San Francisco Bay Times - June 11, 2015

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Secr ets of Cit Sa yH n al lR ev S ee

Sp ec Pa ial S ges ec 7-9 tion

PHOTO COURTESY OF PATRICK CARNEY

June 11-24, 2015 | www.sfbaytimes.com

o c s i c n d a e Fr eal

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Harvey Milk Club Leads the Way, the Mission Rises Up, and New Leadership at City College

A San Francisco Kind of Democrat Rafael Mandelman Happy Birthday, Harvey Milk The Harvey Milk Club gave our community a great present for what would have been Milk’s 85th birthday on May 22. The Club took over the Castro Theatre that night, arranging for a screening of Rob Epstein’s classic documentary The Times of Harvey Milk.

The screening was followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker as well as Milk associates Tom Ammiano (who as a young teacher, worked with Milk on the fight against Proposition 6), Harry Britt (Milk’s successor on the Board of Supervisors), Gwenn Craig (former president of the Harvey Milk Club), Henry Der (former executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action), and Tory Hartmann (Milk’s political consultant and friend). As a former Club president myself, it was a treat to see the Milk Club name and logo up in lights at the iconic theater, but it was an even greater thrill to see current Milk Co-Presidents Laura Thomas and Peter Gallotta and other Club activists doing such a great job of keeping Harvey’s legacy alive and strong.

Mission Moratorium The Milk Club has also been playing

a strong supporting role to the efforts of District 9 Supervisor David Campos and Mission activists to enact a temporary moratorium on development of market rate housing in the Mission. Milk Club members were out in force for the Democratic County Central Committee’s May 27 meeting at which the DCCC considered a resolution in support of the measure, as well as the Board of Supervisors’ June 2 meeting where the Supervisors took action on the proposal itself. In between, on May 30, the Club joined with Calle 24— the Mission activist group spearheading the moratorium—for a protest at Castro and Market, calling on District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener to support the moratorium and other efforts to slow the alarmingly rapid loss of affordable housing. Of course, the proposal lost at both the DCCC and the Board, although in each case by a narrower margin than I had expected.

The vote at the DCCC was 13–10 against, while at the Board of Supervisors, the moratorium was supported by 7 of 11 Supervisors, but fell short of the 9 votes it needed to pass.

Regular readers will probably not be surprised to learn that I was one of the ten DCCC votes for the moratorium. Supervisor Wiener and other opponents have argued that it is madness to impose a moratorium to deal with a shortage of affordable housing.

However, although the opposition’s theoretical arguments make some sense to me, I have found moratorium supporters far more compelling when they argue that, counter-intuitive as it may seem, a temporary moratorium is necessary to create time for the development and implementation of an affordable housing strategy in the neighborhood. (continued on page 30)

An Issue Our Community Has Grappled with for Years

Do Ask, Do Tell Zoe Dunning Last week, a friend and I were talking about Pride Month, since she had just come back from her employer’s Pride Month reception and celebration. I asked her how it was and her response was, “It was okay. There were more allies there than LGBT people.” It wasn’t a criticism, but it was more than just an observation. She was certainly appreciative of her straight boss and her boss’ straight boss attending the event, but there was definitely a slight tone of disappointment in her delivery.

The exchange has stuck in my head ever since.

Our community has been aspiring for, fighting for, and even begging for recognition and support from a broader base of advocates and allies than just ourselves. There is strength in numbers, and all non-dominant groups to some extent need some support of the dominant group to advance their civil rights and secure equality.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would not have been repealed if it weren’t for the leadership and brave testimony of Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ireland just voted for marriage equality, with a majority of its mostly Catholic citizens recognizing and voting in support of our community. Two brilliant legal strategists and straight allies, Ted Olson and David Boies, argued California’s Prop 8 legal case before the United States Supreme Court and won. The recent anti-gay legislation in Indiana was stopped in its tracks largely by the economic power of large organizations that declared they would no longer send employees to the state, hold events there, or do business there. That could not have been organized or accomplished with only LGBT people and resources.

Our LGBT community needs to continue to reach out and build bridges with our allies. Every time a straight or cis ally steps up and speaks out against homophobia, trans phobia, and any law or action that threatens our safety, rights or access, we advance as a society. But when is it appropriate to limit a gathering, an event, or leadership positions to only members of your own community?

I am a co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. Our primary objective: Work within the Democratic Party and within the community at large to influence the Democratic (continued on page 30) BAY T IM ES JUNE 11, 2015

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In the News

By Dennis McMillan

Mayor Raises Rainbow Flag over City Hall San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee raised the rainbow flag above City Hall Tuesday morning to celebrate June as Pride Month for members of the LGBTQ community.

Surrounded by dozens of City officials, Lee lowered the multicolored flag from the mayor’s balcony overlooking the City Hall Polk Street steps. The flag ceremony comes less than two weeks before the City’s Pride weekend starting with events on June 27 and continuing through June 29. sfmayor.org CCOP Bows Out of Pink Party Plans The Castro Community On Patrol (CCOP) has decided not to be part of this year’s Pink Party (formerly Pink Saturday) celebration on June 27. The main reason is the need to be ready for the SCOTUS announcement regarding same-sex marriage, which will require safety monitoring of celebrants in the Castro. Also, mobilizing for the Pink Party would stretch their safety volunteer resources very thin. This year’s party will start and end earlier than those in the past with a 3pm to 8pm schedule. castropatrol.org Help Needed to Assemble 20th Annual Pink Triangle Volunteers are requested for installation/set-up of the Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks north hill on Saturday, June 27, 7am– 10am. The Commemoration Ceremony is at 10:30am. The pink triangle symbol, once used to identify and persecute gay men in Nazi Germany, has since evolved into an important reminder for the LGBT community of the continuing homophobia and inhumanity against them and other repressed minorities around the world. thepinktriangle.com ACT UP Panelists to Discuss 25th Anniversary of AIDS Conference Members of the original ACT UP/San Francisco will discuss the planning behind the actions during the 6th International AIDS Conference in San Francisco, and the impact that they had on that conference and future conferences. Topics include the role of people living with HIV

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housing accounts for 93% of the housing being built in the Mission, and only 13 sites remain for the development of affordable housing. milkclub.org in determining the treatment and research agendas, immigration restrictions on people living with HIV, women and gender issues within the epidemic, threats to the San Francisco model of care, and the relationship between direct action activists and AIDS service organizations. The free meeting will be held on June 20 at 4:30pm –7pm at the SF LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street. Check out facebook.com/groups/acfupreunion2014sf for information on a week of ACT Up reunion events.

Bills Addressing LGBTQ Civil Rights Advance Five bills sponsored by Equality California that address serious gaps in civil rights protections for LGBTQ Californians have advanced from their houses of origin for consideration by the second house. All five concern the mental or physical well-being of LGBT adults and youth. AB 959 reduces disparities in health and wellbeing for LGBTQ people through data collection.

AB 827 combats bullying and supports queer youth. AB 329 updates existing law to ensure that sex education is inclusive of LGBTQ relationships. SB 703 requires out-of-state companies contracting with the state of California to provide insurance benefits to transgender employees. SB 731 requires child welfare officials to consider a child’s gender identity when making a foster care placement. eqca.org Harvey Milk Club Rallies for Housing Affordability in D8 The Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and its progressive allies gathered in Harvey Milk Plaza to demand change in affordable housing. They claimed District 8 has the second highest eviction rate in San Francisco and some of the highest rents, while its leadership continues to undercut community efforts to expand housing affordability. A few days later, the group met in City Hall to tell the Board of Supervisors to vote yes on the luxury housing moratorium. They stated that luxury

Friends and Family of Fernando Robles Invited to Two Memorials A ceremony in memory of Emperor Fernando Robles is on Sunday, June 14, at 5pm to gather for cocktails at the Pilsner Inn. At 6:30pm, participants will travel to Ocean Beach on the N Judah for a 7pm– 9pm Ocean Beach bonfire, toast by Emperor Kevin Lisle & Empress Khmera Rouge. Bring drums, musical instruments and blankets. Also, a Celebration of Life is on Friday, June 19, 7pm at Lookout SF, 3600 16th Street as a gathering of Friends and Family to Celebrate Fernando (December 2, 1969–May 29, 2015). https://www.facebook.com/ events/1593847467567496/ DMV Again Settles with a Verbally Attacked Transgender Woman in Bay Area A San Francisco transgender woman has settled her privacy and civil rights lawsuit with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the second lawsuit of its kind against the DMV in the Bay Area in the past four years. Jane Doe, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect her privacy, went to the DMV to change the gender marker on her ID to reflect her gender identity. When she presented her paperwork to the clerk, the DMV employee was friendly until discovering that she was transgender. At that point, he became visibly angry and began to loudly lecture her on the “sin” of being transgender. The State of California agreed to pay Ms. Doe almost $30,000.

The Transgender Law Center will also continue to urge the DMV to incorporate transgender sensitivity into its ongoing employee training. meltwaterpress.com Protesters Rally Outside Facebook HQ over “Real Name” Policy A group of protesters that included members of the LGBTQ community, Native Americans and domestic violence survivors gathered outside Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters to protest the social network’s controversial “real name” policy. Under the

long-standing policy, Facebook can suspend accounts reported as using a name other than the one listed on that user’s birth certificate. The #MyNameIs coalition said Facebook has been slow to act on their behalf, which is why they organized the protest. As a result, Facebook now allows Facebook users in the U.S. to sign into their accounts while they verify or update their name, and expands the options that blocked users can choose from to verify their authentic name. mashable.com/ Madame Tussauds Features First Ever Transgender Figure in Its History Madame Tussauds announced that Laverne Cox will join Madame Tussauds San Francisco in Fisherman’s Wharf as the first ever transgender figure in the long history of Madame Tussauds to celebrate Pride Month. Madame Tussauds is honored to celebrate Ms. Cox’s outstanding achievements and the historic impact she has made through raising awareness, and her stance on equality and inclusion within the LGBTQ community. madametussauds.com/ SanFrancisco SF Archbishop Speaks Out Against Transgenders Amid the national buzz over transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner revealing her new female identity, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone denounced the spread of “gender ideology” and warned that it threatens the very foundation of the Church’s faith. “The clear biological fact is that a human being is born either male or female,” Cordileone said at the start of an address in Manhattan. “Yet now we have the idea gaining acceptance that biological sex and one’s personal gender identity can be at variance with each other, with more and more gender identities being invented.” Cordileone is also the point man in the battle against same-sex marriage for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. washingtonpost.com Generations HIV Online Archive Goes Live The HIV Story Project online video archive, “Generations HIV.org,” went live

with powerful launch events at San Francisco City Hall that were timed to coincide with National HIV/AIDS Longterm Survivors Awareness Day. There are almost 500 powerful videos on the archive now, and by summer’s end, there will be upwards of 1,200 to watch, explore and share. generationshiv.org/ CA Senate Passes First Medical Aid-in-Dying Bill in CA History Compassion & Choices praised the California Senate for passing a medical aidin-dying bill for the first time in history, two weeks after the California Medical Association dropped its 28-year opposition to such legislation. The vote to approve the bill, the End of Life Option Act (SB 128), was 23 to 14. The bill now moves to the Assembly, where the deadline to pass the bill is Sept. 11. compassionandchoices.org Out & Equal Workplace Celebrates Outstanding Business Leaders Out & Equal Workplace Advocates bestowed Selisse Berry with the inaugural Legacy Leadership Award at the Four Seasons hotel, as they celebrated Bay Area companies and leaders advancing LGBTQ equality in business. In addition to honoring their CEO and founder, the event celebrated Corporate Pride Award Winner The Clorox Company and OUTstanding LGBT business leaders, including the Golden State Warriors’ Rick Welts, Bank of San Francisco’s Roberta Achtenberg and Out & Equal board member Intuit’s Scott Beth. outandequal.org Land Use and Transportation Committee Hears Water Reuse Legislation The Land Use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has heard legislation sponsored by Supervisor Scott Wiener to require new developments to use onsite water reuse systems—like greywater and blackwater systems—for non-potable uses like toilet flushing and irrigation. The legislation also pushes City departments to use non-potable water for all cleaning and irrigation of public spaces within the next five years. Increasing the use of non-potable water will decrease reliance on Hetch Hetchy drinking water for irrigation and toilet flushing. sfgov.org

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BAY T IM ES JUNE 11, 2015

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Round About - SF Pride Kickoff Party

T REAT Y OURSELF TO AN E XCITING C ULINARY A DVENTURE WITH M ICHELIN S TAR C HEF S RIJITH G OPINATHAN

Photos by RINK and Steven Underhill stevenunderhill.com

San Francisco Pride officials, including Gary Virginia, George Ridgely, Lisa Wiliams, Marica Levine, Lucky Gutierrez and Jose Cital, welcomed guests to the launch of the new SF Pride Kickoff Party. Themed “Celebrate Pride at 45,” the party was held at Hotel Whitcomb and featured numerous entertainers, auctions, beverages, gourmet food items and more. The 2015 Grand Marshals were honored with performances

by Cheer SF, SambaFunk!, Funkquarians, Leanne Borghesi and others.

Spice Pot — Chef’s interpretation of traditional Indian street food with vegetables, tamarind chutney, and chickpea crackers.

Frame 123

Get outside and play!

PHOTO BY RINK PHOTO BY RINK PHOTO BY STEVEN UNDERHILL

PHOTO BY STEVEN UNDERHILL

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY STEVEN UNDERHILL

camptonplacesf.com for reservations | 415.781.5555 340 Stockton San Francisco | Union Square Open Every Night for Dinner | Lunch Wednesday – Sunday

PHOTO BY RINK

Enjoy a six-course Spice Route menu or indulge in our ninecourse Degustation menu. For those with lighter appetites we offer a three-course Theatre Menu and Vegetarian Tasting menu.

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY MICHAEL COLBY

Journey along India’s Spice Route by way of California at five-time Michelin star winner Campton Place. Chef Srijith’s cuisine masterfully blends the finest local produce with the richness of the region’s seasonal bounty.

2015 season

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June 7, 13, 14, 21

Mount taMalpais state park * 6

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MountainPlay.org

PHOTO BY RINK

May 24, 31

World’s Gayest City Hall Turns 100 Harvey Milk frequently used to pause and admire the engraved medallions at San Francisco City Hall depicting Liberty, Equality, Learning and Strength. Years later, Patrick Carney, who worked on the restoration of City Hall and is the organizer of the annual Pink Triangle display at Twin Peaks on Pride

Sunday, did the same. Carney made a fitting discovery: the Equality medallion features a pink triangle.

Read into that observation what you will, but the fact remains that San Francisco City Hall holds many LGBT secrets, not to mention history, given the central role that it has played throughout our community’s existence here in the Bay Area. So much emotion has poured outside of its Madera

San Francisco City Hall: The People’s Palace

County granite exterior, after both unthinkable tragedies and events leading to pure, exhilarating joy.

In this issue, we honor venerable San Francisco City Hall during its centennial year. Thank you to Carney, who below shares more about this world-class landmark. He provided our cover photo, as well as many of the images in this section.

Photographs courtesy of Patrick Carney

By Patrick Carney The Shared Vision of Mayors “Sunny Jim” Rolph (1913) and Willie Brown (1996) San Francisco’s spectacular first City Hall was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. After an architectural competition, Bakewell & Brown Architects were selected to design the new structure a few blocks away. When flamboyant Mayor “Sunny Jim” Rolph came into office, the vision was upgraded. In 1989, another earthquake damaged the new City Hall, which by that time was almost 75 years old and in poor shape, not just from the earthquake Patrick Carney but also from years of lack of respect. Bond measures were passed for a seismic upgrade and interior restoration. Just like when City Hall was originally constructed from 1912–1915, a new Mayor came into power in 1996, and he was hands-on and upgraded the vision. The 1913 vision of Mayor “Sunny Jim” Rolph, and 1996 Mayor Willie Brown, were similar.

“Your job is to do what is right for the building. Don’t worry about politics or money, that’s my job!” Mayor Willie Brown stated as he walked into the conference room. He certainly kept his part of the bargain.

I had a front row seat to the building’s restoration when I was selected to be the design team’s liaison to thenMayor Willie Brown. The experience of working on San Francisco City Hall was certainly affected by whom we were working for. Mayor Brown recognized the importance of this opportunity to return the building to its original importance and grandeur.

He inspired us to think only about what was best, and then to do our best. He took hits in the media for some of our team’s proposals, such as restoring the Light Courts adjacent to the Rotunda, and using them as income-generating event spaces. They called the project “Taj Ma-Willie” (and other unprintable things).

What the press, of course, didn’t emphasize was that during World War II, the glass roofs of the Light Courts were covered in asphalt to keep them dark in case of air raids. In subsequent years, they were divided into a rabbits-warren of small rooms. Plus, in the 50s and 60s, the public often favored modern buildings, not old ones.

A lot of damage and abuse had been inflicted on the grand old dame, and

The Medallion of Equality

it took a lot to bring her back. It would have been heartbreaking to have to implement the wrong vision.

City Hall’s Restoration It was an honor to work for five years on the restoration of City Hall. I was one person on a large team, but as Project-Designer of the lead firm of the joint venture of 5 architectural firms and 22 engineering and specialty firms working on City Hall in the 1990s, I ended up being selected as the Joint Venture Team’s Liaison to Mayor Brown. I think I was intended to be the sacrificial lamb (fall-guy), but I survived, since the Mayor and then-SF City Architect for SF-DPW Tony Irons liked me. It was an amazing experience.

I joined Tony Irons for all major presentations to the Mayor, and presented options for layouts of the Mayor’s suite, all of the Supervisors’ new suites, all of the Commission Hearing Rooms, Supervisors’ Committee Room, restoration of the historic Legislative Chamber, elevator cabs, etc., and also presented the material selections, colors, fabrics and finishes to the Mayor. I had worked on the temporary City Hall in the old Museum of Modern Art space in the Veterans Building, and was enthusiastic to be working on the historic City Hall, once the firm where I worked was awarded the contract. However, working on the restoration exceeded my expectations.

The Rotunda’s Pink Triangle The building is a recognizable symbol of the LGBTQ movement worldwide, so it is appropriate that there is a pink triangle in the rotunda of this “architectural monument to equality.” Artist/sculptor Henri Crenier

The four medallions surrounding City Hall’s Rotunda Dome

created four large medallions at the base of the dome in the rotunda, including one entitled “The Medallion of Equality,” which has an equilateral triangle in her hand. The plaster is painted to reflect a lighter version of the floor’s Tennessee Pink marble and the Colorado limestone. Even though the beige color of the plaster isn’t defined, it is intended to be in the pinkish family, therefore, one can argue a “pink triangle” is in the Rotunda (pointed upward).

As yearly-organizer and co-founder of the giant Twin Peaks Pink Triangle, I love to point out the one in City Hall, especially with the 20th annual Pink Triangle coming up in a few weeks. It is fitting that the medallion where the pink triangle is located is entitled “The Medallion of Equality,” and it ties into the theme of this year’s Pride Parade, “Equality without Exception,” as well as the Pink Triangle commemoration. It is ironic that the Nazi’s used equilateral triangles to identify their “undesirables,” since such triangles have been used in art for centuries to denote equality, but never discrimination or persecution.

Living Reminders of the Assassinations During the process of working on the Mayor’s expanded suite, the assassination site of Mayor George Moscone was unveiled when the carpets in the rear dressing/lounge area behind the Mayor’s office were removed. While on a hard-hat progress tour of the building, I took Mayor Brown and his entourage into the now-dismantled dressing area and showed him the stained wood floor with visible holes where the bullets had ended up before being removed by the police in 1978 (this scarred area had been hidden under carpet). I asked if we should abandon our plans for that area. The Mayor said to go ahead with the spatial reconfiguration, but to have the boards removed and stored with the City Archivist.

There Mayor Brown stood, in his expensive suit wearing a hard hat, and to my surprise he proceeded to illustrate how the assassination took place, and where each person was standing related to the stained wood.

It turns out that Assembly Speaker (at the time) Willie Brown had just left the Mayor’s office through a back door moments before Dan White was brought in for his final meeting with Mayor Moscone. Shockingly, Willie

The Equality Medallion and City Hall Rotunda’s Dome

Brown might have ended up as the third victim of White’s rage.

A Site for Memorable and Groundbreaking Weddings Weddings have been taking place in City Hall since the beginning. One of the more famous City Hall weddings was of Marilyn Monroe to Joe DiMaggio. Also, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera got the marriage license for their second wedding there (and may have

been married inside). In 2004 came the first set of same sex couple weddings, then again in 2008, and finally permanently in 2013. Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were married in City Hall twice; they were the first same sex couple married in both 2004 and in 2008.

My spouse and I were married in City Hall by the Mayor right after the Supreme Court ruling in 2013. It was important for us to be married there. (continued on page 30)

The City Hall Centennial Celebration A civic celebration honoring the 100th anniversary of San Francisco’s City Hall will be held on Friday, June 19, from 6–11pm in Civic Center Plaza. The event coincides with Mayor Ed Lee’s hosting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ 83rd Annual Meeting, which will bring 450 Mayors from across the country to San Francisco. Aside from the Mayor-palooza, live entertainment by local artists performing hits from different eras throughout the past century will be featured.

“This historic centennial celebration provides us with an opportunity to come together as a City to remember how resilient San Franciscans have been through the past 100 years and helps us reflect on what tremendous support we have given one another during times of need, and we continue supporting one another for generations to come,” said Mayor Lee. “I can’t wait to join residents from all over San Francisco and Mayors from across the country to switch on our new lights for City Hall and celebrate our City.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein added, “Over the past century, City Hall has been the site of great triumphs and tragedies. During my nine years as mayor I saw both. Built after the devastating 1906 earthquake, the building is a symbol of the City’s ability to rise from the ashes, like the mythical phoenix, even stronger than before. It will be a special day to celebrate the centennial as well as San Francisco’s public servants who have been privileged to serve in its halls.”

The civic celebration will include the unveiling of two new lighting advances for City Hall: a permanent installation of LED fixtures that will light the exterior of City Hall for years to come, and the unveiling of a permanent multi-media projection system. We look forward to seeing what the building will be “wearing” for Pride this year!

For more information about the centennial, please visit www.sfcityhall100.com BAY T IM ES JUNE 11, 2015

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World’s Gayest City Hall Turns 100 City Hall in ruins after the 1906 earthquake Underwood & Underwood Publishers

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera obtaining their marriage license at City Hall San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio at City Hall San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

The”White Night” crowd marches on Castro Photo by Rink

SFPD car burning at City Hall after the announcement of the Dan White trial verdict, May 21, 1979 Photo by Rink

Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk on the steps of City Hall on Inauguration Day Photo by Rink

Supervisor Harvey Milk in the Legislative Chamber at City Hall Harvey Milk Archives - Scott Smith Collection, Gay & Lesbian Center, San Francisco Public Library Giant rainbow flag at City Hall on Pride Day 2013 Photo by Phyllis Costa

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Mayor Gavin Newsom remarries Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon at City Hall, 2008 Photo by Lacy Atkins

Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Ed Lee escort Phyllis Lyon on the steps of City Hall on Supreme Court Decision Day, June 26, 2013 Photo by Steven Underhill

Right: Pride Day Festival goers on the lawn at City Hall Photo by Steven Underhill

Pride VIP Reception Photo by Steven Underhill

Rainbow Flag Raising ceremony on City Hall Mayor’s Balcony, 2014 Photo by Rink

Pride Day 2014, Kiss for the Bay Times Photo Exhibit Photo by Chloe Jackman

Right: Rainbow World Fund’s World Tree of Hope at City Hall Photo courtesy of Rainbow World Fund

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The 20th Pink Triangle

Photographs courtesy of Patrick Carney

By Patrick Carney (Editor’s Note: The San Francisco Bay Times congratulates Patrick Carney on receiving San Francisco Pride’s 2015 Gilbert Baker Pride Founder’s Award. San Francisco Pride explains that “the award honors those who have made a signif icant and historical impact on the LGBTQ community and the movement for LGBTQ rights.” Both Patrick and his husband Hossein are true community treasures. If you can, please consider volunteering for this year’s historic Pink Triangle installation and related efforts. Please also join us in cheering for the Carneys on Pride Sunday, as we gaze at the Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks and contemplate its profound significance.)

The 20th Pink Triangle is coming the weekend of June 27–28, 2015.

How the years fly by!

The gigantic display is a visible, yet mute, reminder of man’s inhumanity to man. It is almost 200 feet across, one acre in size, and can be seen for 20 miles. The pink triangle was used by the Nazis in concentration camps to identify and shame homosexual prisoners. This symbol, which was used in an attempt to differentiate and persecute, has been embraced by the LGBTQ community as a symbol of pride. It seems the lessons of the Holocaust and the pink triangle have been lost on many. As they say, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” That is why we have our display. It is important to keep alive the memory of all of the Holocaust victims to help educate people to what can happen when hatred goes unchecked. Education is the key.

It is through this display that we hope to educate others of the lessons

Photo by Dan Nicoletta, Used by Permission

of the Pink Triangle, with the primary lesson being: what can happen when hatred and bigotry become law. There are certainly numerous recent examples covered in the media, such as in Uganda, Nigeria, Iran, Jamaica, Brunei and many others. Unfortunately, there are currently 77 countries where homosexual activity is illegal. While it isn’t illegal in Russia anymore, President Putin signed an anti-gay propaganda law. Lawmakers in Kazakhstan have passed similar anti-LGBT propaganda legislation, and their president may soon sign it. There is still much discrimination toward the LGBTQ community.

The test of any democracy is how well it treats its minorities. The Third Reich demonstrates how easi-

ly a government can devise minority scapegoats. During the Holocaust, the Nazis created a whole array of colored triangles to label and distinguish their “undesirables.” Branding homosexuals as criminals let most Germans feel comfortable looking the other way, while the Nazis went about their persecution. This diversionary tactic is now being used in several countries again.

At the end of the war, when the concentration camps were finally liberated, virtually all of the prisoners were released except for those who wore the pink triangle. Many of those with a pink triangle on their pocket were put in prison, and the nightmare continued.

To many, the pink triangle is just a brightly colored, graphic image, which has come to represent the gay rights movement, and there is often not a connection to how the symbol came about. We realized its history of hate was forgotten, and wanted to inform people of its significance.

The Pink Triangle started out as a renegade crafts project, which went up in the dark of night so we wouldn’t get arrested. It has now grown into something large that has been officially embraced by the city.

The Pink Triangle display was set on fire in 2009 in an arson hate-crime.

If arson of the Pink Triangle can take place in gay-friendly San Francisco, one can imagine what LGBTQs face in less accepting areas.

There will be a commemoration ceremony on Saturday, June 27, 2015, at 10:30am. Many of San Francisco’s elected officials are expected, as well as most of the Pride Parade’s celebrity Grand Marshals, Community Grand Marshals and Honorees. The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band will be performing as well. The ceremony starts with a telling of the “History of the Pink Triangle.” It is followed by the dignitaries’ remarks, and then the annual champagne christening of the Pink Triangle.

The giant Pink Triangle doesn’t just float up onto Twin Peaks each year.

It takes over 125 volunteers to make the display possible. They climb the hill and install over 175 bright pink canvasses, hammering them to the hill with thousands of 12-inch-long steel spikes. This truly is a community-building project. Plus, it takes 50 people to take it down the next day.

Volunteers Needed!

Installation: Saturday, June 27, from 7am–10am with ceremony at 10:30am De-installation: Sunday, June 28, from 4:30pm–8pm (after the parade) (Even an hour of assistance on either day is a huge help!)

Please bring a hammer and gloves.

Wear closed shoes. Sandals are not recommended.

Wear sunscreen.

Fashionable Pink Triangle t-shirts will be provided to all who help.

For information: www.thepinktriangle.com 10

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See Our Progress

Michael Kaufmann Business Analyst

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casTro residenT

I work every day to help businesses and residents save. I’m proud to work at a company like PG&e, which invests so much into our local communities and is committed to expanding California’s economic prosperity.

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At PG&E, our customers are our neighbors. The communities we serve as PG&E employees are where we live and work too.

That’s why we’re investing $5 billion this year to enhance pipeline safety and strengthen our gas and electric infrastructure across northern and central California. It’s why we’re helping people and businesses gain energy efficiencies to help reduce their bills. It’s why we’re focused on developing the next generation of clean, renewable energy systems.

Together, we are working to enhance pipeline safety and strengthen our gas and electric infrastructure—for your family and ours.

Together, Building a Better California PGE_10.25x16_BayTimes_Michael_0430.indd 1

“PG&E” refers to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation. ©2015 Pacific Gas and Electric Company. All rights reserved. Paid for by PG&E shareholders. All facts 2013/2014 unless otherwise noted.

in the Bay Area

See The FACTS IN The BAy AreA Replaced more than 30 miles of gas transmission pipeline Invested more than $2.1 billion into electrical improvements Connected more than 65,000 rooftop solar installations

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Reinventing Yourself in Retirement

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Retirement offers people a great opportunity to start something new. In addition, life expectancy trends indicate that an increasing number of baby boomers should be prepared for a long life in retirement. While this is good news, it also creates a few things to think about:

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In light of these dual considerations, it may be time to rethink plans to retire at a traditional age, such as 65. For many, extending work into later life may be necessary to ensure long-term financial security. For others, it may not be a financial necessity as much as a desired lifestyle choice. Those who are healthy and energetic might not be

As you enter your late 50s and early 60s, you may be thinking about what’s next in life. High on the list for many is maintaining a sense of purpose as you grow older. In many cases, continuing to work in some capacity is part of this equation. A number of people view the period approaching and entering retirement from their career as a time to begin a new chapter in their lives.

This may mean reinventing yourself and the role you play as a contributor in the workforce. It requires “out-ofthe-box” thinking to determine what you may be suited for that differs from what you’ve already been doing in your career. The range of options at this stage in life may be broader than you think. They include: • Building on your experience by becoming a consultant for your former employers and others with a similar need • Taking on a part-time role with your current employer, something that gives you more flexibility to pursue other interests • Pursuing a long-held dream to start a business, possibly in a field completely different from what you’ve pursued in the past • Providing your services to benefit organizations and people in a volunteer capacity

Looking for Purpose A developing trend is the desire among many baby boomers who want to keep working to find an occupation that provides an increased sense of purpose in life. Money may not be the prime motivation to keep working.

Particularly for those who are more financially secure, the drudgery of the workaday world they may have experienced before can be set aside.

Now is a time to seek work that is more engaging and purpose-filled.

Older Americans should not rule out the opportunity to take advantage of their available time to relax as well.

Taking time off after spending years dedicated to a career and accumulating wealth is well deserved. It might also give you an opportunity to “re-tool,” reconsider your options and determine the best course of action for the next phase of your life.

The idea of “reinventing yourself ” later in life can be a viable option for you. Make sure you have your financial house in order and avoid taking steps that might put your long-term financial security at risk. This can be an exciting time in life full of new opportunities.

You’ll want to be certain that any choices you make are consistent with your abilities, energy and financial capabilities.

Brandon Miller, CFP, is a financial consultant at Brio Financial Group, A Private Wealth Advisory Practice of Ameriprise Financial Inc. in San Francisco, specializing in helping LGBT individuals and families plan and achieve their financial goals.

Round About - Project Bloom Gala Photos by Rink

API Wellness held the Project Bloom Gala on Friday, May 29, at The Metreon. The evening featured a performance by the dance troupe of Groove Dance Studio, a popular food station hosted by Chef Kevin Weber and Art Bradley of The Cliff House, and more. Among the those attending were Supevisor Jane Kim, Commissioner Cecilia Chung, Rafael Mandelman and Empress Khmera Rouge. Tita Aida, emcee for the evening, was joined by Asia SF colleagues Greg Lackamy and Larry Hashbarger.

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BAY TIMES JUNE 1 1 , 2 0 1 5

Queer Cultural Center Brings Together Generations in June Programming Lineup generations. This month, in our National Queer Arts Festival, Qcc is presenting some great programs that bring together generations while retaining a focus on senior contributions and lives. I invite you to join us!

The Fresh Meat Festival - June 18–20: Curator/choreographer Sean Dorsey brings together transgender and queer performance artists in the nation’s premier transgender and queer performance festival. The lineup includes segments from Sean Dorsey Dance’s newest dance work, The Missing Generation, a tribute to the individuals lost to AIDS.

Aging in Community Pamela Peniston With so much media (and social media) focused on the millennials, senior LGBTQ people seldom get to see our lives, cultures, and concerns represented in the arts—on stage, screen, or in literature—much less to see this work developed by, and coming from, our own senior communities.

As a co-founder and artistic director for the Queer Cultural Center (Qcc), an African American lesbian, and a senior, I know the power of seeing our lives accurately portrayed through art.

I know how hearing and seeing our own stories in a play, a film, or a reading breaks our isolation and improves our health and well-being.

Sharing our individual histories is to examine our vast community’s history.

Since our inception in 1994, Qcc has worked with hundreds of artists to bring those histories alive for new

this year’s show, we’ve found that elders are thinking about legacy and what is being left behind, while our generation is thinking about inheritance. This year we have the very special opportunity to bring us all together, to reach for each other in the here and now.”

Still Here - June 11: For three years, Still Here has been telling stories of what it was like for young people to come out at the height of the AIDS epidemic in SF. Curators Natalia Vigil and Cristina Mitra have a compelling vision that is resonating deeply across generations: “As younger queers of color, we both come from cultures that carry a deep respect for our elders and naturally have brought that reverence and care to Still Here. Ever since we started Still Here, we’ve seen this project as a way to create community around San Francisco history, space, and time, both past and present. We can’t pretend to know what it was like to be out in 1980’s San Francisco, so bringing elders into the center of our project in 2015 brings the authentic voices we’re looking for. In curating

Glitter Bomb - June 20: Qcc’s art exhibition at SOMArts features international and intergenerational work exploring the idea of physical, social, political, and historical connections. The popular walkthrough is your chance to meet some of the artists and curators and hear them discuss their work. The exhibit is open until June 27.

Community Center. Katie trains young adults in various styles of printmaking while asking them to research individuals and incidents of recent history that resonate with them. These young printmakers celebrate those heroes and milestones of Queer History.

Pants: The Musical! - June 23–24: If musicals are your cup of tea, you’ll get a kick out of this one. Written and scored by J. Althea, Pants follows a lesbian life. Ellie, our lesbian, is played by seven actors of different ages and ethnicities as she goes through puberty and matures into her senior years.

Pants is a One-Act Musical Theatre pro-duction featuring Karen Ripley, Amy Meyers, J. Althea and 13 other actors, singers and musicians. “Seniors of any gender identification are largely invisible in the arts when it comes to love stories,” says Althea. “We think it’s important to show that love still abounds in senior lesbians!” A Graceland Girls production, the show is followed by a dance party at the African American Art & Culture Complex.

In addition to presenting the National Queer Arts Festival in June each year, Qcc collaborates with artists yearround. In August, Katie Gilmartin’s Chrysalis Studio’s Queer Ancestors exhibition will showcase gorgeous prints throughout the LGBT

The Queer Cultural Center is committed to representing the voices of elders in all of our communities and to removing barriers to their participation in the arts. Our programs are always “No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds,” so that they are accessible to all. Please visit www.qcc2.org to learn more about the National Queer Arts Festival (including ticket information) and our year-round programming, Pamela Peniston is the Artistic Director of the Qcc The Center for LGBT Art & Culture (aka Queer Cultural Center). She is also a set designer and photographer whose sets and images have been seen extensively throughout the Bay Area.

Dr. Marcy Adelman oversees the Aging in Community column. For her summary of current LGBT senior challenges and opportunities, please go to: sf baytimes.com/challenges-andopportunties

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Five Foundations of Loving Relationships Roland Schembari and Bill Hartman Co-Founders in 1978 Kim Corsaro Publisher 1981-2011

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CONTRIBUTORS Writers Rink, Sister Dana Van Iquity, Ann Rostow, Kirsten Kruse, Kate Kendell, Heidi Beeler, Gary M. Kramer, Dennis McMillan, Tom Moon, Terry Baum, Gypsy Love, Rafael Mandelman, Kit Kennedy, Phil Ting, Rebecca Kaplan, Leslie Katz, Philip Ruth, Bill Lipsky, Karen Williams, Donna Sachet, Gary Virginia, Zoe Dunning, Marcy Adelman, Stuart Gaffney & John Lewis Brandon Miller, Jamie Leno Zimron Rebecca Kaplan, Thom Watson, Courtney Lake, Michele Karlsberg Photographers Rink, Steven Underhill, Phyllis Costa, Cathy Blackstone, Robert Fuggiti, Chloe Jackman, Bill Wilson, Jo-Lynn Otto, Sandy Morris, Abby Zimberg

Examined Life Tom Moon, MFT What constitutes mature love? This is the subject of an excellent book, How to be an Adult in Relationships, by Dr. David Richo. I highly recommend it. In this book, Richo discusses five characteristics that he believes are the essential ingredients of maturity in adult love. These “five A’s” are: 1. Attention This is the most basic of the five. Every mammal feels instinctively that it needs and deserves full parental attentiveness. A mother lion doesn’t tend to her own grooming while she’s feeding her young, or demand that they groom her and wait for their dinner. When a parent is only partially attentive, the child notices and feels anxious. The experience of being on

the receiving end of engaged focus and sensitivity to our needs and feelings is the first and most fundamental way we know we are loved. And the most effective way we can show our love is to give our undivided attention to the people we love. This means attuning ourselves to the other’s feelings, needs, bodily reactions, moods, and so on. But this can’t happen if our minds are loaded with judgments about the other person. When we’re full of opinions about what our partner is doing and saying, we’re essentially relating to a “virtual partner”— our own mental constructs, not to the person himself or herself. To attend fully, we need minds that know how to be still and present, which is why Richo recommends regular meditation as an important tool for expanding our capacity for mature love.

2. Acceptance Buddhists have a phrase, “the glance of mercy,” which means looking at other human beings with acceptance and understand ing. Acceptance means we’re received respectfully with all of our feelings and character traits, and supported through them.

Real acceptance means validating someone else’s choices even when we don’t agree with them. It’s the opposite of moralizing. We can’t fully accept our partners until we’re mature enough to understand that they aren’t in this world to live up to our expec-

tations or to meet all of our needs.

Acceptance essentially means not being disappointed in our partners for breaking a bargain with us that they never made.

3. Appreciation Appreciation gives depth to acceptance. To appreciate your partner fundamentally means to nurture your own faith in his or her ultimate value, and to nurture gratitude for the many gifts of love you receive in the relationship. Research shows that the ratio of appreciation comments to complaints in couples that stay together is five to one.

4. Affection Affection means physical closeness, loving presence, reliable availability, compassion and empathy. Its opposite is abandoning and distancing.

In order to be able to be affectionate with our partners we have to have some freedom from the creations of the ego that inhibits closeness. These include fear, demands, expectation, judgment, and control. Richo therefore believes self-knowledge gained through psychotherapy and mindful meditation practices is so important in enabling us to love. As long as we’re unaware of how our egos work, egos are walls that prevent us from connecting with others. But when we’re conscious of our egos, these same limitations become windows through

which we can comprehend others and respond to them with empathy.

5. Allowing Just as one finger is not the hand, so affection is not love but only part of it. We all love to be held and made love to, but unless we’re also allowed to make our own choices freely and without blame, all the affection in the world won’t be enough. When immature people find love, they often try to get control of the source of supply by treating their partners more like hostages than lovers. But mature love is non-grasping.

What I appreciate about Richo’s five A’s is that they’re a reminder that mature love is more than just a warm feeling. It’s a way of life. It’s also a set of learned skills that require commitment, patience, deliberate intention, self-reflection, and disciplined action.

We grow in our capacity for love by expanding our consciousness, and we do that in two ways: through increasing our self-knowledge by means of systematic and honest self-examination, such as what psychotherapy can offer, and through cultivating mindfulness—an alert witnessing of reality without judgment, attachment, fear, or defensiveness.

Tom Moon is a psychotherapist in San Francisco. To learn more, please visit his website at tommoon.net

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GLBT Fortnight in Review

By Ann Rostow Coaches to Watch Out For There’s something about writing this column, a combination of being online and having the urge to procrastinate, that too often leads me down cyber-warrens into pockets of useless information. Do you know the four things that you should never buy from Trader Joe’s? Well, I do, so there.

Hint: sushi and fresh flowers make the list. I haven’t been in a Trader Joe’s for ten years, so why would I click on this headline? Answer that question and you’ll make a fortune in media marketing.

Well, what can we say about Denny Hastert? What a stereotype, the creepy wrestling coach feeling up the innocent equipment manager, or whomever and whatever. I saw a headline somewhere that said the Hastert situation is not a “gay story,” and, of course, it’s not. But still, Hastert does come from the generation that could not easily come out of the closet, and (assuming all these boys were at least 16) perhaps his life could have played out differently had he been born a decade or so later. Or maybe he’s just your run of the mill child molester.

An unassuming man from a small town rises to become second in line for the presidency, and yet his obituary will lead with a story of blackmail and child abuse. Very Greek tragedy.

What else is on our agenda, you ask.

We can now get married in Guam.

Yay! And one of my heroes, graphic artist and writer Alison Bechdel, just added to her many accolades with several Tony awards for the play version of her memoir, Fun Home. If you haven’t read Fun Home for some reason, put it on your summer reading list. Do you remember summer reading lists from school? We had to write book reports and everything. You know of course, that Bechdel wrote the weekly comic strip, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Yoko Ono Said What?

Now, the website “World News Daily Report” is not exactly filled with accurate information. But it’s still a little bizarre that they can write that Yoko Ono said she had an affair with Hillary Clinton back in the day, and that the story can be picked up and spread by dozens of other sites. Happily, we can count on our friends at the various watchdogs, like snopes.com, to shed light on this and other false rumors.

Personally, I wish it were true, sort of.

Speaking of Hillary, Olivia Cruise founder, Judy Dlugacz, organized a mostly lesbian fundraiser in D.C. the other day, which was expected to raise over $300,000 for the Democratic frontrunner. Clinton spoke to about 120 fairly wealthy attendees.

I just paid a visit to the main page of World News Daily Report, which for those unfamiliar with the site is the cyber sister to the tabloids of the 1960s.

Recent headlines tell us that people have just discovered a boy raised by kangaroos, that a woman just gave birth to a 40-pound baby, and that a meteor fragment contained trace amounts of THC. My my! Those of us in the GLBT community will be interested to hear that someone has discovered the oldest remains of a homosexual couple near the ancient ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Oh, and a Black Canadian journalist says he’s the real biological father of Prince William.

Speaking of fake stuff on the Internet, did you read the New York Times article about the secretive Russian agency that is dedicated to spreading disinformation and fake news stories, presumably to advance the insidious agenda of the Red Menace far and wide? Per-

haps they were the ones behind the take down of Trader Joe’s sushi.

Taking the Cake All these stories of bakers and florists who won’t serve gay couples have started to merge and meld in my head to the degree that I don’t delve into each new incident as deeply as I should. So I was shocked to read that Patrick Stewart rose to the defense of an antigay Irish bakery in a recent BBC News interview. Captain Picard?

Really? Say it ain’t so!

Turns out this bakery did not refuse to make a cake for a gay couple. Instead, they refused to decorate the cake with the message: “Support Gay Marriage.”

I find myself in a quandary, because there was a similar situation last April in Colorado where a baker said she would not produce a cake with antigay slogans like “homosexuality is a detestable sin.” The customer tried to get this baker charged with discrimination under the same ordinance that was earlier used by the Colorado Civil Rights Division to sanction a baker who refused gay customers, but to no avail. It seems clear that the friendly baker was not discriminating against a class of customers, but merely refusing to create a specific product that violated her beliefs.

Likewise, this Irish baker seems to be in the identical position, assuming of course that the baker would be happy to sell an undecorated cake to a gay couple. Further, don’t you remember the time when a grocery store refused to make a birthday cake for a child whose name was “Adolf Hitler?” The despicable parents talked some other store into designing the cake, but there was much ado over this incident back in 2008, and again, it seemed clear that baker number one had the right to refuse the assignment on principle.

Why go into such detail? Because we are on the verge of a sustained national argument over when and how antigay bigotry will be protected under the First Amendment, and to what extent anti-discrimination laws and the right to marry will be balanced against unpleasant personal convictions. It will never be illegal to believe that homosexuality is immoral. But to what extent can you manifest this belief in society? Can you be required to sell a cake to gay couples? Yes. Can you be required to write “Support Gay Marriage” on its surface? I think not.

Before we leave this topic, there’s a side issue surrounding the freedom to artistic expression. Some of our leading GLBT legal lights argue that photography, for instance, has an artistic component, and that obliging an antigay photographer to use his or her craft to memorialize a gay wedding offends the Constitution. I think, however, there’s a line between artistic expression and commercial enterprise.

The same artistic argument could conceivably be made on behalf of the bakers or the wedding planners or the dressmakers. But when you’re in business, you must abide by the rules of business, including state anti-discrimination laws.

Still, these are not always clear-cut questions, are they?

Screen Time Hey, everyone. I’m going to Amsterdam tomorrow to visit my stepdaughter and her family. Somehow, years ago, I wound up on the email list of an S&M activist group out of Amsterdam, and I’m thinking I should check in with them for fun. This is another reason why I can’t give up my AOL account. After 20 years of reporting

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for the GLBT press, I have quite the oddball collection of sources. I know. I can hear you regular gay male readers out there. Ann, given what you just told us, why have you devoted such scant attention to the S&M community in Amsterdam? I have no excuse.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that here we are on the verge of the most momentous turning point in the history of the modern gay rights movement, and we are spending our valuable column inches talking about Prince Charles and personal vacations. But it’s the calm before the storm, isn’t it? Thousands of words we have written and read in anticipation of this Supreme Court opinion, and there’s nothing more to say. The jury is out and all we can do is wait with fingers crossed just as we waited for Lawrence, we waited for Massachusetts, we waited for Windsor. Meanwhile, let’s just ramble, shall we?

I was distressed to see that one of my least favorite actresses is going to star in an indy lesbian movie called “Jenny’s Wedding,” due out July 31 with a July 10 premiere in L.A. This is none other than Katherine Heigl, the incredibly annoying Izzie on “Grey’s Anatomy,” who is renowned throughout Hollywood for being an obnoxious diva.

By the way, why did they kill off Derek? Why do characters have to die when an actor wants to leave the show? Heigl was effectively kicked off Grey’s Anatomy after being a pain in the ass and denigrating the show, but unfortunately they let Izzie drift away somewhere rather than giving fans the satisfaction of seeing her expire, maybe from that brain tumor.

Heigl reportedly wanted to come back for some new episodes, but producer Shonda Rhimes said, “No way.”

It wasn’t just Izzie, however. All of Heigl’s characters irritate me, including the CIA spy on the dismal State of Affairs, which lasted one season before being cancelled by NBC. There’s a smugness about her that shines through the script.

I will probably watch “Jenny’s Wedding,” which is about a lesbian who is not out to her conservative family.

Eventually, as you can guess, she decides to get married and is obliged to let the cat out of the bag. I don’t know.

Does this sort of thing still happen?

It sounds more like a scenario from my day and age, but I suppose if your parents are extremely conservative and you lack the maturity to present yourself as an adult, then you might wind up in Jenny’s position. Who knows? I might even revise my view of Katherine Heigl, assuming her star turn as a lesbian impresses. The movie was filmed in Cleveland in October of 2013, but has been delayed as the gang raised postproduction funds.

She Is Cait Have you all seen the cover of Vanity Fair? Caitlyn Jenner, shot by Annie Leibovitz, looks amazing, but I have also read a bit of backlash from classic feminists who wonder why she embraces all the stereotypes of the nonmodern woman. Shoes, nail polish, girl talk with the girlfriends, bombshell looks, etc. Plus, she’s a Republican!

I have to say, Caitlyn Jenner can be whatever kind of woman she wants to be. She’s one person. It’s not as if she is defining the gender for the rest of us. My only objection (aside from the political affiliation) for her as for everyone on reality TV, is the hunger—not just for publicity—but for a life performed for an audience. I think it’s a strange obsession, these Duggars and Duck people and Kardashians (continued on page 30)

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Veronica Calzada Shines in the Business World and on the Dance Floor San Francisco Bay Times: Does dancing contribute to your work life at all, perhaps by re-energizing you, helping with fitness, meeting contacts or fueling creative energies?

By day, Veronica Calzada is a successful, completely self-made businesswoman. As the owner of Fremontbased VFMS, she and her dedicated team provide cost-effective janitorial solutions that help to protect facilities and people, while also creating clean, safe and comfortable environments.

Calzada is beloved by her colleagues, given her thoughtfulness, brilliance, and unmistakable leadership skills.

By night, she is a stunning dancer, who regularly heats up the dance floor during exhibitions and competitions. She often salsas the night away, easily outdancing performers who are half her age. She is also the matriarch of a beautiful family, taking time for their needs too. If you are seeking a powerful woman role model, look no further than remarkable Calzada.

We were delighted to first meet her at a Smart Women Business Network event hosted by “Betty’s List” some years ago. She has remained a loyal friend and supporter to both “Betty’s List” and the San Francisco Bay Times ever since. Here, she shares more about her personal story.

San Francisco Bay Times: You are such a strong, successful businesswoman. Who were some of your role models over the years?

Veronica Calzada: My mother and great grandmother were very strong women who succeeded in a male dominated society. My mother was a doctor and my great grandmother had a lot of real estate. Nowadays, I look up to my daughter Helen, who conquered the salsa community at the age of 16 and now owns her own business.

(Editor’s Note: Helen Vazquez is a competitive salsa dancer and dance instructor based in the South Bay. For

Veronica Calzada: I have always had a passion for the performing arts, and coming from a background of professional skating in Mexico, I continue to dance and even compete in World Latin Dance events. When it comes to practicing, dancing helps get my mind off work and to stay in shape.

Also, who doesn’t like to dance?

Especially, if you are Latina. to process. At the same time, a cleaning lady came knocking on my door to offer me a job as a house cleaner.

Because I didn’t have a secure job at the time, I accepted and learned everything Veronica Calzada with her dance partner Wayne Skater there was to know more information, see http://www. about the business.

A week later, I went salsabythebay.com/helen-vazquez/) looking for her with a fruit basket to San Francisco Bay Times: You thank her, and the manager informed studied dentistry at the me that she had moved away. To this University of Mexico City. Did day, I always say, “That was an angel you ever work as a dentist? If that crossed my path.” not, why didn’t you pursue San Francisco Bay Times: What becoming a dentist? What are some of the challenges you changed your career path? have faced, running your own Veronica Calzada: Yes, I did practice dentistry in Mexico City, and when I moved to the U.S., I was a surgical dental assistant for a doctor at Stanford University. After taking the National Board Test, the revalidation of my credential would have taken about 5 years

EQUALITY = HEALTHY We all bring something unique to the world, something for which we are proud.

For the 6th year in a row, Kaiser Permanente has been recognized as a leader in health care equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender populations in the Healthcare Equality Index 2015 report.

And this year, Kaiser Permanente has received a 100% rating as one of the Best Places to Work for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations in the Corporate Equality Index 2015 report.

For more information about Kaiser Permanente, visit kp.org

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On the other hand, I have been able to jump out of my high heels and let my work speak for myself, even if it requires me to get the job done.

San Francisco Bay Times: You work with a lot of other women.

Sometimes we women argue a lot and can be our own worst enemies! How have you overcome such problems, in collaborating with other talented women?

Veronica Calzada: I have acquired the ability to keep a neutral and professional state of mind when it comes to women in the workplace. It can be difficult at times, because there are a lot of emotions involved, but like any great leader, we are able to move forward together.

business, and how have you resolved those matters?

San Francisco Bay Times: What advice would you give to other individuals who would like to start their own business?

Veronica Calzada: The business world is a male-dominated field, and for that reason, the competition doubles. We cannot close deals in a bar, over beers, to obtain good contracts.

Veronica Calzada: Never give up.

My business philosophy is, “Don’t let past experiences limit you from learning and listening to the new opportunities that come to you everyday.”

San Francisco Bay Times: You have also raised children. How were you able to juggle your professional life with your home life?

Veronica Calzada: Being a mom and a business owner at the same time was a definite challenge. At the same time, I’ve learned to manage my work life and personal life in an efficient way that wouldn’t compromise my mom priorities. It was always important for me to be present at all of my kids’ school and extracurricular activities, even if that meant coming back to work late hours at the office.

San Francisco Bay Times: You are such a role model for those who are hoping to be financially independent and to feel empowered. Do you have any other advice to share?

Veronica Calzada: You have to learn to delegate in your business, as well as in your personal life. Family always comes first, but that doesn’t mean that owning your own business is impossible.

For more information about VFMS, please visit http://verosfms.com/

#KateClinton

This Gay Pride I’ll be riding on the “Fury Road to the White House” float with the Vuvalinis for Hillary. Talk about proud.

Arts & Entertainment Frameline 2015 Must-See Films

By Gary M. Kramer Frameline, San Francisco’s annual LGBT Film Festival screens at area theaters June 18–28. There are dozens of features, shorts, documentaries and revivals playing. Here is a rundown of what to watch.

San Francisco writer/director Joseph Graham (Strapped) has created a striking mood piece with his sophomore feature, Beautiful Something. Set in Philadelphia, the film follows a handful of characters over the course of a single day. Brian (Brian Sheppard) is a writer who falls in love with just about every guy he meets.

Meanwhile, Jim (Zack Ryan) is making an important decision about his relationship with Drew (Colman Domingo), a famous artist, while Bob (John Lescault), is cruising around town in his limo, looking for someone to love, if only for a little while. Beautiful Something eschews plot and dramatic crescendos to focus on the intimate and intense moments shared by the gay men who reveal their insecurities as well as their chiseled chests to one another. Graham’s strength as a writer/director is to give his actors room in each scene to breathe and develop; Sheppard delivers an outstanding performance. Unfortunately, Ryan is weak in the pivotal role of Jim, since the gravitas of his angst is never palpable.

Beautiful Something

This year’s Frameline Award will be presented to Jeffrey Schwartz, the director of the documentary, Tab Hunter Confidential. An affectionate hagiography (co-produced

by Hunter’s off-screen partner Allan Glaser), the film chronicles the life and career of the “6 feet of rugged manhood” that is Hunter. Schwartz shows, through nimbly edited photos and interviews, how this dreamy all-American boy became a screen and recording sensation. His good looks gave him opportunities to develop as an actor, and get under contract at Warner Brothers. His carefully managed career involved studio dates with Natalie Wood and others. Yet while Hunter played along, he tried to keep his relationships with figure skater Ronnie Robertson and actor Anthony Perkins on the q.t. Tab Hunter Confidential does not dish much dirt, or provide any new insights into how gay men fared in the Fifties, but Hunter is extremely likeable in his interviews, and the film’s nostalgia factor compensates for its more superficial moments.

A modest, incisive gem, Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, is the latest film from writer/director Stephen Cone, whose film The Wise Kids was a must-see at Frameline in 2011. This film takes place during

Tab Hunter Confidential

the title character’s (Cole Doman, in a sly, winning performance) 17th birthday. Twenty characters come together to celebrate, and dramatic tension is generated as the characters reveal secrets and lies, both large and small over the course of the day.

Cone’s film unfolds in an organic, not didactic manner, with characters being entirely defined by just snippets of dialogue, or even an unspoken moment between them. This narrative strategy provides many subtle, heartbreaking moments.

When one boy looks with desire at his straight, best friend, he is also unaware of the boy looking with desire at him. Cone’s film, like The Wise Kids, addresses issues of faith and sexuality—Henry is, after all, the son of a Preacher—but it never feels heavy-handed.

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Frameline 2015 Must-See Films

Eisenstein in Guanajuato

By Gary M. Kramer

Carmin Tropical

Eisenstein in Guanajuato is Peter Greenaway’s visually breathtaking and extravagantly sexy film about the famous gay Russian director (Elmer Bäck, fantastic) in 1931 Mexico. His guide is Palomino Cañedo (Luis Alberti, irresistible), who initiates him to gay sex. Greenaway shoots the film, which includes many dazzling bedroom scenes (and considerable nudity), in his eye-popping style. He artfully plays with shadows and projected images, split screens, camera pans, and distorted lenses, photographs, and film clips. The film is impressive, especially for bringing Eisenstein’s emotional catharsis—in the heat of professional crisis—to life.

Luis Alberti plays a very different (but no less seductive) role in Carmín Tropical, a Mexican mystery written and directed by Rigoberto Pérezcano. Mabel (Jóse Pecina) is a muxe (transwoman) who returns to her hometown after learning that her friend (and fellow muxe) Daniela has been murdered. Mabel regrets having never said a proper “goodbye” to Daniela when she left town, and takes it upon herself to investigate her friend’s death.

With the aid of Modesto (Alberti), a taxi driver she befriends— he is smitten with her—Mabel visits the nightclub where Daniela performed, and the prison where a suspect is being held. What makes Carmín Tropical so compelling are the performances by the two leads and that Pérezcano keeps the story percolating even after he reveals who the killer is.

The Summer of Sangaile

Fresno

Out filmmaker Jamie Babbit’s Fresno is a comedy, albeit a dark one, about Shannon (Judy Greer), a registered sex offender who takes a job cleaning hotel rooms in the titular city with her “employee of the month” sister, Martha (Natasha Lyonne).

When Shannon accidentally kills a guest, Martha helps cover it up. Comedy ensues along with a series of very bad decisions. If there are cheap, obvious laughs from selling dildos to a lesbian softball team, or an outrageous Bar Mitzvah rap, Fresno excels at giving Greer some hilarious lines for her crackerjack deadpan delivery.

The Summer of Sangaile is a visually stunning Lithuanian drama depicting the coming of age of the vivacious Auste (Aiste Dirziute) and the shy, self-harming 17-year-old Sangaile (Julija Steponaityte) who meet at a local air show. The young girls quickly develop an intense friendship, which begins with Sangaile modeling dresses Auste designs then posing for photographs she takes, and turns into an erotic romance. Writer/ director Alante Kavaite creates some gorgeous ethereal moments of the young women in water, on the beach, in the fields, and, in one mesmerizing sequence, of Sangaile trying to

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How to Win at Checkers (Every Time)

conquer her vertigo. Gorgeously filmed and well-acted, The Summer of Sangaile is a beguiling romance.

Those People, is an absorbing American indie about Charlie (the adorable Jonathan Gordon), a gay, Jewish artist whose queer best friend, Sebastian (Jason Ralph) is wracked with feelings of inadequacy after his businessman father is imprisoned for financial crimes. Charlie’s codependent relationship with Sebastian is tested, however, when he meets Tim (Haaz Sleiman, all confidence and sexiness), a Lebanese pianist. The sexy romantic spark between Tim and Charlie forms the soft, gooey center of Those People, and viewers will be seduced by the flirtations and physical affections between these two characters.

Writer/director Joey Kuhn handles the dramatic love triangle— the diffident Charlie is afraid to fully commit to Tim because he has unresolved feelings for Sebastian—with less finesse, but his film nicely captures the shifting dynamics between the characters as Charlie comes of age.

How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) is Josh Kim’s sensitive Thai film (adapted from two short stories) about 11-year-old

Oat (Ingkarat Damrongsakkul), who fears losing his older gay brother Ek (Thira Chutikul) to the army at the annual draft. Ek’s wealthy lover Jai (Arthur Navarat) bribes his way out of service, and some of the film’s drama hangs in how their relationship will continue if Ek is drafted. While too much of How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) focuses on the brothers’ relationship and not enough on the queer couple’s, the film also features a storyline about the transgender Kitty (Natarat Lakha). Curiously, late in the closing credits, a transgender woman describes being drafted and serving in the military. Her story would have made for a more interesting film.

While You Weren’t Looking is an ambitious South African feature that packs too many issues into its 72 minutes. Wealthy housewife Terri (Camilla Lilly Waldman, in an affecting performance) feels distanced from her wife Dez (Sandi Schultz) after she discovers a sexy dress meant for someone else. Meanwhile, their adopted daughter Asanda (Petronella Tshuma) is turning 18 and pulling away from them. Asanda unexpectedly becomes attracted to Shado (Thishiwe Ziqubu), a streetwise “tommy boy” (butch female) from the Khayelitsha township.

Frameline 2015 Must-See Films

By Gary M. Kramer

Mariposa (Butterfly)

In the Grayscale

Guidance

While You Weren’t Looking makes valid and important points about gender identity and homo/ transphobia, as well as keen observations on differences of race, class, and sexuality, but they are often applied with a trowel. A series of scenes set in Asanda’s queer theory class are particularly didactic. The film’s messages are worthwhile; they just could have been more subtly delivered.

The Chilean film In the Grayscale has Bruno (Francisco Celhay) meeting Fer (Emilio Edwards), a man who insists that being gay is black or white: one is or one isn’t. Bruno of course, is struggling with the same-sex desires he has been repressing. He is in the grayscale. The film somberly chronicles Bruno’s mid-life coming of age by having him slowly couple up with Fer, only to have their relationship discovered.

In one of the film’s most beautiful scenes, Bruno’s grandfather (Sergío Hernandez), reassures him that he loves Bruno no matter whom he loves. Celhay gives a beautifully modulated performance here, making Bruno’s despair palpable. Edwards and Celhay generate some real heat in their sex scenes.

Mariposa (Butterfly) is gay filmmaker Marco Berger’s elegant, slow-burning drama that depicts two variations on romantic love. In one episode, Germán (Javier De Pietro) falls for Romina (Ailín Salas), who was found by the side of a road and raised as his sister. In the other, Germán meets Romina by accident and befriends her, hoping to woo her. Berger toggles back and forth between the would-be pairs of lovers as well as their friends and boyfriends, including Bruno (Julian Infantino), who figures prominently in a gay subplot. Mariposa’s emphasis on heterosexual couples might disappoint Berger’s core gay fanbase, but he still includes his trademark sexual tension and satisfying episodes of homoeroticism.

Guidance, written, directed by, and starring Pat Mills, is an amusing Canadian comedy about David Gold, a “gentle voiced” childhood actor who is now an adult in deep denial.

Broke, and ignoring his drinking problem, his Stage 3 melanoma, and his homosexuality, David passes himself off as Roland Brown to get a job as a guidance counselor at a local high school. His inappropriate conduct with students—he does shots with students to boost the kids’ confidence, and trades alcohol for weed—generates most of the film’s laughs. Alas, Guidance is on less sure footing when it explores David’s own inadequacies.

Once his ruse is discovered, the film goes almost completely off the rails. Nevertheless, Mills demonstrates some smart and smartass comic talent.

Cheeky gay French filmmaker François Ozon’s latest, The New Girlfriend, has Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) discovering that her late best friend Laura’s (Isild Le Besco) husband David (Romain Duris) likes to dress as a woman. Initially taken aback, Claire eventually enjoys the company of “Virginia” (David in female garb) and befriends “her” as intensely as she once did Laura.

Ozon’s film is a comedy about secrets and lies—there are amusing double entendres, and a series of queer love triangles—but the film is also an affecting drama about grief, love, and identity.

Duris is remarkable in the dual role, and Demoustier is especially impressive. Ozon has a fabulous cameo as a man in a movie theater.

The New Girlfriend

Alex Sichel directed the lesbian film All Over Me, but there is nothing queer about her latest effort, A Woman Like Me. This interesting documentary chronicles the filmmaker’s struggle with terminal breast cancer. Sichel copes with her illness by practicing Buddhism, seeking alternative medicine, and making a film, starring Lili Taylor, in the fictionalized version of the woman she would like to be. A Woman Like Me is a very cogent story about acceptance and the difference between fear and hope. There are moving scenes of Sichel discussing her treatments, and drugs, but the filmmaker goes off in too many directions trying to understand and make sense of her situation. As a result, the film ultimately fails to congeal.

But wait, there’s more! Frameline also offers festivalgoers another opportunity to screen local lesbian filmmaker Jenni Olsen’s eloquent documentary Royal Road; Mark Christopher’s Director’s Cut of the underappreciated 54; and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film, the highly stylized Querelle starring Brad Davis as the sweaty, frequently shirtless title character, in a film that practically drips with eroticism.

Royal Road

For more information, visit www.frameline.org © 2015 Gary M. Kramer Gary M. Kramer is the author of “Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews,” and the co-editor of “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.” Follow him on Twitter @garymkramer

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Volunteering for Frameline

By Howard M. Steiermann

As soon as I notice the rainbow flags along Market Street in June, a smile forms at the corner of my mouth and stretches up to my eyes.

But Pride season really starts for me in May, when I attend Frameline film festival’s volunteer orientation.

In most other organizations, a mandatory meeting elicits groans and eye rolling, but Frameline makes it fun. I even find out what color volunteer t-shirt I am adding to my wardrobe. As part of the high-energy meeting, they show the festival’s trailer. This year I believe it’s one of the best—just you wait!

I attended the film festival for years before I started to volunteer. We’ve all seen the legion of volunteers helping to manage the lines and usher. My entrée was simply a chat with a friend, Nathan Robinson, who had long-term experience as a Frameline volunteer. Approximately ten years ago, Nathan introduced me to a houseguest whom he was hosting through Frameline’s volunteer homestay program. Ever since then, I have hosted staff from the Hamburg, Germany, LGBT film festival.

Last year I began volunteering as a driver for Frameline. I pick up filmmakers or actors and take them to/from SFO. As both a homestay host and as a driver, I love the oneon-one interaction I have with visitors. I get to share stories with them about my favorite parts of the Bay Area, and I learn from them regarding an industry I know little about.

Another fun benefit (so I hear!) is the opportunity to flirt. Not only are the throngs of attendees available for the pickin’, but there are hundreds of other volunteers to meet and chat up.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of volunteering with Frameline is being in the midst of one of Pride season’s biggest events. The Frameline film festival lasts over ten days and is spread over five venues.

It attracts thousands of people to its screenings. As a volunteer and as an attendee, there are people I rarely see the rest of the year, but I can count on seeing them in line or in the theater.

Volunteering also helps me to connect with the broader LGBT community in a myriad of ways. As a volunteer, I receive daily e-mail updates allowing me to engage with others about films I might not have seen. The festival creates wonderful buzz. Through being an active part of the festival, I feel closer to the excitement as well as to our proud community. A long-time Frameline volunteer, Sarah, mentioned how

Howard wearing his Frameline 39 volunteer t-shirt

much she enjoys seeing other volunteers’ smiles in acknowledgment when she is wearing her volunteer t-shirt around town. Like many of us, Sarah enjoys the sense of camaraderie that is part of the festival.

Nathan loves being a part of such a well-run organization, particularly one that does such a great job with volunteer appreciation. Being a volunteer has allowed him to view a more diverse set of films than he would have otherwise. As a volunteer theatre host, Nathan has met a wide variety of filmmakers, broadening his exposure to the LGBT community.

The volunteer coordinator, the fantabulous Albers, would love to add you as a new volunteer. (See the info at this page: http://ticketing. frameline.org/participate/index. aspx ) It’s mega fun. You’ll get a glimpse behind the scenes, and you’ll add another t-shirt to your collection. Happy movie watching and happy Pride!

“San Francisco Bay Times” columnist Howard M. Steiermann is an Ordained Ritual Facilitator. For more information, please visit www.SFHoward.com

San Francisco Bay Times Congratulates AIDS/LifeCycle 2015

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Let’s Talk About Daddies

Beth Braby thick enough to hide a pedestrian couple in a crosswalk.

Auto Philip Ruth What makes a daddy? By the old definition, it’s a man who had children.

Now, in our new LGBT world full of niches, daddies are older men who could have fathered the younger guys they date. Or they’re just men in their 30s on up who turn up some grey hairs and find themselves being seen as more accommodating and perhaps more authoritative than their younger brethren.

Two recent test cars reminded me of the daddy phenomenon: the Buick LaCrosse and the Chrysler 200 C. Both are big American family sedans, the kind of cars you associate with an older generation and their Buick LeSabres and Chrysler Newports.

These new ones are much more in the mold of today’s market, where competitors come from everyone from Kia to Toyota. But the designs of both have some telltale grey hairs that have appeal for those looking for something more mature.

Both the Buick and Chrysler are midsized, Both have V6 engines with

That five-men-in-a-tub feeling is common among modern midsized sedans, and the daddy aspect comes into play with the Buick and Buick LaCrosse Chrysler, given their audaciously American styling. True, the Chrysler’s tail lights can be hard to distinguish from an Altima’s or Sonata’s, but both the LaCrosse and 200 C have bold styling flourishes that reflect the maturity of each of their brands while being appealing to those Chrysler 200 C who are younger. around 300 horsepower. The Buick is bigger, with a 4.8-inch increase in length over the Chrysler, at 197 inches.

The Buick is also about 300 pounds heavier. But interestingly enough, the EPA measures their interiors as being within a cubic foot of each other, and the Chrysler has 2.7 inches more trunk room.

Maybe they’re a little more bear than daddy in size, because beyond their measurements, these cars feel big and not low and long like the land yachts of yore. These new Buicks and Chryslers are more built up around you, with thick doors, high sills and narrow windows.

That means they feel luxurious on the open road, where you feel like you’ve settled into a man-cave. Around town, they’re more cumbersome, and you’re constantly aware of the structure around you. Both have thick windshield pillars, with the Buick’s being

With the Buick, it’s that aggressive shiny grille and eye-catching alloy wheels decorating a wedge-y shape.

Inside, there are lots of curves to wrap driver and passenger into their own cocoons. The Chrysler has those cocoons too, and both cars were longjaunt cozy. They are smooth and settled, as daddies can be.

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Some among the young poo-poo the older set, and legacy brands like Buick and Chrysler can be ignored in the same way older men are. But when a gent’s indications of aging become recognized as those of a daddy, another level of appeal kicks in. The same holds true with the LaCrosse and the 200 C, which both give off older vibes with lots to like.

Philip Ruth is a Castro-based automotive photojournalist and consultant at www.gaycarguy.com Check out his automotive staging service at www.carstaging.com

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The Women’s Movement, My Mom, and Marriage Equality portunities in life, commanded my mother back to her room to study.

My mother did just that and read and studied—a lot. By the early 1950s, my mother had received her PhD, completed a fellowship at a prestigious academic institution in Europe, written a book, and become a professor at a major American research university.

Marriage Equality John Lewis, Marriage Equality USA Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s observation during the Supreme Court marriage equality hearings about the importance of the evolution of marriage under the law from “a relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female” to an “egalitarian” institution really struck me. From a political perspective, Ginsburg’s comments highlight the continuing importance of the women’s movement to equality for all people, especially LGBT people. Discrimination and prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are in many ways rooted in sex discrimination—and stereotyped and fixed notions of gender.

The enormous progress toward eliminating sex discrimination under the law (still an unfinished business) has been instrumental to gains for LGBT rights. None of this progress took place by accident; it came about through the bravery, determination, struggle, and support of millions of people. It was on a personal basis that Justice Ginsburg’s statements really hit home. I grew up with a mother and a father who lived the struggle as they married in the 1950s and attempted to forge a marriage of equals in a society openly hostile to such aspirations.

My mother was born in 1922 into a family who hailed from small town North Carolina. My mother did what good little middle class girls were supposed to do at the time: read books, study, and imagine life as a schoolteacher, then as a mother. However, when my mother pranced into the kitchen as a little girl to help my grandmother cook, my grandmother, frustrated by her own limited op-

My mother met my father at the university soon after she began teaching, and they had the then radical notion that they each could have successful academic jobs and raise children, too. But it was not to be. My mother’s department at the university told her not even to think about getting tenure (and thus job security) because they did not offer such things to women.

Such discrimination meant that my parents followed my dad’s career to support the family, and my mother dutifully attempted to stay home to raise my brother and me. My mother, who just a few years earlier had been working abroad with some of her field’s leading scholars, found herself confined to a tiny house in a bleak suburb with two small children. She hated it, and the isolation and lack of stimulation were stifling to her.

We moved to another city to follow a job for my father, and when my brother and I were school age, my mother and a colleague became the first two full-time female faculty members at a local college. She again faced open discrimination. The college told her that they paid women less than their male counterparts because men needed the income to support their families whereas women’s income was merely supplemental. At the time, there was no Title VII or anything else that made such blatant wage discrimination illegal. My dad was willing to give up his job, which he loved, to relocate where my mother could find a better position, but wage discrimination, the fact that my mother’s field of Classics was dwindling at the time, and the number of years she had been removed from scholarship in the field, all rendered efforts unavailing.

Decades later, my mother mailed my brother and me a short excerpt from the graduation speech that the early feminist M. Carey Thomas, founder of Bryn Mawr College (where my mother received her PhD), delivered in 1922, the year my mother was born. Thomas exhorted the all female graduating

class: Women—“if you want to marry, marry, but do so with a clear understanding with your husband on the conditions of your marriage, with the understanding that you are to go on with your job…Women often disappoint me very much by not amounting to something themselves and giving up everything for a pair of stupid little children who might not amount to anything.”

The directness of Thomas’ admonition struck my mother, and my mother couldn’t resist the opportunity to poke fun at my brother and me by implying in jest that we might be “a pair of stupid little children” who didn’t amount to anything. Although my dad was completely supportive of my mother, Thomas’ anticipation of the struggle my mother would face was prescient.

Several years after my mother passed away, I visited my dad at a retirement community about a year before he died. We were having dinner with some obviously conservative fellow residents, and my dad proudly proclaimed that his wife was “a radical feminist.” Although my mother had never used the term to describe herself, I believe he used it because he took great pride in her accomplishments and he knew how much she struggled.

I have always wished my mother had been able to fulfill her dreams, but I know my brother and I benefited enormously from growing up with her and my father. We experienced the struggle for gender equality as part of our upbringing and learned the human cost of sex discrimination first hand. We learned directly how gender should not define a person, and that the law should enable people to pursue their dreams without regard to gender or any external factor of who you are. We look to the Supreme Court to take a giant step forward to realizing that vision of equality later this month.

John Lewis and his husband Stuart Gaffney, together for three decades, were plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008. They are leaders in the nationwide grassroots organization Marriage Equality USA.

Elope, or Have a Wedding?

Weddings Reverend Elizabeth River

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Over the 11 years I have been officiating weddings, most couples have chosen to celebrate marriage with a full wedding ceremony surrounded by friends and relatives. But some choose to have a private ceremony, with no one else present besides the officiant and perhaps a photographer. I am finding that this is often referred to as an “elopement.”

Now, in my old-fashioned view of the world, I picture an elopement as two people “running away” to get married secretly, usually on the spur of the moment. It might be a really young couple who are afraid their folks will try to stop them marrying.

Or it could be someone who is running off with someone else’s wife— or husband. And then it seems they just find a justice of the peace to marry them! (Do you think I watch too many old movies?)

So, when a couple first approached me about doing their elopement a few years ago, I was so clueless I said, “Why don’t you just hire a justice of the peace?” Eventually I learned that elopements are commonplace, and they are almost never about anyone “running away.”

They are not even secret! I can say this with confidence now, having celebrated quite a few of them over the past few years. In fact, last year, thirty-five percent of my weddings were elopements. This year, half of

the weddings I have booked so far are elopements.

For what reasons do people elope?

Here are some explanations given by the couples: • It can save you money, since it usually involves having a legal ceremony with almost no extra expenses other than the license and the minister.

• You can avoid stress. Eloping may eliminate the need to plan, to figure out whom to invite and not to invite, to decide upon a venue, and so on.

• Couples may experience more instant gratification.

• Shy, private people sometimes feel more comfortable eloping.

• For those who wish to hold a big ceremony later in another city or even country, eloping allows couples to wed now and deal with the other formalities in future. (continued on page 30)

The Yellow Brick Road or a Walk Down Musical Memory Lane

By Dr. Timothy Seelig Elton John’s music has often been described as providing the “soundtrack of our lives.” And that it has.

There are very few artists who have remained at the top of their creative game for five decades—Barbra, Cher, and Julie (Andrews), to name a few. But what sets Elton apart is the fact that not only did he perform the soundtrack, he also composed it!

The story of why we selected the music of Elton John falls into three sections: personal, musical, and production. Sorry if Section One is TMI, but I have three personal reasons for Elton.

Revelation #1: Dating Myself Sir Elton’s first album came out in 1969, the year I graduated from high school! At that time, I was completely absorbed in church, doing my very best straight impersonation. The music of this young, rebellious rocker was not in our hymnal! I was an instant, if closeted, fan.

Revelation #2: Green with Envy The young, handsome, and outrageous Elton John had everything that was missing from my life: rockin’ music, bedazzled spectacles, feather boas, crazy hats, outrageous costumes, and what appeared to be the most glamorous life imaginable.

Revelation #3: Hotness Icon In his early years, he sported plunging necklines that would make J.Lo

look demure. True confession: I actually cut a few of those early pictures of my new idol Elton out of magazines and kept them hidden in my desk drawer. Some even dubbed his hairy chest a “shag carpet”! The only place I had seen that much hotness was on episodes of “Bonanza.” Woof.

But I digress.

The last time I heard Sir Elton in concert was last fall in San Jose with my husband, 45 years after my first introduction. Things have changed since 1969. But he hasn’t changed much. He sang, played, and jumped around the stage like a 20-year-old for two solid hours with no break.

Awe-inspiring. We are planning to bring that same energy in a few weeks!

Now let’s talk about the music. Fun, fun and more fun.

There are obviously too many songs to list—wild and crazy, beautiful and haunting. Love songs that serenaded our most intimate moments and the breakups that followed. Irresistible tunes that got us out of our seats and dancing in the aisles. Stage and screen music beyond compare, such as The Lion King and Aida. We’ll sing them all.

In addition, he has chronicled our shared path through the most indelible moments of our lives. We have chosen three of these.

In 1992, his writing partner, Bernie Taupin, penned “The Last Song,” shortly after the death of Freddie Mercury due to an AIDS-related illness. The song was used during a closing montage of the 1993 film And the Band Played On.

Dr. Timothy Seelig, San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus Artistic Director & Conductor Photo courtesy of San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus

In 1997, helping the entire world mourn the loss of one of its brightest lights, a rewritten and rerecorded version of the 1973 hit song “Candle in the Wind” was released as a tribute to his dear friend, the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

In 2001, Bernie and Elton created “American Triangle” in response to the senseless murder of young, gay Matthew Shepard. The title of this song refers to the victim and his two assailants. It is a stunningly haunting piece seldom performed.

Enough about the music and me. Let’s

finally talk about the production.

All of the things Sir Elton has brought to the stage for five decades (and I so wanted in my life) will be there—multiplied by about 275: roof-raising music, bedazzled spectacles, feather boas, crazy hats, outrageous costumes, choreography and a killer band. We’ll sing more than 30 of your all-time favorite Elton John songs.

But you won’t just be listening. No Siree! You’ll be singing along! Do you sing only in the shower or car? Not to worry. There will be 2,000 folks singing with you! Don’t know the words?

No problem. We will project them on the screen above our heads!

It’s not a concert, it’s an event of huge proportions! Please wear something outrageous, and get ready to rock. Most of all, get ready for a walk down memory lane—or the proverbial yellow brick road—with us as your guides.

When Sir Elton John sings, “I’m Still Standing,” he really means it. And so will all of us.

Dr. Timothy Seelig is the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.

BAY T IM ES JUNE 11, 2015

23

Sister Dana Sez: Words of Wisdumb from a Fun Nun Eyes” to Patrik and led us all in the “Happy Birthday Song” to him, and Jai Rodriguez sang Joe Jonas’s “I Get Jealous.” Hot! Second runner-up was Roxy-Cotten Candy in full drag and lip-synching fiercely from Edge Bar, with first place Matthew David Mello from Beaux winning and going on to Key West, Florida, to compete for the national prize and $5,000 for his charity.

By Sister Dana Van Iquity Sister Dana sez, “I am so thrilled that virulently homophobic Repugnican Rick Santorum is running for president, because his name is already known far and wide for a very different reason. In order to spread the message of the new meaning, be sure to Google ‘Santorum definition’ for a real laugh. He doesn’t stand a chance against any Democrat who may run!”

³5DLQERZ &DEOH &DU´

(c) Richard E. Brooks 2014

Whoo! I need a drink after that! San Francisco bartenders competed at Beatbox for THE STOLI KEY WEST COCKTAIL CLASSIC, North America’s only international LGBT Cocktail Competition. In partnership with the Key West Business Guild, nightlife professionals from our community’s most outstanding queer entertainment venues are invited to showcase their skill and present their most original Stoli cocktail creations in 14 cities across the US and Canada between March and June 2015. SF Co-hosts Patrik Gallineaux, Jai Rodriguez, and Donna Sachet introduced mixologist judges Liam Mayclem, Bebe Sweetbriar, Brad Mendosa, and 2014 Champion Nic Callahan from SF who tasted the specialties of five EssEff bartenders mixing Stoli vodka with their very special ingredients. Singer Brian Kent sang Elton John’s “Your Song” to birthday boy Patrik, SF/NYC chanteuse Leanne Borghese sang “Blue

As Heard on the Street . . .

What is your favorite gay-themed film of all time?

SF PRIDE @ 45 was the THE SF PRIDE OFFICIAL KICKOFF PARTY at the Hotel Whitcomb Grand Ballroom. Proceeds from the fundraiser went toward funding SF Pride’s outreach, grant giving, and programming. The event featured fabulous entertainment by SambaFunk! (Funkquarians with King Theo featuring FUNKTERNAL dancers serving up jazzy Carnival a la Rio de Janeiro with sequins, feathers, and percussion), Cheer SF (performing astounding cheerleading acrobatics and tricks, and leading us in a hearty cheer: “P-R-I-D-E Let’s GO! P-R-I-D-E 45 Years!”); cabaret star Leanne Borghesi (singing the most apropos “Don’t Rain on My Parade”, and Sergio Fedasz (Go BANG!). The amazing Rainbow Flag Decor was by the always creative Tom Taylor.

Board President Gary Virginia reminded us for those living under a rock - that THE 45TH ANNUAL SF LGBT PRIDE CELEBRATION takes place on June 27th and 28th at Civic Center Plaza. Sunday’s festivities will include more than 20 community-produced stages and venues. The Parade will kick off at 10:30 am on Sunday, June 28, along Market Street, from Beale to 8th Streets. Executive Director George Ridgely spoke of the Parade theme, “Equality Without Exception,” applying to international civil rights. He brought to the stage some of the Grand Marshals - representing the LGBTQ (continued on page 30)

compiled by Rink

Victoria Jaschob

Christo Bresnahan

Tita Aida

Sara Kunitake

Tom Mayer

“Prick Up Your Ears”

“Pride”

“The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”

“To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar”

“Rope”

Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com 24

BAY TIMES JUNE 1 1 , 2 0 1 5

The Intersection of Teaching and Writing

Words Michele Karlsberg Michele Karlsberg: How does the intersection of teaching and writing affect you?

Leslea Newman: According to George Bernard Shaw, “Those who can, do; those who can’t teach.” Hogwash! I propose a different adage: Those who can, teach; those who teach, change lives.

My mentor Allen Ginsberg changed my life by taking my work seriously. He studied every word, every comma, every line break of every poem I showed to him, as if my writing was important. Paying it forward, I extend the same courtesy to my students. The most important thing I can teach them is that their work matters. Which helps me remember that my work matters.

I can’t tell my students it’s important to write every day if I spend all my writing time posting on Facebook. I can’t tell my students how important it is to read serious works of literature if my literary diet consists solely of People

magazine. I can’t tell my students to cut out all their clunky adverbs (“The crab meat filler of literature,” according to Stephen King) if my own writing is full of them.

Teaching makes me a better writer because I have to listen to my own advice. And writing makes me a better teacher because the only way to learn how to write is to write, and what I learn practicing my craft is what I pass on to my students. And most importantly, paying it forward by helping emerging writers makes me a better person. Which makes me a better writer. Which makes me a better teacher. And round and round it goes.

Lesléa Newman is the author of 65 books for readers of all ages, including the children’s classic “Heather Has Two Mommies,” the novel-in-verse “October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard,” the short story collection “A Letter to Harvey Milk,” and the poetry collection “I Carry My Mother.”

Yarrott Benz: I’m unusual for a teaching writer because what I teach is

in the visual arts, not in writing or literature. The subject I’ve taught the most often is architecture, and in that studio, spontaneous oral communication is key. During a critique, for example, whether it is the teacher or the student speaking, the skills of oral defense and criticism are essential. Often a class critique becomes a debate, and streamlining a thought to deliver it with an elegant, influential punch can mean a positive or negative verdict from the crowd.

Likewise, selling a design to a client is part of the process in architecture.

Without the client you have no business. Clients often don’t know how to look at an abstract design, so walking them effectively through your ideas could not be more important. You have to describe the way it looks, yes, but you have to describe the way it works and the way it feels, too. The descriptions have to stimulate the imagination, but not overwhelm it.

You work with the same economy of words as good copy writing for advertising.

I’ve taught architecture for twenty-

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Artist, memoirist and essayist Yarrott Benz has written about architecture and the psychology of visual trends. Benz’s debut novel, “The

Bone Bridge,” was published by Dagmar Miura in May of this year. Having taught for many years in New York City and Los Angeles, he now lives on a farm outside of Lexington, Kentucky.

Michele Karlsberg Marketing and Management specializes in publicity for the LGBT community. This year, Karlsberg celebrates twenty-six years of successful book campaigns.

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37th Annual Pride/ Panama-Pacific Centennial Concert

Panama-Pacific Centennial Concert Brings 1915 World’s Fair to Life

By Heidi Beeler

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre Saturday, June 20, 2015

5 pm Film Premiere When the World Came to San Francisco

by R. Christian Anderson

7:15 pm Book Talk San Francisco’s Jewel City

by Laura Ackley

8 pm Concert

$25 for all 3 events

Featuring:

The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band under the direction of Pete Nowlen

The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco under the direction of William Sauerland Guest per formers:

Bay Area Rainbow Symphony Camerata California Members of the Chabot College Choir

Tickets: sfprideconcert.org Suppor ted in par t by Grants for the Ar ts Media Sponsors

This year, the 37th Annual Pride Concert expands the boundaries of Pride to include the entire City of San Francisco when it brings to life music from the Panama Pacific International Exhibition (PPIE) for the Panama-Pacific Centennial Concert. Showcasing music premiered at the 1915 world’s fair that’s being celebrated throughout the City this summer, the concert—to be held on Saturday, June 20—features co-producers Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco (LGCSF), the San Francisco Lesbian/ Gay Freedom Band, along with the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) and other ensembles at the Palace of Fine Arts, the only PPIE building to be preserved in its original location.

To wrap your head around what a big deal the original PPIE was to San Francisco, you have to imagine the world of 1915. Before the Internet, before television or air travel, world’s fairs gathered the latest art, technology and international culture in one location, so visitors arriving by horse, train or boat could see the globe in one shot.

Thomas Edison, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Buffalo Bill Cody were among the almost 19 million visitors that year, and one of the most awe-inspiring exhibits in the Hall of Technology was a mini assembly line turning out Henry Ford’s Model T’s.

The 1915 PPIE officially celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, linking the Atlantic to the Pacific. After the devastation of the 1906 earthquake, the fair also became San Francisco’s opportunity to shine as a world-class city–and shine it did. The exhibition stretched 635 acres from Fort Mason into the Presidio, a city of domed buildings with its central Tower of Jewels rising 43 stories high and covered in 100,000, shimmering, cut-glass “gems.” Every state in the union built exhibition halls, as did more than 20 countries, despite the start of WWI the year before.

What’s missing from all the historic photographs and text descriptions is precisely what made this concert so exciting. Recorded music was unheard of in 1915, so live music filled the PPIE grounds, with original compositions written by world-famous composers and thousands of performances given in the Festival and Fine Arts halls, at the outdoor bandstands, at the exhibition hall demonstrations, and in the carnival concession stands. The Panama-Pacific Centennial Concert will recreate some of those key music moments. In fact, the timing of the concert marks the centennial anniversary of one of the major pieces commissioned for the exhibition.

Pete Nowlen, Freedom Band Artistic Director, shared that the upcoming concert will happen 100 years and 1 day after the very night that John Philips Sousa and Camille Saint-Saens premiered the piece that Saint-Saens wrote for the world’s fair, Hail California!

Nowlen believes that the June 20 event will mark the first complete performance of that work over the entire century.

Hail, California! is unusual because Saint-Saens composed it for full orchestra and a military band, an indication of the huge scale of music performances at the PPIE. The exhibition had hired its own seated orchestra, but marching bands were in their heyday, and John Philip Sousa and his band were among the PPIE’s headliner performers that summer. Saint-Saens took the opportunity to combine them. It then became hugely popular to feature impromptu groupings in mass performances of the singers and musicians gathered at the exhibition that year.

The Pride Concert is similarly taking advantage of its large gathering of many ensembles. BARS joins the Freedom Band to recreate “Hail, California!” Amy Beach’s anthem for the PPIE, Panama Hymn, will combine orchestra and chorus, as will Victor Herbert’s Until We Meet Again. The Saint-Saens Organ Symphony features a soloist from the Freedom Band performing with BARS. Other guest performing groups for the evening include Camerata California, Chabot College and Mill Valley Philharmonic.

That this music exists at all is something of a minor miracle. Much of the sheet music from this era is out of print. The Freedom Band is blessed with a music librarian, Kevin Tam, who is so passionate about resurrecting lost band music, he’s begun to work with the estates of Ferde Grofe’ (arranger of Rhapsody in Blue), William Grant Still, and the Sousa Archives at the Center for American Music at University of Illinois Champaign Urbana to unearth scores and arrange or edit them for performance. Several of the pieces featured at the concert, including Hail, California!, A Day at the Panama-Pacific Exposition and Sousa’s Among My Souvenirs are performed thanks to Tam’s efforts.

To celebrate the restoration of this music, the Freedom Band is releasing a CD at the concert featuring many of these newly available arrangements.

Titled “A San Francisco Affair,” the recording also includes Grofe’s San Francisco Suite, arranged by Tam, as well as several marches composed for the PPIE, newly arranged by Philip Orem.

The evening also brings the sights and sounds of the PPIE to life through film and writings. First, R. Christian Anderson premieres the new docudrama, When the World Came to San Francisco.

The film celebrates the thousands of artists, architects, designers, performers and attendees who created the PPIE by following the footsteps of one visitor through the fair. Laura Ackley will then read from her celebrated new history of the PPIE, The Jewel City.

That an LGBT Pride Concert could become a vehicle for larger civic pride is another reason to celebrate and to be proud of San Francisco.

Trumpet player Heidi Beeler has been a member of the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band since 1991. She is also a founding member of the Dixieland Dykes +3. For more information, please visit www.sflgfb.org or www.facebook.com/sflgfb Palace of Fine Arts

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BAY TIMES JUNE 1 1 , 2 0 1 5

The Fresh Meat Festival:

Serving Up Spectacular Transgender & Queer Performance Transgender opera stars, international gay ballroom champions, a genderbending boy band, vogue superstars, and queer Colombian Folkloric dance?

All this and more hit the stage at San Francisco’s annual June treasure, the Fresh Meat Festival, June 18–20, at Z Space theater.

The Fresh Meat Festival is an awardwinning festival of transgender and queer performance—and the only event of its kind in North America.

This year, the Festival celebrates its 14th incarnation with a stunning lineup of artists who are making history in their fields. Founder and Artistic Director Sean Dorsey says, “This year, we’re presenting worldclass artists who are trailblazers, pioneers and really on the cutting edge of American performance.”

The 2015 Fresh Meat Festival will feature: gender-bending boy band The Singing Bois, Same-Sex Ballroom champions Robbie Tristan & Ernesto Palma, transwoman opera singer Breanna Sinclairé, acclaimed humorist Natasha Muse, Colombian Folkloric dance by Colombian Soul, brilliant singer-songwriter Shawna Virago, powerful wordsmith Elena Rose, vogue superstars Jocquese Whitfield and Saturn Rising, trans/queer powerhouse Sean Dorsey Dance, and revolutionary stand-up by Peacock Rebellion director Manish Vaidya.

And every year really is fresh, according to both audiences and critics alike: “Attending the Fresh Meat Festival is a little like opening a bedazzled queer treasure chest: you never know what you’ll find inside, but you know it will be fantastic, unique, moving and unforgettable” says singer-songwriter StormMiguel Florez, who has performed at or attended all 14 Festivals.

“This is like our community’s symphony or opera, something people look forward to all year long,” says 2015 Festival emcee, filmmaker Annalise Ophelian. “The Fresh Meat Festival gives us the opportunity to dress up, join together in community and experience truly phenomenal dance, theater and music by trans and queer artists.”

2015 Festival artist Shawna Virago is known for her evocative, powerful songwriting—a modern-day transgender troubadour who sings her razor-sharp lyrics over her singular folk-punk guitar playing. Virago says, “The Fresh Meat Festival is my favorite Pride event— because of the amazing caliber of artistry, and because of our gorgeous filled-to-the-rafters audiences!”

Breanna Sinclairé has been making waves and making history as the first transgender woman to receive a Master’s Degree in Opera from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

She will hit the Fresh Meat Festival stage only one day after singing the national anthem for the Oakland A’s on June 17. Sinclairé says, “I love the Fresh Meat Festival because it celebrates the diverse lives and unique talents of our community!”

Sean Dorsey Dance will be performing excerpts from their new show, The Missing Generation, a powerful work that gives voice to longtime survivors of the early AIDS epidemic through full-throttle dancing, luscious partnering, storytelling and oral histories. Heartbreakingly beautiful, the work is a danced portrait of contemporary LGBT history that is profoundly relevant to all generations.

2015 Festival performer Manish Vaidya is a sixteenth-generation storyteller and a stand-up comedian who writes on social justice issues like “global warming and Beyoncé

Breanna Sinclairé

Colombian Soul

albums.” Vaidya is a nationallyacclaimed writer-performer who has been featured at the National Queer Arts Festival, the United States of Asian America Festival, the United States Social Forum, APAture, LitCrawl and Mangoes with Chili.

Dorsey says, “We’re out to break the so-called rules this year. Who says you can’t have world-class transgender opera? Who said transsexuals aren’t funny? Who insists that traditional Colombian Folkloric dance can’t be queer? Who said boy bands can’t be gender-bending heartthrobs? Who dares to insist that championship-level ballroom can only be between a man and a woman?”

Much has changed in the 14 years since award-winning transgender choreographer Sean Dorsey founded the annual Fresh Meat Festival.

“Fourteen years ago,” says Dorsey, “absolutely nobody was putting transgender people on stage. It was impossible to get support of any kind or positive media coverage.”

The Fresh Meat Festival is produced by Fresh Meat Productions—the first and only organization of its kind in North America. “Fresh Meat Productions creates, presents and tours year-round transgender arts programs.” says Dorsey, “and our starring event is the annual Fresh Meat Festival. It’s an incredible experience to bring together so many communities and artists.

There’s absolutely nothing like it!”

Dorsey adds, “Rapid City-sanctioned gentrification and the displacement of trans and queer people, immigrants, working class families and communities of color is devastating our City’s cultural heart and displacing our artists and cultural workers. But once again, we’ve worked hard and have gathered artists from all across the Bay and the nation to declare that our art and our stories matter. And are worth celebrating!”

The Fresh Meat Festival runs June 18–20, and advance tickets are recommended. Every show is followed by a lobby after-party with DJ Miz Rowdy, go-go dancers, photo booth, drinks & dancing.

Fresh Meat Festival of transgender and queer performance: Z Space Thursday–Saturday June 18–20 (8pm) ASL interpretation: Friday June 19 performance TICKETS: $15+ sliding scale (advance tix recommended) www.freshmeatproductions.org BAY T IM ES JUNE 11, 2015

27

See many more Calendar items @ www.sfbaytimes.com

compiled by Robert Fuggiti

musical by composer/lyricist Tony Asaro, and book writer Kirsten Guenther. Through June 28. www. foggtheatre.org

• 11 : T HURSDAY

Shout! For Women Veterans – Fort Mason Center. Free. 6 pm.

(Conference Center Building, 2 Marina Blvd.) Designed to raise awareness about the experiences of women veterans, engage the veteran community and explore the intersections of art, community and healing. www.swords-to-plowshares.org Solo Performance Theatre – Stage Werx. $12. 7 pm. (446 Valencia St.) A monthly showcase of independent, queer performance theater and storytelling. www.stagewerx.org Business of Pride – Four Seasons Hotel. $150+. 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm. (757 Market St.) Honor the companies and leaders advancing LGBT equality in the workplace while enjoying fabulous food, an open bar, and the opportunity to meet top LGBT leaders in the Bay Area. www.bizjournals.com

• 12 : F RIDAY

LGBT Golf Fore Good – Chardonnay Golf Club. $25+. 11:30 am to 9:30 pm. (2555 Jameson Canyon Rd.) Horizons Foundation hosts its 6th Annual LGBT Golf Fore Good Women’s Tournament. www.horizonsfoundation.org Love & Stardust – Brava Theater.

Free. 7:30 pm. (2789 24th St.) A collection of short films celebrating the lesbian experience. www.brava.org Fancifool – Z Space. $25. 8 pm.

(470 Florida St.) A brilliantly con-

All Your Sisters – Hemlock. $6.

8:30 pm. (1131 Polk St.) Enjoy a live performance from the Bay Area band with a post-punk sound. www.hemlocktavern.com

• 17 : W EDNESDAY

Demonstration on women’s AIDS issues at the Sixth International AIDS Conference in San Francisco, June 22, 1990. structed and entertaining piece of 21st century multi-media theater, complete with dramatic and comic dialogue, singing, dancing, mime, vocal impressions and film. www.zspace.org

• 13 : S ATURDAY

San Mateo County Pride – Central Park. Free. 11 am to 6 pm.

(50 E 5th Ave., San Mateo) Join the third Annual Pride Celebration of San Mateo County with this year’s emcee, Marga Gomez. www.lgbtq.smcgov.org San Francisco Bay Times Pride Party & Exhibit – SF LGBT Center. Free. 4 pm to 7 pm.

(1800 Market St.) Join the San Francisco Bay Times and special guest, legendary singer/songwriter Cris Williamson.

Emerging Radiance – Brava Theater. Free. 7 pm. (2789 24th St.) A series of films that ground the transformation in social justice. www.brava.org

You’re invited!

PHOTO BY IRENE YOUNG

Saturday, June 13, 4-7pm San Francisco LGBT Community Center 1800 Market Street, San Francisco

• 14 : S UNDAY

Stern Grove Music Festival – Stern Grove. (19th Ave. and Sloat Blvd.) “Listen to the music” of The Doobie Brothers and celebrate Stern Grove Festival’s 78th Season at The Big Picnic in beautiful Sigmund Stern Grove. Through August 16; www.sterngrove.org Homing Instinct – Brava Theater.

Free. 2 pm. (2789 24th St.) Part of the 11th Annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival , this documentary honors the strength of women’s collective action for humanity and the earth. www.brava.org Screaming Queens Staged Reading Series – Intersection for the Arts. Free. 2 pm. (925 Mission St.) Left Coast Theatre presents an entertaining evening of LGBT artists sharing short stories and monologues. www.lctc-sf.org

• 15 : M ONDAY

Portraits and Other Likenesses – Museum of the African Diaspora. $10. 11 am to 6 pm. (685 Mission St.) A unique exhibit bringing together approximately 50 carefully selected artworks that explore the dynamic role of portraiture in modern and contemporary art. Through October 11. www.moadsf.org One Man, Two Guvnors – Berkeley Repertory Theatre. $39$89. 7 pm. (2025 Addison St.) Join Francis in the fun as he leads you through this topsy-turvy world of love triangles and mistaken identities. Through June 21. www.berkeleyrep.org

Featuring Special Guest Legendary Singer/ Songwriter Cris Williamson

Overture Workshop – War Memorial Opera House. $80. 7 pm.

(301 Van Ness Ave.) A unique workshop that gives participants a rare look at everything that goes into an opera production. www.sfopera.com

“Kiss for the Bay Times” Photo Exhibit Poetry by Kit Kennedy

• 16 : T UESDAY

RSVP by e-mail to Publisher@sfbaytimes.com or call 415-601-2113

Trans Pacific Partnership – The Commonwealth Club. $20 nonmembers. 6 pm. (555 Post St.) Ambassador Demetrios Marantis will clear up misconceptions about the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and uncloak the forces behind the Congressional approval process. www.commonwealthclub.org The Cable Car Nymphomaniac – The Eureka Theatre. $30. 8 pm. (215 Jackson St.) A racy and uproarious new

28

BAY TIMES JUNE 1 1 , 2 0 1 5

LGBT Legal Workshop – SF LGBT Center. Free. 6 pm. (1800 Market St.) The Beck Law Group hosts a free legal workshop addressing estate planning issues and taxes.

#QUEERFAIL: A RADAR Reading Program – SF Public Library. Free. 6:30 pm. (100 Larkin St.) This evening’s program is part of a week-long festival on the Queer art of failure. www.sfpl.org Hanky Code: The Movie – Center for Sex and Culture. $7.

7:30 pm. (1349 Mission St.) A series of short films chronicling “handkerchief code” used by gay men to distinguish sexual preference during the 1970’s. www.sexandculture.org

• 18 : T HURSDAY

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare – Sunnyvale Theatre. $10-$25. 7:30 pm. (550 East Remington Dr., Sunnyvale) A professional resident company of talented actors in an exciting rotating repertory format, at less than local “amateur” theatre prices. Also June 19-20. www.ctcinc.org Fresh Meat Festival - Z Space. $15-$25. 8 pm. (450 Florida St.) The nation’s premiere transgender and queer performance festival. www.zspace.org The Barbary Coast Revue – Balancoire. $15-$64. 8 pm. (2565 Mission St.) A brand new musical with colorful characters from SF’s history and music you can sing along to with others. www.barbarycoastrevue.com

• 19 : F RIDAY

The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Commonwealth Club. $20 non-members. 11:30 am. (55 Post St.) Scott Dodson, Professor of Law, will discuss how Justice Ginsburg, a legal icon, has greatly influenced law and society through her work on gender equality, racial equality and international law. www.commonwealthclub.org Liz in September – Castro Theatre. $11. 7 pm. (429 Castro St.) In this adaptation of the groundbreaking play Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, a tight-knit group of lesbian friends are enjoying their annual vacation on a beautiful Caribbean beach when Eva, a straight stranger, crashes the party. www.castrotheatre.com What’s Your Damage Magnet. Free. 8:30 pm. ( 4122 18th St.) An evening of art, performance and dialogue addressing how queers and activists who struggled through the AIDS crisis of the

1980s and 1990s are surviving, dealing with or getting by in a present that is haunted and informed by the past. www.magnetsf.org

• 20 : S ATURDAY

How AIDS Activists Crashed the AIDS Conference and Changed the Agenda – SF LGBT Center. Free. 12:30 pm.

(1800 Market St.) A living-history panel featuring participants remembering a week of dramatic protests, the issues they addressed and the responses of police, conference goers and San Francisco residents. www.sfcenter.org Don’t Dream It... Be It – Harvey Milk Photo Center. Free. 6 pm to 10 pm. (50 Scott St.) An opening party and photo exhibit hosted by Peaches Christ. www.harveymilkphotocenter.org 37th Annual Pride / Panama-Pacific Centennial Concert – Palace of Fine Arts. $25. 8 pm. (3301 Lyon St.) The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco under the direction of William Sauerland and The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band under the direction of Pete Nowlen present The Panama-Pacific Centennial Concert. www.sfprideconcert.org

• 21 : S UNDAY

When Our Comrades Fell: An ACT UP Memorial - The Women’s Building. Free. 12:30 pm.

(3543 18th St.) A ceremony of remembrance honoring ACT UP members lost to the epidemic and to other causes. The event will feature music, poetry, photographs, and personal tributes to activists by activists. www.womansbuilding.org Peter Pan – Mountain Tamales State Park. $40. 2 pm. (801 Panoramic Hwy., Mill Valley) Mountain Play presents an outdoor theater adventure. Also June 7, 14, 14, & 21. www.mountainplay.org The Trojans – San Francisco Opera. $96+. 1 pm. (301 Van Ness Ave.) One of the largest, most magnificent pieces in the entire opera repertory, this rarely staged epic is presented here for the first time in 47 years. Through July 1. www.sfopera.com

• 22 : M ONDAY

Barbara Lewicki Exhibit – A Woman’s Eye Gallery. Free. 12 pm to 5 pm. (678 Portola Dr.) Barbara Lewicki is an outdoor and travel photographer specializing in wildlife, landscape and portraiture.

Through June 28. 415-265-8237 Startout: LGBT Entrepreneurs Networking Event – Galvanize. $10. 6:30 pm.

(44 Tehama St.) Join LGBT Entrepreneurs on the fabulous Galvanize rooftop with gorgeous views of downtown and the San Francisco Bay for drinks and networking. www.startout.org ALL ABOUT E – Castro Theatre. $11. 7 pm. (429 Castro St.) On the run after finding a bag full of cash, E,

a sexy but closeted DJ, and her gay best mate seek refuge with E’s exgirlfriend in this sexy crime caper. www.castrotheatre.com

• 23 : T UESDAY

Pants, The Musical – African American Arts & Culture Complex. $15. 7:30 pm. (762 Fulton St.) Pants, The Musical romps through the life of a lesbian from age 3 to 83. Also June 24. www.aaacc.org Love and Information – American Conservatory Theater. $40-$100. 7:30 pm. (415 Geary St.) An acclaimed new play that features 57 brief yet memorable scenes that make up a world where data inspires obsession, and FaceTime conversations threaten to replace human contact. Through August 9. www.act-sf.org Trouble Cometh – San Francisco Playhouse. $20+. 8 pm. (450 Post St.) A brand new play on the nature

of identity in the age of the Internet. May 12 through June 27.

• 24 : W EDNESDAY Pride Book Reading – The Readers Bookstore. Free. 6:30 pm.

(Fort Mason Center, Building C) New York Times best selling author Kevin Sessums and Jodi Angel join queer readers for a literary evening in honor of Pride. www.fortmason.org Gay Trivia Night – Wild Side West. Free. 8 pm. (424 Cortland St.) Enjoy a night of trivia at SF’s only lesbian bar. 415-225-4918 Freedomland – Arena Theater. $20. 8 pm. (214 Main St., Point Arena) The Tony Award-winning SF Mime Troupe opens in San Francisco July 4th with its 56th season premiering Freedomland. www.sfmt.org

A program of The Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation

Resource Guide to over 250 SF LGBT nonprofits, arts and athletic groups and their events

Janet Delaney: South of Market relates the complex history of a changing San Francisco neighborhood through an exhibition of more than 40 photographs from the 1970s and 1980s.

This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Janet Delaney, Second at Market Street, 1986. Archival pigment print. Janet Delaney, 10th at Folsom Street, 1982. Inkjet print.

Images courtesy of the artist. © 2015 Janet Delaney

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SISTER DANA (continued from page 24) community’s highest ambitions for inclusion, justice, and equality.

In honor of the very recent, very tragic death of Emperor Fernando Robles (for whom we are all in shock and grief), they played his memorable theme song, “Love Is in the Air,” while tossing up bazillions of white cocktail napkins into the air in a veritable snow storm - as we have done so so soooo many times before, during, and after his Imperial reign and while serving as Krewe de Kinque King. Rest In Peace, my dear, dear friend Fernando.

A&PI WELLNESS CENTER held a well-attended fundraiser, BLOOM: BE YOU; BE OUR CITY; BE A BRIDGE, at Metreon City View. Keeping with the theme, the entrance to the venue was a huge replica of a section of the Golden Gate Bridge, which attendees crossed over. Tita Aida was the emcee with special guests, Emperor Kevin Lisle & Empress Khmera Rouge. Tita introduced Executive Director Lance Toma and staff member Talia dela Cruz, who explained that A&PI Wellness Center is an LGBTQ and people of color health organization that transforms lives by advancing health, wellness, and equality. Wellness Center believes everyone deserves to be healthy and needs access to the highest-quality health care. Its slogan: “To us, health care will always be grounded in social justice.” Entertainment was provided by In the Groove Studios with intricate line-dancing. The Ally Award was presented by Doctor Tri Do to USF School of Nursing. Ever since Wellness Center opened its doors in 2011, USF School of Nursing has been by its side.

DOUBLE DOWN FOR SHANTI was a fun casino gaming night at The City Club where we helped support the SHANTI PROJECT mission, providing emotional and practical support to San Francisco’s most vulnerable individuals living with life-threatening illness.

The 14th Anniversary Event Co-chairs Constance E. Norton & Christopher E. Wiseman spoke about Shanti’s MARGOT MURPHY BREAST CANCER PROGRAM serving hundreds of San Francisco women annually by offering Care Navigation services, advocacy, wellness activities, and more. Executive Director Kaushik Roy was unable to attend because, happily, his wife just had a baby girl a few days prior. shanti.org CUMMING UP! SONDHEIM ALERT!!! Sondheim lovers unite! A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC is easily Stephen Sondheim & Hugh Wheeler’s most deliciously seductive musical, being set to threequarter time waltzes in a lush, all-new production on the A.C.T. GEARY stage. Filled with Sondheim’s signature wit and some of his most gorgeous melodies - including the beloved and haunting

treasure, “Send in the Clowns”- A Little Night Music presents a bewitching, bittersweet tale of lost love, scandalous infidelity, and young and not so young passions that intertwine over a midsummer’s eve at a country home in 1900s Sweden.

Tickets now on sale through Sunday, June 21st, held over, box office at (415) 749.2228, tickets.act-sf.org CUSTOM MADE THEATRE COMPANY presents the San Francisco premiere of GREY GARDENS, THE MUSICAL at Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough Street. Based on a true story and the famous cult documentary by Albert & David Maysles, the show musically explores the American dream gone wrong, and what it means to become a social pariah. In 1975, filmmakers Maysles brought their cameras into the crumbling, palatial estate of Edith Bouvier Beale (the aunt of Jackie Kennedy) and her daughter, Little Edie. There they found two women ostracized from their community, hanging on to reality by a thread, and surrounded by dozens of cats and raccoons. This musical examines both the back-story of this fascinating family and the fate they couldn’t possibly have imagined. It was the first musical on Broadway ever to be adapted from a documentary.

Mary Gibboney plays the aged Edith, and Heather Orth is Little Edie - brilliantly acted as a pair who shouldn’t live together but can’t live apart. Extended through July 5th; Thursdays-Saturdays, 8pm, Sundays, 7pm. Tickets at (415) 798-CMTC (2682), custommade.org AMBER ALERT and friends are heading back to play on 6th Street again. The disco will be jumping, the boys and girls will be bumping at AMBER’S DISCO CABARET on Saturday, June 13th, 9pm - 2am at Club OMG, 43 Sixth Street. She’s not a pretty girl. Good thing she’s stupid. Love ya, Amber!

The SAN FRANCISCO LESBIAN/ GAY FREEDOM BAND, LESBIAN/GAY CHORUS OF SAN FRANCISCO, and guest ensembles will take us on a musical odyssey that will transport us back to the 1915 PanamaPacific International Exhibition, the World’s Fair! The PANAMA-PACIFIC CENTENNIAL / 37TH ANNUAL PRIDE CONCERT program will take place on June 20th at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre. Saturday, June 20th, 3301 Lyon Street. Events begin 5pm with concert at 8pm panamapacificconcert. brownpapertickets.com HARVEY MILK PHOTO CENTER & HARVEY MILK CULTURAL ARTS CENTER presents DON’T DREAM IT… BE IT! a fabulous photography exhibit kicking off Pride and a celebration of Drag, Theatre, Music, and Love of Life! June 20th, 6-10 pm at the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts, 50 Scott Street @ Duboce. Hosted by the one and only Peaches Christ with live entertainment, DJ, dancing, and refresh-

MANDELMAN (continued from page 3) Over time, increased supply should reduce housing prices, but in the short term, I do not see the market providing any real relief for the poor and middle-income families getting displaced from the Mission. Right now, the only way to provide housing for those who are being left behind by the boom is outside the market, by government and nonprofit housing developers acquiring property and building permanently affordable housing on that property. Unfortunately, that’s not happening, at least not at a scale sufficient to meet the challenge, and even worse, the limited number of potential sites for new affordable developments in the Mission is rapidly getting gobbled up for private development. To my mind, the best way to ensure stronger action by City Hall to create new affordable housing and preserve the affordable units we already have is for San Franciscans to credibly threaten to kill the development boom if City Hall doesn’t do a better job of addressing those needs.

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BAY TIMES JUNE 1 1 , 2 0 1 5

Many thanks to David Campos and to the Mission for doing just that. Now, let’s take this fight to the November ballot!

City College’s First Queer Chancellor Big news at City College: we’re getting our first queer Chancellor. On June 5, State Chancellor Brice Harris announced that Susan Lamb, who had been Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, has agreed to serve as our interim Chancellor. This is some of the best news I have heard about City College in a long time.

Susan is widely respected across the often fractious College constituencies.

She’s whip smart, and I know she is going to do a fantastic job. Plus, she is the first queer person to serve in the role. Happy Pride, Chancellor Lamb!

Rafael Mandelman is an attorney for the City of Oakland. He is also President of the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees.

CITY HALL (continued from page 7) ments. Photography featured from Mark Christopher, Marques Daniels, Molly DeCoudreaux, Nicole Fraser-Herron, Sara Gobets, Gareth Gooch, Jose A. Guzman Colon, Michael Johnstone, Dwayne Newton, Daniel Nicoletta, and Eric Stein.

Exhibit runs June 20th-July 18th, Harvey Milk Photo Center, 50 Scott Street. (415) 554-9522 Harveymilkphotocenter.org BOURBON & BLANCHE is Castro’s newest Saturday evening Drag-Fabulous show featuring camp, comedy & glam at The Residence, 718 14th Street, 7-10pm.

Cast: Hostess Patty McGroin, Tora Hymen, Kylie Minono, Daft-nee Gesuntheit, Hostess Kit Tapata, Girl D’or Piper Angelique & DJ Leesa Fema Trailer. $5 Cover.

Reservations: (415) 797-8866 OUTSPOKEN: PORTRAITS OF LGBTQ LUMINARIES by ROGER ERICKSON are on exhibition now through September 11th, San Francisco City Hall Ground Floor and North Light Court, plus 40 downtown JCDecaux kiosk posters. Exhibition features over 80 luminous portraits of out celebrities such as Wanda Sykes, Greg Louganis, Rachel Maddow, Edward Albee and Chris Colfer - alongside 20 Bay Area LGBTQ notables including us Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (where Sister Dana posed) and San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. sfartscommission.org MAGNET and the GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER HISTORICAL SOCIETY are presenting a display of posters and photographs commemorating two pivotal moments in San Francisco’s history: the protests and demonstrations that occurred during the “Castro Sweep” in October 1989 and the VI International AIDS Conference held in San Francisco in June 1990. ACT UP: AIDS ACTIVISM IN SAN FRANCISCO, 1989 & 1990 is on display throughout the month of June at Magnet HQ at 4122 18th and Castro Streets.

Pornucopia: This week’s flick pick is Upper Hand, titanmen.com Sister Dana sez, “May I be the first to wish a Happy Father’s Day (June 21st) to all you gay fathers and daddies out there?!!

DUNNING (continued from page 3) Party policy on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender rights issues and to help educate the public about issues related to public policy and the positions of the Democratic Party. It is not written in our bylaws, but by tradition we limit our Board of Director seats to only those who self-identify as LGBT. Our membership is broad and includes a large number of allies, but we keep the leadership positions within our community as a means of developing the San Francisco LGBT political pipeline and ensuring we prioritize LGBT policy advocacy. Another wonderful organization of Democrats is Emerge CA. Its goal is to increase the number of Democratic women in public office.

Until recently, its Board of Directors was all women. This year, they brought on two men to its Board in a move to broaden and strengthen its outreach and capacity. It was a fairly bold move with a number of the organization’s stakeholders who were fully supportive, and some that question the direction.

Some LGBT community events do limit the participation of allies, and I’ve been on both sides of it. The Dyke March is coming up later this month, a wonderfully rare opportunity for visibility for women in all our queer manifestations—lesbian, bi, questioning, transdyke, MTF, genderqueer and

The People’s Palace The 100-year-old building means a lot to me personally and professionally. I worked on it for many years. I am now a al-appointed Commissioner on a Commission charged with overseeing City Hall’s preservation. My husband and I were married there, and as organizer of the giant Pink Triangle installation, I can re port that there has been a pink triangle in the rotunda for the entire hundred years.

Architecture, preservation, the pink triangle, LGBTQ rights, and marriage equality all come together at San Francisco City Hall.

ROSTOW (continued from page 19) and various housewives. I sort of understand the people who live in the wilderness. These are lives that teach something, if only how to build a cabin or catch a beaver. But what will we be watching on her new reality show, “I am Cait?” Will we be watching real Cait, or reality show Cait?

That said, Caitlyn Jenner has given many Americans their first sense of the extraordinary anguish of gender dysphoria and the extraordinary courage it takes to transition. That is an incredible achievement.

By the way, Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, wrote the cover story, and after I read it, I looked him up and found a fascinating first person account of his shopping addiction.

My professional experiences at City Hall were a once in a lifetime opportunity for any architect, and working on it was something very special to me. I was lucky enough to also be working on the historic San Francisco Columbarium at the same time—another of the City’s great domed buildings. Following the $345 million restoration and seismic upgrade, San Francisco City Hall truly is the People’s Palace again.

Patrick Carney, who worked on the restoration of City Hall, is a member of the City Hall Preservation Advisory Commission. Carney is also the organizer of the Pink Triangle at Twin Peaks on Pride Sunday, and is the co-founder of Friends of the Pink Triangle.

Written for GQ in 2013, Bissinger describes taking over $600,000 of inherited money and blowing it on leather attire, mostly from Gucci, over a relatively short period of time. He became such a good customer that Gucci flew him to fashion shows and put him up in five star hotels. The odd thing was that Bissinger was a dumpy kind of guy, who looked fairly absurd in, let’s say, skin tight orange leather pants, but that didn’t stop his personal Gucci shopper from feeding the monkey on his back, presumably telling him the whole time that he looked terrific. I gather he subsequently went to rehab and cured himself.

And on that irrelevant note, I bid you goodbye for this week! arostow@aol.com

WEDDINGS (continued from page 22) And for what reasons do people have formal weddings with all the trimmings? Here’s what they tell me: • Couples can celebrate to the max what is one of the most significant days in their lives.

• They can celebrate with family and other loved ones.

• Many want to hold the best party ever!

• They look forward to creating fabulous memories that will last a lifetime.

• Some marry because it’s more traditional, and carries on family traditions.

• Certain couples marry because of their religious beliefs.

• Sometimes parents or other relatives encourage couples to marry, even paying for the ceremony.

others. As such, the event limits the participation of men.

The Dyke March website states: “We continue to hold the Dyke March as dyke-only space. We invite our male allies to enjoy our Dolores Park rally with us, and to please support us from the sidelines during our march to Castro.” It seems more men ignore this request, and in recent years I’ve seen an increasing number of men marching along their queer sisters. It brings up conflicted feelings for me. On the one hand, I’m excited to have their support and attendance, but on the other, I am annoyed—in one of the few opportunities we queer women have to create and share a common space and community, men still have to insert themselves.

On the flip side, I’ve also been requested to stand on the sidelines. This past February, I attended a demonstration at San Francisco City Hall where dozens of people dressed in red held a die-in. They were protesting the murder of a transgender woman, Taja DeJesus, who was the most recent of many murders of transgender women of color this year. The organizers announced that they were limiting participation in the die-in to only transgender women of color, as they were the ones at risk and wanted to be visi-

• And, of course, there are many other reasons why couples choose to have a more formal wedding and not to elope.

Here’s the great thing: Whether you choose to have a simple elopement or to have a big wedding bash with lots of guests and a party to end all parties— either way, it’s a marriage! As long as you get the license and it’s signed by your officiant, you have all the legal rights attached to marriage! And what a thrilling time we are in right this minute, awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage for every state in the Union.

I bless your marriage, and I hope you do too!

Reverend Elizabeth River is an ordained Interfaith Minister based in the North Bay. For more information, please visit marincoastweddings.com

ble. (Even with this request, a man lay down with them wanting to demonstrate solidarity, but in obvious contradiction to the organizer’s request.) I remember this exclusion making me slightly uncomfortable, but I understood the request and complied. It was indeed powerful to witness the die-in from the sidelines and to see in front of my eyes the women who were impacted by this rash of anti-trans violence.

I cite these examples to bring to light an issue our community has grappled with for years, and will continue to deal with as we grow in numbers, visibility and support from our allies. We welcome our allies and will continue to build bridges with them. They are our co-workers, our neighbors, and our families. And, we will still need to exclude allies and even members of our own LGBT family in certain venues to ensure we give the proper visibility and attention to those who continue to struggle to have a seat at the table.

Zoe Dunning is a retired Navy Commander and was a lead activist in the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. She currently serves as the 1st Vice Chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, as a San Francisco Library Commissioner, and as Co-Chair of the Board of Directors for the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club.

Round About - All Over Town

Photos by Rink

Beneficiaries and Academy of Friends board members gathered on stage at the AOF Volunteer Appreciation event at the Oasis Club on May 17.

Project Open Hand staff and supporters Kelly Clifton, Alan Beach and Simon Pitchford display the check from Academy of Friends at the AOF event on May 17.

Volunteer coordinator Rory O’Connor and show volunteer Allen Sawyer dressed for the occasion at the Silent Film Festival’s Opening Night at the Castro Theatre on May 28.

Event co-chair Christopher Wiseman Lee Larsen and Sam Schroder presented sales items at the Citizen welcomed philanthropist Joy Bianchi at clothing store display during the Castro Street Merchants Sidewalk Shanti Project’s Double Down benefit Celebration on May 23. for the Margot Murphy Cancer Project, held at The City Club on June 6.

The Meredith Axelrod Trio, featuring (left to right) Axelrod, Clara Gustavsson, Craig Ventresca and Rob Reich, performed at the Kit Kat Klub stage in the penthouse of the McRoskey Airflex Company during the Silent Film Festival’s Opening Night VIP Party.

Levi Strauss’ Miguel Bustos and Shanti board member Alex Rivera at the Double Down benefit for the Margot Murphy Beatbox’s Brian Kent, volunteer Joanie Juster and Donna Sachet at Breast Cancer program.

Shanti’s Double Down benefit on June 6 at The City Club.

C o - ow n e r s M i c hae l Colter and Wendy Mogg serving up dinner at Sweet Inspiration’s “ Wednesday: What’s for Dinner” $10 themed evening on June 3, the first anniversary of the weekly dinner specials.

Organic cherries, almonds and walnuts were among the popular items offered by Allard Farms at the Castro Farmers Market.

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