August 11, 2011 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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San Jose Pride coming up

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Radio host makes ass of self

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Festival Opera's 'Fella'

The

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

Fox bars Karger from debate O

by Lisa Keen

penly gay presidential candidate Fred Karger will once again be left out of a nationally televised debate among Republican presidential hopefuls – this time, in Iowa on Thursday, August 11, just ahead of the Ames Straw Poll on Fred Karger Saturday.

Karger said that he See page 12 >> meets the criteria Fox

Vol. 41 • No. 32 • August 11-17, 2011

Lee’s candidacy eclipses Castro debate

by Matthew S. Bajko

I

t had been carefully planned, with 10 questions culled from neighborhood concerns to be parceled out amongst nine leading candidates to answer. But Monday night’s mayoral debate at the Castro Theatre went off script with interim Mayor Ed Lee’s declaring his candidacy that morning.

The reversal by Lee, who for months insisted he would not seek a full term as mayor, jolted what had been a rather ho-hum race and brought out a packed, boisterous audience to the city’s LGBT neighborhood movie house for the August 8 forum.

The introduction of Lee on stage was

Mayor Ed Lee speaks with fellow candidates Supervisors John Avalos and David Chiu at the mayoral forum sponsored by the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association and the Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association.

Rick Gerharter

met by prolonged boos and catcalls of “liar” as well as applause. He wasn’t alone in engendering ill will from the audience; state Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) also received a fair amount of booing when he was introduced.

But Yee later won over many in the crowd when he called on Lee to resign as mayor now that he is a candidate for the office.

“Had the mayor said he would in fact run,” said Yee, “he wouldn’t have gotten the votes” to serve out the remainder of former

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s term.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera also needled Lee for his about-face. While he noted he believes Lee to be an “honest man,” Herrera also questioned “will he be his own man and stand up to powerful interests?”

The answer, Herrera implied, is no.

“He said he wouldn’t run for a full term.

After months and months of talking to powerful people he changed his mind,” said Herrera.

See page 13 >>

Open Hand Ex-SJ center treasurer to founder be sentenced for embezzlement Ruth Brinker S dies

by Seth Hemmelgarn

by Cynthia Laird

R

uth Brinker, the retired grandmother who in 1985 started delivering meals to people living with AIDS and went on to found Project Open Hand, died Monday, August 8 at the Rick Gerharter Eden Villa Assisted Ruth Brinker Living Facility in San Francisco. She was 89.

She died after a series of strokes and the effects of vascular illness, the agency said in a statement.

Ms. Brinker, who had retired from a career in food services, heard about a neighbor who See page 3 >>

an Jose’s Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center, which has seen financial and leadership troubles in recent years, is set to mark another unpleasant milestone Tuesday, August 16.

Former volunteer secretary/treasurer Nicholas Rice-Sanchez, 26, is expected to be sentenced in Santa Clara County Superior Court for embezzling almost $40,000 from the nonprofit. Rice-Sanchez, who had been a board member in 2010, pleaded no contest to a single felony charge in May. Such a plea is legally equivalent to a guilty plea.

Meanwhile, the center, just west of the South Bay city’s downtown area, is down to three board members. However, board President Chris Flood said the nonprofit’s not in any danger of closing.

The center can have up to 15 board members. Asked about whether having only three people on the panel presents problems, Flood said he and the two others are basically “taking the job of an executive director and dividing it among the three of us, and it seems to be working.”

Flood has been president since February 2010 and has served on the board for a total

of almost seven years. Other board members are Vice President Greg Belaus and Treasurer Patrick McAtee.

Complaint

Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department

Former DeFrank board treasurer Nicholas Rice-Sanchez, shown here in his booking photo, pleaded no contest to an embezzlement charge and is expected to be sentenced next week.

{ FIRST OF TWO SECTIONS }

According to a complaint filed October 1, 2010 in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose, between the period February 1, 2010 and June 30, 2010, Rice-Sanchez (whose last name appears in court documents as Ricesanchez) was charged with one count of felony embezzlement.

Flood said someone came to the June board meeting last year and told members that they thought Rice-Sanchez, who ran for San Jose City Council in 2008, was stealing from the center. Minutes from that meeting say that Rice-Sanchez was absent from the session.

They don’t explicitly refer to the conversation with Rice-Sanchez’s friend.

Flood said he checked bank records, and they reflected charges generated in Puerto Rico on a center ATM card. Rice-Sanchez also paid for other personal expenses using the center’s money, Flood said. Rice-Sanchez never responded to center officials when they tried to find out what was going on, he said.

See page 12 >>

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

August 11-17, 2011

<< National News

▼ HIV infections steady overall, rising in young gay men

by Liz Highleyman

some of it is due to the availability of clean needles, which save lives.”

H

IV incidence in the U.S. remained stable overall during the past several years, but has risen dramatically in some population groups, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week.

Joseph Prejean and colleagues estimated the number of new HIV infections nationwide between 2006 and 2009, based on surveillance data from 16 states and two cities (Chicago and Philadelphia). These are the first multiyear figures since the CDC’s push for expanded HIV testing in 2007.

The latest estimates, described in the August 3 issue of PLoS ONE (available free online), indicate that there were 48,600 new infections among people age 13 and older in 2006 – a reduction from a previous estimate of 56,300. Overall incidence rose to 56,000 in 2007, dropped to 47,800 in 2008, and remained stable at 48,100 in 2009.

“While we’re glad it’s not increasing, it’s not good enough,” said CDC director Thomas Frieden.

“The number of new infections remains too high and we need to do more to prevent it.”

The stable national numbers follow a trend already evident in San Francisco, leading local public health officials to describe the city’s HIV incidence as endemic rather than epidemic.

Glaring disparities The overall national incidence figures hide some major disparities across age, race/ethnicity, geographic, and HIV transmission risk groups.

Men who have sex with men continue to bear the greatest burden of HIV. While gay and bisexual men make up approximately 2 percent of the total population, according to CDC estimates, they account for more than half of all new HIV infections – 61 percent in 2009.

About three-quarters of newly infected people in 2009 were men.

African Americans (who make up 12 percent of the total population)

Test and treat

CDC director Thomas Frieden

accounted for the highest proportion of new infections, at 44 percent, followed by 32 percent for whites, 20 percent for Latinos, and 2 percent for Asians.

HIV incidence did not increase significantly, either overall or in any racial/ethnic group, during the three-year surveillance period. But it did rise by 21 percent among people age 13-29.

New infections increased by 34 percent among young gay and bisexual men during the study period, by 43 percent among young black men, and by 48 percent – or nearly double – among young black men who have sex with men.

Black gay men do not have more unprotected sex than other groups and tend to have fewer partners, Prejean explained during an August 3 media briefing. However, because the prevalence – or number of total cases – is higher in African American communities, there is a greater likelihood that a particular sexual partner will be HIV-positive. Other contributing factors include stigma around homosexuality, lack of access to health care, and being less likely to be tested and treated for HIV. One bright spot in the latest data is the decrease in new infections among injection drug users, which fell from 5,300 in 2006 to 4,500 in 2009, or from 11 percent to 9 percent of all new HIV diagnoses.

“We’ve made tremendous progress,” Frieden said. “Clearly

The CDC is on a mission to maximize the effectiveness of prevention funding by directing resources to the populations and areas with the greatest need – an approach dubbed “high impact prevention.”

“We’re overhauling how we’re giving out money, making sure to give where it’s needed most, for population groups that need it most, and to interventions that are most effective,” said Frieden. “We must correct some of the historical anomalies; some jurisdictions will get more, some will have their resources realigned.”

San Francisco may be among the cities that receive less funding as resources shift to cities with larger African American communities and heavily affected states in the southeast. Local Asian AIDS groups have already seen their funding threatened due to the relatively low number of cases in that population.

The CDC and the San Francisco Department of Public Health are shifting resources toward HIV testing and treatment, in accordance with the growing body of evidence confirming that early antiretroviral therapy dramatically reduces the risk of onward transmission.

“Unless we change what we do, we are not going to eliminate new infections, because we are in an endemic,” Grant Colfax, the city’s HIV Prevention Section director, recently told the Bay Area Reporter.

Frieden stressed the need for better linkage to care for people who test HIV positive, acknowledging that providing more money for AIDS Drug Assistance Programs and efforts to reduce the cost of medications will help get more people on treatment.

“We have an unprecedented opportunity to drive down infections in the U.S.,” said Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.

“It’s no longer about whether we can end the epidemic, but will we end the epidemic.”▼

More support for early treatment for HIV

by Liz Highleyman

E

arly antiretroviral therapy and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to dramatically lower the risk of HIV infection were the big news at the sixth International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention last month in Rome.

“We are at a scientific watershed in the global AIDS response,” said IAS President Elly Katabira in his opening remarks. “The results presented this week could prove to be as important for the future as the antiretroviral breakthroughs of the 1990s.”

More than 5,000 researchers, clinicians, and advocates came together for this major international scientific meeting on HIV, which alternates every other summer with the larger International AIDS Conference (next scheduled for July 2012 in Washington, D.C.).

Early treatment News from key biomedical prevention trials hit the press in the run-up to the conference, where

IAS President Elly Katabira

researchers presented details about their recent findings.

Investigators with HIV Prevention Trials Network Study 052, a randomized study of more than 1,700 heterosexual couples in nine countries, first reported in May that early antiretroviral therapy reduced the risk of HIV transmission between

serodiscordant heterosexual partners to near zero.

HPTN 052 showed that HIVpositive partners who started treatment right away regardless of CD4 T-cell count were 96 percent less likely to transmit the virus than those who waited until their T-cells fell to a threshold specified in treatment guidelines (currently 500 cells/mm3 according to U.S. federal guidelines and 350 cells/ mm3 according to World Health Organization guidelines for developing countries).

Data presented at IAS 2011 also showed that HIV-positive partners benefited themselves from starting treatment sooner, maintaining higher T-cell counts and experiencing fewer clinical events.

This finding helps allay concerns that people with HIV could be pressured to start treatment for public health reasons before they need it for their own health.

“There is a clinical benefit for the patient and a dramatic, nearly 100 percent reduction in transmission,” said HPTN 052 lead See page 12 >>

Community News>>

▼ FBI releases new files on Milk, Moscone, and White August 11-17, 2011 •

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

he Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a new batch of files detailing its various investigations into corruption accusations against former San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, gay former Supervisor Harvey Milk, and former Supervisor Dan White, who assassinated the two progressive politicians inside City Hall on November 27, 1978.

The nearly 1,800 pages of documents provide a glimpse into the activities of the federal investigators and the lengths they went to trying to find evidence to back up claims of political misdeeds at both City Hall and in Sacramento during the 1970s. Among the files are reports from agents in New Haven, Connecticut; Atlanta; and Houston who were involved in tracking down potential witnesses in the various investigations.

The documents include agents’ handwritten notes, redacted transcripts with informants and potential witnesses, city contracts, and press clippings. There are also copies of lawsuits filed by the city of San Francisco in one alleged corruption scheme involving Port Commissioners and the concession agreements at Pier 39.

The Bay Area Reporter obtained the latest documents from local blogger and gay activist Michael Petrelis, who in early 2010 filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI for any material the agency possessed on the three deceased San Francisco politicians. After the FBI released an initial batch of 60 pages to Petrelis last year, the agency contacted him again because more documents had been discovered.

“Part of the reason I filed the FOIA was because you never know what they are declassifying and I wanted every effort made to get every scrap of info the FBI may have about the assassinations,” said Petrelis, who arrived in San Francisco in August 1977 and later moved back to New York in 1980.

As it turns out, there is very little about the murders in the files other than old newspaper articles and a report about the murders that the San Francisco office shared

<<

Ruth Brinker From page 1

had died of AIDS. She was shocked to discover that malnutrition was as much a cause of her neighbor’s death as the illness itself, and started preparing meals in her kitchen and delivering them to seven people, according to a statement on Project Open Hand’s website.

Soon, of course, that number grew and others came to help her cook and deliver hot, nutritious meals throughout San Francisco.

She started the agency with those seven clients and $2,000 from the San Francisco Zen Center and the Golden Gate Business Association.

It later moved to Trinity Episcopal Church.

In 1987, with a $125,000 donation from the Chevron Corporation, the agency moved into a new kitchen and took over a food bank at 17th and Church streets. By 1988, Project Open Hand was serving 500 meals a day. In 1991 it served its onemillionth meal Tom Nolan, the executive director of Project Open Hand, said in an email Wednesday that he and Bob Brenneman, development and marketing director, had visited Ms. Brinker Monday afternoon, shortly before she died.

“Ruth truly made a big difference in many people’s lives, certainly including my own,” Nolan wrote.

Dan Nicoletta

Supervisor Harvey Milk, Mayor George Moscone, and Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver appeared on stage at the Empress Coronation in San Francisco on January 28, 1978. Milk and Moscone were the subjects of investigations by the FBI before both men were murdered.

with its counterparts in San Diego, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and FBI headquarters back east.

The new files do reveal the name of the unidentified person mentioned in a story published by the website Raw Story in May 2010 that was based on the documents initially released to Petrelis. The article related how in 1983 FBI agents met with a man who claimed during a meeting with White in early 1978 the supervisor claimed he would “get rid of three bastards,” referring to Milk, Moscone, and a third person whose name was redacted.

According to an agent’s notes included in the new documents, the person’s name was John Patrick Elia, listed as 68 years old and “dressed like a bum.” The agent, whose name is redacted, also wrote that based on a phone call from Elia requesting a meeting that he “sounds drunk.”

In another document the agent noted that Elia’s mother had him committed to a mental institution in 1942 following his discharge from the Army. Ultimately, the FBI concluded Elia was not a credible witness.

The interview with Elia took place as then-United States Attorney William French Smith was under pressure to bring federal charges against White, who was about to be released from jail, for interfering with Milk and Moscone’s political duties.

Corruption investigations

Nolan, who was in Boston attending an annual meeting of agencies like Project Open Hand, said that now there are more than 100 similar organizations in the United States and increasingly around the world, including the United Kingdom and South Africa.

“Ruth was a real hero,” Nolan added.

Today, Nolan said, Ms. Brinker’s vision has evolved as Project Open Hand now serves meals and provides groceries not only to people living with HIV/AIDS, but also to those who are critically ill, homebound, and seniors. Brenneman said that for a time, Ms. Brinker was herself an Open Hand client.

Bill Ambrunn, an attorney who worked for several years at the agency, praised Ms. Brinker.

“Not only did Ruth start Project Open Hand, but Project Open Hand quickly became a model for HIV/AIDS service providers all over the country,” he said.

“Let me just say this – I have walked in the Pride Parade with many, many contingents, including with popular elected officials and celebrities. But it was never like the experience walking with Ruth as part of the POH contingent,” Ambrunn said. “All along the parade route, you could hear people crying out, ‘We love you Ruth.

Thank you Ruth.’ People clapped See page 10 >>

It has long been known that all three of the local lawmakers had caught the eye of the FBI. White became a focus of federal investigators probing accusations that he had received a sweetheart deal on a restaurant lease at Pier 39. The documents also reveal agents were looking into if the pier developer had bribed City Hall officials and politicians.

Two months prior to his death, the news media disclosed that Moscone was the subject of an investigation led by the FBI’s Sacramento bureau into whether he accepted a $10,000 check from movie mogul Howard Hughes in return for favorable treatment of Hughes’s airline during a planned renovation at San Francisco International Airport.

Moscone repeatedly denied the charges throughout October and November of 1978 as more details about the investigation were leaked to reporters. The mayor also lashed out at the FBI, which at the time, refused to publicly confirm Moscone was a target of the inquiry.

In fact, U.S. Attorney G. William Hunter on October 16, 1978 had authorized the FBI to look into a number of allegations the FBI had received about both Moscone and Milk. An FBI memo written on October 20 that year listed nine different leads agents were ordered to investigate.

The inquires included if Moscone had received $10,000 for helping a McDonald’s restaurant on Geary Street at Van Ness obtain permits.

Another allegation claimed that Milk, with Moscone’s assistance, had formed his own Pride committee in order to use federal funds for his own purposes.

According to Randy Shilts’s Milk biography The Mayor of Castro Street, Milk “didn’t take the investigation seriously” as he believed it was “prompted by one of his gay adversaries who was jealously trying to get funding for his own community center.”

Former B.A.R. political editor Wayne Friday, who was friends with Milk and worked on Moscone’s campaign, recalled that during that time in the city rumors were rampant about the FBI paying gay informants for dirt on the two politicians.

“Milk never expressed any concerns to me about them,” Friday said of the FBI’s investigations. “I think he would have told me about it.”

As for the FBI documents, Friday said, “I wouldn’t put a lot on them.”

Following Milk and Moscone’s deaths, the FBI closed its investigations into the two lawmakers.

It also ended its pursuit of the Pier 39 claims against White and others after city officials filed their own lawsuit in the matter.

There is one set of files that may shed some light on why the FBI had taken such a strong interest in Moscone. A memo dated December 26, 1963 reports on a workshop held

BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

earlier in the month in San Francisco called “Civil Rights Civil Liberties What Now?” One of the meeting sponsors was Moscone.

The speakers included Frank Wilkinson, listed as the executive director of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Commission. HUAC, as it was known, had led the hearings into the alleged communist infiltration of both government and Hollywood.

Included with an FBI report about the workshop was a listing from the “Guide to Subversive Organizations” that claimed Wilkinson ran an L.A.based group called the Citizens Committee to Preserve American Freedoms aimed at abolishing HUAC and “discrediting” the FBI. It is unclear if the FBI has more documents about Moscone, Milk and White to release. A spokeswoman for the agency’s San Francisco bureau told the B.A.R. that the FBI’s FOIA division handles archival materials.

“We wouldn’t have visibility here on what else is here,” said Public Affairs Specialist Julianne H. Sohn.

“That is handled by headquarters.”

A spokesman for the agency’s FOIA Requestor Service Center did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Anyone interested in reviewing the latest FBI documents can do so by going to the San Francisco Public Library’s San Francisco History Center on the sixth floor of the Main Library in the Civic Center. Inquiries should be addressed to librarian Tim Wilson.

Wilson said he has given the documents a cursory look and couldn’t say if they would be of value to researchers or historians.

“I don’t know enough about any of that to say how important they are or not,” said Wilson.▼ The B.A.R. has posted several of the files to its website at ebar.com.

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Open Forum

August 11-17, 2011

Volume 41, Number 32 August 11-17, 2011 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Thomas E. Horn Bob Ross (Founder, 1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Scott Brogan Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Chuck Colbert Richard Dodds • Raymond Flournoy David Guarino • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble Michael McDonagh • Paul Parish Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Ed Walsh • Sura Wood

ART DIRECTION Kurt Thomas PRODUCTION MANAGER T. Scott King PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland Marc Geller Rick Gerharter Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith

GENERAL MANAGER Michael M. Yamashita

DA makes the right call T

he San Francisco District Attorney’s office made the right call when it decided not to waste resources on refiling several criminal charges against Willie Adams. Adams, who tried for years to become a San Francisco Patrol Special Police officer, will probably never find employment in security or law enforcement after sustaining guilty verdicts on weapons and other charges. He was acquitted of eight charges after a lengthy trial, but the hung jury could not agree on seven other counts. District Attorney George Gascón and the prosecutors deserve credit for dismissing those remaining counts.

Adams, 47, is a gay black man living with HIV. He was a protege of the late Castro Special Patrol Officer Jane Warner, who for years sought city approval for him to become a patrol special. He was arrested over four years ago, three months after he filed a discrimination suit against the city, which was later dismissed, because he was rejected as a patrol special for “moral turpitude.” In his lawsuit, Adams said that he had told a police sergeant about two criminal offenses that had been expunged from his record and were over 20 years old. Adams also had the misfortune of dating a man who turned out to be a police informant and tipped off the cops. Interestingly, the informant had been let go because it turned out he was unreliable, Adams and his attorney Randall Knox said.

The trial exposed the murky relationship between the city and the patrol specials. In fact, one of the charges Adams was found not guilty of was impersonating a police officer because patrol special police are not police officers, as the San Francisco Police Department clearly states on its website. Patrol special police are regulated by the San Francisco Police Commission and sworn in by the police chief. Patrol specials own certain beats and patrol those sectors, which are generally paid for by merchants. In short, they do more than standard security guards but do not have all the capabilities of a sworn police officer.

They follow some procedures and regulations of the SFPD.

The police department, in general, often doesn’t look kindly on patrol specials because they do jobs that off-duty cops could be doing, for a lot more money. Hence it has been an intricate and delicate balance in the city for many years.

With the DA’s decision, Adams does not have to face a retrial and can get on with his life. His conviction on one felony of not registering a gun and several misdemeanors likely means he will not be able to find work as a security guard, much less as a patrol special. The assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case acknowledged as much when she told us that the “defendant is no longer going to be able to do what he was doing before and that’s a good result for me.”

The DA’s decision to end its prosecution is a good result for Adams.

A Fox flub When the Republican presidential candidates

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gather Thursday night in Iowa, ahead of this weekend’s Ames Straw Poll, at least one declared candidate will not be standing on stage. Openly gay Fred Karger, who has been campaigning in New Hampshire and Iowa like the other candidates, was ruled ineligible

by Fox News, sponsor of the debate. As we report, the network required Karger to show he had earned an average of 1 percent in five national polls of “most recent polling.” Karger maintains that he met those criteria, although Fox disputes the polls that he cited.

Now we know that Karger is not going to be the GOP nominee for president and he knows that, too. But Karger is a declared candidate and has earned 1 percent in several polls this year.

While they might not all be the “most recent,” Fox News never defined the period, leaving that criteria open to some interpretation. The network also did not specify that the surveys had to be conducted via phone (as opposed to online), further muddying the issue. (Some of the polls Karger cited were done online.)

Fox should have included Karger.▼

Lessons from the McInerney case

by Alex Drummond

DISPLAY ADVERTISING Colleen Small Scott Wazlowski

▼

A

trial is taking place in southern California right now, troubling a nation that faces a story that hits on so many taboos. Here we have a country that must face an uncomfortable reality that children have sexual desires, murderous rage, and can know right from wrong but still be capable of an act of extraordinary violence. Here we have a story about a “sweet-faced boy” who shoots his classmate because despite being a boy he insists on wearing make-up, dresses, and nail polish. And further fueling the disquiet is the idea that a 14-year-old had access to a gun and was willing to use it to kill someone. Do we think the outcome would have been different in the absence of a gun? I suspect not, in the absence of a gun perhaps he would have sought out a knife or club – the desire to kill was there.

The trial is that of Brandon McInerney, who is charged with murder in the shooting death of Lawrence King, who was 15 when he was gunned down in a classroom in Oxnard, California in 2008. McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, is being tried as an adult in Los Angeles County.

What was the driver for this need to kill, to annihilate another human being? It seems from the various reports that McInerney was unsettled by the idea that his classmate might be gay. So at the heart of this is the idea that a boy’s sexual orientation could be so threatening he needs to be killed. Where does someone get an idea like that?

Here we face an uncomfortable truth – that some kids are gay, some kids are transgender and that this awareness is often evident long before they have a label or name for it. Children are raised in a society that places primacy on the idea of achieving a lifelong, monogamous, committed heterosexual relationship and does not offer young people, particularly within schools, the idea that other relationship types exist, that other ways of being exist. Our history is full of famous people who were gay or even transgender but for a long time these aspects of their identities have remained hidden. We might study Shakespeare’s sonnets as the greatest love

Alex Drummond

poems ever – but not discover the homoerotic subtext in many of them until we study English at university. We don’t learn that Joan of Ark was killed for her insistence on wearing men’s clothing – academics increasingly see her as a transgender person living in a world that couldn’t cope with that.

Children get bullied in schools for just about any reason – there are hierarchical and status battles endlessly waged and sexual orientation is an easy insult to throw at someone in a society where it is seen as an insult. Our responsibility as adults raising children, be that as parents, as teachers, as significant others in the world of a child, is to help them learn to accept diversity: that others might think and act differently but to see that as an opportunity to learn from rather than something of which to fear. We also have a responsibility to protect vulnerable children by giving them the tools to defend themselves. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is quoted as saying, “right now, right this minute – [children are] being bullied and beaten in school while adults look

the other way.” Certainly it’s been my experience both as a teacher within secondary education, and as a child, that often teachers saw the bullying and mostly ignored it: dismissed it with “man up, just tough it out” or “everyone gets bullied, it’s part of growing up.” It may be a part of growing up but a young child doesn’t necessarily have the tools or self awareness to know how to handle or deal with it and for me this is the biggest failure in the McInerney case – that the school saw the problem but acted in ways that allowed the problem to continue.

In this case it has been reported that King connected with teachers but struggled to make peer connections. Hardly surprising if the peer group was not helped to understand his differences and was hostile to his gender identity and sexual orientation. A teacher is reported as saying that “The teachers were upset because [King’s appearance] was disruptive to the environment and upsetting the students.”

Well please – behavior can be disruptive – but appearance?

Of course, the inference here is that King’s overt homosexuality was the unsettling aspect – and this I find troubling because schools need to help young people accept and understand same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity to prepare them for the complex world they are entering.

Some kids are gay, some are transgender: we need teachers to understand that and then help young people understand that.

Then we would go a long way to making our society a safer place for everyone, not just those of us who don’t fit the box. I hope that this case provides the motivation to start creating the necessary changes within schools so that this might never happen again. It is perhaps a vain hope.▼ Alex Drummond is a transgender psychotherapist based in the United Kingdom and the author of Queering the Tranny: New Perspectives on Male Transvestism and Transsexualism.

▼

Letters >>

August 11-17, 2011 •

Congrats to ILGA

Dropping the ball on plaque

Cheers for ILGA, world queer confederation, which was recently re-blessed by the United Nations system [“ILGA achieves UN status,” Wockner’s World, July 28].

The earliest modern secular queer organizations seem to date from late 19thcentury Europe. So what’s the oldest known queer group of all, at least in Western civilization?

Try a fighting band of lovers.

Wikipedia says gay male couples, called the Sacred Band of Thebes (Hieròs Lókhos tôn Thebôn), served as the elite unit of the Theban army; circa 378 to 338 BCE. Want to visit, as Q pilgrim? Forget Egyptian Thebes.

Look for the modern village of Thivai, near Athens.

I read reporter Matthew Bajko’s July 21 article about the confusion regarding who pays to produce and install the permanent plaque at Jane Warner Plaza [“Jane Warner Plaza plaque fund tops $4k”]. I noted with interest that former Supervisor Bevan Dufty’s campaign staff apparently canceled, without his knowledge, an event he set to privately raise money to help pay for the plaque.

Were he to become our mayor, how then could he control about 27,000 city employees? Would they go about willy-nilly canceling events, yet keep their jobs?

Ann Grogan San Francisco

Tortuga Bi Liberty San Francisco

SFPD sponsors fishing trip for LGBT youth compiled by Cynthia Laird

T

he San Francisco Police Department’s youth fishing program will have a deep-sea fishing trip for LGBT youth on Thursday, August 18.

There is no cost for the daylong trip, which begins bright and early at 6 a.m. The boat will return to Fisherman’s Wharf at 2 p.m. Tackle, pole, and bait are included; participants are asked to bring a lunch and wear warm clothing.

Officer Jennifer Thompson, a liaison to the LGBT community, said the trip is open to youth ages 12-18. The group will meet at the wharf for departure on the boat.

Thompson said space is limited.

Those interested in participating should contact her at (415) 734-3274.

The trip is also being sponsored by the police department’s LGBT Forum.

Leno to receive award from E. Bay church State Senator Mark Leno will receive the Soaring Spirit Award at New Spirit Community Church in Berkeley on Saturday, August 13 at the congregation’s anniversary benefit event.

Themed “Be Amazed,” the event runs from 1 to 4 p.m. at Easton Hall, at 2401 Ridge Road, across the street from the Pacific School of Religion campus. There will be barbecue, musical entertainment, and silent and live auctions. Auction items include a private tour of the UC Botanical Gardens (up to six people), and other unique items, including gourmet dinners. Tickets are $25, with kids 12 and under free.

Leno, a San Francisco Democrat, is a former rabbinical student. He is being honored for his legislative record, including this year’s Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act. Right-wing, anti-gay opponents are attempting to gather signatures to place a referendum on the 2012 ballot that would overturn the law, SB 48, which Governor Jerry Brown signed last month.

New Spirit, led by the Reverend Jim Mitulski, is a progressive congregation that is affiliated with several denominations, including Metropolitan Community Churches, United Church of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

For more information, contact the church office at (510) 849-8150 or visit the website at www.newspiritchurch.org.

LGBT faith and aging confab In other queer spirituality news, the Coalition of Welcoming Congregations of the Bay Area, Lavender Seniors of the East Bay, and the Rainbow Center of Contra Costa County will hold a daylong conference entitled “Faith and

LGBTQI Aging” on Wednesday, August 17 from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Avenue in Oakland.

The day is designed for seniors, advocates, and clergy who want to empower the LGBTIQ community. Amber Hollibaugh, executive director of Queers for Economic Justice, will lead the conference. She also worked at Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders in New York.

Representatives of Bay Area churches, synagogues, and sanghas will be on hand to learn more about creating spiritual justice for queer elders.

Registration is free and lunch is included. To sign up, go to www.cwcbay.org/faithandaging.

health information.”

The Magic program was initiated

by Adachi’s office in 2004 and convenes more than 100 community organizations and concerned citizens who work to reduce the number of kids who fall through social service gaps. Magic started in the Bayview, as BMagic, and was introduced to the Western Addition as Mo’Magic in 2006 at the request of Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, now a candidate for sheriff.

For more information, visit www. bayviewmagic.org or www.momagic.org.

Lesbians featured at E. Bay Stonewall forum

Queer Indian programs at Commonwealth Club

“Lesbian Power: City, State, and Nation” is the theme of a forum sponsored by East Bay Stonewall Democrats that takes place Wednesday, August 17 at 7 p.m. at Bucci’s, 6121 Hollis Street in Emeryville.

Those speaking will include Emeryville City Councilwoman Ruth Atkin, Andrea Shorter with Equality California, and Peggy Moore with Obama for America.

The event is open to the public.

Backpack giveaways ahead of new school year The Magic program of the San Francisco Public Defender’s office expects to give away 3,200 new backpacks stuffed with school supplies to kids and teens on Saturday, August 13.

In the Bayview, the BMagic event will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House, 4705 3rd Street and the Joseph Lee Recreation Center, 1395 Mendell Street. The event will also include a neutralcolor school uniform giveaway by the Tzu Chi Foundation for children in elementary and middle school.

The Mo’Magic event will be held the same day from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center, 1050 McAllister Street. There, families must visit the accompanying health fair to receive backpacks.

Numerous elected officials will be on hand, including Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), mayoral candidate state Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), and District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen.

San Francisco Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Patricia Gray will also be present.

“As school programs continue to face cuts and parents struggle to provide essentials, it’s more important than ever to give kids the tools they need to succeed,” Public Defender and Magic founder Jeff Adachi said in a statement. “At the same time, we want to make these events convenient venues for families to pick up school uniforms and

Castro Lions hold leather auction The Castro Lions Club will hold a leather auction Sunday, August 14 from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Edge bar, 4149 18th Street. The event is part of a $10 beer bust that day, organizers said.

Two programs this month at the Commonwealth Club look at queer life in India.

First up is a program entitled “Spice of Life, Growing Up Queer in India” on Wednesday, August 17 at 6 p.m. at the club’s San Francisco office, 595 Market Street. Scheduled speakers include Devesh Khatu, Minal Hajratwala, Rakesh Modi, and Dipti Ghoah. They will discuss growing up gay and lesbian in India with a broad worldview, yet at the same time facing Asian family pressures that drive conformity and strong expectations of an individual born to be part of a collective. The program, presented by the LGBT member-led forum, is free for club members, $20 for non-members, and $7 for students (with valid ID).

A networking reception precedes the program at 5:15 p.m.

On Tuesday, August 23 the club’s LGBT member-led forum will welcome Rajasvini Bhansali at a program entitled “India Shining – From the Ground Up.” There is a reception at 5:15 p.m. followed by the program at 6.

India Shining was a 2004 public relations campaign engineered by the then-ruling Hindu fundamentalist party. It referred to the economic growth following India’s information technology boom and a few years of plentiful rain. As India’s image as a developed nation grew, it disguised the growing economic, social, and cultural disparities in a country where over 400 million people continue to live in extreme poverty.

Bhansali will discuss what has been learned from the ground up from these movements working across sectors, cultures, issues, and regions. She will focus on the success of women-led, community-driven initiatives working for long-lasting social transformation and the current LGBT movement.

The program is $8 for club members, $20 for non-members, and $7 for students (with valid ID).

Tickets for both programs can be purchased on the club’s website at www.commonwealthclub.org.▼

BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Politics

August 11-17, 2011

▼

CA teacher union elects gay VP

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

www.ebar.com

his summer the California Teachers Association, one of the state’s largest and most powerful employee unions, installed a gay San Francisco man as its vice president.

A member of the union’s board of directors the last four years, Eric Heins, 53, has been on an extended leave of absence from his job as an elementary school teacher in the East Bay city of Pittsburg. He assumed his executive position with the union on Pride Sunday, June 26.

The union also welcomed a new president, Davis resident Dean E. Vogel, following the retirement this year of David Sanchez, who was not only the union’s first openly gay president but also its first Latino president. Both Vogel and Heins will be up for re-election in 2013.

Heins’s desire to help lead the union is driven, he said, by wanting to fight for the rights of both students and teachers as government officials in Sacramento slash funding for public education and bargaining rights for all public sector unions come under attack.

“I felt I needed to step up to the plate and fight back,” Heins told the Bay Area Reporter during a recent interview at Cafe Flore in the Castro.

Heins’s election to the vice presidency ensures gay leadership within the teachers union as the LGBT community mobilizes to defeat efforts to repeal a California law that requires public schools in the Golden State to teach about gay history.

The same anti-gay groups behind the 2008 effort to pass Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment

Rick Gerharter

CTA Vice President Eric Heins

that banned same-sex marriage in California, are now trying to gather enough signatures to qualify a measure on the 2012 ballot that would rescind Senate Bill 48, the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act. Two years ago the CTA donated $1.25 million toward the unsuccessful No on 8 campaign. Since then it has seen its membership rolls decline to 320,000 members as nearly 30,000 teaching positions have been cut due to the state’s economic collapse.

What, if any, help the union can contribute to the effort to safeguard SB 48 remains to be seen. The union will be waging its own campaign against a measure expected to be on the ballot next year that is aimed at restricting unions’ ability to collect dues from the paychecks of its members.

Heins predicted the CTA would once again be a fierce advocate alongside the LGBT community.

“I believe we will step up to the plate and fight back any attempt to turn back the legislation,” said Heins, whose partner is psychologist David Glenn Swor.

He hopes teachers and LGBT people will join forces to defeat both measures, if they make it before voters.

“The CTA is not powerful enough to fight it alone. It is why we need all organizations to work together,” he said.

Long an openly gay teacher, both in his classroom and the press, Heins said he always kept LGBT books on the shelves of his classroom library.

At times parents have questioned his talking to students about LGBT topics. But when he explains his lessons are aimed at teaching respect for all children, most parents drop their complaints.

“When I frame it that way, I have had very little issue,” said Heins.

At the elementary school level, most of his pupils already have heard about LGBT people and are aware that different households exist other than those led by a mother and father.

“The opposition likes to frame it about teaching about sex. They are obsessed about it,” said Heins.

“Obviously, that is not appropriate in elementary school. It is really talking about family structures and relationships.”

In addition to learning about the societal contributions LGBT people have made, as required under the FAIR bill, Heins said students grappling with their sexual orientation or gender identity still need role models they can turn to for guidance.

“They don’t necessarily know where to go for help. For kids in

the East Bay, the groups in San Francisco may be too urban for them. It is why we need role models such as LGBT teachers who are out and straight teachers who are comfortable talking about it,” said Heins. “It is one of the best ways to deal with the substance abuse and suicide that plague our community.”

While he misses his classroom and interacting with students, Heins said he is interested in seeking the CTA presidency at some point.

“Sure I want to run for president.

But right now my plan is to just survive the next two years because it is a pretty big year,” said Heins.

Being vice president means he is often on the road traveling to the state’s various school districts and meeting with other educators.

“It is a 24-7 job,” said Heins.

Mayoral candidate backs SB 48 Should she be elected mayor of San Francisco this fall, venture capitalist Joanna Rees said she would stand alongside the LGBT community as it fights any attempts to repeal SB 48.

Rees, a longtime education advocate, was asked about the new law during a recent interview with the B.A.R. Children should learn “about everything,” including the LGBT community, she said.

“I am completely supportive of inclusiveness,” said Rees, adding she would reach out to mayors in communities less liberal than San Francisco and seek their support in defending the bill. “It’s just fair; let’s just do what’s right.”

San Francisco’s diversity, said Rees, was the reason she initially moved to the Bay Area 18 years ago from New York. Rees is married to her second husband, John Hamm, and raising four children: son Arthur, 21; daughter Taylor, 17; and stepdaughters Andie, 13, and Perry, 11.

The law would not personally impact Rees’s family, as the older children are now college age and her stepdaughters attend private school. The legislation only applies to public schools.

Nor is it clear when state education officials will implement SB 48. According to a statement State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson issued July 14, the state process for the development and review of K-8 instructional materials “is currently dormant” due to budget cuts.

As for Rees, she will be bringing her “Talk of the Neighborhood” town hall series to the Castro from 5 to 6:15 p.m. Monday, August 22 at the Twin Peaks bar located at the corner of Castro and Market streets.▼ Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check www. ebar.com Monday mornings around 11 a.m. for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion.

This week’s column reports that the city’s three LGBT political clubs will hold endorsement votes this month for mayor, district attorney and sheriff.

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

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

On the web Online content this week includes articles on a report from the Movement Advancement Project and SLDN’s request for an executive order from the president. www.ebar.com.

Business News >>

▼ Castro Community Meeting Room issues grants

by Raymond Flournoy

A

t the August 4 meeting of the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro, Patrick Batt, owner of AutoErotica (4077A 18th Street) and Lion Barnett, former president of the organization currently known as the Castro Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association, presented gifts to three organizations from money collected from use fees for the Castro Community Meeting Room.

Batt and Barnett presented checks for $3,000 to the Pink Triangle Park and Memorial and $3,000 to the GLBT History Museum (4127 18th Street), plus a gift of three rainbow flags to MUMC, for use on the flagpole at Harvey Milk Plaza.

Batt, a former MUMC president, and Barnett have overseen the rental of the meeting room for the last 11 years. They also used the MUMC meeting to announce Barnett’s retirement from managing the meeting space. During the meeting, District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener presented Barnett with a Certificate of Honor, signed by all 11 members of the Board of Supervisors, thanking him for the years of service.

The room, located above the Bank of America at 18th and Castro, is available for nonprofit groups to use at a flat free of $25 per event. These fees cover insurance, utilities, and regular cleaning of the space.

Major upgrades to the space, such as painting and carpeting, have been paid for by corporate sponsors, including Walgreens and Levi’s.

MUMC administrator Richard Magary will take over Barnett’s duties managing the Castro Community Meeting Room.

MUMC prez announces retirement At the same meeting, MUMC President Steve Adams told the Bay Area Reporter that he intends to step down from his position leading the merchants group next April. Adams is currently looking for candidates to replace him, although no one has announced their intention to run yet.

Net profit Living in the Bay Area, most of us are familiar with the stories of Internet entrepreneurs leveraging the new technologies and modes of communication to seek their fortunes. But for every venture capital-funded start-up there are many more individuals who are finding new ways to create and conduct business with the aid of the Net. Shannon O’Malley used her blog to develop book ideas and catch the attention of the publishing world.

Last month she published her first book, Apocalypse Cakes: Recipes for the End, a cookbook including such culinary gems as the “Swarm of Locusts Grasshopper Pie,” “Black Deforestation Cake,” and “Gay Wedding Cake” – which is naturally stolen from a straight couple’s wedding reception.

The original idea of the book grew out of a birthday present for O’Malley’s girlfriend in December 2008. Inspired by her girlfriend’s joint interests in apocalyptic myth and cake, O’Malley whipped up an early version of Apocalypse Cakes on her computer and distributed it to friends.

“I wanted to make a cookbook,

Jane Philomen Cleland

Patrick Batt, second from left, and Lion Barnett, second from right, were thanked for their years of service managing the Castro Community Meeting Room. Joining them were MUMC President Steve Adams, left, Alan Beach-Nelson, center, representing Pink Triangle Park, and Aimee Forster, right, of the GLBT History Museum.

but how do I make a cake cookbook special for her? Then it hit me: We’re all going to die, so we might as well eat cake,” said O’Malley.

Encouraged by her friends’ reaction, O’Malley approached a friend in publishing who suggested that she start her blog to show off her ideas. O’Malley eventually found a literary agent through her Twitter activity, and soon Apocalypse Cakes was sold.

Currently, the queeridentified O’Malley is busy promoting the book, which also features the photography of fellow San Franciscan Keith Wilson. She appeared on the August 7 edition of “To the Best of Our Knowledge” on NPR, and she is teaming up with chef Yasmin Golan to produce a series of cake tastings and readings later this year.

For more information about the book and to sample the content, visit O’Malley’s blog at www.apocalypsecakes.wordpress.com.

Cruisin’ on the Internet Kathy Amendola’s business, Cruisin’ the Castro Walking Tours, is built on the personal connection she makes with the visitors she guides around the Castro every day. Amendola estimates that since taking over the company in 2005 she has led “thousands and thousands” of visitors around the historic district.

But modern technology is essential for helping those visitors find Amendola as they plan trips, and also spread the word about her tours after they return home.

“The majority of tour inquiries are website and/or Internet derived.

Travel review sites such as Yelp and most of all TripAdvisor.com have had a very positive impact on bookings because [the sites are] based on actual tour member reviews,” noted Amendola.

In addition, Cruisin’ the Castro has recently partnered with local start-up Vayable.com, a website that provides individuals with a platform to advertise specialized tours. Visitors to the site can browse the listing of tours, and then book directly with the tour operators, bypassing travel agencies or other traditional middlemen.

For Amendola, cultivating relationships with sites like these is essential to the survival of her business. “Now Internet visibility has become a crucial component to a business’ success,” she said.

To learn more about Amendola’s tours, visit www.cruisinthecastro. com.

Pansexual erotica to go Kilt Kilpatrick does not write your mother’s romance novels, unless your mother reads explicit, pansexual, sci-fi erotica on her Kindle. In that case, she may already be familiar with Kilpatrick’s work.

A collection of Kilpatrick’s erotic short stories, Under the Kilt: The Best Stories by Kilt Kilpatrick, was just released by electronic publisher Ravenous Romance. The collection includes gay and lesbian themed stories, as well as other gender combinations and permutations.

The story collection, which includes a heavy dose of science fiction and fantasy, is available for most e-readers.

Kilt Kilpatrick is the pseudonym of San Franciscan David Fitzgerald, originally a biblical historian who has argued extensively against the existence of a historical Jesus. He never intended to become an erotic romance writer, but his partner submitted to a publisher some writing samples originally produced for private consumption. That led to a series of writing contracts, and a new career was born.

Fitzgerald noted that “this is the toughest environment for writers since the Great Depression,” but in the midst of this, “e-pub [electronic publishing] has really taken off.”

One fact that surprises many of his readers is that Fitzgerald is straight.

“I think of myself as the David Bowie of Ravenous Romance, a literary chameleon,” he said.

“Readers always assume that I’m the same orientation as whatever character I’m writing.”

Fitzgerald says that his audience is primarily straight women, and he receives positive feedback from gay and lesbian readers as well. But he is most proud of the fact that his writing crosses the boundaries of sexuality. “Straight readers enjoy the gay stuff and gay readers like the straight stuff,” he said.

For more information about Kilt Kilpatrick visit the Ravenous Romance website at www.ravenousromance.com.

GGBA news The Golden Gate Business Association will hold Talk of the Town Wednesday, August 17 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Hotel Adagio, 550 Geary Street in San Francisco.

The featured speaker will be Tony Wilkins of TCS Inc., who will talk about business development strategies for small business owners.

Tickets are $10 for GGBA members and $20 for non-members. Those interested in attending should RSVP to karole@ggba.org.▼

August 11-17, 2011 •

BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Community News

August 11-17, 2011

▼

San Jose prepares for Pride festival

by Seth Hemmelgarn

O

fficials with San Jose Pride are preparing for a fun festival later this month even though, as with last year, there will be no parade.

The festival, themed “Moving Forward Together,” will take place 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, August 20, and Sunday, August 21 at Discovery Meadow in downtown San Jose’s Guadalupe River Park. (San Jose Pride is formally known as the Gay Pride Celebration Committee of San Jose Inc.) While there won’t be a parade, organizers have lined up a bevy of

entertainers. Headliners include legendary singer Martha Wash (“It’s Raining Men”) and drag icon Lady Bunny.

Board member Ray Mueller attributed the lack of a parade to financial concerns.

“It was just too late, even if we had gotten the money, to try to do it this year,” he said.

However, he said the board’s goal is “to try to come out of this financially stable, and work on recreating the parade for next year.”

Mueller said a parade would cost about $17,000 due to expenses including fees for street closures.

Last year, Pride had a deficit of about $30,000, according to Mueller, who joined the board earlier this year.

The Pride festival started in 1971 as a rally in San Jose’s St. James Park.

“The whole purpose of this parade is to honor and continue those traditions,” Mueller said. “We certainly don’t want to do it unless we can do it right.”

Mueller said Pride officials have “cleared up” the deficit through a variety of fundraising efforts, and they’re committed to staying “in the black.”

He couldn’t say exactly how much Pride currently has in the bank,

Jane Philomen Cleland

Singer Martha Wash, shown here at last year’s Oakland Pride, will perform at the San Jose Pride festival next weekend.

indicating the amount changes frequently. However, he said, “We’re not really worried about getting through this phase. ... At this point, it’s volunteers we need.”

It takes about $30,000 to pay for advance fees and other costs before the event, Mueller said. Pride’s annual budget is about $250,000.

He said that as of Monday, August 8, sponsors are contributing $29,500.

With fundraising efforts continuing, he said he was confident they would meet their target.

One factor in the apparent success has been more than $8,000 raised through the Friends of Pride program. As of Monday, 34 people were participating, Mueller said.

People in the program get free entry to the festival Sunday and access to the VIP area, which will include a special selection of food and beverages.

Festival director Gary Walker said Monday that preparations “are going very well.”

He said despite tight finances, “The reality is you can still create a very fun and safe and enjoyable festival.”

Pride is receiving some help in putting on the fun this year from new sponsors including the local car dealership Mini of Stevens Creek.

James Cheatham, the dealership’s general manager and center operator, said they’re contributing $2,500 to Pride.

“We’re happy to be sponsors,” Cheatham said. “As a gay person, a

gay man, I was very, very pleased to be able to help out.”

In partnership with Rainbow Chamber of Commerce Silicon Valley, Pride’s creating a space specifically for businesses to market themselves at this year’s festival.

Mueller said changes for 2011 include moving the popular dance stage area, which had been “hidden,” to the main section of the park.

He’s also looking for better attendance at Pride this year.

In June 2010, Pride’s board decided to move the festival to August, so as not to compete with other Pride festivals taking place in June.

Mueller said many people didn’t realize the switch had happened, and attendance was down last year. Pride has been holding numerous events, such as Family Fun Night at an Aqui restaurant on Tuesday, August 9, and it has been working to make sure people know the dates of this year’s festival, he said.

“We’re hoping this year we’ll get past a lot of those, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize you moved it’” remarks, Mueller said.

He said organizers expect to have about 10,000 people this year.

“That was average when we were running it in June,” he said.

Admission is free Saturday. Tickets for Sunday are $15 at the gate, but they’re $10 if purchased Saturday.▼ For more information, visit www.sanjosepride.com.

▼

Community News >>

August 11-17, 2011 •

BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Panel signs off on 55 Laguna deal

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

he San Francisco Planning Commission last week approved a request for conditional use authorization for the 55 Laguna housing development.

The project, at the site of the old UC Berkeley Extension campus, is set to include affordable housing units, as well as apartments welcoming to LGBT seniors.

A deal negotiated between the city, project organizers including the nonprofit Openhouse, and community groups calls for developer Wood Partners to set aside 32 below market rate units among its 330 market rate units. The developer will also pay a $6.3 million in lieu of fee that would be used to cover Openhouse’s cost for its ground lease with UC. The senior housing would remain affordable while the Mayor’s Office of Housing is committing funds elsewhere to buy back another 18 units of below market rate housing in the larger development.

Commissioner Michael Antonini wasn’t at the meeting. After the six commissioners present voted their approval Thursday, August 4, Teresa Yanga, director of housing development for the Mayor’s Office of Housing, said, “We are looking” for the funding.

One possible source is fees generated from the Market and Octavia Area Plan, which has been designed to guide zoning in the neighborhood. Yanga didn’t know how much those inclusionary housing fees could bring in, but she said they wouldn’t be enough on their own.

“We have to find other sources,” she said. Other pots of funding could potentially include federal sources, she said, adding it would take the full year proposed in the deal to find the money.

As the Bay Area Reporter has reported, Duboce Triangle and Hayes Valley residents, along with housing activists, had objected to a plan proposed by Wood Partners and the Mayor’s Office of Housing where, rather than build the required 50 affordable apartments on-site, the company would instead pay a $17 million in lieu of fee to help pay for 109 units of affordable senior housing to be built by the LGBT agency Openhouse.

Dozens of project supporters were in the hearing room Thursday.

Openhouse volunteer Jesse FloresGutierrez told commissioners it’s “about time in this amazing city where people come from all over the world for safety and support” to have such a project. He said the development presents “such a wonderful opportunity to show the rest of the nation that San Francisco still knows how to do it.”

Felicia Elizondo, another Openhouse volunteer, also alluded to the need for safety, and expressed full support for the project. She said she’d been beaten up and raped before.

Commission President Christina Olague said the process had been “wrought with tension” but she

indicated she was pleased with the outcome.

“Ultimately, for a lot of us, living in San Francisco isn’t a choice. It’s a necessity,” she said.

Olague, who is bisexual, said LGBT seniors had been “fighting the good fight” before many of the people involved, including herself, had even been born.

After the commissioners voted, Openhouse Executive Director Seth Kilbourn said he was “very pleased with the outcome of today’s vote.”

See page 13 >>

Jane Philomen Cleland

Openhouse volunteer Felicia Elizondo addresses the Planning Commission at last week’s meeting.

ebar.com

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< The Sports Page

August 11-17, 2011

▼

Et tu, Bruno?

by Roger Brigham

M

emo to Tony Bruno: You’re not just racist, you’re homophobic. And, by the way, as gutless as they come.

Bruno attracted instant criticism last weekend when, during his evening national sports talk show on Fox Radio, he expressed his outrage at the Friday night brawl between the Philadelphia Phillies and the San Francisco Giants by posting a Twitter message on his Facebook page: “gutless #!@%*# Giants. [San Francisco manager Bruce] Bochy is a coward for having his illegal alien pitcher hit a guy.”

(Bruno was referring to Giants reliever Ramon Ramirez.)

Bruno’s handlers quickly got him to delete his post and apologize on the air, but the comment had already been captured and reposted by numerous followers.

“I made a stupid comment and I apologize for it,” he said on the air.

“I was wrong. Bruce Bochy is still a coward and I’m not taking that back.”

In his tirade and so-called apology, he used the word “gutless” more than a dozen times to describe the act of a pitcher throwing at a player.

Yet in his on-air apology, readily available in the archived podcast, while he attempted to deflect the conversation from his comment to the subject of throwing at players, he casually tossed in a homophobic slur. He has not apologized for that comment on the air or in his 500word apology on Facebook.

Talking about the brawl between the Phillies and the Giants, he said, “Luckily, most baseball players are pansies and don’t throw punches so

nobody gets hurt.”

Ex-squeeze me?

When referring to people, as virtually any online urban dictionary or fifth-grade student can tell you, pansy means sissy, fag, fairy, or any other term to indicate an effeminate, homosexual man. It’s a fightin’ word of the intellectually ineffectual.

A colleague of mine in Equality Coaching Alliance, Helen Carroll, the director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights Sports Project, said, “It is interesting to me that when men in the sports world throw an angry temper tantrum – and I am referring specifically to sports radio host Tony Bruno’s comment that, ‘most baseball players are pansies’ – they still believe that the worst name to call an athlete refers to his sexual orientation as gay. How many negative examples do we have to endure? Perhaps I should say, how many young athletes questioning or coming to terms with their sexual orientation have to be subjected to an action that has been proven time and again to be harmful and detrimental?

I am glad we can all continue to see these remarks for what they are: a hateful, inexcusable tirade that has no place in sports.”

Now, when a player says something stupid like that, his employer promptly denounces his comment and fines him and/or suspends him.

Of course, these sincere actions usually only come after the media have made an issue of it, so please feel free to pass this column on to whomever you wish.

I wrote a little Facebook posting of my own when I learned of Bruno’s gaffe. I wrote: “Radio ‘personality’ Tony Bruno was wrong about Giants

Roger Brigham

Tony Bruno, center, made an ass of himself by calling baseball players pansies.

reliever Ramon Ramirez being an illegal alien, but I think I am right about Bruno being a legal dickhead.”

Ramirez, it’s been reported, works under a P-1 visa, often referred to as an entertainment visa.

Bruno and his apologists quickly erected standardized, knee-jerk defenses to try to diminish the criticism of his erroneous and incorrect “illegal alien” remark. They noted that he hastily wrote without thinking, as people are prone to do in social media. They deflected the conversation to the wrongness of throwing at a player. They criticized objections as being overly sensitive and worse than the original insult.

And hey: Bruno noted at the start of his broadcast that he had just finished off a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. (Note to Tony: Did you check to see the immigration status of the people who picked the grapes for that wine?) Perhaps drinking before going on the air, like drinking before driving or going on the Internet, isn’t such a smart idea and not something you really should trumpet to establish how cool you are.

Then again, maybe Bruno was feeling some San Francisco animus because KNBR had recently dropped him from its morning lineup.

But those are excuses, not justifications. Calling people pansies and illegal aliens is the gutless act of a juvenile clown sitting behind the remote and faceless shield of a radio microphone, echoing in the dark of distant nights across the country.

“I am certainly not a racist or someone who likes to hurt people,” Bruno said. “I didn’t hurt anybody. I just hurt them with words.”

Tony, it’s never just words. Words give expression to our lowest impulses and spur our most injurious actions.

Enjoy your wine. Me, I’m queer and I’m having a beer. Go Giants!

Big Gay 10k The second annual Big Gay 10k will be held this Saturday, August 13, at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

The fundraiser for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation is expected to attract several hundred runners, walkers, and skippers and will feature a costume contest. The course begins and ends at Upper Great Meadow, with a turnaround at

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Ruth Brinker From page 3

and cheered enthusiastically for the tiny little lady waiving from the car.

They knew her and knew her story and loved her. Even if they didn’t actually know her, many of them knew people she helped care for.”

Officials from other San Francisco AIDS organizations paid tribute to Ms. Brinker.

“Ruth’s vision of delivering meals with love sparked an organization and a movement,” said Neil Giuliano, CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “Her legacy will live on not just in Project Open Hand, but in the hundreds of mealdelivery organizations worldwide that she inspired and the millions of people who have received food and love because of Ruth.”

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee issued a statement Tuesday expressing sadness at the passing of Ms. Brinker.

“I am deeply saddened by the passing last night of Ruth Brinker, a truly inspirational woman who provided nourishment to the sick and dying,” the mayor said.

There were growing pains when Ms. Brinker headed Project Open Hand. The agency was investigated for financial improprieties in the late 1980s or early 1990s but was cleared, according to a 1996 San Francisco Chronicle interview with Nolan. In 1989 Steve Burns was brought on as chief operating officer and he and Ms. Brinker ran the organization as a “tandem management” team, with Ms. Brinker concentrating on fundraising and Burns doing the day-to-day management.

Nolan said Wednesday that while he had no first-hand knowledge

the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The race starts at 9 a.m. and will be followed by a party at the Lookout bar, 3600 16th Street. Registration is $35. For race information and registration, visit www.thebiggay10k.com.

Nyad ends Cuba-Florida swim After months of preparation and weeks of waiting for the weather to break, endurance swimmer Diana Nyad, 61, began her attempted swim Sunday, August 7, from Havana to Florida without a shark tank, but ended it 29 hours later on Tuesday after being blown off course by strong currents.

Nyad, an out lesbian, had attracted loads of international media attention with her effort but hoped to avoid the attention of the sharks in the 103 miles between Cuba and the Florida Keys through the support of divers and electronic shark shields.

She was plagued with shoulder pain and asthma throughout the swim and was vomiting when divers brought her aboard about halfway into the effort.

“I am not sad,” she said. “It was absolutely the right call.”▼

of the agency’s activities before he became executive director, he said the agency was growing rapidly in its early years.

“For funding Ruth and the cooks would go to gay bars, passing the hat,” Nolan said, “then Ruth would tell them to go out and buy 100 pounds of potatoes, for example. If one had to choose between being a perfect accountant and taking care of those who were gravely ill, she chose the latter.”

“I never heard accusations of personal gain,” Nolan added.

Nolan was named executive director of the agency in 1994, after serving for several years on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.

Ms. Brinker was born on May 1, 1922 in South Dakota and moved to San Francisco in the mid-1950s.

Last year Project Open Hand honored Ms. Brinker with its Visionary Award in recognition of her courage and compassion. She received numerous awards during her life, including from the National AIDS Memorial Grove and the Jefferson Award. To continue her legacy, the agency will rename its Visionary Award in honor of Ms. Brinker.

Ms. Brinker is survived by her daughters Lisa Brinker and Sarah Brinker, and by her grandson, Max Corso and great-granddaughter, Bailey Corso. A public celebration of Ms. Brinker’s life will be held September 16. People can check www. openhand.org soon for the place and time.

The family requests that those who wish to honor Ms. Brinker make contributions to Project Open Hand at www.openhand.org/ donate.▼

▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

August 11-17, 2011 •

BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Commentary >>

I am what I am

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

I

recently violated one of the golden rules of the Internet – I read the reader comments under a news article.

The piece itself was a followup on the assault on Chrissy Polis in a Rosedale, Maryland McDonald’s. A pair of women at the restaurant had assaulted Polis, a 22-year-old postoperative transsexual.

They beat and kicked Polis until she suffered a seizure. Why was she attacked? Polis used the women’s restroom.

The older of the two women who beat Polis, Teonna Monae Brown was offered a plea agreement.

In exchange for Brown pleading guilty to assault and committing a hate crime, prosecutors will seek a five-year prison term at the sentencing hearing next month.

Those who have spent any time on the Internet know that comments after articles are typically not worth reading. They’re littered with trolls, and even well-intentioned commenters can leave shaking their head. Indeed, the old axiom, “better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt” seems tailor made for the comment sections under articles.

Nevertheless, as I scanned over the plea agreement story, my eyes fell to the comments below, where one poster argued against the hate crime element to the case by writing

that “any many could put on a wig and lipstick and go into the ladies room and be protected,” saying that if Polis “wants to be a girl he still has to use a men’s room if he is a man.”

Others, too, pointed out that the fight started in the restroom, and that maybe “he” should not have been in there in the first place.

What we see here is something I first referred to some time ago as “the bathroom meme.” This is the argument used by foes of transgender rights.

They claim that extending rights to transgender people – particularly those involving public accommodations – will allow nontransgender rapists and pedophiles to be shielded by the law when they prey on others in an opposite sex restroom. It’s akin to the old “gays recruit” meme born in the 1970s or so, equally ludicrous yet equally effective.

For the record, no transgender rights bill, including those that cover public accommodations, will protect rapists and pedophiles who attempt to harm your spouse, family members, or children. Rape, molestation, and any other such illegal activity remains illegal.

Meanwhile, such laws would allow for a host of rights beyond restrooms by providing equal access to goods and services at public establishments. You know, the ability to order a meal in a restaurant, or go to an emergency room, or do any number of things

you might otherwise take for granted.

Yet the notion of potential attackers in the restroom remains the hot button issue – or more succinctly, male attackers in the ladies’ room. No one tends to address women wreaking havoc in men’s rooms, because this doesn’t provide those opposed to extending rights the correct sort of ammo. They couldn’t draw parallels between transgender people being treated fairly with swarthy male perverts sexually assaulting your daughter in the playground restroom by actually addressing the issues, now could they?

Now consider Polis, a slight of build, young transwoman. She’s about as far from the image that most people conjure up around the words “rapist” as you get. Her attackers were, by and large, bigger than her, and clearly had the upper hand as they kicked her around the restaurant.

For that matter, she is a postoperative transsexual. This is not someone who should step one foot into a men’s room. I don’t think I’d be in the wrong to suggest that her going into a men’s room would be far more likely to cause a sexual assault on a woman than allowing for public accommodation rights for transgender people.

Back to this random, anonymous comment left under the article. I

Christine Smith

find myself gravitating to that last sentence. “So what this guy wants to be [is] a girl,” the commenter says, “he still has to use a men’s room if he is a man.”

Yet Polis is not a man. She never has been, even if she may have been declared one at birth. Yes, she may have had the sexual characteristics of a male at one point in her life – but she never seems to have been a man. Regardless of the shape of her genitalia at birth, she sure isn’t a man now. Polis is not a “guy who wants to be a girl.” Polis is a woman. Ergo, she uses the women’s room. This should not be hard to comprehend.

Here’s the crux of it all, to me.

Here is the one thing that most transgender people understand, yet is so often lost on others. While transgender people do have a history and background that may well set them apart from others in their preferred gender, they are nevertheless the gender they present

as. If a transman presents as male there’s likely a good reason for it.

Ditto for a transwoman. There are even those who might be opting for a space beyond simply man or woman.

Those who oppose transgender equality feel the need to believe that transgender people, in expressing their gender as they see fit, are being deceptive. Moreover, they need to equate this perceived deception with the actions of violent and criminal predators. Never mind that no one has been able to find a shred of evidence to support their suppositions.

Ultimately, we’re not out to defraud, we’re out to live our lives honestly, and shed whatever lie we may have been living previously. We are exactly what we say we are.▼ Gwen Smith remains a she.

You can find her online at www.gwensmith.com.

International News >>

Defense personnel enter boat in Amsterdam pride canal parade

by Rex Wockner

F

or the first time, around 80 defense personnel – military and civilian – took part in Amsterdam’s gay pride canal parade with their own boat August 6.

Joining them was U.S. activist Dan Choi, who helped lead the fight to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Defense personnel participated in the previous two years’ parades, in uniform, but onboard other groups’ boats.

This year’s contingent was organized by the Dutch Foundation for Homosexuality and the Armed Forces. It also included a British Royal Navy lieutenant commander and Dutch generals.

“After years of trying to realize our aim of participating, we are extremely pleased, because visibility, particularly in the case of LGBT defense personnel, is so important,” said Peter Kees Hamstra, chairman of the foundation that organized the contingent.

“By increasing this visibility, we aim to be an example to other defense organizations,” he said. “Although social acceptance has improved in the Netherlands too, there is still a great deal of work that must be done to strengthen the position of LGBT defense personnel.”

On Facebook, Choi commented, “Honored to ride with Dutch generals and admirals and MoD

(Ministry of Defense) officials. ... We must see the gay rights movement from afar to realize how dismal it is at home, how manipulative the party politics can be. Our effort to bring international shame upon the disingenuous ramblings of career politicians makes clear the enormity of second-class citizenship to our officials and ourselves.”

Ugandan LBTI group’s membership list stolen The LBTI group Freedom and Roam Uganda reported August 1 that its offices were burglarized and sensitive information was stolen.

Taken were computers, printers, a server, telephones, a microwave oven, and documents – including the database of the group’s members.

No members were in the building during the weekend break-in.

“The mood is very low; members are filled with trauma and worries,” the group said in a statement.

Police found fingerprints at the scene and told FARUG there is a good chance of tracking the perpetrators because a rare kind of acid was used during the break-in, apparently to damage locks.

FARUG said it wonders if the robbery was random or targeted.

The group said that four days earlier, the offices of the LGBT organization Sexual Minorities Uganda also were broken into.

FARUG said it needs help “financially, technically, and

Rex Wockner

Dan Choi, shown here in a file photo, was in Amsterdam last weekend for the Pride Canal Parade, in which civilian and military personnel took part.

emotionally.”

A spokesperson said the group needs to hire a security guard, install security cameras with battery backup, replace equipment, and reinstall online access.

“The struggle continues,” the group said. “These kinds of things are just one way of distracting us.

We shall not give in to them.”

Gay victim of Nazis dies Germany’s Lesbian and Gay Federation reported that one of the last living gay victims of the Nazis, Rudolf Brazda, died at age 98 on August 3 in Bantzenheim, France.

Along with up to 15,000 other

homosexuals, Brazda was sent to a concentration camp – Buchenwald in his case, in 1942. He was freed by U.S. forces three years later.

Most gay inmates did not survive.

Brazda had said he remained alive thanks to a guard who moved him to less perilous jobs in the camp and another guard who hid him from a death-march roundup.

Brazda came out as a gay survivor of the camps in 2008 after hearing on television that no gay survivors were left. France later appointed him a knight of the Legion of Honor.

The Dallas Voice reported that Gad Beck, a gay man who was held in a Jewish transit camp in Berlin, is still alive.

Czech president: Prague should not support parade Czech President Václav Klaus said August 4 that Prague city officials should not be supporting the gay Pride Parade.

“I do not feel pride in this event,” he wrote on his website. “Tolerating is one thing, giving public support on behalf of major institutions is something completely different. ...

We may respect homosexuality, but not homosexualism.”

Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda said Klaus’s feelings will not affect the city’s patronage of the August 13 parade, which also has support from numerous foreign embassies, including the U.S. Embassy.

Anti-gay bill introduced in Ukraine An

anti-gay

bill

has

been

introduced in Ukraine’s parliament, according to the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.

The measure “regarding protection of children’s rights in the safe information sphere” would amend the criminal code – as well as laws concerning public morality, print media, television and radio, and publishing – to make “propaganda of homosexualism” a criminal offense. “[The measure] is absolutely discriminatory,” said the Ukrainian organization Insight. “The bill strengthens censorship, restricts freedom of speech, which is the basis of mass media, and legalizes violence against homosexual people.”

Slovenia sees first same-sex second-parent adoption Slovenia’s first same-sex secondparent adoption has been approved by the Ministry of Labor, Family and Social Affairs, according to Ljubljana’s SKUC-LL, the Students’ Cultural Center Lesbian Section.

A new family code adopted in June allows a same-sex partner to adopt a partner’s biological child.

The ministry stepped in, SKUC-LL said, after the adoption was denied by the Center for Social Work.▼ Rex Wockner is beginning a sabbatical. The Bay Area Reporter expects to have international news coverage while he is away.

Bill Kelley contributed to this report.

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

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Embezzlement From page 1

However, he said, as soon they became aware of the problem, “We put an end to it.” He added that safeguards are now in place to prevent a similar situation occurring in the future.

Michael Fletcher, who’s been prosecuting the case for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, said, “What’s really sad about this and particularly troublesome is this is a nonprofit organization that serves a very important community” that’s supported by “the good will of contributors.”

Fletcher said Rice-Sanchez has been out of custody since October 30, 2010, the same day he was arrested.

The Bay Area Reporter wasn’t able to confirm whether Rice-Sanchez turned himself in voluntarily.

Asked whether Rice-Sanchez would pay the money back, Santa Clara County Deputy Public Defender Kipp Davis said, “The court’s going to order it.” But Davis said he didn’t know where RiceSanchez would be able to get the money.

He said as part of his plea deal,

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Fox bars Karger From page 1

News set to participate in the debate this week and that he’ll continue to fight to be included in upcoming debates.

The Iowa Republican Party did invite Karger to participate in this Saturday’s straw poll ballot in Ames, Iowa, but Karger declined.

Why? Money.

To participate in the August 13 straw poll, Karger said, his campaign would have to contribute $15,000 to the party, pay for parking spaces, put up an air-conditioned tent, and buy a slew of $30 tickets to give to supporters willing to attend the straw poll event and vote for him. With the student bodies at local colleges still away for the summer, said Karger, the crowd in Ames this weekend will be especially tilted away from the party’s more moderate candidates.

“I have to pick and choose my battles,” Karger said in a phone interview Monday.

But Karger has waged a battle to be included in Thursday’s debate, the first presidential debate in Iowa among Republican candidates. It takes place at 6 p.m. Pacific time on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames. The deadline debate

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<< Community News

August 11-17, 2011

HIV treatment From page 2

investigator Myron Cohen from the University of North Carolina, who received a standing ovation for his presentation. “We can’t get much better.”

Expressing what would become the unofficial slogan of the meeting, conference co-chair Stefano Vella said, “It’s no longer a question of ‘treatment as prevention,’ it’s now ‘treatment is prevention.’”

PrEP HIV-negative people taking antiretroviral drugs to reduce their risk of becoming infected is more controversial, but there is now little doubt that it works.

Researchers presented data from two studies of discordant heterosexual partners showing that PrEP using tenofovir (Viread) or tenofovir plus emtricitabine (the drugs in Truvada) substantially lowers the risk of HIV transmission.

The University of Washington announced results from the Partners PrEP study the week before the conference, prompting the Centers

▼

Asked whether the board’s actively recruiting new members, Flood said, “I wouldn’t say we aren’t, but I wouldn’t say we are, either. ... It’s not like we’re putting ads out.” However, “If we find people who are interested, we would be more than happy to give them a shot at it,” he said.

Most current and former board members contacted for this story didn’t respond to interview requests.

However, Michael Schlemmer, who left the board in 2010 when elections came up, after about two years on the board, said, “It was a positive experience.”

He said while he was there, “the center was facing some rather extreme challenges,” including having to face the possibility of closing. He said there had been no problems he “could speak to” working with other board members. Asked what working with Flood had been like, he said, “I’d really rather not get into any commentary about particular board members. ... I think it’s a breach of fiduciary duties of a board member to reveal what happened between board members.”▼

if Rice-Sanchez pays back the full amount by the day of sentencing, he’ll receive a three-month county jail commitment. Otherwise, he’ll get eight months.

Either way, his sentence is expected to also include a minimum of three years probation. That term could be extended to five years, Davis said.

Rice-Sanchez might be able to take part in an electronic monitoring program, where he would wear an ankle bracelet and be “completely restricted” to his home, Davis said. In that case, he’d only be allowed to go

to things like doctor’s appointments, for which he’d have to receive prior approval.

Davis said through his plea, RiceSanchez is “acknowledging he made a mistake,” and he said he “firmly believes” his client “wants to move forward with his life.”

Rice-Sanchez could not be reached for comment.

Recent years have seen other trouble for the DeFrank center, starting with the 2009 ouster of

former Executive Director Aejaie Sellers.

Earlier this year, the center canceled its 30th anniversary party, which had been planned for March 26. Only about 40 tickets had been sold.

The budget is currently about $250,000. Flood said the center gets most of its funding through individual donations. He estimated they currently have more than $80,000 in the bank. He said there are no changes to services planned.

Current programs include support groups and HIV testing. The only paid staffer is the HIV program coordinator.

The center pays $1 a year for rent for its building on The Alameda.

Flood said they’re planning to fix the roof this summer – “It’s been leaking since we moved in” – and that’s expected to cost about $40,000.

As far as the board, Flood said, “There’s always been a lot of turnover” there.

“A lot of people get on thinking it’s going to be one thing, and it turns out to be something else,” he said.

He added “it’s a lot of work,” and it’s “hard for people to make that kind of commitment when they have a fulltime job.”

sponsors set for any candidate to qualify for inclusion was Tuesday at 5 p.m.

But those sponsors – Fox News, the Iowa Republican Party, and the Washington Examiner – said last Friday that Karger failed to qualify.

The criteria, spelled out by Fox News, amounted to three things: • That the candidate be registered with the Federal Elections Commission as a presidential candidate; Karger is.

• That the candidate meet all requirements for presidential qualification as spelled out by the U.S. Constitution. Karger does.

• That the candidate has earned an average of at least 1 percent in five national polls of “most recent polling.” This is where the dispute lies.

Karger points to five national polls, all independent polls conducted this year involving Republicans or Republican-leaning independents: a Harris Interactive poll, completed August 4, in which he garnered support from 2 percent of 1,168 people surveyed online; a Zogby poll, completed July 25, in which he garnered support from 1 percent of 1,103 people surveyed online; and a McClatchy-Marist poll, completed June 23, in which he garnered support from less than 1 percent of 308 people surveyed by telephone. Karger was identified

to them as “Political Activist Fred Karger” and, odd as it may sound, he earned a full 1 percent from Republicans identified as “Tea Party supporters.”

Karger also pointed to a Zogby poll, completed May 23, in which he garnered support from 1 percent of 1,169 people surveyed online; and a Fox News poll, completed April 27, in which Karger garnered support from 1 percent of 911 people surveyed by telephone who identified themselves as registered voters.

Karger says the average of these five surveys gives him a clear onepoint average.

Fox doesn’t dispute Karger’s math. It disputes which polls he uses to achieve it.

Michael Clemente, vice president for news at Fox, explained, through a spokesperson Monday, that “none” of the five polls Karger cited helped him meet the 1 percent threshold.

The Harris poll and the two Zogby polls, he said, don’t qualify because they are online surveys. He did not respond to a question asking why online surveys are not accepted.

Both Internet and phone surveys can have their biases, said Williams Institute scholar Gary Gates, an expert in survey data relating to LGBT people.

“Internet surveys can be biased

by the fact that the demographic characteristics of Internet users are likely different from those of the general population (e.g., younger, more education),” said Gates. “But phone surveys can also be biased, especially if they exclude cell phones.”

And then there’s the issue that cell phone exchange numbers are no longer “geographically defined,” said Gates.

Polling firms, said Gates, attempt to correct potential sample biases through various “weighting” methods to ensure that a survey sample represents as accurately as possible the population.

“In general, our knowledge about how to appropriately weight a typical random-digit-dial phone survey is more advanced than our knowledge about weighting of Internet-only surveys,” said Gates.

But it’s a complicated process and “there’s no magic way to determine a priori whether a particular method [for weighting] is best.”

Clemente called the April poll by Fox “out of date.” In two subsequent Fox polls, Karger’s name did not reach 1 percent. And the McClatchyMarist poll registered less than 1 percent for Karger.

But Karger says Fox’s criteria for inclusion “never specified” that the polls had to be conducted by telephone versus online and never

defined what Fox considered “most recent.”

Karger said Tuesday he would file a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission over the dispute and his campaign website is asking supporters to sign a petition, urging Fox to include him in the debate.

One problem for Karger has been with polling groups themselves.

Unlike Fox, which has included Karger’s name each time, most of the polls conducted by independent firms in the past month – including Pew, Gallup, CNN, ABC, and NBC – have not included Karger’s name on a list of candidates for respondents to choose from. That’s been a problem for a few other Republican candidates, too, including Representative Thad McCotter of Michigan and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.

But Karger said he thinks Fox decided to exclude him from this week’s debate because they’re concerned his more “centrist” positions “would be appealing to a broad range” of voters.

And Karger’s not giving up.

“I’m going to fight for every one” of the debates, said Karger, who expects there will be more than a dozen to come. “I’m going to fight like hell for every one.”▼

for Disease Control and Prevention to release findings from a related study as IAS 2011 organizers scrambled to incorporate the new findings at the last minute.

Partners PrEP enrolled more than 4,700 mostly heterosexual serodiscordant couples in Kenya and Uganda. The HIV infection rate fell by 62 percent among positive partners assigned to take tenofovir alone and by 73 percent among those taking both drugs.

“Now, more than ever, the priority for HIV prevention research must be on how to deliver successful prevention strategies, like PrEP, to populations in greatest need,” said study investigator Jared Baeten, speaking at a press conference behind a hastily hand-written name tag.

The CDC’s TDF2 trial compared infection rates for HIV-negative heterosexual participants in Botswana who were randomly assigned to use tenofovir/ emtricitabine PrEP or placebo.

Here, the risk of infection fell by 63 percent overall and by 78 percent among participants who took the study medications consistently.

Presenter Michael Thigpen said

these results are “welcome news for the populations hardest hit by the epidemic.”

and diversion of study drugs to HIV-positive family and friends who lack access to treatment.

In announcing the TDF2 results the CDC urged heterosexual men and women and their health care providers in the U.S. to wait for forthcoming guidance, now in preparation, before using PrEP. But if PrEP is considered urgent in particular cases, they can follow recently issued guidelines for PrEP use by men who have sex with men.

Challenges remain for translating these scientific breakthroughs into real-world practice, including testing people soon enough to start therapy early, as well as the ethics and logistics of offering HIVnegative people antiretroviral drugs for prevention while so many HIVpositive people worldwide still lack access to treatment.

nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor lersivirine and the new integrase inhibitors dolutegravir and elvitegravir – represent refinement rather than revolution.

But one area that remains ripe for breakthroughs received considerable attention: the renewed search for a cure for HIV. Recent scientific advances have led to a re-emergence of optimism about achieving at least a “functional cure” that could enable people to maintain viral suppression without lifelong antiretroviral therapy.

On July 18 members of an IAS advisory board issued the Rome Statement for an HIV Cure, calling for international cooperation to accelerate cure research. Earlier this month the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced $14 million in new funding for research on HIV eradication.

These new grants – under the auspices of the Martin Delaney Collaboratory, named after the late founder of Project Inform – went to three research groups looking at HIV reservoirs and viral latency, including one led by Steven Deeks and Mike McCune at UCSF.▼

“What’s really sad about this and particularly troublesome is this is a nonprofit organization that serves a very important community” that’s supported by “the good will of contributors.”

–Michael Fletcher

Finances

iPrEx The Partners PrEP and TDF2 findings mirror results released last fall for gay and bisexual men and transgender women in the iPrEx trial. This study showed that tenofovir/emtricitabine reduced HIV transmission by 73 percent overall and by as much as 90 percent for participants with the best adherence.

“PrEP presents a unique HIV prevention advantage because it can help stop the cycle of infections from people who are newly infected with HIV but unaware of their status,” said iPrEx investigator Robert Grant, who presented further data at IAS 2011.

Another recent study known as FEM-PrEP, however, was halted ahead of schedule in April after preliminary results were unable to demonstrate a protective effect of PrEP for heterosexual women in Africa. The reasons for the discrepancy are not yet known, but may be related to poor adherence

New meds, push for a cure Unlike prior conferences, IAS 2011 did not feature major news about novel antiretroviral drugs.

With current therapy able to reduce viral load to an undetectable level for most people, drugs now under study – such as the experimental non-

For more information, visit www.defrankcenter.org.

▼ <<

Community News >>

Laguna deal

From page 9

He noted, however, the vote was just “one in a number of steps we will have to go through” before actual construction. He said the next step is the engineering and

August 11-17, 2011 •

design review process.

“I wish I had a crystal ball” to predict when construction on the Openhouse portion of the development would begin, Kilbourn said. He said he’s hoping it can start within three to five years. He said other parts of the project could be

Rick Gerharter

Mayoral candidates Dennis Herrera, Ed Lee, and Joanna Rees took part in the mayoral forum sponsored by the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association and the Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association.

<<

Lee’s candidacy From page 1

Openly gay former Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represented the Castro at City Hall for eight years, quipped that, “If you can’t get booed on the stage of the Castro Theater you are not breathing.”

Throughout the night Lee maintained his composure, despite being repeatedly interrupted by name-calling and blasts from an air horn someone had brought with them. At one point moderator Liam Mayclem, a host of Eye on the Bay on the local CBS affiliate, implored the audience to “please stop booing the mayor.”

In his responses Lee largely avoided the personal attacks on his character until the end of the twohour debate. Noting that he worked with supervisors to pass a balanced budget and helped forge a pension reform measure by working with city leaders and union officials, Lee said he entered the mayor’s race in order to continue having a more collaborative atmosphere at City Hall.

“We can get a lot done if we set agendas aside,” said Lee. Just prior to the debate District 11 Supervisor John Avalos, a former Castro resident, sent his supporters an email explaining that, unlike most of the other opponents, he didn’t spend time “embroiled in political wrangling” to keep Lee out of the race. His reasoning, he said, was “because I don’t think his announcement changes much for my campaign.”

Avalos, nonetheless, didn’t hold back in attacking Lee during the debate, painting him as bereft of his own ideas. The unions are owed credit for the pension deal, said Avalos, while holding balanced budget hearings and enforcing local hiring rules are proposals he has long championed.

“What is his vision?” asked Avalos.

Former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier also questioned what proposals Lee had come up with on his own, arguing that the tax break he pushed for Twitter was initially proposed by Newsom last fall. In terms of the pension deal, she said the politician deserving of praise is District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who has long urged the city to grapple with its ballooning pension obligations.

“Mayor Lee was at the right place at the right time,” said Alioto-Pier.

“This race is about innovation and about looking forward to what we can do for San Francisco.

There is innovation and there is a placeholder. We want to move forward not backward.”

Gary Virginia, a gay man and fundraiser for a number of LGBT nonprofits, said he entered the debate undecided. After hearing from the candidates, he said he was most impressed by Herrera, Avalos, and venture capitalist Joanna Rees.

Yet Virginia said he remained unsure whom his first, second, and third place choices would be under the city’s ranked-choice voting system. He likely won’t make up his mind until closer to Election Day. “I will be looking at the polls to determine who is electable. I don’t want to waste my vote,” said Virginia.

Wayne Friday, the Bay Area Reporter’s former political editor and columnist, said he didn’t believe Lee had won over many in the audience at the debate.

“The big story there is Lee proved he is just a politician. I didn’t believe him from the beginning he wasn’t going to run,” said Friday, adding he plans to vote for Herrera as his first choice and Dufty as his second.

While Lee is leading the pack in the most recent polling on the race, Friday said the mayor’s numbers will likely fall now that he is a candidate.

“I think it is anybody’s game now,” said Friday.

Going Green Lee’s addition to the debate inspired another bit of political theater Monday night, as lesbian Green Party candidate Terry Baum, who had not been invited to take part, showed up anyway with her own chair and refused to leave the stage.

“They told me there was no room on stage for me and now Lee will be here. I will be in this debate unless the police drag me away,” Baum told the audience prior to the start of the forum, which was hosted by the Duboce Triangle and Castro/Eureka Valley neighborhood associations.

Having been 86’ed from a debate held by police and firefighter unions due to his calling for more drastic reductions in pension benefits for city employees, former Supervisor Tony Hall commiserated with Baum over her exclusion.

“The last forum I was not included. As many people know in this room, not being included is not nice,” said Hall, who also welcomed Lee to the race so that there can be “a real debate” about the policies he has enacted. “I thank you Ed Lee for coming here tonight.”

Organizers allowed Baum to remain on stage but did not include her in the answer and question portion. She did end up answering several questions due to Rees and Dufty deferring their time to Baum, and Yee opted to give his allotted two-minute closing statement time

under way “much faster.”

Kilbourn asks LGBT seniors to contact Openhouse at (415) 2968995 or info@openhouse-sf.org to get on their interest list. He said the agency could also help with affordable housing options that are currently available.▼

“If you can’t get booed on the stage of the Castro Theater you are not breathing.”

–Bevan Dufty to Baum.

“We need to send a message to the people in power,” said Baum.

“If you elect a Green mayor it will clear the sinuses of everybody in San Francisco.”

Rees used Baum’s muscling herself into the forum to launch one of the better attacks against Lee. After telling Baum she deserved to be there, Rees said she at first thought Baum’s folding chair was meant for Chinatown power broker Rose Pak, a close friend of Lee’s who was instrumental in pushing him to enter the mayor’s race.

“I thought the seat was saved for Rose Pak to help Mayor Ed Lee answer questions,” said Rees.

The attacks against Lee keep coming, as the morning following the Castro debate Herrera’s campaign announced that former Mayor Art Agnos, who first hired Lee to work in city government, had endorsed the city attorney. A press release sent to reporters quoted Agnos as saying that the city’s next mayor needs to be “independent of special interests” – a clear dig against Lee. In a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Agnos said that he doesn’t consider Lee to be a liar since he can change his mind about running for office.

“I respect his right to do that. I think Ed Lee is an honorable man who obviously was pressured by a number of forces that required him to change his mind,” said Agnos, who served as mayor from 1988 to 1992.

He said he based his endorsement on who would be the best person to maintain their independence in the mayor’s office over the next four years. Agnos also said he has no plans to make second or third place endorsements, referring to the city’s ranked-choice voting as “a form of political polygamy.”

“I am just endorsing Dennis Herrera. I think he is the strongest independent voice for every neighborhood in this city,” said Agnos. “I don’t like the structure of ranked-choice voting. I think it dilutes and encourages too much sameness among candidates.”

The attacks against Lee will likely continue tonight (Thursday, August 11) at the next LGBTcentered mayoral debate. The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club is co-hosting two mayoral debates, the first of which begins at 6 p.m. tonight at the African American Art and Cultural Complex, 762 Fulton Street.

The second will be held at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, August 24 at the Jewish Community Center’s Kanbar Hall, 3200 California Street.▼

BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

Legal Notices>> NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : YUZUKI. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 598 Guerrero St., San Francisco, CA 94110-1018. Type of license applied for:

41- ON-SALE BEER AND WINEEATING PLACE AUG 11,2011 NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSE To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : TELEGRAPH HILL ASSOCIATES LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 2241 Chestnut St., San Francisco, CA 94123-2607.

Type of license applied for:

48- ON-SALE GENERAL PUBLIC PREMISES AUG 11,2011 NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSE To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : LERS ROS. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 730 Larkin St., San Francisco, CA 94109-7117. Type of license applied for:

41- ON-SALE BEER AND WINEEATING PLACE AUG 11,2011 NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSE To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : MICHELE BROWN STEINER. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 731 Clement St., San Francisco, CA 94118-2216. Type of license applied for:

41- ON-SALE BEER AND WINEEATING PLACE AUG 11,2011 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : ROXIE THEATRE THE. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 3117 16th St., San Francisco, CA 94103. Type of license applied for:

40- ON-SALE BEER JUL 28,AUG.4,11,2011 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : FRONT PORCH RESTAURANT LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 65 29th St.,A, San Francisco, CA 94110-4910. Type of license applied for:

47- ON-SALE GENERAL EATING PLACE JUL 28,AUG.4,11,2011 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : FRANCO MONTARELLO. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1106 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102-3804. Type of license applied for:

41- ON-SALE BEER AND WINEEATING PLACE JUL 28,AUG.4,11,2011 STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE# CNC-11-547879 In the matter of the application of ANTHONY JOSEPH NEAL for change of name. The application of ANTHONY JOSEPH NEAL for change of name having been filed in Court, and t appearing from said application that ANTHONY JOSEPH NEAL filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to TONY QUINTERO Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 8th of September, 2011 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 STATEMENT FILE A-033683600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as GRAND CENTRAL FURNITURE,353 9TH St., San Francisco, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Jhovani Manzanares.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/21/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/11/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011

STATEMENT FILE A-033690300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as URBAN GARDEN SF,237 Kearny St., #289, San Francisco, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, signed William Hoag.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/14/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/14/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 STATEMENT FILE A-033690700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as ENCYCLOMEDIA OUTPUT GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDIO, 1504 Bryant St., Suite 101,San Francisco, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Timothy M. Cheng.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/14/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 STATEMENT FILE A-033692800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as BAY AREA SPECIALITY SUPPLIES,8 Meadowbrook Drive, Pittsburg, CA 94565. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Areeb Sa’Aadat.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/15/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/15/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 STATEMENT FILE A-033685400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as 1.PATTIWAGON, 2.PATTICAKES, 121 Kensington Way, San Francisco, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Patricia Doyle.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/12/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 STATEMENT FILE A-033689500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as THE FITNESS RESOURCES, 722 Larkin St.,#6,San Francisco, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Kenneth Scott.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/13/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 STATEMENT FILE A-033644300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as ALEX FITNESS, 2275 Market St.,Suite #4, San Francisco, CA 94114. This business is conducted by limited liability company, signed Alexander Shula.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/22/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/23/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 STATEMENT FILE A-033691900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as WILLI’S WILD FLOWERS,2469 27th Ave.,San Francisco, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Julie Martin.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/15/111. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/15/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 STATEMENT FILE A-033698600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as DAR AL FIKER LP, 1116 Polk St., San Francisco, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an limited partnership, signed Adris Algohem.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/19/11.

JUL 21,28,AUG 4,11, 2011 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : LEANIMALE LIMITED LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1310 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA 94133-3904. Type of license applied for:

41- ON-SALE BEER AND WINEEATING PLACE AUG 4,11,18,2011 NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : HYO JOO LEE. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 6314 Geary Blvd., San Francisco, CA 94121-1824. Type of license applied for:

41- ON-SALE BEER AND WINEEATING PLACE AUG 4,11,18,2011 STATEMENT FILE A-03374500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as GRC ROOFING INC.,1390 Wallace Ave.,San Francisco, CA 94124.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Suilin Lee. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/08/11.

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011

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14 • Bay Area Reporter • August 11-17, 2011

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Legal Notices>>

jul 28,AUG.4,11,18,2011 statement file A-033700000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PLANETSKILL PRODUCTIONS,2938 Moraga St., San Francisco, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Luke Esquivel.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as FORK CAFE,469 Castro St., San Francisco, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Bassem Sirhed. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/20/11.

jul 28,AUG.4,11,18,2011 statement file A-033659700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as INTERSTICE ARCHITECTS INC,587 Shotwell St., San Francisco, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Zoee Astrachan.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/08/98. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/30/11.

jul 28,AUG.4,11,18,2011 statement file A-033714500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as STRAND BEACH ESCAPE,248 Hester Ave., San Francisco, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Freddie Little Jr.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/26/11.

jul 28,AUG.4,11,18,2011 petition to compel discovery case number: FDi-10-773641 superior court of san francisco 400 mcallister st. San francisco, ca 94118 petitioner: OXANA SHELL RESPONDENT/DEFENDANT: CHRISTOPHER SHELL NOTICE OF MOTION: TO COMPEL DISCOVERY ATTORNEY FEES AND COSTS TO RESPONDANT – CHRISTOPHER SHELL A HEARING ON THIS MOTION for the RELIEF REQUESTED IN THE ATTACHED APPLICATION WILL BE HELD AS FOLLOWS DATE:10/04/11 AT 9:00AM RM 404, 400 MCALLISTER STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118 jul 28,AUG.4,11,18,2011 nOTICE OF APPLICATIoN to sell AlCOHOLIC BEVERAGEs To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : DESTINATION BARS LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 691 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94105-4212. Type of license applied for:

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AUG.4,11,18,25,2011 statement file A-033693600

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 state of california in and for the county of san francisco file# cnc-11-547960 In the matter of the application of ALEX MENGBING WU for change of name. The application of ALEX MENGBING WU for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that ALEX MENGBING WU filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to BING WU. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 11th of October, 2011 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 statement file A-033744500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as REMAINCOM,290 Division St., Suite 306,San Francisco, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Stewart McKenzie.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/00. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/15/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as H2Y,2715 Cabrillo St., #103,San Francisco, CA 94121.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Hiroshi Ito.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/08/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/08/11.

AUG.4,11,18,25,2011 statement file A-033697000

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 statement file A-033744700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as JANG SOO B.B.Q.,6314 Geary Blvd., San Francisco, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Hyojoo Lee.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/18/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SMALL FOODS, 522 2nd St.,San Francisco, CA 94107.This business is conducted by a limited partnership, signed Bruce Slesinger.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/08/11.

AUG.4,11,18,25,2011 statement file A-033719800

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 statement file A-033737600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ESSENCE CO.. 15 Delta St., San Francisco, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a husband and wife, signed Biu Wing.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/28/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/28/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as MARC OLIVIER DE BLANC MOBAFOTO,1270 La Playa St., #202,San Francisco, CA 94122.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Marc Abonnat.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/04/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/04/11.

AUG.4,11,18,25,2011 statement file A-033710100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as LAIZA.,4 Mayfield Ave., Daly City, CA 94015. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Daniel Singnan.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/22/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/22/11.

AUG.4,11,18,25,2011 statement file A-033715100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as IZAKAYA SOZAI, 1500 Irving St., San Francisco, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Suemee Osuka.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/22/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/26/11.

AUG.4,11,18,25,2011 statement file A-033726800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as PARAGON PHILANTHROPY, 701 Broderick St., San Francisco, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Andrzej Kozlowski.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/01/11.

AUG.4,11,18,25,2011 statement file A-033726500

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statement file A-033739200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as POT GARDENS, 4040 Balboa St.,#4,San Francisco, CA 94121.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Eshai Delacruz.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/04/11.

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 statement file A-033744100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as DR. SIMMS & CATS,380 10th St., Loft 18,San Francisco, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a husband and wife, signed Adrian Simms.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/08/11.

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 statement file A-033727200

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The following persons have abandoned the use of the ficticious business name known as CONNIE HAIR SALON, 2436 Bayshore Blvd., San Francisco, CA 94134.This business was conducted by an individual, signed Connie Young.

The ficticious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/23/08.

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AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 statement file A-033727600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as NIGHT SKY ACUPUNCTURE, 344 Carl St.,#5, San Francisco, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Erin P. Reilly.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/08/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/01/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as YAN YANG BEAUTY SALON,864 Jackson St., San Francisco, CA 94133.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Yan Miao Chen.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/01/11.

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 statement file A-033737700

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 statement file A-033747100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as LIZBOEDER,800 35TH Ave.,San Francisco, CA 94121.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Elizabeth A. Boeder.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/04/11.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as STEINS,731 Clement St.,San Francisco, CA 94118.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Michele Steiner, The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/09/11.

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011

AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011

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AUG.11,18,25,SEPT.1, 2011 Statement of abandonment of use of ficticious business name: #A-0313229-00

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In the matter of the application of NA LI TRAN for change of name. The application of NA LI TRAN for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that NA LI TRAN filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to LINA TRAN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 6th of October, 2011 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

jul 28,AUG.4,11,18,2011 statement file A-033703400

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In the matter of the application of JENNIFER LYNN WINER FAHRION for change of name.

The application of JENNIFER LYNN WINER FAHRION for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that JENNIFER LYNN WINER FAHRION filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to NIFER KILAKILA Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 22th of September, 2011 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as DAKINI AYURVEDA, 43-B Vicksburg St., San Francisco, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, signed Courtney LaCava.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/10/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/19/11.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as TACO SAN BUENA, 2598 Harrison St., San Francisco, CA 94080. This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Esquival Santana.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/19/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/19/11.

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Vol. 41 • No. 32 • August 11-17, 2011

“Big D” dance number from Festival Opera’s production of The Most Happy Fella.

Robert Shomler

F

estival Opera is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary season in the East Bay with an ambitious production of Broadway composer Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella at the Lesher Center. The company’s founder Theodore Weis appears in the central role of Tony, and if that looks a little bit like vanity casting, the part has traditionally gone to opera singers late in their careers, and Weis (who turns a remarkably agile 80 this year) has already played it several times before.

Festival Opera presents ‘The Most Happy Fella’ ★ ★ ★ by Philip Campbell ★ ★ ★ He can still belt an aria at showtune level, and that’s what really matters.

Stage director Brian Staufenbiel (in his second production for Festival Opera) clearly shares our own affection for Loesser’s often ungainly but always big-hearted and wonderfully melodic score. We can

understand his enthusiastic attempt at staging a complicated and rather serious-minded story set amidst the trappings of a big goldenage Broadway musical.

The composer himself actually already settled the decision as to whether Fella is an opera or a musical comedy back in 1956.

When he wrote the book, music and lyrics for a setting of Sidney Howard’s gritty realistic play They Knew What They Wanted, Loesser called it a “Musical in three acts,” and that is what it is. The challenge in performance is how to convincingly meld a thumping hit parade of songs. C’mon now, you remember “Standing on the Corner,” with a glorious cornucopia of quasi-operatic arias, quartets, trios and duets. It doesn’t always work comfortably with See page 29 >>

Collaging Kurt Schwitters

by Sura Wood

A Kurt Schwitters: “Untitled (okolade),” 1926; collage of cut printed, and marbleized papers on paperboard; the Menil Collection, Houston.

tinkerer, a maker, designer, poet, an anthology of art history and a one-man industry: all of these describe German painter/collage artist Kurt Schwitters, whose work seems remarkably familiar if only because he’s so often been copied by his inheritors and those he influenced, like Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Ellsworth Kelly and Damien Hirst, to name just a few. Enduring cataclysmic world events that would dampen anyone’s avantgarde, utopian idealism, Schwitters

emerged from the ruins of WWI, and later, WWII, collecting detritus from the ashes of bombed-out buildings, and signs of life left behind by those who had moved on. He was a scavenger par excellence, a crucial qualification for an oeuvre he made up as he went along.

Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage, now at the Berkeley Art Museum, is the first major overview of the artist’s work in the U.S. since 1985. It presents 75 assemblages, sculptures and collages, dating from 1918 to 1947, as well as an

intriguing reconstruction of his life’s work, an installation destroyed in an Allied bombing raid – but more on that later.

His collages, executed with an astute compositional eye, are an expression of the dissonant collision of information and experience endemic to modern life, a phenomenon that’s only accelerated in the digital age. Schwitters’ keen ability to balance disparate elements is evident, right from the start, in two of his earliest See page 23 >>

Janet Woodard, Houston

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18 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Out There

August 11-17, 2011

▼

Choreography in clay & glaze

by Roberto Friedman

O

ne-of-a-kind, handmade work from 230 of the nation’s best craft artisans are on show and sale during the annual American Craft Council Show, coming to the Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, Aug. 12-14.

Out There spoke by phone with Bay Area ceramic artist James Aarons, who will be exhibiting at the ACC show. Aarons, who is gay, is well-known in crafts circles for his ceramic drawings and paintings, wall installations and tableware. We asked him to describe his work and art practice.

“I make non-functional artworks out of clay and glaze, to create surfaces to draw or paint on,” Aarons said. “The pieces are not vessels, they’re not functional, but artwork does have a function: it’s to please us, and summon thoughts.

“I make thumbnail sketches, formulate my ideas on paper, then

use that as theme material, and let those ideas flow through me. I’ll have mostly wall pieces on show at ACC, built of multiple components but shown as one large piece, designed to hang together.”

We had to ask about glaze: what is it?

“Glaze, like glass, is mostly silica. It bonds with the surface of clay to create a thin skin of color. It’s a paper-thin layer of glass really, but not transparent.”

Along with his art career, Aarons had a concurrent 10-year professional career as a dancer, working with Nikolais Dance Theatre, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Does he see a link between dance and ceramics? He does.

“The visual component of dance is based on gestures, gestures in space.

Clay responds well to movement, and I think about the kinds of shapes and markings that I make as gestures, as movement. I also make ceramic

pieces based on light and shadows, and the viewer’s eye moves through the shapes and markings, dances through the composition.”

Does he still dance?

“Not that anyone would see. But I still feel like I’m a dancer. I haven’t had one ceramic dream in my life, but I have dance dreams all the time.”

For tickets and info on the ACC show, go to www.craftcouncil.org/sf.

More about Gore This week’s issue includes a review of the mystery novels that author Gore Vidal wrote under the pseudonym Edgar Box (see p. 28).

Because they became famous at about the same time and because they were both openly gay, authors Truman Capote and Vidal were often linked in the public’s mind.

They knew each other but did not socialize, and reportedly did not like one another. In his memoirs, Vidal wrote that the last time he saw Capote was at a party where he mistook him for a hassock and sat on him.

In contrast, Vidal and playwright Tennessee Williams were good friends. They appeared on a television talk show together in the early 1970s. Williams said that the 60s were his “stoned age,” and consequently he didn’t remember them. Without missing a beat, Vidal replied, “Don’t worry, Tennessee. You didn’t miss a thing.”

The liberal Vidal also debated the ultra-conservative pundit William F. Buckley on television during the 1968 Democratic and Republican presidential conventions. They loathed each other. At one point, Buckley called Vidal a homosexual, which Vidal did not deny. Later, he quipped, “There was William Buckley, rolling his eyes and flailing his arms like Bette Davis, calling me a homosexual.”

Page count What is Out There reading during these dog days of summer? Well you know, we have our nose buried in a whole pile of books most of the time; we’re a book slut.

My Queer War by James Lord (Farrar Straus Giroux) is the story of Lord’s sexual awakening during his service in the U.S. Armed Forces, set against the backdrop of WWII; published last year, it’s now out in paperback. Lord, who died in 2009, is best-known for his art criticism

J. Thomas

Ceramic artist James Aarons will show work at the American Craft Council Show, coming to Fort Mason Center this weekend.

and memoirs of his life as an expatriate in mid-20th century Paris. He moved in artistic circles, a friend to Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti; his biography of Giacometti was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The new memoir takes Lord from a 21-year-old naïf reporting to duty in 1942 through basic training in Nevada and California, and eventually to France and Germany. Lord’s writing is flowery and erudite; he’s an aesthete plunked down in GI barracks. “But what of the myth of military camaraderie?” he writes.

“Consider the Sacred Band of ancient Greece, those 150 couples of soldier lovers, incorruptible hoplites, faithful to one another till death, homosexuality winning pride of place in the heartland of civilization.

Unthinkable now amid the bitching, lurching troops in our rackety truck riding to the railroad station en route to destinations determined by madmen.”

Lord is the type of memoirist who furnishes entire conversations reconstructed 60 years later; that is, he is partly autobiographer and part fictionist, involved in fitting out his own personal myth. But if you allow for a certain suspension of disbelief, the anecdotal rewards are great. “There’s nothing nicer than the army for demonstrating how all men – zoologically at least – are created equal, thus doing away with the last laughable wisps of modesty.

GIs sleep in their underwear, often without. If Billy looked 15 in uniform, he gained a well-developed decade when he took it off. He kept on his undies, though. So did I.”

Anyone who knows OT’s reading habits knows that we’re a Highsmithian nonpareil. We’ve read most of the work of lesbian crime novelist Patricia Highsmith, and two recent doorstop-thick biographies of her. Now Grove Press has begun the project of reissuing nine Highsmith volumes; just renewed in print are her first collection of short stories, E Eleven, and her novel The Cry of th Owl. the Highsmith was a great e eccentric whose enthusiasms in included an affection for snails; s often attempted to smuggle she th slimy creatures across borders the w when she traveled, much to th consternation of customs the o cials. In Eleven, there are not offi o but two stories in which men one a killed by snails: “The Snailare W Watcher” is suffocated by his r rapidly reproducing collection; a and “The Quest for Blank Claveringi” leads a professor of zzoology to a remote Pacific isle, w where he is brutally extinguished b by a pair of giant snails.

In his foreword to the book of sstories, novelist Graham Greene puts his finger on the eerie aftereffect of reading Highsmith, the uncanny reflection of interior life.

“Going out into the familiar street we pass with a shiver of apprehension the offices of American Express, the center, for so many of Miss Highsmith’s dubious men, of their rootless European experience, where letters are to be picked up (though the name on the envelope is probably false) and travelers’ cheques are to be cashed (with a forged signature).”

Correction: In last week’s review of San Francisco Ballet at Stern Grove, the choreographer of “Andante sostenuto” was misidentified as Enrique Martinez. In fact, it was J. Francisco Martinez. The B.A.R. regrets the error.▼

▼

Theatre>>

August 11-17, 2011 •

Tim Meadows (right), formerly of Saturday Night Live, performs with Joe Canale and Brad Morris as Uncle’s Brother, one of the groups taking to the stage in the San Francisco Improv Festival.

Free spirits

by Richard Dodds

T

he San Francisco Improv Festival doesn’t just want to get your butts into its seats. They want to take over your mind as well.

To kick off the eighth edition celebrating comedy without a net, you are instructed to be in Union Square at precisely 6:30 p.m. Aug. 16 – watches to be previously synchronized to the atomic clock on the website, where a download should be saved – when you will be instructed to insert headphones, turn on the mp3 device of your preference, and do what a nice man named Steve tells you to do. An observer might see 3,000 people wave in unison to Steve in the sky, drop to the ground for a 15-second power nap, engage in some square dancing, and fall into lockstep behind a non-participant who hopefully has a good sense of humor (or is at least on his meds).

SF Improv has invited Improv Everywhere, which has been producing such events since 2001 mostly in and around New York. Does anyone remember Grand Central Station Freeze, or better yet, No Pants Subway Ride? Detailed instructions for potential participants are available at bit.ly/ohFKGU. We have been led to believe this will be a pants-on project, should the thought of otherwise be a deterrent.

And then it’s on to the festival itself, opening officially on Aug. 18 at the Eureka Theatre, where most of the events will take place. Unless you are an improv aficionado, the names of the groups performing through Aug. 27 may not ring bells. But

maybe you can get a vibe or two from their names. For example, opening night will offer PianoFight, Crisis Hopkins, The Super Dupers, and the higher-profile BATS Improv.

In addition to dozens of improv groups going at it, some slots will take a more scholarly tone. An Aug. 20 event has improv veteran Del Close discussing the early years of the movement. Charna Halpern, co-founder of Chicago’s iO Theater and who has helped train Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Tim Meadows, will hold one of several workshops by various practitioners on Aug. 20. BTW: Former SNL-er Meadows will perform two shows with Uncle’s Brother on Aug. 27.

With so many activities, it’s probably best not to improvise your way through the festival. Everything you need to know can be found at www. sfimprovfestival.com.

More festival fever You don’t need your SF Fringe Festival maps and guides quite yet.

The run of 44 shows over 12 days doesn’t begin until Sept. 7. But to whet appetites, the Fringe Festival is offering excerpts from six of those shows on Aug. 20 at the Exit Theatre. Some good economic news: admission is free.

This sampler plate includes veteran comedian Kurt Bodden poking fun at motivational speakers in Steve Seabrook: Better Than You, Laura Austin Wilsey in Panic! playing an English teacher (and 12 other See page 20 >>

Shaun Landry

Kurt Bodden pokes fun at motivational speakers in Steve Seabrook: Better Than You, part of a free sample of SF Fringe Fest shows on Aug. 20.

BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

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20 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Theatre

August 11-17, 2011

▼

Intimacy issues

by Richard Dodds

I

f love wasn’t so damned resistant to following orders, about 99% of songs, poetry, plays, and movies would have to find new topics: serenades to kayaking, odes to geodes, dramatic interpretations of haggling for a better price, and more Lily Tomlin-John Travolta pairings.

But the mercurial meanderings of romance have provided the nuclear fuel of scribes long before the atom had a name, continues despite a contemporary world of topsy-turvy storybook dreams, and a future where the idea of love has to be reconstructed from the detritus of a collapsed civilization.

Two plays seen back-to-back in

small Union Square theaters offer very different voyages on the love boat. Peaches en Regalia reflects the familiar contemporary foibles over which many of us stumble to dramatists’ endless delight, while The Nature Line takes place in a postapocalyptic world where survival of the species has forbidden physical intimacy in favor of controlled reproduction. But, as suggested above, love breaks rules even when it doesn’t know that there are options to the rules.

Steve Lyons’ Peaches en Regalia, now at Stage Werx, is in the spirit of a summer-love comedy that has shifted away from recognized reality by a notch or two. Basically, it’s the snappy, slightly absurd story of two men and

William Boice

Nicole Hammersia and Sarah Moser play friends who find love in Peaches en Regalia at Stage Werx.

two women who, after a few missteps, couple up correctly in the first act, while a second act about one couple’s pregnancy goes off the comedic rails until happiness is again restored.

The play, directed by Sara Staley for Wily West Productions, is at its best in quirky little moments of revealing human behavior. Syd (Cooper Carlson) longs to be a dude with swag who can throw off a wink that is always properly perceived. When practicing his wink in the men’s room at a diner, the more winkskilled Norman (Philip Goleman) gets the wrong vibe, creating for Syd “a tectonic shift” in the relationship between these two men who have never met. Norman neither notices nor cares.

The diner is the domain of Peaches (Sarah Moser), who quit her job at Merrill Lynch to become a perky waitress whose signature dish is peaches en regalia, a grand name for a rather prosaic offering: peaches and cottage cheese. Her best friend is time-management expert Joanne (Nicole Hammersia), who plucks at her angora sweater whenever things go off schedule. But Peaches ends up with Syd, and Joanne with Norman, and all is well until the second act begins.

“We’re supposed to change the set for Act II,” Syd bellows to his unseen fellow actors, as Lyons breaks away at the fourth wall and gives Norman a chance to expand on the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

But the main issue is Syd’s buyer’s remorse about becoming a father. But other than an amusing accelerated time continuum, to which Syd hasn’t been invited, the second act doesn’t sustain the fragile pleasures of the first.

Nearby, at the Phoenix Theatre, J.C. Lee’s The Nature Line moves us

Clay Robeson

The caged sperm donors in the futuristic The Nature Line are given playtime between milkings.

ahead several centuries as humankind tries to regroup after an asteroid has wiped out most of the population and much of the social structure.

Produced by Sleepwalkers Theatre, this is the third installment in J.C. Lee’s trilogy The World and After that employs different characters and theatrical tones to glimpse the world at three points in the calamity.

In the barren new world, scavengers go looking for, not food, but words – scraps from pages of books that they try to assemble jigsaw-like into meaningful statements. For Aya (Charisse Loriaux), it is time to have eggs removed so they can be fertilized in a laboratory because the process of human delivery has been compromised by the ecological catastrophe. The laboratory is an anomaly amid the devastation.

“Aren’t you relieved that a corporate mode can survive the apocalypse?” asks a nurse in her well-starched uniform.

Aya is always told her test-tube babies are born dead, and her suspicions lead her to explore the

<<

Backstage From page 19

characters) who suffers panic attacks when she teaches Hamlet, Sara Lau playing both title characters in The Secret Adventures of Fat Woman and Remedial Girl as family secrets are spilled, and Joseph Atmore Is Dunninger, in which Atmore recreates a radio show starring one of the most famous mentalists of the 1940s.

The full schedule for the 20th anniversary edition of the SF Fringe Festival is now on line at www.sffringe.org.

One toke over the line As noted a few columns back, summer often brings unexpected and often eccentric stage offerings that slide into theaters that are on summer break. A perfect example is Toke, a labor-of-love play that Deedee Kirkwood has been cultivating for years. Self-produced in 2003 in Hollywood under the title Peace for Pot, Kirkwood’s comedy takes over the Ashby Stage in Berkeley on Aug.

facilities. She comes across a glass cage where studly young men are allowed to frolic until it’s time for them to don their milking machines with scraps of comic books used to facilitate masturbatory fantasies. Against all the rules, Aya connects emotionally and physically with one of the milkmen (a quietly sensual Joshua Schell), and they lead an escape from this homogenized prison.

Playwright J.C. Lee’s mind is a fertile place as his characters can come forth with intelligent humor, wisdom, wonderment, and mystery.

Director Mina Morita has directed the large cast that tells a sprawling tale with smoothness that pulls forth both the comedy and the angst of the situation, where love once again trumps all rules. The seed has again been planted.▼ Peaches en Regalia will run at Stage Werx through Aug. 27.

Tickets at www.wilywestproductions.com. The Nature Line will run the Phoenix Theatre through Aug. 27. Tickets at www. sleepwalkerstheatre.com.

18 while Shotgun Players presents Road to Hades in John Hinkel Park.

Toke centers on Weedee, whose role as the Auntie Mame of marijuana during the breezy 60s hits some rocky territory as the story continues to the present day, though the play is billed as “a madcap comedy.” There is the guilt over abandoning her first love after he returns from Vietnam a broken man, before confronting such issues as abortion, politics, sexual exploration, and domestic abuse. Weedee ends up in a German commune, an Afghan campground, and a dispirited marriage before finding peace and a strengthened commitment to cannabis.

Tenaya Hurst heads the fourmember cast under Patricia Miller’s direction. Kirkwood also includes the late marijuana advocate Jack Herer in the credits, describing him as her inspiration and muse. Toke will run through Sept. 11. Tickets at www. brownpapertickets.com. ▼ BARstage@comcast.net

▼

Film >>

August 11-17, 2011 •

BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Palisades Entertainment

Max Good follows buffer Jim Sharp, from Vigilante Vigilante.

Dispatches from the graffiti wars

by David Lamble

L

adies and gentlemen, welcome to the graffiti wars, which, according to sassy new Bay Area documentary Vigilante Vigilante, are already in progress. Filmmakers Max Good and Nathan Wollman started their project a few years back with a provocative new theory: that a new breed of citizen vigilante – perhaps the street art world’s version of a Tea Party activist – has taken upon themselves to supplement city graffiti abatement programs. These “buffers” (named after the common term for graffiti removal) resemble Wild West marshals of yore, modern Wyatt Earps who have their own ambiguous relationship to law and order.

Good and Wollman have zeroed in on buffers in Berkeley, LA, and New Orleans. Joe Connolly is a notorious figure among graffiti writers, an infamous buffer who has already starred in two previous graffiti films. A motormouth who clearly pines for a larger stage, Joe explains his enlistment in the graffiti wars shortly after the 1992 LA riot, when he attended a neighborhood improvement meeting.

“In 1993, people decided to take our neighborhood back. They had these lists, and one of them said graffiti. So at the meeting someone said, ‘You in the back, you’ve got graffiti.’ And I laughed, ‘This is going to be easy, because there’s no graffiti.’

Then I went out to the alley and the whole thing was covered, and I said, ‘Holy shit!’ I get up at three in the morning, paint [over] graffiti, change my clothes, and go off to work. Come back, barely say hello to my wife and kids, and go out until Midnight. A lot of things in my life were completely out of control, and now I completely control something. Man, it’s almost better than an orgasm.”

Ex-jazz DJ Steve Rotman has

staked his claim as an accomplished urban photographer and perceptive advocate for street art. Co-author of the photo book Bay Area Street Art, Rotman explains his enthusiasm for graffiti with examples from his book of a once-vital San Francisco waterfront park.

“If you have a wall that is allowed to run for many years, you wind up with an accumulation of greater and greater quality, as the good stuff lasts and the bad stuff gets run over.

When I was just getting interested in graffiti, I was blown away when I walked into this park, all this amazing art. And now it’s just a big green wall, completely ugly by comparison, doesn’t do anything to make me want to be in this park.”

Vigilante Vigilante’s edge comes from its filmmakers doubling as a Hardy Boys duo who spend many a sleepless night trying to spot and photograph notorious Berkeley buffer Jim Sharp. The film roams between dueling heads: Professor James Q. Wilson outlines his controversial “broken windows” theory that suppressing quality-oflife crimes like graffiti can put power back in the hands of “decent people.”

The intellectual star of the graffiti movement, LA-based Shepard Fairey, explains the notions that have made him a street-art celebrity with projects like the Obama “Hope” poster.

Max Good and Nathan Wollman popped by to explain the philosophy behind their visually arresting and spunky little doc, with its array of sexy-looking graffiti writers in matching ski masks and bandanas.

David Lamble: Are buffers the Wyatt Earps of the graffiti wars?

Nathan Wollman: We need to come back to square one, which is if you want to paint on someone’s property, you need permission. If you want to take the law into your

Palisades Entertainment

Buffer Joe Connolly, from Vigilante Vigilante.

own hands, that’s up to you, but you should be held to the same standards.

We looked into incorporating some of San Francisco’s Old West lore about the Gold Rush, where people had to protect their own claims because nobody else was there to do it. There’s something classically American about this. After all, vigilante means watcher.

Max Good: You look at our guy in Berkeley, Jim Sharp, he even looks like one of those old grizzled marshals.

He has a face like Clint Eastwood.

How did gay photographer Steve Rotman get involved?

Good: He e-mailed us, and proved an articulate advocate for street art.

Wollman: His book, The History of Bay Area Graffiti, features collections of hundreds of local graffiti artists, each one with a caption from the artist. It’s a beautiful book, some of the pictures are in our movie.

Viva Pedro The Castro Theatre’s not-to-bemissed Pedro Almodovar series begins Wed., Aug. 17, with his two queer-boy masterworks.

Bad Education Gael Garcia Bernal is brilliantly showcased in the masterwork of Almodovar’s cinema of men behaving badly, a triplebarreled homage to Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and himself. Inspired by a scene in Law of Desire where Carmen Maura’s Tina has an awkward reunion with a priest who had abused her as a child, Bad Education sizzles with an electric triple role turned in by Bernal, beautiful and deadly both as a Barbara Stanwyck-like femme fatale and a boyish enfant terrible young actor looking for a killer part. The film’s a tour de force on the subject of telling stories on film. Kicking off when Almodovar alter ego filmmaker Enrique (Fele Marinez) receives a mysterious visitor (Bernal) who claims to be his schoolboy friend and childhood lover Ignacio, Almodovar allows us to see Enrique’s film of Ignacio’s story about the abuse, then ups the ante when a sexual comingof-age tragedy shifts into a full film noir revenge tale.

Law of Desire One of the director’s most male-obsessed comedy/ melodramas starts with a startlingly frank scene of auto-eroticism, with diabolically comic overtones. It’s merely a prelude for a delicious exposé about a movie director who must battle for his own body and soul against two male lovers and his own brother who becomes his sister, the sex change prompted by a passionate liaison with their father.▼

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22 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Film

August 11-17, 2011

▼

Acid flashback

by David Lamble

O

ebar.com

scar-winning doc maker Alex Gibney has refined the art of making his audiences feel they have all-access backstage passes to the shenanigans of some of our fetid age’s most audacious scoundrels: the toxic corporate flim-flam depicted in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; the height of hubris in Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer; the scandal that should have been the unmaking of the Bush presidency, Casino Jack and The United States of Money; and behind the scenes on the Bush war on terror, Taxi to the Dark Side.

With Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place, Gibney and Alison Ellwood tackle what might be called the acid generation’s Rosetta Stone: 40 hours of previously unedited and virtually unseen home movies compiled by the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as he and his friends set out to visit the 1964 World’s Fair in NYC. Huddled aboard a 1939 International Harvester schoolbus with Neal Cassidy at the wheel, the Merry Pranksters set off on a wild LSD-fueled adventure that would find them driving the bus backwards through downtown Phoenix; freaking out novelist Larry McMurtry by prancing around naked in his staid Houston neighborhood; pissing off a beerbloated Jack Kerouac at a Manhattan party; and finally arriving uninvited to the Massachusetts home of acidtrip guru Timothy Leary.

Some critics have complained that the film’s a bore if you’re not on the same drugs as the cast, but I heartily disagree. This thoroughly engrossing time capsule lets us be stone-sober voyeurs through that dizzying moment after the assassination of JFK and before the outbreak of what

Ted Streshinsky, Corbis

Author Ken Kesey in Magic Trip: ‘Let me have the pine trees!’

we now call the culture wars. It’s like being asked to accompany Alice down the rabbit-hole to the mad tea party without having to nibble on those treats labeled “Eat me” or “Drink me.”

On June 22, 1987, I had the great pleasure of meeting Ken Kesey, in town to promote a public-TV doc on the bus, Further: Ken Kesey’s American Dreams. Kesey was a natural storyteller in a Grateful Dead tie-dyed T-shirt that he confessed made him look like he was just beamed down from psychedelic heaven.

David Lamble: Never have I smelled so much patchouli oil.

Ken Kesey: If you really want to know what brought the psychedelic revolution to its knees, it was patchouli oil. Finally that’s why I went back to Oregon. “I can’t stand it anymore, let me have the pine trees.”

Why did the Haight crash so quickly?

When people began to pile up around the Haight-Ashbury, you knew it couldn’t last. As [Jerry] Garcia says in the [KQED doc] videotape, “We had an ecological disaster on our hands!”

What kind of a bus driver was Neal Cassidy?

He had this trick: he would want a beer, he’d be dry, “Christ, is nobody going to get me that damn beer?”

He’d be driving, and finally he’d get a nice stretch of road and he’d turn loose the wheel, run back to the refrigerator, open the door, grab a beer, and make it back to the wheel of the bus, the bus just tooling along without a driver. The first time I saw it, I thought I’d gone crazy: I looked up and there’s the bus whipping down the road, and there’s nobody

behind the wheel. “Sorry, Chief, I had to get my beer.”

Your meeting with Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary was a fiasco.

Why didn’t that chemistry work?

They had just come down off a three-day [trip]. They would go on these psychedelic tours inside their minds. They were ready to go to bed, and we were ready to go to party. We pulled in there, we had two smoke grenades that Babs had from El Toro Marine Base, and set off the green one under the turret of the bus in the back, and the orange one under the hood. It must have looked like hell itself on wheels when these guys saw us coming up.

Do you think you still have a big novel in you?

I met Mohammed Ali a few years ago and had supper with him. I was really impressed: this is a big, fierce-looking guy. Even out of shape, he could tear your head off with one blow. I asked him about comebacks, and he said, “It’s not that you don’t have it physically, your concentration begins to lag.”

In Sometimes a Great Notion, I had so many balls in the air that when I read the book I’m amazed: chainsaws, the past and the present were moving around there, rivers, symbolism, it was all in the air, I had it all within the grip of my consciousness. I don’t know that I’ve actually burned out those cells with dope, or whether I’ve just worn them out with living, but I don’t feel I’ve got the capacity to run a mile under four minutes anymore. It’s a young man’s racket.

(Kesey died on November 10, 2001. His last major writing was a Rolling Stone essay on looking for peace in a post-9/11 world.)▼

Allen Ginsberg, Corbis

Timothy Leary and Neal Cassady in Magic Trip.

▼

Fine Arts >>

August 11-17, 2011 •

Janet Woodard, Houston

Kurt Schwitters: “Mz 11 Starkbild. (Mz 11 Strong Picture.),” 1919; collage of cut and torn printed, metallic and tissue papers on paperboard; the Menil Collection, Houston.

<<

Schwitters @ BAM From page 17

pieces created in 1918, “Zeichnung, A3” and “Zeichnung A6.”

An original thinker with a provocative spirit, Schwitters explored and dabbled in many artistic and intellectual movements, including Russian Constructivism, Dadaism and Expressionism, but, like Picasso, another notorious iconoclast, he neither wholly subscribed to nor obeyed the rules of any of them. It was said he comported himself like a member of the petite-bourgeoisie, but when he opened his mouth, he was “totally Dada.”

For his abstract compositions with paper, Schwitters borrowed, interpreted and exercised his stated aim “to erase the boundaries between the arts,” by incorporating

aesthetic, can be like a Rorschach test for viewers, who will be compelled to identify images from the slivers Schwitters supplies, and speculate about their origins.

By the early 1930s, Schwitters gained recognition among collectors and museum curators in both Europe and the U.S., but that exposure, while gratifying, had the unfortunate effect of bringing him to the attention of the Gestapo. He was paid the backhanded compliment of inclusion in the Nazis’ notorious hall of shame, the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition, and fled Germany the same year for the relative safety of Norway. After the Nazis invaded that country, he departed for the Lake District outside London, where his studio was bombed. One step ahead of disaster, war seemed to follow him.

Don’t leave the exhibition without

“The appeal of Schwitters’ work is primarily cerebral. One senses control rather than contained emotion at play.” painting, typography, poetry, phrases, architecture, and words lifted from unfinished sentences. He collected found materials like train tickets, scraps of paper, advertisements, posters, wire mesh and other discarded objects, and applied a loose, fluid paste, then arranged them and let them set. Sometimes he drew or painted on his works like one inscribed and dedicated to Henry Cowell, an avant-garde Berkeley musician and student of John Cage, who toured Europe. That collage, which has an intricate structure worthy of a musical score, is owned

by Jasper Johns.

Though works such as “Pink Collage” (1940), a combination of geometric shapes, jagged edges, tissue papers, and muted, washedout colors, achieve a near-perfect harmony, the appeal of Schwitters’ work is primarily cerebral. One senses control rather than contained emotion at play. Beauty is not necessarily the point – evoking associations and making connections is the goal. The collages and even the sleek contours of the pale beech wood sculptures he made in Norway, which reflect a filtered Scandinavian

going downstairs and visiting a fullsized replica of the artist’s lifetime obsession, “Merzbau,” a “living” sculptural/architectural installation.

The original, which was in Hanover and occupied six rooms of his parents’ spacious residence, was destroyed in 1943. Schwitters created four “Merzbau” installations, one in each of the countries he lived; they either didn’t survive or were never finished.

Once inside the reconstruction by Swiss stage designer Peter Bissegger, you’ve entered a cross between a white-on-white, Euro-modern studio apartment with color block accents, and a garret with high ceilings that Schwitters dubbed the “Cathedral of Erotic Misery,” which contains hidden alcoves called the “Murderers’ Cave” or “Goethe Grotto.” Portraits, busts and illustrations pop up in surprising places, and there’s even a spiral staircase to the “Nest.”

Schwitters envisioned “Merzbau” as a mutating, evolving space where memories and events could be assembled and transformed into abstract art – a walk-in collage.▼ Through Nov. 27 at Berkeley Art Museum. bampfa.berkeley.edu

BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Out&About

August 11-17, 2011

Fri 12 >> The Age of Reason @ The Garage Robillard Theatreworks’ production of a dance-theater adaptation of Jean Paul Sartre’s book about bohemian underlords and frustrated students. $15. Also Aug 18, 19.

8pm. 975 Howard St. www.brownpapertickets.com www.975howard.com

American Buffalo @ Actors Theatre of SF Adam Tendler

Aural fixation

by Jim Provenzano

I

f it’s wrong to prefer listening to music performed and composed by gay artists, and those who proudly support us, then sue me.

Adam Tendler, who recently completed a 50-state tour of recitals, performs at Old First Church. “Night Thoughts” includes works by Charles Ives, David Lang, Samuel Barber, John Adams, Aaron Copland, and a premiere suite of the complete published piano pieces Ned Rorem composed for his late partner, James Holmes, during their 32year relationship. Proceeds benefit the AIDS Emergency Fund. $14-$17. Friday, August Four 12. 8pm. 1751 Sacramento St. 474-1608.

Saints www.oldfirstconcerts.org in Three The flickering vintage films of origiActs nal productions of Four Saints in Three Acts shown at the dual Gertrude Stein-themed exhibits (see Sunday) were inspiring. Now you can see a rare restaging of the 1934 opera at the Novellus Theater. YBCA and SF MOMA present a new production of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson’s work. $10-$85. Preview August 18 at Steve DiBartolomeo 7:30pm. Aug. 19 & 20, 8pm. Aug 21 2pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Howard St. at 3rd. 978-2787. www.ybca.org If this is all a bit to ‘high art’ for you, then see pop star Katy Perry at HP Pavilion, San Jose. $35-$45.

August 12. 7:30pm. 525 West Santa Clara Ave. (408) 287-9200. www.hppsj.com How about The Gogos at The Fillmore, Tuesday, August 16? They’ve still got the beat! $39.50. 8pm. 1805 Geary Blvd.

346-6000. www.thefillmore.com While the music duo The Katy Perry Secret Sisters aren’t as wellknown as Katy or The Gogos, they’re currently on tour opening for k.d. lang, and stop Café Du Nord for a show. Oh, their music is also really good. $17. Sunday, August 14. 8pm. 21+. 2170 Market St. www.secretsistersband.com www.cafedunord.com For an even more intimate show, Smack Dab at Magnet, Kirk Read and Larry-bob Roberts’ monthly eclectic and often queer reading and performances series, this month features Fleigh. Veterans musical theatre and band performers Flynn DeMarco and The Secret Sisters Leigh Crowe share ukulele-accompanied tunes. Free. 7:30pm sign-up. 8pm show. 4122 18th St. at Collingwood. www.magnetsf.org Bijou at Martuni’s regularly presents LGBT and extra-friendly musicians, plus cocktails!

The August 14 edition is themed ‘Music of the South’ (Johnny Mercer, Thelonious Monk, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, the Indigo Girls, REM, John Fogerty and Mary Chapin Carpenter) with Carly Ozard, Dennis Sanchez, Donald Arquilla, accompanist-singers Tom Shaw and Trauma Flintstone. $5. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. www.dragatmartunis.com Fleigh Here’s a combination recommendation and warning. This weekend, Outside Lands invades Golden Gate Park. Join 12,000 of your best friends at the annual massive three-day music festival.

Oh, yes, there’s art and food and wine and eco-friendly stuff, but mostly it’s about the bands, like Phish, Muse, The Black Keys, The Shins, Deadmaus, Arctic Monkeys, MGMT, plus DJ stages, too. $85-$450. Speedway Meadow. www.sfoutsidelands.com

<<Carly Ozard

David Mamet’s intense drama about three petty crooks. $26-$38. Wed-Sat 8pm. Thru Sept. 3. 855 Bush St. at Taylor. 345-1287. www.ActorsTheatreSF.org

American Craft Council Show @ Fort Mason Center See and shop for works by more than 200 new and established artists and craftspeoples’ handcrafted jewelry, clothing, furniture, home décor and more, including gay ceramic artist James Aarons. $12-$18.

Friday evening admission only $5 (10am8pm). Sat 10am-6pm. Sun 10am-5pm. Thru Aug. 14. Festival Pavilion, Buchanan at Bat sts. www.public.craftcouncil.org/sf sf

Billy Elliot @ Orpheum Theatre Elton John and Lee Hall’s hit Broadway way musical adaptation of the wonderful ul film about a boy who takes up dance lessons; ssons; starring Tony Award winner Faith Prince. $35- Tue-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. also Sun 7:30pm. Thru Aug. 21. 1192 Markett St. at 8th. (888) SHN 1799. www.shnsf.com com

Bearracuda @ Club 8 Celebrate the beartastic club night’s fiveyear anniversary, with DJs Paul Goodyear, Boyshapedbox, Medic and 50 Pound Note. $6-$10. 10pm-3am. 1151 Folsom St. www.Bearracuda.com www.eightsf.com

Bowie Ball II @ Café Du Nord Swing Goth presents Scission and The Tiger Club playing electro dance goth and Bowie classics. $15-$20. 9:30pm. 2174 Market St. 861-5016. www.cafedunord.com

Country & Western Dance @ Humanist Hall, Oakland Queer women and their trans friends enjoy a social night of dancing. $5-10. 6:30 classes with Sundance Saloon’s Ingu Yun, 8pm-11pm open dancing with a buffet. 390 27th St. at Broadway. www.humanisthall.net

Dutch and Flemish Masterworks @ Legion of Honor Famous artists such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Hendrick Avercamp are featured in this exhibit of works from the collection of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, Also, Picasso’s Ceramics (thru Oct. 9) and a fascinating permanent collection. $7-$11.

Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Thru Oct. 2. 100 34th Ave. at Clement, Lincoln Park. 750-3600. www.famsf.org

Rise of the Teenager @ Oddball Film Dating, surfing, Beatles and other short subjects about teenagers. $10. 8:30pm.

Also, Strange Sinema odd shorts Aug 13, 8pm. Also $10. 275 Capp St. www.oddballfilm.com

Sing-Along Grease @ Castro Theatre Summer lovin’, have ye a blast at the subcaptioned sing-along screenings of the hit musical film based on the popular musical; Laurie Bushman and David Hawkins cohost. $10-$15. 7pm tonight, and 2:30 & 7pm Aug 13 & 14. $10. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Sat 13 >>

Wed W d 17

T Tigers Be Still @ SF Playhouse Q Quirky endearing comedy about an art ttherapist whose family and work life is co complicated; oh, and a tiger’s escaped from a local zoo. $40-$50. 8pm. Tue & Wed 7pm 7pm. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm. Thru Sept. 10.

533 Sutter St. near Powell. 677-9596. www www.sfplayhouse.org

Vinta stuff by the truckload is up for sale Vintage and perusal p from hundreds of exhibitors. $5-$10. 6am-3pm. (650) 242-1294. $5-$ www.candlestickantiques.com

Bring your Pug dog for a buffet dinner benefit (sliders, vegetarian pizza, ravioli and more) for the dog rescue organization. $25-$30.

6:30pm. 1201 8th St. at Wisconsin. www.pugpros.org

Natasha Muse and sidekick Ryan Cronin welcome stand-up comics in a parodytalkshow format. Hilarity ensues. $10. 7pm. (2nd Sundays). 855 Bush St. 34501287. www.NatashaMuse.com

Gear Kink Portraits @ Mark I. Chester Studio

Interview show with gay writer Adam Sandel as host. 8pm. www.EnergyTalkRadio.com

Special showing of the leather-kink photographer’s imagery, with free digital portrait.

8pm-10pm. 1229 Folsom St. 621-6294. www.markichester.com

Gilligan’s Island @ The Garage Moore Theatre and Safehouse’s campy stage parody of the classic TV show. $10$20. Sat & Sun at 8pm. Thru Aug. 28. 975 Howard St. www.MooreTheatreSF.com www.975howard.com

H.M.S. Pinafore @ Mountain View Center for the Arts Lamplighters’ production of the classic witty Gilbert & Sullivan nautical operetta. $14$50. 8pm. Also Aug. 14, and Aug 20 & 21 in Livermore. www.lamplighters.org

Woodminster Summer Musical’s production of the classic Lerner & Lowe musical based on G.B. Shaw’s Pygmalion, about a British flower girl who is transformed into a society lady by an elocution professor. $10-$42.

8pm. Thu-Sun thru Aug. 14. Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Road. (510) 5319597. www.woodminster.com

Musical comedy revue, now in its 35th year, with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$130. Wed, Thu, Fri at 8pm.

Sat 6:30, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 5pm. (Beer/ wine served; cash only). 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Joan Baez returns to Teatro in Maestro’s Enchantment, the new show at the theatretent-dinner extravaganza, with Ukranian illusionist Yevgeniy Voronin, a five-course dinner, and a lot of fun. $117-$145. Saturday 11:30am “Breve” show $63-$78.

Wed-Sat 6pm (Sun 5pm). Thru Oct. 9.

Pier 29 at Embarcadero Ave. 438-2668. www.teatrozinzanni.com www

A Funny Night for Comedy @ Actors Theatre

Rick Compton and Betsy Bennett’s witty musical about senior lives and the joys and woes of aging; Dim Sum banquet with each show. $79.59-$99.50. Sat 12pm. Sun 12 & 5pm. Thru Aug 14. 818 Washington St. (888) 885-2844. www.assistedlivingthemusical.com

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi

Teatro Zinzanni @ Pier 29

Pug Pros @ Axis Café

My Fair Lady @ Woodminster Ampitheater, Oakland

Group exhibit of local visual artists in varied media. Exhibit thru Sept. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 978-2700. www.ybca.org

Dan Ross presents 30 large-format color views shot in contrast to the 1910 black and white enlarged originals of the famous Sutro Baths. Also, Fraction Magazine’s group exhibit of prints by a variety of photographers.

Reception 6pm-8pm. Thru Sept 15/18.

Tue-Thu 10am-8pm; Fri-Sun 10am-8pm. 428 Third St. 496-3773. www.raykophoto.com

Ant Antiques & Collectibles Faire @ Candlestick Park Fair

Assisted Living, the Musical @ Imperial Palace

Bay Area Now 6 @ YBCA

Sutro San Francisco @ Rayko Photo

Sun 14 >>

The Kinsey Sicks @ The Rrazz Room

Marin Shakespeare Company performs the creepy and tragic “Scottish play” in repertory with the comic three-man romp about US history. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 4pm.

Thru Aug 14/Sept 25. $20-$75 (season tix).

1475 Acacia Ave., Dominican Universaty, San Rafael. www.marinshakespeare.org

Meet yuour ‘power animal’ at an LGBTinclusive class on alternative spirituality with Liz Dale. $25. 10am-12pm. Monthly, 2nd Saturdays. Register: Lizsanpablo@aol.com Room 308, 1800 Market St. www.sfcenter.org

Shak Shakespeare’s bittersweet comedy about cross-dressing loves, heartache and cross romance, is re-set in colonial New England at roma the bbeautiful outdoor ampitheatre. $15-$25.

Sat & Sun 1pm thru Sept. 4. 2170 Bear Gulch Road (West), Woodside. www.theatreinthewoods.com www

Charlie Ballard welcomes Fara Haidari, Jackie Keliiaa, Isaac Sherbin, Robbie Goodwin, Anthonyy Medina, Justin Lucas, Sal Lopizzo, Victor Torres in a night of multi-culti ti multiple laughs. $10. 21+. 9pm. Fullll bar and dining available. 446 East 12th St. www.charlieballard.com

Macbeth, The Complete History of America @ Forest Meadows Ampitheatre

Shamanism Class @ LGBT Center

Twelfth Night @ Theatre Twe in tthe Woods, Woodside

Hella Gay Comedy Show @ La Estrellita Café, Oakland

Hilarious dragapella troupe returnss to perform their ‘GreatesTits’! $35-$40.

40.

2-drink min. 8pm. Also Aug 13, 8pm m & Aug 14 at 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Masonn St. 394-1189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

▼

The Road to Hades @ John Hinkel Park, Berkeley Shotgun Players presents Jeff Raz’s circus stunt-filled pratfall parody of war between the ancient gods. $10. Sat & Sun 3pm.

Thru Sept. 11. Southhampton Ave. at The Arlington. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

SF Hiking Club @ Mount Tamalpais Enjoy a strenuous 12-mile hike up the Marin peak, with streams, wild orchids and a fantastic view. Carpools meet 9am at the Safeway sign, Market St. at Dolores.

279-5570. www.sfhiking.com

Happy Hour @ Energy Talk Radio

Nude Aid, Naked Girls Reading @ Center for Sex & Culture Annual benefit where you watch artists make art with nude models. Some of the artists will be naked, too, or in kinkwear. Then, Carol Queen, Lady Monster, Ophelia Coeur de Noir, Madison Young and Tessa Wills perform, read and share sexy art and literature. $15-$35 (cash only). 18+. 8pm-10pm. 1349 Mission St. at 9th. www.sexandculture.org

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Exhibit of personal artwork, collected work and archival materials showing how the lesbian poet’s life, mostly in Paris, changed over the decades before and after WWII. Free-$10. Thru Sept. 6. 11am-5pm daily (closed Wed), Thu 1pm-8pm. 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

The Steins Collect @ SF MOMA Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian AvanteGarde, a fascinating exhibit of pivotal artworks originally collected by lesbian poet Gertrude Stein and her family. 4th floor galleries. Free (members)-$25. Thru Sept. 6. 11am-5:45pm daily; extended Sat hours 10am-8:45pm. Closed Wed.; open til 8:45pm Thu. 151 Third St. 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet and Harry Denton host the fabulous weekly brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square.

395-8595. www.harrydenton.com

Various Exhibits @ Oakland Museum of California A Walk in the Wild, Continuing John Muir’s Journey, Bay Area figurative art, Dorothea Lange archive, Early landscape paintings,

▼

Out&About >>

August 11-17, 2011 •

Wed 17 >>

Gold Rush Era works, California ceramics. $6-$12. 1000 Oak St. Oakland. (510) 2382200. www.museumca.org

Lesbian Power @ Bucci’s, Emeryville

Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance @ Asian Art Museum

Mon 15 >>

Expansive exhibit of more than 100 historic art works in exhibits that showcase the practicality of the performing and visual arts in this beautiful culture. Special event: Balinese shadow puppet master I Wayan Wija shows the skill, history and meaning of the historic art form. Wed-Sun Aug 17-28, 12pm-4pm.

Reg. admission: $7-$17. Reg. hours Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. Thu til 9pm. Thru Sept. 11. 200 Larkin St. www.asianart.org

Cityscapes @ John Pence Gallery Group exhibit of paintings of urban San Francisco. 6pm-8pm. Thru Sept 2. Mon-Fri 10am-6pm Sat til 5pm. 750 Post St. 4411138. www.johnpence.com

Marga’s Funny Mondays @ The Marsh, Berkeley Marga Gomez brings her comic talents and special guests to a weekly cabaret show. $10. 8pm. 2120 Allston Way. (800) 838-3006. www.margagomez.com www.themarsh.org

Meet and greet with Ruth Atkin, Emeryville Councilmember; Andrea Shorter, Equality California; Peggy Moore, Obama for America. Hosted by East Bay Stonewall Democrats.

7pm. 6121 Hollis St. (510)548-8796.

Our Vast Queer Past @ GLBT History Museum See the new mini-exhibit about the Alice B. Toklas San Francisco LGBT Democratic political organization as it celebrates its 40th anniversary; part of Our Vast Queer Past, the popular exhibit from the GLBT Historical Society, with a wide array of rare historic items on display. Free for members-$5. Wed-Sat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Pedro Almodovar Films @ Castro Theatre

Mark Kleim Photos @ The Cove

Enjoy classic, campy, melodramatic and utterly unforgettable films by the Spanish director-writer. Bad Education (2:50, 7pm) & Law of Desire (4:55, 9pm). Aug 18, Talk to Her (2:45, 7pm) and All About My Mother (4:55, 9:10). Aug. 19, The Flower of my Secret (3pm, 7pm) and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (5pm, 8:55). $10. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Lavender Lounge host’s video slideshow of sexy amusing candids from Up Your Alley street fairs 2003-2009. Daily 434 Castro st. www.LavenderLounge.com

Nanette Harris @ SF Public Library Blue People by a Green Painter, an exhibit of works by by the artist who paints people of color in different tones, and uses recycled paint. Part of the Afro Solo Arts Fest. Thru Oct. 20. 100 Larkin St. www.afrosolo.org www.sfpl.org

Same-Sex Dancing @ Queer Ballroom

Ten Percent @ Comcast 104

Man Dance

David Perry’s talk show about LGBT local issues. Mon-Fri 11:30am & 10:30pm, Sat & Sun 10:30pm. www.davidperry.com

West Wave Dance @ ODC Theater Solos by Erin Derstine, Jazon Escultura, Maria Basile, Stacey Printz, Maurya Kerr/tinypistol, Angela Mazziotta, Sue Li-Jue/Facing East Dance & Music, and Suzanne Beahrs. $18-$22. 8pm. 3153 17th St. (866) 55-TICKETS. www.westwavedancefestival.org

Yvonne Sturton @ The Rrazz Room Jazz vocalist performs jazz standards. $20. 8pm. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. 394-1189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Tue 16 >> Feast of Words @ SOMArts Cultural Center Monthly potluck, celebrity chef and literary event with cohosts Lex Leifheit and Irina Zadov features poet-musician Kevin Simmonds and chef Peter Jackson. $5 (with potluck dish)-$12. 7pm-9pm. cash bar. 934 Brannan St. www.feastofwords.eventbrite.com www.somarts.org

Moving gays

E

ven more than dance concerts, those that explore gay themes deserve special mention this week. Man Dance premieres two new works at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, including Beyond Brokeback (music by Shawn Kirchner and Ryan Harrison) and Hollywood Knights (music of Rachmaninoff), a movie dance tribute with special guest Connie Champagne. $25-$45. Aug 13 at 8pm.

Aug 14 at 2pm. 50 Oak St. at Van Ness Ave. 3683632. www.mandance.org In Permutae and Reception at CounterPulse, Finley Coyl and Mary Franck’s dance explores desire and queer bodies. Tessa Wills’ Reception is described as a glistening erotic Baroque dance experiment; part of the rather gay Summer Specials series. $10-$20. 8pm. Aug. 12 & 13. 1310 Mission St. at 9th. 626-2060. www.counterpulse.org Inspired to move your self? Join the Big Gay 10K at the Upper Great Meadow, a festive fundraising run and walk event; costumes encouraged.

Proceeds benefit the SF AIDS Foundation’s HIV/ AIDS prevention programs. $35. Saturday, August 13. 9am. Near Fort Mason. Advance registration: www.thebiggay10k.com

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s

Ongoing partner dance lessons and open dancing in a variety of styles; different each night. $5-$25 open dancing to $55 for private lessons.

151 Potrero Ave. at 15th. www.QueerBallroom.com

Thu 18 >> Abigail the Rock Opera @ Light Rail Studios The Salem witch trial rock opera, workshopped last year, returns. $15-$20. Doors 8pm/show 9pm.

Thu-Sat thru Aug. 27. 672 Toland Place. At Kirkwood. 285-0259. www.abigailtherockopera.com www.lightrailstudios.com

Aimee Mann, Liz Phair @ The Mountain Winery, Saratoga Composer-singer (Til Tuesday, the award-winning Magnolia soundtrack) performs live at the scenic outdoor venue, with Phair opening. Dinner packages available. $35-$55 (parking $15-$20).

7:30pm. 14831 Pierce Road. (408) 741-0291. www.aimeemann.com www.mountainwinery.com

Bobby Caldwell @ The Rrazz Room Entertaining R&B singer performs live. $45-$47.50. 8pm. Also Aug 19, 7pm & 9:30pm, Aug 20 & 21 at 7pm. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. 394-1189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Dennis Lehane @ Herbst Theatre

Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night; featured guest Becky Donohue. One drink or menu item minimum. 9pm.

500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

Litquake presents the author of Mystic River, Shutter Island and Gone Baby Gone, who discusses his work and film adaptations with Noir City founder Eddie Muller.

Book signing and sales afterward. $12-$15. 7pm. 401 Van Ness ave. www.CityBoxOffice.com

Leon Mostovoy @ LGBT Center Death of my Daughter, a diptych photo series of female-to-male transgendered people with symbolic poses and imagery. Opening reception 6pm-9pm.

Thru Sept 29.1800 Market St. www.leonmostovoy.wordpress.com www.sfcenter.org

BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Permutae

Love and Anarchy @ Ictus Gallery Group exhibit of works by Cece Carpio, Kira Curtis, Fernando Marti, and Jermaine Rogers. Tue-Sat 12pm-5pm hru Sept. 1. 1769 15th St. at Albion. www.ictusgallery.com

A Thin Line @ Visual Aid Works by Daniel Goldstein, David King, David Wojnarowicz and Philip Zimmerman.

Thru Aug 31. 57 Post St. 777-8242. www.visualaid.org

Soulful Stitching @ MOAD Patchwork Quilts by African (Siddis) in India, a new exhibit of 32 colorful hand-crafted works. Thru Sept. 18. Wed-Sat 11am-6pm.

Sun 12pm-5pm. Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St. at 3rd. 358-7200. www.moadsf.org

Crystal Jackson @ The Rrazz Room Powerhouse vocalist performs jazz, R&B and soul classics. $20. 7pm. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. 394-1189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Growing Up Queer in India @ Commonwealth Club Activists Devesh Khatu, Minal Hajratwala, Rakesh Modi, Dipti Ghosh and moderator Julian Chang discuss the evolving world of tradition and tolerance. Part of the ‘India Now’ series of lectures. $7-$20. 5:15 reception, 6pm program. 595 Market St. 2nd fl. www.commonwealthclub.org

Home Before Dark @ Galeria de la Raza Recent Works by Emerging Latino Artists, a multimedia group exhibit. Tue 1pm-7pm, Wed-Sat 12pm-6pm. Exhibit thru Sept 17. 2857 24th St. 826-8009. www.galeriadelaraza.org

Henson Alternative @ Curran Theatre Stuffed and Unstrung, Brian Henson’s funny irreverent show with 80 puppets, 6 comedians and a lot of naughty words. $30-$65. Thu 8pm. Fri & Sat 7pm & 10:30pm. Thru Aug. 27. 445 Geary St. (888) SHN-1799. www.stuffedandunstrung.com www.shnsf.com

Picasso @ de Young Museum Masterpieces from the Museé National Picasso, Paris, a new exhibit of classic early modern works by the Spanish master painter. Free (members)-$25. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Wed 9:30am-8:45pm (the Aug). Thru Oct. 9. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.famsf.org

To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com.

Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

For bar and nightlife events, go to www.bartabsf.com

www.ebar.com

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Leather

August 11-17, 2011

▼

Luna wins Int’l Bootblack

by Scott Brogan

C

ongratulations to San Francisco’s very own Luna for winning the title of 2011 International Bootblack on Saturday, July 30, at the International Leather Sir/boy/ Bootblack competition. Luna was one of seven contestants in the Bootblack category. Southeast Leather Sir Alan Penrod and Southeast Leather boy pup nitro took home the Sir and boy titles respectively, competing against a staggering 21 other contestants.

Penrod is also second runner-up to IML 2009 Jeffrey Payne.

The weekend’s events were here in SF at the Holiday Inn on Van Ness.

Producer Mark Frazier and his crew once again came through with an amazingly successful weekend. No small task, considering they had to compete with the concurrent Up Your Alley Street Fair’s weekend events. A huge “thank you” to them and to all of the contestants and judges for making the event as vibrant and fun as always. And a huge “thank you” to the outgoing Leather Sir/boy and Bootblack, Sir Hugh, boy Ian and Red Warrior, for exemplifying what a titleholder should be and for representing out community so well.

It’s probably due to them that there were so many great contestants in each category.

Gear Up Weekend a huge success: If you wondered where all men were the weekend before Up Your Alley, they were probably at the first annual Gear Up Weekend in Sarasota Springs, CA. The buzz after the weekend’s events was 100% positive.

It’s the first new maleonly event to come along in a long, long time. Judging from its success and the response, it was sorely needed.

Men of all ages, shapes, sizes, and “levels of experience” freely reveled in the many activities, scheduled and unscheduled. Those woods are

Rich Stadtmiller

Int’l Leather Bootblack/Sir/boy 2011: Luna, Alan Penrod, and pup nitro just after their wins on July 30.

all the better for it, too!

If anyone is lamenting the lack of interest from the “younger set,” they need only to look at the folks involved in this great new annual event, the committee of which is comprised of the entire spectrum of our community. All thanks and accolades should go to Stephen Charles, Mario Torrigino, Dirk Burns, Eric D., Knottybrent, Jay

Larson, Ed Mathews, Tim N., Chris R., Jim Remer, Mick Sheppard and Justin W. (and anyone else I missed) for beating the odds and creating a brand new, exciting, and piggy event! Thanks also to everyone who went. It’s not a good time unless everyone shows up. Word on the street (where I do my best work) is that an additional event may happen this fall. Stay tuned, and go to: www.

GearUpWeekend.com.

“Is Leather dead? Does it need See page 27 >>

Coming up in leather and kink Thu., Aug. 11-Sun., Aug. 14: Leather Levi Weekend - Twisted Summer Camp at the Sarasota Springs Resort in Upper Lake, CA. Go to: www.leatherlevi.org.

Thu., Aug. 11: Locker Room Thursdays at Kok Bar SF (1225 Folsom). 9 p.m.-close. Free clothes check. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Thu., Aug. 11: Underwear Night at The Powerhouse (1347 Folsom). 10 p.m. Wet undie contest and drink specials. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Thu., Aug. 11: Girl on Girl: A Sex Primer for Queer Women presented by Chloe Camilla at the SF Citadel (1277 Mission). Open to all genders. 8-10 p.m. $20. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

8 p.m.-1 a.m. $25 plus Citadel membership. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Sat., Aug. 13: SF Men’s Spanking Party at The Power Exchange (220 Jones St). This is a male-only event. You must be 18+ with valid ID. 1-6 p.m. Go to: www.voy.com/201188/.

Sun., Aug. 14: Night Cruise Sundays at Kok Bar SF. 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sun., Aug. 14: Castrobear presents Sunday Furry Sunday at 440 Castro. 4-10 p.m. Go to: www.castrobear.com.

Sun., Aug. 14: PoHo Sundays at The Powerhouse.

DJ Keith, Dollar Drafts all day. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Fri., Aug. 12: Truck Wash at Truck (1900 Folsom).

10 p.m.-close. Live shower boys and drink specials.

Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Mon., Aug. 15: SF Dominant/subs Discussion Group at the SF Citadel. 7:30 p.m. $5-$15. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Fri., Aug. 12: Transmission at the SF Citadel.

8 p.m.-1 a.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Mon., Aug. 15: Happy Hour After Gym at Kok Bar SF. All-day happy hour Mon.; Tue.-Thurs. 6-9 p.m.; Fri. & Sat. 4-9 p.m. $2.75 all beer & well drinks.

Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Fri., Aug. 12: Lick It’s Two-Year Anniversary at The Powerhouse. 10 p.m.-1 a.m. $5. Go to: www.powershouse-sf.com.

Fri., Aug. 12: Cockstar hosted by DJ Gehno Sanchez at Kok Bar SF. 10 p.m.-close. Featuring “Pin the Cock on the Star” contest at Midnight! Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sat., Aug. 13: Lady Thorn’s Community Exchange (S&M Flea Market) at the SF Citadel. 1-5 p.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Sat., Aug. 13: The Left Behind Gear Up/LDG party at Kok Bar SF. 8-10 p.m. Go to: www.facebook. com/event.php?eid=247534668601335.

Sat., Aug. 13: All Beef Saturday Nights at The Lone Star (1354 Harrison). 100% SoMa Beef & Co. 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Go to: www.facebook.com/lonestarsf.

Sat., Aug. 13: Special showing of Mark I Chester’s Radical Sex at his studio (1229 Folsom). 8-10 p.m.

Free. Go to: www.markichester.com.

Sat., Aug. 13: Open Play Party at the SF Citadel.

Mon., Aug. 15: Dirty Dicks at The Powerhouse.

Starts at 4 p.m. $3 well drinks. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Tue., Aug. 16: 12-Step Kink Recovery Group at the SF Citadel. 6:30-8 p.m. Open to all people in recovery wanting a safe space, kink-identified. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Tue., Aug. 16: Predicament Bondage presented

by Midori at the SF Citadel. 8-10 p.m. $20. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Tue., Aug. 16: Busted at Truck. 9 p.m.-close. $5 beer bust, 9-11 p.m. Great music, notorious Truck boys. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Wed., Aug 17: Bare Bear, night at the baths at The Water Garden (1010 Alameda, San Jose). 6-10 p.m.

Go to: www.thewatergarden.com.

Wed., Aug. 17: Naughty Knitters at the SF Citadel.

7-9 p.m. $5. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

▼

Karrnal >>

August 11-17, 2011 •

Purple haze

by John F. Karr

L

et’s take a look at Chi Chi LaRue’s Frat Boy Fuck Down. After all, it is Catalina film’s first release in over a decade, the company where Ms. LaRue began her career. Up until now she’s been content with re-issuing the company’s backlog of titles, so why this new movie is a Catalina issue as opposed to Rascal or C1R is unknown.

The movie also marks the cumback of star Ryan Razz. If you remember, he retired in April 2010.

Stars come and go all the time, but Razz’ turnaround was pretty quick.

“I’m not retired,” he told porn reporter Jason Sechrest. “I’m not actively seeking work. What I am is indifferent.”

Indifferent. That’s my reaction to the movie. Razz was more enthusiastic about LaRue’s efforts.

He claimed, “I did things I’ve never done on camera.” Yeah, like squalling in discomfort, gagging to the point of dry retching, and generally not having a very good time.

There are 13 guys in Frat Boy Fuck Down, and most are well-known.

There’s Matthew Rush and Mario Costa, who is so slender his 10” dick looks even longer. Johnny Hazzard, mostly looking like he’d like to take a nap. Adam Rogue, a 6’2”, 250 lb., grizzled daddy, with an abundantly fat cock and ponderous breasts, which are amazingly neither touched nor mouthed at any time during the movie. There’s smooth-bodied, uncut twink Alexander Green, graduating toward a deserved stardom from a small-scale company of twinks and cum-swallowing to this majorleague brand with adults of all ages, where Chi Chi’s iron-clad insistence on safer sex precludes cum from passing anyone’s lips. Which is, what, ironic, since I’ve seen several members of this cast eating cum elsewhere – most particularly, Mr. Razz (who has also been barebacked).

Beside Mr. Green, the show is nearly saved by another two charismatic live wires in nasty player Brenn Wyson and handsome, twinkling-eyed Dean Monroe (an indefatigable cum-eater who probably had to be restrained here).

<<

C1R

Ryan Razz performs in Frat Boy Fuck Down.

Typically, LaRue allows the film’s videographer to tilt the camera to fit full-length bodies within the frame, even if it means making them seem nearly horizontal, parallel to the floor, when they are in fact standing on it. Makes me feel wall-eyed.

Also typically LaRue are abundant spitting, double anal, double oral, and cock sizes that are flagged by publicity, “Size Queen Alert.” The promised fetish elements of hoods and sensory deprivation do not appear.

For 25 minutes of mostly feigned fervor, three couples suck cock.

Off-camera, we hear a loud, “Who’s ready to fuck this ass?” It’s Mr. Wyson, who backs up onto Rogue’s broad bone as if it were your little finger. When Wyson’s mouth is not full of cock, he tries to provoke Rogue past uninspired back-andforth to some fiercer, or at least more interesting fucking. After 20 minutes of anal action, the frat boys arrive with new pledge Razz, who sucks every cock while blindfolded, gagging and choking unpleasantly over every one.

The movie’s been nearly dialogue-free, but now the frat

boys start spouting standard, and contradictory, porn clichés. “Hey, guys, I think he likes it,” gives the impression that the pledge is (was) str8, and, by extension, the brothers, too. Then why is there a gay orgy going on in the frathouse basement? And why are the orgy guys uniformly so much older than the frat twinks? Were they hired in for the hazing? Then, more contradictory dialogue. “Don’t be a bitch, don’t be gaggin’,” is followed almost immediately by, “Take it, bitch.” Which will it be, brothers – do be a bitch, or don’t be?

Dean Monroe raised my blood by squatting on a cock with glee, and whoop-de-doo riding it. Alas, only momentarily. For the last 20 minutes, the guys idle in traditional gangbang line, waiting their turn for some ass. But only two guys fuck the yowling Razz before everyone jacks off on him. Rogue cums one pearly drop; a brother’s orgasm produces no cum at all.

And then that promising star, young Alexander Green, cums enough to stock the frat-house buffet for days.

Everyone else has wandered off, but merciful Dean Monroe remains to finger-fuck Razz while jacking forth the tortured star’s sprinkler of an orgasm.▼

Leather + From page 26

to die?” Those were the questions presented by the Leathermen’s Discussion Group (www.SFLDG. org) at a special panel discussion event on July 27. The room at the LGBT Center on Market was SRO as over 300 people showed up to hear panelists Gayle Rubin, Race Bannon, Guy Baldwin, and Michael Thorn give their thoughts on the subject.

For quite some time there has been talk about generation gaps, too many events, not enough outreach, the Internet replacing the bars, a lack of gender-specific events, and so on. This special discussion was the welcome result of the growing fears, anxieties, and issues.

SFLDG moderator Patrick Mulcahey introduced each panelist, who then gave speeches prior to opening the floor for Q&A. For me, a few highlights were: Bannon’s explanation that the pendulum has swung back, and we’re not stuck in some Internet wasteland; Rubin’s knowledge of our history and how things evolved; Baldwin’s pleasure that pig sex has returned; and Thorn’s explanation that in our attempts to be all-inclusive, we’ve become too

Gear Up Weekend

One of the Gear Up Weekend facilities is ready for action, July 22.

fractured.

The two main points I came away with from this discussion, and the follow-up Q&A a week later, are: 1) Leather is not dead, and 2) We need real mentors. This is evidenced by the comments presented by the “younger generation” who were in attendance. Almost all mentioned their need for mentorship, and the lack of community acceptance. We all need to work on that. We all need to be more open and welcoming, and accepting of all kinks and fetishes. I agree with Joe Gallagher’s comment: “[This] younger generation is going

to be fine. We found our own way with no problem, and they’ll find their own way.”

So much more was brought up and discussed, and is open for debate. For more details, go to Lenand’s blog: www.leatherati.com/leatherati/2011/08/report-on-ldgs-is-leatherdead.html. Whatever your personal feelings, let’s try to remember to celebrate our differences. Everyone has something to offer. As Bannon quoted from Dr. Seuss: “Today you are you, that is truer than true, there is no one else alive that is you-er than you.”▼

BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER •

<< Books

August 11-17, 2011

▼

Hiding in the open Gore Vidal writing as Edgar Box in a reissued series

by Tavo Amador

A

t 21, Gore Vidal (b. 1925) published his first novel, Williwaw, based on his World War II military experiences. It earned excellent reviews. Vidal, whose maternal grandfather was Oklahoma senator Thomas Gore and who is a distant relative of former Vice President Albert Gore, was hailed as one of the most promising young novelists of the era. He followed Williwaw with the then-shocking The City and the Pillar (1948), a candid novel about male homosexuality. Even though the climactic scene confuses sex with male rape, the story defied the unwritten convention that a gay protagonist had to die at the end.

Orville Prescott, the chief book reviewer of The New York Times, who had admired Williwaw, denounced The City and the Pillar on moral grounds. He refused to cover Vidal’s subsequent novels. This unofficial blacklisting spread to other New York newspapers, and critics ignored his next few books.

A sympathetic publisher and friend suggested he write murder mysteries under a pseudonym. Consequently, as Edgar Box, he authored three best-selling, crackerjack mysteries which kept him in funds until, under his own name, he began writing for television. The Edgar Box novels, starting with 1952’s Death in the Fifth Position, are once again available (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Press, $14.95), and show that Vidal was a match for Agatha Christie.

Vidal’s likeable amateur sleuth is handsome Peter Sargeant, a WWII veteran and owner of a small Manhattan public relations firm.

He’s hired by Mr. Washburn to handle publicity for the Grand Saint

“Vidal’s Edgar Box mysteries are entertaining whodunits, but are also a reminder of an ugly era for gay men and lesbians.”

Petersburg Ballet, loosely modeled on the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

The company includes Eglanova, an aging, celebrated Russian ballerina who keeps delaying retirement; handsome Louis Giraud, a butch, openly gay, sexually aggressive French premier danseur; Ella Sutton, an ambitious dancer; her husband, Miles Sutton, who is also the company’s music conductor; Jane Gardner, a promising young member of the corps de ballet with whom Peter has an affair; and choreographer Jed Wilbur, who is smitten with Louis and is creating a ballet for him and Ella. On the opening night of this new work, Eclipse, Ella is murdered. Two more killings follow.

The story moves swiftly, thanks to Vidal’s sharp dialogue and eye for relevant detail. He wittily recreates the egotistical personalities of the insular, competitive world of ballet and its wealthy patrons. He also shows the hysteria associated with the infamous Communist Red Scare of the era, and takes readers into a Manhattan gay bar and bathhouse, filled with what today seem like stereotypes but which were probably representative of his own experiences.

(Vidal has described himself as a “homosexualist,” although he did have youthful affairs with women.)

He plants red herrings, but plays fair

with the reader when it comes to unmasking the killer.

Death in the Fifth Position was followed by Death Before Bedtime (1953), in which Peter is hired to work on the presidential campaign of a venerable United States Senator.

Just before he is scheduled to announce his candidacy, the Senator is found dead. Peter eventually unmasks the murderer. Vidal, who spent a great deal of time with his blind grandfather, was familiar with Washington, D.C., and the political class. His one-time stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss, would later become Jacqueline Bouvier’s stepfather, and Vidal was a frequent guest at the Kennedy White House.

Death Likes It Hot (1954) was the final Edgar Box mystery. It, too, is set in a world Vidal knew well.

Peter is hired by a wealthy socialite to plan her end-of-the-season pool party at a posh beach resort. Her niece drowns while swimming in the ocean, a seemingly tragic accident.

But the police discover a lethal dose of sleeping pills in her system. Once more, Peter outwits the cops to reveal the killer’s identity.

In 1954, as Gore Vidal, he adapted Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for television, which led to more work, including the movie version of Paddy Chayefsky’s The Catered Affair (1956) starring Bette Davis,

I Accuse (1958), The Scapegoat, an uncredited contribution to Ben-Hur (he suggested to director William Wyler that the rivalry between Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd include a homosexual element), Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer (1959), and his own Broadway success, The Best Man (1964), which was centered on a presidential nominating convention and included a subplot involving one candidate’s possibly gay past.

For the next 30 years, he was one of America’s most prolific authors, equally at home in fiction, political

essays, and memoirs. His 1968 novel Myra Breckenridge was a dazzling satire on gender roles, featuring a male-to-female transsexual as the central character. Once again, he shocked the establishment. (He disowned the ghastly 1970 film, starring Raquel Welch and Mae West in a disastrous return to the screen.)

Without ever denying who he was, Vidal triumphed over blacklisting.

His Edgar Box mysteries are entertaining whodunits, but are also a reminder of an ugly era for gay men and lesbians. The novels, like Vidal himself, deserve a fresh audience.▼

Can-do-it attitude

by Jim Provenzano The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability: For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain, and Illness; by Miriam Kaufman, M.D., Cory Silverberg, and Fran Odette, Cleis Press, $18.95.

T

he recent controversy about Lady Gaga performing a few concert numbers as a wheelchairbound mermaid not only raised the ire of Bette Midler, whose stage persona Delores DelRio preceded Gaga’s gimmick by decades.

Representatives of the disabled and wheelchair-using community spoke out against what they perceived as an insensitive portrayal. But Gaga said that she is quite aware of her disabled fans, affectionately calling them “rolling monsters.”

All this made me wonder how many LGBT disabled people there are among the 6.5 million differentlyabled Americans.

Also, how do they have relationships and maintain a sexual life? Much off those questions weree answered when I received a copy of thee re-issued Cleis Presss title The Ultimatee Guide to Sex andd Disability: For All off h Us Who Live with

Disabilities, Chronic Pain, and Illness.

At nearly 350 pages, the book covers a broad range of informative topics, from sexual positions to toys, and with a diverse range of sexuality. Historically, the authors state, LGBT-inclusive manuals or information for the disabled have been scant, or nonexistent.

Originally published in 2003 and 2007, the re-issue is a welcome aid for a growing disabled community.

While some of the information is perfunctory – yes, you can buy a dildo online – other sections are creative, supportive and even See page 29 >>

▼

Books >>

August 11-17, 2011 •

BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

‘Dark Shadows’ days

by David-Elijah Nahmod Dark Passages, by Kathryn Leigh Scott; Pomegranate Press, $14.95

I

n the early 1960s, Kathryn Leigh Scott moved from a small town in Minnesota to New York City with stars in her eyes. Determined to be an actress, the young woman paid for her classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Art by working at New York’s famed Playboy Club as a waitress. Dressed in high heels, rabbit ears and a bushy tail, she was known as Bunny Kay. Scott was able to quit her Bunny job in June 1966, when she was cast as Maggie Evans on a new daytime drama called Dark Shadows. During her four years on the series, she found herself the love object of a vampire, sacrificed on a Satanic altar, haunted by malevolent ghosts, and even died herself, only to return as a zombie.

Now, 40 years after the serial ended its network run, Dark Shadows remains a huge part of Scott’s life. Through her publishing company, she’s been the Keeper of the Flame. Pomegranate Press offers several behind-the-scenes Dark Shadows books authored by Scott herself.

Dark Passages is an auto-

<<

Sex & Disability From page 28

amusing. While the primary perspective is from women, the focus moves smoothly from one gender to another, from straight to gay and bisexual interviewees and information.

Numerous quoted anecdotes from interviews conducted by the authors offer a personal perspective

<<

Dark Shadows: TV Milestones series, by Harry M. Benshoff; Wayne State Univ. Press, $14.95 Harry M. Benshoff takes Dark

Shadows where no author has taken it before: he’s done a serious study of the show in the context of late1960s counterculture. What was it that made this show such a huge hit when other attempts by daytime soaps to present supernatural themes failed to click with viewers?

Benshoff argues that it was the time and place in which Dark Shadows was presented.

Barnabas Collins, the show’s

re resident vampire, first a appeared in April 1967.

A few months later, it was th Summer of Love. The the ra radically different nature of D Dark Shadows appealed to a audiences who were tuning o the politics, social mores out a culture of their parents. and Dark Shadows also had a huge fan-base among gay m men.

Benshoff suggests that B Barnabas, an 18th-century m man who suddenly found h himself in the 20th-century, w the key to this appeal. was V Viewers knew that Barnabas w a vampire, but other was c characters did not. Barnabas h to keep his undead state had d deep in the closet, often t talking in code to hide his actions. To closeted young men in those days that preceded the Stonewall riots, this touched a deep nerve. Barnabas’ portrayer, Jonathan Frid, was himself believed to be a gay man, according to the author.

Benshoff ’s prose can be a little heavy-handed at times. But for those who might have wondered what it was about this weird little show that captured the imaginations of so many, Dark Shadows: TV Milestones is worth a look.▼

attendant help him unwrap some online-ordered drag. While helping him dress up, his attendant asked why he was moaning. The mere act of dressing up gave the interviewee an orgasm. Yes, with a little help, anybody can get their kink on.

Privacy issues are a concern for those who need fulltime assistance, and communication barriers are a problem for others. Along with clear explanations of safe sex, SM

sex and other variations, the authors intersperse advice on negotiating a safe and comfortable romantic environment.

Other passages offer clear instructions on specific physical positions for partners with or without wheelchairs, ostomy bags, limb differences, and those with chronic pain.

While primarily focused for disabled readers, the guide is perfect for any caregiver, professional or

personal, who wants to understand the needs of their disabled clients, patients, friends or family.

The guide comes to a perplexing clunk at Chapter 13, which covers sexual violence. But the subsequent resources guide and glossary bring the focus to a more uplifting perspective by showing the range of communities that are sensitive to both LGBT and differently-abled communities.▼

biographical novel by Scott. Sort of. Its lead character, Meg, is a waitress at the Playboy Club in New York. She’s also an aspiring actress, and soon finds herself cast on a new daytime drama called Dark Passages. Sound familiar? But the delicious twist in Dark Passages is that Meg herself is a vampire.

“I think my timing is right for the publication of Dark Passages,” Scott wrote in an e-mail. “It’s now the 45th anniversary of Dark Shadows, and Tim Burton is directing a Dark Shadows film for Warner Bros. NBC is doing a new TV series called The Playboy Club, about a cigarette bunny in 1963. I incorporate the world of the Playboy Club, and of Dark Shadows, in Dark Passages.”

Dark Shadows devotees will relish the sequences in Passages that deal with the fictional show’s production.

It’s easy to spot characters based on Scott’s real-life co-stars, such as Moira Shaw, Passages’ leading lady, a standin for 1940s film-noir bad girl Joan Bennett, who capped her long career as Dark Shadows’ top-billed star.

“What I wanted to do with Dark Passages was to tell my own story about that time, and combine it with elements of fantasy and romance, and tell a story about a vampire and a witch, and unrequited love,” says Scott.

She has just returned from London, where she and three of her former TV co-stars filmed cameos for Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, in which Johnny Depp will portray the vampire Barnabas Collins.

“We were treated like royalty,” Scott reports.

“Everyone on the set was welcoming, including producer Dick Zanuck and all of the actors. I had the opportunity to tell Johnny Depp how much we appreciated his generous comments about Jonathan Frid’s original portrayal of Barnabas Collins. Both Depp and Burton said, ‘We wouldn’t be here without you.’”

Scott is delighted that Imagine Television has purchased the rights to her book The Bunny Years for possible use on the series The Playboy Club. A new paperback edition, with a foreword by Hugh Hefner, is now available.

to the varied challenges differentlyabled people have when negotiating romantic or purely sexual affairs.

With multiple explorations of alternative sex, specifically nonpenetrative acts, since some disabled people do not or cannot have sex that way, the book also expands the definition of what sex is.

For example, one anonymous wheelchair-using bisexual respondent discussed having his

Most Happy Fella From page 17

a libretto that keeps veering from serious social commentary to broad and unsubtle comedy.

Of course, the man who brought us Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying never intended Fella to be another Porgy and Bess. Loesser simply wanted to stretch the boundaries of the musical genre, and display his great delight and ability in both pop and “serious” music.

At the purely musical level, he succeeded, and from a theatrical standpoint, he even made an initial success with a healthy New York run. It was the first time an original Broadway cast album was afforded two long-playing discs.

A more conventional single disc “Highlights” recording was also released at the time. The Most Happy Fella was a hit, and the show even featured as the background of a delightful episode of I Love Lucy (hilarity ensuing in a box seat with the Ricardos and Mertzes).

To bring such a big, unwieldy creation to current audiences certainly poses a challenge, and Festival Opera has responded with a careful, attractive and utterly sincere production. The brassy Broadway aspects of the show are enhanced by a few breakout performances, with Pierce Brandt charming as the wimpy Herman, and a cutely plumpish Krista Wigle as his wisecracking, heart-of-gold girlfriend Cleo.

The operatic side was never less than well sung, but the acting talents of the leads never approached a convincing degree of credibility, and that might have explained the audience’s confusion during

Robert Shomler

Scene from Festival Opera’s production of The Most Happy Fella.

Robert Shomler

Scene from Festival Opera’s production of The Most Happy Fella.

some of the more serious scenes.

Inappropriate laughter, when soprano Shawnette Sulker, as Tony’s mail-order bride Amy (or Rosabella, as he calls her), announced her out-of-wedlock pregnancy by the Napa Valley rancher’s foreman Joe, only signaled something was off with the production’s tone. Sulker is physically as cute as a button, and she did convey the little-girllost side of the character, but her speaking voice is shrill and unmodulated, and she only displayed

real conviction whenever she broke into full-throated and very pleasing song.

The same might be said of Weis’ Tony Esposito. Never mind the fact that the whole premise of the role, a considerably older man (yipes, he’d be up on charges or on a reality show these days) who dupes a young girl into marriage, but who later manages to develop their relationship into true love, poses an almost impossible task. Other stars have made the complex hero

believable enough, but Weis only shows a cute old dude with a good singing voice. His cursory attempt at a stereotypical Italian accent isn’t even bad enough to be funny. His serious dramatic moments (like when he goes after Joe and Rosabella with a pistol) are more peevish than passionate.

As the sexy foreman Joe (“Joey, Joey, Joey”), Joshua Hollister sounds good, but his acting is also generalized and stiff. It’s not enough to merely say you have a restless heart, you gotta smolder more, and really mean it. As three Italian chefs-slash-ranch hands, Nicolas Aliaga, Michael Mendelsohn and Jose Hernandez were hampered by truly cringe-worthy Chef Boyardee costumes, but they also sounded great whenever they were singing.

And that was what elevated this entire production. Despite some moments of clumsy staging and banal choreography, this Fella celebrated the most important legacy of the show, the gorgeous musical score. Conductor Brian

Nies kept his orchestra sounding crisp, audible and, with the strings, downright lush.

The sets and costumes by Peter Crompton and Christine Crook were bright and appropriate, and using California postcards of the era as backdrops was a clever touch.

The plot may be dated and way too complicated (sorry for not filling you in more, but there’s only so much time), and the golden age of Broadway is only a distant memory, but hopefully The Most Happy Fella will still get revivals like this one by Festival Opera. Someday all the elements will come together (where’s Nicholas Hytner when you need him?). Until then, we will congratulate the folks at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, and applaud their courage and enthusiasm.▼ Festival Opera’s The Most Happy Fella has two more performances, Aug. 12 at 8 p.m., and Aug. 14 at 2 p.m. Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. Tickets: www.LesherArtsCenter.org.

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