May 16, 2024 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

Oakland political leader Peggy Moore, wife Hope Wood killed in crash

by Cynthia Laird

Oakland political leader Peggy Moore and her wife, Hope Wood, died late Friday night, May 10, following a head-on collision on State Route 76 in unincorporated San Diego County. The news brought a flood of tributes on social media, as friends and colleagues remembered the couple.

According to multiple media reports, Moore and Wood were passengers in a Jeep Gladiator that was traveling westbound on the highway at 11:17 p.m. when a Chrysler 300 that was driving east swerved into the westbound lanes, striking the Jeep. In addition to Moore and Wood, the driver of the Jeep was killed as was the driver of the Chrysler, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

A third car, a Toyota Camry, which was behind the Jeep, was involved in a minor sideswipe, according to the reports.

It is not known why the Chrysler veered into oncoming traffic.

Moore, 60, had long been involved in Oakland politics. She managed the successful 2014 mayoral campaign for Libby Schaaf and served as a senior adviser to her. In 2016, she unsuccessfully ran for the at-large seat on the Oakland City Council, facing lesbian incumbent Rebecca Kaplan. Moore also worked as an organizer for Barack Obama’s winning 2008 presidential campaign.

In a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter Monday, May 13, Schaaf said that she was devastated by the loss of Moore and Wood. During her 2014 mayoral campaign, Schaaf said that she and Moore “spent all day, every day together for a year.”

“She molded me into the mayor I became – in the most beautiful ways our democracy needs more of,” Schaaf said. “She was centered in love.”

Schaaf said that she hosted a gathering at her home Saturday evening with her former campaign and City Hall staffers. “I was so shocked. I wanted to create a space to celebrate her and Hope,” she said. “It’s a devastating loss for me personally and for democracy.”

Schaaf added that Moore was the only member of her campaign team to come to work for her in City Hall as a senior adviser. Moore stayed until she launched her own City Council campaign, and then Schaaf said that she came back to City Hall for the last few months of Schaaf’s tenure. (Schaaf had been reelected in 2018 and left office in January 2023. She is currently running for state treasurer in 2026.)

See page 14 >>

Nonprofits serving LGBTQ youth reckon with potential budget cuts

by John Ferrannini

Three San Francisco nonprofits with large LGBTQ youth client bases shared with the Bay Area Reporter that they are facing budget cuts they characterize as devastating.

“I’ve never experienced, in the entire time I’ve been working with teens and transitional-aged youth, such significant budget cuts,” Gael LalaChávez, who is nonbinary and executive director of the LGBTQ youth center LYRIC in the Castro. “As a leader in an LGBTQ organization and parent of a trans child, I’m really, really shocked and worried about these cuts and what they will do to a vulnerable population – transitional-aged youth that identify as LGBTQ.”

LYRIC is facing a 56% cut to its program budget over the next five years from the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families. It is also trying to raise money to stave off the effects. And LYRIC isn’t alone – the San Francisco LGBT Community Center is also seeing a 56% cut to its youth services drop-in budget, or $312,012, and Larkin Street Youth Services is seeing cuts in the amount of $495,225.

The proposed reductions in city funding come as San Francisco faces a difficult budget year, as the Bay Area Reporter has previously reported.

Mayor London Breed last December asked city departments for 10% cuts across the board. A deficit of about $800 million is expected over the

next two fiscal years, and Breed has said it could reach $1 billion by Fiscal Year 2028. It comes as the city’s tax base has retracted during and after the COVID pandemic.

Breed has until June 1 to submit to the Board of Supervisors her budget proposal for this year and is likely to issue it in late May. The supervisors then review and can make changes to the budget. The spending document must be approved by late July. All three nonprofit leaders agreed that though the cuts are not set in stone, they are likely.

the agency’s career development and youth leadership program for transitional-aged youth (that is, 18-24).

“We won’t be able to provide jobs and internships for our youth,” Lala-Chávez said, adding that the program helps keep LGBTQ youth off the streets and provides recent arrivals – fleeing more conservative areas – with a home in San Francisco.

“San Francisco has been a beacon, a sanctuary city, for people in our community for many, many years,” Lala-Chávez continued. “I get Instagram messages, I get phone calls from youth, from parents, about just seeking refuge. Scary thing is we’re seeing an influx [of youth] from conservative areas of California, just on the other side of the Bay Bridge, and many of them are transgender and nonbinary youth. They’re coming.”

Ewan Barker Plummer, a queer youth advocate who serves as the chair of the San Francisco Youth Commission, also expressed worry about the impact of the cuts.

“I am concerned that the current proposal from DCYF would see a major reduction in funding for LYRIC,” Plummer, 19, stated to the B.A.R. “Many youth-serving nonprofits are facing similar funding reductions. This is especially harmful for LGBTQ+ youth, who disproportionately rely on nonprofits like LYRIC for housing, mental health care, and a community of support for queer youth.”

Lala-Chávez said the reduction would gut

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Panel confirms CA appellate presiding justice Martinez

2017 Media Kit 0 a

by Matthew S. Bajko

Almost two decades after he received his law license in the Golden State, gay California Presiding Justice Gonzalo Martinez is now the fourth out jurist to preside over one of the state’s appellate benches. He took his judicial oath Tuesday for the top position on the 2nd District Court of Appeal’s Division Seven.

The Los Angeles Blade covers Los Angeles and California news, politics, opinion, arts and entertainment and features national and international coverage from the Blade’s award-winning reporting team. Be part of this exciting publication serving LGBT Los Angeles from the team behind the Washington Blade, the nation’s first LGBT newspaper. From the freeway to the Beltway we’ve got you covered.

Martinez did so shortly after the Commission on Judicial Appointments unanimously confirmed him 3-0 to the administrative leadership role. He was the first of three gubernatorial judicial picks the oversight body considered Tuesday morning.

As the Bay Area Reporter’s Political Notebook column first reported in March, Governor Gavin Newsom had sought Martinez’s elevation into the judicial leadership vacancy created by the retirement of Presiding Justice Dennis M. Perluss. Martinez had been serving as Newsom’s deputy judicial appointments secretary until the governor appointed him to fill a vacancy on the 2nd District appellate bench in early 2023.

The appellate court covers the counties of Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. Each of its eight divisions has four justices who

preside over cases assigned to it.

While he felt his job in the governor’s office was the best ever, Martinez said being a justice on his appellate court “really takes the cake. I get to read, research, and speak with my colleagues about difficult concepts and reach consensus. It is an absolute pleasure to do what I do.”

Martinez, 48, was admitted into the California Bar for licensed lawyers June 1, 2004. He and his husband, tax attorney Raul A. Escatel, had lived in San Francisco until they bought a home in the East Bay city of Piedmont in Alameda County in 2012.

Martinez thanked Escatel for supporting his “every endeavor” throughout his career. As for being a justice, Martinez said he keeps in mind that behind every case he adjudicates is a person.

“I try to remind myself of that when I am trying to get a case out,” he said. “I will pause and think about whether what I am doing is the right thing under the circumstances and the law.”

Among those who spoke on behalf of Martinez was Ana Matosantos, a lesbian who was the first openly gay person to direct the California Department of Finance. She worked in the gubernatorial administrations of Newsom, Jerry Brown, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Of her former colleague Matosantos described Martinez as “measured, matter of fact, collaborative, and insightful.” She credited him with improving the judicial appointment process so it was fairer to applicants of color and those from rural parts of the state.

“He is hardworking. He is grounded. He is humble. He is outstanding,” said Matosantos.

His former colleague Gregg M. Adam, a partner at the law firm Messing Adam and Jasmine LLPMs, noted during his remarks how “unflappable” Martinez is in his temperament.

Oakland political leader Peggy Moore, left, and her wife, Hope Wood, were killed Friday night in a vehicle collision in Southern California.

Justice Gonzalo Martinez spoke before he was sworn in as a presiding justice for the 2nd District California Court of Appeal.

Screengrab CA Courts

LYRIC Executive Director Gael Lala-Chávez

Courtesy LYRIC

National program prioritizes LGBTQ digital equity

by J.L. Odom

For LGBTQ people, access to the internet and devices such as smartphones and computers can have a significant impact on their lives. The devices enable them to connect with social and support groups, and find information about queer-friendly establishments, companies with anti-discrimination policies, and gender identity and affirming care.

But for many in the LGBTQ community, such access is hard to come by due to the digital divide.

LGBT Tech, a research-centered nonprofit based in Staunton, Virginia, is on a mission to address this issue with its national program “PowerOn.”

“We see the importance in general of technology and its role in the world today, but especially for our LGBTQ community and the unique ways that our community uses technology,” Kristen Kelley, LGBT Tech’s director of programs, said in a Zoom video call with the Bay Area Reporter.

Launched in 2015, the program takes the digital divide by its inequitable horns by supporting the specific technologyrelated needs of LGBTQ organizations and individuals, offering grants for technology access and tools.

To date, the PowerOn program has distributed over $400,000 worth of technology and over 2,000 devices to the LGBTQ+ community, and has reached nearly 400,000 LGBTQ+ individuals in need of technology, according to the PowerOn website.

LGBT Tech was founded in 2013 by Christopher Wood, a gay man who is the organization’s executive director; ever since, it’s been a think tank when it comes to identifying and addressing LGBTQ technology limitations and gaps.

History Kelley explained the organization’s history. “Our organization started out doing a lot of work around advocacy and education, of the intersections of technology and the LGBTQ+ community. Through that work, we started working in the space of the digital divide for LGBTQ individuals, [with the] understanding that our communities are often faced with lots of different barriers, such as systemic economic disenfranchisement,” said Kelley.

Based on its IRS Form 990 for 2022, LGBT Tech has a budget of about $724,000. Most of its funding appears to come from grants, according to the document. Wood’s total compensation is $180,198.

PowerOn program supporters include Apple, AT&T, Comcast NBCUniversal, Google, and Meta.

Kelley, who is bisexual/pansexual, queer, and nonbinary/female/gender fluid, oversees the PowerOn program and network of partner centers in 30plus U.S. states and territories. There are currently 107 PowerOn partner centers throughout the U.S., with 12 total in California, including The Center for Sexuality & Gender Diversity in Bakersfield.

“We are incredibly grateful for our partnership with LGBT Tech and the PowerOn program. The support has allowed us to build and enhance our technological capabilities and empowered us to make a more profound and more meaningful impact in the lives of the individuals we serve,” wrote Jesús Martell Gonzalez, executive director of the CSGD, in an email to B.A.R. Gonzalez, a gay man, commented that since the CSGD is in rural Kern County, they’ve faced certain challenges in terms of reaching LGBTQ community members.

“Serving the 2SLGBTQIA+ population here often means navigating vast distances and sparse resources, which can limit our reach and impact,” he wrote.

The PowerOn technology that CSGD has received has helped González and fellow staff better connect with LGBTQ individuals living in remote areas; he described the technology as “transformative.”

“It has enabled us to significantly expand our virtual programming, making our services more accessible than ever before. This shift to digital platforms means that we can now connect with individuals across the entire county, many of whom might not have had the opportunity to engage with our support services due to geographical and transportation barriers,” he shared.

Through connecting with centers such as CSGD, Kelley, and LGBT Tech have been able to determine how to best meet their needs.

“During the beginning of the pandemic, we were working with LGBTQ+ centers to start providing them with more technology that they could use in order to switch a lot of their programs to be virtual or hybrid. And throughout that, we saw that there really was a big need there, as a lot of grants that nonprofits can apply for don’t allow you to purchase technology,”

Kelley said. “And so we began to provide that technology and fill that gap for the PowerOn centers that we work with.”

David Heitstuman, executive director at the Sacramento LGBT Community Center, described the PowerOn grant as a “game-changer.”

“It’s helped bridge the digital divide, especially for youth experiencing homelessness or other economic challenges,” he wrote in an email to B.A.R.

One program at the center that has reaped the benefits of PowerOn technology is the Economic Justice Program, which offers professional development and career counseling to LGBTQ and BIPOC individuals.

[T]hanks to PowerOn, we can better equip them with the technology they need to access valuable resources. This includes job searching tools, resume building platforms, and online educational opportunities. PowerOn is truly helping to uplift these individuals towards a brighter future,” wrote Heitstuman, a gay man.

PowerOn technology has also impacted the center’s ability to support LGBTQ+ youth and others in crisis.

“They can research local resources, apply for emergency aid, and stay connected with supportive peers – all crucial steps towards a more stable and hopeful future,” he commented.

LGBT Tech’s research on the technology landscape and the LGBTQ digital divide plays a key role in the PowerOn program’s mission and offerings to partner centers in Bakersfield, Sacramento and elsewhere.

“We have a really fantastic feedback loop that we’ve managed to create that allows research to underscore everything – all the decisions we make in all the work that we provide – and that feedback loop involves research between our community centers, understanding what really is impacting the community, and then working within the industry with other civil organizations and companies. It gives us all the ability to marry that community with research and outreach that we have,” Shae Gardner, a lesbian who is LGBT Tech’s policy director, said in a Zoom video interview with the B.A.R.

Gardner is the author of LGBT Tech’s “Beyond Binary: LGBTQ+ Rights in the Digital Landscape,” a 22-page report published in January that examines the LGBTQ community’s technology use and participation in the current U.S. digital landscape. It draws from previous LGBT Tech research as well as from sources such as the Human Rights Campaign, The Trevor Project, the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ think tank housed at UCLA School of Law, and the Federal Communications Commission.

“I really wanted to create a document that put that all into one place and that really showcased that, essentially, the work we are attempting to do is to make sure that the bigotry and discrimination that we see too often in the real world is not being replicated in digital spaces,” Gardner said.

In a section of the report about access to technology, it reads, “Reliable access to connectivity and devices is one of the most powerful tools in ensuring economic and social empowerment.”

It then calls attention to the digital divide: “LGBTQ Americans contend with income disparities, workplace bias and limited economic prospects, making dependable and affordable access to technology more important, yet often more difficult to find.”

The PowerOn program and its offering of technology grants is a response to those research findings, and to that perceptible divide.

Once a year, the program accepts applications for a Community Tech Grant; any LGBTQ+ organization seeking technology to use in its centers can apply.

“Because we work with such a large number of LGBTQ-serving organi-

zations, one thing that we really look at, and one thing that we’re also understanding in terms of the reach and impact of the program, is the fact that there are so many different services that LGBTQ organizations are using the technology to provide,” said Kelley. “Most of those organizations are providing services that are specific to the needs of their locality and their community in that location.”

Centers’ grant applications include requests in line with their available or planned services, such as technology for case managers to use for their casework, administrative-related technology such as printers for community outreach and desktop computers to create an accessible LGBTQ community space.

“One of the things that we saw as centers were switching their services either to completely virtual or hybrid was that there was actually an expanded reach, especially for organizations that serve rural communities. So folks who might have had to travel farther to reach that center were now able to be more easily integrated into its programs,” Kelley said.

Once a center receives technology from PowerOn, they are considered a part of the program’s network for life. They can continue to apply for additional technology in future Community Tech Grant application periods.

There’s also the Individual Tech Grant, open a few times throughout the year and available for members of the LGBTQ community in need of access to technology for personal use, including devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Community members can apply for grants through PowerOn partner centers or other organizations that are working with the LGBTQ community, explained Kelley.

Those who have received assistance are grateful.

“The PowerOn grant has really impacted how I’ve been able to work as a consultant in media communications by building different graphics and designs for different nonprofits. Here in New York, I’ve been able to do work through this laptop that I’ve been given for organizations such as GLIT [Gay and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society], Inc. and United Trans Creatives,” MX Leo Williams, a nonbinary Individual Tech Grant recipient, stated in a PowerOn Instagram post.

In the video, they also commented that they intend to use the laptop to pursue a degree in communications.

The reach of PowerOn is discernible in social media testaments such as Williams’ as well as in the numbers: According to the PowerOn website, in 2023, PowerOn technology was used by 100 people to complete schoolwork, 257 people to find stable housing, and 335 people to apply for a job.

Growth

Kelley shared that they’ve received a record-high number of 2024 Community Tech Grant applications – 110 – from LGBTQ organizations, with 79 of them being new (i.e., not already part of the PowerOn partner center network). There’s an uptick in the number of individual tech grants as well. In 2023, the total number of submissions was 228; so far in 2024, in only the first of three rounds of applications, they’ve received 100.

“We’re seeing it grow at an exponential rate, honestly, and I think a lot of that is due to the specific needs that we’re meeting in regard to being able to supply

devices for the centers to be able to do their work,” Kelley said. “A lot of the time, we see centers, for example, that might not have a budget to be able to afford technology for their case manager, so people are using their personal computers and things like that or they might not have technology in the space for their clients to use. So I think we’re meeting any need within that space.”

With increased technology access comes the consideration of safety for the LGBTQ community, particularly during a time of anti-LGBTQ legislation at the state and federal levels, and prevalent anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and ideologies throughout the country.

Potential issues include data breaches, online harassment, and inadequate or altogether absent policies, as there’s a lack of uniformity throughout the U.S. when it comes to LGBTQ+ protections and regulations.

“We really want to make sure that as we’re distributing technology to the community, that they’re also equipped with the knowledge in order to keep their information safe,” said Kelley.

Data privacy and doxing are two major safety concerns for LGBTQ+ individuals, Kelley noted, as both involve the sharing of personal information.

“It’s important to understand the role that things like that can play, especially for somebody who might be, for example, a trans person in a state where gender affirming care is being criminalized and what that could mean for them if their data was compromised in some way. And so that’s been something that we’ve been really paying attention to,” they said.

PowerOn partner centers currently have access to resources related to data privacy, digital skills and bridging the digital divide. Kelley shared that LGBT Tech also plans to publish a guidebook that provides information about online safety and cybersecurity for LGBTQ-serving nonprofits. There’s a corresponding online resource hub in the works, as well, that’s geared toward LGBTQ individuals, plus safety-related trainings planned throughout the year.

Gardner noted, “This is an election year, and given the sort of landscape for LGBTQ+ rights in the country, I think that the [LGBTQ] community is certainly going to be in focus as this election ramps up. I always like to remind people that the same issues that are impacting us in physical spaces are the same ones that can be replicated and brought over into digital ones.”

“Digital spaces provide a level of access, safety and community that we too often do not have in the real world. For members of the LGBTQ+ community, access to information, resources, and visibility are things that keep them alive, and in an increasingly turbulent country, it only becomes more important to protect those spaces online,” she added.

LGBT Tech’s research on the LGBTQ community and technology is available at lgbttech.org/research. t

For more information about the PowerOn grants, go to https:// www.poweronlgbt.org/grantinformation

This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.

People work at a center that participates in PowerOn.

Courtesy LGBT Tech

Kristen Kelley is LGBT Tech’s director of programs.

Courtesy LGBT Tech

Shae Gardner is LGBT Tech’s policy director.

Courtesy LGBT Tech

SFPD LGBTQ forum hears staffing proposal

by John Ferrannini

With his initial proposal hitting a political roadblock earlier this year, gay District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey is working on a new charter amendment to bolster staffing levels at the San Francisco Police Department.

Dorsey, a former spokesperson for Police Chief William Scott, detailed how it is taking shape at the department’s May 1 meeting with its LGBTQ advisory group, during which he also opened up more about his own battles with drug addiction.

Meanwhile, another member of the forum said a Castro safety group is currently planning active shooter and self-defense classes, as well as a hate crimes forum.

As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, the LGBTQ+ Advisory Forum meets several times a year. Its latest meeting was May 1 at the UCSF Mission Bay campus.

Dorsey told the group how he initially proposed what became Proposition B on the March primary ballot as a way to address the city’s police staffing shortage. Until 2020, the city charter required 1,971 full-duty police officers. Though this goal was often not met, Dorsey said it “did keep the city honest in not risking such a shortfall that we were risking a lawsuit.”

“Since we changed the charter in 2020, there was a new process created that was new instead of a static number,” he said. “But nothing happened unless the mayor and supervisors decided something should happen, and unfortunately, there has not been political will since 2020.”

Currently, though the city should have over 2,000 sworn officers according to the number yielded by that new process, it has 1,450.

“We have never been this understaffed in our history, ever, at least in modern history,” he said.

Dorsey proposed what became Prop B as a new minimum-staffing level, but before the measure went to the ballot, it was hijacked by “political gamesmanship,” he said.

District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who is running for mayor this year, insisted that hiring needed to be paid for via a tax increase, and in a 6-5 vote that version went on the March ballot. It was rejected by voters 72%-28%.

Dorsey said he was heartened by the public opposition to Prop B – and in its wake he is proposing another way to address SFPD’s staffing difficulties.

“I do have a charter amendment that will not be a ‘cop tax’ ... but will create incentives for people to not retire and numbers for a minimum staffing level in the charter,” Dorsey said, referring to the language opponents used for Prop B.

Dorsey said that the measure is crucial to protect business – and the city’s tax base – citing the closure of the midMarket Whole Foods last year and Macy’s decision to vacate its flagship store on Union Square.

“This is such a major part of our economy,” he said, adding most of the constituent service requests his office deals with could be solved or helped if there were more police officers.

The public safety crisis in San Francisco had led to public malaise and disdain for government, Dorsey said, adding that his district is “really discouraged about city government and questions whether anyone cares.”

Dorsey shared an anecdote from his days as a new supervisor, at the 2022 Pride parade, when a constituent recognized him on the Market Street parade route and gave him a piece of his mind.

“He said, ‘I was just cited for having an open container of beer,’” Dorsey recalled. The constituent was upset that he was penalized for beer while just blocks away were open drug markets, and Dorsey said he understood that enforcing parking violations, for example, upsets citizens as they deal with more pressing quality-of-life issues.

“‘Look at what’s going on there – Seventh and Mission, Eighth and Mission [streets] – it is delegitimizing to government itself, and I feel very strongly about this as a liberal Democrat,” Dorsey said.

“I want a government that rises up to the expectations of the people we serve. … You shouldn’t have to feel personally invested to know this is priority No. 1.”

Those issues include the city’s overdose crisis, which prompted Dorsey to seek appointment from Mayor London Breed to the District 6 supervisor seat in 2022 when it was vacated by nowAssemblymember Matt Haney (D-San

Francisco). Dorsey’s two-year anniversary in the seat is May 9.

Dorsey was elected in his own right later that year. One of his main challengers was Honey Mahogany, a Black trans person. On May 2, Mahogany was appointed by Breed to lead the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, as the B.A.R. reported.

Dorsey hailed Mahogany’s hiring in an X post, stating, “Congratulations to @HoneyMahogany, and thanks to Mayor @LondonBreed, on a stellar pick to lead @TransCitySF! This assures San Francisco’s national leadership for our LGBTQ+ and TGNCI2S communities – at a time when national leadership is urgently needed.”

Substance use issues

Dorsey, who is living with HIV, has also been open about his struggle with drug addiction, recalling that when he was in his role doing communications work for the SFPD he relapsed.

“I had a setback during COVID myself – it was alarming, even though I spent most of my life in recovery,” he said. “I was one mistake away from dying.”

Dorsey said today’s drug overdose crisis reminded him of the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s before the advent of medications to prevent people with the disease, largely gay and bi men, from dying.

“The stigma of who’s dying is masking the horror,” he said of those now being killed by easy-to-obtain opiates.

Last year was the deadliest on record for drug overdoses in San Francisco – with 806 deaths reported, topping 2020’s record 647 deaths. Dorsey said that new drugs like fentanyl – 2 milligrams, he said, is a lethal dose –have entered the drug supply.

“This is a more lethal, potently addictive and deadly drug than we’ve ever seen before,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to hear moms begging their kids to please become heroin addicts.”

Dorsey said that he will soon be introducing several new initiatives to help stem the tide, such as having the San Francisco Public Library system provide free recovery literature to people who request it.

Another idea, he said, are recovery and sobriety bonus incentives where “if you submit to drug tests, we’ll pay you.”

He made another comparison –“identifying the recovery community as the new closet” that people are coming out of – and citing Board of Supervisors President and mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin and new Democratic County Central Committee member Cedric Akbar as examples. Peskin acknowledged in 2021 that he had a drinking problem and entered recovery.

“I hadn’t heard that analogy, but I like it,” Peskin told the B.A.R. “I’ve been very public about it. It’s interesting – addiction and alcoholism comes with lots of stigma and shame even though it’s something that affects millions and millions of people and has impacts on people’s families. It’s kind of like mental health. Everyone brushes it under the carpet, and I’m out and I’m proud.”

Peskin said that being open about his struggle with alcoholism has allowed others to approach him.

“It’s actually been remarkable because the fact I’m public about it has not only given license to lots of people who have gone through it to share that with me, and it’s been important to them and important to me,” he said. “I

even had a really touching story where I was at a community meeting and afterward someone followed me outside and said he really appreciated what he read in the paper and said, ‘I have a serious alcohol problem, can you help me?’ I picked him up and took him to a meeting and he’s on his way to sobriety now. I’m not only helping myself and people close to me but I think it’s important for everybody and there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Akbar, executive director of Positive Directions Equals Change in the city’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, did not return an immediate request for comment. Among the clients his organization provides services to are those dealing with addiction.

He has been public about being a recovering addict himself, as in this 2023 segment about the city’s fentanyl crisis by the local CBS News affiliate KPIX 5.

Dorsey said that one of the things that heartened him most was that when he was first appointed to the board, someone in his recovery group said, “Finally, we have a seat at the table.”

Public safety events coming up

Greg Carey, a gay man who is chair of Castro Community on Patrol, said that the group’s next active shooter training is set for Saturday, June 8, from 1 to 3 p.m. Anyone 18 or older can register to attend and pre-registration is required at castropatrol.org. Tickets are $20.

The following week, a beginners self-defense class is set for Saturday, June 15, from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Anyone 18 or older can attend and pre-registration is required at the above website. Tickets are $30.

It was for these classes that Carey and his group were recognized by the FBI last month with a ceremony in Washington, D.C., as the B.A.R. previously reported. It came after separate awards from Breed and the Board of Supervisors. Carey brought the awards to the forum.

“We were the only one of the 56 awardees with anything to do with queer life,” he said. “Most had to do with human trafficking. Some were about education about religious types of bias. It was an extremely great honor.”

CCOP is also hoping to have a forum on hate crimes involving the DA’s office and the FBI. An invite-only event last year at The Academy on Market Street attracted considerable interest, and Carey hopes to bring it to a wider audience.

Ken Craig, who is also with CCOP, said of the other FBI awardees, “All of the groups did incredible work in unique areas and are making life better in the U.S.” t

Planning underway for 50th Castro Street Fair

by John Ferrannini

G et ready for something special this fall – the Castro Street Fair is turning 50. Members of the Castro Merchants Association heard from fair officials about plans for the milestone anniversary at their May 2 meeting.

The late Harvey Milk founded the fair in 1974, three years before he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk, who took office in January 1978, was assassinated, along with then-mayor George Moscone, 11 months later by disgruntled exsupervisor Dan White.

Over the years, the fair has grown, shrunk, and come back to life after the COVID pandemic. This year it will be held Sunday, October 6, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The suggested donation is $10 to $20, according to the fair’s website.

of our

remain similar to last year,” which was back to the preCOVID format, including 18th

from Diamond to Noe streets and Castro Street between 18th and 19th streets. In 2022, the second year it returned in person after the pandemic, the fair began at Market and Castro streets but ended at the intersection of Castro and 18th Street. In 2020, the fair was sidelined, and it came back in 2021 with a much smaller footprint, as the Bay Area Reporter noted at the time.

“We got really good feedback on our footprint last year,” Lopez said. “We are continuing to partner with community organizations and raise funds for them and are finding new ways to support local nonprofits, and are obviously looking for sponsorships.”

Lopez said plans are in the works to make the fair’s golden anniversary a special one.

“It will be highlighted because it’s a special year,” he said, adding that exhibitor applications open Friday, May

3. “So if you would like a 10x10, 10x20, 10x50 [exhibitor space] presence at the fair, you just sign on up. See you there. Congratulations, Castro.” Lopez said people interested in setting up a booth – or donating – can find information at castrostreetfair.org. The fair falls one week after the September 29 Folsom Street Fair and just before San Francisco Fleet Week, October 7-15, featuring the popular Blue Angels air show October 12-13. The Italian Heritage Parade is also that weekend, on Sunday, October 13. Terry Asten Bennett, a straight ally who’s president of the merchants group and co-owner of Cliff’s Variety at 479 Castro Street, has long attended the Castro Street Fair. She shared her memories of the inaugural event.

“I was actually at the first Castro Street Fair,” she said. “I was 4 and a half months old.” t

Fred Lopez, a gay man who is the vice president of the fair’s board of directors, told the merchants that “much

footprint will

Street

Castro Community on Patrol Chair Greg Cary, left, District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, San Francisco Police Department Captain Christopher Del Gandio and CCOP’s Ken Craig, all gay men, participated in a meeting of the SFPD’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Forum meeting at the UCSF Mission Bay campus May 1.

John Ferrannini

Onlookers watched as Alejandro Salvia twirled at last year’s Castro Street Fair.

Rick Gerharter

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Why Give OUT Day matters

By now, many readers have probably received

a few – or a lot – of emails and messages on social media from LGBTQ nonprofits seeking donations through Give OUT Day. What used to be a national day of giving has evolved into a month – it ends Thursday, May 30. That’s a good thing because queer organizations desperately need the money, and as we’ve reported, philanthropic giving to LGBTQ organizations is paltry compared with dollars donated to more mainstream (i.e., straight) nonprofits.

We reported a couple of weeks ago on the dire state of giving to LGBTQ organizations.

While foundation giving to LGBTQ organizations has increased since 2015, the starting point was so low that the figures can paint a misleading picture, according to community leaders. For example, in 2021, foundation giving to LGBTQ causes reached $251 million, according to the most recent LGBTQ grantmaking by U.S. foundations tracking report released by Funders for LGBTQ Issues. But – and this is the point – that $251 million represents just 0.13% of total charitable support distributed that year. In other words, queer nonprofits don’t even account for 1% of giving by foundations. Or, as Katie Carter, who is queer and CEO of the Pride Foundation, which makes grants to LGBTQ nonprofits in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, told us, as that 2021 tracking report indicated, for every $100 awarded by U.S. foundations that year, only 28 cents specifically support- ed LGBTQ communities and issues.

“It’s an unbelievably small number. It speaks volumes to how relatively underfunded we are,” Roger Doughty, a gay man who’s president of Horizons Foundations, told us late last month.

Horizons is the organization that produces Give OUT Day, and Doughty and his team have made it easy for organizations across the country and in Puerto Rico to participate. Horizons has worked for decades to help level the playing field through its community grants to queer organizations in the nine-county Bay Area region. It took over Give OUT Day back in 2016 and has since expanded it to a month.

Give OUT Day is important for LGBTQ nonprofits, and it’s not too late to help.

unstable and uneven. “Black LGBTQ, Southeastern, and transgender, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary communities and groups did not reap the benefits of this increase in funding. The rising tide does not lift all boats,” the report states, referring to $281.6 million identified from 6,585 grants to domestic LGBTQ communities and issues from 283 foundations in 2021. (That $281.6 million figure includes $30.8 million in re-granting.) In fact, the report noted that funding for Black LGBTQ communities actually decreased from 2020 to 2021, both in terms of dollars and as a share of overall LGBTQ funding, the report notes. That’s especially concerning since 2020 was the year George Floyd was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer, setting off a monthslong reckoning among funders and many other organizations. It’s depressing to see that essentially, the funding needs of Black LGBTQ people were deemed almost as an afterthought by foundations the following year.

Here’s something else that’s apparent in the tracking report: the funding landscape remains

We don’t know what specific LGBTQ funding has been granted nationally over the last three years, as the reports are based on nonprofit tax filings whose release is delayed as long as two years. Nonetheless, we strongly suspect the figures haven’t increased that much. Given the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation across the country, we’d say that far from decreasing giving, foundations should be increasing their grants to LGBTQ organizations and communities. Another interesting statistic from the tracking report shows that about 20 top foundation donors, led by Gilead Sciences Inc. of Foster City, account for 73% of the giving to LGBTQ

organizations. That needs to increase substantially, as Horizons’ Doughty noted. “It would be better to have a balance and more in the middle,” he said. “If you take out one of the top funders there is a gap.”

We’ve already seen how companies have become skittish about donating to and sponsoring queer events. Spooked by last year’s boycotts involving Bud Light and Target, the latter has already indicated it will do away with most of its Pride merchandise this year. That may send an unwanted message to foundations, sort of like, well, if companies don’t need to support the LGBTQ community, why do we?

That, however, is exactly the wrong message the funders should be taking from the marketplace. Rather, they should see that LGBTQthemed books are being banned by conservative school boards and that trans youth are being targeted for everything from accessing appropriate care to which bathrooms they can use. (The bathroom issue, by the way, also applies to adults in states like Utah and Florida.) They should know that mental health among queer youth is fragile, and that many LGBTQ adults struggle to get by, often turning to nonprofits for assistance.

It is in this environment that Give OUT Day continues to play a vital role. The campaign raised $1.2 million last year, and while that’s not a lot compared to what some foundations give, the money is sorely needed by nonprofits. In fact, we spoke to several participants just before the start of this year’s effort, and all had important things to say about what the fundraiser means to them.

In San Francisco alone, we report this week that city funding for programs serving queer youth may be drastically cut for some agencies like LYRIC, the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, and Larkin Street Youth Services. We’ve also reported on concerns by those living with HIV/AIDS about continued city funding for services in this dismal budget year.

So if people can, they should consider giving to an LGBTQ nonprofit that they support. In this time of municipal budget challenges in cities like San Francisco, Oakland, and elsewhere, the agencies will be grateful. For more information, go to giveoutday.org. t

Let’s preserve LGBTQ culture

by Johnny Townsend

Wemust preserve LGBTQ content while we can.

Russia has laws against “gay propaganda.” In Hungary and other eastern European nations there are varying degrees of discrimination and censorship as well.

In the U.S., right-wing lawmakers and school boards are already banning some LGBTQ books. They’ve announced publicly their goal to label all LGBTQ content as “pornographic” and then use that label to ban all LGBTQ content in the U.S.

If Republicans win in November, this growing threat – and growing reality – could become national law almost overnight.

One way we can preserve LGBTQ books, music, film, and other material is to vote for candidates who don’t support a fascist theocracy. We must get involved, even run for office ourselves, in local elections and not focus solely on national races.

Of course, as we saw on January 6, 2021, voting for democracy may not be enough. As a friend of mine in Canada told me recently, “If [Donald] Trump wins in November, all hell will break loose. But if Trump loses, all hell will break loose.” Friends in Portugal and Italy have shared the same concerns.

And friends in the U.S., too.

As a teen, I recorded family history while my oldest relatives were still around to tell their stories. I worked in a public library for four years. I wrote the first book on the UpStairs Lounge fire, the 1973 attack on a French Quarter gay bar that killed 32 people, and was an associate producer on the documentary “Upstairs Inferno.” I believe in documenting and preserving history.

I’ve studied enough history to know we aren’t immune to fascism and dictatorship in the U.S. While I fervently hope we avoid it here, it would be foolish not to prepare.

other materials to ONE Archives in Los Angeles. But there are several other LGBTQ archives around the world, including the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, and we can send some material to each of them. As a writer, I’m not supposed to use clichés, but “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” sounds fitting here.

There’s IHLIA in Amsterdam, QRAB in Gothenburg, the Schwules Museum in Berlin, Forum Queeres in Munich, The ArQuives in Toronto, and more.

So ... what do we do while also fighting to save democracy?

The same thing I do when I write a novel – I save back-ups.

I’ve donated my UpStairs Lounge research and

These archives accept personal papers, LGBTQ artwork, DVDs, photos, wedding announcements, lecture notices, syllabi, info on gay bowling leagues or biking groups or senior potlucks, lesbian music festival notices, and any other material that could help future historians understand LGBTQ culture in our times. We can donate our journals as well, requesting that our journals not be made accessible to researchers until after our death (or even a certain length of time after our death).

People should contact the archives first with details of what they want to donate. Different archives specialize in different materials, and all archives have limited space. What that mostly means is they don’t want duplicates. If they already have a specific book or film, they may not want a second copy.

But if people have anything original – handwrit-

ten manuscripts, old letters (remember those?), or even printed email correspondence – most of these archives will be happy to accept it. Twenty of my original gay patchwork quilts are in ONE Archives in Los Angeles. Original charcoal nudes given to me decades ago I’ve since gifted to IHLIA in Amsterdam. QRAB in Gothenburg has the artwork I commissioned from a gay Portuguese artist for the cover of one of my books.

Over the past year, I’ve sent more materials to other LGBTQ archives around the world. There’s no guarantee those archives will be safe, either. Fascism and intolerance can rise anywhere.

So we should share the wealth, because we don’t want a Library of Alexandria event where our one main LGBTQ archive burns to the ground, with priceless items lost forever. (Julius Caesar, in 46 BC during a war, had his soldiers set fire to ships in a port, which spread to the library in Egypt, causing considerable damage.)

While mailing materials to other countries is expensive, people should also consider donating funds to help cover any import fees on their end or simply to support their ongoing work. Even if people have no materials of their own to donate, they can still send them a few dollars if they are able.

While we’re at it, let’s contribute a few dollars to local LGBTQ publications and organizations here so there will be culture to document.

Just as preserving LGBTQ history requires a multi-pronged approach, doing so is only one part of preserving democracy. Let’s rally, let’s march, let’s campaign for strong candidates, let’s vote, and let’s make sure the U.S. becomes a safer place for everyone. t

A climate crisis transplant who relocated from New Orleans to Seattle in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Johnny Townsend, a gay man, was an associate producer for the documentary “Upstairs Inferno,” for the scifi film “Time Helmet,” and for the deaf gay short “Flirting, with Possibilities.” His books include “Inferno in the French Quarter: The UpStairs Lounge Fire,” “Please Evacuate,” “Racism by Proxy,” and “Orgy at the STD Clinic.”

Author Johnny Townsend

Courtesy Johnny Townsend

Courtesy Horizons Foundation

by Matthew S. Bajko

Over the decades the late gay San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk has become well known for his line, “You’ve gotta give ‘em hope.” Less famously, Milk’s other mantra was, “You’ve gotta vote!”

It was a frequent topic of his in the Milk Forum columns he wrote for the Bay Area Reporter during the mid-1970s. As the Political Notebook first noted in 2021, Milk wasn’t shy about lambasting his gay readers for their lack of involvement in politics or failure to vote on Election Day.

“If we are ever to see the end of repression and discrimination, we have to start to use our votes for the rights of Gay people and not for the personal gains of a few individuals and their organizations,” wrote Milk, who used gay as a catchall term since back then the LGBTQ acronym was not in use, in his July 22, 1976 column.

Two years earlier, in his October 2, 1974 column, Milk zeroed in on that fall’s reelection bid by thenAttorney General Evelle J. Younger, warning readers the Republican would prosecute people for smoking marijuana and “having sex with a consenting adult.” Milk noted he had invited city election workers to come to his Castro Camera shop to register voters.

“If you don’t register, you can’t vote. If you don’t vote, a friend of yours’ might just get caught and go to jail. It will be too late to complain then,” wrote Milk a month prior to seeing Younger win his last term as the state’s top prosecutor. (He lost his bid for governor in 1978 to Democrat Jerry Brown.)

As Californians, and the LGBTQ community the world over, celebrate Harvey Milk Day on May 22, what would have been the civil rights leader’s 94th birthday, those who worked with and knew Milk are pointing to his clarion call for people to head to the voting booth. They’re doing so with an eye toward this year’s presidential election on November 5, in which Democratic President Joe Biden is aiming to keep his predecessor, Donald Trump, from returning to the White House, and control of Congress will once again be up for grabs.

“He was about hope and he was about voting and that’s what we have to keep, the hope,” said Congressmember Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who was the northern chair of the California Democratic Party in 1977 when Milk won his seat to represent the Castro, Noe Valley, and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods at City Hall. “When

people say where is hope? We say it is where it has always been, sitting there between faith and goodness of others that we can get something done.”

Pelosi was one of the speakers who pointed out Milk’s emphasis about voting in their remarks at the March 29 welcome ceremony for the USNS Harvey Milk marking the naval fleet replenishment oiler’s maiden voyage to San Francisco. Former Milk campaign manager Anne Kronenberg recalled how he used to remind people to exercise their right to vote back in the 1970s.

At the time Milk was rising in power from a business owner and community leader in the then-burgeoning LGBTQ Castro neighborhood. His supervisorial election in 1977 marked the first time an openly gay person won elected office in the city and state.

reelection in November. They also worry Trump would appoint even more conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who could rule to end marriage rights for same-sex couples.

Such a fear is so great in California that LGBTQ lawmakers pushed to add to the fall ballot an amendment aimed at excising language defining marriage as between a man and a woman that was added to the state constitution after the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008. They did so despite federal court rulings declaring the anti-LGBTQ ballot measure was unconstitutional, which paved the way for same-sex couples to again wed in the Golden State during Pride Month in 2013.

“The other thing he harped on constantly was you have to vote, because that is how you empower yourself,” said Kronenberg during her remarks at the naval event. “That is how you gain that power.”

It is particularly important that people vote this year, she said.

“With everything going on in the world today, and how much disarray we are in, we need that hope and we need to be able to vote and make a difference, and we can do that as individuals,” said Kronenberg, who after working on Milk’s successful third bid for supervisor joined him as one of his aides at City Hall in 1978.

Many LGBTQ leaders and advocates are concerned the myriad gains the community has achieved during Biden’s first term will be wiped away during a second Trump administration, should the Republican win

“You must stay engaged. Because we have marriage equality doesn’t mean the fight ends,” stressed Stuart Milk, the gay nephew of Milk, in his remarks during the Milk ship event.

He noted that his uncle routinely talked about the need for people to be publicly engaged.

“It is very important to note that where we are today is, as my uncle would say, is a pivotal moment,” said Stuart Milk, who now heads the Harvey Milk Foundation to keep his relative’s legacy alive. “There is a great video of his last recorded TV interview where he said, ‘Everyone must be engaged.’”

Milk Day events

Milk’s life and political career were tragically cut short the morning of November 27, 1978 when disgruntled former supervisor Dan White gunned down Milk and thenmayor George Moscone in City Hall. Yet, in death, Milk would become a global LGBTQ icon.

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A lithograph featuring Harvey Milk and the USNS Harvey Milk, commissioned by the company that built the naval ship, hangs in Captain J. James White’s office aboard the vessel.

Matthew S. Bajko

Anne Kronenberg, center, a former aide to Harvey Milk, stood next to Rear Admiral Richard W. Meyer of the U.S. Third Fleet aboard the USNS Harvey Milk March 29 in San Francisco.

Matthew S. Bajko

Control

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

Looking at the history of trans care since World War II, one can’t help but notice a theme: transgender people gain agency, and then non-transgender people attempt to exert control to stop it.

In the 1970s, providers of trans care – largely the domain of a handful of university-based medical centers – pressed for transgender women to be conventionally attractive, not to associate with other transgender people, and to act in stereotypically feminine ways, even as the second wave of feminism was taking hold and directly challenging those stereotypes. For transgender women, stepping out of line with the above could cause you to lose care and be drummed out of a restrictive system.

In the 1990s, the university system was all but gone, replaced with private practices. While much of the above remained in play, the system had opened up. Still, there were requirements to be seen by two therapists, live in your preferred gender for some time to prove you were fit to have hormone replacement and surgical intervention, and go through tests to prove your mental fitness. This is the period where I came in.

In more recent years, while not universal, a lot of transgender care has moved to an informed consent model where the trans person may proceed without all this gatekeeping.

Yet, as there has been this increase in transgender agency, there has been

obvious pushback to transgender care over the last few years, predominantly driven by anti-trans campaigners.

Growing out of the work of Ray Blanchard, Ph.D., formerly of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto, Canada, many latched onto his theories that transgender women are either homosexual men or autogynephilic men, with the latter defined as an erotic desire to be women. As is typical, transgender men were largely discounted.

The whole mess has, of course, been used to discount trans lives as nothing more than paraphilia disorders, which are often misunderstood as a catch-all definition for any unusual sexual behavior. (To be diagnosed with a paraphilic disorder, DSM-5 requires that people with these interests: feel personal distress about their interest, not merely distress resulting from society’s disapproval; or have a sexual desire or behavior that involves another person’s psychological distress, injury, or

death, or a desire for sexual behaviors involving unwilling persons or persons unable to give legal consent.)

Likewise, the term Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), coined by Dr. Lisa Littman, attempts to claim that many transgender youth were identifying as such due to contagious “peer pressure.” A publication from Littman on ROGD was removed due to controversy about its methods. This has not stopped ROGD from being pushed as the cause of a rise in trans identity over the last few years, and is still regularly cited as a reason to curtail and control trans lives.

From where I sit, both ROGD and Blanchard’s theories do little to explain the reality of transgender lives. There is little that is rapid about discovering one is transgender, though it may seem like it to a non-supportive family member from whom we have hidden our trans lives out of fear or self-protec tion. I, too, was accused of “rushing things” with my family, even though I had silently struggled with my trans nature for decades by the time I put voice to my experiences.

Likewise, the reductive notion that trans women are either homosexual men or autogynephilic men – setting aside that neither of those options includes our identity as women – does not line up with the lived experience of the vast majority of transgender

people. Of course, Blanchard simply assumes that any contrary evidence is to be discounted as biased and false. Now enter the Cass Review. The Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People, more commonly known as the Cass Review for its primary author, Dr. Hilary Cass. The National Health Service England commissioned it. Its main goal was to review transgender care in the United Kingdom, perhaps best known for long wait times and inadequate services. Rather than finding ways to better streamline care for transgender youth in the U.K., the review is largely being used to control trans lives, and put forth further barriers for transgender people to access care. Of particular note is that puberty suppressing medications will not be available to those who need it most: young transgender people who wish to delay outcomes of puberty not in line with their gender identity.

One thing the review was not able to show, and something anti-trans voices have wanted for decades, is proof that most young transgender people will essentially “grow out of” a transgender identity, and go on to live non-trans lives. Indeed, most research – studies that were discounted out of hand by Cass due to their

Bay Area fundraiser for LGBTQ refugee group features gay Ugandan

by Heather Cassell

The Organization for Refuge, Asylum, and Migration had a homecoming in the San Francisco Bay Area in an effort to drum up support and talk about its work.

The LGBTQ refugee organization, founded in San Francisco in 2008, hosted its first local fundraiser to help queer refugees and learn about ORAM’s current efforts since 2019.

The May 2 event was co-hosted by a lesbian couple who wished to remain anonymous and Frederick Hertz, a lawyer and former ORAM board member, and his husband.

Hertz greeted the estimated 30 guests, telling them, “It’s not an organization that seeks a lot of publicity. It’s really about getting the work done.”

The event’s attendees mingled at the Oakland Hills location, learned about ORAM, and listened to guest speaker Robert Luzinda, a gay Ugandan refugee, tell his story about leaving his home country, living in Kenya for years, and finally coming to America.

Luzinda’s journey to safety

In May 2023, Luzinda, 39, arrived in Oakland. It was a long journey. He fled Uganda in 2014 when President Yoweri Museveni signed into law the first AntiHomosexuality Act, the so-called Jail the Gays bill, which sentenced LGBTQ people to 10 years in prison.

As the Bay Area Reporter noted last month, Uganda’s Constitutional Court upheld most of the country’s latest AntiHomosexuality Act, enacted last year, which includes the death penalty for LGBTQ people for so-called aggravated homosexuality. LGBTQ Ugandan activists vowed to appeal the court’s ruling to the country’s Supreme Court. Museveni signed the new Anti-Homosexuality Act into law May 26, 2023.

Already harassed for being an openly gay man in Uganda, Luzinda didn’t wait for the East African country’s Constitutional Court to strike down the first

law in 2014, which it did on technical grounds. There was very little left in his country for him, he said. His mother, who protected him from harassment after he was outed following the publication of a photo essay (https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/gay-couples-uganda) in 2011, died in 2013.

In 2011, a photographer documenting LGBTQ life in Uganda photographed Luzinda with his then-boyfriend. The photo was used again in 2014 by CNN in an article when Uganda enacted the anti-LGBTQ law.

Luzinda crossed the border into neighboring Kenya and immediately applied as a refugee at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The agency determined him to be an urban refugee rather than send him to Kakuma Refugee Camp, the largest refugee camp in the world, which the B.A.R. previously reported. Urban refugees do not receive any financial support from the UNHCR.

For the next nine years, Luzinda drifted around the country, he said. He went anywhere for work as he struggled to survive while he waited to be resettled in a new country. Tired, Luzinda said he was finally able to stop moving around when he entered a poultry program with the Nature Network.

The Nature Network is an LGBTQled and -run refugee organization that provides micro-entrepreneurial training in catering, cosmetology, jewelry making, poultry farming, and tailoring, in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, with some support provided by ORAM. In 2022, Luzinda was given a scholarship to attend Nairobi’s best cosmetology school, Linton’s College, through a new program launched by Nature Network with ORAM. The monthlong program was a perfect match for Luzinda, he said. It allowed him to grow into his passion for beauty, wellness, and fashion and, after graduating, earn a living giving manicures and pedicures, doing makeup, and giving massages.

The B.A.R. previously reported on the launch of and success of ORAM’s livelihood programs.

ORAM also assisted with stable housing for him with other LGBTQ refugees, Luzinda said.

“You’ve done a very great job,” Luzinda told ORAM Executive Director Steve Roth at the recent event. “I’m praying to help those people who are still there.”

Inspired

Roth told guests that refugees like Luzinda “inspire me.”

“These are incredibly brave and inspiring and resilient people,” he said. “Their commitment to authenticity, to really be who they are whatever the cost” when “the stakes are so much higher when your life is at stake, to have that commitment that they would leave to another country with an uncertain future and persist to see another day, these are people who inspire me.”

According to the UNHCR, an estimated 100 million people were forced to leave their homes as of 2022, including more than 37 million refugees and asylum seekers.

Anita Sarah Jackson, lead user experience (UX) writer at Airbnb.org, was at the Oakland event and said she was also moved by LGBTQ refugees’ stories.

The nonprofit arm of vacation rent-

lack of an impossible double-blind element – show that most transgender people remain trans, and that most who get care show an almost abnormally high rate of satisfaction.

Cass opted to move the goalposts on this while interviewed on NPR, claiming that transgender people simply need to continue to be studied and dissected, to weigh our lives, apparently endlessly.

“We need to follow up for much longer than a year or two to know if you continue to thrive on those hormones in the longer term,” said Cass. “And we also need to know, are those young people in relationships? Are they getting out of the house? Are they in employment? Do they have a satisfactory sex life?” I know that Cass knows that she is not allowed in my bedroom to measure my sex life any more than Blanchard.

If we continue to live in a transphobic society, one that is, in part, driven by studies like this from Cass, then we will continue to see transgender people struggle in employment, avoid social situations, and so on. She is, in short, attempting to fulfill a prophecy of her own creation. Also, like so many others, she is once again attempting to control the narrative of transgender lives – and dominate our lives in the first place. t

Gwen Smith is tired of being studied. You can find her at www. gwensmith.com

al company Airbnb, Airbnb.org is a $13,130,605 organization, according to its 2022 IRS 990 Form. Last year, it announced specific $2 million in funding to its sponsorship initiative to help welcome refugees and resettle them in the U.S., according to Airbnb.org’s June 20, 2023, news release.

The organization also announced $1 million to its Refugee Fund to support refugees in the U.S. and Latin America.

ORAM, a $2 million organization, partnered with Airbnb.org in 2022 at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine when thousands of LGBTQ Ukrainians streamed out of the Eastern European country, along with millions of Ukrainians. The two organizations worked in Germany and Poland, providing temporary housing for 240 people as of April 2024, according to Mattie Zazueta, who is Airbnb. org’s senior lead for public policy communications in North America.

Jackson expressed how “meaningful” Airbnb.org’s work with ORAM is.

“It’s really special for us to be able to partner with an organization that has those relationships on the ground,” she said, announcing the expansion of Airbnb.org and ORAM’s partnership with Kenya’s pilot program. “I’m extremely thrilled to be able to share a story about our pilot program in Kenya.”

focus on “the human connection, the person to person, empathy, and collaboration of our organizations.

“That makes a real difference in people’s lives when they’re at their most vulnerable,” Jackson said, adding that Airbnb.org looks forward to “many more years” working with ORAM.

The refugees, Airbnb.org, and ORAM’s stories inspired event guests Alan Stewart and his husband to donate to ORAM that evening.

Stewart, 62, a gay man, said he usually donates to animal and artistic causes but expressed admiration for LGBTQ refugees’ strength to persevere in the face of unrelenting pressures to conform to mainstream society.

“The hopelessness that they must experience,” he said after Luzinda spoke.

Jackson told guests about Irene, a Ugandan refugee who’s a lesbian mother of twin boys, for whom Airbnb.org helped find temporary housing with ORAM’s support in Kenya. Irene, whose last name was not provided, was then able to find more permanent housing and made “real friendships,” Jackson explained, with people who are helping her take care of her twin boys while she completes her livelihood training with ORAM’s support.

She called the partnership between Airbnb.org and ORAM “special” for its

“We have no idea what that’s like.” He echoed Roth stating, “Isn’t that wonderful that they hold on to who they are, so they can be who they are, wherever they are? Fabulous.” Roger Doughty, a gay man who’s president of Horizons Foundation, a nonprofit that provides grants to LGBTQ organizations, also attended the event. LGBTQ refugees have remained his longtime interest through the decades, he told the B.A.R. Doughty started helping LGBTQ refugees at the beginning of his legal career after the late U.S. attorney general Janet Reno declared sexual orientation as a basis for asylum in 1994. Speaking about the importance of ORAM’s work, he said through the decades he’s watched interest in, and support for, LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers’ plight grow from being nonexistent 30 years ago to being a movement.

“There was nothing, and the prominent international human rights organizations didn’t do anything with LGBTQI rights,” Doughty said. “Fortunately, that has changed.

Christine Smith

Gay Ugandan refugee Robert Luzinda attended an ORAM fundraiser in Oakland May 2. He resettled in the East Bay city in May 2023.

Heather Cassell

Daniel is the only candidate for Mayor who comes from outside of the city’s broken politics. As Mayor, he’ll use bold ideas to fight special interests, take on corruption, and deliver accountability and new leadership for the LGBTQIA2S+ community and all of San Francisco.

Mixner leads national honor wall inductees

by Cynthia Laird

G

ay former presidential adviser

David Mixner is among six posthumous inductees this year for the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the historic Stonewall Inn in New York City. The Bay Area Reporter got a sneak peak of this year’s honorees Monday, May 13.

Mixner died March 11 in New York City, as the B.A.R. previously reported. He was 77.

He is best known for advising former President Bill Clinton before the two had a falling out over Clinton implementing the homophobic “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy after winning the White House in the 1992 election. Clinton had campaigned on a pledge to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, but met stiff resistance from many in Congress, military leaders, and conservatives.

DADT was presented as a compromise that would allow gays and lesbians to serve if they remained in the closet. The policy was finally repealed under former President Barack Obama, who signed legislation passed by Congress in 2010, with it becoming effective a year later, in 2011.

Mixner lived for a short time in San Francisco in the late 1970s. While in the city, he worked with the late gay San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk to defeat California Proposition 6, the 1978 Briggs initiative that would have banned gays

from teaching in public schools. He told the B.A.R. during a 2008 phone interview that one of the saddest days of his life was November 27, 1978 – the day that former San Francisco supervisor Dan White assassinated Milk along with then-mayor

George Moscone in their City Hall offices.

“He was one of the funniest people I worked with in politics. He took great joy at needling people effectively,” Mr. Mixner said of Milk. “Another time and place he would have been a U.S. senator.”

The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor recognizes deceased queer individuals. It is sponsored by the International Imperial Court System and the National LGBTQ Task Force. This year’s induction ceremony will take place Thursday, June 27, at 3 p.m. (Pacific Time) at the Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher Street. It comes just ahead of Pride weekends in New York City and San Francisco.

Other inductees

The five other members of this year’s honor class are Cecilia Gentili, Charles Cochrane Jr., Larry Baza, Abilly Jones-Hennin, and Sakia Gunn.

Gentili was an Argentine American transgender woman who advocated for the trans community, sex workers, and those living with HIV/ AIDS. She died February 6 at her home in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn, New York at the age of 52.

An obituary in the New York

Times noted she was a fierce advocate, working at GMC (formerly Gay Men’s Crisis) and other organizations. She lobbied for passage of the New York State Gender and Expression Act in 2019, and was one of two lead plaintiffs in a successful lawsuit against the Trump administration, which tried to roll back protections for trans people in the Affordable Care Act, the paper reported.

CNN later reported that the cause of Gentili’s death was poisoning from fentanyl-laced heroin.

Cochrane was the first New York City police officer to come out as gay. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, it was on November 20, 1981 when he testified before the New York City Council as it debated whether to pass a gay rights bill banning discrimination against gays in employment, housing, and public accommodations.

“I am very proud of being a New York City policeman,” he said. “And I am equally proud of being gay.”

The bill did not pass, but Cochrane’s testimony did make an impact. His decision to come out publicly was one he struggled with for months, according to the website. Cochrane died in 2008 at the age of 64.

Baza was a gay man who was a titan of the arts scene in San Diego. In 2016, lesbian then-Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) appointed Baza to the California Arts Council. Atkins reappointed Baza to the council in 2020 when she was president pro tempore of the state Senate. (Atkins, who is in her last year in the Senate, stepped down from the leadership role earlier this year. She announced in January that she’s running for California governor in 2026.)

Baza was a professional arts administrator who spent his career advocating for the arts at the local, state, and national level, according to the California Arts Council. (https://arts.ca.gov/press-release/ in-memory-of-larry-t-baza-california-arts-council-chair/) He had been chair of the arts council when he died in February 2021 of COVID-19; he was 76.

A Black bisexual, Jones-Hennin founded the first national organization for Black lesbians and gays, according to a Washington Post obituary.

He oversaw health programs in Washington, D.C. during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, and shifted his focus to disability rights as his health declined, the paper noted.

Jones-Hennin died January 19 at his home in Chetumal, Mexico, where he lived part-time. (He also had a home in D.C.) The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease and spinal stenosis, his husband, Cris Hennin, told the Post. He was 81.

Gunn was a 15-year-old Black queer woman who was stabbed to death in what authorities said was a hate crime in New Jersey on May 11, 2003. Gunn and her cousin, Valencia Bailey, who was with her when she died, both came out when they were 12, according to an article on NewJersey.com

Last year in Newark, Academy Street became Sakia Gunn Way. The National LGBTQ Task Force noted that other changes have taken place in the Newark community in the years since Gunn’s killing.

This resource is supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to https://www.cavshate.org/.

“The establishment of the Essex County Office of LGBTQ Affairs, the Newark LGBTQ Center, and the mural on the side of Newark’s McCarter Highway are a few examples of the city’s commitment to the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community,” it stated in a release about the street renaming. t

David Mixner is one of six deceased LGBTQ leaders who will be inducted into the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall Inn in New York City next month.

From Facebook

Volunteers needed for pink triangle display Community News>>

compiled by Cynthia Laird

With Pride Month quickly approaching, organizers of the giant pink triangle installation atop Twin Peaks are asking for volunteers to help with many aspects of the project. This year marks the 29th annual display, co-founder Patrick Carney stated in an email.

Nearly an acre in size, the pink triangle can be seen for miles if San Francisco’s famous fog stays at bay. Like in recent years, the display will remain up for several weeks, beginning Saturday, June 8, which will include a commemoration ceremony that typically draws political leaders, SF Pride grand marshals, and other dignitaries.

Carney stated that even volunteering for one hour would be a big help.

There are six opportunities to assist. The first is Saturday, June 1, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for site cleanup. Carney noted that San Francisco Public Works no longer takes goats up to the site, as the company that brings them stated that a couple of them got sick in the past. Public Works did send a crew up to the site recently to clear some invasive plants, he added.

The next chance to help is from noon to about 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 6, when people will be picking up the pink triangle materials at a warehouse. On Friday, June 7, from noon to about 2 p.m., volunteers will install the pink outline borders, which are made out of hundreds of feet of sailcloth.

Things get going early on Saturday, June 8, with the start of the main installation tarps at 7 a.m. This is followed by the ceremony at 10:30. In addition to speakers, members of the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band (the city’s official band) will perform, along with musical theater star Leanne Borghesi and others.

The pink triangle will come down Sunday, June 30, after the Pride parade. Help is needed from 4 to 8 p.m., Carney noted, adding that this is the hardest day for which to get volunteers. Finally, on Monday, July 1, from noon to 1 p.m., people are needed to unload the pink triangle materials back into the warehouse.

All volunteers will receive a fashionable pink triangle T-shirt, courtesy of Thomas E. Horn, a gay man who used to be publisher of the Bay Area Reporter and who oversees the Bob Ross Foundation, which is named after the paper’s founding publisher.

There’s an important message in displaying the pink triangle, and Carney, a gay man, noted that it’s a reminder and a warning. It was originally used to brand suspected homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps. But it was reclaimed in the 1970s as a symbol of protest against homophobia, and has been used to symbolize LGBTQ+ Pride ever since.

“Part of appreciating and celebrating any Pride is understanding where we have been – and the pink triangle is it,” Carney stated.

Carney is a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission, as the B.A.R. previously noted in 2022 when Mayor London Breed appointed him. He was named to the seat designated for an architect, for which he holds a master’s degree.

For more information on the pink triangle or to donate, go to thepinktriangle.com.

Final gay chorus oral history program

The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus will hold its final Memory Keepers oral history series Thursday, May 16, at 7 p.m. at the Chan National Queer Arts Center, 170 Valencia Street, which is the home of the signing group.

This time, the program will be about the history of the chorus, which was founded in 1978 after its first public performance at a vigil on the steps of San Francisco City Hall following the assassinations of gay supervisor Harvey Milk and thenmayor George Moscone. Featured speakers will be Robert Rufo and Jay Davidson, gay men who were original chorus members; Thomas Kennard, a trans man who joined the chorus after his transition more than 25 years ago; and surprise guests, according to a news release. Artistic director Jacob Stensberg, a gay man, will moderate.

“When I first became aware that SFGMC was seeking a new artistic director, I immediately began to devour all their rich history, which convinced me that I wanted to take a part in their present and future,” Stensberg stated. And, while many chorus members have been lost to HIV/AIDS over the years, Stensberg noted that the organization is lucky to have other long-standing members who are still active with the group.

Tickets for “The History of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus” are pay what you can, with $30 the recommended amount. For tickets and more information, go to https:// tinyurl.com/n6nu8e67.

Lambda Legal SF soiree

Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund will hold its annual San Francisco Soiree Friday, May 17, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Pearl, 601 19th Street.

The event recognizes Lambda Legal’s 50 years of work as attorneys for the LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS communities. CEO Kevin Jennings, a former Obama administration official, will deliver remarks.

The organization will honor attorney Laurie Edelstein, who helped

prepare and argue Lambda Legal’s successful challenge to the Trump administration’s rule revoking regulatory health care protections for LGBTQ people and other vulnerable populations (Whitman-Walker Clinic v. HHS). Edelstein did so from two law firms, Steptoe & Johnson and her current San Francisco firm of Jenner & Block, an announcement noted.

Tickets are $250 and can be purchased at https://tinyurl. com/3wkj4aa5

Last chance for GAPA gala tix

As the B.A.R. has noted in recent articles about gay Congressmember Mark Takano (D-Riverside), he will be keynoting the GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance banquet Saturday, May 18. The event kicks off with a reception at 5:30 at the Marines’ Memorial Club, 609 Sutter Street in San Francisco. The theme is “VANGUARD: Standing for QTAPI Inclusion, Awareness, and Community.”

This year’s honorees include

Vince Crisostomo, a queer Chamorro man who’s the director of aging services at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, who will receive the George Choy Award of Recognition, and the Red Envelope Giving Circle, a grassroots philanthropic organization that will receive the Doug Yaranon Community Ally Award.

The banquet will be hosted by community icon Tita Aida and showcase diverse QTAPI talents, with a program featuring performances by current GAPA royalty Kiki Krunch and Lotus Party, as well as the GAPA Men’s Chorus and members of GAPA Theatre.

Tickets are $100 and can be purchased by visiting https://tinyurl. com/mr2xc5ru.

Queer LifeSpace

daytime gala

Queer LifeSpace’s third annual gala will be held Saturday, May 18, from noon to 5:30 p.m. on the outdoor terrace at 620 Jones Street. The annual daytime event - this year themed “Bridges to Belonging” – raises muchneeded funds for Queer LifeSpace to provide affordable therapy to members of the LGBTQIA+ community, an announcement stated.

Drag artist Juanita MORE! and Sister Roma are returning as cohosts. Entertainment in cludes singer Lambert Moss, beats by Daytime Realness DJ Stanley Frank, and performances by Miss Rahni Nothing more and a singing trio from Serenade Events.

Executive Director Ryan MacCarrigan stated that this year the nonprofit organization has halved ticket prices to $100-$150 compared to previous years in an effort to make the event as inclusive as possible.

In addition to helping provide affordable therapy, proceeds will also help fund Queer LifeSpace’s youth programs like Outlandish, EQUARTY (emerging queer artists), and Rural Youth Outreach. For tickets and more information, go to tickets.queerlifespace.org.

Virtual town hall to prep for trans history month

The Transgender District and statewide LGBTQ rights group Equality California will hold a virtual town hall to prepare for the first official state recognition of Transgender History Month in August. The meeting takes place Tuesday, May 21, at 5:30 p.m.

Last year, as the B.A.R. reported, Assemblymember Matt Haney (DSan Francisco), a straight ally who represents San Francisco’s east side, including the Transgender District, passed House Resolution 57. The resolution did not need Senate approval. It was adopted in September, meaning it was too late for last year’s trans history month. As a result, the first official recognition will be this year. California is the first state to adopt such a resolution.

San Francisco has declared August as Transgender History Month for the past several years.

Organizers of the upcoming call noted that participants will include Honey Mahogany and Jupiter Peraza, who are listed as co-creators of the state recognition. Mahogany, a trans person who served as district director to Haney, was recently named by Mayor London Breed to head the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives. There is no cost to attend the forum. To register, go to https://tinyurl.com/7dytvcty. t

San Francisco Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford spoke at last year’s pink triangle commemoration ceremony.

Hossein Carney

Census eyes August start for LGBTQ questions test

by Matthew S. Bajko

The U.S. Census Bureau is eyeing an August start date for testing sexual orientation and gender identity questions on its American Community Survey. It first must await sign off to do so from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

OMB officials won’t make a determination until after the public comment period ends later this month about the planned summer rollout for testing the SOGI questions. Due to President Joe Biden issuing a directive to see better federal collection of LGBTQ demographic data two years ago during Pride Month in June, it is widely expected the presidential office will give its assent by early July.

“Assuming they will approve the test, we will begin the test later this summer. We are looking at starting the test in August,” said Elizabeth “Eli” Poehler, the assistant division chief for survey methods in the American Community Survey Office, during a recent joint interview with the Bay Area Reporter and several of her census colleagues.

Known as the ACS for short, the federal questionnaire is sent monthly to 295,000 households in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. It is an ongoing collection of detailed housing and socioeconomic data, which the census bureau notes, allows it “to provide timely and relevant housing and socioeconomic statistics, even for low levels of geography.”

The ACS already collects data on same-sex households, similar to the decennial census forms, but has yet to gather individual SOGI data on every person residing at the 3.5 million addresses annually sent the survey to fill out. A decision to permanently include the LGBTQ demographic questions on it would be viewed as a first step toward also adding them to a future census form.

Andrew Roberts, a gay man who is chief of the sex and age statistics branch in the census bureau’s population division, stressed that a final decision about having the ACS ask the SOGI questions is still years away. The process for revising what the survey asks takes five years at minimum, he noted.

“I think the first thing I would say is to note this is just a test. Just because we

From page 1

who just announced he

are testing material doesn’t guarantee it is going to move forward on to the official questionnaire,” said Roberts. “That process to move between testing and implementation is lengthy. We don’t have a specific time frame we can give you.”

As the B.A.R. first reported online May 1, the census bureau announced that Wednesday the planned testing of the SOGI questions on the ACS in order “to meet the needs of other federal agencies that have expressed interest in or have identified legal uses for the information, such as enforcing civil rights and equal employment measures.”

Under the testing proposal the survey’s third question would ask what a person’s sex was assigned at birth, while question four would inquire about the person’s current gender. The answers given as options on the ACS would include transgender and nonbinary, plus there would be a box to write in whatever term used by the person.

Question 26 on the ACS would ask about a person’s sexual orientation with four different options listed. The first would be “gay or lesbian.” Second would be “straight, that is not gay or lesbian.” Third would be “bisexual,” with a fourth option to write in a different term used by the person.

How the test questions are phrased “is based on extensive research that has been conducted at least as far back as 2016,” noted Amy Symens Smith, a se-

stand the impact of the current DCYF proposal,” he said. “I have also met with DCYF leadership to express my concerns. I am working with colleagues on the Youth

nior demographer for sex, age and gender identity in the population division.

For the hundreds of thousands of households sent the ACS to fill out, one person is asked to respond to the survey on behalf of their entire household. The SOGI questions on it are to be asked about people 15 years of age or older, and the form can be responded to online, by paper questionnaire, or by phone.

Smith acknowledged that children are coming out as LGBTQ even younger than age 15. But they chose that age as the cut off point based on other surveys with SOGI questions also using it and finding it generated higher quality responses.

“We are keeping abreast of surveys in place in the federal system, as well as international practices about collecting information about SOGI. Right now it is decided 15 is the appropriate age for asking about this,” she said.

Some concerns

The test is meant to see how people respond to the questions, how they answer them, and if the wording used is confusing or clear-cut to respondents. Some LGBTQ advocates have expressed objections to the phrasing used for the answer choices that will be tested on the form. The option presented for people who are heterosexual, for instance, has been criticized, with gay retired demographer Gary Gates telling the Associated Press earlier this year it is “patently offensive.”

chopping block if the budget cuts go through. They said that the program helps young people get more invested in their futures and their education.

“It’s organizations like this that cultivate not only community, but a safety net, and a reason to stay in the city,” Tinoco said. “I know people who weren’t motivated in high school until they came to LYRIC. They find if they want to continue this work, education is what supplements it, so it got them to be motivated at school.”

Tinoco is graduating from San Francisco State University this month. After

Obituaries >>

Michael Davenport passed away peacefully on April 27, 2024 after a long illness. He is survived by Steven Hamilton, his partner of 15 years, a brother, and sister. He was born in New York and was involved at an early age with his family’s clothing business. He later ran a successful art gallery in New York City, then became an interior designer in Philadelphia and started a museum in New Jersey. He then moved west, ending up in San Francisco. He was the manager and buyer for a men’s clothing department in San Francisco and was well liked by customers for his expertise and interesting stories.

His travels took him to Paris, London, Prague, and Berlin, among other

questions, as they are not set in stone. The wording set to be tested later this year will be evaluated and could evolve over time, he noted.

“This is a first step in an iterative process to add this content to the questionnaire. We do have a research agenda that includes potentially testing different iterations or additional topics as funding and resources are made available down the line,” he said. “This is the first step in this process. ... Just because the wording is now based on recommendations from OMB and the National Academy of Sciences doesn’t mean this will not evolve over time as we are able to do more research.”

Former census bureau official Nancy Bates, a lesbian who is an expert on SOGI data collection, wrote in an email to the B.A.R. May 2 she was pleased to see nonbinary listed as an answer choice and that people would be given the option to write-in whatever term they use for their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Having people age 15 and older answer the SOGI questions “seems appropriate,” added Bates. She was pleased to see the inclusion of “cognitive interview-type” follow-up questions to better understand how people arrive at their answers, such as would they prefer to mark all that apply for their gender identity, and if so, how would that change their answers.

“This test is extremely critical and will move the needle forward on our understanding of SOGI reporting using a single household proxy to report for all members,” wrote Bates, who is vice chair of the 2030 Census Advisory Committee. Were changes to be made now to the wording of the SOGI questions that will be tested on the ACS, it would require additional public comment and delay the process.

“I think it is fair to say, at this point, it is unlikely we would change those questions. Unless we delayed the test,” said Poehler.

Roberts with the census bureau told the B.A.R. that the agency remains in contact with outside experts and advocacy groups focused on LGBTQ populations about how to word the SOGI

June, they don’t know if they’ll still have a job with LYRIC.

“Cutting the budget doesn’t mean saving money,” Tinoco said. “It means divesting from the people who make the city what it is.”

Representatives and clients from the organizations facing cuts made their voices heard at a Board of Supervisors Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing May 8. (The committee is tasked with hashing out the city’s budget.) Ruben Leon, a 21-year-old Latinx person who is still determining where they fall under the LGBTQ umbrella, discussed

places. He loved men’s fashion, art, and travel.  Toward the end of his life, he started writing fiction as a hobby. He will be missed by all who loved him for his generosity and endless optimism.

Thomas Fontaine

September 24, 1949 – April 27, 2024

Thomas Bertrand Fontaine, 74, of Nobleboro, Maine, passed away peacefully on April 27, 2024. Tom was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, and graduated from California State University, Long Beach in 1977 with degrees in ceramics and art history. After graduation he lived and worked in Long Beach and Los Angeles as a ceramic artist before moving to San Francisco in the mid-1980s. He worked for over

While being asked about one’s sexual orientation or gender identity would seem to require a rather straightforward process, and something LGBTQ individuals are encountering more frequently these days, Roberts noted that the terminology and lingo used in discussing SOGI may not be so easy for others to comprehend. It is imperative that everyone understands what they are being asked when they answer the SOGI questions, he added.

“If someone answers incorrectly, it could have big impacts on the estimates we are putting out,” said Roberts. “If people do not answer correctly that could make the data meaningless pretty quickly.”

As for seeing SOGI questions on the 2030 census forms, Roberts cautioned it is too soon to know. With the ACS, the census bureau is responding to formal requests from other federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice, to add the LGBTQ content, he said.

“The process for adding content to the 2030 census is different. We are not quite there yet, so we can’t comment on the possibility of this content being added to the 2030 census form,” said Roberts. “Certainly, it is not out of the question. We are not at the point of discussing that yet.”

The wording for the SOGI test questions can be found at https://tinyurl. com/2p98n3wv.

Written comments and recommendations about the testing of the SOGI questions on the ACS should be submitted by May 30 online via the website https://tinyurl.com/kn7fn5pt. t

the looming 56% cut to the community center’s youth services drop-in budget.

“A 56% cut from the center’s youth services drop-in budget looks like: cutting off our access to food and clothing, cutting access to gender-affirming care and resources, taking opportunities away to build connection, love and joy,” Leon told the supervisors. “Making it more difficult to access safe bathrooms and spaces for queer and trans folks who are fleeing to San Francisco, destroying one of the only safe spaces for queer and

See page 15 >>

a decade handling office operations and subscriber relations at AIDS Treatment News on Church Street.

Tom loved the Bay Area and the North Coast counties. During his years there he took full advantage of the natural beauty and vibrant arts and food scene. He loved museums and galleries, theater, movies, live music venues, restaurants, and farmers markets.

In 1992 he met his partner of 32 years, John D. Adams, and they lived together in San Francisco and Oakland before moving to Maine, settling in Nobleboro in 2002.

In addition to his partner, Tom is survived by family in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Florida, and California. He will be deeply missed by dear friends from Maine, California, and beyond.

A complete obituary and memorial page are available through StrongHancock Funeral Home in Damariscotta, Maine, at stronghancock.com

This part of the test form the U.S. Census Bureau is using for its American Community Survey.

Courtesy USCB

Andrew Roberts of the U.S. Census Bureau

From LinkedIn

Plummer,

LGBTQ club fights to stay alive amid downtown woes

by John Ferrannini

ASouth of Market LGBTQ nightclub that caters to the Latino community and is one of the few local queer bars owned by a person of color, is turning to the public to keep its doors open.

Rakesh Modi, a gay man who owns Club OMG at 43 Sixth Street, started a GoFundMe to raise $100,000 for his business, which is in debt and at risk of closing, he said. There will also be an in-person fundraiser Saturday, May 18, at 10 p.m.

The GoFundMe has only raised $2,246 as of press time, despite being up for over a month.

Modi said in a phone interview that the trouble began due to the COVID pandemic and was exacerbated by the decline in foot traffic in downtown San Francisco.

“The Castro came back [from COVID], and some areas were not fortunate enough to come back, so we’re in that situation,” Modi said. “We’re hoping things planned for downtown, the revitalization, turn around, but meanwhile we have to pay off the debt. There’s big credit card debt and if you know, fees, the interest rate is so high and that keeps increasing. If we get out of debt, that will help us survive.”

Modi said that during the COVID lockdowns he received a small paycheck protection program loan, which was forgiven, and took out other U.S. Small Business Administration loans to pay operating expenses. Though the bar was closed, the beer tap and dispensing system had to be kept on, leading to large Pacific Gas and Electric bills, he said.

“We had to keep paying PG&E because the machines that run the beer systems and such needed to be on so we couldn’t turn off everything, to keep them alive,” he said. “That takes up a lot of energy.”

When COVID business restrictions tapered down in 2021, the bar did see more crowds, Modi said. But COVID helped precipitate a longerterm downturn for downtown San Francisco, as people keep working from home, businesses continue an exodus, and national media focuses on property crime and the fentanyl epidemic. According to a report from the Institute of Governmental Studies released last year, downtown San Francisco ranked last among 62 North American cities in recovering from the COVID pandemic.

“The first few months were great,” Modi said. “Everyone was ready to get back to the bars. However, things had changed. A lot of people stopped going to work downtown, a lot of retail started closing one by one, and so people who worked at those stores who went to OMG, or people that worked downtown who had a drink after work – we had a happy hour that was really good before COVID – all of that dried out. Being on Sixth Street, we felt the effects more than other places.”

While the city has been working on revitalization efforts – such as Mayor London Breed’s push for an outdoor entertainment zone on Front Street between California and Sacramento streets and the new monthly Chinatown night market and First Thursdays street festival in SOMA – Modi said that isn’t really hitting Sixth Street south of Market Street, which is impacted by openair drug use and sales.

Club OMG first opened its doors 12 years ago, Modi said. After the closure of Esta Noche in 2014, it became “sort of the home bar for the Latino community, especially the first-generation Latino community that don’t necessarily speak English, or that’s not their first language.”

“They like to have community events and fundraisers, birthdays, and fundraisers for those who’ve passed, especially the trans community,” Modi said.

Indeed, Club OMG – open five days a week now, instead of six –hosts a Latin drag show at 10 p.m. on Sunday nights and “two or three” Latin nights a month, Modi said. In addition there’s a comedy night at 7 p.m. Tuesdays and an underwear night at 10 p.m. Wednesdays. The club is closed Mondays and Thursdays.

Christian Palominos is a gay man who promotes the club’s events that cater to the Latino community.

“OMG has been a very strong supporter of the Latin LGBTQ community for many years,” Palominos stated to the B.A.R. “We want to give back and support the club in their time of need.”

Palominos asked people to come to the fundraiser this Saturday; all the performers will be donating their tips to the club. It will be co-hosted by drag performer Vicky Jimenez, who did not return a request for comment for this report.

“We hope a lot of people can join us to donate to OMG,” Palominos stated. Modi said that venues like Club OMG help “communities that are marginalized” feel free to be their authentic selves, and promote the “arts and culture that keep San Francisco alive.”

District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a gay man who represents the district including Club OMG, did not return a request for comment. t

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Schaaf said that recently, Moore and Wood had been mostly living in Orange County to be closer to Wood’s family. Moore maintained an apartment in Oakland, Schaaf said. Moore had also been spending time with her family in Oklahoma City, which is where she celebrated her 60th birthday.

“I was on a Zoom call with her days ago,” Schaaf said.

Kaplan stated that Moore was a “dedicated community leader.”

“May her memory be a blessing,” she wrote in a text message. “Her death is a shock and a great loss.”

Congressmember Barbara Lee (DOakland) knew both women.

“I’m heartbroken to hear of the tragic loss of Peggy Moore and Hope Wood,” Lee wrote on X. “Peggy was a friend, an activist, and one of the best organizers I knew. Her passion and fight for justice and equality is what brought her and

Presiding justice From page 1

“He displays the utmost integrity. He epitomizes decency,” said Adam, who also complimented Martinez as someone who “listens and he has a strong sense of humor. Something undoubtedly you will need as presiding justice.”

Chairing the May 14 hearing was California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, who was joined on the commission by Attorney General Rob Bonta and Senior Presiding Justice Arthur Gilbert of the 2nd District Court of Appeal. In an April 29 letter to the commissioners, the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation disclosed it had rated Martinez as “well qualified” to serve as a presiding justice.

“According to commission rules, that rating reflects the commission’s determination that Justice Martinez possesses qualities and attributes indicative of a superior fitness to perform the appellate judicial function with a high degree of skill, effectiveness, and distinction, and is well qualified for the position of presiding justice on the appellate court,” wrote JNE commission chair Chhaya Malik.

Of the 13 people contacted anonymously by the attorney general’s office about Martinez’s nomination, all commented that he was either “smart,” “collaborative,” “very hardworking,” or “very friendly.” None objected to seeing

<< Political Notebook

From page 7

California legislators in 2009 declared his birthday a day of special significance to annually be observed. Since then an increasing number of jurisdictions across the Golden State mark the occasion with various events.

In San Francisco, Castro leaders and LGBTQ advocates will be marking Harvey Milk Day early since it falls on a Wednesday this year. The annual community celebration will

<< Out in the World

From page 8

“ORAM plays an extremely important role in that along with some of the other international LGBTQI organizations,” he continued. He pointed to the development of LGBTQ-founded and led organizations, like ORAM, along with LGBTQ programs at international human rights organizations, “that

Hope together. “Together they organized, changed hearts and minds, and helped to create a world where who you love doesn’t limit your freedoms,” she added. “Both Peggy and Hope made an impact on our community, on our city, on our state, and on our nation that will be felt for generations to come.”

Started consulting firm

In 2019, Moore and Wood, 48, started Hope Action Change Consulting. On the site, they wrote that they fell in love while working on the 2008 Obama campaign.

“As women of color, we are experts at the dance of values in the workplace,” they wrote on the site. “We have lived outside the main streets of society in the intersections of our gender and our race, and we have learned to navigate a path through many streets where we have not been welcome. Despite the difficulties of this journey, we are full of optimism for where our path leads.”

Moore and Wood were married in

him be confirmed, though one fellow jurist he has worked with noted Martinez “is new and still learning his role as appellate justice” and stated they believe “the role of Presiding Justice may be challenging for him for the first few years, particularly with the backlog of pending cases.”

Another jurist also pointed to Martinez’s “very little experience as a justice,” but they complemented his “strong work ethic” and noted he “works long hours.” They, too, expressed concern “about the backlog of cases that Justice Martinez must address, which could be more challenging with the additional duties as Presiding Justice.”

A third jurist said that “Martinez engaged in collaborative decision making, showed humility, and had appreciation for the significance of the legal issues in their cases that will benefit the court.” They also felt “he absolutely, and without hesitation,” should be confirmed.

Gilbert joked about how quickly Martinez was chosen to be a presiding justice, having just confirmed him as an appellate court jurist less than a year ago.

“You look familiar. Weren’t you just here last week?” he quipped before noting that he had spoken to many of his colleagues on the appeals court who all remarked “how wonderful it is to work with you.”

In her letter, Malik noted that “combined with his breadth of legal experience, Justice Martinez’s unique

be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, May 19.

Attendees are invited to gather at 573 Castro Street, a city landmark due to it once housing Milk’s business, campaign HQ, and upstairs residence, at 1 p.m. for a processional march to Jane Warner Plaza at 17th and Castro streets led by the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, the city’s official band. (Back in 1978 it had made “a splash” by marching up Market Street with Milk’s convertible in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, as the band notes on its website.)

have become much larger and much stronger.”

Hertz and Roth told the B.A.R. that 150 people were invited to the event. Donors gave $6,000 before the event, Roth said. Another $2,000 was raised after the event, according to Kyle Kvamme, communications and development coordinator at ORAM, who wrote to the B.A.R. that donations continue to come in along with funding from Airbnb.org.

a ceremony at Oakland’s Lake Merritt on July 29, 2013. It was a month prior that same-sex marriage returned to being legalized in California after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an appeals court decision that Proposition 8, the samesex marriage ban passed by voters in 2008, was unconstitutional.

On Facebook, friends remembered the couple.

“We want you to know how much we loved you both,” Brendalynn Goodall, a member of the Alameda County Democratic County Central Committee, and her wife, Nancy Hinds, wrote. “The news of your passing has left us feeling shocked, numb, and incredibly sad. It’s hard to believe you are no longer here. You were more than just friends – you were family.

“We shared so many unforgettable memories and experiences together – from life’s ups and downs to discussions about politics, community, family, relationships, careers, and even our beloved pets,” added Goodall. “We were always there for each other, through

background and identity as the son of immigrants, a first-generation college graduate, and an openly gay man would add a diverse and fresh perspective to the role of presiding justice.”

In a letter of support from 15 legal associations for LGBTQ and people of color attorneys from across the state, leaders of the regional unity bars called Martinez “the epitome of the American Dream” and someone “eminently qualified” to be a presiding justice.

“It is undisputed that Justice Martinez is exceptionally thoughtful, compassionate, and an inspirational collegial leader. As Presiding Justice, he will enhance a spirit of cooperation that is expected from those who serve in leadership roles,” they wrote.

Growing up

Martinez grew up the oldest of four children in a farm worker labor camp in the San Joaquin Valley, as his non-English speaking Mexican immigrant parents toiled in the nearby fields. As Malik noted in her letter, which she read at the confirmation hearing, the family was devastated by the death of one of his siblings when Martinez was a teen.

“Justice Martinez’s humility and empathy derive from personal tragedy at a young age,” noted Malik. “Justice Martinez lost his sister to leukemia in high school; and because his parents did not speak English, he translated for his parents regarding

At the public plaza in front of the historic Twin Peaks gay bar will be speeches, music, and other goingson that afternoon. Also taking place from noon to 5 p.m. that Sunday will be the neighborhood’s art-focused Castro Stroll event along the sidewalks of Castro Street from Market to 19th and 18th Street from Collingwood to Noe.

“May 19th is going to be an extra special exciting day in the Castro as we also celebrate Harvey Milk’s birthday. The LGBTQ Freedom Band will play in front of Harvey’s Camera Shop (573 Castro) starting

Helping more LGBTQ

refugees

Roth provided a brief history for the guests of the organization’s 16 years working in transit countries for refugees.

ORAM was founded in San Francisco in 2008 by gay human rights activist Neil Grungras. The B.A.R. previously reported Grungras stepped down from helming the organization in 2019. That same year, Roth took the lead as the organiza -

thick and thin.”

Longtime DJ Page Hodel was also stunned by the news. “I am still doubled over ... literally speechless over hearing the news of the tragic passing of our beloved Peggy Moore and her wife Hope Wood,” she wrote on Facebook.

Moore is also remembered for cofounding Sistahs Steppin’ in Pride, which took place in Oakland beginning in the early 2000s. Kaplan mentioned it as one of Moore’s accomplishments.

For a decade, it brought the East Bay’s diverse queer women’s community together in celebration during the last weekend of August. Up to 2,000 queer women attended the event at its peak, Moore told the B.A.R. in 2011, the last year of the march.

The event had started as the East Bay’s version of the dyke march held in San Francisco and took place in conjunction with the old East Bay Pride. When that event stopped in 2003, Sistahs Steppin’ in Pride stepped up, so to speak, to make sure there was a queer presence in the East Bay.

treatment options and worsening prognoses. These experiences inspired tenacity and grit to find the inner strength to pursue his education and to become the first of his family to attend college.”

Martinez graduated from Harvard in 1998 and later earned his law degree from the Ivy League school in 2003. He worked at several large law firms in San Francisco before becoming a partner in the Appellate and Supreme Court Practice Group at Squire Patton Boggs from 2007 to 2017.

During 2015 and 2016 he chaired the LGBT Division of the Hispanic National Bar Association. In that capacity, Martinez organized the first nationwide LGBT Division Summit.

For two years Martinez served as a deputy solicitor general in the California Attorney General’s Office. Martinez then returned to the law firm until joining Newsom’s administration. He will now earn an annual salary of $272,902 as a presiding justice.

In a letter of support California Latino Judges Association President Thomas A. Delaney and Vice President Sergio C. Tapia II wrote, “by all accounts, Justice Martinez understands and respects people for who they are, not how others may perceive them. He has the emotional intelligence, the patience, and the interest in people that have served him very well throughout his career,

at 1 p.m. and then will march up Castro to Jane Warner Plaza,” noted Castro Merchants Association President Terry Asten Bennett, a straight ally whose family has long owned Cliff’s Variety on the 400 block of Castro Street. “The theme of this year’s event is coalition building. This is a fun-filled way to learn about Harvey Milk’s legacy and carry it forward.”

LGBTQ SF mayoral forum

The Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club is hosting an LGBTQ Mayoral Town Hall May 21 with all

tion’s second leader.

At the time there were only three employees and a small budget. Five years later, Roth said ORAM has grown to a team of 15 employees working in the U.S., Central Europe, Kenya, and Mexico.

ORAM joined Alight, its parent organization, in 2017. Alight is a humanitarian organization that works with displaced people around the world.

Roth told the B.A.R. he is excited

The new Oakland Pride started in 2010. Last year, a combined Oakland Pride and Pridefest parade and festival were held in early September.

Wood was a former teaching fellow for Harvard Kennedy School’s Leadership Organizing, Action: Leading Change course and a UCLA teacher education program alumna, according to the couple’s consulting website. She had devoted more than two decades of her life to organizing across California and the United States.

Moore and Wood’s friend Lisbet Tellefsen organized an impromptu memorial Sunday, May 12, at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater where Moore and Wood were married. Schaaf said that she attended.

“There were lots of [people wearing] Sistahs Steppin’ in Pride and Moore for City Council T-shirts,” Schaaf said.

“She was an amazing leader for the LGBTQ+ community,” Schaaf added. “She brought her full self to everything she did.” t

including as Associate Justice. These experiences, these characteristics make him uniquely qualified to serve in the critically important leadership role of Presiding Justice in the Second District, Division Seven.”

Other justices

The commission as expected also confirmed Tuesday Superior Court Judges Natalie P. Stone in Los Angeles and Tara Desautels in San Francisco as associate appellate justices. Newsom nominated Stone to fill Martinez’s vacant seat on the 2nd Court of Appeal’s Division Seven. Desautels was nominated by the governor to fill the vacancy created on the 1st District Court of Appeal’s Division Two by his elevation of lesbian Justice Therese Stewart as its presiding justice. The appellate court covers the Bay Area region and has five divisions with four justices each.

Serving as its administrative presiding justice is gay Justice Jim Humes. The other out presiding justice is Laurie M. Earl, a lesbian who presides over the 3rd District Court of Appeal.

Altogether there are six known out Court of Appeal members in the state. Gay Associate Justice David Rubin joined the 4th District Court of Appeal’s Division One last year. Gay Associate Justice Luis A. Lavin serves with Martinez in the 2nd District on its Division Three bench. t

five of the top Democratic candidates seeking to become San Francisco’s next mayor on the November 5 ballot. The event next Tuesday will take place from 6:30 to 9:10 p.m. at the First Unitarian Universalist Church located at 1167 Franklin Street.

Those wishing to attend in person can RSVP online at https://tinyurl. com/mrynkpay.

To register to watch the forum remotely go to https://tinyurl.com/ bdcvwnc7 t

about ORAM’s future as it continues to grow, noting the organization’s three-year strategic plan launched last year, which will strengthen the nonprofit and its work.

To donate to ORAM, visit its website at oramrefugee.org. t

Got international LGBTQ news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at WhatsApp/Signal: 415517-7239, or oitwnews@gmail.com.

t Community News>>

trans youth in the city, a place that is a haven for so many of us.”

District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, the budget and appropriations committee’s chair, told the B.A.R. that “while we have not seen the mayor’s budget, we have heard from the community about the potential cuts and service reduction they are facing. I will use every legislative tool available to me to make sure San Francisco does not balance its budget on the backs of our most vulnerable, including our LGBTQ youth and community.”

Gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the Castro on the Board of Supervisors, is vice chair this year of the budget and appropriations committee, as well as the budget and finance committee. He said he’s going “to try to fix this” when asked by the B.A.R. about the expected financial hit to the youth service providers.

“It’s very concerning,” Mandelman said of the cuts to LYRIC, which is in his district, “especially in the context of other cuts to organizations serving queer youth,” referring to the center and Larkin Street. “We’re actively engaged with the mayor’s budget office and impacted nonprofits to try to fix this.”

District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar also sits on both budget committees. In her district newsletter she stated that “we need to focus on the basics to keep our city running as efficiently as possible.”

“I also believe we need to be prudent in investing only in programs that will deliver long-term results for the vitality of San Francisco’s future,” she continued. “To me, this means supporting youth and family services with proven track records and expanding quality child care to grow back our workforce.”

Board President Aaron Peskin, who represents District 3 and is running for mayor in November, is a member of the budget and appropriations committee. He was unavailable to comment as of press time.

District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton also serves on that budget committee. A spokesperson stated that his budget priorities are “maintaining critical services,” “addressing affordability,” “decreasing inequities,” “community/neighbor-

Legals>>

hood safety” and “services for the unhoused.”

District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí introduced a resolution at the supervisors’ May 14 meeting calling on Breed to restore $25 million in planned cuts to DCYF.

“It’s unconscionable that we’re preparing to enhance facilities for pandas while our children’s programs face devastating cuts,” stated Safaí, who is also running for mayor but is not on the budget committee. “This is about prioritizing our future, our children. If we can rally to fund a home for pandas, then we can certainly unite to fund the essential programs our youth rely on. We need a budget that shows we care equally about all parts of our community, from our beloved pandas to our precious children.”

The pandas he’s referring to are to be sent by China to the San Francisco Zoo. ABC7 reported in February that zoo officials estimated $25 million is needed build a new facility for the pandas, and Breed is pushing legislation (https://www.sf.gov/ news/mayor-breed-kickstarts-fundraising-efforts-support-giant-pandas) to make it easier to raise the funds.

Rebecca Rolfe, a lesbian who is the executive director of the San Francisco LGBT center, said that the youth services drop-in is “really the cornerstone of our services” because it is where youth get connected to the services and agencies they need.

“We don’t have any final answers,” Rolfe, who’s an SF Pride community grand marshal this year, told the B.A.R. “I know people [at City Hall] are concerned about it and working on it but that’s something they’d have to answer. We don’t have any assurances at this point.”

And Rolfe said there may be more

reductions to come, and soon.

“These are sadly just cuts from the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families so we have not learned about other cuts from other departments,” Rolfe said. “We know the mayor is concerned about homelessness in general and trans homelessness and she’s interested in how this can be addressed, and we’re looking to her and our city leaders as to how do we not abandon these young people.”

Sherilyn Adams, a lesbian who’s CEO of Larkin Street Youth Services, told the B.A.R. that the cuts there would be impacting its youth workforce and youth leadership programs, which will not be funded.

“We are trying to help folks heal from their trauma and so supporting our young people and having leadership opportunities for them is critical for their wellness and their healing, so we are hoping the funding will be restored,” Adams said to the B.A.R.

The total budget for LYRIC in 2022 was $4.5 million, according to publicly available information from its latest IRS Form 990. The SF LGBT center’s total budget that year was $5.9 million. Larkin Street Youth Services’ was $33.8 million.

Breed prioritizes youth, staff says

A spokesperson for Breed returned a request for comment with a lengthy statement detailing her promises of future funding.

“While it’s still too early to confirm the proposed budget, Mayor Breed continues to prioritize the needs of children, youth, and their families,” the spokesperson stated.

“This year, again, the city is facing an extremely challenging budget, but Mayor Breed is maximizing every dollar to make a positive impact

on San Franciscan families across the city even when tough decisions have to be made. City departments across San Francisco are dedicating resources to serve children, youth, and their families every day.”

The spokesperson continued that “children, youth and families deserve high-quality programs and services. Through DCYF, Mayor Breed has committed $92 million to fund over 142 agencies and 231 programs citywide, or $460 million over the next five years.”

That includes “over $31 million to provide out of school time programming, over $19 million in youth workforce development to support and prepare youth ages 14-17, justice involved youth 14-24, and disconnected transitional-aged youth (TAY) ages 18-24 for work, nearly $13 million in justice services to facilitate early intervention, youth violence prevention, and rehabilitation,” the spokesperson stated.

Additionally, the spokesperson stated, the mayor has committed “over $12 million to provide children and youth enrichment and skill-building opportunities, almost $9M in youth and family empowerment programs, (and) almost $7 million in educational supports to set students up for success to achieve their academic goals.”

LYRIC raising cash through events

In the meantime, LYRIC has taken to asking the public for help via fundraisers. As the B.A.R. previously reported, the organization will be the beneficiary of Brite Nite, which will be Saturday, May 25, at 8 p.m., anchored in Harvey Milk Plaza at Castro and Market streets. That night partygoers are invited to come dressed in clothing that glows in the dark along with neon accessories, such as that which can be bought at Knobs at 432 Castro Street.

According to Andrea Aiello, a lesbian who is executive director of the Castro Community Benefit District, “cash people will walk around with buckets” to collect donations. The event is being put on in consultation with Comfort and Joy – the queer Burning Man group that produces popular parties several times a year, including Club Six in the South of Market neighborhood. It’s being funded by the Civic Joy Fund – which seeks to revitalize San Francisco post-COVID.

LYRIC will also be the beneficiary of the Pride Pour wine tasting fundraising event Saturday, June 1, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Terra Gallery and Event Venue at 511 Harrison Street. People can learn more at bit.ly/ PridePour24.

Lala-Chávez hopes people show up to support the nonprofit. The event will be emceed by Honey Mahogany, director of the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives.

“We’re really hoping for people to donate if they can come to Pride Pour or donate to Pride Pour,” LalaChávez said. “We’re hoping to sell as many tickets as possible. Any amount will be significant. This money alone will go to support career development efforts. Last year alone we gave $500,000 to youth in salaries. We’re hoping to put every revenue we get aside for career development efforts.”

Mahogany told the B.A.R. that “especially now, due to all the hateful rhetoric and anti-LGBTQ+ laws targeting queer and trans children, our kids are experiencing disproportionately poor mental health outcomes. It’s important to shore up organizations like LYRIC that are doing the work to provide these youth and their families with support. Our kids need to feel safe, seen and heard. With so many states infringing upon the rights of LGBTQ+ children and their parents, we are likely going to see an uptick in people seeking services. I want to make sure that both LYRIC and those kids are set up for success.”

Drag artist Juanita MORE! also announced that LYRIC will be the beneficiary of her annual Pride party, now celebrating its 20th year, at 620 Jones Street on Sunday, June 30, at noon.

“This year, I have chosen the LYRIC Center of LGBTQQ Youth (Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center) in the San Francisco Bay Area as my annual Pride Party beneficiary,” MORE! stated. “I have an immense amount of respect for our queer elders and a responsibility to empower our queer youth. Our community has thrived because of the brave generations before us; those legends planted the seeds of love, compassion, strength, and resilience. My duty as a community leader is to keep those planted seeds alive. I want to keep building our future by supporting our queer youth in their quest to carry on the legacy of our queer elders.” t

FILE A-0403189 The following person(s) is/are doing business as MEOW MEOW GREENS, 221 MONTANA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed IMELDA MEILI HAU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/19/2024. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/19/2024. APR 25, MAY 02, 09, 16, 2024

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0403191 The following person(s) is/are doing business as MAIL BOX PLUS, 1450 SUTTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed LOUISE M. FONG-WANG & STEVE FONG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/16/1992. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/22/2024. APR 25, MAY 02, 09, 16, 2024 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0403034 The following person(s) is/are doing business as AMERICA SCORES BAY AREA, 1016 PIERCE ST, SAN

Rebecca Rolfe, executive director of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center

Courtesy SF Pride Larkin Street Youth Services CEO Sherilyn Adams

James Irvine Foundation

by Victoria A. Brownworth

Get ready, Little Monsters, Mother Monster is back to remind Taylor Swift and Beyoncé they aren’t the only queens.

The HBO Original concert special “Gaga Chro-

matica Ball” debuts Saturday, May 25 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.

HBO says: “In front of a sold-out crowd of 52,000 people, 13-time Grammy, and Academy Award winner Lady Gaga delivers a careerdefining performance at Los Angeles’s Dodger

Stadium during her 2022 Chromatica Ball Tour. It delivers breathtaking live performances of some of Gaga’s biggest and most cherished hits, including ‘Stupid Love,’ ‘Bad Romance,’ ‘Just Dance,’ ‘Poker Face,’ ‘Shallow,’ ‘Rain On Me’ and more.

HBO effuses, “The film delivers huge show-

stopping moments and intimate piano numbers, complete with heart-stopping choreography, intense pyrotechnics and an array of iconic outfit changes as only Gaga does. This is Lady Gaga as you’ve never seen her before.”

by Brian Bromberger

There was a time not so long ago when in order to see the latest episode of your favorite cult weekly TV program, you had to sit in front of your set at a fixed time. If you missed a show, you were out of luck (or waited until it was rerun during the summer), especially if it had a continuing plot.

There was an almost obsessive, even hypnotic quality to immersing oneself in a show, with the waiting in-between adding to the excitement and anticipation of craving that installment, especially if you shared the experience with family or friends. You couldn’t stop yourself from watching and these shows became not just entertainment, but lifelines, especially for queer folk.

Somehow, today’s binge behavior, viewing an entire season within a matter of hours or one day, which is largely a solitary pursuit and so easily accessible, lacks that enthusiastic suspense element.

The new film “I Saw the TV Glow” (distributed by A24) both revels in this compulsive escapism but critiques our culture’s fixation with nostalgia as a kind of cocoon and the ways we find and identify ourselves in the shows we eyeball, especially when what happens on the screen becomes more real than one’s own life.

Think pink

Shy monotone Owen (played by Ian Foreman in junior high, then by Justice Smith in high school and as an adult), is a lonely high school teenager whose father is abusive (he later calls “The Pink Opaque” a girl’s

Justice Smith and Brigette LundyPayne in ‘I Saw the TV Glow’

Dead on

How can you not want to watch the new Netflix series, “Dead Boy Detectives?” The title alone is a lure. Plus, dear readers, it’s queer AF. Based on the DC Comics series, “Dead Boy Detectives” by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner, the series fol lows the ghosts of Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) and Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) who decided not to enter the afterlife and instead stay on Earth to investigate crimes that involve the supernatural.

life have also been significant voices on Black Twitter from whom we have learned oh-so-much, shared the nightmare of the Trump presidency and with whom we have also had so much fun.

Hulu has a new series chronicling how the phenomenon of Black Twitter is so strong, even the racist, migrant-hating nepo baby Elon Musk, who Black Twitter calls Apartheid Clyde, can’t kill it.

Edwin is a ghost detective who was killed in 1916 when his classmates performed a sacrifice ritual as a prank to scare him, inadvertently unleashing a demon (Sa’al) who took him to Hell. Charles is Edwin’s partner who died in 1989 from hypothermia and internal bleeding.

Edwin and Charles are best friends, ghosts and the best detectives on the mortal plane. They will do anything to stick together – including escaping evil witches, Hell and Death (Kirby) herself. With the help of a clairvoyant named Crystal (Kassius Nelson) and her friend Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), they are able to crack some of the mortal realm’s most mystifying paranormal cases.

Both Edwin and Charles are queer in the series, and representation of the LGBTQ+ community was something the show’s creators wanted to put a focus on in this comic book adaptation. No spoilers, so you’ll just have to watch to see how this story plays out.

Black @ So some of our closest friends in real

“Black Twitter: A People’s History” is based on Jason Parham’s Wired article “A People’s History of Black Twitter.” Director Prentice Penny partnered with Parham, senior writer at Wired, to document the history of Black people shaping and dominating that social media space.

This three-part docuseries charts the rise, the movements, the voices and the memes that made Black Twitter an influential and dominant force in nearly every aspect of American

political and cultural life.

On MSNBC, Robyn Autry writes, “‘A People’s History’ celebrates how Black people did with Twitter what Black people always do when confronted with the blandness of the mainstream: We transform it. ‘Sure, it was created by someone else; it’s embedded with the values of that creator,’ media scholar Meredith Clark says on screen, ‘but because my mind is expansive, I am going to disrupt, remix, and cut this up, and deliver it the way that I want it to go.’” Watch. It’s fabulous.

Borders up

A new YouTube LGBTQ+ docuseries from SLlama Productions, “Beyond Borders,” delves into the lives of queer and trans people around the globe. SLlama founder Samantha Luque tells the Bay Area Reporter, “‘Beyond Borders,’ sheds light on the diverse and vibrant LGBTQ+ communities across the globe. The first season focuses on the United States, with a spotlight on Flor-

ida, where the LGBTQ+ community confronts distinctive challenges amidst anti-gay legislation. Through riveting narratives, we peel back the layers to unveil the profound ways in which discriminatory laws impact the daily lives, rights, and freedoms of LGBTQ+ individuals.”

Luque added, “Our goal with ‘Beyond Borders’ is to raise awareness about the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals, provoke discussion on important issues, and inspire change towards a more inclusive and accepting society. With compelling storytelling and remarkable insights from influential figures such as Angelique Young, Ericka PC (Aaron Perry-Cruz), Lilith Black, and many more. These powerhouses were crucial to the start of the Drag2Talle movement last year, and their stories serve as a testament to the resilience and vibrancy of the LGBTQ+ community in Florida.”

The first episode is a deep dive into the personal journey of an Afro-Latina trans woman activist (Angelique Young) as she shares her experiences, challenges and triumphs in navigating her identity.

Luque said, “She talks about the transformative process of embracing her true self and reclaiming her authenticity and ‘what it truly means to be a transwoman.’ She discusses ‘the nuances of gender identity, stereotypes and misconceptions while advocating for greater understanding and acceptance.’”

Joke’s on “Hacks” is back and it’s about time! Season three begins with Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) as “a newly world-beating comedian operating solo” and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), her amanuensis working on a latenight comedy show trying to navigate her own career in L.A. after being let go as Deborah’s writing partner at the end of Season 2.

You know how this is gonna go, right? Deborah’s career takes off and she finally has the opportunity to do her own late-night show again and Ava loves being her submissive, so win-win for “Hacks” lovers.

According to Variety, season three finds Ava “alternately acting as mastermind, cheerleader and occasional best frenemy,” a position that “gives this season its crackle and verve, and brings new life into a show that’s been off the air for two years.”

Storm in

Whenever you think the GOP and their MAGA cohort can’t sink deeper into the muck, they best themselves. Fox News’s “The Five” co-hosts discussed Stormy Daniels’ testimony which they deemed “salacious” like it wasn’t about their guy Trump.

And yet. Greg Gutfeld called Trump a “sex god” who “truly screwed the brains out of” Stormy Daniels. Gutfeld then mocked Daniels for saying there was an “imbalance of power” between her and Trump. “That’s how this transaction works when you are a porn star!”

Shaun & Shaun T is known for his intense “Insanity” workout. In a Daytime Exclusive, Shaun and his husband, soccer player Scott Blokker, open up about their surrogacy journey on “The Tamron Hall Show.” Watch at ABC.com or Hulu.

Pet it

The three Law & Order shows on NBC are all set to continue, but although “Law & Order: Organized Crime” has been renewed for Season 5, the youngest of the franchise–and the lowest rated–is making the move to Peacock to become a streaming series next season.

Emmy-winning actress, producer, activist and philanthropist Mariska Hargitay was on ABC’s “GMA” May 10 to talk about her new partnership with Purina’s Purple Leash Project. Hargitay, star of the longest running scripted series on TV, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” has spoken eloquently about how her role as NYPD Captain Olivia Benson has educated her and made her an activist for abused women.

Hargitay previously did a film on the backlog of rape kits called “I Am Evidence.” Now she’s discovered that only 20% of domestic violence shelters take pets, so women are staying with abusive partners because they don’t want to give up their pets or fear their abuser will kill that pet. www.purina. com/purple-leash-project

Also, bisexual and trans women are among those reporting the highest rates of abuse. If you are experiencing domestic violence, National Domestic Violence Hotline is 800-799-7233 or Resources for people experiencing gender-based violence in San Francisco: www.sf.gov/information/san-francisco-gender-based-violence-resources

For art imitating life and all things educational, you really must stay tuned t

Jean Smart and in Hannah Einbinder in ‘Hacks’

Purina’s Purple Leash Project

Left: George Rexstrew, Jayden Revri and Kassius Nelson in ‘Dead Boy Detectives’ Middle: ‘Black Twitter: A People’s History’ Right: Angelique Young in ‘Beyond Borders’

A transgender life of love & music

by Cornelius Washington

The last fifteen years has seen astonishing advancements for the transgender and gender-fluid communities, particularly in art and entertainment, where elements of performance such as style, vocal intonation, lyrics, cosmetics, hair and staging have all been par for the course. Audiences pay great sums of money to be entertained by glamorous beings who serve an ambisexual allure and an androgenous presentation.

However, after the curtain descends, and the lights are shut off, and the audience goes home, what becomes of the performer? What do they do, where do they go, how do they live and love and what does it take to balance their day jobs, families, socialization and mental health, beyond the usual talk show patter?

“From The Rooter to The Tooter” explores the amazing life of LZ Love, her trials, tribulations, toils and snares

Communion in music

As told in her memoir, LZ (born Arnold Elzy) was raised on soul food, “Soul Train,” gospel music, blues, and The Black Panthers. Very early singing and dancing fabulously, along with his emerging sexual orientation, sent him across the bay to San Francisco with a gay community filled with glitter, drag, dancing, and crowds of communion with music.

All the while, there was the emerging of Arnold’s first meditation, the most stellar representation of gay San Francisco known as Sylvester. Although Arnold was underaged and eager, he and Sylvester upgraded gay entertainment with live vocals and a glitter rock presentation that made Alice Cooper and David Bowie look musty.

After only a few gigs, Sylvester went on to the wonderful genre of disco, while Arthur went on to perform in local bands, performing lead vocals, previously, he sang backing vocals for Sylvester, before the latter met Mar-

Strength to strength

After a failed demo for Gene Simmons (of Kiss fame’s label), she seamlessly blended into disco’s transformation into house music, as it was formulating in London, and she soon found fame there on the British capital’s dance charts.

Her transition into a woman went exceedingly well, too, being slender, tall and stylish, with the approval and support of her mother, who never blinked twice. Moving back to America, LZ graciously moved from strength to strength, eventually joining San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church choir, performing for household names like former President Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Bay Area icon, Pulitzer Prize winner, Maya Angelou, who declared Miss Love as beautiful.

Miss Love’s life is a testimony to the enduring spirit of why people the world over come to San Francisco to live out their imaginations, hopes and dreams.

For all of her life’s triumphs, however, the tragedy is, and it pains me to say this, is the book, itself, which is in need of a proofreader and editor. The reminiscences are repetitive and scattershot. And the images of LZ and her family are so unforgivably blurry and tiny, to the point that I thought I needed to upgrade my reading glasses.

LZ Love’s life is so worthy, her career is so sterling and her beauty and pedigree, as a transgendered performer is unmatched. It’s a shame that this book is not reflective of those qualities, though her timing could not have been better.

Perhaps the author may revise the project with a professional publishing

LZ Love’s ‘From The Rooter to The Tooter’

company of discerning standards, so that she may then “receive her flowers.”

LZ Love will perform on May 30 at a tribute for Sylvester at The Tenderloin Museum, 398 Eddy St., with former Sylvester backing singer Jeanie

Tracy. It is my sincere hope that we all attend, to see the beauties on duty.t

www.tenderloinmuseum.org

www.facebook.com/profile.

php?id=100063541478486&sk

Singer/author LZ Love

LZ Love performing

t << Theatre & Beefcake

‘The Glass Menagerie’ A bumpy update at San Francisco Playhouse

by Jim Gladstone

The Wingfields’ wings have been clipped.

That’s the burning kernel of pain at the center of “The Glass Menagerie,” Tennessee Williams’ oft-revived 1944 family drama, now playing in a frustratingly unfocused production directed by Jeffrey Lo at the San Francisco Playhouse.

Williams coined the description “memory play” to describe the piece’s narrative structure, in which one character recalls scenes from their life which they then enact along with the rest of the cast.

Narrator Tom Wingfield (Jomar Tagatac, solid but not particularly distinctive in his take on the role), speaking from an abstract and undefined future, reflects on a period of his young adulthood when he, his physically and psychologically disabled older sister Laura (Nicole Javier), and their anxious fantasist mother Amanda (played with brilliant ferocity by Susi Damilano) struggle to make ends meet in a dingy, cramped St. Louis apartment after being abandoned by the wanderlusting family patriarch, whose portrait still holds a place of prominence in their home and psyches.

Drifting memories

Tom, a fictionalized stand-in for playwright Williams, who drew heavily on his own early life in the script, works in a mind-numbing warehouse job to support the family while aspiring to become a writer and see the world.

His regular evening excursions to the cinema (or, subtextually, to clandestine assignations) provide a taste of escape while simultaneously heightening the bitterness of his current confinement.

Amanda, clinging to her past as a well-to-do debutante, projects her southern belle fantasies onto her daughter, desperate to marry the whole family up by finding a husband for Laura. (William Hodges plays the Gentleman Caller in the second act).

And Laura, utterly lacking in self-esteem, is said to dwell largely in a gauzy dreamworld populated by her collection of collectible crystal animals.

Between Lo’s direction of Javier, whose Laura is recessive and colorless, and what comes across as his willful desire to deemphasize the play’s titular symbol, this play about unstable people becomes destabilized itself. There’s not enough of an anchor to hold Tom’s slipstream memories together coherently.

The scenes wave and wander with a vaporous shapelessness. This could

fairly be described as dreamlike, but also as inducing drowsiness.

Unpressured presentation

Part of what makes dreams compelling is their compression: Powerful symbolism and unconscious yearnings are fused together into a mysteriously resonant story. Part of what makes a menagerie sadly tragic is forced confinement.

This flies in the face of the script’s emphasis on the fact that we are seeing a story told from just one perspective: Tom’s. The turntable’s significant space requirements and elegant, fluid movement also undermine the frustrating sense of stasis and enclosure that Tom rails against.

But this production physically undermines the compression and confinement of Williams’ script: Rather than truncate the width and depth of the San Francisco Playhouse’s enormous stage to emphasize the claustrophobia of the Wingfield apartment, scenic designer Christopher Fitzer’s set makes the audience keenly aware of its vast dimensions.

While the apartment’s rooms are represented by a series of appropriately small, interconnected platforms, this construction is positioned in the center of the huge mechanical turntable built into the Playhouse stage, which rotates at junctures throughout the evening to reveal the apartment from a variety of angles.

(Let me pause to rail a moment myself: The San Francisco Playhouse organization overuses its turntable, coming up with reasons to employ it in virtually every production. Just because you own a feather duster doesn’t mean you have to tickle people with it at any available opportunity).

Interpretation or imposition

The set also allows the audience to see above and beyond the Wingfields’ walls, giving them not only a glimpse of the sign over St. Louis’ Paradise dance hall (a just-beyond-reach place of freedom and romance) but also a peek at the gilded proscenium that bordered the stage of Theatre on the Square, this auditorium’s former resident company, which had a far shallower stage and a far greater seating capacity.

That golden frame, along with vis-

Bare Chest Calendar

ible “backstage” alleys to the left and right of the turntable where the actors, remaining in character, linger quietly during scenes when they are not in the apartment, suggest that director Lo is aiming to underscore the blur between memory and fictional playmaking that Williams toys with in Tom’s introductory speech (“I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion…it is sentimental, it is not realistic.”).

Tagatac’s Tom occasionally scribbles on the pages of a blank book, then rips them out and hands them to other actors (Are these intended to be notes, like those provided by a director or writer to a play’s cast members?). Williams’ 1940s narrative innovations don’t go nearly as far as the meta-theatrical gimmicks in so many contemporary theater works, but that’s the vein of association Lo seems to be mining here. But it distracts, dilutes, and ultimately clips the poetic wings of the script it’s meant to serve.t

‘The Glass Menagerie,’ through June 15. $30-$125. San Francisco Playhouse. 450 Post St. (415) 6779596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Bare Chest Calendar Men 2025

by Larry Rich

The Bare Chest Calendar held their finals contest for Team 2025 at the DNA Lounge on May 5. The event was hosted by Rosie Fingers from Full Queer Wrestling and Miss GAPA 2023, Kiki Krunch. Representatives from beneficiaries PRC and Rainbow Community Center were in attendance, and both Senator Scott Wiener and Supervisor Matt Dorsey spoke to the crowd.

After introducing the contestants for Team 2025, BCC took a moment to recognize the contributions of Calendar Men through 2024, their 40th anniversary. These men were invited on stage for a thank you and a special photo. Senator Wiener presented a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate to the organization for their dedication and service to the community over the past 40 years.

The contest continued with the traditional “gear parade” by the contestants and some racy conversations with the emcees, followed by a big reveal.

In the end, thirteen were chosen for Team 2025 and were presented with sashes by Miss Gay San Francisco, Nikita Vega and their Contest Coach, Ed Mathews. The new team consists of Mr January, Cesar; Mr February, Kasper; Mr March, Jin; Mr April, Aleckz; Mr May, JJ; Mr June, Brandon; Mr July, Ja’Saun; Mr August, Brad; Mr September, Bill; Mr October, Eddie; Mr November, Matty; Mr December, David; Mr Lucky 13, Matt.

Congratulations to all the winners. Supervisor Dorsey will be issuing individual certificates from the Board of Supervisors to each of them as they start their year of service to the community.t

www.barechest.org For more nightlife events, and arts listings, see Going Out on www.ebar.com.

The

monthly models, with Kiki Krunch and Nikita Vega

William Thomas Hodgson, Susi Damilano, Nicole Javier and Jomar Tagatac in San Francisco Playhouse’s ‘The Glass Menagerie.’

Jessica Palopoli

Romelo Urbi steps out

by Jim Gladstone

R

omelo Urbi, poised for breakout local stardom as he takes on the title role in Ray of Light Theatre’s upcoming Bay Area premiere of “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” arches a finely tweezed eyebrow when asked about his first musical theater experience.

“I went to high school in Union City and I was in show choir,” said the 25-year-old Filipino-American performer in a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “It was like ‘Glee’ but with basic movement, not full-on choreography. A lot of the drama kids in our school weren’t really singers, so our music teacher pushed some of us choir kids to do the musicals. I was in the ensemble of my first show sophomore year. It was ‘The Producers.’ Looking back on it now, it seems pretty weird, all these brown kids doing that particular show.”

(The characters in the Mel Brooks film adaptation are largely Jewish New Yorkers and Aryan Germans).

Urbi added, “Senior year we did ‘In the Heights’ which made more sense and was a lot of fun.”

And what about drag?

Ray of Light Theatre’s ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’

“I didn’t really have any drag experience going into the show and I don’t consider myself a RuPaul diehard,” said Urbi. “So, coming into the part, I felt like there was so much I had to learn in order to play the part. But the story is about Jamie’s coming of age, right? I feel like I’m learning along with Jamie. I’m at an era of my life where I’m experimenting a little more with make-up as part of my queerness. So much of the process has been about understanding the relationship between my experience and Jamie’s. I’m figuring out who we are together.”

Next gen joy

“Jamie is the kid I wish I’d been when I was 16,” said Alex Kirschner, 42, a longtime behind-the-scenes presence at Ray of Light who is helming this production after a 10year directing hiatus.

Kirschner’s last directorial gig was in 2014 with “Triassic Parq,” the trans-asaurus dino musical; he’s been biding his time as a public relations exec at Apple.

“Unlike in so many older queer stories, Jamie is not at all a sad kid,” said Kirschner. “He’s incredibly confident in himself and knows who he wants to be. It’s the world around him that needs to get up to speed. What drew me into the show when I first saw the video recording of the London production was the love that Jamie has for himself and the love between Jamie and his mother, who turns out to have a fantasy world, too.

A relatable story

“Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” which celebrates a ballsy small town 16-year-old’s simultaneous quest for community acceptance and drag superstardom also makes sense to Urbi.

The musical, by Dan Gillespie Sells and Tom MacRae, is a fictional take on the 2011 BBC documentary

“Jamie: Drag Queen at 16.” Developed in Sheffield, England, the show debuted on the West End in 2017, where it was nominated for an Olivier Award as best new musical.

A 2022 Los Angeles production featured Bianca del Rio in the role of Loco Chanelle, Jamie’s mentor, a part that will be played by J. Conrad Frank in the Ray of Light production. A film version was distributed globally on Amazon Prime.

“I’m very connected to Jamie,” said Urbi, who paused to note that when he first took on the role, “Jamie might actually have been a little bit ahead of me. In high school, I was out to a few close friends, but not to my family or in general. But then in college, I was like, ‘Fuck it!’ Here I am, this is me.”

Future possibility

While taking great pleasure in the experience of bringing Jamie to life, Urbi says he’s unsure of his next steps in pursuing a music theater career.

“As soon as I heard the music to ‘Jamie,’ which is so pop and catchy and I found out his story, I was like, put me in! I related to this part so much.”

And Urbi recently performed in “Larry: The Musical” about Filipino American Labor Leader Larry Itliong at the Brava Theatre.

“That was great,” Urbi says, “but as a queer Filipino person, I don’t really see myself represented on stage very much. I’m feeling a bit more picky now about what I want to play. But when people ask me what my dream roles are, I’m not sure that they’ve even been written yet.

“If gender didn’t matter, I’d love to play Eurydice in ‘Hadestown.’” t

‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,’ June 1-23. $20-$55. Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St. www.rayoflighttheatre.com

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“When I came out of the closet, my mother was one of my strongest champions, and doing this show feels like I’m sending a love letter to her.”

415 370 7152 • StevenUnderhill.com

Romelo Urbi in a promotional photo for ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’

Left: Director Alex Kirschner Right: Romelo Urbi

Bringing Bacon Home

by Robert Brokl

Edited by critic/curator Michael

Peppiatt, with a forward by novelist Colm Toibin, “Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words” (Thames and Hudson USA) arrives at a propitious moment. Bacon’s paintings have set world record-breaking prices at auction ($142 million for a Lucian Freud triptych portrait), and biographies and reports describing his rather scandalous affairs and lifestyle are old news.

The time may be right for a more measured examination of his friendships and relationships. Peppiatt, a longtime friend, has done a painstaking job of compiling Bacon’s side of letters to friends, dealers, and other art world figures, with helpful notes providing context.

The book is supplemented with photographs, images of artwork, the rare statements Bacon provided about his work, even some conversations, including a garrulous one between Bacon and William Burroughs. Consider adding this to your Bacon library, a companion to more lurid accounts like the “The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon” by Daniel Farson.

Unspeakable

In the post-WWII era, after the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, nuclear bombs, and carnage, Bacon’s signature screaming Popes and figures paired with slabs of raw meat struck an existential chord. His paintings combined somewhat aestheticized backgrounds of bright, decorator color, often with the suggestion of glass boxes or cages, evoking Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem.

Bacon was an unlikely candidate for art world stardom. The effeminate son, born in Dublin, of an English/ Australian Army captain and race horse trainer (Bacon was allergic to horses but attracted to his father’s “masculine beauty” in general as he put it later) and a mother who was heir to the Sheffield steel fortune.

Bacon was on his own from an early age, evidently thrown out after being caught by his father wearing his mother’s undergarments. Bacon didn’t start to paint until his late 20s, after a stint as an interior designer. He had no formal art education, and his oil paintings on raw canvas are, per his instructions,

displayed under glass, providing sheen without technical processes of glazing.

Unfathomable

An example of Bacon’s difficult, even toxic, relationships is that with Denis Wirth-Miller, a figurative painter, and Richard Chopping, a writer and illustrator, a gay couple. As Peppiat explains:

“The mercurial character of their friendship is well evoked in the constant apologies and details of nights gambling and drinking in Bacon’s letters… It is clear from the extracts that Bacon is more tempestuous in person and over the phone than when he was writing. He often uses letters to communicate in a calmer manner and make up for his early behavior.”

Their “unfathomable threesome”

Collection of Francis Bacon letters shows the painter in a new light

had its ups and downs, and “Bacon publicly humiliated Wirth-Miller in 1978 by publicly mocking his work at his solo show,” after which he “appears to have given up painting.”

But Bacon was also generous and kind on occasion, paying the medical bills of his friend Sonia Orwell, with limited means and brain cancer, and promoting Moroccan painter, Ahmed Yacoubi, arranging for him to show at his gallery.

Unlikely

Like a more ribald Bloomsbury, Bacon’s circle was stellar. He maintained a long friendship with Freud, the painter and grandson of Sigmund. It’s unclear why they drifted apart, or what happened to correspondence from Freud, another instance when the reader misses the back and forth of letters.

He made frequent visits to Morocco, linking to the Tangier circle of gay writers and ex-pats like Paul and Jane Bowles. Burroughs was also a lifelong friend, Pappiat quotes him saying: “Bacon and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum. He likes middle-aged truck drivers and I like young boys. He sneers at immortality and I think it’s the one thing of importance.”

Bacon was as hard on his own work as he was on others. “Nine out of ten paintings I see, I hate, including my own. I don’t really like most of what I see, and I think if people do one or two extraordinary things they’ve done a lot…”

These were remarks recorded by the photographer Peter Beard, who befriended Bacon. Beard was gloriously handsome, and his appearance seems have intimidated Bacon; his portrait of Beard is mannerist Bacon doing Bacon.

Unimpressed

Another provocative, if arguable statement from Bacon from 1984:

“… it is a real pleasure if another painter happens to like anything one does—I believe in the first place people working in the same medium are the only real judges even if it is not the type of work they like they know the good from the bad.”

Bacon was unimpressed by David Hockney’s artwork. While “lik(ing) him very much… I have never liked Hockney’s very sub-Picasso drawings or any of his work for that matter I suppose it is so thin and bland that it is so popular.”

Bacon’s most profound work may have been triggered by the alcohol and sleeping pill-induced suicide of his lover, George Dyer, two days before the opening of Bacon’s Paris retrospective at the Grand Palais in1971. Dyer was rough trade working class, a petty thief and burglar. Bacon had taken him in, providing financial support even as the relationship deteriorated, Dyer even planting drugs in Bacon’s flat resulting in his arrest.

Undaunted

But his despair over the death resulted in several major triptychs and an even gloomier world view: “Everyone I’ve ever been really fond of has died. They’d always been drunks or suicides.

With Bacon it’s warts and all, but the comments reflecting self-loathing and cynicism are rather depressing, and dated: “…growing old is much more difficult for homosexuals. Because homosexuals are always obsessed with looks…Most of the time I meet only brutes. I’d love to be with someone I could really talk to—but I’ve never been able to talk to the people I’ve been obsessed by.”

I don’t really know why I seem to attract that kind of person. There is nothing you can do about those things. Nothing.” Legacies are enhanced by cinematic accounts: “Love is the Devil,” based upon the Farson book, starring Derek Jacobi (“I Claudius” fame) as Bacon and Daniel Craig, in a pre-James Bond role, as the doomed Dyer.

Some of Bacon’s best paintings will outrun and outlive the notoriety and auction prices, and Peppiatt’s book is an honest, de-sensationalized attempt to illuminate the life of an important, if uneven artist. In a homage that Bacon might have enjoyed, his squalid longtime studio in London was dismantled, documented, and reassembled at the High Lane Gallery in Dublin, Bacon’s birthplace, on permanent display.t

‘Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words,’ edited by Michael Peppiatt, Thames and Hudson USA $50, 480 pages. www.thamesandhudsonusa.com

Above: Francis Bacon’s ‘Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X,’ 1953

Below: Francis Bacon’s ‘Sleeping Figure,’ 1974

Left: Francis Bacon and Ahmed Yacoubi in Tangier, 1956 Right: Francis Bacon in his studio, 1971 by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Both photos courtesy Thames and Hudson USA

The Los Angeles Blade covers Los Angeles and California news, politics, opinion, arts and entertainment and features national and international coverage from the Blade’s award-winning reporting team. Be part of this exciting publication serving LGBT Los Angeles from the team behind the Washington Blade, the nation’s first LGBT newspaper. From the freeway to the Beltway we’ve got you covered.

The Los Angeles Blade covers Los Angeles and California news, politics, opinion, arts and entertainment and features national and international coverage from the Blade’s award-winning reporting team. Be part of this exciting publication serving LGBT Los Angeles from the team behind the Washington Blade, the nation’s first LGBT newspaper. From the freeway to the Beltway we’ve got you covered.

Great Britten from the jump

by Tim Pfaff

Simon Rattle’s farewell concert with the London Symphony Orchestra was, of course, Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, the farewell of all farewells.

But on a happier note, Rattle led a performance of Benjamin Britten’s choral “Spring Symphony” that may have jerked fewer tears but also came as a reminder of London’s loss to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

That performance has been captured in a recording on the orchestra’s own label, London Symphony Live.

At the same time, Harmonia Mundi has released a new live recording of Britten’s Violin Concerto, with Isabelle Faust as soloist. As in the case of “Spring Symphony,” the recording is rounded out with shorter pieces that demonstrate how fine a composer Britten was from the jump.

As a conscientious objector to World War II, Britten fled Britain for the United States with his muse and lifelong lover and music partner, Peter Pears. His return to England, at war’s end, came with the work that would establish him forever in the repertoire of contemporary opera, “Peter Grimes.”

Meanwhile….

The works that complete the albums are, with “Spring Symphony,” the “Sinfonia da Requiem” and “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” The recording of the concerto, under the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (the orchestra Rattle now leads) under Jacob Hrusa, includes the “Reveille” and the Suite for Violin and Piano, with her frequent collaborator, Alexander Melnikov, and the first-ever recording of Two Pieces for Violin, Viola, and Piano, with Melnikov and Boris Faust on viola. These are not, lest it need saying, “fillers.”

Enduring strings

Britten later wrote that he might have “bit off more than he could chew”

In

by David-Elijah Nahmod

Each year the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band produces “Spotlight,” the band’s annual gala and fundraiser. This year’s event will take place on May 18 at the historic Grand Theater on Mission Street. The concert will focus on music from animated films, as well as anime (Japanese animation) and video games.

Musical selections will include pieces from “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away,” plus Disney classics such as “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “The Little Mermaid.” Representing the world of video games will be “Super Mario Brothers,” among other pieces. The evening will be hosted by Donna Sachet and lesbian cabaret singer Leanne Borghesi.

As always, the band will be led by artistic director Pete Nowlen, who, in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, said that animation, anime and video games have a wide following across diverse communities, including the LGBTQ community. According to Nowlen, a recent report from GLAAD found that 19 percent of heavy gamers, those that spend more than ten hours a week playing, identify as LGBTQ.

“Video games play a key role for young people and their understanding of gender identity,” Nowlen said. “Some games allow the player to make an avatar and explore what it’s like to try on a different gender for a little while. These games are some of the best for queer people, since they aren’t required to play as ‘the same gritty dude protagonist’ in many games.”

Family film faves

We asked Nowlen if the concert might appeal to audiences beyond

with the Violin Concerto, which had its premiere in the U.S. in 1940 (so he revised it at least three more times), and has established itself in the active repertoire ever since. It’s new to many concertgoers, but violinists can’t keep their hands off it, god bless ‘em.

It’s unaccountable how violinist Isabelle Faust, who has an active career in Europe and a reputation for the combination of integrity and penetration of her playing, should be so relatively little known here. Jacob Hrusa, in complete sympathy with her, would be my dream new music director at the San Francisco Symphony, where he has appeared, but he, too, is kept busy across the pond.

Together they offer the kind of live performance of the concerto that burns the fat from your brain. As always, Faust cuts to the core with a keen, individual account of the solo part, probing but without a hint of eccentricity.

Hrusa conducts with the solid sense form, that quality the composer said eluded him at first. The piece ends with an arching Passacaglia, a form Britten was to mine in many of his subsequent instrumental pieces, which both musi-

cians realize at full depth.

It’s characteristic of Faust performing’s style that she cuts through the devilish Vivace second movement, calling no attention to her virtuosity and focusing entirely on the music. She and Hrusa plumb the depths of the Passacaglia without any gratuitous heavy breathing.

Post-war spring exuberance

Britten’s pacifist heart was shattered by World War II, even if the time with his friend, the poet W. H. Auden, in the States when Britten “objected” there, was heartening. Back in Britain, “Spring” came in 1948.

Serge Koussevitsky, the work’s dedicatee, led the premiere, in 1949, in Amsterdam. The Symphony won favor from the start; any inhibitions in programming it today are due to the very large forces it takes to present it.

The 12 movements of the threepart symphony are set to mixed authors, largely 16th- and 17th-century British writers –and Auden’s “Out on the lawn I lie in bed”– joined to make a kind of playlet, with the solo singers taking the roles. Again, Britten despaired of the piece until he thoroughly revised it –including some changes of text– but expressed pleasure with the final result. But against whatever odds, the individual pieces do meld into a coherent, uplifting statement.

the LGBT community, and if parents might be able to bring their kids to see it.

“While the event is a gala fundraiser aimed at adults, and there will be a bar offering alcoholic beverages, we recognize how popular many of the soundtracks we’re playing are with younger audiences,” he said. “Families with older children and teens will have a great time at “Spotlight” reliving some favorite memories from across generations.”

LGBT people will be well-represented during the evening’s musical selections. The concert includes the main theme from the video game “Kingdom Hearts,” which is sung by one of the first Japanese media figures to come out as non-binary.

Disney selections such as “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Little Mermaid” feature the work

Violin Concerto, ‘Spring Symphony,’ shorter works in new recordings

Some shadows fall on this spring, but the motive vision is that of a convincing rejuvenation. It seems wrong, somehow, to single out a single soloist from among the cast –Elizabeth Watts, Alice Coote, and Allan Clayton– but it would be equally grievous not to give the nod to the predictably marvelous Clayton, singing the part Britten wrote for Pears.

A good chorus is the glory of any symphony orchestra, and with “Spring Symphony” the LSO’s gives everything for its beloved but departing maestro.

Britten’s exemplary writing for children’s chorus features three Tiffin children’s choruses.

Perhaps my most heterodox opinion regarding Britten’s music is that it reaches a peak at the “church fable”

“Noye’s Fludde,” which also centers on a large children’s chorus. Here, the Tif-

fin kids, led by James Day, sing from their hearts (and through cupped hands) in a taste of what is to come. What binds and elevates this particular live performance is the conducting of Simon Rattle, an old hand at the piece and here in his own, warm, if valedictory glory. Like Leonard Bernstein before him, Rattle is a natural educator, and his leadership of “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” (this segment on the music of the greatest English composer before Britten, Henry Purcell) is, in all the right ways, textbook. His trenchant reading of the Sinfonia da Requiem is appropriately excoriating.

Isabelle Faust regularly partners with pianist Alexander Melnikov, and together they make some magic with the shorter compositions. The Two Pieces for Violin, Viola, and Piano won’t change anyone’s assessment of Britten’s music, but hints of great Britten are all there.

Got Butterflies?

If some dire emergency kept you from the Met Live in HD telecast of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” with the incomparable Asmik Grigorian (joined by a terrific Jonathan Tettelmen as Pinkerton), no need for your own hara kiri. There will be an Encore presentation on May 15 (check for time), and an audio-only broadcast will be on BBC’s Radio 3 for a month, www.bbc.co.ukt

Benjamin Britten, Violin Concerto, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jakub Hrusa, conductor, plus shorter violin pieces, Harmonia Mundi. www.harmoniamundi.com

Britten, Spring Symphony, Missa da Requiem, and The Young People’s Guide to the Orchestra (Purcell), London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Tiffin children’s choruses, LSO Live. www.harmoniamundi.com

of LGBT identified lyricist Howard Ashman, who died of AIDS at age 40 in 1991. Ashman was credited with creating the Disney Renaissance of the 1980s and ’90s. He won two Academy Awards for the songs “Under the Sea” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

“The latter Oscar was accepted posthumously by Ashman’s long-time partner Bill Lauch,” said Nowlen. “In his acceptance speech, he said, ‘This is the first Academy Award given to someone we’ve lost to AIDS.”

Since the musical selections are from films and video games, Nowlen said that film clips will be included during the concert.

“Several numbers will be performed alongside short films and video,” he said. “And every piece will have video and graphical components shown on the state-of-the-art recently renovated

projection screen at the Grand Theater, making the show a thrilling multimedia experience.”

In addition to acting as emcees for the concert, Sachet and Borghesi will also be singing some of the Disney movie tunes and leading the audience in sing-alongs. They will also be supporting the band with its fundraising efforts through several live auctions, which will help the band continue with its mission.

“In addition to Donna and Leanne, we’re excited to also feature Ken Dulay, a fantastic countertenor vocalist who will help bring several numbers to life,” Nowlen said. “Dulay will be a new voice to Bay Area audiences. He’s in his senior year at California State University Sacramento, with a double major in vocal performance and music education. Ken performs with groups in the Sacramento area

including Camerata California, the Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra, and with Music in the Mountains. “Spotlight 2024” will be his debut performance in San Francisco.”

Nowlen hopes that the community will come out in force to support the band’s work.

“This is one of the band’s most important fundraisers of the year,” he said. “Coming just before a very busy Pride month, this show provides important revenue the Official Band of San Francisco needs to continue providing its music and energy to dozens of events each year.”t

San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band Presents ‘Spotlight

on Animation and Video Games,’ May 18, 7pm, Grand Theater, 2665 Mission Street, $55 (single)$400 (table) www.sflgfb.org

the ‘Spotlight’

Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band celebrates animation, video games

Isabelle Faust Felix Broede

Composer Benjamin Britten

Left: Artistic Director Pete Nowlen conducts the Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band Right: Members of the Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band at the 2023 event.

John Su Courtesy photo

Q-Music: country Pride playlist

by Gregg Shapiro

“Neon Cross,” the second album by queer country diva  Jaime Wyatt was one of the best releases of 2020. Produced by Shooter Jennings (son of country music royalty Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter), the album was as country as can be. Now, Wyatt has returned with her third fulllength, the irresistibly soulful “Feel Good” (New West).

There is an audible sonic shift, beginning with the album opener “World Worth Keeping.” Wyatt, who maintains her country twang and vocal lilt, incorporates a funky, Stax Records vibe on the previously mentioned song, as well as on the title tune, queer love song “Love Is A Place,” “Hold Me One Last Time,” “Jukebox Holiday,” and the Grateful Dead cover “Althea.”

www.jaimewyatt.com

Produced by fellow Nashville resident and music legend Kim Richey, “Love I Swore” (31 Tigers) is another fine effort by independent queer singer/songwriter  Amelia White. The 11 songs focus on the rockier side of country although the Nashville energy radiates loud and clear on “Nothing I Can Do,” “Beautiful Dream” (featuring duet vocals by Ben Glover), the bluesy “Get To The Show,” the fabulous vintage country echo of “Can You See Me Now” (featuring Richey), and the pleasingly rhythmic “Lost Myself.”

www.ameliawhite.com

“Creekbed Carter” (Gar Hole) by trans folk artist  Creekbed Carter Hogan  is such an exemplary effort that, at only eight songs in length, listeners might find themselves reduced to begging for more. An accomplished musician, Hogan’s plaintive and powerful vocals are the perfect complement to his exceptional songwriting skills.

Each song feels like a revelation, and don’t be surprised if, as you find yourself listening to songs such as “Lord, Make Me a Scorpion,” “If I Was,” “Sycamore,” and “Apiary,” you discover something new with each spin.  “The Relic Song” (in which Hogan takes the Catholic Church to task) is simply brilliant.

www.creekbedcarter.com

In the liner notes for “Time and Evolution,” the full-length debut album by queer Dallas-based Americana artist  Stephanie Sammons, she expresses her gratitude to her “incredible songwriting mentor friends” including Mary Gauthier, Emily Saliers, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Jonatha Brooke, Gretchen Peters, and Suzy Boggus. You can definitely hear the influence and inspiration of those amazing artists throughout the 10 songs, including the standouts “Lazarus,” “Make Me Believe,” “Innocence Lost,” and “Mend.” Fans of the late vocalist Ingrid Graudins are sure to be thrilled to hear her voice on the song “Year of the Dog.” www.stephaniesammons.com

Also hailing from the Lone Star State is country-pop duo  The Western Civilization, featuring queer artist Rachel Hansbro. The pair’s lush new album “Fractions of a Whole” (Reggie) is reminiscent of “Translanticism”-era Death Cab for Cutie (take a listen to “She’s By The Sea,” for example). But there’s more to The Western Civilization, and songs including “Bible Verses for Kids,” “If You’re Lucky,” “Noctambulism” (which sounds like a lost Bitch song), “Stitches,” “The Ocean’s on the Rise,” and “Proselytism,” are all deserving of praise. www.thewesterncivilization.com

Some readers may recognize the name of nonbinary musician  Zoe Boekbinder  from their time as one-half of the early 21st-century band Vermilion Lies in which they performed with their sibling Max. A transplant from New Orleans to upstate New York, Boekbinder has just released a new album titled “Wildflower” (Are & Be). Evocative opening track “Cover Up The Moon” sets the modern Americana tone, which they sustain on “The Rest of His Days,” the queer love song “More Like A Home” (featuring Megan McCormick on lap steel), ”You Won’t Let Me Go,” and the down-home “No Sunshine, No Hurricane.” Detours into vintage pop (the Elvis-esque “Hold My Hand”) and experimentation (“Garden” and “Supernatural”) keep things interesting. www.zeoboekbinder.com

“When It All Goes Down” (Ringleader), the debut album by queer sing-

“The only appropriate reply to the question

‘Can I be frank?’ is ‘Yes, if I can be Barbara.’”

—Fran Lebowitz

er/songwriter Sarah King is described as “Americana Noir,” and that’s a fitting description. King’s powerful voice has a melancholy quality which gives songs including the title track, “Lord Take My Soul,” “Blame It On the Booze,” “The Moth,” and the titular song, a haunting quality. It’s also not all that surprising that King covers Led Zeppelin’s “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do,” and does the band proud in the process. www.sarahkingsings.comt

MARIN

FERIA DEL CONDADO DE MARÍN

Be proud and join the crowd for Pride Day at the Fair on July 5th! Sport your pride colors and join us for Pride programming throughout the day on the Community Stage from Drag Story Time, The Glam Show, DJ Cisco, and more.

Ride the rides, explore the Barnyard, enjoy the fine art and photography exhibits, and stay for Brandy Clark on the Island Stage at 7:30pm followed by fireworks over the Lagoon.

EN VOGUE July 3

SPLASHBACK MUSIC FEST July 4

BRANDY CLARK July 5

ZIGGY MARLEY July 6

LOS LONELY BOYS July 7

JULY 3-7, 2024 3-7 DE JULIO

Explore the curious connections of California.

From towering redwood forests to vast deserts, breathtaking coasts to bustling cities, discover the surprising relationships among species, people, and places in our majestic state. A New Exhibit | Opens May 24 | Get tickets at calacademy.org

Every visit supports our mission to regenerate the natural world through science, learning and collaboration.