Hypnosis can help kick habit
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Slight uptick in HIV cases
ARTS
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'Looking' debuts
The
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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Vol. 44 • No. 3 • January 16-22, 2014
Outrage after trans teen charged
by Heather Cassell
M The city’s HIV Prevention Planning Council is mulling a plan to distribute crack pipes to aid in combatting HIV.
Crack pipe distribution considered by Seth Hemmelgarn
L
ooking to boost HIV prevention efforts in San Francisco, some staff members at the city’s health department and community-based organizations are starting to talk about distributing crack pipes. The possibility was discussed at a recent meeting of the HIV Prevention Planning Council, which sets priorities for HIV prevention in the city. Among other benefits, such a plan could help city and nonprofit staff connect people that aren’t otherwise being reached with HIV and other health care services, according to a presentation by HPPC member Paul Harkin, who’s HIV services programs manager for the Glide Foundation, and Alli Kraus, syringe access coordinator for Glide Health Services, at the HPPC’s meeting Thursday, January 9. Among other concerns, people may currently use cracked or broken pipes, said Harkin. Referring to the city’s practice of providing clean syringes to injection drug users, which has been credited with cutting the number of local HIV infections, he said, “We do it with syringes, and we should be doing it with pipes.” Kraus called crack cocaine use “a significant driver” of HIV infection in San Francisco. Crack smokers are likely to engage in unprotected sex and may have sex in exchange for money, and use of the drug “accelerates HIV disease progression,” among other issues, according to the presentation. Additionally, people who use crack are twice as likely “to contract HIV compared to someone who is not affected by the driver.” The drug “primes the immune system for HIV infection,” said Kraus. Many who use crack are homeless and are among those “least likely to be in care for HIV,” and they’re also “more likely to develop” AIDS and die from AIDS-related illnesses, according to the information she and Harkin provided. “We’re doing next to nothing for crack smokers,” said Kraus, and by alienating them, “we are exacerbating” health risks. See page 12 >>
embers of the LGBT community and their allies are expressing outrage after a Bay Area transgender teenager was charged with battery after defending herself during a schoolyard fight two months ago. Jewlyes Gutierrez, a 16-year-old sophomore at Hercules Middle/High School, was charged January 8 with battery by the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office after an investigation into the November incident. Three girls who allegedly attacked her, meanwhile, have not been charged. The decision by senior deputy district attorney Daniel Cabral has caused a firestorm and upset Gutierrez’s family, who are trying their best to protect her and want the DA’s office to drop the charges. “I feel hurt and frustrated because [the other girls involved in the fight are] not getting charged and me getting charged battery for a crime,” said Gutierrez. Her attorney told the Bay Area Reporter that she is “confused” by Cabral’s decision to file criminal charges. “It’s confusing as to why Jewlyes is being further victimized when she’s the one who is already being harassed and tormented ... due to her gender identity and then to have adults
Jo-Lynn Otto
Trans student Jewlyes Gutierrez is facing battery charges after defending herself during a schoolyard fight.
subject her to the court system,” said Kaylie Simon, a public defender at the Contra Costa Public Defender’s Office who was assigned to Gutierrez’s case. “The district attorney’s office is supposed to represent the community and keep everyone safe regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity,” added Simon, who hopes
Cabral will listen to the community. Gutierrez is scheduled for a pre-trial conference in juvenile court February 5. Simon is hopeful that Cabral will dismiss the case. Cabral isn’t speaking about his decision to charge Gutierrez or why no action was taken against the other students involved in the fight. He became angry when the B.A.R. asked if charges were going to be filed against the other girls. “I can’t speak about the case at all,” he said. The Transgender Law Center and the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network are among the organizations that have rallied to support Gutierrez. A change.org petition started by her sister has more than 120,000 supporters. Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla (D-Concord) this week sent a letter to Contra Costa County District Attorney Mark Peterson asking that the charges against Gutierrez be dismissed.
Bias at play?
The family, community members, and LGBT activists suspect bias is at play because of Gutierrez’s gender identity. Police reports from the November 13 incident are missing from the Hercules Police See page 2 >>
Tenant confab packs LGBT center
Rick Gerharter
Housing activist Gus Feldman fields suggestions from the audience at the Castro Tenants Convention as to how San Francisco needs to respond to the increasing cost and decreasing supply of affordable housing.
by David-Elijah Nahmod
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packed house filled a large room at the LGBT Community Center last weekend as housing advocates and others talked about stemming the tide of evictions and developing more affordable housing. “Imagine 2,000 affordable units,” said Tom-
mi Avicolli Mecca with the Housing Rights Committee as he opened the convention. “Today we take our neighborhood back from the developers and predators.” The January 11 Castro Tenants Convention brought out an array of people who offered suggestions on the most effective ways to stop evictions and bring about more afford-
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able housing. With Housing Rights Committee staffer Fred Sherburn-Zimmer serving as moderator, Gus Feldman of District 8 Democrats wrote suggestions down on paper taped to the wall behind the podium. Issues raised included harassment of tenants by landlords, putting banners in front of buildings where Ellis Act evictions have occurred, and making all residential buildings in the City subject to rent control. Currently only buildings constructed prior to 1979 fall under rent control guidelines. Repealing the Ellis Act was mentioned a number of times. One attendee suggested that property be forfeited from landlords who break the law. The Ellis Act is a state law passed in 1985 that allows landlords to get out of the rental business by evicting tenants and, usually, selling the units as condos. Housing advocates have pointed out that many LGBT seniors, people with AIDS, and the disabled have lost their homes. One of the stated goals for the convention was to gather suggestions for a possible ballot measure in November. “If we are going to put a measure on the ballot in the fall, it should be one that not only changes tenants’ lives and stops the displacement, but not get thrown out in court immediately,” said Sherburn-Zimmer. One attendee identified herself as a tech worker and was supportive of the tenants. She See page 12 >>
<< Community News
2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
Report: Gay dermatologist died of accidental overdose by Seth Hemmelgarn
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popular gay San Francisco dermatologist whose death authorities had regarded as suspicious died of an accidental drug overdose, according to a recently completed report by the medical examiner’s office. Dr. Elias Michael, 47, was found dead April 7, 2013 in his apartment in the 2000 block of Vallejo Street, where he’d been living with his aunt. The report, which the medical examiner’s office made available last week, lists the cause of death as “acute” mixed drug intoxication. Alcohol, nitrate, hydrocodone, and alprazolam were found in his system, according to the file. Police homicide investigators had initially been assigned to the case, but the medical examiner’s office ul-
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timately determined the death was an accident, the document shows. Shortly after his death, friends and family recalled Michael for his generosity and spirit. Marianne Arbeed, Michael’s sister, said among the causes he’d supported were the fight against breast cancer and raising funds for Palestinian children who couldn’t get medical treatment. He’d also extended his generosity to patients. “If someone had a skin problem and couldn’t afford to pay him, he wouldn’t charge them,” and he wouldn’t take their money, said Arbeed in April. Asked this week about the report, Arbeed declined to comment. The file says that at about 7 a.m. the morning he died, Michael indicated to his aunt “that he was at a club.” The club isn’t named in the document, but a friend previously told the Bay Area Reporter that Michael had texted several friends to join him at the End Up club, 401 6th Street. Michael eventually came back to his Pacific Heights neighborhood home with another man, but his aunt turned the other man away, the report says. At about 11 a.m., Michael and a friend of his from New York who’d been staying with him for a few days went to brunch, “returning intoxicated several hours later,” according to the file.
Steven Underhill
Dr. Elias Michael
Later, the aunt “heard a verbal argument” occurring in Michael’s bedroom, and sometime between 6 and 8 p.m. she heard a loud “thump” in the room, the report says. Michael “reportedly told her that he was alright when she asked,” but she heard “two more ‘thumps’ minutes later.” While Michael’s friend left the apartment for about 15 minutes, his aunt checked on him. He appeared to be asleep. After the friend came back, he went into the room he’d been sharing with Michael and wouldn’t let Michael’s aunt in when she asked if he was okay, according
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to the document. (The report refers to Michael’s friend as “a very poor historian.”) However, the friend eventually came out and stated that Michael was dead. Paramedics tried to resuscitate Michael but pronounced him dead just after 10. The medical examiner’s report lists several bruises on Michael’s body, including on his abdomen and legs, and says there was a bruise “and a depressed defect” on his forehead. The file says Michael’s family had “relayed a history of alcohol abuse and past recovery attempts.” It also says, “There were multiple alcohol bottles” in Michael’s room, but “no evidence” of “illicit drug use.” Alprazolam, better known as Xanax, had been prescribed for back spasms, according to the report, but the document doesn’t specify to whom they’d been prescribed. It indicates about a week’s worth of the drug should have been left, but none of the pills remained. Six pills of hydrocodone, which can be used as a painkiller or cough suppressant, were found on Michael’s floor, but abuse of the medication “was not discernable” at the scene, according to the file. Other drugs were also found in Michael’s system but the report doesn’t indicate they were primary factors in his death.t
Man pleads guilty to Castro carjacking by Seth Hemmelgarn
a few blocks to a spot near Beck’s Motor Lodge, 2222 Market Street. The victim, who was 27 at the time of the incident, testified that he’d felt a “slash on my neck” and saw Dilworth holding something in his hand. He said Dilworth attacked him again, slicing his thumb, but he was eventually able to get out of the car. Dilworth drove off, and police soon arrested him in the Bayview district. During the October hearing, the victim said Dilworth had cut
through the tendon of his thumb and into the bone, and he’d lost ability to move his thumb. Erin Crane, Dilworth’s attorney, suggested that he had cut himself on his seatbelt. Judge Richard Ulmer Jr., who presided over the preliminary hearing, referred to that notion as illogical. Superior Court records show Dilworth’s criminal history includes charges related to a previous carjacking, in which he pleaded guilty to stealing a car. After Friday’s hearing, Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai noted the length of the proposed sentence and said he’s “happy that the victim can sleep better and put this incident behind him.” He added that the victim “feels as though he received the best justice he could.” Police Inspector Len Broberg, the investigating officer in the case, said along with the victim’s cooperation with authorities, “I can’t emphasize enough” the importance of the people who called 911, helped the victim, and aided with the investigation, as well as the “good and fast police work” by officers. Approached by a reporter, Crane said, “I don’t want to talk to you. Thank you.”t
the B.A.R. called and was directed to Van Putten’s voicemail, she responded immediately. Van Putten blamed the department’s strong spam system for the bounced email, in spite of past email correspondence with the B.A.R. As for the missing police reports, she said she was on vacation from October 15-November 15, 2013 and couldn’t explain why the reports weren’t available on the website. She said someone else was taking the reports while she was out. Investigative reporter Jennifer
Lopez and the online TransAdvocate news site are claiming that Van Putten is prejudiced against transgender individuals. Van Putten, a 70-year-old Republican retired police officer, told Lopez on December 4 that she recommended to the district attorney’s office that charges be brought against Gutierrez and the other students. She singled out Gutierrez because she is listed as “male” both on the police report and school documents, wrote Cristan Williams, See page 3 >>
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San Francisco man is expected to serve five years in state prison after pleading guilty to a July 2012 carjacking in the Castro district that left a man with stab wounds to his hand and neck. Antoine Dilworth, 29, entered his plea Friday, January 10 in San Francisco Superior Court. A felony aggravated assault charge was dismissed. He’ll get a strike on his record, which would enhance punishment for future cases. Dilworth, who’s been in custody since his arrest in the incident, appeared in court in the customary jail uniform of an orange sweatshirt and orange pants, wearing a white rosary around his neck. His sentencing is set for February 3. During Dilworth’s preliminary hearing in October, the victim, a San Francisco resident whose name the Bay Area Reporter isn’t publishing because he’s a crime victim, testified that Dilworth had approached him near Badlands, 4121 18th Street, shortly after the victim had left the gay club early in the morning of July 12. He said he’d reluctantly agreed to give Dilworth a ride to where Dilworth was staying, and he drove him
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Trans teen
From page 1
Department’s website, pointed out Jeff Koertzen, a gay man who is controller of the Contra Costa County Democratic Party and a member of the state party’s executive board. The B.A.R. found that the police reports, excluding the week October 30-November 6, 2013, were indeed missing. An email to Connie Van Putten, reserve detective and public information officer of the Hercules Police Department, bounced. When
Courtesy SFPD
Antoine Dilworth
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Community News>>
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3
New sign for Kraus Meadow
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ohn Mehring, right, speaks to 30 friends and political colleagues of the late gay political activist Bill Kraus who attended the January 11 unveiling of an informational sign of his life and a map of the Bill Kraus Meadow and Path in Corona Heights Park
Rick Gerharter
above the Castro district. Kraus died on January 11, 1986, age 38, from AIDS-related complications. On Saturday mornings Kraus would often head to Corona Heights Park to strategize and catch up with friends.
Bill calls for condoms in prisons by Seth Hemmelgarn
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proposal to distribute condoms in California prisons is making its way through the state Legislature. Assembly Bill 966, authored by Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), passed the Assembly Public Safety Committee 6-1 Tuesday, January 14. The legislation would require the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to develop a five-year plan to distribute condoms in all state prisons. The corrections department would have the authority to determine the order of prisons it includes. The bill is aimed at decreasing HIV transmission and other sexually transmitted infections. In a news release, Bonta said STIs, including HIV/AIDS, “is a tragic reality of life in prison.” “AB 966 is a simple and sound preventative public health policy that is evidence-based, cost effective, informed by a highly successful pilot project, and will save lives,” he said. The legislation is similar to Bonta’s AB 999. The Legislature passed that bill last year, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it. In his veto message Brown said CDCR “currently allows family visitors to bring condoms for the purpose of the family overnight visitation program. While expansion of the program may be warranted, the department should evaluate and implement this expansion carefully and within its existing authority.” In response to emailed questions, Bonta said that this year, the legislation is “extremely flexible.” It allows CDCR “to set its own timelines and develop a plan that works best for them.” He said that past versions of the bill mandated CDCR “to distribute condoms in all state prisons with little to no exceptions under a specified timeline. AB 966 simply requires the department to develop a plan for condom distribution” in state prisons, while “relying on
<<
Trans teen
From page 2
editor of the TransAdvocate, who interviewed Lopez for an article published January 14.
On the web
Online content this week includes the Bay Area Reporter’s online columns Political Notes and Wedding Bells Ring, and the Out in the World column. www.ebar.com.
Jane Philomen Cleland
Assemblyman Rob Bonta
guidance from the successful pilot project that was implemented at California State Prison, Solano” for a year beginning in November 2008. The Solano program cost about $1.39 per prisoner to implement, and the report that followed concluded that the “cost paid for itself if the program averted just 2.7 to 5.5 infections per year,” Bonta noted in his news release. “According to the California Department of Health Services, the average cost per patient with HIV in the Medi-Cal system is $23,964 per year,” he said. Bonta said in his email that there isn’t currently any opposition to AB 966, and “I’m very encouraged by the fact that we have bipartisan support this year.” He said that while he couldn’t predict Brown’s intention’s regarding the legislation, “I am confident that he understands the broad health implications it will have on our state.” He said he’d continue working with Brown, CDCR, and nonprofit groups to ensure that implementation is safe and cost-effective. Jim Evans, a spokesman for the governor, declined to answer questions about the veto message, and in an email, he said, “Generally, we don’t comment on pending legislation.”
Throughout the interview with Van Putten, she refused to refer to Gutierrez as female, reported Lopez and Williams. Because she perceived Gutierrez as male the incident didn’t fall under hate crime protections. In the phone call with the B.A.R., Van Putten didn’t dispute making recommendations for the district attorney’s office to file charges. This isn’t the first time Van Putten was involved with a controversy in the LGBT community. In 1991, when she was acting police chief of
In response to emailed questions, Terry Thornton, a CDCR spokeswoman, said her agency doesn’t have a position on AB 966. However, Thornton said, “Condoms have long been used as a method for smuggling and transporting drugs,” which is “a security risk.” She added, “By ingesting a condom containing drugs, the drugs would not be detectable during a routine body search. There is also a serious health risk to a person who ingests a condom containing drugs, especially if the condom bursts.” Thornton noted that having sex in prison is still illegal in California. In a phone interview, gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who chairs the Public Safety Committee and supports AB 966, said, “What state law is saying and [Brown’s] veto message supports is total denial of what is really happening on the ground in the various prisons.” Ammiano attributes opposition to condom distribution to “institutionalized homophobia” and said, “People go into these denial vortexes.” As a result, more people are infected with HIV, he said. He said San Francisco has been making condoms available to inmates “forever,” and “It’s time to standardize that.” “The issue is” that sex in prison “happens, and it affects the health and actually the mortality of people,” he said. Ammiano said, “the problem” in passing AB 966 “is the governor. The lobbying efforts have to be directed toward him.” Susan Fahey, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Sheriff ’s Department, which oversees the jail, said, “There have been no known incidents” of condoms being used to bring in contraband. AB 966, which is sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, has been re-referred to the Assembly Appropriations Committee and is expected to eventually reach the Assembly floor.t the Union City Police Department, she defended the department’s tracking of people living with HIV and AIDS to protect officers after it was discovered, the Associated Press reported at that time. Koertzen also called into question other similar incidents involving students at the high school where the district attorney didn’t press charges and allowed the school district to handle the incidents, he told the B.A.R. See page 9 >>
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<< Open Forum
4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
Volume 44, Number 3 January 16-22, 2014 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 ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Chuck Colbert Richard Dodds • David Guarino Peter Hernandez • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble Michael McAllister • Michael McDonagh David-Elijah Nahmod • Elliot Owen Paul Parish • James Patterson • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Philip Ruth • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Ed Walsh • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION T. Scott King PRODUCTION/DESIGN Jay Cribas PHOTOGRAPHERS Danny Buskirk • Jane Philomen Cleland Rick Gerharter • Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Scott Wazlowski – 415.359.2612 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863
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CoCo DA should drop charges
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ontra Costa County District Attorney Mark Peterson should drop battery charges against transgender teenager Jewlyes Gutierrez. She was the victim of severe bullying at Hercules Middle/High School and last November, as we reported at the time, she and several other students were involved in an altercation. All participants, including Gutierrez, 16, were suspended and school officials and law enforcement conducted an investigation. Now, Peterson is charging Gutierrez, who acted in self-defense, but is not charging the students who allegedly attacked her. The incident, it should be noted, was recorded on cellphone video and went viral after it was uploaded to YouTube, showing disturbing footage in which other students can be seen pummeling Gutierrez as she tries to protect herself. Adding insult to injury, the Hercules Police Department has misgendered Gutierrez, referring to her as male in police reports about the incident. The Transgender Law Center and other groups are also calling for Peterson and senior deputy district attorney Daniel Cabral to drop the charges. Ilona Turner, TLC’s legal director, said that while the DA’s office has discretion to decide whether or not to bring charges, in this case those charges should be dropped and that an alternative means of resolving the conflict should be found. We agree. It serves no purpose to label Gutierrez a criminal because she stood up against her assailants. Her public defender, Kaylie Simon, told TLC that authorities should take a step back and “look at what are our community’s needs and society’s needs,” suggesting that those needs would be much different than charging Gutierrez with battery, which would put her at risk for “becoming a delinquent in the court system.” “I also wonder what message does it send to people who bully when someone who is a victim is prosecuted,” Simon added. Rather than prosecute Gutierrez, the DA’s office should look to alternative resolution processes, more commonly referred to as restorative justice. Such an approach, TLC noted,
Courtesy change.org
Jewlyes Gutierrez, second from left, is supported by her family members, who are trying to get the charges against her dropped.
is consistent with school discipline guidance issued just last week by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Education. The guidance cites research that links the increasing use of disciplinary sanctions such as referrals to law enforcement authorities with the potential for significant negative outcomes, including placing students in the “school to prison pipeline.” Trans students like Gutierrez face extraordinarily high rates of bullying and harassment in schools. In its 2011 National School Climate Survey, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network surveyed 8,584 students between the ages of 13-20. Of those, 705 identified as transgender. According to the survey, 12.4 percent of respondents reported that they had been assaulted at school because of how they expressed their gender and 43.9 percent felt unsafe at school because of their gender expression. Gutierrez has the strong support of her family. Her sister, Valerie Poquiz, started a petition on change.org asking the DA’s office to drop the charges. In the petition, Poquiz stated that Gutierrez turned to school officials for help but that the issue wasn’t properly addressed. In our No-
vember report on the incident, we noted that the school district has anti-harassment guidelines but the policy in the 2012-2013 Student Handbook makes little mention of sexual orientation and does not mention gender identity. Former school district officials told us that enforcing the anti-harassment policy has been a challenge. “Transgender people are very much in danger until we raise our cultural sensitivity and understand that people get to be who they are,” former school board member Karin Fiffer, an out lesbian, told us. George Ramsey, a 20-year school board member and its current president, said that schools within the district are very welcoming of every student. He is also against the DA’s office charging Gutierrez, according to Poquiz’s petition, which as of Wednesday had more than 120,000 supporters. Gutierrez isn’t the only trans student in the school district, and the physical attack on her should be a wake-up call to school officials that more needs to be done educating and sensitizing students as well as faculty and staff on trans issues. Peterson, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the congressional seat being vacated by the retiring George Miller, must review the case and find a fairer, productive solution.t
A movement moment in Utah by Kate Kendell
emony, it was so exciting!” Sharon, and my brotheranuary 2014 has barely in-law – both devout Morbegun and already we are mons – could not have been off like a rocket. On Decemhappier to be there. My sisber 20, federal district court ter was an official witness to Judge Robert Shelby ruled the marriage. Her name is that Utah’s Amendment on the marriage license. 3 is unconstitutional and Watching the events unthat same-sex couples could fold in Utah over the Christbegin marrying there immas holiday was about the mediately. Our community, most exhilarating experiand everyone committed to ence of a life filled with justice for LGBT people, has many such moments. Just been buzzing ever since. recalling the events of that In our home, Shelby’s morning leaves me a little Associated Press ruling was particularly elecshort of breath, my heart Supporters of same-sex marriage rallied at the Utah state Capitol January 10, trifying. I grew up in Utah, racing. This is what witnessfour days after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the marriages to end while and I came to consciousness a federal judge’s decision is appealed. Utah’s governor said the state won’t ing a landmark moment in a as a feminist and a lesbian recognize the estimated 1,300 same-sex marriages that took place between civil rights struggle feels like. at Weber State College in December 20-January 6 but Attorney General Eric Holder said the federal We have all seen many such my hometown of Ogden. government will recognize the unions. moments and there will be For 12 years, I helped raise more ahead. a daughter, Emily, now 33, The Utah case is now with my former partner, on appeal to the 10th U.S. his ruling, and that changed everything. Lori. I went to law school at the University of Circuit Court of Appeals. After that, the U.S. Emily and Heather spent Sunday, DecemUtah and had my first legal jobs at a Salt Supreme Court will have the option to review ber 22 in Salt Lake City. First thing Monday Lake City firm and then the American the 10th Circuit’s decision if it chooses. The morning, they went to the Salt Lake Civil Liberties Union of Utah. Oh, National Center for Lesbian Rights is now coCity and County Building, where and I also grew up Mormon. counsel on this landmark litigation. Never bethey stood in line and hoped to be Emily and I have continued to fore has the personal and the political so perable to marry. be very close. She is very much a fectly intersected for me. The morning of December 23 part of our family. She is “big sisThey call it a “struggle” for a reason. There are was electric, as our family folsy” to Julian and Ariana, and she enormous highs, and dreadful lows. The events lowed events on social media and my wife, Sandy, bond over of the past several weeks – just in Utah – feel like and text. At one point, Sandy all the crafty things I do not have a roller coaster. But even with the ups and downs, said, “Gosh, we know a bunch the genes to enjoy. Emily and her I would not change a thing. We are witnessing of people in Salt Lake – can’t partner, Heather, got married in a our history as it unfolds. This is a history that evsomebody go and take them flowcommitment ceremony in Utah in September. ery generation hence will be writing about, talkers and be there with them?” And then Julian It was a fabulous wedding. Many of my family ing about, and marking as a huge moment in our said, “Why don’t you ask Aunt Sharon?” I called members – including my devout Mormon siscollective effort to win full dignity, security, and my sister. She and her husband, Larry, changed ter and many of my Mormon relatives and exsupport for our lives and our community.t their plans entirely. They went to the store and tended family – attended, completely happy for bought flowers for Emily, as well as doughnuts Emily and Heather. The plan was that sometime for the others standing in line to marry. As ShaKate Kendell, Esq., is the executive in 2014 Heather and Emily would come to Caliron told me later, “We made it there just as the director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. fornia and legally marry. And then Shelby made clerk was leading them away to perform the cer-
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Politics>>
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5
Gay supes praise SF Pride ED hire by Matthew S. Bajko
S
an Francisco Pride officials are winning praise from the city’s two gay supervisors for hiring an experienced local street fair promoter as the organization’s new executive director. As reported last week, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee’s board of directors unanimously hired George Ridgely to lead what is billed as the West Coast’s largest outdoor event. Ridgely, who will earn $95,000 a year running Pride, had been the longtime executive director of the Castro Street Fair. As such, he is well versed in the city’s permitting process for outdoor festivals, working with public safety officials and community groups, and booking entertainment acts to perform at multiple stages. “I think George is awesome. He does a phenomenal job with the Castro Street Fair,” said District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, who plans to meet soon with Ridgely and Pride board President Gary Virginia. “He is organized, he is no-nonsense, and he is drama free.” District 9 Supervisor David Campos also spoke highly of Ridgely. “It is a very good move,” said Campos, who also plans to soon meet with Pride officials. “One of the things we have heard in the past is that you need someone who has direct experience running this kind of event. Given George’s background and his work with the Castro Street Fair and his expertise, it seems this is a very good fit. I am
very happy and excited about that development.” It is hoped that his hiring will bring to an end the revolving-door status of the Pride executive director job, which has seen four people circle through since the resignation of Lindsey Jones in 2009. The turnover, including numerous board member resignations, has left Pride struggling to deal with fiscal and managerial issues over the last four years. An audit in 2010 by the city controller’s office found that the organization had “both financial and governance shortcomings.” It recommended a number of changes that Pride’s paid staff and board should implement to address the various issues laid out in the review of the nonprofit. In addition to paying down its debt of $225,000, the report suggested that Pride rebuild its reserve funds; require board members to meet yearly fundraising goals and be trained in nonprofit financial oversight; improve its policy documentation; and rebuild senior management. Pride retired the debt but has yet to initiate a number of the reforms recommended by the controller’s report. Asked what he felt Ridgely’s first task should be, Wiener said, “Making sure Pride is on track to implement all of the controller’s recommendations.” And he added he hopes that he keeps “all the contractors in place” who work behind the scenes to plan and run the annual Pride parade and festival the last weekend of June. In addition to implementing the audit’s suggested changes, Ridgely
Letters >> Access to PrEP
We sincerely applaud the Bay Area Reporter for its editorial “PrEP’s unfulfilled promise” [January 9]. We agree that PrEP is a highly underutilized tool in the prevention arsenal despite ongoing high rates of infection. It certainly didn’t help that early PrEP critics, usually touting incorrect information, were so highly vocal and well financed before and just after the FDA approved Truvada for PrEP in 2012. It also doesn’t help that neither medical providers nor patients are often comfortable initiating discussions about any kind of sex, let alone unprotected anal sex. Lastly, though Truvada’s price is high, what has proven to be a barrier is the notion, often unfounded, that it will be impossible to pay for all of the additional doctor visits and testing that need to be done to keep people on PrEP safely and effectively. We do, however, want to disagree with Dr. Lisa Capaldini’s assertion that patients aren’t interested in PrEP. This simply isn’t backed up either anecdotally or through scientifically validated surveys of gay and bi men. Before PrEP’s approval, few knew about it and not many
Rick Gerharter
New SF Pride Executive Director George Ridgely
needs to reach out to the city’s LGBT community, said Campos. “The first thing is to make sure you are looking at the nuts and bolts of the organization,” said Campos, who had called for the audit of Pride and held a special hearing on the nonprofit last fall. “The other priority is to reach out to the community and the folks not only involved with the event and program but to reach out to the larger community.”
Round two for SFO Milk terminal panel
A San Francisco supervisors’ panel will again take up appointing members to the body tasked with selecting a terminal at SFO to name after the late gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. The rules committee at its meeting Thursday (January 16) is set to select another two members to the Airport Facilities Naming Advisory Committee. The board has four seats See page 10 >>
said they’d want it. A recent survey found that many more know about it and many more want it. Fortunately those who want it most are those who could benefit most. Actually, we are finding that the primary obstacle to PrEP roll out is providers. In none of the cases we have responded to in which people were denied PrEP has it been due to cost. Rather, it was because their medical provider felt uncomfortable with PrEP and would not provide it. Nearly everyone working in HIV believes in a woman’s right to choice in reproductive health matters. Project Inform believes it is the duty of providers to help patients who could benefit from PrEP understand its risks and benefits and choose for themselves whether to use it to remain uninfected. Thus, we need the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and other key medical societies on board in an effort to encourage health care providers to step up to the plate on PrEP. Dana Van Gorder, Executive Director Project Inform San Francisco
Cisneros sworn in as treasurer
J
ose Cisneros, center, receives congratulations from Mayor Ed Lee, left, and Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom following his swearing-in for another term as San Francisco’s city treasurer. Cisneros, who is gay, was sworn
Rick Gerharter
in by Newsom Wednesday, January 8 during a ceremony in the treasurer’s office at San Francisco City Hall. Newsom appointed Cisneros to the post in 2004, and he has been returned to the office in three successive elections.
<< Community News
t New year can bring resolve to kick smoking habit 6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
by Elliot Owen
I
t’s a new year and during January, many smokers will try kicking the habit that, according to the American Lung Association, causes more than 443,000, or one in five, American deaths each year and is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Smoking prevalence within the LGBT community is especially high. Unique stressors faced by LGBT people (social stigma, discrimination) combined with the tobacco industry’s focused targeting, results in LGBTs being roughly two times more likely to take up smoking as straight Americans, according to www.smokefree.gov. The California LGBT Tobacco Education Partnership says that women in the LGBT community smoke at a rate three times higher than the general population. Men belonging to the GBT community smoke twice as much. A 2010 national study by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force reported a 30 percent smoking rate – almost one in three – among transgender people. While little data exists for LGBT people of color, anecdotal evidence suggests the rates are even higher among those populations. California LGBT Tobacco Education Partnership Project director Bob Gordon told the Bay Area Reporter that the tobacco industry has been tailoring advertising to the LGBT community since 1992 when the first smoking ad targeting gay men ran in the now-defunct Genre magazine. “The tobacco industry spends $8.8 billion per year in the United States on marketing,” Gordon said. “A lot of responsibility falls on them for targeting specific communities, the LGBT community and communities of color specifically.” For the past 20 years, Gordon,
Elliot Owen
Smoking cessation hypnotherapist Stephanie Ciccone-Nascimento, left, talks with her client, Katie Pratt.
who is gay, has been dedicated to tobacco education initiatives. In 2008, through his work with the Education Partnership, he played a pivotal role in passing local policy that prohibited the sale of tobacco products in San Francisco’s pharmacies. “There’s a Walgreens on the corner of 18th and Castro,” Gordon said. “At the time, the manager told me it collected the highest tobaccorelated revenue out of all 18,000 Walgreens locations nationwide. The idea that it’s a place of medicine and also a place where my brothers and sisters were getting tobacco, well, that’s a major disconnect.” Gordon is also involved with the Last Drag, a San Francisco resource center that provides free smoking cessation classes to LGBT and HIVpositive smokers. He said that two challenges stand between a smoker and clean lungs – having the desire to quit, and believing that you can. “That’s a tall order for lots of people because there’s no silver bullet. The CDC estimates that seven out of 10 smokers want to quit, and half of all smokers try each year,” he said,
referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Taking that first step
However daunting, quitting is possible and there are many ways to do it. According to Smokefree.gov, combining counseling (in-person or telephone) with medication or nicotine replacement therapies (the patch, gum, lozenges, or inhaler) can be very successful. “A good thing people can do is call 1-800-nobutts, the California smokers helpline,” Gordon said. “You can call seven days a week and get free material mailed, ask for work groups and classes in your county, and have up to five free telephone sessions with a trained counselor. I’ve trained counselors there to be LGBT-sensitive. There are also several language lines for people who want to quit in another [language].” Gaining some popularity in the Bay Area, though, is hypnotherapy. While sources like smokefree. gov state “there is little proof that this treatment helps smokers quit successfully,” Gordon said he has
friends who swear by it. He also pointed out that hypnosis is known as alternative medicine, and Western medicine and pharmaceutical company bias could exist around it. Stephanie Ciccone-Nascimento, an Oakland-based hypnotherapist, agrees. Ciccone-Nascimento, an Afro-Brazilian queer woman, has been doing smoking cessation hypnotherapy for the past year. When people ask her about hypnotherapy, she explains it like this: “Hypnosis is a state we naturally go in and out of in our day-to-day lives, like when you’re driving and you zone out or when you’re watching TV,” she said. “It’s a state where your unconscious mind, the place where your habits and memories are stored, can be accessed. When we enter hypnosis, we can give direct suggestions that can change the automatic programming we have set. Shifting that programming while in that state is what creates lasting change.” But, she added, “I can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do. The unconscious mind preserves your core and if you’re not ready, you’ll reject the therapy. That’s why it’s really important that you really want to quit.” First, Ciccone-Nascimento conducts pre-framing with her clients, the process of developing trustworthy rapports, clarifying misconceptions about hypnotherapy, and collecting information about what her client envisions their non-smoker reality to look like. Then, CicconeNascimento does a trance induction, which begins the hypnosis. “Once in that state, I give direct suggestions about being a non-smoker,” she said. “I also retell the ‘non-
smoker’ narrative I collected from them. After that, I take them out of the trance and we do ‘future-pacing,’ which is talking about how they feel when thinking of themselves in the future. It’s nothing dangerous, but incredibly effective for changing habits and quitting smoking, specifically.” Katie Pratt, a lesbian who teaches in Oakland, started smoking in 2009. She never smoked a pack a day but between one and five cigarettes was enough for her. Within four years as a smoker, she tried to quit five times. Cold turkey, increasing cardio exercise, journaling, avoiding bars and social settings, and chewing gum never helped. “All my efforts to completely quit smoking were in vain – until I met Stephanie,” Pratt, 27, said. “I was skeptical at first because I didn’t know much about hypnotherapy but was open to the experience and really wanted to quit. I’d tried other methods and Stephanie’s nature was really calming, so I did it. Now, my cravings are completely gone even when I’m in triggering situations, it’s crazy.” Pratt has been smoke-free since last August. Her girlfriend loves it. Ciccone-Nascimento describes what she does as life-saving work, and Gordon supports anything that works for anybody. “Celebrating each new year with family members is priceless,” Gordon said. “Preventing loss of life and promoting healthier living is also priceless.”t For more information about the Last Drag, visit www.lastdrag. org. For more information about Stephanie Ciccone-Nascimento, visit www.stephaniecn.com.
Film workshop seeks younger, older LGBTs
compiled by Cynthia Laird
F
rameline, which produces the annual LGBT film festival, is seeking LGBTQ youth (ages 14-24) and elders (55-plus) to apply for its Generations Filmmaker Workshop, an intergenerational opportunity to write, script, cast, storyboard, and edit a short film that will play at Frameline 38 in June. The workshop, in partnership with TILT, the youth program of the Ninth Street Independent Film Center, is grant-sponsored, so it is free for participants. That means the organizations are hoping for a wide range of applicants from around the Bay Area, particularly those who would not otherwise be able to afford this opportunity. Through hands-on exercises, participants will learn how to make a movie from beginning to end – from using a digital video camera to directing actors to editing the footage. The theme for 2014 is “This Time; This Place,” encouraging filmmakers to take people out of the virtual and into the physical, helping to connect people to each other, their environment, and their stories. Organizers said that this is a beginning video production workshop. No prior video experience is necessary. This year’s workshops start Saturday, March 1 and continue for 10 weeks through May 3. There is one all-weekend production session April 12-13. The sessions take place at 145 9th Street in San Francisco.
Participants will receive a small stipend. To apply, visit http://tinyurl.com/ku6ccaq. The deadline is February 7. For more information, visit http://tinyurl. com/ks3q7wx. For questions, contact Jason Wyman at jasonw@ninthstreet.org or (415) 863-2889.
Day of action for homeless advocates
The Western Regional Advocacy Project will have a day of action to demand an end to the criminalization of homeless people Friday, January 17 from noon to 4 p.m. at the San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin Street, in the Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room. Supporters of a homeless bill of rights are encouraged to attend. The event will feature anti-criminalization homeless services and resources, including Hospitality House, St. James Infirmary, Mission Neighborhood Health Center, the Transgender Gender-variant Intersex Project, El/La Para TransLatinas, Community United Against Violence, Dolores Street Community Services, Glide United Methodist Church, and the Coalition on Homelessness At 3 p.m. people will gather for a march and rally around Civic Center Plaza. For more information, visit www. wraphome.org.
Lesbian leaders speak in Silicon Valley
The Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee’s Community Foundation Speaker Series will host a discusSee page 10 >>
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Community News>>
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7
Uptick in HIV cases worries SF officials by Matthew S. Bajko
A
fter six years of steady decreases in new HIV cases in San Francisco, the end of that trend in 2012 is causing concern among local health officials. The city registered 413 new HIV diagnoses in 2012, a slight increase from the 406 reported in 2011. While that may not appear significant, it is a troubling sign that the city’s HIV prevention efforts may have reached a plateau. And it could prove problematic for reaching the city’s goal of reducing new HIV infections among gay and bisexual men, as well as transgender persons, by 50 percent in 2015. “We cannot say new infections are going up,” said Tracey Packer, the health department’s director of community health equity and promotion who oversees the city’s HIV prevention efforts. “We can say we think the trend is going down and it is not.” The city will have a clearer picture of where the trend in HIV cases is headed later this year when the 2013 data is released. Based on the most recent HIV/ AIDS surveillance report, released in June 2013, there is some evidence to suggest that new HIV diagnoses either remained stable or decreased last year. The quarterly report indicated that during the first half of the year the city recorded 159 new HIV diagnoses. That was down from the 176 new cases recorded in the June 2012 quarterly surveillance report. “I think it is a really good time to look closely at all the data we have in combination. I don’t think we have enough information yet to say it is not decreasing significantly,” said Packer. Nor do health officials know “what is causing the potential up-
tick,” she added. The number of users in Presenting the most re2012 who reported getting cent year-to-date figures to tested every six months was the city’s HIV Prevention below 40 percent, down from Planning Council last week, a high of 60.7 percent in 2005. Henry Fisher Raymond, an Just 52.2 percent of IDUs reepidemiologist with the Deported in 2012 having an HIV partment of Public Health’s test within the last year, down Center for Public Health from 74.5 percent in 2005. Research Branch, said the “The big question is why number of new HIV diagare fewer IDUs saying they noses in 2012 should have got tested in the last six or been below 400 for the data twelve months? I think we to indicate ongoing declines need to take a closer look in HIV cases. there,” said Raymond. Instead, the uptick in casThe use of clean needles es “is really disconcerting,” has dropped slightly, going Raymond told the council, from 62.6 percent of IDUs which prioritizes what HIV saying they “always” did in prevention strategies the 2005 to 60.4 percent in 2012. city should be funding. Over the same timeframe, Raymond also pointed to 62.2 percent of IDUs reportCourtesy SF DPH an increase seen in the numed engaging in unprotected ber of HIV cases among This chart shows new HIV diagnoses, deaths, and prevalence between 2006-2012 in intercourse, suggesting that San Francisco. men who have sex with men sexual behavior “may be conbetween 2010 and 2011 as tributing” to new HIV infecanother troubling indications, reported Raymond. Packer told the B.A.R. that HIV their efforts to prevent the spread of tor. The city recorded 279 HPPC member Laura testing in the city has significantly HIV in the city. such cases in 2010 and 307 in 2011. Thomas, the Drug Policy Alliance’s increased since the implementa“This is an opportunity to think In 2004 the number was 630 cases deputy state director for California, tion of what is known as a “test and about what has gone well and what among gay and bisexual men. renewed calls for the city to estabtreat” policy. The city has prioritized needs to be rethought,” Packer said. “The overall trend from 2004 to lish safe injection sites for IDUs as testing as many people at risk for One focus for health officials 2011 is promisingly headed down. one way to help educate them about HIV as possible and getting those is eradicating HIV transmission The question is whether the slight knowing their HIV status and prowho test positive into treatment among injection drug users. The uptick from 2010 to 2011 is due to viding easy access to clean needles. soon after their diagnosis. HPPC set a goal of eliminating new more infections or a result of more “We’ve got to be doing more to In 2010 there were 17,000 HIV HIV infections among IDUs by work being done to identify HIV make a bigger dent,” said Thomas. tests administered by city-funded 2015. cases through testing initiatives,” HPPC co-chair Jose Luis Guzclinics; in 2013 that number had The number of IDU HIV cases Raymond told the Bay Area Reportman, the HIV testing services cogrown to 27,000 HIV tests, said continues to decline, but it is uner in an emailed response to quesordinator at Magnet, the gay men’s Packer. clear if the city will meet its goal. In tions following his presentation. health center in the Castro, agreed That has resulted in a decline in 2011 there were 69 cases, dropping During the HPPC meeting Raythat the council needs to renew its the number of people in San Franto 51 cases in 2012, according to the mond was quick to emphasize that efforts to reach the goal of bringcisco estimated not to know they data Raymond presented last week. it remains unclear if “things are ing the number of new HIV cases are HIV-positive. In 2008 it was “We are headed in the right direcon the upswing again” or if the inamong IDUs to zero next year. thought that 15 percent of people tion but maybe not fast enough,” he creased efforts to test people at risk “Let’s do what we did with perididn’t know they were positive, said said. of contracting HIV are behind the natal infections with IDUs,” said Packer, and in 2013 that estimate Among the troubling signs in the numbers. Guzman, referring to the city’s was down to 6.4 percent. data on IDUs, the proportion who “We are paying very much attenelimination of HIV transmission Nonetheless, the HPPC and do not know their HIV status “is tion to if this is a welcome artifact of between pregnant women and their health officials are re-examining quite high,” said Raymond. increased testing,” he said. newborn infants.t
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Plus, each additional guest* in your stateroom will receive a FREE Classic Non-Alcoholic Beverage Package and a FREE Internet Package. There’s no better time to indulge in a Caribbean getaway that will leave you completely relaxed and renewed. Book by February 28 and choose the offer that best fits your style. With an array of cruises sailing through March 2015, you’re sure to find the perfect vacation—and the perfect offer to go with it. Stop by the Celebrity Cruises booth at the Bay Area Travel & Adventure Show at the Santa Clara Convention Center, January 25-26. Mention 123go! and get a gift! Experience it at celebritycruises.com/sf To book, call us at 1-888-456-7887 or contact your travel agent. *Visit celebritycruises.com/sf for full terms and conditions. Cruise must be booked 11/29/13–2/28/14 (the “Offer Period”). Offers applies to 3-night and longer cruises departing 2/2014 – 3/2015; ocean view and higher staterooms booked at the nondiscounted standard cruise fare. Offer excludes Celebrity Xpedition, Transatlantic and Transpacific cruises. Offer applies to new individual bookings and to staterooms in non-contracted group bookings that are named and deposited during the Offer Period. The first two guests choose two options for European sailings and one option for all other sailings: Classic Beverage Package for Two, Free Gratuities for Two, or Onboard Credit (“OBC”); guests must select the same option(s). Triple and higher occupancy guests each receive one 38-minute internet package and one Classic Non-Alcoholic Beverage Package. One Offer per stateroom. ©2014 Celebrity Cruises Inc. Ships’ registry: Malta & Ecuador.
<< Sports
8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
Enough already by Roger Brigham
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t’s a busy month in the LGBT sports world, as much in meeting rooms as on playing fields. Last week, the Federation of Gay Games and Paris organizers finalized the license agreement to host Gay Games X, and an FGG representative will attend the mid-year meeting of the LGBT Sports Coalition in Chicago on January 24 as that group deals with organizational issues and long term strategy in the fight against homophobia and transphobia in sports. Sandwiched in between, the FGG will hold an open town hall meeting this weekend at the seventh annual Sin City Shootout in Las Vegas to discuss the future of LGBT sports. The town hall meeting will take place Friday, January 17, in the lounge of the Tropicana Las Vegas Hotel and Casino from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Agenda items include the LGBT sports movement, at the local, regional, and global levels; the future of the Gay Games and the World Outgames; and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. A second open “Building Bridges” meeting will be held at the European Gay and Lesbian Sports Federation annual meeting March 7 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The Las Vegas meeting will be the latest round of numerous discussions that have occurred since Montreal organizers bolted the Gay Games movement in 2003 and founded a competing event. While drawing some athletes and artists away from the Gay Games, the World Outgames
have struggled to draw sustainable numbers and the demand for divided loyalties has put a strain on sports teams and organizations. The start of the World Outgames has also cut into the EuroGames, which were started by athletes and artists who attended Gay Games III in Vancouver. They originally were held three years in every quadrennial cycle, taking off in Gay Games years, but now occur only twice in a cycle. In 2009, some organizations such as Team Berlin began requests that the FGG and the Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association merge their events. Others, such as Team San Francisco, called for an end to the World Outgames while pledging support for continental Outgames in underserved areas. The most recent round of merger discussions between FGG and GLISA broke down, setting the stage for further public dialogue. Team SF will present a letter at the conference reiterating its position that the World Outgames should cease: if the LGBT sports and cultural world wants one quadrennial event, it should fall around the institution that has done a bang-up job the past three decades rather than trying to appease an event that was formed in spite a decade ago. “It makes no sense to Team SF that we should try to combine two such divergent events or organizations, with the resulting loss in vision and mission of both parties,” the Team SF letter states. “We would rather see the FGG concentrate on what it does
Team SF marches in New York City 20 years ago at Gay Games IV opening ceremonies.
best (sports and culture) and GLISA on what it does best (conferences).” The letter goes on to talk about the distinction between the two organizations. “Our lives are profoundly changed by the Gay Games, collectively and individually. One of the most important but seldom discussed distinctions of the Gay Games is that it is an event entirely in control of the athletes themselves, through the membership mechanism of the Federation of Gay Games and the collegial relationship between hosts and the FGG that is built into the license agreements. This allows us to ensure that the integrity of our sports is respected and the mission of inclusion is never shortchanged for sake of economy. That is a position – and an event – worth defending,” the letter stated. When Montreal negotiators stormed out of license agreement talks 10 years ago, they wanted less FGG involvement in the running of the Gay Games, and an expansion
of the program to include more parties and conferences. It was thinking “bigger” at a time when losses for previous Gay Games hosts and a global recession had the FGG thinking “smaller.” The FGG reopened the bid process and wound up selecting Chicago, one of the previous bidding cities, to host Gay Games VII. Indignant the FGG was going ahead with its own plans, the Montreal group proceeded with its plans for its rival event, to be held less than two weeks later than the Chicago Gay Games, and founded GLISA to sanction it. The 2006 Montreal event was initially marketed simply as the Outgames. The “World” reference was added only months later in 2004 when GLISA announced it would continue the event on a quadrennial basis and add smaller continental events in the other years. Meeting informally at the start of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation in Boston in March 2004, GLISA representatives told club leaders the
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second World Outgames would be held in 2010 – the same year as Gay Games VIII. I was a board member of the FGG at the time, and I remember sitting in one of the campus lounge areas at the meeting, hearing the shouting match going on between one of the GLISA reps and a member of an international sports federation. “If you say you are going to do this in 2010, it will be telling everyone you are just out to destroy the Gay Games,” the sports rep yelled. The next morning, at the official session, it was announced World Outgames 2 would take place in 2009. The Chicago Gay Games announced a year after its close that it had finished with a slight profit. After consistently maintaining it was going to finish with an enormous surplus, Montreal announced it had lost more than $5 million Canadian. The Gay Games and World Outgames are only superficially similar. They are different in their scope, they are run differently, the hosts are selected differently. In deciding how they should move forward, we should consider a few questions. Which model provides the experience we want? Which offers the best model to overcome in time the biggest flaw they both have: a predomination of affluent white males with disappointing numbers of women and people of color? Lastly, do athletes and artists want to pay for parties and conferences when they are already paying to perform and compete? Having spent the past decade working intimately with Gay Games See page 10 >>
Folding hardtops add driving pizazz by Philip Ruth
W
intertime gets you a good price on convertibles: they sell low when the rains are soaking the streets. So this month we’ll look at folding hardtops from BMW and Mazda.
BMW
2013 BMW Z4 sDrive35is – $69,745, 167-inch length, 19 mpg. BMW is one to watch in 2014, with dealer test drives starting this month for the electric i3 (which starts at $42K). It is interesting to watch a company redefine itself, par-
ticularly one with an identity as distinct as BMW’s. It’s been known as a car you grab hold of and drive the hell out of, and the new year begins an aggressive greening of that image. So it’s funny that a Z4 sports car was slipped into the press fleet. It is an unpopular model: it sells at a rate of less than 60 per U.S. state per year. Its frankly penile long-hood/shorttrunk proportions are rooted in a time when it was stylish to show off your internal combustion engine. Our current era of climate change frowns on waving your pistons around – the i3 is at the other extreme, it’s a rolling pod – and so the Z4 becomes a modern anachronism. Just don’t say that on social media like I did: you’ll get a fierce rebuttal, with the Z4’s sharp lines shown as proof of the car’s relevancy. The styling is indeed appealing, and I noticed a few other Z4s romping around the Castro as I drove this one, so let’s take a closer look. For starters, the Z4’s ambitious pricing may be one of its buyer repellants. Press fleet cars are typically pimped out to show off all the available features, and this one’s $70K sticker reflects that. Z4s start at just under $50K and have three levels of power and trim. You can get some neat color combos on any of them, including a knockout Valencia Orange paint shade with matching striped seats. The Z4’s options give you room enough to clearly express yourself, which is not always the case in less expensive cars. These prices are undercut by the relative lack of power behind them. The $50K sDrive28i’s turbo fourcylinder should be kept safe from V6 Honda Accords, as that fam-
Philip Ruth
The BMW Z4 is kind of a throwback to an earlier era in automobiles.
ily sedan’s 278 horses could overwhelm the BMW’s 240. The six-cylinder turbos in the $57K and $66K Z4s give you respective upgrades to 300 and 335 horsepower, which sound good until you compare them with the rating of the V8 in the redesigned 2014 Corvette Stingray convertible, which belts out 455 horsepower from its $57K price point. So if not the Z4 for power, then for handling? In that case I’d steer you to the base sDrive28i, which weighs about 200 pounds less than the tested sDrive35is and hopefully would not feel so heavy. Mass hinders driving fun; ideally a sports car will always feel light on its feet, and the tested Z4 did not. San Francisco’s hills accentuate a car’s poundage in the climbing as well as starting at the top from a stop, and in both cases the tested Z4 had plenty of go but let you know there was a fair amount of car along for the ride. That extra substance nudg-
es the Z4 toward a natural state of cruising rather than sprinting. Otherwise the Z4 is a fitting bookend to a past era, even if BMW couldn’t be bothered to issue a press kit for the little-changed 2014 model. The company is looking to the future, and Z4 isn’t there. And so Z4 buyers can call the shots: sticker prices quickly become theoretical for unloved cars. A little looking and some firm negotiating could bag you the twoseat BMW that will tide you over until you’re ready to power up with electricity. If you’re ready to plug in now, check your local BMW dealer for an i3 test drive event, and you’ll see where this company is headed.
Mazda
2014 Mazda MX-5 Miata Club PRHT – $29,460, 158-inch length, 24 mpg. It hurts my brain to write such a qualified review of a sports car: I was surprised by how the BMW Z4 defied my attempts to like it. The Miata was the opposite: the Club PRHT (power retractable hard top) was love from the minute it sparked to life. See page 10 >>
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National News>>
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9
Judge tosses Oklahoma marriage ban by Lisa Keen
I
n yet another stunning victory for marriage equality, a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Tuesday that the state’s ban on same-sex couples obtaining marriage licenses is unconstitutional. However, unlike his judicial colleague in Utah, U.S. District Court Judge Terence Kern stayed his decision pending appeal, meaning no same-sex marriages are being performed. “Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed. It is not a scarce commodity to be meted out begrudgingly or in short portions,” wrote Kern, a Clinton appointee. “Therefore, the majority view in Oklahoma must give way to individual constitutional rights.” Kern ruled Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage violated both the equal protection and due process rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and he added that it is “insulting to same-sex couples, who are human beings capable of forming loving, committed, enduring relationships.” Response from marriage equality advocates was swift. “This is a tremendous day for loving and committed same-sex couples and their families in Oklahoma,” said Evan Wolfson, head of the national Freedom to Marry organization.
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Trans teen
From page 3
Koertzen is working with a group of people to pressure Cabral to drop the case and possibly get California Attorney General Kamala Harris involved, he said.
Bullied for years
Gutierrez and her family sat down with the B.A.R. for an exclusive interview on January 12. It was the first time a majority of the family discussed Gutierrez’s transition (Jewlyes is the name on her birth certificate), the bullying she’s endured throughout her life leading up to the fight at school, and the charges she now faces, they said. The family was instructed by Simon not to speak about details of the case. They were, however, able to speak generally about the incident and the bullying Gutierrez has endured throughout her life. Two years after Gutierrez, who is of Filipino and Puerto Rican descent, began her transition, her family still struggles with pronoun usage. They are open about their challenges and how much they’ve learned working with therapists and a social worker. They have come to “realize that she needed to express herself,” said Debra Gutierrez, her aunt and adopted mother. While Gutierrez said that she knew for certain that she was a girl, not a boy, around eighth grade, her birth mother, Diana Classen, 49, said she knew her daughter was different since she was 5 years old. She never wanted to play with boy’s toys or with the boys. She always played
Wolfson said the Oklahoma decision builds on the momentum from eight other states ending their restrictions on marriage for same-sex couples in 2013. “The federal district judge has done the right thing by affirming that marriage is a fundamental freedom for all people, gay and non-gay – for all of us who believe in liberty and fairness,” he said. Kern’s decision likely will be appealed to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Utah case, Kitchen v. Herbert, is also pending appeal before the 10th Circuit. The effect of that ruling was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court after more than 1,300 same-sex couples had married. Unlike many of the current marriage equality lawsuits around the country, the one in Oklahoma, Baldwin v. Oklahoma, has been pending since 2004. Two lesbian couples, represented by private attorneys, challenged both the state constitutional amendment barring the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The state amendment was passed in 2004. “Exclusion of the defined class was not a hidden or ulterior motive; it was consistently communicated to Oklahoma citizens as a justification for [the ban],” wrote Kern. “This is simply not a case where exclusion of same-sex couples was a mere ‘unwith girl’s toys and hung out with girls, she said. Debra Gutierrez, a 53-year-old mother of three, adopted her sister’s two children, Elisha “Eli” Gutierrez, 18, and Jewlyes. Her ex-husband, Fernando Poquiz, 55, didn’t adopt either child, but he is still involved in the family. In spite of still referring to Gutierrez as “he” at times, they treat her like their other daughters, teaching her how to dress and behave appropriately as a girl, they said. Gutierrez is a typical teenage girl who likes to talk on the phone with her friends and practice putting on makeup. She refers to her uncle as her father, who jokingly added that “staring at herself in the mirror” is one of her favorite pastimes, as family members and Gutierrez laughed and smiled shyly. While she enjoys studying politics, history, and chemistry, school hasn’t been the enjoyable experience she would like it to be. On November 13, after years of harassment, and after reporting previous incidents to school administrators and teachers with no response, Gutierrez fought back, according to media reports. She allegedly hit one of her classmates, who days before “spit gum in her hand” that was “full of saliva” and “threw it in my face,” the teenager told ABC 7 News. Three African American teenage girls allegedly chased and attacked Gutierrez. The incident was recorded on a cellphone camera by another student and uploaded to YouTube. Gutierrez’s brothers and sisters discovered it November 14, they said.
Obituaries >> Memorial set for BobbieJean Baker
A gathering in the Tenderloin to celebrate the life of transgender minister BobbieJean Baker will be held Saturday, January 18 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the offices of the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, 730 Polk Street, 4th floor, in San Francisco. Ms. Baker was killed in an auto accident in Oakland in the early morning hours of January 1. She was 49.
In addition to her work as a minister, Ms. Baker worked at API Wellness Center as part of a transgender community health program aimed primarily at women of color. Although Ms. Baker started working at API Wellness Center in March 2013, she was familiar with the Tenderloin, having worked at the former Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center and the former Tenderloin Health. API Executive Director Lance Toma, in an email announcing the memorial, said that his agency is a better one because of the work of Ms. Baker. Saturday’s memorial will be an opportunity for people to share stories and pay tribute to Ms. Baker.
intended consequence’ of the law. Instead, this is a classic, class-based equal protection case in which a line was purposefully drawn between two groups of Oklahoma citizens – same-sex couples desiring an Oklahoma marriage license and opposite-sex couples desiring an Oklahoma marriage license.” “... Instead of gender-based discrimination, the intentional discrimination occurring against same-sex couples as a result of [the ban] is best described as sexual-orientation discrimination,” wrote Kern. “The
conduct targeted by [the ban] – same-sex marriage – is so closely correlated with being homosexual that sexual orientation provides the best descriptor for the class-based distinction being drawn.” The judge continued, “Classifications against homosexuals and/or classifications based on a person’s sexual orientation are not subject to any form of heightened review in the 10th Circuit. Therefore, [the ban] is not subject to any form of heightened scrutiny based upon the Bishop couple’s membership in a suspect class. “... The court recognizes that moral disapproval often stems from deeply held religious convictions,” wrote Kern. “However, moral disapproval of homosexuals as a class, or same-sex marriage as a practice, is not a permissible justification for a law. “ “… civil marriage in Oklahoma is not an institution with ‘moral’ requirements for any other group of citizens,” added Kern. He noted that the Tulsa clerk “does not ask a [heterosexual] couple if they intend to be faithful to one another, if they intend to procreate, or if they would someday consider divorce, thereby potentially leaving their child to be raised in a single-parent home.” With respect to marriage licenses, the state has already opened the courthouse doors to opposite-sex couples without any moral, procreative, parenting, or fidelity requirements. Exclusion of just one class of citizens
from receiving a marriage license based upon the perceived ‘threat’ they pose to the marital institution is, at bottom, an arbitrary exclusion based upon the majority’s disapproval of the defined class. It is also insulting to same-sex couples, who are human beings capable of forming loving, committed, enduring relationships.” The lawsuit also challenged both sections of DOMA. Kern noted that U.S. v. Windsor has already settled the question of Section 3, defining spouse and marriage for federal benefit purposes. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. And he noted that, because the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the California Proposition 8 case, the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage are still active. The lead plaintiff couple, Sharon Baldwin and Mary Bishop, are both editors at the daily Tulsa World newspaper and have been together for 15 years. They had a commitment ceremony in Florida, but when they applied for a marriage license from the Tulsa city clerk, they were refused. The other plaintiff couple, Susan Barton and Gay Phillips, has been a couple for 30 years, and own a joint business helping homeless teens. They obtained a civil union license in Vermont in 2001, a marriage license in Canada in 2005, and a marriage license in California just days before voters there approved Proposition 8 in 2008.t
Gutierrez and the three girls were suspended for two days. All of the girls have since returned to school, which has been uncomfortable for Gutierrez. She wanted to go on independent study, but her family, social worker, and therapist advised against it, they said. The girls who were allegedly bullying Gutierrez haven’t touched her
since, but that doesn’t mean they are allowing her to go to school peacefully either, she told the B.A.R. “I feel negative attention and energy around them,” said Gutierrez, who takes the bus and has classes with the girls. Eli has begun taking the bus with his sister. Debra Gutierrez simply wants her daughter to be safe at school.
“I just want my daughter to be treated fairly at school and to be safe at school as well as to succeed in school,” she said, pointing out that it’s not Gutierrez’s fault that her case is bringing the school’s bullying and harassment issues to light. She hopes “it brings about changes to the school policy and fair treatment for people who are different.”t
Associated Press
Sharon Baldwin, left, and Mary Bishop spoke at a National Coming Out Day event in Oklahoma last October.
Serving the LGBT communities since 1971
10 ••BBAY AYA AREA REAR REPORTER EPORTER • January January16-22, 16-22,2014 2014
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Political Notebook
From page 5
on the nine-person panel to fill, with Mayor Ed Lee naming the rest. Campos initially had sought to name San Francisco International Airport after Milk. Following months of controversy, Lee and Campos struck a deal last year to simply name a terminal at the airport after Milk and created the advisory panel to suggest either one of the three domestic terminals or the international terminal. In October the rules committee advanced the names of two applicants to serve. They were Jon Ballesteros, a gay Latino who is vice president of public policy at San Francisco Travel, the city’s tourism bureau; and Maggie Weiland, an analyst with the city’s film commission and volunteer with the Harvey Milk Foundation, co-founded by her mother, Anne Kronenberg, who was a campaign consultant and legislative aide for Milk. Wanting to find a more diverse group of applicants, the supervisors on rules held off on the two other
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News Briefs
From page 6
sion on the deficit of women, particularly lesbians, in leadership roles in business and government throughout the Bay Area Thursday, January 23 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the San Jose Police Officers Association office, 1151 North 4th Street in San Jose. Titled “Through the Thick Glass Ceiling: A Conversation with Lesbian Women Leaders of Silicon Valley,” the forum will touch on the unique challenges gay women face in the area. Speakers will include Amy Brown, the out former acting city administrator of San Francisco, who is now director of agriculture and environment for Santa Clara County; Kathy Levinson, the out former chief operating officer of E-Trade; Sheila Mitchell, chief probation officer
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Jock Talk
From page 8
followers on multiple levels, I would argue that overwhelmingly the factors favor the Gay Games. In the World Outgames models, human rights conferences are supposed to be one third of the program, equal with sports and culture, and the host city has virtually sole discretion to run events once it has signed a license agreement. The two issues I have with this are that the athletes’ and artists’ fees wind up subsidizing the conferences and parties, and hosts are transitory organizations that do not have this institutional knowledge to ensure the sports are truly inclusive, diverse, and empowering. Diversity of athletic opportunity is not a factor high in most people’s social consciences, but it goes to the heart of why the Gay Games were
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Out Wheels
seats so that Campos could recruit additional names. Three people have since come forward: public relations professional Craig Pratt and KGO-TV ABC San Francisco reporter Nick Smith, who are both gay and African American, and Nanci Haines, who works in the fitness industry. Former gay applicants Alex Walker, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club’s political vice president, and Steven Guilliams, an engineer and code architect with San Jose-based firm HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), are again under consideration. Once formed, the naming body will have three months to present its recommendation to the board and could also recommend names for all of the airport’s terminals, as well as boarding areas and control towers.
to succeed gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), who will be termed out of his District 17 seat this December. The race is pitting Chiu, straight and Asian, against Campos, gay and Latino, in a contest being closely watched to see how the candidates’ sexual orientation and race impact voters’ choices at the ballot box. The debate will begin at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, January 23 at the San Francisco Main Library’s Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street.t
The Davids to debate
Keep abreast of the latest LGBT political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes.
The San Francisco Young Democrats has scored the first public matchup between state Assembly candidates Supervisors David Chiu (District 3) and David Campos. The board colleagues are running
for Santa Clara County; and Molly O’Neal, the out Santa Clara County public defender. Cindy Chavez, a former San Jose City Council member, will moderate. The event is free. To register, visit www.baymec.org.
SF-based national hotline seeks volunteers
The GLBT National Help Center, based in San Francisco, is seeking volunteers for its hotline and a training session is scheduled for next month. The hotline fields calls from LGBTQs all over the country and offers peer counseling, information, and local resources for callers from its comprehensive database. Volunteers, especially those who identify as bisexual, are needed. After the training, people are asked to
founded. Playing basketball or volleyball at a high level requires different skill sets than wrestling or swimming and can favor different body types and psychology. Some sports such as softball and racquetball require excellent hand-eye coordination; that is irrelevant in powerlifting or bodybuilding. Some require precise teamwork and cooperation; a marathoner runs alone. A diversity of choices is necessary if people of different bodies and psychologies are to be able to find the sports in which they can best express themselves. The cost of those opportunities needs to be kept low enough to be able to enable people without means to participate. An unchained host with no history in those issues has other things to worry about. Competition groups get collapsed and expensive individual sports get eliminated. And as the final report from Copenhagen 2009
Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reported on gay Assemblyman Rich Gordon’s re-election as chair of the Legislative LGBT Caucus.
Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8615019 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.
commit to two hours per week. The next training session is Saturday, February 1. People who are interested in participating should contact Aaron at (415) 355-0003 for more information. For more information about the help center, visit http://www.glnh. org. The hotline number itself is 1-888-843-4564.
Free antique jewerly appraisals
A local antique store will offer free appraisals on vintage or new rings, necklaces, or that one-of-akind piece. When possible, historical context will be provided. D and H Jewelers, 2323 Market Street in San Francisco, will offer the informal appraisals Saturday, January 25 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, January 26 from noon to 5 p.m.t
stated, sports end up being cut to accommodate conferences. The World Outgames set out to do more and end up doing less. And social diversity? Antwerp 2013 reported that three-fourths of its registrants were men. And a black lesbian soccer player from South Africa wrote a poignant online article about the isolation from seeing almost no other persons of color at the events. Historically, the Gay Games balance is better but still a far cry from what it or anyone else wants. It’s high time we stop worrying about propping up the World Outgames and concentrate on getting more women and more minorities out on the playing fields. That, not appeasement, is the name of the game. Gay Games 9 will be held in August in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. World Outgames 4 is scheduled for 2017 in Miami Beach.t
a kick at any speed. Unlike that 1990s Miata I had with my boyfriend, I actually fit into Yes, Miatas are known this one – my 6 foot 1 as an ultra-gay car. My inch frame fits just right. first boyfriend and I had The interior plastics are a one, and so did others in mite cheap, but their simour suburban gay bubple shaping keeps a classy ble. Colors of yellow and look, and the dash panel teal and crystal blue have keyed to the test car’s made Miatas seem fey, True Red paint job added and there are some selfflair. The power retractidentified masculine gay Philip Ruth able hardtop whips up men who would sooner Mazda’s new Miata MX-5 is a kick to drive. and down and does not strap on spike heels and block the roomy trunk. rip through a Barbra You’d have to look hard to flicked around like it’s been running Streisand drag set than find something to dislike with Miata. the Liberty Street stairs for years. pay Mazda every month for a car Personally, I’d rather just drive it.t The Miata’s key burns a hole in your that could undercut their “str8 actpocket, because it starts something ing” claim on Grindr. that is always rewarding, whether Philip Ruth is an automotive That’s their loss. Unlike the Z4, journalist and consultant at you’re tootling around the city or the evergreen Miata has maintained http://www.gaycarguy.com. heading out to the coast. This car is its dating weight, and it can be From page 8
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Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035541400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PALLADIAN LAW GROUP, 605 MARKET ST. #305, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NANCY LEWELLEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/07. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/1713.
DEC 26, 2013, JAN 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035542700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: INDEPENDENT HEALTH AIDE GROUP, 349 14TH AVE. #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed AZMI B. BAHARUDIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/17/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/18/13.
DEC 26, 2013, JAN 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035541000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BODY FLOWS, 1979 UNION ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SALLY MITCHELL. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/17/13.
DEC 26, 2013, JAN 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035544500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RECOVERS, 155 9TH ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SIROCCO, INC. (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/18/13.
DEC 26, 2013, JAN 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035536700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TAINTED LOVE; MUSTACHE HARBOR; 901 A ST. #C, SAN RAFAEL, CA 94901. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed TLOVE PARTNERS, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/07/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/13/13.
DEC 26, 2013, JAN 02, 09, 16, 2014 NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSE Dated 12/10/2013 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: WJH ENTERPRISE INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 33 New Montgomery St. #1230, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1356 GRANT AVE., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133-3932. Type of license applied for
41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE - EATING PLACE JAN 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES Dated 12/23/13 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: CRYSTAL JADE JIANG NAN LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 33 New Montgomery St. #1230, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 4 EMBARCADERO CTR., STE ONE, LOBBY LEVEL, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111-4106. Type of license applied for
47 - ON-SALE GENERAL EATING PLACE JAN 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035553600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BANANA HOME, 321 KEARNY ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PARAGON 168 CORP (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 12/26/13.
JAN 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035549200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GYRO XPRESS MEDITERRANEAN CUISINE, 499 CASTRO ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed VOLKANCEM INC.. 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 12/23/13.
JAN 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035545500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GLOW, 325 PACIFIC AVE. #202, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed UPWARD LABS HOLDINGS INC. (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/19/13.
JAN 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014
ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC14-550034 In the matter of the application of: EMILY GAIL WEEKS, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner EMILY GAIL WEEKS, is requesting that the names EMILY GAIL WEEKS, aka EMILY G. WEEKS, aka EMILY WEEKS be changed to JILL DAPHNE ARMOUR. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, 5th Fl. on the 13th of March 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014 NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSE Dated 12/17/2013 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: MARCELLE CORPORATION. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 33 New Montgomery St. #1230, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 4039 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114-2501. Type of license applied for
41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE - EATING PLACE JAN 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035545400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HVF LABS, 325 PACIFIC AVE. #200, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed HVF, LLC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/19/13.
JAN 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035550100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUTTER STREET CAFE, 450 SUTTER ST. #7, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SUTTER STREET CAFE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/23/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/23/13.
JAN 02, 09, 16, 23, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035572200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JACKUNISON LLC, 755 GONZALEZ DR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed JACKUNISON LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/06/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/07/14.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035561800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: STEPHANIE’S NURSERY, 1104 TENNESSEE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed STEPHANIE CLAIRE WOODS. 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 12/31/13.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035557600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GLOW HAND AND FOOT SPA, 1780 FULTON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed HONG THI VY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/30/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/30/13.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035566500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GREENSURGE, 2301 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SERGIO NOVOA. 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 01/03/14.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035554700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PDE ARTS, 1730 SACRAMENTO ST #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LING CHO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/27/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/27/13.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035565500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SJT MOVING COMPANY, 2620 VICENTE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ZHONG MING HUO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/03/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/03/14.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014
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Classifieds The
Legal Notices>>
Counseling>>
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035553200
NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOLDIES OAKWOOD BBQ, 230 YALE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed AZAR L. JONES. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/26/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/26/13.
Dated 10/08/13 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: FERRY PLAZA SEAFOOD INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 33 New Montgomery St. #1230, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 653-655 UNION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133-2811. Type of license applied for
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035562900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RUBIS NAILS, 4000 CALIFORNIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed DIEN THI BUI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/02/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/01/14.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035553500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JACK IN THE BOX, 2739 TAYLOR ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed KAM FOOD MANAGEMENT INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/26/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/26/13.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035566800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOTEL EPIK, 706 POLK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NEW PACIFIC HOTEL 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 01/03/14.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-033572500 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: OUTSIDE CONCIERGE, 2699 TAYLOR ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by JUSTIN DANIEL GIBSON. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/18/11.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035578600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE THERAPY LOUNGE, 364 HAYES ST. 2ND FL., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WILLIAM NGUYEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/09/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/10/14.
JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035578500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LESS IS MORE PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZING; LESS IS MORE SF; 1833 24TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KAREN LESLIE ROORDA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/02/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/10/14.
JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035575500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOMA LUXURY PROPERTIES, 2 TOWNSEND ST. #3-105, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOHN F. VALDEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/07/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/09/14.
JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035541600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DENIS O’KEEFFE HANDYMAN, 430 21ST AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DENIS O’KEEFFE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/17/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/17/13.
JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035561700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DAILY BEVERAGES, 190 FUNSTON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MICHAEL S. DAILY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/31/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/31/13.
JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014
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JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035555900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LIGHTHOUSE COMMUNICATIONS, 2845 VAN NESS #603, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANNE KATHERINE RICKETTS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/25/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/27/13.
JAN 09, 16, 23, 30, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035580900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BALLET TO GO, 128 EUREKA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed JOSEPH SCHMITZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/13/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/13/14.
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JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035581000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CLT EXPRESS INC, 1630 DAVIDSON AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CLT EXPRESS 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 01/13/14.
JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035571000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOTEL UTAH, 504 4TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed HOTEL UTAH INVESTMENT LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/26/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/07/14.
JAN 16, 23, 30, FEB 06, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035584800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: UNO DOS TACO, 595 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed APMEX LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/14/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/14/14.
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<< From the Cover
12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
<<
Crack pipes
From page 1
Asked in a phone interview after the meeting about the negative reaction people may have to the idea of distributing crack pipes, HPPC CoChair Tracey Packer said, “Our job as the HIV Prevention Planning Council is to explore the most appropriate ways to prevent HIV, and the information that was shared [at Thursday’s meeting] needs to be explored.” After Harkin and Kraus’s presentation, the HPPC voted unanimously for a four-point action plan. Packer, who also serves as director of community health equity and promotion for the health department’s
<<
Tenant confab
From page 1
suggested placing higher taxes on tech workers so that monies could be used to create more affordable housing. Tech workers have recently born the brunt of many activists’ ire as tech companies have received tax breaks for moving into the MidMarket area, adding employees who often have the means to move into the high-end complexes that are coming online. Convention organizers, however, noted that workers in many professions might not share the political beliefs of their bosses.
population health division, said the first step is to compile evidence and data that demonstrates that use of appropriate crack pipes addresses health issues among crack users. Next, legal issues and policies around crack pipe distribution will be explored. The health department will take the lead on working with city agencies including the offices of the city and district attorneys, and the police department, to explore how the needs of crack users can be met around this issue, said Packer. The third step is to build capacity among community-based providers, including nonprofits, and clinical providers like City Clinic, on engagement and care for crack users
in San Francisco to ensure that providers fully understand the health issues that crack users face, she said. The final part will include an inventory of what treatment is available and an examination of whether it’s sufficient. Some at Thursday’s meeting said the pipes would be inexpensive. Packer said, “We haven’t really done any calculations yet,” on cost. She also said, “I cannot commit to any timeline right now” on any plans. “There’s a lot of exploration work that needs to be done first.” In an interview, HPPC member Harkin noted that other places are already distributing crack pipes. He referred to such distribution as “a
balanced intervention” that would include “wrap-around services.” “Toronto has successfully been doing this for many years,” he said. People present at Thursday’s meeting expressed strong support for the idea of distributing crack pipes, but some wondered about how it could be done legally. HPPC member Laura Thomas, who’s also part of the HIV Health Services Planning Council and deputy state director for California for the Drug Policy Alliance, noted, “Right now it’s a violation of California law to be in possession of drug paraphernalia.” Thomas said, “I would love to see [City Attorney] Dennis Herrera
look through all this” to see what can be done. Asked about the idea of distributing crack pipes, Gabriel Zitrin, a spokesman for Herrera, said in an email, “The legality of a department policy is something we can’t really comment on, because our legal advice to city departments is considered privileged information between attorneys and our clients. If they ask for our advice we provide it, but it has to be kept between us and them.” Spokespeople for Mayor Ed Lee didn’t respond to an email Tuesday, January 14 seeking comment on whether Lee would support crack pipe distribution in order to aid the city in combatting HIV.t
“There are renters from all walks of life who are upset about the evictions and displacement destroying our communities,” said SherburnZimmer. “Some are tech workers. There are plenty of bank tellers who are upset about the role of banks in the foreclosure crisis. I have the same question for tech workers as I do for other renters in San Francisco: are they going to sit on the sidelines in this crisis, or are they going to fight back to stop displacement?” Added Avicolli Mecca, “I don’t believe that all techies are the enemy. I’m glad she came to support what we’re doing. It shows the broad appeal of what we’re doing and saying.
“Anyone with any sense of things knows that the rents are too damn high and that greed is changing the very nature of the city we all love, including our queer community,” he added. “How much longer will the Castro be queer with rents so high and speculators-investors pushing out our LGBT seniors and disabled community members?” After all suggestions were posted on the wall, the moderators asked the audience to vote on which ideas they thought were the most effective ways to combat the evictions. Forming an eviction defense action committee was the top choice, with 24 votes.
Political theater, in which performance art would be used to draw attention to the crisis, took 23 votes. Placing banners in front of buildings where Ellis Act evictions have occurred took 15 votes. Working on Ellis Act changes garnered 10 votes. Attendees then divided up into groups to brainstorm on how to most effectively make these ideas work. At the convention, AIDS Housing Alliance/San Francisco director Brian Basinger talked about how the housing crisis affects the lives of people with HIV/AIDS. “HIVers with stable housing are
better able to maintain complex medical regimens that keep them healthy and out of the expensive emergency room,” he said. “Multiple studies have shown that people with stable housing are much less likely to engage in behavior that may transmit the virus.” Basinger said that “20.7 percent of people with HIV have been displaced from San Francisco in just five years, fueled by no-fault evictions and the crisis in rental affordability.” Organizers said they were happy with the convention turnout. “I’m very pleased with the turnout and the energy in the room,” said Avicolli Mecca. “People are fed up, that was obvious. They want change and they want it now. I hope the politicians in the room got that message loud and clear.” Political leaders who attended included gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, who sat in the back taking notes. Also on hand was gay District 9 Supervisor David Campos, who represents the Mission, and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu. Campos and Chiu are running against each other for an Assembly seat this fall. “The Castro Tenants Convention was a useful brainstorming session on how we can reduce displacement and evictions,” Wiener said. “I’m glad I was able to attend and listen to the discussion.” On Tuesday, January 14, Wiener introduced legislation at the Board of Supervisors that would incentivize construction of on-site affordable housing as part of market-rate developments. According to a news release from Wiener’s office, the legislation will create a trigger under which for any market-rate development that allocates at least 20 percent of its onsite units as affordable (12 percent is the current legal minimum), none of those affordable units will count against the project’s unit density limits. Under current law, all units, whether market-rate or affordable, count against density limits. “We are in the midst of a severe housing crisis – a crisis that threatens our city’s diversity and livability – and we need much more permanently affordable housing,” Wiener said in the statement. “On-site affordable housing construction is the fastest way to create more affordable units, and we need to spur this construction.” Wiener’s proposed legislation does not change current law regarding minimum affordable housing requirements, but does provide developers with an additional alternative, and incentive, he said. Nothing in the proposal will affect existing height and bulk limits in the planning code. It applies to all zoning categories except those zoned for single-family homes or two-unit buildings. Next steps regarding tenants include a meeting Saturday, January 25 at 2 p.m. at the LGBT center to plan eviction defense in the Castro. That will be followed by a citywide tenant convention Saturday, February 8 at 350 Rhode Island Street from 1 to 4 p.m.t
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17
Gallery walk
SFO's new season
Out &About
Square roots
16
O&A
15
18
The
Vol. 44 • No. 3 • January 16-22, 2014
www.ebar.com/arts
Jonathan Groff is happy to be ‘Looking’ by David-Elijah Nahmod
I
Jonathan Groff as Patrick, and Raul Castillo as Richie in HBO’s Looking.
HBO/John P. Johnson
n the opening scene of Looking, HBO’s look at gay life in San Francisco that debuts on Jan. 19, an obviously nervous Patrick is in the park, looking for romance in the bushes. “I didn’t get your name,” Patrick says to his trick. “Stop talking,” says the guy, as Patrick runs off to answer his cell phone. As the storyline progresses, we see that the awkwardly sweet Patrick usually tries too hard – with his friends, his boss, and his dates. Especially his dates. “It’s very symbolic that in the first scene, Patrick is getting a hand job,” says Jonathan Groff, the openly gay actor who stars as Patrick. “He’s never done this before. He’s looking at himself, stepping out of himself and changing his life.” Patrick is also looking for Mr. Right.
After a disastrous blind date with a doctor, he meets the very sexy Richie (Raul Castillo) on Muni. He pushes Richie away. They find each other again. And again. “Looking is very different from Queer as Folk and other. earlier gay shows,” promises Groff. “Nobody is feeling selfconscious about their sexuality, they’ve already gone through that. The drama of their lives is about boyfriends, jobs, and friendships. The characters are more relatable than in other shows, because anyone can have to deal with those issues.” But Groff tipped his hat to those earlier shows. “Looking could never have aired without shows like Queer as Folk, Will & Grace and others that paved the way,” he said. “I feel like we’ve come so far with acceptance towards the gay community. It’s nice that we’ve reached the point that we’re making a show about gay characters in which gay is who they are, but it doesn’t define them.” See page 23 >>
t s e f m il f e c n a d n u S takes flight by David Lamble
T
he Sundance Film Festival, the year’s first great film party and celebrity bash, ignites atop Robert Redford’s sacred mountain. Prepare to battle wannabe Llewyn Davis types for a spot near the beer-filled fridge in somebody’s pricey condo; take selfies at the Queer Lounge; watch hip cinema from dawn to Midnight. Our take includes a couple of features we’ve previewed, beginning with a hot French beach romp that combines sex and murder, followed by an assortment of promising queerthemed features and docs. Stranger by the Lake Eons ago, I would pass tantalizing summers in a wooded gay male cruising area near Austin affectionately known as “Hippie Hollow.” There, under the long shadow of the Texas sodomy law, guys of all ages would cavort in the bushes, mostly unmolested by the long arm of the law. French director Alain Guiraudie rekindles the spirit of Hippie Hollow in a noir-style, addictive thriller.
Scene from Sophie Hyde’s Aussie drama 52 Tuesdays.
“Good evening, can I share your towel?” With that come-on, hunky, mustached stranger Michel introduces himself to the already smitten pretty-boy Franck. The two men will soon be an item, at least by the lake and in the bushes. Franck will come to want more, despite his guilty knowledge that this particular tall, dark stranger is capable of murder. In a subplot, Franck befriends a lonely corpulent guy, in what turns into a rather intimate chat-only relationship. Guiraudie’s knack includes the ability to duplicate the excitement and ennui that hang over gay nude-beach cruising spots worldwide. With a naturalistic ambient soundtrack and a nuanced grasp on how cruel queer guys can be when they’re on the make, this gripping erotic thriller will take you on a rough and psychologically troubling ride. 52 Tuesdays In Sophie Hyde’s Aussie drama (by writer Matthew Cormack), a transitioning transsexual is only there for her 16-year-old daughter Sophie once a week. See page 20 >>
Courtesy Visit Films
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<< Out There
14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
Reno, Nevada, mon amour
t
by Roberto Friedman
E
verybody had an opinion when we told them we were spending Christmas in Reno, Nevada. “It’s no Vegas!” said our barber. But that is exactly the point, we didn’t say to our barber, because he was the one wielding the scissors with sharp steel points. We weren’t going there for the casinos or for the floor shows. Our bartender allowed that she had once been to Reno, on the occasion of her mother’s remarriage, but that she and her sister so hated their stepfather that they beat a hasty retreat as soon as they could. She had no happy memories of the place. But we were Reno-bound because that’s where our beloved Pepi has family – his dad “Big Pepi” and his sister Sweetie. (Pepi did, in fact, grow up in Las Vegas, which explains one or two things. But that is a story for another column.) So this was our first official visit with la familia de Pepi in their natural habitat. Our ears popped from the change in air pressure as we drove over the Sierra Nevada mountains at the Donner Pass, and later so did our toothpaste tube when we opened it. Still, unlike the unfortunate Donner Party, we made it over the Pass all in one piece. The Truckee River Walk, on a bright, sunny Christmas day, was a perfect urban stroll that took us clear out of downtown to a pleasant idyll in Idlewild Park. The river sparkled in the sunlight, but there were patches of ice in it, too. Ducks and large, honking geese flew in for perfect three-point landings. The surrounding mountains sported glistening white caps of snow. We stayed at one of the big casino
Jamie Kingham for the Nevada Museum of Art
Nevada Museum of Art offers modern and contemporary art.
hotels, the Eldorado, not because we gamble (we don’t) but because it was a deal. The view from our 18thfloor window encompassed all of Reno, the breakfast buffet was cheap and plentiful, and we found a good place within for steaming bowls of pho. We visited the Nevada Museum of Art downtown, a compact showcase of modern art housed in appealing contemporary architecture. Inside, we were immediately wowed by the sculpture Transamerica (2013) by the Ball-Nogues Studio, inspired by architect William L. Pereira’s iconic Transamerica Corporation HQ Tower (1973). The piece recreates San Francisco’s famous Pyramid skyscraper done up entirely in metal chain, suspended upside-down from the ceiling into the museum’s atrium. It sounds unlikely, but it works as a captivating art-piece. Frida Kahlo: Her Photos (through Feb. 16) is an unusual exhibition devoted to this seminal
artist in that its focus is not on her art, but rather on her photography collection. This was a medium with unquestionable resonance for Kahlo, since her father was a professional photographer, so she was attuned to its artistic properties from the time of her earliest youth. Her collection includes examples from such important contemporaries as Edward Weston, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Tina Modotti. A section of the exhibit entitled Frida’s Lovers makes explicit the fact that this group included both men and women. Toulouse-Lautrec and La Vie Moderne: Paris 1880-1910 (through
Courtesy of Metabolic Studio
Silo Camera image of the Liminal Camera truck by the Optics Division team at Owens Dry Lake, seen at the Nevada Museum of Art.
Jan. 19) is a crowd-pleasing show of posters, prints and lithographs by the featured artist and others in his milieu. Franklin Evans: Timepaths (through April 20) is a multimedia installation by the Reno-born artist that leads the viewer to the conclusion that Evans has led the gay life, during his student days at Stanford on through an itinerant path as an artist. Lauren Bon & the Optics Division Team: Transforming Inert Landscape into Agency (through May 25) is an intriguing exercise in earth art and process art. LA-
based Bon and her team of fellow artists reclaimed silver, water and chemicals from the dry bed of Owens Lake, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California, to create photographic panoramas of the area, scarred and desiccated from invasive mining. They created a camera obscura – that is, a natural walk-in camera – out of an abandoned mineral silo on the site. The results of their intervention are compelling: portraits of the wasteland landscape, made from its very own materials. Can we therefore call the Liminal Lake Bed Panorama a self-portrait in earth tones?t
Courtesy of Metabolic Studio
Liminal Lake Bed Panorama (2013), gelatin silver print, fixed and toned in the lake bed, by Lauren Bon.
Sexed up by John F. Karr
W
hen SAFE SEX BANG: The Buzz Bense Safe Sex Poster Collection went up on the walls of the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco, a big surprise was the graphic nature of the art. Official response in the early days of the AIDS crisis was prudish, but that doesn’t figure here. Most are the posters are too overtly sexual to be shown in the B.A.R., but they can be seen, full-size and sexed up, at the CSC, where nearly 50 feet of densely packed exhibition wall was designed to impact and even overwhelm viewers. A second surprise is that, through a successful Kickstarter campaign, the exhibi-
tion is the first CSC show to have its own catalogue. It’s a special project of CSC curator Dorian Katz and her associate, Alex Fialho, a New York Citybased curator and art historian. It’s a 36-page publication, in large 9”x12” size and in full color, with nearly 50 reproductions along with historic supplementation, a Foreword from CSC Director Carol Queen, an interview with Bense, and an essay by Fialho. There’ll be a Publication Release Party from 7-10 p.m. on Fri., Jan. 24 (it’s also Bense’s birthday). And although SAFE SEX BANG doesn’t close until Jan. 31, there’ll be a closing reception for the show on Sat., Jan. 25, from 6-8 p.m. (More info is at www. sexandculture.org.) t
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View of the exhibition wall of SAFE SEX BANG: The Buzz Bense Safe Sex Poster Collection at the Center for Sex and Culture.
t
Theatre>>
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15
Her body is a battleground by Richard Dodds
P
ardon My Invasion is something like a bumper-car ride, always sending you careening in unpredictable directions. But these collisions aren’t always of amusement-park playfulness, as whimsy is continually upended by jolts that threaten injury before pulling back from the brink with a disarming twist. Brisk Weather Productions is currently presenting Joy Cutler’s hardto-categorize play at the Phoenix Theatre, and this is a high-end affair in the tiny downtown venue. An elevator ride up six floors takes you to the theater, which is when you’d be wise to fasten your seatbelts. In barest terms, the story involves a teenage girl whose body becomes possessed by an AWOL soldier from the Iraq War. The setup suggests broad comedy, as the girl’s mother struggles at the typewriter to churn out a new volume in her pulpdetective series, and there are solid laughs as Rita reads aloud her pseudo-Sam Spade prose. And the tone
remains humorous as 13-year-old Penny tries to wrest her distracted mother’s attention with complaints of strange new feelings in her body. Her mother’s suggestion is a trip to the museum to look at Georgia O’Keeffe paintings to help Penny cope with what Rita blithely assumes are coming-of-age issues. What follows puts to the test “suspension of disbelief ” theatrical requirements. In fact, it’s best just to forget about any of that, because once you’re ready to go with the flow of the possessed-by-a-soldier scenario, the comfy living-room set (handsomely design by Fred Sharkey) has a few more invasions in store for you. There’s the hyper-macho commanding officer who periodically materializes to harangue the private hiding in the girl’s body, but even more audacious are the appearances by the fictional heroine Honey Babe from Rita’s novels, who asserts herself both over the plots she’s been stuck with and the specific plot of the moment of freeing Penny from the soldier’s control.
Colin Hussey
An AWOL soldier who has taken up residence inside a teenage girl (Marissa Keltie) gets instructions from his commanding officer (John Flanagan) in Pardon My Invasion at the Phoenix Theatre.
This complicated scenario has been adeptly staged by directorproducer Joe Weatherby, and he has guided his actors to confident performances in challenging roles. Sondra Putnam is beguilingly bewildered as the mother of a possessed
teenager, and Marissa Keltie does admirable double-duty as adolescent Penny and the none-too-genteel grunt who inhabits her. John Flanagan creates a scarily brutish sergeant, Randy J. Blair is suitably gawky as Penny’s almost-boyfriend, and Juliet
Tanner has assuring strength as a police officer who ultimately unravels the mystery. And then there’s Marie Shell as Honey Babe, her sequined dress barely containing pendulous breasts that should be licensed as deadly weapons, in a tour de force performance that commands utter attention whenever she is on stage. Cutler invokes incest and pedophilia, compares battlefield blood with menstrual blood, and often has her characters let forth with jawdropping dialogue. “You’re a sweet single mom with a Velcro twat,” Honey Babe tells Rita in one of the tamer passages that unexpectedly erupt like land mines. One could easily accuse Cutler of gratuitous shock, especially as wartime atrocities are recounted, and of confused and confusing focus and tone. But it all contributes to a compelling weirdness that is impossible to anticipate.t Pardon My Invasion will run at the Phoenix Theatre through Feb. 8. Tickets are $15-$30. Call (800) 8383006 or go to phoenixtheatresf.org.
Revolutionary road by David Lamble
T
he Square, Jehane Noujaim’s captivating “crowd-sourced” documentary on the ongoing Egyptian Revolution opening Friday at the Roxie, begins hopefully with a pair of friends in a dark Cairo room looking to light a candle while uttering a witty curse at “the authorities” responsible for turning off the lights. “What happened?” “The lights went out.” “Why?” (The sound of a match struck.) “This is normal.”
“The lights are out all over Egypt.” “It’s not just the electricity. Electricity is the least of our problems.” “All the little kids in the streets say, ‘Turn the lights back on, man.’” “Who is the ‘man?’” “The man who’s responsible for switching the electricity back on: the regime.” It is to the credit of EgyptianAmerican doc-maker Noujaim that she attempts to make sense of the ongoing chaos by casting real people as if they were members of a quarrelsome extended family. Noujaim yokes six distinct personalities together – four
men, two women – and has them deliver news of the political-social tumult sweeping through Cairo for the past three years. They begin with the mass demonstrations that led to the overthrow of the US-backed Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, go through the election of his Muslim Brotherhood-backed successor Mohamed Morsi, and follow up with the army-backed coup that disposed of Morsi and set up a deadly series of dust-ups between the army and Brotherhood demonstrators. We experience the life-and-death clashes See page 16 >>
Courtesy Noujaim Films
Egyptian activist Ahmed Hassan in Jehane Noujaim’s documentary The Square.
<< Fine Art
16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
What’s up at the galleries this month? by Sura Wood
T
his year gets off to a crowded start with a broad range of gallery shows around the Bay Area. Take Oakland. Yes, Oakland, which may be for San Francisco the mecca Brooklyn has become for restless Manhattanites. Despite its distressed buildings and rough neighborhoods, Oakland’s proximity to the city and its comparatively low rents have spawned hot exhibition/ work spaces and attracted an influx of hip, young and not-so-young creative types hungering for vitality and the promise of the new. Jasmine Moorhead’s innovative Krowswork Gallery & Project Space is a prime example of the trend. The gallery’s latest show, Sylvia Fein: Surreal Nature, is a retrospective of some 50 paintings by the 94-year-old Midwestern-born, Martinez-based painter, dating from 1942 to the present. In 1947, Fein’s work was exhibited alongside Max Ernst and a young Jackson Pollock. Her early surrealist pieces, considered feminist and radical at the time, are characterized by narratives suffused with longing, loss, the madness of WWII, and a return to feminine power and magic. The latter theme is expressed in “Lady in Landscape with Animals” (1942), which draws on ancient spirituality and the natural world in its depiction of a half-naked amazon surrounded by a menagerie of woodland creatures, while “Lady with the White Knight” (1942-43) is a medieval, Eden-like fantasy where a barefoot, bare-legged wouldbe Guinevere and her Lancelot stand idly in the midst of a forest.
Courtesy the artist and Krowswork, Oakland
“The Lady with the White Knight” (1942-43), egg tempera on board by Sylvia Fein.
Sewn into his chainmail garment is a heart-shaped, all-seeing eye, a favorite Surrealist motif that would resurface in Fein’s work 60 years later. Now embracing sea, sky and the cosmos, she uses egg tempera – a mixture of yolks and powdered pigment – that produces the radiant glow displayed in the stormy “Shape of the Sea” (1964) and the alien tangerine skies of “Bay Sun through Raccoon Straits” (1958). (Jan. 18Feb. 22) www.krowswork.com RayKo Photo Center Lost and Found: Works of Art by Heidi Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick’s hand-made amalgams investigate the female form, family histories, and how wom-
Courtesy RayKo Photo
Heidi Kirkpatrick transforms found materials into three-dimensional art objects, such as “Monocle.”
en filter their experience of the modern world. Using photography as her primary tool, she transforms found materials into three-dimensional art objects, blending transparent figures, family portraits and illustrations with well-worn books, boxes, copper plates and vintage souvenir containers. In her personal life, the artist contends with chronic debilitating pain, a condition that led to her dissection of Gray’s Anatomy. Its illustrated pages are layered underneath imagery of Kirkpatrick’s nearest and dearest, a therapeutic process that helps her cope with physical suffering. (Jan. 17Feb. 23) www.raykophotocenter.com Rena Bransten Gallery Tracey Snelling: Mystery Hour Every day is Halloween, or so one might surmise from Snelling’s latest sculptures, photographs, videos and scary diorama installations like “Zombie Island” that are informed by horrormovie schlock, true-crime shows, and just maybe, The Island of Dr. Moreau and other similarly sinister low-brow tales. Haunted, dilapidated manses, posters promoting cheesy fake films, women held against their will, illumination courtesy of cheap neon; well, you get the picture. Snelling’s previous exhibition, entitled Nervous Women: Two Centuries of Women and Their Psychiatrists, is one I’m truly sorry to have missed. (Through Feb. 15) Modernism Elina Anatole: Into Elina’s Armoire takes us into the metaphorical closet where the artist stores her psyche and her history. Anatole, who’s in her late 20s and emigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union, focuses on the cultural gap between her homeland, stubbornly entrenched in the past, and the materialism and forward-looking ethos of her adopted country. Classically trained and working in her preferred medium, oil on wood panel, she fuses Renaissance symbols with off-kilter experiments in fashion photography. A pale, waiflike blonde is enfolded in white tulle. Yet another, in a strapless taffeta gown, a skirt billowing behind her, is a figure so ethereal she appears to walk on air. Meanwhile, a show of Robert Stivers’ recent work features vintage, sepia-toned photographs that recall the early days of the medium and silent movies. Viewing these tantalizing, blurry images with intimations of the unreal such as “After Sargent,” a portrait of an elusive woman in black the details of whose appearance we can’t quite make out, is like looking into the far distance without glasses, or trying to focus eyes heavy with sleep when suddenly a single tat-
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The Square
From page 15
among the army, the Brotherhood, supporters of the old regime, and the younger generation of newly engaged secularists through the daily backand-forth – via social networks, digital cameras, and cinema verite footage of appalling events such as army tanks squashing protestors to death, and detainees tortured to death by a “thugocracy” of soldiers and cops. The players are Ahmed Hassan, a sassy-mouthed 20-something onetime poor-kid street-vendor, peddling lemons to tourists to stay in school; Khalid Abdalla, the handsome Anglo-Egyptian actor who vividly portrayed a 9/11 hijacker in United 93, then completely flipped his image by playing the exile returning to Afghanistan who encounters Taliban atrocities in The Kite Runner; Magdy Ashour, an astute, conflicted Muslim Brotherhood supporter whose ambivalence about the need for an Islamic state in Egypt becomes a central motif in the film’s ongoing “intra-family” debates; Ramy Essam,
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Courtesy Jack Fischer Gallery
“Ever so quietly I lie on her hair,” oil on canvas by Bernardo Roman Palau.
tered glove comes into high relief, or you notice the frayed binding on a beloved volume of poetry. A selftaught photographer who prints on matte papers and hand-tones his pictures in the darkroom, Stivers is a former dancer/choreographer partial to bodies in motion like “The Dancer,” whose arched back and extended arms obscure her face and bring Martha Graham to mind. (Jan. 16-March 1) www.modernisminc.com Jack Fischer Gallery Somewhere Between Here and There: Ken Graves & Bernardo R. Palau Think of a builder who has a way with the camera, and you have a glimmer of the strange and wonderful world of Ken Graves, where surrealistic elements mingle with Victorian paper collages, parody and the absurd. His training in photography is reflected in his framed compositions and collages, which weave thread and feathers with pop-culture imagery culled from magazines and medical journals from the 1930s through the 50s. With these and other materials, Graves produces small, meticulously arranged tableaux populated by figures in incongruous settings. The results, a kind of Mad magazine meets Hieronymus Bosch, are bizarre, and I mean that in a good way. Take “Putting Them Out of Their Misery,” in which several chairs are suspended from the ceiling while one lying on the floor is being sprayed by what looks like a bellhop. Then there’s the diver perched on the shoulders of a man with spikes protruding from his spine (“The Meaning of Gravity”). Also exhibited are Palau’s theatrical oil paintings that hint at an
underlying melancholy. The barrenness of a desert landscape is relieved by a lone tree, dogs and birds pose under a crescent moon, and peculiar characters with missing limbs betray their sense of isolation. (Through Feb. 1) www.jackfischer.gallery Cartoon Art Museum Searle in America Ronald Searle, a British cartoonist and illustrator who traveled the U.S., sketchpad at the ready, on assignment for glossy magazines, trained his savage eye and lacerating pen on American politics and culture in the late 1950s and 60s. In following the Nixon/Kennedy campaign and the oddities of the American way, he gave us a chance to see ourselves as our neighbors across the pond did. (Through Mar. 30) Grains of Sand: 25 Years of the Sandman is an exhibition of original artwork from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman saga, which unfolded in a monthly 75-issue DC comic-book series that ran from 1988-1996. It included storylines reminiscent of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and introduced Morpheus, Lord of the Dreams, a hallucinatory landscape encompassing the dreams of the living and the dead, gods, demons and monsters; all in all, a very busy place. Gaiman later revisited the character in graphic novels. Among other trials, Morpheus escaped mortals who had imprisoned him and traveled through realms of myth and fairy tales, the American back roads and hell, which may be the same thing, eventually finding contentment in the spiky bosom of his family, The Endless, a concept familiar to anyone who spent the holidays at home. (Through Mar. 16)t
a mid-20s protest singer whose spontaneous ballads sung before immense crowds in Tahiri Square render him this quicksilver movement’s Dylan, which takes on special poignancy when he escapes custody after a brutal police interrogation; and two brave women, the mid-30s humanrights lawyer Ragia Omran and the youthful filmmaker Aida El Kashef. The Square, a version of which won a 2013 Sundance Audience Award, is the closest a big-screen movie can get to simulating the exhilaration, terror, disgust and ennui that accompany the rollercoaster of impossible expectations followed by hope-crushing downers of watching a revolution ignited, extinguished, then somehow relit. Queer filmgoers who remember 1979’s White Night Riots – first, queers attacking the doors at SF City Hall following the virtual exoneration of Harvey Milk’s assassin; then, SF cops bashing down the doors of the Elephant Walk bar on Castro Street – should identify with the highs experienced by a people who finally grasp their own longdenied need for respect and dignity.
The Square’s penultimate hero, its improbable poster-boy, is the impish former street-kid Ahmed Hassan, this movie’s “out of the bars and into the streets,” Cleve Jones-style pied piper. As the movie turns a turbulent corner following the ouster of Morsi, Ahmed’s once closely-cropped Afro sprouts until he starts to resemble the hippie hero of Hair. It’s difficult to capture the lightning-in-a-bottle sting of real events unfolding at warp speed with real lives hanging in the balance. Noujaim’s family structure serves her well as her clan debates the implications of this popular uprising devouring its own. They are aware of their ancient society’s tangled British roots as they chastise the Brotherhood-leaning Magdy about his loyalty to a fifth column-like group that is fundamentally undemocratic, even in its defense of democratically-elected fallen leader Morsi. See this year’s most exciting reality show in a theatre, where its odd twists, turns and smash-ups will make as much sense as history in the raw ever does.t
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Music>>
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17
San Francisco Opera’s thrilling new season by Jason Victor Serinus
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t’s easy to sound like a press release and frame San Francisco Opera’s just-announced 2014-15 season with shop-worn superlatives. But in this case, excitement is justified. Wonderful soprano Sondra Radvanovsky opens the season in the title role of Bellini’s riveting masterpiece Norma (Sept. 5-30). Radvanovsky drew raves as Norma at the Met last season; here, she has the opportunity to deepen her interpretation. Hopefully, her Adalgisa, mezzo-soprano and former Adler Fellow Daveda Karanas, has matured artistically to where she can match Radvanovsky’s drama and commitment. I have less hope for the Pollione of big-voiced tenor Marco Berti, but look forward to towering bass-baritone Christian Van Horn singing Oroveso (as well as four other roles this season – perhaps General Director David Gockley saves money on package deals), and our wonderful Music Director, Nicola Luisotti, in the pit. In a giant leap from Bellini’s world, one of the 20th century’s most successful American operas, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah (Sept. 6-21), finally makes it to the War Memorial Opera House. Those who thought that after four leading roles this season, soprano Patricia Racette might take a break will discover her back, in a title role perfectly suited to her talents. She’s suffered opposite hunky, marvelously-voiced tenor Brandon Jovanovich before; together, they should scorch the War Memorial Opera House stage, with deep dark bass Raymond Aceto and debut conductor Karen Kamensek hopefully providing equal rewards. Star power impels me to jump ahead to spring/summer. Regardless of your love or disdain for Berlioz’s Les Troyens (June 7-July 1), there’s no
Catherine Ashmore/English National Opera
Cory Weaver
Soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci will appear in Berlioz’s Les Troyens and in the world premiere of Marco Tutino and Fabio Ceresa’s La Ciociara.
question that SFO’s cast will make the best possible case for the four-and-ahalf-hour opera. First of all, we have the opportunity to experience, in the role of Cassandra, an artist famed for her dramatic commitment and theatricality, soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci. You can be sure that Antonacci’s first SFO appearance in 16 seasons will be followed by operalovers around the world, especially since she will be in the company of the beloved mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who is celebrated for her Dido; debut tenor Bryan Hymel (Aeneas), who has been bringing people to their feet at the Metropolitan Opera; and plush-voiced mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (Anna), who was the best thing by far about the world premiere of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene. Conductor Donald Runnicles is sometimes better with propulsion than emotion, but he is certain to have the full sweep of Berlioz’s expansive score under control.
The Olivier Award-winning production of Handel’s Partenope is coming to San Francisco Opera.
There’s a lot about our doublecast La Bohèmes (Nov. 14-Dec. 7) to set the heart aflutter. On one night, we have looks galore from debut soprano Sonya Yoncheva’s Mimi, who was signed to a Sony recording contract after her recent rave Met debut as another fragile character, Gilda, in Verdi’s Rigoletto. Opposite her as Rodolfo is the exceptionally voiced, dramatically thrilling tenor Michael Fabiano, with wonderful soprano Nadine Sierra as Musetta, and debut baritone Alexey Markov as Marcello. On alternate nights, beloved soprano Leah Crocetto’s glorious, emotionally committed Mimi swoons to the Rodolfo of debut tenor Giorgi Berrugi, whose YouTube clips suggest we may swoon as well. I’m less convinced at the notion of poised soprano Ellie Dehn letting down her hair as Musetta, but Brian Mulligan’s gorgeous-voiced Marcello should be something to write home about. Expect Van Horn (Colline) and Adler Fellow Philippe Sly (Schaunard) to bring added satisfaction, as should Resident Conductor Giuseppe Finzi. Puccini-lovers will want to see both casts. Much about the returning pro-
duction of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball, Oct. 4-22) could surprise us. Will the wonderful tenor Ramón Vargas, who is most suited to lighter fare, excel as King Gustavus III, and soprano Krassimira Stoyanova, who soon sings the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at Salzburg, prove equally adept as a Verdi spinto? Far less questionable are baritones Thomas Hampson and Brian Mulligan, who sing the Count; soprano Heidi Stober as the delightfully high-lying Oscar; the supreme mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick as Madame Arvidson; and great-atVerdi Luisotti in the pit. Almost 240 years after its premiere, Handel’s comedy Partenope (Oct. 15-Nov. 2) arrives in San Francisco. Lighting up the stage in an Olivier Award-winning production will be lovely soprano Danielle de Niese; one of our favorite countertenors, David Daniels, who may be a bit past his peak, but is still singing wonderfully; and mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, who raged as Rosina a few months back. As if one Puccini opera sure to fill fall’s seats were not enough, Gockley also brings us Tosca (Oct. 23-Nov.
8). If debut soprano Lianna Haroutounian, who has been scorching the stage in Verdi, does the same as Tosca, we’ll be stabbing Mark Delavan’s returning Scarpia along with her. Tenor Brian Jagde, who sang opposite Delavan in the same production of Tosca only two seasons ago, should make an ardent Cavaradossi, especially with Riccardo Frizza in the pit. As with Tosca, the singers make or break Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Nov. 9-26). In its sixth return since 1969, in the same Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production that introduced it to us, we have the potentially thrilling debuts of mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes and tenor René Barbera as her prince, Don Ramiro. It will be good to have Jesús LópezCobos back at the helm. The summer season concludes with a big risk, the world premiere of Marco Tutino and Fabio Ceresa’s La Ciociara (Two Women, June 13-30); and a sure bet, Mozart’s perpetually loved Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, June 14-July 5). What makes the former a must-see, besides the potential to discover a great new work, are Antonacci and tenor Stephen Costello, conducted by Luisotti and directed by Francesca Zambello. What makes the latter a sure delight is the superb blend of Sly, Lisette Oropesa, Sierra, Kate Lindsey, Angela Brower, and Luca Pisaroni, with Patrick Summers in the pit. A few must-notes. First, every opera except Les Troyens starts at 7:30 p.m., which is better for families, 9-5ers, and seniors, and a sure boon to local eateries. Second, we’re back to a 10-opera season, which we haven’t experienced since 201011. And finally, Gockley’s choice of debut artists shows him once again scouring the world for singers with the potential to ensure San Francisco Opera’s reputation as one of the leading houses on the planet.t
<< Out&About
18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
Sharon McNight @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Our lovely local legendary vocalist performs her all-new cabaret show, The First 30 Years, an introspective retrospect of her careeer, From Moose Hall to Carnegie Hall (and all the gin joints on the way). $25-$35. 8pm. Also Jan. 17. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com
Tater’s Gone! @ Exit Theater Absurdist comic play about the mother of three robots is directed by Adam J. Ansell. $20. Jan. 15-18, 8pm. Jan. 19, 2pm.
O&A
156 Eddy St. www.theexit.org
Fri 17
Out &About
The Paris Letter Lois Tema
Shades of grey by Jim Provenzano
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hile not going into cliché 50 Shades pun territory, it is interesting to not the levels of mature themes in arts events this week. We’re often told in media to aim for the youth market. But it’s been our experience that people who are a bit older, and have jobs, tend to pay admission, and pay attention. They also recall the days before people took cell phone photos of the performers …during their performances. Check out the work of veteran musicians, dancers and visual artists. Enjoy experiencing –and not childishly tweeting, selfie-ing, or over-sharing– some of the following arts events.
Thu 16 Andy McKee @ Yoshi's
Masterful acoustic guitar virtuoso performs pastoral compositions and compelling covers. Janet Noguera opens. $31. 8pm. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com
Art Walk @ 25th St. Oakland Galleries The monthly third Thursdays art event draws thousands of people; enjoy great fine art, fine craft, acoustic music, and artisan made wine and food. 6pm-10pm. www.vessel-gallery.com
Unusual Films @ Oddball Films
Jan. 15-19, the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival. (film fest tix: www.BerlinBeyond. com). Jan. 20: Wattstax (7pm) and Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip ( 5:15, 8:55). Jan.21: Captain Phillips (2:30, 7pm) and Dirty Wars (5:05, 9:30). Jan. 22: Chinatown (7pm) and The Fortune (5:10, 9:25). Jan. 23: SF Sketchfest opening night events (see Thu. 23). $8.50-$11. 429 Castro St. 621-6120. www.castrotheatre.com
The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com Opening reception for an exhibit of abstract sculptural works by the local drag performer and DJ, at the local hair salon. 7pm-10pm. Thru Mar. 2. 304 Valencia St. 861-4526. www.glamarama.com
Joe Wicht @ R3, Guerneville Escape for the weekend to the Russian River and enjoy our favorite piano bar show tunes songster. No cover. Nightly thru Jan. 19, 8pm-closing. Triple R Bar and Grill, 16390 4th St., Guenreville. (707) 869-8399. www.ther3hotel.com
Josh Klipp and The Klipptones @ Palace Hotel The local jazz crooner and his band perform weekly shows at the hotel’s lounge, which draws a growing swingdance audience. 7pm-11pm. 2 New Montgomery. www.joshklipp.com
Fri 17
American Conservatory Theatre presents a co-production with Theatre Calgary of George Bernard Shaw’s classic satirical play of morality and religion, centered around a Salvation Army official who must confront her organization when it takes donations from a weapons manufacturer. (Special nights include LGBT Out with A.C.T. Jan. 22). $20-$140. Thru Feb. 2. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org
Random Dance
The mega-hit multi-award-winning musical comedy parody about the wacky religion returns. Ticket lottery $29. Other $80-$210. Tue-Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm. Sun 1pm & 6:30pm. Thru Jan. 19. 1192 Market St. (888) 746-1799. www.shnsf.com
The Pornographer’s Daughter @ Z Below Liberty Bradford Mitchell’s one-woman show tells her story of growing up on the fringes of an X-rated world as the daughter of notorious pornography pioneer Artie Mitchell; performed with the three-piece band The Fluffers. $32. Thu-Sat 8pm. Also Sat 10pm. Sun 5pm. Thru Feb. 16. 470 Florida St. www.PDtheplay.com
Radar Slam @ Dolores Park Café Read for a chance to present your work at a future Radar reading; judges Mari Naomi, Alvin Orloff and Michelle Tea. 7:30pm. 501 Dolores St. www.radarproductions.org
Random Dance @ Lam Research Theater Wayne McGregor’s company premieres Far, a new dance work with an original score by Ben Frost; inspired by Roy Porter’s history of 18th-century exporations of body and soul. $35-$60. 7:30pm. Also Jan. 18, 7:30pm; Jan. 19, 2pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.sfperformances.org
Tommy Emmanuel, Martin Taylor @ Palace of Fine Arts Acoustic and jazz guitarists perform a duo concert. $48. 7:30pm. Also Jan. 18. 3301 Lyon St. 242-4500. www.omniconcerts.com
Sat 18
Road Show @ Eureka Theatre
Above and Below @ Oakland Museum
Theatre Rhinoceros presents the Bay Area premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s rarelyproduced musical (with a book by John Weidman). Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Thru Jan. 19. 215 Jackson St. at Battery. (800) 838-3006. www.therhino.org
Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the Beethoven and Bates Festival, with performances of works by Beethoven and Mason Bates; nightly, 8pm thru Jan 18. Concerts of works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Britten and Piazzolla Jan. 22-26. $22-$156. 201 Van Ness Ave. 8646000. www.sfsymphony.org
Feral Creatures
West Coast premiere of Emma Rice’s innovative acrobatic and music-filled adaptation of the classic mythical love story. $20-$72. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Extended thru Jan. 18. Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org
The Book of Mormon @ Orpheum Theatre
San Francisco Symphony @ Davies Hall
Cal Performances presents the multiGrammy-winning pianist and banjo virtuoso, who perform a duo concert of jazz, bluegrass and classical works. $26$76. 8pm. UC Berkeley campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org
Sat 18
Tristan & Yseult @ Berkeley Repertory
Ravi Duprees
See blooming magnolia trees and exhibits. Special events include Magnolias by Moonlight (Jan. 16, 8pm. $20), walking tours and more. Thru March 31. Also, hundreds of species of native wildflowers in a century-old grove of towering Coast Redwoods. Free-$15. Daily. Golden Gate Park. 6612-1316. www.SFBotanicalGarden.org
Jon Robin Baitz’ drama about a Wall Street powerhouse who finds his personal and professional life threatened by the unraveling secrets of his past. Previews; opening night Jan. 25. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Feb. 23. 25 Van Ness Ave. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org
Chick Corea, Béla Fleck @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley
Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi
Major Barbara @ Geary Theatre
Magnificent Magnolias @ SF Botanical Gardens
The Paris Letter @ New Conservatory Theatre Center
Fri 17
Award-winning jazz cabaret singer performs her musical tribute to composer Johnny Green, with the Mike Greensill Trio. $20-$45. 8pm. Also Jan. 18. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.lindakosut.com www.societycabaret.com
Popscene presents the UK pop-R&B sensation, who makes his SF debut. $15. 9:30pm. 155 Fell St. 508-7292. www.popscene-sf.com
Alicia Dattner’s solo show explores her life with ex-boyfriends, family, love addiction, and how they all sometimes clash. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 8:30pm. $20-$100. Thru Jan. 18. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org
Jan. 16: Tunes and Toons, vintage musical cartoons. Jan. 17: Shockucational Acceptance, odd vintage films about individuality and corny Afterschool Special excerpts starring Kristy McNichol and Leigh McClosky. Thu & Fri, both $10, 8pm. 275 Capp St. 558-8117. www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Linda Kosut @ Hotel Rex
John Newman @ Rickshaw Stop
The Oy of Sex @ The Marsh
Ginger Snap @ Glama-Rama New and Classic Films @ Castro Theatre
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Stories From Our Changing Bay, about our landscape and its people. Thru Feb 23, in the renovated Gallery of California Natural Sciences. Wed-Sun 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). Thru June 30. 1000 Oak St. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org
Fri 17
Can You Dig It? @ The Marsh Berkeley
The Pornographer’s Daughter
Don Reed’s autobiographical solo show explores the 1960s: Beatles, Black Panthers, MLK, JFK and the KKK. $20-$50. Sat 8:30pm and Sun 7pm thru Feb. 2. 2120 Allston Way. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org
David Allen
David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition @ de Young Museum Last few days to see the exhibit of 300 portraits, still lifes, and landscape paintings by the gay British painter. Free$25. Thru Jan. 20. Also, The Art of Bulgari: La Dolce Vita & Beyond, an exhibit of 150 pieces of exquisite Italian jewelry made between 1950 and 1990, including gems from Elizabeth Taylor’s personal collection. Thru Feb 17. $10-$25. Tue-Sun 9:30am5:15pm. (til 8:45pm Fridays) Thru Dec. 30. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.famsf.org
Feral Creatures @ Modern Eden Gallery Opening reception of a colorful group exhibit, curated by Stephanie Chefas, full of unusual, contemporary, painterly and sculptural animal imagery (artists include Michael Alm, JAW Cooper, Peter Gronquist, Michael Page, Caitlin Hackett, Anita Kunz, Christina Mrozik, Jason Wheatley, Zoe Williams, and Kikyz1313). 6pm-10pm. Reg. hours Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. Thru Feb. 8. www.moderneden.com
The Legacy of Joseph Gifford @ LGBT Center Screening of Jill Uchiyama’s independent documentary film about the veteran dancer and arts innovator. 4pm. 1800 Market St. 865-5555. www.centersf.org
Proximities 3: Import/Export @ Asian Art Museum An exhibit that explores Asian uses of commodities and ideas; thru Feb. 23. Free (members)-$12. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org
SF Hiking Club @ Muir Beach Join GLBT hikers for a 9-mile hike to the newly restored Muir Beach with a reconstituted flood plain for steelhead trout and salmon, hike in Frank Valley alongside Redwood Creek, and then a long, gentle uphill on the Miwok trail with a mix of forest and chaparral; cross into Golden Gate National Recreation Area and complete the loop on the Middle Green Gulch trail, achieve enlightenment hiking through the Zen center, and return to Muir Beach. Bring water, lunch, layers (can get windy), hat, sunscreen, good hiking shoes. Carpool meets 9:15 at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. (510) 985-0804. www.sfhiking.com
Sierra Boggess @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Broadway star ( The Little Mermaid, The Phantom of the Opera) debuts her one-woman cabaret show, Awakening, a concert of diverse songs, accompanied by piano and cello musicians. $35-$45. 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com
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Out&About>>
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19
The Speakeasy @ Boxcar Theatre Nick A. Olivero’s immersive up-close experiental theatrical spectacle, where audience members enjoy a three-hour retro-drama while gambling and drinking at a “speakeasy” dive bar. $60-$90. Thu, Fri & Sat, admission times 7:40-8pm. Thru March 15. (hush! Address provided for guests only!) www.boxcartheatre.org
Student and Faculty Concerts @ SF Conservatory of Music Jan. 18, 8pm: an alumni recital of string and piano works by Schubert. Jan. 20, 7:30pm: baroque trumpet master class. Jan. 23, 8pm: faculty clarinet and piano concert of chamber works. Most concerts are free. 50 Oak St. 503-6322. www.sfcm.edu
Sueño Flamenco @ La Peña Cultural Center, Berkeley Bay Area Flamenco presents a night of dance and music from Seville, Spain, including solo dancer Lakshmi “La Chimi”. $30-$45. 8pm. 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. www.lapena.org
Our Vast Queer Past @ GLBT History Museum See the exhibit, Vicki Marlane: I’m Your Lady, which displays video, images and ephemera documenting the pioneering local drag, cabaret and carnival perfomer, known for decades of performances. Thru Feb 28. Also, The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus: Celebrating 35 Years of Activism Through Song, includes archival materials from the historic chorus, lead-curated by Tom Burtch, with a touch-screen display by multimedia producer John Raines. Other permanent exhibits as well. Reg. hours Mon-Sat 11am-7pm (closed Tue.) Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. 621-1107. www.glbthistory.org
Sun 19 Andres Zorn @ Legion of Honor Exhibit of the Swedish master painter’s works; also, paintings by Matisse from the SF MOMA holdings, and permanent exhibits (ongoing). $10-$25. Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave. 750-3600. www.legionofhonor.famsf.org
Armistead Maupin, Andrew Sean Greer @ The Chapel Books Inc. presents the celebrated Tales of the City author, who shares an onstage conversation about The Days of Anna Madrigal, the last in his series, with the award-winning author of The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. $35 (includes a signed first edition of Maupin’s new book). 2pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net www.thechapelsf.com
Armistead Maupin
Mon 20 36 Stories by Sam Shepard @ Z Below
Sun 19
Wed 22 Cirque du Soleil @ Taylor Street Bridge, San Jose
Word for Word’s staged reading of short works by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. Donations. 6:30pm. 470 Florida St. (866) 811-4111. www.zspace.org
The popular creative circus show’s latest spectacle, Amaluna, has moved to the South Bay leg of its tour. $45-$130 and up (VIP tix). Thru Mar. 2. www.cirquedusoleil.com
All About Image @ Robert Tat Gallery
Jason Lazarus: Live Archive @ Contemporary Jewish Museum
New exhibit of exceptional images from a variety of 20th and 21st-century photographers. Thru Feb 22. 49 Geary St. #410. 781-1122. www.roberttat.com
Tue 21 All Possible Futures @ SOMArts Cultural Center Large group exhibit of graphic designs by Bay Area artists in a variety of media. Thru Feb. 13. Reg., hours: Tue-Fri 12pm-7pm. Sat. 12pm-5pm. www.somarts.org
Arrival From Sweden @ Yoshi’s Mamma mia! The fantastic ABBA cover band (approved by the original band) returns. $29-$34. 8pm. Also Jan. 22. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com
Sat 18
Exhibit of unusual work by the Chicago artist who explores collective public archives, personal memory, and the role of photography and collecting in contemporary art and identity. Also, To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History (thru July 1). 2pm-5pm. Free (members)-$12. Thu-Tue 11am-5pm (Thu 1pm-8pm) 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org
Thu 23 Emanuel Ax, Anne Sofie von Otter @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley The virtuoso pianist and the acclaimed soprano perform works by Brahms, Mazzoli and Muhly. $30-$125. 8pm. UC Berkeley campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org
Geoff Hoyle @ The Marsh, Berkeley
The Speakeasy
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The veteran comic actor returns with his solo show, Geezer, a nostalgic meditation on his lengthy career and life. $25-$50. Thu 8pm. Sat. 5pm. Theu March 1. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org
REAL STEAKS. REAL MARTINIS. REAL SAN FRANCISCO.
Joan Ryan @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The accomplished stage, TV and film actress performs her nuanced cabaret show. $30-$40. 8pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com
Marga Gomez @ The Marsh
John Pizzarelli, Jessica Molaskey @ Venetian Room Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist/guitarist and the Broadway actress-singer perform “This Must Be the Place,” a concert of jazz classics. $48. 5pm. Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St. 392-4400. www.bayareacabaret.org
Butterflies & Blooms @ Conservatory of Flowers Popular exhibit transforms the floral gallery into a fluttering garden with 20 species of butterflies and moths. Reg. hours, 10am-4pm. Free-$7. Tue-Sun 10am4:30pm. Extended thru March 16, 2014. 100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park. 8312090. www.conservatoryofflowers.org
Richard Goode @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley The world-renouned pianist performs works by Janáček, Schubert and Debussy. $30-$75. 2pm. UC Berkeley campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave. (510) 6429988. www.calperformances.org
Science Exhibits @ The Exploratorium
Foodies, the Musical @ Eureka Theatre
Visit the fascinating science museum in its new Embarcadero location. Free-$25. Pier 15 at Embarcadero. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm (Thu night 6pm-10pm, 18+). 528-4893. www.exploratorium.edu
Theatre Rhino’s New Year’s Eve production of the wacky comedy about food, and eating food. $20-$25. 8pm. 215 Jackson St. at Battery. (800) 838-3006. www.therhino.org
Lovebirds, the lesbian comic’s new solo show, portrays an array of wacky characters, from different eras, each searching for love. $15-$50. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat. 8:30pm. Previews. Opens Jan. 25. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org
SF Sketchfest @ Castro Theatre The massive multi-venue comedy festival returns. Opening night events include the Napoleon Dynamite 10th Anniversary with several cast members and an onstage Q&A ($25. 7pm), and a tribute to the comic musical duo Tenacious D, with Jack Black and Kyle Gass, moderator Paul F. Tompkins. ($25, 9:30pm). 429 Castro St. 621-6120. www.castrotheatre.com Full festival (thru Feb. 9) schedule at www.sfsketchfest.com
To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For bar and nightlife events, go to www.bartabsf.com, and our new merged section, www.ebar.com/bartab
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<< Books
20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
Spoken word by Jim Piechota
Our Deep Gossip: Conversations with Gay Writers on Poetry and Desire by Christopher Hennessy; Univ. of Wisconsin Press, $26.95
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ithin the kaleidoscopic prism of modern literature, the LGBT community’s authorial talent is immense, diverse, exciting, and farflung. These multifaceted men and women can certainly captivate with the written word and ignite the imagination with stories, experiences and, as evident in the recently published interview compilation Our Deep Gossip, the wonder of poetic verse. Christopher Hennessy, a distinguished Boston poet, author, and associate editor for The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, follows up his 2005 compilation Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets with this entertaining and illuminating collection of interviews he’s conducted with eight celebrated
gay male poets. In the book’s foreword, Eminent Outlaws author Christopher Bram insists that poetry “should be as popular as song lyrics or stand-up comedy,” and the fact that it isn’t confounds him. Perhaps these interviews with Edward Field, John Ashbery, Richard Howard, Aaron Shurin, Dennis Cooper, Cyrus Cassells, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Kazim Ali, all selected for the quality, diversity, and influence of their work, will change perceptions, or at least enlist a new coterie of readers who may have believed that poetry was a lost art-form. The oldest poet on the roster, Edward Field, a wordsmith known for a fondness for pop culture, begins the collection with ruminations on his work. He opines interestingly on the state of poetry and how it has changed through the years, and offers thoughts on sexuality and AIDS as an “invented virus.” San Francisco-based poet Aaron Shurin shares thoughts on his prescience of becoming a poet, even
through his youth as a “sloppy juvenile, intellectually.” Shurin believes his poetry should be universally appreciated by any orientation because “it doesn’t matter if it’s two guys making love; everybody is my audience because that’s real and that happens. It’s human experience!” As Bram notes in his frontispiece, “Sex is a special poetry of the body.” This unique appreciation of a poet’s erotic side is perhaps best expressed in two of the book’s more provocative conversations: one with controversial gay author Dennis Cooper, the other with Wayne Koestenbaum, a prolific, eccentric, boundarypushing poet with more than a dozen books in his oeuvre. Cooper, whom most readers will associate with his edgy gay fiction involving gay teenagers stuck in punishing predicaments, is also an accomplished poet. He discusses his work, and his need to tap into his innermost emotions in order to create
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Scene from Madeleine Olneh’s The Foxy Merkins.
Sundance
From page 13
My Prairie Home Chelsea McMullan’s portrait of transgender singer Rae Spoon provides a poetic tour of Canada’s prairie heartland. Spoon, who is seen traveling through the beautiful Canadian landscape by Greyhound, lives by three devices: an acoustic guitar, a laptop, and preference for the thirdperson plural pronoun “they.” The Foxy Merkins Madeleine Olneh focuses on a pair of Gotham lesbian hookers: one a naïve ingénue desperate for cash, the other a sophisticated straight gal used to weird clients with control issues and peculiar needs (Lisa Haas, Jackie Monahan, Alex Karpovsky).
verse, with candor. A dramatic shift occurs in their conversation when the sensuality of his prose comes to the fore. Cooper begins to delve deeply into his personal appreciation of the male ass, something he considers “ideally the most beautiful part of the body, and at the same Jamie Marks Is Dead Carter Smith (2006’s Sundance Awardwinning short Bugcrush) adapts Christopher Barzak’s novel One for Sorrow, about the afterlife of a oncebullied teen whose body is found by a river. In a film that deliberately blurs the lines between horror and romance, Jamie’s ghost (Noah Silver) visits his school’s track star, Adam (Cameron Monaghan). Appropriate Behavior Desiree Akhavan spins a comedy around a young Persian woman struggling to hit the trifecta of bi/PC/hip Brooklyn resident. Drunktown’s Finest Sydney Freeland’s drama of troubled Native American youth includes a promiscuous transsexual. The Lunchbox A delightful exception to the Bollywood industry, this small, meditative, accidental love story involves the crazy system by which prepared lunches are delivered to office-workers in Mumbai, and two souls linked by the merest of chance. Trying to jumpstart her boring marriage, Ila fixes a special lunch for her distracted hubby. The meal is misrouted to the desk of a lonely bureaucrat about to retire. On the second day, Saajan notices a handwritten note with the scrumptious meal. His reply kicks off a pen-andpaper romance, with heartfelt ramifications for the lovers and the audience. Ritesh Batra’s debut feature reinvents the charms of old-fashioned romantic cinema for adults. Whiplash Damien Chazelle’s testosterone showdown pits a ruthless music instructor (J.K. Simmons) against an aspiring drummer (John Cameron Mitchell discovery Miles Teller) determined to succeed at any cost: his hands will bleed, and his soul will be severely challenged. Chazelle’s 2009 debut was the beautifully observed Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Song One Kate Barker-Froyland uses the hip Brooklyn music scene as a backdrop for a sister’s attempt to assist the recovery of her comatose musician brother. With a top-flight ensemble: Ann Hathaway, Johnny Flynn and Mary Steenburgen. The Skeleton Twins Craig Johnson (with co-writer Mark Heyman) gives us estranged siblings whose death-defying exploits convince them to rejuvenate their personal bond. With SNL alums Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Low Down Jeff Preiss (with writers Amy Albany and Topper Lilien) dramatizes Albany’s memoir of an edgy childhood spent with a drugaddled dad in and out of jail (famed jazz pianist Joe Albany) in 1970s Bohemian Hollywood. This one
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time it’s a drain pipe.” Cooper waxes romantically about the rush felt throughout an oral-anal connection: “When you’re rimming someone, you have access to them that they themselves can never have; you’re exploring them in a way that they can’t. I like that power dynamic.” His sentiments have much in common with Koestenbaum’s in regard to the expressive appreciation of sexuality. Koestenbaum, with his self-admitted “typewriter fetish,” isn’t too shy to admit to being (unlike Cooper) “embarrassingly phallic.” Passionate about the beauty of poetry, Hennessy presents eight master craftsmen at the top of their game. His interviews are gilded with personal information (much of it steeped in sentimentality) from these poets’ histories. His book will delight readers interested in how a poet’s mind works, and the many places a literary artist draws inspiration from.t
Scene from Chelsea McMullan’s portrait of transgender singer Rae Spoon My Prairie Home.
competes for hippest Sundance cast: John Hawkes, Elle Fanning, Glenn Close, Peter Dinklage and Flea. Life After Beth Kill Your Darlings’ Dane DeHaan headlines Jeff Baena’s comedy about a lad distraught over the demise of his girlfriend, only to find that life gets a lot zanier when the lass unexpectedly returns (John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines and Paul Reiser). God’s Pocket Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in this existential riff on a grieving dad who, confronted by the accidental death of his stepson, can’t bury the kid, move on, explain the death to his ex, or repay a large debt. John Slattery’s film (with co-writer Alex Metcalf) is bolstered by Richard Jenkins and John Turturro. Dear White People Justin Simien spoofs attitudes in a “post-racial” America. His springboard is an Ivy League white frat party with an “African-American” theme. Camp X-Ray Peter Sattler has a small-town girl (Kristen Stewart) joining the Army to trade a deadend life for a tour in Iraq. Her expectations are up-ended when she’s stationed at Guantanamo. At first the duty is awful as she faces the hatred of the Muslim male detainees. Things change dramatically after she develops an unexpected friendship with a male prisoner (Peyman Moaadi). Wetlands David Wnendt (with co-writer Klaus Falkenberg) pokes fun at Germany’s obsession with hygiene, with a female character who plays with vegetables while masturbating. Like June Squibb’s hilariously ranting old lady in Nebraska, Helen (Carla Juri) speaks without a filter, producing an uncompromising comedy.t
Music>>
t Country twosomes by Gregg Shapiro
F
oreverly (Reprise) by Billie Joe + Norah is an affectionate and respectful Everly Brothers tribute performed by the unlikely duo Billie Joe (Armstrong of Green Day) and Norah (Jones). The Grammy-winning pair takes on the Everlys’ 1958 Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, maintaining the Kentucky country spirit and the classic harmonies. “Pretty hymns� sung “in the name of tradition,� the dozen songs sound timeless, to the pair’s credit, and now stand a chance to be introduced to and experienced by a whole new generation of listeners. Standouts include “Roving Gambler,� “Long Time Gone,� “Silver Haired Daddy of Mine,� “I’m Here To Get My Baby Out of Jail� and of course, “Kentucky.� Nashville duo The Civil Wars probably couldn’t have predicted the way that their debut album Barton Hollow would take off, earning the pair accolades and a considerable following. It’s too bad that their relationships, personal and professional, fell apart amidst the successful reception. What we’re left with (for now) is an eponymous second album on Sensibility Recordings/Columbia. The black-and-white photos of smoke on the cover are a good indication of the damage to be found on the record. The sorrow is palatable, and that makes for good art on songs such as “Same Old Same Old,� “The One That Got Away,� “Dust to Dust� and “Oh Henry,� as well as the cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm.�
The Milk Carton Kids, comprised of Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, lean toward the folk side of the country sound on their second fulllength disc The Ash & Clay (Anti). The sense of humor in their name is in short-supply here, but there are a couple of toe-tappers (“Honey, Honey,� “Heaven�) in the midst of thoughtful acoustic meditations including “Memphis,� “Hope of a Lifetime� and “Hear Them Loud.� The Dixie Chicks were busy not being Dixie Chicks during their hiatus in 2013. Natalie Maines released a daring solo album, and Martie Maguire and Emily Robison returned with Amelita (Columbia), their second album under the
Court Yard Hounds moniker. With each CYH disc, the pair puts sonic distance between themselves and the trio, something that works in their favor here on songs such as the title cut, “The Aimless Upward,� the aptly titled “Rock All Night,� the heartbreaking “Divided� and the gorgeous “The Road You Take.� JT Nero aka Jeremy Lindsay (of JT and the Clouds) and Allison Russell (of Po’ Girl) are the duo Birds of Chicago. Their self-titled debut
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21
AUDITED... VERIFIED... ...AND NOW...
CERTIFIED! The
disc (available at birdsofchicago. com) takes wing, recalling another Bird (one named Andrew), as well as some of the scenesters from Chicago’s insurgent country scene. That said, Birds of Chicago occupy their own nest, feathered with folky, rootsy, twangy tunes, such as “Before She Goes,� “Moonglow Tapeworm,� “Come Morning,� “Sugar Dumplin’,� “Humboldt Crows� and “The Wide Sea.� They go down easy and stick to your ribs. Brother and sister act The Roys haul the bluegrass (and the ol’-time religion) into this column on Gypsy Runaway Train (Rural Rhythm). Elaine Roy and Lee Roy perform originals such as “You Can Count On My Love� and the title cut (about pickers who need to pick), as well as covers of classics by Merle Haggard (“Ramblin Fever�), Flatt and Scruggs (“He Took Your Place�) and Bill Monroe (“Blue Moon of Kentucky�). Representing Canadian Country, Melissa McLelland and Luke Doucet of Whitehorse put on their cowboy boots one foot at a time like the rest of us on The Fate of the World Depends on This Kiss (Six Shooter). Whitehorse colors its songs with a bluesy tint on tracks such as “Devil’s Got a Gun,� “Mismatched Eyes (Boat Song),� “Cold July,� “Radiator Blues� and the political voice of “Wisconsin.� “Jane,� the album’s centerpiece, is an unexpected dance-worthy surprise. To maintain the country mood, keep in mind the EP The Escape (thewhisperingtree.com) by The Whispering Tree (Eleanor Kleiner and Elie Brangbour), containing their singular version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,� and Riverman’s Daughter (thegrahamsmusic.net) by The Grahams (“lifelong romantic partners� Alyssa and Doug Graham).t
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refused to honor San Francisco Pride board grand marshal. him – Manning will be their of leaking some Manning, 25, is accused ent documents to 700,000 classified governm website. He has WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy charges against him, confessed to some of the on other charges. but is being court-martialed the enemy, could The most serious, aiding
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Rick Gerharter
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And with our general-market partner publications, only BAR Media can offer you verified reach to both the LGBT segment and the general population. Market your business to the largest audience of Bay Area consumers. Call our Advertising Director today at 415.359.2612
<< TV
22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
People’s choice: gay, gay, gay! by Victoria A. Brownworth
A
wards season is just getting started on the tube, and if the People’s Choice Awards were any indicator, 2014 is going to be a big year for us gays on the tube. About time. Ellen DeGeneres won her 14th consecutive People’s Choice Award for Favorite Daytime TV Host, which is both awesome and a record for the People’s Choice Awards. Queen Latifah won for Favorite New TV Talk Show Host. Memo to the great Queen: Talk to your friend Robin Roberts about coming out. We love you so much, just like we love her. You’ll be fine. Glee star and everybody’s favorite gay boy Chris Colfer won for Favorite Comedic TV Actor. This is his second consecutive win for his portrayal of Kurt Hummel. The other finalists were Jim Parsons, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Neil Patrick Harris and Darren Criss. So the gays swept that category. Swept. Favorite Network TV Comedy went to Parsons’ The Big Bang Theory, but Modern Family and Glee were among the five finalists. Speaking of Glee, Demi Lovato won for Favorite Female Artist. We love her. We hope she comes out soon, too. CBS’ The Good Wife, which has always featured LGBT storylines, and has several gay characters as well as out gay actor Alan Cumming, won for Favorite Network TV Drama. Of the five finalists, every one has a gay storyline and gay characters. Orange Is the New Black won for Favorite Streaming TV Series, while American Horror Story, from gay showrunner and creator Ryan Murphy, won for Favorite TV Movie/ Miniseries, beating out another gay finalist, Behind the Candelabra. Super queer-ish Super Fun Night won for Best New TV Comedy. The Voice, which has the most openly gay vocalists competing of all the competition shows, won for Favorite Competition TV Show. A plethora of gay-friendly actresses won as well, including Sandra Bullock, Mike & Molly star Melissa McCarthy, and The Big Bang Theory star Kaley Cuoco, who beat out finalists and Glee stars Jane Lynch and Lea Michele. And who knew there were these two categories: Favorite TV Bromance and Favorite TV Gal Pals? Winners of the former category were Sam, Dean & Castiel of Supernatural (how many years have we been talking about sexy Sam and Dean?). The gal pals were Rachel and Santana of Glee, although we think Meredith and Cristina from Grey’s Anatomy should have won that category because they are just legendary in their love for each other, and this is Cristina’s last season on Grey’s. Glee’s Kurt and Blaine were listed among the five TV couples with the best chemistry, even though we think their chemistry is more schmaltzy than sexy. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis won Favorite Hip-Hop Artist, which means their “Same Love” song resonated with a whole lot of people,
queer or not. Many people sniff at the People’s Choice Awards, but they mirror the Emmys and Grammys in many respects. What intrigued us was just how many gays won or were finalists. To us this signals a definite shift in perspective among the under-35 demographic in the U.S., who are the majority voters for these awards. Pay attention, older, homophobic people. Our column went to press last time before ABC’s GMA co-host Robin Roberts finally came out. We’ve been asking her to do this for years, but we are so grateful that she is finally breathing deep in the air outside that suffocating closet she’s been in since she was a college basketball star. We can’t imagine how freeing that must be for her and her partner, San Franciscan Amber Laign. Roberts, more than any of the other recent TV and sports personalities who have come out, resonates for a demographic that rarely gets a mention: lesbians of color. Although Roberts’ partner is white, Roberts herself, as a proudly African-American woman who has long reported on issues of race and who is also deeply religious, touches a chord for many lesbians of color who are torn between their lesbian loves and their religious families. Roberts’ coming out signaled a subtle yet tectonic shift in attitudes that are very much tied to what Americans see on TV. Fourteen People’s Choice Awards for Ellen DeGeneres means for 14 consecutive years, viewers either overlooked her being a lesbian or decided it was irrelevant to her fresh, fun talk show and her incredible comedy. She and Neil Patrick Harris are also the premiere awards presenters, which means seeing a lesbian and a gay man regularly accustoms them to our being everywhere. When Roberts came out through a Facebook comment, the news was greeted far and wide. Her lesbianism was the worst-kept secret since Rosie O’Donnell came out, but it was her story to tell. We knew she was chosen to interview President Obama on marriage equality not just because she’s African American, but also because she’s gay. We can’t drag people out of the closet, however, nor threaten them out (unless they are politicians: no rules for that kind of betrayal of our community). Rather, we should be addressing the closet itself. That the closet continues to be such an issue for our community 45 years after Stonewall makes the strongest statement there is about how intense the fears are and the discrimination still is against LGBT Americans. Roberts went through two very public battles with cancer. Both times she was close to death, both times she allowed ABC to follow her struggles with breast cancer and then a rare blood cancer. Yet through all of that, she hid her lesbianism. Fear of coming out was even greater than fear of actually dying. When are we going to change this for lesbian and gay people? When Roberts did finally make
/lgbtsf
Courtesy CBS-TV
Glee star Chris Colfer won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Comedic TV Actor.
her announcement, the support was munificent. Her bosses at ABC News issued a statement: “We love Robin and Amber, who we have all known for a long time. We were so touched by Robin’s Facebook message today, and thankful for all the loving support she has in her life.” Who wouldn’t want that kind of support from their job when they came out? But of course without ENDA, most of us throughout the country not only can’t be assured of that kind of response, but fear possibly losing our jobs. Roberts also got a response from none other than our lovely First Lady, Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama sent this message from her @FLOTUS Twitter account: “@RobinRoberts I am so happy for you and Amber! You continue to make us all proud.–mo” In sending that tweet, Mrs. Obama made a statement not just about her friend Roberts, but about all lesbian and gay couples. Change is coming. Look out, people on the wrong side of history. (We’re looking at you, Utah.) Love is love.
Foster family
Speaking of love is love, ABC Family’s The Fosters returned for its winter premiere on Jan. 13. Promotion of the series about a lesbian couple and their children, some adopted, some fostered, some born to them, has been heavy on both the tube and social media. We especially love the Twitter ad depicting Stef Foster (Terri Polo) holding wife Lena Adams (Sherri Saum) as she sleeps. So beautiful, so sexy, so sweet. The tagline is, “We’re definitely not the Brady Bunch.” The naturalness of this couple’s lesbian family is what makes The Fosters such a good drama and so engaging. While it’s reminiscent of NBC’s Parenthood, the LGBT aspect of the show is unavoidable. This is a show for us, but it’s also a show for everyone. NBC’s Dracula and Fox’s The Following resonate for this gay viewer, and the reason is clear: openly gay and lesbian sex with characters getting physical with each other. Neither show neuters non-heterosexual sexuality, which is enticement enough. But as we re-watched Season 1 of The Following in anticipation of the Season 2 premiere on Jan. 19, we were reminded of just how hot this show is. As for Dracula, there is no hotter show on network. You don’t have to be a fan of vampires to appreciate this drama. Those who pretend
lesbians and gay men suddenly appeared in the latter half of the 20th century really need to get straight with their history. Dracula is anything but. Straight, that is. Syfy’s new series Helix isn’t gay (yet), but it sure is good. Battlestar Gallactica creator Ronald Moore, who oversaw all the Star Trek revisions, is at the helm of this drama, and his skill with claustrophobic settings resonates yet again. For those of us who have been weathering the polar vortex, this series set in the Arctic Circle, where grisly experiments won’t be spied upon easily, is a chiller of a thriller. The show stars Billy Campbell, Jeri Ryan (will she play a lesbian again?), Hiroyuki Sanada and Kyra Zagorsky. Helix takes science into that realm that scares the bejesus out of all of us. What is being experimented with, and why? What will happen to the human race if whatever it is leaves the battened-down hatches of the Arctic and makes its unholy way to the inhabited parts of the world? (Think 28 Days.) The first episode aired Jan.10, and is available on Hulu (and this is a series that needs to be watched from the beginning). Mindy Kaling was ABC’s Person of the Week Jan. 10. Kaling is one of the tube’s brightest lights: smart, funny, sexy, queer-friendly, what more could we want? She was hilarious in The Office, and while her Fox show The Mindy Project doesn’t always hit the right notes, it’s still funnier than the majority of sitcoms on the tube. We were excited to see her profiled in Elle magazine this month, but her cover created a feminist furor. Why was she shot in black-and-white? Why was her somewhat zaftig body not shown like previous (and slender) TV funny women Amy Poehler and Tina Fey? Kaling told ABC News she was insulted by the comments. She said using just her face to sell the magazine made her feel very proud, she thought she looked really beautiful. She does: the photo is like an iconic 1930s movie-star shot. She was horrified to discover that people thought she was too hideous to be seen in full-figure. It was hard to listen to the pain the controversy had caused her, particularly as it didn’t come from men, but from other women. Kaling didn’t say outright that white feminists might want to actually speak to the woman of color in question first before taking a stand allegedly supporting her, but that was her subtext. We thought it
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took some big ones to speak out the way she did. And we’re honored to have her lovely photo on our bulletin board. Speaking of speaking out, and more body shaming, though this time from the usual suspects, the other furor this week was when a reporter at the Television Critics Association meeting Jan. 9 asked Lena Dunham, Girls creator and star, why she takes off her clothes “randomly” on the show. Really? Dunham didn’t freak out, but her producers Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner went ballistic. Apatow carried his frustration at what he termed misogyny over onto Twitter, while Konner said the question put her into a “rage spiral.” Kaling and Dunham are basically the same size, not catwalk-thin but hardly fat. What disturbs us about both these incidents is the perception issue: that women who are maybe size 10 instead of size 2, whose stomachs aren’t washboard tight when they are sitting (just like real women), are somehow grotesque. These two young women aren’t candidates for My 600 Lb. Life, and it’s shocking that controversies over the diversity of women’s bodies are still plaguing actresses in 2014. Memo to Katie Couric: If you wouldn’t talk genitalia with your other actress guests, you shouldn’t do it with Laverne Cox (Orange/ New Black) or Carmen Carerra just because they’re transgender. Couric said, “Your private parts are different now, right?” That said, Cox said the Jan. 6 episode (watch it at ABC. com) drew attention to issues vital for trans persons. In a statement on Jan. 10, Cox said she was grateful to Couric for the opportunity to discuss trans issues, and that she was “so deeply moved by the dialogues that are happening around my appearance” on Katie. Cox also said, “It is my dream that by highlighting the deep humanity of trans people’s lives in the media, elevating actual trans voices to speak the truth of our lived experiences, in ways that don’t sensationalize and objectify us, those human voices and stories can be part of the disruption needed to end the disproportionate injustices that threaten so many trans people’s lives, particularly the lives of trans women of color.” Classy response, addressing the issues raised both on the episode itself and in the controversy since. Meanwhile, as this body controversy was going on, 76-year-old Linda Lavin, who plays Sean Hayes’ mother Lorna on NBC’s Sean Saves the World, was talking about how much she needed a good fuck on the Jan. 9 episode of the sitcom. We watch this show every other week to see if it gets better, gayer in any real way, or just less embarrassing. It’s as bad as most LGBT TV is good these days. We cannot understand why it hasn’t been cancelled. Watching Hayes caught in the closet (yes, sledgehammer metaphor there) with his boss, who has a huge erection from accidentally taking Viagra instead of Aleve, and has to take his pants off while the two watch his father and Lorna get ready to copulate, was both not funny and seriously creepy. We also are tired of people of color on the show used as either seat-fillers or the constant butt of jokes. Tiresome and racist: not a good combo. If the producers of Sean Saves the World want to see how a truly funny sitcom works, we suggest Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory and Trophy Wife. These shows never disappoint: they are hilarious and have their poignant moments. To keep abreast of the controversies, watch stellar new programming, and keep in touch with who’s coming out and who’s not, you really must stay tuned.t
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January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23
New generation shows confidence by Tim Pfaff
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one too soon, a young generation of conductors is stepping onto the podiums of an astounding group of aging ones, few less controversially than the openly gay French-Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin. If there are people who don’t like his work, they’re being quiet about it; meanwhile, he’s being snapped up by major opera companies and symphony orchestras for prestigious guest stints. Not that he doesn’t have a day job – typically now, he has two of them, as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (since 2008, replacing Valery Gergiev) and, since last season, of the august Philadelphia Orchestra. He’s two installments into an impressive Mozart-Da Ponte opera cycle for DG, and the company has signed him to record with his two orchestras – where his virtues with the stick are somewhat easier to assess. In successive months, DG has released major works with unusually interesting couplings: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Pathetique, with Rotterdam, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, no less, with the Philadelphians. Both have quickly become my go-to recordings for these works when what I want is to listen and savor. The final symphony of the iconic gay composer has been with NezetSeguin, he says, since the first concert he heard with his hometown Montreal Symphony when he was eight, and it’s cropped up at signal times throughout his own career as
Conductor Yannick NezetSeguin enjoys a treat in Philadelphia.
conductor. That he opened his first season as music director in Rotterdam with the work – a staple of Gergiev’s – speaks volumes about his confidence as much in the work as in himself. The first thing you notice about Nezet-Seguin’s Pathetique is its subtlety and extraordinary clarity of textures. At least since Leonard Bernstein’s last, angst-ridden traversal of the Sixth, conductors have tended to go for the emotional jugular with it. If conductors really let the music speak for itself, as is sometimes deemed superior, we wouldn’t need them. Nezet-Seguin lets it unfold naturally, without goading, and the immediate yield is direct access to the score’s preternatural beauty.
The temptation at first is to turn the volume up, and then again, but if you have iffy speakers, or neighbors, don’t. When, in the development section, Tchaikovsky asks for an orchestral scream, you get one, with all the surprise the composer intended. But, although Nezet-Seguin’s draws a full range of expression from his players, and the movements are distinctively characterized, what’s most impressive is the musical achievement over the very long line. The heartbreak is in the opening minutes, heralded by lamenting winds, and the remainder of the piece is its working out. The finale ends on the kind of hush you might expect only from Claudio Abbado these days, and it’s good to know that someone among Abbado’s successors is likeminded. Rounding out the disc are six Tchaikovsky Romances, from Opp. 6 and 73, with the voice parts transposed for solo violin, a dark-toned, eloquent Lisa Batishvili, with NezetSeguin at the piano. True, these songs are ultimately more reward-
HBO/John P. Johnson
(Left to right:) Murray Bartlett as Dom, Jonathan Groff as Patrick, and Frankie J. Alvarez as Augustin in HBO’s Looking, which debuts this coming Sunday night, Jan. 19.
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Looking
From page 13
The actor says that his own sexuality has become a non-issue. He doesn’t feel that being gay, or playing a gay role, will be a hindrance in finding new roles to play. “Being pigeonholed is not specific to gay actors,” he said. “When you’re in a hit show, you’re pigeonholed. I did Broadway musicals, and I did Glee. It took hard work for me to be able to show that I could act without singing. It’s universal: you have to be prepared for the challenge to prove yourself.” Looking features many familiar San Francisco landmarks, including BART, Muni, the Folsom Street Fair, Castro Street (with the familiar Castro Theatre sign blazing in the night) and the ever-popular Stud bar, where Patrick and Richie dance together. Viewers will also meet Patrick’s friends, each of whom has their own issues to deal with. One of the strongest of the series’ early
storylines involves Dom (Murray Bartlett), who agrees to meet his ex for coffee. It’s their first contact in eight years. The now-wealthy ex, to whom Dom lent a great deal of money, wants Dom back. Dom wants his money back. MIA from Looking are the lesbian and trans communities, at least in the first four episodes that were made available to the B.A.R. for viewing. Granted, this is a show about gay men, but the women and trans communities are highly visible in San Francisco. Their complete absence in Looking seems odd. But Looking is fast-paced and often quite funny. At times it will feel so familiar it may embarrass some viewers. It’s a slice of real life as gay men live it in the City by the Bay. Groff said that he thoroughly enjoyed shooting the eight half-hour episodes that comprise Looking’s freshman year. He hopes viewers will tune in so that he can return as Patrick. In the meantime?
HBO/John P. Johnson
Jonathan Groff as Patrick in HBO’s Looking.
“I’m looking for a job,” he said with a laugh.t Look for Looking on Sun., Jan. 19 at 10:30 PM on HBO. Episodes will also be available online and On Demand.
ing with a singer, as Tchaikovsky intended, but Batishvili and NezetSeguin delve so deeply into them that, while they are playing, with extremes of sensitivity, I was not merely content with their versions but utterly hypnotized by them. If it’s a slam-bang, sonic spectacular Rite of Spring you’re after, don’t even bother with Nezet-Seguin’s – and as we learned last year, the catalogue is bulging with the showpiece recordings. Nezet-Seguin is stalking different prey, and bags it. Again, there’s a startlingly strong line from the opening bassoon wail (which gets a new context in the shadow of the opening of the Pathetique) to the culminating cosmic groan. There’s nothing careful about Nezet-Seguin’s reading, but his care
with the score is always front and center. I long ago lost count of the number of Rites I heard last year, its centennial, but I was still hearing new layerings of instrumentation and rhythm in this new one. This Rite steals out of the crypts of time to seek its sacrificial catharsis. The recording as a whole reflects a deep sense of history on Nezet-Seguin’s part, and a lively sense of humor, or at least play. He salutes his Philadelphia predecessor Leopold Stokowski (who recorded The Rite with the Philadelphians in 1929) by including some of the transcriptions of Bach organ works that brought Stokowski the mixed blessing of world renown by their use in Disney’s Fantasia. Had you thought Nezet-Seguin took the approach he did with The Rite because he was shy of orchestral sonic punch, these blistering performances would convince you otherwise. They came from a different recording session, but their bravado, and the Stokowskian sense of the greatness of the originals, add considerably to the picture of Nezet-Seguin the musician. He’s hardly the only conducting Wunderkind today – how do they all find work? – but it’s gratifying that he brings such range and depth.t
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VANESSA ZAHORIAN IN TOMASSON’S GISELLE (© ERIK TOMASSON)
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SF Ballet launches our 2014 Nite Out season with Helgi Tomasson’s lavish production of Giselle! Then join Nite Out hosts Principal Dancer Damian Smith and Corps de Ballet Dancer Shannon Marie Rugani and other SF Ballet dancers for a post-show party. Get to know our dancers, mingle with friends, enjoy complimentary cocktails, light bites, and a live DJ. TICKETS: sfballet.org/NiteOut
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PERSONALS Vol. 44 • No. 3 • January 16-22, 2014
www.ebar.com ✶ www.bartabsf.com
Like a Record, Baby San Francisco Album Project’s drag and rock mix by Ray Aguilera
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an Francisco has a rich history of drag, which has brought us everything from the acid-tinged musicals of The Cockettes, to extravaganzas dedicated to this season’s reigning pop divas. But The San Francisco Album Project is a bit different. See page 2 >>
A recent production of the SF Album Project.
Travis Santell Rowland
James Adomian performs at Sketchfest. He’s cute. He’s gay. Give him a hug.
Funny s s e n i s bu SF Sketchfest’s annual comedy invasion
by Ronn Vigh
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anuary is here and on more than one occasion I’ve winced at the sight of my credit card bill. I’ve also voluntarily hit the treadmill more times in the last two weeks than I have since last Summer. Spend less and work out, have been two New Years resolutions of mine that I can’t wait to be tired of upholding. See page 2 >>
Luke Fontana
The BEST is yet to come
Serving the LGBT communities since 1971
2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
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SF Album Project
From page 1
Pairing gender-blending performance art drag with some of the greatest albums of the last few decades, the Album Project presents classic records in their entirety. On Sunday, January 19, the Album Project will be breaking out the flannel shirts and plaid glitter for a drag interpretation of Nirvana’s breakthrough 1990s classic Nevermind. According to Robert Barber, (who produces the bi-monthly Album Project shows, alongside Nathan Rapport and Michael Soldier)
EDITOR Jim Provenzano DESIGNERS Jay Cribas, Scott King ADVERTISING SALES Scott Wazlowski 415-359-2612 CONTRIBUTORS Ray Aguilera, Matt Baume, Scott Brogan, Heather Cassell, Coy Ellison, Michael Flanagan, Dr. Jack Fritscher, John F. Karr, T. Scott King, Sal Meza, David Elijah-Nahmod, Adam Sandel, Donna Sachet, Jim Stewart, Ronn Vigh PHOTOGRAPHY Biron, Marques Daniels, Don Eckert, Lydia Gonzales, Rick Gerharter, Jose Guzman-Colon, Georg Lester, Dan Lloyd, Jim Provenzano, Rich Stadtmiller, Monty Suwannukul, Steven Underhill
the Album Project came into existence after years of working within San Francisco’s thriving drag scene. “Nathan and I were bouncing ideas back and forth trying to find our own niche, our own take on a drag show. Some of our favorite drag events ever were the ‘album’ nights at Trannyshack back when it was at The Stud. That concept was first thought up there at Trannyshack by Heklina, Peaches Christ and Vinsantos, and we wanted to try and build off of it. Once Nathan and I were able to bring Precious Moments (Soldier) on board as our third producer/director we knew we had to go for it.” The first show in May of last year featured Yaz’s 1982 record Upstairs at Eric’s. Since then, the Album Project crew have also tacked Radiohead’s OK Computer Prince’s Parade, and Roxy Music’s self-titled debut from 1972. They’re not traditional drag fare, and that’s part of the beauty of Album Project shows. According to Barber, one of the ideas driving the shows is that that “drag performance can be many things; not just in content, but in form as well.” In keeping with that boundarypushing, the Album Project performances are not your typical lip-sync show in a bar. Thus far the shows have also been presented in a “nontraditional” venue for drag performance. The first four happened at The Chapel on Valencia Street, and this month’s Nirvana show is moving to the Victoria Theater. “The venue is very important to a show like this one,” Barber says. “[At first,] we weren’t sure just how the night would be experienced as a whole. Is it a club night that has a show? Or is the Album Project a night at the theatre with a listening party before and afterwards? A combination of the two?”
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Syphillis Diller (center) performs in the SF Album Project’s Prince tribute.
Producer Robert Barker
Before and after the shows, DJs spin a mix of tunes from the same year as the featured album, giving audiences some context for the material, as well as a crash course in excellent tunes. The shows themselves are the result of collaborations between the producers and a wide range of San Francisco drag performers. The Nirvana show will star Johnny Kat, U-Phoria, Jordan L’Moore, Ambrosia Salad,Vivvyanne Forevermore, Raya Light, Roxanne RedMeat, and Elijah Minnelli. “Watching a drag show in a theatre instead of a nightclub elevates the performance, albeit superficially,” said Barber. “Ultimately what happens on the stage has to live up
The SF Album Project will perform Nirvana’s Nevermind.
to the grandeur and history of the venue. This is something I hope we’re able to do with the Victoria Theatre.” We asked Barber what’s next for the Album Project, and he opted to maintain the mystery for a bit longer—the album for the next show is announced at the end of the show. But he did offer this tidbit. “The March show is the day before
St. Patrick’s Day, so perhaps we’ll be doing something relating to that.” t The Album Project performs Nirvana’s Nevermind at the Victoria Theatre, Sunday, January 19. $15-$20. 8pm. 2961 16th St. Tickets: http://store. peacheschrist.com/products/129the-san-francisco-album-projectnevermind.aspx
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SF Sketchfest
From page 1
Fortunately, The 13th Annual SF Sketchfest takes over our city by the bay starting January 23, with an eclectic variety of performances celebrating smash TV shows, cult classic movies, comedic bands and brilliant stand-ups. Yours truly will also be participating in a few SketchFest shows this year as well. Along with Tenacious D getting a tribute night, the Futurama cast will do a live reading, many more talents perform, so many that it’s a bit exhausting. Here is a list of some of my favorite picks in this year’s lineup.
BARtab is published by BAR Media, Inc. PUBLISHER/PRESIDENT Michael M. Yamashita CHAIRMAN Thomas E. Horn VP AND CFO Patrick G. Brown SECRETARY Todd A. Vogt BAR Media, Inc. 225 Bush Street, Suite 1700, San Francisco, CA 94104 (415) 861-5019 www.BARtabSF.com NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media 212.242.6863 LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad Member National Gay Newspaper Guild Copyright © 2014, Bay Area Reporter, a division of BAR Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Kyle Gass and Jack Black, aka Tenacious D.
Napoleon Dynamite 10th Anniversary SketchFest kicks off right in the heart of the Castro, where you can go practice your sweet dance moves set to Jamiroquai after taking in a screening of the cult classic, Napoleon Dynamite followed by a conversation/Q & A with cast members Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), Efren Ramirez (Pedro) and Jon Gries (Uncle Rico). Please leave your pet llama at home. Thursday, January 23, 7pm. After that screening, comic musical duo Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) get a See page 3 >>
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Read more online at www.ebar.com
SF Sketchfest
From page 2
well-deserved tribute, with onstage chats, clips, a little rockn’ music 9:30pm. Each $25. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St. The Realest Real Housewives The Real Housewives franchise has become a train wreck of a phenomenon. While many won’t admit they have programmed their DVR to record any of these. I do know a group of gay guys who threw a Real Housewives of the Castro party complete with drag characters, tag lines and confessionals. Comedy powerhouses which include Natasha Leggero, June Diane Raphael and NIck Thune star in this staged reading of scenes from The Real Housewives series. Friday, January 24, 8pm. $20. Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson St. The Great Debate: Girls vs. Golden Girls I could not leave out any mention of my beloved The Golden Girls from the listings- I can deliver most of the punchlines and summarize each episode in my sleep if needed to. If you don’t want to travel all the way to FiDi for The Housewives show, how about taking In Matt Price and Ilyse Mimoun’s popular debate series, aptly titled The Great Debate! This time they will discuss: Girls versus Golden Girls. Who empower us and who are a bunch of stunted, oppressed degenerates? Friday, January 24, 8pm. $15. StageWerx, 446 Valencia St.
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3
Farewell, Futurama! Good news, everyone! The wacky animated scifi series may be finished, but the cast isn’t, and many of them will be performing a few favorite scripts from the show. Saturday, January 25. $25. 1pm. All ages. Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter St. Stand Up Spotlight: James Adomian I’ve had the pleasure of working with James Adomian, who is a stellar comic who just happens to be gay. His impressions and memorable characters are not to miss, and it’s widely agreed that it’s just a mere matter of time before Adomian is a household name. The Advocate named him a part of their Top 40 Under 40, and he can be heard on many a podcast. Also appearing: Baron Vaughn. Sunday, January 26, 8pm. $20. Cobb’s Comedy Club, 915 Columbus Ave. Mortified There’s an episode of The Golden Girls where Blanche and Sophia read Rose’s diary and are mortified by the things she wrote, presumably about them. Well, it turns out it was her 4H pig-raising diary she kept as a child... and I bet we all have those journal entries or some other not-so-fond memory from our childhood that we documented and would be mortified if a live audience of strangers heard it. Some willing adults will read their actual entries from childhood in this hit show. Tuesday, January 28, 8pm. $20. Punchline Comedy Club, 444 Battery St.
Maya Rudolph and Gretchen Lieberum return as Princess, the Prince cover band.
Megan Mullally in Concert You may remember her best as the wacky and often tossed Karen Walker from Will & Grace. Now, Megan Mullally has teamed up with actress Stephanie Hunt to form their new band, Nancy & Beth. Friday, January 31, 8pm. $30. Kanbar Hall at JCCSF, 3200 California St. Talk Show: The Game Show Bay Area comedy alum Guy Branum spotlights two of television’s least respected formats, the talk show and the game show, by combining them into one entertaining evening of guests name-dropping and anecdote-ing their way to victory. Friday, January 31, 8pm. $20. StageWerx, 446 Valencia St.
Kurt Stauffer
Nellie McKay
Nellie McKay Maybe you don’t know her name, but you recognize her music from TV shows such as Mad Men, Weeds, Grey’s Anatomy, and Nurse Jackie. Maybe you see a picture of Nellie and realize that you did catch her appearance on multiple chat shows. She’s a singer, songwriter, actress, pianist, ukulele player, satirist, comedian and a good pick to check out at SketchFest. Saturday, January 25, 8pm. $30. Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa St.
Farewell, Futurama!
Scott Capurro
Scott Capurro’s Position While he spends most of his time in England, Capurro originally from The Bay Area is usually found performing here in San Francisco at least twice a year. On this trip, he brings his show Scott Capurro’s Position to The Punchline Comedy Club where he and sidekick David Mills will partake in a fun, informal and gossipy banter about anything and everything. Thursday, January 30, 8pm. $20. Punchline Comedy Club, 444 Battery St.
The Business I must give some local love to a weekly San Francisco based comedy show whose business members are some of the most unique and brightest in the Bay Area. The Business will appear several times during SketchFest including this evening at
their regular venue.The Dark Room will their homegrown comedy sells out almost every week. Wednesday, February 5, 8pm. $10. The Dark Room, 2263 Mission St. Inside Inside Amy Schumer Amy Schumer has recently shot into the spotlight through her stand up, sketch series Inside Amy Schumer on Comedy Central and from her appearances on some of Comedy Central’s roasts. Inside Inside Amy Schumer will feature Schumer and some of the writers of her hit TV series to discuss its provocative and wicked style. Thursday, February 6, 8pm. $25. Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter St. Cabin Boy: 20th Anniversary Midnight Mass and underground drag superstar Peaches Christ will steer the free wheeling conversation with Cabin Boy star Chris Elliott and the movie’s co-writer and director Adam Resnick. Friday, February 7, 7:30pm. $20. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St.
Celebrity Autobiography: The Music Edition Outrageous and true music memoirs will be acted out live onstage by actors and comedians, including Rachel Dratch, Florence Henderson and Fred Willard. $50. Saturday, February 8, 4pm & 7pm, Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter St. Princess Saturday Night Live vet and Bridesmaids co-star Maya Rudolph teams up with Gretchen Lieberum to turn their mutual adoration of Prince into a musical project. Put on your raspberry berets and make your way to Mezzanine to party with them like it’s 1999! Oh wait, if it’s 1999, then we may not even know who Maya Rudolph is yet! Sunday, February 9. $40. 8pm, Mezzanine, 444 Jessie St. t SF Sketchfest runs from January 23 to February 9, and dozens of Bay Area venues. For tickets and daily schedules, go to www.sfsketchfest.com
Serving the LGBT communities since 1971
4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
Super-camp
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D’Arcy Drollinger’s sexy satire’s the sh*t! by David-Elijah Nahmod
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Drink it up!
www.BARtabSF.com Now weekly, BARtab’s insightful articles, celebrity interviews, vivid photos and comprehensive listings are the new standard in LGBT nightlife coverage. BARtab now compliments our award-winning News and Arts sections.
’Arcy Drollinger loves Blaxploitation cinema. Cheesy all black action flicks like Cleopatra Jones can make his day. Just imagine if those beloved cult classics were remade with white actors in drag! Wonder no more. Drollinger’s Shit & Champagne, opening Friday January 17 at Rebel, is what the actor/dancer calls “whitesploitation.” “It’s based on films like Coffy and Foxy Brown,” Drollinger said to BARtab. “By calling it whiteploitation, I’m turning the blaxpolitation genre on its ear!” It’s all in good fun. Drollinger stars as Champagne Horowitz Jones Dickerson White, the gun-totin’ heroine. Perennial drag favorite Matthew Martin co-stars as Dixie Stampede, the bad girl. “She’s based on the combination of Shelley Winters (the acting great who played the villain in the original Cleopatra Jones) and Joey Heatherton, a popular dancer on 1960s TV. “We’ve got some amazing character actors in the show, and some karate fights in high heels,” Drollinger promises. The surreal-sounding revenge fantasy has Champagne, a divorced exotic dancer from the wrong side of the tracks, seeking revenge for the brutal murders of her fiancé and half-sister. She takes on Mal-Wart, the biggest sex, drug and back-to-school clothing ring in the country. When her best friend becomes addicted to booty bumps, Champagne has no choice but to go undercover and infiltrate the corrupt Mal-Wart. Drollinger said that the bootybumping won’t be limited to the stage. On Saturday evening performances, there will be a little Burlesque, with real honest to God pole dance performances. Shit and Champagne is old home week for Drollinger. The show enjoyed a successful run in New York City, in spite of its naughty title. In a review of its original New York run, Paper magazine described the show as “a scatological, totally hilarious comedy.” In his blurb for the show, Hairspray playwright Mark O’Donnell called it, “Showgirls meets Kill Bill. “ Yet a quick online search proves that many publications and websites wouldn’t even list the show by name, spelling the title as S__t & Champagne. “A publicity firm in New York tried to get me to change the title,” said Drollinger. “The gay and queer press gave it a lot of positive coverage, but not the mainstream papers.”
Mathu Anderson
D’Arcy Drollinger as Champagne Horowitz Jones Dickerson White, the gun-totin’ heroine of Shit & Champagne.
It can be a hard sell to be seen and heard these days with such unusual works, show titles notwithstanding. “Theater is a business,” Drollinger said. “It’s easier to produce a musical version of The Addams Family than a new product. TV shows sell. With Shit and Champagne, there was a question whether or not people would take a chance on something they don’t know. It’s all about figuring out the best way to make what you’re making.” Longtime Bay Area residents may recall Drollinger’s earlier years in the alternative theatre scene, particularly his musical duo band Enrique, with Jason Mecier. The pair performed post-pop and punk music with a retro style. Mecier’s also known for his noodle and foundobject collage portraits of celebrities ranging from Dolly Parton, PeeWee Herman to the late Tammy Faye Bakker. Drollinger’s other original musicals include a range of darkly comic works, including Project: Lohan, Scalpel!, The Possession of Mrs. Jones, Above and Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Showgirls, Suburbia 3000, and The Cereal Killers. His Broadway credits include the original productions of The Producers and Hairspray the Musical.
BARtab’s hip style and website www.BARtabSF.com features daily posts on nightly events. It’s essential reading for LGBT men and women and their friends who enjoy local bars and dance clubs. • Advance articles on artists performing live • Diverse coverage of all communities, from bears to drag, upscale cabaret shows to offbeat alternative events • A weekly photo page of Steven Underhill’s fun, lively coverage of local nightspots and celebrity-filled events • In-depth interviews with local and visiting performers • Comprehensive, convenient listings of Bay Area bars and nightclubs and events Visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife Enjoy our handy online page-view version at www.issuu.com/bayareareporter
Mathu Anderson
That Champagne’s loaded!
D’Arcy Drollinger
Locally, he also brought his jazzcamp choreography skills to the Thrillpeddlers productions of Vice Palace and Hot Greeks. Drollinger has also directed and performed in the local drag productions of episodes from the hit TV shows Sex and the City, Roseanne, Friends, Designing Women and Three’s Company. When he’s not so super busy, performing in theater in Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco, Drollinger is a popular Castro dance teacher. “When I moved back to San Francisco, I couldn’t find a dance class I was connecting to,” he said. “So I decided to do what I want to do. The worst that could happen is that I could dance by myself. But there was good word of mouth: after six months I had about 12-15 people. After eleven months more and more people were coming.” Drollinger calls it Sunday Skool because it meets Sundays at 11am. More details can be found at D’Arcy Drollinger’s official website. He described his unusual classes, which are held at The Academy of Ballet, 2121 Market Street, as “a body-positive, age-positive, sexpositive dance class. I have people who are sixty-plus doing sexy moves in a safe place. It’s an exciting thing to be a part of.” t Shit and Champagne will run Fridays and Saturdays, January 17 through February 8, 8pm at Rebel. Tickets are $20, with optional VIP champagne tables for $120. 1760 Market Street, 431-4204. www.darcydrollinger.com
t
Read more online at www.ebar.com
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5
January joys
Grace Lawrence
Donna Sachet, Renita Valdez, Bobby Sleker at a dual birthday party at the Encore Lounge.
Sharon McNight will perform at Feinstein’s at the Nikko January 16 and 17.
by Donna Sachet
J
anuary, as you may know, is generally the most difficult month for a social columnist, since significant events are less common and many of the “usual suspects” have taken flight for winter vacation spots. Nevertheless, your intrepid social columnist for the Bay Area Reporter continues to stay on the town and will report herein that which catches our eye. One of the most highly anticipated events of New Year’s Day must be at the lovely historic Victorian home of John Newmeyer, where brunch is presented, guests mingle amiably, and a half dozen romances or so have blossomed. This year was no exception! Somewhere around 200 attendees included Skye Paterson, Jeff Martin, Thomas Ray, Dan Joraanstad and Bob Hermann, Doug Waggener, Matt Buchanan, Patrik Gallineaux, and Shane Mayer. The brunch menu followed all the traditions said to bring good luck to the new year with green salad, black-eyed peas, and succulent ham, not to mention free-flowing Bloody Marys. John is the ultimate host, offering his sprawling home as a setting, greeting each guest at the door, and making introductions as the event progresses. And we met at least two gentlemen who may appear in our immediate future. We can’t think of a better way to start off 2014! Last Saturday’s Doll House at Midnight Sun was another smashing success. Performers included Empresses Galilea and Alexis Miranda, Khmera Rouge, Misty Blue, Danielle Logan, Keri Hanna, DaftNee Gesuntheit, Lady Bug, and Emperor John Weber; tips were flying and generous. This monthly event, started by Reigning Empress Patty McGroin, was one of the first
and certainly most successful drag shows at this long-running bar and has added a regular stream of income to the charitable efforts of this year’s reign. Together with Reigning Emperor Drew Cutler’s Safari Wednesdays at The Edge, these two monthly events have helped raise significant money which will be distributed to various organizations, including St. Aidan’s, AIDS Emergency Fund, Night Ministry, and Rocket Dog Rescue, at Imperial Coronation this year on Saturday, Feb. 22, at the Design Center. Much more about that annual extravaganza will appear in this column as the month approaches. And thanks to The Edge and Midnight Sun for their unflagging support. What happens when a San Francisco Empress and Grand Duchess combine their birthday celebrations? One incredible party with a guest list a mile long! On Sunday, January 5, Empress Renita Valdez, the “Burrito Bombshell,” and Grand Duchess Colette LeGrande, the “Platinum Brick,” joined forces at the lively Encore Lounge on California Street. Well-wishers from here and a number of other California cities included Bobby Sleker, Paloma Volare St. James, J.P.Soto, Arthur Mainster, Jay Harcourt, Steve Gibson, Savannah Summers, David Fleming, Barry Rogers, and Arnel Valle. Even Ray Tilton emerged from a recent hospital stay to help emcee the festivities. Not a fundraiser, but simply a party, this event was a genuinely heartwarming reunion as well as birthday celebration. By the way, the Ducal Court of San Francisco recently won the prestigious Court of Distinction Award from the International Court Council and will receive that award at the Jose Honors presentation in
New York this March. Congratulations! It was our honor to witness the official swearing-in of Jose Cisneros as City Treasurer last Wednesday in the South Light Court of City Hall. Here’s a politician who loyally fulfills his duties while creatively introducing extra programs designed to reduce dependence on pay-day loan companies, encourage personal financial literacy, and aggressively pursue corporate tax evasion, among other things. Quite a powerhouse attended, including elected officials Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom (who did the swearing-in), Mayor Ed Lee, District Attorney George Gascon, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, Supervisors David Campos, Scott Wiener, David Chiu, Malia Cohen, and Jane Kim. Also attending were
supportive citizens and friends Bevan Dufty, Steve Kawa, Dan Glazer, Steve Adams, Mark Murphy, John Rosin, Alex Randolph, and Jose’s partner Mark Kelleher. This weekend, you’ve got the new Wild Winter Ball, hosted by Imperial Crown Prince Kevin Lisle and Princess Emma Peel on Saturday at 1500 Howard, 7PM, and AIDS Emergency Fund’s Dancing Queen tea dance on Sunday at Beatbox from 1-8PM. Coming up in January, you are bound to see us at Feinstein’s at the Nikko often, since their line-up includes some incredible talents and personal friends of ours. Tonight and tomorrow, January 16 and 17, the voice and comedy that is Sharon McNight returns to San Francisco with The First Thirty Years – From Moose Hall to Carnegie Hall. On January 23, we welcome Joan Ryan, known for her television appearances, theatrical roles, and incredible voice, fresh from her acclaimed
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS:
1) On ARVs with an undetectable viral load 2) CD4 T-Cell above 600 3) Clean and Sober 4) No Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C Thomas Ray
Jeff Martin, Skye Paterson, Thomas Ray at John Newmeyer’s New Year’s Day brunch.
courtesy John Weber
John Weber and Patty McGroin at The Midnight Sun’s Doll House event.
show at New York’s 54 Below. Then there’s Sam Harris January 24 and 25 and Leslie Jordan January 31, both not to be missed. Hope to see you there! t
Contact Dr. Jacob Lalezari for more information Phone: (415) 353-0800 drjay@questclinical.com
<< On the Tab
6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
f eON THE TA0B 14 2 January 16 23,
★
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Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun Open during renovations, the popular video bar ends each week with gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. midnightsunsf.com
Hard @ Qbar DJ Haute Toddy spins electro beats; cute gogo guys shake it. $3. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com
Hardbox @ Powerhouse Gehno Aviance and Guy Ruben’s monthly night includes heavy grooves, mixed martial arts and capoeira demos with hotties. $5. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com
Joe Wicht @ R3, Guerneville Escape for the weekend to the Russian River and enjoy our favorite piano bar show tunes songster. No cover. Nightly thru Jan. 19, 8pm-closing. Triple R Bar and Grill, 16390 4th St., Guenreville. (707) 8698399. www.ther3hotel.com
Josh Klipp and The Klipptones @ Palace Hotel The Ethel Merman Experience at Beaux
Tue 21
W
ho do you have to sleep with to get a drink around here? Enjoy retro-groovy dance benefits (Dancing Queen at Beatbox), drag concerts that’ll make you flip your wig (Ethel Merman), a rockin’ band that’s the opening act but top notch in our opinion (hint: The Skins), and cat videos!
Thu 16 Comedy Returns @ El Rio The monthly cool comedy night has moved to each third Thursday, with Yayne Abeba, Jabari Davis, Nina G., Bobby Golden, and host Lisa Geduldig. $7-$20. 8pm. 3158 Mission St. at Precita. elriosf.com brownpapertickets.com/event/550617
Comedy Thursdays @ Esta Noche The revamped weekly LGBT- and queerfriendly comedy night at the Mission club is hosted by various comics (1st Thu, Natasha Muse; 2nd Thu, Emily Van Dyke; 3rd Thu Eloisa Bravo and Kimberly Rose; 4th Thu Johan Miranda). No cover; one-drink min. 8pm. 307916th St. comedybodega.com
Fuego @ The Watergarden, San Jose Weekly event, with Latin music, half-off locker fees and Latin men, at the South Bay private men’s bath house. $8-$39. Reg hours 24/7. 18+. 1010 The Alameda. (408) 275-1215. www.thewatergarden.com
Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar. 10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. HiTopsSF.com
John Newman @ Rickshaw Stop Popscene presents the UK pop-R&B sensation, who makes his SF debut. $15. 9:30pm. 155 Fell St. 508-7292. www.popscene-sf.com
Jukebox @ Beatbox Veteran DJ Page Hodel (The Box, Q and many other events) presents a new weekly dance event, with soul, funk, hip-hop and house mixes. $10. 21+. 9pm-2am. 314 11th St. at Folsom. www.BeatboxSF.com
Magic Parlor @ Chancellor Hotel Whimsical Belle Epoque-style sketch and magic show that also includes historical San Francisco stories; hosted by Walt Anthony; optional pre-show light dinner and desserts. $40. Thu-Sat 8pm. 433 Powell St. www.SFMagicParlor.com
The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough’s weekly drag show with gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. edgesf.com
Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences
Linda Kosut @ Hotel Rex Award-winning jazz cabaret singer performs her musical tribute to composer Johnny Green, with the Mike Greensill Trio. $20-$45. 8pm. Also Jan. 18. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.lindakosut.com www.societycabaret.com
Picante @ Esta Noche
Our lovely local legendary vocalist performs her all-new cabaret show, The First 30 Years, an introspective retrospect of her careeer, from Moose Hall to Carnegie Hall (and all the gin joints on the way). $25-$35. 8pm. Also Jan. 17. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com
Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle The weekly live rock shows have returned. 9pm-ish. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com
Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Enjoy the intimate groovy disco night with DJ Bus Station John. $7. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. auntcharlieslounge.com
Underwear Party @ Powerhouse Strip down to your skivvies at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com
VIP @ Club 21, Oakland Hip Hop, Top 40, and sexy Latin music; gogo dancers, appetizers, and special guest DJs. No cover before 11pm and just $5 after all night. Dancing 9pm-3am. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com
Enjoy meaty beats by Juan at the extracruisy night, with a cruisy back room. $3. 10pm-2am. 1900 Folsom St. www.trucksf.com Weekly show with drag queens and the Picante Boys; hosted by Lulu Ramirez; DJ Marco. 9pm-2am. 3079 16th St. 841-5748. www.jceventssf.com
Release @ Club OMG Weekly party at the intimate mid-Market club; rotating hosts and DJs, Top 40 dance remixes, giveaways, gogo hunks. Free before 11pm. $3. 9pm-2am. 43 Sixth St. www.clubomgsf.com www.facebook.com/ReleaseSF
Some Thing Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com
Sat 18 Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com
Beatpig @ Powerhouse Juanita More, Walter Gomez and their crew’s monthly cruisy, fashiony, alt cool crowd night. 9pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com
Beer Bust @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Beer only $8 until you bust. 4pm-8pm. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com
Bootie SF @ DNA Lounge
Bad Girl Cocktail Hour @ The Lexington Club Every Friday night, bad girls can get $1 dollar margaritas between 9pm and 10pm. 3464 19th St. between Mission and Valencia. 863-2052. lexingtonclub.com
Fedorable @ El Rio
Jabari Davis at Comedy Returns
Eight bars, more dance floors, and a smoking lounge; the largest gay Latin dance night in the Bay Area. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com
Pan Dulce @ The Café
Fri 17
Thu 16
Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland
NSFW @ Truck
Sharon McNight @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko
Free weekly queer dance party, with gogos, prizes, old groovy tunes, cheap cocktails. 9pm-2am. 3158 Mission St. 2823325. www.elriosf.com
Go-Beaux @ Beaux Gogo-tastic weekly night at the new Castro club. Bring your dollahs, ‘cause they’ll make you holla. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com
Sun 19
The local jazz crooner and his band perform weekly shows at the hotel’s lounge, which draws a growing swingdance audience. 7pm-11pm. 2 New Montgomery. www.joshklipp.com
Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. calacademy.org Amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com
Suppositori Spelling’s Cocktailgate five-year anniversary
Weekly mash-up dance night, with resident DJs Adrian & Mysterious D. No matter the theme, a mixed fun good time’s assured. $8-$15. 9pm-3am. 21+. 375 11th St. at Harrison. www.BootieSF.com www.DNAlounge.com
La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland Xmas party with Pancho Claus, plus DJed tunes, gogo hotties, drag shows, drink specials, all at Oakland’s premiere Latin nightclub and weekly cowboy night. $10$15. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com
Club Rimshot @ Bench and Bar, Oakland Weekly hip hop and R&B night. $8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com
Frolic @ Agenda Lounge, San Jose The furry costume clan meets in South Bay for a club night, timed with Further Confusion, the furry convention. DJs: Oneluv, Lycan Catt, Genki, AudioDile, NeonBunny, and Switchblade. 21+. $5$15. 8pm-1:30am. 399 South First St., San Jose. www.frolicparty.com/sanjose
No Service @ Truck Check your cell phone at the special “no phones” dance music night. First person unable to resist checking their phone pays the tab! If no one succumbs to selfieaddiction, the tab is half off. 9pm-2am. 1900 Folsom St. www.trucksf.com
Sierra Boggess @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Broadway star ( The Little Mermaid, The Phantom of the Opera) debuts her one-woman cabaret show, Awakening, a concert of diverse songs, accompanied by piano and cello musicians. $35-$45. 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 6631063. www.ticketweb.com
Porno @ The Stud One-year anniversary of Bebe Sweetbriar and Turk Mason’s porn-filled night, with a porn gogo wannabe contest, X-rated DVD swag and more. $5-$10. 9pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com
Sun 19 Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar’s most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. 3pm-6pm (Also now open daily 11am-2am). 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com
Brunch @ Hi Tops Enjoy crunchy sandwiches and mimosas, among other menu items, at the popular sports bar. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com
Cocktailgate @ Truck Suppositori Spelling gets a fun roast at the five-year anniversary of the wild weekly drag show night. $3. 10pm-2am. 1900 Folsom St. www.trucksf.com
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On the Tab>>
Disco Daddy @ SF Eagle Celebrate the three-day MLK weekend at the very popular retro-groovy post-beer bust event, with de-lovely DJ Bus Station John spinning R&B and disco classics for bears, otters, queens and cuties. 6pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. sf-eagle.com
Dancing Queen @ Beatbox The AIDS Emergency Fund’s popular T-dance fundraiser features DJs Russ Rich and Christopher B, who’ll spin classic grooves from the Trocadero and I-Beam days. Groovy retro attire suggested. $20$30. 1pm-8pm. (Advance tix at Body on Castro) www.aef-sf.org www.beatboxsf.com
Full of Grace @ Beaux Weekly night with hostess Grace Towers, with pop-up drag performances. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. beauxsf.com
Hero @ Ruby Skye Manny Lehman and Moto Blanco DJ the popular MLK weekend T-dance. $25. 6pm12am. 420 Mason St. www.eventbrite. com/e/hero-tickets-9952124071
January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7
Internet Cat Video Festival @ Uptown Lounge, Oakland Grumpy Cat! Maru! Lil Bub! Enjoy hilarious sweet endearing and oddball short clips from around the globe, all of funny (and occasionally ennui-laden French) cats! $17. 6pm. 1928 Telegraph Ave. (510) 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com
Jock @ The Lookout The sporty fundraisers continue, this time with the SF Tsunami Water Polo team. 3pm-6pm. 3600 16th St. lookoutsf.com
John Pizzarelli, Jessica Molaskey @ Venetian Room Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist/guitarist and the Broadway actreess-singer perform “This Must Be the Place,” a concert of jazz classics. $48. 5pm. Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St. 392-4400. www.bayareacabaret.org
Liquid Brunch @ Beaux No cover, no food, just drinks (Mimosas, Bloody Marys, etc.) and music. 2pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com
Katya Presents @ Martuni’s
Salsa Sundays @ El Rio Salsa dancing for LGBT folks and friends, with live merengue and cumbia bands; tapas and donations that support local causes. 2nd & 4th Sundays. 3pm-8pm. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com
Sundance Saloon @ Space 550 The popular country western LGBT dance night celebrates a decade and a half of fun foot-stomping two-stepping and linedancing. $5. 5pm-10:30pm with lessons from 5:30-7:15 pm. Also Thursdays. 550 Barneveld Ave., and Tuesdays at Beatbox, $6. 6:30-11pm. 314 11th St. www.sundancesaloon.org
Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com
Mon 20 Cock and Bull Mondays @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Specials on drinks made with Cock and Bull ginger ale (Jack and Cock, Russian Mule, and more). 8pm-closing. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com
Karaoke @ The Lookout Paul K hosts the amateur singing night. 8pm-2am. 3600 16th St. at Market. www.lookoutsf.com
Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany’s weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com
Monday Musicals @ The Edge The casts of local and visiting musical soften pop in to performs at the popular Castro bar’s musical theatre night. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com
Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone). 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.dragatmartunis.com
Sports Night @ The Eagle The legendary leather bar gets jock-ular, with beer buckets, games (including beer pong and corn-hole!), prizes, sports on the TVs, and more fun. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com
Tue 21 13 Licks @ Q Bar Weekly women’s night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com
Arrival From Sweden @ Yoshi’s
Sun 19
Mamma mia! The fantastic ABBA cover band (approved by the original band) returns. $29-$34. 8pm. Also Jan. 22. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com
Block Party @ Midnight Sun
The Skins open for Jake Bugg
Ink & Metal @ Powerhouse
Way Back @ Midnight Sun
Show off your tattoos and piercings at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com
Weekly screenings of vintage music videos, and retro drink prices. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. midnightsunsf.com
Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down at the strip joint. $20 includes refreshments. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com
Torch @ Martuni’s Veronica Klaus hosts the weekly night of cabaret, jazz and blues music, with Tammy L. Hall and special guests. $15. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.facebook. com/veronica.klaus
Trivia Night @ Hi Tops Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com
Wed 22 Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com
Broadway Bingo @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Joe Wicht and Katya Smirnoff-Skyy cohost the weekly fun musical theatre trivia singalong night. Pull up a comfy chair or sofa, enjoy a cocktail or three, and test your Broadway knowledge. Kanpai Lounge, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. No cover. 7pm10pm. 394-1111. www.hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins.aspx
Dream Queens Revue @ Ant Charlie’s Lounge Classic monthly drag show, with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, Sheena Rose, Kipper, Davida Ashton, and Joie de Vivre. No cover. 21+. Cheap drinks! 9:30-11:30pm. 133 Turk st. 441-2922. www.dreamqueensrevue.com
Plaque Blague, Scott Arford @ Elbo Room The Nebraska-based “heavy leather” (electronic-industrial) band and the unusual soloist perform; also, DJs Crackwhore and BLK Rainbow. $7. 9pm. 647 Valencia St. www.elbo.com
Queer Salsa @ Beatbox Weekly Latin partner dance night. 8pm1am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com
Red Hots Burlesque @ El Rio Women’s burlesque show performs each Wed & Fri. Karaoke follows. $5-$10. 7pm. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com
So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall
Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 8614186. www.midnightsunsf.com
New weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com
Bombshell Betty & Her Burlesqueteers @ Elbo Room
Trivia Night @ Harvey’s
The weekly burlesque show of women dancers shaking their bonbons includes live music. $10. 9pm. 647 Valencia St. 5527788. www.elbo.com
The Ethel Merman Experience @ Beaux The veteran local drag singer (aka Mark Sargent) and her band perform wild renditions of everything from Led Zeppelin to Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles. No cover. 10pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com
Russ Rich DJs at Dancing Queen
Thu 23
Katya Smirnoff-Skyy performs with special guest and vocal powerhouse Leanne Borghesi, fresh from her acclaimed New York performance in Sweeney Todd. $9. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. www.russianoperadiva.com
Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night. One-drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com
Bebe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly night of trivia quizzes and fun and prizes; no cover. 8pm-1pm. 500 Castro St. 431-4278. www.harveyssf.com
Sun 19
Thu 23 Circle Jerk @ Nob Hill Theatre Whip it out in the underground playroom and enjoy participatory erotic fun with super-hung porn stud Boomer Banks; $10. 9pm (and don’t miss his stage shows next week, Jan. 24 & 25, 8pm & 10pm, $25). 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com
Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar. 10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com
Jake Bugg, Albert Hammond, Jr., The Skins @ Fox Theatre, Oakland Three energetic bands perform (but we’re actually partial to the amazing opening rock/soul band, The Skins). $29.50. 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.theskinsband.com www.thefoxoakland.com
Joan Ryan @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The accomplished stage, TV and film actress performs her nuanced cabaret show. $30-$40. 8pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. ticketweb.com
Pan Dulce @ The Café Enjoy amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com
The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough’s weekly drag show with gogo guys. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com
Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Retro disco tunes and a fun diverse crowd, each Thursday. This week, a special 32nd annual 21st birthday bash for DJ Bus station John. $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com
Underwear Party @ Powerhouse Strip down to your skivvies at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com
VIP @ Club 21, Oakland Hip-hop, Top 40, and sexy Latin music; gogo dancers, appetizers, and special guests. No cover before 11pm and just $5 afterward. Dancing 9pm-3am. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com
Want your nightlife event listed? Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event. Event photos welcome.
Maru! The Internet Cat Video Fest
Serving the LGBT communities since 1971
8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • January 16-22, 2014
Pacifico Ventures
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San Francisco’s 18+ Sex Club!
DominicPacifico
Tasty good! Dominic Pacifico and Dallas Magnum share a shower and more in a scene from Flexx Extreme.
by John F. Karr
D
Open daily at 12pm
2051 Market St. at Church St. Info: 415-864-EROS (3767)
ebar.com
ominic Pacifico’s toiled long, hard, and successfully in the pastures of porn. He’s appeared in at least 80 films, and made a whole lotta scenes for a whole lotta web providers. He’s kept his eyes open along the way, and now that he’s launched his own web site, it shows in the expertise of the scenes he’s filmed for it with Anthony Meade, a guy I’m not familiar with. Videographer Charlie Oak gets an unusual second credit as the movie’s writer. I’d credit a location scout for finding the places where the scenes were filmed. But a writer? Nobody says anything, except for the stray, and decidedly impromptu bit of sex-thusiam. Pacifico’s site now delivers some 40 scenes, but you won’t have to join to find out what they’re like. DP (that’s Dominic, well, you know) has released two DVD anthologies through the Pornteam distributor; the one I saw, Flexx Extreme, was the first. The title makes this nearly twohour, four-scene collection sound like it revolves around weightlifting, or gym life. Not so. In order, they take place in a bathhouse, at a poolside sizzling in the sun, in a living room, and under the showers of a health club. The videography and editing is technically proficient, except for some fairly brief moments in the filming of Dallas Magnum. He’s a fairly dark-skinned black man, and he’s being topped by Mr. Pacifico, a fairly light-skinned top. Even a lighting pro could be challenged by this combo—and their performing in
DominicPacifico
This week’s award for Best Bulge goes to Tate Ryder and Dominic Pacifico, as shown in this screengrab from their scene in Flexx Extreme.
front of a black background is a complication. Yet the problem is only momentary, and can be indulged, since Magnum is most attractive—he’s a handsome stud bottom with a rock cock, and tribal tattoos curling down his side from shoulder to knee. DP is prominent but does not dominate his website, which has its share of stars and lesser known guys performing with and without him, and where he demonstrates his taste for kinda kinky twinks. You’d better be a fan, though, if you watch Flexx Extreme, because he’s in all four scenes, costarring with three big names, and introducing Magnum in the fourth. Big names? DP bottoms for Adam Russo and Tate Ryder, and he tops
JR Bronson and Mr Magnum. The disc isn’t chaptered, and delivers no bonus material. It’s okay—the scenes don’t need to be shilled. Tate Ryder and DP look really hot, groping each other through bulging briefs. Love those basket shots! Ryder’s his usual gung-ho self, offering intense cocksucking before he finger fucks, rims and then fucks DP, first doggie style, and then with DP laying on his back, legs splayed wide. Ryder shoots across DP’s chest, and licks up it all up. I liked best the rough fuck Adam Russo delivers in the movie’s first scene. And I especially liked the setting. The guys are on a padded banquette in a bathhouse, with each end of their berth bracketed by mirrored walls. So there’s some nifty See page 9 >>
DominicPacifico
Adam Russo pounds Dominic in an intriguing mirror-angled scene.
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January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9
New Mr. Powerhouse NAKED NIGHT TUESDAYS
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New Mr. Powerhouse Leather Will Victoria is flanked by his fellow Mr. Powerhouse Leathers.
by Scott Brogan
L
ast Saturday night the Powerhouse was packed to the rafters with “Fandies” (that’s “Fans of Andy Cross, for those not in the know). The occasion? The Mr. Powerhouse Leather 2014 contest. Andy is the outgoing Mr. Powerhouse Leather (2013), so the crowd was bigger than usual. It was standing room only as Fandies, regulars, and the curious crowded the front bar to watch Bare Chest Calendar Man Will Victoria and popular barber at Joe’s Barbershop Harley Maxwell vie for the honor of succeeding Andy as Mr. Powerhouse Leather. Lance Holman provided effervescent emcee duties and kept the contest rolling at a good pace. The judges were Troy Anicete, Brent Ganetta, Matt Johnson, Ron Balos (all Mr. Powerhouse Leathers themselves), and Cross. They provided some fun pop questions to the contestants in between the onstage categories of physique (the jock strap portion) and speech (leather image), as well as their bar wear when they’re first introduced. Both men’s speeches were very well given. They were similar in parts, about acceptance of all kinds of leather/ gear/kink people and what that means. Well done, guys! After a break for the tally of the scores, Cross gave his step-down speech. What a nice speech. Very sincere and heartfelt and, thankfully, short. I’ve had the dubious honor of sitting through some of the longest speeches in contest history. Sometimes, late at night, I can still hear them reverberating in the skies above. This isn’t the end for Cross. He’s still Mr. SF Leather 2013 (until late February) and International Mr. Leather 2013 (until late May). As I
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Karrnal Knowledge
From page 8
shots where you see the guys duplicated unto eternity. It’s so effective I’m surprised no one’s filmed in this location before. And Russo looks really good, with his head shaved perfectly smooth. He’s so meaty, in that Italian way, with a meaty cock to match. And he fucks so hard. Fans of Pacifico know how frequently he frequents the end of a dildo; in this scene, Russo smashes his cock into DP’s face while he smashes a hefty black toy up DP’s ass. But what’s up with this—it’s hardly a two-minute tease, instead
joked with his partner, and Powerhouse bartender, Carlton Paul, last Saturday’s contest was Andy’s “hump day” as he’s in the home stretch of an amazing year as International Mr. Leather. Even Andy joked to me “five months!” It’s really incredible how much he’s traveled in the past eight months, representing not only San Francisco but our community all around the world. What a wonderful ambassador for us to have. Andy, you only have Scott Brogan five months left, but I Mr. Powerhouse Leather Andy Cross gives know you’ll keep the his step-down speech at the Mr. Powerhouse same high standard of Leather contest last Saturday night. excellence you’ve shown all year. Thank you! great. And a thanks to Oil Tan Sam, Besides, I’m sure he’ll Glitz Shimmersteed, and Juan Garcontinue to be a vital and vibrant cia for their production prowess. part of our community for As it stands right now, the folyears to come. lowing will compete at the Mr. SF Mr. SF Leather proLeather 2014 contest next month: ducer Ray Tilton took Mr. Legion of Sin Leather Scott “Big the stage for a special Red” Farrell, Mr. SF Sober Leather announcement. He Jay Hall, Mr. Daddy’s Barbershop surprised everyone Leather Nile Eckhoff, Mr. Edge by announcing that Leather Stephan Ferris, Mr. SF Eagle Marlena, producer of Leather Gage Fisher and Mr. Powerthe Mr. Hayes Valley house Leather Will Victoria. Leather Contest, will be “Judge Emeritus for A Fond Farewell Life” at the Mr. SF Leather contests. It may come as a shock to many When Marlena took the stage to that this is my last column for the Bay accept the honor, she quipped, “I Area Reporter. I have to step down as was wearing leather long before I put the biweekly leather community colon a dress!” She went on to mention umnist due to personal reasons. It’s the glory days of Folsom’s “Miracle nothing bad, luckily, just personal. Mile” in the 1960s and ‘70s and how, I have enjoyed writing the column although it’s changed quite a bit, the and getting to know so many people community is still here. The vibe is I might not have had the chance to different yet in many ways the same. know otherwise. Thank you for all of When it was all said and done, the wonderful support you’ve given Will Victoria was victorious me these past years. And thank you (couldn’t resist that) with Maxfor reading and giving me your feedwell coming in a very close second. back. It’s been great and a part of me Thanks to you both for stepping up, will miss it. Thank you! t and congratulations, Will! You’ll be
of the major provocation we’d like it to be. Oh, well, go on and get a quick thrill as DP wiggles damn good on that thing—and then it’s gone. JR Bronson’s also a noted dildo lover, but he doesn’t get one in his scene with DP. What he does get, while DP lays on his back on a cocktail table, is the chance to straddle the guy while keeping his feet on the floor. That helps him pump himself onto that cock with maximum leverage. He’s a pretty sight, especially with his hands behind his head, his torso pulled taut, his lats impressively etched down his sides, and his cock flapping. This ride’s so exciting that he cums. You may, too. I did, as
there seemed to be any number of reasons why I should. That brings us to the last scene, featuring the bearded, humpy, hardmuscled bottom, Dallas Magnum. The two guys make it under a shower room spray, and look mighty fine, all wet and shiny. The second DVD from DP is called Distinction. I haven’t seen it. It promises All Foreskin, and has a dildo solo, a JO solo, a Venezuelan twink in mild bondage and (candy) ball gag kink, a much pierced, much-alterna looking youngster, and fully tattooed twink paired with a fuck machine. Check out some photos at www.Pornteam.com.t
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January 16-22, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11
Shooting Stars photos by Steven Underhill Fans of the HBO series Girls enjoyed a VIP viewing of the comedy show’s third season premiere at Terra Gallery on January 6. The red carpet entryway displayed video footage and tweets from premiere screenings around the country. For more of Steven Underhill’s photo albums, visit BARtab’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife and visit www.stevenunderhill.com.
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For more photos, and to arrange your own wedding, headshot or portrait photos,
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