February 13, 2025 edition of the Bay Area Reporter
meeting
Checking in with Randall
Scott Wazlowski
Castro Theatre reopening delayed
by John Ferrannini
The Castro Theatre won’t be reopening this summer as originally planned. That’s according to an announcement made Thursday at the Castro Merchants Association by Another Planet Entertainment, the company in charge of the renovation and restoration project at the historic site.
Other items discussed at the business group’s first meeting of 2025 included the need to find a new president; hearing a proposal for a wellness center; and support for a new mural in the LGBTQ neighborhood.
The Castro Theatre is an integral part of the neighborhood, and business owners as well as residents have looked forward to its reopening following significant renovation. Another Planet Entertainment, which manages the theater, started the renovation project in spring 2024.
APE project manager Margaret Casey announced that the events and concerts producer is hoping to open it in the fall. It means the historic moviehouse will be dark for the second year during Frameline, the city’s international LGBTQ film festival that usually shows most of its movies at the Castro Theatre during mid-June, bringing an influx of hundreds of people into the neighborhood over the course of its run.
Last year during Pride Month Frameline utilized theaters in the Mission, Civic Center, Marina, and Laurel Heights to show its films in San Francisco. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus also relocated its annual Christmas Eve shows from the Castro Theatre to Davies Symphony Hall last December.
“We originally forecast summer of this year, hoping we’ll be open during Pride. That’s not going to happen,” Casey said at the merchants meeting. “Our next best bet is October, November, and December we’ll be able to open.”
The reason, Casey said, is Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
“Our current issue is PG&E,” she said. “We need to add power for our lighting and sound systems. We have a couple different options for where we draw power from – one is simple and easy, one is complicated – and we have no control over any of that, so we have been very much in a holding pattern.
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SF building becomes first US transgender movement historic site
by Matthew S. Bajko
The site where a transgender uprising against police harassment took place in San Francisco 59 years ago has become the first property granted federal landmark status specifically for its connection to the transgender movement in the U.S. It is also now on the California Register of Historical Resources.
On January 27 the building at 101 Taylor Street was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Tenderloin District building was listed without fanfare last month, with the news of the national recognition reaching local advocates earlier this week.
The address was where one night in August 1966 an angry drag queen patronizing Gene Compton’s Cafeteria housed in a ground floor commercial space reportedly threw a cup of hot coffee in the face of a police officer as he tried to arrest her without a warrant. The exact date of the altercation has been lost to time. But the incident sparked a riot between trans and queer patrons of the 24-hour diner and cops, as detailed in the 2005 documentary “Screaming Queens” by transgender scholar and historian Susan Stryker, Ph.D.
“As far as I know, it’s the first landmark on the national registry listed specifically for its connection to transgender community history,” said
Stryker. “There is Stonewall and sites connected to individual people like Pauli Murray, who was nonbinary. But this is the first thing put on the register specifically because of its connection to the history of the transgender movement.”
Coming amid the Trump White House’s assault on the rights of trans youth and adults in
recent weeks, the Compton’s listing is “something to celebrate,” said Shayne Watson, a lesbian Bay Area-based historian and historic preservation planner who had highlighted the property’s trans historical significance in a city-commissioned report she co-wrote over a decade ago.
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Lee says she’s ready to lead Oakland
by Cynthia Laird
Former congressmember Barbara Lee told a crowd of supporters that she’s ready to lead Oakland as her mayoral campaign kicked off its headquarters opening over the weekend. The longtime progressive Democrat is seen as the frontrunner in the special election to choose a leader following the recall of former mayor Sheng Thao.
Lee, who long represented Oakland and surrounding cities in Congress, left the House of Representatives in early January. She had run unsuccessfully for California’s open U.S. Senate seat last year. A potential position in a Kamala Harris administration failed to materialize when Republican Donald Trump was elected president.
After Oakland voters recalled Thao in the November 5 election, and Trump won the presidency, progressives began talking about Lee as a mayoral candidate. There is precedent for such a move. The late former mayor Ron Dellums, Lee’s mentor, served in Congress for decades before returning home to lead the East Bay city from 2007-2011.
In early January, Lee officially declared her mayoral candidacy. The April 15 election will be to complete Thao’s term, which goes through 2026. Last summer, Thao found herself in the center of a wide-ranging federal corruption probe into Alameda County politics when FBI agents raided her home. In January, she was crim-
inally indicted on federal corruption charges and has pleaded not guilty.
Lee’s campaign headquarters is at 12th Street and Broadway in downtown Oakland. Supporters and volunteers filled the large room and gave Lee a rousing welcome.
“We’re at a critical crossroads here in Oakland,” Lee said during her remarks. “I will be ready to hit the ground running. I will be a hands-on mayor.”
Lee, 78, touted recent endorsements of the Alameda County Democratic Party; Oak PAC, the political arm of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce; and the Alameda Labor Council.
Lee said she’s learned in the last two to three months that “every sector wants the city to move forward.”
There will be difficult decisions ahead for whomever wins the mayor’s race. Lee’s major opponent is former city councilmember Loren Taylor, who officially filed last month, as the Bay Area Reporter previously reported.
Oakland faces a daunting $280 million budget shortfall that has already seen two fire stations in the hills temporarily closed. At the February 8 Lee event, queer City Councilmember Janani Ramachandran told the crowd that a third fire station has also been closed.
The Taylor campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
“The City of Oakland needs help,” Ramachandran said, adding that seasoned leadership like Lee’s is needed.
Lee said that public safety and sheltering the unhoused are top priorities, along with economic development to draw businesses to the city.
“I also recognize that Oakland is a vibrant community,” she said, but added, “in many places, morale is down, people don’t have hope.”
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Cheyenne Jackson
Another Planet Entertainment announced that the Castro Theatre reopening has been pushed back to this fall, due to issues with Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Former congressmember Barbara Lee spoke at her Oakland mayoral headquarters February 8.
Jane Philomen Cleland
Volunteers put the finishing touches on a Black Trans Lives Matter mural at the corner of Turk and Taylor streets in August 2020.
Rick Gerharter
Public safety discussed at SOMA town hall
by John Ferrannini
City officials said they’ve heard the message from voters and are cracking down on criminal activity while trying to improve street conditions and help the unhoused. That was the consensus at a public safety town hall in the South of Market neighborhood.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said during the District 6 public safety town hall February 3 that she approves of the help she’s getting from Mayor Daniel Lurie – and hopes that the new Trump administration continues the cooperative relationship her office has built with federal officials.
“Any time you have a completely new administration, you have to sit down at the table and inform people of what you’ve already been doing and tell them what you think still needs to be done,” Jenkins said, adding she had a couple of meetings with Lurie during the transition and now meets with him every other week. “He is trying to build a great team who are now trying to divide and conquer some of the work that under Mayor Breed’s staff was more condensed, so each day we’re all learning what each other thinks is best focused on coming up with a new strategy together.”
Jenkins said her office shares many of Lurie’s priorities.
“I discussed a lot with him: my thoughts on us needing a more robust public health strategy, because again, you can’t put all of this on the shoulders of law enforcement to solve the addiction issue we have on our streets,” Jenkins said. “We need to have a stabilization center. We need to have more data as we shift [law enforcement resources] to Sixth Street –are these people who are unhoused? Or are these people who are housed, who chose to use out on the street? That tells us something different about how we need to interact with them.”
Lurie’s promise to address the city’s fentanyl crisis helped propel him to the mayoralty in last year’s election. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors granted him broad emergency powers to address it. According to a news release the fentanyl state of emergency ordinance “will unlock funding and expedite hiring and contracting – allowing for expanded treatment and shelter capacity, new behavioral and mental health initiatives, and accelerated hiring of key public safety and behavioral health staff.”
Lurie is a supporter of a 24/7 drop-off center as an alternative to jail for people experiencing a mental health or drugdriven crisis episode, as he reiterated in his inaugural address.
The mayor’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment February 6.
San Francisco’s national reputation has taken a hit in recent years for the intertwined crises of street homelessness, fentanyl use, and petty crime. Jenkins claimed that, “We do have some reason to think” that other jurisdictions are “even getting people bus tickets to come here, saying that’s where all the treatment is and all the great things that we can go get.”
Her message to them, “We will fight you through the courts.”
Jenkins has asked the city attorney’s office “to the extent that we can prove there is any jurisdiction in the Bay Area or beyond that is systematically sending people here, that we seek court injunctions, that we gather evidence to prove it and seek injunctions against these other counties.”
Sam Dodge, the city’s director of street response coordination, agreed that Lurie has been “very hands on from the beginning, prepared to go, and a breath of fresh air.”
“Honestly, a lot of the government working since COVID was worn down, so it’s been great to have fresh eyes and energy in there,” he continued. “A more, I don’t know, corporate approach. There’s a seriousness – ‘You don’t want to do this? You need to do this. This is really important, and that’s been also refreshing.”
Future of DOJ efforts unclear
The public safety forum was held at the Ikea at 945 Market Street and featured Jenkins, Dodge, and San Francisco Police Department Chief William Scott. Questions submitted in advance were read by gay District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey. There were several dozen attendees in the Ikea food hall.
Jenkins came to power after the June 2022 ouster of her former boss Chesa
Boudin, who was recalled amid voter concerns about his handling of crime and public safety, particularly during and after the COVID pandemic lockdowns. First appointed by former mayor London Breed, Jenkins won election in November 2022 and was reelected to a full four-year term last November.
Dorsey was also appointed by Breed in 2022 and went on to win election to a full term that November.
Dorsey – a longtime veteran of the City Attorney’s office who later worked as the SFPD’s communications director – said he’s “never seen a level of cooperation between local, state, and federal authorities like we’re seeing right now.”
Jenkins said she built relationships within the Biden administration to deliver for San Francisco, and indeed, reported crime in 2024 fell to the lowest overall crime rate since 2001.
“When I got appointed, maybe a few months later we got a newly appointed U.S. attorney, a federal prosecutor, who due to urging from Speaker Emerita [Nancy] Pelosi came to the table with the chief and I and said, ‘Do you want us to help you?’ and we said, ‘Absolutely, we do,’” Jenkins said. “The problem of drug dealing was so out of control we knew we needed all hands on deck. … The [Drug Enforcement Administration], the FBI, and the federal prosecutors came together, again at the table with us, and said how can we work this out? What can this look like?”
Part of that agreement led to United States Attorney Ismail Ramsey taking on more street-level drug dealing cases, she said.
“Normally, the feds were more used to higher up in the drug trade,” Jenkins said, adding an anecdote that the reality of federal prosecution has deterred drug dealing.
“The federal courthouse has judges who take crime really seriously and they have stiffer penalties, so it’s a risk-benefit analysis” Jenkins said.
But with President Donald Trump back in office, Jenkins cautioned, “We don’t know what’s going to happen, everyone.”
With the new administration comes changes at the justice department, an offer to buy-out federal employees (which some 20,000 have already taken, Axios reported, and promises to block federal dollars and resources to sanctuary cities like San Francisco, which prohibits local enforcement from cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
“Our current U.S. attorney, Izzy Ramsey, who has been great, expects to be let go any day now because, of course, he is a Biden appointee, and we expect Trump to come in and overhaul every single U.S. attorney appointment,” Jenkins said. “Until that happens, we’re full speed ahead. We have to wait and see whether or not whoever replaces him is going to respect my office’s need to abide by sanctuary city and that the role that we play has to be limited in our collaboration with them.
“We have to see whether or not the Trump administration’s threats of sanctions against cities like San Francisco because of sanctuary city means he tells them ‘don’t work with us,’ or anything crazy. We just don’t know,” Jenkins added.
Asked for comment in response to Jenkins’ statements, a spokesperson for U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California stated that the federal government is looking forward to continued cooperation on combatting open-air drug scenes.
“The All Hands on Deck initiative,
involving an array of local, state, and federal law enforcement, has driven the positive change that has taken place in the Tenderloin over the past year, including tackling open-air drug markets and reducing overdose deaths,” the spokesperson stated via email February 7. “The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and San Francisco Police Department have been indispensable in this coordinated law enforcement effort. The U.S. Attorney’s Office looks forward to continuing to work with them.”
Scott said he feels confident federal officials won’t seek to obstruct the city’s progress.
“Federal and local law enforcement effectiveness is built on relationships at that level, at the local level,” Scott said. “They have their marching orders from headquarters just like we do from our mayor and our executive administration. However, at the local level those relationships need a lot because they need us and we need them to do what we respectively do.
“I say that, to say this – they’re going to have their orders, they know what our rules are in the city, what our laws are, immigration and other things, sanctuary city, and they’ve been doing that since the law has been on the books,” Scott said. “The people I work with here, and before I got here in the city, have always respected that.”
On February 7, San Francisco joined a number of jurisdictions in suing the Trump administration over two memos the city alleges “instructed USDOJ personnel to investigate and civilly and criminally prosecute state and local officials in sanctuary jurisdictions who do not actively assist in immigration enforcement,” as well as Executive Order 14159, which the city says orders federal agencies to cut off funding to sanctuary cities, according to a news release from the office of City Attorney David Chiu.
The justice department brought a civil action challenging the city of Chicago and state of Illinois’ sanctuary laws the previous day.
“The Trump administration’s actions have nothing to do with public safety because we know that sanctuary laws improve public safety,” Chiu stated in the release. “This is the federal government illegally asserting a right it does not have, telling cities how to use their resources, and commandeering local law enforcement. This is the federal government coercing local officials to bend to their will or face defunding or prosecution. That is illegal and authoritarian. As local officials, we have a right to do our jobs without threats and interference from the federal government.”
San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey, right, spoke at a District 6 public safety town hall that included, from left, Sam Dodge, director of street response coordination; Police Chief William Scott; and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
John Ferrannini
Randall adapts to new role in Congress
by Matthew S. Bajko
Even before she had been sworn in as the first LGBTQ member of the House of Representatives from Washington state, queer Congressmember Emily Randall (D-Bremerton) was confronted by the transphobia of her new political colleagues. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) banned transgender people from using the bathroom corresponding with their gender when in the U.S. Capitol.
It was a response to the historic election of Democratic Delaware Congressmember Sarah McBride, the first trans person elected to serve on Capitol Hill. Randall, the first out Latina in Congress, wanted not only to show her solidarity with McBride, whom she had gotten to know during their orientation for new congressional members, but also for her constituents and anyone else coming to the U.S. Capitol complex and in need of using a restroom.
Thus, she and her staff worked up a sign to affix to the entranceway of her office in the Longworth House Office Building. Next to the door into her suite numbered 1531 on the fifth floor, visitors will find bright signage in rainbow colors declaring her private facilities an “All Gender Bathroom.” In addition to symbols for men, women and gendernonconforming individuals are ones for pregnant people, babies, and the disabled along with the donkey and elephant mascots for the country’s two main political parties.
The bottom of the sign declares, “All are welcome to use our restroom regardless of gender identity or expression, political ideology or shoe size.” Randall has made the sign available for use by all members of Congress, though her staff had told the Bay Area Reporter that none had done so to date.
“This is the House of Representatives. It is our job to represent the people and give them access to their government. If people want to come and lobby their member of Congress and push their policy agendas, they should be able to go to the bathroom here. And that includes transgender folks who are coming to lobby Congress,” Randall, 39, told the B.A.R. during a video interview late last month.
At the time of the January 24 interview, Randall had yet to have a trans person take up usage of her bathroom. But she did have a Republican family from her House district happen to be in town to attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration and ask about a restroom for their young son to use, to which she said he was welcome to utilize the one in her office.
Her allowing public access to her office’s private bathroom harks back to her work as a Washington state senator in setting up lactation rooms available to parents of newborns in her home state’s capitol building.
“I think our buildings should be accessible because they are the people’s buildings. They are not just for us,” noted Randall, who was elected a co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus for LGBTQ House members and their straight allies.
The anti-trans restroom policy adopted by her Republican colleagues wasn’t the only rude welcome Randall has received since heading to Washington, D.C. With her having an active social media presence, particularly on Instagram at https://www.instagram. com/p/DFs15YyJGEr/, something she began as a state legislator, Randall has been taken aback by the increase in derogatory comments about her physical appearance she now receives as a member of Congress.
It wasn’t something she was routinely subjected to when representing the Puget Sound region in the Washington Legislature. Yet, since becoming the holder of the Evergreen State’s 6th District U.S. House seat, nasty comments about her looks are now common in the comments section of her online posts.
“I have been in public office for years and I thought I knew what negative comments on social media were like. I
all-gender
will just say I had no idea what the negative comments would be like as a member of Congress,” said Randall, noting she was prepared for the blowback on her policy stances.
But swipes at her physical appearance, said Randall, are “not what you expect or what you should have to expect as a public official, or any human being should expect. Why should we talk about how people look?”
Highlighting the positive
She aims to highlight the positives and has begun a weekly feature on her Instagram page called “Six for the 6th” where she shines a light on six things people may have missed during the course of the week. The number two moment for the post that went up January 19 showcased her using her first speech on the House floor to denounce the transphobic House bill 28 dubbed the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025.”
It aims to permanently ban trans females from playing on women’s athletic teams. Should it become law, H.R. 28 would generally prohibit school athletic programs from allowing individuals whose biological sex at birth was male to participate in programs that are for women or girls. (On February 5 Trump signed an executive order to do just that, though it can be rescinded by a future occupant of the Oval Office.)
Randall also has become a vocal opponent of the Trump administration and its various policies. She was quick to call out Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship for the children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents, which has been blocked by a federal judge, as birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
She also has called out Trump “and unelected Elon Musk,” the tech titan heading up the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as “a threat to our democracy and essential government programs our seniors, families, children, and veterans rely on.”
For those impacted by the funding freeze Trump imposed on federal contracts, which have since been blocked by federal judges from taking effect, Randall and her staff set up a form for people to fill out and seek assistance from her office.
At the same time as she has tried to assuage the fears and concerns of her constituents, Randall has also attempted to manage their expectations. With Democrats in the minority in both chambers of Congress, they are limited in what actions they can take to block Trump, noted Randall in one recent post.
“Folks, I hear your terror and frustration that your elected leaders aren’t doing anything fast enough. A lot of the actions that can/are being taken most rapidly are lawsuits – in the courts on behalf of impacted parties, by unions, ACLU, state attorneys general, etc.,” wrote Randall. “The truth is, Democrats in the House minority don’t have “standing” to sue on many of these atrocities. Our committee leadership is coordinating with/supporting outside efforts wherever possible.”
ber and both won second terms in 2022. Wilson endorsed Randall in the House race.
As a freshman member of Congress, Randall is serving on the House Committee on Natural Resources and Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She is also on subcommittees for Indian and Insular Affairs, Federal Lands, Health Care and Financial Services, and Government Operations.
She was thrilled with the assignments, especially since she represents a district known for its natural scenic wonders but dealing with the impacts of climate change. There are also a dozen federallyrecognized American Indian tribes with lands in her district, and a total of 29 sovereign nations throughout her state.
Asked what her message is particularly for LGBTQ Americans, Randall told the B.A.R. that they deserve to have a sense of safety and security like anyone else in the country and intends to fight to see that they do.
“We may not have the majority right now, but we are going to keep fighting to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice,” pledged Randall, who acknowledged the frightening atmosphere and uncertainty currently being felt by many Americans, whether they be LGBTQ, immigrants, or part of any marginalized community.
“I would say I see you and I understand that it is scary. We are living in scary times,” she said. “I will also say states like Washington, Oregon, and California are doing really important work. They are doing really important work to protect our neighbors, all of our neighbors.”
Working with colleagues
Randall’s victory last November made Washington the second West Coast state to have out representation in Congress. California’s two gay Democratic Congressmembers, Robert Garcia of Long Beach and Mark Takano of Riverside, had both endorsed her House candidacy.
Now Randall is not only serving alongside them but also closely working with them in the Congressional Equality Caucus. Garcia is also a co-chair, while Takano was elected its chair this session.
“It has been a pleasure to welcome Congresswoman Emily Randall as a co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus,” Takano stated to the B.A.R. “Rep. Randall is an accomplished state legislator and a dedicated advocate for her constituents. I know she will play a vital role in helping us advance LGBTQI+ equality and holding the Trump Administration accountable, especially as a member of the Oversight Committee.”
A former Oakland resident with inlaws who live on the Peninsula south of San Francisco, Randall was born and raised in Port Orchard on Washington’s Kitsap Peninsula. She and her partner of 19 years, Alison Leahey, a carpenter in the construction field, own a home in Bremerton.
The women first met at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and eventually moved together out west, settling in West Oakland. Leahey’s sister and her family reside in the Bay Area.
Back in 2015 and 2016 Randall had managed institutional partnerships for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. She left to work for Planned Parenthood. In 2017, with Leahey working at the time for Microsoft, the women had relocated to Washington state. Upset by Trump’s election as president in 2016, Randall decided to seek public office herself.
With her win seven years ago to the 26th Senate District in her state Legislature, Randall became the first Latina elected to represent it. Claire Wilson, a lesbian who grew up in Seattle, also won a Senate seat that November.
They became the first out women elected to their Legislature’s upper cham-
kind of scary right now in this political moment,” she said. “Since I came for orientation the week after the election, I keep thinking how I feel more optimistic than I thought I would on election night.”
She added that, “I think about being united as a Democratic Party and serving alongside so many folks who, like me, want to make a difference for their constituents.”
Randall also is hopeful of being able to work with her colleagues across the aisle in areas where they agree on.
“In the 119th Congress, Oversight Committee Democrats will face an important task: fighting to make life easier for everyday Americans and holding the incoming administration accountable. I’ll lead by example and always keep the issues most important to working people in my community front and center,” stated Randall last month after being named to the committees by her party’s minority leader Congressmember Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Speaking to the B.A.R. last month, Randall had expressed optimism at still being able to make a difference during her first term.
“It is an honor, exciting, and also
“I have gotten to know many freshmen Republicans who I think also want to make a difference in the lives of the people they serve,” she said. “I am hopeful there will be enough of us who want to do as much good as we can so we are able to pass some bipartisan policy that really does lower the cost of living, makes health care accessible, especially in rural communities, and makes housing more accessible and affordable.”
Yet she is also realistic about the political environment she finds herself in.
“Time will tell if Republicans are looking for those opportunities to work together on making life easier to live for our neighbors or if they are going to focus entirely on villainizing people who want to use the bathroom and get health care access,” said Randall. t
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Congressmember Emily Randall stands outside her office where there is a placard welcoming anyone to use her private restroom.
Courtesy Randall’s office
The
restroom sign that Congressmember Emily Randall has outside her House office.
Courtesy Randall’s office
Artwork sales sustain Oakland LGBTQ arts center
by Matthew S. Bajko
For the Queer Healing Arts Center, showcasing the work of Bay Area LGBTQ artists, especially those of color and gender-nonconforming, is its main raison d’être. At the same time, selling the art is what sustains it.
The Oakland-based arts center relies on the sale of the artwork at its shows, and purchases of products from its online store that are inspired by the works of the artists it highlights, to help cover its expenses, such as its monthly rent with utilities of $6,700. Transactions during the 2024 holiday shopping season were enough to cover its lease for the first month and a half of this year.
“I think if the community comes out and supports the center by purchasing art that is an important thing for people to be doing,” noted Oakland resident Kin Folkz, the center’s founder and executive director, during an interview this month at the art gallery and events space.
Showing off the location at 3411 Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland’s Lakeshore neighborhood to the Bay Area Reporter, Folkz acknowledged, “We are struggling” when it comes to covering the center’s bills.
It had to increase its share of the proceeds of art sales from 30% to 40%, with the remaining 60% retained by the artists. The center also rents out its space for various events as another revenue stream.
$10,” said Folkz, noting they do offer a sliding scale for events with an entry fee so everyone can utilize the center. “We want people to have access to us.”
“We support all of our programs through grants, donations, online store sales, commissioned art and revenue from our events and art exhibitions,” explained Folkz, 58, who is nonbinary and transgender and uses they/them pronouns.
The longevity of the institution, they noted, is dependent on its patrons.
“Just buy our stuff, come to our shows, and be willing to support us beyond
The arts center is a short walk from the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center and within the boundaries of the city’s Lakeshore LGBTQ Cultural District.
Nonprofit Social Good serves as its fiscal sponsor.
The arts center has a yearly budget of $125,000 to cover its rent, operating costs, and Folkz’s salary of $15,000 for overseeing it. They also work as a professional grant writer for hire by nonprofits and other groups.
The center refreshes the artwork and other items for sale on its online store at queerartscenter.com/shop throughout the year. Among the items currently listed are ones inspired by the Baldwin & Lorde 2024 show it mounted late last year, such as a baby onesie ($28) that comes in different colors and features a black and white photo of the late gay
Black writer James Baldwin surrounded by colorful flowers. The same image is on a candle ($19), throw pillow ($24) and tote bag ($38) for sale.
Part of the arts center’s mission is to break through any hesitance people may have of displaying artworks created by queer artists in their homes or work places.
“We want people to feel comfortable with having James Baldwin on their wall,” said Folkz, who was a community grand marshal in the 2018 San Francisco Pride parade.
Their own work of the late gay Black drag icon Marsha P. Johnson as the Statue of Liberty titled “Marsha: Torchbearer of Truth” is currently on display inside El Cerrito City Hall, one of the venues for this year’s annual Art of the African Diaspora event showcasing Bay Area Black artists running through March 31. It can be purchased for $2,500.
“Our artwork is also exhibited in other galleries and commissioned by corporations, institutions, groups, and individuals. Currently, our artwork is being exhibited and sold at several spaces as part of the Art of the African Diaspora annual exhibition,” noted Folkz.
An itinerant beginning
Back in 2012 leading up to Christmas, the late gay Black singer-songwriter Blackberri suggested to Folkz, a fellow musician who plays African drums, that they get together to jam on December 25. Neither celebrated the Christian holiday, so Folkz agreed to meet up with their friend at an open mic gathering in San Francisco.
The next year the two decided to rent out a locally-owned coffeehouse in Oakland near Lake Merritt, which has since closed, to host their own open mic for local queer and transgender artists. To their surprise, 43 people showed up that Christmas Eve.
“We were there for hours,” recalled Folkz.
As people were saying goodbye, they each told Folkz they would see them next week. Confused, they asked Blackberri if he had told people they would co-host the event again.
“He told me he thought I had been telling people that we would do it again,” laughed Folkz as they recounted the memory. “The people wanted it.”
Thus, for seven years Folkz and Blackberri co-hosted the Oakland Queer Open Mic night for the East Bay’s LGBTQ community, first at a coffeehouse and later at the city’s LGBTQ center. Most gatherings they videotaped, creating an archival collection of the LGBTQ artistic scene they helped foster.
“People from around the world heard about it,” recalled Folkz, who had also launched Spectrum Queer Media, and through it, traveled the globe uniting LGBTQ artists from different countries.
In 2009, they had gone to Jamaica and later went to Japan on cross-cultural exchanges between local and foreign queer artists. It was the precursor to establishing the arts center, which prior to having a storefront operated as “a moveable feast,” explained Folkz, who grew up in Buffalo, New York with the given name of Monica Anderson, as they note in their bio on their personal website at kinfolkzart.com/about.
“It was safe for us. Having a clearly identified brick and mortar space was out of the question,” recalled Folkz, who prior to calling the Bay Area home had lived in the Central Valley where they operated a youth arts program with their mother.
It was in mid-February 2020 when Folkz obtained the keys to the commercial space near Lake Merritt to open the arts center. It has a 660 square foot gallery space and a smaller meeting room in the back.
“It is about creating space and holding space so members of the community can be seen and be heard,” said Paul Winfield, 46, a gay Oakland resident who is a singer and volunteers as the arts center’s community engagement director. “At this time of conflict, we are about restoration and healing because outside of the community there is so much trauma and negativity. This is a place to come and find restoration.”
Kin Folkz stood in front of artwork at their Queer Healing Arts Center in Oakland.
Matthew S. Bajko
Kin Folkz’s art depicting Marsha P. Johnson as the Statue of Liberty is for sale.
Courtesy Kin Folkz
James Robinson, Tavern Guild founding member, dies
by Cynthia Laird
James
“Robbie” Robinson, a founding member of the Tavern Guild, an organization of gay bars in San Francisco that was formed to stem ongoing police harassment, died February 5. He was 89.
Mr. Robinson had been in poor health for some time, said his good friend, gay former supervisor and state legislator Mark Leno. Mr. Robinson died at Ivy Park Cathedral Hill, an assisted living facility in San Francisco where he had lived.
“He was universally known throughout his entire life as an extraordinarily gentle, loving, and caring individual,” Leno said in a phone interview. “He had strong opinions and was not shy to express them. But he had a good word for everyone.”
“Everyone knew and loved Robbie,” Leno added.
In addition to a career in bartending, Mr. Robinson later became a barber, first working at, and then eventually buying, the old Viking barbershop that was in the Castro LGBTQ neighborhood.
According to an obituary written by his nephew, Will Prater, Mr. Robinson was the consummate storyteller and enjoyed sharing his lifetime of experiences with his friends and customers. He was active in the gay community and local politics for years.
Obituaries >>
Memorial set for Catherine Ficcardi
A memorial will be held later this month for Catherine “Captain” Ficcardi, a lesbian who was a longtime bartender at the White Horse LGBTQ bar in Oakland. Ms. Ficcardi died December 22 after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia.
Sarah Hanson, Ms. Ficcardi’s partner of about 15 years, said that the celebration of Ms. Ficcardi’s life will take place Thursday, February 27, at 6 p.m. at the bar, located at 6551 Telegraph Avenue. The memorial will be on what would have been Ms. Ficcardi’s 58th birthday. The service will be streamed and recorded at https://www.viewlogies.net/ sinai/7F96YYclW?pin=369981.
To read the Bay Area Reporter’s obituary on Ms. Ficcardi, go to https://tinyurl.com/hz9ypmr6.
Daniel Mackey
July 6, 1962 – October 2, 2024
Daniel Mackey died of cancer October 2, 2024 in San Francisco at the home of a loving friend, just a few weeks after being diagnosed. He was preceded in death by his parents and his sister, Marguerite Hill. Daniel was born in Westbury, New York, the youngest of seven siblings; he moved to California in 1973. As a youth he developed a fanatical dedication to the game of tennis; he played regularly and could spend hours discussing the fine points of Roger Federer’s backhand versus that of Rafael Nadal.
Daniel worked as a server in restaurants all over the city; wherever he was, he made friends. An inveterate reader and traveler, he was on a firstname basis with many of the city’s librarians, and had explored South and Central America, as well as Europe and the Middle East. Most recently, he spent a year in Mexico traveling and teaching English as a second language. Daniel moved through the world unencumbered, without attachment to material possessions. What he did have was a large, loving family and a wide circle of fiercely loyal friends, all of whom will miss his loving nature and witty sense of humor. May the four winds blow him safely home.
“The biggest thing was he was just a storyteller,” Prater, a gay man who lives in Atlanta, said in a phone interview. “He had a great memory.”
Prater said he began visiting Mr. Robinson regularly in 1990. “He’d sit there in his chair and tell stories of his past,” he said. “He talked at a slow, even pace.”
Prater said sometimes he would interrupt. “He’d always say, ‘Let me finish,’” Prater recalled with a laugh.
Mr. Robinson bartended at the old San Francisco watering holes Silver Dollar, the Hideaway, and the Rendezvous, among others. In 1970, Mr. Robinson
left bartending to become a barber at The Viking barbershop. He bought The Viking in 1980, becoming one of San Francisco’s early gay-owned businesses.
“Robbie was a witness, a hard working foot soldier, and an eager historian of the San Francisco gay community’s evolution from suffering police harassment, organizing HIV/AIDS services, to becoming an influential voice in San Francisco government and politics,” Prater wrote in the obituary.
In 2005, then-mayor Gavin Newsom, now the state’s governor, proclaimed it James Robbie Robinson Day in San
Francisco on March 30, which was Mr. Robinson’s 70th birthday.
Tavern Guild
Helping start the Tavern Guild was a major accomplishment, as the Bay Area Reporter noted in a 2019 article about Mr. Robinson.
As the paper reported, Mr. Robinson recalled the first time he walked into a gay bar in San Francisco in the 1950s.
“This guy looks at me, and I wasn’t used to that – cruising,” Mr. Robinson said in an interview at the time. “Then we get up to Eddy and Market and as he goes inside; as he goes inside he looks at me and smiles.”
But Mr. Robinson soon learned about ongoing police harassment at gay bars at a time when homosexuality was illegal in every state.
“They did everything they could to find out if it were a homosexual place, and with that then they could close it,”
Mr. Robinson said in the interview.
“The cops would come in the bar and terrorize the customers.”
In his self-published memoir, “My Story, One Gay’s Fight: From Hate To Acceptance,” which is available at the San Francisco Public Library, Mr. Robinson wrote that police tactics included demanding to see the identification of every patron of the bar, pretending real driving licenses and IDs were faked –
and even standing with their genitalia exposed at toilets and arresting people based on their reactions.
Some businesses found to be gay bars were closed and their owners lost their liquor licenses. Others had envelopes of cash on hand to pay off police officers, his autobiography noted.
Mr. Robinson and others started discussing the issue, and in 1961, came up with a phone tree system whereby if police came into one bar, someone from there would call another bar, which would then call the others. That was the beginning of the Tavern Guild, he recalled in his memoir.
The Tavern Guild officially started in 1962. The network of gay bars and employees by the summer of 1980 included 184 people and 86 different establishments, according to the Online Archive of California.
While some gay bar owners were initially apprehensive about the guild, they came to see its benefits, Mr. Robinson recalled. Bar staff started to receive better treatment from alcohol distributors, he said in the 2019 interview, and the guild worked with owners to prevent them from losing their liquor licenses.
The guild also played an important role in early LGBTQ history. It was at the Beaux Arts Ball – organized by the guild
Drag queen Gladys Bumps, aka Bob Lanning, left, and James “Robbie” Robinson smiled in an undated photo.
Courtesy Mark Leno
Volume 55, Number 7
February 13-19, 2025 www.ebar.com
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At Supreme Court, Trump admin abandons trans youth
President Donald Trump’s obsession with attacking the transgender community ratcheted up a notch last week when his deputy solicitor general –the government’s top lawyer in the Supreme Court – informed the justices that the administration was switching sides in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the case that is challenging Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming hormone therapies for transgender adolescents. No longer will the administration side with the trans adolescents, as former President Joe Biden’s administration did; instead it is joining with the state of Tennessee, which wants to ban hormonal care for young people.
The Supreme Court, as we previously reported, heard oral arguments in the case in December and a decision is expected by June. As SCOTUS blog reported, generally there’s been a long-standing tradition that when there is a change from a Democratic to a Republican administration, or vice versa, the federal government maintains the same legal position in any cases already before the courts on the merits. But, the outlet also noted that in both the Biden and Trump administrations, the Office of Solicitor General departed from that practice.
While it wasn’t a total surprise, it’s worth mentioning that Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon’s withdrawal of the government from the plaintiffs’ case does not bode well. Indeed, the conservative supermajority on the court hinted as much when the justices heard the oral arguments. The best hope, many LGBTQ advocates said at the time, was a narrow ruling. That now appears to be in jeopardy.
In fact, the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to decide the case, perhaps believing that the conservative justices will produce a blanket ban on hormone treatments such as puberty blockers, which Trump wants anyway, given he has issued an executive order decrying such treatments. In accepting the case last year, the question the court asked was, “Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1 (SB l), which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow ‘a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex’ or to treat ‘purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.’”
needed to “protect children” from receiving medications to block the hormones of puberty and “crosssex hormones” to enable them to develop attributes of the sex to which they are transitioning. The state says these drugs have the potential to cause infertility, bone loss, sexual dysfunction, and “unknown effects on brain development” during critical brain development years.
The Biden administration’s brief acknowledged that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved puberty blockers to treat young children with hormonal imbalances caused by “precocious puberty” (early puberty) but has not approved them for “gender dysphoria.”
In challenging the Tennessee law, the plaintiffs and the Biden administration relied on the Constitution’s guarantee that each citizen has a right to equal protection of the law. Specifically, Amendment 14 states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
the equal protection question presented by the case because their ruling “will bear on many cases pending in the lower courts,” Gannon’s letter stated.
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is co-representing the plaintiffs – three transgender adolescents, their families, and a Memphisbased physician – with the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, stated that the Tennessee law “continues to upend the lives of our plaintiffs.”
“These Tennesseans have had their constitutional rights to equal protection under the law violated by the state of Tennessee,” the agencies and law firm stated. “This latest move from the Trump administration is another indication that they are using the power of the federal government to target marginalized groups for further discrimination. We condemn this latest move and will continue to fight to vindicate the constitutional rights of all people.”
We see a terrible trend developing with Trump and the courts. While this decision may not be out of the norm, it’s clear that the administration does not want equal rights for trans people. The executive orders – banning gender-affirming care for youth, banning trans service members, stating there are only two genders, and eliminating “all federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology and protecting parental rights” – demonstrate Trump’s deep-seated animosity toward this vulnerable segment of our community. Moreover, the administration is now openly floating the idea that it doesn’t have to follow court decisions with which it doesn’t agree. The U.S., of course, is governed by three separate branches of government –the executive, legislative, and judicial. The first two are now firmly controlled by Republicans. The judicial branch, at the Supreme Court level and some federal appellate court districts, is also controlled by Republicans. But if Trump thumbs his nose at adverse court decisions, like the preliminary ones that have come out so far against his funding freeze and others, we will no longer be living in a liberal democracy.
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According to Tennessee’s briefs, Senate Bill 1 is
Now, the Trump administration is saying it agrees with Tennessee and wants the justices to decide on
That’s the awful prospect we face now. We don’t have much hope that the Supreme Court will rule for the plaintiffs in U.S. v. Skrmetti. The Trump administration’s decision to switch sides only bolsters our fear. t
What Urvashi Vaid taught me
by Janelle Perez
On
a recent morning, when I dropped my daughters off at school, I reflected on what America has looked like to them. They’ve lived through the COVID pandemic, one Donald Trump presidential term already, and now the reelection of the man who is against so many values our family stands for. They’ve seen what it can look like when the sick are forgotten, when immigrant stories are erased, and when families who look like ours are called “un-American.” Yet, when I look at them, I know their future is bright and so is ours.
LGBTQ+ and nonbinary people’s history in America is one of struggle, protest, and perseverance. Our co-founder, the late Urvashi Vaid, protested the Vietnam War when she was 11 years old, and went on to spend the next 50 years speaking out for LGBTQ+ and gender equality. In 1990, she disrupted then-President George H.W. Bush’s speech on AIDS to call for meaningful action. She was the first woman of color to lead a national LGBTQ organization (the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, now known as the National LGBTQ Task Force), and helped start LPAC in 2012 to build political strength and increase representation for and with LGBTQ+ women. The New Yorker calls her “the most prolific LGBTQ organizer in history,” and her resume certainly speaks to that. Vaid died of cancer on May 14, 2022 at the age of 63.
I find myself thinking a lot about Vaid these days, as we face one Trump executive order after another threatening to deport hardworking immigrants, ban transgender service members, strip lifesaving care from transgender youth while undermining parents and doctors, remove and scapegoat diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and whitewash the history our children learn in schools. And we know that this is just the beginning. We also know that this onslaught is intended to exhaust and overwhelm us. What Trump wants is our fear and complacency as we return to an antiquated world where
only one kind of person (a straight, white, cisgender, upper-class Christian man) is valued.
Vaid once said, “We call for the end of bigotry as we know it. The end of racism as we know it. The end of child abuse in the family as we know it. The end of sexism as we know it. The end of homophobia as we know it. We stand for freedom as we have yet to know it. And we will not be denied.” What strikes me about this quote is how it speaks to the America we both do, and do not yet, know. MAGA heralds a time we’ve already lived through, a time we fought through to win the rights that are now under attack. And yet we still fight for the freedom we have yet to know: the full liberation of LGBTQ+ and nonbinary people. We will not stop fighting for this vision, and as Vaid said, we will not be denied.
This past year, LPAC started the Urvashi Vaid Legacy Fund because if there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that the world needs more Vaids. We
want to see more LGBTQ+ and nonbinary candidates of color running for office, and we want – we need – to help them win. We can’t wait for the world to change; instead, we must join together and lift up those with the power to change it.
Another of my favorite Vaid quotes is: “Social activism is all about optimism, even when you lose.” We may not win every election, or stop every executive order. But optimism is the highest form of patriotism. It’s the belief that America can and will be great again – not for a select few, but for all. It’s the belief that my daughters can be anything they dream of. For them, for Vaid, and for all of us, LPAC will fight on. t
Janelle Perez is the executive director of LPAC, the only organization in the U.S. working to elect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer women and nonbinary people. Learn more about the Urvashi Vaid Legacy Fund at teamLPAC.com/UrvashiFund.
Urvashi Vaid, then-executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, protested at then-President George H.W. Bush’s address on AIDS in March 1990 in Arlington, Virginia.
The Trump administration has switched sides in a trans health care before the U.S. Supreme Court.
From US Supreme Court
In Tsai pick, Mayor Lurie ends 30+ year run of out SF health directors
by Matthew S. Bajko
Over a remarkable span of 31 years, San Francisco has had a series of either gay or lesbian health directors. That track record came to an end Tuesday, when Mayor Daniel Lurie introduced Daniel Tsai as his choice to lead the city’s health department with a budget of more than $3 billion.
Tsai succeeds gay former health director Dr. Grant Colfax, who resigned February 7 after leading the sprawling agency for six years. At one time Massachusetts’ Medicaid Director, Tsai had overseen the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the Biden administration.
In that role, to which Tsai was named in 2021, he was credited with strengthening care for mental health and substance use, while pioneering interventions for individuals who are homeless with medical and behavioral health conditions, noted Lurie in formally introducing Tsai February 11 as his choice for the high-profile position of leading the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The city’s health commission had unanimously nominated Tsai on Monday.
“It’s going to take creativity, compassion, and collaboration to tackle the city’s drug crisis, and that’s exactly what Dan Tsai brings to the table,” stated Lurie. “Dan’s experience is broad, but his commitment to patients and communities is clear throughout. I am excited that he is bringing that expertise and dedication to San Francisco.”
District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, at the news conference held Tuesday to introduce Tsai to the city. Dorsey told the B.A.R. he expects Tsai to maintain San Francisco’s reputation as being a leader in the fight against AIDS and providing cutting-edge care to people living with HIV.
Tsai oversaw the Bay State’s Medicaid office for six years. Prior to that post, he was a partner in McKinsey and Company’s health care and public sector practices.
“San Francisco’s health care system is storied and has some of the best facilities and people in the nation. I am committed to collaborating with the community to ensure every individual and family we serve can access and receive world-class health care and outcomes,” stated Tsai. “This is all the more urgent given the opioid and homelessness crisis, and I look forward to partnering with stakeholders and individuals with lived experience to find new, datadriven approaches to tackling this important challenge compassionately and effectively.”
It is believed that Tsai, who has no medical training, is the city’s first Asian American health director. (The position does require the person to have a medical degree.) The mayor’s office has yet to respond to the Bay Area Reporter’s inquiries on what is Tsai’s first day in the job and how much is his salary.
Past out directors
Dating back to 1994, when lesbian Dr. Sandra Hernandez, who had been heading up the city health department’s AIDS Office, was tapped to be San Francisco’s health director, there has been a succession of out health directors, most with experience caring for people living with HIV. Succeeding Hernandez in 1997 was Dr. Mitch Katz, a gay man.
He was followed by lesbian Barbara A. Garcia, who resigned in 2018 after questions were raised about a contract granted to her wife’s employer. It resulted in Colfax, who had been serving as Marin County’s health and human services director, to be lured back to the city’s health department, at which he had been its HIV prevention director between 2007 and 2012.
Gay District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who is living with HIV, joined Lurie and a number of his board colleagues, including queer
“I think anyone with the background Daniel Tsai has had at MassHealth will bring enormous expertise in AIDS/HIV care, given that Massachusetts has for decades been among the national leaders in that realm (alongside San Francisco),” noted Dorsey in a texted reply. “I’ve been assured by the Lurie administration that this pick is wellaligned with the mayor’s recoveryfocused approach to our drug crisis – and that’s a priority I strongly share. So, I’m excited to get to work with Director Tsai and his team, and I’ll be reaching out to him this week on drug policy legislation I’m in the process of drafting right now.”
Tsai’s tenure is coinciding with a multi-pronged attack by the Trump White House on various health programs and care beneficial to the LGBTQ community. The Republican president is attempting to restrict gender-affirming care for youth, ended financial support for global AIDS programs, and is attempting to freeze funding for nonprofit service providers across the country, many of which deliver vital health care to LGBTQ individuals.
Reached for comment about Tsai, lesbian San Francisco health commissioner Susan Belinda Christian, a lawyer at the city’s district attorney’s office, referred the B.A.R. to the oversight body’s secretary, who forwarded the paper’s interview request with Christian to the health department’s press office. It did not respond by the paper’s print deadline Wednesday morning.
Former health commissioners who are both living with HIV Dan Bernal, who is gay, and Cecilia Chung who is transgender, did not respond to the B.A.R.’s request for comment about the new health director. Nor did San Francisco Community Health Center CEO Lance Toma, a gay man who last Friday announced that his agency had its federal funds in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for programs serving trans youth of color “immediately terminated” by the Trump administration.
“These specific programs support safe spaces in San Francisco and Oakland to access HIV, STI, and Hep C screening and testing services, as well as linking our clients to more comprehensive health care services,” noted Toma in a February 7 email.
“A temporary restraining order was issued by a U.S. District Court which gives us a bit of breathing room to continue for now, and yet, we remain chilled to the bone.”
Cleve Jones, who is living with HIV and is a longtime leader in the LGBTQ community and labor movement, told the B.A.R. he isn’t familiar with Tsai or his medical career. Concerned about the Trump administration attacking Medicare and Medicaid, Jones surmised Tsai’s experience with those programs could be valuable as health advocates locally and across the country fight to protect those federal programs.
“I would say any new health director faces some significant challenges across the board,” said Jones. “As an HIV activist and long-term survivor, I am very, very concerned about the Trump administration’s attacks on health care funding, and we are going to see how it plays out.”
Longtime gay politico Tom Ammiano told the B.A.R. that defending care for the city’s transgender community needs to be a priority for Tsai moving forward. Like Jones, Ammiano said he didn’t know much about Tsai and hoped he would prioritize having face-to-face meetings with the city’s LGBTQ political clubs as one way to introduce himself to the local queer and trans community in the coming weeks.
Noting he hails from liberal Massa chusetts, where Tsai and his wife, who have two sons, had lived in the college town of Cambridge outside Boston, Am miano said he is giving Tsai the benefit of the doubt as he takes on his new role.
“We were hit pretty hard by AIDS and we still have an issue with HIV, so the thing is there is always a lot to learn about San Francisco. We are so unique,” said Ammiano, a former su pervisor and state lawmaker. “I would hope he is a fast learner.”
With his trademark humor as a comic, Ammiano added, “This is San Francisco, so when the neurosurgeon he meets is also a drag queen, we want him to be all good with that. We are a unique city.” t
Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column focused on a report about LGBTQ youth nonprofit service providers in Washington State. Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Threads @ https://www.threads.net/@ matthewbajko and on Bluesky @ https://bsky.app/profile/politicalnotes.bsky.social. Got a tip on LGBTQ politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8298836 or email m.bajko@ebar.com.
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Incoming San Francisco Health Director Daniel Tsai, left, spoke at a news conference where Mayor Daniel Lurie introduced him as the new leader of the Department of Public Health.
From Lurie’s Facebook page
“If anyone knows anything about PG&E, give us a call,” she continued. “We do have a full crew doing everything else.”
But the utility company told the B.A.R. it has finished its job at the theater unless APE returns to its original electricity connection plans.
Nate Bourg, a gay man who’s the merchants’ treasurer, said, “It’s emblematic of people’s frustrations with San Francisco.”
“I can understand how a homeowner can have problems with a process moving along, but you’re a big company with so much influence and connections,” he said to Casey. “I find it wild. It’s hurting the neighborhood.”
As for its part, a PG&E spokesperson stated to the B.A.R. February 7, “PG&E has completed the contract for this project.”
“In November, we held a preconstruction meeting with Another Planet’s contractors. We discussed the trenching work that the company would need to complete to allow PG&E to connect the theater to the electric system,” a spokesperson for the utility company stated in an email. “In January [2025], two months after that preconstruction meeting, Another Planet proposed a different connection point. However, that connection point would compromise the safety and reliability of our electric system due to existing equipment at that alternative location.”
The spokesperson continued that PG&E can continue working once APE trenches to the original connection point.
“We continue to wait for Another
“It is a relief, though, as we didn’t think nominations were still going to be accepted by the keeper,” said Watson. She was referring to Sherry A. Frear, the chief and deputy keeper of the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program for cultural resources, partnerships, and science. As the B.A.R. had noted in 2023, Frear determined the initial application for the Compton’s site listing was too limited in scope. In addition to the building, she requested the application be revised to also include the immediate outdoor areas where the protest took place.
Frear also wanted to see more information about how the incident that took place at Compton’s tied into the fight for LGBTQ rights in the U.S. in order to designate it as having a national level of significance. It occurred three years prior to the more famous riots at New York gay bar the Stonewall Inn considered to have kick-started the modern fight for LGBTQ equality, the history
She noted the city’s well-known restaurant scene, which has been nationally recognized. “Everybody wants to come and see Oakland,” she said.
Ramachandran told the B.A.R. that she believes Lee is the right person to lead the city in this time of challenges.
“I’m very proud to support a seasoned stateswoman with a sense of professionalism and maturity Oakland needs right now,” she said.
Alameda County Supervisor Nikki
Planet to trench to the connection point agreed upon in November,” the spokesperson concluded. “Once the company completes the trenching work and passes inspections, PG&E can schedule the construction work for energization.”
APE spokesperson David Perry, a gay man, was asked about PG&E’s comments.
“We are working closely with PG&E on this matter and look forward to finalizing a solution to bring the needed upgrade to the electrical service into the theater as soon as possible,” he stated.
As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, work has been ongoing inside the theater, the marquee of which has also been restored. APE took over management of the theater in January 2022, beginning a saga in the neighborhood over what its fate should be.
The theater had heretofore been both owned and run by the Nasser family. APE, which runs the Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park and the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco’s Civic Center area, wanted the venue to be used for concerts as well as for cinema, and take out the orchestra level seats.
Some Castro neighborhood organizations, and LGBTQ and film groups – such as the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District and the Castro Theatre Conservancy – formed the Friends of the Castro Theatre Coalition in opposition to APE’s proposed plans.
APE announced the orchestra seats would be replaced with motorized, raked seating usable for both concerts and film; after which, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the prerequisite ordinances allowing APE’s vi-
of which is now preserved via the National Park Service’s Stonewall National Monument.
Madison Levesque had written the national registry request for Compton’s as part of their thesis project for the master’s in public history they earned in 2022 from California State University, Sacramento. At the time of the submission Levesque had been working as a cultural landscape inventory steward for the U.S. parks agency.
In October 2022, the California State Historical Resources Commission recommended the Compton’s site be recognized on the federal register. Subsequently, Levesque, who is queer and uses they/them pronouns, took a job as an architectural historian with the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.
Two years ago, Levesque had told the Bay Area Reporter they would resubmit their listing request for Compton’s to address the additions Frear had requested. Last summer and fall they did not respond to the B.A.R.’s inquiries on when they would do so, and the state’s Office of Historic Preservation had told the
Fortunato Bas helped Ramachandran introduce Lee. Bas formerly served on the Oakland City Council and was acting mayor for a few weeks in December before she began in her new role as the county’s District 5 supervisor.
“She knows how to bring people together,” Bas told the audience, adding that Lee has integrity and has worked on ethics reform at the federal level.
Bas also noted that during Lee’s time in Congress, she brought money back to Oakland and the East Bay. According to a mailer Lee sent to constituents just before she left Congress, she
sion to move forward. The crucial vote, which passed 6-4, rejected an amendment that would have required the orchestra seating to be fixed.
In October 2023, the supervisors approved allowing second-floor alcohol sales throughout the Castro Street Neighborhood Commercial District.
The seats on that mezzanine level are slated to remain, having been designated as historical during the protracted approval process.
Casey said that APE continues to look forward to the project’s completion.
“We’re still excited,” she said. “It’s still going to be great.”
Merchants’ leader stepping aside
Terry Asten Bennett, a straight ally who is the president of the Castro business association, will not be running for reelection, as she noted in the merchants’ newsletter. The Cliff’s Variety co-owner most recently became president in 2023 and has served in the position previously.
“I will not be running for president again,” she said at the meeting. “I have a commitment to stay on the board for at least two more years, if you guys have me, to make sure the transition is smooth and effective. … If you’re interested in being on the board, please reach out to me. I’m at Cliff’s 24/7, except for when I’m not.”
The board election will be held at the merchants’ April meeting, which will also be a public meeting of the organization, as required by the city.
Castro wellness center proposed Ryan MacCarrigan, a gay man who’s
B.A.R. it was not in receipt of a revised application.
In early December, Stryker said she had reached out to Levesque after being asked herself by several architectural historians about the status of the Compton’s listing on the national register. Levesque, who had used Stryker’s extensive research into the uprising for their initial submittal, responded that they had sent in the paperwork and were waiting to hear word from the federal office.
“It did come as a surprise. It had kind of languished,” said Stryker, who learned earlier this week that Compton’s listing had been finalized.
Declaring “finally, geez!” via a social media post, Levesque announced they had “received word from Keeper staff that your revised nomination was approved.” Screenshots of their post then began circling among advocates in San Francisco.
Stryker called Levesque the “driving force” to seeing the listing come to fruition. She also credited Chandra Laborde with the TurkxTaylor Initiative and Jupiter Peraza, formerly with the city’s Transgender District, for also championing
secured $47.5 million in community project funding since 2022.
Former Oakland mayor Jean Quan told the B.A.R. she also supports Lee for mayor.
“We need someone who can unite the city, and she’ll hit the ground running with her national contacts,” Quan said. “As a leader in the Black and progressive caucuses in Congress, she’ll get resources for the city. She’s worked so hard on so many projects – the Chabot Science Center, the sea wall, and Port of Oakland.”
Queer at-large Oakland City Councilmember Rowena Brown was
the executive director of Queer Life Space, told the merchants that he is proposing a capital campaign with a projected cost of $10 million to create a building for businesses and nonprofits addressing queer wellness.
“We probably will see a red state refugee crisis because of what’s happening,” he said, referring to restrictions on LGBTQ and especially transgender rights in red states. “California will probably take a lot of these refugees, and San Francisco absolutely will.”
MacCarrigan said the space could be a home for his organization – which is in a protracted fight with its landlord, as the B.A.R. previously reported – and also serve as a “legacy project” so that other organizations focused on issues of wellbeing can have an anchor in the neighborhood.
“Castro Wellness Center is a physical space,” MacCarrigan envisions. “It will be a permanent space to really convey the fact we are committed to community wellness.”
He said that he was inspired by the city’s purchase last fall of 2280 Market Street to house an LGBTQ history museum.
“I’ve already spoken to Supervisor [Rafael] Mandelman and he is supportive of the idea, and he will probably talk to Mayor [Daniel] Lurie soon,” he said. “It’s good for Mayor Lurie to latch himself on to something like this to show his support for the community.”
Mandelman and the mayor’s office didn’t return requests for comment for this report by press time.
MacCarrigan said that “it’s going to take years to raise this kind of money” and that the $10 million figure was specu-
having the Compton’s site receive federal recognition.
“Maddie did all of the heavy lifting,” noted Stryker, adding, “I am thrilled this is finally happening. I am gratified my work was useful but my hats are off to the people who did the actual work of shepherding it through the process.”
California State Historical Resources Commission spokesperson Jorge Moreno told the B.A.R. February 7 that Levesque sent the revised nomination to the State Historic Preservation Officer on November 22 last year. It was then returned to the keeper of the register in D.C. on December 10.
“As there was no change in boundary or criteria, the nomination was not reheard by the commission,” Moreno explained, referring to the state oversight body.
On Friday, January 31, Compton’s Cafeteria at 101-102 Taylor St. was among two sites in California included on the weekly list of actions taken by the National Register of Historic Places. While the listing affords more public significance on the building, it does not protect it from being demolished or significantly altered.
also at the event.
“It really is a dream come true to support her and work alongside her,” Brown told the B.A.R. “I’ve worked alongside her and always looked up to her. There’s so much work she’s done for the East Bay and Oakland.”
Marilyn King, a lesbian and former Olympic athlete, told the B.A.R. that she’s supporting Lee for mayor.
“We need people who understand the systemic challenges,” said King, an Oakland resident who competed in track and field at the 1972, 1976, and 1980 Olympics. She also said she and her
lative, subject to inflation and other costs. He offered to form an exploratory committee with anyone interested in the idea.
“This is the seed of an idea,” he said. “I think it’s better to start in a public forum like this rather than having people thinking it’s a cabal of people with power and influence. … We’re all stakeholders.”
Other items
The merchants voted to send a letter to the arts commission endorsing a new mural behind the Walgreens at 498 Castro Street. As the B.A.R. reported earlier this week, the artwork of Tanya Wischerath will be used for the mural, which will be painted between April 1-15.
They also voted to endorse Bar49’s use of lights outside the establishment at 2295 Market Street. Gay proprietor Colm O’Brien said for them to stay up over 90 days he needs city approval and an endorsement from the merchants goes a long way.
Ron Willis announced that he’s working on the 2025-2026 Castro Guide for the merchants, which lists the association’s members. Willis said that a quarterpage in the guide is $275 and that advertisements are due in April. For only $100, the team working on the guide will design an ad – “a flat rate which has been our rate extended to members for the last dozen years,” he said. Willis lives in Southern California now, but as a labor of love continues to work on the guide, he said.
Asten Bennett advised the members that a dozen people a day pick up the current edition of the guide from Cliff’s daily.
“They are getting into people’s hands,” she said. “It is the least expensive form of advertising for the community and for you, and it’s effective.” t
The private company GEO Group is the current owner of the property. It operates a residential reentry facility there for people recently released from prison. There is talk of having the city landmark the entire building, which would provide it a modicum of protection, as any proposals for the site would trigger greater scrutiny of the plans by city planning staff. In 2022, San Francisco officials landmarked the intersection of Turk and Taylor in front of the building in recognition of the uprising by the LGBTQ Compton’s patrons.
The city’s 307th landmark also included portions of the structure’s exterior walls containing the commercial space that had housed the Compton’s eatery, specifically the lower 11 feet of the facade extending north 52 feet from the corner of Turk Street and 40 feet west from the corner of Taylor Street.
To learn more about the history of the Compton’s Cafeteria site, see Stryker’s “At the Crossroads of Turk and Taylor: Resisting carceral power in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District” that appeared in the October 2021 issue of Places Journal at http://bit.ly/3QgnbFU. t
partner were one of the first same-sex couples to march in the San Francisco Pride parade 37 years ago.
Another supporter is Judith Wilhyte, a straight ally and Oakland resident.
“I’ve known her behind the scenes for years,” said Wilhyte. “She was a go-to person in Washington.”
Oaklandside will be hosting a mayoral forum Wednesday, February 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Castlemont High School, 8601 MacArthur Boulevard. The event is free. To sign up, go to https://tinyurl. com/3ycymhyd. t
Hundreds of arrests on Sixth Street
Scott’s department has been ramping up law enforcement in the past several months; for example, there were 218 arrests from December 28 to January 27 on Sixth Street alone, the SFPD announced.
These included 124 arrested for drug-related offences, 36 on outstanding warrants, 18 individuals on assault
charges, and 40 additional individuals who were charged with other crimes. Scott said during the forum that one past challenge with enforcement operations has been keeping an area crime free after focus has moved on to another area.
“You tackle the problem here and the problem moves there,” he said, referring to how drug dealing activity moved from United Nations Plaza to Sixth Street, which he said is “much worse than it used to be.”
“Now we’re going to ramp it up at
Sixth Street, but while we do that we’re not going to give up at United Nations Plaza to where it goes back to where it used to be,” Scott said.
Asked by the B.A.R. after the meeting what the plan is to fix that, Scott said, “We work with some of our nonprofits, like Urban Alchemy, and they do a great job. They’re not police officers, but we try as much as we can when we have to go to the next spot is have them do the things that they do –to hold the ground as much as they can do that – while we support them, like
if we start seeing issues pop up again, we’re out there to support them. That has worked really well for us.
“It’s been an effective model because we don’t have enough officers to hold those corners,” Scott said.
The San Francisco Standard reported, citing anonymous sources, that Lurie has considered firing Scott, and speculated that this had led Lurie seeking to remove Police Commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone, a Breed appointee to the oversight panel who proved to be a thorn in her side.
Dorsey wrote on X February 4, “I believe @SFPDChief Bill Scott is an extraordinary leader who has delivered on the ambitious and nationleading police reforms we hired him to accomplish.
“Unfortunately, he has never been given the chance to lead a fully-staffed police department. That failure is 100% on City Hall; not on him. And City Hall is finally poised to fix it.” As for speculation a potential shakeup for Scott is related to the row over Carter-Oberstone, Dorsey stated he disagrees. t
by Jim Gladstone
On Valentine’s Day, Cheyenne Jackson will be embracing his vulnerability.
Set to appear in two intimate cabaret performances at the Chan National Queer Arts Center, the new home of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, the gay star of stage and screen says “My opening bit is about my experience getting hair transplants.”
In a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Jackson recalled sharing the story in public for the first time in 2023, on the opening night of a residency at the New York nightclub 54 Below.
“I hadn’t planned it ahead of time,” he said. “But in cabaret, getting as close to the audience as possible and making an honest connection is where the real magic is. In my life I’m an introvert. Making those real connections with people is something I have trouble with. It’s something I’m always working on.
“My husband [Jason Landau] tells me, ‘If you want to connect, you’ve got to take the lead. You’ve got to put yourself out there.
“So in New York, I just decided to go on, talk
Broadway & TV singer-actor at the Chan Center Cheyenne Jackson’s Valentine cabaret
40 Years of Queer
by David-Elijah Nahmod
From February 16-April 8 the Roxie Theater will celebrate queer cinema with a carefully curated selection of films that run the gamut of LGBT cinema. The festival was co-curated by Jenni Olson, a filmmaker of note, and Lex Sloan, executive director of the Roxie. Films being shown include “Buddies” (1985), the first scripted drama to deal with the AIDS crisis.
“Buddies” is an Arthur J. Bressan film. He was a filmmaker who glided effortlessly between the world of gay adult features and R-rated fare. His films, including his adult work, always had a certain depth, with strong storylines and fully fleshed out characters.
“Buddies” tells the story of a gay man who becomes a volunteer buddy to a man dying of AIDS. A deep friendship grows between them.
“It’s particularly remarkable because since it was made in 1985, in those early years of the epidemic, there are ways that it almost hits you like a documentary,” Olson said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “Like it just feels so real and especially emotionally real. It puts you in a position where you are so strongly identified with the characters. The way he shot it using only two actors is incredible.”
Also being shown is a newly restored print of Bressan’s adult feature “Daddy Dearest.”
“His adult films, including “Daddy Dearest” and “Juice,” are so much more than porn films,” said Olson. “He always has really strong scripts with a deep sense of character development, and he’s cinematically ambitious in all of his work. His films are also so romantic, even the porn.”
Bressan’s “Juice” will have a special screening on February 24 at the 4 Star Theater in the Richmond District, the only film in the festival not showing at the Roxie.
LGBTQ film classics at the Roxie and 4 Star
Scream screen
The festival will continue with “Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria,” a 2005 documentary by Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman. This film preserves the history of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots, which preceded the Stonewall Riots by three years.
Compton’s was a coffee shop in the Tenderloin where trans women of the 1960s would go for coffee, where they would be routinely harassed by the police. One night in 1966 they decided they had had enough and stood up and fought back. The film includes interviews with several survivors of the riots, most of whom who have since passed on.
“It’s both comforting and galvanizing to get to see such a vivid and inspiring portrait of those who came
before us,” said Olson. “And how they fought and triumphed over such hate in so many ways. Especially in this moment when the current administration and right-wing politicians have seized on this political strategy of nationwide fear mongering about trans people. It’s the oldest play in the book, spewing dehumanizing hate and lies as a way to retract the basic civil rights of a historically marginalized group of people, while distracting from doing anything about actual issues that impact people’s lives.”
Charming and funny
“The Watermelon Woman” may be the most groundbreaking film in the annals of Black lesbian cinema. Director Cheryl Dunn stars as Cheryl, a video store clerk and aspiring filmmaker whose interest in forgotten Black ac-
tresses leads her to investigate a 1930s performer known as The Watermelon Woman. This resonates in Cheryl’s own life as she navigates a new relationship with a white girlfriend. This was the first time a Black lesbian story was told by a Black lesbian filmmaker.
“It is charming and funny and engaged with important aspects of Black history and is really one of my longtime favorite lesbian films,” said Olson.
Four of Olson’s own films will round out the festival. First will be a double feature screening of Olson’s “The Royal Road” (2015) and “575 Castro St.” (2008). Then there will be another Olson double bill, “The Joy of Life” (2005) and “Blue Diary” (1998). Olson will be on hand to introduce both programs and to engage in post screening conversations.
“The way I usually describe my
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films is ‘butch dyke pining over unavailable women and lengthy digressive observations on arcane historical topics,’” Olson said. “My films are mostly voiceover essay films, shot on 16mm film. They consist almost entirely of shots of the streets of San Francisco, with a smattering of LA and points south. I’ve gotten to show my films all over the world, including most of them premiering at Sundance. But I love Bay Area audiences, and they always have a special appreciation of my work.”t
‘40 Years of Queer,’ February 16-April 8, Roxie Theater, 3117 16 St. $6.62-$16.62, www.roxie.com ‘Juice,’ February 24, 7pm, with post-screening discussion by Jenni Olson, 4 Star Theater, 2200 Clement St, $12.50-$15, 18+ www.4-star-movies.com
<< Thing about Jellyfish
From page 11
delineating her character as both a youngster and a teen) was killed by the sting of a poisonous Irukandji jellyfish. Existentially upended by the death of her peer, she’s trying to regain a sense of control, to impose logic upon the inconceivable.
Preparing a school science report built around her theory, Suzy spends later scenes obsessively researching the topic. Here, the previously poetic production design shifts into excess. Suzy’s forays onto the worldwide web explode into kinetic stage-swallowing projections. Streaks of light, streams of computer code, clips from nature documentaries, and glowing portallike frames clamor for attention.
Why? To a contemporary seventh grader, doing research on the internet is hardly the stuff of sci-fi spectacle. It’s routine.
The submarine projections woven throughout the show offer elegant allusions to the unfathomable, but this online stuff is just superficial whiz-
bangery. Rather than drawing you into Suzy’s sincere interior world: it pushes you back against your seat and focuses you on theater’s artifice. It saps impact from the show’s more genuinely affecting effects.
Missing messiness
Lawler, the 16-year-old actor who plays Suzy, delivers a remarkably layered performance. Her nuanced facial expressions and body language reveal the character’s near-constant internal confusion, melting from social engagement into solitude, flipping from studious concentration to shapeless outrage, abruptly downshifting from speedy teen energy to depressive lethargy.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to see her wrestle with more of the messiness that’s part of Benjamin’s plot but glossed over in Bunin’s too-tidy script.
Suzy is processing not only the death of her friend, but also the recent divorce of her parents. Yet we get no real sense of how these traumas are entangled in her subconsciousness. Lawler’s scenes with mom Meg
(Stephanie Jannsen) and dad Dan (Andy Groteluschen) do little other than remind us that the elders exist. Because Suzy has been giving them the silent treatment since Franny’s passing, she offers no illuminating dialogue, and her folks speak in empty platitudes (“Sometimes things just happen”; “There is nothing you could ever do that would make us love you any less.”)
Relatively late in the play, we begin to understand that Suzy’s relationship with Franny had significantly changed in the months before her passing: They’d matured at different paces and their interests had diverged. Suzy felt left behind well before Franny’s death. There’s a lot of rough psychological terrain that could be explored here, but it’s handled too smoothly and simplistically to have much of an impact. You’ll definitely remember those projections though.t
‘The Thing About Jellyfish,’ through Mar. 9. $63-$139. Berkeley Rep, 2015 Addison St. www.berkeleyrep.org
Five of the films included in ’40 Years of Queer’ are:
Left: ‘Buddies’
Middle: ‘The Watermelon Woman’
Right: ‘Juice’
Left: ‘Daddy Dearest’
Right: ‘Screaming Queens’
Left: Jasper Bermudez, Kayla Teruel, Lexi Perkel, and Matilda Lawler (bottom) in the world premiere of ‘The Thing About Jellyfish’ at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
Right: Matilda Lawler and Antonio Watson in ‘The Thing About Jellyfish’
Both photos: Julieta Cervantes
‘Bonus Track’
by Brian Bromberger
When a family-friendly gay film like England’s escapist romance
“Bonus Track” can’t secure a distributor for a theatrical release and goes directly to video on demand, this is yet another sign of dire times for LGBTQ films in Hollywood.
The disastrous release of “Queer” in December based on the William Burroughs’ novel, made barely $4 million worldwide, but cost $50 million to produce, despite casting a bona fide movie star, Daniel Craig (who couldn’t even secure a Best Actor Oscar nomination with rapturous critical reviews of his performance), reinforces the lack of audience appeal to queer material outside of core LGBTQ masses.
Yet “Bonus Track” is a reflection of Netflix’s game-changing “Heartstopper” series, since streaming platforms are now where most LGBTQ films screen as opposed to Cineplex cinemas.
“Heartstopper” redefined gay teen love affairs with its whimsical, effervescent charm, showing how despite awkward moments, romance can be fun and hopeful, without focusing on conflict and melodrama. It reminds us that even with difficulties, joy can be found in love.
“Bonus Track” (Vertigo Releasing), while nowhere near as inventive as “Heartstopper,” has great affection for its two central characters. It sticks to the now predictable genre based rom-com formula with few surprises, but its sweetness and warmth, coupled with its authenticity, makes it almost impossible to dislike.
Engaging but formulaic teen liaison
Teenage dream
It’s 2006 in a small English Yorkshire town. Gawky 16-year-old loner George (Joe Anders, son of actress Kate Winslet and director Sam Mendes) is failing academics at his posh secondary school and might not graduate, to the consternation of his bickering parents, supportive mother (Alison Sudol) and stern, sarcastic father (Jack Davenport). However, George believes he’s a gifted musician and dreams of becoming a star (in fantasy scenes he’s performing to rapturous audiences), even if no one
‘Sex Love Venice’
by David-Elijah Nahmod
No doubt the most romantic gaythemed film to be released in years, Steve Balderson’s “Sex Love Venice” tells the story of Michael, played by cute-as-a-button Daniel Bateman, who visits the Italian city of Venice to heal from a bad breakup. While there he meets Marco (sexy Alexander Ananasso), who turns out to be the love of his life. It’s a story that’s been told before, but rarely has it been told with so much erotic tension.
Venice itself becomes a character in the film as Michael and Marco walk along its waterfront streets, sit in its cafes, and embrace atop its bridges. Rarely has a film made a city look more radiant.
As the story begins, Michael is at home in the USA, waking up on a sunny morning. The radio is on, and he listens to a young man named Jack (Jason Caceres) bemoaning the fact that gay men become “invisible” in the
community once they turn thirty. Jack sounds like he’s looking for a meaningful relationship, but when he hooks up with Michael a few days later he’s cold and standoffish.
“I’d like to see you again,” says Michael.
“Why?” replies Jack. “We already fucked.”
Michael is in fact very caught up in the hook-up culture. He keeps picking up one trick after another, even though these encounters leave him feeling lonely and depressed.
“Are you almost done?” one trick asks him. “Because I have a class.”
Michael confides to his best friend (Suzanna Akins) and his therapist (Fahad Alhumaid) about how empty he feels and about how hurt he still is from his breakup, which occurred the year before. Michael’s mom (Mink Stole) comes up with the perfect solution: take a trip to Venice, which she will pay for, Michael agrees, and two of his friends accompany him.
date girls, the script writes itself. The only suspense is when they will share their first kiss.
The film is divided into chapters. Quite cleverly, each one is named after George’s favorite songs/tracks (i.e. ‘Teenage Dirtbag,’ ‘Dry Your Eyes’) on cassette tapes, giving us hints concerning his emotional changes and feelings towards Max. George must also come to term with his sexuality, but more importantly gain control of his own life so he can discover what he really wants both personally and professionally.
Endearing flirts
This story takes place almost twenty years ago and similar to today’s “Heartstopper” everyone around George is supportive and there’s no hint of homophobia, which in a small provincial town at that time seems incredulous. But this movie soars or falls on the chemistry of Max and George, which we can say is impeccable, with two likable actors making their clumsy flirting believable and endearing.
else agrees, especially his condescending music teacher (Ray Panthaki)
Then cool, handsome, instantly popular Max (Samuel Paul Small), son of a mega-famous musical duo, who are divorcing, arrives at school to be near his mother. Max seeks geometry help from George and in return he will work on George’s song, which he hopes to perform at the end of the term talent show. Max brings George out of his isolation.
At this point, as their budding friendship develops while they hang out together and even unsuccessfully
Gay romantic drama in Italy
Once they get to Venice, the whole tone of the film changes. Michael walks the streets of the city, taking it all in. The city is of course dazzlingly beautiful, the perfect place to fall in love. But old habits die hard, and Michael immediately peruses a hookup app. That’s how he meets Marco.
They meet for coffee. Marco is like no other man Michael has ever met. He speaks perfect English in a slightly accented voice, talking eloquently about the meaning of love. At first he doesn’t let Michael kiss him, suggesting that they savor the pleasures of anticipation.
Marco takes Michael and his friends on a tour of the city. Then Michael and Marco begin having a series of dates, alone. They walk the streets of Venice, they sip coffee in its cafes, they visit its bookstores, as Marco talks about what “a living, breathing work of art” the city is. He continues to keep things platonic, though they do embrace a few times.
“I want to kiss you so badly,” Michael says.
“Let’s enjoy the magic of waiting,” Marco replies.
“I don’t live here,” Michael tells Marco. “And I’m leaving next week. I don’t want to leave Venice with any regrets.”
They go to Marco’s place. It’s an experience unlike anything Michael has had before. They don’t fuck, they make love, during which Marco whispers to Michael that he should pay attention to his five senses. The love scenes are intense, erotic. This is so much more than just a hookup.
But even before they go to bed, “Sex Love Venice” has an erotic tension that few films ever had, and the two leads are the reason why. Bateman and Ananasso have enormous onscreen chemistry, both as individuals and as a couple. At times it’s hard to believe that these are just two actors playing at being in love because their onscreen love appears absolutely authentic. The film’s operatic score adds to the story’s romanticism.
George’s parents is a lackluster substitute for any intrigue.
The peppy dialogue was written by Mike Gilbert from a story by Gilbert and actor Josh O’Connor (yes, the same one from “God’s Own Country” and “Challengers”). O’Connor has a brief hilarious cameo as a graffiti artist/body piercer.
The soundtrack (not to mention flip phones) really exudes the mid aughts era with cuts from Franz Ferdinand, Wheatus, and The Streets. Gay singer/actor Olly Alexander croons the catchy George/Max ‘composed’ song ‘A Very Bad Fun Idea’ during the credits.
With all this talent (including Julia Jackman’s direction), one wishes “Bonus Track” could have been more groundbreaking in a well-worn genre rather than a colorful imitation of “Heartstopper.” Still, it could have descended into sentimentality, but luckily with the slight snarky edge of the screenplay, avoids that trap.
At 22, Small is clearly too old for the part, yet exudes charisma and almost bursts out of the screen whenever he appears. Similar to actor Jonathan Bailey, both men and women could easily fall in lust/love with him.
Unlike “Heartstopper,” none of the supporting characters stories are expanded. This is particularly regrettable when there’s an inkling that the Black female Head of the Year (Susan Wokoma) who shows concern for George, may have had a romance with a butch wilderness survival type teacher. A lesbian subplot could have added more sizzle to an otherwise pre-dictable end. The strife between
Though the film had all the elements for something more daring, but its core teen audience won’t be disappointed with the final result. We care about George and Max with their feel-good courtship, so even if it’s all a garden-variety fantasy, we’ll take its sincere heart gladly as a remedy over the stone cold malarky we’re currently enduring in real life.t
‘Bonus Track’ is available on-demand February 11. www.vertigoreleasing.com
The film also makes some insightful observations about the hookup culture that’s so prevalent in the gay male community. Are these kinds of encounters really good for our emotional health? Balderson’s screenplay invites the audience to think about this question.
“Sex Love Venice” is being released on Valentine’s Day. It’s the perfect day to release this sensual, sexual, and deeply romantic film.t
‘Sex Love Venice,’ 102 minutes. Streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play and Fandango at Home. www.dikenga.com
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Samuel Paul Small and Joe Anders in ‘Bonus Track’
Vertigo Releasing
Alexander Ananasso and Daniel Bateman in ‘Sex Love Venice’
‘The American No’ Rupert
by Tim Pfaff
For queers of a certain age, Rupert Everett would not have had to do anything but play gay Guy Bennett in “Another Country” to command a seat at the table of the gay gods. But he has done more, much more; you should read up on him. Lately he has authored “The American No” (Atria Books), a collection of seven stories and a screenplay that seem perfectly calculated to entertain in hard times.
Such as the stories hew to a theme, it’s the double-edged sword of success and, in these cases, failure. They’re a working out of projects Everett initiated and pitched but for a variety of the usual reasons did not come to fruition. Unfinished symphonies revisited here in the hope of their getting finished, or maybe being declared finished after all. Everett calls them “jugs of dust.”
He introduces each item with a page or three about how they came to be, or not to be. Sometimes bits of these backstories slip into the stories presented as now finished, confusingly until you get used to them. The collection as a whole appears under the cover, in a single page, of the template of “the American no.”
It could also be called the Hollywood salute. The ruse: an aspiring (script)writer turns up for a meeting with the studio mogul, who flatters the scribe with quickly vanishing praise, projections of how the project will unfold, followed by being escorted out by the shoulder-hugging agent with the looking-forward-to-it message. After which, nothing at all happens.
But this particular “no” could just as well be Esperanto, since the same camouflaged rejection can be witnessed in many other cultures as well.
Everett’s story & script collection’s an unusual mix
Actor-author Rupert Everett Broadway Direct
But Everett has been to Hollywood on business, so I’ll hand him his experienced-based deflation.
The hit parade
In truth, these stories could, and do, stand on their own. The reader’s imagination reels in synch with Everett’s as he spins his yarns about the deathbed confessions of an English woman who decamped to India in the mid-19th century; another dame, an “American countess,” who faces the trials of age and sex (here, gender) unexpectedly in a tea shop; “Ten-pound Pom,” about the trials and tribulations of travel and emigration if you’re a person of color.
In “Cuddles and Associates,” a long, meandering tale, fortunes turn on movie agents and their clients, with
‘How to Sleep
at
Author Elizabeth Harris
by Evelyn C. White
At the close of “How to Sleep at Night,” I recalled the buzz that surrounded “Waiting to Exhale” by Terry McMillan in 1992. Penned in a breezy, street-smart style, the novel about four Black women struggling to balance family, romance, and career drew a diverse group of devoted readers.
In her rollicking debut novel, New York Times reporter Elizabeth Harris likewise delivers a dynamic cast of characters working to reconcile their ambitions with the vagaries of life.
A successful lawyer and public high school teacher, respectively, Ethan and Gabe are gay, married parents to Chloe, their five-year-old daughter.
Their suburban New Jersey world is upended when Ethan, a once
some newly awakened homosexuality adding twists and turns. But readers are unlikely to forget the subplot, in which the wife of a megarich sultan seeks to provide an heir, and protect a fortune, by having a child.
She fixes on the idea of the sperm coming from a handsome movie star, Matt Dean, currently aging and down on his luck and unlikely to rise to the occasion, given his homosexuality. The account of the insemination is rollickingly comic, and Everett goes to the trouble to describe the crone and her agent lying with their feet up a wall to foster pregnancy.
What the stories lack in what could, in another reality, be called cohesion, they compensate with some driveby digs. We’re barely off the starters’
box when Everett quips, incidentally, that a man was “good-looking, in that floppy, collapsed way the English spawned in those days.”
The bons mots keep on coming, and the reader welcomes them, first as verbal entertainment and then as offsets of the dire circumstances being recounted.
Homage to the ancestors
The Everett pitch that did land was “The Happy Prince,” the 2018 film he wrote, produced, and starred in about the darker side of the life of Oscar Wilde. In “Sebastian Melmouth. The Morning After and the Night Before,” Everett depicts Wilde’s final day, soaked in absinthe and buoyed by cocaine and morphine.
Night’ Gay parenting & politics in debut novel
moderate Republican, decides to run for Congress. Gabe, a lifelong Democrat sees “red.”
pledge to his skeptical wife, Ethan solicits his husband’s support before taking the plunge. “Gabe sat at their dining room table, still, and silent, panicking,” Harris continues.
Double-duty
The outcome? Roll tape for Ethan’s cadre of campaign managers, image consultants and swank fundraisers for ultra right-wing Republican donors. Then add Fang, an albino milk snake that Chloe receives as “compensation” because her aspiring Congressman dad (glad-handing 24/7) is no longer free to take her to school. Cue Gabe doing double-duty.
Overwhelmed by the upheaval in their home, Gabe declines when Ethan invites him to join a strategy session about his campaign. “It would be rude to add that he’d rather crawl across the West Side Highway blindfolded,” Harris writes with the arch humor that infuses the novel.
In “Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years,” Nicholas Frankel takes an unblinkered look at Wilde’s last days in Paris, as a bum. With Everett’s re-imagining of Wilde’s toothless, malodorous last hurrah, the reader enters the land of the unrelievedly bleak.
In a passage that seemingly counts as little other than another surprise interjection into the already compelling narrative, Everett gives us the paternal Wilde reading to his sons. When one asks what his father means by “the mystery of suffering,” Wilde replies, “One day you will, my dearest.” Before he serves up his retelling of Wilde’s last stand, Everett gives the reader a modicum of consolation. “Oscar was a god, but also a wonderfully flawed fairy. I think that’s what it means to be Christ. With his death the road to liberty was born. It had found a face.”
“The American No” ends with “The End of Time,” a commissioned script for what was to have been a series on Marcel Proust’s sprawling, sevenvolume novel, “In Search of Lost Time.” “In one sense,” Everett declares, “these books were the cornerstone of my own career, as my first job out of drama school was as an extra in a legendary production of Proust at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre called ‘A Waste of Time.’”
“Well,” Everett concludes, “I have at least written a version of ‘Swann’s Way.’ And while it may never make it to the screen, it now has a flickering existence in this book.”
It beams in from another country.t
‘The American No,’ by Rupert Everett, Atria Books/Simon and Schuster, 300 pages, $28.99. www.simonandschuster.com
a stay-at-home mom in a town of McMansions.
Can you say lesbian drama? About their erotically charged meet-ups, on the down-low, Harris writes, “As their third round arrived, Kate excused herself to go to the bathroom. Alone in a crowd of strangers, Nicole had a moment to sit with the fact that her drinking buddy was someone with whom she used to have lots of illicit sex. She took out her phone to text [her husband], who had made the kids chicken tenders, toast, and apple slices for dinner and encouraged Nicole to stay in the city as late as she wanted.”
“Ethan had always been to Gabe’s right politically, and twenty years ago when they started dating, that was fine,” Harris writes. “Gabe was so liberal there wasn’t much on his left anyway. … But over time, Ethan’s views had shifted. … As he became more conservative, the overlapping ground between them narrowed. Today, there was almost nothing left.”
In a move that evokes then Senator Barack Obama’s “I won’t run for President without your blessing”
Running on parallel tracks in the quick-paced narrative, readers find Kate. She’s a high-profile reporter at a major newspaper who happens to be a lesbian and … Ethan’s sister. In addition to the stress of office politics, Kate is on the rebound from a failed relationship. Ready for a refresh, she reconnects with Nicole, a former lover who has since married a man (with a penchant for golf), and become
“I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.”
By the time the tale winds down, opposition research has unearthed an unsavory episode in Ethan’s past and Gabe’s LGBTQIA+ students have gotten a hate on him because of his mate. Kate is called to account at her newspaper for an alleged ethical breach. A “rogue” photo on Nicole’s cellphone triggers, as the Temptations crooned, a “ball of confusion.” As snakes are wont to do, Fang slithers hither and yon. Elizabeth Harris keeps readers turning the pages in her skillfully crafted queer saga.t
‘How to Sleep at Night’ by Elizabeth Harris, William Morrow/ Harper Collins, $28.99. www.harpercollins.com
The Book Group
t Events Listings >>
Goingout
Love is in the air, and we don’t mean chocolate and roses.
But you’re certainly welcome to find new friends and old, if not a Valentine, at arts events, or at your local bar, as listed in Going Out, each week on www.ebar.com.
Dad in Training @ Club Six Trophy Dad’s military-themed supercruisy dance night with DJs Brian Maier and J Warren, clothes check, gogo guys. $38-$60, Feb. 15, 10pm-4am, 60 6th St. www.eventbrite.com
The Edge Celebrating five decades, the bar hosts numerous fundraisers, musical tributes, drag shows like The Monster Show (Thursdays), award-winning bartenders and gogo dancers. 4149 18th St. www. edgesf.com
Frolic @ The Foundry
Fursuit, fantasy, cosplay, pups and more dance it up with DJs Neon Bunny, Pepe Mapache, Confetti Cannon, and Sean B.A.S.S. $15-$20, Feb. 8, 8pm-2am. 1425 Folsom St. frolicparty.com
El Rio
The popular bar with a spacious outdoor patio hosts multiple LGBTQ events, including Hard French, Daytime Realness, Mango, live bands, comedy and more. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com
<< Cheyenne Jackson
From page 11
“I used to hate that intimacy,” he said.” I remember doing a residency at the Café Carlisle many years ago. People are sitting like one foot away from you there, and I just couldn’t deal with it. It felt too close and too vulnerable and I really had a terrible time during that run.
Now I don’t want to do it unless I just totally unzip my guts and get real.”
A challenging year
The past year has felt particularly vulnerable for Jackson, who will turn 50 in July.
“I lost my bestie,” he says, speaking about fellow Broadway actor Gavin Creel, a friend of over two decades who died at 48 last September.
As 2024 came to a close in the wake of the Hollywood writers’ strike, Jackson realized that “for the first time in my past 18 years as a professional actor, I hadn’t done enough SAG work to keep my insurance for myself and my family. I’d done a couple of TV guest spots and a couple of indy movies, but it wasn’t enough. I was one gig short.
“I’m lucky to have been able to call up my dear friend from ‘American Horror Story,’ Kathy Bates, who is a gem of a person and has been a mentor for a decade. She’s having great success with the reboot of ‘Matlock’ and I asked if there was any possibility she had something for me.
“She called back in 15 minutes and said she’d just talked to the producers and there was one role: ‘You’ve got four lines and you don’t even have a name’ and I was like, 100% yes. I’m so grateful that people in our community look out for each other.”
Then, just last month, Jackson found himself having an almost inconceivable conversation with his
Martuni’s
The intimate martini bar hosts music and cabaret acts. NYE sing-along. 4 Valencia St. at Market. Ongoing: pianist Russell Deason hosts the fun weekly Monday Happy Hour open mic gathering, with guest pianists 5:30pm-1am. Katya Presents, Sundays 7pm, a monthly music series hosted by Katya Smirnoff-Skyy with pianist Joe Wicht. James J. Siegel hosts Literary Speakeasy, last monthly Thursdays. 4 Valencia St at Market.
Midnight Sun
The popular bar celebrates five decades. Timeline Tuesdays, Honeypot Fridays with gogo studs; Nitrix Oxide’s Killer Queen, 3rd Sundays, 9pm; Galaxy Saturday nights with DJ Lu; K-Pop and drag shows like Munro’s at Midnight, 10pm Monday nights, Thursday Media Noche, and more. 4067 18th St. www.midnightsunsf.com
Oasis
Juanita MORE’s
Loads of Love @ 620 Jones
Fall in love at a fun Valentine’s night, with dinner, dancing, cocktails, art, Mr. David Glamamore, Sister Roma & Dulce De Leche; music by LBXX & Brown Angel, performances by RedBone, Mary Vice, Bionka Simone, & Jota Mercury, Pole Dancers - Pup Epoch & Princess Onyx. ($ with reservations) Feb. 14, 5pm-10pm, 620 Jones St. www.juanitamore.com
Lookout
Castro bar and restaurant with a panoramic view. Ongoing: Encore, the drag musical revue hosted by Nitrix Oxide (first Thursdays); Bounce (Sat. nights), Lips & Lashes Drag Brunch with host Carnie Asada (Sat. afternoons); Jock (Sunday nights), and frequent themed fundraisers. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com
Lone Star Saloon
DJed events at the historic bear bar, special events like Cubcake, plus regular nights of rock music and patio hangouts. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com
The multiple award-winning nightclub’s shows include ‘Substance’ V’Day movie night Feb. 14, 7pm. Asheq, the North African/Middle Eastern dance night, with gorgeous performers, Feb. 14, 7pm. Moist, an all-Black erotic cabaret, Feb. 15, 7pm. Princess, the weekly Saturday night drag show, 10pm-2am. Reparations, the Fridays all-Black drag show, 10pm-2am. 398 11th St. www.sfoasis.com
8-year-old twins, Willow and Ethan, encouraging them to pack up their favorite things as the family prepared to evacuate their Hollywood Hills home as nearby wildfires encroached. Their home was left unscathed, but Jackson still sounded rattled remembering that drive to the desert through wind and smoke.
“My kids were counting tractor trailers that had blown over on their sides. The whole experience is hard to believe.”
Along with vulnerability, Jackson says he’ll be taking the stage in San Francisco with a renewed sense of gratitude and responsibility.
Powerhouse Bar
Popular cruisy SoMa bar hosts many events. Underwear Thursdays; Juanita MORE’s Powerblouse (fun drag makeovers) 1st Saturdays; Glamamore’s Pillows drag show on Mondays; and Beat Pig, 3rd Saturdays; Lance Holman’s Lick It, 4th Saturdays. Flex, the muscle worship night with big guys, each fifth Friday. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com
QBar
The Castro bar and dance club has reopened. Cake, Saturdays with DJ Cip & guests. 456 Castro St. www.instagram. comqbarsf
SF Eagle
The famed leather bar has numerous events. Monthly Tom of Finland leather gear and erotic art night, each last Friday; Karaoke, Mondays 8pm, hosted by Dana Morrigan. BLUF Cigar Buddies 2nd Fridays; Adonis, a muscle fetish night, first Fridays; Woof, the pup/handlers play party, first Saturday afternoons, 3pm; Filth, first Saturday nights; monthly Lair with host Suppository Spelling; Sunday beverage bust, 3pm-7pm, $10-$15. 398 12th St. www.thesfeagle.com
The Stud
The historic bar has reopened at a new location with with events, drag shows, and guest DJs each week. Truck returns, Wednesdays, 9pm. 1123 Folsom St. St. www.studsf.com
Sundance Saloon
@ Space 550
In November, he made a rare return to his musical comedy roots, starring as Albin in a Pasadena Playhouse production of “La Cage Aux Folles.”
“I’ve never worked on a production with so many incredible trans and non-binary people,” said Jackson. “It was a queer circus backstage, and it was just beautiful. After the election, I have never felt more like I need to shout from the rooftops and sing ‘I Am What I Am.’”t
Cheyenne Jackson, Feb. 14, 6pm and 8:30pm. $69-$128. Chan National Queer Arts Center, 170 Valencia St. www.sfgmc.org
The (mostly) Country music line-dancing, two-stepping night, Thursdays and Sundays, 5:30pm-10pm. 550 Barneveld Ave. sundancesaloon.org Town Bar & Lounge, Oakland Intimate Art Deco LGBTQ bar serves up signature cocktails, DJed Fab Disq-O, first and third Sundays; dance nights, too. 2001 Broadway. www.goingtotownoakland.com
White Horse Bar Enjoy indoor and outdoor drinks at the famous Oakland bar, now in its 90th year, under new ownership, hosts music nights, dance parties and more. 6551 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.whitehorsebar.com
