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Pride in the Northwest

ARTS

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Oakland Ballet's 50th

Kristine W

The

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

Vol. 45 • No. 22 • May 28-June 3, 2015

Opening date set for LGBT shelter

by Seth Hemmelgarn

ally bringing those needs out of the shadows and casting light on those in our community who are suffering.”

Basinger referred to the most recently available census data on homeless people in the city. In June 2013, the biennial homeless point-in-time data were released and, for the first time, included statistics on LGBT people. The report found that out of a total of 7,350 homeless people, more than one in four (29 percent) identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or “other,” for a total of 2,132.

“Once again, San Francisco will be leading the way for the nation,” Basinger said, but “29 percent of the city’s homeless population is LGBT,” and the shelter has only 24 beds.

“Hopefully we can use that as an advocacy tool to continue to demand our fair share,” he said.

A Courtesy Getty Images

People celebrated Ireland’s vote for marriage equality.

Ireland votes yes for same-sex marriage

by Heather Cassell

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rish residents celebrated on the streets of Dublin as the ballots were counted and results showed the country overwhelmingly approved the same-sex marriage referendum with more that 60 percent of the vote.

Returns showed that all but one of Ireland’s 43 districts voted yes for same-sex marriage on May 23. The lone district to have a majority no votes was rural RoscommonSouth Leitrim.

The Iona Institute and Mothers and Fathers, which opposed the referendum, conceded defeat early in the count, according to media reports.

“Congratulations to the Yes side. Well done,” tweeted David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute.

Once the final tally came in, 1,201,607 people (62 percent) voted for same-sex marriage, while 734,300 people (38 percent) voted against the Irish Marriage Equality Referendum.

The victory made Ireland the 21st country to legalize same-sex marriage and the first to approve it by popular vote.

The same-sex marriage referendum is expected to be enacted before Ireland’s Parliament takes its summer recess July 16, said Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald.

Normally it takes three months to register to marry, but same-sex couples will receive an exemption, meaning that weddings could being as early as July, according to media reports.

Couples already planning on obtaining civil partnerships, which were legalized in 2010, will automatically be upgraded to marriage upon the official passage of the bill.

“We’re the first country in the world to enshrine marriage equality in our constitution and do so by popular mandate,” Leo Varadkar, a gay man who is Ireland’s health minister, told NPR, “That makes us a beacon, a light to the rest of the world of liberty and See page 14 >>

n opening date for a longawaited homeless shelter in San Francisco specifically designed to be safe for LGBT adults has been set for Wednesday, June 17.

After more than five years of permit, funding, and other delays, word came last week that the 24-bed space at 1050 South Van Ness Avenue is almost ready.

Brian Basinger, who’s pushed for Jane Philomen Cleland the shelter for years and is the director of AIDS Housing Alliance/San Fran- Dolores Street Community Services Executive Director cisco, announced the opening date in Wendy Phillips, left, and Miguel Romero, a shelter staff person, discuss the progress on the agency’s soon-toa Facebook post Friday May 22.

The shelter will be called Jazzie’s be-open homeless shelter that’s designed to be safe for Place, after Jazzie Collins, a transgender LGBT adults. woman who advocated for housing, seniors, and other issues and died in 2013. bureaucracy, with many of the hurdles related to Dolores Street Community Services, which obtaining permits from city agencies. Additionalready operates a shelter at the South Van Ness ally, money for the project was slow to come, Lottery system site, will also run the LGBT shelter, which is loBasinger indicated details haven’t been fidespite the relatively small amount needed. cated in a renovated space at the building. nalized for the June 17 grand opening, but he In an interview Friday, Basinger said the Advocates and elected officials have been said shelter residents will move into the space impact of Jazzie’s Place for residents “is bepushing for the shelter since a March 2010 that night. yond just the safe, dignified, and welcoming Board of Supervisors hearing in which several shelter for the individuals who’ll be accessing Residents will be selected through a lottery LGBTs told of harassment they had experi- those services. The broader impact is really, in system. enced at the city’s shelters.

In response to emailed questions, Dolores a very concrete way, demonstrating the need Since then, the project has been mired in city for LGBT-focused safety net services, and reSee page 10 >>

Plan progresses to review homeless deaths

by Seth Hemmelgarn

ers are unlikely to know about their death and unlikely to do an Francisco officials are [quality assurance] review” or planning a process to reother examinations. view the deaths of homeless “Homeless deaths can be treatpeople in the city in order to see ed as other sentinel events in our if more can be done to prevent health care system as a trigger for future cases. quality improvement,” the overCity staff who deal with homeview says. lessness and health met last week There will be quarterly reviews, as a homeless death review comand Dodge said in an email that the mittee is established. The progress first will be the week of August 10. follows the death of Anastasia The review process will start Walton, 50, a transgender woman with the medical examiner’s office who died New Year’s Eve outside notifying the medical director of the Peet’s coffee shop in the Castro. the city’s homeless outreach team Walton died of a heart condition, when a homeless individual dies, according to the medical examinRick Gerharter according to the outline Dodge er’s office, which recently released In 2011 a small memorial to a homeless man who died in a Castro provided. its review of Walton’s death.

People who don’t have a fixed Street doorway was erected. Officials are restarting a group that will People who knew Walton have review cases of homeless people who die in the city. address, including those whose said that she had repeatedly deaddress is a homeless shelter, and clined offers of shelter and other people who are known to live on Dufty, a former city supervisor, has been services. But Bevan Dufty, who the street but have temporarily serves as director of Housing Opportunity, working for months to restart the review com- been staying in a single-room-occupancy hotel, mittee, which was last in place several years ago. are among those who will be included.

Partnerships and Engagement for Mayor Ed An overview of the panel provided by the Lee and who’s been involved in establishing the Information on the cause of death or cirHOPE office’s Sam Dodge says homeless panel, said in January that Anastasia’s “tragic cumstances related to it that can be shared will death can be a rallying point to make sure we people “frequently have received services from be included. Confidential details related to posmany service providers, but the service providdon’t leave people behind.”

See page 17 >>

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$5 AFTER 5PM

<< Community News

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

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Protests against archbishop continue

S

John Bare

tudents joined faculty, parents, and other supporters May 20 in front of the archdiocese office to protest San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s proposed revisions to the faculty handbook that would designate staff at four Catholic high schools the diocese oversees as “ministers.” The criticisms of Cordileone started earlier this year after he announced that revisions to the handbook would also require faculty to adhere to church teachings – even in their personal lives. The archdiocese released a statement following last week’s protest saying that negotiations with the teachers’ union continues. And while some say the tone of the handbook has changed, its requirements apparently have not.

Gay home movies set for big screen debut

by Matthew S. Bajko

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hey are snippets of forgotten times, lost memories, and private escapades in the lives of LGBT people. Many of the reels of film have been collecting dust in attics, closets, or basements.

It is likely few, if any, of the people filmed thought the home movies they had captured were of any relevance other than to themselves, their friends, and family. Yet the celluloid time capsules provide a unique glimpse into an era when being gay was a crime and there was no social media to document everyday moments.

Next month more than 60 people’s home movies will receive a big screen debut when the film Reel In The Closet has its premiere Sunday, June 21 at Frameline, San Francisco’s LGBT international film festival. Director Stu Maddox has spliced together snippets of the found footage into a 68-minute

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FD# 1848

documentary about why maker,” said Maddux, it is so important to safewho learned about the guard these oft-forgotten films from a fellow filmreels of film. maker using it in their “I think people are own project. going to see themselves His film cost roughly back then,” said Mad$100,000 to produce, with dux, a gay man who $60,000 raised through lives in Novato and has crowdfunding campaigns. been working on the film Many of the donors will since 2012. “All of a sud- Reel In The Closet receive tickets to screenden you are seeing shots director Stu Maddox ings of the film in cities of someone I could see near where they live. walking down the street today and “There are 100 tickets owed, we moving the same way.” don’t anticipate everyone attending Maddux, 49, whose company is the world premiere of Reel In The called Interrobang Productions, LLC, Closet because many live on the scoured the archives of 17 organizaEast Coast and abroad,” Tish Gettions in search of a diverse collection tys, administrative producer of the of home movies to shine a light on film, told the B.A.R. “However, we what life was like for LGBT people hope they will take advantage and dating as far back as the 1930s. Feause their free tickets when the film tured institutions in the movie inpremieres in their town.” clude the GLBT Historical Society Preserving old movies based in San Francisco, the Latino The inspiration for Maddux’s film GLBT History Project in Washingcame from his learning about John ton, D.C., and the Lesbian Home Raines, a volunteer who has been Movie Project overseen by Northeast digitizing old home movies in the Historic Film in Bucksport, Maine. archives of San Francisco’s GLBT “The stuff that is the most interHistorical Society so they are more esting is day-to-day life, which is accessible to researchers, documenharder to come by,” said Maddux. tarians, and members of the public.

“We wanted to make a loose chronProfiled by the B.A.R. two years ological look at kind of a gay life ago, Raines has processed more than a through the eyes of a person who thousand hours of old home movies, lived it in the 1930s on.” television station news reports, and When the Bay Area Reporter other audio-visual archival materials first wrote about Maddux’s film in of LGBT historical significance. To the summer of 2013, he had hoped assist with the work, Maddux’s comto release it sometime in 2014. But pany donated equipment to the local its debut was delayed as Maddux archival group that allows it to process looked for a more diverse collection its 8mm collection of home movies. of home movies to feature.

“We were able to transfer these “It is still not super diverse. We films at the GLBT Historical Sociplan to treat it as a crowd work in ety’s archives for the first time into progress,” said Maddux, who will HD and really look at them for the also be showing the film in late June first time,” said Maddux. during Helsinki’s Pride celebration.

Another San Francisco-based “We know people are going to come film preservation group, the Metro up after screenings and say, ‘I have Theatre Center Foundation, is also this wonderful material.’ We want to working to save old home movies. be sure to include that in future verThis year it purchased its own high sions of the film.” definition film scanner that can scan In the film he submitted to Fra8mm, super 8 and 16mm films. meline, Maddux said gay white men “We did a round of fundraising account for the majority of the home in the past three months to raise movies featured. Through screening the funds needed, and I’m happy to the film, Maddux is hopeful audience report we were successful, and that members will come forward with the film scanner is on order, and will home movies featuring women, peoarrive at the end of June,” Ron Merk, ple of color, and transgender people. a gay man and San Francisco-based “I know it is out there,” he said. “It film producer who is director of film is just a matter of getting out there and cultural programs at the foundawith this film and getting people tion, told the B.A.R. in a recent email. aware of what is in their closet and Since the B.A.R. first wrote about to realize this is important for everythe foundation three years ago, it body to see.” has acquired more than 2,000 colHe was able to track down the lections of important home movies home movies of Christine Jorgensen, through its initiative called the Presa former U.S. Army private whose ervation Project Partnerships. sex change surgery in Denmark in “What never ceases to amaze me is the 1950s made national news upon what has been sitting in a closet (no her return to America in 1955. They pun intended), an attic, a basement are housed at the Royal Copenhagen or a garage, which is just waiting to Library, which uploaded the footage be discovered,” wrote Merk. “We have via file servers at Maddux’s request.

“She was a really big home movie See page 7 >>

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Community News>>

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Pride season kicks off in Sonoma, Sacto compiled by Cynthia Laird

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une is fast approaching and that means that LGBT Pride celebrations will begin in cities across northern California.

In the North Bay, Sonoma County Pride will hold its Pride weekend June 5-7 at the Russian River.

The nonprofit incorporated last year and Sonoma County Pride President Chuck Ramsey said that the new energy, enthusiasm, teamwork, excitement, and results are already evident.

This year’s theme is “Equality Everywhere,” and is a nod to the hopefulness many people feel as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.

Grand marshals for the parade are Barefoot Winery ambassador Randy Arnold and Rainbow Cattle Company co-owner Bobby Frederick.

Pride festivities begin Friday, June 5 with the First Friday Art Walk in Guerneville, followed by country western dancing. Saturday, June 6 will feature a kayaking event that ends at the Rio Theater in Monte Rio for an afternoon of games, barbecue, music, and LGBT short films. There will be a disco party that night in Guerneville.

The parade takes place Sunday, June 7 on Main Street at 11 a.m. Afterwards, the Pride festival takes place at the Guerneville Lodge from noon to 6 p.m. There is a $5 donation.

Festival entertainment includes the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, pop dance band Rumors, members of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, Last Comic Standing star Nikki Carr, and local singersongwriter Bobby Jo Valentine.

For more information, including weekend lodging options, visit www.sonomacountypride.org.

In Sacramento, the Pride parade will take place Saturday, June 6 at 11 a.m. at 3rd and N streets, ending at 10th and N. The festival will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Capitol Mall, between 3rd and 7th streets. Organizers said that this year’s event will feature more live entertainment than any time in the event’s 26-year history. Admission to the festival is $10; children ages 5 and under are free.

Headlining the festival will be singer Belinda Carlisle, formerly the lead singer for the chart-topping all-girl punk band, The Go-Go’s, who has gone on to have a successful solo career.

“As someone with many LGBT individuals in my life, both personally and professionally, performing at Pride events has always been very important to me,” Carlisle said in a statement issued by the Sacramento LGBT Community Center, which produces the Pride event.

The main stage line-up will also include two stars from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Jujubee from Season 2 and Kennedy Davenport from the current season.

Also performing will be hip-hop artist Cazwell, who became a YouTube sensation with his “Ice Cream Truck” music video.

For more information, visit www. sacramentopride.org.

Botanical Garden celebrates 75th anniversary

The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department will co-host a free community day Sunday, May

Courtesy Sonoma County Pride

A woman celebrates at Sonoma County Pride.

31 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park, which opened to the public in 1940 as a place of beauty, learning, and inspiration.

The community day runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will include family activities, giant puppets, a sing-along, docent-led walking tours, and a special stage featuring world music and dance performers reflecting the global nature of the collection.

A fundraising Garden Feast luncheon will be held Thursday, May 28 on the sweeping great meadow. The keynote speaker will be Lieutenant Governor and former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. Tickets are $250. Proceeds from the lunch support the garden’s youth education program.

For more information about either event, visit www.sfbotanicalgarden.org.

Wilde Chats mark 11 years with dinner

The Community Initiative will celebrate the 11th anniversary of its weekly gay community discussion series, Wilde Chats, with a dinner at Sweet Inspirations, 2239 Market Street (near Sanchez) Wednesday, June 3 at 6 p.m.

Organizers said that people will gather in the back of the bakery for chicken pot pies and a salad. The cost is $10. No RSVP is necessary, men can just stop by and say hello and stay for dinner if they choose.

Wilde Chats, which take place every Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Sweet Inspirations, is a loosely structured, community-driven discussion group of topics and issues that are important to gay men.

Castro retail strategy open house set

The public is invited to attend a June 4 open house to learn about the recommendations proposed in the Castro and Upper Market Retail Strategy.

The main goal of the project is to assist with filling vacant storefronts throughout the city’s gay district. Organizers of the strategy report that the area’s retail vacancy rate remains around 8 to 9 percent, significantly higher than the citywide average. The city had a retail vacancy rate of 2.2 percent, according to Marcus and Millichap’s 2015 National Retail Index.

The Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District last summer launched the effort to create the strategy and has been working with the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, the Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association, and the Castro Merchants group to develop it.

Last fall 1,200 patron surveys were gathered, 700 online and the rest at various street locations in See page 18 >>

<< Open Forum

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

Volume 45, Number 22 May 28-June 3, 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 Richard Dodds • Michael Flanagan Jim Gladstone • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell • John F. Karr Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Max Leger Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Paul Parish • Sean Piverger • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel • Khaled Sayed Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Ed Walsh • Cornelius Washington Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Jay Cribas PRODUCTION/DESIGN Max Leger PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Lydia Gonzales • Jose Guzman-Colon Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd 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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Ireland’s historic vote for equality

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he resounding vote in Ireland to legalize same-sex marriage was joyous news. Last Friday’s vote was 62.07 percent in favor and 37.93 percent opposed. It was a substantial win, by passing in nearly all constituencies, as voting districts there are called. Just one of the nation’s 43 districts had a majority no vote. Turnout was 60.52 percent. Ireland becomes the first country in the world to approve same-sex marriage via popular vote.

Ireland, of course, is a very Catholic country that in recent years has become more secular. Child sexual abuse scandals roiled the church as they have elsewhere, and news reports indicate that the tide has shifted dramatically after years of being in the pocket of the Vatican. Tellingly, young people voted in large numbers, and they voted for marriage equality.

During the campaign, people in support of same-sex marriage told their stories and in the process garnered public support. Journalists and others came out as lesbian or gay, or came out as parents of a gay child. And while the church was opposed, it seemed that Catholic leaders have accepted that their country has changed. It wasn’t an easy campaign, but the Yes side prevailed in part because it used real people sharing their life experiences and hopes.

In spite of a recent scientific survey about the effectiveness of people sharing personal stories in same-sex marriage campaigns being debunked, we think people coming out and talking about their lives does have an impact. The lead author of the study in question, Michael LaCour, sought to show that personal stories can persuade people to support marriage equality. But he apparently misrepresented his methods and evidence did not back up his findings. We do know from our experience in California, however, that hiding gays and lesbians from the electorate does not work. In the two statewide fights for marriage in California, Proposition 22 in 2000 and Proposition 8 in 2008, the pro-marriage sides did not take advantage of LGBT people telling their stories, which turned out to be a bad miscalculation. In

subsequent elections in Washington state, Maine, and Maryland, voters approved samesex marriage amid increased public support, including people talking about their lives and their families.

Ireland’s Yes campaign involved the transgender community, and its success may have significant benefit down the road in that country. That’s because groups like Transgender Equality Network Ireland are pushing for passage of the Gender Recognition Bill, which would allow transgender people to be issued a new birth certificate that reflects their preferred gender. This legislation has been long-stalled, but with the momentum coming off of the marriage equality vote, political leaders should realize there’s a strong desire on the part of Irish citizens that people be treated fairly.

The broad vote for marriage equality reflects a cultural shift that we hope will become the norm in the U.S., where support has broken 60 percent, recent polls state. As we brace for a

Supreme Court ruling in June that could legalize same-sex marriage in all states, LGBTs and our allies need to understand that the fight will not end if the court’s decision is in our favor.

We still need national employment and public accommodation non-discrimination laws, and we need to push back against the Religious Freedom Restoration Act laws that are being passed. Last week Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who’s exploring a 2016 White House run, issued an executive order protecting those who object to same-sex marriage after a House committee voted down a similar bill. Jindal’s move was a blatant political act that shows he’s out of step with public opinion. Yes, Louisiana is a red state, but support for same-sex marriage is nudging up even in the South.

What Ireland’s vote shows is that people can look beyond the homophobia and do the right thing. When the nuptials begin, we expect to see more acceptance from society. Homophobia likely won’t ever go away, but same-sex couples who marry will gain important legal recognition. We’re elated with the victory across the pond, which adds one more country to the 20 that allow same-sex marriage nationally.t

How I went from boycotting to buy-cotting

by Ryan Fisher

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y name is Ryan Fisher and my name is Jake Reynolds. Yes, I have two identities that, over time, are melding into one. Ryan Fisher is the name on my birth certificate; Jake Reynolds is the name of the character I play on a web series called The Spinoffs, as well as on my own YouTube channel Openly Jake (youtube.com/openlyme), in which I tackle a lot of gay issues (and sometimes they tackle me right back).

As an actor, sometimes a role gets so profoundly under your skin that you can’t tell where it starts and you end. That’s what’s happened with me and Jake. I was never very political. Oh, I always believed in gay rights, but I, Ryan, had a much more carefree attitude – “haters gonna hate,” etc. – whereas Jake called everyone out on anything remotely anti-gay.

But the one thing about Jake (and me): he’s not mean; he’s sarcastic; he’s not in your face, he’s like a gnat flying around your face; he’s not polemic; he’s ironic. Over time, Jake has evolved into a comic commentator on gay rights. One critic called Jake “the gay Jon Stewart,” the biggest compliment he could have been paid. Jake tackles issues differently than other gay vloggers – he uses anger disguised as ignorance; outrage disguised as innocence, and fury disguised as funny.

Which brings me to buy-cotting and this new concept which I’d like to think I invented (well, Jake and I did). But like many positive movements, it had its roots in something negative: I had been doing some fun gaythemed vlogs, like on what I was looking for in a boyfriend (still looking, by the way). And then something really frightening happened in California: a lawyer was trying to get a

proposition on the ballot that would allow California citizens to shoot and kill anyone who’s gay (yes, you read that right). Then “Indiana” happened – where discrimination against gays and lesbians for “religious reasons” became legal, and people – even politicians – decided to boycott Indiana, which was the first mention of the B-word: Boycott. [Indiana has since revised the law in question.]

Then prejudice against gays took a decidedly different turn when high-end Italian fashion designers Dolce and Gabbana did an interview where they said that gays should not be allowed to have children.

What made that one particularly galling is that they are gay (they even used to be a couple)! In the D&G backlash, Elton John had started a campaign urging people to boycott D&G products.

That word again. Next up was a fancy reception dinner for right-wing, maliciously anti-gay Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, given by two real estate developers – who happened to be gay and who owned hotels and resorts catering to gay clientele. The gay community went nuts, and again the call to boycott was raised – and this time it was louder than ever. Okay, so now, between these guys and Dolce & Gabbana, we were boycotting Our Own – gays vs. gays, or as I called it, Boy-on-Boycotting. I mean, if you can’t trust gays to be pro-gay, who can you trust? As far as I was concerned, no one is safe from being boycotted – if you’re an anti-gay, you’re out ... even if you’re openly out.

But then I had a crisis of conscience – wasn’t I just as bad as the haters, discriminating against gay people just because I don’t

like their politics? Boycotting my fellow gays means a lot in a country where the dollar talks, even my gay dollars.

I wanted to find a way to turn my boycotting into something positive. And so buy-cotting was born: buying from (and thereby rewarding) companies that support gay rights. A righteous way to spend all the money I saved on boycotting anti-gay companies.

I did some research and the list of gayfriendly companies is much longer than I realized. Here is a rundown of some prominent companies and brands that have addressed LGBT issues – ranging from political and personal actions by high-profile CEOs to product advertising to workplace policies: Tiffany & Co., Apple, Amazon, Starbucks, Facebook, Tesla, Yelp, Google, Nike, Oreos (yes, I can now eat my favorite cookie guilt-free). And there are hundreds more.

So here’s where I’ve landed: Go on and boycott the haters – but make sure we reward the good guys and support the supporters. And the way I figure it, if people don’t like what we – me and Jake – have to say in our videos – well, they can just boycott us!t Ryan Fisher lives in Los Angeles. To see Jake’s video on “Boy-on-Boycotting,” visit https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=LIsz0vkgY8o; for “Proposition Jake,” visit https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=F4J_h7EzHyE; for “Dolce & Gabbana,” visit https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=u-OU9Uzw1g0; for “United Hates of America,” visit https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=4eQVs2RO5Zk.

t

Politics>>

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

BART to increase service for SF Pride

by Matthew S. Bajko

D

uring last year’s Pride parade and celebration in San Francisco, lesbian BART board member Rebecca Saltzman skipped the festivities in order to attend her grandfather-in-law’s 90th birthday party.

Yet the LGBT event was not far from Saltzman’s mind that Sunday, as constituents of the East Bay district she represents on the transit system’s oversight body were contacting her to complain about being stuck on station platforms unable to board overcrowded BART trains.

Emails and phone calls about BART’s lackluster service on the day of Pride continued for several days, recalled Saltzman, one of two out BART board members.

“It was definitely a problem last year and everybody at BART recognizes that,” Saltzman told the Bay Area Reporter in a phone interview this week. “On the day of the Pride parade, I got a lot of constituent contact on it. I, and other board members, contacted BART staff right away to find out what went wrong.”

The problem, said Saltzman, stemmed from the fact that the BART employee in charge that day never before had overseen the system the day of Pride. Thus, not enough special event trains were put into service that Sunday.

“That was a big problem,” said Saltzman, who plans to march in this year’s parade.

It is one the agency has pledged not to repeat during this year’s Pride parade and festival, set to take place Sunday, June 28. BART’s staff and board have finalized a plan to ensure there is increased service to handle the hundreds of thousands of people expected to turn out for Pride.

Improved BART service this year will be critical, as Pride organizers are predicting record crowds due to the release next month of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in a marriage equality case that could legalize same-sex marriage across the country. Adding to the need for increased BART service that Sunday, both the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants baseball teams have home games.

Over the last several months BART staff, members of the agency’s board of directors, and leaders of the East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club, an LGBT political group, have been meeting to craft a plan for Pride day service, said Saltzman.

<<

Home movies

From page 4

been thrilled with our many finds of unique views of our lives ‘way back when,’ and how wonderful it has been to save them for future generations.”

Merk singled out “two tantalizing pieces of gay life, a 16mm early 1930s black and white film of a gay man swimming nude in a lake, and a 16mm color film of a bunch of WWII soldiers romping buck naked in a river and having a grand time.”

He added that they recently “struck gold” with a 16mm color film of 1946 New York Times Square that includes footage inside a Broadway theater where Ethel Merman is standing on stage in Annie Get Your Gun, “belting out one of her signature tunes, ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business.’ Just a treasure for everyone!”

One of his more significant film finds came in 2012 when Merk bought on eBay a batch of old film

“The new plan in be reserved for service writing lays out what on the East Bay lines will happen and how for the A’s game that many trains will run,” afternoon, while others she said. would be routed to pick The service plan was up Giants fans. laid out in a letter dated “Because train opMay 15 that Paul Oversierator staffing of event er, BART’s assistant trains is through volJane Philomen Cleland general manager for opuntary overtime, we erations, sent to Brenda- BART board member will not publish a lynn Goodall, president Rebecca Saltzman formal schedule for of the Stonewall club. these trains,” explained “As you are probably Oversier. aware, the key lesson learned from While the plan for Pride serlast year is to run more special event vice this year should eliminate the trains,” wrote Oversier. “We problems riders experienced last will not operate weekday June, Saltzman nonetheless warned service levels because the BART users to be prepared to find projected ridership is less crowded stations and packed cars than a typical weekday again this year on Pride Sunday. and all extra service over “It is going to be a really busy and above Sunday service day in the Bay Area,” she predicted. is dependent on employ“When there are big events someees volunteering for times it takes time to clear the overtime.” platform. I encourage people to be BART’s labor conpatient, but I think it will be much tracts restrict it from better service than last year.” mirroring on a Sunday its Gay El Cerrito City Councilman normal Saturday schedule with all Gabriel Quinto, whose town is five of its lines running, as the LGBT serviced by two BART stations, was leaders had inquired about doing. caught up in the system’s logjam The normal Sunday schedule sees last Pride both in the morning and three of the lines in service with a mixagain later in the day as he tried to ture of short and long trains cycling return home. through the system every 20 minutes.

“It was a horrible experience, I “We will, however, closely emuremember,” recalled Quinto, who late Saturday service and at certain was one of the people to contact times exceed it,” wrote Oversier.

Saltzman about the problems. “She The morning of Pride BART stagot back to me right away last year, tions will open at 8 a.m. per usual on so I know that I am not the only one Sundays, but trains will be sized for who was affected by this. Everybody regular weekday peak commute serin the East Bay was.” vice at a length of eight to 10 cars. In Quinto will once again be taking addition to the 25 trains that normally BART into the city for this year’s run Sundays, BART will be adding 14 Pride festivities. He told the B.A.R. special event trains that day. this week that he is confident the According to Oversier’s lettransit system’s leaders have learned ter, most of the event trains will from last year’s mistakes. be deployed on the Fremont and “They know they have to make Richmond lines to “closely mimic some improvements,” he said.

Saturday service on those two lines.”

“They also mentioned that they will Trains should arrive at 10-minute combine their efforts with AC Tranintervals between Richmond, Bay sit to make sure they will be workFair, Daly City, and San Francisco. ing together and making sure the Additional event trains on the morning commute for the parade Dublin, Concord, and SFO/Millwill be okay if you need to get there brae lines will increase capacity on before 8 o’clock.” “the 20-minute single route service Saltzman and fellow BART that operates on those branches on board member Gail Murray will Sundays,” wrote Oversier. be answering the public’s questions The event trains will make return about BART service and the transit trips to suburban intermediate staagency’s budget priorities during an tions such as Bay Fair, Pleasant Hill, online town hall being held from and El Cerrito del Norte and “cycle noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, June 3. continuously throughout the mornQuestions can be emailed beforeing,” added Oversier, noting that hand and during the event to betmost of the extra trains would then terbart@bart.gov or tweet questions be stationed at Daly City/Millbrae to @SFBART. until the afternoon “to provide adThe town hall will be screened ditional capacity for the trip home.” live online at http://www.bart.gov/ Some of those trains would then townhall.t reels that had belonged to David Eugene Bell, a famous home designer at Bloomingdale’s who in the 1970s took up needlepoint and became a celebrated artist. He lived in Connecticut with his partner, Donald Cotter, and died in 2006 in his mid-80s.

Efforts by Merk to raise upwards of $20,000 from crowdsourcing campaigns to restore the cache of 50 reels of 8mm and 16mm film were unsuccessful. But he told the B.A.R. that the foundation was “lucky to license some of the footage that we have transferred to a film called Tab Hunter Confidential, and this provided us with money to pay our preservation team members to fully clean and inspect all the material.”

The film, noted Merk, “was badly affected by mold due to poor storage. The mold was literally eating the emulsion (which carries the images) right off of the film base.

Luckily, we have arrested the mold.”

Once its HD scanner arrives, the

foundation plans to scan the complete seven hours of the David Eugene Bell collection. But it is looking for donations to cover the cost of the labor required to do the scanning and make the films available for viewing and research.

“For that we need to raise $5,000, and of course we hope that the community will help with donations, or that we can find one sponsor for the full amount,” wrote Merk. “This collection is a very rare look at gay life when most gay people did not photograph their lives due to fear of prosecution, loss of family or jobs, or worse. This collection of films that goes back to the 1950s provides a unique view of gay history, culture and lifestyles that is rarely seen.”

Donations can be made online via the foundation’s website at www.

MetroCenterFoundation.org.

For more information about Reel In The Closet, visit http://closetreel. com/.t

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<< Commentary

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

Duggar skullduggery

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

T

he notion of anti-gay lawmakers and policymakers being selfloathing and closeted is by no means an uncommon thing. Whether it’s former Idaho Senator Larry Craig and his toe-tapping, wide stance antics in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, or Family Research Council cofounder George Rekers and the rent boy he hired to “lift his luggage” on a two-week European vacation, those who espouse the strongest anti-gay stances seem to be the largest hypocrites.

Last week, when Matt Makela – a Michigan-based pastor with a strong anti-gay history – saw his Grindr profile go public, I viewed the outing as a bit of a yawn.

It’s become just so common that I expect a strongly anti-gay voice in today’s political climate to have a

gay double life.

It wasn’t until other news last week, which overshadowed that of Pastor Makela, that I finally discovered the transgender corollary.

No, I didn’t assume that those who are strongly anti-transgender are trans, though I suspect we’ll see a few over time. I presumed, rather, that the attacks against transgender people were simply anti-gay hucksters trying to find a new target in the wake of various LGBT legislative victories.

With the long slog toward same-sex marriage rights appearing to be all but over, surely they need a new target to fill their coffers. The anti-transgender “bathroom bills” seem tailor-made for them.

The right has crafted a bathroom meme to fight against transgender rights. Their argument is that letting transgender people use public

accommodations consistent with our gender identity or expression will allow non-transgender rapists and molesters to gain access to opposite-gender restrooms.

It’s been at the heart of a series of insidious bills introduced in Kentucky, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and elsewhere.

It has been used to stall and prevent rights gains, including a recent loss in Charlotte, North Carolina marked by radio ads extolling the bathroom meme as well as a notorious anti-gay Josh Duggar activist harassing transgender people who used on the repeal of an anti-discrimiappropriate facilities at the nation bill. The bill in question – hearing over the bill.

Ordinance 119 – protected against There’s one time in particular discrimination due to sexual orienthat the bathroom meme was used tation and gender identity, among that I want to focus on. other protected classes. A robocall In August 2014, the Fayetteville recorded during the fight to repeal City Council in Arkansas was voting Ordinance 119 evoked the bathroom meme.

“The Fayetteville City Council is voting on an ordinance this Tuesday night that would allow men – yes, I said men – to use women’s and girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, showers, sleeping areas and other areas that are designated for females only. I don’t believe the citizens of Fayetteville would want males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls.

I doubt that Fayetteville parents would stand for a law that would endanger their daughters or allow them to be traumatized by a man joining them in their private space.

We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child. Parents, who do you want undressing next to your daughter at the public swimming pool’s private changing area?”

That robocall was recorded by Michelle Duggar, the wife of Jim Bob Duggar and mother of the 19 Kids and Counting Duggar clan of the TLC reality show. Jim Bob and Michelle are part of a movement of hard-right evangelicals who focus on female submission and sexual purity while also promoting large family units. Their strong beliefs have been passed onto their kids, including Josh Duggar, the oldest of Jim Bob and Michelle’s 19 children.

Josh Duggar, 27, has been a rising star among the right, even being

t

photographed with most of the 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls. Until last week, he was the executive director of FRC Action, the political arm of the Family Research Council. The FRC has also been pushing the bathroom meme.

I mentioned that Josh Duggar was now the former executive director. He stepped down after molestation allegations against him came out.

You see, between March 2002 and July 2003, Josh Duggar molested several young girls, many of whom were his own younger sisters. Initially he sneaked up on them as they slept, later assaulting one while she sat on his lap.

His parents initially told their pastor, and placed Josh Duggar into a “treatment program” that was little more than helping a friend remodel a building. It was a year later that they finally told a police officer. The officer did not arrest him, only offering a “stern talking to.”

That police officer, by the way, is now serving a 56-year sentence for child pornography.

Josh Duggar, his parents, and his wife all want this story to go away now, claiming that while Josh “made some very bad mistakes,” he has found his forgiveness with God. The statute of limitations will keep him from serving time in jail for what he did.

So what does this teach us?

It’s not that those attacking transgender people are self-hating transgender people; it’s that they’re child molesters. They’re looking at transgender anti-discrimination protections, and trying to figure out how they personally would use them to attack children.

Or perhaps, like Michelle Duggar, the anti-trans crusaders come to their knowledge of molesters by shielding one under their own roof – even after their own children were victims.

So next time you see someone who seems to focus just a bit too much on anti-transgender bathroom bills, consider that they may be the next Josh Duggar: perhaps we need laws to protect us from evangelicals in public restrooms.t Gwen Smith always wondered about that family. You can find her on Twitter at @gwenners.

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<< Community News

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

Pro-Palestine film festival sets schedule

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

wenty-four feature films, plus several shorts, will screen at the Outside the Frame: Queers for Palestine Film Festival taking place in San Francisco in June. It is touted as a “radical alternative” to Frameline, San Francisco’s international LGBT film festival.

As the Bay Area Reporter noted in a story in January, a coalition of groups decided to produce its own counterprogramming during the opening weekend of Frameline to protest its acceptance of funding from the Israeli government. They contend the country’s financial support of organizations like Frameline is a form of “pinkwashing,” using Israel’s pro-gay stances to detract attention away from its policies toward the Palestinian territories.

As it turns out, the local Israeli consulate is not sponsoring Frameline39 this year because no feature length Israeli film was selected as part of the 2015 lineup. Several short Israeli films are part of this year’s program.

“It is ironic on one level. On another level, it speaks to the growing strength of this movement,” said Kate Jessica Raphael, a longtime organizer with the group QUIT, which stands for Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism, and one of the producers for Outside the Frame. “Of course we are glad to see there is not going to be Israeli sponsorship this year. We hope that will remain the case.”

Asked if Frameline had changed its policy regarding partnerships with the Israeli Consulate or associated organizations, Executive Director Frances Wallace referred the B.A.R. to a statement the festival released last week in

announcing this year’s slate of films.

“As in keeping with our current policy we only accept consulate support to cover costs associated with screening international feature films. Frameline is still in the process of reviewing its current overall funding policies around consulate support from any country,” read Frameline’s statement.

In response to a request for comment about its ongoing relationship with Frameline, the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest, which is based in San Francisco, issued a statement to the B.A.R. pointing to Frameline’s policy that only full-length feature films require consulate sponsorship for the festival.

“We wholeheartedly support the full inclusion of top quality LGBTQ films from anywhere in the world, and are strongly convinced Frameline has been dedicated to this essential goal year after year,” stated Consul General Dr. Andy David. “We look forward to future opportunities to continue our partnership with Frameline in order to highlight the innovative LGBTQ films coming from Israel.”

Despite the lack of an Israeli feature film in this year’s Frameline, Raphael told the B.A.R. that activists were still considering some form of protest over the course of the festival. They continue to demand that Frameline sign on to a worldwide academic and cultural boycott of Israel, or at the very least, stop taking money directly from the local consulate or from groups that are affiliated with it.

“This issue isn’t going away,” said Raphael. “It is our feeling Frameline hopes they can satisfy everybody by being neutral and they can not.”

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Jane Philomen Cleland

Kate Jessica Raphael demonstrates outside the Roxie Theater in April 2010.

Three days of screenings

As for Outside the Frame, it kicks off three days of screenings the evening of Friday, June 19 with a lineup that includes Criminal Queers, the 2012 “political farce” from Chris E. Vargas and Eric A. Stanley featuring Angela Davis “that imagines a prison break with a queer twist.”

Saturday’s program includes Dean Spade’s new documentary, Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back, which looks at the protests of the 2012 Rainbow Generations Tour organized by LGBT Israeli groups,

<<

LGBT shelter

From page 3

Street Executive Director Wendy Phillips said the details of that process “are still being worked out, so we are not releasing this information publicly yet. We are shooting for June 8 as the first day people can start entering” the lottery.

Phillips said residents will be able to stay for up to 90 days and may be able to extend that an additional 30 days.

People “who are not selected in the initial lottery will remain on a waitlist and will be contacted when a slot opens up,” she said.

In order to be included in the lot-

t

including A Wider Bridge.

Also that day StormMiguel Florez and Annalise Ophelian will be showing and discussing an excerpt from the forthcoming documentary, Major, a biopic about Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a formerly incarcerated black transgender elder and activist.

It is part of a block of films about transgender issues, including Reina de Los Angeles, the 2014 film from Byron Jose about transgender immigrant women and drag queen performers at Latino gay bars in Los Angeles.

The day will be capped by the premiere of The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen. Directed by Jennifer Abod, it is a biographical look at the life of the noted dancer, professor and black lesbian feminist activist.

Sunday’s program begins with Patty Berne’s Sins Invalid, “a celebration and exploration of sexuality and disability,” and ends with Sin Visa from Bassam Kassab, executive director of San Jose-based Zarco Films. The movie focuses on a Mexican undocumented immigrant with homophobic views who is befriended by a gay couple in the U.S. “We have some great films and some great people speaking,” said Raphael. “We hope people will be interested in coming, but we know there are a lot of things going on

that weekend.”

The 41 film submissions they received surprised the organizers, Raphael said.

“We thought we would get 10 maybe. None of us wanted to be in the business of curating, jurying, and rejecting anybody,” she said. “We were so moved and honored people wanted to be in the festival, and it was really hard to say no to people.”

Outside the Frame is meant to be a one-time event, though Raphael said the organizing committee is not opposed to entertaining offers from a group or person interested in taking it over as long as they uphold its mission statement.

“I can’t say we would because I don’t know that. But it would be cool if somebody who had more skills in putting on a film festival decided they wanted to do that,” she said.

Outside the Frame will take place at the 360-seat Brava Theater, 2781 24th Street in San Francisco, Friday, June 19 through Sunday, June 21.

Tickets are free and will be distributed each day on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors to the theater will open 30 minutes before each day’s screenings.

For more information, including screening times, visit http://outsidetheframefest.org/.t

tery, people first have to have a profile in the city’s centralized shelter database and be tested for tuberculosis, Basinger said. He said people could start those processes at Mission Neighborhood Resource Center at 165 Capp Street. That information couldn’t be confirmed with the agency Friday.

Jazzie’s Place will include bunk beds and bathrooms and is separated into three gender-specific mini pods.

Partitions separate the beds. The gender categories will be male, female, and non-conforming, and there will be eight beds available in each.

“When someone signs up for the waitlist, they will be able to select which space or spaces they

would like to stay in,” Phillips said.

“However, the male-identified and female-identified spaces would only be for male-identified or femaleidentified individuals.”

Dolores Street’s shelter space has three rooms. Two of those spaces will house the current population, “which is all men,” Phillips said. The new LGBT space will operate in the third room.

Each of the three rooms “will have one shelter monitor at a time,” she said. “ ... We have been and continue to focus on hiring LGBT individuals for all shelter monitor positions, See page 18 >>

Sex worker fest tackles trafficking

by Yael Chanoff

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he Bay Area Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival has been a biennial staple of the local sex workers’ rights movement since 1999. Events at this year’s festival, which ran May 15-24, included a day of skill building workshops at the “Institute of Sex-Workology” and a spa day for sex workers called Whores Bath.

In the midst of the celebration of films and other arts by and for sex workers, two events focused on resistance to abuse. On May 20, a group of sex workers and allies came together to discuss anti-trafficking efforts, and how they can often lead to violence against sex workers – at the hands of police.

“In the mainstream media and in the public discourse, sex work is being conflated with trafficking. But

Alana Perino

Lania Watkins, left, a case manager with the California Prostitutes Education Project, speaks at the “Sex Work Does Not Equal Trafficking” event May 20. Seated next to her is Carol Leigh, the founder of the Bay Area Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival.

they’re two different things,” said festival curator Laure McElroy. “The issue is consent.”

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Yet many laws that purport to tackle trafficking sweep up consensual sex workers in their enforcement.

“Most anti-trafficking policies create collateral consequences,” said Alix Lutnick, a researcher at RTI International, who spoke at the event.

And on May 16, young people from the Sex Worker Action Group and Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center worked with lawyers from Red Light Legal to discuss ways to end violence against trans women and sex workers.

“A lot of the organizing around sex worker rights is coming from queer and transgender youth,” said McElroy. “There’s a lot of recognition in the queer community that sex workers are here, they’re a part of the community. Keeping them safe and healthy is keeping all of us safe and healthy.”t

t

Community News>>

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

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Students celebrate Milk Day

Jane Philomen Cleland

O

ver one hundred dancers performed to show their gratitude to the late San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk and their enthusiasm for LGBT civil rights during Alameda’s Harvey Milk Day festivities Thursday, May 21 at Alameda High School. Students from Encinal High School also participated.

Students shared stories, read poems, and paid tribute to the slain supervisor, who would have turned 85 on May 22. The unofficial state holiday of special significance is growing in popularity among school districts, which use the day to teach about Milk and LGBT rights.

San Francisco Columbarium rededicates Milk niche

Rick Gerharter

Michael Bard snaps a photo of the new memorial niche for Harvey Milk at the San Francisco Columbarium during a rededication ceremony May 23.

by Chris Huqueriza

T

he San Francisco Columbarium rededicated a larger memorial niche in honor of slain city supervisor Harvey Milk for its observance of Harvey Milk Day. The niche contains items that were donated years ago by Dan Nicoletta, a gay man and longtime photographer who once worked with Milk at his Castro Camera shop.

In a Facebook post, Nicoletta, who now lives in Oregon and could not be present at the May 23 rededication ceremony, said that the Columbarium was “upgrading Harvey to a larger niche.”

The niche contains memorial items; his ashes were spread over the Pacific Ocean and some are buried in the sidewalk under a plaque in front of Milk’s old camera store, now a store and action center run by the Human Rights Campaign.

“Years ago they inaugurated memorial niches to honor several late local heroes, including Harvey,” Nicoletta, 60, said. “The coolness factor was the original decision to get involved as his old niche was way up high and you had to crane to see it.”

Calling it a “treasure trove of wonderful materials,” Nicoletta donated a medium-sized box filled with election pins, magazines, and photos, including one with Milk and former Mayor George Moscone, who was killed along with Milk in 1978. The project was delayed after the flurry of activity surrounding the 2008 biopic Milk, for which Nicoletta served as a consultant.

Nicoletta said that one of his favorite items is a Marc Cohen portrait of Milk with his lover and business partner, the late Scott Smith.

“Both men were like gay parents

to me,” Nicoletta said in an email.

Nicoletta said that the decision to donate the items came about in a casual conservation with the Columbarium staff as they viewed Milk as an icon for the advancement of the LGBT movement.

“Harvey would find people who believed that they were not worthy, that they were less than or not normal. He looked them in the eye and said that’s not true. You are worthy, you are valuable, and you are normal,” said Columbarium general manager Bob Yount, 65.

Added Yount, a gay man, “He changed thousands of lives and he continues to inspire.”

The rededication became more relevant as news spread at the ceremony that Ireland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote in an election on May 22, which would have been Milk’s 85th birthday.

Mary Regan, funeral family service counselor at the Columbarium, quipped that the niche will be on display “in perpetuity.”

“It’s about time that his niche was eye-level,” joked Regan, 57, who identifies as questioning. “It’s great that his niche was upgraded to a better condo because his impact is large.”

The Columbarium is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and weekends from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

There are no immediate plans of rotating the items in Milk’s niche.

“The Columbarium is a well-kept secret as one of the great places in San Francisco,” said Nicoletta, who has a personal fondness for the location. “It’s a jaw-dropping beautiful Victorian historical landmark from the turn of the century. Everyone should visit at least once.”

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Nicoletta recalled celebrating Milk’s birthday.

“It brings a great feeling inside as we were close friends and would celebrate each other’s birthdays,” he said. “A lot of humor as we would throw pies in the face. It harkens back to my youth and birthdays were big amongst our friends.”

While he couldn’t be there for the ceremony, Nicoletta hopes people who watched the movie and others visit the Columbarium to see the niche.

5.75 wide by 7.625 tall “Harvey Milk changed the hearts and minds and continues to do so today,” said Yount. “Harvey did not like the dark, he liked living in the light.

Where there is light, there is life.”t

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<< Travel

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

t

Eat, drink and be Prideful in the Pacific Northwest

by Heather Cassell

T

he Pacific Northwest is brimming with festivals, making a trip up the coast well worth the adventure this summer.

The skies were clear and the days were warm in Portland and Seattle as the cities showed off their “festival weather” during a recent trip I took with my girlfriend.

To get into the summertime mood we hopped onto the Brewvana bus to tour some of Portland’s famed craft brews and toured the area’s famed food carts.

We quickly learned why locals and recent New York and San Francisco transplants living in these charming cities are bursting with pride and celebrating.

There’s a lot to be proud of with thriving LGBT communities hosting multiple Pride festivals and other LGBT-focused events, as well as popular mainstream activities.

Portland, known as the Rose City, and Seattle, whose nickname is the Emerald City, host five separate Pride festivals combined, not including thriving Dyke and Trans marches and other events throughout the summer.

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This year, Portland Pride is celebrating its 40th anniversary in style with Grammy-nominated Martha Wash as the headliner. The R&B singer, whose hit with the Weather Girls, “It’s Raining Men,” has been a gay club anthem since it hit the airwaves in 1983, takes the main stage at Tom McCall Waterfront Park June 14.

Portland’s LGBT community will also celebrate the one-year anniversary of marriage equality in Oregon and bisexual Governor Kate Brown, the former secretary of state who took over the state’s top job in February following the resignation of John Kitzhaber.

Brown is grand marshal of Portland’s Pride parade. Debra Porta, president of Pride Northwest Inc., which produces the parade, said it is also honoring Mia Macy, a transgender Portland woman who fought the U.S. government’s employment discrimination and settled her case in 2013.

The weeklong celebration kicks off with a benefit gala and film screening followed by parties at night and outdoor activities during the day leading up to the festival.

Portland Pride organizers anticipate upwards of more than 55,000 people to celebrate in the Rose City, according to Porta.

“This is a special year for us because we’ve had a full year of marriage,” said Porta. “There’s just lots happening in the community.”

Indeed there is, with Portland Black Pride June 13-14, followed

by Portland Latino Gay Pride’s 10th annual festival in July.

Drag queens will have their day in the sun too at the Peacock in the Park festival at the Washington Park Amphitheater June 28. The nearly 30-year-old drag variety show has brought out an estimated 5,000 people for a day of picnicking and other activities.

“It is just about having a great time with your friends,” said Kimberlee Van Patten, co-founder of Peacock Productions Inc., which produces Peacock in the Park.

“There is just something so romantic and liberating about being able to express your sexuality outdoors,” said Van Patten, 49, a lesbian who perceives drag as “gay folklore.”

Emerald City Pride

Lauren Palmer

Portland’s legendary drag queen Darcelle performs at Peacock in the Park 2014.

Pride continues in the Emerald City kicking off with the women’s event June 19, followed by Seattle Pride Week, June 23-28, which culminates with the Pride parade, produced by Seattle Pride’s parent organization Seattle Out and Proud, and the festival that follows at the Seattle Center, produced by PrideFest, on Sunday.

Lesbian comedian Julie Goldman of The People’s Couch, The Mindy Project, and The Big Gay Sketch Show will headline the second annual Women’s Pride.

An estimated 500 women and their friends will flock to Capitol Hill for a night of food, drinks, and laughter at a classy venue, said Sarah Toce, publisher of the Seattle Lesbian, which produces the event.

DJ Wildfire of Portland and Seattle’s Hot Flash Dance Parties will keep the energy going into the night.

“I’m excited to be here for Women’s Pride,” said Goldman. “I mean, there are a million lesbians in Seattle! So, hopefully every one of them comes out.”

Seattle Pride organizers anticipate attracting 450,000 Pridegoers to its 41st annual parade, said Anthony Coraggio, board member and director of marketing of Seattle Out and Proud.

The week is filled with many events and parties, but Coraggio, a 25-year-old bisexual man, said that Seattle Pride is reinvigorated, planning a pre-parade show and comedy series in addition to the annual Pride Picnic, Pride Brunch, and parade. Pridegoers will notice that there will be more opportunities to eat and drink with three new beer gardens and food trucks as well as increased bleacher seating along the parade route, he explained.

“We have an amazing LGBT community ready to welcome you with open arms,” said Coraggio.

“Seattle Pride brings the whole city together to celebrate our diversity and further equality.”

Geena Dabadghav

Feast Portland co-founders Jannie Huang, left, and her wife, Carrie Welch, are ready for this year’s event in September.

Over the rainbow

Pacific Northwest festivities continue with the fifth annual Freedom Fantasia, a musical patriotic drag extravaganza poking fun at and celebrating America and Americana during Fourth of July weekend in Seattle.

In September, food and art will converge in Portland with Feast Portland and the Time-Based Art Festival.

Former San Francisco Bay Area native Holcombe Waller, 39, a gay music artist, will open the festival with his latest piece, “Requiem Mass.” The concert’s goal is to bring together a choir of 100 singers from LGBT, allied, and faith communities at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral to perform original songs that promote a “positive conversation about gender and sexual diversity in churches,” said Waller.

Waller said that he was inspired to bring members of the faith and LGBT communities together by the inequality of California’s Proposition 8 marriage ban, which voters passed in 2008, and the changes in people’s hearts and minds since then. The U.S. Supreme Court tossed Prop 8 in June 2013 and same-sex marriage became legal in the state later that month.

The performance kicks off two weeks where artists from around the world transform Portland into a creative wonderland with live performances, visual arts, and creative workshops.

Feast Portland is one of North America’s hottest food festivals. The four-day celebration of gastronomic delights, now in its fourth year, has quickly captured food travelers’ attention and their hearts.

The festival, taking place September 17-20, attracts upward of 12,000 foodies who come out to eat, mix, and mingle with 150 acclaimed chefs.

“The festival exemplifies what everyone wanted in the Pacific Northwest,” said Carrie Welch, 36, a lesbian who founded the festival with her friend, Mike Thelin.

Welch noted that smaller food festivals attempted to sprout in Portland, but the timing wasn’t right. Now Portland – which was home to famed Chef James Beard, and the Pacific Northwest as a whole – is experiencing a culinary renaissance. Just look at the recent Top Chef finalist, Gregory Gourdet, a gay man and executive chef of Departure, Portland’s popular panAsian restaurant.

Welch, a former Food Network executive, and her wife, Jannie Huang, 37, who is creative director of the festival, sensed it was time soon after they said goodbye to the Big Apple and moved to Portland five years ago. They then met Thelin and set about creating the event.

See page 13 >>

t <<

Travel>>

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

Pacific Northwest

Executive Chef Sarah Schafer’s culinary creations are seared into my memory from a previous visit, and Mint/820, Por que no, and Southpark Seafood Restaurant.

In Seattle our friends turned us onto the Wild Ginger Asian Restaurant and Satay Bar, which served up delicious plates of pan-Asian cuisine. We followed that up with a scrumptious lunch of salad and sandwiches as guests of Chef Maria Hines at Agrodolce in the Fremont neighborhood, but it was dinner on our final night in the Emerald City that really blew us away.

We discovered the future of Seattle’s culinary scene as guests of young Chef de Cuisine Charlotte Glaves, who created a private tasting menu that was truly art in taste and presentation at Frolik Kitchen and Cocktails. The restaurant, reenvisioned from its former self as a part of the new Motif Hotel, sported bright colors in an open atmosphere. Guests enjoyed themselves playing pingpong, shuffleboard, and other games on the outdoor deck while eating finger foods and drinking cocktails. We topped off the evening at a Capitol Hill speak-

From page 12

Savory Pacific Northwest

From food carts to fine dining my girlfriend and I experienced a festival of flavors.

One of my best friends joined us in Portland as we spent an afternoon food cart hopping, sampling everything from burgers to falafels to spicy curry dishes. The night before we had the pleasure of being guests at Bluehour, one of gay restaurateur Bruce Carey’s family of restaurants that also includes 23Hoyt, Clarklewis, and Saucebox.

It immediately went on our list of restaurants we would return to the next time we are in town.

While we only had time to check out dining downtown, Portland’s culinary scene is expanding, with the newest restaurants taking up residence on the Northeast and Southeast sides of town in the Alberta Arts District and Southeast Division Street, respectively. Not to mention the craft brews, distilleries, and wineries offering beverages to wash down the bounty of tasty delights that are nearly on every corner.

Other great eats to consider are Irving Street Kitchen, where lesbian

See page 17 >>

FEED YOUR SOUL VISIT. EAT. SMILE. On a morning drive into Sacramento, you stop by a fruit stand for fresh strawberries. The kids think they’re candy and you smile. In Old Sacramento, you find trains and horse-drawn carriages. It’s evening now and the Capitol lights up. The kids think it’s a castle and you chuckle. A last stop at the Farmer’s Market the next morning leaves the kids tugging at your shirt. More strawberries please!

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<< International News

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

<<

Out in the World

From page 3

equality. It’s a very proud day to be Irish.”

Prime Minister Enda Kenny said he welcomed the outcome.

“With today’s vote, we have disclosed who we are: a generous, compassionate, bold and joyful people,” said Kenny, reported the Associated Press.

Standing beside him Deputy Prime Minister Joan Burton declared the victory “a magical moving moment, when the world’s beating heart is in Ireland.”

Finland’s same-sex marriage law won’t go into effect until 2017. Mexico is currently reviewing two cases that could make same-sex marriage legal throughout the country. In the United States the Supreme Court is expected to rule in June on a case that could establish a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Currently, 37 states have passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage.

Northern Ireland, the only country within the United Kingdom not to have same-sex marriage, banned it again for the fourth time last month.

Last week’s vote was historic for Ireland, once dominated by the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican.

In April, Ireland made expansive changes to its Children and Fam-

ily Relationships Bill allowing for same-sex adoption. However, it is just the beginning, said some activists. Laws surrounding surrogacy and transgender rights remain in debate.

“This is an incredibly important moment for Ireland and one that we are all immensely proud of, but it’s not the end, it’s just the beginning. We’re still a long way off of full equality,” wrote Broden Giambrone, director of Transgender Equality Network Ireland, in an email interview.

“So, we celebrate this victory before moving on to the next struggle,” Giambrone added. “Ireland, we can do it!”

Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993 under Ireland’s first female president, Mary Robinson.

Cause for celebration

The crowd outside Dublin Castle, where the ballots were counted, roared in joyous victory and the celebration spread from Dublin throughout Ireland with rainbow flags waving and LGBT people kissing in joy, media reports showed.

Mairead Lydon, a 33-year-old lesbian living in Galway with her partner and child, said there was a mixture of euphoric high and disbelief that the people of Ireland actu-

ally passed the same-sex marriage referendum. She was profoundly moved by the vote.

“I have been out and proud for years, but as my partner and I walked through the streets of Galway on Saturday, we somehow we felt prouder knowing that this little island supports our rights,” said Lydon in a Facebook interview. “[It] fills my heart with hope for my child’s future.”

Andrew Guerin, a 29-year-old Irish gay activist, declared last weekend as the “Weekend of Love and Acceptance,” on Facebook.

Irish people throughout the country and abroad expressed great pride.

“I can’t be more patriotic right now,” Guerin added. “My countrymen and women have now stated that they lawfully accept who I am and that the love I ‘may’ give is not inferior or less. It simply is not. Love is Love. Love is Life. Love gives us reason to carry on.”

The people’s vote in favor of same-sex marriage “proved that old-fashioned narrow-mindedness, bigotry and prejudice are not tolerated anymore,” wrote Guerin. “Ireland won’t stand for it. Progress can be made.”

Rachel Macmanus, a 40-year-old

ally, agreed, expressing “great relief and a general feeling of optimism and happiness,” and “validation that Ireland is very much not the Catholic country it used to be,” in a Facebook interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “[There’s] a great surge of national pride and a step forward for liberal thinking and a step back for all the hypocritical, bigotry, smallminded ridiculousness of Catholicism,” wrote Macmanus. “There is so much residual guilt here over the child abuse that took place for years in state-run institutions, the adoptions of Irish babies that were taken from their unmarried mothers against their will, and all the other dark acts that stain Irish history.” “[It] feels like a symbolic heralding of a new era,” Macmanus added.

Jeremiah O’Mahony, a gay Irishman who left the country in 1992 and now lives in San Diego, cried with pride.

“With tears streaming down my face I have never been more proud to be Irish,” O’Mahony, who declined to give his age, wrote in a Facebook post. “I’m so proud of my family and friends and so proud to be Irish. So proud of ye all.”

Reality check

Ireland has changed, activists and experts told reporters and stated on social media. The Vatican, which once had a tight grip on Ireland

Thank you, heroes.

t

with its theological rule up until the mid-1980s when that started unraveling, is now officially a thing of the past. Many experts and individuals cited the church’s child sex scandals, among other abuses, that cracked the faith of the Irish in the church, leading to last week’s historic vote.

The New York Times noted that Ireland’s campaign and vote for same-sex marriage symbolized more than marriage equality and that the vote “seemed as much about putting behind a past entrenched in theocracy and tradition.” A young generation raised during the scandals came out in droves – some even flying home – to vote. The election symbolized that “in a little more than a generation, Ireland has both distanced itself from the church and sharpened its secular identity,” wrote Times reporter Danny Hakim, detailing the nearly 30-year fall of the church and Ireland’s progress toward secularism.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said that Ireland’s vote for same-sex marriage was a wake-up call to the church.

“The church needs a reality check right across the board, to look at the things we are doing well and look at the areas where we need to say, ‘have we drifted away completely from young people?’” Martin said during an interview with RTE on Saturday.

Other church leaders also weighed in.

“Instead of perhaps feeling downcast by the decision, or wondering about the role of the church in the world today, I believe that Catholics must now pause, focus, pray, and advance with even greater energy,” said Monsignor John Kennedy, a Dublin native.

He added that Catholics should be “conscious that what they have received in the Lord’s teaching, in its entirety and not just on marriage, is not something that can be altered by a national vote, by a certain percentage of those in favor of a change.”

Sour grapes

Campaigners in the lone district to reject same-sex marriage blamed its political leaders. A majority of Ireland’s politicians in its various political parties backed the referendum.

Quinn, the Iona Institute director, stated in a news release that he knew the No campaign was facing an “uphill battle,” because of the lack of political support.

The Iona Institute is an Irish Catholic advocacy group that promotes the role of religion and family in society and was one of the key players in the opposition campaign.

The No campaigners also blamed their own lack of manpower and resources for their loss.

“Going forward, we will continue to affirm the importance of the biological ties and of motherhood and fatherhood,” said Quinn, reported the Catholic World Report. “We hope the government will address the concerns voters on the No side have about the implications for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.”

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The victory in Ireland may spur movement in other countries.

Soon after the vote, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi stood up in support of his country’s civil unions, reported the La Repubblica newspaper.

But advocates may push for more recognition.

Democratic Party leader Roberto Speranza, and other politicians agreed.

“What joy,” he declared after Ireland’s results on the referendum.

“Now it is Italy’s turn.”

German politicians also voiced support for moving same-sex marriage forward in that country.

See page 18 >>

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Community News>>

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

Housing activists cry foul as Pride partners with Airbnb

by David-Elijah Nahmod

A

irbnb, an online rental website in which people rent out their homes or guest rooms to travelers, has entered into a partnership with San Francisco Pride amid cries from housing activists that the service is significantly reducing the available housing stock in the city.

At a May 26 meetup at Airbnb headquarters at 888 Brannan Street in San Francisco, Airbnb employees Ricky Ulivi and Bola Akinsanya extoled the company’s benefits, urging homeowners and apartment renters to sign on during Pride, when visitors arrive in the city.

Airbnb is a sponsor of this year’s San Francisco Pride events.

“We have over a million listings in 18 countries and 34,000 cities,” Ulivi said. “We’ve just launched in Cuba.”

He assured people that safety was a prime concern to Airbnb. “We do our best to kick off bad apples,” he said. “We verify ID and social media accounts of guests, and hosts can always decline a guest.”

Ulivi, who said that he was both an Airbnb guest and a host, told attendees that the 14 percent city hotel tax is passed on to travelers. “We are just a platform,” he said, pointing out that hosts could charge guests whatever fee they thought was fair.

“It’s a cashless transaction,” said Akinsanya. “We debit the traveler and send the money to the host, either by auto-deposit, by check, whatever you prefer.” She said that the company receives a 3 percent commission for each transaction, which the traveler also pays.

Each member has a profile on the Airbnb site. Potential guests and hosts can message each other. Reviews are two-sided: guests can review hosts, but hosts can also review guests.

The company was founded in 2008, and is currently worth $20 billion, according to Wikipedia.

Ulivi said that Airbnb will be the official “host hotel” of this year’s Pride celebration, under its sponsorship agreement with the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee.

But many housing activists consider the sponsorship a betrayal of SF Pride’s equality mission. They claim that Airbnb does not promote equality in a city where many lower income and senior LGBT people continue to face evictions and skyrocketing rents. Average rents in the primarily LGBT Castro district recently surpassed a $4,000 per month average.

A study commissioned by gay Su-

pervisor David Campos don’t live in them. “But as visors will consider a proposal by and released this month we crack down on those Campos to limit Airbnb rentals by the city’s budget and abuses, we need to make in the city to 60 days per year, relegislative analyst states sure we aren’t throwing gardless if the host resides in the that 23 percent of vacant out the baby with the home or not. A counterproposal by units in the city are being bathwater and harming District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell used for tourist rentals San Francisco residents would restrict all Airbnb rentals to 58 or more days per year, who are living in their 120 days per year. rather than for permahomes and simply rentBasinger stated that every tenant nent housing, meaning ing out a room to make group in the city favored further rethat the units likely are ends meet,” he said. strictions on Airbnb rentals. He said no longer on the rental AIDS Housing Althey had formed a coalition called market. liance/San Francisco Share Better SF. Its mission, accordCurrent city law speciDirector Brian Basinger ing to Basinger, is “to appropriately fies that there are no limpointed to the budget and regulate this industry to protect the its on the number of days legislative analyst’s report. majority of San Franciscans.”

Khaled Sayed per year that a person “Airbnb is responKwan said that Airbnb, and can rent out a room in a Housing activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca said Airbnb sible for removing up hosts, oppose the proposals made residence in which they deprives neighborhoods of rental units. to 2,000 units from

by Campos and Farrell, citing ecolive full time. If the host the housing stock,” he nomic hardships they could impose is renting out a unit in said, referring to figures on hosts. Kwan also pointed out an which they don’t reside, in the report. “We are additional benefit of hosting.

Wiener said. “Renting out a spare they are limited to 90 days per year. hemorrhaging housing that’s being “So many hosts I know get so bedroom as a short term rental is Some housing activists claim flipped for other uses and we will much pleasure in the cultural exhelping people stay in their homes that landlords are hoarding vacant never get ahead of this if City Hall change of opening their homes to and in San Francisco.” apartments and illegally renting keeps letting these housing leakages international travelers,” he said.

Wiener said that the city is opthem out through Airbnb without continue.”

Officials at SF Pride did not respond posed to units being used as full reporting the correct number of On June 9, the Board of Superto an email seeking comment.t time Airbnb rentals by owners who days to the city.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the Housing Rights Committee told the Bay Area Reporter that Airbnb is “depriving our city and our LGBT neighborhood of much needed units. It’s contributing to the eviction epidemic. It’s displacing queer folks in the Castro. It is not helping our community.”

Avicolli Mecca said that some landlords were evicting tenants so they can rent out on Airbnb and “make a killing.” He also said that Pride’s partnership with Airbnb was “a slap in the face to our community at a time when so many of us our being evicted and displaced.”

Peter Kwan, a gay man in North Beach who is an Airbnb host, disagreed. “Current ordinances already make short term rentals of secondary units illegal and criminal,” he said. “We support the enforcement of the law.”

Kwan, who is not an Airbnb employee, is the founder of Homeshares of San Francisco, a support group for city hosts. He pointed to a Experience an eco-friendly oasis of exceptional report by San Francisco Chief Economist Ted Egan, which states that service located just steps to Waikiki Beach, vacancy rates in the city remained stable between 2008 and 2013. shopping and dining. 72 modern guestrooms.

“Homesharing allows many San Franciscans and their families to Exclusive privileges include our convenient afford to stay in the city by helping them to make ends meet and to pay mobile concierge service. their mortgage or rent,” Kwan said.

Gay Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents the Castro, agreed.

“Many San Franciscans are having trouble making ends meet,”

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James Olivera

B.A.R. photog, husband, in Rome ceremony

F

ernando Proietti Orlandi, left, and Bay Area Reporter freelance photographer Bill Wilson pose on the Mayor’s balcony overlooking the Roman forum with the Colosseum in the background after their names were added to the Civil Union registry of the City of Rome in a May 21 ceremony. They join 20 other couples registered by Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino during a previous ceremony.

The status of civil unions confers on the couples the same rights and recognition the city provides married couples.

The ceremonies took place at the Sala della Protomoteca del Campidoglio. The Campidoglio is the plaza designed by Michelangelo and is site of both the mayor’s office and the Capitoline Museums.

While Marino was unable to be present for these ceremonies various city councilors and officials were delegated by the mayor to serve on his behalf. The person who presided over Orlandi and Wilson’s ceremony was Consigliere Municipale Sara Martorano, an Italian equivalent to a San Francisco supervisor.

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<< Sports

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

t

The life and death of the Gay Games, 1982-2018

by Roger Brigham

T

he Gay Games were launched in San Francisco in 1982 on a shoestring budget, thousands of volunteer hours, and a revolutionary dream to raise the visibility of, and respect for, gays and lesbians through participation in an inclusive first-class sports and cultural festival. Now, after having transformed the lives of tens of thousands of LGBT athletes from across the globe for more than three decades, it appears the mission and the quadrennial event itself will be dead

after Gay Games X in Paris in 2018.

The family of the man who founded the Gay Games wants nothing to do with what comes next.

The Gay Games obituary was delivered earlier this month in the form of a notice from the board of the Federation of Gay Games that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association, producer of the rival World Outgames,

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to host a joint quadrennial event starting in 2022.

Unlike the Gay Games, GLISA’s World Outgames have not had robust bid competition from prospective hosts; choose event sites by a process that allows for proxy voting; and rely on holding conferences and workshops rather than sports and culture to advance human rights.

A site selection process is scheduled to begin this year and end in 2017 even though such details as to how a host’s sports programs would be overseen by the newly formed licensing body or even what the name of the event will be have not yet been worked out. An executive agreement to drop the Gay Games name from a proposed merged event was made several years ago in what was called the Manchester Declaration, but was hastily withdrawn after vociferous objections from Gay Games supporters.

Gay Games loyalists say they do not know which they dread more: the Gay Games name being dropped, or the name being kept but the mission skewed away from its historic focus on sports – in which athletes pay for the honor of participating – in favor of human rights conferences with paid speakers. Either prospect apparently stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in pledged support from those who have been most intricately involved with the Gay Games.

San Francisco’s Gene Dermody, winner of last year’s male Tom Waddell Award, the Gay Games’ highest honor, has competed in every Gay Games, served the FGG as president twice, and overseen the technology and sports committees for many years during decades of board service. He is currently an

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The Waddell Lewinsteins at Gay Games II, 1986, from left, baby Jessica, Tom, and Sara.

honorary lifetime member (HLM).

He said many of his fellow HLMs have been in contact with him in recent years to talk about removing the Gay Games from their wills as the FGG has dabbled with talks to drop the Gay Games in favor of holding an event with GLISA. He said he has warned the FGG board about having already lost $300,000 in bequeathals with the likelihood they are about to lose much more.

“Without naming names, based upon my personal conversations and dealings with HLMs specifically to bequeathals, I would say the FGG stands to lose conservatively today about $400,000,” Dermody said.

“About seven years ago, the amount of bequeathals was about $700,000.

But previous talks about ‘One Quadrennial Event,’ specifically the Manchester Declaration in which the presidents proposed dropping the Gay Games name, took a toll.

Now this 1WE (One World Event) nonsense will finish it off to zero. I removed the Gay Games from my will years ago, and that was worth about $60,000. I am sure there will be a lot more money removed from FGG bequeathals as word gets out that the Gay Games brand and mission will be gone. I have been warning the FGG for years about this issue, but there is no FGG discussion with those who question this mindless merger.”

Another one of those HLMs who said he has removed the Gay Games from his will is Oakland’s Derek Liecty. Liecty served as a soccer official in Gay Games I, helped secure venues for Gay Games II, and served on the FGG board for many years. He won the male Tom Waddell Award in 2006.

“I know I removed the Gay Games from my will years ago when these talks started,” Liecty said. “The MOU is an absolute travesty. If this plan goes through, it will be the end of the Gay Games as [founder] Dr. Tom Waddell envisioned them.”

Nothing in his work for the Gay Games has made Liecty prouder than his work on the FGG’s scholarship committee, which has brought hundreds of needy athletes from a battery of underrepresented, repressed countries to the Gay Games.

“As a member of the Gay Games Scholarship Committee for years, my biggest inspiration from the Gay Games was always seeing those recipients walking into the opening ceremonies and realizing for the first time that they are not alone,” Liecty said. “The Gay Games have done so much to help the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender athletes through the years. It is absolutely absurd that some organization with no legacy to speak of in the gay sports movement, GLISA, should be allowed to co-sponsor the Gay Games, which has established its legacy through the years and which is a proven entity for improving people’s lives through sports, not conferences.

They bring nothing to the table.”

Also at stake is the primary ongoing source of scholarship money. Gay Games veteran Jeffry Pike administers funds that are dedicated solely for Gay Games scholarships. “Should the Federation of Gay Games be dissolved, the Coe family and I would meet to discuss the future of the Roy M. Coe Scholarship Fund,” Pike told

the Bay Area Reporter.

The FGG said it was guided by a survey last year to undertake the steps for a merged event with conferences being included. That survey was actually from a broad range of people in and out of the Gay Games movement, including many who had never been to a Gay Games or who believed sports were not an important component.

The most comprehensive true survey of Gay Games participants was taken after the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney. In it, participants overwhelmingly rejected the idea of using host resources to stage conferences, workshops and parties; and affirmed a program emphasizing inclusive sports with a minor cultural component. Those results were the basis of a 2003 white paper called the “Image of the Gay Games” that dictated the parameters under which subsequent Gay Games have been held.

Although later Gay Games have not had the success of the initial Gay Games with regard to gender parity, they have had some remarkable, even historic, moments when it comes to building a more inclusive sports world. In 1982, the staid New York Times, which refused to use the word “gay,” reported the officially sanctioned wrestling results of the “Homosexual Games.”

In 1990, the Vancouver Gay Games introduced a martial arts tournament in which individuals from different martial arts disciplines could compete against each other.

In 1994 figure skating was added to the program and, in a direct challenge to the heterosexist International Skating Union, same-sex pairs skating was offered. That was the same year the Gay Games introduced women’s wrestling with 10 weight classes (10 years before the Olympic Games had women wrestling in just four weight classes) and Olympic diver Greg Louganis came out publicly in a video message greeting his fellow athletes.

In 2002 the Gay Games allowed transgender athletes to enter without undergoing the draconian gender testing policies being used at the time by the Olympics.

In 2006, two Chicago residents donated the funds to bring an entire lesbian South African soccer team to the Gay Games.

In 2010, the Gay Games voted to reject World Anti-Doping Association drug testing protocols because they discriminate against HIV-positive athletes.

The marketing challenges of staging a new event with a new name should be stiff. Organizers of the 2009 Copenhagen World Outgames said they faced enormous difficulties trying to market a new and relatively little known brand name and had trouble selling folks on the idea of an event that was so multifaceted rather than being focused on sports.

If both GLISA and the FGG stick to the letter of the law, they would be precluded from using their current contact databases to market an event that is neither the Gay Games nor the World Outgames. Similarly, they could not use images from past Gay Games to market a new event because that would violate the release agreements participants sign when registering for the Gay Games.

“I am 100 percent opposed to this proposal,” said Sara Waddell Lewinstein, an original Gay Games board member, the widow of Gay Games founder Waddell, and the winner of the female Tom Waddell Award in 2010. “The Gay Games have always been about individuals and families being able to participate in sports regardless of their athletic ability.

They have not been about conferences. If Tom wanted conferences, See page 18 >>

t <<

Community News>>

Homeless deaths

From page 3

sible criminal investigations won’t be disclosed.

The outreach team’s medical director will check health department data to see if any of the agency’s programs have provided care to the person.

In cases where there’s no record, data would be brought to the outreach team’s clinical leadership for discussion.

When records are found, additional information “as to whether the death had any preventable aspects” may be obtained from the person’s primary care provider and other health workers, the committee overview says.

Other steps may include outreach team clinical leaders discussing improvements to service so that similar deaths are prevented.

If the person who died isn’t someone outreach staff has worked with, the team will talk about how to contact people who’re facing similar risks.

There will be quarterly meetings to talk about recent deaths or trends.

People from the medical examiner’s office, the outreach team, the HOPE office, city homeless programs, and others may be invited. Other meetings may be called if needed.

‘30 to 100 deaths annually’

In an interview Thursday, May 21, Dodge said that based on the work of the previous committee and the sharing of information between agencies, there “could be 30 to 100 deaths annually” for the committee to review.

There will likely be an annual report.

The panel isn’t yet reviewing any cases, but Dodge said he’s “very in-

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Pacific Northwest

From page 13

easy, the Knee High Stocking Company, sipping artesian cocktails.

If we had more time we would have revisited some of our favorite restaurants, such as the Cafe Campagne, Cafe Flora, the Pink Door, or any one of celebrity chef Tom Douglas’ restaurants, just to name a few.

During the morning we shopped and sampled foods at Pike Place Market as stands opened. While walking around we discovered quite a few LGBT-owned booths, such as Sweet Success, a family-owned honey stand run by Mykaela Wills, a transgender woman.

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

terested in learning” about Walton’s death.

“I think that would be a great case to review,” he said.

So far, other agencies have been cooperative, Dodge said.

“It’s been nice to see everyone’s been on the same page, as far as openness to sharing and working on this,” he said, adding that “there hasn’t been any obstruction or hand-wringing about what the information would bring.” People seem willing “to look at all that information and use it to improve what we’re doing,” he said.

In response to emailed questions, acting Medical Examiner Administrator Christopher Wirowek said his office is talking to officials with the outreach team and others to establish the quarterly review, which Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Hunter will facilitate.

“The key objective of this quarterly meeting is to focus on deceased individuals who may have resided and/or died in an encampment, temporary housing, or shelter facility” in the city, Wirowek said.

“Discussions may potentially include decedents who have utilized, or even declined, Department of Public Health services.”

The review committee may be able to reach out to those who knew the people who died and find ways to help them.

The medical examiner’s office “is establishing protocol in order to share key social information with members of the homeless outreach team to provide more timely accessibility to the social services made available” through the health de-

partment, Wirowek said.

If it’s appropriate, workers may reach out to other homeless people who knew the person that died and see if they’re open to help, Dodge said.

Asked whether there could be punishment for staffers in cases where it’s found they could have taken more action before someone’s death, Dodge said, “I don’t want to preclude” anything.

“The intent is to really improve the work that we’re doing and to decrease the amount of people that end up dying due to conditions of their homelessness,” he said.

Dodge said the committee got underway Tuesday, May 19.

Rachael Kagan, a health department spokeswoman, said in an email exchange Thursday, May 21, “There has been a meeting ... to start the planning process.” but that’s “not the same as the committee itself starting this week.”

Kagan said it’s premature for Dr. Barry Zevin, the homeless outreach team’s medical director, to comment.

“We at DPH are working with the medical examiner’s office on developing a plan for the review of homeless deaths,” she said. “Similar efforts are already taking place in New York City and Philadelphia, and we look forward to making progress here.”

Dufty, the HOPE director, has explained the last review committee’s end by saying the “medical examiner’s office has had some peaks and valleys over the years, and this protocol was discarded.” His comment was an apparent reference to past leadership problems at the agency.t

Dreaming in emeralds and roses

our fingertips. Everywhere we wanted to go to was easily walkable or accessible via Portland’s public transit system.

I also suggest the Jupiter Hotel, which is on the other side of the Burnside Bridge, but still offers easy access to downtown Portland and other attractions.

The same was true in Seattle at Inn at the Market.

“You are literally steps to everything that Seattle has to offer, Pike Place Market, shopping, dining, and the arts,” said Troy Thrall, 50, a old gay man who is the director of sales and marketing of Inn at the Market.

“Not to mention that the Pride parade is only three blocks away.”

Many sights in Portland and Seattle were close by as we were guests of Hotel Vintage Portland and the Inn at the Market.

Hotel Vintage Portland, a Kimpton property, recently underwent a multi-million dollar renovation that brought the gems of Oregon’s wine country and funkiness into its walls, giving guests a complete feeling of being part of the community.

It didn’t hurt that it’s located in the heart of downtown on the edge of the Pearl District, offers game and movie rooms, and is very LGBT-friendly.

Food trucks, restaurants, and shopping at some of Portland’s famed stores, such as Powell’s Books, were at

LGBT PROGRESSIVE CATHOLICS † OUR FAMILIES & FRIENDS

Celebrating our Sexuality and Love as Gifts of God Liturgy & Social: Every Sunday 5pm First Sunday Movie Night Second Sunday Potluck Supper Third Wednesday Faith Sharing Group 1329 Seventh Avenue † info@dignitysanfrancisco.org Follow us on Facebook!

ebar.com

See page 18 >>

IN MEMORIUM DWAYNE PATRICK CALIZO Dwayne Patrick Calizo (Boobie/Kekoa/Mama) was the truest of bohemians. A devotee to the transcendent power of art, activism, teaching, friendship, family, the underdog, irreverence, diversity, laughter, forgiveness and above all, LOVE. As his mother said, Dwayne had no black book where he wrote down the people he would not forgive, and when he did feign writing in one (purely for dramatic affect), he did so with disappearing ink. He had a voice unlike any of us had ever heard, and an unrelenting belief that everyone could sing. EVERYONE had a voice that needed to be heard. In retrospect, it may have been because it was lonely singing from the next world; somehow still, he managed to pull many of us halfway there. Surrounded by love, family, friends and singing, he passed on from a pulmonary embolism on May 17, 2015 in San Francisco, California at the age of 52.

Dwayne was born in Fort Sill, Oklahoma on March 15th, 1963 but he spent most of his early life in Hawaii. He attended Honowai Elementary where he learned to play his first musical instrument, the ukulele. He frequently told the story of when all the neighborhood kids would gather outside his bathroom window shouting requests as he sang in the shower. They called the game “Radio”; Dwayne took a lot of showers. He graduated Leilehua High School in 1982, and Leeward Community College before attending University of Hawaii where he won numerous national awards for classical singing. He then went on to create “The Space” in Los Angeles, a community art and music venue, which served as a safe space for rival gangs to interact/create art with one another. He was also a hospice nurse during the early days of the AIDS crisis, putting his own life on the line to help others pass with dignity and grace.

Dwayne then moved to San Francisco, meeting up with his new partner Zak where he formed ghosttown experimental theater, followed by the Experimental Performance Institute, the first BA, MA and MFA Program in Queer and Activist Performance in the world with a group of sf-based artists, as well as Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, dedicated to queer artists of color, trans artists and artists living with HIV/AIDS. As an individual artist, he originated 7 Rock Musicals, 10 original dance theater pieces and 5 solo albums, and collectively was awarded some of the most prestigious artistic grants and awards in the country. His life both in Hawaii and San Francisco was a beautifully composed song, filled with countless verses of relationships with family and friends.

Dwayne’s teaching, producing and artistic work has impacted innumerable artists and activists across the globe, and at the time of his death, he was gearing up to launch a new school/production company in Los Angeles. He died committed to the things he loved: his beliefs, his partner, his art, his family and his friends. Dwayne struggled with many things: mental illness, AIDS, poverty and Addiction. Dwayne taught us to stand up for ALL of who we are, and to use humility, commitment and love to navigate through. He died a hero.

He is survived not only by his profound legacy, but by his mother, Elizabeth Loggins and father, Bonifacio Calizo (deceased), loving partner Tommy, Artistic Partners Zak, Erika and Jessica, siblings Deborah (Richard) DeVincent, Robert (Linda) Calizo, Denise (Cecil) Hale, Theresa (John) Rosario, John A. Calizo (deceased), Shawn (Erica) Calizo, Blayne (Stephanie) Calizo and Christopher (Diana) Calizo. His ohana also included 16 nieces and nephews, 27 grandnieces and nephews and more true friends, and dedicated students then one could count.

A celebration of Dwayne’s life is being planned for this summer. Please visit http://www.youcaring.com/memorialfordwayne

for updated details on this event and for ways to give in his honor, including the Dwayne P. Calizo Memorial Scholarship Fund for Activist Artists.

SAN FRANCISCO

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MakeWine the choice yours. & Cheese Open House Friday, July 19, 2013 2—5pm

There are available niches in the new RSVP Required: (415) 752-8791 Hall of Olympians and a few beautiful 1 Loraine Court—San Francisco, CA 94118 stained glass locations in the original building.

Discounts and 0% financing are currently avalable.

Call 415.752.7891 Visit us at One Loraine Court in the heart of the Richmond COA 534

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

<<

Jock Talk

he would have put them in. If they go through with this, I want Tom’s name taken off of it. I want our pictures taken off, everything. And I want to see financial statements from each of the Gay Games and from the World Outgames before we talk about adding anything.”

Financial statements have been released for every Gay Games, four of which have finished in the black.

The first World Outgames lost more than $4 million, the second WOG made a modest profit, and no financial statement of WOG 3 in 2013 has been released.

Waddell Lewinstein said she thought the Gay Games should work on improving its product, not deserting its mission.

“Truthfully, I’m disgusted with this taking up so much time,” she said. “Take the time that’s been spent with the Outgames and work on making the Gay Games better.

We need to be reaching out to more athletes. We need to bring in more athletes from around the world. We need to get the next younger generation and they don’t want to come for conferences. If you want to piggyback conferences alongside, do that and have your own entity.”

Of course, this could be a Princess Bride scenario and the corpse of the

Gay Games could prove to be only mostly dead, not completely dead. It is possible that the FGG board will realize before it’s too late that making decisions about its sports mission based on a poll of people outside of sports may not be an intelligent thing to do and certainly not within the spirit of its legal duties to safeguard the brand and mission.

But for now, the mission is dead.

The obituary is in the MOU, which does not value the passion, commitment and volunteerism that united LGBT individuals from across the globe. So RIP, baby – it was a great ride and a great mission while it lasted. We are forever indebted to you.t

<<

Zoo and other downtown hotels, the Max Hotel and the aforementioned Motif Hotel.

three-hour scenic route up Highway 5 to Seattle.t

From page 16

Pacific Northwest

From page 17

It’s true. Guests are steps away from much of what Seattle has to offer as my girlfriend and I experienced. As indicated by its name, the Inn at the Market is located at Pike Place Market.

I also suggest the 9 Cranes Inn located in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood next to the Woodland Park

<<

News Briefs

From page 5

the Castro and along upper Market Street, to provide a better insight into who is shopping in the district and what stores people felt were missing.

A bakery, butcher shop, and additional clothing stores, particularly for women, are among the businesses deemed most desirable to attract to the Castro. The number one retailer many survey takers said they wished would open in the neighborhood is Trader Joe’s.

Some of the ideas being proposed to promote the Castro to retailers and shoppers alike include developing a brand identity for the area, showcasing the businesses that already exist, and proactively reaching out to property owners and commercial brokers to discuss with them the types of businesses that would generate support from the neighborhood.

The meeting will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. at 2175 Market Street inside a storefront where a market hall for local food and beverage vendors is being constructed.

For more information about the project, visit www.castroretail.com.

<<

Out in the World

From page 14

Green Party leader Katrin Goring-Eckardt called out Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The Merkel faction cannot just sit out the debate on marriage for all ... I am confident that the Irish vote will accelerate equality in Germany,” Goring-Eckardt told Die Welt newspaper.

<<

LGBT shelter

From page 10

and our goal will be to assign an LGBT person to the LGBT space.

Hiring is still in process for new staff to accommodate the expansion,” Phillips said.

The $163,000 in operating funding for the LGBT space comes from the city’s Human Services Agency and will be combined with Dolores Street’s current contract to operate its other three shelters, Phillips said.

The shelter can’t deny access to non-LGBTs based on their orientation.

Basinger said they’re working to make clear to people “what the shelter is, and the kind of environment we’re creating there, but there’s no way you can – or would we want to – deny somebody access to shelter because they’re not LGBT. It’s in the affirmative marketing.”

Getting to Portland and Seattle

It’s an easy hour and a half flight from San Francisco to Portland or a two-hour flight to Seattle. My girlfriend and I enjoyed a smooth flight to Portland on Virgin America and then rented a car to drive the nearly

Author to hold panel discussion in SF

Full-disclosure: The Seattle Lesbian is a media partner with Girls That Roam, an online women’s travel magazine published by Heather Cassell.

See the online guides for Seattle and Portland at http://www.ebar. com for more information on festivals and other resources.

Community Boards, the nation’s

oldest public conflict resolution center, will hold its fifth annual Peacemaker Awards Friday, June 5 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. at City Club of San Francisco, 155 Sansome Street.

The event includes breakfast, workshop, luncheon, and the awards ceremony.

This year’s honorees include Valerie Tulier, who will receive the Raymond Shonholtz Visionary Peacemaker Award. Tulier is a leader in youth development, violence prevention, and policy advocacy in the Mission district.

The Alternatives to Violence Project will receive the Community Boards Leadership Peacemaker Award for its work with youth gangs and at-risk teens.

Ja’Marc Allen-Henderson will receive the Gail Sadalla Rising Peacemaker Award. A senior at June Jordan School for Equity, AllenHenderson became a peer mediator and has conducted mediation sessions on campus. He’s also a peer mentor for incoming freshmen.

Tickets are $175 for the entire morning or $125 for the luncheon and awards only. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit http://communityboards.org/in-the-community/ sfpeacemakerawards/.t

Jens Spahn, a member of the executive committee of Merkel’s Christian Democrats Party, was optimistic that Germany could have same-sex marriage.

“One should think, what the Catholic Irish can do, we can too,” Spahn was quoted by Welt Online as saying. “The population is often more ahead in these matters than we think.”

On Wednesday, however, Merkel’s

spokesman rejected moving forward on same-sex marriage, Reuters reported.

Note every world leader was happy with Ireland’s vote.

Australian Prime Minster Tony Abbott dismissed his country voting on same-sex marriage. However, Australian politicians were hopeful that marriage equality will be passed before the end of this year, according to media reports.t

‘A passageway’

“This shelter is community-driven, and activists fought and stayed the course to make it happen,” Dufty said. He added, “This is so much more than 24 beds. This is a recognition that our services have not always been accessible to members of the LGBT community, because of hostility and ignorance. This is about a system recognizing the unique needs of LGBT individuals, particularly to be safe and welcomed.”

Gay Supervisor David Campos, whose District 9 includes the shelter and who called for the 2010 hearing, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Phillips said that along with Dufty, Campos’ staff “have been critical to advancing this project and ensuring that the shelter opens” in June. “They helped significantly to ask city departments to make this project a priority, and deserve a lot of credit for bringing the project to fruition.”t

A panel discussion will take place Friday, June 5 at 5 p.m. that will feature participants from the new book, The Human Agenda: Conversations About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity by Joe Wenke.

Wenke, a writer, social critic, and LGBTQI rights activist, will be facilitating the panel. His new book is a series of conversations between him and various LGBTQI people, several of whom will be at the event. They include Kevin Fisher-Paulsen, a gay man who is the author of A Song for Lost Angels, which details the story of how he and his husband became the foster parents of triplets but subsequently lost the children due to the intervention of an anti-gay social worker.

Fashion model and event producer Gisele Alicea, also known as Gisele Xtravaganza, will also be part of the panel, as will writer, lecturer, and intersex activist Hida Viloria, who is the chair of the Organization Intersex International.

The event is free and open to the public.

Community Boards to hold Peacemaker Awards

Housing activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who like Basinger has been advocating for the shelter for years, said, “We’ve taken a lot of pains to make sure this is going to be a safe space for LGBT folks,” and “for people to come in off the streets. Hopefully, it will be a passageway to permanent housing and other things in their lives.”

Avicolli Mecca added, “It was frustrating that it took so long. Part of that is on the city, and how the city operates.”

He said that while “the city did help a lot” in getting the shelter open, “we’ve got to remember this came from the community. It came from a very real need in our community.”

Bevan Dufty, a gay man who serves as director of Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement for Mayor Ed Lee and who’s been a strong backer of the shelter, echoed Avicolli Mecca’s remarks.

t

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036426000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DIVINO SPUNTINO, 646 CORBETT AVE, #508, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KRISTEN CONNOLLY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/13/15.

MAY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036418700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PIXMETTLE, 156 2ND ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KAPIL DEV DHINGRA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/08/15.

MAY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036455000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE RELAXATION LAB, 830 28TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ITAI ARGAMAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/28/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/28/15.

MAY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036464500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CHRONICLED, 609 MISSION ST, #300, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed ARTCOA, 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 05/04/15.

MAY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036418800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EL MAJAHUAL REST., 1142 VALENCIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed HERNANDO LEDESMA & REGINA LEDESMA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/09/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/09/15.

MAY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036453900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FIRE ROAD, 42 WINFIELD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed FIRE ROAD LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/17/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/28/15.

MAY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036433500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CHIROPRACTIC FOR HUMANITY, 126 WAVERLY PL., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WARREN ZHAO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/16/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036463800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GRIEF COUNSELING, 1400 GEARY BLVD #1402, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BETTY J. CARMACK. 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 05/04/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036457900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ARTMAR HOTEL, 433 ELLIS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed AKSHAY AMIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/28/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/30/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036439400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOLD BAY APP, 359 11TH AVE #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed FREDERICO SILVA RESENDE COUTRIM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/20/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/20/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036437600

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551136 In the matter of the application of: JEFFREY STEPHEN MARCUSJOHN, 451 KANSAS ST #505, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JEFFREY STEPHEN MARCUSJOHN, is requesting that the name JEFFREY STEPHEN MARCUSJOHN, be changed to ANXO MAXXUM FLYNN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 7th of July 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036465000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SALON DE BAR, 322 HAYES ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JENNIFER DE BAR. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/04/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/04/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036466900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOSPITALITY INSTITUTE OF SAN FRANCISCO, 607 MARKET ST, 3RD FLOOR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed UOYE LLT, INC (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/05/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036437500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DIVANO HOME, 3251 20TH AVE #209, SAN FRANCISCO, C A 94132. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed DIVANO HOME INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/17/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/17/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036468200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: IN TICKETING, 660 MARKET ST, FLOOR4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed VENDINI, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/26/14.

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

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036435700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 60 FOOT FARM, 1746 33RD AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by co-partners, and is signed JEFFREY G. FOSTER & RICHARD P. CABLER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/17/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036471400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOBSON’S CHOICE BAR, 1601 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed PINE & DAVIS, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/07/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/07/15.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 NOTICE OF HEARING – DECEDENT’S ESTATE OR TRUST: DONNA MARIE MADISON-BELL, PETITIONER, ESTATE OF SAMMY LEE BELL, DECEDENT, SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-15-298702

This notice is required by law. This notice does not require you to appear in court, but you may attend the hearing if you wish. Notice is given that Donna Marie Madison-Bell has filed Amended Petition for Probate. You may refer to the filed documents for more information (Some documents filed with the court are confidential.)

A HEARING on the matter will be held as follows: June 8, 2015, 9:00 a.m. Room 204 in Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102. Attorney for petitioner: Hilary Hedemark (SBN255882), Law Offices of Hilary Hedemark, 601 Van Ness Ave., Ste 2056, San Francisco, CA 94102; (415) 692-1503

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, 400 MC ALLISTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102 FILE CNC-15-551170

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CITY SLICKERZ; CITY SLICKERS, 1151 WEBSTER ST #3, SAN FRANCICO, CA 94115.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JAMAR M. COLBERT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/17/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/17/15.

In the matter of the application of: CINDY LEE, 5429 B GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner CINDY LEE is requesting that the name CINDY LEE; CYNTHIA LEE ENG; CYNTHIA LEE FENG, be changed to CYNTHIA LEE. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room. 514 on the 23rd of July 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MANI-PEDI SPA, 1545 POLK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed QUYNH LAU. 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 05/18/15.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036488600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MUZZAMMAL K. QURESHI DBA QURESHI TRANSIT, 118 DECATUR COURT, HERCULES, CA 94547. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MUZZAMMAL K. QURESHI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/01/2014. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/18/15.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036481700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BINGHAM RENTALS, 682 SHOTWELL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EDWARD M. BINGHAM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/14/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/14/15.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036479500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GREEN CONSTRUCTION BUILDER CORP, 176 CAPISTRANO AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LAWRENCE SITU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/18/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/13/15.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036477600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EAST BAY SIGN CO, 870 HARRISON, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed IMAGEWORKS MANUFACTURING INC. (IL). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/12/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/12/15.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036487900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE SMOG SHOP, 276 11TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CHRIS DISCOUNT MUFFLER & BRAKE INC. (CA). 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 05/18/15.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036453500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: STREAT FLEET, 428 11TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed STREAT FLEET LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/27/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/27/15.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036486700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: STORIE’Z STYLE BBQ MOBILE, 2261 MARKET ST #643, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed STORIE’Z STYLE BBQ MOBILE LLC (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/14/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/18/15.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035803500

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: FLOURISH SKIN CARE AND WAXING, 1905 UNION ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by MACAELA P. STEELE. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/25/14.

MAY 21, 28, JUNE 04, 11, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036481500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NORTHERN SKY HEALING, 201 DUNCAN ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KATHLEEN WHITING. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/14/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/14/15.

MAY 28, JUNE 04, 11, 18, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036494500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: URBAN PACIFIC DENTAL ASSOCIATES, 450 SUTTER ST #2640, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WENLI LOO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/19/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/21/15.

MAY 28, JUNE 04, 11, 18, 2015

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-034676200 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: HOBSON’S CHOICE BAR, 1601 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by GOOD TIME LAST NIGHT LLC. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/25/12.

MAY 14, 21, 28, JUNE 04, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036487100

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VICTOR’S SNACK SHOP, 2380 SAN BRUNO AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VICTOR RODRIGUEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/17/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/18/15.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ROOMSTORM, 5758 GEARY BLVD #545, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed WALKSOURCE, 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 05/15/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RAREFIELD DESIGN BUILD, 766 VALENCIA ST 3RD FLR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed ONE INCH TO THE LEFT, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/20/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/20/15.

MAY 28, JUNE 04, 11, 18, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036490600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DUTCHMAN’S FLAT, 601 19TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed MORTAR & MASH ONE, LLC (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 05/20/15.

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MAY 28, JUNE 04, 11, 18, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036486600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AQUA SPA, 14 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118-2418. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed AQUA SPA, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/18/15.

MAY 28, JUNE 04, 11, 18, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036496300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: REVEILLE COFFEE ROASTERS, 610 LONG BRIDGE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94158. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SHY GIRL LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/21/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/22/15.

MAY 28, JUNE 04, 11, 18, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036490700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE PEARL, 601 19TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed MORTAR & MASH ONE, LLC (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 05/20/15.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HUSHCONCERTS, 1 AVENUE OF THE PALMS #131, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94130. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed MAMALAYLA, 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 05/11/15.

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COCK?

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Out &About

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23

O&A

23

Vol. 45 • No. 22 • May 28-June 3, 2015

www.ebar.com/arts

Ballet beat

Oakland Ballet’s 50th, SF Ballet School demos

by Paul Parish

D

oes Oakland need a ballet company, or San Francisco a ballet school? “O, reason not the need,” as King Lear said to his maddening daughter. “If to go warm were gorgeous, thou needst not what thou gorgeous wearest, which scarcely keeps thee warm.” But if Oakland wants a ballet company – and it certainly did look that way

last Saturday afternoon, at the Oakland Ballet Company’s 50th reunion, which had the Paramount Theater close to full and vibed to the hilt on nostalgia and civic pride – chances are looking better that they could make the comeback after the Loma Prieta earthquake laid them low. And across the Bay, the students of the San Francisco Ballet School looked very impressive indeed in their annual graduation exercises.

See page 22 >>

Oakland Ballet’s L’Apres-midi d’un faune (2007).

Choreographer: Vaslav Nijinsky.

Restaging: Ronn Guidi. Dancer: Ethan White.

Marty Sohl

Her heart belongs to Broadway

by Richard Dodds

N

obody likes to be pigeonholed, but is it a dangerous career move to be too unpigeonholed? After all, Laura Benanti has Broadway, movie, television, concert, cabaret, and writing credits – and she even danced with the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.

“If my goal was to be a famous person, then it probably would be a detriment to me,” Benanti said of the versatility conundrum. “But my goal is to be a happy person – being a versatile actor who also gets to be a pretty normal person is perfect for me.”

See page 30 >>

Broadway and TV star Laura Benanti will headline 42nd Street Moon’s annual gala on June 1 at Bimbo’s 365 Club.

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

Courtesy of Laura Benanti

Spring and summer mean later sunsets and later hours at the Asian Art Museum. We’re open ‘til 9 PM on Thursdays and for just $5 after 5 PM, you can spend an evening in our beautiful building enjoying the galleries, special exhibitions, fun talks, lively gatherings and intimate hangs with artists. On first Thursdays, there are even cash bars, DJs and more. For details, visit www.asianart.org/thursdays

AT THE ASIAN ART MUSEUM

$5 AFTER 5PM

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

<< Out There

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ast week at a press conference held at Oasis nightclub, Frameline senior staffers announced the THE STORY AS IT HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD BEFORE details for Frameline 39, the San PHONE: 650-344-6400 DEAR ADVERTISER: We have followed your instructions and created this proof. Please review it and indicate if it is ok to print or if it needs any FAX: 650-343-2540 Francisco International LGBTQ minor corrections. This is not an opportunity to redesign your ad.

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SIGNED BY ✘______________________________________ DATE___/___/___ SIGNED BY ✘______________________________________ DATE___/___/___ COUPON NAME: GROOMINGDALE’S AREAS: ALSO PLAYING AT: Among the films from 33 counWISE BUY$ IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ERRORS, CHANGESCAMERA OR CORRECTIONS 3 SAN JOSE NOT INDICATED AT THIS TIME. tries are the works of 63 women QUANTITY: SIZE: SIDES: PAPER: CENTURY 16 MTN VIEW GROOMINGDALE’S FOR PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT USE ONLY COUPON NAME: AREAS: LANDMARK SHATTUCK filmmakers. Director of exhibition GROOMINGDALE’S SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER COUPON NAME: AREAS: QUANTITY: SIZE: SIDES: PAPER: & programming Desiree Buford VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.SAINTLAURENTMOVIE.COM QUANTITY: SIZE: SIDES: PAPER: described opening-night offering I Am Michael as an envelope-pusher, as it’s the true story of Michael Gla3.75" X 2" THUR 05/28 tze, an SF-based gay rights activist SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA REPORTER who renounced homosexuality. It’s DUE FRI 5PM still up in the air whether stars James Franco and Zachary Quinto will attend, but director Justin Kelly definitely will.

AE: (circle one:) Artist: (circle one:) ART APPROVED Director Malcolm InAngela Maria Josh Heather Staci AE APPROVEDgram’s Out to Win features Tim Jane Emmett Steve Ronnie CLIENT APPROVEDinterviews with lesbian & gay pro athletes includDeadline: Confirmation #: ing tennis stars Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, gay NBA player Jason Collins, retired NFL player David Kopay, and others.

It’s one of six programs in the spotlight series Game Changers: Sexuality & Sports, exploring what Buford called the “intersection of sexuality and athletics.”

Other big nights include closingnight film Bare (director Natalia Leite), where you can watch the sexual sparks ignite between Sarah (Dianna Agron of Glee) and Pepper (Paz de la Huerta of Boardwalk Empire); Tab Hunter Confidential (Tab Hunter and his partner will appear), directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, winner of this year’s Frameline Award; and director Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato. Senior programmer Peter L. Stein pointed to the “sparkling and over-the-top imagery” in Greenaway’s film, which speculates that the great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein had a sexual awakening in Mexico while attempting to shoot a movie there in 1931.

Great late gay filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder would have been 70 this year, and Frameline honors him with a screening of With this Wise-Buys™ coupon.

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Courtesy Frameline

Director Justin Kelly’s I Am Michael, starring James Franco and Zachary Quinto, will be the opening-night film for Frameline 39.

Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands. Director Christian Braad Thomsen illuminates his life and work, and the talking heads include RWF himself, from interviews Thomsen filmed in the 1970s.

Adding to the tribute, Frameline will screen Fassbinder’s last and gayest film, Querelle, based on Jean Genet’s classic homoerotic novel.

Ever the documentary fan, Out There looks forward to director Ethan Reid’s Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn; director Jenni Olson’s The Royal Road; director Michael Stabile’s Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story; director Barbara Hammer’s Welcome to This House, a film about Elizabeth Bishop; director David Thorpe’s Do I Sound Gay? (yes); and much else.

Proving that LGBT people are in fact everywhere, the festival will screen films from Albania (Sworn

Virgin), Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Love Island), Kenya (Stories of Our Lives), and all over Latin America. And, appropriately for a film fest that was launched at a club fitted out with strippers’ poles, Frameline will heat up the Castro Theatre screen on Pinkish Saturday night with a special preview of director Gregory Jacobs’ Magic Mike XXL, in which such beef-studs as Channing Tatum, Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello indulge in what Stein called “one last bump & grind before hanging up their posing pouches.”

A group of protesters decrying Israeli military interventions gathered at the entrance to the press launch, despite the fact that Frameline is not presenting any Israeli features this year, and therefore the Israeli Consulate is not a sponsor (there are two shorts from Israel). But because Israel is that rare Middle Eastern nationstate that supports its LGBT filmmakers and citizens, we’re sure there will be plenty to protest in the future.

Info and tickets: frameline.org/ festival.t

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Courtesy Frameline

First out gay NBA player Jason Collins is one of the athletes interviewed in director Malcolm Ingram’s documentary Out to Win.

<<

Ballet

From page 21

It’s been 20 years since the Oakland Ballet was a force to be reckoned with, but in the 1980s and 90s, their performances of neglected great ballets made international headlines.

They gave riveting performances of ballets that the companies that had originated them could no longer perform with conviction. Critics in

New York and London staggered out of the theater to say Oakland Ballet had just given them a life-altering experience. Their show Saturday came in two parts. First, a parade of excerpts, mostly solos, from the ballets that made them famous; and second, a string of mostly new, larger works that showed their power to entertain.

What made them famous – astonishing, really, for a regional comSee page 23 >>

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San Francisco Ballet School students perform student demonstrations.

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May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Mean girls take the stage

by Richard Dodds

R

esearch for reviewing Heathers: The Musical was handled backwards. I watched the 1988 movie on which it was based after seeing Ray of Light Theatre’s production of the recent off-Broadway musical. So every plot twist, every bit of dialogue that has become iconic among fans of the movie, was new to me. That, I think, is a good thing with this particular piece of material. It’s easier to exceed expectations when you have none.

This reverse research did produce some surprises. Often what seems outrageously sardonic in the musical, a hip snark retooled for contemporary audiences, actually derives directly from the movie. True, when a musical number is developed from a relatively brief spoken exchange the emphases are changed, but the musical’s creators have not had to unduly camp up the material to make it a cool new thing.

When Heathers, the movie, was released in 1988, it fizzled at the box office. But it gained a cult status thanks to home video, no doubt helped by screenwriter Daniel Waters’ highly quotable rude twists on teenspeak. You might expect to hear one of the girls of Westerburg High School say something like, “Gag me with a spoon,” but when Heather Chandler must deal with a minor annoyance, she mutters, “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” Many of these lines have been preserved in Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy’s dialogue and lyrics in their musical adaptation. Like, “Grow up, Heather. Bulimia’s so ’87.” Or, “Dear Diary: My teen angst bullshit now has a body count.”

Three girls named Heather rule

Courtesy of Ray of Light Theatre

Lizzie Moss, Jocelyn Pickett, and Samantha Ray Cardenas play the title characters in Heathers: The Musical, based on a movie about mean girls and murder at a high school.

Westerburg High, and they enlist the wannabe popular Veronica Sawyer to be an apprentice acolyte. But Veronica still has nice-girl instincts that the Heathers try to quash, and to the Heathers’ horror, Veronica also has a thing for the loner who wears a trench coat to school and helps make Veronica’s murderous fantasies come true. Hence, teen angst with a body count.

Even more so than the movie, the musical zigzags among tones, making jokes about teenage sui-

cide, bullying, and homophobia, let alone the Columbine-type massacres that were still a decade away.

But the writers have a way of turning the jokes inside of themselves, so it is the perpetrator, not the subject, that is being satirized. The needs of a musical can also bend the source material, as a sincere ballad appears here and an uplifting song of reconciliation appears there.

Ray of Light Theatre has a history of presenting the offbeat along with musicals from the traditional

repertoire. A couple of years back, they staged Carrie the Musical, a historically famous Broadway flop, but Ray of Light had to present a revised version that took out all the fun bad stuff, leaving behind a fairly mediocre musical. Heathers: The Musical is the real thing, with all the conscious bad taste intact.

Ray of Light is a volunteer company that nevertheless has established high standards in productions and performances. Director Erik Scanlon has shrewdly maneu-

vered a large cast through the multiscene show, eliciting performances that can be exaggerated, but usually in a good way.

Jessica Quarles, as the reluctantly homicidal Veronica, is a brashly commanding presence, with Jocelyn Pickett as the head Heather throwing off diva sparks with a vengeance. Laura Arthur as the overweight victim of the Heathers’ practical jokes is sadly sympathetic as she mopes about, but then stuns with an angelic voice in a heartfelt but always slightly comic paean to her kindergarten sweetheart. As the psychopathic teen rebel known as J.D., Jordon Bridges gives a flatter performance than befits the spirit of the musical.

Choreographer Alex Rodriguez provides the cast with exuberant, imaginative steps that work for a group not primarily made up of dancers, and a six-piece band led

by Ben Prince ably carries forth through a score with generic poprock melodies occasionally interrupted by a surprisingly effective ballad or a rousing gospel-type song.

Even among all the mean-girl behavior, date-raping jocks, and murders disguised as suicides – and you’ll have to trust me that the authors have a canny way of mocking the jokes on these matters – there are pearls of wisdom amid the swinish behavior. “We’re all damaged,” says Veronica, “but that doesn’t necessarily make us wise.”t Ray of Light Theatre’s production of Heathers: The Musical at the Victoria Theatre will run through June 13. Tickets are $20-$36. Go to rayoflighttheatre.com.

Gifted with feminine glamour

by Richard Dodds

N

o one is beheaded in Jeffrey Hatcher’s Compleat Female Stage Beauty. “Calm down,” says King Charles II. “It’s the Restoration. No more chop-chop.”

But the king’s father, Charles I, did undergo the chop-chop a decade before, leading to the Puritanical rule during the Cromwell years.

Among the victims of the new order were theaters, their doors boarded up, but Charles II returned from exile in France in 1660 awash in libertine views. Not only did he allow theatrical productions to resume.

Before long, he not only lifted the ban against women on stage, but eventually decided that men should be forbidden to play women.

Good news for women, not so good news for the men who played them. One of the most prominent performers made redundant was Edward Kynaston, so popular as Desdemona in Othello that he often took a bow after her death scene but before the play had actually concluded. At least, that is how Hatcher depicts it in his highly entertaining play that offers lively backstage comedy, unexpectedly sweet explorations of sexual identity, sharp dialogue, and an amusing if benignly selective history lesson.

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Ballet

From page 22

pany with a budget their founding director Ronn Guidi laughingly called “the size of SF Ballet’s deficit” – was their power at evoking myth: making folk legends appear before your eyes solid as statues, moving like life. They used ballet technique for the distancing effect, then once you’d accepted the strangeness, put human emotions back in front of

New Conservatory Theatre Center is presenting the local premiere of Hatcher’s 1999 play that was wellreceived but never quite achieved the high profile it deserved. But it did reach wider audiences in the 2004 screen adaptation Stage Beauty, starring Billy Crudup and Claire Danes, which pumped up a hetero-conversion for Crudup’s Kynaston. Even if you have seen the movie, NCTC’s quality production is worth the visit.

We first meet Kynaston during a performance of the final scene in Othello, and his work is hokey but popular with the punters. But at a competing theater company, Margaret Hughes (another historical figure) is a novelty success as an actually female Desdemona despite a certain lack of talent. Proto-feminism was probably not the king’s primary motivation for opening the stage to women. Both he and his fellow noblemen often found mistresses among the new leading ladies. Hypocritical justification for the no-men-as-women edict was also found in religion. “The clergy says men acting as women leads to effeminacy and sodomy,” proclaims the throne, “and they are priests so they should know.”

Hatcher doesn’t hesitate to pull from contemporary sensibilities to make comment on the situations, you: Petrouschka’s unbearable loneliness, Billy the Kid’s terrible isolation, the nightmare of being forced into marriage, the afternoon of a faun, the romance of an Arabian night. There was always a lack of consistency, some dancers who were flat-footed or thick in the waist, who could partner the ballerina but had no power to charm when it came time for their solos. You’d notice it, but suddenly some dancer would hurry away your soul, and you’d

Lois Tema

Stephen McFarland plays a 17th-century cross-dressing actor who loses his job to an actress played by Elissa Beth Stebbins when Britain allows women on stage in Compleat Female Stage Beauty at NCTC.

and while the dialogue playfully scatters about contemporary idioms, the play is not about anachronistic japery. If anything, these bursts of current colloquialisms pull us more into the characters’ situations and provide extra bits of humor.

Ed Decker’s well-calibrated production on an austere set by Giulio Cesare Perrone and period costumes by Keri Fitch features a cast that must navigate a labyrinth of tones and emotions, and his cast is well-tuned to these needs. In the

central role of Kynaston, Stephen McFarland expertly takes us on the character’s journey through fame, degradation, despair, sexual illumination, and a resurgent career in new roles. As London’s first female Desdemona, Elissa Beth Stebbins’ performance warmly develops from a haughty hot new celebrity to a vulnerable actress who knows she’s second-rate and needs Kynaston’s coaching in the role that has been ripped from him.

As a backstage seamstress with

forget about it. In a city that’s still got a working port, actual factories, a downtown without a major department store, schools with a high murder rate, romance is more necessary than for most places, and it’s always got some holes in its socks.

Oakland Ballet was always a “character” company, scraped up from the leavings of San Francisco Ballet.

Although a few of the dancers had first-rate classical technique, most did not. But all had flair, rhythm,

imagination, raw dance power, and they could put across the “movingpicture” ballets that Serge Diaghilev had commissioned for the Ballets Russes in the early 20th century.

Saturday’s event was still a holey affair: some of these dancers aren’t good enough. They are not really a company. They need months of rehearsal and two classes a day from teachers cleaning up their technique. Right now, all they can afford is to pick up dancers who are

acting aspirations, Sam Jackson excels with McFarland in a gently physical scene as she tries to understand the gender dynamics of Kynaston’s relationships with men.

Those dynamics are definitely complicated when he is intimate with the Duke of Buckingham (a dashing Justin Liszanckie), who can only act on his homosexual urgings when Kynaston is in costume as Desdemona. Jeffrey Hoffman goes to the top with the foppish Charles Sedley, and Ali Haas has a savvy centeredness as an actress plucked from the stage to be the king’s mistress. Matt Weimar has the dual role of Kynaston’s traditional Othello and, more colorfully, as King George II. The king enjoys theater, but encourages the producers of Othello to make it a bit more jolly. He’s not sure about the upgraded version with its realistic death scene that Kynaston, now as Othello, brings to bear on his former rival Mrs. Hughes. “That ending is very, very real, almost too much so,” says the king. “Well, that’s tragedy for you – all well in theory, but we still get dinner.”t Compleat Female Stage Beauty will run through June 14 at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

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

available and fit the city’s diversity requirements, with the help of Mills College for rehearsal space. If the city is going to stand up, they need to fund their housing and training.

In the first half, only Evan Flood and Gabriel Williams brought real imaginative life to their solos, Petrouchka and Billy the Kid. The first-act finale, Afternoon of a Faun, saved the day. Matthew Roberts and EmSee page 24 >>

<< Film

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

Cinema silent & green

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by Erin Blackwell

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ilent films are an extinct art-form, alas, like the sonnet or dithyramb.

Watching these 90- or 100-year-old relics of the past is a curious experience. We are swept up by the glamour, the art direction, the performances, all the while aware that the people, lifestyles, and landscapes we’re watching are long gone. It’s a bit zombie. Paranormally, there’s no denying these ghosts are amusing.

See for yourself during the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, playing May 28-June 1 at the Castro Theatre.

The opening-night film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, is a dreadful reminder that wars supposedly fought to end all war only pave the way to more wars.

A very young, sensitive, and beautiful Lew Ayres plays a German soldier who, along with his pals in the trenches, has been recruited to win WWI. Poignant on reflection, the film was released as the Hitler gang was starting the cannonball rolling toward a war designed to restore Germany’s honor after a hugely humiliating defeat.

The 7 p.m. show on each of the following four nights is a doozy.

Friday night, German giant F.W. Murnau directs genius actor Emil Jannings in The Last Laugh (1924) as he experiences the humiliations of a swanky hotel porter demoted to washroom attendant. Saturday night, an incandescent Greta Garbo is a naughty femme fatale igniting John Gilbert’s passionate lover-boy in Flesh and the Devil (1926), directed by Clarence Brown. Sunday, the iconic William Gillette is Sherlock Holmes (1916), a role he’d per-

Courtesy SF Silent Film Festival

Scene from director Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930): wars only pave the way to more wars.

fected onstage. Monday, Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) shows what happens when inspired Hollywood fantasists throw the budget out the window. Totally gay Ramón Novarro plays Ben, a crack charioteer.

Programs from many nations start at 10 a.m. and are not all that silent, being accompanied by live musicians, most of whom know how to rein in their genius and subtly enhance the main attraction.

Stephen Horne is the exception, his overtly baroque detailing calling attention to his piano technique, detracting from the visuals. In such cases, earplugs are an excellent way to adjust the volume.

The green stuff

As these quaint old entertainments are resurrecting the past, the San Francisco Green Film Festival will be posing pertinent questions about our future. The most conscientious film festival of the year,

A jump too far

Jean and Carl Boenish in director Marah Strauch’s Sunshine Superman.

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Ballet

From page 23

ily Kerr were fascinating in Nijinsky’s Art Deco choreography, which made it seem as though that era had come back to life. It was the only selection that had its full staging, complete with the famous rock-face backdrop. Suddenly my imagination was drunk on all that glamour.

That’s what it was all about.

The second half opened brilliantly with clean, joyous dancing for two couples (Daphne Lee, Lydia McRae,

Taurean Green, Sean Omandam) backing up the sparkling Alysia Chang in flashing steps that fit Vivaldi’s bright music perfectly. It ended with equal brio in Val Caniparoli’s hilarious setting of Papa Mozart’s Toy Symphony re-done with new toys. Das Ballett featured six dancers (Alysia Chang, Daphne Lee, Sharon Wehner, Tyler Rhoades, Matther Roberts, Sean Omandam) and was more engaging than anything he’s made for SFB since Narcisse. Other standouts were Robert Moses’ delicate, moving adagio Untitled (set to

Scene from director Clarence Brown’s Flesh and the Devil (1926).

riously enough to try to stop. Nonhuman species of mammal, bird, reptile, and amphibian are quite simply being wiped out by youknow-who, a process that will leave us alone with the invertebrates. Humans, pay attention!

Over seven days, 60 films attack day-to-day realities like recycling, wasted food, salt, sugar, biodynamic farming, fracking, plastic water-bottles, coal, butterflies, and forest fires. Two documentaries celebrate Greenpeace, an organization exemplifying the power of courageous nonviolent protest to derail life-threatening corporate practice.

Jerry Rothwell’s How to Change the World (5/30, 6:30 p.m., Roxie) features unseen archival footage of their 1971 infiltration of a nuclear test zone. After the film, stay to hear Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard. Maarten van Rouveroy’s Black Ice (6/2, Noon, Main Library) documents Greenpeace’s protest of the first oil drilling in the

Arctic Ocean, in 2013. Such documentaries are always bittersweet, equal part inspiring and dismaying, but denial isn’t a viable option.

Golf, that trivial pursuit which should have stayed in Scotland, is a great destroyer of habitat to no purpose. Anthony Baxter’s Dangerous Game (5/30, 7 p.m., Little Roxie) reveals how this over-hyped time-killer is used to mask the development of luxury resorts. Noah Hutton’s Deep Time (5/31, 3:30 p.m., Little Roxie) puts our breakneck extraction of fossil fuels into paleontological perspective. For Bruce Dern fans, 1971 sci-fi classic Silent Running (5/30, 9:30 p.m., Roxie) depicts an ecologist forced to defend the last remaining vegetation.t

approached Marah Strauch’s exhilarating new bio-documentary Sunshine Superman with a certain amount of mixed feelings and downright confusion. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been anxious about achieving any heights beyond the reach of my kitchen stepladder.

Even approaching the boundaries of danger, like once on the rooftop of the Davies Medical Center parking garage, would give me the shudders. And there’s the fact that the title Sunshine Superman has for me always been reserved for that great 1960s drug anthem from Glasgowborn singer-songwriter Donovan Leitch, whose #1 single clung to the Top 40 charts for 13 glorious weeks in 1968.

“I don’t want to grow old or grow up.” – Carl Boenish (April 3, 1941July 7, 1984). Strauch’s Sunshine Superman (opening Friday at Bay Area theatres) focuses on the natural highs achieved by a kind of freefall or BASE jumping, whose modern father Carl Boenish doubled as a cinematographer, and who seems to have considered himself less of a Guinness Book of World Records exhibitionist than a sports pioneer

who wanted to make the joys of recreational jumping available to the average person.

Strauch, who gained access to Boenish’s archive of great jumps and hypnotic free-floating moments from his widow Jean, notes that Boenish had accumulated some pretty spectacular bullet points on his resume. In 1978, he filmed pioneering jumps from atop El Capitan using state-of-the-art “ram-air” parachutes. He published BASE magazine as a way of promoting safety in a sport that he knew could take its practitioners to a jump too far. Boenish’s parachuting cinematography also provided some awesome visual thrills for the 1969 John Frankenheimer aerial classic The Gypsy Moths, with Burt Lancaster and Gene Hackman.

Spoiler alert: the Boenish legend came crashing down to earth in 1984 in a fatal BASE leap from Norway’s Troll Wall, only a day after he filmed a spectacular doubleBASE jump with his wife Jean for the TV show That’s Incredible!

Sunshine Superman is, in short, a leading candidate for this year’s “mixed message” bio-doc Oscar.

At a time when nonfiction filmmakers are avidly competing for

paying audiences who will line up for real-life thrills, this film seems to deliver the goods, as indicated by this fan posting on the Internet Movie Data Base: “I saw the film in Atlanta with a crowd that gave it a standing ovation. It is a crowdpleaser, yet also something deeper.

The film explores themes of mortality, faith, inspiration, and what it means to be fully awake in the mad world.”

Queer filmgoers may find some ironic overtones in another IMDb posting from a fan who caught the doc in Toronto. “This film made me cry, and I am a man!” This fan goes on to say that Sunshine Superman made him want to take his own leap into the void, which is exactly why I’m so reluctant to give it both thumbs up.

But as they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and perhaps wiser. Just don’t expect to find me up there along for the leap. I’m still clinging to the top rung of my kitchen stepladder. If I’m feeling especially brave, maybe I’ll whip out my special edition DVD of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, where the height-fearing Scotty (James Stewart) remains forever out on his own scary ledge.t

one of Satie’s Gnossiennes, played

by Roy Bogas) and Michael Lowe’s Horse Head Strings, which gave a rich, strange role to Evan Flood.

Meanwhile, San Francisco Ballet’s Trainees, the highest rank at SFB’s School, danced with distinction in James Sofranko’s beautiful new ballet set to Mozart’s Paris Symphony.

The choreography is fantastically well-made: difficult, precise, generous, and perfectly scaled to Mozart’s phrases, many of them with feminine endings, so that the last small movement completes the picture just in

time. This requires flair, musicality, and delight in the impulse to move, all of which were wonderfully present in all the dancers, but especially in Anastasia Kubanda (with Daniel Domenech) and Natasha Sheehan (with Hadriel Diniz), who danced together with a fantastic connection.

The whole show was anticlimactic, ending with a dull ballet

by Kenneth Macmillan that needs more chic than these dancers have.

But it began with a splendid grand defile for the whole show from the smallest children to the top ranks,

assembled with great craft to demonstrate their skills, presence, and charm by their teacher Parrish Maynard. Chisaaka Oga and Haruo Niyama showed blazing technique in the Soviet display piece The Flames of Paris: it’s wonderful to see youth and mastery so powerfully united in one place. Those kids are contenders! And SFB Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s excellent Bartok Divertimento, staged by Tina Le Blanc, showed Ms. Kubanda and Messrs.

Diniz, Occhipinti, and Domenach again to fantastic effect.t

raising our awareness of how humans simultaneously destroy the planet and figure out ways to mitigate the damage, is very Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The publicist made a “sad face” informing me these films weren’t “happy,” but frankly, I find it unbelievably positive that some of my species are taking seriously the challenges posed by how needy, greedy, numerous, and unrepentant we all are.

Opening night, the feature documentary Bikes vs. Cars (5/28, 8 p.m., JCC-SF) shows the worldwide struggle between two-wheels and four-wheels. Director Fredrik Gertten was responsible for the fantastic activist doc BANANAS!*, so I expect this film to be similarly intelligent, appealing, eye-opening, and inspiring. Closing night, Racing Extinction (6/3, 8:30 p.m., Roxie) will bring its audience up-to-speed on the Sixth Extinction, which some may have heard of but few take se-

by David Lamble

I

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Courtesy SF Silent Film Festival

SF Silent Film Festival, May 28-June 1, Castro Theatre, SF. SilentFilm.org.

SF Green Film Festival, May 28–June 3, 2015, various venues. greenfilmfest.org.

arriving to New Zealand on the back of a giant.

According to Maori legend, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exactly what whale-rider Paikea did. Discover the cultural connections between whales and people at this new exhibit. Get tickets at calacademy.org

Developed and presented by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

This exhibition was made possible through the support of the New Zealand Government.

<< Music

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

Symphony fortnight delights

by Philip Campbell

S

an Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas has been back on the podium at Davies Symphony Hall for the past two weeks, serving up big helpings of what has made his name synonymous with musical adventure for two decades now. Musical “happenings,” sympathetically presented instrumental soloists’ performances, and fresh looks at modern scores have kept energy levels high.

American maverick composer John Cage’s Renga (1976), a mixedmedia circus of music, may have been the crowning achievement of the fortnight, but there was a wideranging mix of caringly performed scores on other, less provocative programs to satisfy most every listener’s tastes. Most recently, Alexander Barantschik, Concertmaster of the SFS since 2001, and Jonathan Vinocour, Principal Viola since 2009, partnered with MTT and their orchestral colleagues for an endear-

Stefan Cohen

San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas introduced John Cage’s Renga from the stage of Davies Hall.

ing interpretation of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in E-flat Major.

The brisk and intricate opening Allegro and closing Presto movements were dispatched with flair and a fine

Nathan Phillips

Composer Samuel Adams.

sense of detail, but it was the melancholy central Andante that really showed the soloists’ interpretive skills. Talk about “killing me softly.”

The audience responded with obvious affection.

The concert opened with a brief (like, six-minutes-brief) first SFS

presented by

performance of young composer Samuel Adams’ Radial Play (2014).

Written as a curtain-raiser for the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, it certainly fills the bill, and has all the snap-toattention qualities one might expect from the son of the renowned John Adams. The program notes and most publicity surrounding Samuel leave mention of his famous dad out. Appropriate, if we are going to judge the music impartially, but the new piece leaves little doubt the talented new writer is a chip off the old block. His really “short ride in a fast machine” is full of glittering orchestral effects and sonorities that remind us of his musical heritage. We know he is developing a clear voice of his own from longer scores like Drift and Providence, but there is no mistaking the father’s wit and ability with orchestration in Radial Play.

Bela Bartok’s haunting and compelling Concerto for Orchestra (1943) finished the evening with a suave and expertly controlled performance that gave light and definition to even the most somber moments. It offered a chance for the orchestra to show off individual technique without obvious grand-standing, and MTT guided the course with typically sure-handed insight.

The week prior brought a onenight-only full performance of John Cage’s Renga on the second half of a Saturday-night bill that included the composer’s less splashy The Seasons (1947). The subscription-series concerts of the week had opened with The Seasons but skipped Renga on the second half, offering a full rendition of Stravinsky’s delightful score for the ballet Pulcinella (1920) instead. That was probably a wise decision for the perhaps more conservative regulars. They may have been less than amused by the musical impudence of Cage, but

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willing to revel in the composer in neo-classical mode. Whatever. It offered a chance to catch some luxury casting in the sung parts of Pulcinella. International star bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni, in town for his upcoming role debut as the Count in The Marriage of Figaro at the San Francisco Opera, joined with winning mezzo-soprano Peabody Southwell (great name, memorable voice) and pleasing tenor Matthew Newlin for a happy romp through the lively score.

Renga enjoyed some big-name casting as well. Actor Tim Robbins, still looking boyish despite a full head of gray hair, was on hand to act as the reciter of Cage’s famous Lecture on Nothing (1950), a touchstone through the 40 minutes of performance that included pieces like Cheap Imitation (1969) and Litany for the Whale (1980). Splitscreen videos designed by Clyde Scott framed the stage. The videos were mostly television clips from the 1950s and 60s, contemporaneous with the earlier compositions, and they seemed a little too spoton, but added a visual impact to the proceedings, with many musicians positioned around the hall.

Typical of Cage’s outrageous mind, percussionist Tom Hemphill was up in the center terrace adding the sound of an amplified cactus. That’s not a joke: it was a real plant, and it sounded surprisingly good.

Robbins declaimed the non-text of the Lecture with just enough twinkle to offset the Zen-like words, and all members of the SFS were likewise in the right mood. It added up to a lot of fun, if not a particularly satisfying event. The build-up was more than the considerable sum of the parts. Cage remains an iconoclast, but I doubt if anyone thought he would ever be shown to be anything else.t

Extreme playing

by Tim Pfaff

THE SING-ALONG JUNE 26, 8 P.M. JUNE 27, 3 P.M. JUNE 27, 8 P.M. NOURSE THEATER with guest artist BREANNA SINCLAIRÉ

TICKETS AT SFGMC.ORG OR (415) 392-4400 SEASON 37 IS SPONSORED BY

THE OFFICIAL AIRLINE OF SFGMC

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he problem with cult musicians is that they’re hazardous to your friendships. I took flack, lots of it, and temporarily imperiled an important friendship for liking, in print, a Grigory Sokolov recital at Herbst Theatre in 1998. You could say, and I think I did, that the pianist had his way with the music on his program, but I was mostly good with that, and I was a long time – days, not hours – coming down from his Beethoven G Major Sonata, Op. 31, No.1.

It was a recital that otherwise elicited equal parts weeping and eyerolling from an audience unused to that kind of artistic individuality. I see that I wrote, “I want to hear Sokolov play Beethoven my last day on Earth.” I’ll hold with that, though it will probably have to be via recording, since the pianist rarely performs and allows only live recordings of his recitals.

It was as puzzling as startling when Deutsche Grammophon recently announced that it had signed an exclusive contract with Sokolov, beginning the partnership with its release of the pianist’s July 30, 2008 recital at the Salzburg Festival. But in other ways it was business as unusual for Sokolov, and the recital turns out to be one of his best ever, captured in luscious piano sound.

Only with Sokolov would taking Mozart to Salzburg, the Mozart capital, be cheeky, and his monumental performances of the two F Major Sonatas, K. 280 & 332, may have startled the horses at the nearby Felsenreitschule. But he’s one of the few present-day exemplars of the kind of re-creative pianism that takes the printed score not as sacrosanct but as the starting-point of an artistic interaction.

So if you don’t like your Mozart Adagios of Brucknerian breadth, you’ll shrink from these “interpretations,” See page 27 >>

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Film>>

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Shadow government of criminal minds

by David Lamble

I

Jean Dujardin as Pierre Michel in director Cedric Jimenez’s The Connection: drug cop takes on drug kingpin.

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Sokolov

From page 26

which they very much are. You may or may not stick around for the Chopin Opus 28. But the truth is that Mozart can take it. If you normally prefer him with Mitsuko Uchida on piano, or Kristian Bezuidenhout on fortepiano, I’m with you. Yet Sokolov took me on a tour of these familiar pieces that opened them up to my marveling, and I’ll venture an opinion that his – call them executions – of the pieces boast greater vitality and insight than the recorded performances we have by Sokolov’s idols (and mine), Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter, where reverence sometimes prevails over revelation.

Sokolov’s full-blooded Chopin Preludes stop you in your tracks.

Time and again you have the feeling of the pianist’s wiping the slate clean, listening in on this concentrated, extraordinary music with wide-eared wonder, then passing on what he hears. It’s playing of power, delicacy and astounding beauty.

One of the happy paradoxes of Sokolov’s artistry at this pitch is that, clear as it is that this is the only time he will play this music exactly this way, you can listen to it endlessly and only ever hear more in it.

The contrary motion in these deceptively “simple” pieces is rarely brought out with this skill, and Sokolov’s gift for tracing, if not underlining inner voices pays big dividends. The “raindrops” of the D-flat Major Prelude fall for a full seven minutes, never before sounding quite so consequential. Then, somewhere around the B-flat minor Prelude, with its big chordal outburst releasing music of Mendelssohnian lightness and momentum, sparks start to fly. The crushing chords of the C minor Largo seem over the top, until Sokolov reveals the rapt hush to which they lead. From there to the end of the set, the drive is breathtaking, defying all sense of the familiar, until in the roiling final prelude, the piano all but groans in its revels. The six encores bring more living, breathing Chopin (two mazurkas), gossamer Scriabin, Rameau that sounds terrific on the piano, and a traversal of Bach’s chorale prelude “Ich ruf ’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” from which nothing else could follow. Extreme playing, yes, but musical to its marrow.

But wait. DG’s superb Sokolov isn’t the only kid on the block.

Over the last year Melodiya, the once Soviet, now Russian label of record, has released eight discs of vintage Sokolov, in three sets. The most recent of the performances captured (all in Leningrad) is a bold Beethoven Opus 111 from 1988 – 20 years before DG’s Salzburg recital.

There’s Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann (a Carnaval that all but jumps out of the speakers at you)

and Scriabin (a Ninth Sonata of blinding brilliance). But even more impressive is what would have been the “new music.” Stravinsky’s Three Episodes from Petrushka is the most theatrical I’ve heard, and the Prokofiev Seventh and Eighth Sonatas stand comparison with any, the Seventh sheerly incandescent.t

confess to being a huge fan of William Friedkin’s 1971 adrenaline-fueled rogue-cop thriller The French Connection. Gene Hackman parlayed frat-boy charm into an endearing portrait of a New York narcotics squad cop so charmingly ruthless that I found myself cheering as “Popeye Doyle” gleefully shredded the Bill of Rights. While in no way intended as a sequel to this Oscar-anointed bad-cop classic, in The Connection French screenwriter and director Cédric Jimenez embeds us in a 1975 drug-gang opera that plays like a post-feudal religious war, complete with rival popes.

Deep into the second act of this absorbing account of how a workobsessed drug cop (Jean Dujardin as police magistrate Pierre Michel) takes on an all-powerful drug kingpin (Gilles Lellouche as Gaëtan “Tany” Zampa), the very macho rivals hold a kind of outdoor summit, in which the drug lord warns the cop to back off. The threat comes in the wake of police raids that have virtually decapitated his roster of thug lieutenants.

Zampa: “What do you want? You get everyone talking, tail me. No women ever did as much. You like me?”

Michel: “Not my type. I’m not into thugs.”

“Loaded word. You see thugs everywhere. Part of the job. I see myself differently. I keep lots of people afloat. I consider myself a businessman.”

“Don’t play the business card.”

“I annoy you. I’m used to people like you. What’s the salary of a minor magistrate? 5,000 euros a month? Wake up! Without me, will Marseilles be Switzerland? I enjoy the little time we have. You should, too.”

“Like you do? Bulletproof car and full-time watchdog? Everybody wants you: me, the cops, your pals out for your spot.”

“Been here for 20 years. I’m not scared.”

“Bulletproof vests aren’t for looks.

You sleep with an eye open. Wondering when you or your wife –” “Don’t be disrespectful.”

“No respect for you.”

While Friedkin’s The French Connection sizzled with the high-voltage energy of a modern Western – a Western where souped-up cop cars raced after elevated subway trains – Jimenez’s The Connection owes far fewer debts to the pop culture, except for one disco-powered peek at a mob-run dance club. It is an-

other episode in the eternal struggle between the light and dark forces of the universe. Whereas in the Godfather trilogy, the Corleone family’s bad behavior is mostly aimed at buying respectable futures for the grandkids, Jimenez’s crime lords see themselves as a perpetual rival power-structure, a wicked parallel government of crooks.

At 135 minutes, The Connection is a mini-epic whose occasional longueurs allow ample time to get an extra tub of popcorn without feeling you’re missing anything vital. The real draw is the dueling tough-guy leads, two men so ferociously driven that they could be actual siblings separated at birth. Dujardin delivers a supercop cool as the other side of the pillow, whose obsessive sense of mission seems almost divinely endowed, while Lellouche never lets us forget that he’s from the gutter, with the ethics and killer instinct of a Marseilles wharf rat.

The Connection is a strictly straight-boys club where women and queers have no roles to play.

The film could have stood a nice kinky subplot or two, to provide the naughty frisson we’ve come to expect from British mob-film gems like Mona Lisa or The Long Good Friday.t

FEB 11–JUN 29 2015

IN THE PRESIDIO 104 MONTGOMERY S A N F RA NC IS C O WALTDISNEY.ORG

Revel in the golden age of Hollywood through an exhibition of photography from George Hurrell—one of America’s finest photographers, credited with creating the opulent glamour portrait of the 1930s and 40s. See rare and vintage prints of Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, and more, including Hurrell’s uncle-in-law, Walt Disney.

Image: George Hurrell, Carole Lombard in The Princess Comes Across, 1936; courtesy of Pancho Barnes Trust Estate Archive, © Estate of George Hurrell. Lights! Camera! Glamour! The Photography of George Hurrell is produced by The Walt Disney Family Museum. The Walt Disney Family Museum® Disney Enterprises, Inc. | © 2015 The Walt Disney Family Museum | The Walt Disney Family Museum is not affiliated with Disney Enterprises, Inc.

<< Out&About

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

A & O

Karen Ripley @ The Marsh Berkeley The veteran comic performs her solo show, Oh No, There’s Men on the Land, her witty account of being a young lesbian in 1970s Berkeley. $15$100. 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru May 30.

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

out b A Out &

A Little Night Music @ Geary Theatre

Soar

by Jim Provenzano

A

s we head into June, arts events are busting out all over with rainbow pride.

Fly into stagings of classic plays, choral anniversaries, and cultural odysseys.

Thu 28 Angels in America @ Lohman Theatre, Los Altos Hills Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer and Tonywinning “gay fantasia” about Reagan-era AIDS and Mormons in Manhattan gets an East Bay production by Foothill Theatre Arts.

Part 1: Millennium Approaches is fully produced, with three staged readings of Part Two: Perestroika. $15-$20.

Wed & Thu 7:30pm, Fri & Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm. Thru June 14. 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills. (650) 949-7360. www.foothill.edu/theatre

Faux Real with Fauxnique @ Oasis The local –and internationally acclaimed– dancer and faux queen brings her new show to the SoMa nightclub, with guest performers Tim Carr, Matthew Martin, Miss Rahni and Trixxie Carr. $20. 7pm. Also May 29 & 30. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Grey Gardens, the Musical @ Gough Street Playhouse Custom Made Theatre’s production of Scott Frankel, Doug Wright and Michael Korie’s musical based on Maysles’ brothers’ disturbing documentary about Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, and their sad decline into obscrutiy and poverty. $20-$50. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm.

Thru June 21. (May 30, special night with Jerry Torre, from the original documentary; $100-$150, 7pm). 1620 Gough st. at Bush. 798-2682. www.custommade.org

Hope Mohr Dance @ ODC Theater Eighth spring season of works by the innovative local choreographer, who’s danced for Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs and others; three world premieres include a collaboration with Christian Burns. $20-$45. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru May 31. 3153 17th St. 863-9834. www.hopemohr.org www.odcdance.org

Laurie Anderson @ SF Jazz The innovative musician performs concerts of her unique multimedia works. $25-$65. 7:30pm. Thru May 31 (4pm). 201 Franklin St. www.sfjazz.org

Pride Dinner Party @ Institute of Possibility

Thu 28 Angels in America David Allen

SF International Arts Festival @ Various Venues Fascinating new works by artists from around the block and around the world, in dance, theatre, music, visual arts and film, including several LGBT creators and performers. Events include works by Teatr Zar, Theater of Yugen, Ariel Luckey, Jesper Arin, Brian Freeman and others.

Various times, admissions ($20-$30) and venues. Thru June 7. www.sfiaf.org

Storm Large @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Musician, actor, playwright, author; the multi-talent performs her new cabaret show, Taken by Storm. $35$50. ($20 food/drink min.). 8pm. Also May 30, 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. stormlarge.com www.ticketweb.com

Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga @ Concord Pavilion, Concord The veteran jazz vocalist and the glam pop star hit the stage in their elegant duo concert tour. $45-$600.

8pm. 2000 Kirker Pass Road, Concord. www.livenation.com

Fri 29 30 Years of Collecting Art That Tells Our Stories @ GLBT History Museum New exhibit of collected drawings, paintings and sculptures from three decades of queer donations, guestcurated by Elisabeth Cornu. Free (members)-$5. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Ondine @ Sutro Baths We Players, the innovative environmental theatre ensemble, presents an outdoor production of Jean Giraudoux’s fairy tale drama about an ocean-dwelling mermaid and her affair with an arrogant knight. $40-$60. Fri-Sun 4:30pm. Thru June 7. 680 Point Lobos Ave. www.weplayers.org

Jeffrey Hatcher’s stylish period dramedy about a 1660s crossdressing Shakespearian actor whose life changes when women are allowed to act. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm.

Thru June 14. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. www.nctcsf.org

Each and Every Thing @ The Marsh Solo performer Dan Hoyle returns with his acclaimed show about about the slow-tech movement and how personal interactions outweight technology. $20$100. Fri 8pm, Sat 8:30pm, Sun 5pm. Thru July 18. Mainstage Theater, 1062 Valencia St. at 21st. 282-3055. themarsh.org

Heathers the Musical @ Victoria Theatre Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy’s dark musical comedy adaptation of the cult favorite 1989 film about conniving high school girls. $25-$36.

Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru June 13.

2961 16th St. at Mission. www.rayoflighttheatre.com

SF Green Film Festival @ Various Venues

This Is What I Want @ CounterPulse Three-day performance festival with various works about erotic desire in diverse forms. $20-$40. May 29-31, 8pm, including a special cothingoptional Nude Night May 29 ($5 off if nude!). Symposium, June 3, 8pm. 1310 Mission St. 626-2060. counterpulse.org

Geoff Hoyle’s new solo take on Shakespeare’s King Lear, from the perspective of the unemployed Fool. $15-$35. Wed & Thu 8pm. Sat 5pm.

Thru May 30. 1062 Valencia St. 2823055. www.themarsh.org

Melancholy, a Comedy @ The Marsh Sara Felder’s solo show about a lesbian college student’s romantic entanglements while researching Abraham Lincoln’s depression. $15$100. Sat 5pm. Sun 7pm. Thru June 28. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Ross McKee Piano Competition @ SF Conservatory of Music Six young Bay Area piano virtuosi compete in the final round of the prestigious award, and perform works by Beethoven, Haydn, Liszt, Schumann and other composers. Free.

7pm. 50 Oak St. www.sfcm.edu

Trouble Cometh @ SF Playhouse Richard Dresser’s dark comedy about two executives stuck in an existential crisis as a deadline looms. $20-$45.

Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm.

Sun 2pm. Thru June 27. 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Mon 1 42nd Street Moon Gala @ Bimbo’s 365 Club The vintage musical theatre ensemble welcomes Tony Award-winning musical theatre actress-singer Laura Benanti ( Gypsy, Nashville ) at their gala fundraiser, with cocktails, a live auction, dinner and a ‘Moonlight Lounge.’ Cocktail attire, please. $375-$750. 6pm. 1025 Columbus Ave. 255-8207. www.42ndstmoon.org

Susan Jorgensen @ John Pence Gallery Exhibit of detailed photographs of nature and still lifes. Thru June 27. MonFri 10am-6pm. Sat 10am-5pm. 750 Post St. 441-1138. www.johnpence.com

Tue 2 Check, Please! Bay Area @ SF Design Center Galleria The KQED restaurant review show celebrates its 10th anniversary with a big food and wine event, with more than 40 eateries and wineries participating. $70-$80. 6:30pm8:30pm. 101 Henry Adams St. 3924400. www.KQED.org

One Man, Two Guvnors @ Berkeley Repertory Theatre Richard Bean’s comic update on Carlo Goldini’s The Servant of Two Masters, with biting one-liners, satire, live music and a bit of cross-dressing, is about a doltish butler who’s trapped between two bosses. $29-$89. Wed & Sun 7pm. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru June 21. 2025 Addison St. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Smuin Ballet @ YBCA The local modern ballet company performs world premieres and repertory works in its 21st season, including the balcony pas de deux from Michael Smuin’s Romeo and Juliet, his Hearts Suite, Helen Pickett’s Petal, and a new work by Adam Hougland. $24-$67. May 29-30 in Walnut Creek, and June 5 & 6 in Carmel. www.smuinballet.org

Talley’s Folly @ Harry’s Upstage, Berkeley Aurora Theatre Company restages Lanford Wilson’s lyrical uplifting two-actor drama. $30-$50. Tue 7pm.

Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru June 7.

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

Thu 28 GAPA Men’s Chorus

The Yellow Wallpaper @ Berkeley City Club Central Works’ production of Gary Graves’ adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s early feminist work, published in 1892, which follows a Victorian woman’s descent into madness when she sees a ghost. $15$28. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm.

Thru June 21. 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. (800) 838-3006. www.centralworks.org

Sun 31

Compleat Female Stage Beauty @ New Conservatory Theatre

Juanita More! and Kitchit host a fundraiser dinner for SF Pride’s Youth Empowerment Summit; enjoy a delicious five-course dinner and wines. $100. 7pm-10:30pm. 3359 Cesar Chavez. www.juanitamore.com

Environmental, cycling, science fiction, and global politics feature and short films are screened at the Roxie Theater, Jewish Community Center, 518 Valencia and the SF Public Library.

Thru June 3. www.greenfilmfest.org

Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s lilting musical (based on the Ingmar Bergman Swedish film Smiles of a Summer Night) gets a stylish local production by American Conservatory Theatre, starring Patrick Cassidy, Emily Skinner, Karen Ziemba; directed by two-time Tony nominee Mark Lamos. $20-$140. Tue-Sat 8pm.

Wed, Sat & Sun 2pm. (Out With A.C.T. June 3). Thru June 14. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Lear’s Shadow @ The Marsh

t

ASL Epic @ Sweet Inspiration Sign Language-only open mic, with storytelling, poetry, comedy and skits.

4pm-7pm. 2239 Market St. www.meetup.com/asl-294

Fri 29 Karen Ripley

Sat 30 The Birthday Party @ Phoenix Theatre Harold Pinter’s darkly comic play about two strangers who invade a private party is produced by the award-winning Off Broadway West Theatre Company. $25-$40. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Thru June 27. 414 Mason St. #601. (800) 838-3006. www.offbroadwaywest.org

GAPA Men’s Chorus @ St. Gregory of Nyssa The Gay Asian Pacific alliance’s signing ensemble performs In Light & Love, their 25th anniversary concert, including fan favorites of the choral repertoire of traditional and pop contemporary songs; including guest performances by Oakland East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus, Likha Philipino Folk Ensemble, and students from Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu hula haumana. $10-$25. 8pm. 500 De Haro St. www.gapa.org

Bobby Conte Thornton @ Venetian Room Bay Area Cabaret presents the cabaret premiere of the singer, whose concert songs range from Irving Berlin to Sting. $30-$40. 5pm. Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St. 392-4400. www.bayareacabaret.org

Lillias White @ Venetian Room Bay Area Cabaret presents the multiple award-winning musical theatre singer-actress (Tony, Obie, Emmy and more), who performs classic songs in her elegant cabaret show, directed by Billy Stritch. $50.

8pm. Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St. 392-4400. www.bayareacabaret.org

SF Hiking Club @ Tilden Park Join GLBT hikers for an 8-mile hike that starts at Tilden Park’s Little Farm.

Carpool meets 9:00 at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. 203-7055. www.sfhiking.com

Michelle Tea @ Books Inc. The prolific local author reads from and discusses her latest Young Adult book, The Girl at the Bottom of the Sea, the sequel to Mermaid in Chelsea Creek. 7pm. 2275 Market St. 8646777. www.booksinc.net

Wed 3 Love and Information @ Strand Theater The inaugural performances at American Conversatory Theatre’s new satellite theatre; Carol Churchill’s kaleidoscopic play captures the dizzying array of electronic communication that helps and hinders true human connection. $40-$100. Tue-Sat 7:30pm [note earlier curtain time]. Wed & Sat 2pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru Aug. 9.

1127 Market St. 749-2228. act-sf.org

Miriam Cabessa @ Dryansky Gallery Exhibit of works by the New Yorkbased lesbian artist. Wed-Sun 11am-5pm. 2120 Union St. at Webster.

932-9302. www.miriamcabessa.com www.thedryansky.com

Thu 4 Nneka @ The New Parish, Oakland The German/Nigerian modern soul singer-songwriter performs two nights as part of her new tour; Antique Naked Soul opens. $25-$30. 9pm.

Also June 5. 1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. (510) 444-7474. www.nnekaworld.com www.thenewparish.com

SF Docfest @ Roxie, Brava, Vogue Theatres Two weeks of compelling documentary feature and short films, including related live music and singalong nights. $12-$25. Thru June 18.

820-3907. www.sfindie.com

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Books>>

May 28-June 3, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Homerun hero

by Jim Piechota

Out at Home by Glenn Burke with Erik Sherman; Berkeley Publishing Group, $15 companion volume to the riveting, multi-perspective 2010 documentary Out: The Glenn Burke Story (which debuted at a starstudded, red-carpet premiere at the Castro Theatre), the new co-written autobiography Out at Home tells the inspiring and often tragic life story of Glenn Burke in his own words. The book was originally self-published in 1995, when Burke was suffering with AIDS-related complications, and this reprinted version is ably co-written by veteran freelance sportswriter Erik Sherman.

Burke was an AfricanAmerican, California native whom many consider to be the first openly gay Major League Baseball player, with a career spanning 1976-79 with both the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics. His posthumous memoir is prefaced with an introduction

by Billy Bean, who commemorates his sports compatriot as a pro ball player who “didn’t hide from his truth.” (Bean came out after he had permanently retired from baseball.)

Yet Burke’s post-career “slide into darkness” saddened him personally.

The book, devoid of gratuitous padding, is slender and potent, getting right to the heart of Burke’s professional athletic career, which he’d survived for two seasons in the closet before his sexuality emerged and drastic changes occurred.

Burke addresses Tommy Lasorda’s hasty decision to trade him from the Dodgers to the Oakland A’s, a move Burke insists is “painfully obvious” and directly the result of his admitted homosexuality. He also

A

attributes Lasorda’s ill-conceived decision to Burke’s close relationship with the Dodger manager’s gay son Tom “Spunky” Lasorda, Jr., who died at age 33 from AIDS (a claim his father vehemently refuted). Burke calls Spunky an “extremely flamboyant” man with a great sense of humor, someone he cherished, and a guy who enjoyed being “a transsexual some of the time, but not all of the time.” Burke loved San Francisco’s Castro District, while Spunky preferred Southern California. And while Burke alludes to their relationship as being a bit more than a deep friendship, he never admits to the fact, and shirks the suggestion by writing, “That’s my business.”

Burke also writes of recreationally enjoying marijuana and cocaine, drugs that alleviated the stress of his situation, and that were hand-delivered right into the baseball locker room. Yet once his homosexuality became common knowledge in 1982 within the sporting world via a

magazine article and a Today show interview with Bryant Gumbel, he was essentially blackballed from the game to which he devoted his life.

“Because I was homosexual, no team was ever going to give me a real chance to play the game I loved,” Burke laments. “I would now begin the second phase of my life, a single life, as a gay man.”

His fondness for the Castro materializes in a particularly touching, nostalgic chapter describing Burke’s days on the city streets in the 1970s and 80s. At the time of his book’s writing in the mid1990s, he admits the iconic area had already seen better days. He writes of enjoying his time in bars like Uncle Bert’s, Castro Station, and the original Badlands, and of participating in the local gay softball league with the Pendulum Pirates. Unfortunately for Burke, relationship drama, prison sentences for drug possession, and sadness and decimation from the AIDS epidemic were not far behind.

Burke’s career highs were astounding, yet only to be matched by personal lows, from his narcotics addiction to the consequences of coming out while being a public figure in the highly scrutinized and rampantly homophobic sports arena. Sherman’s final chapter, when he learns of Burke’s death and shares his reflections on the inclusion of gay and lesbian players in global sports teams, provides a fitting coda to this affecting biography.

The author’s legacy joins the more recent admissions of openly gay players such as the NBA’s Jason Collins and the NFL’s Michael Sam. As the playing field slowly yields to diversity, it’s crucial to pause and remember valiant pioneers like Glenn Burke who fearlessly led the way.t

Secrets unlocked

by John F. Karr

M

ark Merlis is right up near the top of my personal pantheon of favorite gay writers.

Yet I can hear you asking, Who? He seems to be almost unknown.

Five gay participants in my book group had never heard of him (imagine never having read An Arrow’s Flight!). My otherwise well-read friends weren’t aware he had a new book out, and weren’t at all receptive when I urged them to read it. Now I’m urging you. It has the nearly enigmatic title JD, but unstintingly reveals some of the deeper mysteries of gay self-love and self-loathing (Terrace Books, $26.95).

Merlis has written four books in the last 20 years. Despite having been favorably reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement, and Publisher’s Weekly (though none have mentioned JD in the four months since its publication), and despite some notable awards along the way, he remains relatively unknown but to a handful of writers. How to explain this? He’s a modest man who has led a quiet life as an analyst of federal health policy. He didn’t publish until he was in his mid-40s, and has never been a part of the academic creative-writing community.

To borrow a line from JD, all of Merlis’ novels have been about our “finding a way to be in this world.”

Paralleling life in the age of AIDS, An Arrow’s Flight is a mash-up of the Philoctetes myth (remember the Trojan War?) set simultaneously in the ancient and modern worlds, with its mythological hero becoming a stripper and hustler in contemporary New York. Merlis’ other three novels aren’t quite as fanciful, but are pungent examinations of the ways in which the gay experience has changed during the last half-century; the novels survey the effects of our recent history on our present and future lives. Merlis’ characters may have survived the McCarthy era and the American Psychiatric Association’s appalling

classification of homosexuals as disturbed individuals (I guess Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone didn’t get the update memo on that), but their battle scars run deep.

The two narrators of JD are the gay author Jonathan Ascher and his wife, Martha. Jonathan’s guilt about his sexuality has stunted his ability to be a man. But his strangulated life has also made him a visionary, and the publication of his poetic manifesto of freely expressed gay sexuality is a surprising and much-cherished success. Never able to repeat that book’s success, Jonathan died forgotten.

Several decades later, a young gay academic proposes to Martha that he write Jonathan’s biography, which prompts Martha to retrieve Jonathan’s diaries from a locked vault. We read the diaries along with Martha, and become privy not only to Jonathan’s pre-Stonewall life, aspirations, and shocking misstep, but to Martha’s present-day reaction to those revelations. In time periods and gender, it’s gay history from both sides, now.

Read JD as a suspense novel: What fate will Jonathan deliver upon himself? What will Martha do with the devastating truths she is forced to face? How did their actions cause their son’s death? Read JD as a family saga, a page-turner of truth born from lies. Read it as commentary on the effects our past has on our future. Read it.t

Dawn Harms, Music Director & Conductor Sara Davis Buechner, Piano Tickets & Info: http://BARS-SF.ORG

June 6, 2015 8pm plus Recital at 3pm San Francisco Conservatory of Music 50 Oak (at Van Ness)

Kaprálová - Partita for Piano & String Orchestra Clara Schumann - Piano Concerto Smyth - Serenade The Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) is an orchestra that provides a safe and supportive environment for musicians of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. A 501(c)3 org, BARS makes cultural, social, and educational contributions to the San Francisco Bay Area by performing ambitious repertoire to a high standard.

<< Theatre

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 28-June 3, 2015

<<

ebar.com

Benanti

From page 21

But normal for Benanti also means busy. She’ll be back on Broadway early next year in a revival of She Loves Me, she has a recurring role in the upcoming TV series Supergirl, she’s at work on a book of humorous personal essays, she was featured in PBS’ recent Memorial Day special, and she’s guest-starring with the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus in June. More immediately, she’s the headliner at 42nd Street Moon’s Song of a Summer Night gala at Bimbo’s 365 Club on June 1. (Tickets at 42ndstmoon.org.)

Working with musical director Todd Almond, she’s planning a “hybrid version” of the two cabaret shows she’s done at New York’s 54 Below.

There will be songs from the Broadway shows she has done, including Nine and The Sound of Music, as well as songs “that I love that aren’t necessarily from the shows that I have been in,” she said recently from New York. But the set list will not include anything from Gypsy, which earned her a Tony Award in 2008 in the revival that starred Patti LuPone as Mama Rose.

Benanti’s connection to The Sound of Music is multifold. After graduating from high school in New Jersey, she skipped

Courtesy of Laura Benanti

Laura Benanti won a Tony Award as Louise (better known as Gypsy Rose Lee) in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy.

college to play a nun in the 1998 Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. She was also understudy to Rebecca Luker as Maria, and took over from Luker to officially become a Broadway star at age 19. More recently, she gained considerable attention for her performance as the Baroness Elsa Schraeder in the 2013 live broadcast starring Carrie Underwood.

Her most recent high-profile television work came as country singer

Benefiting

Photo by Nigel Barker

Oh Hell No! Civil rights leader and author David Mixner gives an intimate, first-person account of his headline-grabbing life.

June 16 Brava Theatre San Francisco 7 pm

National Sponsor

Information & tickets

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www.pointfoundation.org/mixnershow

Sadie Stone in the third season of Nashville. The role started off as a confidante to Connie Britton’s character as a Nashville superstar, and as the season progressed, Sadie’s abusive ex-husband came back to torment her anew before she shot him dead and left town. Benanti doesn’t know if the Nashville writers plan to bring Sadie back.

“I’d love to come back, but then there’s my schedule as a recurring character on Supergirl to work around,” she said. In the CBS series coming this fall, Benanti plays planet Krypton native Alura Zor-El, the biological mother of the title character (and Superman’s cousin), who rockets her daughter to Earth shortly before Krypton explodes. Presumably Alura dies along with her planet, so how does she become a recurring character? “Sorry,” said Benanti. “I can’t tell you that. That’s a spoiler.”

Although Benanti has already been a regular or recurring character on nine television series, she says her heart belongs to Broadway.

“I grew up as a little girl wanting to do it, and it’s the thing I want to do forever and ever.” Broadway aficionados are particularly keen on her Twitter posts that often have a wry, self-deprecating humor. The popularity of her tweets led St. Martin’s Press to offer her a book deal.

The collection of essays will offer her take on the funny and sometimes weird experiences of her career and personal life. “A lot of the people who follow me on Twitter are young women, and my goal is to direct them in a humorous way to a less male-centered way of living,” she said. “It’s good to make people laugh, but also to point out that I’ve made a lot of choices that were not healthy for me because I was prioritizing the attention of men over my own self, over female friendships, abdicating myself to other people, and I think that’s a common theme for women. And for gay men, of course, my other favorite group of humans.”

Her affinity for gay men and support of causes important to them came from her love of her late uncle, Robert Wonneberger. “He was one of the founding members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C., and he was also an incredible drag artist whose drag name was Wanda Mae Wonneberger,” she said. “He was extremely important to me, so gay causes, gay rights, gay people are also really important to me.”

Following her second divorce by age 34, Benanti and her family found solace in a gay cruise to Alaska. “I felt like it was my Uncle Bob looking out for me, sending me out on a ship with a bunch of men who didn’t want to have sex with you, and a family who loves you more than anything in the world, keeping you from harm in that way.”

Benanti is now deep into a relationship with Patrick Brown, a director of marketing at a start-up.

“He’s not an actor, which only took me 10 years to figure out was not the best thing to do.” The downside of dating an actor? “Oh, God,” she said, “we don’t have enough time to get into that.”t

32

34

David Kelsey

36

On the Tab

NIGHTLIFE

SPIRITS

DINING

SOCIETY

ROMANCE

www.ebar.com V www.bartabsf.com

A Wicked Game

LEATHER

PERSONALS Vol. 45 • No. 22 • May 28-June 3, 2015

Kristine W

Dance music hitmaker performs at Beatbox

by Jim Gladstone

“I

know there are plenty of people who think of dance music as throwaway music,” says Kristine W (born Weitz), who will perform this Saturday night as part of Served, a new monthly dance See page 33 >> party at Beatbox helmed by DJ Escape.

Rich Stadtmiller

Kristine W

International Mr. Leather winners and finalists on stage immediately after winning: Kevin Murphy, IML 2015 first runner-up (left), Patrick Smith, the winner of IML 2015 (center), and Brian Donner, IML 2015 second runner-up (right).

CHICAGO’S B LEATHER INVASION

by Race Bannon

eing a former Chicagoan, every time the International Mr. Leather (IML) weekend rolls around, I get excited. It’s always a trip down hometown memory lane for me as well as a chance to reconnect with countless friends, some of whom I only see there once a year. It’s essentially a leather invasion with thousands of guys descending upon the city from all over the world to frolic in kinkland for a few days.

See page 37 >> It’s truly special.

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

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the anniversary historical parade contingents, to mind Pride’s 200 passing likely to call milestone is of the GLBT significance. executive director anniversary Paul Boneberg, said Pride’s 40th in events both Society, of the Pride Historical importance “shows the and around the world.”

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34 wraps up Frameline final weekend’s The big 4-0! days: The politics of Pride parade.

As the only LGBT publication with an audited and verified circulation, the Bay Area Reporter offers the largest reach to LGBT consumers in the 9-county San Francisco Bay Area.

RESERVE YOUR SPACE TODAY!

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OUR 2015 PRIDE EDITION PUBLISHES JUNE 25. CALL 415-861-5019 or EMAIL ADVERTISING@EBAR.COM FOR MORE INFO. page 13

NS ECTIO REE S OF TH FIRST

32 • Bay Area Reporter • May 28-June 3, 2015

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

The Musical Wizard of Polk Street

David Kelsey in a 1980s ad for Macintosh computers.

by Michael Flanagan

I

f you think of a popular gay San Francisco musician from the 1970s, the person who probably springs to mind is Sylvester or perhaps Patrick Cowley, both of whom influenced many and are fondly remembered.

But you may be surprised to know that one of the most successful musicians in town in that era was a keyboard player whose claim to fame was playing Dixieland jazz in the era of disco, and that he packed the house at the New Bell Saloon, a bar at 1203 Polk Street, for more than a decade.

David Kelsey was born in Miranda in Humbolt County and began his career humbly, learning to play the organ he inherited from his grandmother. Piano lessons paid off and by 1959 he had made his way to San Francisco and was a working musician. He recounted the start of his career in an oral history with the GLBT Historical Society’s Jim Duggins: “I was 19 and was playing over at the Black Cat. Hazel [Jim McGinnis, Jose Sarria’s accompanist] was having a gall bladder operation and José had no one to play his operas on Sunday afternoons… I also played Halloween there.”

Along with his musical association with Sarria, Kelsey shared another thing in common with Hazel. Both were in the armed forces and made good use of their musical talents there. But whereas Hazel was in the service before working with José, Kelsey went into the Army in 1963 and played with the Seventh Army Chorus in Germany.

They were both part of a tradition of gay men working in the Armed Forces to entertain the troops that Allan Berubé documentQueer Music Heritage ed in his book Coming David Kelsey’s album, Flights Of Fancy.

Out Under Fire.

However Kelsey did it in the Sixties after having worked in gay bars in San Francisco, a considerably more dangerous environment as it came after the gay purges of the 1950s, particularly as he did it as a conscientious objector.

After getting out of the service, Kelsey returned to San Francisco in 1965 and played at several gay dinner clubs including On The Levee (987 Embarcadero), The Big Basket (238 Columbus), and Page One (431 Natoma). He did benefits for the S.I.R. Center and accompanied Charles Pierce at Bimbo’s in 1971.

He became a well-known entertainer, the late Bay Area Reporter’s publisher Bob Ross calling him “a gifted musician and talented comedian” in the magazine Vector.

Kelsey left the Bay Area for an extended stay at the House of Charles in Honolulu in the early ‘70s. But even while he was gone, he made his presence known as the Hawaiian club advertised in the Bay Area Reporter.

In 1974 Kelsey returned to San Francisco and began a seventeenyear run at the New Bell Saloon on 1203 Polk. His first few years there were as a solo musician.

On July 4, 1979, at a post-parade party for one-year-old San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band in Redwood City, Kelsey threw out an invitation for a jam session at the New Bell the following night.

In an article in the B.A.R. the following year, Allen White recalled that at that jam session “Jon Sims, in his usual Judy Garland style, David Kelsey’s ad in Vector magazine. prompted the group to get together.”

t

Sims (founder of the Marching band and the Gay Men’s Chorus) occasionally sat in with the band. From 1979 through 1984, the band played every Sunday night at the New Bell. Pure Trash was a sight to be seen.

In City Arts Monthly Lois Smith said this in a review of a benefit concert: “The jazz world’s answer to the Village People: Pure Trash. David Kelsey, leader of the band, and perhaps its most conservatively dressed member, simultaneously played piano and organ. Wearing a lovely red wig, red satin boxer’s robe and tres chic denim platforms with red piping See page 33 >>

Queer Music Heritage

David Kelsey on the back cover of his album Flights Of Fancy.

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

May 28-June 3, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 33

Kristine W

<<

Kristine W

From page 31

“Even guys who go to parties all the time, they love it but they don’t necessarily understand the effort that can go into it. I don’t want to put out the musical equivalent of McDonald’s. I work really seriously on my songwriting and my recording.”

In a genre sometimes brushed off as disposable oontz oontz, Kristine W’s efforts have paid off in a career of remarkable durability. Since her first single, “Feel What You Want,” went to #1 on the Billboard dance charts more than two decades ago in 1994, she has scored 18 top five dance songs, sixteen of which –most recently “Fade” in 2011– went to #1, besting the likes of Whitney Houston, and placing her just a single hit behind Mariah Carey and Donna Summer.

<<

Unlike so many once-youheard-them, now-you-don’t dance acts, Kristine is far more than fluttering lashes and sparkly boobage used to put a face –and body– on what are essentially producers’ records. She composes her own work on piano and guitar (she also plays saxophone), focusing on melodies and lyrics; the beats and sizzle come later. Her hits are anchored by songs, not just sounds.

For ample proof of the substance beneath the glittery surfaces of her club hits, one need only listen to New & Number Ones Straight Up with a Twist, Kristine’s self-financed 2010 smooth jazz alown, Kristine offers stripped down bum. Alongside an arrestingly tenre-recordings of some of her dance der arrangement of the Eagles’ “Take chart toppers, including “Wonder of It to the Limit,” a grin-inducing reit All” and “Save My Soul.” imagining of The Romantics’ punky Slowed down and stripped of all 1980 “What I Like About You” (“My the studio flourishes that mark their brothers used to play that song in more famous versions, these tracks their high school rock band,” she make winning arguments for Krissaid) and several new tunes of her

tine’s artistic motivations and the staying power of her career.

“A good song is a good song, no matter how you frame it,” she says, pointing to her compositions’ ability to be convincingly presented in radically different styles. “I’ve written lots of unreleased songs that I think would make great country records. And I’d definitely like to do a rock album one day.”

Kristine’s diverse musical interests stem from her upbringing. She was raised in rural Pasco, Washington by her mother and maternal grandmother (Her father died when she was three), both very much involved in music at their church, where Kristine first sang publicly.

Grandma was also trained as a classical violinist, but could no longer play after being struck by lightning and having her shoulders dislocated; she ended up teaching herself to play lap guitar to keep music in her life.

After Kristine’s father passed, her mother took up singing with bar bands to earn a living, which required a diverse repertoire and a versatile singing technique.

“It’s funny to think what must be going through Mom’s head when she sees me at a show today,” says Kristine, now the mother of a teenage son and daughter herself. “I wonder what it’s like to see this little girl you had singing hymns during the offering at church and entertaining at old age homes with my guitar now as this adult dance diva.”

As a high school student, Kristine competed in local beauty pageants to earn scholarship money, and af-

Kristine W performs with DJs Escape and Hex Hector at Served, Saturday, May 30. 10pm-4am. $20$30. Beatbox, 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com www.kristinew.com

Delicious Sichuan specialties Tasty Dim Sum made fresh daily in-house

David Kelsey

Great selection of Belgian beers & California wines

From page 32

was Richard Best on second trumpet. Jeff Glines, the sax player, was nattily attired in a white tuxedo with black pants and resembled Groucho Marx in a blond Lana Turner wig.”

Kelsey was entirely aware that he was going against type by camping it up and playing Dixieland. He told Duggins: “There’s kind of a macho mystique to jazz musicians and there has been for years.”

Both as a solo musician and with Pure Trash, Kelsey was extraordinarily popular. I asked Wayne Friday, former political editor of the B.A.R. (and former bartender at the New Bell) about his act.

“He was very talented, the most talented musician I ever knew,” said Friday. “I’ve never seen anyone who could play like that. It [Pure Trash] took off right away. You couldn’t get near the place on Saturday or Sunday night.”

Friday also told me that Kelsey maintained a lively banter with the audience during performances and that he drew celebrities to the bar.

He counted Eartha Kitt, Barbara Cook, Johnny Ray and Lauren Bacall as fans, and they often made a special effort to see him when they were in town.

ter going to the 1981 Miss America Pageant as Miss Washington, where she won the talent competition singing Gershwin’s “Summertime” from Porgy & Bess. Ultimately, she used her winnings to enroll at the University of Las Vegas and continued to fund her education by performing in casino lounges.

In a multi-year run leading a band, Kristine W and the Sting, at the Las Vegas Hilton, she won Singer of the Year and Bandleader of the Year.

While her show largely consisted of covers, she began to be courted by agents and labels. Her first dance single, “Feel What You Want,” recorded independently in Europe, eventually led to contracts with RCA and Tommy Boy records.

During her Beatbox set, Kristine will perform numbers from her latest release, last year’s New and Number Ones, a career retrospective which includes seven new tracks, including her most recent hit “Everything I Got.” Among the best cuts is a giddy, speedy reinvention of Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire,” another great example of how solid song craft can underpin dance floor throb.

“Good dance music helps get people through hard times,” says Kristine. “It isn’t really given the credit it should be.”t

Ji’

MaMa “As long-time residents of the neighborhood, we look forward to welcoming you to Mama JI’s.”

An autographed photo of David Kelsey.

David Kelsey with Jay Southerland in a 1971 Vector magazine.

Kelsey independently released two albums, a solo titled Flights of Fantasy, and Top O’ The Heap with Pure Trash.

You may wonder why such a talented musician didn’t go to Broadway or Vegas. The answer was provided by Friday, who told me that people in the bar often offered him jobs in both places.

“He was in love with San Francisco,” said Friday.

And San Francisco loved him back. He was mentioned by Herb Caen, played to tourists at Pier 39 and was listed

in Fodor’s San Francisco as a “must see” for several years.

Kelsey died in 1998 at age 58. He was remembered both as a talented musician and as an “only in San Francisco” phenomenon.

As a self-supporting musician, he also unfortunately represents a bygone era here. He deserves to be remembered.

Fortunately there is a great half hour long performance of his work with Pure Trash on YouTube at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9KKC4RKpaJM And he is well represented on the Queer Music Heritage site www.queermusicheritage.com/ kelsey.html.t

Sum Dim

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ne & Din

4416 18th St. (Douglas & Eureka) San Francisco • (415) 626-4416 Visit us at www.mamajissf.com

<< On the Tab

34 • Bay Area Reporter • May 28-June 3, 2015

abf th8e-JuT eOn ne 4 May 2

Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga @ Concord Pavilion, Concord The veteran jazz vocalist and the glam pop star hit the stage in their elegant duo concert tour. $45-$600.

8pm. 2000 Kirker Pass Road, Concord. www.livenation.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night. 11th anniversary night!! $4.

10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

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 29

Fri 29

Boy Bar @ The Cafe

Club Papi @ Oasis

H

eading into June, aka Pride month, things are gaying up all over. As usual, you can go online to www.ebar.com for the full expanded listings.

Thu 28

Barbary Coast Revue @ Balancoire The third season of the popular cabaret show returns, with Danny Kennedy as Mark Twain, a cast of diverse performers, and new guest performer Connie Champagne.

Thursdays weekly thru June. $14-$64.

8pm. 2565 Mission St. at 22nd. www.BarbaryCoastRevue.com

Bulge @ Powerhouse Grace Towers hosts the weekly gogotastic night of sexy dudes shakin’ their bulges and getting wet in their undies for $100 prize (contest at midnight), and dance beats spun by DJ DAMnation. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Faux Real with Fauxnique @ Oasis The local –and internationally acclaimed– dancer and faux queen brings her new show to the SoMa nightclub, with guest performers Tim Carr, Matthew Martin, Miss Rahni and Trixxie Carr. $20. 7pm. Also May 29 & 30. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Fly On @ 1300 on Fillmore Fundraiser gala dinner for the Imagine Bus Project, an arts education project for teenagers at risk in juvenile detention centers; with Rita Moreno, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Jeff Adachi and other notable people. $250 and up. 6:30pm. 1300 Fillmore St. 6751104. www.imaginebusproject.org

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

My So-Called Night @ Beaux Carnie Asada hosts a new weekly ‘90s-themed video, dancin’, drinkin’ night, with VJs Jorge Terez. Get down with your funky bunch, and enjoy 90cent drinks. ‘90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Nap’s Karaoke @ Virgil’s Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover. 9pm. 3152 Mission St. 8292233. www.virgilssf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Pride Dinner Party @ Institute of Possibility Juanita More! and Kitchit host a fundraiser dinner for SF Pride’s Youth Empowerment Summit; enjoy a delicious five-course dinner and wines. $100. 7pm-10:30pm. 3359 Cesar Chavez. www.juanitamore.com

Storm Large @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Musician, actor, playwright, author; the multi-talent performs her new cabaret show, Taken by Storm. $35$50. ($20 food/drink min.). 8pm. Also May 30, 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.stormlarge. com www.ticketweb.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle Music from Danny James, Sarah Bethe Nelson and Wymond Miles. 9pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Homo Thursdays @ Qbar Franko DJs the weekly mash-up/ pop music night. No cover. 2 for 1 well drinks, 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.qbarsf.com

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

Sat 30

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland DJed tunes, gogo hotties, drag shows, drink specials, all at Oakland’s premiere Latin nightclub and weekly cowboy night. $10-$15. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.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.

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

Sun 31

ASL Epic @ Sweet Inspiration Sign Language-only open mic, with storytelling, poetry, comedy and skits.

4pm-7pm. 2239 Market St. www.meetup.com/asl-294

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

Big Top @ Beaux 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

Bobby Conte Thornton @ Venetian Room Bay Area Cabaret presents the cabaret premiere of the singer, whose concert songs range from Irving Berlin to Sting. $30-$40. 5pm. Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St. 392-4400. www.bayareacabaret.org

Club Papi @ Oasis The hot Latin night with sexy gogo guys includes performances by Tania Soto, and hosts Ms. Lola and Dorys. $12-$15. 10pm-3am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.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

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland The festive gogo-filled dance club, with host Lulu, features Latin pop dance hits with DJs Speedy Douglas Romero and Fabricio; no cover before 10pm. $6-$12. 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

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

Midnight Show @ Divas

Sun 31 Lillias White @ Venetian Room

Weekly drag shows at the last transgender-friendly bar in the Polk; with hosts Victoria Secret, Alexis Miranda and several performers. Also Saturdays. $10. 11pm. 1081 Polk St. www.divassf.com

Dark Room @ The Stud

Red Hots Burlesque @ Beatbox

Mother @ Oasis

The saucy women’s burlesque revue’s weekend show; different musical guests each week. $10-$20. 7:30pm.

314 11th St. Also Wed nights at Oasis (298 11th St.). www.redhotsburlesque.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

Yara Sofia (RuPaul’s Drag Race ) performs at the dark gothic drag night, with hosts Suppositori Spelling and Lady Hyde. 10pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com Heklina’s weekly drag show night at the fabulous renovated SoMa nightclub; plus DJ MC2 and guests.

May 30: Sisterhood with Latrice Royale. $10. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Sugar @ The Cafe Dance, drink, cruise at the Castro club.

9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Disco Daddy @ SF Eagle Bonus fifth Sunday edition of DJ Bus Station John’s disco-tastic T-dance. $5. 7pm-12am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

GlamaZone @ The Cafe 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

Jock @ The Lookout The weekly jock-ular fun continues, with special sports team fundraisers.

DJed dance music 3pm-7pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

The Kids in the Hall @ Warfield Theatre

Lillias White @ Venetian Room

Sing your heart out at the free lively night. 8pm-2am. 2120 Broadway.

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

Bay Area Cabaret presents the multiple award-winning musical theatre singer-actress (Tony, Obie, Emmy and more), who performs classic songs in her elegant cabaret show, directed by Billy Stritch. $50.

8pm. Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St. 392-4400. www.bayareacabaret.org

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 weekly drag show continues, with gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Fundraiser for Dykes on Bikes; dance music and drink specials. $5. 9pm2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

The Canadian sketch comedy ensemble reunites for the U.S. tour. $40-$100. 8pm. 982 Market St. www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

Karaoke Night @ Club BnB, Oakland

The Monster Show @ The Edge

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

Sxissor @ SF Eagle

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Thu 28 Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga @ Concord Pavillion

Morning After BBQ @ Oasis New weekly barbeque brunch on the newly opened rooftop deck, with Mimosas and Bloody Mary cocktails.

11am-3pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom.

795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

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On the Tab>>

May 28-June 3, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 35

Patric Watson @ The Chapel Pop-rock-folk singer perfoms music from his new album Love Songs for Robots with his band. $20. 8:30pm.

777 Valencia St. www.thechapelsf.com

Retro Night @ 440 Castro Jim Hopkins plays classic pop oldies, with vintage music videos. 9pm-2am.

44 Castro St. www.the440.com

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

Una Noche @ Club BnB, Oakland

Sun 31 The Kids in the Hall @ The Warfield Theatre

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550 Dance it up at the popular twiceweekly country-western night that includes line-dancing, two-stepping and lessons. $5. 5pm-10:30pm. Also Thursdays 6:30pm-10:30pm. 550 Barneveld Ave. at Industrial. www.sundancesaloon.org

Sunday Brunch, Xtravaganza @ Balancoire Weekly live music shows with host Galilea and various acts, along with brunch, mimosas, champagne and more, at the stylish nightclub and restaurant; shows at 12:30pm, 1:30pm and 2:45pm. After that, T-Dance drag shows at 7pm, 10pm and 11pm. 2565 Mission St. at 21st.

920-0577. www.balancoiresf.com

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 1

42nd Street Moon Gala @ Bimbo’s 365 Club The vintage musical theatre ensemble welcomes Tony Award-winning musical theatre actress-singer Laura Benanti (Gypsy, Nashville) at their gala fundraiser, with cocktails, a live auction, dinner and a ‘Moonlight Lounge.’ Cocktail attire, please. $375-$750. 6pm. 1025 Columbus Ave. 255-8207. www.42ndstmoon.org

Gaymer Meetup @ Brewcade The new weekly LGBT video game enthusiast night include big-screen games, and signature beers, with a new remodeled layout, including an outdoor patio. No cover. 7pm-11pm. 2200 Market St. www.brewcadesf.com

Karaoke @ The Lookout Paul K hosts the amateur singing night. 8pm-2am. 3600 16th St. at Market. www.lookoutsf.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

Mash Up Mondays @ Club BnB, Oakland

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

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Opulence @ Beaux 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 the popular men’s night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Tue 2

Block Party @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Check, Please! Bay Area @ SF Design Center Galleria The KQED restaurant review show celebrates its 10th anniversary with a big food and wine event, with more than 40 eateries and wineries participating. $70-$80. 6:30pm8:30pm. 101 Henry Adams St. 3924400. www.KQED.org

Cock Shot @ Beaux Shot specials and adult Bingo games, with DJs Chad Bays and Riley Patrick, at the new weekly night. No cover.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

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

I Heart Queens, Mazel Top @ Oasis

Weekly Karaoke and open mic night; RuPaul’s Drag Race screenings, too.

9pm-2am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 7597340. www.club-bnb.com

Reception for Adan Garcia’s exhibit of drag art (6:30pm). At 8pm, the Jewish gay guys (and admirers) social event.

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

Monday Musicals @ The Edge

Kingdom of Sodom @ Nob Hill Theatre

Sing along at the popular musical theatre night; also Wednesdays. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing.

4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Naked Night hosted by Truck; strip down with the strippers at the cruisy adult theatre and arcade; free beverages. $20. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Vicky Jimenez’ drag show and contest; Latin music all night. 9pm-2am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.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 3

Booty Call @ QBar Juanita More! and her weekly intimate –yet packed– dance party. $10-$15. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.qbarsf.com

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.

HiTopsSF.com

Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm.

424 Cortland St. 647-3099. www. wildsidewest.com

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See page 38 >>

I am the future of the LGBT community.

I’m gay.

I’m 20 years old. I’m out to my parents. I love parties, the beach, and believe it or not, sports. I have a boyfriend, and we like to laugh at dumb online videos.

But I also read the news. I care about the planet. I’m studying Engineering at college. I voted in the last election and and I campaign for marriage equality.

Someday I might want to have kids.

I am the future of the LGBT community. And I read about that future every day on my smart phone. Because that’s where I want it to be.

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

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

36 • Bay Area Reporter • May 28-June 3, 2015

Wicked

by John F. Karr

I

fessional mode. You gotta admire the rimming and fucking Rose dishes out, and when he spread-eagles Black on the pointed prow of the boat, it’s a real occasion, which I marked with general rejoicing when Rose blasted his load down Duncan’s throat.

Yet somehow this hasn’t been the lover’s idyll I was jacked up for. Rose has shown touches of darker mien. Black is gleefully carefree, but the somber undercurrent that eddies around Rose brought some hesitation to my enthusiasm for the scene.

There’s an enjoyable third scene divertissement with Valentin Petrov and Ty Royal, and then it’s back to the main event. The ongoing celebration of Rose and Black is interrupted by a home invasion. The intruder manages somehow (we’re not shown) to tie up the guys (with rope work worthy of Van Darkholme).

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scene? The question is, can the arousal that is porn’s promise be kept when the requirements of the plot turn dark?

If the object of porn is to arouse us, that rape makes the movie’s effectiveness questionable. Yet its expert enactment of serious plot convolutions mark it as a bold achievement. Congratulations to Leo Forte for his coherent script, and to mr Pam, whose filming is always handsome, whose continuity maintains mood, and whose actors never falter.

Does the movie represent porn’s sophisticated entry in feature film territory, or a partially successful experiment with the nature and goals of porn? I swing a little toward the latter. You’ll have see for yourself.

Here’s another interesting question about porn. You wanna know how long it takes to film a porn scene, and how long a performer must keep his dick long? Two scenes of Wicked Game begin in full daylight, and end as dusk is darkening into night.

’ve always felt entirely fortunate that I was somehow chosen to write about guy’s cocks. There are some beauties being put to good use in the new NakedSword Original movie, A Wicked Game. But my joy in watching them was clouded by aspects of the movie’s unique nature.

First, let me consider under whose provenance the movie was produced. It’s got a NakedSword imprimatur and packaging, plus their entire production crew, including mr. Pam as director. But you won’t find it at the NakedSword site. It’s being marketed by Falcon; you’ll find it in their store.

This bit of confusion is compounded by the casting, which includes Exclusive performers from both Falcon and a third company, Men.com. I’d guess all three of the named companies function under some greater corporate umbrella, Reality shown which, like The Blob, has I found it ironic, and a been busy consuming little sad, that Jarec Wentbrands. To me, this comworth was languishing in mingling of companies jail at the same time I was speaks of the conglomerwaxing enthusiastic over ation of a major portion his suave look and forceof the porn industry, and ful fucking in mr. Pam’s the concomitant loss of A Wicked Game. His Arbrand identity. mani outfit has been reOh, well. That’s just placed by an orange jump all backstage jabber. It’s suit, and his sharply tonabout time we got to talksured hair by a buzz cut. ing about dick.

He’s been charged with You’ll feel buoyant as blackmail and felony exyou approach A Wicked tortion of some $500,000.

Game. The movie was Doing what’s euphemistifilmed in a brilliantly cally called “escort” work, sunny Fort Lauderdale, under his real name, and includes, as the box Teofil Brank, he allegedly cover shows, a high glam got a hefty commission fuckarama aboard a yacht from a would-be porn with glam headliners producer (and registered Ryan Rose and Duncan Republican) each time NakedSword Black. The movie feahe delivered the gent a tures suave, studly Jarec A publicity shot for in A Wicked Game shows Duncan boy (which is commonly Wentworth, and it re- Black and Ryan Rose cuddling their rapist, James known as pimping) for introduces to mainstream Hamilton. what’s euphemistically porn, the forceful James called “private meetings.”

Hamilton. Yet, when it’s There are all sort of conall over, you may feel brought to He forces Rose to watch his rape volutions to this tale, and a quick ground. And you’ll find that’s what of Black, and a sunny Florida romp online search will bring you to the director and scriptwriter want. becomes In Cold Blood. That sure Brank’s declaration of innocence.

Scene One finds handsome Jarec kills eroticism. Black is forced to Reportage of crimes perpetrated Wentworth dressed and groomed suck the rapist’s cock. It’s a memby porn stars aren’t infrequent. Yes, in keen high fashion style. He arorable cock, belonging to James porn seems a loosely regulated and rives poolside and silently, forcefulHamilton, and I’d like to see it in louche environment that’s likely to ly, takes the equally handsome pool some other movie, any other movfind itself a host to marginal types. boy, Rikki York. York is beefy, and ie. Rape as entertainment does not But I don’t think it’s porn that matches his partner’s immaculate fly with me. drives performers to crime. grooming. Wentworth’s so cool he Things get more twisted in the Unlawful acts occur with the doesn’t take off his sunglasses while denouement. There’s a corpse (or same regularity most everywhere. rimming York, and is considerate two), and a shocking revelation.

Like, in politics; witness the local enough to ultimately feed most of Sorry, you’ll get no spoilers from politico who was arrested last week his cum to him. It’s a hot scene. me. It’s around this time that you for possession of child pornograIt seems Wentworth is a detecfinally realize that Rose had been phy. Was it working for Ed Lee that tive, and we see him arriving at a playing (skillfully) a purposefully made the guy go wrong?t crime scene to question mournful disquieting subtext during the Ryan Rose, who’s got his face burscene aboard the yacht. But what www.NakedSword.com ied in his hands. Across the room is did it do to our enjoyment of the the corpse of Duncan Knight, with a bloody knife lying nearby. Whatever happened?

Rose’s explanation takes us into a flashback. Newlyweds Rose and Black are celebrating on that yacht.

What a glamorous day!

A Rose is a rose, you know, and Ryan’s sorta dazzling in a skimpy Speedo. For my money, the real attraction is Black. He may not be tall as forever and broad-shouldered as a Frigidaire, but he’s warmer, with an open face and lush, long hair that falls in shining waves. I admire at every moment his sunny enthusiasm and strongly projected joy in his sexuality.

NakedSword The guys are superbly hot together, even if Black relates with Suaveness in shades: Jarec Wentworth tops happy hunger on a personal basis, Rikki York in A Wicked Game. while Rose relates in a rather pro-

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

May 28-June 3, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 37

Rich Stadtmiller

IML contestants at the Opening Ceremonies including all four Bay Area contestants; Trevor Black holding the flag, Al Parso-York to his immediate left, Daniel DeLage on the far right, and Scott “BigRed” MacLaren to Daniel’s immediate left.

<<

Chicago Leather

twenty men proceed through that night’s competition during which they are judged on leather image, presentation skills that includes a When speaking of IML, there’s a short speech, and physical appeartendency to focus primarily on the ance. At the end of the night the contest, which is admittedly a big scores from the final night’s compedeal, and most consider it the most tition only are tallied and the winhigh profile of all leather contests. ners are announced.

But surrounding the conRunning alongside the IML contest is a massive leather test is another contest that takes and kink celebration of place all weekend, the International parties (the San FranMr. Bootblack Contest. Bootblacks cisco party is one of are scored in four categories: bootthe highlights), vendor blacking skills (50%), a private inmarket, dances and other terview with the judges (20%), perevents. Together they sonality and stage presence (10%), form what I consider the and ballots (20%). Ballots allow for premiere gay male leaththe general public to weigh in on the er event in the world. The scoring by voting for their favorite vast majority of attendees don’t atbootblack during the “open polish” tend the contest at all. Instead, they portion of the weekend when the focus on the rest of the weekend’s bootblacks are available to work on offerings. At IML there is something the boots of anyone who climbs into for every gay male kinkster of just their chairs. about any erotic proclivity.

Patrick Smith (Mr. Los Angeles I will repeat something I’ve said Leather 2015), ended up winning before that was told to me by local the International Mr. Leather title leatherman Patrick Mulcahey, bewhile Kevin Murphy (Mr. Leather cause it so beautifully sums up why Ireland 2015) was first runner-up IML is so special and an event I enand Brian Donner (Mr. Tristate courage every true leather Leather 2014) was second and kink gay man to atrunner-up. tend.

Bamm-Bamm ended Patrick said, “People up winning the Internatalk about a ‘leather tribe,’ tional Mr. Bootblack title but I never experienced while Bootblack Zach that until IML - thouwas first runner-up and sands of men of all ages Brooklyn was second and races who share colrunner-up. lective ideals about sexuRamien Pierre, IML ality, pleasure, masculin2014, a smart and savvy ity, beauty, character, and leatherman who reprea more just and loving sented the IML title well, future.” offered this about his exSo that is why I keep reperience this past year. turning to IML. If you’re a Maybe the new IML will kinky gay man, I strongly find this useful. encourage you to give Ramien said, “The IML a try at least once. greatest compliment I This year IML weekreceived during my title end took place May 21year came recently, and 25, headquartered at the at a moment when I was Congress Plaza Hotel. feeling unsure whether Since the Congress isn’t as or not I was doing a good large as some of the past Rich Stadtmiller job. Someone told me hotels that have hosted that I was ‘a good example IML, there were attendees A tear-inducing portion of Mr. Leather Ireland 2015 of being a good example.’ scattered across many ho- Kevin Murphy’s speech was when he proposed to his It was a joy and a relief tels in the nearby vicinity, partner the day same-sex marriage became legal in to hear someone so sucand that made the sur- his country of Ireland. cinctly summarize what I rounding streets appear had spent 11 months tryto be a leatherman’s paraing to figure out.”

The judges score multiple times dise neighborhood for a few days. I So as I type these last few words during the weekend. For those unloved it. as this amazing weekend in Chicago familiar with the process, every conI used to say the contest was the testant is scored during a private preends, I am reminded that not everycenterpiece of the weekend. As I’ve liminary interview by the judges for one here gets to return home to a talked to a variety of guys who at60% of their score. Later during the place as remarkable for leather and tend, I’ve come to disagree with my weekend all contestants receive 40% kink folks as the Bay Area. There’s former view. While the contest is of their score at the Pecs and Personno place quite like the Bay Area. We important to the weekend, it’s really ality portion open to the public durare so damn lucky.t about the camaraderie and erotic ing which their stage presence and freedom the weekend offers that personality are scored. At that point www.imrl.com draws the massive numbers. Still, all scores are tallied and the top 20 IML is the iconic leather contest.

Race Bannon is a local author, contestants are determined.

This year 52 men competed to be blogger and activist. You can reach Then, during the final contest, the International Mr. Leather 2015 and him on his website, www.bannon. top 20 contestants are announced six men competed to be Internacom. For Leather events listings, at the start of the night and those tional Mr. Bootblack 2015 (IMBB).

From page 31

Among the competitors were our own Bay Area’s Trevor Black (Mr. SF Leather 2015), Daniel DeLage (Mr. Powerhouse 2015), Al ParsoYork (Mr. Alameda County Leather 2015), Scott “Big Red” Farrell (former Mr. SF Leather), and running for International Mr. Bootblack was Dusty “Bamm-Bamm” Garner (former International Leatherboy). All of them did a fantastic job throughout the competition.

A contest like IML can’t happen without a panel of judges who put in a lot of hours over the course of the weekend.

Judges for the contest this year were Ramien Pierre (IML 2014), Kenneth Anthony, Daniel Dumont, George Giaouris, Patrick Grady, Riley Johnson, Midori, Bruce Ross, and Jeff Wiloughby. Tallymasters were Don Leach and Danny Tamez. Judges for the International Mr. Bootblack competition were Daddy Tony, slave tabitha, and Scout. The contest was once again masterfully MC’d by the Bay Area’s own Lenny Broberg.

visit www.ebar.com/bartab.

Rich Stadtmiller

As evidence that times are changing and leather/kink acceptance is now greater, two of the mothers in the audience posed with their sons: Patrick Smith (left) with his mother and Brian Donner with his mother (right).

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

38 • Bay Area Reporter • May 28-June 3, 2015

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On the Tab

From page 35

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle

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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 weekly women’s sexy strip show, with special guests Barnaby’s Babes (male burlesque dancers). $15-$25.

Jose Guzman-Colon

Kollin Holts hosts the weekly comedy and open mic talent night. 6pm-8pm.

398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

FREE CODE: Reporter

8:30pm-11:30pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.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

To place your Personals ad, Call 415-861-5019 for more info & rates

2586

Thu 4 Nneka @ The New Parish

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. 8614186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Wig Parade @ Oasis Nicole Monsoon hosts a wig fashion show of festive designs by David carver-Ford. 7:30pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Wooden Nickel Wednesday @ 440

Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland

Sex & The City Live @ Oasis

Buy a drink and get a wooden nickle good for another. 12pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Weekly LGBT and straight comedy night hosted by Dan Mires. $10. 8pm.

2111 Franklin St. Oakland. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

The popular drag parody performances of episodes from the TV show. $25 and up. Thu-Sat 7pm.

Thru June 26. 298 11th St. at Folsom.

795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Thu 4

Barbary Coast Revue @ Balancoire The third season of the popular cabaret show returns, with Danny Kennedy as Mark Twain, a cast of diverse performers, and new guest performer Connie Champagne.

Thursdays weekly thru June. $14-$64.

8pm. 2565 Mission St. at 22nd. www.BarbaryCoastRevue.com

Bulge @ Powerhouse

Wed 3 Wig Parade @ Oasis

Grace Towers hosts the weekly gogotastic 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

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar.

10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Karaoke Night @ Club OMG Dana leads the weekly amateur singing night. 8pm. No cover. 43 6th St. 896-6473. www.clubomgsf.com

Nneka @ The New Parish, Oakland The German/Nigerian modern soul singer-songwriter performs two nights as part of her new tour; Antique Naked Soul opens. $25-$30. 9pm.

Also June 5. 1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. (510) 444-7474. www.nnekaworld.com www.thenewparish.com

Thirsty Thursdays @ The Cafe Drink specials, Top 40, gogo studs and no cover, 2 for 1 cocktails until 10:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Thump @ White Horse, Oakland Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests. 9pm-2am.

6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

May 28-June 3, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 39

Shooting Stars One Night Only

photos by steven underhill C

ast members from the the touring production of The Book of Mormon performed wild and wacky interpretations of songs by The Beatles, with hostess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, at the Marines Memorial Theatre last Monday night. The ‘One Night Only’ concert benefitted the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation’s expanded redistribution of fund to local caregiving nonprofits. For more info, visit www.richmondermet.org More event photo albums are on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife.

See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at www.StevenUnderhill.com.

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com or email stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

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