme campaign can be found at https://www.gofundme.com/grgqrczu.t

sity of San Francisco, working days at a variety of jobs including as an assistant buyer at the Emporium.

Westrum began his painting career while in college and rapidly developed a following of collectors, showing in New York and Palm Beach galleries. He also worked as a fabric designer and later spent two decades as a personal trainer and competitive body builder.

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<< Sports

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

Shining through the rains

by Roger Brigham

P

lanning winter sports events in the Bay Area has always involved close consultation with the weather forecast, which day by day seems not to change.

Last year every day pretty much was mild but dry, no precipitation.

Ditto the year before.

This year? Enough rain to make every outdoor soccer field suitable for a water polo match.

The best alternative to El Niño so far has been a trip to Las Vegas, where the ninth annual Sin City Shootout was just held. The low-cost, bare-bones sports festival – all competition and parties, no formal conferences and ceremonies – has grown from its modest beginnings as a winter break softball tournament into one of the biggest and most successful LGBT sports events. This year the event offered 23 sports and drew an estimated 8,500 participants.

The Shootout’s success drawing athletes in big number sports such as soccer, softball, and basketball is not surprising: the attraction of a lowcost tournament run with minimal host interference in a major entertainment tourism destination is a unique treat. More surprising is the success smaller sports such as wrestling and powerlifting, which historically have been reliant on enormous international events such as the Gay Games, have had in bringing together critical levels of participation.

This year the festival added swimming, arm wrestling and power lifting.

“It was an extremely busy year,” Eric Ryan, director of the Shootout, said. “Every year some of the sports start out slow and then take off in a year or two, while others just skyrocket from the beginning. We had a few issues this year, such as the city parks department turning off lights \

on fields that were supposed to be on, or having gates locked that were supposed to be open, but overall we were able to handle everything and have a great event.”

Participants in the wrestling and grappling events put on by Southern California Wrestling Club were gushing on social media about the experience.

“Participation, inclusion and personal best at its best,” San Francisco’s Gene Dermody wrote on Facebook.

“An awesome day of competition. Our largest turnout, most competitive, and still very diverse. The smiles tell it all. When you consider the low costs, the opportunity, the camaraderie, the great clinicians Tyler Marghetis, Matthew Kaiser, and Hudson Taylor, and 20 percent off food in the Tropicana restaurant, it is absolutely an annual event not to be missed.”

Wrestlers came in from Australia, Canada, and Great Britain.

“I was glad to see so many old friends and make a few new ones,” wrote Mike Sammons of Great Britain. “Time to lie down and see if I can remember anything from the clinics. I expect to be insufferable at my next Brighton practice: ‘Hey guys, here’s a cool move I learned in Vegas!’”

Closer to home, a number of options remain to escape the daily deluge.

Skiing and snowboarding: All this wet stuff we are sloshing through down here means tons of fluffy stuff on the slopes at local ski resorts – a much-needed boon after the paucity of snow the past couple of years. SAGA North Ski and Snowboard Club is a fun group to head to the hills with and has ski weekends scheduled for north and south Tahoe through March.

For information, visit http://www. saganorth.com.

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Hiking and walking: Since you’ve decided to be out to your friends, you should really get out and join the Gay and Lesbian Sierrans as they tramp about exploring the beauty of the Bay Area. The weekend of February 19 members will be enjoying a weekend of snow in Norden with the opportunity for sledding and snow shoeing; before that, the club will host a strenuous 10-mile hike Saturday, January 23 along the Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline, and a stroll through the Mission district Wednesday, January 27 to enjoy the social and political narrative of local murals and community gardens. For information, see http://www.glshikes.org.

Basketball: Have you gotten the itch from watching the adventures of Steph Curry and Draymond Green as they lead the assault on the NBA record book? You don’t need a team but can meet a lot of players in the weekly Sunday pickup games in the Mark Bingham Gymnasium at Eureka Valley Recreation Center, 100 Collingwood Street, run by the San Francisco Gay Basketball League. Open play is held from 5 to 8 p.m. and costs $5 per night. For information, visit http://www.sfgba. com.

Wrestling: If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to roll around on the mat and test your mettle and muscle against your peers, you’ll be glad to know that San Francisco is home to one of the few USA Wrestling charter clubs and is open to all comers regardless of gender, age, skill level, or health status. Instruction at Golden Gate Wrestling Club

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Courtesy Wrestlers WithOut Borders

Wrestlers WithOut Borders Chairman Chris Lorefice meets up with Federation of Gay Games President Kurt Dahl at the wrestling clinic during Sin City Shootout.

focuses on two forms of discipline – freestyle and grappling – although other forms such as scholastic folkstyle and Greco-Roman are also observed. Practices are held Tuesday and Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons in the upstairs room at Eureka Valley Recreation Center.

And if you want to compete against your peers, you can start preparing for the annual Don Jung Memorial Freestyle Tournament, which will hold its 30th edition Folsom Street Fair weekend in September. For information, visit www.ggwc.org.

Swimming: OK, maybe with all of this water surrounding you, you should surrender to the impulse and start swimming again. The folks to hook up with are on the

San Francisco Tsunami Swim team.

Training sessions will be held with the reopening of the Mission Pool in early March and the King Pool at the end of January. Visit http:// www.sftsunami.org for contact information. Water polo more your speed? Nothing could be more invigorating. Check out http://www. tsunamipolo.org for information on San Francisco Tsunami Water Polo.

Softball: Don’t wait for the passing of El Niño to register for the spring season of the San Francisco Gay Softball League. Numerous teams are currently scheduling tryouts for the squads that will compete in nine men’s and women’s divisions. For information, visit http://www.sfgsl.org.t

Clothier Wilkes Bashford dies

by Cynthia Laird

C

lothier Wilkes Bashford, whose clients at his eponymous store included many San Francisco luminaries and politicians, died Saturday, January 16. He was 82.

According to media reports the cause of death was prostate cancer.

While Mr. Bashford never publicly identified as gay in media stories, he long supported LGBT and AIDS causes.

Thomas E. Horn, the former publisher of the Bay Area Reporter and vice president of the War Memorial Board of Trustees, said he met Mr. Bashford, who was president of the board at the time of his death, decades ago.

“I met Wilkes through mutual friends back in the late 1970s or early 1980s,” Horn said in an email.

“He always had a smile on his face and a kind word to say to everyone.

He was a true ‘gentle man.’ Back in the heyday of Polk Street, I would run into Wilkes, his dog (always a dachshund), and his always hunky limo driver in the finer establishments such as the PS Restaurant.

Bob Ross was running the PS back then and Frank Banks and John Gooch would star at the piano bar.

It was a magic time, and Wilkes was one of San Francisco’s truly unique characters. I will miss him enormously.”

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee issued a statement over the weekend praising Mr. Bashford’s civic commitment.

“San Francisco is deeply heartbroken by the sudden passing of Wilkes Bashford, the dapper business and civic leader that represented the best of our city,” Lee said.

The mayor added that the Wilkes Bashford Company started in downtown San Francisco in 1966 and “has grown in success over the last five decades.”

See page 10 >>

Rick Gerharter

Wilkes Bashford, right, holding one of his beloved dachshunds, speaks with a friend at a Pets Are Wonderful Support benefit at the Mansion in 1991.

Obituaries >> Grahame “Gugs” Perry December 10, 1969 – December 21, 2015 Grahame was a dedicated son to Maxine and Ronald Perry (both deceased), beloved partner to Maurice Lin, and loving brother to Danielle Perry. For friends and family of Grahame, a memorial ceremony and party celebrating Grahame’s life will be held at 1:30 p.m., Saturday, February 13 at the Jewish Community Center, Kanbar Hall, 3200 California Street, San Francisco.

Please RSVP through Evite at http://evite. me/CJRtU3qXku. Born in London, Grahame immigrated to the U.S. with his parents and sibling in 1969. Grahame graduated from UC Berkeley in 1983 (B.A., psychology). At Berkeley, he was instrumental in leading the Lesbian/ Gay Union, and also in initiating a Gay and Lesbian Studies Program for the Associated

Students. Grahame moved to his favorite city, San Francisco, in 1997, and retired from his IT career in his early 40s.

Grahame possessed many talents and intelligences, and full-heartedly committed himself to each of his endeavors. He was a dedicated volunteer with Project Inform.

Grahame organized Cheek to Cheek, a social dance group, which performed in the 1989 San Francisco Pride Parade and at the 1990 Vancouver Gay Games. Later, Grahame choreographed and taught salsa dance at City College of San Francisco, and performed with his dance group. As a photographer, Grahame was an active member of the 81 Bees photo collective. His genres included night photography, urban landscapes, and panoramic images. Grahame also expressed art and social activism through his longterm HIV-positive survivor photographic projects, “Every AIDS Obituary,” “Am I Blue?” and “Materials of Survival” – shown frequently in galleries and exhibitions. Many of his photographs and listings of his published photo books can be found at http:// grahameperryphotography.com.

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Community News>>

Property crimes

From page 1

homeless population, a conclusion that cannot be proven. Some homeless people are among those committing crimes, he acknowledged.

While walking on the street, Perea suggested that in addition to “being aware of your surroundings,” people not use “those large ‘steal me’ headphones” that are an obvious target.

Park Station Captain John Sanford said police officers are trying to do things in a “smarter” way, despite lower than desirable staffing levels.

One strategy, he said, is to “redistribute personnel” based on ongoing analyses of crime patterns. The alley behind Safeway on Market, for example, had “literally hundreds” of people in homeless encampments, he said. Police patrol there every evening as well as responding to calls, he added.

Ingleside Station Captain Joseph McFadden, whose district includes

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Openhouse

From page 1

The agency’s new community facilities will be named the Bob Ross LGBT Senior Center. The first 2,700 square feet of space, to be located at 65 Laguna Street, will open this fall in the ground floor of Richardson Hall, formerly a part of the UC Berkeley Extension site at the corner of Laguna and Hermann streets.

“Bob Ross is a pioneer of this community that really helped transform it into an LGBT community that takes care of itself and takes care of each other,” said Openhouse Executive Director Seth Kilbourn.

“I think that is what Openhouse is about and we are proud of honoring that legacy of bringing the community together.”

Providing senior housing and services to LGBT people was always something Ross felt was needed, said Thomas E. Horn, president and trustee of the Bob Ross Foundation.

“Bob at one time had a vision of creating an LGBT retirement center with low-income housing up in the Russian River in Guerneville,” recalled Horn, who was named the executor of Ross’ estate upon his death in 2003. “He had gone as far as purchased property with cabins on it to have low income housing for LGBT seniors in Guerneville. It ended up falling through because of all the permits and bureaucratic hurdles.”

Ross, who lived a few blocks away from the 55 Laguna site, and Paul Bentley launched the B.A.R. in 1971, with Ross becoming the full

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Out in the World

From page 3

wan. Last year, Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice found that 71 percent of Taiwanese favored legalizing same-sex marriage in a poll and in July thousands of activists marched through Taipei, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

However, the Marriage Equality Bill 2013 has stalled in parliament since it was introduced and passed its first reading that same year.

DPP legislators Cheng Li-chiun and Yu Mei-nu, who originally introduced the same-sex marriage bill in parliament in 2013, plan to reintroduce the bill as soon as parliament reconvenes February 1, reported Foreign Policy. Taiwanese LGBT activists believe in spite of the DPP’s landslide win last weekend it’s still going to be an uphill battle when the bill is reintroduced.

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Political Notebook

From page 5

Richmond) and Rob Bonta (DOakland) and former Assembly members Nancy Skinner and Sandre Swanson, who are now running

Diamond Heights, pointed to a recent case that was solved with cooperation from the public. The socalled wig burglar was reported by several residents, including one who sent video surveillance to Wiener’s office on a Sunday evening. The police were able to apprehend the suspect, McFadden said.

McFadden urged residents to call police if they observe someone suspicious. In the case of the wig burglar, there were some people who observed him and reported it on the Nextdoor website, but did not call police.

People “must document” everything they see, McFadden said, including specifics about someone’s appearance, what they were wearing, and any identifying details on their vehicle. He suggested that people consider keeping copies of police report forms at home.

Suhr, noting the increasing number of homeowners who have installed video surveillance systems at

January 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

their home, said, “If you have video” of a suspicious person on the property, “the district attorney” wants it and “juries expect it.”

“We are a 24/7 shop,” Suhr said.

“All the [police department] captains have email.” He suggested people check on the police department website to send evidence to the captain of the station where the incident occurred. Within three to six months, a new app called Fight Crime SF, will allow Apple and Android cellphone users to send a video to the police, around the clock, Suhr said.

Audience members told of recent brushes with crime. One woman, who did not identify herself, said that a burglar entered their home – while she, her husband, and daughter were there – by using a credit card to jimmy a dead bolt that wasn’t turned all the way. While the incident was terrifying, the woman complimented the police response to their 911 call.

“They were absolutely wonderful in calming us down,” she said.

Another resident reported calling 911 and being put on hold three times before getting through. Wiener acknowledged that the city had been short of phone dispatchers but that the problem has since been resolved.

A Castro man, who described himself as visually impaired, said that the homeless encampments at Jane Warner Plaza have made it impossible for him to navigate the space to board Muni. And another resident wondered why the blocks-long line of tents along Division Street has been allowed to remain there.

Perea explained the complexity of dealing with the homeless.

While it is possible to issue a citation of blocking a sidewalk or living in a tent, it is especially difficult to convince these people to try to find alternatives while it is pouring rain.

And a woman who had just relocated to San Francisco from

New York City, said that she was “shocked” to see how dark it is, especially on side streets. Wiener acknowledged that the lighting in San Francisco was “designed for streets and cars” not for sidewalks and pedestrians.

Wiener urged residents to meet with neighbors and try to determine which spots on their block need additional lighting. “I’ll support you,” he said, once there is a consensus among neighbors.

Although the meeting was billed as a presentation of current property crime trends, questions by the audience on this topic went unanswered.

In an email to the Bay Area Reporter last Friday, Wiener said, “Last night’s community meeting was organized by my office to provide an open dialogue with city officials regarding general public safety throughout the district.”

Thursday’s hearing will be held at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 250.t

Openhouse’s offices inside Richardson Hall will house its staff as well as be the location where it provides case management and information and referral services. The public entrance off Laguna Street will include signage noting the space is named after Ross.

The development’s second building, to be constructed on the parking lot next door, will include an additional 7,000 square feet of space for the senior center. There will be a ground floor lobby area with dropin lounge as well as an art room and exercise area for yoga classes and other physical activity programs.

On the second floor will be a large open space where Openhouse can host social events and activities.

It will also be dividable into smaller classrooms or resource rooms.

The senior center’s two spaces will not be connected but accessed separately by the public from the sidewalk and by residents from interior entrances. The larger event space, slated to open in 2018 with an address of 75 Laguna Street, will include an interior plaque honoring Ross.

“One reason it is really exciting to be moving over there is we will have more space for staff, more space for volunteer training, and more space for service delivery,” said Kilbourn.

“We will have private space to meet with clients. We will be able to offer even more when the new building is built out.”

The Bob Ross Foundation gift equates to $200,000 annually for five years for Openhouse. The money

will likely be used to cover the cost of building out and furnishing the agency’s new offices as well as for direct client services.

“It is an unrestricted gift, which is really wonderful. It allows us flexibility to use the funds as we need them for the priorities of that particular year,” said Kilbourn.

In a statement, Openhouse board President Bill Scherer noted that with San Francisco an increasingly expensive city for nonprofits to operate in, the Bob Ross LGBT Senior Center will be “a permanent home” for the agency and “a sustainable community resource” for LGBT seniors, their caregivers, family and friends.

“This deeply generous gift significantly strengthens our capacity to deliver on our core vision to ensure every LGBT senior has access to safe and stable housing, care providers that understand their lives and opportunities to stay engaged in their community,” stated Scherer. “We’re proud to share and continue Bob Ross’ legacy, while adding critical momentum to our work and breaking new ground for LGBT philanthropy in the Bay Area.”

The naming rights for the residential areas of the two buildings have yet to be secured. Kilbourn said Openhouse is not actively pursuing those fundraising opportunities at this time but would welcome potential offers.

“If someone wanted to talk to us about the naming of the residential spaces, Mercy is open to talking to us about what that may look like,” he said.t

Internationally recognized sex and gender expert Aaron Devor was appointed as the chair of the world’s first transgender studies department at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

The announcement followed a $2 million donation from the Tawani Foundation, founded and led by U.S. transgender billionaire Jennifer Pritzker, reported the Canadian Press. The donation will establish the chair for five years in the university’s Faculty of Social Sciences.

Devor, who estimates that about one in 200 people are transgender, plans to advance the study of trans-

gender individuals working with researchers, students, and community activists focused on a broad scope of topics that affect the lives of transgender individuals.

“Transgender people are among the most disadvantaged in society today. There’s a huge amount of stigma, poverty is rampant, health care is not what it should be,” said Devor, a transgender man who is also a professor in the university’s sociology department. “In order to improve the circumstances of transgender people, we need to have solid research that will give us good data and good foundation for changing policies, for changing practices and for changing hearts and minds.”

Devor plans to explore issues around discrimination, health care, poverty, and suicide, he said. He noted that recently transgender celebrities have been in the limelight, but “that is not the reality for most transgender people’s lives.”

Devor is also an elected member of the elite International Academy of Sex Research and a fellow of the Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality, reported the newspaper. He also has been the author of the last two editions of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s standards of care. The journal provides guidelines to health professionals on caring for gender variant and transgender people.

to advocate for LGBT rights, women, and youth.

“I am standing for election because I believe that our political system, which impinges on every aspect of our lives, should be accessible to everyone,” said Murray, who spoke about reforming abortion laws, equal rights for LGBT people, welfare reform, and safe, economical and green transportation options.

Northern Ireland Green Party leader Steven Agnew praised Murray as a “fantastic campaigner.”

“I am proud to be part of a party that is open and welcoming to all,” he said following Murray’s selection by the grassroots membership in West Belfast.t

against each other for state Senate.

The fundraiser for Lee, who is seeking her 10th term this fall, will take place from 8 to 9:30 a.m. Monday, February 8 at Bell Investment Advisors, on the 16th floor at 1111 Broadway in downtown Oakland.

Tickets begin at $250, while a $1,000 sponsorship includes a photo with Lee and Frank. To RSVP, email events@barbaraleeforcongress.org or call (510) 663-1207.

In other Stonewall club news, current president Brendalynn Goodall

is likely to be re-elected to lead the club for another two-year term. She has led the club since 2012.

“No, I haven’t recruited a successor,” Goodall told the B.A.R. last week, adding that, “I will likely run for re-election.”

owner of the paper about a decade later. He was a founding member of the Tavern Guild, a coalition of gay bar owners, founded Gay Comix, and was active socially and politically throughout his life.

He established the foundation in 1996 to give to a broad portfolio of nonprofits. Up until the gift to Openhouse, Horn said the $5 million awarded by the foundation over the last 12 years has gone to help various agencies cover their operating expenses.

More recently, Horn, who served as publisher of the B.A.R. following Ross’ death until 2013, had sought a way to more publicly honor Ross.

“For some years I have been thinking, when the right opportunity comes along, what would be an appropriate legacy gift, something more permanent and that would carry on Bob’s legacy,” said Horn.

New generation

After the LGBT senior housing project broke ground last spring, Horn began exploring a way for the foundation to make a sizeable donation to it. It is a reflection of how the LGBT community’s needs have evolved, he said, to where one of the biggest unmet needs today are services for LGBT seniors.

“For most of my adult lifetime it has been the AIDS epidemic. Most of my generation and Bob’s generation, we didn’t live long enough to need senior services,” said Horn. “Now we have a whole new generation of older LGBTs who are living with HIV and are going to have the same problem “I don’t think that in the first [parliamentary] session it will be passed,” said Yu, but she believes it’s only a matter of time, she told Foreign Policy.

Canada establishes world’s first-ever chair of trans studies

Courtesy Bay Area Reporter

Bay Area Reporter founding publisher Bob Ross

of aging that everybody else has.”

Mercy Housing, an affordable housing developer, and Openhouse are redeveloping the building at 55 Laguna into the first half of a 110-unit development of belowmarket-rate housing aimed at LGBT seniors. The first 40 units are now under construction and set to be completed by late August or early September.

Although anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, is eligible to apply to live in the building, Openhouse has been working to ensure a large percentage of applicants are LGBT seniors.

The lottery for the Richardson Hall residences is expected to open in late April or early May with the residents selected by early June.

Trans candidate seeks office in Northern Ireland

Ellen Murray became the firstever transgender candidate to run for office in Northern Ireland when she announced her bid to represent West Belfast in May’s election.

This is the first time in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland that a transgender individual has run for office, reported the Independent.

Murray, 22, is running on the Green Party ticket and has pledged

Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at 00+1-415-2213541, Skype: heather.cassell, or oitwnews@gmail.com.

The club will hold its board elections at its February annual membership meeting.t The Political Notes online column will return Monday, January 25.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

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News Briefs

From page 6

EQCA seeks nominees for ‘good neighbor’ award

Equality California is again partnering with State Farm insurance for this year’s Equality Awards and is seeking nominations for the Good Neighbor Award that will be presented at each of the statewide LGBT lobbying group’s galas this year, including the one in San Francisco Saturday, April 2.

In an email sent to supporters, EQCA Executive Director Rick Zbur said that the organization is looking for someone who has

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GLBT Historical Society

From page 1

founded ACT UP/San Francisco in the 1980s, and he was the first national coordinator of the national ACT UP network, known as ACT NOW. While Beswick was the Country Club’s manager, the nonprofit “saw an eight-fold increase in annual operating revenue and eliminated a long-running deficit,” according to the historical society. “At the same time, Beswick spearheaded a capital campaign funded by small donations and in-kind contributions, and planned and implemented a complete renovation of the facility’s interior.”

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Wilkes Bashford

From page 8

“But it was also his lifelong dedication to our communities and our city that I admire the most,” Lee said.

“As president of the War Memorial Board of Trustees, Wilkes oversaw our city’s treasured performing arts venues and recently presided over the reopening and rededication of the War Memorial Veterans Building after a historic multi-year safety renovation. We were fortunate to have called him a true friend of our city.”

In June 2008, after the state Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing same-sex couples to wed, Mr. Bashford promoted the arrival of marriage equality with window displays at his store featuring samesex mannequins. At the time, he said, “It’s an issue of equality. We don’t usually do windows with a political theme, but with this we felt a responsibility as a San Francisco institution of 42 years.”

Of course, the nuptials were short-lived as Proposition 8 passed that November, banning same-sex marriage. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Prop 8 on a technicality and same-sex marriage resumed in the Golden State.

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Bashford hosted the first fundraiser for what was then called Pets Are Wonderful Support for People with AIDS/ ARC, or PAWS for short. Dr. Ken Gorczyca, founding veterinarian of

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Attempted murder

From page 2

inappropriately,” but at first, “he doesn’t strike anyone with it.”

She said that it was only after Hulsey was off the bus and hit Joynes that he stabbed her. Video also shows the two of them standing and arguing afterward, and Hilton said the dispute went on for several minutes.

The incident was a “heated quarrel that escalated, probably unnecessarily, over a window,” Hilton said.

As for the hate crime allegations, she said, “Just uttering offensive words during an altercation doesn’t make it a hate crime.”

Kantrovitz said it’s true that “not every assault with a deadly weapon is attempted murder,” but in the video, Joynes “doesn’t back away,

Residents, property and business

owners, community activists, and others are invited to meet the new leadership team of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District at a no-host mixer Monday, January 25 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at Piano Fight, 144 Taylor Street.

Officials said that the new interim executive director, Steve Gibson with Urban Place Consulting, and his leadership team will be on hand to present the CBD’s programs and ideas for 2016. They will also be soliciting input from attendees.

To RSVP, email katie@urbanplaceconsulting.com.t

In a text exchange, Marke Bieschke, a historical society spokesman, declined to make Beswick available for a phone interview, saying, “We’d like to give Terry a few weeks to settle in and learn more about the organization” first. Bieschke offered to have Beswick email responses to general questions, but the B.A.R. strives to avoid email interviews.

Asked about Beswick’s salary, however, Bieschke provided a response from the group’s new leader that said, “The executive director salary is based on half-time employment to start, at $42,500 annually, plus benefits. The goal is to go to full-time within six-12 months, depending on our success with fundraising for all the society’s needs

during that period.”

The historical society has a budget of about $571,000, according to its tax documents for 2013.

Beswick is still working at the Country Club. John Cunningham, a board member of the nonprofit, said in an email that assistant managers Louis Cullen and Billy Lemon “will be assuming the operating responsibilities during the period of the search for Terry’s replacement,” and a meeting was planned for Tuesday night “to discuss the strategy moving forward.”

Beswick will be available at the museum’s fifth anniversary celebration – “I Love History” – 7 to 9 p.m., Friday, January 29 at the museum, 4127 18th Street.t

made a lasting contribution to the health, well-being, and equality of the LGBT community. For the San Francisco award, the person should reside in the Bay Area. To make a nomination, visit http://action. eqca.org/page/s/eqca-state-farmgood-neighbor-award-nomination.

The gala will be held at the Westin St. Francis, 335 Powell Street.

Tickets are $350 and can be purchased at http://www.eqca.org/ equality-awards/san-francisco/.

Meet new Tenderloin CBD leadership team

PAWS, recalled that the dog fashion show was a success.

“His pioneering fundraising event helped to bring publicity to the fledgling PAWS movement incubating at the San Francisco AIDS Food Bank and allowed the agency to become an independent program by the fall of 1987,” Gorczyca said in an email. “The publicity alerted the San Francisco community that volunteers with the SF AIDS Food Bank were now offering pet food to their clients with AIDS. And there were many more unfilled needs that people with AIDS that had animal companions needed – dog walking, foster care, adoption, social work, veterinary care, and education.”

Gorczyca said that Mr. Bashford’s love of animals foreshadowed the importance that animal companions would play for people living with AIDS. “For the first 15 years of the pandemic, animal companionship was an important ‘therapy’ when there was nothing else non-toxic available,” he explained. “Especially when friends and family abandoned many. Nearly 30 years later, the human-animal bond is more understood and now integrated into medicine and social work.”

PAWS merged with the Shanti Project last year. The doggie fashion show that Mr. Bashford held decades ago eventually evolved into Petchitecture, an annual benefit that showcases dog living spaces. he follows” the couple, while still wielding the knife.

She also said that the progression in his behavior showed what was on his mind: “I’m going to jump off the bus and stab her in the chest.”

Garibaldi said of the attempted murder charge, “I totally understand the arguments from both sides,” but he thought a jury should decide on the count.

He added that Joynes “did make comments that show an intent to kill,” and “enough time” had passed between when he made the comments and when he stabbed Hulsey to show there was “some reflection on what he was going to be doing well before he did it.”

During his remarks at the end of the hearing, Garibaldi repeatedly used male pronouns for Hulsey, which Hilton pointed out as she ar-

Shanti Executive Director Kaushik Roy said that Mr. Bashford would be honored posthumously later this year.

“Wilkes was one of the driving forces to help establish PAWS in San Francisco and the larger national movement to embrace and appreciate the power of the human-animal bond,” Roy said in an email. “He will be missed dearly by the entire PAWS family, and we are planning to do a special tribute in his memory at this year’s Petchitecture – an event which he shaped in our early years.”

John Lipp, a former PAWS chief executive officer, said Mr. Bashford was a “true original.”

“I got to know Wilkes while serving as CEO of PAWS and will never forget lunching with him and Mayor Willie Brown at Le Central,” Lipp said in an email. “Wilkes dined there every day and held court; it was hard for him to get through a bowl of soup as countless people came to his table to pay their respects.”

Lipp added that Mr. Bashford and Emily Scott Pottruck co-chaired PAWS’ 20th anniversary gala in 2007.

“Wilkes was a true original – gracious, caring, passionate, funny, and beyond dapper. He inspired you to be your best and do it with class and style. After leaving PAWS, I would occasionally see Wilkes while in San Francisco. He always greeted me like I was the most important person in the world and would leave me with a huge smile on my face.”t gued against the accusations Joynes was facing.

“With all due respect, words don’t necessarily indicate people’s perspectives,” Hilton said, noting that Garibaldi had repeatedly referred to Hulsey “as a man.”

“I’m certain the court does not have any negative feelings toward transgenders at all,” Hilton said.

Garibaldi apologized for the error and said he was “a bit embarrassed about it.”

Although Garibaldi held Joynes to answer on most charges, he found there was “insufficient evidence” to maintain a false imprisonment count.

Joynes, who sat quietly during Tuesday’s hearing, remains in custody on $2 million bail. His next court date is February 2 for arraignment.t

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 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036863600

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: 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

JANUARY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035706000

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.

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, 2016

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036874600

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 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036875000

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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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.

JAN 14, 21, 28, FEB 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036883200

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JAN 21, 28, FEB 04, 11, 2016

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In the matter of the application of: PETER SHIH, 463 NEVADA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner PETER SHIH, is requesting that the name PETER SHIH, be changed to PETER HUNTER PAINE. 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 10th of MARCH 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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Noir lives

19

Bowie on film

Homeless Maggie

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Out &About

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O&A

16

Vol. 46 • No. 3 • January 21-27, 2016

www.ebar.com/arts

Scott Wells’ variety show

by Paul Parish

J

ust before San Francisco Ballet blows back into the Opera House with a blockbuster Gala Performance that opens the season for big-time dance on the West Coast, a charming and intellectually refreshing evening of dances with ideas in them played in a Mission loft space. The house was full, and wildly appreciative. I’d wager the audience was 80% dancers. The event whetted my appetite for the big blockbuster shows to come. In fact, SFB will be hard-pressed to match the freshness and appeal of the Butoh, ballet, and contact improv dancers Scott Wells invited to riff off each other and mash it up in Take this Dance and Shove It. See page 17 >>

Collage of dancers choreographed by Shinichi Iova-Koga, Amy Seiwert and Scott Wells.

(left to right:) David Papas, Sunhi Mang, David DeSilva

Shapeshifting genders

Miracle on Capp St.

by Richard Dodds

C

onflict resolution has been the basis for centuries of playwriting, with the ancient Greeks providing the template. But playwright MJ Kaufman is about pulling away from the boundaries set by templates, especially in terms of gender, and an ancient Roman helped provide a key into a very contemporary conversation.

by Sura Wood

I

f you had an eccentric, bohemian, artistically-inclined favorite uncle who owned a house that he turned into a cross between a living conceptual-art installation and the movie set of a film that had Marcel Duchamp as adviser and chief mischief-maker, then you may have an inkling of the singular experience that awaits you at 500 Capp St., the 1886 Edwardian-style Italianate home in the Mission District that belonged to the late San Francisco artist David Ireland.

The house, Ireland’s residence for three decades

See page 17 >> Transgender playwright MJ Kaufman’s Sagittarius Ponderosa looks at a young man visiting his family who recall him as a she rather than a he, in a world premiere at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

See page 16 >> Courtesy mjkaufman.com

Henrik Kam, courtesy 500 Capp Street Foundation

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

SATCHMO WALDORF AT THE

David Ireland House (interior view), upstairs hallway with “Broom Collection with Boom” (1978-88).

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<< Out There

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

MARIN CENTER PRESENTS

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David Bowie with The Man Who Fell To Earth co-star Candy Clark.

by Roberto Friedman

W

e all were shocked and saddened at the sudden death of the legendary David Bowie last week, and glad to see so many heartfelt tributes popping up everywhere. Out There has learned that two titans of the SF cultural scene have bonded together to present a full evening of Bowiemania on Sat., March 12. Marc Huestis, out of semiretirement, has put together a grand tribute at our majestic Castro Theatre.

Screening will be Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, with co-star Candy Clark live in person. The sci-fi classic features Bowie in the iconic role as alien Jerome Newton. Academy Award nominee Clark plays his ditzy, boozy love interest Mary Lou, with the classic line, “You know, you’re really a freak. I don’t mean that unkindly, I like freaks!” Amen, sister.

The gala will feature an on-stage interview with the star, queried by the SF Chronicle’s Tony Bravo.

Also on the expansive bill: tribute performances by some of SF’s finest, including Veronica Klaus with Tammy Hall, D’Arcy Drollinger’s Sexitude Dancers, gorgeous Kenshi Westover, Conspiracy of Venus, and a fashion segment by Mr. David & Juanita More. Beep-beep!

Tickets are quickly selling out. Call (415) 863-2098 to snag a few. Afterwards, put on your dancing shoes and head on down to the Oasis, where queen of the night Heklina presents a rocking All Star Tribute to David Bowie. Heckle’s Trannyshack’s Bowie nights were the stuff of legend, and this one at Mother promises to be one for the books, with such underground talents as Putanesca, Kiddie, & Raya Light.

We don’t know if there’s life on Mars, but there’s sure to be life on Planet San Francisco as the stars align for these special events.

Bacon bits

In his marvelous new memoir Francis Bacon in Your Blood (Bloomsbury, $35), author Michael Peppiatt concedes, “There are risks involved when, at the age of 21, you get caught up in a whirl of drink, drugs and gambling, predatory homosexuals, seedy clubs and East End thugs. But if you do survive, what a revealingly accelerated introduction to life it is – and what an unusual story it leaves you to tell.”

At the Soho watering hole the French House, Peppiatt hopes to get an introduction to the genius modern artist Francis Bacon, for an interview in his college literary magazine. He approaches a Bacon

cohort, the photographer John Deakin, who rebuffs him, “Now that she has had an exhibition at the Tate Gallery of London Town and become so fa-mous, I fear she wouldn’t even consider meeting a mere student like you!”

But Bacon, down the bar, has overheard, and exclaims, “Don’t listen to that old fool, I simply adore students. Come and join us. Now what are you having to drink?” Behind his bonhomie and generosity, of course, Bacon had ulterior motives.

He was attracted to young heterosexual men whom he thought were ripe to be “turned.” But as their amitié amoureuse develops, Peppiatt becomes what Deakin calls “Bacon’s Boswell,” chronicling his life and exploits. In fact, he’s written at least four other books on the master painter, but this is by far his most personal. During bar crawls til dawn through Soho and derelict districts, Peppiatt meets a Who’s Who of artistic and literary postwar London, including Sonia Orwell, Lucien Freud, Nikos Stangos, David Plante, Kitaj, Hockney, and Spender.

It’s an embarrassment of riches for a young Cambridge wanker.

Along the way he cites Baconisms like, “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends,” and, “Often, in my painting, I have this sensation of following a long call from antiquity,” and, on Norman Mailer, “I’ve always thought that the way Mailer wears hair on his chest is just like a woman wearing pearls. I mean why is he so keen to convince

everyone he’s so masculine?”

So there’s a lot of wit and adventure recounted here as Peppiatt and others in Bacon’s orbit “revolve on his unique whirligig of posh restaurants, louche bars and kinky clubs,” but due warning: this is a dark read.

Chapters are titled “Consumed by Guilt” and “The Inspiration of Pain” for good reason. Darkest of all is the fate of Bacon’s doomed lover George Dyer, who ODs on pills and liquor just as Bacon gets his landmark retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris. Dyer, who literally fell into Bacon’s life during an illfated attempt to burglarize him, is immortalized in several of Bacon’s masterpieces.

A couple of reservations about the book. First, there’s the matter of a memoir written decades after the fact that reproduces whole dialogues between Bacon and Peppiatt when clearly they are composites of things the author remembers Bacon saying.

The author confronts this problem head-on: “For a long time I didn’t even question the fact that I jotted down what happened and what was said when I was with Francis. I even used to joke to myself that if I didn’t get it down the first time I’d record it the next time Francis said it, since he does repeat himself constantly.”

The second qualm is more philosophical. Can Peppiatt, an admitted heterosexual, adequately portray the inner life of Bacon, a kinky and, by this account, tormented homosexual? What kind of real insight could he have into the artist’s deep, dark relationship with George Dyer? Does a critic have to be queer to appreciate a queer? Jury still out.t

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<< Film

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

The dark arts at the Castro Theatre

t

by Tavo Amador

T

his year’s Noir City film festival (Jan. 22-31) at the Castro Theatre shows that artists can be dangerous or find themselves at risk. The Art of Darkness series opens with Alfred Hitchcock’s scary Rear Window (1954). Manhattan photojournalist L. B. Jeffries (James Stewart) breaks his leg on a shoot.

Confined to his apartment, he spies on neighbors with his camera.

When one disappears, he fears she’s been murdered. Sexy fiancee Grace Kelly gets into trouble investigating.

Shrewd Thelma Ritter is his nurse, and cold-eyed Wendell Corey the skeptical detective. Gay Raymond Burr, before TV’s Perry Mason, thinks he has committed the perfect crime. Hitchcock combines humor and romance, and builds to an unforgettable climax. Screenplay by John Michael Hayes from a short story by gay noir master Cornell Woolrich. Costumes by Edith Head.

Franz Waxman wrote the effective score. “The Great Bernzini” (Joe Pesce) is The Public Eye (1992), set in the grim underworld of 1940s Manhattan. Bernzini’s knowledge makes him a threat to many.

Loosely based on the career of news photographer Arthur Fellig. Written and directed by Howard Franklin.

(1/22, evening) Before becoming TV’s Lucy Ricardo, Lucille Ball spent 18 years in movies playing beautiful, smart women. She’s at her sharpest trapped in The Dark Corner (1946).

As private eye Mark Stevens’ savvy Girl Friday, she helps him solve a murder in the world of fine arts, personified by the gay screen metrosexual Clifton Webb. With a brutish William Bendix before he became lovable on TV’s The Life of Riley. Excellent direction by Henry Hathaway. Screenplay by Jay Dratler and Bernard C. Schoenfeld. Based on a Leo Rosten story. Atmospheric cinematography by Joe MacDonald.

George Steele (Pat O’Brien), an art curator in a small museum, knows a trainwreck caused his Crack-Up (1946). But almost everyone thinks

<<

Capp St.

From page 13

until several years before his death in 2009, is possibly his greatest, most enduring achievement, and his legacy. The building was rescued from oblivion and the rapacious real estate market by Carlie Wilmans, an arts patron and granddaughter of local philanthropist Phyllis C. Wattis, who bought the failing, fragile 122-yearold structure for $895,000 in 2008.

She was instrumental in establishing the 500 Capp Street Foundation, which acquired over 2,500 art objects from Ireland’s estate, and is organizing a series of talks, residencies and rotating exhibits. Wilmans and her team of conservationist and architectural collaborators wanted a dynamic breathing space, not a shrine or an airless museum, and they’ve succeeded in their mission. After a construction-renovation-stabilization project that began nearly two years ago, and an infusion of $2 million, the house finally opened to the public last week.

To borrow an old art-historical expression: it’s way cool.

Ireland, whose art practice embraced sculpture, painting, architecture, printmaking and performance, had a unique take on everyday, discarded objects. He tweaked expectations of materials such as the small mounds of concrete that he molded like play dough into decorative blobs that also provide bases for lamps and candle-holders, as well as filling polished silver dessert dishes that would otherwise serve ice cream; he liked to give the latter to friends as gifts.

James Stewart is a Manhattan photojournalist in Alfred Hitchcock’s scary Rear Window (1954).

he’s crazy, including his boss, who fires him. Fortunately, reporter Claire Trevor believes him. With Herbert Marshall and Ray Collins, later Lt. Tragg on TV’s Perry Mason.

Solid direction from Irving Reis.

Screenplay by John Paxton, Ben Bengal, and Ray Spencer, from a story by Frederic Brown. (1/23, matinee) Argentine noir Los Tallos Amargos (The Bitter Stems, 1956) finally has its American premiere, thanks to a restored print from the Film Noir Foundation. Buenos Aires reporter Carlos Cores joins a correspondence school scam, with unforeseen consequences. Fernando Ayala directed. Screenplay by Sergio Leonardo, from a novel by Adolfo Jasca. Flicka och hyacinter (Girl with Hyancinths, 1950) is a rarely seen Swedish noir. A young couple is stunned when their beautiful neighbor commits suicide. They learn they’re her heirs. Her estate includes a mysterious portrait of herself with hyacinths. The husband investigates. Directed by Hasse Ekman. Hailed as a masterpiece by Ingmar Bergman. Both films with English subtitles. (1/23, evening) Classical pianist Bette Davis commits Deception (1946) when her old lover, cellist Paul Henried, unexpectedly re-enters her life. She’s now the mistress of The entrance of the modest house is no longer through the original front door but on 20th Street, the former storefront of an accordionmaker who once owned the house and whose sign remains etched in the window. Ireland purchased the house from him for around $50,000 in 1975 – think on that one for a moment.

Once inside the foyer, you know this is no ordinary place; you’ve entered a slightly bent artistic imagination, an evolving canvas orchestrated by an offbeat sensibility.

Climb a creaky wooden staircase and find curving mustard-colored walls varnished to a high-sheen and pistachio-green moldings and doors.

In one alcove sits a three-legged chair, defying the laws of physics by remaining upright, with a hole where the seat ought to be. If only these walls could talk, they might speak of an exceedingly delicate restoration without the violence of hammers and nails, where adhesives were gently applied to the plaster with hypodermic needles.

Ireland wittily cultivated the possessions of the previous owner, a salvage project that resulted in “Broom Collection with Boom” (1978-88), an installation loaned by SFMOMA. Evidently, he was a compulsive sweeper who kept a broom handy in every corner of the house.

Ireland assembled and linked them together with wire into a tilting, partially open circle. Like an enchanted chorus that escaped from the clutches of the Wicked Witch of the East, they’re now tethered with said wire to a half-moon-shaped

a malevolent maestro, the great Claude Rains. This menage a trois turns deadly. Davis and Rains are mesmerizing. Irving Rapper directed, from a screenplay by John Collier and Joseph Than, based on Louis Verneuil’s play. Music

by Ernest Wolfgang Korngold. In Humoresque, glamorous, wealthy Manhattan socialite Helen Wright (a riveting Joan Crawford) is drawn to poor but virile violinist Paul Boray (John Garfield). “Bad manners – the infallible sign of genius,” she purrs, initiating a doomed romance.

The finale has Crawford, gowned

by Adrian, walking into the sea listening to Wagner’s Liebestod.

It’s irresistible. With wisecracking Oscar Levant. Top-notch direction

by Jean Negulesco. Sharp screenplay

by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold, from Fanny Hurst’s novel.

Magnificent cinematography by Ernest Haller. (1/24, matinee & evening) The terrific Gloria Grahame is In a Lonely Place (1951) when she meets a volcanic Hollywood writer (Humphrey Bogart) whose career seems over. She can provide an alibi that may clear him of murder. He falls in love with her, but his volatility scares her. Nicholas Ray directed this emotionally authentic noir, and had a hand in the screenplay, officially by Andrew Solt and Edmund H. North,

who adapted Dorothy B. Hughes’ novel. Grahame was Bogart’s best costar in his post-Lauren Bacall period.

The inevitably compelling Barbara Stanwyck falls in love with mentally ill artist Bogart and becomes one of The Two Mrs. Carrolls. Gorgeous Alexis Smith was the first. Did she really die of natural causes? Overwrought, operatic but fascinating. Directed

by Peter Godfrey. Screenplay by Thomas Job, from a play by Martin Vale. (1/25, evening) The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) is surprisingly faithful to gay Oscar Wilde’s suggestive, sinister novella. Hurd Hatfield is beautiful, ageless, corrupt Dorian. Oscarnominated Angela Lansbury is an exquisite Sybil Vane – anyone who would hurt her is truly cruel.

George Sanders is a flawless Lord Henry Wooten. Lowell Gilmore is painter Basil Hallward. With Donna Reed and Peter Lawford.

The homoeroticism is palpable. The reasons for Dorian’s nocturnal visits to seedy waterfront dives remain mysterious, and intriguing. Directed and adapted, brilliantly, by Albert

Henrik Kam, courtesy 500 Capp Street Foundation

David Ireland House (interior view), downstairs dining room showing details of “Shrine to Natalie Wood” (1992).

rock on the floor in the upstairs hallway, in case they’re compelled to fly out the window under the spell of a full moon. Ireland also stored the swept dirt and dust – souvenirs of history, perhaps – in a variety of mason jars. Talk about preservation.

In a sitting room in front of a grey hearth, a waist-high lighting fixture with an exposed orange bulb stands by a chair with a sheepskin throw.

Hanging perilously from the ceiling where a chandelier should be, over a pair of chairs facing each other

across a burled wood table, are two portable propane tanks. They’re filled with gas and can easily be prompted to elicit flames. Caution: It’s best not to light up a cigarette here. In the bedroom, on the wall above the headboard, an enormous rack of Kudu antlers presides. There are many bleached animal skulls with antlers scattered about the house, holdovers from Ireland’s time as an African safari guide. A slate gray industrial sink and cabinet, contemporary design elements

Lewin. Eric Portman walks through A Corridor of Mirrors thinking he’s a reincarnated Renaissance artist and Edana Romney is his lover from the past. Reality clashes with this dangerous fantasy world. With Christopher Lee in a bit. Directed by Terence Young. Christopher Massie adapted his novel. (1/26, evening) Doris Day plays 1920s singer Ruth Etting pleading Love Me or Leave Me (1955). Oscar-nominated James Cagney is the gangster who wants to control her in the name of love. Both stars are at their best. This dark mix of music and melodrama is upsetting and touching. Charles Vidor directed. Adapted by Daniel Fuchs and Isobel Lennart from Etting’s autobiography. Costumes

by Helen Rose. Kirk Douglas is a Young Man with a Horn (1950), paying heavily for success. He’s torn between supportive Day and dangerous, bisexual socialite Lauren Bacall. Directed by Michael Curtiz.

Written by Carl Foreman and Edmund H. North, from a novel by Dorothy Baker. (1/27, matinee & evening)t also found in the kitchen, aren’t as jarring as one would expect; the same could be said of a gray square concrete slab on the far wall. A tan torpedo shape cuts a diagonal across it like the hand of a modernist clock; the torpedo was a prevalent motif in Ireland’s artwork.

But it’s the dimly lit dining room, which would fit right into the décor of a European homestead in Africa, that’s the culmination of the eclectic ambience. A tall, carved chair heads the end of an exceedingly long, very narrow, deep-brown wooden table.

The reincarnated workbench, now decorated with metal candleholders set in concrete, was the scene of many boisterous evenings with fellow artists and the aspirants Ireland nurtured.

Cabinets around the room are lit from within; spooky and intriguing, their contents are a mix of oddities and sculptures, mementos of travels or experiences dreamed rather than lived. A set of jagged-toothed animal jaws rests on a sideboard; the shelves above contain color snapshots of his life-long obsession, Natalie Wood.

You can spend hours finding telltale objects, old photos, wire sculptures, unconventional furnishings tooled by the artist, restoration detritus, handwritten notes and phone numbers scrawled on the walls. When you go, try to pack in as much discovery as you can; admission is $20. Reservations for the guided group tours are strongly recommended and a must for the next couple of months.t Info: 500cappstreet.org.

t <<

Dance>>

Scott Wells

From page 13

Even had it failed, Wells’ experiment would have been worth making. The Bay Area has the largest, most varied dance community in the whole country outside New York; the area is teeming with talent.

One of the features of the SF scene here is cross-training, and not just in the studio, but on stage, performing with dancers trained in other lores – tap and Kathak, say, or Chinese and West-African. Here’s a rhythm, let’s see what you do with it, that sort of thing. It’s actually a tradition here.

As it happened, Take this Dance was very entertaining, a variety show with each form getting to shine in its own way for a moment, then yielding without prejudice to something completely different.

Sometimes the dancers would have a solo. Sarah Griffin had an exquisite ballet solo, with her legs unfurling in exquisite patterns. It was just long enough to make you want more. But then Miriam Wolodarski (contact improv) made a little speech in Swedish before demonstrating a slomo, one-legged squat, descending smoothly all the way to the floor, resting her butt on her heel. And then it turned out that all of them could do that – and they did.

Wells chose his collaborators well.

He himself came to dance through wrestling and yoga; so did Shinichi Iova-Koga, of InkBoat, who started as a kid in Japan with Judo and Aikido. Seiwert’s male dancer, the wonderful Scott Marlowe, not only could do cartwheels and log rolls

January 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

with the best of them, he has the stage presence of an actor. (He was the star of the indie gay movie Test, which won the 2013 Outfest Grand Jury Award.)

Periodically, as Seiwert and Wells would insert themselves as choreographers into the action, the process of dance-making got revealed in many facets, with mutual respect paramount. Allen Wilner’s intelligent lighting helped unobtrusively. It’s wonderful to see dancers think, make decisions, grab another’s idea and make something of their own out of it, or challenge each other to repeat the movement they’d just done, with a different emphasis. Iova-Koga showed how to fall off a stool in slow motion.

This kind of show succeeds, not by demonstrating Opera House production values, but by showing movement ideas aborning, which makes an immediate appeal to your imagination. The tone of the evening was perfectly managed. We got to see each of them excel at what they do themselves, and enjoy how game they were at trying things they were not already skilled at.

It was curious to notice how striking the imagery was, especially the sculptures created by the ballet and Butoh dancers, and how an evening without much rhythmic interest could still hold your attention all the way. What would it have been like with some syncopations?

All of the performers were wonderful. The remaining cast were Dana Iova-Koga, Virginia Broyles, and Shira Yaziv.t

Transgender performer SK Kerastas has the lead role in New Conservatory Theatre Center’s world premiere of Sagittarius Ponderosa, its first play authored by a transgender playwright.

<<

MJ Kaufman

From page 13

Around the time that Kaufman was writing Sagittarius Ponderosa, having its world premiere Jan. 30 at New Conservatory Theatre Center, this emerging playwright was also learning about an unusual form that Ovid used in his first-century epic poem Metamorphoses. Then a student at Yale School of Drama, Kaufman was taught about Ovid by widely produced playwright Sarah Ruhl.

“Usually in a story, a character changes or transforms, and that’s the resolution of conflict. In Ovid, the characters shape-shift a lot, and it’s about the landscape, not the resolution of a particular conflict,” Kaufman said, finding the notion of constant change an inspiring way to write in a different way about gender, because the most stories about trans people generally are a transition story. “Like there are two gender boxes, and a character is in one and then moves to the other, while I think that a lot of us are different genders in different spaces.”

While this gender fluidity is about freedom of personal expres-

sion, it can also be a much more practical matter. “I think that a lot of trans people around me shapeshift constantly in order to stay safe,” Kaufman said. “There can be a harsh price to pay for a certain kind of gender non-conformity. Those were some of the questions I was exploring at the start of the play, and it also ended up being a love story about a young person taking care of a dying parent.”

Sagittarius Ponderosa takes place in Kaufman’s home state of Oregon, albeit among the ponderosa pines rather than urban Portland. The main character has taken the name Archer, after his Sagittarius birth sign, although the family he has come home to visit are used to calling him Angela. His mother, father, and grandmother often find themselves tripping over such pronouns as “he” and “she,” with the former being Archer’s preference. Kaufman herself uses variations on the gender neutral “they,” which can be awkward at first. “It’s kind been of an explosion of language,” they said.

See page 22 >>

MARILYN MAYE

PAMELA JOY

PAULA WEST

January 28 - 29

February 10

February 11 - 12

For tickets:www.feinsteinsSF.com Feinstein’s | Hotel Nikko San Francisco 222 Mason Street 855-MF-NIKKO | 855-636-4556

<< Film

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

David Bowie up on the Silver Screen

by David Lamble

I

n the end the human being born David Robert Haywood Jones in Brixton, England on Jan. 8, 1947 was shooting for the stars – even if he had to ditch his surname, dye his hair, learn an instrument, switch countries, and tell the Queen to go stuff herself. Indeed, a star he became, complete with a symbolic star on Hollywood Blvd.

The man who became David Bowie, a.k.a. Ziggy Stardust, didn’t actually make all that many movies – the whole process was a tad slow for his liking – but the ones he deigned to appear in are, on the whole, a cut above the ordinary.

Topping the list is 1976’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed

by Nicolas Roeg and featuring a 29-year-old androgynous Bowie as an alien who visits our wet planet in hopes of finding water for his very dry one.

The Man Who Fell to Earth would prove to be the Bowie film template: he portrays an otherworldly creature who inspires a perilous mix of lust, envy, and S/M control issues – ultimately, it’s the perfect paradigm for the science fiction world’s ongoing warnings of doom for our species.

The movie is a good adaptation of Walter Tevis’ novel. Descending upon Earth like a comet, Bowie’s alien quickly discovers a group of curious humans and makes them an offer they won’t refuse: the financial rewards from nine basic patents that outstrip existing human technology in several distinct areas.

The movie benefits enormously from the quirky charisma of two

David Bowie is an alien on a mission in The Man Who Fell to Earth.

oddball character actors: Rip Torn as an avuncular quasi-mad scientistacademic, and veteran screenwriter Buck Henry, known for his huge contributions to The Graduate and Catch 22. A witty subplot involves Henry’s character being married to another man who’s curious and extremely nearsighted. Henry reportedly wondered out loud why his character was gay.

With Candy Clark as the nattering love interest for the alien, The Man

Who Fell to Earth remains a highly watchable science fiction drama, whose only rival comes from the work of Spielberg and Lucas.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) This English language debut feature from Japanese master Nagisa Oshima plays on the surface as a kind of hipster remake of David Lean’s multi-Oscar POW camp classic The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The film is essentially a battle of cultures and wills between a stiff-

necked Japanese camp commander and a steadfast British major (Bowie). Supporting player Tom Conti steals some of the dramatic thunder as a bilingual prisoner, but the film is evidence of just how good Bowie could be if he were cast for his acting abilities, as opposed to his pop-celebrity freak status.

Labyrinth (1986) One of the strangest entries on the Bowie film resume, this Jim Henson (of the Muppets) -directed kids’ tale involves

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Bowie as a “King of the Goblins” creature who abducts a teen girl’s baby brother. Good of a kind.

The Hunger (1983) Director Tony Scott’s stylish female vampire movie really bugged mainstream movie-maven Leonard Maltin, but for those who don’t find a Catherine Deneuve/Susan Sarandon bed scene to be an appalling excess, there’s a great Bowie aging scene that’s a worthy showstopper.

Prestige (2006) Christopher Nolan’s multi-star (13 good names) drama about a turn-of-century (19th into 20th) magic show (adapted from Christopher Priest’s novel) is again a matter of taste, and represents the last major screen outing by Bowie.

There’s a revealing Bowie quote from 1983, found on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB), that succinctly sums up the dilemma facing “Ziggy” as he fielded film offers. “I get offered so many bad movies. And they’re all raging queens or transvestites or Martians.”

From 2002: “I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual.

But I had no inclination to hold any banners or be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter and a performer, and I felt that bisexuality became my headline over here for so long.

America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.”

Much of what he wanted to do was his music, 26 albums in all. The films were an extra treat, hopefully the basis of a future Castro Theatre retrospective.t

Oscar predictions 2016

by David Lamble

F

rom big bets at office-party pools to once-a-week movie buddies recalling what they’ve seen for the year, Oscar-night picks remain a favorite spectator sport. Despite the insane proliferation of TV awards shows, Oscar night on ABC, from the red carpet to the Best Picture prize to the talk-show recaps, is still numero uno.

Predictions this year are tough because, as one critic opined, it was a year chock-full of worthy number twos, with really no consensus Best Picture. For queer film fans, a banner night for the Todd Haynesdirected, lesbian lovers drama Carol would be thrilling.

Best Picture In the Rolls Royce Best Picture category, my choice is split between two multi-star ensembles that delve behind the scenes of bigtime chicanery: Adam McKay’s The Big Short, about the wolves of Wall Street hijacking our economy and producing the big bust of 2008; or The Boston Globe’s unmasking of the 2002 Catholic priest/altar boy scandal, Spotlight. Both films represent Hollywood muckraking at its finest.

Sadly, recent insider forecasts suggest that the lost-in-space drama The Martian may steal everyone’s lunch, pushing past the 1950s immigrant tearjerker Brooklyn, the Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies, and the dark horse comic-book-style sequel Mad Max: Fury Road.

Best Actor In this year’s Best Actor showdown, if his fur-trapper character in The Revenant almost losing his manhood to a bear in the woods doesn’t secure a top trophy for Leonardo DiCaprio, nothing ever will. This prodigiously talented, widely popular actor has to be the sentimental favorite. Sentiment aside, Matt Damon’s lonely astronaut may be looming, passing Bryan Cranston’s showy take on

Scene from Adam McKay’s The Big Short, a favorite for Best Picture.

a persecuted 50s screenwriter in Trumbo, Michael Fassbinder’s heroic stab at humanizing the repellent Apple computer founder Steve Jobs, or Eddie Redmayne’s saucy crossdressing in the queer pick The Danish Girl.

Best Actress The top-actress pick is less controversial. For me, it’s hands-down Cate Blanchett depicting an older glamorpuss lesbian lover in openly gay director Todd Haynes’ lushly mounted Carol.

Cate should be wary of the plucky Jennifer Lawrence’s semi-comic take on a working-class first-time inventor in Joy, not to mention Brie Larson’s embattled kidnapped mom in Room, Charlotte Rampling’s austere comeback as the angry wife just learning that she was not her complacent husband’s first love in 45 Years, or the critically acclaimed Saoirse Ronan’s take on a young Irishwoman coming to Gotham city in Brooklyn.

Best Supporting Actor I have to admit, the Best Supporting Actor nominations really ticked me off for Academy voters’ scandalous neglect of Paul Dano for his energetic and soulful impersonation of Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson in the underappreciated Love and Mercy.

And to think that Sylvester Stallone is the overwhelming favorite for his revival of the tired Rocky franchise (Creed) is truly galling. Runnersup: Christian Bale (The Big Short), Tom Hardy (The Revenant), Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight) and Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies).

Best Supporting Actress My pick is Rooney Mara’s exuberant supporting turn as the shopgirl swept off her feet by an older woman in Carol, over Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight; Rachel McAdams, Spotlight; Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl; and Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs.

Best Director Logically, the Best

Scene from Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, another favorite for Best Picture.

Director should be connected to the already-named Best Picture.

Therefore, Adam McKay (The Big Short) and Tom McCarthy (Spotlight) split my vote over George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road), Alejandro Iñárritu (The Revenant) and Lenny Abrahamson (Room).

Foreign Language Film In a field of mostly underpublicized underdogs (Embrace of the Serpent, Mustang, Theeb, and A War), the Holocaust drama Son of Saul should once again reaffirm Oscar voters’ decided preference for this tragic era.

Adapted Screenplay Fair or not, the winners in both screenplay categories tend to be consolation prizes for films that lost out in the Best Picture and Director races. Or, if it’s one of those weird “big-sweep winner” years, the bandwagon merely sweeps them up. My pick is for the lesbian-themed Carol over The Big Short, Brooklyn, The Martian, or Room.

Original Screenplay The only chance for an upset here is if Oscar voters toss a consolation bone to the African American drama Straight Outta Compton over Bridge of Spies, Ex Machina, Inside Out and Spotlight.

Animated Feature Film I’ll go for Shaun the Sheep Movie, the stop-action animation British entry that was a real charmer and an innovative contribution to the art-form. Runners-up: Anomalisa, Boy and the World, Inside Out, and When Marnie Was There.

Of the ragtag categories, during which many viewers make pizza runs, my choices zero in on Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom in the documentary feature category; and a bio-doc, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, in the short doc department, a longoverdue tribute to the creator of perhaps the single most important oral history of this horrific era.t

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Film>>

January 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Maggie Smith goes homeless

by Erin Blackwell

M

aggie Smith is old now. As of December 28, she is 81.

Few actresses make it to this sort of finish line. Watching her earlier in her career, say The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), one might not have backed her in the longevity sweepstakes. Surely her febrile, high-strung air of manic daredevilry, plus acid tongue and no meat on her bones, would use her up fast. Sometimes it’s the sinuous, anxious ones with a work ethic who endure. She repeats her 1999 stage triumph as a mad homeless woman in Alan Bennett’s screen adaptation of his play adapted from field notes and always called The Lady in the Van, opening Friday, Jan. 22, at the Clay and Century 9.

The Lady in the Van is drawn from Bennett’s experience as a homeowner on whose front drive in 1974, and by invitation, Miss Shepherd parked the van in which she was living, to thwart the parking police of Camden Town. Bennett rides a bike, doesn’t need a drive, thinks nothing of a gesture that makes the neighbors shudder and

wince. No one wants a smelly, pigheaded, cantankerous, divinely guided right-wing old harridan, except this one particular 40-yearold gay writer with an eye for the social outcast, who doesn’t mind a sharp daily dose of madness on his doorstep. God bless him.

Charity, a dirty word in these cruel times and one Bennett would never use, is nevertheless the greatest form of Love, and powers his meditation on old age, shit, and alienation. Does he feel guilty he’s not spending time with his actual mother, a widow starting to drift gently off into obsolescence? Or is Miss Shepherd simply Bennett’s ideal mum? Proud, private, and it turns out, also an artist, a pianist.

The doubling of the mother is matched by the splitting of Bennett into he-who-sits-by-the-windowand-writes and he-who-interactswith-the-world. Both Bennetts are played precisely by Alex Jennings.

The depiction of plucky survival is thus paralleled by scenes of a writer’s life, which is seen to amount to a certain resignation to the stories that impose themselves.

On the stage, The Lady in the Van

Sony Pictures Classics

Maggie Smith plays the title character in The Lady in the Van.

ran three hours in preview, two-anda-half-hours on opening; the film runs under two hours. The essence of this story is detail accumulated and juxtaposed with further snippets.

It makes for choppy storytelling.

Onstage you can suggest what on film must look real but can feel stolid. Indeed, Gloucester Crescent and Bennett’s actual house comprise the film set. Nicholas Hytner,

who brilliantly staged the original play, does not find an equivalent cinematic style. He borrows from the Harry Potter franchise a cheery hyperrealism peopled with British stage greats, and ladles on an orchestral score that overwhelms the stark joy of this eccentric saga.

I saw Lady in the Van at the Queen’s Theater in London, sitting beside a large drunken blonde in

full-length sable, in 2000. I couldn’t believe Bennett had managed to get a West End audience to sit still for this very queer story of a gay man’s relationship with a madwoman.

Maggie Smith was the lynch-pin.

Every fiber of her being was invested in the gamut of Miss Shepherd’s existential struggles, alternately pompous and abject, dotty and hawk-eyed, ridiculous and sublime.

As an audient, I was shredded by pathos and simultaneously buoyed by this singular character’s apotheosis.

Deification on a London stage for one old lady does not, alas, translate into more charity in the streets.

Au contraire. There are now many more homeless, stateless, abandoned, bombed-out, unemployed, and immigrating people than in 1974.

The concern today is for security, not charity. Paranoia is a way of life.

The Lady in the Van seems like a fairy story and will be viewed by many as “mere” comedy, by which they mean insignificant. The film made me weep, because despite its flaws, The Lady in the Van is a big-hearted film about the difficult daily rituals that keep body and soul together. One of them is art.t

‘Danish Girl’ vs. ‘Carol’

by Brian Bromberger

I

t was a banner December for LGBTQ film audiences, with two major movies addressing gay/ lesbian/transgender themes: The Danish Girl and Carol. The former elicited generally an emotionally cold response while the latter mostly thrilled viewers. One wonders why two LGBTQ pictures, both period pieces directed by openly gay filmmakers, could draw such opposite reactions.

One major point of separation between these two films is that The Danish Girl is more or less a Hollywood production, while Carol is an independent movie. The Dan-

ish Girl is directed by Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), who deserves credit for using his clout in convincing producers to make a film on a transgender woman, still mostly a taboo topic in La-La Land. The plot revolves around Einar Wegener, a successful landscape painter in 1920s Copenhagen who lives with his portrait-artist wife Gerda. Substituting for an absent model his wife needed, Einar puts on a dress and silk stockings, slowly transforming himself into Lili Elbe parading her new identity in public.

In the early 1930s she became one of the first recorded recipients of experimental sexual reassignment surgery in Germany, while Gerda hit it

big painting Lili.

The movie is based on David Ebershoff’s 2000 Lambda Awardwinning novel, inspired by the real Lili’s diaries and letters published after her death. The Danish Girl is gorgeously photographed with stunning art direction and sumptuous production design, a staid, genteel costume prestige drama with a decorous exterior but nothing substantial underneath, least of all any raw emotions. What drove

Einar to become Lili, a life-changing decision? What inner turmoil was experienced in order for her to express her true self? How did this transformation affect Lili’s formerly sexually playful relationship with Gerda? None of these questions are broached, as the film never gets a grip on the sexual identity issue.

Instead we are given a superficial though well-intentioned attempt to make transgender people palatable to mainstream audiences. Lili is

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.

Eddie Redmayne plays the title character in The Danish Girl.

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.

Wilson Webb

Cate Blanchett plays the title character in Carol.

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

ironically rendered sexless, the movie hinting she died a transgender virgin, historically inaccurate. What is worse is what isn’t said, that Gerda was a bisexual who enjoyed painting nude women. Theirs was likely one of the first open modern marriages, but you would never know that from the movie. Gerda becomes the devoted-to-the-end wife, while Lili is made into a martyr, with See page 22 >>

<< Out&About

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

O& A

Mexicanos al Grito de Guerra @ Mission Cultural Center

by Jim Provenzano

Fri 22 Compagnie Hervé Koubi @ ODC Theater

S

torytelling, in epic and intimate styles, keeps our cultural myths alive, and gives birth to new ones told from unlikely voices. Listen and watch as ancient stories become new.

Lou Damars

Thu 21 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

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

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. www.tenderloinmuseum.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

Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin @ Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts The acclaimed pianist-actor, whose shows portray various composers, performs as he tells the inspiring life story of the prolific songwriter. $35-$100. Thru Feb. 14. 500 Castro St., Mountain View. (650) 463-1960. www.TheatreWorks.org

Internet Cat Video Festival @ YBCA 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

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

Luz Marina Ruiz @ Manna Gallery, Oakland Exhibit of fascinating multimedia sculptures. Artist reception Jan. 21.

Thru Feb 13. 473 25th St., Oakland.

Fri & Sat 12pm-5pm. (510) 277-5972. www.mannagallery.com

Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels Wheeled fun at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the “Godfather of Skate,” including Saturday’s Black Rock night (Burning Man garb encouraged). 7pm-10pm.

Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm-5:30pm. $10. Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Tue 26

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. Thru Feb 13. $5. Tue-Sat 10am-5pm. 2868 Mission St. missionculturalcenter.org

Winter tales NEAT @ Contemporary Jewish Museum

Compagnie Hervé Koubi @ ODC Theater

You Know I’m No Good, NEAT: New Experiments in Art and Technology, Chasing Justice (thru Feb 21) , and Hardly Strictly Warren Hellman.

Lectures and gallery talks as well. Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. thecjm.org

The West Coast debut of the FrenchAlgerian male dance company’s What the Day Owes the Night, a stunning blend of gymnastic, modern dance and ballet. $30-$45. 8pm. Also Jan. 23, 8pm. Jan 24, 2pm. 3153 17th St. 863-9834. www.odcdance.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

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Jan. 21: Sketchfest presents NPR’s Ask Me Another. $35. 8pm. Jan 22-31: Noir City 14, The Art of Darkness (www.noircity.com). 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

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

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

The Odyssey: From Vietnam to America @ YBCA Forum Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning composer Vân-Ánh Võ’s musical epic story of Boat People escaping war. $15-$30. 8pm. Also Jan. 23.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Porchlight/Sketchfest @ Various Venues Funny, touching storytelling as part of the annual comedy fest. Jan. 22: Jon Daly, Moshe Kasher, Jackie Kashian, Aparna Nancherla and Iris HaasBiel at Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market St. $20. 10pm. Jan 25: open mic five-minute story at Hemlock Tavern, $5, 7pm. 1131 Polk St. Jan. 26: Beyond Folsom Street Blue, with Ed Wolf, Jennifer Joseph and Janet Delaney at YBCA, 701 Mission St. www.porchlightsf.com

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

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

Sun 24 Abrazo, Queer Tango @ Finnish Brotherhood Hall, Berkeley Enjoy weekly same-sex tango dancing and a potluck, with lessons early in the day. $7-$15. 3:30-6:30pm. 1970 Chestnut St., Berkeley. (510) 8455352. www.finnishhall.com

Yo-Yos & Half Squares @ Oakland Museum Yo-Yos & Half Squares: Contemporary California Quilts (five women artists), thru Feb 21. And, Unearthed: Found + Made, featuring Jedediah Caesar’s geological sculptures; thru April 24. Free/$15. Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Lesbian and gay comics Ash Fisher, Karen Ripley and Sampson McCormick return with their hilarious shared comedy show. $15. 8pm. 18+. 444 Battery St. punchlinecomedyclub.com

Wed 27 Here Now @ Noh Space Screening of Here Now: Digital Stories from the San Francisco Jails, a storytelling-performance-dance film by Amy Dowling, created with San Francisco Jail #5, Community Works, Resolve to Stop the Violence Project, University of San Francisco’s Performing Arts and Social Justice Department and the Bay Area Video Coalition. Free. 7pm. 2840 Mariposa St. www.theatreofyugen.org

Natural Beauty @ Marin Center Natural Beauty: The Art and Artists of West Marin, a group exhibit of paintings, water colors, landscapes and paper works depicting Northern California. Repection Jan. 20, 6pm.

Thru March 30. 10 Ave. of the Flags, San Rafael. www.marincenter.org

Senior Singers @ Herbst Theater Seven choirs of 200 older adults perform a special concert, in celebration of Community Music Center’s 95th anniversary. 2:30pm.

401 Van Ness Ave. www.sfcmc.org

World premiere of MJ Kaufman’s whimsical play about a transgender man who returns to visit his Oregon family. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Feb. 28. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. 861-8972. nctcsf.org

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

Fri 22

The Mousetrap @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley

My Spirit Animal is a Butch Lesbian @ Punch Line

Sagittarious Ponderosa @ New Conservatory Theatre Center

A Song at Twilight @ Z Below

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

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

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

Baruch Porras-Hernandez and Blythe Baldwin cohost the vibrant eclectic reading night. 7pm-10pm. 2919 24th St. 282-9246. www.mtbs.com

Sat 23

Taylor Mac @ Curran Theatre

Mother’s Milk @ The Marsh Berkeley

Mel Shaw: An Animator on Horseback @ Walt Disney Family Museum

Queer Open Mic @ Modern Times Bookstore

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

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. TheRhino.org

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Avenue Q @ New Conservatory Theatre Center

D.I.R.T. @ Dance Mission Theater Dance In Revolutionary Times presents 18 choreographers in a weekend of three programs of new dance and performance works. $15$50. Sat & Sun, pm. Thru Feb. 7. 3316 24th st. at Mission. (855) 787-5237. www.dancemission.com

From Our Own Hands @ Glama-Rama Salon Group exhibit of varied visual art (paintings, stained glass, jewelry, photography) by the hair salon’s talented staff, including Leigh Crow, Tina Sogliuzzo, Lady Nigel, Dottie Lux, Gunner & Deena Conway-Davenport and Jennifer Hoffmann. Thru Feb 7.

304 Valencia St. 861-4526. www.glamarama.com

Sat 23 Zoe Kelin in D.I.R.T. @ Dance Mission

Mon 25 Best Gay Erotica Contributors @ Strut Local authors Rob Rosen, Vincent Meis, Rick May, and Dale Chase read from their stories in Best Gay Erotica of the Year, Vol. 1. 8pm. 470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

PWR BTTM @ Rickshaw Stop The New York power-punk duo performs; Dude York and Try the Pie also play. $10. 8pm. All ages. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com www.pwrbttm.bandcamp.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

Thu 28 David Cross @ Davies Symphony Hall The sardonic comic and TV actor performs his new show, Making America Great Again! $35. 8pm. 201 Van Ness Ave. www.livenation.com

Literary Speakeasy @ Martuni’s The monthly reading event at the intimate martini bar’s lounge this time features Cassandra Dallett, Willian Taylor, Jr., Tarin Towers, and Elizabeth Creely. James J. Siegel MCs. 7pm. 4 Valencia St.

Marilyn Maye @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Music veteran performs her classy cabaret tribute to the songs of Johnny Mercer. Also Jan. 29. $45-$65. 8pm.

(2-drink min.) Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (855-636-4556. feinsteinsSF.com

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Books>>

January 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Complicated unions

by Tim Pfaff

G

arth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a short novel about a small subject that gets it exactly right. The writing is so good, so ensnaring, it may net a large readership. There will be talk that it is “about desire,” about “sexual obsession,” about the consequences of both, and the talk won’t be wrong; it will merely miss what makes this book singular and important. What’s great about it is not how universal it is but how special it is in the strictest sense of the word. We who do know its terrain, by heart and by the soles of our shoes, will be amazed we’re reading it, that someone could and would write it with such specificity and candor. It’s the novel that Isherwood – and Forster, Baldwin, Maugham and even White – might have written, didn’t write and maybe dodged. However small in size, What Belongs to You is a novel no one would call A Little Life.

In that post-postmodern way, it’s precisely about what doesn’t belong to you. It’s an unflinching look at the way commercialized sex, particularly when protracted over time with an individual, actually works in places where beautiful, sexy men are also, frequently, conveniently poor.

Bravely, the book is in significant part about how commodified sex routinely consumes the consumer, high heresy in contemporary, international gaythink.

There won’t be a debate about whether it is a gay novel, despite the indeterminate sexuality of its central character, Mitko, whose name was the title of Greenwell’s earlier run at this story, a 2011 novella from Miami University Press. Mitko’s sexuality is unclear in terms of preference – the thing, besides money, that he doesn’t have – and of identity-recognition in his own, unsafe culture. The narrator of Greenwell’s new novel

goes unnamed, putatively because his American name is “more or less unpronounceable [in Bulgarian].”

He is, we learn, a teacher at the American College in Sofia.

We first meet him, however, in a subterranean public toilet, a sepulcher for the walking dead in which timeless, timeworn urban sex rituals play out in an olfactory miasma of metallic water, fermenting urine and cheap booze. He tries to insert himself into “the halting conversation” of a tearoom scrum with what little he can muster of the local slang. The drunken colloquy acquires focus only when the hottest of the guys starts stroking the promising bulge in his jeans. “He rubbed the first three fingers of his other hand together, making the universal sign for money,” the narrator notes about the moment when the deal is cinched. “There was nothing in his manner of seduction, no show of desire at all: what he offered was a transaction.” Minutes into the ensuing sex act (as it can only be called), he adds, “I knew he was performing a desire he didn’t feel.”

Then, correctively: “I was performing too, pretending to believe that his own show of passion was a genuine response to my own desire, about which there was nothing feigned. As if he sensed these thoughts he pressed me more tightly to him, and for the first time I caught, beneath the more powerful and nearly overwhelming smell of alcohol, his own scent, which would be the source of the pleasure I took from him and which I would seek out (at his neck and crotch, beneath his arms) at each of our meetings.”

Despite the exchange of damp bills of a devalued currency, no one exactly scores – or even, in the strictest sense, gets off – by the time the scene has played out.

But the grinding wheel of shifting domination and ownership has been set in motion. The remainder of the novel that’s about the two men re-enacts “how helpless desire

is outside the little theater of heat.”

The scene is as raw as anything in John Rechy, yet in it and thereafter the writing is almost Jamesian. The grammatical subject of the book’s first sentence is a “that” clause, and that particular “that” falsely alleges a personal “betrayal.”

All the prose that follows is sophisticated, urbane and, despite surface resemblances to the loping, comma-salted, hearme-sing-w ithout-breathing style of Greenwell’s idol Hanya Yanagihara, is more like a novel Henry James might have written had he lived in our time, gotten out more and been candid about it.

It would be a disingenuous pleading of my own case to say that the narrator is a nice guy, but clearly he means to have a culturally sensitive work-adventure in the hinterlands, where of course he will tackle the language first thing, and have a little fun while at it, both with the language and otherwise. What I will say is that any gay expat – and I’ve been one in Southeast Asia for 15 years – will immediately recognize crucial common elements of the scenario.

Greenwell provides hundreds but none other so vividly as the prompt colonization of a “host” expat’s apartment – an utterly unconscious but triumphal imposition of a postimperial dynamic – by the visiting “guest.”

Of the novel’s several such events, my favorite is Mitko’s first sleepover. Studiously steering events away from the bedroom, and from his persistently clothed crotch, Mitko is immediately all over the host’s laptop, listening to local karaoke, Skype-chatting with friends and visiting sex sites where he finds former clients and makes assignations with them and maybe some new ones. Feeling not a little

Dance feverish

by Gregg Shapiro

T

hese days, dance music is showing up in some unexpected places. The title of Glaswegian group Belle and Sebastian’s splendid new record Girls in Peacetime Want To Dance (Matador) should have been a clue as to the direction they’ve taken.

Belle and Sebastian are no strangers to danceable pop, but many songs on Girls in Peacetime are downright clubby. The exhilarating electro of “Enter Sylvia Plath” deserves to be a tea dance standard. “The Party Line” is a sexy, throbbing number sure to set booties to bumping and hips to shaking “to the beat of the party line.” The seven-and-a-half minute “Play for Today” and the funky, flirty “Perfect Couples” also enchant.

Don’t be put off by its name, because Night Terrors of 1927 is a riveting live act. The mixed gender band led by the unlikely pairing of Jarrod Gorbel (of emo act Honorary Title) and Blake Sennett (of hipster band Rilo Kiley) makes unexpectedly dancey music on its debut album Everything’s Coming Up Roses (Atlantic). The funky rock of “When You Were Mine” (featuring Tegan and Sara) and “Running in Place” are custom-made for loft dance parties swarming with urban pioneers. Gorbel’s emo vocals work well within the dance framework.

Joywave is an exciting band to catch in concert. The electronic dance band is fronted by Daniel Armbruster, whose hipster-nerd appearance belies the electro genius within. The question in Joywave’s

debut album’s title How Do You Feel Now? (Hollywood/Cultco) is easy to answer after the first listen. Elated, mesmerized and addicted are three words that come to mind. Dancefloor delights “Carry Me,” “Tongues” (featuring Kopps), and “Feels Like a Lie” deliver swells of ecstasy.

Big Data, aka Alan Wilkis, has lots of cool friends and calls on them on his debut album 2.0 (WB/ Wilcassettes/Crush). Guest artists are heard on the songs they cowrote with Wilkis. Joywave makes an appearance on “Dangerous,” co-written by Armbruster. Other collaborations include “Clean” with Jamie Lidell, “The Business of Emotion” with White Sea, “Get

Some Freedom” with Dragonette, and “Sick for Me” with Bear Hands.

Faceless corporate prog-rock confection Imagine Dragons (starting with that name!) incorporated electronic and dance elements into the songs on its 2012 debut breakthrough Night Visions.

On the follow-up, Smoke + Mirrors (Kid in a Korner/Interscope), ID wastes no time in hitting the dancefloor on the appealing opener “Shots.” “Gold” makes interesting use of samples and rhythms. “I’m So Sorry” has a stomp worthy of vintage Billy Squier, while “I Bet My Life” imagines Mumford & Sons as a clubbier act. “Friction” warms up the strip-club-grind vibe.t

demoralized, the narrator turns to “a slim volume” of (yes!) Cavafy, in the hopes that the words of the poet laureate of sex with the underclass will bring succor.

However: “My fatigue was a kind of agitation now, I kept opening and closing the book I held unread on my lap. I couldn’t find what I had found in it before, the recovery of something like nobility from the mawkishness of desire, the sense that stray meetings in dark rooms or the shadowy commerce of my own evening could burn with genuine luminosity, rubbing up against the realm of the ideal, ready at an instant to become metaphysics.”

The cost to the soul of mingling sex with commerce has featured in English writing at least since Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale” (although plain old unremunerated adultery beats it out every time). But while Greenwell’s book clearly falls within a larger literary tradition, its genius is what’s unique to it in both content and style. His gift rarer than it should be in writers: the ability to walk not just up to but into and through an experience with eyes and ears, in fact the whole sensorium, open, and the willingness to report back truthfully.

What Belongs to You has far better breeding than Larry Kramer’s Faggots, but it has its own way of allowing that love is seldom free, even when paid in full. Only our narrator comes out of this duo wiser. Both men are brought down,

if not diminished, but in the end Mitko shuffles off into a likely brief future that will be characterized by nothing so high-minded as tragedy. The poor are always with us, until they are not.

What will startle many readers is that the men become friends of a sort, which is not to say that they almost become friends but that, in their complicated union, they can accuse one another of being friends, just friends or not good-enough friends, all the while intertwined. It’s Greenwell at his most eloquent: “He lay like some marine creature wrapped around me, wrapping around me again if I shifted or half woke, and I slept as I have seldom slept, deeply and almost without disturbance, held like his beloved or his child; or held, I suppose it must be said, like his captive or his prey.”

“Gift” is another of the book’s many leitmotifs. Only too late does our narrator learn that the extraordinary gift he has – one that a barely comprehending Mitko would have coveted had he even thought it was there for the wanting – is that the other people in his regular life, like school, know that he is gay and make nothing of it.

While the Mitko timeline is linear, Greenwell shuttles, with no grinding of gears, both back and away in time, to lyrical episodes featuring children who are vital, safe and loved as well as to the horrors of the narrator’s own childhood, rendered with as little self-pity as possible while remaining emotionally forthright.

I’ll be thinking about the boy on the train forever, seeing everywhere the progressively older boys and men he has turned into. It will require no such act of imagination on my part to recall the portrait of the narratorartist as a young son disowned by his father over an involuntary erection.

We don’t get to keep memory, What Belongs to You tells me. It has a mind of its own. Writing alone holds experience in place long enough to explore it, if never completely. In the end, what belongs to you is the book.t

<< Theatre

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 21-27, 2016

<<

MJ Kaufman

From page 17

The play, being directed at NCTC

by Ben Randle, served as Kaufman’s thesis production at Yale in 2012, and has since gone through various readings, including one at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre as a winner of its 2014 Global Age Project. “I pretty much felt it was ready to go up on stage after the Yale production,” Kaufman said, though still making tweaks as it moved along. “It’s a play of not many words, so changing even one word makes a big difference,” Kaufman said. “When NCTC called and said they wanted to produce it, I

<<

Danish Girl vs. Carol

From page 19

the following postscript: “Her bravery and pioneering spirit remain an inspiration for today’s transgender movement.” The same sexless martyrdom theme met gay computer genius/suicide casualty Alan Turing in last year’s The Imitation Game, which gave the lion’s share of the movie to his fraught “heterosexual” romance with fellow Enigma decoder Joan Clarke. This nonsexual friendship was a minor one in Turing’s life, and during his WWII Bletchley Circle days he had gay sexual affairs, never mentioned in the movie.

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had two more readings lined up, so I had a chance to think about every single word. I loved the journey.”

Kaufman has no interest in discussing their personal journey, and said the play should not be seen as autobiographical. “None of the characters are very much like members of my family,” they said, “but I think that something about the relationships is translatable, what it’s like to be intimate with someone whose frame of reference is so many years older than yours, and changing the way they think about the world.

This play is a lot about a father who dies, and my father died when I was in high school, which I’m sure was a

big part of working on this play.”

In addition to Archer’s family members, the characters include a young man working among the pines as a student arborist. Owen’s first meeting with Archer beneath one of the oldest trees quickly becomes sexual. “I was writing Owen as queer, so he sees Archer exactly how Archer needs to be seen.

I was kind of writing those scenes like a heightened fantasy, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where you could meet a magical lover who would understand things about you.”

Another character who’s not part of Archer’s family is an elderly man represented by a puppet. “After

Pops dies, that actor becomes the puppet operator for Peterson, so in my imagination part of Pops gets recycled into this other character.”

Kaufman, coming to SF for final rehearsals and opening night, now splits their time between Philadelphia, where their girlfriend lives, and New York, where theatrical opportunities are more abundant. Kaufman also teaches at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, where they are also working on their newest play. “It’s about our transgender ancestors, and how do we find them in history, and sort of imagining Joan of Arc as a trans ancestor.”

Queer-gender issues and characters have been moving into

the mainstream, but with a catch.

“There is like an explosion of trans people on TV and in the media, but most of it isn’t actually authored by trans people, and that’s frustrating to us,” Kaufman said.

Sagittarius Ponderosa is the first play in NCTC’s mainstage season by a genderqueer playwright and featuring a genderqueer lead character. “I’m so glad that New Conservatory chose my play for this first.”t

In last year’s book It’s Not Over, journalist Michelangelo Signorile borrowed the term “covering” from law professor Kenji Yoshimo to describe why so many queers have jumped on the assimilation bandwagon by downplaying differences to make themselves palatable to straight people. Hollywood eagerly supports covering by depicting film characters who are sexless and thus harmless to reduce the “ick factor,” not scaring away paying heterosexual audiences.

Signorile references a 2014 study from the American Sociological Review that documented that many straights support full civil rights for gays and lesbians, but would

rather not see same-sex public displays of affection or sex scenes.

The Danish Girl could be Exhibit A bolstering Signorile’s argument about Hollywood covering.

But such a case could not be made for gay auteur Todd Haynes’ (Safe) masterpiece Carol, which profiles a forbidden 1950s lesbian romance between wealthy, middle-aged, married but separated Carol Aird and young, single, penniless store clerk cum photographer Therese Belivet, who meet in a department store. It’s based on lesbian crime novelist Patricia Highsmith’s pseudonymously published The Price of Salt (1952). Both escaping from unhappy lives (Carol from her

divorcing husband Harge seeking sole custody of their daughter by invoking a morals clause, and Therese from the unwanted amorous advances of a persistent male suitor), they take a road trip to nowhere as their relationship builds slowly, climaxing to an exhilarating nude sex scene in Waterloo, Iowa.

Meticulously recreating postwar Manhattan, Carol features dazzling photography and dreamy artistic design and costumes, but subverts the intoxicating exterior by overthrowing societal rules imposed on women at that time. Haynes turns the coded language, torrid glances, and whispered secrets of that era upside-down to present a

passionate love affair between two real women who find the inner strength to be who they are, to suffer the real costs of expressing their erotic desires.

The difference between The Danish Girl and Caroil poses the question of what kind of portrayal of LGBTQ people do we want: flawed but real sexual human beings who are approachable as potential role models, or inoffensive plaster saints who seem entombed in history and bear little relevance to current sexuality and gender struggles? The answer to this question could well decide what type of LGBTQ mainstream movies we will be watching in the near-future.t

Sagittarius Ponderosa will run Jan. 22-Feb. 28 at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

Tickets are $25-$45. Call (415) 8618972 or go to www.nctcsf.org.

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SOCIETY

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PERSONALS Vol. 46 • No. 3 • January 21-27, 2016

www.ebar.com V www.bartabsf.com

Bowie by the Bay

A brief personal history of David Bowie’s Bay Area concerts

by Dave Ford

D

David Bowie poses a la Hamlet in his Serious Moonlight tour.

avid Bowie’s January 10 death from cancer proved shattering to millions of long-time admirers and obsessives, myself included.

See page 24 >>

PWR BTTM

Queer punk duo invades the Rickshaw Stop

by Bas Geerling

T

hey never travelled that much, but now their success brings them all across the States. Queer punk band PWR BTTM will leave their upstate New York home and start their first ever West Coast Tour in February, visiting cities such as San Francisco, Portland and Los Angeles. Equally adept at guitar and drums, the duo switch instruments and share the stage with others, even crowd-surf. They’re fun, and are on the cusp of a bigger fandom.

See page 25 >>

PWR BTTM

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Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

24 • Bay Area Reporter • January 21-27, 2016

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forty years old, I waited in line each afternoon for a coveted front row spot. Every performance was fabulous. The band nimbly fleshed out tunes old and new, and Bowie appeared happy and at ease.

After the final show, I swiped from the stage a laminated cheat sheet, with lyric prompts and chord changes, for the 1971 song “Quicksand,” with which Bowie had begun each show, strumming an acoustic guitar. I still have it, of course.

David Bowie in his iconic lightning bolt face paint.

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David Bowie

From page 23

I wasn’t always a fan. In the early 1970s, when I was a closeted San Francisco Peninsula teenager, I found Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane personae off-putting.

But in 1977, Bowie released the brilliant albums Low and Heroes, in collaboration with Brian Eno. By then a more sophisticated college boy, I got Bowie, and was mostly dazzled thereafter.

Though his recorded work was moving, it was in concert that Bowie shone. His early theater training ensured shows that were fabulous spectacles of fashion, dance and music.

I caught him 14 times between the mid-70s and the mid-aughts, twelve of those in the Bay Area.

Herewith, snippets:

April 5, 1978, Isolar II tour Typically, Bowie defied expectation at the start of this show. The house lights still shone when the band ambled onstage and launched into the moody Low instrumental “Warszawa.” Bowie stood unobtrusively behind keyboards; few in the audience noticed him.

The song finished, the house went black, and the band launched into “Heroes” – to predictable bedlam. A spotlighted Bowie, now center stage, wore shiny high-waist trousers, three-button T-shirt and hooded slicker, all in different hues of blue. His hair was a natural brown, his movements economical but dramatic, his voice strong.

The show, encompassing most of the two recent albums and older hits, was transcendent.

Sept. 17, 1983, Serious Moonlight tour Bowie creatively innovative albums Lodger (1979) and Scary Monsters (1980) served as soundtracks to my attempts to figure out early-

adulthood gay identity, which culminated in my moving to San Francisco in early 1983.

That spring, Bowie released Let’s Dance, his most accessible album. I liked it well enough, but was miffed that interviews found the formerly self-avowed “bisexual” now claiming heterosexuality. (The May 12 Rolling Stone cover headline said it all: “David Bowie Straight.”) Fans like me felt sucker-punched, though his claim no doubt contributed to his mass appeal, and satisfied EMI Records, with which he’d signed a $17.5 million deal.

Still, Bowie looked hale for the tour: tan skin, bright blond curls, suits in yellow or blue. Not that I could see as much from mid-field at Oakland Stadium, in those days before video screens. Nevertheless, the music was fierce, the show a delight.

Aug. 7, 1987, Glass Spider tour Dark clouds had amassed over the gay community by 1987: U.S. AIDS deaths topped 4,000 that year, and showed no signs of slowing.

Bowie, whose albums Tonight (1984) and Never Let Me Down (1987) comprise, by his own later admission, his creative nadir, added insult to injury by bringing the ridiculous “Glass Spider” tour to San Jose’s Spartan Stadium.

He sported a dreadful mullet (!).

He wore winged, gilded boots (!!).

Dancers cavorted frenetically. Even with Peter Frampton’s ringing lead guitar, the whole proved disappointing.

Oct. 21, 1995, Outside tour AIDS deaths mounted as the ‘90s wore on. Even some of those in a new young wave of queers who’d enlivened late ‘80s San Francisco began to succumb.

Having toured his greatest hits “one last time” in 1990 (I caught the show at the Shoreline Amphitheater), Bowie settled into marital bliss with the Somalian-born model Iman in 1992. Three years later he reunited with Eno to produce the 1995 album 1. Outside, a sprawling mess that nevertheless had the virtue of being weird and experimental; I loved it.

Bowie’s solo stadium-filling days by now behind him, he cleverly partnered with then-white-hot Nine Inch Nails for a tour. After NiN’s frenetic opening set, Bowie appeared standing motionless upstage (again at Shoreline), dressed in a snakeskin coat and beige Tshirt, his blond hair spiked up. After NiN leader Reznor’s incessant frenzy, Bowie’s stillness pulled focus to him: a brilliant showman’s trick.

He and his band turned in a superb performance.

Sept. 7, 15 and 16, 1997, Earthling tour After presenting moving fivesong acoustic sets at Neil Young’s annual Bridge Show in 1996 (I saw both nights, at Shoreline Amphitheater), Bowie toured the following year behind Earthling, a wild drum n’ bass-heavy album.

I attended all three shows at the Warfield Theater. Although by then

Robin Weiner

Kirsten Riley

Feb. 6, 1976, Isolar I tour I was 19, and my college friend Norman –a mad, Los Angeles-born queen– offered a ticket to Bowie’s Cow Palace concert. I said sure. Before the show, Norman also offered a quaalude. Alas, I said yes to that, too.

Only fragmented memories remain. Bowie, inhabiting the cocaine-addled Thin White Duke persona, wore black trousers and a black vest buttoned over a collared white shirt. He’d shellacked back his orange-blond hair. Vertical whitelight tubes bordered the rear of the otherwise unadorned stage. (All this I took in through binoculars, when

I could focus.)

I recall nothing about the music, I’m sorry to say. I do remember being impressed that Luis Bunuel’s surrealist film Un Chien Andalou screened before Bowie appeared. (Weirdly, the zonked throng cheered.)

I also remember walking the Cow Palace hallways and caroming off the concrete walls. I subsequently swore I’d never be that high for a concert again. (I never was.)

David Bowie onstage for his 1976 Isolar tour.

Left to Right: David Bowie during the Glass Spider tour; the Outside tour; at The Warfield in his 1997 Earthling tour; onstage in 2002.

April 16, 2004, Reality tour Bowie, by now 57 and touring to promote Reality (2003), proved an amiable host for two career-spanning Berkeley Community Theater shows. The high point: a haunting “The Loneliest Guy,” from Reality, and the encore-opening anthem “Slip Away,” from Heathen (2002), backed by choral opening act The Polyphonic Spree. Matchless.

The Reality tour was aborted three months later when Bowie suffered a heart attack. Thereafter he more or less retreated from public life, only re-emerging with the albums The Next Day (2013) and, on January 8 this year, his 69th birthday and two days before he passed, Blackstar, now his first U.S. charttopping album.

Of all the Bowie shows I saw, two stand out. In 1991, Bowie’s shortlived (and quite awful) hard-rock band Tin Machine performed at the cozy South of Market club Slim’s. A friend and I wound up in front of the stage.

So what if the music was trashy?

David Fucking Bowie was standing a foot away from me! At one point I reached my hand to him. He took it, and shook it.

And so, you see, loyalty is rewarded to he who is patient (and who puts up with a lot of crap from him to whom he’s loyal).

The other standout happened on Halloween 1995. My friend Emily and I caught Bowie at the Hollywood Palladium. Near set’s end, he sang Jacques Brel’s lament, “My Death,” an occasional early ‘70s concert staple.

As the tune drew to a dramatic close, Bowie intoned the final chorus: But whatever lies behind the door There is nothing much to do Angel or devil, I don’t care For in front of that door there is You. t Dave Ford lives on the San Francisco Peninsula. You can reach him at Daveford29@gmail.com

t <<

Read more online at www.ebar.com

PWR BTTM

From page 23

Here’s our interview with Ben Hopkins and Liv Bruce, the two men behind PWR BTTM. This is going to be your first West Coast tour ever. What are you most excited about?

Ben: Well, I’ve never been to the West Coast. I’ve barely been anywhere, actually, so it’s great to be going on tour. I never thought that I would be traveling the country in drag, so that’s what I’m most excited about! Also, just the fact that we’re going to see all these cool cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. I see it as all these places with weird fried food.

Liv: I can’t wait to go to In-NOut Burger, but we’re also looking forward to seeing a different audi-

January 21-27, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 25

ence on the West Coast. Everyone seems chiller than they are over here. All I do is chill, so I think I would be more at home around these audiences.

When did you both realize: ‘We like punk, we like drag, let’s combine those two,’ and was it perceived well?

Ben: It was never a conscious decision. It just happened. For our first show, I wondered what to wear.

Then I pulled a dress out from my friend’s house, and that was that.

And I think that overall, we’ve been perceived well by the Punk community.

Liv: We once went for a photo shoot in New York City and we thought we were going to get harassed a lot. But people were hopping out of their car not to say, ‘Fuck you,’ but to say, ‘That’s cool!’

Walter Wlodarczyk

PWR BTTM

Do you see a lot of drag in your audience?

Liv: Our audience is very diverse, a lot of people come to our shows dressed up, which we always encourage. People wear very good costumes, not just dresses. As long as you’re respectful of others, wear what you want to wear.

PWR BTTM

Is there a bigger agenda? As in making drag more acceptable in the punk community?

Ben: I’m not sure if that’s part of the agenda, the whole point is to

write songs so that Liv and I feel less alone, feel like we have something to say in drag. For me, I always loved drag, I thought of it as this magical Avatar thing. Through drag, I can represent who I truly am.

Liv: I wouldn’t call it making drag more acceptable as much as I would call it being visibly queer within the punk community. When I first discovered my queerness as a kid, I was really worried. I knew I wanted to become a musician but didn’t see anyone in the music industry who

was like me. I didn’t think there was room for me. The goal of this project is to give a visible example of queer people in the music scene.

Someone who feels uncertain can now see: I can do whatever I want, I can become a musician. I can become anything.t PWR BTTM performs at The Rickshaw Stop, Monday, January 25, at 8pm. Dude York and Try the Pie also play. $10. All ages. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com www.pwrbttm.bandcamp.com

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

26 • Bay Area Reporter • January 21-27, 2016

Aiden James ‘Hurry’ to see the singer-songwriter at Beatbox

by Jim Provenzano

ter it, be it overall as an artist or for a certain song, without the looming, crippling debt of a traditional producer deal.

A

fter one listen, you’ll recognize the crisp vocals and heartfelt message in Aiden James’ songs. The Philadelphia-based singer-songWhat’s the toughest part of writer returns to San Francisco for self-producing music? a concert with local vocalists Brian Second-guessing yourself.

Kent and Honey Mahogany at Beatbox this Wednesday, January 27.

Even if you don’t know him, you may have heard his music, on a playlist on an airline, in the score of the hit Netflix series Sense8, and among the recent gaythemed viral music videos.

In between touring at select venues around the country, James is once again working on a new album. I sent him some light –and a few more serious– questions. His replies show the challenges and successes of being an independent musician, and the witty, affable nature of the creator of en- Aiden James dearing pop tunes.

videos a pain or worth the effort?

Between the “Hurry Hurry” video and my Whitney Houston cover of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” music videos are totally worth the effort. It helped both of those songs go viral. It’s funny, you know; in this age of information coming at us blazing fast, it’s hard for people to stop and listen to a song for three minutes. However, if you paint a world for the listener to get lost in, I find they stay with you longer.

Or you can make one about booty poppin’. That works too.

Neal Santos

How does an independent artist survive these days?

Not everyone will be successful in this business.

It’s a struggle for everyone.

What separates those who are ‘successful’ to those who aren’t, I believe, is stamina.

It takes a lot of stamina to do this; see who can bang their head against a wall the longest.

45 What’s the best thing about self-producing music?

You can find your voice and mas-

The video for your song “Hurry Hurry” video is quite popular. Is producing and shooting music

Do you see yourself as an indie success story?

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.

t

I suppose this would depend on what day you ask me. I’ve had those moments when I feel ‘successful.’ It usually hits me on tour. One night when I was driving through the desert to another show, there was something about me being so far away from home, all because of some catchy love songs I wrote. I felt validated and with purpose.

Or when someone comes up to me after a concert and shares with me a story about their life and how they connect with a song. Or, when I get to work with an artist I admire like Matt Morris or Elliot Jacobson (Ingrid Michaelson, Elle King); I feel alive.

Should out artists resist ‘typecasting’ or embrace a community if they’re gay?

I think what artists should do is focus on writing good songs.

Please share the inspiration behind your new song, “Last Reminder.”

This song is not autobiographical. I wrote it for someone else who Christian Birmele was searching. I’ll explain: I woke up at the crack of Aiden James noon one day and went to the corner coffee shop.

On my way I noticed a change. That said, every song that Lost and Found flier posted seekwill be on my new album, I wrote ing the return of an object with for or about someone else. Like the huge sentimental value. I thought to one I wrote for the Netflix series myself, ‘What was the memory tied Sense8. It was based off the transto this object?’ It was less about the gender character Nomi. Songwritobject and more about the memory, ing is a craft. To master it, you have so much, in fact, they’d pay to get it to be able to express yourself in and back. out of your own experience.

I wrote the song moments after at the laundromat on my phone voice Do dates ever ask you to sing recorder. We’ve all at one point or for them? another lost the last reminder of Actually, yes! someone or something we’re not ready to forget. “Last Reminder” is If so, what song(s) get the most for them, whoever and wherever requests? they are.

Quite frankly, I don’t think it would matter what I sang. I never Do you have a favorite cover got through an entire song in that song you have yet to perform or situation (smiles). record?

I’m working on a new record, and What’s the first thing you I’m putting a cover in it, so I can’t like to do when you visit San tell you as to not … blow my cover.

Francisco?

See what I did there?

I want to go to Gracias Madre That said, I’ve always liked Bonin the Mission. It’s a vegan Mexinie Tyler’s “Holding out for a Hero.” can restaurant. I always leave with a food baby (stuffed). Maybe this What’s the favorite venue time they’ll actually have a Medium you’ve played? shirt for me because every time I The live studio at SiriusXM visit they’re out!

Headquarters in New York City.

What’s an overlooked PhiladelAnd a dream venue where phia place tourists should visit? you’d like to play?

You should go to the Betsy Ross The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles House! It’s in Historic Old City or on Saturday Night Live.

Philadelphia. You walk through the very house where the American Flag Can you name-drop some early was stitched and learn about Betsy music influences?

Ross’s life – the business woman, Wilson Phillips, Patty Griffin, Darevolutionary, mother and wife. At vid Gray. the end of the tour you get to meet Betsy. No really, she’s in the front And a few music artists you room and answers questions as she admire now? stitches the stars onto the flag.

Sia, Ryan Tedder (One Republic), Adele.

What do you miss most from home when you’re touring?

Writing songs about love Cooking in my kitchen! I love versus having it in life; can you making plant-based meals and compare? having everything exactly where I To be a good songwriter, you left it.t need to write in and out of your own experiences. You can’t just be Aiden James performs a live music writing songs about yourself all the night with Honey Mahogany and time. That’s self-indulgent and my Brian Kent at Beatbox. $10-$25. least favorite thing about artists.

Wednesday, January 27. 7pm. 314 We could all benefit by putting our11th St. www.beatboxsf.com selves in someone else’s shoes for a www.aidenjamesmusic.com

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

January 21-27, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 27

Behind the Scenes Kudos

by Race Bannon

views on what can improve things.

So I asked Eric what one thing n this column, and elsewhere, cercould he and others do to improve tain leather and kink folk often the local scene. get mentioned. These are the people “I’m going to cheat and name who win contests, speak from the two,” he said. “First, I think that we stage, act as educators, run organineed to continually remind ourzations, or otherwise walk in some selves that our community revolves variation of the limelight. We need around sex and desire. That needs people like that, but we also need to be front and center, because it’s the slew of background people who the point of it all. We should be help make our clubs, organizations judging the value of events and events happen. and community activities I’m referring to the volunteers. by how much they celThey do what they do not for acebrate and facilitate our colades, but because they feel it’s sexuality. If they don’t, important to offer service and conlet’s get rid of them.” tribute to their scene. Even though “Secondly, I think they are never likely to bask in the we need increased dialimelight that many others enjoy, logue, both within and they still help out in so many imwithout. As our commuportant ways. These people need to nity evolves and opens be heralded. The public face of our up into more expressions scene would come to a grinding halt of kink, we need to ensure that rewere it not for these hard working spect and understanding continue. people.

That we can all speak in a common So, I’ve decided that I’m going vernacular about what it is we do, to use this column to occasionally because we need each other’s back. highlight one of these tireless backWe also need to make sure that we ground heroes. My hope is that by continue to dialogue with the more pointing out such people and their vanilla parts of the LGBT commotivations and insights into why munity. Otherwise whatever acthey do what they do, others will be ceptance and understanding we’ve encouraged to volunteer as well. Our gained can be eroded quickly.” scene, indeed any organized group of A big part of this column’s focus people, always needs such volunteers this week is motivated by my own to keep the wheels spinning. desire to encourage others like Eric Deciding who to write about first to volunteer. Volunteering helps in this column was difficult. Our loyour fellow kinksters. It engages you cal scene has so many wonderful volsocially in a deep way. It broadens unteers worthy of such recognition. your network of friends. It engenSo I did what I often do when I’m ders a feeling of accomplishment hunting for inspiration for this colknowing that you’ve helped, really umn. I asked people their opinion. A helped, your community thrive. few names kept being repeated. So in I asked Eric what he would say to the end I had to pick from among a other people considering volunteerstellar group of suggestions. ing. What are the benefits?

The first volunteer I am “You should volunteer for choosing to herald is Eric See. the events, clubs and orgaEric is a fixture in the local nizations that speak to you leather and BDSM scene. He the most, and be honest with volunteers for various organiyourself about how much time zations, projects, and was reyou have. Burnout is an overcently elected Chairman of his used word, but there are some club, the 15 Association club. ways to avoid it. Working with When I asked people about other people for any length of Eric, they consistently lauded time is going to involve some him for his hard work, dedilevel of inter-personal drama. cation and lightning smart There’s no avoiding that, so go mind. in with both eyes open. The I asked Eric why he feels benefits to putting in work for compelled to do all of the volthe community are well worth unteer work that he does. the effort, though. If you are “Compelled is an interestnewer, it’s a great way to really ing choice of words,” he said. get to know people and build “It implies being driven by up a network of relations that something other than concan last a lifetime.” scious choices, like desire. I For those who need volguess I’ve always had a desire unteers to make their events, to serve something; the comorganizations or projects munity, an idea, a group of happen, Eric suggests that people. I’ve been thinking there are ways to entice more recently of the South African people to volunteer and get concept of Ubuntu. One of involved. the ways I’ve heard it sum“Asking people is a good marized is ‘a person is a perstart,” he said. “Nothing is son through other people.’ I more powerful that asking like that conception, and I’ve someone directly to pitch in. been applying it to my volunAlso, having ample opporteer work in the leather/kink tunities for volunteering is community.” important. If there’s a task, “We really do need a comfind a way to facilitate somemunity in order to fully exone else doing it if you can. perience, understand and Give recognition to people practice our sexuality. And for putting in work. It doesn’t althat we need infrastructure; ways need to be a ceremony. club events, spaces and other Sometimes just a personal resources. I think about my thank you can go a long way own experiences and history. towards making someone feel If there had been no comappreciated. Lastly, if you are munity to reach out to, I’d in a position of responsibility probably be the same kinky you should always be looking teenager experimenting in to find your replacement.” the bedroom and eventually Bravo, Eric See. I hope my pushing desire back into the readers are inspired by Eric to closets in my brain.” consider volunteering. There One thing that commuare so many benefits, not Both photos: Rich Stadtmiller nity volunteers can provide us only to the community itwith is perspective. They are Top: Tireless and dedicated community volunself, but also to the volunteer. often not mired in the internal teer, Eric See. Bottom: Queen Cougar, longKeeping our scene alive and politics and churn that many time friend to Mr. Marcus, looking stunning as vibrant can’t happen withothers can be. So I wanted to she hosted her Remembering Mr. Marcus event. out volunteers. It just can’t. get Eric’s take on the general We need them. I encourage

I

state of the local men’s leather/kink scene.

“I’ve been involved in various subcultural or marginal communities throughout my life, and worked with and volunteered with many different organizations,” he said. “One lesson is clear to me: if you don’t evolve, you wither away into meaninglessness. And what I see today is a community that’s evolving before our very eyes. Every time I hear someone say, ‘That’s not how it’s done,’ I know we are doing something right. There will always be conservative and orthodox pressure on variance from some mythical past. But it’s the change-makers and the risk-takers that keep the community moving forward and, most importantly, continuing to be relevant.”

See continued, “What I like about the community is that there is more than one way to be kinky, and there’s growing support for more than one form of sexual expression. Just look at Mr. S Leather.

Are they selling the same items now as they did ten or fifteen years ago?

And what will their inventory look like ten years from now? One area of concern I have is the slow erosion of space in San Francisco. With the rental markets as they currently are, we as a community need to do some long-term planning or we may be priced out of community space in the future.”

Volunteers are the people in the trenches. They do the vital work that needs to get done, and therefore they often have insightful

everyone to consider contributing something to the betterment of our scene.

Mr. Marcus Remembered On Saturday, January 9, Queen Cougar, a local community icon and close friend to Mr. Marcus, the originator of this column, hosted a Remembering Mr. Marcus event at the Armory. The event was covered elsewhere in this publication, but I would be remiss to not mention it again, since I now hold the reigns to the column that Mr. Marcus originated. Respect dictates another mention.

I was at the well-attended event.

What struck me was the diversity that Mr. Marcus would repeatedly mention reflected among those who were in attendance. Whether it was the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Imperial Court, leather-

women, leathermen or titleholders, they were all there to celebrate Marcus’ life.

I’m happy the event was such a great success and all in attendance clearly had fun as they remembered Marcus. Queen Cougar expressed to me that she felt her dream was realized and she now looks forward to the interment of Mr. Marcus on February 28.

Thank you, Marcus, for creating this column and everything else you did. I and others will forever be grateful.t

For Leather Listings, please visit www.ebar.com/bartab Race Bannon is a local author, blogger and activist.

You can reach him through his website www.bannon.com.

Steven Underhill

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<< On the Tab

Yonas Media

28 • Bay Area Reporter • January 21-27, 2016

On the Tab

January 21-28

Fri 22

Boy Bar @ The Cafe

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isten to the sound of love, life, language and laughter. Watch and listen as witty comics, magical musicians and deft DJs interpret these elemental parts of our world.

Gus Presents’ weekly dance night, with DJ Kid Sysko, cute gogos and $2 beer (before 10pm). 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Brüt @ Beatbox Dan Darlington and Peter Napoli’s New York-based leather night returns. $10.

10pm-4am. 314 11th St. www.brutparty.com www.beatboxsf.com

Wed 27

Comedy Noir @ Balancoire

Lady Rizo @ Great American Music Hall

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

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

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

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

Edwardian Ball @ Regency Ballroom 16th annual large-scale two-night costume ball with old-time style, inspired by Edward Gorey, Tim Burton, steampunk, etc. Costumes strongly encouraged. $60-$125. 8pm-2am.

Vendor bazarr, 12pm-5pm, Jan 23 only. 1300 Van Ness Ave. www.theregencyballroom.com

The Devil Makes Three @ Fox Theatre, Oakland The rousing, popular Santa Cruzbased Bluegrass trio perform two nights. Parker Millsap opens. $27.50.

8pm. Also Jan. 23. 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.thedevilmakesthree.com www.thefoxoakland.com

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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

El Mundo @ Empire Ballroom 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

Porchlight/Sketchfest @ Various Venues Funny, touching storytelling as part of the annual comedy fest. Jan. 22: Jon Daly, Moshe Kasher, Jackie Kashian, Aparna Nancherla and Iris HaasBiel at Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market St. $20. 10pm. Jan 25: open mic five-minute story at Hemlock Tavern, $5, 7pm. 1131 Polk St. Jan. 26: Beyond Folsom Street Blues, with Ed Wolf, Jennifer Joseph and Janet Delaney at YBCA, 701 Mission St. www.porchlightsf.com

Red Hots Burlesque @ Beatbox The saucy women’s burlesque show hosted by Dottie Lux. $10. 7pm-10pm.

314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Shenanigans @ Oasis Juan and Brian Urmanita DJ at Sodom & Gomorrah, the theme of the monthly (4th Fridays) costume and dance party. $10. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Fri 22 Brüt @ Beatbox

Maria Konner @ Martuni’s Enjoy jazz, blue and rock from the talented pianist, with bass, drums and guest trumpet player Patina De Copper; then open mic. 3rd Thursdays.

No cover. 6:30pm. 4 Valencia St.

Oleta Adams @ Yoshi’s Oakland The amazing soul-gospel singer performs. $29-$65. 7pm & 9pm. 510 Embaracadero west, Oakland (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. 7pm-2am. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.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

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

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

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

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

Ladies of San Francisco @ Club OMG Galilea hosts the new weekly “old school drag show” with guest performers and DJ Jack Rojo, and a special Christmas night show. $4.

9pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland 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

Manimal @ Beaux Gogo-tastic dance night starts off your weekend. $5. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Mark Ballas, Alexander Jean @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The Dancing With the Stars choreographer-dancer shares his music talents with the soulful Jean. $55-$75.

7pm. Also Jan. 23. (2-drink min.) Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (855-636-4556. www.feinsteinsSF.com

Some Thing @ The Stud Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Wesla Whitfield @ Hotel Rex Society Cabaret presents the jazz vocalist, accompanied by pianist Mike Greensill and bassist John Witala. $30-$50. 8pm. Also Jan 23, 8pm. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com

Sat 23

Boy Division @ Codeword The new monthly gay New Wave night (4th Saturdays) features DJs Xander, Tomas Diablo and Donimo spinning Britop, Electro and queerwave classics. $6-$8. 9:30pm-2am. 917 Folsom St. www.codeword-sf.com

Club Rimshot @ Club BNB, Oakland The weekly hip hop and R&B night.

8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 2120 Broadway.

(510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Code @ The Edge The monthly ‘leather in the Castro’ night gets kinky, with DJ Sean McMahon, furry gogo studs, clothes check, and the windows covered! 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. www.edgesf.com

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On the Tab>>

January 21-27, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 29

Hysteria @ Martuni’s

Switch @ Q Bar

Bone @ Powerhouse

Irene Tu and Jessica Sele cohost the comedy open mic night for women and queers. No cover. 6pm-8:30pm.

4 Valencia St.

Weekly women’s night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

New weekly punk-alternative music night hosted by Uel Renteria and Johnny Rockitt. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

I Want to Believe @ Oasis

Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Watch all six new X-Files episodes, enjoy X-Files-themed drag acts and trivia, hosted by Linty and Mannequin. $3. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

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

Sat 23

Monday Musicals @ The Edge

Boy Division @ Codeword

The Jean Genies @ Rockbar Theater, San Jose

Femme, Xtravaganza @ Balancoire

The David Bowie tribute band performs a special concert in celebration of the musician. $15-$80.

8pm. 360 Saratoga Ave., San Jose. www.rockbartheater.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

Lucky Dog Day @ Lucky 13 Fourth annual benefit for Rocket Dog Rescue, hosted by Fieldwork Brewing Company; dogs welcome; part of SF Beer Week. 3pm-7pm. 2140 Market St. 487-1313. www.facebook.com/Lucky13SF

Mother @ Oasis Heklina’s weekly drag show night with different themes, always outrageously hilarious. Jan. 24: Gay Icons. $10-$25.

10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom.

795-3180. www.sfoasis.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

Sugar @ The Cafe Dance, drink, cruise at the Castro club. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s

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

Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone).

9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www. dragatmartunis.com

Nightclubbing @ Oasis The San Francisco Album Project, the music, drag and theatre collective, perform different interpretations (but non-remixed audio) of Grace Jones’ entire classic album, Nightclubbing ; with Carnie Asada, Clammy Faye, Fauxnique, Johnny Kat, Landa Lakes, Mahlae Balenciaga, Qween, Suppositori Spelling, U-Phoria, Roxanne RedMeat, Roxy-Cotton Candy, Dulce DeLeche. $15-$20. 8pm.

298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

PWR BTTM @ Rickshaw Stop The New York power-punk duo performs; Dude York and Try the Pie also play. $10. 8pm. All ages. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com www.pwrbttm.bandcamp.com

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 26

Cock Shot @ Beaux Shot specials and adult Bingo games, with DJs Chad Bays and Riley Patrick, at the new weekly night. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

The all-women Led Zeppelin tribute band returns. Stars Turn Me On and Daniele Gottardo open. $18-$43 (with dinner). 9pm. 859 O’Farrell St. www.slimspresents.com

Afternoon Delight @ The New Parish, Oakland

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room

GlamaZone @ The Cafe

Zepparella @ Great American Music Hall

Sun 24

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

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s 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

Sun 24 U-Phoria and other talents perform Nightclubbing @ Oasis

Enjoy grooves from DJs Justime, Maximillian, Mark O’Brien, Taco Tuesday, Steve Fabus, and a live set with Krylon Superstar. 3pm-8pm.

1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. www.thenewparish.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

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

Gaymer Night @ Eagle 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

Meow Mix @ The Stud 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 25

Dina Martina @ Oasis The hilarious drag performer returns with her new show, Sitting Ovations 2. $22. 7pm & 9pm. Also Jan. 26. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.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

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

My Spirit Animal is a Butch Lesbian @ Punch Line Lesbian and gay comics Ash Fisher, Karen Ripley and Sampson McCormick returns with their hilarious shared comedy show. $15.

8pm. 18+. 444 Battery St. www.punchlinecomedyclub.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

Sergio Mendes @ Yoshi’s Oakland The legendary bandleader, composer, and pianist performs Brazilian jazz with his band. $64. 8pm & 10pm.

Jan. 27, 7:30pm, 9:30pm. 510 Embaracadero West, Oakland (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops

Underwear Night @ Club OMG 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

Wed 27

Aiden James @ Beatbox The Philadelphia gay singersongwriter performs in a live music night with Honey Mahogany and Brian Kent. $10-$25. 7pm. 314 11th St. www.aidenjamesmusic.com www.beatboxsf.com

Bedlam @ Beaux 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

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Dream Queens Revue @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, Sheena Rose, Kipper, and Joie de Vivre perform at the classic old school drag show. No cover. 9:30-11:30pm. 133 Turk St. www.dreamqueensrevue.com

Lady Rizo @ Great American Music Hall The passionate, funny and amazing singer returns with her new show.

Rosin Coven and Moondrunk open. $21-$26. 8pm. 859 O’Farrell St. www.slimspresents.com

See page 30 >>

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30 • Bay Area Reporter • January 21-27, 2016

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From page 29

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

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To place your Personals ad, Call 415-861-5019 for more info & rates

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats @ The Fillmore The funk-rock-folk band performs; Paper Bird opens. $25. 8pm. Also Jan. 28. 1805 Geary Blvd. (800) 745-3000. www.thefillmore.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 Ladies night at the Castro dance club.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Shit Talk @ Oasis Yuri Kagan’s comedy night, with Zorba Jevon Hughes, Stefani Silverman, Irene Tu, Jesus U Betta Work, and Emily Epstein White. $5.

7pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 7953180. www.sfoasis.com

Wed 27 Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats @ The Fillmore

Wooden Nickel Wednesday @ 440

Marilyn Maye @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

Buy a drink and get a wooden nickle good for another. 12pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Music veteran performs her classy cabaret tribute to the songs of Johnny Mercer. Also Jan. 29. $45-$65. 8pm.

(2-drink min.) Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (855-636-4556. www.feinsteinsSF.com

Thu 28

Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland Weekly LGBT and straight comedy night hosted by Dan Mires. $10. 8pm.

2111 Franklin St. Oakland. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar.

10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Literary Speakeasy @ Martuni’s

Tue 26 Sampson McCormick, part of My Spirit Animal is a Butch Lesbian @ Punch Line

The monthly reading event at the intimate martini bar’s lounge this time features Cassandra Dallett, Willian Taylor, Jr., Tarin Towers, and Elizabeth Creely. James J. Siegel MCs. 7pm. 4 Valencia St.

Mary Go Round @ Lookout Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes’ weekly drag show. $5. 10:30pm show.

DJ Philip Grasso. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge The weekly drag show with themed nights, gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.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

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 Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests. 9pm-2am.

6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.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 Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Shooting Stars

January 21-27, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 31

photos by steven underhill Mascara T

he Castro Country Club, the LGBTQ sober space in the heart of the Castro, hosts its monthly drag show Mascara, usually at their own space on 18th Street. But the event’s become more popular, and the bigger cute stage at the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy proved a welcome new home for the witty, campy drag acts and beefcake displays. www.castrocountryclub.org 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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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com or email stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com