March 20, 2014 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

End of the line for Sweet

8

Deadline nears for health care

ARTS

3

17

'Tyler's Suite' premieres

The

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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971

Vol. 44 • No. 12 • March 20-26, 2014

Grindr now STD outreach tool

Petition urges SF unveil for Milk stamp

by Matthew S. Bajko

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

local gay philatelist has launched a campaign to urge the United States Postal Service to unveil its Harvey Milk stamp later this spring in San Francisco to coincide with annuRick Gerharter al celebrations held Branton Burke on the deceased gay rights leader’s birthday.

San Francisco resident Branton Burke, 48, a stamp enthusiast, has created a petition on the White House website asking the postal service “to do the right thing” and schedule the issuance ceremony for Milk’s stamp in San Francisco on May 22, which is annually designated Harvey Milk Day in California.

Milk became the state’s first openly gay elected official when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in November 1977. A year later he was assassinated inside City Hall along with then-Mayor George Moscone by disgruntled former supervisor Dan White.

Over the last 36 years Milk has become a beloved LGBT icon throughout the world.

His life story has inspired award-winning musical productions, books, and films. He will be the first person honored with an official postal service stamp due to his work for LGBT equality.

“The USPS honors the individual featured on the stamp with a ceremony in a city that usually is related to that person. As it stands now the ceremony is not scheduled for San Francisco or any place close to it,” states Burke’s petition, which he created on March 3.

In an interview Monday with the Bay Area Reporter, Burke said he based his claim on conversations he has had with postal service officials who told him “on background” that the ceremony would be at the White House.

“It looks like it is coming to fruition. I just feel like it is a slap in the face to San Francisco and what Harvey stood for to not have it here,” said Burke.

Spokespeople for the White House, the postal service, and Milk’s family, however, all insisted to the B.A.R. this week that a time, date, and location has yet to be determined for when the Milk stamp will be issued.

“We haven’t solidified that and have nothing to announce at this time,” said postal service spokesman Mark Saunders.

Shin Inouye, director of specialty media in the White House Office of Communications, See page 14 >>

S Luck o’ the Pride

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here were no controversies in San Francisco about LGBT groups marching in the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade March 15. For the first time, members of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee had a contingent in the long-running parade. There were dustups in New York City and Boston because the private

Rick Gerharter

organizations overseeing the parades prohibit gays from marching openly. A possible agreement in Boston was nixed after it was discovered that LGBTs could not march with Pride symbols or signs.

This is not the first time gays have marched in the San Francisco parade; the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization marched in 1995 and 1996.

an Mateo County health workers have been creating fake profiles on the online hookup application Grindr to encourage more men who have sex with men to get tested for HIV and other sexuCourtesy Grindr ally transmitted diseases.

Darryl Lampkin, Samples of profile prevention supervisor pictures promote for the STD/HIV pro- Grindr Xtra gram at the county’s health department, said last week that the efforts have enabled staff to reach far more people than they had been able to in the county, which is just south of San Francisco but includes no physical venues such as gay bars or community centers where outreach can be focused.

See page 14 >>

Chorus show celebrates Tyler Clementi’s life

by Matthew S. Bajko

O

ne song is centered on riding a unicycle; another is derived from the rivalry of siblings. A third harkens back to nursery school rhymes and the innocence of youth.

“I wish I were a child again, when everything were simple,” goes one snippet of the lyrics.

A fourth song is a mother’s lament, asking if her deceased son realized he was “perfect in my eyes.”

The hauntingly beautiful lyrics and music celebrate the life of Tyler Clementi, a gay Rutgers University student whose suicide in 2010 captured worldwide media attention.

Distraught after his college roommate posted video of him kissing another man online, Clementi leapt to his death from the George Washington Bridge.

His childhood and family memories have now inspired the eight songs that make up Tyler’s Suite, a new commissioned work the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus will premiere next week as part of its spring concert “Luster – An American Songbook.”

Lyricist and librettist Pamela Stewart, who wrote the lyrics for the entire work, met with the Clementi family at their home in New Jersey over a year ago to draw inspiration for the songs.

“It was a real painful topic, but it has been a good process for myself,” Jane Clementi, Tyler’s mother, told the Bay Area Reporter during a recent phone interview. “I want Tyler to be known by other people.”

Courtesy the Clementi family

A young Tyler Clementi, left, visited San Francisco years ago with his mother, Jane, and brothers, Brian and James.

At first, she was reluctant to publicly share her memories of her son, especially when the story first broke.

“Initially, his story was just a media sensation.

At that point, I kind of wanted to keep him to myself a little bit. He was mine,” she recalled. “As time has moved on, I am a little more freer to let

him go. I need his story to go out and for him to be known as the person he is, not just the media sensation.”

The genesis for the chorale work was sparked through a friendship the Clementis See page 6 >>

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Photo: RJ Muna

<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Giuliano compensation tops $300K

by Seth Hemmelgarn

S

an Francisco AIDS Foundation CEO Neil Giuliano was compensated more than $300,000 for the 2012-13 fiscal year, upping the income for someone who already was likely the highest-paid head of any LGBT-related nonprofit in the city.

Giuliano, 57, earned $263,580 in base salary and benefits, and the nonprofit’s board gave him a $37,900 bonus last year, accord-

ing to records the AIDS foundation filed with the IRS that were released this week. The filing also lists other income for Giuliano, including $10,161 in nontaxable benefits. His total compensation was $319,933, up almost 19 percent from the previous year’s figure of $269,418.

With a budget last year of about $24 million, the AIDS foundation is the largest HIV/AIDS-related nonprofit in the city. Giuliano’s salary and benefit package accounts for

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about 1.4 percent of that figure.

The agency’s clients include some of San Francisco’s poorest residents, and it provides free services ranging from HIV testing and counseling to distribution of clean syringes to injection drug users.

Giuliano already had a high profile when he joined the agency in 2010 after previously serving as the mayor of Tempe, Arizona and president of GLAAD. Reached via email for a statement on Giuliano’s compensation, SFAF spokesman Ryan McKeel noted that the figure is set by the nonprofit’s board.

In a phone interview, Tom Perrault, who served as board chair from January 2011 to December 2013, said that when Giuliano was hired, board members had asked him “to consider this important question: How do we become the first city to end HIV transmission? It was and remains an audacious and exciting goal. We said we’d provide him with a bonus for that plan creation and continue to provide bonuses for each

Rick Gerharter

SFAF CEO Neil Giuliano

year he continued to make substantial progress” on that goal.

Perrault said evidence of that progress includes Giuliano securing $1 million worth of pro bono consulting work to help identify ways to end HIV transmission in San Francisco. That project provided the

t

foundation for the health center for gay and bi men that the nonprofit is working to establish in the Castro.

Giuliano also received $200,000 worth of free work on branding and naming for the planned center, according to Perrault and the firm involved.

Giuliano, whose original salary at the AIDS foundation was $249,000, recently said he’s hopeful that the center will open in December.

Aside from Giuliano’s work on the center, Perrault also pointed to Giuliano’s efforts to increase efficiency at the AIDS foundation and guide more money toward programs and services.

One of the next highest-paid nonprofit leaders in San Francisco is Kevin Winge, the executive director of Project Open Hand, which provides meals and other services to people living with AIDS and other illnesses.

According to the agency, Winge’s total compensation last year was $203,395, or about 2.1 percent of the nonprofit’s $9.7 million budget.t

Local Ellis Act ordinance gains support from supes

by David-Elijah Nahmod

A

San Francisco ordinance aimed at helping those facing eviction through the Ellis Act was heard by a Board of Supervisors panel following an emotional hearing this week.

The measure, by gay District 9 Supervisor David Campos, wasn’t voted on by the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee at the March 17 hearing because some amendments were added.

It was continued in committee for a week to allow for public comment and is expected to go to the full board April 1.

About 50 tenant and housRick Gerharter ing activists rallied outside City Supervisor David Campos, right, speaks at a March 17 rally on the steps Hall prior to the hearing.

Campos’s proposal would of City Hall in support of his legislation that would increase the relocation fees in an Ellis Act eviction. Fellow Supervisors Eric Mar, left, and John increase the payments made by Avalos also spoke in support of the proposal. landlords to city tenants facing an Ellis Act eviction.

The Ellis Act is a state law that ple from leaving the city.” years. She recalled a friend who took allows landlords to evict tenants in Avicolli Mecca said that many his life after being evicted. order to get out of the rental busiof those being displaced were “I see the families and the artists ness. In recent years, out of town “the heart of our city. And our gone,” Gomez said, as she fought developers have purchased multineighborhoods.” back tears. ple buildings, immediately evicting Under current law, landlords Others pleaded with the superall tenants in order to sell the units must pay between $3,000 and visors to address the city’s housing as condos or tenancies in common. $5,000 in relocation fees to tenants, crisis.

Long-term LGBT tenants with AIDS, with additional fees paid to disabled “It’s heartbreaking,” said Iris the disabled, seniors, and people of tenants.

Biblowitz. “As a nurse I wonder color have been hardest hit. Many Supervisors Jane Kim, Eric Mar, about people’s health. Homelessness cannot find affordable housing in a and John Avalos are co-sponsoring is already a problem, it’ll get worse. market where current average rents Campos’s proposal. Supervisors There’s a lot of suffering. Please do now top $3,000 per month.

Malia Cohen and gay Supervisor something quickly.”

The ordinance would require Scott Wiener expressed support for Allison Wright, who walked with landlords who evict using the Ellis the legislation. Wiener represents a cane, wondered where she would Act to pay the difference between the Castro district, which, along go. “The people who put you in ofthe tenant’s rental rate prior to with Campos’s Mission district, has fice will be gone,” she warned the eviction and what would have been been hard hit by evictions. supervisors. the market rate for that unit for The original proposal was Fred Sherburn-Zimmer of the two years. According to Campos, amended to include an appeal proHousing Rights Committee told the the law would ensure that relocacess for landlords who themselves supervisors that developers are the tion payments – already required might face financial hardships due problem. under the Ellis Act – would adeto the increased payments. This “We see almost no small landquately represent true market costs would theoretically benefit smaller lords using the Ellis Act,” she said. and allow displaced tenants who “mom and pop” property owners.

“Most are flippers. They are not would face dramatically higher rent The amendments passed without landlords. It’s a business plan. Most costs the opportunity to stay in San objection. are not from San Francisco.”

Francisco.

Many people spoke at the hearBrian Basinger, director of AIDS “Campos’s legislation helps to ing. Out lesbian comedian Marga Housing Alliance/San Francisco, give tenants who are evicted under Gomez talked about her love for the reported that many of those facing the Ellis Act a fighting chance to city. eviction are HIV-positive or living stay in the city,” said Tommi Avicolli “It’s my longest lasting relationwith AIDS. Mecca of the Housing Rights ship,” she quipped. Gomez fears Campos urged swift action on his Committee. “With Ellis evictions on that she might be facing eviction proposal. the rise and buyouts and threats disafter hearing her landlord wonder “If we have a chance to save the placing even more tenants, we need what he might be able to get for the character of the city, we have to act every tool we can find to keep peobuilding Gomez has called home for now,” he said.t

t

Community News>>

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Adventure ends as Sweet calls it quits

by Heather Cassell

I

Sweeties unite

t was an adventure for six years, but Sweet, the eco-lesbian travel company, is calling it quits on its “do-goodery” vacations.

Shannon Wentworth, founder and CEO of Sweet Ventures LLC, posted a short note on the company website last month announcing that she was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

“I write this with a heavy heart,” wrote Wentworth, who bought out co-founder Jen Rainin in September 2012. “Due to poor sales and our inability to raise enough capital to continue operations, Sweet has no choice but to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. All operations cease immediately.”

Wentworth added that a bankruptcy trustee would oversee the liquidation and the refunds for scheduled trips.

Sweet’s 2014 trips were being marketed up until the abrupt shutdown February 3.

As of press time, Wentworth, a 41-year-old lesbian, hasn’t filed the paperwork in bankruptcy court, according to a search of case filings.

Sweet set sail on its 28th and final cruise to the Western Caribbean in November 2013, Wentworth wrote in an email to the Bay Area Reporter.

Sweet is registered with the California Attorney General’s office under the California Sellers of Travel Act and the California Travel Consumer Restitution Corporation, which only protects California travelers who book vacations in California.

The consumer restitution office didn’t respond to the B.A.R.’s request if any travelers have filed complaints against the company.

Wentworth declined to respond to the B.A.R.’s request for comment until after the legal process is completed, she wrote in an email.

On January 13, prior to Wentworth’s decision to dissolve the company, she sent out an S.O.S. message to “Sweeties,” as Sweet called its guests, asking for help to raise $25,000 by January 17 and urged them to book their trip to Cozumel as soon as possible.

Overall, in order to keep operating in 2014, Wentworth needed to raise $150,000 and sell out the Cozumel vacation by the end of January, according to the email announcement.

Supporters cried out, “Save our Sweet!” to lesbian Ellen DeGeneres, host of the Ellen Show, and other potential investors by spreading the word on Facebook.

Unfortunately, Sweet couldn’t be saved.

“We all feel bad about it. We all worked so hard,” said Babs Daitch, who was the director of programming for Sweet. She took a sabbatical from the company in May 2013, she said.

Daitch, a lesbian travel industry expert and owner and tour guide of Thanks Babs! The Day Tripper in Las Vegas, said that Wentworth tried every way possible to make Sweet work, but in the end there weren’t enough women booking vacations.

“I felt really sad,” said Crystal Phears, a 32-year-old lesbian, about when she learned that Sweet was bankrupt. “I really enjoyed going on these Sweet trips.”

She had traveled several times with Sweet and adopted a cat and dog during two separate Sweet trips and was planning on taking her wife Rocio Penaloza, 38, on a Sweet trip in September when she learned of the company’s problems.

Phears told the B.A.R. that she’s been on trips where resorts were completely sold out by Sweeties.

Yet, the last cruise she went on Wentworth couldn’t charter the entire ship, so Sweet’s guests mixed with other passengers.

Courtesy Sweet Ventures LLC

Sweet founder and CEO Shannon Wentworth took part in a beach cleanup day.

“I know a lot of people are very devastated,” said Phears. “It’s a shame that this is happening because they do so much for the community. Wherever they go they give back and that’s what I liked about Sweet a lot.”

Good will travel

Social justice is in Wentworth’s blood. A Bay Area native, Wentworth and her younger sister were raised by their mother, a phone company service representative, in Contra Costa County. Protecting the envi-

ronment and equal rights grabbed her early in life and became a philosophy to live by. At the end of last year she moved with her young son, Theron, to the Sierra Nevada foothills outside of Yosemite.

Sweet was Wentworth’s way of getting people on board with changing the world while seeing it and having fun. She spoon-fed change to lesbian travelers and their friends with “voluntourism” excursions that lasted from an hour and a half to four-hours wherever Sweet traveled. The excursions included clean-

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ing up beaches, painting children’s hospitals and schools, planting trees and restoring wetlands, helping animals in shelters, and more.

In total, Sweeties logged more than 5,500 hours of community service in five years since the inaugural cruise to the Caribbean in November 2009.

Her brand of vacationing brought queer women together with locals at destinations in countries where homosexuality is more often than not criminalized. The voluntourism excursions left locals and vacationers feeling good and a little more knowledgeable about each other.

In addition to the excursions, each Sweet vacation was designed to have as little impact on the environment as possible by reducing vacationers’ carbon footprints in partnership with Carbonfund. org, a carbon reduction and offset organization.

Wentworth, along with Sweeties, also donated more than $650,000 to local community and LGBT organizations abroad and domestically, she wrote.

For all the giving Sweeties did, Wentworth made travel affordable offering Sweet travelers payment plans and organized vacations around all-inclusive resorts and cruises.

In an unusual turn of events and as testament to Wentworth, Sweeties are already planning vacations together on Sweet’s forum. Some of her loyal guests are planning a Sweet reunion in Isla Mujeres, Mexico in September and they are inviting the Sweet staff to thank them, said Daitch and Phears.

“They’ve invited Shannon and the staff to come with them so they can say, ‘Thank you,’ for Shannon being so nice,” said Daitch. “That’s the amazing part of this thing, even though Sweet isn’t officially there anymore.”t

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4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Volume 44, Number 12 March 20-26, 2014 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Chuck Colbert Richard Dodds • David Guarino Peter Hernandez • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble Michael McAllister • Michael McDonagh David-Elijah Nahmod • Elliot Owen Paul Parish • James Patterson • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Philip Ruth • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Ed Walsh • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION T. Scott King PRODUCTION/DESIGN Jay Cribas PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland Rick Gerharter • Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Scott Wazlowski – 415.359.2612 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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<< Open Forum

t Fake hookup profiles raise concerns T

he San Francisco Bay Area has always been at the forefront of promoting cutting-edge research and adopting new approaches to stem HIV transmissions and to encourage gay and bisexual men to test regularly for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

One of the most successful was the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s award-winning Healthy Penis campaign that ran for several years. Gay men responded to the penis character who was featured in clever cartoon ads and as a costumed figure at neighborhood street fairs.

He was there to remind them to get tested regularly for STDs, and pointed out that no man wanted to be with his sidekick, Phil the syphilis sore.

We want to encourage innovation around gay men’s health. So it was concerning to learn this week about a new outreach program conducted by San Mateo County health officials.

The county health department is using fake Grindr profiles to engage men via instant messaging about safer sex. It’s a bait and switch tactic that has the potential to backfire badly.

It’s skirting the line between deception and forthrightness. We’re not sure how we would feel if we were using an app like Grindr and suddenly were told the person we contacted was a health worker who wanted us to get tested.

But we know that in this social media age, all bets are off in terms of knowing who you’re actually communicating with. As Darryl Lampkin, the San Mateo County STD/HIV prevention supervisor, explained at a recent meeting of the San Francisco HIV Prevention Planning Council, the county is certainly not the only one using fake photos on Grindr. He also emphasized that health workers, some of whom are women, are “very forthcoming early in the conversation about why we’re there.”

The numbers Lampkin touted clearly show that his approach is working – contacts with gay and bi men jumped from just 60 to 215 that were attributed to Grindr outreach.

Nearly 80 percent of those contacts remained

engaged when told who was really behind the photo and why they were there.

But Lampkin, who is gay, can’t say – as he did – that the county isn’t deceiving people. Using altered stock photos and creating fake profiles is deception, no matter how effective the program is.

San Francisco health officials told us that they have no plans to operate a similar program and that’s a good thing.

FGG’s Facebook blunder

The fake Grindr profiles weren’t the only social media story in local news this week. From our sports columnist Roger Brigham comes the ugly tale of an unnamed Federation of Gay Games board member who anonymously responded to an anti-gay troll. Both people engaged in homophobic and anti-straight comments that have no place on an official Facebook page of the group that started the Gay Games. An FGG spokesman said the organization would update its communications policy, but the kicker is that

FGG’s existing policy was disregarded by the board member, starting with the fact that he (or she) posted anonymously. FGG needs to retrain everyone who has access to its social media sites as well as update its policy. There are so many trolls online these days that simply ignoring the offending post would have been the best course of action.

A much better approach is the one that Gay Games 9 organizers in Cleveland are taking: have paid staff do the social media engagement. Ann Gynn, Gay Games 9’s director of marketing and communication, clearly knows the importance of targeting messages and controlling the messengers. Comments are so closely monitored that designated staff receive an alert whenever a comment or link is posted or shared on the site. If the FGG had similar controls it might have prevented the recent exchange.

It’s easy to hide behind social media sites, even ones like Facebook that ostensibly require using real names. And it’s the people who hide behind anonymity who often post comments that they otherwise wouldn’t if they were held accountable for their actions.t

Tax time: the good, the bad, and the ugly

by Scott E. Squillace

couples starting with this year’s tax filings for 2013, due by April 15 any have fought to seek le(unless extended). Marriage is degal recognition for sametermined based on your legal status sex couples in our society. A new on December 31 of the tax year. So, dawn is upon us with vast federal if you were married (lawfully, anyrecognition of our marriages since where) on December 31, 2013, you last summer. On June 26, 2013 the will be required to file as “married” U.S. Supreme Court, in a landfor your 2013 federal income tax mark decision, United States v. returns. This could be good if you Windsor, struck down a portion of qualify for the marriage “bonus” or Courtesy Scott Squillace the Defense of Marriage Act, essenbad if the marriage “penalty.” tially ordering the federal govern- Attorney and author 2. Filing married now means ment to stop discriminating against Scott Squillace you may pay more income taxes lawfully married same-sex couples. (commonly known as the marriage One of the many federal agencies penalty). That’s the bad. There is, that changed its regulations and policies as a however, something known as the marriage boresult of this decision was the Internal Revenue nus – where your combined filings could now Service. Now that tax time is upon us, everyone reduce your overall tax exposure. This is often is focused on what this means. the case when one person in the couple Last August the IRS announced new regulahas significantly less (or no) income, tions implementing the Windsor decision. The such as a stay-at-home spouse. The community breathed a sigh of relief. The IRS only way to determine where you stated it would apply the “place of celebration” fall in this spectrum is to run your rule for all federal tax matters. This means that own tax numbers. Tax professioncouples lawfully married “where celebrated” als can help and a number of soft(which can include foreign countries) can and ware programs, including certain will be treated as married for all federal tax apps, are available to help as well, purposes, even if they move to or live in a state such as Turbo Tax. that does not recognize their marriage.

3. Once married and required There are currently 17 states, plus the District to file as such, you still may choose to file jointof Columbia, that recognize same-sex marriage ly or separately – but – it is almost always betand 33 that do not, although this could change ter to file jointly. (Couples who elect the “sepasince there are a variety of lawsuits percolating rate” option usually reach the higher marginal around the country. Some states that do not rate quicker and have certain itemized deducrecognize the rights of its same-sex citizens to tions phased out quicker.) It is an urban myth be married, do however, recognize those marthat electing “separate” as married puts you riages performed elsewhere. So there is a patchback where you were or would have been as work of recognition, non-recognition, and quasingle. Separate is not single! si-recognition in states today.

4. Couples who were married in 2012 or Legal and tax practitioners everywhere are earlier may amend prior income tax returns if still sorting out the details of what this means they would, as a married couple, receive a refor same-sex couples. Here is a brief summary fund. That’s the really good. But, if they would of the good, the bad, and the ugly with respect be required to pay more taxes, they are not reto these new rules: quired to amend. Also good. This may be par1. All married couples must file as married ticularly interesting for couples with very dif-

M

ferent incomes, such as a stay-at-home spouse and a working spouse. The only way to know whether it is beneficial is to run the numbers.

5. Couples who have moved to a non-recognition state and split up but were not able to become divorced because their new home state won’t allow it are still married for federal tax purposes. There are some states that allow outof-state residents to become divorced if their home state doesn’t allow it, such as Delaware, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia. But, the marriage status for tax filings, as mentioned, is determined on December 31 of the tax year. So, unless you were divorced by December 31, 2013, even if you had separated and/or couldn’t get divorced, you are still married for federal tax purposes and required to file a married return. That’s ugly.

6. If you filed federal estate or gift tax returns in prior years based on transfers to a samesex spouse, you can now amend those for the past three years. But the clock is ticking. Soon, you will be only able to amend for the past two years.

State income tax filings are an entirely other kettle of fish. The same filing married options apply in recognition states, but non-recognition states are a bit all over the map.

You should consult a tax professional in your area to find out the state of the current rules in any non-recognition state.

Whether good, bad, or ugly, the bottom line is we are increasingly being placed on a level playing field with our straight counterparts and not being discriminated against, at least for all federal tax purposes.t Attorney Scott Squillace is the author of a recent book on planning for same-sex couples entitled Whether to Wed: A Legal and Tax Guide for Gay and Lesbian Couples.

He runs a boutique estate planning firm in Boston and works with couples nationally.

For more information visit: www.gayestateplanning.com or www.whethertowed.com.

Politics>>

t Gay Alameda Co. education official to serve second term

by Matthew S. Bajko

A

gay member of the Alameda County Board of Education will automatically serve a second four-year term, as he did not attract a challenger for his re-election race in June.

Since no one filed to run against Joaquin J. Rivera, the first and so far only out LGBT person to serve on the oversight body, his name will not appear on the primary ballot.

He is in line to become presidentelect of the board next year and expects to take over the gavel as president in 2016.

“I prefer to think people were very happy with my performance,” Rivera, 48, told the Bay Area Reporter during a recent interview when asked why he thought he had failed to draw an opponent.

He did acknowledge that part of the reason why he and several other trustee candidates had no competition might have to do with the limited powers of the board’s trustees.

Unlike the members of local school district boards, who hire and fire their superintendents, the county superintendent is an elected position.

“Most of the power is given to the county superintendent,” explained Rivera, adding that the “role of the county board is much more limited than the role of local school district boards.”

Rivera holds the Alameda County board’s Area 1 trustee seat, which covers Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Piedmont, and portions of Oakland that include North Oakland and the Chinatown/Central districts. He was recently elected vice president of the California County Boards of Education, a statewide organization that represents members from county boards.

He has been a chemistry professor since 1990 at Skyline College, located south of San Francisco in the hills of San Bruno and part of the San Mateo County Community College District. Rivera lives in Berkeley with his husband, Joel Cohen; the couple does not have children.

Rivera said he wished to remain serving on the county education board, as he is “excited” to take part in discussions on how to implement a new funding formula for local public schools. He has also taken a keen interest in charter schools, which the board has oversight of as it approves charterships for the private ventures.

“I personally feel there has been a proliferation of charter schools to the detriment of public schools like in Oakland. There are some good ones out there but there are a number that are not,” said Rivera. “Some are coming back to get chartered again, and they have to be held accountable for what they will do.”

He is also excited to work with a new county superintendent. The current officeholder, Sheila Jordan, has opted to step down. Five people filed to run for the seat, and Rivera is supporting Karen Monroe, the current associate superintendent for the county office.

“I feel she will be the person to hit the ground running at a faster speed than some of the others,” he said.

No matter who wins the race, which will appear on the June ballot, Rivera said he “is looking forward to working with the new person on finding ways which we can help the local school districts I represent. Especially in areas like special education and career education,

Rick Gerharter

Alameda County Board of Education member Joaquin Rivera

the county can do more than we have been doing.”

Rivera had begun to campaign for his seat earlier this year, having secured endorsements from the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a nationa l group that backs LGBT candidates for political office, and the East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club, a local political group for LGBT residents.

He is now one of three out elected LGBT leaders serving on countywide boards in the East Bay. Elected in 2012, lesbian BART board member Rebecca Saltzman represents parts of Oakland, Berkeley, and a section of Contra Costa County.

Abel Guillen, who identifies as two spirit and dates men and women, serves on the Peralta Community College Board and his term ends this fall. His seat is up for re-election on the November ballot, but Guillen is widely expected to jump into the race for an open Oakland City Council seat.

Rivera expects his swearing-in ceremony to his second term will occur at the county board’s July 8 meeting. His first term officially ends June 30.

Gay Oakland council candidate ends ‘run’

Weeks after telling the B.A.R. that he has no intention to seek an open Oakland City Council seat, despite pulling papers to enter the race, gay Democratic political consultant Michael Colbruno took to Twitter to squash continued speculation that he would indeed run.

“I’m not running. PERIOD,” Colbruno tweeted on March 11 in response to a conversation on Twitter about his intentions.

A member of the city’s Port Commission, and a prominent backer of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s re-election bid this fall, Colbruno’s reason for exploring a run for the city council’s District 2 seat was to nudge Guillen into seeking it, as he explained both on his Facebook page and in an interview with the B.A.R. last month.

Guillen said Wednesday that he would make an announcement soon about his candidacy for the seat, which covers Oakland’s Chinatown, Grand Lake, San Antonio, and Trestle Glen districts.

The incumbent, Councilwoman Pat Kernighan, opted not to seek re-election.

In order to be eligible for the seat, Guillen needs to move, as he currently lives a few blocks outside the boundaries for District 2. He does represent the council district on the community college board.

Two people have filed to seek the

Assembly Speaker-elect Toni Atkins

seat, so far, former KPIX news anchor Dana King and Sokhom Mao, a foster youth advocate who sits on the Oakland Citizens’ Police Review Board.

Lesbian voted in as new CA Assembly speaker

It’s official; lesbian state Assemblywoman Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) will be the next leader of the Assembly. She is the first out lesbian lawmaker to be named Assembly speaker and the first one from San Diego.

Monday, March 17 the Assembly members voted to elect Atkins to the powerful legislative post. As the B.A.R. reported in late December, Atkins had been considered a shooin to succeed the current Assembly speaker, gay Assemblyman John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles), who is termed out this year and running to be state controller.

Her Democratic colleagues, who control the Legislature’s lower chamber, had voted in January to name Atkins the next speaker. Her swearing-in ceremony has yet to be announced, though it is likely to occur sometime in June or July.

In her acceptance speech this week, Atkins listed “reducing homelessness and providing affordable housing, including for our state’s growing population of veterans,” as among her priorities as speaker, reported the Sacramento Bee. Speaking to reporters afterward, Atkins added that state lawmakers “need to be looking at how to fund and afford housing for our citizens.”

As for being the first known lesbian to become speaker, Atkins told reporters “that is surreal to me.”

Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), chair of the Assembly Democratic Caucus, hailed the vote for Atkins as a win for working families in the state.

“Her rise to the speakership from modest origins is an inspiring example of achievement that is only possible in our country. While other states dither on equality, I’m proud to serve in the Assembly when the new normal is for us to be led by a member of the LGBT community,” stated Ting in a release his office issued.t

Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion.

This week’s column reported on the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club’s PAC endorsement of David Chiu for Assembly.

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

Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 861-5019 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

<< Commentary

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Let’s ask

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

M

ost know the modern history of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in the military: President Bill Clinton issued the directive that became known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993 and President Barack Obama signed the DADT repeal bill in late 2010. Yet when DADT ended on September 20, 2011 – in spite of rightwing pundits who made pointed references to Corporal Klinger from the old MASH television show – the repeal did not apply to transgender members of the military.

While DADT dates back to only 1993, the ban on transgender members of the military was enacted in the 1960s.

It’s probably important to note how much things have changed since then. This was the era of the Vietnam War, a time before the allvolunteer army I grew up with. This was also a time when transgender people were viewed very different from today: then, transgender people were typically viewed as having a mental disorder, and care was viewed as to costly, difficult, and disruptive for the military to manage.

In my own experience, I’ve known quite a few transgender people who have served. Many of the male-tofemale transsexuals I know served in

the military, assuming erroneously that the military would “make a man out of them.” I should note, too, that most transgender people join the military with the same sense of honor and duty of any non-transgender service member.

In 1952, Christine Jorgensen became the world’s best-known transsexual when the New York Daily News announced her to the world under the headline “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty.” Last year trans woman Chelsea Manning was convicted of espionage due to actions taken while serving in the United States Army.

Between Jorgensen and Manning are decades of service by proud transgender military members. It is estimated that there are over 15,000 transgender people currently serving in uniform. The vast majority of these service members are not out, fearing discharge. Meanwhile, in over a dozen countries around the world, transgender people serve openly in the military.

An important step has been taken that may change all this.

The Transgender Military Service Commission, co-chaired by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jocelyn Elders, has recently released a report on transgender members of the military, and it concluded that the ban

on transgender people serving in the military is based on unsound, outdated data. The commission found policies that are inaccurate, inconsistent, and clearly exclusionary.

“We determined not only that there is no compelling medical reason for the ban,” stated the commission, “but also that the ban itself is an expensive, damaging, and unfair barrier to health care access for the approximately 15,450 transgender personnel who serve currently in the active, Guard, and reserve components.”

The commission further determined that facilitating gender transitions for active and reserve service members “would place almost no burden on the military.” The commission estimates that 230 transgender people each year would see surgery, at an average cost of about $30,000. Meanwhile, removing the ban could help prevent suicide and other issues with transgender military personnel.

The aforementioned Manning, I should note, claimed that the stress of keeping her gender identity secret contributed to her leaking information to WikiLeaks. Whether this is true or not, it is worth considering how requiring transgender service members to remain closeted could be dangerous.

“When you closet someone, you create a security risk, and we don’t need another Chelsea Manning,” retired Brigadier General Thomas Kolditz said in an interview with the Air Force Times. “If I were a com-

Christine Smith

mander, I certainly wouldn’t want people in my unit in a position to be blackmailed.”

When I was in my senior year of high school, the military came calling. Each service branch claimed I should enlist, offering me money for college, training, and other great things. At the time, I was deep in my own closet. I did think about the ability of the military to somehow force any of my gender dysphoria to melt away. I also considered what it would be like to be stuck in the military and still feel the same way. I turned down all their offers.

Nevertheless, I look up to those who make up our military, and who do the job of keeping our country safe. I’m further buoyed to consider how many members of the military are transgender. I wonder when, or

t

if, they will be able to serve openly: just because this commission has released this report does not mean that this ban will be lifted.

The White House has referred all questions about the report and the status of transgender service members to the Department of Defense.

A spokesman for the Defense Department, Navy Lieutenant Commander Nate Christensen, has declined to say much more than the White House.

“At this time there are no plans to change the department’s policy and regulations which do not allow transgender individuals to serve in the U.S. military,” said Christensen.

The right wing is lining up against open trans service, with the usual pundits and others speaking out. World Net Daily’s Matt Barber gave his usual vitriol, “we’re moving into the next treasonous phase of the left’s San Francisco-style sabotage of the world’s once-greatest military. In a few short years, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ has become ‘do tell, do flaunt.’” All he missed was a reference to Corporal Klinger.

It is no longer the 1960s, though, and military policies enacted then should be re-examined. Much like DADT, it’s time for policies on transgender service members to be changed, and this commission is the first big step forward.t Gwen Smith is a peacenik. You can find her at gwensmith.com.

candlelight meditation prayer chant Thursdays at 6pm during Lent March 13–April 10

St. John the Evangelist Church 1661 15th Street at Julian Avenue (Near 16th Street BART) www.saintjohnsf.org

Prop 8 plaintiffs honored in Oakland

Jane Philomen Cleland

T

he National Women’s Political Caucus, Alameda North chapter, held its Susan B. Anthony Women of the Year Awards reception at the Port of Oakland’s Jack London Square, where the lead plaintiff couple in the federal Proposition 8 case was honored. Above, Ces

<<

Tyler Clementi

From page 1

had formed with Peter Drake, a member of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus board. He suggested honoring Tyler and his passion for music – he was an accomplished violinist and played piano – by collaborating with the chorus on a new production.

“We agreed that was Tyler’s passion. Music he held near and dear to him in his heart,” said Jane Clementi. “Actually, at one point in time, I thought he would major in music maybe in college.”

The family had never heard the gay men’s chorus perform but felt comfortable entrusting it with Tyler’s story.

“It just seemed like they would understand and present it in a respectful, dignified way,” said Jane Clementi, who has yet to see the chorus perform Tyler’s Suite.

Drake joined the chorus’ board in 2011 and also sits on the board

Rosales, left, a member of the NWPC-AN executive board, hands the Advocate of the Year Award to Kris Perry, as her spouse, Sandy Stier, made remarks. Outgoing Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (DBerkeley) was honored with the Elected Leader of the Year Award.

of the Tyler Clementi Foundation.

Through his COIL Foundation, which stands for Coming Out Into Light, Drake donated $10,000 to the chorus for the new work and is covering the cost to buy 500 tickets for Bay Area youth to attend the production next week.

“I do believe in the power of music to change hearts and minds. I am hoping this will contribute in that way,” said Drake, 57, who came out as gay four years ago and has a gay son and lesbian daughter with the woman he was married to for 28 years.

For the music, the chorus turned to a composer it had previously worked with, Stephen Schwartz, who had met the Clementi family through mutual friends. He in turn recruited other composers to assist with the songs, including John Bucchino, Craig Carnelia, John Corigliano, and Jake Heggie. (See story in Arts section.)

The chorus purposefully decided to create a suite, or song cycle, linked by the same lyricist, said Timothy

Seelig, the chorus’ artistic director.

“It is a double entendre with Tyler’s being in a suite at Rutgers,” he explained.

The resulting work is “very intimate and very vulnerable,” added Seelig.

The show features a single violinist, Kevin Rogers, accompanied by a piano performing the music for Tyler’s Suite.

“He looks like Tyler; it is just frightening,” said Seelig. “He is tall with strawberry blonde hair and about the same age Tyler would be.”

Particularly striking are references to bridges throughout the production. An accompanying multi-media slideshow of Clementi family photos includes one of Jane Clementi and her three sons in front of the Golden Gate Bridge during a family vacation.

The second song in the show refers to “London Bridge is falling down,” while the finale is titled “The Narrow Bridge.”

See page 13 >>

t

Community News>>

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Frameline youth program goes national

by Elliot Owen

F

rameline, the San Franciscobased and internationally known queer cinema nonprofit, recently released a new collection of films for its Youth in Motion program.

Formerly a statewide program that enables students and educators to access LGBTQ-themed films, the initiative was opened to all 50 states for the 2013-2014 school year, as the Bay Area Reporter note in a story last June.

Since its launch in 2008, Youth in Motion has provided free films accompanied by complementary discussion guides and curricula to over 500 schools in California. A distributor of films for over 30 years, Frameline is also the producer of the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival, which turns 38 this June.

Now, in what began last summer and was officially announced last month, schools outside the state can also sign up.

Because Frameline receives between 600 and 800 film festival submissions per year, the organization “is really well-positioned for a program like Youth in Motion,” said Alexis Whitham, Frameline director of educational programming and acquisition.

“Nationally, there’s a lot of people that don’t have access to queer cinema,” Whitham said. “The idea with Youth in Motion is that we have amazing films and we’re able to get those films to people who

need them, people in rural areas or places where there isn’t a large queer community, particularly youth that are creating their own communities within schools through gay-straight alliances.”

Upon creation of Youth in Motion, Frameline partnered with Gay-Straight Alliance Network, a San Francisco-based organization that links student-run GSA clubs to one another to share support, leadership development, and training in the fight to end harassment and discrimination in schools based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Before Youth in Motion,” Whitham said, “GSAs had access to really great activist material through GSA Network but not necessarily the media material to support it. Our partnership allows us to access GSA Network’s well-established pipeline to the student clubs so we can get those kids the media materials they need to facilitate conversations.”

Within California, the program has seen great success. Since 2008, nine film collections covering a range of subjects have been made available. Representing an extensive scope of LGBTQ realities is a central tenant of the initiative – the intersections of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, class, disability, and age are relatably addressed for elementary to high school students through stories about classmate crushes, bullying situations, authen-

Elliot Owen

Alexis Whitham, left, Frameline’s director of educational programming and acquisition, holds the 2013-2014 Youth in Motion collection along with Taylor Hodges, Youth in Motion outreach coordinator, and Jason Boyce, Frameline’s digital media coordinator.

tic self-expression, and more.

Independent curricula creators and organizations like GSA Network and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network professionally develop the curricula and action guides that complement each collection.

“The intended impact is to provide students with a variety,” Whitham said, “to show them that the LGBTQ experience is incredibly diverse and not necessarily what you see in mainstream media.

We’re also giving teachers and students the tools they need to talk to

allies. Many GSA advisers may not be LGBTQ but the curriculum gives people the terminology, the language to talk about things.”

Jan Speller, a former English teacher at South San Francisco’s El Camino High School for 13 years, was an adviser for the school’s GSA. She found out about Youth in Motion through GSA Network because, she said, “they do a good job putting teachers, students, and community-based organizations together for resources.”

Speller, a lesbian, joined the Youth in Motion mailing list in 2008 and,

now teaching at Baden High School in South San Francisco, continues to use the films and curricula.

“Students are more receptive to learning about LGBTQ people, to having their horizons broadened in terms of their understanding of sexuality and gender than adults think they are,” Speller said. “The films are a great vehicle to talk about difference. Youth in Motion provides high-quality films and curricula for students at different grade levels for free. They help improve school climate and culture which means safer schools.”

Now, Youth in Motion is having the same impact but on a national scale. Since last August, 100 new schools outside California registered, bringing the total number of schools serviced by the program to 620 in 34 states. The expansion of the program is being financed by the Bob Ross Foundation and private funders. Ross, the Bay Area Reporter’s founding publisher, died in 2003 and since his death, the foundation has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to nonprofit organizations.

“As a nonprofit organization,” Whitham said, “you need more resources to facilitate expansion.

Funding was certainly part of it for Youth in Motion. Also, our mission over the past few years has been about expanding beyond the Bay Area to meet the national need for queer content.”t

Surrogacy provider faces forced bankruptcy

by Heather Cassell

P

lanet Hospital, a popular medical tourism company that up until recently provided international surrogacy services, is facing a case of involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy from three former clients.

The shutdown of Planet Hospital’s surrogacy services, which reportedly happened in December 2013, was officially announced, said Geoff Moss, the former vice president of corporate affairs and business development of Planet Hospital.

The Bay Area Reporter couldn’t find any mention of the closure of the company’s surrogacy services on its website or through a web search.

Rupak “Rudy” Acharya, founder and chief executive officer of Planet Hospital, told the B.A.R. that he simply removed the service from the company’s website in January, but he hadn’t publicly announced the closure of the surrogacy services.

The sudden halt of international surrogacy services has left an estimated 30 sets of intended parents out of money and scrambling to secure their place in the surrogacy process and move forward with planning their family, said Catherine Moscarello, the former director of client services for Planet Hospital’s Cancun program.

Planet Hospital also assists people with traveling to other countries for other medical procedures.

Three former Planet Hospital clients, Jonathan C. Dailey, Garrett Warner, and Jay W. Sisam, filed an involuntary petition against Planet Hospital, based in Calabasas, California, under Chapter 7 bankruptcy February 18 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California. The petitioners are asking for a combined $79,000 in refunds of fees paid for services that Planet Hospital has allegedly failed to perform. The men are represented by attorney Thomas Schelly of El Segundo, California.

Acharya said he made some mistakes.

“Unfortunately, I made some

very, very, very bad decisions which resulted in a lot of people not getting their services at the moment, but I’ve been working diligently to fix that,” said Acharya.

He didn’t agree with the forced bankruptcy proceeding, which could potentially remove control of the company from him and his management team and liquidate the assets. He believes it is “shortsighted” and not allowing him time to “fix the situation.”

Acharya pointed out that he is a Canadian citizen with homes around the world and could easily leave, but he is back in southern California working on correcting the situation and that he’s proud of his work, especially in the LGBT community.

Schelly wouldn’t disclose his clients’ sexual orientation. The B.A.R. was unable to contact the men who filed the bankruptcy proceeding.

But with more and more LGBTs creating families, Moscarello said at least three-quarters of the clients affected by Planet Hospital’s surrogacy shutdown are gay.

None of the gay former clients were willing to speak with the B.A.R. about their surrogacy experiences, but they have been active on Facebook, where Moscarello co-launched a closed Planet Hospital survivors’ support group, https://www.facebook.com/ groups/PlanetHospitalSurvivors/.

Two former clients, identified only as Rhy and Drew, launched a blog, http://0kayintheend.blogspot.com, documenting their surrogacy process and ultimately complaints and warnings against Planet Hospital.

There may also be a federal in-

vestigation into Planet Hospital. On the Okay in the End blog, Dailey, one of the men in the bankruptcy proceeding, posted on February 27 that he had received confirmation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that an agent is “ready to open his case in the San Diego office of the FBI against Acharyya ‘Rudy’ Rupak (a Canadian citizen) and Carlo Aldo Bonfonte (of San Diego, USA), business partners of Planet Hospital.com LLC, an active LLC registered in San Diego.”

FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth told the B.A.R. that he couldn’t confirm if the bureau was investigating Planet Hospital.

she said. That led her to work with Planet Hospital while she resolved her situation with her former clients and the state bar.

Moscarello left Planet Hospital in November 2013 after she witnessed alleged gross misconduct by Moss and Acharya. She also claims Lilly Frost, owner of My Donor Cycle,

the donor bank that partnered with Planet Hospital, was complacent in some of the misconduct.

Moscarello accused Acharya and Moss of stealing eggs from an unnamed single gay man through an unauthorized splitting of donor See page 14 >>

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Allegations

Upon returning to the U.S. from Canada, Acharya fired back at Moscarello, 46, filing a complaint against Joseph Adams, Planet Hospital’s former attorney in the U.S., with the State Bar of California. He provided an undated copy of the case number to the B.A.R. on March 4.

Adams is married to Moscarello, who Acharya now claims wasn’t “really an employee” of Planet Hospital, and he claimed that he filed a case against her.

“Catherine, basically, is also being sued by us,” said Acharya.

He’s also accused her of being homophobic and pointed out her suspension from the State Bar of California. He provided no documentation to back up his accusation.

Moscarello was aware of Acharya’s allegations.

Moscarello said people have told her, “If you hate gay people, I want more people to hate gay people like you.”

“They know my heart. All the clients know what I’m trying to do for the community, for myself and for them – everybody,” continued Moscarello.

Moscarello was suspended for a year by the state bar in June 2011 due to her inability to fulfill nine client contracts when she experienced a near fatal injury during in vitro fertilization that ultimately cost her twin babies and nearly her life,

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<< Community News

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Health insurance deadline looms

by Seth Hemmelgarn

H

ealth care providers and advocates are urging people who aren’t yet insured to enroll in coverage

by March 31. That’s the deadline for signing up under the Affordable Care Act, which aims to provide benefits to millions of people who couldn’t otherwise afford medical services.

Among other aspects of the act, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010, insurers can’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, including HIV/AIDS. Dr. Dawn Harbatkin, the executive and medical director of San Francisco’s Lyon-Martin Health Services, has been encouraging people to get enrolled for months.

Lyon-Martin, which provides primary care and other services to women and transgender people, regardless of their ability to pay, has a goal of getting 1,000 people enrolled this year. Harbatkin said that so far, about 225 have signed up.

She attributed the gap to a lack of capacity, rather than a lack of interest.

“We don’t have the money to bring in more resources,” said Harbatkin.

“There are far more people to be enrolled than we have the ability to quickly enroll,” she said, but “I feel like we’re right on target.”

Health care officials have been hoping that young people would enroll in order to help pay for covering older people who are more likely to need services.

Harbatkin didn’t have specific demographic information, but she estimated that 98 percent of the people who’ve been enrolled through Lyon-Martin are the clinic’s patients.

“I’m assuming the demographics are reflective of our patient base,” she said.

Last year, about 51 percent of the clinic’s patients were ages 25 to 39, while 20 percent were 40 to 49, and another 20 percent were 50 to 64.

Harbatkin said that for transgender people, the health care law has “opened up” the benefit “of being able to get medically necessary surgeries to complete gender transitions, so they can self-actualize and become who they really are.”

She said having insurance coverage for those needs is “tremendous, just tremendous.”

For more information on enrolling through Lyon-Martin, visit www.lyon-martin.org or call (415) 565-7667.

One of the young people that the national health care law has drawn is Tom Temprano, 28, a gay San Francisco man who last week signed up for care through Covered California (www.coveredca.com), the California state enrollment site.

Temprano, who serves as president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and co-owns the bar Virgil’s Sea Room, and who also works as a promoter and marketing consultant, said he wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford coverage.

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He’s been getting care through Healthy San Francisco, the city’s locally designed and funded universal health care program, and is expecting to have a second surgery on his ankle, which he injured during a basketball game over a year ago.

Temprano said he’s been forced out of Healthy SF and “I want to make sure I’m dealing with [the ankle] and have adequate after-care after the surgery.”

Through an ordinance backed by San Francisco Jane Philomen Cleland Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, jail Lyon-Martin’s Dr. Dawn Harbatkin inmates would also get help enrolling in coverage so that urges people to sign up for the they would have access to Affordable Care Act before the March health care when they are 31 deadline. released. The proposal is set to come before the Board of Pacific Center for Human Growth Supervisors Neighborhood Services in Berkeley. and Safety Committee Thursday Brown said the center isn’t itself (March 20). enrolling people, but he and others According to an email from have been working to “help inform Mirkarimi, “The vast majority of and properly educate the commujail detainees have no private or nity at large” about obtaining insurpublic health insurance or the fiance under the national law. nancial resources for medical care He said there’s a penalty of about upon release.” $99 or 1 percent of income at tax The sheriff stated, “Enhancing actime for people who don’t enroll. cess to integrated health care for the The next open enrollment period is uninsured is not only a wise public set to start in November. health move, but it’s also wise pub“I really want to stress to everylic safety strategy – there is nexus one to do their best to enroll,” said between repeat incarceration and Brown. “It would be better to get poor chronic health, especially peosomething than nothing at this ple suffering with mental illness or point.” substance addiction.”

Brown welcomed people with Others are working to get LGBTs questions about getting covin the East Bay signed up. ered to contact him at lbrown@ Leo Brown is the volunteer and pacificcenter.org or Katie Tims at facility events coordinator at the ktims@pacificcenter.org.t

Couple creates Holocaust survivors fund compiled by Cynthia Laird

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ewish Family and Children’s Services has announced that its board of trustees member Joyce Newstat and her spouse, community and business leader Susan Lowenberg, have established the Seymour Newstat Endowment Fund at JFCS to benefit Holocaust survivors who participate in the agency’s social and educational program called Cafe by the Bay. Specifically, the fund will support Cafe by the Bay’s annual Passover Seder, which attracts many Holocaust survivors throughout the Bay Area.

The amount of the fund was not provided, but it is expected to exist in perpetuity and will be used for Holocaust education after there is no longer a need for Cafe by the Bay programs, said Robert Miller with JFCS. The fund is named in memory of Newstat’s father, a Holocaust survivor who attended Cafe by the Bay programs during the last years of his life. Mr. Newstat died in April 2010 at the age of 86.

“My father was a quiet man, but he loved presiding over the Passover Seder,” Newstat said in a statement, “so it’s fitting that we remember him in this manner. A whole new world opened up for him at JFCS’s Cafe by the Bay, where he made friends with other survivors.”

In addition to serving on JFCS’s board, Newstat is chair of the JFCS Holocaust Center’s Council of

Courtesy JFCS

Joyce Newstat, left, and her spouse, Susan Lowenberg

Children of Survivors. Lowenberg, daughter of the late William Lowenberg, a leader in the advancement of Holocaust education in this country, also sits on the Council of Children of Survivors.

Lowenberg also serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council.

“Joyce and Susan set the example.

They are leaders in both supporting care for aged Holocaust survivors and in ensuring that the important lessons that survivors have imparted to us are learned by future generations,” said Anita Friedman, JFCS executive director.

UCSF Alliance Health Project marks 30 years

The UCSF Alliance Health Project will mark its 30th anniversaSee page 9 >>

National News>>

t Matthews sees tough path for Dems in midterms

by Robert Ristelhueber

C

hris Matthews makes no secret about being a partisan for the Democratic Party, having worked as a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, and later as chief of staff for the late Tip O’Neill, the speaker of the House of Representatives. But the message the MSNBC commentator brought to San Francisco this week contained little cheer for liberals looking forward to this year’s midterm elections: “Look out,” he warned. “It’s not going to be a good year.”

Speaking at a forum hosted by the University of San Francisco, Matthews mostly blamed President Barack Obama for his party’s bleak prospects in congressional contests, pointing out that the president’s approval ratings have dipped to near 40 percent.

“His numbers are terrible,” Matthews noted. “People don’t feel a connection with him.

“Obama’s not engaged us,” he added. “I don’t know why.”

The dynamics of midterm elections tend to favor Republicans under ordinary circumstances, Matthews told the audience at USF’s McLaren Conference Center March 18. “Minorities don’t vote in the midterms, generally speaking, so you have a Republican electorate,” he said. But the president’s sag-

<<

News Briefs

From page 8

ry this week with a gathering Friday, March 21 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1930 Market Street in San Francisco.

Started in 1984 as the UCSF AIDS Health Project, its goal was to meet the mental health needs of patients at San Francisco General Hospital and their loved ones. It was not long before officials realized that the agency also needed to help HIV-negative people remain free from infection.

In 1985, AHP started the first-ever HIV anonymous test sites in San Francisco and has provided HOV counseling and testing ever since.

DK Haas, UCSF’s LGBTQ community liaison, said that people are welcome to attend the gathering.

“It’s not a fancy donor event,” she said, adding that former clients and staff are welcome to attend, “or anyone who’s had an HIV test.”

AHP’s current services include case management, individual and couples counseling, psychiatry, provider education, and training and HIV/AIDS publications. Peer and professionally led support groups are available for lesbians with disabilities, people coping with trauma, transgender people, the newly positive, men over 50, and LGBTQ people coping with sex and sobriety.

Haas said that there will be a cake and short program at 5:45, featuring AHP’s longtime executive director, Dr. James Dilley.

In addition to the anniversary event, AHP is also hosting the Generations HIV video storytelling project through March 23. It will be open to the public Friday from noon to 4 p.m. for the final session if people want to record their testimonials or thoughts about the epidemic. People can participate regardless of HIV status. To date over 600 videos have been recorded and they are expected to be available in an online archive later this spring.

For more information about AHP, visit www.ucsf-ahp`.org.

Psychic fair and benefit

CelebrateLife, a progressive spiritualist community, will hold its annual Psychic Fair and benefit Saturday, March 22 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the CelebrateLife Community, 4530 18th street in San Francisco.

Organizer James Bae said that people can seek out local Mediums,

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

ging approval ratings are an is the primary, and primaries extra burden for Democratic tend to go to the more excandidates this November, treme candidates.” he suggested Matthews said he thinks “The Democrats won’t that the most likely matchvote against Obama, they up for the 2016 presidenjust won’t show up. They’re tial election is Democrat disillusioned,” he said. At the Hillary Clinton against same time, “the Republicans Republican Senator Rand will come out in droves.”

Paul (Kentucky), and a key The troubled rollout of factor in the outcome will be the Affordable Care Act whether Paul can convince last October is symptomatyounger voters to buy his libic of what Matthews called ertarian brand of politics.

Obama’s aloof, hands-off Matthews was in town approach to governing. The to teach a weeklong gradupresident should have been ate seminar based on anRobert Ristelhueber closely involved in the deother of his books, Hardball, tails of the launch of his key MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews talked How Politics Is Played. The domestic program, “but he about the upcoming midterm elections during an seminar took place at USF’s just left it to other people,” appearance at the University of San Francisco.

Leo T. McCarthy Center Matthews said. for Public Service and the When technical problems Common Good. lately is that very few congressional emerged, few uninsured USF is a Jesuit-affiliated elections are competitive these days. were able to sign up for coverage on school, and the forum was mod“There are no close elections anythe national site or state exchanges erated by the Reverend Bob more,” Matthews contended. “All in the early weeks of the rollout, alMcElroy, auxiliary bishop for the the candidates have to worry about though signups have rebounded in San Francisco Archdiocese. The recent months.

Matthews recently published a book about the working relationship between his former boss and President Reagan, called Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked. And he explained that one reason why politics isn’t working in Washington Tarot card readers, and healers, and much more. There will also be raffle prizes, great food, and fun. Sessions with a Medium cost $20 for 20 minutes; the cost is $15 for 15 minutes for a Tarot card reading.

All are welcome to attend. For more information, visit www.celebratelifesf.org or see the group’s Facebook page at “CelebrateLifeSF.”

Night Ministry benefit

An afternoon of classical, operetta-style music to benefit the San Francisco Night Ministry will take place Sunday, March 23 at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 1111 O’Farrell Street.

“Spring Song,” as the event is called, will also include a champagne and chocolate reception.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for seniors and students in advance, via www.brownpapertickets.com, or $25 at the door.

Trans leadership summit coming up

The eighth annual Transgender Leadership Summit is coming up and advocates want to get the word out.

This year’s summit takes place April 11-13 at California State University, Northridge, in southern California.

It is a one-of-a-kind leadership conference that builds the foundation for community action on trans issues among both transgender community members and allies alike. About 200 attendees are expected.

The Transgender Law Center, which is the host organization, noted that registration is sliding scale: $50 for standard, $25 for discounted, and $10 for low income. Rates at two nearby hotels have also been discounted.

For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/lda22nl. For information on ride share/housing share, visit https://www.facebook. com/groups/219747018220256/.

DA’s fund to help nonprofits

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón has announced that requests for proposals are now being accepted from local nonprofits for Neighborhood Justice Fund grants.

This year priority areas include pedestrian safety, security improvements, and summer community activities.

See page 11 >>

conversation naturally turned to the impact of Pope Francis, himself a Jesuit, who is shaking up Catholicism with some of his statements and actions.

Matthews said that Francis’s thinking is heavily influenced by his upbringing in South America, where he witnessed dire poverty.

“This pope is from Argentina where there’s a vast inequality of wealth,” he said. “He wants to focus on this inequality. He thinks that’s the problem. He’s very suspicious of free markets.”

The pope’s message isn’t just aimed at developing countries, with Matthews noting that inequality of wealth is also growing in the U.S. And while San Francisco may have a liberal attitude toward the homeless, he said that such sympathy is in short supply in much of the country. Many blame the poor for their plight, arguing, “’That’s the way they want to live, so let them live that way,’” Matthews said. “And I think that’s not fair.”t

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<< Obituaries

t Bertolt Schmidt, husband of German diplomat, dies 10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

by Cynthia Laird

B

ertolt Schmidt, the husband of Rolf Schutte, the German consul general who was stationed in San Francisco several years ago, died Sunday, March 9 on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

The cause of death was heart failure, Schutte said in an email.

Schutte, who served as consul general for the Pacific Northwest in San Francisco from 2005-2009, is now serving as consul general of the New England states and is based in Boston.

Mr. Schmidt was a professional industrial product designer and artist. Schutte declined to provide Mr. Schmidt’s age, saying that his husband never wanted to tell anyone and that he was respecting his late husband’s wishes.

Schutte said that Mr. Schmidt received numerous international design awards, among them the Good Design Award of the Chicago Atheneum. In addition to his work as a freelance product designer he had been active in the fields of painting and graphics, mostly including computer-based applications.

At the time of his death he was most interested in examining the endless opportunities of the use of computers for both forms of creative expression: product design and in completely free design processes, Schutte said.

“The combination of digital and analog techniques is one of his most typical ways of expressing himself,” Schutte said in an email. “He saw particular opportunities of expression in a fruitful interaction between human spirit and computer while retaining the specific advantages of both of them in the process of creating and designing.”

San Francisco friends of the couple expressed their sadness at Mr. Schmidt’s passing.

“Bertolt was the essential artist,” said Bob Mackler, who used to be a neighbor of the couple as he lives opposite the German Consulate.

“He had the creativity to successfully work in many mediums including industrial product design, acrylic, and oil. He was direct, focused, complicated, and always, private.”

City College trustee Lawrence Wong met Schutte when he was consul general here; the school has a “vibrant international students program,” Wong said, adding that at the time he was on the board of the San Francisco chapter of the United Nations.

“I attended many events at the German Consulate and was always impressed that Consul General Schutte would always introduce his beloved partner, Bertolt, at these public events,” Wong said in an email. “I knew Rolf was making history because to my knowledge Rolf was the first openly gay consul gen-

German Consul General Rolf Schutte, left, and his husband, Bertolt Schmidt

eral in the history of San Francisco.”

Wong added that Schutte “was making history and a trailblazer in the diplomatic circles” of the city.

“Rolf and Bertolt, by being a visible diplomatic same-sex couple, made a difference in our march for equality,” Wong said.

Wong hosted a farewell party for the couple at his home when Schutte’s posting in San Francisco ended.

Schutte and Mr. Schmidt were together for 18 years. Mr. Schmidt first lived with Schutte in Berlin and in Rome before the couple came to San Francisco. They were married in Germany. Schutte said that the legal term is “registered partnership” or “civil union.”

“But in Germany that is almost identical to gay marriage – without the name,” Schutte said.

One of the highlights of his service in San Francisco was his appearance at the annual pink triangle installation that occurs the weekend of San Francisco Pride. The Friends of the Pink Triangle, which organizes the event, had Schutte speak three times, said Patrick Carney, one of the founders.

The installation aims to educate people about the history of the pink triangle and how it was used by the

Nazis in concentration camps to identify and shame gays during World War II. Schutte said that Mr. Schmidt accompanied him to the 2008 event, where he was the keynote speaker.

“The topic of my address was, ‘The Pink Triangle: From a Symbol of Shame to a Symbol of Pride,’” Schutte said.

Carney recalled events that took place at the German Consul residence in Pacific Heights and said that Mr. Schmidt “was a gracious host, along with Consul General Rolf Schutte.”

“Pieces of Bertolt’s art work were proudly displayed within the grand rooms of the mansion, along with various other artists,” Carney said in an email. “Together he and the consul general made a great team as they presided over events within the estate, mingling freely between the various consular heads from other nations around the world, as well as members of the LGBT community, local government leaders, and other citizens of California invited to their themed events.”

The couple often walked their dog, Blacky, around the neighborhood as well as Lafayette Park.

“The two of them as a couple became the local face of Germany and showed how far the government of that nation has come since the era

when the pink triangle was invented. Germany was in the forefront of gay liberation before the war and is indeed again now,” Carney said.

Carney said that Mr. Schmidt was an enthusiastic and inspired artist, and once took him on a detailed tour of his work at a gallery near Yerba Buena Center.

“As we walked back across town afterwards he spoke of how much he loved San Francisco and how wonderful it was to be able to walk with such ease everywhere, as one can do in Europe,” Carney recalled.

Schutte said that while the couple lived in San Francisco, the legal situation was such that even as the spouse of a foreign diplomat and holder of a German diplomatic passport, Mr. Schmidt could not stay with him the whole time, but had to leave the U.S. a few times a year in order to fulfill legal obligations.

“The situation has changed since.

Now, a gay spouse of a foreign diplomat can live with his/her spouse while the diplomat is on official duty in the U.S. This new rule already applied before the Supreme Court decision and was adopted in the first Obama administration by the State Department,” Schutte said, referring to last June’s high court decision in United States v. Windsor, which threw out a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act.t

Obituaries >> Jose Luis Iturio Hernandez September 7, 1970 – August 6, 2013 Jose Luis Iturio Hernandez, known as Luis, succumbed to the rare autoimmune disorder HLH on August 6, 2013 in Palm Springs, California as he awaited a bone marrow transplant. Luis was born September 7, 1970 in Cuernavaca, Mexico. After moving to San Francisco from Orange County in 2001, Luis established his home reno-

vation business, Golden Renovations, where he showcased his amazing construction and design skills.

Luis constantly had an infectious smile, witty humor, and a positive attitude that would light up any room he entered. Luis enjoyed the nightlife of the Castro and the Mission; he loved to dance the night away and made many friends in San Francisco. He had relocated to Palm Springs in early 2013 since he craved the warmth and sun of the desert.

Luis is survived by his faithful Jack Russell terrier, Ditto; his wife; along with his mother, sister, and nephew in Mexico.

Wedding announcements compiled by Cynthia Laird Daniel Deninger and Michael Evans

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Longtime San Francisco residents Daniel Deninger and Michael Evans finally tied the knot at Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco December 18, 2013 after living together for nearly 29 years.

The small private ceremony was officiated by the Reverend Robert Shively.

Mr. Deninger, 60, was born in Rochester, New York, and was a field representative for the U.S. Census Bureau. He is now retired.

Mr. Evans, 70, was born in San Francisco and is a service representative for the Social Security Administration. He also is a long-

time community volunteer for various gay nonprofits.

The couple lives in the Tenderloin

with their two cats, Marin and Marie, and they hope to buy a condo soon.t

Brides of March hit SF

T

he Cacophony Society’s annual Brides of March flashmob descended on San Francisco’s Union Square March 15 as more than 100 people dressed up in white wedding gowns.

The event has taken place annually since 1999, with sister events taking place in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto.

Khaled Sayed

International News>>

t Lots to do for queer refugees coming to the Bay Area

by Heather Cassell

T

here is much work to do by support organizations and others as they prepare for more LGBT refugees and asylees due to harsh laws in many African countries and nations like Russia.

Following up on last week’s column about local folks wanting to help queer people safely leave their countries of origin, this week the Bay Area Reporter spoke with local leaders of LGBT refugee and asylum services about what they anticipate might be an increase in queer refugees and asylum seekers.

There is a marked difference between asylum seekers and refugees, experts pointed out. Often, asylum seekers have already made it to the U.S. and have been living and working in their new cities before they enter the asylum process. Refugees often escape their countries to camps in neighboring countries to enter the international refugee system.

Eventually, they are transported to safer countries that serve as temporary hosts before they are relocated in their new home countries.

One of the differences between LGBT refugees and straight refugees is the fact that an average refugee has few problems locating their local community and integrating themselves to help them assimilate into their new home. LGBT refugees often don’t want to rejoin the community of their national origin because too often they will face similar prejudices as they did at home, said experts.

Furthermore, until the past couple of years many American LGBTs had little knowledge about the struggles that newcomer LGBTs have fitting into the community and building their new lives. Sometimes gayborhoods, like the Castro, which are perceived as safe havens for Western gays, are overwhelming to queers coming from countries where they couldn’t be out.

The American LGBT community also hasn’t provided a similar network that other communities provide to newcomers from their home countries. This often leaves gay refugees alone figuring out how to survive in a new country, said experts.

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

try to create a community or even a pseudo-family to help support these individuals,” said Carol Palecki, a 48-year-old lesbian who is the coordinator of the LGBT Refugee Program of the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay. The program is one of only two organizations in the U.S. working with resettling LGBT refugees funded by a multiyear $558,900 Special Populations grant from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The grant is distributed through the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

The program is also funded by other grants and individual donations.

The other agency is Fegs in New York, said Palecki.

The grant ends this year; $68,000 was distributed to JFCSEB and $73,000 to Fegs.

The JFCSEB program operates throughout the Bay Area, but mostly in San Francisco and the East Bay due to the desire of LGBT refugees to be in or near the “gay mecca” as well as geography and transportation, said Palecki.

Since the program launched two years ago, Palecki said that her team

of about 30 volunteers an organization that prohas helped resettle apvides education, support, proximately 20 people, six and financial services to of whom were refugees queer asylees, agreed. while the rest were asylees.

“They are very homeIt has a budget of $75,000. sick and disoriented. It’s Most of the LGBT refa horrible thing that they ugees come from Africa are forced from their – at the moment mostly home countries,” said from Cameroon, Congo, Niedzwiecki, a 47-yearUganda – and the Middle old gay man, adding East – mostly from Iran that oftentimes they are and Iraq. Currently, most “lacking the basic necesof the asylees come from sities for life.”

El Salvador, Guatemala, The seed money and Mexico.

LGBT refugees receive It generally takes a to survive on is often team of five or six volunjust $300 a month, said teers to assist one refugee Palecki, making it exclient through the resettremely difficult for anyCourtesy of ORAM tlement process, said one to survive, particAn unnamed Congo gay refugee is seen in a preview Palecki. ularly in the Bay Area, “I think that every- clip from a film made by the Organization for Refuge, where it’s expensive to body hears about sto- Asylum, and Migration. live. ries about persecution in The biggest challenge in a new country. It’s a very difficult other countries and you is finding affordable thing,” said Palecki. think that once the person leaves the housing for LGBT refugees, said “It’s a big change and it’s not an country their problems are over,” Palecki. easy process for anyone,” added said Palecki.

Niedzwiecki and other experts in Palecki. “People are being forced to The fact is if anyone takes a mothe field don’t foresee these issues learn a new way of life and also deal ment to imagine arriving in another fading away. with the day-to-day reality of living country not knowing anyone, not “These problems are going to in a very expensive area.” speaking the language or knowing continue to exist as people continue Max Niedzwiecki, coordinator of customs and systems, and have very to be forced out,” Niedzwiecki said. the LGBT Faith Asylum Network, little money trying to “make a life See page 13 >>

New Agreement Options

Rainbow network

To resolve this problem, earlier this month pockets of LGBT activists began organizing to connect social services and fundraising efforts to help queer refugees resettle in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“It’s really important for us to

<<

News Briefs

From page 9

The justice fund is open to all nonprofit 501(c)3 community organizations. Applicants must be compliant city vendors prior to submitting proposals to be eligible for the funds. Projects must be located in San Francisco. Organizations may submit one application for a maximum amount of $3,000. There will be no more than 11 grants awarded in this funding cycle.

Last grant cycle, projects funded included a security gate, a community garden, and public safety projects benefiting youth, seniors, and the LGBT community.

The grants are a result of restitution funds collected from Neighborhood Court directives and held by the DA’s office solely for the grant program.

For complete eligibility requirements, visit www.sfdistrictattorney.org. The deadline to apply is Monday, April 14 at 5 p.m.t

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<< Automotive News

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

High-end cars aim for emotion

t

by Philip Ruth

W

hat makes an expensive car special? We’ll answer that this week with a look at a Volvo and a couple of Acuras. Then keep reading online, where we’ll check out the Lexus IS.

Volvo

2014 Volvo S60 T5, $38,715, 182inch length, 24 mpg.

I haven’t yet had a client who didn’t like their Volvo. Aside from the increasing difficulty of getting 1980s and 1990s Volvos to pass smog tests, and the lesser product quality of some 2000s under Ford’s influence, it takes a lot to put people off the brand. Even $1,000 radiator and timing belt jobs don’t dampen the enthusiasm.

That’s partly because Volvos have an extra measure of personality that connects with their drivers. There’s nothing like Volvo in the U.S. market, and that’s particularly true of the recently redesigned S60.

The S60 is an entry-level luxury car. Base prices in the $32-42K range put it squarely in the sights of the BMW 3 Series, Mercedes C-Class, Audi A4, Cadillac ATS, etc. The S60 is right in the mix of one of the market’s most hotly contested and profitable segments.

None of the S60’s competitors has its singular style. The sheet metal looks like it has been pulled tight, and inside, the test car’s Sport Package brought the option of rich “Beechwood” leather in a deep peanut-butter color. The seats are those legendary Volvo thrones, with broad comfort coupled with just enough of a huggy embrace.

The tested T5’s 250-horsepower, five-cylinder turbo engine (T6s have sixes) gave a sparkling performance, with strong takeoffs and boost-laden passing. The Sport Package includes “Dynamic” chassis tuning, which feels buttoned-down but still relaxed enough to manage the most construction-torn streets.

Firmness in the steering and brakes breeds confidence. It’s fun to make time in the S60.

City driving reveals a caveat: the S60’s 73-inch width is notably wider than that of a BMW 3 Series (71 inches) or an Infiniti G37 (69 inch-

Philip Ruth Philip Ruth

Acura RLX Advance

The Volvo S60 T5

es). Extra width can make it harder to thread the needle through traffic. Add in a turning radius on the T6 that at 39 feet is 0.2 inches wider than that of a full-sized Chevy Impala, and you may sometimes wish you could shrink the S60 down a size or two.

Fortunately, it’s powerful enough to make you forget whatever picky maneuver it took to get you up to speed. The S60’s style, performance, and premium feel are indelible. Like many Volvos before it, if the S60 speaks to you, you’ll probably love it.

Acura

2014 Acura RLX Advance, $61,345, 196-inch length, 24 mpg.

2014 Acura MDX Advance, $57,400, 194-inch length, 21 mpg.

The Acura RLX is Honda’s best shot at a mid-level executive sedan, with a starting price just under $50K. The company hopes your mind’s eye will slot it alongside the BMW 5 series and Mercedes E-Class.

Can’t picture it? Join the club; the RLX’s 2014 debut landed with a thud, with few sales. Honda sees the problem and has finally established a separate marketing entity for Acura, making it a stand-alone division within the company.

That division has its work cut out for it with the RLX, which frankly fails to make its case. First there’s

the styling: the body is detailed with Acura’s flat-and-then-curvy side sculpting, but why did they make it look so much like an Accord? The “jewel-eye” LED headlights are distinctive, but they lend little class. In terms of elevated presence, the RLX doesn’t rise up enough.

More distressingly, it doesn’t drive as well as the Accord it resembles, despite the RLX’s techno-fabulous suspension. The RLX has “P-AWS,” otherwise known as “Precision AllWheel Steer,” which claims to amp up the RLX’s nimbleness. The car did corner with the usual Honda competence, where it feels like you could hurl it around without skidding into the shrubs, but the lightweight body structure Acura touts sent a number of untoward vibrations into the RLX’s interior, undermining driver confidence. Premium cars aren’t supposed to do that.

Inside, the RLX’s instrument panel is pleasingly curved with lowsheen black plastics, but its rigorous symmetry renders it ultimately forgettable. The controls work well enough, with kudos to the big fat primary control knob that fills your hand and responds quickly, but overall, the interior feels a little cold.

Maybe the upcoming 2015 RLX Sport Hybrid will use its even more advanced technology to devise a definable personality. Acura already has an example of that in its popular and evergreen MDX crossover wagon, which shares the RLX’s newfor-2014 platform but feels much more like a cohesive whole. Where

the RLX feels undefined, the MDX is directed: it’s a car that seems to know what it’s doing.

Chalk it up to the MDX’s consistent driving feel. Steering is communicative; brakes have no slack and can be minutely modulated; the 290-horsepower V6 engine has right-now throttle response and a deep well of power; handling with the test car’s SH-AWD (Super Handling All-Wheel Drive) suspension is smooth and athletic; the structure feels brick-like. The MDX isn’t sporty, but it does most of the things a sporty car can do.

The width caveat applies to the MDX; its 77.2 inches is only 1.1 inches less than that of the Lincoln Navigator. You’ll want to measure your garage before committing to it.

Turning circle remains a tight 37.6 feet.

gay man” and commented that his Facebook picture with “the sweater draped over the shoulders is not exactly a butch look.” Park responded, “We are normal!

Y’all aren’t!” and “I’m not one of y’all! being a homophobe is the way to go!” and “do I look like I’m one of y’all? NO I DON’T!” and then finally, “I hope someone bombs your event.”

The entire exchange lasted just a few hours.

The FGG declined to name who the board member was and did not indicate if any sanctions, such as suspension of social media privileges, would be taken.

“The person responsible regrets the exchange,” Kelly Stevens, communications officer for the FGG, told the Bay Area Reporter. “The offensive posts were removed quickly for obvious reasons. FGG acted clearly against this and is updating our policy. The policy change will specifically ask FGG volunteers to delete hostile posts or comments and not to engage hateful people on behalf of the FGG or even if it could

be interpreted to be from FGG on a personal social media account.”

The FGG was formed in 1990 out of the San Francisco Arts and Athletics organization that started the Gay Games in San Francisco in 1982. As such, it predates the proliferation of Internet interactions that constitute so much of the communications market today. Its current communications policy says that board “members who use electronic media should clearly state whether they are speaking on behalf of themselves or the FGG organization,” and when “speaking on behalf of oneself on electronic media, board members should state that any opinions they express are their own and not necessarily those of FGG. While some commenters on electronic media have the option of remaining anonymous publicly, FGG board members should disclose who they are and should not use anonymous aliases.”

The policy goes on to say that board members should not disclose confidential information (which would seem to include the sexuality of a closeted person), use “reasonable efforts to ensure that their

Philip Ruth

Acura MDX Advance

Inside, the tested MDX Advance had tons of features, including a cinematic 16-inch rear screen with HDMI input. The instrument panel has the RLX’s dark symmetry, but the higher driving position makes it friendlier. The common elements these Acuras share just seem to gel better in the MDX. That’s the essence of a genuinely premium car; beyond the accouterments, there’s an indefinable element that taps your emotions. The S60 and MDX have it, each in their own ways, but the RLX doesn’t, as too much of the spreadsheet that created it shows through. Which proves once again that expensive doesn’t necessarily mean special.t Philip Ruth is an automotive journalist and consultant at http://www.gaycarguy.com.

Social media 101

by Roger Brigham

S

ocial media: gotta love it; #cantlivewithit #cantlivewithoutit. Individuals use it to communicate instantly en masse with thousands of their nearest and dearest friends as to what they have just eaten, what the weather is like, and what their favorite nephews, nieces and pets are doing. Nonprofit organizations, including sports groups, use social media to raise awareness stakeholders and the general public.

Most of the time, social media is an inexpensive way for those organizations to reach thousands and thousands to build their brand identity, but on occasion, as the Federation of Gay Games experienced this month, it can be embarrassingly ugly and result with a threat of violence.

A March 8 exchange on a Gay Games Facebook page began with a post from a user named Matthew Park, whose profile says he is a Republican from Connecticut living in Georgia. His first post asked Gay Games, “Why? Why does faggot shit like this exist it pisses me off.”

An FGG board member using the Gay Games sign-on replied, “Tough

shit. And why are you so obsessed with faggots? Protesting too much?”

It was downhill from there.

In a rapid exchange of ill-advised and ill-crafted barbs, the Gay Games user told Park he was a “raging homophobe,” which was “usually the sign of a repressed gay man;” that he needs to “learn to speak English,” and “such a proud straight man would be more worried about getting some lady sex than worrying about what dudes are doing ... For someone that’s so straight you seem awfully interested in dick.”

Park’s responses included: “I’m ‘protesting’ that shit like ‘Gay Games’ don’t need to exist,” and calling him a repressed gay man was “the funniest thing I heard all day.

Because I hate you and I want to see all gay people wiped off the face of the earth. I’m ‘a bigot’ or ‘in the closet but in complete denial’? You sir are a dumbass!”

They weren’t done.

The Gay Games user baited Park by calling him a “self-hating

Courtesy Kelly Stevens

FGG communications officer Kelly Stevens said the group’s policies would be updated after a board member engaged in a diatribe with a homophobe on one of the federation’s Facebook pages.

electronic communications are true and accurate,” and “they should be considerate and respectful of others.

Choose words carefully and keep in mind that readers may have different sensitivities.”

The policy concludes by saying board members using electronic media should “use it as an opportuSee page 13 >>

t <<

Community News>>

Tyler Clementi

From page 6

“It comes from a speech Pam heard a rabbi give and says the world is a narrow bridge if we walk it alone.

But if we walk it together, it is plenty wide,” explained Seelig. “It is so beautiful and hopeful. The whole suite ends on this powerful image.”

The Clementis formed the Tyler Clementi Foundation to combat anti-gay bullying and harassment in schools, workplaces, and faith-

<<

Jock Talk

From page 12

nity to further the mission and values of FGG. If electronic media is to be used, it should be to portray a positive face of FGG.” Social Media 101 class assignment: Write a 1,000-word essay on the myriad ways in which the March 8 exchange violated the FGG Communications Policy.

The hosts of the Cleveland Gay Games this year run their own communications shop and have a paid staff. Ann Gynn, director of marketing and communications for Gay Games 9, has taught senior-level public relations, including use of social media, at Cleveland State University.

“Gay Games 9’s social media is controlled by staff,” Gynn said.

“Comments are open but monitored closely (key managers receive an alert every time any comment or link is

<<

Out in the World

From page 11

The ‘pink’ dollar

To help LGBT refugees fleeing persecution in their countries, philanthropic and organizational efforts are popping up in major cities like San Francisco.

The Horizons Foundation developed two funds within the past year that will provide grants to assist Cameroonian and Russian LGBT refugees and asylees resettle in the Bay Area and beyond.

The funds are in their infancy with the Russian fund garnering a little under $2,000 from a recent fundraising event in conjunction with the Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom that was inspired by meetings that the Jewish Community Relations Council held, said Francisco Buchting, director of grantmaking and community initiatives at the Horizons Foundation.

A little more than $3,000 has been raised for the Cameroon fund.

posted/shared on site). In general, Gay Games 9 social media policy prohibits attacks or derogatory comments about individuals as well as the use derogatory or hateful speech.”

Gynn said Cleveland uses the nuances of social media to help reach its target audience.

“Social media is extremely important in marketing today,” Gynn said.

“No longer does an organization need to rely only on the standard gatekeepers to share its information with the public. It’s revolutionized public relations and marketing.

Now, organizations can reach their audiences directly through their ‘owned’ social media accounts. We also can target prospective audiences based on their interests, demographics, socio-graphics, etc. and encourage them to become direct audiences.”

And, she said, Cleveland uses combined efforts through different

media for maximum effect.

“For example, Gay Games 9 created a 30-second commercial and planned to debut in select TV markets during opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics,” Gynn said.

“We couldn’t afford a national commercial, but we reached a national and international audience through social media. The commercial spot made its debut on the Gay Games 9 YouTube channel 12 hours before it was on broadcast television. We shared through our Facebook page as well as our Twitter account, and thousands started sharing before the opening ceremony even started.”

Gynn added that people talked about the commercial on social media.

“The power of sharing and engagement on social media is what it is all about,” she said. “Gay Games 9 has conducted two paid Facebook campaigns targeted to markets based on geography and LGBT in-

terests. Our click-through-rate and generation of new fans of the page exceeded industry averages by as much as 100 percent.”

Responding to a request for comment through his Facebook page, Park said he engaged in the exchange with the FGG board member in the heat of the moment and apologized – sort of.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a homophobe and I hate the LBGT with a passion and I hope the Gay Games will be ceased permanently,” Park said. “But I’ll admit that comment was a little too far, even for me.”

A brief survey of Park’s Facebook page shows an image of the rainbow flag burning, another picture of a sign saying “Two Men Are Friends Not Spouses,” and lists three groups to which he belongs: Christians Who Are Against Same-Sex Marriages (88 members), Christians Against Homosexuality (164 mem-

bers), and Americans Against Gay Marriage (20 members). His page shows he has “liked” 41 places, including 29 that oppose gay rights, especially same-sex marriage.

I’m no social media graduate student, but I’d say the odds of someone being able to change Park’s mind through a message exchange on Facebook were pretty much doomed from the start. Hell, I understand the temptation. I’ve indulged in exchanges not so bad but no more successful.

But take solace, anonymous FGG board member: the Gay Games do not change the world through Facebook, Twitter, virtual Pride Houses, anti-Sochi rallies, or human rights conferences. They change the world through their sheer existence.

They change the world with every drop of its athletes’ sweat, with every note its musicians play. #justplayt

“We know that there is an increase in LGBT persecution internationally,” said Buchting, pointing particularly to Africa, Russia, and Eastern Europe. “That means there are LGBT activists who have to leave their country for their safety and some of them are making it to the San Francisco Bay Area.”

The community-driven funds, which are managed by the $1.7 million foundation, will be awarded to organizations that have been working with LGBT refugees, said Buchting, a 45-year-old gay man.

“We know that the situation in some of these countries is not getting any better and that the reality is that we are going to have LGBT activists and LGBT folks coming into the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Buchting. “It’s important for us as a community to build a safety net for these folks and provide the resources necessary.”

the Q Foundation, which is the umbrella organization for the AIDS Housing Alliance/San Francisco, was searching for earlier this year.

Basinger began reaching out to his contacts as well as local LGBT elected officials and community leaders involved in the international asylee and refugee movement to begin building the foundation.

Meanwhile, LGBT activists in the East Bay came together with LGBT refugee and asylee professionals ear-

lier this month to begin coordinating a forum led by gay activist Gregg Cassin to educate the community on queer asylee and refugee needs.

“People are in a panic and they are reaching out everywhere,” said Basinger, who was contacted recently by several gay Ugandans who were being helped by several different people. “There are people who are getting into a response place.

There was a lot of duplication of effort.”

Recently, Basinger assisted a refugee Ugandan HIV doctor and a Cameroonian lesbian family find emergency housing in San Francisco.

He hopes that a “coordinated response” to the crisis can happen.t

The next frontier

An infrastructure was what Brian Basinger, founder and director of

Asylum Resources

AIDS Housing Alliance

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant

http://horizonsfoundation.org Donations can be made to the LGBTI Cameroon Fund or the LGBT Russian Refugee Fund online at www.horizonsfoundation. org or via check. Please denote on the check which fund you are donating to. Checks can be mailed to the Horizons Foundation, 550 Montgomery Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94111.

LGBT Refugee Program of the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay http://jfcs-eastbay.org/volunteers/lgbtirefugee-services Provides a variety of resettlement services to LGBT refugees and asylees throughout the Bay Area.

Songbook” at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 25 and Wednesday, March 26 at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. Tickets range from $25 to $75 and can be purchased online at http://tinyurl.com/qho2peg.

Six other choruses signed on as cocommissioning choruses and will perform it next spring in Chicago, New York, San Diego, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

“I just really want to offer up the fact that, ultimately, this is a piece about hope and getting others help and to a place where they are comfortable,” said Jane Clementi. “It is not a piece to bring people down.”t

Refugee Resources

Horizons Foundations LGBTI Cameroon Fund and the LGBT Russian Refugee Fund

laway rehearsing the song “I Love You More,” which she composed for Tyler’s Suite and will perform during the concerts, can be seen at the end of this article on ebar.com.

based environments. They see the chorale production as an extension of that work.

“It is not Tyler’s complete story; it is just aspects of who he was and glimmers into parts of him with a strong message of hope. That is what we want to put out there,’ said Jane Clementi. “We are making sure no one else feels and gets placed in the place Tyler was placed. We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

It cost the chorus less than $25,000 to commission the piece.

LGBT asylum and refugee services www.ahasf.org Provides emergency housing assistance and placement in San Francisco.

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

www.eastbaysanctuary.org

Provides sanctuary – support, protection, and advocacy – to lowincome and indigent refugees and immigrants.

LGBT Faith Asylum Network

www.lgbt-fan.org/community-support Provides support for LGBT asylum seekers and individuals wanting to learn more about helping them through education, services and fundraising efforts.

Immigration Equality www.immigrationequality.org

Offers pro bono help to LGBTI people who seek asylum in the U.S.

Sunday, March 23 Jane Clementi and Timothy Seelig will be talking with the Very Reverend Dr. Jane Shaw at Grace Cathedral Church, 1100 California Street, San Francisco. The free event takes place from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.

The chorus will perform its new show “Luster – An American

A video of the chorus and singersongwriter Ann Hampton Cal-

A fundraiser for the Tyler Clementi Foundation featuring a sneak peak performance of the show will be held at 6 p.m.

Monday, March 24. There is a suggested donation of $125; to RSVP email Michael Lynch at michaeljlynchjr@hotmail.com.

Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at 00+1-415-2213541, Skype: heather.cassell, or oitwnews@gmail.com.

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<<

Grindr

Lampkin, who spoke Thursday, March 13 to members of San Francisco’s HIV Prevention Planning Council, added that staffers don’t initiate contact with others on the site and the profiles contain minimal information. Instead, they respond when someone expresses interest in the profile.

Before Grindr was in use, during October 2011 to March 2012, there were 60 contacts with men who have sex with men, he said.

From October 2012 to March 2013, that number jumped to 305, Lampkin said. The Grindr outreach, which started in October 2012, accounted for 215 of those contacts, and 79 percent of those contacted remained engaged when staff revealed what they were doing on the site, he said.

“We’re very forthcoming early in the conversation about why we’re there,” Lampkin told council members.

In an interview, Lampkin, who is gay, added that many people have said, “They’re really happy the intervention exists, and they’re happy to learn of those services being available” in the county.

Questioned about the program, Lampkin didn’t directly answer but asked if it’s more unethical to “ignore” the application’s potential as an outreach tool or “to give them information about HIV and STDs and save them from suffering.”

“We’re not deceiving people,” he said. “We also know other people have a profile up that’s not them,” and there have been “very few” negative reactions.

He also said, “There are people who just go on there to chat. ...

That’s what we go on there to do.”

Health department staff have had “lots of conversations” about ethics, and talked to researchers who attended a 2012 conference and helped inspire San Mateo County’s use of Grindr for outreach. Unlike the county, those researchers, who Lampkin said were from UCLA, had been initiating contact with Grindr users.

Data from San Mateo County, which has a population of about 739,000 people, indicate why Lampkin

<<

Milk stamp

From page 1

wrote in an email that he had “no scheduling announcements to make” when asked if the White House was working with the Harvey Milk Foundation to release the Milk stamp at a White House ceremony on May 22 in conjunction with its annual Harvey Milk Champions of Change honorees ceremony.

Stuart Milk, the gay nephew of Milk who helped co-found and runs the Harvey Milk Foundation, told the B.A.R. that neither the family nor foundation officials have been told of when the stamp will be officially released to the public.

“I am not aware of even the date May 22. That is news to me,” said Milk when asked by the B.A.R. about the petition created by Burke. “The White House piece is news to me as well. I am not aware of any decision made yet on the place, date, or time.”

Last May the B.A.R. first reported that the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee had voted to approve a Milk stamp based on information obtained by Linn’s Stamp News, a weekly publication that covers the mail service. The documents also

<<

The county has two smartphones for the Grindr work, meaning there are two separate accounts. The county subscribes to Grindr Xtra, where Lampkin said a membership is $55 a year.

Staffers purchase stock images of men to use as profile photos.

“We dirtied them up,” including through using shadowing, so that they wouldn’t look “so professional,” said Lampkin. They also change the picture twice a month.

Not all staffers involved in the project are gay or bi men, and some are women.

Users of hookup sites are known to send pictures of their penises and other body parts. Training for the staffers has included setting boundaries and responding to “explicit” photos and messages, said Lampkin.

People may communicate “in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways”

that they’re looking for sex, he said.

“Folks can be very persistent with an image,” he added.

Despite health workers revealing early on what they’re up to, some people have persisted in wanting to meet the men in the profile photos, Lampkin said.

“We just say, ‘No, he doesn’t really work in the clinic,’ and leave it like that,” he said.

Lampkin, who said health workers are interested in talking with other hookup apps, defended the way his agency is using Grindr.

“I haven’t had any conversations with Grindr,” he said, but “our goal was to follow the terms of service.”

In response to an interview request, Grindr spokesman Matt Goodman emailed the Bay Area Reporter a statement that said the site “strongly encourages our users to engage in safe sex practices, get tested, and know their HIV status.”

Grindr welcomes working with non-government organizations to do safe sex education and promotion, the statement said, but “as part of our terms of service, we do not allow paid or pro-bono advertising within user profiles. In our experience, we found that the most effective approach is in partnering with organizations to educate users via events and targeted messaging rather than through Grindr profiles.”

The site sponsors and raises money for AIDS walks in San Francisco and other cities, among other assistance, according to the statement.

In response to the Grindr statement, Lampkin said, “We don’t advertise. We offer information specific to people’s questions, which we consider to be risk reduction information and referrals.”

San Mateo County has a nonvoting seat on the HPPC, which sets priorities for HIV prevention in San Francisco and is co-chaired

by Tracey Packer, a longtime staffer at the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

In response to the B.A.R.’s request to interview Packer about using Grindr to do HIV and STD outreach, health department spokeswoman Nancy Sarieh said in an email, “We are not using Grindr for HIV/STD outreach.”t

showed that the Milk stamp would be released in May 2014.

Last October the Milk Foundation on its Facebook page confirmed that a Milk stamp had been approved.

More recently the postal service has listed the Milk stamp as set for release on May 22 in its last two postal bulletins’ calendar listings, though it notes the schedule is “subject to change” and does not include information for where the first-day city/ state ceremony will take place.

Saunders would not say if having the ceremony in San Francisco had been ruled out. Nor did he know if the design for the Milk stamp had been approved.

“I know this will be an extremely popular stamp,” he said. “In California there will be plenty of Harvey Milk stamps on supply.”

Stuart Milk declined to comment when asked about the final design of the stamp. He did say a number of cities have been under discussion for where to unveil it and that the family has asked that it be given “at least a month’s notice” of the ceremony location so they can attend.

“The only thing I know of is there may be more than one ceremony” to celebrate its release, said Milk.

“They definitely are working with us and consulting with us, but it is all still to be decided.”

Burke, who publishes a twice-yearly newsletter called California Stamp News, is “optimistic” enough people will support his petition so that the unveiling of the Milk stamp will be held somewhere in San Francisco.

“If somebody said we are going to do a Harvey Milk stamp and we need to know where to do the ceremony, it is a no-brainer you do it in San Francisco. That is where it should be done. Period,” said Burke.

His petition has just six signatures to date and can be accessed at https:// petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/ require-united-states-postal-service-hold-first-day-ceremony-harvey-milk-stamp-san-francisco-ca/ CRczqGT8.

Because the petition has yet to reach 150 signatures, it is not yet publicly viewable on the White House website’s petitions section.

Nor does it show up when typing “Harvey Milk” into the search feature for the petitions.

Burke has until April 2 to get 100,000 signatures in order for his petition to be reviewed by the White House.t

Acharya, Frost, Moscarello, and Moss documenting Moscarello’s concerns.

Stunned when the B.A.R. inquired about the allegations, Frost stated that she didn’t have much knowledge of what was happening at Planet Hospital. My Donor Cycle was simply a vendor, she said.

“I don’t work at Planet Hospital.

I’m not in a position to interfere

here,” said Frost, who was only made aware of one situation regarding donor egg splitting when Moscarello brought it to her attention. “My role is to take care of the donor and make sure the donor is paid appropriately and consents to her eggs being split.”

Which the donor did agree to and was compensated for, said Frost.t

From page 1

Surrogacy

From page 7

eggs among other clients; clinic and donor mishandling; falsifying medical documents; mismanaging company finances; and making false and fraudulent claims to clients.

The B.A.R. obtained copies of email correspondence between

Courtesy Darryl Lampkin

San Mateo County health official Darryl Lampkin

and others have taken to Grindr.

As of December 2012, there were 1,424 people in the county living with HIV/AIDS, according to Lampkin. Men made up 83 percent of all cases, with 59 percent of them having contracted it through sexual contact with other men.

Lampkin said that, in 2008, almost 40 percent of people who tested positive for syphilis reported they had looked online for sex partners.

Creating profiles

t

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035636600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: I/O LEGAL GROUP, 2261 MARKET ST #140, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MOIRA LUZ DAWSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/05/14.

FEB 27, MAR 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035648900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GUYS FLOWERS, 2198 15TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GUY CLARK. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/11/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/11/14.

FEB 27, MAR 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035675300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FRESH AND FOOLISH, 66 CLEARY CT #509, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed RAHUL NIHALANI & JONATHAN ELLENBOGEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/05/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/18/14.

FEB 27, MAR 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035664900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SILVANA SAN FRANCISCO, 2559 38TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed JOSEPH SONG RIN PARK & CHARLES MCHAEL SCHWENKE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/05/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/05/14.

FEB 27, MAR 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035678800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: STEPPINGSTONE, 930 FOURTH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94158. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NORTH AND SOUTH OF MARKET ADULT DAY HEALTH CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/14.

FEB 27, MAR 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035672600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CABLE CAR WINE & SPIRIT GROCERY, 841 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CABLE CAR WINE AND SPIRITS, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/21/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/21/14.

FEB 27, MAR 06, 13, 20, 2014 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-033558100 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: CABLE CAR WINE & SPIRIT GROCERY, 841 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by KENNY TSANG. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/12/11.

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MAR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035687900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FLUIDITY, 143-A PIERCE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JEFFREY ARNOLD TAYLER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/28/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/28/14.

MAR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035676500

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550771 In the matter of the application of JOHN LANCE WHITEFORD, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JOHN LANCE WHITEFORD, is requesting that the name JOHN LANCE WHITEFORD, be changed to JACK SORIANO WHITEFORD. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Rm. 514 on the 13th of May 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035689600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LOUIS, 914 LARKIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed LOUIS GOUDEAU, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/28/14.

MAR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550160 In the matter of the application of: NASER ABBAS SALMAN, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner NASER ABBAS SALMAN, is requesting that the name NASER ABBAS SALMAN, be changed to SALMA SALMAN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 6th of May 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 13, 20, 27, APR 03, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550171 In the matter of the application of: JOHN LANCE WHITEFORD, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JOHN LANCE WHITEFORD, is requesting that the name JOHN LANCE WHITEFORD, be changed to JACK SORIANO WHITEFORD. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Rm. 514 on the 13th of May 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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MAR 13, 20, 27, APR 03, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035697700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SEW; WALKERSHAW CLOTHING; 29-1/2 WEST PORTAL AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed CONNIE WALKER & IRA SHAW. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/14.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NIMBLY, 25 TAYLOR ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company and is signed NIMBLY LLC (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/20/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/05/14.

MAR 06, 13, 20, 27, 2014

MAR 13, 20, 27, APR 03, 2014

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SMOKE & MIRRORS; SMOKE&MIRRORS; SMOKE&MIRRORS HAIR; SMOKE&MIRRORS HAIR AND FASHION PLAYGROUND, 256 SUTTER ST, 2ND FL, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SMOKE AND MIRRORS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/19/14.

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MAR 13, 20, 27, APR 03, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550181 In the matter of the application of: NATESH DANIEL, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner NATESH DANIEL, is requesting that the name NATESH DANIEL, be changed to NATHAN DIESEL. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Rm. 514 on the 13th of May 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035691100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NOELANI, 1700 A UNION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DELIGHT LOW. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/05/85. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/03/14.

MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035700000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SF WEB SOLUTION, 3532 21ST ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOERG KLEINEBRAHM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/06/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/06/14.

MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035678000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LOU IT NOW, 3015 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LOUISE WO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/18/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/14.

MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035714700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HENRY’S HUNAN RESTAURANT, 674 SACRAMENTO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed MATMAR CO. INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/13/14.

MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035711600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOT POT ISLAND, 5512 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HAN HU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/12/14.

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

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MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035717400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SHANKEL STUDIOS, 3376 23RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed JASON PAUL SHANKEL & MARIA ISAACS SHANKEL. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/14/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/14.

MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035701300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HILLS PLAZA MARKET, 345 SPEAR ST #115, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a limited liability corporation, and is signed HILLS PLAZA MARKET LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/06/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/06/14.

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MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035706600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FASHION SPOT, 824 STOCKTON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a limited liability corporation, and is signed W & W INTERNATIONAL TRADING LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/10/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/14.

MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035719100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AE ACADEMY LLC, 415 STOCKTON ST, 4TH FLR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a limited liability corporation, and is signed AE ACADEMY, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/14.

MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-029240600 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: COLD STONE CREAMERY, 119 ELLIS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by ICE CREAM ENTERTAINMENT LLC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/03/06.

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MAR 20, 27, APR 03, 10, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035710400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BANDIDOS, 2200 A MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability corporation, and is signed SNAKEBITE, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/11/14.

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The

Vol. 44 • No. 12 • March 20-26, 2014

www.ebar.com/arts

SFGMC’s must-hear premiere

by Jason Victor Serinus

T

he San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is about to premiere a project equally audacious and vital. In Luster, its forthcoming spring concert in Davies Symphony Hall, it will augment classics of the 20th-century American Songbook – the great popular tunes of Gershwin, Porter, Ellington, and Berlin, here sung by Ann Hampton Callaway and a chorus of 300 – with the premiere of Tyler’s Suite. A multi-movement work curated

by Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin, The Magic Show) in collaboration with the Tyler Clementi Foundation, Tyler’s Suite tells the story of Tyler Clementi, the 18-year-old Rutgers University student who jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge three days after two cyberbullies hijacked his computer to film and post video of him kissing another man.

Overseen by SFGMC Artistic Director Timothy Seelig, Tyler’s Suite consists of eight movements.

Set to lyrics by Pamela Stewart, the sections See page 27 >>

Ann Hampton Callaway and the Men of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. mellopix photography

Cinderella shines in second season

by Paul Parish

S

an Francisco Ballet’s Cinderella, which premiered last year to already sold-out houses, returned to the Opera House last week, where it looks even better than it did in its first run and plays through this Sunday, with an added show on Friday “due to popular demand.” For once that phrase really means something – this Cinderella is a show, an adventure in moving pictures, and everything about it is in the best sense of the word popular.

Cinderella herself is an example of the cream rising to the top and embodies the democratic ideal. Prokofiev’s music was written to be popular; Stalin had to like it.

Cinderella is a hit with the audience, but not with all the critics; it’s been especially attacked

by Alastair Macaulay in The New York Times, who found the choreography disappointing.

Macaulay is the best dance critic the Times has ever had, but in this case he’s judging too narrowly.

Purists tend to define choreography as just the dancing, and if all you valued were the steps of the dances themselves, well, they’re only great when they have to be. For much of the time, they’re like pianist’s passagework in a concerto: brilliant, fleeting, busily getting us to the next key moment. But if chorography is overall movement design, it’s a different matter: the choreographer, See page 26 >>

San Francisco Ballet dancer Maria Kochetkova as the title character in Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella.

{ SECOND OF TWO SECTIONS }

Erik Tomasson

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<< Out There

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Standing up for civic art treasures

t

by Roberto Friedman

R

ecently the arts journalist Tyler Green devoted an installment of his Modern Art Notes blog to the case of the Piazzoni murals’ tumultuous fate in San Francisco. Perhaps you remember the tale. The two multi-panel murals The Sea and The Land (1932) had hung for years in the Beaux Arts gem of a building that was the old San Francisco Public Library in Civic Center. They were site-specific civic art. The artist Gottardo Piazzoni was an Italian-American immigrant whose great subject was his new home of California. His two library murals illustrated the deep blue ocean and golden-hued hills at the shore, defining features and colors of the local land- and seascape.

When the architect Gae Aulenti unveiled her design for the new Asian Art Museum that would replace the library in the renovated building, the murals, previously installed on either side of the grand staircase, were no longer part of the plan.

A great San Francisco art monument was being unceremoniously uprooted, with no plans for further public display.

Green presents convincing evidence that the Piazzoni murals were greatly influential to important California artists like Clyfford Still and Robert Bechtle. “Every year or two I find a new way in which San Francisco’s post-war avant-garde painters found him [Piazzoni] important,” he writes.

“In one way that shouldn’t be a surprise: In the first decades after World War II, when art magazines were published in black-and-white, the local meant more than it does now. Artists spent more time absorbing what was around them than they did what was

Piazzoni murals just before removal in the old San Francisco Public Library. Gae Aulenti’s design for the building’s rebirth as the Asian Art Museum required their removal.

selling in the market centers.”

There’s a happy ending to the story of the Piazzoni murals, which Green doesn’t go into but we will. The thenSan Francisco-based art critic David Bonetti raised such a hue and cry in his columns about the dismantling and proposed disappearance of a great city art treasure that the de Young Museum, which was just then moving into new quarters in Golden Gate Park, dedicated an entire gallery in the new museum to the preservation and presentation of the murals. Today you can contemplate the sea and the land in Piazzoni’s great work, just the way generations of postwar California artists did. The art’s new home in the great city park, once a rolling expanse of sand dunes leading to the ocean, seems fitting and fine.

We dredge up this old story for a reason. It’s a fine example of how a focused and critical press can function as a watchdog for public interest, in a way we can’t always expect arts institutions or their directors to

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be. Another example that comes to mind is when, without any warning, the corporate interests who operate the Palace Hotel dismantled the Maxfield Parrish painting that hung above the bar in its Pied Piper room. It was only the public uproar that followed exposure of the deed in the local press that persuaded management to rehang the Parrish, after cleaning, in its rightful place.

(Out There was much relieved, as we were afraid we’d never be able to enjoy a Bombay Sapphire on the rocks at the Palace again, which would have been a real hardship.)

But we worry that the critical function of the local arts press has become more and more neutered or compromised. Arts journalists seem loathe to rock the boat, lest advertisers or their point-men take umbrage, and bloggers don’t hold themselves to the same standards they hold others. Case in point: the expansion of SFMOMA that has necessitated the three-year closure of its flagship building. This means the destruction of some of the best features of architect Mario Botta’s original design, including the great Italian marble-and-granite staircase in the atrium at its 3rd St. entrance. Architects from Snohetta, the firm that is handling the renovation, assured us that Botta explicitly signed off on the gutting/expansion. But let’s be frank, was he really going to object?

At the last press conference held in the old SFMOMA, Out There asked pointedly how many personnel – guards, support staff, café workers, etc. – were being laid off during the three-year interim. Museum administrators skillfully deflected the question, and indeed, as a private

Courtesy Snohetta and MIR

An artist’s rendition of one view of the renovated and expanded SFMOMA, coming in a few years.

Mike Harvey

Inside the San Francisco Opera Costume Shop Sale.

institution, SFMOMA is under no obligation whatsoever to answer impudent questions about staffing and budgets. But after the presser, one museum staffer came up to us and thanked us for making the point. She was laid off shortly thereafter.

Costumes to die for

Because Bay Areans love their costumes, we relay the following press release from SFO: “For only the fifth time in our 91-year history, San Francisco Opera is offering up for sale hundreds of stylish and exotic items, including medieval, Biblical, Renaissance, and 18th-century costumes; modern and vintage clothing previously worn in SFO productions; hats, masks, armor, gloves, belts and jewelry; handmade costumes spanning a wide variety of styles and periods; and wild conceptual and fantasy costumes that defy description.

Also on sale will be crafting supplies, beads and findings as well as a wide variety of fabrics including vintage textiles, laces and brocades.

“Among the items available for sale are hand-woven Biblical costumes from the 2013 world premiere

of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene; spectacular 19th-century costumes from Eugene Onegin; hand-painted fantasy costumes from Pelléas et Mélisande; elaborate 18th-century costumes from Don Giovanni; studded leather jerkins from Die Meistersinger; as well as costumes from The Flying Dutchman, Carmen, and Katya Kabanova. The sale includes costumes worn by some of opera’s greatest luminaries at San Francisco Opera and pieces by noted fashion designers such as the one and only Gianni Versace.

“San Francisco Opera Costume Shop Sale: Sat., March 22, 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. (no admittance after 4:30 p.m.), and Sun., March 23 from 10:30 a.m.-4 p.m. (no admittance after 3:30 p.m.) at the San Francisco Opera Scene Shop, 800 Indiana St. (between 20th and 22nd Sts.) in SF. Prices range from $1 to $750; costumes from the special opera luminaries collection are available upon request. Cash and credit card only accepted; no checks. All sales are final and benefit San Francisco Opera. For more information, visit www.sfopera.com/costumesale.”t

Tough love

by David Lamble

C

ome to see your dying mom and bring her flowers and chocolates? Or have you come to kill me with your dirty homo kissing?”

When last we saw him, Cal (mixed-race toughie Wayne Virgo) was the kick-ass star of Bristol, England’s hyperviolent queer scene, as depicted in the powerful 2009 feature Shank. Time flies when your life is as barren and on the edge as Cal’s, and in this remarkable sequel, our hoodie-attired lad is back to duke it out with Bristol’s nasty criminal class. Having lost track of his French lover-boy Olivier, Cal hooks up with a skinny beanpole, Jason (Tom Payne), himself attracting the wrong kind of attention from the local thuggish set.

Cal, with Shank co-writer

“

Christian Martin as director, is a must for those who like their soft-core gay-boy adventures laced with a bit of the old ultraviolence. With a bow to A Clockwork Orange creator Anthony Burgess, this one delivers erotically (the sex kicks in at 51 minutes), with a special fighting sequence between Cal and Jason under the orders of a pistolwielding bad guy.

Cal is accompanied by a remarkable HIV-themed short, Fucked, whose blond-boy hero (the saucy Ben Moorman) is very convincing in a bar-bathroom slice of sodomy.

“Exams out of the way, I’m off to be gay.” Directed by Jack O’Dowd, Fucked delivers with sexy flair.

Bonus: a cheery, downright zany blooper reel, and the theatrical trailer.t

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Theatre>>

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Life is a cabaret – with child

by Richard Dodds

N

ot long after winning a Tony Award at age 11 for The Secret Garden, Daisy Eagan was on stage at Carnegie Hall singing “Broadway Baby” in a tribute to Stephen Sondheim. Now she’s got her own baby who’s hitting the road with Mom, although it’s unlikely she’ll be steering him toward a life on the stage. It’s a complicated story, involving years of professional rejection, spirals into debilitating depression, and motherhood that was neither planned nor wanted.

But little Monty, not yet 2, with his grandparents as babysitters, will be only a few floors away as Eagan premieres her new solo show as part of the Society Cabaret series at Hotel Rex on March 28 and 29. Titled One for My Baby, it comes with the rejoinder “An Inappropriate Evening with Daisy Eagan.” In other words, don’t bring the children.

“My humor tends to be a little blue,” Eagan said from her home in Los Angeles. “You would think that a show called One for My Baby would be sort of sweet and like a love letter to your child, which in some ways it is, but there’s a lot a stuff about my parenting trends that make me insane, and I definitely poke fun at myself. So, yeah, it’s slightly inappropriate.”

Eagan had just broken up with boyfriend Kurt Bloom, the father of her child, when she discovered she was well along with her pregnancy.

They talked and talked, and asked themselves if they wanted to make a go of it at parenthood as a couple.

“That’s a condensed and much friendlier version of what we went through,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of time to make the decision

Daisy Eagan, a Tony Award winner at age 11, has returned to the stage in the solo show One for My Baby for the Society Cabaret series at Hotel Rex.

because if we were going to take the other route we had to do it quickly because I was going to be too far along in the pregnancy. Both he and I spent time talking with people we love and trust, and he was the one who finally said, ‘I really want to do this.’ That was a huge relief, because that’s really what I wanted.”

Some of this ambivalence is reflected in Eagan’s cabaret show. “It’s funny because I never wanted children and was never a big fan of children,” she said. “I think at first some people might be uncomfortable, but the more honest we are about how difficult it can be, the better off we all are. I’m fiercely pro-choice, but the decision to have Monty was the best decision I could have made.”

Eagan sings about a dozen songs, most of them standards, to illustrate

Daisy Eagan poses with her son Monty, who provides the inspiration for her cabaret show One for My Baby.

the stories she wants to tell. When she emerged from a break from show business that she had thought was permanent, she found that the sound of laughter was even better than the sound of applause for her singing.

She quit the business in 2007, got a BA in psychology and creative writing, and had started grad school when she decided to go back on the stage. And where did that change of heart come from? “I think partly insanity,” she said. “I think once it’s in your blood, it’s really hard to walk away from.”

She made her return in a loosely structured cabaret show titled Still Daisy After All These Years, and then got more serious in a second show with the somewhat unexpected title Fuck Off, I Love You, in which she explored her bumpy career that had started so brightly. “I just decided that I wanted to move away from that topic,” she said of the newest show.

During those difficult years, she was one of the struggling actors featured on The It Factor, a 2002 reality show on Bravo that followed a group of New York actors in a 13week series that was about the grind of classes, auditions, and, mostly, rejection. Eagan was the best-known, and certainly the only Tony Awardwinner, among the group.

“I talked about The It Factor in the last show, and I said I was edited to seem like the depressed and angry one, and by edited I mean that they filmed me and I was depressed and angry. I played a clip from the show of me sort of bemoaning my fate, and meanwhile onstage I was, like, making faces at myself. I swear, when I turned 30 and I looked back at that past decade, I don’t know who that person was.”

After San Francisco, One for My Baby has dates in several cities, and

she’s looking to add more. She’ll have to take a break from that when she goes into rehearsals for a new play this spring at the Pasadena Playhouse, but she can’t say any more about it yet.

Eagan’s bouts with depression, one that even left her hospitalized, have sometimes seemed related to show business, which can be a danger now that she has returned to the tribe.

“You have to be keenly aware of the early signs and deal with it,” she said of depression. “I’m trying to learn to be nicer to myself and remind myself that there are enough people in the world who are going to be hard on me, and if anyone is going to treat me kindly, it should start with me.”t Daisy Eagan will perform One for My Baby at the Rex Hotel on March 28-29. Tickets are $20 and $40, and are available at www.societycabaret.com.

<< Theatre

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Anarchy reigns in Berkeley

by Richard Dodds

Y

ou can bend it, you can fold it, you can squeeze it, you can stretch it, you can bounce it, and still it comes back for more. On stage at Berkeley Rep, Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist looks nothing like what a reader of its printed text would expect – or could possibly imagine. Apparently whatever firm that licenses rights to present this play don’t hold its client’s words as sacrosanct. “This isn’t Dario Fo,” says an actor to another who has strayed into rants on Bush-Cheney, Iraq, WMDs, mortgage scandals, and other misaffairs of state. But Fo would approve, claims the off-script actor, before continuing on about the dangers of penis-shaped wedding cakes in Arizona.

Fo is quite alive, and Accidental Death, first produced in 1970, is years away from the public domain, so we must accept on faith that Fo, or his representatives, are satisfied with liberties taken in this

co-production with Yale Rep. The pop-culture references and selfreferential gags that polka dot the production can be verbal or visual, and for all this broadness it’s still a style that walks a narrow rope. In the vernacular of this production, these are cluster-fuck jokes that can just as easily miss the target as make a strike.

But director Christopher Bayes and comic dynamo Steven Epp have plenty of target practice working together. Two years ago, they brought A Doctor in Spite of Himself to Berkeley Rep in a similar gag-fest whirlwind of anachronisms and winks to the audience.

But though a farce, Fo’s play comes from a serious place in not-so-distant political history, and some of that context can be lost when the Three Stooges are being emulated, 1970s sitcoms referenced, and Jude Law evoked in this translation by Gillian Hanna and tweaked by Gavin Richards.

Fo’s play was inspired by the

Joan Marcus

Eugene Ma, Steven Epp, Allen Gilmore, and Liam Craig break into a brief musical number in an unusual take on Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist at Berkeley Rep.

mysterious 1969 death of avowed anarchist and suspected terrorist Giuseppe Pinelli, who somehow passed through the fourth-floor window of a Milan police station

to the street below. In Fo’s fictionalized account, unanswered questions about the defenestration have been swept under the rug by the police station’s bumbling staff – at least

t

until a certified maniac (and he has the papers to prove it) starts asking awkward questions in the guise of an investigating judge.

As the wily madman, Epp is fascinating to watch in a performance of bipolar burlesque, reacting in character with the other performers on stage while keeping the audience in on his joke. The other characters are mostly caricatures, getting laughs with exaggerations of looks and behavior, notably Eugene Ma’s rolypoly dim-sum constable and Allen Gilmore’s variation on a bad 1970s black sitcom character. Liam Craig, Renata Friedman, and Jesse J. Perez are in roles of somewhat lesser cartoon station. Aaron Halva provides musical accents from the side of the stage, which would be rim shots in venues of lesser prestige.t Accidental Death of an Anarchist will run at Berkeley Rep through April 20. Tickets are $29-$99.

Call (510) 647-2949 or go to www.berkeleyrep.org.

Wonder women of the world

by Gregg Shapiro

D

oes anyone remember the late Ofra Haza? The Yemeni singer was poised to become the first legitimate Middle Eastern pop superstar.

Haza’s unlikely popularity, spurred by her being discovered and embraced by club DJs, transformed her from a traditional artist to a dynamic disco diva via songs such as the dance version of “Im Nin’alu.” With her debut album Ya Nass (Crammed Discs), Lebanese singer/songwriter Yasmine Hamdan could become the next Middle Eastern idol. The contemporary pop arrangements of these 13 songs give them an in-

stant accessibility that their language might not. Of course, we’ve been listening to pop songs sung in other languages such as French, Spanish and Italian for years, so while our ears might be unsure at first, Hamdan gives us plenty to enjoy. Incorporating acoustic folk-pop (“Shouei,” “Beirut”) and electronics (“Samar,” the title cut), Hamdan also offers up her own interpretations of songs by Omar El Zenni, Ahmed Rami and Mohammed Abdel Wahab.

It was only a matter of time before Nina Persson, the lead singer of Swedish band The Cardigans (“Lovefool”) and later A Camp

(with husband Nathan Larson of Shudder To Think fame), released a solo album as rewarding as Animal Heart (The End). Well worth the wait, Animal Heart gives Persson a chance to exhibit her versatility.

On the dramatic “Burning Bridges for Fuel,” Persson proves that she knows her way around a power ballad, and infuses it with the proper level of emotion. “Clip Your Wings” is meant for dance-floor strutting, “Jungle” swings subtly, and the delicious “Food for the Beast,” with its reference to being “face down on the floor of the discotheque,” has club track written all over it, elevating Persson to full-fledged dance

CHEYENNE JACKSON

VONDA SHEPARD

STEVE TYRELL

WELL STRUNG

March 14 - 16

March 27 - 30

March 21 - 22

April 3 - 6

For tickets: www.feinsteinssf.com Feinstein’s | Hotel Nikko San Francisco 222 Mason Street 855-MF-NIKKO | 855-636-4556

089684.04_HNSF_Feinsteins_2014_q1_Bay_Area_Reporter_3_20 ROUND #: MECH Trim: 5.75in x 7.625in Bleed: none Live: 5.75in x 7.625in Color Space: CMYK Fonts: Futura

diva. Check out funky track “Catch Me Crying,” the polished retro of “Silver,” and “This Is Heavy Metal,” which is heavy in ways you might not expect.

Even when she’s rocking out as she does on the exhilarating “Man” or cussing up a storm as she does on the heartbreaking “Near Midnight, Honolulu,” insurgent country goddess Neko Case never loses her torchy twang throughout her latest album, the Grammy-nominated The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You (Anti). With a gift for turn of phrase that rivals Stephin Merritt, Case sings the heck out of these songs, causing them to become a part of your being after only one listen – but repeated listens are in order. “Night Still Comes” aches at the “right angle,” the aforementioned “Man” would be a hit single in a perfect world, and “Bracing for Sunday,” featuring Steve Berlin’s sax, about “a Friday night girl/bracing for Sunday to come,” might be Case’s queerest statement to date.

The striking “Calling Cards” is followed by the graceful rock of “City Swans,” and Case’s cover of Christa Päffgen’s “Afraid” is nothing to fear.

In an all-star affair, Case is supported by a dazzling array of artists including grand divas Kelly Hogan and Carolyn Mark, Mudhoney’s Steve Turner, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Carl Broemel, fellow New Pornographer AC Newman, M. Ward and Howe Gelb.

Talk about incredible genes.

Half-sisters Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones are the daughters of sitar superstar Ravi Shankar.

Following in her late father’s footsteps, Anoushka is also a sitarist and composer of renown. Half-sibs Anoushka and Norah team up on a trio of songs on Anoushka’s new album Traces of You (Deutsche Grammophon), one of the elements contributing to the disc’s more accessible and commercial sound.

The three songs, the sad but radiant “The Sun Won’t Set,” the countryinfluenced title cut and the touching ballad “Unsaid,” are all lovely additions to both women’s portfolios.

On the remainder of the disc’s instrumentals, Shankar and producer Nitin Sawhney strike a balance between the contemporary and the traditional.

A dazzlingly beautiful recording from start to finish, Aventine (Play It Again Sam) by Danish artist Agnes Obel opens with the glorious instrumental “Chord Left,” which wouldn’t be out of place on

the Oscar-winning soundtrack to an indie movie. Obel maintains the high caliber of skill throughout. “Fuel to Fire” sounds like a lost Goldfrapp track. In fact, Obel could give Allison Goldfrapp a run for her money when it comes to alternately chill and sizzling atmospherics of most of the songs. “Run Cried the Crawling,” on the other hand, recalls the collaborations among Julee Cruise, Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. Aventine is a remarkable and strongly recommended album.

Known for her explosive recordings and live performances, Sri Lankan artist M.I.A. is at the opposite end of the musical spectrum from Agnes Obel. But after blasting her way into our consciousness with a pair of sensational releases (2005’s Arular and 2007’s Kala), M.I.A. appears to have lost focus on her latest album, Matangi (Interscope).

Still working the exotic angle with her hip-hop-inspired compositions, M.I.A. sounds like she’s chosen technology over tunes. There’s nothing here as groundbreaking See page 21 >>

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Film>>

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Down & out & middle-aged in Paris

by David Lamble

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he droll new comedy Le WeekEnd opens on both an in-joke – that the British whose capital, London, is the financial heart of Europe have refused to swap their pounds for euros – and the wryly amusing spectacle of a 60something, provincial English couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary in Paris.

Nick and Meg (Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan) are on a Parisbound express train. Schoolteacher Meg is devouring a travel guide while her college-professor hubby is fumbling through his pockets for their stash of euro cash.

“Have you got the euros?”

“Do I have the euros?”

“Don’t start.”

“Of course, you never lose anything.”

“I’ll lose you in a minute.”

As envisioned by screenwriter Hanif Kureishi, creator of 1985’s pioneering Anglo-queer classic My Beautiful Laundrette, Nick and Meg will bicker virtually nonstop for the ensuing 93 minutes, only taking time out for a pit-stop homage or two to their generation’s heroes, Bob Dylan and Jean-Luc Godard.

Now, good bickering dialogue is in short supply these days. Whiny, selfabsorbed blathering doesn’t count.

No, if you want to score at the top of the scale, in the Cary Grant/Irene Dunne or William Powell/Myrna Loy 1930s screwball comedy leagues, you need a grade A writer whose talents have been honed through novels or plays. Fans of Hanif Kureishi’s Laundrette Anglo/Pakistani loverboys Johnny and Omar will recall how the authenticity of this boldfor-the-mid-80s bond was immeasurably strengthened by the lads’ sly and flirtatious bantering. Today, if we could see them, that would have probably morphed into bickering.

In the verbal wars, Meg is clearly a top, while the professionally more eminent Nick is constantly licking

Courtesy of Music Box Films

Nick Burrows (Jim Broadbent) and Meg Burrows (Lindsay Duncan) in director Roger Michell’s Le Week-End.

his wounds. One slight complaint is the tendency of Lindsay Duncan to swallow key phrases in some of her more notable outbursts. If you fall in love with this one, it’s a good excuse for a second viewing.

Le Week-End is a two-hander until deep in the second act, when the film’s big set-piece, a fancy book-signing party at the palatial apartment of Nick’s former student Morgan (in a late entry by Jeff Goldblum), sets the stage for Nick and Meg’s self-induced, mutual public undressing.

I won’t spoil this piece de resistance with too much information, but suffice it to say that when Nick drops his bomb of a toast at the dinner table, the only verbal response is an impressed shriek of “Awesome!” from Morgan’s American teenage son, Michael (a lovely drop-in from British-born Olly Alexander, from Into the Void and British TV’s erotic serial Skins).

Duncan is winningly agile in the film’s grand chutzpah moment: dis-

covering that they can’t pay an astronomical restaurant bill, Meg counsels Nick to take a smoke break and carry both their coats outside with him. The resulting how-to on skipping out on a Paris restaurant check is a physical-comedy gem, as looseygoosey a delight as early sound-era Laurel and Hardy. The comedy is enhanced by our never being fully let in on the joke of just how outrageous the weekend’s tab is becoming. Imagine how Casablanca’s “We’ll always have Paris” surprise ending would play accompanied by 2014 Paris sticker shock.

Jim Broadbent, my favorite British character actor since his passive/aggressive tour de force as a browbeaten hubby battling his lesbian wife for child custody in Mike Newell’s The Good Father, steals every moment as an aging lefty activist in slow-dawning horror that this is

indeed all there is. Watch Broadbent frugging away to Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” the white iPhone ear-pods contributing to his coming off like an aging space alien.

Even more sublime is his extended sequence getting high with Michael, a teen from Morgan’s first American marriage.

“You want a drink?” Michael tosses a bottle of beer at the older man that Nick catches like a live grenade, before quickly downing its contents.

“Aren’t you enjoying the party?”

“I don’t quite fit in. You live here?”

“I’m just here for the weekend. I live in New York. Morgan’s my dad.”

“Does he talk in a loud voice all the time?”

“Even his e-mails are loud. I mean, a weekend in Paris, what a drag! The more out of it I am, the better.”

“You’ve obviously never been

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to Birmingham. I would make the most of this city if I was you.”

“That’s what my dad says. He and I don’t really share that many interests.”

“That’s not that unusual.”

“He likes the idea of me being around. He sends me air tickets, but he really freaks out if we’re stuck in the same room together. He feels bad, guilty – hates being hated.”

After several puffs on the joint passing between them, Nick falls back on Michael’s pillow, surrendering to pot giggles.

Kureishi deftly doubles down on the screen parlor-trick of a character opening up to a total stranger – enhanced by giving them a 40-plus year age gap – with the conspiratorial glee of shuttling between the boy’s bedroom and the apartment’s balcony, where Meg is agreeing to a drink invite from a prominent Proust scholar. Hands down, the best Proust gags since Little Miss Sunshine.

Part of Le Week-End’s suspense comes from our wondering whether Goldblum’s genial-host mask will slip, revealing a ruthless power junkie like his regal upscale philanderer in Burr Steers’ brilliant 2002 swipe at the rich and powerful, Igby Goes Down.

Eons ago I witnessed Kureishi and Le Week-End’s director Roger Michell with their public masks askew. Kureishi took suddenly ill while attempting to field a question about his follow-up to Laundrette, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. Still later, Michell was laughing too hard to chat about their next collaboration, The Mother, his laughter prompted by my using a hotel ice-bucket as a camera tripod. It reminded me that these consummate artists were alltoo-human, a trait delightfully on display in the year’s first great postOscar comedy.t

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Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Robert Battle, Artistic Director Masazumi Chaya, Associate Artistic Director

“Phenomenal.

It’s change-your-life good.”

—NBC’s Today Show

Courtesy of Music Box Films

Jeff Goldblum as Morgan in director Roger Michell’s Le Week-End.

<<

Wonder women

From page 20

as “Paper Planes” or “Bucky Done Gun,” where tech and tunes coexisted creatively.

She may not have Björk’s pipes, but Icelandic singer/songwriter Emiliana Torrini shares a similar pop sensibility on her new disc Tookah (Crush/Rough Trade). This is something that comes through the clearest on the slinky funk of “Speed of Dark,” the heated delirium of “When Fever Breaks,” the sexy beat of “Animal Games” and the fuzzy slither of “Caterpillar.”

The cancellation of X-Factor, sinister Simon Cowell’s insidious

TV talent show, by the Fox network (they finally did something right!) was a sign that maybe we’d have fewer of his insufferable Svengalied acts to slog through. Of course, the cancellation came after the release of Salute (SYCO/Columbia), the second disc by X-Factor champs the Brit quartet Little Mix. The female quartet gets our attention with the march of the title cut, a song that sounds like it’s trying to connect the empowerment messages of the Spice Girls and Beyonce. The dance-floor-destined “Move” lives up to its name and is an example of what LM does best, as opposed to overwrought ballads such as “Boy,” “These Four Walls” and “Towers.”t

See premieres by: Aszure Barton Ronald K. Brown

Plus RETURNING FAVORITES including Revelations

April 1–6

ZELLERBACH HALL Antonio Douthit-Boyd.

Photo By Andrew Eccles

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510.642.9988

Download the Cal Performances mobile app for iOS or Android and buy tickets on-the-go. Now with select your own seating!

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<< Out&About

Out &About

O&A

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Unusual Shorts @ Oddball Films

Mark M. Garrett @ Dogpatch Gallery

Yellow @ New Conservatory Theatre Center

Enjoy wacky offbeat vintage short films.

Thu & Fri, each $10, 8pm. 275 Capp St. 558-8117. www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Opening reception for the local artist’s hand-cut mapwork art. 6pm-8pm. Special sound eprformance by Jorge Bachman, March 28, 7pm. Thru April 19. 2295 3rd St. at 20th. www.markmgarrett.com www.dogpatchcafe.com

Bay Area premiere of Del Shores’ new drama about a Southern family, and how a personal catastrophe forces them to unite. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru March 23. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level.

861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Maya Beiser @ YBCA Forum

Xavier Castellanos @ Blue Fig Café

Venus in Fur @ Geary Theatre American Conservatory Theatre presents a new production of the Broadway hit by David Ives, about straight sexual domination. $20-$72. Tue-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Also Sun 7pm. Previews; opens March 26. Out with ACT April 2. Thru April 13. www.act-sf.org

Whoa Nellies @ SF Eagle The popular local retro fun ‘60s/’70s band celebrates 15 years with a special concert. $5. 10pm. 398 12th st. at Harrison.

TheWhoaNellies.com www.sf-eagle.com

Fri 21

Sidra Bell Dance

You can dance

by Jim Provenzano

…for inspiration, for the heck of it, or “to Spring,” like that leotardclad Jules Feiffer comic. And when you do, be sure to check out the body of dance works coming to the Bay Area from all over the world.

There is lot of dancing going on this vernal equinox! While some of their PR remains a tad too esoteric for this wizened former post-postmoderner, the fact remains; people shaking their groove thangs are always interesting to watch.

Thu 20

New Noe Novels @ Folio Books

Bread and Circuses @ La Val’s Subterranean, Berkeley

Rob Rosen, Michael Castleman, Kirtin Chen and Bill Yenne read from and discuss their new books; part of Noe Valley Word Week.

7:30pm. 3957 24th St. www.foliosf.com www.friendsofnoevalley.com

Impact Theatre’s spicy mix of new and action-packed (i.e. violent) short plays by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Prince Gomolvilas, Declan Greene, Lauren Gunderson, Dave Holstein, J.C. Lee, Ross Maxwell, Lauren Yee, and Steve Yockey. $10-$25.

Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru April 6.

1834 Euclid Ave., Berkeley. www.impacttheatre.com

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Fri 21 Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Ballet San Jose @ SJ Center for the Arts The South Bay company performs works

by Paul Taylor. Vicente Nebrada, Igal Perry and Dwight Rhoden. $20-$105. 8pm. Also Mar. 22, 8pm and Mar, 23, 1:30pm. www.balletsj.wordpress.com

The accomplished solo cellist performs All Vows, with music by Michael Gordon, plus works by Glenn Kotche, David T. Little, Mohammed Fairouz, Evan Ziporyn, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Janis Joplin, and Howlin Wolf, and films by Michael Harrison. $25$35. 8pm. Also March 22. 701 Mission St. 978-ARTS. www.ybca.org

Mommy Queerest @ Exit Studio Kat Evasco’s stirring and darkly comic solo show (co-written with John Caldon) explores her family life as a lesbian Philiino whose mother is also a lesbian. $15-$25.

Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru March 29. 156 Eddy St. www.divafest.info

New Experimental Plays Festival @ Exit on Taylor Cutting Ball Theater’s 15th annual new experimental theatre series includes staged readings and productions of five new plays. $20-$50 (5-play pass). Fri & Sat thru March 29. 277 Taylor St. 525-1205. www.cuttingball.com

Public Intimacy @ YBCA SF MOMA on the Go exhibit Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa, a collection of photography, with artists Kemang Wa Lehulere, AthiPatra Ruga, Sello Pesa, and Vaughn Sadie, among others. Thru June 29. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 3211307. www.sfmoma.org www.ybca.org

Flower and Garden Show @ San Mateo Event Center

Exhibit of the local artist’s colorful landscapes. 990 Valencia St. www.xavierarte.com

Sat 22 Accidental Death of an Anarchist @ Berkeley Repertory Comic actor Steven Epp stars in Dario Fo’s political farce about bureaucratic duplicity and political corruption. $29-$57. Tue-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Roda Stage, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Arthur Szyk and the Art of the Haggadah @ Contemp. Jewish Museum New exhibit of 48 fascinating and richly detailed illustrations of Hebrew stories by the early 20th-century artist (thru June 29). Also; Jason Lazarus: Live Archive, an exhibit of unusual work by the Chicago artist who explores collective public archives, personal memory, and the role of photography and collecting in contemporary art and identity (thru March 23). Also, To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History (thru July 1).

2pm-5pm. Free (members)-$12. Thu-Tue 11am-5pm (Thu 1pm-8pm) 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

Fri 21

The annual exhibition of nature’s beauties and home garden products enjoys a special Floral Headress Contest hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and a festive floral party with dance music and wine, snacks and fun. $30-$40. 7:30pm10:30pm. Full events thru March 23. www.sfgardenshow.com

Maya Beiser

Comedy Returns @ El Rio Steve Lee, Bob McIntyre, Johan Miranda, Kat Evasco, and host Lisa Geduldig offer their comic talents. $7-$20. 8pm.

3158 Mission St. (800) 838-3006. www.elriosf.com

Crystal Springs @ Eureka Theatre Kathy Rucker’s drama about a mother who gets caught up in her daughter’s online world. $20-$65. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm.

Thru March 23. 215 Jackson St. (800) 8383006. www.CrystalSpringsThePlay.com

Thu 20

Shakiri’s Lottie’s Ghost

Jason Graae @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The accomplished cabaret star perform his new witty music show, “49 1/2 Shades of Graae.” $25-$35. ($20 drink/beverage minimum). 8pm. Hotel Nikko lobby, 222 Mason St. www.hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins.aspx

Jewish Music Festival @ Various Venues This diverse array of concerts includes soloists, bands, singers, instrumentalists, traditional and modern Afro-Semetic jazz.

Various venues (Yoshi’s, Freight & Slavage, JCC East Bay) and admission ($22-$30).

Thru April 1. www.jewishmusicfestival.org

Lottie’s Ghosts @ Brava Theatre Center Shakirii’s autobiographical storytelling show about her ancestors and radical 1960s Oakland gets a West Coast premiere; directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe. $20. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Thru April 6. 2781 24th St. at York. 641-7657. www.brava.org

New and Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Mar. 20, Disposable Film Fest. Mar. 21, Vampires (7:30) and From Dusk Til Dawn (9:35). Mar. 22, fantasy films Labyrinth (3:15, 7pm) and Legend (5:10, 9pm). Mar. 23, North by Northwest (2:15, 7pm) and Silver Streak (4:45, 9:25). Mar. 25, The King of Comedy (7pm) and Play Misty for Me (9pm). Mar. 26, Synedoche, New York (7pm) and Punch-Drunk Love (9:15). Mar. 27, Jack Goes Boating (6pm) and Magnolia (8pm). $11. 429 Castro St. 621-6120. www.castrotheatre.com

ODC/Dance Downtown @ YBCA

Foodies, the Musical @ Shelton Theater

The innovative local dance company’s 43rd season includes the world premiere of builder and bones, 2013’s Triangulating Euclid, Two if by Sea, and Unintended Consequences: A Meditation. Mar. 20, 8pm gala opening. $20-$75. Wed 7:30, Thu-Sat 8pm, Sun 4pm. Thru Mar. 30. 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.odcdance.org www.ybca.org

Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue of songs and sketches about food. $32-$34.

Fri & Sat 8pm. Open run. 533 Sutter St. (800) 838-3006. foodiesthemusical.com

Pearls Over Shanghai @ The Hypnodrome Thrillpeddlers’ hilarious Cockettes revival returns, with many of the ebullient cast members. $30-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru May 31. 575 10th St. (800) 838-3006. www.thrillpeddlers.com

Porchlight Storytelling @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Moon Unit Zappa is only one of many stellar readers – Michael Bunin, Suzanne Kleid and Brian McMullen – at the popular storytelling series, this time themed Too Hard To Keep. $20. 7pm-8:30pm. 736 Mission St. at 3rd. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

The Scion @ The Marsh Solo performer Brian Copeland’s new show focuses on privilege, murder and sausage in his retelling of the triple murder crime at the Santos Linguisa Factory. $15-$60. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Extended thru April 18. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Fri 21 Ballet San Jose

The Black Woman is God @ SF Public Library

Josh Klipp and The Klipptones @ Palace Hotel The local jazz crooner and his band perform weekly shows at the hotel’s lounge, which draws a growing swing-dance audience. Closing night. 7pm-11pm.

2 New Montgomery. www.joshklipp.com

Julia Jackson @ Stage Werx Theatre Children are Forever (All Sales are Final!) , the solo performer’s comic show about motherhood. $15. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru Mar. 22. 446 Valencia St. www.stagewerx.org

Magnificent Magnolias @ SF Botanical Gardens See blooming magnolia trees and exhibits.

Also, daily walking tours and more. Thru March 31. Also, Woods to Wildflowers, outdoor exhibits of hundreds of species of native wildflowers in a century-old grove of towering Coast Redwoods; thru May 15.

Free-$15. Daily. Golden Gate Park. 66121316. www.SFBotanicalGarden.org

Shit & Champagne @ Rebel D’Arcy Drollinger’s “whitesploitation” drag satire musical play kicks up the laughs; also starring Matthew Martin. $20-$25.

Fri & Sat, 8pm. Thru March. 1772 Market St. at Octavia. www.shitandchampagne. eventbrite.com

Sidra Bell Dance New York @ Dance Mission Theatre The eclectic provocative New York-based dance company performs new and repertory works. $12-$20. 8pm. 3316 24th St. Thru March 23. (800) 838-3006. www.dancemission.com

Trey McIntyre Project @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley Farewell tour of the Boise-based modern dance company includes performances of Mercury Half-Life, with music by Queen, and The Vinegar Works: Four Dances of Moral Instruction, set to a Shostakovich piano quintet. $30-$68. 8pm. Also Mar. 22. Bancroft at Telegraph Ave, UC Berkeley campus. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

Karen Seneferu curated this exhibit focusing on the art of Tarika Lewis, Karen Seneferu, Malik Seneferu, Sydney “Sage” Cain and Ajuan Mance, whose work explores the divinity of Blackness. Thru May 15. African American Center, 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org

Crosscurrents @ MoAD Africa and Black Diasporas in Dialogue, 1960-1980, an exhibit of contemporary art.

Thru April 13. $5-$10. Wed-Sat 11am-6pm.

Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St. 358-7200. www.moadsf.org

Feisty Old Jew @ The Marsh Charlie Veron’s new solo show about a fictional elder man who hitches a ride with surfer-hipsters, and rants about what he hates about the 21st century. $25-$100.

Sat 8pm, Sun 7pm. Thru May 4. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

A Gay Old Time @ St. Aiden’s Episcopal Church Poppy Champlin headlines a fundraiser comedy show, with guests Valerie Branch and hostess Kitty Tapata. Beer & wine available for purchase; proceeds benefit the church’s ministries. $25-$35. 7:15pm.

101 Gold Mine Drive. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/559578

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Out&About>>

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Georgia O’Keeffe @ de Young Museum

Smoke & Mirrors @ Southern Exposure

Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, a new exhibit of paintings focusing on the artist’s New York landscapes. $25. Thru May 11. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoungmuseum.org

The art gallery’s annual fundraiser and art auction includes catered food, specialty drinks and acreative crowd. $40-$150 and up. VIP reception 6pm. Reg, 7:30pm-11pm.

3030 20th St. 863-2141. www.soexauction2014.eventbrite.com

Henry Schreiber/ The Grotesque @ Modern Eden Gallery

Tipped & Tipsy @ The Marsh

Hollerbound, the artist’s strangely cute kitsch paintings of anthropomorphic groundhogs, visualize his comic edge.

Also, The Grotesque, a group exhibition of delightfully disturbing paintings and multimeda. Both thru Mar. 22, Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. 403 Francisco St. at Powell. www.moderneden.com

The House That Will Not Stand @ Berkeley Repertory World premiere of local playwright Marcus Gardley’s historical drama about Creole Women in 1830s New Orleans who had common-law marriages with wealthy white men. $29-$59. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Also Sat & Sun 2pm.Thru March 23. Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2918. www.berkeleyrep.org

Chicks with Shticks @ SF Public Library The Kinsey Sicks and 20 Years of Dragapella Activism, a new exhibit about the musical ensemble Thru July 10. Also, Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013, 4th floor. Thru June 5. 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org

A “Best of Fringe” show, Jill Vice’s solo work portrays an array of characters from the bartending world. $15-$50. Sat 5pm, Sun 7pm. Thru April 6. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Sun 23 Frank Lévy @ Old First Church The former Juilliard faculty member performs an afternoon of Frédéric Chopin’s ballades and impromptus. $14-$17. 4pm.

1751 Sacramento St. 474-1608. www.oldfirstconcerts.org

Igor Sazevich @ Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station Exhibit of the Inverness painter’s works, at the scenic Headlands arts center. Reg. hours Wed-Mon 11am-5pm. 11101 Highway One, Point Reyes Station. www.galleryrouteone.org

Leslie Jordan @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

Music: The Power to Change Hearts and Minds @ Grace Cathedral The Very Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw, with guests Jane Clementi (Tyler Clementi Foundation) and Dr. Timothy Seelig (SF Gay Men’s Chorus) discuss the nature of music in fighting ignorance and homophobia; with a specific focus on the tragic loss of Tyler Clementi, and SFGMC’s upcoming concert (see Tue. 25). 9:30am. 1100 California St. www.gracecathedral.org

New Exhibits @ Museum of Craft and Design Dogpatch warehouse is now a museum store, gallery and program space. Exhibits include Stoney Lamar sculptures (thru Mar. 23). Mon-Fri 9:30am-5:30pm. 2569 Third St. 773-0303. www.sfmcd.org

Science Exhibits @ The Exploratorium Visit the fascinating science museum in its new Embarcadero location. Free-$25. Pier 15 at Embarcadero. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm (Thu night 6pm-10pm, 18+). 528-4893. www.exploratorium.edu

Mon 24 10 Percent @ Comcast David Perry’s interviews with notable LGBT people; Mon-Fri 11:30am, Sat & Sun 10:30pm. Channel 104.

Butterflies & Blooms @ Conservatory of Flowers

Various Exhibits @ Cali.

Academy of Sciences

Popular exhibit transforms the floral gallery into a fluttering garden with 20 species of butterflies and moths. Reg. hours, 10am-4pm. Free-$7. Tue-Sun 10am4:30pm. Extended thru March 16. 100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park. 831-2090. www.conservatoryofflowers.org

New exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth. Special events each week, with adult nightlife parties most Thursday nights. $20-$30. Mon-Sat 9:30am-5pm.

Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

It’s Everything @ KOFY-TV Local nightlife host and singer BeBe Sweetbriar’s new streaming web talk show welcomes local celebrities. 7pm. Audience welcome at KOFY-TV, 2500 Marin St. www.BeBeSweetbriar.com

Love Me Tenderloin @ SF Public Library Screening of Henri Quenette’s moving documentary film about San Francisco’s troubled low-income neighborhood, seen through the lives of four residents living below the poverty level. 5:45pm. Koret Auditorium, lower level, 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org

Meditation Group @ LGBT Center New weekly non-sectarian meditation group is led by Daishin Sunseri; part of the Let’s Kick ASS AIDS Survivor Syndrome support group. Tuesdays, 5pm, 1800 Market St. www.LetsKickASS.org www.sfcenter.org

San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus @ Davies Symphony Hall

Yoga: The Art of Transformation @ Asian Art Museum New exhibit of visual art representing the 2,500-year-old health practice. Other ongoing exhibits as well. Free (members)-$12. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org

Thu 27 Afternoon of a Faun/Tanaquil Le Clercq @ Opera Plaza Cinema Director Nancy Buirski will be present at a local screening of her film about the talented Balanchine ballet dancer who was paralyzed by polio at age 27. Post-screening discussion also includes San Francisco Ballet’s ballet mistress Anita Paciotti. VIP post-screening reception at Hayes Street Grill. $15-$50. 7:15pm. 601 Van Ness Ave. 793-9317. www.wordsondance.org www.landmarktheatres.com

The celebrated men’s choral group performs Luster, An American Songbook, a concert of classic songs, with special guest vocalist Ann Hampton Callaway, violinist Kevin Rogers, librettist Pamela Stewart, plus a special world premiere performance of Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz’s Tyler’s Suite Movement : “Brother, Because of You.” $25-$75. 8pm. 392-4400. www.sfgmc.org

David Sokosh: American Tintypes @ Robert Tat Gallery

Wed 26

Wed 26

Geoff Hoyle @ The Marsh, Berkeley

Traditions and Taboos

Dandelion Dancetheater @ ODC Theater

Marga Gomez @ The Marsh Lovebirds, the lesbian comic’s new solo show, portrays an array of wacky characters, from different eras, each searching for love. $15-$50. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat. 8:30pm.

Extended thru April 12. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

The diminuitive gay TV and film actor ( Will & Grace, The Help, Sordid Lives) with a big talent (and an Emmy Award) returns with his solo performance, Show Pony, about his quest for longevity in Hollywood. $35-$50 ($20 food/drink min.). 7pm.

Hotel Nikko lobby, 222 Mason St. www.hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins.aspx

Tue 25 Anthony de Mare

Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock performs with the experimental dance company in a unique one-night wheelchaiinclusive concert, Tongues/Gather, an interdisciplinary work based on the Sam Shepard/Joe Chaiken play. $7-$12. 7:30pm.

351 Shotwell St at 17th. www.dandeliondancetheater.org www.odcdance.org

The fine art photography gallery presents an exhibit of Sokosh’s contemporary faux-vintage imagery, created with a 19th-century Wet-Plate Collodion process. (artist talk April 5). Tue-Sat 11am-5:30pm.

Thru May 31. 49 Geary St., #410. 781-1122. www.roberttat.com

The veteran comic actor returns with his solo show, Geezer, a nostalgic meditation on his lengthy career and life. $25-$50.

Thu 8pm. Sat. 5pm. Extended thru April 26. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Medea @ Buriel Clay Theatre African-American Shakespeare Company’s production of Euripedes’ classic tragedy about Jason’s vengeful wife. $12-50-$50.

Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Thru Mar. 30. 762 Fulton St. www.african-americanshakes.org

The Music Man @ Berkeley Playhouse The East Bay youth theatre company performs Meredith Wilson’s Tony Awardwinning musical about a con artist and small town values. $17-$60. Thu & Fri 7pm.

Sat 1pm & 6pm. Sun 12pm & 5pm. Thru Mar. 23. Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave., Berkeley. (510) 845-8542. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org

Psychic Fair @ CelebrateLife Community Meet local mediums, Tarot card readers, healers at a fundraiser with raffles, food and fun. Donations. 11am-3pm. 4530 18th St. www.celebratelifesf.org

Queer Jitterbugs @ Magnet The same-sex swing dance party returns.

7:30pm lessons, with social dancing until 9:30pm. $5. 4122 18th St. at Castro. 3058242. www.QueerJitterburgs.com www.magnetsf.org

Costume Shop Sale @ SF Opera Scene Shop Start planning a fabulous Halloween, Burning Man or drag costume at the annual sale of opera memorabilia, costumes, props and more, on sale from $1-$750. 10:30am-5pm. Also Mar. 23, 10:30am-4pm. 800 Indiana St at 20th. www.sfopera.com

Wed 26 Dandelion Dancetheater

Sun 23 Leslie Jordan

Macy’s Flower Show @ Macy’s Union Square The annual festive series of floral events takes over the popular department store, with displays, parties, special events, and floral display demonstrations by Billy Cook, Emily Dreblow and others. Tours Wed-Fri 2pm, Sat & Sun 12pm & 2pm.

Thru April 6. 170 O’Farrell St. 397-3333. www.macys.com/events

Mona Khan Company @ The Garage Soch, a concert of modern Indian dance and live music. $20-$25. 7:30pm. Also Mar. 30, 5:30 & 7:30pm. 715 Bryant St. at 5th. www.monakhancompany.com

Our Vast Queer Past @ GLBT History Museum

The Habit of Art @ Z Below Theatre

See the exhibit The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus: Celebrating 35 Years of Activism Through Song, includes archival materials from the historic chorus, leadcurated by Tom Burtch, with a touchscreen display by multimedia producer John Raines. And, Premarital Bonds: Creating Family Before Marriage Equality. Other permanent exhibits as well. Reg. hours Mon-Sat 11am-7pm (closed Tue.) Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. 621-1107. www.glbthistory.org

Alan Bennet’s “very British comedy” about gay artists Benjamin Britten and W.H Auden’s imagined meeting, takes on the nature and purpose of theatre, poetry and music, is directed by Theatre Rhino’s John Fisher. $15-$35. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm.

Thru April 13. www.TheRhino.org

Tue 25 Anthony de Mare @ SF Conservatory of Music The accomplished pianist performs Reimagining Sondheim from the Piano, in concert and conversation with host Lara Downes. $20-$40. 8pm. 50 Oak St. www.liasonsproject.com www.sfcm.edu

Every Five Minutes @ Magic Theatre World premiere of Scottish playwright Linda McLean’s about a family dinner gone strange when a returning son slips into an unimaginable dreamscape. $20-$60.

Wed-Sat 8pm. Tue 7pm. Sun 2:30 & 7pm.

Thru April 20. Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., Bldg D, 3rd floor. 4418822. www.magictheatre.org

Traditions & Taboos @ Modern Eden Gallery Opening reception for an exhibit of work by tattoo artists from SF, San Jose and Brooklyn working in print (vs. skin). Also OKTP (Okay To Print) , a group exhibition of new small-scale printmaking works.

6pm-10pm. Thru April 5. 403 Francisco St. 956-3303. www.moderneden.com

Magic Parlor @ Chancellor Hotel Whimsical Belle Epoque-style sketch and magic show that also includes historical San Francisco stories; hosted by Walt Anthony; optional pre-show light dinner and desserts. $40. Thu-Sat 8pm. 433 Powell St. www.SFMagicParlor.com

To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For bar and nightlife events, go to bartabsf.com, and our new merged section, ebar.com/bartab

<< Music

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Great American opera gets its due

by Philip Campbell

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uroArts Music International releases San Francisco Opera’s triumphant Francesca Zambello production of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess this month on DVD and Blu-Ray disc. For opera-lovers, Broadway music fans, and devotees of the Great American Songbook, it is a date you will want to calendar.

San Francisco Opera: The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess Eric Owens (Porgy), Laquita Mitchell (Bess), Lester Lynch (Crown), Chauncey Packer (Sportin’ Life), Karen Slack (Serena), Angel Blue (Clara), Eric Greene (Jake), Alteouise deVaughn (Maria) San Francisco Opera Orchestra (John DeMain, Conductor), San Francisco Opera Chorus (Ian Robertson, Chorus Director) Stage Director: Francesca Zambello; directed for the screen

by Frank Zamacona In one of the best bonus interviews included in this third collaboration between SFO, EuroArts and Naxos of America, SFO General Director David Gockley talks of his 40-year passion for the Gershwins’ stroke of genius, and chronicles the painstakingly restored show’s odyssey from Houston Grand Opera in the mid-1970s to the new millennium and the SFO. Returning to its original conception as a folk opera and finally working it into the standard repertoire has taken a long pull to get there (as the chorus sings), but the great, sprawling masterpiece has finally made it to the “center ring,” and we don’t risk much argument in recognizing it as the great American opera.

We loved Francesca Zambello’s production back in 2009, with only some minor quibbles. Now video director Frank Zamacona has corrected her tendency to fuss with detail by choosing subtle and strategic close-

ups. Nothing will ever top the experience of witnessing a performance live, but this high-definition recording has been successful on its own in movie-theatre screenings and on TV for its wonderfully vivid representation of the opera-house experience.

Needless to say, you are also getting the best seat in the auditorium, and the acoustics are fabulous.

Conductor John DeMain leads the orchestra with a symphonic sweep and tight control that still manage to loosen up and enjoy the Tin Pan Alley passages. Ian Robertson directs the close to 50 members of the ensemble through the deceptively naive call-and-response of Brother Robbins’ funeral sequence with better control and feeling than I can ever remember.

If there is one especially striking revelation (or important reminder) on display, it is Gershwin’s heavy reliance on the chorus to create a framework for the heart-wrenching plight of Porgy, the crippled beggar, and Bess, his tormented love.

DeMain says as much in his fascinating interview, and he further stresses the importance of dance rhythms underpinning even the most famous arias and duets.

All the beloved numbers, such as “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “My Man’s Gone Now” and “I Loves You, Porgy,” make better sense and flow more naturally within the rich context of Gershwin’s gorgeously orchestrated, through-composed version.

In a smart move, director Zambello combined the first two acts into Part I. Dividing the story helps tighten the action. It also speeds the long and sometimes overwritten score with a propulsive theatrical flair. Not that we could bear to do without any of the wonderful touches of color or idiosyncratic asides that Gershwin provides. The flashes of 1930s jazz and Jewish minor chords, woven into a tapestry of Negro spirituals and gospel shouts, make a kaleidoscopic listening experience.

Regardless of the historical con-

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Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Eric Owens (Porgy) and Laquita Mitchell (Bess) in San Francisco Opera’s production of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.

text or race of the characters, this is a folk opera about the human experience, played against the backdrop of a greater world stage. Debates about the political correctness of white authors portraying black racial stereotypes onstage seem particularly unfair when one experiences the depth of human emotions and gutwrenching beauty of Porgy and Bess.

The central characters, portrayed marvelously by Eric Owens and soprano Laquita Mitchell, giving a lusciously sung and sexy performance as Bess, keep the story intimate, helped by the extreme focus of the close-ups.

As the murderer and abuser

Crown, Lester Lynch is an ominous and physically impressive bad guy.

He’s vicious, crude and frightening, but he is also persuasive enough to almost make us see poor Bess’ selfdestructive obsession.

Chauncy Packer’s feisty and well-sung Sportin’ Life provides an energetic shot of life whenever he appears. It is a real kick watching the smarmy and devious little dopepeddler as he confronts the church ladies during the picnic scene on Kittiwah Island with his amusing anti-hymn, “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” Angel Blue’s Clara and Eric Greene’s Jake get a little lost in the

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crowd, but they make their mark, and Blue’s opening “Summertime” is beautiful.

Karen Slack as Robbins’ widow Serena is memorably powerful, and her rendition of “My Man’s Gone Now” is particularly emotional when watched so intimately.

Fight director Jonathan Rider and choreographer Denni Sayers make the movement of the huge cast look naturalistic and thoroughly believable. The long shots chosen for the big production numbers are particularly well-judged. Peter J. Davison’s imaginative settings recreating Catfish Row as a massive warehouse (with whiffs of the cellblock about it) and Paul Tazewell’s suitably grimy work-clothes and Sundaybest costumes make a timeless stage for a timeless story.

When Porgy departs for New York at the ending, he might as well be heading for the “Promised Land.” It must seem that far away to him. It is certainly a long way from this Catfish Row. He is actually embarking on a heroic and possibly futile journey to regain his lost love. It is a profoundly inspirational and human moment that transcends color or class, and it is made clear in this wonderfully definitive production.t Available March 25, 2014 at all major retailers and the San Francisco Opera Shop (www.sfopera.com/ OperaShop).

Rach 3 at Mach 10

by Tim Pfaff

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know people who still weren’t down from Yuja Wang’s magisterial performance of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto with MTT and the SFS in Davies Hall last year when she repeated the feat last Wednesday with the visiting LA Phil and The Dude. Now those ecstatic listeners need never return to pedestrian Earth thanks to DG’s new release of a live performance of the infamous knucklebuster – paired with the equally if not more “impossible” Prokofiev Second Concerto – with the Dude and his “old” orchestra, the Simon Bolivar Symphony of Venezuela (somewhere along the way the name lost its “youth,” though the orchestra’s vital sound did not).

The last pianist of any gender to have been regarded as a comparable musical force of nature is the stillactive Martha Argerich, who also made a specialty of Rach 3. What the two women share beyond incalculable talent and supreme musicianship is their unmistakable lack of self-regard in performance. Their animal pleasure at fully engaging with man-eating music is clear, but it’s their ability to make the playing say, “Look at him [the composer]” rather than, “Look at me” that sets them apart. Daring music-making, not derring-do. If anyone finds the planet Krypton whence these two came, Lang Lang will have to buy it.

Argerich can play like the wind, her hands a smear of flesh high over the keyboard. Wang adds what would appear to be the need for speed. It would be a flaw in her playing were not it so obviously an expressive device, completely under her control, and a fundamental component of her spontaneity as an artist. It’s the sizzling fuse to her explosive performance of this piece.

Yet equally spell-binding about this interpretation is its delicacy and simplicity of utterance when those are called for. If she were about effects, she would probably have opted for the second, longer, showier cadenza in the first move-

ment, but her masterful shaping of the more musical first one (the one Rachmaninov played) could stand as a motto for the integrity as well as the dazzling variety of her musicianship.

The Dude and his – yes – youthful orchestra are ideal partners here, and Wang repays the compliment by delivering some of Rachmaninov’s finest filigree, precisely and with exquisite color, at an almost eerie remove that allows the orchestra’s other voices, particularly the winds, to sing as lyrically as she does.

The long, brooding central Intermezzo is, despite its enormous range of expression, taken in a single breath. The rhythms in the Finale are astonishingly elastic, with a snap that keeps the ever-accelerating movement in sharp focus.

By the time she’s put this runaway, still-arresting-after-all-these-years music through the centrifuge of her musical imagination, a pure, spinning new element emerges.

For all the concerto’s fearsome reputation, every pianist of its temperament takes it out for a spin, and I’ve heard more pianists than I care to remember play it note-perfect but vacuously. They’re not lining up for the truly fiendish Prokofiev Second, which holds no terrors for Wang (as it apparently also did not for Yundi Li, who made a terrific live recording of it with the Berlin Philharmonic). She goes for its poetry, pyrotechnics, and uneasily shifting moods, and paints a lightning-lit landscape with it.

Argerich, that other trans-uranium element in the piano universe, is at the center of another new pianoconcerto recording that flirts with perfection and delivers satisfaction at its deepest. At the Lucerne Festival a year ago, she and Claudio Abbado, leading his hand-picked Orchestra Mozart, performed Mozart’s Concertos 20 and 25, the transfixing result of which has just been released in a live recording from DG. It came as the capstone to a partnership of more than four decades onstage and in the studio (the booklet includes photos of these ar-

restingly beautiful musicians in the studio in 1967) and is the eulogy to the recently deceased Abbado no one could write in words.

In both concertos, this is late-life Mozart from musicians (all but the alert young orchestra) who have lived with it across their entire careers, and the wisdom gleaned from those decades informs every note and gesture – and still is worn lightly. From Abbado there’s the wisdom of accumulated, deeply considered historically informed performance, which came into its own before his very eyes and ears. From Argerich, there’s the attention to every crystalline note and the lunge into its fullest, deepest possibilities that the best of modern pianos can underwrite. From both is unwavering devotion to Mozart.

Argerich properly lets loose in the cadenzas (Beethoven’s in the D minor, her teacher Friedrich Gulda’s in the late C Major), and spontaneity and at times even impulsivity illuminate her playing. But perfection of scale – and perfection in scales – prevail in interpretations that have formed and reformed in her febrile imagination over a lifetime. (She’s recorded both concertos several times before, but these are clearly views from the summit.) Abbado, otherworldly in the D minor, encapsulates a life in music theater in the broadly smiling C Major.t

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Books>>

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Churches on the road to inclusion

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decision, based on her “faithful compassion,” to defy for the first time ever the highest Presbyterian court, and not only refuse to censure her but vote to support her. The brave Lutheran congregations, St. Francis Lutheran, who called and ordained a lesbian couple, Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, and First United Lutheran, who called and ordained a gay man, Jeff Johnson, all in 1990, but were expelled from the ELCA in 1996 for their disobedience, is vividly recalled, as is their joyous Rite of Reception welcoming them back to the ELCA roster in 2010.

Holmen alludes in one sentence to the milestone books Is the Homosexual My Neighbor and The Church and the Homosexual, which were among Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality and others that challenged the “orthodox” theology of homosexuality as sin. Their importance cannot be overstated, and the impact these books made deserves

more recognition because they gave intellectual cover to straight allies, especially in reinterpreting Scriptural clobber texts and reading those passages in a new light, uncovering the real issues as Biblical authority and homophobia.

But throughout this book, we re-experience many of the moving personal stories of these courageous witnesses (gay and straight) who once were derided as divisive heretics. Their testimony is the story of the church’s growing realization that all people are children of God, meaning full participation and hospitality in every aspect of church ministry. We can thank Holmen’s authoritative account of how five Protestant denominations grappled to realize the wideness of God’s mercy in all its agonies and triumphs. The journey continues, as these denominations wrangle over adopting same-sex marriage rites.

But this is still a time to celebrate, or as Holman concludes, “Presuming to speak for these churches, I can say that we have relearned the meaning of gospel, we have been healed of a grace-killing sickness of the soul, and we have once again encountered Christ on the road to Damascus. We have all been given the gift of extravagant welcome.”t

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Queer Clergy: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism by R.W. Holmen (Pilgrim Press) n the last 40 years there has been a revolutionary evolution in mainline or ecumenical American Protestantism with regard to the full inclusion of LGBTQ Christians by opening up their pulpits to queer noncelibate clergy. Within 50 years, the U.S. has moved from homosexuals (the correct term at the time) being considered sinful by the church – indeed, homosexuality and Christianity were seen as incompatible – to openly gay and partnered Episcopal (Gene Robinson) and Lutheran (Guy Erwin) bishops.

This elongated Damascus road conversion has occurred across entire denominations, particularly United Church of Christ (UCC, the forerunner, since they were the first Protestants to ordain an openly gay man, William Johnson, in 1972), Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists. Here to chronicle this volcanic historic change from rejection towards welcome is R.W. Holmen, a straight Lutheran lawyer and grass roots advocate, in his massive, comprehensive, probably definitive-forthis-generation review. Holmen has exhaustively researched and reported a complicated, magisterial story very effectively using national constitutional deliberations and archives, advocacy group reminiscences, and first-person narratives.

Comments from fellow straight allies to the effect we wish we knew more stories of some of our lesbian and gay pioneers who have brought us to this time and place, gave genesis to this book. This well-documented reference history also acts as an apologia to the many gays and lesbians who have left or rejected Christianity for being judgmental and exclusionary, or “experiencing the church as a source of pain rather than healing.” Holmen even makes the startling claim (and backs it up with persuasive evidence) that progressive religious activism actually predated and encouraged Stonewall and its aftermath. In his argument, he refers principally to San Francisco’s Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH)’s infamous 1964 New Year’s Eve benefit ball arrest of six people, and protest by local clergy, which led to both public and religious awareness of the police abuse of the gay community.

By the end of the 1960s, all these denominations compassionately rejected criminal penalties for gay behavior and favored nondiscriminatory governmental policies, but all followed with “yes, but” statements, reiterating the traditional view that homosexuality contradicted the moral law of God as revealed in the Bible. This question of sin, according to Holmen, is the ultimate issue the church would wrestle with for 40 years.

Holmen also chronicles the founding of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in 1968, one of the first churches composed mostly of LGBTQ people, which subtly challenged the slow movement of the above denominations, and showed them the promised land that full acceptance of gay/lesbian people was possible.

In the 1970s there was the coming out publically of both clergy and congregants, which was met with mixed reactions. By the 1980s, a reactionary period with evangelical gatekeeper organizations in each denomination pushing against the modest gains accomplished, the realization grew that total inclusion would take awhile. Holmen dutifully records the 1990s ecclesiastical

court litigations of both LGBTQ clergy and their straight supporters, as well as the fight over marriage equality and the tense general conventions struggles and nail-biting votes of the 2000s that led to policy revisions towards acceptance without preconditions in all roles, including ordination. Holmen observes that escalating participation by women at the local and national levels led to increasing acceptance of openly LGBTQ clergy.

During this fourdecade struggle, the San Francisco Bay Area is well represented.

Marin’s Ministry of Light founder Janie Spahr is a Presbyterian lesbian minister (ordained in 1974, before the 1978 definitive guidance against LGBTQ clergy) whose call to be a co-pastor at a church in Rochester, NY in 1992 was ultimately rejected, though her ordination was not revoked. Her 2010 trial for officiating at the temporary legal-in-California weddings

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by Brian Jackle

<< Film

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Emotional manipulation in Romania

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by David Lamble

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mother’s love for a 30-something adult son is severely tested in Child’s Pose, Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer’s absorbing, slow-drip drama about how a badly misshapen mother/son bond can have a corrosive impact on a score of lives. We meet Cornelia (the legendary Romanian film star Luminita Gheorghiu) right before the shit hits the fan. Over coffee with her dear friend Guta (Natasa Raab), the 60-something grand dame, a professional architect in a society where that means a lot, expounds on her last conversation with her wayward boy, just moments before he tosses her out of his car.

“I’m ashamed to tell you what he said. ‘Stupid idiot,’ that’s nothing.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ he told me. And ‘Go suck cock, you motherfucking idiot.’

“And I’m destructive! Isn’t it natural to want him by my side for my birthday? What’s the big deal?”

Observing Cornelia wielding a slim filter cigarette like a weapon throughout her self-pitying rant, Guta nonchalantly advises, “Stop suffocating him. Let him come to you.”

Events take a dire turn when Cornelia learns that her son, Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache), has been involved in a high-speed freeway accident, that a teenage boy is dead as a result, and, most seriously, that Barbu is facing prison time for vehicular manslaughter.

Fans of recent classics from this

<<

Cinderella

From page 17

Christopher Wheeldon, and his collaborators have created a moving picture that takes up the whole stage, not just the floor of it. From the beginning, when Cinderella’s mother dies, Nature begins to mourn. A scrim falls that fills the proscenium arch, projections cover the stage picture with falling rain, and through this veil of tears we see the ghost of her mother floating high overhead, blessing her child, and then Cinderella herself begins to float, mysteriously lifted in postures of grief, carried by shadowy figures who remain with her for the whole rest of the ballet, sympathetic powers who lend her their strength at key moments and make the most ordinary domestic scene (say, breakfast) into a visionary spectacle of floating, wheeling elements that are just as stylized and fantastic as the entrance of the

Courtesy Zeitgeist Films

Luminita Gheorghiu in Child’s Pose, a film by Calin Peter Netzer.

former Eastern-bloc society’s nowvibrant cinema such as The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days will appreciate how vital graft, corruption, and pay-offs are to greasing the wheels of a still-sluggish bureaucracy. Particularly since the fall of the Communist dictator, people in Cornelia’s posh but still vulnerable new niche in urban Romania are used to slipping cash-filled envelopes to slugs up and down the decision-making chain – from ordinary policemen to assistant prosecutors, and in this case, even to a fellow motorist, the fellow Barbu was attempting to pass at high speed when he hit the kid. In a café scene whose awful implications are offset by a nice, crystal-clear sunny day,

Cornelia brazenly asks the man his price to alter his accident witness statement. The motorist, a beefy thug with piggy eyes and the casual air of a man who knows just how to pull off a truly shocking shakedown, lets the lady know that he’s going for a big payday: 80,000 euros. Even the single-minded Cornelia is stopped by the enormity of the greed on display. The scene is redolent of a society that has known every manner of sleazy goings-on for centuries.

In a memorable story-beat from Casablanca, a young woman pleads with Bogart’s Rick for exit visas, explaining that she and her fiancé are fleeing an Eastern European hellhole where “the Devil has the people by the throat.” Following the piggy-man’s offer, you can almost

Shades in La Bayadere.

Throughout the evening, visionary movements animate the space overhead. Sometimes the vision is the ballerina herself (Sarah van Patten) being lifted by her Fates or her Prince, sometimes it’s revelatory magic (as when portraits in the throne-room of the eligible princesses our boy may have to marry come to life and reveal just how god-awful their real natures are) or the poltergeistian magic that sets the chandeliers at the ball violently akimbo as the clock strikes 12 at the ball.

Similarly, the tree which grows from her mother’s grave embodies the mother’s undying love, and by the time she’s a grown girl, the tree, designed by the great puppeteer Basil Twist, has become a visionary spectacle that takes up the whole stage, with limbs that dance and leaves that roil in the turbulent winds. The dancers moving under

that tree have no need for choreography of the singular clarity that Frederick Ashton gave his fairies – indeed, the whole effect might be less magical than the one Wheeldon has created, in which the spirits of the seasons teach Cinderella the movements she’ll need to own in order to be the most beautiful dancer at the ball and deserve to hold her place at the center of everyone’s attention.

It’s been common since the last midcentury for Western critics to condemn pantomime and detailed story-telling gesture and exclude it from the term “choreography.” The last great ballet to use this much pantomime was Lavrovsky’s unsurpassed Romeo and Juliet, also to overwhelming music by Prokofiev.

Wheeldon has created juicy roles for dancers who can act. Frances Chung has never been more adorable than as the younger, really-rather-nice stepsister, whom the Prince’s friend (brilliant Myles Thatcher) falls for. Sasha de Sola had a breakout star performance as the spiteful, narcissistic, truly awful older stepsister. Marie-Claire d’Lyse was perfect as the smooth, beautiful, awful stepmother whose role is rich in variety – she gets drunk at the ball, and she displays herself in embarrassing fullness in a teetering pas de deux with her mortified husband, managing cleverly to snatch four glasses of champagne from passing waiters during that dance alone.

These mime phrases are brilliantly built into the dancing, and reveal Wheeldon’s deep background in the English theater; he came out of the Royal Ballet, which got its start as part of the Old Vic Theater.

Cinderella combines all these theatrical forces in unique and enormously satisfying ways. The audience is not wrong for loving it. It is a show with a big heart that subtly and incisively shows the ugliness of favoritism in families. Any gay kid who’s growing up feeling more insecure at home than anywhere else in life will feel that this show was made for him. This theme is doubled by Wheeldon’s device of giving the prince a friend. They like

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Courtesy Zeitgeist Films

Luminita Gheorghiu in Child’s Pose, a film by Calin Peter Netzer.

feel Cornelia checking her neck for teeth marks.

Ultimately, Child’s Pose is really one of those great Mommy/adultson tussles where the kid is just trying to extract his cock and balls from mom’s deep freeze before cutting out for good. Director Netzer (with co-screenwriter Razvan Radulescu) chose not to show this deeply Freudian meltdown in the darkcomedy strokes of such 1960s classics as The Manchurian Candidate or The Loved One. Rather, he and his sublime ensemble gently shift gears to reveal just how the heady stew of anger, shock and grief upends the lives of two families, as Cornelia heads for the dead boy’s working-class clan with a stuffed

envelope and an empty heart.

The mother/son meltdown reaches the sort of edgy soft climax available mostly in risk-taking European cinema. Having finally got Sonny home for a brief respite between court appearances, Cornelia bids him to lie down on a bed and lift up his T-shirt so she can examine any wounds from the accident. Even queer filmgoers used to every form of screen nakedness may find the sight of a 65-year-old bottle-blonde matriarch moving her hands expertly down towards her semi-conscious hunky scion’s ass a tad more information than we can ever fully process.

To paraphrase Chinatown’s immortal ending,“Jake, it’s Bucharest.”t

Erik Tomasson

San Francisco Ballet dancers Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada in Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella.

Erik Tomasson

San Francisco Ballet dancer Maria Kochetkova in Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella.

to change places and go around on the lam, and early on they come to Cinderella’s house, where the wicked stepmother and the favored sisters fuss over the wrong guy, while the prince in disguise hangs out with Cinderella, who offered him something to eat when he said he was hungry, and they quietly get way into each other long before the question of how she’ll get to the ball ever comes up.

A classic must reveal new insights with every viewing, otherwise the effects really do shoot their wad the first outing. Cinderella stands up well because, although everyone already knows what happens in

Cinderella, this version keeps you in constant wonder of how the things we know will happen are in fact going to happen. If you’re just looking at the steps, you won’t feel this wonder, but if you’re looking at the stage, you will.

Tiit Helimets, a true danseur noble, was wonderful as the prince.

Doris Andre was brilliantly fleet as Spring, Francisco Mungamba had an otherworldly airiness as the Spirit of Summer. Many fine performances added highlights all across the show: Andre again as the Spanish princess, and Kimberley Braylock, Shannon Rugani, Jordan Hammond as court ladies.t

t

TV>>

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Here! TV offers laughs & skin

by David-Elijah Nahmod

I

n Here! TV’s side-splitting new comedy series From Here On Out, hot T.J. Hoban plays Sam, an actor cast as the lead in a new gay TV show being produced by a gay network.

In order to keep the role, Sam has to come out as gay, even though he’s straight. Hilarious hijinks follow.

“It’s really a funny show,” Hoban said, speaking to the B.A.R. by phone. “I believe in the project. I love the idea of playing secretly straight but being openly gay. I enjoy making people laugh at my own expense.”

Part of the show’s humor comes from the frustrating, real-life, often over-the-top situations that can go into putting a TV series together, and in being an actor in Hollywood.

“I believe that I’m a talented actor,” Hoban said. “I’d never had a contract role before, that’s the Holy Grail. At the end of the day, it’s hustle and a grind.” These words could have been spoken by the character of Sam. From Here On Out’s storylines include laugh-out-loud sequences in which Jimmy, the creator of the show within the show, has to put up with ridiculously unreasonable demands from network executives. Openly gay Terry Ray, From Here On Out’s writer/creator, plays Jimmy. He says that these scenes are autobiographical.

<<

Courtesy Here! TV

A pool scene is part of Here! TV’s new comedy series From Here On Out.

“It’s a weird world,” Ray said.

“The sofa set where Jimmy gets the job is the actual sofa at Here! studios where I got the job!”

Director Sam Irvin, who worked on Here!’s horror-themed series Dante’s Cove and has directed feature films, agreed. “OMG, this is my life!” he said with a laugh. “I’ve been to those meetings, I went through

this directing Dante.”

Irvin described From Here On Out. “It’s a very sexy gay 30 Rock.

30 Rock spoofs NBC, and we spoof Here! TV. Our show is all about the shenanigans of producing a lowbudget series. The show has no political agenda. We’re trying to make a fun show that will make people laugh. It’s not politically correct: ev-

SFGMC

From page 17

by John Bucchino, Ann Hampton Callaway, Craig Carnelia, John Corigliano, Nolan Gasser, Jake Heggie, Lance Horne, and Schwartz will ideally add eight new songs to the American Songbook of the 21st century.

This is Schwartz’s second collaboration with the gay men’s chorus.

The first, Testimony [www.youtube. com/watch?v=-XZRNL9ZnyM or www.sfgmc.org/single/testimonydownload-ipoditunes/], based on interviews that gay men around the country gave to the It Gets Better project, premiered in March 2012, and has since received multiple performances around the country.

“It was such a good experience that Tim Seelig and I have stayed in touch,” Schwartz told the Bay Area Reporter. “About a year ago, we got together for breakfast in NYC, and spoke about putting together a piece about Tyler Clementi, in cooperation with the Tyler Clementi Foundation. We thought it might be a good idea to do a suite where different songwriters and composers contributed individual sections. I made some suggestions about possible composers whose work I admire and whom I happen to know, and said I would be happy to get in touch with them. Pretty much everyone enthusiastically signed on.

Then, in the course of development, the decision was made to expand it a bit and add a couple of sections, one of which I volunteered to write.”

Asked what he had done to ensure the suite flows from one different compositional style and key to the other, Schwartz declared, “Absolutely nothing. That was part of the fun.

I have no idea how it will all fit together, and I’m looking very forward to finding out for myself. All I did was write my piece and send it out.

Besides sharing my section with my close friend John Bucchino, and hearing his, I have no idea what the other writers have done. There really were no instructions or limits. I simply have to feel that all of us were conscious of the fact that we were contributing to a larger work, and kept each section relatively concise.”

While that may sound like compositional anarchy, San Franciscobased contributor Jake Heggie, the

Courtesy SFGMC Courtesy SFGMC

Composer Stephen Schwartz.

world’s third most performed contemporary American composer, remains sanguine about the adventure.

“Stephen chose the composers, but Tim has to make the piece work,” he explained by phone. “For example, Tim got back to me and said, ‘Given the pacing of the piece, is there any way we could make this section move more?’ He was aware of the structure, and he knows how to work with the chorus and the different soloists we’ve asked for. I implicitly believe in and trust him. I think he is a brilliant, brilliant man and an excellent musician who has a sense of balance and what needs to go where to make it really flow and work.”

Schwartz acknowledges that after Stewart gave him lyrics for his section, based on interviews with Clementi’s brothers about their response to his death and what has transpired since, he departed a fair amount from the text. “I used some of what Pamela did as a starting point,” he says. “I went back and forth with her, and made sure that she was happy with what I had done. I also took suggestions that she made, because we’ll share lyric credit. Some of it is funny, because I think some of what the brothers said is funny, and some of it is emotional, but I don’t think it’s overly sentimental.”

Heggie’s section is called “The Narrow Bridge.” “It’s literally about when someone feels they can make it to the other side of the bridge, just as Tyler did,” he reports. “There is room for all of us on the bridge, and we can walk together to the other side.” The section has extreme personal reso-

San Francisco-based composer Jake Heggie.

nance for a gay man whose father committed suicide, and who also briefly considered taking his own life.

“I don’t really talk about it much,” he acknowledges. “I was 24, and deeply conflicted over my sexuality.

It was friends that helped me not feel alone. That’s another reason I wanted to be part of the project. Too many gay youth feel suicide is their only option. Luckily that is changing a lot. The whole It Gets Better campaign has made a huge difference. It’s very important that people know they’re not alone.”

Will it work? Heggie stresses that Schwartz was very canny in choosing storytellers whose immense talents have led to successful careers. He is convinced that everyone is devoted to telling the story of Tyler Clementi, and to the purpose of the piece.

“It’s about setting your ego aside and really working on the actual work itself,” he says. “I think that unites us in a very special way.”

While the proof is in the pudding, as they say, the recipe can always be changed. The list of composers, especially opera composers, who heavily revised their most memorable works after their premieres is as long as it is distinguished. After the premiere, there will be time for tweaking Tyler’s Suite before it continues its journey around the country and, hopefully, the world. The stories must be told.t SFGMC premieres Tyler’s Suite on Tues., March 25, and Wed., March 26, 8 p.m., in Davies Symphony Hall. For tickets, see www.sfgmc. org or call (415) 392-4400.

eryone’s a target.”

“I want people to have a good time,” said Terry Ray. “Be entertained. Forget that it’s a gay show.

There’s no message other than it’s entertaining.”

There will be much disrobing from various male cast members, which Ray said wasn’t as distracting as people might think. “There were

so many naked men on set, it plateaus out,” he said. “It’s all the same amount of hotness, so it cancels itself out. I was glad to get hot guys who could be funny.”

Juliet Mills, beloved by TV viewers for her roles on Nanny and the Professor and as the lovably evil witch Tabitha on the daytime drama satire Passions, signed on to play Dottie, the receptionist at the TV studio. Mills is part of theater royalty. Her father was Sir John Mills, a legendary British actor. Her sister, Hayley Mills, starred in many Disney film classics. Her godparents were actress Vivien Leigh and the great gay playwright/actor Noel Coward.

“We wanted to get somebody famous,” said Ray. “She thought it was risqué, but said OK as long as there were no naked guys in her scenes!

She laughed and was really funny.”

“It took a little persuading,” said Irvin. “She said, ‘As long as I don’t have to be naked!’ But she came on board.”

Here! produced six 30-minute episodes for the show’s freshman season. The first three episodes can now be seen at Here! TV Premium, the network’s paid subscription channel at You Tube. ($7.99 per month for unlimited access to many Here! programs.)

Episodes will begin airing on the Here! cable network on March 28.t

4

5

Vonda Shepard

Spring Flings

NIGHTLIFE FOOD

9

SPIRITS

SEX

Think Kink

SOCIETY

ROMANCE

LEATHER

PERSONALS Vol. 44 • No. 12 • March 20-26, 2014

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This Drag’ll Rock You

PEPPERSPRAY’s drag stars (left to right) Princess Kennedy, Peter Fogel, Precious Moments (aka Michael Soldier), Jordan L’Moore and Peggy L’Eggs (aka Matthew Simmons).

by David-Elijah Nahmod

P

eter Fogel is a busy guy. The San Francisco resident, who has composed rock musicals for the theater, is currently the front man for two Bay Area bands: the punky drag act PEPPERSPRAY (the caps are theirs) and the delightfully retro The Whoa Nellies.

See page 2 >>

Get Your Dinah On! Women hit the desert for Spring Break, Golf and Jazz

by Heather Cassell

T

housands of queer women and their friends will head to Palm Springs for the infamous and largest lesbian party on the planet: The Dinah.

Lesbians and their friends will converge upon the desert resort town April 2 – 6.

Once known as the lesbian Spring Break, The Dinah has turned into a one of a kind women’s music and comedy festival celebrating women

artists, attracting more than 15,000 women to Palm Springs for a weeklong celebration.

“There truly is no other place on earth like Palm Springs,” said Mariah Hanson, producer of The Dinah. “We couldn’t have picked a better city to host what has over the years become not only the biggest lesbian event in the world, but as well a Palm Springs signature event.”

This year will be no different. Hanson is particular proud of the entertainment she’s nabbed for the ladies this year.

See page 3 >>

Partygoers at the famed Dinah pool parties.

Courtesy of The Dinah

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

<<

PEPPERSPRAY

From page 1

PEPPERSPRAY, with songs like “Quadrasexual” and “It Takes Balls (to be a Woman”), will be performing in concert at the DNA Lounge’s Bootie event on Saturday March 22.

The Whoa Nellies, whose website photo conjures up thoughts of a Queer Partridge Family, will have a CD release party at the San Francisco Eagle on Thursday March 20.

Fogel tells BARtab that he came out during the early 1990s after having lived with a girlfriend.

“I became enamored with Justin (Vivian) Bond, Arturo Galster, Miss X, and many others prior to discovering Heklina’s Trannyshack in 1996,” he said. “I eventually competed for the Miss Trannyshack crown in 1998.”

Like many closeted kids, the young Fogel found solace in the pop culture that now inspires his work. “I’ve been into rock and roll since childhood and was an avid collector of 45s and LPs,” he recalls.

“I saw every important band in the 70s: Queen, Led Zepellin, The Who, Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and the 80s: Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, X, Pretenders, and U2. I was the

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lead singer in a Santa Monica band called Borkum Riff, named after the tobacco that our guitarist’s father smoked. After we won our Junior High talent competition playing Kiss covers, my Mom agreed to buy me an electric guitar if I kept my grades above a C.” In 2002, Fogel decided to combine his love for drag with his love for music.

“I asked each singer in PEPPERSPRAY to be a featured performer for an idea that I had of a band fronted by five drag queens,” he explained. “It became sort of a cross between Spice Girls and Sex Pistols, with each member bringing their unique personality to the table.

I figured this was something no one had really seen before and that we could combine forces to bring something new to the live performance scene in San Francisco.”

PEPPERSPRAY was an instant hit. They’ve opened for Cher and Scissor Sisters, and released a CD in 2005.

How Peter Fogel finds time to sleep is anyone’s guess, as he continues to front both PEPPERSPRAY and The Whoa Nellies.

“I formed The Whoa Nellies with Leigh Crow, the artist formerly known as Elvis Herselvis, in 1999,” he said. “I grew up listening to AM/ FM radio hits, so our common bond was bubblegum hits and songs from the late 60s/early 70s, Mamas and Papas, Partridge Family, Monkees, Dusty Springfield, along with our own originals. We always perform in psychedelic period outfits that are evocative of the times. Our new CD Hootenanny is just out on Folk U Records and features many threepart harmony one-hit wonders by some of our favorite artists from the flower-power era.”

Fogel says that The Whoa Nellies will perform a few tunes at the Eagle party Thursday March 20.

In 2009, Fogel’s other band the Whoa Nellies, joined by Joan Baez, performed with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus at Davies Symphony Hall.

“Joan was a hoot!” Fogel says.

“She has a great sense of humor and was constantly coming into our dressing room to borrow a steam iron or a nail file and telling salty, off-color jokes. She was completely down to earth and not at all what you might expect a 1960s counterculture icon to be like.”

Of course it takes a village to make a band. PEPPERSPRAY’s Michael Soldier also chatted with BARtab.

“I moved to San Francisco with a huge desire to be in a band after performing with Space Pussy in Provincetown for five years and getting my first experience at Squeeze Box in New York City,” Soldier said. “I saw that Peter was involved with tons of music and theater when I got to town. I pounced on Peter to back me up on guitar so I could sing live at a club, and it turned out that he had been hoping to put together a draggy rock band too. We were the queens who

PEPPERSPRAY’s full band

could actually pull it off and wanted it bad enough to keep showing up; a great balance of interests, talents and personalities. The rest of the band has held tight for a number of years now.”

Soldier says that PEPPERSPRAY encompasses a wide range of musical genres.

“Girl group punk? Grunge in heels?” he asked. “Our covers lean heavy from angry boy rock from the classic 70s, new wave 80s, grunge 90s, modern pop and punk, mash-ups, medleys and originals, all done with a cheeky scream and glam harmony. We have to love the songs and think of them as theatrical enough to perform, not just sing. After that, seven people bitch until we realize how much we agree on most everything. Similar tastes coming from different angles.”

Soldier described the band’s live PEPPERSPRAY shows.

“Fanaticism is our favorite reaction,” he said. “So many people get so excited when we start a string of gigs that it’s incredibly heartwarming and encouraging. The superfans are in on it. It’s as much a real rock band as it is a commentary on male and female rock fantasies and cliches. We take putting on a great rock show very seriously, yet we’re never afraid of coming off as ridiculous, passionate, vulnerable and melodramatic.”

Other band members include

SECRETARY Todd A. Vogt BAR Media, Inc. 225 Bush Street, Suite 1700 San Francisco, CA 94104 (415) 861-5019 www.BARtabSF.com NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media 212.242.6863 LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad Member National Gay Newspaper Guild Copyright © 2014, Bay Area Reporter, a division of BAR Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

t

BARtab

PEPPERSPRAY at the 2013 Folsom Street Fair stage.

The Whoa Nellies

drag personas Peggy L’Eggs (who also plays keyboards), vocalists Princess Kennedy and Jordan L’Moore. The band’s backed up by drummer Stony Kurtis and Swirly Rat, Jr. on bass.

“It’s really a spectacle with great musicians anchoring it,” said Soldier. “Each queen has her own style and strengths and interests, but we work together to make the shows cohesive; very energetic, both humorous and political by nature of being queer and in-your-face, glamorous and dirty, sexual from both the masculine and feminine ends of the spectrum concurrently.”

Soldier described the “Bits of girly choreography and storytelling woven through with aggressive vocal performance,” and that their gigs provide a bit of nostalgia “for the highlights of rock and roll’s greatest filtered through modern drag sensibilities.”

And their audiences are diverse as well.

“The straight women love it, the queers love it, and trans love it,” said Soldier. “The most fun of all is seeing the inexperienced doubting straight guys lose their minds as PEPPERSPRAY virgins. Often they look a bit scared and confused at the start of a set. Once we smash them in the face with a classic rock cover they already love, done with four-part girl group choreography and harmonies, in full-face and hot bitch glam gear, you can see their brains explode as they scream along with us!”

“There’s a lot of love between the audience and band members when either group performs live,” said Fogel. “Because of this, I’ll no doubt be singing and playing until I’m too old to rock and roll anymore, and I’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming from the stage.”t PEPPERSPRAY: www.pepperspraytheband.com The Whoa Nellies: www.whoanellies.com

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Eve will perform at the Dinah.

<<

The Dinah

From page 1

Headlining The Dinah is Grammy Award-winning rapper Eve, Sapphic hit wonders Mary Lambert of the “Same Love” spin-off hit “She Keeps Me Warm,” and Tegan and Sara. They cap off a lineup of astonishing musical artists such as Antigone Rising, and Australian rapper-fashionista Iggy Azalea, to name a few.

Fortune Feimster heads up the funny ladies show with Gina Yashere, Erin Foley and of course Suzanne Westenhoefer.

“It’s such a phenomenal line-up, most certainly one of the greatest in Dinah history,” said Hanson.

“They’re all extraordinarily amazing and I can’t wait to see them.”

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

A big crowd at a Dinah dance event.

New this year is the Battle of the DJs. Dinahites will get their groove on at the Saturday and Sunday main pool parties as the spinstresses battle it out for the top honor.

Hanson is particularly proud of the philanthropic events, the Celebrity Poker Tournament and The Dinah Film Festival, where 100 percent of the proceeds benefit the Human Rights Campaign and the featured filmmakers.

It’s been 24 years since the party “really got started,” meaning expanded beyond house parties hosted alongside the Ladies Professional Golf Association tournament originally sponsored by the late Dinah Shore. Shore was an avid golfer and supporter of women golfers, but no one knows how she felt about lesbi-

ans hijacking her name and event, turning it into the biggest all-girl party in the world.

The Kraft Nabisco Championship took over sponsoring the event decades ago, but in 1994 it finally did away with Shore’s name after her death.

She lives on at the Mission Hills Country Club, where a statue of Shore surrounded by flowers punctuates the list of plaques of women golf greats … oh and the debaucherous parties all in the name of celebrating women.

Yet, in recent years – especially after the bitter breakup between promoter powerhouses Club Skirts’ Hanson and Girl Bar’s Robin Gans and Sandy Sachs that promoted the original Dinah Shore Weekend in 2006, The Dinah has matured beyond its “lesbian Spring Break” image into a women’s festival to contend with, and the golf tournament has turned into a world-class sporting event.

The Dinah has attracted emerging breakout stars such as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Pussy Cat Dolls, and Feimster, just to namedrop a few. At the same time, The Dinah has remained true to its roots, hosting an incredible line up of Sapphic entertainment, such as Hunter Valentine and Uh Huh Her. Celesbians who walk the red carpet at the signature parties also hang out and mingle with guests around the pool parties during the day.

This year, Hanson is particularly proud of the diversity in the entertainment featuring artists Thea Austin to Evelyn “Champagne” King and hosting the traditional parties and comedy shows to producing the second year of The Dinah Film Festival.

The Dinah Producer Mariah Hanson and Ke$ha.

which has produced women’s music and other events in Palm Springs for a decade, showcases a diverse set of women jazz musicians.

The festival is back again this year, during The Dinah, with a lineup of 45 performers for a fourday outdoor music festival. Sweet Baby J’ai, the artistic director of the Women’s Jazz Festival, anticipates that this year will turn out double the number of women from last year’s attendance, she said.

“The lineup is incredible. There is a little something for everyone,” said Sweet Baby J’ai.

“This is another arm of Dinah Weekend,” she added. “Hear some music and chill out,” to concerts ranging from contemporary Jazz to Hip Hop. Unlike The Dinah, whose primary audience is in their 20s and early 30s, the Women’s Jazz Festival

attracts women in their 30s and older, said Sweet Baby J’ai, who said she has her own memories of her crazy and wild days at The Dinah during her 20s.

The tournament, which expects 115 of the world’s top women golfers from approximately 28 countries, also offers events for golf fans such as lessons with the pros and the world’s longest putt.

Palm Springs definitely has a little something for every lezzie: golf, parties and great all-girl entertainment.t Tickets for The Dinah are $10 $269, depending on the event.

Tickets for the Women’s Jazz Festival are $15 - $75, depending on the event.

Tickets for the Kraft Nabisco Championship are $16 - $625, depending on the event.

Dinah in Color

Dinah Events

Mon, Mar 31 – Sun, Apr 6 The Kraft-Nabisco Championship @ Palm Springs

Last year, The Dinah got a little bit of competition with the firstever Women’s Jazz Festival that put a little color into the traditionally mostly white event that brought out 1,000 women to Palm Springs.

The women’s musical event produced by Jazz artists Sweet Baby J’ai and Lucy and Gail Productions,

A world class golf tournament that will attact upward of 115 of the world’s top women golfers from an estimated 28 countries will take to the green to witness sporting history in Palm Springs. $16 – $625, depending on the event. Mission Hills Country Club, 34-600 Mission Hills Drive, Rancho Mirage, CA 92270. (760) 324-9400. www.kncgolf.com

Wed, Apr 2 – Sun, Apr 6 The Dinah @ Palm Springs The largest all-girl party in the world is back with award-winning musicians, celebrity comedians, and of course celesbians walking the red carpet affairs. You don’t want to miss the debauchery happenging in the desert during The Dinah! $10 – $269, depending on the event. See schedule for event times and locations. 888-92Dinah or (34624). info@thedinah.com. http://thedinah.com

Wed, Apr 2 – Sun, Apr 6 The Women’s Jazz Festival @ Palm Springs Celebate women in jazz at the largest Women’s Jazz Festival on the West Coast. $10 – $269, depending on the event. See schedule for event times and locations.

760-416-3545. info@pswomensjazzfestival.com. http://pswomensjazzfestival.com

Comic Gina Yahsere will also be at The Dinah.

weddings • headshots• portraits

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Mary Lambert, one of the Dinah’s headliners.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

Vonda Shepard America’s oldest, highest-circulation LGBT newspaper celebrates our 44th Anniversary with our biggest edition of the season

t

She’s Just Getting Started

Vonda Shepard

by Joshua Klipp

O Publishes: April 3 Deadline: March 26 Advertise in our ‘BESTIES’, the LGBT Best of the Bay and the 4th annual Readers’ Choice Awards edition of America’s oldest continuously-published and highest audited-circulation LGBT weekly newspaper.

Showcase your business to more than 120,000 readers, the largest verified audience of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender consumers in Northern California.

Reserve your space today!

Call 415-359-2612 or email scott@ebar.com for more information

13

second section

Boston, P-town travel

40th anniv., readers' poll

57

Considering Balenciaga

The

www.ebar.com

Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual,

REPORT CITES HEALTH GAPS

Our new look

The Bay Area Reporter decided to update its look now that we’re 40.

So we’ve made some slight design changes in both sections of the paper, with new fonts, and in the case of the Arts and Culture section, a new name.

Most significantly, our website has been updated to allow for video with stories, and readers can now comment directly on our online content if they are friends on Facebook.▼

Vol. 41 • No. 14 • April 7-13, 2011

by Seth Hemmelgarn

Community looks back at 40 years of the B.A.R.

by Bob Roehr

See page 24 >>

The 1971

F

A

report released last week detailed the need for more federal research and data collection on the health of LGBT people.

“Lesbian, Bob Roehr gay, bisexual, Dr. Robert Graham and transgender individuals experience unique health disparities.

Although the acronym LGBT is used as an umbrella term, and the health needs of this community are often grouped together, each of these letters represents a distinct population with its own health concerns,” stated the summary of the report, written by the prestigious Institute of Medicine.

“Furthermore, among lesbians, gay men, bisexual men and women, and transgender people, there are subpopulations based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic location, age, and other factors,” the report continued.

While that summary statement is not news to anyone familiar with the LGBT community, the fact that it was made in the IOM report, which was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health, adds new meaning and credibility to shaping health policy, which that heretofore had been lacking.

Traditionally, IOM committees are asked to identify research gaps and priorities within a field. “But that paradigm does not fit for this area,” chair Dr. Robert Graham said at the March 31 news conference releasing the report.

and transgender communities since

Founding publisher Bob Ross

www.ebar.com

or 40 years now, the Bay Area Reporter has informed, entertained, and frequently miffed people in San Francisco and beyond.

The paper started when Bob Ross – chef, Tavern Guild president, and bar culture insider – launched it with business partner Paul Bentley. The first issue was dated April 1, 1971 but hit the streets on April 2, Ross’s 37th birthday. Ross pasted up all the pages by hand, copied them, and delivered them to local bars.

In the beginning, nobody took the paper too seriously.

Cleve Jones, who said he had an “up and down” relationship with Ross and who was a close friend of slain gay icon Harvey Milk, started reading the paper after his arrival to San Francisco in 1972.

“To be honest, it was sort of a silly publication,” said Jones, who now works with the Courage Campaign. “Most of the other young people didn’t really have much use for it. It was basically just announcements about whatever specials were going on at whatever bar.”

The front covers of many early 1970s issues were dedicated to the Imperial Court’s See page 23 >>

’s

T

Rick Gerharter

Members of the Kaiser Permanente contingent enjoyed the sun and music as they headed down Market Street at last year’s Pride parade.

{ FIRST OF THREE SECTIONS }

t’s been a rough year for organizers of the 43rd annual San Francisco LGBT Pride parade and celebration, but Pride chief Earl Plante still sounds enthusiastic about this year’s theme, “Embrace, Encourage, Empower.”

Plante, CEO of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, said that to him, the theme means, “embracing all aspects of our community” and “diversity at all levels.”

It also invokes “empowering the broader global LGBT movement.”

“San Francisco Pride is a thought leader ... it has been since its inception,” Plante said.

This year’s Pride festivities begin Saturday with the festival in Civic Center, from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, the celebration in Civic Center runs from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. The parade kicks off at 10:30 a.m. at Market and Beale streets and ends at Market and Eighth streets. The Pride festival is free, but a donation of $5 is suggested.

There will be jubilation in the streets as well, following Wednesday’s historic victories at the U.S. Supreme Court.

See page 22 >>

1971

Vol. 43 • No. 26 • June 27-July 3, 2013

Phyllis Lyon is escorted down the Rotunda stairs in San Francisco City Hall by Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, left, and Mayor Ed Lee.

Court victories!

Rick Gerharter

by Matthew S. Bajko and Lisa Keen

I

n a stunning double victory, the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday issued decisions that strike down both a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban.

The DOMA decision, a 5-4 split, was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by

the four liberal justices of the court.

It strikes DOMA as unconstitutional because it violates the guarantees of equal protection and due process.

The DOMA dissent, based largely on matters of standing, was led by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court’s three other conservatives.

Activists to honor Manning at SF parade

The Pro-Latino contingent marched in the 2008 San Jose Pride Parade; officials are not yet sure if there will be a Pride Parade this year, although the festival is scheduled for August.

he past year has seen several setbacks in San Jose’s LGBT community, even as data from the 2010 census recently revealed that the South Bay berg is now the 10th largest city in the country.

Recent events, however, have made it seem that for a city with almost 1 million people, there’s not much strength in the gay community there.

Last month, the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center canceled its 30th anniversary party, which had been planned for March 26. Only about 40 tickets had been sold.

Last November, the Silicon Valley AIDS Leadership Center, which had organized the annual Walk for AIDS, announced its closure.

And about three months before that, in August, the Gay Pride Celebration Committee of San Jose Inc. opted not to hold a parade.

Of course, problems at LGBT organizations aren’t unique to San Jose. Several San Francisco agencies have been struggling financially.

And people with Pride and the DeFrank center Mueller said the event will generate indicate they’re all right. about $1,000 for this year’s Pride, which is August “We have a vibrant community, and 20when 21. A block of about 300 tickets, ranging we can engage them, I think that they’re from there,” $36 to $73, were reserved for the hockey said Ray Mueller, who joined San Jose night.

Pride’s “I think the Sharks event proves there board earlier this year. are people out there to go to something One example is last Thursday’s LGBT that isn’t night the usual ‘Let’s go to a gay bar and with the San Jose Sharks hockey team. have a Tickets fundraiser,’” said Mueller. sold out in 10 days.

and transgender communities since

by Seth Hemmelgarn

I

The

2nd Annual Reader’s Choice Awards

Despite setbacks, LGBT scene in San Jose is ‘vibrant’

by Seth Hemmelgarn

Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual,

City to embrace Pride

See page 22 >>

by Cynthia Laird

G

ay Army private Bradley Manning was stripped of his grand marshal status and is 3,000 miles away in Maryland at his court-martial but supporters will honor him in Sunday’s San Francisco LGBT Pride parade anyway.

The Bradley Manning Support Network contingent, which has marched in San Francisco Pride parades for the last two years, is expected to be teeming with activists, probably a couple politicians, and supporters of the WikiLeaks whistle-blower. In a statement released this week, Manning’s local supporters said in essence that they didn’t care that the San Francisco Pride board refused to honor him – Manning will be their grand marshal.

Manning, 25, is accused of leaking some 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website.

He has confessed to some of the charges against him, but is being court-martialed on other charges.

The most serious, aiding the enemy, could send him to prison for life.

After initially naming Manning as a grand marshal in late April, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee board reversed itself two days later. Initially Pride board President Lisa Williams, in a statement, said that it was a “mistake” to name Manning a grand marshal. Later, the board came out with a sec-

Rick Gerharter

Center official appears hopeful

The DeFrank center has been hobbled by financial and leadership problems in recent years and currently has no full-time executive director. However, Chris Flood, the DeFrank’s board president, indicated that the center’s doing better than it might appear. He was at a See page 22 >>

The Free Bradley Manning contingent, shown here in last year’s parade, is expected to be larger on Sunday. ond statement that said Manning couldn’t be considered for a community grand marshal slot because he is not local.

After a contentious community meeting May 31, the Pride board declined to recognize Manning in any way for the Pride celebration.

Joey Cain, a former Pride Committee board president and a former parade grand marshal,

was the person who nominated Manning for the honor. He has been by turns, angry, hurt, and disappointed in how the controversy has played out, and the lack of communication and transparency from Pride officials.

“There’s a major leadership problem at Pride that needs to be addressed,” Cain said in a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

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{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

Photo: Rick Gerharter

Rick Gerharter

To those who say that even though Manning is gay, what he did was not specifically gay-related, Cain has a different perspective.

“The reason I nominated Bradley Manning was because the LGBT community needed to know about him and embrace him,” Cain said.

“Bradley Manning is a gay man who did See page 6 >>

n Friday March 21 and Saturday March 22, Feinstein’s at the Hotel Nikko hosts a performer who can accurately be described as one of television’s most successful and recognizable singer/songwriters, Vonda Shepard.

Ms. Shepard has sold over 12 million albums, won two Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards, and two Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, as well as the Billboard prize for selling the most television soundtrack records in history for the hit TV series Ally McBeal. A lot of singers might ride out this fame, but Shepard is just getting started.

“I’d like to do a Broadway show someday,” she said in a recent interview with BARtab, “and I think about doing film scoring. But with friends like Randy Newman, (The Natural, Toy Story, James and the Giant Peach), it’s a little intimidating.”

It seems ironic to hear Vonda Shephard say she’s intimidated by anything. By the age of 19 she was signed to Artist Development with Warner Brothers, and by the age of 20 she was touring the globe playing keyboard for Rickie Lee Jones. She later toured with none other than the great Al Jarreau, and what she took from Jarreau shaped her artistic choices.

“We were in an airport one morning and he leaned over and said, ‘Vondy, teach!’ I said ‘What?’, and he said ‘Teach; go show people that anyone can do it no matter the color of your skin.’ It was Al that inspired me to keep my (voice’s) soulful quality…people respond to that, when I really let it rip and my true soul comes through.”

Soulful accurately describes Shepard’s sound. Pick nearly any track from one of her eleven albums and you’ll hear gritty traces of blues, funk, R&B and perhaps a little country, all wrought forth through a single, inimitable and impassioned voice. Her sound is unmistakable, and was largely introduced to the world through all five seasons of Ally McBeal.

“That job was a blessing,” Shepard reminisces. “I was producing the music. We’d get a script every two weeks, then eventually every week.

It was an unbelievable whirlwind.

I’d have to learn the songs, pick a key, get it to the band, then make it sound the way David Kelley (Creator, Ally McBeal) had it in the script. For five seasons I’d show up to the studio around 10am, and leave around 3am.

Plus, I was touring on breaks, and playing on weekends. And I did four albums during that time.”

This trial by fire not only made

Vonda Shepard

Vonda a prolific artist, but honed her skills as a marquee performer.

When not drawing the audience’s ear to her distinguished band – James Ralston (Tina Turner) and Jim Hanson (Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash) – Vonda is known for dedicating songs, telling stories, and taking her audiences on journeys that range from purely joyful to quietly profound.

“I was talking to a friend recently and I said, ‘I write so many heartbreak songs!’ And she said, ‘People need to hear those, because they need that catharsis – you speak their heartbreak for them – don’t ever stop doing that.’”

Never stopping is a theme for Vonda Shepard. “I came from an odd family,” Shepard admits. “We lived a very Bohemian lifestyle, and my parents, rather than forcing me to stay at home, said to go play a gig.

So I did at every opportunity. Once I hit the state at age 14, I never wanted to do anything else. That was the place I felt most comfortable.”

After more than three decades of touring, writing, and recording, album number twelve is in the works. For someone who’s collaborated with everyone from Gladys Knight to Sting to Barry Manilow and Jon Bon Jovi, Shepard is humble with an easy laugh. When

Vonda Shepard

it comes to laughs, she recalls a story about Al Green.

“When I was about 15 or 16 I had Al Green’s Belle album. I listened to it every day about four times a day for two years and, at the end of one of the songs, he does this funny little laugh, and it was such a memorable part of the album; it made me feel like I knew him. Then years later I’m standing in the recording studio with him and, at the end of a take, he did that crazy little laugh again and I just about fell on the floor. That whole experience was so memorable for me on so many levels.”

Vonda Shepard has opened for Sugarland and Jackson Brown. She’s shared stages with The Eurythmics, Santana and Matchbox 20. But this month, she plays for one of her favorite audiences, in one of her favorite venues.

“Feinstein’s is a wonderful listening room. And what I love about San Francisco (audiences) is that people here are serious music lovers, and feel connected with one another, and that’s part of my spirit and belief – that we’re all connected to one another.”

Before the interview wrapped, Vonda offered a few words of advice to young singer/songwriters.

“Don’t settle. Don’t take the first draft. Work and hone and make sure it’s special, don’t just finish it. You’ll be playing it for the next ten or twenty years, and you still need to love it.”

What’s clear is that Vonda Shepard heeds her own advice. She is at the top of her game, yet every time she plays a song, it is for that audience and that audience alone.

She has never performed it that way before, and she never will again. So you might not want to miss this night at Feinstein’s.t Vonda Shepard performs Friday & Saturday, March 21 & 22.

Feinstein’s at the Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason Street. 8pm. Doors: 6:30pm.

For more info visit www.vondashepard.com www.ticketweb.com

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Spring Flings Floral fun at festive affairs

by Jim Provenzano

B

e it dance, gardening, science or shopping, a fabulous bouquet of decorative and artistic receptions and parties await you in your new Spring party garb. Catch the fun while it’s blossoming.

It’s already underway, but the 20th annual San Francisco Flower and Garden Show is an inspiration for urban gardeners, whether you have a full yard or a few plants on your fire escape. With five days of show gardens, 150 speakers, the third largest show of its kind will leave you fragrantly inspired for Spring.

Expect more fun, flora and flamboyance as this year, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence host a special party Friday March 21. Your ticket gets you a glass of wine and a souvenir glass, plus entrance to the festive party with a no-host bar and food concessions. Sister Flora Goodthyme spins tunes.

But don’t just view the floral fabulocity. Don your most elaborate horticultural headdress for a chance to win prizes in the contest and fashion runway show.

SF Flower and Garden Show, March 19-23. Sisters party, Friday, March 21, 7:30-10:30pm. $30$40. Full events thru March 23.

1346 Saratoga Drive, San Mateo.

BARtab

A sumptuous spread at a recent ODC Dance reception.

Jouke Lanning

Sister Risque in a floral-fitted frock at a recent event.

www.sfgardenshow.com Nightlife continues at the California Academy of Sciences.

Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum include DJed dancing, cocktails, food, fun and some fave amphibians. March 20, Under the Sea Nightlife includes dive shows, pop-up info booths and seafood snacks. Life Aquatic costumes are encouraged.

March 27, encounter robots of all sizes, shapes and functions (okay; not floral, but fun). Meet custom character robots by design studio BeatBots, marvel at the musings of visual artist Randy Regier, check out a robot who water colors by Evil Mad Scientist, and participate in a group tinkering session with community-minded Robot Garden.

Ah-ha! It is in theme! $10-$12.

6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org ODC’s Dance Downtown season begins March 20 at YBCA’s Lam Research Theater. The innovative local dance company’s 43rd season includes the world premiere of builder and bones, 2013’s Triangulating Euclid, Two if by Sea, and Unintended Consequences: A Meditation. Mar. 20, 8pm gala opening.

Juanita More! hosts a pre-show reception for its LGBT night out on March 28 in the terrace

BARtab

Gowned gals at last year’s ODC pre-show reception at YBCS’s Lam Research Theatre.

BARtab

Out in the Bay radio host Eric Jansen and Maurice Kelly at a recent party at the California Academy of Sciences.

lobby. At 7pm, enjoy drinks and pre-show chat, then take in the innovative ensembles new and repertory dances. $20-$75. Wed 7:30, Thu-Sat 8pm, Sun 4pm. Thru Mar. 30. 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.odcdance.org www.ybca.org Also March 20, Porchlight Storytelling drops in at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

Moon Unit Zappa is only one of many stellar readers, along with Michael Bunin, Suzanne Kleid and Brian McMullen, at the popular storytelling series, this time themed Too Hard To Keep. $20. 7pm8:30pm. 736 Mission St. at 3rd. 6557800. www.thecjm.org Over in Oakland, the monthly Oakland Art Murmur Art Walk takes place Thursday, March 20.

From 6pm to 8pm, enjoy the first night of Spring as you stroll between eight participating galleries, enjoy taste handcrafted wines and artisan foods, and hear wonderful acoustic music. The next third Thursday event is April 17. 471 25th Street, Oakland. (510) 893-8800. www.vessel-gallery.com Spring’s first day continues to blossom. How about partying with sea life? Thursday, March 20, The Marine Mammal Center hosts Deep Dive: Get BioBlitz’ed from 6pm to 9:30pm. This after-hours event is for ages 21 and over, and features marine science trivia, conversation, snacks, and an open bar ($30-$35). Watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean, and The Marine Mammal Center’s patients’ twilight activities.

For parents with kids, Friday, March 28, The Marine Mammal Center’s Seal & Slippers includes camping out under the stars, with dinner and after-hours activities to learn more about marine mammals.

Wake up to the sound of barking sea lions. After breakfast, join

Gilbert and George’s art got a floral triubute at a recent Bouquets to Art event.

The Marine Mammal Center at a BioBlitz inventory site in the Marin Headlands. 2000 Bunker Road, Fort Cronkhite, Sausalito. www.marinemammalcenter.org.

It’s not exactly nightlife, but it’s quite festive. The annual Macy’s Flower Show at Macy’s Union Square blooms into a festive series of floral events that take over the popular department store, with displays, parties, special events, and floral display demonstrations

by Billy Cook, Emily Dreblow and others. Despite their various internal climatic DNA, disparate flora blooming in unison, taking root in unexpected settings including store countertops, specially designed architecture and even full-scale auditorium presentations. Tours Wed-Fri 2pm, Sat & Sun 12pm & 2pm. Thru April 6. 170 O’Farrell St. 397-3333. www.macys.com/flowershow For a more direct floral-cocktail connection, visit the beautiful San Francisco Botanical Garden on March 27 for Magnolia Cocktails, an evening in the Exhibition Garden, complete with docent chats and a lovely romantic setting. Yes, the drinks are infused with real

magnolia petals. $30-$40. 5:307:30pm. 9th Avenue at Lincoln Way, Golden Gate Park. 661-1316. www.sfbotanicalgardensociety.org Next week (March 28), Season 10 of the de Young Museum’s popular nightlife events revs up, with live performances, hands-on activities, drinks and food. Opening night features an evening of Modern Swing, with live music from Silver Moon Big Band and swing dance lessons from Bay Area dance instructor Cynthia Glinka. The evening’s theme ties into special exhibition Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, on view through May 11. Season 10 continues each Friday night through November 28. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoungmuseum.orgfridays Also at the de Young, the annual Bouquets to Art exhibit showcases creative floral displays inspired by great works of Modern Art. Special events include catered lunches, trunk shows and hands-on activities for adults and kids.

So, feeling springy? You should.

Enjoy the new season and let your nightlife libido bloom.t

San Francisco’s 18+ Sex Club!

Open daily at 12pm

2051 Market St. at Church St. Info: 415-864-EROS (3767)

<< On the Tab

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

eON THE –TAB f March 20 27

★

Cabaret Concerts @ Hotel Rex Society Cabaret presents three nights of vocal talents. Mar. 21, 8pm: Martha Crawford's "Hooray for love." Mar. 22, 8pm. Nicole Dillenberg's "Yes to You: a Tribute to Alice Faye." Mar. 23, 2pm, pianist-singer Barry Lloyd live. Dining and cocktails available. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com

Flower and Garden Show @ San Mateo Event Center The annual exhibition of nature's beauties and home garden products enjoys a special Floral Headdress Contest hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and a festive floral party with dance music and wine, snacks and fun. $30-$40. 7:30pm10:30pm. Full events thru March 23. www.sfgardenshow.com

Go-Beaux @ Beaux

Fri 21 Berlin

F

rom classic jazz to sweet vocal sounds help celebrate Spring. Didn’t get tickets to the Prince concert? How about a fun cover band? Heart the retro tunes? Whoa Nellies and Berlin should help you recall the spring of youth, and even the sprouting contents a few gogo guys’ shorts.

Gogo-tastic weekly night at the new Castro club. Bring your dollahs, 'cause they'll make you holla. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Some Thing Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Trannyshack @ DNA Lounge Get out your shawls for the Stevie Nicks tribute, with Heklina hosting a bevy of drag acts, including Alaska Thunderfuck, Becky Motorlodge, Cookie Dough,Sue Casa, Jordan L'Moore, U-Phoria, Sugah Betes and Grace Towers. $15-$20. 10pm (show at 11pm)-2am. 375 11th St. www. trannyshack.com www.DNAlounge.com

Vonda Shepard @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The celebrated singer, pianist and storyteller performs fan fave songs (including requests on her Facebook page) with her bass and guitar back-up musicians. $40-$55 ($20 food/beverage minimum). 8pm. Also March 22.

Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. 7pm-10pm. (866) 663-1063. www.hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins.aspx

t

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland DJed tunes, gogo hotties, drag shows, drink specials, all at Oakland's premiere Latin nightclub and weekly cowboy night. $10-$15. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Burning Man Radio Benefit @ NIMBY, Oakland Enjoy live and DJed music (Jerk Church, Moldover, Dubvirus, Dulce Vita, WALA, Doug JC, Grumples and Neon Nunny), plus fire art, a silent art auction, food, drinks and more at the fab benefit for Burning Man's radio station at the warehouse arts space. 7pm- 8410 Amelia St. (510) 633-0506. www.bmir.org www.nimbyspace.org

Club Rimshot @ Bench and Bar, Oakland Weekly hip hop and R&B night. $8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun The popular video bar ends each week with gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials. Check out the new expanded front lounge, with a window view.

4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Hard @ Qbar

Thu 20 Comedy Returns @ El Rio Steve Lee, Bob McIntyre, Johan Miranda, Kat Evasco, and host Lisa Geduldig offer their comic talents. $7-$20. 8pm.

3158 Mission St. (800) 838-3006. www.elriosf.com

Comedy Thursdays @ Esta Noche The revamped weekly LGBT- and queerfriendly comedy night at the Mission club is hosted by various comics (1st Thu, Natasha Muse; 2nd Thu, Emily Van Dyke; 3rd Thu Eloisa Bravo and Kimberly Rose; 4th Thu Johan Miranda). No cover; one-drink min.

8pm. 3079 16th St. www.comedybodega.com

La Femme @ Beaux New ladies' happy hour at the new Castro nightclub, with drink specials, no cover, and women gogos. 4pm-9pm.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar. 10pm-2am.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Jason Graae @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The accomplished cabaret star perform his new witty music show, "49 1/2 Shades of Graae." $25-$35. ($20 drink/beverage minimum). 8pm. Hotel Nikko lobby, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins.aspx

Jewish Music Festival @ Various Venues This diverse array of concerts includes soloists, bands, singers, instrumentalists, traditional and modern Afro-Semetic jazz.

Various venues (Yoshi's, Freight & Slavage, JCC East Bay) and admission ($22-$30).

Thru April 1. www.jewishmusicfestival.org

Jukebox @ Beatbox Veteran DJ Page Hodel (The Box, Q and many other events) presents a new weekly dance event, with soul, funk, hip-hop and house mixes. $10. 21+. 9pm-2am. 314 11th St. at Folsom. www.BeatboxSF.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am.

4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Nap's Karaoke @ Virgil's Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover.

9pm. 3152 Mission St. 829-2233. www.virgilssf.com

Pan Dulce @ The Cafe Amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. March 20, Under the Sea Nightlife includes dive shows, pop-up info booths, seafood snacks, Life Aquatic costumes encouraged. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle The weekly live rock shows have returned. 9pm-ish. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

DJ Haute Toddy spins electro beats; cute gogo guys shake it. $3. 9pm-2am.

456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Josh Klipp and The Klipptones @ Palace Hotel The local jazz crooner and his band perform weekly shows at the hotel's lounge, which draws a growing swingdance audience. 7pm-11pm. 2 New Montgomery. www.joshklipp.com

Fri 21

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge Retro disco tunes and a fun diverse crowd, each Thursday. $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Underwear Party @ Powerhouse Strip down to your skivvies at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am.

1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

VIP @ Club 21, Oakland Hip Hop, Top 40, and sexy Latin music; gogo dancers, appetizers, and special guest DJs. No cover before 11pm and just $5 after all night. Dancing 9pm-3am.

Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Whoa Nellies @ SF Eagle The popular local retro fun '60s/'70s band celebrates 15 years with a special concert. $5. 10pm. 398 12th st. at Harrison.

TheWhoaNellies.com www.sf-eagle.com

Fri 21 Bad Girl Cocktail Hour @ The Lexington Club Every Friday night, bad girls can get $1 dollar margaritas between 9pm and 10pm. 3464 19th St. between Mission and Valencia. 863-2052. www.lexingtonclub.com

Berlin @ Bimbo's 365 Club Terri Nunn and her iconic LA-based synthpop band ("Sex (I'm a…)," "Take My Breath Away,") are back with new music from their CD Animal. Ownership and DJ Shindog open. $28. 9pm. 1025 Columbus Ave. 474-0365. www.Bimbos365club.com

Thu 20 Whoa Nellies

Latin Explosion

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland Enjoy eight bars, more dance floors, and a smoking lounge at the largest gay Latin dance night in the Bay Area. March 21, Valentino's birthday bash. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Shit & Champagne @ Rebel D'Arcy Drollinger's "whitesploitation" drag satire musical play kicks up the laughs; also starring Matthew Martin. $20-$25. Fri & Sat, 8pm. Now with an open-ended run.

1772 Market St. at Octavia. www.shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com

Themed Nights @ The Brig If you're looking for a new sexual adventure, check out this new space.

Weekend events take place Fridays through Mondays, and the intimate venue with a jail theme offers slings, tables and various spaces for erotic play. Sat-Mon, above PopSex960 at 962 Folsom St. at 6th St. www.BrigSF.com

Sat 22 Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Beer Bust @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Beer only $8 until you bust. 4pm-8pm.

1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Bootie SF @ DNA Lounge The weekly mash-up dance night, with resident DJs Adrian & Mysterious D, and special live music guest PEPPERSPRAY (See feature article on page 1. $8-$15. 9pm3am. 21+. 375 11th St. at Harrison. www.BootieSF.com www.DNAlounge.com

A Gay Old Time @ St. Aiden's Episcopal Church Poppy Champlin headlines a fundraiser comedy show, with guests Valerie Branch and hostess Kitty Tapata. Beer & wine available for purchase; proceeds benefit the church's ministries. $25-$35.

7:15pm. 101 Gold Mine Drive. www. brownpapertickets.com/event/559578

The Purple Ones, Killer Queens @ The Uptown, Oakland The Prince and Queen cover/tribute bands perform a night of retro rock and funk. $12-$15. 9pm. 1928 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. (510) 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com

Sun 23 Brunch @ Hi Tops Enjoy crunchy sandwiches and mimosas, among other menu items, at the popular sports bar. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

t

On the Tab>>

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar's most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. 3pm-6pm, with an '80s-themed dance party 7pm-1am. $5. Also now open daily 11am-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550

Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595 www.starlightroomsf.com

The popular country western LGBT dance night; enjoy fun foot-stomping twostepping and line-dancing. $5. 5pm10:30pm with lessons from 5:30-7:15 pm.

Also Thursdays. 550 Barneveld Ave., and Tuesdays at Beatbox, $6. 6:30-11pm. 314 11th St. www.sundancesaloon.org

Mon 24 Cock and Bull Mondays @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Specials on drinks made with Cock and Bull ginger ale (Jack and Cock, Russian Mule, and more). 8pm-closing. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Sat 22 The Purple Ones

Irish Dance Night @ Starry Plough, Berkeley Weekly dance lessons and live music at the pub-restaurant, hosted by John Slaymaker. $5. 7pm. 3101 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. www.thestarryplough.com

Sausage Fest @ Club OMG

Red Hots Burlesque @ El Rio

Hella Gay Comedy presents a night of straight comics gladly becoming the object of our affection, comedic attention, and ascerbic admiration, with host Charlie Ballard, and comics Mark Smalls, Hayden Greif-Neill, Mark Burg, Noah Gain, Tommy Arnold, Jake Hirschfeld, Tramane Webb and Chris Duncan. $10. 8pm. 43 6th St. 896-6374. www.ClubOMGsf.com

Women’s burlesque show performs each Wed & Fri. Karaoke follows. $5-$10.

7pm. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com

Showdown @ Folsom Foundry Weekly game night for board and electronic gamers at the warehouse multipurpose nightclub. 21+. 6pm-12am. 1425 Folsom St. www.showdownesports.com

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Wed 26

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni's Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone). 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.dragatmartunis.com

Shanté, You Stay @ Toad Hall BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly viewing party of RuPaul's Drag Race Season 6, with a live drag show challenge. 8:30-11:30pm.

4146 18th st. at Castro. www.toadhallbar.com

The weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm.

4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly night of trivia quizzes and fun and prizes; no cover.

8pm-1pm. 500 Castro St. 431-4278. www.harveyssf.com

Strip down to your skivvies at the popular leather bar. 9pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun

The casts of local and visiting musicals often pop in to perform at the popular Castro bar's musical theatre night. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall

Underwear Night @ SF Eagle

Paul K hosts the amateur singing night.

8pm-2am. 3600 16th St. at Market. www.lookoutsf.com

Monday Musicals @ The Edge

The celebrated five-man jazz ensemble, led by the Grammy-winning trumpeter, returns for a five-night residency. $16-$28; prxfixe dinner availabel ($38). Wed-Sat 8pm & 10pm. Sun 7pm & 9pm. Thru Mar. 30. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com

Trivia Night @ Harvey's

Karaoke @ The Lookout

Honey Mahogany's weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm, with a RuPaul's Drag Race viewing as well.

4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Roy Hargrove Quintet @ Yoshi's

Way Back @ Midnight Sun Roy Hargrove Quintet

Weekly screenings of vintage music videos and retro drink prices. Check out the new expanded front window lounge. 9pm-2am.

4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Wed 26 Broadway Bingo @ Feinstein's at the Nikko Joe Wicht and Katya Smirnoff-Skyy cohost the weekly fun musical theatre trivia singalong night. Pull up a comfy chair or sofa, enjoy a cocktail or three, and test your Broadway knowledge. Kanpai Lounge, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. No cover.

7pm-10pm. 394-1111. www.hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins.aspx

Dream Queens Revue @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, Sheena Rose, Kipper, and Joie de Vivre perform at the classic drag show. No cover; cheap drinks! 9:3011:30pm. 133 Turk St. 441-2922. www.dreamqueensrevue.com www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Thu 27 Circle Jerk @ Nob Hill Theatre Porn performer J.R. Matthews leads a sexy downstairs event in the strip club's playroom. $10. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Dot Photos @ SupperClub Opening reception for an exhibit of photos

by Tom Schmidt, aka Dot, of SupperClub performers (dancers, singers, acrobats, drag queens, and circus arts performers).

9:30pm-1am. 657 Harrison St. at 2pm. www.supperclub.com

Sports Night @ The Eagle The legendary leather bar gets jock-ular, with beer buckets, games (including beer pong and corn-hole!), prizes, sports on the TVs, and more fun. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Tue 25 13 Licks @ Q Bar Weekly women's night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Block Party @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 8614186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Tue 25 Sausage Fest

Bombshell Betty & Her Burlesqueteers @ Elbo Room

MAD MANhattan Wednesdays @ Starlight Room

Suppositori Spelling's wild weekly drag show night. $3. 10pm-2am. 1900 Folsom St. www.trucksf.com

The weekly burlesque show of women dancers shaking their bonbons includes live music. $10. 9pm. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

Full of Grace @ Beaux

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey's

Weekly night with hostess Grace Towers, different local and visiting DJs, and pop-up drag performances. No cover. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night. One-drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

The new weekly event includes classic cocktails created by David Cruz, and inspired by the the show Mad Men, plus retro food classics like a prawn cocktail and oysters Rockefeller, all with a fantastic city view. 6pm-10pm. 21st, Sir Francis Drake Hotel. 450 Powell St. www.starlightroomsf.com

Cocktailgate @ Truck

GlamaZone @ The Cafe Pollo del Mar's weekly drag shows takes on different themes with a comic edge.

8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Leslie Jordan @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The diminuitive gay TV and film actor ( Will & Grace, The Help, Sordid Lives) with a big talent (and an Emmy Award) returns with his solo performance, Show Pony, about his quest for longevity in Hollywood. $35-$50 ($20 food/drink min.). 7pm.

Hotel Nikko lobby, 222 Mason St. www.hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins.aspx

Tue 25 Rachel Sage

Ink & Metal @ Powerhouse Show off your tattoos and piercings at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am.

1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Jock @ The Lookout The weekly jock-ular fun continues, with special sports team fundraisers. This week, SF Fog Rugby Club! 3pm-7pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Liquid Brunch @ Beaux No cover, no food, just drinks (Mimosas, Bloody Marys, etc.) and music. 2pm-9pm.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Strip down at the strip joint. $20 includes refreshments. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell.

397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Rachel Sage @ Hotel Utah The talented pop-folk singer performs on a shared bill with Blow Up Hollywood, Marina V and Science. $10. 8pm.

500 4th St. www.rachaelsage.com www.hotelutah.com

Miss Kitty's Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata.

No cover. 7pm-10pm. 424 Cortland St. 647-3099. www.wildsidewest.com

Queer Salsa @ Beatbox Weekly Latin partner dance night. 8pm1am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Rookie's Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Watch competitors shake it for a $200 first prize in stripping, or sign up yourself by 8pm. The audience picks the winner. $20 includes refreshments. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Fauxgirls @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge The classic drag show includes acts by Victoria Secret, Alexandria, Chanel, Maria Garza, Mini Minerva, Kipper, Ruby LeBrowne, and Lulu Ramirez. No cover, and cheap drinks! 8pm. 124 Ellis St. www.fauxgirls.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar. 10pm-2am.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Pan Dulce @ The Cafe Enjoy amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com

Underwear Party @ Powerhouse Strip down to your skivvies at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

A Fistful of Happiness

by Race Bannon

Y

ou put your right hand in. You put your right hand out. You put your right hand in and shake it all...” Well, you know the rest of that little ditty. And it’s a humorous song I’ve often heard uttered among many of the people who engage in what is generally referred to as “fisting” and alternatively as “handballing.” Men and women of all orientations engage in fisting, but in this column I’ll focus on gay men.

For those completely unfamiliar with fisting, it’s the inserting of the hand into the anus for erotic pleasure. Yes, for those who have never been exposed to the idea of fisting, it perhaps seems like an extreme form of sexual play. But the truth is that it’s quite popular and men engage in it in large numbers and do so safely.

The trick is to know what you’re doing and to proceed slowly.

While fisting is common in many areas of the world, here in San Francisco fisting is most certainly not an uncommon activity at all among gay men, and the men’s community luckily has a man who I consider not only a leader among local fisters, but nationally as well. That man is Larry Shockey and he kindly agreed to be interviewed for this column.

Larry, his partner, Loy, and others have worked hard to not only create

“

Handball Academy

Larry Shockey, Producer of Hell Hole and Fist Fest, and founder of Handball Academy.

Handball Academy

Handball Academy “Ask-the-Expert Panel” July 2013. L to R: Ganymede, Mr. Allen, Ed Ehrgott, Cullen Frandsen, Dr. Robert Lawrence.

play events for men into fisting, but also to educate and inform fisters and potential fisters on how to do it properly and safely. I asked him about some of these efforts.

“In 2010, the Handball Academy (www.handballacademy.org) was formed to provide the educational component to our work and to round out our program. The mission of the Academy is to provide safer sex education and training about safer sex practices, harm and risk reduction, prevention and technique to individuals who engage in high risk sexual activities through the dissemination of printed materials, publications, visual and audio broadcasts, and the presentation of programs and workshops, public forums, lectures, panel discussions, and retreats.”

I asked Larry how a newcomer to fisting might begin to explore that erotic territory.

“If you are local and can attend one of our Handball Academy novice workshops, that is an excellent and safe place to start,” he said.

“If not, start with your favorite kinky hookup site to find others who are into fisting and start up a conversation with a few folks to find someone you are comfortable with. As eager as you might be to jump in with both fists, don’t. Begin a conversation. Be honest about

your experience level. Not everyone likes playing with beginners. And remember, getting fisted is about the journey, not the destination. Go into your first few scenes without any expectations – especially expectations that you’ll actually take a hand on your first few tries. Read the booklet that I wrote a few years ago, The Sacred Art of Fisting (available on the Handball Academy site), for a good basic primer on getting started, anatomy, protocols, safer sex techniques and safety.”

Novice workshops are five-hour intensive, hands-in afternoons consisting of about 90 minutes of discussion and three hours of practice under the guidance of highly experienced coaches who like working with beginners. They limit attendance to no more than 30 men (so that everyone gets some sling time).

Fisting isn’t all about workshops and educational events. There’s lots of great play available. Larry has been instrumental in providing the community with a variety of such fisting play events. Locally there is Hell Hole (www.hellholesf.com), a

play party held periodically in San Francisco, and elsewhere he produces Fist Fest (www.fistfest.com).

And true to Larry’s tireless commitment to the overall community, “proceeds from the sale of Fist Fest passes, as well as from Hell Hole parties, benefit the educational programs of the Handball Academy,” he added. “No one gets a salary. No one is living off of these events. They are there for the community, and are supported by the community and by the volunteers who help us out.”

When I asked Larry what is the biggest misconception about fisting, he said, “Easy. That you’ll lose control over your sphincter muscles and either won’t be able to control your bowel movements, or won’t be able to enjoy anal sex – or both. That just simply is not the case. The butthole is not like the elastic waistband on the favorite old pair of underwear you just can’t throw away, that keep slipping off your waist down to your knees. Your anal sphincters (there are two of them, an inner and an outer) are muscles. Like any muscle, they can be trained and toned. You can teach them how to relax and

t

how and when to tighten.”

Another great contribution to the community that Larry created is Play Spray (www.playspray.net). When Larry started doing fisting parties, he recognized the need to keep the space as hygienic as possible, recognizing the heightened risk of transference of things like HIV, Hepatitis, MRSA and so on when many people are using the same equipment over the span of a few hours. After much research, he came across the solution he now calls Play Spray. It is a quaternary ammonium solution, which is diluted to a people-friendly level that is effective against HIV, Hepatitis B and C, MRSA and a host of other STIs. They kept getting asked for some and decided to make it available to the public under the name Play Spray.

It’s the only disinfectant out there that does not contain alcohol or bleach, making it safe and effective to use on leather, rubber, silicone and latex. And it has applications across the BDSM spectrum on everything from crackers, floggers and sounds as well as for cleaning surfaces such as crosses, benches, slings, wrestling mats and the like.

Proceeds from the sale of Play Spray support the educational programs of the Handball Academy.

For gay men interested in fisting, there are also the Mr. S Leather Fist City parties (www.mr-s-leather. com/studio). They are always welcoming to both newcomers and the more experienced.

I hope this column has given both the curious and more experienced fisters a bit more information and insight to help them pursue this aspect of their sexuality safely and in an atmosphere of community and support. We’re so lucky to live in an area that embraces the wide diversity of sexual expression.t Race Bannon is a local author, blogger and activist. You can reach him at www.bannon.com.

Handball Academy

Patrons meet the models from the Handball Academy photo shoot during Red Hanky Nite at the Powerhouse bar.

Leather Events, Mar. 21 – April 9, 2014 >>

T

here’s always a lot going on in the San Francisco Bay Area for leather and other kinksters.

Wed 26

Fri 4

Leathermen’s Discussion Group @ Mr. S Dungeon

Sober Kink Together @ Castro Country Club

Fri 21

The Men of ONYX, an organization formed and operated by men of color who enjoy the leather lifestyle. 385A 8th St., 7:30pm. www.sfldg.org

Officially a CMA meeting, but open to all Anonymous 12-step Fellowship members, 4058 18th St., 9:30pm.

Leather/Gear Buddies @ Blow Buddies

Sat 5

Sober Kink Together @ Castro Country Club Officially a CMA meeting, but open to all Anonymous 12-step Fellowship members, 4058 18th St., 9:30pm.

Sat 22 The 15 Association Men’s Play Party @ SF Citadel A men’s BDSM play party. 181 Eddy St., 8pm. www.the15sf.org

Erotic fun for leather and gear guys, $15, 933 Harrison St., 8pm. blowbuddies.com

Fri 28 Sober Kink Together @ Castro Country Club Officially a CMA meeting, but open to all Anonymous 12-step Fellowship members, 4058 18th St., 9:30pm.

Fist City @ Mr. S Leather Men’s fisting party. 385A 8th Street, $20, 8pm. www.mr-s-leather.com/studio

Wed 9 Golden Shower Buddies @ Blow Buddies A men’s water sports night, Golden Shower Buddies, $15 with membership, 933 Harrison St., 8pm. www.blowbuddies.com

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Think Kink! jr matthews

jr matthews

circle jerk with a porn star

TitanMen

Dirk Caber seems happy to be less hairy, in Hard Play.

by John F. Karr

E

ven I have my limits, so I didn’t think anything could prod me into watching a spanking flick. I’d seen one once; it bored me terrifically, too. But as a fan of Liam Magnuson, it seemed prudent to avail myself of one such when it came to my attention (well over a year after the movie was released) that in the Titan Rough kink fest called, Smack, Liam was topping and toying and, oh my, putting his whole fist inside the almost illegally hot Cylus Kohen.

Although Cylus pumps out his load while (briefly) squatting on TitanMen Liam’s fist, the highlights of the scene are elsewhere, during a long Nick Prescott gives master Aleks Buldocek a spit polish in Soaked. and lush suck ‘n fuck, and zesty dildo play of satisfying when Swagger, pump encased, swalDirk Caber and Will Swagger duration. Elsewhere in lows Dirk’s cock, whose cock and were crossing cockSmack, the late Wilfried balls are engorged and tightened by enclosed pumps?). And Knight paddles the a ball stretcher and cockring combo. since I’m mad for guys always ready for more Furry daddy Anthony London who accessorize, I apAymeric DeVille, after tops Adam Hurst, whose neoprene preciate the cockrings first locking his balls wrestler’s singlet is provocatively that find hot homes into a Humbler bar cut right down to the pubic bone. on headliner hard-ons that keeps them proAnd what a sweet, servile boy it all over Rough movies. truding tensely behind is, too, getting slammed so heartLike the title says, his legs. No matter how much or ily by toys and taut tubesteak. But Soaked rains down a lot o’ piss, how little Aymeric moves, even if it’s George Ce’s topping of Rogue while never hogging sole spotlight. he merely flexes his butt cheeks as Status that’s gone into steady rotaCutie Nick Prescott gets his licks in they’re smacked, it’s a guaranteed tion hereabouts. Rogue’s about as on master Aleks Buldocek’s boots, ball tug. Wilfried gets off from unique as his name, although in his giving them a spit polish before rimming and fucking Aymeric, and sly raunchiness and meaty member, pissing ‘em down. Things are so then helps his pal shoot by sticking he recalls Johnny Gunn. shiny when they’re wet.

Ethan Ayres a dildo up his ass. In the final scene, He’s hanging in a Sit Sling, susand Paul Steele are sensational cock-ringed Shay Michaels gets his pended straps that circle his thighs together, husky dudes with husky butt paddled ‘til his meaty cheeks to hold him seated mid-air, stretchcocks plumped up by contrasting are blazing neon red. Prior to a hefty ing his legs wide and exposing to all cockrings, one white rubber, the fuck. creation his unfurled anus. I broke other black chrome. There’s fab Well, all this was very interesting. out in a sweat just writing about cocksucking, and strong-arm dildoAnd, it didn’t make me squirm. Well, it. Both Ce and Status are bald, ing, all amidst pungent plumes of perhaps a little (my balls couldn’t bearded, a little hunky, attractive in piss. conceive of hosting a Humbler). a masculine, not pretty, way. Both My favorite among today’s fi lms So I pulled three other unwatched are jock strapped and cock-ringed. is probably Pumped, Pissed and Rough flicks off the shelf, and found The accompanying music is kind Pounded (although it’s almost a toss in watching them what I think is of intense, prowling our ears as up with Hard Play). This is the one the line’s salient element, the thing Rogue’s widescreen ass packs our with Caber and Swagger as playful that makes the movies palatable to a eyes. It gets a superb dildoing— pump buddies.

Dirk’s attitude, guy such as I, who may go for some watch Rogue’s cock thump with as usual, is mischievously sinister extra strong kink, but is otherwise each plunge of the successively wary about the way BDSM is so larger toys. frequently depicted. There’s no Each scene of Hard Play offers menace in them. Strong fetish unique play. Aleks Buldocek and play, oh yes. The aggressive, Tony Orion are in puppy love, showing no mercy kind. But wearing pup hoods, paws and not in an atmosphere of torture puppy buttplugs while yelping, (however consensual) or punishbarking, sniffing rammers and ment. Dirk Caber’s lusty exubergetting rammed. And Buldocek’s ance in flirting with the ouch pylon of prick when he’s factor typifies the series, which pumping out his load? Beauty, is gung-ho great, not gruesome.

Thy Name is Bone. Jed Athens The movies are a buffet of balltops Byron Saint using dildos, a buster kink. Whatever you fancy large chrome probe, and a cock in a fetish, you’ll find in a scene. extender sheath. But most hard The movies are directed by hitting is Matt Stevens, shearPaul Wilde, who sure is creative ing Dirk Caber’s head of all its in engaging a wild array of fetish hair while Caber sucks his cock. play. Frequent dildos, infrequent Dirk, wildly excited by his (mal) fistings, lotsa piss permeating treatment, throws a mean fuck at most all of the flix, as well as oneStevens.t offs for boot blacking, sounding (okay, I squirmed), and pumping George Ce and Rogue Status, in a screenwww.TitanMen.com (was I clutching my junk when grab from Pumped, Pissed & Pounded.

underground pl thursday march 27ayroom th @ 9pm

main stage headlin

MARCH 28 th & 29 th er SHOWTIMES @ 8PM & 10pm

Photo Credit: Titan Media

MARCH 27th, 28th & 29th

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 20-26, 2014

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March 20-26, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Shooting Stars photos by Steven Underhill F

ilm, stage and TV star Rita Moreno was a special guest at Marc Huestis’ double feature March 15 at the Castro Theatre. A matinee of West Side Story was introduced by Marga Gomez, and Moreno signed memorabilia. That evening, a special screening of the bath house comedy The Ritz included pre-show performances by D’Arcy Drollinger and Matthew Martin, plus an onstage Q&A with Moreno.

C

astro bars went cheerfully green as gay patrons and their pals celebrated St. Patrick’s Day over the weekend, in advance of the official Monday holiday. Toad Hall, The Edge, The Mix, and Midnight Sun each took on a bit o’ the Irish spirit, and spirits.

See more event photo albums on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife and on www.StevenUnderhill.com See this and other issues in full page-view format at www.issuu.com/bayareareporter

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com or email stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

r u o r o f s u n i Jo S E I T S E B !

N O I T A R B E L CE

Friday April 4, 2014 5:30-8:30 pm

$10 unlimited Happy Hour *while supplies last

The Cafe - 2369 M arket Street Benefitting the San Francisco LGBT Center

During February our readers voted in more than 75 categories for what they believe is the best the San Francisco Bay Area has to offer. The results will drive the content in our annual LGBT Best of the Bay edition on April 3rd , our largest issue of the season.

ADVERTISERS

Align your brand with this very special edition and reach the largest (audited and verified) audience of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender consumers in the San Francisco market. Our readers are fiercely brandloyal and when all other things are equal, prefer to do business with companies that have demonstrated their support for the community.

To take your place among the best, call Scott Wazlowski, Vice-President of Advertising at 415-359-2612 or email Scott@ebar.com.

Space reservations and final ad materials are due Friday, March 28th at 12noon.

READERS Join us on Friday April 4, 2014 from 5:30-8:30 pm as we celebrate your BESTIES, the winners of the Bay Area Reporter’s 4th Annual Readers’ Choice Awards. We’ll take over the Café (2369 Market Street near 17th and Castro) for a special evening celebrating the LGBT Best of the Bay as voted by you, our loyal readers. Enjoy hosted spirits and beer as well as light refreshments as we toast this year’s BESTIES winners. Best of all, you’ll be doing good while celebrating the best as our $10 optional cover charge will benefit the San Francisco LGBT Center.