January 29, 2015 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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Besties get a makeover

by Cynthia Laird

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oting for the Bay Area Reporter’s readers’ poll starts Thursday (January 29) and this year has seen a makeover in the contest.

Dubbed the Besties: The LGBT Best of the Bay, the poll aims to find readers’ top choices in a variety of categories. The ballot, which is online and appears in the arts and culture section this week, has been revamped for the fifth annual incarnation of the contest. The ballot now includes nominees in each category, with an option for readers to write in their See page 14 >>

Castro arson suspect appears in court

David Diaz is led into court for his arraignment Monday, January 26.

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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San Francisco man convicted of accidentally choking to death his sexual partner in 2011 pleaded not guilty this week in a case that involves at least one recent fire in the Castro.

David Munoz Diaz, 25, pleaded not guilty Monday, January 26 before San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman to charges that he burned the Up Hair salon at 4084 18th Street January 17 and set fire to his boyfriend’s silver Hyundai December 21, along with a count of possession of an incendiary device.

Diaz’s boyfriend, Larry Metzger, owns the Mix bar, 4086 18th Street, which is below the salon. Diaz and Metzger were living in an apartment in the same building at the time of Diaz’s arrest Wednesday, January 21. The felony complaint against Diaz doesn’t say where Metzger’s car was when it was burned.

Several other suspected arsons, including incidents where a home and several cars were

Rick Gerharter

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Vol. 45 • No. 5 • January 29–February 4, 2015

burned, have occurred in the Castro in recent months.

“The investigation is ongoing as investigators continue to review information which may link Diaz to additional arson incidents,” police said in a news release announcing Diaz’s arrest.

During his trial last summer, Diaz testified about how he fatally choked Freddy CanulArguello, 23, in Buena Vista Park in June

2011. He said it was an accident that occurred after Canul-Arguello asked to be choked during a sexual encounter.

He also said he set fire to a cup in a recycling bin but said he did it to signal for help. The melted bin was found with Canul-Arguello’s heavily charred body.

See page 13 >>

Senior ‘Bill Imperial Court celebrates of Rights’ its golden anniversary unveiled

by Matthew S. Bajko

by Matthew S. Bajko

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new law set to be introduced in San Francisco aims to protect LGBT seniors living in long-term care facilities in the city.

Under the measure, operators of such facilities would be barred from evicting residents Supervisor Scott based on their sexual Wiener orientation, gender identity, or HIV status. They would be required to allow residents to room with the person of their choosing and could not restrict residents from being sexually intimate.

They would also be required to allow residents to use bathrooms that correspond with their preferred gender. The proposed law would mandate that employees and managers refer to residents by their preferred names and pronouns and allow them to dress in the clothing, accessories, and makeup of their choosing.

See page 8 >>

Cat Cafe in the city’s North Beach neighborhood. He made history t began as a platform to foster in 1961 with his unsuccessful atgay pride during a time when tempt for a Board of Supervisors homosexuality was still classeat; it marked the first time an sified as a mental disorder. Over out gay person had sought elected time it grew into a major fundoffice in the U.S. raising vehicle for a vast array of Working in tandem with the causes and gave birth to myriad Tavern Guild, an association for nonprofits in cities across North gay bar owners in the city, the ImAmerica. perial Court each year crowned Modeled after European mona new empress during elaborate archies, the International Court coronation ceremonies. Elections System now has nearly 70 chapfor emperor were added in 1972, ters in cities across the U.S. and with the late Marcus Hernandez, Canada, with one in Tijuana, a leather columnist for the Bay Rick Gerharter Mexico. It dates its birth to 1965 Area Reporter, crowned Emperor Absolute Empress XLV Renita Valdez, right, takes her farewell walk with the founding of the ImpeI After Norton. during the Imperial Court Coronation 46 on February 26, 2011, as rial Court of San Francisco, chrisBy then Imperial Courts had other members of the court look on. tened “the Mother Court,” which been established in a number of is celebrating its golden anniverWest Coast cities, with the roster much more than that.” sary in February. steadily growing in the comThe court system was founded by the late ing decades. In 1996 Sarria worked with other “I believe, truly believe, that this is one of Jose Julio Sarria, who in 1964 crowned himself the greatest organizations in San Francisco to court leaders to form the International Court “Her Royal Majesty, Empress of San Francisco, Council to help unify the various courts. represent not only the gay community but all of the focuses we worked on and raised money for Jose I, The Widow Norton” in homage to Joshua “We are an historic organization. We have Norton, an eccentric city resident who in 1859 helped build gay communities across the counto help other people,” said Absolute Empress declared himself Emperor of the United States XXV Marlena, 75, elected in 1990. “A lot of try,” said San Diego resident Nicole Murray and Protector of Mexico. Sarria was well known people think we are just a bunch of drag queens See page 10 >> out having a good time and partying. We are for performing in drag at the now defunct Black

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2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29–February 4, 2015

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Fake cop trial goes to jury

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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he trial of a San Francisco man accused of pretending to be a police officer and forcing other men to engage in sexual acts with him went to the jury this week after prosecution and defense attorneys presented their closing arguments.

Jeffrey Bugai, 36, faces more than two-dozen counts, including accusations of impersonating a public officer, forcible oral copulation, and unlawful administration of a drug.

There are six alleged victims.

Retired Superior Court Judge Jerome T. Benson explained instructions to jurors Wednesday morning, January 28, just before attorneys from both sides were set to make their closing arguments and shortly before the Bay Area Reporter went to press.

During the preliminary hearing in October, one alleged victim, identified in court as Luis R., who wept during his testimony, said that in late 2008 Bugai had handcuffed him and a friend after meeting them at El Trebol, 3149 22nd Street, in the Mission district, and taken them to an apartment after saying he was a cop.

Luis testified that Bugai eventually “threw me to the ground,” told him, “all illegals are weaklings and they shouldn’t be here,” and touched Luis’ penis through his pants as he tried to pull Luis’ pants down. He said he’d fled the apartment after hitting Bugai with a ratchet.

In superior court January 8, Deputy Public Defender Phoenix Streets picked apart details that Luis had offered.

During one exchange, Streets asked Luis about an alleged struggle he’d had on the floor with Bugai.

Streets reminded Luis that at one point he’d said he’d been on the floor for 20 to 30 minutes, then

Courtesy SFPD

Jeffrey Bugai

asked him whether he’d said during a visit to the district attorney’s office that he’d been on the floor for an hour and a half.

“No, I don’t remember having said how long,” Luis responded.

Luis went to police in November 2013 after seeing Bugai outside a bank. The other men came forward following media coverage of his report.

The alleged incidents occurred from January 2008 through March 2014, according to the complaint prosecutors filed against Bugai in September 2014.

Police have said Bugai targeted Central American immigrants with “limited English speaking” skills who had recently arrived in the United States.

The men who testified against Bugai during his preliminary hearing said they believed Bugai was a cop, and some said after he took

them to his apartment, he made them drink something they suspect was drugged. Most of the men also said they had been drinking before they went to the apartment with Bugai. All of the men, who appeared to be in their late 20s to early 30s, spoke through Spanish interpreters.

According to court documents and testimony, Bugai often dressed like a police officer and drove a vehicle that resembled a police patrol car.

Another alleged victim who testified during the trial has been identified in court as Miguel M. Miguel was 26 when he testified in October that he met Bugai at El Trebol around December 31, 2007. He got into a cab with Bugai, thinking he was getting a ride home.

Miguel said when they got to the apartment, Bugai gave him a glass of what looked and tasted like water, but after that, he testified, “I did not know anything anymore until I had him on top of me without any clothes.”

Bugai was performing oral sex on him, Miguel told the court, and Bugai soon took Miguel’s penis and penetrated himself with it, he said.

He said he unsuccessfully tried to push him away and told him “No” during the incident, but “I had no strength.”

Bugai, who’s been in custody since his July arrest, didn’t testify during the trial, in which opening statements were given January 6.

His bail is $3 million.

Nine of the jurors are men; three are women.

According to court records, Bugai changed his name to Jeffrey Thomas in 2011.t

Body found in bay in November ID’d as gay man

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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he body found floating in San Francisco Bay in November has been identified as Dan Ha, the medical examiner’s office announced Sunday, January 25.

Ha, 26, a gay software engineer who friends and family remembered for his compassion and humor, was last seen alive Halloween night, October 31.

Ha’s family had seemed certain that the body, which was found November 11, was his, and hundreds of people attended a memorial service for him three days later.

Christopher Wirowek, the acting medical examiner administrator, said in Sunday’s announcement that Ha’s family has been notified of the identification “and the case is under investigation, with the cause and manner of death pending.”

It will likely be months before the cause and manner of death is released publicly.

In a November statement, Ha’s family said that it did not suspect suicide. One of Ha’s family members said no note was found, and his personal belongings had been found with the body. (Friends and family of Ha have told the Bay Area Reporter he was gay.)

Wirowek said the identification was made with help from the Bureau of Forensic Services DNA Laboratory at the California Department of Justice. He didn’t immediately respond Monday to a question about the cause for the delay in identifying Ha’s body.

Officer Albie Esparza, a San

Dan Ha in an undated photo.

Francisco police spokesman, indicated in November that his agency would not investigate Ha’s death unless the medical examiner’s office determined foul play was involved.

Esparza said in an email Monday, “this has been a medical examiner case from the beginning.”

In the days after Ha went missing, people who knew him blanketed the South of Market area near his apartment with fliers bearing his picture and conducted several search parties.

Officials have indicated the body was located in a part of the bay north of San Francisco, within four miles of the Golden Gate Bridge.t

Correction The January 22 article, “Singer alleges mistreatment at gay club” incorrectly identified the man with whom performer Blackberri had a verbal disagreement. It was Club OMG co-owner Paresh Shah. The online version has been corrected.

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Community News>>

January 29–February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Officials flesh out ‘Getting to Zero’ HIV plan

by Liz Highleyman

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ublic health officials, health care providers, and community advocates provided more details and raised more questions about the city’s “Getting to Zero” plan for eliminating new HIV infections at a recent Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee hearing.

Attendees emphasized that funding for the new initiative should not come at the expense of existing HIV services.

Gay supervisors Scott Wiener and David Campos, both of whom have been active in efforts to expand access to pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, attended the January 21 hearing in lieu of regular committee members Eric Mar and John Avalos.

“We know that if we’re able to get people tested regularly so that they know their status, if when people do become positive they’re immediately connected with treatment, [and] if we are able to keep people consistently on treatment so they’re healthy and have a suppressed viral load, that will reduce new infections,” said Wiener, who publicly disclosed last fall that he is taking PrEP. “If we can get it right here in San Francisco, it will spread to other the parts of the country and other parts of the world.”

As previously reported, the Getting to Zero plan aims to make San Francisco the first city to eliminate HIV infections through a combination of PrEP, prompt antiretroviral therapy, and efforts to retain people with HIV in care and treatment.

The name reflects UNAIDS’ triple goal of zero new infections, zero AIDS deaths, and zero stigma for people living with HIV. The coalition, which has grown to more than three-dozen members, includes representatives from the Board of Supervisors and the mayor’s office, the Department of Public Health, UCSF, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Project Inform, other local AIDS service organizations, Kaiser Permanente, private HIV care providers, and community advocates.

Good progress to date

San Francisco was an epicenter of the early AIDS epidemic and has consistently been a leader in providing new models of care and treatment.

The city has seen a steady decline in new HIV infections, reaching 359 in 2013. The number has fallen in all demographic groups except for young people age 25 to 29, and there have been no HIV infections among newborn babies since 2006, noted steering committee member Neil Giuliano, SFAF CEO. The number of deaths attributable to HIV has fallen to 182, and there has been an increase in the number of people living with HIV as they survive longer, now nearing 16,000.

Looking at the cascade of care, San Francisco already does better than the U.S. as a whole. In 2012, 94 percent of people with HIV in San Francisco had been tested and knew their status, compared with 82 percent nationwide. While 72 percent of people diagnosed with HIV in the city were linked to care and 63 percent started treatment and achieved viral suppression, the corresponding nationwide figures were 66 percent and 25 percent, respectively.

Three-part program

The first prong of the threepart Getting to Zero plan involves expanding access to PrEP. Gilead Sciences’ Truvada (tenofovir plus

Jane Philomen Cleland

Supervisor David Campos

emtricitabine) taken once daily has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection by more than 90 percent.

“I want to emphasize that PrEP is really a game changer,” said Susan Buchbinder, director of Bridge HIV at DPH. “We have been in the same place for HIV prevention for the last 30 years [and] have not had any other real new tools to prevent infections.”

The latest estimates suggested that fewer than 1,000 people in San Francisco are receiving PrEP – including more than 500 at Kaiser Permanente alone – though a recent surge in interest has likely increased this number. According to PrEP researcher Robert Grant from the Gladstone Institutes, as many as 6,000 city residents could potentially benefit from PrEP. But cost is a barrier for many people, with a price tag of approximately $1,200 per month. Last fall the Board of Supervisors passed legislation, introduced by Campos, that allocates approximately $300,000 to hire “navigators” to help people obtain PrEP through existing channels such as private insurance, Medi-Cal, or Gilead’s patient assistance programs.

Noting that the Getting to Zero plan relies heavily on PrEP, Campos suggested that $300,000 “is a drop in the bucket” and “may not necessarily reflect the level of commitment that is needed.”

The second prong is rapid antiretroviral therapy as soon as people find out they are infected.

In 2010 San Francisco was the first city to recommend that all people diagnosed with HIV should start treatment regardless of CD4 T-cell count, but this is now reflected in national treatment guidelines.

“During the early phases of HIV when patients appear to be asymptomatic, levels of virus in the blood are causing inflammation and affecting their organs,” explained Diane Havlir, chief of the division of HIV/AIDS at San Francisco General Hospital. “Now we know that at all stages of HIV disease the virus is more toxic than medications, therefore we should be starting treatment immediately.”

Havlir added that there is a “twofor-one benefit” of early therapy because people who start treatment and achieve undetectable viral load dramatically reduce their risk of transmitting HIV – by 96 percent in one major study.

Under San Francisco’s RAPID ART program, people who are diagnosed with HIV are “offer[ed] treatment on the spot,” Havlir said, referring to quick access to antiSee page 12 >>

<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29–February 4, 2015

Volume 45, Number 5 January 29–February 4, 2015 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 Chuck Colbert • 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 Elliot Owen • Paul Parish • Sean Piverger Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Khaled Sayed • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Ed Walsh • Cornelius Washington Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Jay Cribas PRODUCTION/DESIGN Max Leger PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Lydia Gonzales • Jose Guzman-Colon Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd Rich Stadtmiller • Steven Underhil Dallis Willard • Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.861.5019 ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Lance Roberts NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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News Editor • news@ebar.com Arts Editor • arts@ebar.com Out & About listings • jim@ebar.com Advertising • scott@ebar.com Letters • letters@ebar.com Published weekly. Bay Area Reporter reserves the right to edit or reject any advertisement which the publisher believes is in poor taste or which advertises illegal items which might result in legal action against Bay Area Reporter. Ads will not be rejected solely on the basis of politics, philosophy, religion, race, age, or sexual orientation.

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Two supreme courts, two decisions

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he California Supreme Court voted unanimously last week to prohibit state judges from belonging to the Boy Scouts of America because the youth organization continues to bar gays and lesbians from serving as troop leaders. It’s a move that sends a clear message to the organization that the Golden State doesn’t tolerate discrimination. The California Judges Association, which represents 1,575 of the state’s 2,000 judges, supported the ban.

It’s important to note, as the justices did, that the ban does not elevate gay rights over religious freedom. The new rules adopted by the court still allow judges to belong to religious organizations whose beliefs or practices discriminate. The Scouts are not a religious organization, even though many troops hold meetings in churches. It’s not clear exactly how many state judges are active in the Scouts, but they need to end their affiliations or they will be found in violation of the state Code of Judicial Ethics and could face removal from office.

In 2013, the Scouts ended the longtime ban on gay youth as members, but the organization refused to allow gay men and lesbians to be troop leaders; some were removed from their leadership positions despite petitions of support that were delivered to the Scouts’ headquarters in Irving, Texas. Last year, when former Defense Secretary Robert Gates took over as president of the organization, we expected to see movement toward end-

ing the ban on troop leaders. But for whatever reason, Gates has been largely silent since he’s been in the job. A quick search could find no recent comments from him about the Boy Scouts.

That’s too bad, because Gates seems like one of the few people who could forge substantive change in the organization.

The state Supreme Court’s decision should be viewed in a larger context by other state high courts: that judges who routinely rule on issues of fairness, equity, and justice should not be engaged in activities that openly discriminate against a group of people.

Other states’ courts would do well to implement similar policies.

At the other end of the spectrum, Roy Moore, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, this week wrote to Governor Robert Bentley, telling him that he would

continue to recognize the state’s same-sex marriage ban even though a federal judge last Friday declared it unconstitutional.

“As chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, I will continue to recognize the Alabama Constitution and the will of the people overwhelmingly expressed in the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment,” Moore wrote. “I ask you to continue to uphold and support the Alabama Constitution with respect to marriage, both for the welfare of this state and for our posterity.” Moore continued at the end of the letter, “Be advised that I stand with you to stop judicial tyranny and any unlawful opinions issued without constitutional authority.”

Some gay legal experts see Moore’s latest rant as further evidence of his “career-long contempt for the American legal system,” as Freedom to Marry’s Evan Wolfson posted on Facebook.

We disagree with Moore and find that his comments amount to judicial tyranny if he so blatantly refuses to follow the law.

But Moore has a knack for defying court orders and issuing discriminatory decisions. For example, he once granted child custody to an abusive father because the child’s mother was a lesbian.

The California high court justices may receive criticism for their decision, but it was made based on ethical guidelines, in contrast to Moore, who just decided on his own that he won’t follow the law. In this contrast of state high courts, there is no question which one made the better determination in an effort to provide a more just and unbiased process.t

Marketing out: A move for open LGBT advertising

by Richard Waters

advertisements was that the gay lifestyle was one of partying, expensive his month Tiffany & Co. unclothes, and luxury items. Beginveiled its first advertising camning in 1981, Swedish vodka compaign featuring a same-sex couple. pany Absolut targeted this audience This new age advertisement didn’t in a vibrant and partying manner, feature actors or LGBT models but encouraging spending on their a real life couple out of New York brand name alcohol.

City. Although these new, open By pushing this vision of a lavish Courtesy Circa Interactive LGBT campaigns are a major step lifestyle onto the LGBT community forward, marketing to this diverse Professor Richard in order to capture this perceived audience has had a rocky past filled Waters, Ph.D. “gay dollar,” this encouraged indiwith layers of misconceptions, viduals in the community to overstereotypes, and societal backlash spend and rely on credit. People muffling a true, targeted, advertising voice. were racking up debt and wrecking their Through my research at University of San lives just to live up to a certain lifestyle Francisco and my consulting with Fortune 500 shown to them through advertiscompanies and nonprofit organizations, I’ve ing and what they thought was explored the issues surrounding the business to the image they had to embody in consumer (B2C) communication and advertisorder to fit in. ing efforts targeting the LGBT community. While Not only did this false margrowing research and LGBT civil advancements keting push debt on the comare pushing true advertising campaigns, marmunity, it also had detrimental keting misconceptions and sociological myths psychological effects on those fueled many of the original targeted campaigns struggling with their LGBT directed at the LGBT U.S. consumer base. identity. These individuals were A notable misconception in the evolution already outside of mainstream of LGBT marketing was the widely accepted culture and now they felt outside of the culture myth of gay affluence. This notion stemmed that was presented to them. Those that recogfrom the idea that LGBT individuals did not nized that they couldn’t afford the product and follow mainstream family values; therefore, weren’t represented by the imagery battled to they had extra income that would commonly find their place in society and were left with a go toward the costs of raising a family. The sense of outsiderness.

Williams Institute at UCLA studied this inacAfter pushing the image of partying and curate phenomenon in 2014 in relation to food luxury onto the gay demographic, the next stamp participation in the LGBT communities step in the evolution of marketing was the idea finding that “LGBT adults are 1.7 times more of gay vague. Mainstream advertisers managed likely than non-LGBT adults to not have had to avoid large-scale social backlash when adenough money to feed themselves or their vertising toward this diverse audience, because family in the past year.” their ads were designed in such a way that the The misconception of disposable income in gay and straight audiences perceived them in the gay community led to large-scale marketdifferent ways. ing efforts toward these individuals on a false One of the best known examples of gay pretense. High-end, luxury brands targeted vague advertising is the 1997 Volkswagen the LGBT audience through the past couple Golf television commercial featuring two decades and continue to do so today. These men who salvage a discarded chair by putbrands spanned an array of industries, includting it in the back of their vehicle as they are ing automotive, alcohol, jewelry, and apparel, driving around aimlessly. The ad, titled “Sunand some of the larger brands included Alfani, day afternoon (https://www.youtube.com/ Gucci, and Rolex. This particular Alfani ad watch?v=BSjDX9e2EOE),” debuted during features two men embracing in luxury suits, the much-publicized coming out episode of and it reinforced the idea that gay identity was the sitcom Ellen. Volkswagen executives have about luxury and high fashion. repeatedly denied that their intention was to Marketing in this fashion was not only portray the two men as boyfriends and were incorrectly targeted; it had negative psychosurprised at the reaction; however, the ad soon logical and monetary effects on the audience. led to the company’s sponsorship of gay Pride The message these companies pushed in their events the following year.

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From a heteronormative perspective, these two men could be college roommates or could simply be friends hanging out. But for the gay audience, this is perceived as an open gay couple and a form of LGBT advertising. Another example of the gay vague style of advertising is the previously described advertisement from Alfani that includes the catchphrase “Perfectly Put Together” and features two men embracing.

Again, these men could be co-workers or family members for mainstream audiences while gay audiences could perceive the arm-around-theshoulders as the embrace of a couple.

Society has become more accepting of diverse couplings beyond the traditional family scenes in a variety of presentations. The next step in this evolution of advertising was a style of ads that featured many different types of gender and sexual orientation in an “all-inclusive” manner. During the 2014 holiday season, Tylenol recreated the iconic Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting, “Freedom from Want,” (http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/22/ t y l e n o l - l e s b i a n - co m m e rc i a l _n_6367800.html) with a television commercial that featured a variety of families, including lesbian mothers sharing the meal with a former husband. This evolutionary step is more open than the gay vague stage, but it doesn’t quite reach the next level of mainstream, open LGBT marketing toward the LGBT audience.

With advertisements such as Tiffany & Co’s new groundbreaking campaign along with civil advancement in terms of same-sex marriage achievements, we are in an exciting, progressive time. I encourage researchers, leaders, and the entire LGBT community to take a closer look at how and why they are being marketed to and voice their opinions through the support of websites such as Commercial Closet, which grades advertising from the LGBT standpoint. This is a time for understanding of LGBT stereotypes and greater study into this diverse and growing audience.

Backed by the momentum swing of civil change, research and advertising’s impact on the LGBT consumer should be analyzed and addressed now and in the coming years.t Richard Waters, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of San Francisco who specializes in public relations, marketing, and public administration, particularly in the LGBT realm.

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Letters >>

January 29–February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Alerting LGBTs to health care options

Thank you for publishing the most recent article on the Affordable Care Act, shining a light on health insurance campaigns targeting uninsured LGBTs [“Campaigns target uninsured LGBTs,” January 15]. It’s wonderful to learn about state and national campaigns such as the ones being run by Covered California and Out2Enroll.

I hope the community also gains awareness of local programs that support health insurance enrollment, such as the Equal Access to Healthcare Program (EAHP) offered by the Positive Resource Center.

EAHP offers a health insurance open enrollment lab for HIV-positive SF residents Monday through Friday mornings. A lab technician is available to help individuals navigate the Covered CA website. The program also offers free health access consultations and legal advocacy for eligible clients facing problems with Medicare, Medi-Cal, Covered CA, AIDS Drug Assistance Program, Office of AIDS Health Insurance Premium Payment program (OA-HIPP), and other health care access issues.

As the supervising attorney for EAHP, I am especially proud of the level of client-centered service we have provided in our first open enrollment season. In addition to resolving Covered CA enrollment problems, we have successfully helped clients avoid coverage gaps by appealing Medi-Cal discontinuations, assisted with the selection of Medicare Part D prescription drug plans, and counseled clients on how to decrease out-of-pocket medical costs.

Through this work, we have learned that many people – especially those in the LGBT community – lack information and awareness of all the programs available to support healthcare access. For those who remain uninsured, perhaps the most important things to be aware of are that many free and low-cost health coverage options are available and open enrollment closes on February 15.

Chuan Teng, Supervising Attorney Equal Access to Healthcare Program Positive Resource Center San Francisco

Gay men take over local Democratic Party posts

by Matthew S. Bajko

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or the first time, gay men are serving as Democratic Party chairs in San Mateo and Contra Costa counties.

The Democratic Party of Contra Costa County elected Jeff Koertzen, of Concord, as its chair January 15. That same night Jeffrey Adair, of Redwood City, was elected chair of the Democratic Party in San Mateo County.

Their elections bring the current number of out gay Democratic Party chairs in the state to four.

Eric C. Bauman continues to serve as chair of the party in Los Angeles County as does Gregory Rivera in San Benito County.

“We celebrate the elevation of LGBT leaders as an important affirmation of the tremendous talent and leadership in our community,” stated the California Democratic Party’s LGBT Caucus Executive Committee in an email. “Jeff and Jeffrey earned the support of their colleagues through tireless dedication to and advocacy for our party. Contra Costa and San Mateo Counties will be well-served by their leadership, as will the whole Bay Area.”

Adair, 57, had been serving the past two years as southern vice chair for the San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee. He is also a co-founder and chair, for now, of the Peninsula Stonewall Democrats, a political club for LGBT people in the county.

He is actively seeking someone to succeed him as chair of the Stonewall club so his main focus can be running the county party apparatus.

“My biggest goal is to bring more diversity to the party representatives. I want to start Democratic clubs based on ethnicities,” said Adair, the owner of J Floral Art who has been with his husband, Craig Kozlowski, 24 years. “There is a Latino club starting right now that has had two meetings, I think.

I really want to get an African American Democratic club going as well.”

In terms of LGBT-specific goals, Adair said he accomplished them by forming the Stonewall chapter, which will continue to encourage LGBT people to seek public office in San Mateo County. As local party chair, he is restricted to only supporting those candidates endorsed by the party.

“Really, I am there to support the ones the committee as a whole does,” said Adair. “I am there to make sure we, as a party, are sup-

Barry Schneider Attorney at Law

400 Montgomery Street, Ste. 505, San Francisco, CA

Courtesy Jeffrey Adair

San Mateo County Democratic Party Chair Jeffrey Adair

porting them in their campaigns by getting the word out and doing mailers.”

Koertzen, 45, who is single, has served on the Democratic County Central Committee in Contra Costa since 2012, and as of 2013, has also served on the state Democratic Party’s executive board. In addition to looking to recruit more LGBT candidates for public office in the county, Koertzen said his main goal is to see that those Democratic candidates who are elected are fully supportive of LGBT rights.

“People out here are accepting of gay marriage but there are still some people who don’t really understand transgender issues. I want to try to get some education out here on why this is a Democratic value,” said Koertzen, the business information manager at the California Transplant Donor Network.

His first major test of steering the party will come with the special election to fill the state Senate seat vacated by Mark DeSaulnier after he was elected to Congress last fall.

Two Democrats with strong records on LGBT rights are in the March 17 primary: Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla (D-Concord) and former Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, who was termed out of office in December.

Beyond that contest, said Koertzen, “We are working on assessing all races across the county where we are under represented and identify seats to get someone elected representing the Democratic Party.”

While Contra Costa County now has more registered Democrats than San Francisco – as of November there were 258,862 Democrats in the East Bay jurisdiction compared to 241,000 in the city – Koertzen said he is concerned about the increasing number of voters who opt to decline to state their party preference.

“I want to get people involved in the Democratic Party and have

Courtesy Jeff Koertzen

Contra Costa County Democratic Party Chair Jeff Koertzen

them feel like the Democratic Party represents them,” he said.

The former Seattle resident had served as chair of that city’s influential LGBT political group known as the Seattle Metropolitan Election Committee. An employee at Microsoft, he quit in 2005 when the tech giant opted not to support an LGBT rights bill pending in the state Legislature due to threats of a boycott made by a Christian preacher.

His decision to resign became national news, and faced with growing complaints from the LGBT community, Microsoft reversed course and backed the bill during the next legislative session.

Koertzen was unable to find work and relocated to Sacramento in search of a job. Five years ago he moved again to Concord when a friend offered to rent Koertzen a mother-in-law unit he owned there.

“Being out of work for so long, my credit took a hit. I was not able to apply for apartments,” he recalled.

“It was the perfect circumstance and I have a great landlord.”

The one drawback of living in the area is the lack of LGBT organizations, said Koertzen, other than a couple of centers focused on youth.

“There aren’t that many organizations specifically for LGBT adults out here,” he noted.

Starting February 21, 2015 The 415/628 Area Code Overlay BEGINS! Follow These 3 Easy Steps: For 415 Area Code Numbers

For 628 Area Code Numbers

City College board elects gay prez

At its first meeting in a year and a half, the board of trustees for City College of San Francisco elected a gay man to serve as president.

Rafael Mandelman, who lost a bid to serve in the position when he was first elected to the board in 2012, was unanimously elected president at the board’s meeting January 22, its first since June 2013.

Haight neighborhood activist Thea Selby, recently elected to the board, was picked to serve as vice president.

The board was stripped of its powers as part of the fallout stemming See page 12 >>

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<< Travel

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29–February 4, 2015

Cruising offers something for everyone

by Fred Palmer

I

f you are wondering about taking a cruise as a vacation I highly recommend it.

I always tell people that a cruise is like a vacation smorgasbord; it takes you to several different destinations – and often countries – and allows you to taste test each. The one downside is that you have limited time in each port, usually only a day or so. However, to me, experiencing several new cities is part of the fun, and it gives me a short look at a city that I might like to return to on a future trip.

Another great reason to take a cruise is that you unpack once, always have the same room, and wake up each morning in a new location. It’s like staying at an allinclusive resort that moves while you sleep.

When you awake there is a brand new view out your window and as you sail away each night into the sunset you dine with a new view.

Some itineraries do include an overnight in a port so that you can explore and dine in that city. I have had overnight ports in Barcelona, Ibiza, Puerto Rico and Key West, all of which offered a party and some fun dining experiences.

Now let’s talk cruising for the LGBT folks. I have been on several different types of gay and gayfriendly cruises, and they all have something for everyone: couples, singles, triples, family, and friends.

There are large ships, small ships, and even riverboat cruises that can be completely LGBT, or some that charter a medium-sized group on a normal cruise and make their own little gay travel group. Lately there seem to be more and more companies popping up offering

unique vacations, everything from bear cruises, gay senior cruises, and even gay film festivals at sea. Plus there are options for lesbian-only travel; Olivia being one of the oldest women-only travel companies.

Recently, I traveled with a small group on the ship Celebrity Solstice, cruising to Alaska. We departed from Seattle where we spent a couple of days exploring before getting on the boat. The itinerary included wonderful ports in Alaska as well as one final stop in stunning, Victoria, British Columbia.

This trip was part of Brand g Vacations, an LGBT tour operator that launched in 2011 and charters gay trips, and also trips that can include straight allies as part of a larger group on mainstream trips.

This allows those of us in the LGBT community to include family members. The trip to Alaska was easily one of my favorites. The boat was one of the finest ships I have had the pleasure to cruise on. Alaska was on my list of places to visit, and it was easy to catch a flight to our departure city of Seattle.

The Celebrity Solstice had numerous unique features including a top deck with a large sprawling lawn on which to play games or sit and relax, as well as an at-sea glass blowing show called “Hot Glass.”

The views along the way were amazing and as people say, impossible to capture in photos, and in words. I just cannot describe how breathtaking it was to sit on a lawn on the top deck of a ship and pass through the Inside Passage of Alaska.

Brand g has many unique trips this year, including one to Cuba that was already in the works before President Barack Obama announced changes in U.S.-Cuban policy.

Source has some fun stuff planned this year including a trip on the Mekong River through Vietnam and Cambodia, a trip to Venice and the Dalmatian Coast. Source also offers some fun land trips, and this year trips on the Venice Simplon Orient Express train, and a journey to Africa, are planned.

Oldest gay travel group

Courtesy Fred Palmer

Fred Palmer, right, went on a recent cruise to Alaska with Kurt Masters, left, Kevin Giovanetti, and Peter Milinazzo.

“It’s a whole new way to see Cuba,” said Jeff Gundvaldson, Brand g’s managing partner. “Our goal is simple. We offer unique, compelling and lesser-traveled corners of the globe to our guests. We have a real passion for LGBT group travel and especially for more intimate and meaningful trips that Brand g is best known for.”

Gundvaldson said that Brand g’s emphasis is on unique destinations and smaller ships.

“We always aim for exotic bucketlist destinations, along with some of the tried and true and more popular destinations,” he said. “What really makes us special is our emphasis on unique destinations and smaller ships, which translates to more intimate, personal experiences for our travelers.”

Another gay-owned company is Miami-based Source Events. It started in 2001 and focuses on gay travel with an emphasis on mind, body and spirit enhancement. Both cruise and land experiences are offered by Source Events, along with

very unique experiences that you just don’t see with larger travel companies.

According to Source Events President Craig Smith, “One of the trends we’re seeing in gay travel is our guests’ requesting more exotic destinations, such as Tahiti, New Zealand, and Asia. Our luxury tall ship sailings for 150-300 guests allow us travel into off the beaten path islands and ports.”

He explained that on-board activities include enrichment seminars on destinations, local entertainment, yoga, and even well known guest speakers such as gay author Armistead Maupin.

“Many of our travelers are looking for travel that includes more unique experiences, which is why we are offering more customized excursions, such as cooking classes,” Smith said. “And with marriage now legal in 36 states, it’s not surprising that we are now getting requests for destination weddings at sea, which we’ll be offering on our next Tahiti cruise.”

One of the larger – and oldest – gay travel groups is Atlantis Events, which acquired RSVP Vacations in 2007 and maintains it as a separate brand. Both host large all-gay cruises and land resort adventures.

The majority of their cruises are on huge passenger liners, and offer entertainment tailored to the LGBT crowd. I have been on several, and have enjoyed celebrities such as Cybill Shepherd, Belinda Carlisle, Patti LuPone, and even Charo. With the larger groups, of course, come more options along with quite a few theme parties, most held on the deck of the ship. Theme parties can include a Dog Tag Tea Dance, Mardi Gras, White Party and ... well, you get the picture.

Atlantis always charters the entire cruise liner so the whole crowd is LGBT and it always does a great job keeping guests entertained. All day long there is something happening, all over the ship, even when many guests are away on excursions.

Many people think that the larger group trips are a floating party, and they truly are, but there really is something for everyone, and the experience is yours to have, couples and singles alike. Atlantis’ land resort trips are a lot of fun too and are all-inclusive, which is a great idea.

You can just relax and enjoy all that they have to offer, without worrying about your bar bill.

See page 7 >>

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Travel>>

Cruising

From page 6

Bars, food aplenty

Large cruises ships always include many opportunities to pamper yourself with onboard experiences, spa packages, casinos, and yes, booze. Usually there is a martini bar, a Champagne Bar, a piano bar, a wine bar and many of the cruise lines are offering drink packages that let you relax and know your bar bill has already been paid, usually at a substantial discount. You can do the math and see if a drink package works out for you, but I know the math tells me to always buy the package.

In terms of food, on cruises al-

January 29–February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

most all of it is included, cruise. On the smaller and depending on the sailing ships, the dining cruise line, usually is experience is the pool spectacular, with your deck transformed into an choice of main dining elegant, outdoor venue rooms and other fantastic under the stars. gastronomical options After all the eating and on board. Dressing up in drinking you can always formalwear is not usuhit the fitness center to ally required on cruises, work it off. Most of the as it was in the old days, ships have a great fitness but most host a dress up center and offer personal night, or Captain’s dinner. trainers.

Fred Palmer If you don’t wish to parI also encourage you ticipate, you can try one A Source Events ship sits in port in Capri, Italy. to do your homework on of the other restaurants the destinations that you on board. Many cruise plan to visit. There are to pay and it can get you a five-star lines also offer up several specialty obviously many resources in print and steak house, or deluxe French bistro. restaurants for an additional fee of online for LGBT travelers. One great I usually try a couple of the spe$15-$40 per person, a small price source is the international Gay and cialty dining experiences on each

Cliff’s named merchant of the year compiled by Cynthia Laird

C

liff ’s Variety, a Castro neighborhood institution, was named merchant of the year by the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Association and will be recognized at an awards gala next week.

The same family has owned Cliff ’s, 479 Castro Street, since 1936, which predates the area becoming the widely recognized gay mecca in the 1970s. The store, which features craft supplies, gifts, unique items, and everyday merchandise, is also active in the Castro Merchants association.

Other awardees are the San Francisco Fire Department, for paramedic Jason Cortez’s exemplary patient care that he gave to a 3-year-old boy who was in respiratory arrest. The child, who was not identified, has fully recovered from his medical emergency.

The San Francisco Police Department will be honored for Officer Jason Johnson, who during his six-year tenure, has gone above and beyond when it comes to mentoring youth.

Finally, American Express has been named advocacy business of the year for its annual Small Business Saturday campaign that encourages shoppers to patronize local shops.

The awards gala and fundraiser takes place Thursday, February 5 at the Olympic Club Lakeside. A reception begins at 6 p.m., followed by dinner at 7:30.

Tickets are $135 and can be purchased at www.sfcdma.org/ annual-gala.

Community newspapers back at main library

Following a service disruption of nearly two months, San Francisco Public Library officials have announced that free community newspapers are once again available at the main branch, 100 Larkin Street. The papers are now located

on the fifth floor.

The papers, including the Bay Area Reporter, had previously been on shelves just inside the Fulton Street entrance. But they were removed in early December after library staff determined the shelves had become messy and “weren’t working,” as Randy McClure, library project manager, said at a library commission meeting earlier this month.

Shortly after the commission meeting B.A.R. publisher Michael Yamashita received an email from Michelle Jeffers, chief of community programs and partnerships, informing him that an alternative location has been identified. The space is on the fifth floor, in the magazines and newspapers section. The papers are located right in front of the desk in the periodicals section.

Jeffers said that a sign will be posted at the Fulton Street entrance, alerting patrons to the new location.

Health insurance fair to help LGBTQs

Assemblymen Phil Ting and

David Chiu, both Democrats representing San Francisco, and gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) will host a health fair in order to help the LGBTQ and Chinese communities receive high-quality, affordable health care. Representatives from Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act, and Healthy San Francisco will be on hand Saturday, February 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street.

Event counselors proficient in health care options for people living with HIV will be able to advise attendees about their health coverage options through Covered California, Medi-Cal, and Healthy San Francisco. Those enrolling in Healthy San Francisco or Medi-Cal will make an appointment to enroll the following week.

Attendees eligible for private health insurance options will be able to enroll in health plans on site with the counsel of certified Covered California agents. (The dead-

Lesbian Travel Association (http:// www.iglta.org). Also there is still the good ol’ Damron Guide (http://damron.com).t For more on Brand g, visit http:// www.brandgvacations.com.

For more on Source Events, visit http://sourceevents.com. For more on Atlantis Events, visit http://atlantisevents.com.

Fred Palmer is the publisher/ owner of Outword Media Marketing and Events. Based in Sacramento, California for over 20 years, Palmer has traveled extensively and has written travel pieces not only for Outword, but also for other LGBT publications.

For more on Outword, visit www. outwordmagazine.com.

line for people to sign up for health coverage under the current open enrollment period is February 15.)

The event is free and open to the public. Translation services will be available in Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, and Tagalog.

Oakland play date for kids announced

Our Family Coalition, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ families, as well as all families and children, will hold a community play time event Saturday, February 7 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Youth UpRising Skatepark, 8711 MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland.

The free event is for children 0-5 years of age and will include outdoor games, fun multicultural activities, arts and crafts, story time, and healthy snacks.

To register, visit https:// www.z2systems.com/np/clients/ o u r f a m i l y / e ven t Re g i s t r a t i on . jsp?event=35625.

Future play times are scheduled for March 7 and April 4.t

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Visit celebritycruises.com/sf, call 1-888-456-7887 or contact your travel agent. *Visit celebritycruises.com/sf for full terms and conditions. Cruise must be booked 1/14/15–2/1/15 (“Offer Period”) applicable to an Alaska or Europe cruise that departs in 2015. Offer applies to 3-night and longer cruises departing 3/2015– 4/2017 booked at the non discounted standard rate. For 123Go! All Inclusive offer for standard verandas up to category 1A, cruise must be booked Jan. 21– Feb. 1, 2015 (“Offer Period”) applicable to an Alaska or Europe cruise that departs in 2015. Bookings that meet all of these requirements are “Qualifying Bookings.” 123go! All Inclusive Offer: In addition to the standard cruise, the Offer provides each of the first two guests in a veranda or higher Qualifying Booking with all three of the options described below. Standard 123go! Offer provides ocean view and veranda stateroom bookings on European sailings with guest’s choice of any two of the following options and one of these options for all other sailings: Classic Beverage Package, Free Gratuities, or a stateroom onboard credit (“OBC”). OBC amounts vary as follows: Concierge class and higher - $200 for 3-5 night sailings and $300 for 6-night and longer sailings, and ocean view and higher sailings - $100 for 3-5 nights, $200 for 6-9 nights, and $300 for 10-nights and longer. One OBC per stateroom. Third and higher guests booked in a triple or higher Qualifying Booking stateroom each receive one 40-minute internet package and one Classic Non-Alcoholic Beverage Package. Free Gratuities provides prepaid stateroom, waiter, assistant waiter and head waiter gratuities in the amount suggested by Celebrity’s guidelines. OBC is not redeemable for cash and expires on final night of the cruise. Specialty dining packages are additional, include one or more dinners in each specialty restaurant, and vary by sailing. Restaurant reservations are subject to availability. All Offers are applicable to new individual bookings, non-transferable, applicable only to the Qualifying Booking, not combinable with any other offer. Offers and prices are subject to availability and change without notice, and capacity controlled. ©2015 Celebrity Cruises Inc. Ships registered in Malta and Ecuador.

6983nx CELsfBayAreaRepo_V2.indd 1

1/22/15 6:00 PM

<< Community News

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29–February 4, 2015

t

Strength in political numbers Jane Philomen Cleland

F

ourteen of the East Bay’s LGBTQ elected officials gathered recently in Oakland to kick off the new year and receive congratulations from members and friends of the East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club. The January 21 reception was held at the California Nurses Association headquarters and was emceed by lesbian former state Senator Carole Migden. From left, the electeds are: Joaquin Rivera, Alameda County Board of Education; Jovanka Beckles, Richmond City Council; James Chang,

Berkeley Rent Board; Ruth Atkin, Emeryville mayor; Darryl Moore, Berkeley City Council; Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland City Council; Migden; Kriss Worthington, Berkeley City Council; Abel Guillen, Oakland City Council; Lori Droste, Berkeley City Council; Judy Appel, Berkeley School Board; Gabriel Quinto, El Cerrito City Council; Marguerite Young, East Bay Municipal Utility District board; Andy Katz, EBMUD board; and Rebecca Saltzman, BART board.

EQCA head talks PrEP, health disparities

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he head of Equality California voiced strong support for 10:17 AM PrEP as an HIV prevention tool, and discussed the statewide LGBT advocacy group’s work to address health disparities, at a recent town hall meeting in San Francisco.

Rick Zbur, an attorney who took over as the nonprofit’s executive director in September, noted the organization has expanded its focus beyond some of the work it’s been best known for in recent years.

“We’re not just about marriage” now, Zbur, a gay Latino man, said at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro Thursday, January 22. He said EQCA “will engage on anything” if it’s important to the community “and we have the capacity as an organization to make positive change.”

A primary concern among many people locally has been expanding access to the pre-exposure prophylaxis medication Truvada, which more people are using to prevent HIV transmission. Truvada, however, is expensive and not always covered by insurance.

“We’re very focused on it,” Zbur said of PrEP. “I know certain plans under Covered California,” the state’s health benefit exchange, “do not cover it.”

“The answer is obvious. There should be coverage for people to choose it,” Zbur said, adding, “I don’t really understand” people who are against it. To him, he said, “it’s about individuals making choices over their own lives.”

Paul Urban, a gay trans man, told Zbur he’s been on PrEP “for a while” and said he’d like to see something similar to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which helps ensure access to medications, for PrEP users.

Zbur said EQCA is looking at how it can play a role in expanding access to PrEP, but the group “wouldn’t do it alone.”

He said after the event that he’s

<<

Senior ‘Bill of Rights’

From page 1

Pat McGinnis, the executive director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, told the Bay Area Reporter that San Francisco would be the first city to enact such legislation.

“The San Francisco ordinance is a great step forward in creating safe environments for people, and that is what you need,” said McGinnis, whose San Francisco-based agency was not involved in the drafting of the proposed law.

Gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener plans to introduce the local

Rick Gerharter

Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur speaks at the organization’s town hall meeting in San Francisco January 22.

hearing support for more PrEP availability “in a lot of places” and it’s “something I want us to engage in” either through legislation or administratively.

Health disparities

EQCA’s updated mission statement includes making sure LGBTs’ rights are protected even when they leave California. It also includes addressing heath disparities, such as those impacting seniors and transgender people living in poverty, and high rates of suicide among LGBT youth.

Zbur said such problems are products of “systemic discrimination,” and EQCA wants to look at what can be done to draw attention to the problems.

EQCA has also launched its Fair Share for Equality initiative, which is meant to address health disparities and other concerns through budget advocacy and assuring that LGBTs are counted in social service programs.

In a video Zbur showed Thursday, Jo Michael, EQCA’s legislative associate, said, “If we are not counted, we don’t count.”

EQCA is also putting more of a focus on undocumented immigrants, including its efforts in the

ordinance creating a “Bill of Rights” for LGBT residents of long-term care facilities at the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, February 3. Gay District 9 Supervisor David Campos is a co-sponsor of the law, which was one of the recommendations made last spring by the city’s now disbanded LGBT seniors task force.

“I think, in talking to members of the task force, this made sense as a foundational piece of legislation to address the needs of LGBT seniors,” said Wiener. “There are a lot of programs for seniors, so we need to make sure that those programs are being run in a nondis-

Central Valley, where the organization’s work includes making sure health care providers have cultural competency training.

The organization soon also plans to announce details of a faith initiative.

“We’ve been in discussion with a group of faith leaders throughout the state,” including people who are Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, Zbur said. The aim is to work toward “full acceptance of LGBT people” in all communities.

Besides marriage equality, EQCA’s also been known for its work to protect LGBT students from discrimination.

Thursday night, Zbur talked about efforts related to Assembly Bill 1266. The EQCA-backed bill, which Governor Jerry Brown signed into law in 2013, is meant to ensure that transgender students can fully participate in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their gender identity.

“Implementation is spotty,” Zbur said. “ ... A lot of districts don’t really want to do it.” He’s heard there are plans to try to repeal the law on the November 2016 ballot.

The turnout for the town hall was small, with only about 20 people present. It was moderated by Bay Area Reporter news editor Cynthia Laird.

Tom Mayer noted the nonprofit, which is based in Los Angeles, currently doesn’t have much presence in San Francisco and asked Zbur what the group would do to “reengage” people here.

Zbur said his organization does still have a local office (but no staff) and the goal is “to have more staff up here.” He also said the organization, known for its gala fundraisers, hopes to reach out more to medium-size donors.

Asked after the town hall what he thought of it, Urban called it “a great start.”

Zbur invited people to contact him at rick@eqca.org.t criminatory manner.”

While there is little data regarding LGBT seniors in long-term care facilities, aging advocates point to a study published in 2011 by the National Senior Citizens Law Center that looked into the issue and found myriad problems residents, their families, and friends had experienced.

Of the 800 respondents, 78 percent felt it would be unsafe for LGBT seniors to be out of the closet in a care facility, with 89 percent believing out seniors would face discrimination from staff.

See page 13 >>

t

Community News>>

January 29–February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Fleeing anti-gay conditions, youth find a home at LGBT center

Jane Philomen Cleland

Shane, who asked to be identified only by his first name, was one of four young people who spoke at the LGBT Community Center’s donor appreciation brunch.

by David-Elijah Nahmod

T

hree young gay men and a young lesbian credit the San Francisco LGBT Community Center for offering them a safe sanctuary as well as job, housing and community building opportunities.

One of the men came to the United States from Eastern Europe and one came from Jordan. Both fled countries where being openly gay put their lives at risk.

All four spoke about the isolation and unacceptance they faced from their families and the community.

They addressed an attentive and largely supportive audience at a community center donor appreciation brunch Sunday, January 25.

Due to concerns involving immigration and family retaliation from two of the speakers, they requested that their last names not be

published.

Nemo, 22, spoke of being forced to live a closeted life in his homeland.

“I was secretly watching Queer as Folk,” the Eastern European native said.

Nemo said that he arrived in San Francisco with “the timidity of a virgin boy approaching a gay bar.” He credited the center’s youth program with changing his life.

“They welcomed me with encouragement, support, and condoms,” he said. “Because of the inspiring people here, I went back to school. I’ve been offered an internship in Washington, D.C. to lobby for gay rights.”

Aram, 21, faced even greater challenges. His self-esteem had been destroyed by the intense homophobia in his native Jordan.

“I was bullied, beaten, and spat

upon,” he recalled. “I understood that I had to leave my country.”

He spoke of feeling worthless and of selling his body. All that changed, he said, when he came to San Francisco and walked into the LGBT center. “All I needed was someone to hear me,” Aram said. “I’m happy for the first time in my life.”

Aram now serves on the advisory board at Larkin Street Youth Services.

“Things are changing for the LGBT community,” said community center Executive Director Rebecca Rolfe. “But we still see LGBT youth in the foster care and criminal justice systems. It’s important that we celebrate change, but remember that many still face hardships and challenges.”

Rolfe named housing, employment, and self-esteem among the issues that LGBT youth continue to face. The center serves about 300 youth annually.

“They’re struggling to find their way,” she said.

The other two speakers shared similar stories and asked that they be identified only by their first names. Meredith, 24, spoke of enduring neglect and sexual abuse.

“I made the decision to leave that environment,” she said. “I learned that I’m a strong, resilient person. I can give back.”

Shane, 22, remembers being bullied and being subjected to anti-gay slurs.

“I grew up without a community,” he said.

When he arrived at the center for a meal night, he found something else, he said.

“I needed food, but more than that, T:9.75” I needed friends,” he said. “I came here scared but driven to make it work. I

now work two jobs – tech and retail.”

The audience was impressed, although San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade and Celebration Committee board member Veronika Fimbres, a

longtime transgender activist, was disappointment that no trans youth were represented at the brunch.

See page 14 >>

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<< Community News

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29–February 4, 2015

A monarchy for all comers, gay or straight

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by Matthew S. Bajko

I SAN FRANCISCO

COLUMBARIUM Meet Your Neighbors Now until February 5th, 2015 we’re offering a 25% discount Wine & Cheese Open House on the original Friday, July 19, Columbarium, 2013 2—5pm The RSVP Francisco Room Required: (415) 752-8791 and The Hall of Olympians.

1 Loraine Court—San Francisco, CA 94118

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

Please mention that you saw our offer here in the Bay Area Reporter.

415.752.7891 Visit us at One Loraine Court, in the heart of the Richmond.

COA 534

ebar.com

t may have been a sovereignty established to lend nobility to drag queens, but today it is a monarchy that welcomes everyone, gay or straight, in drag or out.

All are welcome to become a member of the International Court System, which was born 50 years ago in conjunction with the founding court’s establishment in San Francisco. Gaining membership status is as easy as filling out an application and paying the yearly dues to join one of the nearly 70 Imperial Courts in the U.S., Canada or Mexico.

“We are throwing a wider net than we used to. It is not just drag aficionados and drag queens,” said Donna Sachet, Absolute Empress XXX of the Imperial Court of San Francisco and the Bay Area Reporter’s society columnist.

The biggest misperception about the Imperial Court, say longtime members, is that is it merely a group for people who dress in drag, when in fact, anyone interested in helping raise money for worthy causes in their community can join.

“The hallmark of the court system is it has always welcomed everyone, be they straight, gay, or transgender,” said San Diego resident Nicole Murray Ramirez, who holds the title of Queen Mother I of the Americas, Canada, U.S.A., and Mexico.

Another little known fact is that anyone can enter the yearly elections to be crowned emperor and empress of their local court. Today men and women, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, compete for the titles.

The current reigning empress

Rick Gerharter

Nicole Murray Ramirez, Queen Mother I of the Americas, Canada, U.S.A., and Mexico, stands by the grave of Imperial Court founder Jose Julio Sarria during the Imperial Council’s annual visit last year.

and emperor of the Imperial Court of All Alaska are a heterosexual man and woman, noted Ramirez.

“During the campaign one married heterosexual couple ran against another. The evil queens that we are, we split up the couples and picked a wife from one and a husband from another,” joked Ramirez.

When attending events hosted by the Royal Sovereign and Imperial Court of the Alamo Empire, based in San Antonio, Texas, straight allies and sisters, Rosie Valdez and Norma Czigler, are often asked how long have they been life partners.

“We say all our lives,” joked Valdez, who was given the lifetime title of Arch Duchess from San Antonio three years ago.

A nurse and professor who specialized in caring for expectant mothers living with HIV or AIDS, Valdez, 59, joined her local Imperial Court four years ago after being invited to attend a benefit show by one

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of the emperor candidates that year.

“I was impressed by the work that they did, raising one dollar at a time by tips,” she recalled.

A lifelong fundraiser, Valdez as a child worked in tangent with her mom to hold bake sales and other events to raise money for worthy causes. In 2009, having recovered enough from a traumatic brain injury she suffered six years prior that had kept her stuck in her home, she was looking to get involved with nonprofits again.

The local Imperial Court turned out to be a perfect match, said Valdez, even if she has no ambition to be elected an empress one day.

“I love to fundraise and I don’t feel I need to be an empress in order to fundraise,” she said.

Those interested in joining their local Imperial Court can find a list with links to the various courts’ websites at http://www.impcourt. org/the-courts/court-directory.t

Imperial Court

From page 1

Ramirez, who as Sarria’s handpicked successor holds the title of Queen Mother I of the Americas, Canada, U.S.A., and Mexico. “Jose established the court in 1965, that is way before Stonewall in 1969.”

Ramirez refers to Sarria as a gay version of folklore character Johnny Appleseed.

“She planted a seed in San Francisco and it turned into the Imperial Court of San Francisco. She nurtured that, and it then grew into a strong Royal Oak tree with branches now in three countries the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. There are now chapters in nearly 70 cities in these three great nations, all from that little seed.”

Many were the first gay groups to form in their hometowns, such as the Imperial Court in Surrey, British Columbia Canada, founded in 1998 by Emperor 1 & 7 Surrey Martin Rooney, his partner Rob Loewen, and a lesbian couple who had moved to the city around the same time.

“We moved out to Surrey in 1996 and nothing was going on. It was a conservative city and people thought no gay would live here,” said Rooney, 54, adding there are now close to 100 members in the Surrey court. “You get the opportunity to do incredible advocacy or activism.

And you get the opportunity to play

Rick Gerharter

Absolute Empress XVI Phyllis performed at the Imperial Court Coronation 46 in 2011.

in roles of traditional monarchy.”

Leaders within the court system, noted Ramirez, have gone on to launch LGBT nonprofits and other groups in their cities. Among those he listed are the Los Angeles-based agency Aid for AIDS, the Nevada AIDS Foundation, the International Gay Rodeo Association, and San Diego’s LGBT community center.

“The history of a lot of the community coincided with the Imperial Court,” said Ramirez. “Now, people have forgotten that role the courts See page 11 >>

t

Community News>>

January 29–February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

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<<

$1,752.40. Anthony Ross, left, program director of Outlet; Roark Clayton, president of the Rainbow Chamber of Silicon Valley; Adrienne Keel, outreach director for the chamber; and Cassie Blume, program director of the LGBTQ Youth Space, held up oversized checks at the event, which was the second year that the chamber raised funds for the youth groups.

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Imperial Court

From page 10

have played. A community, a movement that doesn’t know where it came from doesn’t know where it is going.”

Jerry Coletti, elected Emperor XVII After Norton in 1989 alongside the late Absolute Empress XXIV Pat Montclaire, said that during their reign as the Court of the Lion and the Lady they fought to foster stronger ties between San Francisco’s leather and drag communities at a time when many leather bars would not admit drag queens.

“Pat Montclaire, my empress, is the reason that drag queens are accepted within the leather community,” said Coletti. “Another example is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

They had never been involved in any Imperial function before. Pat and I asked them to become involved in our two campaigns.”

Over the years the court systems have also been conduits for raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for charitable causes. Each year’s empress and emperor spearhead the fundraising efforts.

“We are a group of individuals who care about the organization and, particularly, our community,” said Emperor XXXVI After Norton John F. Weber, the current chairman of the Imperial Council of San Francisco, the governing body for the local court. “Our sole purpose, as it was when Momma Jose started it, is to find the least among us, support them, empower them, and distribute money to the needy and charitable organizations and to do so while having fun. The moment we cease doing that – having fun and not give out money – then we miss the heart of why we are here.”

By holding annual elections for empress and emperor – as well as contests for other titles such as Mr. and Miss Gay San Francisco – the Imperial Courts ensure new leaders are brought into the fold each year.

“Hopefully, the emperor and empresses title will go another 50 years,” said Absolute Empress XVI Phyllis, a.k.a. Pushy Phyllis, whose

Rick Gerharter

The late Absolute Empress XIV Ginger came to the 20th anniversary of her coronation in 1999 dressed as Elizabeth I.

given name is Jim Bliesner.

Bliesner, 64, now lives in Palm Springs but remains involved with the San Francisco court and will be attending the anniversary events next month.

“I am the oldest empress still involved. I am kind of like the queen mother Jose used to be,” said Bliesner, who next year will celebrate the 35th anniversary of his being crowned the Ducky Empress.

“I had a crown with Daisy Duck on it and I gave away Ducky Awards to people who helped me do things.

The theme of my coronation was Upstairs Downstairs at Duckingham Palace.”

Like others, Bliesner credits the court system for playing a major role in fostering a charitable tradition within the LGBT community and laying the foundation for so many of the nonprofits that came afterwards.

“We helped the gay community get to where it is today. I hope it does live on,” he said. “I hope it survives another 50 years.”

For information about the Imperial Court of San Francisco, visit http://www.imperialcouncilsf.org/ index.html.t

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<< Community News

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29–February 4, 2015

<<

HIV plan

From page 3

retroviral therapy. Getting to Zero seeks to expand this initiative from SFGH and DPH clinics to all providers citywide.

The third prong involves retention in care, for example when someone loses their job, their housing, or their health insurance.

“For many diseases, having a short interruption in therapy isn’t devastating,” Havlir said. “That is not the case for HIV. When people [stop] taking HIV therapy the virus levels immediately surge and it’s very unhealthy for the patient and also puts the community at risk for transmission.”

Campos emphasized the existing disparities in access to PrEP and

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Political Notebook

From page 5

from City College’s accreditation threatened with revocation by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. A special trustee was put in charge of City College and continues to maintain oversight of the academic institution.

Mandelman told the Bay Area Reporter he wants to reclaim the board’s power by the end of the year.

“For accreditation reasons and democracy reasons, we have to

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HIV treatment and the many factors that affect outcomes, including lack of housing. Mental health issues and substance use are also barriers facing many people living with, or at risk for, HIV. “There are still many disparities in certain communities including the African-American community, the Latino community, and the transgender community,” he said. “You can’t talk about serving those living with HIV without talking about the other issues that impact their lives.”

Campos suggested that the Getting to Zero coalition “doesn’t really reflect the diversity of San Francisco,” and emphasized the importance of people from the most heavily affected communities having a place at the table.

Need for more funding

DPH chief financial officer Greg Wagner explained that over the past five years San Francisco has seen more than $14.6 million in cuts to state and federal HIV funding, with more expected for the coming year. In fiscal year 2014-2015 the city will spend about $36 million for HIV health services, about $15 million for prevention, and about $5 million for epidemiology and research.

The Getting to Zero effort will require additional funding over and above the current HIV budget, although the exact amount has not yet been determined.

“Getting to Zero’s first year initiatives are costed out at a bit over $2 million,” steering committee mem-

ber Jeff Sheehy told the Bay Area Reporter. “[The coalition] is hoping the city can cover roughly half and is actively seeking funding from foundations, private industry, and other sources for the remainder. We want this to be a public-private initiative.”

Several speakers emphasized that funding for the Getting to Zero initiative must not replace existing HIV services and programs.

“Our future success in getting to zero is going to be built on the existing foundation of HIV services that we want to make sure does remain intact,” said Stephanie Goss from the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center. “We have to ensure we don’t leave the most vulnerable and hardest to reach communities behind.”t

have the local board in control,” said Mandelman, an attorney who is the sole LGBT person serving on the elected body. “We also have to demonstrate we are competent to run this really important institution, which it is, at a time when City College is facing huge challenges, including really seriously declining enrollment.”

The college did receive some good news earlier this month regarding its accreditation fight. As the B.A.R. reported last week, a state court judge ruled January 16 that the accrediting commission acted unlawfully in reviewing City College’s accreditation.

And two days prior to the judicial decision, the accreditation committee granted “restoration” status to CCSF, giving it two years to fully comply with the campus requirements needed to be in good standing.

The board is now meeting again regularly at 4 p.m. on the fourth Thursday of the month in the Multi Use Building, Room 140, on City College’s Ocean Campus. The next meeting will be February 26.

“It is going to be a gradual process, but I will be seriously disappointed if we don’t have most of

our authority back by the end of the year. I think it is likely that we will,” said Mandelman.

chairs the Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors and represents the city on the Caltrain board.

Wiener elected chair of transportation board

Correction

Gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener was elected chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority Tuesday, January 27. The body is made up of the city’s 11 supervisors and is responsible for long-range transportation planning for the city.

Created by voters in 1989, the transportation authority administers the half-cent transportation sales tax and serves as congestion management agency for San Francisco. The agency is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Wiener had sought the position, and didn’t request heading a board committee because of it, he told the B.A.R. earlier this month.

The supervisor noted that “there’s a lot of queer leadership around transportation issues.” He and fellow gay District 9 Supervisor David Campos, who chaired the CTA in 2012, represent the city on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and Tom Nolan, a gay man who used to run Project Open Hand,

Last week’s column about the Outside the Frame festival incorrectly referred to the feature-length film Bassam Kassab is submitting to be screened. It is Sin Visa, (translated Without a Visa), about a Mexican undocumented immigrant whose views on homosexuality are challenged when a same-sex couple befriends him.

The online version of the column has been updated.t Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion.

This week’s column reported on LGBT support for a “right to die” bill before the CA Legislature.

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

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

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lar with a small group of the couple’s friends on a crisp winter afternoon.

Mr. Iriki, 51, is an attorney with Moscone Emblidge and Otis in San Francisco, and was born in Berkeley, California. Mr. De Lora, 55, is associate professor of musical theatre and voice at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs, and was born in Portland, Oregon.

They met in April 2003 while on separate vacations at a men’s resort in Palm Springs, California.

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Obituaries >> Ronald Aguilera July 26, 1955 – January 6, 2015

It is with immense sadness that we mourn the loss of our great friend, colleague, mentor, son, and brother who passed suddenly on January 6, 2015.

Ronald moved to San Francisco in 1995 and quickly became an integral part of the therapeutic community. It is inestimable how many lives Ronald has touched in his long career as a psychotherapist.

He is remembered as being extremely gentle, kind, optimistic, compassionate, and as an extraordinary human being who touched hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

Ronald is survived by his mother, Virginia; sister, Stephanie, of Orange County; and brother, Tommy, of Tucson, Arizona.

Please join us in celebrating and remembering Ronald’s many gifts to us on February 15 at El Rio, 3158 Mission Street, San Francisco from noon to 3 p.m.

Gerald N. Kramer October 22, 1940 – January 22, 2015

In fond memoriam of Gerald N. Kramer who passed away from this life too soon on January 22, 2015. His kindness, generosity, and good humor will be missed dearly by those close to him. Gerry is survived by his life partner of 51 years; sister Beverly; brother Jack; and numerous friends, relatives and acquaintances.

Northern California memorial and viewing services were held at Monte’s Chapel of the Hills in San Anselmo Wednesday, January 28.

Gerry’s body will be peacefully interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheatridge, Colorado. The date for the interment Mass and ceremony will be announced at a later date.

t <<

Community News>>

Castro arson

From page 1

In August, jurors acquitted Diaz of second-degree murder but convicted him of involuntary manslaughter, arson, mutilating human remains, and destroying evidence.

Diaz was released in September after spending more than three years in custody.

At Diaz’s sentencing in November, Deputy Public Defender Alex Lilien requested that Superior Court Judge Donald Sullivan dismiss all counts but the involuntary manslaughter. Sullivan dismissed only the arson count.

Back in custody

Diaz, who’s back in custody on $500,000 bail, looked grim as he was escorted into court Monday with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Assistant District Attorney Andrew Clark said prosecutors weren’t asking for a criminal protective order for Metzger. Clark noted Metzger was in court, and said he’s “in support of Diaz” and “not interested” in such an order.

In an interview Friday, January 23, Lilien, who again is representing Diaz, said he hadn’t seen any of the evidence in the new case.

He said it appears that there’s “circumstantial evidence” that has Diaz “in the vicinity or in the bar at some time prior to the fire on the second floor.”

Lilien said that his understanding is that police seized the digital video recorder from the Mix, and computers and clothing from Diaz’s residence. He said he didn’t have details related to the burning of Metzger’s car.

Diaz is “doing OK,” but “distraught,” he said.

“My understanding is the police talked to him the day before they ar-

rested him,” Lilien said. “I think he knew there was video of him in the bar prior to the fire happening nearby,” but “he didn’t go anywhere.”

Diaz has been “insistent he wasn’t responsible,” Lilien said, and “I have trouble imagining him running around lighting fires.”

Over the time that Diaz appeared in court for the 2011 killing, he had appeared mild-mannered, and Lilien has referred to his client as “a sweet kid.”

Lilien said Friday, “I really was very optimistic for him. I’m honestly pretty surprised” by the arrest last week. He said things had been “going well” for Diaz, who’d been studying English and math in college, and had “a good support system.”

When the Bay Area Reporter tried to visit Diaz in jail last Thursday afternoon, January 22, a sheriff ’s department staffer said that Diaz is “refusing to speak to the media.”

After Monday’s hearing, Lilien told reporters he couldn’t say “a whole lot more” about the evidence in the new case.

In an email exchange, Officer Albie Esparza, a police spokesman, said, “We do have at least one video.

We are not able to discuss evidence as this case is in the courts.”

Asked whether police were investigating Diaz in connection with fires that occurred in the Castro in 2011, Esparza said, “We are still investigating other cases.”

Diaz’s next court date is February 24 for a prehearing conference.

Arson dismissal

Sullivan’s dismissal of the arson conviction has drawn media attention in recent days.

At Diaz’s sentencing, the judge considered that keeping that count would require Diaz’s “lifetime regis-

From Larry Metzger’s Facebook page

David Diaz, left, and his boyfriend, Larry Metzger, vacationed in Mexico in late December with dog Patch.

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Senior ‘Bill of Rights’

From page 8

It included several examples reported by people in San Francisco, such as one 83-year-old resident who reported staff at one unnamed facility refused to bathe his partner for 16 days be cause of being uncomfortable helping a gay man. A woman told of staff at one facility refusing to use the more masculine name her friend, a lesbian in her 80s, went by and instead used her given, more feminine name.

“We have heard examples of more broadly, not just in San Francisco, of LGBT seniors experiencing significant problems when they go into a facility in terms of going back into the closet and not being with their partner,” said Wiener. “Certainly, it is not as big a problem in San Francisco as it is in other parts of the state.”

The issue takes on added importance due to LGBT seniors being more likely to need facility-based care compared to heterosexual seniors because they have less people they can rely on to help them age at home, noted attorney Daniel Redman, a gay man who served on the San Francisco task force and fo-

cused on long-term care issues.

“For folks, especially, without family members to advocate for them, this bill is necessary to empower our allies in facilities. It sets the tone for what nondiscriminatory and proper care looks like,” said Redman. “We are giving people the tools they need to advocate for themselves, their friends, partners and families of choice.”

Due to the advancement of marriage rights for same-sex couples, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid is looking to enact national guidelines protecting the rights of gay and lesbian couples when they move into long-term care facilities, said McGinnis.

“Interestingly enough, the federal government just came out with draft regulations we commented on regarding discrimination against same-sex spouses in nursing homes,” she said. “They want to change the rights of residents of nursing homes at the federal level.”

A statewide law requiring administrators of residential care facilities receive training in LGBT issues went into effect in California January 1. A similar law mandating that licensed health care professionals at senior care facilities in the state be trained

January 29–February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

tration as an arsonist,” which would “mar his character.”

He acknowledged Diaz’s youth, that he had no prior criminal history, and indicated he agreed with Lilien that “the likelihood of [Diaz] committing such crimes in the future” was “extremely unlikely.”

Friday, Lilien said the facts presented in the 2011 case “were pretty unique.”

Diaz had set that fire after “a fairly traumatic and stressful event. ... The judge had heard all the evidence. It didn’t really seem like other cases” where “people are lighting fires for the sake of lighting fires.”

Even if the arson charge hadn’t been dismissed in November, Lilien said, Diaz “wouldn’t have done any more time.” He’d already served the time he could in the case.

“He wasn’t given a break,” Lilien said of Diaz. “This was not like an ill-conceived deal he got. This was pretty well-explored.”

Speaking to reporters Monday, Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said that Sullivan’s dismissal of the arson charge had added “insult to injury.”

Bastian said that the judge had wanted to save Diaz from the “undue burden” of being a registered arsonist, but now that “burden” rests on the city.

An online search of superior court records didn’t indicate any trouble between the two men.

Metzger attended many of the hearings in the 2011 case and the trial, and he accompanied Diaz to his sentencing in November. He declined requests for comment on the current charges against Diaz.

“I’m not going to talk to you,” Metzger told a reporter as he left his home last Thursday.

According to a motion Lilien filed in the previous case, Diaz isn’t a U.S. citizen but a legal permanent

resident. Diaz, who was assisted Monday by a Spanish interpreter, is originally from Mexico.

Asked Friday about the risk of his client being deported, Lilien indicated he didn’t know the specific chance of that happening, but said, “There’s always a risk when someone is not a U.S. citizen and there’s criminal charges.”

A conviction of arson of an inhabited structure alone can result in a maximum sentence of eight years in state prison plus lifetime registration as an arsonist.t

Salon damage

An Up Hair worker who said he didn’t want his name published because the owner had instructed him not to talk about the fire said his hair products stored in a backroom cabinet had been destroyed, among other damage, but the salon was still open for business.

He said the blaze had occurred in “the middle of the night.” The salon doesn’t have a video surveillance system, he said, and it wasn’t clear if someone had forced entry into the shop.

The man said he had occasionally seen Diaz in passing, and he’d been “very quiet and pleasant.” He said he had “no idea” what the motive may have been for the fire, and nobody from the salon had had any altercations with Diaz.

He also didn’t know of Diaz and Metzger having any troubles between each other. He’d last seen Diaz at the building Monday, January 19.

“Everything seemed pretty normal,” he said Lilien said there’s “no indication” that there had been a fight between Diaz and Metzger. “They were living together. ... They were doing great.”

in LGBT issues took effect at the start of 2009.

The proposed ordinance in San Francisco is believed to be the first in the nation to focus on all LGBT residents of long-term care facilities, particularly transgender seniors.

It would empower gender-nonconforming residents to demand certain privacy protections, such as requesting visual barriers when they disrobe, and to refuse to be examined for educational purposes rather than therapeutic.

Facilities would be required to update their admission forms so that questions regarding a person’s gender identity and preferred names and pronouns are included.

They would also need to designate a staff member as an LGBT liaison responsible for annual trainings on cultural competency and other issues.

Once adopted, the law would mandate that within six months the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and the local long-term care ombudsman office publish a handbook to help facilities comply with the ordinance.

The Board of Supervisors likely will vote on the Bill of Rights law sometime in March or April.t

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Aram and a go-go pup at Pound Puppy in 2014, at the SF Eagle.

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Besties

From page 1

own suggestion. Previously, the ballot did not contain listed nominees.

Staff at the paper hope that the new format will be easier for readers to complete, thus increasing the number of ballots submitted. Categories this year include community, shopping/services, weddings, arts and entertainment, restaurants, nightlife, bar folk, and sex.

“For our fifth annual readers’ choice awards, we’ve added a new weddings section as well as other new categories, and, while still allowing write-in votes in all categories, have nominated a slate of previous winners and new editors’ picks,” said Scott Wazlowski, vice president of advertising for the B.A.R. Other new features include breaking out the museum and dance categories – now there are nominees for modern dance and ballet and museum and nature/science museum. For the weddings category, domestic and international vacation destinations are also up for popular vote.

The nominees are designed to allow for new winners in many categories, such as best LGBT fundraiser, which this year includes events benefiting the Horizons Foundation, Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation, National AIDS Memorial Grove, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, LGBT Community Center, and the GLBT Historical Society.

Nominees for best LGBTQ activist this year are: Tez Anderson, of Let’s Kick ASS (AIDS Survivors Syndrome); B. Cole, of the Brown Boi Project; Alicia Garza, of #Black Lives Matter; and Aja Monet, of

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LGBT center

From page 9

“I would have liked to see what a trans youth of color would have said,” Fimbres told the Bay Area Reporter. “They are the most displaced and distressed in our community.”

Angel VanStark, the California state director for the Campaign For a Presidential Youth Council, was quite pleased with the brunch.

“Not only does the LGBT center provide youth with preparation to face the world with a resilience that is hard to match, the center opens up countless opportunities through their youth leadership programs, economic development program and large network,” VanStark, a center board member, said.

VanStark was a homeless youth who found housing and employment with help from the center’s youth program.

Though the LGBT center has often been given high marks for its work with queer youth, some in the disabled community have called upon the center to make the building more accessible, particularly to people in wheelchairs. A recent

Tenderloin Pride.

There was an increase in categories encompassing the rich diversity of local events, venues, and people of the nightlife world, noted BARtab editor Jim Provenzano.

New this year is the best game night category, which includes nominees Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night at Wild Side West; No No Bingo at Virgil’s Sea Room; Name That Beat at Toad Hall; Trivia Night at Harvey’s; and Bottoms Up Bingo at Hi Tops.

Other new entries are unusual and themed nightlife events, from the horror-themed Dragula at SF Oasis (formerly at SF Eagle) to Kink.com parties to Pound Puppy at SF Eagle. Also new are the comedy night and weekly nightlife events, which feature nominees such as Comedy Returns (El Rio), Funny Fun (Club 21, Oakland), Big Top (Beaux), Mother (SF Oasis), and Sundance Saloon (Space 550/ Beatbox).

In terms of personalities, there are categories for male and female DJs, go-go boys and go-go girls, male and female comedians, and male and female cabaret performers.

If you have a favorite drag queen and she isn’t listed in that category, you can write in your own.

The winners of the Besties will be featured in the B.A.R.’s April 2 issue.

There will be several prizes offered in a random drawing of people who complete at least 75 percent of the ballot. The grand prize is a fivenight stay at the Maui Sunseeker Resort with round-trip airfare provided by Alaska Airlines.

For a complete list of prizes, see the ballot. To vote online, visit www. ebar.com/besties2015. The deadline is midnight February 28.t B.A.R. story noted issues with the center’s front door, which does not have an electronic opener. In late December, Rolfe said that the installation date had not yet been set pending approval of the bidding contractor by the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

Sunday, she said that plans to install an electronic door at the center’s main entrance are still in the works. Rolfe said that the center was told that new architectural drawings were required in order to request funding to install the electronic door. The final cost of the door would be $27,000.

“We are now in the process of requesting the funding to hire the architect to do the drawings that will go to our request to hire a contractor to do the actual work,” Rolfe said. “If that feels like an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, it actually does feel that way.”

Sunday’s brunch was a prelude to the center’s annual Soiree, which will take place Saturday, March 28, at City View inside the Metreon.

The Soiree is one of the center’s biggest fundraising events.t

Notice is hereby given to the creditors and contingent creditors of the above-named decedent, that all persons having claims against the decedent, Jennie V. Maybon, who died on November 14, 2014, are required to file them with the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco at 400 McAllister Street, San Francisco, California 94102-4515, and mail a copy to Howard J. Lewis, as trustee of the Jennie V. Maybon Trust, Dated December 06, 2011, wherein the decedent was the settler, c/o Law Office of Justin W. MacNeil, P.O. Box 26024, San Francisco, California 94126-6024, within the later of four months after January 08, 2014, the date of the first publication of notice to creditors or, if notice is mailed or personally delivered to you, 60 days after the date this notice is mailed or personally delivered to you. A claim form may be obtained from the court clerk.

For your protection, you are encouraged to file your claim by certified mail, with return receipt requested.

Howard J. Lewis, Successor Trustee Jennie V. Maybon Trust Dated December 06, 2011 c/o Law Office of Justin W. MacNeil, P.O. Box 26024, San Francisco, California 94126-6024

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036210800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: S9 CONSULTING, 3055 GOUGH ST, #205, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BRIEANNE SENN. 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 12/19/14.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036229400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HERZ APPLIANCES, 1700 BAY ST, #105, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JHONSSON HERNANDEZ. 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 01/05/2015.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036218300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NELLY REYES IMMIGRATION CONSULTANT, 210 POST ST, #413, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NELLY REYESROSENBERG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/2001. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/26/2014.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036228100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE NAIL ROOM, 4205 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed JERRICA LUONG & LINDA HOANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/2015. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/05/2015.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036225200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FAYES, 3614 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110.

This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed JOSEPH WONG & MICHAEL GERALD MCCONNELL. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/2015. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/02/2015.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036218800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EYE CARUMBA OPTOMETRY, 4 EMBARCADERO CENTER, LOBBY LEVEL, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed JOSEPH TORRES O.D., A PROFESSIONAL OPTOMETRIC CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/26/2004. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/29/14.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036210300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PENABRAND, 608 ELIZABETH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PENABRAND, INC (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/2005. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/19/2014.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036203900

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035901600

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: THE NAIL ROOM, 4205 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by JERRICA LUONG. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/20/2014.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15550851

In the matter of the application of: RUTH WOO ENG, 418 40TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner RUTH WOO ENG, is requesting that the name RUTH WOO ENG be changed to RUTH YING WOO, and the name CAITLIN NICOLE ENG be changed to CAITLIN NICOLE WOO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 514 on the 19th of March 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15550859 In the matter of the application of: DAVID FREDERICK HAYES, 33 ELGIN PARK #10, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner DAVID FREDERICK HAYES, is requesting that the name DAVID FREDERICK HAYES be changed to DAVE HAYES. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 514 on the 24th of March 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036247000

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036212900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CALPE PAELLAS, 428 11TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NICOLAS ULLOA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/23/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/23/14.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036242500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RYDAIRE GAMES; RYDAIRE; 227 NINTH ST #44, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed CLAIRE TANG & RYDER BRIGHT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/09/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/09/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036242000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SWAG CABIN, 269 2ND AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed RYAN ALLEN SCHENK, JAMES CHO & DAVID ALEGRE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/26/14.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/09/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036241800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BERNAL HEIGHTS PIZZERIA, 59 30TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BERNAL HEIGHTS PIZZERIA, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/2015. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/09/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036229500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BABALOONS BUILDERS, 4407 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOHN JOSEPH TURANO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/09/09. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/13/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BRICK AND MORTAR REAL ESTATE SERVICES, 44 GOUGH ST #202, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed KATZ GROUP (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 01/05/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036241100

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036239600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RUG AND CHAIR, 2536 FOLSOM ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANNE NEUMAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/09/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EAZEMEDS LLC, 2035 OAKDALE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed EAZEMEDS LLC (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/08/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/08/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036237500

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036239500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: STAR LIGHTS S.F., 914 GRANT AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed YUE HUA CHEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/08/2015. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/08/2015.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 5, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036239400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VANCE JACOBS PHOTOGRAPHY, 237 CLARA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VANCE PATRICK JACOBS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/05. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/08/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036237800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HE XIE, 914 GRANT AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GUO QIANG LAI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/08/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29 FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036237200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EMBARKADERO SOCIAL CLUB, 1766 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed WALAC PET SERVICES LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/08/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/08/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035421800

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: BERNAL HEIGHTS PIZZERIA, 59 30TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110.

This business was conducted by a general partnership and signed by MEGHAN C. MURPHY & MARIO A. JUNQUEIRA. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/08/13.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036256600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OLD SOD TRANSPORT, 1422 16TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MONICA FEELY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/17/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/20/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036254200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ED HSU ACUPUNCTURE AND PHYSICAL THERAPY, 1424 VALENCIA ST #12, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EDWARD C. HSU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/15/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/08/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BETTER WIRED ELECTRIC, 215 SANTA YNEZ AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOSHUA FROST. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/2015. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/16/15.

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036234900

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036255800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOUSE RULES, 2227 POLK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed POLK STREET PARTNERS, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/15/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/16/14.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BRAYDEN FASHION, 564 GRANT AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed YIWEI KUANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/07/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/07/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WASSAM LABORATORIES, 660 4TH ST #297, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PASCAL WASSAM. 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 01/20/15.

JAN 08, 15, 22, 29, 2015

JAN 15, 22, 29, FEB 05, 2015

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036252600

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036265500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MAXEBOY MEDIA, 24 BONVIEW ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MAX STEIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/05/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/16/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: YONG FA, 5151 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112.

This business is conducted by an individual and is signed CAN QUAN ZHOU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/23/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/23/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036247600

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036265600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BASS LEGAL SERVICES, 1847 SCOTT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JUSTIN BASS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/10/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/13/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SIAM ORCHID THAI MASSAGE, 39 POLK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MONTAKARN PHUKAB. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/23/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/23/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036241400

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036265000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: N AND N PROPERTIES, 2227 UNION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed GEORGE NEWHALL & ELIZABETH WINTER NICHOLS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/09/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/09/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036252500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PRIMA CAFE, 215 FREMONT ST # 5B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HUNG AND HUNG INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/2015. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/16/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036241500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOLID BUILD CONSTRUCTION; WEST COAST SOUND SOLUTIONS, 98 12TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 941031242. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed WCSS (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 01/09/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036249200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PIVOT COFFEE, 650 TOWNSEND ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed ZYNGA INC (DE). 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 01/14/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036255900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CHIBERUS MOTOR & EXPORT, 71 BERTHA LANE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed LIBERUS JIKA & CHINYERE JIKA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/20/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/20/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036251000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OCTAVIA, 1701 OCTAVIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed KORE RESTAURANT GROUP 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 01/15/15.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035021700

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: THE HAPPY COLLECTIVE, 158A YUKON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business was conducted by a general partnership and signed by MICHAEL E. REILLY & AARON KLLC. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/05/13.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035754100 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: BETTER WIRED ELECTRIC, 258 EUREKA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business was conducted by a general partnership and signed by JOSHUA FROST & JAMES FROST. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/01/14.

JAN 22, 29, FEB 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036269500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TIGER N PEPPER, 424 STAPLES AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHARLESIE YONN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/23/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/23/15.

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036268000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CAMER1, 21 COLUMBIA SQ, #214, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CAMERON MOBERG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/26/15.

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036258000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SILVER COMPUTERS, 6835 GEARY BLVD, #4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EUGENE ABEZGAUZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/20/15.

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036233900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GUERRA CONSIGLIERI, 60 RAUSCH ST, #208, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JASMIN BARRAZA-GUERRA. 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 01/07/15.

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036238700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: COOKIE LOVE, 1488 PINE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ERIKA ANN OLSON. 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 01/08/15.

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036257800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FLOWERS INDEED! 510 LANSDALE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GREGORY CANNON LUM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/20/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/20/15.

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036263800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ZILK STUDIO, 3833 LAWTON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual and is signed ZARISHEILI ORTEGA MELENDEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/22/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/22/15.

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036261500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TYCOON CAFE & RESTAURANT, 620 O’FARRELL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ANCHALEE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/21/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/21/15.

JAN 29, FEB 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036263000

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

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Vol. 45 • No. 5 • January 29-February 4, 2015

Kicking off the ballet season

by Paul Parish

F

or the first time in 30 years, San Francisco Ballet’s opening night gala disappointed me. It’s always been a community festival. In the late 1980s, we’d leave the auditorium and find more

dancing going on in the lobby – Russian folk dancers, Savoy-style lindy-hoppers, with little combos playing so you and your date could dance yourselves, or climb the stairs to the mezzanine and look down over the balustrades on le tout San Francisco rocking out around the huge marble table.

See page 29 >>

San Francisco Ballet dancers in Helgi Tomasson’s Concerto Grosso.

Erik Tomasson

Distant memories of South of Market

by Sura Wood

J

anet Delaney: South of Market, now on show at the de Young Museum, is a photographic essay that documents the city’s brush with redevelopment, gentrification, the wages of progress, and their casualties in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As such, it has parallels with 21st-century San Francisco that are difficult to miss. And what have we learned, you might ask, as history seems to be repeating itself with the current tech boom?

To paraphrase singer Joni Mitchell’s rueful lyrics, “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

See page 30 >>

“David, Father Leo Joseph’s Roommate, 60 Langton Street, 1981,” archival pigment print

by Janet Delaney.

Courtesy of the artist

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

Cast your votes in our 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards Poll!

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<< Out There

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

Do-it-yourself North Bay getaway

by Roberto Friedman

T

he small picturesque town of Healdsburg in the North Bay is in the midst of its inaugural Hands on Healdsburg program, set to run through Feb. 28. It’s all about doit-yourself activities. So Out There and our comely companion Pepi headed up to the charming burg earlier this month to check out some of their “hands on” offerings.

First night in Healdsburg, we helped prepare a winter supper featuring a variety of wild mushrooms with teaching chef Anne Cornell at Relish Culinary Adventures.

The cooking school offers forays of mushroom foraging up in the hills and, when you’re back in town, the facilities to cook them up good. We enjoyed making tempura maiitake mushrooms with a port wine reduction, wild mushroom and chevre tartlets, petit filet with morel butter, sauteed kale and sunchoke puree. We sampled black trumpets, known in French as “trumpets of death,” but only because of their color – they’re not to be confused with “death caps.”

Dessert was zeppole filled with candy caps, a fungus found only in Northern California that has a distinctive maple-syrup taste. We’ll say it: we love mushrooms! More info can be found at relishculinary.com.

Next we headed to SHED, a wonderful venue that’s a combination grange, gardening and kitchen-supply store, café and fermentation bar, for a demonstration about fermented beverages such as housemade kombucha, kefir water, and a delicious blood orange-bay shrub made with sherry

vinegar. Fermentation specialist Jennifer Harris had us at kombucha when she presented us with her living, slimy SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast), the mother of all k-juice. Future SHED workshops include intensives on knife skills, Japanese rice, and a salt tasting. Info at HealdsburgShed.com.

Dragonfly Floral school offers classes in basic floral design, orchid arrangements, and design with succulents and tillandsia, all set on a rustic six-acre farm that’s home to a variety of plants and animals, a picnic area, shop and design school. We enjoyed meeting the squadron of “working ducks” busy ridding slugs from the rose garden by chowing down on them. Dragonfly is a bouquet of riches, and can be found at dragonflyfloral.com.

Our “hands on” experience hadn’t run its course, as next we were off to a wine and chocolate pairing at Ferrari-Carano Wine Shop that demonstrated real affinities between good red wine and artisanal chocolates from Scharffen Berger. Who knew that so much vocabulary from wine tasting – nose, bouquet, finish – could be applied to fine chocolate?

An epicurean education for OT. Dinner was at Spooonbar in the h2hotel, one of our favorite restaurants anywhere. Openers included chicken crackling in mole, marinated beets in a garden vichyssoise, and brassicas cooked on the plancha. Mains featured black truffle + escargot-stuffed chicken leg with dandelion greens, and the standout dessert was an almond granita, sesame and whipped honey. All of this washed down by a couple of glasses

t

Courtesy SHED

The fermentation bar at SHED in Healdsburg, one of the participating venues in Hands on Healdsburg.

of Sonoma Coma Pinot Noir, set to the sounds of water cascading down the sculpture of espresso spoons that gives this place its name.

We stayed at the Haydon Street Inn bed & breakfast, a few blocks from the town square in a quiet residential neighborhood. Innkeepers John Harasty and Keren Colsten opened up their home to us, and OT & Pepi found our Turret Room cozy and charming. A wine-and-cheese hour got us mingling with fellow guests of all ages, and breakfasts by Harasty, one-time executive chef at Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, were simply exquisite.

Booking info is at haydon.com.t For an overview of classes and other offerings in Hands on Healdsburg, go to healdsburg.com/ handsonhealdsburg.

The Haydon Street Inn bed & breakfast offers sumptuous morning meals prepared by one of the innkeepers, a professional chef.

Portrait of a lady

by Richard Dodds

T

om Stoppard is a bright guy. You won’t get much argument with that. And yet it can still feel like he is trying to convince you just how bright he is, with such intellectually demanding plays as The Invention of Love, Arcadia, and Coast of Utopia coming to mind. But in Indian Ink, which had its U.S. debut at ACT in 1999 and where it has now returned

in revised form, Stoppard is in a more entertainingly accessible mood. He still interweaves huge swathes of cultural issues in scenes alternately set on two continents and more than 50 years apart, but it’s not particularly difficult to follow his multiple trajectories. The challenge falls to him to have them meaningfully coalesce by the end of the three-hour production.

The fact is that he largely succeeds, abetted by director Carey Perloff’s

clear-headed approach that smoothly integrates, yet clearly delineates, the overlapping scenes set in different decades and locales. The primary locale is a fictional Indian province, both in 1930 and the 1980s, and the 1980s are also the time frame for scenes set at an English cottage, where strangers meet to uncover secrets about close relatives who may or may not have had a forbidden love affair in 1930 in the oppressively hot,

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culturally isolated, and politically restive province of Jummapur.

The unifying character is a frail young Englishwoman traveling in India for her health, a confounding notion to those who live there, but who is welcomed both by her fellow Brits and by the Anglophile local population because of her celebrity as the author of slightly scandalous erotic poetry. Even among those in favor of the growing independence movement – Gandhi is already making headlines – a fixation on all things British is prevalent. It is genuine, even if the comic deference the Indians show toward their occupiers masks attitudes that remain mostly impenetrable to outsiders.

But trying to untangle the enigma of the poet Flora Crewe (a wispy, spirited Brenda Meaney) has become the life work of a minor American scholar (a comically pedantic Anthony Fusco). He travels to England to interview Flora’s elderly sister (an imposing Roberta Maxwell), who is grudging with details, and he then winds up in Jummapur trying to find any hints of a romantic relationship between Flora and an Indian painter (an endearingly and fussily sensitive Firdous Bamji), whose portrait of

her ends up years later on the cover of a book of her collected letters. Unbeknownst to him, back in England, the painter’s son (an assured Pej Vahdat) reveals to the sister a startlingly intimate portrait his father painted of Flora back in 1930.

Stoppard revels in exploring the essences of culture clashes, especially in how it informs art. There is also a distrust of anything calling itself history, a malleable concept that is impossible to render objectively. When the American academic indicates he wants to follow up his meticulously footnoted collection of Flora’s letters with a biography, her sister throws cold water on the idea. “Biography is the worst possible excuse for getting things wrong,” she retorts with disdain.

The play is filled with humor, both as clever ripostes and in comic situations that arise as cultures and personalities collide. But never far away is Stoppard’s incisive intellect, which, in Indian Ink at least, merely dazzles rather than overwhelms us.t Indian Ink will run at the Geary Theatre through Feb. 8. Tickets are $20-$120. Call 749-2228 or go to act-sf.org.

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Brenda Meaney plays an English poet visiting India in 1930 who admires her portrait rendered by a local artist (Firdous Bamji) in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink at ACT.

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<< Theatre

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

Medium rare

by Richard Dodds

I

t’s no surprise when Angela Lansbury gets a round of applause as she makes her first entrance in Blithe Spirit. That’s a standard ritual when the presence of even fitful celebrity is revealed on a stage. But Lansbury gets a round of applause on each of her subsequent entrances, and these bursts of appreciation are no longer in recognition of past accomplishments, but in delight that we know that Noel Coward’s 1941 comedy will once again take flight.

Lansbury won her most recent Tony Award (her fifth) for the 2009 Broadway revival of Blithe Spirit.

She reteamed with director Michael Blakemore for a 2014 London run, and a version of that production is at the Golden Gate Theatre as part of a limited tour. Never mind that Lansbury is 89, for she delivers what is, quite simply, a wonderful performance regardless of age.

Lansbury is obviously the raison d’etre for this revival, though the Tony she won in 2009 was for best supporting actress. Madame Arcati, the dotty but serious psychic, provides a sort of comic relief to Coward’s more brittle humor that fills up most of the play in her absence. The players who dominate these scenes are veterans of the Broadway and/ or London productions, but they aren’t always able to bring forth more than genial competence that

Joan Marcus

Angela Lansbury plays a trouble-making psychic who leads a seance for a skeptical group of English gentry in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit at the Golden Gate Theatre.

is easy enough to bear knowing that a Madame Arcati entrance is always around the corner.

As Arcati, Lansbury’s comic instincts are so keen that she doesn’t need to overplay to win fierce attention. There is no waste in her performance, and even a seemingly casual gesture contains yet another delicious morsel we don’t want to miss. When Beatrice Lillie played

Madame Arcati in the musicalized High Spirits, Coward wrote in his diaries that her vaudeville antics drove him mad. One can only surmise how much he would appreciate Lansbury, who gets laughs by not treating the character as a clown.

Even when she goes into a preseance dance that looks as much like an ostrich preparing to mate as anything else, we still believe in the

character.

Madame Arcati is at first a plaything for novelist Charles Condomine. He has invited her to his country home to conduct a seance for research on a book about a bogus medium. But the session conjures the spirit of his late wife, the tantalizing Elvira, which does not please his current wife, the less glamorous Ruth, much at all. Madame Arcati is

t

herself amazed at her ectoplasmic success, but is pretty much clueless about how to send Elvira back to the astral plane.

As Charles Condomine, the actual leading role, Charles Edwards does solid and increasingly interesting work, as the reality of having two wives on the premises turns the character from amiable husband into an increasingly waspish budding misogynist. Charlotte Parry nicely parlays the role of wife Ruth, though Jemima Rooper doesn’t quite bring Elvira to vivid ethereal life. Director Blakemore saves the broadest strokes in his sensibly staged production for Edith, the awkward housemaid, whom Susan Louise O’Connor plays with occasional finesse. Simon Jones and Sandra Shipley are fine as neighbors who have a knack for always saying the wrong thing to Madame Arcati – provoking some of Lansbury’s best reactions.

It all comes back to Lansbury, who has vowed that this excursion with Blithe Spirit is her final tour, and at age 89, we should take her at her word. The radiant performance she delivers doesn’t need our goodwill to power it, but glows all the more because of it.t Blithe Spirit will run through Feb. 1 at the Golden Gate Theatre. Tickets are $45-$175. Call (888) 746-1799 or go to shnsf.com.

Are you ready for some football?

by Richard Dodds

A

docudrama about head concussions sustained in professional football sounded about as enticing as a docudrama on pedestrian safety, in which I have considerably more of a personal stake. But the new play X’s and O’s (A Football Love Story) at Berkeley Rep upend-

ed these wan expectations by framing the core subject in entertaining ways that encompass historical artifacts, fan behavior, athletic ethos, and cultural contexts along with the evolving knowledge about brain trauma. Pedestrians, on the other hand, just want to cross the street to get to the other side – albeit without dying.

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Created by KT Sanchez with Jenny Mercein, X’s and O’s was developed through interviews with football players, their relatives, medical professionals, and football fans. Bill Geisslinger, Dwight Hicks, Anthony Holiday, Eddie Ray Jackson, Marilee Talkington, and co-author Jenny Mercein adroitly play multiple characters who are variously comic, serious, academic, and sad.

Under Tony Taccone’s direction, the collection of short scenes flows easily together even as subject matter can veer from videos of Super Bowl halftime entertainment (think “wardrobe malfunction”) to a doctor comparing scans of Alzheimeraffected brains to those of athletes discovered to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

CTE is a diagnosis that can only be made post-mortem, a frustrating reality for victims and their loved

ones as recreated interviews reveal, for they can only guess at behavioral changes years after a player has retired from the game. Multiple concussions are an obvious culprit.

So, too, are sub-concussive hits to the head that cause no immediate symptoms. We see a couple of unnerving video clips to illustrate gridiron collisions, but they have their lighter complements – such as a vintage film demonstration of the latest thing in helmet safety with the inventor repeatedly kicking a volunteer’s head.

Another leavening agent is the production’s periodic return to a sports bar where patrons banter about the nature of the game’s allure and the extent to which violence is part of the appeal. Perhaps it should count as unnecessary roughness when a character points out that professional football declined to

cancel its games on the Sunday after JFK’s assassination – with assertions of patriotic duty to play on – but it satisfies a certain sort of reverse bloodlust.

Nevertheless, Sanchez and Mercein lay claim to football fandom, and X’s and O’s looks not to dismantle the game but to use emerging health studies to make it less obviously dangerous. In fact, it is noted, recent rule changes have arguably given professional football a step up on its college and high school counterparts. “The safest place to be right now is the NFL,” says one character, though I will continue taking my chances in crossing the road.t X’s and O’s (A Football Love Story) will run at Berkeley Rep through March 1. Tickets are $29-$79. Call (510) 647-2918 or go to berkeleyrep. org.

Kevin Berne

Ray Jackson, left, and Bill Geisslinger are among the ensemble cast of X’s and O’s, a new play now running at Berkeley Rep.

t

Film>>

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Captivating cinema in Germanic languages

by David Lamble

T

he 19th edition of the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, films from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and seven other nations, plays the Castro Theatre (1/29-1/1), San Francisco’s Goethe-Institut (530 Bush St. at Grant, 2/1-2), Palo Alto’s Aquarius Theatre (430 Emerson St., 2/2) and Berkeley’s California Theatre (2113 Kittredge St., 2/3). Among the unscreened highlights are one of two entries from the prolific comedy director Doris Dorrie, This Lovely Shitty Life, advertised as embedding us with a band of female Mexican Mariachi singer-dancers (Castro, 1/31, 1 p.m.). Christian Petzold’s Phoenix offers a unique take on a Holocaustbased tale, with a drama about a female concentration camp survivor whose life takes a startling turn after she undergoes reconstructive face surgery (Aquarius, 2/2, 7 p.m.).

Exit Marrakech (Germany/ Morocco) In the opening scene of writer/director Caroline Link’s captivating account of a teenage German boy’s most unusual summer vacation, Ben (the slyly seductive newcomer Samuel Schneider) is quizzed by his portly faculty adviser about his plans to reunite with his long-absent dad, Heinrich (Ulrich Tukur), a self-indulgent hedonist who’s spent the past decade in Morocco staging portentous experimental plays for jaded tourists and rich ex-pats. While approving of anything that will expose this sheltered/pampered lad to a taste of the real world, his teacher worries aloud that Ben, an aspiring fiction writer, isn’t prepared for the culture shock presented by a desert nation and an adult male who’s largely struck out in the dad department.

“I’ve read your stories, they’re very good. What I don’t like is that everything seems to bore you. You weren’t always like this. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“Summer vacation is the time you’re really free.”

“You don’t know my father.”

Ben’s live-wire spirit and bratty demeanor will reignite old disputes with Dad and send him on a journey into Morocco’s interior, where he will experience far more than he bargained for in a film that deftly evokes some of the mysterious charisma about this desert kingdom so beautifully contained in queer novelist Paul Bowles’ classic tale of lost travelers, The Sheltering Sky. (Festival Centerpiece, Castro, 1/31, 7 p.m.)

The Whole Shebang Writer/director Doris Dorrie brings her skills for taking satirical swipes at the lumpen middle-class to this farce set in Southern Spain, based on a middle-aged woman’s flashbacks to loose living during the 1967 “Summer of Love.” Our readers should enjoy the chaos in paradise

instigated by a pushy transperson lounge singer. In German & Spanish w/English subtitles. (Castro, 2/1, 8:30 p.m., director Dorrie and lead Hannelore Eisner in person) The King’s Surrender (Germany) Writer/director Philipp Leinemann plunks us down inside an urban combat zone where a violent street gang dukes it out with the equally brutish members of a police SWAT team. The highlight is the activity of a teen who tries to get on the good side of the SWAT team’s leader by bribing him with expensive electronic toys from his immigrant dad’s store. (Director & lead Ronald Zehrfeld in person at the Castro, 1/30; Aquarius, 2/2, both at 9:15 p.m.)

The Dark Valley (Austria) Director Andreas Prochaska with cowriter Martin Ambrosch stage an “Alpine Western” with British actor Sam Riley (known for his sensational turn as the late Joy Division singer/writer Ian Curtis in Control) popping up in a bleak mountain village like Clint Eastwood’s patented no-name “stranger.” One of the rare examples screened in the US of a foreign-born filmmaker attempting to compete in a uniquely American genre, this one bears a style and the slow pacing of early Robert Altman, say McCabe & Mrs. Miller. German w/English subtitles. (Castro, 1/31, 10 p.m.)

Unlikely Heroes (Switzerland) Director Peter Luisi & co-writer Jurgen Ladenburger present a middleaged woman abandoned by family with the challenge of staging a play with a group of asylum-seekers.

This fixation on the plight of asylum refugees pops up in several of this year’s features. In Swiss German & German, with English subtitles.

(Castro, 2/1, 1 p.m.; Aquarius, 2/2, 4:45 p.m.)

Amour Fou Writer/director Jessica Hausner explores a romantic “suicide pact” forged between a depressed male poet and a terminally ill young woman. Drawn from a real-life story from 1811, this one will appeal to fans of history-based romance where authentic period details allow us to completely surrender to the titillating vertigo of “dying for and with the love of one’s life.” (Castro, 2/1, 3:30 p.m.)

Run Boy Run The festival crosses over into the Jewish film festival’s turf with director Pepe Danquart’s WWII-era thriller about a nineyear-old Polish Jewish boy who survives the Nazi occupation by posing as a Christian war orphan.

Based on an Israeli novel by Uri Orlev, this one in some ways presents parallels to the real-life childhood struggles of the always-controversial Polish director Roman Polanski.

Presented in German, Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew, with English subtitles. (Castro, 1/30, 10 a.m.)t

Courtesy Berlin & Beyond Film Festival

Scene from writer/director Caroline Link’s Exit Marrakech, part of the Berlin & Beyond film festival.

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<< Film

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

Timbuktu goes Hollywood

by Erin Blackwell

T

he name Timbuktu is synonymous with faraway places, having a Neverland allure to rival Hollywood’s for anyone who’s never actually been there. Historically a city of gold and now an endangered Unesco World Heritage site, modern-day Timbuktu is one of eight administrative capitals of the West African nation of Mali, which won independence from the French in 1960 after 63 years of colonial rule. In April 2012, the Mali military lost control of Timbuktu to “rebel forces,” and in January 2013, France intervened to return control to the Mali government. Out of a complex mish-mosh of neocolonial, tribal, and Al-Qaeda interests, director Abderrahmane Sissako has refined an eerily serene fairy tale, which is now Mali’s contender for best foreign-

language Oscar. Timbuktu comes to San Francisco on Jan. 30 at Sundance Kabuki.

The first thing that strikes you is headscarves. To watch lithe, graceful nomads, city dwellers, and even evil sharia-enforcers slope along covered in flowing pastel garments is to desire a complete wardrobe overhaul.

This film is super-aestheticized, super slow-paced. Sissako has some major cinematic gumption, holding his camera on the face of a comely nomad wife for what seems like hours as she squints into the sun extremely picturesquely. The stand-in Mauritanian landscape looks great.

It’s vast and remains as God created it. Sand, shrubs, the River Niger. A lone gazelle, running as beautifully as only a gazelle can, opens and closes the film. Pretty, very pretty.

The intense promotion of this film in Europe and the States vs.

the fact it’s yet to be shown in Mali leads one to believe Timbuktu is a fable concocted for Occidentals.

One wonders, Why exactly? The director and stars were trotted out in tuxedos and tribal finery at Cannes 2014, and walked away with two prizes. The François Chalais Prize, given for “ethical values in journalism,” will seem cruelly ironic to anyone abreast of news from Mali.

But how many of us are? I certainly wasn’t until I tried to make sense of Timbuktu, which, for all its National Geographic-tinged exotic chic, raises more doubts than it consoles.

Spoiler alert: The narrative is simple. A languid nomad lolls around in his tent in his headscarf, plays guitar, admires his young daughter, and speaks in dulcet tones to a wife who seems the more practical of the two. The nomad makes a bad decision when he packs heat to settle a dispute with the black fisherman who speared his favorite cow.

During an underwater tussle the gun goes off. The nomad runs away, and is quickly apprehended by the meanies who have imposed sharia law. The nomad is nothing if not philosophical, and clearly states his readiness to die according to God’s will. Well, he did murder the guy!

And die he does, as does his wife, who somehow gets her hands on another gun and storms the place of execution in a foolhardy attempt at dramatic climax. It’s all sort of noir.

The plot is not dissimilar to Sidney Lumet’s Fugitive Kind (1960), with Brando as the nomad, in a script by Tennessee Williams, which needless to say is better written than this. The

t

Cohen Media Group

Ibrahim Ahmed aka Pino in director Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu.

musicians of the world are forever menaced by the fanatically unlovable control freaks, be they Southern sheriffs or salafi-jihadists. Williams always clearly denounced corrupt small-town bullies. Sissako’s moral parsings are far less crystalline.

Parallel to the highly unlikely nuclear-nomad-family plot-thread runs a character study of a jihadist captain, depicted as rather a meek soul. When the imam tells him to please not bring Kalachnikovs into his mosque, Abdelkrim and his gang retreat without a word. Even though the imam gets major screentime distinguishing nice, inner jihad from naughty, militant jihad, Abdelkrim blurs the boundary by being both naughty and nice. Sure, he’s party to a graphically filmed lapidation, but doesn’t he take a humanizing cigarette break behind

a dune? Doesn’t he speak respectfully to Mrs. Nomad in the absence of her husband? He even averts his gaze from the public lashing of a woman caught singing. Mostly, it’s the sympathetic face of the French actor playing him that makes you want to bum a cigarette off him.

Moral complexity is a good thing in works of art, but glossing over barbarity with one hand while you pretend to denounce it with the other is perhaps the only position left to the Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, who has no doubt seen enough suffering, corruption, and destruction to last him several lifetimes. Why should he stick his neck out to court a fatwa? Hey, he’s comin’ to Hollywood. Watch for headscarves on Parisian runways.

Wait. They’re already there.t

stars as Petra Von Kant, a twice-widowed fashion designer who treats her obedient assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann) like a slave. Marlene quietly does as she is told and never speaks during the film. Her facial expressions indicate that there might be resentment starting to boil beneath the surface of her silence.

Hanna Schygulla, one of New German Cinema’s biggest stars, plays Karin, a much younger woman from the wrong side of the tracks.

Petra, who’s world-famous due to her designs (even though Marlene does all the work), mentors Karin, who becomes an equally famous supermodel. They live together for a while as Petra falls deeply and obsessively in love with her new “friend.”

But Karin got what she wanted and returns to her husband. Petra cannot live without Karin. Her almost sociopathic love for Karin drives her to become increasingly self-destruc-

tive. Is she going insane?

It was a very different world in 1972. Coming out was rarely an option, and many LGBT people were often relegated to the shadows.

People had little self-esteem in such an environment. Petra’s descent into obsessive madness, brilliantly portrayed by Cartensen, is a portrait of how many LGBT people were forced to live in that post-Stonewall, pre-Harvey Milk world. The story is a tragic reminder of where many of us came from.

Bitter Tears is set entirely in Petra’s house. Fassbinder’s camera rarely strays from her bedroom. By shooting long scenes with a fluidly moving camera, he prevents the film from becoming static. Though the scenes are long and talky, they move along at a comfortable pace.

Strong acting and well-written lines make Petra’s sad tale a powerful one.

The film is highly stylized. Some of the performances lean toward the theatrical, but with a selfawareness that makes the film fascinating to watch. Though the story appears to be set in what was then the present, the women wear colorful period costumes from the 1920s and 30s.

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a different cup of tea from what audiences are offered today. It’s a hypnotic look back at one of cinema’s most interesting movements and one of its finest directors. The Criterion Collection includes recent interviews with the film’s all-female cast. Their recollections of Fassbinder are as riveting as the film itself. itself.t

Classic lesbian film returns

by David-Elijah Nahmod

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ainer Werner Fassbinder (194582) was the best-known filmmaker during the New German Cinema period. A new generation of filmmakers had emerged in Germany, and they made their voices heard from the late 1960s until shortly after Fassbinder’s death at 37. Working with low budgets, they produced deeply personal, thoughtprovoking films that captured the imaginations of art-house moviegoers. Though directors such as Volker Schlondorff, Werner Herzog and Margarethe Von Trotta also achieved prominence during this time, the films of Fassbinder came to define New German Cinema.

Fassbinder was a man in a hurry.

Openly bisexual, he often cast his friends and lovers of both sexes in his films. In a career that lasted roughly 15 years, Fassbinder produced 40 films for theatrical release or television. He also wrote plays and acted, sometimes in his own films, sometimes for other directors. His output surpassed that of directors who lived much longer. Did he have a premonition of his early demise?

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, based on Fassbinder’s play, was filmed in 1972, hardly a pivotal year for LGBT cinema. The envelope-pushing storyline now comes to DVD/Blu-Ray courtesy of the Criterion Collection. Fully remastered, Petra Von Kant features sharp images, vibrant colors and crystal-clear sound.

The film is in German with subtitles.

Margit Cartensen

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Get tickets at calacademy.org This program is funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

15 CAS Evergreen Habitat Bay Area Examiner 9.75x16.indd 2

1/21/15 10:26 AM

<< Out&About

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

Out &About

O&A

Chante Moore @ Yoshi’s Oakland The native SF R&B, jazz and Gospel singer performs a series of concerts at the East Bay jazz club/restaurant. $35-$75. 8pm & 10pm. Also Jan. 31, 8pm & 10pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Jack London Square, Oakland. (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

DIRT Embodiment Project @ Dance Mission Theater

Fri 30 Scott Wells & Dancers

Curtains call

David Papas

by Jim Provenzano

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heatrical entertainments lure you into other worlds, with performers flinging their bodies into the air, jumping through hoops, or simply reading beguilingly fascinating poetry.

Thu 29 Barbara Rhine @ Modern Times Bookstore Author of Tell No Lies discusses her book about the love triangle between three radical activists. 7pm. 2919 24th St. 282-9246. www.mtbs.com

BeBe Sweetbriar @ Balançoire The local chanteuse performs a tribute concert of 20 Diana Ross songs, with an optional five-course dinner by Chef Shawn McFarland. $25 (show only, two-drink minimum) or $65 (with dinner). 7pm. 2526 Mission St. 920-0577. www.bebesweetbriar.com www.balancoiresf.com

Blithe Spirit @ Golden Gate Theatre Angela Lansbury stars in Noel Coward’s rollicking comedy about society people and spiritual mediums, where a man’s dead wife is conjured. $75-$185. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Feb 1. 1 Taylor St. (888) 746 1799. www.shnsf.com

Classical Concerts @ SF Conservatory of Music Almost nightly recitals by students and faculty. Check website for programs. 50 Oak St. at Franklin. 5036322. www.sfcm.edu

The Company Men @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Vocal mash-up men’s quartet performs hits and classics with style. $25-$40. 8pm. Hotel Nikko 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.thecompanymen.com www.ticketweb.com

Fred Frith Trio @ Slim’s The innovative improvisational guitarist performs with drummer Jordan Gleen and bassist Jason Hoopes. Also on the bill, Trance Mission and Jack O’ the Clock. $20. $45 with dinner. 8pm. 333 11th St. 255-0333. www.slimspresents.com

Haiku Tunnel @ The Marsh Josh Kornbluth returns with his acclaimed solo show about being a temp worker in a local law office. $20-$100. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Feb. 7.

10162 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

San Francisco Magic Parlor @ Chancellor Hotel Theatre David Facer’s solo magic show, The World of Paradox, entertains and beguiles. $40. Thu-Sat 8pm. Openended run. 433 Powell St. at Post. www.MagicParlor.blogspot.com

Shit & Champagne @ Oasis D’Arcy Drollinger’s hilarious nightclub hit, a whitesploitation satire-comedy with action-packed models fighting a drug cartel, returns at the new SoMa nightclub; featuring Matthew Martin. $20-$25. Thu-Sat 7pm. Thru Feb. 14.

298 11th St. at Folsom. sfoasis.com

Unusual Movies @ Oddball Films Weekly screenings of strange and obscure short films. $10. 8pm Also Fridays. 275 Capp St. 558-8117. www.oddballfilm.com

Fri 30 Abundance @ Shelton Theatre Pultizer Prize winner Beth Henley’s tenderhearted drama about two 1860s mail order brides in the Old West gets a local production. $38. Thu-Sat 8pm.

Thru Mar. 14. 533 Sutter St. (800) 8383006. www.sheltontheater.org

Avenue Q @ New Conservatory Theatre Center The local production of the naughty hit Broadway puppet musical returns!

(Music and lyrics by Robert Lopez & Jeff Marx; Book by Jeff Whitty). $22.50-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm.

Extended thru Feb 1. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. www.nctcsf.org

Billy Porter @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The Tony Award-winning Broadway star ( Kinky Boots, Angels in America ) performs his cabaret show. $45-$60.

8pm. Also Jan 31 & Feb. 1 at 7pm.

Hotel Nikko 222 Mason St. (866) 6631063. www.billyporter.com www.ticketweb.com

The Book Club Play @ Center Repertory, Walnut Creek

Jan. 29: Berlin & Beyond Festival (thru Feb 1). Most tickets $11. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Rabbit Hole @ Exit Studio

Candide @ YBCA

The new local theatre company performs David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about a family torn apart by a life-shattering accident. $20. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Feb. 7. 156 Eddy St. at Taylor. www.ArtistsRepSF.org

Felix d’Eon @ Magnet We Blaze Away, a new exhibit of art by the unique painter who blends vintage looks with contemporary homoeroticism. Reg. hours Mon-Wed 10am-6pm. Thru Jan. 4122 18th St. 581-1600. www.magnetsf.org

Lamplighters Music Theatre’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta adaptation of Voltaire’s novel about a bevy of characters in search of the meaning of life. $20-$59. 8pm. Jan. 31 at 2pm & 8pm. Feb 1, 2pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard St. 978-2787. (Also in Feb at East Bay theatres) lamplighters.org ybca.org

Local production of Julie Hébert’s award-winning drama about race, family and heritage; a Southern white woman arrives at the home of a Black Chicago man, claiming to be his half-sister. $20-$120. Tue-Thu 7pm.

Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm, Sun 2pm.

Thru March 7. 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

X’s and O’s (A Football Love Story) @ Berkeley Repertory World premiere of KJ Sanchez’ captivating docudrama about players and rabid fans of football; directed by Tony Taccone. $29-$79. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm, Sat & Sun 2pm.

Thru March 1. Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2918. www.berkeleyrep.org

Fool La La! @ The Marsh, Berkeley Unique Derique’s holiday clowning show’s fun for kids and adults alike. $15-$35. Daily 2pm, extended thru Feb 28. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley.

282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Gaymazing Race @ Yerba Buena Garden The Gay Asian Pacific Alliance’s annual street game contest, with clues hidden all over downtown, prizes and a postrace pizza party. $20-$80. Meet at Yerba Buena Gardens, 750 Howard St. 8:30am start, 3:30pm finish. www.GAPA.org

Hostel Comedy @ Piano Fight Andrew Roberts’ weekly comedy show with visiting comics and backpacking tourists telling funny stories. Free. 7pm. Thru April 25. 144 Taylor St. www.pianofight.com

Glamorgeddon: The Spectacle @ SOMArts Cultural Center Group exhibition of works focusing on a freeform interpretation of glamour.

Speical live events thru the run.

Exhibit thru Feb. 4. 934 Brannan St. at 9th. www.somarts.org

Harbor @ New Conservatory Theatre Center West Coast premiere of Tony Award nominee Chad Beguelin’s gay-themed comedy about an East Coast family’s tumultuous conflicts. $25-$45.

Previews; opens Jan. 31. Thru March 1. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

I Am My Own Wife @ Cinnabar Theatre, Petaluma Steven Abbott portrays 32 characters in Dough Wright’s Pulitzer and Tony award-winning play about a “deviant” German who survived the Nazi and Communist regimes. Fri & Sat 8pm.

Sun 2pm. Thru Feb 22. 3333 Petaluma Blvd. North, Petaluma. (707) 7638920. www.cinnabartheater.org

Indian Ink @ Geary Theatre

Karen Zacarias’ comedy about a small book club that gets invaded by a foreign film crew. $33-$58. Tue & Wed 7:30pm. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2:30pm. Thru Feb. 28. 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. (925) 943-7469. www.CenterRep.org

New and Classic Films @ Castro Theatre

Dance In Revolt(ing) Times series showcases 16 choreographers in a series, Jan 30, 31 and Feb 1. $20-$50.

3316 24th st. (800) 838-3006. www.dancemission.com

Tree @ SF Playhouse

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American Conservatory Theatre presents a new production of Tom Stoppard’s drama about a 1930s poet, her relationship an Indian artist, and their descendants’ search for truths about her life. Special events thru the run, including Out with A.C.T. (LGBT after-party) Jan. 28. $20-$120. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm.

Also Sun 7pm. Thru Feb. 8. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Into the Cole @ The Marsh Berkeley Aaron Akins’ one-man show, inspired

by Nat King Cole, includes songs and personal stories telling how the singer influenced the actor-musician’s life. $20-$100. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru Feb 7.

2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Here’s Looking at You!

EDGE will keep you informe world’s largest LGBT networ the sparkling news, entertai and photos you’ll need in 20

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Jason Brock @ Oasis The popular local gay crooner performs a new cabaret show at the new nightclub. $25. 10pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 985-4442. sfoasis.com

Sat 31

Keith Hennessy @ Omni Collective

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi

The SF-based queer performance icon performs his new solo, Bear/ Skin, a solo performance/dance about socio-political issues. $10-$25. 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. circozero.org

The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. Reg: $25$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. beachblanketbabylon.com

Mica Sigourney @ CounterPulse The drag/performance innovator presents For the Glory, a solo work exploring the ideas of “the white body.” $17-$50. 8pm. Also Jan. 31, 8pm. 1310 Mission St. 626-2060. www.counterpulse.org

Thu 5

Scott Wells & Dancers @ ODC Theater

Four Under 40 @ SF Public Library, Magnet The San Francisco Main Library hosts award-winning Sibling Rivalry Press authors Brent Calderwood, Matthew Hittinger, and Stephen S. Mills (2012 Lambda winner, poetry). Jan. 31: 3pm-5pm. Hormel Room, 3rd floor, 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org Feb. 1: at Magnet, 6pm-8pm. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

How Not to Die @ Mojo Theatre Sherri Rose’s interactive multicharacter solo show takes on childhood fears, panics and safety tips. $15. Sat & Sun 8pm. Sun 3pm.

Thru Feb 1. 2940 16th St. www.mojotheatre.com

Imogen Cunningham @ Harvey Milk Photo Center

The entertaining and very physical local dance company performs premieres and repertory works. $15$25. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru Feb 8. 3153 17th St. www.odcdance.org

Exhibit of the renowned photographers Paris in the Sixties series. Tue.-Thu. 4pm-8:30pm. Sat & Sun 12pm-4pm. Thru Feb. 28. 50 Scott St. www.harveymilkphotocenter.org Early Shaker Spirituals

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Out&About>>

Rainbow Girls, The Hot Toddies @ The Fillmore The all-women gypsy-folk ‘n’ roll band performs; also, the She’s and Kendra McKinley. $20. 8pm. 1805 Geary Blvd. at Fillmore. 346-6000. www.rainbowgirlsmusic.com www.thefillmore.com

The Salon @ Levy Studio Quarterly performing arts showcase, with five-minute excerpts in dance and performance. $10. 9pm. 19 Heron St. 701-1300. www.levydance.org

The Waiting Period @ The Marsh Brian Copeland returns with his popular solo show, about the tensions of considering suicide, and waiting for approval to buy a gun. $30-$100.

Saturdays 5pm. Extended thru Mar. 14. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Aquascapes @ Conservatory of Flowers Fascinating new exhibit of underwater plant sculptures that resemble miniature outdoor English, Asian and classic gardens (thru April 12). Permanent floral exhibits as well. Free-$8. Tue-Sun 10am-4pm. Golden Gate Park, 8312090. conservatoryofflowers.org

Roads of Arabia @ Asian Art Museum Roads of Arabia: Archeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (thru Jan. 18); Dual Natures in Ceramics: Eight Contemporary Artists from Korea (thru Feb. 22). Other fascinating exhibits as well. Free (members, kids 12 and under)-$15. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. www.asianart.org

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Mon 2 All Aboard @ Walt Disney Family Museum

Margaret Keane @ Keane Eyes Gallery Paintings, prints and other items by the creator of the famous kitschy “big eyes” paintings of children and animals; featured in the new Tim Burton film. By appointment. 3040 Larkin St. 922-9309. www.keane-eyes.com

Exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth; special events each week, with adult nightlife parties most Thursday nights. $20-$35. Mon-Sat 9:30am5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park.

379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Tue 3 The Pianist of Willesden Lane @ Berkeley Rep Mona Gobalek returns in Hershey Felder’s acclaimed solo music drama (based on Golabek and Lee Cohen’s book) about a young Jewish musician in 1938 Vienna and wartime London. $41-$89. Tue, Thu-Sat 7pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Feb 22. Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.BerkeleyRep.org

Science Exhibits @ The Exploratorium Visit the fascinating science museum in its new Embarcadero location. Free$25. Pier 15 at Embarcadero. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm (Thu night 6pm-10pm, 18+). 528-4893. www.exploratorium.edu

ed, as the rk, with all inment, 015!

Slinging Satire @ Cartoon Art Museum Slinging Satire: Masters of Political Cartoons, a timely exhibit of recent works by Mark Fiore, David Horsey, Matt Wuerker, Mat Bors, Jen Sorensen and Tom Tomorrow, plus many others, in left- and rightwing politics, print, web and multimedia formats. Thru Mar. 9. Also, Stranger Than Life: The Cartoons and Comics of M.K. Brown, thru Feb. 15. Other exhibits and events. Free-$8. Tue-Sun 11am-5pm.

655 Mission St. 227-8666. www.cartoonart.org

et.com Wilde Chats @ Sweet Inspirations Community Initiative’s weekly informal discussion group at the dessert shop.

10:30am-12pm. 2239 Market St. 6218664. sweetinspirationbakery.com

Victor Krummenacher @ Starry Plough, Berkeley Cofounder of Camper Van Beethoven performs music from his new solo album Hard to See Coming (10pm).

Also, Sean O’Brian and Dirty Hands (9pm) and Bye Bye Blackbirds (11:15pm). $10. 3101 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. www.thestarryplough.com

Sun 1 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

Fertile Ground @ Oakland Museum Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California (thru April 12). Free/$15.

Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Keith Haring: The Political Line @ de Young Museum New exhibit of 130 large-scale paintings, sculptures and retrieved subway drawings by the late great gay graffiti artist who came to global fame. Free$26-$41. Thru Feb 13. Other exhibits as well. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Thru Feb. 16. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.famsf.org

Student & Faculty Concerts @ SF Conservatory of Music Feb. 1: Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit’s Nine is performed by Voice students; free, 8pm. Feb 4, 7:30pm, guitar concerto competition finals,. Feb. 4, 8pm: Voice dept. recital. Feb. 5, 8pm: Ian Swensen, violin and Elisabeth Reed, cello with Kenneth Slowik, fortepiano.

Free. 50 Oak St. 503-6322. sfcm.edu

Harbor

A Celebration of Walt Disney’s Trains, thru Feb. 9, plus classic art work and ephemera from the park and animated films. Free/$20. Open daily 10am-6pm. 104 Montgomery St., the Presidio. 345-6800. www.waltdisney.org

Various Exhibits @ California Academy of Sciences

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Fri 30

Wed 4 After Dark/Nocturnal @ Exploratorium Enjoy a nighttime-themed version of the mpnthly After Dark parties at the interactive science museum. $10-$15. 6pm-10pm. 18+. Pier 15 at Embarcadero. 528-4893. www.exploratorium.edu

Art/Act: Maya Lin @ David Brower Center Exhibit of new works by the sculptor/ designer (Vietnam Memorial). Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. Sun 10am-1pm. Thru Feb 4.

2150 Allston Way, Berkeley. www.browercenter.org

Lois Tema

Lava Thomas @ Museum of the African Diaspora

Lloyd Cole @ Great American Music Hall

Exhibit of contemporary works. Also, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, and historic exhibits of African cultures.

Free/$10. 685 Mission St. moadsf.org

The veteran indie rock singersongwriter (The Commotions) performs with his band. $25, 50 with dinner. 8pm. 859 O’Farrell St. at Larkin. 885-0750. www.slimspresents.com

Lucinda Williams @ The Fillmore The veteran rocker performs with The Kenneth Brian Band. $40. 8pm. Also Feb. 5. 1805 Geary Blvd. at Fillmore.

346-6000. www.thefillmore.com

Seven Fingers of the Hand Circus @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley The Montreal troupe Les 7 Doigts de la Main perform their unusual eclectic and satirical theatre/dance/ circus show set to contemporary and classical music. $22-$58. Wed-Sat 8pm, Sat 2pm. Thru Feb. 6. Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave., Berkeley. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

Queers Against Gentrification @ GLBT History Museum Panel discussion about the economic and housing changes in SF, with Tommi Avicolli Mecca, San Francisco Housing Rights Committee, and Christina Hanhardt, associate professor, University of Maryland.

7pm. New and mini-exhibits ( Queer Past Becomes Present) as well. Free (members)-$5. Reg hours: Mon, WedSat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. 621-1107. www.glbthistory.org

Tom Reardon @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The witty singer performs his cabaret show, Crazy Little Thing Called Love. $20. 7pm. Hotel Nikko 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. ticketweb.com

Thu 5 Early Shaker Spirituals @ Z Space The Wooster Group (NY famed theatre ensemble, including actress Frances McDormand) performs their bare-bones stage Record Album Interpretation of the historic anthropological album of Shakers music, singing and dancing. $50. 7pm.

Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm, Sun 5pm.

Thru Feb. 8. 450 Florida St. (866) 8114111. www.Zspace.org

Fotanicals @ SF Botanical Gardens Fotanicals: the Secret Language of Flowers, an exhibition of photographs by artist joSon. Also, see blooming floral displays, including new Magnolia blossoms (51 species and 33 cultivars!), plus trees and exhibits. Also, daily walking tours and more, at outdoor exhibits of hundreds of species of native wildflowers in a century-old grove of towering Coast Redwoods. Free-$15.

Daily. Golden Gate Park. 661-1316. www.SFBotanicalGarden.org

J. Otto Seibold and Mr. Lunch @ Contemporary Jewish Museum New exhibit of works by the beloved children’s book author. Also, Arnold Newman: Masterclass, an exhibit of prints by the influential photographer.

Other exhibits, lectures and gallery talks as well. Free (members)-$12.

Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 6557800. www.thecjm.org

Fri 30 Billy Porter

Robert Altman Films @ YBCA New documentaries and rarities by/ about the innovative film director.

Free/$10. Altman by Ron Mann, Feb 5 7:30pm and Feb 8, 2pm. Other films thru Feb. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts screening room, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Seinabo Sey @ The Chapel The Swedish/West African R&B/pop vocalist performs live. $18. 9pm. 777 Valencia St. www.seinabosey.com www.thechapelsf.com

Socially Conscious Abstraction @ SMAart Gallery Opening reception for a gorup exhibit of ceramic and mixed media sculptures that visualize social issues. 6pm-9pm. reg. hours Tue-Sat 11:30am-5:30pm. Thru Mar. 5. 1045 Sutter St. 962-7877. www.smaartgallery.com To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section, online at www.ebar.com/bartab

Wed 4 Seven Fingers Circus

At Large: Ai Weiwei @ Alcatraz Island The internationally acclaimed Chinese sculptor’s exhibit of seven site-specific multimedia installations; the largest art exhibit ever hosted by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. $18-$30. Daily thru April 26. Ferries to and from Pier 33 at Embarcadero. www.AiWeiWeiAlcatraz.org www.alcatrazcruises.com/website/ ai-weiwei.aspx Sylvie Ann Pare

<< Books

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

Game-changer about a winter journey

by Tim Pfaff

I

t’s usually a performance rather than a book that changes minds about a piece of music. But tenor Ian Bostridge’s Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession (Knopf) is, as a book, a performance.

Although he’s sung Schubert’s Winterreise, 24 songs about love gone bad, more than 100 times over 30 years, his book radically up-ends even his own earlier (and recorded) ideas about the work. A onetime scholar turned world-class performer – his performances of Winterreise, 70 minutes of music that just wreck audiences, are big-ticket events now – he knocks the cobwebs out of the far corners of this “classic” work and returns us to the spook house Schubert built.

The physical book is beautiful, 500 smallish pages lavishly illustrated with apposite art exquisitely reproduced and placed in the text exactly where you want it. But it would be a crime if it ended up on coffee tables rather than music stands. It’s too illuminating – and transgressive – for that. Old assumptions die on its pages.

The Wilhelm Mueller poems that Schubert sets to music do not specify who the protagonist of this winter journey is, or for that matter whether there’s a story at all. But the listeners who have not allowed Winterreise to leave the active repertoire for nearly two centuries know there’s a story there, a ghost story maybe.

When in the Western imagination was the tale of love gone awry, with disastrous results, not the story?

Ian Bostridge/Twitter

Tenor and author Ian Bostridge, looking a bit Schubertian.

Writing about the first song, Bostridge asks, “What is our hero doing, creeping out of this house at night? Rather negligently, it wasn’t something I had given much thought to before I sat down to write this book. Why should a young man, of lower economic status, be living in a house with a young woman and her family?”

Bostridge is far from dogmatic about any of his ideas about the interpretation (a word he cannily avoids) of Winterreise, but he supplies a provisional but compelling answer: the young man was a house tutor, providing in-home education to the children of the privileged.

“Very often emotional complications ensued,” Bostridge observes.

You could say. But here the author

is flying in the face of the age-old assumption that the lad was suffering from unrequited love. If you look at it through another glass – that the problem was precisely that his love was requited – suddenly the whole tale snaps into focus.

One of the less than sacred cows that dies on the altar of evidence – and this is going to cost me – is the queer theorists’ arguments that Schubert was gay. Allowing that “Schubert may have had some homosexual feelings, he may have had some homosexual experiences,” Bostridge lays out – in every sense – the gay thesis of Maynard Solomon and others, and just lets it die for lack of intellectual oxygen. The more likely scenario – that the composer had his heart shattered, twice, by young

women at opposite ends of the social spectrum – is not a poorer story.

There’s nothing dry about the historical background Bostridge paints as the backdrop to this Biedermeier Everyboy story, and his topics include revelatory ruminations on dancing and its discontents in 1820s Vienna, and the obstacles to matrimony at the time. Schubert doesn’t emerge a political firebrand, but he suddenly has a place in a political and social milieu determined by such resistance as was possible to the repressive regime of Prince Metternich.

Winterreise is a color chart of the idea of cold, and Bostridge provides information you didn’t even know you wanted about snowflakes, windowpane ice-flowers, will-o’-the-wisps and parhelia, all of which makes the songs come alive. His bigger-picture observations are about historical weather patterns (surprise: Europe was even colder then) and what he calls “a winter journey to end all winter journeys, Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.”

Some of the book’s most gamechanging ideas are about the music, and the tenor lets the chips fall where they may, including on his own old, lazy notions. If you look at the third stanza of the antepenultimate song, “Mut” (“Courage”), on the page it looks a lot like the previous two – and in most recordings, including Bostridge’s from 2004, it

Teenage trouble

by Gregg Shapiro

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s with his nuanced 2004 masterwork Mysterious Skin, queer filmmaker Gregg Araki’s latest, White Bird in a Blizzard, now available on Blu-ray (Magnolia Home Entertainment), is the writer/director’s adaptation of a novel. In this case, it’s Laura Kasischke’s minor book of the same title.

In late 1988, Katrina (Shailene Woodley) was 17 when her mother Eve (Eva Green) disappeared. As Katrina, a former fat girl, describes it, just as she “was coming into her body,” her mother “stepped out of hers.” Eve left her car in the garage, didn’t leave a note, and simply vanished. She’d been threatening to do

so for years. Unhappily married to Brock (Christopher Meloni), Eve was becoming increasingly despondent, and her once-loving relationship with Kat turned competitive and full of resentment.

A typical teenager, Kat thought nothing of disrespecting her mother, which only made matters worse.

After Eve caught Kat and the pothead boy next door Phil (Shiloh Fernandez) having sex, her already strange behavior got weirder, until the day she goes missing. Brock and Kat enlist the aid of Detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane), and Kat starts to see therapist Dr. Thaler (Angela Bassett). During her therapy sessions, Kat tells the doctor about her recurring nightmares involving Eve

and a snowstorm. These dreams are some of the least subtle uses of foreshadowing you will ever see, especially when the giant, malfunctioning freezer in the basement is introduced a short time later.

Essentially a boring murder mystery, White Bird would be a total loss if it weren’t for the big reveal. Someone is having an affair, but you might not guess who. The movie follows Kat to college in the early 1990s, and back home again, where she hangs out with besties Beth (Gabourey Sidibe) and Mickey (Mark Indelicato, of Ugly Betty fame), whom Beth describes as “a fat chick in a skinny gay body,” and she continues sleeping with Detective Scieziesciez.

What at first appears to be another

Araki movie about adults taking advantage of teens (see Mysterious Skin) turns out to be something else entirely.

No one is at their best here; not Woodley, not Meloni, not Sidibe, and not even Araki. We’ve come to expect more from the director, as well as some of his cast members, which is especially disappointing because this White Bird never takes wing. Blu-ray special features include deleted and extended scenes, commentary and interviews with Araki and Woodley, and more.

Based on the inexplicably popular Y/A novel series by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight Forever: The Complete Saga (Summit), newly reissued in a triple DVD+digital extended-editions set, is essentially the story of baby butch Bella’s (nonactress Kristen Stewart) evolution from morose high school junior to full-blown vampire-obsessed brideto-be by graduation. Untrue Blood would have been a better name for the trilogy.

Relocating from her mother’s house in sunny and dry Phoenix, AZ, to live with her father in grey and damp Forks, WA, in 2008’s Twilight, Bella is going to have to deal with more than being the new kid at school. Her police-chief father Charlie (Billy Burke) isn’t the kind of dad to hover, leaving Bella to her own devices. She seems to have her choice of potential beaus, including classmate Mike (Michael Welch, of LGBT film-fest fave Boy Meets Girl) and Jacob (Taylor Lautner), who goes to school on the reservation. But Bella is feeling it for Edward (Robert Pattinson) of the notorious Cullen clan. After an awkward meeting in biology class, Bella and Edward discover they have chemistry, leading to a succes-

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sounds pretty much like them.

But he now hears in that verse “the first intrusion into the cycle of notional real music, singing aloud rather than the internal, symbolic sounds that have emanated heretofore from the wanderer’s mind.” The wanderer, not just the onstage tenor, is singing out loud. It anticipates, breathtakingly, the appearance of the hurdy-gurdy man in the final song, when, Bostridge writes, “Now both we and the wanderer hear someone else’s music floating in the frozen air.”

If Winterreise is, as the author quips, “the first and greatest concept album,” its hit single is its final song, “Der Leiermann” (“The Hurdy-Gurdy Man”). Bostridge’s most vaulting speculation – wildly imaginative, not conclusive – is that in one possible reading, the hurdygurdy man may have been along for the whole journey, and not just at its end. The thought made my hair stand up.

With Winterreise, he writes, “We all, performers and audience, enter into an aesthetic compact according to which we challenge, for an hour or so, our basic assumptions and our way of living.” Early on, writing of another Schubert song, to a poem by Goethe, Bostridge notes, “The sense of psychological depth achieved by such a rich and relentless undertaking – Schubert never lets go of the musical or poetic logic – is palpable, and it is difficult to go back to the poem without the music and not feel, somehow, robbed.” Returning to Winterreise without this book would feel the same.t

sion of encounters, including the revelation of Edward’s true identity (let’s just say he’s been 17 for more than 100 years).

Edward and his “family,” including “father” Carlisle (Peter Facinelli), are “vegetarian” vamps (feeding on animals, not humans), but their true selves are hidden from the townsfolk. All of this is set against the backdrop of a series of murders committed by a trio of especially evil vampires, including James (Cam Gigandet, in this case the poor man’s Ryan Kwanten) and Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre), who are determined to get to Bella once they discover her relationship with Edward and that he has not turned her. Sheesh, as if being a teenager isn’t traumatic enough, imagine having bloodthirsty vamps on your trail. Plus, with all this bloodlust, is it wrong to wonder what happens when Bella menstruates?

More than anything, this first flick in the series is notable for fully launching several careers, including Anna Kendrick’s (she plays Bella’s friend Jessica). It also feels the most like a teen flick (see the “prom drama”), and the credit for that goes to director Catherine Hardwicke, who See page 27 >>

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Books>>

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Chilly scenes of Gore Vidal

by Brian Bromberger

Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal by Michael Mewshaw (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24) “ used to be the handsomest man in Rome. Now I’m just another ruin,” quipped writer Gore Vidal when he was 50. Or characterizing himself, he once said, “I am exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.” Complex, chilly, confrontational, and abrasive are the words one associates with Vidal, yet freelance journalist Michael Mewshaw, in his new memoir detailing his nearly 40-year friendship with him, attempts to give a corrective, more nuanced, nonreverential portrait. He only partially succeeds.

Receiving a fellowship in Rome in 1975, Mewshaw and his wife Linda are introduced to Vidal by a mutual friend. Thus begins an amusing but also sad exposition on Italian expatriate life nestled in the context of gossipy lunches and entertaining dinner parties with famous guests, stretching into late-night confessions fueled by alcohol, set in Vidal’s Rome apartment and his villa, La Rondinaia, on the Italian coast.

Mewshaw is intent on debunking popular conceptions of Vidal as arrogant, American-hating, vicious, and sexually deviant by showing he could be discreetly generous, a loyal friend, and a hardworking, disciplined writer.

The book is by no means a biography of Vidal. It provides a brief background chapter on Vidal’s life to provide context for their initial meeting, zeroing in on Vidal’s privileged but dysfunctional childhood, characterized by cruelty, parental promiscuity, and alcoholic fury. His father Eugene, whom Gore loved,

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Teenage trouble

From page 26

already had a couple of other teenoriented films (Thirteen, The Lords of Dogtown) under her belt before helming this one.

Of the three films, it’s the second one, 2009’s Twilight: New Moon, that’s the worst, which is disappointing considering that it was directed by Chris Weitz (About a Boy). An increasingly femmy Bella, 18, is so busy obsessing over aging that she completely misses the opportunity to play Jacob, who has metamorphosed into a porny, muscled, tattooed boy-toy. The gayest moment of the series occurs in New Moon after Jacob’s teen-wolf secret is exposed. He tells Bella that he was born that way, and it isn’t a lifestyle choice. But an unsubtle Romeo & Juliet star-crossed-lovers theme, as well as the mediocre special effects involving the (were)wolf pack, threaten to sink the whole thing.

The third installment, Eclipse finds slightly less sullen graduating high school senior Bella accepting her brooding true love Edward’s marriage proposal in exchange for

was a football player at West Point, competed in the 1920 Olympics as a pentathlon, and helped build the American airline industry after WWII. After her divorce from Eugene, Vidal’s mother Nina, whom Gore basically hated, moved into her father’s (Sen. Thomas Gore of Oklahoma, which began Vidal’s lifelong fascination with politics) home. Later, a perennial gold-digger, she wed the rich Hugh Auchincloss, which also netted Jacqueline Bouvier (later Kennedy) as Gore’s stepsister once removed. Vidal served in the Army in the Aleutian Islands during WWII. There is hardly any literary analysis of Vidal’s work here, although Mewshaw’s description of Vidal’s sentences as possessing “the snap of a dominatrix’s whip” hits the bull’seye concerning his power as a writer.

It might be added that Mewshaw has repeatedly used his relationship with Gore for monetary gain, not only with this book, but for numerous in-depth articles and interviews written before Vidal’s death in 2012, at 86.

Vidal’s nearly 50-year relationship with Howard Austen figures prominently in this memoir. Austen was James Boswell to Vidal’s Dr. Samuel Johnson, a round-the-clock nanny who did everything for Vidal so that he could attend mostly to his writing. Austen tried to moderate Vidal’s drinking, admonished him as well as made amends if he obliterated a friend with a cutting remark, and kept him from falling off the deep end. Mewshaw believes it was largely a platonic relationship; however, they both paid for rent boys, whom they traded back and forth. (Vidal’s favorite sex was belly-rubbing frottage, and was proud of the fact he never pleasured any man in return.) Sometimes they had sex with the same partner at the his promise to “change” (read “kill”) her so they can be together for eternity. Wait, let’s get this straight.

Mormon author Meyer thinks it’s all right for white trash teenagers to marry vampires, but LGBT folks should be deprived of the same expression of love and commitment.

Maybe she should have called her saga Twit-light.

Eclipsing its predecessors, Eclipse has plenty of skin, courtesy of stud (wolf) cub Lautner, who continues to do most of his acting with his abs as Jacob, and his pec pack of wolves, although the wolves’ pelts are wearing thin. The scary factor is also ratcheted up, not only with the lingering presence of the ruthless Jane (Dakota Fanning) and her creepy crew, but also the benton-revenge Victoria (now played

by Bryce Dallas Howard), her boytoy Riley (Xavier Samuel) and his army of merciless newborn vamps.

Eclipse also gets points for cranking up the humor. You will find yourself laughing out loud, and that appears to be the way screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg intended it. For not taking itself too seriously, Eclipse is recommended viewing.t

same time. Despite sleeping with hundreds of men, Gore still identified himself as bisexual, though asked when he had last slept with a woman, he could only recall an orgy “when I plugged into the wrong socket.”

Real raconteur

Vidal emerges as a charismatic storyteller and performer, cultural gadfly, and fearless social critic, always the talk-show guest raconteur with an outrageous, witty remark (Mewshaw observes that Vidal’s one-liners were well-rehearsed and repeated ad nauseam), the closest the U.S. has come to producing an Oscar Wilde. But as the years pass, Vidal’s alcoholism, depression (which at times could slide dangerously close to suicide ideation) and disillusionment escalate. In one horrifying incident, Vidal, unable to open an expensive bottle of scotch, bashed the bottle against his fireplace and drank straight from the jagged edge. After Howard died in 2003, Vidal slid into early dementia, and his writing, mostly political essays excoriating Bush foreign policy, bordered on paranoia. Vidal’s final public appearance in a wheelchair at a Key West literary weekend is described by Mewshaw as a colossal wreck where he embarrassed himself and insulted everyone. “Once he had been a witheringly funny iconoclast. He now seemed a kind of transgressive performance artist determined to give offense.”

In 1995, Vidal wrote his memoir Palimpsest, which Mewshaw calls his best book in decades, seeing it more as a “novel with a thoroughly unreliable narrator, its greatest flaw being Gore’s refusal to come to grips with his inner life, with the painful traumas he suffered in private while he sustained the impression in public of perfect equa-

nimity.” Mewshaw also critiques Fred Kaplan’s authorized biography of Vidal in 1999 as failing to crack Vidal’s icy veneer. But the same criticism could be applied to Sympathy for the Devil. The problem is that the popular conceptions of Vidal as nasty and venomous are largely true, so the brilliant, provocative Vidal emerges in Mewshaw’s analysis as a caustic Sphinx with rare fits of charm. If he didn’t know himself, he wasn’t about to let himself be known by others.

Like many famous authors, the real Gore Vidal is found in his writings. Vidal produced no master-

piece. Mewshaw correctly evaluates him as being overly didactic, especially in his historical fiction.

He forecasts that ultimately Gore’s essays, where he is amusing and perceptive, will be his chief literary legacy. Vidal paid a heavy personal and professional price for being an LGBT pioneer (his novel The City and the Pillar was revolutionary in its time), so perhaps only a gay critic can compose an authentic biography with insight, someone who will understand the role homophobia played in molding and ultimately destroying his personality and his career.t

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28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

Crystal-clear homophobia

by Victoria A. Brownworth

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nd 2015 had been going so well.

Pres. Obama even said three words never uttered before in prime time by a sitting president during the State of the Union Address: lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

We got a little verklempt when we heard that part of the speech. And there was Speaker Boehner looking like the Grinch’s orange twin. It was kinda perfect. Then, as always, sh*t happened.

A hella homophobia hit this week like a front coming in from somewhere very ugly. Homophobia is always more shocking coming from people we thought were our friends, like Billy Crystal, who played the first out gay character on TV back when we were infants in the landmark TV sitcom Soap.

Like all closet homophobes, Crystal later spent some time trying to walk back what he said, but you know, people who don’t think this stuff don’t have to worry about accidentally saying it. If you don’t think it, you don’t say it, and you don’t have to walk it back. So simple.

Crystal told the Television Critic’s Association that graphic scenes of gay sex on TV have gone too far. He said “modern day” TV shows (he’s only 66, but apparently talks like he’s from another era) are guilty of “pushing it a little too far.”

Crystal said, “I’ve seen some stuff recently on TV in different kinds of shows where the language or the explicit sex is really, you know, sometimes I get it, and sometimes I just feel like, ‘Ah, that’s too much for me.’”

Later he said: “Sometimes shows, well, it’s just pushing it a little too far for my taste, and I’m not going to reveal to you which ones they are. I hope people don’t abuse it and shove it in our face – well, that sounds terrible – to the point where it feels like an everyday kind of thing.”

Cue us screaming. Yes, it does sound terrible, all right. “Shove it in our face?” “An everyday kind of thing?” You mean, like heterosexual sex? Actually, for gay men and lesbians, sex is an everyday kind of thing, just like it is for their straight counterparts.

And is there a single TV show where heterosexual sex isn’t being shoved in our faces? Just last night we watched an episode of Mom where Bonnie’s (Allison Janney) boyfriend Alvin was giving her cunnilingus. In prime time. That sitcom was followed by Alan (Jon Cryer) doing the same in Two and a Half Men. Obviously there is some faceshoving going on, but it seems to be heterosexual faces, not ours.

Kids watch these shows, yet Crystal’s concerned about How to Get Away with Murder and Looking, which are the only two shows we can think of that have overt gay sex, and which are in the latenight zone? The last time we were this disappointed in a star we liked was when Prince came out against same-sex marriage.

Crystal had been talking about homophobia he had encountered when he starred as Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom Soap. Crystal said, “It was very difficult at the time.

Jodie was really the first recurring [gay] character on network television, and it was a different time, it was 1977. So, yeah, it was awkward.

It was tough. I did it in front of a live audience, and there were times where I would say to Bob, ‘I love you,’ and the audience would laugh nervously, because, you know, it’s a long time ago. Then I’d feel this anger. I wanted to stop the tape and go,

‘What is your problem?’”

Well, apparently, their problem was people like Crystal himself, who didn’t want gays shoved in their faces. As always seems to be the case when people get caught with their homophobia showing, Crystal just exacerbated the problem by explaining himself with this defensive comment: “Why would there be anything offensive in what I said?

When it gets too far either visually, now, that world exists, because it does for the hetero world, and I don’t want to see that either. But when I feel it’s a cause, when I feel it’s ‘You’re going to like my lifestyle,’ no matter what it is, I’m going to have a problem.”

He said “lifestyle.”

That’s the L word we do want erased. The thing is, Crystal was being interviewed about what it meant to play a gay character 40 years ago, less than a decade post-Stonewall.

He was not being asked what he thought about gay sex on TV today.

These comments remind us of what Peter Nowalk, the out gay showrunner for ABC’s hit How to Get Away with Murder, for which star Viola Davis just won a Golden Globe, had to say about this very issue. When the show debuted, Nowalk asserted that he was putting a lot of gay sex (in addition to straight sex) in the show because he wanted people to get used to it. Like it was everyday. A natural part of life.

Commonplace. What Crystal said is actually the problem: We need to have directors and writers shove gay sex in our faces, because that’s how straight America will acclimate to the normalcy of it. Because it is, you know, normal.

Gay ‘Days’

That’s the perfect segue to Days of Our Lives, which is making gay sex normal in daytime. We’ve been doing this column for over 20 years now. We watched Bianca Montgomery and Luke Snyder be tortured, sex-deprived gay teens on All My Children and As the World Turns, respectively. It was especially difficult to believe a gay high schoolthen-college student was in purity mode, waiting to have sex until the “right time” when he actually had a boyfriend. Did the writers not remember that teenage boys want sex more than anyone on the planet?

Thus, seeing a complicated gay storyline evolving on Days of Our Lives? Priceless. Especially in the wake of the ickiness from Crystal and another icky comment from African American actor Kevin Hart, who opined that he’d never be able to play a gay character because he couldn’t “give it [his] all.” Because you know, it’s not acting. Neil Patrick Harris played the most notorious straight bed-hopper in sitcom history on How I Met Your Mother for a decade, but maybe NPH is just a better actor, since he managed to play super straight with no problem.

Back to Days. We thought the gays had left Salem when longtime Days star and Biggest Loser host Alison Sweeney exited Salem on Halloween. Sweeney played Sami for over 20 years, since she was a teenager. And while we knew Sweeney was leaving town, what we didn’t know was that she was taking her son, Will (who is gay), with her. We didn’t know what this meant for Will (Guy Wilson) and husband Sonny Kiriakis (Freddie Smith), since it’s hard to keep a marriage together with an entire country between you and Sami, and Will had left Salem for Hollywood. But now that Will is back, well, all kinds of hell is breaking loose.

In an interview with Soap Op-

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Billy Crystal played the first out gay character on network TV. Now he’s uncomfortable with gays.

era Network back in November, Wilson gave a spoiler alert that infidelity was going to be a storyline for Will when he returned to Salem.

Well, now Will is back, and yes, it’s a full-on, soap-style cheating scandal, where one partner sleeps with another’s ex-partner, except for once all the characters are gay.

Will has been spending time with his father, Lucas Horton (Bryan Datillo), bonding and working together, trying to solve a mystery, which has put Will on the front burner in several storylines, which means he’s not going away any time soon.

Meanwhile, during the time Will was MIA, his hot hubby was pining. We thought he might end up in bed with his hot ex, Paul Narita (the gorgeous, totally ripped Christopher Sean), who is a closeted baseball player. (Didn’t we just see this same storyline about a closeted baseball player on CBS’ Madam Secretary, and didn’t it cause an international incident? Yes, we did. Something tells us there are a bunch of closeted baseball players just waiting to come out.)

The big conflict between Will and Sonny has always been their careers.

As a reporter, Will is always traveling. Which leaves Sonny alone with nothing to do but wait for Will. It’s what they fight about. Now they’ll have something much bigger to fight about: Infidelity.

While Sonny and Paul were playing footsie but Sonny was still saving himself for Will (yeah, that still goes on, but whatever), last week, Paul finally got what he wanted: the steamy sex he was looking for. On the Jan. 8 and 9 episodes of Days, there’s the gorgeous Paul in bed.

With Will. Cue rim shot. (See what we did there?) Will was cough covering Paul for a story. Then he got a little too close to his subject.

Thing is, Paul may be a player, but he doesn’t know Will is Sonny’s husband. As Sean told TV Guide, “Paul is not the villain in this triangle.

Sure, he has animalistic urges and he pounced, but it’s Will who was easily swayed. He wanted that forbidden fruit.”

So apparently Will is the new Sami, who was always being lured or luring someone other than her partner du jour into bed. Like mother, like son.

Can Will and Sonny’s marriage survive the cheating? Maybe the two will come to an understanding: onenight stands, yes, emotional entanglements, no. Or maybe Will wants another piece of that fastball action of Paul’s. We’ll have to see how this plays out, but since Paul is in Salem for surgery on his pricey arm, he’s on the canvas for some time. And

who can say what kind of physical therapy he will need to get back in the game?

While we are loving the Days storyline, we just don’t know what to do with the faux gay-marriage storyline on Two and a Half Men, which is heating up, not fading out.

The hit sitcom is now in its 12th and final season, and ends next month.

Yet not without controversy, and not without raising eyebrows and questions. When the final season began Oct. 30, Alan (Jon Cryer) and Walden (Ashton Kutcher) got married in one of the more controversial storylines on the tube. There was a real kiss, but not a real marriage. Walden wants a child, and Alan wants to help him get one. So they got married, lied to the state, and now are fostering an adorable biracial six-year-old boy, Louis (Edan Alexander). Walden is in love with the child. And Alan wants what Walden wants, having already raised his own son, Jake.

Since the season resumed postholidays, problems arose as their social worker discovered the two aren’t really gay, and aren’t really a couple.

Or are they? On the Jan. 22 episode, Walden joins a group for foster dads where he talks about his husband in much the same way the men talk about their wives. There are some funny bits, but the bottom line, soto-speak, ends up being the straight guys tell Walden and Alan that they are in fact a couple because they do in fact love each other, even if they don’t have sex.

So: it’s complicated. It’s not a bromance. It’s not a real gay relationship. Yet the real commitment in the lives of these two men is to each other and their son. Several episodes ago, Alan asked Walden about how the co-parenting of Louis would work since he and Walden would have to stay married for a least six months to placate the foster program. Alan made it clear that he had no problem with the arrangement, noting that this was the happiest he had been throughout all three of his marriages, the first two to women.

The Jan. 22 episode ends with Alan the new member of the wives group.

We just don’t know what to think about this. Women marry men and men marry women all the time on TV to get a child, and we don’t object. Certainly the focus of Cam and Mitchell’s relationship on ABC’s Modern Family is their daughter, their marriage and their extended family. They are very gay, but they are not sexual. But the implication in TaaHM is that Walden and Alan’s relationship is the same as that of a gay male couple.

We have long objected to the neutering of gay men on TV, and so greeted HTGAWM and Looking with excitement. Gay men do have sex, so why can’t we show it? HTGAWM is riskier (and hotter) than Looking, but the gay sex is also framed differently.

All the sex on HTGAWM is transgressive, so it’s a different presentation from some of the lovely scenes we’ve seen on Looking.

We really like the sweetness in the scenes between Walden and Louis, because another thing we don’t see enough of on TV is men being affectionate with children in a real and honest way. Yet we also know that the only reason Walden and Alan were allowed to foster a boy, when all the gay male couples on the tube from Scandal to Modern Family have girls, is because the audience knows they aren’t really gay, so there’s no sexual threat there.

Just as there’s no sexual threat in gay men adopting girls. Because TV also doesn’t know how to present affection between men and children without sexualizing it.

Kutcher was on Ellen Jan. 23 and let slip some spoilers for the series finale. It’s going to be amazing.

Kutcher is actually playing the only character like Walden on the entirety of the TV landscape. Even on NBC’s Parenthood, there is not this kind of fathering that we are seeing on TaaHM. So watch.

CBS is promoting this same “yes, we’re really a couple” meme in their ads for the re-boot of the classic sitcom The Odd Couple. The show debuts Feb. 19 and stars Friends alum Matthew Perry in the Jack Klugman role of Oscar Madison, and Thomas Lennon in the Tony Randall role as the obsessively tidy Felix Unger. Just as in the original, we are expected to believe Felix is not gay. But the original debuted in 1970, and this is, Billy Crystal’s queasiness aside, 2015. So Felix really could be gay this time around, and it would be more believable.

We’re not sure any of this will work. Perry, a genius actor, has had a bad run with his last few series being cancelled. And while we loved Lennon on Reno 911, we aren’t sure about him as Felix. Lennon last played Max on the terrible Sean Hayes sitcom Sean Saves the World.

Lauren Graham, who leaves Parenthood when the series ends, plays Gaby, Oscar’s ex-wife, and we’ll watch anything Graham is in, so we’ll keep you posted.

For gay sex being shoved in your face and that whole gay lifestyle being flaunted all the time, you know TV is the place to be, so you really must stay tuned.t

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Film>>

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Like mother, like son

by David Lamble

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kay, I’ll admit it, as a gay boy growing up on the East Coast, I was definitely “Daddy’s boy.” Most of my best childhood memories involve some insane trope of my BBC shortwave-listening, Players cigarette-inhaling, Rheingold beerguzzling, baseball-obsessed father.

Even my grip on the sinking of the Titanic centers on my Dad’s dinnertime boast of having been slapped across the face by his mom for reporting the news that the great ship had foundered.

It’s wryly appropriate that Titanic looms large in the film fantasies of my subject, the wavy-darkbrown-haired, mother-fixated, Cannes Film Festival-toasted, Quebec cinema boy wunderkind Xavier Dolan. The now-25-year-old film prodigy – he produces, directs, edits and assists with the costumes – has cited James Cameron’s Titanic as a seminal boyhood inspiration, a kind of full-immersion baptismintroduction to the cinema style that would run riot in his first five films.

Dolan’s latest and most ambitious feature (opening Friday), Mommy is an operatic at times (139-min.) elaboration on the themes con-

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tained in his earlier 2009 film, I Killed My Mother. If you recall, that film’s aspiring painter enfant terrible was banished to a remote country boarding school by his divorced mom for writing a school essay, “I Killed My Mother,” a narrative trick that Dolan gleefully stole from Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows.

In his version, his rebellious little shit Hubert (Dolan himself) turns his videocamera into a Hi-8 diary machine, producing bare-chested, B&W anti-Mom diatribes: “I bet most people believe that hating your mother is a sin. They’re hypocrites.

They’ve all hated their mother.”

In that film, Mom finds Hubert’s tape stash, the revelations within inspiring from her a brilliant telephone rant to one of Hubert’s clueless boarding school teachers, laying the groundwork for a mother/son makeup.

With Mommy, Dolan raises the stakes and expands his cinema canvas. Here, Mommy Diane Després (Anne Dorval) acquires a next-door neighbor female accomplice, Kyla (Suzanne Clément), with whom to ride herd over her emotionally disturbed, great-balls-of-fire, acting-out blond son, Steve (the hysterically seductive Antoine Olivier Pilon). With the additional

Roadside Attractions

Antoine Olivier Pilon stars in director Xavier Dolan’s Mommy.

gimmick of appearing to have been shot through the narrow aperture of a cellphone camera, thus restricting our view of the mommy/son knockdown brawls and intensifying their emotional heft, Dolan gives fans of

daytime-TV soap opera a hint of what could be if the American networks permitted no-holds-barred scenes like the following: Steve (from his bed): “Wanna hold my dick when I piss, too?”

Diane: “If it helps you aim!”

Dolan’s aim is increasing on target in this, his fifth feature. My only reservations are the absence this time of the frisky boys-in-bed scenes, and the extra hour that Mommy takes to unspool compared to I Killed My Mother’s spare 95 minutes. Still, I stand by my 2011 opinion that Dolan is a young dog still refining his tricks. With his knowing embrace of his hometown of Montreal as a North American Paris, and with his latest terribly grownup romantic feature promising a great career in the offing, Xavier Dolan has given a long overdue queer accent to that most treasured of screen genres, the French romantic comedy. Dolan, even at his most hyperbolic, manages to avoid the out-and-out low-camp humor of such American mother-bashing classics as Frank Perry’s Faye Dunaway “coathanger special,” Mommie Dearest.

And for those desperate to catch queer cinema that manages to end on a hopeful note, Dolan tosses this crumb, a late film exchange between a doting, nutty mother and a son temporarily drugged into calm.

“We still love each other, right?”

“That’s what we’re best at, buddy!”t

SFB Gala

From page 17

This year’s Gala, which kicked off the season last Thursday night, was sold out before the press releases went out, and though standing room was full and the house was filled with excitement, and many beautiful gowns floated up and down the aisles and Prosecco had been given away in the lobby, once the curtain went up, the whole event w/Lizz Wright, the Nona Hendryx, began to resemble roll-out of a new generation something Ingrid Jensen,of Tia Fuller you should invest in. & Helen Sung The programming was simultaneously impressive and dreary, and confusingly anticlimactic. The curtain went up on a brilliant presentation of the entire company, from the smallest children in the school through the ranks of the professional company, ending with the stars: they all marched forward doing the Polonaise, in direct imitation of the Grand Défilé of the Paris Opera Ballet.

This was fabulous, except that it was followed by the curtain going back up on a podium, at which stood poor John Osterweis, head of the San Francisco Ballet Foundation, who then talked for 30 minutes, thanking everybody who’d helped fundraise for the occasion, corporation after corporation after corporation, and hostess after hostess after hostess. It could not have been more plain that this evening was for them, not for us – and the string of pas de deux that followed each seemed like a vicarious existence for rich ladies who’d been forced into marriages Frisch aus dem Kloster, kommandiert worden.

I haven’t felt this much like one of the 99% since the tape of Mitt Romney’s gaffe went viral. As one overwrought, second-rate pas de deux after another took over the stage – always superlatively danced, but never well-enough choreographed – you wondered if Helgi Tomasson was about to overreach himself, as Michael Smuin did with his dominatrices in To the Beatles, 30 years ago.

What were they thinking putting together a program like this? With dancers like these – performers of finesse, skill, energy and fire, a cadre of talent that really is world-class – to showcase them in a format of second-rate “highlights” that revealed See page 30 >>

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<< Dance

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

<<

SFB Gala

From page 29

very little of their tremendous gifts?

Two of the dances were gifts from the choreographers Christopher Wheeldon and Alexei Ratmansky, who are indeed in the first rank of contemporary choreographers. But neither of their problematic works belonged in a festive gala.

The numbers that did not misfire were the opener and the closer: first, a jokey pas de deux to Johann Strauss II’s hilarious polka Leichtes Blut, for two of the company’s premier danseurs, Pascal Molat and Joan Boada, which proved beyond a doubt that they could both do the hardest tricks in the book in perfect rhythm with the music and make it look like dancing, and gave hope that the show was going to get some zip back in it. Then, the finale, the Grand Pas d’Esclave from Le Corsaire (with which Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn used to enthrall audiences), superlatively danced by our Cuban virtuoso Taras Domitro, who deeply understands the glamor and style of this Soviet-era chestnut, dancing with the much-loved Vanessa Zahorian, who’s just returned to performing after an injury that kept her off the boards for the entirety of the last season. Zahorian is a great-hearted virtuoso who turns like a tornado, and she finished the show with a blazing set of perpetual-motion pirouettes that brought the house down and almost made us forget the scissoring leaps that her partner had just thrown off before she came on. He had literally thrown himself into the air with his legs in 180-degree splits, and at the height of his jump reversed himself, scissoring the legs back through to even wider amplitude – 190 degrees, perhaps – before he came down. Such a sight really peels your eyes, and he did

<<

t

Erik Tomasson

San Francisco Ballet dancer Taras Domitro in Petipa’s Le Corsaire.

Erik Tomasson

San Francisco Ballet dancers Yuan Yuan Tan and Tiit Helimets in Helgi Tomasson’s On a Theme of Paganini.

them over and over. Such heroics make your adrenaline spike, and the audience went berserk. Me, I was grateful that there’d been something I didn’t have to make apologies for, and that it capped things and at least sent us out feeling good.

But in the meantime there’d been only small ensemble pieces that canceled each other out. Lorena Feijoo and Vitor Luis were nearly wasted in Val Caniparoli’s Cinderella Story pdd, which sucked the energy out of the proceedings, as were the magnificent Sofiane Sylve and her sterling partner Luke Ingham in a sad duet to Kurt Weill. Yuan Yuan Tan’s terrifying extensions matched the sub-

limity of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, but by then it was clear that even the big things were going to be small. And of the five dancers in William Forsythe’s Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, only Gennadi Nedvigin was thrilling, vertiginous, or exact. In truth, Nedvigin is one of the greatest male dancers anywhere in the world today, and it is an immense pleasure to be in the presence of such artistry; but of the other dancers, only Francisco Mungamba was ready for prime time.

The piece must be performed allegro molto; the dancers meet themselves coming and going, with stylized exaggerations of the spiralings built

into ballet technique. But none of the ladies came up to the standards set by their predecessors.

The five corps men who danced Tomasson’s Concerto Grosso, one of his finest ballets ever, executed their magnificent steps immaculately, though without the élan that their predecessors brought to the roles. As with Vertiginous, I kept seeing other dancers shadowing them, dancing better. Diego Cruz and, again, Mungamba danced best. Frances Chung and Joseph Walsh did their very good best to realize Wheeldon’s Borealis, though Gavin Bryars’ music, to which the dance was set, kept the whole thing pretty desolate. The heroic Sarah van Patten made every moment of her dancing in Ratmansky’s puzzling Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher seem honest and poignant – in fact, maybe even tragic. I am eager to see this double pas de deux again, in another context, when its virtues can be appreciated. The new dancer Carlo di Lanno was thrillingly musical as the guy she wants but can’t have, as he danced with the exquisite and perhaps exquisitely silly and undeserving Mathilde Froustey. Finally, Yuan Yuan

Tan made a hysterical melodrama out of the final pas de deux from Onegin.

Lovers of ballet cannot be sorry that the San Francisco Ballet is in the black, nor that they are 2/3 of the way through their capital campaign, which is designed to make sure that the company will never again face the bankruptcy they did back in the 1980s, which Tomasson was brought in to stave off. The company was not operating then under sound financial principles, and the board nearly pulled the plug on them. Without the help of the Ford Foundation, we might have lost our ballet company, which was the oldest in the USA at that point, and was generally considered, already, after the two great New York companies, the third-ranked ballet company in the country.

The season ahead looks good.

Some of the choreography is not inspired, but all of it will give these fantastic dancers opportunities to dance their hearts out and to make us love them again. I am particularly looking forward to Serenade and Giselle, both of which contain sublime choreography that rival Shakespeare for poetic power.t

Janet Delaney

From page 17

While not exactly paradise, the lively, diverse neighborhood of South of Market depicted in Delaney’s pictures, which was deemed a slum by opportunistic city officials and developers, was once home to an eclectic mix of artists, gays, small-business proprietors and Filipino families. Today, though, that’s a mirage, a distant memory of an area that bears little relationship to the teeming, more homogeneous, higher-end district that replaced it.

Now as they did then, concerns about the deleterious effects of a modern gold rush on the social and ambient landscape of a community, not to mention the displacement of long-time residents, take a backseat when increased revenues and a soaring tax-base are at stake. The prospect of buckets of money rolling in

Courtesy of the artist

Courtesy of the artist

“Hamburger Mary’s, 1582 Folsom at 12th Street, 1980,” archival pigment print by Janet Delaney.

“Mercantile Building, Mission at Third Street, 1980,” archival pigment print by Janet Delaney.

and filling city coffers is – and was – too hard to resist. San Francisco remains a beacon for those who fit in nowhere else and seek the freedom to

a form of activism,” says Delaney. “I believe art should play a role in the conversation about what’s happening in one’s community.” It’s an idea that continues to be an impetus for the artist, who’s creating a new body of work focusing on SoMa today.

When the hammer came down and the government removed the “blight” to make way for redevelopment and the construction of the behemoth Moscone Center in 1980, it was the assorted bohemians, the working class, and especially the poor, many of whom had been drawn by SoMa’s cheap rents and central location, who suffered the most. They had the least power, virtually no voice in decisions that shaped their destinies, and the fewest alternatives. The show’s images and personal accounts form a humanizing narrative that’s a rebuke to the cold-hearted calculations of the powerful like the blunt former head of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency who put it this way: The land was “too valuable to permit poor people to park on it.”

The show, which has the feel of a photojournalism piece that might have appeared in Life magazine

reinvent themselves in peace – if only they can afford a place to live.

Growing up in her hometown of Compton, CA, Delaney had watched as the tight-knit community she had known since childhood dispersed and departed for the suburbs due to a combination of sleazy real-estate speculation, racism and the panic that followed the riots in the 1960s. “It was like a Diaspora,” she recalls. After moving to San Francisco and settling into her studio on Langton Street in 1978, Delaney intuited trouble ahead for her adopted neighborhood, and picked up her 4x5 large-format view camera to record threats to her new home, interviewing friends, neighbors and others directly affected.

Some of their stories accompany the 40 or so color photographs on display at the de Young.

“It was a process of depicting people and a place no one else was paying attention to, and trying to understand a 10-block area that was cleared for redevelopment,” she recalls. She would utilize the pictures to help people find jobs and housing, and otherwise mitigate the destructive impact of big business. “All art is

during its heyday, certainly triggers a sense of deja vu all over again.

Reinforcing that sensation is this prescient statement, made in 1981,

by Perry Lancaster, a musician who had a studio near Delaney’s: “The landlord, in the next month or so, could say, ‘You’ve gotta leave,’ and more than likely, I’ll have to move to Oakland, because I can’t afford a space in San Francisco.” Sound familiar? As for Delaney, she relocated to Berkeley in 1988. If not for the expense, she would have stayed in San Francisco and raised her children here.

“I mean, what redevelopment did was criminal,” Philip Kiely, a city fireman and property owner, told Delaney in 1980. “They ran people out. They were just pushed right out of their houses, literally.

A lot of them died, or they moved to the Tenderloin and shriveled up.

They will never do it again as long as anybody remembers what they did.”

Delaney’s thoughtful document should help keep that memory alive.t Through July 19 at the de Young Museum.

T

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Best Bookstore

COMMUNITY Best LGBT Event  Castro Street Fair  Folsom Street Fair  Oakland Pride  San Francisco Pride  San Jose Pride

✎

Best LGBT Fundraiser  Casino Night (Horizons

Foundation)  Help is On the Way (REAF)  Light in the Grove (National AIDS Memorial Grove)  Santa Skivvies Run (SFAF)  Soiree (LGBT Community Center)  Unmasked (GLBT Historical Society) ✎

Best Blog/Website  Accidental Bear  The Bold Italic  Ebar.com  SFist

✎

Best LGBT Nonprofit  AIDS Emergency Fund  Imperial Council of San

Francisco  Openhouse  Project Open Hand  Transgender Law Center ✎

Best LGBT Sports League  Golden Gate Wrestling Club  SF Fog Rugby Club  SF Frontrunners  SF Gay Basketball Association  SF Gay Softball League  SF Pool Association  SF Tsunami Swim Club

✎

Best LGBTQ Activist  Tez Anderson (Let’s Kick ASS)  B. Cole (Brown Boi Project)  Alicia Garza (#Black Lives Matter)  Aja Monet (Tenderloin Pride)

✎

Best LGBTQ Youth Activist (Under 25)  Angel VanStark (Campaign for

Presidential Youth Commission)  Alex Neumann (San Mateo County LGBT Commission) ✎

SHOPPING/ SERVICES Best Place to Pamper Your Pets  Animal House  Bernal Beast  Best in Show  Groomingdales (Burlingame)  Mr. Muggles’ Dogs  Mudpuppy’s Tub & Scrub  Noe Valley Pet Company  VIP Pet Grooming

 Aardvark  Alley Cat Books  Books Inc.  Booksmith  Green Apple

✎

Best Bicycle Shop  Box Dog Bikes  Freewheel Bike Shop  Market Street Bikes  Mission Bicycle Company  Valencia Cyclery

WEDDINGS Best Formalwear for Women  Kipper Clothiers  Macy’s  Saint Harridan  Tomboy Tailors

✎

✎

Best Formalwear for Men

✎

Best Vintage Clothing/ Consignment

 Macy’s  Men’s Wearhouse  Sui Generis

Best Veterinarian

 Buffalo Exchange  Sui Generis  Wasteland

Best Place to Buy Rings

 Mission Pet Hospital  San Francisco Veterinary House

Calls  Seven Hills Veterinary Hospital ✎

Best Dog Park  Bernal Heights Dog Park  Corona Heights Dog Park  Duboce Park  Point Isabel (Richmond)

✎

Best Dentist  Financial District Dental Care  Michael Perona, DDS  Aaron Rose, DDS

✎

Best Health Care Provider  Brown & Toland  CPMC/Sutter Health  Kaiser  UCSF

✎

Best Thrift Store  Community Thrift  Goodwill  Out of the Closet

✎

Best Art Supplies  Blix  Discount Fabrics  Flax  Just for Fun and

Scribbledoodles

✎

Best Retirement Community  Fountaingrove Lodge  San Francisco Towers  The Sequoias – San Francisco

✎

✎

Best Place to Buy a Car

Best Medical Marijuana Dispensary

 Fiat of San Francisco  One Toyota (Oakland)  Volkswagen San Francisco

 Apothecarium  Compassionate Health  Green Cross  Green Door

✎

Best Auto Mechanic

Best Tax Preparer

 Cowden Automotive  John Gardner Automotive  Luscious Garage

 H&R Block  Jackson Hewitt  Johnston Tax Group

Best Real Estate Firm

✎

✎

Best Bank  SF Federal Credit Union  Sterling Bank and Trust  Union Bank  Wells Fargo

✎

BESTIES 2015 SPONSORS:

✎

 Hill & Company  Swann Group  Vanguard Properties  Zephyr Real Estate

✎

✎

 D&H Sustainable Jewelers  Gallery of Jewels  Tiffany

✎

Best Wedding Photographer  Rick Gerharter  Gareth Gooch  Georg Lester  Steven Underhill

✎

Best Caterer  J Jardine  Molto Benne Catering  Taste Catering

✎

Best Honeymoon Destination  Hawaii  Key West  Monterey/Carmel  Provincetown  Puerto Vallarta

✎

Best Domestic Travel Destination  Palm Springs  Las Vegas  New York City  Seattle  Washington, D.C.

✎

Best Foreign Travel Destination  Barcelona, Spain  London, England  Paris, France  Rome, Italy  Thailand

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Best Large Live Music Venue  The Chapel  The Fillmore  Great American Music Hall  Masonic Hall  Regency Center  Warfield

✎

Best Small Live Music Venue  Martuni’s  The New Parish (Oakland)  Thee Parkside  Rickshaw Stop  El Rio  SF Eagle

✎

Best Theatre Company  American Conservatory Theatre  Berkeley Repertory Theatre  New Conservatory Theatre  Ray of Light Theatre  Theatre Rhinoceros

✎

Best Museum  Asian Art Museum  Contemporary Jewish Museum  GLBT History Museum  Legion of Honor  Museum of the African

Diaspora

 Walt Disney Family Museum  de Young Museum

✎

Best Modern Dance Company  AXIS Dance Company  Jess Curtis/Gravity  Joe Goode Performance Group  Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero  Katie Faulkner/little seismic  ODC Dance  Sean Dorsey Dance

✎

Best Ballet Company  Alonzo King Lines Ballet  Ballet San Jose  Post/Ballet  San Francisco Ballet  Smuin Ballet

✎

✎

Palm Springs, CA

Best Nature/Science Museum  California Academy of Sciences  Exploratorium  SF Botanical Gardens  SF Conservatory of Flowers

✎

Best Classical Venue  Davies Symphony Hall  Old First Church  SF Conservatory of Music  War Memorial Opera House

✎

Best Mixed Drink

Best Place to Meet Men

Best Sports Bar

Best DJ Duo/Group

 Alembic  Blackbird  The Hideout at Dalva  Lolo  Martuni’s  Tacolicious  Twin Peaks  Virgil’s Sea Room

 440 Castro  Powerhouse  Lone Star Saloon  Lookout  SF Eagle  Truck

 440 Castro  The Edge  Hi Tops  Pilsner Inn

 BAAAHS (Big-Ass Amazingly

✎

Best Theme Night

✎

Best Place to Meet Transgender People

Best Beer Selection  Brewcade  Caskhouse  City Beer Store  Monk’s Kettle  Pilsner Inn  SF Eagle  Toronado

✎

RESTAURANTS Best Breakfast  Crepevine  It’s Tops  Orphan Andy’s  Sparky’s  Stacks

✎

 Balançoire  Cassava  Foreign Cinema  Hi Tops  Squat & Gobble  Starbelly  Zuni Cafe

✎

Best Drag Show

Best Wine Bar  20 Spot  Biondivino  Blush  City Club  Noeteca  Swirl  St Vincent

Best Bar Menu  Harvey’s  Hi Tops  Lookout  Truck

✎

✎

Best Castro Bar

Best Dinner  Canela  Chow  Firewood Cafe  Hecho  Pesce  Poesia  Urchin Bistro

✎

Best Dessert  B Patisserie  Craftsman and Wolves  Cream  Frozen Kuhsterd  Illy Cafe  Sweet Inspirations  Tartine Bakery

✎

Best Outdoor Patio  Café Flore  Catch  Fable  Flippers  Starbelly

✎

Best Coffee Shop  Dolores Park Cafe  Four Barrel  Illy  Morning Due  Peet’s  Philz  Ritual Roasters  Spike’s

✎

Best Late Night Restaurant  Grubstake  Orphan Andy’s  Sparky’s  Tempest  Tommy’s Joynt

✎

Best Happy Hour Bites  Blackbird  Dosa  Hi-Tops  Nopa  Pesce

 440 Castro  Badlands  Beaux  The Edge  Lookout

✎

 Brewcade  Club BnB (Oakland)  SF Oasis

 Comedy Returns – El Rio  Funny Fun – Club 21, Oakland  Funny Tuesdays – Harvey’s  Hella Gay Comedy (various

venues)

✎

Best Weekly Nightlife Event  Big Top – Beaux  The Monster Show – The Edge  Mother – SF Oasis  Sundance Saloon – Space 550/

Beatbox

Best SoMa Bar

Best East Bay Bar

Best Monthly Nightlife Event  Beatpig – Powerhouse  Go Bang! – The Stud  Comedy Returns – El Rio  Hardbox – Powerhouse

✎

 Club BnB (Bench and Bar)  Club 21  Club 1220  White Horse Bar  World Famous Turf Club

Best Game Night

✎

Room  Name That Beat – Toad Hall  Trivia Night – Harvey’s ✎

Best Stray (Straight/Gay) Bar  Blackbird  Brewcade  EndUp  Wild Side West  Virgil’s Sea Room

✎

Best Cabaret Venue  Feinstein’s at the Nikko  Hotel Rex  Martuni’s  SF Oasis  Starlight Room

✎

Best Women’s Event  13 Licks – Qbar  B.P.M. – Club BnB, Oakland  Cock Block – Rickshaw Stop  Darling Nikki – Slate  Mango – El Rio  Pussy Party – Beaux  Riot Grrr – Lone Star Saloon  Ships in the Night – The New

Parish, Oakland

 Uhaul – Beatbox

✎

✎

 Bottoms Up Bingo – Hi Tops  Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night – Wild

Side West

 No No Bingo – Virgil’s Sea

Best Nightlife Event (non-weekly/non-monthly)  Bearracuda – various venues  Chaos – Beatbox  Comfort & Joy – various venues  Hard French – El Rio  Industry – various venues  Magnitude – various venues

✎

Best (non-contest) Leather Event at a Bar  Code – The Edge  Daddy – Powerhouse  Lick It – Powerhouse  Sadistic Saturday – SF Eagle

✎

Best Neighborhood Bar  El Rio  Pilsner Inn  The Stud  Trax  Wild Side West

✎

✎

BAR FOLK Best Bartender  Andy Anderson – 440  Steve Dalton – SF Eagle  Jose Guevara – Powerhouse  Chris Jansen – Rickshaw Stop  Bruce Jennison – Lone Star  Erick Lopez – The Edge  Michael Tempesta – Midnight

Sun

Best Drag Queen  Cookie Dough  D’Arcy Drollinger  Heklina  Juanita More  Sister Roma  Khmera Rouge  Donna Sachet  BeBe Sweetbriar  Grace Towers

✎

Best Gogo Guy  Paul Brown  Josh Colwell  Brian Hawn  Simon Palczynski  Andrew Slade

✎

Best Gogo Gal  Lucy Dorado  Jella GoGo  Nina Makalena  Chloe Rainwater

✎

Best Female Cabaret Performer  Leanne Borghesi  The Coker Sisters  Sony Holland  Veronica Klaus  Katya Smirnoff-Skky  Paula West  Wesla Whitfield

✎

✎

✎

✎

 Dragula – Oasis (formerly at

 1015 Folsom  Beatbox  EndUp  Mezzanine  Mighty  Public Works  Space 550

 Gym Class – Hi Tops

 Hole in the Wall  Lone Star Saloon  Powerhouse  SF Eagle  The Stud

Best Unusual Nightlife Events

Best New Bar or Nightclub

Best Comedy Night

NIGHTLIFE BARS

✎

Best Dance Floor

Drake Hotel

✎

 Bar Tartine  Café Flore  Green Chile Kitchen  Harvey’s  Mama Ji’s  Super Duper

 Cubcake – Lone Star Saloon  Frolic – The Stud  Mazel Top – SF Oasis  Pound Puppy – SF Eagle  ShangriLa – EndUp

✎

Charlie’s Lounge

 Glamazone – The Cafe  Monster Show – The Edge  Mother – SF Oasis  Some Thing – The Stud  Sunday’s A Drag – Sir Francis

✎

Best Lunch

✎

Eagle)  Fridays – de Young Museum  Halloween Runway Massacre (Juanita More; various venues)  Kink.com Parties – Armory  Nightlife – California Academy of Sciences  Opening Parties – Yerba Buena Center for the Arts ✎

 Dream Queens Revue – Aunt

✎

Best Brunch

 Asia SF  Aunt Charlie’s Lounge  Balançoire  Diva’s  SF Oasis

✎

Awesome Homosexual Sheep)

 Go Bang!  Honey Soundsystem  Hard French

Best Event host/MC  Michael Brandon – Sadistic

Saturdays (Eagle)  Andy Cross – Daddy (Powerhouse)  Cookie Dough – The Monster Show (Edge)  Heklina – Mother (Oasis)  Lance Holman – Lick It (Powerhouse)  Juanita More – Booty Call (Qbar)  Gehno Aviance Sanchez – Hardbox (Powerhouse)  Grace Towers – Bulge (Powerhouse) ✎

Best Male Cabaret Performer  Jason Brock  Jesse Cortez  Mark Hockenberry  Mark Johnson  Joe Wicht

✎

Best LGBT Band  Double Duchess  The Klipptones  Pepperspray  Tom Shaw Trio  Whoa Nellies

✎

Best Female Comic  Yayne Abeba  Diane Amos  Lisa Geduldig  Marga Gomez  Natasha Muse  Karen Ripley

✎

Best Male Comic  Charlie Ballard  Yuri Kagan  Nick Leonard  Justin Lucas  Sampson McCormick  Ronn Vigh

✎

Best Male DJ  Paul Goodyear  David Harness  DJ Hawthorne  Tristan Jaxx  Bus Station John  Justime  Guy Ruben

✎

Best Female DJ  Candy  Jibbz  Ms. Jackson  Kimba  Motive  Page Hodel  Jenna Riot  Olga T  ShOOey

SEX Best Sex Venue  Blow Buddies  Eros  Steamworks (Berkeley)  Watergarden (San Jose)  Nob Hill Theatre

✎

Best Place to Buy Sex Toys  Does Your Mother Know?  Folsom Gulch  Good Vibrations  Mr S  Rock Hard

✎

Best Local Gay Male Porn Actor  Jesse Colter  Race Cooper  Blake Daniels  Jimmy Durano  Leo Forte  Sebastian Keys  Adam Ramzi

✎

✎

BESTIES 2015 SPONSORS:

Palm Springs, CA

36

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Candidating

41

On the Tab

NIGHTLIFE

SPIRITS

DINING

Karrnal Knowledge

SOCIETY

ROMANCE

LEATHER

PERSONALS Vol. 45 • No. 05 • January 29-February 4, 2015

Gareth Gooch

www.ebar.com ✶ www.bartabsf.com

y a d s ’ r e h Mot in a g a , g ra d t n e v in re w re Heklina and c

by Andre Torrez

“I

have always thought the PC police are way out of line.” Heklina writes to me via email about the “T” word that was the source of much criticism last year. From RuPaul’s Drag Race to her own long-running Trannyshack; the drag-night institution that incorporated the term that offended so many — use of “tranny” was more likely to be defined as a slur than See page 34 >> a term of endearment.

Heklina, back in black, opens the new Mother with a crew of hunky dancers.

An Oasis of civilization courtesy the GLBT Historical Society, photos by Robert Pruzan

Sisters are doing it for themselves on the outdoor patio at the old Oasis, Halloween Day 1982.

The history of SoMa’s newest nightclub

by Michael Flanagan

“S

an Francisco; an oasis of civilization in the California desert.”

– Addison DeWitt, All About Eve If the walls could only talk, what stories the Oasis would have to tell.

It started its life as the Polly Ann Restaurant in the middle of blue-collar auto shops and gas stations. You can almost see the gingham tablecloths and smell the spaghetti. When it became the Covered Wagon in 1968 and turned gay, it was still a restaurant, but it evolved into a bar that held private parties for the See page 35 >> mysteriously named “Longhorn Club.”

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

It was last spring when the night’s name (intact since 1996 when Heklina founded it) was abbreviated to “T-Shack.” Suddenly it didn’t have the same ring to it, but the critics got their way.

“It gets so tiresome when everything is transphobia, homophobia, racist, what have you,” she vents her frustration explaining that in order to examine taboo subjects, one must “prick at them” as if dissection was the healthiest option.

“I often think that the far left are just as loony as the far right,” she says. “There’s just no reasoning with people who are bound and determined to be outraged and offended by something. It blew my mind to think that some people, knowing the history of Trannyshack and what it meant to so many people, would just flat out say we were transphobic— just that cut and dry.”

She points out that some of these same critics attended her club nights back at The Stud and DNA Lounge, before ‘tranny’ took on such weight, making their hypocrisy maddening. “San Francisco is rapidly becoming a city I almost don’t recognize.”

“I began to think the name had to change to keep up with the times,” Heklina says. “If the name Trannyshack now seemed archaic and hurtful, what is the point of hanging on to it? I went with my gut feeling. As much as I like to shock and offend, I do not like to hurt. There’s a fine line there.”

Enter Oasis—Heklina’s new club (co-owned with three business partners) at the corner of 11th and Folsom streets, equipped with two bars, a spacious dance floor, gender-neutral bath- Putanesca unleashed. rooms, but most importantly— a stage. In HekImages of Faye Dunaway from lina’s own words, the goal is to keep Mommie Dearest and Endora from drag on the West Coast map and to Bewitched projected by Vis-A-Vis keep the “freak flag” flying. flashed on the screen as the crowd It was chilly outside, typical for waited in anticipation. Music vidmid-January, but looking at guys eos played too, but weren’t neceswearing mesh tops and fishnets sarily synced to the music playing made me that much colder. The line over the thunderous sound system. wrapped around the block, well past Highlights included Bjork and the neighboring Izakaya House for vintage Courtney Love from her the debut of Mother.

Hole, kinder-whore days. There was T-Shack, now history, is re-chriseven a more tasteful Cher segment, tened for a new era of weekly Satwhich included a cameo by Chaz urday night drag, each installment Bono, shown as Chastity at the time, representing a different theme. I ask to really drive the theme home.

Heklina if she’s worried about keepLayers of clothing began to peel ing her ideas fresh. Her all-caps reoff just as it seemed the crowd sponse, as if to guffaw, and a simple wouldn’t be able to bear much ‘No’ is convincing enough. more. AC/DC’s “Back In Black” While waiting on the sidewalk, blared over the PA as the curtain I heard snippets of other people’s lifted. Heklina emerged for an openconversations. A group in front of ing number as emcee. Finally it was me talked about how threeways nevstage time. er work out and said there’s always

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There were some technical difficulties with a temperamental DVD player and Heklina herself seemed to be the most vocal critic of there being no AC in the building, but she flawlessly incorporated that into her own fabulously-snarky schtick. (She has since updated me and said the second installment of Mother included CO2 cooling cannons and high-powered fans on the dance floor, and an air-conditioned dressing room).

For the most part, the routines maintained their edge, kitschiness and comic relief. Mahlae Balenciaga, basically a preggers Beyoncé, did some serious wig-flipping while she managed to check her baby’s heartbeat with the microphone.

Fauxnique, introduced as being the first genetic female to hold the distinctive honor of being Miss Trannyshack, channelled Liza in Cabaret.

Heklina made a joke that may just as well have gone over every millennial’s head that she was looking more Joyce DeWitt of Three’s Company fame.

Speaking of millennials, it was impressive to see such a wide-ranging age demographic in the audience, and with the performers too. Kelly Dezart-Smith, a nightlife curator and producer known for his Swagger Like Us party, was in the audience that night.

“In San Francisco’s current climate of gentrification, it’s remarkably refreshing to see a queer business open up rather than close,” said Dezart-Smith. “I didn’t get the impression Heklina was trying to recreate her previous party. It really felt like she was trying to curate a new show and a new experience in this new space. I thought the Gareth Gooch show was great.”

Other honorable mentions included the comedic Kill Bill choreography by the House of Glitter crew, which utilized elements from ‘90s-era Janet, Madonna and even a Mortal Kombat reference for any old-school gamers in the house.

VivvyAnne Forevermore donned a gown worthy of Dusty Springfield and brought an air of ‘chanteusesings-AM gold’ to the stage. However, that quickly disintegrated into a legitimately gag-worthy, diaperchanging scene, complete with what I hope was a melted chocolate bar as the main poopy prop.

If there were an overall winner, I’d have to pick Holy McGrail, for not only making my jaw drop during the crude artificial insemination video skit, but her and her entourage’s elaborate preparation and production, which included paper dolls representative of the litter she popped out and a Rainbow Brite doll with the umbilical cord attached, generated sincere laughout-loud moments from myself and most of the crowd.

Finally, Glamamore closed the evening with her own sophisticated brand of hobo drag. Sort of rag-clad and disheveled, yet still wearing pearls, this by far was one of the more fascinating performers of the evening. Almost clownish looking, pasty-white makeup, was smeared over her full beard as she mimed to a somber bluesy number with a cigarette in one shaky hand and pint bottle of bourbon in the other. Maybe it was the role she was born to play or her ability to tell a story without even really speaking.

Nonetheless, I felt like I had witnessed something legendary.t

t 1

2

Gareth Gooch

someone left on the sidelines that gets jealous. Behind me there appeared to be a reunion taking place between two couples. As soon as one pair left for the end of the line, the original two discussed their observation that one of the guys they hadn’t seen in a while appeared to have stopped going to the gym.

Elsewhere, I caught a glimpse of someone sniffing poppers before entering. Meanwhile, someone else complained, but not wholeheartedly, that there weren’t nearly as many people at Truck in the Mission.

They were right. Once inside, the body heat, while initially comforting, was indicative of the overwhelming wall of people. I barely noticed the decor amidst the extraordinary reception. It’s definitely spacious, except there were too many people. I made a beeline to the stage for a good vantage point.

Gareth Gooch

Mother’s day

From page 33

3

1. Mahlae Balenciaga poked fun at Beyoncé’s baby bump at the premiere of Mother at Oasis.

2. Fauxnique’s Liza Minnelli tribute.

3. Glamamore performs at Oasis’ first night of Mother.

4. D’Arcy Drollinger at the premiere of Mother.

Gareth Gooch

<<

Gareth Gooch

34 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

4

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The Hayloft’s invitation, circa the late 1970s.

Oasis of civilization

From page 33

We should not be so puzzled by the presence of longhorns in the South of Market Area however, since the iconic Tool Box, the first leather bar in the neighborhood, was at 4th Street and Harrison by 1964.

The Tool Box garnered national attention that year when the Chuck Arnett mural in the bar of men seriously pursuing pleasure was the opening spread of Life magazine’s article “Homosexuality In America.”

In 1966, two years before the Covered Wagon opened, Febe’s and the Stud opened in the same block of Folsom Street with the Cruiser Café (which would become Hamburger Mary’s) opening at the other end of

the block in 1967. The leather community was already well established in the neighborhood before the Covered Wagon pulled into town.

By the time the Covered Wagon became the Leatherneck in 1977, the community was well established. The mural in the Tool Box had echoes in the Leatherneck with “The Perils of Pecs O’Toole” cartoon panels by Al Shapiro (A. Jay), which Jim Stewart wrote about in the BARchive column (7/24/14). It’s obvious that there was a homey feel to the bar and a thriving community established there by Thanksgiving of the next year, as Stewart recounted in “Thanksgiving High” (11/21/13).

But the Leatherneck only lasted through 1978 and was replaced in

photo © Jim Stewart.

1

courtesy the GLBT Historical Society, photos by Robert Pruzan

<<

photo © Jim Stewart.

photo © Jim Stewart.

3

1. A cowboy master surveys his two submissives at The Plunge, 1980.

2. A hunky bartender outside The Leatherneck.

3-4. Hunky patrons and bartenders at The Leatherneck.

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 35

that year by Dirty Sally’s, which only lasted one year.

By 1979 the bar had become the “San Francisco Plunge.”

The Plunge was advertising in a May 1979 issue of the Bay Area Reporter, letting readers know that “summer is here” and that the pool was open.

In 1980 the Plunge was gone and the Drummer Key Club and its retail outlet, the ‘Studstore’ had taken over the spot. Jack Fritscher has written extensively about this period of time in his books Eyewitness Drummer and The Rise and Fall of Drummer Magazine.

I was particularly interested in the incongruity of pool culture and leather and asked Fritscher about this. Apparently John Embry, the publisher of Drummer was interested in emulating the Playboy Clubs and attempted to start his own gay club empire, starting with the Drummer Key Club. But it was not a fully formed concept and the business faltered a few years in.

The Rise and Fall of Drummer Magazine includes an essay by Daniel Curzon, who wrote, “’His [Embry’s] publications were doing well in the late 1970s, and then Embry got too ambitious. He decided to open the Drummer Key Club, modeled after the Playboy clubs, only for South-of-Market types….

The Key Club was a flop, 2 and money became tighter.”

Embry did have elements which could possibly have saved the enterprise as Jim Stewart, late of the Leatherneck, was managing the bar, but it was not to be and the Drummer Key Club locked the doors in 1982.

The Oasis opened later that summer of 1982. It was an inauspicious time to be starting a new club in San Francisco. The ephemera collection of the GLBT Historical Society reflects this. The announcement for the first event at the new club is a benefit for the (then newly formed) K.S. Foundation, which would eventually become the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. The business sponsoring the event was The Connector, an “Electronic 4 Glory Hole.”

Not all signs pointed to doom, however. In September 1982 there was a travel event at the club sponsored by a local travel agent that had a drawing for a trip “to beautiful sunny Puerto Vallarta!”

And in the ad for the event, the iconic pink flamingo (which adorned the outside wall of the club on 11th Street) was featured for the first time. Halloween was also an event at the

photo © Jim Stewart.

The erotic mural at The Leatherneck.

courtesy the GLBT Historical Society, photos by Robert Pruzan

Scenes from the outdoor patio at the old Oasis, Halloween Day 1982.

club that first year. It was open from 6 A.M. for revelers who had spent the previous night partying “After The Galleria, I-Beam & Trocadero the party begins at Oasis” the ads promised.

The Oasis also seemed to retain some of the leather clientele from the Leatherneck and the Drummer Key Club, because Manifest magazine held the contest to choose the “Manifest Man” at the club in December 1982.

But the club’s luck didn’t last, and it had new owners with a different vision. On March 28, 1984, the club reopened with the same name, but (as the flyers promised) “A New Beginning.” And gay patrons of the club wouldn’t notice much of a change – at least at first.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence had a “High Mass” tea dance later that year, in September. Page Hodel, who had already built a reputation as a DJ at Amelia’s, started with the club in 1984, and by 1987 was doing Friday and Saturday nights there.

With the addition of Plexiglas pool covers, the club could now host bands.

The Oasis was the first of the rock nightclubs in SoMa, but would pave the way for Slim’s, DNA and DV8.

Etta James, who had been performing down the street at The Stud for years (and who appeared there earlier in 1984 for Valentine’s Day) began performing at the Oasis – twice in 1984 – and brought her gay following with her.

The late John Sex, who had performed at Danceteria and the Pyramid Club in New York, came to the Oasis in November 1984. Dr. John rang in the New Year in 1985 and Tina Turner appeared there in June 1985 (she would appear at the Oakland Coliseum twice later that year).

In April 1985 I saw Screaming Jay Hawkins there at a sold out event that was so good that it is seared into my memory.

The incredible thing about the Oasis is that you can see how much promotion affected the longevity of the businesses there. The gay bars there kept turning over until the rockers got the club and started doing lots of P.R. for the club. They put ads in local papers every week and it had an affect; hence, they stayed open longer than any other business there.

It’s also interesting that the Oasis did not make a big deal out of not being a gay club when the straight

owners took over in the early ‘80s. That’s different from the way things are today. Instead of labeling themselves as “post-gay” (which would have gotten them big grief) they hired a lesbian DJ, invited The Sisters to have parties, and hosted AIDS benefits.

In February 1985, The San Francisco Chronicle published an article entitled “Nightlife Tilt on Folsom: Changing Times in the South of Market Area” that indicated there was tension between the new Oasis patrons and the denizens of the area.

Community United Against Violence reported there was some antigay name-calling by patrons of the bar, and there was graffiti painted on the club saying “Straights Get Out” and “Oasis Is Anti-Gay.” But tension seemed to be shortlived. By November of that year, the club had a “Women on Wednesday” rock night, and the same month Arturo Galster performed as Patsy Kline and the Memphis G-Spots.

By the 1990s the situation had flipped once again. Because of gang violence in SoMa, the Oasis decided to change its clientele once again. In 1994 the club decided to go all gay.

As the manager told The Chronicle, “If we go all gay, we’ll send those (gang) people on their way.’’

By the last year of its existence (1997) is was hosting the lesbian dance club G-Spot, whose motto was “If you can’t find it, you can’t come.’’

After Oasis closed in 1997 the space became Caliente and V/ sf (they used both names). The Chronicle reported in 2000 that Club V/Sf “sits mostly dark after the owners declared bankruptcy.” This was due to disputes with occupants of live/work lofts on 11th Street.

The owners reopened it and tried again under the Caliente name, but it eventually closed once again at the beginning of this decade, and remained closed for five years.

Now, after months of planning and renovations, the four-person crew of the new Oasis opened to much acclaim on December 31, 2014. The venue has an almost nightly array of events featuring local and visiting talents in drag and live cabaret.

It seems as if the trajectory of the business was headed in the direction the club has gone now under its new ownership. It’s a many-storied venue that will now have even more stories to tell.t

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

36 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

Candidating

by Donna Sachet

L

eave it to Lookout to create another fundraising opportunity out of thin air! Their recent Winter Onesie Party raised money for the AIDS Memorial Grove while giving guests several eyes-full of studs packed into a variety of onesies. (You know, the often thermal, usually red one-piece underwear frequently associated with lumberjacks.)

We joined Suzan Revah, BeBe Sweetbriar, and Sister Phyllis for a raucous fashion show and contest, including prizes for most original, sexiest, and best overall. By the time of the midnight competition, DJ Philip Grasso had whipped the audience into a frenzy and the assortment of superheroes, teddy bears, and indeed, lumberjacks became a delightful blur. Interesting how a seemingly silly idea can take on a life of its own on a Friday night in the Castro!

After an amiable Review Board,

the Imperial Council announced the three approved candidates in this year’s race: Khmera Rouge and Deena Cartier for Empress and Kevin Lisle for Emperor. For four weeks, these candidates will canvas the city to convince the public to vote for them on Saturday, Feb. 7.

Even though the Emperor candidate is unopposed, he must win 50 percent of the votes plus one.

Voting takes place in front of the Powerhouse, 1347 Folsom Street, from 11AM-5PM, at Project Open Hand, 730 Polk Street, 10AM-4PM, and at Harvey Milk Plaza in the Castro, 12PM-6PM. Eligible voters must show identification proving they are 21 or older and reside in San Francisco, San Mateo, or Marin Counties.

As you surely know from reading our historical series on the Imperial Court in this publication, voting for Emperor and Empress of San Francisco, in some form or other, is a 50-year tradition and we invite you

Imperial Coronation Schedule Wed. Feb. 11

Sun. Feb 15

In Town Show & Awards

Colma Cemetery Pilgrimage

6:30PM, Beaux, 2344 Market St.

Fri. Feb. 13 Alcatraz Tour 9:30am, Marriott Union Square Hotel pick-up

Out of Town Show 6pm, Balencoire, 2565 Mission St.

Sat. Feb 14

7am, Marriott Union Square Hotel pick-up

Victory Brunch 11am, Marriott Union Square Hotel

50th Anniversary Gala Celebration 5pm, City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett Place

Imperial Coronation 6pm, SF Galleria Design Center, 101 Henry Adams St.

Jason Brock

by David-Elijah Nahmod

F

ormer X Factor contestant Jason Brock will be performing at the Oasis on Friday, January 30. The show marks the singer’s drag debut.

“I’ve done drag in theater or as a guest performer, but this is my first full on drag show,” said the San Francisco resident.

He cited drag superstar Peaches Christ as a drag mentor. “I would love to be like Peaches,” he said.

Peaches, Brock said, offered him advice on who to use for drag costume design. “I haven’t revealed my drag name yet,” Brock said.

Brock’s time on X Factor was stressful. He had a challenging relationship with judge Simon Cowell, and was the first contestant to be voted off during the show’s second season. Yet he looks back on the experience with fondness.

“X Factor was fun, stressful and

t

to get to know the candidates and make your selection known. Getting to know the candidates couldn’t be easier, as they have events scheduled all over town.

Last Saturday, we decided to stop by one event for each candidate, starting at OMG on 6th Street for Deena’s 4PM-7PM fundraiser for OpenHouse, an organization dedicated to addressing the needs of SF’s aging LGBT population. The bar was hopping and Jell-o shots and raffle tickets were selling.

Guests we eyed included Empresses Marlena, Gareth Gooch Galilea, Alexis Miranda, and China Silk, JP Imperial Court candidates Deena Cartier, Kevin Lisle and Khmera Rouge.

Leddy, Ron Ross, Keri Hanna, Bob Glas, Eve and celebrate with this 50-year-old been exchanged through Facebook, Volution, and Pat N Leather. charitable organization. we thank Pollo del Mar and others From there, we headed to We end this column on a very for keeping San Francisco informed Khmera’s fundraiser for St. Aidan’s sad note as the terrible news about about the ongoing drama in PV, and food pantry at Midnight Sun in the much loved Cookie Dough in Cookie’s recent return to the city.

Castro, packed with well-wishers Puerto Vallarta spreads. While in The outpouring of support, includincluding Empresses Patty McMexico to perform in the popular ing on-line financial donations, last Groin and Tiger Lily, Tia Dora, Golden Girls drag take-off episodes, week’s special Monster Show at The Kylie Minono, Tommy Dillon, Cookie fell dramatically ill and, after Edge, and Heklina’s incredible show Jezebel Patel, Tora Hymen, and tremendous effort, was flown back at Oasis, has been amazing, truly Nathan Page. on life support to San Francisco indicative of Cookie’s wonderful Then we caught the tail end of with her husband Michael Chu. reputation in our community. We Kevin’s fundraiser Feed the People, While some will be critical of how anxiously await good news of her also for St. Aidan’s, at The Edge, much personal information has recovery.t where they proudly raised significant funds without a drag show!

Leave it to the boys to find alternative techniques to pull in the dollars. Glimpsed there were Emperors Berlin, John Carrillo, and Stephen Dorsey, Carlos Medal, CoCo Butter, Dana Edgar, Erin Lavery, and Johnny Razzaroli.

So, expect to see these three and their supporters all over town leading up to Election Day on February 7, raising money for worthy organizations and having lots of fun along the way.

Once voting is complete, Imperial Georg Lester Coronation Week begins. For your convenience, we offer a schedule of Lions and tigers and bears in onesies at Lookout. events in the nearby sidebar. Come

X Factor Contestant to Make Drag Debut at Oasis

life-changing,” he said. “The show gave me exposure all over the world.

That’s awesome, because it gave me a fan base. More people came to my shows and I could charge more.”

Brock used to work in the tech industry while doing music on the side.

“Music is my full time job since X Factor,” he said with joy. “It made me realize I was good. I was in the top 12 out of 100,000 auditions.

They like a good story, and a good voice.”

Brock’s story is one that’s familiar to many in the LGBT community.

His mom, he says, is a devout conservative Christian.

“I came out when my mom asked me if I was gay,” he recalled. “I told her I was bisexual in order to soften the blow. She asked how could I do this to the family.”

He said that he retains a loving relationship with his mom, even

though she has yet to change her views.

“I told her I was gay years later,” he said. “She still had hopes that I would get with a girl, and asked me if I had trouble getting an erection!

That’s not something I need to discuss with her!” He said that people who are homophobic have the choice to change their views.

Brock was very excited to talk about his musical influences, many of which will be on display at the Oasis show. He was a particular affinity for African American singers like Tina Turner, Anita Baker and Patti LaBelle.

“These Black divas were my idols growing up,” he said. “They are my inspiration. There’s something in their voices. It’s the feeling in their voices that I could relate to. It’s heartfelt.”

He cited Tina Turner’s “We Don’t Need Another Hero” as a song that particularly touched him. “I felt the music,” he said. “I felt the pain.” As a child he was also touched and influenced by Gospel.

“I’ll be doing Tina and Patti at Oasis,” he said, “and telling stories that relate to the songs; stories about being tough and about getting through difficult circumstances.”

Brock promises that it will be a fun show. “I love the music, and I love to talk shit about my ex,” he said.

He still has a great deal of affec-

tion for his ex, the equally famous Lt. Dan Choi. Choi is the openly gay military activist who’s coming out in 2009 triggered the end of the USA’s ban on gays in the military. Choi probably won’t be trashed all that badly.

“I hold back as much as I tell the truth,” Brock said.

“People like to hear it.”

The singer, who says he’s active on Grindr, admits to having an affinity for Asian guys. His preference, he says, is for “gaysians”.

“I’m planning a tour of Japan,” Brock said. He hopes people will visit his website and contribute to the crowd-funding page, which is set up in order to finance his proposed Japanese tour.

“If anyone feels charitably inclined, the link is on my home page,” he pointed out.

“Because there’s no other way I’m going to get there.”

In the meantime, see Jason Brock live, right here in San Francisco, at the Oasis.t Jason Brock at Oasis, Friday January 30, 10pm. $25. 298 11th St. www.jasonbrock.info www.sfoasis.com

Jose Guzman-Colon

Jason Brock.

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January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 37

Rick Gerharter

4: mid-1990s The Imperial Court of San Francisco Part to mid-2000s 2

courtesy Donna Sachet

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6

Rick Gerharter

Rick Gerharter

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4 Rick Gerharter

ew charitable organizations enter a fourth decade, but the Imperial Court certainly did, electing two of its youngest monarchs ever in 1997, the Sterling Silver Rose Emperor XXV, A. N., Jacques Michaels and the Coppertone Absolute Empress XXXII, Veronda Lanai, each competing against two others.

Veronda became the talk of the town on Voting Day, when she appeared on top of the marquee at the Castro Theatre. During their reign, the Gay & Lesbian Historical Society displayed an exhibit curated by Matthew Brown and Paul Gabriel titled Founding a Dynasty: Jose, The Black Cat & The Imperial Court of San Francisco at the Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the SF Public Library’s main branch.

In 1998, only one candidate for Emperor and two for Empress emerged and the Ruby Red Emperor XXVI, A.N., Fred Lewis and the Flaming Fuchsia Flamingo Absolute Empress XXXIII Alexis Miranda stepped up.

And in 1999, we welcomed another singing duo to the thrones, the Herculean Emperor XXVII, A. N., T. J. Istvan (the youngest elected Emperor) and the Singing Sapphire Absolute Empress XXXIV Sheba.

Their reign was full of musical duets and fun-filled events.

The whole Y2K thing may have been a colossal disappointment, but the year 2000 ushered in the successful reign of the Millennium Emperor XXVIII, A. N., John Carrillo and the Millennium Dragon Absolute Empress XXXV Suzie Wong. Suzie ran unopposed, probably because she was so popular that no one dared challenge her, even though she rarely wore a wig, causing some to tease her about whether she was really in drag.

Wong went on after her reign to serve as the tight-fisted Treasurer of the Imperial Council for many years. Carrillo brought great business sense to the leadership of the Imperial Council, later serving as its Chair for nine consecutive years.

In 2001, the Imperial Court entered untested waters as the first female, Gale Wood, ran for the title of Emperor. Although San Francisco still has never had a female Emperor, other cities in the International Court System have had female Emperors, straight Monarchs, and all kinds of creative combinations.

Wood’s opponent appeared in his campaign posters in the buff, but despite that controversy, emerged victorious as the Star Fire Emperor XXIX, A.N., Tom Basch. Between two candidates for Empress, we elected the Sparkling Ivory Absolute Empress XXXVI Chablis, who used white as her signature color.

It was during their reign that Matthew Brown moved to Palm Springs, but not before passing on his extensive collection of Imperial Court memorabilia to responsible Monarchs here. The collection, which includes programs from

3

Rick Gerharter

by Donna Sachet

5

1. Coronation of Empress Sheba and Emperor T.J. Istvan in 1999.

2. Sterling Silver Rose Emperor XXV, A. N., Jacques Michaels with Coppertone Absolute Empress XXXII, Veronda Lanai.

3. Coronation of Empress Barbie LaChoy and Emperor Berlin in 2002.

4. Coronation of Empress Chablis and Emperor Tom Basch in 2001.

5. Coronation of Empress Snatch and Emperor Michael Parsons in 2003.

6. Coronation of Empress China Silk and Emperor Fernando in 2004.

Coronations, magazines and newspapers, oral interviews, costumes, and jewelry, has grown since then with each reign and remains under the watchful eyes of Jerry Coletti, Marlena, and John Carrillo.

That year at Marlena’s bar a large frame displayed the official pins of each Emperor and Empress and/or their Reign, professionally mounted on black velvet under glass, a striking glimpse at our history.

In 2002, the Emperors celebrated their 30th Anniversary at The ARC on Howard Street; to think that it took seven years after Jose’s crowning as Empress I before the Emperor title was established in San Francisco.

Now the Emperors have become

a strong brotherhood of men, originating their own traditions, awards, and events. That year saw the election of the Rockstar Emperor XXX, A.N., Berlin Fisher and the Rockstar Absolute Empress XXXVII Barbie La Choy, a raucous, fun-loving couple who traveled extensively, but maintained a strong presence locally as well.

They were followed in 2003 by the Jewel in the British Crown Emperor XXXI, A.N., Michael Parsons and the Thigh High Leather Absolute Empress XXXVIII Snatch. Although popular during their year, Michael returned to his native England, and Snatch is the only Empress on record to

renounce her title some years later.

In 2004, the Red Heart Latin Emperor XXXII, A.N., Fernando Robles and the True Blue Heart of Love & Compassion Absolute Empress XXXIX China Silk were crowned, and it was a year of mixing Latin and Asian cultures.

2005 brought the Italian Stallion Teddy Bear Emperor XXXIII, A.N., John-Richard Daniel and the Bird of Paradise, Black Pearl Absolute Empress XL Tiger Lily.

John-Richard followed in the footsteps of Chuck Demmon before him by frequently appearing in period costume, reminiscent of the first Emperor Joshua Norton.

Tiger was the first Grand Duchess

of San Francisco to ascend the Imperial throne.

2006 marked a historic first as only one candidate for Emperor and one for Empress stepped forward. A campaign and race was still held to ensure the public’s support and we elected the Emperor of the Golden Gate, Emperor XXXIV, A.N., Jason Ladd and the Diamond White Dove Absolute Empress XLI Galilea.

Next week, the Founder of the International Court System announces her retirement from active leadership and the appointment of her successor, and not a San Francisco Monarch! Reverberations from that decision continue today.t

<< On the Tab

38 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

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Thirsty Thursdays @ The Café

Some Thing @ The Stud

GlamaZone @ The Cafe

AB f eON TH–EebT ruary 5

Drink specials, Top 40, gogo studs and no cover. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Mica Sigourney and pals' weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Pollo del Mar's weekly drag shows takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

★

Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night. $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge

VIP @ Club 21, Oakland Hip Hop, Top 40, and sexy Latin music; gogo dancers, appetizers, and special guest DJs. No cover before 11pm and just $5 after all night.

Dancing 9pm-3am. Happy hour 4pm8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

Fri 30

Thu 5

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi

Two Gallants @ Three Venues

I

f you’ve been to drag events at The Edge, DNA Lounge, the new Oasis, or enjoyed local drag productions of The Golden Girls, you’ve seen the affable Eddie Bell as Cookie Dough. Those more into nightlife culture know that Bell and his partner Michael Chu (DJ MC2) are two of the nicest people in the community. Bell was hospitalized in Puerto Vallarta (while in rehearsal for a touring production of The Golden Girls), and Bell’s partner Chu joined him.

A fund has been set up to help cover medical and travel expenses for their recent return to SF. Please donate online at: www.gofundme.com/ Gareth Gooch kppdgo Cookie Dough (Eddie Bell) And now, as Cookie’s and MC2 (Michael Chu). costar Pollo Del Mar has said, “The show must go on!” Cookie’s Monster Show continues at The Edge each Thursday, and many other events like last week’s Mother are raising funds for the couple, proving that queens stick together in times of need.t

Thu 29 Beats Reality @ Trax Resident DJs Jim Hopkins and Justime welcome guest DJs and play groovy tunes. Weekly, 9pm-2am. 1437 Haight St. 864-4213.

BeBe Sweetbriar @ Balançoire The local chanteuse performs a tribute concert of 20 Diana Ross songs, with an optional five-course dinner by Chef Shawn McFarland. $25 (show only, two-drink minimum) or $65 (with dinner). 7pm. 2526 Mission St. 920-0577. www.bebesweetbriar.com www.balancoiresf.com

The Company Men @ Feinstein's at the Nikko Vocal mash-up men's quartet performs hits and classics with style. $25-$40. 8pm. Hotel Nikko 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.thecompanymen.com www.ticketweb.com

Mary Go Round @ Lookout Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes host the weekly night with DJ Philip Grasso, gogo guys, drink specials, and drag acts.

10pm-2am. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys and hilarious fun; guest-hosted in Cookie's absence. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

My So-Called Night @ Beaux Carnie Asada hosts a new weekly '90s-themed video, dancin', drinkin' night, with VJs Jorge Terez. Get down with your funky bunch, and enjoy 90cent drinks. '90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences

The innovative improvisational guitarist performs with drummer Jordan Glenn and bassist Jason Hoopes. Also on the bill, Trance Mission and Jack O' the Clock. $20. $45 with dinner. 8pm. 333 11th St. 255-0333. www.slimspresents.com

Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. Jan. 29, Sketchfest Nightlife, with comedy performers all over the space, Peaches Christ, podcaster Sandra and New Wave City DJs. $10$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland

Pan Dulce @ The Cafe

Fred Frith Trio @ Slim's

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 cheap/free whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar.

10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. 12pm-2am. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160.

678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Bennett Anthony @ Nob Hill Theatre

Liquid Brunch @ Beaux

Sat 31

No cover, no food, just drinks (Mimosas, Bloody Marys, etc.) and music. 2pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Amber's Disco Cabaret @ Club OMG Amber Alert's retro dance night, with Comfort & Joy DJ crew, drink specials and wackiness. Donations. 9pm-2am.

43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Beer Bust @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Beer only $8 until you bust. 4pm-8pm.

1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Bleaux @ Beaux Haute Toddy and Lindsay Slowhands art/queer/dance over-the-top, underthe-bottom night. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Club Rimshot @ Club BNB, Oakland Get groovin' at the weekly hip hop and R&B night at their new location. $8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 2120 Broadway. www.bench-and-bar.com

Dickslap @ SF Eagle

The popular redhead porn stud performs a live interactive strip show. $25. 8pm and 10pm. Also Jan. 31. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

DJs Riff-Raff and Doc Sleep bring out the disco grooves, with the Nark Magazine crew, drink specials, gogo guys and gals. 9pm-2am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Billy Porter @ Feinstein's at the Nikko

Mother @ Oasis

The Tony Award-winning Broadway star ( Kinky Boots, Angels in America ) performs his cabaret show. $45-$60.

8pm. Also Jan 31 & Feb. 1 at 7pm.

Hotel Nikko 222 Mason St. (866) 6631063. www.billyporter.com www.ticketweb.com

Boy Bar @ The Café Gus Presents' weekly dance night, with DJ Kid Sysko, hotty gogos and $2 beer (before 10pm). 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Chante Moore @ Yoshi's Oakland The native SF R&B, jazz and Gospel singer performs a series of concerts at the East Bay jazz club/restaurant. $35-$75. 8pm & 10pm. Also Jan. 31, 8pm & 10pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Jack London Square, Oakland. (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun The popular video bar ends each work week with gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Jason Brock @ Oasis The popular local gay crooner performs a new cabaret show at the new nightclub. $25. 10pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 985-4442. www.sfoasis.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland

Heklina's new weekly drag show night at the fabulous renovated SoMa nightclub. Jan. 31: Age of Aquarius tribute night, with groovy '60s songs, plus DJGuy Ruben. $10. 10pm-2am.

298 11th St. at Folsom. 985-4442. www.sfoasis.com

Rainbow Girls, The Hot Toddies @ The Fillmore The all-women gypsy-folk 'n' roll band performs; also, the She's and Kendra McKinley. $20. 8pm. 1805 Geary Blvd. at Fillmore. 346-6000. www.rainbowgirlsmusic.com www.thefillmore.com

Victor Krummenacher @ Starry Plough, Berkeley Cofounder of Camper Van Beethoven performs music from his new solo album Hard to See Coming (10pm).

Also, Sean O'Brian and Dirty Hands (9pm) and Bye Bye Blackbirds (11:15pm). $10. 3101 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. www.thestarryplough.com

Beer Bust @ Lone Star Saloon The ursine crowd converges for beer and fun. 4pm-8pm. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar's most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk.

3pm-6pm. Now also on Saturdays! 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Manimal @ Beaux

Big Top @ Beaux

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

Science of Cocktails @ Exploratorium Enjoy open bars full of delicious cocktails served up with a bit of science, ample hors d'oeuvres, demos and live entertainment, at the innovative interactive museum's party. $120-$350. 8pm VIP, 9pm-12am. 21+.

Pier 15 at Embarcadero. 528-4893. www.exploratorium.edu

Shit & Champagne @ Oasis D'Arcy Drollinger's hilarious nightclub hit, a whitesploitation comedy with action-packed models fighting a drug cartel, returns at the new SoMa nightclub; featuring Matthew Martin. $20-$25. Thu-Sat 7pm. Thru Feb. 14.

298 11th St. at Folsom. 985-4442. www.sfoasis.com

Viewing parties for the second season of HBO's San Francisco-set gay dramedy series. 10pm. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550 The popular twice-weekly countrywestern dance night includes linedancing, two-stepping and lessons. $5. 5pm-10:30pm. Also Thursdays 6:30pm-10:30pm. 550 Barneveld Ave. at Industrial. www.sundancesaloon.org

Sunday's a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45.

11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Mon 2 Drag Mondays @ The Cafe Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko's weekly drag and dance night, 2014's last of the year. 9pm-1am.

2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland Mondays and Tuesdays popular weekly sing-along night. No cover. 8:30pm1am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 6523820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany's weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Monday Musicals @ The Edge The casts of local and visiting musicals often pop in to perform at the popular Castro bar's musical theatre night.

7pm-2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pmclosing. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Name That Beat @ Toad Hall BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly musical trivia challenge and drag show. 8:30-11:30pm. 4146 18th St. at Castro. www.toadhallbar.com

Sun 1

The festive gogo-filled dance night (Jan. 23: 80s and 90s hits); no cover before 10pm. ($10) 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Looking @ Midnight Sun

No No Bingo @ Virgil's Sea Room Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Steven Underhill

January 29 F

Joshua J.'s homo disco circus night, with guest DJs and performers, hotty gogo guys and drink specials. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.BeauxSF.com

Brunch @ Hi Tops Enjoy crunchy sandwiches and mimosas, among other menu items, at the popular sports bar. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Brunch Sundays/ Xtravaganza @ Balançoire Weekly live music shows with various acts, along with brunch, mimosas, champagne and more, at the stylish nightclub and restaurant. T-Dance drag shows at 7pm, 10pm and 11pm.

2565 Mission St. at 21st. 9200577. www.balancoiresf.com

Fri 30 Boy Bar @ The Café

t

On the Tab>>

Opulence @ Beaux New weekly dance night, with Jocques, DJs Tori, Twistmix and Andre.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni's Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone).

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

Underwear Night @ 440 Strip down to your skivvies at popular men's night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 39

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops

Thirsty Thursdays @ The Café

Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Drink specials, Top 40, gogo studs and no cover. 9pm-2am.

2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Olga T and Shugga Shay's weekly queer women and men's R&B hip hop and soul night, at the club's new location. No cover. 8pm-2am.

2120 Broadway, Oakland. www.bench-and-bar.com

Lucinda Williams @ The Fillmore

Tue 3 Bombshell Betty & Her Burlesqueteers @ Elbo Room The weekly burlesque show of women dancers shaking their bonbons includes live music. $10. 9pm. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

Cock Shot @ Beaux Shot specials and adult Bingo games, with DJs Chad Bays and Riley Patrick.

No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Two Gallants @ Three Venues

B.P.M. @ Club BnB, Oakland

Sat 31

The veteran rocker performs with The Kenneth Brian Band. $40. 8pm. Also Feb. 5. 1805 Geary Blvd. at Fillmore. 3466000. www.thefillmore.com

Rainbow Girls @ The Fillmore

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

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

Thu 5 Seinabo Sey @ The Chapel

Ink & Metal @ Powerhouse Show off your tattoos and piercings at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night.

10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Underwear Night @ Club OMG Weekly underwear night includes free clothes check, and drink specials; different hosts each week. $3. 10pm2am. Preceded by Open Mic Comedy, 7pm, no cover. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Wed 4 After Dark/Nocturnal @ Exploratorium Enjoy a nighttime-themed version of the monthly After Dark parties at the interactive science museum. $10-$15. 6pm-10pm. 18+. Pier 15 at Embarcadero. 528-4893. www.exploratorium.edu

Booty Call @ QBar Juanita More! and her weekly intimate dance party. $10-$15. 9pm2am. 456 Castro St. www.qbarsf.com

BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly night of trivia quizzes and fun and prizes; no cover. 8pm-1pm. 500 Castro St. 431-4278. www.harveyssf.com

Way Back @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of vintage music videos and retro drink prices. Check out the new expanded front window lounge. 9pm-2am.

4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Grace Towers hosts the weekly gogo-tastic night of sexy dudes shakin' their bulges and getting wet in their undies for $100 prize (with a contest at midnight), and dance beats spun by DJ DAMnation. 10pm-2am.

1347 Folsom St. www. powerhousebar.com

Raw Fabrics @ Sub-Mission

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

Trivia Night @ Harvey's

Want your nightlife event listed?

Of course you do. Email events@ ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

WARNING HOT GUYS! San Francisco

415.430.1199 Oakland

510.343.1122 San Jose

408.514.1111

Bulge @ Powerhouse

Strip down with the strippers at the cruisy adult theatre and arcade; free beverages. $20. 8pm.

729 Bush St. at Powell.

397-6758. thenobhilltheatre.com

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops

Enjoy retro disco tunes and a fun diverse crowd, each Thursday, with DJ Bus Station John. $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Thu 5

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre

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

The witty singer performs his cabaret show, Crazy Little Thing Called Love. $20. 7pm. Hotel Nikko 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Buy a drink and get a wooden nickle good for another. 12pm2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.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

Switch @ Q Bar

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge

Wooden Nickel Wednesday @ 440

Meow Mix @ The Stud

The LA-based pop/rock trio performs. $10. 9pm. 2183 Mission St. (650) 450-0996. www.sf-submission.com

Tom Reardon @ Feinstein's at the Nikko

The SF-based blues/rock duo play music from their new/ fifth CD, We Are Undone.

Golden Drugs opens ($20$24, 9pm) Feb. 5 at Leo's Music Club, 5447 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.clubleos. com Also Feb. 6 at The Chapel SF, 777 Valencia St. ($20-$22, 9pm) with Andrew St. James. www.thechapelsf. com Also Feb. 7 at Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell St. ($20-$45, 9pm) with B. Hamilton. www.slimspresents.com www.twogallants.com

Point Break Live @ DNA Lounge The dude-tastic live parody performance of the surfer-bank robber-skydiving movie, now monthly, features a chosen audience member in the lead. Enjoy messy, wacky, zany shirtless dude theatre, bro. $15-$25. 8pm. Also Feb 6, 7:30pm & 11pm ($20-$50). 375 11th St. www.pointbreaksf.com www.dnalounge.com

Pussy Party @ Beaux Weekly women's happy hour, with allwomen music and live performances, 2 for 1 drinks, and no cover. 5pm-9am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Red Hots Burlesque @ Oasis The saucy women's burlesque revue has moved to the new SoMa nightclub. $10-$20. Wednesdays at 9pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 9854442. www.sfoasis.com

Rookies Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Watch newbies get nude, or compete yourself for a $200 prize. Audience picks the winner. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall The weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

Lloyd Cole @ Great American Music Hall The veteran indie rock singersongwriter (The Commotions) performs with his band. $25, 50 with dinner. 8pm. 859 O'Farrell St. at Larkin. 885-0750. www.slimspresents.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys; guest-hosted in Cookie's absence. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. Feb. 5: Show Off, with DJ Purple, Professor Bang, voguing dance workshop, Stump a Scientist, gif photo booth and more. $10-$12.

6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Pan Dulce @ The Cafe Enjoy amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am.

2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com

Seinabo Sey @ The Chapel The amazing Swedish/West African R&B/pop vocalist performs live. $18.

9pm. 777 Valencia St. www.seinabosey.com www.thechapelsf.com

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40 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

Rubbed right Bondassage blends kink and massage

by Krissy Eliot

I

’m always sore from working out, and I’m always thinking about sex. So when a friend of mine told me about Bondassage – the practice of combining bondage and massage – I was all about trying something that would leave me sexually satisfied and knot-free. But when I actually took part in the practice, it wasn’t really about massage. The session was basically just vanilla

foreplay with a bondage twist.

It was a sunny weekday afternoon when I met up with professional dominatrix Eve Minax at her home in San Francisco; she had authored the Bondassage book along with the creator of the practice, Jaeleen Bennis.

Minax looked the part of a kinkster. She had purple hair

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and wore a tight, black dress that showcased the cleavage of her enormous boobs.

She even had the pointy, 1950s-style glasses. It was very naughty teacher-esque.

She led me into her dungeon, which was lined wall to wall with whips, chains, paddles, restraints, and leather apparel. She handed me a water bottle and asked me if I had questions before we began. I asked her if I was supposed to get totally naked, and she said, “I was thinking of just having you wear underwear today.”

But of course, I wasn’t wearing underwear, so naked would have to do.

Minax informed me that Bondassage isn’t totally methodical or prescriptive. The whole point of the practice is to toy with the senses.

Like any other sexual encounter, the dominant partner needs to adjust their actions to the person being touched. My session was going to be unique to me.

I stripped down and stood in front of her while she put a collar on my neck and put leather restraints on my wrists.

“The collar is the signifier of the bottom or the receptive partner,” she said.

I was ready to receive.

She put a blindfold on me and told me to climb onto the leather massage table. So I waddled over a few feet and felt for the surface, then crawled onto it and laid face down.

She placed headphones on my ears

and they played jazz songs. I felt her tie my wrist restraints to the table, and eventually my ankles were restrained too. I couldn’t move or see, and I couldn’t hear anything but music.

According to the Bondassage book, by depriving someone of sight, hearing, speech, and mobility, you’re releasing someone from sexual responsibility, which means “they are able to float free in the eroticism of the scene, secure in the knowledge they are looked after by their partner.”

It’s a nice idea, but for a kink newbie like me, the sensory deprivation didn’t make courtesy Eve Minax me feel secure – it just made me feel like a Eve Minax, Bondassage practitioner. helpless, horny Helen When she started using her arseKeller. nal of BDSM gadgets on me, I reShe started rubbing coconut oil ally appreciated how she took me all over me and it felt good, but it through a rainbow of sensations. was hardly what I’d call a massage. It She scratched my skin with what I was basically just a typical foreplay would later learn were a bundle of rub down that primed me for fuckthin branches. I was also stroked ing (I’m not complaining). Later, with a boar-hair shaving brush, a she would tell me that she’s not a feather, and this fuzzy glove that had certified massage therapist. metal spikes in it (it gave me shiv“I’ve had a fair share of massage ers). I even got paddled for a little in my day, so I just do the things that bit; she alternated between smackhave appealed to me over time,” she ing me with the fuzzy, soft side of a said. paddle and then the hard, flat side.

My booty cheeks were happy.

After lying there for awhile, I realized that I was never assured that I was in a clean environment. And then I remembered Minax is a professional dominatrix who probably has a bunch of naked people in there all the time. The potential for infection! Herpes! The flu! Pink eye!

(She told me later that everything was clean and sterile, so I was just being paranoid.) It also occurred to me that Minax hadn’t asked me if I was allergic to latex, fabrics, foods, etc., when the Pre-Play discussion chapter of her book says: “Ask about any allergies.” Womp womp.

Eventually, Minax undid my restraints and I flipped onto my back.

After tying me up again, she used a lot of the same tools on my front Krissy Eliot as she did on my back – only this Our columnist Krissy Eliot, pre-bondassage. time I got some crotch action. I felt an intense vibration on my cooch, which I would later find out was a vibrating Pulsar toothbrush with a condom on it. (I’m totally investing in one for myself; it was amazing.)

She then dragged ticklers across my chest and did expert things to my nipples. I was into it, but couldn’t fully enjoy the experience because I couldn’t hear myself speak or breathe. I didn’t want to risk making some embarrassing noise because I’m not used to being deaf to the world around me. Bizarre guttural moans can kill a mood.

When the session came to a close, warm, wet towels were draped over me, and Minax popped a piece of chocolate into my mouth. I let it dissolve and relaxed into the massage table. I still had sore muscles, but my vulva felt good.

My first Bondassage session didn’t involve traditional, knot-kneading massage, but I did get fondled for 90 minutes. And I also discovered a toothbrush that I can use as a vibrator and lend to overnight guests as a cruel joke. All in all, it was pretty damn great.t courtesy Eve Minax

Top: Eve Minax’s dungeon/massage space. Bottom: A detail of Minax’s many BDSM tools and toys.

Readers can contact Krissy by email at thekrissyeliot@gmail.com and view her previous work at www.krissyeliot.com.

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 41

Back on the train gang

by John F. Karr

train was masked by the ear pods he was wearing, or he mistakenly hortly after hearing news that the believed the train was on a nearby, State of Nevada is considering parallel track. legislation that would require porn As Greg Plitt, the strikingly blueproducers to use condoms for fuckeyed hunk had developed a legion ing (anal or otherwise) and even for of gay fans by posing for many sexoral sex, I read a stunner headline. ually provocative, though clothed, “Undectable Guys Do Not Transmit photographs, which usually capiHIV to Negative Sex Partners.” talized on a massively bulging basA two-year study, presented at the ket. He liked to show it off.

Conferences on Retroviruses and And he offered a certain Opportunistic Infections in midamount of cock tease by January “gives scientific credence being not entirely clear to what many have long suspected: which muscle he was HIV positive guys who are on treattalking about in a fitment and have an undetectable viness video that went ral load are not giving HIV to their viral in gay circles. partners. The study strengthens the “Oh by the way. belief that ‘treatment as prevention’ Size fucking matis one of the most effective ways to ters. In everything. Don’t believe stop new infections.” the hype, size fucking matters. Size When asked what the study tells doesn’t matter to people that don’t us about the chance of someone have any size, that’s why they like with an undetectable viral load ‘Oh, size doesn’t matter.’ Size, girth, transmitting HIV, presenter Alison thickness, everything. It’s a game of Rodger said: “Our best estimate is inches in life. Add up all those inchit’s zero.” es… victory, motherfucker!”

How this apparently good news As George Plitt, he’d gradumight affect the porn industry, the ated from West Point and served state of Nevada and the perfive years in the Army before sonal sex lives of many gay becoming a personal trainer. men sure is confounding and He subsequently appeared on confusing. All I can say is, stay the covers of some 200 fitness tuned. And remember, that magazines and 25 romance HIV or no HIV, condoms pronovels. He was the face of Thitect against a host of STDs. erry Mugler’s Angel Men and Condoms may be making a Ice Men fragrances, and apquestionable exit, but hugely peared on reality television popular porn star Johnny shows and a soap opera, and as Rapid made one a couple a stunt man and actor in films. weeks ago that was instantaHe had roles alongside Robert neous, when he was jailed and DeNiro in The Good Shepherd, charged with battery for allegand Christian Bale in Terminaedly choking, pushing and hittor Salvation, and was oogled ting his girlfriend last year. by gay men when he was a body His interview a year ago in double for Dr. Manhattan in the documentary series, I’m a The Watchmen.

Porn Star, more than foreshadI’ll remember Greg Plitt, for owed this event. his smile, his eyes, his muscles “I’m really dominant over and his masculinity. And, oh, females,” he said, with a disyeah—size, girth, and thickarming smile. “I fuck the shit ness, for sure. out of them, dominate them.

By the way, I’m pretty I choke them… I do my porn, knocked out that the B.A.R. and then I go home to my girlnow has a woman sex columfriend. I have sex with her until nist. Although I’ve been acshe bleeds.” cused of being that, Krissy Eliot Born Hylan Anthony Taylor, is the true and actual first. A the 23-year-old had filmed 11 former Bay Guardian writer, scenes for two lesser streamshe’s written a fine article about ing sites before filming (at last the history of sex writing in San count) 114 for men.com.

Francisco for a commemoraLittle 5’6” bunny Johnny, tive issue of the SFBG that’s who had an ever-hard, upan insert in the current San “Size fucking matters,” testified cocktease ward curving cock and nearly Francisco Public Press, which Greg Plitt; size, girth, and thickness, for sure. pre-pubescent face, was one of is available on-line and in a those heterosexuals who loved,

S

just looooved to get fucked. He liked cocksucking a lot too. But he was spurred by the need to support his wife and two kids.

Johnny recently offered Justin Bieber $2 million to appear in a gay porn scene. Now Johnny may be needing that amount to post his own bail. Although his Twitter account and his Facebook page are still up, his personal website is closed down, just like his porn career.

Writer Joe Morgan, at Gay Star News, posed a pertinent question: “Why does this have any relevance to the LGBT community?”

Ponder that, my friends.

Greg Plitt was neither gay nor a porn star. Yet his beauty, outspoken nature, and the apparent size of his cock brought him many gay fans. I’m sad to relate that he was killed when he was hit by a Metrolink commuter train in Los Angeles on January 17. He’d previously shot workout videos on these tracks, but either the sound of the approaching

Bennett Anthony

by Cornelius Washington

B

ennett Anthony is one of the best new guys in porn. He’s a natural man who enjoys his work, and does it well. He has a raw masculinity that doesn’t depend on pomade, tattoos and piercings (or more than a touch of steroids). He doesn’t look like any overdone guy whom you see walking down “the gay stroll” in any major metropolitan city. The Nob Hill Theater has him, and that’s what they do, bring you real studs...and real sex, uncensored. And here’s Bennett, uncensored as well!

Cornelius Washington: I love your porn name. Love it! How did you come up with it?

Bennett Anthony: I wanted to choose something southern and unique. My agent, Howard at Fabscout, helped me. It has a good ring to it and had yet to be used. It’s like a ‘real name’ vs a ‘porn name’; i.e., when gingers use McAllister, O’Conner or O’Riley, it seems kind of corny.

Ginger stud talks sex, stripping and stardom

What made you begin your adult career?

Porn is something I’ve always wanted to do. I never saw myself doing it, though. I was offered an underwear modeling gig in Orlando, where Howard saved me from go-going my life away.

I love the way you look!

Men.com Is there anything special that you do, grooming- Bennett Anthony wise, because of your hair, skin and eye color?

I love it! I was blessed with this Not really. Apricot face scrub in awesome color of body hair and all the shower and Dove soap on my I have to do is live for it to be recbody. My look is changing, due to ognized. my recent move to California. I’m used to having a buzz cut and wearSince you’re relatively new to the ing minimal clothing. California adult industry, do you have any fanhas made me grow my hair out and tasies about your next director, scene wear sleeves. partner and/or story line?

I would really like to work with How you do feel about the attenmr. Pam. I’ve met her at two events tion you receive because of your red hair?

See page 42 >>

Men.com

Johnny Rapid (right), with Cooper Reed in a recent video that was an unwitting rehearsal for real life.

bunch of local outlets. Google it now, and you can read Krissy quoting me (you didn’t think this plug for Krissy wasn’t going to be at least a little self-serving, now, didja?).

Finally, in my review of mr Pam’s Dirty Rascals, I noted the strange

absence of Menu functions. mr.

Pam informs me that in an effort to get screeners to reviewers in a timely manner, they were burned without the Menu. The commercially marketed DVD will have Menus, BTS, and trailers, as expected.t

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

42 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 29-February 4, 2015

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From page 41

now, and I can’t stop laughing when I’m around her.

The Nob Hill Theater is a great venue for exposure. What do you think you’d like to do to stand out from the other performers?

I think I’m going to bend myself in half, blow air into my butt and pull out a balloon animal (that I obviously folded and stuffed up in there before I went on stage).

What has been your best adult industry experience, so far?

The travel. Being a South Carolina boy, I had never been more west than Texas or more north than North Carolina. Since porn, I’ve been to New York five times, I now live in California and Men.com sent me to London once. I used to be intimidated by it, whereas now, I’m always on the run and can’t stop.

What do you do to prepare for a shoot that you don’t do off-set?

Starve myself for eight hours.

What is your favorite sexual position?

If you picture missionary, I’m on top, the bottom has one leg over my shoulder and one leg around my waist. I have one hand on the thigh that’s around my waist and one hand on his bicep holding him down, so he can’t move. I like being in control.

What is the first adult film you ever saw?

When I was 5, I found my older brother’s copy of Girls Gone Wild. I watched it for about three seconds, was grossed out and put cartoons back on.

Men.com

Bennett Anthony

Whom, in the adult industry, do you admire?

Michael Brandon.

He’s such an inspiration. I hope I’m as awesome as he is when I’m 50 years old.

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What’s your fantasy talent (musical instrument, singing, cooking, sports, etc.)?

Back flips.

What do you think is lacking in gay adult films?

A reality show, where every four hours an alarm goes off and whomever your closest to you has to start 69-ing with you. It would be great to see stink faces, and who actually continued when the alarm went off.

What part, if any, should social media play in the adult industry?

They should play the advertisement part, right?

With what photographer would you most like to work?

Thomas Knights, author of The Red Hot 100. It’s a dream to be in his next coffee table book.

Barebacking. Pro or con?

No comment.

What’s your favorite body part, on yourself and others?

On me, my nuts. Touch them, and I’m instantly leaking precum.

On others, furry buttholes.

What’s your favorite guilty pleasure (shopping, food, sex, video games, etc.)?

Pot. What do you want your audience to see when they watch your films?

Genuinely, I want them to see someone truthful; a people person who can see the good in everyone.

So far, what do you see as the greatest misconception about the adult industry?

How hard it is, literally. This is the easiest job I’ve ever been employed to do. I sometimes stop and thank everyone around for paying me for this. I get paid to fuck hotties, some-

To place your Personals ad, Call 415-861-5019 for more info & rates thing I would do for free.

What stereotypes about the adult industry have you found to be true?

I thought about this one for, like, ten minutes, and can’t think of any. It’s the stereotypes that I have found to be untrue in porn, that all porn people are whores; so not true. Don’t get me wrong. There’s the select few out there who will take any hand they can get inside of them, but, I meet a lot of great guys who not only play hard to get, but are hard to get.

What’s your fantasy leather fetish ensemble?

Not too much into how leather feels. I have some leatherscented beard oil that makes me wet, though.

Who’s your favorite adult film star?

Zeb Atlas. Those muscles, dawg. Damn!

I wanna look like that!

Men.com

Bennett Anthony

What is your view of “bottom stigma”?

I mean, have you been to the gym recently? I thought that went out the window years ago. Just because a guy is fem, it doesn’t mean he’s trying to use his hole as a pussy in a gangbang. It’s always a little awkward when you’re eating a twink’s ass, and he tries to flip you over and put it in.

Where do you see adult films going in the 21st Century?

I see DVDs being wiped out completely, and everything being sold online. It’s already happening. You’d think that hard copy porn movies would be gone, already.t Bennett Anthony performs a live interactive strip show at The Nob Hill Theatre. $25. 8pm and 10pm. Jan. 30 & 31. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com Follow Bennett at www.twitter.com/bennettanthonyx

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

January 29-February 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 43

Balançoire

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or Sunday brunch and a fun drag show, head out to the Mission at Balançoire, where mimosas and merriment collide (11am-2pm). Xtravaganza, their T-Dance drag shows, continue at 7pm, 10pm and 11pm. 2565 Mission St. at 21st.

920-0577. www.balancoiresf.com More event photo albums are on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife.

See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at www.StevenUnderhill.com.

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com or email stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com