May 22, 2014 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

Proud scholarship recipients

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Tony Kusher speaks

John Grant

The

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

Vol. 44 • No. 21 • May 22-28, 2014

Teen who wore tux welcomed at NCLR gala by Danielle Parenteau

tion, but the loudest cheers of the night were reserved for Urbina, essica Urbina, the high school who was given two. senior whose graduation pho“I’ve experienced some things to was reportedly not includin the past four years that had me ed in Sacred Heart Preparatory [thinking] ... I don’t want to be Academy’s yearbook because she here, but I found solace in theater wore a tuxedo, was given a rous– that’s where I met Katie,” she said. ing ovation by hundreds of people Urbina also said that the picture of when she and her girlfriend were her wearing a tux “is who I am.” the surprise guests at the National Brinton and Kendall received Center for Lesbian Rights’ San NCLR’s Courage Award. Both surFrancisco gala last weekend. vived reparative therapy, also known Students at the San Francisas conversion therapy, whose aim is co Catholic high school rallied to change people’s sexual orientation around Urbina last week when from homosexual to heterosexual. news of the omission spread. By Such therapies are widely discredlast Friday, hundreds of her fellow Steven Underhill ited in the medical and scientific students wore ties to school in a NCLR Executive Director Kate Kendell, left, turns the stage communities, saying that they are show of support. The high school over to Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy senior Jessica potentially harmful. California has also released a statement saying Urbina and her girlfriend, Katie Emanuel, at the organization’s enacted a state law prohibiting the that the campus-wide dialogue gala dinner May 17. practice on minors by state-licensed sparked by the school’s action “will mental health providers. result in a revision of policy.” “I didn’t fail at changing. I sucfriend, Katie Emanuel, and NCLR Executive This week, school officials said ceeded at being myself,” said BrinDirector Kate Kendell. Urbina’s photo would be included. It was not ton. “You can’t change what we never chose.” “I love tuxedos!” said Urbina. immediately clear if the yearbooks would Tamika Butler, a co-chair of NCLR’s board The evening’s award recipients included be reprinted or if the school would affix the of directors, presented the Courage Award. actress Meredith Baxter, who came out as photo in another way. “When NCLR was founded 37 years ago, lesbian in 2009, and reparative therapy surviA beaming Urbina was joined on stage in conversion therapy was one of the socially vors Sam Brinton and Ryan Kendall. a ballroom at the Marriot Marquis Hotel in acceptable ways our society inflicted violence Each honoree was given a standing ovadowntown San Francisco May 17 by her girlSee page 10 >>

J Jane Philomen Cleland

Dr. Dawn Harbatkin, left, and Marj Plumb

LyonMartin explores merger by Seth Hemmelgarn

yon-Martin Health Services, a nonprofit that provides primary medical care to women and transgender people regardless of their ability to pay, and HealthRight 360, which offers substance abuse counseling and other programs, are exploring a merger. See page 3 >>

B.A.R. election endorsements CALIFORNIA PRIMARY

Governor: Jerry Brown Lt. Governor: Gavin Newsom Attorney General: Kamala Harris Secretary of State: Alex Padilla Treasurer: John Chiang Controller: Betty Yee Insurance Commissioner: Dave Jones Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tom Torlakson Board of Equalization (District 2): Fiona Ma State Assembly (San Francisco) Dist. 17: David Chiu Dist. 19: Phil Ting State Assembly (Bay Area) Dist. 15: Elizabeth Echols Dist. 18: Rob Bonta Dist. 24: Rich Gordon Dist. 28: Evan Low Congress (Bay Area) Dist. 2: Jared Huffman Dist. 3: John Garamendi Dist. 5: Mike Thompson Dist. 10: Michael Eggman

Dist. 11: Mark DeSaulnier Dist. 12: Nancy Pelosi Dist. 13: Barbara Lee Dist. 14: Jackie Speier Dist. 15: Eric Swalwell Dist. 17: Mike Honda Dist. 18: Anna Eshoo Dist. 19: Zoe Lofgren

LGBT grads excel in diverse fields by Khaled Sayed

Judges SF Superior Court Office 20: Daniel Flores Other races Alameda County Bd. of Ed. Area 1: Joaquin Rivera SAN FRANCISCO PROPS Prop A YES Prop B NO CALIFORNIA PROPOSITIONS Prop 41: YES Prop 42: YES

Remember to vote on June 3!

mong the hundreds of college graduates that will collect their diplomas this weekend at San Francisco State University are four out LGBT students. Some have overcome challenges while others are planning to complete advanced degrees. Among the graduates is Catherine Feely, a military veteran who is graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in kinesiology. Raised by a single mother, Feely was born in New York, and attended high school in Mississippi. After high school she joined the Coast Guard in the days when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was still in effect, meaning that she could not be open about who she was. “In regards to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, you had to be careful that you didn’t disclose anything about yourself,” Feely said. “By the time I moved to San Francisco people, especially here, kind of knew, even though you weren’t allowed to talk about your sexual identity.” She added, “I had to hide a lot about myself.” Feely left the military in 2010. “I decided to leave the Coast Guard while I was on the younger side to continue my education. I was 30,” she said Feely enrolled in City College of San Fran-

Khaled Sayed

Military veteran Catherine Feely is one of several LGBTs who will graduate from San Francisco State University this weekend.

cisco and then transferred to San Francisco State to pursue her degree in kinesiology. “One of the biggest reasons I chose to get out of the military to go to school was because I felt like I had two different lives,” Feely said. “I really See page 6 >>

{ FIRST OF TWO SECTIONS }

PRIDE

2014 Reservations now being accepted for our June 26, 2014 PRIDE edition, our largest annual issue. Call 415-359-2612 or email advertising@ebar.com for more info.

<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

Oakland’s vibrant cultural scene now on film by Elliot Owen

akland Originals, a highlyanticipated new set of short documentaries intended to highlight Oakland’s cultural scene through compelling vignettes of the city’s residents, is set to premiere next week at the historic Grand Lake Theater. The first four “originals” of the series are people the local filmmakers, Jim McSilver and Erin Palmquist, feel are “pushing boundaries, countering stereotypes, and exploring territories singular to this dynamic city,” according to the project’s mission. “Anyone can be an Oakland Original,” Palmquist told the Bay Area Reporter. “It’s more a state of mind rather than a resume of accomplishments or regional affiliation. Selection was hard. There are thousands of people in Oakland doing amazing things but we had to stick with four people due to a limited budget. All of the first four had, of course, some strong connection to Oakland.” Both filmmakers feel a strong connection to Oakland, too. McSilver has lived there for 22 years and Palmquist for 15 years, and when McSilver approached Palmquist about joining

Elliot Owen

Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre will host a new series of short films, Oakland Originals, next week.

the project, she was thrilled. “He’s an amazing filmmaker and very passionate about the Oakland Originals project,” Palmquist, 37, said. “Like him, I too am constantly in awe of this amazing city we live in.” Palmquist, who rejects categories by identifying as “human,” has previously worked on projects with LGBTQ undertones. In 2008, Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, screened her film, BDSM: It’s Not What You Think!, a documentary designed to counter misconceptions

around BDSM culture. That same year, another film she shot called Out on the Dance Floor, which explores healing in gay country culture, was also screened at the festival. Additionally, for the past six years Palmquist has been chronicling the journey of Ghazwan Alsharif, an Iraqi man who worked as a translator for the U.S. military during the Iraq War. “While working as a translator,” Palmquist said, “Alsharif was wrongfully accused of being a double agent, arrested, and tortured for 75 days in an American-run Iraqi prison. In 2008, he came to the U.S. as a refugee, and he is also gay. While the film, From Baghdad to the Bay, is not a comprehensive look at the cultural dilemmas that Arab and Muslim LGBTQ people face, it does expose some of those struggles.” While the first four Originals represent diversity in different ways, none of them are LGBTQ. But, Palmquist said, that doesn’t mean the next round of Originals won’t include someone who is. McSilver and Palmquist found the first batch of Originals through online research and community networking. The compelling group – Asiya

Wadud, Michael Christian, Vanessa Solari Espinoza, and Tim Monroe – will be present at the premiere for a question and answer session. Wadud is the founder of Forage Oakland, a fruit barter network founded in 2008 that organizes the harvesting and redistribution of fruit growing in the yards of North Oakland residents. Christian creates large sculptures out of metal. Using large vacant warehouse spaces, he erects pieces designed to be transportable. While his sculptures seldom stay put for very long, they’re distinct, the most recent of which can be found in Oakland’s Uptown Art Park. Espinoza, also known as Agana, is a graffiti artist. She’s also a deejay, jewelry maker, educator, clothing designer, and 3D animator, a “true Renaissance woman” and “Jane-ofall-trades” as Palmquist called her. Nurtured by an Oakland culture that fosters community engagement through art initiatives, Espinoza uses her graffiti art to transform public spaces into sites of transformation. Monroe, the oldest of the four Originals, is an inline skater who may or may not have, according to

Suspect arrested in SOMA homicide compiled by Cynthia Laird

ichael Green, the man wanted by authorities in connection with the murder of a young woman near a gay South of Market nightclub last November, was arrested in Florida, San Francisco Police Department officials said Monday, May 19. Green, 24, of San Mateo, was taken into custody May 16 by SFPD’s major crimes unit with the assistance of the Miami Police Department and Florida De-

partment of Law Enforcement, according to SFPD. He is expected to be extradited to San Francisco and booked on murder and attempted murder charges, police said. Green is the suspect in the shooting death of Melquiesha “Mel” Warren, 23, who had been celebrating her partner’s birthday at Club OMG, 43 6th street, before the early morning incident November 17. A friend of Warren’s was also shot and hospitalized. According to police accounts, Warren was in her car with friends in

a parking lot at 6th and Jessie streets when another car backed into theirs. Warren got out to inspect the damage, words were exchanged, and the shooting started. Soon after the shooting, police released Green’s name and photo in an effort to capture him. The Bay Area Reporter reported last December that court records show that Green has a long rap sheet that includes assault and domestic violence charges.

Gay Cuban doctor visits SF

Dr. Alberto Roque, a gay Cuban physician, LGBT rights activist, and transgender health specialist, will be in San Francisco next week where he will deliver a talk entitled “Dissident Sexualities: LGBTQI Life in Cuba – A Historical Background and Current Challenges.” The presentation takes place Thursday, May 29 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street. The event is free and a reception with Roque will follow. Roque is an internal medicine specialist and an assistant professor and adjunct researcher at the Medical University of Havana. He has worked on trans health issues since 2004. He is expected to discuss changes that occurred in Cuba following the 1959 revolution. While the Cuban Revolution meant a radical and an affirmative change for heterosexual women’s rights recognition, it was quite different for gender expressions and sexualities that did not align with heterosexual norms, a summary of Roque’s presentation notes. This situation has changed in the last 15 years with sustained educational and advocacy work. Roque’s visit is sponsored by the Rainbow World Fund, the LGBT center, and the Turquino Project.

Oakland Originals premieres Thursday, May 29 at 6 p.m. the Grand Lake Theatre, 3200 Grand Avenue. Tickets are $10.

in the agency’s behavioral health therapy program donated works for the auction, with proceeds being split as a stipend to each artist for items such as food and clothing, and for supplies to maintain the art therapy space. Bloom takes place from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at City View at Metreon, 135 Fourth Street. Tickets are $125. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.apiwellness.org.

Opening reception for gay artist

SF ready for Carnaval

Streets in San Francisco’s Mission District will be hopping when the 39th annual Carnaval grand parade steps off Sunday, May 25 at 9:30 a.m. The parade starts at the corner of 24th and Bryant streets and proceeds west to Mission Street. From there it heads north on Mission down to 17th Street, where it will turn east and flow into the festival area. The Carnaval festival takes place Saturday, May 24 and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is free but donations are accepted. For more information, visit www. carnavalsanfrancisco.org.

the Oakland Originals website, skated all 837 miles of Oakland’s city streets. A software engineer during the day, Monroe explores each district on skates in his free time. The premiere is also serving as the kickoff to the Grand Lake Theatre’s plan to screen the short documentaries before showing feature films. The event’s after party will be at nearby Ordinaire Wine Shop and Bar and Panorama Framing at 7 p.m. The first four shorts were made possible by the city of Oakland’s Cultural Funding Program ($5,000 in 2010) and independent contributions. Palmquist and McSilver hope to continue expanding the Oakland Original series and are already looking at who to feature next. “We’re always looking for eyecatching people but with the release we’re hoping that people will be inspired to suggest their friends, family, and colleagues,” Palmquist said. People can send their suggestions to contact@oaklandoriginals.com.t

courtesy SFPD

Murder suspect Michael Green

Seating is limited and first come, first served. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/ events/672342332801468/.

API gala honors trans advocate, drag diva

A longtime transgender community leader and a drag diva will be honored at the Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center’s seventh annual Bloom benefit Thursday, May 29 in San Francisco. Timed to coincide with Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the event will include food and drinks and a silent auction described as a “shopper’s paradise” of vacation getaways, personal care, and dining packages. One of the honorees will be Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, who will receive the inaugural BobbieJean Baker Memorial Award. Baker, 49, was a transgender minister who died in an auto accident early New Year’s Day. She had long been involved with API Wellness Center. Griffin-Gracy is executive director of the TGI Justice Project and was named as one of this year’s San Francisco Pride community grand marshals. Also being recognized will be Juanita More, a celebrated drag performer, fashion muse, fundraiser, and tireless advocate for HIV/AIDS and LGBT nonprofits. The evening’s special guest will be Bishop Yvette Flunder, founder of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ and the Arc of Refuge, which provides HIV/AIDS services in San Francisco and Oakland. API Wellness Center will also debut its first client art auction. Ten clients

San Francisco artist John Kiltinen’s new exhibit of paintings will be on display at MinibarSF and the opening reception will be held Thursday, May 29 from 7 to 11 p.m. at 837 Divisadero Street (at Fulton and McAllister). The show itself runs through July 29. Kiltinen is the partner of longtime Castro Lions Club member, and former president, Troy Brunet, who invited everyone to enjoy the “beautiful paintings.” Kiltinen has had exhibits at many children’s museums; his current exhibit includes urban landscapes.

Point Foundation fundraiser

Point Foundation will celebrate the next generation of LGBTQ leaders with an event in San Francisco Thursday, May 29 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street. Gay San Francisco Treasurer Jose Cisneros will be the featured speaker. The reception is an opportunity to meet Point Scholars and alumni and hear about the organization, which provides scholarships to LGBTQ students. The reception is free but attendees will be asked to join the foundation’s Cornerstone Society ($500 annually), a philanthropic group of dedicated individuals helping to create positive change in the LGBTQ community and the world through the impact of education. For more information, visit www. pointfoundation.org.t

On the web Online content this week includes the Bay Area Reporter’s online columns, Political Notes and Wedding Bell Blues; the Out in the World column; and more News Briefs. www.ebar.com.

Community News>>

t Rent prices cause dip in units for homeless youth

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

by Matthew S. Bajko

an Francisco’s skyrocketing rents have led to a drop in the number of apartments a local agency can afford to lease for homeless youth. According to Larkin Street Youth Services, the number of scattered site units it can afford to rent on the open market has dropped by nearly 20 percent over the last year. The agency receives funding from a variety of agencies to rent apartments throughout the city on behalf of the homeless youth it serves. “Mostly, young people want to live in their own apartments like any of us,” Sherilyn Adams, Larkin Street’s executive director, told the Bay Area Reporter during an interview this week. But because not all of the scattered site units Larkin rents are protected under the city’s rent control laws, the prices to rent them have increased “exponentially,” said Adams, due to the soaring demand for housing in San Francisco. The city’s median rent price hit $3,057 in the first quarter of the year, according to the firm Cassidy Turley, and the apartment vacancy rate had fallen to 3.8 percent. During the July 1, 2012 to June

Rick Gerharter

Larkin Street’s Sherilyn Adams

30, 2013 fiscal year, Larkin rented 73 scattered site units; during its current 2013-2014 fiscal year that number dropped to 60 such units. “It is mainly due to the increased cost to rent the scattered site units. It means we can afford to rent less units,” said Adams. Larkin Street offers a variety of housing options for both LGBT and straight young adults around the city, including shelter beds and long-term housing. It rents 22 rooms at the Perramont Hotel on

Market Street near Sanchez specifically to house LGBT youth, up from 15 last year, and has another seven scattered site units in the Castro area. “Over the past several years, with the city’s help and the commitment and good work of many people, we have been able to create new housing for homeless youth. That is great,” said Adams. But she noted that there are only three new youth housing projects slated to open in the city in coming months to help meet the current demands. “Once those are all done,” said Adams, “there aren’t any new projects in the pipeline for youth.” Larkin staff and a number of the youth it serves plan to address the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee Wednesday, May 28, when it holds a special hearing on homelessness among youth and LGBT people in particular. It will be the latest hearing on homelessness the committee has held this year at the request of District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell. After first being elected in 2010 to represent the city’s Marina and Cow Hollow neighborhoods, Farrell opposed two supportive housing projects for youth that faced opposition

from nearby residents. This year, as he looks toward running for re-election in November, Farrell has sought additional funding for the city’s homeless outreach team, asked for a review of the city’s supportive housing programs, and called for homeless and formerly homeless residents to be given preference in all of the city’s affordable housing programs. “As you look at the statistics, we have the same number of people sleeping on the streets today as we did 10 years ago,” Farrell told the B.A.R. this week. “If we are going to be serious about this issue and take serious steps, we need more active public dialogue on what San Francisco is doing, what other cities are doing, and what we can do better and different moving forward.” While acknowledging there is “no silver bullet” to fix the problem, Farrell said the best “way to impact homelessness is to house people. It sounds simple, but in San Francisco it is complicated, as are many things.” No matter how high rents soar in the city, San Francisco remains an attractive place for youth to move to, particularly LGBT youth wanting to find a welcoming community. According to a homeless survey

released last June, of the 1,902 unaccompanied children and youth living on San Francisco streets roughly 29 percent identified as LGBTQ. The overwhelming majority was over the age of 18, nearly three quarters (72 percent) were male, and one-in-four had been in the foster care system. Declan Cante, 21, arrived in town in January from New York City looking for “aspirations” despite having nowhere to live when he arrived. “I camped in Buena Vista Park, I think, for about three weeks,” Cante, who refers to his sexual orientation as “other,” told the B.A.R. Eventually he found housing through Larkin. No longer worried about where he will sleep, Cante is now working and looking to enroll in college classes. “I can work on things for school and basically get my life together,” said Cante. At the hearing next week, Cante plans to testify and ask the city to provide more money for youth housing. “They need to be expanding what options are already out there,” he said. The May 28 hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in Room 250 at City Hall.t

Lyon-Martin

From page 1

The boards of the two San Francisco-based nonprofits plan to vote on the proposal May 28. Both groups will be represented at a town hall at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 22 at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street. Officials say the move would ensure Lyon-Martin’s survival while offering enhanced services for clients at each of the two organizations. “I think this merger saves LyonMartin well into the future, and I just could not be happier,” said Marj Plumb, Lyon-Martin’s board chair. The clinic, which was founded in 1979 and serves just over 2,000 active patients, nearly shut down in 2011 after a surprise announcement from then-board members that the group was heavily in debt. Community members quickly rallied to keep the nonprofit, which has a budget of about $2 million, afloat, but it has still struggled to pay off an estimated $1 million in long-term debt. If the merger goes through, HealthRight 360, which last fiscal year provided direct services to 23,911 people and has a budget of about $75 million, a figure that includes budgets of smaller organizations it’s recently merged with, will take on Lyon-Martin’s debt. It would also share some administrative staff with the smaller organization, which should help LyonMartin save on positions such as finance. The move is expected to benefit clients of both groups. “Bringing Lyon-Martin into the HR360 family gives us the opportunity to expand and enrich care for women and LGBTQ individuals,” HealthRight 360 CEO Vitka Eisen said in a news release. HealthRight 360 itself is the result of the 2011 merger of HaightAshbury Free Clinics and Walden House. In an interview, Eisen said, “To the degree that Lyon-Martin Health Services patients could benefit from a robust continuum of behavioral health care,” such as substance abuse and mental health counseling, “that would be made more easily available.” The nonprofit also offers assistance with employment skills and housing, among other services. See page 6 >>

SOMETHING CONCERNING YOU

DOWN THERE?

DON’T IGNORE IT. THE FIRST STEP IS UP TO YOU.

1 Learn about treatment options for erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostate and bladder leakage (stress urinary incontinence). Erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostate and bladder leakage may affect your intimacy and confidence.1,2,3 The first step in treating the problem is learning more. Join us to learn about today’s treatment options for these common men’s pelvic health conditions.

Attend a FREE Men's Health Seminar: Presented by: Dr. Edward Karpman Men's Health Seminar June 3, 2014 • Registration 6pm • Seminar 6:30pm Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center 938 The Alameda, San Jose, CA 95126 Partners and guests welcome. Refreshments will be served.

Space is limited, call to register today. RSVP 1-877-433-2873

American Medical Systems, Inc. has sponsored funding for this patient seminar and accompanying educational material. 1. DiMeo PJ. Psychosocial and Relationship Issues in Men with Erectile Dysfunction. Urologic Nursing. 2006 Dec; 26(6): 442-453. 2. Hunskaar S., Sandvik H. One Hundred and Fifty Men with Urinary Incontinence. III. Psychosocial Consequences. Scand J Prim Health Care 1993; 11: 193-196. 3. Shvartzman, P. et al. Second-hand prostatism: effects of prostatic symptoms on spouses’ quality of life, daily routines and family relationships. Family Practice 2001; 18: 610-613.

<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

Volume 44, Number 21 May 22-28, 2014 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Brian Bromberger • Victoria A. Brownworth Philip Campbell • Heather Cassell Chuck Colbert • Richard Dodds David Guarino • Peter Hernandez Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell • John F. Karr Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble Michael McAllister • Michael McDonagh David-Elijah Nahmod • Elliot Owen Paul Parish • Sean Piverger • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Gregory Pleshaw Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Khaled Sayed • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Ed Walsh • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Jay Cribas PRODUCTION/DESIGN Max Leger PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland Rick Gerharter • Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.359.2612 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad, Esq.

BAY AREA REPORTER 225 Bush Street, Suite 1700 San Francisco, CA 94104 415.861.5019 www.ebar.com A division of BAR Media, Inc. © 2014 President: Michael M. Yamashita Chairman: Thomas E. Horn VP and CFO: Patrick G. Brown Secretary: Todd A. Vogt

News Editor • news@ebar.com Arts Editor • arts@ebar.com Out & About listings • jim@ebar.com Advertising • scott@ebar.com Letters • letters@ebar.com Published weekly. Bay Area Reporter reserves the right to edit or reject any advertisement which the publisher believes is in poor taste or which advertises illegal items which might result in legal action against Bay Area Reporter. Ads will not be rejected solely on the basis of politics, philosophy, religion, race, age, or sexual orientation. Advertising rates available upon request. Our list of subscribers and advertisers is confidential and is not sold. The sexual orientation of advertisers, photographers, and writers published herein is neither inferred nor implied. We are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

No doubt – Brown for governor

overnor Jerry Brown appears to be on his way to an unprecedented fourth term and there’s no reason why LGBT voters shouldn’t join with most Californians in voting for him in the June Rick Gerharter 3 primary. In fact, the field is so uninspiring that Brown hasn’t had to do much in the way of campaigning ahead of the primary. In the last three and a half years, Brown steadied the state after he took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who never could figure out how to pay down the debt and work with the Legislature. Brown stopped the fiscal bleeding, and now with the improved economy, California is on the road to recovery. Statewide, the unemployment figure this month is at 7.6 percent, a vast improvement from the 12.1 percent rate when he took office in January 2011. On LGBT rights, Brown signed groundbreaking legislation, including gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s (D-San Francisco) AB 1266, which ensures that transgender students can fully participate in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their gender identity. He also signed Seth’s Law, another Ammiano bill that addresses school bullying. The law is named after a Kern County teenager, Seth Walsh, who hanged himself after suffering years of harassment. The governor also signed bills ensuring LGBT cultural competency for administrators of senior care facilities; LGBT health insurance tax parity (even though a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act was found unconstitutional, the state had unfairly taxed same-sex couples who received health insurance through their partner or spouse); and simplification of the name-change procedure for transgender persons. In his likely last term in office, Brown will have to address the financial challenges facing high speed rail, water issues, and lingering effects from the drought. But he’s been there before and has the experience to run a state as large and diverse as California. We recommend that readers vote for Jerry Brown for governor.

Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor

Since being elected, Newsom has used the bully pulpit of the lieutenant governor’s office to oppose rising tuition fees at state universities and colleges, continue advocating for marriage equality, and Rick Gerharter embrace the growing tech sector. Earlier this year he became the highest ranking Democrat to come out against high speed rail, saying that it wasn’t the same system that he initially supported in 2008. Since then, other Democratic statewide officeholders and candidates have begun to question the high cost – now pegged at $68 billion, more than double the original estimate. There’s no doubt tough decisions need to be made on the cost of the project before it moves forward and Newsom jump-started that conversation. Newsom will continue to be a tremendous advocate for the LGBT community and voters should re-elect him.

Kamala Harris, attorney general

Attorney General Kamala Harris refused to defend the indefensible Proposition 8 when the case against the state’s same-sex marriage ban went to the U.S. Supreme Jane Philomen Cleland Court last year, upholding a pledge she made during her victory party. Since taking office, Harris oversaw a broad range of investigations targeting illegal weapons, drugs, and white-collar crime. In her likely second term, we hope that Harris comes out more forcefully in favor of medical marijuana and that she will work with lawmakers seeking to regulate the business in California. It’s likely that another statewide initiative supporting recreational use of cannabis will come before voters in 2016 and Harris needs to get out in front on this issue. So far, the states that do allow recreational use, Colorado and Washington, have not experienced major problems, and, in fact, have seen an increase in revenue. By and large Harris has done a good job as the state’s top law enforcement officer. She merits a second term.

Alex Padilla, secretary of state

This race is one to watch as it may be the most competitive since state Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) withdrew after his arrest on federal corruption charges (he pleaded not guilty). Padilla, a Democratic state senator from the San Fernando Valley, pledges to expand voter participation to ensure that every vote counts and is accounted for. He also wants to increase transparency where appropriate and reach out to county election officials to better serve voters. The secretary of state’s office is also responsible for overseeing registrations for new businesses and Padilla says on his campaign website that he will work to reduce the backlog, which is a step toward economic recovery. Padilla has experience in state government and was able to work across ideological lines. He is our choice for secretary of state.

Betty Yee, controller

See last week’s editorial, http://ebar.com/ openforum/opforum. php?sec=editorial&id=489.

John Chiang, treasurer

John Chiang has been an excellent state controller for the last eight years, and was put to the test during California’s cash crisis in 2009 when he briefly suspended lawmakers’ salaries because they did not pass the state budget on time. In an editorial board meeting, Chiang said that he wants the treasurer’s office to help real people and intends to provide the expertise of his office to local districts so that officials can ask the right questions before issuing bonds. The treasurer sells the state’s debt and handles the related disclosure documents. Chiang also questions the cost of high speed rail and told us more private investment is needed. He has the financial expertise to seamlessly transition to the treasurer’s office. See page 10 >>

Ballot measure endorsements San Francisco ballot measures

Proposition A: Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response Bond. YES Prop A would authorize the city to issue $400 million in general obligation bonds to repair, upgrade, and seismically retrofit San Francisco’s aging firefighting water infrastructure and to make other infrastructure upgrades to the city’s neighborhood police and fire stations and create seismically secure facilities for the medical examiner and the crime lab. These upgrades are badly needed as the current facilities do not meet current seismic standards and are not expected to remain functional in the event of a major disaster. This is a project supported by the mayor and the Board of Supervisors as well as all public safety agencies and has been thoroughly vetted and included in the city’s 10-year Capital Plan. Vote YES on A. Proposition B: Voter Approval for Waterfront Development Height Increases. NO We oppose Prop B. It is unnecessary and will lead to unintended and counterproductive results. Development along the San Francisco waterfront, from Fisherman’s Wharf to India Basin, has always been a sensitive topic, as well it should be. Our waterfront constitutes a unique and beautiful part of San Francisco’s geographic mystique. It is for that reason that in 1990 the voters adopted Proposition H that required the city to prepare a Waterfront Land Use Plan. There was extensive public input. As a result, the Port Commission that administers some seven and a half miles of waterfront property adopted a comprehensive land use plan that governs acceptable waterfront uses consistent with Prop H and public trust requirements. Likewise, the city’s zoning laws regulate development on all property, including Port property, and limit development height ranging from 40 feet to 84 feet. Any deviation from these rules, including height limit, is only allowed after an extensive public process and approvals by numerous city bodies, including the Port Commission, the Planning Commission, the Board of

Supervisors and often other state and local agencies. This is an orderly process, conducted by our elected officials and those appointed by them to implement city policy. This is how democracy is supposed to function. Generally, it works well. The zoning rules, including height limits, are not absolute. Often there are tradeoffs to consider. Perhaps a developer would like to build affordable rather than luxury housing but needs to create more units in order to make it financially viable and has to add two floors, exceeding the height limit. More affordable housing is in the public interest, so under a controlled process, a variance might be appropriate. Likewise with public parks and public space. In order to include public space in a project, it may be necessary to permit greater density or height for the project to pencil out for the developer. That is why there is a process for a variance. Certain development projects, however, are of such a scope and public impact that voters are asked to weigh in. Such was the case with the Giants baseball park, a proposed new 49er stadium and would surely be the case with any stadium development on the waterfront, such as the previously proposed Warriors stadium on Piers 30-32. This is normal for large projects with great public impact. Prop B eviscerates the city’s orderly process that has functioned well for many years. It requires that the voters approve all developments that would exceed the height limit along the waterfront. We believe this to be unnecessary. Currently all developments are vetted by professionals in the respective commissions and agencies after extensive public input. They have studied the issues related to a particular development and brought professional expertise to them. Most voters don’t have the time or the professional skills necessary to get down into the weeds of every development project that seeks a variance from a general rule. It is good that there is a process to put an individual project of great public interest on the ballot, but every project? Every apartment building? Every office building? We don’t think so.

We spoke of unintended consequences. Everyone knows the housing crisis facing San Francisco. Rents are too high, and there is not enough new housing being created to hold prices down. This proposition will add a new level of cost that will likely prohibit many project sponsors from going forward with modest and smaller housing projects. Only the luxury high rises will get built, because they will be the only sponsors with the resources to fight a costly election battle. It will make the housing crisis worse, not better. Most of our city elected leaders know that Prop B is a bad idea. Why haven’t they spoken out? Where is the leadership? It’s missing because they all think that Prop B is a slam-dunk to win, and there’s nothing in it for them. We are disappointed with the lack of courage and leadership on this proposition. Maybe it is a slamdunk. But it’s still a bad idea. Vote No on B.

State ballot measures

Proposition 41: Veterans Housing and Homeless Prevention Bond Act of 2014. YES This state proposition authorizes the issuance of $600 million in General Obligation bonds previously approved to construct and rehabilitate housing for California’s large population of homeless veterans. After 10 years of multiple wars and tens of thousands of returning veterans, many with serious physical and psychological injuries, this investment is definitely needed and justified. Proposition 42: Public Records. Open Meetings. State Reimbursement to Local Agencies. YES Full public access to government meetings and records is essential to the proper functioning of a democracy. This state constitutional amendment addresses the question of who should pay the costs incurred by local agencies for compliance with the public access to records law: the state or the local agency doing the complying. Currently the state pays these costs. This proposition would shift the burden to the local government agency that is better positioned to innovate and reduce costs through efficiencies.t

Letters >>

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Campos deserves LGBT support

The Bay Area Reporter has selected David Chiu as its candidate of choice for Assembly District 17, San Francisco’s eastern side. In the May 8 editorial [“Chiu’s the choice in AD 17,”], the B.A.R. noted that voters are lucky to have two qualified Democratic candidates vying to replace Tom Ammiano, who will be termed out of office this year. We ask the B.A.R.: if all things are indeed equal and we have two good candidates from whom to choose, why not choose the LGBTQ candidate? Chiu may have been “with us” in the past but isn’t it still preferable to have one of our own carrying our legislation? The B.A.R. is usually adamant that an LGBTQ candidate must be our community’s pick and yet, in this case, a straight ally is selected over someone who is not only gay but actively works on behalf of LGBTQ causes. The B.A.R. cites a difference in tone and culture between the two candidates. Supervisor David Campos certainly struck the right tone when he managed to pass through the Board of Supervisors substantial legislation including the following:  Pilot program providing free Muni passes for lowincome SF youth;  Closing a loophole in the Healthcare Security Ordinance that allowed business owners to pocket customers’ money instead of spending it on employee healthcare;  Substantial increase in relocation payments given to those evicted under the Ellis Act;  Ordinance allowing SF-based employees to request flexible or predictable working arrangements to assist with care-giving responsibilities; and  Restoration of millions of dollars in proposed budget cuts for critical HIV/AIDS services. Because of his effectiveness, Campos has wide-ranging endorsements. He is strongly supported by those who work in Sacramento on behalf of the LGBTQ community, including Equality California; the California Legislative LGBT Caucus; newly elected lesbian Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins; and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. Campos is US. He has the active support of Ammiano because he knows that Campos will carry on his legacy in a way that Chiu cannot. Campos is a tireless advocate for LGBTQ and progressive issues and a talented, thoughtful, and successful legislator. In a historic move, we can elect San Francisco’s first gay Latino to be our voice in the California Assembly but only if we get out to vote June 3. Please join us. Gwenn Craig, Bevan Dufty, Gabriel Haaland, Eileen Hansen, Cleve Jones, Esperanza Macias, Donna Satchet, Sara Shortt, Tom Temprano, Laura Thomas, and Gary Virginia San Francisco

Happy birthday, Harvey

Happy birthday, Harvey. Yes, physically you are not here but spiritually you are always between us no matter what. Your body was just a part who you were – the person who led all of us where we are today, tomorrow, forever. Your hope gave us the green light: we will be judged not for who we are but what we do. And you, Harvey, are this spirit for all of us for generations to come. Thank you. Georgy Prodorov San Francisco

What could have been

Thirty years ago, in March 1984, Larry Littlejohn’s proposed bathhouse initiative precipitated a highly emotional debate and legal maneuvers, which resulted in the regulation of San Francisco bathhouses and other sex clubs. These regulations, and an ongoing decline in bathhouse patronage, brought an end to those bathhouses. The last traditional bathhouse was forced to close in 1987 for violating those regulations. Since then, San Franciscans have had no bathhouses, although they have been permitted, as long as they followed public health guidelines. Fast forward to today and an article in the May 8 Bay Area Reporter on the Market Street sex club Eros mentions the fact that this safe-sex club has a new bathhouse license [“Castro safe-sex club upgrades amid ownership shuffle,” Business Briefs]. Fortunately for San Francisco, Eros founder Buzz Bense and his colleagues provided our community with a great service. And with this new licensure, San Francisco officially has a bathhouse – a bathhouse that would have been a model of “safe sex=good business” at the height of the AIDS epidemic. That is, if traditional bathhouse owners during the early AIDS epidemic had embraced, and not fought, a safe-sex approach. John Mehring San Francisco

[Editor’s note: The article Mr. Mehring refers to makes clear that Eros safe-sex club co-owner Ken Rowe said the ownership group has no plans of installing locked, private rooms, which is a main feature of traditional bathhouses.]

Depends on how you look at it

A big thanks to Neal Gottlieb of Sausalito for planting that rainbow flag on the tallest peak in Uganda [“Bay Area climber claims Uganda peak for LGBT rights,” Out in the World, May 1]. But why was it upside down? Was this a sign of distress, like when someone has the stars and stripes upside down? The story left that part out. Anthony Rhody San Francisco

Housing is a queer right, too by Tommi Avicolli Mecca and Brian Basinger

nding homelessness is one of the greatest challenges that the city of San Francisco faces these days. It’s also a challenge for the LGBT community since it disproportionately affects us. Nearly one-third (29 percent) of the respondents in last year’s homeless count said they identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual. An additional 3 percent said they’re transgender. It was the first year that the survey, which is organized by the Local Homeless Coordinating Board, included questions about sexual orientation and gender identity. The numbers may seem high (especially in a city where the queer population is usually estimated at 12 percent), but they’re not. According to other studies, the numbers are higher, for instance, 40 percent of homeless youth in the city, and also nationally, are LGBT. Many of these young people sleep in the parks rather than risk harassment or antiqueer violence in the shelters. A 2007 Coalition on Homelessness study, “Shelter Shock: Abuse, Cruelty, and Neglect in San Francisco’s Shelter System,” reported that 70 percent of transgender people experienced harassment or violence. LGBT homeless, like all those who live on the streets, also face citations or arrests under anti-panhandling and sit/lie laws, which puts them at risk of being turned down for housing. An unpaid citation turns into a bench warrant and can lead to arrest, which then becomes a “criminal” record. It’s something the voters

never consider when they approve measures that criminalize homeless people, rather than provide them with housing and services. Three things have made poverty and homelessness in our community worse: the lack of action and financial support from the city and the politicians who represent us; the lack of action on the part of LGBT mainstream organizations that don’t see these issues as their concerns; and the lack of adequate protection for tenants from speculators and investors who evict them for profit whenever the market is sizzling hot, as it is right now. Since 1997, there have been almost 2,000 Ellis Act and owner move-in evictions in District 8, which includes the Castro area, according to the AntiEviction Mapping Project, a group that documents the displacement of tenants in San Francisco. It’s the hardest hit area of the city, with tenants in 837 units Ellis Act-evicted, and 917 owner move-in-evicted since the days of the first dot-com boom. Most of the evictions were of people with AIDS who had been in their apartments for years, some since the days of Harvey Milk, longterm tenants who were in the way of speculators wanting to make a huge profit flipping their buildings and turning them into tenancies in common. Many of those tenants ended up homeless or were forced to leave the city and the Castro because they couldn’t afford the new high rents. Where is the affordable housing in the neighborhood? The Castro area is currently seeing a lot of new construction, but none of the units being built will be afford-

able for homeless or low-income people within the community. The only affordable housing slated for the neighborhood is actually right on the outskirts, at 55 Laguna, where 110 units will be built for low-income seniors, including LGBTs. What’s going to become of the Castro as more and more longtime LGBT renters are pushed out of their apartments and have no choice but to leave the neighborhood? It’s time that elected officials and LGBT mainstream organizations in this city get involved in addressing poverty and homelessness in our community. Next Wednesday, May 28 at 10 a.m. in Room 205 of City Hall, LGBT homelessness will be the focus of the latest in a series of hearings into homeless issues that is being held by the Board of Supervisors’ budget and finance committee. We urge homeless members of our community as well as service providers and advocates to speak out at the hearing. Let board members know what they need to do to help. Tell them we don’t want any delays or excuses. We also urge directors and staff of mainstream LGBT organizations to come to the hearing as well. They can use this opportunity as a first step in getting involved in the issue. While it’s great that we as a community have won many gains in the past 40-something years since the Stonewall riots, including the right to marry, it’s time we recognize that housing is a queer right that should be on everyone’s agenda.t Tommi Avicolli Mecca works for the Housing Rights Committee of SF. Brian Basinger is founder and director of the AIDS Housing Alliance.

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<< Community News

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

17 students receive eQuality scholarships by Gregory Pleshaw

crowd of more than 200 people was on hand to offer congratulations to 17 students who received eQuality scholarships at the organization’s recent dinner gala. Equality Scholarship Collaborative, as it is known, is a collaboration among several LGBT employee resource groups at some of the Bay Area’s largest companies and nonprofit partners. This year marked the collaboration’s 25th year. “Tonight we have 17 students who have shown a dedication and a commitment to doing whatever needs to be done to make their schools and their communities a safer and better place to be,” Mary Issel, with PG&E Pride Network, said at the May 16 event, held at the Hotel Nikko. “It’s important to keep in mind that our queer youth face additional challenges than nonqueer, including not always having the support of their parents in their own identities.” Most of the students were graduating high school seniors. Each offered a remarkable story of bravery and courage, for in addition to facing the difficult issues of coming out and disclosing their identities to family, friends, and teachers, each went the extra mile by devoting part of their school lives to working for queer equality through groups like Gay-Straight Alliance Network and special projects on campuses across California. But by the time 18-year-old Esteban Baiz left the stage after his remarks, it’s hard to imagine that there was a dry eye in the room. Baiz, a soft-spoken youth from Newman (Stanislaus County) who plans to use his scholarship to attend California College of the Arts, told a story that many of those in attendance may have found familiar. “I didn’t grow up with a father – my mother was my only parent,”

Lyon-Martin

From page 3

Lyon-Martin, which provides services including HIV care and gynecologic care, would remain at its current 1748 Market Street location and maintain its mission while becoming a program of HealthRight 360. Dr. Dawn Harbatkin, Lyon-Mar-

said Baiz. “She is a very devout Catholic from Mexico who came here to give us a better life. When I told her I was gay, she told me she was very disappointed in me and that I had to leave.” After a suicide attempt, Baiz took on the task of raising himself, relying on an art teacher to give him support and guidance and validation for his identity. Joining his high school gaystraight alliance as a freshman, by the following year he was the group’s copresident and became its president in his senior year. Throughout the dinner, the repeated refrain of being isolated and alone in their identities, even among such accomplished young people, illustrated the ways in which the needs of LGBT youth often extend beyond the basics like money for college, and also for mentors and others within the community to help care for them. On hand for the event was gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, who presented the group with a proclamation from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors declaring May 16 as “eQuality Fund Scholarship Day.” “It’s important that we take care of our own,” said Wiener, 44, who is a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law, as well as the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship. “Despite a boom time in San Francisco, young people are still struggling. With housing, with health care, and with having the funds necessary to go to college to better their communities. We know that people have better lives with education, and awards like this make someone’s life better and the community at large a better place to be.” For each scholarship recipient, someone close to them – a parent, a teacher, a best friend – was on hand to offer personal anecdotes and testimonials as to the courage of these tin’s executive and medical director, said “what has been really exciting” is that HealthRight 360 has agreed on many “non-negotiable pieces” with Lyon-Martin, including “serving our community in the way we serve them.” “They really do share our values and our commitment to serving marginalized populations,” said Harbatkin of the larger group, which has

Jane Philomen Cleland

Recipients of this year’s eQuality scholarships come from cities across California and will be attending college or medical school in the fall.

young people to take their identities and become activists for the sake of the lives of others. EQuality was founded in 1989 in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco, and the first awards ceremony featured a single recipient, who was given a scholarship for $250. This year, eQuality was able to offer $6,000 each to all 17 recipients. “We like to say that we’ve been able to adjust for inflation,” said Matt McCabe, a spokesman for eQuality and chair of the publicity committee. “Each year, we give out almost exactly what we receive, as there is no paid staff for eQuality. If we had more money, we’d give away more. We differ from other scholarship funds in that we pay the institutions directly,” he said – though a student remarked from the podium that she did receive a “ridiculously oversized check like from a television game show,” upon learning of her award. Funding for the group is provided by a variety of corporate and nonprofit sources such as the United Way, Out and Equal Workplace

Advocates, GSA Network, and the LGBT employee resource groups at PG&E, KPMG, Kaiser Permanente, and Genentech, as well as through gifts from many individual donors. The total number of applications received for the awards this year was 72, with many of the applicants learning about the fund through their local gay-straight alliance. Applications were received via an online system and were evaluated based on the student’s involvement in LGBTQQIATSA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, two-spirit, ally) community activity and leadership. Three categories of awards were given: high school seniors, community college students, and medical school students. In addition to Baiz, other high school scholarship recipients included Nekeisha Barnett McNeil of Pacifica; Sam Blanchard of Fairfax; Schuyler Borges of Bakersfield; Jenny Chen of Campbell; Cassie Contreras of Fresno; Neeozzi Dickerson of Sonoma; Laura Jacobs of

operations in other parts of California. “They run the only transgender residential treatment facility for substance disorders in the state.” Eisen will remain HealthRight 360’s CEO. Harbatkin’s new title hasn’t been finalized. Like Plumb, both are out lesbians.

ing water” in its efforts to pay off about $1 million in long-term debt, which includes money the nonprofit owes on a loan. HealthRight 360 will take over that debt. “When we merge, we assume all the liabilities,” said Eisen. Taking it on is “something that’s manageable over time,” she said. San Francisco Health Director Barbara Garcia has been talking

Debt, staff

Lyon-Martin is “basically tread-

LGBT grads

From page 1

liked the Coast Guard and I didn’t feel like they were anti-gay, but I wasn’t being honest as a person. “They expect you to be honest, but you can’t be honest, so that was hard for me,” she added. “I didn’t want to live two lives, so I decided to have just one life.” While at SFSU Feely also volunteered at a nonprofit organization that provides coaches for public schools. Due in part to the strong support the university offers to military veterans, she will graduate and plans to become a physician’s assistant. She now lives in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. Also graduating this semester is Jose Alfaro, who earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature. He is also the undergraduate hood recipient for the College of Liberal and Creative Arts. Hood recipients are the top graduating students chosen from each of San Francisco State’s six academic colleges. Each college selects one student for the honor of wearing the academic hood and representing their peers at graduation. Alfaro was raised in Sacramento in a working class Mexican American family and attended West Campus High School. “I grew up with bilingual edu-

Courtesy SFSU

Jose Alfaro plans to attend graduate school.

Chris Wilson Simpkins will receive her MA degree.

Craig Corpora will receive his MA degree.

cation, then the English-only law passed in California when I was in fourth grade, so I was placed in English as a second language (ESL) classes. I didn’t like English at all for many years,” Alfaro said, referring to Proposition 227, the 1998 law that banned most bilingual education in public schools. “It had a lot to do with my identity, I was having a hard time with English as a language I could claim,” Alfaro said. “Besides, I had to hide my Spanish language.” However, around the eighth grade

Alfaro had a teacher who taught him how to use Spanish word roots to extend his vocabulary in English. “I think that was when the transition started,” he said. Alfaro became interested in the works of authors whose backgrounds were similar to his own. The writings of Chicano scholars like Gloria Anzaldúa were particularly inspiring to him, as were the works of lesbian activistwriter Audre Lorde. “In college I explored other writers, and I understood that English can’t be claimed by one group.

English can transcend borders and boundaries,” he said. Although Alfaro transferred to SFSU from Sacramento City College in 2012, his civic interests helped him form connections throughout the campus community. As a member of “SalSanFran,” SFSU’s Latin rhythms student group, he helped host free dance workshops for students, faculty, and staff. Living on campus, Alfaro was elected to work as a residential assistant for freshmen students in the Towers at Centennial Square. While

Windsor; Narina Jones of Oakland; Lara Loesel of El Dorado Hills; Alexa Lopez of Walnut Creek; Rhozi Niebauer of South Lake Tahoe; and Maximus Yearian of San Francisco. Michael Nedelman was the recipient of the Permanente Medical Group Scholar Award. Currently attending Stanford University Medical School, where he is the president of the LGBT Meds group, Nedelman received an undergraduate degree in film from Yale University, where he produced a documentary called The Camouflage Closet, a documentary on LGBTQ veterans’ experiences with trauma and recovery. “All of us have had the experience where we were the only one in the room who are different in the way we are different, where if we didn’t speak up about our issues, no one else would,” said Nedelman. “This was the case for me both in high school and in medical school. Fortunately, I can say with some confidence that through my experience of speaking out, I found a lot more support than I ever could’ve imagined.” The three other community college and medical school scholarship recipients were Katrina Craton of Chico; Victor Romos of Santa Rosa; and Greg Zahner of San Francisco. McCabe noted that some of the students come from conservative areas of the state. “It takes enormous courage to be out in places like Chico or Bakersfield, but to place themselves in a position of being out, loud, and proud, and active, takes a level of commitment that elicits awe among eQuality staffers as we review the applications – and which brings pride and honor to our community as a whole,” he said.t For more information about eQuality Scholarship Collaborative, visit www.equalityscholarship.org.

about agencies increasing efficiency through merging for years. “We are very excited about the merger of Lyon-Martin Health Services and HealthRight 360,” Garcia said in a statement.” Leveraging our community assets like this is exactly what we need to do in the midst of health care reform to ensure that health services for our imporSee page 10 >> completing his senior coursework, Alfaro was an academic and personal mentor to his residents. Alfaro has been accepted into UC Riverside’s English literature Ph.D. program. He hopes to become an English literature professor. Chris Wilson Simpkins is graduating this weekend with a Master of Arts degree in literature. She grew up in Michigan and was academically gifted, but despite graduating high school a year early she was unable financially to attend a four-year college. Wilson Simpkins took a bus to San Francisco where she found a job with the city and signed up for evening classes to earn her B.A. She later enrolled at SFSU’s master’s program in literature in 2006 and has become a top student, including presenting papers at six national conferences. She lives in North Oakland with her partner and their 14-year-old son. Finally, Craig Corpora, after receiving his bachelor’s degree at SFSU, he returned for graduate studies. Corpora will receive his master’s degree in art history. While at SFSU, his focus has been on queer art theory. He has also volunteered at the GLBT Historical Society and SFMOMA. He lives in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood with his husband.t

Politics>>

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

New Prop 8 book, film events in SF by Matthew S. Bajko

ew York Times reporter Jo Becker’s controversial behindthe-scenes book about the federal case against Proposition 8, California’s now-rescinded ban against same-sex marriage, won’t be the final word about the litigation. Nor will it be shining alone in the media’s glare for much longer. A documentary from HBO Films and a new book about the case written by the two lawyers for the plaintiffs will both be released in June and each will be feted in San Francisco next month at different events. Becker, who swung through San Francisco in early May to promote her book Forcing the Spring, was hit with accusations of ignoring the history of the marriage equality movement and elevating Chad Griffin, who spearheaded filing the Prop 8 case, to mythic status. Her book received mixed reviews, with those raving about it calling it a spellbinding page-turner. Now two of the main characters in Becker’s tome, lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies, will release their own book about the case, Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality, Tuesday, June 17. Similar to Becker, the opponents in the famous Bush v. Gore lawsuit also reflect on their five-year legal battle and the various arguments raised by the case. To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Prop 8 and saw same-sex marriages resume in the Golden State on the eve of Pride weekend last June, local chain Books Inc. is hosting a celebration

featuring Olson and Boies. It takes place during this year’s Pride week at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 25 at the LGBT Community Center. Tickets cost $35, which includes a signed copy of the book, and can be purchased online at http:// rredeemingthedream.brownpapertickets.com/. (The bookstore staff will be busy that night, as they are also cohosting a conversation with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose own book Hard Choices hits stores in June, at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco that evening.) As for the documentary featuring the two same-sex couple litigants in the Prop 8 case and their legal team, The Case Against 8, it will open this year’s Frameline LGBT International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre Thursday, June 19. Directors Ben Cotner and Ryan White received an all-access pass by the Prop 8 plaintiffs, and legal team, to film their courtroom journey and eventual weddings on the evening of June 28, 2013. “Ben and I grew up as LGBT youth admiring those who led our movement, especially the leaders of the marriage equality cause who devoted their lives for this issue,” the filmmakers said in a statement. “Those individuals paved the way for this case and for this moment which we were able to capture on film.” Frameline expects all four of the plaintiffs, Berkeley couple Kris Perry and Sandy Stier and Los Angeles couple Jeff Zarillo and Paul Katami, along with the filmmakers to attend the opening night events. “We can’t think of a better way

won the SXSW Audience Award in the Festival Favorites category. Tickets to the opening night screening and gala are currently on sale for Frameline members only and cost $75. They can be purchased online at http://ticketing.fra`meline. org/shop/passes.aspx#opening. Tickets for the general public go on sale next Friday, May 30. HBO Films will begin rolling the film out in theaters June 6 and will screen it on HBO at 9 p.m. Monday, June 23.

Bill Wilson

Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, center, are flanked by city officials and others as they speak to reporters following their wedding in San Francisco City Hall last June after same-sex marriage was restored in California.

to open this year’s Frameline,” said Desiree Buford, the festival’s director of exhibition and programming, during a May 19 media preview of Frameline’s lineup and a press screening of the Prop 8 film. “It is touching; it’s powerful. I thought I knew everything about the case and I was completely blown away by the plaintiffs’ story.” Throughout the course of the litigation Perry and Stier largely shielded their four sons from the media glare. The documentary crew, however, was granted unfettered access to both couples and presents brief glimpses of their more private moments with their families. “They and their families are the heart of the film, highlighting the human side of an issue that often gets overshadowed by politics,” stated the filmmakers, who pared down more than 600 hours of footage to create the 112-minute documentary. And unlike T:9.75” in Becker’s book, the film treats Griffin as more of a sec-

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Dustin Lance Black, the gay screenwriter who won an Oscar for his film Milk about the late gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, will be this year’s commencement speaker at the city’s community college. City College of San Francisco officials invited Black to address its spring graduating class this Friday, May 23 after he was initially disinvited to speak by Pasadena City College, from which he graduated in 1994. College officials had rescinded their invite after learning about a sex tape an ex-boyfriend of Black had shopped to media outlets. When the college’s replacement speaker then dropped out due to his homophobic past surfacing, the southern California school re-invited Black to deliver the commencement address, which he did earlier this month. Rafael Mandelman, a gay man who is a City College trustee, had reached out to Black’s friend, Cleve Jones, who was a close friend of Milk’s, about having him address the San Francisco graduates. “I think Cleve and I were having a conversation about wouldn’t it be See page 9 >>

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ondary character rather than a lead actor. It is more than 15 minutes into the film before Griffin, who now heads LGBT rights group the Human Rights Campaign, appears on screen. Instead, the film opens with Olson preparing for his U.S. Supreme Court arguments before a panel of mock judges and covers how the conservative attorney came to be part of the lawsuit. Much of the action in the film occurs in legal offices as the lawyers prep the plaintiffs to take the stand during the January 2010 trial in San Francisco. Because the proponents of Prop 8 fought the trial court’s decision to originally air the proceedings on TV, the filmmakers rely on having the attorneys and plaintiffs read snippets of their arguments or testimony from printouts of the court transcripts. The film won the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Directing Award in the U.S. documentary category and

Gay filmmaker to give City College commencement address

<< Sports

t First out former football player weighs in on Sam 8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

by Roger Brigham

erhaps it was naive of me not to realize that when Michael Sam became the first openly gay football player ever to be drafted by the NFL, everyone would end up talking about Oprah. Folks had barely recovered from their shock at seeing Sam kiss his boyfriend on ESPN when it was announced that he would be the focus of a reality TV show for the Oprah Winfrey Network. In other words, screw the NFL and, in many people’s minds, screw Sam’s chances of being able to concentrate on earning a roster spot on the St. Louis Rams: Oprah OWNed him. Publicly Rams officials had tight smiles and said they’d have no trouble allowing the show. In the sober light of the days that followed the heady moment of Sam’s selection, however, both he and the network realized that just maybe a reality series would be a mistake. Plans for the show were shelved and Sam, a defensive destroyer in college but considered a marginal prospect for the pros, can concentrate on training and playing football. Of course, between the announcement of the show and its cancellation, every football pundit and gay sports activist in the country chimed in praising or condemn-

ing the concept and saying what Sam should or should not do. Frankly, I didn’t care about any of that or what any of them thought. The only opinion I wanted to hear was from the athlete who first envisioned a world in which an openly gay man would be accepted into the headbusting macho world of pro football. I wanted to talk with the original man in the arena: David Kopay. Kopay was the first former NFL player to come out of the closet in 1975 – three years after he had retired. In fact he was the first male athlete in any of the major U.S. pro team sports to come out, and at the time folks figured it was just a matter of time before active NFL players started coming out. But for decades, it didn’t happen. Didn’t happen in the 15 years between Kopay’s announcement and Sam’s birth in 1990. Almost another quarter of a century passed before Sam came out, which means that it could finally happen 39 years after Kopay’s revelation. But only if Sam lands a roster spot. Only if Sam suits up and plays in a game. And if that all happens, how it will be viewed in another 38 years from now will depend on entirely on how many games Sam plays and how successful his career is. Kopay met Sam for the first time

Felice Quinto

Former 49ers football player David Kopay is shown at a 1977 news conference for the release of his book.

at Sam’s “launch” party organized before the NFL draft by publicist Howard Bragman. “I think he’s a good kid,” Kopay told me. “He has a sense of awareness about himself and others. He’s a survivor from a family that is totally dysfunctional. The players will find out this kid is a battler. He’s going to compete. If some of them are nervous, tough shit: get over it. All this stuff about kissing his boyfriend: Maybe they would have preferred the team selecting a player who is a wife-beater or someone who shoots someone or somebody who gets drunk and kills somebody with his car. He’s with someday he loves. A

kiss is just a kiss. Kids seeing that is not a bad thing; it’s a good thing.” Supposedly, Kopay is 73 years old, but when he starts talking, he has the same breathless stamina he had as a 20-something landing a playing spot on the San Francisco 49ers as an undrafted free agent. “I’m really glad [coach] Jeff Fisher and the Rams drafted him,” Kopay said. “That’s better than just signing as a free agent. I talked him up when I saw him at the dinner. He’s a really solid guy. He’s a brick shithouse. He’s built like that, 260 pounds, 6-foot-2, really solid. I said, ‘Michael, you’re talking about midrange draft round. I was told I’d get drafted in the mid-rounds, and I never got drafted at all – and they had 20 rounds then!’” My editor usually requires me to start a new paragraph when someone talks that long, but Kopay is having none of it. “Of course, I was disappointed he didn’t go higher in the draft,” he said, “but I didn’t know his combine performance yet. Based on the combine, he probably got drafted about where he should; the combine shows something. But it doesn’t show a lot about determination and character.” Some self-proclaimed Sam supporters were aghast at the prospect of a reality TV show. Gay ESPN columnist LZ Granderson said he thought it sent a “mixed message.” ESPN NFL writer Jason Whitlock accused Sam’s agents and publicist of exploiting Sam and referred to him as being more $am than Sam.

Of course, he writes for E$PN. Hey folks: it’s professional football. Everybody makes money off of it: the owners, the players, the publicists, the media, the agents, the gamblers, the team trainers who don’t tell players when they have serious injuries that should keep them out of the lineup. Kopay said he understood the concern that doing a TV show might be a distraction, but said on reflection he was okay with it. “In the NFL, he’s going to be making the $440,000 minimum,” he said. “Anybody else would have jumped at the opportunity to do a show. Oprah would be giving him more money, so why wouldn’t he? Everyone has distractions in life; you overcome them. It might give him a platform. He’s certainly already gotten people’s attention and given people hope kind of like I did when I came out. It could lead to a career going to campuses and talking to people. Hell, I’m happy for him.” And I was happy for Kopay, who after decades of standing alone found himself being, in his words, “recycled” in interviews. “Thank God,” he said. “I’m so happy for him. And I keep getting recycled. I’m so moved by it all.”

Gay Games pioneer celebrated

Family and friends of Ralph Countryman celebrated the life of the organizer of the first Gay Games See page 10 >>

PRIDE 2014 Published weekly since 1971, the Bay Area Reporter has covered San Francisco’s June celebrations since before the word PRIDE was even used to describe them. The

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

Vol. 43 • No. 26 • June 27-July 3, 2013

City to embrace Pride by Seth Hemmelgarn

Rick Gerharter

Members of the Kaiser Permanente contingent enjoyed the sun and music as they headed down Market Street at last year’s Pride parade.

t’s been a rough year for organizers of the 43rd annual San Francisco LGBT Pride parade and celebration, but Pride chief Earl Plante still sounds enthusiastic about this year’s theme, “Embrace, Encourage, Empower.” Plante, CEO of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, said that to him, the theme means, “embracing all aspects of our community” and “diversity at all levels.” It also invokes “empowering the broader global LGBT movement.” “San Francisco Pride is a thought leader ... it has been since its inception,” Plante said. This year’s Pride festivities begin Saturday with the festival in Civic Center, from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, the celebration in Civic Center runs from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. The parade kicks off at 10:30 a.m. at Market and Beale streets and ends at Market and Eighth streets. The Pride festival is free, but a donation of $5 is suggested. There will be jubilation in the streets as well, following Wednesday’s historic victories at the U.S. Supreme Court. See page 22 >>

Phyllis Lyon is escorted down the Rotunda stairs in San Francisco City Hall by Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, left, and Mayor Ed Lee.

Court victories!

Rick Gerharter

by Matthew S. Bajko and Lisa Keen

n a stunning double victory, the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday issued decisions that strike down both a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban. The DOMA decision, a 5-4 split, was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by

the four liberal justices of the court. It strikes DOMA as unconstitutional because it violates the guarantees of equal protection and due process. The DOMA dissent, based largely on matters of standing, was led by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court’s three other conservatives. See page 22 >>

Activists to honor Manning at SF parade by Cynthia Laird

ay Army private Bradley Manning was stripped of his grand marshal status and is 3,000 miles away in Maryland at his court-martial but supporters will honor him in Sunday’s San Francisco LGBT Pride parade anyway. The Bradley Manning Support Network contingent, which has marched in San Francisco Pride parades for the last two years, is expected to be teeming with activists, probably a couple politicians, and supporters of the WikiLeaks whistle-blower. In a statement released this week, Manning’s local supporters said in essence that they didn’t care that the San Francisco Pride board refused to honor him – Manning will be their grand marshal. Manning, 25, is accused of leaking some 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website. He has confessed to some of the charges against him, but is being court-martialed on other charges. The most serious, aiding the enemy, could send him to prison for life. After initially naming Manning as a grand marshal in late April, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee board reversed itself two days later. Initially Pride board President Lisa Williams, in a statement, said that it was a “mistake” to name Manning a grand marshal. Later, the board came out with a sec-

The Free Bradley Manning contingent, shown here in last year’s parade, is expected to be larger on Sunday. Rick Gerharter

ond statement that said Manning couldn’t be considered for a community grand marshal slot because he is not local. After a contentious community meeting May 31, the Pride board declined to recognize Manning in any way for the Pride celebration. Joey Cain, a former Pride Committee board president and a former parade grand marshal,

was the person who nominated Manning for the honor. He has been by turns, angry, hurt, and disappointed in how the controversy has played out, and the lack of communication and transparency from Pride officials. “There’s a major leadership problem at Pride that needs to be addressed,” Cain said in a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

{ FIRST OF THREE SECTIONS }

To those who say that even though Manning is gay, what he did was not specifically gay-related, Cain has a different perspective. “The reason I nominated Bradley Manning was because the LGBT community needed to know about him and embrace him,” Cain said. “Bradley Manning is a gay man who did See page 6 >>

On June 26, we’ll publish our 44th Annual edition celebrating the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride celebration.

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Community News>>

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Marin group picks up Grindr outreach by Seth Hemmelgarn

n AIDS-related nonprofit in Marin County has been posting fake ads to Grindr, Scruff, and other hookup sites as part of its efforts to encourage testing, picking up on a strategy San Mateo County health staff have been using since 2012. Marin AIDS Project, which is based in San Rafael and is marking its 30th year, has been using Grindr, Scruff, Craigslist, and similar applications and websites since January. Andy Fyne, the Marin nonprofit’s prevention and testing manager, said the response has been “overwhelmingly positive.” “I know our efforts like Grindr and getting people to send their friends in and ads on Craigslist are bringing in more high-risk folks to test,” said Fyne, who’s gay. He said people come in “because of the outreach worker they met online. They don’t realize it’s me.” Fyne couldn’t say exactly how many people overall the outreach has drawn in for testing. The work involves using stock photos of men to attract people. Fyne said his agency uses the same approach as San Mateo County workers, where staffers use stock photos of men but don’t initiate contact with others on the site, and profiles contain minimal information. Instead, county workers respond when someone expresses interest in a profile.

Political Notebook

From page 7

cool if San Francisco invited Dustin Lance Black to speak at CCSF in light of what happened at Pasadena,” recalled Mandelman. “I floated it to folks at the college and they said that sounds cool.” In a statement CCSF Chancellor Art Tyler said CCSF “is thrilled to welcome Mr. Black” to its campus. “As a graduate of a California community college, Mr. Black embodies the opportunity City College represents for all of our students,” stated Tyler. “His leadership in the LGBTQ community resonates with our tradition of celebrating our diversity and standing up for the rights and talents of each and every student.” City College’s 79th commencement ceremony is expected to include more than 600 graduates, a record for the school, as well as over 4,000 parents, family members, and friends at the ticketed event. “As a proud alum of a California community college, I understand the power and potential of a community college education,” stated Black, who turned the Prop 8 trial transcripts into the play 8. “I look forward to sending the 2014 graduating class off into their own bright tomorrows.” City College is in a heated fight to save itself from having to close in 2015. It is battling in court the commission that stripped it of its accreditation. While the litigation progresses, the school is enrolling students in summer and fall classes. “The accreditor continues to try to shut us down and the accreditor is going to fail,” said Mandelman.t Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reported on three LGBT bills passed by the state Assembly. Keep abreast of the latest LGBT political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes. Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8615019 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

The efforts, which started in October 2012, have been a boon to outreach work, according to Darryl Lampkin, prevention supervisor for the STD/HIV program at the county’s health department. After speaking with Lampkin, the Marin nonprofit launched a similar effort. Like San Mateo County, finding specific locations where outreach work can be focused toward gay and bi men can be tough. “It’s a challenge in Marin when you don’t have a gay bar or gay Pride day,” Fyne told members of San Francisco’s HIV Prevention Planning Council during a presentation at its regular meeting Thursday, May 8. The nonprofit’s work isn’t limited to Grindr. Fyne said people in Marin “love Craigslist,” where his agency’s staff post ads with headlines like, “Do you like to bareback?” The body of that ad includes the line, “No judgment from me,” along with Marin AIDS Project’s name and phone number. The nonprofit tests for HIV and hepatitis C, but doesn’t test for sexually transmitted diseases, largely due to a lack of funds. The Bay Area Reporter requested interviews on the fake ad strategy

with a handful of men who posted on Craigslist last week. None of them responded. Marin AIDS Project also uses other apps besides Grindr, such as Scruff and Growlr, because of the age groups they draw. “Our folks tend to be a bit older in Marin County,” by about 10 years, said Fyne. San Francisco officials don’t seem interested in entertaining the idea of posting fake ads on social media to aid in their HIV testing efforts. In response to the B.A.R.’s request earlier this year to interview a San Francisco Health Department official about using Grindr to do HIV and STD outreach, department spokeswoman Nancy Sarieh said in an email, “We are not using Grindr for HIV/STD outreach.”

Finances

Marin AIDS Project just had a close call regarding its funding after the county put a Ryan White HIV/ AIDS Treatment Modernization Act contract that the nonprofit’s relied on up for bid for the first time in nine years, and another agency applied. Marin AIDS Project learned last week that it had again been awarded the contract.

Courtesy Scruff

The Marin AIDS Project is using social hookup sites like Scruff to reach out to gay men for HIV testing.

Jennifer Malone, the nonprofit’s executive director and a straight ally, said, “For us this is certainly a great endorsement of what we do.” Services from testing to emergency financial assistance are “all designed to work as an integrated set of services that will help people thrive and that will address problems and barriers” for clients, said Malone. (She also said she was told

by a county official that putting such a contract up for bid every few years is “standard procedure.”) The group served 243 clients from March 2013 through February 2014. Fyne said Community Action Marin was the other bidding agency. That group didn’t respond to an interview request Friday. The contract, worth $410,000 for a 12-month period, is more than half of Marin AIDS Project’s approximately $750,000 budget. For the eight months left in the year, it’s worth about $274,000. The nonprofit’s staff already had enough to worry about without the potential loss of the Ryan White contract. The organization is operating at a $73,000 deficit, and all five full time staff go unpaid for two days each month. In addition to Ryan White funds, the agency also receives federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding through the San Francisco Eligible Metropolitan Area, which consists of Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties. Other sources include private donations and the AIDS Walk. For more information, visit www. marinaidsproject.org.t

Mary’s at the Patio Two iconic, historic, cutting-edge, LGBT-friendly institutions for over 30 years, Hamburger Mary’s on Folsom Street and the Patio on Castro Street, are joining together to open a new Hamburger Mary’s at the Patio Cafe. “Mary’s at the Patio” will be a lively and vibrant business and it will be desirable for the Castro neighborhood, the LGBT community, and San Francisco. The original Hamburger Mary’s opened in 1972 and the Patio Cafe opened in the 1960’s. Both were gay-owned and operated and had a largely gay and lesbian clientele from San Francisco, the Bay Area, and tourists from around the world. Both establishments have been closed over a decade and both have been sorely missed. Because Hamburger Mary’s has 12 locations in the U.S. the San Francisco planning department considers it (and any retail establishment with 11 or more locations) to be “formula retail.” Therefore we need to show that Mary’s is “necessary or desirable” for, and “compatible with the neighborhood or community.” Hamburger Mary’s is not a chain or a formula retail store like Starbucks, Walgreen’s, Chipotle, or the fast-food restaurants which have thousands of locations and which are all alike. Today there are 3 “Mary’s” in California (West Hollywood, Palm Springs and Long Beach), and there are a total of 12 Hamburger Mary’s in the U.S. And there is one in Berlin. Each “Mary’s” is independently owned and operated, each one is different, and each is operated as a neighborhood restaurant. All “Mary’s” owners pride themselves on being involved in their community and every “Mary’s” gives back to their community. Mary’s bingo events, for example, have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the collective of Mary’s restaurants has raised nearly one million dollars for local charities. “Mary’s at the Patio” will bring back life to the Patio Cafe which has been closed far too long. Mary’s at the Patio will be desirable for the Castro neighborhood, the LGBT community, and San Francisco. Please email your support to John Kevlin, JKevlin@reubenlaw.com

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

Lyon-Martin

From page 6

tant communities continue.” Lyon-Martin has about 25 paid staff. It is likely some employees will be let go but those decisions haven’t been finalized. HealthRight 360 has approximately 800 paid workers. “I’m really sure we’ll keep all of our patient care-related staff,” said Harbatkin. “... Anyone working daily with patients will continue to do that.” The Affordable Care Act national health care reform is bringing changes to clinics across the country, including the expense of updating records systems. The merger would also aid LyonMartin in this area. HealthRight 360

Editorial

From page 4

Dave Jones, insurance commissioner

Dave Jones has a record of standing up for consumers in the cut-throat insurance industry. His office regulates – and can reject as excessive – rates for most types of insurance; the glaring exception is health insurance, which he hopes to rectify with a fall ballot initiative, the Insurance Rate Public Justification and Accountability Act. During an editorial board meeting, Jones pointed out that he issued a gender non-discrimination regulation to ensure that everyone has the right to access coverage for medically necessary care regardless of their gender identity or gender expression. He recently received an award from the Transgender Law Center for his efforts on behalf of the community. In short, Jones has a solid record fighting for consumers and reining in the big insurance companies. He should be re-elected.

NCLR gala

From page 1

on the LGBT community,” she said. “Sam and Ryan ... are survivors in the truest sense. They didn’t just live through something – they’re living for something.” Brinton and Kendall have both attained remarkable academic achievements despite what they endured. Brinton is working toward a dual graduate degree in nuclear engineering and technology and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kendall is studying law at Columbia University. Kendall had nearly committed suicide, according to Butler. “The 16-year-old Ryan fought to keep me here,” Kendall said. If he could go back and talk to his younger self, he would say, “It will be a long, hard journey, but you will win.” He finished with a message of triumph: “History will not just record our struggle ... history will record our victory.” Loving yourself for who you are was a theme throughout the night. The dinner also celebrated the accomplishments of the LGBT community and the strides made toward acceptance in mainstream society while remembering more still needs to be done. Baxter was honored with the Voice and Visibility Award, which recognizes someone who has brought those

Jock Talk

From page 8

physique contests at his cousin’s home Sunday, May 18, in Oakland. Countryman died November 25, 2013 at the age of 94. Countryman, a native of Piedmont, promoted and was the sports coordinator for physique for Gay

Lyon-Martin is finalizing an 18-month lease with the corporation that bought the building in which it is housed, which also includes a tax office and recovery groups, in December. Harbatkin said the new agreement would mean “a slight increase in rent,” and the clinic is discussing with the new building owner who will pay for electricity. There had been uncertainty around Lyon-Martin’s ability to stay at its current location, given the

building being sold and many sites in the neighborhood being transformed into condominiums. The nonprofit had discussed moving into the LGBT Community Center, which is nearby, but costly renovation work would have been necessary to make space at the center suitable for a medical clinic. “Personally, I don’t think the LGBT center is completely off the list of things,” said Plumb. “I think there are still ways Lyon-Martin and the LGBT center could work really well together, but the idea of trying to raise $1.5 million on top of having a million-dollar debt, and on top of getting ready for health care reform just seemed really daunting and not a wise business move, necessarily, at that point,” said Plumb.

Eisen said the merger discussions started around January, after she and Harbatkin, who are both board members of the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium, had lunch. Board chairs of both nonprofits expressed enthusiasm for the merger. “I would be very shocked if the merger didn’t go through,” said Plumb. HealthRight 360 board Chair Harlan Grossman said he’s “fully supportive of the merger.” The two groups’ mission statements “align very nicely,” said Grossman, who’s a straight ally. Along with the board votes, there’s at least one other hurdle. The proposal also needs the ap-

Tom Torlakson, superintendent of public instruction

ommend re-electing Torlakson to a second term.

Legal Notices>>

“will implement their electronic health records at Lyon-Martin, so we’ll all be on the same system,” and the larger group will maintain it, said Plumb.

Staying on Market

Tom Torlakson has been instrumental in the fight to avoid even deeper education cuts during the state’s fiscal crisis and, according to his campaign website, earlier this year led successful efforts to provide schools with $1.25 billion in locally controlled funding for new textbooks, teacher training, and school technology. If re-elected, we’d like to see Torlakson become more proactive when it comes to LGBT students. He has made strides in making the state’s public schools safer for all students, but problems persist, especially around gender identity and gender expression. An audit report last year concluded that schools aren’t doing enough to check whether their antiharassment policies are effective. We wish Torlakson wouldn’t be so averse to speaking out on LGBT issues, especially the pervasive problem of school bullying. We have attempted to reach him for comment over the past four years but he has yet to speak with us. Overall, however, he understands the public education system and is working to restore much-needed funding to the classroom. We rec-

Fiona Ma, Board of Equalization, District 2

Former San Francisco Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D) is running to replace Betty Yee on the state Board of Equalization. Ma is a certified public accountant who has financial experience and would be a good fit for the BOE. District 1 includes the nine-county Bay Area region and 14 other counties from the northern California coast to Santa Barbara. In an editorial board meeting, Ma told us that she’ll work to educate people more about the state tax issues that the BOE oversees. She also wants to see the increased use of technology and a more aggressive program for going after tax cheats. Ma has traveled to every county in the huge BOE district at least three times, listening to voters and talking about ways to improve transparency in the department. She said that if the LGBT community identifies specific issues that need to be addressed, she will convene a forum to discuss possible changes. We think she will be a great addition to a little-known board that oversees much of the state tax system.t

things to the LGBT community. Baxter started her speech on a light note. She talked about coming out on the Today show and in People magazine. “You know, the way you all came out,” she quipped. She then went on to talk about her struggle with coming out. She had told her partner, Nancy Locke, “I don’t want to do this.” She said that Locke told her it really would have helped her when she was growing up to see someone as visible as her living openly. That made Baxter realize the significance of coming out. “Coming out is a political action,” she said. She also talked about how coming out helped her. “I felt unburdened,” Baxter said. “I can see clearly now, I am who I wanted to be.” After the awards, Kendell addressed the crowd and welcomed the recipients. “We would all like [Baxter] to be in our family, and now she is,” she said. “Sam and Ryan, I know your families of origin betrayed you ... We are your family now, and we love you” for who you are. Kendell went on to talk about the many recent legal successes that have been made regarding marriage equality. “It is no longer the case that if we get a ... liberal judge, we would win and if we get a conservative judge, we would lose,” she said. “Now, all we need is a fair hearing, and we win every time.”

NCLR has won its last 11 marriage cases. Kendell said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling throwing out Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act “ushered in” change in such states as Utah, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Virginia, and Idaho. She also spoke about the victory in the Golden State, which also occurred last year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the proponents of Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban, lacked legal standing, which upheld a lower court’s finding that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. “We have marriage in California, and no one can ever take that away,” Kendell said. Karen Dixon, who is on Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund’s board of directors, was “so inspired” by the speakers that she offered to contribute $25,000 if $100,000 was raised and $50,000 if $200,000 was raised. Several tens of thousands of dollars were raised during the auction alone. Many of the estimated 1,000 people in attendance made donations. All of the proceeds will go directly to support NCLR’s work because of corporate underwriting. Kendell returned to the stage to talk about NCLR’s mission. “We want to stop bad things from happening to members of our community,” she said. “It’s about creating a sense of celebration” of who we are. She went on to say that even “when we win marriage, our work will not be done.”t

Games I in 1982 and Gay Games II in 1986, working under the pseudonym “George Williams.” “He also worked very closely with the Gay Games III promoter in Vancouver,” said Richard Cavalier of the Bodybuilding Guild. “He was the very first person ever to be the AAU National Chairman for Physique in the USA. In 1976, physique became

independent from being administered by weightlifting. He signed my National Judges Card No. 9 on September 4, 1976. I still have this card.” Donations in Countryman’s memory may be made to the Alameda County Community Food Bank, the Lamplighters, the Yosemite Fund, or the AIDS Emergency Fund.t

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MAY 15, 22, 29, JUNE 05, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035839100

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MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035844100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BUMP IT UP, 2176 CHESTNUT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed AIMY TANTUWAYA-REHM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/19/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/19/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035840000

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MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035843500

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MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014

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proval of Cal-Mortgage, which is part of the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and insures a $7 million bond that HealthRight 360 has. Eisen said Cal-Mortgage, which she said has been briefed on the proposed merger, has to endorse the idea to “make sure we’re not impairing our ability to service our own debt.” Asked about the possible merger, Mabel Chan, a Cal-Mortgage senior account manager, said, “We haven’t received the request, so I haven’t really had a chance to look at the transaction. ... I’m waiting to have more conversation with HealthRight 360.” To RSVP for the Thursday town hall, send an email to townhall@ lyon-martin.org.t

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035820900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: IDEAL STORE, 4214 CALIFORNIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ELENA TUNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/05/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/06/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035827600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ADVANCE HEALTH SF, 528A SAN JOSE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MAGNOLIA NG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/08/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/08/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035842200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SPIRAL TOUCH MASSAGE THERAPY, 1840 48TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARY B. FONTE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/16/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035840600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAN FRANCISCO PERIODONTICS AND IMPLANT DENTISTRY; SFPID; 129 SACRAMENTO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed ALEC J. TEMLOCK, DMD, MS, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/15/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/15/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035830600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SYMBIO; SYMBIO, INC; 393 7TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SYMBIO, INC. FAMILY THERAPY AND CONSULTING SERVICES (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/01/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/12/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035833500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PLEASURE WORKS ECOROTIC, 603 VALENCIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed BARNABY LTD LLC (OH). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/08. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/13/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035833600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PLEASURE WORKS ECOROTIC, 1620 POLK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed BARNABY LTD LLC (OH). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/08. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/13/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035833700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOOD VIBRATIONS PLEASURE WORKS, 899 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed BARNABY LTD LLC (OH). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/08. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/13/14.

MAY 22, 29, JUNE 05, 12, 2014

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Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550292 In the matter of the application of: LINDA GAYLE MARKS BARNETCHE for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner LINDA GAYLE MARKS BARNETCHE, is requesting that the name LINDA GAYLE MARKS BARNETCHE, be changed to LYNDA MARKS BARNETCHE. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 11th of SEPTEMBER, 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 SUMMONS SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF CONTRA COSTA NOTICE TO RESPONDENT: SHAW SECURITY MANAGEMENT, YOU ARE BEING SUED. PETITIONER’S NAME IS PETER A. DAVIDSON, LIMITED RECEIVER FOR COMMERCIAL ESCROW SERVICES, INC. CASE NO. C13 02425

You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this Summons and Petition are served on you to file a Response (form FL-120 or FL-123) at the court and have a copy served on the petitioner. A letter or phone call will not protect you. If you do not file your Response on time, the court may make orders affecting your marriage or domestic partnerships, your property, and custody of your children. You may be ordered to pay support and attorney fees and costs. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the clerk for a fee waiver form. If you want legal advice, contact a lawyer immediately. You can get information about finding lawyers at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/ selfhelp), at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), or by contacting your local county bar association. SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF CONTRA COSTA, 751 PINE ST., MARTINEZ, CA 94533. The name, address, and telephone number of petitioner’s attorney, or the petitioner without an attorney, is: KIMBERLEY D. LEWIS (SBN 137637), KLEWIS@ECJLAW.COM ERVIN COHEN & JESSUP LLP 9401 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD, NINTH FLOOR BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90212-2974 TELEPHONE (310) 273-6333 FACSIMILE (310) 859-2325 Date: APRIL 9, 2014 Clerk of the Superior Court, by STEPHEN K. AUSTIN, Deputy.

MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035808700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MONKEY WRENCH, 29 TOLEDO WAY, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RUSSELL H. LONG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/29/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/29/14.

MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035808200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: Q DESIGN, 1 DANIEL BURNHAM CT, #701, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANGELA QUAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/28/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/28/14.

MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035801900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE STONE FLOWER, PIER 39, #H-14, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94119. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHOLADA THINPRAPAARAM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/24/14.

MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035772600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KARI ORVIK PHOTOGRAPHY; KARI ORVIK TINTYPE STUDIO, 5153 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KARI ORVIK. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/09/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/09/14.

MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035805300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SMALL WORLD CHILD CARE, 2223 39TH AVE., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EILEEN J. QIU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/25/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/25/14.

MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035790700

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

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FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035805200

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MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035801100

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MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0358094-00

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ALFARO’S JANITORIAL SERVICES, 2707 OHIO AVE, RICHMOND, CA 94804. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JORGE ALFARO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/17/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/17/14.

MAY 01, 08, 15, 22, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550262

In the matter of the application of: MARGARET COLLEEN BRUENING, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner MARGARET COLLEEN BRUENING, is requesting that the name MARGARET COLLEEN BRUENING, be changed to MARGARET COLLEEN GRACE MCGARRY. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 24th of June 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAY 08, 15, 22, 29, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME & GENDER IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550235 In the matter of the application of: CAROLINE LOWNDES SMITH, for change of name & gender having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner CAROLINE LOWNDES SMITH is requesting that the name CAROLINE LOWNDES SMITH be changed to BEAU AMADEUS DREAM. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Rm. 514 on the 5th of June 2014 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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MAY 08, 15, 22, 29, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME & GENDER IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550313

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MAY 08, 15, 22, 29, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035814800

In the matter of the application of: JULIE MICHELE BERNSTEIN, for change of name & gender having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JULIE MICHELE BERNSTEIN, is requesting that the name JULIE MICHELE BERNSTEIN be changed to PAX AHIMSA GETHEN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 10th of July 2014 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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Dance steps

Picture puzzle

Out &About

Gay history

O&A

The

Vol. 44 • No. 21 • May 22-28, 2014

www.ebar.com/arts

Tony Kushner’s complicated relationships by Richard Dodds

ver since Angels in America announced Tony Kushner as a playwright of enormous talent and even more daring, there have been followers with a pressing desire. When would Kushner write another “gay” play? No creative artist wants to be pigeonholed or pressed to fulfill some sort of quota, but Kushner said as far back as 1998 that he was “somewhat defensive” about that question. In a recent phone interview from New York, en route to the airport for an SF-bound flight, he reaffirmed that it remains a hovering question even if its intensity has abated since Angels was born in San Francisco in 1991 and went on to win just about every prize as it moved to Broadway two years later. “People sort of gave up,” he said of the “gay” play expectations as he continued writing on a diverse collection of other subjects. “But I have heard from people who ask, ‘When are you going to do your next play about us?’ They think I’ve lost interest. I hope not, but there are people who read it that way.”

Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner chose Berkeley Rep for the first post-New York staging of his latest work, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures.

See page 23 >>

‘Raisin in the Sun’ rocks Orinda by Erin Blackwell

f you’re unfamiliar with Lorraine Hansberry’s work, Cal Shakes’ revival of her innovative play A Raisin in the Sun (1959) will shake you out of your woeful stupor. Or find the 1961 film in a library, starring a luminescent Sidney Poitier and incandescent Diana Sands in the original Broadway cast. Or read it, as one reads the Bard before seeing Hamlet. Yes, the play is rich enough to repay study. Step lively, though, because Raisin previewed in the Orinda hills on May 21, and closes June 15. Remember to dress warmly, and bring a thermos. Raisin’s title is a quote from Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” which asks, “What happens to a dream deferred?” Suddenly rewarded $10,000 life insurance money when the hard-working pater familias dies, an AfricanAmerican family in a tiny Chicago apartment squabbles over what to buy. His widow, Mama, dreams of a mortgage plus higher education for daughter Beneatha, but son Walter naively champions a get-rich-quick scheme. He’s got

(Left to right:) Ryan Nicole Peters as Ruth, Zion Richardson as Travis, Marcus Henderson as Walter, and Margo Hall as Lena in Cal Shakes’ A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Patricia McGregor.

See page 23 >>

{ SECOND OF TWO SECTIONS }

Kevin Berne

<< Out There

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

And a barihunk shall lead them by Roberto Friedman

oming up at Davies Symphony Hall, frequent guest conductor Charles Dutoit will lead the San Francisco Symphony in two weeks of intriguing concerts, May 29-30 and June 4-7. The first of the two programs showcases the SF Symphony Chorus in three masterpieces of the choral symphonic repertoire: Poulenc’s Gloria, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, and Fauré’s Requiem, with soloists soprano Susanna Phillips and bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann, making his much-anticipated debut at DSH. Led by director Ragnar Bohlin, the SFS Chorus celebrates its 40th anniversary this season. The gifted German barihunk Müller-Brachmann has just begun breaking into the US classical music scene. This is his first SFS appearance and his only performance in the US all year. He’s in high demand in opera houses in Germany, and as an early music specialist. Here come the credentials: MüllerBrachmann made his operatic debut in 1996 in Telemann’s Orpheus under René Jacobs at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin. He sang the great Mozart roles of Leporello, Figaro, Guglielmo, and Papageno, as well as his first Wotan under conductor Daniel Barenboim. He is an acclaimed interpreter of the great Bach Passions, and has sung with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Kurt Masur and the

Courtesy Barihunks

Hanno Müller-Brachmann, left, and appearing in Cosi fan tutte in Berlin will make his West Coast debut at Davies Symphony Hall.

Monteverdi Orchestra under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Philharmonia Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnanyi, and the Berliner Philharmoniker under Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He is also a devoted recitalist, working with pianists such as András Schiff and Daniel Barenboim. His festival engagements have included the London Mostly Mozart Festival under Sir Neville Marriner, the Tanglewood Festival under von Dohnanyi, and the BBC Proms, Berlin, and Lucerne Festivals under Masur. Müller-Brachmann’s recordings include Schubert recital discs for Harmonia Mundi and Naxos Records, a Schumann recital disc

for Hyperion Records, Die Zauberflöte conducted by Claudio Abbado for Deutsche Grammophon (which won Gramophone’s “Best Opera Recording of the Year”) and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion conducted by Riccardo Chailly for Decca. This year, Susanna Phillips appeared at the Met for her sixth season and was just featured in the live HD broadcast of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte and in La Bohème in April. She got rave reviews for her recital at Cal Performances last February, but has yet to appear with San Francisco Opera. SFS ticket info can be found at sfsymphony.org.

Magazine wrack

Besides perusing our own esteemed publication, Out There regularly reads a raft of magazines,

newspapers and other periodicals to keep abreast of what’s new, what’s public and what’s dishy. We consider it part of our job. Here’s a précis of a few pieces we’ve read recently. “Pass the Bong, and Tune Up the Berlioz” by Michael Cooper in The New York Times described the repercussions of the Colorado Symphony’s announcing it would hold a series of bring-your-own-pot fundraisers called Classically Cannabis: The High Note Series. Even though the events were designed as private affairs in order to be on the right side of Lucy Law, the city of Denver pressured the Symphony to extinguish the blaze, thus harshing their buzz. The Symphony took action: it made the events “invitation-only, removed information about them from its website, and refunded all tickets purchased when the events were advertised publicly.” The fundraisers will be open only to people on a closed guest list. Jeesh, all over a few lousy joints.

“The Paradox of Art as Work” by A.O. Scott of The New York Times explored the difficulties that professional writers, musicians, photographers and others have in making a living in this brave new world of “citizen journalists” and iPhone photography. “Digital amateurism sells itself as an alternative route to professional riches. Competitive reality television, Kickstarter campaigns and cooperative self-publishing ventures offer the lure of fame and fortune accomplished without the usual middlemen. The idea that everyone can be an artist sits awkwardly alongside the self-contradictory dream that everyone can be a star. “Nobody would argue against the idea that art has a social value, yet almost nobody will assert that society therefore has an obligation to protect that value by acknowledging, and compensating, the labor of the people who produce it.” What a concept. “When Deadlines Came Alive,” a review by Jeffrey Collins in The Wall Street Journal of The Invention of News by Andrew Pettegree (Yale), offered this revelation: “It was the French Revolution that created the modern newspaper. With censorship collapsed and ‘an almost inexhaustible supply of subject matter,’ advocacy journalism was born. Many leading Jacobins – including the ferocious provocateur Marat and the tyrant-executioner Robespierre – acted as celebrity journalists, keeping ‘all the trumpets of renown at their disposal.’” If only Marat could see where journalism has gone today, he’d keel over in his bath all over again.t

Emotionally riveting history by David-Elijah Nahmod

he long-awaited feature film based on Larry Kramer’s envelope-pushing AIDS drama The Normal Heart will premiere on HBO on May 25. In 1981, Kramer, who at the time was known as an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, was considered something of a pariah in the gay men’s community. His 1978 novel daringly titled Faggots questioned the community’s rampant promiscuity, which he felt was preventing gay men from finding love and leading

enriched and fulfilling lives. It’s at this point that viewers of The Normal Heart meet Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo), a barely fictionalized version of Kramer. After attending a friend’s birthday party, he reads in The New York Times about a “rare cancer” that has stricken 41 “homosexuals.” A few days later, the birthday boy (Jonathan Groff) is taken ill and dies in a matter of days. Only a few days after that, Ned knows of 10 more gay men who have died from this bizarre and terrifying new illness, which has never been seen before. Dr. Emma Brookner (Julia

Roberts), a paraplegic physician, is the only doctor in town willing to treat the patients. All the doctor can do is try and keep them as comfortable as possible while their bodies waste away right before her and Ned’s eyes. No one survives. They die so quickly, one after the other, that it becomes unimaginable. This was the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, which decimated much of an entire generation of gay men. Kramer wasn’t going to put up with it. In his own inimitable style, he screamed his head off, at gay men for not taking the crisis seriously, and at a govern-

ment that obviously didn’t care. He screamed, shouted, pointed fingers, and kicked open doors in a manner that few in our community ever did, co-founding the clinic and advocacy group Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, a radical activist group that stood up to government apathy. The Normal Heart is a fairly accurate dramatization of what happened during those terrifying years of death and rage. It may be the most brutally honest gay theaterpiece ever written. Kramer adapted his play for the film’s screenplay. Openly gay Ryan Murphy directs, with many openly gay cast members seen in pivotal roles. No one is spared Kramer’s welldeserved wrath. On a 1980s television interview, Weeks accuses the government of intentionally ignoring the epidemic. He yells at gay men who don’t have the courage to come out, telling them to “get their shit together” and come out before they’re dead. He courageously illustrates the longstanding habit of gay activists to turn against each other, showing how self-destructive and counterproductive such behavior is. He cuts his brother (Alfred Molina) out of his life “until you can say we’re equals.” Kramer also acknowledges a rarely spoken truth. In one of the film’s most riveting scenes, a lesbian

named Estelle (Danielle Ferland) shows up at Gay Men’s Health Crisis’ newly opened office. “My best friend Harvey just died,” she says in tears. “I want to help.” “We need someone to run a hotline,” says office manager Tommy (Jim Parsons), as he embraces her. “I don’t know how to do that,” she says. “Let’s go get coffee and figure it out,” says Tommy, as they weep and hug. We often forget that lesbians were among the first, if not the first, AIDS volunteers to come from outside of the gay male sphere. Kramer didn’t forget, and he reminds us. Few films are as powerful as The Normal Heart, because few real-life stories are as terrifying as what happened during that first decade of the AIDS epidemic. Only those who were there can understand how horrible the sheer volume of death among gay men was. Few stories are as inspirational as the tales that the survivors can tell of how people stood up and fought back. The Normal Heart is a gut-wrenching tribute to the memories of lives lost, and to the people who screamed, “Act up! Fight back! Fight AIDS!” It’s also a history lesson for the generations that follow them. The film will premiere on HBO on Sunday, May 25, at 9 p.m. Other airings will follow. The film will also be available at HBO On Demand.t

Courtesy HBO

Scene from Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart: inspirational.

Theatre>>

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

They’re here, they’re queer, get used to it by Richard Dodds

n both of his plays soon to make their Bay Area debuts, Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins gives away the endings at the beginnings. In The Homosexuals, the play proceeds in reverse chronological order, from 2010 to 2000, so the first scene is the ultimate result of the final scene. In Failure: A Love Story, the very first line of the play is, “Nelly was the first of the Fail sisters to die,” and it is soon revealed her two siblings would also die in the same year before we harken back to how lives were led before their untimely endings. Dawkins is a young Chicago playwright whose career seems on the ascendant, and hometown critics have definitely stoked his rising reputation. “Hugely talented,” said The Chicago Tribune of Dawkins in its review of Failure. “Smart, funny, poignant, sharply observed, and up-to-date,” said The Chicago SunTimes in its review of The Homosexuals. “‘Humbling’ may be overused, but it is pretty humbling and excit-

ing,” Dawkins said from Chicago about his overlapping introductions to Bay Area audiences. “Stylistically, they’re very different,” Dawkins said of The Homosexuals and Failure. “But there’s a question that’s actually asked in both plays, so I think of them as second cousins. In The Homosexuals, it’s not whether or not we achieve our dreams, but the fact that we have and express them. And in Failure, the question becomes, if you never achieve your goals, is that a failure, or was it a success just to have them?” The Homosexuals arrives first, opening this week at New Conservatory Theatre Center. It centers on the story of Evan, who is breaking up with his boyfriend as the play opens in 2010. Each scene is then set back two years, as Evan interacts with a different member of the circle of friends he joined in the scene that ends the play in the year 2000. “My hope with the play was to explore a group of friends through the lens of sex,” Dawkins said, “what it means to a friendship when sex is on the table or removed from the relation-

Lois Tema

Scott Cox, Robert Rushin, and Gabriel Ross play three of the friends whose relationships are explored in The Homosexuals, Philip Dawkins’ play opening this week at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

Ed Smith Courtesy Loyola University Chicago

Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins has two plays opening soon at Bay Area theaters that show very different sides of his writing style.

ship, or when the feelings about sex are imbalanced.” The idea for the play, and the decision to present the scenes in reverse order, developed when Dawkins attended a party “with a whole gaggle of gays who were closer to each other than I was to them,” he said. “I watched all night as they explained themselves, performing their histories for me. So at the beginning of the play, it’s like, this is where we are now, and now let us perform for you how we got here. There is a lot of tension in the play about being there and getting there. ‘We’re here, we’re queer.’ But what does it really mean to be here?” The wildly inclusive title The Homosexuals sets up any number of expectations that audiences have responded to in different ways. “A lot of people want it to be an angrier play, or want it to be a more active play,” Dawkins said. “My attitude is, that’s cool that it brought that out of you, but this is a play about existence,

Kathryn Zdan, Megan Smith, and Liz Sklar play three sisters whose fates are ordained at the start of Failure: A Love Story, a recent Philip Dawkins play opening at Marin Theater Company in June.

and not necessarily about the fight.” Dawkins recalled the words of director Bonnie Metzgar, who directed the play’s debut production for Chicago’s About Face Theatre in 2011. “She said, ‘Philip, your play is an opinion magnet.’ It was like the most extreme piece of prophecy, and it was so true.” One of the opinions it elicited came from Father Michael Garanzini, president of Loyola University, one of several Chicago schools where Dawkins is on the faculty. “He wrote me a very beautiful note, saying how much he identified as a priest with leaving his family and being thrown into this male-centric group, and being told this is your new family. I thought, whoa, I never thought of it as having anything to do with being a new priest. And then he commissioned me to write a new play.” Dawkins will be able to see a performance of The Homosexuals at NCTC as he also ventures to the Bay Area for the opening of Failure: A Love Story at Marin Theatre Company on June 10. First seen at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater in

2012, Failure takes place as the 1928 household of the Fail family is presented in a lighthearted and at times almost vaudevillian spirit that belies the opening lines informing us of the deaths that will befall the young sisters in the story that then unfolds. “People ask why I chose to start the play that way,” Dawkins said. “I think that theater can provide us with wonderful moments of full life, and even though the characters may live happily ever after, what they don’t say is, ‘Until they die.’ We can still care about these people’s struggles and lives knowing that at the end of it they’re all going to be dead, and that’s okay, because that’s the end of all of our stories. Every character expressly says what they want, and not one of them gets it, and yet it’s a happy play because they leave behind a happy energy.”t The Homosexuals will run at New Conservatory Theatre Center through June 28. Call 861-8972 or go to nctcsf.org. Failure: A Love Story will run June 5-29 at Marin Theatre Company. Call 388-5200 or go to marintheatre.org.

<< Fine Art

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

Historical context comes to queer life by Sura Wood

he GLBT History Museum in the Castro received a facelift and reopened last week with a remodeled main gallery and a brand-new show, Queer Past Becomes Present, which will be up for several months. First, the space: The enlarged gallery feels bigger and more open and has greater flexibility. Walls have been painted dark grey and lighting updated and improved, making for a modernized environment conducive to dramatic presentations. Electronic media components have been enhanced, and will play a greater role in exhibitions going forward in the form of complex digital displays, video monitors and headsets for listening to film clips and excerpts from interviews. All of these upgrades are a must in a digital age where multiple platforms are expected, if not required, especially when it comes to attracting a younger demographic and maintaining the interest of an older one accustomed to sophisticated presentations on their phones and computers. The current show offers historical context for contemporary queer life and social activism in San Francisco. Focusing on 10 major subject areas, and the numerous topics contained within them, it includes accounts of African-Americans; a gay JapaneseAmerican man sent to an American internment camp during WWII; the San Francisco-founded Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian social and political group in the country; and oral histories of aging Asian Pacific Islanders. One of the strengths of the museum’s approach is its personal dimension, taking stories of real people drawn from the GLBT Historical Society archives and humanizing the achievements of a diverse community, as well as the struggle for equality and the desire to be seen and understood in the face of bigotry and prejudice.

GLBT Historical Society (San Francisco)

Part of the Main Gallery in the newly redesigned GLBT History Museum, San Francisco, with the exhibit Queer Past Becomes Present.

The exhibition’s lead curators, Dr. Amy Sueyoshi and Jim Van Buskirk, have filled individual displays with photographs, books and publications, recordings, handbills and other artifacts, some accompanied by video footage. Regular visitors to the museum’s well-researched shows will recognize important and familiar figures who deserve the showcase they receive, such as drag queen extraordinaire Jose Sarria, Harvey Milk, and AIDS activist movements that pressed for immediate response to the crisis. The first section, History is Now: the Dragon Fruit Project, features intergenerational conversations between queer Asian Pacific Islanders, many of them approaching their 70s, and the younger volunteers who interviewed them and transcribed their accounts. The elders share their experiences of homophobia, racism, sexism, and economic hardship at a time when it was dangerous to be openly gay and transgender. One can listen to the edited content with headphones that hang below images of the participants. A standout exhibit and an indi-

cator of the direction the museum may be headed is Gayborhoods, a primer on the city’s lost gay havens. Digital projections cover the gallery’s back wall with a variety of photographs, playbills, brochures and posters, accompanied by textual information and anecdotes that chronicle the heyday of Valencia Street, where the Modern Times bookstore once hosted lesbian authors; North Beach, home to wild nightclubs like Finocchio’s and the Black Cat; and the Tenderloin, where a stone marker at Turk and Taylor Streets commemorates the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot. This first known demonstration for transgender and gay rights, ignited by police harassment of the estab-

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José Sarria, shown here in his WWII military uniform, was known as “The Nightingale of Montgomery Street” for his legendary drag performances at San Francisco’s Black Cat Café. This image appears in José Sarria: Activist and Entertainer, one section of Queer Past Becomes Present.

lishment’s transgender women and drag queens, predated Stonewall by three years. Screaming Queens, the 2005 documentary about the incident, can be accessed on a monitor nearby. The late Jose Sarria, an activist better known as the Nightingale of Montgomery Street, who sang arias at the Black Cat Club, is also seen in a standard-issue photograph wearing his military uniform. Legend

has it that the diminutive Sarria, who at less than five feet tall did not meet the army’s height requirement, seduced a major at the recruiting station to get his enlistment approved. The display features a flyer announcing Sarria’s (unsuccessful) bid for Supervisor in 1961 – he was the first openly gay candidate to run for public office in the U.S. – along with costumes from his long-running act such as a black, 1920s flapper sheath with lots of fringe that’s a little like a Balenciaga homage to Goya – well, maybe that’s a stretch – a battered red high heel, a tiara, and an extraordinarily big cigar he used in his performances of Carmen, or for other purposes that won’t be speculated about here. Harvey Milk’s assassination is addressed in a moving, theatrical, diorama-style exhibit that employs a black screen just behind the glassenclosed case, imagery reminiscent of a cage or holding facility. Press a large blue button and a single spotlight inside slowly brightens, revealing the now-empty, bloodstained suit Milk was wearing when he was murdered; it lays wrinkled in an open box. A graphic account of the assassination is spelled out on a wall panel, while the audio recording Milk had taped years earlier, in anticipation of his being cut down in his prime, plays overhead. The whole package, understated yet powerful, really hits home.t glbthistory.org

Beyond tolerance by Brian Bromberger

The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality, by Suzanna Danuta Walters (NYU Press, $29.95) ith all the excitement following the end of the military’s DADT and the Supreme Court decisions validating same-sex marriage, it would seem the gay rights movement has succeeded. According to some commentators, we are now living in a post-gay era. Not so fast, argues Suzanna Walters in her engaging sociological analysis. LGBT people are in danger of settling for “an illusion of progress that is rooted in a watered-down goal of tolerance and acceptance rather than a deep claim for full citizenship, civil rights, and inclusion.” In her nuanced examination punctuated with snarky wit and biting polemic, Walters critiques the idea of tolerance. The late Middle English origins of the word “tolerate” mean “to bear pain and hardship.” The word implies something negative, so if we say we tolerate homosexuality, there is something wrong about it. Also, this leaves mainstream institutions and practices unchanged. The book aims to refute tolerance as the path to real change for LGBT people. Walters makes a convincing case that while there has been monumental change for LGBT rights in the last 15 years, we still have a long way to go. Walters recognizes the complexities of our times. Yes, queer youth have sexual freedom, but gay teenagers are still being bullied. Why does anti-gay hatred still persist? If coming out is satirized as “so last year,” why are so many gay people still in the closet? The glass is half-full and half-empty. Walters writes we are now in a period of “banal normalization, assimilation, and everyday, unmemorable queerness.” But is that all there is? Do we want to be part of a straight society that is not as inclusive as it pretends to be?

…a gambling nun… a math professor-drag queen…

GLBT Historical Society (San Francisco)

Walters is willing to throw out uncomfortable questions, but won’t settle for superficial answers. For example, she wonders whether LGBT kids are coming out younger because there now exist relatively safe places and access to information via the Internet. But is the Internet altering the very process of coming out? Does not being able to face the fears of possible rejection, familial displacement, and discrimination “strip us all of the need to develop vibrant public queer spaces, as well as social solidarity?” Walters also raises concerns about biological determinism. Those who believe homosexuality is innate are more accepting of gay rights. Walters critiques this science for small sample size, unsubstantiated generalizations, essentialist notions of gender difference, and asymmetry, epitomized by the two most famous gay studies, those of Simon LeVay (an extra-large hypothalamus) and Dean Hamer (the gay gene). A religious version of this ideology, “God made me this way,” emphasizes that homosexuality is not a choice. Yet don’t we know many gay people who find members of the opposite sex attractive? Does this make them less gay? The implication is that sexuality is impervious to decisions we make to shape it. Should choice be central to discussions of civil rights? Even if the biological argument is used to promote civil rights, couldn’t it just as easily be used to support eugenic policies, such as aborting fetuses harboring a gay gene? Why people are LGBT should not determine our response. Regardless of etiology, we deserve equal rights. Walters characterizes gay marriage “as the perfect Trojan horse for the tolerance trap, sneaking in retrograde ideas in the guise of simple civil rights advances.” Gay marriage dominates but also crowds out other battles in gay rights, such as ENDA, which arguably affects more LGBT people than marriage

equality. Should one have to marry to have one’s family supported legally? What about the nuclear family’s sexual inequality and gender rigidity? There is the possibility that same-sex marriage might change the institution by providing an example of the equal sharing of responsibilities of married life. But if we “make marriage the brass ring of civic inclusion, we risk consigning a utopian vision of sexual and gender/power freedom to the dustbin of history,” as well as ignoring new models of gay kinship, created families of choice, that challenge traditional heterosexual values. Many of the questions Walters raises are thorny ones. At the root of these issues is the question of whether the purpose of gay culture is to reproduce the social features of heterosexual mores, or to provide a template that can challenge both LGBTs and straight people to imagine a more inclusive future. But even if we disagree with some of Walters’ positions, perhaps we can usher in a “new paradigm for civil rights that champions authenticity over conformity, self-expression over both institutional and internal policing.” At this critical juncture in LGBT history, we ignore Walters’ stinging question at our peril: Do we dare deny the unique genius in being queer?t

Dance>>

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

Ballet: a finale & a comeback by Paul Parish

an Francisco Ballet brought their 81st season to an end with a bittersweet evening marking the end of the SFB careers of several major artists. Since Louis XIV, ballet has been part of the ceremony of public service, and this program was put together using age-old etiquette, to put a brave face on final partings of dancers we’ve come to know and love, and to send them on into the rest of their lives with acclamation and blessing. Damian Smith and Ruben Martin Cintas, among the greatest partners the company has ever had, made it possible for their ballerinas to lose themselves in the expressive demands of their roles, with no fear that their partner would not be there to support them and lend all the strength necessary to float, soar, whirl, dart, melt, glide, to realize the music through the dance in its largest dimensions. The first half featured some wonderful duets, including a farewell to the soloist Simone Messmer, who danced “The Man I Love” from Balanchine’s Who Cares? with Martin Cintas as if he were the man of her dreams. Even more moving was hearing Roy Malan, for decades the ballet’s principal violinist, who said goodbye by playing Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel from the pit while Damian Smith danced the awesome adagio After the Rain, which Christopher Wheeldon set to that holy music, with the ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan (and with Michael McGraw, piano). As the curtain came down, it was impossible not to reflect on the personal emotions of this great partnership, since both dancers were visibly moved, Tan especially. The second half included video

Erik Tomasson

Damian Smith and Rubén Martín Cintas at the conclusion of their Farewell Performance.

tributes to both dancers. I’d have liked to see once again MartinCintas’ Boy in Green from Dances at a Gathering, one of the most poetic performances I’ve seen here. He’s retiring young. But Smith has a long list of great roles wonderfully danced, including almost everything Mark Morris has choreographed for SFB, and ranging from the tragic samurai of RaKu to the foppish suitor of Don Quixote, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Smith is openly gay (his husband was the first person to come out and give him flowers at the final curtain calls) and he used all his gay lore in creating Don Q’s Gamache, drawing on scores of gay comics to add a touch here, a petulance there to that character. His gait would have won first prize from the Ministry of Silly Walks. He brought something different to every role; I’ll remember him best in Morris’ A Garden and

Christopher Dunn

Oakland Ballet Company dancer Sharon Wehner (left) with guest dancers from the Turf Feinz, Rayshawn “Looney” Thompson (center) and Garion “Noh-justice” Morgan (right), in choreographer Graham Lustig’s Turfland.

Yuri Possokhov’s Reflections, where his adoration of the ballerina (Muriel Maffre) had an exalted quality like the passion of a gay man for a woman who is completely his without sex. After the intermission came one of the great works of Jerome Robbins, the four duets to Chopin Nocturnes called In the Night. Here we saw the future of the company in the second duet for Tiit Helimets and Sofiane Sylve, who danced the second, “Polish” duet with austere majesty, while Martin Cintas and Smith danced the nostalgic and turbulent pas de deux (with Dores Andre and the fiery Lorena Feijoo). Robbins created this on his return from his Broadway career and triumph in Fiddler on the Roof; when he moved into the more contemplative reaches of ballet, he explored his EasternEuropean roots in a series of pro-

found ballets to music by Chopin, of which In the Night is the most sorrowful and the most resigned. It’s

danced against an array of stars on a black-velvet background, and the gathering of the three couples in the finale, in which they greet and briefly dance with each others’ partners, as in a quadrille, but return quickly to each other, say “good night,” and exit in pairs, perfectly expressed our feelings at the end of the season, of some careers. All I can say is “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Then at the end of the week came a delightful comeback performance by the Oakland Ballet Company, full of vitality and pride in their city, which is now home to more lesbians than any other city in the country and probably the bedroom community for most of the Bay Area’s artists. Before the 1989 earthquake knocked down much of Oakland’s downtown, the Oakland Ballet was an internationally important ballet company. Since the earthquake, Oakland Ballet has been struggling to maintain its grip. But they’ve See page 23 >>

Bravura performances by Philip Campbell

he San Francisco Symphony is heading towards the culmination of the current season with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, back from a brief hiatus, conducting programs featuring favorite guest soloists. He will then be turning the reins over to conductor Charles Dutoit for another fortnight off the podium. He needs every available minute offstage to prepare for the ambitious season-closing June concerts that celebrate the artistic life of gay genius composer Benjamin Britten. All of this coincides very nicely with Pride San Francisco! This week, MTT is leading the orchestra in an offbeat bill that ranges from Tchaikovsky to Debussy, and features Yuja Wang performing the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4. Last week, it was Christian Tetzlaff ’s time in the spotlight for an utterly mind-blowing rendition of Bartok’s fiendishly difficult Violin Concerto No. 2. If anyone can make a convincing and cohesive statement of Bartok’s emotionally kaleidoscopic score, it would be Tetzlaff. He never seems content with the more conventional mainstream repertoire, but demonstrates with every visit his personal artistic growth and jaw-dropping technical command. The Bartok 2nd has come to be recognized as one of the greatest concertos of the previous century, actually in the entire history of the genre, but that doesn’t mean there is anything easy about it for listeners or, most emphatically, for the performers. I heard one impressed audience member saying at the end of the bravura presentation, “Can you imagine how hard it must be to learn that piece?” Well, yeah, I can

Courtesy SFS

Violinist Christian Tetzlaff.

imagine it easily enough, and I wonder even more at the sensibility that can also turn the required technique to a meaningful interpretation. Like so much of Bartok, there are pages of mystery (almost film-noirish at times), outbursts of pain, anger and anguish filling the fascinating score. There is also a surprisingly lush quality to the orchestration that supports the frequently lyrical and melodic interludes. This is good territory for MTT, and he led the orchestra with perfect balance to Tetzlaff ’s ferocity. It is really hard understanding that the intense young artist who first impressed us over two decades ago is actually approaching 50. He doesn’t look it, but he has intelligently matured into an expressive and virtuosic sort of stardom that deserves high praise and notice. Playing virtually the entire nearly 40-minute score with his eyes closed, Tetzlaff ended (on the night I attended) by sending his bow with scary velocity clean out of his hands towards MTT’s head.

It audibly startled the audience and, indeed, both the bemused conductor and genuinely surprised soloist. Didn’t Tetzlaff’s parents ever tell him you could put somebody’s eye out with that thing? The evening began with some more music by Jean Sibelius, a composer we wish MTT would tackle on a regular basis. The moody Finnish master also wrote some rip-roaring tone poems alongside the mighty canon of symphonies, and MTT clearly enjoys every aspect of his storytelling art. Lemminkäinen’s Return, from Sibelius’ Four Legends from the Kalevala, proved a quick and highly enjoyable way to get the audience in gear for the concert that concluded with the Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor. When asked what my favorite Brahms symphony is, I don’t think I’m the first to say, “Whichever one I’m listening to.” I do confess to certain favoritism for the rhythmic spring and gorgeous themes of the Fourth, and hearing it as the last half of an already satisfying program was really special. The strings of the SFS have blossomed over the years from Blomstedt’s leadership through the placement of Alexander Barantschik as Concertmaster by MTT into a rich and sonorous ensemble that can handle just about repertoire. They didn’t use to be known for a particularly plush tone, but they can deliver as needed, and with MTT’s briskly energetic approach to Brahms, the SFS strings sounded just right. It amounted to a very spirited account of a symphony that can sometimes sound dark or heavy. I always enjoy watching MTT in Brahms. I hope there are plans for a complete cycle in the back of the recording engineers’ and artistic management’s minds.t

CHANTICLEER

PRESENTS

Russian Dreams Choral music, in many styles, that has poured from the great Russian heart, under the direction of Elena Sharkova

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<< Out&About

Out &About

O&A

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

The Color Purple @ Hillbarn Theatre, Foster City

The Speakeasy @ Private Location

Local production of the musical stage adaptation of Alice Walker’s hit novel about downtrodden African Americans in the South. $23-$38. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru June 1. 1285 East Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City. (650) 349-6411. www.hillbarntheatre.org

Boxcar Theatre’s popular Prohibition-era interactive bar, gaming and performance show extends its sold-out run before closing to find a bigger venue. $65-$100. Wed-Sat admissions times 7:30-9pm. Thru June 21. Address given after ticket purchase. www.thespeakeasysf.com

Communiqué No. 10 @ Exit on Taylor Cutting Ball Theatre company’s production of the American premiere of French playwright Samuel Gallet’s drama about tensions in the urban underclass, Muslim and French violence, revenge and riots; translated and directed by Rob Melrose. $10-$50. Thru May 25. 277 Taylor St. 5251205. www.cuttingball.com

Fri 23

Devil Boys From Beyond

In Bloom

Lois Tema

by Jim Provenzano

he arts breathe life into the written word (spoken by alien gay twinks), the scribbled notes of music (sung by dinosaurs), and in some cases, carnivorous plants. Okay, so perhaps a Venus Fly Trap isn’t art per se, but you can’t deny the cruel poetic beauty of flowers that eat bugs. And hot guys from space. And singing dinosaurs.

Thu 22 36 Stories by Sam Shepard @ Z Below Word for Word theatre company’s ambitious production series of staged readings of stories by the award-winning playwright. $20-$55. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Previews; opening night May 24. Thru June 22. 470 Florida St. (866) 811-4111. www.zspace.org

Avery Sunshine @ Yoshi’s Oakland Stellar soul-gospel vocalist performs. $23. 8pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Jack London Square, Oakland. (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Merima Ključo @ Contemporary Jewish Museum The acclaimed Bosnian accordionist/ composer performs a musical adaptation of The Sarajevo Haggadah, the story of a sacred manuscript’s travels across centuries; with an accompanying animated film. $20. 6:30pm. 736 Mission St. at 4th. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

Unusual Shorts @ Oddball Films Enjoy wacky offbeat vintage short films. Thu & Fri, each $10, 8pm. 275 Capp St. 558-8117. www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Campo Santo and Living Word Project’s music-movement-poetry production of Chinaka Hodge’s drama about the aftermath of the Oscar Grant Oakland BART murder. $25. 8pm. Thu-Sun Thru May 24. 925 Mission St. chasingmehserle.brownpapertickets.com

Month-long festival of contemporary French playwrights and films, in partnership with Cutting Ball Theater, the French International School and the French consulate. Thru May 25. desvoixfestival.com

Dracula @ Shelton Theatre Jennifer Keller and Lauren Davidson’s new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel. $30. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru May 31. 533 Sutter St. at Powell. (800) 838-3006. www.sfdracula.blogspot.com

Jane Monheit @ Yoshi’s The gifted Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist and her four-piece band perform songs made famous by Judy Garland. $25-$63 (with dinner). 8pm & 10pm. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com

Lavender Graduation @ Diego Rivera Theater City College of San Francisco’s Queer Alliance Diversity Awards, honoring City Attorney Dennis Herrera, with a keynote address by Supervisor David Campos, and MC Donna Sachet. 5pm-7pm. 50 Phelan Ave., City College campus. 452-5723. RSVP: queerccsf@gmail.com

Pearls Over Shanghai @ The Hypnodrome Thrillpeddlers’ hilarious Cockettes revival returns, with new choreography, costumes, performers, and some of the original cast members. $30-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Extended thru June 28! 575 10th St. (800) 838-3006. www.thrillpeddlers.com

Foodies, the Musical @ Shelton Theater Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue of songs and sketches about food. $32-$34. Fri & Sat 8pm. Open run. 533 Sutter St. (800) 838-3006. www.foodiesthemusical.com

Grease Sing-Along @ Castro Theatre

Thu 22 Merima Ključo

Fri 23 The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee @ Center Repertory, Walnut Creek East Bay production of the comic musical about stressed-out spelling bee competitors. $37-$65. Wed 7:30pm. ThuSat 8pm. Sun 2:30pm. Thru June 21. 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. (925) 943-7469. www.centerrep.org

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Catch Me If You Can @ Spreckels Performing Arts Center, Rohnert Park Spreckels Theatre Company’s production of the Broadway musical (book by Terrance McNally, music by Marc Shaiman) based on the film about a teenage thief and pilot impersonator, with flashy Vegas-style dance numbers. $22-$26. Thu 7:30pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru May 25. Codding Theatre, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. (707) 588-3400. www.spreckelsonline.com

Sat 24 David Sokosh: American Tintypes @ Robert Tat Gallery The fine art photography gallery presents an exhibit of Sokosh’s contemporary faux-vintage imagery, created with a 19thcentury Wet-Plate Collodion process. TueSat 11am-5:30pm. Thru May 31. 49 Geary St., #410. 781-1122. www.roberttat.com

Erin Crociani @ Glama-Rama Salon, Oakland Exhibit of paintings that blend Alice in Wonderland with Victorian pin-up girls. Thru June 5. 6399 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. (510) 655-4526. www.glamarama.com

Feisty Old Jew @ The Marsh Charlie Veron’s new solo show about a fictional elder man who hitches a ride with surfer-hipsters, and rants about what he hates about the 21st century. $25-$100. Sat & Sun 5pm. Extended thru July 13. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Marga Gomez @ The Marsh

Laurie Bushman and Sara Moore cohost the fun sing-along night with the film adaptation of the Broadway musical; costume contest, too. $10-$16. Fri 7pm. Sat-Mon 2:30 & 7pm. 429 Castro St. 6216120. www.castrotheatre.com

The lesbian comic’s hit solo show Lovebirds, with characters revolving around a nightlife photographer, returns before she takes it to New York City. $20$100. Fri 8pm, Sat 8:30pm. Thru May 31. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. themarsh.org

The Homosexuals @ New Conservatory Theatre Center

Much Ado About Nothing @ Buriel Clay Theatre

Bay Area debut of Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins’ comic drama about young men facing the new gay community. $25$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. thru June 28. 25 Van Ness Ave. lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

The West Coast premiere of multiple award-winner Tony Kushner’s new play takes on politics, sex, and power in his expansive and brilliant way, by focusing on a Brooklyn Italian family whose patriarch decides to die. $55-$89. Tue, Thu-Sat 7:30pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Thru June 29. Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Comedy Returns @ El Rio

Des Voix; Found in Translation @ Various Theatres

Buddy Thomas and Kenneth Elliot’s hilarious comedy is about an ace reporter who investigates a Florida colony of elders who are shacking up with alien beefcake guys. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. thru June 28. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures @ Berkeley Repertory

Chasing Mehserle @ Intersection for the arts

Karen Ripley headlines the LGBT and gay-friendly diverse comedy night’s fifth anniversary show, with Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, Eloisa Bravo, Julia Jackson and host Lisa Geduldig. $7-$20. 8pm. 3158 Mission St. (800) 838-3006. www.elriosf.com

Devil Boys From Beyond @ New Conservatory Theatre Center

The Letters @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley John W. Lowell’s suspenseful two-person psychological thriller about life under the Stalin regime. $28-$32. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru June 1. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

Not a Genuine Black Man @ Osher Studio, Berkeley Brian Copeland’s tenth anniversary run of his compelling autobiographical solo show gets restaged at Berkeley Repertory’s studio theatre. $14-$430. Wed 7pm. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru May 31. Osher Studio, 2055 Center St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Tue 27 Chomp

African American Shakespeare Theatre company’s production of The Bard’s lighthearted comedy about love. $12.50$37.50. Sat 8pm, Sun 3pm. Thru May 25. 762 Fulton St. www.african-americanshakes.org

Mutt: Let’s All Talk About Race! @ La Val’s Subterranean, Berkeley Impact Theatre company premieres Christopher Chen’s satirical play about desperate racist GOP power brokers who select a token presidential candidate who’s half Asian. $10-$25. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru June 1. 1834 Euclid Ave., Berkeley. www.impacttheatre.com

Paper and Blade @ Galeria de la Raza Exhibit of works on paper by Mayumi Hamanaka, Adrienne Heloise, Ian Kuali and Kai Margarida-Ramirez. Wed-Sat 12pm-6pm. Thru May 31. 2857 24th St. 826-8009. www.galeriadelaraza.org

Queer Jitterbugs @ Magnet LGBT and straight-friendly partner dance lessons and social hour. 7pm-9:30pm. Free. 4122 18th St. at Castro. www.magnetsf.org

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival @ Esplanade The months-long free summer performance series has commenced, with weekend outdoor dance, music and theatre concerts, on various days and evenings thru Oct. Mission St. at 3rd. 543-1718. www.ybgfestival.org

Sat 24 Much Ado About Nothing L. Peter Callender

SF Hiking Club @ Purisima Creek Join GLBT hikers for a 10-mile hike that starts out along redwood- and fern-lined trails. After descending and crossing a gulch, climb out to long views of the distant ocean and Santa Cruz Mountains; finish in a forest of redwoods, Douglas firs, big-leaf maples, and ferns. Bring water, lunch, sunscreen, hat, layers for the weather, sturdy hiking boots. Carpool meets at 9am at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. 845-4940. www.sfhiking.com

Sun 25 Georgia O’Keeffe @ de Young Museum Georgia O’Keeffe: Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, a new exhibit of paintings focusing on the artist’s New York landscapes. $25. Thru May 11. Also, Lines on the Horizon: Native American Art from the Weisel Family Collection, thru Jan. 4, 2015. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoungmuseum.org

Intimate Impressionism @ Legion of Honor The exhibition includes nearly 70 paintings from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., featuring the work of 19th-century avant-garde painters such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh. Also, the Salon Doré, a reconstructed room from the Hotel de La Trémoille, has re-opened. Free/$25. Thru Aug. 3. Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave. 7503600. www.legionofhonor.famsf.org

SuperAwesome: Art and Giant Robot @ Oakland Museum Exhibit of eclectic comic and unusual graphics from contributors to the creative zine Giant Robot, which expanded to websites and retail shops. Multiple engaging hands-on activities thru the run. Also, Sunshine and Superheroes: San Diego Comic-Con, an exhibit of archival photos and items from the many years of the huge comics convention. Thru May 31. Also, Judy Chicago: A Butterfly for Oakland, a collection of slides and films of her 1974 Lake Merritt pyrotechnical installation; part of a nationwide group of exhibits celebrating the pioneering feminist artist’s 75th birthday; thru Nov. 30. Free/$15. Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Mon 26 10 Percent @ ComCast 104 David Perry’s weekly talk show features local and visiting LGBT people. This week, Perry chats with funny lady Darryl Forman, author and volunteer at 826 Valencia, and Brian Cheu, director of San Francisco’s Office of Housing and Community Development. Mon-Fri 11:30am & 10:30pm. Sat & Sun 10:30pm. www.davidperry.com

Gay Comics Threeway @ Magnet Exhibit of queer comic art by Ed Luce (Wuvable Oaf), Justin Hall (Glamazonia) and Jon Macy (Fearful Hunter). Thru May 31. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

Out&About>>

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Chicks with Shticks @ SF Public Library The Kinsey Sicks and 20 Years of Dragapella Activism, a new exhibit about the musical ensemble; thru July 10. Also, Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013, 4th floor. Thru June 5. Also, You Don’t Say! Wordless Cartoons from the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, an exhibit of witty visual comics like Little Lulu, from the 19th to 21st century. Thru May 31. 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org

Donald Rizzo @ Castro Country Club Rizzo’s exhibit of colorful portraits. Thru May 31. 4058 18th St. www.castrocountryclub.org

Xavier Castellanos @ Alliance Francaise Exhibit of the local artist’s colorful landscapes; thru May 31. 1345 Bush st. www.xavierarte.com

Tue 27 Chomp! @ Conservatory of Flowers They Came From the Swamp, a new floral exhibit of carnivorous plants includes exhibits, docent talks and a giant replica model so you can feel like a bug about to be eaten. Thru Oct. 19. Reg. hours, 10am4pm. Free-$7. Tue-Sun 10am-4:30pm. Thru Oct. 19. 100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park. 831-2090. www.conservatoryofflowers.org

Designing Homes @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Jews and Midcentury Modernism, an exhibit of architectural, furniture, dinnerware, photos, and interior design in post-WWII. Also, Arthur Szyk and the Art of the Haggadah, an exhibit of 48 fascinating and richly detailed illustrations of Hebrew stories by the early 20th-century artist (thru June 29). Also, To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History (thru July 1). 2pm-5pm. Free (members)-$12. Thu-Tue 11am-5pm (Thu 1pm-8pm) 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

Thu 29 Triassic Parq

Erik Scanlon

Wed 28 Daylighting @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ production of The Berkeley Stories Project, Dan Wolf’s play about a young East Bay woman whose day-long walk includes real-life stories from Berkeley residents. Previews. Opens May 30. $20-$35. Wed-Sat 8pm. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Eating Cultures @ SOMArts Cultural Center Group exhibit of the Asian American Women Artists Association features 30 artists’ works, including three lesbians (Kay Cuajunco, Sigi Arneho, Genevieve Erin O’Brien), who focus on food as a cultural lens. Special events thru the run. Thru May 30. 934 Brannan St. www.somarts.org

Sat 24 Marga Gomez

Various Exhibits @ California Academy of Sciences Exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth. Special events each week, with adult nightlife parties most Thursday nights. $20$30. Mon-Sat 9:30am-5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. calacademy.org

Woods to Wildflowers @ SF Botanical Gardens See blooming floral displays, trees and exhibits. Also, daily walking tours and more, at outdoor exhibits of hundreds of species of native wildflowers in a centuryold grove of towering Coast Redwoods. Thru May 15. Free-$15. Daily. Golden Gate Park. 6612-1316. SFBotanicalGarden.org

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

Thu 29

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Geoff Hoyle @ The Marsh, Berkeley The veteran comic actor returns with his solo show, Geezer, a nostalgic meditation on his lengthy career and life. $25-$50. Thu 8pm. Sat. 5pm. Extended thru May 24. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Magic Parlor @ Chancellor Hotel Whimsical Belle Epoque-style sketch and magic show that also includes historical San Francisco stories; hosted by Walt Anthony; optional pre-show light dinner and desserts. $40. Thu-Sat 8pm. 433 Powell St. www.SFMagicParlor.com

Patti Meyer

Iconiclasm @ The McLoughlin Gallery Duo exhibit of provocative pop culture imagery by Arnix and Max Papeschi. Thru May 31. Reg hours Tue-Sat 10:30am-6pm. 49 Geary St. #200. 986-4799. www.mgart.com

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

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

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

New and Classic Films @ Castro Theatre May 28: Fellini Satyricon (7pm) and Roger Vadim’s Barbarella (9:25). $11. May 29June 1 is the Silent Film Festival; various single and ulti-event ticket prices. (www. silentfilm.org). 429 Castro St. 621-6120. www.castrotheatre.com

Pen/Man/Ship @ Magic Theatre World premiere of playwright Christina Anderson’s drama about passengers on an 1890s ship bound for Africa. Previews. Opens May 28. $30-$55. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2:30pm. Thru June 15. Fort Mason Center, Bldg. D, 3rd floor. 4418822. www.magictheatre.org

Sony Holland @ Level III The acclaimed jazz vocalist performs with guitarist Jerry Holland. Weekly 5pm-8pm. Also Thursdays & Fridays. JW Marriott, 515 Mason St. at Post. www.sonyholland.com

Walk Like a Man @ The Costume Shop Theatre Rhinoceros’ production of Laurinda D. Brown’s Lambda Literary Awardwinning drama about African-Amercian lesbians and their relationships. $15-$35. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Thru June 15. 1117 Market St. at 7th. (800) 838-3006. www.TheRhino.org

REAL STEAKS. REAL MARTINIS. REAL SAN FRANCISCO.

Queer Past Becomes Present @ GLBT History Museum Operning reception for Biconic Flashpoints: Four Decades of Bay Area Bisexual Politics, 7pm-9pm. Thru Aug. 15. Also, the new exhibit of fascinating historical items and how their legacies are still with us; includes queer youth, Harvey Milk, José Sarria, AIDS and gay bar ephemera and the lesbians of The Ladder. Reg. hours MonSat 11am-7pm (closed Tue.) Sun 12pm5pm. ($5/free for members). 4127 18th St. 621-1107. www.glbthistory.org

Triassic Parq @ Eureka Theatre Ray of Light Theatre company’s production of the innovative musical about a female T-Rex who turns male, leaving the herd of singing dinosaurs to question their prehistoric gender identity. $25-$36. WedSat 8pm. Thru June 28. 250 Jackson St at Battery. www.rayoflighttheatre.com

Wrong’s What I Do Best @ SF Art Institute Group exhibition of works that push the boundaries of social, political and personal fault lines. Tue 11am-7pm. Wed-Sat 11am6pm. Thru July 26. Walter and McBean Galleries, 800 Chestnut St. www.sfai.edu

To submit event listings, email jim@ ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section, online at www.ebar.com/bartab

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<< Film

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

Charismatic despite chaos by David Lamble

ginning, and then it becomes more and more crazy and illogical.

his week I rediscover my favorite film of this still-young year, and it turns out to be the finale of my favorite film series of this still-young decade. Just as, for me, Francois Truffaut’s 1959 coming-of-age masterpiece The 400 Blows will never be a mere “French” film, latter-day auteur Cedric Klapisch’s extraordinary trilogy (L’Auberge Espagnole or The Spanish Apartment, Russian Dolls, and now, Chinese Puzzle) is vastly more than a slapdash series of adventures by an ageless novelist/lothario. Xavier (the romantically nimble Romain Duris) is wrenched away from his beloved Paris when his English ex-wife, Wendy (Kelly Reilly), starts life anew with John (Peter Hermann), a rich and very large American, and Xavier’s school-age kids. Landing in the trendy Brooklyn digs of lesbian pal Isabelle (Cecile de France) and her Chinese-American girlfriend Ju (Sandrine Holt), Xavier is soon living over a Chinese bakery while time-sharing his kids, creating a marriage of immigration convenience and re-packaging this soap opera for his pulp fiction-loving French publisher. As is often the case with a popmovie trifle, what makes both Chinese Puzzle and by extension the whole trilogy sizzle and become a truly adult brand of summer fun is the filmmakers’ astute manipulation of cinema fairy-tale ingredients within a realistic setting. Xavier’s pratfall-laced discovery of his NY life is reflected by a remarkably precise Brooklyn-to-Manhattan sojourn through New York’s iconic subway system. Not only do you absorb the emotional humiliation experienced by Xavier as he shuttles between Wendy and John’s pricey East Side Manhattan condo and

I loved your subway scenes. When you take the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan, the crowd changes in every station. Was this always going to be a trilogy? I was asked if there would a sequel. It took me two years to say yes. Then, when I made Russian Dolls, I wanted a third one, and I knew I had to wait 10 years just for it to become interesting, just for their bodies to change – they’re 25 in the first one, 30 in the second one, and 40 in the third one – to treat that with the actors actually aging in-between the films. You get a little bit of what Truffaut achieved in the five films of his 400 Blows series. Truffaut probably invented that, and it’s a great example of a relationship between an actor and a director, where it was really about what happens in real life. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group

Romain Duris stars in director Cedric Klapisch’s Chinese Puzzle: romantically nimble performance.

his shabby, mattress-on-the-floor Chinatown sublet, but you’re also given just enough practical details to make the absurdly romantic movie believable. Here Klapisch follows in the footsteps of American screwball-comedy pioneer Frank Capra (It Happened One Night) and modern-day Taiwanese genius Ang Lee (The Wedding Banquet). The charming Duris (The Beat My Heart Skipped, Dans Paris) gives a vivid performance that is both appropriately low-key and wonderfully charismatic, in a story that is the male version of Julie Delpy’s Two Days in New York. A clue to just how unassumingly special Duris is comes in

the handful of scenes his Xavier dad has with the young French actor Pablo Mugnier-Jacob, who appears as his son, just on the cusp of puberty. As Wendy is about to whisk him away into her new life in New York, the kid pulls his dad aside at the airport. “I want to stay here.” “New York’s great. They’ve got skyscrapers.” “So you’re glad we’re leaving?” After a pregnant pause, Xavier stammers, “Of course I’m not glad.” “Then why do you keep saying it’s so great?” The poignancy and kid wisdom in this, which would be a throwaway scene in an American film, is

what separates Chinese Puzzle from the pack. It makes cosmic sense out of the hopeless pratfalls of our real lives. As Xavier so insightfully puts it, “I’m 40, and I’ve ruined my life.” I chatted with director/writer Cedric Klapisch and actor Romain Duris. David Lamble: Your film is so sublimely complicated. Cedric Klapisch: I like complicated stories, like Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, where you take real life and shake it up to the extent that everything becomes crazy, but everything is still believable. I really like the American screwball comedy, where everything is logical at the be-

Romain, what was it like to play this character over three movies? Romain Duris: It’s great to imagine what’s happened outside of the frame of the films. When you create a guy like Xavier, it creates an intimacy with the audience. I loved the locations that Cedric chose, because they were in a part of Manhattan with a lot of authenticity. It’s so funny when you sit down with Wendy’s big American husband and you guys have nothing to say to each other. If you don’t say anything, it’s funny. The kids were great. The four-year-old girl understood what Cedric wanted all of the time. The guy was different, more mysterious, which was great for the character.t

Chinese checkmate by David Lamble

n Ai Weiwei The Fake Case, Danish director Andreas Johnsen’s intimate portrait of Chinese dissident artist Ai Wewei, a telling moment unfolds in a first-act chat between the usually jovial sculptor and his mother, now 80. Mom reminds her son that she and his dad experienced an even greater degree of persecution in the 1950s, when the face of the Beijing government was

an enigmatically smiling Chairman Mao. As mom puts it, modern Chinese history is as predictable as the daily fluctuation of the tides. Mother: Chinese society is like a huge wave. And our family is always in danger at the top of the wave. There was a big persecution in 1957. More than a million intellectuals were accused and punished. Ai Weiwei: But you had a good life in Beijing, and suddenly you were accused of being rightists and sent to

Northeast China. I mean, did nobody dare to say anything against this? Mother: At the time, the Party could do anything. You were punished just because you had a different opinion. Times have changed, and today they just use a different excuse. You once asked me if you had inherited something from us. We just showed you what was right and wrong by doing it ourselves. And you learned from us, right? Ai Weiwei: Yes, but when all that suddenly happened to me, you were surprised, right? Mother: But now I’m scared. Some of your writings are really harsh. You criticize them too much. If this was 1957, they would have killed you already. I’m worried about you. This understated but devastating moment ends with mother and her embattled son holding hands while, outside the artist’s compound, Chinese government agents seem ready to pounce given the least excuse. As Johnsen’s cameras roll, Ai is forced by the terms of his house arrest to refuse comments to the growing army of foreign and domestic media. The government is prosecuting Ai for “tax evasion,” a charge, as a young Chinese reporter quips on camera, that just proves to the average Chinese citizen that the government’s whole case is trumped up. Meanwhile, the artist is quietly finishing a massive work that documents his Orwellian life. That work ultimately evades Chinese censors and becomes an eloquent cry for freedom at a Milan, Italy museum. Picking up where a previous film, Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, left off, director Johnsen depicts his embattled subject in moments of

Andreas Johnsen, courtesy International Film Circuit

Detail from S.A.C.R.E.D., an artwork by Ai Weiwei, from director Andreas Johnsen’s Ai Weiwei The Fake Case.

tranquility – a witty scene shows a younger artist photographing Weiwei as he naps in a lawn chair – as well as in a fighting mood. Late in the film, noticing that a young cameraman has been injured by the police, the heavyset Weiwei charges out of his house to physically confront the cops in a real-life moment that could have been ripped right out of Al Pacino’s taunting rant at Gotham cops in Sydney Lumet’s 1970s thriller Dog Day Afternoon. If anything, this captivating doc makes the case for how modern China can be seen going through a version of the political turmoil that convulsed the US and much of the West in the 1960s. Ai Weiwei The Fake Case is a thoroughly involving dispatch from a land where freedom can never be taken for granted. Fed Up You may think you’ve heard the last of the great movie food wars, but doc maker Stepha-

nie Soechtig, with famed TV anchor Katie Couric as her narrator, unearths some dirty secrets in the food industry’s battle, aided and abetted by government regulations and Catch 22-like policies, to keep our national waistlines expanding. Fed Up’s insights are centered on the role sugar, an added ingredient in so many mass-produced foods, plays, especially in producing unprecedented numbers of obese kids. Picking up a decade after Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me exposed how Americans were being fattened up for an early death by oversized portions of junk food, Fed Up presents a compelling case that the nation’s school lunchrooms remain combat zones where unwary kids are still exposed to too many empty calories. Try watching this cautionary tale without an extra-large popcorn swimming in calories of artificial-butter glop.t

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<< TV

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

Goodbye to all that by Victoria A. Brownworth

ut with the old, in with the new. It’s that time of year again, the one we all dread, when sweeps month meets cancellation month. There isn’t an Ides of May, but it felt as if there were when the cancellations were announced this week. Shows being cancelled that have had LGBT characters and storylines are ABC’s wry sitcom Suburgatory; CBS’ arch sitcom The Crazy Ones, which had marked Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s return to TV; and NBC’s dystopian Revolution. ABC also cancelled Trophy Wife, Super Fun Night and The Neighbors, all of which had had gay storylines. We were surprised by The Crazy Ones being cancelled, since the show got stellar reviews, but the ratings must have slipped precipitously, and none of the networks is giving anything a chance without strong ratings these days. We were also surprised by Revolution, but we stopped watching this season because the Lost-style, non-linear narrative had begun to wear on us. NBC also cancelled Sean Saves the World, the only show on network specifically about a gay character, but that’s been expected for some

time since the show was, in a word, terrible. It also cancelled The Michael J. Fox Show, which we guessed since Fox has joined the cast of CBS’ The Good Wife. NBC cancelled its other disability sitcom, Growing Up Fisher, as well as its long-running sitcom Community. NBC also took the ax to the stellar period drama Dracula, which had both a gay and a lesbian storyline and a central lesbian character, and which we absolutely loved. A lot of freshman shows with LGBT elements have also been cancelled, including two shows we’ve touted here in recent months, NBC’s Crisis and Believe, and CBS’ hilarious new sitcom Friends with Better Lives. CBS had announced last season that its long-running sitcom How I Met Your Mother, starring Neil Patrick Harris, would end this season when NPH headed off for Broadway, where he’s already garnered a Tony nomination for his starring role in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The good news is that other shows with strong gay presence are safe for another season. NBC didn’t cancel Bryan Fuller’s magnificent Hannibal, which had been rumored. Given there’s really nothing else like it on network, we’re both surprised and pleased. Hannibal is mesmer-

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ABC-TV

Viola Davis will star as a “complicated” professor in How to Get Away with Murder.

izing, and Fuller has expanded his already exciting repertoire with the cannibalistic psychological thriller. If you haven’t been watching, now’s your chance to do a binge-watch catch-up over the summer. We were also pleased that since Fox took the ax to several shows, including Rake and Surviving Jack, it left Kevin Williamson’s homoerotic thriller The Following alone. This is another one to binge-watch until it returns in September. Ryan Murphy gets all the queer press for his TV series, but Fuller and Williamson have never been off the TV landscape for long. Both have retained a strong following, not just of gay viewers, but of straight ones who don’t even know they are gay. We consider The Following and Hannibal among the year’s best dramas. Speaking of showrunners with strong LGBT appeal, Shonda Rhimes is now the official lead showrunner in Hollywood, and we could not be happier. ABC just gave her a big present this week when the networks did their upfronts Tuesday. Rhimes got the green light for another drama, this one starring Oscar-winner Viola Davis as a “complicated” professor, in How to Get Away with Murder. The only part of this deal that worries us is the placement. Grey’s Anatomy now moves to the 8 p.m. slot, which means some of that TV MA-14 stuff that has been a strong subtext of the show, particularly with the lesbian couple Callie and Arizona, might get muted. Scandal should still be safe to go wild in the 9 p.m. slot, but it does make us wonder just how intense HTGAWM will be if it can only fill the 10 p.m. slot. We love Davis and have always wondered why she didn’t have her own show, since she’s been a guest star on the episodic Jesse Stone series with Tom Selleck, as well as a plethora of Law & Order episodes. Since Davis has always been a stellar actress who can make a walk-on sing, we chalked it up to colorism, since Davis’ is one of the darkest faces on screen and TV tends to like its African Americans lighter-skinned. We’ve always been appalled by this, but we’re thrilled to see Davis finally getting her own vehicle. She’s such a nuanced actress, and we know she’ll bring that nuance and then some to this new role. The casting of Davis in HTGAWM is a statement for all the black girls out there who don’t have Halle Berry (who will be starring in the new series Extant come June) or Beyoncé-toned skin. If one goes back to the first big-name black women stars on the tube – Lena Horne, Diahann Caroll, Abby Lincoln – colorism is blatant. As former ABC news anchor Carole Simpson, herself African-American and lightskinned, used to say, “The brownbag test is still in play.” Those whose skin is darker than a brown bag

need not apply. Some may think this colorism issue is a minor point. It’s not. As recently as last fall, Elle magazine was accused of lightening Gabourey Sidibé’s (American Horror Story) dark skin, another mag was accused of lightening Beyoncé’s skin, and in January Elle was accused again of lightening skin when it put comedian Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project), a dark-skinned Indian of Tamil and Bengali descent, on their cover. In doing the talk-show circuit to promote her work, Kaling ended up talking about color in every interview. Meanwhile, controversy has swirled around Dove (owned by Unilever), Procter & Gamble, and Vaseline. Dove has promoted their “real girls” campaign all over the TV in the U.S., but sells skin-lightening products throughout Asia and Africa. P&G has just bankrolled a documentary on colorism, but also sells tons of skin-lighteners. Vaseline promotes a line of gradual tanning lotions on the tube in the U.S., promotes skin-whiteners in Asia, and just promo’d a skin-lightening app for your photos on Instagram. So yeah, colorism is still a thing. A big thing. And Rhimes is breaking that down, just as she seems to have broken down the “black people can’t star in a TV show” barrier. The reason Twitter belongs to Rhimes on Thursday nights is because Black Twitter is in love with her, and those of us who aren’t black are in love with her, too. In her shows, Rhimes isn’t positing how black people might think and act, she knows. And black women and men know she knows. And therein lie both Rhimes’ power and a reminder of why we must have people behind the camera who represent us. Rhimes is doing it for blacks; Murphy, Williamson and Fuller are doing it for gay men. But we need more than just this tiny handful of showrunners addressing our minority status. The upcoming 2014-15 TV season looks like it will be the least LGBT in years. We can’t afford to keep losing ground. But at least we can depend on Rhimes to keep gay in play. That the entire Thursday night prime-time lineup on ABC now belongs to Rhimes, a first in TV history, is beyond major. It’s not just one showrunner running the table on a given night. It’s Thursday, the biggest ad-revenue night of the week. ABC’s bold move is causing other networks to scramble. NBC has long held Thursday to be their sacrosanct arena of comedy, but Rhimes’ stranglehold on the ratings, especially with ratings giant Scandal, has forced the network to rethink. They’ve cancelled all but one of their sitcoms, and that remaining show, Amy Poehler’s Parks and Recreation, will have its final season

in September. Thursday’s dramedy, Parenthood, was already slated for its final season. And in an attempt to woo viewers away from Rhimes, NBC is moving its Monday smash hit The Blacklist to Thursdays. So, whole lotta shakeups going on.

New ‘Normal’

The other big gay news on the tube this week is the years-in-the-making debut of Larry Kramer’s iconic play about AIDS and activism, The Normal Heart, which Ryan Murphy has brought to HBO. It debuts May 25, and will be around a long time this summer. Anyone who thinks this story won’t still have power 30 years after Kramer wrote it could not be more wrong. No one of a certain age will ever forget the B.A.R. issue that finally had no obits. We will never forget the first day we met Cleve Jones in the Castro in 1987 to discuss the Names Project. This is our history, and no matter which coast it depicts, seeing it on TV? Yeah, we’re verklempt, alright. For those of us who lived through it, this is somehow a coda. AIDS isn’t over, not even close, but Normal Heart reminds us of how far we have come, the lives we have saved. Murphy’s film chronicles the rise of AIDS in New York City in the early 1980s. The superb cast includes out gay actors Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons, as well as Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts and Taylor Kitsch. Kitsch was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last week talking up Normal Heart and showing some intense clips. When one considers Kitsch was born the year “GRID” was first discovered, it puts a whole different spin on the long road to getting the play to the screen. From our lives on the line to our love being celebrated is a strange counterpoint, but that’s the trajectory of queers on the tube. As you prep to watch TNH, you can also watch Mitchell and Cam, TV’s longest-running gay male couple, get married on the season finale of ABC’s Modern Family. ABC has been promoing this event like they were the ones getting married. Already the gay network with more gay-themed shows and more gay characters than anyone else, ABC has been tag-teaming on GMA. Two of their own were getting married, and they decided, what the hey, let’s pay for weddings in New York City as promotion for Mitchell and Cam’s great big fat gay wedding. Gay, straight, young, old. Wow. We saw two lesbians interviewed on ABC World News Now when ABC paid for them. We always cry at weddings. We also always cry during Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Sometimes it’s because the show tends to be triggering, other times it’s because as good as this show is, in large part due to star Mariska Hargitay (Olivia Benson), the reliance on female and See page 23 >>

t <<

Theatre>>

Tony Kushner

From page 13

After all, Angels in America was subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and it placed the AIDS epidemic into a sprawling context of intimate personal stories, national and international politics, historical ghosts, and even cosmic intervention. At the time, it was like a shot across the bow of a society conflicted by its own health, history, and capacity for redemption. His latest play again gives titular billing to those who may have wondered whither the gay Tony. The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures opens this week at Berkeley Rep, a safe haven for the playwright, who has taken a hands-on approach during rehearsals at Rep’s six preceding Kushner productions. “I guess I have a tendency to sort of label it when something might be considered a gay play,” he said. “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide, or I-Ho as we call it, is a gay play. I have no problem with that.” It is the first solabeled since Angels. While acceding to a “gay play” label, and noting the fact that five of the 10 characters are gays or lesbians whose complicated issues are intertwined with a suicidal patriarch’s gathering of the clan, the Homosexual title does not confer a particular LGBT imbalance to the central concerns of the play. As for the title, it partly paraphrases George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism with a kicker borrowed from a trea-

Oakland Ballet

From page 17

Lavender Tube

From page 22

gay criminals always makes us, well, nuts. Much of this season has focused on Olivia recovering from her kidnaping, near-rape and near-murder by psychopathic serial rapist/torturemurderer William Lewis (Pablo Schreiber, in a spectacular 8-episode story arc). But in the two-part season finale that ended May 21, SVU chose a provocative subject: pedophilia. In a wild shift from his usual role as good guy Assistant U.S. Attorney David Rosen

kevinberne.com

Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Tony Taccone, left, has a long relationship with playwright Tony Kushner, and is staging his newest play.

kevinberne.com

In Berkeley Rep’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide, Lou Liberatore, left, and Jordan Geiger portray lovers in the West Coast premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play.

that wasn’t true, and now look what happened to him. There is a way in which he believes that his suicide is a political act that is in some way an affirmation of the theories that have steered his life.” This may not sound much like a “gay” play, but three of his children are gay, each with a partner who is also in the play. “More than with Angels, I think the story is genuinely held by different ones of four or five of the main characters. I think in most of my plays there is a kind of battle over whose play it actually is.” Some of those characters include the oldest son, who is battling with his partner, most audibly because he has been spending thousands of dollars for the company of a hus-

tler who is also on the scene. Some of that money was borrowed from his lesbian sister, nicknamed Empty, who had had that money earmarked to help with the expenses soon to arrive along with her partner’s baby, achieved through artificial insemination from sperm donated by their younger brother. “Empty is the child who is closest to Gus, and her partner is eight months along in a tricky pregnancy, and she’s suddenly faced with how to care for an actively suicidal parent, not to mention her ex-husband, who is living with her father in a basement apartment,” the playwright explained. “I don’t want to do any spoiling, but Empty is very much implicated in one of the aspects of Gus’ intentions to commit suicide. So it’s all very tangled.”

First seen at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 2009 and at New York’s Public Theatre two years later, the play hadn’t yet felt finished to Kushner when he got a call from Tony Taccone, Berkeley Rep’s artistic director, who also happened to have been running the Eureka Theatre when Angels in America premiered there in 1991. “I was trying to figure out where next to do the play where I could do the work I knew I wanted to do,” Kushner said. “I’ve been working on it for five years, and I really feel it is done – at least for now.”t

tic director Jonathan Moscone, for selecting, as your non-Shakespeare play this summer season, a play by a black lesbian-feminist genius whose courage to critique the system is a huge inspirational boost to a gutless aesthetic atmosphere.

If you think I’m slinging the word “genius” too freely, you either don’t know their work, or don’t realize the breadth of their philosophies. Hansberry and Baldwin, who were friends, used their black-and-queer outsider lens to focus on the Big Picture, which they critiqued with compassion. Besides, they’re damned fine writers, meaning they dipped visionary pens into blood-pulsing hearts. The skill with which Hansberry presents the African-American longing for home ownership, even in the great white lap of suburbia, utterly disarms and deconstructs any latent racism in a white theatergoer. This skill, to present blacks as people wanting what everybody wants, seduced Broadway 60 years ago and again last month. Even that lovable old gadfly Henry Louis Gates, Jr. blogged about it. Director Patricia McGregor spoke on the phone before facing her first day of tech (theatrical lingo for taking the intimate work of the rehearsal space onto the stage where the play’s to be performed).

Having read Raisin in high school with reverence, and again in college, the Harlem resident said she was “shocked by the play’s vibrancy and relevance” when she picked it up again in response to Moscone’s offer. Raisin’s core question, she says, still resounds: “What is it to pursue this American Dream in the face of obstacles?” Taking a homebuyer’s class in Harlem, where brokers will not even show to certain clients, McGregor said they devised the counter-strategy of sending someone of a different socio-economic profile to see the property. “Fifty years later,” she mused, “we’ve made progress, but we’ve also slipped back.” Rehearsing in Berkeley, she and her nearly all-black cast were aware that “10 minutes one way, there was an exclusively black neighborhood, and 10 minutes in the other direction, an exclusively white neighborhood.” She stressed that Hansberry has the grace to treat this sorry truth with “so much humor. This is a serious play about serious issues, but hu-

mor is a survival tactic. Laughter humanizes the journey.” The character of Beneatha is routinely described as autobiographical, being composed of “elements of Hansberry.” McGregor lists “her struggle to articulate her choices, her desire to express herself, her desire not to get married, not to see men as the answer. The knight in shining armor coming to rescue you? She didn’t buy into that. At the end of the play, it’s intentionally left ambiguous what path she takes.” And yet. Hansberry, dead of cancer at 34, was a lesbian. That was a civil rights battle too far in 1959. Today, we needn’t be so bashful. Because Beneatha’s giddy sense of freedom only makes sense when you realize she has no need for men – except as brothers, friends, colleagues. Hail Beneatha, a willful, funny, quirky lesbian sheroe of stage and screen.t

true greats of jazz piano; Joan Jeanrenaud, alumna of the Kronos Quartet, a real original; Graham Central Station, alum of Sly and the Family Stone; and others. The music was too loud, but otherwise created a wonderful floor for a world of quirky and catchy moves. They’re building back up by partnering with Mills College, who are lending them rehearsal space and the help of their fantastic dance and music programs. Former department chair Sonya Delwayde made

a casually sophisticated dance for them, using two guest dancers from Axis dance for an inventive jazz piece to Hines’ music that used a lot of moves I’d never seen before. The ballerina Sharon Wehner sailed through it all, always fascinating, with Evan Flood whipping out moves with wonderful timing. Meanwhile Joel Brown, who looks like Superman in a push wheelchair, made sharp, smooth, controlled moves – he’s a virtuoso in a push wheelchair – that

were not just flashy bits of local color but profoundly integrated into the choreography. Similarly, in the finale Graham Lustig incorporated the street moves of the Turf Feinz in a funky dance for the whole company that put the show over the top. Taking Up Room on the Floor is Oakland’s unique and brilliant contribution to contemporary African-American street dance. The Turf Feinz are internationally popular through You-

tube videos. This is the dance of the ghetto, and the dancers are, in my view, demigods. There was also a wonderfully funky dance by Robert Moses, and a Cunninghamesque dance by Mills alum Molissa Fenley that the OBC dancers filled with strong shapes, to Jeanrenaud’s Harry Partsch-like music, well-played by Nava Dunkelman and AnnaWray on gongs and drums, which gave a fine motor impulse to the dance.t

on Scandal, Josh Malina played Simon Wilkes, an empathy-less art photographer with a sideline in extreme child porn: photos of boys (of course) in scenes of sexual torture. It was a complex scenario. The May 14 episode, “Thought Criminal,” brought pedophile Wilkes, whose main interest was the abduction, sexual torture and torture murder of boys. Malina’s character is set up by undercover Lt. Murphy (Donal Logue) to buy, torture, and kill a young boy. Wilkes is arrested when the team discovers his torture

chamber. But the twist is he hasn’t actually committed the crimes, he’s just in the planning stages. The episode poses a key question: What do we do with people who are planning heinous crimes, but have yet to actually commit them? May 16 marked Barbara Walters’ final day on the tube as she retired from ABC and her long-running talk show, The View. There’s no one else like Walters on the tube. She’s been a face of television news since 1976. The 84-year-old Walters was the first female co-anchor of a

nightly newscast in 1976, has interviewed nearly every head of state between now and then including every president from Nixon through Obama, and opened the door for women in broadcasting. It’s difficult to overstate her importance, especially in a week when The New York Times fired the only female executive editor of the paper (or any other major newspaper in the country) for asking to be paid commensurate with her male colleagues. Women only represent a fraction of people in media and the newsroom,

so Walters always being there means something. As does her retirement. Walters told Diane Sawyer in an interview on the May 16 ABC World News that she was looking for the next chapter. She was ABC’s “Person of the Week,” and the network did a special, Barbara Walters: Her Story, in prime time. It was the end of an era. And so to salute Ms. Walters, Ms. Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, and all the women and queers who have changed the TV landscape for us, and in hopes of seeing yet more, you know you really must stay tuned.t

Raisin in the Sun

got the community behind them, and this season’s repertory shows last Friday filled the house at the Malonga Casquelourde Theater in Oakland for Oaklandesque, an entertaining evening that celebrated the vitality of this gritty city. This year Oakland Ballet Company has used music by Oakland artists Earl “Fatha” Hines, one of the

tise by Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy. “The relationship of the title to the text is very literal,” Kushner said. “If anyone can figure how this or any play is a guide to something, you are probably watching a bad play. This play is a story that contains the title rather than something that is described by the title.” And partly, the title was just Kushner having some fun. “I like Shaw as sort of an unapologetic champion of – I wouldn’t call it arrogance or elitism, because Shaw really believed that stupidity is rarer than we think, that most people are intelligent even if they don’t use their brains as well as they should,” he said. “And I liked the conjunction of LGBT politics and politics of the body and desire and love, and there’s a kind of complicated relationship between the brain and the rest of the body.” “Complicated relationship” is also an apt description of the Gus Marcantonio family, which includes his children, their spouses both current and ex-, and, in one case, a rented sexual companion. They have regrouped at the Brooklyn home of Marcantonio, a former longshoreman, labor leader, and socialist, in order to hear his reasons for killing himself – and to decide what they should do with this information. The character of Gus and his motivations have been a major focus of Kushner’s rewrites since the play’s New York production in 2011. “I hope that it is now difficult when you watch the play to judge Gus. I didn’t want to make him simply this guy who believed in this thing

From page 13

to do something, with a wife, son, and baby on the way. Before the final choice is made, these spirited characters light up the stage with their wit, temper, tiredness, insights, jokes, rivalries, mistakes, frustrations, and love. Meanwhile, without your realizing what she’s up to exactly, Hansberry not only skewers social constructs of race, gender, and class, but poetically paves the way out of a burdensome past into a challenging future. “It is possible,” wrote black gay literary activist-genius James Baldwin, “that Lorraine Hansberry’s plays attempt to say too much; but it is also exceedingly probable that they make so loud and uncomfortable a sound because of the surrounding silence.” Baldwin’s point, that U.S. theater had stopped examining political hot potatoes 50 years ago, is equally true today. Since 9/11, arguably, the silence has become eardrum-implosive. So thank you, Cal Shakes artis-

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Matt Holliday

A Raisin in the Sun director Patricia McGregor.

The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures will run at Berkeley Rep through June 29. Tickets are $29-$99. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org.

Through June 15 at Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda. Tickets ($20-$72): (510) 548-9666, calshakes.org.

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PERSONALS Vol. 44 • No. 21 • May 22-28, 2014

John Grant turning pain into beauty through music by Jim Provenzano

Garoar Olafsson

oni Mitchell may have sung that laughing and crying are the same release, but with the songs of John Grant, both can be experienced simultaneously. With equal parts whimsy and melancholy, the openly gay singer tells of heartache, confusion and fragments of joy with a unique sense of humanity. See page 2 >>

John Grant in Iceland.

by Jim Provenzano

h, New York, New York. It’s so great, they named it twice. Or maybe they just weren’t very creative back then. But who am I to poke fun at Metropolis, the city of my birth, something I always brag about, including just now. If you think San Francisco has become “Manhattanized” with its flood of new highrises, then take a trip, real or imagined, to the true Metropolis. This summer would be a great time to visit. And if you wait too long, you might not be able to afford it. Here, in the style of a rushed Manhattanite, is a flippant, crowded and somewhat glib survey of New York City’s attractions for first-time or returning visitors.

BARtab

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2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

John Grant

From page 1

If you missed his last local performance, a sold out show at The Chapel, Grant will open for Elbow at Oakland’s Fox Theatre on May 27. As open about being gay as he is about being sober, Grant’s new album Pale Green Ghosts contemplates personal battles and even recovery hallucinations with a deft combination of electronic-tinged folk stylings. This is Grant’s first tour in big venues opening for Elbow. Later this year, he’ll headline a European series of venues, then return to the U.S. for several gigs in October. “I know several people that know the band,” said Grant in a phone interview. “I’m a fan as well, and I’m pretty excited about it, and to be back in my home, so to speak.” That’s because he spoke from Reykjavik, Iceland, where Grant has lived for about two years. Asked about his grasp of the Icelandic language, Grant said, “It’s coming along. It’s definitely the hardest so far.” Grant, 42, speaks several languages, but admitted, “My brain is not as soft and malleable as it used to be. It’ll take me a while. I love

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to speak other languages. Icelandic is Germanic, like all Scandanavian languages, and has a lot in common with Danish. Icelanders have no problem understanding Swedish or Danish.” Grant mentioned Feroese, a

did this happen?” he said. “I wanted to explore more what the hell has been bothering me, my getting to the bottom of my fear and inability. Why did I do this? It was about taking responsibility for what happened, dealing with it and getting

John Grant performing in Oregon.

dialect spoken on the small Faroe Islands between Denmark and Iceland, where an ancient Old Norse mixture of languages goes back centuries. “They’ve been isolated on that little island, so the language has become preserved and complicated,” Grant said with a tone of admiration. Asked if he’d consider performing or writing songs in other languages, Grant said he has performed other songs in German and Icelandic. “I definitely want to do more of that, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I want my pronunciation to be perfect.” Then Grant shifted gears, as in one of his songs, saying, “Or maybe I just need to get over it and have fun, like with Russian.” Grant studied piano since childhood, and gained what he called a “passable” ability to play Rachmaninov. That’s just one of many autobiographical layers in his music.

Seeing Sounds

Fans of Grant’s music videos should surely know of the astounding film montage by Jonathan Caouette that accompanies his song “Glacier.” With film clips and images of LGBT people and media depictions from the silent film era through the recent Bradley/Chelsea Manning protests, the film encapsulates our community’s glacial shift toward equal rights. Grant’s sometime touring partner, keyboardist Chris Pemberton, plays the gorgeous piano coda at the song’s finale. Grant’s other collaborations have included songs with Sinead O’Connor. His songs were also included in the score of film director Michael Lannan’s gay-themed Weekend and episodes of his HBO series Looking. Another of Grant’s music videos, “I Try to Talk to You,” a collaboration with Hercules and Love Affair, offers a modern dance interpretation of a troubled gay relationship, directed by David Wilson. But that interpretation is open to, well, interpretation. “The director was coming at it as a dialogue with someone else. But when I wrote that song with Andy, doing the lyrics, I was thinking more in terms of having a dialogue with myself. You can look at it as a guy dancing with another guy, struggling to have a relationship, or the two men are parts of one man.” But when Grant wrote the song, he said he was coming to terms with his HIV-positive diagnosis. “I asked myself, why, after I took the trouble to get sober and get rid of the destructive things in my life,

on with it. I had to forgive myself and move on. At the end of the day, one has to simply accept it.” Acceptance of his past is also a major part of Grant’s current life. As a singer and pianist with The Czars from 1996 to 2005, Grant drank to excess and spent a lot of time being frustrated. One of the only things that got him to stop drinking was being being kicked out of the band (Four of their six albums are still available on Grant’s website). “I had so many ideas about what I was supposed to be,” he said. “I was still far from realizing how fantastic I would be as myself. We’ve been told this all our lives, ‘Be yourself and people will like you,’ but I was never able to do that. That was one of my frustrations with The Czars. I knew that I could bring my music to a whole different level, if I could just love myself or others.” That’s been difficult, considering Grant’s repressed life with a highly religious family. “Whether it was Mom and Dad or family or church, all their expectations fail,” said Grant. “You see your friends become this upstanding citizens. Yet, with such people, nobody will ever ask me if I was gay. People just didn’t ask about my life, or, ‘Are you seeing someone?’” Grant has found more honesty as a solo artist. His first solo album Queen of Denmark, won high critical praise. “At some point, I wanted to be able to say, ‘I am great just the way I am.’ That’s part of what my new music is about. It does feel like a new life, being able to say exactly what I want to say. Sometimes I worry if I’ve gone too far. But you owe it to yourself and your art to ignore that negative voice.” His voice encompasses a bold ruminative baritone, and his lyrics shift from whimsy to anger that at times approach the darkly comic. Instead of wrapping around metaphor, his lyrics bluntly state what’s in the frontal lobe, as in the song “Sigourney Weaver,” where Grant expresses awkwardness as feeling “just like Winona Ryder in that move about vampires… and she couldn’t get that accent right, and neither could that other guy.” The video for the song “GMF,” at first innocuous, portrays Grant as a bumbling oaf. “I am the greatest mother fucker that you’re ever gonna meet,” he sings, as he fumbles with a basketball while mostly alone in parks, while shopping, and at a bar as a down and out failed superhero hungover on what feels like “Pop Rox and cyanide,” until he meets an equally inept nemesis and gets pummeled, yet remains hopeful.

Across the Pond

knows his limits. “Whenever I write something that’s a little too difficult, I give it to Chris Pemberton,” the pianist who performs the arpeggios at the end of “Glacier.” “These days, I figure, just get a pro,” said Grant. “He can literally play anything, and he does play everything. It’s amazing to watch someone who’s a virtuoso on an instrument.” Actually, Grant’s no slouch at the ivory-tickling himself. His songs reveal layers of subtlety and an accomplished compositional style. “When I’m teaching songs to other musicians, before we play live, they’re like, ‘Good lord; another key change?’ His music is also compositionally autobiographical. “I love the Russians; Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky,” Grant said. “There are specific references in my music. ‘Pale Green Ghosts’ has a string arrangement based on Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, which I played as a kid. I thought it was so cool to put it on top of a fat electronic beat.” Other references are more obscure, like the strings in Grant’s song “Vietnam,” which reference his love of horror movie scores like John Carpenter’s. He also cited Cocteau Twins’ Lisa Gerrard, whose obscure lyrics seem like Elvish, but, Grant discovered, are sometimes simply a Polish dialect. “People want things that they can connect to, but we also want music that we can escape into,” said Grant. “One of the reasons people like my lyrics is they like to hear reality sometimes. Relationships are fuckin’ tough. You don’t always feel like you have it together. It’s funny to talk about how difficult it is to be a human.” Or a bear? Songs in the Key of Life Grant admitted being amused by For his opening set on May 27 his strong fan base among the hirsute at Oakland’s Fox Theatre, Grant gay male subculture. “That is what I connect to,” he said. “I mean, there are different kinds of men that I find hot, but I do love hairy men, and I do connect to that community. And I’m glad that I’m embraced by them.” Grant’s also comfortable being considered a gay musician. “I’ve never sensed it as limiting,” he said. “Although, other people made my being gay an issue by bothering us about it. But John Grant’s new CD, Pale Green Ghosts you’ve got to go out there and be yourself. Be true to whatever it is you need will perform on piano with a guitarto do, and everything else will fall ist. He said he likes the simplicity, in place. It’s your job to embrace but also looks forward to his own the people that like you. I want to European tour later this year with show that love back to them by beseveral more musicians, “to have the ing there and connecting. Although, whole set up, so I can present the alfor a long time I was just sort of this bum. I want people to hear the lushguy who really didn’t feel like I fit ness, how big and fat and gorgeous into the gay community anywhere. it is. But some of the songs do lend To feel that other gay men apprecithemselves to acoustic versions.” ate my music… I think ‘flattered’ is Part of Grant’s music is his elothe wrong word. I feel quite pleased quent skill at the piano. Having about it. Because we are, us gays, studied since his childhood in Busome picky motherfuckers. I do feel chanan, Michigan, Grant found that in my mind to be appreciated refuge in music. by own community is special.” “I was starting to get into becomAnd yet, his work isn’t at all liming a teenager, wanting to be cool, ited to any group of people. whatever the fuck that meant. Back “I do notice that lots of different then, playing the piano wasn’t very people come to my shows,” Grant cool. I still had to go to church, added. “In Great Britain, there are and also play piano there. But I a lot of young kids with their parnever wanted to practice my scales, ents. It’s a very diverse cross section which you really have to do, to get of humanity, and that make me feel the dexterity to play something like very successful.”t the Chopin etudes. There’s tons of difficult music out there. I could play it fine, but never to the level John Grant opens for Elbow at the Fox Theatre, Tuesday May 27. that I could have if I’d practiced. But $32.50. 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave., I played long enough that it’s inexOakland. (510) 302-2250. tricable from my music.” www.thefoxoakland.com With his years of performing exwww.johngrantmusic.com perience, Grant admitted that he Asked if he feels disconnected from U.S. culture after moving to Germany for six years, and having lived in Iceland for two, Grant said yes… and no. “I love it, I miss it; I’m a very American boy,” he said. “But I love languages so much. To get to know other cultures makes me love where I come from even more. I wanted to get away from where I was, the Methodist and Southern Baptist church culture where the message was imparted that I was a lesser human being. There was a lot of anger, and I wanted to get away. I love Germany, but there comes a point when you get over thinking that some place is better, because no place is better. There are tons of amazing places, and home is one of them.” He’s also not idealistic. “Iceland kicked the corrupt bankers out, but six years later, they just elected the same people back into the government who did that to them. That’s one of the things you learn. American politics are ridiculous and embarrassing. But guess what? It’s the same bullshit everywhere you go.” When he does return to the U.S., Grant said that he reconnects with his family, most of whom live in Colorado. “My relationship to my family was quite strained because of my alcoholism,” said Grant. “I was constantly having to be bailed out. There was a lot of resentment. I’ve stayed sober in order to have a career and a life. It was something that was important for me to do, so my relationships have improved greatly. I’ve become somebody that they can count on. I can do things for them,” including flying a brother out for a show, or bringing his sister to England for a vacation.

t <<

Read more online at www.ebar.com

NY See

From page 1

The Gay White Way

Neil Patrick Harris. Hedwig. If these two names mean nothing to you, you’re probably reading the wrong newspaper. Seriously, Broadway’s spring season is gayer than ever. Harris, the openly gay song and dance charmer,

Real, the new Sylvester musical, begins selling tickets on June 2 (www. fabuloussylvester.com). Also, longrunning Tony Award winners Kinky Boots, Wicked and The Book of Mormon continue to fill houses. For some onstage beefcake (and some classic scores) Rocky the Musical and Aladdin prove that like Hollywood, Broadway producers more often stick with a derivative ideas.

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

and gentrification is that it’s safer. Walking across town late one night on my last visit, I saw cops, and they hadn’t shot anyone. Plus, much of Times Square is now pedestrian parklets, and unless you’re a young child getting harassed by a humansized Elmo, you can enjoy the busy intersection under glaring corporate billboards. For a show that’s a few hundred dollars cheaper, Joe’s Pub regularly books talented singers, from jazz greats to rock up and comers, and our favorite expatriate Justin Vivian Bond.

Fortunately –for me– for my last stay, I got a free press night out of a few surprisingly enjoyable nights spent at the overly stylish OUT NYC. Yep, the midtown West Side hotel, styled like a science fiction re-

sort, proved to be comfortable. The smaller rooms facing inward toward to the ultra-green patio can be a bit noisy, what with BPM, the nightclub next door, and the foot traffic. But if you can afford one of the larger rooms, the quiet is almost sepul-

Don’t Sleep in the Subway

So, where to stay? If you’re not lucky enough to have relatives or exlovers with a Jennifer Convertible in their living room, and you doubt your Grindr hook-up sleepover chances, you’ll have to risk the lingering threat of bedbugs by staying in a hotel. But hey, between the millions of rats and cockroaches, it’s all part of the Big Apple’s wonderful wildlife subculture.

chral, and the bed, shower and desk area were sleekly designed in a series of squareshaped patterns; even the soap! With an outdoor sauna, hot tub, tables and chairs, plus the generous morning contintental breakfast, the OUT offers stylish and convenient accomodations.

Neil Patrick Harris in Hedwig and the Angry Inch

stars in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the super-acclaimed new staging of the genius musical about a a jilted transgender rock singer in Germany, should be enough to make any theatre queen travel across the country and shell out a few hundred bucks (Belasco Theatre, 111 West 44th St.). But wait. There’s more! Cabaret is back in yet another new staging, with bisexy Allan Cumming as the MC. Relive the hit show that made Liza Minnelli more famous, and offers up a creepy singing Nazis, all based on the fiction of gay author Christopher Isherwood (Studio 54, 254 W.54th St.). Opening in September, Mighty

Revivals star many film actors, like Raisin in the Sun, starring Denzel Washington. With new productions of classics Pippin and Les Miserables getting extended runs, you’d think it was the ‘70s again, but without the garbage strikes and massive power outages. Off-Broadway features some familiar titles like Avenue Q, Naked Boys Singing, and Stomp. One of the original film-derived shows is Heathers: the Musical. For tickets and updates on shows, visit www.broadway.com. Broadway itself, meaning Times Square, has become Disney-fied and Bloomberg-fied. That’s true. The upside of the glittering sellout

Mighty Real, a Fabulous Sylvester Musical, opening in September

We Are Going to Another Disco

And speaking of the club next door, if you’re looking for convenient nightlife, you can’t beat stepping through your own hotel lobby into Alan Cumming in Cabaret

See page 4 >>

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

NY See

From page 3

a neon-lit club that hosts live and DJed acts at BPM, with an occassional visit by none other than Lady Gaga. Gay nightlife is a fleeting source of pleasure. Club promoters from my day, freshly paroled, are no match for the constantly changing urban nightlife scene. Wait. You want old school? You want post-Stonewall? Christopher Street ain’t what it was, but there are a few nice bars left in the West Village. The fabled piano bar Marie’s Crisis is still open for your show tune crooning pleasure. Right in Sheridan Square, The Monster’s still

BARtab

The unique faux-grass deck at the OUT NYC.

offering strong drinks and stronger piano bar singers. Boots & Saddle still welcomes the cruisy macho types, and The Hanger’s still a place for gay men to, well, hang. The East Village hasn’t been completely taken over by NYU, yet. Eastern Bloc and the nearly-mythical Pyramid Bar are still around, if not in different incarnations. Eleven Eleven and The Boiler Room cater to hip crowds. And giving a run for its game change, the New York version of our own Hi Tops is Boxers, the popular new

BARtab

George Segal’s Gay Liberation statue in Sheridan Square.

BARtab

The OUT NYC hotel.

BARtab

Central Park’s beauty

Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

gay sports bar, with two locations, in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen. They not only butch it up with sporty ambiance, but serve pizza and other grill food, with the occasional camp night such as RuPaul’s Drag Race episode-viewing. Chelsea was once the new West Village, and now Hell’s Kitchen is the new Chelsea. More than a dozen gay bars, queer nights and extra-gayfriendly restaurants are on the midtown West Side, including Rocket, Bartini Ultra Lounge, Industry, Posh and the 9th Avenue Saloon. Many of these dance and cruise nights offer gogo

guys who tease, and for the full monty, The Gaiety and Show Palace are long gone. But for a sexy male strip show, Adonis Lounge at Evolve offers male dancers on Wednesdays and Saturday nights, and on Fridays at Lucky Cheng’s. Bring some cash if you want a hot lap dance from some muscley trade. For the women, Club Remix and Lipstick Productions offer ladies nights several times a week. To see the pros take it off, Broadway’s hottest men and women just performed their racy Broadway Bares Solo Strips at BPM Nightclub on May 11. But you might just maybe be able to get tickets to the annual Broadway Bares. Moved from the now-closed Roseland to the Hammerstein

Open daily at 12pm

Park, Avenues

To take a break from the dance, music and nightlife, the daytime in Manhattan is pretty cool, too. Shopping, restaurants, and still more shopping can be enjoyed everywhere from Soho to Harlem. But you must spend at least an afternoon in Frederick Olmstead’s wonder of landscape architecture, Central Park. Spring and early summer, or autumn –heck, even in the dead of winter– it’s beautiful. Don’t forget to see the Bethesda Fountain angel statue made famous in Tony Kushner’s gay classic play and film adaptation Angels in America. While uptown, visit some of the world-famous museums like the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim and the Natural History Museum. Pick

Lady Gaga and pals at BPM.

COME IN WITH A FRIENd and recieve $3 OFF each entry!

2051 Market St. at Church St. Info: 415-864-EROS (3767)

Ballroom, the showboys and girls will strip off for AIDS charities on June 22. And if you’re in town that late in June, stay for the last weekend, when of course the annual LGBT Pride parade and weekend celebrations pretty much turn a lot of the borough rainbowlicious.

Edge Media

BUDDY-NIGHT TUESDAYS San Francisco’s 18+ Sex Club!

Edge Media

Hotties at Boxers in Hell’s Kitchen.

up a New Yorker and Time Out New York for comprehensive listings for exhibits. For the latest on New York news, arts and events listings, you’ve got a lot of media outlets to choose from. Our affiliate partners Edge Media can offer a tease of what to expect in their nightlife section, with more than 100 up-to-date listings for LGBT bars and nightclubs in all five boroughs (www.edgenewyork. com/nightlife). While waiting for your doubtlessly delayed flight out of SFO, peruse Gay City News on your tablet (www.gaycitynews.com). New Yorkers will expect you to be up on their local issues and politics, so consider it a pre-flight quiz. Our friends at The Spartacus Guide now have a handy app, so you can check your phone for expanded listings, instead of lugging their comprehensive global tomes around. And remember, with the right attitude, New York City will welcome you with open arms. Actually, open hands, so don’t forget your ATM card.t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Jimmy James as Cher, Marilyn, and now himself by David-Elijah Nahmod

immy James is a multi-faceted performer who has worn many hats, and a few gowns. He first came to prominence with his incomparable portrayal of Marilyn Monroe, whom he played for 17 years. “I played Marilyn longer than

former who knows how to put on a show, he dazzles his audiences with his powerful pipes and glittering costumes. His efforts have brought him a legion of loyal fans and even a few awards, including the prestigious M.A.C Award, Cabaret’s equivalent to the Oscars, which we won in 1988 and again in 2007.

details about his life in and out of the spotlight.

fun of me; they liked me. I was sensitive and not really into boy things. I hung out mostly with the girls. Coming out was not discussed in my strict Catholic family until I was in my 20s and a boy devastated and broke my heart so badly. My mom could tell something was wrong. I broke down and told her I was in ruins. She was very concerned for me and later confided in me that she’d had bad feelings about him.

Jimmy James as Marilyn Monroe in the late 1990s

Jimmy James

Marilyn played Marilyn,” James quipped in one interview. His Marilyn stunned audiences because it came across less like a drag queen and was more akin to a ghost of the screen legend. Over the years James has portrayed other Hollywood icons, and has even played himself. An old-fashioned per-

James’ recent album Jamestown included the hit dance single “Fashionista,” which was embraced worldwide and reached #13 on Billboard’s dance charts. As James rehearsed for his May 23 performance at Rebel, which is surprisingly his first time performing in San Francisco, Jimmy shared

David-Elijah Nahmod: Please tell us who Jimmy James is? Jimmy James: I started my career in the early 1980s, with my visual and vocal recreation of Marilyn Monroe. I made several appearances on popular talk shows of the period starting with Donahue, then Sally, Geraldo, Joan Rivers, RuPaul on VH1. I sold out shows for years, but San Francisco has always eluded me for some reason. I’m very excited to be coming there. By 1997 I retired Marilyn or any drag part of my show and continued concentrating on my vocal impressions and tributes to: Cher, Eartha Kitt, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Elvis, Diana Ross, Lionel Richie, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Bettie Davis and many more. I didn’t consider myself a gay kid, I was probably more of a “sissy,” but I didn’t know it until other boys made fun of me. Girls never made

Jimmy James on stage

Who are your musical influences? Music was my escape from my little sissy fat boy world. The music I loved was driven mostly by the divas: Cher, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Barbra Streisand. The male singers were Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Neil Sedaka in the 80s, and Sylvester. I loved male singers who sounded like girls because I could relate. I was lucky to meet and hang out with Sylvester. I cherish the memories. Can you discuss the genesis of your stage persona? I am myself but I jump in and out of personas with each song I sing. I don’t dress in drag anymore, I al-

ready look female without trying. I concentrate on my vocals. But don’t get me wrong, I serve a look. I won’t go on stage as “plain James.” With the rise of marriage equality and LGBT visibility, do you find you have a bigger crossover audience, or has your audience always been mixed? It is changing. In the old days, when I started, I only performed in gay clubs. But nowadays I’m able to work in performing arts centers with mostly straight people who love me. Back when I was on those talk shows they would ask if I was gay or straight, or which bathroom did I use? Do I want to have a sex change? I never hear those questions anymore. I kinda say it’s the RuPaul effect. She blazed a very big trail. What other kinds of music do you do besides dance? Are you influenced by classic Hollywood cinema? My show is a roller coaster ride of different musical genres; dance, country, contemporary, electronic, rock, rap (my own), ballads, 70s, 80s, 90s. I’m influenced by all cinema. But I don’t live in the past. I can acknowledge it, but I like to keep moving forward. What can people expect from your San Francisco show? Comedy, drama, music, classic and contemporary. You won’t forget me. I do tricks with my throat. Can I get a date? t Jimmy James performs One Night Only, May 23, 8pm & 10pm at Rebel, 1760 Market St. at Octavia. $20 in advance, $25 at the door. www.jimmyjames.eventbrite.com

<< On the Tab

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

Jimmy James @ Rebel

eON THE– TAB f May 22 29

★

The East Coast singer who channels pop divas makes his SF debut. $20-$25. 8pm & 10pm at Rebel, 1760 Market St. at Octavia. www.jimmyjames.eventbrite.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland Enjoy eight bars, more dance floors, and a smoking lounge at the largest gay Latin dance night in the Bay Area. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Manimal @ Beaux Gogo-tastic night starts off your weekend. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Odyssey @ Beatbox

Lauren Bilanko

Thu 22

Pansy Division @ The Eagle

usical brilliance, both whimsical and sincere, plus wild drag shows, will keep you entertained eight days a week.

Thu 22 Avery Sunshine @ Yoshi's Oakland Stellar soul-gospel vocalist performs. $23. 8pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Jack London Square, Oakland. (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

The Crib @ 715 Dance night for the younger guys and gals. 9:30pm-2am. 715 Harrison St. www.thecribsf.com

La Femme @ Beaux Ladies' happy hour at the Castro nightclub, with drink specials, no cover, and women gogos. 4pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge Retro disco tunes and a fun diverse crowd, each Thursday; now in its tenth year! $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Underwear Party @ Powerhouse Strip down to your skivvies at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

VIP @ Club 21, Oakland Hip Hop, Top 40, and sexy Latin music; gogo dancers, appetizers, and special guest DJs. No cover before 11pm and just $5 after all night. Dancing 9pm-3am. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

DJs Steve Fabus, Bus Station John, Eli Escobar, Stanley Franks and Robin Simmons spin old-school disco at this after-hours tribute to the Paradise Garage. $10. 12am-8am. (bar closes at 2am, reopens at 6am). 314 11th St. 500-2675. www.odysseysf.com www.beatboxsf.com

Sat 24

DJed tunes, gogo hotties, drag shows, drink specials, all at Oakland's premiere Latin nightclub and weekly cowboy night. $10$15. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Lady Bunny @ Rebel

Club Rimshot @ Bench and Bar, Oakland Weekly hip hop and R&B night. $8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com

Lady Bunny @ Rebel New York's big-haired drag wonder, Wigstock founder and politically-astute loudmouth returns with a new freshly crass comedy show, Clowns Syndrome. $20-$25. 7pm & 9pm. Also May 25. 1760 Market St. at Octavia. www.ladybunny.eventbrite.com

Pearls Over Shanghai @ The Hypnodrome Thrillpeddlers' hilarious Cockettes revival returns, with new choreography, costumes and cast members. $30-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru May 31. 575 10th St. (800) 838-3006. www.thrillpeddlers.com

Some Thing Mica Sigourney and pals' weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Steam @ Powerhouse Jim Hopkins spins groovy tunes at the cruisy bar's drippingly wet and sexy night, with $100 Wet Towel contest and more clean/wet debauchery. $5. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

Themed Nights @ The Brig If you're looking for a new sexual adventure, check out this new space. Weekend events take place Fridays through Mondays, and the intimate venue with a jail theme offers slings, tables and various spaces for erotic play. Sat-Mon, above PopSex960 at 962 Folsom St. at 6th St. www.BrigSF.com

Fuego @ The Watergarden, San Jose Weekly event, with Latin music, half-off locker fees and Latin men, at the South Bay private men's bath house. $8-$39. Reg hours 24/7. 18+. 1010 The Alameda. (408) 275-1215. www.thewatergarden.com

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland

Fri 23

Spring g has sprung!

Manimal @ Beaux

Harvey Milk Birthday Party @ Beaux Steven Underhill

Celebrate the iconic local gay activist and politician on what would have been his 84th birthday. 6pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Jukebox @ Beatbox Veteran DJ Page Hodel (The Box, Q and many other events) presents a new weekly dance event, with soul, funk, hip-hop and house mixes. $10. 21+. 9pm-2am. 314 11th St. at Folsom. www.BeatboxSF.com

Fri 23

Magic Parlor @ Chancellor Hotel

Bad Girl Cocktail Hour @ The Lexington Club

Whimsical Belle Epoque-style sketch and magic show that also includes historical San Francisco stories; hosted by Walt Anthony; optional pre-show light dinner and desserts. $40. Thu-Sat 8pm. 433 Powell St. www.SFMagicParlor.com

Every Friday night, bad girls can get $1 dollar margaritas between 9pm and 10pm. 3464 19th St. between Mission and Valencia. 8632052. www.lexingtonclub.com

Nap's Karaoke @ Virgil's Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover. 9pm. 3152 Mission St. 829-2233. www.virgilssf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences The museum's weekly cocktail parties continue with drinks, food live music and pop-up display exhibits and docent talks, plus creature, plant and science exhibits. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Pan Dulce @ The Cafe Amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com

Pansy Division @ SF Eagle The classic queercore band reunites in a rare live set; Zbornak, Munecas and Clutch the Pearls also play. $8. 9pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Fedorable @ El Rio Free weekly queer dance party, with gogos, prizes, old groovy tunes, cheap cocktails. 9pm-2am. 3158 Mission St. 2823325. www.elriosf.com

Friday Night @ de Young Museum Nightlife events at the museum take on different themes. $20-$35. 6pm-8:30pm. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoung.famsf.org

Pride Night @ Great America, Santa Clara The annual amusement park’s LGBT night includes a stage show with performances by Pollo del Mar, Lady Bunny, Cookie Dough and her Monster Show, plus Xavier Toscano, Ross Matthews and DJs Luis Perez, Cisco, Shawn Perry and others. $30-$55. 6pm-2am. 4701 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara. www.cagreatamerica.com

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun The popular video bar ends each week with gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials. Check out the new expanded front lounge, with a window view. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Sat 24 Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Bearracuda @ Beatbox Underwear? Under bears! Enjoy the stripped down manly night, with DJs Brian Maier and Medic. $6-$10. 9pm-3am. 314 11th St. www.bearracuda.com www.beatboxsf.com

Beer Bust @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Beer only $8 until you bust. 4pm-8pm. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar's most popular Sunday daytime event now also takes place on Saturdays! 3pm-6pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Bleaux @ Beaux Haute Toddy and Lindsay Slowhands' twerky poppy fun night at the stylish Castro bar-nightclub. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Bootie SF @ DNA Lounge The weekly mash-up dance night, with resident DJs Adrian & Mysterious D. No matter the theme, a mixed fun good time's assured. $8-$15. 9pm-3am. 21+. 375 11th St. at Harrison. www.BootieSF.com www.DNAlounge.com

ShangriLa @ The EndUp The bimonthly gay Asian dance night's Memorial Day Weekend party takes on a "Heroes & Villains" theme. Wear your sexy superhero/villain costume, with a contest at 12am. Free before 11pm. $20. 10pm6am. 401 6th St. www.shangrilasf.eventbrite.com

Sun 25 Beer Bust @ Lone Star Saloon The ursine crowd converges for beer and fun. 4pm-8pm. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar's most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. 3pm-6pm. Now also on Saturdays! 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Brunch @ Hi Tops Enjoy crunchy sandwiches and mimosas, among other menu items, at the popular sports bar. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Drag Comedy Night @ Pa'ina Lounge Laugh it up with wit and wacky drag queen (and faux and king) fun from host Miles Long, plus Victor Ocho, Chile Con Consuela, Daniella Starburst, Bubblegum Bonnie, Curry Peckerwood and Georgia O'Queef. $10. 21+. 1865 Post St. www.charlieballard.com

Full of Grace @ Beaux Weekly night with hostess Grace Towers, different local and visiting DJs, and pop-up drag performances. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

GlamaZone @ The Cafe Pollo del Mar's weekly drag shows takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:3011:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Hero @ Ruby Skye Memorial Day Weekend dance party, with DJs Paul Goodyear and Grind. $25-$30. 6pm-12am. 420 Mason St. www.industrysf.com

Honey Soundsystem @ Beatbox

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Trannyshack @ DNA Lounge

Karaoke @ The Lookout

The annual Madonna tribute includes wild and wondrous drag lip-synch acts by host Heklina, Exhibit Q, Sue Casa, Cookie Dough, Qween, Raya Light, Sugah Betes and more. 9pm meet & greet with Bianca Del Rio ($25). 11pm show ($20). 375 11th St. www.trannyshack.com

Paul K hosts the amateur singing night. 8pm-2am. 3600 16th St. at Market. www.lookoutsf.com

Special Memorial Day edition of the groovy DJ collective's spinstastic talents. $15. 10pm-4am. 314 11th St. 500-2675. www.honeysoundsystem.com www.beatboxsf.com

Mon 26

Jock @ The Lookout

Enjoy Italian and Polish sausages, cole slaw and baked beans at the fundraiser for the LGBT war veteran group. $5 all you can eat. 12pm-3pm. 440 Castro St. 431-1413. www.post448.org www.the440.com

The weekly jock-ular fun continues, with special sports team fundraisers. 3pm-7pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Liquid Brunch @ Beaux No cover, no food, just drinks (Mimosas, Bloody Marys, etc.) and music. 2pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Alexander Hamilton Post @ 440 Bar

Cock and Bull Mondays @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Specials on drinks made with Cock and Bull ginger ale (Jack and Cock, Russian Mule, and more). 8pm-closing. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany's weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm, with a RuPaul's Drag Race viewing as well. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Monday Musicals @ The Edge The casts of local and visiting musicals often pop in to perform at the popular Castro bar's musical theatre night. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni's Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone). 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.dragatmartunis.com

Shanté, You Stay @ Toad Hall BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly viewing party of RuPaul's Drag Race, with a live drag show challenge. 8:30-11:30pm. 4146 18th st. at Castro. www.toadhallbar.com

Sheena Rose @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge The local drag club singer performs her new single "Dirty Cash" at High Fantasy, the drag night. $3. 10pm. 133 Turk St. 441-2922. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Showdown @ Folsom Foundry Weekly game night for board and electronic gamers at the warehouse multipurpose nightclub. 21+. 6pm-12am. 1425 Folsom St. www.showdownesports.com

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Wed 28 Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Dream Queens Revue @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge Classic drag acts in the old-school gay bar. Free. 10pm. 133 Turk St. 441-2922. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Tue 27

Red Hots Burlesque @ El Rio Women's burlesque show performs each Wed & Fri. Karaoke follows. $5-$10. 7pm. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall The weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

Sony Holland @ Level III The acclaimed jazz vocalist performs with guitarist Jerry Holland. Weekly 5pm-8pm. Also Thursdays & Fridays. JW Marriott, 515 Mason St. at Post. www.sonyholland.com

Trivia Night @ Harvey's BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly night of trivia quizzes and fun and prizes; no cover. 8pm-1pm. 500 Castro St. 431-4278. www.harveyssf.com

Underwear Night @ SF Eagle Strip down to your skivvies at the popular leather bar. 9pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Way Back @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of vintage music videos and retro drink prices. Check out the new expanded front window lounge. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Thu 29 Circle Jerk @ Nob Hill Theatre Enjoy yourself as others do, along with a performing porn stud, in the Arcade's underground playroom. $10. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

La Femme @ Beaux Ladies' happy hour at the Castro nightclub, with drink specials, no cover, and women gogos. 4pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops

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Sheena Rose @ Aunt Charlie’s

Sports Night @ The Eagle The legendary leather bar gets jock-ular, with beer buckets, games (including beer pong and corn-hole!), prizes, sports on the TVs, and more fun. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Tue 27

Hugh Laurie & The Copper Bottom Band @ The Fillmore The British star of the TV show House performs with his folk band at the famed music hall. $62. 8pm. 1805 Geary St. at Fillmore. (Also May 26 at the Uptwon in Napa, and May 27 at Montalvo in Saratoga) www.thefillmore.com

Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar. 10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. $10$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

13 Licks @ Q Bar Weekly women's night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Block Party @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 8614186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Bombshell Betty & Her Burlesqueteers @ Elbo Room The weekly burlesque show of women dancers shaking their bonbons includes live music. $10. 9pm. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

Salsa Sundays @ El Rio Salsa dancing for LGBT folks and friends, with live merengue and cumbia bands; tapas and donations that support local causes. 2nd & 4th Sundays. 3pm-8pm. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550

Drag Mondays @ The Café Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko's weekly drag and dance night. 9pm-1am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Irish Dance Night @ Starry Plough, Berkeley Weekly dance lessons and live music at the pub-restaurant, hosted by John Slaymaker. $5. 7pm. 3101 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. www.thestarryplough.com

The popular country western LGBT dance night; enjoy fun foot-stomping twostepping and line-dancing. $5. 5pm-10:30pm with lessons from 5:30-7:15 pm. Also Thursdays. 550 Barneveld Ave., and Tuesdays at Beatbox, $6. Grace Towers 6:30-11pm. 314 11th St. @ the 2013 www.sundancesaloon.org Trannyshack

Sunday's a Drag @ Starlight Room

Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Madonna tribute

Sun 25

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey's Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night. One-drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

Ink & Metal @ Powerhouse Show off your tattoos and piercings at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

John Grant, Elbow @ Fox Theatre, Oakland The gay singer-songwriter opens for the popular band Elbow. See feature in this section. $32.50. 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. (510) 302-2250. www.johngrantmusic.com www.thefoxoakland.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down at the strip joint. $20 includes refreshments. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Wed 28 Hugh Laurie @ The Fillmore

Mad Manhattans @ Starlight Room The new weekly event includes classic cocktails created by David Cruz, and inspired by the the show Mad Men, plus retro food classics like prawn cocktails and Oysters Rockefeller, all with a fantastic city view. 6pm-10pm. 21st, Sir Francis Drake Hotel. 450 Powell St. www.starlightroomsf.com

Miss Kitty's Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm. 424 Cortland St. 6473099. www.wildsidewest.com

Queer Salsa @ Beatbox Weekly Latin partner dance night. 8pm1am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Pan Dulce @ The Cafe Enjoy amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com

Michael Feinstein, Paula West @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The cabaret singer-pianist and namesake of the classy nigthclub performs in a oneyear anniversary celebration of concerts with special guest vocalist Paula West. $65-$95. 8pm. May 30, 8pm. May 31 & June 1, 7pm. Thru June 1. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Want your nightlife event listed? Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event. Event photos welcome.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

Benefitness by Donna Sachet

Cirque de l’Arc on May 9 raised significant funds for The Arc San Francisco, showcasing incredible talent, offering great food and drink,

and presenting circus costumes galore. Kitty Glamour deserves tons of credit for overseeing this annual event and truly outdid herself that night with so many costume changes we lost count. Entertain-

Nob Hill Theatre rookies night

DOMINIC FORD STAR

NICK CROSS

CIRCLE JERK WITH A PORN STAR UNDERGROUND PLAYRO THU MAY 29th @ 9P OM MAINSTAGE HEADLINEM R MAY 30TH & 31ST SHOWTIMES @ 8PM & 10PM

FabScout Model - Photo Credit: Dominic Ford

JUNE 4th - 8PM - $200 CASH PRIZE

ers included members of the SF Gay Men’s Chorus, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Galilea, Alexis Miranda, Patrice, and Ana Mae Cox, who in particular brought the audience to their feet with her incredible costume and performance. The more you learn about this organization, the more you want to support them and their essential work with adults with developmental disabilities and their families. At The Arc San Francisco, clients are given the chance to achieve their highest potential and live more independent lives in the community. Our new Reigning Emperor J.P. Soto and Empress Misty Blue have

Steven Underhill

Donna Sachet (right) at Mark Abramson’s Books Inc. reading.

my Awards Gala to six charities, toThe highlight of the program had taling $90,000. In addition, the late to be the announcement that JesStu Smith received the Kile Ozier sica Urbina, recently disciplined by Founder’s Award. A lively crowd at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory the St. Francis Hotel applauded the School for wearing a tuxedo for her renewed focus and financial stabilclass photo, was in the audience at ity of this organization, which has Kate’s invitation. Nothing could supported so many difhave brought the message of ongoferent AIDS related ing struggles to clearer focus. She organizations over 34 spoke with genuine wonder and years. resolute defiance. The live auction Wednesday nights in and call for donations fell on willthe Castro have gotten ing ears and pockets opened wide, a little bit crazier than followed by dancing with abandon ever, as we personally at City View across the street. All in witnessed last week. The all, a great blend of the requisite gala choices include Juanita elements and striking moments of More’s Booty Call at mission and compassion. Q Bar (great music, cute crowd, Sincere condolences to friends and photo ops in the back), Bebe and family of Michael Phillips who Sweetbriar’s Trivia Night at Hardied suddenly, leaving the world a vey’s (test your knowledge, while little dimmer, the Castro a little sadflirting with players), and the new der, and many of us a little lonelier. Musical Wednesdays at The Edge Tonight, Thurs., May 22, we join (Brian Kent selecting and playing Supervisors David Campos and his favorite musical numbers and Jane Kim, City Attorney Dennis yours for tips). Thursday mornings Herrera, and Trey Allen for our will never be the same! first Lavender Graduation at City When you attend as many annual College of San Francisco. How apgalas as some of us do, they all tend propriate on Harvey Milk Day in to blur together, however well-inCalifornia! Meanwhile, in Washingtentioned. The National Center for ton, D.C., Nicole Murray Ramirez Lesbian Rights provided one of the will join Stuart Milk and others at most moving, issue-oriented, acthe White House for the official untion-stimulating evenings in recent veiling of the US Postage stamp in memory. We joined Chris Carnes Harvey’s honor. and Gretchen Fleischmann for On May 28, we’ll have our own the dinner for 1500 at the Marriott San Francisco event for the stamp Hotel. Yes, 1500, including Terri at City Hall at 3:30PM with elected Sabella & Diana Saca, Louette Coofficials, associates of Harvey’s, and lombano, Kris Kealey, Terry Dolother community leaders. That lard, Arwen Johnson & Barbara night at Chambers restaurant at the Morton, Geoff Kors, Jim Carroll, Phoenix Hotel, we’ll be emceeing Tracy Chapman, Liam Mayclem, the annual awards event of Marriage and State Senator Mark Leno! Equality USA. With Kate Clinton as emcee, we knew the program would move along at a nice pace, punctuated with her delightful humor and slick, thematic video presentations. Co-Chairs of the Board of Directors Tamika Butler and Kelly McCown kept their remarks upbeat and brief, quickly moving to the Courage Award Steven Underhill presented to Ryan Cuties and queens at the Arc of San Francisco’s Kendall and Sam circus-themed gala. Brinton, remarkable survivors and thrivers out of the horrors of conAnd the following weekend, version therapy. Each displayed unthings really pick up! On Friday, usual humility, unexpected humor, May 30, we’ll emcee the Positive and lasting impressions. Actress Pedalers send-off to AIDS Life CyMeredith Baxter received the Voice cle at 2099 Market Street. On Sat., and Visibility Award with extraordiwe’ll join the Imperial Court’s Mr. nary grace and brevity. Her enthusiand Miss Gay kick-off party at Toad asm for NCLR was greatly evident. Hall, 4-7PM. And on Sun., we’ll join Then, Executive Director Kate KenLu Conrad at the amazing Meals on dell, a nationally respected and adWheels Star Chefs & Vintners Gala mired LGBT leader by any measure, at Ft. Mason’s Festival Pavilion. brought the audience to their feet A bit further out is Homage to La with an upbeat, celebratory speech Cage on Mon., June 9, at the Castro which also contained clear battle Theatre, saluting the music of Jerry cries for the remaining fight ahead. Herman, featuring entertainment by Lee Roy Reams and Davis Gaines, glamorous drag queens, a pink carpet, and raffle prizes, all benefiting Camp Sunburst and 50 Years of Fabulous, a film about the Imperial Court of San Francisco, produced by David Lassman. With Wilkes Bashford as Honorary Chair, you know this is an event not to be missed! Yes, Pride is right around the corner… our suggested calendar will be in the next colcourtesy Donna Sachet umn. Stay tuned! t

embarked on a busy reign, including monthly events at Beaux in the Castro. Their May event there featured an open drag show, jello shots, lots of raffle prizes, and shenanigans. Dropping by were Keith & Gladys Bumps, Khmera Rouge, Mark Beale, Olivia Hart, Diana Wheeler of Night Ministry, Mike Smith of AIDS Emergency Fund, Emperor John Weber, and Empresses Alexis Miranda, Angelina Josephina Manicotti, and Chablis. The next Imperial shenanigans at Beaux are scheduled for Sun., June 1, 4-8PM, called Kiss My Pride, hosted by Mr. Gay SF 2011 Moe Jo Toomey-Garcia and our Monarchs. Feinstein’s at the Nikko hosted Sean Ray’s latest cabaret fundraiser for AIDS Life Cycle, reuniting a talented group of his friends and a supportive audience. Music ranged from Broadway, Hollywood, and pop to the Great American Songbook, jazz, and blues. We’ve proudly emceed and performed at each of the 11 versions of this cabaret and always marvel at energy, talent, and genuine partnership of this talented group of performers. Executive Director of SF AIDS Foundation Neil Giuliano, and Gregory Sroda, director of the ride, both appeared on stage with praise for Sean’s and his team’s efforts. We’ve attended our share of independent fundraisers for AIDS Life Cycle and we wish them the best as they depart San Francisco for Los Angeles on June 1 for this sevenday, 545-mile bike ride. We congratulate Academy of Friends who last Thursday distributed money from their February Acade- Empresses past, present and future at Beaux.

Read more online at www.ebar.com

That ‘70s Porn by John F. Karr

I’m always stumped by the first thing people want to know when they meet me. What’s your favorite sexo? What are your ten favorite sexos? Well, I’ve finally decided to do something about it—partially so I won’t be left without an answer when next questioned on the subject, but more because it’ll be interesting to see what titles pop up out of all those movies I’ve reviewed (how many have there been in 36 years?). One thing I know is that I have

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Wakefield Poole’s Bijou re-release

woman’s purse off the street. Investigating its contents at home, he sniffs at her lipstick, takes a lick off its tip. For gay viewers, it’s very phallic. For straights, it’s a tell-tale clue Harrison’s straight, too. If the gal’s panties had been in the purse, he’d a sniffed ‘em. It’s the sort of character-revealing director’s touch you don’t see much in porn. Although it doesn’t shy away from hardcore, the mysteriously brooding Bijou has an emphasis on ambiance over overt sex, making it the first example of what I’ve called artporn, and what Poole has called (when asked what he’d like to see in today’s porn) “a little brain sex.” It doesn’t take brains, however, to be moved by the film’s hot cast, which includes Stoner, aka Bill Cable, an iconic Colt and Playgirl model, who sadly doesn’t participate, but

The guy behind this dolled up reissue is Jim Tushinski, who directed the documentary That Man: Peter Berlin. Coming soon is Tushinski’s documentary about Poole, who’s known as the godfather of gay porn. It’s Tushinski who’s been behind the DVD resurrection of all of Poole’s movies. Bijou was first on DVD as part of a 2002 two-disc treasure chest, The Wakefield Poole Collection. But that iteration of Bijou was created from faulty sources, which turned much of its mysterious, deep black tones into an ugly green wash. For this edition, Tushinski supervised a meticulous color correction, creating a digital master scanned at 2k from the movie’s original 16mm elements. “The results,” says Tushinski, “are astounding.” I emphatically second that emotion. While encapsulating the sexual revolution of the 1970s, Bijou is right in line with porn’s current obsession over straight men. “I wanted to show that a straight man could go and experience something and think of it as a kick,” Poole

The glammed up new edition of Bijou, with Stoner, lower right.

more favorite scenes than fulllength movies. But there’s one full movie that would hover right near the top of my Top Ten list. Serendipitously, it’s just been reissued in a fully restored edition, remastered and glamorized the way it deserves. It’s Wakefield Poole’s Bijou. Along with Poole’s Boys in the Sand, it’s one of the cornerstones of gay porn. And though it was made in 1972— 42 years ago!—it’s still mighty fresh. Sure, by today’s digital standards, the film stock’s grainy. But the film’s content remains gritty. Bijou stars Bill Harrison, a handsome, dirty blond with a majorly big dick. Think of a big dick, and then think of one that’s a lot bigger. Moody pic of Bijou star Bill Harrison. Get a load of that mustache! That’s Harrison’s. Among his other appreciable attributes, like the fine sandy says in the director’s commentary fleece shining on his foretrack. And what a true picture of arms, I’m particularly fond the ‘70s it is: liberating, enraptured of his thick mustache. Very with male sexuality, hedonistic, 1972 clone, and hot. drugged, and, yes, melancholy—a He plays a construction mood largely credited to Poole’s worker who accidentally right-on choice for the soundtrack acquires an invitation to a of Gustave Holst’s The Planets, with club named Bijou. He has that composer’s longing for the inno idea what’s in the club, effable throwing an unfulfillable but he’s game—even when yearning over the movie’s sex. a flashing sign in the club’s And get this—though listed at dark interior instructs him $19.98, the current sale price at disto remove his clothing. tributor www.VinegarSyndrome is Naked, he wends his way a mere $15.98.t through a labyrinth that’s home to a strange erotic Read John F. Karr’s NSFW world. Deep within the archive of reviews at Remastering makes those pinks pop! It’s www.KarrnalKnowledge.com maze, he comes across a lipstick-licker Bill Harrison, in Bijou. gay orgy, where he’s venerated, fucks some guys, sure makes use of the opportunities premerely stands nearby and sented, and where the participants nude for all to worship. of the gay orgy finally cum across As for Harrison, he’s a him. We really can’t tell if he’s gay constant eyeful. When or straight, or even if he likes what his penis is revealed for he’s doing. the first time in the film, Spoiler Alert: Only as he leaves, in 1972 audiences gasped the film’s last second, does he break and wondered if it was a into a smile that tells all. It’s a fleetspecial effect. Nowadays ing grin that makes a perfect freeze we take a dick that size in frame. Roll credits. porn as our just due, and Watching the movie again, I relthe only special effect ished a clever moment of Poole’s may be the Viagra holdGodfather of Gay Porn Wakefield Poole direction. Harrison’s snatched a ing it up.

ebar.com

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • May 22-28, 2014

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Shooting Stars

May 22-28, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

photos by Steven Underhill

astro capers took place over the past few weekends, from Cinco de Mayo events at The Edge (4149 18th St., 8634027, www.qbarsf.com/EDGE) to dancing and frivolities at Badlands (4121 18th St., 626-9320 www.sfbadlands.com). See more event photo albums on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife and on www.StevenUnderhill.com. See this and other issues in full page-view format at www.issuu.com/bayareareporter

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