January 11 2018 by Bay Area Reporter

Keeping score: GOPers fall short

Bridge club offers lessons

ARTS

Marga Gomez

Well-Strung at Feinstein's

The

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Since 1971, the newspaper of record for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community

Vol. 48 • No. 2 • January 11-17, 2018

Rick Gerharter

Kelly Sullivan

Mark Leno takes an oath as a candidate for San Francisco mayor, administered by Department of Elections manager Gregory Slocum, as supporters Tom Temprano, back, Bevan Dufty, and Rafael Mandelman look on.

Supervisor Jeﬀ Sheehy

SF Supe Sheehy looks back on 1st year

SF mayoral race takes shape

by Matthew S. Bajko

aturday morning longtime medical marijuana advocate Jeff Sheehy was up early to mark the start of recreational sales of the drug in San Francisco. He helped usher in the historic moment at the Apothecarium, a dispensary in the city’s gay Castro district. It was the culmination of months of work for Sheehy, who as the appointed District 8 supervisor took a lead role at City Hall in pushing for the adoption of rules and regulations required before the sale of marijuana for recreational use could legally begin in the city. At moments during the – oftentimes heated – debate over the issue, it was unclear if the supervisors would be able to hatch out an agreement in time for sales to begin in January, as in many cities around the state the new rules took effect January 1. “It is a great first step,” Sheehy, the first person living with HIV to serve on the board, told the Bay Area Reporter during an interview in his supervisors office shortly before the end of the year. The extended debate over the issue resulted in many other matters he had hoped to tackle in the fall get pushed to the back burner. “I lost so much time on cannabis,” said Sheehy, who expects to continue to tackle the issue this year as local leaders work to iron out remaining concerns, such as where consumption should be allowed and if there should be a special city commission on cannabis. It is an idea Sheehy remains undecided on and questions if the marijuana industry should be treated separately from other adult-oriented businesses like nightlife venues and liquor stores. The feedback he has gotten from cannabis businesses is they don’t want to pay for the oversight body. “I personally haven’t made up my mind. I want to hear from the stakeholders,” said Sheehy. “The philosophical question is how do we want cannabis to evolve.” One priority in the new year for Sheehy is working with District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen to move forward with naming Terminal 1 at San Francisco International Airport after gay icon and former city supervisor Harvey Milk, the first LGBT person to win elective office in San Francisco and California. Ronen introduced the legislation last summer and expects it to be taken up by the board in the coming weeks. See page 15 >>

SF gets legal pot

fter a five-day delay, adult San Franciscans were finally able to purchase recreational marijuana beginning Saturday, January 6 after state and city officials approved licenses for a handful of operators. Above, customers lined up inside the Apothecarium in the Castro district, one

Rick Gerharter

of the first dispensaries allowed to open for recreational sales. Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and gay District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy joined Apothecarium officials in marking the occasion. Adult recreational sales of cannabis began January 1 in several other California cities.

by Matthew S. Bajko

an Francisco voters come June could elect the city’s first gay mayor, maintain the first black female mayor, or could instead send the first Asian-American woman to Room 200 at City Hall. By the 5 p.m. filing deadline Tuesday to enter the special mayoral election on the June 5 ballot, called due to the sudden death last month See page 15 >>

Podcast tells Mattachine story by Seth Hemmelgarn

podcast devoted to the founding and evolution of the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest homophile organizations in the United States, recently debuted. The 10-episode “Mattachine” podcast, available for free on iTunes and at http://www.mattachinepod.com, follows the story of the secret organization, which was founded in Los Angeles in 1950, and has been credited with spawning the country’s LGBTQ rights movement. “From a spark of inspiration in 1920s Chicago, through secret speakeasy-style meetings that brought together anonymous homosexuals,” the podcast uses FBI case files and other sources to examine the paranoia wrought by communisthunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, said a news release for the program, which launched January 4. The “witch hunt” eventually “pulled the communist queer activists apart, scattering the seeds of the movement,” the podcast’s creators stated. The podcast, which includes archival interviews with late Mattachine founder Harry Hay, highlights the stories of Hay and others “to uncover nuanced issues the LGBTQ community still struggles with today: internalized homophobia, misogyny, political pressure, anonymity, and assimilation,” the release said. Acknowledged by many as the founder of the modern gay and lesbian rights movement, Hay died in 2002 in San Francisco. In response to the Bay Area Reporter’s

Rick Gerharter

Harry Hay, center, celebrated his 90th birthday April 7, 2002 and was joined by Mark Garret, left; Hay’s partner, the late John Burnside, and the late author Stuart Timmons.

emailed questions, producer and host Devlyn Camp, who’s 25 and lives in Chicago, said, “I was out for almost a decade before I started reading about the Mattachine Society, and assumed I was pretty well-versed in queer culture. Reading these stories about our community opened my eyes to the problems that persist today. This show is certainly about how outside forces view the queer community, but it’s just as much about how we view ourselves. Studying history

is never a waste of time, especially when political pressure is coming down on us again under [President Donald] Trump. His administration is doing terrible things to our community, and we can learn how to fight him by studying what our ancestors did.” Camp, who’s genderqueer and uses third person pronouns, said they started their research and writing “about two years ago,” and recorded and produced the show during most of the last year. See page 5 >>

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What is TRUVADA for PrEP?

Who should not take TRUVADA for PrEP?

TRUVADA for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is a prescription medicine that is used together with safer sex practices to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex. This use is only for HIV-negative adults who are at high risk of getting HIV-1. To help determine your risk of getting HIV-1, talk openly with your healthcare provider about your sexual health.

Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP if you:

Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to prevent getting HIV. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about TRUVADA for PrEP? Before taking TRUVADA for PrEP: ® You must be HIV-negative before you start taking TRUVADA for PrEP. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1. Do not take TRUVADA to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-negative. ® Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. If you have flu-like symptoms, you could have recently become infected with HIV-1. Tell your healthcare provider if you had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting or at any time while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin. While taking TRUVADA for PrEP: ® You must continue to use safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1. ® You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP: ® Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months. ® If you think you were exposed to HIV-1, tell your healthcare provider right away. ® To further help reduce your risk of getting HIV-1: ® Know your HIV status and the HIV status of your partners. ® Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections. Other infections make it easier for HIV to infect you. ® Get information and support to help reduce risky sexual behavior, such as having fewer sex partners. ® Do not miss any doses of TRUVADA. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection. ® If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time. TRUVADA can cause serious side effects: ® Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. TRUVADA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have HBV and stop taking TRUVADA, your HBV may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

® Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status. If you are HIV-1 positive, you need to take other medicines with TRUVADA to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time. ® Also take certain medicines to treat hepatitis B infection.

What are the other possible side effects of TRUVADA for PrEP? Serious side effects of TRUVADA may also include: ® Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider may do blood tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with TRUVADA. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking TRUVADA. ® Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat. ® Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain. ® Bone problems, including bone pain, softening, or thinning, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones. Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP are stomach-area (abdomen) pain, headache, and decreased weight. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or do not go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking TRUVADA for PrEP? ® All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis. ® If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if TRUVADA can harm your unborn baby. If you become pregnant while taking TRUVADA for PrEP, talk to your healthcare provider to decide if you should keep taking TRUVADA. ® If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. If you become HIV-positive, HIV can be passed to the baby in breast milk. ® All the medicines you take, including prescription and overthe-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. TRUVADA may interact with other medicines. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. ® If you take certain other medicines with TRUVADA, your healthcare provider may need to check you more often or change your dose. These medicines include certain medicines to treat hepatitis C (HCV) infection. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Important Facts about TRUVADA for PrEP including important warnings on the following page.

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TVDC0141_PrEP_D_9-75x16_BayAreaReporter_Vogue_p1.indd 1-2

I'm passionate, not impulsive. I know who I am. And I make choices that fit my life. TRUVADA for PrEP™ is a once-daily prescription medicine that can help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 when taken every day and used together with safer sex practices. ® TRUVADA for PrEP is only for adults who are at high risk of getting HIV through sex. ® You must be HIV-negative before you start taking TRUVADA for PrEP.

Ask your doctor about your risk of getting HIV-1 infection and if TRUVADA for PrEP may be right for you.

Learn more at truvada.com

10/30/17 11:48 AM 8/24/17 2:58 PM

IMPORTANT FACTS

This is only a brief summary of important information about taking TRUVADA for PrEPTM (pre-exposure prophylaxis) to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection. This does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your medicine.

(tru-VAH-dah) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF TRUVADA FOR PrEP

Before starting TRUVADA for PrEP: • You must be HIV-1 negative. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1. Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-1 negative. • Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include flu-like symptoms, tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin. Tell your healthcare provider if you have had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting TRUVADA for PrEP. While taking TRUVADA for PrEP: • You must continue to use safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1. • You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you think you were exposed to HIV-1 or have a flu-like illness while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. • If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time. • See the “How To Further Reduce Your Risk” section for more information. TRUVADA may cause serious side effects, including: • Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. TRUVADA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking TRUVADA. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

TRUVADA can cause serious side effects, including: • Those in the “Most Important Information About TRUVADA for PrEP” section. • New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. • Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat. • Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain. • Bone problems. Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP include stomach-area (abdomen) pain, headache, and decreased weight. These are not all the possible side effects of TRUVADA. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with TRUVADA for PrEP.

ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP TRUVADA for PrEP is a prescription medicine used together with safer sex practices to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex. This use is only for HIV-negative adults who are at high risk of getting HIV-1. • To help determine your risk of getting HIV-1, talk openly with your healthcare provider about your sexual health. Do NOT take TRUVADA for PrEP if you: • Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status. • Take certain medicines to treat hepatitis B infection.

HOW TO TAKE TRUVADA FOR PrEP • Take 1 tablet once a day, every day, not just when you think you have been exposed to HIV-1. • Do not miss any doses. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection. • Use TRUVADA for PrEP together with condoms and safer sex practices. • Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months. You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP.

BEFORE TAKING TRUVADA FOR PrEP Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis. • Have any other medical conditions. • Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. • Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. If you become HIV-positive, HIV can pass to the baby in breast milk. Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: • Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. • Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with TRUVADA for PrEP.

HOW TO FURTHER REDUCE YOUR RISK • Know your HIV status and the HIV status of your partners. • Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections. Other infections make it easier for HIV to infect you. • Get information and support to help reduce risky sexual behavior, such as having fewer sex partners. • Do not share needles or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them.

GET MORE INFORMATION • This is only a brief summary of important information about TRUVADA for PrEP. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more, including how to prevent HIV infection. • Go to start.truvada.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5 • If you need help paying for your medicine, visit start.truvada.com for program information.

TRUVADA FOR PREP, the TRUVADA FOR PREP Logo, the TRUVADA Blue Pill Design, TRUVADA, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. Version date: April 2017 © 2017 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. TVDC0141 07/17

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Community News>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay area reporter • 5

East Bay health group names gay CMO by Seth Hemmelgarn

Health Department Office of AIDS. gay man with years of In an interview, experience fighting O’Brien, who lives in El HIV/AIDS has become the Cerrito and started his chief medical officer for Alnew job January 2, said ameda Alliance for Health, “a very major” challenge a managed care health plan facing residents of Althat works to provide afameda County is homefordable services in Alameda lessness and the effects it County. Dr. Steve O’Brien has on people, including Dr. Steve O’Brien, 55, will “significant” emotional lead patient-centered mediand physical impacts. cal care and service coordination for Public health issues include tent over 268,000 underserved adults and encampments with unsanitary condichildren who live in the county, the tions, and people “staying too long in alliance announced last week. hospitals,” said O’Brien. “I’m honored to join Alameda AlEven for people who aren’t homeliance for Health,” O’Brien said in a less themselves, “it has a huge cost news release. “I am excited and I look to us that’s mostly invisible because forward to learning from and partnerpeople don’t really recognize the huge ing with Alameda County’s Medi-Cal cost,” he said. providers in working to provide outThe biggest challenge O’Brien sees standing patient care and outcomes.” to fighting HIV and AIDS in the O’Brien’s previous achievements county involves young people. include developing the East Bay AIDS “The rate of HIV transmission Center into what the alliance says is the among young men who have sex with country’s largest hospital-based HIV men,” particularly those who are of program. He’s also served on advisory color, “is still very high, way too high,” boards and committees, including the said O’Brien, noting that the illness National Board of the American Acadis “not only treatable, but very, very emy of HIV Medicine, and he’s received preventable.” the Medical Provider of the Year Award He said he wants to see the same from the Alameda County Public level of “knowledge and access to HIV

Mattachine

From page 1

“It’s been a fantastic and educational journey,” Camp said. “It started with stacks of books and several audio files, and then I had a really fun time digging into files at the ONE [National Gay & Lesbian] Archives at the USC Libraries, which is the

largest queer archive in the world.” The show’s main source is “Behind the Mask of the Mattachine” by James Sears, said Camp; “The Lavender Scare” by David K. Johnson, and “Hoover’s War on Gays” by Douglas Charles “were also extremely important resources,” they said. in. Joey Cain, 9.75 a longtime gay San Francisco resident who’s a

prevention services” available in Alameda County that people can receive in San Francisco. O’Brien, who declined to share his salary information, said that he’s HIV-negative, “but I had a partner of many years who had HIV and passed away about 15 years ago.”

Praise

In a news release from the alliance, Dr. Kathleen Clanon, medical director of Alameda County’s Health Care Services Agency, stated, “We are delighted to partner with Dr. O’Brien as he joins the alliance team. His clinical expertise, patient advocacy, and reputation for advancing care will accelerate our collective efforts to deliver whole person care to residents across Alameda County.” Alliance CEO Scott Coffin said, “Dr. O’Brien is well-positioned to enhance the growth and expansion of the Alliance toward a communitybased, patient-centered, whole person care organization. His work in our community aligns with our overall mission and vision to create a healthier community for all, by improving the quality of life and reaching better health outcomes for our members, for many years to come.”t

Mattachine Society expert, said in a phone interview that he wasn’t familiar with the podcast. “What I would hope they would get and be able to communicate to people is the level of strength and integrity it took to convince other gay men that we had something in common besides just who we wanted to have sex with,” said Cain. t

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<< Open Forum

6 • Bay Area Reporter • January 11-17, 2018

Volume 48, Number 2 January 11-17, 2018 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Seth Hemmelgarn CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Tavo Amador • Race Bannon Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Brian Bromberger • Victoria A. Brownworth Brent Calderwood • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Belo Cipriani Richard Dodds • Michael Flanagan Jim Gladstone • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell John F. Karr • Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy Joshua Klipp • David Lamble • Max Leger Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Michael Nugent • Paul Parish • Sean Piverger Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr • Adam Sandel • Khaled Sayed Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Tony Taylor • Sari Staver Jim Stewart • Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez Ronn Vigh • Charlie Wagner • Ed Walsh Cornelius Washington • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Max Leger PRODUCTION/DESIGN Ernesto Sopprani PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Jose Guzman-Colon • Rudy K. Lawidjaja Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd • Jo-Lynn Otto Rich Stadtmiller • Kelly Sullivan Steven Underhil • Dallis Willard • Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small Bogitini VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.829.8937 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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Time for out LGBT justice in CA A

s California Governor Jerry Brown begins his last year in office, we say it’s time for him to name an out LGBT person to a long-vacant seat on the California Supreme Court. Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar, a moderate appointed by former Governor Pete Wilson, announced her retirement nearly a year ago and stepped down August 31. And while Brown has continued appointing judges to the state’s lower courts, the opening at the Supreme Court has gone unfilled, with a rotating appeals court judge sitting as the seventh justice. That’s fine as an interim measure, but we’d argue that Brown should have had someone ready for confirmation last summer. When it comes to judges, the Golden State is behind the curve. This week, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy (D), nominated Andrew McDonald, currently an associate justice on the Connecticut Supreme Court, to be its next chief justice. McDonald was the first openly gay member of that high court, and if confirmed by the state’s General Assembly, would be the first out chief justice in the country. Last year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo named Justice Paul Feinman, a gay man, to a seat on that state’s highest court. California does not have any out LGBT justices on its high court, but there are qualified LGBT jurists who could be elevated. Two out

appeals court judges that come to mind are Jim Humes and Therese Stewart. Humes, before being named to the appellate court, served as Brown’s longtime top legal aide. It is true that for his other high court nominees, Brown has gone outside the judicial branch entirely (he has made three during his second stint as governor). Leondra Kruger, his most recent appointee, was a former U.S. Justice Department attorney. Goodwin Liu and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar hail from academia. Like Brown, all three, as has been noted elsewhere, attended Yale Law School. We’ve written before encouraging Brown to name out LGBTs to judicial positions, at all levels. A state’s judiciary should reflect the people it serves, and California’s, like all the other states, needs more diversity. Brown should act swiftly to fill this vacancy. With his fourth appointment, the majority on the seven-member court likely would tip Democratic for the first time in a generation. Former Republican governors stacked the courts with conservative judges, and Brown’s last seven years in office has begun to shift the balance. A state Supreme Court opening is rare, and while we appreciate the governor taking the time to find the right person, we think he should nominate an out LGBT person who can bring their life experience and knowledge of the law to the court.

SF’s trans community – from then to now by Theresa Sparks

Resource Center was one of the few safe havens for group counseling, or my entire life, two things have food, and friendship. remained constant: confusion It was not a particularly good time about my gender and a deeply held to be transgender in San Francisco. belief I could do nothing about it. Fast forward to 2018. I sought professional help many Many positive things have haptimes with disastrous results. It is in pened in the transgender commuthis context that I moved to San Frannity in San Francisco over the last 20 cisco 20 years ago to confront these years. With the help of amazing allies, Rick Gerharter feelings and to resolve them one way Theresa Sparks extraordinary public officials, roor another. bust national and regional advocacy After months of intense therapy, I groups, and many committed transcame out to my business associates, friends, and gender community members, we are at a stage family, and found little or no acceptance. With of our evolution I never thought I would see in very few exceptions I lost every relationship I had my lifetime. had previously. Let me list just a few of the more impactful I had faith though, that with my successful advancements, in no particular order, that have background as an international business profesoccurred over the last two decades. sional, I could move into my next professional The transgender discrimination hearing challenge seamlessly, only this time as a woman. and report occurred in the mid-1990s, quickly As I discovered, privilege due to race, education, followed by one of the first transgender nonor upbringing is readily obliterated by discrimidiscrimination ordinances in the country. Then nation, fear, lack of understanding, and hate. came the Transgender Civil Rights ImplementaAfter months of unsuccessfully seeking emtion Task Force, addressing the recommendaployment my enthusiasm and spirits plumtions of the original report that had not been meted. I lost my apartment, ceased therapy, and implemented. started to think about unthinkable things. Then the impossible happened. The San Fortunately, at a community support group Francisco Board of Supervisors passed, by a meeting, I met a transgender woman who was 9-2 vote, a resolution to add transgender health president of DeSoto Cab Company. With her equality to the city’s health plan for its employurging, I applied and was hired as a full-time taxi ees. This historic action generated the driver on the night shift. This was the first of many necessary actuarial data that led to the jobs I took to survive, including a census taker, adoption of transgender health care bank teller, and sex toy warehouse worker. I was at public and private organizations also offered a job by the Leno for Supervisor camin the U.S. and around the world. paign as a paid field worker. My friendship with Nearly 15 years later the city imMark Leno bloomed during that time, changing plemented universal transgender the course of my life and ultimately impacting health care for all people in the the lives of hundreds of thousands of transgender city, with or without insurance. people around the world. To this day I regard Leno The city helped to fund the first as one of those angels that periodically enter a perTransgender Employment Initiason’s life. In many ways he saved mine. tive in the country, educating job Employment discrimination wasn’t the seekers on how to prepare for, and employers on only issue confronting transgender people in the value of, hiring transgender people resulting San Francisco during the late 1990s. Discrimiin hundreds of job placements. nation in the areas of housing, use of public The city implemented mandatory transfacilities, and getting served in bars and resgender awareness training for all officers and taurants, and harassment on public transpordeputies of both the San Francisco Police Detation were also prevalent. partment and the San Francisco Sheriff’s DeSerious violence was not uncommon in the partment. The current training being taught is transgender community, of which the primary not only the standard for the law enforcement victims were transgender women of color. Also in the entire state of California but also used disturbing was the tepid response by law enforceto create the federal standard used by the U.S. ment and the under-reporting by the media. Department of Justice. Statistics show that in During this time, there were very few serSan Francisco, violence and harassment against vices for transgender people. The Tom Waddell transgender people by law enforcement has deClinic was one of the only places where health creased by more than 90 percent. care could be obtained. The Tenderloin AIDS The Transgender Day of Remembrance and

Steyer digs deep

A couple of months ago, we criticized billionaire San Francisco activist Tom Steyer for his decision to pour $20 million into a national ad campaign urging the impeachment of President Donald Trump. At the time, we thought Steyer was acting in his own self-interest, gathering contact information on the millions of people who signed his petition while at the same time building name recognition for a possible run for public office. Well, he cleared up the mystery (at least for this year) on Monday when he announced he would not run for senator or governor in California and instead would commit to spending $30 million in this year’s midterm elections to help Democrats – and another $20 million to try and impeach Trump. We’re not wild about the latter, but his doubling down and willingness to spend millions to help Democratic candidates in several states is a good thing. And Steyer knows, like we said in November, that with Republicans in control of the House and Senate, impeachment was a non-starter. Should Democrats prevail in one or both houses of Congress in November’s elections, all bets are off. So, we’ll give credit to Steyer for being realistic, and sticking to what he does best: staying behind the scenes and donating to Democratic candidates.t

the first Transgender Pride March were both created in San Francisco. The UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender Health was created and is now a nationally recognized thought leader in transgender health. The Transgender Law Center, the leading national advocacy group for the transgender community, was founded in San Francisco. El/La Para TransLatinas is successfully implementing violence and trauma reduction programs for primarily Spanish-speaking transgender immigrants in the Mission. Transgender Intersex Justice Project has expanded services for current, and recently released inmates, in the areas of re-entry assistance, housing, employment, trauma counseling and legal services. Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center not only provides medical and HIV services to the transgender community but also hosts Trans Thrive, a legacy support group welcoming all transgender people. The late Mayor Ed Lee created the first of its kind Office of Transgender Initiatives, reporting directly to the mayor’s office, led and staffed 100 percent by transgender people to ensure San Francisco remains at the forefront of innovations in the worldwide transgender community. Most of these community nonprofit organizations are led and staffed by transgender people, thus providing critical leadership development and training to our next generations of leaders. Most importantly, transgender and gender nonconforming people are seen all over San Francisco, in every neighborhood and community playing, socializing, and working at organizations of every size and nature of business. In the last 20 years the San Francisco transgender community has come a very long way. We now not only find ourselves fighting to retain the rights we have so courageously won but continuing to create innovative new programs leading us into the 21st century. We still face serious and dangerous issues, but I believe we are much better suited and equipped to overcome them than any time in our recent history. I am extremely proud to have had the opportunity to bear witness, and be a participant in a small measure, to the achievements we have attained during my 20 years living in this wonderful city and community. Thank you all for your support, kindness, and love. t Theresa Sparks was the late Mayor Ed Lee’s first senior adviser for transgender initiatives and recently retired from that position.

Politics>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay area reporter • 7

GOP CA lawmakers fall short on LGBT scorecard by Matthew S. Bajko

y earning a perfect score in 2016 on the legislative scorecard released by Equality California, the Bay Area’s lone Republican state lawmaker, Assemblywoman Catharine Baker (Dublin), raised the prospect of becoming the first GOP legislator to earn a pro forma endorsement from the statewide LGBT rights organization. In order to earn that distinction, Baker needed to once again receive a 100 percent on EQCA’s 2017 scorecard. The organization has a policy of automatically endorsing state lawmakers for re-election who earn perfect scores in the years prior to their being on the ballot. Yet Baker fell just shy of that threshold on the 2017 Legislative Scorecard, which EQCA will release Thursday (January 11) and provided an advance copy of to the Bay Area Reporter. Baker earned a 90 percent score due to her voting no on two LGBT bills last year. She opposed Senate Bill 310, the Name and Dignity Act authored by lesbian state Senate Pro-Temporeelect Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), which went into effect January 1 and allows incarcerated transgender inmates to more easily change their legal name or gender marker through the courts. Baker also voted against SB 384 authored by gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). It amended the state’s sex offender registry to create three tiers of offenders beginning on January 1, 2021 and allows those who committed lesser crimes, such as gay men arrested on indecency charges, to petition to be removed from the list. EQCA has yet to endorse a sitting GOP member of the state Legislature, and it is unclear if it will endorse Baker this year. EQCA Executive Director Rick Zbur told the B.A.R. that in order for her to be considered, Baker would first need to score 100 percent on its candidate questionnaire and then explain her opposition to the two bills last year. Baker’s Assembly campaign did not respond by press time Wednesday to the B.A.R.’s inquiry on if she intended to seek an endorsement this year from EQCA’s political action committee. Assemblyman Brian Maienschein (R-San Diego) is facing the same circumstance, as though he earned a 100 percent on the 2017 Legislative Scorecard, last year he earned a score of 80 percent. The former San Diego city councilman has consistently received high scores from EQCA since being elected to his 77th Assembly District seat in 2012. This year he is facing an out opponent in his re-election race, lesbian real estate agent Sunday Gover, who lives with her partner and their four children in Scripps Ranch. Thus it is unlikely EQCA would endorse Maienschein, though Zbur said he is welcome to seek the EQCA PAC’s endorsement just like Baker. “We will let them know if they are interested in our endorsement that we will treat it as an open seat race,” he said. “In those cases we reach out to all the candidates to ask them to fill out our questionnaire, then evaluate that and consider if we want to have the PAC interview them.” But Zbur noted that, for lawmakers seeking re-election, “it is very hard to get our endorsement” if they

Assemblywoman Catharine Baker (R-Dublin)

have not earned a 100 percent on EQCA’s scorecards. Unlike with the 2016 Legislative Scorecard, which marked the second time since 2004, when EQCA began scoring California lawmakers, that no Republican in the Legislature received a zero, two GOP Assemblymen from Huntington Beach were across-the-board no votes on LGBT legislation in 2017: Matthew Harper and Travis Allen, who is running for governor this year. Five members of the GOP caucus earned scores between 60 and 90 percent. The remaining 32 Republican lawmakers scored 50 percent or below, with the majority receiving scores of 30 percent or less. “Overall, the Republican performance has gone down a little compared to last year, but we are also seeing a number of GOP legislators getting closer to 100 percent as well,” noted Zbur.

Majority of Dems earn perfect scores

Across the aisle the vast majority of Democratic state legislators earned perfect scores in 2017; a total of 73 earned 100 percent. None earned less than 59 percent, while eight Democrats received scores between 60 and 90 percent. (The total number of lawmakers scored last year numbered 139 due to the June election of Los Angeles Democratic Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez to Congress. His successor, Wendy Carrillo, was not sworn in until this month.) One of those falling short of a perfect score was freshman state Senator Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), who earned a grade of 90 percent for missing votes on two bills, the sex registry reform legislation and Wiener’s decriminalization of the state’s HIV laws, SB 239. Newman is facing a recall election on the June 5 ballot due to his voting to increase the state gas tax, and EQCA has decided to remain neutral in the race. “He is better than his opponents would be, but we do require a measure of 100 percent support from members of the Legislature to be endorsed,” said Zbur. In a reversal from last year, when lesbian state Senator Cathleen Galgiani (D-Stockton) received a 91 percent grade, all eight of the lawmakers in the Legislature earned perfect 100 percent scores in 2017 from EQCA. Despite questions at the start of the legislative session on how lesbian Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes (D-Corona) would vote on the more controversial LGBT bills, as she represents a swing district and is being targeted

for defeat this year by Republicans, she ended her freshman year with a perfect score. EQCA has made re-electing Cervantes to a second term come November a top electoral priority in 2018. She ousted a Republican incumbent two years ago, and Republican Corona City Councilman Randy Fox, who failed in 2016 to unseat gay Congressman Mark Takano (D-Riverside), pulled papers last spring to run against Cervantes. “She exhibited significant courage in voting for bills that may be problematic with a conservative opponent in her race for re-election. We are very proud of her,” said Zbur. “One reason why we focus on electing LGBTQ legislators is they are part of our community and, even in these tough districts, more likely to support our bills.” Democratic Governor Jerry Brown also received a perfect score from EQCA, which was no surprise. As the B.A.R. reported in October, last year was the fourth year in a row that Brown did not veto any of the LGBT-related bills that landed on his desk during the legislative session. It further cemented his legacy as the most LGBT-friendly governor in the state’s – and country’s – history. During his current two terms in office, Brown has signed into law at least 60 bills that protected the rights of, or improved the health of, the LGBT community in the Golden State. And over the last seven legislative sessions, Brown has vetoed just six LGBT-related bills. “He was strongly behind our bills, some of which were precedent setting and first-in-the-nation bills that he signed,” noted Zbur. EQCA based its scoring for the 2017 Legislative Scorecard on how the state lawmakers voted on nine bills and two resolutions last year. To download a copy online, visit https://www.eqca.org/category/ publications/.

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Lesbian CA Senate candidate to fundraise in SF

Joy Silver, a lesbian running for the state’s 28th Senate District seat, currently held by Senator Jeff Stone (R-La Quinta), will be in San Francisco Friday night for a fundraiser hosted by lesbian former city entertainment commissioner Audrey Joseph. Stone, 61, who earned a 20 percent score on EQCA’s 2017 Legislative Scorecard, represents a large swath of Riverside County, including the gay vacation and retirement mecca of Palm Springs. A former county supervisor, Stone was first elected to the Legislature’s upper chamber in 2014 and has been a strident opponent of LGBT legislation. “Jeff Stone has been one of the worst members of the state Senate from an LGBTQ perspective, not only voting against our bills but carrying the torch against them,” Zbur told the B.A.R. Last month, EQCA endorsed Silver, 62, who was part of its “Let California Ring” campaign in 2008 against Proposition 8, the ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage but was later overturned by the federal courts. A consultant on LGBT aging issues, Silver took part in President Barack Obama’s 2015 LGBT Elder Housing Summit. She previously lived in New Mexico where she started a foundation that grants funds to aging LGBTQ people facing financial emergencies. She also chaired Equality New Mexico’s health care initiatives and See page 14 >>

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8 • Bay area reporter • January 11-17, 2018

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Former MTA chair honored with plaque

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etired Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors Chair Tom Nolan, center, pointed to the plaque dedicated in his honor at the Castro Muni Metro station January 4, flanked by MTA Vice Chair Malcolm Heinicke, left, and MTA Executive Director Ed Reiskin. Nolan, a gay man, said he was “very honored” to learn the city’s transit agency would install a plaque commemorating his years of

service and advocacy for public transit. The bronze plaque is on a brick pillar next to the stairs leading down to the Castro Muni station’s outbound platform. “I was very proud to be on the SFMTA board but also am very proud to say it isn’t my fault anymore,” joked Nolan. Reiskin thanked Nolan for his leadership and joked, “Tom is now responsible for cleaning the station platform.”

SF bridge club offers lessons by Sari Staver

gay married couple who met and fell in love at the Castro bridge club Quick Tricks three decades ago are about to begin their eighth year teaching bridge lessons at the club, located in Ellard Hall at Most Holy Redeemer Church, 110 Diamond Street. On January 22, David Fielder and John Corey will begin the first of 15 lessons teaching the basics of bridge, a card game played by an estimated 25 million Americans. The lessons are suitable for both beginners and players who want to brush up on their skills.

The first two lessons are free; the rest are $10 each, payable before each class. The club, organized in 1978, has offered the lessons annually for more than 25 years, with various top players from the club rotating in to coordinate the class. Fielder, a 67-year-old retired theater manager, said the class is based on the nationally recognized method called Easy Bridge, and is offered in a way that allows people to feel comfortable and enjoy the game. “Bridge can be a difficult game,” he said. “But we offer the basics in easy steps so that people don’t feel overwhelmed.” Corey, 58, a staff attorney with the California Supreme Court, met Fielder for the first time two decades ago, when they played at Quick Tricks with other partners. “For me it was love at first sight,” said Corey, who holds the title of Silver Life Master, which means he has accumulated 1,000 Master Points, signifying the number of competitive games and tournaments he has won. Fielder, who plays more often since he retired, is a “Ruby Life Master,” with some 1,500 Master Points. He said modestly, “John is really a better player than I am.” The two married on June 28, 2013, after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the state’s Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban. Fielder and Corey are each enthusiastic boosters of the game of bridge. In graduate school at the University of Virginia, Corey began playing duplicate at bridge clubs so when he moved to San Francisco in the 1990s, he went to Quick Tricks hoping to meet a bridge partner. “I met all these wonderful people,” recalled Corey, “including David, of course.” Before he got together with Corey, Fielder traveled around the country, with bridge partners from Quick Tricks, to compete in tournaments. In recent years, the couple made a tradition of going to a regional tournament in Hawaii in January. Ellen Salwen, a 70-year-old psychologist, took lessons at Quick Tricks a few years ago, and has been playing regularly ever since. Salwen, a straight ally, said, “David was simultaneously entertaining and knowledgeable.” Salwen, who watched her parents “fight over the bridge table,” played in college and was encouraged by a friend to return to the game. “I decided it was a good way to improve my mind and my memory,” she said. “Bridge attracts an interesting group of people,” Salwen added. “When I’m there, it’s my vacation and

Sari Staver

Bridge instructors John Corey, left, and his husband, David Fielder

a wonderful break from daily life. I don’t know if my game is improving but I don’t really care. It’s just fun. The people at Quick Tricks are a generous and forgiving group of people.” Longtime club manager Kim Fanady, a 57-year-old attorney in private practice, said Quick Tricks is “the best club in the Bay Area.” “We have the best players and we concentrate on making sure everyone feels welcome and has a good time, first and foremost,” she wrote in an email. Bridge pro Vicki Lerner, 61, who plays and teaches bridge for a living, has been to clubs around the world. Lerner agrees with Fanady about the club. “No question. Quick Tricks is the best,” said Lerner, a straight ally. Lerner, the only regular player at Quick Tricks who holds the title Platinum Life Master, representing an accumulation of over 11,500 Master Points, said that in addition to a “friendly, nice crowd,” the club offers the most competitive games outside of national tournaments. A former paralegal, Lerner began working fulltime as a bridge pro at the suggestion of many players who she helped casually. Lerner, who learned the game at age 8 from her parents and hasn’t stopped playing since, worries that the next generation of players may not make up for the overwhelming number of players in their 80s and 90s. “The kids all seem to be using their thumbs on a small screen” rather than playing bridge, she said, referring to smartphones and other electronic devices. The crowd at Quick Tricks reflects that trend, with gray and silver being the most prominent hair colors. See page 14 >>

Community News>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay area reporter • 9

New CEO joins Out & Equal

Courtesy Out & Equal

Erin Uritus

by Seth Hemmelgarn

ut & Equal Workplace Advocates, which works to achieve workplace equality for LGBTs, has announced the hiring of a new CEO. Erin Uritus, who has a long relationship with the nonprofit, will start in her new post January 15. “I am deeply honored to have been chosen as the next CEO, and I’m eager to get down to the important work of ensuring everyone – no matter who you love or how you identify – finds inclusion, belonging, and equality at work,” said Uritus in a news release. Uritus wasn’t available for interviews, but Out & Equal board chair

Michael Cox, senior vice president for Comcast, stated, “Erin joins Out & Equal with unparalleled domestic and international experience as an executive in the corporate, government and nonprofit sectors – a critically important combination to us at Out & Equal. ... As the chair of the board of directors and as a major sponsor of the organization, I have full confidence Erin will lead all of us to a future where our country’s largest companies and governments around the world embrace diversity, prioritize inclusion, and enact equality.” Out & Equal started in San Francisco in 1996 and also has staff in Washington, D.C., where Uritus will be based. The nonprofit partners with Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies to provide development, consultation, and networking opportunities, among other services. The group’s founder and former CEO, Selisse Berry, left the top job in August. Uritus’ background includes years of international work, including opening the African Women’s Media Center in Dakar, Senegal. She first became involved with Out & Equal in 2002 when she was an employee resource group leader

March planned for MLK Day

at the Booz Allen consulting firm and attended her first Out & Equal Summit. Eventually, she joined the nonprofit’s board and co-founded Out & Equal’s chapter affiliate in Washington, D.C. From 2007 to 2011, Uritus worked for a Middle Eastern government to support its modernization and restructuring efforts during the

economic crash, subsequent “Arab Spring” revolutions, and nationalization programs. Spokespeople for Out & Equal wouldn’t say which government in the Middle East Uritus had worked for. They also declined to share her age, sexual orientation, or salary. According to an online biography from a previous job, Uritus at one

time worked for the government of Abu Dhabi. Out and Equal’s biography said that she has two daughters with her former spouse, Amira and Haneen. According to the group’s tax forms for 2016, Berry’s total compensation was approximately $331,000, and the organization’s budget was about $5.5 million.t

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roups in San Francisco and Piedmont will hold events commemorating the birthday of civil rights leader the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The San Francisco Interfaith Council invites faith leaders, their congregants, and the public to the birthday celebration Monday, January 15, at Yerba Buena Gardens, 750 Howard Street. Prior to the gathering, there will be a march/parade starting at 11 a.m. from the Caltrain Depot at Fourth and Townsend streets. Once the march reaches Yerba Buena Gardens, the interfaith commemoration will begin. The Piedmont Appreciating Diversity Committee and the city of Piedmont will hold their 21st annual MLK celebration Monday, January 15, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Veterans Hall, 404 Highland Avenue in the East Bay town. Organizers said that this year’s theme is “Bending the Arc,” and the memorial celebration will “focus on the work we must continue as a community and our individual abilities to ‘Bend the Arc’ toward Dr. King’s vision of a moral universe of inclusion, equality, and justice.” Performers will include the Westlake Middle School Jazz Ensemble, the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, and the Oakland Interfaith Youth Choir. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) is scheduled to speak, along with Assemblyman Tony Thurmond (DRichmond), who is now running for state superintendent of public instruction. Events are free and open to the public.

Surrogacy confab returns to SF

Gay men who are interested in becoming fathers can attend the fifth annual West Coast conference by Men Having Babies, which takes place January 13-14 at the Marines’ Memorial Club and Hotel, 609 Sutter Street in San Francisco.

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Chris Henderson via SFMTA

Marchers gathered for the 2016 MLK Day march in San Francisco.

Men Having Babies is a nonprofit organization that has been helping thousands of gay men become biological parents since 2012. It is partnering with local nonprofit Our Family Coalition for the San Francisco conference. The two-day expo brings together community activists, medical and legal experts, parents, and surrogate mothers. New this year is a focus on Asian men, organizers said. “For the first time the 2018 conference will offer Chinese simultaneous interpretation service,” Ron PooleDayan, executive director of Men Having Babies, said in a statement. “We hope to provide Asian men with guidance on how to work directly with USA and Canadian providers, avoiding the financial and ethical disadvantages of using additional layers of intermediaries.” The conference kicks off with a panel discussion of gay surrogacy dads and the surrogates who helped them on their journeys. Two workshops will be offered on planning the surrogacy journey and choosing partners, based on the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of gay men who have See page 14 >>

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<< Business News

10 • Bay Area Reporter • January 11-17, 2018

Lesbian artist is SF’s go-to calligrapher by Matthew S. Bajko

nyone attending a gala event hosted by such San Francisco cultural institutions as the Asian Art Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, or the city’s ballet or opera companies has located their dinner table seat by finding their name beautifully written on a place card. For those who opened a Christmas card last month, or in years past, from the late Mayor Ed Lee or his predecessor Gavin Newsom, they should have noticed their name and address were hand lettered in a stylistic flourish. The penmanship, done in various calligraphic styles, is the work of Oakland resident Rona J. Siegel, a lesbian artist who has become the go-to calligrapher for City Hall and local civic institutions. “Rona is the calligrapher to the stars. She does the calligraphy for all the social set as well as for the major arts institutions in San Francisco,” said former Bay Area Reporter publisher Thomas E. Horn, the honorary consul of Monaco, who for years has hired Siegel to address his holiday cards. “I met her through the mayor’s office of protocol, and she is sweet to squeeze me in even though she is used to more rarified company. I am glad her art is being recognized.” Charlotte Mailliard Shultz, the chief of protocol for the city and county of San Francisco, hires Siegel not only to address the mayor’s annual holiday cards but also to do the place cards for the annual consular brunch the mayor hosts for local foreign ambassadors and consular staff. “When carrying out foreign affairs on behalf of the people of San Francisco, we in the Office of Protocol want to showcase the very best talents of our local business and artisans. When we are working on something special, Rona’s calligraphy helps us to communicate to the communities we serve with elegance, adding a little bit of human touch that is often overlooked in our fast-paced society,” Shultz told the B.A.R. “Her beautiful calligraphy plays a significant role in setting the tone for San Francisco’s engagement with our global partners while maintaining what I think is a wonderful and timeless tradition. We take great delight in sharing Rona’s talents with the world.” How Siegel came to hold such a position is largely due to chutzpah. She had

been working at the now-closed Flax art supply store at the corner of Valencia and Market streets, where for 15 years she was known as “Miss Information,” when a customer came in looking for someone to hire for an art project that was to be a gift for her husband. Siegel said she could do the work. Pleased with the outcome, the woman came back to ask her if she could do 100 place cards for one of the San Francisco Symphony Gala dinners she was chairing. Even though she had never done such work before, Siegel told the woman she could complete the assignment. “She was very pleased. It started a whole future of my working with the symphony on their special events,” said Siegel, 66, who grew up in Forest Hills in the New York City borough of Queens. Her interest in the art of calligraphy was sparked during a childhood visit to the Met Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s branch dedicated to medieval art. “I saw the artwork of these illuminated manuscripts and my heart just fluttered,” recalled Siegel. “I said I want to do that. It was the most incredible art I had ever seen.” While she wanted to work for an advertising agency, her parents suggested she become an art teacher, and Siegel graduated with a bachelor’s degree in arts education K-12 from Hofstra University on Long Island. Then in her 20s she moved with her family to Huntsville, Alabama where she worked for a printing company that handled classified contracts for the U.S. Air Force. But a white employee accused the owner, who was black, of mishandling the documents, in what was a racially motivated allegation, said Siegel, who testified during the resulting trial. The company lost its government work and was forced to close, leading Siegel to decide to move west. So after seven years living in the South, she relocated again, this time on her own, to San Francisco in 1990, about six months after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. Within a year she had landed her job at Flax and found a studio apartment in Bernal Heights, and by 1992 she had met the woman of her dreams, Joan Zawaski, a certified public accountant whom she would later marry. Outside of her art store job, in addition to her working on gala events,

Courtesy Rona J. Siegel

Rona J. Siegel’s calligraphy adorns a couple’s chalk wedding reception schedule.

Siegel started doing wedding invitations and other written materials for brides and grooms. “I am self-taught,” said Siegel, who bought herself calligraphy books to learn the craft. Twelve years ago, with backing from Zawaski, she quit her job at Flax and officially launched Siegel Fine Art Studio. She currently rents a small office space in San Francisco’s Mission district that is jammed full with various pens, paper, and other supplies. “It was a leap of faith and a total dream,” recalled Siegel. “Had it not been for the fact Joan and I were together, I could not have done it. She said, ‘No, I will not support you because you are going to be just fine.’ In June 2006, I said goodbye to Flax, we signed up for a cruise to Tahiti, and when we got back Siegel Fine Art Studio was on its way.” She soon formed a working relationship with a local wedding planner, Kathryn Kenna. Couples who go the extra mile to hire her to produce calligraphy elements for their ceremony, whether it is the invites or place cards to menu chalkboards for their receptions, are showing their guests they are appreciated, said Siegel. “It tells the guests they care about them enough to make something beautiful,” she said. “If you see in your mailbox a beautifully handwritten letter or junk mail, what are you going to open first? All the junk mail is going to fall by the wayside.” As children have less and less reasons to utilize penmanship, due to the advance of electronic communications, Siegel fears they will not appreciate the value of calligraphy in the world.

“Everyone around me tells me, ‘You are doing a dying art.’ Clearly, the next generation is missing out on something that is very necessary,” said Siegel, who does not use a computer but does utilize email via her smartphone. “I get calls from mothers who want me to help their children improve their handwriting. We are losing a bit of humanity when we don’t teach kids how to write.” To learn more about Siegel’s services, call her at (415) 314-1019 or email siegelfineartsf@gmail.com.

Stoli plans Harvey Milk vodka bottle

The makers of Stolichnaya vodka plan to issue a commemorative bottle this year honoring the late gay San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, whose election to his board seat in 1977 made history for being the first time an LGBT person won elective office in the city as well as the state of California. According to a December 22 email from Center Link, the organization for the country’s LGBT community centers that has received funding from Stoli, the tribute to Milk would be the company’s “first-ever LGBT bottle” and celebrate the 40th anniversary of his being sworn into office in January 1978. “Stoli is also a proud partner of the important work of the Harvey Milk Foundation for global equality, and through this project will be making a donation to commemorate while encouraging others to do the same,” stated the email, which asked recipients to take part in a survey about the proposed Milk vodka bottle. The six questions asked if the person knew of Milk, who was

assassinated in November 1978, and if so, how well they did; if they had ever bought an LGBT-branded bottle of vodka; if they would buy a Milk vodka bottle that raised money for “global equality;” would they switch from their preferred vodka brand to buy the Milk Stoli bottle; and would they buy such a bottle as a keepsake. “Stoli is sensitive to the needs and values of the LGBT community and appreciates feedback on future activities and being informed of your interest,” stated the email. It is unclear when the Milk bottle will be released. It could be timed to the annual celebrations held on May 22, which was Milk’s birthday and is a day of special significance in California, or sometime in June during Pride Month. “This is in very early stages, but I will be in touch as soon as we have updates to share,” Alison Walsh, the global director for public relations and digital at the Stoli Group USA, told the B.A.R. this week in response to questions about the rollout of the Milk bottle. In 2013, Stoli was the target of a boycott in the U.S. pushed by LGBT activists upset with Russia passing anti-gay laws as the company had long promoted itself as producing Russian vodka. Gay bars across the country were encouraged to stop carrying the brand, and at several that did, employees poured out their Stoli stock. Yet the brand is actually owned by the Luxembourg-based SPI Group, whose principal owner fled Russia in the 1990s after being accused of stealing the Stolichnaya name from the government. The vodka is now produced in Latvia, but uses raw alcohol distilled from grain grown in Russia. Due to the attacks from American LGBT activists, Stoli launched the website http://stoliforequality.com/ to explain that the Stolichnaya vodka sold in Russia is owned by a different company. It also highlighted the fact that its North American subsidiary, Stoli Group USA, supports LGBT rights and has offered domestic partner benefits since it was created in 2013. The website also notes that the company four years ago pledged $300,000 over three years to the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center for its Leadership LAB initiative. During Pride Month last June, Stoli launched its “Raising the Bar” platform at http:// www.heroesraisingthebar.com to highlight its 35-year commitment to the LGBT equality movement. Since 2012 Stoli has donated $1 See page 14 >>

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<< Commentary

12 • Bay area reporter • January 11-17, 2018

It takes more than marching by Christina A. DiEdoardo “An activist’s most important job ... is not to organize rallies or act as a spokesperson. It is to inspire people by creating a small culture of democracy in a place dominated by the mindset of dictatorship.” – Ahmed Salah

or many, January 20 will mark the first anniversary of the struggle against the fascist regime in Washington (and the fascists’ local fellow-travelers in the Bay Area and elsewhere). To borrow a line from Winston Churchill, we are probably far closer to the “end of the beginning” than the “beginning of the end” of that fight, but we’ve learned a lot all the same. One area of education has been

challenging our own expectations. For example, who would have thought San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón would follow the lead of his counterparts in Washington, D.C. at the inauguration and insist on prosecuting several #J20 defendants arrested here last January? While there are some differences between the theories underlying both cases – in Washington, the government tried to elevate mere presence at an action to the level of aiding and abetting a riot, while in San Francisco the defendants are accused of blocking Caltrain tracks as part of a direct action – in both instances criminal prosecution seems a foolish use of scarce criminal justice resources. According to Supporters of

the J20 Resisters, Gascón apparently doesn’t agree, so a one- to two-week trial is scheduled to begin in the case March 12. Here’s hoping prosecutors face the same ignominious defeat as their colleagues in Washington did last month, when a jury acquitted the first cohort of #J20 defendants to be brought to trial. On a more positive note, last year activists in Oakland and San Francisco managed to defy expectations and schedule their respective Women’s Marches to take place at staggered times, so that it was possible for attendees to march in Oakland’s that morning and San Francisco’s that afternoon and evening. Sadly, that’s not the case this year. The Oakland Women’s March will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, January 20, at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater and march to Frank Ogawa Plaza (or Oscar Grant Plaza, depending

on your political sympathies). In contrast, the San Francisco Women’s March is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, January 20, at Civic Center and conclude after a march to the Embarcadero, while another march in San Jose being put together by the San Francisco organizers is set to begin at 11 a.m. that same day at San Jose’s City Hall and proceed to Arena Green East near the SAP Center. While there’s value in keeping the marches local for accessibility purposes, it does seem to me like a big opportunity to build community was squandered. How powerful would a unified march across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland (or vice versa) have been instead of the well-worn paths that were chosen instead? #MaybeNextYear? In the meantime, as Salah says, there’s more to this than marching – and there’s some great direct

Christina A. DiEdoardo

Fireworks near the Embarcadero January 1 mark the beginning of 2018 and a new year of resistance.

actions and trainings coming up, as you’ll see below. See page 14 >>

And then there were three by Roger Brigham

ecades ago when I was a young(er) pup covering the Olympics, I decided that the biggest difference (besides temperature) between the Winter Olympics and the Summer Olympics was simple: the icy version offers tons more drama based on politics and prejudice than the sweaty version. Yes, gymnastics and boxing can provide aggravation and mystery due to judging vagaries – but nothing compared with the likes of bobsled, luge, or figure skating, where team selection alone can produce an almost endless sense of betrayal and bitterness. In most sports in

THIS IS THE

Getty Images

Skater Adam Rippon is headed to the Winter Olympics.

which individual results are determined by stopwatches and measuring tape, team selection is usually pretty straightforward: unless there is an injury waiver granted, top finishers at the trials make

the team. Not so in sports in which athletes have the power to dictate who their crewmates should be, or in sports in which winning or losing depends entirely on the enormously fallible impressions of judges. And not just impressions from the trials, but from previous bodies of work. Nowhere is this truer than the paradoxically conservative sport of figure skating. In that sport, athletes don’t just spend years training to build up their skills: they spend years building up their resumes and reputations, waiting for those standing ahead of them in the rankings to peel away and give them a chance to move up. Selected to the men’s figure skating team after the nationals See page 14 >>

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ichael Counihan, a longtime disc jockey at Club 1220, a gay bar in Walnut Creek, died January 3. He was 65. Rik Newby, manager at Club 1220, said that Mr. Counihan, a gay man, had recently experienced health issues and died at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek. He declined to be more specific, citing a request by Mr. Counihan’s family members. Mr. Counihan was born December 1, 1952. Mr. Counihan, aka “DJ Mikey,” was also affectionately known as the “Mayor of Pine Street” and the “Ambassador of Club 1220,” Newby said. Club 1220 is located at 1220 Pine Street, Newby explained, and Mr. Counihan was often the first person people would see upon entering the bar. He started working as a DJ at the club in 1997, Newby said. “He DJ’ed every Friday and Saturday for 10-15 years,” Newby added. “He loved playing ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody,’ and if you requested a song, he’d remember it.” Ken Carlson, a gay man who is a Pleasant Hill City Council member and board president of the Rainbow Community Center of Contra Costa County, said that Mr. Counihan would be missed.

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“He was a fixture in our community,” Carlson wrote in an email. “His outgoing personality and generosity will be missed.” Carlson said that Mr. Counihan supported many causes and charitable events over the years, such as the Rainbow Community Center, the AIDS Walk, and the Imperial Court system. “His support of my husband, Jeremy, and I during our reign in the Royal Grand Ducal Council of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties was a significant part of our success,” Carlson added. Ben-David Barr, Ph.D., who recently retired as the executive director of the Rainbow center, described Mr. Counihan as a “very kind man

with a giant smile who made 1220 into a place filled with warmth and hospitality.” “He was also a great supporter of Rainbow Community Center and a past board member,” Barr wrote in an email. “He recently attended our afternoon drag brunch – happy to celebrate in our success. He had a talent for showing kindness that instilled the feeling that he was rooting for you. He made the Contra Costa County LGBTQ+ community a kinder and better place. He will be dearly missed.” Up until several years ago, Mr. Counihan would also stop by the Bay Area Reporter’s office weekly to pick up copies of the papers to take to the bar. Newby said that memorial plans are pending. t

Clarification

The January 4 article “Oakland LGBTQ center takes control of its lease,” contained inaccurate information about staffing at the San Mateo County Pride Center. While the center was funded in part by the county, workers are employees of various partner agencies, and are not county employees. The online version has been updated.

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<< Community News

14 • Bay Area Reporter • January 11-17, 2018

Political Notebook

From page 7

served on various boards serving LGBTQ seniors. She and her partner, Atma Wiseman, live in Palm Springs. “Joy Silver has deep knowledge of

Bridge club

From page 8

The crowd typically ranges in age from 19 to 90 and includes people with a wide variety of backgrounds, including attorneys as well as teachers, doctors, nurses, and business owners. There’s one man who is a longtime executive in the pornography

News Briefs

From page 9

already gone through the process. Other sessions will cover insurance, budgeting, legal, medical, and psychological aspects of surrogacy. Admission for both days is $20 in advance, or $25 at the door. Preregistration is encouraged as past conferences have sold out. For more information, visit http://www.menhavingbabies.org/sf.

Queer youth art exhibit at Strut

Strut, the men’s health center in the Castro, will team up with the Queer Ancestors Project to present prints by queer and trans emerging artists. An opening reception will take place Thursday, January 18, from 7:30 to 10 p.m. on the third floor of Strut, 470 Castro Street. Part of Strut’s Seasonal Art Show, featured artists include Beni Ali

Business Briefs

From page 10

million to various LGBT nonprofits, including the San Francisco-based Positive Resource Center and the Milk foundation, which last year awarded Stoli Group USA President and CEO Patrick Piana a Diversity Honors Award due to the company’s commitment to LGBT causes. Gay former San Francisco supervisor Bevan Dufty, who held Milk’s seat on the board, called the branding of a vodka bottle after Milk “a mixed bag” when told of the idea by the B.A.R. “On the one hand having Harvey

Resist

From page 12

Bystander intervention training

At 3 p.m. Sunday, January 14, at the Islamic Society of the East Bay’s Jamia Masjid at 33330 Peace Terrace in Fremont, the San Francisco branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and the ISEB will conduct a training on how to respond to (and, ideally, de-escalate) hate crime incidents when they occur in public spaces. The event is child-friendly.

Jock Talk

From page 12

last weekend in San Jose were Nathan Chen, 18, who finished first and is expected to be a strong contender for gold; Vincent Zhou, 17, who fell once and was ragged on four of his quadruple jumps to finish third, and who attempted five quads but received negative grades of execution on four of them, including one fall; and Adam Rippon, 28, who came in as a heavy favorite to dazzle the crowd and become the first openly gay American Winter Olympian, only to fall early and reduce the technical level of his program on the fly to finish a disappointing fourth. But his past performances on the

the needs of LGBTQ seniors and has dedicated her community service activities to addressing their needs,” stated Zbur in announcing the endorsement. “Silver’s commitment to the LGBTQ community is unquestionable, and we are confident that she will be a strong new member of California’s Legislative

LGBT Caucus, if elected.” In an email about the fundraiser for Silver, Joseph noted that the two have been friends for decades and that former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (DCalifornia) is also supporting Silver in the race. “She is honest and compassionate

and more than anything she is so very smart. She has been an activist for most of her life,” wrote Joseph. “Joy champions change for the better and has worked diligently on women’s health issues, housing especially for seniors, the environment and so many more progressive issues. She is also a

great bass guitar player and an advocate for entertainment.” The fundraiser takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, January 12, at Joseph’s home in San Francisco’s Westwood Highlands neighborhood. To RSVP and receive the address, email Joseph at audrey@audreyjoseph.com.t

industry and another who worked as an exotic dancer. While the tech industry is underrepresented at Quick Tricks, two exceptions are start up CEO Zack Karlsson, 40, and his fiancé, software engineer Derek Shockey, 34. Karlsson, a 20-year veteran of the gaming industry, said the couple play a variety of games with friends at least

several times a month. After learning bridge as a way to connect with his future mother-in-law, Karlsson has become a devoted fan. “It’s intellectually stimulating and by far the most difficult game I have ever played,” he said. As far as playing at Quick Tricks, Karlsson said the club is “a great social outlet for gay men and has been an

opportunity for me to meet people in my community who have lived through the genocide of a generation and hear their stories. I’d encourage anyone to give it a try.”t

night, at 6:45 pm, and cost $6 per person. If you don’t have a partner but would like to play, contact the club’s partnership coordinator, Bruce Osterweil at BruceO. Bridge@gmail.com.

Avalos, Jorge Mata Flores, Cedar Kirwin, Yonit Mordechai Moerman, and Princesa Venegas. The artwork will be displayed on the first and third floors. The wine reception will include light snacks. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit strutsf.org.

and book signings. Pets are welcome, but organizers have guidelines that are available, along with other information, at http://www.bayareapetcon.com.

Author to talk about raising trans kid

Bay Area Pet Con

Pet lovers are welcome to check out the free Bay Area Pet Con taking place January 13-14 at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, 344 Tully Road in San Jose. The expo is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. The indoor event includes exhibitors, prize giveaways, rescue groups, discounted vaccinations, microchipping, and heartworm and flea preventatives, free nail trims, demonstrations, and live entertainment. There will also be author readings

GAPA Theatre to hold workshop

The Gay Asian Pacific Alliance has planned a six-session narrative storytelling workshop and performance series for API gay, bi, queer, and trans men. The sessions for “Citizen Queer – Stories of Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Men,” will take place on Saturdays, from 1 to 3 p.m., beginning January 20 and continuing every other Saturday through March 31. Cesar Cadabes will be the workshop facilitator. For more information about GAPA Theatre, visit facebook.com/groups/ GAPATheatre/about/. For questions or to sign up for the workshop sessions, email gapatheatre@gmail.com.

and his legacy out in the world is better than having him be forgotten. On the other, seeing another bottle of vodka for sale is not as exciting,” said Dufty, who now serves on the BART board. Gay bar owner Tom Temprano does not carry Stoli at his Mission watering hole Virgil’s Sea Room and recalls patrons asking him if he did back in 2013 at the height of the boycott effort. He told the B.A.R. he “might consider” stocking the Milk vodka bottle if it was tied to a fundraising effort benefiting LGBT causes. “This could be their acknowledging their brand took a real hit,” suggested Temprano, an elected member of the board that oversees City College

of San Francisco and a former president of the city’s Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

Let our people go

the Anti-Police Terror Project will conduct its fourth annual March to Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy. The event is intended to be an exhibition of direct action against and noncompliance with the administration of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the fascist regime in Washington, D.C.

At 11 a.m. Sunday, January 14, at the West County Detention Facility at 5555 Giant Highway in Richmond, the Choral Majority, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, and Kehilla Community Synagogue will conduct a singing protest at the building that serves both as Contra Costa County’s jail and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility for the Bay Area. The event is youth- and elder-friendly.

Chinese firm buys Grindr hookup app

A Chinese technology firm has gained full control of the West Hollywood-based Grindr, the gay hookup app that launched in 2009 and now has 3.3 million daily active users across the globe. Kunlun Group Limited, based in Hong Kong and a subsidiary of Beijing Kunlun Tech Co., Ltd., last January paid $93 million to acquire a 60 percent stake in Grindr and control of three of the five seats on the Grindr board. It bought the

Help the radical monarchs

At 1 p.m. Monday, January 15, at 14th Street and Broadway in Oakland,

At 10 p.m. Friday, January 19, at La Estrellita Cafe at 446 East 12th Street in Oakland, Queer Cumbia will host a fundraiser to benefit the Radical Monarchs. Admission is a sliding scale of $3-$69 for an evening of tropical music, including

international stage led the team selection committee to overlook that one errant performance and choose him over second-place finisher Ross Miner, 26, who had never dazzled on the big stage but did this night. Miner and 2014 bronze medalist Jason Brown, 23, who struggled all night, were named team alternates. As for the women’s team, it’s been ages since the United States has won a medal and that drought is unlikely to end anytime soon. Ashley Wagner, 26, the 2016 world silver medalist, speaks with rare articulation and has the kind of artistic grace that judges coveted decades ago but skaters were starting to abandon for showier jumps and spins. (When I covered the 1988 nationals, all of the women skaters were

bemoaning the fact they felt their sport was “becoming too athletic.”) The judges in San Jose favored the more technically challenging programs, and Wagner ended up out of the top three. Making the squad were Bradie Tennell, 19; Mirai Nagasu, 24; and Karen Chen, 18. Back on the men’s team, Rippon acknowledged that his program came up short. “I take full responsibility,” Rippon said of his sub-par performance. “On the first quad lutz, I just kind of felt like I was losing my right foot a little bit. I just let that feeling get the best of me toward the end. I just sort of felt like it was gone.” And that almost meant his Olympic hopes were gone. But the judges

Reclaim MLK’s radical legacy

For more information on Quick Tricks or the Easy Bridge lessons, visit www.quicktricks.org. Bridge games are every Monday

The San Francisco Human Rights Commission is bringing back its lunchtime Community Conversations series and the first speaker this year will be author Janna Barkin, who wrote “He’s Always Been My Son: A mother’s Story About Raising her Transgender Son.” Barkin’s first installment of her three-part conversation took place this week, but people can attend her upcoming talks January 17 and 24. The free program takes place from noon to 1 p.m. at the HRC office, 25 Van Ness Avenue, Room 70. Lunch is provided. Community Conversations is part of the HRC’s Help Against Hate initiative.

Public Works offers free sandbags

San Francisco Public Works has announced that city residents can obtain free sandbags during the

Full disclosure: Reporter Sari Staver took Easy Bridge lessons nine years ago and has been an occasional player at the club since then.

winter rainy season. The sandbags can be picked up at the Public Works operations yard, 2323 Cesar Chavez Street, Monday through Saturday, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. People should enter at the Marin Street/Kansas Street gate. Proof of San Francisco residency is required and sandbags are limited to 10 per address. Officials also announced that street cleaning crews will be out cleaning catch basins during their regular rounds. Director Mohammed Nuru encouraged individuals to sweep up leaves and litter from the sidewalks in front of their homes and businesses and put them in the appropriate green, blue, or black bins to prevent them from clogging catch basins. People who spot a blocked catch basin or street flooding should contact the 311 customer service center by calling 311, logging on at www. sf311.org, or using the free mobile app. t

remaining stake in the company January 5 for an undisclosed amount. As part of the terms of the deal, Grindr CEO and founder Joel Simkhai exited the company, and Yahui Zhou, the chairman of the board of Grindr, became interim CEO last Friday. Additionally, Grindr’s current vice chairman Wei Zhou was named executive vice chairman and CFO, and former Facebook and Instagram veteran Scott Chen joined Grindr as CTO. “I’m beyond proud of what we’ve built as a team and how Grindr has been able to make a meaningful and lasting contribution to the global community,” stated Simkhai. “We have achieved our success because of the strength and

global reach of our community. I look forward to Grindr and Kunlun’s continued commitment to building tolerance, equality, and respect around the world.” Zhou thanked Simkhai “for his inspiration and service as the founder of Grindr” and wished him “all the best in the future.” He added that, “looking forward, we are extremely excited about the excellent work Grindr is doing in becoming a leading global technology company, serving and supporting our users no matter where they are in the world.”t

“cumbia, merengue, salsa, norteñas, banda y más!” but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. There’s no ATM at the location, so please bring cash for the door (the bar accepts credit and ATM cards at this 21-and-up event). For those who may not be familiar with them, the Radical Monarchs focus on empowering young women of color both as individuals and to assist them as they build progressive movements within their own communities. They’ve been strong supporters of the Trans March and other queer events and deserve all the backing they can get.

RIOTcon

decided he still has something to dazzle us with, and so now he is training for South Korea. He’s already made history just by making the team – now let’s see how this plays out. It’s all about the drama and the dreams.

Federation of Gay Games are in the process of finalizing route and organizational details. Four years ago the run ended at a Winter Olympics demonstration at the UN Plaza. Other possible race ends being considered for this year are Justin Herman Plaza and the steps of City Hall. After the race is held here with runners carrying the Gay Games flag, runs will be staged in other previous Gay Games host cities in the next few months. The next leg will be in Sydney Saturday, March 3, as part of the Mardi Gras celebrations, and the final leg will be August 4 in Paris, host of this year’s Gay Games. For more information, see the group’s Facebook page at http://bit. ly/2CJfmRv. t

Rainbow Run set for February 3

The kick-off of the quadrennial International Rainbow Memorial Run to End AIDS will be held Saturday, February 3, with a start in Golden Gate Park. The Rainbow Run is staged every four years as a lead-up to the Gay Games, which were started in San Francisco in 1982. Volunteers from Team SF, International FrontRunners, and the

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

At 11 a.m. Saturday, January 20, at the East Bay Community Space at 507 55th Street in Oakland, the Radical Interactive Open Technology Conference, or RIOTCon, kicks off. Besides having the best name I’ve seen for an event so far this year, RIOTCon will explore “the intersections between radicalism, art and technology.” It’s organized by GG Allen, who led the “Baby Bloc” contingent of children and their parents at last year’s general strike in Oakland on January 20, 2017. t Got a tip? Email me atchristina@ diedoardolaw.com.

International News>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 15

India’s high court could reverse gay ban, again by Heather Cassell

ndia’s Supreme Court has ordered a review of Section 377 of the country’s penal code that criminalizes homosexuality in the South Asian country. The court responded to a petition filed by LGBT advocates to reconsider Section 377, a colonialera law criminalizing homosexuality in India. The activists claimed the LGBT community “felt persecuted for their sexual orientation,” reported the New York Times. A three-person panel, including Chief Justice Dipak Misra, referred the request for reconsideration to a larger panel of judges. The panel noted that gay Indians “should never remain in a state of fear,” and that societal morality also changes from age to age,

reported the Times. Arvind Datar, a lawyer appearing before the Supreme Court on behalf of five petitioners, referred to the court’s August privacy ruling, when the court made a fundamental

Mayoral race

From page 1

of former mayor Ed Lee, eight candidates had qualified for the race. Whoever wins will serve out the remainder of Lee’s term through January 8, 2020 and will need to run for a full four-year term on the November 2019 ballot. Many in the city’s LGBT community and progressive political circles have lined up behind gay former District 8 supervisor and state lawmaker Mark Leno, who last spring mounted his mayoral bid for 2019 and was the first to announce his candidacy for the special election this year. Due to his early start, Leno has already netted close to $420,000 in donations and locked up many endorsements from community and political leaders. “We are in good shape to start this campaign,” Leno, 66, told the Bay Area Reporter shortly before filing his paperwork with the city’s elections department Monday morning. “The issues before us – affordable housing, homelessness, traffic congestion – have likely only gotten worse and the urgency of these matters has only gotten greater.” Addressing the media and a large crowd of backers outside the elections office in the basement of City Hall, Leno vowed to “shake things up” as mayor. Positioned as a progressive in the mayoral race, Leno said the time was long overdue for a change in leadership at City Hall,

Courtesy the Better India

The Indian high court is set to review a colonial-era law that criminalizes homosexuality.

decision regarding Indian citizens’ right to privacy. Section 377 was ruled unconstitutional in 2009. But the Supreme Court reinstated it in December 2012, ruling that only Parliament could change the law. Violators face up to 10 years in prison and a fine if caught. Fewer than 200 people have been convicted of homosexual acts under Section 377 since its reinstatement, the Supreme Court noted. LGBT activists claimed the law was used to blackmail and intimidate LGBT Indians and stunt HIV/AIDS prevention efforts. In its most recent action, the court was persuaded by LGBT advocates to move the

Kelly Sullivan

Acting Mayor London Breed has entered the mayoral race.

which has been led by three moderate mayors over the last 22 years. “I am running for mayor because I believe it is time for a new direction at City Hall,” said Leno, who moved to the city four decades ago and owns a small sign-making business. “On June 5 voters will have a real choice between fundamental change and the status quo.” District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, 40, a progressive member of the board who two years ago lost her bid for Leno’s state Senate seat, is also vowing a change in the city’s direction should she win the mayor’s race. “For the last 20 years City Hall has been run by the same administration,” Kim told the media after filing her paperwork Tuesday morning,

Sheehy

From page 1

“I am hopeful we will move forward,” Sheehy said. Another top legislative goal is to grant tenant rights groups the legal authority to go after property owners who unlawfully utilize the city’s owner move-in laws to evict tenants from rent-controlled units in order to secure higher rents. “They will be able to take the lead to restore the tenant in the unit at the price they were paying prior,” said Sheehy. He will continue to push for the city to open a Navigation Center designated for homeless youth, almost half of whom identify as LGBTQ. As for where it will be located, Sheehy said no one has brought to him a suitable location in the city, though he remains open to the possibility of having it in District 8. Looking back over 2017, Sheehy described it as “challenging, inspiring, and poignant.” The challenges were mostly due to the policies of President Donald Trump, he said, while he drew inspiration from the city’s unifying against the administration. The culmination of his first year on the board ended on a sad note with the sudden death of Mayor

Kelly Sullivan

Rafael Mandelman, center, filed his paperwork Tuesday to run for the District 8 supervisor seat.

Ed Lee on December 12. The two had become close over the last 12 months, often meeting over a meal at their neighborhood diner Tyger’s in Glen Park, and Sheehy said he will “miss him terribly.” “I think the mayor was underappreciated,” said Sheehy. “He was a kind and noble man who was doing this for the right reasons and he cared deeply about every San Franciscan.” He also ended the year by saying goodbye to his two top aides, Justin

Kelly Sullivan

Supervisor Jane Kim files her papers for the June mayoral race.

referring to how Lee largely kept in place the policies of his predecessor, Gavin Newsom. “It has not worked for all of us.” Also running is District 5 Supervisor London Breed, 43, who automatically became the city’s acting mayor upon Lee’s death due to her being board president. A leader of the board’s moderate bloc, Breed is backed by former mayor Willie Brown and has garnered support from a number of women’s advocates and African-American community leaders who have organized to ensure she remains mayor through the election. “I’m not a partisan. I’m not an ideologue. I believe in a San

Jones, who moved to the East Coast with his wife, and Bill Barnes, a gay man who was a former AIDS czar for former mayor Willie Brown. Barnes agreed to work for Sheehy throughout 2017 and then return to his job as a top staffer for City Administrator Naomi Kelly. This month Sheehy brought on Martin Fatooh, who had been working on security for the San Francisco 49ers football team and was a campaign aide in 2016 for Ben Matranga in the District 7 supervisor race, and Koledon Lambright, who was a trans employment program associate at the LGBT Community Center. They join Megan Hamilton, who was hired last year by Sheehy as a legislative aide and last month took her oath as an attorney.

June election campaign

It was a year ago this month when Lee tapped Sheehy to serve out the remainder of gay moderate former supervisor Scott Wiener’s term, as he resigned two years into his second term representing District 8 after being elected to the state Senate in November 2016. Sheehy made his bid to retain his board seat official last Friday, when he filed for the June 5 election to serve out the remainder of Wiener’s term through early January of 2019.

petition forward. “I’m in high spirits,” Anand Grover, a lawyer leading the push to invalidate the law told the Times. “I always look at things in a positive manner and this is more than positive.” An Indian LGBT activist also expressed hope and caution by the court’s decision Monday. Aditya Bondyopadhyay said the court already signaled its intention to hear challenges to Section 377, reported the Guardian, “at least now we know when it is going to happen, we have a date.” “It’s about time that Section 377 is thrown out,” Harish Iyer, a wellknown activist who remains cautious, told the media. “We are a small number and we

need to keep shouting.”

Francisco where we succeed as one. Together there is no problem we can’t solve,” wrote Breed, who grew up in San Francisco and lived in public housing not far from City Hall, in announcing her decision to run in a Twitter post last Friday. Also in the running is former supervisor Angela Alioto, 68, a lawyer whose father served as mayor. She twice before has sought to be elected mayor, and as a former homeless czar for Newsom, has vowed to make addressing the city’s homeless crisis a major focus of her administration. “I have a passion and love for this city that literally runs through my veins. I have given my life to serving the city I love so much,” stated Alioto in announcing her decision to run earlier this month. “I feel I’m the most qualified person to take on the vast number of problems facing our city, and I know I’m the candidate that can bring all the stakeholders together to truly address the issues in front of us, as well as the resources and plans to solve these critical problems.” The lesser-known mayoral hopefuls in the race are center/right candidate Richie Greenberg; pro-development advocate Amy Farah Weiss; social worker Ellen Lee Zhou; and massage therapist Michelle Bravo. Three elected leaders who had been seen as possible candidates all opted against running: state Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), City Attorney Dennis Herrera, and Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu. Leno and Kim this week both

expressed their desire to see the Board of Supervisors name a caretaker mayor who is not running in the June election, effectively arguing Breed should not be allowed to remain in the position. It is up to the supervisors to decide to elect Breed or someone else as interim mayor, which requires six votes on the 11-member board, and the supervisors cannot vote for themselves. If they deadlock on the issue, then Breed would remain acting mayor as well as the District 5 supervisor. District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who is backing Leno for mayor, called on Tuesday for the board to hold a special meeting next Tuesday, January 16, to elect an interim mayor. Among the names floated as possibilities are lesbian city clerk Angela Calvillo and gay former supervisor Tom Ammiano, who also served in the state Assembly. At a rally last week in support of Breed remaining mayor over the next five months, former supervisor the Reverend Amos Brown, pastor at Third Baptist Church, recalled the last time the city had an acting mayor: Dianne Feinstein was president of the Board of Supervisors when Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated in November 1978. “She stepped in and admirably led this city,” Brown said. He railed against a “caretaker” mayor, saying, “We didn’t have one in 1978 and we don’t need one in 2018.” t

He told the B.A.R. he likely would have an official kick-off event later this month. “I care what happens to people. This is not my career; I came into it to help people,” said Sheehy, 60, who had been the spokesman for UCSF’s AIDS Research Institute. He pointed to a number of policies he helped enact, from passing first-of-its-kind legislation to require meat producers to report the antibiotics they use, securing millions of dollars in city funding to tackle youth homelessness and backfill federal cuts to HIV programs, and making it harder for bicycle thieves to openly sell their stolen goods on the street as for why he has earned the right to ask voters of the district to keep him on as supervisor. “It would not have been fair to ask voters for their support if I had not been productive,” said Sheehy, a married father with a daughter enrolled in public school. His main opponent is Rafael Mandelman, 44, who filed his paperwork Tuesday morning for the June race, which will now also share the ballot with the special election for mayor. In that race, former District 8 supervisor Mark Leno, who went on to be one of the first gay men elected to the state Assembly and then the first gay man to serve

in the state Senate, is one of eight people running. It is the second time Mandelman has sought the District 8 seat, having lost to Wiener in 2010. Asked if he was concerned that the mayoral election would overshadow the supervisorial race, Mandelman said he was looking forward to being on the same ballot as Leno, who has endorsed him for supervisor. An early supporter of Leno’s mayoral bid, Mandelman noted that Leno remains “enormously popular” in the district and “will make a great mayor.” Their running at the same time bolsters his own bid for the board seat, added Mandelman. “We have done a lot of work over the last six months and have window signs up throughout the district,” said Mandelman, a gay man who serves on the board that oversees City College of San Francisco. “District 8 voters are savvy enough to think about more than one race at a time, and we are in a great position going into these last five months.” Sheehy and Mandelman are expected to twice compete for the board seat this year. No matter the outcome of the June race, they have both pulled papers to run for a full four-year term on the November ballot. t

China’s media censorship ban challenged

It was announced January 3 that a Beijing court will review a case challenging China’s media regulatory body to justify classifying homosexuality as “abnormal.” Fan Chunlin, 30, from Shanghai, filed the lawsuit with his attorney, Tang Xiangqian, after China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television denied his request to disclose the legal basis of the ban’s description of homosexuality among the list of behaviors deemed abnormal. Chunlin’s sexual orientation wasn’t identified in media reports. t Read the full article at ebar.com

<< Classifieds

16 • Bay area reporter • January 11-17, 2018

Legal Notices>> NOTICE

The Annual Report of the Burk Chung Foundation, 465 Clementina Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 is available at the Foundation’s office for inspection during regular business hours. Copies of the Annual Report have been furnished to the Attorney General of the State of California. Burk Chung, Trustee. Fiscal year ended November 30, 2017.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037893400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: IRISH EXPRESS MOVING; IRISH MOVING COMPANY; IRISH MOVERS; IRISH MOVING & STORAGE; IRISH EXPERT MOVERS; IRISH EXPRESS MOVING & STORAGE, 2095 JERROLD AVE #313, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOHN P. O’DONOGHUE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/26/94. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/11/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037898700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: UNITED LOCKSMITH, 1190 PINE ST, #109, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed YGAL MAGEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/14/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037900100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FOR TOMORROW, 18A HENRY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LORA MENTER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/15/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037894600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MARINA HAIR SALON, 3224 SCOTT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOHNNY DAO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/12/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/12/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037871800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: INTERNATIONAL ANTIVIRAL SOCIETY - USA, 425 CALIFORNIA ST #1450, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed INTERNATIONAL AIDS SOCIETY - USA (DC). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/22/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/30/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037889300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: I AM WONDER WOMAN, 3956 20TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed I AM WONDERN WOMAN LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/20/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/08/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037875400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: COFFEE BAR, 1890 BRYANT ST #100, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed COFFEE BAR 1, LLC CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/12/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/01/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037894900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: COFFEE BAR, 101 MONTGOMERY ST #C, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a limited liability company and is signed COFFEE BAR VENTURES, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/21/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/12/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037895000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: COFFEE BAR, 199 NEW MONTGOMERY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed 6 DEGREES CAFE LLC, (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/12/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037861200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOCA, 2363 17TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed USA SOCA INTL TRADING LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/21/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/21/17.

RAMBO WITH A VACUUM Housecleaning Richard 415-255-0389

CLEANING PROFESSIONAL

27 Years Exp. (415) 794-4411 Roger Miller

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CREATIVE MEDIA, 389 OAK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ORIEL NAGEL. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/08/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/12//17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037890500

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037900200

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037896100

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037904000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HI-WAY, 3853 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ROADSIDE BBQ III (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/08/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POLLO CAMPERO, 2740 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed POLLO CAMPERO OF CALIFORNIA, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/30/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/13/17.

DEC 21, 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 2018 PUBLIC NOTICE ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-553481

In the matter of the application of: LEAH KATHLEEN RANDOLPH, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner LEAH KATHLEEN RANDOLPH, is requesting that the name LEAH KATHLEEN RANDOLPH, be changed to LEAH KATHLEEN CONDER. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 514, Dept. 514 on the 23rd of January 2018 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037876800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DMB REGISTRATION SERVICE, 5190 3RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARTHA PATRICIA BENITEZ CASTREJON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/04/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/04/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037876400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: REVEL & ROUGE, 1616 16TH ST #370, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DAVA GUTHMILLER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/04/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037914300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FLOWER CART, 2 MONTGOMERY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VALERIE CHIENG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/26/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/26/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037910600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TOWNSHIP 31, 1629 JERROLD AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ARWYN MOONRISE KOLTUNIAK. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/22/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037901200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MS SF LEATHER; MS SAN FRANCISCO LEATHER, 270 BAYVIEW CIRCLE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SALEAL HOPKINS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/13/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/18/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037906600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JIKA RAMEN & GOLD CURRY SUSHI, 3925 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JIALING WANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/20/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/20/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017

Classi lassifieds Cleaning Services>>

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037896000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MIND FU MEDIA, 29 GROVE ST #340, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JAMES BEACH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/15/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/15/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TENA PRO NAILS, 2717 SAN BRUNO AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed BICH NGOC THI NGUYEN & LAN THUY THANH LE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/19/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/19/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037878700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HELLOSIGN; HELLOFAX, 301 HOWARD ST #200, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed JN PROJECTS INC. (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/05/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037909600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOTHA SAING, 291 PUTNAM ST #B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SIMKEINASO, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/22/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/22/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037874900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SHELTON CAPITOL MANAGEMENT, 455 MARKET ST #1600, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a limited partnership, and is signed RFS PARTNERS, LP (GP OF CCM PARTNERS). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/01/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037905200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GLOSS NAIL BAR, 702 LARKIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed STRAND SF LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/19/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/19/17.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036982900

Th e f o l l o w i n g p e r s o n s h a v e a b a n d o n e d t h e use of the fictitious business name known a s : S PA R C, 1 2 3 1 0 T H S T, S A N F R A N C I S C O, C A 9 4 1 0 3 . Th i s b u s i n e s s wa s c o n d u c t e d b y a c o r p o ra t i o n a n d s i g n e d b y N O PA R C, I N C ( C A ) . Th e f i c t i t i o u s n a m e wa s f i l e d w i t h t h e C i t y a n d C o u n t y o f S a n Fra n c i s c o, C A o n 03/09/16.

DEC 28, 2017; JAN 04, 11, 18, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037917400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BAILEY’S PROTECTIVE & SECURITY SERVICES, 247 NELSON AVE, PACIFICA, CA 94044. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed STEVEN RAY BAILEY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/27/17.

JAN 04, 11, 18, 25, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037918900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SHERESE ELSEY PHOTOGRAPHY, 2230 MISSION ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SHERESE ELSEY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/28/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/28/17.

JAN 04, 11, 18, 25, 2018

Movers>>

NOTICE TO CREDITORS OF CLIFFORD BARBANELL AND HARRIET BARBANELL BY TRUSTEES, CYNTHIA B. SILVERSTEIN AND GREGG S. BARBANELL COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

Notice is hereby given to the creditors and contingent creditors of the above-named decedents that all persons having claims against the decedents are required to mail or deliver a copy to CYNTHIA B. SILVERSTEIN and GREGG S. BARBANELL, as Trustees of the BARBANELL FAMILY TRUST dated March 2, 2001, wherein the decedents were the Trustors, at 23 Ralston Road, Atherton, California 94027-3912, within the later of four months after January 4, 2018 (the date of the first publication of Notice to Creditors) or, if Notice is mailed or personally delivered to you, sixty (60) days after the date this Notice is mailed or personally delivered to you, or you must petition to file a late claim as provided in Section 19103 of the Probate Code. A claim form may be obtained from the court clerk. For your protection, you are encouraged to file your claim by certified mail, with return receipt requested. Trustees: CYNTHIA B. SILVERSTEIN and GREGG S. BARBANELL Address: 23 Ralston Road, Atherton, California 940273912

JAN 04, 11, 18, 25, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037923700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MANI PEDI PLUS, 1447 20TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TRANG MY THI DOAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/18 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/02/18.

JAN 04, 11, 18, 25, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037919600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MOREWOOD VENTURES, 175 BLUXOME ST #207, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANNY HAO-YEI LIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/28/17.

JAN 04, 11, 18, 25, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037920400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE BAY AREA TEAM; BAY AREA TEAM, 1699 VAN NESS AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PACIFIC UNION INTERNATIONAL, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/29/17.

JAN 04, 11, 18, 25, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037917900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GO GO TRAVELER, 912 COLE ST #131, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LISA ZAMARIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/27/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/28/17.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037932100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JIE YING, 3751 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SHUYING WU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/08/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/08/18.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037933400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LUIS GARNICA MAINTENANCE SERVICES, 388 BEALE ST #1309, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOSE LUIS GARNICA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/04/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/08/18.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037931000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JOVAN & BROTHERS BUILDING MAINTENANCE, 235 SANTA BARBARA AVE, DALY CITY, CA 94014. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOVAN BUENROSTRO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/23/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/05/18.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037914500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TESSA MARIE, 2845 VAN NESS AVE #504, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TESSA VIKE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/20/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/26/17.

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JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037927000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BUBBLE LOUNGE LAUNDROMAT, 1811 FULTON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JEREMY PAZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/03/18.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037908800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LEDA LAW FIRM; LIFSCHITZ, EZRIN, DARSKY & ALIOTO, 345 FRANKLIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed LOELL, P.C. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/21/17.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037929600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENTAL SERVICES, 109 BARTLETT ST #302, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110.This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SCOTT S. WILSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/04/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/04/18.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037924100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 415 DESIGN+BUILD; 415 MAINTENANCE; 763 25TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed 415 DESIGN+BUILD (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/02/18.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037906400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TORCH LEADERSHIP LABS, 383 RHODE ISLAND #201, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed REDFISH LABS, INC. (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/15/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/20/17.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037931100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PAPI’S SF, 425 A HAYES ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed PAPI’S SF, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/05/18.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037931800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BAY BRIDGE SPIRITS; BEAR MOON SPIRITS, 849 AVE D, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94130. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed TREEHOUSE CRAFT DISTILLERY LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/05/18.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-037672500

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: 415 DESIGN+BUILD, 763 25TH AVE, SF, CA 94121. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by KENNETH CROMPTON. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/07/17.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-037314900

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: CROMPTON CONSTRUCTION, 763 25TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by KENNETH CROMPTON. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/19/16.

JAN 11, 18, 25, FEB 01, 2018

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Liverpool lives

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Vol. 48 • No. 2 • January 11-17, 2018

Fabian Echevarria

www.ebar.com/arts

Marga Gomez polishes her act by Sari Staver

ans of Marga Gomez, you have just 12 opportunities to see the Puerto Rican/Cuban American lesbian performer’s final solo show, “Latin Standards,” which premieres at the Brava Theater Center on January 11. The show, a 90-minute tribute to Gomez’s father, a singer who performed in New York in the 1950s and 60s, will also inaugurate the new intimate cabaret room at Brava, a recently constructed 80-seat space. See page 24 >>

Marga Gomez brings “Latin Standards” to Brava Theater Center.

New year at Bay Area art galleries

by Sura Wood

arch comes in like a lion, so the saying goes, but the same could be said of January, judging from the crop of new exhibitions roaring out of the gate in this brandNew Year. See page 24 >>

Courtesy the artist

Phillip Andrew Lewis, SYNONYM 001110 (2014), photograph of only known artifact from now-demolished Synanon facility in Oakland, from ongoing SYNONYM project; c-print.

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

<< Out There

18 • Bay Area Reporter • January 11-17, 2018

Dozen upcoming delights by Roberto Friedman

6. Leonard Bernstein’s jazz-influenced opera ere in the arts pages, “Trouble in Tahiti,” in a worldour last few issues premiere pairing with Bay have explored the past Area composer Jake Heggie’s year’s offerings and the “At the Statue of Venus,” both year to come in Bay Area from SF’s Opera Parallele, culture. We pile it on with Feb. 14-18 at SFJazz. sfjazz.org. 12 more arts events coming 7. Opera Parallele will also soon to a Bay Area venue present the world premiere of near you. a new opera inspired by the life 1. While most music of heroic American abolitionhistorians agree that Pyotr ist Harriet Tubman, Ilyich Tchaikovsky was Jan. 18 & 20, at the gay, living in acute fear of African American reprisal in homophobic Art and Culture Czarist Russia, today’s ofComplex in SF. ficial Soviet stance still “Harriet’s Spirit” denies what it considers features new music a “slur” against Russia’s by Bay Area-based most famous composer. jazz composer How then does one tell the and bassist MarHershey Felder Presents story of the composer’s life cus Shelby and before a Soviet audience? Hershey Felder plays Pyotr Tchaikovsky in his latest one-man show, “Our Great a libretto by Writer-performer Hershey Tchaikovsky,” at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Roma Olvera as part of OP’s Felder tackles this ques“Hands-On Opera” program, tion in his musical tribute performing new music20, 7:30 p.m. at Davies Symphony sfperformances.org “Our Great Tchaikovsky,” which theater works in collaboration with Hall. Performing with Glass will 4. & 5. Peking Acrobats, featurTheatreWorks Silicon Valley is elementary school children. opharbe the Philip Glass Ensemble, ing live musicians playing tradicurrently presenting through Feb. rietsspirit.bpt.me. San Francisco Girls Chorus, and tional Chinese instruments, Jan. 11 at the Mountain View Center 8. Coming up in the San Francisyoung students from the San Fran27 & 28; and Circa, “Il Ritorno,” for the Performing Arts. Info: theco Symphony’s 2018 season: MTT cisco Conservatory of Music. an Australian troupe of acrobats, atreworks.org. conducts “Candide”; pianist Daniil Prior to that concert, on Fri., Feb. chamber musicians and singers cre2. & 3. San Francisco PerforTrifonov plays with the orchestra; 2, 7:30 p.m. at the Herbst Theatre, ates circus arts set to the music of a mances presents composer Philip and the SFS performs the score to Kronos Quartet and pianist Timo 17th-century opera by Monteverdi. Glass’ early masterpiece “Music “West Side Story” live with the film Andres discuss “On Playing Glass,” Both at Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkewith Changing Parts,” on Tues, Feb. screening. Look for our ongoing offering musical examples. Both: ley. calperformances.org.

SFS coverage; sfsymphony.org. 9. Gifted pianist Sarah Cahill performs a 100th birthday salute to great late gay composer Lou Harrison, with violinist Kate Steinberg, the Alexander String Quartet and William Winant Percussion Group, Jan. 24 at the Strand Theater. sfperformances.org. 10. The Mynabirds, aka Laura Burhenn, will appear at Cafe Du Nord in SF on Jan. 25 in support of the new album “Be Here Now.” The album is politically charged, recorded in just two weeks following the presidential inauguration and the woman’s march of resistance last year. 11. Concertmaster Daniel Hope leads the New Century Chamber Orchestra in an all-Mozart program, Jan. 25-28 at various venues. ncco.org. 12. Disgraced conductor Charles Dutoit was set to lead the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra when it plays DSH, Jan. 28 & 29; he’s been replaced. But acclaimed soloists Gautier Capucon (on cello) and Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano) remain on the program, part of the “Great Performers” series. sfsymphony.org.t

Film Noir icons don’t die

by Erin Blackwell

ollywood actress Gloria Grahame would have been 94 on Nov. 28, had she not died of stomach cancer in 1981. She spent her final days in Liverpool at the family home of actor Peter Turner, half her age, who wrote a book about their affair called “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” (1987). The memoir was eyeballed decades ago by British producer Barbara Broccoli of the James Bond franchise dynasty, with Annette Bening in mind. Having lived as long as Grahame, Bening finally stars with Jamie Bell in this oddly incoherent biopic. Director Paul McGuigan favors flashbacks, surreal segues, and scenes replayed from different perspectives, over simple emotional truth. Opening

Friday at the Clay, and next Friday at the Shattuck. Grahame, an important presence in the film noir pantheon, is misleadingly labeled a femme fatale. Yes, male characters who attach her to themselves do sometimes get killed, but they were headed the wrong direction anyway, since birth. Gloria is so often slapped, punched, thrown around, insulted, ignored, strangled, beaten, shot, or run over, she’s more accurately called a damsel in existential distress. The men she attracts are never knights in shining armor. They’re there to use, abuse, destroy, and discard her. An authentic female presence in the dream factory, Grahame’s easy to overlook or underestimate because the veil she lifts on men’s treatment of women shows how dangerous it is to be desired.

Grahame was married four times, the last husband being her own stepson, whom she made love to while still married to his father, director Nicholas Ray, who found them in bed together. She was 13 years older than the son, and 12 years younger than the father. That Oedipal revelation put an end to the marriage in 1952, and to the December-May romance, at least temporarily. Husband #3 was wedged in there before she got back together with Anthony Ray and tied the knot in 1960 for a 14-year run, including children and custody battles with ex-husbands. The family dynamic was a scandal that tainted her career. Besides, she was pushing 40, and we all know what that means to a woman in or out of Hollywood. Grahame had style as well as

NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER IN ASSOCIATION WITH TOM KIRDAHY PRODUCTIONS SEASON PRODUCERS: NORMAN ABRAMSON & DAVID BEERY, LOWELL KIMBLE EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: JIM TAUL & DAVE HOPMANN PRODUCERS: DR. ALLAN GOLD & MR. ALAN FERRARA PRESENT

substance, an ironic awareness of men’s weakness, an erotic mystique greater than the sum of her parts. She made some bad movies. She begged Howard Hughes to let her out of “Macao” (1952), starring Jane Russell and Robert Mitchum, and her performance is strikingly minimalist. She later showed what she could do opposite Mitchum in “Not as a Stranger” (1955), a sultry horsepowered melodramatic mash-up of two deadpan sex gods. In “Human Desire” (1954), Fritz Lang’s mostly wonderful version of Zola’s “Bête Humaine” (1890), she gives a flawless performance stuck between monstrous husband Broderick Crawford and priggish lover Glenn Ford. Spoiler: She’s beaten to death in the final frames, like a dog. Grahame is a smooth-tongued, conscienceless con artist in Joan Crawford’s post-war-paranoid apotheosis, “Sudden Fear” (1952), famously filmed in several San Francisco locations. Gloria plays Lady Macbeth to gorgeously grotesque Jack Palance’s gigolo-cumdoting-husband who’s only sweet to Joan because she’s a rich old fool, gaga over him despite her cynical Broadway-playwright brains. “Fear”

is a must-see for many reasons. The final 25 minutes are a miracle of suspense, silent and shadowy, wherein Crawford’s face is a landscape of terror as her tidy murder plot goes awry cuz she’s too nice to kill in cold blood. Grahame takes Palance’s rough treatment as proof of love. Spoiler: The pair of rats is exterminated because they simply have it coming. Grahame isn’t on the cover of the 2016 Criterion DVD of “In a Lonely Place” (1950), only Humphrey Bogart. Another misogynist slap in the face. This toned-down adaptation of Dorothy B. Hughes’ 1947 novel dissecting the menace of masculinity recasts Bogart’s character as a hair-trigger Hollywood screenwriter suspected of murder. Nicholas Ray directed his then-wife in this rare starring role, a jewel in her crown as icon of imperiled objects of desire. “It wasn’t the way I looked at a man, it was the thought behind it,” Grahame said of her technique. Movie acting is in the eyes. As philosophical as she is desirable, Gloria Grahame, having seen it all, projects a disabused knowledge of the female condition that makes her uncannily deathless.t

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Annette Bening and Jamie Bell in director Paul McGuigan’s “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.”

Theatre>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 19

2018 begins on Bay Area stages rector Brian Katz chose the “Impossible Dream” musical in reaction to the current political climate: “I felt we needed a glimmer of light to remind us why we fight.” Tickets at custommade.org. Director Susi Damilano also sees contemporary relevance in San Francisco Playhouse’s latest offering, even though it’s been 71 years since it was first seen on Broadway. “Born Yesterday,” she says, is a “timeless story of integrity triumphing over political self-interest.” Michael Torres and Millie Brooks play a junkyard tycoon and his showgirl mistress, with Anthony Fusco as a journalist hired to give her a veneer of polish as the uncouth businessman tries to buy political favors in Washington. Garson Kanin’s comedy runs Jan. 23-March 10. Tickets at sfplayhouse.org.

collage of Walter and Maggie’s life together. Tickets at magictheatre.org. The life of one survivor of the AIDS epidemic is thrown into turmoil as his life loses direction and the legacy he has held onto is ripped away in “Still at Risk,” having its world premiere at New Conservatory Theatre on Jan. 19-Feb. 25. Dennis Lickteig is directing the new play by Tim Pinckney, whose “Message to Michael” was seen at NCTC nearly 20 years ago. Tickets at nctcsf.org.

San Jose triad

A new venue for live theater is opening at the site of a former San Jose movie triplex. The Camera 3 theaters went dark in October, and will reopen this month in renovated form as 3 Below Theatres and Lounge. The largest of the space’s three venues, with 250 seats, will be dedicated to live theater productions, and its opening attraction is the musical revue “Sondheim on Sondheim,” running Jan. 18-Feb. 4. ComedySportz’s long-running improv shows will continue in the facility’s 99-seat theater, while the 89-seat auditorium will be used for independent, revival, and art films. Food and drinks will be available to both theatergoers and the public in a new cafe fashioned from the former home of Psycho Donuts. Guggenheim Entertainment, made up of husband-and-wife team Shannon and Scott Guggenheim, and brother Stephen Guggenheim, have experience repurposing cinemas, having previously offered live programming at several South Bay moviehouses. Their new location will have plenty of parking; it’s located below the parking structure at 2nd and San Carlos streets in downtown San Jose. More info at 3belowtheaters.com.t

Premiere attractions Comedian Louie Anderson looks at the serious side of growing up in a dysfunctional family in a new solo show based on his memoir “Dear Dad” at ACT’s Strand Theater.

by Richard Dodds

ith a new year aborned, and the theatrical lull of the holidays and attendant distractions behind us, it’s time to take stock of how 2018 will begin to unfurl on our stages. Here are some attractions crowding their ways into the January calendar, including solo turns, world premieres, the opening of a new venue, and a couple of chestnuts still roasting on an open fire.

Going solo

Comedian Louie Anderson is debuting a new theater piece based on a memoir written in the form of letters to his late father. “Dear Dad” is running through Jan. 14 at ACT’s

Strand Theater, where audiences will see for the first time how he reconstructs the story of growing up in a housing project as the 10th of 11 children, with an alcoholic father more forthcoming with condemnation than commendation. He has mined his dysfunctional family for material throughout his career, and won an Emmy Award for channeling his long-suffering mother into his cross-dressing role as Zach Galifianakis’ mom on TV’s “Baskets.” Tickets at act-sf.org. Marga Gomez, San Francisco’s solo queen, claims that “Latin Standards” is the last one-woman show she will write. Back at Brava Theatre Center, where it had a workshop before its debut at New York’s Pub-

lic Theatre last year, its official San Francisco premiere inaugurates Brava’s new cabaret space. In “Latin Standards,” running Jan. 11-28, Gomez is again looking back at her colorfully tempestuous home life as the child of fame-chasing entertainers, with the new show narrowing in on her father’s songwriting ambitions. Tickets at brava.org. There will be one-persons in profusion as PlayGround presents its first Solo Performance Festival. Running Jan. 11-28 at Potrero Stage, eight local actors offer works on a rotating schedule. A sampling includes Lisa Evans’ “You Should Really Sit Like a Lady (or How I Got to Femme”), which pulls in martial arts, R&B divas, and live music to explore the road to gender identity; Michael Phillis’ “Dolls,” in which a man’s collection of figurines creates its own pecking order; and Marjorie Hazeltine’s “The Notorious Bug,” where a doctoral student goes against the tradition of using male names for new species and creates gender confusion for a new genus of praying mantis by naming it after Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A full schedule is available at playground-sf.org.

“Megabytes! The Musical” is the latest show from Morris Bobrow, the writer-director of such long runs as “Shopping! The Musical” and “Foodies! The Musical.” In his latest musical comedy revue, he takes us through the travails of everyday folks dealing with life in a cyber world: self-Googling, forgotten passwords, butt dialing, a lack of Facebook likes, and the commitment required to finally hit “send.” Performances are Jan. 19-March 3 at the Shelton Theatre. Tickets at megabytesthemusical.com. The Magic Theatre opens the New Year with the world premiere of “Reel to Reel,” running Jan. 31-Feb. 25. In writer-director John Kolvenbach’s unconventional exploration of a 55year marriage, four actors on stage playing younger and older versions of the couple are surrounded by recorded conversations, arguments, and household noises to create a

HERSHEY FELDER

Fresh chestnuts

“Man of La Mancha” is getting the stripped-down, actors-as-musicians treatment used in recent years for Broadway revivals of “Sweeney Todd” and “Company.” Custom Made Theatre’s production of the 1965 musical runs Jan. 11-Feb. 17, with Edward Hightower heading the cast as Cervantes/Quixote. Di-

Music by Piotr

Ilyich Tchaikovsky Written and Performed by Hershey Felder

Directed by Trevor Hay

”Felder is truly stunning!” Broadway World

Acclaimed for recent portrayals of Beethoven, Irving Berlin, and more, piano virtuoso Hershey Felder brings to life the legendary Russian composer and LGBTQ issues in his day.

Jan 10 –Feb 11 Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts theatreworks.org 650.463.1960 Above: Ken Levin Below: David Wilson

Above: Michael Torres and Millie Brooks play an uncouth tycoon and his showgirl mistress in Garson Kanin’s “Born Yesterday” at San Francisco Playhouse. Below: “Megabytes! The Musical” is a new comedy revue about everyday people navigating the cyber world, at the Shelton Theatre.

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<< Film

20 • Bay Area Reporter • January 11-17, 2018

January chilling at the Castro Theatre

by David Lamble

T 2pub-BBB_BAR_011118.pdf

CMY

12/6/17

4:52 PM

he Castro Theatre welcomes the New Year with a schedule peppered with films up for award-season honors. The Castro is also home to the annual Noir City festival (Jan. 26-Feb. 4), this year covering films produced between 1941-53. Its highlight is Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant 1943 thriller, the Santa Rosa, CA family murder-mystery “Shadow of a Doubt.” Blade Runner: The Final Cut LA has never felt more desolate than in Ridley Scott’s genre-defining sci-fi thriller featuring a solid mid-career Harrison Ford. He’s a cynical former cop lured out of retirement on a search-and-destroy mission to rid acid-rain-drenched LA of runaway android slaves. Based on Philip K. Dick’s classic novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Costarring Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos and the music of Vangelis. (1982/2007) Blade Runner 2049 Kicking off 30 years after the first film’s action, blade-runner official K (Ryan Gosling) unearths an astonishing secret that leads him on a quest to find former blade-runner Rick Deckard (Ford), missing for 30 years. Costarring Robin Wright and Jared Leto in Denis Villeneuve’s sequel. (2017) (both 1/12) Murder on the Orient Express Agatha Christie’s classic gets a hearty reboot from Kenneth Branagh. He directs and stars as detective Hercule Poirot, on the case when a loathsome American (Johnny Depp) is murdered on a trans-European train. The suspects: Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Derek Jacobi, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Odom Jr., and Dame Judi Dench. (2017) (1/15-16) To Catch a Thief Hitchcock’s elegant thriller stars Cary Grant as a reformed cat burglar on the Riviera pursuing Grace Kelly while trying to clear his name after a series of jewel robberies. Boosted by Robert Burke’s Oscar-winning cinematography and Edith Head’s costumes. (1955) The Man Who Knew Too Much Hitchcock remade a film from his British period focusing on American tourists James Stewart and Doris Day as they probe international spy business in search of their kidnapped son. Day’s rendition of “Que Sera, Sera” won an Oscar. The climax comes at Royal Albert Hall, with a cameo by composer Bernard Herrmann. (1956) (1/17-18) They Live Horror classic from John Carpenter, with a “Twilight Zone”-style plot about aliens attacking Earth using TV signals. Roddy Piper and Keith David have one of the longest fistfights in screen history. (1988)

Videodrome James Woods is running a sex-and-sleaze cable network when he stumbles across a bizarre broadcast overflowing with sadism and torture. From Canadian director David Cronenberg. Deborah Harry co-stars. (1982) (both 1/19) The Shape of Water Mexican master storyteller Guillermo del Toro casts an otherworldly spell with this imaginative fable set against the backdrop of 1962 Cold War America. Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute woman, is trapped in a life of lonely isolation, radically upended when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) stumble upon a top-secret classified experiment. The excitement of the classic monster movie merges with film noir. Michael Shannon plays a very dark hand as the film’s heavy while veterans Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones and Michael Stuhlbarg fill in the gaps. (2017) (1/22) Dunkirk Director Christopher Nolan recreates one of WWII’s great turning points, with a veteran cast headed up by Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance. (2017) (1/24-25) Noir City 16: Film Noir A to B: 1941-1953 (1/26-2/4) I Wake Up Screaming LA promoter Frankie Christopher is fingered by the cops for the murder of a model, Vicky Lynn. Frankie fears he’s being set up to take the rap, and the only one he can turn to is Vicky’s sister Jill. With Betty Grable, Carole Landis, and Victor Mature. Among the Living In Stuart Heisler’s crime thriller, a mentally ill man, a twin, breaks out of isolation. With Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward, and Frances Farmer. (both 1941, 1/26) This Gun for Hire This Frank Tuttle noir helped launch the career of Alan Ladd. He’s a paid hit man seeking revenge on the guy who betrayed him. With Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar and Pamela Blake. Quiet Please, Murder John Francis Larkin directs George Sanders as a forger who steals rare books then passes off his copies as authentic. With Gail Patrick, Richard Denning and Sidney Blackmer. Not on DVD. (both 1942)

Shadow of a Doubt An early American Hitchcock thriller, set in WWII-era Santa Rosa, CA. Teresa Wright is terrific as a young teen who senses that her favorite Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) is a serial killer specializing in wealthy widows. Note Hitch’s use of belching black smoke from a steam locomotive bringing Uncle Charlie into Santa Rosa as a sign that an “innocent” community was being visited by a diabolical evil. Hitchcock shrewdly arranged for thencloseted Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Thornton Wilder to be screenwriter. Wilder brings his New England-bred sensitivity for small-town behavior to bear. In effect Santa Rosa is a West Coast version of Wilder’s world. Co-stars Hume Croyn in his screen debut. Address Unknown William Cameron Menzies directs Paul Lukas as a German-born American resident who returns to his homeland and becomes involved in the Nazi Party. (both 1943; all 4, 1/27) Destiny Julien Duvivier and Reginald Le Borg dramatize the impact on a young man after he’s sent to prison on murder charges. Not on DVD. Flesh and Fantasy Duvivier’s three-part anthology film includes a short drama inspired by an Oscar Wilde story. (both 1944, 1/28) Conflict Curtis Bernhardt directs Humphrey Bogart in this seldomseen melodrama about a husband who wants to kill his wife in order to marry her sister. With Sydney Greenstreet and Alexis Smith. Jealousy Gustav Machaty directs blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s LA-set story. (both 1945, 1/29) The Blue Dahlia George Marshall directs Alan Ladd in a melodrama from a Raymond Chandler script, about a GI who returns from the war to an unfaithful wife. Super supporting cast includes Veronica Lake, William Bendix, and Howard da Silva. Night Editor Henry Levin directs this obscure noir named for a radio series of the day. A married police detective has an affair with a lady with a bad reputation, then witnesses a murder. With William Gargan, Janis Carter, and Jeff Donnell. (both 1946, 1/30) The Unsuspected “Casablanca” creator Michael Curtiz directs Claude Rains in a noir about a radio star involved in murder. With Joan Caufield, Audrey Totter, and Hurd Hatfield, who played Dorian in the 1945 version of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” High Tide John Reinhardt stars Lee Tracy in a drama about a crusading reporter trying to break up a gambling syndicate. With Don Castle, Julie Bishop, and Regis Tommey. (both 1947, 1/31)t

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<< TV

22 • Bay Area Reporter • January 11-17, 2018

As the dystopian world turns by Victoria A. Brownworth

he new year has got off to a rollicking start. We’ve had a what-climate-change winter cyclone in the East, fires in California are still burning, and it’s snowing in Florida. Michael Wolff ’s book “Fire and Fury” registered a higher Seismic impact in the Beltway than last week’s earthquake in the Bay Area. The tell-all shook up Washington, got Trump in a tizzy, and gave us, thanks to the unfettered access former chief strategist and Breitbart head Steve Bannon provided, some alarming new images of a president whose grasp on, well, anything is limited at best. The beginning of the new year was good news for CNN. We watched CNN see out the old year with Don Lemon kissing his boyfriend on live TV on his New Year’s Eve show, and Andy Cohen proving he’s no Kathy Griffin, he’s apparently better. On Jan. 5 CNN released their ratings for New Year’s, and Anderson Cooper’s gay pairing with Cohen was a huge hit: viewership was up a full 8% from last year. Lemon’s broadcast with Brooke Baldwin was also up from last year, putting CNN in first place for the 12:30 a.m. EST lineup. The new year also gifted Rachel Maddow with more dirt on the Trump/Russia scandal than ever, to keep her in the top slot on cable news, deposing Fox News. And, surprise! As authoritarian rule gets comfy, AG Sessions (be sure to catch Kate McKinnon’s latest on “SNL”) announced Jan. 4 he was going after both legalized marijuana and Hillary Clinton. To quote a song from our youth: Same as it ever was. It is into this tempestuous new year that some fabulous TV is debuting (we cannot wait for Ryan Murphy’s sumptuous “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”) even as the news gets more dystopian. A bizarre spectacle at the Jan. 4 White House press briefing had Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders standing between twin screens of Trump, who was in the next room. It was very “Hunger Games.” That image came even as CNN was breaking the story that a noted Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, had met with a bipartisan group of Congresspersons from both the House and the Senate on Dec. 5 & 6. In an interview with CNN on Jan. 4, Lee said, “Lawmakers were saying they have been very concerned about this, the President’s dangerousness, the dangers that his mental instability poses on the nation. They know the concern is universal among Democrats, but it really depends on Republicans. Some knew of Republicans that were concerned,

maybe equally concerned, but whether they would act on those concerns was their worry.” The interview with Lee came less than 12 hours after Trump had tweeted a provocative claim to North Korea that his “button” was bigger than Kim Jong Un’s “button,” referencing their respective nuclear capabilities. Lee explained she had been asked to return to Congress to meet with more of the leadership to further discuss perceptions about the President’s mental acuity. CNN gave the caveat, “Lee made it clear that she is not in a position to diagnose the President, or any public figure, from afar. But she said that it is incumbent on medical professionals to intervene in instances where there is a danger to an individual or the public. She argues that signs the President has exhibited have risen to that level of danger.” To which we can only say, “We told you so in 2016 well in advance of the election.” But there will be more. Lee has been invited back to speak. According to CNN, Lee is also an expert on studying and predicting violence. Lee told CNN, “Mr. Trump is showing signs of impairment that the average person could not see. He is becoming very unstable very quickly. There is a need for neuropsychiatric evaluation that would demonstrate his capacity to serve.” Lee, who has never registered with a political party, is scheduled to hold a briefing at the home of Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) later this month with other members of Congress, and is scheduled to speak at Rep. Jamie Raskin’s (D-MD) town hall in Maryland. Raskin has introduced a bill, the “Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act,” which would utilize the 25th Amendment to create a “body” to discern whether the President is fit to execute the powers and duties of the presidency. What’s truly shocking is that a year into the worst presidency of our lifetimes, this news was barely a headline. If Trump is removed from the presidency, will Ellen DeGeneres take his place? While we’d love to have our first woman POTUS be a lesbian, we’re pretty sure the only new plan for 2018 the daytime diva has is her new game show, “Ellen’s Game of Games,” which debuted on NBC Jan. 2. Trump’s son Eric thinks Ellen is up to something far more nefarious that will undermine his father’s presidency. Starting the new year vying for least bright bulb in the Trump pack that consists of Ivanka, whom Steve Bannon described as “dumb as a brick”; and Donald Jr., whom Bannon called “treasonous”; Eric asserts that Ellen is running America’s “Deep State” shadow gov-

Darren Criss as killer Andrew Cunanan in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”

ernment. We were confused by this because we thought Hillary Clinton was running the shadow government set in place by Barack Obama. Eric Trump was given a Twitter algorithm that suggested he follow Obama, Hillary and Ellen, and he took it as a conspiracy dictate from the Deep State, rather than the usual three suggestions based on one’s most recent follows or tweets to a specific account. Over the past year Sean Hannity and others on Fox News have falsely asserted that Obama is operating another government deep within the Washington Establishment, where Hillary is the “shadow president.” Eric, who has been easily confused in the past and has been viciously lampooned by “SNL,” assumed that the addition of Ellen to his algorithm meant she was taking over for Hillary, who Vanity Fair suggested needs to take up knitting. DeGeneres received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2016 for her work on LGBT equality. She has said Trump is not welcome as a guest on her show. In an interview with “Today” host Megyn Kelly, DeGeneres said, “I can’t have someone [on my show] who I feel is not only dangerous for the country and for me personally as a gay woman, but to the world. He’s dividing all of us, and I think I don’t want him on the show.” Being a comedian first and foremost, DeGeneres used the incident to poke at the entire Trump family in a hilarious monologue that began, “First, which one is Eric? Did he kill the elephant or the cheetah?” She told her audience, “Apparently I’m part of some secret government conspiracy called the ‘Deep State.’ It’s supposed to be a group of people that are trying to undermine Donald Trump, which is ridiculous because no one undermines Donald Trump more than Donald Trump.” Addressing Eric specifically, she said, “I’m honored you think I’m powerful enough to be part of a government conspiracy. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I am not part of the ‘Deep State.’” She had no time to be shadow president when she already had such a busy schedule, including her new game show. “I’ve got my gay agenda meetings on Mondays. On Wednesdays, Beyonce and I host an Illuminati brunch.” She also referenced tabloid rumors about her and her wife Portia, “Portia and I on the weekends are trying desperately to have a baby, so I can’t. I don’t have the time.” If we can’t have Ellen as POTUS, we can at least have some good LGBT TV. On Jan. 3 the spin-off of

ABC’s hilarious “black-ish” debuted on Freeform (formerly ABC Family, but far-right extremists complained that the increasingly pro-LGBT content was anything but familyoriented). The new sitcom, “grownish,” stars the oldest Johnson child, Zoey (Yara Zahidi), as she starts college away from home. We knew this show would be good because Zahidi is a terrific young actor, and her deadpan delivery has charmed us since “black-ish” debuted in 2014. In the first episode, Zoey’s friend Nomi (Emily Arlook) comes out as bisexual. What else will happen as Zoey negotiates race, sexuality and gender in the place where many of us felt free to be our authentic selves for the very first time? Worth watching. What would the new year be without RuPaul? His latest, “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3” premieres on Jan. 25 on VH1. Be prepped for Trixie Mattel, Shangela and Chi Chi DeVayne to snap diva their way through another season, along with a cavalcade of other stars and wannabes. “Black Lightning” premieres on the CW on Jan. 16. We need the first black superhero on the tube, and we need his lesbian daughter just as much. We love Lena Waithe. We love having an out, black, gender nonconforming lesbian on TV. Waithe, who won a primetime Emmy for her writing in “Thanksgiving,” the most emotional coming-out story we’ve seen in years on “Master of None,” is branching out. Her new solo series on Showtime, “The Chi,” debuted Jan. 7 and is a provocative must-see. It will remind many of the best of “The Wire.” The opening episode is rich and deeply emotional. It’s beautifully shot. The acting is stellar. Waithe’s writing is luminous. “The Chi” is about ripple effects of gun violence and killing on a community, Chicago’s South Side. Three men are featured: an aspiring chef, Brandon (Jason Mitchell); a teenage father, Emmett (Jacob Latimore); and a drifter named Ronnie (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine). “Moonlight’s” Alex Hibbert plays Kevin, and Yolonda Ross plays Yada. Waithe told Variety she based many of the series’ characters on herself and others close to her, and that it feels very personal. “I grew up hustling my mom and her friends, and seeing things maybe too soon that I shouldn’t have.” Waithe wants “The Chi” to “put some humanness behind the headlines” about Chicago’s headline violence. She wants to portray her hometown from “a very human, honest and grounded perspective.” One element of “The Chi” that will

resonate is how adept Waithe is at portraying the range of black women in the community: the mothers, girlfriends, aunties, and grandmothers. There is breadth, verve and oh-somuch heart in these characterizations. “The Chi” is destined to be another series we wait for all week. FX has been promoting “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” Ryan Murphy’s latest creation, for months in sumptuous, super-saturated color. These promos have been visually stunning, even as the undercurrent of violence has never been more than a blink away, reminiscent of a Helmut Newton photo montage. Last season’s “Feud” was tremendous, but “Versace” is brilliant. It is Ryan Murphy’s piece de resistance. It is the most breathtakingly real of all his creations and the gayest. It is an exquisite exposition of two lives running in parallel: that of the designer and that of his killer, serial murderer Andrew Cunanan. In an opening scene, a detective asks Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico, whose white shirt is stained with his lover’s blood, “But who was [Versace] really?” D’Amico takes a breath and says, “He was a genius.” Every scene plays like this, like grand opera, yet never over-the-top. It’s a balance that Murphy has not always been able to achieve, but when he has, the results have been perfection. The cast is seamless. Darren Criss plays against type as the tortured killer Andrew Cunanan, in the role of his career. We were never fond of Criss’ bland Blaine on “Glee,” but here he sears through the story, projecting Cunanan’s mix of beauty and sociopathy with ease. Criss takes us deep into Cunanan, who developed shifting personae from the time he was in middle school, changing both his look and his affect to attract those he wanted in his orbit. Cunanan was also a life-long fabulist, and Murphy has written that deftly into the role. Murphy told EW Criss was his only choice for the role after seeing him on Broadway in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” “I just knew he could do it,” Murphy asserted. “More than that, I knew that he was superhungry and ambitious. When I saw ‘Hedwig,’ I knew he was capable of great darkness.” Come for Criss, stay for Ricky Martin (Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico), Edgar Ramirez (Versace) and the sublime Penelope Cruz (Donatella Versace). Icing? Matt Bomer will direct the eighth episode. Premieres Jan. 17 on FX. Not to be missed. So for a TV news countdown to the 25th Amendment, a gay shadow president, and some serious takes on LGBTQ lives past and present, you know you really must stay tuned.t

Music>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 23

Precise lightness at the piano by Tim Pfaff

tephen Hough has made a name for himself as a polymath. Rightly renowned as a concert pianist, he’s also a composer, a painter, a substantive blogger and, most recently, a novelist, with his first, “The Final Retreat,” due out in April. Musically, he’s also a polyglot, in terms of the broad range of musical styles he has essayed. For evidence, look no farther than his recital at Herbst Theatre on January 18, when he plays Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, the Schumann Fantasy, and Debussy’s “Images.” It’s 2018, the Debussy Year, a centennial celebration of the composer’s death. Death anniversaries have a way of making regular concertgoers eventually want to give up the ghost, as some of us learned in the Mozart Year’s overkill. Warner has just issued a Debussy Complete Works in a 33-CD box, and DG is rumored to be following suit. Hough’s new all-Debussy CD (Hyperion) – which contains Book I of the “Estampes,” both books of “Images,” the “Children’s Corner,” La plus que lente” and the titanic “L’isle joyeuse” – has almost the identical repertoire of a new DG release by the

South Korean pianist SeongJin Cho, who’s not my cup of absinthe. Go with Hough, and catch the recital before you’ve overindulged in Debussy. The sheer intelligence of Hough’s playing has long been a calling-card. In a Hough performance, every note is considered but, as important, none is “worried.” A telling call by Debussy that one of his pieces be played with “fantastical but precise lightness” defines the ground on which Hough meets this music. Hough’s playing seldom gets the credit it deserves for broaching the fantastical. In fact it cloaks an ecstatic in a scholar-monk’s robes. To hear it at its most charming, there is Hough’s ideally gauged “Children’s Corner.” It’s as atypical and problematic a suite as you’ll find in Debussy, a set of pieces that are by no means “for children” as performers, but that summon the specific affection the generous genius of Debussy had for his daughter Chouchou. It’s fundamentally playful, delightfully varied music that dares to imagine a child’s view of the world.

For the adult performer, it’s anything but child’s play, yet that’s the way it has to sound to work. Volleys of repeated notes, time and again, evoke the sounds of a child (albeit a very gifted one) practicing the piano. But the syncopated rhythms alone ask a touch as sure as it is light, and the challenge for the player is to keep it all tripping (and, in “The snow is dancing,” floating) along without also seeming infantile. Here the hyper-alertness of Hough’s agile mind finds its natural ally in his playful touch.

Perhaps as a reaction to the abundant misconceptions about Debussy’s music as easy on the ears, the trend in at least the last half-century is for pianists to find and exploit its extremes. What’s refreshing about Hough’s Debussy is that he takes each piece on its own terms, its only extremes those of concentration. Yes, you can hear every note of theses dense scores, but that’s hardly the main point. Yes, the rhythms are free and malleable, the colors almost tactile, but the fabric is never stretched out of shape for show. Savvy pedaling blurs some sonorities, but always meaningfully and never reflexively. This is powerful, pellucid playing that nonetheless never stints on the music’s innate beauty and suggestiveness. In the liner notes (sadly not by Hough), Roger Nichols makes several references to the playing of Ricardo Vines, Debussy’s Spanish friend, who gave the premieres of many of these pieces as well as works of Ravel and Chabrier and other high-water marks of the

20th-century French repertoire. On YouTube you can hear Vines’ 1930 recording of “Poisson d’or,” whose premiere he played in 1907. That recorded performance captures the mercurial luminosity and lithe movement of the two Japanese carp Debussy saw in a Japanese blacklacquer plaque, and it revels in the mysteries of water that never ceased to fascinate the composer. But it comes a quarter-century after the premiere, and more than a decade after Debussy’s death, and it’s hard not to think that it took on some of the airs of saucy post-WWI salon music. It has a feeling I can only call “slinky,” not all that far from hoochie-coochie. By comparison, Hough’s “Poisson d’or” is, wisely, more wondering than salacious. But for all that, my favorite track on the CD is “La plus que lente,” a waltz at once earthy and evanescent, a cousin of Ravel’s waltz before the ensuing madness. In Hough’s hands it’s languorous, beckoning and ultimately ensnaring – not so much refined as what I’d call advanced. As with the rest of this finely crafted disc, it’s playing of both deep feeling and deep knowing.t

Solos & sides

by Gregg Shapiro

ith the release of her debut solo disc Change (Kill Rock Stars), Cindy Wilson is the third member of the legendary B-52s to record a solo album. Fred Schneider led the pack back in 1984 with an album that didn’t drift too far from the B-52s’ path. He changed all that with the punk assault of 1996’s Just Fred. Kate Pierson followed suit almost 20 years later with 2015’s Guitars and Microphones, displaying another side to the singer-songwriter. You shouldn’t expect to hear the Cindy Wilson you remember from B-52s songs “Give Me Back My Man,” “Legal Tender” or “Love Shack” on Change. Closer in mood to the subtle soul drama of “Ain’t It a Shame” from 1986’s underrated B-52s platter Bouncing Off the Satellites, the songs on Change introduce us to a more soft-spoken Wilson, who sings 10 songs (two of them covers) in a breathy belt. The disc opens with “People Are Asking,” a potential activist anthem. With an appreciation for a good beat, Wilson invites us to “dance this mess around” on “No One Can Tell You,” “Stand Back Time” and the title track. She takes an unexpected experimental turn on “Brother,” her interpretation of a song by Athens, GA band Oh-OK. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a Led Zeppelin fan, there’s no denying that

the band’s former lead vocalist Robert Plant has had a fascinating solo career. His first two albums were well-received. A late-career collaboration album with Alison Krauss, 2007’s Grammy Awardwinning Raising Sand, marked a new creative period for Plant, including 2014’s excellent Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar. Plant’s new album Carry Fire (Nonesuch) finds him working with his band the Sensational Space Shifters, and features guest appearances by Chrissie Hynde (“Bluebirds Over the Mountain”) and Seth Lakeman (title cut). Songs “Carving Up the World Again,” “New World” and “Bones of Saints” find Plant making political statements, but most of the tunes are heartfelt love songs. Collaboration is key on several new releases. Lotta Sea Lice (Matador) is an album by out singersongwriter Courtney Barnett and ex-War on Drugs guitarist Kurt Vile. This disappointing album feels so low energy as to almost be sleepinducing. Part of the problem is the similar quality of their voices, although Barnett’s is more expressive. Songs “Over Everything,” “Continental Breakfast” and “Peepin’ Tom” prevent the album from being a total loss.

Filthy Friends is the kind of band they used to call a supergroup. Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney), Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5), Bill Rieflin (King Crimson) and Kurt Bloch (The Fastbacks) teamed up to record an album, Invitation (Kill Rock Stars). Tucker’s distinctive voice steals the focus on “Faded Afternoon,” the R.E.M.esque “Any Kind of Crowd” and “Makers.” Karen and Ryan Hover, formerly of Candy Claws, are joined by Jacob Graham (ex-The Drums) along with Ben Phelan and Derrick Bozich, to form the band Sound of Ceres. The Twin (Joyful Noise), their second album, is a dream pop reverie, combing influences ranging from Cocteau Twins to Air. “The Trance,” “Mercury’s Moods” and “Solar Mirror 9” keep listeners busy on the dance floor. Languorous songs “Humaniora,” “Gemini Scenic” and “Eden V” sound like they’re meant to be listened to in an altered state of being. Virtual/animated group Gorillaz, led by Blur’s Damon Albarn, returns after seven years with the dance-oriented Humanz (WB/Parlophone). Potential club-bangers include “Strobelite” (featuring Peven Everett), “Momentz” (De La Soul), “Andromeda” (D.R.A.M.), “Sex Murder Party” (Jamie Principle and Zebra Katz) and the Prince-ly “We Got the Power” (Jehnny Beth and Noel Gallagher). Collaborations with Grace Jones (“Charger”) and Mavis Staples (“Let Me Out”) don’t hurt. More than 20 years ago, electronic music legend Moby detoured into rock music on Animal Rights. The trip was short-lived, although Moby continued to incorporate rock elements into his music. The politically-minded Moby thought he could get his message across in a harder rocking format, and that there aren’t many reasons to dance. The 2016 debut album by Moby & The Void Pacific Choir was titled These Systems Are Failing, and the second album More Songs About the Apocalypse (Mute) maintains the mood on “All the Hurts We Made” and the more dance-oriented “In this Cold Place.”t

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<< Theatre

24 • Bay Area Reporter • January 11-17, 2018

Marga Gomez

From page 17

If you’re not already a fan, you might want to know that The New York Times gave the production the paper’s highest possible praise, a “Critic’s Pick,” when it played at the Public Theater’s “Under the Radar” festival in 2017. “Yeah, getting almost an entire page in the Friday Times was great,” said Gomez in response to a question from the Bay Area Reporter. “They usually save that space for those million-dollar shows.” In a sit-down interview in San Francisco two weeks before the show was set to open, Gomez was clearly focused on her work polishing the performance, which goes to San Jose and Tucson next. “I’m studying the videos of a recent performance,” she said. “Cut, cut, cut!” Gomez works from a home office in a “very small studio” in the Castro District, where she has lived since the 1980s. In addition to writing all of her own material, she acts as her own agent, publicist, and assistant. “There’s a lot to do” in putting on a show, she said, but after a few years with a big-time Hollywood agency representing her, Gomez concluded, “I do it better myself. So I always have to be thinking three steps ahead. I’m typically working on my calendar six-12 months ahead of time.” Working with longtime director David Schweizer, Gomez performed the work-in-progress in

2016 at Brava, where she is Artistin-Residence. The show has also been presented at the Los Angeles Theater Company’s “Encuentro de las Americas,” Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, Chicago’s Urban Theater Company, and American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA. “Latin Standards” is the story of her father, who went under the stage name Willy Chevalier, and describes his struggle for work as live entertainment venues in New York’s Latino community declined. It’s a situation not unlike Marga’s plight after she began her career with a hipster comedy night at Esta Noche, a doomed Mission District drag club, during the onset of San Francisco’s gentrification crisis. With the aid of slides projected onto a large screen looming above her, Gomez draws a portrait of her father and his work, reciting the lyrics as recordings play in the background. “Why is this my final show?” asked Gomez, sipping on a black coffee while she entertained questions. “I feel I’ve completed my work” in solo performances, and “have said everything I have to say. “But this doesn’t mean I’m going away. I’m just not going to be doing any more solo shows. There are other things I want to try,” she said, although there is nothing definite on the calendar yet. “I’m leaving the door open to be able to perform any of my previous shows into eternity,” she added. “Maybe I’ll try to do a show without any words.”

Fabian Echevarria

Comedian Marga Gomez in a backstage moment.

Gomez also plans to continue doing stand-up comedy, with a regular gig in San Francisco now under discussion. “Nothing to announce just yet,” she said. Over New Year’s, she “really enjoyed” a gig at Punchline comedy club with Greg Proops. When asked about her personal life, Gomez asked, “Didn’t we already talk about that?” She dropped out of Oswego College, where she was majoring in political science with hopes of becoming a teacher, “because my parents were both struggling entertainers and didn’t

see a role for me there.” But she and her then-girlfriend heard about the burgeoning gay scene in San Francisco, and decided to drive across country. “It wasn’t ideal,” she said, “because just before we left I learned she had cheated on me with a onenight-stand.” They broke up soon after landing in the Bay Area, with Gomez getting a job cooking and an apartment in a lesbian collective. After gigs in restaurants for four years, Gomez joined a theater company, which toured in Europe for several years.

Courtesy the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, “Nesting II” (2000), triptych. Polaroid Polacolor Pro 24x20 photograph.

Galleries

From page 17

At Headlands Center for the Arts: “Phillip Andrew Lewis: SYNONYM” investigates the phenomenon of group-think and its perils, terrain the Memphis artist understands from first-hand experience. As a teenager, he was held against his will at an intensive drug rehab program that employed mind control and sensory deprivation techniques. He later learned the center was an offshoot of Synanon, whose empire and self-help agitprop, which began in the 1960s, once extended throughout California with compounds and unmarked buildings in Marin and San Francisco. Their extreme approaches to treating drug addiction eventually fell into disrepute, and after facing a barrage of lawsuits, they disbanded in 1991. Based on extensive research, Lewis’ multidisciplinary project incorporates real and imagined video documentation, photographs, and artifacts such as a chandelier equipped with microphones for eavesdropping, and other detritus salvaged from abandoned compounds. He tracks the organization’s evolution through a dozen installations illustrating the group’s questionable philosophies and harsh “tough love” practices. For some, the handcuffs, peer criticism, shunning, starvation, constant surveillance, and no privacy or contact with family and the

outside world made the program more like a North Korean-style fascist state than a mecca for recovery. Not exactly a walk in the park, but fascinating subject matter that sends shivers down the spine. (Jan. 14-Feb. 18; headlands.org.) In its first major offsite project since transitioning to an innovative new strategy in Hayes Valley, Gallery Wendi Norris showcases “Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: If I Were a Poet” in the roughhewn spaces of Building 649 in Presidio National Park. The artist, who grew up on a Cuban sugar plantation with a multiethnic family whose ancestors were brought there as slaves in the 19th century, trades in the occult and the spiritual, gender issues, religion and memory. With a name that could belong to a heartbreaking chanteuse out of a David Lynch fantasia, Campos-Pons is unafraid to use her body as a canvas in autobiographical work that carries the mystique of Santeria ritual, and bridges the natural and metaphysical worlds. The show brings together several bodies of work: glass multimedia sculptures with sound, wood, olfactory and wooden elements, a video installation, and large-format grid photographs shot with a super-sized Polaroid camera as big as a room (Polaroid only made four such cameras, the same kind used by Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter.) The sections, photographed one at a time, are as-

sembled after the fact like “Bin Bin Lady, The Papaya” a portrait of a mysterious, dark-skinned woman in a burka proffering ripe tropical fruit. (Jan. 11-28; gallerywendinorris.com.) Jenkins Johnson Gallery: “There is No Alas Where I Live,” one of two early winter exhibitions here, is a free-ranging photography show that takes its title from a poem by Theodore Roethke. Curator Ann Jastrab, former director of Rayko Gallery, focuses on the work of nine Bay Area photographers including Wesaam Al-Badry’s pictures of the Mississippi Delta; the devastated but not defeated victims amidst the ruins of Hurricane Katrina in Lewis Watts’ New Orleans Suite; and the painterly compositions of Johanna Case-Hofmeister, who captures the languid waning days of endless summer in giant chromogenic mural prints, produced with a largeformat camera. People are seamlessly integrated into her lush, color landscapes, like the young woman in striped bathing shorts with her back to the camera, leaning over an inner tube on the edge of a lake (“Ariel in Quarry”) or the unadulterated joy of a pair of adolescent girls floating in the water (“Claire and Grace,” 2006). (Through Jan. 27.) The photographic collages of Deborah Roberts probe and deconstruct the fractured identity of black girls and women, and the myths projected onto them by society and

a legacy of prejudice. Confronting and up-ending image-making by pop culture purveyors and art historians, the artist cuts, alters and reconfigures found and manipulated photographs – built with images of famous, barely recognizable figures such as Michelle Obama and Gloria Steinem – and combines them with drawings and paintings. In layering portraits of naive, promising, eight to 10-year-old girls, Roberts

When she got back to San Francisco, Gomez did stand-up comedy, and in 1991, began doing her solo work. Like most artists and entertainers starting out, Gomez occasionally took “day jobs” to help pay the bills. She tried stints walking dogs, serving coffee, and wrapping cannabis chocolates. “None was really as interesting as I’d hoped,” she said. When asked again about her personal life, Gomez said, “I’ve had some serious relationships, some fast-and-shallow relationships, and some long-and-shallow ones, too. I’m on good terms with about 90% of my exes.” Last year, “I realized it had been a long time since I’d had intimacy in my life. I had a lot of situations that were ‘almost dating’ or ‘almost hooking up,’ but things seemed to fall apart.” Success struck at the end of 2017, she said, when she met someone “who has been a source of great affection.” As far as being a celebrity goes, Gomez admits she’s occasionally recognized in places like Whole Foods and Bi-Rite, where she usually shops. Depending on the day, “I’m sometimes happy to be recognized. “But mostly,” she said, “I’m a celebrity mainly in my own mind.”t Tickets to see Marga Gomez at Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St., are $20-$30 and available at brava.org. Previews begin Thurs., Jan. 11, and the show runs through Sun., Jan. 28.

challenges prevailing myths and damaging, de-humanizing stereotypes, reconstructing black female identity on her own terms, with enlightening, sometimes disconcerting results. (Feb. 1-March 17; jenkinsjohnsongallery.com.) Haines Gallery: “Taha Heydari: Running Rabbits” features the latest work by the Iranian-born painter, who embraces digital art and a visual style influenced by new media. Drawn from online news, his profusion of almost childlike, pixilated images keeps the eye constantly hopping. In “The List” he evokes the chaotic aftermath of the crash of an Iranian passenger jet likely mistaken for enemy aircraft and shot down by U.S. missiles in 1988; everyone onboard was killed. Heydari lines up headshots of the victims, ill-defined visages fading fast from memory like student pictures in the yellowing pages of an old yearbook. An esteemed scholar of Islamic law, wrapped in ceremonial robe and scarf, his facial features obliterated, is seated by the flag of Saudi Arabia, the leading exporter of oil and exponent of extremist Wahhabist ideology, in “The Vendor,” which depicts stagecraft at the confluence of power, politics and religion. (Through Feb. 24; hainesgallery.com.)t

Courtesy the artist and Jenkins Johnson Gallery

Johanna Case-Hofmeister, “Claire and Grace” (2006), optical c-print.

Arts Events

Karrnal Knowledge

Jessie Colter Vol. 48 • No. 2 • January 11-17, 2018

www.ebar.com V www.bartabsf.com

Popssical performers String quartet Well-Strung returns to Feinstein's at the Nikko by David-Elijah Nahmod

he string quartet Well-Strung has built up quite an impressive resumé since forming in 2012. In addition to previous engagements at Feinstein’s at the Nikko, these four musically talented hunks have twice performed with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and with the New York Gay Men’s Chorus. They’ve been invited to perform at the Vatican, for President Barack Obama, and for presidential candidate Hilary Clinton. They’ll return to San Francisco at Feinstein’s at the Nikko from January 18-20.

Well-Strung (left-right) are Daniel Shevlin, Chris Marchant, Trevor Daniel and Edmund Bagnell.

Asia Hassan

See page 28 >>

Sun 14

Resist: NIN’s The Downward Spiral @ Rickshaw Stop

On the Tab January

11-18

e bold and daring! Resist! Visit a bar you’ve never been to! Stay up late! Go out in the rain! Dare to have more fun in new ways! > Use more exclamation marks! art on page 26 >

Listings st

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

@LGBTSF

@eBARnews

26 • Bay Area Reporter •

<< On the Tab

January 11-17, 2018

Mikky Echo @ Rickshaw Stop

Fri 12 La Bomba Latina @ Club OMG Drag show with DJ Jaffeth. $5. 9pm2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Boy Division @ Cat Club SF's Queer Wave dance party, with DJs Xander, Tomas Diablo, Donimo and Starr playing cool retro grooves in three rooms. $5-$10. 9:30pm-3am. 1190 Folsom St. sfcatclub.com

Cubcake @ Lone Star Saloon The popular bears, treats and sweets night, with DJ Paul Goodyear. $5. 9pm-2am. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

Club Papi @ Club 21, Oakland Hip Hop and Latin grooves event, with 3 dance floors, gogo studs and drag acts. $10-$20. 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Sat 13

Eric Benét @ Yoshi's, Oakland

Kim Chi at Mother @ Oasis

Thu 11 After Dark @ Exploratorium The cocktails and science night for adults, with installations throughout the hands-on exhibit museum. Jan. 11: Bivalves and sea creatures. $20. 6pm-10pm. Pier 15 at Embarcadero. https://www.exploratorium.edu/

Bluegrass Night @ Driftwood Hear live bands play music at the SoMa stray (straight/gay) bar. 9pm1am. 1225 Folsom St. www.driftwoodbarsf.com

Comedy @ Ashkenaz, Berkeley Ngaio Bealum, Ronn Vigh, Carla Clayy, Jeff Applebaum, and Lisa Geduldig perform stand-up comedy. $15-$20. Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Berkeley. ashkenaz.com

Lulu and DJ Marco's Latin night with sexy gogo guys. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Puff, Love @ The Stud

Fantasy Friday @ Divas

Picante @ The Cafe

DJ Dank and Maria Konner's cannabisfriendly monthly party (It's legal: Whoo-Hoo!), with live music, stoner raffles, and DJ Sergio Fedasz. $5-$10. 7pm-10pm. Then, Love with Thee Pristine Condition and Mama Dora. 10pm-3am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

Weekly drag shows at the last transgender-friendly bar in the Polk; with hosts Victoria Secret, Alexis Miranda and several performers. Also Thursdays and Saturdays. Thursday karaoke night. $10. 10pm. 1081 Polk St. www.divassf.com

KJ Dana hosts the weekly singing night; unleash your inner American Idol; first Thursdays are Costume Karaoke; 3rd is Kinky Karaoke 8pm. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Satiric comic drag performer performs her show Multiple Lives, about the video game queen. $25-$35. 8pm. Also Jan. 12 at 7pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom www.sfoasis.com

NightLife @ California Academy of Sciences The museum parties return; Jan. 11: Fungus Among Us, with DJ Sep (Dub Mission), shroom demos and more. Jan. 18: SF Sketchfest Comedy Festival, New Wave City, cast members from Stan Against Evil and more oddball fun. $12-$15. 6pm-10pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. calacademy.org/nightlife

The vibrant talented band performs their jazzy fun originals, with Dakini Star & Aima The Dreamer (Goddess Alchemy / Femme Deadly Venoms), Orchestra Euphonos. $16-$41 (with dinner). 9pm. 859 O'Farrell St. slimspresents.com

Orfeh & Andy Karl @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The Broadway singing couple perform Legally Bound, their new cabaret show. $52-$90 ($20 food/drink min.) Also Jan. 13 . Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. www.feinsteinsatthenikko.com

Lips and Lashes Brunch @ Lookout

Red Hots Burlesque @ The Stud

Weekly show with soul, funk and Motown grooves hosted by Carnie Asada, with DJs Becky Knox and Pumpkin Spice. The yummy brunch menu starts at 12pm, with the show at 1:30pm. 3600 16th St. lookoutsf.com

The saucy women's burlesque show hosted by Dottie Lux will titillate and tantalize. $10-$20. 8pm-9:30pm. 399 9th St. Also Sunday brunch shows at Piano Fight Theatre. 144 Taylor St. www.redhotsburlesque.com www.studsf.com

Mother @ Oasis Heklina's popular drag show, with special guests and great music themes (No bachelorette parties admitted!) Jan. 13 features RuPaul's Drag Race star Kim Chi! $15. 10pm-3am (11:30pm show). 298 11th St. sfoasis.com

Surface Tension @ The Stud Electronic music night with Wetware and Entro Senestre. $5-$10. 10pm4am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

Uhaul @ Oasis

The Playground @ Club BNB, Oakland

The popular women's dance night includes gogo gals and DJ China G and Von Kiss. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Revamped night at the popular hip hop and Latin dance club. $5-$15. 9pm to 4am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Vibe Fridays @ Club BnB, Oakland

Pound Puppy @ SF Eagle Cruisy cubs, otters etc., monthly night with DJs Jeremy Castillo and Taco Tuesday, plus studly gogo guys. $10. 10pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Saturgay @ Qbar

Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. Also Fridays. 7pm-2am. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Fri 12

Fri 12 Mikky Echo @ Rickshaw Stop

Royal Variety Show @ Moby Dick Queen Dilly dally’s variety show of drag, music, even puppets. 9pm11pm. 4049 18th St. mobydicksf.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550 The Country-Western line-dancing two-stepping dance events celebrates 18 years. Free-$5. 5pm-10:30pm. Also Sundays. 550 Barneveld Ave. www.sundancesaloon.org

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle Rock bands play at the famed leather bar. Jan. 11: Diesel Dudes, Wire Spine and Sashcloth & Ashes. $5-$10. 398 12th St. at Harrison. sf-eagle.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night. $5. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Dance it up at the historic (and still hip) East Bay bar. 9pm-2am. 6551 Telegraph Ave. whitehorsebar.com

Friday Night Live @ El Rio Enjoy the weekly queer and LGBTfriendly live acoustic concerts. $5pm. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

Gaymer night @ SF Eagle Have a nerdgasm with video games galore on projected screens at the leather bar. 8pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Shake It Up @ Port Bar, Oakland DJ Lady Char spins dance grooves; gogo studs, and drink specials, too. 9pm-2am. 2023 Broadway. (510) 823-2099. portbaroakland.com

Sugar @ The Cafe

Eric Benét @ Yoshi’s, Oakland

Friday Nights at the Ho @ White Horse Bar, Oakland

Stanley Frank spins house dance remixes at the intimate Castro dance bar. $3. 9pm-2am (weekly beer bust 2pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. QbarSF.com

Sat 13

Bambi Lake & Friends @ Oasis

Sat 13 Bambi Lake & Friends @ Oasis The singer and trans luminary, whose recent concert wowed local audiences, returns with a new show, along with pianist Birdie Bo Watt, comic Natasha Muse, and rocker Maria Konner. $25. 7pm. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Dance, drink, cruise at the Castro club, with DJs Gay Marvine, Taco Tuesday and Matthew XO. 9pm2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Vivvy's Grand Opening @ The Stud Capricorn Power dance and drag night, with VivvyAnne ForeverMORE, Honey Mahogany, Suppositori Spelling and others. $5-$10. 10pm-3am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

Writers With Drinks @ The Make Out Room Authors + booze = hella fun, with host Charlie Jane Anders and writers Amelia Gray, Rob Reid, Brontez Purnell, Kate Elliot and Frances Stroh. $5-$20. 7:30pm. 3225 22nd St. www.makeoutroom.com

Hard Fridays @ Qbar DH Haute Toddy's weekly electropop night with hotty gogos. $3. 9pm-2am (happy hour 4pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Gooch

Ms. Pak-Man @ Oasis

John Brothers Piano Company @ Great American Music Hall

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall

MrPam and Dulce de Leche cohost the weekly underwear strip night and contest.. $5. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. powerhousebar.com

The weekly drag show with host Sue Casa, DJ MC2, themed nights and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Mohammad spins house grooves at the MLK Weekend cruise and dance night. $10. 9pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Annual contest for who will represent the bar in upcoming contests, with judges Andy Cross, Element Eclipse, Daniel DeLage & Will Victoria. 8pm. then, Lance Holman's Lick It, 10pm2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Junk @ Powerhouse

The Monster Show @ The Edge

House Party @ Powerhouse

Mr. Powerhouse Leather, Lick It @ Powerhouse

House music and cocktails, with DJs Shareef Raheim-Jihad and Ellis Lindsey. 9pm-2am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. club-bnb.com

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG

Queer weekly night out at the popular Mission bar. 9pm-2am. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

The Bay Area singer and American Idol finalist performs songs from her new CD. $28-$50. 8pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. www.yoshis.com

Dance music with a view at the Castro bar. 9pm-2am. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

The compelling and cute vocalist performs at the intimate club. $15-$17. 9pm. 155 Fell St. rickshawstop.com

Gayface @ El Rio

LaToya London @ Yoshi's Oakland

Bounce @ Lookout

Dan Karkoska

For full listings, visit www.ebar.com/bartab

The popular R&B singer performs four nights of concerts at the stylish restaurant-nightclub. $49-$94. Jan 12 & 15 at 8pm & 10pm. Jan 13 at 7:30pm & 9:30pm. Jan 14 at 7pm & 9pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. www.yoshis.com

Jessie Colter @ The Nob Hill Theatre The creative and kinky porn stud (see interview this issue) performs two nights of sex shows with local hunk Dylan Strokes. $25. 8pm & 10pm. Also Jan. 13. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21 The popular Latin club includes drag shows, with gogo guys. $10$20. 10pm-3am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Fri 12

Cubcake @ Lone Star Saloon

On the Tab>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 27

Underwear Night @ 440 Strip down to your skivvies at the popular men's night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. the440.com

Tue 16 Hella Saucy @ Q Bar Queer dance party at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

High Fantasy @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge

Sat 13 John Brothers Piano Company @ Great American Music Hall

Sun 14 Beer Bust @ Lone Star Saloon Beer, bears, beats at the weekly fundraiser for various local charities. $15. 4pm-8pm. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The popular weekly event packs in the fans, with proceeds going to local charities. $10. Beer bust 3pm-5pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. sf-eagle.com

Big Gay Beer Bust @ The Cinch Benefits and plenty of beer at the historic neighborhood bar. 3pm-7pm. 1723 Polk St. www.cinchsf.com

Big Top @ Beaux Enjoy an extra weekend night at the fun Castro nightclub, plus hot local DJs and sexy gogo guys and gals. $8. 9pm2am. 2344 Market St. Beauxsf.com

Blessed @ Port Bar, Oakland Carnie Asada's fun drag night with Carnie's Angels Mahlae Balenciaga and Au Jus, plus DJ Ion. 2023 Broadway. www.portbaroakland.com

Dandy @ Oasis The drag king and burlesque variety show, cohosted by Leigh Crow and Ruby Vixen, showcases the Best of Dandy, with Chester Vanderbox, Kegel Kater, Mason Dixon Jars, Meatflap, Oliver Quim, Tyson Check'In and Kitten on the Keys at the piano. $10$20 ($200 VIP champagne tables). 7pm. 298 11th St. sfoasis.com

Dirty Musical Sundays @ The Edge Sing along at the popular musical theatre night, with a bawdy edge; also Mondays and Wednesdays (but not dirty). 7pm-2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Domingo De Escandal @ Club OMG

Hysteria Comedy @ Martuni's

Sunday's a Drag @ Starlight Room

Open mic for women and queer comics, with host Irene Tu. 6pm-8pm. 4 Valencia St.

The weekly brunch and drag show with a panoramic view. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Karaoke Cocktails @ Ginger's The new basement tribute to the old Ginger's Trois hosts a weekly singing fun. 8pm-12am. 86 Hardie Place. gingers.bar

Underwear Party @ Lone Star Saloon Strip down to your skivvies at the undy night, with DJ Collin Bass. 9pm2am. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

Burlesque and variety show takes on a mythological creature theme, with DJ Dakota Pendent. $10 (free in drag). 11pm show. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

Resist: NIN's The Downward Spiral @ Rickshaw Stop The album performance ensemble takes on Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral, with political live and lipsynch interpretations by Glamamore, Raya Light, Stanley Frank, Profundity, Lysol Tony-Romeo, U-Phoria, Profundity, Qween and others. $15-$20. 7pm. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com

B.P.M. @ Club BnB, Oakland Olga T and Shugga Shay's weekly queer women and men's R&B hip hop and soul night, at the club's new location. No cover. 8pm-2am. 2120 Broadway, Oakland. bench-and-bar.com

Castro Karaoke @ Midnight Sun Sing out with host Bebe Sweetbriar; 2 for 1 well drinks. 8pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. midnightsunsf.com

Thu 18 Comedy Returns @ El Rio Yayne Abeba, Sid Singh, Nick Leonard, Abhay Nadkarni, and host Lisa Geduldig share smart stand-up wit and wisdom. $7-$20. 7pm (new time). 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

D'Arcy's Birthday, At the Hop @ Oasis Oasis co-owner, playwright, musician and drag performer D'Arcy Drollinger celebrates a birthday. 7:30pm. Then, Mutha Chucka and Crafty Dough's new monthly party, At the Hop, with '50s and '60s classics, and performances by Rahni NothingMore and BeBe sweetbriar. $5. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar. 10pm2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. HiTopsSF.com

Thu 18

Mondays and Tuesdays popular weekly sing-along night. No cover. 8:30pm1am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. whitehorsebar.com

@ SF Eagle

Gaymer Meetup @ Brewcade

Kollin Holtz hosts the open mic comedy night. 5:30pm-8pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Wed 17

K. Flay @ The Fillmore

Mule Mondays @ Port Bar, Oakland Enjoy frosty Moscow Mule cocktails in a brassy mug, specials before 8pm. 2023 Broadway, Oakland. www.portbaroakland.com

Musical Mondays @ The Edge Sing along at the popular musical theatre night; also Wednesdays. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni's

PoleSexual @ The Stud

Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

The hot weekly Latin dance night with sexy gogo guys, drag divas and more, hosted by Amaya Blac and Delilah Befierce. $6. 9pm-2am (free before 10:30pm). 2344 Market St. beauxsf.com

Carnie Asada hosts a weekly '90s-themed video, dancin', drinkin' night, with VJs Jorge Terez. Get down with your funky bunch, and Yayne Abeba at Comedy Returns @ El Rio enjoy 90-cent drinks. '90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Comedy Showcase Market St. www.beauxsf.com

GlamaZone @ The Cafe

DJs Mohammad and Danny Verdi spin grooves at the Ky Martinez/Cecil Russell MLK Weekend dance night. $15 6pm-12am. 314 11th St. www.heavensf.com

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops

Pan Dulce @ Beaux

My So-Called Night @ Beaux

Opulence @ Beaux

Heaven @ Halcyon

Wed 17

The industrial goth king returns. $49-$65. 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. http://thefoxoakland.com

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland

The weekly LGBT video game enthusiast night includes big-screen games and signature beers, with a new remodeled layout, including an outdoor patio. No cover. 7pm-11pm. 2200 Market St. brewcadesf.com

Cranny hosts a big gay trivia night at the new East Bay bar; drinks specials and prizes. 7:30pm. 2023 Broadway. www.portbaroakland.com

Marilyn Manson @ The Fox, Oakland

Mon 15

Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez and DJ Carlitos. (Comedy Open Mic 5:30pm). 7pm-2am. 43 6th St. clubomgsf.com Pollo del Mar's weekly drag show takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Weekly drag and variety show, with live acts and lip-synching divas, plus DJed grooves. $5. Shows at 10:30pm & 12am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. auntcharlieslounge.com

Trivia Night @ Port Bar, Oakland

Weekly dance night, with Jocques, DJs Tori, Twistmix and Andre. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht. 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market.

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down with the strippers at the clothing-optional night. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Retro Night @ 440 Castro Jim Hopkins plays classic pop oldies, with vintage music videos. 9pm-2am. 44 Castro St. www.the440.com

Sing Out @ Encore Karaoke Lounge Home of drag shows, and hilaraoke karaoke. 9pm-1am. 1550 California St. #2. 775-0442.

Stag @ Powerhouse Single, or a couple looking for an extra? Cruise it up. $5. 5pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. powerhousebar.com

Dick at Nite @ Moby Dick Grace Towers' weekly drag show at the fun local bar. 9pm-12am. 4049 18th St. mobydicksf.com

Follies & Dollies @ White Horse Bar, Oakland Weekly drag show. 9:30pm-11:30pm. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. whitehorsebar.com

Freeball Wednesdays @ The Cinch Free pool and drink specials at the historic neighborhood bar. 8pm-1am. 1723 Polk St. www.cinchsf.com

K. Flay @ The Fillmore The pop-rock singer ("Blood in the Cut") performs with her band. Sir Sly opens. $22.50. 8pm. 1805 Geary Blvd. at Fillmore. kflay.com

Miss Kitty's Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm. 424 Cortland St. 647-3099. www.wildsidewest.com

Nap's Karaoke @ Virgil's Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover. 9pm. 3152 Mission St. 8292233. www.virgilssf.com

Nice Jewish Boys @ Evil Eye Keshet's monthly gay Jewish men (and friends) social event. 7pm. 2937 Mission St. keshetonline.org

Rice Rockettes @ Lookout Local and visiting Asian drag queens' weekly show with DJ Philip Grasso. $5. 10:30pm show. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Thump @ White Horse, Oakland Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests. 9pm-2am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Well-Strung @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The popular men's string/vocal quartet returns to the intimate elegant nightclub. $33.75-$65 ($20 food/drink minimum). Jan 18-20. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. feinsteinsatthenikko.com

28 • Bay Area Reporter •

<< Feature

January 11-17, 2018

John Barrios

Well-Strung onstage at a recent concert.

Well-Strung

From page 25

Well-Strung has graced concert stages around the world, appearing with Broadway superstars such as Kristin Chenoweth, Audra McDonald and Neil Patrick Harris. They’ve attracted a great deal of attention in their own right, playing to appreciative crowds wherever they go. The group consists of four very hunky guys: Edmund Bagnell (1st violin), Chris Marchant (2nd violin), Daniel Shevlin (cello) and

Trevor Wadleigh (viola). And if you think their name sounds a little “naughty,” you could be right. “We hope the name speaks to our sense of humor,” Bagnell said in a group interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “We love puns, and we’re all men, so....” added Shevlin. When they appear at Feinstein’s, the guys will be performing pop/ classical mash-ups. Hits by Stevie Nicks, Queen, The Beatles, Lady Gaga, and others will take on a new meaning when they’re heard in Well

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Strung’s distinctive, classical style. Broadway and classical standards will also be in included in the show. Shevlin describes the group’s sound as “popssical, peppered with anecdotes about the music or the artists,” he said. “And the usual amount of charm and humor that only four guys named Well-Strung could provide.” They addressed being openly gay, which they have been from the beginning. “Our gay identities do not define our music,” said Bagnell. “But it certainly informs who we are as individuals and that we are happy to be gay individuals publicly. We are proud of who we are, and we hope that speaks for itself.” “I can’t imagine growing up a straight white male in Ohio and still pursuing a career in a string quartet boy band,” said Marchant. “So I guess our sexualities are very influenced by it. Because we are four gay men who live together, our humor tends to lend itself to that demographic.” Wadleigh and Marchant have taken their act beyond the Well Strung sphere. Both recently appeared together on CBS’ competitive reality show The Amazing Race. “I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to race around the world with my great friend and colleague,” Marchant said. “We definitely hope the race will allow some greater visibility for the quartet. But Trevor and I had so much fun running the race regardless of that. We are both really competitive and had so much fun challenging ourselves and being silly while racing. It’s also a nice feeling, in some ways, to be chosen to represent America to the rest of the world. I was proud to do that as a gay man and as a musician.” Marchant is also known for showing a little skin, which he did in a photo shoot some years back. Those photos ended up influencing the band’s name. Marchant bemusedly recalls giving his all for the camera—though the photo did include a strategically placed violin. “That infamous photo shoot,” he said. “I believe that took place in 2011. The picture was taken for DNA Magazine for their music issue. They did a photo spread on me and an interview, in which I talk about wanting to start a classical/pop string quartet. They titled the photo spread Well Strung, and the name stuck.” As a group, Well Strung group has been quite the success story. The guys are delighted to be bringing their act back to San Francisco. Shevlin spoke of what he hopes audiences will take from the show. “I would like them to leave with different thoughts on their preconceived opinions of music,” he said. “For example, if they are pop fans, I want them to have a new appreciation for classical. And if they are classical fans, I want them to walk away thinking ‘I never realized how much I could enjoy a Britney Spears song.’”

The Well-Strung guys.

Well-Strung’s Trevor Daniel and Chris Marchant on The Amazing Race.

“We’re a little bit of everything,” said Bagnell. “Our sound is definitely based in the classical music tradition, but with a contemporary pop sensibility layered on top of that. “Our sound can adapt to many different styles, which is probably my favorite thing about what we do. It speaks to how versatile these string

instruments, developed in the 17th century, can surprisingly be.”t Well-Strung performs at Feinstein’s at the Nikko, Thur. Jan 18-Sat. Jan. 20 $33.75-$65 ($20 food/drink min.). Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. feinsteinsatthenikko.com well-strung.com

Chris Marchant in his sexy DNA Magazine photo shoot.

Arts Events>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 29

Watch on the Rhine @ Berkeley Rep Local new production of Lillian Hellman’s Nazi/anti-fascist-themed drama set in 1940. $30-$60. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat & Sun 7pm, Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Jan. 14. 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. berkeleyrep.org

Sat 13

Michael Phillis’ Dolls @ Potrero Stage

Sat 13 David Jacobs-Strain @ Cyprian’s The Oregon-based slide guitaristsinger performs his upbeat folk stylings with fellow musicians. $18$22. 8pm. 2097 Turk St. www.davidjacobs-strain.com/ http://sflivearts.org/

Arts Events January 11-18 T

he arts this week will shake you up, like last week’s earthquake. What, too soon?

For full listings, visit www.ebar.com/arts

Thu 11 Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 43th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. Wed-Fri 8pm. Sat 6pm & 9pm. Sun 2pm & 5pm. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd. (Green St.). 421-4222. beachblanketbabylon.com

The Birthday Party @ Geary Theatre Artistic Director Carey Perloff directs the classic Harold Pinter drama, starring Tony Award winner Judith Ivey. $15-$110. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Feb. 4. Out With A.C.T. LGBT night with an after-party Jan. 24. 415 Geary St. act-sf.org

Black Rider @ Ashby Stage Shotgun Players’ production of the Williams S. Burroughs, Tom Waits and Robert Wilson adult fairy tale musical about a lowly clerk who must prove himself to his fianceé’s father by riding through a mysterious forest. $25-$40. Extended thru Jan. 21. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. www.shotgunplayers.org

El Canto del Colibri @ Arlene Francis Center, Santa Rosa Screening of a new documentary exploring the relationships between Latino immigrant fathers and their LGBTQ family members. This film is in Spanish with English subtitles. Free. 6pm. 99 West 6th St., Santa Rosa. lgbtqconnection.org

Classic & New Films @ Castro Theatre Jan 11: SF Sketchfest (thru Jan. 23). Jan 12: Blade Runner the Final Cut (1:30, 7pm) and Blade Runner 2049 (3:45, 9:15). Jan 13 & 14 more Sketchfest with Bill Burr, Kevin Polak, (1pm) tribute to Twin Peaks with cast members (4pm), Rachel Bloom (8pm). Jan 14, live reading of the Stinker Lets Loose! (1pm), Baskets (5pm), Stuff You Should Know (8pm). Jan 15 & 16: Murder on the Orient Express (2017) (4:30, 7pm. 9:15). Jan 17 & 18: To Catch a Thief (2:45, 7pm) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (4:45, 9pm). $11-$16. 429 Castro St. castrotheatre.com

LaToya London @ Yoshi’s Oakland The Bay Area singer and American Idol finalist performs songs from her new CD. $ 28-$50. 8pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. www.yoshis.com

Mugwumpin @ Z Space The innovative theatre ensemble premieres In Event of Moon Disaster, a multimedia adventure into science fiction and future, with a mystical lunar soul versus colonizing forces. $15-$25. Thru Jan. 28. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. 470 Florida St. www.zspace.org

Red Diaper Daughter @ GLBT History Museum Three Generations of Rebels & Revolutionaries, author Laura Bock’s reading and discussion about her fascinating new memoir.. Jan. 18: How Has Hollywood (Mis) Represented Homosexuality?, a panel discussion with trailers from historic films presented by Jim Van Buskirk. 7pm. Also, exhibits OUT/ LOOK and the Birth of the Queer; and Faces of the Past: Queer Lives in Northern California Before 1930, part of the Queer Past Becomes Present main exhibit. $5. 4127 18th St. glbthistory.org

SF Sketchfest @ Various Venues Annual large-scale multi-event celebration of comedy and performance, with Jane Lynch, Rhea Butler, Dan Savage, Peaches Christ and hundreds of performers in improv, panels, films, workshops and parties. $15-$50. Thru Jan 28. sfsketchfest.com

Solo Performance Festival @ Potrero Stage Playground SF presents eight writer-performers in solo works: Lisa Evans, Malcolm Grissom, Marjorie Hazeltine, Michael Phillis, Katie Rubin, Thomas Robert Simpson, Nina Wise, and Dan Wolf. $21-$124 (full pass). Various dates/times. 1695 18th St. playground-sf.org/ solofest/

Untitled: Art Fair @ Palace of Fine Arts SOMArts Cultural Center and curator Kelly Lovemonster present a group exhibition of visual, cinematic and other media works by queer, trans and artists of color: VivvyAnne Forevermore, Spice Queers, Nikki Jizz, Xandra Ibarra, Yetunde Olagbaju, Mark McBeth, and others. Thru Jan. 14. 3301 Lyon St. www. somarts.org palaceoffinearts.org

Fri 12 Avenue Q @ New Conservatory Theatre Center The puppets return! The Tonywinning musical about a New York neighborhood of puppets and people is restaged. $35-$60. WedSat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Extended thru Jan. 21. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. www.nctcsf.org

Dolls @ Potrero Stage Michael Phillis (Baloney and countless drag shows) revives his hit 2008 solo show about a boy’s love of dolls; part of the PlayGround Solo Performance Festival. $21-$36. 2pm. Also Jan 14, 5pm. Jan 20, 6pm. Jan 25, 8:30pm, and Jan. 28 at 7pm. Seven other performers thru Jan 28. 1695 18th St. michaelphillis.com playground-sf.org/solofest

Ida Lupino Films @ Berkeley Art Museum/ Pacific Film Archive Screenings of films starring the innovative actress who wrote, produced and directed films in the ‘40s and ‘50s. $5-$13. Thru Feb 24. 2155Center St., Berkeley. bampfa.org

Object Action: The ‘F’ Word in a Post-Truth Era @ State Collect for Change’s politicallythemed multimedia group feminist response to the current political climate. Opening reception 5pm8pm. Panels and other events, too. Thru Feb 16. 1295 Alabama St. akart.com/collect-for-change

Tender Life @ Tenderloin Museum Tender Life: Graphic and Ceramic Memories of Tenderloin Living, 1999-2004, a group exhibit of contemporary ceramic and other works by Holly Coley and others. 398 Eddy St. www. tenderloinmuseum.org

The Yale Whiffenpoofs @ St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Oakland The celebrated men’s vocal ensemble performs contemporary and classic songs with flair. $5-$30. 7pm. 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. https://www.whiffenpoofs.com/ http://www.stpaulsoakland.org/

Sun 14 In the Name of Love @ Scottish Rite Center, Oakland Oakland Interfaith Choir, Living Jazz Children’s Project, and numerous solists, with Tammy Hall Trio, perform the annual musical Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute concert, with MC Dana King. $8-$48. 7pm. 1547 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. https:// www.livingjazz.org/mlktribute/

Magnificent Magnolias @ SF Botanical Garden Visit the lush gardens for winter Magnolia displays, plus many other trees and plants. Free with SF proof of residency. $5-$10 others. 7:30amclosing. 9th Ave at Lincoln Way. https://sfbotanicalgarden.org/

SF Hiking Club @ Montara Mountain Join GLBT hikers of the SF Hiking Club for a 10-mile hike at Montara Mountain via San Pedro County Park in Pacifica. Carpool meets at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores at 8:30. (650) 740-9849. sfhiking.com

Mon 15

Wed 17

William Blake in Color @ William Blake Gallery

Smack Dab @ Dog Eared Books

Exhibit of classic plates in the new gallery of historic art by the 18th- and 19th-century poet and illustrator. Mon-Fri 10am-5pm. Sat 11am-5pm. 49 Geary St. #205. www.williamblakegallery.com

Queer open mic with cohosts Dana Hopkins and Larry-bob Roberts, with featured guest Sylvia L. Blalock ( Uprising: A Book of Poetry, Sista: How Skynet Sparked the Revolution ). 8pm. 489 Castro St. www.dogearedbooks.com

Youth Speaks @ Nourse Theatre 21st annual Bringing the Noise for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. concert of spoken word. $5-$10. 7pm. 275 Hayes st. www.youthspeaks.org

Tue 16 Fool La La! @ the Marsh Berkeley Unique Derique performs his wacky kid-friendly physical comedy clown show and holiday extravaganza. $15-$100. Jan 2-7. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. www.themarsh.org

Unearthed @ California Academy of Sciences Exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth; new exhibit, From Stone Age to Space Age, showcases minerals through time. $20-$35. Mon-Sat 9:30am-5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Various Events @ Oakland LGBTQ Center Social events and meetings at the new LGBTQ center include film screenings and workshops, including Bruthas Rising, trans men of color meetings, 4th Tuesdays, 6:30pm. Film screenings, 4th Saturdays, 7:30pm. Game nights, Fridays 7:30pm-11pm. Vogue sessions, first Saturdays. 3207 Lakeshore Ave. Oakland. https://www. oaklandlgbtqcenter.org/

Thu 18 A Fatal Step @ The Marsh Jill Vice’s solo show about a hardboiled detective, told by a femme fatale. $20-$100. Thu 8pm, Sat 8:30pm. Thru Mar. 3. 1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Harriet’s Spirit @ Buriel Clay Theater Opera Parallele presents the world premiere of jazz composer Marcu Shelby and librettist Roma Olvera’s opera about abolitionist and humanitarian Harriet Tubman. $5-$15. 6pm. Jan 20, 1pm & 4pm. African American Art & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St. http:// operaparallele.org/harriets-spirit/

Queer Ancestors Project @ Strut Opening reception for a queer youth exhibition of art about LGBTQ pioneers. 7:30pm-10pm. 4709 Castro St. http://strutsf.org/

Volunteer Orientation @ Voices Youth Center, Santa Rosa Meeting for those interested in volunteering with LGBTQ Connection, the East Bay LGBTQ group. 5pm. 714 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. lgbtqconnection.org To submit event listings, email events@ebar.com Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

30 • Bay Area Reporter •

<< Karrnal Knowledge

January 11-17, 2018

Sean with the wind by John F. Karr

’ve had the flu. It was killer. But I guess I’m getting better, as my thoughts have returned to cock, and issues like the following are once again pressing matters. Here’s something I’d like to see in porn. Why haven’t Sean Duran and Sean Zevran ever been paired? They have the same name, they’re near twins, they’re versatile, they both have battering rams for cocks, and they’re both solid beauties. Or are they the same person, and I’m just confused? Everybody else in porn has made out with everybody else. Why have these guys never met up? What a thriller that could be. Here’s something I don’t want to see in porn. A new-fangled toy called a Double Fucker. It’s a penis sheath that doubles the girth of your goods. But it’s held on only by the built-in cock ring at the base. I envision the front end flapping around like a flip-flop under your heel. But I’m prejudiced. I never quite understood the seeming popularity of the DP, the sort of thing I call a circus act. Certainly not easy to accomplish, and I can’t imagine it providing much sensation to anyone involved. Here’s something that confounds me. Why is Men.com pushing the presence of women in their videos? Is this supposed to be cutting edge? It does nothing for my libido. Here’s an amazing development in porn. After years, perhaps decades, the guy who runs Gemini Studios has discovered KY. He’s been using that equivalent of mucilage, petroleum jelly. Welcome to the 21st Century, Mr Gemini! Here’s something I’d really like in porn. I guess I’m getting old, or am falling out of the loop, because

I recently needed someone to explain contemporary jargon to me. “Sexual self-care;” what’s that? I read about it in an article. Took me nearly a full page before I realized it was jacking off. Here’s one thing I sure don’t like about porn. It’s the use of posed photo setups to represent a movie. In them, unlike the filmed scene, the models are directly addressing the camera. Obviously, these are setups. Why, I’d like to know, aren’t the stills taken directly from the video? Seems they’d be more intense, carry the heat of the moment better than this posed porno. It reminds me of the tumult of Le Salon mags that were tied to each movie the company put out in the ‘70s and ‘80s. There were Falcon mags, and Target mags, and lots from Le Salon. They were shot to be published in the era’s gay glossies. Remember Blueboy, Skin, Manshots, etc. The equivalent of lobby shots for a mainstream feature. I liked those mags, with their full-page, full-color shots. Now that magazines are dead, the photos are used online. But they mostly look so unreal. All I can see in them are a couple of models who’ve squirmed their way into position, and are now holding it while the photographer clicks away. You can’t pretend spontaneity. Doesn’t fool me. Here’s something in porn I find reprehensible. It seems that during the week or so I was unconscious with the flu, a revolution swept porn star’s Instagram and Twitter feeds. So they’re no longer sources of photo fun, late breaking news, up to the minute cock shots, and the omelet you had for breakfast. They’re now devoid of content, unless you sign up and pay a member-

Left: Raging Stallion Right: Hot House

Left: Sean Zevran. Right: Sean Duran.

ship price. OnlyFans, it’s called. Just one more thing to pay for. Well, not me. That’s one game that porn star greed just bounced me out of. Bye Bye, boys! And, finally, here’s something I really like. Muscle boys in bulging gstrings, or veiled, but bustin’ out all over. So I love the site Muscle Gods and Warriors, at musclewarriors.

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XXX Interview>>

January 11-17, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 31

Jessie Colter From cosplay to kink, this porn stud’s diverse

The handsome Jessie Colter.

by Cornelius Washington

orn stud Jessie Colter is the perfect combination of brains, beauty and brawn. As one of today’s premiere erotic performers, the Nob Hill Theatre has finally gotten the man who truly represents what a 21st-century San Francisco stud is all about. He’ll be at the famous strip club on January 12 and 13 in shows with local talent Dylan Strokes. Colter took time out of his busy schedule to talk to the Bay Area Reporter about his passions, from cosplay to horticulture to porn to Kink.com. Cornelius Washington: Welcome to The Nob Hill Theatre! You’re finally here! How do you see yourself adding to the great legacy of this historic venue? Jessie Colter: I’ve always wanted to perform at The Nob Hill Theatre. They’ve offered many times to have me. It just never worked out. I’ve been fortunate enough to have had a long career in this industry. Knowing that I’ll be performing at a venue that so many other great performers have worked at is truly an honor. You’ve worked with your performance partner, Dylan Strokes, numerous times, live and on film. How do you keep your chemistry fresh, and where do you see live performances going in the 21st century? There’s a very big difference between work life and real life. You learn how to draw a line in the sand and separate the two. The sex industry will always be around. Did growing up on a 22-acre spread in Kentucky add to the

isolation already felt by so many LGBT youth, or did it inspire/inform your sexuality? It never made me feel isolated or inspired. It was a time in my life that I honestly didn’t know much about my sexuality or myself. I left when I was 18. Your mother is one of your biggest fans, personally and professionally. Describe coming out to her, on both levels, and how you’ve maintained that relationship. I never got to come out. It was something that was known, expressed as normal and accepted. She was the only person I somewhat asked permission from to pursue this career. She was very supportive and always has been. I understand that your ‘green thumb’ led to a Master’s Degree in Horticulture and Plant Biology. Please describe your love of nature, and does it translate to your sensuality? My love of nature comes from growing up in the forest and fields on my mother’s property. Everything around me was alive and beaming with energy. I couldn’t help but feel it throughout my whole being. It was a part of my everyday life while growing up. I’ve always had a way with plants and insects. Getting the degree was a very simple choice to make. As for translating to my sensuality, I guess it helps me understand how to be gentle and how to experience my senses fully...if that makes sense. With what type of studio do you most enjoy working? Honestly, the bareback studios are great! They’re super easy and

Van Darkholme and an assistant tie up Jessie Colter, in a scene from James Franco’s Kink film.

take no time to film. Outside of in awe I was of its presence. Now, unapologetic for who I am and enthat, I’d have to say Kink.com. Why knowing that I was a part of somejoying seeing others’ reactions to Kink, you might ask? Because it’s so thing so amazing makes me proud, things that I honestly find very easy different than the boring same old but all good things come to an end. and normal to do. I’ve been told I’m stuff all the other studios do. They Nothing lasts forever. brave for being me. I like to think never do anything different than I’m just being me, bravery has noththe same things they’ve been doing Please describe your exhibiing to do with it. Loving yourself is for decades. With Kink, it’s always tionism, as captured by your what it really takes. something new that will push me to amazing Twitter feed. the limit. I learned so much being a I love to push limits and show You’re a very popular escort. dom and a sub that I would never what I’m made of. I’m extremely What services do your clients rehave experienced anywhere else. My quest most? heart belongs to Kink. It runs the gamut, from foot domination to basic vanilla You’re very versatile. How do services and everything in beyou feel about the industry and tween. It honestly makes no fans’ embrace of versatility? difference to me. I’m an equalIt’s great! I’m a believer in ‘You opportunity kind of guy. have to take what you can give!’ How else are you going to know if you’re This past August, you on top of your game? If you’re a top, fought off two attackers (in how will you know if you’re pleasing San Francisco for a White your bottom and giving him what Supremacist rally) who he needs, and vice versa? posed as clients, during an outcall. How are you healWhat made you decide to pering from/dealing with the form bareback, after being against incident? it for so long? I take it day by day. I’m I was never against bareback. medicated and see a psychiaWhat concerned me was not gettrist and therapist to help me ting work if I performed bareback. cope. Just know that I’m doing You see, there was a time that if you great. did bareback work, no mainstream studio would ever hire you again. You’re the Nob Hill TheThanks to the rise of PREP, atre’s first performer of the that’s no longer an issue. year! What are your profes sional and personal New What led you to kink? Year’s resolutions? It was all by chance. I did To do the best and be the the first ever Men On Edge best I can possibly be; to grow shoot. They instantly wanted and learn as much as possible to shoot me as much as posand to strive for greatness, sible. After having awesome because if you don’t fight and experiences with kink and try to make your life what you getting to learn a few things, I want it to be, it never will.t was hooked. Read more with What are some of the bigJessie Colter at gest misconceptions about www.ebar.com/bartab kink and its fans? That we’re crazy sex fiends Jessie Colter’s Official who hurt each other. Kink is Website (A division of http://pervout.com ): made up of so many wonderhttp://jessiecolterxxx.com/ ful, kind and caring people. It’s very safe and quite enjoyBehind Kink interview, able. with his mother: https:// vimeo.com/132151917 You seem to really enjoy Top: Jessie Colter on Muni, on his way to the fetish cosplay, and you look Folsom Street Fair in 2017. To view Cornelius great in the outfits, catsuits, Bottom: Dylan Strokes and Jessie Colter at Washington’s erotic fetish especially. What do they do the 2017 Folsom Street Fair. photography, visit for you? Who creates your http://cuirphoto.com gear? I love catsuits! They look so good on my physique and quite honestly enhance it as well. They feel incredible and make you feel like a different person. I especially love the ones from Slick-It-Up. They’re so comfortable and look badass! What was it like to appear in James Franco’s 2013 Kink documentary? Are there any aspects of kink that you think the film missed? It was incredible and such an honor. It put me in the world’s face, and they had no choice but to look. It made me proud to know that my friends and family got an insider’s look at what I do. I think there was some stuff they missed, but nothing serious. Does The Armory hold a special place in your heart? Please describe some of your favorite memories in that amazing venue and your feelings about Kink. com’s leaving it. It definitely does. It’s a place I’ll remember for the rest of my life. No studio could ever compare to the beauty, detail and truly amazing creature that building was. As for memories, I remember the first time I was there and how much

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