April 21, 2016 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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Harris backs federal rescheduling of marijuana

by Matthew S. Bajko

S

hould she be elected to the U.S. Senate this November, California Attorney General Kamala Harris would advocate for the federal government to change how it classifies marijuana as Rick Gerharter a controlled substance.

State Attorney In an editorial board General interview with the Bay Kamala Harris Area Reporter, Harris said she does not believe marijuana should be designated as a Schedule I drug, along with such illicit substances as heroin, LSD, the party drug ecstasy, and peyote.

Such substances are considered “the most dangerous” and have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Having marijuana classified in such a way hinders federally funded research into its medicinal uses. It also allows federal authorities to crack down on dispensaries and growers in states that have legalized marijuana for either medical purposes or recreational use.

“As a U.S. senator, an area of focus for me would be to remove marijuana from Schedule I and put it in Schedule II,” said Harris.

Schedule II drugs include cocaine, methamphetamine, methadone, Ritalin, Adderall, and oxycodone. The DEA considers such drugs “dangerous” and having “a high potential for abuse, with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence.”

Harris’ position on the federal reclassification of marijuana is a continuation of her softening stance on the legalization of the drug. In late November 2014, shortly after being re-elected as AG, she told BuzzFeed News that she is “not opposed to the legalization of marijuana.”

It was a stark turnaround from her position in 2010, during her first campaign to be elected AG, when Harris told the B.A.R., “While I support the legal use of medical marijuana, and personally know people who have benefited from its use, I do not support the legalization of marijuana beyond that.”

At last year’s California Democratic Convention, Harris said, “Now is the time to end the federal ban on medical marijuana.” Her comment came three months after she told the San Francisco Chronicle that legalizing recreational marijuana use was “an inevitability” in California.

With Golden State voters likely to be asked this November to pass a ballot measure that would do just that, Harris reiterated that comment during her April 13 interview with the B.A.R. “Generally, I am supportive of it,” said Harris, formerly San Francisco’s district atSee page 13 >>

Vol. 46 • No. 16 • April 21-27, 2016

Gay SF gardener surviving TV fame

by Matthew S. Bajko

A

s his team of co-workers from the Port of San Francisco competed one recent weekday afternoon in the Ferry Bocce League, Tai Trang took a time out from the action at Justin Herman Plaza to pose for a photo with a fan.

Walking by with his lunch, Danny Tran had spotted Trang, one of the cast members from this season of the hit CBS show Survivor. The 26-year-old Tran, like Trang, is gay and their families both came to the U.S. from Vietnam.

He and his roommate have been rooting for Trang to win the televised competition, which this go-around took place in Cambodia and will award the winner a $1 million prize later this spring.

“He is a favorite to win,” said Tran, who has See page 13 >>

Tai Trang, a contestant on Survivor, plays bocce ball at the courts on the Embarcadero.

Leader of SF Parks Alliance marks 5 years Rick Gerharter

by Matthew S. Bajko

C

ole Valley resident Matthew O’Grady, an avid cyclist, often biked through the triangular open space bounded by Lincoln Way and Kezar Drive on his way from his home to Golden Gate Park.

For years the area, dubbed Kezar Triangle, was a “real dead zone,” said O’Grady, “with more gopher holes than pieces of grass.”

That changed two years ago, after a $670,000 renovation of the 2.8 acre plot of land funded by the Friends of Kezar Triangle, which was created in 2010 by Carla Crane, with the Carla and David Crane Foundation. It now features flowering beds, a bench carved out of a single log, and an art garden tended to by artists who use the plant materials in their works.

“The result is now it is a destination in its own right,” said O’Grady. “You see people here picnicking and playing with their dogs.”

O’Grady, who is gay, had selected the site to meet with the Bay Area Reporter for an interview about his marking his fifth year as chief executive officer of the San Francisco Parks Alliance. The nonprofit agency is a leading advocate at City Hall for funding of the city’s numerous parks and recreation facilities.

It also partners with scores of community groups that have adopted various city parks to serve as stewards of the sites. More than 200 groups, such as the Friends of Kezar Triangle, are fiscally sponsored by the parks alliance.

“We use philanthropy and civic engagement

Rick Gerharter

Matthew O’Grady, CEO of the San Francisco Parks Alliance, stands at the entrance to one of its projects, the Kezar Triangle on the edge of Golden Gate Park.

to protect, sustain, and enrich San Francisco’s parks, recreation, and open green spaces,” said O’Grady.

He had chosen the Kezar Triangle site as a meeting place in order to show off what the Parks Alliance and community groups, in partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, can achieve. The site is

a model for how overlooked green spaces in the city can be re-imagined into inviting public realms.

“The traditional way is philanthropists raise the money and give it to the recreation and park department. Here we did the contrary,” said See page 14 >>

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6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

Volume 46, Number 16 April 21-27, 2016 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Seth Hemmelgarn CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Tavo Amador • Race Bannon Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Brian Bromberger • Victoria A. Brownworth Brent Calderwood • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Belo Cipriani Richard Dodds • Michael Flanagan Jim Gladstone • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell • John F. Karr Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Max Leger Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Paul Parish • Sean Piverger • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel • Khaled Sayed Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Sari Staver • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Ed Walsh • Cornelius Washington Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Jay Cribas PRODUCTION/DESIGN Max Leger PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Lydia Gonzales • Jose Guzman-Colon Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd Jo-Lynn Otto • Rich Stadtmiller Steven Underhil • Dallis Willard • Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.829.8937 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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<< Open Forum

t Support inclusion in North Carolina S

ince North Carolina’s new law limiting bathroom access for transgender people went into effect earlier this month, cities in other states – nearly 20 so far – have passed bans on taxpayer-funded travel to the Tar Heel State. Many corporations have expressed outrage, and PayPal went so far as to cancel a planned operations center that would have generated 400 jobs. Entertainers like Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, and Pearl Jam have canceled concerts.

Last week Cirque du Soleil announced it would not perform in the state. The outspokenness on the part of the business and entertainment communities is welcome support to folks who believe in equality.

But now is the time for the group with the loudest voice in the sports world to use it.

We’re talking about the National Basketball Association and its All-Star Game, which is set to be played in Charlotte next year. The NBA has come under enormous pressure to move the game out of the state, and Commissioner Adam Silver has sided squarely on the side of equality in other contentious episodes. (Remember when Silver banned for life Los Angeles Clippers’ former owner Donald Sterling for his racist statements?) This time, when the controversy involves LGBT rights, Silver hasn’t been as forceful, despite the fact that the NBA has a gay man, Rick Welts, at the helm of one of the most successful franchises in basketball, the Golden State Warriors.

The NBA playoffs started last weekend, putting Silver once again in the crosshairs. But while Silver has sent conflicting messages, it appears that the NBA won’t move the All-Star Game. It should.

North Carolina is a basketball-crazed state, and moving the game would send a shock wave that equality is a serious matter.

Such drastic action might spur lawmakers to revise the law, including restoring a provision for cities in the state to pass their own anti-discrimination ordinances. Silver is con-

Tragically, our city’s budget allocation to our parks has not kept hat’s your favorite park in the up with the needs. Park funding as city? a share of the city’s total budget has Do you take your favorite book eroded over the years, leaving our or magazine and head to Dolores parks in need of more stable fundPark for some quality reading time? ing to address critical needs such Member of FrontRunners? It’s OK as fixing broken bathroom equipif you skip the run and just show up ment, fixing ruts in the running Rick Gerharter for Second Circle – you’re still gettrails that can turn an ankle, ting out in Golden Gate Park.

Matthew O’Grady replacing broken sprinOr do you take your dog to klers to conserve water, Duboce Park where you meet up and keeping ball fields with canine and human friends to visit and let smooth and safe. the dogs romp?

An analysis by the Parks AlliMaybe you meet friends or take visitors to ance found that the Recreation reflect at the National AIDS Memorial Grove and Park Department annual in Golden Gate Park. allocation from the city’s genWhatever your day holds, chances are it ineral fund hasn’t kept up with cludes some time in our parks, playgrounds, the city budget. In 2000, Rec and open space, or recreation centers. In our dense Park received 2.1 percent of the general fund. urban city, our parks, open spaces, and rec In 2015, Rec and Park received only 1.2 percenters serve as our backyards, providing space cent of the general fund budget. It’s gotten so for exercise, gatherings with friends and fambad that, according to the city controller, Rec ily, and opportunities to take a deep breath and and Park spends 99 percent of its maintenance slow down from the bustle of our hectic lives. budget on emergency repairs. Preventive Because parks are an integral part of our maintenance is all but gone. That’s why our daily life, they bear the brunt of that daily love. parks need Proposition B, and why the Parks And it’s not just we San Franciscans loving our Alliance has spearheaded this ballot measure. parks – visitors to our world-class city spend Prop B is a charter amendment that builds a lot of time enjoying our world-class parks. upon the Open Space Fund overwhelmingly Between residents and visitors, more than 20 passed by voters in 2000, fulfilling San Franmillion people visit our park system every year. ciscans’ intent to provide a sustainable funding And our parks generate $1 billion each year for source for parks. Prop B will ensure the city’s our local economy, based on a study commisgeneral fund contribution to RPD gradually sioned by the San Francisco Parks Alliance. increases over time, cannot fall below 2015-16 That constant use requires constant maintefunding levels, and ensures stable funding for nance and improvement. the next 30 years.

W

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Another organization that has condemned the law but won’t take action is the National League of Cities, which is planning its 2017 City Summit in Charlotte. That conference should be moved as well; attendance is expected to be low because of the growing number of cities prohibiting travel by employees that is taxpayer funded.

The league prides itself on “cities united in the fight for the principles of local authority” and CEO and Executive Director Clarence Anthony said in a news release that it “stands united” with Charlotte in its commitment to inclusion. But that is meaningless. Right now, because of HB 2, Charlotte is unable to foster inclusion – it cannot even pass its own local laws. Instead of standing with Charlotte, the National League of Cities should relocate the conference to affirm its commitment to local authority – in protest of what’s happening in North Carolina.

Finally, Governor McCrory is getting tangled up in his lame attempts to justify the law.

He was on Meet the Press last Sunday, and apparently in all seriousness, suggested that the Human Rights Campaign was “more powerful than the NRA.” Never mind that McCrory got HRC’s name wrong, referring to the Human Rights Council. What’s laughable about his statement is that if HRC were more powerful than the National Rifle Association, North Carolina’s legislature would never have passed HB 2 and sent it to McCrory in the first place.

After all, with the hundreds of shootings since Sandy Hook, the NRA has thwarted every attempt in Congress to pass the most basic gun control laws – not even expanded background checks can get its OK, meaning such a bill will never make it out of Congress. HRC has a budget of about $16 million. In contrast, the NRA had about $243 million in expenditures a few years ago, and is far and away among the best-funded political interest groups.

So, no, Governor McCrory, HRC is not more powerful than the NRA. Not even close.t

Prop B will maintain and improve the park you love

by Matthew O’Grady

BAY AREA REPORTER

cerned about the message moving the game would send to the Charlotte Hornets, the NBA team that plays in the state. He also said that the NBA would like to work with the business community and elected officials to change the law. But lawmakers have given no indication they’re willing to do that, and Governor Pat McCrory’s hasty executive order last week did nothing to remove the anti-trans bathroom provision. The only change his order made was to extend non-discrimination protections to state workers. That is a good first step, but doesn’t go far enough.

Silver said last weekend that the NBA has 10 months until the game, but moving a star-studded game needs to happen sooner, rather than later, because with each passing day the odds of moving it decreases.

There are pros and cons of the economic boycott now hovering over North Carolina.

Ironically, those who support the LGBT community in the state are being negatively affected when concerts get canceled or companies decide not to expand. But sometimes a law is so heinous, mean-spirited, and likely unconstitutional that tough measures are called for.

That’s where we are today.

Silver and the NBA should take a stand for equality, and do the right thing by moving the All-Star Game.

Prop B’s sustainable funding will allow Rec and Park to address the backlog of maintenance needs, and the breathing room to make improvements to outdated facilities and overgrown open spaces.

Additionally, for the first time ever, Prop B requires Rec and Park to develop equity metrics and an analysis of funding and service levels in low-income neighborhoods and disadvantaged communities, and to submit annual recommendations on how to provide equitable and sustainable funding for parks, playgrounds, and open spaces in every neighborhood of the city.

Prop B is a historic opportunity to secure a responsible and sustainable revenue source that will ensure clean and safe parks in every neighborhood for at least a generation – all without raising taxes.

Join the San Francisco Parks Alliance, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom (D), state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), Supervisors Scott Wiener and David Campos, the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, the Democratic Party, the Trust for Public Land, the Nature Conservancy, and the San Francisco League of Conservation Voters in supporting Prop B on your June 7 ballot.

Please take a moment to learn more about Prop B and see our full endorsement list at http://www.protectsfparks.com.t Matthew O’Grady is CEO of the San Francisco Parks Alliance. For more about him and the alliance, see story, page 1.

t

Letters >>

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Former B.A.R. reporter weighs in

It was very kind of Bill Ambrunn to include me in his comments on the importance of the gay press in the life of the community [“Glad the B.A.R. is here to cover the news,” Guest Opinion, April 7].

For what it’s worth, I have mostly fond memories of my journalistic efforts at the Bay Area Reporter – I really gave it my best shot. With the exception of a few memorable failures, I think my legacy will stand the test of time, should we survive as a species.

That’s a bit dubious at this point.

Bill was right about the tragic childhood – of orphanages, institutions, physical and religious abuse, psychological torture to try and make a bright, generally funny and loving sissy boy straight.

Unfortunately, such trauma left me pretty badly damaged, with post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic melancholia and sadness, and a nasty cocaine habit that nearly killed me.

But, with all that – the good news is therapy works. I’d like to give a shout out to Shanna Holladay, LMFT, for helping to save my sorry ass years ago. For people with issues like mine, there are competent therapists in our community who can help heal the wreckage, believe me.

If you need it, get help. No shame.

And finally, I was just the first full-time paid reporter for the B.A.R. There were longtime freelancers/editors

like Will Snyder, Brett Averill, Mike Hippler, and many more who paved the way for me. Their enormous contributions are so important.

Dennis Conkin San Francisco

Disagrees with paper’s coverage

I’m writing to add my name to the many who’ve objected to the newspaper’s unprofessional reporting related to the tragic death of Dennis Nix last November. Despite a policy that the B.A.R. “reserves the right to edit for clarity, style and taste,” the paper published irrelevant, misleading, insensitive, and certainly tasteless details that were lifted from a medical examiner’s report. This was heartless and caused harm to Dennis’ reputation and distress to his family and friends. There can be no justification for this lapse in journalistic judgment and ethical practice. Dennis was a trusted, kind and compassionate man who contributed generously to his community. He deserved more from a community newspaper. As the B.A.R. continues to report on the investigation, I urge the paper to clarify and correct previously reported misleading information consistent with the accurate medical examiner’s report.

A sincere apology for the harm this caused is also in order.

Deborah Royal RN, MSN, NP Oakland, California

SF LGBT film festival won’t cut ties with Israeli Consulate

by Matthew S. Bajko

F

rameline, San Francisco’s LGBT international film festival, will continue to accept financial support from the Israeli Consulate and other foreign governments.

The decision is a blow to pro-Palestinian activists who, since 2007, have called on Frameline officials to decline funding from the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest, who is based in San Francisco. The local consulate often helps pay for the travel expenses of Israeli filmmakers so they can attend the screening of their films at the local festival, held annually in June.

But the film festival’s critics contend the sponsorships are a form of “pinkwashing,” where Israel uses its pro-gay stances to detract attention away from its policies toward the Palestinian territories.

There is an ongoing worldwide boycott of Israel that asks cultural and academic institutions to sever ties with the Jewish state due to its “genocidal policies” toward Palestinians. Likewise, a growing list of filmmakers refuses to submit their films to Frameline due to its accepting financial support from the Israeli government.

Frameline officials have maintained that the financial support is necessary so the foreign filmmakers can attend the festival and take part in Q&A sessions following the screenings of their films.

In January 2015 Frameline Executive Director Frances Wallace had told the Bay Area Reporter that, due to the ongoing dispute, the film festival was reviewing its funding policies.

In March, Wallace announced that she and Frameline’s board of directors had concluded “that as the global leader in LGBTQ media arts we stand by our original decision to continue to support all filmmakers, regardless of their country of origin, and will continue to partner with consulates, as needed, to fund film exhibition and filmmaker travel.”

The statement also noted that the foreign films Frameline chooses to screen are often “critical of their country of origin.”

Wallace could not be reached for comment. According to the festival’s statement, its decision affirms Fra-

Jane Philomen Cleland

Kate Jessica Raphael has long protested the Israeli government.

meline’s “arts-focused mission” and is aimed at ensuring it is not used as “a proxy in a divisive political issue with many viewpoints but little consensus within the greater LGBTQ community.”

Kate Jessica Raphael, a longtime organizer with the group QUIT, which stands for Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism, told the B.A.R. that Frameline’s decision has “upset” many people.

“I definitely think it is a slap in the face to all the groups and people who made painful sacrifices to take a position for justice,” she said. “Certainly, for us, I mean we feel like it is clear we just have to be louder and clearer, I guess.”

She specified that Frameline’s critics have never asked it to discriminate against Israeli filmmakers or not screen their films.

She also stressed that it is not just Israel that Frameline should sever ties with when it comes to funding.

“There are many places, many governments I think they shouldn’t be partnering with,” said Raphael.

“And there are many they would not partner with. I can’t imagine if the governments of Uganda, Iran, or Syria wanted to give them money they would be accepting it.”

As for needing the financial support from the Israeli Consulate, Raphael countered Frameline could easily ask other donors or funders to cover the cost of the filmmakers’ trips.

“We know, because of things they have said, they don’t need the money. They could still bring the filmmakers if they didn’t take money from the Israeli government,” she said.

It is unclear if an Israeli film will be screened this year at Frameline.

The festival, which is marking its 40th anniversary, will not release its full schedule of films until May. Shaul Hamawi, a spokesman for the Israeli Consulate, told the B.A.R. earlier this month that he did not yet know if an Israeli film had been selected this year. If asked, the consulate does plan to return as a sponsor.

In a statement to the B.A.R., Consul General Dr. Andy David stated, “It is common practice for festivals around the world to partner with various supporters of international arts and culture efforts, including consulates and embassies. This practice contributes to the ability to present audiences with diversity that otherwise might not be available to them.”

David added, “We are proud and honored to be one of many in this effort. The Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest contributes to festivals that showcase inspiring Israeli creations, and the Frameline Film Festival is only one of them.”

Raphael, who has been promoting her debut novel, Murder Under The Bridge: A Palestine Mystery, said there are no plans to bring back the Outside the Frame: Queers for Palestine Film Festival, which was held last year as a counterprogramming protest of Frameline.

Those opposed to Frameline’s consulate policy will be protesting outside the Roxie Theatre in the Mission Thursday night where a free screening of the film Alex & Ali, about two men falling in love in Tehran, Iran in 1967, will be co-presented by the film festival at 7 p.m.

More protests are likely to take place in June during this year’s Frameline.

“I would say for sure look for us to be out there in one way or another,” said Raphael. “We are not going to be shut up or go quietly.”t Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion.

This week’s column looked at how DCCC candidates stand on giving San Francisco supervisors ex-officio status on the committee.

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

Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8298836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

Barry Schneider Attorney at Law

family law specialist* • Divorce w/emphasis on Real Estate & Business Divisions • Domestic Partnerships, Support & Custody • Probate and Wills www.SchneiderLawSF.com

415-781-6500 *Certified by the California State Bar 400 Montgomery Street, Ste. 505, San Francisco, CA

<< Community News

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

t

Longtime sexual health worker to leave SFAF

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

man who for years directed a program that provided HIV testing, counseling, and other services to thousands of people in San Francisco is leaving the position.

Steve Gibson, 50, who had served as director of Magnet and is currently director of sexual health services at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, will mark his last day at the nonprofit Friday, April 22. He’s set to become the HIV prevention branch chief at the State Office of AIDS in Sacramento.

“I’m very proud of my nearly 25 years of developing innovative HIV prevention programs in San Francisco and the successes we’ve seen here in reducing new HIV infections,” Gibson said in response to emailed questions. “I am humbled by the strides we’ve achieved in San Francisco and look forward to representing our achievements, address

barriers to more effective vices are now also known prevention strategies, and as sexual health services, identify new initiatives of and Gibson is the diviprevention across the state.” sion’s director.

Gibson left the Stop “The sexual health AIDS Project in 2001 to services provided in the head the strategic planCastro and the other SFAF ning process that led to locations are national and Steven Underhill international models of Magnet’s opening as a program of UCSF in 2003. Steve Gibson care. The staff and volunMagnet left the university teers are leaders in their and became an SFAF program in roles,” Gibson said. (The foundaJuly 2007, and Gibson’s been an emtion’s headquarters are at 1035 ployee of the nonprofit since then.

Market Street and it also offers asMen regularly lined up outside sistance at other sites.)

Magnet’s 4122 18th Street site to get He called his decision to leave tested for HIV and other sexually “difficult,” but said Magnet’s move transmitted infections, along with “allowed me to take inventory of other services. Community events the next chapter in my professional and exhibits were also hosted at the development.” center.

The Office of AIDS HIV PrevenMagnet recently moved out of the tion Branch, where Gibson is head18th Street spot and went to Strut, ing, “funds initiatives to assist local SFAF’s center for gay and bi men’s health department and other HIV health at 470 Castro Street, which service providers to implement efopened early this year. Magnet serfective HIV detection and preven-

tion programs,” he said.

Asked about his biggest achievement at SFAF, Gibson said, “I’m proud of the work my team does every day whether it be at Strut, on the mobile testing unit, or at the SFAF main office on Market Street.”

However, he said, his biggest recent accomplishment was the rollout of the PrEP health program at Magnet and at 1035 Market Street.

Gibson said he and others worked “to develop a sustainable model of offering PrEP services in a sex-positive environment.”

In the Castro, the program focuses primarily on gay, bi, and transgender men, while the 1035 location focuses more on trans women and men who’re sexually active with other men “but wouldn’t feel comfortable coming to the Castro,” Gibson said.

In emailed comments, Tim Patriarca, Strut’s executive director, said, “Steve is a visionary of public

health. At the Stop AIDS Project, Magnet, and the AIDS foundation, he led teams to develop a model of HIV and STI prevention, testing, and community health that has been replicated all around the world. Since he joined us in 2007, he has expanded HIV and STI screening services tenfold, launched our PrEP program and overseen increased capacity at Strut.”

Gibson’s position is being rewritten “to reflect the new integrated services at Strut,” Patriarca said.

Joe Hollendoner is set to take over as SFAF’s new CEO May 2. Patriarca said he’s “hopeful” that the search for Gibson’s replacement can start by the end of May. In his current role, Gibson, who declined to state his salary, oversees a staff of 35 employees and more than 100 volunteers.

There will be a free, public going away party for him from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, April 21 at Strut.t

Suspects plead not guilty in gay man’s hit-and-run death

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

wo men charged in the hit-andrun death of a popular gay San Francisco financial planner have pleaded not guilty as a police official discussed the long investigation and friends expressed relief at the men’s arrests.

Dennis Nix, 60, was killed November 22 when a car collided with his scooter in the city’s Ingleside district.

Heinz Raimol “Rymo” Cortado, 34, of Broadmoor, in unincorporated San Mateo County, pleaded not guilty Thursday, April 14 to charges of being an accessory after the fact and giving police false information.

He bailed out of custody shortly after his arrest.

Brendan Wallace, 32, also of Broadmoor, pleaded not guilty Monday, April 11 to felony charges of hit and run and vehicular manslaughter, as well as a misdemeanor count of providing false information to police. He remains in jail on $400,000 bail.

Wallace, who according to his Facebook profile was a line cook at Google, had been identified by police as the driver of a silver-colored Mercedes used in the collision and was arrested at his job in Mountain View. Cortado, who surrendered to police, was identified as the getaway driver of a second car that allegedly picked up Wallace after the accident.

Cortado works for the Sunset Neighborhood Beacon Center, where he serves as the daytime pro-

Courtesy SFPD

Courtesy SFPD

Brendan Wallace

Heinz Raimol “Rymo” Cortado

gram coordinator at A.P. Giannini Middle School, according to the center’s website.

He’s “the proud father of three boys” and “has been working closely with at-risk youth since 2002,” the site says. Cortado’s also “passionate about hip-hop and the arts and is an accomplished musician.” He didn’t respond to interview requests.

In an interview, Randy Knox, Cortado’s attorney, said of Nix’s death, “It’s terrible. It was a tragedy.

I don’t know what else to say about it. The decedent did nothing to bring this on himself.”

Knox declined to say much more, since it’s “a pending criminal case” and “I think what needs to be said needs to be said inside a courtroom.”

However, he said Cortado’s “never been arrested” before. He

didn’t know why his client had turned himself in on this case.

Knox said Cortado’s and Wallace’s wives are sisters and they all live together. Numerous people appeared at a court appearance this week to support Cortado, Knox said.

Deputy Public Defender John Paul Visaya, who’s representing Wallace, didn’t respond to an interview request.

Five months before arrests

Asked about why it took almost five months to make arrests in the case, Sergeant Michael Alexander, with the police department’s Traffic Collision Investigation Unit, said police only had “the car at the scene, and that was it, and no witnesses, so basically I had to start from there.”

Wallace, whose first name is also

spelled Brendin, is the car’s registered owner, Alexander said, and police interviewed him the morning of the incident.

“He basically just denied it,” Alexander said, and “since we didn’t have any witnesses or anything, we had to build the case.”

Alexander declined to say what had been most helpful in gathering evidence, but he said a problem related to DNA was part of the delay.

“There was some DNA taken,” he said. “... The trouble was some miscommunication we were having with the lab, but we got that all cleared.” He wouldn’t say what the miscommunication had been.

He also didn’t want to say how police were able to connect Cortado to the case or share details of what happened around the time Cortado allegedly picked up Wallace.

“I can’t get too involved in that, either, but they made contact with each other and [Cortado] was able to pick him up and take him away from the scene,” Alexander said.

Police “aren’t really sure how much” Cortado knew about what happened when he allegedly came to get Wallace. “As far as we know” Cortado was alone at the time, Alexander said.

The defendants had stayed in the Bay Area throughout the months between the incident and their arrests, he said. He couldn’t confirm that Wallace had worked at Google.

Police aren’t seeking other suspects “at this time,” he said.

‘Now I have hope’

Friends of Nix’s expressed relief at the arrests.

In an email this week, Katharine Holland, a friend of Nix’s, said of Cortado and Wallace, “What demons drove them to leave Dennis without stopping to help? Now I have hope.

I am thankful beyond belief to the San Francisco Police Department for tracking down the people responsible for Dennis’ death.”

Michael D’Arata, another friend, said in an email, “My initial reaction to the arrest was mixed. On the one hand I had a sense of great relief that the perpetrator of this horrific crime had been apprehended. At the same time it brought up a deep sense of despair around the fact that my dear friend had been so brutally killed by someone who lacked the basic compassion to help another human being who lay dying in the road.”

D’Arata questioned why it took police “five months to make an arrest,” but he said, “I think that they have been diligently working on it,” and he’s “grateful” they brought the case “to a successful conclusion.”

Alexander, who said there were no surveillance cameras in the area, asks anyone who saw anything the night Nix was killed to call him at (415) 553-1641. Tips may also be made anonymously at (415) 5754444 or texted to TIP411. Begin the text message with SFPD. Wallace’s next court date is April 21. Both he and Cortado have another appearance set for May 5.t

Anti-gay group sues over Dolores Park pissoir

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

Rick Gerharter

The pissoir in Mission Dolores Park is now the subject of a lawsuit.

n anti-LGBT group based in Sacramento is suing San Francisco over the pissoir in Mission Dolores Park.

In its civil rights complaint, Pacific Justice Institute says, “Allowing public urination at the pissoir is indecent, and offensive to the senses,” among other claims. The group, which is known for its failed efforts to restrict transgender people’s access to public restrooms in California, is following through on a threat it made earlier this year to sue the city.

The lawsuit was filed April 14 in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of the nonprofit San Francisco Chinese Christian Union and four city residents against the city and Recreation and Park Department general manager Phil Ginsburg.

Plaintiff Patrick Sullivan lives across from the park “and has a

clear view of persons using the pissoir from his kitchen window,” the complaint says. He “alleges that the presence of the pissoir negatively impacts the value of his home.”

Sylvia Terpstra, another plaintiff, “uses Dolores Park, at times riding the train there,” the court documents say.

“Urine is nauseating and offensive when excreted in public places,” the lawsuit says, and people with disabilities aren’t able to use the outdoor urinal, which is located near 20th and Church streets and is part of the park’s recent remodeling.

The city attorney’s office made clear how seriously it’s taking the litigation in a news release headlined “Ain’t that a pissoir?!”

Matt Dorsey, a spokesman for the city attorney, stated, “If I had to predict the top 100 things in Dolores Park likely to offend these plaintiffs, I wouldn’t have guessed that this would make the cut.”

The office noted that the park, which has long been popular for boozy, pot-fueled get-togethers and frolicking, “ranks number 1 on Yelp among San Francisco’s best nude parks.”

Park department spokesman Joey Kahn said in an email that the pissoir “was conceived through a yearslong community-driven process to address concerns of neighbors and park users frustrated by people relieving themselves on the train tracks and in bushes near homes,” and the urinal “is in addition to the 27 new toilets (up from four) we’ve installed at Dolores Park.”

Among other things, the lawsuit asks for “enjoining the continued unlawful and wasteful expenditure of tax dollars on maintaining, and holding open for use to the public, the pissoir.”

A case management conference is set for September 14.t

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<< Community News

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

Medical cannabis fuels jobs in Bay Area

by Sari Staver

J

obs in the cannabis industry are growing like weeds, according to Bay Area companies hoping to expand their workforce to meet the rapidly increasing demand for medical marijuana.

On April 10, more than two-dozen companies hoping to hire more than 100 new workers paid $350 to have a table at Bloom Farm’s fourth semi-annual Cannabis Career and Job Fair, held at City Lights, a South of Market nightclub.

Resumes in hand, more than 1,200 people – mostly millennial men – waited in line for interviews, often getting the chance to shake hands with the founder of a cannabis startup.

The jobs available ranged from unpaid interns to six-figure software engineers, and everything in between. In addition to openings for budtenders at dispensaries, once the mainstay of the industry, there were also positions in gardens, laboratories, manufacturers, distributors, and delivery companies.

In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Bloom Farms Executive Director Michael Ray, who came up with the idea for a job fair two years ago, said he is trying to “shift the way people view the medical cannabis industry.”

“We are trying to chip away at the negative social stigma that exists around marijuana by helping job candidates connect with companies,” he said.

The income from the job fair “barely covers our costs,” he added.

“We’re not doing this for the money.

It’s part of our mission to fight old stereotypes about this industry.”

Employer Michael Hadj, founder and owner of 3-year-old NorCal Trimmers (http://www.norcaltrimmers.com) was hoping to hire half a dozen people to work with his company, which sends trim crews to 16 different clients. The job starts at $15 per hour and typically increases to $20 per hour within six months, he said. Hadj said that by summer, the company would need about 40 more trimmers.

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job fair,” said Hadj, as a dozen people waited in line to speak to one of the company representatives interviewing people. Previously, he recruited largely through word of mouth but conceded that rapid turnover has been frustrating.

New employees must pass a background check and, once on the job, show a “serious work ethic,” he said.

Prior experience is not necessary, said Hadj, who added that “honesty and integrity” are the qualities he looks for.

Brent Saupe, collective garden coordinator for Bay Area Safe Alternatives (http://www.trybasa. org) hires trimmers and gardeners.

Saupe, who said starting pay is $18$25 per hour, has also experienced high turnover.

“It’s one thing to have turnover when you’re paying just the basic minimum wage,” he said, “but we offer what I feel is a fair rate of pay and still have the problem.”

Saupe attributed the turnover to expectations by people that the job “is just one big smoke-out party” he said in an interview. “It’s hard work,” he added, “and we expect people to be serious.”

Business and life partners Ashley Martino and Kim Geraghty, cofounders of upscale cookie company Madame Munchie (http://www. madamemunchie.com), received more than 100 applications for just three part-time openings in sales and marketing at their Oakland company. Martino, whose family has been in the cannabis farming business for several decades, and Geraghty, a Paris native trained in fancy cookery, said they didn’t want to discuss details about the pay scale or the size of their current workforce.

“We were impressed and thrilled” to meet so many qualified applicants, said Martino in an interview the day after the job fair.

Geraghty, who grew up in France, said the couple spent “many, many months” experimenting with recipes before they came up with their current product, an “artisanal cannabis macaron,” a meringue-based cookie, which sells for $5-$6 apiece in many Bay Area dispensaries.

Another cannabis food company, Auntie Dolores, (http://www. auntiedolores.com), was hoping to find two new full-time workers for its shipping and fulfillment department, a job whose starting pay is $13 an hour. Auntie Dolores makes can-

t

Rick Gerharter

Those seeking work and those seeking workers filled the dance floor at the City Nights Club during the recent Cannabis Career and Job Fair.

nabis laced snacks, including pretzels, biscuits, and caramel corn as well as Treatibles, a line of dog treats.

Two of the largest cannabis dispensaries in the East Bay, Harborside (http://www.harborsidehealthcenter.com) in Oakland and Magnolia Wellness (http://www. magnoliawellness.org) in Berkeley, were also recruiting at the job fair.

Harborside was looking for people to fill nine different job slots, including receptionist, bud tender, driver, inventory clerk, security guard, gardener, and controller. Magnolia had only two openings, for patient services clerks, with starting pay of $14-$15 an hour for the first 90 days.

Isamarie Perez, a lesbian who is the head of business development and operations at Meadow Care (http:// www.getmeadow.com), was recruiting summer interns to work in sales, marketing, and social media. Perez, who spoke at the recent Lesbians Who Tech conference about opportunities for women in the cannabis industry, said the company provides a “seed to sale software platform,” connecting growers with patients through an app that patients download on their mobile phones.

Meadow, often called the “Uber for weed,” recently raised $2.1 million in venture funding that it intends to use to expand throughout the state, Perez said.

“We are in a growth mode and anticipate more openings in the future,” she said.

Engineer Aaron Miller, cofounder of year old startup Confident Cannabis (http://www.confidentcannabis.com), was recruiting several more engineers for the Palo Alto-based company. Miller, who met the company co-founders while the three were at Stanford University, said the firm is growing rapidly with clients in four states. Starting salaries are competitive, he said, ranging from $80,000-$120,000 based on experience. The technology company works with laboratories, producers, and retailers to get accurate and rapid data about their products.

The next San Francisco cannabis job fair will be held Saturday, April 30, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness Avenue. It’s sponsored by Green Rush, a cannabis delivery service.

For more information, visit www. jointhegreenrush.org.t

GSA Network modernizes its name

by Heather Cassell

T

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479 Castro Street , San Francisco • (415) 431-5365 • www.cliffsvariety.com

he Gay-Straight Alliance Network this week formally changed its name and tagline to reflect the youth it serves, the organization’s leadership announced.

The nonprofit will now be known as Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network, with the tagline, “trans and queer youth uniting for racial and gender justice.” The change was reflected on its website Wednesday, April 20.

The group will retain its wellknown acronym, GSA Network, as it has been referred to since it was founded in 1998.

The change reflects and gets the organization in line with the youth it advocates for and supports, Ginna Brelsford, co-executive director of GSA Network, told the Bay Area Reporter.

“It really was a youth-driven endeavor,” said Brelsford, a 35-yearold queer woman, who noted the process began with a joint task force with the board, staff, and youth advisers last October. “[The youth] have already been

using this kind of terminology. They were moving away from the GSA terminology because it’s just not inclusive, particularly because it’s not [inclusive of] trans and gender non-conforming individuals,” she explained.

“They’ve been using terms like ‘gender and sexualities alliance,’ ‘queer students alliance,’ ‘rainbow club,’ [and] ‘pride club,’ really moving away from that binary language,” said Brelsford. “So, we are really taking our direction from them.”

Sam Alavi, board co-chair of GSA Network, agreed.

“GSA Network has always been at the forefront of the LGBTQ movement; over the years, I have watched the organization evolve and change as the movement does,” Alavi said in a news release. “So, it makes sense that the organization’s name is equally evolving to best represent its communities.

“Ask any of the youth leaders, and they’ll tell you that the work we do is no longer just about gay or straight identities,” he added.

Brelsford believes the name change will have a significant im-

pact on LGBT youth.

“I think that it will have a really great impact in terms of making sure that GSA clubs know that they have the freedom to name the club whatever they wish and be as inclusive as they would like to be,” she said.

“We are really excited for this name change,” she continued. “We are really glad that we are at a place now that we can reflect all the amazing work that the youth we work alongside.”

Since its founding 18 years ago to help make schools safer for LGBT youth through establishing youth-led clubs, the community has evolved, which is reflected not only in the name change, but also including “racial justice” within its tagline, and so must the organization, according to the news release.

GSA Network connects more than 1,000 GSA clubs in California’s middle and high schools through regional summits and youth councils and 40 statewide networks and clubs nationwide.

For more information, visit www. gsanetwork.org.t

t

Community News>>

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

NCLR to honor Black Lives Matter compiled by Cynthia Laird

Crowdfunding campaign started for Compton’s anniversary

T

he co-founders of Black Lives Matter will receive the Justice A crowdfunding campaign has Award at the National Center for Lesstarted for the 50th anniversary of bian Rights’ Anniversary Celebration, the Compton’s Cafeteria riots, an Saturday, May 7 in San Francisco.

August 1966 event in San Francisco Alicia Garza, a grand marshal at where transgender people stood up last year’s San Francisco LGBT Pride to police. This summer will mark the parade, will be joined by co-founders 50th anniversary of the riot, the date Patrisse Kahn-Cullors and Opal Toof which has been lost to history. meti at the event. The trio co-created The cafeteria was located in the the Black Lives Matter hashtag and Tenderloin neighborhood and was the Black Lives Matter National Netopen from 1954-1972. Today, a work as a call to action following the plaque memorializes the riot and acquittal of George Zimmerman in was installed 10 years ago on the the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin.

40th anniversary at Taylor and Turk “Our Black Lives Matter honorees streets.

Alicia Garza, one of the cohave taken risks that have made them Felicia Elizondo, a transgender founders of Black Lives Matter pioneers and role models,” NCLR Exwoman who was at Compton’s the ecutive Director Kate Kendell said in night of the riot, said that funds a news release. “These are visionaries loss and, when he was 1, his parraised would be used for a party, who refuse to accept that systems of ents made the decision to obtain hopefully to be held at City Hall to oppression cannot be undone.” cochlear implants for him. As Rycommemorate the event. Elizondo This year, Black Lives Matter is land began to talk, his first words was also featured in Screaming the organizational grand marshal of were, “I am a boy,” prompting his Queens, a film about the riot. the San Francisco Pride parade. parents to research the issue. Like To donate, visit https://www.goNCLR will also recognize Tiara many parents, they realized that fundme.com/d6z5uu5g.

Yates and her family with its Libunconditional love was what their erty Award. Tiara and Sheena Yates child needed most, and they have Elections department became civil union partners in provided him with the support he seeks poll workers New Jersey in 2011 and needed to become a happy, The San Francisco Department married three years well-adjusted boy. of Elections is seeking poll workers later. They conceived The family, who NCLR for the upcoming June 7 primary their youngest child, helped through Ryland’s election. now nearly 3, using transition, has since Poll workers operate polling placa known sperm donor shared their story with es on Election Day and assist voters through at-home insemimillions, including in in many parts of the voting process. nation. They were both a new book.

There is a training class prior to listed on the child’s birth NCLR has been a the election, in which duties are excertificate. But the sperm leader in the moveplained in detail. Lead poll workers donor later sued for cusment furthering the must also pick up materials before tody and visitation and civil and human rights the election and transport them a trial court held that he, rather of the LGBT community since its to their assigned polling place the nd. than Tiara, was the child’s second start in 1977. The Anniversary Celmorning of June 7. legal parent, even though he barely ebration is its signature fundraiser, Applicants must be lawful perhad any contact with the child. drawing a sell-out crowd of more manent residents of the U.S., age 18 In March, NCLR and Lowenstein than 2,000 people. or older. All positions are one-day Sandler LLP succeeded in having The dinner takes place at 5:30 assignments that pay between $145the sperm donor’s lawsuit dismissed p.m. at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, $195. Applicants who speak Chiand his paternity order vacated.

780 Mission Street. Tickets are $300 nese, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Finally, Ryland Whittington and and available online until Friday, Korean, or Japanese in addition to his family will receive the Courage April 22. A separate nighttime party English are highly encouraged to Award. Ryland, 8, is a transgender starts at 8:30 at City View at Meapply. boy who won the hearts of millions treon, 135 Fourth Street. Tickets Interested people can apply in when his supportive parents, Jeff for that are $100 and available onperson at the election’s department and Hillary Whittington, shared line through May 6 or at the door. recruitment office, which is open his inspirational journey through a For tickets and more information, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from YouTube video that went viral. visit http://www.nclrights.org/ 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is located Ryland had profound hearing NCLR-Anniversary-Celebration/. in the Department of Elections, in the basement of San Francisco City Obituaries >> Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place the epidemic, working at Shanti and Our Room 43 B. For more informaKarl Knapper Love before joining San Francisco AIDS tion, visit www.sfgov.org/elections/ May 17, 1959 – April 9, 2016 Foundation to lead African-American proelection-connection.

Friends, family, and colleagues of Karl Knapper are grieving the leading light after he passed away this month. Karl, who was 56, is survived by two brothers and a sister.

An inspirational and dedicated public health advocate, Karl was at the forefront of the HIV prevention movement throughout

grams Black Brothers Esteem and DREAAM. Karl was known as someone whose service to his community never stopped at 5 p.m. He volunteered on several HIV and LGBT community organization boards and advisory committees, and always had time for people who needed advice or support.

Personally, his friends and colleagues will remember him as a well-read, loving man with a big comic book collection and an eclectic taste in music.

LYRIC was recently recognized

by Bay Area Reporter readers as the best LGBT nonprofit in the paper’s annual Besties readers’ poll.

The agency provides services to thousands of young people through both direct service and outreach.

The event is free and open to all. To RSVP, visit https://www.facebook. com/events/1773400006216396/.

RYSE Center fundraising event

The RYSE Center in Richmond, which works with youth ages 13-21, including LGBTQ young people, will hold its annual fundraising event Friday, April 29, from 5 to 9 p.m. at 205 41st Street.

Called, “Be A Kid,” the event invites attendees to experience first-

hand how RYSE provides crucial transformative space for youth to discover, engage, and change their lives and communities.

Organizers said that Be A Kid is a happy hour-style occasion that will offer food and craft cocktails.

Additionally, RYSE will offer attendees free drawing lessons led by an accomplished local artist, exclusive live performances by RYSE youth, and a variety of additional activities for adults to explore how youth navigate their self-discovery in a supportive, relevant youth-driven environment.

Tickets range between $20-$35 and can be purchased online at https://www.classy.org/richmond/ events/be-kid-home-by-midnight/ e68290.t

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with the group’s Phoenix Award for her contributions to the San Francisco leather community and her work as an activist, author, and founding member of the first Asian American women’s performance group, Unbound Feet. The banquet was sold out, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit the TGI Justice Project.

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<< Sports

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

San Francisco Columbarium

THE cemetery for cremated remains in the CITY!

t

Farewell to a fighter and a friend

by Roger Brigham

– but “Abraham” knew the freedom of America promsaid a final farewell to a ised a better life for his chilfriend last week in Colma, dren. And so he brought his a trilingual ceremony in a wife and family to America, generically religious chapel settling in San Francisco. in which a few dozen family Ostrovskiy continued members and fellow athletes to officiate, becoming the gathered, and my world may highest ranked official in the never again be so bright as it world. In fact, his wrestling was before that parting. knowledge was so highly You’ve probably never coveted that the internaheard of Abram Ostrovskiy Coach Alex Ostrovskiy, back row, far left, joined tional wrestling federation before, or if you did you Gene Dermody, Greg Lines of Denver, Russ Connelly waived mandatory retiremay have known him by his of San Diego, Roger Brigham, Akil Patterson of ment for him. given name of Abraham Os- Baltimore, front left, and Josh Watkins of San He passed on much of trovskiy. If you wrestled you Francisco at a recent Don Jung Memorial Wrestling that knowledge to the Cathmay have known him as I Tournament at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center. olic boys at Riordan High did – as Coach Alex. He was School, where he spent a lion of a man and there the top technical wrestler in tournaabout a decade as a paid were reasons why he was known by ments, where the “trophies” he was assistant coach. And, most remarkdifferent names. He was also one of awarded included sabers and silk ably, he became an unpaid coach the most dedicated and effective alrobes and animal paws and knives – with Golden Gate Wrestling Club as lies LGBT sports have ever had, so tons of crazy ass stuff that said this it trained for the 2002 Gay Games indulge me for a moment and get to guy is a stud, don’t mess with him. in Sydney. That might seem like an know this warrior as I grieve his loss He was the kind of guy the Soviet odd choice for a heterosexual, world and smile at his memory – Union loved sending to big champion wrestler, but if you knew at the memory of sparinternational tournahow much Ostrovskiy loved wresring with an old man and ments – but it never did. tling and hated discrimination, it rediscovering late in life They may have called made all of the sense in the world. the vitality of my youth. him Alex, but in their “He and I teamed up to coach Ostrovskiy was born hearts he was still AbraGolden Gate,” said club President in 1932 in Belarus. As ham. There was no way Gene Dermody. “It was a dream Soviet dictator Josef they were going to risk come true for me, then to start the Stalin consolidated his him defecting. preparations for 2002 with Alex, power, the Ostrovskiy And so Ostrovskiy whom I worshipped as a wrestling family members were continued his wresgod. His coaching style was organic subjected to persecutling career and beto the wrestler, inviting, fun, simple, tion, execution and/or came an officer in the and effective. He definitely was not exile to Siberia. A biblical name like Soviet army and after his competia one-size fits-all technician. He Abraham did not fly well with the tion career became a highly respectinspired me, and gave me new motianti-religious bent of the governed coach and official. vation to continue coaching.” ment, so Abraham became known All of that ended when the Soviet As the Gay Games were approachas Alexander.

Union came crumbling down. ing, Australian political support for You know – more Russian, less When Russian Jews began being the event’s wrestling tournament Jewish. accepted for emigration to the Unitwas crumbling. As Dermody tells it, Ostrovskiy was a little guy – but he ed States, the coach and his family the Australian state wrestling federwas a fighter and a survivor, and he had a major decision to make. “Alex” ations voted against recognizing the excelled when it came to wrestling. A didn’t want to leave – his whole tournament and officials refused to star athlete by his teens and 20s, he world was wrestling, and who knew participate in it. became a member of the national what opportunity he would have to See page 13 >> team, several times being named continue that in a strange new world

I

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Dance show gives voice to early AIDS epidemic

Kegan Marling

Brian Fisher, left, ArVejon Jones, Sean Dorsey, and Nol Simonse perform in The Missing Generation.

by Belo Cipriani

W

hile some parts of our LGBT past have been well documented and have made their mark in American history, there are still several LGBT events and stories that have not been given the attention and dedication they deserve by our society at large.

One of these oftenoverlooked segments of LGBT history is the early AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.

“Our culture has turned its back on the early AIDS epidemic,” said Sean Dorsey, the founder and artistic

director of Fresh Meat Productions, the nation’s first transgender arts nonprofit, and Sean Dorsey Dance.

“Young people simply aren’t being taught about this incredibly important period in American history.”

Dorsey, a San Francisco-based trans man and award-winning dancer – Sean Dorsey Dance picked up an Izzie Award last month – has put together a thoughtprovoking and gorgeous production that gracefully captures the experiences of survivors of the AIDS epidemic. Part intimate storytelling and part highly physiSee page 14 >>

t <<

Community News>>

Harris

From page 1

torney. “It is inevitable it is going to happen.”

But she continues to have concerns, “as the top law enforcement officer of the state,” on how legalization would be implemented. In particular, Harris pointed to “the lack of technical knowhow we cur-

<<

Gay gardener

From page 1

been a fan of the show since it debuted 16 years ago. “He knows how to play the game and has a good personality.

He is going to do well I think.”

Trang, 52, who works as a gardener for the Port, is still adjusting to being noticed by fans of the show. One stranger recently gave him $5 and told Trang to buy himself a drink; he in turn gave it to a homeless man since he didn’t need the money.

“It is fun to be recognized,” said Trang during a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

One of 18 contestants on Survivor: Kaoh Rong, which premiered February 17, Trang has largely come across as one of the more likeable cast members. This season began with the contestants split between the beauty, brain, and brawn tribes, with Trang assigned to beauty.

“When I was told on the boat I was part of the beauty tribe, I started laughing,” said Trang, adding that he joked it was due “hopefully” to his “inner beauty is what I was guessing.”

Early on gay blogs picked up on his “bromance” with fellow beauty tribe member Caleb Reynolds, who was taken out of the game for medical reasons. The two remain close friends, and Trang plans to attend Reynolds’ wedding in a few weeks.

“Every night is so cold. The best thing to do is to hold on to people, body heat is amazing,” said Trang.

“I would hold Caleb; I asked if I could hold him. I didn’t think about the bromance thing.”

He has been communicating with fans of the show via Twitter, where he has 5,865 followers, and created a fan page on Facebook where people can comment on the show.

He’s been referred to as “adorable” and “lovable,” and one fan posted a photo of her “star struck” husband posing with Trang.

<<

Jock Talk

From page 12

Unable to get any help from anyone else, Dermody asked Ostrovskiy if he might be able to help.

Now, it is one thing for the world’s top ranked official to quietly coach a provincial gay wrestling club on the side. It is quite another thing for that official, with little means of supporting himself in his adopted country, to risk everything by speaking up in what was a highly homophobic sport.

But speak up he did. He persuaded Sam Feigleman, an old friend then living in Sydney, to officiate with him in the tournament and for Feigleman’s wife, Maya, to pair the bouts.

“Alex did it without question and without fanfare,” Dermody recalled.

“Not only did Wrestling Australia reverse position, New South Wales Wrestling stepped up with one of its 2000 Olympic wrestlers to help us.”

The immediate result was the biggest and most successful Gay Games wrestling tournament ever. And as Golden Gate wrestled its way to the top of the team standings, Dermody, who had wrestled in every previous Gay Games without ever winning gold, finally came home with the top prize.

I wasn’t on the gay wrestling scene at the time. In late 2001, while the Golden Gate wrestlers were training for Sydney, I was having both of my

rently have to measure impairment for purposes of driving.”

Harris is running to succeed Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California), who opted not to seek re-election this year. Polling shows Harris to be the leading candidate headed into the June primary, where the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, will advance to the November election.

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

A Field Poll released in early April had Harris in first place with 27 percent of likely voters, and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Orange) was in second with 14 percent.

Sanchez has long supported the use of, and research on, medical marijuana for patients with terminal and chronic illnesses, according to a news release her office issued last month. It also stated that she has

“consistently voted in favor of legislation to halt raids on marijuana dispensaries and ensure that federal law enforcement respects a state’s right to legalize use and conduct research on medical marijuana.”

The three leading Republican candidates all had single digit support: businessman Ron Unz (5 percent), and former state Republican Party chairs Tom Del Beccaro

(4 percent) and Duf Sundheim (2 percent). The poll also found that 48 percent of likely voters “remain undecided or do not choose any of the five” leading candidates.

The poll of 633 Californians considered likely to vote in the June statewide primary election was conducted March 24 through April 3 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.t

Trang hadn’t set out to become a Survivor cast member. In the summer of 2014, he and his partner, Mark Philpot, 56, who works as a nurse in the Tenderloin for the city’s public health department, had applied to be contestants on another CBS competition show, The Amazing Race.

Although the couple wasn’t picked, Trang caught the eye of a casting director, who recommended he think about applying for Survivor.

“I am a huge fan but Survivor really scared me. The social game is so tough, I don’t know if I can handle it,” he recalled. “I said, ‘What the hell, let’s go for it,’ and I sent in an audition tape.”

Philpot hadn’t really wanted to tryout for The Amazing Race, so he wasn’t upset at not being asked to also audition for Survivor.

“I don’t like to be in front of the camera and I don’t like to have my picture taken,” said Philpot, who like Trang has watched both shows from the beginning. “He is very good in front of the camera. He just kind of takes to it very naturally.”

Trang left in March of last year to tape the show. His being away “was much harder than I thought,” said Philpot. But watching his partner the last nine weeks has been “really great.”

As for how long Trang has survived, that has been a surprise, admitted Philpot.

“Honestly, I just didn’t think he would make it very far. He gets along with everyone really well, but he has a tendency to be a little bossy.

So I thought he might rub people the wrong way,” he said.

Several times it appeared his fellow tribe mates might vote out Trang. But so far he has been able to, in the show’s parlance, “outwit, outplay, and outlast.” He also has what the show calls an immunity idol, offering him safety in the game if used to protect himself from being voted out.

One reason for Trang’s longevity on the show, said Philpot, is he “brings a lot to his tribe. He is a very generous person, just in life in general. He does things for people everyday I have known him, without hesitation.”

Sunni Franco, who works for Bay Crossings, which runs the bocce ball tournament, said it isn’t surprising that Trang is on the show.

“He is a really good guy and very outgoing,” said Franco. “He seems to really enjoy being outside with people. He works as a gardener, so it makes sense he is outside in nature.”

Trang was born in Saigon, Vietnam, where his parents had escaped to on foot from China in the 1940s.

In 1979 the family then fled Vietnam, after five years of living under Communist rule, aboard a fishing boat and ended up at an Indonesian refugee camp.

A year later the family was resettled to San Jose, where Trang enrolled in high school without speaking a word of English. He excelled and was accepted to Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo.

Although he knew he was gay from an early age, Trang didn’t start to date men until after college. To this day, he said, he has never talked to his family about being gay, even though he first introduced them to Philpot a decade ago. (Trang is one of 11 siblings who all live in the Bay Area. Their father died in 1991.)

“Even now my mom says how is your roommate? She must know now because I tried to kiss a straight

guy,” said Trang, referring to an interaction between him and Reynolds from one of the Survivor episodes. “It is an Asian thing. We just don’t talk about it.”

The couple owns a home in the Bayview, where Trang raises chickens and tends to a backyard beehive. They volunteer with the Quesada Gardens project, which turned overgrown medians in the area into landscaped gardens in an effort to ward off the drug dealing and prostitution in the neighborhood.

“Since I am a gardener myself, I am involved in the community work there. We do a lot of clean up,” said Trang.

Over the last 13 years Trang has raised $75,000 as a participant of the annual AIDS/LifeCycle ride that benefits the Los Angeles LGBT Community Center and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. He took part in last year’s ride just weeks after returning from Cambodia, where he broke a tooth eating a coconut, despite being anemic and having done no training.

“I was underweight and thought I had a parasite, but I had to be there,” said Trang, who also ran the San Francisco Marathon last July. “I am planning to do the AIDS ride this year. It is a fun, fun event.”

He has enjoyed watching himself on Survivor, even though he was terrified of coming off as stupid.

One trait revealed by the show has surprised him.

“I never thought I had an accent until I saw my audition tape. It sounded like I was just off the boat and I have been here 30 years,” he joked. “I worried at least I appear to be hopefully not an idiot. After the show started airing, it feels like I am who I am on the show. My friends say, ‘You act exactly as you are.’ I am glad that comes across.”t

hips surgically replaced – a painful procedure that required nearly two years of healing and left me quite unexpectedly unable to run.

Unable to play any of the run-dependent sports I had enjoyed as an adult, I decided in 2003 to return to wrestling. I’d never been involved in LGBT sports, but I figured it would be a snap to get back on the mat, demolish my competition the way I did in my youth, and grab the gold at Gay Games VII. Only problem was, as I discovered early in my comeback, I sucked.

I could remember moves, heck, I was coaching the moves, but when it came to compete, I just could not move or fight the way I did when I was a kid.

A gold medal seemed beyond my grasp.

Then sometime in 2004, after I had been with Golden Gate about a year and seemed no closer to the gold than I had a year before, Ostrovskiy attended one of the sessions I coached. After the session, he and I began to spar.

Mind you, Ostrovskiy was over 70 at the time, but he was still as tough as nails.

We’d circle around on the mat and I would fight to get inside position on him. I’d get right up next to him, then back out and start to set up a “fireman’s carry,” the takedown that was my go-to move in college and which I had just spent an hour demonstrating in practice.

Suddenly, he began smacking and punching me and screaming in his distinctive Russian accent.

“Why body no can do?” he yelled.

“Why body no can do?”

No can do what, I asked myself.

What was this crazy old man yelling about?

Then I stopped and he made sense. I realized I was listening to my brain, not my body. I was getting inside his defenses next to him, but instead of realizing that I could simply trip him and throw him to that mat, I was backing up and trying for a more complex move just because I had been coaching it that day.

Basic Zen warrior stuff that fueled the wrestling of my youth but which I had lost in the anxiety to rebuild hip strength and overcome my disability. In that moment, with the crazy old Russian smacking me and yelling, I rediscovered my “inner wrestler.”

The next day I showed up to work out with my friend Johnny Almony.

I held tennis balls so I would not depend on my hands and I wore a blindfold so I would not depend on what I saw. I began to practice, a blind man unable to grasp, and the intuitive moves so beautiful to Ostrovskiy and me and everyone else who has spent years grappling began to dance and take command.

If Ostrovskiy were here now, he would probably offer me another shot of vodka and urge me to wrap this up – he liked wrestling, not

chit-chat – so suffice it to say I went on and took the gold in 2006. Ostrovskiy was not well enough to officiate at the games that year, but he worked to make sure we had the best officials possible. By 2007 I was coaching at Mission High, and Ostrovskiy loved to come in to see my kids now and then. One session he got on the mat and showed them a bit of how he processed situations in wrestling. One of my wrestlers from Ukraine served as translator, but he really didn’t need her to translate his moves. The kids were seeing genius unveiled, and it defied words.

Occasionally I’d drive Ostrovskiy to tournaments, where he would officiate and I’d work at the scoring tables. I’d walk in a stranger, but once folks saw I was with Ostrovskiy, I’d be treated like a rock star.

In 2010, I was at a national championship tournament in Cleveland with Dermody and a friend from San Diego. We were there to cheer Donna Rose, a 50-something transgender woman who had begun her comeback in 2006 with Golden Gate. We were nervous as hell, expecting any moment some provincial bumpkin to step forward to protest Rose’s presence and make an irrational stink.

But Ostrovskiy was officiating on the mat next to Rose’s first match, and as soon as he saw her he went up to her to make a big show of welcoming her and wishing her good luck.

Ice broken. As I say, when Ostro-

vskiy introduces you, you are treated as a rock star. No one challenged Rose after that.

As the years passed, health issues began to rise for Ostrovskiy. There were heart problems and cancer.

Living became a bit more painful with every passing day. It was almost a relief for many of us when he finally passed away in his sleep Monday, April 11.

So there we were Thursday, saying goodbye to the man who had breathed so much life into our lives.

It seemed so impossible that a life so large could be lying before us in a box so small.

The rabbi sang in Hebrew. Relatives spoke to each other in Russian, then translated themselves in English to the wrestlers in the room.

Again and again, they spoke of the leader and the fighter they knew him to be, an inspiring force of nature in their lives.

A wrestler even when he was not wrestling.

Ostrovskiy is gone now, but I am richer and happier for having known him. Late in life he helped me rediscover the joy and power of my youth. I was told that competing in the Gay Games would change my life, but in reality the change began sometime earlier when a crazy old Russian began smacking me and asking me why my body no can do.

After that, there was nothing I wanted to do that my body no could do.t

“It is amazing. Even the first day it aired, people recognized me. I guess I am very recognizable,” said Trang, who even encountered fans during a recent trip to Joshua Tree National Park.

At times, however, the public adulation has turned negative. After last week’s episode aired on the East Coast, which showed Trang and two of his allies sabotaging their camp, a number of his fans expressed their disappointment via social media.

“It is very hard, extremely hard,” Trang said about disappointing his fans. “People think I am a certain way, the nice guy. But it was a game, right, and you have to separate that from who you are. I think a lot of people feel betrayed. It was really difficult to receive hate tweets.”

The worst message he has received, so far, came in mid March from a fan of one of the female contestants Trang helped to vote off the show. The poster, who said he lived in San Francisco, called him homophobic slurs and threated to beat Trang up if he ever ran into him on the street.

“I tweeted out a screen image of his post and asked should I take this seriously?” said Trang, adding that the reaction from his Twitter fans was “amazing. So many people said they reported the guy to Facebook.”

Failed tryout led to being cast

Rick Gerharter

Survivor contestant Tai Trang climbs a palm tree on the Embarcadero.

Survivor airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on CBS5.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

<<

Seeing in the Dark

From page 12

cal theater, The Missing Generation places us back into the loss and chaos that was that time, while painting a mesmerizing tribute.

“The Missing Generation project is about attuning ourselves to and attending to these longtime survivors – lovingly witnessing and holding and listening and connecting,” said Dorsey.

The 25 transgender and LGBT survivors featured in the production took time to find, and Dorsey spent a year traveling the country looking for early AIDS activists, early health care workers, and leading trans AIDS activists.

“Every single person I asked said a resounding ‘yes’ to being interviewed,” said Dorsey.

Some conditions, such as HIV and AIDS, can lead to other disabilities, and Dorsey definitely found this to be true as he collected the 75 hours of oral history in which survivors shared their own experiences, as well as the experiences of close friends, on the physical implications of the virus in their bodies.

“In the early years, many people developed cytomegalovirus (CMV), which often led to blindness,” Dorsey said.

Disability interpretation in the arts is something that greatly matters to Dorsey, and influenced some of the artistic decisions for the show.

He explained, “It was an important task for me as a choreographer to find ways for us to move, partner, and speak onstage and embody and

<<

Parks Alliance

From page 1

O’Grady. “We managed the renovation of the place, and when finished, we gifted it back to the recreation and park department.”

O’Grady was hired in October 2011 to be the executive director of the Parks Alliance, which was created by the merger of the Neighborhood Parks Council and San Francisco Parks Trust. Blending together policy work and advocacy into one agency presented a significant challenge in the beginning, he said.

“There was a lot to do to put the new organization together,” said O’Grady, a 29-year resident of the city who relocated to the Bay Area from the suburbs of Chicago, where he grew up. “It required big shifts in the culture of both staffs of the two former agencies, which had different styles and boards of directors.”

He has spent his career focused on helping nonprofits expand their capacity. In 1990, O’Grady started his own independent consulting practice, working with such nonprofits as KQED, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Shelter Network, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

In 1998 the Management Center hired him as an associate executive director, and he created its executive search service, as well as a program to train executives. The Taproot Foundation recruited him in 2004 to assist the start-up in expanding nationally.

He has also served on the boards of several nonprofits. Between 1996 and 1998 he chaired the board of AIDS services organization the Shanti Project.

As he marks five years at the helm of the Parks Alliance, O’Grady said he has no plans to leave. He is focused on helping to shepherd the creation of the Blue Greenway, a 13-mile stretch of park space along the city’s southeastern waterfront, as well as raising funds to upgrade 33 playgrounds in the city the agency has deemed as failing.

“This job continues to allow me to do something for the city I love, on a topic that is near and dear to my heart,” said O’Grady.

express these stories in a way that was authentic ... without, of course, pretending that we ‘are’ the people we interviewed. It became about being deeply vulnerable as performers and finding the most truthful gesture, breath, every moment.

Being true to these people that honored us with their stories.”

Dorsey is also looking into providing audio description services for the blind and closed captioning for the hearing impaired for the shows, as well as for the places where the production will be archived.

The Missing Generation project is a true labor of love and was funded by several cities and communities, such as Bates Dance Festival, Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), Dance Place (Washington, D.C.), 7 Stages (Atlanta), and the Theater Offensive (Boston). Additionally, during the production of this project, Dorsey became the first transgender dance artist to be awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which also supported the production.

The Missing Generation is going on a two-year, 20-city tour. In San Francisco, it will be performed at Z Space, 450 Florida Street, from May 5-7. For other locations, visit www.

FreshMeatProductions.org.t Belo Cipriani is a freelance journalist, the award-winning author of Blind: A Memoir and Midday Dreams, and a spokesman for Guide Dogs for the Blind. He was voted best disability advocate in the Bay Area in 2015 by SF Weekly. Learn more at www.

BeloCipriani.com.

The former Boy Scout has always had a love for the outdoors. He met his husband, Steve Van Landingham, a regional development director at the National Resources Defense Council, through the LGBT cycling club Different Spokes.

“We both knew the other was an outdoorsy kind of guy,” said O’Grady, who said he “isn’t old enough” when asked how old he is.

(Public records indicate he is in his 60s.)

The Parks Alliance, which had assets totaling more than $20 million in 2015, doesn’t track how much it raises from LGBT or straight donors. Its mission impacts all city residents, noted O’Grady, who earned $139,502 in 2013, according to the agency’s most recent tax filing.

“Practically everybody in San Francisco loves their parks. Even people who don’t use them often say they are important,” he said.

“That cuts across any demographic, sexual orientation, and age group; it doesn’t matter. In a super dense, urban city parks are our lungs.”

Yet the parks are suffocating in terms of financial support, contends the Parks Alliance. It points out that the city’s general fund has grown 43 percent over the last 15 years, but general operating support for parks has only grown 30 percent.

To remedy the fiscal picture, the agency partnered with District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell to draft Proposition B on the June ballot.

The charter amendment, which has broad support and is likely to pass, would create a designated set aside within the city’s budget for the recreation and park department.

It would result in roughly $1 billion in “new, sustainable park funding over the next 30 years,” according to the Parks Alliance.

Even if adopted, O’Grady said the city’s green spaces would continue to need the public’s support.

“I have come to see how important parks and open spaces are to the people in San Francisco,” he said. “We can no longer rely on government to take care of our parks.

We all have to chip in.”t For more on Prop B, see the Guest Opinion on page 6.

t

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STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-032424600

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: SUPPORTIVE LEARNING, 2639 MCALLISTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by CHARLES J. ANDERSON. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/09/09.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-033486300

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: WILDWOOD PASTRY, 709 BUCHANAN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by CHARLES J.ANDERSON. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/13/11.

APRIL 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINSTER ESTATE OF GRACIELA C. CARRENO IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-16-299673

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of GRACIELA C. CARRENO. A Petition for Probate has been filed by AMALIA P. CARRENO in the Superior Court of California County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that AMALIA P. CARRENO be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court.

The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.)

The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: May 04, 2016, 9:00 A.M., Rm. 204, Superior Court of California, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102, Probate Department. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined by section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250.

A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for petitioner: Mr. Robert P. Garcia #047867, 2588 Mission St., #226; Ph. (415) 648-3060.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, 2016 SUMMONS: FAMILY LAW, SAN DIEGO COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT \NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: SANDRA BJORK RUDOLFSDOTTIR \YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: KEVIN ANTHONY NASH CASE NO. D-559231

Notice: You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below.

You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and petition are served on you to file a response (form FL-120 at this court and have a copy served on the petitioner. A letter, phone call or court appearance will not protect you. If you do not file your response on time, the court may make orders affecting your marriage or domestic partnership, your property, and custody of your children. You may be ordered to pay support and attorney fees and costs. For legal advice, contact a lawyer immediately. Get help finding a lawyer at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www. courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), California Legal Services website (www.lawhelpca.org), or by contacting your local county bar association., at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia. org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association.

NOTICE: Restraining orders are effective against both spouses or domestic partners until the petition is dismissed, a judgment is entered, or the court makes further orders.

They are enforceable anywhere in California by any law enforcement officer who has received or seen a copy of them.

FEE WAIVER: If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the clerk for a fee waiver form. The court may order you to pay back all or part of the fees and costs that the court waived for you or the other party.

The name and address of the court is: SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO, CENTRAL DIVISION, FAMILY COURT, 1555 6TH AVE, SAN DIEGO, CA 92101.

The name, address, and telephone number of the petitioner’s attorney, or petitioner without an attorney, is:

KEVIN ANTHONY NASH, 3875 FLORIDA ST #20, SAN DIEGO, CA 92104; (619) 384 - 9130.

Date: 01/27/16; Clerk, by A. THOMPSON, Deputy.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016

▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037045700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VAL DE COLE WINES AND SPIRITS, 906 COLE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BEHROOZ PEJOOHESH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/12/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/12/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037040600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KATHRYN WOODS; KEW GARDENS, 780 27TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KATHRYN ELIZABETH WOODS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/28/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/07/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037043600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CUTIE PIES, 1750 MONTGOMERY ST 1ST FLR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARIA DEL PILAR ALVARADO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/11/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037041800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HAPPY MOVING, 81 MINERVA ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed XINGCHUAN SU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/08/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/08/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037035600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: H. G XU SERVICES, 751 STOCKTON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed HONG GEN XU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/05/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037030700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ACUTE SALON, 3913 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LINDA M. THOMAS-MAYFIELD. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/01/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037043000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: REID’S TAILORING, 2124 UNION ST #B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed YALI WU & WEI BIN LI. 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 04/11/16.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036301500

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: PACIFIC HAIR STUDIO, 1538 PACIFIC AVE #115, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business was conducted by a general partnership and signed by ATIYA OWENS & IOANNA IOSIFELLIS. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/11/2015.

APRIL 14, 21, 28, MAY 05, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037056100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GREEN BEAUTY NAILS & SPA, 1300 PACIFIC AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed HUONG T. NGUYEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/19/16.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/19/16.

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 05, 12, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037034100

SUMMONS ALAMEDA COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: BERKELEY INVESTMENTS, LLC, A CALIFORNIA LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY; PRIME REALTY AND FINANCIAL SERVICES, INC., A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION; PRIORITY CAPITOL FUNDING, INC. A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION; QUAN DANG NGUYEN, AN INDIVIDUAL; CHRISTOPHER GREGORY TOY, AN INDIVIDUAL; AND DOES ONE TO TWENTY. INCLUSIVE YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: KERSTIN SCHWARTZ CASE NO. RG15789507

Notice: You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below.

You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and legal papers are served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp) your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court. There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can locate these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case.

The name and address of the court is: Alameda County Superior Court, Rene C. Davidson Courthouse, 1225 Fallon St, Oakland, California 94612.

The name, address, and telephone number of the plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: Charles R. Ostertag, Alamere Law, 802 B Street, San Rafael, California 94901: Office (415) 938 - 7823 Date: October 13, 2015: Clerk, by Lynn Wiley, Deputy.

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 5, 12, 2016 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-16-552050

In the matter of the application of: SUKI CHANG TSANG, 2928 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner SUKI CHANG TSANG, is requesting that the name SUKI CHANG TSANG, be changed to SUKI AVA TSANG. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 14th of June 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 5, 12, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037054800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GINA GRAHAME PRESENTS, 50 STANYAN ST #101, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GINA D. GROSS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/18/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/18/16.

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 05, 12, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037049100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CAFE SIS, 402 BALBOA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JI YEON LEE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/14/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/14/16.

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 05, 12, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037051600

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

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Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037048500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAN FRANCISCO REIKI CENTER, 3150 18TH ST #243, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHRISTOPHER TELLEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/2011. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/05/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: COMMERCIAL MAINTENANCE CONCEPTS, 140 CRESTA VISTA DR., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed TONY TENG & ANTHONY VENTURI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on04/15/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/15/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE CITY INN, 395 9TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SOMA INVESTMENTS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/21/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/14/16.

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 05, 12, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037053100

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 05, 12, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037052300

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 05, 12, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037042200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CARDINALE RENTALS, 2227 FILBERT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SAL CARDINALE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/15/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ROSÉ TODAY, 1420 DE HARO ST #2, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed ALLEN HABEL & CRAIG PALMER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/15/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AMADOS, 998 VALENCIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed 998 VALENCIA LLC, (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 04/08/16.

APRIL 21, 28, MAY 05, 12, 2016

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Zoo story

Triple threat

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Media construct

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Out &About

21

O&A

19

Vol. 46 • No. 16 • April 21-27, 2016

www.ebar.com/arts

World-class cinema comes to town

by David Lamble

T

he 59th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 21 through May 5 at our beloved Castro Theatre, the Roxie Theater, the Alamo Drafthouse/New Mission (Mission St. between 21st-22nd Sts.), the Gray Area (2665 Mission between 22nd-23rd Sts.), the Victoria Theatre (16th St. between MissionCapp Sts,), Proxy (432 Octavia) and BAM/ Pacific Film Archive (2155 Center St., Berkeley).

Check It is Dana Flor & Toby Oppenheimer’s LGBT documentary set in Washington, DC.

See page 24 >> Courtesy SFFS

High times at the Oakland Museum

by Sura Wood

Grab a coffee, coffee take a survey,

T

he question that’s sure to arise with Altered State; Marijuana in California, OMCA’s everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-cannabis-but-were-afraidto-ask show, is if it’s best viewed while high.

I’m going to leave that answer to the experts, though the museum has taken the chemical bliss factor into account by issuing timed tickets; whether the mellowed out will pay attention to such practical considerations is hard to say.

change the world.

Making a Difference is Easy.

See page 24 >>

Take the 10th Annual LGBT Community Survey

®

A flower on a Lemon Kush cannabis plant during an indoor grow.

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change the world.

Flickr user eggrole, Creative Commons

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<< Out There

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

Russian to the opera

t

by Roberto Friedman

R

2pub-BBB_BAR_040716.pdf

1

3/14/16

4:07 PM

ussian operas are not generally thought of as economical in terms of their scale, production values or time commitment. But this past weekend the New York-based opera company New Opera NYC challenged that notion when they performed a Russian opera double bill at Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center.

In a collaboration with the Russian Cultural Center of San Francisco, New Opera NYC showcased two Russian operas, Boris Godunov and Iolanta, in a single evening.

One of Tchaikovsky’s most popular operas, the one-act Iolanta featured Grammy Award nominee Mikhail Svetlov, one of the most acclaimed interpreters of the role of King Rene, which he has sung many times at the Bolshoi Theater and around the world. Soprano Julia Lima performed the title role.

The New York Times wrote that Lima “has the right noble temperament for her slow arias.” Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya is riding the crest of a successful career, including opening the concert for a Dallas Opera program for female conductors.

The stage dress for Iolanta was designed by Sausalito-based Russian fashion designer Vasily Vein, who has designed gowns for Russian socialites Tatiana Shesterneva and Anjelika Koulebakina attending San Francisco Opera galas.

In the past few years, Iolanta has made a major international comeback all over the world, including at the Paris Grand Opera, Salzburg Festival, Metropolitan Opera, and Barcelona Liceo Theater. Prominent opera stars such as Anna Netrebko, Ekaterina Scherbachenko and Veronika Dzhioeva have all sung the part of Iolanta.

This Iolanta came complete with an interesting visual concept: the

A scene from Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta, performed by New Opera NYC at the Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center this past weekend.

production was designed entirely in black-and-white, the conceit being that the absence of color was equivalent to Iolanta’s blindness. The ending brought the introduction of color onstage as Iolanta gained the gift of sight.

Boris Godunov in New Opera NYC’s one-act version is a blend of pivotal moments centered around The Boris.

The full opera hasn’t been performed in large theater settings in SF since 2008.

Svetlov performed two roles in the new production: Boris Godunov, the Tsar; and Varlaam, a drunkard monk. This condensed version could be a good way to get familiar with this often four-or-five-hours-long operatic masterpiece.

This Godunov was staged in a Soviet concentration camp, Solovki. The character of Boris was projected onto the real-life director of the prisons. The tragic life of this Boris, rising to the heights of power yet feeling unhappy and eventually trapped, resembles the life of the “historic Boris,” who finalized the enslaving of Russian peasants by

canceling Yury’s Day, the one day a year when peasants were allowed to leave their assigned living locations.

May God bless and keep the Tsar – far away from us!

Correction time

“Dear Roberto and all who sail with the B.A.R., “Enjoyed David Lamble’s interview with the director of Love & Mercy [‘A Brian Wilson state of mind,’ Arts & Culture, 4/14/16], but a minor correction is in order.

[The song] ‘Love & Mercy’ was not written especially for the movie, but in fact is a song that opened Brian Wilson’s solo debut album back in 1988, one that this reader wholeheartedly encourages Lamble to investigate, especially its mini-songcycle ‘Rio Grande.’ “‘Writers and documentary filmmakers should always remember that Dumb Old Pop Music must never be taken seriously, while also remembering that nothing in the world is more important.’ – Bob Stanley, The [UK] Guardian, May 2008.

“All best meantime, Michael Layne Heath, San Francisco.”

Thanks, Michael, we stand corrected!t

Living doll

by Jim Piechota

C

Barbie: The Icon by Massimiliano Capella; Glitterati Incorporated, $16.95 remember years ago searching for a roommate situation in San Francisco, and one particular apartment I ventured to for an interview proved quite shocking. After a somewhat solemn 30-minute conversation about the overly strict house rules and regulations I would have to follow to move into this guy’s place, my stonyfaced potential roommate escorted me down a hallway to a sacred room I was never to enter, ever. He was more than happy to open the door and reveal a room covered in bright pink walls with candy-colored shelving units and tables where hundreds of Barbie dolls had been meticulously staged and posed. He was a die-hard doll collector, and his throng of insanely rare Barbies was priceless (to him personally, and on eBay, I would assume). That afternoon, surrounded by gloss and glitter, I recognized the sheer intensity (and slight creep factor) of extreme doll-collecting.

For those folks with obsessive collections of their own or even readers with just a passing interest in Barbie, author and Italian art and fashion scholar Massimiliano Capella has produced Barbie: The Icon, an artistic, five-part retrospective of the 56-yearold toy sensation that has, for many decades, continued to dazzle and inspire the imaginations of young girls (and boys, for that matter).

The production value of this glossy pictorial is exceptional and makes it a

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required item for Barbie aficionados.

Inside, the snippets and factoids on the iconic doll, her history, evolution, and influence on domestic and international culture appear on just about every page, beginning with Barbie’s creation in 1959 by Barbara Millicent Roberts, greatly inspired by Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, and Sandra Dee in “a combination of femininity and beauty.”

Capella writes that Barbie as a style icon reflected the essence, nuances, cultural and aesthetic changes of each era of her evolution. Designers from Bob Mackie to Moschino, Calvin Klein to Karl Lagerfeld and way beyond worked overtime to construct complete ensembles perfectly representative of their unique signature lines.

A section on the making of Barbie is engrossing, as are details of how the doll is mass-produced, constructed, and meticulously painted, hair-styled, and dressed. There is as well a “Ken in a Nutshell” page, all about Barbie’s handsome partner (although they broke up in 2004).

There have been many incarnations of Barbie over the decades, and all of them are featured in the book, including the Showgirl Barbie Doll in 2008, the Fashion Photo Barbie in 1978, and the Barbie in Black and White inspired by Jean Patchett in an April 1, 1950 Vogue cover.

Fascinating timelines on the evolution of Barbie as well as her many incarnations in countries all over the world decorate and exhaustively inform this psychedelically-colored coffee-table book many will consider to be the ultimate Barbie authority.

With its expansive array of details, photographs, and history, this is a must-have, comprehensive Bible about a doll who “always represented the fact that a woman has choices.

Everything is possible,” according to Barbie’s inventor and past president of Mattel Ruth Handler.

The Barbie: The Icon museum exhibit, a five-month extravaganza, just closed in March 2016 at the Museo delle Culture in Milan, Italy, and was curated by Capella himself, in collaboration with Mattel. Both this book and the companion art exhibit continue to demonstrate Barbie’s importance to youth and world culture, and the lasting endurance of a toy that has enriched countless lives and enchanted millions.t

t

Theatre>>

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Question zoological authority

by Richard Dodds

P

oor Tracy. A middle-aged woman who volunteers at a zoo as a docent, she doesn’t get any respect.

The zoo staffers look down on these civilians, and the one zoo-goer we meet, a mother with a baby stroller, is alternately abusive and a sexual tease.

And all the officially heterosexual Tracy wants to do is bond with the lemurs – except when she’s admiring zookeeper Nola from afar. “She’s as radiant as a raven’s wing dressed like a janitor,” Tracy says of Nola, before sighing, ambiguously, “She’s a keeper.”

This is but one of a tangle of stories that take place during a day at the zoo in Tar Gracesdottir’s Cage at the no-frills Mojo Theatre (located in the Redstone Building that long housed Theatre Rhino). The play’s title and its setting offer up fairly easy metaphors for both the lives of the zoo’s occupants and those who are presumably living outside the bars. And while some of those connections are there, Gracesdottir also offers novel situations and a keen ear for rejoinders that ring humorously, uncomfortably, or both amid a general state of absurdity.

Gracesdottir brings a personal perspective to Cage, having worked at zoos as volunteer, intern, and

Jamie Lyons

Val Sinckler, as a zookeeper, must deal with a deranged zoo visitor (Sara Breindel) in Tar Gracesdottir’s new play Cage, being presented by Performers Under Stress.

keeper. There is conflict in the playwright’s view on zoos, that they are both ways to nurture endangered species and a habitat so unnatural as to defeat the preceding goal. “This whole situation is non-consensual,” Nola says of the kept animals, and she’s the most animal-empathic worker at the zoo. On the other hand there is numbers-cruncher Gordon, who is all about rebranding and

automation. “We want to display healthy detainees,” says Gordon, who can foresee a future when zoos are essentially holographic virtual experiences. “The revenue stream will be like a bit-coin on acid,” he boasts.

Into this zoological debate, the playwright offers a fraught personal relationship that spills onto the other characters. Administrator Gordon and zoo visitor Rhonda are

former spouses, and Rhonda wants her man back, with his annihilation as a second option. They’re crazy in different ways, with both going to extremes to neutralize the other.

Docent Tracy and zookeeper Nola suddenly are dealing with handguns, a kidnapped anteater, not-sofriendly lemurs, and a corpse.

Not all of Gracesdottir’s dialogue provokes the intended reaction, and

there are plot, stylistic, and structural issues. But director Scott Baker’s antic production for the Performers Under Stress theater company never lacks for a total engagement from the cast.

As the docent Tracy, Valerie Fachman bubbles with innocent wonder, at least until Rhonda moves in with her insults and come-ons. We don’t have to know the baby-buggy-pushing Rhonda for very long before we know we are dealing with a sociopath, extravagantly rendered by Sara Breindel.

As her ex-husband Gordon, Charles Lewis III is a booming presence even though he seldom lets us see much approachable humanity in a mostly one-note bombastic delivery. But Val Sinckler as zookeeper Nola exudes a graceful force with an understated but intense performance.

The program notes for Cage report that Gracesdottir has worked in the zoo industry since childhood, though it is unclear if that applies to her current circumstances. Cage is far from a love letter to the zoo.

“Why do people come to zoos?” asks Rhonda rhetorically. “To see animals worse off than themselves.”t Cage will run at the Mojo Theatre through May 8. Tickets are $25. Call (415) 585-1221 or go to performersunderstress.com.

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<< Books

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

Mother, I barely knew thee

by Brian Bromberger

The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss, by Anderson Cooper & Gloria Vanderbilt; Harper, $27.99 hen one glances at the cover of this new book of intimate correspondence, one is drawn not just to the strikingly handsome 48-year-old CNN and CBS journalist Anderson Cooper, but to the woman who looks more like his only slightly older sister, rather than his 92-year-old mother. Artist, writer, and designer Gloria Vanderbilt is a living billboard for the miracles of plastic surgery, and while one of this memoir’s themes is that money doesn’t guarantee you happiness, based on her appearance, it can help you look fabulous. Last year Vanderbilt almost died of influenza and asthma, and although Anderson felt he had a close relationship with his mother, he recognized he barely knew her. So he initiated a yearlong email conversation with perhaps his toughest interview, asking Gloria questions about her childhood, adult life, and people she knew, as well as difficult issues (i.e., death), to change their relationship “so that nothing would be left unsaid.” The book focuses primarily on Gloria’s life, and longevity aside, she has led a fascinating albeit intermittently sad existence. How some of these events impacted Anderson is also explored (though minimally, as he presents little autobiographical material) with an intriguing juxtaposition between his realistic reporter’s darker outlook and her

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unwavering optimism bordering on fantasy.

Gloria was born in 1924, heir to the wealthy shipping and railroad empire of her ancestor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, through her alcoholic father Reginald, who died when she was 15 months old.

Her beautiful mother Gloria was 18 when she gave birth to little Gloria. An aspiring actress, widowed at 21, she moved with Gloria to Paris.

Gloria was raised by her German governess nicknamed Dodo and maternal grandmother Naney, both of whom schemed to move Gloria back to New York to live with her Vanderbilt relatives. This led to a famous bitter custody battle when Gloria was 10, which received sensational media coverage. Towards the end of the trial, it was secretly revealed that Gloria’s mother had a lesbian relationship, so Gloria’s Aunt Gertrude won custody, more or less raising her. After dating actor Errol Flynn and Howard Hughes (and years later, Brando and Sinatra) to escape her family’s domination, at age 17 she married Pasquale diCicco, a Hollywood agent, despite his being suspected of having killed his first wife. Abused, Gloria eventually left him, and at 21 she married the renowned orchestra conductor 40-years-older Leopold Stokowski, with whom she had two sons, Stan and Chris (long alienated). That union ended in 1955, and she immediately wed film director Sidney

“I felt compelled to go to places in the world where there was suffering and loss, where the pain outside would match the pain I was feeling inside. I wasn’t sure I could survive, and I wanted to learn from others how they were surviving.”

–Anderson Cooper

Lumet, but this relationship eventually floundered.

She married Wyatt Cooper, an author and screenwriter originally from Mississippi, in 1963. Finally happily partnered, they had two sons: Carter, and at age 43, Anderson. Wyatt would die during heart surgery at age 50 in 1978 when Anderson was 10. During this period Gloria began her own fabric-design business leading to her famous designer jeans, her face instantly recognizable through her television commercials and talk show appearances. In 1988, Carter, age 23, jumped to his death off the 14thfloor ledge of his family’s Manhattan apartment building, a ghastly horror with Gloria unsuccessfully begging him to come inside.

Gay liberation days

Blowing the Lid: Gay Liberation, Sexual Revolution and Radical Queens, by Stuart Feather (Zero Books) ven before Blowing the Lid reached my desk, several things about this purported history of the UK’s Gay Liberation Front had my eyebrows raised. First and foremost was its claim that the author, British Bloolips gay theatre troupe cofounder and interior design craftsman Stuart Feather, was “the first participant of the Front to write a history of the lesbian and gay men who joined Gay Liberation [UK].”

While it seemed rather strange that it had taken 45 years for anyone to write a history of a movement that was founded in October 14, 1970, over 15 months after the formation of the New York Gay Liberation Front, it turned out that the claim was half hyperbole. Feather’s may in

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fact be the first personal memoir of the UK’s Gay Liberation Front that also claims to be a comprehensive history of the modern British gay rights movement.

While it made sense that I review the book – I lived in New York City’s pioneering 17th St. Collective, was active in NY GLF from June 1970 until its demise, paraded the streets in drag, and remain in touch with most of the key players – I knew nothing about the history of GLF UK. To be able to offer some kind of critical perspective, I requested assistance from Steven F. Dansky, an early GLF veteran and founder of the Outspoken: Oral History from LGBTQ Pioneers project. Dansky’s contributions to NY GLF are even cited in Feather’s book, although his surname is misspelled.

With Dansky’s help, I contacted two UK GLF veterans. The first was Peter Tatchell, whose work as a gay and human rights advocate is

STUFF!

by Jason Victor Serinus

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celebrated worldwide. The other was Jeffrey Weeks, a well-known gay academic whose latest book, What is Sexual History?, reaches the U.S. in May. Flags went up when Tatchell replied that he had not read Blowing the Lid and had no plans to do so. Weeks didn’t go that far, but also acknowledged that he had not read it. He also said that while he had been around Feather in GLF, he (Weeks) had worked in GLF’s political action arm while Feather was affiliated with the Radical Queens faction. “I knew him but I didn’t really know him, if you understand what I mean,” is what I recall Weeks writing via Facebook.

Upon receiving the book, imagine my surprise at reading, in the book’s opening chronology, “1969: June 27. New York.

The police raid The Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village. Drag queens and lesbians fight back.”

First of all, the raid took place at approx. 1 a.m. on the morning of June 28. Secondly, while there were clearly lesbians and transvestites/ drag queens of all races and classes in the Stonewall that particular night – David Carter’s definitive book Stonewall says it was resistance on the part of a furious butch lesbian that sparked the initial revolt – there was also a sizable number of male-identified gay men in the bar who fought back. In fact, given that many of those who joined the melee from the outside were gay men, they were likely the majority. Why, I wondered, has Feather played so loose with such a pivotal event in our history?

The answer came upon reading Feather’s simultaneously exhaustive and exhausting 547-page account.

As much as he is determined to tell the tale via extensive, multi-page quotes from articles, leaflets, and first-person accounts, he is equally

The usually guarded Anderson does open up a bit, responding to Gloria’s revelations, especially her confession that she wasn’t a great parent, even confiding, “I wish it would have been me who died instead of your father.” He was afraid to tell her he was gay, despite knowing she had many gay friends, yet unsure how she would react due to rumors his grandmother had been a lesbian. Gloria confessed that she suspected he was gay because “all your friends were gay.” She also admits that her views on sexuality have changed through the years and is not afraid to tell Anderson candidly to his obvious discomfort that one of her past boyfriends is “the Nijinsky of cunnilingus.” But aside from this brief discussion, Anderson’s gayness and even his longtime boyfriend are not mentioned. Anderson is forthcoming, however, about the devastating impact his father’s early death and his brother’s suicide had on his life: “I felt compelled to go to places in the world where there was suffering and loss, where the pain

outside would match the pain I was feeling inside. I wasn’t sure I could survive, and I wanted to learn from others how they were surviving.”

Gloria endured a chaotic, unstable childhood, perhaps explaining her unconventional motherhood.

Despite the tragedies in her life and some regrets (especially estrangement from her mother, meeting only once before she died, and wishing she had talked with her more), she shares honest, intelligent “life lessons” on family, death, forgiveness, fame, and perseverance. Many of her musings seem cathartic, and one senses a new emotional intimacy between mother and son. For LGBT people, Rainbow could be an ideal Mother’s/Father’s Day gift, with the opening, “Let’s get to know each other better.” The title derives from a Wadsworth poem, meaning enjoy life while it lasts. Affectionate, heartfelt, inspirational, and sometimes hilarious, the book’s message is that it is never too late to cultivate a new relationship with your family and break down those walls of silence.t

set upon naming names, revealing potentially compromising personal information, and getting back at individuals whom he feels de-railed UK GLF and precipitated its demise.

Hence, amidst interminable polemics and counterarguments, you’ll find out who was wasted on dope or alcohol, who was having sex with whom, and who was dropping acid. You’ll also discover that Tatchell is a Maoist, and Weeks guilty of “shoddy investigation and analysis.”

So much for them.

But that’s just a bit of it. As much as Feather condemns those whose background in the straight liberation and socialist movements contributed to doctrinaire ideological stances, he is all too eager to counter their arguments after the fact with lengthy ideological arguments of his own. At the book’s start, this is done amidst a plethora of enlightening tales of abominable police brutality against gays – the stories bear a striking similarities to today’s “Black Lives Matter” protests in the U.S. – and many amusing accounts of street-theater actions and drag get-ups. But eventually, it’s hard not to wonder if the entire presentation

is constructed to vindicate Feather’s approach and vilify his opponents.

One item to marvel at is the leaflets GLF handed out. Judging from Feather’s account, GLF didn’t simply hand out one-page, big-lettered calls for action. Instead, it published a number of mini-tomes suitable for university courses on political theory. I do recall a number of ideologically centered debates in NY GLF, and I’m sure some people debated political theory all night rather than cruising the trucks or Christopher Street. But from Feather’s account, “think-ins,” meetings, and publications were filled with lengthy back and forths from people who took them very seriously. To the extent this was the case, I can well imagine that GLF alienated at least as many gay people as it attracted.

Then again, NY GLF did the same.

Reading countless polemics, like so much else in the book, eventually becomes tiresome. After all, as much as we in NY GLF chanted, “Smash the Church, Smash the State,” we also chanted, “Gay Love is Gay Strength.”

I could have done with a lot more lovin’ and a lot less polemic. The joys of street-theatre actions and colorful get-ups quickly become suppressed by so much dish.

Another of the book’s many challenges is the layout. Rather than putting lengthy excerpts and firstperson accounts in italics, they are simply indented. As you turn the page, it becomes difficult to figure out who is talking. Which I suppose makes sense, since Feather’s choice of what to include is so personal.

While Feather deserves praise for bringing so much valuable information together, praise must be tempered by the fact that he does so in such a back-biting, “I’ve been waiting for decades to get back at you” manner. Ultimately, his stance calls into question the veracity of his account. Proceed with caution.t

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Music>>

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Four golden girls, one terrible orchestra

Courtesy SF Opera

Le Terrible Orchestre de Belleville perform during a screening of The Triplets of Belleville at the Taube Atrium Theater, Wilsey Center for Opera.

by Philip Campbell

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he Academy Award-nominated animated flick The Triplets of Belleville is deservedly achieving cult classic status. Sylvain Chomet’s endearingly silly and fantastical romp through Paris and a megalopolis called Belleville during the age of Le Jazz Hot may have lost the Oscar, but it continues to win fans.

SF Opera Lab’s first season in the Taube Atrium Theater, Wilsey Center for Opera, couldn’t have come up with a better way to lure new patrons to the fourth floor in the Veterans Building than by screening the darling Triplets with the composer himself performing his original film score live. Benoît Charest conducted the eight-member (including one chanteuse) Le Terrible Orchestre

de Belleville for a sold-out opening night last week, beginning a run ending this Saturday, April 23.

It is probably booked solid, but I still might take a stab at grabbing a last-minute ticket, it’s that much fun. Charest stands, sits, and does a little dancing, playing swing guitar á la Django Reinhardt as his hipster band with a cheeky chirp bring the loopy mélange of jazz, pop and classical music to rib-tickling life.

Elderly Frenchwoman Madame Souza has become enmeshed in an international Mafia plot when her adopted grandson, Champion, a cyclist in the Tour de France, is kidnapped. Joining with her faithful (and very funny) dog Bruno, she embarks on an improbable quest to find him. She serendipitously allies with three singing sisters (veterans

of vaudeville) and tracks down Champion and his captors. The quartet of Gallic golden girls combine their amusingly muddled wits to outwit the hoods and save the day after a crazy chase through the streets of Belleville.

Along the way we have been treated to many snatches of jazz era music and caricatures of historical figures ranging from Josephine Baker to Charles de Gaulle. It makes sense in a whimsically French sort of way, but no one really cares when the soufflé is egged so well.

Charest’s talents are wonderfully apparent throughout the performance, and his musicians join him without reserve to create an entertaining theatrical experience as well.

We could have sat (well, maybe sat isn’t the word) for a lot more music.

Courtesy SF Opera

The Triplets of Belleville composer Benoît Charest performed his original film score live with Le Terrible Orchestre de Belleville.

Singer Doriane Faberg can sing a Piaf-style chanson and snap her way through a comedy vocal with élan, and the sidemen are a whole lot more than that.

Bringing cine-concerts to the Taube Atrium proves to be a brilliant idea. Hopefully there will be other film nights with live accompaniment in coming seasons. Triplets filmmaker Chomet made another charming animated movie called The Illusionist, based on an unproduced script by the great Jacques Tati. The delightful score by the director himself features

a boy band reminiscent of the early Beatles. Just saying.

The SF Opera Lab season continues until early May with soprano Deborah Voigt performing a one-woman show developed with ubiquitous SFO director Francesca Zambello and renowned gay playwright Terrence McNally. The tickets should move quickly for this event, too.t SF Opera Lab tickets: SF Opera Box Office, 301 Van Ness Ave., SF; (415) 864-3330; sfopera.com.

Completely Igor

by Tim Pfaff

T

he recent “news,” from Robert Craft, who should know, that at least during the time of the composition of his most famous work, Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), Igor Stravinsky was having romantic and sexual relationships with men has settled in nicely since the initial sensation it predictably caused. (Craft died not long after the publication of his Stravinsky: Discoveries and Memories.) It accounts for much, including his Vladimir Horowitz-like sincere, lifelong devotion to his wife, Vera.

It neither adds to nor diminishes Stravinsky’s reputation as the greatest composer of the last century, the Picasso of music. And it only adds to the wonder that the man who most revolutionized music in that turbulent century has become a composer pretty much everyone likes. How could this be?

The answer, of course, is in the music itself, all of which is now available in one place, DG’s Stravinsky Complete Edition. Dyed-in-thewool Stravinskians will also have to have Sony’s complete Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky set, for the truly indispensible composer’s view, but his most ardent adherents would not claim that his work with the baton was superior to that with his pen. All but those who would want to make special points about particular recordings of the works could agree that DG’s set consistently does all of them proud.

Wisely arranged by genre rather than chronologically, the set begins

with The Firebird, Petrushka, Rite and the Rossignols, all conducted by the late Pierre Boulez, who, in the prevailing fashion, has attained sainthood as a conductor simultaneously with the obits. There were always those who thought his brainy baton too cerebral, and too little sensual, but I was not among them.

And probably no other conductor of the time, save perhaps Salonen, had Boulez’s magisterial sense of rhythm, the sine qua non of great Stravinsky conducting.

The segue into the staged vocal music lands us in the company of conductors of the caliber of Riccardo Chailly, Claudio Abbado, Oliver Knussen and Leonard Bernstein, the latter of whose recording of Rite was met by the composer with a monosyllabic “Wow.” The first choice that could be called controversial, if only because of its problematic competition, is John Eliot Gardiner’s of The Rake’s Progress. But Gardiner’s has long been my personal favorite, and an interesting reflection of the fact that the piece has figured prominently in the repertoire of many conductors otherwise regarded as early-music specialists.

Russian conductors are not conspicuously overrepresented in the 30-CD box, but their appearances are special. Vladimir Ashkenazy, at his best, leads Agon, arguably the greatest of the non-narrative ballet scores, and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky takes the rarely heard, one-act comic opera Mavra. Igor Markevitch leads a rare 1962 recording of The Soldier’s Tale, with a cast that includes Jean Cocteau as Narrator

and Peter Ustinov as the Devil. It’s as remarkable as it sounds.

At this point – halfway through the set – even many Stravinsky aficionados will have left familiar territory. The choral music, chamber music and songs that fill out the set are rarely enough heard but no less compelling. Boulez continues as the supreme expert guide, and rightly so. His Dunbarton Oaks Concerto and Ebony Concerto (with clarinetist Michel Arrigon), leading the Ensemble Intercontemporain, is as good as chamber-orchestra

recording gets.

The far-too-seldom-heard sacred choral music is presented in what are effectively the reference recordings, and the solo-vocal music is as expertly sung by the likes of Lucy Shelton and Phyllis Bryn-Julson, exemplary new-music singers in their time now fading from collective memory, the common fate of newmusic singers. The two orchestrated selections from the sacred songs of Hugo Wolf ’s Spanisches Liederbuch, with Ann Murray, are particularly delectable, only partly because of

the surprising source material.

The chances of hearing any of this small-ensemble music today, at least outside a festival setting, are so incalculably small that the intimacy recording gives is a considerable compensation.

The historical rarities, which include a venerable, 1935 composerconducted Violin Concerto with its dedicatee, Samuel Dushkin, conclude with a 1956 recording of Rite with Pierre Monteux, who led the 1913 Paris premiere. As such it’s of interest, but hardly the best of Monteux’s Rites; the one to look for is RCA’s, with the San Francisco Symphony (you read that right).

The “bonus CD” is a re-release, still available singly, of a relatively recent live performance of the composer’s two-piano version of Rite, with Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim, which has all the elemental wizardry you’d expect, the two master musicians driving each other to dizzying heights.

The nigglers have already weighed in that the set is not completely complete. But all you could reasonably need to augment it is the two-CD Hyperion recording of the actually complete music for violin and piano with the unbeatable duo of Anthony Marwood and Thomas Ades.

Like Decca’s superlative boxes of the complete Benjamin Britten and Alexander Scriabin, DG’s Complete Stravinsky is well-nigh ideal, with no tricks up its sleeve. You don’t have to pop for a (commendably low) box price to get a couple of tracks not available elsewhere.t

<< Out&About

O&A

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

Thu 21 Colette Uncensored @ The Marsh

Art Therapy

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f you’re old enough to remember Shrinky-Dinks, the plastic melting craft kit where kids’ designs reduce in size when baked, you know that beautiful things start big, but are also small. Did you know that they were created in 1973 by two Wisconsin housewives for their Cub Scout troop? Here’s a shrinky-dinked version of the best arts events, condensed to a few descriptors. In person they grow to bigger than life size. Den Mother magic!

David Allen

Thu 21

Fri 22

Alonzo King Lines Ballet @ YBCA

Bay Area Dance Week @ Citywide

The local innovative dance company’s spring season includes new and repertory works, including collaborations with jazz musicians Charles Lloyd and Jason Moran. $30$65. Gala, April 23. Thru April 30.

700 Howard St. 978-2787. www.linesballet.org www.ybca.org

Buyer & Cellar @ New Conservatory Theatre Center

Anne Boleyn @ Marin Theatre Company Howard Brenton’s new version of the life of Henry VIII’s second wife, based on alleged banned books discovered decades later by King James. $10-$58.

Thru May 8. Tue-Sun 7:30pm. 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. 388-5208. www.marintheatre.org

Colette Uncensored @ The Marsh Lori Holt’s new solo show tells the story of the famed French novelist’s pioneering feminist life. $20-$100.

Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru May 14.

1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Hella Close @ Books Inc. Stories of Intimacy by Sex Workers, with Aria Sa’id, Lyric Seal/Neve Be, Natalia Garcia and T. Lathika. 6pm.

2275 Market St. www.booksinc.net

San Francisco in Ruins @ Tenderloin Museum Exhibit of paintings by local artist Jacinto Castillo depicting old San Francisco. Free/donations. April 21: Volunteer Fair. April 27: Lost Footage of Cecil Williams, film screening and talk with Rev. Cecil Williams, Janice Mirikitani, and others. Tue-Sun 10am5pm, $6-$10 ($15 includes walking tour). 398 Eddy St. 351-1912. www.tenderloinmuseum.org

Trans Sex in the City @ Books Inc. Radar and Books Inc. present trans writers Syd Nova, Aria Sa’id, Lyric Seal and Natalia Garcia. 6pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

The Untamed Stage @ Hypnodrome The new musical by Scrumbly Koldewyn takes us back to Weimar-era Berlin, with a Cabaret/Cockettes styled twoact show of songs, dances and bawdy pre-Fascist abandon, with special guest performers each night. $15. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru May 28. 575 10th St. at Bryant. 377-4202. hypnodrome.org

Wed 27

Watch or participate in any of 400+ public free dance events, outdoors, in theatres, studios and elsewhere. Thru May 1. www.bayareadance.org

J. Conrad Frank stars in Jonathan Tolin’s hilarious solo show about an actor working in Barbara Streisand’s underground shopping mall. $20$45. Thursday night pre-show trivia & piano with Joe Wicht thru April.

Extended thru May 8. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. 861-8972. nctcsf.org

Dancers We Lost @ GLBT History Museum Dancers We Lost: Honoring Performers Lost to HIV/AIDS , a new exhibit of photos and ephemera, curated by Glenne McElhinney, about Bay Area dancers who died of AIDS. Thru Aug. 7. Also, Feminists to Feministas: Women of Color in Prints and Posters. $5. Thru July 4. 4127 18th St. dancerswelost.org/exhibit/ www.glbthistory.org

The Heir Apparent @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley

The Boy From Oz @ Great Star Theater

Marvin Werlin @ Strut

Andrew Hinderaker’s strikingly staged drama about a gay athlete, disability and recovery, with a drum corps and dancing football players. $25-$100.

Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri &Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm, Sun 2pm. Thru April 30. 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

The 86-year-old gay artist’s exhibit of paintings blend contemporary style with mythological symbolism. Thru April. 470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

Mel Shaw: An Animator on Horseback @ Walt Disney Family Museum New exhibition showcases 120 artworks and designs by the prominent Disney animator, whose own life was full of adventures. Free (members)-$20. Thru Sept. 12. 104 Montgomery St., The Presidio. 3456800. www.waltdisney.org

Hamlet @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ new innovative production of the classic Shakespeare tragedy includes performers pulling their roles for the night from Yurick’s skull! Wed-Sun thru May 15.

In repertory June 10-Jan, 2017.

(510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

The Lion @ Strand Theatre Benjamin Scheuer’s award-winning solo musical about coming of age and the redemptive power of music. Thru May 1. $22-$55. Tue-Fri 7:30pm. Sat & Sun 2pm & 7:30pm. 1127 Market St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Queer Open Mic @ Modern Times Bookstore Baruch Porras-Hernandez and Blythe Baldwin cohost the vibrant reading and performance series, with featured guests. 7pm. 2919 24th St. 282-9246. www.mtbs.com

Treasure Island @ Berkeley Repertory

Yes to Everything Series @ Exit Theatre Original new performance and theatre works by John O’Keefe, Bob Ernst, David Schein, Margery Kreitman, Candace Roberts and Ady Lady. $15$20. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru May 7. (800) 838-3006. www.ftloose.org

Thu 28 Comedy Night for Immigrant Rights @ Fort Mason Center BATs Improv Theatre presents Marga Gomez, Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, Johan Miranda, and Nato Green, who perform at a fundraiser for International Institute of the Bay Area; Rose Aguilar hosts. $45-$100.

5:30 cocktails. 7pm show. Bldg. B, 2 Marina Blvd. www.eventbrite.com/e/comedy-nightfor-immigrant-rights-tickets-21792760734

The accomplished vocalist-musician performs voice and electronic works. 7pm. Berkeley Art Museum/ Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center St., Berkeley. www.pamelaz.com

Vintage Paper Fair @ County Fair Bldg.

Shop from dozens of vendors for vintage posters, postcards and more.

Free. 10am-6pm. April 24, 11am-5pm.

Golden Gate Park, 9th ave. at Lincoln Way. www.vintagepaperfair.com

Write of Way Literary Festival @ SF Art Institute First annual gathering of 25 independent literary organizations presenting authors reading from a wide range of genres.

Free. 2pm-10pm. 800 Chestnut St. www.facebook.com/ events/1711593855797091/ www.sfai.edu

Oscar de

THE RETROSPECT

Oscar de la Renta’s designs celebrated confidence. See more than 130 ensem pay tribute to one of the most beloved a

The How and the Why @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley West Coast premiere of Sarah Treem’s ( House of Cards) drama about two women biologists who clash over evolution and gender theories. $35$45. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru May 22. Harry’s UpStage, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 8434822. www.auroratheatre.org

The Leathermen’s Discussion group welcomes Bay Area artists Justin Hall (No Straight Lines, Hard to Swallow) and Jon Macy (Teleny & Camille, Fearful Hunter), who discuss the legacy of queer comic art with a slideshow full of sexy illustrations.

7:30pm. 385A 8th St. www.facebook. com/events/993246780745768/

Pamela Z @ BAM/PFA

Bay Area premiere of David Ives’ adaptation of Jean-Francois Regnard’s 1708 comedy about greed, love and lust. $35-$50. Tue & Sun 7pm. WedSat 8pm. Also Sun 2pm. Thru May 15.

2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 8434822. www.auroratheatre.org

Mary Zimmerman directs the West Coast premiere of the stage adapatation of the Robert Louis Stevenson pirate classic. $57-$97. Tue- Thu-Sat 8pm. Tue 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru June 5. 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Erotic Comics and Art @ Mr. S Studio

Mon 25

Colossal @ SF Playhouse

by Jim Provenzano

Erotic Comics and Art @ Mr. S Studio

Sat 23 Bay Area premiere of Nick Enright’s musical based on the life of gay performer Peter Allen, with his music throughout; costarring Connie Champagne as Judy Garland. $10$65. Thu-Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm. Thru May 15. 636 Jackson St. 407-9223. www.landmarkmusicals.com

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Fri 22

M A R 1 2 – M A Y 3 0, 2 0 1 6

Benjamin Scheuer’s The Lion @ Strand Theatre

This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco with the colla Renta LLC. Presenting Sponsors: Cynthia Fry Gunn and John A. Gunn. Director’s Circle: D Circle: Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, The Diana Dollar Knowles Foundation, Marissa Ma and Yurie and Carl Pascarella. Benefactor’s Circle: Paula and Bandel Carano, Stephanie a Marcus, and Jennifer and Steven Walske. Patron’s Circle: Mrs. Carole McNeil, Mrs. Komal Sh Mary Beth and David Shimmon, and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph O. Tobin II. Additional support is Hopper Fitch, and Mr. and Mrs. William Hamilton.

Photo: Steven Meisel / Art + Commerce

Matthew Murphy

Sun 24 Billy Collins, Aimee Mann @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley The award-winning poet and the singer-sonwriter share an evening of poetry, music and discussion on the creative process. $18-$48. 7pm.

Bancroft Way at Dana St., UC Berkeley campus. www.calperformances.org

Oscar de la Renta @ de Young Museum Stylish new retrospective exhibit of the world-famous fashion designer’s gowns on display, as well as archival photos and materials; Thru May 30.

Other exhibits of modern art as well.

Free/$25. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.famsf.org

SF Hiking Club @ Rodeo Beach, Telegraph & Russian Hills Join GLBT hikers for a 10-mile hike from Rodeo Beach through the Marin Headlands. Carpool meets at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores, at 8:30am.

April 27, a 4-mile, after-work hike from the bay, over Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill, to Fillmore Street. Meet at 5pm in front of the Ferry Building.

(510) 910-8734. www.sfhiking.com

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Tue 26

John Wood @ Arthaus The Lake, new paintings by the Bay Area artist. Thru June 25. Tue-Fri 11am-6pm. Sat 12pm-5pm. 411 Brannan St. www.arthaus-sf.com

Will Durst @ The Marsh The political comic’s updated solo show, Elect to Laugh: 2016, adds topical jokes about the bizarre election season. $15-$100. Tuesdays, 8pm. Thru June 7. 1062 Valencia St. 282- www.themarsh.org

Wed 27 Altered State: Marijuana in California @ Oakland Museum The first-ever museum exhibition to focus on pot, with art, political documents, scientific displays. Thru Sept.

25. Other exhibits as well. Free/$15. Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm).

1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Gayby Baby @ AMC Van Ness 14 Screening of a new Australian documentary about same-sex families, told from the perspective of four children in different families. $14.

5pm. 1000 Van Ness Ave. www.tugg.com/events/94977

Jason Schneiderman @ Books Inc. The award-winning poet reads from and discusses his new collection Primary Source. 7pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

New Frequencies Fest @ YBCA Three-day interdisciplinary experimental music concerts featuring Pamela Z, Theresa Wong, Edward Schocker and The Crossing Ensemble, and Luciano Chessa. $15-$5. 8pm.

Thru April 30. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.ybca.org

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Film>>

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Louder than ennui

by Erin Blackwell

A

Jakoblhre Motlys

Isabelle Huppert in director Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs.

t any given moment, one may be seized by the impression that life is empty, blank, meaningless. In order to distract oneself, one turns to food, sex, photography. In such a mood, one must choose carefully to ensure the cure isn’t worse than the disease. Don’t select something more boring than your own boredom. Do not, in such a mood, go to Landmark Theatres to sit through 109 minutes of pouts, posturing, and petulance spliced together under the heading Louder Than Bombs, starting Friday, April 22.

Isabelle Huppert is a great actress, no question. She is not as good an actress in English as she is in French. I don’t think she really understands the language, or the cultural values embedded in the language, well enough to connect her viscera to our vowels.

She remains mired in her Frenchness, and unless a director understands this, she’ll never give a great performance in English. As a war photographer whose roles of wife and mother

shrivel during her stints overseas, Huppert performs something like her own celebrity, a media construct devoid of innate value, without ever registering as a character.

As her husband, Gabriel Byrne gives one of the most nonexistent performances in the history of cinema. He’s there, they’re filming him, but he has nothing to exhibit but his aging flesh, which, having once been handsome, never became interesting, only thickened with age and success. I guess it’s a measure of how bad the directing is, and the script, if we’re left with nothing to contemplate but how honest Byrne is trying to convince us he is by never varying his expression except to widen his eyes. There’s zero going on under the surface, he’s made for TV. This pair of narcissists are the parents of two young men who are making small messes of their lives.

None of it really matters, since they all live in some kind of designer chalet surrounded by a forest that must be in Nyack, since that’s where Isabelle’s character, also named

Jakoblhre Motlys

Jesse Eisenberg in director Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs.

e la Renta

TIVE

d the best in us—beauty, optimism, and bles in the first major retrospective to and influential fashion icons of our time.

aboration of Oscar de la Diane B. Wilsey. Curator’s ayer and Zachary Bogue, and Jim Marver, Neiman hah and Mr. Gaurav Garg, provided by Mrs. George

by Tavo Amador

T

he power of money and how it is exercised has been much in the news recently. It’s not a new concern, however. Seldom has this issue in all its complexities been more brilliantly articulated than by Swiss dramatist Frederich Durrenmatt (1921-90) in his 1956 German language play The Visit of the Old Lady, which Maurice Valency adapted for the 1958 Broadway production retitled The Visit, starring the legendary acting team of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne (The Lunts.)

It was their final stage appearance.

In 1964, a much-altered but still powerful film version was released.

It’s available in DVD. The town of Gullen, in an unnamed, presumably Eastern European country, is desperately poor.

Once thriving, it now has no industry. Most people scrape to get by. But hope for betterment unexpectedly presents itself. Native daughter Karla Zachanassian (Ingrid Bergman), who left as a teenager, is coming for a

visit. She is now fabulously 3/9/16 wealthy.

7:52 PM The mayor and the town council are confident that “little Karla” will help her hometown regain its prosperity.

The bureaucrats enlist assistance from Karla’s former boyfriend, Serge Miller (Anthony Quinn). He married Mathilda (Valentina Cortese), whose father owned the local general store. They have a son. The city fathers prudently suggest that Mathilda remain in the background during Karla’s visit.

The populace is surprised when the express train unexpectedly stops at Gullen, rather than roll through it. Someone has pulled the emergency brake. Suddenly, a stunningly beautiful and sumptuously dressed Karla steps off the train. She soothes the conductor’s anxieties about the train being late by giving him a handsome sum. She smiles at the town’s leaders and at the school band that welcomes her “home.”

The dreary town looks the same to her.

Karla is happy to see Serge. They reminisce pleasantly. He recalls the

Souls for sale nickname he gave her, and she beams when he uses it again. So little seems to have changed, except they are both older and she is worldly.

She is ready to help Gullen’s citizens become prosperous – indeed, wealthy – if they meet her conditions.

She wants Serge tried, convicted, and executed for having abandoned her when she was pregnant with his child.

He forced her to flee Gullen in disgrace. The bureaucrats are outraged – neither they nor their justice is for sale.

Serge is horrified.

Soon, however, gifts start arriving. A new television set for Mathilda. More luxuries and the promise of cash tempt the residents of Gullen. The people begin to see Serge differently. He once was their neighbor, friend, and community leader. Now he is standing between them and previously unimaginable riches. After all, what he did to Karla was dreadful. What kind of a man would treat a woman that way? A mere girl? Perhaps he does deserve to be tried, and if convicted, punished – indeed, executed – for his crime. Even Mathilda is tempted by the better opportunities for her and her son that Karla’s promises represent. Besides, Serge probably married her, even though he loved Karla, because her family had some money and status.

Serge’s fear increases. He seems to be living in a nightmare. A desperate attempt to escape fails. He is tried and convicted. Will Karla insist that his death sentence be carried out? Would he be better or worse off if she relents?

Bergman is riveting in the first truly unsympathetic role of her extraordinary career. Her charm at the beginning as she seduces the populace and relaxes Serge is beguiling. She segues beautifully into revealing her ruthlessness. Viewers are as shocked as the townspeople.

In her climatic scene, she eloquently expresses her contempt for how easily the “good citizens” were bought – she could have offered half what she did and they would have accepted.

She’s chilling and unforgettable.

Quinn is touching. He is more reserved than usual. He memorably conveys Serge’s growing incredulity and terror. Cortese’s Mathilda suggests her marriage was not all she hoped it would be, and that she has dreams for herself and their

Isabelle, kills herself in a car accident a few years before the start of the “action.” Not that there is any real action in this numb, close-lipped, listless film, except at minute 84 it did hit me, aha, this is a comingof-age story about the younger son, who doesn’t fit in at his high school.

Devin Druid has the face of an underdone muffin with currants for eyes. Jesse Eisenberg plays his older, married brother, who comes home to avoid his wife and newborn.

In other words, it’s Proust done badly. Director Joachim Trier is a 42-year-old Norwegian, the child of directors, related to Lars von Trier (who is many things but not boring), and grandson of Erik Løchen, Norway’s answer to John Huston. In Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the set-up is not dissimilar: young son named Eugene, older brother a bit of a louse, father a pompous skinflint, and the mother absent by virtue of a heroin addiction. Except, of course, the Tyrones are personalities with flaws writ large, busy destroying and being destroyed. There’s a reason they exist and we watch them.

There is no reason to watch Louder Than Bombs. If director Trier had an ounce of perspective or wit, he could have made this a stinging satire of an elite aesthete who runs away to Iraq or Syria to photograph the martyrs of American bombs, returning to awards and acclaim in New York City, before retiring to Nyack bored out of her mind. In the lineage of Ibsen and Bergman, he could have lanced some festering cultural wounds. There’s something profoundly disgusting about these people’s petty hypocrisies that Trier exposes but fails to explode. He’s too polite and discreet. He’s a bore. In cinema, that’s an unforgivable sin.t

son that only money can make a reality. The rest of the cast, which includes Claude Dauphin as Karla’s factotum and Irina Demick as Anya, a hotel maid and the mistress of the police chief, is good.

Karla sees herself in Anya. and treats her as kindly as she can treat anyone.

Bernhard Wicki’s direction builds the tension and suspense. Ben Barzman adapted Valency’s script.

Rene Hubert designed Bergman’s costumes, which were executed by Nina Ricci and nominated for an Academy Award.

With the exception of one bizarre ensemble, they magnificently convey Karla’s status and arrogant confidence. The effective score is by Richard Arnel and Hans-Martin Majewski.

The movie opened to derogatory reviews and poor business.

Many criticized the adaptation, but today it seems fitting. In an hour and 40 minutes, it hauntingly deals with vengeance, justice, greed, corruption, and the eternally open wounds of brutalized youth. No one is spared.

At one point, a remake was discussed as a vehicle for Elizabeth Taylor, but it was never made. Kandler and Ebb adapted it as a musical, initially starring Angela Lansbury. In 2015, Chita Rivera headlined it on Broadway, but it had a disappointing run. It’s not surprising – such a grim view of humanity is unlikely to be popular with today’s audiences, who more and more seek escapism when they attend the theatre.t

<< Fine Art

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

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Thomas Hawk, Creative Commons

Neon signs in the window of a medical cannabis club on Haight Street in San Francisco.

<<

Altered States

From page 17

Under the influence or not, you’d be hard-pressed to name a place where you could find both a working Munchies vending machine stocked with Fritos and Cheetos to satisfy dope-induced cravings, and a confessional that encourages visitors to detail their sins on note cards and deposit them in a box. Testimonials from previous supplicants run from “I’m high right now” to an admission of drug use ruining a relationship. If disclosure isn’t your thing, the exhibition, which is organized

in a single large gallery like a science fair, has 10 booth-style installations that offer many other opportunities to express opinions and share personal experiences.

A social and cultural history of weed as well as an exploration of the controversies surrounding its legalization, including criminal prosecutions skewed by race and geography, and the impact on wildlife habitat, Altered State is a mix of DIY science, sociology, charts and graphs, photos, ephemera, film clips, old news footage, and even a couple of chances to spin a gimmicky “wheel of fortune” that lands on various

factoids and outcomes as in, if you become a pot entrepreneur, you could end up busted or super-rich.

The show may be scattered, a bit thin and not terribly insightful, but it’s not without a sense of humor and the potential to provoke discussion. Some parents have expressed concern about bringing younger kids along, though the setting could provide a forum for touchy, otherwise difficult conversations with teenagers.

Given its hotly debated topic and the political moment, the exhibition couldn’t be more timely. However, breathing life into statistics and multiple perspectives and turning those into an engaging visual experience poses a substantial challenge that the curators and designers have gamely attempted to surmount through interactive components and displays.

What the show has going for it is novelty – it’s the first museum exhibition on the topic – and a sheaf of fun facts. For instance, did you know that California was the first state to outlaw marijuana (in 1913), and two years before it did so, Opium Commissioner Dr. Hamilton Wright

Nathan Rupert, Creative Commons

A protester with a sign at San Diego Gay Pride in 2012.

predicted “the fiends would turn to Indian hemp?” Or that there’s an order of New Age Marijuana Nuns whose members grow plants for medicinal purposes – no, they don’t inhale – and that $2.7 billion have been spent at medical dispensaries, giving investors everywhere visions of another gold rush?

The entry is lined with quotes from an array of sources. Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Education, William Bennett, who can always be relied upon to weigh in with a reactionary response, wonders why anyone would want “to foster a drug that makes you stupid,” while John Ehrlichman, former President Nixon’s felonious henchman, theorized that marijuana and heroin use would make it easier to crack down on hippies and arrest African Americans.

Miley Cyrus, who feels compelled to say more than one wants to hear, proclaims that “weed is the best drug” – since twerking, that is.

But the exhibition is most enjoyable when it zeroes in on the popculture embrace of and reaction to getting high. Famous, not-sodynamic stoner duos such as Wayne and Garth, Beavis and Butthead, Harold and Kumar, and of course, the granddaddy potheads of them all, Cheech & Chong, get some wall space, but Seth Rogen is noticeably missing from a rogue’s gallery that contains an academic thought or

two on the stoner genre. If there was ever a time to put aside self-serious critical analysis, this is it, bud.

An interesting section titled “Evil Weed” charts the trajectory of attitudes toward the drug from 1875 through the present, from “bad to badass.” Weed’s legacy of wickedness helped make it the drug of choice for young rebels, Beat poets, cool cats and jazz musicians of the 1920s and 30s like Louis Armstrong, who chose “Muggles,” a slang term for reefer, as the title of one of his songs. Later, dope would be adopted by flower children of the 1960s, and condemned by the Reagan administration, which advocated a duly ridiculed “just say no” policy and “family values.” Now here we are in a period of decriminalization when marijuana is touted for its medicinal properties, an industry whose proceeds can bolster revenue-starved municipalities. A display modeled on a clinical research lab examines the drug’s efficacy in treating a number of maladies. Evidently, the jury is still out on epilepsy; it hasn’t been shown to cure cancer, depression or pain; it does alleviate nausea; and thank heavens, it doesn’t cause schizophrenia. Hey, man. It’s all good.t Through Sept. 25 at the Oakland Museum of California. Info: museumca.org.

Courtesy SFFS

Tickled is David Farrier’s look at the world of man-on-man competitive tickling.

<<

SFIFF59

From page 17

Longtime fans of the Festival may recall its origins stretching back to 1957, when some San Francisco civic leaders thought our berg needed to join the growing chain of film fests showing post-WWII films celebrating the new Europe, along with emerging national cinemas in Asia and Latin America. For years the SFIFF played the Masonic Auditorium, before a theater was constructed at the Palace of Fine Arts. The first festival opened with an offering from Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, Il Grido, starring Steve Cochran and described by

critic Leonard Martin as a “leisurely yet compelling study of Cochran’s mental disintegration due to a lack of communication with those he loves.”

As usual, the film fest will host an array of world-class filmmakers and actors, including Irving M. Levin Directing Award winner Mira Nair, whose 2001 feature Moonson Wedding will be shown at the Castro (4/21). We begin with a few highlights for the LGBTQ film community.

Check It Dana Flor & Toby Oppenheimer give us an LGBT doc set in a multicultural Washington, DC, where gay and trans youngsters See page 26 >>

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TV>>

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Caught up in the discrimination frenzy

by Victoria A. Brownworth

W

e don’t know about you, but despite our other hat being politics writer/editor, we are way over this primary season. Enough with your damn debates!

Yet it’s easy to see why this election is so important when you turn on the tube and yet another state has anti-LGBT legislation pending or just passed. Some TV faves have got caught up in the discrimination frenzy – notably in Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina. Fear the Walking Dead, Archer, Halt & Catch Fire and The Originals all shoot in Georgia. Nashville in Tennessee.

Sleepy Hollow and Under the Dome in North Carolina. True Blood shot in Mississippi, but ended in Aug. 2014, for which we are now grateful, as Mississippi has the most repressive law. Various reality shows shoot in all three states, notably the highly rated Real Housewives of Atlanta.

There’s no escaping the politics of our own lives – not even on TV. But TV certainly had an influence in Georgia. After Disney threatened to pull all its TV and film projects out of the state, Gov. Nathan Deal suddenly vetoed the anti-gay bill that passed the state legislature last week. Deal cited the Constitution, but we think it was this, from Disney: “Disney and Marvel are inclusive companies, and although we have had great experiences filming in Georgia, we will plan to take our business elsewhere should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law,” said a Disney spokesman the day after the legislation was passed. The top-grossing films of the past five years have all come from Disney.

The problem for ABC’s Nashville, which has had LGBT storylines throughout its four seasons, is Nashville is set in Nashville. Emmynominated Nashville star Connie Britton (Rayna James) sounded off with The Hollywood Reporter on April 14 as two bills, HB 1840 and HB 2414, are being considered. HB 1840 is comprehensively anti-gay and lesbian, and has already passed the state’s House and Senate. HB 2414 is yet another gender-identity bathroom bill and has yet to make its way to Gov. Bill Haslam. Britton, who has long been a strong supporter of LGBT rights, hopes Haslam vetoes both. She told THR she thinks the legislation is “extremely harmful to everyone. Obviously we are seeing a lot of this legislation crop up now,” Britton said. “It’s disturbing and it’s unjust.” She added that both bills are “completely un-American.”

If the bills do go through, Britton thinks the entire crew of the hit show will be upset. “Honestly, if they proceed with this, I’m not necessarily going to feel comfortable working there. That is a tricky situation because of course we employ a lot of people in the state, and you certainly don’t want to have to interrupt that, but at the same time, this is the only way that we can have our voices be heard.” Referencing the Georgia veto, Britton noted, “Unfortunately, a lot of the way that we do that is through the choices we make financially.”

Britton was speaking for herself, not the show, but the numbers are clear: TV shows bring huge money to cities and states, and lobbying for these shows is itself a big business. There’s also quid pro quo-ing involved. THR reports that Nashville got $8 million in unspecified economic incentives because, as the state’s film and TV commissioner Randy Boyd notes, Nashville has high “economic value” for Tennessee

and also provides “great advertising” for tourists. The show also generates more than $30 million in revenue and employs a significant number of local people.

None of which mitigates Britton’s feelings about the laws. Nor Chris Carmack’s. Carmack, who plays hunky/sexy Will Lexington, a gay country-western singer who is ironically struggling with the antigay atmosphere of Nashville, was as distressed as Britton. He told THR the legislation is “incredibly harmful.” Carmack also believes his storyline has been beneficial and wellreceived in Nashville, which he said had been “overwhelmingly receptive to the storyline.”

Carmack, who is straight but has received accolades from GLAAD, said, “Even people coming at me and questioning me from a place of prejudice are open to conversations. The state is basically setting an example for people that it’s ok to discriminate.”

He called the legislation “devastating” and said it directly affects people “who might be about to change their minds about something that they’ve believed in their whole lives.”

Lesbian nuptials

Meanwhile, Disney continues to promote LGBT-themed programming, which is a kind of irony we can’t help but love. The April 13 episode of ABC’s black-ish was all about lesbian weddings and feminism. Dre’s (Anthony Anderson) sister Rhonda (Raven Symoné) is a lesbian and she’s about to get married to her long-time girlfriend Sharon (Elle Young), much to the consternation of their mother, Ruby (Jenifer Lewis), who announces when the couple arrives at Dre’s house, “The homosexuals are here!”

A discussion ensues about whether or not Sharon will keep her name or take Rhonda’s, an interesting debate in lesbian couples. It’s revealed that Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross) never took Dre’s name because she’s a feminist and a doctor. Which leads to this hilarious exchange: Ruby: “Oh, so I see. You done turned into one of these hairylegged man-haters.”

Rhonda: “Mom, for the last time, lesbians don’t hate men or love tuna.”

Ruby: “No, baby, I’m talking about feminists now.”

Rhonda: “Oh well, they really do hate men. I don’t know how they feel about tuna.”

Rainbow: “Feminists do not hate men. We actually love tuna. We simply believe that women and men are equal. And I will fight up against any custom or tradition that reinforces that we’re not. Women like Alice Paul, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, these are the women that paved the way for me to be the doctor that I am today. I say that a lot, don’t I?” Rhonda: “What I think Mama’s trying to say is that black feminists and white feminists had a little bit of a different path. It wasn’t as simple for black feminists, because they had to choose between civil rights and feminism.”

The conversation continues about why black women wanted to take their husbands’ names, and why Sharon should keep her own.

One of the things we like about black-ish is the way serious political issues get folded into the show: feminism, homophobia and humor in one half-hour? We’ll take it.

We’ll also take anything Fox’s Empire has to give. Because there’s no one we don’t love on that show.

The April 13 episode was directed by Paris Barclay, one of our fave black

Courtesy ABC

Nashville star Connie Britton sounded off on recent discriminatory legislation.

gay directors, and as we say: when we’re behind the camera, we’re in front of the camera. And this show has a lot of queers behind the camera. Warning: spoilers ahead!

We love Empire. We love Lee Daniels, the show’s black gay creator. We love Ilene Chaiken (The L Word), the show’s out lesbian executive producer. What we don’t love is that the show just joined the ranks of the bazillion other TV shows that have killed off their lesbian/bisexual characters. There is no more perilous role than being a lesbian on the tube.

Who got the ax? Billionaire Mimi (Marisa Tomei) and her wife, Camilla Marks (Naomi Campbell), in a scene straight out of Shakespeare.

This show is always leaning King Lear, but this episode tossed some Macbeth into the mix. Both Mimi and Camilla have had all the Lyonses under their moneyed thumbs.

Cookie has been looking for a way to get Camilla out, but it’s Hakeem who devises a plan. A literal bloodbath ensues.

But why did Camilla and Mimi have to go? We know Empire likes to kill people off, and we’re still reeling from the last death, but why the gay girls? Or why kill Mimi when it was really Camilla everyone wanted out? Couldn’t Mimi have found love with Cookie, as we have been hoping since she first arrived? And why does everything involving Lucious have to be so very very bloody?

That last is perhaps because his mother was bipolar and did some terrible things to her son. In flashbacks we saw Leah (Kelly Rowland), who died when Lucious was nine.

Not a pretty picture, that may explain a lot of what is happening in Lucious’ psyche.

ABC’s The Family has moved into its darkest territory ever. If you haven’t been watching this stellar drama, get thee to ABC.com and play catch-up. This show is navigating that blurred line between homosexuality and pedophilia in a fascinating and non-homophobic way. The sexual dynamics of the pedophiles in question, both of whom have taken very different routes, are very revealing. There’s certainly a voyeuristic element to watching this, but more documentary than anything puerile.

The gay murder on the most

recent episode of Lucifer was handled well. And highlighted the perils of the closet, about which not enough can be said. We’d like to see more of the lesbian side of Bethany Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) on Greg Berlanti’s Blindspot. We love Jean-Baptiste and watched some truly mediocre TV over the years simply because she was in it.

We’d prefer this wasn’t another “two minorities folded into one character” event, but we love that such a complex character is also a lesbian.

Last week’s episode had her take out a guy abusing a woman. The show killed off Bethany’s previous partner, so we’d like to see her have someone for more than the time it takes to cock a pistol.

HBO has two shows in the queue on demand that are of particular interest. Anderson Cooper seems to be everywhere these days, but HBO’s Nothing Left Unsaid: Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt is one of the gayest things you will see anywhere. The Silver Fox and his 92-year-old mother sit down for a complex Oedipal wreck of a documentary that is by turns fascinating and frustrating. Vanderbilt is an extraordinary woman whom we interviewed years ago when one of her memoirs was published. Married four times, including to Leopold Stokowski and Sidney Lumet, she and Cooper have been the quintessential diva mother and gay son for many years. When Cooper was an anchor for ABC’s World News Now, she would stop by the middle-ofthe-night newscast to hang out in the then-very informal set.

Cooper has written and spoken before of the suicide of his brother, Carter, which happened literally before the eyes of Vanderbilt and Cooper. Vanderbilt has endured other tragedies as well. Nothing Left Unsaid is a love letter from a gay son to his adored mother, and for her part Vanderbilt is still fascinating and sharp as the proverbial tack, which makes it all compelling.

Highly recommended for queens of all ages.

We worked for Spin magazine when the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings were held. We were asked by our editor to “out” Hill, who was at that time rumored to be in a lesbian relationship (she’s not now). It was one of very few

assignments we have refused in our life, and the consequences weren’t great, but we’re glad we did. The smearing of Anita Hill was one of the worst things to happen in the first Bush Administration.

Kerry Washington is made to look a lot like Anita Hill in Confirmation, the HBO film she co-produced.

Washington, who has been a highprofile surrogate in both the Obama 2008 and Clinton 2016 presidential campaigns, is a skilled and nuanced actor, as those of us addicted to watching her as the Beltway fixer Olivia Pope on Scandal can attest.

At the time, Hill was made out to be a psychopathic monster trying to take down a major black judicial figure, Thomas. The things that were said of her were horrible and the sheer volume of men in power saying them, including current Vice Pres. Joe Biden, prodigious.

Washington has made this project a labor of love, and her beautifully restrained performance is sure to garner an Emmy nod. The prism of history puts the nightmare for this then-35-year-old attorney into a perspective that illumines the racism and misogyny that combined to paint her as a liar and a kind of heretic to the notion that a black man should be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Thurgood Marshall.

At times Confirmation is difficult to watch, as were the hearings themselves, because of the display of blatant sexism. But Washington and Wendell Pierce’s (Clarence Thomas) performances are riveting. We know how it ends, of course. Hill, youngest of 13 whose parents were sharecroppers and yet who graduated from Yale Law School in 1980 at 24, was discredited. Thomas is still on the court today, the most conservative of all the justices. And sexual harassment on the job is still, 25 years later, a bedrock of American life for women. Confirmation, written by Oscar nominee Susannah Grant and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, debuted April 16, is currently on demand on HBO, and is a mustsee. Also starring Greg Kinnear, Eric Stonestreet and Jennifer Hudson.

Speaking of HBO, set the DVRs for the return of some faves on April 24: Game of Thrones, Veep and Silicon Valley. The conventions are coming.

Finally, has it only been a year since then-Bruce Jenner told Diane Sawyer, “I am, for all intents and purposes, a woman?” The April 16 episode of I Am Cait doesn’t feel much like a celebration of trans identity. There’s an emotional scene with Kris Jenner, who is still reeling from the couple’s 2014 divorce after more than 25 years and two children together. And there’s a scene with Jenny Boylan about politics that will have most LGBT people pumping their fists as Boylan takes Jenner to task for Caitlyn’s horrible rightwing “I love Ted Cruz!” politics.

We’ve watched a lot of friends transition over the years, and while we’re glad Jenner has brought attention to trans issues, as a spokesperson for a movement? Well, listen to Boylan. Or watch the incredibly moving segment on Nightline with Reevs O’Neal, a transman living in the shadow of the North Carolina bill. O’Neal explains, “In North Carolina, it definitely wasn’t safe for me to transition. It was just terrifying.”

He goes to Washington, D.C. for his surgery. (You can watch the segment at ABC.com) So for the spokespersons whose politics make us cringe as well as the allies who make us proud and for the subtleties of politics in our daily viewing as well as the relentless primary that won’t reach California until June 7, you know you really must stay tuned.t

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26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • April 21-27, 2016

Art unpacked

by David-Elijah Nahmod

Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson (Wolfe Video) ane Anderson, an out lesbian, is enjoying the life and career her Great Aunt Edith should have had.

Anderson is a film director and screenwriter. Her credits include penning the screenplay for the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014), for which she won an Emmy Award.

Aunt Edith wasn’t so fortunate.

Edith Lake Wilkinson (18681957) was an artist who lived in New York City with her partner Fannie.

The daughter of a wealthy family, Edith was committed to a mental hospital in 1924, where she spent the rest of her life. Was Edith mentally ill, or was she falsely committed by a shyster attorney who was stealing her money and who used her lesbianism as an excuse to have her declared insane?

Decades after Edith’s death, Anderson and her wife try to unravel the mystery. As Michelle Boyaner’s documentary Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson

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begins, Anderson is examining Aunt Edith’s paintings, which sat unseen in the attic of a relative’s home for more than half-a-century. Wilkinson’s work is bright, joyous, and exquisite. Her last paintings, produced six months before she was committed, do not appear to be the work of a woman who was suffering from mental illness.

Anderson decides to find out what really happened, and to bring Wilkinson’s work into the public eye. She arranges for a gallery exhibition in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a historic resort town that has long been an LGBT mecca. Both Anderson and the gallery owner are astonished and delighted to discover that Wilkinson had painted a picture of the building that now houses that same gallery.

Anderson talks to family members, including a cousin who knew Aunt Edith. She visits the hospital where Edith lived. In addition to hospital records, she uncovers a letter sent to Wilkinson by her attorney shortly before he had her committed. In that chilling note, the attorney suggests that Wilkinson live apart from her “friend” Fannie, who

was actually Wilkinson’s spouse.

It was a different world during the 1920s. Not only did the two women have no legal protections, they were considered “sick” in the eyes of the law and by society. The result was the grave injustice that forced Wilkinson to live the last 30 years of her life in lonely misery, her artwork packed away and forgotten.

Packed in a Trunk is at once profoundly sad and joyously uplifting.

It’s infuriating to relive the horrific injustice that Wilkinson endured because she dared to be who she was at a time when “ladies” were expected to “know their place.” Yet the film is also a delightful treasure chest: viewers will share Anderson’s pleasure as she exposes her aunt’s art to the light of day and gives Wilkinson the acclaim she deserves.

The film underscores the importance of remembering those who came before us. It reminds us that we must be ever-vigilant in the fight for acceptance and equality.

Jane Anderson has launched a website which offers further information about the film and about Wilkinson’s life: packedinatrunk.com.t

Courtesy SFFS

In The Man Who Knew Infinity, Dev Patel plays a WWI-era Indian math student at Cambridge.

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SFIFF59

From page 24

of color have to defend their life choices 24/7. You may find yourself constantly changing your opinion on whom to pull for in a story that illustrates not only the heavy weight of America’s vicious racial history, but also how hard it is to chart genuine opportunities for kids born and seemingly destined to remain stuck

in the shadow of the Obama White House. (Alamo, 4/22; Victoria, 4/24) Tickled David Farrier is an out gay reporter who stumbles upon the weird world of man-on-man competitive tickling. Some viewers may be drawn back to childhood times when prepubescent wrestling could often dissolve into tickling to exhaustion without the guilt pangs that early sexual fumblings could induce. A crazy cyberworld detective story that promises lovely men

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and some very odd beats. (Alamo, 4/23; Victoria, 4/24) Neon Bull Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro presents perhaps the fest’s oddest duck. Neon Bull is a full-submersion baptism into a still raw, frontier-like society. The film’s appeal lies in its original take on sex, gender and the never-ending battle of the sexes.

We first spot Iremar at the local vaquejadas (rodeo) in Brazil’s still-wild Northeast, where men on horseback work to bring bulls to the ground by seizing their tails. While Iremar is a natural vaquero gifted at feeding and caring for the bulls, he yearns to create women’s clothing.

At home, he shares his truck with

coworkers: Galega, an exotic dancer, truck driver and mother to her cheeky daughter Cacá; and Zé, his rotund compadre in the bull pen. Together they comprise an odd but close-knit family. Swinging in his hammock, Iremar’s head is full of dreams of sequins and exquisite fabrics as he mentally assembles his latest fashion designs.

In Portuguese with English subtitles.

(PFA, 4/23; Roxie, 4/25) Under the Gun This advocacy doc opens with a devastating statistic: “Before this film is over, 22 people in America will be shot. Six of them will die.” Directed by Stephanie Soechtig with understated narration from former CBS anchor Katie Couric, Under the Gun takes you on a meticulously researched journey across a nation with a complex love affair with firearms.

The film lays out the paradoxical history of the pro-gun lobby the National Rifle Association, showing that the NRA’s resistance to guncontrol laws dates back only as far back as the late 1960s, when Pres.

Johnson signed civil rights legislation that empowered African Americans but produced fear and loathing across a broad swath of conservative whites. We hear the stories of Americans for whom gun violence is no mere abstraction: a father ponders the murder of his youngest son during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre; a Chicago mother mourns the gun death of her son headed for college; and the astronaut hubby of former Rep. Gabriel Giffords takes us through his wife’s recovery from a head wound to her return as a spokeswoman against

America’s gun-violence epidemic.

The filmmakers report that you’re 65 times more likely to die from gun violence in the US than in Britain.

When Couric asks a panel of gunowners who’s packing a pistol at that moment, every hand in the room shoots up. A festival must-see: the life you save may be your own.

(Victoria, 4/27; Alamo, 4/29) Love & Friendship Whit Stillman directs the opening-night film, a period comedy about spunky social climber Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale), who tries to wiggle out of a social scandal while putting herself and her daughter in a good position to marry up. Stillman adapts a Jane Austen novella set in the 1790s that looks into the affairs of the privileged and those yearning to be, winking at contemporary pretensions through the lens of the past. (Director Stillman and actor Beckinsale are expected to appear.) (Castro, 4/21) Miss Sharon Jones! Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, U.S.A.) presents a moving bio-doc on soul singer Sharon Jones as the veteran performer battles pancreatic cancer. Kopple’s cameras follow Jones from a tiny church in South Carolina to NYC’s majestic Beacon Theatre. (Castro, 4/22) Author: The JT Leroy Story A few years back, a lively literary dustup ensued around the identity of “trans artist” JT Leroy. Many were taken in, and among the lessons learned was, It’s not nice to fool [Fresh Air radio host] Terry Gross! Now filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig attempts to re-spin and See page 27 >>

WINNER Best Wedding Photographer

Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

Courtesy SFFS

Scene from writer-director Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan.

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Books>>

April 21-27, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Ageless & evergreen

by Jim Piechota

Our Young Man by Edmund White; Bloomsbury, $26 eaders who covet boys with youthful beauty above all else, with their pink, unblemished, cherubic skin and boundless energy, will surely relate to Guy, the central character and the sensual source of jealousy, desire, and hushed resentment in Edmund White’s 13th novel Our Young Man. Armed with a French accent and killer good looks, Guy commands the story right from the opening pages. The novel is a study in extremes set in the heady, fashion-forward, discocentric era of the 1970s and 80s, and winds its way through the murky shadows of the AIDS epidemic’s peak. Early warning of the disease’s progression finds the novel’s narrator fretting over a new “gay cancer” that had swooped in unannounced and “wiped out a whole house of five on Fire Island.”

Beautiful Guy, quite the heartbreaker, has surprisingly continued working as a model even beyond his youth and well into his second decade, and White paints his struggle to stay relevant, even in the New York City of the 1980s, admirably.

Guy is a character who obviously loves to be watched and adored, but it soon becomes evident that beauty and brains are not mutually exclusive. Throughout the course of the book, he emerges as somewhat of a pretty mess, particularly when the novel winds its way from Paris into Manhattan. Guy becomes enraptured with Buddhism and is frustrated with the older men his agent introduces him to, who want more than he is able to offer, though he is more than open to accepting sports cars from sadistic old Belgian men or a Fire Island beach house from “a fat man in a sports jacket” with whom he’d slept only once.

White’s version of a long-forgotten New York City is bittersweetly depicted, and brims with brilliant nostalgia, a large part of what

R

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SFIFF59

From page 26

update the whole fuss with a lengthy film chat with the woman behind the hoax, SF resident artist Laura Albert.

(Castro, 4/22) Cast a Dark Shadow For decades, British actor Dirk Bogarde was sublime as gents with martial problems, blackmailed for being gay or fatally smitten by a Swedish youth (Death in Venice). Here we have early-period Bogarde as a suave wife-killer who meets his matches in characters played by Margaret Lockwood and Kay Walsh. (Castro, 4/23; PFA, 4/24) Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World German director Werner Herzog recaps the history of the World Wide Web. (Castro, 4/23) The Man Who Knew Infinity Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel returns as a WWI-era Indian math student at Cambridge who faces bias and other challenges while studying under a famed don (Jeremy Irons).

(Castro, 4/24) Monsoon Wedding (2002) Irving M. Levin Award-winning director Mira Nair is honored and presents a classic drama about the complications that ensue from an arranged marriage. (Castro, 4/24) The Fixer Ian Olds offers an Afghan-born young man who served US forces as an interpreter and now faces fitting into a Northern California landscape filled with drugs and cultural intrigue. See if you can spot Palo Alto native James Franco hiding in plain sight. Hint: his character has long hair and can’t be trusted.

(Castro, 4/24)

I am the future of the LGBT community.

I’m 26 and transitioning.

makes this novel shine. Readers of a certain age will recognize mentions of the Mineshaft sex club, dancing at the Roxy, random celebrity luminaries of the era, the Concorde, and the exquisite bitchiness of working models. As Guy traverses through the men and boys of his life, he also carefully sidesteps the shadows of AIDS, a subject popping up on virtually everyone’s casual conversation in those days.

Taking a step back from all of the excess, the paranoid AIDS chatter, and the tumescent gay sex scenes, White’s book on a deeper level reflects on the sheer, unrelenting, and enduring vanity of humans. He scrutinizes the lengths some go to deceive others, with the skill and dexterity of vaudeville magicians, into thinking we are younger and more boundless than we really are. Constructing those youthful veils is no easy feat, as Guy himself discovers, and sometimes that vanity takes other’s hearts and wallets for granted.

White reminds us of the cruelties of age, time, and disease, but his novel wins out with lust, arrogance, gay sex, and over-the-top boudoir scenes like this one: “Suddenly nothing in the world seemed to Guy more glamorous than homosexuality, as romantic as heady white gardenias nested in polished green leaves.” Indeed.t Maggie’s Plan Writer-director Rebecca Miller aims high with a screwballish romantic comedy constructed around Greta Gerwig as a sweet control freak who can’t resist meddling with the lives in her Manhattan social orbit. (Victoria, 4/23; Alamo, 4/26) Operator Martin Starr stars as a tech worker who jumps the shark with some techno gadgets that deliver only chaos and martial discord.

(Roxie, 4/23, 25) Wild German director Nicolette Krebitz explores interspecies passion in this odd little fable about a young woman who comes upon a wolf in the forest near her home.

(Alamo, 4/22, 26, 28) Assassination Classroom Japan’s Eiichiro Hasumi offers a junior high fable about a teacher who challenges his students to kill him before he does something they’ll regret. (Alamo, 4/23, 27) The Greasy Strangler Jim Hosking gives us a Sundance Fest hit about a man who conducts a walking disco tour with his beat-down son. In a subplot, a maniac is on the prowl in their town. (Alamo, 4/22, 25) All These Sleepless Nights Warsaw denizen Kris sets off on a binge of rowdy activity in this part-doc/ part-fiction entry from Poland’s Michal Marczak. (Alamo, 4/22, 24) Counting Former festival awardwinner Jem Cohen creates a globespanning visual essay in tribute to famed indie filmmaker Chris Marker. (PFA, 4/23; Alamo, 4/24)t Info: festival.sffs.org.

I have a lot going on - I don’t need to be mocked, misgendered, or marginalized, and I don’t have time to hunt out news that matters to me.

That’s why I read EDGE on my Android tablet.

I’m being true to my future - and that’s where it will be.

The person depicted here is a model. Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

31

36

On the Tab

39

On the Town

Shooting Stars

Vol. 46 • No. 16 • April 21-27, 2016

www.ebar.com V www.bartabsf.com

Ultra Showgirls D’Arcy Drollinger’s Delirious Nod to Naughty Movies

Super Vizen, the all-girl band in Above and Beyond The Valley of the Ultra Showgirls.

by David-Elijah Nahmod

O

Both photos: Sean Timberlake

Gareth Gooch

n Thursday April 21, drag multi-talent D’Arcy Drollinger brings his show Ultra Showgirls: Above and Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Showgirls to Oasis. It promises to be a mad send-up of Russ Meyer’s most notorious films, and of Paul Verhoeven’s equally raunchy (and equally silly) Showgirls (1995), which attempted to revive the non-hardcore X-rated genre.

See page 29 >>

Memorable Los Alamos

An unexpected oasis in rural Santa Barbara County

by Sean Timberlake

A a coffee, Grab coffee take a survey,

bout four hours south of San Francisco, there are two exits off Highway 101 for Los Alamos, marking the north and south ends of the tiny town’s main drag, Bell Street. There are no traffic lights on that stretch, nor even a stop sign. The diminutive downtown covers a scant four blocks, peppered with relics of its Wild West past.

See page 34 >>

change the world.

Making a Difference is Easy.

Background: Bucolic Los Alamos offers laid back beauty and cuisine. ® Insert: Bob Oswaks at Bob’s Well Bread Bakery.

Take the 10th Annual LGBT Community Survey

LGBTsurvey.com

Grab a coffee, coffee take a survey,

change the world.

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS } Scan the QR code on your phone to take the ! survey now

Take the survey before April 30 and be entered into our drawing for a pair of VIP tickets to the SF Giants. www.ebar.com/LGBTsurvey

Making a Difference is Easy.

Take the 10th Annual LGBT Community Survey

®

LGBTsurvey.com

Your information is confidential, used for research purposes only.

You will not be contacted for marketing purposes.

Proudly LGBT-owned and -operated A pioneer in LGBT research, founded in 1992 NGLCC-Certified LGBT Owned Business Enterprise

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

30 • Bay Area Reporter • April 21-27, 2016

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Ultra Showgirls

From page 29

Fifty years ago, filmmaker Russ Meyer was the king of T & A: Tits and Ass cinema. Throughout the 1960s, during the era which preceded XXX hardcore sex films, Meyer titillated a primarily straight male audience with “nudie” classics such as Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962), Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

(1965), and Vixen (1968). Meyer’s work became best known for the large endowments of his leading ladies, and his often over-the-top films made him a fortune. They also became camp classics, which guaranteed their future appeal to gay men.

Eyebrows were raised across Hollywood when, in 1970, Meyer signed with 20th Century Fox, which was the independent filmmaker’s first foray into the big leagues. John Schlesinger’s searing X-rated drama Midnight Cowboy had just won a Best Picture Oscar, so the Fox suits decided to take a chance and see what they could get out of consistent moneymaker Meyer.

They probably weren’t expecting the hilariously raunchy Hollywood horror story which Meyer called Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

“You have to wonder what Fox thought when they gave the green light to have Russ Meyer direct a film,” drag multi-talent D’Arcy Drollinger said in an interview. “He was a porn director. They were asking for it.”

Drollinger acknowledges that Xrated films which are made outside of the hardcore genre often try so hard to be “shocking,” they often become hilarious.

“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is such a unique film,” he said. “It was written by movie critic Roger Ebert and Meyer. This in and of itself is a

crazy and beautiful collaboration.

But the fact that Fox dumped over a million dollars into it, which was a lot of money for the time, transforms what should have been a trashy, low budget film into a candycoated masterpiece.”

Drollinger admits to being “obsessed” with the film, which he describes as “this ridiculous melodrama about an all-girl rock band falling apart after their quick rise to fame, interlaced with sex scenes and musical numbers, all wrapped up in a sparkly bow.”

And how does Showgirls fit into all of this?

“Both films had completely overthe-top melodramatic scripts that in many ways felt like they were written for a female audience,” Drollinger explained. “Both included gratuitous sex scenes obviously geared towards straight men. Both were given very large budgets and X ratings. I’m not sure who they thought their audience was for either film, but both became instant cult classics with devout gay followings.”

Drollinger likened both films to the notorious Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest (1981), another camp classic which is adored by gay men.

“The attraction from the gay audience is the camp value,” he explained. “And it’s the unintentional camp that makes these kinds of films so riveting.”

Drollinger first wrote Ultra Showgirls in 1997 and performed it right up the street from Oasis, where it ran for more than a year.

In 2003 the show was mounted in New York City.

“Now, in its third incarnation, I’m also directing and producing,” said Drollinger. “In the past we were always subjected to the club’s availability and limited resources. This time around, I own the club. The

results are a somewhat more polished, refined version of the show.”

As Drollinger describes Ultra Showgirls, it begins to sound like an homage to Russ Meyer’s entire career, and not just to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls or Showgirls.

Though lines from the films may be sprinkled throughout his show’s script, he points out that Ultra Showgirls is an original work, featuring a five-piece band performing original songs.

“Ultra Showgirls follows Super Vixen, a struggling, all-girl rock band with big dreams, big boobs, big hair and big everything else,” he said. “The audience can expect my brand of ridiculous. This was very

much the predecessor to my shows Shit and Champagne and Temple of Poon. Audiences can also expect flashy costumes, a kick-ass band, and an amazing cast of singers.”

Drollinger added that the show is “immersive theater,” with actors as part of the audience. “You’ll feel like you’ve been transported back to your ‘80s rock concert fantasy… or nightmare!” he said.

In addition to Drollinger, the cast of Ultra Showgirls includes John Paul Gonzalez, Nancy French, Jane D’Oh, Bobby Barnaby, Manuel Caneri, Lavale-William Davis and Melinda Campero. Peter Fogel

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(Whoa Nellies, Club Inferno) is the music director.

“This is our first musical that we are doing at Oasis,” Drollinger said.

“If things go well, and they have so far, this could open up so many exciting possibilities.”t ‘Above and Beyond The Valley of the Ultra Showgirls’ opens at Oasis on Thursday, April 21 at 7pm. Performances will run every Thursday, Friday and Saturday through May 14. 398 11th St. 21+. 2-drink minimum. $25-35, or $250 for a VIP table. www.sfoasis.com

The In-Voice Study explores the relationship between alcohol use and sexual behavior. You must be HIV+, sexually active, and a regular alcohol consumer.

Participants will have two interviews over a 6-week period and may be assigned to 6 weeks of daily cell phone-based data collection.

Compensation ranges from $70 - $190 over the 6-week period depending on the group one is assigned to.

To see if you are eligible call Bob at 415.802.4500 or email in-voicestudy@ucsf.edu

All photos: Gareth Gooch

D’Arcy Drollinger (Top Left) as Chablis, Nancy French (Top Right) as Gewürztraminer and John Paul Gonzalez (Bottom) as Chardonnay in Above and Beyond The Valley of the Ultra Showgirls.

April 21-27, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 31

FBFE

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On the Tab>> Thu 21

h celebrates 12 years, wit Tubesteak Connection unge Lo ie’s arl Ch nt Au @ DJ Bus Station John!

The popular video bar ends each work week with gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Hard Fridays @ Qbar DH Haute Toddy’s weekly electro-pop night with hotty gogos. $3. 9pm-2am (happy hour 4pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Ladies of San Francisco @ Club OMG Galilea hosts the weekly “old school drag show” with guest performers and DJ Jack Rojo. $4. 9pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

re we having fun yet? Oh , yes. Campy live shows, groovy grooves, classy musical act s, sexy gogo studs, sumptu food and drink events, and ous plain old bar bemusements await.

48 Hills Gala @ Starlight Room

Celebrate and fundraise a the 3rd annual party for the website created by former Bay Guardian staff, while enjoying cocktails, light food, and the panoramic view. $35-$1,000.

6pm-9pm. Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell St. www.48hills.org

Above and Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Showgirls @ Oasis D’Arcy Drollinger’s restaging of the high camp rock musical about a singer’s rise and fall, with lots of sex, drugs and original live music. $25$35, $250 Super Groupie front row VIP tables. Thu-Sat 7pm. Thru May 14.

298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Battle of the Seasons @ Regency Ballroom RuPauls’ Drag Race winners and finalists perform a fab drag show as part of their international tour; hosted by Michelle Visage, with Adore Delano, Alaska Thunderfuck, Pearl, Courtney Act, Ginger Minj Jinks Monsoon and many others. $38-$300 (VIP meet & greet). 9pm, 1290 Sutter St. at Van Ness Ave. www.RuPaulBOTS.com

Bill Graham and the Rock & Roll Revolution @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Exhibit of photos and documents of and about the prolific rock concert promoter. April 21: Exodus Party, a celebration of Passover and music, with funk band Hibbity Dibbity, DJ mash-ups, cocktails and a light show; $7-$135, 7pm-12am. Other exhibits about Jewish culture, lectures and gallery talks as well. Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland Enjoy Latin, hip hop and electro, plus hot gogos galore, and a big dance floor. $10-$20. 9pm-3am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences

Ain’t Mama’s Drag @ Balancoire

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

Weekly drag queen and drag king show hosted by Cruzin d’Loo. Mar. 25 features Donna Personna and many other acts. 8pm-10pm. No cover. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.com

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. Also Fridays. 7pm-2am.

1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Sexitude @ Oasis The fun popular retro-style aerobic dance class and party. Bring your neon Spandex, leg warmers and get physical, then have cocktails. $8.

9pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle Music night with local and touring bands. $8. 9:30pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night. April 21: 12-Year anniversary party! OMG. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Fri 22

Access Happy Hour @ Oasis Linty hosts an early eve cocktail time with performances, raffles; proceeds benefit the group that helps young adults with disabilities in the the arts.

6pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 7953180. www.sfoasis.com

Latin, hip hop and Electro music night. $5-$25. 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Bonnie Raitt @ Fox Theatre, Oakland The Grammy winner performs songs from her 20th album, and favorites.

California Honeydrops opens. $59$125 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.thefoxoakland.com

Boy Division @ Codeword The monthly (4th Sat.) gay (and straight pals) New Wave, Brit Pop and Electro night plays classics, with new grooves mixed in. $6-$8. 9:30pm3am. 917 Folsom St. www.codeword-sf.com

Club Papi @ Space 550 Belanova performs at the gay Latin dance night; DJs Sebastian and Mike Biggsz spin, 12 hot gogo dancers. $10-$20. 10pm-3am. 550 Barneveld Ave. www.clubpapi.com

Boy Bar @ The Cafe Gus Presents’ weekly dance night, with DJ Kid Sysko, cute gogos and $2 beer (before 10pm). 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Comedy Noir @ Balancoire Valerie Branch’s weekly comedy night, where she embodies her faux queen character Pia Messing for some offbeat wit, along with guest performers. $5. 8pm-10pm. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.com

Fri 22

Laura Osnes @ Feinstein’s

Friday Nights @ de Young Museum Season 12 of the fun art parties returns, with the Oscar de la Renta exhibit, flamenco-jazz pianist Alex Conde, fashion films and mixed media art-making stations. 5:30pm-9pm. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, www.deyoung.famsf.org

Friday Nights @ Oakland Museum The family-friendly night events returns, with exhibit tours, dancing, food, drinks, and live music. $7-$15.

5pm-9pm. 1000 Oak St. www.museumca.org

Laura Osnes @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The Broadway star performs her cabaret show, Paths Not Taken. April 22 (8pm) & 23 (7pm). $45-$65 ($20 food/beverage minimum). Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Manimal @ Beaux Gogo-tastic dance night starts off your weekend. $5. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Midnight Show @ Divas

Grace Towers hosts the fun sexy night. $100 cash prize for best bulge. $5$10 benefits Groundswell Institute, the queer retreat camp. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Weekly drag shows at the last transgender-friendly bar in the Polk; with hosts Victoria Secret, Alexis Miranda and several performers. Also Saturdays. $10. 11pm. 1081 Polk St. www.divassf.com

Red Hots Burlesque @ Beatbox The saucy women’s burlesque show hosted by Dottie Lux. $10. 7pm-10pm. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Maria Konner @ Martuni’s

Shenanigans @ Oasis The monthly theme party (4th Fri.) takes on Casino Royale.

Don your best James Bond or Vegas showgirl/boy garb; DJs Juan and Loryn. $7. 10pm-2am.

298 11th St. at Folsom. 7953180. www.sfoasis.com

The musically marvelous trans diva performs blues, jazz and rock with her 3-piece trio, plus open mic, no cover, and delish cocktails. 6:30-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St.

Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes’ weekly drag show. $5. 10:30pm show. DJ Philip Grasso. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland

The Australian vocalist performs her new cabaret show, Songs from My Journey Around the World. $25-$50. 8pm. Dinner, small plates and cocktails available. Hedley Club Lounge, 233 West Santa Clara St., San Jose. www.societycabaret.com

Bulge @ Powerhouse

Mary Go Round @ Lookout

Sat 23

Armelle Delaney @ Hotel De Anza, San Jose

Steven Underhill

Thu 21

Hot dancers grind it at the Castro bar with a dance floor and patio. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun

On the Tab A April 21-28

Gogo Fridays @ Toad Hall

Some Thing @ The Stud

Fri 22

Gogo Fridays @ Toad Hall

Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. $7. 10pm3am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Club Rimshot @ Club BNB, Oakland The weekly hip hop and R&B night.

8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 2120 Broadway.

(510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Club Soda @ SOMArts Cultural Center The Hard French crew hosts a night of cocktails, films and a late night drag show (Miss J, Willard, Trangela Lansbury, Pseuda), with guest DJs Mozhgan, Primo. $12-$15. 10pm-4am.

934 Brannan St. www.somarts.org www.hardfrench.com

Make New Friends @ Oasis Meet-up Group for Gay Men hosts a get-together for men in their 20s-30s, with a drag show, upstairs patio mingle. $5. 3pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Martha Crawford @ Hotel Rex I Feel a Song Coming On, the singer’s cabaret concert of classic songs, with The Dave Austin Trio. $25-$50.

Cocktails and small plates available.

8pm. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com

Mother @ Oasis Heklina’s weekly drag show night with different themes, always outrageously hilarious. April 23: Bjork vs. Robyn. $15. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Nitty Gritty @ Beaux Weekly dance night with nearly naked gogo guys & gals; DJs Chad Bays, Ms. Jackson, Becky Know and Jorge T. $4.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

See page 32 >>

<< On the Tab

32 • Bay Area Reporter • April 21-27, 2016

Domingo De Escandal @ Club OMG Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez and DJ Luis.

7pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Femme, Xtravaganza @ Balancoire Weekly live music shows with various acts, along with brunch, mimosas, champagne and more, at the stylish nightclub and restaurant; shows at 12:30pm, 1:30pm and 2:45pm. After that, T-Dance drag shows at 7pm, 10pm and 11pm. 2565 Mission St. at 21st.

920-0577. balancoiresf.com

GlamaZone @ The Cafe

Belanova at Club Papi @ Space 550

<<

On the Tab

From page 31

Rockstars Beer Bust @ The Edge The SF gay softball team’s fundraiser includes $10 all you can drink beer, Jell-O shots and the entire team. 4pm7pm. 4149 18th St. www.edgesf.com

Saturgay @ Qbar Stanley Frank spins house dance remixes at the intimate Castro dance bar. $3. 9pm-2am (weekly beer bust 2pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Soul Delicious @ Lookout Brunch, booze, sass and grooves, with the Mom DJs, Motown sounds, and soul food. 11am-4pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Soul Party @ Elbo Room DJs Lucky, Paul, and Phengren Osward spin 60s soul 45s. $5-$10 ($5 off in semi-formal attire). 10pm-2am. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

Sugar @ The Cafe Dance, drink, cruise at the Castro club.

9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Third Anniversary @ SF Eagle Celebrate three years of the renovated spacoius and popular leather bar.

9pm-2am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Sun 24 Bazaar @ Blackbird

The popular cocktail bar hosts a crafts soiree, with Tarot readers, woodworkers, jewelry makers, candle and candy artisan and ceramicists.

2pm-6pm. 2124 Market St. www.blackbirdbar.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar’s most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. Beer bust donations benefit local nonprofits (Check the website for a list of recipients). 3pm6pm. Now also on Saturdays. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Big Top @ Beaux The fun Castro nightclub, with hot local DJs and sexy gogo guys and gals. $5. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.Beauxsf.com

Karaoke Night @ SF Eagle

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s

Sing along, with guest host Nick Radford. 8pm-12am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

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

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany’s weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm, with 9pm RuPaul’s Drag Race viewings. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Monday Musicals @ The Edge Sing along at the popular musical theatre night; also Wednesdays. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing.

4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Gaymer Night @ Eagle

Red Hots Burlesque @ PianoFight

Gay gaming fun on the bar’s big screen TVs. Have a nerdgasm and a beer with your pals. 8pm. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

The saucy women’s burlesque show now serves brunch before and after the show, with bottomless Mimosas! $15-$25. 2pm. Weekly thru May 29. 144 Taylor St. www. pianofight.com

Hella Saucy @ Q Bar

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room

Weekly two-stepping and linedancing fun, with lessons and DJed music (not just country). 5pm10:30pm. Also Thursdays.

550 Barneveld Ave. www.sundancesaloon.org

Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Eat at any of the 100+ participating restaurants, and a portion of your bill goes to the SF AIDS Foundation. www.dolsf.org

Enjoy the weekly jock-ular fun, with DJed dance music at sports team fundraisers.

12pm-1am. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550

Block Party @ Midnight Sun

Dining Out for Life @ SF Restaurants

Jock @ The Lookout

Bottomless Mimosas until 3pm at the fun rock-punk club. 1600 17th St. 2521330. www.theeparkside.com

Tue 26

Shot specials and adult Bingo games, with DJs Chad Bays and Riley Patrick, at the new weekly night. No cover. 9pm2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Sing along to the music from the hit musical Hamilton. No cover. 6pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Sunday Brunch @ Thee Parkside

Strip down to your skivvies at the popular men’s night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Cock Shot @ Beaux

Hamiltunes @ Oasis

Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. $45.

11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Underwear Night @ 440

Sat 23

Bonnie Raitt @ Fox Theatre, Oakland

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Opulence @ Beaux Weekly dance night, with Jocques, DJs Tori, Twistmix and Andre. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Queer dance party at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

High Fantasy @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Weekly drag and variety show, with live acts and lip-synching divas, plus DJed grooves. $5. Shows at 10:30pm & 12am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Meow Mix @ The Stud The weekly themed variety cabaret showcases new and unusual talents; MC Ferosha Titties. $3-$7. Show at 11pm. 9pm-2am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

See page 37 >> PhotoByDot

Sat 23

Pollo del Mar’s weekly drag show takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:3011:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

t

Unicorn @ Powerhouse Art by Seth Cosmo, Joseph Vallier, Dot, and Uel Renteria, a drag show with Dakoda Pendent, Hollow Eve and Queen Glitter More, at the monthly event. $5. 6pm-11pm. 1347 Folsom st. www.powerhousebar.com

Mon 25

Drag Mondays @ The Cafe Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko’s weekly drag and dance night, with 9pm RuPaul’s Drag Race viewings. 9pm-1am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland Mondays and Tuesdays popular weekly sing-along night. No cover. 8:30pm1am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 6523820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Gaymer Meetup @ Brewcade The weekly LGBT video game enthusiast night includes big-screen games and signature beers, with a new remodeled layout, including an outdoor patio. No cover. 7pm-11pm.

2200 Market St. www.brewcadesf.com

Hysteria @ Martuni’s Irene Tu and Jessica Sele cohost the comedy open mic night for women and queers. No cover. 6pm-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St.

Tue 26

Trangela Lansbury at Meow Mix @ The Stud

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34 • Bay Area Reporter • April 21-27, 2016

t

Sean Timberlake

Bell Street Farm’s Jamie Gluck.

<<

Los Alamos

From page 29

It’s not a town you go to for vibrant nightlife or sophisticated cultural offerings. It’s the antidote to city life. The primary activities are antiquing, wine tasting, and, especially recently, eating. It’s serene. It’s also, quietly, becoming something of a gay enclave.

“The cliché of ‘If the gays find it, something must be up’ is completely the case with Los Alamos,” says Jamie Gluck, who opened the restaurant Bell Street Farm (406 Bell Street, www.bellstreetfarm.com) in 2011 with his husband, John.

They’re half-time residents, making the two-and-a-half hour commute each weekend from Los Angeles. „I say goodbye to him on Thursday; I say hello to him on Friday; I say goodbye to him on Sunday; I say hello to him on Monday.”

The couple is an agent of change in town, introducing their LA entourage to its charms. They weren’t the first gay couple to settle there, but they’ve definitely noticed an uptick in interest among the gay community.

“When we first came here, we discovered, ‘Oh, there’s four gay couples, there’s six, there’s eight.’ There’s a gay vacation rental by owner. Another couple owns two big plots of property here. They’re breaking ground in May on their lot across from the post office, and they want to open a gay bed and breakfast across from Full of Life Flatbread.”

Prior to Bell Street Farm, Full of Life (or just Flatbread, as it’s often called by locals) was nearly the only game in town, alongside Café

Sean Timberlake

Full of Life’s Clark Staub.

self without a kitchen, they retooled, opening Plenty on Bell (508 Bell Street, www.plentyonbell.com) at the beginning of 2016, retaining Johanssen as chef.

Johanssen helmed the Quackenbush kitchen for 16 years. He came to the area from his native Sweden via Edible Communities co-founders Healdsburg, and then Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian. met a man in the Santa Ynez Valley, where he relocated. One night, Quackenbush, which closed in his boyfriend’s business parter was 2015. In its absence came an opporwowed by Johanssen’s bolognese tunity for two recent transplants. sauce, and convinced him to get culinary training. Not long after, he acPlenty to Enjoy cepted the opportunity at QuackenTracey Ryder and Carole Topalian bush, but not without reservation. co-founded Edible Communities, a “When I moved here 17 years franchise of local food publications, ago, there were maybe two lesbian in 2002. When the empire grew couples. They were very quiet about to 70 titles nationally, the couple it. Now, there are a lot of gays for a stepped back, and relocated from small town.” their home in Santa Barbara to Los Alamos. They purchased a home with an acre of land, which they developed as Clayworks Farm (610 Main Street, www.clayworksfarm. com), a creative studio and working farm. The name harkens to Topalian’s craft as a potter.

Seeking a new project in town, they intended to open a retail food market, but when Quackenbush’s chef, their friend Jesper Johansssen, found him-

At first Johanssen struggled with the pace of life small town, but came to love the quieter lifestyle. At Plenty, he’s serving modern comfort food with a hyper-local focus. Much of the produce is grown at Clayworks Farm, as well as plots behind the restaurant. The bread comes from Bob’s Well Bread Bakery, a few doors down the block.

Daily Bread

Clark Staub came to Los Alamos with more intent. Having stopped in town en route to and from Los Angeles, the charms of the town grew on him, and a for-lease sign on an unfinished building on the north end of Bell Street lured him in. In 2003, he opened Full of Life Flatbread (225 Bell Street, www.fulloflifefoods.com) with a brick oven he built himself.

On a spring afternoon, you can find him rooting through the restaurant’s side garden, picking rosemary blossoms for dessert, or borage flowers for one of his famous pizzas.

At the opposite end of Bell Street, and at the other end of the timeline, another bakery has flourished. A former TV executive, Bob Oswaks took up baking while waiting for callbacks for jobs. When the jobs didn’t manifest, he just kept baking. He and his wife had purchased a home in Los Alamos in 2001 as a weekend getaway, bringing up friends from their LA set (including Jamie and John of Bell Street Farm).

In making a break from his previous life, it made sense to relocate as well, and he opened Bob’s Well Bread Bakery (550 Bell Street, www.bobswellbread.com) in 2014.

“When I decided to do the bakery, I didn’t want to do it in LA, because LA is not a bread culture,” said Oswaks. “I knew that this would be perfect, because Los Alamos is between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, and it hadn’t yet had this culinary renaissance.”

See page 35 >>

Sean Timberlake

Pico, a wine bar and restaurant.

Sean Timberlake

Sean Timberlake

Jesper Johansssen at Plenty on Bell.

The Alamo Motel.

t <<

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Los Alamos

From page 34

The newest addition is Pico (458 Bell Street, www.losalamosgeneralstore.com), a wine bar and restaurant occupying the old general store that housed Quackenbush previously. Chef Drew Terp brings serious culinary chops, having worked at barMASA, the Vegas outpost of the Michelin-starred New York restaurant, and more recently popular Los Olivos spot Mattie’s Tavern.

Los Alamos’ location informs a lot about how a small town like Los Alamos can have such a vibrant food scene. It sits amidst a burgeoning wine region, with access to some of the area’s best farms. And yet it’s far enough away from everything else to make it a real getaway.

“It’s the perfect two and a half hours out of town, and convenient to San Francisco, too.” notes Gluck.

“They like to take an alternative to the 5. I get tourists en route from LA to San Francisco via Big Sur, as well as San Francisco locals heading to LA.”

Fine Wines

Being a wine destination helps, too. A few tasting rooms are scattered around the valley, but you can more easily stroll along Bell Street and simply pop into ones for local producers like Frequency (448 Bell Street, www.frequencywines.com), Bedford (448 Bell Street, www. bedfordwinery.com), and Sonja Magdevski’s Casa Dumetz (388 Bell Street, www.casadumetzwines. com).

Magdevski started making wine 10 years ago after moving to California, meeting a man (who happened to be actor Emilio Estevez), and planting a half acre of grapes.

Now, she produces just over 1,000 cases of mainly Rhone varietals, sourcing grapes entirely from Santa Barbara County. She enjoys the libertine attitude of the town.

April 21-27, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 35

“Everyone is very neighborly,” said Magdevski. “I often think smaller communities are more tolerant, because you have to see everyone at the post office and getting coffee in the morning.”

Gluck agrees. “No one’s trying to get away from themselves. There’s no ghetto. We do what everyone else does. We eat out, we barbecue, we wine taste, as cliché as that is.”

Casa Dumetz hosts Friday salons.

“They’re a real gathering for locals, and they are jam packed each week,” says Ryder. “She has a speaker series that is very well attended and serves light food. During the summer, we have a monthly ‘locals Thursday’ at Muni Wine’s tasting room in the courtyard of the Alamo Motel.

There’s a fire pit, serapes to curl up in, and a picnic table.”

Room for Magic

The town’s picayune size makes it an easy place to unwind. Once you’ve arrived, you can check into your room and enjoy the town entirely on foot all weekend. Popular lodgings include the historic (and allegedly haunted) 1880 Union Hotel (362 Bell Street, www.unionhotelvictmansion.com), resplendent in Victoriana, or the recently renovated mid-century modern Alamo Motel (425 Bell Street, www.rememberthealamomotel. com), sporting a more streamlined aesthetic.

Location is important, but it takes more than that to make a destination great. Los Alamos has soul.

“Everyone who’s succeeding in town is because everybody is doing something authentic,” says Oswaks.

“You’re not going to find better pizza than over at Clark’s. You’re not going to get better roast chicken or porchetta than at Jamie’s. Our thing is artisan bread made in small batches. When you make something with your hands, there’s a bit of magic to it. You take a bit of that magic home.”t

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36 • Bay Area Reporter • April 21-27, 2016

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At the B.A.R. Besties, Emperor Kevin Lyle, Oasis icon Heklina, and Bestie winner (Best MC/Host) Donna Sachet.

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t a splashy party at Oasis last week, not only did the Bay Area Reporter celebrate the newest winners of the sixth annual Bestie Awards, but they marked 45 years of publication, making the B.A.R. the longest continuously published LGBT newspaper in the country!

We are delighted to work with such able professionals and humbled to be a part of such a historic legacy.

Heklina and D’arcy Drollinger welcomed everyone to Oasis, the well-deserved winner of eight Bestie Awards this year; not bad for a club venue only in its second year of existence. Shawn Ryan, outfitted in a print suit that only a mother could love, served as emcee for the event, masterfully weaving his own comedy into the program.

Emperor Kevin Lisle, who shows no signs of slowing down since his remarkable reign, joined us as we hob-nobbed with fellow Bestie Award-winners Sister Roma, Katherine Holland, Michael Chu, Terry McLaughlin, Christian Heppinstall, and the wonderful Linda Lee, surprised to win a special Best Fan Bestie! How does she manage to be everywhere?

Also among the crowd were SF Pride representatives Michelle Meow and George Ridgely, Don Berger, Gareth Gooch, Mark Allen, Pat Murray, Joe Wicht, Todd Sucy, Rebecca Prozan, Zoe Dunning, and Tom Horn. A fun game to identify audio clips from famous movies and raffle ticket drawings resulted in several happily prize-winning guests.

Musical performances by Veronica Klaus, Connie Champagne, Jason Brock, and Kingdom, featuring Alex U. Inn and proclamation certificates presented by City Supervisors Scott Wiener and Mark Ferrell completed the night.

Rich Stadtmiller

Host Shawn Ryan, in his floral suit, brought camp and fun to the sixth B.A.R. Besties, held once again at Oasis.

Standing Ovations

Friday night’s screening of Last Men Standing, a film documentary produced by The San Francisco Chronicle, proved to be as historically accurate and emotionally moving as expected, but with amazing points of hope and personal triumph.

Filmmakers Tim Hussein and Erin Brethauer and most of the people featured in the film were on hand for the packed premiere at the Castro Theatre, introduced by SF Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Audrey Cooper.

Gareth Gooch

Connie Champagne, performing as Judy Garland at the Besties, sang cleverly paired songs, Aerosmith’s “Dream On” and “All I Wanted Was the Dream” from the upcoming production of The Boy From Oz.

After all the many tales of the AIDS epidemic have been told, the stories of the long-term survivors remain largely untapped; this film gives a voice to so many who never realistically expected to be here today. And what better place for those stories to emerge than right here in San Francisco? Make a point to see this film. And if its acceptance into the Frameline Film Festival is any indication, we’ll see more such courageous efforts from our local SF Chronicle.

Faced with a daunting choice between several worthy Saturday night events, we indulged our love of music and devotion to masters of vocal performance and headed to Great American Music Hall for The Queens of Cabaret, Andrea Marcovicci and Shawn Ryan. This historic and dustily opulent space was the perfect setting.

Marcovicci strolled onto the stage in a full-length beaded white gown and instantly captured the crowd with her magnetic presence, charming personal anecdotes, and mesmerizing vocal mastery. Her song selections were plucked from decades of classics, but ended with an unexpected, but truly lovely Brandy number, further proving her versatility and readiness to embrace beautiful music wherever it appears.

After a short break and the addition of several instrumentalists, Shawn Ryan took the stage, contrasting delightfully with Marcovicci’s performance with his self-depracating humor and extemporaneous monologue. Dubbed “the other Queen of Cabaret” by Marcovicci, Ryan lived up to that title with wonderful singing and a generous dose of his own gay wit.

All in all, it was just the musical experience we needed and an unexpected reminder of the magic of the Great American Music Hall.

The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’ Tales of the City: Our Lives, Our Heroes reunited the chorus with San Francisco’s legendary chronicler Armistead Maupin and revived selections from their previous commissions, A Naked Man, music by Robert Seeley and lyrics

by Philip Littell, and I Am Harvey Milk, music and lyrics by Andrew See page 38 >>

t <<

On the Tab>>

On the Tab

From page 32

Move to the Now @ Oasis Informal dance performances by members of Post: Ballet, ODC and RAWdance; with DJ Jaqueen. No cover. 6pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom.

795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down as the strippers also take it all off. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Retro Night @ 440 Castro Jim Hopkins plays classic pop oldies, with vintage music videos. 9pm-2am.

44 Castro St. www.the440.com

April 21-27, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 37

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

B.P.M. @ Club BnB, Oakland Olga T and Shugga Shay’s weekly queer women and men’s R&B hip hop and soul night, at the club’s new location. No cover. 8pm-2am. 2120 Broadway, Oakland. www.bench-and-bar.com

Floor 21 @ Starlight Room Juanita More! presents a new weekly scenic happy hour event, with host Rudy Valdez, DJs Vin Sol and Rolo.

No cover, and a fantastic panoramic city view. Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell St. www.starlightroomsf.com

Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm.

424 Cortland St. 647-3099. www.wildsidewest.com

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle Kollin Holts hosts the weekly comedy and open mic talent night. 6pm-8pm.

398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Pussy Party @ Beaux Ladies night at the Castro dance club.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Shit Talk @ Oasis Yuri Kagan hosts the monthly offbeat comedy night. 7pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

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

Tue 26

Way Back @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of vintage music videos, and retro drink prices. 9pm2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Thelma Houston @ Yoshi’s Oakland

Wooden Nickel Wednesday @ 440 Buy a drink and get a wooden nickle good for another. 12pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Thu 28

Bulge @ Powerhouse Grace Towers hosts the racy night with a $100 wet undies bulge contest at midnight. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar. 10pm2am. 2247 Market St. 5512500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Thelma Houston @ Yoshi’s Oakland The Grammy-winning Motown legend performs classic hits with her band at the stylish nightclub/ restaurant. $69. 8pm.

Also April 27, 8pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge The weekly drag show with themed nights, gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am.

4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

My So-Called Night @ Beaux

Una Noche @ Club BnB, Oakland Vicky Jimenez’ drag show and contest; Latin music all night. 9pm-2am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Underwear Night @ Club OMG Weekly underwear night includes free clothes check, and drink specials. $4.

10pm-2am. Preceded by Open Mic Comedy, 7pm, no cover. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Wed 27 Art & Wine Auction @ Clift Hotel

Academy of Friends hosts a fundraiser auction at the elegant downtown hotel; proceeds benefit local AIDS/HIV nonprofits. $40. 6:30-8:30pm. 495 Geary St. www.academyoffriends.org

Bedlam @ Beaux New weekly event with DJs Haute Toddy, Guy Ruben, Mercedez Munro and Abominatrix. Wet T-shirt/jock contest at 11pm. $5-$10. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Bone @ Powerhouse New weekly punk-alternative music night hosted by Uel Renteria and Johnny Rockitt. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Wed 27

Gryffin @ Rickshaw Stop

Gryffin @ Rickshaw Stop The multi-instrumental talent performs at the fun club. Taylor Wise opens; DJ Dials spins between live sets. $18-$20. 8pm. 155 Fell St. www.gryffinofficial.com www.rickshawstop.com

Latin Drag Night @ Club OMG

Carnie Asada hosts a new weekly ‘90s-themed video, dancin’, drinkin’ night, with VJs Jorge Terez. Get down with your funky bunch, and enjoy 90-cent drinks.

‘90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Nap’s Karaoke @ Virgil’s Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover. 9pm. 3152 Mission St. 8292233. www.virgilssf.com

Picante @ The Cafe

Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez. 9pm-2am.

43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Lulu and DJ Marco’s Latin night with sexy gogo guys. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Man Francisco @ Oasis

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG

The sexy, funny weekly male burlesque show returns with a few new handsome talents; choreographed by Christopher James Dunn; Mr Pam MCs. $20. 2 Two-drink min. 9:30pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom.

795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Martunis & Poetry @ Martuni’s Drinks and words with writers Amy Berkowitz, Robin Ekiss, Nazelah Jamison, Nick Johnson and Richard Loranger. No cover. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. www.facebook.com/ events/245431645807193/

Dana hosts the weekly singing night; unleash your inner American Idol.

8pm. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels Groove on wheels at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the “Godfather of Skate.” Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm.

Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm-5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5. Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Throwback Thursdays @ Qbar Enjoy retro 80s soul, dance, pop classics w/ DJ Jorge Terez. No cover. 9pm-2am.

456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Thump @ White Horse, Oakland Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests. 9pm-2am.

6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle Music night with local and touring bands. 8. 9:30pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night; 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

38 • Bay Area Reporter • April 14-21, 2016

Personals

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Star Chefs

The popular Star Chefs & Vintners Gala at Fort Mason.

<<

On the Town

From page 36

Lippa. Most of our readers know the special place we hold for the Gay Men’s Chorus, since Donna Sachet was born at a chorus retreat over 20 years ago, so you’ll please indulge our gushing praise.

Artistic Director Tim Seelig has grown the chorus to 300 voices and demonstrated their power, subtlety, and undisputed musical skill with this concert. Davies Symphony Hall filled with glorious vocal music, including a handful of talented soloists and heartfelt stories told by Maupin. They were supported by dazzling performances by the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, under the masterful direction of Dawn Harms.

Among the more personal pleasures of the night were sharing this concert with dear friend Gary Virginia, chatting with Richard Landry and Mario Torrigino during intermission, and reuniting with former Artistic Director of the SFGMC Stan Hill, with whom we sang (and more) for many years.

In talking to chorus members, current and previous, it appears that

the SFGMC remains as it was for us a bedrock of acceptance, encouragement, and empowerment for its members and an extraordinary source of inspiration for its legion of supporters.

Armistead Maupin at the touching San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus concerts, Tales of the City: Our Lives, Our Heroes, at Davies Symphony Hall.

San Jose:

Once again, we were overwhelmed by the generosity at Meals on Wheels’ annual Star Chefs & Vintners Gala at Fort Mason, this time on the arm of the dashing Richard Sablatura, in the unexpected absence of our usual host Lu Conrad. Sunday night’s event transformed the Festival Pavilion into a spacious reception area packed with silent auction tables, wine sampling stations, and elegantly dressed attendees and a lush dining room for nearly 1000.

Among those we greeted were State Senator Mark Leno, Taste Catering’s MeMe Pederson, Gary Danko, Nancy Oakes, Dan Bernal & Dan Burns, Andrew Freeman, Rick Hamer, Daniel Chacon, Craig Divini, Jan Divini, Sheila Sprogna, Ashlee Kim, Hillary Tyree, Jeff Schindler, and Tante Marie’s Cooking School legend Mary Risley. Just out of reach was Denise Hale looking marvelous and surrounded by admirers.

We joined the dinner table of Executive Director Ashley McCumber and several of his family members, all of us watching as live auction bids set new records and a grateful smile crept across McCumber’s face. Smiles also crossed the faces of two lucky winners of the raffle for leases on a Smart Car and a Mercedes Benz automobile!

Among the incredible auction packages with their equally remarkable winning bids were cooking lessons, wine collections, private dinners at top-end restaurants or in your home, VIP trips in California and abroad, and the pinnacle of the night, a week in Provincetown with Gary Danko, Nancy Oakes, Emily Luchetti, and Ken Fulk in Danko’s Victorian cottage, which went for $100,000 and was doubled with a second trip!

The traditional “fund a need” auction exceeded all expectations with bids starting at $50,000 and ending with $500 multiple bids from nearly every table. And why not? Meals on Wheels provides vital daily nourishment and essential social interaction to thousands of home-bound seniors across the City year after year. And no Meals on Wheels Gala would be complete without a stop by the dessert presentation of Tout Sweet and the handsome pastry chef Yigit Pura on our way out. Nothing could be sweeter. Congratulations, Meals on Wheels, on another phenomenal success!

Upcoming Events

Up next, we are excited to see the latest at the Hypnodrome from Thrillpeddlers and Scrumbly Kol-

To place your Personals ad, Call 415-861-5019 for more info & rates dewyn, The Untamed Stage. Original music, creative costuming and staging, and some of our favorite San Francisco performers. How can one go wrong?

Also on the horizon is Landmark Musical Theatre’s West Coast premiere of The Boy from Oz at the recently revived Great Star Theatre in Chinatown. We love seeing a new venue and when Connie Champagne is on the bill, we are there.

And we think it’s time to dance with abandon again at Locoya Hill’s IJWFD on Saturday, April 23, at Beatbox with DJ Ivan Gomez.

The following Friday, April 29, Suzan Revah wraps up seven years of events at Powerhouse with Superpower, supporting UCSF Alliance Health Project, with DJ Guy Ruben and Suzan’s sexy entourage. Will we see you there?t

David Allen

Scrumbly Koldewyn’s The Untamed Stage brings Weimar decadence to The Hypnodrome.

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Shooting Stars

April 21-27, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 39

photos by Steven underhill Daytime Realness @ El Rio

A

nother heat wave on April 17 brought the hotties out for the patio party Daytime Realness at El Rio (3158 Mission St.). Hosts Heklina and Tom Temprano (aka DJ Carnita), with DJs Stanley Frank, Siobhan Aluvalot and Guy Ruben, kept shorts-clad fans dancing and sweating. Enjoy “Drag, Dancing and Disorder” every third Sunday afternoon. www.facebook.com/DaytimeRealness www.elriosf.com More event photo albums are on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife. See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at www.StevenUnderhill.com.

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com or email stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

Brian had his HIV under control with medication. But smoking with HIV caused him to have serious health problems, including a stroke, a blood clot in his lungs and surgery on an artery in his neck. Smoking makes living with HIV much worse. You can quit.

CALL 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

#CDCTips

HIV alone didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cause the clogged artery in my neck.

Smoking with HIV did.

Brian, age 45, California