June 17, 2021 edition of the Bay Area Reporter, America's highest circulation LGBTQ newspaper

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Vol. 51 • No. 24 • June 17-23, 2021

Pam Torno

Oakland Black Pride organizers James Cox, left, Olaywa Austin, and Avery Hines are planning for lots of activities next weekend.

Rick Gerharter

This site at 1939 Market Street was purchased by the city and will become affordable LGBTQ-welcoming senior housing and include units for those who are HIV-positive.

Oakland Black Pride to hold celebration

SF updates its HIV housing plan

by Matthew S. Bajko

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an Francisco aims to increase by 30% within the next five years the number of rental subsidies dedicated to people living with HIV and AIDS, and expand by a similar amount the overall number of those served through its HIV housing service programs overseen by a mayoral housing office.

At the same time, as the number of people living with HIV continues to fall in the city, its share of federal funding for HIV housing programs is expected to continue to decline.

By July 2022, the city expects to see an estimated $1 million reduction in its Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) allocation from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development; the current allocation is $6,220,119. City leaders, however, have pledged to backfill the cut with other revenue sources.

Meanwhile, more than 800 applicants have requested rental assistance through the Plus Housing program for low-income people living with HIV that is overseen by the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

Thus, the new 2020-2025 HIV Housing Plan includes the twinned 30% increases to better meet the housing needs of people living with HIV or AIDS (PLWHA) in the city.

“We have to look at creative ways to maintain alternate funding options,” said Plus Housing Program manager Manuel Vasquez, who is queer and living with HIV. A copy of the revised HIV Housing Plan, being published Thursday, was provided early to the Bay Area Reporter. In a statement Mayor London Breed noted, “San Francisco has been a national leader in our response to the HIV/ AIDS epidemic and in our efforts to get to zero new infections, and we know part of our success in helping people lead healthier lives is to ensure they have access to housing. This plan is part of our commitment to strengthen housing stability and access for our most vulnerable residents, including those living with HIV/AIDS.” It also calls for greater coordination between HIV housing providers and HIV medical providers to ensure they are able to better assist their patients who have housing needs, as housing stability greatly improves a person’s health.

“It takes a village looking to enhance those community partnerships,” said Vasquez.

See page 13 >>

Open Hand lights up

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roject Open Hand, which provides meals and groceries to people living with HIV/ AIDS and other illnesses, has a new neon sign outside its offices in a historic building at 730 Polk Street. On June 10, a lighting ceremony was held featuring San Francisco Mayor London Breed, District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney, and Project Open Hand CEO Paul Hepfer. Organization officials noted that the sign will be a

Rick Gerharter

beacon for a vibrant, safe, and secure neighborhood. The choice of neon conforms with the history of the Tenderloin, with its corner stores, bars, and other businesses, a news release stated.

The agency is also working to raise $375,000 by the end of the month to fix its aging elevators and support its programs. To donate to the Uplift campaign, go to https://www.openhand.org/uplift.

by John Ferrannini

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akland Black Pride is preparing in-person and virtual events for its inaugural Inside/OUT! Black Pride Celebration June 24-27.

Executive Director Olaywa K. Austin, who is queer, spoke with the Bay Area Reporter to tout the major festivities – including the Queer Expo, Skate for Pride Party, and a grand finale Slayer’s Ball at the waterfront Bridge Yard event venue between the MacArthur Maze and the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza.

See page 10 >>

LGBTQ interns make an impact on San Francisco science museum

by Matthew S. Bajko

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ne project examined how the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics tie into gender and gender expression. Another involved interviewing out LGBTQ+ professionals working in science, science education, and science advocacy.

Curriculums used to educate museum employees about transgender acceptance received an update. And how docents at science museums use gender-specific terms when talking about the natural world was examined to see how they could incorporate more inclusive language.

Those are just a few examples that the firstever class of 13 STARS interns aged 18 to 24 at the Exploratorium along San Francisco’s Embarcadero worked on over the last six months.

The acronym stands for Striving for Trans-inclusion and Anti-Racism in Science learning.

The program aimed to center trans and queer people of color, their perspectives, and identities during the internship, which came to a close during Pride Month. The goal was to transform the way gender inclusion and racial equality are linked to science learning, and the interns’ projects have been featured during the

Courtesy Exploratorium

Exploratorium STARS interns, from left, include Lavender de Julia, Felix Duley, and Kayla Walker, learned a lot during their time with the museum.

Exploratorium’s special “After Dark Online” Pride Month events, the last of which will take place for free at 7 p.m. June 24.

“We are working together to collaborate on and create something so wonderful, that was extremely special,” said Lavender de Julia, 23, a queer femme nonbinary graduate of CSUNorthridge, where they earned a B.A. in deaf education and a minor in art history. “I will

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take that with me and, wherever I go next, make sure I am working in a team.”

Sal Bell Alper, 34, manager of the Field Trip Explainer Program at the Exploratorium, served as the STARS program manager. A queer and transgender nonbinary Oakland resident, they pitched the 20-hour-a-week internship, which paid participants $19 an See page 9 >>

<< Community News

2 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

Openhouse taps housing expert as new ED

by Matthew S. Bajko

is really an opportunity to work again to develop penhouse, the nonLGBTQ senior housing profit provider of programs and services, LGBTQ senior services in which is exactly what I San Francisco, has tapped wanted to do.” housing expert Kathleen Sullivan is joining the Courtesy Openhouse Sullivan, Ph.D., to be its agency as it works with new executive director. The Kathleen Sullivan longtime partner Mercy Portland, Oregon resident has been named Housing to design and will be relocating to the city the new executive construct a new affordwith her wife in order to director of Openable housing project with start in the position July 19. house. upward of 130 residential Sullivan, 55, brings a units that is welcoming to wealth of experience in LGBTQ seniors. Located both LGBTQ political campaigns at 1939 Market Street, the city-owned and affordable housing for LGBTQ site is a block away from the 119-unit older adults to the job. A lesbian, she development the two agencies built spent years working to defeat antion Laguna Street that houses a majorLGBTQ ballot measures, first in Ority of LGBTQ older adults. egon then as a consultant to groups “We are delighted and fortunate to fighting against similar attacks on find someone with Kathleen’s direct LGBTQ rights in other states during experience, proven expertise, and deep the early 2000s. passion in the area of affordable housMost recently she has been working ing and services for LGBT elders,” staton intergenerational housing developed Tim Sweeney, a gay man whose two ments in Oregon. Wanting to return to years as co-chair of Openhouse’s board focusing on the LGBTQ community, of directors will end July 1. “Given her Sullivan jumped at the chance to apbackground of advocacy, manageply for the Openhouse position. Earlier ment, coalition building, and fundraisthis year Karyn Skultety, Ph.D., who is ing, we know she is immensely capable bisexual, announced she would step of leading the Openhouse community down as executive director May 31 in as we step into this next phase of our order to help care for her aging family development.” members in Denver.

In the mid-1990s Sullivan spent a “This was an unexpected, wondersummer living in the city’s Hayes Valful opportunity that came my way. I ley neighborhood while working for had to put my hat in the ring and say an environmental group overseeing I would love to do this,” Sullivan told its offices in the Bay Area, Hawaii, and the Bay Area Reporter June 9 during a Utah. Born in New Jersey and raised phone interview prior to checking out in Connecticut, she had relocated an apartment for rent in San Francisco. from Ohio to the West Coast after beShe praised Skultety for her leadering transferred by her employer to its ship of the agency, which doubled its Seattle office in 1991. staffing during her tenure and opened By the end of the decade she decidits new offices and affordable senior ed to pivot her focus toward political housing development on Laguna Street. causes. In 2000 she managed the cam“She has left it in amazing shape, so paign that defeated Oregon’s Measure I am vey grateful for that,” said Sulli9, which would have would have provan. “It is like a dream come true. It hibited the state’s public schools from

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“encouraging, promoting, sanctioning or instructing on homosexual or bisexual behaviors.”

“I was tired of working in the environmental community. Back then it was still pretty homophobic and definitely sexist,” she recalled. “I decided to do something different.”

Following the Measure 9 campaign, the abortion rights group NARAL hired her as its executive director in Oregon, where she stayed for several years. In 2004 Sullivan decided to enroll at Portland State University, where in 2011 Sullivan earned a doctor of philosophy in urban studies and planning. Working with the school’s Institute of Aging, Sullivan had studied LGBTQ senior housing developments across the West, with sites in Oakland, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles.

No more hiding

An encounter with an elderly gay man who feared having to go back into the closet if he had to move into a long-term care facility had inspired Sullivan to focus on the needs of aging LGBTQ adults. It quickly became clear to her the growing need for LGBTQ-affirmative senior housing that was also affordable.

“It was just devastating to think at the end of his life, he would have to go back to closet. What a terrible way to end your life, hiding yourself because that is the only way you can feel safe,” Sullivan recalled of her conversation with the man. “I went to school to study what kind of housing we can develop for older LGBTQ adults where they could be safe and be out.”

Upon graduating Sullivan landed a job with the Los Angeles LGBT Center as director of its senior services department. During her tenure the nonprofit merged with Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing, which built the 104unit Triangle Square LGBT senior housing project in Hollywood. When

it opened in 2007 it was the nation’s first affordable housing development of private, individual apartments for LGBT elders.

After departing the Southern California agency at the end of 2015, the following year Sullivan spent much of 2016 as executive director of Generations with Pride, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing for LGBTQ adults in Seattle. She then worked as a consultant for several years until being hired last year as a regional director of EngAGE in Portland. The agency partners with developers of affordable housing communities for all ages and has helped bring 1,100 new units of intergenerational affordable housing to the Portland metro area and rural Oregon.

Sullivan has also been teaching two courses in social gerontology and families & aging as an adjunct professor at Oregon Health Sciences/Portland State University School of Public Health.

She told the B.A.R. she was still finalizing her salary with Openhouse but that it would be similar to Skultety’s. According to the nonprofit’s tax forms for 2019, her salary was $157,000, while Openhouse had revenues close to $3 million.

In addition to working with Mercy Housing to design and build San Francisco’s third building of affordable senior housing aimed at LGBTQ older adults, Sullivan will help oversee the public opening of the $5 million community center Openhouse built at its Laguna Street campus. Delayed by construction issues then the COVID pandemic, it should be unveiled by this fall and will house the Community Day Services program Openhouse created in partnership with fellow senior service agency, On Lok. It is the nation’s first communitybased adult day program co-designed for and with the LGBTQ+ community.

Sullivan will also oversee the resumption of Openhouse’s other services and

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programs as the city emerges from the pandemic and allows various in-person activities to resume.

And she intends to examine what possibilities there are in San Francisco to construct intergenerational housing that includes units for both LGBTQ seniors and youth. The Los Angeles LGBT Center in April opened up a 25-unit supportive housing development for youth ages 24 and under across the street from its Anita May Rosenstein Campus that includes 99 units of affordable housing for seniors.

“It would be really interesting to see whether or not it is possible to do a project with both youth and senior housing,” said Sullivan. “The challenge is often around the funding buckets.”

She also wants to ensure transgender older adults and other marginalized seniors in the LGBTQ community receive the services they need as they age in the city.

“I am so grateful for all the LGBTQ folks who came before me and really helped to lay the foundation,” said Sullivan. “There is still a lot of work to do in the community. Clearly, there are folks within our community that still are highly marginalized and don’t get access to services. So many barriers to them are put up; we just need to dismantle those.

“That is the mission of Openhouse,” she continued. “I am excited to join the staff on working on those issues.”

But first Sullivan and her partner, educator Rebecca Levison, 51, need to sell their home in Oregon and find a place to live in San Francisco.

A former president of the Portland Teachers Association union, Levison is currently the associate director for faculty development at the University of Southern California and plans to continue working remotely for the time being. t

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<< Community News

4 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

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Suit against Lowe’s alleges sexual harassment

by John Ferrannini

[the man] that what he did was completely unacceptable, [the man] told him to keep his mouth shut or he would ‘fuck up’ Doe.” According to the lawsuit, the man later showed the photo of Doe using the restroom to multiple employees.

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former employee filed a lawsuit against Lowe’s Home Centers June 15 alleging sexual harassment, retaliation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other counts.

The civil suit was filed in Solano County Superior Court by a former assistant store manager who is listed in the complaint under the pseudonym John Doe. Doe claims after he started working at Lowe’s in March 2019, he was subjected to harassment by a fellow employee and that when he complained to the store manager he was told that he himself could be fired. (The Bay Area Reporter is not naming that fellow employee because he has not been criminally charged.)

“In a conversation with Doe, [the man] stated that since he was tall, the size difference between him and another man would be ‘fun’ and that he would make another man ‘spin like a top on [his] dick,’” the complaint states. “Doe told [the man] that he did not appreciate the explicit comments and that they made him uncomfortable. Ignoring Doe’s admonition, [the man] later described his genitalia in detail to Doe and asked him whether he ever wanted to have sex with a man.”

Kelly Armstrong, an attorney with the Armstrong Law Firm, which has offices in San Francisco, Oakland, and Sausalito, is representing Doe. Doe declined to state his sexual orientation, according to Armstrong.

Armstrong told the B.A.R. that often sexual harassment against men in the workplace isn’t taken as seriously as similar behaviors toward women.

“It is textbook sexual harassment,” Armstrong said. “There’s a double standard with men. It’s taken more seriously when women report it, but

Rumors swirl

Cynthia Laird

Lowe’s Home Centers has been sued by a former employee for alleged sexual harassment.

thousands of men are experiencing sexual harassment on a regular basis, and are afraid to come forward. Men shouldn’t be left behind in the time of #MeToo.” On other occasions, the man offered to take Doe on a trip to Las Vegas, where the two could share a room because it’d be more “intimate;” the man rated the physical attractiveness of fellow employees; the man offered to “choke and stroke” Doe; the man asked Doe if he wanted to try his “big kielbasa” at a work potluck, “motioning toward his groin;” and the man asked Doe if the latter wanted to try ‘edging,’ which the former said he “often practiced” himself, according to the complaint.

While sitting on a toilet, Doe suddenly received a text message with a picture of his own shoes taken from an adjacent bathroom stall, the complaint states.

“That your shoes?” the man asked in the message.

“Doe was shocked and mortified that [the man] would take a photo of him using the restroom and send it to him,” the complaint states. “When Doe exited the bathroom and told

As rumors started circulating among the employees that Doe had given a fellow co-worker a sexually transmitted disease and that he had a threesome with an employee and her boyfriend, Doe took action, according to the complaint.

“In December 2019, Doe complained to store manager Dave Berlin about [the man’s] inappropriate sexual conduct and photographing him twice without his knowledge or consent when he was in the restroom,” the complaint states. “One of the photos showed Doe standing up with his legs spread and pants down in the restroom while using the facilities where his buttocks, scrotum, and penis were showing. The second photo was taken from underneath a bathroom stall when Doe was sitting on the toilet and showed the sides of his buttocks and thighs as his pants were down. [The man] showed the photos to multiple employees.

Lowe’s failed to take any action in response to Doe’s complaints.

“Remarkably, when Doe complained to Berlin about [the man’s] blatant violation of Lowe’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, Berlin dismissed his complaint, told him to drop the issue, and warned that he could fire Doe any time he wanted to ‘a hundred times over,’” the complaint continued.

Doe subsequently lodged a complaint with Lowe’s Associate Care Center through an online portal.

“Later that day, [the man] approached Doe in the store and told

him, ‘You better drop your complaint or I’m going to fuck you up,’” the complaint states. “A Lowe’s department manager overheard [the man’s] threat but did not bother to ask Doe about the threat, much less investigate it or reprimand [the man]. At that point, Doe was so distraught by [the man’s] treatment of him that he often broke down and cried as he drove home from work because he felt so humiliated and alone.”

Lowe’s allowed Doe to go on leave, but Berlin threatened Doe with termination if he did not return to work, the complaint states.

The day he finally returned, in the summer of 2020, turned out to be his last with the company.

“On the last day Doe reported to work, [the man] pulled him aside and reminded him that if he continued to pursue his harassment complaint, [the man] would ‘fuck him up,’” the complaint states. “Doe requested to work at a different Lowe’s location than [the man], but Lowe’s refused.”

That was the end of Doe’s employment with Lowe’s. The man continued to work there for several more months, according to the complaint.

“Every day I drove to work I lived in fear of the humiliation I would suffer once I arrived,” Doe stated in a news release. “I lived and worked in fear, and Lowe’s management did nothing other than threaten me, call me names, retaliate, and force me from my job. I was trapped between a paycheck I needed to survive during the pandemic and a workplace that traumatized me every day.”

Armstrong said that the facts of the case are “particularly egregious.”

“Our client complained so many times to so many different managers, including the vice president of human resources and the CEO,”

Armstrong said. “Despite repeated complaints, no one took action and he was threatened if he didn’t stop his complaints.”

Armstrong said that Doe is seeking damages for “significant emotional distress” as well as for “lost wages and benefits due to being discharged after trying to seek protection.”

“Many harassment victims don’t come forward because they are afraid of the repercussions,” Armstrong added.

There are six total causes of action in the complaint: hostile work environment through sexual harassment, retaliation, failure to prevent harassment and retaliation, wrongful termination, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The man is being sued personally in addition to Lowe’s.

Lowe’s settled earlier case

Armstrong said that the case is also particularly distressing because it’s not the first time Lowe’s has had a run-in with sexual harassment suits. A decade ago, the company settled a harassment suit for $1.7 million.

One of the terms of the settlement was a three-year consent decree requiring anti-discrimination training for all employees in the states of Washington and Oregon, according to the Seattle Times.

“Despite this consent decree we are disappointed and dismayed that in the year 2021 the highest levels of Lowe’s are not taking sexual harassment as seriously as they should, especially in California,” Armstrong said.

Lowe’s did not return an immediate request for comment.

Berlin was reached but declined to comment. The man could not be reached for comment. t

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6 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

Volume 51, Number 24 June 17-23, 2021 www.ebar.com

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CA has reopened at last

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ost of us were downright giddy on Tuesday as we ventured outdoors without face coverings for the first time in more than a year of surviving the COVID-19 pandemic.

Governor Gavin Newsom officially reopened the state June 15 with an appearance at Universal Studios Hollywood, where he said that the Golden State’s full reopening marks the end of social distancing, capacity restrictions, county tiers, and masks in almost all settings for vaccinated Californians. (One important caveat: face coverings are still required on public transportation, railways, and at airports and health care facilities, per federal regulations.) This milestone would not have been possible if most state residents had not adhered to the shelterin-place mandates, and dramatically changed their behavior for some 15 months. When vaccines became available, folks in the Bay Area especially raced to get them, leading to some of the highest inoculation rates in California.

“Today, we celebrate the incredible strength and resilience of Californians – from our heroic health care workers to essential workers across the board to everyday Californians from all walks of life – who have supported each other through hardship and heartache over the past year, making sacrifices to save countless lives and enable us to turn the page on this pandemic,” Newsom stated. “As we look ahead to better days, we will continue to look out for one another, redoubling our investments to address California’s most persistent challenges, so that the entire state comes roaring back together.”

Newsom noted that more than 40 million vaccinations have been administered in the state, with over 70% of adults having at least one shot. Last week, San Francisco Mayor Lon-

Gooch

Veronika Fimbres, a transgender woman, celebrated the state’s reopening Tuesday afternoon outside Twin Peaks Tavern in the Castro.

don Breed stated that the city became the first in the country with 80% of eligible residents having received at least one vaccine dose. That’s an extraordinary accomplishment.

Other Bay Area counties also have solid vaccination rates combined with decreasing COVID cases.

It’s also important to remember that not everyone is ready to ditch their masks just yet – and that is OK. Especially since they’re still required on public transportation, people should probably carry one with them, just in case. Others may feel uncomfortable gathering in large maskless groups, and that’s OK too. And some workplaces, stores, and school campuses may continue to require face coverings, considering that children under the age of 12 still can’t get vaccinated. Much like when the pandemic

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started last year, these are days of adjustment.

And we must keep in mind that the pandemic is not over and is still spreading in much of the world. Even as Newsom was drawing names for the 10 lucky vaccinated winners of $1.5 million cash prizes, the state’s COVID dashboard was reporting that there were 628 COVID cases and 10 deaths on Tuesday. In fact, there have been a total of nearly 3.7 million cases and 62,515 deaths in California since the start of the pandemic, according to the state’s figures. But it’s clear that the vaccines are a factor in curbing the virus so effectively and that, so far, they seem to protect against the variants that have developed and will provide immunity for a while.

While reopening calls for rejoicing, it’s also time to remember that neighborhood businesses, and the nightlife, restaurant, and hospitality industries, were severely impacted by the lockdown. Some establishments didn’t make it, but those that did will need the support of patrons to rebound. We can do our part by dining out, grabbing a cocktail, or shopping at local merchants in the Castro and beyond.

For those planning summer getaways, most hotels will welcome you back and are eager to detail their enhanced cleaning protocols.

It’s disappointing that there won’t be a San Francisco Pride parade this year, but it will come roaring back in 2022. (The People’s March will take place as announced Sunday, June 27.) In the meantime, you can still celebrate Pride by reveling in the freedom to gather with others without face coverings, and enjoy seeing faces again. t

Being out at Wells Fargo

by Matt Hurwitz

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came out to my family when I was 26 years old. Even though I was certain they’d be loving and supportive once they wrapped their heads around the news, for some reason, the idea of saying “I’m gay” was terrifying. It was something about the word itself: what it meant and how it made people feel. It scared me, and I knew things would change once I said it out loud.

I pushed through it, and after some tears and laughs, it was done.

Once I got those first few conversations under my belt, I began telling pretty much everyone I knew. Across the board, I was met with love and kindness and curiosity. Lots of funny and interesting questions in particular from my college buddies. A personal favorite from my buddy Mike: “Wait, be honest – am I hot or not really?”

I realize how lucky I was, and that my experiences don’t reflect everyone’s throughout the LGBTQ+ community. So when I think about that, I’m very aware of the opportunity I have to support friends and colleagues who have had it harder and might still be struggling to come to terms with being out at work.

For this reason, I’m thankful to be at Wells Fargo for over a decade. I work for a company where I am celebrated and supported, not only by how I’m treated individually, but also by the intentional actions the company takes to ensure we are equal citizens outside of work, such as supporting the Equality Act. (The federal legislation would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It passed the House of Representatives in February but remains stalled in the U.S. Senate.)

That assurance, along with living in a city where I can confidently walk down the street holding the hand of my husband, Bruce Walter, makes me aware of both the privilege I have and the responsibility to support those who aren’t in similar situations.

Being out at work is one of the ways I harness the power of my privilege and responsibility and show support for others. Because I’m in a relatively senior role, when I talk about my life openly and honestly, I know it could help those just starting out in their careers or those with friends, family, or loved ones who are grappling with their own identities. The message I hope to convey is that everyone should be exactly who they are – less concerned about any possible adverse impact and more empowered and confident that being themselves is what can actually help with personal engagement and career advancement.

I feel fortunate to be out at work, and I hope we continue to see greater numbers of senior

Courtesy Matt Hurwitz

Bruce Walter, left, and his husband, Matt Hurwitz, who is head of commercial banking communications at Wells Fargo.

leaders doing the same. Representation matters, and seeing ourselves reflected in greater numbers by those in senior ranks will have an enormous and lasting impact.

Especially when you’re younger, seeing people similar to you thriving, no matter what your diversity dimensions, helps build confidence and envision future possibilities. For me, having an out boss when I was 23 and in my first job after waiting tables made me think, “Someday, that could be me.”

That’s an experience I’ve never forgotten, and it helped fuel my desire to be out at work and open and proud about my life. Colleagues often talk about their spouses and kids, so I tell them about my husband: a powerful word I use intentionally. They share how they met, and I do the same (at a straight bar!).

Now that I’m in my 40s, living my authentic life is less scary than it was in my 20s. And though much has changed in the 20 years since I came out, I know we’re still not fully there in terms of acceptance. So if my being out at work helps anyone, I am doing my job. I know not everyone feels comfortable or safe doing so, and no judgment toward those who choose not to for whatever reason, but I personally see this as a responsibility and a privilege and I am fortunate to have the love and support from friends, family, and colleagues.

Recently, a colleague from Iowa said working for me was the first time she reported to a manager who was out at work. She has a wife and two beautiful children, and said it made her feel safe,

welcomed, and celebrated for being her whole self. The fact that this telegraphed to her that it was OK to share her story with colleagues is exactly why I choose to be out at work. It was one of the biggest compliments of my career, and makes me want to do more to be an example for others.

Pride reminds me of my own experiences, but also provides an opportunity to reflect on the reality of others. Having straight allies has been a critical piece of my own journey, and I am committed to doing the work to be that same ally to my transgender and nonbinary friends and colleagues, as well as those from historically marginalized communities. The opportunity to be an active and vocal supporter is right there in front of us, and needed more than ever.

Wishing you all a happy and safe Pride Month.

Whether you identify as LGBTQ+ or are one of our allies, I hope we all can be proud, be kind, and look for ways to be an advocate for anyone who could use your support. We really are stronger together. t

Matt Hurwitz is executive vice president and head of Commercial Banking Communications at Wells Fargo, where he has worked since 2011. Based in San Francisco, he holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s in management communication from Emerson College. He and his husband, Bruce Walter, have been married for nine years, and recently adopted Stanley, an Australian Cattle Dog/Pit Bull rescue from Sonoma. You can email him at matthew.s.hurwitz@wellsfargo.com.

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Politics >>

June 17-23, 2021 • Bay Area Reporter • 7

Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Dem Club marks 50 years

by Matthew S. Bajko

A

t its launch in December 1971 San Francisco’s oldest LGBTQ Democratic Club operated with a “wink, wink” as being a political group for the city’s LGBTQ community. It was merely known as the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club.

Founder Jim Foster and the other 19 original members of the group chose the name of writer Gertrude Stein’s partner as a code to protect their confidentiality. As former club board member Nathan Purkiss noted in an online history he created of Alice, saying one was a “member of Alice” signaled you were LGBTQ in political circles without having to directly come out of the closet.

It would take until 1980 for the club, under the leadership of thenpresident Connie O’Conner, to update its name to the “Alice B. Toklas Gay Democratic Club.” Four decades later it expanded its name to include the full LGBTQ acronym.

“We certainly changed with the times,” noted Matthew Rothschild, who joined the club in 1984, came out as gay in 1987, and led the club as its chair from 1992 through 1994.

And just as its name became ever more inclusive of the LGBTQ community, so has the Alice club become ever-more progressive over the years.

When Alice failed to back Harvey Milk in his historic 1977 campaign to become the first out person elected in the city, instead backing a more moderate gay candidate, Milk and his allies formed their own political club called the Gay Democratic Club. (It was renamed in his honor after his assassination in 1978 and is now known as the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club.)

Alice was long seen as the more moderate of the two queer Dem clubs, routinely snubbing progressive candidates, whether LGBTQ or straight, and endorsing ones more in the political middle. In recent election cycles, that has been far less the case.

“Who is Alice and what do we do?” posed former club co-chair David Fujimoto in his farewell message in December. “My answer has not always been the same over the past 13 years on the board. ‘The more moderate LGBTQ Democratic club.’ ‘A progressive, yet not as progressive as Milk, club.’ There’s a certain complex that comes with being the older sister of the younger brother with more name recognition.”

His conclusion was that Alice has become “a diverse, independent Democratic LGBTQ organization that works within the levers of power to try to make progressive change.”

Take, for instance, when the Democratic Party held its presidential convention in San Francisco in 1984.

Alice helped elect 18 of its members to be delegates, “more delegates than many states had,” recalled then-chair Sal Rosselli, a gay man who is now president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

The club also produced and printed 20,000 copies of its tabloid-like newsletter “Alice Reports” each day for two weeks and had hundreds of volunteers deliver it to the hotel rooms of convention attendees as well as the national news media in town to cover the political gathering. Rosselli credits Alice’s doing so with landing him several interviews on cable news.

“We got national press for the first time,” recalled Rosselli, who has been an Alice member since 1979. “I remember doing CNN and one of the interviews was about the AIDS epidemic. We did a march on the floor of the convention to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic.”

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Incoming Mayor London Breed joined with other San Francisco elected officials at the annual Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club Pride Breakfast on June 24, 2018.

Over its history the club has weathered its share of “ups and downs,” said Rothschild, with the AIDS epidemic being an especially dark time in its history, taking the lives of numerous members. In 1997, the club said goodbye to Jo Daly, who in 1973 became the first woman to chair Alice and its third president, after she died following a long battle with cancer.

Another blow came in August 2002 when gay political consultant Robert Barnes, an influential member of the club who also served as chair, died at the age of 42 following a seven-week battle with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disease similar to multiple sclerosis.

“I think Alice has always been a family,” said Rothschild, a lawyer with the city attorney’s office. “I always felt it was my political family.”

Rebecca Prozan, currently Google’s West Coast head of government affairs and public policy, joined Alice in 1995 as a member and became one of its many lesbian co-chairs in 2006, serving a two-year term. She pointed to the club’s elevating diverse leaders over its history, in particular Theresa Sparks as its first openly transgender co-chair and as its first Black co-chair one of her fellow male co-chairs, the late attorney Julius Turman, a gay man who like Sparks served on the city’s police commission.

As the club turns 50, Prozan said, “It makes me think of what an agent of change Alice has been, from having Elizabeth Edwards announce her support for same-sex marriage (at the club’s 2007 Pride breakfast during her husband’s presidential campaign) to changing the course of San Francisco history when they endorsed Willie Brown for mayor in 1995 (when he defeated lesbian former supervisor Roberta Achtenberg) and all the times Alice advocated for LGBTQ+ equality in the Democratic Party platform.”

Current and formerly active members of Alice’s family will come together to mark the club’s 50th anniversary for an online “Pride Dinner” from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 24. The virtual event is in place of the club’s normal in-person breakfast fundraiser usually held the morning of Pride Sunday at the end of June.

(Canceled this year and last due to COVID, the early morning fete will return to the Hyatt Regency Hotel June 26, 2022 for its 25th anniversary.)

Its theme “LGBTQ Activism Through the Years,” the dinner will feature a lineup of special guests that speaks to Alice’s transformation over the years and the power it wields in local politics. Milk confidant and longtime gay progressive activist and union leader Cleve Jones will keynote the dinner, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Governor Gavin Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor and supervisor, are among those set to give remarks.

3 one-bedrooms, 35 two-bedrooms, and 3 three-bedrooms are available. Rents range from $1,869 - $2,278 per month.

Households must earn no more than the Also set to speak are onetime poMaximum Annual Income below: litical rivals and former state Senators Mark Leno, a gay man with long ties 1 Person - $69,000 2 Persons - $78,850, to Alice, and Carole Migden, a les3 Persons - $88,750, 4 Persons - $98,550, bian who was a former leader of the 5 Persons $106,450, 6 Persons - $114,350, Milk club. Another pair of former 7 Persons - $122,200 political opponents will also give remarks: gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), a one time Alice co-chair, and gay District 8 Supervisor Applications and information can be found on Rafael Mandelman, a former Milk DAHLIA- San Francisco Housing Portal at housing.sfgov.org. club president who lost his initial race for the board seat in 2010 to Wiener.

Applications are due by 5pm on 7/14/2021. Please call our The rivalries over the years between information line at 415-287-0642 for more information. the Milk and Alice clubs, which also have worked collectively on myriad Units available through the San Francisco campaigns and causes, are remarked Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development on by several people in their testimoand are subject to monitoring and other restrictions. nial videos taped for the event, noted Visit www.sfmohcd.org for program information. current Alice co-chair Gary McCoy, a gay man who recently left Pelosi’s office to handle government affairs for the nonprofit HealthRIGHT 360.

“I really appreciated how a handful of folks have referenced the historical sort of rivalry between Alice and Milk,” he said. “Everybody sort of comes back to a common theme of unity and also how the importance of that rivalry for many years brought out more queer people to vote.”

Leno, a member of both the Alice and Milk clubs since the 1980s, drew inspiration from Foster as well as the late lesbian couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who were also active members in the early days of the Alice club.

“Clearly a historic occasion, which should not be understated in its significance,” said Leno. “We take a lot for granted these days, as we made significant strides in our equal access to and protection under the law. But 50 years ago it was a very different time.”

Alice leadership had to scrap much of their plans for marking the club’s When you plan your life celebration and lasting remembrance in golden jubilee this year due to the advance, you can design every detail of your own unique memorial health crisis, though it has continued and provide your loved ones with true peace of mind. Planning ahead to conduct its regular business virtuWhen your celebration lasting protectsyou your plan loved ones fromlife unnecessary stress and and financial burden, ally since last March.

When you remembrance plan your celebration and lasting in allowing themlife to focus on what will matter most at design that remembrance time—you. in advance, you can every “It’s great to be part of a club or any advance, you can design every detail of your own unique memorial detail ofusyour owntheunique memorial andlegacy provide organization that can turn 50,” said Contact today about beautiful ways to create a lasting atyour theloved San Francisco Columbarium. and provide loved ones with true peace mind.

Planning ahead McCoy. “It is a pretty big feat, let alone your ones with true peace ofof mind.

Planning for an LGBTQ organization.” protects your loved ones from unnecessary stress and financial ahead protectsProudly yourserving loved onesCommunity. from unnecessary burden, the LGBT It will be turning its attention later allowing them focus on whatburden, will matter most them at thattotime—you. stresstoand financial allowing this year toward the 2022 midterm elections and local races on the Nofocus on what will matter most at that time—you. vember ballot next fall as it lays the Contact us today about the beautiful ways to create a lasting legacy groundwork for its next five decades. at the San Contact FranciscousColumbarium.

The need for the Alice club and other today about the beautiful ways to create LGBTQ organizations has not dissia lasting legacy at the San Francisco Columbarium. pated but only grown since its foundOne Loraine Ct. | San Francisco | 415-771-0717 Proudly serving our Community. ing, noted Rothschild.

SanFranciscoColumbarium.com “I think it is important that we have Proudly serving the LGBT Community. openly queer candidates and people FD 1306 / COA 660 at the table and continue to break barriers, especially for queer women and transgender individuals,” he said.

“The struggle is not over, I hate to break the news. We still have to fight.”

The cost to attend Alice’s 50th Anniversary Pride Dinner begins at $50 per person. To purchase a ticket online, visit https://bit.ly/3goFWpw One Loraine Ct. | San Francisco | 415-771-0717 eid=601f9a78cf.

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PlanningAhead Ahead isisSimple Planning Simple The benefits are immense.

Planning Ahead is Simple The benefits are immense.

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See page 8 >>

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<< Commentary

8 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

Pride then, Pride now

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

W

hen we celebrate Pride, we are commemorating the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, a seminal moment in LGBTQ history.

The Stonewall Inn was, at the time, a bar owned by the Genovese crime family in New York City. It lacked fire exits, running water behind the bar, and a liquor license. Indeed, it only remained open thanks to regular payoffs offered to the New York City Police Department.

On June 28, 1969, four plainclothes and two uniformed officers entered the Stonewall Inn, squaring off with some 200 or so patrons in the bar.

The raid soon turned sour, with some customers refusing to go with officers, and others withholding their identification. Onlookers came to the bar as patrons and employees were shuffled into police wagons.

Tensions were high when a butch lesbian, believed by most to be Stormé DeLarverie, was struck by an officer after complaining about her handcuffs being too tight. DeLarverie shouted at the increasingly raucous crowd, “Why don’t you guys do something?” The crowd got hotter, and the riot took hold.

Also present during the riot was Marsha P. Johnson, who has been credited with throwing the first brick of the night. Johnson, by her own admission, did not show up at the Stonewall Inn until about 2 a.m., some 40 minutes after DeLarverie

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Political Notebook

From page 7

Pot for LGBTQ political clubs

The San Francisco cannabis store Berner’s on Haight, whose owners include Conor Johnston, a gay man and former legislative aide to Mayor

Christine Smith

was struck with an NYPD billy club, but many who were there claim that Johnson was part of the vanguard, pushing back at police on the first night of the rebellion. It was Johnson who went uptown to get her friend, Sylvia Rivera.

Both Rivera and Johnson became very involved in actions post-Stonewall, and founded Street Transvestites Actual Revolutionaries, later Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.

They raised money for housing, medical care, and legal needs for the community, and opened STAR house to provide a roof over the head of trans and gay youth in New York City.

Then something happened.

By 1973, both Johnson and Rivera were banned from New York City’s growing Gay Pride parade. Organizers had begun to feel uncomfortable with drag in the parade, feeling it was giving the movement a bad name.

I should note that, at this time, the term “drag” was more akin to how we might use “trans” today, a broader umbrella term inclusive of a number London Breed when she served on the Board of Supervisors, is raising money during Pride Month for both the Alice and Milk Dem clubs.

Customers who buy any two Kiva gummies can get a Pride gummy for $1.

Those who buy any two-pack of Cann drinks can get an additional one for $1.

t

of cross-gender identities and expressions, rather than just being used to describe a subset of people as it is now.

Indeed, the parades of the early 1970s, fresh from the days of the Stonewall rebellion and seeing rights for lesbian and gay people gaining traction, started to clean up their act.

All trans identities were shunned from Pride, as were a lot of visible kink representations. Bisexual activists, too, got the cold shoulder. The focus was to show that the community was, at heart, “just like” the straight world.

DeLarverie died in 2014, after a long life serving as a bouncer at many New York City bars.

At the time, she was suffering from dementia and living in a nursing home in Brooklyn.

Johnson died in 1992, shortly after that year’s Pride. She had a dispute with a group of people, and her body was later found floating in the Hudson River. The NYPD initially ruled her death a suicide, even reportedly ignoring evidence to the contrary.

The case was reopened in 2012.

Like Johnson, Rivera often faced life on the street, and much of her work post-Stonewall revolved around helping food and shelter those in need.

In the five years prior to her death in 2002, Rivera resurrected STAR, fighting for trans rights in New York and beyond.

Finally, Pride has gone from a commemoration of a raid on a mobcontrolled bar where the police beat the patrons and the community finally had enough and fought back to a safe, family-friendly venue for corporations to promote their brands on rainbow-festooned floats.

This year, as with the last few, provocateurs from websites such as 4Chan have sought to stoke the flames, pushing disingenuous calls to avoid kink at Pride. Likewise, religious right-backed puppet groups such as LGB Alliance, which is based in Great Britain, have pressed for trans people to be removed from the larger movement, just like it is 1973 all over again.

Additionally, we fight over the inclusion of police contingents at Pride.

New York City’s pride organization barred uniformed officers, only to overturn the policy, then overturn the overturn. In large part, this year’s ban was driven by the NYPD’s handling of LGBTQ protests at the previous event, but I would contend that if there’s one group that should be a polarizing and unwelcome part of Pride festivities, it should be uniformed police officers. (The San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee announced last year that the SF Pride Alliance of the San Francisco Police Department would be banned from participat-

ing in the Pride parade in uniform.

However, there is no Pride parade this year. SF Pride officials’ September 2020 statement did not mention other law enforcement agencies or whether police officers could march in street clothes.)

Pride, at its heart, is a commemoration of a riot, a time when we should feel welcome to get together and be ourselves at full volume. While I do grasp that these big affairs cost a lot of money to produce, we are not present to celebrate the Bank of America or Bud Light – but ourselves.

Yet Pride seems destined to become a quaint, family-friendly affair that bears no resemblance to what it was, paving the way for the next DeLarverie, Johnson, Rivera, and hundreds of others that will need to fight for their rights.

The Pride event of today feels increasingly like any other street party that is being slowly homogenized into American culture, the same way Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick’s Day have become days to wear festive attire and drink alcohol. And while 4Chan and others may be driving specious moves to “clean up” Pride, that they gain any traction should give us pause.

Pride, as an event, should be challenging. It should push back against the status quo, not embrace it.t

The money from the promotional $1 purchases will then be divided between the two LGBTQ political groups.

Berner’s is located at 1685 Haight Street at Cole.

stated that California lawmakers proposed a $19 million boost in new funds for the End the Epidemics plan, with $6 million being a one-time allocation and the rest of the money ongoing to combat the spread of HIV, hepatitis C, and sexually transmitted diseases. The online version has been updated. t

Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes.

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

Correction

Last week’s column should have

rancisco F n Sa

EDITION JUNE 24, 2021 SPACE RESERVATIONS NOW BEING ACCEPTED! As part of the Bay Area Reporter’s 50th anniversary celebration, we are proud to announce our annual edition celebrating PRIDE in San Francisco. The edition will publish on June 24.

Reserve your advertising space by calling Scott Wazlowski at (415) 829-8937, or email advertising@ebar.com

Gwen Smith doesn’t so much care who threw the first brick, as long as it was thrown. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.

t <<

Community News>>

LGBTQ interns

“The merger of sociology and life sciences and being able to promote anti-racist practices and trans-inclusion, it is everything I am workhour plus some benefits, as a way to ing toward,” said Duley. “Coming help young adults find work in the from working at the Pride center museum field at a time when most to exploring life sciences, it is just institutions were forced closed due fascinating to me how those two to the COVID-19 pandemic. The things can exist in the same realm application noted people with an for me. For a long time I felt like it arts background were welcome to was one or the other. To find a job also apply and used the acronym that merges those two passions is STEAM. worth its weight in gold for me.”

“As far as I know this is the only He only recently was able to program of this exact style a musevisit the Exploratorium in person um is doing, science-based educafor the first time. The institution tion work around trans inclusion, moved into its bayside location queer inclusion, and anti-racism,” at Piers 15 and 17 in 2013, having said Alper. “To me, why it matters relocated from its longtime home is that science education is a gateat the Palace of Fine Arts in the way into formal science as well as Marina. science literacy and understanding “It is massive. I am blown away,” the world. During the pandemic said Duley. “It is so sad that things we’ve seen the importance of bearen’t populated by people. I can’t ing able to understand the science imagine how different it is to be behind things.” here with a bunch of folks looking Alper added that, “Without that to explore.” base understanding, we have a lot Prior to the internship Duley of inequities. In order to support said he was a bit “freaked out” STEM, it is important there is sciabout entering the STEM field as ence literacy and understanding in a male-identified transgender inour queer communities.” dividual. Now he hopes to find a

teaching position to serve as a role Diversifying ranks model for other trans young adults.

Diversifying the ranks of STEM “To have a program like this I can professionals brings added bonuscome to as a trans male and not just es, explained Alper, in how people as a male and be totally fine and not think about the sciences and the have to exclude key aspects of mysolutions they are able to achieve. self makes it palatable to pursue “Having more diverse thoughts my dreams,” said Duley. “I learned and experiences creates better outa lot still needs to be done, but we comes,” said Alper, who is unsure are making headwinds every single if there will be a second cohort of day. Just the fact a cohort like this STARS interns.

ISO 12647-7 Digital Controlexisted Strip 2009 ever is massive in my mind.”

Community 100 60 100 70 30 100 60 100 70 30College 100 60 100 70 A Solano The interns’ work has not only student Felix Duley, 18, a bisexual had an impact at the Exploratoritransgender man who lives in um, which has offered online proFairfield, came to the internship grams during the COVID pandemthrough his love of spiders. (He has ic100 and plans to30reopen to60the100public 100 60 100 100 70 70 jumping 30 30 100 100 60 100 70 70 30 100 100 100 70 70 12 100 tarantulas and one spiJuly 1, but also at other science inder at home.) A friend he met while stitutions that can take advantage working at the Solano Pride Cenof the programs, curriculum, and ter suggested he apply, as he knew educational materials they proDuley wanted to turn his love of duced. The recorded conversations arachnids into a career.

From page 1

B

June 17-23, 2021 • Bay Area Reporter • 9

they did with out scientists are part of a visibility campaign called “500 Queer Scientists.”

Lauren Esposito, Ph.D., curator of arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, founded the campaign and is working on a pop-up exhibit “if/then” that will debut at her institution next week.

There is a digital companion piece already online and the exhibit materials can be replicated by other museums.

“People with LGBTQ+ identities have propelled science forward from the shadows, and they’ve persisted in the face of persecution – scientific and otherwise – for centuries. It’s long past time for us to be seen for our accomplishments, and embraced for our identities,” stated Esposito in February after the Association of Science and Technology Centers awarded the Cal Academy an IF/THEN Gender Equity Grant and also a Moonshot Award.

Intern Kayla Walker, 22, a queer woman with Black and Mexican roots living in Santa Ana, helped worked on the “if/then” exhibit.

Her STARS team developed a webinar that teaches museum professionals how to engage with the exhibit.

“With this exhibit the museum is doing a beautiful job really emphasizing anti-racism and transinclusion,” she said.

A senior at UC Berkeley majoring in English literature, Walker had started an online virtual dance studio to teach students from 40 100 40 100 30 100 40 40 70 40 around the world her love of ballet and hip-hop dance. She applied for the STARS internship due to having a “huge passion,” she said, for seeing of40 the40humanities 30 30 a merging 100 40 100 100 10 40 40 with STEM, particularly around computer science.

“I had a great experience. I think I learned a lot about myself and T:9.75" the world around me,” said Walker.

3%

Courtesy Exploratorium

Sal Bell Alper served as the STARS program manager.

“I think most importantly I got to connect with people who have completely different experiences than me.”

Growing up in the East Bay with her deaf mother, de Julia now lives in Los Angeles and consults with cultural institutions on how they can provide better disability access to their visitors. Last year de Julia, whose father is Mexican and mother is Cape Verdean, founded the group Pro Bono ASL with other queer people of color sign language interpreters to provide culturally accurate American Sign Language services to the Black, indigenous, and people of color deaf community across the U.S. and Canada.

With cultural institutions shuttered last March due to the COVID pandemic, de Julia found themself 70 40 without 40 40 70 40work.

40 70When 40 70 40they 40 discovered 3 10 the call for applicants for the STARS internship, de Julia at first thought it was fake. But after doing some research, de Julia realized it would be 20 70 an 70 amazing 70 70 40 70 40 40 0000 3.1 2.2 10.2 7.4 7.4 opportunity to2.2further the work they had been doing.

“Disability access work is so new, unfortunately, to a lot of institutions,” said de Julia. “Trying to find a position at a museum and cultur-

al institution that felt really aligned with what I do was hard.”

One of the first projects they worked on was special programming for an “After Dark” virtual event celebrating the Transgender Day of Visibility and that centered STEM in the lives of transgender people.

“My group specifically worked on a project with wonderful animation talking about how to look at gender expression and what gender expression means and how to tie into STEM using the gender constellation. It is a lovely graphic about how external societal forces drive how you define gender,” said de Julia. “The point of it was looking at gender and gender expression through curiosity.”

A particularly special assignment for de Julia was interviewing fellow disabled queer Latina Dana Bolles, a NASA engineer who is a quadriplegic and lives in San Francisco, for the “if/then” exhibit.

Through the work they did for the internship, de Julia hopes they have shined a light on how the sciences need to move beyond a binary view of gender.

“I understand there are a lot of programs to get women into STEM. It begs the question who identifies as woman and what is woman?” said de Julia. “I hope the Exploratorium can be a catalyst for using queer as an umbrella term instead of just one gender specific group.”

To learn more about the 500 Queer Scientists campaign, visit https://500queerscientists.com/. about the 25 For information 50 75 90 100 Exploratorium, its online events, and to purchase tickets for when it reopens, visit https://www.exploratorium.edu/. for40 more upcoming 25 19 And 19 50 40 100 its 100 100 80 70 70 100 75 66 66on “After Dark Online: Pride” event June 24, visit https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/calendar/afterdark-online-pride. t

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<< Community News

10 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

Porter to join ‘5B’ virtual screening compiled by Cynthia Laird

A flier described the events as the “first” in the Tenderloin during Pride Month, but there have been others at different times of the year.

In 2019, the Bay Area Reporter noted that Aja Monet-Ashton helped organize a September Tenderloin Pride event that included a benefit reception and street fair.

For more information on Saturday’s festival, go to https://sfcommunityhealth.org/event/tenderloinpride/.

T

his month’s 40th anniversary of the first reports of AIDS has aligned with another health pandemic, COVID-19. On Thursday, June 24, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time, gay actor Billy Porter of the hit show “Pose,” who recently revealed his own HIV diagnosis, will join Michael Sneed, Johnson & Johnson’s executive vice president of global cultural affairs (which in addition to helping the world fight COVID, is currently working on a HIV vaccine), for a free special screening of awardwinning documentary “5B.” The 2018 film chronicles the stories of the nurses who risked their lives to found the world’s first AIDS ward at San Francisco General Hospital.

Immediately following the virtual screening, Porter will participate in a fireside chat with 5B nurse Alison Moëd Paolercio, RN MS, and nurse, entrepreneur, innovator, and author Rebecca Love, RN, to discuss the disproportionate toll that epidemics and pandemics take on at-risk communities, the parallels between the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 crises, and the role of nurses in driving health care change.

To register for the event, go to https://bit.ly/2ShW4A3.

<<

Black Pride

From page 1

Austin likened the ball, scheduled for 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Sunday, June 27, to those portrayed in the FX series “Pose,” which ended its run earlier this month.

“We are going to have a ball, both literally and figuratively,” Austin said.

Courtesy amFAR

Actor Billy Porter

Qmunity District Pride event

A Pride festival will be held in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood Saturday, June 19, from noon to 6 p.m. on Larkin Street between O’Farrell and Eddy streets.

According to organizers, the event will include music, drag shows, performances, art, and food and merchant booths and will celebrate the rich legacy of the Tenderloin as an LGBTQ neighborhood.

The afternoon’s special guest host will be Tita Aida. The festival will benefit organizations providing services and mutual aid to LGBTQIA+ and unhoused folks in San Francisco. The event is free and all are welcome. It is a production of the Tenderloin Merchants Association in partnership with San Francisco Community Health Center.

The Qmunity District will hold the first major in-person Pride event in the South Bay since the COVID-19 pandemic began when it hosts a San Jose Earthquakes watch party Saturday, June 19. The Quakes take on Austin FC at 6 p.m. in Texas.

Organizers stated in an email that the afternoon begins at 3 p.m. with tailgate-inspired activities followed by the livestreamed Earthquakes Pride game. Then San Jose’s Post Street, the anchor of the LGBTQ district, will be transformed into an exciting area of entertainment, community, and Pride, featuring special drag performances, a DJ, photo booth, and plenty of giveaways, COVID vaccination opportunities, and more.

The event, which is open to the public, is sponsored by the Project MORE Foundation, which provides services and support to the North-

“We have music, kick-ass DJs, all from the queer community. There’s room enough for folks to be spread out, have a good time, and be in community. A lot of what Pride is is being able to be in community.”

Being in physical community was obviously dangerous last year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Austin said that the effect of the

disease on the Black and LGBTQ communities spurred her on in the creation of the Oakland Black Pride nonprofit that is putting on the celebration “in partnership with the City of Oakland and the Oakland Parks, Recreation and Youth Development Department,” according to a news release.

“It’s with great pride that we wel-

Tenderloin Pride Festival Sat.

ern California LGBTQ+ and ally communities.

For more information, visit the Qmunity Pride and Quakes Watch Party Facebook page.

Call for Muni Art entries

San Francisco Beautiful and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency have issued a call for artists for the 2022 Muni Art project.

The theme is “Streets of San Francisco” for the seventh year of the project.

Five poems by the late San Francisco poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti have been chosen for the artists to visually interpret as a tribute. Each artist has eight panels to showcase their work, which will be installed in 100 Muni buses throughout the city.

Applications are available at https://bit.ly/3wkSx2v. The deadline is Friday, July 16.

Socialists to discuss Pride and police

The Freedom Socialist Party Bay Area will hold an online discussion titled “LGBTQIA+ Pride: No Place for Cops” Sunday, June 20, at 3 p.m.

The conversation will look at the militant history of Pride, such as the 1969 Stonewall riots in New

come the Inside/OUT! Black Pride Celebration to the ‘town’ of Oakland,” Mayor Libby Schaaf stated in the release. “In a continued effort to combat the effects of racial and gender inequality, we stand with Oakland Black Pride in honoring the unique and beautiful contributions of the Black LGBTQIA+ community.”

The festival was “something as an

York City, and the history of police targeting queer spaces and criminalizing LGBTQIA people, especially trans women of color.

Breana Hansen, a queer educator at City College of San Francisco, will be the featured speaker. They have been active in the SF League Against Systemic Harm in calling for the defunding of the San Francisco Police Department and fighting to save LGBTQ studies at City College from being cut.

The San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee announced last year that the SF Pride Alliance of SFPD would be banned from participating in the Pride parade in uniform. However, there is no Pride parade this year. SF Pride officials’ September 2020 statement did not mention other law enforcement agencies or whether police officers could march in street clothes.

In New York, the organizers of the Pride events have banned police and other law enforcement officers from the annual parade until at least 2025, according to NBC News.

To register for the FSP Zoom event, go to https://bit.ly/3zvQGtQ For more information, contact (415) 864-1278 or bayareafsp@socialism.com. t idea I had for a while,” Austin said.

“A lot of what I saw [at Pride events] around my immediate area didn’t look how Pride started – didn’t look as Black, as transgender, as riotous, as inclusive as it had started.

“I’d been thinking about that, and then COVID hit,” Austin continued.

See page 13 >>

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<< Obituaries

12 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

t

Retired AIDS researcher John Peterson dies

by Cynthia Laird

P

rofessor Emeritus John Lamont Peterson, Ph.D., died unexpectedly of natural causes May 23 in Atlanta. He was 72.

Mr. Peterson, a gay man, had served on the faculty of Georgia State University’s Department of Psychology until his retirement in 2015.

According to an obituary prepared by Roger Bakeman for GSU,

Mr. Peterson graduated with honors from Jones High School in Orlando and attended summer studies at Harvard University.

He graduated from Florida A&M University in 1970 and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1974. His mentor was James Jackson, one of the most eminent African American psychologists of the last halfcentury, known for his studies on the impact of racial disparities on

minority health and for his many professional contributions.

Mr. Peterson enjoyed a long and distinguished academic career and was known for his many contributions to understanding the predictors of HIV/AIDS risk reduction, the effects of behavioral interventions to reduce this risk behavior, and the social determinants of racial disparities in HIV infection, primarily among Black men who have sex with men, Bakeman’s

Programs Coordinator/Community Liaison. nitiative, will provide his unique insights into the

Stanford Forgiveness Project. nd mental health. He offers easily practiced skills

OP 2

Avenidas

June 2021

UES iana Dean Gendotti dotti is an estate planning and trust administration ho has been licensed for 31 years, and has an s Altos. She will highlight the critical aspects of ning, especially as it relates to LGBTQ issues.

June 17 • 3-4pm June 24th • 3-3:30pm burning questions!

Calendar of Events Free and inclusive to all!

Wonder Women Lesbian Social Group

Gay Men’s Walking Group

group meets virtually twice a month to Gay Men’s Walking Group meets for lunch, structor,This will lead in a The quick andengagement, while social discuss news, trends, everyone festivals, relationships, exercise, and social

OP 4

home projects, and more. Help us make this the best social group for lesbian women in North Santa Clara County! In June, join us on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month. In July, we’ll have new meeting times.

June 21 • 2:30pm-3:30pm

distancing and wearing masks. Ready to meet some new people and get some fresh air? Join us and get out of the house. On the second and fourth Thursday of each month at 3pm, we meet over Zoom to discuss and plan the walk for the following weekend.

June 24th • 4-5pm

obituary stated.

Larry Saxxon, a gay Black San Francisco resident who was friends with Mr. Peterson for 40 years, told the Bay Area Reporter that his mentor was an original founder of the Third World AIDS Advisory Task Force and one of the most influential African American gay researchers in the world with respect to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its impact on the African American gay male community.

“His work is among the most well cited research in the entire world with respect to challenges that both societal and political challenges posed while fighting this horrific pandemic,” Saxxon wrote in an email. “He unabashedly dealt with both homophobia within the African American communities and racism within the LGBTQ communities and showed direct correlations on how the presence of these social ills negatively impacted our ability to combat the AIDS pandemic.”

Saxxon stated that Mr. Peterson began his career as an AIDS researcher and member of the education department of the then-AIDS Project of the East Bay when it was still a division of the Pacific Center for Human Growth in Berkeley.

“Dr. Peterson actively participated with several other AIDS education and prevention expert panels and advisory capacities with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, San Francisco General Hospital, the AIDS Health Project, and the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies program at UCSF, Georgia State University, the National Institutes of Health, and a host of innumerable other professional agencies and entities,” Saxxon added.

“He has mentored and trained numerous other professionals in the field of research because in essence, John passionately believed with research, and its findings, one could not only change the course of educating the public about the dynamics of this horrific disease, but also with firm belief that enlightened scientific revelations could move policy and political change for both the LGBTQ and African American communities nationally, and indeed internationally,” Saxxon added.

Mr. Peterson was a fellow of the American Psychological As-

John Lamont Peterson, Ph.D.

sociation and of the Society for Community Research and Action; included in Florida A&M University’s Gallery of Distinction; a Horace H. Rackham Prize Fellow at the University of Michigan; and he served as a member of the National Academies of Science-Institute of Medicine’s Committee on LGBT Health Research, according to the obituary.

After teaching at Claremont’s McKenna College and Graduate School in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and realizing in particular the growing impact of the early AIDS epidemic on African American men, Mr. Peterson joined the CAPS at UCSF, where he served as a research scientist from 1986 to 1993. In 1994 he joined the GSU’s Department of Psychology’s Community Program, first as an associate professor, then as a full professor from 2003 until his retirement, the obituary stated.

He leaves a record of over 70 publications, nearly 20 books and book chapters, and over 100 conference presentations, many with students he mentored. According to the obituary, he collaborated widely, not just with his colleagues at CAPS, but also with colleagues at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and on projects with the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was known for his active mentoring of Black social and behavioral scientists and was among the most respected researchers on the Black HIV experience, influencing protocols on how to pursue outreach and See page 13 >>

LGBTQ Elder Empowerment Song Appreciation Group UR VILLAGE and Connections Group of the Day: “Your Personal Soundtrack” : Jenn Chan and Loretta Austin,Theme Avenidas What does PRIDE mean to you? Do you plan on participating in a PRIDE events this year? Have Submit your songs in advance to tkingery@ y is especially Building and any stories to important share from past PRIDEright events? now. avenidas.org so we can listen to them during Join us on June 21st where we will share our our Zoom meeting and provide the lyrics to ing yourthoughts, village will help you thrive. the group Discover to read along. Then we’ll discuss the opinions, and PRIDE experiences.

We will also be discussing how Avenidas song’s meaning and how it relates to you and es for new with ourtheintergenerational theme. Join us on the second and fourth Rainbowconnections Collective will be celebrating and supporting Pride this year.

Thursday of the month at 4pm. ogram and social groups. Learn where to find resources and how to build a safe space.

fairs

Email LGBTQ@avenidas.org for more information on how to register for these great events, groups, and opportunities presented by Avenidas Rainbow Collective to our older LGBTQ Community members.

Courtesy B.A.R. Archive

50 years in 50 weeks: 1981’s AIDS editorial

T (650) 289-5400 • www.avenidas.org

With support from the County of Santa Clara, Office of LGBTQ Affairs

www.avenidas.org

(650) 289-5433

he Bay Area Reporter first mentioned what became HIV/AIDS about a month after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s notice on June 5, 1981. But that fall, in the paper’s September 10 issue, editor Paul Lorch, in a signed

editorial titled “The Mystery Maladies,” sought to downplay the health scare, even as gay San Franciscans were being diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer associated with AIDS. “Similarly, at this point there is nothing to give up, do more of, or do less of,”

Lorch wrote. Thirtynine years and many editors later, the B.A.R. in 2020 was quick to editorialize in favor of the precautions being urged by health officials and city leaders to protect against COVID-19, which was hitting the Bay Area.

t

Community News>>

June 17-23, 2021 • Bay Area Reporter • 13

Plea pushed back in South Bay murder case

by John Ferrannini

A

Union City man was supposed to enter a plea June 15 on a charge that he murdered a transgender woman he’d been romantically involved with, but the plea was pushed back to July 28.

The reason is because Peter Johnson, the attorney representing Elijah Cruz Segura, 22, said he needed more time for discovery, according to Margaret Petros, the executive director of Mothers Against Murder, who is handling communications for the family of the victim, Natalia Smüt Lopez.

<<

Black Pride

From page 10

“Faced with a pandemic, a lot of the needs of myself and the Black, queer community were exhausted. A lot of our needs – the things we struggle to get anyway – were in jeopardy. So I started working on a project based on my needs and the needs of my immediate community, and three months later I had a nonprofit. This organization was a survival tactic of ours. Fast forward to now, it’s Pride Month, and we have an organization with a full schedule for our community.”

Also on the schedule is a Queer Expo that will take place over two days. The first day of the expo is set for Saturday, June 26, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The Lot at Tribune Tower downtown. On Sunday, June 27, from

<<

HIV housing plan

From page 1

As for setting the increase thresholds at 30%, city officials and community leaders “felt it was an achievable goal,” Vasquez told the B.A.R. Since 2019 he has worked with an advisory group of city staff, nonprofit leaders, and program participants to update the HIV Housing Plan, which was last released in 2014. According to the document, there are 2,560 households in the city that require housing assistance in some form due to a PLWHA being severely rent-burdened, unstably housed or experiencing homelessness.

Based on data from the mayoral housing office, there are 170 severely rent-burdened PLWHA households in San Francisco. An estimated 2,390 PLWHA are homeless or unstably housed in the city, based on Medical Monitoring Project data from 2016.

<<

John Peterson

From page 12

reduce infection among African American men.

Dr. David Malebranche, an associate professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, told the B.A.R. that he and many other gay Black men doing HIV research owe Mr. Peterson a debt of gratitude.

“As a younger Black gay physi-

“[Segura’s] attorney is still doing discovery, so he will not plead,” Petros told the Bay Area Reporter.

“There are documents needed by his attorney before he will plead.

That’s why the next hearing was scheduled for July.”

As the B.A.R. previously reported, prosecutors allege that Segura stabbed Lopez, 24, of San Jose, to death early April 23. The two had been dating for several months, according to a statement of facts from a detective. Segura was formally charged at San Jose’s Hall of Justice April 29. He remains in custody.

Lopez’s death sent shockwaves through the South Bay LGBTQ community, which mourned the drag performer as it unveiled a mural featuring Lopez’s likeness in downtown San Jose April 30, as the B.A.R. reported.

On that occasion, Vanessa Singh, Lopez’s sister, briefly spoke to thank the South Bay LGBTQ community for its support.

Singh spoke with the B.A.R. after the June 15 court hearing in Department 34 of the Hall of Justice when it was learned a plea would not be entered that day.

“It’s frustrating, to be honest,”

Singh said. “But that’s just the way the justice system works; the process is very long.”

Singh said she plans to attend every court date.

“Going on two months, we’re taking it as best we can,” Singh said about the grieving process. “I just want to see justice for my sister.

I’m going to keep the hope alive for the voice she no longer has.”

Johnson and Deputy District Attorney Rebekah Wise did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The next hearing in the case will be held in Department 34 at 1:30 p.m. July 28. t

10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the expo takes place at Raimondi Field in West Oakland.

“We have a little bit of everything,” Austin said. “We have a lot of vendors – someone who makes cannabis cream, our own LGBTQ Center is handing out HIV/AIDS information, trans caterers, food trucks, a bunch of creators and makers of earrings and jewelry, arts and crafts, things like that.”

Austin said that in planning the expo, “it was important to have representation of pretty much everything. In true exposition form, we’ve got to have a lot of queer and LGBTQIA vendors.

“Historically, I don’t know if this has ever been done – an expo full of queer vendors for our community,” Austin continued. “This is what I’m most excited about: putting people in the position to thrive economically.”

Joe Hawkins, a gay man who is the ex-

ecutive director of the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center, told the B.A.R. that “we have a booth and are very supportive of what they’re going to be doing.”

“I literally saw the promotion in my feed and wanted to be a part of it,” Hawkins said. “Many years ago, I was involved in Bay Area Black in the Life and the Oakland International Black LGBT Film Festival, so it’s really great to see someone taking up the mantle and taking Black Pride to a new level.”

As the B.A.R. reported (https:// www.ebar.com/arts_&_culture/movies//227556) in 2005, the film festival at the now-defunct old Parkway Theater was “one of the central events” of the Bay Area Black in the Life Pride Week. (The Historic Parkway Theatre on Park Boulevard is now shuttered.

The New Parkway Theatre is open in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood.)

Hawkins said that at the booth the center is planning on presenting information about its resources, new clinic, sexual health services, and youth services.

“We want the community to be aware of all the services we have at the center,” Hawkins said.

The center will also be providing COVID-19 vaccinations and sexually transmitted infection testing, which people can make an appointment for on its website (https://www.oaklandlgbtqcenter.org/) or call 510-882-2286.

“We do have walk-ups but prefer people make appointments,” Hawkins said.

The center’s booth will also be offering $30 gift cards to Black and Latino gay, bisexual, or transgender individuals who come to test for HIV. “Any Pride is a huge undertaking

but more than ever we need spaces and events like Black Pride to empower our community,” Hawkins said.

Other in-person events will include a Pride benefit dinner at 6 p.m. June 24 at Sobre Mesa near Lake Merritt; a queer pub crawl at 5:30 p.m. June 25 at various locations; Skate For Pride at 6 p.m. June 26 at 7th West in the Acorn Industrial neighborhood; and the Queer Kick Ball Tournament and Black Pride Family Reunion at 11 a.m.

June 26 at Raimondi Field.

The virtual events will include a fitness and nutrition class at 2 p.m. June 24 and at 3 p.m. June 25 over Zoom; an inclusive economics presentation at 3 p.m. June 24 over Zoom; and a reclaiming food systems presentation at 4 p.m. June 24.

For more information, go to https:// www.oaklandblackpride.org/. t

“Our biggest goal is to help more households,” said Vasquez. “We also want to make sure services are culturally competent and meeting clients where they are at.”

Ilsa Lund, a straight ally who is chief of strategy for Larkin Street Youth Services and was not part of the working group that helped revise the HIV Housing Plan, told the B.A.R. its goals are reflective of the current needs in the city. Her agency provides 12 beds for youth living with HIV who are under the age of 25 through its Assisted Care program at a building in the Tenderloin.

“I commend the city for its work to ensure that despite a loss of federal dollars, that will not translate to any loss in HIV housing. In fact, it commits to growing the housing over the next five years,” said Lund.

Currently, 1,215 households affected by HIV/AIDS are receiving dedicated housing resources from the city,

according to the plan. It notes that the city currently provides 754 rental subsidies to PLWHA, which is 24% fewer than the 998 available five years ago.

Part of the reason for the decline is the amounts of the subsidies individuals can receive via HOPWA dollars have increased, but due to the declines in the city’s overall allocation as its cases of HIV fall, the total number of subsidies awarded has decreased. In 2019, there were 624 HIV/AIDS subsidy slots in use, at an average annual cost of $9,765 across all subsidy types.

There are 456 permanent units dedicated for PLWHA in San Francisco, indicating a high rate of retention or replacement of the 464 units that were available five years ago, notes the housing plan. The document assumes around 28 units will turn over each year due to participants exiting the program either because they are deceased or have moved out of San Francisco.

New units expected

A change in Larkin Street’s Assisted Care program set to take place July 1 will allow it to serve youth at risk for contracting HIV. With those between the ages of 13 and 24 accounting for less than 1% of persons living with HIV in the city, roughly 83 individuals as of the end of 2019, the agency has had trouble filling all 12 of its beds.

It is changing the program from offering hospice-type care to being a transitional residential care facility funded with city resources rather than with HOPWA dollars. Doing so means fewer restrictions on who can be given one of the dozen beds.

“The last thing we want to do is to have an empty bed,” said Lund. “Because there are fewer youth who are HIV-positive than at any time now, it is a great problem to have. Operating a program restricted to only those who are HIV positive means we are not always operating at capacity.” t

cian in the late 1990s, I was interested in doing research and sexual health work with Black gay men,” Malebranche stated in an email.

“The name I saw on many of the publications back then focusing on Black gay men was John Lamont Peterson. He did work that was unapologetically focused on Black gay men, and he was talking about and developing the HIV prevention interventions for Black

gay men long before it was chic or received broad federal or private funding. He understood the equal importance of both Black and gay identities for men, and how social contexts and mental health played a pivotal role in our lives and sexual health.”

According to the obituary, Mr. Peterson leaves behind a wide circle of friends in the academic research community nationally;

many friends in the HIV/AIDS and gay activist community in Atlanta; and friends in Black and White Men Together, especially the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta chapters. The National Association of BWMT had planned to present Mr. Peterson with its Lifetime Achievement Award at its 40th convention in New Orleans in July; it will now do so posthumously.

Born April 22, 1949, in Orlando, Florida, he was the only child of John Sheppard Peterson and Maggie Peterson, now deceased. His domestic partner, Lupin Loughborough, died in 1993. He is survived by his cousins Tracy Anderson and Julia Diggle and other relatives in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, California, Pennsylvanian, New York, and New Jersey. t

KEEP UP!

As the B.A.R. reported in early June, starting in late 2023 or 2024 the first of at least 50 new units with rents set at no more than 50% of the Area Median Income for people living with HIV should become available. They will be scattered among nine new affordable housing developments to be built around the city, mostly South of Market.

But the units will fall far short of meeting the current needs for housing. There are 331 transitional Plus Housing applicants awaiting a unit.

“In order for the city of San Francisco to meet our ambitious goals of Getting To Zero, we need to address the housing crisis for people living with HIV/AIDS,” stated Bill Hirsh, executive director of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel. “We are pleased that this new award will significantly advance those goals by creating new affordable housing for people living with HIV. Housing is health care for people living with HIV.”

EMAIL STRIP.indd 1

In the matter of the application of WALTER THEODORE WOODWARD, 233 DOLORES ST #4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner WALTER THEODORE WOODWARD is requesting that the name WALTER THEODORE WOODWARD be changed to THEODORE WALTER WOODWARD. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 103 on the 24th of JUNE 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

Natalia Smüt Lopez

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Legals>>

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556325

Courtesy Mothers Against Murder

6/19/19 11:30 AM

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556328

In the matter of the application of ROSA ESMERELDA ZELAYA PORTILLO, 2786 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner ROSA ESMERELDA ZELAYA PORTILLO is requesting that the name ASHLEY AMANDA SANCHEZ ZELAYA be changed to ASHLEY AMANDA SOLANO ZELAYA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 614 on the 1st of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to

show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039347000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as AH LEGAL SERVICES, 1924 HAYES ST #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANGIE HUA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/21/21.

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

FILE A-039334000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PETIT SWEETS, 566 PENNSYLVANIA AVE #A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MAI-TAM NGUYEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/15/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/12/21.

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039335800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as NIMP, 474 NATOMA ST #410, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARK ALLAN PAISLEY. The registrant(s)

commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/13/21.

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039336500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as LITTLE SESAME, 555 5TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HAKKINEN, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/20/20.

See page 13 >>

<< Section

14 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

<<

Legals

From page 14

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/14/21.

LIVE TAHOE REAL ESTATE, 891 BEACH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHRIS HERNANDEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/01/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/21/21.

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039333800

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039332800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as FLOOR PROS, 1661 TENNESSEE ST #3K, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HUNG MAI CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/14/07. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/12/21.

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as AARON HANSEN DESIGN, 584 CASTRO ST #105, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by AARON HANSEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/31/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/07/21.

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039338000

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039352300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SAN FRANCISCO BOAT CHARTERS; HERE AND NOW EVENTS; 1405 YORKSHIRE LOOP, TRACY, CA 95376. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SMALL TOWN GLORY LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/15/21.

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039327400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as ORGANIC STYLIST, THE, 4111 19TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JAIYA ALAMIA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/17/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/29/21.

MAY 27, JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021 NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF SALLY A. MCDONNELL IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-21-304503

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of SALLY A. MCDONNELL, C/O PAUL H. MELBOSTAD (SBN 99951), GOLDSTEIN, GELLMAN, MELBOSTAD, HARRIS & MCSPARRAN LLP, 1388 SUTTER ST #1000, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. A Petition for Probate has been filed by SCOTT D. HRUDICKA in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that SCOTT D. HRUDICKA be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: JUNE 23, 2021, 9:00 am, Rm. 204, Superior Court of California, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney.

If you are a creditor or contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the latter of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined by section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250.

A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for petitioner: PAUL H. MELBOSTAD (SBN 99951), GOLDSTEIN, GELLMAN, MELBOSTAD, HARRIS & MCSPARRAN LLP, 1388 SUTTER ST #1000, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109; Ph. (415) 673-5600.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556357

In the matter of the application of WING KEUNG IP & SHUK MEI KOON, 100 WALLER ST #235, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner WING KEUNG IP & SHUK MEI KOON is requesting that the name WING HEI IP AKA WING HEI JEANINE IP be changed to JEANNIE WING HEI IP. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 103 on the 22th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556343

In the matter of the application of YINGJUN HE, 150 NIAGARA AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner YINGJUN HE is requesting that the name YINGJUN HE be changed to YUKO YINGJUN HE. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 27th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556353

In the matter of the application of ARON AHLAM, 1115 TENNESSEE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner ARON AHLAM is requesting that the name ARON AHLAM be changed to ARON ARGUELLO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 103 on the 27th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039346900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as

The following person(s) is/are doing business as LATIN AMERICAN BARBERSHOP, 3194 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EINSTEIN PAREDES. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/22/21.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039350300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as HI-FI D.I.Y. PRODUCTIONS, 944 TREAT AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LAUREN TABAK. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/02/05. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/22/21.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039354400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as SANDRA FIZ NUTRITION, 825 SILLIMAN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARIA SANDRA FIZ ELIAS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/26/21.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039345900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as BISCUIT BENDER, 328 GUERRERO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BISCUIT BENDER INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/06/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/20/21.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039346400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as FERRY PLAZA FARMERS MARKET, ONE FERRY BUILDING #50, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CENTER FOR URBAN EDUCATION ABOUT SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/23/06.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/20/21.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039352400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as FORESIGHT RISK AND INSURANCE SERVICES, 785 MARKET ST #600, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed INSURTECH INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/20. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/22/21.

JUNE 03, 10, 17, 24, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556354

In the matter of the application of DAVID EDWARD BRAGINSKY, 147 29TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110 for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner DAVID EDWARD BRAGINSKY is requesting that the name DAVID EDWARD BRAGINSKY, AKA DAVID BRAGINSKY be changed to DAVID BRAGINSKY BLOOMIN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 8th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556352

In the matter of the application of SHAHRZAD ROSE BROOME, 147 29TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110 for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner SHAHRZAD ROSE BROOME is requesting that the name SHAHRZAD ROSE BROOME, AKA ROSE BROOME, AKA S. ROSE BROOME be changed to ROSE BROOME BLOOMIN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 8th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556375

In the matter of the application of ANGEL ALEXANDER SOSA JIMENEZ, 161-A LELAND AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134 for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner ANGEL ALEXANDER SOSA JIMENEZ is requesting that the name ANGEL ALEXANDER SOSA JIMENEZ be changed to ANGEL ALEXANDER DELAPAZ JIMENEZ. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 20th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039355300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as STEVEN SATYRICON, 88 WALTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed STEVEN JAMES BENDER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/03/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/27/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039335300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SEA TEA MUSIC CO., 3042 PINE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHARLES THOMAS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/05/11.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/13/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039346700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as EVERY 6 WEEKS; SIX; ARTIFICIAL; 491 CASTRO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RICHARD TITUS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/21/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039360100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PLUR EVENTS, 238 11TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANDRE KORR. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/09/21.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/07/21.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556390

In the matter of the application of TALEEN QUIRREH, 233 VALLEY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner TALEEN QUIRREH is requesting that the name TALEEN QUIRREH be changed to TALEEN QIRREH. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 27th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556394

In the matter of the application of GUOQIANG ZHANG & BEI XU, 227 BAY ST #211, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner GUOQIANG ZHANG & BEI XU is requesting that the name BOHAN ZHANG be changed to ANDREW BOHAN ZHANG. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 10th of AUG 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039360000

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556382

The following person(s) is/are doing business as KANDI LOVE; BLURR EVENTS; 238 11TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GABRIEL RENOUF. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/19/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/07/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039354300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PHO VIETNAM SAN FRANCISCO, 1406 POLK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed VIETNAM FOOD CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/26/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039351900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SAN FRANCISCO HEALTH CARE, 1477 GROVE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a corporation and is signed SAN FRANCISCO HEALTH CARE AND REHAB, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/23/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/22/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039282900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as BANANA HOME, 321 KEARNY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PARAGON 168 CORP (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/03/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039360400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as LA ROCCAS CORNER, 957 COLUMBUS AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PURGATORY INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/95. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039335700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as SOCIAL DATA LAB; SOCIAL DATA REVOLUTION, 4150 17TH ST #12, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed WEIGEND ASSOCIATES LLC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/30/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/13/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039350500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THE PEN AND THE PANGOLIN, 95 CENTRAL AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed THE PEN AND THE PANGOLIN (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/29/20.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/22/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039358300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as PERSONA, 685 SUTTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed 685 SUTTER LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/04/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/07/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039359900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as CANDLESTICK PARK, 747 3RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed BOTTOM OF THE NINTH (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/07/21.

JUNE 10, 17, 24, JULY 01, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556378

In the matter of the application of LIZBETH MALMSTEAD, PO BOX 410772, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94141, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner LIZBETH MALMSTEAD is requesting that the name LIZBETH MALMSTEAD be changed to LIZBETH PERALTA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 20th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021

In the matter of the application of MUZAFFAR IMAMOV & ZEBOKHON IMAMOVA, 333 12TH ST #719, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner MUZAFFAR IMAMOV & ZEBOKHON IMAMOVA is requesting that the name MUKXAMMADSODIKOV MUKHAMMADYUSUF be changed to MUHAMMAD YUSUF and the name MUKXAMMADSODIKOV MUKHAMMADUMAR be changed to MUHAMMAD UMAR. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 103N on the 29th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-21-556384

In the matter of the application of STEFANI YOANITA, 1658 31ST AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner STEFANI YOANITA is requesting that the name STEFANI YOANITA be changed to STEFANI YOANITA IRWAN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 29th of JULY 2021 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039360200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as MAYAN MOVING, 906 HOWARD ST #201, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed EDWIN EDUARDO CAAMAL QUIJADA & WISMAR ERNESTO CAAMAL QUIJADA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/07/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039362300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as CRYSTAL MANA, 33 8TH ST #331, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ARES KPAKA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/08/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039362000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as EMILIO ORLANDI, 2282 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EMILIO GIRAUDBIT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/27/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039354600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as SF BAY AREA JANITORIAL SERVICES, 1912 FOLSOM ST #A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CESAR

t

R. MEJIA PEREZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/16/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/27/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039360900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as FREE & CLEAR AUTOMOTIVE WHOLESALE, 480 GUERRERO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MICHAEL JOSEPH WHITE JR. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/24/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039368400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as LA ENTERPRISE, 1517 NORTH POINT ST #444, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LIYA ANOSOVA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/15/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039362600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as PATISSERIE ON CALIFORNIA, 6833 CALIFORNIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PHILIPPE DELARUE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/23/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/09/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039362700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as LUCKY NAILS, 17 DRUMM ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NAILS FOR ME INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/09/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/09/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039359500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THE BITE, 996 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SAHIN INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/07/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039361400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as ONLY IN CHINATOWN, 864 GRANT AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SF FASHION HOUSE INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039363100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as LA BARBERHOOD, 2275-A MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed LA BARBERHOOD LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/09/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039361300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as MESTIZO, 750 VAN NESS AVE #203, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed EL MESTIZO LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039355700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as MONARCH, 101 6TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ELECTRIC RESISTANCE SOCIETY LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/14/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/27/21.

JUNE 17, 24, JULY 01, 08, 2021

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 Yelp reviews

Tom Prior and Oleg Zagorodnii in Firebird

by Brian Bromberger

W

hether consciously or not, the theme of Frameline45, in its programming of narrative films, is traditional values, mainly home and family.

Many of the characters in this year’s movies are struggling to find meaning either through returning to their homes and biological families, attempting to make sense of their lives now, or revitalizing themselves by discovering something they’ve been missing but didn’t recognize its absence until now.

In the past year of lockdown when we were all chained to our homes, Frameline45 seems to mirror the reassessment of our lives. Our sense of priority, whether it be work, friends, extracurricular activities, and especially spending more time with those we love, has been altered.

Frameline Executive Director James Woolley’s welcome message in this year’s program guide notes how the pandemic underscores “the fragility and the value of our connections with one another,” so it may not be surprising that many of this year’s features reveal that connections with home and family –even if not beneficial– still exert a huge influence on our queer identities and the people we become as we mature.

Frameline45 will also go down as the year where foreign films both excelled and were more daring in their content than U.S. movies.

Boy Meets Boy seems to be a copycat of Weekend, which –at least for LGBTQ audiences– has set the mold for two strangers rendezvousing for a one-night stand but wind up talking, dreaming, confessing, and perhaps changing each other.

Frameline45 : Homos, where the heart is White German dancer Johannes meets visJump Darling is one of the must-sees mother wants to send her to a nursing home. iting Black British doctor/tourist Harry in a of the festival. Russell (Thomas Duplessie) Russell can’t decide whether to pursue actBerlin nightclub; they’re instantly attracted to bombs out in his drag debut at a Toronto ing or drag (portrayed here as more gritty than each other. The next day Johannes will give nightclub, leaves his controlling sugar daddy glamorous), which seems to give him a fearHarry a tour of the city before his flight later boyfriend, and retreats to his grandmother’s lessness he lacks in ordinary life. The interplay that evening. The clock is ticking as the two house in the boonies. His spitfire grandmothbetween one life in the process of ending and men, a younger generation than the two guys er, played by the late inimitable Cloris Leachthe other one trying to kick- start is stunningly in Weekend, discuss major life questions such man in her final role before her death at 94 essayed. Duplessie and Leachman play off each as monogamy, love, religion, and the meanin January, is drifting in and out of dementia, See page 19 >> ing of life. having to deal with her mortality as Russell’s Johannes has an open relationship with his boyfriend, while Harry prefers noncommittal hookups, never sleeping with the same guy twice. Even though society is much more accepting of Johannes/Harry than the Weekend couple, the same issues of internalized homophobia and gay stereotypes still emerge. The vibrant chemistry between the two actors and the exciting cosmopolitan Berlin make this film Thomas Duplessie and Cloris Katharina Behrens and a standout. It’s not as great as Leachman in Jump Darling Adam Hoya in Bliss Weekend, but a worthy successor.

Anthony Thornton

Dancing For Pride Fresh Meat Festival’s 20th, online

Vanessa Sanchez and La Mezcla will perform in the Fresh Meat Performance Festival.

by David-Elijah Nahmod

F

resh Meat Productions, a dance and performance troupe headed by trans dancer-choreographer Sean Dorsey, celebrates both Pride and its 20th anniversary with a two-week festival featuring more than 40 performers. Transgender, non-binary, queer, Black, Indigenous people of color, deaf and disabled artists will take to the stage for two

nF Sa

rancisco

weeks of free online performances showcasing dance, theater, music, poetry, and comedy.

According to Dorsey, twenty years ago cisgender people refused to hire or present trans artists.

“As a choreographer and activist, I longed not only to bring my own work to the stage, but to help lift up other artists, and to build community,” Dorsey said.

And so Dorsey set out to make it happen. He brought together a group of artists

and activists. They put together what they all thought would be a one shot-festival of trans, genderqueer and queer performance. Much to their surprise, the show was a massive hit, with many people telling Dorsey that they felt a deep hunger and need for these kinds of performances to continue.

“And twenty years later we’ve grown and deepened,” said Dorsey. “Today we’re a thriving arts nonprofit with year-round programs.

We believe in trans, gender non-conform-

ing and queer artists are powerful agents of change. And we believe that justice must be approached intersectionally through racial, trans and disability justice.”

Dorsey has many feelings about reaching the 20th anniversary milestone. He points out that the community is in the middle of intense uprising and resistance against anti-Black and white supremacist institutions, while also enduring loss, grief, isolation, and financial stress from the pandemic.

“I see the work of Fresh Meat Productions to be balm, medicine, and fuel for our communities,” he said. “We want to inspire, we want to ignite, we want to uplift.”

He takes great pride in the diversity of Fresh Meat’s performers.

“Fresh Meat Productions is proud to have broken down so many barriers facing trans, non-binary and gender-non-conforming artists,” Dorsey said. “We’re so proud of the caliber, innovation, and boldness of the artists we get to work with.”

He has very strong feelings about what Pride means to him and wants to remind people that Pride is about trans, BIPOC, queer, sex workers and others who rose up and fought back against police violence and state sanctioned abuse.

“Today, Black communities, BIPOC trans folks, and sex workers are still enduring intense police violence and murder, covered up and minimized by the state,” he said. “This is why, for me, Pride should be about defunding police and instead investing in these communities.

This is also why sassy kinksters and outsiders and sex workers do belong, with bells on, at

SPACE RESERVATIONS NOW BEING ACCEPTED! The Bay Area Reporter’s annual edition celebrating San Francisco Pride 2021 will publish on June 24.

EDITION

Reserve your advertising space by calling Scott Wazlowski at (415) 829-8937 or email advertising@ebar.com

See page 16 >>

<< Film

16 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

Best Side Story an interview with Rita Moreno

Rita Moreno

by Gregg Shapiro

H

ow fortunate are we to be alive at the same time as Rita Moreno? A groundbreaking actress, writer, activist, dancer, mother, singer, feminist, Latina and EGOT, the recipient of two Emmy Awards (for The Rockford Files and The Muppet Show), a Grammy Award (for The Electric Company cast album), an Oscar (West Side Story) and a Tony (The Ritz), Rita Moreno shows no signs of slowing down at 89.

In December 2021, Moreno will

be playing Valentina, a role written especially for her, in Steven Spielberg’s big-screen remake of West Side Story. If you can’t wait to see her until then, you are in luck. The documentary Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It (Roadside Attractions), is being released in June 2021. Revelatory and celebratory, Just A Girl Who Decided to Go for It features Rita Moreno front and center, telling her story as only she can.

Rita was gracious enough to answer a few questions in advance of the release of the documentary.

Happy PRIDE Month!

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Gregg Shapiro: Rita, in 2011, your book Rita Moreno: A Memoir was published and now, in 2021, the documentary Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It is being released. During the ten years in between, you have continued to be a hard-working actor – appearing in movies as well as sitcoms such as Jane The Virgin, Happily Divorced and, of course, Norman Lear’s One Day At A Time. Would it be fair to say that the documentary is a kind of visual extension and update of the book?

Rita Moreno: Actually, it is a kind of visual extension, and definitely an update of the book.

Except to say that there’s a lot more detail in this. It’s important to know, for the viewers, that I made a promise to myself, once I decided I was going to take part in the documentary, that I would be as truthful as I could possibly be. I did not want to pull any punches whatsoever and I paid the price because [laughs] I was asked very serious and difficult questions.

But you can be sure that everything I said in this wonderful documentary – by the way, I think it’s marvelous – is absolutely the truth.

In the film, you talk about how the late gay playwright Terrence McNally (who is interviewed in the doc), incorporated the Googie Gomez character you created into his play The Ritz, for which you won the Tony Award, a role you reprised in the movie version. It made me think about how, in the late 1970s, you were in two gay-themed movies The Ritz and Happy Birthday, Gemini, something you did before a lot of other actresses did. Can you please say something about your decision to be in those films, as well as your LGBTQ+ fanbase?

Being in two films that had gay themes was really not a difficult decision [laughs]. They were wonderful.

They were delicious. They were funny. Being a part of that was just not a big deal. I’ve had gay friends forever.

In fact, let me tell you something.

I had the most wonderful little girlfriend as a seven- year-old child. This girlfriend was around for at least seven years of my life and her name was Eddie Lopez. Because I just knew there was something different about him at the time. We had the

<<

Fresh Meat

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best time. So I always thought of him as my little girlfriend. I’ve had an LGBTQ fan base for a long time and it started way before The Ritz and the movies. It’s just something that is so much a part of me. I love the humor. I think gay people are just hilarious and I think they’re heartbreaking. I think they’re brave and I think they are here forever. Anybody who’s unhappy about that, tough titty [laughs]!

With the forthcoming Steven Spielbergdirected West Side Story remake arriving in December, 2021 is turning out to be an especially big year for you professionally. In Tony Kushner’s revised script, you play shop owner Valentina, a gender-swap with the original Doc character. How does it feel to be able to be involved in this project?

I just don’t think there are enough words to express my happiness at being in the new West Side Story. Being with Steven Spielberg is a dream come true. I’ve always loved his work. It has such breadth.

He can do almost anything! He can do E.T., he can do Lincoln, and now he’s doing something that, by the way, he’s wanted to do from the day he saw our original movie.

Let me just say that he is brilliant.

Oh my God, he’s so cinematic! Some of the shots in this movie are not to

t

be believed. I literally followed him around like a child. He, in turn, behaved like a child so much, because he loved doing it. He’d say, “Rita, what do you think of this shot?” It was one of the greatest experiences of my life! The set design is incredible. That has everything to do with Steven. He chooses his people. The cinematography is unreal.

The young actors are spectacular, and here’s what really means the most to me; that he and Tony Kushner had a great deal to do with the fact that the Sharks are Hispanic for real. They’re not all Puerto Rican; that’s not necessary. What’s necessary is that they had to be Latinx and they are. That makes me so proud.

When I spoke to Steven on the phone and he said, “Would you be interested in doing this movie?” I practically dropped the phone. Certainly, my jaw dropped. I said, “Well, yeah. I think so yes.” [Laughs] I was peeing my pants, really. Then I said, and good for me for remembering, “I wouldn’t want do a cameo. Number one, I think it would be a terrible distraction just to sort of pop in and pop out.” He said, “No, it’s a real part. You will play Doc’s widow.

You have a real part in this. It’s not a cameo.” It was a great day in my life.

Finally, do you have something special planned for your 90th birthday in December?

It seems that, perhaps, I can actually have a birthday party again.

I always had one and I don’t think I’ll have as many people as I used to have, but I think I’m definitely going to create something very special.

It has to be with costumes of some kind. I don’t know what that will be yet. Ninety, I can’t believe it!t

Upper Left: Rita Moreno in West Side Story, Upper Right: The Ritz (with Treat Williams), and Left: The Electric Company (with Morgan Freeeman)

means reveling in our glorious, gorgeous, resilient communities.”

Dorsey is very excited about celebrating the 20th anniversary of Fresh Meat Productions. To commemorate the occasion, he’s made the anniversary performances free. The festival will be presented online and features three programs of world premieres and new works, plus five retrospective programs featuring exclusive, archival footage culled from the company’s 20-year history.

“The line-up is incredible,” he said. “These artists honestly leave me speechless with their talent and power. This year we’re presenting more than forty artists and ensembles in everything from bachata, blues, bomba, hula, hip-hop. jawvogue, trans and queer mariachi, contemporary R&B, queer dance theater, along with award-winning wordsmith poets, disabled dance pioneers, world champion queer ballroom, and so much more.”

Though the performances are free,

pre-registration is required. The first weekend is three nights on YouTube Live, June 18-20 at 5pm Pacific Time.

Week 2 is pre-edited archival footage from the last twenty years, and can be accessed on demand anytime from June 21-27 on Vimeo.

Information about the artists and the nightly lineups, as well as registration for free tickets can be found at the Fresh Meat Productions website.

“I cannot express enough how gorgeous these performances are,” Dorsey said. “This is some of the most exquisite, moving, innovative, and important performance work being done anywhere, period. We talk a lot about the Fresh Meat Family, and it truly is a family of people that makes all this happen. I am so, so blessed to be in family and community with them all.”t www.freshmeatproductions.org

Read the full interview on www.ebar.com

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Theatre & 50 in 50>>

June 17-23, 2021 • Bay Area Reporter • 17

Men of Color on virtual -and live- stages

by Jim Gladstone

been mounted since 2008. Along the way, Sakara has made revisions to her script, as playwrights are wont to do. But I was stopped cold and set squirming when Hirabayashi, after losing an important legal battle, moaned “I can’t breathe.” Was that line added after May 25, 2020?

If so, it should be reconsidered.

Live performances through July 3. SF Playhouse. 450 Post St. Ondemand streaming through July 3. $15-$100. www.sfplayhouse.org

W

ith apologies to Gabe Kaplan, who did a much-loved turn as a high school teacher back in the 1970s, there are few people from whom I’d rather get my American history and humanities lessons than Jomar Tagatac. And to get them inperson rather than through distanced learning makes it all the sweeter.

Tagatac, one of the Bay Area’s most versatile actors, has played toughs and ciphers and romantic leads. With light-footed grace, he touches on all of those and more in the San Francisco Playhouse production of Hold These Truths, playwright Jeanne Sakata’s oneactor/multi-character dramatization of the life and trials of Gordon Hirabayashi, directed by Jeffrey Loo. Hirabayashi’s parents and siblings were among the tens of thousands of U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry –many of whom were American-born U.S. citizens– evicted from their homes and herded to geographically remote internment camps during WWII under President Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous Executive Order 9066.

At age 23, having already registered as a conscientious objector to the U.S. military draft on grounds of religious pacifism, Hirabayashi leaned even further into his conscience. He openly refused the order of internment, arguing that it was unconstitutional, based only on racial prejudice rather than any real military need.

After turning himself in to the FBI, he was sent to jail where he began a convoluted trip through the American justice system that led to the Supreme Court’s upholding the charges against him in 1943, but ultimately, in 1987, a dramatic overturning of his conviction.

During our ugly current confrontation with anti-Asian and antiBlack prejudice, Hirabayashi’s activist refusal to back down provides a powerful example. For theater buffs whose familiarity with the Japanese internment is based primarily on Al-

Jomar Tagatac in Hold These Truths

legiance, the George Takei-produced musical, Hold These Truths offers an important counterpoint to that show’s prevailing air of victimization.

That said, for all its earnestness, Sakata’s writing often feels like a civics primer. Granted, this particular civics lesson is sorely needed. And audiences of this production are in luck, because Tagatac gamely excavates emotions from Hirabayashi’s story that are not fully evident in a script that is generally plain and sometimes platitudinous.

He’s the kind of performer who goes above and beyond a playwright’s words to draw music out of characters’ souls. Who reaches right off the stage with a vibrant energy we’ve been missing.

Watch the mischief in Tagatac’s eyes when his Hirabayashi sharpens legal strategy, the way his body softens in tender pride when he speaks as Hirabayashi’s mother, the bushytailed energy he brings to a gang of college kids.

And watch his sheer joy in doing the work he loves –sharing meaningful stories with a live audience– when Tagatac yanks off Hirabayashi’s goofy mid-century hairdo at the end of the evening and directly acknowledges the crowd. His smile is well earned yet deeply grateful. It says, “Welcome back” right back to us.

One itchy question I’ve got to ask.

Versions of Hold These Truths have

this series of quick-cut sketches and musical interludes that make up Manifesto, which was originally created as a solo stage show but has been significantly reimagined to take advantage of video production, with jump cuts and flashy edits that feel perfectly suited to the material.

“As we return to public gatherings and live theatre,” Rotimi has written, “I wanted to revisit…the would-be stars, the gatekeepers, and creative ancestors like James Baldwin and Nina Simone. What would they have to say about theatre’s recent past and what guidance could they give for its future?”

The show is packed with big laughs and big issues. It’s celebratory and cerebral, as befits the moment.

In person screening with live Q&A. Sunday at 8pm. $20. Brava Theatre, 2781 24th St. On-demand. Monday, June 21 through July 18. $15. www.brava.org

between tension and affection as the two men strain to harmonize their commonalities with their differences. Devin A. Cunningham, an Oakland native, beams in from Savannah, Georgia to play Baby Boy, and his video introduction to the character (on Theatre Rhino’s website) makes you look forward to spending more time with him. Tankia Baptiste directs.

Livestreaming Friday and Saturday, 8pm; Sunday 3pm. On demand Sunday, 5pm-Midnight. Pay what you can. www.therhino.org

Janna Giacoppo

Rotimi Agbabiaka in Manifesto.

Brandon Kyle Goodman in The Latrell Show

Juneteenth…with teeth

This Saturday is the annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, a time to celebrate, certainly, but also to meditate over the current state of black lives in America. Three productions available on COVID-hangover video this weekend showcase powerful perspectives from African-American theatermakers in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Manifesto is a puckish take on the post-pandemic cusp by Rotimi Agbabiaka, a queer Bay Area performer of Tagatackian ubiquity who has brought distinctive shamanic sparkle to productions for companies from The San Francisco Mime Troupe to the California Shakespeare Company, where he played a memorable shade-throwing harem overseer in House of Joy. Agbabiaka wrote and performs

50 Years in 50 Weeks:

1981­ : Cinema, Skinema A

s Frameline celebrates its 45th anniversary with online, in-theatres and even drive-in screenings this month, let’s look back at coverage of their fifth anniversary in late June 1981. Among the films mentioned are A Woman Like Eve, Gertrude Stein: When This You See, Remember Me, and Greetings From Washington D.C, a documentary about the 1979 March on Washington.

Of course, while the nonprofit relied on editorial coverage and reviews to gain audiences, adult film theaters supported the newspaper that supported the less graphic arts. To the right, a tempting full-page ad for Grease Monkeys, “a Mark Aaron Production,” screened at the Century Theater on 816 Larkin Street; presented in SuperVision!t

See the July 2, 1981 spread at https://archive.org/details/bayareareporter

Ramond Thomas as Chuck in Pillow Talk

Pillow Talk shrewdly borrows the title of one of the whitest, least sincere movies of all time, in which Doris Day succumbs to Rock Hudson’s glib machismo, for what looks to be a sharp, sensitive take on intimacy between Black men. Theatre Rhinoceros’ new commission is written by Kheven Lagrone, who hails from Oakland and sets his play there in the 1990s.

It centers on the relationship between Baby Boy, a young street hustler, and Chuck (Ramond Thomas), an upwardly mobile older man who may become Oakland’s first police chief. There’s a precarious dance

The Latrell Show, from Los Angeles’ IAMA theater, is a campstravaganza on the surface with a dark undertow beneath. The brainchild of writer/performer Brandon Kyle Goodman, it begins as flaming, fast-talking TV-chat show parody –title character Latrell is the Billy Porteresque host– and evolves into a more complex examination of gay Black identity in contemporary America as Goodman takes on a second character, Jeremiah, a troubled office worker whose natural lack of showboating fabulosity renders him near-invisible. The piece’s structure doesn’t entirely work dramatically, but it shines as a showcase for Goodman’s talents: Effortlessly charismatic but simmering with subversiveness. Latrell is a supersmart hybrid of In Living Color laughs, Justin Sayre satire, and Sorry To Bother You surrealism.

Catch Brandon Kyle Goodman now.

You’ll say you knew him when.

On-demand through June 27. $15. www.iamatheatre.comt

<< TV & Film

18 • Bay Area Reporter • June 17-23, 2021

Pride programs The Lavender Tube on TV news, talk shows and documentaries

by Victoria A. Brownworth

J

une is such an exciting month on TV. Everybody remembers that LGBTQ people exist. Ad campaigns include us. Networks have cute little Pride spots with rainbow flags (we’ll pay closer attention when you have a rainbow flag and a trans flag side by side). There is LGBTQ programming everywhere.

Like Cinderella at the ball, we are seen, until June 30, at midnight, when it all returns to cisgender hetero-normativity, and we are shunted into the background again.

Pay attention post-Pride to who still pays attention to you.

Nightline

On June 10, ABC’s Nightline aired a segment on Dr. Rachel Levine, of whom we have long been a fan.

Levine made history when she was confirmed by the Senate to serve as Biden’s assistant secretary of health, the first openly transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate and the highest ranking openly transgender government official.

The Senate confirmed her by a vote of 52-48. Along with the Democrats, Levine was backed by moderate Republicans Susan Collins (RME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

Gotta love that “bipartisanship” we keep hearing about.

Levine is the numyou tell your younger ber-two person at the self?”

Department of Health Levine said, quite and Human Services, poignantly, “Things where she serves diwill be okay. And to rectly under Secretary live your life without Xavier Becerra. fear.”

Nightline excerpted You can watch the a portion of a long inentire interview with terview where Levine Granderson, which spoke with out gay Dr. Rachel Levine also includes Dr. Anhost LZ Granderson thony Fauci talking for his new podcast about the HIV/AIDS Life Out Loud. pandemic at ABCnews.go.com. It’s Levine spoke about herself comwell worth watching. Levine really is ing out trans and about trans youth, a superb role model. who are under assault by the GOP. “You got to give them hope,” said The View Levine about trans youth.

Just hours before Nightline highGranderson said, “In lighted Levine, Caitlyn Jenner was many ways, those six lastmaking us cringe on The View. We ing words of the late activist don’t do the “good LGBTQ, bad and politician Harvey Milk, LGBTQ,” like straight media loves act as a north star for the to do, but OMG, how is this woman LGBTQ community. We running for governor? know those who began the Sunny Hostin took her to church. ongoing journey toward Whoopi Goldberg snorted when full equality were aware they likely Jenner claimed they were longtime would not be around to enjoy it.” friends. The interview was a carLevine said, “Trans youth are vulcrashian spectacular, which you can nerable and they are at risk of bullywatch in its entirety on ABC.com ing, harassment and discrimination.” should you want to, but one of the “There are people who have no telling moments came when Joy Belived experience about trans individhar asked if Jenner where she stood uals, about gender-identity issues,” on the issue of the Big Lie. Levine said. “People fear what they “Are you one of those people, one don’t understand and what is beyond of those Republicans?” Behar asked. their experience.”

Jenner responded, “I am not goGranderson asked, “What would ing to get into that. That election

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is over with. I think award-winning docuthat Donald Trump mentary film about did do some good the HIV/AIDS crisis things. What I liked in San Francisco. The about Donald Trump film, produced and diwas that he was a disrected by David Weissrupter.” man with editor and Behar interrupted, co-director Bill Weber, “But did he win? Did premiered at the Sunhe win the election?” dance Film Festival in Jenner then contin- Ed Wolf in We Were Here January 2011, with its ued, “I want to go in international festival and be a thoughtful premiere following at disrupter in Sacramento. We need the Berlin International Film Festival to change the system, and I want to in February 2011. The theatrical prechange the system for the positive.” miere took place at the Castro TheJenner also demurred on a quesatre in San Francisco on February 25, tion about trans athletes in student 2011. sports. She has said she opposes We Were Here explores the protransgender girls playing on girls’ found personal and community isteams. (How come no one ever talks sues, as well as the broader political about trans boys on boys teams, and social impact, raised by the AIDS which is actually far more frequent.) epidemic.

On The View, Jenner said it was “a The film focuses on five different very small issue in the state of Caliinterviews of people that had a profornia. We have so many bigger issues tagonist role during the epidemic. Ed in this state like immigration.” You Wolf, a counselor to many gay men; don’t want to know what she said Paul Boneberg, a political activist; about that or why her campaign is Daniel Goldstein, an HIV+ artist being advised by Trumpers who were who lost two partners to AIDS; Guy involved in the insurrection.

Clark, a dancer who ran a corner flower stand near the Castro, supplyMore Pride ing flowers to many funerals; and The roster of Pride programming Eileen Glutzer, a nurse who helped continues through the end of the administer clinical trials for antimonth. Here are some highlights, so retroviral drugs.t set your DVR. We Were Here (June 25, DocuRead more TV show mentary Plus) We Were Here is a 2011 mentions on ebar.com.

Filmmaker Jenni Olson honored

by David-Elijah Nahmod

O

n June 18 filmmaker and film curator Jenni Olson will be honored with the prestigious Teddy

Award, the Berlinale’s queer film award, during the 71st Berlinale’s Summer Special Festival. The awards ceremony will be live-streamed at 7pm Berlin time, which is 10am PT.

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479 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA 94114

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Olson shares the award with past luminaries such as Udo Kier, Tilda Swinton, Joe Dallesandro, Rosa von Praunheim, and John Hurt, among many others. The award comes to the Berkeley resident after a lifetime of working as a queer filmmaker, film historian and preservationist. She has also worked as a director of marketing for LGBTQ film distributor Wolfe Video, and was a co-director of the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival, now more commonly known as Frameline.

“It feels like an incredible honor,” Olson said of her award. “It’s particularly validating to be recognized Filmmaker and historian Jenni Olson by such a prestigious international film festival, and esfilms, has also launched a retrospecpecially with the Teddy which is the tive of her work. most important LGBT film award in “It’s such a prestigious platform,” the world. The Frameline Award is she said. “It’s just amazing that so pretty prestigious as well, but yeah, many people are seeing my films. As it’s an incredible honor and I’m very a maker of 16mm urban landscape excited about it.” essay films, they’re very queer, and It was Vito Russo’s groundI’m very much speaking from the breaking 1981 book The Celluloid perspective of a butch dyke, my work Closet: Homosexuality in the Movis very much about San Francisco ies, which she read in 1986 while a and the Bay Area, and they’re all shot student at the University of Minnehere. I started shooting in 1997, and sota, that moved Olson to pursue a I have a reservoir of footage from career in queer film. She was parshooting over the years that I draw ticularly moved by Russo’s message on. I have a lot of amazing footage of of how important it is for LGBTQ the history of the Bay Area.” people to see images of themselves Olson’s work has also included on screen.

“It really changed my life,” she said. “It was the thing that made me come out. I started a gay film series on campus as a result of reading Vito’s book.”

A few years later she began attending Frameline to look for films she could show in Minneapolis.

This led her to applying for a job to work at Frameline.

“At the time I thought, wow, this is basically the best job in the world in my little tiny profession of gay film,” she recalls.

The Criterion Channel, a streaming service that specializes in foreign, independent and classic

putting together a compilation of trailers from LGBTQ films.

She said that she was fascinated by the marketing of LGBTQ films, which she refers to as an art form unto itself.

In the past year the Harvard Film Archive has acquired Olson’s entire collection of films, which includes her trailers, her feature films and her collection of homophobic “educational” films from decades past.

Olson addressed why it’s important for LGBT people to see themselves on screen.

“The messages that we get are that we’re still living in a homophobic, transphobic, biphobic world,” she said. “It’s important to see images of ourselves on screen to know that we’re not alone, that there’s a community out there of other people that we can connect and engage with, and that we have a culture and a history as a people.”

She added that she considers herself quite fortunate that her own films have been screened at mainstream festivals such as the Berlin Film Festival, Sundance, and the Museum of Modern Art. But it’s having her work shown at LGBTQ film festivals which means the most to her.

“When I come to Frameline and stand on the stage of the Castro Theatre and show my film to that audience, I feel like that’s why I made the film,” she said. “I made it for this audience, and this audience understands my work in such a much deeper way, and it’s who I want to see it and who I want to talk to about it.”

Olson’s Teddy award is especially joyful to her as she is receiving it during Pride month.

“As hard as this past year has been, I feel keenly aware that I’m extremely blessed to get to do the work that I do,” she said. “Being honored during Pride month for simply having followed my passion for LGBTQ film is just one more example of how blessed I truly am.”

Link to Teddy Awards livestream: eddyaward.tv/en/live/t

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Film>>

June 17-23, 2021 • Bay Area Reporter • 19

Left to Right: Alexandros Koutsoulis and Matthew James Morrison in Boy Meets Boy; Gold Azeron (left) in Metamorphosis; Benjamin Voisin and Felix Lefebvre in Summer of 85

<<

Frameline45

From page 15

other brilliantly as the film suggests life is beautiful especially because of the choices we make, even if they defy societal expectations.

From previous films we have learned that sex workers should never fall in love with their clients.

In the German Bliss, we’re faced what happens when two female sex workers begin a sensual affair, with the older cynical Sascha (Katharina Behrens) and younger neophyte Italian Maria (Adam Hoya) working in a sorority-like brothel headed by a caring mother figure.

One is struck how unsexy and business-like the environment is.

If you ever had any romantic notions about prostitutes, you will quickly be disabused of any such impressions. There is a great deal of nudity here and not all of it pleasant. What director Henrika Kull accomplishes so skillfully is paralleling the real lovemaking between Sascha and Maria with the tedious mechanical friction demanded by their occupation. Sascha is damaged with a complicated past and whether she will allow herself to be loved, becomes the focus of this naturalistic and hopeful movie, that is a real find, even in its disturbing moments.

Metamorphosis is an important film because it deals with a topic, an intersex coming-of-age, almost never addressed on screen.

Fourteen-year-old Adam is an outcast at a Filipino school, called a faggot by schoolmates, resulting in fights, until a new student, Angel, a 24-year-old sex worker, returning to high school, befriends him.

Then one day Adam starts menstruating.

His family, including his Christian pastor father, knew he was intersex at birth. The sympathetic physician does tests and finds he is a true hermaphrodite with a womb and testes, though chromosomally he is a male. Adam’s father wants him to have an operation to become female, even willing to move to another town to avoid scandal.

However, Adam seems to want to remain a boy, even though he’s attracted to both Angel and his handsome doctor. Adam only wants one thing, to be happy. He must learn to accept himself, and reject any false binary gender identity.

Gold Azeron is astonishingly good as Adam able to convey both vulnerability and fearlessness. The final scenes are heart-rending. At times Metamorphosis can be a bit preachy, but you won’t mind since so few of us know much about intersex people. By the end, the film courageously integrates a faithful understanding embrace of intersex that applies to all queer people.

Metamorphosis is an unexpected treasure.

The French queer auteur Francois Ozon returns to fine form in Summer of 85, which at first appears to be a summer fling romance, but in true Ozon style morphs into a mystery with treacherous undertones. Alex (Felix Lefe-

bvre) is rescued by the seductive David (Benjamin Voisin) after his boat capsizes off the Normandy coast. They start an all-encompassing romance at least for Alex.

David isn’t what he appears to be, even though his mother (the terrific Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is supportive of the relationship, as Alex takes a job in their family store. But jealousy will lead to farreaching consequences. In typical Ozon fashion, the ending is murky, open to various interpretations. A killer 1980s soundtrack and picturesque scenery play starring roles here. It’s not one of Ozon’s very best, but well worth your time with two very attractive leads and a Talented Mr. Ripley ambiance that will keep you glued to your screen to the very last frame.

Language Lessons is a mixed bag, as it’s another example of a straight actor writing himself a plum gay role and deciding to act in it, similar to Viggo Mortensen’s recent Falling. Mark Duplass portrays middle-aged Adam, whose rich husband gives him a gift of online Spanish language lessons taught by Costa Rican tutor Carino (Natalie Morales). Not for one minute will you buy Duplass as gay; aside from having a husband, you’d never suspect he was gay.

An unexpected tragedy brings the two closer as they reveal more about their personal lives, going beyond Spanish tutorials, though Carino isn’t forthcoming about the bruises on her face.

Language is ideal for lockdown filming, because it’s just two characters with their virtual screens.

Having a gay actor play Adam might have lent a queer perspective clearly missing in the script. The final plot ending seems contrived, though Adam admitting his white privilege in their inter-cultural exchange, is invigorating in these post-George Floyd days. Mediocre at best but as we emerge from the COVID pandemic, Language Lessons argues for honest connections, and reflects the zeitgeist of the moment.

Firebird is the best gay male love story since God’s Own Country (2017). Based on a true story, Sergey (Tom Prior) is serving as a junior Soviet Air Force base in Estonia in 1977 along with his best friend Luisa (Diana Prozharskaya) who hopes to marry him, though Sergey, ready to leave the military, wants to pursue a career as an actor.

Both their lives are upended with the arrival of the dashing starfighter pilot Roman (Oleg Zagorodnii).

Sergey and Roman begin a forbidden but passionate affair, especially precarious during this Cold War period, as they must hide their affections from everyone or face dire consequences.

Years later, the now married Roman and drama school student Sergey meet again and restart their secret relationship. Yes, a bit melodramatic and marred only by all the characters speaking English rather than Russian, but the sparks fly between the two hot leads, even though this is primarily Sergey’s story of his

struggle to lead an authentic life.

After a monastic-like lockdown, aren’t we all in need of a dreamy romance? Firebird is it. Sumptious production values even manage to make drab Moscow look inviting.

Firebird is my favorite narrative film at the festival. Run and see this winner live at the Castro Theatre as well as watch Prior and director Peeter Rebane being interviewed in-person post-screening.t

Look for part two of Frameline45’s narrative films, and documentaries, in next week’s Pride issue.

BY ROUND BARN

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