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BAYAREAREPORTER
Vol. 40
. No. 27 . 8 July 2010
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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Hawaii gov Police seek public’s help after vetoes civil Pink Saturday fatal shooting union bill R H
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awaii Governor Linda Lingle vetoed a civil union bill Tuesday, July 6 that would have granted same-sex couples all the state rights, benefits, responsibilities, and obligations of marriage under a different name. “I have been open and consistent in my opposition to samegender marriage and find that House Bill 444 is essentially marriage by another name,” Lingle, a Republican, said at a 3 p.m. news conference. “I am vetoing this bill because I Governor have become con- Linda Lingle vinced that this issue is of such societal importance that it deserves to be decided by all the people of Hawaii,” she said. “It would be a mistake to allow a decision of this magnitude to be made by one individual or a small group of elected officials. ... There are issues that require the reflection, collective wisdom and consent of the people and reserves to them the right to directly decide those matters. This is one such issue.” Lingle went on to criticize the way the bill had been passed in the state House of Representatives. “The legislative maneuvering that brought House Bill 444 to an 11th-hour vote on the final day of the session via a suspension of the rules, after legislators led the public to believe that the bill was dead, was wrong and unfair to the public they represent,” she said. “This is a decision that should [be made] by all the people of Hawaii behind the curtain of the voting booth.” Lingle, who is termed out of office this year, said she felt “very comfortable” with her veto, but added: “I would be surprised if this does not go on the next available ballot. ... I would encourage lawmakers to do it ... so that we can all move on.” Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union promptly announced they would file suit over the veto. “We’re obviously disappointed that Governor Lingle has, once again, used her power to deny the people of Hawaii their civil rights,” said Laurie Temple, staff attorney for the ACLU. “Luckily for the people of Hawaii, however, our constitution prevents discrimination based on sexual orientation. If the governor won’t honor her oath to uphold the constitution, the courts will.” Hawaii’s constitution was amended by voters in 1998 to give the Legislature authority to restrict marriage to oppositesex couples, which it did. The amendment does not prohibit civil unions, or the Legislature’s changing its mind. The amendment states: “The legislature shall have the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples.”
esponding to several violent incidents that occurred during Pride weekend, local leaders and police this week appealed to the LGBT community for help in combating crime. This year’s Pride was marred by a shooting at the Pink Saturday street party in the Castro that left one man dead and two others wounded, a late-night assault against a former Mr. San Francisco Leather title holder, and a confrontation caught on video between a group of women and police in which punches were thrown and nightsticks swung. Investigators have had particular difficulty in pursuing the Pink Saturday shooting. Despite occurring in the middle of a crowd of tens of thousands, few witnesses have stepped forward after the June 26 incident. “There’s been a minimum of cooperation from involved parties,” said San Francisco Police Department homicide Inspector Kevin Jones. “From other celebrants, the response has been very small.”
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by Rex Wockner
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Matt Baume
by Matt Baume
A crowd gathered at Market and Castro streets for the “Red Saturday” rally during which speakers, including Paul Henderson from the district attorney’s office at right, urged the LGBT community to get involved in fighting crime.
Obama policy chief meets with gays by Lisa Keen he purpose of the small gathering on the second floor of the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. July 1 was two-fold. First, White House domestic policy chief Melody Barnes wanted to give LGBT media outlets a “snapshot” of what the Obama administration has done, and plans to do, on LGBT issues. And, second, nine LGBT reporters and political bloggers would get a chance to ask a question. It was the first time any administration had arranged to deliver such a briefing to LGBT media and take questions, and some lamented that the access has come 18 months into the administration and, thus far, has not included an interview with the president himself. But Barnes offered an earnest defense of what the Obama administration has done thus far on LGBT issues – “more than any previous administration,” she said. She pointed to the signing of hate crimes legislation into law, issuing of executive memos to expedite tangible benefits where possible, and using the president’s bully pulpit in a variety of settings to advance the public’s understanding of civil rights for LGBT people. Barnes was pressed to explain why the administration continues to defend laws in court, such as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which prevents gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits equal marriage rights, even though President Barack Obama has repeatedly said both laws should be repealed. Barnes said it’s in part because the president is concerned about setting a precedent that would make it easier for some future administration to pick and choose which laws it would defend, and in part because the president “hasn’t made an argument” concerning the constitutionality of the laws. “To be clear, he believes DOMA is discriminatory,” said Barnes, noting the administration has indicated so in legal briefs. “But,” she added, “we believe we have an obligation to defend the law if Congress had a rational basis for passing the law.” She added that the president has been “trying to move the country forward and change the narrative” on these issues. When it comes to prodding Congress to pass pro-LGBT laws, such as the Employment Non-
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White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes met last week with LGBT reporters and bloggers.
Discrimination Act, said Barnes, the administration is relying on the congressional leadership. “We look to the Senate leadership to also say to us, ‘These are issues we are prepared to move forward on,’” said Barnes. “They’re doing that based on a whole number of variables. And when they are talking about moving forward with ENDA, they’re also getting an indication from us that we support it.” Pam Spaulding, a political blogger at www.pamshouseblend.com, told Barnes that there is a “big gulf” between what national LGBT organizations consider to be significant progress on LGBT issues and what people at the grassroots think. She suggested a briefing like this one might have gone a long way to mitigate the concern of the grassroots if it had been held earlier in the administration. Barnes acknowledged the frustration of the grassroots, but emphasized, “We are here now, and that reflects the desire to be engaged.” She also noted that the White House AIDS czar, Jeff Crowley, has been engaging the grassroots through a series of town meetings around the country to talk about HIV/AIDS issues. “There’s always a desire and effort to do better, and that’s why we are sitting here now,” said Barnes.
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The only surprise came when – in responding to a question about the relative lack of openly gay people on the president’s senior staff – Barnes credited White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel with having pushed for the hospital visitation directive. That directive, signed by Obama this spring, provided for the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that hospitals receiving federal funding respect the wishes of an LGBT patient in deciding who can visit them in the hospital. Emanuel has, for years, been seen as a relative obstructionist on LGBT advances, first, in the Clinton White House and, now, in this one. “There are a number of very senior members of this administration – whether it be Rahm, Valerie [Jarrett] or me or Jim [Messina] – who are not gay or lesbian but for whom these issues are important. We have conversations and provide advice to the president on those issues. It is helpful and important to have people ... who are not gay or lesbian or transgender who care about these issues and advocate for them in the White House.” “There are LGBT senior colleagues who may not have as their portfolio specific LGBT issues,” continued Barnes, “but they come to the table with expertise on personnel, the environment, and a host of other issues who do participate in these conversations, who sit at the table and bring their perspective to the conversation on a consistent basis. So while there isn’t an individual ... there are many individuals who care about these issues, who drive this set of issues and think about how we move forward.” Asked whether the White House vetted its decision concerning the DADT certification requirement with anyone in the LGBT community, Barnes answered indirectly, saying the White House “absolutely consults frequently” with the community. She pointed specifically to staffers Brian Bond and Tina Tchen in the White House Office of Public Liaison, as the point persons to ensure such consultations. “Brian and Tina are talking to and considering and hearing the positive and negative as we go through the process of both developing policy and articulating what our policy is,” said Barnes. “We’ve carried the ball a long, long way down the field,” said Barnes. “There’s still work to be done but we’ve carried it a long way down the field.”▼
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Judge rules against lesbian VA employee by Matthew S. Bajko federal administrative judge has rejected claims by a lesbian former employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs office in Oakland that she was fired after she spoke out against anti-gay harassment and a hostile work environment. The lawsuit highlights what little legal recourse LGBT federal employees have in terms of fighting on-thejob harassment based on their sexual orientation due to Congress’ inability, to date, to extend non-discrimination statutes to cover LGBT workers. El Cerrito resident Ann Williams filed the lawsuit in 2009 with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after she was dismissed from her job as a veterans service representative with the regional VA office in June 2008. Her allegations in the lawsuit ranged from co-workers sabotaging her performance records to anti-gay verbal taunts and threats of violence against her due to her sexual orientation. Following three days of hearings and testimony from 15 witnesses in the suit earlier this year at the Oakland Federal Building, Administrative Judge Caitlin A. Schneider ruled June 3 that not only had Williams failed to prove she had been subjected to a hostile work environment as outlined under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but also that she had failed to show that the ill treatment stemmed from her being part of a protected class under federal law, such as age, race or sex. “The incidents alleged by [Williams] simply do not rise to the level of actionable harassment,” wrote Schneider in her ruling. While the judge found one coworkers’ behavior toward Williams
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Ann Williams, left, and former co-worker Jamie Fox, shown last year after they filed separate complaints with the EEOC.
to be “immature and unprofessional,” Schneider also states that Williams’s own conduct toward her colleague contributed to their “poor working relationship.” And she ruled that since Williams only learned of several anti-gay comments made about her after she had left the VA that those incidents could not be considered as contributing toward a hostile work environment. The judge also noted that Williams told her VA superiors that her co-worker didn’t like her because she is gay, which does not fall under one of the federally protected classes.
“Discrimination based on sexual orientation is not prohibited by Title VII and is not within the EEOC’s purview,” wrote Schneider. The judge also ruled that VA officials had taken “immediate and appropriate corrective action” once notified of Williams’s concerns. She dismissed Williams’s claim that her being terminated was in retaliation for speaking out and found that it was due to her poor performance at work. “The evidence shows that [Williams’s] performance deficien-
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Report examines smoking among LGBTs by Seth Hemmelgarn recently released report from the American Lung Association examines higher smoking rates among LGBTs than straight people, and recommends that health researchers ask people about their sexual orientation. Among other findings, the report, “Smoking Out a Deadly Threat: Tobacco Use in the LGBT Community,” which was released Tuesday, June 29, says that a 2009 data review found that gay men had between 1.1 and 2.4 times the odds of smoking compared to straight men. The review that year also found that lesbians had between 1.2 and 2.0 times the odds of smoking compared to straight women, according to the report. “Since the smoking rate within the LGBT community is roughly double that of the general population, more members of the LGBT community are at greatly increased risk” of lung cancer, heart attacks, and other problems, Mary H. Partridge, chair of the American Lung Association’s board, wrote in the report’s preface. With the report, she wrote, the association is calling for “decisive action to better understand the root causes and find effective solutions to this deadly threat to the LGBT community.” According to the report, most health studies in the country don’t collect data on sexual orientation and gender identity.
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“Smoking Out a Deadly Threat” is the second report in the association’s Disparities in Lung Health Series. The report’s findings come from a combination of research studies with results collected in several state surveys. In 2009, researchers reviewed 42 separate studies measuring smoking prevalence among LGBTs. The people behind the report used the pooled data where available, but also went directly to some of the individual studies to highlight some specific points, the report says. About half the studies examined didn’t look at bisexuals separately from gay men and lesbians, but “all of the state surveys that collected data on bisexuals found smoking rates higher than 30 percent, and ranging up to a high of 39.1 percent,” according to the report. Information on smoking rates among transgender people is almost non-existent, according to the report, which says that the 2009 data review didn’t include any studies that had results for transgender people. According to the report, around a dozen states have collected sexual orientation information on routine health surveys. However, only California and five other states have published reports on tobacco use by sexual orientation, according to the report. Among other things, the report calls for more surveys to include questions about sexual orientation and for LGBT advocacy organizations to encourage policies to promote tobacco
prevention and cessations programs as part of LGBT health promotion. The report points to several possible factors behind smoking in the LGBT community, including stress related to homophobia, the tobacco industry’s targeted marketing to LGBTs, and lack of access to treatment. The reports also noted the significance of bars historically being “among the few safe spaces for LGBT people,” and the “biological and behavioral link between drinking and smoking.” In a conference call last week to announce the findings, Gloria Soliz, with the Last Drag, a free smoking cessation class for LGBT and HIV-positive smokers held in San Francisco, talked about people attaching smoking to their identity. “Smoking does not make a person gay, nor does it need to be part of the LGBT community,” said Soliz. Tom Dvorak, who works in ad production and design for the Bay Area Reporter, explained in an interview how stress led him to start smoking again in 2008, after having quit for several years. The openly gay Dvorak said he plans to stop again. He said he has a history of cardiovascular illness “and when I smoke, my vascular system goes to crap.” “I know I have to quit,” said Dvorak, 47. “... I’m really, really disappointed in myself.” ▼ To view the report, go to www.lungusa.org.
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Stuart Milk inspires Jewish LGBT leaders by Heather Cassell tuart Milk, the openly gay nephew of the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, inspired a new generation of queer Jewish activists poised to open a new chapter of the LGBT Jewish movement. Stuart Milk stood before an estimated 50 LGBT Jewish activists and talked about his uncle’s activism and Jewish philosophy in Berkeley last week at the LGBT Jewish Movement Building conference. All told, nearly 100 queer and straight allied Jewish movement leaders came together for the first time to harness the power of the emerging movement at the conference, which took place June 28-29 at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry on the Pacific School of Religion campus. Conference organizers called on Stuart Milk to shed some light on Harvey Milk’s Jewish heritage, Jewish beliefs, and activism. “He led from his humanity,” said Jay Michaelson, executive director of Nehirim, one of the conference organizers, referring to Harvey Milk. Michaelson was inspired by Stuart Milk’s speech derived from the “call of the prophet to do justice” in his Jewish roots. “It was really inspiring to me to hear from Stuart Milk [about the role of] what’s now called prophetic Judaism played in Harvey’s life,” he said. In recent years, Stuart Milk has raised his profile carrying on his late uncle’s legacy. In 2009, he accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was awarded posthumously to his uncle and founded the Harvey B. Milk Foundation to inspire hope and equality around the world. That is a goal he’s had since 1978 when he was 17 years old, the year Harvey Milk was assassinated along with then-Mayor George Moscone at City Hall. While Stuart Milk wants to do the “type of service” that his uncle did, as he told a rabbi in his youth, his goal is more humble. He said he simply “would like to leave the world with more freedom than we have today.” “Harvey represents freedom to an entire world because there are LGBT
Stuart Milk visits with Idit Klein, executive director of Keshet, at last week’s LGBT Jewish conference in Berkeley
people all over the world,” said Stuart Milk, who was inspired by South African bishop and activist Desmond Tutu, who also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom last year. It was at the White House ceremony that Tutu told Stuart Milk that he “must do more” for Harvey Milk’s legacy.
Harvey’s politics Harvey Milk was ahead of his time. An activist long before he became a gay activist turned gay politician, Harvey Milk stood up against the Reserve Officer Training Corps’ presence on college campuses and spoke out about being different. As one of four Jews at a mostly Christian school while attending teacher’s college in Albany, New York in the 1950s, he wrote two columns where he expressed his views about teaching peace, said Stuart Milk. Long before marriage equality, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and many of the modern issues of the LGBT movement were in vogue and hotly debated, Harvey Milk pondered them, Stuart Milk said, speaking about the recordings his uncle left behind. An audience member asked Stuart Milk what Harvey Milk would think about the LGBT movement today. Stuart Milk responded that his uncle would be thrilled to see so many LGBT elected officials, but he would be devastated that there wasn’t a comprehensive non-discrimination law in place. Stuart Milk
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Inspiring legacy
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BAYAREAREPORTER Volume 40, Number 27 8 July 2010 eBAR.com PUBLISHER Thomas E. Horn Bob Ross (Founder, 1971 – 2003) N E W S E D I TO R Cynthia Laird A R T S E D I TO R Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador • Matt Baume • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Scott Brogan • Victoria A. Brownworth Philip Campbell • Chuck Colbert • Richard Dodds Raymond Flournoy • Brian Gougherty David Guarino • Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell Robert Julian • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble • Michael McDonagh Paul Parish • Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro • Gwendolyn Smith Robert Sokol • Ed Walsh • Sura Wood
A R T D I R E C TO R Kurt Thomas P RO D U C T I O N M A N AG E R Tom Dvorak P H OTO G R A P H E R S Jane Philomen Cleland Marc Geller Rick Gerharter Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja Steven Underhill Bill Wilson I L L U S T R ATO R S & C A R TO O N I S T S Paul Berge Christine Smith G E N E R A L M A N AG E R Michael M. Yamashita C L A S S I F I E D A DV E R T I S I N G David McBrayer D I S P L AY A DV E R T I S I N G Colleen Small Scott Wazlowski N AT I O N A L A DV E R T I S I N G R E P R E S E N TAT I V E Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863 LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad
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Shameful veto in Hawaii awaii Governor Linda Lingle’s veto of the state’s civil union bill Tuesday will go down in history as a cowardly act by a lame duck politician who didn’t have the courage to do what is right, that is provide a modicum of equality to same-sex couples in the Aloha State. We’re not even talking about full equality here. The federal Defense of Marriage Act makes that impossible for now. What Hawaii’s civil union bill would have done is provide same-sex couples with equal state benefits and responsibilities. These days, that’s in the middle on the marriage equality scale. Lingle’s action is shameful, all the more so because she supposedly took weeks to make up her mind and acted on the final day she had to sign or veto the bill. Her comment at a news conference called to announce her decision that “there has not been a bill I have contemplated more or an issue I have thought more deeply about during my eight years as governor...” rang hollow. Surely, if she had thought about the issue that much, she would have realized that discrimination is wrong. But Lingle’s major error is her position that voters should make the decision, and she’s urging that civil unions be put to a vote. For one thing, Hawaiians already voted on the issue in 1998. Voting on civil rights is not the answer, as we in California know all too well with the Proposition 8 fiasco. There is something seriously wrong when the civil rights of a minority group are decided by a majority of voters. Besides, the Hawaii Legislature had passed the civil union bill, and in a representative democracy, the people have already spoken – through their elected leaders. Equally important is the reality that Lingle’s veto not only harms same-sex couples, it is devastating to the children that many of those couples are raising. Hawaii is the state where the marriage equality issue was first raised in the mid-1990s. It is sad that more than a decade later same-sex couples there are still fighting for equal state rights. The veto is also yet another reminder of the failure of the Obama administration and Congress to push for the repeal of DOMA, a bill that was hastily signed by former President Bill Clinton when it appeared Hawaii would be the first state in the country to have equal marriage rights. That obviously did not happen, and now we are saddled with federal regulations that make offering even the smallest benefits to same-sex couples illegal.
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This is a situation that must be rectified.
It’s time for GOProud and Log Cabin to take a page from Equality California’s playGOProud and Log Cabin follies book. The statewide LGBT lobbying organization has a policy that its political action comGay Republican groups have given the larger mittee only endorses candidates who have a LGBT community another reason to snicker and 100 percent record on our issues, including wonder about their relevance: both GOProud, marriage equality and allowing gays to serve the new upstart, and Log Cabin Republicans, the openly in the armed services. Executive Direcestablished organization, have decided to tor Geoff Kors said that EQCA endorsed endorse Congresswoman Mary BonoPougnet back in February because of his Mack in her re-election bid. Bonorecord and his history of fighting for Mack, who represents the 45th Conequality. Bono-Mack, Kors noted, regressional District that includes Palm fused to oppose Proposition 8, the Springs, surprisingly voted against the same-sex marriage ban, and has never House amendment in May that starts said she would support overturning the process of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t DADT. Tell.” Of all the major issues the LGBT com“She does not support full munity is advocating, allowing gays equality for the LGBT community and lesbians to serve openly in the military is one that gay GOPers can E DITORIAL and it should be a top priority to elect a 100 percent candidate in get behind, and they have. That’s why this district,” Kors told us. it’s so frustrating to see both groups Or, as Tommy Simmons from Memphis put partisan politics ahead of supporting canditweeted Tuesday in response to the Lingle veto dates who support us. in Hawaii: “We (LGBTQIs and allies) have been Bono-Mack faces her stiffest challenge yet – FAR too nice for FAR too long to politicians, from Democrat Steve Pougnet, the openly gay corporations, and clergy.” mayor of Palm Springs who is married and raising It’s time to stop giving anti-equality politichildren with his partner. Pougnet, who has a real cians a break. GOProud and Log Cabin should shot at defeating Bono-Mack, certainly would know better.▼ have voted for the DADT repeal amendment.
Our lesbian Brokeback by Kathy Wolfe eople often ask my perspective on which movies I think are the most significant lesbian films ever released. As the founder of Wolfe, the world’s largest exclusive distributor of lesbian and gay movies, I have been working with lesbian film and lesbian filmmakers since 1985. I’ve seen the landscape change drastically over that time – from the 1985 release of Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts, through the indie-lesbian film boom of the mid-1990s (which included Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art), through the amazing box office success of Bound to the upcoming July 9 theatrical release of Cholodenko’s latest project, The Kids Are All Right. Ever since we were lucky enough to attend Cholodenko’s world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, we’ve been describing The Kids Are All Right around the office as “the lesbian Brokeback.” On the surface, the films may seem to have nothing in common; but digging deeper it’s clear this is an apt comparison. For a variety of reasons, The Kids Are All Right will be the most widely distributed lesbian-themed mainstream movie in history. Like that beloved yet sad gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain, it has major stars in the gay roles: Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as lesbian moms. This ensures that the film will reach a wide audience. Most exciting of all – with its entertaining yet ultimately politically powerful G UEST message of putting a lesbian family front and center – the film will open hearts and minds very much like Brokeback did on its theatrical release. Also like Brokeback, The Kids Are All Right isn’t striving to create a scenario where the gay characters are perfect. Rather, it’s telling an authentic story. In doing this, writer-director Cholodenko demonstrates that it’s possible to speak to a gay and lesbian audience at the same
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Wolfe CEO Kathy Wolfe
time you’re speaking to the straight mainstream. The other crucial component of the film’s landmark status is that The Kids Are All Right is being released by Focus Features. Focus is a company that has demonstrated an enormous commitment to releasing smart, complex, and thoughtful gay movies. Unlike many Hollywood studios and mainstream distributors, Focus Features genuinely seems to care about the gay and lesbian community. And yes, these are the folks who brought us not just Brokeback Mountain, but also Milk. And although it may be rated R, The Kids Are All Right is truly a family film – it’s about what O PINION makes a family. Of course we all know that ingredient is love (how exciting that this message, so poignantly conveyed, will be entering the hearts of people across the country and around the world). This is truly a landmark moment in lesbian film history. We’ve come so far! A big budget film with major movie stars playing lesbian roles! It’s absolutely fantastic that this film is coming out in 2010 – 25 years after Wolfe first went into business. We’ve been around long enough now to see
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our stories fully enter the mainstream. I am personally enormously grateful for this; and also gratified that Wolfe continues to fulfill our vital role in supporting the careers of lesbian filmmakers (and all our LGBT and straight filmmaker allies as well). We’re very proud to say that we first distributed Cholodenko’s short film The Dinner Party way back in 1997 (just before she made her big splash with High Art). Watching our filmmakers advance in their careers is the most rewarding aspect of our work. Every few years someone seems to proclaim a new breakthrough or a new upcoming boom in lesbian cinema. And this time it’s for real. Audiences will be seeing more independent lesbian films in the next 12 months than we have since the mid-1990s (1995-96) brought us the crop that included: The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls In Love, When Night is Falling, Late Bloomers, Bound, Fire, and The Watermelon Woman. Frameline34 attendees are already in the loop on many of these but keep an eye out in the year ahead for such exciting new lesbian features as: Elena Undone, A Marine Story, The Four-Faced Liar, The Owls, Purple Sea, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, The Evening Dress, and Earthling and Girl Trash: All Night Long. These films may not get theatrical releases but today’s audiences have even greater access – so be sure to put them in your Netflix queue, watch them on iTunes, or rent or buy the DVDs (but please don’t participate in online piracy – it only hurts the filmmakers in the end). As for The Kids Are All Right, I want to encourage everyone to get out to the movies on the July 9 weekend to support Cholodenko’s movie and send the message to the powers that be in Hollywood (and to Cholodenko): Thank you and We want more!▼ Kathy Wolfe is the founder and CEO of Wolfe, the world’s largest exclusive distributor of LGBT movies, currently celebrating its 25th anniversary year. Learn more about Wolfe at www.WolfeVideo.com. For more on The Kids Are All Right, see the arts section.
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8 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER
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Website launched in response to Pugno primary win by Dan Aiello s expected, self-described Proposition 8 author Andrew Pugno won the Republican primary last month and will face off against Democrat Dr. Richard Pan for California’s 5th Assembly District in what both sides are anticipating will be a tough race. The open seat was once solidly a Republican district east of Sacramento. Pugno won the GOP primary after raising more than $350,000 using the protectmarriage.com’s Yes on Prop 8 mailing list after the antimarriage equality initiative passed. Sacramento’s Stonewall Democratic Club has responded with the launching of the website, www.StopAndrewPugno.com, calling on the LGBT community to help stop Pugno’s political aspirations in their tracks. “We’re certainly not excited to see Pugno on the ballot but it was completely expected,” said Stonewall President Chris Moore, the creator of the website. Moore is also the new deputy director of political affairs for Equality California. “It’s going to be a difficult race no matter who you are, because the registration in the district is neck and neck,” Moore told the Bay Area Reporter. “It’s been trending Democratic and it’s at a tipping point.” One of the encouraging signs for the Democrats came in 2008 when Barack Obama won the traditionally Republican district. AD5 is currently represented by Republican Roger Niello, who will leave office as a result of term limits. AD5 encompasses the suburban Sacramento communities of Fair Oaks and Folsom. On the Democratic side, Pan, a pediatrician at UC Davis Children’s Hospital, won in last month’s primary. Pan captured the nomination with about 44 percent of the vote,
Rick Gerharter
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GOP Assembly candidate Andrew Pugno
Democratic Assembly candidate Dr. Richard Pan
defeating Sheila Kuehl protege and San Juan school board member Larry Miles and lobbyist Matt Gray. Pan attended the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club’s Pride breakfast in San Francisco last month and club leaders said he is someone the community should support. He has also been endorsed by openly gay Assembly Speaker John A. Perez. The general election in November is expected to draw major campaign contributions and interest from both progressives and conservatives, as Democrats attempt to pick up the seat for the first time since 1978. The Republican registration advantage in AD5 has fallen to an insignificant level in the last four years. According to the Sacramento Bee, Democrats are hoping to capitalize on the national interest in the overlapping 3rd Congressional District race and have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to back Pan. Pugno, who already has tapped
into the Proposition 8 supporter base to finance his run, has a large campaign war chest, including a $100,000 loan he gave the campaign. “With such a polarizing figure as Pugno, who knows who will be showing up,” to volunteer and contribute, Moore told the B.A.R. “Every day that passes is another day that we need to be working to make sure he’s not elected here [in the Sacramento area], and it takes money to do that.” Stonewall was unable to reach a 60 percent consensus on any Democratic candidate before the primary, but after the election the club endorsed Pan, who Moore said, “is 100 percent” on LGBT issues. “He has a rich history of working with the LGBT community and has been a big supporter,” said Moore. Asked if Stonewall would counter Pugno’s use of the Yes on Prop 8 list with a fundraising effort to the No on Prop 8 list, Moore told the B.A.R., “I think that will be part of the overall effort Stonewall is doing to reach out to coalition partners.”▼
AIDS Walk is coming soon compiled by Cynthia Laird ride is over and that means it’s on to AIDS Walk San Francisco. This year marks the 24th annual 10-kilometer walk-a-thon, which takes place Sunday, July 18 in Golden Gate Park’s Sharon Meadow. The AIDS Walk benefits the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and many other Bay Area HIV/AIDS organizations. Last year’s event raised $3.5 million, and organizers are hoping to exceed that total this year. There is no minimum amount of money people need to raise in order to participate; people can also sign N EWS up for the walk until the event begins. SFAF officials said that the AIDS Walk is notable for its diversity. People of all ages, races, and backgrounds come together each year in an inspiring demonstration of compassion and action. Sign-in starts at 9 a.m., followed by an aerobic warm-up and opening ceremonies. The walk begins at 10 and takes a couple hours to complete. At 12:30 p.m. there will be a post-walk concert, and other entertainment. For more information or to sign up, visit www.aidswalk.net/sanfran. Sponsor forms can be downloaded from the site.
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‘Prop 8 Love Stories’ Sunday A unique production is coming to San Francisco: Prop 8 Love Stories, which features young people ages 10 to 17 portraying same-sex and opposite-sex couples they have interviewed. The performance is for one night only, Sunday, July 11 at 8 p.m. at Fort Mason Center, Building D, 3rd floor. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online at www.fortmason.org/boxoffice. Molly McKay, media director for Marriage Equality USA, said the show is amazing. The 90-minute play was researched, interviewed, written, directed, and acted by young people. B RIEFS “Watching the 14year-olds who play Phyllis Lyon and Sally Gearhart is so precious it brought tears to my eyes,” McKay said in an e-mail. McKay also was interviewed for the play. The play is directed by Brian Glenn Bryson of the Walking Elephant Theatre Company. For more information, visit www.8lovestories.blogspot.com.
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Benefit for Hayward center The Lighthouse LGBT Community Center in Hayward will be having a fundraiser at the World Famous Turf Club on Friday, July 9 beginning at 5:30 p.m. A spaghetti dinner will be available for $5, with all
proceeds benefiting the center. The Turf Club is located at 22519 Main Street in downtown Hayward. In other Lighthouse news, board president Bob Whitehead said that the next regularly scheduled board meeting will be held Tuesday, July 13 at 7 p.m. at the center, 1217 A Street. He said that the center is seeking suggestions to further serve the community. For more information, call (510) 881-8167.▼
UPCOMING EVENTS IN SAN FRANCISCO! Up Your Alley/ Dore Alley Fair
July 25 Folsom Street Fair
September 26 Castro Street Fair
October 3
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 8 July 2010
INTERNATIONAL
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5 arrested at banned Pride Parade in Russia T
mophobia is a disease” and “Marriage rights for all.” One marcher carried a sign that said, “Peter I was bisexual.” “The city and the country refused to recognize us as equal to other citizens of this country and that is what we came to denounce today at Winter Palace Square,” organizer Maria Efremenkova told fellow activists just before police took her into custody. Also arrested were co-organizers Yuri Gavrikov and Alexander Sheremet, Belarusian activist Sergey Androsenko, and Moscow activist Anna Komarova. They were charged with organizing an unauthorized public action Police escort detained activists following a Pride Parade in St. Petersburg, and were released after several hours. Russia on June 26. They could be jailed for 15 days if found guilty. The other marchers apparently esity. There is no provision, for examSince the women were already regcaped arrest by mingling with ple, to acknowledge joint parenthood. istered partners under an existing civil tourists. “A continuing area of concern ... is union law, they simply filed paperEfremenkova had sought a city the absence in the bill of support and work to convert their eight-year-old permit to hold the parade and subrecognition of the many children partnership into a marriage. mitted more than 10 proposed routes. being parented by same-sex couples,” “I have today taken advantage of All were rejected under varying presaid Kieran Rose, chair of the Gay and this new legislation,” Sigurðardóttir texts. She said pride organizers would Lesbian Equality Network. “This critsaid in a message sent to a celebration sue over the denials, taking the ical omission will have to be adof the new law. case as far as the European dressed.” Sigurðardóttir is the Court of Human Rights if world’s only openly gay necessary. LGBTs march or lesbian head of gov“Right to freedom of in Sofia, Helsinki ernment. assembly is guaranteed in Parliament legalSeveral hundred people marched Russia by Article 31 of the ized same-sex marin the third gay Pride Parade in Sofia, constitution as well as the riage by a vote of 49-0 Bulgaria, on June 26, under protecEuropean Convention on on June 11. Fourteen tion of hundreds of police officers. Human Rights and the MPs skipped the vote. Anti-gay protesters rallied earlier W OCKNER ’ S International Covenant The bill also blocked fuin the day and did not disrupt this W ORLD on Political and Civil ture use of the registered year’s march. A concert was staged at Rights, which are two inpartnership law. the parade’s endpoint. ternational treaties ratified by our Iceland is the ninth nation where In 2008, some 60 counterdemoncountry,” Efremenkova said. same-sex couples can marry nationstrators were arrested for attacking the “Despite the pressure from the auwide and the 11th nation where inaugural parade with bottles, rocks, thorities and from the nationalist and same-sex marriage is possible. eggs, firecrackers, smoke bombs and religious groups, we held our action Gay marriage also is legal in BelMolotov cocktails. today,” she added. “We are only at the gium, Canada, the Netherlands, NorMeanwhile, in Finland, about 5,000 beginning of a long road before we way, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, people marched through Helsinki on manage to get implemented civil and Sweden, Mexico City, Connecticut, July 3. Three bystanders were taken political rights of sexual minorities in Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampinto police custody after some Russia.” shire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. marchers were hit with pepper spray. Shortly after police aborted the march, it was reported that 70 antiIreland passes Slovenian gay gay skinheads and other troublemakcivil partnership law venue vandalized ers appeared on the scene, some carThe lower house of Ireland’s parThe gay and lesbian bar Cafe Open rying baseball bats. Twenty-two of liament passed a civil partnership bill in Ljubljana, Slovenia, was vandalized them were arrested and charged with for same-sex couples July 1. It is extwice in late June. disorderly conduct. pected to pass the upper house easily Local activists said a Molotov cockThere is video of the parade at and take effect early next year. tail was placed at the entrance and that www.tinyurl.com/sppride. The law will extend marriage the building was defaced with graffiti, Gay parades also have been rights and obligations in areas such as including “Death to faggots.” banned in Moscow. Mayor Yuri taxes, pensions, property, tenancy, inActivists said similar graffiti was Luzhkov has prohibited Pride for five heritance, alimony, immigration and found on the house of the judge in a years in a row, calling gay marches “sasocial benefits. case against three men who attacked tanic.” Small groups of activists have Couples will unite before a registhe bar last year and were sentenced defied the bans and have been attrar after providing three months’ adto 18 months in jail following hatetacked and beaten by police and antivance notice of their intention, as with crime convictions. gay protesters. marriage. In last year’s incident, the attackTo end a partnership, a couple will ers carried torches, threw rocks, and Lesbian Icelandic prime go to court and prove they’ve not lived shouted that gay people should be minister gets married together for two of the previous three killed. They reportedly beat and Out lesbian Icelandic Prime Minyears, the same as with marriage. burned gay activist Mitja Blazic, who ister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir got marThe law also will recognize foreign required hospital attention as a reried to her partner, writer Jónína same-sex unions. sult.▼ Leósdóttir, on June 27, when the naActivists welcomed the “historic tion’s law legalizing same-sex maradvance” but said it fell short of equalBill Kelley contributed to this report. riage took effect.
Kirill Nepomnyaschiy/GayRussia.Ru
wenty-five gays and lesbians staged a Pride Parade in St. Petersburg, Russia on June 26 although the city government had banned the march. Police broke up the gathering and arrested five participants. The march began in the courtyard
of the famed State Hermitage Museum and made it as far as the entrance to Winter Palace Square before police swooped in. Hundreds of tourists were unwitting observers of the parade. The marchers chanted: “Gay equality, no compromise,” “Homophobia: shame of this country,” “Ho-
What a Fourth of July!
Rick Gerharter
by Rex Wockner
James Hoang, Andrew Love, and Christian Ceja admire sailor go-go boy Skyler Williams from the balcony of the Lookout bar during a Fourth of July USO Tour Party presented by BeBe Sweetbriar.
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D8 supe candidates adamant Castro Pride party to continue by Matthew S. Bajko s the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence re-examine their plans for the annual Pride party in the Castro following a deadly shooting that marred last month’s event, the candidates running to replace District 8 Supervisor Bevan Dufty are adamant that the street party will not be shut down similar to what happened with Halloween. Violent incidents plagued the Castro’s Halloween party for years, leading city officials to cancel the unofficial street bash in 2007. The decision sparked a loud outcry from some but was championed by many Castro residents and business leaders. Most civic and city leaders have so far taken the opposite stance toward Pink Saturday. Hardly anyone has called for canceling the gay Pride event. While several of the District 8 candidates have put forward various suggestions on how to prevent a repeat of this year’s fatal incident, there is unanimous consensus that no changes should be made until all of the stakeholders involved with the party have had a chance to weigh in on what happened this year. What is clear is that whoever succeeds Dufty, who is termed out this year and running for mayor in 2011, will have an immense impact on how the city handles next year’s Pink Saturday street party, held the night prior to San Francisco’s annual Pride Parade and celebration the last Sunday of June. Dufty has been intimately involved in the planning for the yearly gathering since he assumed office eight years ago. He has served as a go-between for the Sisters with not just the police but also other city officials who have a role in the permitting for the charitable drag nun group’s major fundraiser. The next District 8 supervisor is sure to play a similar role, particularly as questions are raised about how to adequately protect the tens of thousands of attendees at the party.
Lydia Gonzales
merely wants to help foster discussion about what steps could be taken to address the violence that marred this year’s party and cost a 19-yearold man his life. “It is a complicated issue. The main problem is the few ruin it for the many,” he said. “I am not going to take a stand right now because I think it is too soon. We have to hear from everyone’s ideas on this.” The only position he has taken, said Hemenger, is that there is no need for the city to shut Pink Saturday down. “Our biggest concern is it doesn’t become another Halloween where we lock it down like a military state and say no to any visitors,” said Hemenger, who had left the event this year for his home in Diamond N OTEBOOK Heights by 9:30 p.m. “This is part of our biggest holiday of the gay community’s year. This is our Christmas, really, so we can’t just shut it down.” A better solution can be found, he added. “At the same time we can’t just be yes it is on and let’s see if it happens again. We just have to come up with creative new ideas to keep the crowd under control and still having a good time,” said Hemenger. Rafael Mandelman, a gay attorney, expressed the same sentiments as his opponents in the race. He too is calling for community forums to be held to elicit public feedback from all interested parties, while at the same time saying there is no reason why Pink Saturday must come to an end.
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“People want Pink Saturday to stay. They also want a safe, fun event. We have to do everything we can to provide that,” said Rebecca Prozan, an assistant district attorney and out lesbian who had returned to her Castro home by 10:30 p.m. June 26 following the Dyke March and dinner at a Market Street sushi restaurant. “I am obviously distraught and want to make sure Pink Saturday stays for next year.” Should she be elected, Prozan said she would work with the mayor’s office, law enforcement, and neighborhood groups to address the safety issues surrounding the 2011 Pink Saturday party. “It is bigger than just a neighborhood event at this point,” said Prozan. “I would be doing an official
investigation of what actually happened, what the Sisters did this year, what happened to work and what didn’t so we could problem solve for next year.” Deputy City Attorney Scott Wiener, a gay Castro resident, was also resolute in wanting to see Pink Saturday continue. “I don’t want us to overreact and kill off one of the last large community events in the Castro. I want to be very thoughtful about this and not to overreact,” said Wiener, a past president of the Castro’s residential neighborhood association and co-founder of a volunteer safety patrol in the area. Before proposing specific changes to the event, Wiener P OLITICAL also said he would want to first hear from community leaders and city officials. “I really think it is important to sit down with the Sisters and folks in the entertainment community as well as bar owners and merchants in the Castro to come up with some solutions that work for the community,” said Wiener, who had returned home by 11:15 p.m. that night from the street party. “I don’t want to unilaterally impose my opinions.” Having worked with the Sisters in the past on the Pride party, Wiener said the group does “a tremendous job” and deserves to have a say in whatever changes are proposed. “I respect the work they have done on Pink Saturday and I am really interested in hearing what they think the best solution is,” said Wiener. He did suggest that the street party may need to end earlier than it has been, which in recent years has fluctuated between 11:30 p.m. and midnight. Wiener proposed a potential 10 p.m. cut-off point. “One option I have been thinking about is to open the streets a little earlier than normal. It might make sense to consider opening the streets up at 10 p.m.,” said Wiener. “My experience is that earlier in the evening from 6 to 7 p.m. until things get going at 10 p.m. it is a much more community, peaceful, festive atmosphere. Once you get to 10:30 or 11 o’clock, it becomes a different kind of atmosphere.” Out of the four main contenders in the District 8 race, out businessman Bill Hemenger has proffered the most ideas for addressing safety concerns tied to Pink Saturday. In an email to the Bay Area Reporter and a follow-up interview, Hemenger suggested making the party a ticketed-only event and restricting it to people 21 years or older. He also proposed moving it to the daytime as opposed to a nighttime party. He was quick to note that he is not wedded to any of the ideas and
Bill Hemenger
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Rafael Mandelman
“This is definitely the kind of issue that calls for a good process so people feel heard and have an opportunity to come up with the best solution,” said Mandelman, who lives near Dolores Park and had left the Castro by 9 p.m. that night. “I really feel like this is an important event for the community. It shouldn’t be an
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Scott Wiener
Rick Gerharter
Rebecca Prozan
Courtesy Bill Hemenger
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 8 July 2010
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ADAP troubles mount in many states by Bob Roehr tate waiting lists for the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs are skyrocketing with no relief in sight. Officially, 1,924 people are now on ADAP waiting lists in 11 states, federal ADAP administrator Deborah Parham Hopson told the Presidential Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS at its June 29 meeting. That is about 1 percent of the people served by the program. Three years ago there were no ADAP waiting lists. “This represents an increase of 269 people in the last week, and an increase of 730 people during the month of June,” Parham Hopson said of the most recent figures. “I have not seen such a rapid increased demand
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for ADAP during my entire eight-year tenure” with the program. Those numbers mask an even greater problem. Louisiana stopped enrolling new ADAP patients in June and didn’t even bother to set up a waiting list. As program administrator DeAnn Gruber said, “We don’t want to give anyone false hope” that a person might eventually be added to the program. The problem is money, or rather the lack of it. Even in the best of times, federal funding seldom has kept pace with the expanding epidemic. California, however, fares better than most; there is no ADAP waiting list, thanks in large part to advocacy by people living with HIV/AIDS and their allies. “California advocates and a supportive Legislature have kept ADAP nearly fully funded and the program remains strong and without a waiting list or other restrictions,” Project Inform’s Ryan Clary told the Bay Area Reporter. “However, the state is eliminating ADAP funding for prisoners in municipal jails and the budget crisis could lead to further cuts in the future.” States that added their own funds to the pot are no longer able to do so as local economies and revenue have tanked. Most state constitutions require a balanced budget, so states do not have the federal government’s freedom of deficit spending. Many other states have reduced the formulary of drugs they cover, while others have tightened eligibility requirements, making lower income working people ineligible for ADAP. On July 1, Ohio lowered the income eligibility standards, and stopped paying for HIV drugs for 320 people. New Jersey will cut the ADAP rolls by 600 on August 1. None of those purged from the ADAP rolls will be counted as eligible for those services, further hiding the scope of the crisis.
Driving forces A perfect storm of forces is driving the increased demand for ADAP resources. The “natural” growth of people living with HIV in the United States is about 40,000 per year, once one subtracts deaths from estimated new infections. Federal funding has not kept pace with this growth. Unemployment continues to hover at just below10 percent. People have not only lost their jobs, they often have lost their health insurance as well. Those fortunate enough to be able to continue to pay for health insurance under COBRA provisions often have reached the end of the 18month coverage of that program.
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Freedom to Marry, a national organization, called the veto “deeply disappointing” and said it “unnecessarily delays Hawaii’s journey toward fairness and equality.” “Governor Lingle has rejected the will of the state Legislature and the advice of countless business and faith leaders and turned her back on the committed couples and Hawaii kin who have expressed their support for this measure,” said Executive Director Evan Wolfson. “Freedom to Marry urges the Hawaii state Legislature to overrule Governor Lingle’s veto.” Equality Hawaii’s Alan Spector commented: “Today is a sad day for the thousands of Hawaii families who remain second-class citizens. We fail to see how the governor’s actions are in the best interest of Hawaii’s future and are nothing
Federal ADAP administrator Deborah Parham Hopson
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is rolling out a program to increase testing for HIV and make such testing a part of routine medical care. That means more people are learning their HIV status and want to begin treatment. Finally, revisions to treatment guidelines last December now recommend starting therapy earlier. They say treatment should be started before a patient’s CD4 count falls below 350; and patients should be given the option of starting a drug regimen once the CD4 count nears 500. All of these factors have contributed to the pressure on ADAP.
Funding AIDS advocates pushed for increased funding as part of the economic stimulus package earlier this year, but those pleas fell on deaf ears within the Obama administration and Congress. President Barack Obama’s budget for next year provides for a $20 million increase in funding for ADAP, but that is far short of the $126 million that the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors says is needed now. A group of conservative Republican senators, led by Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), the former co-chair of PACHA, has proposed that the full $126 million be funded out of unspent stimulus money in the Department of Health and Human Services. “At a time when waiting lists are growing with no end in sight and these patients no longer have access to their lifesaving drugs through ADAP, there couldn’t be a more appropriate funding stream to deal with the preservation of health care and the promotion of these individual’s wellness,” said Bill Arnold with the National ADAP Working Group.▼
more than political maneuvering at the expense of people’s lives. We’re disappointed and outraged.” National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey called the veto “a disgrace.” “Hawaii’s lawmakers passed this bill because it was about fundamental fairness,” she said. “The governor’s action today flies in the face of both common sense and common humanity. We urge the Hawaii Legislature to override this veto.” Same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. Five additional states have domestic partner or civil union laws that extend to same-sex couples all state-level rights and obligations of marriage: California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington. Five other states extend limited marital rights to registered same-sex couples: Colorado, Hawaii, Maine,
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Theater hosts workshop for gay male couples ing the workshop in order to learn some tips on how to make their relationship better. “It’s been great but there have been some bumps in the road along the way. Rather than wing it, I feel like we need some guidance,” he said. The 14-hour workshop, which takes place between Friday, July 16 and Sunday, July 18, costs $300 per person. Nance said some partial scholarships are available to help defray the expense.▼
by Matthew S. Bajko he love that used to not dare speak its name is now searching for ways to ensure it will last the test of time. As more and more gay men opt for long-term relationships, they are also seeking out help on how to make their commitments last. Enter the New Conservatory Theatre Center, which is hosting a three-day workshop next weekend for gay male couples looking for an assist in rekindling their passion for each other. “I have noticed with literally every one of my friends in a long-term relationship, I just feel we are all floundering a little bit on how do we create amazing relationships we can treasure and just be grateful for,” said Andrew Nance, the gay theater company’s conservatory director. “I just don’t see that with any of my friends. I feel like we need some tools to really flourish.” In a first for the theater, it has added the gay male specific workshop to its list of summer class offerings this year. Having read The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World by well-known gay clinical psychologist Alan Downs, Nance invited the author to facilitate the weekend workshop based on his 2005 book. “It was just really profound to me the way he framed why gay men have destructive behaviors, whether drinking or smoking or sex anger issues. It just shined a light on the gay experience in a whole new way,” said Nance of the book. Titled “Real Men, Passionate Relationships: The Gay Couple’s Journey into Passion and Authenticity,” the workshop aims to help those gay male couples who may feel they have lost the spark and romance in their lives. “In a general sense the relationship feels like it has hit a plateau. Others might use the word stuck, but I am not fond of that word,” said Downs when asked what couples would be the workshop’s target audience. “You feel you have reached a place where it is not great, it is not bad, it just sort of is and how do you get past that plateau.” This will be the first time that Downs, who resigned this year as CEO of Michael’s House Treatment Center in Palm Springs, will present his workshop in San Francisco. He has been offering similar sessions for gay men across the country. “There are not many places gay couples can go to have their specific
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That reluctance to come forward could leave the door open to further violence. “People who commit these crimes rely on intimidation and anonymity,” Jones said. He warned that without an effective investigation to deter further crimes, “there’s a good likelihood it could happen again.” He added, “Once the door’s been opened...” before his voice trailed off. As one of the first openly gay members of the SFPD and the first gay man assigned to homicide investigations, Jones is particularly invested in the safety of the LGBT community. He recalled having attended community events for many years, and expressed concern that an increase in violent crime could force organizers to scale back events in the future. “This should be scaring the bejesus out of everybody,” said Jones. “We’re not talking fistfights – we’re talking guns.”
Clinical psychologist Alan Downs
issues addressed and worked on. Most relationship seminars, if not all, are workshops created for and by the straight community for straight couples,” said Downs, a contributing writer to Mother Jones magazine and who has a private practice in Beverly Hills. Topics Downs addresses in the workshop run the gamut from reviving intimacy and exploring nonmonogamous boundaries to how past traumas in one’s life can impact current relationships. He also explains how dialectics, when two partners hold differing ideas, can be resolved within the confines of a relationship. “It is a philosophical word. What are two competing truths that can both be true at the same time? For example, one truth might be I love you and the opposing truth is when I spend too much time with you, you get on my nerves,” explained Downs. The workshop is not meant to drill into the specific issues couples who sign up are facing, cautioned Downs, who advised that those gay male partners with serious relationship issues should pursue individual therapy to address their needs. “It is not going to be an avenue where an individual couple can work on their specific conflicts,” he said. “It is really a supportive weekend to work on your relationship and make it better. Some of the more difficult issues that need to be processed would be better done in a private office with a therapist and not in a group setting.” The workshop is limited to only 17 couples, and about half the slots have already been filled. Nance said that he and his partner of 20 years, Jim Maloney, are tak-
Role of community in violence prevention Ray Tilton defines community involvement in the face of violent crime. Around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 26, Tilton and his friends were assaulted by a group of men from east of the city. Following his assailants’ arrest, he organized a rally the following week to galvanize support for stronger anti-crime measures. “I want to step forward and put a face to it,” Tilton, 47, told the Bay Area Reporter. The rally, entitled “Red Saturday,” was held at Market and Castro streets, just feet from where he and his friends had been beaten. The rally was attended by representatives from Castro Community on Patrol, victims’ advocacy group Healing Circle, the LGBT Community Center, the district attorney’s office, and by local leaders including Supervisor Bevan Dufty, state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), and former Police Commission President and District 6 supervisor candidate
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Courtesy Alan Downs
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For more information or to sign up, visit www.nctcsf.org/AdultClasses .html.
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Soccer player awaits Cologne Gay Games year and a half ago or so, Chris Fajardo had what he refers to as a “bad confrontation” with a goalkeeper on the soccer pitch and broke his leg: a gruesome, painful moment. As he heads to Cologne, Germany this month for his first Gay Games with the San Francisco Spikes, he knows it was also a moment that helped his parents understand how fulfilling is the love that he has found with his boyfriend, Bobby Dunn. “It was a really, really bad break,” Fajardo recalled recently. “There were compound fractures and it was really swollen. I wasn’t walking for about four and a half months. “That whole time, my partner was with me. He had to help me take a shower and get up and down the stairs. I think in that moment, my parents saw that he was there for me.
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I think especially after that they have been so welcoming.” Parents and soccer were two steadying forces throughout Fajardo’s early years in San Mateo. “I’ve been playing soccer since I was 4,” he said. “It’s always been part of my life. It is also how I socialize. Through soccer I have made my best friends.” Fajardo said he knew he was gay “forever” and started to come out his junior year in college. “With friends, it was fine. It was very easy,” he J OCK said. “It was a lot harder to do that with my family. I told my mom and sister first at the beginning of summer vacation from college. They took it okay. It was a little hard for them. “My mother and I would walk around the neighborhood in the
evening and she would have a lot of questions. She had a vision of what she wanted for me. She said, ‘Of all the things, I just don’t want your life to be harder than mine. I don’t want you to go through that pain. It’s hard to see that.’ “I came out to Dad a year later, right after graduation. The conversation ended with him saying, ‘Well, at least you have your Mom,’ and he hung up the phone. I decided they just needed time.” He gave them time – space. He took a job TALK and in Belize training dolphins and talked with his parents twice a week. The chill thawed. “By the end,” Fajardo recalled, “Dad was saying, ‘I’m looking forward to your coming home. Let’s talk things through.’ It’s been almost three years since then and they definitely have changed a lot.” Out at home, he was still not out on the playing field. “I was playing with only straight teams,” Fajardo, 27, said. “The soccer has always been the same; there isn’t any real difference in the play. The difference is in how I feel. I think before, there was always a part of me that questioned, ‘What if people knew?’ I could partake of their conversations, but it definitely made some of those conversations uncomfortable. I was playing a part that wasn’t me.” In 2007, his life changed. A friend of his was in the San Francisco Pride Parade representing his gay hockey team. “I didn’t even know there were any gay sports teams before,” Fajardo said. He joined the Spikes and two weeks later was headed with them to play in the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association championships in Argentina, playing for the team’s A Squad. Finally the elements of his life were blissfully merging. “It was such a great way to integrate back into the community and also to find a lot of people who were a lot like me,” he said. “Soccer for me is a family, but it is also about the larger community. You can go anywhere around the world and people are passionate about it. “It’s the easiest way for me to keep in shape. It is so demanding on my body. You can always be faster or stronger, but there is always someone better than you are. It just pushes you to be the best that you are. It tests your physical abilities and also your mental abilities. It pushes to your limits.” Fajardo said playing on the team is supportive. “I play for the first team and we’re really competitive. But we’re one of three teams with a much larger club and it’s very accommodating for anyone to come out. The group really values itself on being inclusive. It’s a really supportive group.” Fajardo said being out in his sport has made a huge difference for him. “It’s uplifting,” he said. “It’s reassuring. It makes me more comfortable in myself. I’m not living a lie.” And on the trip to Argentina he and Dunn, who was playing for the second team, began to connect. “We became friends on the trip,” he said. “We started taking our dogs to the park and hanging out.” Fajardo, one of two coaches for Spikes, is a training and coaching corps specialist with Team-Up for Youth, which creates sports opportunities for youths, mostly low-income children from the inner city. “I’ve been coaching since I was 15,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to be who I am and still continue to follow my passion. If you can impact lives and make something positive happen, what does it matter if you are gay or straight?” For information on the San Francisco Spikes, visit www.sfspikes.com.
S
Courtesy Chris Fajardo
by Roger Brigham
San Francisco Spikes soccer player Chris Fajardo is heading to Cologne for Gay Games.
For information on the Gay Games, July 31-August 7, visit www.gamescologne.de.
Soccer team fined for homophobic fan behavior Institutional efforts to curb homophobia in English soccer have taken it on the nose lately, so British footers might wish to take note of the action of the British Rugby Football League. Responding to a March match in which fans loudly abused openly gay player Gareth Thomas with homophobic taunts, the RFL announced it was fining Castleford £40,000 (about $50,125) for the unacceptable behavior of its fans. Castleford said it is considering an appeal. Half of the fine was immediately suspended, but the episode caused another suspended £20,000 fine from an earlier incident of other fan misbehavior to be reinstated. “It is not about the fine, but rather recognition that this behavior from a small section of the Castleford fans is not acceptable in 2010,” Thomas said through his agent. “Unfortunately, what happened at Castleford could not be ignored. We are delighted that the RFL have taken action against what is a serious and upsetting incident for all parties. Gareth Thomas is all about positive messages and positive changes, and to that end today was a huge step forward for Gareth and the world of sport.” Castleford officials also responded. “The club condemns any person who makes or chants obscene remarks toward players or officials,” Castleford Tigers CEO Richard Wright said. “But the charges against the club are not that there was chanting. They are that the club failed to take its best endeavors to prevent or stop any chanting. This the club refutes totally. The club has a well-established system for dealing with chanting and could not have done any more on the day.” The league’s attention to the incident was not brought about by Thomas, but by other fans at Castleford who witnessed it. Contrast the RFL’s action with the timidity of the English Football Association. Earlier this year, the FA canceled release of an anti-homophobia video it had spent the previous two years developing with gayrights groups. This follows the FA’s disbanding of its Tackling Homophobia Working Group last year and its quiet replacement with a smaller, less inclusive committee. The video the FA balked at focused on the virulent language used
by bigoted fans; some critics found it incendiary and said they would have preferred a more positive of acceptance. My take? I think both the Castleford Tigers and the Football Association should learn the same lesson I learned when I converted from soccer to rugby many, many, many years ago: Tackle hard, tackle often, tackle without flinching or blinking. Just tackle. And they might want to puncture their lapels with pins just issued by London Summer Olympic Games organizers. As part of their message of inclusion for the 2012 Olympics (it is widely felt the diversity of presenters of the London bid was a major factor in pushing the city past a strong but less diverse bid from Paris), the organizers released an Olympic gay pin, as well as one for the Paralympics. It is believed to be the first such pin ever issued by an Olympic host. More pins are planned to promote acceptance of religion, gender, age, and ethnicity. London Olympics spokesman Paul Deighton said the pins show the committee’s “support for a sporting environment built upon equality and inclusion.” The pins are available for purchase online at shop.london2012 .com.
‘Swim for Equality’ Equality California will hold its inaugural fundraising 1.7-mile “Swim for Equality” event September 25 in Malibu. Each swimmer will raise at least $2,000 for the organization with the open water swim at Malibu’s Point Dume State Beach. A finish line brunch will follow. Information on entering or sponsoring a swimmer is available under the “Events” menu on the EQCA website, www.eqca.org.
Matthew Shepard Gay Ski Week The inaugural Matthew Shepard Foundation Gay Ski Week will be held March 19-26, at Crested Butte Mountain Resort in Colorado. The event is being produced by the resort, StraightOut Media and Marketing, and the Matthew Shepard Foundation. “This new event provides the perfect vehicle for communicating the education, advocacy and awareness work of the foundation,” said Jason Marsden, executive director. “This was a large scale opportunity to bring attention to our mission.” The event schedule and pricing have not been announced.▼
▼ Edward James Kitson October 1931 - April 2010
Edward passed away in Lacrosse, Wisconsin where he was born and reared. He had lived in San Francisco for more than 50 years. After completing four years of service with the U.S. Air Force, he settled in Sacramento and later relocated to the Bay Area. He will be missed by many friends whose lives he touched, and by his partner of 23 years, Dehue Marshall. Edward was an accomplished artist and painter. In 1964 he had a one man show at The California Palace of the Legion of Honor and in
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opportunity for people to just get drunk, but it should be a celebration. It would be sad to see another city celebration go down.” In the end, though, it is not just a problem for the Castro to resolve, said Mandelman. “It is terrible to have this kind of violence coming to the heart of the Castro. It also reminds us there are communities in the Bay Area and the city that deal with this kind of violence on a daily basis,” he said. “We shouldn’t want to keep it from happening just in our community but in any community.”
Planners set to vote on Castro infill project The Planning Commission is set to vote today (Thursday, July 8) on a controversial infill project in the Castro neighborhood that would replace what has been a hole in the ground for decades. The lot at 2299 Market Street, bounded by 16th and Noe streets, has been a scar on the streetscape of the city’s gayborhood ever since an arsonist burned down the church that used to occupy the prominent corner spot in 1981. Developer Angus McCarthy wants to build a five story mixed use building with 18 dwelling units over ground-floor commercial space for two or more stores. There would be subterranean parking for 18 vehicles as well as storage space for 18 bicycles. The building, measuring 50 feet in height, would have residential and garage access from 16th Street. It would consist of a variety of oneand two-bedroom units and one three-bedroom unit. A variety of neighborhood groups along with pedestrian and bicycle advocacy organizations are opposed to the project. They have raised concerns about pedestrian and bicyclist safety; the failure to include affordable housing units on-site; a lack of public amenities; and the number of parking spaces sought. In his report to the oversight body, planner Michael Smith recommended that the commissioners approve the project as proposed. “The project is well designed and would contribute to the urban character of the neighborhood,” wrote Smith in his review of the project. The meeting will begin at 10 a.m. today in Room 400 of City Hall. The
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Maryland, and Wisconsin. New York and Maryland recognize same-sex marriages from other states and countries. California recognizes same-sex marriages from anywhere in the world if they were entered into before Proposition 8 amended the state constitution in November 2008 to re-ban same-sex
8 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER
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OBITUA RIES 1965 he showed 25 paintings and drawings along with works by Wayne Thiebaud and Roland Peterson at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento. The 41st Annual Exhibition of Northern California Artists, curator Dr. Peter Selz, Director of the Museum of Art, University of California Berkeley, included works by Kitson. He also exhibited in The Bay Area Surrealists show at San Francisco Sun Gallery in 1968, The Banfer Gallery, New York City, Adele Bednarz Galleries, Los Angeles, St Paul Art Center, Minnesota and is represented in private collections. Edward was a long-time employee of the early Cost Plus store, working in display design and product development. He was a consultant in opening their European/Asian Arts & Antiques annex store. Edward completed commissioned commercial murals for States Shipping Lines, Sto-
Castro project is listed as number 14 on the commission’s agenda, which would be one of the last items to be heard.
Dean backs Nava for judge Following his third-place finish in last month’s primary race for a San Francisco Superior Court judicial seat, gay attorney Daniel Dean has endorsed the other gay male candidate in the race. Out attorney Michael Nava took first place in the three-way match-up for the court’s Seat 15, currently held by Judge Richard Ulmer, who was appointed to the bench last summer by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to elections officials, Nava beat his opponents with nearly 46 percent of the vote. Ulmer, who needed to capture 50 percent plus one of the vote to retain his seat outright, fell far short with just 42 percent. Dean garnered 11 percent of the vote. Following their race, Dean spoke with both candidates but decided to throw his support behind Nava. “I obviously think he is a great guy, with wonderful credentials. He would make a great judge,” said Dean. “I also think it would be wonderful to have San Francisco’s first openly gay person of color on the bench. I think that is needed and very important.“ Had Dean stayed out of the race and opted instead to run for an open seat on the local court, it is possible that Nava would have defeated Ulmer last month. Instead, the two are locked in an intense runoff on the November general election ballot. Asked if Nava would have won had he not been in the race, Dean said, “My gut feeling is he would have.” Nonetheless, Dean said he has no regrets about his decision. “No second thoughts. It was one of the best experiences I went through. I am really proud of all I did. I have no regrets,” said Dean, who plans to seek a judicial appointment and did not rule out a second judicial campaign in the future. “I will become a judge somehow.” Nava is hoping that the LGBT community and progressives will help him oust Ulmer, a former Republican Party member, from the judicial post this fall. Dean said he is unsure of which candidate his supporters in the primary will now back. “I think my base was pretty broad. I think it will be interesting,”
marriage, which had been legal for about five months. A high-profile lawsuit charging that Prop 8 violates the U.S. Constitution will see a U.S. District Court decision in San Francisco this summer. The case likely will end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. Internationally, same-sex marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Mexico City.▼
rybook Land and other private clients. He was involved in the design and development of the San Francisco Chocolate Company. Edward maintained an active and productive creative life after retirement. He returned to his home in Lacrosse due to failing health. Condolences may be directed to: dehue@comcast.net
Jack Thornburg September 18, 1930 – June 14, 2010
Jack passed on June 14 due to lung cancer. Jack was born and raised in San Francisco. He fought in the Korean War in the early 1950s, earning a commendation for bravery. Upon his re-
said Dean. He said he drew not only from within the LGBT community but also longtime residents due to his being a fourth-generation San Franciscan with ties to the city’s Irish community. Some of those supporters may now opt to go with Ulmer. “I don’t know that it is a guarantee that all my votes will go to Michael Nava,” said Dean. “I am curious to see how it plays out.”▼
turn from the war, Jack worked for the U.S. government as a printer until he retired in 1985. In 1954, he married and he and his wife bought and fixed up houses. Jack loved to garden and growing tomatoes. After his divorce in 1968, he immersed himself in the gay community. Jack loved to work jigsaw puzzles and loved movies of all kinds, building a large movie collection. In his later years, he spent his time in the service to others, helping the elderly or anyone in need. Jack is survived by his brother, Norman of Sacramento; his children, Steven Thornburg, and Sharon Mullenaux (Tom) of Colorado Springs, Colorado; grandchildren Joshua Perry (Kim), Jennifer Zuspan (Brandon) of Rohnert Park, California, and Jeffrey Hislop of Colorado Springs; and four great-grandchildren.
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Theresa Sparks. “You define what happens to you when you’re a victim of crime,” said Paul Henderson, chief of administration in the DA’s office. “This is how we empower ourselves and take back the neighborhood.” Speakers called for greater community involvement in anti-crime measures, and for partnerships between anti-crime organizations throughout the city. In recent months, CCOP has heavily promoted safety education, distributing a free pamphlet entitled “Clubber’s Guide to Safety” and recruiting volunteers. The group’s next volunteer training class is Friday, July 9, at 7 p.m.; anyone interested in attending is asked to RSVP to Training@CastroPatrol.org. Michael Medema, a board member at the LGBT center, emphasized collaboration between neighborhood organizations. “It’s time for all of us to reach out to one another, beyond the borders of the Castro, and say as San Franciscans we’re not going to take this anymore,” he said. “The center will take the lead on bringing community forums, not only with LGBT community, but with members of other communities. ... This isn’t SF versus the bridge and tunnel crowd. It’s about our community joining other communities and saying no. No more violence. No more hate.” Dufty, who’s running for mayor next year, agreed that efforts to quell violence needed to extend beyond the borders of the Castro. “It appears to me now that there’s some clear lines that represent where these homicides are coming from this year,” he said, referring to shootings similar to the one on Pink Saturday. “There’s clearly a division between two major gangs, and other major gangs that have been unaligned are lining up with one side or another.”
Gang task force involvement Gang involvement in the Pink Sat-
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added that Harvey Milk would support the repeal of DADT based on the premise that it requires people to lie about who they are and he would support marriage equality due to the number of rights denied same-sex couples.
Milk’s faith Authenticity and equality were key components to Harvey Milk’s activist philosophy, politics, and vision derived from his faith and heritage and influenced by World War II, Milk explained. Harvey Milk was not the typical synagogue-goer, as Rabbi Allen Bennett, the first rabbi to serve at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in the Castro and who conducted his memorial service, pointed out during his introduction of Stuart Milk. Syna-
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cies were noted and discussed by management before she ever complained” to her superiors of the antigay harassment, wrote the judge. Williams, a former mayor of Pinole in the East Bay, is appealing the ruling to the EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations in Washington, D.C. “I am so shocked by the decision and the blatant inaccuracies and biases the judge demonstrated,” Williams, who represented herself in the case, told the Bay Area Reporter. “She had to bend over backwards to support her decision that I was not
urday shooting is still under investigation. “I’d be uncomfortable calling it gang-related,” said Jones, but he confirmed that a “fairly large group of young people” from the Bayview had come to Pink Saturday, that the shooter and victim were familiar to each other, and that the shooting was preceded by an argument. In addition, the homicide on Pink Saturday was followed by a second shooting two days later at a vigil for the murdered man, Stephen Powell, just blocks from an area covered by a gang injunction. The SFPD’s Gang Task Force is investigating the second shooting. When asked why the task force was not involved in Pink Saturday security planning prior to the shooting, SFPD spokesman Troy Dangerfield explained, “it’s not something that they would normally do,” since LGBT events in the past have tended not to attract gang activity. Dufty explained, “We’ve had the Gang Task Force at Halloween, but traditionally Pink Saturday has been a community-driven event. It hasn’t had the feeling of having gang participation.” That may change after this year. Looking ahead, Dufty told the B.A.R., “I would have no problem with the Gang Task Force coming.” Involving the task force could discourage criminals from attending future events. “There are people who feel comfortable bringing guns into the Castro,” said Jones. “You’re really not safe in this neighborhood. ... The gay community has generally had a reputation for having safe events, but there’s always a starting-off point when events become not safe. And this is our starting-off point.” Officer Len Broberg, a gay officer working with the Gang Task Force, echoed the speakers at the Red Saturday rally, pointing out that the community has an important role to play in ensuring safe events. “The most important part of the equation is to have the community act as the eyes and ears of the police,
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last two months, of the number of serious crimes that have not been reported to the police,” Carey said. “Chief [George] Gascón is very focused on putting police where the problems are, and the only way the police know where the problems are is if the crimes are reported and logged into the database.”
Re-dedication to crime prevention
Matt Baume
Pink Saturday
NEWS
“Red Saturday” organizer Ray Tilton, right, is comforted by state Senator Mark Leno at the rally.
and agree to be witnesses. We all have a job to do in this,” he said.
Increase in violence? There’s widespread disagreement about whether this year’s violence is part of a larger trend. “The police mention that they feel it escalating, but I don’t feel that,” said Sister Titania with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the nonprofit organization that produces Pink Saturday. “What happened here was an isolated incident that could have happened anywhere.” As event organizers, the Sisters witnessed numerous uplifting moments during Pride weekend. At a ceremony Friday night to reflect on the events of the past week, Sister Maryly Onward recalled giving a parasol to a delighted 6-year-old girl who was watching the festivities. Sister Merry Peter helped a pregnant woman through the partying crowd and then drove her home. And Sister maeJoy B. withU described onlookers who came to the aid of a man who’d stepped in broken glass. But Jones detected a troubling atmosphere at this year’s Pink Saturday. “I’ve been attending these since their inception,” he said. “I was struck
gogue to Harvey Milk was a place to “prey” on members for votes, Bennett said. But Harvey Milk also understood lessons from the Torah, lessons that he shared with his young gay nephew without ever once mentioning his queerness, Stuart Milk said. “Harvey was one of the first people who taught me about a broader meaning of religious context,” he said. Harvey Milk would spend nights in the kitchen of Stuart Milk’s parents’ home in Long Island, New York, discussing the Torah and his activist philosophy, Stuart Milk recalled. The story of David and Goliath, where a simple man wins a battle against a fierce warrior, was one of the most significant conversations Stuart Milk had with his uncle, he said. That night Harvey Milk spoke about courage in the face of adversity and the potential cost for stand-
ing up for what you believe in, Stuart Milk told the audience. Harvey Milk was David to him because his uncle proclaimed his authenticity against a society that believed homosexuality was a disease and was illegal. He spoke to rooms filled with people who hated him – gay and straight – and who actively campaigned against him. Against all odds he ran for public office and finally won, Stuart Milk said. “Harvey actually had, to me, the courage of David, because what he was up against was the Goliath of a society that said that you do not proclaim who you are authentically if you are a lesbian, a gay, a bisexual, or a transgender person,” Stuart Milk said, adding his uncle was “always trying to convince me who I was was perfect; that who I was from the time that I was very young was exactly who I needed to be.” Harvey Milk could never understand “how a community and a
discriminated against. In fact she insinuates I was a racist and was as bad as the guy who was discriminating against me and I deserved what I got.” A spokesperson for the Oakland VA office did not respond to a request for comment. Having been told (inaccurately it turned out) by VA officials that she could bring an EEOC complaint based on sexual orientation, Williams said she had no reason to think she had to prove her ill treatment was due to a different protected category. After having her claims rejected by the EEOC judge, Williams questioned if the agency would be equipped to handle sexual orienta-
tion based complaints should a federal pro-LGBT Employment NonDiscrimination Act be passed into law. “With ENDA the whole point is to put sexual orientation under Title VII. Who enforces Title VII? The EEOC. If they don’t protect people now, they aren’t going to protect gay people either,” she said. “Something has to be done with the EEOC. You can’t take seriously their mission to enforce Title VII.” Williams’s co-worker Jamie Fox, who is straight and was also let go at the same time after she voiced concerns about how other VA employees were treating Williams, also filed suit with the EEOC. She is awaiting a decision in her case.▼
that it did not have a particularly gay vibe, or even a gay-friendly vibe.” The Sisters’ positive experiences are a far cry from a video of a fight captured during Pride on Sunday. Posted to YouTube by an individual calling himself Spi0n (www.Spi0n.com), it shows a group of young women aggressively confronting and throwing punches at SFPD and California Highway Patrol officers. Seven women, ranging from 18 to 23 years old and hailing primarily from the East Bay, were arrested. Although the SFPD is investigating the incident, Spi0n, who is straight and wanted to be identified only by his blog name, told the B.A.R. that the police have not contacted him. He also claimed that the fight with police was touched off when one of the girls punched a Pride volunteer in the face. Spi0n, who is French, was visiting the city with two friends. Although incidents such as these have attracted widespread attention, CCOP Chair Greg Carey worries that there are far more that have gone unreported. He explained that failure to report a crime to the police can put the community at risk for future incidents. “We are surprised to hear, in the
country could turn on members of its own community and country,” Stuart Milk said, recalling a wound his uncle carried from WWII, especially a community that was gaining rights and was being celebrated in pre-Nazi Germany: the LGBT community. Harvey Milk learned from World War II that, “You cannot allow a community to shrink. You cannot allow a community to disappear. You cannot allow a community to not talk about themselves, to proclaim themselves,” Stuart Milk quoted his uncle, who taught him not to hide his faith or any of the things that make him different from other people. The Jewish community is the community that can lead other communities to embrace equality, Stuart Milk believes. “If any community can feel the empathy of a community not being celebrated it is the Jewish faith community,” said Stuart Milk, who pointed out the centuries of outsiderness the Jewish people experienced that caused some individuals to lose their “authenticity.” This fact allows the Jewish community the ability to “lead in inclusion and celebration of all [its] parts.” “It’s a natural and we can help lead the way in other faith communities by being fully inclusive and celebrating all of our members and that does not diminish or challenge your own personal belief and faith,” he said. Harvey Milk wanted people to join the LGBT community and invite others to join “in celebrating ourselves,” Stuart Milk said. “I tolerate mosquitoes so I can be outside but our LGBT community are the ladybugs and butterflies of the world, we are a gift to the world. We do not need to be tolerated.” Last week’s meeting was co-pro-
“We live in violent times, in a violent world, in a violent city,” Leno said at the Red Saturday rally. He urged those present to become involved with community patrol organizations. Speaking just a day before July 4, he declared, “We proclaim our independence from violence. And we embrace love and eschew hate.” “The good that might come out of this is getting the queer community engaged in crime issues,” said District 8 supervisor candidate Bill Hemenger. Hemenger has suggested that selling tickets to Pink Saturday could prevent interlopers from attending. [For more on where the District 8 candidates stand, see the Political Notebook column on page 7.] Whether the community gets engaged remains to be seen, but the approximately 50 attendees of the Red Saturday rally clearly felt strongly about crime, boisterously applauding the speakers and wearing red in solidarity. “You must get up,” organizer Tilton told the crowd to widespread cheering. “You must step forward, determined to make a change. ... Violent assaults, crimes of hate, and even being treated as second-class citizens cannot silence us.”▼ The SFPD is reaching out to Pink Saturday celebrants by posting fliers around the city, asking anyone with video or photos from the event to contact Jones at (415) 553-9685 or to use the SFPD’s anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444. Even if you didn’t witness the shooting, Jones said, your images may still be helpful to the police investigation.
duced by Keshet, Jewish Mosaic: the National Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and Nehirim to open a dialogue with queer Jewish leaders who have emerged as a “flowering of queer Jewish organizational life,” said Idit Klein, executive director of Keshet. Jewish Mosaic recently merged with Keshet and has offices in San Francisco, Denver, and Boston. The conference was significant because up to this point many LGBT Jewish leaders and organizations operated on a reactionary basis to community needs, said Nehirim’s Michaelson. An irony that didn’t escape organizers is the community that is the “most progressive” on LGBT equality and issues “speaks with the least unified voice on these issues,“ said Michaelson. “We are only now at the stage when we have the luxury of thinking strategically and together as a movement,” Michaelson added. “This is the first time where there is a concerted effort to think as a movement not as an independent freelance people doing our own projects.“ Klein agreed, believing the conference was “potentially a watershed moment in queer Jewish history.” Conference attendees ranged from Zionist and Orthodox Jews to reform and liberal organizations and foundations. Pro-Palestinian protesters were absent from the conference due to its intentional low profile, said Klein. While issues between Israel and Palestine are important and something the queer Jewish community cares about and will discuss in the future, said Klein, it wasn’t included on the itinerary, which was focused on the emerging LGBT Jewish movement.▼ For more information, visit milkfoundation.org.
8 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER 13
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LEGAL NOTICES NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSE To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are:Ken Jincong Chen, Andy Kin Ho, Henry Baisheng Hu. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 1706 Post Street, San Francisco, CA 94115-3606. Type of license applied for:
48 - ON-SALE GENERAL PUBLIC PREMISES JULY 8, 2010 NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSE To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are:William Chungpong Chan, Eric Chunkit Cheung, Trevor Lee. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 4243 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94114-2409. Type of license applied for:
41 -ON-SALE BEER AND WINE EATING PLACE JULY 8, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032829000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Viva Goa, 2420 Lombard Street, San Francisco, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Nicolau Fernandes. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/10.
JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032831100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Pinkies Bakery, 1196 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company signed Boris Nemchenok. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/31/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/09/10.
JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTICIOUS BUSINESS NAME: #0312921-00 The following persons have abandoned the use of the ficticious business name known as Pinkies Bakery, 1294 Vallejo Street. #5, San Francisco, CA 94109. This business was conducted by a sole propietorship, signed Cheryl Burr. The ficticious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/05/08.
JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032831000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Citizens Band #1, 1198 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company signed Boris Nemchenok. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/09/10.
JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032805100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 1. Professional Garage Doors, 2. Reliable Locksmith, 2055 16th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Sagy Vaknin. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/26/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/26/10.
JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032801300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Takara Sushi S.F., 4243 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94114-2409. This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed William C.P. Chan. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/25/10.
JUNE 17,24, JULY 1,8, 2010 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: Cafe Zazo LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 64 14th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-4230. Type of license applied for:
41-ON-SALE BEER AND WINE EATING PLACE JULY 1,8,15, 2010
You got served!
NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: Whole Foods Market California Inc. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 690 Stanyan Street, San Francisco, CA 94117. Type of license applied for:
20- OFF-SALE BEER AND WINEJULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032851800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Intava Hair Salon, 323 Ivy Street, San Francisco, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Lieng Phethsaya. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/18/10.
JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032841200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Hairdoo Voodoo, 3150 18th Street,Suite 324, San Francisco, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Margaret A. Friel. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/15/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/15/10.
JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032847700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Tiagu, 652 8th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Brandon Neustadter. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/17/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/17/10.
JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032837000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Ocean Avenue Tattoo, 1907 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Thomas O McGrath. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/11/10.
JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032854300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Tataki 8 Lounge, 1740 Church Street, San Francisco, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Kenneth Zhu. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/21/10.
JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032806300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Lefty’s at Junction, 2140 Union Street, San Francisco, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Hugo Gamboa. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/27/10.
JUNE 24, JULY 1,8,15, 2010 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: Magellan Wine LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at: 447 Battery Street, San Francisco, CA 94111. Type of license applied for:
42-ON-SALE BEER AND WINE PUBLIC PREMISES JULY 8,15, 22,2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032865900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Mitchell and Company, Law Offices, 1300 7th Avenue,Unit #4, San Francisco, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Brian Mitchell. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/24/10.
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010
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STATEMENT FILE A-032837900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Ragazza, 311 Dividadero Street, San Francisco, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Laura Aaronson. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/11/10.
STATEMENT FILE A-032882300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Apres Collective, 601 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Jeanne Feldkamp. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/10.
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010
JULY 8,15,22,29, 2010
STATEMENT FILE A-032821000
STATEMENT FILE A-032870300
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SF Walk With Me, 6016 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Carla S. Popovics. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/03/10.
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Rhythm Section, 2367 39th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Mick Terrizzi. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/10.
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010
JULY 8,15,22,29, 2010
STATEMENT FILE A-032863600
STATEMENT FILE A-032874400
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Dream SF Real Estate, 150 Manchester Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual,signed Beth C.Newman. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/24/10.
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032870000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Helios Art Glass, 1550 McKinnon Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Constance Levathes. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/12/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/10.
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Manaomakani, 1310 Minnesota Street, Unit 310, San Francisco, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Jamie M. Aldaya. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/05/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/29/10.
JULY 8,15,22,29, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032830100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Viorum Capital LLC, 50 California Street,Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Gerald Noemdoe. The registrant(s) commenced to
transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/10.
JULY 8,15,22,29, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032882100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Bureau, 498 Waller Street,#9, San Francisco, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Lawrence Li. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/10.
JULY 8,15,22,29, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032874500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Mix & Match, 168 Hyde Street,#208, San Francisco, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Olga Salakhutdinova. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/29/10.
JULY 8,15,22,29, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032837300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: X Officers Group, 101 California Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Ronald Ward. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/11/10.
JULY 8,15,22,29, 2010
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTICIOUS BUSINESS NAME: #038366-00 The following persons have abandoned the use of the ficticious business name known as Helios Architectural Glass, 1550 McKinnon Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94124. This business was conducted by a general partnership, signed Constance Levathes. The ficticious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/11/10.
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032859700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 1.Quickly Fillmore,1522 Fillmore Street, San Francisco 94115. 2.Quickly Geary,6901 Geary Blvd. San Francisco, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Wei Ming Zeng. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/23/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/23/10.
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATEMENT FILE A-032871300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Dr. Minh Vo Chiropratic, 129 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Minh Vo. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/28/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/10.
HAULING Hauling 24/7 441-1054 Lg. Truck Reliable Hauling $30/Hr Call Mike 415-577-7180
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010
JULY 1,8,15,22, 2010 STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE # CNC - 10 - 546962 In the matter of the application of Jaiya Ben-Yuhmin for change of name. The application of Jaiya Ben-Yuhmin for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that Jaiya Ben-Yuhmin filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to Jaiya Alamia. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 218 on the 2nd day of September, 2010 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted
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STATEMENT FILE A-032815000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: IflyCheaper.com, 2235 19th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Diana Tishkovskaya. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/28/10 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/01/10.
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Decline of Western civilization
The spirit of ’69
High on Kinsey Scale
Interactive, 24/7 live-streaming ‘Real World,’ ‘Big Brother’ on this summer’s lavender tube.
‘Stonewall Uprising’ recalls riots at fabled NYC gay bar.
‘Kinsey Sicks’ Ben Schatz chats re their upcoming appearances.
page 23
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ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT
BAYAREAREPORTER Vol. 40 . No. 27 . 8 July 2010
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Cumming attraction
Stage star Alan Cumming plays the Castro Theatre G by Adam Sandel H he puckish stage and film star Alan Cumming brings his solo live show Alan Cumming: I Bought a Blue Car Today to the Castro Theatre on Saturday night. The evening of stories and songs earned rave reviews in New York, Sydney, London and LA, and chronicles the Scottish actor’s adventures coming to America. “It was something I always wanted to do, but I was too scared to do it,” he told me in a recent interview. “As an actor, I was so used to the full rehearsal process, but Lincoln Center facilitated making it happen. The inspiration for the show was me coming to America and becoming a US citizen because I wanted to vote for Obama.” Mingled throughout his autobiographical tales, Cumming sings selections from his CD I Bought a Blue Car Today. “I’m really looking forward to being at the Castro Theatre so I can sing a few songs and tell a few dirty stories.” The classically trained actor, who’s played everything from Romeo and Hamlet to Dionysus, the Devil and the Pope, made his first big Broadway splash with his Tony Award-winning performance as the emcee in the 1998 revival of Cabaret. Cumming has also lent his impish, comically evil style to films, including the Spy Kids series, Disney’s Annie, Reefer Madness, and as the teleporting blue Nightcrawler in X-Men United. He’ll be blue again as the voice of Gutsy Smurf in the upcoming Smurfs movie, and he co-stars with Cher and Christina Aguilera in this fall’s Burlesque. While there’s much ado about performers coming out as gay these days, Cummings has never really been “in.” “It only becomes an issue when people are interested in you,” he said. “I was never hiding, but as I became wellknown, I made it more public.” Three years ago Cumming married his partner of six years, a Bay Area native, and he continues to be an outspoken advocate for LGBT equality.
T
Good as Gold
Actor Alan Cumming.
page 28
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Adrian Buckmaster
As the go-to guy for sexually ambiguous eccentrics, Cumming faced a new challenge when joining Julianna Margulies and Chris Noth in the cast of TV’s best new series, The Good Wife. He plays Eli Gold, a slick political
Lesbian family comedy values Director Lisa Cholodenko on ‘The Kids Are All Right’ • by David Lamble f the classic definition of screwball comedy is a scenario where an autonomous woman challenges the masculinity of the main male character, then Lisa Cholodenko’s hilarious new queer-family comedy The Kids Are All Right doubles down on all the genre’s traditional bets. The film begins with a young man’s curiosity about the identity of his birth dad after jealously witnessing his best friend roughhousing with his live-in pop. That young man, Laser (Josh Hutcherson), goads his older sister Joni (Mia Wasikowska) to call Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the still-eligible, free-spirit bachelor who a generation ago made the almost whimsical decision to contribute to a sperm bank rather than a blood bank.
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•••SECOND
Suzanne Tenner
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page 28
Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Josh Hutcherson, Mia Wasikowska and Mark Ruffalo star in The Kids Are All Right.
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 8 July 2010
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That’s music to our thirsty ears! by Roberto Friedman t’s been a long wait for diehard Laurie Anderson fans since her last studio album in 2001, but now Homeland is here (from Nonesuch), and it’s up to her usual standards of brilliance. Anderson marshals a wide range of talents for the new record, from free jazz saxophonist John Zorn to vocalist Antony Hegarty and the Tuvan throat-singers of Chirgilchin, a musical group of Mongolian nomads. Her husband Lou Reed is featured on electric guitar, and gets a credit as co-producer. That O UT Charlie Chaplin-looking character on the CD cover is Anderson alter ego Fenway Bergamot. Long before AutoTune gave the gift of harmonics to every rapper, Anderson was working with voice filters and effects, and Bergamot is the natural extension of that, a masculine, world-weary, rather melancholic voice. “Ah, America!” he
I
ruminates. “We saw it, we tipped it over, and then, we sold it.” Bergamot is full of bon mots. “And you, you who can be silent in four languages. Your silence will be considered your consent.” “What are days for? To wake us up. To put between the endless nights.” In a making-of DVD included with the CD, Reed offers his assessment that Homeland is the culmination of Anderson’s career, her earlier albums, and years of performances. At 63, she qualifies as a mature artist for sure, and this record is her latest masterpiece.
Sarah says
T HERE
We’ve always known that various types of music have varying appeal for different folks. The women bartenders at our favorite neighborhood eatery were molto excited last week because they had tickets to the Lilith Tour which came to the Bay Area Monday night, with Heart scheduled to perform. So in-between
keeping us supplied with generous pours of the house white, they took turns singing “Bar-ra-cu-da!” and the like, while playing art guitar. We’re not a natural fit for the female-centered music festival, but we have been enjoying listening to Lilith 2010, the tour’s companion CD on Arista. This is a compilation with a real range, from the expected (Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones) to the rather less so (Ke$ha, Rihanna). Our favorite tracks are Corinne Bailey Rae doing “The Blackest Lily,” and Tegan and Sara’s “Hell.” Here’s hoping you enjoyed the rockers, gals!
Musical chairs The regular subscription series of the San Francisco Symphony has come to season’s end, but that doesn’t mean that the SFS has ceased making beautiful music in the summertime. B.A.R. readers might be interested to know more about Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra, leading the orchestra July 22-25, including a free concert in Dolores Park celebrating the Mexican bicentennial; and about transgender pianist Sara Davis Buechner, who returns to the SFS this summer to participate in their Grand Finale concert conducted by de la Parra on Sat., July 24. In 1990, Buechner performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 with the SFS and conductor Nicholas McGegan, when she was known as David Buechner. In 2008, she performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Find out more at www.sfsymphony.org.
Hob-nobbin’ on the Hill Out There doesn’t live on Nob Hill, but we can still read the Nob Hill Gazette, because its masthead assures us that it’s “An Attitude, Not an Address.” Attitude? We’re there! The July issue is subtitled, “The ‘Bests’ – the Banter and Beneficence,” which may be alliterative but otherwise doesn’t make much sense. Still, we couldn’t wait to dig in. The winners of the Gazette’s 7th annual Bay Area Best Dressed list were (woman) Charlot Malin and (man) Zach Bogue, and they are both very yummy indeed. But we think it’s something of a back-handed compliment for the Gazette to then run a list (with pics) of “runners-up.” These also-rans include skier Johnny Mosley and (shockingly) mayoral wife Jennifer Newsom. OK, some of these socialites are a little too “matchy-matchy.” But we’d like to ex-
tend our sympathies to the runnersup, because it’s sort of like getting a “C+” in hygiene or poise. Dear runner-up Ken Faulk, Perhaps you’d have made the cut had you not chosen to wear that Lone Ranger mask with your wide-lapelled tuxedo. Also, why is Joel Goodrich not here? We thought that, with the recent passing of Bella Farrow, he was next in line to be queen of Nob Hill! The Best of 2010 listings were chosen by Gazette readers themselves, in such essential categories as best private jet company, best personal chef and best plastic surgeon. We’re not in the market for any of these services, yet, but we do like to hear the scuttlebutt. Under “Best Gossip,” we learn, “Lea Belli had a baby? What woman realtor is dating a supermodel?; anything overheard in the bathroom at Balboa Café, Joseph Cozza’s Salon, or Seth Mattarasso’s waiting room.” Apparently they don’t teach parallel structure over on Nob Hill, but they do want to know your personal bidness.
ROTFL* Expect laughter at the Vogue Theater when LOL-SF: A Celebration of Comedy On-Screen rolls in July 8-15. The comedy festival, the first of its kind in the Bay Area, will feature 16 comedies, including classics, new and independent releases. Kids’ matinees and foreign films round out a program that boasts a little something for everyone. Star comics will present their favorite funny film, and stick around after each screening for a discussion on how comedians view comedy. Presenters are Kevin Pollak (Midnight Run), Don Novello (aka Father Guido Sarducci, Divorce Italian Style), Marga Gomez (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), Bob Sarlatte (Groundhog Day), W. Kamau Bell (Coming to America), Will Durst (The Pink Panther), Debi Durst (The Blues Brothers), Dhaya Lakshmi-
narayanan (Up in Smoke) and Lisa Geduldig (Sleeper). LOL-SF opens July 8 with the new exuberant German comedy Soul Kitchen, winner of a Special Jury Prize at Venice. There are uproarious results when a star chef turns a greasy spoon into a culinary sensation. It’s from Fatih Akin, director of Head On and The Edge of Heaven. The festival also features winning independent comedies from the vault of the prestigious distributor IFC. This will be the only chance to see films like Made in China, winner of the 2009 South by Southwest Grand Jury Prize, which tells the story of a budding entrepreneur’s misadventures in Shanghai; and Colin Fitz Lives!, about a rock n roll legend whose fans won’t allow him to rest in peace. This cult favorite starring William H. Macy closes out LOL-SF on July 15. All films will play at the Vogue, 3290 Sacramento St. in SF. Tickets are $10 each. A series pass that allows you to attend all events is available for $50. For information, go to www.lolsf.org. One last film note: the 30th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, in partnership with Film Night in the Park, will present a free outdoor screening of Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey in the 1980s fave Dirty Dancing on Sat., July 10, 6:30-10:30 p.m., in SF’s Union Square. Come early for the pre-film “Boogie Down” session with Dexter and Michelle of Bluestherapist.com. The night’s schedule: 6-7:45 p.m., blues dancing (7 p.m., dance class; 7:45 p.m., performance). Dusk (approx. 8:30 p.m.)-10 p.m., screening of SFJFF’s new trailer, then Dirty Dancing, followed by Deluxe Date-Night Package Drawing. Let’s have a pair of homos win the date package! Dancing after the movie. *“Rolling on the Floor, Laughing.”▼
THEATRE
Creature feature by Richard Dodds t’s a small shame that, as Mel Brooks has contended, he was talked into first turning The Producers into a Broadway musical before doing the same with Young Frankenstein. Had the order been reversed, Young Frankenstein might have been seen as an amiable first Broadway-musical effort (albeit by a grizzled showbiz veteran), and The Producers as a triumphal step forward in storytelling, songwriting, and character development. But that’s not the way it played out, and because the musical version of Young Frankenstein came so close on the heels of The Producers, and with the same creative team intact, it’s impossible not to sink into a comparative disappointment as Brooks makes a monster mash out of his delightful screen satire. But let’s take The Producers out of the equation, and what you see is a kind of Hellzapoppin’ approach to entertainment, the kind of postvaudeville revue where jokes are feverishly pitched with hopes that at least a few will stick to the back wall. Even though they occasionally do, it often becomes a tiresomely repetitive procedure that will find scant audiences begging for more. While Brooks’ best movies, including Young Frankenstein, have al-
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ways done a comic tightrope act between a vague reality and a savvy silliness, in the musical Young Frankenstein, now on tour at the Golden Gate, something has gone amiss on the high wire. Brooks’ songs are built from perfunctory melodies and lyrics, and director Susan Strohman’s usually gold-standard choreography feels constricted and recycled. There is one big exception, and perhaps the opportunity to work with a classic melody, Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” re-inspired Strohman’s work. Of course, the song was also a high point in the movie, when Frederick Frankenstein (grandson of the notorious scientist) puts his creature on display in a woefully, hilariously misguided songand-dance act. It’s also a great moment for Shuler Hensley, an accomplished Broadway actor re-creating his role as the monster from the original New York production. For a while, it seems a thankless role for the accomplished Hensley, but during the course of the evening, he infuses the DIY creature with hints of humanity and a strong comic sense. Roger Bart, as the young Dr. Frankenstein, is also continuing his role from Broadway, and while he’s an agreeable and familiar presence (especially if you watch TV), his performance is busy with wink-winks to
Shuler Hensley and Roger Bart recreate their roles as the monster and his creator from the original Broadway production of Young Frankenstein, now at the Golden Gate.
the audience at the telling of hoary jokes (by Brooks and Thomas Meehan), and there are hints of spontaneous break-ups over something that strikes him funny in the moment, but I suspect some of these have become stock responses to enliven what he must know to be an iffy script. Cory English, Beth Curry, Joanna Glushak, and Anne Horak try to create their own identities in roles
Not in Kansas anymore by Richard Dodds here have always been summer camps for gay boys. They’re called theater camps. There are girls there, too, of course, but love of show tunes is not as likely a sign of a budding lesbian. So are there theater camps for lesbians? I don’t know, but if there were, Left of Oz could easily be the big summer show put on by campers, counselors, administrators, and the old nurse. Occasionally saucy, but never salacious, and with large doses of blushing expressions of first love, this independently produced musical at the Ashby Stage (during the summer break in the Shotgun Players’ schedule) produced a boisterous response from the opening-night audience akin to forgiving fellow campers cheering on their pals. The reaction was often reminiscent of audience reactions to adolescent TV sitcoms, where a quick kiss or even a display of canned sentiment can
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Dorothy meets up with the hippiegirl Jazmin (Amelia Mae Paradise), whose exuberant drug use leads her to sing, in the scarecrow spirit, “If I
draw sighs and ahhs from the primed viewers in the studio audience. Left of Oz is largely the effort of Stephanie Reif, who is its writer, director, producer, and set designer, and even plays a pivotal role in what is a lesbian love story very loosely based on The Wizard of Oz. The advertising tag line is “Dorothy comes out,” but the parallels to the original story are so sporadically and arbitrarily invoked that Oz this isn’t. Yes, the first scene does takes place in a farmhouse in Kansas, where pig-tailed Dorothy (Sarah Mosby) lives with her Aunt Emma (Val Scott). But when Dorothy confesses to her aunt this strange tingling she feels around other women, Emma practically has her niece’s bags packed and on a bus to San Francisco before you can say L. Frank Baum. No need for this Dorothy to run away. Even so, it seems at first like the Oz characters will be invoked when
Dorothy (Sarah Mosby) finds love in San Francisco with a dance instructor (Tonilyn A. Sideco) in Left of Oz.
played respectively on film by Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, and Teri Garr, with English (as Igor) and Glushak (as Frau Blucher) succeeding best. Brad Oscar, who does okay with the Transylvania town’s Teutonic police inspector, gets a fine second-act cameo as the blind hermit who briefly befriends the monster. One of the gripes voiced by critics
when the original Broadway production opened was that it was over-produced. No such problems here, where most the sets are painted drops that waft with any breeze. They are as thin as the show itself.▼
Don’t Burn Out My Brain.” Then along comes butch dyke Kat (Helena J.), whose song “If I Were King of the City” has nothing to do with a cowardly lion’s lament. And when we get to Toni (Tonilyn A. Sideco), stand-in for the Tin Man hoping to find a heart, we are off the Oz track completely. They have no common
goal (to meet the Wizard, who can give them what they think they lack; there is no Wizard at all, in fact), and the scenes meander among local SF hangouts where the purpose often appears to be a chance for the semisynchronized dancers to move
Young Frankenstein will run through July 25 at the Golden Gate Theatre. Tickets are $30-$99. Call 512-7770 or go to www.shnsf.com.
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The Sicks sense by Robert Sokol eed a recipe for musical delight? Take four lawyers or activists, add high hair and high heels, sprinkle with Bette Midler, and strain all instruments. Leave the rest to the Kinsey Sicks, currently at the Rrazz Room for an extended run, who are guaranteed to shake things up. The group was, in fact, founded out of the experience of being the only drag queens at a Bette Midler concert. “Well, the only drag queens other than Bette,” remembers Ben Schatz, co-founding leader of the pack along with Irwin Keller. Possessed of a dry, quick wit not unlike Bruce Vilanch, Schatz quickly scopes out the parameters of the interview. “Is this going to be an article where you only pull selected quotes, or are you just going to transcribe everything? In other words, do I only have to be occasionally interesting or perpetually interesting?” he asks. “Oh, thank God,” he sighs when assured of the former. Back at Bette, he remembers that “it was New Year’s Eve, San Francisco, Bette – we figured, why not? We were very considerate drag queens. Even before we formally existed, we had a social conscience and removed our wigs when the lights went down, so as to not completely block the view of the people behind us. It was, however, the last socially conscious thing we’ve done!”
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He jests, of course. In fact, Schatz sees the Sicks as keeping a link to their activist roots. “The group is a reflection of who we are as people. Is the purpose of the group to be activist? No. Are those of us who write the lyrics activists at our core? Yes. So sometimes we have a special message, and sometimes it’s just raunchy or silly. The key to the Kinsey Sicks is that we have something to displease almost everybody. Have you had the misfortune of seeing us?”
run at the Las Vegas Hilton. On screen, they made their debut in Kinsey Sicks: I Wanna Be a Republican (2006), and were the subject of the documentary Kinsey Sicks: Almost Famous (2008). The original 1993 group included Schatz (Rachel), Keller (Winnie), Abatto Aviles (Begoña), Maurice Kelly (Trixie), and Jerry Friedman (Vaselina). A year in, Aviles died of AIDS, and his character was not replaced. In 1999, Vaselina gave way to
Rachel is a kind of exorcism. She’s the combination of everything I don’t want to be in my life and everything I most want to be. There was always a very, very, very, very bad girl in me.” – Ben Schatz Lots of people across the land have indeed seen and heard “America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet!” They’ve recorded several CDs, the most recent being the basis of their current show, and have toured 40 out of 50 states in the Union. They appeared off-Broadway in Dragapella! – a copyrighted term, Schatz advises – and in an extended
Trampolina when Friedman retired, and Chris Dilley expanded on the character. Currently, Jeff Manabat and Spencer Brown fill the respective heels of Trixie and Trampolina. The characters are the core of the group, and each is pretty well-defined, though Schatz advises, “The word pretty cannot be used when applied to Rachel in any context.
JR Robeck
‘Kinsey Sicks’ Ben Schatz sees humor everywhere
The Kinsey Sicks, ‘America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet.’
Rachel is very defined, but she sure as hell ain’t pretty!” “Rachel is a kind of exorcism. She’s the combination of everything I don’t want to be in my life and everything I most want to be. Her essential purpose is to give Ben a fighting chance to be socially appropriate. Before I had Rachel, I would just go places that people who pretended to be respectable simply should not. I was never the buttoned-down, respectable, homosexual lawyer type, though I ‘played it on TV.’ There was always a very, very, very, very bad girl in me that I was fighting to keep from jumping out at any moment. Now she has her place to jump out.” Before he adopted juris prudence, Schatz did have some youthful theatrical yearnings. “I did tons of theater,” he says, “but I felt that I was not talented enough to make it. It was only later that I discovered that talent was not necessary to be successful as a performer, which was
a great relief.” Still, he deferred to the calling of AIDS activism in the 1980s and early 90s. Now, he says, “The Kinseys give me the opportunity to combine my love of theatre, of making people laugh, and of making music with the chance to shake up the status quo. I’ve always loved to push the envelope, and the Kinseys are a much more effective means of doing that than being a talking head.” With their 20th anniversary just a few years off, Schatz looks ahead, but cautiously. “This is our Sweet Sixteen year, and we never thought it would last this long. I still pinch myself.” All he asks now is that everyone “say the name of the current show three times out loud to their boss or loved one!”▼ The Kinsey Sicks in Each Hit & I at the Rrazz Room. July 6-18. Times vary. Tickets ($35-$40): (866) 4683399 or www.therrazzroom.com
Songs of innocence & experience by Tim Pfaff ’ll be bargaining with the devil for my Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recordings as I make my way into the next life, but I’ll give up the one of Benjamin Britten’s Songs and Proverbs of William Blake if I get to keep the new recording of the cycle by Gerald Finley and Julius Drake (Hyperion).
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Fischer-Dieskau, with Britten at the piano, made their recording of the cycle shortly after giving the 1965 Aldeburgh Festival premiere. But essential as that recording is, the great German baritone’s English never quite cut to the core of Blake’s uncompromising texts. Finley’s native English crosses that hurdle easily, but what makes this set
a consistent marvel is the seemingly infinite imagination with which he can characterize a song (in any language, as his other great recordings with the unbeatable musical partnership of Julius Drake make clear). The consuming darkness of Blake’s vision coupled with the simple fact that these seven poems and the terse proverbs that precede them unfold in a single, uninterrupted musical stream only increase the daunting task of giving the songs an individual profile. Finley and Drake do just that, with the seeming artlessness that is the summit of the songmakers’ art. The poisoned apple that lurks – like the one in the Eden story – at the pivot-point of this cycle, in “A Poison Tree,” is the perfect symbol of the trembling innocence and mostly bitter experience at the core of Blake’s “prophecy.” Finley’s chilling story of the wrath that infuses the fruit that kills the foe because it shone – and “he knew that it was mine” – in five minutes tells a twisting tale that foreshadows its death-dealing climax without once flinching. Later in the disc, the pair’s performance of a setting of the same text by
UPCOMING EVENTS IN SAN FRANCISCO! Up Your Alley/ Dore Alley Fair
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Britten when he was in his early 20s tells another tale, of the composer’s gift and how he grew it. In “The Fly,” the off-kilter music for piano and voice that so vividly evokes the flight of a fly builds, over the song’s twominute span, to the poet’s crazed recognition, which Britten repeats: “For I dance/ and drink and sing:/ Till some blind hand/ Shall brush my wing.” Then the prophecy: “If thought is life/ And strength and breath/ And the want/ Of thought is death;/ Then am I/ A happy fly/ if I live,/ Or if I die.” Finley and Drake make these instants Blakean “eternities in an hour.” They stretch the music taut between the poles of the opening “London”: “[I] mark in every face I meet/ Marks of weakness, marks of woe,” and “Every Night and every Morn,” in which some to misery are born, and some to sweet delight. And it holds. On either side of this unsparing cycle are sets of Britten’s wondrous folk-song arrangements, the five songs of Tit for Tat, and some unforgettable miscellaneous gems. “I wonder as I wander” and “Greensleeves” hold an aching beauty in Finley’s direct, unfussy performances of them. Elsewhere, things are loftier or in higher spirits. The moment at the end of the second verse of “Tom Bowling,” when on the repeat of “for Tom is gone aloft,” Finley slips effortlessly into head voice, might wring a sudden tear. And if “The Deaf Woman’s Courtship,” which Britten wrote in 1952 for Kathleen Ferrier and Peter Pears to sing as a comic duet, and is the equivalent of a hilarious bar story in a minute and a half, is not an LOL moment for you, I’m sorry. Finley sings both parts, in two unbelievably
distinct and distinctly unbaritonal voices, and hilarity prevails. Without it, and the equally outrageous “Bird Scarer’s Song” that ends the disc with a decidedly unsung “Ha! Ha!,” the CD just might be unbearable. I’ve waited years for this opportunity to put in a plug for a DVD I stumbled on in San Francisco two years ago. If, like me, you think Britten’s late, made-for-TV opera Owen Wingrave is underrated, get the DVD of the Margaret Williams movie version of it (Kultur). Finley’s Owen is phenomenal, and the DVD also includes the invaluable Britten documentary The Hidden Heart. Three times now, recordings of the Britten string quartets have struck me as “the last word” on them. I finally just had to submit to the power of the Belcea Quartet’s CDs of the complete Britten quartet music. But just now the rapidly emerging Elias Quartet has done one better with its ravishing accounts of the Second and Third Quartets and the Three Divertimenti (Sonimage). These vibrant young musicians bow to no one in their penetration of this music and its architecture, but what they offer alongside the intensity and profundity of it all is its intrinsic sensuality. They play Britten with unashamed, transfixing beauty.▼
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Bettye Lane
FILM
A patron of the Stonewall Inn confronts New York police, as seen in Stonewall Uprising.
Rising up, righteously! New documentary ‘Stonewall Uprising’ opens in SF by David Lamble e didn’t have the manpower, and the manpower for the other side was like a real war. And that’s what it was, a war.” – Seymour Pine, New York City Police Commanding officer the night of the raid on the Stonewall Inn. “This was the Rosa Parks moment: gay people stood up and said, ‘No.’ And once that happened, the whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people started to crumble.” – Lucian Truscott IV, one of two Village Voice reporters to witness the first night of Stonewall. “In the civil rights movement we ran from the police, in the peace movement we ran from the police. That night the police ran from us, the lowliest of the low, and it was fantastic!” – an unidentified participant, interviewed in the new documentary Stonewall Uprising. 1969: it was a hell of a year! Let’s see: Richard Nixon gets possession of the atomic football and ratchets up the war in Vietnam, prompting an escalating series of demonstrations, including the first candlelight vigils; the Woodstock Music and Art Fair succeeded and failed on such a colossal scale that for three mad days it was New York’s secondlargest city; acid rock, most particularly trippy Midnight shows by the Jefferson Airplane, was showcased weekly at Manhattan’s Fillmore East; what was possibly the worst professional baseball team ever, “the amazing” New York Mets, won the World Series; man walked on the moon, an event that is probably the most emblematic for filmmakers trying to capture the essence of that year; and oh yes, thousands of gay men and women from every possible spectrum on the gender scale rebelled, rioted and taunted New York’s Finest for six days in and around the Stonewall Inn in Sheridan Square. As a 25-year-old New Yorker, I was vitally involved in the first five top stories of the year, and profoundly ignorant of the last, Stonewall. A powerful new documentary opening Friday at Landmark Theatres, Stonewall Uprising goes a long way to explaining why this news I could have used wouldn’t reach me for several years, almost like light
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cameras. Describing the unadulterated pleasure of razzing the cops with a conga-like dance formation, a gray-haired Stonewall veteran fights back tears. “It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport, and I stood up, I was proud, I was a man.” Stonewall demonstrator Jerry Hoose describes why this Mafia-run bar became a community center for queerdom’s dispossessed. “The open gay people who hung out on the streets were basically the have-nothing-to-lose types, which I was. A lot of them had been thrown out of their families, and that crowd between Howard Johnson’s and Mama’s Chicken Rib was like the basic crowd of the gay community at that time in the Village. You got to remember the Stonewall bar was just down the street from there. It was right in the center of where we all were.” In his book, Carter asserts that the uprising at Stonewall was neither accidentally nor coincidental, but represented a perverse kind of inevitability based on historical forces that had been building for years and that would find their logical expression at the historic center of queer in the heart of – Lucian Truscott IV life, America’s bohemia, where nine subway lines, a commuter railroad and the grapevine for describing the changes rocking the nament.” In 1966, the legendary Mike tion in the 60s all intersected. As Wallace spoke those words on what Carter notes. San Francisco had exwas then America’s most trusted perienced potentially equally signifibroadcast news service. Three years cant episodes of queer rage at later, Lucian Truscott IV would get Compton’s Cafeteria and American into trouble for language in a Village Hall, but these were largely ignored Voice article that was generally posby the agenda-setting media like the itive in tone towards the Stonewall fabled New York Times, which in demonstrations. “I famously used the word fag in those days promised “All the News the lead sentence, I said, ‘The forces That’s Fit To Print.” Ultimately, of faggotry,’ and the first gay power Stonewall Uprising, employing an demonstration, to my knowledge, amazing collage of archival photos was against my story, and The Village and stock film, demonstrates how we as a community came to be conVoice started using the word gay.” sidered fit for print, or ready for That same week, gay-liberation proprime time. testors seriously considered burning The filmmakers do unfortunately down the Voice’s Greenwich Village make at least one confusing narrative offices. jump-cut: conveying the impression Drawing on David Carter’s that New York’s historic 1970 gay meticulously documented book rights parade somehow magically Stonewall sorting through the myths evolved out of the embers of that have attached themselves to Stonewall, without detailing the queer America’s Boston Tea Party, messy process in which almost-warfilmmakers Kate David and David ring factions, the Gay Liberation Heilbroner let the words of the men Front and the more moderate Gay Acand women who fought back that tivist Alliance, wrestled over the agennight tell a story that more than da for this newly-born people.▼ compensates for the absence of TV from a distant planet. The first act of Stonewall Uprising illustrates the downright Orwellian nature and intensity of anti-queer propaganda emanating from virtually all media organs pre-1969, culminating in an infamous 1966 CBS News TV special that used hidden cameras to capture gay men having sexual encounters in public restrooms, hinting that these sad creatures posed a threat to the moral fiber of the nation almost equal to that of Godless Communism. “Two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear. The CBS News survey indicates that sentiment is against permitting homosexual relationships between consenting adults without legal punish-
This was the Rosa Parks moment: gay people stood up and said, ‘No.’ And once that happened, the whole house of cards that was the oppression of gay people started to crumble.”
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 8 July 2010
FILM
Queer eye for the gore fest by David Lamble an Francisco’s feisty homegrown horror fest Another Hole in the Head returns with three queer-based if not necessarily queerpositive bashes that should please those thirsting for both off-beat blood sports and weird film energy. Thirty-two film programs play the Roxie Cinema and the Viz Theatre (July 8-29), while a summer music fest of hot indie bands unfolds (July 9-13) at the Bottom of the Hill and Thee Parkside. Find more info at www.sfindie.com. Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives Israel Luna puts a party-down North
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Texas cast through their blood-shedding paces in a soap opera of trannies in peril that’s all the more fun the less sense it makes. Beginning with a chatty Cathy first act of queen dish, switching to a nasty ambush of the girls in a creepy warehouse, taking time out for an absurdist Zen subplot that goes nowhere, and finally climaxing in a buckets-of-gore showdown in a suburban kitchen where a sexy bad guy is killed about 42 ways to Sunday, this cheesy, way beyond camp “transploitation” snuff film has a truckload of chills and giggles. (Roxie, 7/22; Viz, 7/23) Satan Hates You On a postagestamp budget, James Felix McKenney outshines the flashier, over-
hyped The Killer Inside Me. Marc (Don Wood) is an aging bar-fly guymagnet whose habits of drinking like a fish conceal a murderous rage. As with Casey Affleck’s boyish brute in Killer, we are totally blindsided the first time Marc pummels a male trick. Then the pattern becomes all too predictable. McKenney mixes and matches Marc’s homicidal bouts with bits of low-rent loony comedy: Marc simply tosses his stiffs into an alley dumpster as if he were in sync with the local recycling program; a group of nerdy cute guys spends the entire movie working out the wacky rules of a Dungeons and Dragons-like board game; a pair of fey demons root for the characters’ eternal damnation; and a naïve young tart, Wendy (Christine Spencer), allows herself to be gang-banged in men’s restroom stalls while searching for answers to the riddles of the cosmos from an avuncular
SF IndieFest
‘Another Hole in the Head Film Fest’ highlights
Ladies get revenge in Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives.
TV preacher (Angus Scrimm). Marc and Wendy’s paths to salvation are on the kind of collision course only horror fans could appreciate. McKenney’s thesis that childhood religious indoctrination can sow the seeds for mayhem is driven home by Scrimm’s hypnotic prophet, who seems to have wandered out of The Matrix. (Roxie, 7/10, 13)
Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre A squeaky-clean African American queer-boy hero and a devious Japanese girl heroine make this compendium of bad Icelandic whale jokes tolerable. If you want a tastier slice of Icelandic camp with a Japanese filling, rent Fridrik Thor Fridricksson’s 1995 Jim Jarmusch spoof Cold Fever. (Viz, 7/25, 28)▼
Rolling in reissues by Gregg Shapiro isintegration (Fiction/Elektra/Rhino) is the perfect name for The Cure’s 1989 album, now available as an expanded three-disc reissue, because shortly after its release the band’s sound began to morph away from their trademark new wave/goth style. By the time that Disintegration hit the shelves, The Cure had amassed a considerable mainstream following due in no small part to the rise of college radio. Songs from Disintegration including “Pictures of You,” “Lovesong,” “Lullaby” and “Fascination Street” went a long way in cementing The Cure’s place in the history of 1980s music. It also signaled the end of an era in terms of what was yet to come. But there’s plenty to revel in on the reissue, including a 20-track disc of very late-80s rarities (demos, rough mixes and rehearsal tracks), and a third disc, Entreat Plus, that expands on the 1991 live Entreat recording. All in all, a must-have. As it stood in its original 1972 twoLP set, the expanded, remastered and reissued Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones Records/UMe) was as close to perfect as the Stones could get. Song such as “Tumbling Dice,” “Happy,” “Torn and Frayed,” “Rip this Joint” and “Shine a Light” are regarded as among the band’s finest work. Almost 30 years after its release, Exile on Main Street maintains its timelessness. The 10 bonus tracks on the second disc expand the legend of the original album, as well as the band itself. These unreleased old songs, and even “older” vocals (recorded last year), in no way detract from the initial product, and “Plunder My Soul,” “Following the River” and the alternate take of “Soul Survivor” (featuring lead vocals by Keith Richards) go a long way in enhancing the Exile experience. The expanded (by double!) reissue of Now I Got Worry (Major Domo/Shout! Factory) by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion gets off to a rip-roaring vocal-cord-shredding start with “Skank,” setting the tone for the muddy blues/punk assault to follow. Grungy in the truest sense of the word, this is music meant to be listened to in boots for treading through the sexy sludge. Only JSBX could be responsible for the tantalizing trauma of “Fuck Shit Up,” “2 Kindsa Love,” “Chicken Dog” and the Rolling Stones-esque “Dynamite Lover.” The 22-track Dirty Shirt Rock n Roll: The First 10 Years (Major Domo/Shout! Factory) compilation should do the trick to complete your JSBX fix. In honor of Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday, the four-disc box set Good Rockin’ Tonight (RCA/Legacy) traces
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The King’s career over the course of 100 classic cuts. It’s a thorough and thoroughly enjoyable collection that follows Presley’s 20-odd year career, and celebrates his immeasurable contributions to the world of rock and roll. Further festivities come with a pair of reissues, the 40th anniversary expanded reissues of From Elvis in Memphis (which contains the Back in Memphis follow-up album and includes the hits “In the Ghetto,” “Kentucky Rain” and “Suspicious Minds”) and On Stage (both on RCA/Legacy), recorded in February 1970. One of the odder musical trends of the 1990s involved chanting monks. For example, the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos topped the charts at one point during the decade. Shortly before that occurred, electro group Enigma had a hit with “Sadeness,” which combined electronic instrumentation with Gregorian chanting. The triple-disc set The Platinum Collection (EMI/Virgin) compiles that track along with “Return to Innocence,” “Mea Culpa,” “Principles of Lust” and “Gravity of Love,” and a dozen remixes on the second disc, along with a third disc, The Lost Ones. Currently on tour with friend and occasional collaborator James Taylor, Carole King is feted with the doubledisc hit-and-miss compilation The Essential Carole King (Ode/Epic/Legacy). A definite improvement over the spiteful Songs of Long Ago set, disc one, The Singer, features the Grammy Award-winning artist performing her biggest hits from Tapestry (“It’s Too Late,” “I Feel the Earth Move”) and her other Ode albums (“Jazzman,” “Sweet Seasons,” “Only Love Is Real”), as well as earlier (“It Might As Well Rain Until September”) and later (“Now and Forever”) selections. In addition to overlooking her Capitol and Atlantic recordings, the set excludes the hit “Believe in Humanity.” Even more peculiar is the second disc of cover versions of King songs that were hits for others, including “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by The Shirelles, “The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva, “One Fine Day” by The Chiffons, “Pleasant Valley Sunday” by The Monkees and “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” by Aretha Franklin. Ideally this an-
thology would have been more “essential” with another (third) disc of King’s performances. A couple of very different piano men are the subjects of the two-disc sets The Definitive Vince Guaraldi (Fantasy) and The Tom Lehrer Collection (Shout! Factory). In spite of having established himself as a serious jazz musician and composer (he wrote “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” included here), Guaraldi will eternally be linked to the music he composed for the animated Peanuts specials of the 1960s. Nine of the songs on the second disc, including the previously unreleased “Blues for Peanuts,” and “Linus and Lucy,” “Great Pumpkin Waltz” and “Christmastime Is Here” are drawn from the musical period. Harvard-educated humorist and songwriter Lehrer remains an unparalleled musical satirist, achieving his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 60s. Brilliant songs such as “The Elements,” “New Math,” “National Brotherhood Week” and “The Vatican Rag” helped to establish him as one of the funniest and most original comic minds of his generation. The CD in the Lehrer compilation features 26 of his most cherished tunes, including a few he wrote for the 1970s PBS program The Electric Company, while the DVD features a 1967 Oslo concert and music videos.▼
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TV
Reality bites in the summertime by Victoria A. Brownworth ummer, and the viewing is sleazy. Well, not all of it, but summer programming does lean more toward the down-and-dirty than the more proper fall season and the prim spring season. Apparently we feel more vicariously vicious as viewers in high heat. If we can’t grill a potential US Supreme Court nominee (“Why do you refuse to acknowledge you’re queer?” “Do you think there’s something wrong with being gay?”) or make demands of a BP exec (“Before you is a plate of Gulf seafood. Please eat it for the Committee. Yes, the oysters, too,”) or ask Gov. Schwarzenegger or Gov. Christie if you can stay at their house now that yours is in foreclosure, then watching Snooki get smacked again or Vienna get publicly dumped by Jake is the next best thing. Well, maybe not the next best thing, but definitely among the top five. Reality shows in all their Bridezilla -meets-Jersey Shore bitch-slapping are now at full throttle – and we do mean throttle. The reality season begins in earnest in June for a reason. Take the interactive, 24/7 livestreaming, live-show “house” debacles where there’s always a despicable, back-stabbing villain, or several. The most popular are Big Brother and The Real World, which always have the requisite bitter and/or angry queer among their denizens. (How do 21-year-olds become so angry and bitter?) Big Brother is now in its 12th season, which is hard to fathom, especially given the irritating host Julie Chen, who is coincidentally or not the wife of CBS president Les Moonves. Chen is like nails on a chalkboard for hours at a stretch. The Real World is in its 24th season, and has been in so many cities that this season is Back to New Orleans. Not that we mind a second trip to our old hometown, but seriously, no other city would take you? The Real World just debuted June 30, but here’s a tidbit about what happened during the filming of the show, according to Nola.com, a New Orleans news site: “On March 1, 2010, New Orleans’ 2nd District police were summoned to the house by cast member Ryan Leslie, who complained that his housemate Preston Roberson-Charles, with whom he had an argument three weeks earlier, urinated on his toothbrush, and used it to scrub in the inside of a toilet bowl, causing a subsequent sore throat and fever experienced that required Leslie to go to the hospital on February 21, where he was treated for a viral infection. According to Leslie, Roberson-Charles previously called Leslie a ‘faggot,’ and threatened to take some action against Leslie’s belongings. Leslie learned that Roberson-Charles had soiled his toothbrush only after Leslie had been using it for two weeks. “Police confiscated Leslie’s toothbrush as evidence, but did not take a statement by Roberson-Charles. The police report did not indicate
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through Douglas Caldwell’s spotty neo-retro choreography. There may be no wizard, but for dubious dramatic reasons, there are equivalents of the Good and Wicked Witches (Stephanie Reif and Adrienne Seltzer, respectively), who fuss over Dorothy’s ruby slippers. In the case of Seltzer’s character, named here the Temptress, the involvement is so awkwardly staged and enacted that I actually wondered if an understudy hadn’t suddenly stepped into the role. Overall, Reif ’s production is
Snooki of MTV’s Jersey Shore.
Carson Kressley, token queer and token male judge on True Beauty.
whether the police viewed video footage shot in the house while investigating the complaint. Executive producer Jim Johnston declined to comment. Officer Garry Flot, a New Orleans Police Department spokesman, opined that Leslie may have merely wanted the incident documented, as the police would have likely issued a municipal summons to both roommates in order for a judge to determine if a crime had been committed, had Leslie wanted to press charges. Flot further suggested that the incident may have been contrived to generate publicity for the series.” Memo to self: Keep toothbrush on person at all times. Expect to see a lot of “faggot” footage this season. These two despise each other. Meanwhile, watch and wonder if these people had any friends before they landed in their TV abodes. These shows are like TLC’s tantrum-fest Toddlers and Tiaras, with (titular) grown-ups. Who pees on someone’s toothbrush and then scrubs the toilet with it? And who doesn’t notice that their toothbrush has been used to scrub a toilet? Talk about a rim job. These shows make the nastiness on Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List, with the red-headed heir to the Joan Rivers bitchy comedy crown, and Hell’s Kitchen, with ever-vicious top chef Gordon Ramsay, seem tame by comparison. Both shows are perilously addictive and routinely queer, and there is no peeing on toothbrushes. We know we shouldn’t find Griffin’s humor funny or Ramsay’s verbal assaults and food-smashing entertaining, and yet we do. So much so that we are thrilled that Ramsay has a second show debuting right after Hell’s Kitchen ends in a few more weeks. Our new reality addiction also has a queer edge and contestants. Work of Art: The Next Great Artist was the brain-child of Sarah Jessica Parker, and is mesmerizing in both a good way and a bad way. We’re not sure why everyone is now a performance artist,
rudimentary, with what amounts to a sheet on a clothesline serving to mask noisy scene changes, but Reif ’s songs, while not always germane, have listenable melodies. The story, though, is a contraption of bad jokes, improbable coincidences, gooey romance, and a time and place that reflect no clear grounding point. But the ending is happy, happier even than in The Wizard of Oz, and it left the audience with a big smile and a taste for toasted marshmallows.▼ Left of Oz will run through July 18 at the Ashby Stage, Berkeley. Tickets are $25. Ticket info at www.leftofoz.com.
from DC or the Jersey shore) into divas, “drag queen style.” Alumnae of RuPaul’s Drag Race will be on hand to help fluff and fit. Pandora Boxx, JuJubee, Ongina, Nina Flowers – they’ll all be there, honey. This will be nip without the tuck. According to RuPaul, “Each episode will feature three women going to drag school, and they will be evaluated based on the ‘Drag Point Average.’ There is a winner each episode, but everyone’s a winner at Draguation Day.” Okay then, set that DVR. This will be at least as high on the camp-o-meter as when Carson Kressley made fat straight women look good naked – because who knows fat naked straight women better than a flaming queen?
since we think representational art still has its place, but after one episode, we guarantee you’ll be signing up for ondemand. It’s that fabulous. We aren’t sure how Queer Eye‘s Carson Kressley (stop plumping those lips, dear, we know what you can do with them, but soon you’ll look like Larry King’s wife!) decided he should be the token queer and token male judge on True Beauty, but he does seem to love it, and we love him. He’s the only thing that makes this show worth watching. We do wonder, Psychic chic however, how men so If you like your reality desperately in love tinged with the paranorwith their own looks mal, and who doesn’t?, the as the male contesbest place to view is SyFy tants are on this show (don’t blame us for the can claim to be hetridiculous name change). erosexual. SyFy is debuting Speaking of rethree paranormalality-TV hosts L AVENDER T UBE based reality shows claiming to be het(yes, it is an oxyerosexual, Larry moron, but bear with us) on July 15. King dropped the bomb that after Mary Knows Best is a must-watch, being on TV since it was Cinescope, even if it turns out to be a train-wreck. he’s leaving his show, and he wants Here’s the scenario: Noted psychic Ryan Seacrest to take his place. Fill in (how does one become a noted psyyour own joke here. Or several. chic? By managing to fool all of the Speaking of screaming queens, people all of the time?) Mary Occhino RuPaul will have a new reality show believes all three of her children have starting July 19 on Logo. This show inherited her psychic ability. (Wait, is a vamp on Queer Eye, with RuPaul doesn’t CBS already have this show, as a diva trainer. (Let’s face it: nothcalled Medium?) Occhino thinks one ing was more amazing than his is a paranormal investigator, another dressing up as both Barack and is a reluctant psychic and the third is a Michelle Obama and having the skeptic. The show focuses on the relaphotos spliced together. Of course, tionship between her and her psychic he looked better than both of them, children. Wow. Why aren’t the fundabut we’d expect nothing less from mentalists boycotting this? such a diva.) So imagine RuPaul The other two reality shows are transforming “ordinary women” Paranormal Investigators, which SyFy (translation: frumpy housewives not
says “profiles intriguing cases of supernatural activity” (are there cases of supernatural activity that aren’t intriguing?), and Ghost Hunters Academy, which is, incredibly, a competition featuring “aspiring spirit-chasers engaging in exciting weekly challenges.” We want to see Gordon Ramsay on that show. We think a better title might have been From Hogwarts to Hogwash, but no one asked us. One reality show that is seriously impressive is ABC’s Boston Med, which tracks three hospitals in the Boston metro area. The situations are real, of course, so if you’re squeamish, this is not for you. And also, often, heart-breaking. But it is fascinating to see how hospitals work, what surgeons, residents and interns do hour by hour, and how capricious, sometimes, the line between life and death can be. Full of real pathos and dark humor, this is Miami Medical without the romance. Although we have to say, it’s a pretty great-looking staff at these hospitals. Finally, our favorite contest-based reality show has been America’s Got Talent since it debuted seven seasons ago. It has the best host, Mariah Carey’s talented young hubby Nick Cannon, who strikes just the right tone; it has the requisite vicious Brit judge in Piers Morgan; Sharon Osbourne is the glamour; and it had the goofy American in David Hasselhoff. But the Hoff left the show at the end of last season – amicably, he just was over it – and was replaced by Howie “Deal or No Deal” Mandel. The synergy among the previous three had been so perfect we weren’t sure a new person would work, but Mandel is pitch-perfect, and the transition has been seamless. Last week’s final contestant from the Portland, Oregon auditions was a 75-year-old Gertrude Stein lookalike named Sally Cohn. Her talent was hand-whistling, and we admit, she was good at it, although handwhistling and the licking of the hands prior to doing it is not our thing. Cohn performed admirably, but she also had a banter with the judges that was infectious. The crowd loved her, and in the course of her performance she came out as a lesbian. (There’s no real point to a joke about the licking, is there?) She got put through to the Las Vegas finals. Mandel noted, “I need to see more of you.” She was pretty fabulous. (Check her out at NBC.com.) America’s Got Talent often has queer contestants – there have been several thus far this season – but this is the first coming-out tale on the show. It was memorable and moving in a woman of 75, and caused Osbourne to get to her feet and applaud. So, reality doesn’t always have to bite. Stay tuned.▼
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 8 July 2010
Bruce Vilanch at One Night Only, Mon.
OUT& ABOUT Joe Goode Performance Group
Fri 9 >>
Blackbird @ Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory
Deja view
Seth Eisen’s fascinating and funny musical cabaret tour through queer cabaret history, from speakeasy singers to Klaus Nomi and Sylvester. $20-$25. 8pm. Thu-Sat (some Sun). Thru July 10. 1519 Mission St. www.eyezen.org www.mcvf.org
Cherry Zonkowski @ The Marsh Hilarious solo show, Reading My Dad’s Porn and French-Kissing the Dog, about growing up in Texas, San Francisco sex parties, marzipan pigs and more. Adults only! $15-$50. (800) 838-3006. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru July 17. 1062 Valencia St. at22nd. www.themarsh.org
Chuck Drees @ Magnet
1 by Jim Provenzano 2 ometimes, a show or exhibit is even better the second time around. A classic musical gets a new take, or a new setting makes for a fresh look at a classic. If you missed Joe Goode Performance Group at the Old Mint Building, you’re in luck. The acclaimed environmental dance-theatre work Traveling Light returns by popular demand. With four stories in separate interconnected rooms, it’s amazing and worthy of multiple viewings. $34$44. Wed-Sun 8pm. Fri & Sat 10pm. Thru Aug. 1. 88 Fifth St. at Mission. www.joegoode.org Here’s a fun rerun. Alison Arngrim, the former child star who played Mellie Oleson, the mean girl in Little House on the Prairie, performs Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, her comic tellAlison Arngrim all about child stars and TV land, at The Rrazz Room. $20-$25. 2-drink min. 10:15pm, July 9 & 10. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 468-3399. www.TheRrazzRoom.com The Kinsey Sicks, America’s finest Dragapella quartet, finally reCowardly turns home for their first extendedThings run show in years. Enjoy the camp hilarity and a cappella parody tunes. Some shows share proceeds with Out in the Bay radio show. You’ll laugh your wig off. $35. 2-drink min. 8pm. Thru July 18. The Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 468-3399. www.TheRrrazz Room.com Noel Coward’s last-century tunes gets a remodeled touch-up in Cowardly Things at New Conservatory Theatre, Cindy Goldfield and Scrumbly (Pearls Over Shanghai) Koldewyn’s duo cabaret show. $20-$28. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru July 31. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org If you didn’t get enough of Andy Bell at last month’s Pride celebration, and I admit it, I can never have too much Andy Bell music, see Erasure-esque at Café DuNord, Friday, July 9. The local cover band performs classic hits by the British duo. Sing Blue Silver, a Duran Duran tribute band, opens. $10-$12. 9:30pm. 2170 Market St. 861-5016. www.cafedunord.com The Fantastiks is fifty years old. Yep, fifty! But the new staging by SF Playhouse offers a new interpetation of the classic OffBroadway musical about young love and interfering parents. Set in a future post-apocalyptic world, the two dads’ desperation to have their kids hook up takes on a different Trauma Flintstone perspective. $30-$50. Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sat 3pm. hosts Bijou Thru Sept. 4. 533 Sutter St. at Powell. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org Speaking of old musicals, Bijou, the eclectic live cabaret showcase celebrating five years, pays tribute to gay musical composer Jerry Herman, with Eliza Leoni, Conrad Frank (Katya Smirnoff Skyye in a rare non-drag performance), Carly Ozard, Ben Cohen, and hostess Trauma Flintstone. $5. Sunday, July 11, 7pm. Martuni’s, 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.dragat martunis.com ▼
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Exhibit of haunting landscape paintings. Artist’s reception July 9, 8pm. Exhibit thru July. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org
Comedy Ballet @ The Garage Dark Porch Theatre ensemble’s hybrid dance theatre work. $15-$25. Thru July 18. 975 Howard St. 518-1517. www.975howard.com
Cultural Encounters @ de Young Museum Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo presents local muralists and graffiti artists, with live music by Audiobraille, sound sculpture in the garden and more, all at the monthly first Fridays evening partystyle events. 6pm-9pm. Free. Golden Gate Park. www.deyoungmuseum.org
The Kids are All Right @ Century 9 Cinema
Tokyoscope Talk @ Viz Cinema
Patrick Macias discusses the pop phenomenon of Japanese superheroes like Ultraman with August Ragone (author, Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters). $10. 7pm. 1746 Post St. www.newpeopleworld.com
Travesties @ Forest Meadows Ampitheatre, San Rafael Marin Shakespeare’s outdoor theatre production of Tom Stoppard’s Tony Awardwinning spoof of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. $20-$35. Fri-Sun 4pm & 8pm. Sun 5pm. 1475 Grand Ave. Dominican University campus. 499-4488. www.marinshakespeare.org
Sat 10 >> Alan Cumming @ Castro Theatre
Everybody’s favorite Tony Award-winning Scottish actor-singer performs his solo show, I Bought a Blue Car Today. $85$37.50. 8pm. 429 Castro St. 863-0611. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com
Another Hole in the Head @ Roxie, Viz Theaters Three weeks of new and cult classic horror, science fiction and fantasy movies, including the 1984 colorized rock-scored version of Metropolis, the hilarious slasher parody Tucker & Dave vs. Evil), plus fun opening and closing parties. $10 each- $150 full pass. Thru July 29. Roxie: 3117 16th St. Viz Cinema: New People World, 1746 Post St. 820-3907. www.sfindiefest.com
Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi
Two teenaged children conceived by artificial insemination get the notion to seek out their birth father and introduce him into the family life that their two mothers (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) have built for them. 835 Market St. www.filminfocus.com
Musical comedy revue, now in its 35th year, with ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$80. Wed, Thu 8pm. Fri, Sat 6:30, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 5pm. (Beer/wine served; cash only). 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd. 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com
Left of Oz @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley
Birth of Impressionism @ de Young Museum
Lighthearted musical comedy parody of The Wizard of Oz includes lesbian and gay characters helping Dorothy find San Francisco, and true love; written and composed by Stephanie Reif. $25-$50. Fri-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru July 18. 1901 Ashby Ave. (800) 838-3006. www.leftofoz.com
Masterpieces from the Musee d’Orsay includes approximately 100 paintings from the Musee d’Orsay’s permanent collection. $10-$25 (free/members). Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.deyoungmuseum.org
The New Century @ New Conservatory Theatre West Coast premiere of Paul Rudnick’s gay comedy. $22 - $34. Thu-Sat 8pm; Sun 2pm. Thru July 11. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level, near Market St. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org
Piaf: Love Conquers All @ Eureka Theatre Naomi Emmerson stars as French chanteuse Edith Piaf in the Off-Broadway musical hit. $25-$36. Thu-Sat 8pm. Also Sat 3pm 215 Jackson St. Thru Aug. 7. (800) 838-3006. www.tonepoetproductions.com
The Real Americans @ The Marsh
Calder to Warhol @ SF MOMA The first public exhibit of some of the works collected by the Fishers (The GAP empire owners), with some pivotal works by Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Chuck Close and others. Other exhibits include visually striking contemporary works. Free-$18. Thru Sept. 19. FriTue 10am-5:45pm. Thu til 8:45pm. 151 Third St. at Mission. 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org
Country Western Dance @ Humanist Hall, Oakland Dance and social event for women, transpersons and their friends, with lessons, music, a buffet and free parking. $5-$10. 7:15pm-11pm. 390 27th St. at Broadway.
Little Shop of Horrors, Rocky Horror Picture Show @ Ohlone College Screening of Howard Ashman’s gay alien plant musical (8:15pm) and the transsexual alien rock musical cult classic (10:30pm). Costumes encouraged. $10. 43600 Mission Blvd., Fremont. (510) 6596031. www.smithcenter.com
Local Wonder @ Tenderloin Community Gallery Art by Tenderloin artists challenging stereotypes about local residents. Fri-Sat 12pm-3pm. Thru Aug. 31. 134A Golden Gate Ave. at Jones. www.nom-tlcbd.org
More Glitter - Less Bitter @ Electric Works Gallery Exhibit of fascinating photographs by Daniel Nicoletta from 1975 to the present, including candid photos of Harvey Milk, behind-the-scenes images from the film Milk, and sexy glam portraits of the cast of Pearls From Shanghai. Through July 10, 2010. 130 8th St. 626-5496. www.sfelectricworks.com
Pastor Tom Show @ KUSF Dr. Tom Polcari’s LGBT music and talk show. 4pm. Weekly on 90.3 FM.
Pearls Over Shanghai @ The Hypnodrome Thrillpeddlers’ revival of the comic mock operetta by Link Martin and Richard Koldewyn, performed by the gender-bending Cockettes decades ago, and loosely based on the 1926 play The Shanghai Gesture. $30-$69. 8pm. Extended, Fri & Sat thru August. 575 10th. (800) 838-3006. www.thrillpeddlers.com
Point Break Live @ Metreon Action Theater Ridiculous live staged version of the surferbank robber movie, where a chosen audience member plays Keanu Reeves’ role with cue cards. Warning; wear cheap clothes. Rain tarps provided, but you will get wet and/or fake-bloody. $25. 9pm. Fri & Sat. Thru July 31. (866) 811-4111. www.pointbreaklivesf.com
Reason to Party @ St. Regis Hotel Elegant cocktail night with art and fashion show; designs by Travis Taddeo, networking galore, and music by DJ Jeff Stallings. Proceeds benefit Visual Aid, At the Crossroads, and the Future Leaders Institute. $35-$50. (VIP reception 7pm-9pm). 9pm2am. 125 3rd St. 2nd floor. www.reasontoparty.org
Teatro Zinzanni @ Pier 29 Hearts on Fire is the current show at the theatre-tent-dinner extravaganza with new guest chanteuse Liliane Montevecchi, comic Frank Ferrante, twin acrobats Ming and Rui, Vertical Tango rope dance, plus magic, comedy, a five-course dinner, and a lot of fun. $117-$145. Saturday 11:30am “Breve” show $63—$78. Wed-Sat 6pm (Sun 5pm). Pier 29 at Embarcadero Ave. 438-2668. www.teatrozinzanni.com
West Coast Swing @ Vima Dance Studio
Dan Hoyle (Tings Dey Happen) premieres a new multiple-character solo show based on his road trip to Middle America to explore the profound disconnect in a politically polarized country. $15-$50. Thu-Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru Sept. 25. 1062 Valencia St. at 21st. (800) 838-3006. www.themarsh.org
Opening reception for YTREBIL, an exhibit of politically satirical prints and drawings. 7:30pm. Exhibit thru Aug. 28. Tue 1pm7pm. Wed-Sat 12pm-6pm. 826-8009. 2857 24th St. www.galeriadelaraza.org
Speech & Debate @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley
Kunst-Stoff Arts Fest @ 929 Market
Stephen Karam’s hit Off-Broadway comedy about three geeky teens, including a gay kid, who fight for truth amid a small town scandal. $24-$45. Tue 7pm, Wed-Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru July 18. 2081 Addison St. (5100 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org
Music, dance, theatre, media and installations in a spacious loft with Prum Ok , Chin-chin Hsu (dance), Marina Fukushima (dance), Silvia Girardi (theater), Patrick Ferreri (dance), Leslie Schickel (dance), Rob Bailis (music), Abby Another Hole in the Head, Fri. Crain (dance), Justin Morrison (dance, San Diego), Mary Carbonara (Dance), Jethro Dehart (Music), Kara Davis (Dance), Janine Cayla Trinidad (Dance/Media). $15. 8:30pm. Fri & Sat thru July 18. 929 Market St. at 5th. 777-0172. www.kunst-stoff.org
TechnoCraft @ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Opening night party for a new exhibit, Hackers, Modders, Fabbers, Tweakers, and Design in the Age of Individuality, which includes works in many media by dozens of technicians, artists and designers who remake and revision technology, art and culture. Live smash-up of metal objects, and performances by Cyclecide. $12-$15 (Free for members). 8pm-11pm. Exhibit Thu-Sat 12pm-8pm. Sun 12pm-6pm. 700 Mission St. 978-ARTS. www.ybca.org
Enrique Chagoya @ Galeria de la Raza
Learn how to partner-dance with Photis Pishiaras. Proceeds benefit Vima Vice Squad and Sundance Saloon. $20-$30. 3pm, 4pm. Register: 977-0203. 560 Third St. www.sundancesaloon.org
Wicked @ Orpheum Theatre Mega-hit musical based on the book about the two famous Oz witches as young college roommates. $30-$99. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat, Sun 2pm. Sun 7:30pm. Thru Sept. 1192 Market St. at 8th. $30. 5127770. www.shnsf.com
8 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER
Coast tour. The Hugs and Little Black Bats also play. $8. 9pm. 406 Clement St. 3876343. www.loganlynnmusic.com www.rock-it-room.com
Rehistoricizing Abstract Expressionism in the Bay Area: 1950 to 1970 @ Luggage Store Gallery Fascinating exhibit shows how women and people of culture were part of the abstract expressionist movement, but shut out by the era’s bias toward white men. Exhibit thru July 31. 1007 Market St. at 6th. www.queerculturalcenter.org
SF Hiking Club @ Lake Merritt LGBT hikers take a 3-mile hike around Oakland’s scenic lake. 5:45 at Oakland Public Library on 14th St. www.sfhiking.com
Yoga Classes @ LGBT Center Fun, friendly weekly classes for beginners or experienced with Bill Mohler. $10-$20. 6:30pm. Also Wednesdays. Room 302, 1800 Market St. at Octavia. www.billmohleryoga.com
Logan Lynn, Tue.
Sun 11 >>
Dan Plonsey’s Bar Mitzvah @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Dandelion Dancetheatre’s whimsical postmodern take on the Jewish family ritual, a bar mitzvah for the composer-playwright, with nearly two dozen performers. $18$22. 7pm. Also July 11, 1pm & 4pm. 736 Mission St. at 3rd. www.thecjm.org
Comedy Night @ El Rio Will Durst, Ray Ferrer, Sia Amma, Mike Spiegelman, Eve Meyer and host Lisa Geduldig bring forth the multicultural wit and wisdom. $7-$20. 8pm. 21+. 3158 Mission St. at Precita. (800) 838-3006. www.koshercomedy.com www.elriosf.com
Wed 14 >>
Lil’ Kim @ The Rrazz Room
Dr. Charlie Glickman answers your questions about the purpose and use of cock rings in this comfortable workshop. He will discuss physical anatomy, explain the different types of rings, offer tips on using them (solo or with a partner), and cover important safety info. Free. 6:30–7:30pm. 2504 San Pablo Avenue (at Dwight Way). http://events.goodvibes.com
Hip hop star performs in a rare intimate concert. $47.50-$75. 8pm. Also July 13, 10pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. at Ellis. 3941189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com
One Night Only @ Club Fugazi
Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Midnites for Maniacs brings an extraterrestrial double feature; ET, the Speilberg classic (2pm) and Mac and Me, the Bmovie best-worst cult fave (4:15). $11. Also, a restored print of Five Easy Pieces at 7pm, 9pm. July 14, Mildred Pierce, 7pm and Leave Her to Heaven, 9:10pm. $10. July 15, opening night of the Silent Film Festival, with John Ford’s The Iron Horse (www.silentfilm.org). 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com
Happy Hour @ Energy Talk Radio Interview show with gay writer Adam Sandel as host. 8pm. www.EnergyTalkRadio.com
Outlook Video @ Channel 29 LGBT monthly news show; this month, Kathy Wolfe of Wolfe Video, STD screenings in the API community, Harvey Milk Day celebrations, and the 21st GLAAD Media Awards. 5pm. www.outlookvideo.org
San Francisco Symphony @ Stern Grove Outdoor concert, featuring Copland’s Danzón Cubano and Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo, Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, and Beethoven’s Overture to Fidelio, Opus 72 and Symphony No. 6, Pastoral. Free. Bring blankets, picnics. 2pm. 19th Ave. at Sloat Blvd. www.sterngrove.org
Shanghai @ Asian Art Museum New exhibit about Asian artists from Shanghai, 130 works exploring and visualizing the city’s vibrant and turbulent history. $7-$17. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org
Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet and Harry Denton host the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.harrydenton.com
Mon 12 >> Al “A. Jay” Shapiro @ James Snidle Fine Art
Exhibit of original drawings by the late gay erotic cartoonist and creator of Harry Chess and other muscular comic characters. Open run. Also, the Rodney Thompson Estate collection. Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. Sat 9am-2pm. 1190 Bryant St. 552-0500. www.jamessnidlefinearts.com
Cabaret show fundraiser for the Richmond Ermet AIDS Foundation and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, with cast members from Young Frankenstein and Wicked performing their favorites songs; guest comic Bruce Vilanch. Live auction at intermission. $100-$25 (dessert party with the cast, $20 extra). 7:30pm. 678 Green St. at Columbus. 421-4222. www.helpisontheway.org
Queer Ballroom @ Live Art Gallery Weekly beginners same-sex dance classes in salsa and other styles. Also swing classes on Wednesdays, Standard ballroom Thursdays, $10 each, $35 for series. 151 Potrero Ave. 305-8242. www.QueerBallroom.com
Ten Percent @ Comcast 104 David Perry’s new talk show about LGBT local issues. New times: Mon-Fri 11:30am & 10:30pm, Sat & Sun 10:30pm. www.davidperry.com
Tue 13 >> Book Club @ Magnet
Bi-monthly meetings for book lovers. Buy with a 10% discount at A Different Light (489 Castro St.) and discuss amongst yourselves! Next up (for July 27), John Waters’ hilarious memoir Role Models. 7:30pm. 4122 18th St. 431-0891. www.adlbooks.com www.magnetsf.org
The Dresses Project @ Theater Artaud Exhibit of 30 women artists’ group installation of handmade dresses, images, prints and poetry inspired by Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. Thru July 18. Tue-Sat 1pm-5pm. 450 Florida St. www.zspace.org www.katrinarodabaugh.com
Foto Ada @ Robert Koch Gallery Exhibit of 1930s German photomontages that commented on the Nazi uprising. Also, Miroslav Tichy vintage photos. Tue-Sat. 10:30-5:30pm. Thru Aug. 21. 49 Geary St. 421-0122. www.kochgallery.com
Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gayfriendly comedy night. One-drink minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com
Logan Lynn @ The Rockit Room Gay electropop-rock singer (“Bottom Your Way to the Top”) stops by on his West
Ask the Docs: Cock Rings @ Good Vibrations Berkeley
Chris Schiavo @ ArtHaus The Backyard, an exhibit of darkly witty photos of cluttered Queens, New York back yards. Also a garden installation by Deanna Glory. Thru Sept. 30. Tue-Fri 11am-6pm. Sat 12pm-5pm. 977-0223. www.arthaus-sf.com
Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene @ Robert Tat Gallery Exhibit of high fashion, art, and nude prints by the two gay iconic photographers of the 20th century. Tue-Sat 11am5:30pm, by appointment, and first Thursdays til 7:30pm. Thru July 31. 49 Geary St. Suite 211. www.roberttat.com
In Country @ SF CameraWork Soldiers Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan, photographer Jennifer Karady’s compelling story portraits of American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan create images that tell their individual stories and make visible the psychological impact of war— the nightmares and memories that soldiers continue to experience after returning home. Also, Roll Call, an SF Camerawork members’ exhibition. Thru Aug. 7. Tue-Sat 12pm-5pm. 657 Mission St. 512-2020. www.sfcamerawork.org
Nine Vines Dinner @ Fifth Floor Final dinner of the season hosted by the Australian winery; proceeds benefit for Project Open Hand. Enjoy lively conversation, exquisite wine pairings and a luxurious dinner and the fraction of the cost. A minimum of 30% of ticket sales will benefit Project Open Hand. Wines featured will include: 2008 Grenache-Shiraz Rosé, 2008 Viognier, and 2008 Shiraz-Viognier. $75. 6:30pm-9pm; cocktail attire. Hotel Palomar, 12 Fourth St. 447-2316. Register at: www.ninevinesevents.com
Thu 15>> Alicia Ohs @ Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory
New York dance-theatre artist performs When I Die I will Be Dead, and New York, I Love You, I Hate You, Now Dance!, works with frantic comic insight. $20. ThuSat thru July 24. 1519 Mission St. at 11th. www.mcvf.org
Passionate Struggle @ GLBT Historical Society Exhibit about Bay Area LGBT historical events and people. Also, Man-I-Fest, an exhibit of letters and documents by FTM transgender pioneer Lou Harrison and friends. Free/donations. Wed-Sat 1pm5pm. 657 Mission St. #300. 777-5455. www.glbthistory.org
Nine Vines Dinner, Wed. For bar and nightclub listings, go to our new website and monthly print nightlife guide, www.bartabsf.com To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 8 July 2010
SOCIETY
Pride perambulations by Donna Sachet nce again, indescribably beautiful weather smiled upon our Pride Celebration in San Francisco, and even senseless acts of violence in our own backyard couldn’t dampen the spirits of the LGBT community. Our pre-Pride celebration started Thursday at the Kimpton Hotel Pride Party at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel benefiting the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation and National Center for Lesbian Rights. The brightly lit, spacious rooms overflowed with party people, including REAF’s Ken Henderson & Joe Seiler, Dean D’Onofrio, Don Berger, Patrick Gallineaux, Anita Cocktail, Xavier Toscano, Adam Sandel, and Scala’s executive chef and Bravo Top Chef Jen Biesty. Musical entertainment included a guest appearance and song by Sam Harris, enjoying a very successful run at the nearby Rrazz Room. Immediately afterwards, we strolled to the Clift Hotel for Mark Rhoades’ annual VIP Pride Party, this year benefiting New Leaf Services with generous support from PG&E, in the swanky Red Room and Velvet Room. With Carolyne Zinko, Joel Goodrich, Mark Calvano, Juan Barajas, Thom Lynch, Jim Hormel & Michael Nyguen, Tim Whalen, Brett Andrews, Tom Nolan, Roger Doughty, Andrea Shorter, and Gus & Bahya Oumlil-Murad in attendance, this truly qualified as a VIP event. The next night took us to a sumptuous party benefiting amfAR and the James Beard Foundation at 12 Gallagher Lane in SoMa, a gorgeous art gallery exclusively displaying the evocative works of Hunt Slonen. When the host list includes Anne Kronenberg and Denise Hale, you know we’ll be there! Featured chefs were Gary Danko, Traci Des Jardins, Emily Luchetti, Craig Stoll, and Taste Catering Executive Pastry Chef Yigit Pura – yum! The music, O N T HE the atmosphere, the intelligent conversation, and the passed drinks and hors d’oeuvres all reminded us of tony New York soirees. Guests included Will Whitaker, Michael Loftis, Richard Holland, Susana Munoz, Tatiana Sorokko, Derek Cabaniss and John Washko. We then rushed across town to Books, Inc. in the Castro for the latest book release and reading of Mark Abramson. In this latest in his Beach Reading series,
Steven Underhill
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Tweedledee and Tweedledum in the Castro on Pink Saturday.
titled Snowman, Mark continues to portray the San Francisco characters, both fictional and real-life, that we have come to love with witty dialogue, rich descriptive passages, and startling insights. After the reading, we joined Sharon McNight, mentioned in the book, and others at a lively birthday party and reception at Café Flore, hosted by Gary Virginia. Saturday’s 12th Annual Pride Brunch honoring the Grand Marshals of the Pride Parade and benefiting Positive Resource Center at Hotel Whitcomb exceeded all expectations with record attendance and over $17,000 in net T OWN proceeds. Heartfelt remarks by Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal James Hormel, a rousing demonstration by Organization Grand Marshal Cheer SF, and candid comments by Celebrity Grand Marshal Andy Bell made for an excellent program. Espied in the crowd were Reigning Emperor Steven Dorsey and Reigning Empress Renita Valdez, Emperors Brian Benamati, Jacques Michaels,
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and Michael Dumont, Empresses Marlena and Alexis Miranda, Mr. Gay Moses Garcia, Dan Joraanstad & Robert Hermann, Tommy Dillon, Roy Kauchik, Dave Rhodes, Rick Camargo & Liam Mayclem, Betty Sullivan, Joe Mac, Julius Turman, Steve Adams, Cole Beam, Geoff Kors & James Williamson, Goldblatt, Kevin Shanahan & Michael Montoya, and a host of elected officials, including Senator Mark Leno, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, Supervisors Bevan Dufty and David Campos, Treasurer Jose Cisneros, and Assessor/Recorder Phil Ting. Finally, the day of the 40th Annual Pride Parade arrived and with it, superb weather and high spirits. In partnership with a top-notch crew from Clear Channel, KOFY-TV, and Comcast, we were thrilled to be back anchoring the television coverage of the Parade with Michelle Meow, Sebastian Kunz, Lenny Broberg, Brett Andrews, and Jewelle Gomez. After a quick whirl through Civic Center and the chaotic party in City Hall, we finished our Pride celebration with rapturous dancing at Fresh at Ruby Skye and Sanctuary. We hope
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Coming up in leather & kink >> Thur., Jul. 8: Locker Room Thursdays at Chaps Bar (1225 Folsom). Grab yer dirtiest jock, gear up in sports gear. Pumping music at 9 p.m. Comp clothes check provided by the SoMa Guardians, 9 p.m. to close. Go to www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com. Fri., Jul. 9: Open Play Party at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission). 8 p.m.-1 a.m. $25 per person. Go to www.sfcitadel.org. Sat., Jul. 10: Boot Lickin’ at The Powerhouse (1347 Folsom). 10 p.m. Go to www.powerhouse-sf.com. Sat., Jul. 10: Back Bar Action at the Eagle Tavern (398 12th St.). Back-patio bar opened to all gear/fetish/leather. 10 p.m. to close. Go to: www.sfeagle.com. Sat., Jul. 10: Hell Hole Fisting Party. 8 p.m.-2 a.m. Door closes at Midnight. $25 admission. Free clothes check. For an invitation, visit www.HellHoleSF.com. Sat., Jul. 10-Sun., Jul. 11: Rope Bondage Dojo Stage 1 with Midori at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission St.). Preregistration required. Solo: $350/Pair: $600. Limited to 30 students. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. both days. Go to www.RopeDojo.com or www.sfcitadel.org. Sun., Jul. 11: Castrobear presents Sunday Furry Sunday at 440 Castro. 4-10 p.m. Go to www.castrobear.com. Sun., Jul. 11: SF Men’s Spanking Party at 385A 8th St., above Mr. S Leather. 1-6 p.m. “This is not a S&M Leather group.” More for guys into Spanking & Spanking Fantasies like traditional Old-Fashioned Spanking
over Daddy’s Knee or a Fraternity-style Pledge Initiation Paddling. This is a safe place for beginners to explore their Spanking Fantasies, or just a good place to meet and talk to other guys into this fetish. For info: (415) 864-2766, e-mail: SanFranParty@yahoo.com or check the Bulletin Board http://www.voy.com/201188/. Tues., Jul. 13: 12-Step Kink Recovery Group at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission). 6:30-8 p.m. Go to www.sfcitadel.org. Wed., Jul. 14: Busted! at Chaps Bar (1225 Folsom). This week’s edition: Spanking hosted by Daddy Tony. Starts at 9 p.m. Go to: www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com. Wed., Jul. 14: SoMa’s Men’s Club. Every Wed., the SoMa Clubs (Chaps, Powerhouse, Truck, Lone Star, Hole in the Wall, The Eagle) have specials for those who have the Men’s Club dogtags. See your favorite SoMa bar for details. Wed., Jul. 14: Naughty Knitters (Domiknits and sum’ stitchin) at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission St.). Ladies, are you a knitter, crocheter or other sort of hand crafts (beading, needlepoint)? Are you kinky or perverted? If the answer to both of these is yes, then we have the event for you! The goal is to have a regular crafts circle where you can come, work on your projects, get advice from others, while hanging out with like-minded, kinky people. 7-9 p.m. $5 per person, everyone is invited to bring some sort of snacks that we can pass around and share. Please note, this gathering is for the ladies only a la Stitch n Bitch. Go to www.sfcitadel.org.
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8 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPORTER
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KA RRNAL
Manly mayhem by John F. Karr ’m a longtime fan of the Randy Blue website. He’s got a great formula for movie-making: two guys on a bed, no muss, no fuss. And the performers he employs, frequently his “discoveries” and loyal exclusives, are generally pleasing – and in the instances of Reese Rideout and Chris Rockwell, historic. Yet online viewing via computer has, for me, always been second-best to having a DVD in hand. And those hi-res video files take up a lot of room on a hard drive. So I was pleased when Mr. B began last year to release his rich backlog of videos on DVD. There are now 28 Randy Blue DVD anthologies, each with three or four films and total running lengths of 90 minutes and more. Some of RB’s clips exceed standard timings. Bless him, he doesn’t over-edit. I also laud his steady camera, and especially his straight-on POV. I got off mightily on two of the three scenes in Do Me Now. Start off with cover boys Benjamin Bradley and Jeremy Walker. Talk about beauty. Do they look hot in skivvies? Puhleeze. When they strip, we’re confronted with Bradley’s magnificently hard and pretty cock, super-tight balls, and mercilessly sculpted pubic hair. This groin should be listed on the National Groin Register. Walker is manly, muscled, finely furred (for once without body shaving), and with a thick throbber cock that matches his body in swell self-stroker. He twists his chunky heft. I wished he’d shut up nipples, moans, draws up his while fucking Bradley. We can see how legs and fingers his ass. This splendid things are without his conmakes his cock harder, and he stant testimony. There are great inserplugs away. Someone should tion shots of his fat cock sluicing have given him a dildo. Bradley’s asshole – wow! What closeSomeone did come up with ups! And the view of Bradley strada whole deluge of dildos for dling that cock is pretty incendiary. In the anthology called Fill My fact, Bradley finds the ride so exciting Ass Now. Toys frequently figthat it makes him shoot. ure in Randy Blue solos, and Scruffy top Colby Keller makes are momentary highlights of ripped, smooth James Hawk wail in some duos. But Mr. B has piothe next scene. Hawk keeps yelling, neered the addition of the gad“Fuck me, oh fuck me!” long after he’s gets to group play, and Fill My blasted his cum. And Keller keeps on. Ass Now has both a trio and a The third scene delivers cute Kyle quartet of guys who go for commuHennessy, boyish with man showing nal dildo-digging. through, and Spencer Reed, allFirst up, though, Randy atman roughhouser. Reed’s a tempts a “horny handychampeen cocksucker; man” scenario. It’s clumsy, they’re the first couple in and quickly dropped. the collection to 69, We’re left with a workduring which Reed room setting that leaves keeps a finger grinding nowhere for the guys to up Hennessy’s ass. make out, sawhorses not Though I know Reed to being very accommodating. be a wild fucker, And florescent lights aren’t somehow this event flattering. Good tattoos K ARRNAL is not as climactic as and good hard-ons can’t I thought it would K NOWLEDGE save the day. be. Nice, but with But the next two scenes less chemistry than make the DVD a mustthe preceding couples. Yet Hennessy’s have for toy fans. Cody Fallon and a hot cock-rider, and both guys cum James Hawk top Lucky Daniels every quite a bit. As a bonus, the DVD which way, plunging a toy up his ass brings us Keller’s first solo. He’s a real as preliminary turn-on. Then they’re charmer in a brief interview, and a all turning on with some self-dildo
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sporting, and the sight of them lying in a row with legs up and holes plugged is quite rousing. That’s nothing compared to the scene called Slip-n-Slide It In. Four guys are hitting the shower room. Chris Rockway, Sebastian Rivers and Shawn Harriri gang up on Reese Rideout, rasslin’ him down and russlin’ a dildo up his ass. Seeing his resistance soon become joy ride, the other three grab their own toys. It’s a sight heretofore unseen, four dudes, scrunched up together, scooching toys up their butts while jacking themselves and their buddies. I doubt there’s another toy circle-jerk on film. Rockway and Rideout, side-by-side toy riders? Overwhelming. Chris rams it up Reese vigorously enough to get them both off. I’m sure it’ll have the same effect on you.▼
On the Town your Pride Week was as full of fundraising, frivolity, and friends as ours. Don’t miss Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation’s latest One Night Only Cabaret featuring company members from the casts of Young Frankenstein and Wicked, emceed by Bruce Vilanch, at Club Fugazi in North Beach this Mon., July 12. On Fri., July 23, from 2-5 p.m., Brian Basinger has invited the candidates in the upcoming race for city Supervisor to address a Community Listening Session on HIV/AIDS at the Milton Marks Auditorium of the State Building on Golden Gate. And on Sat., July 24, the Special Olympics of Northern California introduces Over the Edge, a unique fundraising event which features a day of rappelling down the Grand Hyatt Hotel,
Steven Underhill
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Pride weekend participants near the Latino stage in Civic Center.
with possible participation by this humble writer, not particularly skilled in any sporting activity, but always anxious to assist in raising money for a worthy cause. As you
can see from this brief list of coming events, SF does not suffer from any lack of variety in stimulating occasions. Get out there and participate!▼
Check out the Bay Area Reporter online at:
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BAY AREA REPORTER . eBAR.com . 8 July 2010
ARTS
What won’t the Church do next? Thus does this longtime couple, stalwarts of the early music movement, take an eloquent stand for truth and freedom. In three CDs and an extraordinary 558-page glossy book, presented in seven languages and laid out like a Bible, they present the tragic history of the Cathars. These Christian believers in the existence of two coeternal principles, Good and Evil, came into conflict with official Church doctrine. Labeled heretics, they were murdered, massacred, and burned at the stake as part of the Crusades launched in 1208 by the ironically titled Pope Innocent III. With the destruction of their homeland, known as Occitania, and of the early troubadour tradition that had blossomed in their towns and villages during the 12th and 13th centuries, humanity, music, and spirit suffered. Even as the lilt and unusual rhythms of this music entice, most of the tracks are hardly filled with joy. The first CD, The Emergence and Heyday of Catharism – The Rise of Occitania, barely begins to dance before, in track 3, drums and duduk memorial-
by Jason Victor Serinus
2, The Albigensian Crusade – Invasion of Occitania 1204-1228, and culminates with CD 3, Persecution, Diaspora and the End of Catharism, 1229-1463. The final track, Savall’s “Homage to the Good Men,” has an eloquent sadness whose parallel can be found in the melodies that developed over millennia of Jewish persecution by the same forces that persecuted the Cathars. This is a remarkable artistic achievement. At a time when CD sales are slowing, this great couple and their orchestras have gone to great expense to remind us of abominations that we continue to repeat in one bellicose invasion and massacre after another. If the book look likes a Bible, the project itself is a prayer. As Hispanic immigrants become the latest target of those who would purify, a Buddhist paraphrase arises in the mind. May all human beings be free of the suffering imposed by ignorance and intolerance.▼
“It’s our task to unveil the two mysteries which constitute the extremes of the living world: on the one hand evil, and on the other, beauty.”
Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Jordi Savall, Le Royaume Oublié, The Forgotten Kingdom, The Albigensian Crusade (AliaVox)
eaving myth and legend aside,” write UNESCO “Artist for the Peace” soprano Montserrat Figueras and her viola da gamba master/conductor husband Jordi Savall, “the destruction of the memory of that remarkable civilization which was the ‘land of Oc,‘ destined to become a truly forgotten kingdom, and the terrible tragedy of the Cathars or ‘Good Men’ and their witness to their faith, deserve our unreserved respect and determined effort to preserve their historical memory. Eight centuries have passed, and yet the memory of the crusade against the Albigensians has not been erased. Even today, it evokes sorrow and pity. That is why, in common with François Cheng, we believe that it is our urgent and permanent task to unveil the two mysteries which constitute the extremes of the living world; on the one hand, evil, and on the other, beauty. For what is at stake is no less than the truth of human destiny, a destiny which involves the very foundations of our freedom.”
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ize the first burning of heretics at the stake at Orléans and Turin in 1022. Recitation, chant by the great Figueras (whose plaintive voice remains beguiling, despite darkening and growing less pliable with age), and instrumental/vocal ensemble tell the tale as the saga proceeds through CD
Alan Cumming
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“Each of my moms had a kid with your sperm.” “I love lesbians.” At first the moms, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), are merely bemused at the prospect of some face time with their somewhat goofy benefactor. But screwball comedy is dedicated to detonating the best-laid plans, and pretty soon the moms are aghast when Joni seeks to build a real relationship with this not-so-perfect male role model. Nic, the older partner who sees herself as top mom whose word is law, reminds her brood that visitation privileges were not part of the deal when they acquired Paul’s spunk. “You met him, and that’s cool, and now it’s time to move on.” “I want to see him again.” “You do?” This breach in the dam has a slew of hilarious unintended consequences, including a wildly unpredictable series of unauthorized sleepovers and a wacky drunken dinner party where Nic channels her inner Joni Mitchell. While no mention is made of the dreaded topic of lesbian bed death, Cholodenko and her co-writer Stuart Blumberg do invoke screwball’s motif of the main couple undergoing a kind of symbolic divorce followed by a magical remarriage.
Annette Bening is a revelation as the bossy but unexpectedly vulnerable top who is suddenly faced with losing her honey not only to a man, but to a guy she considers little more than an eccentric loser. Bening’s great scene unfolds at a dinner party where a little too much wine feeds her suspicions that Jules and Paul have been up to something behind her back. Cholodenko orchestrates Nic’s inner demons by turning down the soundtrack so that we are cradled in her head as she starts to connect the dots. Julianne Moore, finally getting a chance to get out from under her patented Douglas Sirk-inspired overwrought melodrama mode, finds a ditzy low-key style that smacks of 1970s Diane Keaton. Beginning with his outsized portrayal of Laura Linney’s black-sheep brother in the 2000 sibling comedy You Can Count on Me, Mark Ruffalo has been this past decade’s go-to guy for unpredictably unreliable, emasculated men. Here Ruffalo projects an idiotic sincerity that allows us not to hate him for being the catalyst for Nic and Jules’ domestic meltdown. There’s perhaps no better example of an actor who can make doing all the wrong things seem like a perverse badge of integrity. There was a time when even radical queer activists claimed that hetero fears that LGBT folks were looking for the right to marry and raise kids were a lunatic notion, as crazy
In November of last year, Cumming was made an O.B.E (Officer of the British Empire) in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. “It hasn’t changed my life, but it was great to take my Mum to the Palace. Part of the honor was for working for [LGBT] equality in the United States. The Queen was out of town, so Princess Anne gave it to me. It was a little medal that she pinned on me. I was wearing a kilt, and the ribbon on the medal matched my kilt perfectly.” Becoming a US citizen, starring on a hit TV series, and performing at the Castro Theatre? Fabulous. Being color-coordinated when you’re honored by the Queen? Priceless.▼ Marc Huestis presents Alan Cumming: I Bought a Blue Car Today on Sat., July 10 at 8 p.m., Castro Theatre, SF. Tickets ($37.50-$85): call (415) 863-0611 or go to www.ticketweb.com.
Why is the boy named Laser?
It’s the name of my writing partner, and I just love it. It’s another example of why this is such an exceptional screwball comedy.
I’m curious why you call it a screwball comedy.
Suzanne Tenner
Kids/All Right
Actor Alan Cumming.
Suzanne Tenner
consultant charged with reviving the career of Noth’s disgraced politician after a sex scandal rocks the lives of the family, especially Margulies’ titular character Alicia. “Playing Eli is fascinating for me because he is a grown-up. He is a man in a suit. They even put grey in my hair, which is quite funny considering my hair was colored, so they were actually putting grey on top of color on top of grey. He is an image consultant, and he is Jewish. He is a million miles away from me. Initially I thought I didn’t understand Eli, he seemed so far away from me. But then instead of thinking I don’t relate to him because he has a life that I don’t comprehend, I thought he is exotic like every human being, and I can understand that.” What began as a guest role evolved
Craig Mackay
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“Initially I thought I didn’t understand Eli, he seemed so far away from me. Then I thought he is exotic like every human being.”
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into a series regular as Cumming joins the sterling cast in the upcoming season. “People really responded to the character in a big way. I love the people, and everyone’s on a high being on a hit show,” he said. “It’s intriguing how the show deals with infidelity. It’s very bold. I don’t have a television or watch TV, so if I wasn’t in the show I never would have known about it.” The wildly versatile actor recently went from playing the buttoned-down Eli Gold to the drag queen Desrae in the mini-series The Runaway. “It was really amazing playing a drag queen, and an interesting exercise. You really have to believe it, and be convincing as a woman. It was a hoot.”
Annette Bening stars in The Kids Are All Right.
Julianne Moore stars in The Kids Are All Right.
as believing that queers were looking for a new planet to colonize. Forty years later, The Kids Are All Right is a funny valentine to life on that queer planet. Writer/director Lisa Cholodenko sat down with us following a wildly popular preview San Francisco screening of her breakthrough comedy.
Laser is over at his best friend’s house and witnesses his friend roughhousing with his dad. This prompts him to wonder, why don’t I have that relationship, do I want that relationship? That scene was always in the script. I guess it makes psychological sense since he’s literally the odd man out in his family – with a sister and two moms – he just has a natural craving to find some male connection for his existence. He learns that these big questions don’t always have simple answers. He does finally ask the dad why he decided to donate sperm, and gets that embarrassed, funny answer. “Because it was easier than donating blood.”
David Lamble: You open the film with Laser, the son, pleading with his sister to seek out the identity of their birth donor dad. It seems that the boy has more at stake in the answer to this question.
Lisa Cholodenko: Well, there is that scene early in the film where
There are moments in your film, especially that wonderfully daffy affair between Ruffalo and Moore, that match the zany yet thought-provoking hilarity of screwball classics like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday. In casting Mark Ruffalo as the sperm donor, you tap into this actor’s talent for inspired lunacy, like that the moment in You Can Count on Me when he takes Rory Caulkin’s character to meet his birth dad, and a big fistfight breaks out. Here, Ruffalo’s bachelor suddenly becomes ferociously and hilariously inappropriately enamored of Julianne Moore’s lesbian mom.
Yeah, he’s great playing guys who are lovable but make incredibly shitty choices. There’s a wonderful irrationality at work there, because you sense that under different circumstances, his choices could be right. I love the way you handle the oncetaboo subject of bisexuality rearing its head in a long-settled lesbian relationship.
It was fun exploring that, and that is perhaps one of the few moments where the film incorporates so-called screwball comedy conceits.▼
8 July 2010 . eBAR.com . BAY AREA REPOR TER 29
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BOOKS
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Blushing buds for their first time by Ernie Alderete he premise behind Sam Carson’s First Exposure (Bruno Gmunder, 2009) is a simple one. Gather a baker’s dozen of the healthiest, horniest, most clean-cut gay male specimens on earth, and array them around a spectacular Southern California swimming pool. It’s an old but tried-and-true format, almost the prototype for the gay male pictorial layout as we know it. But First Exposure raises the premise to the sublime. The book features truly exceptional specimens presented in fresh and exciting poses, and titillating situations. All of the models are fresh meat, new faces, aspiring porno stars of the future. I’ve met many young men aspiring to be the next erotic icon. And
T
each one has confessed his personal insecurities. I’ve reassured them that a little scar or a less than memorable penis won’t automatically disqualify them from success on the Silver Screen. First Exposure provides proof of the validity of those assurances. One model has the biggest scar I’ve ever seen in a book of this nature. It’s as if someone took an old-fashioned stainless steel can-opener to his belly, a wide, jagged scar in the shape of an infinity symbol. There’s no coy attempt to disguise or hide the scar. It’s there is full view. You can clearly see where the minute stitch-marks bound him back together. Completely healed, of course. And you know what? It doesn’t distract from his appeal one bit. In fact, it only adds another level of character. There’s a muscle-bound, bleached blonde in First Exposure with what has to be the smallest pecker in gay male
Home sweet home S
by Jim Piechota
In My Father’s House by E. Lynn Harris; St. Martin’s Press; $24.99
uccessful openly gay African American author Everette Lynn Harris’ novels exemplify what it means to be a closeted black man struggling with society’s perceptions,
photo history! It’s a flaccid little wiener, but that didn’t exclude him from the skin business. And we can all feel superior after peeking at his shortcomings. It’s a win-win situation for all involved. There are a half-dozen other pricks in various stages of arousal on display, but none are honest-to-goodness, fullblown, earth-shaking whoppers. There are several extremely shapely asses and some very attractive faces with delightful smiles and winning expressions. First Exposure features a good balance of slim, smooth, young twinks, as well as beefier, broader, more mature he-men. Virtually all of the models are of European extraction, and have mostly hairless bodies. Of course, there’s a shower scene. There always is, and this one features a solid young man standing behind a fine mist that drops down like a
sheet of grated Parmesan cheese. Little rectangular pellets of moisture are suspended in midair by the camera. Most of the pictures are strictly posed. By that I mean the photographer told the subjects where to stand, and the models are looking straight at the camera. These photos are quite good, but there are also a few less posed pictures that catch the same models more off-guard, revealing more of their authentic personality. My favorite photo in this second, more liberated category features a view of a twinkish skinhead from behind, pulling down his tight whites with his thumbs to reveal a luscious, curvaceous, ultra-pure, white-as-virginsnow ass, while we enjoy his smiling face in a sharp profile. It’s sexy but
often coupled with stringent familial expectations. His death a year ago at age 54 from heart disease sent shock waves down America’s literary spine, and cut short a career that was
(after 10 consecutive novels charting on The New York Times bestseller list) still budding new works, including In My Father’s House, the first novel in the author’s new series. A southern writer, Harris’ novels are character-driven gems brimming with simmering melodrama, romance, sex, lies, betrayal, and pages
wholesome. Almost as if Norman Rockwell painted our blue-eyed, blushing bud in all his corn-fed, apple-cheeked, Midwestern glory.▼
of pitch-perfect dialogue from some of fiction’s most beautifully-described black men and women. This posthumous entry (after 2009’s Mama Dearest) continues to ride that frothy wave. This new story features Bentley Laroyce Dean III, the bisexual owner of Miami’s hot modeling agency Picture Perfect, whose business is presently struggling at the mercy of an economic recession. But Bentley has had issues bigger than that of his floundering agency. Five years prior, his father, a homophobic, imageconscious, third-generation million-
aire based in Detroit, disowned him after Bentley broke off his engagement to beautiful fiancée Kim Boston in favor of an out-and-proud lifestyle, rather than “creepin’ on the down low.” When he decided to go public with his relationship to thenboyfriend Warren, he bid adieu to his inheritance, but welcomed in a lifetime of sexual freedom. With Warren (who has since dumped Bentley over problems with living a double life) now out of the picture, Bentley focuses on his troubled agency with female business partner Alex (she books the female models, and he “handles” the males, afternoon-delight-style). Desperate for cash flow, he takes on a shady booking assignment requiring muscular, scantily-clad men to free-float around a party thrown by a closeted, control-freak film superstar, Seth Sinclair. Tempers flare as Bentley’s young, impressionable friend Jah becomes embroiled in Seth’s opulent life of money and deceit. Bentley decides he wants Warren back, but not before repairing things with his father, whose health is called into question. In true Harris style, and without missing a beat, the blur of backbiting and double-crossing is modestly reigned in to reveal the truths behind all of the (beautiful, athletic, steamy, etc.) poker faces. Consistently lush and thrilling, draped in sex and desire, such is the cool brilliance of an E. Lynn Harris novel. It’s difficult to say goodbye to such a seasoned pro; Harris will be greatly missed! ▼