September 25, 2014 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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Aging with HIV

Vol. 44 • No. 39 • September 25-October 1, 2014

EQCA expands to national work

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

wo decades ago Cleve Jones, the founder of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, used $10,000 he scraped together from family and friends to buy “a little cabin” in the gay resort area of Rick Gerharter Russian River north of San Francisco.

Cleve Jones During his run in 1992 for a citywide seat on the Board of Supervisors, Jones had concealed his declining health from voters. Following his defeat at the polls, he moved into his new abode in the unincorporated community of Villa Grande fully expecting to die.

His immune system ravaged by HIV, he was suffering from pneumocystis pneumonia and allergic to the drug prescribed to treat it.

“I moved out to the river because I didn’t want people to see me. I was so sick,” recalled Jones during a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “I didn’t want to get evicted in the middle of dying. No, I did not expect to survive.”

Then, in November 1994, Jones enrolled in a trial for a new “cocktail” of drugs – “that term is a slander against vodka tonics,” joked Jones – aimed at beating back AIDS. He began taking a combination of AZT, DDC, and 3TC and his health improved. In one month his T-cell count went from 23 to 350.

One day, coming back from a support group he attended at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, Jones stopped by the grocery store. He ran into a friend in the produce section who was also in the drug trial and doing well.

“I said to him, ‘I guess we are not going to die.’ Then one of us said, ‘We will never be happy again,’” recalled Jones, explaining they felt that way “because we had lost all of our friends. It was beyond conceivable that I would live and be happy again.”

This year Jones is turning 60 on October 11, which is also National Coming Out Day. Meeting over coffee in the Castro, where he has lived for the past four years after moving back to the city from Palm Springs, Jones said he still finds it hard to believe he has lived this long.

“What the hell am I doing here? I didn’t think I would make 40. I was really ill for a very long time,” said Jones, who works as a union organizer for UNITE HERE. As highlighted by last week’s seventh annual National HIV and Aging Awareness Day, observed on September 18, the country’s aging HIV population is a growing concern.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2010 persons aged 55 and older accounted for 19 percent (217,300) See page 8 >>

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T Cutting through the crowd

Rick Gerharter

T

he crowd at last Sunday’s Folsom Street Fair made way for a carriage, just one of the unique ensembles that was part of the leather and kink

extravaganza that drew hundreds of thousands of people to San Francisco’s South of Market district. For more photos, see the BARtab section.

he statewide lobbying group that has long focused on enacting laws protecting LGBTs in California is expanding to a national scope as a new executive director takes charge.

“Over time, our civil rights protections are Courtesy EQCA maturing in the state,” EQCA’s Rick Zbur Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur said in a phone interview. “The question is what is the next phase for Equality California, and what is it that’s important to our community” now that so much has been achieved legislatively.

Zbur, 56, an attorney who had previously been an EQCA board member, officially started his new post September 1. He replaces John O’Connor, See page 17 >>

No decisions made on Pink Saturday

by David-Elijah Nahmod

the community who were not there to celebrate Pride. We put a platoon in place to uggestions ranging from mandatory follow them around and let them know bag checks to making Pink Saturday they were being watched.” a daytime event were discussed at a Wiener, who helped organize the Seprecent community meeting but no decitember 10 meeting, said he has attended sions were made regarding gaining more Pink Saturday since 1995 and volunteered control over the street party that has been there before being elected to the Board of marred by assaults and other violence in Supervisors. recent years.

“I saw the amount of work it takes to Those who packed the Eureka Valley put this event on, and I thank the Sisters,” Recreation Center earlier this month were Wiener said. “This event means a lot to a mainly Castro residents, though there lot of people. We have to learn how to do were people from outside of the neighborit better as a city. We have to make sure it hood, including a small number from the doesn’t go the way of Halloween. It’s not East Bay. Attendees were overwhelmingly okay that Sisters were assaulted. Public gay male, although about a dozen women drunkenness is not okay.” attended.

Bill Wilson Wiener was referring to what used to be Pink Saturday is the annual celebration There was a full house at a recent community an annual Castro Halloween street party in the Castro that happens the night be- meeting to discuss Pink Saturday safety concerns. that was canceled in 2007 because of viofore the LGBT Pride parade. It is organized lent incidents. by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Wiener joined several of the Sisters in year’s Pink Saturday, a Sister and her husband voluntary gate donations raise funds that acknowledging that the trouble at Pink were attacked in an apparent hate crime. The the drag nun group distributes to nonprofits.

Saturday seemed to begin after 8 p.m.

Sister was present at the Eureka Valley meeting.

After the meeting, Sister Selma Soul, whose “We could make it a daytime event,” said Like many others, she expressed her desire to real name is James Bazydola, and gay District Selma. “Ending it at 8 p.m. would free the police see an event that was inclusive, but safe.

8 Supervisor Scott Wiener reiterated their supto police the neighborhood. People will come to San Francisco Police Captain Daniel Perea, port for ending Pink Saturday at an earlier time. the neighborhood anyway because the Castro is who oversees Mission Station, which serves Concern about the event has grown since a destination. We’re asking Scott and the city atthe Castro, said help from the community was 2010, when 19-year-old Stephen Powell was torney to look into charging admission.” needed in order to maintain the peace. shot and killed around the time Pink SaturAdmission, Selma feels, would help “We are not all-knowing or all-seeing,” Perea day ended. In 2013, a 28-year-old woman was See page 18 >> said. “There were a lot of people there not from kicked in the face near Pink Saturday. At this

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2 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

Campos seeks funds for PrEP access

by Liz Highleyman

S

upervisor David Campos on Tuesday, September 23, introduced legislation requesting supplemental budget funds to expand use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, to prevent HIV infection.

The request for $801,600 now goes to the board’s budget and finance committee.

Campos proposed a PrEP resolution at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, which was discussed, along with the budget request, at a hearing of the board’s Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee on September 18. The hearing was preceded by a PrEP rally on the steps of City Hall.

“The AIDS movement started in San Francisco, and it’s only fitting we begin to eradicate HIV here in the city once and for all,” Campos, who is gay, said at the rally.

The resolution, co-sponsored by gay Supervisor Scott Wiener and Supervisor Eric Mar, states that the city “supports the expanded use of PrEP as an important means for ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” and asks the health department to submit by December 1 a plan to increase the use of PrEP that addresses educational and affordability issues.

After the resolution was introduced last week, Wiener announced in a Huffington Post article that he was taking PrEP, saying he hoped to raise awareness and reduce stigma.

The supplemental budget request made Tuesday was co-sponsored by Mar and Supervisors Jane Kim and John Avalos. Wiener also spoke in favor of it.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead Sciences’ Truvada (tenofovir plus emtricitabine) for PrEP in July 2012. Studies have shown that when used consistently, oncedaily Truvada reduces the risk of HIV infection by more than 90 percent. In May the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that people at substantial risk should consider PrEP to prevent HIV infection, and the World Health Organization also recently recommended PrEP as an option for at-risk gay men.

Liz Highleyman

Supporters of Supervisor David Campos’s plan to expand access to PrEP rallied on the steps of City Hall September 18 before heading inside for a hearing on the proposal.

PrEP hearing

Last week’s rally and hearing brought out nearly 100 health officials, researchers, service providers, and community members, many of whom spoke in favor of the city taking an active role in expanding access to PrEP. “DPH fully supports PrEP as an effective HIV prevention strategy,” said deputy health officer Susan Philip, director of the city’s STD Prevention and Control Services Section.

In 2010 San Francisco was the first city to offer antiretroviral treatment to everyone diagnosed with HIV regardless of CD4 T-cell count, years ahead of national guidelines, Philip recalled. The city now has an opportunity to “stay ahead of the curve” by implementing a new prevention strategy.

San Francisco was one of two U.S. sites for the international iPrEx PrEP trial of gay and bisexual men and conducted one of the first PrEP demonstration projects (along with Miami and Washington, D.C.).

Yet only about 800 residents are currently using PrEP, according to researcher Robert Grant of the Gladstone Institutes.

In 2013 there were 359 new HIV infections in San Francisco, according to DPH figures. Based on an informal

calculation of “numbers needed to treat,” Grant estimated that about 6,000 at-risk San Franciscans should be on PrEP, which could reduce annual new infections to less than 50.

The iPrEx open-label extension study found that there were no new HIV infections among men who took Truvada at least four times per week, Grant reported at the International AIDS Conference in July.

However, overall effectiveness was only about 50 percent because some participants did not take it regularly.

The study also showed that taking PrEP does not lead people to engage in more risky sexual behavior. “Some expected PrEP to unleash a storm of sexuality,” Grant said. But instead, “people often become more mindful of their sexual goals, more talkative with their partners, and when they take PrEP in calm moments they plan for their long-term safety.”

“One of the things we do really well [in San Francisco] is follow the evidence, and sometimes we create the evidence,” said HIV Prevention Planning Council member Laura Thomas.

“We pride ourselves on overriding barriers to health care. This is an issue of health care justice, reproductive justice, and racial justice.”

Costly but cost-effective With

Truvada

priced

at

approximately $1,400 per month, cost is a potential barrier to wider PrEP access.

While many insurance plans cover PrEP, some make people “jump through extra hoops” such as prior authorization, David Evans of Project Inform explained at a PrEP forum last week. Some people who chose cheaper Affordable Care Act plans with high deductibles have been shocked by how much they have to pay.

Speaking at the hearing, community advocate Erik Gibb said that while he is lucky to get Truvada PrEP though his private insurance, he has an annual co-pay of $3,000.

Campos’s proposed supplementary budget request for just over $800,000 would be used to hire “navigators” to help people access PrEP through existing funding mechanisms – including private insurance, Medicaid (Medi-Cal), and Gilead’s patient assistance programs – and to provide co-payment assistance for people who fall through the cracks.

Contrary to some media reports, Campos’s resolution does not call for free PrEP for all paid for by the city, and his plan is intended to “minimize the impact on the general fund,” he said. Several speakers at the hearing stressed that funding for PrEP should not be taken from other HIV-related services.

“To those who say we can’t afford it, it is not only morally the right thing to do, but financially it makes a lot of sense,” Campos emphasized, as every new HIV infection prevented saves $355,000 in lifetime treatment costs.

“We have the resources to do this and we can and should do it because it works,” Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance said at the rally. “This will promote the notion that queer lives matter.”

Other barriers

But cost is not the only barrier to PrEP, according to speakers at the rally and hearing.

“There’s still enormous stigma, as we see every time there’s a public health measure that addresses sex,”

t

Wiener said, comparing the debate over PrEP to claims that birth control or the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine will cause women to become promiscuous. “Stigma, shaming, and stereotyping have to end. ... We have to take a scientific and public health-based approach to making PrEP available to our community.”

Though gay men have received the most attention around PrEP in the U.S., they are not the only group that stands to benefit.

Shannon Weber from the Bay Area Perinatal AIDS Center said that PrEP is “the first female-controlled method of HIV prevention” that women can use without their partners’ knowledge.

Weber explained that an earlier form of PrEP – giving HIV-positive women antiretrovirals both for their own health and to prevent motherto-child transmission – has been standard practice for many years.

For the past decade, no babies born to women with HIV in San Francisco have been infected. Now, Truvada PrEP offers an option for HIV-negative women who wish to conceive a child with an HIV-positive man. “[Condoms] will always be a central tool in the fight against HIV, yet we know that there are also many people for whom condoms simply do not work,” James Loduca of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation testified. “PrEP has the potential to be a game-changer. It has a degree of forgiveness: the pill you took yesterday provides some (not optimal) protection today. The condom you used yesterday will not protect you if you don’t use a condom today.”

None of the more than 20 people who offered public comment at the committee hearing spoke in opposition to PrEP. “Our society, our doctors, and our scientists have aspired to find a way to prevent transmission of HIV,” said Edwin Lindo of the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club.

“Well it’s here today. We have the opportunity to save a generation of people who can say, San Francisco stood up for us first, and the rest of the country is going to follow.”t

Mom of Israeli shooting victim comes to SF

by Heather Cassell

A

yala Katz has been on a personal campaign to educate parents and people about the LGBT community ever since her gay son, Nir Katz, was murdered in the tragic shooting at Bar Noar, a Tel Aviv center for LGBT youth, on August 9, 2009.

During the five years since her 26-year-old son was killed, Katz has chaired Tehila, Israel’s version of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, better known as PFLAG, speaking out on behalf of parents with LGBT children as well as the queer community.

She’s also worked with government officials to improve the lives of LGBT people and most recently has promoted the center named after her son, the Nir Katz Center for Violence, Discrimination and Homophobia Reporting, which opened in 2012.

On September 17, a handful of Jewish and LGBT community members came out to see Katz speak about her experience being an ally at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco.

Katz, who was traveling in the U.S. on vacation, was the guest of A Wider Bridge, an LGBT Jewish organization that promotes relationships between American and Israeli LGBT Jewish people.

The evening was co-sponsored by Keshet, another Jewish LGBT organization, along with the Israel Center of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation and Sherith Israel.

Arthur Slepian, founder and executive director of A Wider Bridge, hosted the discussion. Slepian asked Katz about how her attitude and knowledge of her son’s sexuality and Israel’s LGBT community came about and evolved translating into her activism and how Israel has changed since the shooting at the LGBT center.

Katz told the audience that Israel has changed in two significant ways since the shooting: one, it made Israel’s citizens and government stop to reconsider its attitude toward the LGBT community, and two, it made Israel’s LGBT community take more responsibility to create change.

Personally, one of the messages Katz tells parents is that it’s important not only to embrace your children inside the family, but to participate with them in the LGBT community when they invite you, she told the audience.

Even parents who initially reject their LGBT children usually reunite with them.

During her years working with parents and the LGBT community, Katz said that she couldn’t find

Yet, it was a long journey for her personally and for Israel to get to where it is today in regard to its embracing of its LGBT community.

A mother’s wisdom

Rick Gerharter

Ayala Katz spoke about the environment for LGBT people in Israel at a presentation sponsored by A Wider Bridge.

a common factor determining if parents – whether deeply religious or secular, rich or poor – reject or accept their LGBT children and community members, she told the audience.

“We found nothing,” said Katz.

“People are accepting ... their kids from all over the society, from all over the country and the same thing for rejecting.”

Even if parents reject their children for a while, it’s generally to allow time to come to terms with their children’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Eventually, in many cases, the family comes back together, particularly if there are grandchildren involved, she said.

When Nir Katz revealed his sexuality to his mother, she said, all of her dreams for him vanished. She recalled the moments when Nir Katz was 2 years old on the playground and she was brokering his marriage with a “gorgeous little girl for the wedding” with another mother, she told the audience. What she realized was more important was that he needed to fulfill his own dreams, not hers.

“My children are the most important thing in my life and what I want for them is happiness,” said Katz.

“I lived to fulfill my own dreams, so the same goes for my kids. They should live their own dreams for themselves, not my dreams. My dreams for them are not relevant.”

Katz didn’t know much about the LGBT community when her son came out to her at age 20 and she didn’t entertain his invitation to join him at Tel Aviv Pride and other LGBT events, always coming up with excuses, she said. It’s something that she now regrets.

She believed that she was doing her job being a good mother by embracing her son and his partner just as she embraced her other children, she said, but after his death she

realized it wasn’t enough.

“I was sure that being there for him in the family environment and the extended family environment was enough,” said Katz. “Looking back, being there with him in the environment of the LGBT community is more important than I assumed.”

Rebirth

Nir Katz’s untimely death opened her eyes to the problems the country and its LGBT community faced.

Israel was very open and embraced its LGBT community – from open military service to same-sex civil See page 17 >>

Corrections In last week’s story, “Ugandan MP’s support of LGBT rights questioned,” it should have been stated that Member of Parliament Naggayi Nabilah Sempala signed a petition to bring back the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, not that she signed a petition in support of the bill.

In last week’s News Briefs item about the Horizons Foundation gala, it should have stated that the Bob Ross Foundation is a minority shareholder in BAR Media Inc., which owns the Bay Area Reporter.

The online versions have been corrected.

t

Community News>>

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 3

Surprise nuptials at open house A Rick Gerharter

n open house at Delancey Street Foundation September 20 to celebrate his public service career turned into a wedding for outgoing Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), second from right, who married his longtime partner Carolis Deal. The two shared a laugh with former Supervisor Harry Britt, left, who officiated before the many well-wishers who attended the party.

Brown signs condoms, syringe bills

by Seth Hemmelgarn

C

alifornia Governor Jerry Brown recently signed into law bills discouraging condoms from being used as evidence of prostitution and allowing drug users easier access to syringes.

Assembly Bill 336, by gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) is meant to reduce prosecutors’ and police use of condoms as evidence of prostitution.

Ammiano originally sought a total ban on condoms being used against suspected sex workers, but had to water down the bill to get it through the Legislature after opposition from groups like the California District Attorneys Association.

The law, which Brown signed Thursday, September 18 and goes into effect January 1, requires prosecutors to get a court’s permission before they can use possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution.

“It is entirely counterproductive for law enforcement to target people for holding unopened condoms in their wrappers, when public health officials are trying to encourage the use of condoms to cut the transmission of infectious diseases,” Ammiano stated. He called the law “a modest step” but said “we hope California can move to protect the public by ending this evidentiary practice entirely.”

Ammiano’s bill followed the Bay Area Reporter’s coverage of San Francisco policy on using condoms to try to convict suspected sex workers. Citing public health and other concerns, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr and Public Defender Jeff Adachi said in 2012 that using condoms as evidence of prostitution should be permanently banned (District Attorney George Gascón agreed to the ban last year).

Local prosecutors had only rarely used condoms as evidence, according to Alex Bastian, a spokesman for Gascón.

The bill was co-sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

AHF praised Brown for signing the bill.

Whitney Engeran-Cordova, senior director of AHF’s public health division, said in a news release, “We believe that the process of having to seek a court’s permission on a repeated basis will ultimately prove too burdensome for many district attorneys to pursue, and that as a result, sex workers, prostitutes, and others may now possess more than one condom without the current – and rational – fear of incriminating themselves while they may simply be trying to protect themselves against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and/or pregnancy.”

Dave Garcia, director of policy at Los Angeles’s LGBT center, said the bill “was a compromise that was better than nothing.”

“There’s no reason why condoms should be used as evidence” in cases of alleged prostitution, Garcia said, and his agency and others would “continue to work” on legislation

California birth certifi“until we can get it exactly cates by allowing each where we want it.” parent to identify as As the B.A.R. reported mother, father, or parent. on its blog, Brown also Assemblyman Jimmy signed legislation that will Gomez (D-Los Angeles) make it easier for intraveauthored the bill. nous drug users to have “I authored this bill to access to clean needles say that it’s okay to have through 2020. two mothers or fathers,” Under state law, pharRick Gerharter Gomez stated. “I bemacists have been allowed Governor lieve that parents do see to sell up to 30 syringes Jerry Brown themselves as a mother without a prescription. or a father and that they But the legislation had want to express that on their child’s been set to sunset on January 1, and birth certificate. We should give without lawmakers extending the people the flexibility to accurately law, syringe sales would have rereflect their relationship with their mained legal in just 15 counties and child.” four cities, including San Francisco.

Gomez added, “In the long term, The new law, which Brown signed this will change the way people view Monday, September 15, removes the the family structure and view each cap placed on the number of syringother. In the future, it won’t be a es a person could buy at one time. debate; it will be something that is Initially, Assemblyman Phil commonly accepted.”

Ting’s (D-San Francisco) AB 1743, Currently, parents are required to the Safe Syringe Access Act, would select “Mother/Parent” and “Father/ have ended the need for lawmakParent.” AB 1951 requires the state ers to re-address the issue. But Ting Department of Public Health to added a five-year sunset to his bill to change birth certificates so that they address objections raised by public include a line for each parent’s name safety groups.

“It has taken many years to win with boxes to choose “Mother,” “Fathis fight but California will finally ther,” or “Parent.” start treating syringe access as a The new law goes into effect in public health issue,” Ting stated.

January 2016. Same-sex couples “We dithered while the rest of the who currently have children will nation aggressively expanded access be able to update their child’s birth to save lives and tax dollars. That certificate to the new format startmakes this victory both exciting and ing in 2016. overdue. This is a landmark reform Equality California sponsored the for California.” bill.

In a statement issued after the “Birth certificates reflect real Legislature passed his bill in August, rights and responsibilities, and it’s he said, “Syringes can be bought important to have them reflect the over the counter in nearly every progression of what defines family,” state because the policy saves lives Rick Zbur, EQCA’s executive direcwithout taxpayer expense. Mountor, said in a news release. tains of research and the medical Veto community stand squarely behind Brown, who has until September this bill.”

30 to sign bills, vetoed legislation by With access to clean syringes gay Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Los an effective tool in preventing the Angeles) that would have required transmission of HIV and hepatitis, a baby changing station in the AIDS advocates pushed for pasmen’s restroom if one were “being sage of Ting’s bill. The San Franinstalled in the women’s restroom, cisco AIDS Foundation and the or a changing station in a family Drug Policy Alliance were its lead restroom available to both men and sponsors. women,” according to Lara’s office.

In an interview last week, Laura The legislation was known as Potty Thomas, deputy state director for Parity for Parents Act. the Drug Policy Alliance, said, “This Brown, who also nixed another represents both a continuation and changing station bill, SB 1358, said an expansion of a really effective in a veto message Friday, September HIV and hepatitis C prevention 19, “At a time when so many have program here in California. We raised concerns about the number think that many lives will be saved of regulations in California, I believe because of the governor’s action it would be more prudent to leave signing this bill,” and advocates the matter of diaper changing staappreciate “Assemblyman Ting’s tions to the private sector. Already, willingness to step forward and many businesses have taken steps champion this issue.” to accommodate their customers in Neil Giuliano, the AIDS foundathis regard.” tion’s chief executive officer, has He added, “This may be a good applauded Ting’s work. business practice, but not one that “As operator of one of the oldest I am inclined to legislate.” and largest syringe access programs In response, Lara stated that he in the country, we know the sigwas “disappointed,” saying the legisnificant impact that access to sterile lation “would have brought greater syringes can have in preventing equality and a more modern outblood-borne illnesses like HIV and look on family life.”

HCV among people in our comJesse Melgar, a spokesman for munity at high risk for infection,” Lara, said in an email, “At this moGiuliano stated in February. ment we are uncertain whether we’ll Also last Monday, Brown signed reintroduce the bill.”t AB 1951, which modernizes

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t Murphy, Wolfe, Murase for school bd.

4 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

Volume 44, Number 39 September 25-October 1, 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 BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Seth Hemmelgarn CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador Race Bannon • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Brian Bromberger Victoria A. Brownworth • Brent Calderwood Philip Campbell • Heather Cassell Belo Cipriani • Chuck Colbert • Richard Dodds Michael Flanagan • David Guarino Peter Hernandez • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Michael McDonagh David-Elijah Nahmod • Elliot Owen Paul Parish • Sean Piverger • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Khaled Sayed • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Ed Walsh • Cornelius Washington Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Jay Cribas PRODUCTION/DESIGN Max Leger PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • Rick Gerharter Lydia Gonzales • Jose Guzman-Colon Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd Rich Stadtmiller • Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.861.5019 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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an Francisco voters have several qualified candidates to consider in this year’s race for the San Francisco Board of Education. And for the first time in many years, a gay man and a transgender woman have a good chance at election. We recommend that city residents vote for Mark Murphy and Jamie Rafaela Wolfe. Straight ally Emily Murase is running for re-election and we support her bid as well.

Murphy, a gay man who works in communications, is passionate about San Francisco public schools. Murphy is not a parent, but has been involved in the schools by working with various parent and teacher organizations and is on the Prop H (Public Education Enrichment Fund) Community Advisory Committee, which provides oversight and feedback on the $50 million within the San Francisco Unified School District that supports 17 programs including sports, libraries, arts and music, and many more. From 2007-2012 Murphy served on the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s LGBT Advisory Committee where he focused on LGBT youth issues.

His husband of 19 years is an elementary school teacher in the district.

Murphy’s goals include more engagement with parents and starting a conversation about the whole child experience, addressing what he calls a “significant achievement gap among black and brown children.” That includes providing after school programs, vision and dental care through the health department, and improving academics and curricula. Murphy also believes officials need to know students better, for example, addressing the causes of their absenteeism. Funding for these activities come through Prop H, which has added school nurses and social workers to sites.

Murphy has a good working relationship with district Superintendent Richard Carranza, who he said is working to improve schools both academically and financially.

Wolfe is a trans woman who is an educator, school administrator and behaviorist at a nonpublic school in the city where the district sends students who have behavior problems or other

special needs. In her interview with us, Wolfe said two important issues are equitable access for students and increasing green policies for schools, including gardening programs in which students would eat the fruits of their labor while learning social skills.

The district’s school assignment system is widely disliked; Murphy said he supports children attending the school in their neighborhood, or assignment area.

Unfortunately, that isn’t always possible as the district works to distribute enrollment across the city.

Wolfe told us she sees the school system as “very segregated” and thinks the assignment area policy needs to be examined again. At the same time, she wants to make sure the city’s schools are diverse because, “when there’s diversity people are safer.” She elaborated: “When there’s diversity I’m not attacked because I’m trans. Now, I’m accepted.”

In other words, diversity sensitizes students to others who are different.

Wolfe also supports increased physical education, saying that sports teaches students about teamwork, cooperation, and their abilities. She is a strong supporter of AB 1266, the new state law that ensures transgender students’ full participation in all activities, and maintains that continuing education and outreach is needed for district staff, parents, guardians, peers, families, and community members about the importance of diversity and validation of people’s gender identity regarding safety and inclusivity.

Murphy and Wolfe would bring different philosophies and leadership styles to the school board, but both are qualified and LGBT. And that perspective has been missing on the school board for the past several years.

“Identity politics is difficult at times,” Murphy told us. Nevertheless, the LGBT community should be represented on the school board, which oversees 56,000 students. For LGBT and questioning students – and parents – it would be good for them to know there is someone like them on the governing body who understands their issues.

Wolfe also pointed to the lack of LGBT representation on the seven-member school board and said that needs to change. There has never been a trans person on the board, she noted.

“As an educator and trans identified, students will know they’ll have an advocate on the school board,” Wolfe said. “I want to make sure schools are open to all.”

Murase is running for her second four-year term. She strongly supports LGBTs. “I consider myself a member of the LGBT community,” Murase said in her questionnaire, adding that it’s important that board members “engage and serve all of the diverse communities of San Francisco.”

While on the board Murase secured a $40,000 grant for the district to implement the now-annual Internet Safety Day, a crucial topic for students navigating social media. She is a strong supporter of the aforementioned AB 1266.

All three candidates support Common Core, a set of education standards that California adopted. It, in Murase’s words, “releases educators from the tyranny of prescribed textbooks and high stakes testing and empowers them to find their own materials.”

We’re endorsing Murphy and Wolfe because they are qualified and would bring a much-needed LGBT perspective to the district.

As trans issues continue to be in the news – especially at schools – and gender non-conforming students often struggle to find acceptance on school campuses and in their own families, the district’s leadership would be well-served by these two out candidates. We’re endorsing Murase because she has been effective and inclusive of LGBT students and families who use public schools.t

CA ballot measure endorsements

B

elow are the Bay Area Reporter’s recommendations for the state propositions on the November 4 ballot.

Proposition 1: Water Bond. Yes. This authorizes the issuance of $7.12 billion in general obligation bonds to fund necessary water infrastructure projects throughout California. It addresses water conservation and storage issues that will mitigate the crisis during years of severe drought providing resources for additional water storage during wet years. It started out as an $11.14 billion bond in 2010 and was reduced by the Legislature at the urging of Governor Jerry Brown who now supports it, along with California Senators Dianne Feinstein (D) and Barbara Boxer (D), as a “no-frills investment in critical projects that doesn’t break the bank.”

Proposition 2: State budget and reserve policy: Yes. Proposition 2 amends the state constitution to change state debt and reserve practices. It creates a “rainy day” fund that requires the state to put aside money to pay down state debt in good years when tax revenues are strong and provides a reserve to be used to protect essential services such as public safety and schools during the lean years. This bipartisan measure, strongly supported by the governor, will mandate fiscal discipline and avoid boom and bust budgeting.

Proposition 45: Approval of Healthcare Insurance Rate Changes: Yes. This measure would allow the state insurance commissioner to reject health insurance price increases found to be unreasonable. Thirty-five other states allow regulators to review and approve health insurance rates.

California regulators already have the power to

Proposition 1 would issue $7.12 billion in bonds to shore up California’s water infrastructure and address conservation and storage issues during drought years, like now, and when the state receives more rainfall.

control the price of home and auto insurance.

This measure is intended to prevent price gouging by insurance companies.

Proposition 46: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Doctors; Medical Negligence Lawsuits: Yes. This initiative measure raises the 39-year-old cap on medical malpractice damages for non-economic injury such as pain and suffering from $250,000 to $1.1 million and adjusted annually for inflation. It is aggressively opposed by the insurance industry that fears the measure will reduce their profits if victims of medical malpractice are adequately compensated for their injuries. The insurance industry has successfully blocked tort reform in the Legislature for years.

This will help correct a longstanding injustice.

Proposition 47: Criminal Sentences; misdemeanor penalties: Yes. This initiative statute, sponsored by San Francisco District Attorney

George Gascón, is a common sense approach to California’s prison overcrowding. It reduces simple drug possession and petty crimes to misdemeanors and makes other needed criminal justice reforms. Currently, California spends more than $9 billion annually on its prison system. In the last 30 years, California has built 22 new prisons but only one (count ’em: 1) university. Money currently filtered into the bloated prison system would be freed up to allow law enforcement to focus on violent and serious crime while providing new funding for education and crime prevention programs, assistance for victims of crime, and mental health treatment and drug treatment to stop the cycle of crime. The legislative analyst’s office has studied Prop 47 and concluded that it could “save hundreds of millions of dollars annually, which would be spent on truancy prevention, mental health and substance abuse treatment and victim services.” This is a common sense alternative to warehousing people for petty, non-violent offenses. Vote yes on Prop 47.

Proposition 48: Referendum on Indian Gaming Compacts: Yes. Proposition 48 affirms two compacts negotiated by the governor, ratified by a bipartisan majority of the state Legislature, and supported by local, state, and federal officials that allow the North Fork Tribe near Yosemite and the Wiyot Tribe near Humboldt Bay to create a single gaming project on federally held Indian land in the Central Valley.

While we’ve never been particularly enthusiastic about gambling in California (whether on reservation land or elsewhere), this cat is already out of the bag, and we see no basis to justify discrimination against these two particular tribes when all the others are doing it. So gamers will be free to ruin their and their families’ lives, but it will create a lot of jobs and the state will reap some tax revenue.t

t

Letters >>

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 5

Yes on G, the Milk anti-speculation measure

Proposition G will stop evictions, protect our neighborhoods, and make San Francisco more affordable.

Prop G will accomplish this by doing one thing and one thing only: stopping the speculation, or flipping, of buildings for huge profits that are causing a rise in rents, evictions, and housing prices. We are in the midst of a terrible housing crisis. Evictions are up 170 percent in the last three years. District 8, which includes the Castro, has the highest number of evictions in the city, evictions by speculators flipping our homes for profit. Real estate speculation puts our neighborhoods and communities at risk by displacing people from their homes, driving up the cost of housing and harming our neighborhoods.

Prop G will stop these evictions by cutting into the profit speculators make when they flip buildings, making speculation less lucrative. Prop G only applies to multi-unit buildings that are bought and resold within five years. It does not apply to single-family homes, condos, or owner-occupied housing units, including tenancies in common. The highest tax on the resale (24 percent) is within the first year because that’s when most buildings are flipped. This tax cannot be passed on to tenants. Only speculators will pay the tax.

Prop G is not a new idea. Harvey Milk proposed a similar measure back in 1978 just before he was murdered. Milk himself was forced out of his camera store and apartment when his rent tripled. He understood that speculation drives up rents and evictions.

The idea to put this measure on the ballot surfaced last November at the Harvey Milk-George Moscone March on City Hall, and received the highest number of votes from the 250 people who attended the Castro convention at the LGBT Community Center, and the citywide Tenant Convention in the spring. Prop G is on the ballot because it came from people like you who are concerned about keeping San Francisco affordable.

The housing crisis affects all of us. We all know friends, neighbors, family members, and co-workers who are being evicted or have been already. Neighborhoods are changing as people of color, people with AIDS, artists, and many others who have made our city what it is are forced out, just as they were in Milk’s time.

Those opposing Prop G are the same people responsible for the evictions, the people forcing us out of our homes and our beloved city. The San Francisco Board of Realtors has contributed $170,000 and the California Association of Realtors nearly a half million more to defeat Prop G. Others opposed to G include the San Francisco Republican Party.

Do you trust them?

Or do you trust the San Francisco Democratic Party, Tom Ammiano, Mark Leno, David Campos, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, San Francisco Tenants Union, Housing Rights Committee, AIDS Housing Alliance, Causa Justa/Just Cause, Tenants Together, Chinese Progressive Association, Mark Freeman, Sara Shortt, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, Maria Zamudio, Tom Temprano, Rafael Mandelman, and so many others who are supporting G? Stop the evictions, protect our neighborhoods. Keep San Francisco affordable. Vote Yes on G. Cleve Jones, Bevan Dufty, Eileen Hansen, Brian Basinger, and Gabriel Haaland San Francisco

Prop L supporters weigh in

Last week, the Bay Area Reporter decided to oppose Proposition L. We’re disappointed that the B.A.R. didn’t contact our campaign to discuss Prop L before making its decision. As a result, a number of your statements about Prop L are incorrect.

Proposition L is a nonbinding declaration of policy which recommends that the city adopt six policies. It doesn’t “mandate” anything. Should the voters adopt Prop L, we hope it will send a message to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency that its policies aren’t working, and begin a genuine dialogue among all transportation stakeholders, including motorists, so the city can develop balanced transportation policies.

The B.A.R. suggests that Prop L was placed on the ballot to counter Prop B. This is completely untrue. The impetus for Prop L began in 2009, when the SFMTA started enforcing parking meters on holidays. Prop L was submitted for Title and Summary on April 22 – several weeks before Supervisor Scott Wiener submitted his binding Charter Amendment.

Most San Franciscans need to use more than one mode of transportation – they aren’t motorists all the time, transit riders all the time, or bicyclists all the time. Prop L seeks balance, rather than wishing away cars or penalizing those who rely on them.

Additionally, the B.A.R. should be sensitive to the fact that not everyone in the city is able to walk, bike, or take Muni to get to his or her destination in a safe and timely fashion – especially seniors and people with disabilities.

We proudly count among our endorsers the SF Firefighters Local 798, Police Officers Association, SEIU Local 1021, Council of District Merchants, Coalition for SF Neighborhoods, Affordable Housing Alliance, Save Muni, and Log Cabin.

To learn more about what Prop L is really about, please visit http://www.restorebalance14.org.

Claire Zvanski, David Looman, Jason P. Clark Official Proponents, Proposition L San Francisco

Confronting anti-gay snark

I received over 150 phone calls, emails, and letters from Bay Area Reporter readers of all ages in response to my recent Guest Opinion column about LGBT people finding new joy and comfort in gay-friendly senior communities [“Options for LGBT retirees,” August 14]. Most of you expressed surprise and hope that a happy, fulfilling life can still be found in our youth-obsessed culture after “passing our prime.”

I would like to share the only letter that came from a critic, obviously intending a homophobic slur. “I read on the Internet about the show that your people put on for old queers. In the photograph the color of your shirt matches the color of the lettering for the Commonwealth Club on the backdrop behind you. Your type of people always have to show off that you are the world’s best interior decorators.”

Well sir, I had never been to the Commonwealth Club’s auditorium before this appearance (which was part of its monthlong examination of current LGBT issues), I had no idea what their color schemes are, and that evening I wore the same clothes that I had on all day (how un-gay of me!). I wish I did have the creativity and taste level of an interior decorator, but my major was business administration and I worked in many drab, straight corporate environments.

But I thank this critic for his keen-eyed, flaming observation about the matching of colors. He may have some interesting, unexplored, and repressed potential lurking behind his sarcasm. If he ever acknowledges and fully develops his hidden attributes, I hope he will contact me again before I need advice for my next apartment re-do.

Ralph Harris San Francisco

McDonald to get second award in SF

compiled by Cynthia Laird

F

resh off receiving an award recently from the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, CeCe McDonald will be in town next month as she will be recognized by the Transgender Law Center at its annual Spark anniversary celebration.

Spark takes place Thursday, October 2 at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell Street in San Francisco. A VIP reception takes place at 6 p.m., followed by the gala and awards ceremony at 7.

McDonald, an African American transgender woman, will receive TLC’s Authentic Life Award for her courage and resilience in bringing visibility to diverse communities and to the unjust ways that trans

people are often treated throughout their interactions with police and the justice system.

McDonald, 25, was sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2012 for fatally stabbing a man who had attacked her and her friends in Minneapolis the year prior.

She was released in January after serving 19 months.

Other honorees at the TLC event include Willy Wilkinson, who will receive the Vanguard Award for garnering attention and funds for the trans communities affected by the AIDS epidemic and founding the first support group for femaleto-male people of color; and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which will receive the Community Partner Award for its leadership and support in

Rick Gerharter

CeCe McDonald

co-sponsoring the School Success and Opportunity Act, a state law authored by gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) that helps ensure that transgender students can fully participate in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their gender identity.

Organizers announced that Spark will be a filming venue for the documentary about McDonald entitled Free CeCe, and guests will be asked when they register to denote their See page 9 >>

Everyone is welcome!

Contemplative.

Candlelit ambiance.

A peaceful time for prayerful reflection.

Sunday Twilight Mass

Sundays @ 6:30 PM

For people with busy weekend schedules.

God’s inclusive love proclaimed here!

Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church

100 Diamond Street @ 18th, San Francisco, CA 94114 (415) 863-6259 mhr.org

6 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

Heading to the Russian River?

Stop at Food For Thought Antiques!

<< Politics

t SF D6 supervisor candidates sound off at forum

by Matthew S. Bajko

O

ne indication of District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim’s assuredness of her re-election chances this November could be discerned from the poorly attended candidate forum the League of Women Voters of San Francisco hosted between three of the candidates in the race.

Kim, 37, didn’t bother to pack the September 19 hourlong forum at All sales benefit Food For Thought Golden Gate University with any of Sonoma County AIDS Food Bank, which provides healthy groceries her supporters, a typical strategy for to more than 675 people in Sonoma County living with HIV/AIDS. candidates running in tight races.

She arrived with just two campaign aides by her side and addressed an Featuring an eclectic mix of antiques and vintage goods, audience of 20 people, many of from heirloom jewelry to rusty farm tools. Open 11 - 5 daily. whom were either league members 707 823.3101 • 2701 Gravenstein Hwy S. Sebastopol • www.fftantiques.com or part of the crew taping the forum.

Kim is seeking re-election to a four-year term representing the Tenderloin and South of Market at City Hall. Considered a progressive when she was first elected in 2010, Kim has proven to be more moderate and a frequent ally of Mayor Ed Lee, who is backing her re-election bid.

Two of Kim’s three opponents participated in the forum, gay Rincon Hill resident Jamie Whitaker, 41, and neighborhood activist Michael Nulty, 56, who told the Bay Area Reporter he identifies as homosexual. While he was invited, David Carlos Salaverry, a Republican who placed third in the June primary for the city’s 17th Assembly District seat, did not take part.

Traffic, transit, and housing issues dominated the discussion, which drew mainly on questions submitted by those in the audience.

“District 6 is a very diverse district,” noted Kim. “I do represent the city’s poorest residents and the wealthiest Zip code in the city as of this year.”

Should she be re-elected, Kim said two of her top priorities during a second term would be land use issues and addressing homelessness.

One idea she is pursuing is seeing the city open a 24-hour medical respite shelter as most people staying in the shelters are in their 40s and 50s.

BAR 3.75x5 online appointment ad v3.indd 1 8/15/14 10:17 AM Yet, “the shelters were built for the young,” noted Kim, who added there needs to be nurses assigned to work in the shelters.

With her district bearing most of the brunt of the new high-rises transforming San Francisco’s skyline, Kim said she is concerned about the impact the new development is having on her constituents.

“As we grow I am focused on ensuring infrastructure follows that development,” said Kim. She pointed to her championing a Vision Zero resolution earlier this year to reduce pedestrian fatalities and noted her support of seeing more separated bike lanes in her district. In terms of open space, Kim said she is working with parks officials to acquire a site in western SOMA and helped secure funds to upgrade a number of Tenderloin mini parks.

“We worked really hard to secure funding for the parks we have,” said Kim. “We were able to open a dog and skate park under the freeway.”

Whitaker said his top concerns if elected supervisor would include community health and addressing traffic congestion in District 6. He criticized city departments for not working more collaboratively, pointing out that as the city’s planning department has approved numerous new buildings in District 6, transit officials have cut bus service and the parks department has not increased recreational opportunities.

Khaled Sayed

District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, second from left, makes a point during a candidate forum that included challengers Michael Nulty and Jamie Whitaker. At left is Allyson Washburn from the League of Women Voters, which sponsored the forum at Golden Gate University.

“Departments in the city act like fiefdoms,” said Whitaker, who works in the budget and analysis division at the city controller’s office.

As one example of how agencies can work together, Whitaker noted that the city’s port owns several properties that could be used for new parks in District 6.

“We need more open space and should look at city-owned lands,” he said.

Nulty, who listed public safety and affordable housing among his top priorities, also expressed concerns about all of the new development in the district.

“We need to ask developers to give their fair share for transit and other services,” said Nulty, who supports seeing safe injection sites opened in the district.

And he also called for more accountability among those community-based organizations funded by the city to provide services.

“We need to review where the money is going,” said Nulty, whose twin brother John, who also identifies as homosexual, is running in this year’ District 8 supervisor race.

In response to a question submitted by the B.A.R., all three candidates voiced support for helping LGBT businesses in the Tenderloin and SOMA survive and thrive as they face changing economics and population shifts in the city.

During her time in office, Kim supported the fight to keep the Eagle leather bar at 12th and Harrison under gay ownership, and more recently, has pushed for a zoning change to allow for a drag and cabaret nightclub to open in an abandoned club space at 11th and Folsom.

(The Board of Supervisors this week voted in favor of the zoning amendment to the Western SOMA Neighborhood Plan.)

And in the Tenderloin Kim backed renaming the 100 block of Turk Street after the late beloved transgender performer Vicki Marlane, who died in 2011 at the age of 76 due to AIDS-related complications. Marlane hosted a popular drag revue show at gay bar Aunt Charlie’s located at 133 Turk.

“I am really proud to represent a district with a long history of LGBT businesses,” said Kim. She said she is now pushing to see the city create its first LGBTQ Social Heritage District, which was included in the Western SOMA Neighborhood Plan but has yet to be implemented by the planning department.

“I am working really hard at preserving and supporting our LGBT businesses,” said Kim. Whitaker also called on the city to implement the LGBT cultural district, as well as a similar one aimed at preserving the Filipino community’s long ties in SOMA. He pointed to the project currently

underway in the gay Castro district, where new plaques honoring LGBT luminaries have been installed and a rainbow crosswalk will debut next month, as examples of what could be similarly done in District 6.

“In the Castro people are saying there goes the gayborhood,” he said.

“We need to make sure that the cultural district is funded. There is no reason not to fund putting up pride markers like the ones on Castro Street.”

As for Nulty, he recalled how there used to be a larger concentration of gay bars both in SOMA and the Tenderloin that served to draw LGBT people to both neighborhoods. Helping to attract more LGBT businesses to those areas could serve a similar purpose today, said Nulty, and draw in people from across the Bay Area.

He also called for more emphasis to be placed on the two neighborhood’s LGBT history.

“We need to identify various historical parts in District 6 that identify the LGBT community and put that on the map. A lot of that has been left out,” he said.

Ammiano weds longtime partner

Congratulations to outgoing gay state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) and his longtime partner, Carolis Deal, who wed Saturday, September 20.

Ammiano popped the question to Deal during the live broadcast of the 2013 Pride parade and had initially said the couple planned to marry in a private ceremony last fall.

They ended up exchanging their vows, with gay former Supervisor Harry Britt officiating, during a public celebration of Ammiano’s time in the state Legislature to the delight of the surprised crowd. The men, wearing suits and bow ties, clasped hands while pledging “I do” to be husbands.

Due to term limits Ammiano is barred from running again for an Assembly seat. After serving three two-year terms, his last day as a state legislator will be in December. He has said he plans to pen a memoir, and there is already talk of seeing Ammiano mount a third bid to be San Francisco’s mayor in 2015 or seek a state Senate seat in 2016.

The couple’s wedding can be viewed at the 23-minute mark on this video posted at www.youtube. com/watch?v=82pvEz1GPKA.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 an East Bay LGBT political club’s latest endorsement vote.

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.

t

Community News>>

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 7

Trans women pen essays that explore transition she’d already had something on hand.

“I’d written this piece a long time ago and I didn’t have any plans for it,” said White, who identifies first as queer, then female, then transgender. “I’d literally written it to myself as a draft email and stuffed it away. It was before I knew I was transitioning, I found myself crying a lot, which was not something I’d do before. I spent a lot of time disassociating prior to transition as a way to keep my sanity. When I started transitioning, I was able to give that up and started to feel these emotions. At first I thought it was something that had to be fixed, then I realized I liked these feelings.

That’s what my piece is about.”

When Wagner, a self-identified trans polyamorous asexual woman who is feminist, theoretically panromantic, agender, kinky, and a self-described slut, encountered the call for submissions, she knew she would submit, too. It was something, she said, she had wished she had for herself at a younger age.

“Through the writing process,” she said, “I was able to hone in on what I regretted about my coming out processes. During some of those times, I didn’t have enough

Elliot Owen

Letters for My Sisters contributors Gina White, left, and Mazikeen Wagner relax at the LGBT Community Center, where they will read from the book this Saturday.

by Elliot Owen

I

n celebration of this year’s release of Letters for My Sisters: Transitional Wisdom in Retrospect, a book featuring the writing of 35 trans women from across the globe, the San Francisco LGBT Community Center will be holding a reading this weekend.

The publication’s co-editors, well-known media producer and writer Andrea James and Deanne Thornton, will be speaking along with two of the book’s Bay Areabased contributors, Gina White and Mazikeen Wagner. Published

by Transgress Press, a publishing house centered around transgender and gender variant writing, Letters for My Sisters was released in July. It follows its notable predecessor, Letters For My Brothers: Transitional Wisdom in Retrospect, a compilation of essays by trans men reflecting on their experiences through various stages of their transitions, which was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2012.

The seed for Letters for My Sisters, Thornton told the Bay Area Reporter, was planted when she approached the co-editor of Letters for My Brothers, Zander Keig, in 2012.

“I’d met Zander and found him interesting because he was open to discussing his experiences around transitioning from female-tomale,” Thornton, who identifies as a woman of trans experience, said. “Zander shared Letters for My Brothers with me and then I started talking to him about doing something similar for trans women.

And that’s when I contacted Andrea, who’s someone I’ve known in the community for years.”

Almost immediately the project took off. Leveraging a similar theme to Letters for My Brothers, Thornton and James narrowed down their book’s concept to a single premise and put out a call for submissions.

They sought essays from trans women who answered or interpreted this question – if you could write a 1,000 word letter to your younger, pre/early-transition self, what would you say?

“We didn’t want writers to so much tell their stories,” Thornton said, “but to tell what their stories taught them, to give us the wisdom without the justification.

Everybody did a phenomenal job distilling down their experiences to fit that limitation, so what’s really

talked about is the stuff that’s really important.”

James and Thornton took submissions for a year and a half, which included some from outside the U.S., two of which were selected for the book; one from Canada, one from Australia.

When White came across the call for submissions, unlike many who wrote new pieces for the prompt,

faith in myself to stand up for who I was. A lot of what happens when you’re first coming out is you get so much blowback you start doubting yourself and trying to make it easier on other people, and other people often interpret that as ambivalence or insincerity of your gender identity. I was trying to be kind to other people not realizing I was compromising important parts of myself.

That’s what this book addresses most of all, the advice from us to the next generation.”

And, Thornton said, Letters for My Sisters isn’t just a book for younger trans women, it’s a useful resource for trans women in all stages of their lives.

“There are lots of things in the

stories I’ve read that help me and I’m way down the line,” Thornton said. “Sometimes other people had insights that really resonated with me, especially when talking about things like finding hope and gratitude, both things we all struggle with. This writing can really make your life fuller.”t The reading takes place Saturday, September 27 at 2 p.m. at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street.

To read the B.A.R.’s previous coverage of Letters for My Brothers and Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family, and Themselves, see http:// www.ebar.com/news/article. php?sec=news&article=69791.

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<< Election 2014

8 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

Out SF school board candidates back new curriculum standards

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

he two out candidates seeking seats on San Francisco’s school board are supportive of the new curriculum standards known as Common Core.

Initiated by the Obama administration in reaction to the criticism that dogged former President George W. Bush’s education policy known as No Child Left Behind, the Common Core standards outline learning goals for students at each grade level in mathematics and English.

Forty-three states, including California, and the District of Columbia have adopted the new standards and have begun instituting them.

They have generated controversy, however, as parents and educators try to understand the new teaching methods and tests that come with Common Core. And Republican state lawmakers have criticized the new standard as a federal mandate that strips local officials of their ability to set education policy.

The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices call such claims myths.

The groups counter that the standards “are designed to build upon the most advanced current thinking about preparing all students for success in college, career, and life. This will result in moving even the best state standards to the next level.”

During recent editorial board meetings with the Bay Area Reporter, both Mark Murphy, 49, a gay man who is a communications and marketing consultant, and transgender educator Jamie Rafaela Wolfe, 37, voiced support for the new standards.

“They are standards, not a federal mandate,” said Murphy, whose husband, David Allyn, works at Argonne Elementary School in the city’s Richmond district. “A number of education leaders said No Child Left Behind didn’t serve us well.”

He pointed out that the new standards do not prescribe specific curriculums that school districts should be using, as those decisions are being made at the local level.

“They are new standards – not curriculum – for what children should know as they move up through the grades,” said Murphy,

<<

Aging with HIV

From page 1

of the estimated 1.1 million Americans living with HIV. In San Francisco, according to the city’s 2013 annual HIV/AIDS epidemiology report, age 50 years and older was the largest age category for both men and women living with HIV (55 percent and 51 percent, respectively). Between 2009 and 2013, the number and proportion of living HIV cases aged 50 and older in the city increased from 6,395 (42 percent) to 8,650 (54 percent), stated the report.

“I think that aging with HIV brings on a whole series of things.

It can come with depression and more,” said San Francisco-based photographer Duane Cramer, 51, who has lived with HIV for nearly 20 years. “Fortunately, as it relates to my overall physical health, things have been very good. I really attribute that to having a positive attitude.”

“What I like to call positively aging with HIV,” added Cramer, who for several years now has been a spokesman for Merck’s “I Design” campaign that urges people to work with their medical providers to develop a treatment plan tailored to their needs.

Courtesy Mark Murphy

Rick Gerharter

School board candidate Mark Murphy

School board candidate Jamie Rafaela Wolfe

who acknowledged that “the way you teach is a little different. You are getting children to think critically.”

The changes in standards and testing are “the greatest” seen in a generation, acknowledged Murphy.

“The changes coming for our students, teachers, administrators, and parents/guardians over the next many years is not to be under estimated,” noted Murphy, who said one of his priorities on the school board will be to ensure all district staff have the training they need “not just for day one, but for ongoing support and collaboration” as they implement Common Core.

Wolfe, a behaviorist and floor manager at Oakes Children’s Center Inc., a nonprofit that provides educational and therapeutic services to children with emotional and developmental issues, told the B.A.R. that she understands why Common Core has fostered such strong negative reactions to it. Nonetheless, she pointed out there are positive benefits to it for students.

“Common Core is tricky; it is still new,” she said. “What I do appreciate about Common Core is that it is a standard to teach to. You are teaching to a standard and not teaching to a test.”

Wolfe also pointed out that the new standards allow for differentiated lesson plans for students who learn in different ways and at different speeds.

“Some people think Common Core dumbs down curriculum and makes children go at one pace. That

is not how I view it,” said Wolfe, who believes it allows for “different teaching for learners where they are at.”

Rather than oppose Common Core, Wolfe said she wants to ensure it is implemented properly and tailored to ensure students succeed, not just at the level called for by the standards but also beyond them.

“I would say now Common Core is where we are at. The reality is it is not going away right now,” she said. “I want to see where it goes but I don’t just stop at Common Core.”

He also singled out the San Francisco-based group Let’s Kick ASS (AIDS Survivor Syndrome) for providing a platform for long-term survivors of the AIDS epidemic to meet one another and advocate for their unique needs that come with aging with HIV. “I think it is a really wonderful group of guys who have been longterm survivors who can get together and share best practices and their personal stories,” said Cramer. “Sharing those stories and personal support can make us mentally stronger.”

His best advice to people is to develop a treatment plan and not deviate from it.

“Immediately, I realized I needed to be adherent on my medication,” recalled Cramer.

Need to educate

People should also educate themselves about HIV’s impact on the aging process, he added.

“Even if we are controlling our diseases as best as possible, we can develop other aging conditions decades ahead of our HIV negative counterparts. It is really important we know this,” said Cramer. “By educating people about these things it empowers people to take better care of themselves.”

School board lacks LGBT member

The San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education has been without an LGBT member on it since 2009. While gays and lesbians have held seats on it, no transgender person has been elected to the board.

Wolfe argued her election would be transformative, particularly since students are coming out as transgender at ever younger ages and schools are still grappling with how to best serve their needs in and out of the classroom.

If elected, Wolfe said “trans identified and gender nonconforming students will know they have an advocate on the school board.” And she pledged to be a voice statewide calling for full implementation of California’s landmark bill that requires school districts to provide transgender youth full participation in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that

match their gender identity. Known as Assembly Bill 1266, it went into effect at the start of this year and was authored by gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco).

“I will push other school boards to ensure safe schools for all families,” said Wolfe. “We have students in crisis right now who are unsure of their safety. I want to make sure Ammiano’s bill is upheld in every school district.”

Murphy also told the B.A.R. it is important for there to be an LGBT person serving on the school board, not only to support LGBT students but also the growing number of LGBT couples raising children in the city.

“There needs to be a person who understands what they are going through sitting at the table. Someone who is responsible for them and understands who they are, whether as children or parents,” said Murphy.

With three school board seats on the November ballot, it is possible that both Murphy and Wolfe could be elected. This is Murphy’s first bid for public office, while Wolfe last ran for a school board seat in 2010 but came up short.

This week, the B.A.R. endorsed Murphy and Wolfe as well as incumbent Emily Murase, 49, executive director of the city’s Commission on the Status of Women.

“While I am not LGBT, I consider myself a member of the LGBT community,” Murase wrote on the B.A.R.’s questionnaire for school board candidates. “It is important that school board members engage and serve all of the diverse communities of San Francisco.”

Asked what the school board can do to implement AB 1266, Murase told the B.A.R. that each school’s gay-straight alliance should report on the status of the law at their school site to the board in addition to regular staff reports on its implementation.

As for the Common Core standards, Murase also voiced strong support for them.

“Actually, I believe that the Common Core releases educators from the tyranny of prescribed textbooks and high stakes testing and empowers them to find their own materials,” she wrote. “It opens up space for collaborative work among educators.”

There are six other candidates in the race, including incumbent

Courtesy Merck & Co.

Duane Cramer

Meredith Greene, a fellow at UCSF’s geriatrics division, agreed that patients and providers should be thinking beyond just HIV in terms of their health.

“We know as people get older they may develop other diseases. HIV itself can be a factor for other diseases like heart disease,” noted Greene.

“Not just focusing on treating HIV but thinking about taking care of the whole person. Caring for not just one

condition but multiple conditions.”

By managing his health, Cramer is planning to be alive well into his 90s.

“Today, with so many great therapies out there, there’s no reason why people can’t live very long, healthy lives,” he said. “My goal is to be 100.”

As for Jones, he is in “pretty good health” though he has been having painful back problems. He is most worried about getting dementia and who will care for him in his old age.

t

Hydra Mendoza, 49, Mayor Ed Lee’s education adviser, and Trevor McNeil, 32, a former substitute teacher in the district who led the GSA at both his middle and high schools.

In response to the question regarding AB 1266, Mendoza told the B.A.R. the district should ask students on its annual surveys a question about “the safety and inclusion of our trans students that could help us make improvements to the policy.”

Also supportive of Common Core, Mendoza wrote on her questionnaire that her “biggest concern is the critical need to provide the necessary training and support to our educators to ensure smooth implementation and uninterrupted transition.”

McNeil, who tutors high school students, sees Common Core as “not a perfect answer,” with its roll out leading to a loss of support among teachers and parents. Yet he pointed out that “there is too much inertia behind it,” and should he be elected to the school board, will bring “both an optimistic hope that this can work and a cautious memory of many, many past school fads that only hurt students, exhausted teachers, and forced districts to focus on problems beyond the most pressing issues they faced at a local level.”

In terms of LGBT initiatives, McNeil told the B.A.R. that he wants to see sex education in the schools be “less hetero-normative” and a continued emphasis on anti-bullying efforts and professional development about LGBT issues.

“Frankly, I sense that there is quite a bit of complacency among SFUSD leadership because San Francisco is often the ‘first’ to get to a place of implementing progressive, affirming programs in schools so we pat ourselves on the back and often don’t do the follow up selfevaluation required,” he wrote.

The other candidates in the race are Stevon Cook, a staffer at the San Francisco Education Fund; Lee Hsu, who works at GemShare, an application whose users rate local services; Shamann Walton, executive director of the Bayview-based Young Community Developers Inc.; and Dennis Yang, who teaches Mandarin at the Bay School of San Francisco, a private college preparatory high school located in the Presidio.t “Who knew I was going to have to deal with aging after all this. It seems so unfair,” said Jones, only half joking.

This year he lost his parents and two uncles within a six-month period, leaving Jones more acutely aware of his reliance on the community he has helped foster in the Castro since the 1970s. But the city’s current housing crisis, which has hit the gayborhood hard and seen many older residents and people living with HIV or AIDS be forced out, has been unsettling to watch, said Jones.

“I am not the least bit different from the men of my age and similar circumstances who have survived and are now dealing with the housing crisis,” said Jones, who lives in an apartment that is not protected by rent control. “I am very confident in this neighborhood someone is going to take my hand and say, ‘Cleve, let me get you some help.’

People are very kind to me; I don’t want to lose that.”

Parties for a cause

To celebrate his 60th, Jones decided he wanted to hold a fundraiser for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s new health center for gay and See page 18 >>

t

Election 2014>>

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 9

Strict ID laws could hinder trans voters

by Chuck Colbert

said Herman. “Transgender people have unique barriers to obtaining accurate IDs needed to vote. As these 10 states begin planning for their fall elections, educating poll workers is crucial in order to ensure that transgender voters in their states have fair access to the ballot.”

A

new study by a Californiabased think tank found that strict voter identification laws in 10 states might cause problems for transgender voters this fall, possibly disenfranchising more than 24,000 of them on Election Day. The states include Arkansas, Georgia, and Kansas where the outcome of key Senate races could affect which political party controls the upper chamber of Congress.

For instance, a transgender person might face the issue of a identification card’s photo not matching his or her current gender identity, or a gender designation “F” for female or “M” for male not matching a subsequent name change, with a person now identifying with a different gender.

“Lawmakers should not overlook the consequences of enacting stricter voter ID laws on transgender voters,” study author Jody L. Herman, Ph.D. said in a news release.

Herman’s report is titled “The Potential Impact of Voter Identification Laws on Transgender Voters in the 2014 General Election.” She is the Peter J. Cooper Public Policy Fellow at the Williams Institute, based in the UCLA School of Law. “Election officials must consider the potential impact of these laws in the upcoming November elections,” she said. “Voter ID laws create a unique barrier for transgender people who would otherwise be eligible to vote.”

In all, 10 states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin – have strict government-issued photo identification requirements, according to the Williams Institute study. (The voter identification law is not currently in effect in Wisconsin.)

Across those states, about 84,000 transgender people who have transitioned are estimated to be eligible

<<

News Briefs

From page 5

preference to be included or omitted from filming.

Among the sponsors of the event is the Bob Ross Foundation, a nonprofit that is named after the Bay Area Reporter’s founding publisher and is a minority shareholder in the paper, which is owned by BAR Media Inc. Tickets are $150 for the VIP reception and gala or $95 for the gala only and can be purchased at www. transgenderlawcenter.org.

AIDS conference report-back in Oakland

A report-back on this year’s International AIDS Conference will be held Friday, September 26 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the New Parkway Theater, 474 24th Street in Oakland.

The event, called “Stepping Up the Pace,” is being held by Imani Community Church, the Bay Area State of Emergency/Black Treatment Advocates Network, and the East Bay HIV Faith Collaborative.

The goal of the conference hub is to create a forum for the exchange of ideas for improving the local response to HIV/AIDS. Speakers will include Phill Wilson, president and chief executive officer of the Black AIDS Institute, and Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. The meeting will feature screenings of presentations made at AIDS 2014 in Melbourne, Australia, followed by moderated discussions with local opinion leaders and participants.

MCC-SF to hold queer prom

Metropolitan Community ChurchSan Francisco will hold a queer prom,

Advocates raise concerns, offer suggestions

Courtesy NCTE

NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling

to vote, with 24,000 – or 28 percent – of them facing possible difficulties in casting ballots.

That’s because the 28 percent of transgender voting-eligible persons in those 10 states have no identification or records that accurately reflect their gender.

In order to vote, the 24,000 transgender voters need to get updated IDs that comply with either state or federal requirements, which vary widely by state or federal agency.

State-issued driver’s licenses or ID, a U.S. passport, or a military identification card are all acceptable forms of ID in the states that require photo identification in order to vote, according to the study.

“If voters do not provide an acceptable form of identification, they may vote on a provisional ballot,” the study noted. “For the provisional ballot to be counted they must provide an acceptable ID to government election officials within a certain limited timeframe.”

Still, “Some voters may not have the means or the ability to present the required voter identification for a variety of reasons, such as poverty, disability, or religious objection,” “Look Back with Glitter” Saturday, September 27 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the church, 150 Eureka Street.

Attendees can dust off that old tuxedo or prom dress to relive high school in the queerest possible way, organizers said in a news release.

DJ NewRo (Kevin Groves) will spin tunes all night, ranging from 1940s swing favorites to current pop tunes. Refreshments will be available to purchase and attendees can vote ($1 per vote) for prom king and queen. Tickets for the dance, a fundraiser for MCC-SF, are $15 in advance or $20 at the door, and can be purchased at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/859646.

Sasha Buchert, staff attorney at the Oakland-based Transgender Law Center, discussed the barriers transgender people face in some detail.

“Almost all of the states with restrictive voter ID laws also require that transgender people obtain surgery before issuing an accurate driver’s license,” Buchert said in an email.

“People should not be required to undergo forced sterilization in order to exercise their right to vote.

“Even if people want to (and are able) to medically transition, categorical health care exclusions force most transgender people to pay for medical care out of their pocket,” Buchert added. “Prohibitive health care costs, compounded by the impact of widespread employment discrimination and confusing patchwork of laws governing the process, make it extremely challenging for transgender voters in these states to hold accurate identity documents.”

Trans people who have accurate forms of identification could still face problems, Buchert said.

“Even transgender voters who hold accurate ID will likely encounter bias and discrimination based on appearance-based assumptions from poll workers who challenge transgender people regarding the accuracy of their ID,” Buchert explained. “The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 20 percent

of transgender people have been harassed or disrespected by governmental officials and rather than enduring the stigma and heightened scrutiny, many transgender people will simply choose to forego their voting rights.”

While the Williams Institute study was “nothing new” to Mara Keisling, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Center for Transgender Equality, “It still shows there are a lot of vulnerable transgender people who could run afoul of these laws,” she said in a phone interview.

“Hopefully, people know by now that these laws are politically motivated and partisan,” said Keisling, noting that in addition to transgender persons, seniors, students, lowincome people, and people of color are also hurt.

“I don’t think Republican legislatures that passed these were aiming at transgender voters. That was not on their radar,” she said. “The truth is they made our folks vulnerable because some states have voter ID laws, and some states don’t, but also some states have modern policies for how people can update information and get identification. Some states have old-fashion discriminatory policies.

“When those two things happen,” Keisling said, referring to strict voter ID laws and discriminatory policies, “you are going to impact transgender voters.”

Meanwhile, Keisling offered suggestions for transgender voters who want to cast their ballots and have them counted.

“Make sure your voter registration is up to date,” she said. “If you have moved or changed your name, don’t try to do that on Election Day.” Keisling also urged early voting in states that permit it. “If there are problems, there is time to fix it,” she said.

Keisling also suggested voting by mail. “Using an absentee ballot is a good way to avoid running afoul of voter ID laws,” she said.

Andrea Zekis, a trans woman and founder of the Arkansas Transgender Equality Coalition, offered an on-the-ground perspective from one of the 10 strict photo-ID states.

“Having the name match the face in a photo ID is costly and cumbersome,” she said in a phone interview, referring to one of her state’s voter eligibility requirements.

A name change in Arkansas, Zekis said, costs $165. “Then you have to go through the whole issue of legal document changes, requiring time and money,” she said.

“The majority of trans people in Arkansas are low income,” she explained. “If someone has to pay hundreds of dollars for medical care that may not be covered in health insurance, if someone doesn’t make much money at work and is going paycheck to paycheck, how is [he or she] going to come up with $165 for a name change?”

The Williams Institute study found that in Arkansas, 906 people out of the 3,485 transgender eligible voting population – or 26 percent – have no updated identification or records.

“We’re making it difficult for trans people to vote,” said Zekis.

“Absentee voters in Arkansas must submit a copy of their photoidentification. Trans people who can’t afford a name change will vote absentee or risk invasive personal questions from poll workers.”t For more information, visit NCTE’s website at www.votingwhiletrans.org. The Williams Institute report is available at http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla. edu/wp-content/uploads/voter-idlaws-september-2014.pdf.

APE 2014

ALTERNATIVE PRESS EXPO

OCT. 4&5 SATURDAY: 11-7 • SUNDAY: 11-6

Sisters to distribute Pink Saturday grants

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will present Pink Saturday grants at a party Sunday, September 28 from 2 to 4 p.m. at Cafe Flore, 2298 Market Street in the Castro.

According to a news release, there was $8,000 for 10 recipients in this grant cycle. Beneficiaries include Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits, Instituto Familiar De La Raza, Zenyu Healing, Ministry of Presence Institute, Solutions for Women, Trans March San Francisco, Money Allard (SF Motherhouse documentarian), Tenderloin Art Lending Library, Parents Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays Napa, and the Youth Pride Coalition.

The money distributed is from the gate collection at Pink Saturday.

Other grant giveaways are in the spring, from donations at the Sisters’ Easter party, and in December during Saturnalia.

Interested nonprofits can apply See page 18 >>

COMICS • ART BOOKS • PANELS WORKSHOPS SPECIAL GUESTS & MUCH MORE!

Fort Mason Center • San Francisco Festival Pavilion • 2 Marina Blvd.

COMPLETE INFO & BUY BADGES:

www.comic-con.org/ape

What is STRIBILD? STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. It combines 4 medicines into 1 pill to be taken once a day with food. STRIBILD is a complete single-tablet regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses you must keep taking STRIBILD. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD? STRIBILD can cause serious side effects: • Build-up of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency.

Symptoms of lactic acidosis include feeling very weak or tired, unusual (not normal) muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold especially in your arms and legs, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat.

• Serious liver problems. The liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and fatty (steatosis). Symptoms of liver problems include your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice), dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored bowel movements (stools), loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach pain.

• You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or serious liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD for a long time.

In some cases, these serious conditions have led to death.

Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any symptoms of these conditions.

• Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. If you also have HBV and stop taking STRIBILD, your hepatitis may suddenly get worse.

Do not stop taking STRIBILD without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

STRIBILD is not approved for the treatment of HBV.

Who should not take STRIBILD? Do not take STRIBILD if you: • Take a medicine that contains: alfuzosin, dihydroergotamine, ergotamine, methylergonovine, cisapride, lovastatin, simvastatin, pimozide, sildenafil when used for lung problems (Revatio®), triazolam, oral midazolam, rifampin or the herb St. John’s wort.

• For a list of brand names for these medicines, please see the Brief Summary on the following pages.

• Take any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection, or the medicine adefovir (Hepsera®).

What are the other possible side effects of STRIBILD? Serious side effects of STRIBILD may also include: • New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do regular blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with STRIBILD. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking STRIBILD. • Bone problems, including bone pain or bones getting soft or thin, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones.

• Changes in body fat can happen in people taking HIV-1 medicines.

• Changes in your immune system.

Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking STRIBILD. The most common side effects of STRIBILD include nausea and diarrhea. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? • All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection.

• All the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. Do not start any new medicines while taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider.

• If you take hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc).

• If you take antacids.

Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD. • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby.

Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD. • If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed.

Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk. Also, some medicines in STRIBILD can pass into breast milk, and it is not known if this can harm the baby.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Brief Summary of full Prescribing Information with important warnings on the following pages.

PALIO Date: 5.2.14 • Client: Gilead • Product: Stribild • File Name: 16873_pgiqdp_J_Drew_Bay_Area_Reporter_fi.indd

Drew

STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used as a complete single-tablet regimenmedicine to treat HIV-1 in STRIBILD is a prescription used as a complete single-tablet regimen to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines adults who have never before.

STRIBILD does nottaken cure HIV-1 HIV-1 medicines or AIDS. before. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

I started my personal revolution

I started my revolution Talkpersonal to your healthcare provider about starting treatment.

Talk to your healthcare provider STRIBILD is a complete about starting treatment.HIV-1

treatment in 1 pill, once a day.

STRIBILD is a complete HIV-1 treatment in 1 pill, once a day.

Ask if it’s right for you.

Ask if it’s right for you.

PALIO Date: 5.2.14 • Client: Gilead • Product: Stribild • File Name: 16873_pgiqdp_J_Drew_Bay_Area_Reporter_fi.indd

Drew

Patient Information STRIBILD (STRY-bild) (elvitegravir 150 mg/cobicistat 150 mg/emtricitabine 200 mg/ tenofovir disoproxil fumarate 300 mg) tablets ®

Brief summary of full Prescribing Information. For more information, please see the full Prescribing Information, including Patient Information.

What is STRIBILD? • STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before.

STRIBILD is a complete regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

• STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. You must stay on continuous HIV-1 therapy to control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses.

• Ask your healthcare provider about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to others. Do not share or reuse needles, injection equipment, or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them. Do not have sex without protection. Always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom to lower the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood.

What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD? STRIBILD can cause serious side effects, including: 1. Build-up of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis). Lactic acidosis can happen in some people who take STRIBILD or similar (nucleoside analogs) medicines. Lactic acidosis is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Lactic acidosis can be hard to identify early, because the symptoms could seem like symptoms of other health problems. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms which could be signs of lactic acidosis: • feel very weak or tired • have unusual (not normal) muscle pain

• Do not stop taking STRIBILD without first talking to your healthcare provider • If you stop taking STRIBILD, your healthcare provider will need to check your health often and do blood tests regularly for several months to check your HBV infection. Tell your healthcare provider about any new or unusual symptoms you may have after you stop taking STRIBILD Who should not take STRIBILD? Do not take STRIBILD if you also take a medicine that contains: • adefovir (Hepsera®) • alfuzosin hydrochloride (Uroxatral®) • cisapride (Propulsid®, Propulsid Quicksolv®) • ergot-containing medicines, including: dihydroergotamine mesylate (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal®), ergotamine tartrate (Cafergot®, Migergot®, Ergostat®, Medihaler Ergotamine®, Wigraine®, Wigrettes®), and methylergonovine maleate (Ergotrate®, Methergine®) • lovastatin (Advicor®, Altoprev®, Mevacor®) • oral midazolam • pimozide (Orap®) • rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater®, Rimactane®) • sildenafil (Revatio®), when used for treating lung problems • simvastatin (Simcor®, Vytorin®, Zocor®) • triazolam (Halcion®) • the herb St. John’s wort Do not take STRIBILD if you also take any other HIV-1 medicines, including: • Other medicines that contain tenofovir (Atripla®, Complera®, Viread®, Truvada®) • Other medicines that contain emtricitabine, lamivudine, or ritonavir (Atripla®, Combivir®, Complera®, Emtriva®, Epivir® or Epivir-HBV®, Epzicom®, Kaletra®, Norvir®, Trizivir®, Truvada®)

• have trouble breathing

STRIBILD is not for use in people who are less than 18 years old.

• have stomach pain with nausea or vomiting

What are the possible side effects of STRIBILD?

• feel cold, especially in your arms and legs • feel dizzy or lightheaded

STRIBILD may cause the following serious side effects:

• have a fast or irregular heartbeat

• See “What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD?”

2. Severe liver problems. Severe liver problems can happen in people who take STRIBILD. In some cases, these liver problems can lead to death. Your liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and you may develop fat in your liver (steatosis). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms of liver problems: • your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice) • dark “tea-colored” urine • light-colored bowel movements (stools) • loss of appetite for several days or longer • nausea • stomach pain You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD for a long time.

3. Worsening of Hepatitis B infection. If you have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and take STRIBILD, your HBV may get worse (flareup) if you stop taking STRIBILD. A “flare-up” is when your HBV infection suddenly returns in a worse way than before.

• Do not run out of STRIBILD. Refill your prescription or talk to your healthcare provider before your STRIBILD is all gone

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before you start and while you are taking STRIBILD. Your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking STRIBILD if you develop new or worse kidney problems.

• Bone problems can happen in some people who take STRIBILD. Bone problems include bone pain, softening or thinning (which may lead to fractures). Your healthcare provider may need to do tests to check your bones.

• Changes in body fat can happen in people who take HIV-1 medicine. These changes may include increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump”), breast, and around the middle of your body (trunk). Loss of fat from the legs, arms and face may also happen. The exact cause and long-term health effects of these conditions are not known.

• Changes in your immune system (Immune Reconstitution Syndrome) can happen when you start taking HIV-1 medicines.

Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that have been hidden in your body for a long time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you start having any new symptoms after starting your HIV-1 medicine.

PALIO Date: 5.2.14 • Client: Gilead • Product: Stribild • File Name: 16873_pgiqdp_J_Drew_Bay_Area_Reporter_fi.indd

Drew

The most common side effects of STRIBILD include: • Nausea • Diarrhea Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away.

• These are not all the possible side effects of STRIBILD. For more information, ask your healthcare provider.

• Call your healthcare provider for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? Tell your healthcare provider about all your medical conditions, including: • If you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis B infection • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD. - There is a pregnancy registry for women who take antiviral medicines during pregnancy. The purpose of this registry is to collect information about the health of you and your baby. Talk with your healthcare provider about how you can take part in this registry.

• If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you take STRIBILD. - You should not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby.

- Two of the medicines in STRIBILD can pass to your baby in your breast milk. It is not known if the other medicines in STRIBILD can pass into your breast milk.

- Talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements: • STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works.

• Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you take any of the following medicines: - Hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc) - Antacid medicines that contain aluminum, magnesium hydroxide, or calcium carbonate. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD

- disopyramide (Norpace®) - estazolam - ethosuximide (Zarontin®) - flecainide (Tambocor®) - flurazepam - fluticasone (Flovent®, Flonase®, Flovent® Diskus®, Flovent® HFA, Veramyst®) - itraconazole (Sporanox®) - ketoconazole (Nizoral®) - lidocaine (Xylocaine®) - mexiletine - oxcarbazepine (Trileptal®) - perphenazine - phenobarbital (Luminal®) - phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®) - propafenone (Rythmol®) - quinidine (Neudexta®) - rifabutin (Mycobutin®) - rifapentine (Priftin®) - risperidone (Risperdal®, Risperdal Consta®) - salmeterol (Serevent®) or salmeterol when taken in combination with fluticasone (Advair Diskus®, Advair HFA®) - sildenafil (Viagra®), tadalafil (Cialis®) or vardenafil (Levitra®, Staxyn®), for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED). If you get dizzy or faint (low blood pressure), have vision changes or have an erection that last longer than 4 hours, call your healthcare provider or get medical help right away.

- tadalafil (Adcirca®), for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension - telithromycin (Ketek®) - thioridazine - voriconazole (Vfend®) - warfarin (Coumadin®, Jantoven®) - zolpidem (Ambien®, Edlular®, Intermezzo®, Zolpimist®) Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. Do not start any new medicines while you are taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider.

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- bepridil hydrochloride (Vascor®, Bepadin®)

Issued: October 2013

- Medicines to treat depression, organ transplant rejection, or high blood pressure - amiodarone (Cordarone®, Pacerone®)

- bosentan (Tracleer®) - buspirone - carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®) - clarithromycin (Biaxin®, Prevpac®) - clonazepam (Klonopin®) - clorazepate (Gen-xene®, Tranxene®) - colchicine (Colcrys®) - medicines that contain dexamethasone - diazepam (Valium®) - digoxin (Lanoxin®)

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Drew

<< Travel

14 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

LGBT travelers have a crush on wine country

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t was time for another romantic weekend getaway to wine country, so my girlfriend and I packed up our convertible, turned the radio up, and zipped up the freeway toward the Napa Valley.

It was a beautiful day that turned into perfection as soon as we saw the familiar rows of vines sloping along the hills filled with clusters of plump grapes glimmering in the bright sun against the blue sky.

Wineries continue to recover from last month’s magnitude 6.0 earthquake in Napa. While most of the dramatic damage centered in the heart of downtown Napa, wineries are expected to suffer about $50 million in damages, according to a report from Napa Valley Vintners, a trade group with 500 members. Vintners are carrying on, hosting wine tastings and prepping for harvest and crush season.

Some wineries made light of the bit of damage they received by selling wine-soaked labeled bottles as “earthquake vintage.”

This year is shaping up to be a great harvest, the pourers in the tasting rooms told us as we stopped at Peju Winery and Whitehall Lane on our way to the Harvest Inn in St. Helena.

The drought has been good to the grapes, stressing the vines just right to produce what vintners anticipate will be a memorable vintage that oenophiles will put on their collector lists.

My girlfriend and I have been coming up to Napa for the past couple of years for the annual Tri, Girl, Tri

in the heart

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Chardonnay grapes are sun-ripened at Long Meadow Ranch’s vineyards and farm.

women’s triathlon, which is October 4; a fall wine tasting bike ride through the vineyards; and the Big Gay Wine Train event in the spring. Napa is not the “snooty too-big-for-its-britches” wine country we once thought it was.

It’s actually confident and proud, a little bit hip and risque in an intellectual and quietly passionate way, and very open and accepting of the LGBT community.

There are great reasons why LGBT travelers should come to the Napa Valley, local gays and lesbians said.

“Napa has really become ... a gay destination,” said Susan Steirer, the lesbian owner and tour guide of Absolutely Fabulous Tours.

Depending on what type of experience you are looking for you can get casual wine country and spas in Calistoga, classic romance in St. Helena, tony boutiques in Yountville, or country urban in Napa.

The wine country is on the cusp of booming again. Picking up the Napa Valley Register and the St. Helena Star, I learned that Calistoga and St. Helena are both on the verge of becoming major destinations by offering more hotel options soon.

Napa recently added the Andaz Napa, which is currently being repaired after the earthquake.

With this wealth of beauty and options, you bet Napa has a large and growing LGBT community and is attracting queer travelers. The community is largely matured and coupled,

but over the last several years, Napa has also gained younger residents, infusing a youthful spirit into the region.

“There’s quite a vibrant community here,” said gay restaurateur Mark Young, who co-owns a string of fine dining restaurants in Calistoga.

Calistoga boutique and doggie daycare owner Margaret Law agreed.

“The gay and lesbian life down in Napa is booming,” said Law, who is a lesbian.

Wayne Armstrong, who with his husband, Marcus Robbins, co-owns two jewelry stores – Palladium Fine Jewelry and Patina Estate and Fine Jewelry – and a knick-knack store, Pennyweight, in St. Helena, believes LGBT travelers should visit the Napa Valley, “because of its extraordinary scenic beauty,” and also because “there are absolutely world-class restaurants here that are unequaled to anywhere in the world, including New York City.”

Aside from wining and dining in Napa, Armstrong pointed out that, “There are lots of great things to do when you are not eating delicious food and tasting wine.”

In particular for LGBT travelers, Napa offers the sense that you can come and “feel comfortable, feel safe and feel relaxed,” said Armstrong.

Romance beacons in St. Helena

During this trip, my girlfriend and I settled in the quaint and charming town of St. Helena. It was perfectly situated for our weekend adventures and is a 15-minute drive to Calistoga and about a 30-minute drive to Napa.

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Travel>>

It’s also very close to Peju Winery, where the second annual Big Gay Grape Stomp and Harvest Party will be held October 18, from noon to 4 p.m.

Last year, the event attracted about 150 people, said Gary Saperstein, 54, who, with Mark Volger, 48, founded Out in the Vineyard, a gay wine country event company.

“It was very fun,” said Saperstein, who suggests participants wear good underwear as many of the guests ended up stripping down to their skivvies last year. “It was even more fun than Mark and I thought it was going to be.”

“When we say ‘out in the vineyards’ we are truly out in the vineyards,” said Saperstein, laughing and talking excitedly about the winery run by sisters Ariana and Lisa Peju that features winemaker Sara Fowler.

About a mile from the heart of St. Helena is the Harvest Inn, where we were guests for the weekend. The inn is tucked away in a grove of trees just off of Highway 29.

Our room, the Vineyard Room, spoke of romance with its spectacular view out onto one of Whitehall Lane’s vineyards with the Mayacamas Mountain Range in the background.

Inside there was a huge brick fireplace and cozy leather chairs. It was too warm to light a fire, but we were quite comfortable in the spacious room. The Harvest Inn is an AAA four diamond rated resort that was recently taken over by celebrity chef Charlie Palmer. It offers 74 rooms that range from romantic to more modern apartment-style options for small conferences and wedding parties, a spa and fitness center, and adult-only and family pools.

We didn’t check out the spa at the inn, but my girlfriend and I enjoyed a couples’ massage at Health Spa Napa Valley. My deep tissue massage was excellent and my girlfriend relaxed with a simple Swedish massage.

We enjoyed a romantic dinner at Wine Spectator’s Greystone

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 15

Harvest fun

Courtesy Absolutely Fabulous Tours

Susan Steirer, at right in pink boa, owner and tour guide of Absolutely Fabulous Tours, posed with some guests on a wine tour.

Restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America. We also enjoyed a Southwestern dinner at trendy La Condesa, which served up Cochinita Pibil, an anchiote braised pork that was out of this world. Both restaurants served top quality gourmet meals that were amazing, but we were really blown away by a personal lunch crafted by Chef Timothy Mosblech at the end of our Full Circle Wine Experience tour at Long Meadow Ranch.

Courtesy Mark Young

Mark Young, co-owner of Calistoga eateries Barolo Italian Kitchen and Cocktails, Brannan’s Restaurant, and Checkers Restaurant.

To experience wine country we went on two adventures that brought us up close and personal with the land, vines, and wine: a wine tour at Long Meadow Ranch in St. Helena and Judd’s Hill Winery and MicroCrush in Napa, where we crafted our own unique Bordeaux blend at Bottle Blending Day Camp.

For a broader experience of Napa’s wines, guests might want to go on the aforementioned Absolutely Fabulous Tours led by Steirer, who like many LGBT Napa Valley locals is a visitor turned resident.

Launched a little more than a year ago, the former Oakland and San Francisco resident decided to set up tours specifically for LGBT visitors to put a gay flavor into her wine tours. She and her guests don colorful feather boas, fake mustaches, and wigs while they hop from winery to winery.

Steirer, 39, launched her company after working for Platypus Wine Tours for about three and a half years, simply because she saw LGBT visitors come to wine country and go back into the closet.

“I would get gay and lesbian couples on my tour buses ... and they could not come out in the group they just wouldn’t do it,” said Steirer. “Being a gay person myself, it just really started to hurt me. I just thought to myself, ‘You know, how can we be in the backyard of San Francisco, the largest gay mecca on the planet, and nobody is catering to these people?’”

Saddened, she decided to create tours that highlighted queer people in wine country.

“My tours are definitely geared toward the gay community, but mostly it’s just geared toward people that want to have fun,” said Steirer, who also gets a lot of non-LGBT guests on her tours.

Steirer also runs the popular meet up group, Absolutely Fabulous Napa Valley that attracts upward of See page 16 >>

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<< Sports

16 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

Domestic violence talks turn punch drunk

by Roger Brigham

A

nd in the third week of its burgeoning domestic violence scandal, the Great Pundits of the National Football League said they were tired of talking about it and wanted to get back to talking about football.

Rah. Rah. Rah. Forget about Commissioner Roger Goodell’s latest punt, announcing that the NFL will act with typically decisive glacial speed to review the league’s personal conduct policy – in time for next year’s Super Bowl. Forget about congressional calls for the NFL to lose its bogus

tax-exempt status, with taxes on NFL dues to the tune of $10 million a year – with those taxes to go toward domestic abuse programs. Forget about the calls for Goodell’s resignation or the unending waffling by individual teams as to whether to suspend players who are either facing domestic abuse charges or in fact have already been convicted. Forget about the calls from such leaders as Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and the National Organization for Women for NFL teams to be forced to bench players facing abuse charges.

Forget all of that. Let’s talk about

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the 4.5-point spreads on the upcoming Raiders and Niners games.

Think either of these teams are ever going to play a complete game all the way through?

Just one week after NFL commentators on all of the major networks were falling all over themselves criticizing the mishandling of domestic abuse cases in the NFL, the same commentators spent the first few minutes of the Sunday, September 21 game broadcasts by informing us that the players were tired of talking about it and now want to focus on what’s really important.

You know: keeping those guys out there doing permanent brain damage to each other so we can sell some beer, cars, and jerseys.

So, let’s stop talking about the NFL and its embarrassments for a few moments and let’s look at another domestic violence case involving a highly visible U.S. sports star, and consider how sexism, racism, and perception are helping that case fly under the media radar.

On Thursday, September 18, the U.S. women’s national soccer team – that “other” form of football – scored a 4-0 victory in a friendly match against Mexico, with goalkeeper Hope Solo recording her national record 73rd shutout.

Problem is, Solo, one of the most visible and marketable women in American sports, is facing criminal domestic abuse charges for assaulting a 17-year-old nephew at a rowdy family affair in June. Rather than being suspended from her pro team, the Seattle Reign, or benched

by Team USA – the very same sanctions NFL teams are being urged to take with their suspected superstars – Solo was being publicly celebrated and allowed to wear the captain’s honorary armband in recognition of her string of shutouts.

Scott Blackmun, chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee, told USA Today that the charges against Solo were “disturbing and inconsistent with our expectations of Olympians,” but

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Wine country

From page 15

200 members monthly to wine and dine around the valley, she said.

In addition to the aforementioned Big Gay Wine Train and the gay grape stomp, Napa reaches out to LGBT audiences during the Napa Valley Film Festival, November 12-16. Since its launch in 2011, the festival has always included LGBT films. This year is no different, as filmgoers will enjoy An Honest Liar, Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank, and States of Grace.

“We are film, food, and wine people. We just love films. We love good stories and characters,” said Brenda Lhormer, who founded and runs the Napa Valley Film Festival

U.S. soccer star Hope Solo is facing domestic abuse charges but has continued to play in matches.

stopped short of requesting soccer suspend the goaltender before the case has run its criminal course.

“U.S. Soccer takes the issue of domestic violence very seriously,” said U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati.

“From the beginning, we considered the information available and have taken a deliberate and thoughtful approach regarding Hope Solo’s status with the national team. Based on that information, U.S. Soccer stands by our decision to allow her to participate with the team as the legal process unfolds. If new information becomes available we will carefully consider it.”

“The question is why,” wrote Juliet Macur in the New York Times.

“Celebrating Solo’s achievement right now is like allowing running back Adrian Peterson, who has been accused of child abuse, to continue to play for the Minnesota Vikings – and then awarding him the game ball for his next 100-yard game.”

Wrote columnist Joe Concha on www.mediaite.com, “She continues to play. I don’t hear Hannah Storm, I don’t hear ESPN doing too many exposes on Hope Solo because maybe, she’s a woman, maybe it’s soccer and it’s not as popular, but it’s just as important, and I think this is becoming too much of a ‘this is an NFL problem’ instead of ‘this is an epidemic that happens across all industries, all with her husband, Marc Lhormer.

Calistoga

I still have fond memories of the mud baths in Calistoga when my auntie and I spent Christmas there many years ago. Unfortunately, my girlfriend and I didn’t have time to venture into Calistoga this time, but we have been invited back for the crab festival in February.

Calistoga is known for its natural springs and spas. It is also the most casual town and the farthest north in Napa Valley. It’s also the place in the valley where many gays have settled, creating a handful of bed and breakfasts, restaurants, and shops. Calistoga is also pet-friendly and the home to the newly opened Calistoga Doggie Daycare, owned by Law, a longtime Calistoga businesswoman, who also

Obituaries >> Craig A. Brown

Wayne Patrick Rogers

April 18, 1954 – September 6, 2014

May 27, 1959 – August 29, 2014

A well-known member of the community, Craig A. Brown passed away September 6, 2014 while in the care of St. Francis Hospital due to medical complications. Having done some modeling in his younger days, he later designed windows for some of the more upscale clothiers in both New York and San Francisco. A much-loved member of the Gangway family, he will be sorely missed. He is survived by a sister and nephew in Texas. There will be a celebration of life for Craig at the Gangway, 841 Larkin Street, San Francisco Saturday, September 27 at 3 p.m.

Wayne Patrick Rogers, a longtime resident of San Francisco, passed away August 29, 2014 after a long battle with leukemia.

Raised in the East Bay, Wayne attended Clayton Valley High School; he went on to Stanford University, where he studied aerospace engineering. Wayne worked in the aerospace industry in Los Angeles and San Francisco, including 22 years at Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto.

Wayne was a lifelong swimmer. He was a member of the SF Tsunami swim team and its synchronized swimming squad. Wayne attended almost every Gay Games and International Gay and

t

genders, and even soccer.’”

Gay ESPN writer LZ Granderson told CNN that, “Forgive me, but soccer just is not as relevant in this country as the NFL, so that’s part of it. But then it’s also the imagery. The idea of a big, strong man hitting a defenseless woman does something to us that a woman hitting a woman does not do.” (Solo was also charged with misdemeanor domestic violence in an alleged assault of her half-sister at the same family gathering.)

Might I also point out that Solo is an attractive white woman – not a big black man as are most of the NFL players currently roasting in the press for domestic abuse instances? Hell, if 20 years ago Tonya Harding had knocked Nancy Kerrigan with a baton rather than leaving the task to her goon boyfriend, it probably would have been written off as a humorous cat fight on an episode of Seinfeld, right?

Look, I have no idea whether Solo, who has pleaded not guilty, will be convicted when she comes up on the charges in November.

But there is enough in the police record of repeat incidents, patterns of abusive relations with her former NFL player husband, to indicate that this is somebody who has some very confused and violent behavior in her life – someone who should be working at healing herself, not being touted by Nike and U.S. Soccer as every little girl’s role model.

Similarly the NFL should not be dressing up and showing accused batterers in our face every weekend, sending the message that it’s okay to smash the people in your life as long as you are not videotaped and convicted and have exhausted all legal due process to the nth degree.

Think this is a new problem? In 1988, the U.S. Olympic team had to suffer through the embarrassment of allowing Bruce Kimball to compete for a spot on the Olympic team just two weeks after he got drunk and plowed a speeding car into a crowd of teenagers, killing two boys and See page 18 >> owns the Chateau Ste Shirts boutique.

Young, who owns three restaurants – Barolo Italian Kitchen and Cocktails, Brannan’s Restaurant and Checkers Restaurant – with his business partner Ron Goldin, opened his first restaurant in Calistoga nearly 30 years ago. The 59year old gay men, who were once life partners but are now just friends and business partners, owned up to eight restaurants in Napa and Sonoma at one time, Young said.

“I’ve always loved it here and always knew that this is where I belonged,” said Young, who was born in Pinole and raised in Sonoma on an Arabian horse ranch. “I mean, it’s just such a beautiful and special part of the planet.”

Law agreed and said that when See page 17 >> Lesbian Aquatics competition, receiving medals at all of them.

Wayne was also a talented violin player. In his teens, he was a member of the Oakland Youth Orchestra. Recently he performed with BARS, Redwood Symphony, and Symphony Parnassus.

He also was a dedicated member of a local chamber music quartet.

Wayne and his husband, Frank Wild, were avid travelers; they maintain a second home in Berlin, Germany.

In addition to Frank (and their beloved dog, Stella), Wayne is survived by his parents, James and Elfriede Rogers of Concord, California; three brothers; six nieces and nephews; and an enormous group of friends.

A private celebration of Wayne’s life will be held in October.

Donate to Music in Schools Today in Wayne’s honor. http://musicinschoolstoday.org/wayne-rogers

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Community News>>

EQCA

From page 1

who left in July after a year and a half in the position, citing personal reasons.

EQCA’s board decided Saturday, September 20 to update its mission statement to include changes such as a focus on “full equality and acceptance” both inside and outside of California and “ensuring the health and well-being of LGBT Californians,” Zbur, who is gay, said.

The expanded focus could help with issues like “employment mobility,” he said.

Currently, the “patchwork of rights” that exists “outside the state is not a positive thing for us,” Zbur said.

He said with the broader mission statement, EQCA may also pay more attention to areas such as immigration reform and offer increased help to “the most marginalized members” of the community.

Andreas Meyer, EQCA’s board president, stated the organization “is evolving to meet the needs of the LGBT community in California.”

EQCA, which also includes the educational arm the Equality California Institute, formed in 1998 as the California Alliance for Pride and Equality. Since then, it’s worked to bring marriage rights for same-sex couples and to protect LGBT students from bullying, among other legislation. The nonprofit recently saw its 100th piece of legislation pass the state Legislature.

Gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who has worked with EQCA on numerous bills, applauded Zbur and the shift in EQCA’s mission.

“I’ve known Rick for many years and am confident that his track record as an accomplished, dedicated, and articulate community leader will serve Equality California well,” Leno said in a statement. “Now that EQCA has sponsored more than 100

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Wine country

From page 16

she was searching to set up her first business she settled on Calistoga 25 years ago.

“Calistoga is so unique,” Law said.

“We are casual. We are unassuming.

We don’t try to put on airs. We are friendly. We are not judgmental. I think that comes off in our warmth when we greet you when you come into town and you feel that.”

Napa

On our final day in Napa, we stopped downtown for lunch at Tarla Mediterranean Grill.

My girlfriend and I were terribly sad to see the sign of Carpe Diem, one of our favorite restaurants, amidst the rubble after the August 24

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Out in the World

From page 2

unions – but there were still many inequalities and stereotypes that were perpetuated, she discovered.

“I didn’t stop to consider the stereotypes when he came out. [Her son’s murder] was a moment to stop, to think, and to understand what is the most important in life,” she said.

“I realized what was really going on out there,” she said, adding that it was only natural for her to stand up on behalf of her murdered son and the rest of Israel’s LGBT youth and their parents.

Since then, Katz and her family attend the annual Pride in Tel Aviv and she works to educate parents and the broader community.

Her personal introspection of the meaning of life when her son came out to her became a collective moment for Israel when the shooting happened at the Gan Meir LGBT Community Center in Tel Aviv.

“One of the things that happened, many, many people and many of my friends told me that it made them to stop,” she said. ‘They had to stop and think what is the meaning again

successful bills expanding the rights of LGBT Californians, it makes sense for the organization’s future mission to expand. I agree with EQCA’s belief that where a person lives or travels should not determine whether he or she is a first- or second-class citizen.

There is still much work to be done.”

Governor Jerry Brown last week signed into law Assembly Bill 1951, which EQCA backed. The bill, authored by Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) modernizes California birth certificates by allowing each parent to identify as mother, father, or parent, rather than just mother or father.

The nonprofit has also been associated with some failures. Most notably, former Executive Director Geoff Kors was one of the committee members behind the unsuccessful campaign to defeat California’s Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban. Voters passed the anti-gay measure in November 2008. The U.S. Supreme Court effectively killed the ban on a technicality in June 2013.

Changes

Although he’s officially been on the job only for about three weeks, Zbur, whose selection was announced in April, said he’d worked with the board for most of the summer. Their work included “taking a step back and looking at what Equality California is doing and has been doing, and assessing what it should be doing as we move ahead.”

For example, traditionally, EQCA endorsed only candidates for the state legislative and other state offices.

But this year, for the first time, it also has endorsed candidates in local races, including out Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan in her bid to unseat Oakland Mayor Jean Quan.

The group has also made endorsements in national contests,

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 17

such as its backing of state Senator Ted Lieu’s (D-Torrance) run for Congress. Lieu, a straight ally, worked with EQCA on Senate Bill 1172, the state law that bans statelicensed mental health professionals from attempting to engage in efforts to alter the sexual orientation of LGBT youth 18 years and younger.

Zbur said EQCA isn’t going to be going head-to-head with national groups.

“We want to focus on things on which our capabilities give us the ability to have a positive change” that fit with the organization’s strengths of political and legislative advocacy, he explained.

The group recently announced that it’s partnered with Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) on a joint resolution urging President Barack Obama to compel the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Food and Drug Administration to end the ban on gay and bi men donating blood.

EQCA is “launching an advocacy program” aimed at stopping the ban. The organization plans to engage its 800,000 members. Over the past couple years, EQCA already has worked with the National Gay Blood Drive, part of the Los Angeles-based Love, Don’t Hate, by encouraging members to attend events.

“We’re not doing something competing with them,” Zbur said.

Ryan James Yezak, the blood drive’s founder and executive director of Love, Don’t Hate, said his group is “looking forward to working with [EQCA] more closely in the future.” Yezak’s group also supports Bloom’s resolution.

On another front, EQCA’s looking at enlisting corporations to promote civil rights protections for LGBTs, including in the Southern states. Zbur said the effort could involve the national Human Rights

earthquake as we watched television coverage of the temblor. The restaurant was still closed a couple of weeks later when we walked around the downtown to see what was open. According to Carpe Diem’s website, it is holding an “Under the Stars” earthquake relief dinner ($125) Saturday, September 27 at Copia Gardens, 500 1st Street as it works to reopen.

Napa is open and ready for business despite some yellow caution tape and red-tagged buildings.

The Inn on First was slightly damaged, but the gay owners were happily checking people in when we stopped by and toured the charming historic inn with its heartshaped bathtubs. Owners Jamie Cherry, 59, and Jim Gunther, 56, bought the bed and breakfast that is walking distance from the heart

of downtown in 2007. The couple has been busy making it a foodie inn and offer wine tours for guests, creating a truly unique experience.

Other lodging options in Napa where my girlfriend and I have been guests recently are the historic Napa River Inn, another romantic hotel along the Napa River downtown, and the Best Western Plus Inn At the Vines, a great choice for budget travelers to Napa.

If resorts are your thing the Meritage Resort and Spa is an excellent option that also provides nightlife such as bowling, dancing, and other activities.t

of all of the stereotypes, all of the things that they were thinking about the LGBT community.”

The LGBT community also changed after the tragedy, she said.

“I saw many groups of people doing for themselves,” she said, noting that there was a shift in attitude within the LGBT community to strengthen and provide for its own.

She told a story about how an Orthodox LGBT community began worshiping at the LGBT center in Tel Aviv. Men and women used to praying separately were suddenly faced with having to worship in a single room.

To resolve the situation they came up with offering three prayer sections: a co-ed section between the men’s and women’s sections, said Katz.

She also pointed to the many programs, from adults volunteering to be at the LGBT center weekly to listen to and talk with queer youth to play dates for LGBT parents’ children.

While there have been many successes there is one challenge that continues to fail with each attempt, bringing Arab Israelis into the fold of parent support groups and other activities within the LGBT community, said Katz.

The Nir Katz center, launched in 2012 by the Aguda, one of Israel’s leading LGBT organizations, is modeled after Berlin’s Maneo, an LGBT organization that actively works in partnership with the police to combat hate crimes and homophobia, she said.

“I was really proud that they called it after Nir,” said Katz.

She’s been working to promote the work of the Nir center, which has been working with Tel Aviv police on how to identify and correctly record hate crimes.

Soon after the Nir center opened it was discovered that police were recording hate crimes against members of the LGBT community as a conflict between neighbors, she said.

Today, that has changed. Professionals at the Nir center work closely with the Tel Aviv police properly recording and collecting hate crime data that has been compiled in two annual reports. The Nir center also helps people file incident reports of hate crimes and works with the Aguda to assist people with obtaining legal support to mental health services to public speakers about LGBT issues, she said.t

For a listing of where to eat, sleep, and play in the Napa Valley, see the online guide at www.ebar.com.

Campaign, but “we haven’t talked about a formal relationship.”

Spokespeople for HRC, which launched their own Southern strategy this year, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

EQCA’s budget is about $3 million.

Zbur said he “envisions larger budgets over time,” and fundraising efforts in support of “specific program initiatives.” He added, “We’ll add staff as we fund each of these initiatives.”

The nonprofit has 14 full-time staff, along with 25 to 30 part-time phone and field staff. Zbur, whose salary is $150,000, is single, and he lives in West Hollywood.

The organization has been run mostly out of Southern California in recent years, but it still has a small office in San Francisco. A new local field manager is being hired.

Zbur has made some trips to San Francisco to meet with donors and elected officials, including gay Supervisors Scott Wiener and David Campos.

He said he “mostly” spoke with the men to get “their views on the repositioning of the organization.”

He also spoke with Campos about how the nonprofit could help him in his race against Board of Supervisors President David Chiu for the Assembly seat being vacated by gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), who’s termed out this year. EQCA previously endorsed Campos in the race.

That’s “one of our priority races,” Zbur said. “It’s important to us that he get elected.”

Campos referred to Zbur’s hiring as “a stroke of genius.”

“I think Rick is exactly what the organization needs at this point,” he

said. “He, I think, has a vision that recognizes EQCA is the premiere civil rights organization that has to not only expand its reach within California, but also outside California.”

Wiener called Zbur “an inspired hire” who “brings enormous experience and gravitas, and I think will be able to elevate Equality California.”

The supervisor pointed to statewide issues including LGBT aging, and access to housing and health care, as areas where he’d like to see the organization focus.

More state work

Although the group has more national plans than before, EQCA will continue to do work specific to California.

In August, it started receiving a $250,000, yearlong grant from the California Endowment to encourage better access to health care for undocumented LGBT Californians, especially those in the Central Valley.

The nonprofit is also considering an HIV-decriminalization bill. Zbur said current law includes “criminal penalty enhancements if HIV is transmitted under certain circumstances.”

He said, “The law treats HIV differently than it does other diseases that are similar and also are transmissible, so we’re looking at what kind of changes need to be in the law so people with HIV are not treated differently.”

Zbur said people in San Francisco may soon have a chance to let EQCA know directly what they’d like to see the organization do.

“We are planning forums toward the end of October or early November” in San Francisco and other places around the state, he said.t

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

18 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

<<

Jock Talk

From page 16

injuring four others. Of course, he eventually pleaded guilty and served time, but in the interim his ego was served by allowing him to try out to be an Olympic representative.

Our Olympic representative.

I had a real ambivalence about his participation at the time. I said Mothers Against Drunk Driving was wrong in its demand that the diving federation block Kimball from competition – but only because the Olympic organizations did not have clear guidelines at the time on such instances and it is always wrong to invent punishments after the crime.

<<

News Briefs

From page 9

for the December grants by November 28. Information can be found at http://www.thesisters.org/grants.

Specific questions can be directed to grantmistress@thesisters.org.

Brunch and bowl with Dems

The East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club’s second annual Brunch and Bowl fundraiser takes place Sunday, September 28 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at AMF Southshore Lanes, 200 Park Street in Alameda.

The cost is $35 per bowler ($25 for Stonewall members) and includes shoes, two hours of bowling, and refreshments. There will be a raffle and a cash bar will be available. Proceeds benefit the club’s Campaign for Equality political action committee.

For tickets, visit www.eastbaystonewalldemocrats.org/ brunchandbowl2014.

Charles Blow at Commonwealth Club

New York Times visual op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow, who came out as being attracted to men and

<<

Pink Saturday

From page 1

discourage troublemakers from attending. She pointed out that Burning Man charges admission to its street party in the Dogpatch neighborhood.

Residents shared their own concerns about the trends they were seeing during Pink Saturday. Some reported being subjected to anti-gay slurs and threats of violence right in the middle of Castro Street.

“I was afraid to be in my own neighborhood,” said longtime resident Frank Pietronigro, “I don’t want to be afraid. What’s happening at the event is degrading.”

Jeff Hamilton suggested closing the Castro Muni station early on Pink Saturday.

Others suggested a bag check.

“If we have to do a mandatory bag

<<

Aging with HIV

From page 8

bisexual men being built in the heart of the city’s gay Castro district. He reached out to drag queen Juanita More to serve as host, inspired by her raising more than $75,000 this year through her annual Pride party for local LGBT housing programs.

A co-founder of the AIDS foundation, Jones has at times been critical of the agency for being “too corporate.”

But since moving back to the city in 2010, Jones has been particularly pleased by its merger with Magnet, the gay men’s health clinic, which led to the expansion of the facility in a new home on Castro Street.

“I am so impressed with the role they play in the community now,” Jones said of Magnet. “A week doesn’t go by where I don’t refer someone there for HIV testing or medical services.”

He would like to raise at least

But that was decades ago in another millennium. Surely in this day and age, our marketing-savvy elite sports organizations should recognize that they are on the business of selling role models, that in one form or another their source of income comes from our desire to see people we hope to be like, hope for our children to be like.

And people crashing drunkenly through crowds or beating the crap out of spouses and fiancees and nephews and children are not the role models we are looking for.

This is not about due process.

This is not about rushing to judgment. This is about giving a shit about the people whose lives you endanger any time you behave in a

way that can be seen as giving cover to abusers. Put them on suspension – not on public display. Then let them have their day in court.

It’s not just due process – it’s fair process.

women in his just-published memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, will appear at the Commonwealth Club Monday, September 29. The noon program takes place at the club’s San Francisco offices, 595 Market Street, second floor.

Blow is expected to share the story of his childhood in small town Louisiana and how he overcame poverty, racism, and abuse. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his three children.

The event is free for members, $20 for non-members, and $7 for students with valid ID. For tickets, visit www.commonwealthclub.org or call (415) 597-6705.

Reservations for free time slots in the nonprofit windows in the Castro district for 2015 are now available on a first-come basis.

Paul Margolis, who administers

the project, said organizations can choose Walgreens at 18th and Castro streets or California Check Cashing at 16th and Market streets.

Groups currently included on Margolis’s www.ourtownsf.org, which promotes San Francisco LGBT nonprofits, arts, and athletic groups, are encouraged to apply for a reservation. Because of the overwhelming demand, organizations are limited to one annual installation.

Walgreens has generously offered window space since 2009; California Check Cashing got involved in the project last year. At the check cashing spot, you can choose to install the display or have employees do so.

Margolis said that special consideration is given to first time applicants, those with a major fundraising event scheduled during an available time slot, those promoting ourtownsf.org, and past appealing eye-catching displays. The only caveats are nothing pornographic, political, or provocative. Displays with artistic creativity often generate the most attention from passersby.

For inquiries on reservations, email Margolis at otsanfran@gmail. com with the dates for major 2015 events. He will respond with available dates nearest to those events.t

check then we do it because it will stop people from being stabbed,” said Wayde Palmer.

A number of attendees alluded to “hip-hop music” and “ghetto blasters.” There was a smattering of applause to these comments, but also hisses and whispers of racism. The need to extend a welcome to LGBT youth of color was expressed.

“Historically, segments of youth and communities of color have remarked that they have not seen their voices and cultural fully represented in the Castro,” said Joshua Smith, a co-producer of the global village stage at Pride and a member of the group that puts on the Soul of Pride African diaspora stage. “We must actively reach out to community groups who have experience working with youth and folks from diverse classes and cultures. This means getting out of our comfort

zones and building bridges to other neighborhoods beyond San Francisco. Through coalition building, we can build the capacity needed to manage the ever changing nature of LGBT oriented outdoor events.”

Dyke March Chair Elizabeth Lanyon offered to work with the Sisters and share some of the things the Dyke March had done to make that event safer.

“Our biggest concern is safety,” she said. “We did hire security and it made a difference. Dyke March is so grateful to the Sisters, who have supported the march for many years. We hope to continue the community dialogues and work more closely with groups who are organizing the Pride weekend events.

It takes a village, or, in this case, all of us queers who are committed to keeping our space queer, safe and community minded.”t

$85,000 toward the new health facility with his birthday fundraiser.

“I am happy with the model Magnet has become,” said Jones. “The single most important reality we are dealing with today is treatment equals protection. The AIDS foundation has an extremely important role to play right now.”

The push to start HIV-positive people on treatment in order to lower their viral loads to undetectable levels, and thus decrease the likelihood of transmission to their sexual partners, combined with HIV-negative people able to protect themselves from becoming positive by taking a once-a-day pill, has Jones hopeful the goal of halting the AIDS epidemic is achievable.

“I think it is the first opportunity to really end the pandemic,” he said.

Cleve Jone’s 60th birthday party benefit for SFAF will take place from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday, October 11 at the Cafe, 2369 Market Street in

the Castro. To make a tax-deductible donation to the agency online, visit http://www.sfaf.org/clevejones.

Meanwhile, Let’s Kick ASS is celebrating its first anniversary Thursday night with a “party for a purpose” where it will be seeking feedback to its proposed long-term survivors’ declaration and agenda.

“Based on many conversations, Facebook posts and emails we’ve come up with a set of principles and an agenda. It is clear that they need an agenda to begin getting the recognition survivors deserve,” stated the group. t

DeFrank center annual meeting

The Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center board will hold its annual meeting Tuesday, September 30 at 7 p.m. at 938 The Alameda in San Jose. For more information, visit www.defrankcenter.org.

Nonprofit ad space available

SF FrontRunners 40th

San Francisco FrontRunners will hold its 40th anniversary celebration Saturday, December 6, at the General’s Residence, Fort Mason. The 6-11 p.m. affair will include food, wine, elections, awards and speeches.

Registration cost is $50 for any SF FrontRunner member; $55 for members of other FrontRunner clubs; and $60 for others. Information is available at http://www.sffr.org/.t

The Let’s Kick Ass event, titled “One Year Later: Setting A Grassroots Long-Term Survival Agenda,” will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, September 25 at the LGBT Community Center in the second floor Rainbow Room.

The center is located at 1800 Market Street in San Francisco.

t

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FREE HEART COUNSELING, 3516 GEARY BLVD #102, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LEAH ANN COCHRANE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/13/14.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/13/14.

SEPT 11, 18, 25, OCT 02, 2014 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-033402800 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: CAPRICORN FRAMING, 1335 DIVISADERO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business was conducted by a general partnership and signed

by LLOYD D. HADDAD & WAYNE D. HAND. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/09/2011.

SEPT 11, 18, 25, OCT 02, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036045500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: UNLEASHEDLEADERS, 177 HANCOCK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WAI POC. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/16/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/16/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036034400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MUNDUS TECHNOLOGIES, 226 10TH AVE, # 1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CARLOS JALLES. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/09/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/09/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036041200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BENT., 759 CASTRO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TAYLOR CUFFARO. 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 09/12/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036014200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KOROV CREATIONS, 380 MONTEREY BLVD, #209, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MADDIE SMITH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/18/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/22/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036043800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MAYA WERX, 74 NEW MONTGOMERY ST, #408, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KIAN TABRIZI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/16/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/16/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036020200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SIN CHERRY2, 2093 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARK TWYMAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/28/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/28/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036039400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DACOMPANY; DA COMPANY TECH, 56 MOSS ST, #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed WHITE SHELF, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/12/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/12/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036040100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SPARKR, 680 MISSION ST., #41A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed OPEN DIALOGUES MENTORSHIP, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/12/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/12/14.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036037200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: P & S PROPERTIES, 2208 SUTTER ST, #2, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed ANDREW G. STEWART, KARLA M. PETERSEN. 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 09/11/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036004300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS, 49 STEVENSON ST, #800, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed AE DIRECT CO. LLC (DE).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/22/13 The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/19/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036032800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BRENDA’S MEAT & THREE, 919 DIVISADERO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed BISTRO AMERICAN, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/08/14.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036037700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VARTAN, 1005 MARKET ST #301, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CARLY ANN ROSE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/31//14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/11/14.

SEPT 25, OCT 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036048300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ITMC SERVICES, 388 WILDE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PAUL M. JOHNSON. 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 09/18/14.

SEPT 25, OCT 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036040300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ERIK ALMAS CELLARS, 1110 PAGE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed ERIK ALMAS PHOTOGRAPHY, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/12/14.

SEPT 25, OCT 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036047000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BTL TRADE, INC., 71 APOLLO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BTL, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/12//14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/17/14.

SEPT 25, OCT 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036047800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HEALING THE BODY AND SOUL, 501 CRESCENT WAY #5202, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed MOJGAN DAVACHI & SEYED MIRARABSHAHI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/17/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/17/14.

SEPT 25, OCT 02, 09, 16, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036049200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ONYA CELLARS, 2455 THIRD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed J2 WINERY LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/18/14.

SEPT 25, OCT 02, 09, 16, 2014

All the news that’s fit to post.

SEPT 18, 25, OCT 02, 09, 2014

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September 25-October 1, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Legal Notices>> ]FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035998600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MOTIVE; MOTIVE CYCLING; MOTIVE GOODS, 522 ASHBURY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHRISTOPHER PREST. 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 08/14/14.

SEPT 04, 11, 18, 25, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035011800

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The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/28/14.

SEPT 04, 11, 18, 25, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036025400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAN FRANCISCO BEVERAGES, 295 TERRY FRANCOIS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94158. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOHN VANLOO VALEER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/02/14.

SEPT 04, 11, 18, 25, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036017200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SCHEMATIC MEDIA, 2120 24TH ST, #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DOUGLAS WEIHNACHT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/2011. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/26/14.

SEPT 04, 11, 18, 25, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036024400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JACKALOPE, 1042 POST ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed REAL DRINKS INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/02/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/02/14.

SEPT 04, 11, 18, 25, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-14-550562 In the matter of the application of: JACOB PHILIP LAFLAMME by and through his parents Michael S. Laflamme & Constance G. Laflamme, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JACOB PHILIP LAFLAMME by and through his parents Michael S. Laflamme & Constance G. Laflamme, is requesting that the name JACOB PHILIP LAFLAMME, be changed to JACOB MCENTEE LAFLAMME. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 514 on the 13th of November 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

SEPT 11, 18, 25, OCT 02, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036025500

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MAXIMUS PRODUCTIONS, 24 BONVIEW ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MAX STEIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/05/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/05/14.

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SEPT 11, 18, 25, OCT 02, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036017700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NEXTREX, 3099 MARKET ST #4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PHILIP DOBBS. 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 08/27/14.

SEPT 11, 18, 25, OCT 02, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036017600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NARA, 518 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SUNHEE NARA CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/27/14.

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SEPT 11, 18, 25, OCT 02, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036025600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAN FRANCISCO SLEEP DIAGNOSTICS, 950 STOCKTON ST #200, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed APOLLO FAMILY MEDICINE AND SLEEP MEDICINE, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/29/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/03/14.

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SEPT 11, 18, 25, OCT 02, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036026300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CALIFORNIA HOLISTIC HEALTH ACADEMY & CALIFORNIAN MASSAGE, 1849 UNION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PARADISE HEALTH RESORTS INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/03/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/03/14.

SEPT 11, 18, 25, OCT 02, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035997200

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Clown time

24

Choral launch

30

Out &About

Gorgeous sounds

23

O&A

22

The

Vol. 44 • No. 39 • September 25-October 1, 2014

www.ebar.com/arts

The edge of Expressionism

by Paul Parish

T

he dance world here is teeming with remarkable performers. Indeed, the level of training is so high, it’s not in question that any show you see will be well-danced, even if the artists involved aren’t famous and they’re performing in a dive somewhere. In fact, if they’re dancing in a dive, like Randee Paufve’s guerilla series 8x8x8, which happens in nightclubs, odds are excellent it’ll have a lot going for it. The real questions will be: what’s the rationale, did it achieve its goals, and how much should you care?

See page 28 >>

Garrett + Moulton Productions’ premiere of The Luminous Edge at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater.

RJ Muna

Anderson Collection has a new home

by Sura Wood

S

tanford University’s riches keep accumulating but, this time around, rather than an announcement of a staggering increase in their endowment or the construction of a sports arena worthy of a prince, they’ve received the core of what many consider one of the finest privatelyheld collections of 20th-century post-war art. The Anderson family, who live in an affluent neighborhood near the university, has given Stanford 121 primo works by some 86 artists, from Clyfford Still, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler and Frank Lobdell to Squeak Carnwath, Mark Rothko, Wayne Thiebaud and Frank Stella, which are now housed in a new, donorfunded, 33,000 sq. ft. campus building that opened to the public this week.

See page 26 >>

Philip Guston, “The Tale” (1961), oil on canvas.

The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

designing home jews and midcentury modernism FINAL WEEKS! On view through October 6, 2014 The Contemporary Jewish Museum | Plan your visit at thecjm.org

<< Out There

22 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

All’s hopping on the Western front

by Roberto Friedman

S

ervicemen, Cockettes, tales from deepest Hollywood and the coalmines: it was a hopping full week for Out There. Let’s start with last Wednesday night, when we attended the grand opening of the newly remodeled Masonic auditorium up on Nob Hill. The art deco palace has undergone a $7 million renovation, and is now a proper showcase for the four-story mosaic mural in its lobby by the late gay artist Emile Norman. The building’s façade features a Norman war memorial sculpture as well, a frieze of four 12-foot-high figures representing the four branches of the armed forces. In addition, 40 San Francisco scene photos by gay SF artist Ron Henggeler, and historic photos from his collection of vintage images, were chosen to decorate the Masonic’s walls. The photos are printed 40 x 60 inches on aluminum, and present a fitting tribute to our City by the Bay. The Masonic bash was first-class deluxe.

We were given access not only to the grand lobby and refurbished auditorium, but also to the backstage area, dressing rooms and new VIP party space known as the California room, with its windows overlooking Nob Hill. A few tours of duty over by the open bar, then it was time for us to scoot down the hill to the theatre district for the opening of ACT’s season, genius clowns Bill Irwin and David Shiner in Old Hats, reviewed in this issue.

Friday night we met up with friends in Golden Gate Park to attend A Tribute to the Cockettes, an art-social event at the de Young Mu-

Ron Henggeler

Emile Norman war memorial sculpture on the façade of the Masonic auditorium on Nob Hill.

seum in conjunction with the exhibit Anthony Friedkin: The Gay Essay. The festivities included a “piano bar” session in which director Russell Blackwood led his Thrillpeddlers troupers, including original members of the Cockettes, in recreations of scenes and songs from such legendary Cockettes vehicles as Pearls over Shanghai, Hot Greeks, Vice Palace, and Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma. Cabaret luminaries Veronica Klaus and Katya Smirnoff-Skyy also sat in, with Scrumbly Koldewyn accompanying on piano. Then The Cockettes co-director David Weissman presented rare Cockettes film clips, including from the 1971 classic, Tricia’s Wedding.

Saturday night found us back in the neighborhood as we went to The Marsh in the Mission for opening night of Semi-Famous: Hollywood Hell Tales from the Middle, the new one-man show from the

talented performer Don Reed (East 14th, Can You Dig It?). Reed tells tales from Tinseltown, including from his gig as warm-up act for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (best guest: Tom Cruise; worst guest: Courtney Love); anecdotes featuring Ike Turner, Lenny Kravitz and others; and the hilarious story of being hit on by Little Richard at the NBC commissary, who said: “You little slice of chocolate handsomeness!” Mostly, it’s Reed’s sheer charisma, storytelling skill and animated stage presence that captivate.

He’s a genius onstage. (Through Oct. 19. Info: themarsh.org.)

Working-class pride

The new film Pride, opening at the Sundance Kabuki and Landmark Embarcadero in SF on Fri., Sept. 26, is inspired by a true story.

Per the promo: “It’s the summer of 1984, [the evil] Margaret Thatcher is in power, and the National Union of Mineworkers is on strike, prompting a London-based group of gay and lesbian activists to raise money to support the strikers’ fami-

Patti Meyer

Don Reed in Semi-Famous: Hollywood Hell Tales from the Middle at The Marsh San Francisco.

H

ello, Gorgeous!” That’s what you’ll say when you hear the first sounds of Barbra Streisand’s voice on her new album of duets, Partners. She’s now 72, and having husbanded her voice with extreme care for the last decade or two, she

“

what Barbra Streisand would think of the play, set in the shopping mall Babs built in the basement of her Malibu manse to house her collectibles. Now, thanks to an interview in last Sunday’s NY Times Style section, we know that “Ms. Streisand didn’t see it. ‘How could I go see a play that’s about my basement, and my stuff?’ she said. ‘I would be so self-conscious.’

“Plus, there were a couple of zingers in it about her son, Jason, and that upset her. ‘I could have almost stood it about me, but when it was about my son, I didn’t think we should go,’ she said.” A shame: she missed a good play that treated her and Jason respectfully and with true affection.

It’s been real

When the off-Broadway hit Buyer & Cellar played SF recently, some theatergoers were left wondering

It’s always fun to thumb through Reality Shock!, an annual collection of strange-but-true stuff from the people who run the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! franchise. We found ourselves engrossed by its fashion pages.

For example, here’s their version of Roadkill Fashion: “Fashion designer Jess Eaton from Brighton, England, created a range of wedding clothes from roadkill, including a bridal cape made from swans’ feathers. She also made a necklace out of human bones after sourcing a ribcage from a university medical department.” That last trinket is rather creepy.

Or consider their item on the Hair Coat: “British firm Arla commissioned the creation of a coat made entirely from men’s chest hair.

It took designers 200 hours to weave together about one million strands of hair. The limited-edition coat went on sale for $4,000.” But how many hirsute gents were sheared for that one coat? Inquiring minds want to know.t

sounds, well, gorgeous – soaring with ease into the stratosphere, belting (yes, just a bit), making your nipples hard with her bull’s-eye pitch, her breath control, her long-held bell tones that break into a soft and relaxed vibrato. Yeah, there’s a delicate amount of reverb and filtering in the mix, but this is (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again) gorgeous singing.

I hope you caught her appearance as the sole guest on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. Although Fallon was an idiot who wouldn’t stop gushing over Babs, she was gracious to him, poised and witty.

And she sang the most dynamite “Come Rain or Come Shine.” She sang higher than Yma Sumac, lower than Carol Channing, and with the exciting punch of her days-of-yore appearances on the Johnny Carson show. Her duet version with John Mayer on Partners can’t compare.

And it seemed a gracious honor when Jimmy offered Babs his chair.

Although they bantered about it with seeming spontaneity, I slowly realized this wasn’t gallantry at all.

The reversal of guest/host position allowed Babs to present her favored right profile to the camera, mostly shielding the scorned left, and was probably a perquisite of her appearance on the show.

So, I’m concluding, she’s keepin’ her ass covered. Literally – on television she wore a jacket with tails, and in the recording studio (you should definitely watch these music videos on YouTube), she favors billowing blouses. And figuratively – she’s playing it safe. She never wanted to be caviar for cultists, and has always courted mass appeal. So her duet

partners are safe choices. No one among this all-male crew is gonna rock the boat. Also safe is the way she’s rather unfortunately sticking to her previously much- (some say overly) recorded classics. Over half the song choices are some form of retread. Another “Evergreen?”

Again with “The Way We Were?” My pulse does not race.

With one exception, she maintains the same plodding, slow tempo throughout the (not-toogenerous) 50-minute playing time.

Sure, it shows off her breath control and lets her voice be unfettered as all get out, wafting around the heavens. But put them together with the overreaching arrangements, and you got trouble. In each song a massive 70-piece orchestra is thrown mid-way into nearly overwhelming climax. Tsunamis of sound. But put them all together, and they spell stupefying. They begin to negate their own impressiveness. Sample two or three cuts, and wallow in the luxury of it all; listen to too many in a row, and you may feel you have molasses in your ears.

Not so much the dramatic actress in song that she was early in her career, Babs is content now to deliver pure sound. No small feat. But like See page 28 >>

lies. Initially rebuffed by the Union, the group identifies a tiny mining village in Wales and sets off to make their donation in person. As the strike drags on, the two groups discover that standing together makes for the strongest union of all.”

Pride was directed by Matthew Warchus (God of Carnage), written by Stephen Beresford, and stars Bill Nighy (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), Imelda Staunton (Maleficent), Dominic West (The Hour), Paddy Considine (Submarine), and Andrew Scott (Sherlock).

Although not mentioned in the film itself, as a result of the gay activists’ efforts in support of the strike, the miners union got the Labor Party to support adoption of gay rights legislation in Britain. England moved forward.

Passing on ‘Cellar’

Barbra & the boys

by John F. Karr

t

t

Theatre>>

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 23

Clowning around the town

by Richard Dodds

T

here are somethings old and somethings new in Old Hats, with “old” and “new” taking on multiple meanings. Bill Irwin and David Shiner, who last roiled ACT’s Geary Theatre 13 years ago in Fool Moon, are at it again in a vaudeville revue that stirs around both in autumn leaves and techno-wonders through sketches that reboot the pair’s “greatest hits” and add some new reasons to merrily ride their tilt-a-whirl world.

Still a-whirl, this pair is, but their world is less anarchically athletic and acrobatic than it once was.

Shiner remains the one with the sharper elbows, but the audience is relatively safer than before, and Irwin’s battles against invisible hostile forces have become smaller skirmishes. The structure is that of traditional vaudeville – title cards on an easel announce each new scene or song – which gives further order to a disorderly domain.

The opening scene captures many of these facets, as the curtain rises on Irwin and Shiner in sad-sack garb frantically running in place as a video projection of an Indiana

Jones-sized boulder barrels down on them. At first it seems traditional antics are meeting newer technologies, but there is a twist as the screen goes blank save one of those spinning wheels by which your computer is asking you to bear with it. The world we think we control always seems to have a trump card up its sleeve.

Although Irwin and Shiner had not performed together for more than a decade when Old Hats reunited them for an off-Broadway run last year, their well-honed rapport often manifesting itself as rivalry remains intact. As two commuters waiting on a train platform, they get into a wordless argument as they take turns poking each other in the chest. It’s as if they’re pushing elevator buttons as they alternately grow taller and shorter in a delicious bit of dexterous physical comedy. And their work as a second-tier magic act, Shiner as the cheesy prestidigitator and Irwin in drag as his mamboing assistant, is priceless.

They also get to work separately to mostly felicitous ends, though there are a few misfires. But not the sketch requiring technological precision that has Irwin fumbling to regain control of his iPad, as his head

pops into its screen while the image on the screen pops into his head.

Shiner’s showcase scene dates back to his days with Cirque du Soleil, as he plays a manic silent-film director trying to teach, without words, chosen audience members how to play out a melodramatic saloon scene.

Let us just say these volunteers don’t get it right on the first take – or the second or the third – as Shiner mocks his actors’ efforts at trying to mimic him. Funny stuff, at least if you get to watch from your seat.

In a break from tradition, Irwin and Shiner actually vocalize as they try to competitively woo singer Shaina Taub with flowers and riffs on The Wizard of Oz. Accompanied by a small band, Taub offers up a collection of her own quirky between-sketch songs with radiantly good cheer. Director Tina Landau helps sustain that cheer as she pulls the diverse pieces of Old Hats into a happy whole, and Irwin and Shiner take what one hopes isn’t a final victory lap around such a bountiful partnership.t Old Hats will run at ACT’s Geary Theater through Oct. 12. Tickets are $20-$120. Call 749-2228 or go to act-sf.org.

Kevin Berne

David Shiner, left, and Bill Irwin know how to push each other’s buttons in a scene from Old Hats at the Geary Theatre.

Once upon a time in Vietnam

by Erin Blackwell

I

was excited to watch a film about Vietnam, but bored watching it. The title Last Days in Vietnam promises a complex canvas, but director Rory Kennedy delivers a dismayingly shallow, small-focus film. A bit of navel-gazing, really, by a handpicked handful of government employees who, 40 years ago, administered a fiasco. They let themselves off gently with a bit of on-camera mea culpa, or “my bad.”

This moral idiocy, which, uncorrected, would ultimately spawn the “War on Terror,” is on view starting Friday at the Opera Plaza Cinema.

With the notable exception of brilliant British documentarist Adam Curtis, nobody dares narrate a non-fiction film these days.

No filmmaker wants to be caught dead stating an opinion. Maybe they don’t actually know what or how to think. So, usually, a bunch of talking heads are stitched together in a crazy-quilt montage, with the narrative in the mind of the beholder.

Stock footage and musical interludes complement or contradict the blah-blah, adding depth, irony, or intrigue – if you’re lucky.

The de facto narrator of Last Days is CIA analyst Frank Snepp, a rugged guy with snowy hair cut short, who uses simple words and semaphore facial expressions to avoid telling the camera, the world, the director, you, or me what he knows. Because if he was where he says he was, he knows things. But Rory, there’s no point interviewing Frank Snepp about Vietnam if you can’t get him to say anything interesting. And really, letting him narrate your film for you suggests you’re a U.S. government apologist pretending to make an indie film.

The first third of Last Day tells us that the Paris Peace Accord was signed in January 1973, covering a ceasefire between the Communist North and the Americanized South, and a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

There’s President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger creepily lisping. It’s very hard to watch the vile vampire Kissinger in hornrims smiling as he mimics a human being. There’s zero context for U.S. foreign policy in general, or Kissinger’s reign in particular. Not one political analyst or journalist participates onscreen.

Courtesy of Hugh Doyle

Aboard the USS Kirk, crew members signal the Chinook to hover over the deck and drop its passengers out (April 29, 1975). From director Rory Kennedy’s Last Days in Vietnam.

In August 1974, Nixon was impeached for burglarizing the opposition’s offices in the Watergate Hotel. The departure of the crazy warmonger from Whittier emboldened the Communist North. In

April 1975, the South Vietnamese capital Saigon was a sitting duck.

Everything U.S. taxpayers’ dollars had paid for was about to be flushed spectacularly down the toilet. Here’s where the story begins, 30 minutes

in, but it never gets very far, wide, or deep, because director Kennedy doesn’t scratch the surface.

There were 5,000 Americans in South Vietnam, with Vietnamese “wives and girlfriends” who wanted

Bettmann/Corbis

A CIA employee helps Vietnamese evacuees onto an Air America helicopter from the top of 22 Gia Long Street, a half-mile from the U.S. Embassy (April 29, 1975). From director Rory Kennedy’s Last Days in Vietnam.

to get the hell out before the Communists started the inevitable process of exterminating collaborators.

We’re told there was no evacuation plan. Did the U.S. never contemplate defeat? Did it never consider the people of South Vietnam to be human? The lack of foresight is staggering. The indifference to the suffering, not of the putative enemy in the North, but the putative friend in the South, is sociopathic. If you’re looking for answers to these appalling conundrums, look elsewhere.

Last Days gathers self-serving anecdotes about a botched evacuation from the ubiquitous Snepp and a few army and navy mouthpieces who will tell a consistent story without lapsing into remorse or insight. The only wrinkle in the film is the bitterness directed at Ambassador Graham Martin, a dignified old-school diplomat saddled with the least desirable posting in the world. CIA mastermind Snepp has the chutzpah to pretend it was somehow the Ambassador’s fault that more of the native population wasn’t saved. Kennedy gives Snepp the soapbox, and there’s no one to contradict him.

I don’t know why Kennedy made this film, which barely functions as a film. There are four kinds of images: talking heads, stock footage of South Vietnamese crowds, animated maps, and a computer model of the U.S. Embassy from every possible external angle except the earthworm’s. None of these visuals is remotely engaging in any way. The soundtrack music by Gary Lionelli is brooding cellos hovering on the brink of a thematic statement that never arrives.

Maybe the boredom inherent to Last Days is indicative of a generalized inability to face what we did to Vietnam and ourselves by shipping tons of materiel and soldiers, spies, contractors, diplomats over there, and bombing and terrorizing peasants for a while, and then leaving. The alternative to boredom is questioning the official version, expressing pain, releasing secrets, and grieving the dead. But if we actually dealt with Vietnam, we’d be forced to stop repeating it.t Opens Friday at Opera Plaza Cinemas in SF, Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley, and Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

<< Music

24 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

Have brunch with SF Gay Men’s Chorus

by David-Elijah Nahmod

T

he San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus kicks off its 37th season with Crescendo: Brunch with the Boys on Sunday. The event will be a fun-filled, up-close and personal luncheon with the boys of the Chorus. Crescendo will also serve as a way to raise critical funds that are needed in order to operate over the next year, and to honor some of the people whose work has benefited the Chorus.

SFGMC Board Chairman Justin Taylor explained the Chorus’ importance within the fabric of the community.

“Our community isn’t a paragon of mental health,” he said. “That’s why organizations like the Chorus are so important as a place to build community. As long as we are thrown out by their families for being gay, as long as we have hostile religious organizations, there will be a need for organizations like the Chorus. The Chorus is part of an array of solutions to create community and to offer positive role models.”

Among those being honored at

Crescendo are Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin, Wicked), whose choral piece Testimony was written as a contribution to the It Gets Better Project. Testimony was recorded

by SFGMC, and was mastered

by Leslie Ann Jones at Skywalker Sound. Jones will also be honored at Crescendo.

Schwartz was also the creative force behind Tyler’s Suite, which the Chorus premiered in March 2014. Tyler’s Suite featured contributions from a number of notable American composers. It was created to honor the memory of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Courtesy SFGMC gay college student who commit- Artistic director Dr. Tim Seelig leads the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. ted suicide in 2011 after he was outed by a straight roommate.

[SFGMC Artistic Director Dr. Tim comfortable. Yet he helps so many The roommate shot video of Seelig] gathered seven of the finest young artists. He’s about helping Clementi making out with another composers. It was an incredible and artists thrive. He goes to colleges male via hidden cameras, then postchallenging process. We are proud and to small musical theaters. He’s ed the video online. a humble man, a gift.” of that commission.”

“Schwartz was our coordinator Schwartz and Leslie Ann Jones Taylor said that Schwartz’s supfor that commission,” Taylor said. are both expected to attend Creport of the Chorus has been uncon“We knew we wanted to tell Tyscendo, which will also honor the ditional and absolute. “He doesn’t ler’s story. We got permission from William and Flora Hewlett Foundahave to do this,” said Taylor. “He’s the family, then Stephen and Tim

t

tion for its philanthropic support for the arts. Jones, Taylor reports, was more than generous with her time, and contributed far more than she was contracted for during the mixing of Testimony.

Taylor promised that Crescendo will be great fun, but he also underscored its importance. “We are a community-based organization,” he said. “Only half of our income comes from ticket sales. Events like Crescendo are an important part of how we fund our mission.”

The luncheon will include performances. Each table will have its own theme, and attendees are encouraged to dress according to the theme of their table. “My table will be Venice Beach,” Taylor said. “This is not your Grandfather’s fundraiser. It will be festive, fearless and fabulous!”t San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus presents Crescendo: Brunch with the Boys, Sun., Sept. 28, Noon, Four Seasons Hotel, 757 Market, SF. Tickets: $150-$250. Info: sfgmc. org/crescendo.

Appreciating James Gandolfini

by David Lamble

A

re you doing something desperate, something we can’t clean up this time?” The question, from Tom Hardy’s taciturn bartender to the late James Gandolfini’s amiable “Cousin Marv,” reverberates all the way through The Drop, a smart if bloody thriller from the pen of Dennis LeHane (Mystic River). This dark tale loses little punch despite the switch in settings from LeHane’s Southie Boston precincts to a drab slice of industrial, non-gentrified Brooklyn.

Belgian-born director Michael Roskam (Bullhead) keeps us guessing about why Gandolfini’s paunchy Marv feels such resentment towards Hardy’s GQ-cute barkeep. In a pivotal moment from what was his last big-screen role, Gandolfini reminds his handsome young foe about the perils of ignoring the crime world’s unwritten rules concerning turf and the respect due an older and still dangerous rival. “At least I had something once. I was respected. I was feared. When I walked into a place, people sat up straight, They noticed.”

Despite his premature death at 51, James Gandolfini left behind a hefty body of big-screen work, sometimes

“

Tom Hardy and the late James Gandolfini in director Michael Roskam’s The Drop.

overlooked in the ongoing celebration of his role as the emotionally volatile New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano. Here are four recent releases from a roster of 50 films, a quarter-century of mostly noirish fare, which we heartily recommend.

Not Fade Away (2012) Gandolfini’s the clueless but goodhearted 60s Long Island dad whose rock star-aspiring son (John Magaro) is

hell-bent on getting a record deal.

The core of this well-observed rock drama consists of kitchen eruptions between Gandolfini and Magaro.

Gandolfini displays all the highintensity fireworks that made his Sopranos crime boss such a frightening treat, but without the body count. This was the final collaboration between Gandolfini and director David Chase. Chase and Sopra-

nos partner Steven Van Zandt nail the 60s suburban garage-band vibe.

Early on, tension between Gandolfini and Magaro spills over in a physical altercation as the kid returns from junior college with a Dylan-worthy Afro and boots with “Cuban heels,” which dad sees as “faggy.” This moment of patriarchal rage is tempered by a touching father/son scene where the old man, reeling from a cancer diagnosis, allows his kid to feel the love. (Paramount DVD) Cinema Verite (2012), based on the true story of the Santa Barbara clan showcased on the early-70s public-TV doc An American Family. Gandolfini excels as the slightly slippery reality-TV pioneer Craig Gilbert, whose cameras captured a hell of a lot more than he, the Loud family or PBS bargained on. Queer viewers will love the story of Lance Loud (a plucky trickster turn from Thomas Dekker), a gay-boy original whose spectacular coming-out party would properly kick off America’s post-Stonewall decade. (HBO Films) Welcome to the Rileys (2011) Director Jack Scott and writer Ken Hixon cast Gandolfini as a distressed businessman. Of Gandolfini’s 50 big-screen roles, Doug

Riley is perhaps the sweetest, most self-sacrificing and emotionally vulnerable. Riley arrives in post-Katrina New Orleans for a convention, only to be drawn into the plight of a feisty teenage rent girl (Kristen Stewart). The filmmakers avoid both melodrama and hooker cliches, while Gandolfini’s good soul is a revelation. (Sony DVD) In the Loop (2009) This laughout-loud black comedy imagines the skullduggery leading up to a U.S./British Middle East invasion.

Scottish-born Armando Iannucci translates the back-stabbing world of high-stakes diplomacy into a diabolical farce positioned uneasily between Dr. Strangelove and Joe Orton. Gandolfini’s peace-loving American general gets many of the best one-liners, including the showstopping exit line, “Go fuck yourself, Frodo!,” spoken to a frightened young English diplomat (Chris Addison). The Anglo-Italian comedian Peter Capaldi squares off in a steelyeyed staredown against the amused Italian-American Gandolfini. In a comic touch, Gandolfini’s general types out a peace communique on a child’s toy keyboard, squatting in a Washington nursery. (IFC Films)t

by David Lamble

moments that are almost worth the price of a ticket. The Thailand-raised British schoolboy Jack not only has a Hugh Grant-worthy stammer, but also delivers a home headache remedy that is literally the film’s elephant in the room. As we watch the boy joyfully cavort around these enormous mammals, he deadpans, “Elephants have this weird ability which you may think is a stupid lie, sort of a legend they came up with that isn’t really true, but I’ve experienced it myself: how elephants can change the chemicals in your brain. If you have a headache, all you’ve got to do is put your head to an elephant’s head, and within seconds your headache just goes away.”

Finally, in an example of a child possessing wisdom beyond his years, 11-year-old Remi, perhaps reflecting on his country’s checkered record on tolerance issues, proclaims simply, “I’m not a citizen of France, I’m a citizen of the world. To know there are still people who differentiate between humans depending on race, that’s completely absurd.”t

11 up

A

Henrik Nordstrom

Jamira in director Genevieve Bailey’s I Am Eleven.

new doc from Down Under challenges viewers to remember how it felt to be a “tweener” straddling the perilous slope between kiddom and the horrors of early adolescence. First-time Aussie helmer Genevieve Bailey neglected to include any overtly queer boys or girls in I Am Eleven, a 94-minute first effort that gets off to a sluggish start, then rallies in the back stretch.

While some of Bailey’s kids – culled from 15 countries, with special emphasis on India, Thailand, France, the UK and the US – are articulate in a child-prodigy fashion, rehashing adult nostrums in a way that can seem cute or precious, most quickly become grating. What kids at that age are overflowing with is a kinetic, physical intelligence.

It’s why we watch the Little League World Series, and it explains part of the reason Richard Linklater’s brilliant fictional Boyhood is likely to reap award-season gold.

I Am Eleven has a couple of stellar

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 25

Beethoven, Bates & Brant

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Music>>

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Todd Rosenberg

Alternative Energy composer Mason Bates, a self-described “mixologist” of sounds.

by Philip Campbell

O

ne of the advantages of regular concert attendance at the San Francisco Symphony is the insight it provides into the logic of programming choices for subscription series programs. It also allows for comparisons and better understanding of the composers included in the season’s schedule. It may be early, but recent weeks at the SFS have already yielded some fascinating examples of how intelligent programming can ease listeners into new works while still managing to keep well-known classics fresh and alive.

Last week was the latest example of Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas’ commitment to American composers and new music. It was also proof-positive that “maverick” musical inspiration is not necessarily confined to young composers.

Henry Brant was 87 years old when he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ice Field: Spatial Narratives for Large and Small Orchestral Groups for the SFS in 2001, and his bigtitled, relatively brief (20 minutes) score certainly fills the hall that inspired it.

Davies Symphony Hall has never been known for exceptional acoustics, and even after the major overhaul many years back, the auditory range remains only slightly better than acceptable. Brant found a way around the dead spots and lack of aural bloom by positioning musicians in various locations around the hall and on the stage.

Ice Field is also arguably grounded around the massive sonority of DSH’s magnificent Ruffatti organ.

Talk about a sonic spectacular. Organist Cameron Carpenter, somewhat curiously touted as the star of the evening, took his place at the console and provided an extraordinary running commentary and recitation of shrieks, whoops, gurgles and deeply disturbing rumbles. The piece is so big and physically disjointed it requires two conductors: one on the podium (fearless leader MTT) and another conducting brass and a jazz drummer in an upper tier. Edwin Outwater, whose face and talent have long been familiar to SFS audiences, was given that assignment. We couldn’t see him from where we sat, but his group could definitely be heard.

Brant accomplished in spades what he set out to do, but unfortunately, filling the vast reaches of DSH with big explosions of sound punctuated by moments of silence doesn’t really amount to a very satisfying musical experience. The sheer audacity and power of the work are evidence of the composer’s late-life achievements. It just isn’t as much

fun as MTT suggested in his intro, and for listeners who came to hear Carpenter it was something of a letdown. Would it have killed them to give the kid a solo encore?

The night started well with associate concertmaster Nadya Tichman leading members of the orchestra in a propulsive and nicely gauged account of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. The concluding half of the concert was filled by a strangely flaccid account of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. The first and second movements were stretched to interminable length, and the gorgeous melody of the Andante cantabile was underwhelming. The game plan didn’t fall into place until the final movement, and it came too late. The Finale was triumphant after all, but credit for the standing ovation should simply go to Tchaikovsky and the excellence of the orchestral playing.

The previous week saw DSH hosting another sonic-palooza with the latest installment of the Beethoven and Bates series that initially earned a $75K grant from the NEA for the SFS. Mason Bates is an American composer and selfdescribed mixologist who has made a big name for himself writing symphonic music made notable mostly for his innovation in adding electronics to his brilliantly scored and melodically attractive large-scale works, never less than hugely listenable. I have never been quite as captivated as others by Bates’ somewhat superficial charms. Putting his name alongside Beethoven’s hasn’t helped, and there is a certain whiff of desperation in the musical intelligentsia trying to appear hip when over-praising his likeable but essentially decorative works.

The SFS’ first performances of Alternative Energy may have finally brought me into the fold. The big four-part tone poem is a witty and tuneful romp that may or may not have larger goals, but results in a satisfying experience anyway. If Respighi could incorporate canned birdsong into his crowd-pleasers like the Pines of Rome, why can’t Bates have some fun with exotica and melodic interludes reminiscent of Martin Denny and his Quiet Village? Bates seems to have a special fondness for the fun stereophonic showpieces of the 1960s, and frankly, so do I. I’m not afraid to date myself (that ship has long since sailed), and I get a kick out of the young composer’s references.

The electronica aspects of the score often amount to simple whooshes and burps coming from multi-channel speakers, and Brant got the same effect from the organ in his Ice Field, so I’m not giving Bates a high score

for innovation. What wins me over is the fact the composer himself has never tried to make his works appear more important than they are. It is good that the performance of Alternative Energy was being recorded for an upcoming release on SFS Media.

It will be a chance for everyone to savor Bates’ music on a good home audio system, sort of a sampler of a sampler’s work.

The Beethoven part of the concert was filled by Leif Ove Andsnes performing an elegant and rhythmically perfect account of the irresistible Piano Concerto No. 1. The audience demanded an encore, so Andsnes was joined on the piano bench by MTT for a Schubert fourhanded delight. Bates can hang with Beethoven anytime, as long as the old master gets his props like that.t

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<< Fine Art

26 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

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Henrik Kam

The new home of the Anderson Collection on the Stanford University campus.

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Anderson Collection

From page 21

Though the architectural aesthetics of the facility, designed by Richard Olcott, whose firm Ennead Architects completed Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall last year, may not be on the same plane as Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth or even Mario Botta’s original concept for SFMOMA, now under siege as a result of that museum’s expansion, the building is simple and unpretentious, Most importantly, it provides a tasteful showcase for the art – the majority of which is installed on the expansive second floor – while not overshadowing it.

Clerestories allow for filtered natural light on either side of a central staircase that has a curved ceiling above it; best of all, an open floor-plan that mimics the flowing, interconnected spaces of the Andersons’ sprawling ranch-style home makes it possible (and fun) to look across to various galleries and gain unexpected views of paintings or sculptures that one can then see or revisit.

I made several pilgrimages to the grouping of Bay Area Figurative artists, where I was drawn back to gaze again upon the gorgeous sky bluegray and aquamarine vistas of Richard Diebenkorn’s “Ocean Park #60” (1973), whose seemingly translucent surface invites entrée into its maze of semi-permeable squares. It hangs outside a room that contains the same artist’s totally California “Girl on the Beach” (1957) and a trio of transfixing paintings by the late artist and Stanford professor Nathan Oliveira. The textured, nearly 3-D creature at the center of Oliveira’s “Reclining Nude” (1958) appears to be emerging from a muddy, primordial ooze; pinkish purples and detached human body parts float and coalesce in “Nude in Environment, 1” (1962); and then there’s the arresting “Stage #2 with Bed” (1967). Pitch-black and theatrical, it’s a setting for drama, a theater stage with a long, flat, bluish bed and a couch facing across the space to the only light source: a door, stage right, cracked open just a hair. In the corner of the gallery is Manuel Neri’s “Untitled Standing Figure” (1982), a white plaster sculpture of a female half-swathed in marine blue, as if it had been transported out of the studio before it was ready. On the opposite side of the gallery, a pair of large

and loud Lobdell canvases vies for attention; like rowdy pals looking for trouble, they shout out color contrasts between blaring yellow and deep indigo in one instance and subtle umber and chocolate brown in the other.

The atmosphere feels freer and somehow less officious in this place than at a public institution, which befits the donors who were motivated not only by their legacy – Hunk Anderson is 91; Moo, 87 – but a desire to share. The Andersons, who made their money in the food service industry, lived with their art. Before the move, part of the collection was assembled at their home, where “Lucifer” (1947), one of Jackson Pollock’s early drip paintings, hung over their daughter’s bed as it had done for years. (The artist’s cigarette paper is famously stuck somewhere on the canvas.) The Andersons parted with that prized masterpiece along with the others; 104 are on display, with more to be exhibited on a rotating basis going forward.

The collection is heavy on the New York School – most of the work spans the period from 1947-86 – with fine representations by abstract expressionists such as de Kooning’s “Woman Standing – Pink” (195455), a lush, pastel-toned oil of a voluptuous nude who looks like she’s in the clutches of a garbage compactor. The art is organized loosely into about a dozen sections, such as Dumb Objects, California Funk, Geometric Abstraction, (the distinctly L.A.) Light & Space/Finish Fetish and The Shaped Canvas.

The latter is where Frank Stella’s elephantine “Zeltweg” (1981) doesn’t so much reside as rule. The multipart, multi-media aluminum construction, consisting of nine sepa-

rate components with cut-outs and painted squiggles, is virtually threedimensional, and made by someone who must have been on drugs at the time, or high by other means.

Painting dominates, but there are several compelling sculptures like Nancy Graves’ “Telestitch” (1988), a delicate, playful iron-and-bronze sculpture with an abacus, spiky radial saw discs perched on a lattice sea urchin that sits on a twisted stick, which, in turn, rests on the topmost point of a painted starfish.

It’s reminiscent of the miniature balancing acts created by Calder, an inspiration for Graves, whose work is a welcome and all-too-rare sight. “Sky Garden” (1959-64), an enigmatic black wood assemblage

by Louise Nevelson, is a repository of threatening, oversized, jaggededged tools suitable for a giant forest troll. Like many of her cabinets of found curiosities, it raises more questions than it answers, which is just what art should do.

Though the building’s location most directly benefits Stanford students, teachers and scholars, admission is free and access is available to anyone. The best way for people from the Bay Area to take in the Anderson collection is to make an afternoon of it, combining it with a visit to the Cantor and perhaps a stroll to Stanford’s Memorial Court to view “Burghers of Calais,” Rodin’s stunning group sculpture of the tormented French noblemen who, legend has it, sacrificed their lives to save their town. It’s alleged that the figures are so extraordinarily lifelike drunken freshmen have stopped to ask them for directions.t For info: anderson.stanford.edu.

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Joan Mitchell, “Before, Again IV” (1985), oil on canvas.

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Books>>

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 27

Flawed gay theologian?

by Brian Bromberger

Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh (Knopf, $35) ho was Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45)? Theologian, Protestant martyr, German Lutheran pastor, musician, poet, fiction writer, anti-Nazi spy, key founding member of the Confessing Church that led Christian opposition to the Nazi government, and according to author Charles Marsh, probably a homosexual. All of this is detailed in the comprehensive, meticulously researched, and at times tedious new interpretation of his extraordinary life, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The pampered son of a rich German family (his father was the dean of the German psychiatric establishment), Bonhoeffer announced at 13 that he wanted to become a theologian. When his atheist brothers said that the church was not only irrelevant but also an obstacle to promoting equality and human rights, Dietrich replied, “In that case, I shall reform it.”

One of the virtues of Marsh’s book is that he does not engage in the hagiography of previous biographers; he’s willing to present a very human portrait. Bonhoeffer was brilliant, an incisive writer and thinker, multi-talented in several disciplines, but also a dandy, preoccupied with clothes, lazy in terms of physical work, emotionally needy, snobbish at times, and self-occupied, with a temper. For almost his entire life, he lived off his parent’s money. They bankrolled his extended travelling and received packages of his dirty laundry to be cleaned.

He wrote at least three spiritual classics still revered today – The Cost of Discipleship, Life Together, and Letters and Papers from Prison – in a 16-volume canon, astonishing considering he only lived to be 39.

He is probably the closest Protestants have come to a bona fide saint, though flawed. He led a life of privilege during a time of economic turmoil in Germany after WWI, yet expressed solidarity with the poor and oppressed. A staunch opponent of the Nazis from the very beginning (he went on radio two days after Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933 to denounce him), he also defended the Jews when it was an unpopular and dangerous stance.

He preached radical discipleship inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, which he believed could only be lived out in community. He was a sharp critic of liberal German Protestantism, whose nationalism and tendency to see God as a projection of human need and longing, he felt, left it helpless to combat Nazism. He founded an underground seminary, Finkenwalde, for dissident pastors in training. Much of his theological writings centered around the question of whether Christianity could still be vital for people who had found better ways to spend their Sunday mornings, still a relevant question today.

He coined the phrase “religionless Christianity,” meaning not a faith devoid of God, but a God unshackled by human philosophical constructs, leading to a renewal of Christianity centered on action. It wasn’t until after his yearlong professorship at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1930 that he reevaluated his theological training as being too abstract, having been influenced

by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and his social ethics, as well as the preaching of the black spiritual tradition. Marsh felt his finest work came during his two years in prison, an incredible output unshackled to convention, with the freedom to indulge in “trial combinations” and

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Yet this book is the center of a storm of controversy as Marsh contends Bonhoeffer was gay, though celibate. In Finkenwalde’s first class in 1935 was a seminarian named Eberhard Bethge, who became inseparable with Bonhoeffer, as “they knew each other down to the most minute detail of their behavior, opinions, interests, abilities, and innate characteristics.”

They shared a bank account, signed Christmas cards together, slept in the same bedroom in Bonhoeffer’s parent’s home, fussed over Christmas gifts they gave as a couple, took elaborate vacations together, wrote intimate letters to each other daily, often in emotional language. Bonhoeffer regularly sent Bethge presents, and in his will left all his belongings and writings to Bethge. Critics of Marsh disapprove of the “scandalous overtones” to what they claim is a samesex friendship that was intense due to the extreme times in which they lived, and intimate but not sexual, arguing this was the language of the period.

There is no smoking gun per se, with most of the evidence circumstantial, but the situation is complicated by the fact that after WWII, Bethge became a scholar who wrote the definitive biography of Bonhoeffer. Having custody of all his papers, he could have destroyed any direct proof. Just prior to Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment, Bethge became engaged to Bonhoeffer’s niece, whom he married after the war. Coincidentally, after Bethge’s engagement, Bonhoeffer, who never had a girlfriend, announced his engagement to 17-yearold Maria von Wedemeyer. Marsh tries to strike the middle ground by asserting that Bonhoeffer died a celibate. He observes Bethge did not reciprocate the same intensity of affectionate feelings for Dietrich, who never acknowledged publically “a sexual desire for Bethge, nor would Bethge have welcomed its expression.” After their respective engagements, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Now we can resume our partnership, and we can travel together in those places where we found so much joy, and we can leave our wives back in Germany, or some place.” Bethge had

everything to gain from not tainting the legend. Marsh says Bethge was probably not gay, but he could very well have been bisexual. We’ll probably never know.

But because Bonhoeffer is such a central figure in German resistance to Hitler, as well as one of the 20th century’s most innovative theologians, historically it is important that we know the truth about his life. In line with his own thinking, Bonhoeffer himself would be on the side of transparency.t

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<< Dance

28 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

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RJ Muna

Tegan Schwab and Dudley Flores in Garrett + Moulton Productions’ premiere of The Luminous Edge at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater.

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Garrett + Moulton

From page 21

Luminous Edge, which filled the theater at Yerba Buena Center show after show last weekend, a magnum opus from Garrett/Moulton Productions, rang every bell so far as I was concerned. The choreography is thrilling and exacting, and performances by the 24 dancers and eight live musicians reached a high level of professionalism. Beyond that, it’s both accessible and awesome, and the audience got it and loved it.

The whole thing is like a sophisticated and profound Merrie Melodie.

The curtain was already up when we arrived, the eight musicians were already grouped at the back of the stage, and the movement to come echoed the music without ever being slavishly illustrative. When the lights went down, lines of dark-clad dancers appeared at both sides of the space, then proceeded to the center and formed up like trees along a

highway as the music began, whereupon a heterosexual pair of dancers appeared at the back of the allée and came toward us. The process then repeated twice: the two lines crossed through each other like shuttles in a loom, another couple appeared and came toward us. One last time, the lines recrossed, and a third pair appeared, this time with her folded up, carried in his arms. This same image re-appeared at the very end.

Then began a dance that was about the brevity of life, its many absorbing moods, to contemporary classical music with many different tones and rhythms, some of them rhythmically intoxicating, punctuated along the way by songs from Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), which gave an emotional structure to the music and to the entire spectacle.

Janice Garrett’s brilliantly crisp work has gained in emotional resonance since she began working with Charles Moulton some 15 years ago, and so has his. Moulton’s fascinating experiments in group-mind operation have always been entertaining, and his 1,000-person dance that the Wachowski Bros. embedded in the Warner Bros. movie Matrix Reloaded (2001) echoed some of the fabulous chaos that Cecil B. DeMille incorporated into his “Parting of the Red Sea” in The Ten Commandments. His weeping movement choirs in this piece, with their wringing arm gestures, are a lot more like a Greek tragedy’s chorus than were the adorable players in 9 Person Precision Ball Passing, with which he first made his name as a choreographer.

Like most postmodern work, Luminous Edge blurs many edges, yet many things were exact. There were 32 performers, a quarter of them musicians; of the 24 dancers, twothirds were corps de ballet, 6 soloists; of the soloists, half were male, in drab, dark clothes, half were female, in Chinese-red-lacquer satin cocktail dresses. The dance style is half classical ballet, half “old modern dance.”

Since program notes merely identified the players, you were forced to make something out of it yourself.

<<

Barbra Streisand

From page 22

the arrangements, she doesn’t so much reach an emotional climax, as just the loudest place. As slow does not equal profound, loud is not emotional imperative.

Yet on most every track, Babs breaks through. There are thrills all over the place. Josh Groban’s voice entwines comfortably with Babs’ on “Somewhere.” In a big-band arrangement, Michael Bublé sings “It Had to be You” Sinatra-style, and gooses Babs into some snaz of her own (if the number doesn’t swing as it ought, it’s surely the tempo at

Probably every member of the audience followed a different throughline, though the Mahler songs have such a powerful emotional logic built into their harmonic logic and their use of the sad tones of the oboe and the contralto voice, they pulled the harmonically trivial “contemporary classical” pieces assembled and conducted by director-clarinetist Jonathan Russell into an emotionally resonant whole.

If you already knew the Kindertotenlieder – or as a balletomane, knew Dark Elegies, the great setting of that score from a half-century ago

by Anthony Tudor, also in the style of central-European Expressionist dance – it was impossible not to see the community responding to grief in this work, and to see an ecumenical response to all the great dance traditions, including infusions towards the end of Indian classicaldance styles, notably the dance of Shiva in Nol Simonse’s dance at in the finale. This begins with a solo that adopts poses of Shiva, before the section in which he accepts the embrace of one dancer after another, who then collapse slowly and fall to the floor as if dead.

You can’t say that this is about the death of children, it’s more about the coming death of each of us. We’re all equal, as ballet and modern dance are equal. The wringing arm-andhand movement of Expressionism, the torqued, supremely expressive fourth arabesque of ballet, the tight fifth position on pointe, sous-sus, at the very end of Luminous Edge is a telling quotation from Balanchine’s Symphony in C, a cadential phrase of tiny steps moving backwards on pointe that brings everything to an end, with the legs tight against each other like an exclamation point, before the dancer collapses into her partner’s arms in the fetal position.

The whole thing feels like an echo chamber going all the way back to Greek tragedy, with even the most brilliant lives ending in tragedy, and the community looking on, commenting, noticing the glories along the way, and the inevitable ending.

“Count no person happy til s/he pass through life free from pain.”t fault). Two not-to-be-missed highs include Babs’ partnering with Andrea Bocelli, a guy I never thought I’d be endorsing. Yet here, he provides my favorite cut. Their vibratos quiver in unison (as hand-in-glove as Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne), and the silken warmth of his voice seems such a natural match to Babs’. Their “I Still Can See Your Face” is rapturous.

And in an arrangement that involved some technical wizardry, Babs duets with Elvis Presley so successfully you’d never guess one of the participants is dead. It’s a lovely, touchingly low-key conclusion to the album. The Queen still reigns.t

t

TV>>

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 29

The face of domestic violence: the NFL

by Victoria A. Brownworth

W

e like writing about fun TV stuff, like the hot new ad for “My Burberry” perfume with sexy supermodels Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne. The two women are wearing nothing but Burberry trench coats strategically open. They are pulling each other close, spraying each other with perfume, getting their hair mussed, looking playfully in love, all while Joss Stone sings a smoky, bluesy version of “I Put a Spell on You.” It’s a little shot of pseudo-lesbian erotica, and we admit we like it. A lot. If Burberry wants to sell their perfume with lesbian sensuality, we know we should complain about exploitation and appropriation, but all we really want to do is watch it again.

We also want to alert you to Transparent, the comedy-drama web series produced by Amazon Studios created and directed by Jill Soloway.

The story revolves around a Los Angeles family and their lives following the discovery that the father Mort (Jeffrey Tambor) is transgender. The series was picked up for a full season

by Amazon Studios, and will premiere in full this month and next.

As fun as that ad is, as great as Soloway’s show is, as enticing as the new season that bursts open throughout October is going to be, the major TV event of the past 10 days continues to unfold, and that is what we want to unpack, as the deconstructionists say. That TV event is the current scandal, growing broader every day, of violence in the NFL. We’ve reported on this problem numerous times over the years, most recently when San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Jonathan Martin was bullied off the Miami Dolphins team in Oct. 2013 after a two-year pattern of anti-gay (even though Martin is not gay, to our knowledge) and racist attacks.

Several players participated in the bullying and harassment, which included racial and homophobic slurs, and numerous threats of assault. Martin filed suit against the team, and in April 2014 a series of texts and emails sent to Martin were revealed by ESPN. Martin had been so traumatized by the harassment and hazing that he checked himself into a hospital in addition to leaving the team.

Martin was portrayed as a “sissy” who couldn’t handle the boys-willbe-boys atmosphere of the NFL, and there implications that he was gay and too “sensitive.” At the time, the Martin debacle was presented as a single, anomalous event. Fastforward to now, where the violence within the NFL is being exposed for what it is: rampant, endemic, and basically excused when players are vital to the team. In the past 10 days, five different players have been revealed as violent, charged with varying degrees of assault against women and children. The NFL has repeatedly turned a blind eye to that violence.

In watching this scandal unfold and thinking back over the tone of the Martin case last October, and the message that if a man can’t handle non-stop abuse and threats of violence he must be gay (as if that’s the worst thing a man could be!), we think the chasm between us and them, gay and straight has never yawned wider, and it has been writ large on TV in recent days. Why the chasm? Because quite simply, we are not them. The national problem needs to be named: straight male violence against women, against children, against us LGBT people.

Straight male violence is at epi-

demic levels in the U.S., and around the globe. The NFL is a mere microcosm of that.

The President has spoken out about the NFL violence “as a father of two daughters.” On Sept. 19, Pres.

Obama, with Vice Pres. Biden (author of the Violence Against Women Act as a senator) in tow, gave a press conference about new initiatives he is leading to end another epidemic of straight male violence, campus sex assaults.

“Sexual violence isn’t just a crime, it’s a civil rights violation,” Obama told the TV audience. “We don’t condemn sexual assault as loudly as we should. It’s on all of us to reject the quiet tolerance of sexual assault.” Biden added, “Every one of these statistics is a life.”

That phrase, it’s on us, is the president’s hashtag, which he enlisted a ton of his best TV-star buddies to promote. On Sept. 19, a slew of PSAs began airing starring Jon Hamm of Mad Men, and Kerry Washington of Scandal, among others. Breaking into daytime TV isn’t done lightly (sponsors lose money), but doing so made clear just how important this issue is to the president.

There was another press conference that broke into daytime programming Sept. 19. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell held a press conference to give his explanation of what had transpired since Sept.

8. His press conference, not the President’s, led the evening news on all networks. The reason we feel this NFL scandal, a massive TV event, needs to be addressed is because it stratifies what we see every day in scripted TV shows: straight male violence against women and against LGBT people. We women and queers are the most common targets in scripted drama series or even sitcoms. Women in jeopardy is an actual thematic structure for TV, and has been since TV began.

That chasm we spoke of between our community and the straight community? It’s because gay men don’t beat the crap out of women in public, on video, and get away with it. That’s straight men. Because gay men and lesbians, bisexuals and trans people are not the purveyors of violence in America, although we are often, increasingly often, the victims. Straight men beat the crap out of women, kids, gay men, lesbians, trans persons and other straight men, and get away with it on a daily basis. Especially if they are celebrities. And we see it on TV over and over again. The microcosm of the NFL scandal has played out on TV every night since Sept. 8. The closet door on straight male violence has been torn off, and awe can see how the same guys who often make our lives a living hell are now being (maybe) held to account.

USA Today sports editor and ABC News consultant Christine Brennan said on the Sept. 20 Nightline that the domestic violence scandal in the NFL is the biggest and worst sports scandal ever. Bigger than the steroid and doping scandals. And, Brennan said, the NFL has completely blown their handling of it.

The reason the NFL story is so huge and the scandal so far-reaching and that it’s all playing out on TV is because the NFL really exists as a TV franchise. The season begins in August with pre-season games.

Then the weekend after Labor Day, the actual season begins, and runs through December or early January. The Super Bowl, in the end of January or beginning of February, is the top-rated TV event of the year.

Nothing comes close to it.

The NFL season consists of 256 games. And while baseball is supposed to be the quintessential American sport, there is nothing that draws people, women as well as men, to TV like football.

There is no other sport that takes up as much TV air-time as football. It is on network and cable, day and night. And while college football has many devotees, the big money is in the NFL. The Super Bowl is the most expensive TV program in U.S. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell held a press history. There are 110 conference last week. million viewers, one in three Americans. The ad against LGBT people are on the rise. revenue from a 30-second And the DoJ calls domestic violence commercial during the Super Bowl the most common violent crime in costs $4 million. Tickets at the 50the U.S.; one in four women is a vicyard line cost $10,000. tim. But on TV, almost all women and But few of us are sitting at the LGBT people are victims.

50-yard line. We’re having Super In less than two weeks, five NFL Bowl parties and contributing to players have been named in assaults the revenue that revolves around on women and/or children. In addithe Super Bowl from our sofas. The tion to Rice, Adrian Peterson of the NFL brings in more money for TV Minnesota Vikings was arrested and than anything else. It is a $10 billion charged with child abuse for beatindustry which, in January, NFL ing his four-year-old son with a tree Commissioner Goodell pledged to branch. Prior to the beating, Petertriple by 2027. Oh, and that $10 bilson stuffed the boy’s mouth with lion? It’s free and clear, because inleaves so he would not scream. The explicably, the NFL has tax-exempt child was beaten on his bare thighs, status. That’s how much we love buttocks, testicles, arms and back. football.

The child’s physician reported the TV land is where most Ameriinjuries to authorities. Yet the NFL cans still spend between four and only benched Peterson after sponeight hours of their day. TV is where sors objected. Because football is we first saw the video of Baltimore about TV, and TV is about money.

Ravens running back Ray Rice There’s almost no one on TV who punch his then-fiancé, now wife, hasn’t weighed in on this issue, but Janay Palmer Rice square in the face, some stand out. On The View, Rosie knocking her unconscious in the O’Donnell said, “What’s interesting elevator of an Atlantic City casino. to me is that we, as a country, supThe NFL scandal has turned ESPN port football. They’ve had studies that into an investigative news network show it’s life-threatening to every playthat should have forced Roger er. They have traumatic brain injuries.

Goodell to resign.

They’re taking steroids, which really But in his press conference, changes their judgment. They’re enGoodell, after saying repeatedly that couraged and paid to be violent. Same “I got it wrong,” “I disappointed with fighters, with boxers. It would be everyone,” and “Problems with the wonderful if they were able to sepaleague begin with me” in response rate the violence of their job with the to the Rice incident, also said he violence in their life, but I don’t think never considered resigning. Oh, the that’s how human brains work. I don’t hubris. excuse any violence towards anyone, CBS This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell got the exclusive first interview with Goodell on Sept. 10. In that interview he denied knowledge of the “extent of the incident” before the TMZ tape. Between that interview and his Sept. 19 press conference, Goodell was MIA. It took nine days for him to say nothing and to continue to lie in the face of incontrovertible evidence from TMZ, ESPN, ABC and other network and cable exposes that he knew more that he intends to ever admit to. In our selfie and social media era, the “pics or it didn’t happen” mantra seems to be Goodell’s as well.

Anyone who watches TV, and that is most of us, knows that violence is on the up-tick. And nearly all of that violence is perpetrated, as it is in real life, by straight men against the vulnerable. Most dramas include an act of violence every four minutes, according to the people who record this stuff to give TV its MPAA ratings. That’s a lot of violence, especially as that’s an average.

We watch some of the most violent shows on the tube and love them, including The Following, Hannibal, True Blood, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Dracula, Breaking Bad, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Sons of Anarchy and Criminal Minds. In fact, if violence isn’t a major theme in a TV drama series, the show is often dubbed a chick show.

Because straight men and violence go together.

The LGBT community knows without needing the Dept. of Justice to tell us that hate crimes and violence

but I do understand how a guy who knocks people over and pushes them down for a living and gets cheered might do that in his private life.”

On the Sept. 19 Late Show, David Letterman asked TV host and former NFL star Michael Strahan about the incidents. Strahan said, “You need to be aggressive on the field, but this is not a business that you take your work home with you. This [domestic violence] is an epidemic.”

Strahan said he hoped the non-stop attention to the issue would help women in abusive situations to “step up to protect themselves, to save themselves.”

Letterman said, “This is beyond chilling. Everything we have learned, it’s beyond chilling.” It is beyond chilling, and we personally think that as members of a minority group regularly victimized by straight male violence both in real life and on TV, we should name the problem and make demands that it stop. GLAAD is there not just to approve when TV gets it right, but also to name the problem when TV gets it wrong. But GLAAD has been silent on this latest controversy and GLAAD needs to point out that we, the LGBT community, are continually victimized by just this kind of violence, in real life and in representations of us on TV. The NFL culture of violence has used us and the “sissified” gay man trope to beat (literally) people with.

We urge you all to note the times and dates where LGBT people are the TV victims, where sportscasters reference gay men as sissies or pansies or any of those encoded words that slur our community.

We need the NFL (which still has a team called the Redskins in 2014!) to cease its violence against us. This scandal began, in part, with Martin last year, and the gay slurs everyone ignored because the only people lower on the social strata than women are gays. When this scandal will end, we don’t know. All we can say is, Stay tuned. t

<< Out&About

30 • Bay Area Reporter • September 25-October 1, 2014

O&A Out &About

Randy L. Schmidt @ Books Inc. Author of Judy Garland on Judy Garland: Interviews and Encounters, will read from and discuss his book about the legendary singer, which features Garland’s interviews, transcripts, comments and writings about the star. 7:30pm. 2275 Market St. www.booksinc.net

Unusual Shorts @ Oddball Films Enjoy wacky offbeat vintage short films. Sept. 25: Cine-Collage visual treats. Sept. 26: Chuck Jones classics!

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

Fri 26 Sat 27 Mary Lambert

Fall faves

by Jim Provenzano

T

he festive array (more like an onslaught) of premieres, openings, and artistic engagements continue at a pace, and while we’d love to recommend them all, time and page limits can’t accommodate. But here are some favorites, new and old, with more online at www.ebar.com.

Thu 25 Act 1, Scene 2 @ 580 Hayes Second (and last) larger group exhibit of varied-media works by local artists.

Tue-Sun 10am-6pm. Thru Sept 28. 580 Hayes St. www.hayesvalleyartcoalition.org

Beyond Bullying @ SF State Professor of Sociology Jessica Fields discusses the Beyond Bullying Project, and her studies on hostility toward LGBTQ students. 12:30pm-2pm.

Room 108, Humanities Bldg., SF State, 1600 Holloway Ave. https://lca.sfsu.edu/

Big Book Sale @ Festival Pavilion SF Public Library’s annual huge book (and DVD) sale, where every item is $1-$3. Free (member preview Sept 23, 4pm-8pm) 10am-6pm. Thru Sept.

28. Fort Mason Center, Marina at Buchanon. www.friendssfpl.org

Butch @ Austin Gallery Butch: Not Like Other Girls, the local installation of Los Angeles-based SD Holman’s touring photo exhibit of butch women. By appointment thru Nov. 18. 799 Castro St. 282-4511. www.austinlawgroup.com

Charles Busch @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

Joe Goode Performance Group @ Z Space Performances of two acclaimed dance-theatre works: Wonderboy (with master puppeteer Basil Twist) and the brilliant solo, 29 Effeminate Gestures. $15-$100. Thu-Sat 8pm.

Sun 3pm. Thru Oct. 4. 450 Florida St. (866) 811-4111. www.zspace.org www.joegoode.org

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Sept. 25: Mood Indigo (7pm) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (8:50). Sept. 26: Bruce Campbell in Bubba Ho-Tep (7:30) and Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (9:15). Sept 27: Peaches Christ presents Hocus Pocus (see Saturday listing). Sept.

28: retro noir Pickup on South Street (2:30, 7:15) Park Row (4:05, 8:50) and the documentary A Fuller Life (5:40). Sept. 30: Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come (7pm) and The Survivors (9:10). Oct. 1: Bogart & Bacall in To Have and Have Not (7:05) and Dark Passage (5pm 9pm).

Oct. 2: 3D double feature, Jaws 3-D (7:30) and Drive Angry (9:25). Oct. 3: Stephen King’s Christine (7:15) and Carrie (9:25). $12. 429 Castro St. 621-6120. www.castrotheatre.com

The New Electric Ballroom @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley

Acclaimed actor, playwright and drag legend performs his witty cabaret act with pianist-singer Tom Judson. $35-$50 ($20 food/drink minimum).

8pm. Also Sept. 26. Hotel Nikko, lobby level, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Shotgun Players’ production of Tony Award-winning playwright Edna Walsh’s drama about the fantasy of youth between sisters determined to live in the past. $20-$30. Wed-Sat 8pm (some Wed & Thu 7pm). Sun 5pm. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Fabulosa Festival @ Yosemite

Noises Off @ Shelton Theater

The four-day women’s music festival (open to all genders) features Average Dyke Band, Tru Bloo & Wanda Kruda, Anita Lofton, and others, plus DJed dance areas, workshops, kid-friendly activities and more. $20-$200. Thru Sept. 28. Spinning Wheel Retreat, Forest Route 1S30, Yosemite National Park. www.Fabulosa.org

Michael Frayns’ hilarious theatre comedy of onstage and backstage pratfalls returns. $20-$48. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Oct. 25. 533 Sutter St. at Powell. (800) 838-3008. sheltontheater.org

@Large: Ai Weiwei @ Alcatraz Island The internationally acclaimed Chinese sculpture’s exhibit of seven sitespecific multimedia installations; the largest art exhibit ever hosted by the Golden Gate National Parks conservancy. Sept. 26, a special performance by ODC Dance (6:3011pm). $18-$30. Daily except major holidays thru April 26, 2015. www.AiWeiWeiAlcatraz.org

Bell, Book and Candle @ Spreckels Performing Arts Center The 1950s comedy about witches in love, with a gay subtext and McCarthy era paranoia, is performed by the East Bay theatre company. $22-$26. Fri-Sat 8pm. Thu 7:30pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Oct. 12. Bette Condiotti Theater, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. (707) 5883400. www.spreckelsonline.com

Big Fish @ Lucie Stern Theater, Palo Alto

Thu 25 Joe Goode Performance Group RJ Muna

Cock @ New Conservatory Theatre Center

Motown the Musical @ Orpheum Theatre

Michael Bartlett’s controversial play about a gay couple, one of whom falls in love with a woman, gets a West Coast premiere. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Oct. 12. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Clifton Oliver and Allison Semmes costar in the first national tour of the musical treasure about the life and career of Berry Gordy, featuring dozens of performers singing and dancing to Motown classic hits. $45-$210. Tue-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7:30pm. Also Sat 2pm. Thru Sept.

28. 1192 Market St. (888) 746-1799. www.motownthemusical.com www.shnsf.com

Cops and Robbers @ The Marsh, Berkeley Jinho “The Piper” Ferreira’s compelling multi-character solo show about his life in the worlds of hip hop (he’s toured with Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes and others) and law enforcement. $20$100. Fri 8pm, Sat 8:30pm. Extended thru Oct. 19. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Diana Ross @ Paramount Theatre, Oakland The diva singer returns to the Bay Area for a concert of her solo and Supremes hits. $56-$276. 8pm. 2025 Broadway, Oakland. www.rbpconcerts.com www.paramounttheatre.com

Michelle Tea reads, plus a panel on SF gentrification with Vero Majano, Darius Bost and Jillian Sandell. 7pm9pm. Oct. 2, Queers, Revelodpment and Racial Displacement, a panel discussion with Marcia Ochoa Mia Tu Mutch and Robbie Clark. 7pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Chanticleer @ SF Conservatory of Music

Hope Mohr Dance @ Joe Goode Annex

The grammy-winning men’s a cappella vocal ensemble begins its new season with Gypsy in My Soul, a concert of Renaissance and European folk music. $20-$50. 8pm. Also at other NorCal venues thru Sept. 28. www.chanticleer.org

Classic Films @ BAM/PFA Screening of cinematic classics, including James Dean films, Stanley Kubrick films thru Oct. 31, avantegarde cinema (Wed thru Oct. 29), Activate Yourself: Free Speech Movement (Tue & Thu thru Oct. 30). $7. Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Company @ Town Hall Theatre, Lafayette Town Hall Theatre Company’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s classic 1960s urban musical about a single man facing pressures from his married friends on the brink of his 35th birthday. $15-$29. Thu-Sat 8pm.

Sun 2pm. Thru Oct. 12. 3535 School St., Lafayette. (925) 283-1557. www.townhalltheatre.com

Solos and other works by Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, Lucinda Childs and Mohr. $25-$50. 8pm. Also Sept.

27. 401 Alabama St. hopemohr.org

Ideation @ SF Playhouse Aaron Loeb’s darkly comic play about corporate consultants undergoing a dubious project. $20-$120. Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm & Sun 2pm. Thru Nov. 8. 450 Post St. 6779596. www.SFplayhouse.org

Jai Rodriguez @ Hotel Rex Society Cabaret presents the Broadway actor-singer in his new show, Dirty Little Secrets. $25-$45.

8pm. Also Sept. 27. Cocktails and small plates available. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com

King Fool @ Various Locales We Players, the innovative sitespecific theatre ensemble, presents a two-actor multi-venue updated version of Shakespeare’s King Lear. $30-$50. Locations TBA. Fri-Sun. Thru Sept. 28. 547-0189. www.WePlayers.org

The Late Wedding @ Thick House Crowded Fire Theater’s world premiere production of Christopher Chen’s theatrical rumination on multiple ritualistic interpretations of weddings (gay, straight, etc.), inspired by the writings of Italian fabulist Italo Calvino. $15-$35. Wed-Sat 8pm. Thru Oct. 11. 1695 18th St. at Carolina.

746-9238. www.crowdedfire.org

Lovebirds @ The Marsh, Berkeley

Tue 30 David Johnson

Old Hats @ Geary Theatre American Conservatory Theatre presents Bill Irwin and David Shiner’s clownish two-man comedy, with music written and performed by Shaina Taub amd her band. $20-$120.

Tue-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Sun 7pm. Thru Oct. 12. Geary Theatre, 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Going Down on Valencia @ GLBT Historical Museum

John August and Andrew Lippa’s heartwarming musical adaptation of the Tim Burton film and Daniel Wallace’s novel. $34-$48. Thu-7pm.

Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Sept.

28. 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto.

(650) 329-0891. www.paplayers.org

Mark Morris Dance Group @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley The award-winning New York-based choreographer’s dancers perform Crosswalk, Jenn and Spencer, The Muir, A Wooden Tree, Festival Dance, Excursions, and with jazz trio The Bad Plus in Spring, Spring, Spring. $40-$96. Thu-Sat 8pm. Also Sat 2pm, Sun 3pm.Thru Sept. 28. UC Berkeley Campus, Bancroft Way at Dana St., Berkeley. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

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Marga Gomez’ hit solo show, about the various lives of nightclub patrons as told by an ageless photographer, returns, now at the Marsh’s Berkeley stage. $20-$100. Fridays 8pm; Saturday 8:30pm. 2120 Alston Way, Berkeley. www.themarsh.org

Wed 1

Peter Berlin

Pippin @ Golden Gate Theatre The touring company of the awardwinning Broadway revival of Stephen Schwarz’s classic musical about a young prince’s death-defying quest to find meaning in his life, stars Matthew James Thomas (original Pippin in the revival), Lucie Arnaz (as Berthe) and a talented cast of singers, dancers and acrobats. $45-$210. Tue-Sat 8pm.

Wed, Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Oct. 19. 1 Taylor St. at Market. (888) 746-1799. www.shnsf.com

Queer Open Mic @ Modern Time Bookstore Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano reads from Amorcito Maricon, plus open mic.

Free/donations. 7:30pm. 2919 24th St. www.queeropenmic.com

Rapture, Blister, Burn @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Gina Gionfriddo’s Pulitzer-finalist drama compares the lives of two women –a mother with a family, and an accomplished academic– with a comic feminist flair. $32-$60. Tue & Sun 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sun 2pm. Extended thru Oct 5. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

SF Latino Film Festival @ Various Venues 6th annual Cine+Mas festival screens films from around the world’s Latin countries. Sept 19, opening Cry Now at Brava Theater; after-party at Brick and Mortar. Thru Sept. 27. www.sflatinofilmfestival.com

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Out&About>>

Sat 27 Among Dreams @ LGBT Center Chelsea Rae Klein’s multimedia exhibit of works that interpret the once-closeted lives of LGBT military members, and the anniversary of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. An online archive of the exhibit includes bios, photos and multimedia. Thru Nov. 11. 1800 Market St. www.amongdreams.com www.sfcenter.org

An Audience With Meow Meow @ Berkeley Repertory Theatre Musical comedy features songs, sequins, satire and star Meow Meow. $29-$89. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Oct. 19. Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.BerkeleyRep.org

AXIS Dance Company Benefit Auction @ Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, Oakland Fifth annual auction and performance includes restaurant, theatre, and arts ticket packages, wines, classes and other items; cocktails, appetizers, and a special performance by the company. $20. 6pm. 1428 Alice St., Oakland. www.axisdance.org

Bay Area Cabaret Opening Gala @ Venetian Room The upscale ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel celebrates its new season, with a concert that includes composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin, Godspell), Ana Gasteyer (Saturday Night Live, Suburgatory, Wicked) Liz Callaway, Michael McCorry Rose and Peter Scattini. $60-$75. 8pm. 950 Mason st.

392-4400. bayareacabaret.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.). 4214222. beachblanketbabylon.com

Dan Hoyle @ The Marsh The award-winning solo performer premieres his new show, Each and Every Thing, a multi-character play about the search for real community in a hyper-connected world. $20-$50.

Thu & Fri 8pm, Sat 8:30pm. Extended thru Oct. 4. 1062 Valencia St. at 21st.

282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Frank Pietronigro @ Johnston Gallery Exhibit of gay-themed paintings (“Great American Patriots”) and “Documents,” an unusual installation that uses anti-gay words. Thru Sept.

2327 Market St. www.pietronigro.com www.johnstontaxgroup.com/art

Hocus Pocus @ Castro Theatre Peaches Christ presents a drag parody and screening of the Bette Midler comedy about witches. Performers include Jinkx Monsoon, Ben de la Crème, Thomas Dekker, Timmy Spece and Vinsantos. $30-$100. 3pm & 8pm. 429 Castro St. www.peacheschrist.com www.castrotheatre.com

Horizons Foundation Gala @ Fairmont Hotel The locally-based LGBT foundation that supports small nonprofits holds its annual gala fundraiser, with a dinner and program, including honors to BAR columnist Donna Sachet, a casino party in the Tonga Room, silent auction of luxury items and vacations. $300 and up. 5:30-11pm. 950 Mason St. www.horizonsfoundation.org

Kiandanda Dance Theater @ Zaccho Dance Studio Taboos and Heroes, a multi-media dance theatre work by the SF-based African performance ensemble; part of the Sf Int. Arts Festival. $15. 8pm.

1777 Yosemite Ave. www.sfiaf.org

September 25-October 1, 2014 • Bay Area Reporter • 31

Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band @ Empire Ballroom Exotic Destinations, a concert of music from around the world, is performed at the hotel’s ballroom. $10-$20. 4pm.

Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 2nd floor, 450 Powell St. www.sflgfb.org

Little Shop of Menken @ Martuni’s Jason Brock, our fave gay vocal powerhouse, is joined by Jessica Coker ( Tales of the City) in a night of songs

by Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken (many Disney musical films, and the Off-Broadway hit Little Shop of Horrors). $25. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. www.jbmenken.bpt.me

Mary Lambert @ Nourse Theatre The young singing sensation performs in the Hayes Valley theatre, with guest Young Summer. $25-$55. 8pm. 275 Hayes St. 392-4400. www.marylambertsings.com www.cityboxoffice.com

Mélange @ Regency Center Fashion and design event, showcasing 18 fashion designers with 100 models; with Laganja Estranja ( RuPaul’s Drag Race ) and Cory Wade Hindorff (America’s Next Top Model), Adam Roth, Chapkins Dance Company and others. $50-$250. 7pm-10pm. 1300 Van Ness Ave. www.melange-2014.eventbrite.com

Michael Cavanaugh @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko Grammy and Tony-nominated star of the Billy Joel musical Movin’ Out performs his concert of classic rock and pop songs. $35-$50. $20 drink/ menu minimum. 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Queer Prom @ MCC Look Back With Glitter, an LGBTQ prom dance, with DJ NewRo playing 40s swing, retro hits and Top 40.

Vote for king and queen ($1 a vote fundraiser). $15-$20. 7pm-10pm. 150 Eureka St. www.brownpapertickets. com/event/859646 www.mccsf.org

Semi-Famous @ The Marsh Don Reed’s new solo show, SemiFamous: Hollywood Hell Tales From the Middle, includes tales of panicridden auditions and almost being shot by the Secret Service. $20-$100.

Sat 8:30pm, Sun 7pm. Thru Oct. 19.

1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Sun 28 Brunch & Bowl @ AMF Southshore Lanes, Alameda East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club’s 2nd annual bowling party includes two hours’ lane time, shoe rental and refreshments. $25-$35. 11:30am1:30pm. 200 Park St., Alameda. www.eastbaystonewalldemocrats.org

Cheesecake & Demerol @ Stage Werx Theatre Gene Gore’s one-woman autobiographical show about pregnancy, women’s health issues, all told from her true-life experiences. $15. Sundays, 3pm. Thru Oct. 19. 446 Valencia St. www.genegore.com

Sat 27 Kiandanda Dance Theater

SF Gay Men’s Chorus: Crescendo @ Four Seasons Hotel The award-winning men’s chorus presents a delicious brunch fundraiser, with performances by opera singer Breanna Sinclaire and Broadway’s legendary composer Stephen Schwartz ( Wicked, Pippin, Godspell ). $150 and up. 12pm. 757 Market St. www.sfgmc.org

Frenchie Davis @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The Grammy-nominated singer ( Rent and Dreamgirls on Broadway), performs her new cabaret show of soul, R&B and Broadway classics. $25-$40. $20 drink/menu minimum.

7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Now & Zen Fest @ Golden Gate Park Alice 97 Radio’s free show, with Neon Trees, Matt Nathanson, American Authors, Lindsey Stirling. Beer, wine and food on sale. 12pm-5pm. Sharon Meadow. www.radioalice.cbslocal. com/show/alices-now-zen-fest

Fri 26

Mon 29

Pippin

10 Percent @ Comcast David Perry interviews local and visiting community members of note.

11:30am & 10:30pm. Also Sat & Sun, 10:30pm. Channel 104.

1964: The Year San Francisco Came Out @ GLBT History Museum New exhibit focusing on San Francisco’s emerging gay culture at the time of the pivotal LIFE magazine feature “Homosexuality in America.” Reg. hours Mon-Sat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm5pm. ($5/free for members). 4127 18th St. 621-1107. glbthistory.org

Queer Prism Reading @ Good Vibrations Gay and lesbian fiction and memoir authors Felice Picano, Dale Chase, Eric Andrews-Katz, Dena Hankins, Clifford Henderson and Kathleen Knowles read from their work in a special event at the popular sex shop. 6:30-8:30pm. 1620 Polk St. 345-0400. goodvibes.com

Skulls @ California Academy of Sciences Exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth, including the new popular exhibit of animal and human skulls (thru Nov. 30). Special events each week, with adult nightlife parties most Thursday nights. $20-$35. MonSat 9:30am-5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. calacademy.org

Tue 30 Circle of Life Cabaret @ Martuni’s A C.O.L.T. Following, the disability and LGBT-inclusive theatre company’s music and variety show, includes raffles and tickets to their upcoming shows. No cover. 6:30pm-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St. circleoflifetheatre.org

Joan Marcus

Anthony Friedkin: The Gay Essay @ de Young Museum Exhibit of photos, and an audiovisual installation, by the Los Angeles artist who focused on gay underground culture of the late 1960s and early ‘70s in SF and LA. Thru Jan. 11, 2015.

Lines on the Horizon : Native American Art from the Weisel Family Collection, thru Jan. 4, 2015. Free/$10. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoungmuseum.org

David Johnson @ Harvey Milk Photo Center Retrospective exhibit of the accomplished local photographer, who was Ansel Adams’ first African American student. Tue-Thu 4pm-8pm.

Sat & Sun 12pm-4:30pm. Thru Oct. 19. 50 Scott St. www.harveymilkphotocenter.org

Art/Act: Maya Lin @ David Brower Center

Peter Berlin @ Magnet Opening reception for a solo exhibit of photographs and autoportraits by the reclusive ‘70s art porn model; curated

by Eric Smith and Mark Garrett. 8pm10pm. Thru Oct. 31. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

Project Mah Jongg @ Contemporary Jewish Museum New exhibit about the popular Chinese game and Jewish culture’s affection for it. Thru Oct. 28.

Also, Designing Homes : Jews and Midcentury Modernism, an exhibit of architectural, furniture, dinnerware, photos, and interior design in postWWII. Also, Hardly Strictly Warren Hellman, thru Oct. 18. Other exhibits, lectures and gallery talks as well. Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. thecjm.org

Exhibit of new works by the sculptor/ designer (Vietnam Memorial). Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. Sun 10am-1pm. Thru Feb 4, 2015. 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley. www.browercenter.org

Thu 2

Meditation Group @ LGBT Center

The author of Displaced Person (with artwork by Anthony Peruzzo) discusses his much-anticipated graphic novel (murder, love and time travel in San Francisco) in a slideshow reading. 7:30pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

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

Wed 1 Do I Hear a Waltz? @ Eureka Theatre 42nd Street Moon’s production of the rarely seen Rodgers-SondheimLaurents musical, about a lonely tourist in Venice, stars Tony nominee Emily Skinner. $25-$75. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri 8pm. Sat 6pm. Sun 3pm. 215 Jackson St. 255-8207. www.42ndStMoon.org

A History of LGBTQ Spaces @ Center for Culture and Politics This shaping San Francisco Public Talk include scholar/historians Glenne McElhinney, Gerard Koskovich, Shayne Watson, Donna Graves, and Felicia Elizondo in a panel about formerly gay venues around the Bay Area.

Free. 7:30pm. 518 Valencia St. www.shapingsf.org

Kevin Killian, Brent Calderwood @ Books Inc. Two gay author-poet-essayists read from their new works, Killian’s Tweaky Village and Calderwood’s God of Longing. 7:30pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

Derek McCullogh @ Books Inc.

Lest We Forget @ YBCA Remembering Radical San Francisco, a film series of doclumentaries. Oct. 2, 7:30pm: The Times of Harvey Milk.

More films thru Oct. 26. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Stranger Than Life @ Cartoon Art Museum The Cartoons and Comics of M.K. Brown (thru Feb 15). Other exhibits and events. Free-$8. Tue-Sun 11am5pm. 655 Mission St. 227-8666. www.cartoonart.org

Theory of Survival: Fabrications @ Southern Exposure Group exhibit and pop-up bazaar of art works inspired by traditional Persian marketplaces, made by a dozen California-based Iranian artists.

Saturday events include daytime workshops and panel talks; night events include music, readings and storytelling.

Tue-Sat 12pm-6pm. Thru Oct. 25. 3030 20th St. 863-2141. www.soex.org 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

36

On the Town

NIGHTLIFE DINING

36

38

Hercules & Love Affair

SPIRITS

On the Tab

SOCIETY

EVENTS

LEATHER

PERSONALS

Vol. 44 • No. 39 • September 25-October 1, 2014

Richard Downing

www.ebar.com ✶ www.bartabsf.com

In through the out door

Disabled gay & lesbian nightlife experiences

by Jim Provenzano

T

D’Andre Michael

hey seek out ramps, they’re sometimes daunted by stairs and cramped bathrooms, and even occasionally refused entry.

The local bar and nightclub experience can be a hassle for disabled patrons who just want to enjoy themselves. As the population of disabled and elderly LGBT residents grows, are local venues accomodating their changing clientele? In the first of a two-part feature, I talked with several people about their experiences in the local nightlife scene.

See page 34 >>

Nomy Lamm at a recent Sins Invalid show.

Jai Rodriguez gets dirty

‘Queer Eye’ singer at the Hotel Rex

by Joshua Klipp

T

he weekend after Folsom Street Fair often sends your average queer San Franciscan spiraling into an existential entertainment crisis. Particularly, after witnessing (and perhaps participating in) some of the world’s most public displays of private fetishes, is there any secret left un-witnessed and untold?

Take heart, dear San Francisco. The answer is resoundingly yes – many, many dirty little secrets, as a matter of fact. Only this time those secrets aren’t exposed on sun and beer-drenched streets amongst mouth bits and rosy-whipped cheeks, but rather over glamorous cocktails while seated in a lush lounge, and tantalizingly dripped from the lips of a beautiful guy with a very queer eye, Mr. Jai Rodriguez.

On Friday September 26 and Saturday September 27, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s Jai Rodriguez brings his one-man show, Dirty Little Secrets, to the Society Cabaret at the Hotel Rex in Union Square. Starring the See page 33 >>

Jai Rodriguez

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

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Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

34 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 25-October 1, 2014

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In/Out Door

“I always think about whether a space is accessible. Ramps aren’t necessary for me. But I made a choice a few years ago; I don’t perform in spaces that aren’t wheelOn stage and off chair accessible. If I know a certain As a musician, Nomy Lamm has person can’t get in, it just doesn’t performed at several spaces around feel good.” the Bay Area. She’s part of the anEven if a friend can get in the nual Sins Invalid performing showdoor, or the floor is level, they may case, and also writes and makes face other barriers. short films. Originally from Olym“Sometimes they can get in the pia, Washington, Lamm also lived in door, but not in the bathroom.

Chicago before moving to San FranI’ve done different things to find cisco seven years ago. a resolution, like communicating “For myself, there are a lot of with other venues to see if there is factors of accessibility,” said the a nearby space with accessible bath39-year-old artist, who uses a prosrooms.” thetic leg. Before considering perLamm recalled how a live-work forming at a venue, Lamm cites a performance space, Chicken John’s few concerns. on Ceasar Chavez, made a makeshift small ramp for their two-step door.

“It was a bit silly,” she said, “that it couldn’t be left on the street, since the ramp would block sidewalk traffic. So they brought it out when it was needed. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a way that an entry can be made accessible.”

When she performs, Lamm has often had to accommodate a variety of obstacles.

“I’m able to make do for some performances with Red Hot Burlesque at El Rio,” she said, describing the Mission nightclub as “accessible-ish” with mostly flat areas and stairs on the patio and up to the stage.

“I’m a diva, so I get up there and have someone hold my hand,” Nomm said. “But it wouldn’t be accessible for chair Nomy Lamm plays her accordion at a recent users.” performance.

When Lamm ran the From page 33

artists-in-residence program for the Sins Invalid performing series, finding a fully accessible venue was one of many duties.

“We were looking into La Peña Cultural Center [in Berkeley] as a venue, but there’s no way a wheelchair user could get up onstage. We ended up doing it at Mission Cultural Center. The stage was accesible but the dressing room wasn’t, so they had a ramp built.”

Lamm recalled the former space for the Center for Sex and Culture, and its daunting stairs.

“They said, ‘We have an elevator if you need it.’ I had to carry my accordion around the entire building to the freight entrance, and go up in a cargo elevator with a step over the gate. I was like, ‘No, you can’t advertise this as accessible.’”

The new Center space, however, has a level entrance, is much more accessible, and even hosts LGBTQ disability events.

With some spacees, nothing can be changed, due to the architecture of a venue, and its limitations preceding the Americans with Disabilities Act. “At the Elbo Room, I’ve performed or gone to shows that are upstairs,” she said. “I’ll occasionaly hike up all those stairs, but it’s not accessible.”

Lamm recalled a 1999 Sister Spit performance, where “a wheelchair user skidded up the stairs on her butt. Nobody should have to do that.”

Lamm has other concerns, too.

“In thinking about people I want to be there, I have friends with different sensibilities around chemicals,” she said. “Are there scent-free seating areas? Does the soap in the bathroom use harsh chemicals?

Some people have strong sensitivities.”

Other concerns include flashing lights, which can effect those who have seizures or a form of epilepsy.

“You need to know that ahead of time.”

t

At events that are specific to disabled art, performers or themes, understandably, the venue should be accessible.

Lamm’s next gig is a screening of her short erotic film at Un(diss) ing our Abilities, a night of “sexplicit” short films made by differentlyabled people. Oakland’s New Parkway Theatre hosts the event on October 16 at 9:30pm.

That theatre is fully accessible, with wide hallways, ramps, and open space in the couchfilled seating area.

“The whole screening includes all different kinds of bodies and people expressing themselves in different ways,” Lamm said.

As with previous screenings at ATA Gallery in the Mission (another accessible space), Lamm emphasized the empowering aspect of Rich Stadtmiller filmmakers, artists and their friends gathering Sam Wren at The Mix for a sex-positive representation of people learned to parse the different bewith various disabilities. tween fans and stalkers.

“It’s really a community event,” “There are certain straight men she said. “There wasn’t any really who specifically act more creepy.” voyeurism feeling. We were here toMore often, her prosthetic leg is gether celebrating our sexuality.” not as noticable, except when she Which leads to the question of removes it. those who aren’t disabled approach“I take my leg off almost any time ing Lamm and other disabled LGBT I sit down for any extended period, people. since it’s not comfortable to sit in. If “I have had some experiences I’m at shows, I’ll be in the audience, with devotees [people who fetishize and I need a minute to get my leg disability] who are particular to on to get onstage. I don’t take it off women who are amputees,” said onstage unless there’s a reason, like Lamm. “It can be creepy, especially if I’m getting up to play my accorwhen they would call me, when dion.” people could look you up on a land Like others with different disline. I’ve had some mild stalking.”

See page 35 >> Lamm discussed how she has

t <<

Read more online at www.ebar.com

In/Out Door

From page 34

abilities, Lamm has stories of ‘ableist assumptions.’ Well-intentioned people think they’re helping disabled people, but they’re actually being insensitive.

“I’ve had people grab at me, and think they were helping me,” said Lamm. “Touching me without consent is not okay. People think they’re being helpful by just jumping in, or taking my stuff to carry it without asking. These are nice people, and I feel sometimes feel like I’m being a jerk for being ornery, but you have to ask.”

We discussed a few experiences others shared with me, about children’s curiosity in public about wheelchairs, crutches or prosthetic limbs.

“Kids can be invasive when the parents are not communicating with them about boundaries,” said Lamm. “But the whole shaming thing is not good either. My niece has made up songs about my legs.”

Asked how much of her art specifically addresses her use of a prosthetic, Lamm cited one of her songs’ lyrics, “There’s one foot on the ground, but the other one is an imagination,” she sang. “That lyric is talking about my experience in my own way. I feel like it’s just so woven in.”

Her song “Belly Up” includes references to Lamm becoming a mermaid, “about healing from trauma.”

Lamm’s leg was amputated when she was three years old.

Her experience is also contextualized in an animated film she’s developing, as well as a novel she recently completed. She also interviewed others who endured the pain of ‘corrective surgeries.’

“After experiencing such hard things,” said Lamm, “it’s about allowing ourselves to engage with people in trusting ways.”

Choosing the right place

Sam Wren is choosy about which bars he goes to, not just because of accessibility issues.

“Where I go varies, if I’m in the mood for going out,” said Wren. “I don’t go to some bars because of the people.”

One of his preferred watering holes is The Mix, which he assessed as “somewhat accessible,” despite the small patio with steps. “The Edge is okay, but the bathroom’s not set up for a wheelchair user.”

For a few nearby bars, Wren cited attitude as a problem, despite level entryways.

“At Badlands, they have a problem

<<

Jai Rodriquez

From page 33

man himself and a single pianist, Jai uses the stripped down set to cover – and uncover – everything from family, to sex, to Hollywood, and back to sex again through the media of storytelling, stand up, and reinvention of timeless music – or as Jai calls it, “the Moulin Rouge effect.”

Intimate, raw, and at times embarrassingly funny, the man you thought you knew makes you think again. In a recent interview, the beans spilled.

Known as Queer Eye’s “Culture Vulture,” the 35-year-old confessed to an unlikely upbringing for an openly gay TV celebrity.

“Both of my parents were born again Christians, so while growing up, I wasn’t even allowed to watch TV or listen to secular music,” he said.

Regarding the Emmy-award winning stint on the show, Rodriguez revealed, “I didn’t have friends during Queer Eye. They give you a wardrobe and you play a character.

I let them put me into things that weren’t me. I hadn’t found my iden-

September 25-October 1, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 35

“I think just the service industry in general needs to understand,” he said. “I feel like I have to educate everybody, and it gets exhausting.

I wonder if any of them are taught to deal with people in different cultural backgrounds, but not us. The service industry training deosn’t seem to have disability etiquette, and it shows.”

Manners can be fun Cipriani recalled experiences of For author Belo Cipriani, good hostesses and waiters stopping he manners go a long way. and Oslo (and his earlier service “A big problem for me has been dog) before asking permission from finding service staff who know the their managers. etiquette of serving a blind person,” And although Cipriani spoke he said. fluent Spanish on a few occasions “I’ve had bartenders who throw when we dined with friends, he said money at me, or don’t tell me what that the most difficult restaurants to they’re doing. The staff doesn’t enter are ethnic businesses. know how to act with someone who “They have biases toward anihas a disability, or anyone who has a mals,” he surmised. “That’s been mobility impairment. These people an issue. There might be some ESL are not trained to hanproblems.” Other probdle any situation.” lems have been staff or Along with a phone other patrons claiming interview, Cipriani and dog allergies.

I met at a restaurant But such difficulties in Rockridge, where aren’t limited to local the staff was not only businesses. Cipriani refriendly, but the waiter called a few unpleasant went out of his way to experiences in the allegaccommodate Cipriedly sophisticated New ani’s requests. Before York City, where a trendy having coffee at an outrestaurant’s manager redoor table, we found a fused he and his service convenient table with dog entry, saying, “Can a nearby recessed shelf you go have your rights that gave Oslo, his sersomewhere else?” vice dog, a space to sit.

Other issues are the Cipriani, who was rise of fake service dogs, blinded by a violent owned by people with no assault in the Castro disability, or a mere ‘conin April 2007, turned dition.’ his experience into a “That’s a very big probbestselling memoir. He lem,” said Cipriani, who continues to write, and mentioned the ease with he works online with which anyone can purthe help of text-to-auchase vests made for dogs dio devices, including from online stores. on his cell phone.

But even with that Cipriani can make problem, contesting illelighthearted jokes, gal discrimination is too such as when wait staff bothersome for him and compliment his system many others. of folding dollar bills “I think a big part of into “origami.” surviving a disability, no “I ask bartenders matter what it is, is that Jim Provenzano and waiters to just tell you have to plan ahead.” me what they’re giving Belo Cipriani at Olivetto in Oakland.

He spoke of his rehame, and where it is.” bilitation training. “They Getting around with teach you how to predict his dog, in shuttle vans, and on the and navigate different scenarios. I is The Café, which surprised me,” arm of a friend, are his mainstays. have to predict a curb, and when said Cipriani. “They offered me the “The bathrooms are not so much I go out. If it’s a Friday, The Mix elevator, the staff helped me a lot. an issue, but having the staff know will be super busy. But if I get there That’s something I’ve not found in how to help me is great,” he said. “A earlier, get a nice spot, and introother bars.” The Castro nightclub big part has been asking staff to help duce myself to the staff, it can be also has ramps to different levels of me with cash or a credit card. Those good.”t the club. are the two biggest issues.”

While Cipriani appreciates any Asked about loud music in bars effort, he knows from experience Part 2 will be in next week’s impeding his ability to sense his surthat there could be a lot more imBARtab section. roundings, Ciprinia joked that he provement.

there,” he said. “I don’t go in there because of the staff. They hassle me for different things. Other people do a lot worse things, but they harassed me and give me a hard time.”

Wren also critiqued Toad Hall, across 18th Street, and said some bartenders and staff were rude and dismissive, simply because he uses a wheelchair.

“There was broken glass on the floor a few times; another time, someone was smoking pot in the smoking area.” Wren is allergic to marijuana smoke.

“They said ‘We’ll take care of it,’ but they didn’t. It was like, ‘I’m not listening to you.’ I’m not going to spend my money where I get that kind of treatment.”

Wren said he appreciates Beaux for its spacious flat floors. “Yeah, I can wheel around there.” The nightclub’s elevator leads to the balcony, and Wren likes Beaux’s two-for-one drink specials. Economics is also an issue, since he’s on disability. So he looks for reasonably priced drinks and bars without a cover charge.

South of Market bars offer more wheelchair-accessible options for the 40-year-old Wren. Originally from Missouri, he’s lived in San Francisco for ten years.

A few years ago, The Stud renovated its corner emergency exit as an accessible entryway. The Hole in the Wall is flat, with a private bathroom, and the Lone Star Saloon is flat with a ramp entry to its patio.

The Eagle’s notable renovations in 2013 include a fully accessible bathroom, which Wren said he likes.

“I can wheel around, use the accessible bathroom,” he said. “I don’t bother with the upper deck,” he said, citing his smoke allergy.

Even the crowded Sunday beer busts don’t daunt him.

“I don’t worry about the crowds,” he said. “I just do my own thing.

Mostly I don’t have any problems.”

Asked is he’s had to endure any naïve or repeated curious questions, Wren said, “I’m always asked what put me in a wheelchair. I just tell them; I have a genetic medical condition, and leave it at that.”

At his preferred bars, Wren said he’s established a connection with some bartenders.

“I just get my service. I know where to go. It’s just all about common sense.”

With all the construction taking place throughout the city, does Wren find it easier to get around on the streets?

“Mostly, but they need to make more curb cuts on Van Ness Avenue, and a few side streets,” said Wren. “I see a few problem spots, and I wheel all over the place. The city needs to

make sure that it’s accessible everywhere, not just in particular areas.”

As for his navigating through crowded street fairs, like the recent Folsom Street Fair, Wren said he attends on occasion, “But I’m not paying eight dollars a beer. I’m not gonna pay fifteen dollars for a sandwich I can make in my apartment.”

did not, after losing his sight, “gain any superpowers.”

But loud music is a problem, “which is why I tend to frequent quiet divey places and bars,” he said.

“Usually, I’m with a group of people, so it makes it easier to navigate, and I have my dog with me.”

Recently, several disabled people in the U.S. with service dogs have been denied entry into many restuarants and stores, despite laws prohibiting such discrimination.

“They get attitude,” said Cipriani.

“I have to explain that I’m blind. In a nightclub, people who have been drinking don’t get it, and try to pet the dog.”

A service dog is basically at work, and petting them should not be done without permission from the owner.

“One place to get my needs met

tity and sense of self separate from career yet.”

The young veteran star of stage and silver screen (and now the

world’s most watched gay web series, Horizon), isn’t afraid to let it all hang out, well, at least under the right circumstances.

Rodriguez recalls, “One of my favorite moments in the show is when I talk about my first girlfriend and everything I did to try and get out of having sex with her.”

But not everything about Jai Rodriguez traces back to culture and sex. The summer after Jai’s senior year at a performing arts high school in New York, he was the youngest actor cast on Broadway when he was offered and accepted the role of “Angel” in Rent. This began not only the gig of a lifetime for any young performer, but also set him firmly on the path as the face of fundraising for AIDS and HIV research.

“By accident, I’ve ended up devoting my adult life to raising money and awareness around HIV,” Jai said. “My aunt and cousin passed [from AIDS] when I was 16. Two years later I was doing Rent, raising millions of dollars and giving a speech as the character after every show. It’s inadvertently become my legacy.”

Not a bad legacy to have, and not

the only one. The man that helped bring gay sense into homes across the country and around the world counts Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Lang and John Leguziamo as a few of his heroes. Without a doubt, he holds that same status with some in the next generation.

But hero status is not his goal as an artist. Jai hopes that through Dirty Little Secrets, formerly on Broadway, his vulnerability exposes a hope and ideal that he espouses and tries to live out on and off stage.

“My first tattoo on the back of my neck says, ‘Live Truth,’ and that’s what I believe and hope comes across with this show,” he said, adding, “to try to live an honest life with no apologies. I hope people leave [the show] empowered to embrace the things that have formed and defined them. Everyone has something they’re not proud of, but you only go around once. Embrace the things that have molded you.”

The show is only two nights, and the venue is intimate. If you don’t get tickets now, you’ll not only miss out on a voyeuristic night of Jai’s dirty, beautiful secrets, but you’ll have to wait until this fall to see him opposite the hunky Nick Jonas

D’Andre Michael

Jai Rodriguez

in the upcoming television series Kingdom.

And if television isn’t your thing, you can watch him do his thing as the “Richie Valentine” on the webseries Horizon. You can also find him on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook (sidebar: he has strong opinions on the Facebook name debacle), and if you message him, he promises to message you back.

Finally, if you try to get tickets at the door but are unable, stick around for the after-party, because according to Jai, “I’ve done the AIDS walk, and Cabaret for the Stars for the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation. What I haven’t done much of is explore San Francisco’s nightlife! I want to explore the scene and see what the community is like.”

Did you hear that, San Francisco queer folk? After Jai Rodriguez tells you all his secrets, maybe you could show him a few of your own.t Jai Rodriguez, Sept. 26 & 27, 8pm, at the Hotel Rex. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com Josh Klipp is a writer and bandleader for jazz band, the Klipptones. www.klipptones.com

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

36 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 25-October 1, 2014

Birds of a feather

by Donna Sachet

Macy’s iHeart Radio RisJai Rodriguez, Randy ing Star winners Before You Moore, Greg Peters, acy’s Passport presented a Exit performed a peppy boy Robert Arnoldcrowd-pleasing Glamorama band number and Jason Kraft, Adam Sandel, last Friday at the Golden Gate TheDerulo brought the house Donald Dewsnup, atre, benefiting three admirable down with hard-hitting Neil Giuliano, Scott charities: AIDS Emergency Fund, music, a bit too raw for us, Miller & Douglas Project Open Hand, and Glide. but exactly what the youngPiper, Walter Leiss, Dressed with the eveest elements of Jerome Goldstein & ning’s fashion theme the audience Tommy Taylor, Alein mind, James Holwanted. jandro Franceschi, loway and this colAfter a reaand Skye Paterson umnist were treated to sonable hour and his table of gora royal red carpet photo of fashion and geous friends. From and press welcome as music, the party the looks of the dance gaggles of young hipadjourned to the floor, this party consters, community volWarfield Thetinued late into the unteers, fashion mavens, atre for a Tastenight! established philanthrocatered reception.

As if there weren’t pists, and plain old San Franciscans This theatre has removed enough to keep us poured into the theatre. all the standard seating, but busy here in San FranOnce seated, the full extent of kept the wonderful archicisco, we tested the Macy’s knack for theatricality betectural decoration, creating limits of Uber with a came evident, as swirling lights, a dramatic party space with Sunday night trip to booming sound, and multiple wooden dance floor and Walnut Creek, where special effects bombarded the auupstairs VIP area, where we we joined Sunday’s a dience. First a short beautifully exchanged comments with Drag co-star Holotta produced video informed the audiMike Smith of AEF, Kevin Tymes at the 1220 ence of the work of the three benWinge of Project Open Club. Her husband eficiaries. Then men’s and women’s Hand, Lu Conrad, Lance Robert Carstensen, fashions from Tommy Hilfiger and Holman, Linda Glick, Larry aka Cowboy Wild, Calvin Klein to Diesel and Hello Hashbarger, Troy Brunet, recently became fasciSteven Underhill Kitty pranced and strutted across and others. All in all, a denated with pole dancthe stage. lightful night of carefully Michael Brandon (left) and a festively headdressed ing, as an art form, as produced the- Donna Sachet at the Leather & Feathers fashion show. a demanding sport, atrical fashion! and as form of selfSaturday expression. This was a Supreme Court litigants Kris Perry night, we joined conight for us to share his new-found & Sandy Stier, and Golden State chairs John Marez passion at his Pole-Tacular Birthday Warriors’ Rick Welts. and Christopher Extravaganza.

Emcee Taryn Manning demVasquez at the Hilton Included among the performers onstrated the popularity of her Hotel for GLAAD’s were many of Robert’s friends, felNetflix show Orange is the New Game Changers, a low students, and teachers, but the Black, Alex Newell again amazed newly conceived headliner was Timber Brown, an all with his luscious voice, and awards gala recognizinternationally recognized dancer, auctioneer extraordinaire Lenny ing the extraordinary acrobat, gymnast and pole-dancer, Broberg applied his consummate influence of social who shared his amazing talents skills to the live auction. The commedia and the high with us in performances that were pany at our table was perfect, but tech industry. Anothsexy and suggestive, while remainif the program was a bit long, there er glamorous red caring technically extraordinary and were plenty of opportunities for pet awaited, followed visually stunning. The raffle ticket table-hopping, as we chatted with Steven Underhill by a splendid seated sales and performer tips went to GLAAD consultant and grandson dinner, and awards Timber’s Kids, a non-profit charGuests at the Macy’s Glamorama event. of the same name Omar Shariff, for Google, YouTube, ity started by Timber to help chil-

M

t

dren find their true potentials. The highlight of the night was a touching performance by Robert himself, bringing the house to its feet. Who knows? We may find ourselves at the cozy and welcoming 1220 again soon!

AEF’s Leathers & Feathers event on Sunday brought together amazing fashion and over 40 of San Francisco’s most prominent activists from the Leather and Drag communities. We co-emceed with Sister Roma, always a pro at no loss for words, and a couple hundred people enjoyed a very well-run fashion show, by Joel Tan. It was one of those rare nights when so many from so many different facets of our community came together in support of a cause and the results were stunning.

We started with the Leather portion of the show. Sexy, revealing, and eye-popping, it featured models like Julian Marshburn, Andy

Steven Underhill

Wilson Cruz (left) and Dan Choi at the GLAAD gala.

Cross, Beth Bicoastal, J.P. Soto, Demetri Moshoyanis, Al Saadia, and Phillippe Gosselin. Then, awards were presented to Project Inform’s Dana van Gorder, Beach Blanket Babylon, and tireless volunteer Joanie Juster. The second See page 37 >>

Herculean Andy Butler on Hercules & Love Affair’s new musical feast

by Ray Aguilera

H

ercules & Love Affair, the house music project spearheaded by Andy Butler, has always been known for classic style, and a rotating cast of collaborators. This time around, Hercules has teamed up with a range of vocalists, including John Grant, Rouge Mary, Gustaph, and Krystle Warren. With vocal styles moving from Grant’s gravely drawl to Gustaph’s mezzo soprano, Hercules & Love Affair covers a lot of musical ground, but the emphasis remains on having a good time. As Hercules & Love Affair rolled into town to perform tracks from the new album Feast of the Broken Heart, we talked to ringleader Andy Butler to find out how his penchant for collaboration feeds his musical muse.

Ray Aguilera: Tell us a little bit about your history. How did you start DJing, and when did you begin producing your own music?

Andy Butler: I started DJing as a 15-year-old in Denver, CO. One night I was spending time at someone’s house who had a set of turntables and a really good record collection. I became obsessed.

My birthday came around, and my parents had bought a used pair of

turntables and a mixer that had amazing sound effects unit on it. I had already started writing music though I was kind of a musical kid.

There was a piano in the house, and I was playing it as a pre-teen. I had lessons with a piano teacher, and then I went to school and studied

piano and composition. DJing and composition were kind of the same thing for me, they were running concurrently. Collecting records, writing music. I started studying electronic music and collecting gear and putting together a small studio.

That’s kind of the whole trajectory.

How would you describe Hercules & Love Affair?

I would say that it is very rhythmic, very rooted in popular dance music, disco, house music, techno; colorful,

introspective, and heartfelt.

You worked with Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons on your first album. What was that collaboration like?

I learned so much being in the studio with him. There were a lot of lessons musically and personally.

It was really an amazing, amazing experience. He was super generous, in the sense that he was willing to help me realize my music, my songs with such humility. I learned a lot about integrity, and the process of working with other people in a creative capacity. I felt very blessed to [work with] someone so gifted.

The new record features gay singer/songwriter John Grant on a few tracks. How did you meet John?

Actually, the first recommendation for us to meet and collaborate came from a journalist for a music magazine who said, “You must know John Grant. He’s gay, he’s from Colorado, he likes house music.” And I thought to myself, “Denver’s not that big, he’s gay, he likes house music. I should know him.

I don’t know him, maybe I should know him.”

After a couple of missed attempts through formal introductions, our schedules cleared up and we could actually meet. We just hit it off, and over the course of a couple days, wrote some really great music.

How does having collaborators

affect your creative process?

This record was a more wholehearted collaboration than I’ve ever walked into before. The level of artistry amongst these singers is really great. They are all really capable lyricists, instrumentalists, vocalists.

It was really fun to do. From a production standpoint, I was working with my co-producers, and they were also really key collaborations.

A lot of it happened organically. I moved to Vienna pursuing a love interest, primarily. One day, I needed to use a studio to get a remix done, and through a friend of a friend, I got put in touch with this brilliant studio, and these two engineers. It’s like the stars aligned when we met, like members of my family that I had never known. Often my collaborations happen weirdly, in a really natural, predestined way, which feels really cool.

How did being in Vienna affect the final result?

There’s a preservationist streak in that city. Part of the reason that I like Vienna is that they respect their buildings, they respect their institutions, they respect their art and their artists and they protect them.

They’re not so quick to just sign up for entertainment, they’re more often than not interested in being challenged. As an artist, that’s a really fun place to be. You’re encouraged to push the envelope a little bit more. I’d say the finesse, and the high standards [of this record] is in direct relation to that city. Classics, classic disco, classic house, the idea

of “the classics” and what makes something classic. History is so important to what I do, and it seems like a city with such history is a good match. It worked out well.

How has the creative vision changed over the course of three Hercules albums?

I think I’m sort of honing in on something. Unabashedly being yourself, and celebrating that.

There’s a sort of punky spirit, celebratory punky, but punky, rebellious revolt kind of spirit that is at the core of what I’m doing. I’m honing in on it, becoming more refined.

Really it’s kind of a personal journey, this whole thing.

What’s your live show like?

I’m actually bringing two American vocalists with me. The idea is really having a party, the four of us onstage enjoying ourselves to the max, and being ourselves to the max, and spreading that message.

This is what it’s all about. There’s no point in any of this, if that’s not what we’re doing. That kind of energy is really the focus of what we’re trying to transmit. With that energy and the crowd, it becomes a proper dance party. That’s what we’re after, that’s what I think you can expect; fun, fun, fun! t Hercules & Love Affair performs with Tensnake, Friday Sept. 26. $30. 9pm. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie Street. www.herculesandloveaffair.net www.mezzaninesf.com

t <<

Read more online at www.ebar.com

September 25-October 1, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 37

Birds of a feather

From page 36

part of the fashion show exploded with feathers, worn by models like Juanita MORE!, Honey Mahogany, BeBe Sweetbriar, Mercedez Monro, Holy McGrail, and Mr. Pam. It looks like AEF has a great new concept for its annual gala, so don’t miss next year’s!

Since the night was still young, we joined Gary Virginia for the anniversary party happening at Foreign Cinema, where the entertainment was winding down, but the celebration continued. We socialized with Cockatielia, Deana Dawn, Heklina and others, sipping signature cocktails and sampling tantalizing hors d’oeuvres in an amazing space.

At Hotel Whitcomb on Saturday night, the Grand Ducal Council hosted their Coronation, honoring decades of community leaders, recognizing a successful reign, welcoming visiting royalty from as far as Hawaii and Las Vegas, and presenting five candidates for office. At the conclusion of a night of pomp and circumstance, the winners were announced: Grand Duke TJ Wilkinson and Grand Duchess Roxy Cotton Candy! Much credit must go to the other candidates who worked so hard during the campaign and will continue their charitable work: Olivia Hart, Lexi Shimmers, and Peter Griggs.

We hope to see you this Saturday night, September 27, at the Fairmont Hotel for Horizons Foundation’s annual Gala & Casino Night.

Expect an elegant cocktail hour, silent auction, delicious seated dinner, inspiring program, and gaming and dancing at the conclusion.

And Wed., Oct. 1, is Positive Resource Center’s Windows of Opportunity at SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission Street, when we’ll celebrate PRC’s success, honor its supporters, like Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation and photographer Rink Foto, and get a glimpse of the future mission. See you then and there!t

Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

ebar.com GET HIM ON THE LINE All photos: Steven Underhill

Top: A masked man, BeBe Sweetbriar, Juanita MORE! And Kenshi Westover show off their leathery feathery couture. Middle: A canine leather model shows off his tail at Leather & Feathers. Bottom: Sister Roma (left) describes a fabulous outfit on the runway at Leather & Feathers.

Try it for free

415-430-1127 More local numbers: 1-800-777-8000 Ahora en Español/18+ www.guyspyvoice.com

All photos: Alexander Nussbaumer

Left: Hercules & Love Affair’s current main performers.

Above: Hercules & Love Affair’s Andy Butler.

<< On the Tab

38 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 25-October 1, 2014

TAB f eON THE 2 – Sept. 25 Oct.

t

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. 8292233. www.virgilssf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. Sept. 25: DJs Grown Kids Radio, live set by Teeko, and science pop-up talks and exhibits about epidemics. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Pan Dulce @ The Cafe

Diana Ross @ Paramount

Fri 26

A

n alert to drag and trans folk in nightlife; before you get banned from Facebook, don’t forget that your events listed on the problematic social media website may not be seen by yours truly. To get the maximum exposure for your events, with none of Facebook’s censorious idiocy, please consider going back to that now apparently antiquated format: emailed press releases. Send your event info to events@ebar.com to get it listed here. Besides, many people are dumping Facebook altogether.

Thu 25 Beats Reality @ Trax Resident DJs Jim Hopkins and Justime welcome guest DJs and play groovy tunes. Weekly, 9pm-2am. 1437 Haight St. 864-4213.

Bulge @ Powerhouse Grace Towers hosts the weekly gogotastic night of sexy dudes shakin' their bulges and getting wet in their undies for $100 prize (contest at midnight), and dance beats spun by DJ DAMnation. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Charles Busch @ Feinstein's at the Nikko Acclaimed actor, playwright and drag legend performs his witty cabaret act with pianist-singer Tom Judson. $35-$50 ($20 food/drink minimum).

8pm. Also Sept. 26. Hotel Nikko, lobby level, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Club Yass @ City Nights Frisco Robbie presents a new 18+ LGBT weekly night, with live sets by guest performers, DJ TwistMix, with a Latin room up front, gogo guys and gals. $10. 9:30-3am. 546-7938. www.sfclubs.com

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

Fabulosa Festival @ Yosemite The four-day women's music festival (open to all genders) features Average Dyke Band, Tru Bloo & Wanda Kruda, Anita Lofton, and others, plus DJed dance areas, workshops, kid-friendly activities and more. $20-$200. Thru Sept. 28. Spinning Wheel Retreat, Forest Route 1S30, Yosemite National Park. www.Fabulosa.org

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar.

10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.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

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. ThuSat 8pm. 433 Powell St. www.SFMagicParlor.com

Mary Go Round @ Lookout Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes host the weekly night with DJ Philip Grasso, gogo guys, drink specials, and drag acts.

10pm-2am. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys and hilarious fun.

Sept. 25: a Cabaret musical theme. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

My So-Called Night @ Beaux Heklina hosts a new weekly '90s-themed video, dancin', drinkin' night, with VJs Jorge Terez and Becky Knox. Get down with your funky bunch, and enjoy 90-cent drinks!

'90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

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

Pussy Party @ Beaux Women's happy hour, with all-women music and live performances, 2 for 1 drinks, and no cover. 5pm-9am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. 12pm-2am. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Thump @ White Horse, Oakland Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests. 9pm-2am.

6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge The intimate groovy retro disco night with tunes spun by DJ Bus Station John. $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle

Sat 27 Michael Cavanaugh @ Feinstein’s

Friday Night @ de Young Museum Nightlife events at the museum take on different themes. $20-$35. 6pm8:30pm. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoung.famsf.org

TASTE.

The weekly live rock shows feature local and touring bands. 9pm-ish. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.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 4pm8:30pm 2111 Franklin St. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

Fri 26 Bad Girl Cocktail Hour @ The Lexington Club Every Friday night, bad girls can get $1 dollar margaritas between 9pm and 10pm. 3464 19th St. between Mission and Valencia. 863-2052. www.lexingtonclub.com

Diana Ross @ Paramount Theatre, Oakland The diva singer returns to the Bay Area for a concert of her solo and Supremes hits. $56-$276. 8pm.

2025 Broadway, Oakland. www.rbpconcerts.com www.paramounttheatre.com

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun

Weekly ladies' happy hour at the Castro nightclub, with drink specials, no cover, and women gogos. 4pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Fuego @ The Watergarden, San Jose

Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland New weekly LGBT and straight comedy night hosted by Dan Mires. $10. 8pm.

2111 Franklin St. Oakland. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

Society Cabaret presents the Broadway actor-singer in his new show, Dirty Little Secrets. $25-$45.

8pm. Also Sept. 27. Cocktails and small plates available. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com

CRISP , REFRESHING

La Femme @ Beaux

Weekly event, with Latin music, halfoff 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

Jai Rodriguez @ Hotel Rex

The popular video bar ends each work 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

Hercules and Love Affair @ Mezzanine

Sat 27 Ana Gasteyer @ Bay Area Cabaret Opening Gala

Andy Butler's innovative dance music project (he regularly collaborates with a variety of musicians) performs live.

Tensake opens. $15-$30.

9pm. 444 Jessie St. 6258880. www.mezzaninesf.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland The Oakland nightclub continues its 22nd-year anniversary with Hip Hop, Top 40, and Latin music, gogo dancers and special guest DJs. No cover before 11pm and just $6 afterward.

Dancing 9pm-3am. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm 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

Some Thing @ The Stud Mica Sigourney and pals' weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Brand:Bud L Item #: PBL2 Job/Order #:

Light 201410615 : 263938

t

On the Tab>>

September 25-October 1, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 39

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland

Sat 27

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

Bay Area Cabaret Opening Gala @ Venetian Room The upscale ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel celebrates its new season, with a concert that includes composer Stephen Schwartz ( Wicked, Pippin, Godspell ), Ana Gasteyer ( Saturday Night Live, Suburgatory, Wicked ) Liz Callaway, Michael McCorry Rose and Peter Scattini. $60-$75. 8pm. 950 Mason St. 392-4400. www.bayareacabaret.org

Club Rimshot @ Bench and Bar, Oakland Get groovin' at the weekly hip hop and R&B night. $8-$15. 9pm to 4am.

510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi

Gameboi @ Richshaw Stop

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.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Gay Asian dance party and fundraiser for GAPA Foundation. $5-$12.

9:30pm-2am. 155 Fell St. www.gameboisf.eventbrite.com www.rickshawstop.com

Hocus Pocus @ Castro Theatre Peaches Christ presents a drag parody and screening of the Bette Midler comedy about witches. Performers include Jinkx Monsoon, Ben de la Crème, Thomas Dekker, Timmy Spece and Vinsantos. $30-$100. 3pm & 8pm. 429 Castro St. www.peacheschrist.com www.castrotheatre.com

Horizons Foundation Gala @ Fairmont Hotel The locally-based LGBT foundation that supports small nonprofits holds its annual gala fundraiser, with a dinner and program, including honors to B.A.R. columnist Donna Sachet, a casino party in the Tonga Room, silent auction of luxury items and vacations. $300 and up. 5:30-11pm. 950 Mason St. www.horizonsfoundation.org

Sun 28 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

Beer Bust @ SF Mix The popular Castro bar hosts its weekly softball team beer bust fundraiser. 3pm-7pm. 4086 18th St. 431-8616. www.sfmixbar.com

Big Top @ Beaux Joshua J.'s homo disco circus night returns, now weekly, with guest DJs and performers, hotty gogo guys and drink specials. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.BeauxSF.com

Brunch @ Hi Tops

Sun 28

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

Frenchie Davis @ Feinstein’s

Little Shop of Menken @ Martuni's Jason Brock, our fave gay vocal powerhouse, is joined by Jessica Coker ( Tales of the City) in a night of songs

by Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken (many Disney musical films, and the Off-Broadway hit Little Shop of Horrors). $25. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. www.jbmenken.bpt.me

Mary Lambert @ Nourse Theatre The young singing sensation performs in the Hayes Valley theatre, with guest Young Summer. $25-$55. 8pm. 275 Hayes St. 392-4400. www.marylambertsings.com www.cityboxoffice.com

Mélange @ Regency Center Fashion and design event, showcasing 18 fashion designers with 100 models; with Laganja Estranja ( RuPaul's Drag Race ) and Cory Wade Hindorff (America's Next Top Model ), Adam Roth, Chapkins Dance Company and others. $50-$250. 7pm-10pm. 1300 Van Ness Ave. www.melange-2014.eventbrite.com

Michael Cavanaugh @ Feinstein's at the Nikko

©2014 A-B, Bud Light® Beer, St. Louis, MO

Closing Date: 7/1/14 QC: CS

Sat 27

Trim: 8.75 x 7.75 Bleed: none Publication: Bay Area Reporter Live: 8.5x7.5

Beer Bust @ Hole in the Wall Saloon

Beer only $8 until you bust.

4pm-8pm. 1369 Folsom St. 4314695. 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

Bootie SF @ DNA Lounge Celebrate eleven years of the weekly mash-up dance night, with resident DJs Adrian & Mysterious D. Sept. 27: Octoberfest theme, with SmachUp Derby and Bayern Maiden live. 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

Superhero Street Fair

Brunch & Bowl @ AMF Southshore Lanes, Alameda East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club's 2nd annual bowling party includes two hours' lane time, shoe rental and refreshments. $25-$35. 11:30am1:30pm. 200 Park St., Alameda. www.eastbaystonewalldemocrats.org

Brunch Sundays @ Balancoire Weekly live music shows with various acts, along with brunch, mimosas, champagne and more, at the stylish nightclub and restaurant. 2565 Mission St. at 21st. 920-0577. www.balancoiresf.com

Frenchie Davis @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The Grammy-nominated singer (Rent and Dreamgirls on Broadway), performs her new cabaret show of soul, R&B and Broadway classics. $25-$40. $20 drink/menu minimum.

7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

GlamaZone @ The Cafe Pollo del Mar's weekly drag shows takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

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

Sam Smith @ Fox Theater, Oakland The openly gay British singer performs his acclaimed new music with his signature vocals. $35. 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave. www.samsmithworld. com www.thefoxoakland.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550 The popular country western LGBT dance night; enjoy fun foot-stomping two-stepping 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. 6:30-11pm. 314 11th St. www.sundancesaloon.org

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

Mon 29 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). 8pmclosing. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Drag Mondays @ The Cafe Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko's weekly drag and dance night.

9pm-1am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland Mondays and Tuesdays popular weekly sing-along night. No cover. 8:30pm1am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 6523820. www.whitehorsebar.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

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

Grammy and Tony-nominated star of the Billy Joel musical Movin' Out performs his concert of classic rock and pop songs. $35-$50. $20 drink/ menu minimum. 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Queer Prom @ MCC Look Back With Glitter, an LGBTQ prom dance, with DJ NewRo playing 40s swing, retro hits and Top 40.

Vote for king and queen ($1 a vote fundraiser). $15-$20. 7pm-10pm. 150 Eureka St. www.brownpapertickets. com/event/859646 www.mccsf.org

Sing-Along Saturdays @ Martuni's Join Joe Wicht for a new weekly night of top 40 rock and pop sing-alongs.

9pm-1am. 4 Valencia St.

Superhero Street Fair @ Waterfront Boardwalk Oasis The fifth annual superhero-themed outdoor music festival encourages you to dress up in your favorite tights and masks gear, with seven stages of music (House, downtempo, dubstep and more) by DJs from Symbiosis, Muti Music, Enchanted Forest, Pink Mammoth, Opel Supperclub and more. $10-$100 (VIP). 1pm-11pm.

Indiana St. at Cesar Chavez. www.superherosf.com

Sun 28 Jock @ The Lookout 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

Now & Zen Fest @ Golden Gate Park Alice 97 Radio's free show, with Neon Trees, Matt Nathanson, American Authors, Lindsey Stirling. Beer, wine and food on sale. 12pm-5pm. Sharon Meadow. www.radioalice.cbslocal. com/show/alices-now-zen-fest

Neon Trees @ Now & Zen Fest

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany's weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm, 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.

7pm-2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pmclosing. 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

See page 40 >>

<< On the Tab

40 • BAY AREA REPORTER • September 25-October 1, 2014

<<

On the Tab

From page 39

Name That Beat @ Toad Hall BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly musical trivia challenge and drag show. 8:30-11:30pm. 4146 18th St. at Castro. www.toadhallbar.com

No No Bingo @ Virgil's Sea Room Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.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

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

Underwear Night @ 440 Strip down to your skivvies at popular men's night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Tue 30 Block Party @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Pixies, Royal Blood @ Masonic Hall The veteran alt rock band performs; opening is the UK-based thrashrocking duo –just Mike Kerr on guitar and Ben Thatcher on drums– blast '70s rock-influenced songs. $60$180. 7:30pm. 1111 California St. (877) 598-8497. www.livenation.com www.sfmasonic.com

Showdown @ Folsom Foundry Weekly game night for board and electronic gamers at the warehouse multi-purpose nightclub. 21+. 6pm12am. 1425 Folsom St. www.showdownesports.com

Switch @ Q Bar Weekly women's night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.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 1 Aquapalooza @ Aquarium by the Bay

Show off your tattoos and piercings at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night.

10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Meow Mix @ The Stud The weekly themed wild variety cabaret showcases new and unusual talents; MC Ferosha Titties. $3-$7.

Show at 11pm. 9pm-2am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

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

Piano Bar @ Beaux Singer extraordinaire Jason Brock hosts the weekly night, with your talented host –and even you– singing.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Rainbow Skate @ Redwood Roller Rink Weekly LGBT and friends skate night, with groovy disco music and themed events. $9. 8pm-10:30pm. 1303 Main Street, Redwood City. www.rainbowskate.net www.facebook.com/rainbowskating/

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

Rookies Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Watch newbies get nude, or compete yourself for a $200 prize. Audience picks the winner. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

The weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com 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. 4314278. www.harveyssf.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. 8614186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Wooden Nickel Wednesday @ 440

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey's

Ink & Metal @ Powerhouse

Weekly Latin partner dance night.

8pm-1am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Sony Holland @ Level III

Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

A C.O.L.T. Following, the disability and LGBT-inclusive theatre company's music and variety show, includes raffles and tickets to their upcoming shows. No cover. 6:30pm-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St. www.circleoflifetheatre.org

LGBT night at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the "Godfather of Skate."

Actually, every night is gay-friendly, including Saturday's Black Rock night (Burning Man garb encouraged). Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5.

Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Queer Salsa @ Beatbox

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops

Circle of Life Cabaret @ Martuni's

Gay Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels

Kollin Holts hosts the new weekly comedy and open mic talent night.

6pm-8pm. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall

The weekly burlesque show of women dancers shaking their bonbons includes live music. $10. 9pm. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

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

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle

The aquatic museum and interactive exhibit venue's monthly silent disco parties keep fish safe while you enjoy headphone music, drinks and appetizers. $15-$20. 7pm-10pm.

Embarcadero at Beach St. 623-5300. www.aquariumofthebay.org

Bombshell Betty & Her Burlesqueteers @ Elbo Room

ebar.com

t

Thu 2 Lorde @ Greek Theatre

Bromance @ Beaux DJ Kidd Sysko spins tunes for the bro-tastic midweek night, with $2 beer pitchers, beer pong, $1 shots served by undie-clad guys. It's like a frat house without the closet cases.

8:30-10pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Dare 2 Bare @ Club OMG New weekly underwear night includes free clothes check, no cover, and drink specials. 9pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Good Times @ Bench and Bar, Oakland Olga T and Shugga Shay's weekly queer women and men's R&B hip hop and soul night. No cover. 8pm-2am.

510 17th St. www.bench-and-bar.com

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. 647-3099. www.wildsidewest.com

Buy a drink and get a wooden nickle good for another. 12pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Wrangler Wednesday @ Rainbow Cattle Company, Guerneville The Russian River bar's country music night attracts cowboys and those who like to ride 'em. 8pm-1am. 16220 Main St., Guerneville. (707) 869-0206. www.queersteer.com

Zen Hospice Project Gala @ Fort Mason Center One Night, One Heart, the fundraiser for the caregiving nonprofit, includes drinks, live music, Josh Kornbluth performing, and MCed by actor/activist Peter Coyote. $75-$500. 6pm-8pm.

Golden Gate Room, Marina Blvd. at Buchanan. www.zenhospice.org

Thu 2 Lorde @ Greek Theatre, Berkeley The enchanting New Zealand vocalist performs at the scenic outdoor ampitheatre. $60-$80. 7pm. Also Oct. 3, 7pm. UC Berkeley campus, 2001 Gayley Road, Berkeley. (510) 6429988. www.lorde.co.nz www.thegreektheatreberkeley.com

Thievery Corporation @ Fox Theater, Oakland The multi-cultural eclectic duo and their festive 15-member band perform live. $52.50. 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave. www.thieverycorporation.com www.thefoxoakland.com Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

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September 25-October 1, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 41

Tattooed Love Boys

by John F. Karr

I

couldn’t wait any longer for the arrival of Johnny V’s first Falcon movie. My balls were turning none too flattering shades of the darkest blue, and I was sure those babies would be breakaway balls at any moment. Well, the ginger muscle boy with an exuberant personality who seems too, too much for my excitable glands finally got here—a day too late for this week’s kolumn.

While waiting for him, I had amused myself with Raging Stallion’s Under My Skin, Parts 1 and 2.

It was (they were) successfully distracting from my testicular trauma. It’s (they’ve) got plentiful stars, and tasty newbies—it’s officially Part Two of my Cam Christou survey. The pair of flix were directed, shot, edited, and given art direction by Tony Dimarco and Steve Cruz—it’s a one-man show by two people (with Andrew Rosen in on the editing).

a lovely sentiment which reminds me of one of my favorite bits of poetry, Aaron Shurin’s “Come into the light, where my actual love is shining.”

Then, Nick Cross is back, on the receiving end of Boomer Banks.

This scene has the preceding’s missing OCS, with Banks dropping blobs in Cross’s mouth.

Then we’re back in the alley— and wouldn’t it have been a thrill if this had been filmed in a real alley? It’s a nice set, though—RS usually has nice sets, and it’s luridly lit. And Trenton Ducati and Seven Dixon are lurid performers in it.

They’re intense, and really complement each other, with certain similarities of look and style.

Pointing his big ole butthole towards Ducati, Dixon fingers it sleazily. Ducati takes the bait, and gives Dixon’s way big ole butt a sturdy slamming that roils on to a smash finale.

Part Two of Under My Skin finds us in the same environs, with some of the same performers, though differently paired. What I liked best about it, though, was its quotient of new guys.

Humpy Derek Parker gets fucked all around, by punk killer Draven Torres—with cockring, thank you—and newcomer FX Rijos (in his second film). A couple weeks ago I was raggin’ a little humorously on Boomer Banks’ haircut. But get a load of what Rijos has on his head. Looks like a Mongolian speed

RagingStallion

Making his debut, he shows tough, he shows tats—he’s Ryan Patrix, in Under My Skin Part 2.

bump. Yet, from his name to his tats to his sturdy, uncut cock, you’ll welcome him. Along with the trio he rides in on, as, all strung together, they burst into a blazing climax.

Ryan Patrix makes his film debut, paired with Jake Jammer, who moves from several websites into the RS big time. They’re intensely focused on each other, and they sizzle. Jammer, a little younger, has a small mouth and a week and a half of cock. Patrix has a nearly full body tattoo, humungous ear stretches, and heavy hanging balls. And what a hot surprise they are—they flip each other, oh, yeah.

RagingStallion

A beefier Damien Crosses tops with élan in Under My Skin.

The title refers not to Ahab’s harpoon sticking Moby Dick, but to some no less determined fellows: a) sticking monster dicks into recipients far more happy with the situation than was the hapless whale; and, b) boys within and without a tattoo parlor.

The sex is intense, but not in that marathon fashion so prevalent in porn. There’s a quieter focus here; RagingStallion it’s sorta down low. That feeling is abetted by the minimalist assuaging Seven Dixon and Trenton Ducati—a star bout in Under My Skin Part 1. of the music, by JD Slater and Maxi for Remix Labs.

You know all about what Veteran nasty-man Damien Damien Crosse does, and he does Crosse opens, topping Nick it here with Seven Dixon as if it Cross. Two uncut studs in were brand new. Dixon’s so apthe alley behind tattoo parlor, preciative he gobbles Crosse’s at night time. They’re good, cum. though I thought Nick a little The finale has another cum meh. guzzler, with Cam Christou getJames Ryder isn’t really ting a gut bucket OCS from working at full throttle, but Boomer Banks. First Nick Cross partner Christian Wilde sure and now frisky Cam Christou— kicks the kid’s gong around. seems folks are lining up to eat Ryder does good work on Banks’ cum. By the time you read Wilde’s stout and solid pole. this, Banks will no longer be an I’ve studied this particular RS Exclusive. This scene’s an expole extensively, and will atplosive farewell, with soulful kisstest that this filming sizes it ing, nipple tugging, and an ass up well. It’s formidable—or, pummeling for Christou, whose as the French say, formidable. cock‚ which has been shown And, for a str8 guy, Wilde off to its best, stays right hard sure can deepthroat a dick. throughout.

A facial that’s only a teeny bit Neither of these is an imperaoral is neither here nor there, tive movie, but if you like any but you’ll savor the moment of the guys, you’re going to like when Ryder kisses the spermy RagingStallion them here.t crown of Wilde’s cock. The tattoo across Wilde’s clavicle Cam Christou cozies up to Boomer Banks in reads, ‘Stand In the Sunshine,’ Under My Skin Part 2. www.RagingStallion.com

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Shooting Stars

September 25-October 1, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 43

photos by Steven Underhill Folsom Street Fair

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he 30th annual Folsom Street Fair saw thousands of attendees unleash their kinky side, all under pleasantly overcast skies; no harness tan lines afterward! Photographer Steven Underhill caught some of the new generation of kinksters, who enjoyed the newly expanded areas and events.

For more info, visit www.FolsomStreetEvent.org.

See more event photo albums on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife and on www.StevenUnderhill.com See this and other issues in full page-view format at www.issuu.com/bayareareporter

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com or email stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com