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BAYAREAREPORTER
Vol. 38
. No. 1 . 3 January 2008
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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Suspect charged in hit and run death
2008 ushers in new laws by Heather Cassell
Ringing in 2008! Entertainer Sandra Bernhard, right, took to the stage at the Castro Theatre on New Year’s Eve for a one-night only performance. Elsewhere in the gay neighborhood, bars were packed with revelers anxious to ring in the new year.
Gays campaign for Clinton band, former President Bill Clinton. “She’s not a first timer.” Luis Vizcaino, 38, is ay and lesbian supthe openly gay California porters of Hillary communications director Clinton’s presidenfor the Clinton campaign. tial bid are working overHe told the B.A.R. that he time in Iowa, where cauleft his job at the Human cusgoers will meet tonight Rights Campaign because (Thursday, January 3). And he so believes in her canlocally, those campaigning didacy. for the New York senator’s “I was working for the bid for the Democratic largest LGBT group in the nomination insist that she country,” he said. “I wantis the one candidate who ed to work for a candidate can win back the White who would sign legislaHouse. tion.” On the campaign trail, He said that Clinton Clinton, a former first lady Hillary Clinton at an appearance supports an Employment and current senator from in San Francisco last month. Non-Discrimination Act New York, talks about her that includes protections experience in an effort to differentiate herself from Barack Obama, for gender identity; a version of the law that who is running second to Clinton in most covers only sexual orientation passed out of national polls, though the numbers don’t the House of Representatives last fall. Clinton is also on record supporting hate crimes mean a lot at this point in the campaign. “I really believe she is the one who knows legislation and ending the military’s anti-gay how to get things done,” out lesbian Cather- “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that prevents ine Dodd told the Bay Area Reporter in a De- gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. cember 30 telephone interview. “On our issues, she’s great,” Dodd said, A registered nurse and member of the San Francisco Health Commission, Dodd, who noting that Clinton supports equal benefits used to serve as district director for House for federal employees as a co-sponsor of the Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), put Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligahealth care at the top of her list of issues, tion Act, which would grant the same benefits, including health insurance, to domestic “next to ending the war.” Dodd, 51, noted that San Francisco partners of federal employees that are curspends $1.3 billion on health care services in rently offered to employees’ legal spouses. Vizcaino said that there are more than 100 state, federal, and local funds. “We have to LGBT community leaders who support Clinhave a system,” she said. “Hillary Clinton has walked through that ton, including state Senator Sheila Kuehl (Dlandmine once,” Dodd said, referring to Clin- Santa Monica). “This is a very important election,” Vizton’s failed health care proposal during the early years of the administration of her huspage 15 씰
by Cynthia Laird
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woman suspected in the hit and run death of a gay San Francisco man has turned herself in to authorities and faces felony charges in the December 23 incident, officials said. Samantha Osborne, 23, of Novato, pleaded not guilty to charges of vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of a crime at her arraignment in Superior Court Wednesday, January 2, said Connie Chan, Gregory Anstett spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. San Francisco Police Department spokesman Sergeant Neville Gittens said that Gregory Anstett, 51, died at 12:10 a.m. December 23 after a 1994 Jeep Cherokee struck him on Van Ness Avenue at Post Street. The vehicle’s license plate was left at the scene, Gittens said. Osborne turned herself in at the police station at 850 Bryant Street on December 26 at 9:30 a.m., Ron Giddings, deputy clerk of the San Francisco Sheriff ’s Department, said Monday, December 31. Osborne posted $15,000 surety bail, said Giddings, and was released at 1:22 p.m. the same day. SFPD Inspector Dean Taylor said that Anstett was “on the hood of the car for about 50 feet. We don’t suspect the car was traveling that fast.” Osborne was stopped 20 minutes after the accident on Geary Boulevard and 8th Avenue. There were an unknown number of passengers in the vehicle at the time police stopped her, Gittens said. He said that she was alone at the time of the incident. Osborne wasn’t suspected to be intoxicated at the time she was stopped, according to Gittens, and was released “pending further investigation.” No witnesses to the accident have contacted San Francisco police, Taylor said, though two witnesses after the accident have come forward. Anstett’s tight group of friends was shocked by the news of his death. Anstett, an optician at Kaiser Permanente, was a San Francisco resident for more than 20 years, according to friends grappling with the news. Anstett, who was single, was originally from Chicago, where his family still lives, friends said. A memorial service was held December 30 at Driscoll’s Valencia Street Serra Mortuary. His friends are filled with grief and questions about his death. They have also banded together to ensure an older gay man, whom Anstett looked after, finds a new caretaker. “It’s been a big shock,” said George Arvanites, who knew Anstett for 27 years, in a December 31 phone interview from Chicago. page 3 씰
Thomas MacEntee
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Jane Philomen Cleland
Rick Gerharter
by Heather Cassell Steven Underhill
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here must have been a lot of rainbow confetti on New Year’s Eve as the LGBT community celebrated another record setting year of legal protections that went into effect January 1. While Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger followed through on his promise to veto Assemblyman Mark Leno’s (D-San Francisco) marriage equality bill for the second time, he also set another record by signing 11 gay bills into law in 2007. In 2006, Schwarzenegger signed eight bills into law. The new laws that went into effect Tuesday cover a variety of issues from domestic partnerships to helping HIVpositive individuals to protecting youths in and out of Sen. Sheila Kuehl schools to the strongest anti-discrimination laws in the United States to protect all Californians. Equality California sponsored nine out of 10 pieces of legislation that passed, including the Student Civil Rights Act (SB777), authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica). SB777 updates the state’s education code to reflect current legally recognized protected classes, including sexual orientation and gender identity, in the Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2000 (AB537). Kuehl and advocates for SB777 told the Bay Area Reporter that the law was scheduled to go into effect January 1, unless the anti-gay Capital Resource Family Impact is successful gathering the 433,971 qualified signatures for a referendum by January 10. The anti-gay group filed a referendum against SB777 with the attorney general’s office as soon as Schwarzenegger’s signature dried on the bill. If Capital Resource Family Impact submits the qualifying amount of signatures to the secretary of state’s office in time, SB777 will be held until June when Californians vote. The referendum won’t affect AB537, which has been protecting students for eight years. In a December 21 e-mail urging constituents to turn in signed petitions, Capital Resource Family Impact claimed to have gathered more than 161,000 signatures. page 4 씰
BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 03 January 2008
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Mixed reaction to NGLTF’s name change by Heather Cassell
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n the wake of House passage of a sexual orientation-only Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the dawn of an election year, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is reinventing its political arm with a new name and Web site. But some bisexual and transgender activists have a mixed response to the change and how it reflects the organization’s inclusive politics. NGLTF stepped up its image from being known more as a grassroots organization to being seen on Capitol Hill by changing its political arm to the NGLTF Action Fund – separating the NGLTF Foundation, which focuses on education, from the organization’s political endeavors. The changes were quietly announced in a December 17 news release that touted the organization’s long history of grassroots community work and political activism on Capitol Hill. NGLTF was the first organization to have a full-time lobbyist on the Hill to fight for LGBT rights, the first to have gays and lesbians to have an official meeting in the White House, to lobby for HIV/AIDS funding and organizations, and more recently was one of the first national organizations to join United ENDA, which fought unsuccessfully to include gender
Bob Roehr
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NGLTF’s Matt Foreman
identity protections in ENDA.
What’s in a name? NGLTF Executive Director Matt Foreman told the Bay Area Reporter that he only had second-hand knowledge of some bisexual community leaders’ discontent with the name change and new Web site. “It’s a name change,” said Foreman, who said it was in the works for more than a year at the recommendation of the organization’s lawyers, due to NGLTF’s increased political activity. “Inc.” just wasn’t cutting it, he said, adding that many nonprofit organizations use “foundation” or “action fund” to distinguish between their political and educational operations. Yet, when it came to changing its name, some bisexual and transgender leaders were quick to point out that the organization lacked the “B” and the “T,” in spite of more than a decade-long discussion, according to LGBT activists, to change the name to reflect NGLTF’s mission and actions. “That’s the part that smells,” said Ka’ahumanu, a former NGLTF board member and longtime bisexual activist who was cochair on the advisory committee for the policy institute’s “Bisexual Health: An introduction and model practices for HIV/STI prevention programming” published in 2007. “If it didn’t stink they would make a big deal out of it.” Ka’ahumanu is suspicious about the timing and “under the radar” announcement about the change. Eileen Hansen, a nonprofit consultant and a longtime lesbian activist who supports NGLTF, agreed with Ka’ahumanu that the name change wasn’t made lightly. Changing an organization’s name is “done very consciously and very carefully” because it’s not something that happens often, Hansen said, and it signals how an organization wants to be seen in the future. Ka’ahumanu said that she is “insulted” by NGLTF’s decision and alerted the bisexual community on several listserves. Longtime bisexual community leaders responded in kind. Sheela Lambert, founder of the Bi Writer’s Association and bisexual activist in New York wasn’t surprised. It was like deja vu. Lambert believes that Foreman has improved his record in recent years, but it is “spotty.” Lambert told the B.A.R. she spent a decade battling Foreman’s bi and transphobia when he led three large New York organizations before he took the helm of NGLTF. After being hired to lead NGLTF, Foreman issued a public statement acknowledging that he was wrong
about his previous position on transgenders and vowed to fight for that community. “They are willing to fight for transgender rights, but they are not willing to put it in the name of the organization? That’s hypocritical, it’s old school, it’s not nice, it’s selfish, and it treats bisexual and transgender people like we are the bastard children at the family reunion,” said Lambert. Loraine Hutchins, co-founder of BiNet USA and co-editor of Bi Any Other Name, agreed with Lambert. “They are more spineless than the Democrats,” she said. Hutchins considers NGLTF’s action a response to the current conservative political climate. “It’s a chilling commentary on the right wing’s intimidation campaign in this country that we can’t put the names that we call ourselves in the first line of our organizations,” said Hutchins. Digging beyond the name reveals all but one of NGLTF’s board members, Moonhawk River Stone, a female-to-male transgender, don’t identify their sexual orientation or gender identity in their biographies on the organization’s main Web site. In an e-mail December 31, Roberta Sklar, director of communications, wrote that there are no bisexuals serving on the board and there are two transgender members. Sarah Fletcher, an openly transgender lesbian board member, said Monday that she wasn’t aware of other board members’ sexual orientation. She told the B.A.R. that she doesn’t focus on sexual orientation or gender identity, but “what I can do with the board to effect change.” Fletcher and Stone were unable to comment when the B.A.R. asked about NGLTF’s name change. NGLTF’s board of directors approved the name change in September 2007, according to Foreman, who denied the decision had anything to do with ENDA, strategically positioning NGLTF on Capitol Hill to compete with the Human Rights Campaign, or the upcoming election year. “All of this has nothing to do with the ENDA controversy or the upcoming election year. We just have been gradually building our [501]c4 work,” said Foreman. “We have increased political activity both at the state and federal level and will soon have five federal lobbyists – that’s more than any other LGBT organization, other than HRC – so our action fund is doing more work than ever before and needed to have a more readily identifiable name.”
Missed opportunity? Bisexual and transgender activists applauded NGLTF’s lead on United ENDA. “They did everything right around ENDA,” said Ka’ahumanu. But that doesn’t take away the sting of a missed opportunity, according to some activists. “It would have been a good opportunity for them to be really declarative in terms of the bisexual and transgender community,” said Jamison Green, who resigned from HRC’s business council in November and co-founded the Transgender Education Partnership, with former HRC board and business council member Donna Rose. Hansen agreed, and said that NGLTF missed a “golden opporpage 13 씰
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 3
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Club aims to empower PWAs by Matthew S. Bajko
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new political club seeking chartership from local Democratic Party officials aims to give voice to the needs of people living with HIV and AIDS. The new HIV Democratic Club already has 20 members signed on and expects to be granted official status later this month. Organizers of the club argue the city’s HIV population deserves its own political group that can ensure its needs are front and center on politicians’ agendas. It could also replace the political vacuum created at City Hall in September 2006 when Jeff Sheehy resigned as Mayor Gavin Newsom’s HIV and AIDS policy adviser. The mayor has left the AIDS czar position vacant ever since. “HIV keeps sort of getting dropped off the radar. Everyone thinks it is a manageable disease and that isn’t the case,” said Castro resident Demian Quesnel, the club’s membership chair who learned he was HIV-positive in 1984. “The purpose of the club is to keep HIV issues on the table. People with HIV need to be involved in the political process to look out for their interests. Services are being cut.” AIDS decimated San Francisco’s gay male population during the 1980s, but the introduction of antiretroviral treatment a decade ago has led to longer survival rates for many people living with the virus. According to the health department’s 2006 HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Annual Report, 15,129 people with HIV or AIDS were
Hit and run 씱 page 1 “Every time I turn around I think of him, something reminds me of him because I’ve known him for so long.” “He was always the life of the party,” added Thomas MacEntee, Arvanites’s partner. Arvanites and MacEntee said that they were unable to attend Sunday’s memorial service for Anstett, organized by his younger brother, Kurt Anstett. Kurt Anstett was in San Francisco to handle his brother’s affairs and to bring Anstett’s body back to Chicago to be buried in the family plot, said Kevan Curran, a friend and coworker. Along with Kurt Anstett, Anstett is survived by his father James L. Anstett; sisters, Rita and Veronica; niece, Erika; and nephews, Aidan and Ryan. He was preceded in death by his mother, Loretta Sugrue Anstett, in 2001. Kurt Anstett didn’t respond to a request for comment. Anstett’s friends question the investigation of the accident and authorities’ decisions regarding Osborne, the suspect. Lack of information and conversations with Anstett’s brother, friends said, isn’t adding up. They want to know exactly what happened. “I don’t want this to be the case that some poor gay man just gets snuffed out and nobody cares,” said Rod Thornton, a friend. Police did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday on the investigation. Clay Wilkins, a 91-year-old gay man who Anstett looked after, alerted Arvanites and MacEntee that something was wrong. The men said that Wilkins called them after Anstett missed dinner plans and didn’t contact him. It was out
Cecilia Chung is interim co-chair of the new HIV Democratic Club.
living in San Francisco. Those living with AIDS totaled 8,795 and those living with HIV non-AIDS totaled 6,334. Most of those people, said the report, are white gay and bisexual men ranging in age from 40 to 49 years old. The latest Quarterly AIDS Surveillance Report, which reported AIDS cases through September of last year, showed the population of people living with AIDS had increased to 8,920. The report does not track HIV cases, but the city estimates each year roughly 1,000 people become infected with HIV. The birth of an HIV Democratic Club would be another sign that AIDS is no longer the death sentence it once was and that the AIDS community has matured from being an activist movement to part of the establishment, no different than any other distinct bloc of voters. Compared to the city’s estimat-
of character, said the couple. Immediately, the friends investigated and contacted Anstett’s family, who informed them of Anstett’s death. Beyond their own grief and inquiries into Anstett’s death, his friends are also worried about Wilkins. “Anstett would take him to the grocery store, shopping, or doctor’s appointments, or anything that was needed,” said Arvanites. “They talked every day at least once. They lived about a block and a half away from each other. He really was his lifeline.” “He’s just been a very loving soul,” added Arvanites, stifling his crying. “He was a perfect denizen of the Bay Area.” Wilkins did not respond to a request for comment made through MacEntee. Patricia Jackson, director of New Leaf: Services for Our Community’s friendly visitor’s program, told the B.A.R. Monday that staff were meeting today (Thursday, January 3) to come up with solutions to fill the gaps in Wilkins’s care. “I talked to Clay this morning,” said Jackson.“He is doing as well as he could be. His friendly visitor is going out to lunch with him Friday.” Pedestrian deaths involving vehicles in San Francisco more than doubled from 13 in 2006 to 30 by the end of 2007, according to Manish Champsee, president of Walk San Francisco. Out of the pedestrian accidents involving vehicles, five were hit and run cases, Champsee said. In most cases, Champsee said, the driver stayed at the scene of the accident. Taylor requested that anyone with information about Anstett’s death contact him at (415) 5531215. Jackson requested that anyone interested in assisting Wilkins contact her at (415) 626-7000, ext. 429. ▼
ed population of 817,537, PWAs comprise a small segment of the city’s total number of residents. But when their family and friends are taken into account, PWAs could prove to be an influential player in the city’s political arena. “There are many Democratic clubs in this city but to really give people living with HIV a strong voice, this will be the first,” said Cecilia Chung, an openly trans and HIV-positive woman who is interim co-chair of the new club. Until the club can hold elections for officers, Chung is sharing co-chair duties with Lee Jewell, HIV-positive since 1986 and a member of the community advisory board for UCSF’s Center for AIDS Prevention Studies. Its secretary is Mark Irwin and serving as treasurer is Steve Manley, cochair of the HIV Health Services Planning Council. Despite having two LGBT Democratic clubs, countless AIDS service organizations, and several HIV policy bodies within the city’s health department pushing an AIDS agenda, backers of the HIV club argue the needs of peo-
ple living with the virus are not always front and center. “I think while we have two LGBT Democratic clubs having people living with HIV on their membership, we often deal with competing agendas and priorities in terms of legislation and what to advocate for,” said Chung. AIDS Housing Alliance founder Brian Basinger is a main proponent behind the new HIV club. While he is also the current president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, Basinger said instead of reviving the Milk Club’s defunct HIV caucus, he saw a need to have a separate political group for PWAs. “I think it is very important to create a safe place for people with HIV and AIDS to educate themselves about the political process and advocate for their specific needs,” said Basinger.“People with HIV deserve a clean slate and a space to work on their issues and develop their issues.” Not everyone with HIV is LGBT, the club’s backers point out, and some straight PWAs may page 15 씰
BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 03 January 2008
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Rocket Dog founder regroups after fire by Kris Larson
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ali Boucher, the founder of Rocket Dog Rescue, has been homeless before. She spent years of her childhood on the streets, first with her mother and then on her own after her mother died. But since then, she’s gotten off the streets, kicking alcohol and drug addictions in order to take care of her first dog, a hound named Leadbelly that she rescued from the pound. It was Leadbelly who first inspired her to found Rocket Dog Rescue, a nonprofit group that saves shelter dogs about to be euthanized, placing them in foster homes until a permanent home can be found. But on December 21, Boucher found herself homeless again for the first time in years when her Bernal Heights apartment caught fire. Boucher was unharmed, but the blaze killed three of the dogs she was fostering, as well as her beloved talking parrot, Chester. Now Boucher is staying at Kosita’s Pet Grooming in Bernal Heights. Though she’s had many offers of other places to stay, Boucher said she’s sticking with the grooming salon for now. “This just seemed like a safe place for my animals and for me,” Boucher said. “These are friends of ours, longtime foster homes with Rocket Dog, and I’ve known them for years. And if I need to go anywhere, my dogs can always stay here with them.” The cause of the fire is still unknown, said Boucher. “There were
New laws 씱 page 1 417 SOUTH VAN NESS at 15th SF/CA 415/861-GLAM www.glamarama.com
EQCA Executive Director Geoff Kors said he would be surprised if the group makes the deadline. There hasn’t been evidence of signature gathering, Kors noted, and the mainstream press has reported the groups quoting different figures for signatures gathered for the referendum. “Honesty doesn’t seem to be one of the family values that they aspire to,” Kors said. Karen England, executive director of Capital Resource Family Impact, didn’t respond to a request for comment. On December 21, EQCA and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network filed a motion to intervene in defense of SB777 against a lawsuit filed in November in federal court in San Diego. EQCA sponsored SB777 and the GSA Network, which organizes gaystraight alliance clubs in California schools and across the country, is a supporter of the bill. At the same time the federal district court granted a motion for a time extension filed by attorneys representing the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office, and the state superintendent for public instruction. They have until January 11 to respond to the lawsuit. Jennifer Monk, counsel for Advocates for Faith and Freedom, one of the anti-gay groups that filed the lawsuit, told the B.A.R. there were no plans to block SB777 from going into effect January 1.
Other laws Despite the anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition telling its con-
Rick Gerharter
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Pali Boucher with Elwood, will continue Rocket Dog Rescue.
lives of the animals and the loss of being able to do the rescue.” Despite Boucher’s unsettled living situation, she promised that Rocket Dog would continue to do its work. “We do want to continue the business of saving and rescuing dogs. We don’t want that to stop just because I am without a place,” she said. The organization needs volunteers to foster dogs. Dogs are matched to volunteer homes to ensure that foster “parents” can keep the dog with minimal stress until a permanent home is found. Boucher said this process can take anywhere from two weeks to two months. Rocket Dog is also looking for cash donations, as well as donations of leashes, collars, dog toys, and gift certificates to stores like Pet Food Express and Pet Club. Ultimately, the group hopes to find a central home for Rocket Dog, an urban sanctuary where several dogs can stay while waiting for foster homes or permanent homes, and where Boucher can live. Boucher, who is living with HIV, had an adoption center at Supervisor Bevan Dufty’s campaign office during his re-election bid in 2005, and has long been a friend to the LGBT and HIV/AIDS communities. The next Rocket Dog adoption event will be Sunday, January 6 from noon to 4 p.m. at Zephyr Realty, 4040 24th Street, between Noe and Castro streets. ▼
no obvious things on my end. I didn’t have any candles or anything that you light. There was nothing crazy plugged in.” She hasn’t been back inside yet, but is hoping she’ll be allowed to return soon. Meanwhile, Boucher is more upset over the loss of a rescue space than she is over losing her things. “Honestly, coming from my background, living on the streets, for me to lose everything is not that uncommon,” she said. “It’s been years and years since something like that has happened to me, but for me to have a set of belongings and leave where I was living, if I came back and it was missing, that could happen. It was fiftyfifty whether or not your stuff would be there. For me to lose my possessions, it’s devastating, but it’s not as devastating as the loss of the
For volunteer or donation information, visit www.rocketdogrescue.org.
stituents in a December 20 e-mail that Leno planned to introduce another marriage bill in January, Shannan Velayas, Leno’s press secretary, told the B.A.R. December 26 that Leno has no plans to introduce another marriage bill at this time. Laws that took effect January 1 include: • The Joint Income Tax Filing Implementation bill (SB105), authored by Senator Carole Migden (D-San Francisco). The law simplifies tax laws for registered domestic partners filing jointly by creating a worksheet couples can use beginning with the 2007 tax year. • The Tissue Donors-Sperm Donors Act (SB443), commonly known as the sperm washing bill, authored by Migden, allows HIVpositive men to artificially inseminate their partners after their sperm have gone through a cleansing process. • The Juvenile Justice Safety and Protection Act (SB518), authorded by Migden. The law protects LGBT youth and straight youth from discrimination in state Department of Juvenile Justice facilities. The bill includes institution of a Youth Bill of Rights, statutory anti-bias rules, and a toll-free help hotline that youth can call to report rights violations. • Fair and Equal Taxation for Surviving Patners Act (SB559), authored by Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego). The law reverses tax increases for domestic partners who separated or lost a partner prior to 2006’s State Income Tax Equity Act (SB1827), authored by Migden. The law treats domestic partners the same as married spouses protecting them from unfair property re-
assessments. • The Civil Rights Act of 2007 (AB14), authored by Assemblymember John Laird (D-Santa Cruz). The law strenghtens 51 state anti-bias laws prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people and other communities. The law automates updating protected classes that apply to the Unruh Act making California the gold standard against discrimination. • The Safe Place to Learn Act (AB394), authored by Assemblymember Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys). The law strenthens enforcement of non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies to protect LGBT and non-queer youth in California’s public schools. The law requires the state to monitor school district compliance of existing anti-discrimination laws. • The California Routine HIV Screening Act (AB682), authored by Assemblywoman Patty Berg (D-Eureka) changes the process for patient permission to obtain an HIV/AIDS test. In response to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2006 HIV testing recommendations, the bill removes the need for informed consent before an HIV test can be administered and now requires a patient to give simple consent in order to be tested. The only law that won’t go into effect at the beginning of the year, is the Name Equality Act (AB102), authored by Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco). The law allows married and domestic partners to select the surname of their choice (with some restrictions) when they register with the state – regardless of gender. This law goes into effect July 1. ▼
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 5
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Black Cat patrons recall famed gay hangout by Matthew S. Bajko
Jane Philomen Cleland
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ost Sunday afternoons during the 1950s Robert Potter joined friends at the Black Cat Cafe, a watering hole in San Francisco’s North Beach section popular with the city’s literati, gay men, and tourists. There he would watch bartender Jose Sarria don drag apparel and perform his famous opera shows. “They were totally crazy and wonderful,” recalled Potter, now 80, who was born and raised in the city. “It was, oh yes, one of my Don Roberts, left, Robert Potter, and Fred Hirth join Dr. John Newmeyer at the favorite places. It was pret- dedication of a plaque commemorating the old Black Cat Cafe. ty much the center of gay tapas restaurant. The former bar tertained by the operatic voice and life. It was not the only gay bar but space sits between the law offices bawdy humor of Jose Sarria, later certainly one of the more popular of Mayor Joseph Alioto and Anknown as ‘The Widow Norton.’” ones.” gela Alioto to the right and the Dr. John Newmeyer, an openly Don Roberts, 77, grew up in Bubble Lounge to the left. Across gay man who serves as Estonia’s Stockton and moved to Oakland the street from the old gay stomphonorary consul for Northern nearly six decades ago to attend ing ground – curiously enough – California, paid $240 for the the College of Arts and Crafts on a are the offices of the Church of marker, which was set into the scholarship. He would take the old Scientology. concrete in late November last Key System of trains that ran Neither man had stepped foot year. While Sarria could not atunder the Bay Bridge to the city into the old bar space at 710 tend last month’s event, he was on and pop into the Cat for a drink Montgomery Street until last hand for an informal unveiling in with friends on weekend nights month. They had returned to reOctober. and Sunday afternoons. call found memories from their Newmeyer first came to the “A friend took me to the bar. It youth and to help dedicate a city in 1967 as a young Harvard was a pit stop,” recalled Roberts. plaque in the sidewalk in front of student and never had a chance to Roberts remembers the elabothe brick building heralding the patronize the Cat. Nonetheless, he rate papier-mâché decorations location’s historical significance. surrounding the bar, including page 13 씰 The 7-inch by 7-inch bronze monkeys scaling the walls and a plaque notes that “for 30 years Cheshire Cat-like feline sitting on (1933-1963) The Black Cat was at a rafter with lights in its eyes and a the heart of the city’s bohemian long tail hanging down. life – providing a welcoming saThe Cat closed its doors 45 loon for artists, gay people, and years ago. The space is now home North Beach characters, often ento a Bocadillos, a wine bar and
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 3 January 2008
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BAYAREAREPORTER Volume 38, Number 1 3 January 2008 eBAR.com PUBLISHER Thomas E. Horn Bob Ross (Founder, 1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Heather Cassell Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Tavo Amador • Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Dale Carpenter • Katie Dettman • Richard Dodds Raymond Flournoy • David Guarino Seth Hemmelgarn • Marcus Hernandez Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell Robert Julian • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble • Joe Landini Kris Larson • Michael McDonagh David Nahmod • Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff Jim Piechota • Libby Post • Bob Roehr Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel • Jason Serinus Gregg Shapiro • Mike Sher • Gwendolyn Smith Robert Sokol • Zak Szymanski • Ed Walsh Dick Walters • Jane Warner • Sura Wood
ART DIRECTION & LAYOUT Adrian Roberts AD PRODUCTION & DESIGN Sean Greene PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland Marc Geller Rick Gerharter Rudy K. Lawidjaja Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith GENERAL MANAGER Michael M. Yamashita CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING David McBrayer DISPLAY ADVERTISING Colleen Small ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Oleya Pearsall WEB ADMINISTRATOR Erik Hinzpeter
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China’s sneaky crackdown W
hile the West was distracted by the holiday season, authorities in China used the opportunity to escalate a crackdown on dissenters, including prominent AIDS activist Hu Jia, who was detained at his Beijing home last week. According to a report by the New York Times, Hu was charged with “subverting state power.” The report noted that such vague accusations have been used routinely against Chinese activists, many of whom have been detained, threatened, or harassed. Additionally, police cut off communication at Hu’s home to prevent his wife, Zeng Jinyan, also an AIDS activist, from contacting others. In fact, Hu and his wife lived effectively under house arrest before his detention. Officially, China has long tried to downplay the seriousness of its AIDS epidemic. This latest action could backfire, however, because prosecution of one of China’s best known human rights advocates most certainly would generate a storm of negative publicity as the world anticipates this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing. According to the Times, Hu participated in a European parliamentary hearing in Brussels in November about human rights in China. There, he said, “It is ironic that one of the people in charge of organizing the Olympic Games is the head of the Bureau of Public Security, which is responsible for so many human rights violations. It is very serious that official promises are not being kept before the games.” The government is seeking more control of other organizations as well. Groups such as the San Francisco-based AIDS Relief Fund for China have tried to work with people in the rural, impoverished areas of the country by providing microloans and other services. Humphrey Woo, program director of ARFC, wrote in an undated, online article about the difficulties people face in China: “It would not be unreasonable to ask why the grassroots movement exists in China at all. Only a handful of foundations support China’s non-governmental organizations. Public fundraising is not allowed without the collaboration of the government’s Charity Foundation. In March, China required
Rights Watch, which is just the latest examall NGOs to re-register, and Internet users ple of growing intolerance in that country. began having trouble accessing some Web Instead of protecting human rights and sites, online forums, and e-mail accounts. gay advocates who tried to assemble, HRW Yet a vibrant grassroots community is growreported, Moscow police colluded with skining rapidly.” heads to break up the pride demonstraChina does indeed have a public tion. HRW and the European Region relations problem with this latest of the International Lesbian and Gay detention, and countries with inAssociation documented the violence, fluence such as the U.S. must which included nationalists and others hold the government accountbeating and kicking lesbians and gays able. When China was selected to and their supporters “with impunity” host the 2008 Summer Olympics, queswhile riot police stood by, HRW tions were raised about the country’s stated. willingness to quash free The group added that three speech and dissent; now, with Editorial times as many people were arjust months until the games rested in 2007 compared with begin, the government seems the 2006 attempt to hold a gay Pride event to be thumbing its nose at those concerns. in Moscow. Hu should be released immediately. China and Russia need to understand Progress in 2008 and accept that human rights abuses must Last year, anti-gay violence, which has end. As we usher in a new year, LGBT advobeen increasing in recent years, was directcates need to form transnational coalitions ed again at people who attempted to celeto continue monitoring world events, and brate gay Pride openly in Russia. There were work within organizations such as the Unitviolent attacks on Pride demonstrators in ed Nations to foster much needed global Moscow in late May, according to Human progress. ▼
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by Stephen Jay Vossler
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Best Bay Area Community Newspaper 2006 San Francisco Bay Area Publicity Club Bay Area Reporter 395 Ninth Street San Francisco, CA 94103 415.861.5019 www.ebar.com News Editor • news@ebar.com Arts Editor • arts@ebar.com Advertising • advertising@ebar.com Publisher • t.horn@ebar.com A division of Benro Enterprises, Inc. © 2007 Published weekly. Bay Area Reporter reserves the right to edit or reject any advertisement which the publisher believes is in poor taste or which advertises illegal items which might result in legal action against Bay Area Reporter. Ads will not be rejected solely on the basis of politics, philosophy, religion, race, age, or sexual orientation. Advertising rates available upon request. Our list of subscribers and advertisers is confidential and is not sold. The sexual orientation of advertisers, photographers, and writers published herein is neither inferred nor implied. We are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.
efore joining the Army, I had never met anybody whom I knew to be gay. While I served on active duty, however, I had the opportunity to serve side-byside with openly gay men and women the entire five years, some of whom happened to be the finest soldiers and motivators I knew. This stands in direct contrast to the rationale that policy makers and senior military brass in Washington continue to put forth for why the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law is still needed today. While these officials surmise that those openly gay soldiers with whom I served should have caused the collapse of unit cohesion, morale, and combat readiness in our units, needless to say they didn’t. My patriotism and a desire to speak on my own behalf now as a veteran are what inspired me, an unlikely gay rights activist, to begin speaking out against the DADT policy by becoming a member of a small but innovative and dynamic new group called Servicemembers United (www.servicemembersunited.org). My best friend from the Army and one of the co-founders of SU, Jarrod Chlapowski, was stationed with me at nearly every unit to which I was assigned throughout our active duty careers. Everywhere Chlapowski served, he neither hid nor made a big deal over his sexual orientation; neither did anyone else. Though this experience is contrary to the detached logic that Congress and “the Brass” use to keep the DADT policy around, the actual reality to which I am attesting here is the “bootson-the-ground” and “in-the-trenches” truth of the modern military environment – don’t
ask and don’t discharge, because no one cares. After I got off active duty, Jarrod contacted me about an opportunity to serve with him again in Servicemembers United. Quite frankly, I’m almost more proud of this opportunity to serve my country than I am of the time I spent in the military. My military service was an opportunity for me to help my country achieve its strategic goals outside of its borders. This time, however, is about improving my country domestically to extend the opportunity for honest military service to all patriots, not just the straight ones. Servicemembers United aims to be a different kind of policy advocacy organization, and that is what attracted me to the group and motiGuest vated me to get involved in the fight to repeal DADT. SU’s messaging and image realistically represent the voices and the faces of real servicemembers and veterans, including their straight allies, and I’ve watched over the past two years as SU and its predecessor group, Call To Duty, have achieved remarkable results – some publicly and some behind the scenes – with their unique creativity, tailored strategies, and effective tactics. The core of young veterans who founded SU – some of whom you’ve seen on 60 Minutes, CNN, the covers of the Advocate and elsewhere – founded the organization because they believed that more targeted and strategic work needed to be done in order to lay the groundwork for DADT’s eventual repeal. I was inspired as I saw the friends I had served with become actively
involved with this organization and as I saw them grow personally with its rapid successes. This past fall, I decided to become a more active member of SU’s cadre, and the time and place of the first speaking opportunity that came along couldn’t have been better. SU had been working with the Nebraska Public Policy Center to schedule a speaking engagement at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where I currently attend university, so I quickly jumped at the chance to become part of this panel of highcaliber veterans and discuss the “straight” perspective on DADT. In addition to getting the issue covered on local TV and radio in an area of Nebraska where DADT is rarely thought about, countless fellow Nebraskans got the Opinion chance to gain insights into an issue that many of them, although supportive, really knew very little and heard very little about. I am proud to have served with gay men and women in the armed forces, and I am a better person for having done so with those who had the courage to be honest about who they really are. It was not easy for me to step out on the “gay rights activist” limb as a straight guy from Nebraska, but I felt a conviction to continue serving my country now in this capacity, and I have never felt so supported in my life. Thank you for this support, and for being proud gay Americans. You make both this nation and its military stronger, and I only hope that one day our country comes to terms with its own orientation and can recognize you for all that you continue to contribute to it. ▼
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 7
L E T T E R S
him, he can’t get an erection, he loses his teeth, he fails to keep his promises and the elves can’t rely on him, What happened at producer Marc Heustis’s show he spends all his money on the stuff and compromislast Saturday night should never be repeated. Heustis es his morals, eventually disappointing children has worked tirelessly to bring our community fun, around the world when he doesn’t show up. sometimes educational but mostly affordable enterWith all of the other holiday songs that include hutainment for almost a decade and a half. His recent morous innuendo that could have been sung, I ask event – “A Christmas Disco at the Castro” – featured why this song, especially since it appeared to make the the original Randy from the Village People and a prisconductor uncomfortable? tine print of You Can’t Stop The Music. Discount tickets were $15 (remember, Saturday night). Before the Arthur Bosse, MNA, Executive Director movie started Heustis took the microphone and graNational Council on Alcoholism ciously thanked those that help put on the Christmas and other Drug Addictions production. Then he did something that just broke Bay Area Chapter my heart. Huestis pleaded to the audience that these San Francisco productions he puts on don’t come cheap and he really needed our support through sponsorships or unIntuition ignored for concert derwriting. He told the audience he would be in the There is a small, quiet voice within each of us that hole for over $3,000. This did sound like a plea; it was speaks with clear intention. It is known mostly as indownright begging and I was a bit embarrassed for tuition. It tells us when we are on track, and when we him. This man who brought so much joy into our are not. We choose to listen or not. The consequences lives with living legends like Debbie Reynolds, Jane that follow are based upon our decision to pay attenRussell, Armistead Maupin, Piper Laurie, Connie tion or not. Stevens and so much more didn’t deserve to stoop to I wonder why Stephanie Lynne Smith made the the level of a Dickens character with his hand out for decision she did when she included “Magic Snow” in money. the program presented by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of The Castro Theatre makes big bucks off of San Francisco at the annual holiday program at the Heustis’s shows. The Nassar family counts their reCastro Theatre on Christmas Eve. The song was about ceipts from the concession stand while paying their Santa Claus being on cocaine/crystal so that he could staff minimum wage. We’re not talking about a famget through the busy night before him. The perforily that wants for anything. Lately, we have all noticed mance was enhanced by the “sniffing” of the chorip-offs of Heustis’s shows like Connie rus members to mimic snorting drugs. Francis in concert or the Sandra Bernard How, you might wonder, do I know New Year’s Eve extravaganza. that Smith ignored her intuition? Because Bill Loggins, a good man and a terriffollowing the performance of the song, ic theater manager, has definitely brought she turned and apologized to the audisome spirit back to our grand ol’ lady Casence.“I’m so sorry,” she said. So am I, Ms. tro after the whole Anita Monga debacle Smith. I thought that I could not be any but there is more to be done. The Nasmore horrified by your decision until I sar family should be working with Mailstrom read in your bio in the program from Heustis to actively find sponsors. Local the performance that you are a clinician. high-end businesses that can afford to I’ll make some assumptions, as a clinician myself, that drop a grand to keep this wonderful tradition alive you have spent endless hours listening to the heartshould get involved. break, shame, lost possibilities, desperation and utter You may say what difference does one person realhopelessness caused by addiction. I certainly have and ly make in the whole scheme of things. If that is your still do. In fact, there were many people in that audiquestion, move back to wherever you came from, sit ence that were wondering if they could get through on Main Street USA during the annual Fourth of July that night, a very difficult night for many of us, withparty and maybe there will be some magic tricks, too! out using. I am a fan, a sponsor, a friend and confidant to Mr. That evening is a tradition for many of us, and a Heustis and he’ll probably have a hissy fit if this letter chance to be with our “family.” I am sad that the inis published. clusion of this song tainted the evening for me and There is only one San Francisco, and we are fortuwell as a number of other people with whom I have nate to have the real magic of showmanship through spoken. It was inappropriate and disrespectful and the hard work and dedication of our town’s Marc you knew that. You’ve made your apology so I don’t Heustis. expect another. Please listen the next time your inner Harry Lit voice tells you that you have been presented with an Castrobear Presents idea that may not be such a good one, and proceed San Francisco accordingly. A presence higher than our own never steers us in the wrong direction, and we can all be wise ‘Magic snow’ misses mark enough to pay attention. On Christmas Eve I attended the 9 p.m. SF Gay Kim Grubbs Men’s Chorus “Home for the Holidays” concert at the San Francisco Castro Theatre. Their special guest performers were the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, which sang Pick and choose? a set of songs, including one entitled “Magic Snow,” In his December 27 review of the San Francisco the premise of which was to answer the question of Opera’s fall season, Philip Campbell wrote that he how Santa Claus is able to stay up all night delivering “happily avoided the real stinkaroos of the season, to presents. The song attributes St. Nick’s stamina to get a cherry-picker’s taste of what [director David] “magic snow,” a euphemism for cocaine. Although the Gockley can accomplish...” It’s disturbing to think that word cocaine was never used, the chorus members your reviewer attends only productions he knows in made snorting sounds and gestures as if they were advance he will like. How does he know? Does he have snorting cocaine whenever the line “magic snow” was friends who see the opera and then tell him whether sung. At the end of the song the conductor turned to it will be worth his while to attend himself? The job of the audience and said that she was sorry (I assume for a professional critic is to attend opening night perthe song) and then continued the program. formances and then offer his views to his readers. Let me start by saying that I “got” the joke. As a reAfter this flip comment, how can your readers trust covering cocaine addict there is little that gets by me, Campbell’s future critiques? and although some people will read this letter and tell Robert Eakin me to “lighten up,” I must say that I do not think that San Francisco drug abuse or addiction are joking matters, especially in a community that has witnessed the disease of [The arts editor responds: Philip Campbell covers the addiction obliterating relationships and ruining lives SF Symphony season for the B.A.R. Jason Victor in epidemic proportions. One need not look far to see Serinus has primary reviewing duties for covering the how drugs have ravaged the gay community from the SF Opera season.] formation of a special methamphetamine task force to public service messages encouraging users to get No purse check help. There is a connection between drug use and Now that plastic bags are being used less, many risky sexual behaviors, and as the nation’s number one people will be carrying canvas and other types of tote health problem, addiction strains the health care sysbags. tem, the economy, harms family life, and threatens Many stores require men to check their bags, while public safety, making drug use something that should women are allowed to carry their purses, unchecked. not be encouraged or joked about. Flax Art, Dick Blick Art, Amoeba Records, Pearl I think including such a song in the venue of Arts, and Big Lots, all in San Francisco, blatantly ask “Home for the Holidays” was inappropriate and hope men to check backpacks or canvas bags. At Flax, I nothat neither chorus loses supporters as a result. A proticed a woman with a purse, saying she could steal gram that was so inclusive of all should not have inmore in her purse than I could in my bag. The woman cluded a song that makes light of drug use. Throughat the bag check said, “A woman will never surrender out the performance of “Magic Snow” I could not her purse.” help but feel uncomfortable for the parents who This is gender discrimination and needs to be adbrought their children to the concert, for all the redressed. It is highly unfair to men. Either every person covering people present who had to hear drug use glochecks his/her bag, or no one does. Discrimination rified, and for anyone in the audience that has ever has no place in San Francisco. cared about someone who struggled with addiction. I might have felt differently about the song if it had told R. Tony Haze the entire story of what will happen to Santa after San Francisco some time of using magic snow: Mrs. Claus leaves
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C O M M E N TA R Y
The perils of Paul it might make sense to do a lot of things very differently from the way we do them now. But we are not at liberty to he primaries and caucuses begin the world anew. Taken tofor the 2008 presidential gether, Dr. Paul’s radical prescriprace loom, so what’s a gay tions would entail a massive disRepublican to do? For many, the ruption of life in the United States answer has been Ron Paul. He’s not as we know it. Millions of elderly going to win any primaries, but a Americans depend on Medicare for vote for him could be thought a basic medical needs. Student loans protest against the theocratic tenhave given a college education to dencies of the party. It could also millions of middle- and lower-inbe a vote for libertarian principle, come students whose financial which appeals to some. Yet needs were not met by private while some of Paul’s views are markets. Every person a superficially appealing, he’s pharmacist? I’m sorry, a very bad choice. but that’s just loony. It’s Let’s start with what’s also typically reckless of attractive about Paul. Paul. First, he’s not the other GOP He wants the U.S. to quit candidates. With the excepthe United Nations tion of Arizona Senaand withdraw from tor John McCain, OutRight just about every imthey’re about as politportant treaty it has ically and ideologicalentered. This guarantees applause ly unlovely a lot as one can imagfrom conspiracy theorists who ine. They’re nativist and anti-evothink U.S. “sovereignty” is endanlution. Several are running for Nagered, but it’s stupid foreign policy. tional Pastor instead of president. He says he supports free trade, On gay issues, they’re as bad as but opposes the agreements that we’ve ever had. The two candihave made trade freer. dates with gay-friendly records – The best that could be said Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney – about a Paul presidency is that alhave abandoned their erstwhile most nothing he believes would principles to cozy up to religious become law. We might as well conservatives. elect Daffy Duck. All of them support “Don’t But isn’t Paul the best of the Ask, Don’t Tell.” All, except McRepublicans on gay issues? Cain, support some kind of antiPaul’s opposition to a federal gay-marriage constitutional marriage amendment is welcome. amendment. Giuliani, who initialBut he voted for the 1996 Defense ly opposed any amendment, has of Marriage Act, which defined since wobbled. marriage as heterosexual for fedIn walks Ron Paul, formerly a eral purposes. DOMA substantialpracticing doctor, promising to ly reduced the legal significance of limit government and sticking by marriage even for same-sex couhis principles. He would abolish ples in states where their unions the IRS, the income tax system, and might be permitted. the departments of Education, EnIn an interview with ABC’s ergy, Homeland Security, and John Stossel, Paul said that he supHealth and Human Services. He ports gay marriage. Then he exwould eliminate Medicare and end plained what he meant: “Sure, they student loans for education. He can do whatever they want and would even get government out of they can call it whatever they want, the medical licensing business. As just so they don’t expect to impose he put it in an interview with their relationship on somebody Google, this means your neighbor else. They can’t make me, personcould dispense medications. ally, accept what they do, but they Part of this is intriguing. If we can do whatever they want.” were starting the world over again,
by Dale Carpenter
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There’s more than a whiff of homophobia in this. It’s akin to, “They have a right to their disgusting lives.” More importantly, it’s not clear what he means by saying gay couples can call their relationships “whatever they want.” If he means that gay couples can contract for certain legal rights and call what results a “marriage,” that’s nothing new. Full legal marriage “imposes” on people in all kinds of ways since married couples have stategranted rights and benefits others don’t have. Paul’s answer to this is to abolish marriage as it exists, to “privatize” it. State-sponsored marriage is bound up in our law at all levels of government. Ending state involvement in it is has as little public support as any imaginable policy proposal. So it’s naive at best, and a cynical dodge at worst, to offer gay families “privatized” marriage as the answer to the practical problems they face right now. Paul says citizens should be able to serve in the military as long as their sexuality is not “disruptive.” That suggests he’d apply the same standard to heterosexuals and homosexuals in uniform. But the whole point of opposition to gays in the military is that homosexuality itself degrades unit moral and cohesion. Paul has had nothing to say about this. Personally, I’d vote for McCain. While I disagree with him on a few things, including campaign finance limitations, he’s the candidate in the GOP field with the most potential to be a good president. He has the integrity, the life experience, and the national-security credentials for it. Alone among the Democratic or Republican candidates, he has the credibility with military leaders to end – or at least to weaken – DADT, if he decided to do that. The others are all talk on the issue. A vote for Paul, on the other hand, is a flight from responsibility. He is too ideologically hard and pure to be president. A conscientious voter should think harder about the serious choices. ▼
A one-issue year Crimes Prevention Act. That bill made it further than ENDA in any form, only to be pulled after an attempt to get it attached to a dehe year 2007 is a hard one to fense spending bill. look back on. I thought Neither it nor ENDA had 2006 was a rough ride, but much of a chance with George W. personally, it was this last year that Bush as president. I will remember as one marked But 2007 wasn’t all about with loss, grieving, hardship, ENDA. We’ve seen transand stress. Not perhaps the gender representations worst I have faced, but ceragain grow in the mass tainly high up in the top 10 media, this time in the countdown. daytime soap opera All My On the broader Children. We’ve also seen a transgender rights front largely positive – in spite of slew of transthere being a Transmissions gender-themed great many news articles, other stories most surrounding the termination worth discussing – there was but of Largo, Florida city manager one issue: the Employment NonSusan Stanton. Newsweek did a Discrimination Act, and how package of articles focusing on Congressman Barney Frank (Dtransgender issues. Lawmakers in Massachusetts) and the Human Mexico and elsewhere pushed for Rights Campaign jettisoned the the inclusion of transgender peoneeds of transgender people in a ple in rights bills, and we again doomed-from-the-start attempt won more than we lost. to pass an exclusionary bill. As a community, in spite of the Way back in May I had disbig losses with federal legislation, cussed some rumors from Senator we have still seen positive steps, Edward Kennedy’s (D-Massachuand these steps will continue to setts) and HRC’s camp of this push us ever forward. happening, but regarding the This is where 2008 will lead us. Local Law Enforcement Hate
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We will continue to see incremental successes, positive media, and likely win more rights in cities and countries across the globe. While a transgender-inclusive ENDA will again be off the table in 2008 – Frank already took that off the table for the foreseeable future – the election year will keep any attempt at federal gains nestled on the back burner. Indeed, it is unlikely that we’ll see any dramatic changes until after the calendar changes yet again. Perhaps, then, our main goal should be introspective. We should look at what happened to make the ENDA situation go so far south so fast. HRC has been doing a series of events around the country to “say sorry” about what happened, and vow to do better. That likely is not enough – its actions may well have caused a rift in the community that may take more than a year’s time to heal, dividing not only gay from trans, but haves from the have nots. We, as a community, need to look closely at this, and 2008 might be the time to do so. Here’s to hoping, for all of us, a safe new year, and that the end of the year might see us a community united, willing and ready to make things happen for all. ▼
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 9
P O L I T I C S
LGBT politicos make ’08 predictions by Matthew S. Bajko
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ith three different elections facing California voters this year, Political Notebook asked LGBT politicos throughout the state for their 2008 prognostications. Foremost in many people’s minds as they discussed how they see things playing out politically over the next nine months was, of course, the presidential election. But local races – in particular the match-up between out San Francisco Democrats state Carole Senator Migden and Assemblyman Mark Leno for Migden’s 3rd District Senate seat – and issues such as marriage equality and a fight over how the state divvies up its presidential electoral votes Political also weighed heavily on the minds of those interviewed. Here are their predictions on what will happen at the ballot box and in the courtroom. “We will achieve the all important transformation of winning the second state, the state that follows Massachusetts in ending our exclusion from marriage. And if we do it right, it will be California.” (Connecticut could be second if its Supreme Court releases a favorable decision in a gay marriage case it heard in May 2007.)
pendent candidate for president.” James Vaughn, Director Log Cabin California and Western Region
“I think Carole [Migden] will win. There is really no reason to vote against her, especially if you are queer. Hopefully, we will have our first African American president, but I don’t know. I think it will be an uphill climb for him.” Harry Britt Former San Francisco Supervisor
“Senator Migden will be reelected. I am feeling Barack [Obama] right now. I think he will be the nominee.” Jeff Sheehy Former Mayoral AIDS Policy Adviser
“One prediction is that statewide in the June primary there are some really Notebook awful right-wing ballot measures that could be on the ballot, including the so-called eminent domain reform which is a radical, anti-regulation measure; another anti-choice parental notification abortion measure; and also the Electoral College power grab. If they are all on in June there will be a very massive and broad-based progressive coalition to defeat those measures. It will be very energizing politically.” Scott Wiener, Chair San Francisco Democratic Party
Evan Wolfson Advisory Board Chair Let California Ring
“The Democrats will win every single office in the country. The Democrats will get better margins in the House and Senate [in Congress] and definitely will get a Democrat in the White House.” Tom Nolan, Executive Director, Project Open Hand Former San Mateo County Supervisor
“I look forward to seeing a President Obama and I think we will retain the same number of gay seats on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.” [Currently, two gay men serve on the 11-member board, though Tom Ammiano is termed out this year and running unopposed for state Assembly. So far two gay men are running to replace him, while a transgender woman is running for another open seat on the board.] Rebecca Prozan, Co-Chair Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club
“We are going to have a record voter turnout in November. People’s imagination is going to be captured by the time we have a Democratic presidential candidate. It will be very exciting to see us get back on track.” Hank Wilson AIDS Activist
“The LGBT community becomes disheartened by the Democratic Party’s failure to pass any bills in Congress that advance equality and begin to consider supporting a third party or inde-
Robert Bernardo
“I predict a big Hillary [Clinton] sweep in the coming months. Forget what you read about the Iowa and New Hampshire polls. I also predict that Barack Obama will be the Howard Dean of 2008, all sizzle and no steak. “I predict that you’ll see a lot more of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa visiting the Bay Area as he attempts to elevate his profile in anticipation for a 2010 run for governor. ‘Viva Villaraigosa’ fundraisers are just around the corner... “In San Francisco, I predict an even nastier campaign for state Senate. As we have already seen in the earlier endorsement meetings of Milk, Alice and GAPA, this will be a bitter race to the end. I just hope the LGBT community doesn’t get destroyed in the process.” Robert Bernardo, Member San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee
“We are totally assuming Mark [Leno] will win by a landslide. We are very proud of him.
“As for 2008, I think it is going to be a really exciting time. No matter what presidential candidate people are supporting, people are engaged in the presidential race and it is a sense of hope. I think Mark is part of that; he reflects that sense of hope and a vision for the future.” Fran Kipnis and Martha Knutzen Partners and Emeritus Board Members Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club
“I predict that we will be able to elect to the state legislature even more state lawmakers who will support marriage equality because page 15 씰
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T R AV E L
The dollar is strong in the ‘Paris’ of South America by Ed Walsh
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look of shock came across the face of an Argentine woman I met while we were waiting in the subway in Buenos Aires. I had been talking to her in broken Spanish about the Bay Area’s transit system. I mentioned that it costs $1.50 to ride buses and the subway in San Francisco and even more to take BART outside of the city. “That’s crazy,” she said in English with a tone of indignation that was as strong as her Argentine accent.
Since Argentina’s currency collapsed in 2001, the shock for Americans visiting the Paris of South America may be the city’s low prices. It costs 70 centavos to ride the subway in Buenos Aires, that’s about 22 cents. Since I last visited Buenos Aires in 2002, prices have gone up, but the city still remains one of the best values for Americans who have seen their currency deteriorate against the euro, British pound, and even the Canadian dollar. Buenos Aires has often been called the most European of any Latin American city. That opinion would soon be apparent to any visitor. It borrows its architectural style from its European immigrant population. You will see French, Spanish, Italian and English architecture throughout downtown. And that influence extends to bathrooms, as most have bidets. That European influence on the city is also reflected in its gaypositive laws and attitudes. In 2003, Buenos Aires became the first city in South America to enact a civil unions law. The city of 3 million supports dozens of gay and gay-integrated bars, nightclubs, and a handful of gay hotels. Buenos Aires has recognized the importance of gay travel. The city produces a brochure with a gay map that is available at its tourism kiosks that are scattered throughout the city. When I didn’t see the gay map displayed with the other brochures at the kiosk on Florida Street, its famous pedestrian-only shopping street, I asked for one. At first the woman behind the counter didn’t understand what I was asking for, then she asked her fellow clerk and he pulled out a map from a drawer. But a friend told me that the gay maps are readily displayed at the kiosk in the San Telmo neighborhood. Buenos Aires’ official Web site explains the city’s gay scene: “Buenos Aires has adopted the concept of ‘heterofriendly,’ which speaks to a common ground, an understanding between gays and heterosexuals, a more integrated experience; Buenos Aires is an open city, without ‘gay ghettos.’ Gay tourists from all around the world flock to Buenos Aires. The majority of the visitors are men.” Well-known international club promoter and Buenos Aires resident, Steven Gomez, told the Bay Area Reporter: “Being gay here now is getting to be like it is in the USA. “You can kiss somebody in the street. You can walk hand in hand down the street,” he added. Buenos Aires has its own gay travel agency, Pride Travel, owned by Carlos Melia. It’s a great onestop shop for all things gay in the city. He offers gay-specific tours of the city. His Web site, www.pridetravel.com, also is a good guide in itself. It will soon include a free posting service for visitors looking for traveling companions. Dropins to his office are welcome from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 3 to 6:30 p.m. Monday-Friday.
The sights There are a wide variety of bus, walking and even boat tours available in the city. As long as it’s not raining, a bicycle tour is a great way to see the sights. You can ride on some of the city’s pedestrian paths and sidewalks. On a recent
Ed Walsh
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Deigo Valerioti, lifeguard at the “heterofriendly” Axel Hotel, on the glass-bottom rooftop pool.
visit, I took a four-hour bicycle tour offered by Bike Tours (www.biketours.com.ar). It went by most of the main attractions in the city and was a great history lesson. If you prefer to do it yourself, Buenos Aires’ official tourism Web site (www.bue.gov.ar) includes 12 circuit maps of the city’s neighborhoods. You can print out the maps and download an audio tour that corresponds to each circuit. The service is free. If you have a cell phone that works there, you can listen to each stop in the circuit over your phone by dialing a local Buenos Aires phone number and punching in the stop’s corresponding code. By the way, the tourist board offers a hotline that you can call toll free from any pay phone: 0800-999-2838. It is staffed by people who speak English and can be called 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. You can also e-mail the city’s official tourist ombudsman at turista@defensoria.org.ar. Downtown Buenos Aires is punctuated by the Obelisk monument in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio (Avenue 9th of July). It looks something like the Washington Monument but it is a lot smaller and you can’t go inside it. The Obelisk is a great help in getting your bearings in the city. Avenida 9 de Julio is named for Argentina’s Independence Day and bills itself as the widest boulevard in the world. It runs north to south, cutting the city in two. Hundreds of old homes had to be bulldozed to build the boulevard, which opened in 1937. The Casa Rosada is where the president of Argentina works. But unlike our White House, the president of Argentina does not live there. The building’s presidential museum is open to the public. But the famous balcony where Evita Peron rallied for her husband, President Juan Peron, is closed to the public. While we’re on the subject of Evita, the Museo Evita opened in 2002 in one of the buildings she bought to help unwed pregnant women. But don’t expect a balanced view of the life of the former first lady of Argentina. The museum virtually canonizes her. It includes displays of the amazingly preserved stylish clothes that were her trademark. Laminated cards explain the displays in English and several videos shown throughout the museum have English subtitles.
After her death at age 33 in 1952, President Peron had his wife’s body preserved in the hopes of keeping it permanently displayed in a glass case. But after he was overthrown, Evita’s body was moved to a secret grave in Italy. Her body was returned to Buenos Aires in the 1970s and it is buried in the Recoleta Cemetery. The cemetery is one of the most popular sights in the city. Evita’s grave is the most-visited but the cemetery contains a rich history of some of Argentina’s most important residents. The cemetery is known for dozens of cats that roam throughout it. It is also said to be haunted by 19year-old Rufina Cambaceres, who may have been accidentally buried alive in 1902. While there is no gay neighborhood in Buenos Aires the Barrio Norte and the San Telmo neighborhoods near the city’s center have a large number of gay people. By the way, San Telmo is the birthplace of the tango. It was once home to Buenos Aires’ richest residents. But a reversal of fortunes hit in 1871 when yellow fever swept the city. The rich residents fled to what was then the outskirts of the city to avoid the plague. The poor took over the old mansions of the rich. A dozen or more families packed into the mansions once owned by one rich family. The tango was born in the melting pot of cultures that flourished in San Telmo. The La Boca neighborhood is a great example of the Italian immigrant influence on the city. Italians from Genoa first settled in the 1800s. They used leftover paint and scrap metal from ships to build their homes. That patchwork of bright colors and materials is now one of Buenos Aires’ most popular tourist attractions. La Boca’s main street, Calle Caminito, is an open-air market for artists, and an open stage for street performers. Buenos Aires’ newest landmark is the Puente de Mujer. It means “woman’s bridge” and is a tribute to the country’s women. The modern footbridge has a single white mast with cables that connect the walkway below. It rotates to the side to let ships pass. It opened in December 2001.
Nightlife What’s gay nightlife like in Buenos Aires? Two words: late and integrated.
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 11
Ed Walsh
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Puente de Mujer (woman’s bridge), Buenos Aires’ newest attraction.
People don’t eat dinner until after 9 p.m. Bars don’t get busy until after 11:30 p.m. and you won’t see anyone in dance clubs until after 2 a.m. Amerika (Gascon 1040) is one of the most popular nightclubs in the city and it’s also gay, lesbian, and straight integrated but is usually about half gay. It’s open Thursday, Friday, and Saturdays. “Amerika, it’s a very nice club,” a cab driver told me on the way. “Everything is there, gays, lesbians, and men with women, too. Everybody together.” The Bulnes Class (1250 Bulnes) is a trendy new gay lounge bar, just a half block from busy Cordoba Street in the Palermo District. Bulnes is popular with the pre-dance crowd. Sitges bar (4119 Cordoba), as in the gay-popular resort town in Spain, is gay and lesbian mixed, although it is mostly gay men. It features entertainment with a drag show and male strippers on Wednesdays. Like Bulnes, it’s a “pre-dance” bar and it is also in the Palermo neighborhood. If you want a crash tango lesson, you can get a gay one every Wednesday night at 10 p.m. at La Marshall (444 Maipu Street). It’s downtown. Contramano (1082 Rodriguez Pena), in the Barrio Norte neighborhood, is Buenos Aires’ oldest gay bar. It opened in 1984 after Argentina returned to democratic rule. Like Amerika, Alsina (940 Alsina) is a very popular gay/straight mixed weekend disco. It’s a huge space set in a 19th century warehouse in the Monserrat neighborhood. The Glam disco (3046 Cabrera) is particularly popular on Thursday and Saturday nights. It has one dance floor, two bars, a patio and a dark room. It’s in the Palermo neighborhood. Buenos Aires has at least three bathhouses, three sex clubs, and three X-rated cruise cinemas. For a complete updated list of those clubs check out www.theronda.com.ar. Click on the British flag for English. The saunas in the cinemas are generally busiest in the early evening. The sex clubs are also busy in the early evening before the crowds gravitate to the discos.
Hotels The crown jewel of gay tourism in Buenos Aires is the newly opened five-star Hotel Axel in the gay-popular San Telmo neighborhood. It bills itself as “heterofriendly.” It is a brand new building that opened on Halloween 2007. It includes 48 rooms, a ground floor outdoor pool and a rooftop indoor pool. The roof pool has a glass bottom that can be seen to the lobby, five floors
below. The hotel is stunning but it could be a vertigo-sufferer’s worst nightmare. The elevators and the stairs are glass. If you are not staying there, the hotel’s restaurant is open to the public. Check out the hotel’s Web site for information on parties and special events hosted there. If you appreciate good design, the hotel is worth checking out. It’s very safe during the day, but at night, it’s advisable to take a cab when coming or going. If you’ve stayed at the other Hotel Axel in Barcelona, you can expect the same high standards. Rates start at the current high season price of $206. On the other end of the budget scale but also in San Telmo, you will find Lugar Gay. It literally means gay place. If you plan to visit during Buenos Aires’ high season, October through April, book ahead. Rooms fill up quickly. It has eight rooms, some with shared baths. Amenities include a Jacuzzi, small workout area, and a couple of sun decks with views of San Telmo. Unlike the Hotel Axel, Lugar Gay is only for men. Rates start at a bargain $35 and include breakfast. For security reasons, they don’t allow overnight guests but if you just met Mr. Right Now, they can point you to one of the city’s many sex hotels that rent by the hour or the night. The Calden Guest House is a gay-owned and heterosexual friendly guesthouse in downtown Buenos Aires near Pride Travel. It’s in a house that was built in 1895 and has operated as a guesthouse since 2005. It promotes itself as “straight-friendly.” Each of its five very well decorated rooms has a bath and its own theme. Yes, there is an Evita room! Rates start at $60. A loft suite that can sleep three people runs $90. Like Lugar Gay, overnight guests are not allowed. The Bayres guesthouse is on the outskirts of the Palermo district on a rundown section of Cordoba Street, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. I stopped by for a tour but I was told it would not be possible because the owner wasn’t there. But the Web site photos of the inside of the guesthouse look very nice and it’s about a 15-minute walk from the center of the trendy Palermo Soho neighborhood, which has some wonderful outdoor cafes and upscale restaurants. Rates there start at $35. Like the other guesthouses, overnight guests are not allowed.
Restaurants Buenos Aires is a paradise for foodies with lobster taste but with a fast food budget. You can have a gourmet meal for as little as $15 per person. Most people don’t eat dinner until after 9 p.m. A 10 per-
cent tip is standard. For a quick meal, you can’t beat Pride Cafe (869 Balcarce). You can pick up a gay magazine there, pick up a gay map of the city, or flier promoting the next event at a gay club. It’s particularly popular on Sundays during San Telmo’s street fair. A second Pride Cafe is just around the corner. Chueca restaurant and bar (3283 Soler) is in the trendy Palermo Soho neighborhood. By the way, Chueca is named for a gay neighborhood in Madrid, Spain. It features international gourmet food and late night entertainment. Like Sitges, it often features a drag show and male strippers. Inside Restaurant and Bar (1572 Mitre) in downtown includes strippers on the weekends. It’s most popular with the 40-plus age group. Olsen (5870 Gorriti) is gayowned and very popular during its Sunday brunch. The hip restaurant in the Palermo district sports a Scandinavian design. The trendy Casa Cruz bar and nightclub (1658 Uriarte) near Chueca in Palermo Soho is known for its modern decor and Italian food.
Getting there and around American, Continental, United, Mexicana and LAN Airlines offer connecting flights to Buenos Aires’ airport (EZE) from the Bay Area. I took LAN to Buenos Aires with stops in Los Angeles and Lima, Peru. The economy class service was great and it’s a good way to go if you want to combine a Peru and Argentina trip. I actually enjoyed my three-hour layover on my return flight in Lima’s modern international terminal last month. As I wrote part of this story on my laptop, I could hear a Peruvian Indian band as it played traditional and Christmas music for passing tourists. The musicians weren’t soliciting donations, but I went up to thank them after they were getting ready to leave. I spoke to them in Spanish and they answered, “You’re welcome. Thank you,” in English. Downtown Buenos Aires is about a 45-minute bus ride from the city’s airport. The best way to get downtown is to take a Manuel Tienda Leon bus. It runs every half hour and depending on the exchange rate, the fare is around $10. You can get a transfer minivan to your hotel for about a dollar more. If you take a cab all the way from the airport, the fare will be about twice as much, but if you are traveling with someone, you won’t save much by taking the bus. The aforementioned subway costs less than 25 cents and is a great way to avoid the traffic. Unlike BART or Muni, the system is very user friendly. You buy your ticket at the window and insert the ticket into the turnstile. No one will bark at you for not having the exact change. A taxi ride within the downtown, Palermo, and San Telmo neighborhoods will seldom run you more than $3. Unlike the U.S., taxi drivers don’t expect tips but it’s customary to round up the fare to the nearest peso.
For more information For Ed Walsh’s multimedia blog on gay Buenos Aires and a list of good gay Buenos Aires travel links visit www.gayBAtravel.blogspot.com. For a great guide book on Buenos Aires, pick up a copy of Frommer’s Buenos Aires guide, written by openly gay travel writer, Michael “Mister Buenos Aires” Luongo. It includes information for gay and lesbian travelers. ▼
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 03 January 2008
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by Heather Cassell
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ife is different for transgender teacher Dana Rivers, who lost her high school teaching job in Sacramento nearly 10 years ago. The media spotlight that was her life for nearly three years has faded, she now lives in the Bay Area, and while she still teaches at the high school level, her students are different. Rivers, 52, an award-winning educator, knows she’s fortunate and is happy to be teaching again. “I always thought that [I] would teach again because it’s what I do,” said Rivers, who teaches social studies and history at Five Keys Charter School in San Francisco’s county jail. “There was a period of time when I thought that the activist part of my world would kind of dominate things for a while, and it did for a couple of years, but when that quieted down, I just went back looking for another teaching job and went back to doing this.” After a nearly three-year stint as a transgender activist, which brought her face-to-face with Congressman Barney Frank (DMassachusetts), who later led the charge against a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Dis-
crimination Act in the House of Representatives in October, Rivers said, she knows how lucky she is. “He just doesn’t get it,” she said, disappointed, but not surprised, by Frank’s position. Rivers, whose teaching style is creative and interactive, settled her discrimination lawsuit against Center High School in the Antelope Unified School District in North Sacramento for $150,000. The agreement included that the school district would maintain her good standing in her professional record. Rivers said she turned down other teaching opportunities in neighboring Sacramento high schools during the media hype because “I wasn’t ready to pursue jumping right back into that fish bowl that Sacramento is.” Instead, Rivers road the media wave during her transition that included a potential book and Lifetime movie deal. The book and the movie didn’t materialize, partially due to conceptual differences and to management changes, Rivers said. Rivers moved away from the Sacramento area when the media frenzy was over and settled for a while in Boulder Creek, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, to finally get to know her new self, some-
Jane Philomen Cleland
Trans teacher changing lives in SF jail
Dana Rivers is now teaching in the San Francisco Sheriff Department’s Five Keys Charter School.
thing she didn’t have a chance to do during her transition, she said. She then moved to the Bay Area and applied for teaching jobs. Nearly two years ago she began teaching at Five Keys Charter School in the county jail. Five Keys is one of the many rehabilitative programs initiated by Sheriff Michael Hennessey after local educational funds for the county jail dried up. The only charter school of its kind in the United States, Five Keys opened four years ago and operates on $1.2 million from the state’s education budget, according to Eileen Hirst, chief of staff to Hennessey and a board member of Five Keys. Nine teachers, a principal, and seven board members oversee the school, which is based on five key goals: education, employment, family, community, and recovery. Classes are provided at three locations: one at the women’s facility, one at the men’s facility, and one facility on Bryant Street for former prisoners. Students, with an average of a 90-day stay in the county jail, are tested monthly to ensure they are learning. Testing also ensures continued funding of the school. Since the school opened nearly 60 students have graduated from the program. The charter school model allows teachers to create curriculum that fits their students and their teaching styles. Rivers understands the uniqueness of who she is and the
city and county that has employed her. That understanding comes across in her lessons to the students who come into her classroom. Rivers, who is used to teaching with multi-media tools, teaching outside of the classroom, as well as having more time, has had to par down for her students. The county jail doesn’t provide many tools and semesters are cut to a month due to a student population that gets transferred in and out, Rivers said. Yet, during a recent visit, the white classroom wall was lined with colorful maps of Africa, some quite detailed, and Rivers handed out “Making sense of English law enforcement in the 18th century,” to the 22 students dressed in orange sweats, the jailissue wardrobe. The lesson plan for the day, Rivers said, was a part of the social studies teacher’s new program, the Incarceration Project. The project, developed last summer, is to shape the curriculum “around the reality that our students are in the jail system,” Rivers said. “I hope that I have an influence that helps place themselves in their own history,” said Rivers. “That they understand ... that there is no ‘us and them,’ it’s all ‘we’ and that we can celebrate our differences. We are all unique beings ... that same quality makes us the same – we are all unique, therefore we share this uniqueness, we share our differences.”
Rivers continued,“We all get to celebrate this human experience that’s not time specific, that is all of our lifetime and all the lifetimes before. If I can get them to make those connections and some of the decisions they’ve made in their life, maybe they get to re-examine them.” Rivers, who isn’t explicitly out about being a transgender woman with her students, but is open about her life, translates her belief that “each one of us has a voice” that can reduce the stigma of labels through her lessons. The students of all ages and ethnicities who are new to, or who have been in and out of, the criminal justice system engage passionately in the learning process. When asked if they were aware that Rivers is a transgender woman, two of her students told the Bay Area Reporter that it didn’t matter personally to them. Both of them agreed that if it was common knowledge there might be some problems. “I didn’t know she’s transgender, so for me that’s something new,” said Kevin Joseph, 44, who said he was in jail due to drugs. “Does it matter that she’s transgender? Not to me, it doesn’t. I think if that was common knowledge ... it might be less calm in her class.” Michael Bailey, another student, agreed, but he wasn’t as surprised. He told the B.A.R. that he picked up hints from Rivers’s personal stories that she shared with the students. “I had an idea, living in San Francisco,” said Bailey, 41, who said he violated his parole. “Personally, it doesn’t bother me. There have been some comments made previously ... which is expected around here.” Rivers is very much aware of prisoners’ homophobia. “There is a real homophobia among the inmate population,” said Rivers, “because there’s a fear amongst themselves that being out when they live in such a close, confined space just has a tremendous pressure to seem virile and strong.” Rivers, who said she wants her students to see themselves as “part of the solution, not as victims of a problem, but as proactive change agents,” has seen some “lights” turn on in some of her students. Hirst said that an estimated 15 percent of prisoners return to the county jail, according to an informal study in June 2007. The typical rate of recidivism is 55 percent for prisoners not in programs, Hirst said. Hirst also said the study found individuals in the program stayed out of jail longer than their previous experience. “Human beings are social creatures. We need to know that we are not so unique that we live in the constant fear of being banished of being ostracized,” said Rivers. “That’s the message that I carry to my students. They need to see themselves as powerful messages of an important story that must be told.” ▼
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 13
C O M M U N I T Y
NGLTF 씱 page 2 tunity” to “change the name and reflect our politics, because they do have good politics around the ‘B’ and the ‘T’ issue. ... This would be an amazing time for our community after ENDA and say, ‘Look at the lessons we all learned from that fight.’” A former two-time candidate for District 8 supervisor who is currently a commissioner on the San Francisco Ethics Commission, Hansen told the B.A.R. that she was considering increasing her annual donation to NGLTF – due to its swift response to support a transgender-inclusive ENDA. But she is now reconsidering the increase. Hansen didn’t disclose how much she gives annually.
Benefit of doubt Some bisexual and transgender activists were willing to give NGLTF the benefit of doubt, due to the organization’s history. “The task force has been so spectacular on trans issues,” said
Black Cat 씱 page 5 said he felt it was important that the legendary gay bar be remembered and not lost to time. “It’s part of the foundation that made it easier for us by creating bars and comfortable places for us to go to and meet each other,” said Newmeyer, an epidemiologist at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco. “The Black Cat wasn’t the first, but it was the strongest of these early establishments and the longest lasting.” He spent the last year and half working with city officials and neighborhood groups to win approval for placing the plaque in the sidewalk. “The Cat for 30 years was a welcoming place for folks like us,” Newmeyer told the crowd of about 20 people during the dedication ceremony Saturday, December 15. In the 1950s the Cat’s owner, Sol Stoumen, hired Sarria and gave him license to perform his shows. “We had a lot of fun here,” said Roberts as he sat drinking a glass of wine reminiscing of old times he had at the Cat. “Jose would climb up to the beams and lay on the rafter.” “One time he dressed up as Madame Butterfly and arrived by rickshaw here one Sunday afternoon in full costume and makeup,” added Roberts. A straight man, Stoumen proved to be more than a welcoming barkeep and an unyielding ally of his gay patrons. As detailed in Nan Alamilla Boyd’s book Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, the state Board of Equaliza-
OBITUARY POLICY Obituaries must be typed and no longer than 200 words. Please follow normal rules of capitalization. Birth and death date are required. We reserve the right to edit for style, clarity, grammar, and taste; no poetry. Email is preferred. To submit a photo of the deceased, e-mail a recent color jpg. Send to obituaries@ebar.com For mailed or in-person submissions, write the deceased’s name on the back of the photo. If you include a SASE for the photo’s return, write the person’s name on the inside of the envelope flap. All obituaries must include a contact name and daytime phone number. They must be submitted within a year of the death. Deadline for obituaries is Monday at 5 p.m., with the exception of special display ad obituaries, which must be submitted to the advertising department by Friday at 3 p.m. (advertising@ebar.com). Mail to Bay Area Reporter, 395 9th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 or e-mail to obituaries@ebar.com.
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Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “They were the first organization to say that they would support trans inclusive legislation and they were one of the first to include trans in their mission statement.” While she said that the new name wouldn’t have been something she would have chosen, she understood NGLTF’s legacy and history that went beyond gay and lesbian issues. Rose agreed with bisexual and transgender activists concerned with NGLTF’s name change, noting that the name “does carry some weight.” But Rose also agreed with Keisling and pointed to what NGLTF has done for the bisexual and transgender communities. “If one were to say to me, ‘If you would rather have the name or the substance?’I would take the substance nine times out of 10,” said Rose. Bisexual activist Amy Andre agreed with Rose. “They do actually live that mission.” Andre, who co-authored “Bisexual Health,” said, “The task force has good content going on
for bisexual people. I’d rather push that and develop that content rather than focus on the name.” Foreman reasoned that NGLTF isn’t the only national LGBT organization that doesn’t include every community’s initial in its name, but works on behalf of the entire queer community. He pointed to the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund as examples. Keisling agreed, “At NCTE, we take very seriously that we are an LGBT organization, but there are very important empowerment reasons why we just have the word ‘transgender’ in our name.” Foreman added that NGLTF has been working to “brand” itself within the last year, using the “Gay and Lesbian Task Force” on first reference and then dropping the “gay and lesbian” to just the “Task Force” on subsequent references to the organization. “You should judge organizations by their work not by ... their name,” said Foreman. “I would challenge anyone to ... have shown a greater commitment than the task force.” ▼
tion in 1949 indefinitely suspended the Black Cat’s liquor license because it “was a hangout for persons of homosexual tendencies.” Stoumen fought back, and in his appeal “rejected the state’s allegation that the bar was a hangout for homosexuals.” He lost before the BOE but hired attorney Morris Lowenthal, who turned the case into a fight for gay rights, arguing in two separate lawsuits that “homosexuals had the right to assemble in bars and restaurants.” While lower courts ruled against the bar, the state Supreme Court ruled in its favor in 1951. It was one of the first judicial decisions to grant rights to the gay community in the United States. For that reason alone, Roberts said the bar is due its rightful place in gay history. “It’s probably because Jose and the owner of the bar who went to bat for us against discriminatory laws,” said Roberts. “You weren’t allowed to congregate.” The legal victory did not mean an end to harassment from police. As Roberts recalled, “If you were sitting at the bar you wouldn’t be allowed to rub knees together. The only time two men kissed in a bar in the 1950s was on New Year’s Eve when they turned the lights off for two minutes.”
Potter, adorned with a Black Cat “souvenir of nostalgia” pin, added, “You couldn’t even hold hands or they would arrest you.” The harassment led Sarria to run for city supervisor in 1961, becoming the first openly gay person to run for elective office in the country. He lost the race but his candidacy gave birth to a new politically active gay community. The Cat closed its doors following Halloween night in 1963. Agents with the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, charging that “lewd and indecent acts” occurred inside the bar, revoked its liquor license on the morning of October 31 that year. The bar threw one last party – albeit a dry one – that night. Potter arrived dressed as a clown and took second place in the costume contest. As the bar’s final closing time neared, he said the patrons lined the tables up as a runway leading outside to the sidewalk. “All the drags did a walk on the tables out the door,” he said. Thinking back on that time as he shared a drink inside the old Cat, Potter said no one realized back then they were witnessing history. “We were gay pioneers and we didn’t know it. We were doing what we wanted to do,” said Potter. ▼
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Jimi Austin Davis September 20, 1953-October 28, 2007 One sunny Sunday on a hill in San Francisco, Jimi Austin Davis left for another dimension. Aged (finally it can be told) 54, he is survived by his husband of thirty years, his parents, siblings and loving extended family. Jimi loved to dance and travel and frequented many nightclubs in San Francisco, New York and Western Europe. He had an eye for very nice things. His husband was stricken by AIDS during the 1990s, as were so many, but he determined that they would make it through it, and it was so. Jimi met with cancer and they faced it down too, for four years before he passed. We can’t yet imagine what it will be like to deal with his exit from this world. He will be sorely missed and fondly remembered.
Debra Kent February 9, 1952 – December 21, 2007 Debra Kent died peacefully at home in Durham, North Carolina on December 21, 2007, surrounded by family and friends. She was 55 and had battled ovarian cancer for almost two years. Debra is survived by her daughter Sofia and Sofia’s other mother Jamie Lamkin; her mother Mildred, sister Nancy, and brother David and countless family and friends. Debra made an art form of networking within the nonprofit sector. She was passionate about many causes, and never shied away from helping an organization in whose mission she believed. She was a pioneer fundraiser for HIV/AIDS causes in the earliest days of the epidemic, and inspired the founders of the Academy of Friends to make their annual party an AIDS fundraiser. She was a strong believer in giving back to
the community, volunteering her time as a member of several boards of directors and advisory boards. Although she found her career and relationships deeply satisfying, Debra also had a life-long dream to be a parent, which she was able to realize when she adopted Sofia from the Ukraine in 2002. A public memorial will take place in San Francisco in the spring. Please check http://managingthemoments.blogspot.co m/ for more details. In lieu of flowers please send a donation to Camp Kesem (www.campkesem.org) in North Carolina.
L B Langston May 7, 1923 – November 21, 2007 L.B. Langston passed away on November 21, following a lengthy illness. He was 84. A longtime resident of San Francisco and former executive with Crocker Bank (now Wells Fargo), he was born in San Antonio Texas on May 7, 1923, to Lonnie and Lois Whitaker Langston. Both pre-deceased him. L.B. was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1946. He received his Associate of Arts Degree from San Antonio Junior College on May 27, 1949. His brothers, Roy, David, Elisha, are all deceased. Roy’s children are Jimmy of Arizona, and Suzie Newton of Montana, and Roynell, who is deceased. David’s wife, Theresa, lives in Covina, California, and their surviving children are Douglas from Florida, and Mary Lois Stone from Georgia. His son, David, Jr., is deceased. Elisha’s surviving children are Winona Bowdon, Michael and Diane Bruce, Danny and Laura Dockerman, all of New Mexico, and Brenda Chaves of Arizona. L.B. was a member of Black Tie Club International and Prime Timers. He was a quiet man with a great, subtle sense of humor and dignity. Loved by all who knew him, he will be greatly missed. His remains were scattered at sea by a number of friends, family representatives, and the Neptune Society on December 13.
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 03 January 2008
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2007: Year of the dupe and dope istory will be the ultimate test for 2007. Hindsight years from now will let us know whether this was the year when competitive spectator sports finally developed a sense of ethics and cleaned up its act or just came up with bigger and better ways to shill its swill. Time will tell whether this was the year we stopped buying the con or just stopped caring. For now, all we know is that 2007 was the Year of the Jock Dupe and the Dope: sham excuses for shameful behavior. Michael Vick, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Floyd Landis, Martina Hingis, Marion Jones – in the past they have all given us reason to cheer, but this year we had reason to jeer. So chill with me as we take a stroll down memory lane to review the
January: Bye, bye, Sting. The year began with the folding of the Charlotte Sting, dropping the number of active WNBA basketball teams to a lucky 13. The collective bargaining agreement signed by the players and the league in 2003 has expired and players will be pushing for expanded free agency, upgrades in travel arrangements and more ability for individual players to be able to cash in on endorseTalk ment deals. They said it: “I’m sorry: I just don’t think he’s representative of the community I want to be part of. And where – who? – is designing these outfits?”
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– Openly gay figure skating commentator Mark Lund, trashing champion Johnny Weir and his skating costumes.
Jane Philomen Cleland
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his finger up teammates’ butts. He was fined $1,000, placed on a year’s probation, and transferred to another school. They said it: “I had high hopes for my future, had been working hard to achieve goals that were set when I was young, and they were starting to come true, my dreams.”
year in sports – and hope this hangover does not last.
by Roger Brigham
John Amaechi
February: Penn State, or penalty state? In a move that will set the tone for the 35th year of Title IX, Penn State settles a lawsuit filed against the university and women’s basketball coach Rene Portland by former player Jennifer Harris, who alleged Portland perceived her as a lesbian and created an intolerably hostile environment. Penn State instituted a number of program, reforms, and though it denied any wrongdoing, it previously fined Portland $10,000 for her conduct. A month later, Portland resigned. Ironically, Valentine’s Day did bring us the news that another Penn State alum, John Amaechi, was coming out of the closet with a highly touted autobiography. Amaechi is the first former NBA player ever to come out. They said it: “You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known.” – Former Golden State Warrior player Tim Hardaway, reacting to Amaechi’s coming out, in a radio interview that led to him being banned from any role in the NBA All-Star weekend.
March: What’s love got to do with it? The abrupt resignation of women’s basketball coach Pokey Chatman as her Louisiana State University team was getting ready for a NCAA championship run stunned the basketball world. It was quickly reported that LSU was quietly investigating allegations of “improper conduct” by Chatman and rumors swirled that Chatman had been ratted out by an assistant coach she had had relations with who subsequently walked in on Chatman and another player. And in South Dakota, 17-year-old South Dakota high school state champion wrestler Jerome Hunt was convicted of seven counts of attempted rape for trying to force
– Hunt, during his trial. Since transferring, he has resumed wrestling and in December pinned his first opponent in less than one minute.
April: ‘Tis the season for a hoho heave-ho. After noted intellectual Don Imus refers to the NCAA champion Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ‘hos” on his trash talk-radio show, he was suspended and then fired by CBS Radio and MSNBC. They said it: “It was completely inappropriate.” – Imus, referring to his on-air insult – not the $20 million contract buyout he got nor his return to the air eight months later.
May: We swear, it wasn’t the ‘gay thing.’ Honest. Less than one year after coming out, Kyle Hawkins is fired as coach of the men’s lacrosse powerhouse he created at the University of Missouri. Several players had not returned the previous season, all citing a multitude of personal reasons, and 6-9 season had left Hawkins with a 127-58 record. They said it: “You see these kids who think they know better than anybody else, and I don’t think they think long-term as to what the ramification on the program is going to be. Missouri is taking three big steps backward, and they’re going to have a hard time in the next four to five years being competitive at all. I just think it was not a very wise move, a bad decision for the program overall. In a year or two, they will regret it.” – Great Rivers Lacrosse Conference Commissioner Brian Mosher, on the firing of Hawkins.
June: Poster boys for ‘roids. As Barry Bonds slugs his way ever closer to Hank Aaron’s home run record, reviving speculation about the prevalence of performanceenhancing substances in baseball, shocking news comes out of Georgia that over a three-day killing spree, pro wrestler Chris Benoit carved his wife up with a butcher’s knife, strangled his autistic son, then hanged himself. They said it: “Steroids were not, and could not, be related.”
– World Wrestling Entertainment response to the rampage, even as police were finding anabolic steroids on Benoit’s property, and raiding the home of his physician, who was charged with illegally prescribing the steroids.
July: That’s some exchange rate. Chicago Games Inc. announces that Gay Games VII held in 2006 broke even after a yearlong post-event fundraising effort. It is the first time the Games have not lost money since they were held in San Francisco in 1982 and 1986, and contrasts with the more than $5 million Canadian that the Montreal Outgames lost the same year. While Chicago was closing out its books, Outgames organizers, who had promised Montreal would have a “major financial impact,” were negotiating with creditors to pay then, in pennies on the dollar. They said it: “What [Chicago] has been able to achieve is all the more remarkable since they faced a challenge no other Gay Games has faced: a direct competitor. The financial debacle at the event in Montreal validates the decision to support CGI and remain true to the founding principles of the Gay Games.” – Federation of Gay Games Marketing Officer Doug Litwin, on the contrasting financial outcomes.
August: The dogged pursuit of justice. After months of proclaiming his innocence and telling the world he seldom went to the house he owned where investigators discovered dozens of injured dogs and evidence of an extensive dogfighting operation, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick became the last of four dogfighting defendants to plead guilty to a federal charge. Court papers revealed Bad Newz Kennels had been operating since 2002, training fighting dogs, staging fights, placing bets, and executing dogs that did not measure up. Vick was hit with related state felony charges and tested positive for marijuana use while waiting to be sentenced. In November he began serving his term, which was set at 23 months in December. They said it: “I want to apologize for all the things I have done and have allowed to happen. I am ashamed and totally disappointed in myself, to say the least.” – Vick, in a post-sentencing apology in which he said he has now found Jesus.
September: Yes, but what have you done lately? The Advocate comes out with a Top 40 Heroes list, dotted with a handful of LGBT athletes, but not making the cut are Dr. Tom Waddell, (who shined the brightest light on gay sports with the founding of the Gay Games in 1982) and former NFL player Dave Kopay (whose decision in 1975 to become the first major pro athlete to come out has inspired hundreds of thousands of amateur gay athletes to do the same). They said it: “The greatest gift we can give one another is the vision and beauty of life. I continually hear from people all over the world that my act of coming out especially when I did in 1975 has empowered them in their search for self and to see their vision. Hopefully, my million-dollar pledge will influence others to support the university and the Q Center continue to help others to do just that.” – Kopay, after pledging $1 mil-
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 15
C O M M U N I T Y
PWA club 씱 page 3 not want to be associated with one of the LGBT clubs. The HIV club is open to anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, as well as people who are HIV-negative. “The needs of mixed status couples are also pushing this,” said Quesnel, whose partner is negative. “Housing is an issue of huge concern.”
Motives questioned However, some within the city’s HIV community have questioned Basinger’s motives in wanting to launch the club and have asked if it is not merely a platform he will use for a future supervisorial run. One person posting on Thrive, a Yahoo group for PWAs, said the club did not “pass my ‘smell’ test. Under the guise of concern for Ryan White I think this is about power and ‘politics’ – Gay Democratic party politics.” Basinger said he understands not everyone with HIV will embrace the new group. “For those people who think this is a good idea, I encourage them to participate. The people who aren’t sure it’s a good idea, they don’t have to participate. It’s like change the channel,” he said. “If they don’t like it, I am not here to convince them. I don’t want to argue with them.” The Democratic County Central Committee will vote on the club’s proposal at its January 23 meeting. San Francisco Democratic Party Chair Scott Wiener, a gay man, is supporting the club’s application. “It is terrific to have a club that would help us to do outreach and build the party within the HIV and AIDS community. I think it is a great idea and I am happy it is happening and I support it,” said Wiener. “I am confident the committee will support chartering the club as well.” DCCC member Bill Barnes,
Jock Talk 씱 previous page lion to fund programs at the queer student center at his alma mater, the University of Washington.
October: If you ignore it, they will come. Or something like that. After decades of disappointments, the Boston Red Sox sweep the Colorado Rockies to win their second World Series in four years. But the news by the bay is that Barry Bonds, who did break Aaron’s home run record, will not be back with the San Francisco Giants. In an event that lends a whole new meaning to the term “fantasy baseball,” Bonds is the guest for a Q&A session at the Commonwealth Club, and while the patrons soak up the platitudes and puffball questions lobbed the home run king’s way, not a single mention is made about the ongoing investigations into the constant rumors of Bonds’s alleged steroid use. They said it: “If there is a pattern Bonds has followed, it is not traced along racial lines; rather, it’s the pattern of entitlement and privilege. He is far from alone, instead joining a cadre of powerful people who, in this second gilded age, believe their position and financial power allow them to disregard the law. Average people are tired of it. ... Given the wealth and resources of celebrity figures today, the federal government, it seems, is the only body left that has the power to remind even home run hitters, movie stars and corporate executives that
N E W S
who is HIV-positive and formerly served as AIDS czar under former Mayor Willie Brown, also is supporting the club, though he voiced some concerns about how the club would protect members’ privacy. “I think it will be fine but it raises lots of issues,” said Barnes. “Will the membership list be confidential? To some extent people are concerned about privacy, there is still stigma and there are still insurance issues people with HIV must deal with.” It remains to be seen if the DCCC will grant the club official status. Its application before party leaders has become embroiled in the political match-up between two of the city’s most powerful LGBT politicians. Supporters of state Senator Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) have questioned if the club is not a front to help the campaign of state Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) who is seeking Migden’s 3rd District Senate Seat. At the November DCCC meeting, Migden’s camp voted to postpone approving the HIV club’s application to its January meeting. Should it be given formal recognition, then the club would be granted votes – based on its membership rolls – at the party’s pre-convention caucus meeting in March where delegates from Democratic clubs statewide and other party leaders will vote on endorsing candidates in the presidential primary and races for congressional and state offices. For every 20 members, a club receives one vote. But with a threshold of 70 percent to win the party’s endorsement, the HIV club would likely have little impact on the outcome of any candidate’s winning the party’s backing. Most decisions in contested races end up being decided at the party’s convention. Some have griped that Basinger moved to form the HIV club in response to the brouhaha over the Milk Club’s endorsement of Migden in the Senate race. Basinger has insisted the club’s vote
last month is illegitimate and has chastised his fellow board members. In turn, the Milk Club board censured Basinger and striped him of his duty to oversee meetings. DCCC member Michael Goldstein, a Migden supporter, did not respond to a request for comment. Debra Walker, a Milk Club executive board member and a Migden supporter, recently told a local newsweekly that the HIV club seems like Basinger’s “Plan B for Leno partisans. It feels like he’s saying, ‘I’m taking my ball and going home.’” Basinger dismisses such talk as ridiculous, pointing out he has not endorsed in the Senate race. When asked about the new club in early December by the Bay Area Reporter, Basinger said while he is a founding member he does not plan to have a leadership role in the group. He said he is already busy running the AIDS Housing Alliance and may run for a second term as Milk Club president. Besides, he said, when it comes to endorsing candidates, “the group is going to make its own decisions.” Chung, while a Leno backer, also dismissed talk of the club being a front for Leno. She said the club would not make endorsements until after the June primary, and instead, it will spend the next six months building its membership and laying out its priorities. “Here is the interesting part: I think we are really flattered people think we have so much power just because we decide to form a political club we will have an impact on a race of two really strong candidates,” said Chung. “I personally am supporting Mark, but this has nothing to do with that race whatsoever. “The club has no intention on making an endorsement on candidates in the first six months of the club’s formation,” she added. “We are more interested in educating the membership on different policy making processes in government.” ▼
they cannot always rely on the private jet to make an easy escape from accountability. Bonds is a polarizing figure to many people because, while he could have used his government-granted immunity to tell the truth during his four-year showdown with federal prosecutors, Bonds and his handlers instead counted on his wealth and his advantages to place him beyond the rules, beyond the law.”
table “Who’s Who” of baseball stars and the men who love to give them an artificial edge on the competition. The report calls for no sanctions, has suggestions for change – and a wide condemnation of the industry’s wink-wink approach to anti-doping enforcement. They said it: “The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game. Widespread use by players of such substances unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the validity of baseball records. Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades – commissioners, club officials, the players’ association and players – shares to some extent the responsibility for the Steroids Era. There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on.”
– Former Oakland Tribune reporter Howard Bryant, writing for ESPN.com
November: Would you like fries with that? Dale Levitski, an openly gay former diver for the University of Iowa, finishes as runner-up in season three of Top Chef. Okay, that has only a thin connection to sports, but I was getting hungry and I spent two months watching Levitski compete and was pulling for him all the way. They said it: “The swimmers definitely had a problem with it. But the divers and the girls’ team all knew and they didn’t seem to have a problem. I’d go out to the gay bar in Iowa City wearing my letter jacket.” – Levitski, on being an out college athlete.
December: Could I get the Cliffs Notes version? After two years of investigation, former Senator George Mitchell releases a 408-page investigation into abuse of chemical enhancers in Major League Baseball. Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada, Barry Bonds – the work is a veri-
– The Mitchell Report.
It was just a year ago that Jim Provenzano handed me the keys to this column, and it’s been a fun cruise so far. I noticed that he introduced his last sports column with a beautiful horoscope he found online. I decided what the hey, let’s try it as the ending for this one. So the first one I found for myself and all the other Libras out there was: “You’re in a really good spot right now and ought to be able to move past any troubles onto something even sweeter without much effort. Relax for a while and enjoy the comfort of the season.” Sounds good. Let’s enjoy the new year. ▼
Politics 씱 page 9 of the great work of Equality California’s political action committee. We will also work to ensure the LGBT legislative caucus is maintained and grows.” Seth Kilbourn, Political Director Equality California
“In 2008, despite having fewer total delegates allocated for the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the California Democratic Party will be sending a record number of LGBT elected, pledged, or alternate delegates (note: in 2004, 55 LGBT delegates attended the national convention in Boston). By the end of 2008, the Democratic president-elect will formally nominate a respected national figure to become the nation’s first openly gay or lesbian member of a presidential cabinet; and in 2008, Nevada’s five electoral votes will be won by the Democratic presidential nominee (Bill Clinton was the last Democrat to win the state in 1996).” Clark Williams, Northern California Vice Chair State Democratic Party’s LGBT Caucus
“I foresee further splintering of the Republican Party, a contentious primary for conservatives and a surprise nominee. Hillary [Clinton] will get the Democratic nomination, and though I wish otherwise, further Democrat gains in the House and Senate. “In the end, 2008 will be an even more humbling year for conservatives both within California and across the nation than 2006. On the up side, it will be a time for us to engage in some much needed soul searching. Though I don’t see us leaving Iraq in 2008 or anytime soon after, even under, heaven forbid, President Clinton.” Henry Nickel, Member Log Cabin Republicans
“I predict that a California Supreme Court victory for samesex marriage will energize both the LGBT community and the evangelical right wing across the country, heating up the presiden-
Clinton 씱 page 1 caino said. Neither Clinton nor any of the major Democratic candidates support marriage equality, however. Clinton supports civil unions (like the other candidates), and has stated that position numerous times on the stump and at candidate forums. Asked about that, Dodd said she doesn’t have a problem with Clinton’s position. “I’m a pragmatic idealist,” she said, adding that same-sex couples have a chance, should Clinton become the nominee and win the general election, to get those “1,000-plus” rights on the books through civil unions. “I support her position – to anchor the debate on the left and move the debate.” At the Human Rights Campaign’s March 2007 board meeting, Clinton addressed the group and reiterated her support for civil unions. She pointed to the need for hospital visitation and “other fundamental rights.” In the speech, which is on YouTube, Clinton also praised the community: “Every day that you stand up for who you are, you’re helping us move toward a more perfect union ... where equality is
tial race (uncomfortably for moderates), and leading eventually to a secular victory for equality.” Jamison Green, Board Member National Center for Transgender Equality
“I think Hillary will pull it out, though ideally I think a ClintonObama ticket would be perfect.” Patrick Batt Castro merchant
“I think at this point on both sides it is too early to tell. I like that; I like we still have choices. Though none of them have got my vote yet.” Cleve Jones AIDS Quilt creator Milk movie consultant
“I am endorsing [Mark] Leno. I hope we can make it through this campaign without pulling the community apart. It has already been divisive, even among my own circle of friends. I would like to see us sticking together in the meantime and see us come back together at the end, no matter the outcome. “I don’t think the Human Rights Campaign’s ‘Win Back’ campaign will work. I think we are all a lot smarter than that. If HRC is going to remake itself it needs new leadership, new values, and renewed commitment and a fresh start. “I am nervous at the national level that we are going to see cowardice and homophobia, especially among the presidential contenders. My hope is that even if they cynically won’t support marriage equality that their messaging remains explicitly gay-affirming and lays the groundwork for progress.” John Newsome, Co-Founder And Castro For All
“It is Hillary for the nominee and the general election. Maybe [Bill] Richardson [New Mexico’s governor] as her vice president.” Miguel Bustos, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Oakland Mayor’s Office
An expanded Political Notebook with more predictions is online at eBAR.com.
a reality.” “When the Human Rights Campaign stood up and took on the Federal Marriage Amendment, you were making an important statement because this amendment was wedge politics at its worst.” There is a difference between Clinton and Obama on the Defense of Marriage Act. At the Logo presidential forum in August, Clinton said that she would repeal Section 3 of DOMA, which states that, for federal purposes, “marriage” can mean only marriage between a man and a woman, thus it essentially denies same-sex couples more than 1,100 federal benefits enjoyed by married heterosexual couples. Section 2, however, says that states do not have to recognize same-sex relationships, and Clinton has not gone so far as to support repeal of that provision. “She believes in civil unions and that long-term partners have the same rights,” Vizcaino said. “Equality under the law.” Obama supports repeal of all of DOMA.▼
Online content The News Briefs column and an analysis of the GOP presidential race can be found online at www.ebar.com.
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 03 January 2008
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03 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 17
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LEGAL NOTICES STATEMENT FILE A- 0307671-00 The following person(s) are doing business as: CA International Travel Group USA, 2 Encanto Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94115, This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Frank J Tu. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/04/07. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/04/07.
DECEMBER13,20,272007,JANUARY3,2008 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE # CNC - 07 - 544606 In the matter of the application of Margaret Page Weller for change of name. The application of Margaret Page Weller for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that Margaret Page Weller has filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to Page Weller Freyermuth. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 218 on the 7th day of February 2008 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
DECEMBER13,20,272007,JANUARY3,2008 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE # CNC - 07 - 544596
FOR SALE KAWAI 5’1” Grand Piano Ebony Polished Finish, with Bench
Serial Number 1504688, Model GE-1 Excellent Condition $6,500.00 Buyer is responsible for all delivery cost. Payment Methods - Cash, Cashier’s Check
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In the matter of the application of Jae Jung Kim for change of name. The application of Jae Jung Kim for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that Jae Jung Kim has filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to Jane Jaejung Kim. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 218 on the 31st day of January 2008 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
NOTICE OF FUNDING AVAILABILITY (NOFA) City and County of San Francisco Human Services Agency and the Department of Aging and Adult Services The San Francisco Human Services Agency and the Department of Aging and Adult Services Announce the intent to seek applications from agencies or organizations interested Services in Activity Center/Senior Centers for individuals 60 years of age and older and for adults with disabilities 18 to 59 years of age. Applications are also invited to provide Community Services for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) individuals and groups. Applicants may provide services at various Activity Centers/Senior Centers. Applicants may apply for funding for one or more regions in which they intend to provide services. Services are expected to begin July 1, 2008.
The Applicant Conference will be held on January 9, 2008 at 9:30 AM at 875 Stevenson Street, 3rd Floor, Golden Gate Conference Room, SF, CA. For further information, call Kim Fergison at (415) 557-5585. Due date for applications is February 8, 2008 at 3:00 PM.
DECEMBER 20,272007,JANUARY3,102008
DECEMBER 20,272007,JANUARY3,102008
STATEMENT FILE A- 0308042-00
J.D., LL.M. Taxation Wills, Trusts, Estate Planning, Wealth Preservation, Probate, Domestic Partnership Agreements, Taxation, Business Formation & Transactions
2342 Shattuck Avenue, #263 Berkeley, CA 94704 amarzo@marzolaw.com 415-908-0820 510-292-8846
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LAW OFFICES SHELLEY S. FEINBERG, ESQ. Serving the gay community since 1999
Probate Wills and Living Trusts Estate Planning Domestic Partnership Agreements
IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE # CNC - 07 - 544635
The following person(s) are doing business as: Lagrand Global Productions, 15 Red Rock Way #303, San Francisco, CA 94131, This business is conducted by an individual, signed Christopher L. LaGrand. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/10/07. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/18/07.
STATEMENT FILE A- 0307917-00
LAW OFFICE OF ANTHONY J. MARZO, ESQ,
A NOFA packet may be picked up at SFHSA, Office of Contract Management, 1650 Mission Street, Suite 300, on or after January 2, 2008. NOFA packets are available on the Internet at http://mission.sfgov.org/OCABidPublication/ click “BIDS and Contracts Database”, then the “Consultants and Professional Services” link and look for the NOFA.
In the matter of the application of Danielle Annmarie DeLeo for change of name. The application of Danielle Annmarie DeLeo for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that Danielle Annmarie DeLeo has filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to Daniele Angelino Leonetti. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 218 on the 21st day of February 2008 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
DECEMBER 20,272007,JANUARY3,102008
LEGAL SERVICES
Flood Building 870 Market St.
FLAT FEE shelleyfeinberg.com 415.421.1893
STATEMENT FILE A- 0307978-00
The following person(s) are doing business as: The Castle, 1540 Newhall, San Francisco, CA 94124, This business is conducted by an individual, signed Tom Lacey. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/21/07.
The following person(s) are doing business as: Deliverability Optimization Consulting, LLC, 3250 21st Street #1, San Francisco, CA 94110, This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Mark J. DiMaio. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/19/07. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/19/07.
JANUARY 3, 10, 17,24 2008
DECEMBER 272007,JANUARY3,10,172008
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO EMERGENCY RIDE HOME Do you want to ride the bus to work, but worry about how to get home when you need to work late unexpectedly? Or perhaps you would like to try to vanpool to the office, but don’t due to uneasy feelings about how to pick up a sick child from school? The Emergency Ride Home (ERH) Program eliminates these worries! ERH is a city run program that provides a free or low-cost ride home in cases of emergency for employees who use alternative transportation, such as carpooling, vanpooling, public transit, bicycling, and walking. ERH eases the worry of being stranded at the office if an unexpected situation arises, so commuters can leave their cars at home! Also, ERH is one of the easiest and least expensive benefits an employer can offer its employees (most employers pay nothing). It's a great way to show your employees you care! To learn more about how ERH works and who’s eligible to use the program call (415) 355-3734 or visit our website at www.sfenvironment.org for more information. To take part in ERH, an employer must first fill out the Emergency Ride Home Participant Agreement. After this has been done, anyone who uses alternative transportation at the workplace can use ERH! VOLUNTEER SERVICES San Francisco Animal Care and Control is responsible for the City's lost, abandoned, injured, sick, neglected and mistreated animals. We receive approximately 14,000 animals every year and rely heavily on volunteers to assure the success of our efforts. Whether you work with the animals, the public or on special projects, you will improve the quality of life for the animals in our shelters and increase their chances for adoption. Volunteers not only brighten the lives of our resident animals, but enrich our lives as well. Volunteers must be at lease 18 years old. Volunteers needing community service credit for school must agree to complete a minimum of 48 hours at the shelter. The first step to becoming an Animal Care and Control Volunteer is to attend a NEW VOLUNTEER ORIENTATION. Please call (415) 554-9414 for the dates and times of upcoming orientations. You must sign yourself up for one of these sessions by leaving a message with the date and time of the orientation you've chosen. You will not receive a return call to confirm. There will be time at the orientation to have all questions answered. New Volunteer Orientations last approximately 90 minutes, and take place in the Volunteer Room on the second floor of Animal Care & Control. Animal Care & Control is located at 1200 15th Street, at Harrison, in SF - look for the big orange/multicolor building on the corner. Upcoming dates for 'New Volunteer Orientations': ∑ Saturday, January 12 @ 11:00 AM ∑ Sunday, January 13 @ 11:00 AM ∑ Saturday, January 26 @ 11:00 AM ∑ Volunteers are currently needed to fill the following positions: ∑ Cat Volunteer ∑ Dog Volunteer ∑ Small Animal Volunteer ∑ Training Volunteer ∑ Lost and Found Volunteer ∑ Kitten Foster Volunteer ∑ Community Affairs Volunteer ∑ Reserve Officer The City and County of San Francisco encourage public outreach. Articles are translated into several languages to provide better public access. The newspaper makes every effort to translate the articles of general interest correctly. No liability is assumed by the City and County of San Francisco or the newspapers for errors and omissions.
INSTRUCTION INTRODUCTORY BUDDHIST MEDITATION CLASSES Wed.evenings, 7-8:30PM at the LGBT Community Center 1800 Market St., RM. Q13. Everyone is welcome. $10 suggested donation. NOTAFLOF. For more information: eps@kadampas.org or (415) 503-1187
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 03 January 2008
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Clothes make the man (& woman) Considering the new book ‘Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design.’ page 29
Year ahead in theatre ‘Backstage’ surveys eight upcoming productions. page 23
Two flights up The Café is the scene for Boy Bar on Friday nights. page 29
ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT
BAYAREAREPORTER
Vol. 38
. No. 1 . 3 January 2008
▼
Three strong women Melissa Etheridge, Chaka Khan & RuPaul on their recent projects by Gregg Shapiro
Star of stage and screen RuPaul
1. Starrbooty duty
T
he camera loves RuPaul. Anyone who remembers RuPaul’s music videos or talk show knows that. So it’s perfectly logical that RuPaul would eventually be playing the lead role in a movie, and Starrbooty is just that flick. RuPaul’s star power on Starrbooty, available on DVD at www.rupaul.com, is undeniable. Gregg Shapiro: The IMDb plot outline for Starrbooty reads, “Supermodel goes undercover as a hooker to rescue her niece from an evil body-parts broker.” Is that a satisfactory description?
RuPaul: That’s great, that’s the perfect description. The only other description I would add is: lots of gratuitous violence, hair and makeup, and nudity! Mike Ruiz, who appeared in the 1997 movie Latin Boys Go to Hell, makes his directorial debut with Starrbooty. What was it like to work with a first-time director?
Well, he had directed me in a couple of music videos before, and we’ve worked together on photographs for many years. So it was just like being home with him, it didn’t feel like the first time. You are described as a “method-acting superstar” on the Starrbooty website. How accurate would you say that is?
Well, maybe crystal method-acting superstar, but I don’t know about method acting, that is kind of a joke. I have done some training in acting, but none of it ever caught on with me. I learned more about acting from Diahann Carroll on Dynasty. So you act with your eyes and eyebrows mainly, yes?
Yes, exactly!
page 32 씰
Intensive caring by David Lamble
Julian Schnabel on ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’
S EC O N D
Max Von Sydow and Mathieu Amalric in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
O F
T WO
S EC T I O N S
Etienne George, courtesy Miramax
I
n movies, as in life, our opinion of someone may rest on when we first spy them. Julian Schnabel introduces his protagonist, JeanDominique Bauby, at the worst possible time for the character, but also at the precise moment we are most likely to embrace this dashing if frivolous man. Schnabel decides that for the first act of his engrossing miracle play about a man’s return from the dead, the audience will become Bauby. The filmmaker employs a totally subjective camera to simulate the experience of a man waking up from a three-week coma only to discover that a devastating stroke has left him with a lucid mind trapped inside a useless body. Bauby can only communicate by blinking his eyes, and then even that option is cut in half when his right eye is stitched shut to avoid infection. Bauby (French actor Mathieu Amalric) awakens to find a small army of medical workers surrounding his bed. To them, the playboy editor of France’s leading fashion magazine is as much a challenging medical experiment as a patient. Schnabel reproduces the frustrations of a man who can’t move his head, and therefore is constantly confounded with persons wandering in and out of his field of vision, in and out of focus. When Doctor Lepage (the avuncular Patrick Chesnais) pronounces his diagnosis, more like a sentence, that Bauby has “locked-in syndrome,” a mysterious condition where the brain stem ceases to bark orders to the spinal cord and central nervous system, it’s as if Bauby has been confined to his own version of Devil’s Island, with his doctor tossing the key to his cell into the moat. Bauby’s locked-in inner voice provides an ironic, self-deprecating and page 24 씰
22
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 3 January 2008
O U T
T H E R E
Juliet, O Juliet! Here art thou, Juliet! by Roberto Friedman
V
alentine’s Day is quickly coming up, and cupid’s arrow lands squarely at the Castro Theatre on February 14 as Mr. Man Marc Huestis presents a very special 40th anniversary screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet, with none other than the ravishing Olivia Hussey — yes, Juliet herself — live and in-person. A whole generation of incipient Shakespeare lovers grew up in lurve with Leonard Whiting and La Hussey as Romeo & Juliet — not to mention grooving Out on young Whiting’s breathtaking white ass, lying butt-naked in all its Renaissance splendor. Yes, queens of a certain age know what we’re talking about! For those too young or bushytailed to remember, upon its release in 1968, this movie galvanized the counterculture and shocked some in its portrayal of ripe teenage sexuality. It also carried with it an undeniable homoerotic quality, due largely to gay director queen Zeffirelli. Hussey, still beautiful, will reveal the behind-the-scenes dish on the goings-on in an interview with our own Funny Valentine, TV personality Jan Wahl. Also on the program, the lovely crooner Connie Champagne will sing composer Nino Rota’s haunting theme, accompanied by the magic fingers of Boris Goldmund on the harp. The film will be shown in all its splendor in a gorgeous archival print. The balcony’s open for this one — come all ye lovers, wherever you are. Call (415) 863-0611, ask for Romeo, and get a discount and first choice on priority orchestra seats.
Pope. He says the Pope’s vestments are too sumptuous and showy. But these are more sober times, and high-tailored churchwear is not appropriate. Benedict has been known to wear red loafers and a red velvet cape with ermine trim. If Zeffirelli thinks Benny’s outfits are too much, he’d better listen. From “Zeffirelli offers Pope a makeover” by David Willey, BBC News, Rome: “Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian film, stage and opera director, has said Pope Benedict XVI needs a makeover of his ‘cold’ image and ‘showy’ clothes. Zeffirelli told La Stampa newspaper that the There Pope communicated in a cold way that was little suited to what was happening around him. These are not times for high tailoring in papal vestments, he said. “He contrasted the relaxed attitude of the late Pope John Paul II to his official attire with that of Benedict. Lacking his predecessor’s charisma, Pope Benedict has taken to wearing some eye-stopping outfits in public, such as a red velvet cape trimmed with ermine, not worn in public since the death of John XXIII in 1963. When he donned a fur-trimmed
The famous tush of Leonard Whiting, with Olivia Hussey in Romeo & Juliet.
red cap, some people mistook it for a Santa Claus hat. “Zeffirelli, a Roman Catholic, told La Stampa he would relish being Pope Benedict’s image consultant. So far there has been no reaction to Zeffirelli’s offer from the Vatican.”
Milk dudes According to a producer of
Red loafers? Gotta go! We at the Out There desk do love us a bit of irony. Franco Zeffirelli, gay man and respected film director, who knows from overthe-top costuming, has offered to be the fashion consultant to the
Olivia Hussey as a teenager in love, in Romeo & Juliet.
Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk movie, it’s likely they will not cast anyone in the Dianne Feinstein role, and instead use archival footage. Producer Dan Jinks from the Jinks/Cohen Co. said, “It is a miracle we are actually here [in SF]. It is still incredibly hard to get financing for this kind of movie. We were all asked to cut our fees.” According to Jinks, even the actors are receiving less than they would normally get for the roles. And (our favorite part), instead of every actor having their own trailer, they are being asked to share three to a trailer. Now, a hottie actor sandwich is something we’re sure Milk would have eaten right up! By popular demand, more Milk cookies: In 1993, when Van Sant thought he would direct the Oliver Stone-backed film with Robin Williams in the lead, he moved into Cleve Jones’ apartment for four months to do “research” on the film. Producer Bruce Cohen said there will be two marches reproduced for the film, and because they can only afford to pay a handful of extras, they will be seeking volunteers — up to 1,000 people — to march in the scenes. They will be advertising the dates closer to shooting, but it will be on a Friday night in late January or early February. Brief recap of what we know so far re the cast: Recently divorced (the better to research his gay ways?) Sean Penn will play Harvey. Luscious Gael Garcia Bernal will play Jack Lira, Milk’s second lover, who committed suicide. Emile Hirsch will play Cleve Jones. They tested Ann Cronenberg’s daughter to play Ann Cronenberg, but we don’t know the result. Matt Damon, rumored to be up for Dan White, will not be playing the role. Keep us in the feedback loop, filmies!
Between worlds Kitka, the nine-woman vocal group with a nearly 20-year history in the Bay Area, will present the music of their new album The Rusalka Cycle: Songs between the Worlds (Diaphonica) as a theater piece on Fri. & Sat., Jan. 4 & 5, 8 p.m., and Sun., Jan. 6, 2 p.m., at Kanbar Hall, JCCSF, 3200 California St., SF. Kitka members collected traditional songs used to appease powerful, banshee-like feminine spir-
its, Rusalki, who hold power over fertility, both human and agricultural. The compelling thing about The Rusalka Cycle is that these songs came from survivors of the Chernobyl disaster, in an eerie parallel between mythology and real-life tragedy. For more info, call (415) 292-1233. Also on Sat., Jan. 5, as part of the Poetry Flash series at Cody’s in Berkeley, poet Justin Chin will be reading with poet Cynthia Cruz. Chin’s book of poems Gutted won Publishing Triangle’s 2007 Thom Gunn Award for Poetry. Widely published in literary journals like Grand Street and AGNI, Cruz has published her first book of poems, Ruin. The reading starts at 7 p.m. Cody’s is at 1730 Fourth St., Berkeley. Info: (510) 559-9500.
Palm droppings Palm Springs author and actor Robert Julian, who was one of the founding company members of The Thorny Theater, was recently fired by the company’s artistic director Arch Brown due to the contents of Julian’s memoir, Postcards from Palm Springs. In a vitriolic e-mail Julian opened on Christmas Eve, Brown accused the author of “dissing the Thorny company” in his book, and told him he was “being dropped.” Julian was the lead actor in The Thorny Theater’s debut production, and he recently assayed a supporting role in Thorny’s Who Killed Zachary Morgan?, which closed on Nov. 30. In the termination notice, Brown acknowledged both productions were highly successful, yet alleged that this fact was in no way related to Julian’s “mediocre talents.” Brown referred to himself as “St. Arch” in his closing salutation. When contacted about the firing, Julian remarked,“I knew Postcards from Palm Springs was going to be controversial when I wrote it. Those who read the book in manuscript form told me I had written the Palm Springs equivalent of Peyton Place, and that some people would be scandalized. This is what always happens in a small town when you talk about things people don’t want to talk about, and you tell the truth. I am pleased to say the reviews of my book have all been positive, and that it is selling well. I am also grateful I had the opportunity to work with some wonderful actors and directors at The Thorny Theater. I wish them well.” Postcards from Palm Springs is nominated for a 2008 Lambda Literary Award.▼
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 23
T H E AT R E
Ringing in the new year Eight theatrical offerings coming in 2008 by Richard Dodds
T
he first Backstage column for a new year should be forward-looking, and so here are eight promising and/or intriguing theatrical opportunities for the first weeks of 2008.
Varla goes Plush The future of the Empire Plush Room remains cloudy, and it was widely assumed that Wesla Whitfield’s current engagement would probably be the last for the venerable cabaret. But lo and behold! It’s Varla Jean Merman to the resMatthew Del Negro and Andrew Polk in rehearsal for Speed-the-Plow. cue — or at least a respite. Tickets are now on sale at www.ticketweb.com to Varla Jean Merman York in 2005 at Lincoln Center ‘Third’ at bat Loves a Foreign Tongue, running at Theatre, few were aware that It was a sad day, two years ago the Plush Room Jan. 24-Feb. 2. Wasserstein was seriously ill. But this month, when playwright Merman’s alter ego Jeffery the critics picked up on a tone in Wendy Wasserstein died at age 55, Roberson premiered Foreign the play that was in fact prescient. extinguishing a vital, contempoTongue in Provincetown this past As Ben Brantley wrote in The New rary, and richly female theatrical summer, and has since performed York Times, “Third exhales a gentle voice. TheatreWorks has been the it in his hometown of New Orbreath of autumn, a rueful awareBay Area’s prime purleans and several other ness of death and of seasons past. veyor of Wasserstein’s cities. In the new show, A gracious air of both apology plays, beginning with Varla sets out to be and forgiveness pervades its attiThe Heidi Chronicles in America’s goodwill amtude to its characters.” 1993, and most recentbassador, learning to say ly staging The Sisters Don’t call me Shirley “this sore is not contaRosensweig in 2006. gious” in 27 languages as David Greenspan, the veteran Now TheatreWorks she tours the world. gay off-Broadway actor, director, will complete the There will be video inand playwright, has been working canon with the reterludes filmed at inwith A Traveling Jewish Theatre gional premiere of ternational locaon a revised version of his 1991 Third, WasserBackstage tions, as well as the farce Dead Mother, or Shirley Not stein’s final play, chance for Varla to All in Vain. Co-produced with opening Jan. 19 at adopt the roles of, among others, a Thick Description, it’s the story of the Mountain View Center for the flamenco star, a German opera a gay son who impersonates his Performing Arts. Call (650) 903diva, an American pretending to dead mother in a series of increas6000 or go to www.theatrebe a Canadian, and the lover of a ingly horrific/comedic situations. works.org. possible terrorist. The run begins Jan. 10. Call 522Set at a progressive college, the 0786 or go to www.atjt.com. story spins off a case of suspected Making the scene student plagiarism that creates a Rising New York playwright battle between a feminist profesTheresa Rebeck’s The Scene is a sor facing menopause and a prepcelebrity-baiting comedy that py jock whose nickname is Third, grows increasingly darker as it exthanks to the tony “III” suffix at amines people who are desperate the end of his name. Stage and to be part of that amorphous screen veteran Elizabeth Norment place where “it” is supposedly is making her TheatreWorks happening. SF Playhouse is predebut as Professor Laurie Jamesenting the West Coast premiere, son, and Craig Marker, a Theatrebeginning performances Jan. 30. Works regular, returns to the theCall 677-9596 or go to www.sfater as Woodson Bull III. playhouse.org. When Third opened in New
Varla Jean Merman Loves a Foreign Tongue. Clearly.
Michael Lamont
comes in with Boston Marriage, in which two genteel turn-of-thecentury women wish they could find a way in which to, socially speaking, misbehave. Speed-the-Plow, opening Jan. 9, may be best remembered for providing Madonna with her one and only Broadway role. She played a supposedly clueless temp in the office of a rough-and-tumble Hollywood honcho, whose passion for his producer-buddy’s crass movie wanes when the temp sells him on a socially conscious prestige project. At ACT, Jessi Campbell, Matthew Del Negro, and Andrew Polk will play the roles created by Madonna, Joe Mantegna, and Ron Silver. Call 749-2228 or go to www.act-sf.org. Coincidentally, a mostly unknown Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) was Madonna’s replacement on Broadway in Speed-the-Plow, and 11 years later, she created one of the desperately closeted women in the premiere of Boston Marriage at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. The title phrase is an anti-
Carrie Fisher, star of Wishful Drinking.
Gone fishing Carrie Fisher tells all in Wishful Drinking, about childhood with Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher as parents, about making Star Wars, about drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and marriage to Paul Simon and a man who she thinks she turned gay. Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Tony Taccone has been working with Fisher to deepen the one-woman show, which had its first run in Los Angeles in 2006. Performances begin Feb. 8. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to www.berkeleyrep.org.
David Allen
Mamet times two
Kevin Dunning and Laura Sanders in The Secret Garden.
The new year brings David Mamet at his most macho and at his most gay — gayness, with Mamet, being a relative issue, of course. First it’s the Hollywood satire of Speed-the-Plow at ACT, with straight people behaving badly, and then Theatre Rhino
quated euphemism for two women living together as polite housemates who are actually lovers. The play explores the journey to such an arrangement, in a comedy of manners that critics have likened to an homage of sorts to Oscar Wilde. Boston Marriage, which has long been on Rhino Artistic Director John Fisher’s wish list, begins performances Feb. 7. Call 861-5079 or go to www.therhino.org.
Planting a ‘Garden’ Lamplighters, the area’s most notable presenter of Gilbert and Sullivan, occasionally strays into more recent musical theater. But stylistically speaking, The Secret Garden is just a touch avant-garde for the venerable troupe. The 1991 musical runs Jan. 18-20 at the Yerba Buena Center before moving to the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek on Jan. 31-Feb. 3. Call 978-2787 or go to www.lamplighters.org. ▼ Richard Dodds can be reached at BARstage@comcast.net.
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 3 January 2008
F I L M
A boy and his country are violated by David Lamble
B
oys don’t cry, and serious critics aren’t supposed to, but I’ll confess this San Francisco-penned saga of friendship betrayed and the rape of an ancient culture blindsided me emotionally, and came within a breath of making my top-film list. Based on Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novel, The Kite Runner begins with an unlikely boyhood bond: Amir, the spoiled son of a wealthy and politically influential Kabul businessman, and Hassan, the adopted son of Amir’s father’s personal servant. The time is the late 1970s, and the place is the capital of an Afghanistan that is struggling for a tiny sliver of modernity in the last chaotic decade of the Cold War. The boys occupy themselves with simple pleasures: teasing sleeping dogs, catching old Hollywood movies at the local cinema (their favorite is a much-spliced and hilariously dubbed print of The Magnificent Seven), and most especially, the annual winter kiteflying festival, where every Kabul lad on the cusp of puberty launches his precious hunk of cloth into the skies over their city, engaging in a pastime that is a odd mix of a combat air-fight and that funny sport played by Harry Potter and his friends. The exultation the boys experience when they banish their rivals from the sky is quickly forgotten by an unexpected and pitiless tragedy: the jovial Hassan, on his way to fetching their winning kite, is raped by a rival gang of boys, all the while Amir, hiding in the shadows, witnesses the assault and does nothing. Desperately being ashamed at his own cowardice, Amir nonetheless discovers that the event has unleashed a reservoir of hidden resentment that he has held in his heart towards Hassan. Com-
pounding his original sin, Amir tells his father a vicious lie about Hassan’s stealing an expensive watch. The boys’ friendship is shattered, and the betrayal is compounded by the Russian invasion of their country — a calamity that sends wealthy families like Amir’s into exile, but will leave the members of the servant class like Hassan and his family to the tender mercies of first the Soviet troops, and later the Taliban. Marc Forster’s stirring film, like Hosseini’s novel, pivots on our endless fascination with and longing for second chances. Following an unsettling adjustment to life in the suburban Bay Area, a grownup, married Amir receives an unexpected phone call summoning him home to Kabul to finally redeem his personal honor by rescuing the only son of the now-deceased Hassan. On his journey back, masked with a fake beard, Amir must witness atrocities like Taliban forces stoning a woman to death in a soccer stadium, and hear the account by an orphanage director of the systematic abuse of young boys by Taliban officials. The Kite Runner plays on our hearts for several reasons. In hindsight, it’s plain that we, as a nation, misjudged the long-term consequences of the Soviet invasion. But, just as important, Hosseini and Forster succeed in their rather obvious mission of making the sexual violation of a small boy stand for a diabolical assault on a poor nation, with the dismemberment of a precious culture and the resulting death and exile of millions of innocent persons. While the film slumps dramatically in its American middle passage, the emotional jolt of its first and third acts more than make up it. The film, shot in a region of Western China that bears a remarkable resemblance to Kabul in the 70s, feels authentic and is sustained by three outstanding per-
Phil Bray
Novelist Khaled Hosseini on ‘The Kite Runner’ up on the big screen
Scene from The Kite Runner: personal sins and endless misfortunes.
formances: Afghan native Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada will break your heart as a joyous little urchin whose spirit and future are crushed by an act of unimaginable cruelty; Homayoun Ershadi is mesmerizing as Amir’s Baba, turning in a sophisticated portrait of a worldly, secular, ferociously anti-communist patriot who must live out his days in a pop-besotted America as a humble merchant who gets his last bit of joy from seeing his only son graduate from community college. Finally, the
sensational, Scottish-born, Anglo/Egyptian actor Khalid Abdalla (who was harrowing as the head terrorist in United 93) is riveting as a first-generation immigrant American, a man who must pursue a “frivolous” dream, that of being a serious fiction writer, while making amends for his personal sins and the endless misfortune of his native land. The controversial rape of a boy is handled with great delicacy by director Forster, who has in the past excelled at tales of the most
The Diving Bell
blink for yes and two for no; his patient ex-wife Celine (Emmanuelle Seigner), who has the unenviable task of translating a romantic phoneside chat with an ex-girlfriend; and the beautiful young literary assistant Claude (Anne Consigny), who navigates the torturous letter system through which Bauby composes his memoir blink by blink, a book published days before his death. The film is a haunting deathbed confession by a profoundly secular man who gets to construct his own special moral resurrection while staying free of the pieties and curious customs of the church. An amusing moment has him fleeing the bed of the religious girlfriend whose nightlight is a Lourdes-purchased electric Madonna. A sublime moment has Bauby driving through Paris to the accompaniment of the score of Truffaut’s masterpiece The 400 Blows, another parable about the ultimate purpose of life and the limits of freedom.
씱 Arts cover increasingly moving commentary about his plight, fleshed out by entrancing inner journeys where he relives precious snatches of his old life: a trip to Lourdes with a religiously inclined ex-girlfriend, a haunting memory of shaving his elderly father the morning of the stroke, a ride in his convertible with his 12-year-old son where the kid’s complaints about being embarrassed in gym class lead to dad’s question about whether his son “has hair on his dick,” a silly moment that takes on unintended poignancy when it is punctuated by the stroke. We don’t see Bauby in his poststroke paralyzed condition until the patient catches a frightening glimpse of himself in a hallway mirror. “I look like I’ve been preserved in formaldehyde!” A cruel joke about whether he must live in a vegetative state prompts Bauby to wonder, “Am I a pickle?” Schnabel presents the dilemmas of intensive care with vignettes of the patient being bathed in a pool by a male attendant, having his ass wiped like a baby, suffering the barbs of telephone installers and the frustration of having a technician thoughtlessly turn off his TV while he’s enjoying a soccer match. Bauby’s bedside is overflowing with feminine charm: his physical therapists Henriette and Marie teaching him a new language, one
Dished up My chat with Julian Schnabel in his luxury hotel suite comes with an invitation to have a dish of ice cream while we talk. I say, by all means; chocolate, please. David Lamble: You make a bold choice in the beginning, only letting us see what Bauby can see.
Julian Schnabel: There was no choice but to make that choice. Ron Harwood had established
improbable sort of redemption (Monster’s Ball). In many ways a very old-fashioned movie, at its best The Kite Runner has the feel of the kind of intimate epic tale that was the mainstay of the master David Lean. Novelist and transplanted San Franciscan Khaled Hosseini was in town recently to discuss his pleasure at how well his first novel has been translated to the big screen. David Lamble: How hard was it for you to write the book’s rape scene, and did you have alternate versions in mind? Khaled Hosseini: It was important for me that what happened in that alley be rape, because I can’t think of an uglier crime. It’s a crime where one person exerts their will in the ugliest, strongest fashion over another human being. To me, the scene when I was writing it has a kind of allegorical dimension as well. A lot of Afghans feel, whether it’s right or not, that what happened to Hassan in that alley — after he runs that kite for Amir, and after he has served his purpose — that he is abused and raped while Amir watches. They feel that’s what happened in Afghanistan: you know, once a million Afghans died and the Soviets were defeated, which in no small way contributed to the end of the Cold War, then the international community just watched as Afghanistan was brutalized by the extremists and the Taliban, and they did nothing. When I went to Afghanistan, after the book was written but before it was published, in conversation they would say, “People came and raped this country,” and it was just incredible for me to hear that, given the fact that I had just written a scene with that idea. ▼ that convention in the screenplay, and that’s one of the reasons why I decided to work on something I didn’t initiate. When you think of this movie, you think, “Well, a guy’s in a hospital,” you start thinking about a few different things. One, when they say the alphabet, is that going to be boring? Well, the women speak in French, with an accent, these beautiful voices. Then you think, “He blinks, well, there’s more than one blink.” There’s 50 different blinks at least. Sometimes you blink and you don’t really close your eye totally, and sometimes it’s a longer answer. It becomes like an emotional statement, like a longer blink, a quicker blink, you start to think about communicating. That was interesting to me as a filmmaker. Your choice of lead actor?
The way I got into this thing was that Johnny Depp was going to play Bauby, [and he said to his agent,] “If I play it, I want Julian Schnabel to direct it.” Then he fell out of it, but because we were such good friends they all hoped that I could talk him back into being in it. I don’t think anybody knew I was going to make the movie in French, and he was going to speak French. But the fact that Mathieu Amalric was actually born French and had all the colloquial things that Johnny could do in English — the idea that Mathieu was in this box and he could hear what people were saying, and he could say anything he wanted, was huge! ▼
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She learned her lessons well Lorna Luft pays tribute to her legendary Mom by David Alexander Nahmod Lorna Luft: Songs My Mother Taught Me (First Night Records)
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hatever personal demons she may have battled, two things remain clear about Judy Garland: she had an extraordinary, unparalleled talent, and she loved her three children dearly. Two of her offspring have followed her into show business. Though Judy was a tough act to follow, Liza and Lorna have achieved successes based on their own unique abilities. But to a degree, they have always been in Momma’s shadow. In Songs My Mother Taught Me, her onewoman show, Lorna Luft speaks of “Making Friends with the Ghost.” The show, a tribute to her Mom and to the love they shared, tells the story of Judy’s life through the songs Judy made famous. Luft toured with the show for many years, including an appearance at the Plush Room a few years back. As soon as she finishes her current run in a UK production of White Christmas, Luft will tour the UK with Songs My Mother Taught Me. As busy as she is, Luft was kind enough to grant BAR a recent phone interview. She revealed herself to be quite a charming, downto-earth person. “Oh honey, it’s so cold here,”
she said from her hotel room in Cardiff. “I wish I were back in LA, where it’s warm!” Luft is quite pleased with her new CD, a Barry Manilow-produced studio recording of her one-woman show. “The opportunity to make the CD simply presented itself,” she said. “I’d been wanting to record the show for a while, but at first Barry wasn’t available, then he was.” She’s pleased to report that sales for the disc have been brisk in the UK.“The CD gives good insight into what the show is,” she says. “I’d urge people to listen to it as a stand-alone disc, not as a cast album.” The CD begins with the unmistakable voice of Judy singing “Lorna,” an ode to her beloved younger daughter. Lorna herself segues into the recording, performing “Minstrel Girl,” a lovely tribute to her Mom. As she prepares to share the story of her mother’s life, Lorna offers “I Feel a Song Coming On,” a Judy standard. Cut #4,“The Mother/Daughter Medley,” is haunting. Using the same technology that allowed Natalie Cole to sing a few duets with her famous parent, Lorna and Judy perform together on “You’re Nearer,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” and “Through the Years.” Lorna then channels her Mom for an intensely emotional version of “The Man that Got Away.” Lorna doesn’t just sing the song, she conveys her feelings through
Sex you up by Robert Julian Where the Boys Are edited by Richard Labonte; Cleis Press, $14.95
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here the Boys Are is the latest collection of urban gay erotica from Cleis Press. Editor Richard Labonte combines short stories and memoirs from 14 different writers (two of them women) who focus on urban gay erotica. As a group, the stories trend toward the more intellectual, literary consideration of sexual congress between men. But there are always exceptions, like Zeke Mangold’s Las Vegas sploogefest, “God Hates Techno.” International entries include a British city boy/country boy dilemma nicely framed by Alpha Martial in “The Birds and the Bees,” and Erastes’ “Drug Colors,” which explores the gay London punk scene of the late 1970s. Manhattan makes an appearance several times as writers like Rachael Kramer Bussel (“Live from New York”), Sam J. Miller (“My Evil Twin”), and Jameson Currier (“One of the Guys”) document the eternal draw of the Big City for migrating young men who seek to assume their rightful place in the urban gay pantheon. San Francisco readers will be particularly drawn to stories of Baghdad by the Bay that resurrect memories of the antediluvian past as well as recent ribaldry. Simon Shepard’s “Wild Night” revives memories of the early 1970s and clubs like the 1808, the Cauldron,
the Catacombs, and the Slot. A more contemporary San Francisco (as well as Walnut Creek) is on display in Dale Chase’s “Half Life,” where a 48-year-old, married East Bay insurance executive emerges from a heart attack to reach for the brass cock-ring of a hunky younger colleague. After one sextacular night together, the executive realizes their intense attraction is mutual; his wife simply must be discarded. It is interesting to note that only one or two of the stories contained in Where the Boys Are reference safe sex practices. Some of the settings pre-date the AIDS era, but most do not. The omission of safe sex practices may be an accurate reflection of the collective consciousness now in place regarding sex between men, or maybe it’s just wish fulfillment. In any case, Where the Boys Are delivers enjoyable prose that can be appreciated with two hands just as easily as with one. ▼
Stage star Lorna Luft: ‘She was the best Mom she knew how to be.’
it. Like her Mom, Lorna’s own talent runs deep. But it’s track #8 that becomes the centerpiece of Songs My Mother Taught Me. The cut begins with Lorna’s own children expressing their regret that they never knew Grandma. “Tell us the stories again,” they plead. Lorna sings plaintively not about the legendary Judy Garland, but about the woman who was her Mom. Beginning with “Born in a Trunk,” Lorna does a medley of no fewer
than 25 songs that are associated with the Judy Garland legend. The songs were carefully chosen to chronologically illustrate the most important events in Judy’s life, beginning with her first childhood appearance in 1920s vaudeville, and continuing to her Carnegie Hall triumph in 1961. A few of the lyrics were re-written so they could apply directly to Garland’s life, and Luft offers bits of dialogue here and there. But mostly, Luft uses the actual songs
that Judy made famous to tell her mother’s story. Luft’s voice is powerful throughout, and her love for her mother shines through. I asked Luft if she could describe the Judy Garland legacy in her own words. “She was my Mom. She’s everyone else legacy. She was the best Mom she knew how to be: smart, gifted, and a really good human being.” Mother and daughter both have strong followings in the gay community, for which Luft expressed her deep gratitude. “The gay community has always held my mother in high regard, and has always supported me. I have no definitive answer why, but I certainly thank the community for this.” And what of her own children? Might they follow Mom and Grandma into the family business? “My kids see the perks of show business, but they also see the insecurity. One day it’s opening night, but you can’t get a job the next day. “My kids strive for stability, and show business is very unstable. I chose this, but my kids don’t want to grow up in hotels. They came to see me in Scotland. We had a great time, but then they needed to get home.” And might Luft team up with her sister Liza for a performance? “Liza and I did do the Tony Awards together. I’d like it to happen, but it would have to be the right project. Right now, White Christmas is all I can do.” ▼
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Concertize like an ‘Egyptian’ Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s elegant way with Saint-Saens by Tim Pfaff
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hen Jean-Yves Thibaudet played Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No 5 in F, the so-called “Egyptian,” with the San Francisco Symphony more than a decade ago, I was not, I’m sure, the only person in Davies Hall hearing the piece for the first time. I recall bracing myself for a tsunami of kitsch — and being bowled over instead by a strikingly original piece of music marked less by faux Orientalism than genuine feeling of a considerably fine grain encased in elegant musical architecture of the highest craftsmanship. If 2007 offered a gayer CD than Thibaudet’s new recording of the “Egyptian,” with Saint-Saens’ far better-known Second Concerto and, between them, Caesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra (Decca), it slipped past me. Saint-Saens, dubbed both the “French Mendelssohn” and the “French Beethoven” during his lifetime, was as gay a sensibility as ever took to score paper (and, to judge from reports, drag; he’s said to have “performed” as a ballerina for Tchaikovsky). Generations of straight pianists have proved that you don’t have to be gay to capture the essence of his piano concertos, but listening to this endlessly enjoyable disc, it’s impossible not to think that Thibaudet’s
being a gay Frenchman gives him a special way into this enchanting music. Both Saint-Saens’ music and Thibaudet’s pianism are rightly appreciated these days. Even so, under the spell of music-making this imaginative, it’s hard not to think that both men are still undervalued. Although the widely traveled Saint-Saens composed his fifth concerto in Cairo in 1896, its sobriquet, “Egyptian,” is not his own. The only Egyptian music in it is the song of a Nile boatman, which the composer notated on a shirt cuff before transforming it into the theme of the concerto’s sensuous middle movement. Still, as Jeremy Siepmann writes in the accompanying notes, the “Egyptian” was the first French concerto to incorporate “exotic” elements, setting the stage for the likes of Ravel. More interestingly, Siepmann points out, Saint-Saens’ goal in the concerto’s spitfire finale was, in his
words, a defense of “virtuosity itself. It is the source of the picturesque in music, [giving] the artist wings to help him escape the prosaic and commonplace. The conquered difficulty is in itself a thing of beauty.” It certainly is in the playing of Thibaudet, whose phenomenal technique keeps enough in reserve that, no matter how harrowing the music’s filigree, he always makes it sound easy and gracious. It’s a fun-loving, uplifting brand of brilliance that obliterates any sense of the commonplace whatever. Charles Dutoit’s conducting of L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is surprisingly less acute in the Second Concerto than in the “Egyptian,” but Thibaudet’s playing makes the performance a competitive one. Claims that Franck’s Variations symphoniques page 28 씰
Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet has a special way into this music.
Soulful journeys by Jason Victor Serinus Soulfood: SpaScapes Massage (Soulfood)
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t’s no wonder that Soulfood’s liner notes devote scant space to details about their music;
their best compositions invite you to leave the world of details behind. The present compilation, intended for yoga, meditation and massage, contains seven extended tracks drawn from six previous Soulfood releases. The music, with such titles as “Dreaming,” “Soaring” and “Bliss,” lives up to the Massage magazine quote by Yours Truly affixed to the cover: “This is great stuff. Ideal for floating away!”
The folks responsible for Soulfood’s music — Gordy Schaeffer, aka DJ Free, and Peter Schimke — have created an immediately recognizable sound. Schaeffer began playing music at the tender age of eight, and has since charted Top 15 on Billboard and won Best Score for IMAX Extreme. Although these boys also create “world, rhythm & chill” tracks, their most mellow compositions, including everything on this CD, are the stuff of dreams. SpaScapes Massage features the kind of spacey fare that encourages the husband to mutter, as he climbs into bed, “Play that some more, honey.” An ambient mix of piano, electronic keyboards, Native flutes, woodwinds, crystal bowls, chimes, and thankfully unobtrusive nature sounds, the music ambles along to the blissful land of nowhere in particular. Which is quite a lovely place to be. Check out Soulfood mp3 Radio at soulfoodmusic.com. Though the music sounds much fuller and warmer on CD, even a brief listen will convince. Ernest Bloch: Violin Concerto Zina Schiff, violin - Royal Scottish National Orchestra - José Serebrier (Naxos)
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ally petition for a review. But when Bay Area/Boston-based violinist Zina Schiff suggested I might be moved by the spiritual content of her renditions of music by Ernest Bloch (1880-1959), I seized the opportunity. Born in Switzerland, Bloch immigrated to the United States in 1916, where his music was championed by three of the leading conductors of the era. Soon he was directing music programs in Cleveland, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and UC Berkeley. Most widely known for his Sacred Service, commissioned in 1927 by Temple Emanu-El of San Francisco, he devoted the last 28 years of his life to composing. Although Bloch attributed the major themes of his great Violin Concerto (1938) to Native American songs he heard in New Mexico, the influence of Jewish cantorial chants bring to mind another incongruous juxtaposition, the sounds of the Bohemian woods echoing through the Native American and “Negro” melodies of Antonín Dvorák’s New World Symphony. Bloch’s music is often filled with drama, has a certain contemplative quality that brings to mind Talmudic scholars pondering deeper meanings, and is quite moving. The disc also contains two other works. Baal Shem, whose title refers to the visionary “miracle worker” founder of Chasidism, contains three fanciful movements which are explicit in their references to Jewish life. Suite Hébraïque, written when Bloch was 70, is a visionary suite whose final movement celebrates the founding of the then-new State of Israel. Despite dry recorded sound, Schiff and Bloch’s mastery and commitment shine through with commanding presence. ▼
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Vocalists, up-close and personal An exciting season of Schwabacher Debut Recitals ahead
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Courtesy SF Opera
an Francisco Opera Center is about to celebrate the silver anniversary of the Schwabacher Debut Recital Series with a season of four extremely tempting concerts. With two scheduled for February and two more in April, the series enables vocal lovers to catch four major league artists on the ascendant. “All the singers are especially talented, and they all have really beautiful voices,” San Francisco Opera Center Director Sheri Greenawald told the Bay Area Reporter. “I envision them all having fantastic careers. Recitals are the place where you see personality most revealed. And knowing all four of these singers, there’s lots of personality to share. You get to see them up-close and personal before they become the next Cecilia Bartoli.” Greenawald certainly knows her voices. Her 30-year career, which ended at Chicago Lyric Opera in 2002, included triumphs on many of the world’s great stages. Her “farewell” as the Beggar Woman in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd was sung alongside no less an artist than baritone Bryn Terfel. The Schwabacher series, scheduled for Sundays at 5:30 p.m. in Temple Emanu-El’s Martin Meyer Sanctuary, begins on February 3 when tenor and 2002 Merola alumnus Phillippe Castagner per-
Baritone Lucas Meachem
Chicago, Meachem was recently profiled in Opera News. It’s an especially good time to catch the 29year-old, who is about to debut at Paris Opera (Billy Budd) and Covent Garden. Greenawald dubs him “Mr. Charm” for his outgoing and gregarious personality, and expects that he will abandon formality and speak to the audience. “I encourage people to feel free to do what feels natural to them,” she
Big voice The season ends on April 27 with a big girl with a big voice. Soprano Heidi Melton, a secondyear Adler Fellow, blew the socks off anyone who heard her in Stern Grove last summer, and could probably burn a hole through your Calvins if she chose to focus her voice like a laser. Her lauded stint as Mary Todd Lincoln in the world premiere of Philip Glass’ Appomattox (coming to a theater near you before too long) merely hinted at her talents. “The selection of repertoire has to be right for the voices,” says Greenawald. “Heidi has this enormous dramatic voice, which
makes her selection of Bach so interesting. It’s quite the instrument, I must say. The Grieg she’ll perform is less often heard, and Brahms and Strauss are natural choices for that kind of voice. It will be an incredibly interesting recital.” The recitals are the lovechild of the late James Schwabacher, one of San Francisco’s great patrons of the vocal arts. At his request, the
As someone who has written for gay weekly publications for over 21 years and served as an editor, I found myself frequently laughing out loud at some of Hoffman’s stories, recalling my own years of deadlines and head-
by Robert Julian
Courtesy SF Opera
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forms one of the greatest of all song cycles, Franz Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin. Castagner, who recently performed the cycle to critical acclaim at the Spoleto Festival, USA, has performed several smaller roles at the Met, and made major recital debuts in New York, Boston, and DC. The accompanist, Ken Noda, is no less than James Levine’s Musical Assistant at the Met. “Of all the singers on the series, he’s the most natural recitalist,” says Greenawald. “I’ve known him since my first summer with Opera Center, when we used to ride together to the Merola 11-week summer program. His particular nature and beautiful lyric tenor lend themselves to the recital format. I’m sure he will have his own, unique take on the cycle, which is one reason I admire him so much.” Three Sundays later, on February 24, baritone Lucas Meachem, a former Adler Fellow, tackles Schumann’s Kerner Lieder, Poulenc’s Chansons Gaillardes, and Copland’s wonderful Old American Songs. After a debut at the Met and a star turn at Lyric Opera of
Soprano Heidi Melton
series always includes a graduate of the summer Merola program, a current participant in the seasonlong Adler Fellow program, and someone who’s already making a name for themselves. “As an audience member,” Greenawald notes, “you have to be willing to put a little effort into listening to art song. People love high notes because they wake them up and give them a visceral thrill. Hopefully you’ll also have a visceral thrill from an exquisite piano or a gorgeous, spun-out line. And of course, you have to be a lover of poetry, because it’s about delicacy and rhyme, and shadings of words. Art song is the sort of nuanced value that our splashy society doesn’t always allow you time to appreciate, which is why hearing it in a smaller, warm hall is such a special thrill. And the low ticket price ($20/concert; $60 for the series) is really nice.” ▼ For tickets to the Schwabacher Debut Recital Series, call the Opera Box Office: (415) 8643330.
Serving time in the gay press An Army of Ex-Lovers by Amy Hoffman; University of Massachusetts Press, $22.95
Tenor Phillippe Castagner
Courtesy SF Opera
says. Mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, a 2008 Adler Fellow and former Merola Opera Program participant, holds forth on April 6. Although her program is not yet set, Greenawald hopes that the Argentinean-born artist will perform both French and Spanish-language selections. She’d also love to hear her do some Rossini songs, since she’s so good at vocal fireworks.
by Jason Victor Serinus
my Hoffman’s autobiographical history of her years at Boston’s Gay Community News (GCN) is one of the most engaging works of nonfiction recently published. An Army of Ex-Lovers documents the period from 1978-82 when Hoffman was serving as one of the weekly newspaper’s editors. This tumultuous period encompasses the flagship era of Gay Liberation; the murder of Harvey Milk; the Anita Bryant crusade; and the beginning of the AIDS crisis. It was also a time of emerging lesbian activism, a subject this lesbian, Bostonian author covers with a wry sense of humor and wonderful candor. Hoffman’s tenure at GCN coincides with her coming out to her conservative Jewish family. Her early discomfort with being openly gay, and her evolving understanding of just what it means to be a lesbian, inform Hoffman’s perspective throughout the narrative. Her alliances with the gay male staff at the weekly newspaper bring her into considerable conflict with some lesbian activists, forcing Hoffman to continually scrutinize her own values as well as those of her peers. The personal and professional conflicts that arise during Hoffman’s years at the paper illustrate the differing perspectives of those involved in gay activism, and the different modus operandi of women and men. The old Mars/Venus dichotomy surfaces as Hoffman details lesbian resolve to deconstruct even minor differences of opinion at the paper, with an insistence on considering all points of view before arriving at a mutually agreed-upon, politically correct stance. Meanwhile, their male peers impatiently push for a
decision — any decision. One of the unique characteristics of Gay Community News (which ceased publication in 1999) was its formation as a collective in political opposition to gay bar culture. The bars were viewed as oppressive, inviting alcoholism, and placing lesbian and gay patrons at the mercy of many Mafioso bar owners. Decisions at the newspaper were traditionally made by consensus. This made the Boston newspaper quite different from its early San Francisco counterparts. Those West Coast publications were more specifically targeted at gay male readers, and were often owned by gay bar proprietors who had their own issues with alcoholism and ruled capriciously, but with an iron hand. And of course, there was the distinctly different tone of life for gay people in Boston as opposed to gay people in San Francisco. Although Hoffman dances around the subject somewhat, it is abundantly clear that she and her colleagues were adversely impacted by ingrained East Coast conservatism. Immediately after an extended 1982 visit to the gay Disneyland of San Francisco, Hoffman went back to GCN and turned in her resignation.
lines, and many fond memories of departed colleagues. But no personal experience is necessary to appreciate An Army of Ex-Lovers; an interest in lesbian and gay history and an appreciation of good writing will suffice. ▼
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Spanish spirits come out to play J.A. Bayona & Sergio Sanchez on their spine-chilling ‘Orphanage’ by David Lamble
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n The Orphanage, Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona (with screenwriter Sergio Sanchez) revives the spine-chilling tradition of the great horror classics with a tale about a woman driven to the brink of madness by the loss of a child. Laura and Carlos, a youngish professional couple, are happily refurbishing an abandoned seaside mansion as a home for sick and disabled children, including their own HIV-positive, adopted son Simon. Laura (the hypnotically expressive Belen Rueda) fondly recalls her early childhood at the old orphanage, and is taken aback when Simon becomes preoccupied with a gaggle of imaginary friends, including a mysterious little boy, Tomas, whom he meets in a cave carved out of the beach. One day, while his parents are hosting a housewarming party, Simon refuses to play with the invited guests, instead disappearing into the bowels of the house as if abducted by his imaginary friends. Laura starts to suspect a link between her son’s companions and the spirits of her own long-ago lost playmates. With touches of Hitchcock (terror striking in broad daylight), Polanski (a story told solely from the viewpoint of a possibly mad character) and Nicolas Roeg (hints of a dark underside to childhood in-
nocence), Bayona and Sanchez ratchet up the suspense while spurning the traditional cheap tricks and blood sports of the genre. The young Spanish filmmakers spent a joyful day in our city celebrating their film’s early success and explaining why they refused to give in to the conventions that have so sapped the powers of the American horror film. J.A. Bayona: I met Sergio at a film festival in Spain. He was presenting a short film, 7337. I loved the atmosphere, the mood of that story. Sergio told me about the film he was trying to finance with that short script. I knew Guillermo del Toro, and we finally got the money to do it. Sergio Sanchez: Actually, the script had been going around a few production companies in Spain, and they all kept complaining about the same things: we were trying to mix horror with drama, and those two elements were like oil and water; they said the script was too ambiguous, we didn’t have a bad guy who was strong enough; and they wanted this very conventional ending. Basically, they wanted to take away everything that was special about the script, and make it complete formula. David Lamble: What was your inspiration?
Sanchez: Peter Pan. There’s this drawing of Wendy’s mother sit-
Scary child from The Orphanage.
ting by the window waiting for her children to come back from Neverland. The other inspiration was The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, because this movie invites the audience to have its own interpretation of what they’ve just seen. You can read it as a ghost story, or you can think that you’ve witnessed a woman who’s losing her mind because she
can’t cope with the loss of a child. Then I just threw in my own childhood fears.
very much universal, not specific to any nation, gender, or any sexual preference whatsoever.
Is there a Spanish school of film horror? Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Playground and Pan’s Labyrinth, and The Orphanage seem to share a common sensibility.
The little boy Laura and Carlos have adopted, Simon (Roger Princep), has HIV.
Bayona: It’s true that there’s a new generation of directors that has grown up watching the classical American horror stories, and at the same time we grew up watching all these European movies, mostly on TV: Francois Truffaut, Roman Polanski. I feel very lucky I’ve got this education. Sanchez: We’re probably the first generation of Spanish filmmakers that have had this broad exposure to these sorts of films. In Spain, the only fantasy films you could find were in the last period of the Franco regime: all these political films like The Spirit of the Beehive were made because you couldn’t openly talk about certain subjects. We watched those films growing up, and while the politics were over our heads, we got the tone and the creepiness. Is there a gay sensibility at work in The Orphanage?
Sanchez: A gay sensibility? I get asked a lot: do you have children? How did you come up with such a strong female character and know what it’s like to be a mother? The themes the film tackles are
Sanchez: Someone who’s willing to adopt a kid who’s HIV-positive is going to have to be very loving, and I felt that half of Laura’s character was written just with that decision. Right now, there are all these kids who are staying in hospitals who are HIVpositive that nobody wants. If this is a movie that’s speaking of Spain today, I thought that was a nice detail to put in there. ▼
Thibaudet 씱 page 26 is greater music don’t quite ring true between the two Saint-Saens charmers.
Off the path More off-the-beaten-path piano concertos appear on the latest release by Yundi Li, whose ventures beyond the Chopin and Liszt, for which he is deservedly renowned, reveal the emergence of an increasingly versatile young artist. (His Herbst Theatre recital for San Francisco Performances on March 2 includes, in addition to Chopin and Liszt, Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.) With the Berlin Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa, he gives a blazing live account of the littleknown Prokofiev Second Concerto with an equally acute “studio” recording of a work at the other extreme of musical expression, Ravel’s Concerto in G Major (DG). The last substantial composition by the gay Ravel, the 1931 G Major Concerto is one of the very works for which Saint-Saens’ “Egyptian” set the stage. In the composer’s own words a “divertissement” with “certain effects borrowed from jazz, but only in moderation,” it’s an arrestingly free work that flanks an exquisite, walking Adagio central movement of Mozartian clarity (and influence) with a spry, teasing, lighthearted first movement and a blisteringly virtuoso concluding Presto. It’s that range that makes it a terror for pianists. Its playful side brings out an aspect of Li’s playing unheard until now, and the combined zest and polish of his playing, fun at its most disciplined, bring unalloyed pleasure. Still, it’s his concentration in the rhapsodic Adagio assai that finds Li at his most impressive. The nearly three-minute piano solo that begins the movement is a model of limpid, focused beauty, and the long arc to the seemingly endless, otherworldly final trill is breathtaking, with Ozawa and the Berliners in sublime communion with the pianist. From the piano’s high, keening entrance, with its constantly startling intervals, there’s no lack of exoticism, if of a sterner sort, in the Prokofiev. Li dives into this fury of a piece with a fearlessness that’s almost scary in itself, and equal parts muscle and poetry. With nowhere to hide in this immaculately wrought, go-for-broke live performance, the musicians go for the burn. ▼
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 29
B A R S
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Spanish dudes and lesbian T-dancers by Mike Sher
Rick Gerharter
DJ Kidd Sysko spins the tunes at Boy Bar at the Cafe.
counts are offered on bottled beer and mixed drinks. They vary, so you should inquire. On Fridays, there will be random drink specials announced by the DJs, so stay tuned. You never know what’s coming! There are six TVs, and they show sporting events on occaIn The sion, but since the emphasis is on music, you may have to rely more on sight than sound. The club
participates in a bowling league, and also has its own softball team. It’s Friday, and the Café is gearing up for the Boy Bar, which takes place every Friday starting at 9 p.m. It’s a product of leading promoter Gus Bean, whom we met at Space 550 on Barneveld Avenue. Bars It advertises “High testosterone! Low attitude! Tight jockstraps!” Gus and posse invade the Castro, with hot sock go-go jocks, steamy windows, strong booze and clean teen towel-boys, to use the event’s advertising lingo. The six TVs feature all-male video loops. Music ranges from pop dance (Madonna and Britney) to electro (Miss Kitten) to cock rock (AC/DC,
l
Creating drag A new history of Hollywood costume design by Tavo Amador
A
ctors have long known that the right costume makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of a performance. This is especially true in movies, because the impact of a character’s appearance is enhanced by the sheer size of the screen image. Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design (Collins Design, $75) by Deborah Nadoolman Landis is a lavishly illustrated history of an art that, surprisingly, wasn’t recognized with an Oscar category until 1948, two decades after the establishment of the Academy Awards. This coffee-table book is arranged chronologically. The abundant and extraordinary photographs tell the story, but Landis increases their effectiveness by quoting from actors, actresses, designers, directors, and others to explain much that might not be apparent to viewers. Her introductory essays for each decade are exceptionally informative. In dressing performers, the designers had many objectives: reveal something about the character; provide a tool that helps the actor interpret the role; and for stars, generally make them look as attractive as possible, enhancing strong points, minimizing flaws. Additional challenges were using fabrics that photographed in the desired way, that “flowed” properly, and that were right for the period in which the movie was set. The advent of sound added more complications, because costumes usually had to remain silent when actors moved. Designing for contemporary stories posed one more problem: films are often shot a year before they are released, so
Rick Gerharter
N
ear the entrance to the Castro, you can experience sweet Spanish guys, a leading promoter’s Boy Bar, and the Stro’s only lesbian tea-dance. Welcome to the Café, 2369 Market Street. To enter the Café, prepare to ascend a couple of flights of rather steep stairs. (Coming back down, a sign will caution you that sliding down the banister could be hazardous to your health!) A flight or two up, you’ll see a large dance floor, a pool table and a bar. If you’re not in the mood for dancing (and with that steadily pounding music, it’s hard to resist), grab a drink and sit by a window looking down on Market Street. We talk to Paula Finn, a jolly barkeep in the tradition of Shakespeare’s Ruth Quickly. She tells us the Café is between 25 and 30 years old, and used to be called the Café San Marcos. It’s owned by P.H. Holdings, Inc. She’s been dispensing drinks and good cheer for 17 of those years. We look up another short flight of steps, to see a second pool table and another bar. Finn tells us that Happy Hour runs from 4 to 9 daily, including weekends. Dis-
creating costumes that are too voguish risks their looking dated when the picture opens. As Landis points out, these goals help explain why noted couturiers like Erte and Coco Chanel failed when they designed for movies. They created ensembles that women would wear in real life, but looked dull on screen. Effective costume design required exaggeration that would appear over-the-top in person. During the classic era, the major studios had huge wardrobe departments filled with a dazzling collection of fabrics, feathers, beads, lace, sequins, and every other conceivable item needed for their work. Hundreds of seamstresses, cutters, and fitters were on payroll. Most of the great designers of the period: Adrian at MGM, Orry-Kelly at Warners, Walter Plunkett at RKO, and Travis Banton of Paramount, were gay. Banton hired the inexperienced Edith Head, who would become the most honored designer in film history, often taking credit page 32 씰
Enjoying Boy Bar last Friday night at the Cafe are R.J., R.J., Randy Clettre, and Allen Camasura.
Motley Crew). Admission is a reasonable $3. If your taste runs to Latin, every Thursday it’s the Pan Dulce party, run by the Club Papi people. There’s free cover all night long (except for special events), $2 Miller beers and $4 Smirnoff vodka drinks. Sexy go-go boys, muy chico, will groove for you to the music of disc jockeys Carlitos, 4 Play and Marco. There will be Sweet Latin, Reggaeton, Hip Hop and more. Every third Saturday, ladies and their admirers can swing to the Castro’s only lesbian tea-dance, Delicious. The next one is set for January 20. It starts at 3:30 p.m. Until 7 p.m., they advertise twofor-one drinks. Munch on complimentary appetizers from Krave restaurant. There will be CD and
prize giveaways, and record release parties. If you’d rather not teadance, you can play pool or smoke on the outdoor patio, where a drag refers to a puff on a cigarette rather than a costume. The discspinners will be Sexy Claudette from Los Angeles, and Chili D, a local product. In keeping with the tradition, there will be go-go girls. Admission is $6. So come on down to the Café, at the Castro’s edge. It’s good for a cocktail before or dancing after an event at the Castro Theatre. Mingle with a cross-section of the Castro, and the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, too! ▼ The Café, 2369 Market St., SF. (415) 861-3846. Open from 4 p.m.-2 a.m. nightly.
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 3 January 2008
OUT&ABOUT Calendare
Fri 4
by Jim Provenzano
Looking at Light Through Flowers at Strybing Arboretum. See Tuesday.
Associated Press
LGBT-and-friends bar features DJs Carmen and Miranda 6pm-9pm. Free oysters on the half-shell at 5:30. DJs Cliff and Andy spin world soul and funk, 9pm, with a free barbeque. 3158 Mission St. at Cesar Chavez. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com
Resolutionary R
esolutions for a revolution. To-do lists, agendas, gay ones, political and otherwise: Eat more fruits. Be more fruity. Exercise the mind and body. Lose negative karmic weight. Throw out useless inner garbage. Overthrow neoconservative regimes. Support the rights of gays around the world. Buy local. Go green, or perhaps turquoise. Sunday, Jan. 6: Out in the Bay on KALW, the LGBT radio show hosted by Eric Jansen and Marilyn Pittman features an interview with Michael Luongo, author of Gay Travels in the Muslim World. His stories about traveling in Afghanistan and Iraq (several times) offer insights into the secretive gay culture of Arab countries. Free. 2pm. KALW, 91.7 FM. www.KALW.org www.OutInTheBay.com Sunday, Jan. 6: Les Leventhal, one of many popular local gay yoga instructors, starts off the new year with a recovery-focused series of yoga classes that examine addictions while focusing on poses that heal. Stay sober, get limber. $40. 1pm-04pm. Plenty of other classes and instructors through the year. Yoga Flow, 18th St. at Collingwood. www.lesleventhal.com www.yogatreesf.com Monday, Jan. 8: Beatriz Gimeno and Carmen Monton at The Commonwealth Club. Gimeno, the author of the Spain’s marriage and transgender laws and the former president of Spain’s national LGBT organization, and Monton, a Spanish congressional representative who successfully debated the LGBT bills in Parliament, discuss how marriage equality was achieved in Spain. Take notes. $15. 5:30pm. 595 Market St. 2nd. floor. 24-5484. www.commonwealthclub.org Tuesday, Jan. 8: Sasha Cagen at Modern Times Bookstore. The author of Quirkyalone reads from and discusses her new book, ToDo List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us. A list slam follows; bring your own New Year’s resolution or other amusing list to read. Free. 7:30pm. 888 Valencia St. at 21st. 282-9246. www.moderntimesbookstore.com Thursday, Jan. 10: Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin at the LGBT Center. Frameline, The Black Coalition on AIDS, Shanti and The Center present a screening of the documentary about the prominent gay African-American civil rights activist; directed by Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer. Get inspired. Free. 7:30pm. 1800 Market St. at Octavia. www.frameline.org www.sfcenter.org Daily (except Sundays): Chill out, WiFi, and fill up at the Three Dollar Bill Café. With meeting groups ranging from LGBT knitters, deaf people, plus readings, art exhibits and movie nights, this community center within the Community Center offers a haven for smaller groups and those who just want to hang out. Vince and Pete, the owners, are also finishing up New Year’s renovations. Among those projects is the Quote Contest, where the best quotes will be put on a mural and unveiled at their grand re-opening party Jan. 19. Submit a favorite quote that means something to you, from a famous or not-so-famous person, and you can win a prize. Deadline is Jan. 11, 5pm. 1800 Market St. www.threedollarbill.com ▼
Charlie’s Angels @ Our Little Theater
Opening reception for a new exhibit of gay photographers and visual artists. Free. 8pm. 4122 18th St. at Castro. 581-1600. www.magnetsf.org
Hot Draw @ Mark I. Chester Studio Open workshop in a friendly environment with a handsome nude model posing in a leather SM kink theme, and other artists drawing and sharing techniques. Also Gay Men’s Sketch Group (non-fetish-themed) on Jan. 8. Donations accepted, Call to reserve space. 6:30pm. 1229 Folsom St. 6216294. www.markichester.com
Kitka @ Jewish Community Center Acclaimed Bay Area women’s vocal group performs The Rusalka Cycle: Songs Between the Worlds, about female nature spirits in Slavic folklore; composed by Mariana Sadovska. $15-$28. 8pm. Also Jan 5, 8pm. Jan 6, 2pm. Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St. at Presidio. 292-1233. www.jccsf.org/arts
Kurosawa Films @ Castro Theatre Mini-festival of films directed by the great Japanese filmmaker, and starring Toshiro Mifune. Today, Yojimbo (7pm) and Sanjuro (9pm). Jan. 5, The Seven Samurai (12:30, 4:15, 8pm). Jan. 6, Throne of Blood (1:45, 6:30) and The Hidden Fortress (3:55, 8:40). Jan. 8, Rashomon (7pm) and Stray Dog (8:50). Jan. 9, The Bad Sleep Well (1pm, 6:30) and High and Low (3:50, 9:15). $10. 429 Castro St. 621-6120. www.castrotheatre.com
Lucky Pierre @ The Stud Break those New Year’s resolutions at the saucy nightclub with strip poker, sexy slutty gogo boys, DJs Donimo and Six, and divatastic hostess Bebe Sweetbriar. $7. 10pm-3am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.myspace.com/clubluckypierre
Meeting Resistance @ Roxie Cinema Compelling documentary with a behind the scenes look at the Iraq insurgency, focusing on eight people who resist the US-led occupation. $6.-$10. 6:30pm. Thru Jan. 10. 3117 16th St. at Valencia. 431-3611. www.meetingresistance.com www.roxie.com
Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge @ SF Playhouse
Hanging out at the Three Dollar Bill Café.
The Missing Peace @ Yerba Buena Arts Center
Weekly live music by the orchestra, with salsa, Latin and other dance instruction and open dancing for same-sex and opposite-sex couples. $8-$12. 9pm-2am. Also Saturdays. 1830 17th St. at DeHaro. 2529000. www.metronomedancecenter.com
Group Art Show @ Magnet
$7-$10. 2199 Market St. at Sanchez. www.feminapotens.com
Salvage @ Deco Lounge Anniversary party features Suppositori Spelling, Artemis Chase, Holy McGrail. Mercedez Munro, Miss Anita Fixx, Tweaka Turner and more dragtastic talents. $5. 9pm-3am. Show at 10:30pm. DJ Strano. 510 Larkin St. at Turk. 436-2025. www.decosf.com
Speed-the-Plow @ American Conservatory Theatre Previews begin for the sardonic David Mamet three-character play about two Hollywood moguls and a calculating secretary. (Opening night Jan. 9; Jan. 10 is pay what you can, discount tickets in exchange for donated kids’ items). $14-82. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat, Sun 2pm. Thru Feb. 3. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org
Sat 5 Aftermath @ Robert Koch Gallery Stunning exhibit of prints by Larry Schwarm (after a Kansas tornado) and Debbie Fleming Caffery (after Louisiana hurricanes Katrina and Rita). Tue-Sat 10:30am5:30pm. Thru Jan 26. 49 Geary St. 5th fl. 421-0122. www.kochgallery.com
Art Prints @ Pasquale Iannetti Gallery Classic modern art lithographs and etching and sculptures on exhibit and for sale. Ongoing. Mon-Sat 10am-6pm. 565 Sutter St. at Powell. 433-2771. www.pasqualeart.com
Artists of Invention @ Oakland Museum More than 120 works by graduates of the California College of the Arts, including Richard Diebenkorn, David Ireland, Liz Cohen and Dennis Oppenheim. Free-$8. Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. Thru Mar. 16. 1000 Oak St. at 10th. www.museumca.org
Artworkers II @ Eros Second annual exhibit of unusual erotic art by current and past employees of the local sex club. Thru Jan. 2051 Market St. near Dolores. 255-4921. www.erossf.com
Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi
Ebeneezer Scrooge gets a Dickens of a surprise when he visits his employee’s home in this Christopher Durang comedy that sets A Christmas Carol on a manic edge. $38, Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sat 3pm. Thru Jan. 12. 533 Sutter St. at Powell. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org
Longrunning comedy and music show known for its huge hats and mirthful parodies of current events. $46-$80. Wed/Thu 8pm, Fri/Sat 7pm & 10pm. Sun 5pm. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com
Open Eyes @ Femina Potens
Casual discussion, meeting and social event with bisexuals and their friends. 1pm. 216 Church St. at Market. brunch@babn.org
First in a monthly series of film nights; tonight, A Complicated Queerness: Living Femme in a Dyke Community, directed by Johanna Buchignani and Emily Hillman. Bring films, videos, DVDs up to five minutes in length by 7:30pm. Show at 8pm.
Exhibit, demonstrations and hands-on workshops focusing on traditional woodblock prints, vibrant paintings, and scrolls. Daily noon-4pm in the North Court (except Mondays). Thru Jan. 19. Reg. hours, 10am5pm (til 9pm Thu). Tue-Sun. Free-$12. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org
Exhibit of more than 40 fine rugs, bags, tent and animal trappings from Turkmenistan, northwest Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. $6-$10. Tue–Thu, Sat & Sun 9:30am–5:15pm, Fri 9:30am–8:45pm. Thru April 27. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.famsf.org
Cesar’s Latin All Stars @ Metronome Dance Center
Local gay comic Charlie Ballard performs stand-up with Caitlin Gill, Chris Burns, Liz Grant, Jane Haze and Marcella Arguello. $15. 8pm and 10pm. 287 Ellis St. at Mason. 928-4060.
Weekly drag show with singers, dancers, impersonators and fun. Free. 10pm. 488 Hayes St. 864-6672.
Masterpieces of Turkmen Weaving @ de Young Museum
Oysters & Barbeque @ El Rio
Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin at the LGBT Center. See Thursday.
Hayes Valley Follies @ Marlena’s
Korean Buddhist Art @ Asian Art Museum
Affordable Art @ City Art Group exhibit and sale of photos, etchings, paintings and more, all for $200 or less. Wed-Sun, noon-9pm. Thru Jan. 31. 828 Valencia St. 9709900. www.cityartgallery.org
artist Francisco Goya depicting Napoleon’s bloody war with Spain. also showing, Joan Jonas: The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, an installation of three decades of the performances artist’s work. Free-$8. Wed, Fri-Sun 11am-5pm. Thu 11am-7pm. Thru Mar. 2. 2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley. (510) 642-5188. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
Bi Brunchers @ Crepevine
Goya: The Disasters of War @ UC Berkeley Art Museum Exhibition of landmark prints by Spanish
Artists Consider the Dalai Lama, a group exhibition of 88 artists (including Jenny Holzer, Richard Gere, Bill Viola, and Chuck Close) from 25 countries exploring themes of peace, compassion, patience and tolerance; curated by Randy Rosenberg. $7. Today only, a special particapatory workshop on Enzo painting (Japanese calligraphy) with Kazuaka Tanahashi, 2pm. Reg. hours, Tue-Sun noon5pm (8pm on Thu). Thru Mar. 16. 701 Mission St. at 3rd. 978-2787. www.ybca.org
Perverts Put Out @ CounterPulse Readings of true-life sex tales, fetish fun, porny poetry and more by Trebor Healey, Gina De Vries, horehound stillpoint, Lori Selke, and Mattilda aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore. MCed by Simon Sheppard and Carol Queen. Proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture. $10-$15. 7:30pm. 1310 Mission St. www.counterpulse.org www.simonsheppard.com/pervertsputout.html
Rocky Horror Show @ Hoover Theatre, San Jose Enjoy the story of a sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania, and his encounters with Brad and Janet in Richard O’Brien’s stage musical that later become a hit cult film. $25-$30. 8pm. Also at midnight tonight (closing night). Thru Jan. 5. 1635 Park Ave. (408) 998-TIXS. www.theatrecenter.biz
The Shaker Chair @ Ashby Stage Shotgun Players’ production of Obie Awardwinning playwright Adam Bock’s new play, in which a widow invests in a vintage chair that inspires activism and a fight for justice. $20-$30. Thu-Sat 8pm, Sun 5pm. Thru Jan. 27. 1901 Ashby Ave. (510) 8416500. www.shotgunplayers.org
Tom Stoppard @ American Conservatory Theatre One-hour talk with internationally renowned playwright. Free, but limited seating; reservations required. 10am. 415 Geary St. at Mason. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org
Club Feral @ Thee Parkside Queer bands performing include Trannysaurus Sex, Floating Corpses and Jenny Hoyston’s Paradise Island. Drag performances by Jupiter; Frankie Sharp and Rhanimals DJ between sets. $5. 9pm. 21+. 1600 17th St. at Wisconsin. www.theeparkside.com
Sun 6 Double Duchess Birthdays @ Marlena’s Drag show celebration for Collette LeGrande-Ashton and Renita Valdez. 4pm. No cover. 488 Hayes St. at Octavia. 8646672.
Edward Gorey’s Dracula @ Cartoon Art Museum Exhibit of prints by the artist whose work inspired The Addams Family; set designs, memorabilia and costumes for the Broadway show about the classic vampire. $2-$6. Tue-Sun, 11am-5pm. Thru Jan. 20. 655 Mission St. at 2nd. 227-8666. www.edwardgoreyhouse.org www.cartoonart.org
Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend @ de Young Museum The first retrospective exhibit in two decades of the wood-constructed “found ob-
3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 31
Winsome Griffles @ Hotel Utah Folky funny queer music group with a new CD performs with Sweet Crude Bill and the Lighthouse, Nautical Society and Lariats of Fire. $6. 21+. 9pm. 500 4th St. at Bryant. 546-6300. www.myspace.com/winsomegriffles www.thehotelutahsaloon.com
Wed 9 Banished @ SF Public Library Film by Marco Williams about the U.S. towns and counties from the 1860s to the 1920s where entire African American communities were violently expelled; a century later, these twns remain all white. Free. 6pm. lower level, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin St. at Grove. 557-4277. www.sfpl.org
Buddhist Meditation Class @ LGBT Center Xavier Rudd at The Fillmore. See Wednesday. ject” sculptures of one of the more famous of postmodern women artists. Thru Jan. 13, 2008. $6-$10. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm (Fridays til 8:45pm). Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.deyoungmuseum.org
Outlook Video @ Comcast Channel 29 LGBT news magazine features segments with Dr. Betty Sullivan, community response to AB 43 veto, Dawn Wright of the Billy deFrank Center, Frederick Ferrer of the Health Trust, and Molly McKay of Marriage Equality USA. Free. 5pm. www.OutlookVideo.org
Sundance Saloon @ Club 550 Lively weekly LGBT country western dancing for everyone from fancy dancers to novices. Lessons at 5:30pm. Open dancing at 7pm. Also Thursdays. $5. 550 Barneveld Ave. www.sundancesaloon.org
Sunday’s A Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet and Harry Denton’s weekly sumptuous brunch and fabulous drag show. $40. 18+. Brunches at 11am & 1:30pm; shows at Noon and 2:30pm. Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell St., 21st floor. 395-8595. www.harrydenton.com
Supersonic Sundays @ Underground SF Afternoon beer bust in the Lower Haight featuring the sounds of DJMC2 and Cookie Dough, drink specials, dancing. Free. 4pm–9pm (beer bust 5-7). 424 Haight St. www.cookievision.com
Mon 7 Support Group @ Bay Positives Drop-in support group for HIV positive people. Free. 7:30pm. 701 Oak St. 487-1616. www.baypositives.org
Dollar Mondays @ El Rio DJ Mrs. Robinson and DJ Jenny Hoyston spin an eclectic mix of vinyl for gay and “not gay but happy” folks. $2. $1 beer, $2 shots, mixed drinks. 21+ 9pm-1am. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com
Gay Mondays @ Etiquette Lounge New social cocktail night for LGBT folks. 7pm-midnight. $1 from each drink will be donated to the LGBT Center. 1108 Market St. at 7th. 869-8779. www.etiquettelounge.com
Gay Sangha @ LGBT Center Buddhism meditation group with topic discussion and sitting. Donations. 5:30pm. 1800 Market St. at Octavia, Rom 300. SFLGBTsangha@yahoogroups www.sfcenter.org
OUT Spoken @ Comcast Ch. 11 Cable TV show for the LGBT Community, co-hosted by Tim Gaskin and Donna Sachet. Mon. 6:30, Tue. 9pm, Wed. 7pm, Fri. 7:30pm, Sat. 7pm, Sun. 6:30pm. www.outspokensf.com
Picturing AIDS @ LGBT Center Exhibit of 100 photos and artwork about AIDS and AIDS activism by Rudy Lemcke. Free. Thru Jan. 15. 1800 Market St. at Octavia. www.sfcenter.org
Tue 8 Jim Van Buskirk @ SF Public Library Editor of several gay-themed books discusses his latest, a diversion focusing on his heritage, in My Grandmother’s Suitcase: A Family Memoir. Free. 6:30pm. Main Library, lower level, Latino/Hispanic community meeting Room, 100 Larkin St. at Grove. 557-4277. www.sfpl.org
Looking at Light Through Flowers @ Strybing Arboretum Exhibit of photographs by Joanne Koltnow showing translucent perspectives on wild flowers. Free. 10am-4pm. Thru Mar. 31. Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture, SF Botanical Garden, 9th Ave at Lincoln Way, Golden Gate Park. 661-1316. www.sfbotanicalgarden.org
Todd McCaffrey @ Booksmith Fantasy author and collaborator with his mother, Anne McCaffrey, reads from and discusses his latest book, Dragon Harper. Free. 7pm. 1644 Haight St. 863-8688. www.booksmith.com
Trannyshack @ The Stud Star Search is the theme for the weekly dragstravaganza. $8. 10pmish-2am. Harrison St. at 9th. www.trannyshack.com
SF Brothas @ Three Dollar Bill Café Social group for African-American gay and bisexual men. Free. 6:30pm. 1800 Market St. at Octavia. 503-1532. www.threedollarbill.com
Veronika Lukásová @ RayKo Photo Center Opening reception for two exhibits; panoramic holga images from the Czeck Republic, and a juried plastic camera show of surprisingly artistic imagery. Free. 6pm. Reg. hours Tue-thu 12pm10pm. Fri-Sun 10am-8pm. Thru Feb. 9. 428 3rd St. 495-3773. www.raykophoto.com
Kadampa Buddhist Temple members lead meditation classes; ongoing. $10. 7pm8:30pm. 1800 Market St. at Octavia. 5031187. www.MeditationinSanFrancisco.org
Jan Rhodes @ City Lights Bookstore Author of Framing The Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise Of A Power Icon discusses her new book. Free. 7pm. 261 Columbus Ave. 362-8193. www.citylights.com
Our Lives @ SF Public Library A unique, powerful multimedia “photovoice” exhibit relating to African American men’s sexual health, about the successes and challenges in maintaining sexual health and preventiing HIV infection. Free. Thru Jan. 17. 100 Larkin St. African American Center, third floor. 557-4400. www.sfpl.org
Xavier Rudd @ The Fillmore Australian multi-instrumentalist and environmental activist, who’s opened for Dave Matthews and Ani DiFranco, performs with his band. $25. 8pm. 1805 Geary St. at Fillmore. www.xavierrudd.com
Thu 10 Berlin and Beyond Film Fest @ Castro Theatre New films and classics revivals from Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Tonight, opener Yella. 8pm. 429 Castro St. Thru Jan. 16. 263-8760. www.castrotheatre.com www.berlinandbeyond.com
Dead Mother @ Traveling Jewish Theatre Subtitled or, Shirtley Not All; in Vain, David Greenspan’s strange farce about a man who has to impersonate his mother take son themes of personal identity. $18$44. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru Feb. 17. 470 Florida St. (800) 838-3006. www.atjt.com
OutRanks @ GLBT Historical Society Timely exhibit about GLBT soldiers, sailors, and other military veterans, and the history of the antigay policies in the military. See almost 70 years of history told through letters, photographs, medals, uniforms, and video footage. Thru June 2008. $4. 1pm5pm. Tue.-Sat. 657 Mission St. at 2nd, Suite 300. 777-5455. www.glbthistory.org
Radar Reading @ SF Public Library Author Michelle Tea welcomes writers Enrique Urueta, Susanna Myrseth, Ellis Avery and Kim Addonizio. Free. 6pm. Main Library, lower level, Latino/Hispanic community meeting Room, 100 Larkin St. at Grove. 557-4277. www.sfpl.org
Robert Altman’s Sixties @ Heather Marx Gallery Opening reception for an exhibit of work by longtime Rolling Stone photographer, focusing on rock bands, hippies and SF culture. Free. 5:30pm. Reg. hours Tue-Fri 10:30am-5:30pm, Sat 11am-5pm. Thru Feb. 77 Geary St. 2nd floor. 627-9111. www.heathermarxgallery.com
The Small Photograph: An Appreciation @ Robert Tat Gallery New exhibit of diminuitive yet powerful black and white images. Thru Feb. 2. TueSat 11am,-5:30pm. 49 Geary St., Suite 211. 781-1122. www.roberttat.com
For more listings, visit www.ebar.com
Send your calendar event listings to: Out & About Bay Area Reporter 395 Ninth Street San Francisco, CA 94103 email: calendare@eBAR.com
Holy McGrail at Salvage. See Friday.
Deadline is Friday before issue date.
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 3 January 2008
M U S I C You’re also singing Prince again, this time in “Sign o’ the Times.” Why did you choose that song?
Strong women 씱 Arts cover Starrbooty parodies and pays homage to the blaxploitation flicks of the 70s. Do you have a favorite film from that genre?
Absolutely! When I was 12, I was enthralled with Cleopatra Jones. I even wrote Warner Brothers a letter asking about a sequel and any other information they had on Tamara Dobson, the star. They wrote me back and told me that they were working on the next movie, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. The Starrbooty cast includes familiar porn stars such as Michael Lucas, Owen Hawk and Gus Mattox. What was it like working with them?
So much fun! Any time your co-star is willing to whip out his cock at any moment, I think you’ve got yourself a winning cast! They all had a really great sense of humor, so it really worked out very well. We’re doing this kind of guerilla filmmaking, and people have to be flexible in a working situation like that, and they were more than accommodating.
2. Funky diva For more than 30 years, first as a member of the essential 70s funk unit Rufus and later as a solo artist, Chaka Khan has been one of the fiercest divas of her generation. Khan has found a way to pay her respects to her predecessors by recording albums of standards over the years. But one listen to her latest, Funk This (Burgundy), and you know that her heart beats a funky rhythm. From
the powerhouse pairing of Khan and Mary J. Blige on “Disrespectful” and the faithful reading of Prince’s “Sign o’ the Times,” this is funk at its finest, and Chaka at the height of her powers as a performer. Gregg Shapiro: How did Mary J. Blige come to be singing with you on “Disrespectful?”
Chaka Khan: She and I have been friends since the beginning of her career, and we’ve been threatening to do something together for a long time! The opportunity finally presented itself. When I went into the studio, she already had a track laid down. She’d pretty much written the song already. I just put my bit in, and there we are. I think it really is a tour de force. You have a long history with Joni Mitchell, dating back 30 years from her Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter album to the present day. You cover “Ladies’ Man” on Funk This. What does Joni mean to you?
Everything! She’s my idol. I think she’s intellectually amazingly astute. I think her artistry is unbounded. She is somebody I’d like to be like.
I wanted this CD to have an overall message to young people. To look around them, chill, and see what’s going on. See where you’re living, see how you’re living, and try to correct that. And know that somebody cares. That is one of the fundamental reasons for doing the CD. That song is so timely. Prince is a prophet in many ways. He’s brilliant, he’s a genius. “I’m Every Woman” is something of a signature song for you. Does it still have special meaning to you almost 30 years after it was first released?
It has a lot of meaning! It’s an empowering song. The only regret that I have is that I sang, “I’m every woman.” If I could have sung “I’m every human,” if there was a word in the English language that could refer to men and women in a good and cool way, as opposed to “people.” I couldn’t have sung, “I’m every man and woman!” How would you rate your awareness of your following in the gay community?
It appears to be quite high! And when asked why, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the little butch in me! I think gay people are more acute. They are a lot more like my European audiences that really do listen to lyrics and get what you’re trying to stay. It’s a sensitivity. I think it has to do with the sensitive aspect of being gay.
3. Awake and sing The Awakening (Island), Melissa Etheridge’s 9th studio
▼ that lent itself to being a songcycle?
album and her first since her battle with cancer, finds her embracing her activist voice. Etheridge covers the politics of body image, religious fanaticism, war and more, and does so in what has become her signature style. I spoke to her about the new album and her own artistic awakening. Gregg Shapiro: Would you say that The Awakening is your most personal and autobiographical effort?
Melissa Etheridge: It’s the most consciously personal and autobiographical. Everything I’ve written has been personal, whether I knew it or not! I finally realized what I’m doing as an artist, and I finally let go of this dream of being some sort of famous thing. Does it ever surprise you to look back over the course of your nine studio albums, at the evolution of your political voice?
That has definitely been a journey. I remember writing my first political song, “Testify,” on my second album, Brave and Crazy. The song was about: I want to testify. Going back and listening to my songs, which I did on chemotherapy, I realized that I was forecasting. I want to be truthful. What is it about this set of songs
Dressed 씱 page 29 for the work of others. The profession was so dominated by gay men that Head encouraged people to think she was a lesbian because she thought it would help her career. While Head may not have been the most original costumer, she had another, very important quality, summarized by Elizabeth Taylor. “It was her method of working that was so phenomenal. She got ‘inside’ the characters as much as the actors and directors did. She would find little personality quirks for each different individual, like a favorite scarf, or pockets in odd places, sort of built-in props for each role.” Because women have been judged by their appearance far more than men, and because leading ladies were expected to be beautiful and sexy on the screen, far more attention was paid to costuming them than men. Studios soon realized that costume design could become a huge marketing tool. Over 200,000 copies of Adrian’s white ruffled organza gown worn by Joan Crawford in Letty Lytton (1932) were made, still a record. Helen Rose’s wedding dress for Taylor in Father of the Bride (50), Head’s evening gown for Taylor in A Place in the Sun (51), and Givenchy’s party dress for Audrey Hepburn’s Sabrina (54) were also widely reproduced. On the other hand, when Clark Gable revealed he wore no undershirt in It Happened One Night (34), sales of that garment dropped dramatically, but recovered after Marlon Brando filled it out so magnificently in A Streetcar Named Desire (51). Brando, James
The first song I wrote was “California,” because I’d always wanted to write a song about California. So I did, and it turned out to be about leaving Kansas, and this place is going to make all my dreams come true. The second song I wrote was “Kingdom of Heaven,” and I thought, “Lord, I can’t put that on the CD, people are going to crucify me. ‘God is me,’ what’s that?” Then the songs came one by one until I finally just said, “Well, wait a minute, this is my journey,” and I started realizing what I was writing. In spite of the album’s serious nature, you find a way to work your sense of humor into it.
That’s because I want people to know, in expressing my awakening or my new spirituality, it’s not a bummer, it is joy. Finding one true love can be extremely fun, sexual and exciting, and when you’re in your 40s you’re still very alive sexually for a long time. Yes, I can get political, and there are some serious issues in front of us and changes we need to make, but fun is a part of it. What did it mean to you to participate in the Democratic candidates’ political debate on Logo?
It meant that I was grateful for my celebrity. We live in a world of celebrity worship, we’re celebritycrazed. And I know that I was asked to be on that because I am a name, and it would bring in people. I hope that I represented my community, and it’s hard, the gay community, you can’t get more different people, we’re not even all Democrats or liberals. And I hope that I brought a personal side to it. That’s what I was asked to do, and that’s what I wanted to do. I was so honored to be there, and I learned a lot.▼
Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (55) and Paul Newman in Hud (63) made denim pants a standard for young men. Even the most talented and serious artists pay attention to clothes. “I’m a notorious pain-inthe-butt for any costume designer. For me, clothes are a kind of character,” says Meryl Streep. Bette Davis also understood the importance of costume. About her character the Empress Carlotta in Juarez (39), she said, “To point up Carlotta’s growing insanity, OrryKelly used visual psychology. He created a white dress for her first scene, and as the picture progressed, the color of the gowns changed from white to gray. Finally, when she’s completely mad, she is seen in black.” The photographs show how Streep, Glenn Close, Angelica Huston (who provides a thoughtful introduction), among so many, have transformed themselves over the years by wearing outfits that perfectly suited the characters they were playing. Many of the quotes are nearly as memorable as the images. “Ah like gowns that are tight enough to show I’m a woman and loose enough to show I’m a lady,” proclaimed Mae West. Hindsight also reveals some astonishing assessments. “One thing’s for sure: now when I look at Funny Girl, I think I was gorgeous. I was too beautiful to play Fanny Brice,” insists Barbra Streisand, which makes designer Irene Sharaff ’s achievements in that film even more impressive. Landis, who received an Oscar nomination for her costumes for Coming to America (88), is both a practitioner and admirer of the art. As a result, readers of Dressed will find their pleasure in watching movies enhanced enormously. ▼
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 33
DV D
A French affair Zabou Breitman’s ‘The Man of My Life’ by Robert Julian
F
rench filmmakers have a way of finding meaning in the ordinary, and drama in the mundane, but few do this as skillfully as Zabou Breitman does in his film The Man of My Life, now available on DVD from Strand Releasing. Frederic (Bernard Campan) is a married man who is on holiday with his wife Frederique (Lea Drucker) and their children at the family home in Provence. This year, the family meets a neighbor, Hugo
(Charles Berling), a gay graphic artist who regularly swims nude in his pool — sometimes with male guests. The pool is visible from the second story of Frederic’s home, and Frederique and the children enjoy watching Hugo’s nude swims. Early in The Man of My Life, Frederique remarks to her husband that Hugo “has a nice willy,” setting the stage for the sexual tension that permeates this film from beginning to end. Frederic and Hugo become running buddies, and their discussions about relationships and
life choices draw them close. A wedding in the town center, dinners with Frederic’s family, and a sprained ankle throw the men together physically until Frederic is at the point of a nervous breakdown and Frederique is reduced to tears as she accurately accuses her husband of being in love with Hugo. Hugo is a free spirit, a committed bachelor in his 40s who has no intention of settling down with anyone. His French farmhouse is characterized by a restrained elegance of design and a remodeled second story that features a clear
Suffering Hayward ‘I’ll Cry Tomorrow’ is out on DVD by Tavo Amador
D
uring Hollywood’s classic era (ca. 1930-60), women made up a much larger percentage of movie audiences than they do today. Studios targeted films to them the way they now market to teenage boys. “The Woman’s Picture,” or tearjerker, was a staple, and stars as different as Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne, Greta Garbo, Margaret Sullavan, Joan Crawford, Olivia de Havilland, Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine, and Barbara Stranwyck won acclaim for their work in “weepies.” By the 1950s, Crawford and Stanwyck were still at it, but Jane Wyman, Lana Turner, and especially Susan Hayward (1907-75) were queens of the genre. The Brooklyn-born Hayward, dismissed by Time as a “bargain-basement Bette Davis,” and whom critic David Shipman called a “miniCrawford,” became synonymous with suffering, despite often playing strong or seductive women like Bathsheba and Messalina. She was a model when summoned by Hollywood in 1937 to test for Scarlett O’Hara. She didn’t get the part, but decided to show Tinseltown it had made a mistake. In I’ll Cry Tomorrow (55), Hayward scored as vocalist and early movie star Lillian Roth (1910-80), whose struggles with alcoholism were chronicled in her bestselling memoirs. Roth had been a child singing star in vaudeville and headlined several pre-code Hollywood films, notably Animal Crackers with the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille’s Madame Satan (30), and Ladies They Talk About (33), a landmark women-in-prison story starring Stanwyck. Jo Van Fleet plays Lillian’s stage mother Katie, the driving force behind her career. Over mother’s objections, Lillian was planning to give up stardom to marry her childhood sweetheart, attorney David Tredman (the gorgeous Ray Danton). According to the film, Roth turned to alcohol to consol herself after David’s untimely death. Her intake increases, and after an all-night bender, she wakes up married to a soldier/fan (Don Taylor). Their drinking begins affecting her career. He walks out and she meets, then marries, another boozer (Richard Conte), a physical and emotional abuser who exploits her. Lillian struggles on her own to control her drinking, but fails. She hits a truly low
bottom, losing her money and forced to live with her mother in a small tenement apartment. She contemplates suicide, but finally, with great difficulty, goes to Alcoholics Anonymous, where she finds help and true love from her sponsor (Eddie Albert). Helen Deutsch and Jay Richard Kennedy’s screenplay isn’t subtle, which suits Hayward’s intense style perfectly. She had a lovely contralto voice, and handles the musical numbers, including “Sing You Sinners,” “When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin Along,” and especially, “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe,” effectively. (When she portrayed singer Jane Froman in With a Song in My Heart (52), Froman insisted on doing the vocals, so many fans were surprised that Hayward could sing so well.) More importantly, Hayward graphically conveys the horror of alcoholism and its physical and emotional toll. Her detoxification scenes are moving, as powerful as those by Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend (45), Hollywood’s first serious look at the disease. Hayward had played alcoholics in Oscar-nominated performances for Smash Up: The Story of a Woman (47) and Beware My Foolish Heart (49), yet under Daniel Mann’s direction, her work here is fresh. It earned her a fourth Academy Award nod, which she lost to Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo. Van Fleet is brilliant as Katie — manipulative, controlling, loving, desperate for a better life for her daughter and herself. She’s complex: sympathetic, monstrous, sometimes both at once. Her scenes with Hayward crackle. Danton, Albert, and especially Conte are all good. Only towards the end, when Roth, in recovery, agrees to appear on television’s This Is Your Life to tell the public about her ill-
ness, does the film succumb to bathos. This scene is filmed in a theatre, and as Hayward gallantly strides up the aisle to the stage, the viewer expects her to sing, “When You Walk Through a Storm.” Contemporary audiences, however, wept as they watched her. I’ll Cry Tomorrow, on screen and in the book, presented a sanitized version of Roth’s life. Among other things, she was married eight times. But it had a huge impact on changing the popular perception of alcoholism, especially for women, from a moral failing to a disease that couldn’t be cured, but could be controlled. The movie was a box-office smash. Three years later, Hayward would finally win a Best Actress Oscar for Robert Wise’s compelling I Want To Live! She gave a characteristically gutsy performance as convicted murder accessory Barbara Graham, the first woman in California given a death sentence. Former co-star Gregory Peck quipped, “We can all relax now. Susie finally got what she’s been chasing for 20 years.” Although Hayward worked steadily in films and television after her win, she did little that was memorable, except for her wonderfully over-the-top Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls (67). Sadly, her real life resembled one of her melodramas. She suffered from alcoholism and died of brain cancer at age 57. ▼
glass floor. Frederic and his family live in a more traditional French Provencal style, but a strange and mysterious breeze blows perpetually through the center of their home. It won’t take viewers long to recognize this as a metaphor for the winds of change that will cause Frederic’s marriage to implode. Director Breitman allows his screenplay to unfold leisurely. He jumps back and forth in time, and cuts many scenes into small installments that start and stop without warning. All the performances succeed in conveying the casual freedom of a summer in the country, as well as the intense self-scrutiny that comes when one has time to contemplate personal life choices and question where they have led. The impact of Breitman’s work
here is considerably enhanced by Michel Amathieu’s extraordinary photography. The French countryside becomes both modern and ancient through carefully framed images that perfectly mirror the delicate emotional state of the protagonists, their battle with sexual desire, and the implications of a carefully cultivated French ennui. The Man of My Life is an intellectually provocative and visually stunning motion picture.▼
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 3 January 2008
L E AT H E R
S C E N E
▼
Here we go again! by Mister Marcus
I
t’s 2008, and it’s amazing to believe the new century started with the panic of 2K jitters and has progressed smoothly (more or less) into this New Year. Ups and downs in every area of life, as in this new century, but what time period was without turmoil, indecision, big achievements, dreams unrealized? For some, five years ago you had a different husband/wife, and you survived the turmoil of a break-up. We now have a community center in San Francisco, and civic-minded people are facing another election. Our political clubs are “at it” again, the bare-chest calendar continues, leather contests are taking place almost at a global level, and new titleholders popping up hither and yon. The IML Class of 2008 looks great already, and there are almost a dozen more contests scheduled between now and May. Good news for 2008 is that what used to be the Mr. Drummer and Drummer Boy titles (now International Sir/boy) return to San Francisco in 2008, and the American Brotherhood titles resurface in New Orleans. Not a peep about the Ms. and Mr. World Leather titles, but we’re hoping. The status of bootblacks has been elevated to a well-deserved niche. I don’t know if he does his own boots or a bootblack does them, but the outstanding pair worn by Dexter Edmond (former Karl Hornberger, Mr. Double L Leather of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Int’l. Leather Sir) is a beautiful will be among the Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather competitors in Washington, sight to behold. Not too many DC the weekend of Jan. 18-21. The Double L contestant has won this bootblacks have mastered the title three years in a row. “spit-shine” look. Former Int’l. MS. Bootblack Leslie Anderson And the rest of the leather gear in the Castro when I arrived: the knows how, that’s for sure. came bit by bit. No matter what Missouri Mule on Market near Next month, we’ll be voting for economic condition exists in this Castro, the Mistake (now the a new emperor and empress. I country, leather still costs a forMen’s Room — hi, Lita, my lovehave fond memories of the two tune. Gone are the days when ly!), and the Honey Bucket (later empresses I served with, the you had to “earn” your the Pendulum). Many people late Jonni Valle, Empress VII; leather(s). Nowadays, anyone traveled down the Peninsula to and my beloved Maxine, Emwith a decent credit card have brunch at Mona’s. On the press VIII, who is alive, can stroll into a leather Levee on the Embarcadero was fawell and with the same store in almost any part vored by the leather guys. All the sense of humor that was of the country (and other bars in the Castro were runprevalent during her Canada) and get outfitdown Irish bars. The Twin Peaks reign. Who could ever ted from head to toe, and was a straight bar with four jukeforget our “shotgun” not just on the outerboxes, each with only jazz records wedding benefit at wear! The hanky code (three plays for a quarter!). I can’t Scott’s Pit, a lesbian Leather started out with tell you how many women tried to bar near Duboce Ave.? about a dozen or so pick me up in that place (a jazzI think about the colors, but nowadays, you need a lover to this day!). The last straight people who influenced me the hefty guidebook to figure out anybar to vacate the Castro was the most after I arrived in SF on Auone’s “proclivities.” one on 18th & Collingwood (now gust 7, 1968. I remember my first Gone are cheap rents. My first the Edge). The very popular Toad taste of fundraising, a benefit aucapartment here was on Telegraph Hall is now the expanded space of tion held at Febe’s bar with the Hill near the corner of Union and Walgreen’s today. Before it was late Bob Ross auctioning off Montgomery Sts. The rent was Walgreen’s, it was the Star Pharleather stuff and other goodies. $110, and the view was the Finanmacy, with a gay-friendly woman The auction was staged to buy cial District, the Bay Bridge, Russnamed Jackie Starr, who later was seats for the waiting room at the ian Hill, and “visitors” to my pad elected Miss Cowgirl of SF. Those new VD Clinic on 7th St. That were amazed to see the world’s were fun days. We used to have a night, I was finally accepted into biggest dildo from my window gay bowling league with almost 30 the leather community when the (Coit Tower)! teams, who rolled their balls Febe’s bartenders chipped in and Polk Street was the “gayest” around at the Park Bowl on bought me the leather jacket I neighborhood on the West Coast. Haight St. The Gay Softball wear to this day. When it was Fond memories of the New Bell, League had great opening-day handed to me, it was with the adCloud 9 and the Web. ceremonies. Highlights during the monition: “Don’t ever wear white There were only three gay bars sneakers with this jacket.” next page 씰
E V E N T U R E S
I N
L E A T H E R
Saturday, Jan. 12
test is on Sunday.
In Palm Springs, to benefit Prostate Cancer Awareness, it’s Purgatory, a charity fetish ball by Michael Bales, he of Zeus Studios fame!
Weekend Jan. 25-27
Thursdays, Jan. 17, 24 & 31 At the Powerhouse around 2200 each night, Bare Chest Calendar 2009 contests. You really ought to compete!
Weekend Jan. 18-21 First big leather contest of the year at the Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend in Washington, DC. Con-
Mr. Chicago Leather 2008 Contest at the Touche bar. Meet & Greet on Friday night, contest on Saturday night, victory brunch on Sunday. I’ll be there judging, so you’ll be the first to know the results. I love scooping the competition.
Weekend Feb. 8-10 Mr. Iowa Leather 2008 contest in Des Moines. No details furnished.
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3 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 35
P O L K S T R PA OS RS N E
Budding icons by Ernie Alderete
N
ew Generations from Bel Ami is like a welcome splash of warm summer sunshine across the frigid white snow of winter. The concept behind the title is to present fresh meat. Nice new faces, with appealing bodies. Budding erotic icons of the future. Bel Ami is a porno studio that is virtually synonymous with young boytoys from the former Warsaw Pact nations: Chechnya, Slovakia, Hungary, and what was East Germany, in particular. How can such small political entities pump out so many beautiful men? As best as I can tell, the apparatus the former Soviet Bloc set up to produce gold medalwinning athletes is still spewing out buff and beautiful young men. Danny Alvarez has the most spectacular eyes in New Generations, a pair of jewels a deep translucent-green as brilliant as lustrous jade. His body is naturally hairless, save a small dark bush just above his uncut cock. Even his balls are bare, and there’s hardly a trace of hair in his armpits, let alone on his chest. He has a nice solid, well-balanced build. No part of his body outshines another. But if I had to choose my favorite part of Danny, it would be his face, with his fine lips, beautiful eyes and finely textured dark hair. New Generations is not directed to butt-lovers. Sure, there’s some choice tails, but most of the pictures concentrate on the front
of the body. There’s plenty of nice dick shots, including several raging hard-ons. My favorite dick belongs to cover model Tommy Hansen. It almost looks like a war club. I’m sure he could inflict some heavy damage if he battered someone over the head with it! The models here are a shade beyond what we know as twinks: a few years older, and a few pounds beefier. They’re perhaps in their mid- to upper-20s. As far as personal equipment goes, dark-haired Danny Saradon is definitely in the minor leagues. He has a nice uncut schlong, but nothing memorable. It’s perhaps the shortest appendage in New Generations, but presumably fully functional, and enough to get him into any men’s club! He hasn’t got much of a bush either, but he does have an undeniable boyish charm; very even, healthy, flawless skin;
and lovely hands that more than compensate for any shortcomings in the pecker department. Alex Orioli has a nice, stiff, uncut, eight-inch, tan boner firmly planted in a dark, fluffy bush. He’s not a pretty boy. Alex has small but powerful dark eyes, and an overall attractive face, crowned by a nice head of healthy, dark hair. I’d bet he shaves his body hair, but there is a trace of hair left below the belt line, almost forming a pyramid with his crotch as the base, and his horizontal, slitlike belly button at the summit. Yves Carradine has several attractive attributes. I like the way his groin veins are so visible streaming down into his crotch! He must be equipped for some powerfully rock-hard erections and massively spurting orgasms. You just can’t fake veins. Especially leading to the crotch, you need to be in peak physical form for those veins to be that prominent. I like his belly button, too. It’s both an “innie” and an “outie.” His umbilical cord looks like it was neatly knotted into an outie, but it rests in a deep, bowl-like depression that makes it stand out almost like the nipple on a tire. It’s several times larger than both of his puny chest nipples combined. Brandon Manilow (no relation to Barry) looks like he’s wearing a bad hairpiece, with the jagged part running straight down the middle. To be honest, it looks as coarse as horse’s hair, and as shiny as vinyl. But he was probably just having a bad hair day, and don’t we all? ▼
Mister Marcus 씱 previous page early seasons were a gay softball team vs. either the SF Police Dept. team or the SF Fire Dept. team. The gay teams usually won. Nobody has forgotten the notorious “Irene,” who almost single-handedly ran the league. One year, there was a game between the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and leather titleholders. A riotous game, and bet you can’t guess who won that one! There were gay bathhouses all over town: in North Beach, in the Mission, in the Folsom area, as well as the houses still going strong in Berkeley and San Jose. I wonder if the Naked Sword people know that their premises were once a hotbed of leather & vanilla sex! The Ritch Street Baths was notorious, as was the Folsom Barracks. There are people in this town who vociferously proclaim they were “friends” or “supporters” of Harvey Milk. But if you dig deep, you will find that the gay Establishment denied Harvey their support, and chose the lawyer Rick Stokes in his bid for the Board of Supervisors. Stokes didn’t win. Harvey was viewed with skepticism by most. He was a New Yorker; he had long hair; and he wasn’t in the cliques of the day. The night of his victory was bedlam on Castro as we gathered to celebrate his victory. Not one of the Establishment was present. Yeah, they sure did support him! But times do change. There is voter awareness, and most gays are registered for voting. After all, it’s your city! I hope you’re registered to vote, and that you vote in the coming election. I suppose that’s enough pontificating. You can’t live in the past,
Jackie Starr, the reigning queen of the Star Pharmacy, now Walgreen’s on Castro St., went on to become San Francisco Cowgirl.
but it’s interesting to reminisce about it and hope things will get better. Our city is a model for the entire nation with its overwhelming support in challenging the AIDS crisis. So many good, productive, intelligent and astute people have left us. HIV is out there, and protective measures should be
foremost in your mind when you’re out cruising. It will be good to see your happy faces doing your thing in 2008 and beyond. I wish you all a healthy, productive, good year. Hang in there and remember: Opportunity may knock once, but temptation bangs on your front door forever! ▼
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 03 January 2008
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EFFIE MAY NOT BE GOING, BUT 2007 IS GONE.
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03 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 37
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 03 January 2008
P E R S O N A L S
MODELS/ESCORTS KEN
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STR8 WHITE 9X7C 29, 5’11”, 190#, Always Able I Will Wreck You. Outcalls Only Joey (415) 933-5801 - 12p - 12a E08W
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THE BAY AREA REPORTER ONLINE EB1 Farmer, 6’, 32yo, Well-Hung. Call Brad @415-596-4184 SF Calls Only
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03 January 2008 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 39
P E R S O N A L S
PEOPLE san francisco
spank pa r t y call for monthly info private sessions also available
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UNFORGETTABLE BLOW BUDDIES ENCOUNTER On Sun, Nov 11th at about 11:30 p.m. we were in adjacent booths on the 2nd floor. You put it through. I was ravenous as you leaned way back to observe the action. After you climaxed you peeked through with a look of appreciation. As we exited you asked my name as if to seek future contact. "Rick", I said with discomfort and then parted I am intense with desire anew. You are a slender white man with balding, patchy dark hair, well endowed with perfectly proportioned equipment. I need to find you again for all the right reasons. I trust that I will as a "Meant-To-Be". E-mail me at pab2nyc@aol.com E01W
MAX DELONG HORSE SIZE DICK! MAXXXCOCK.COM & MAXDELONGMOVIES.COM Video on Demand & DVD rpj1510@hotmail.com $5 brochure (No Personal Checks) Max Entertainment, Inc. 931754 L.A., CA 90093 m/o & c/c ok. E01W
ADULT JOBS OFFERED SHOW-OFF FOR CASH
BAYAREAREPORTER CLASSIFIED ORDER FORM Payment must accompany ad. No ads taken over the telephone. If you have a question, call 415.861.5019. Display advertising rates available upon request.
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