July 14, 2016 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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Cafe Flore is for sale

Vol. 46 • No. 28 • July 14-20, 2016

LGBTs debate gun laws

by Sari Staver

T

he Castro’s iconic Cafe Flore, a popular LGBT hangout for the past four decades, is for sale.

On July 11, the business, including use of its liquor license, was offered for sale for Jane Philomen Cleland $495,000.

The funky dining Cafe Flore and drinking spot, is for sale. which was awarded best place for lunch and best outdoor patio in the Bay Area Reporter’s Besties readers’ poll this year, has hosted many charity fundraisers and community events, including last year’s 25th anniversary party for ACT UP. Steven “Stu” Gerry, one of the owners, told the B.A.R. in a phone interview that the current partners would also be open to selling an interest in the business to people who could provide the capital to make some necessary improvements.

“Our hope is that Cafe Flore will continue,” said Gerry, who said he was showing the business to three prospective buyers just one day after it was listed. The property itself, owned by J.D. Petras, is not for sale.

“We’re willing to stay on in some capacity” to keep the business operating, said Gerry.

“There are all kinds of possibilities” in structuring the deal, he said.

The decision to sell “was a tough call,” he said.

Gerry and two other partners invested in the business two years ago, when Petras put it on the market. Gerry, who had the listing for the property and has a background in the restaurant business, decided to “make some improvements” and then determine whether to keep it or put it back on the market.

After two years, “and many, many improvements,” Gerry said the partners had exhausted their capital.

“I’m not sure any of us really realized all we were getting into when” they invested, he said.

Unlike the sale of many other local businesses, the owners were not prompted to act by a rent increase, said Gerry. But, he added, “doing business in San Francisco has become increasingly difficult,” citing both the recent increase in the minimum wage and Healthy San Francisco universal health care, which increases costs for businesses with 20 or more employees.

“Old buildings need a lot of love,” said Gerry. “We reached our capacity and could not invest any more money.”

Cafe Flore has had ongoing issues with is prep kitchen, which is located across the street from the restaurant (http://ebar.com/ blogs/planning-commission-approves-cafeflores-off-site-kitchen/). That facility is now “within inches” of being in compliance with city codes, he said.

See page 13 >>

Athonia Cappelli fires a gun during a Pink Pistols training session in San Jose.

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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s the U.S. reels from recent gun violence that includes the massacre at the gay Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida; the fatal police shootings of two African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota; and the ambush killings of five Dallas police officers, California officials are taking a look at the state’s gun laws while LGBT firearms enthusiasts say additional legislation is unnecessary.

See page 10 >>

Milk’s bullhorn returns to gay museum Jo-Lynn Otto

by Matthew S. Bajko

uary 1974 during the beer truck drivers’ boycott of Coors Brewing Company. fter another star turn in a Hol“The union gave me the bullhorn,” lywood production about San recalled Baird, at the time employed by Francisco’s LGBT community, Teamsters Local 888, which was fighting the bullhorn once used by the late gay for a better contract for the beer truck Supervisor Harvey Milk is back on disdrivers it represented. “I requested it beplay at the GLBT History Museum in cause I couldn’t keep yelling in front of the city’s gay Castro district. the businesses we picketed. We were in It had been removed for two weeks front of stores, restaurants, anyone who so it could be used during filming of sold Coors beer.”

When We Rise, the forthcoming ABCBaird, 84, spoke to the Bay Area miniseries about the city’s LGBT comReporter while seated at a table inside munity that is inspired by the soon-toEureka Cafe on Castro Street, in the be released memoir of the same title heart of the neighborhood he has by gay rights activist Cleve Jones, who called home his entire life. Over his Kelly Sullivan created the AIDS quilt and is currently shoulder, on the wall, hung a black Allan Baird, left, holds the bullhorn that he gave to Harvey Milk working with labor union Unite HERE. and white photo of himself, described as he joined Cleve Jones outside the GLBT History Museum.

Jones, who helped elect Milk in as “Teamster ‘Allan Baird,’” along with 1977 as the city’s first openly gay ofMilk at a Coors beer boycott in 1976 mains to be seen if the scenes with the bullhorn, ficial, went on to serve as an intern in that was taken by Dan Nicoletta. his City Hall office. Milk gave him the red and featured prominently in posters for this year’s “It has a lot of history in it. I can’t tell you gray Japanese-made Model MV-85-C bullhorn, Frameline LGBT International Film Festival, all the things that happened with this bullhorn,” will make the final cut of the show. officially known as a Fanon Transistorized said Baird.

“It all still works,” Jones said of the bullhorn, Megaphone, shortly after his election.

It was Milk who suggested to Baird that he which is now dented and scratched in various seek the LGBT community’s support of the In 2008 the bullhorn was used during filming of Milk, the Oscar-winning biopic about the iconic places and includes the initials “HM” etched beer boycott. onto it. gay leader. Both Sean Penn, who won an Academy “Before the strike, Coors was in the Castro While more attention has been paid to Milk’s bars. Harvey told me gays drink Coors too,” reAward for his portrayal of Milk, and Emile Hirsch, who played a young Jones, can be seen speaking use of the bullhorn, and later Jones’ utilizing it called Baird, who years ago retired as president during various protests and demonstrations in of Teamsters Local 921. through it in the Gus Van Sant-directed film. the 1980s and 1990s, the device has a history that In the seven-episode TV series, set to air in Milk introduced him to the late Bob Ross, the 2017, Austin P. McKenzie plays a young Jones predates their ownership of it. Union organizer founding publisher of the B.A.R. who was close Allan Baird initially deployed it beginning in Janwhile Guy Pearce portrays him as an adult. It reSee page 13 >>

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<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

Gay ex-SF cop pleads guilty to theft

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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gay former San Francisco police officer who had been accused of stealing from the LGBT officers’ association pleaded guilty last week to misdemeanor grand theft after months of negotiations resulted in a plea deal.

Mike Evans, 35, who had reportedly stolen more than $16,000 from the police officers’ Pride Alliance when he was the group’s treasurer, entered his plea Friday, July 8. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Robert Foley sentenced Evans to serve 160 hours of community service and three years probation. He’ll be allowed to complete the terms in Texas, where he currently lives.

Evans originally pleaded not guilty in October to felony charges of grand theft and embezzlement.

Those charges were dismissed Friday in exchange for his guilty plea.

John Campion, Evans’ attorney,

Pete Thoshinsky

Former San Francisco police Officer Mike Evans

said in court that the nonprofit where Evans will perform his community service hasn’t been selected.

“I would suggest a local animal shelter,” Foley said.

Outside the courtroom, Campion said Evans has paid all the money back.

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“We believe this was a fair and just resolution,” Campion said. “It’s been a tough three years, and he’s looking forward to moving on with his life.”

Campion also thanked the prosecution for “a fair and productive discussion over the past few months.”

The allegations against Evans first emerged in 2014, and he resigned from the police department that year.

Evans declined to comment outside the courtroom Friday, but a New Year’s Day post on his Facebook page said, “To say that 2015 was heartbreaking, devastating, embarrassing, and even a little depressing might be an understatement.” In the new year, the post said, Evans hoped to “have a much better year and be a better person than last year.”

Assistant District Attorney Mike Sullivan prosecuted the case.t

Oakland club faces protests over brawl

by Seth Hemmelgarn

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gay bar in Oakland is facing protests after a female patron got into a brawl with the club’s owner.

Charles Bisbee, 49, who owns Club BnB, at 2120 Broadway, and the adjacent Club 21, said the incident started at about 10:30 p.m.

June 28. The club was having a benefit that night for victims of the June 12 shooting massacre at Orlando, Florida’s gay Pulse nightclub, in which Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53.

At the BnB event, a female couple got into a fight with each other, Bisbee said.

A bartender refused to serve them any more drinks, he said, and a manager tried asking them “to leave because they were getting rowdy.”

Bisbee said one of the women “lunged” at the bartender who’d cut her off, “so I grabbed her and started

Jim Provenzano

People picketed outside Club BnB last Saturday.

to escort her out.”

“Several people hit me in the back of the head,” Bisbee said, but “I got her outside, and we fell to the ground” with the others.

The woman, whose name Bisbee doesn’t know, “bit me, and I had to pull her off my arm. She had a grip on my arm with her teeth.”

After he pulled her off, “I pushed her back, and I told my employee to call 911,” he said.

Bisbee, who said he suffered a concussion and emailed the Bay

Area Reporter photos of his injuries, including wounds on his arm, said, “I did nothing wrong.” He said the woman wasn’t injured.

He said he reported the incident to police so that there would be a record of it, but he doesn’t want to press charges.

He hadn’t seen the woman before, but he said she’s previously gotten in fights with her girlfriend at the bar.

“They should have thrown her

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and the shooting started.

Citing police and other Trevisan said Wednesrecords, the medical exhe trial of the man accused of day that Green shot Waraminer’s office report on fatally shooting a woman who ren in the face “while her Warren’s death says that had been celebrating her partner’s hands were up, like she after the parking collision, Road birthday at a gay San Francisco club wanted no trouble.” He “multiple occupants exin 2013 began Wednesday. also shot the driver of Now ited the other vehicle, apOp In her opening statements, Asthe car that Warren had proached the vehicle that HAPPY sistant District Attorney Heather been in. The driver, who Ever y Thurs [Warren] was occupying, Courtesy SFPD OFF take 20% a Road Mountain Trevisan told jurors that witnesses was still strapped in her produced firearms, and have said they’re “100 percent” cerseat when she was shot, Michael Sione fired multiple rounds.”

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<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

Volume 46, Number 28 July 14-20, 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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News Editor • news@ebar.com Arts Editor • arts@ebar.com Out & About listings • jim@ebar.com Advertising • scott@ebar.com Letters • letters@ebar.com Published weekly. Bay Area Reporter reserves the right to edit or reject any advertisement which the publisher believes is in poor taste or which advertises illegal items which might result in legal action against Bay Area Reporter. Ads will not be rejected solely on the basis of politics, philosophy, religion, race, age, or sexual orientation.

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SFPD reform long overdue

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his week a blue-panel tasked with reviewing transparency, accountability, and fairness in law enforcement issued a blistering critique of the San Francisco Police Department. The 72 findings and 81 recommendations reveal an institution in crisis and confirm what many people in the city already know: SFPD is mired in outdated technology, old-school law enforcement practices like stop-and-frisk, and has no meaningful community policing in areas where the majority of residents are from minority communities.

The panel – made up of retired Judges Cruz Reynoso, who served on the state Supreme Court; Dickran Tevrizian, who served on the federal bench; and LaDoris Cordell, a lesbian who served on the Santa Clara County bench and is the former independent police auditor for the city of San Jose – also found that the department too often yields power to the police union, which has historically resisted reform. Most recently that coziness could be seen in the monthslong effort to approve a body camera policy for officers on duty.

Of concern to the LGBT community, the panel found that transgender victims of domestic violence – often low-income trans women – experienced ridicule from the police and routine misgendering.

So, while the police department has stated policies prohibiting bias that are in line with best practices, the reality on the street is that these procedures are not uniformly followed, particularly if the person arrested is black, brown, or LGBT. For example, the department has failed to report accurately the number of Hispanic arrestees to the California Department of Justice.

Arrest data reported in the SFPD’s own “Racial Profiling Assessment” includes five racial categories, but the arrest data it reports to the state DOJ includes only three racial categories: black, white, and other. “Although there is a separate category for ‘Hispanic’ in the [state’s criminal justice statistics center] arrest data, the SFPD reported only one arrest of a Hispanic person

for the period 2005-2014. Instead, it appears that the SFPD classifies Hispanic arrestees as ‘White,’” the report states. The panel recommended correcting this problem.

The panel recommended that SFPD issue a department bulletin addressing searches of transgender individuals: “The SFPD should partner with community-based organizations and coalitions focused on transgender people to issue a department bulletin addressing the procedure officers should follow if they need to conduct a search of a transgender individual.

This issue is not addressed in [Department Bulletin] 13-258 regarding police interactions with transgender individuals, which only provides that officers are prohibited from searching any person ‘if the sole purpose of the search would be to determine a detainee’s or arrestee’s gender.’ SFPD should revise DB 13-258 to establish a written procedure for searching transgender individuals.”

The department needs to improve training for police personnel on implicit bias. The report recommended that such training be included in academy classes for new cadets and ongoing for officers. More importantly, the training should focus on real-world scenarios and include use-of-force situations. The panel also recommended that community members be invited to participate in and observe the training and noted that experts have said such collaborative efforts produce good results.

Community members get an opportunity to experience what police officers encounter on the job, and the officers can better connect with the people they serve, the report stated.

Perhaps the most critical findings concern SFPD’s use-of-force policies, which the panel said are contrary to best practices, “outdated,” and “confusing.” The report recommended that the department eliminate its “escalating scale” of permissible use-of-force policy and instead include a focus on “de-escalation.” This is training that police departments around the country

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must consider, given the recent fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. The Castile case in particular is shocking and repulsive because he was complying with the officer’s orders, yet was still fatally shot with his girlfriend and her young daughter in the car.

In San Francisco, like other jurisdictions, the police union is all-powerful. And predictably, Police Officers Association President Martin Halloran was not happy with the blue ribbon panel’s report, accusing District Attorney George Gascon, who commissioned it, of “lighting a match” on the tinderbox that confirms for police their belief that they are being scapegoated. We don’t think that’s the case. One can support the majority of hard-working, brave officers yet still believe it’s unjustified when someone who hasn’t done anything – or hasn’t committed a major crime – is the victim of an officer-involved shooting. San Francisco had six fatal officer-involved shootings in 2015 and three in the past six months.

Mayor Ed Lee, the Board of Supervisors, and the SFPD must begin instituting the recommendations made by the blue ribbon panel. The mayor can start by searching for a permanent police chief from outside of the department. It’s clear from this report that SFPD needs an outside leader to institute the necessary reforms. Police reform is possible, as exemplified by Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who earned plaudits in recent days as media reports pointed out that the department experienced a major decrease in citizen complaints and instituted effective community policing techniques since he took the helm in 2010.

America is reeling from gun violence.

The answer isn’t to arm everyone, as Donald Trump likes to say. Rather, the solution is for law enforcement to use less lethal force, and to work within their communities to foster better relationships. Nobody wins when a major U.S. city has to bury five cops. And nobody wins when communities have to bury their own because police lack policies and training to deescalate, disarm, and apprehend.t

Gun safety: A step forward in CA, an uphill fight in DC

by Rick Zbur

crime. Hate crimes are on the rise throughout the United States, with s the LGBT community contin20 percent of hate crimes reported ues to reel from the massacre at nationally targeting people based on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the their sexual orientation or gender worst mass shooting in U.S. history identity.

– and as the country is rocked by Reported LGBT homicides rose the brutal shooting deaths by poby 20 percent in the U.S. between lice of two black men, followed by 2014 and 2015, according to a study Courtesy EQCA the murders of five police officers released this week by the National in Dallas – we naturally search for Equality California Coalition of Anti-Violence Promeaning and hope to spring from Executive Director grams. Of the homicides reported these senseless tragedies. One un- Rick Zbur last year, 62 percent were LGBT foreseen but much needed outcome people of color and 54 percent of all may be long overdue progress in strengthening hate-violence related LGBT homicides were our nation’s gun safety laws. transgender women of color.

Orlando was a call to action for Equality CaliSo yes ... gun safety is an LGBT fornia and for the LGBT community as a whole. issue and Equality California is Following the shootings, we became one of the already taking a leadership role first major LGBT organizations to make gun in the ongoing struggle to enact safety a top priority and launched our #SafeAntough federal gun safety meadEqual initiative to end gun violence. As part of sures and strengthen state laws #SafeAndEqual, we announced our support for to ensure that another Orlando a package of tough, commonsense gun safety cannot occur anywhere. bills that quickly made their way through the Nationally, gun violence prevenCalifornia Legislature. On July 1, California tion efforts are gaining attention as Governor Jerry Brown demonstrated his comwell, but progress has been stalled in Washingmitment to gun safety reform in California by ton. Equality California supported two measigning into law six of those bills. sures, by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CaliforThe six bills are a historic step in keeping nia) and Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), that Californians safe from gun violence. We Caliwould have barred those on the FBI terrorist fornians owe a debt of gratitude to Brown, to watchlist from buying firearms and expanded Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (DFBI background checks on gun purchasers. The Los Angeles), to Assembly Speaker Anthony Senate voted down both measures.

Rendon (D-Paramount) and to members of Congress’ utter failure to move forward the Legislature for maintaining California’s even the most basic gun safety legislation in leadership in enacting tough, commonsense the aftermath of Orlando spawned an unusual laws that protect all of us. and widely cheered 25-hour sit-in that drew In the weeks and months ahead, we will re170 lawmakers, led by civil rights icon Reprelentlessly lobby in Washington, D.C. and in Sacsentative John Lewis (D-Georgia). ramento and mobilize the LGBT community In recent days, House Republicans faced into support legislation to keep our community traparty squabbling on legislation that would – and everyone – safe from gun violence. ban gun sales to those on a government watch Gun safety is, after all, an LGBT issue. list. With opposition from the Republican For one, LGBT people are disproportionParty, and without support by congressional ately impacted by gun violence and hate-moleadership to allow a vote, the bill is likely to tivated crimes in general. Transgender women stay in limbo. At the same time, most Demoface epidemic rates of murder and violent crats are pushing for votes on measures to ex-

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pand background checks and prevent those on the terror watch list from buying guns.

Equality California is lobbying for the passage of these and additional pieces of legislation. We recently participated in a roundtable discussion organized by Representative Xavier Becerra (D-California), joining seven other members of Congress, representatives of communities of color and faith, as well as gun safety and LGBT organizations to plan strategy and advance meaningful gun-safety reform at the federal level.

And we will join many of those same organizations at a rally for gun law reform on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on August 13.

And while California has some of the nation’s strongest gun safety laws, much more remains to be done. When Brown signed the recent six bills, he also returned five Equality California-supported gun safety bills that would have done more to make Californians even safer from gun violence. The governor’s veto messages reflected careful analysis and raised concerns that we believe can be addressed. We encourage legislators to work with the governor next year to address his concerns and close remaining loopholes in California law. Equality California is also evaluating possible support for Safety for All, a ballot initiative backed by Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom (D).

Too often, national tragedies like the Orlando mass shooting are followed by vocal cries for change but a disheartening lack of action.

This time is different. Far from paralyzing us in fear and defeat, the recent tragedy in Orlando has only galvanized our community’s commitment to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of all people, including members of our own community.t Rick Zbur is executive director of Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization dedicated to creating a fair and just society. For more information, visit www.eqca.org.

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Letters >>

July 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

And the ‘Greediest Person’ is ...

Stephen Jackson San Francisco

become the first jurisdiction in the world to end the great burden of HIV/AIDS. The Getting to Zero consortium, a community-led effort with support from Mayor Ed Lee and every member of the Board of Supervisors, is implementing a strategic set of activities to reduce the number of HIV-related deaths and new HIV infections by 90 percent within this decade. We intend to make new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths in San Francisco extremely rare.

Building on the great strides already made by the city and dozens of HIV/AIDS service organizations, much progress toward these goals has already occurred in the two and a half years since Getting to Zero was formed.

Getting to Zero has achieved strong participation and coordination among over 200 public, private and nonprofit organizations and individuals. The innovative programmatic initiatives we are implementing would not be possible without a strong commitment of moral support and resources realized by Mayor Lee and the Board of Supervisors. We express our deepest gratitude for their support of this great, shared responsibility to improve community health and achieve social justice.

Even greater membership and work on the part of community groups and individuals will help speed San Francisco to the goal of making HIV and AIDS history.

We welcome Bay Area Reporter readers to join our efforts at http://www.gettingtozerosf.org.

As we mark 35 years of lives lost and disrupted because of HIV and AIDS, San Francisco has the opportunity to

Shannon Weber for The Getting to Zero Steering Committee San Francisco

I hereby nominate Les Natali for the inaugural Donald Trump Greediest Person of the Year Award.

Natali has stonewalled the development of the Patio Cafe for nearly a generation; only because his greedy sense demands that he control bar assets (I guess Badlands and Toad Hall don’t provide enough spending money for the awardee). Also, I suppose the vacant Patio provides Natali with a handsome tax break, uninvestigated by our local supervisors.

The saddest part is that the old Patio was a fixture in the community for many years. Many of us courted our current spouses in the vibrant courtyard over pleasant Sunday morning brunches.

Greedy Natali has deprived us, and a whole generation, of that joy, while letting the property rot without activity. Sure, he will offer all sorts of excuses, blaming the city and others.

But the bottom line is that it’s Natali who is responsible for the eyesore on Castro that used to be a centerpiece of our community.

He, and his acolyte supervisors whose coffers he doubtlessly helped fill (Bevan Dufty, Scott Wiener) have succeeded in robbing a whole generation of our community from this wonderful setting.

The award comes with a personally signed full urinesample cup.

Help SF get to zero

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Gay Concord resident runs for council seat

by Matthew S. Bajko

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gay Concord man is running this November to be the first out person elected to the city council in the Contra Costa County city.

Pablo Benavente, 25, is seeking one of two seats on the five-person elected body that will be on the fall ballot. Councilman Edi E. Birsan is expected to seek a second term, while Councilman Daniel C. Helix, who is in his late 80s, has indicated he doesn’t plan to run again after six years on the council.

The filing period for the race opens Monday, July 18 and will close three weeks later. Based on information filed with state election officials, there will likely be at least four people running. Benavente is expected to be the only LGBT candidate.

“There is still that sentiment in Concord of people being anti-gay.

But with more millennials moving in and more Latinos, Concord is becoming more progressive,” said Benavente, who in 2013 married his husband, Simon Woods, 26, a food scientist from Ireland.

Born in El Paso, Texas the younger of twin boys – his brother Joaquin is also gay and lives in southern California – Benavente grew up in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. His parents separated when he was 4, and at age 9, he fell off a play structure and broke a portion of his cranium.

The accident left him partially paralyzed and with severe memory loss.

Seeking better treatment for her son, his mother moved them back to El Paso where Benavente recuperated. Eventually, he regained all of his movement and relearned writing and math.

The next year, when his mother remarried, the family moved to Concord. His mother is 43 and raising two girls she had with his stepfather, who is in his 40s and works for a meat distributor.

After graduating high school, Benavente earned a political science degree, with a minor in music – he is a trained opera singer – from CSU East Bay. He was selected for the Panetta Institute for Public Policy’s congressional internship program in 2013 and worked in the Washington, D.C. office of Congressman Sam Farr (D-Carmel).

Rick Gerharter

Concord City Council candidate Pablo Benavente

“My passion for politics just grew from there,” he said.

The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 hired him as a political organizer, and he worked on several local state legislative campaigns, including gay San Francisco Supervisor David Campos’ failed Assembly bid in 2014.

He currently works for Service Employees International Union Local 2015 as its political coordinator. And last week he was named to the Economic Opportunity Council in Contra Costa County, which advises the county supervisors and several departments.

One of the biggest issues he plans to focus on in the campaign is housing costs. Concord has no rent control ordinance, and as more people flee San Francisco’s exorbitant housing prices, rents in his hometown are also on the rise.

“We just purchased a condo in Concord after losing out on thousands of housing bids. We just got in in time because now we would be priced out,” Benavente said.

He is the not the first LGBT person to run for a Concord council seat, nor would he be the first gay person to serve on the council should he win. Steve Weir was a councilman from 1980 to 1989, including a stint as mayor, but was not publicly out as a gay man at the time.

He didn’t come out of the closet

until 1992 while serving as Contra Costa County’s clerk-recorder and registrar of voters.

In 1991 the late Gil Block, a gay man who better known as Sister Sadie, Sadie, the Rabbi Lady as a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, ran as a protest candidate for a Concord council seat even though he lived in San Francisco.

He did so because a sitting council member, Lloyd Mashore, was fighting a legal effort to remove him from office since he didn’t live in the city either while pushing for passage of an anti-gay ballot measure that fall.

Should Benavente win, not only would he be the first out LGBT council member, but also the youngest. He believes he would only be the second Latino to serve on the body.

“The Concord City Council is 100 percent Caucasian right now.

What about people of color? They don’t have a voice right now in the city of Concord,” he said. “When I meet with people, they say we need new blood.”

To learn more about Benavente’s campaign, visit http://www. pabloforconcord.com/.

Gay Oakland Port Commissioner to become prez

Three years after being appointed to Oakland’s powerful Port Commission, Michael Colbruno will become its president Thursday afternoon. It will be the first time the oversight body has had an out LGBT person serving in the role.

A former planning commissioner in the East Bay city, Colbruno was appointed to fill a vacant Port seat by former Mayor Jean Quan in 2013, a year after the first LGBT person to serve on the commission, Michael Lighty, resigned. The City Council confirmed his appointment in May of that year.

The commission voted at its meeting Thursday, June 23 to elect as its next president Colbruno, who has been serving as second vice president. It is expected to finalize its decision at the end of its meeting July 14.

Public affairs firm the Milo Group of California, where Colbruno is a partner, is hosting a celebration Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. at Bocanova Restaurant, 55 Webster Street, in Jack London Square on the Oakland waterfront.t

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<< Community News

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

t

Tenderloin Museum marks first anniversary

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

museum that honors the history of one of San Francisco’s grittiest neighborhoods is marking its first anniversary.

The Tenderloin Museum, at 398 Eddy Street, will hold a free celebration Saturday, July 16 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., with hourly programming from 1 to 8.

Since it opened, the museum has worked to highlight often overlooked aspects of the area, which was once the gay hub of San Francisco but is now mostly known for its crime and poverty. The museum offers a permanent collection, walking tours, film screenings, exhibitions by local artists, and other activities. Its partners include other museums, nonprofits, and local businesses.

“LGBT history is really important here. It’s a big part of the museum,” said Katie Conry, the museum’s program manager and a straight ally. “The fact is the whole gay civil rights movement started in the Tenderloin and spread throughout the city, then the country.”

Before people flocked from other parts of the country to the Castro district, they came to the Tenderloin.

“The Tenderloin was a safe haven for people ostracized by mainstream society,” Conry said.

One of the highlights at Saturday’s celebration will be the Aunt

Rick Gerharter

People sit around a table in the Tenderloin Museum; the cabaret tables display neighborhood matchbook covers and historical items under glass.

Charlie’s Lounge Dream Queen Revue Drag Show, which is set for 8 p.m. Donna Personna, Collette LeGrande, and the Tenderloin Museum’s own Cruzin d’Loo will perform.

The museum offers walking tours that highlight the area’s LGBTQ history. Night tours include the longtime gay bars Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk Street, and the Gangway, 841 Larkin Street. Day tours include the site of the Compton’s Cafeteria riot, at Turk and Taylor streets.

The museum is teaming up with the GLBT History Museum, at 4127 18th Street, through September to host a series of programs to mark

the 50th anniversary of the August 1966 riot, where transgender patrons stood up against police, who had been called to quell a disturbance. The exact date of the riot has been lost to history.

Events will take place at the museums and at the Roxie Theater, at 3117 16th Street.

In a news release, Don Romesburg, curator of public programming at the GLBT History Museum, said, “The Compton’s Cafeteria riot shows how, even before Stonewall, trans people, people of color, and those on margins have been at the vanguard of queer social justice.

This series celebrates their legacy and

urges us all to envision how this story from the past can inspire our future.”

From 6 to 8:30 p.m. July 28, Cruzin d’Loo, also known as performer Kevin Wisney, will lead a walking tour of the Tenderloin’s LGBTQ history, with a focus on the Compton’s riot. The tour will begin at the Tenderloin Museum and return there at 7 for a kickoff reception. Trans filmmaker Susan Stryker, whose 2005 Screaming Queens documentary brought new attention to the riot, will be on hand, as will longtime trans activist Felicia Elizondo, who is featured in the film. Admission for the tour is $5.

Visitors

Conry doesn’t have exact figures on how many visitors the museum has had, but said it’s in the “thousands.” At the weekly public events, there’s often 50 to 100 people, she said.

The impact on the neighborhood has been “very positive,” she said.

“We definitely try to be as welcoming as possible to the neighborhood and really listen to what people in the neighborhood want to see from us.”

Visitors have included tourists and neighborhood residents.

Wednesdays are free for people who live in the neighborhood.

The museum was closed during hours it was supposed to be open when the Bay Area Reporter visited

last week. Conry said it’s unusual for that to happen.

Conry said that people have “a source of pride about honoring the neighborhood,” which is often dismissed as scary and crime-ridden, and “they like learning more about the history of the neighborhood, and they like how the space takes itself seriously.”

One popular feature has been Beautiful by Night, a film featuring three Aunt Charlie’s performers.

The museum had a question and answer session with the directors and performers that “sold old extremely quickly,” Conry said, and the film was also featured at the Roxie, where tickets sold out.

LeGrande, 65, who’s in the film and lives on the cusp of the Tenderloin, said of the museum “I think it’s really terrific.”

“I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 40 years,” LeGrande, a trans woman, said. “When I first moved here, the Tenderloin was one of the big hubs of the city,” not just for LGBTs, but for San Francisco in general. “At that time, they had lots of nightclubs.”

However, she said, “as the years went by, that dwindled away, and it turned into what it is, unfortunately.”

LeGrande expressed support for the museum promoting “some of the old history of the Tenderloin.”

For more information, visit http:// www.tenderloinmuseum.org.t

Lottery slots awarded for SF LGBT senior housing

by Matthew S. Bajko

R

ay Rudolph stood nervously at the back of the packed dining hall inside Francis of Assisi Community, an independent living facility in San Francisco’s Mission Dolores neighborhood.

Like many of the more than 100 other people present that Thursday morning, July 7, Rudolph was there to see how he would fare in the lottery for 31 rooms in the city’s first affordable housing development intended for LGBT seniors. A few blocks away construction was ongoing at the site of the project, the former Richardson Hall college building located at 55 Laguna Street.

One of 1,806 people who had applied to live there, Rudolph, 66, a gay man, for four decades has lived near the project in a rent-controlled apartment. But fearful of being kicked out of his home, he had decided to throw his name in the mix to be selected as one of the inaugural residents at 55 Laguna.

“I think they are slim. I know that,” Rudolph acknowledged about his chances in the lottery. “But I am going to be optimistic. I took a hard-hat tour of the building the other week. It looks like it is coming along nicely.”

Rick Gerharter

Maria Benjamin, right, from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, pushes a button to activate the electronic lottery drawing for housing at the 55 Laguna senior project.

The project, a joint venture between Openhouse, the LGBT senior services agency, and Mercy Housing California, which develops belowmarket-rate housing, is slated to be complete by September with the first residents moving into their units in October. There will be a total of 40 residential units in the building, with one set aside for a resident manager.

Eight units at 55 Laguna will be

given to people aged 55 or older who are living with HIV or AIDS at risk of homelessness. Those residents are being chosen through a separate selection process overseen by the city’s human services agency.

Construction of the project’s second phase, a new building with 119 units of affordable senior housing to be built on what is now a surface parking lot, should break ground next year. Fourteen of those units

will be set aside for seniors age 62 or older living with HIV or AIDS at risk of homelessness. The lottery to select residents for the remaining units is slated for sometime in 2018.

“It’s been a long time coming.

Here we have a beautiful, LGBTfriendly community. It is a great day for a lot of reasons,” Maria Benjamin, director of homeownership and below market rate programs at the city’s housing office, told the crowd that had assembled to witness the lottery for the 55 Laguna units.

The selection process has been fraught with controversy and concerns within the LGBT community that most of the residents will, in fact, be straight seniors. Due to antidiscrimination laws, the city cannot restrict who can apply to live at 55 Laguna based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

A large majority of the people who attended the lottery, which was not required of applicants, appeared to be gay white men. But there were also about a dozen Asian American seniors present, as well as several African-American and Latino applicants.

A list shown of all the names of the people who applied included many Asian surnames, which was

unsurprising as the city’s Chinese community in particular has long been organizing its low-income seniors to apply for affordable housing when it becomes available.

“One of the reasons I am here is to see how many LGBT people as opposed to other ethnic groups applied,” admitted Randolph, who feels the city could have done more to ensure the units go to LGBT seniors. “I think it could have been better handled by the city.”

Signaling the frustration of seeing so few affordable housing units marketed to LGBT seniors was applicant Frank Pietronigro, 61, a gay man who lives on Twin Peaks.

“Ask the mayor to do a thousand more of these, not just one for the thousands of people who applied,” he requested of Benjamin.

Pietronigro told the Bay Area Reporter that the response to the 55 Laguna lottery clearly demonstrates the need for the city to build more affordable housing for all seniors.

He added that the willingness of non-LGBT seniors to want to live in a development meant for LGBT people is a sign of progress in its own respect.

“We are all in this together. There See page 13 >>

Trans Israeli man sets career in military

by Heather Cassell

A

transgender soldier serving openly in the Israel Defense Forces isn’t new, however, making the military a career choice is groundbreaking.

Lieutenant Shachar Erez, 22, Israel’s first openly transgender commander in the IDF, knew he wanted a military career when he entered the mandatory service when he was 19 years old. He wanted to be a soldier so badly that he was willing to put his gender identity aside.

“When I enlisted I said to myself, ‘OK, what is important to me is my service. I will put my gender aside if necessary and do whatever needs to be done to have a successful service,’” said Erez, whose parents were commanders in the IDF. He wears his mother’s officer pin that she gave to him when he graduated from the officer course.

But he was able to live authentically. That’s because transgender individuals have been allowed to serve openly in the IDF since 2000, reported NBC News. During the last 16 years, none have made

it to being a commander until now.

Prior to U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s June 30 announcement that he was lifting the ban on transgender soldiers serving openly in the military, Erez came to the U.S. on a 10-day tour, June 20-30, visiting Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Erez didn’t meet with any officials at the Pentagon or LGBT military organizations during his recent tour, but a future visit is being planned, according to Iraina Miles Fox, director of community relations at the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest in San Francisco.

Erez, who is a project officer at the

army’s general headquarters in Tel Aviv, spoke with the Bay Area Reporter and community leaders during his stop in San Francisco June 22.

He explained that it is his hope that through his story other transgender individuals with dreams of serving their country will gain the courage and strength to achieve their goals as he has been able to reach his own.

A rather shy man, Erez was reluctant at first to become the “poster boy” for transgender soldiers in the IDF, he said, but he realized that his story was important and he wanted to build awareness.

“It’s important to tell this story, to show that it could be common,” he

said. “It shouldn’t be unique. People who want to go and serve and defend the country can do it in Israel.”

He noted last month’s mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and the terrorist attack in a popular cafe area outside his office in the middle of Tel Aviv the week before. The attacks reminded him of why he is in the IDF. “I can’t imagine being in a country who forbids me letting me be myself,” said Erez about anti-LGBT ideologies of the Islamic State, alQaeda, and other militant groups.

“So, it’s reminding me why I’m fighting for democracy.”

See page 13 >>

THANK YOU, SAN FRANCISCO!

For a warm, welcoming, and wonderful 2016 LGBT Pride Parade and Celebration!

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DENNIS HERRERA SAN FRANCISCO CITY ATTORNEY

Paid for by: Paul Henderson for Judge 2016, FPPC I.D. No. 1383323; and Dennis Herrera for City Attorney, FPPC I.D. No. 1374368.

<< Election 2016

t Trump’s GOP heading to Cleveland for convention 8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

by Lisa Keen

P

resumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is an unattractive political choice for many voters because of his unabashed hostility toward Muslims, Mexicans, and media scrutiny. But, oddly enough, he is still the most LGBT-friendly Republican presidential candidate in history.

He accepted GOProud’s invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011 when many conservatives attending the meeting raised objections to the gay conservative group’s participation. He eliminated a beauty pageant rule requiring contestants be “naturally born female.” He said he has “many fabulous friends who happen to be gay.” He accepted gay actor George Takei’s invitation to lunch to discuss same-sex marriage, and he attended the wedding of a gay couple.

And last year, when asked on Meet the Press whether private companies should be able to fire people for being gay, he said, “I don’t think it should be a reason, no.”

Even as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, Trump was quick to speak out against the shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, and he has repeatedly expressed “our nation stands in solidarity” with the LGBT community.

Among LGBT voters who evaluate candidates on a range of issues – in addition to their positions relative to LGBT-specific concerns – some will find Trump attractive.

He promises to “put America first,”

“grow the American economy,” and “reclaim millions of American jobs” from foreign countries.

Gregory Angelo, president of the national Log Cabin Republicans group, has described Trump as “the most pro-gay nominee that the [Republican] party has ever had for president.” And, given LGBT voting patterns in the past, there’s a prospect for Trump earning significant support this year.

In 2008, 19 percent of self-identified gay, lesbian, or bisexual voters said they voted for Republican presidential nominee John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama. In 2012, 22 percent voted for Republican Mitt Romney over incumbent Democrat Obama, who was already establishing himself as the most pro-LGBT president in history.

Trump seems to be aware of the prospect for winning LGBT votes.

He’s careful to word his disagreements with the LGBT community very delicately. For instance, rather than say he’s opposed to allowing same-sex couples to marry, Trump says, “I’m for traditional marriage.”

But nearly every statement of Trump – with the exception of his desire to “build a wall” between the U.S. and Mexico – seems subject to revision by the candidate. After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage, Trump’s response was: “I don’t say anything.

I’m for traditional marriage” and he said he accepted the decision is the “law of the land.” But a few months later, he said he would “strongly consider” appointing justices who would overturn that decision.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump

After North Carolina passed a law to ban transgender people from using public restrooms that correspond to their gender identity, Trump said he thought people should be able to use “the bathroom they feel is appropriate.” Then later, he said the issue should be left to state law, and he criticized the Obama administration’s guidelines for helping transgender students.

Trump takes frequent swings against “political correctness,” a term many in the LGBT community associate with basic respect for people despite their differences. He was reluctant to disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and white supremacy because he knew “nothing” about them.

Visible support in the LGBT community for Trump specifically is small.

One gay political activist, Chris Barron, is organizing an LGBTrump group that will host an event in

Cleveland during the convention.

Barron declined to say how many people have expressed interest in the group but said he speaks with the Trump campaign “regularly” on LGBT issues.

“I haven’t asked them for anything in reference to [Trump’s] speech” at the convention, he said, but added, “I think his approach on LGBT issues, particularly in the wake of Orlando, has been perfect.”

Three gay men are part of the delegation from California, and all three are pledged to Trump: Charles T. Moran, former president of the California chapter of Log Cabin Republicans; Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and a Facebook board member; and Ric Grenell, who was an adviser to Romney in 2012 and a political commentator for Fox News.

Three other gay delegates to the convention come from Washington, D.C., and none are pledged to Trump: Christian Berle (a John Kasich supporter) and Rachel Hoff and Bob Kabel (Marco Rubio supporters). Gay delegate Kevin Cain of Washington, D.C., gave up his seat in May, telling the Washington Post he did not want to be involved “in any way” in nominating Trump for president.

A search of leaders of Log Cabin’s 46 other chapters around the country matched against the RNC delegate list found no other openly LGBT delegates, and the party does not collect information about LGBT status.

So what should LGBT viewers watch for at the July 18-21 convention in Cleveland?

The nomination

Although Trump won enough delegates during the primaries to secure the nomination, staunch opponents of his nomination have threatened to try and derail that.

But party leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), have in recent days said they’d call on Republicans to rally around Trump, in the interest of party unity.

Veep

Of critical concern to many will be who Trump secures as his vice presidential running mate and what that person’s credentials will be on LGBT issues. Trump said he would announce his choice this week but an announcement had not been made by press time.

LGBT visibility

LGBTrump plans to host an event at Cleveland State University on Tuesday night. Log Cabin Republicans and the local GOP chapter will host a convention watch party on Tuesday night. Log Cabin will join the American Unity Fund in hosting a “Big Tent Brunch” on Wednesday morning, with a panel of conservatives, including Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner, discussing “diversity and inclusion in the GOP.” On Wednesday evening, Log Cabin will team up with PFLAG to host a party.

Convention speeches

Trump said earlier this month that the convention speaker list is all filled and that he would release it

by July 6. That didn’t happen and he had not released it by press time.t

GOP platform looks to continue anti-gay stance

by Lisa Keen

T

he Republican Party is poised to adopt an anti-LGBT platform, which is unchanged from previous years despite efforts by a couple committee members to foster inclusion in the document.

During a meeting of the platform committee Monday, July 11, there were two dramatic players: Anne Dickerson and Rachel Hoff.

Dickerson repeatedly chided the committee for taking hostile swipes at the LGBT community through the party platform. Hoff implored the committee to simply acknowledge that there is a difference of opinion among Republicans on

marriage for same-sex couples.

Both were soundly rebuffed.

The 112-member committee snubbed forceful appeals from Dickerson to stop attacking the LGBT community and delete hostile language in the party platform. Initially, it seemed to welcome the quieter entreaty from Hoff to have the platform say only that the Republican Party welcomes “thoughtful conversation” about the meaning of marriage.

“In high school, I chose to be a Republican. My parents are not Republican so I was not born this way,” said Hoff, eliciting a few laughs from other members. “I chose to be a Republican because I believe in the same principles that you do – free-

dom, individual liberty, and limited government. I’m here 15 years later, still in this great party, despite the hurtful rhetoric and stance on these issues and all I ask today is that you include me and those like me – and not exclude us – by simply acknowledging that thoughtful Republicans represent multiple views on the definition of marriage.”

Hoff, a delegate from Washington, D.C., noted near the beginning of her remarks that she is the first openly gay member of the Republican Party’s platform committee, which drew applause from only a few members.

The meeting, which aired live on C-SPAN, was mostly quiet as she introduced her amendment to replace hostile language in the platform about marriage for same-sex couples with language that would acknowledge “there are diverse and sincerely held views on marriage within the party and that support for allowing same-sex couples the freedom to marry has grown substantially in our own party.”

But there was no discussion and, when Hoff asked for a show of hands, the platform chair declared the amendment failed.

Earlier in the day, the committee adopted an amendment from Colorado member Justin Ever to add the

<<

Oakland club

From page 2

out a long time ago,” Bisbee said.

Oakland police haven’t provided information on the incident.

The bartender wasn’t made available for comment, and Bisbee said he doesn’t have surveillance video showing the incident.

A Facebook page encouraging people to boycott Club BnB and Club 21 says, “a queer black woman was assaulted” by BnB staff and then beaten outside the club by Bisbee.

The page also calls for boycotting Oakland’s LGBT Pride parade and festival, which is set for September

word “traditional” in front And Hoff said it was of “two-parent housenot only a “slap in the hold” in a sentence that face” of gay parents but proclaimed that children also “a slap in the face to raised in a “traditional their children.” two-parent household” are The amendment passed physically and emotionally easily by voice vote. healthier and less like to Dickerson introduced engage in drug and alcohol an amendment to strike Courtesy Huffington Post use, crime, and pregnancy language in the proposed outside of marriage.

Gay GOP delegate platform that said the (There is no scientific Rachel Hoff party supports the antievidence that children gay First Amendment raised by same-sex couples are any Defense Act “to ensure [private worse off than those raised by hetadoption agencies] do not face goverosexual couples.) ernment discrimination because of “This is another poke in the eye their views on marriage and family.” to the gay community, and it’s outShe said the language encouraged rageous,” said Dickerson. “This has such organizations “to turn away gay no place [in the platform], and concouples” and was not only unconstitinuing to suggest that a gay married tutional but “blatant discrimination.” couple, which is legal in our country – A platform committee member this is outrageous to suggest children from Virginia, 22-year-old Tommy of a gay couple are more likely to be Valentine, said Dickerson’s remarks completely imbalanced ... . This is so amounted to calling the platform provocative ... I won’t support it.” committee members bigots and Jesse Long of Nevada said he that he disagrees – a remark that would oppose the amendment beelicited considerable applause from cause he wanted the party to supthe committee. Dickerson’s amendport “any parent who wants to raise ment failed on voice vote. a child.” A member who identified The meeting continues this week, herself as a single mother from Newith final debate and vote on the braska said she found the amendplatform taking place during the ment insulting not only to LGBT Republican National Convention parents but to single parents.

July 18-21 in Cleveland.t 11. Bisbee’s club is listed as a sponsor of the event, as is the B.A.R. “We understand this is not the first time assaults have happened at this club,” a post on the boycott page says. People with stories to share are encouraged to contact boycottclubbnb@gmail.com.

Bisbee said calls for a boycott haven’t had an impact “at all.”

“We’ve been part of the community forever, and we cater to all different ethnic groups,” including blacks and Latinos, he said.

Bisbee said he’s “very proud” of his bar and referred to rants about the incident on Facebook as “lies.”

On Saturday, July 9, about 30

people picketed the entrances of Club BnB and Club 21. Protest organizer Alex U. Inn, who hasn’t responded to interview requests, and several others spoke with an amplified microphone from the bed of a truck parked next to Club BnB’s entrance.

At one point, Bisbee shouted complaints from the club doorway, but the protest remained peaceful. No arrests were made. Another protest was planned for Monday night, July 11.

For more coverage of the protest, see the article in BARtab.t Jim Provenzano contributed to this report.

t

National News>>

July 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Studies: Same-sex weddings aid economy, family acceptance

by David-Elijah Nahmod

T

wo recent studies show that in the year since same-sex marriage became legal in all 50 states, the economic impact of those nuptials is being felt, along with an uptick in family acceptance.

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law said in a new report that marriages by 123,000 same-sex couples have generated an estimated $1.58 billion boost to the national economy.

A separate study by the Knot, a wedding brand and marketplace, and Logo, the LGBT entertainment brand, found that same-sex couples are spending more on their weddings, participating in more wedding-related events, and seeing an increase in family acceptance.

Broken down, the numbers in the Williams Institute report reflect $1.35 billion in direct wedding spending by the couples and $228 million in spending by out-of-town guests. The 46 states that collect state and local sales taxes saw $102 million flow into their coffers as a direct result of same-sex weddings, the report said.

The Williams Institute noted that the economic boosts from same-sex weddings could support 18,900 jobs for one full year.

“This study shows that businesses and governments have benefited from marriage equality,” said Christy Mallory, study co-author and senior counsel at the Williams Institute.

The results of the study came as no surprise to Bay Area resident Len Hancock-Handeland, who married his husband, Byron HandelandHancock, two years ago – the couple have been together for 34 years.

“This is not only highly beneficial financially to our economy, helping each state with the increase in taxes collected by married same-sex

couples, but also benefiting many small businesses providing wedding services,” Hancock-Handeland told the Bay Area Reporter. “Whether they be florists, caterers, wedding planners, DJs, as well as wineries and wedding halls providing their space for weddings.”

Hancock-Handeland also noted the social justice aspect of legalizing same-sex marriage.

“This is not only a financial gain for society as a whole, but also morally just, which is displayed, if not celebrated, in a very public way,” he said. “Stating that same-sex couples are, and deserve to be, considered equal to their heterosexual married counterparts.”

For some, the legalization of same-sex marriage has made it possible for multinational couples to stay together. On July 7, San Francisco resident Ken Jones officiated at the City Hall wedding of Jeanette and Lucia, a lesbian couple who met while both were working overseas.

The couple declined to provide their last names as both continue to work as engineers in countries where LGBT people do not enjoy legal protections and where homophobic sentiments run high.

“I was only able to celebrate quietly,” a smiling Lucia told the B.A.R. after the ceremony. She said that she had followed the story of the U.S. Supreme Court marriage equality ruling while she was working out-

these paths in the future,” he said.

Greater acceptance

Rick Gerharter

A married couple walked with their child in the Our Family Coalition contingent in last month’s LGBT Pride Parade.

side of the United States.

“I’m very grateful to those who fought for this for 30 years,” she said.

The couple has been together for three years and had many obstacles to face in their quest to be together.

“I agreed to perform this wedding ceremony as I learned more and more about the high hoops and multiple hoops this loving couple

“This study shows that businesses and governments have benefited from marriage equality.”

–Christy Mallory, Williams Institute

had to jump over in a lot of countries where you can still be stoned or stomped to death because of your homosexuality,” Jones said after he pronounced the two women legally wed. “Their story highlighted the challenges facing our immigration policies as they relate to LGBTQI communities. If the truth be told, our immigration work has just begun.”

Jones is a well-known gay activist who will be portrayed by Jonathan Majors (as a young man) and by Michael Kenneth Williams (as an older man) in ABC TV’s upcoming gay historical drama When We Rise.

He declined to discuss the economic aspects of marriage equality.

“I am in it for the social change and making America a better place to live, not only for those who are with us now but for all those who walk

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The Knot/Logo study, which surveyed 979 LGBTQ respondents in the U.S. who were married or engaged, revealed that since the legalization of same-sex marriage, 15 percent of LGBT-identified men and 10 percent of LGBT-identified women report feeling the pressure to get hitched.

The study also found a 53 percent increase in family acceptance, but noted that more than half the couples still reported that family was not accepting of their marriage.

That’s up from 28 percent for both men and women in 2015. Family approval increased to 43 percent for men and 44 percent for women this year.

More couples are also seeking permission from their significant other’s family before proposing, with 87 percent of the men and 90 percent of the women receiving a formal wedding proposal. Among transgender people, 94 percent of the respondents reported having a formal proposal.

The Knot study further found that the average marrying age for gay men is 37, while the average age for lesbians in 33. Men spend an average of $33,822 on their weddings, while women spend an average of $25,334. Men spend an average of $5,719 on engagement rings, while the average cost for women is $5,349. Transgender people spend a whopping $11,145 on engagement rings, according to the study.

About 70 percent of couples pay for their own wedding receptions.

Around 10 percent of couples report getting help from their families in defraying their wedding costs.

Nearly all the couples – 97 percent of men and 98 percent of women – reported that they recite their own vows at their weddings.t

<< Business News

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

t

Marriage case plaintiff Obergefell helps launch line of wines

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

he Ohio home of Jim Obergefell and his late husband, John Arthur, was normally stocked with some bottle of Champagne or other bubbly beverage.

“We were of the belief it doesn’t have to be a special occasion to have bubbles. Just breathing is a special occasion,” recalled Obergefell, 50, the lead plaintiff in the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case that established marriage equality in all 50 states.

Arthur, who was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, married Obergefell in 2013 on a Maryland airport tarmac three months prior to his death. Because Ohio didn’t recognize the couple’s marriage, it led Obergefell to sue the state in federal court, as he recounts in his new book Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality – co-written by Debbie Cenziper and published

by William Morrow.

While the men never made it out to California’s famed wine country, they did visit the wineries in Canada’s Niagra-on-the-Lake region across the border from Buffalo, New York. And there were a number of wineries near them in northern Ohio, though Obergefell conceded, “Ohio wines are not always the best.”

The first time he visited Napa wineries was last October, and his inaugural trip to Sonoma came in February when he met with several winemakers helping to create and bottle a series of wines for Equality Wines, LLC. The San Diego-based company is a partnership between Obergefell and wine producers and distributors Elissa Nauful and Matt Grove, who are both straight.

“We wanted to make a tribute wine to him and his husband. When we asked him what wine we should make, he said sparkling,” said Grove.

“When he and John were going through the most difficult times, they would always raise a glass and say, ‘At least we have bubbles.’”

Grove, 47, initially had set out to produce a bottle of wine in honor of his deceased aunt who identified as gay, Marilyn Rose Schultz, a television journalist who led a class action lawsuit against NBC and its affiliates in the 1970s seeking equal pay for women. Nauful suggested he think bigger.

He read a story about Obergefell and spent the next year trying to reach him. It turned out that Nauful once was a student of a man who was good friends with Obergefell.

He suggested in March of last year that he connect with them.

Once he came on board, the trio then turned to Michael Volpatt, a gay man who owns Big Bottom Market in Guerneville, for suggestions of winemakers they should approach. He, in turn, introduced them to Iron Horse Vineyards

Matt Grove

Iron Horse Vineyards CEO and co-owner Joy Sterling, left, tastes dosages with Jim Obergefell.

CEO and co-owner Joy Sterling.

“She is the best sparkling winemaker in northern California. I knocked on her door and asked her to make a wine for this cause,” said Grove. “She said, without batting an eye, ‘I absolutely will make this wine.

You are on to something.’”

Thus the three partners found themselves at Sterling’s vineyard earlier this year tasting a variety of dosages, a mixture added to Champagne that determines its sweetness.

“It was a lot of fun, though I was nervous going into it,” Obergefell said of choosing the correct dosage.

Of the eight they tried, two stood out and were mixed together to create the dosage they opted to use.

“I can’t say why it was the one. It hit everything I liked about bubbles.

I loved the flavor,” said Obergefell.

Grove said he knew by the look in Obergefell’s eye that was the way to go.

“I remember it vividly,” he recalled. “He said if John could see me now, this is it. This is the wine.”

Their first release, 200 cases of the Love Wins Cuvee, came out June 26 on the first anniversary of the court’s historic ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Comprised of 70 percent pinot noir and 30 percent chardonnay, the sparkling wine is made from grapes grown by Iron Horse Vineyards in Sebastopol.

A tribute to Obergefell and Arthur on the bottle explains that, “this beautiful sparkling rosé is a toast to marriage equality and those reluctant activists who change our world.”

In February they also met with Kurt Giusti, whose family has long run Via Giusti Wines in Forestville and is making a pinot noir for Equality Wines. It will be called The Decision and should be released August 1.

The company is also working with two other renowned winemakers on a cabernet sauvignon for release in the fall. They are keeping their identities a secret for now.

“We chose producers and grapes from the Russian River Valley not only for the amazing grapes that are grown in the area, but also because western Sonoma County is known

for its inclusiveness and acceptance of all people,” explained Nauful in a statement about the wines.

With each bottle Equality Wines sells, $8 will be donated to an organization fighting for equal rights.

Its first partnership is with national LGBT advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign.

“Jim is on board for a couple reasons, the main one being so we always stay true to our mission and are genuine and do the right thing in terms of making an impact,” explained Grove. “When you buy a bottle of Equality Wine, you are not only celebrating Jim and his husband and their rights but also contributing to great causes.”

Obergefell personally signed about 100 of the Love Wins bottles, whose front label features the facade of the U.S. Supreme Court in rainbow colors. Last week, he donated one to the White House and hopes to soon personally deliver it to President Barack Obama.

The wines can be purchased online at http://www.equalitywines. com. An unsigned bottle of Love Wins goes for $60, signed it is $80.

The pinot noirs will likely be priced at $80 a bottle.

The Love Wins Cuvee can also be bought in San Francisco at wine shop Swirl on Castro, 572 Castro Street, or in Guerneville at Big Bottom Market, 16228 Main Street.

Dog washers host canine events

Noe Valley’s VIP Scrub Club, run by business and life partners Sage Cotton and Lancy Woo, is hosting several events for canines and their

Matt Grove

Jim Obergefell sits on a bench at Iron Horse Vineyards.

owners this month.

Next Thursday, July 21 will be the dog-washing business’ second Yappy Hour, where dogs and their owners can meet up, take a snapshot in the “fun Fido phone booth,” and enjoy wine, juice, and snacks. The kid-friendly events will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. the first and third Thursdays of the month.

From 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. Saturday, July 30 DOGTV – http://www. dogtv.com – will be shooting dogs in tubs at the business for an upcoming show.

VIP Scrub Club is located at 1734 Church Street. To keep abreast of more special events at the business, visit its events blog at https://vipscrubclub.com/blogs/news and sign up for its “pup-dates” at the bottom of the page.

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Gun laws

From page 1

Governor Jerry Brown recently signed into law a package of bills meant to enhance gun safety. While he vetoed several other pieces of legislation, a state LGBT advocate called the bills that he signed “significant.”

Brown signed six gun safety bills July 1. Among other provisions, the new laws prohibit people from possessing high capacity assault rifle

Got a tip on LGBT business news? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or e-mail m.bajko@ ebar.com.

Courtesy Leesa Sleep

Courtesy Mayor’s office

<<

During Pride Month in early June the online, luxury mattress company Leesa Sleep – https://www.leesa.com/ – donated 200 mattresses to Larkin Street Youth Services, the San Francisco-based agency that offers a variety of housing options to at-risk youth, particularly LGBT youth who are homeless or transitioning out of foster care.

The donation came to a retail value of $60,000 and was part of the company’s One-Ten initiative where it donates one mattress for every 10 it sells.

Leesa has donated more than 5,000 mattresses to date to shelters and transition homes across the country.t

Jen-Ai Notman, left, head of social impact for Leesa Sleep, checks out the mattresses that the company recently donated to Larkin Street Youth Services.

Lesbian Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan, left, and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee visited the memorial for victims of mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando Friday, July 8. Sheehan is carrying the rainbow flag that flew at half-staff at San Francisco City Hall in honor of the victims, which Lee brought and was added to the memorial.

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magazines, regulate ammunition possession and sales, and expand background checks.

The statewide LGBT lobbying group Equality California was joined by 19 other LGBT and HIV-related organizations in backing the bills as part of EQCA’s Safe and Equal campaign against gun violence.

“The bills signed into law today are a historic step in keeping Californians safe from gun violence,” Rick Zbur, EQCA’s executive direc-

tor, said in a July 1 news release.

Zbur thanked Brown, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) and others “for maintaining California’s leadership in enacting tough, commonsense laws that protect all of us.”

As Zbur noted, Brown vetoed several gun safety-related bills, including those that would’ve allowed people to buy only one long gun per month and expanded who could request a restraining order to prevent high-risk individuals from getting a firearm.

In his veto message on that legislation, Assemblyman Phil Ting’s (D-San Francisco) Assembly Bill 2607, Brown noted a restraining order bill that he had signed just took effect in January, “so at this point it would be premature to enact a further expansion.”

Zbur said Brown’s “veto messages reflected careful analysis and raised concerns that we believe can be addressed. We continue to believe that these bills included important protections to strengthen California’s gun laws. We encourage legislators to work with the governor next year to address his concerns and close remaining loopholes in California law.”

In an interview, Zbur said EQCA See page 14 >>

t

Community News>>

July 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Equality campaign launched in Solano County compiled by Cynthia Laird

T

wo LGBT organizations have launched a campaign to foster inclusion and equality for the community in Solano County.

The Stonewall Democratic Club of Solano County and the Solano Pride Center unveiled the campaign, dubbed “We Are the Same, You and Me,” which was developed in response to the June 12 massacre that killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

The coordinated campaign includes a series of posters designed to raise awareness on how feelings of hatred, bigotry, and inequality exist in the cities and communities of Solano County and aren’t going to be tolerated by the community, the groups said in a news release.

“Throughout their lives, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people live ordinary and extraordinary lives with a continual barrage of disapproval or hate in the public square,” Rebecca Nord, managing director of the Solano Pride Center, said in the release. “Whether through media, through legal attempts to marginalize us, or in the marketplace and in communities which don’t acknowledge us.”

The posters are available to any business that wants to display them, organizers said.

“It is way past time for us to share, embrace, respect, and honor our differences,” said Brenda Crawford, chair of the Stonewall Democratic Club.

“This will allow us to focus on our similarities and build healthy communities where all are welcomed and accepted.”

In the last month, over 30 businesses in downtown Vallejo were

given the first of four posters to display in their shop windows. Stonewall and the Pride Center will be selecting three artists from around the county to complete the collection of posters, with themes such as “No Hate in My Town,” “Our Love is the Same,” and “Our Family Matters Too.” “The ‘We Are the Same’ campaign facilitates the public square in welcoming LGBTQ people to local shops, restaurants, and theaters,” said Nord.

Solano County businesses interested in obtaining a poster can email info@solanostonewalldemocrats.org or solanopride@gmail. com.

For more information on the Stonewall club, visit the Facebook page “The Stonewall Democratic Club of Solano County.” For more information on the Pride Center, visit http://www.solanopride.org.

Orlando fundraising update

GLAAD has released a single, “Hands,” as a musical tribute to last month’s mass shooting in Orlando that left 49 mostly gay Latino men dead and 53 others injured.

“Hands” features numerous music superstars, including Mary J. Blige, Tyler Glenn, Selena Gomez, Adam Lambert, Jennifer Lopez, Pink, Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Meghan Trainor, and the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles.

A news release noted that GLAAD has been on the ground in Orlando since the tragic shooting working to support local LGBT advocates and organizations and with media outlets to shine a light on the disproportionate rates of violence LGBT people face, especially LGBT people of color.

Gay man complains about CPMC visit

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

gay San Francisco man is complaining to California Pacific Medical Center’s Davies campus about a recent trip he made to the Castro district hospital, claiming a nurse told him to “man up,” among other problems.

In a June 27 letter he wrote to administrators Gehno Aviance, 43, who didn’t want his legal name published, said he and his husband, Javier Rocabado, went to the emergency room May 31 in “intense pain” after he’d been vomiting for several hours.

Among other problems he encountered with staff, he said a nurse told him to “man up” as he breathed hard and hyperventilated during an examination.

“That was the last thing that I expected to hear at this hospital,” Aviance said. “Especially in San Francisco.”

When he continued moaning, the nurse exclaimed, “I hate drama queens!”

Later, he said, a nurse insisted that Rocabado leave, and, “groggy” from sedatives he’d been given, he felt “excruciating pain” in his genitals as the nurse inserted a catheter into his urethra without his consent.

“I started to yell and tried to stop her by grabbing onto her hand and said: ‘It hurts!!’” he wrote. ‘She responded: ‘You should be used to the pain with that piercing you have down there.’ ... She forced my hand away and shoved the catheter into place.”

Aviance, who wrote that he’d had “the best service” at CPMC in the past, said in his letter that he hasn’t

been able to sleep, his sex life has been “destroyed,” and his gastric issues “have gotten worse.”

“Every time I think about what happened to me at the hands of your nurse and doctor, I become paralyzed with fear and anger to the point that I am incapacitated by panic attacks,” he wrote, adding that it took him four weeks to write the letter because, among other reasons, “every time that I start to write it get sick to my stomach.”

He posed several questions to CPMC administrators, including, “What is CPMC going to do about this?”

Aviance wrote that soon after his visit he spoke with a manager “on several occasions,” but he told the Bay Area Reporter the hospital hasn’t responded to his letter.

He also said he wasn’t diagnosed with anything during his visit, but he said the problem was gastritis.

“They didn’t give me any real answers about anything,’” Aviance said. “They pretty much kicked me out of the emergency room after a few hours.”

CPMC spokesman Dean Fryer said in an email exchange with the B.A.R. Tuesday that the hospital’s “been in communication” with Aviance “to gather more detail on what he experienced during his visit to the CPMC emergency department.

At CPMC we set high expectations for our staff and expect them to treat patients with compassion and understanding. We have an ongoing investigation into the complaint,” Fryer said he couldn’t comment further, but he later said that he’d been told someone was trying to reach Aviance Tuesday.t

that all contributions collected via its Pulse Victims Fund GoFundMe campaign will go to victims’ families and survivors without exception. The distribution of the fund is being coordinated with the city of Orlando’s OneOrlando Fund to ensure speed, transparency, and to prevent fraud.

Courtesy Stonewall Democratic Club

Brenda Crawford, left, Stonewall Democratic Club chair, stands with Fred Menard of Indian Alley Antiques in Vallejo as she gives him a poster to display as part of the “We Are the Same, You and Me” campaign.

“Hands” can be downloaded from iTunes for $1.29 at https:// itunes.apple.com/us/album/handssingle/id1130519695?app=itunes.

GLAAD said that proceeds will benefit Equality Florida’s Pulse Victims Fund, the GLBT Community Center of Central Florida, and GLAAD. In related news, the online victims’ fund that Equality Florida started after the June 12 attack has now surpassed $7 million, with donations coming in from across the country. Many of the gifts have been small-dollar amounts, though there have been large donations from some corporations such as the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, GoFundMe, and MGM Resorts International.

“The outpouring of love and support from across the globe has been overwhelming,” Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith said in a news release. “We are grateful for the small-dollar gifts that comprise the bulk of this fund, and contributions from those who have used their positions of power to support the victims and families.”

Equality Florida said in its release

Supe calls for hearing on LGBT cultural district

Supervisor Scott Wiener this week called for a hearing on preserving LGBT nightlife spaces and the status of the stalled LGBT cultural district.

Wiener, a gay man who’s in the midst of a tight race for a state Senate seat, requested the hearing in part due to the recent news that the owner of the Stud bar in the city’s South of Market neighborhood would retire in a couple months.

The move leaves the future of the gay bar in limbo as it’s expected to face a rent increase in September.

Wiener, who represents District 8, which includes the Castro, said that other SOMA LGBT nightlife venues are also at risk. His opponent in the Senate race, District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, represents SOMA. Wiener also said he would seek to push forward the long-stalled SOMA LGBT Cultural District. Approved in 2012, the cultural district has been delayed for years.

The hearing will focus on what policy tools can help protect LGBT nightlife venues throughout the city.

The hearing will take place at the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee. No date has been set.

Rainbow symphony seeks musicians

The Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, a group of LGBT artists, invites orchestral players to audition ahead

of the group’s summer concert, which is scheduled for September 3 at the San Francisco Conservatory.

The program will be Saint Saens Cello Concerto #1, Elgar’s Sea Pictures, and Brahms Symphony #4.

Interested musicians can contact the symphony for audition information by emailing recruitment@bars-sf.org. Rehearsals are on Wednesday nights, with the first one taking place July 20. For more information, check out http://www. bars-sf.org.

Tickets now available for leather bay cruise

The Golden Gate Guards and Breeches and Leather Uniform Fanclub, or BLUF, will hold their sixth annual leather cruise on San Francisco Bay Saturday, September 24, the evening before the Folsom Street Fair.

Marc Owens, corresponding secretary for the Golden Gate Guards, said the cruise will travel under the Bay Bridge, and pass Angel Island and Treasure Island. Going north, the boat will cruise near Sausalito and take a turn around Alcatraz.

From there, the cruise will head to the Golden Gate Bridge for a chance to see it and the city at sundown.

No-host cocktails will be available on board (the guards are selling drink tickets), as well as a late afternoon buffet.

People should be at Pier 40 at South Beach Harbor, The Embarcadero (near AT&T Park), at 4:30 p.m. to register and board. The cruise returns at 8:15.

Leather or uniform attire is expected. Early registration until August 1 is $65 per person (tickets increase to $75 after that date). All attendees receive a commemorative pin, sailor cap, and lei. Net proceeds from the cruise benefit Openhouse, an LGBT senior agency.t

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<< Sports

t Olympics are diverse, but problems persist in Rio 12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

by Roger Brigham

B

y all rights, fans of inclusive sports should be celebrating. Diverse representation and participation at sports’ highest levels that was scarcely conceivable a generation ago is now reality.

Led by Simone Biles, the women’s national Olympic gymnastics team that was named after last weekend’s Olympic trials in San Jose includes three women of color.

That same weekend, Brazilian lesbian Amanda Nunes won the

women’s UFC bantamweight title in Las Vegas.

And headed by British diver Tom Daley and U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner, as many as 30 LGBT and intersex athletes are expected to compete at the Summer Olympics in Brazil next month, eclipsing the two dozen mark set in the 2012 London Games.

Sounds pretty peachy, we’re all getting along, right? We should all be set to munch on apple pie while waving the ole red, white, and blue en route to gold in sunny Rio, yes?

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Well, no.

First, there are the 2016 Olympics themselves and the conditions surrounding them. Brazil is in a crippling economic recession and organizers say the national government has not come through with promised funding. Murder and robbery are up 15 percent over a year ago and there does not appear to be enough money available to pay cops or give them enough gas money to make it through the first week – right now, they are striking for pay and literally begging civilians for printer ink, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper. Plans had been made to squire tourists around and insulate them from the most crime-stricken areas, but those preparations now appear uncertain.

“How are people going to feel protected in a city without security?” Governor Francisco Dornelles asked a local newspaper.

Of course, it’s hard to say whether fewer cops on the scene is a good thing or bad. Amnesty International reports police have killed more than 2,500 in Rio since the city was awarded the Summer Games in 2009.

Think the Zika virus will be the biggest health risk in Rio? Well, maybe, if you stay away from the beaches, where, with the Olympics just weeks away, scientists have identified a drug-resistant “super” bacteria capable of causing meningitis and pulmonary, gastrointestinal, urinary tract, and bloodstream infections. City officials blame it on illegal dumping; scientists say it is more likely triggered by Rio’s habit of dumping raw untreated sewage into Guanabara Bay. Most infested areas? The beaches being used to stage the sailing, triathlon, and open water swim events.

“Experts have likened it to competing in raw sewage,” the South Atlantic News Agency reported.

But domestic news back in the states in recent days has been so alarming, so saddening, so enraging, that even the fears of swimming in sewage and having to lend the cops a few squares of double-ply

Jason Lavengood for USA Gymnastics

The women’s U.S. Olympic gymnastics five-member team includes, from left, Laurie Hernandez, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles, and Madison Kocian.

may make the Olympics seem like an idyllic relief.

Let us hope that is not so. Let us hope that we see a few demonstrations of anger, pride and determination. Let’s hope for a few John Carlos-Tommy Smith moments of defiance. Let us hope that at this crisis point of the country, where the African-American community is being devastated by officer-inflicted gun violence and transgender and gay rights are under almost daily legislative attack, the sports community, as it has so often in the past, can provide a rallying point for a return to sanity and acceptance.

Look: for two and a half centuries our country was concerned about ensuring the right of every citizen to have access to a musket but the Founding Fathers didn’t care enough to declare slavery evil. Now their words protecting the right to have a musket are being used to ensure access to far more lethal fastfiring guns that citizens use against each other at a sickening rate – and we are still paying the economic and social price for their cowardly silence on slavery.

Over the past few weeks, professional athletes have taken to social media to express their anger and dismay at the repeated incidents of officer-involved shootings that have taken so many black lives. They have mildly protested as North Carolina has overturned local civil rights pro-

Attorneys shift focus to gun violence

by Sari Staver

M

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tections for LGBT individuals and forced transgender individuals to use the restrooms associated with the genders they were assigned at birth. But some athletes would like to see them do more when on the biggest media-saturated stage they will ever know.

“I’m all about rallying, protesting, fighting for OUR people,” New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony, who is on this year’s men’s Olympic basketball team, wrote on Instagram. “I’ll even lead the charge, by any means necessary. We need to steer our anger in the right direction. The system is broken.

Point blank period. If the system doesn’t change we will continue to turn on the TVs and see the same thing. We have to put the pressure on the people in charge in order to get this thing we call justice right. A march doesn’t work. We tried that.

I’ve tried that. A couple social media posts/tweets doesn’t work. We’ve all tried that. That didn’t work. Shooting 11 cops and killing 5 WILL NOT work. While I don’t have a solution, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people don’t have a solution, we need to come together more than anything at this time. We need each other.

These politicians have to step up and fight for change. I’m calling for all my fellow ATHLETES to step up and take charge.”

The Olympics sounds like a pretty good place to start.t

any of the attorneys who worked on the marriage equality issue are now shifting their focus to legislative solutions to gun violence in the U.S., according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Speaking on a panel at the Roxie Theatre, following a screening of the new documentary about guns in America, 91%, Mike McLively, staff attorney with the San Franciscobased Law Center, as it is known, said that gun violence legislative efforts are “attracting the top minds” who worked on marriage equality.

“It’s a long haul but we can win this,” said McLively, referring to the passage of so-called smart gun laws on the state and federal level.

McLively, who tracks court cases related to smart gun laws and writes amicus briefs in critical Second Amendment cases nationwide, discussed the victories and defeats in efforts to pass laws aimed at curbing gun violence. Smart gun laws include those requiring universal background checks as well as those involving permit-to-purchase laws, minimum age laws, large capacity magazine bans, and gun dealer regulation, he said.

With 117,000 Americans shot every year in the U.S., that rate tops “other industrialized nations,” he said.

“Much is preventable, based on

Courtesy Law Center

Mike McLively is a staff attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

research,” McLively added.

Each year, attorneys at the Law Center analyze the strength of gun laws in all 50 states and assign letter grades, then comparing those grades to the states’ gun death rates.

Year after year, there has been a “powerful correlation,” with states with stronger laws having fewer gun deaths per capita, McLively explained. Six states, including California, got an “A” in 2015, while 26 states got an “F,” the lowest grade. The best state is California, while the worst is Kansas, he said.

While smart gun laws are saving lives, interstate gun trafficking has

become “a contagion” said McLively.

To reach their full potential, laws must be adopted nationwide, he said.

McLively pointed out that while Congress has been “shamefully ineffective,” 2015 was a “banner year” for common sense gun legislation at the state level. Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook in 2012, 125 new smart gun laws have been enacted in 41 states, he said.

The movement to save lives from gun violence “has never had more momentum or more public support,” said McLively. According to the documentary screened at the Roxie before the panel, 91 percent of Americans are in favor of laws mandating universal background checks.

Clare Senchyna, a retired Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital nurse practitioner who became an advocate after her son was shot and killed, discussed her involvement with the Everytown Survivor Network.

Through her volunteer work with the network, Senchyna has been a part of phone campaigns targeting voters in states with pending legislation, including a recent campaign in Georgia, where a proposed law would’ve allowed guns to be carried on campus. When advocates called Georgia voters, about half agreed to have their call put through to the governor’s office to ask him See page 14 >>

t <<

Community News>>

Milk’s bullhorn

From page 1

friends with Milk and had him write political columns for the weekly gay paper.

Baird recalled he stopped by the paper’s offices one day to speak with Ross about taking out an ad to inform B.A.R. readers about the protest against Coors, the lone beer company refusing to sign a new contract with the union.

“Bob said that advertising is expensive and asked how I was going to pay. I said I would pay out of my own pocket,” recalled Baird. “I asked him how much, and Bob said, ‘Do you got a $5 bill on you?’ I said I did and that was all he charged me.”

The LGBT community soon became one of the strongest backers of the Coors boycott, and gay bars throughout town refused to serve it. Protests against the company became so ubiquitous that complaints about Baird and his use of the bullhorn started to pour in to City Hall.

<<

Cafe Flore

From page 1

Gerry said other improvements needed would be a new fence, patio heaters, and renovations in the bar area. He said that under the partners’ ownership, the restaurant was given a 94 health code rating, up from 73 two years ago, when they purchased it.

He estimates that the business needs approximately $100,000 to make the improvements he thinks are necessary.

Long history

Cafe Flore is mentioned in the “Citywide Historic Context State-

<<

Out in the World

From page 6

The transgender soldier

Currently, there are an estimated 60 transgender soldiers serving in the IDF, reported Ynetnews, an online English-language news site. Erez and Shaul Hamawi, the gay director of new media at the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco, said the number sounded about right.

They couldn’t confirm it because the IDF doesn’t keep statistics on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Elisha Alexander, 41, a gay trans person and founder of Ma’avarim (Passageways), a transgender organization, and who works with Erez informing transgender soldiers of their rights, believes they should be able to serve as their whole selves in the military.

“There are over 40 soldiers that have come out of the closet in the army as trans,” wrote Alexander in an email interview with the B.A.R. “I think it’s important that trans people are able to be out and live authentic lives in every situation, including the army.”

Alexander noted that in the past transgender individuals couldn’t serve openly in the military and were automatically discharged as it was considered a mental illness.

Even though that has changed, he wrote that it takes a “certain kind of trans person” to successfully serve in the military and that there is a high suicide rate in the army as well as the transgender community.

“The army is very binary. There is still no room for gender variant and genderqueer people,” wrote Alexander. “There is still no official policy

<<

Lottery

From page 6

is not enough housing for anyone,” said Pietronigro. “I am loving that people want to move into an LGBT housing center from other communities. I think that is OK but shows we need more housing.”

City officials did take a number of steps intended to boost the chances

July 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

After the union ended its boycott of Coors in 1976, and he no longer needed the bullhorn, Baird decided he should pass it on rather than pack it up and have it go unused.

“I thought who I am going to give it to? Who better than Harvey?” said Baird. “Harvey put it to good use and then Cleve put it to good use.”

Sometime after the creation of the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, a public elementary school in the Castro renamed for Milk in 1996, Jones donated the bullhorn to it for inclusion in a display case about its namesake. There it had remained, largely forgotten outside of the school community, until 2008.

Due to the media attention the bullhorn attracted for being a part of the Milk movie, Jones opted not to return it to the school and instead brought it home with him to Palm Springs, where he was living at the time. Eventually he struck a deal with the LGBT museum and loaned it the bullhorn indefinitely.

Last Friday, July 8, Jones met up with Baird at the cafe and the two then walked over to the museum to return the bullhorn. It is displayed in a glass case above an old “Harvey Milk for Supervisor” T-shirt and next to a specially lighted case that houses the suit Milk wore the day he was assassinated inside City Hall in November 1978.

“I am really happy it is there, it is accessible, and people can see it,” said Jones, who once again is a Castro resident.

After handing over the bullhorn, the two men then walked over to P.O. Plus on Castro Street to have a description and short history of the bullhorn notarized. It will be kept in the archives of the GLBT Historical Society, which operates the museum.

“I want people to know this history. My job today with the union is directly connected to what Allan, Harvey, Howard Wallace, and others did with the Coors boycott, when an alliance of the gay community with the Teamsters was as unlikely as one could imagine” said Jones, referring to the first openly gay Teamster truck driver. (Wallace died in 2012.)

“My union today is negotiating on behalf of LGBT hotel workers in the Deep South where there are no protections for people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. And we are winning those protections in our contracts.”

As for Coors, the LGBT community continued to avoid the company’s products for decades due to its anti-gay business policies and the Coors family’s donations to anti-gay groups. In 2007 the company merged with the Miller Brewing Company and is now considered an ideal place for LGBT people to work. (There is currently a $100 billion-plus merger planned between Anheuser-Busch InBev and SAB-Miller.)

But the actions of Chairman Pete Coors and his family’s Castle Rock Foundation continue to draw scrutiny. Many LGBT people still refuse to drink Coors beer.

“It is still not sold here in the Castro gay bars to this day,” noted Baird, who has been with his wife, Helen, another lifetime resident of the neighborhood, for 60 years and helped raise her son from a different relationship in the Castro.

The GLBT History Museum is located at 4127 18th Street. Admission costs $5 for the general public, $3 for California students with ID.t

ment for LGBTQ History in San Francisco” adopted late last year by the Historic Preservation Commission, noted historian Gerard Koskovich in an email to the B.A.R. According to the San Francisco Heritage website, the building that Cafe Flore occupies dates back to the early 20th century when the Castro was then known as “Little Scandinavia” or “Fin Town” due to the large numbers of Nordic immigrants who called the district home.

The plot of land that would eventually become Cafe Flore originally contained a Swedish bathhouse.

Constructed in 1932, the bathhouse was owned and operated by the Finnila family. A pharmacy

was also opened in the section of the building that faced the corner of Market and Noe streets. The designer of the building, Alfred Finnila, later contributed to the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, where he oversaw the iron and roadway installation. Finnila also built the famous Bridge Roundhouse Restaurant.

In 1973, the pharmacy closed its doors, and Cafe Flore was established in the vacant storefront. The Finnila family continued to run the bathhouse section of the building until 1986, when that section of the building was demolished.

Said longtime disk jockey and nightlife writer Marke Bieschke,

“For me, Cafe Flore has always been the perfect spot to grab a huge vermouth on the rocks, flirt with a waitress in drag, pick up a temporary European boyfriend, or pop in for a tasty cinnamon roll. As one of the few outdoor spaces in the Castro it’s a real destination. And with its charitable drag shows and events, Cafe Flore’s brought some scrappy creativity to the neighborhood’s often polished nightlife scene.”

Gay filmmaker Marc Huestis said he has “many fond memories” of time spent at Cafe Flore.

“I shot a whole scene in my film Whatever Happened to Susan Jane there,” he said in an email. “I just hope they keep it Cafe Flore.”

Terry Beswick, executive director of the GLBT Historical Society, recalled he worked at the cafe as an “angry busboy/barista” in 1986 when it was owned by Mahmood and Ahmad Ghazi.

“I was also beginning work as a street activist with Citizens with Medical Justice and had meetings there,” he wrote in a Facebook message. “Those were different times, and it was a different place, but for me it will always represent one of the centers of gravity in the Castro.”

District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener said in an email, “Cafe Flore is a true anchor for the Castro community, and I have confidence it will be around for many years to come.”t

However, he recognized it hasn’t always been so easy for transgender soldiers in the past. More progressive policies only came into place since he joined the army, Erez said.

There’s even a discussion about transgender soldiers in the Knesset, Alexander noted.

“We didn’t have a policy that we have today or the awareness that we have today,” said Erez, who entered the military as a woman, but graduated as a man. “My commanders always did what they thought was right without any regulation. They still managed to figure out the right things to do.”

Guy Tiram, a 22-year-old transgender man, had a mixed experience of acceptance and misunderstanding when he entered the IDF.

Officers attempted to address and place him according to his preference, but a female soldier during boot camp discovered he was born female and changed the situation.

In the process he was humiliated, forced to wear women’s gear, and dress in the women’s dressing room, he told Ynetnews.

“The girls started screaming, ‘No! There’s a guy in here! Get out of here!’” he told the site. “I went out and cried for half an hour. They called an officer, who came over and began yelling at me, and then finally they found a place where I could change privately. It was just terrible, a terrible feeling of humiliation.”

However, as he went further into boot camp his commanders went the extra mile to help him feel comfortable. But IDF policies forced him to remain in the women’s barracks, which was intolerable for him. He left the military. That wouldn’t happen today as policies have changed, he admitted.

Tiram is now a counselor for transgender youth at Israel Gay Youth, and he participates in the Trans-Breaker Project, which guides transgender individuals through national service.

Erez had a similar experience where he couldn’t get a men’s uniform when he enlisted in the military.

“When I enlisted I asked to get man [sic] uniform. They tried and tried to get me one and they couldn’t succeed,” he said. “So, my first day in the army – for the first three hours in my service – I was wearing women’s clothing.”

As soon as he entered boot camp

and informed his commander, they found a solution: a unisex work uniform. That’s all he asked for, but like Tiram, his commanders went further offering separate showering times in the barracks and other ways to make him feel comfortable.

“It was so nice to feel understood,” said Erez, who continued to experience that respect as he rose through the ranks.

Like his parents, he even met his girlfriend of three and a half years in the IDF, which made him feel like everyone else.

“I look at myself and I said, ‘OK, I’m just like my parents and a lot of other people in Israel that met their spouses in the military service,’” he said.

He declined to reveal his girlfriend’s name, citing privacy concerns.

During the past two years he has overseen more than 200 soldiers.

Today, he advises transgender soldiers by encouraging them to address their gender and informs them of their rights in the IDF. Erez expressed that while being a transgender commander isn’t the focus for himself or his soldiers, authenticity and the mission is.

“I owe it to my future soldiers. I owe it to be the best commander that I can, the best soldier, and the best officer that I can. I owe them openness and honesty. I also owe them to let them be the main focus of my service,” said Erez. “I am an officer. They and the mission is the main focus.”t

policy, was 382 applicants.

They also announced people who live or work in San Francisco would have preference for the units, making it near impossible for people with no current ties to the city to be selected.

Applicants in this group totaled 1,361.

According to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, which oversaw the lottery process, 13 of the applicants fell

under the first preference category for people who were displaced from their homes in the city during the 1960s and 1970s.

Another 16 applicants fell into the second preference category for eight of the units earmarked for people who have more recently been forced out of their homes due to an Ellis Act or owner move in eviction.

Berkeley resident William Mitch-

ell, 62, a gay black man, believes he falls under the first preference category as he was displaced from his homes in both the Western Addition and Chinatown due to redevelopment projects decades ago. But he said he had been told conflicting responses on if he does qualify to be in the first group.

“The city said quit it with the bullhorn, you are hurting people’s business,” he said. “Coors even took me to federal court and the judge said your bullhorn is no more. The union then told me not to use it.”

Instead, at the suggestion of a friend, Baird bought nearly a dozen children’s tape-recorders and had the protesting beer truck drivers play the union song “Solidarity Forever” on a loop.

“They would play it all day long in front of the stores. It got to the point where they said we want the bullhorn back, we are sick of hearing that song,” said Baird.

Bullhorn put to good use

regarding trans soldiers. Each case is dealt in a different way, supposedly in accordance to the soldier’s needs.”

Erez disagreed, clarifying that transgender soldiers are treated like any other soldier in the IDF. “The main policy says that the transgender solider is exactly like any other soldier,” he said.

The IDF has an equity policy where the military will help soldiers from various backgrounds serve equally within its ranks by providing individuals with the resources needed to help them serve to the best of their ability – including medical, he said. Additionally, during boot camp, every incoming soldier is taught to respect every person no matter what their background is and treat them like everyone else, he said.

“We understand that each and every person is a different person and they have different needs,” said Erez, about the “tool box” the IDF has developed to work with a variety of different individuals to help them succeed.

“No matter what, you have to respect everyone and treat them the same,” said Erez, who is the oldest in his family. He has two other brothers, one of whom recently started his military service. “Now as a commander I see it. I know that no matter how different my soldiers may be from me, I will give them the best care and treatment that they need and judge them only by their professional performance. This is the exact treatment that I got as a soldier.”

The IDF also has someone, Lieutenant Colonel Limor Shabtai, who is the deputy women’s affairs adviser to the chief of staff of the military, whose of LGBT seniors in the lottery. They reduced the window to apply down to roughly two weeks from the usual 30 days.

They also set aside 16 of the units for people who either live in District 8, which includes the gay Castro neighborhood, or within a half mile of the project. Falling into that category, used for the first time in a housing lottery since becoming city

Jane Philomen Cleland

Israeli Defense Forces Lieutenant Shachar Erez speaks to trans advocates during a recent visit to San Francisco.

purpose is to advocate and oversee women’s issues and gender identity.

Transforming the military

Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at 00+1-415-2213541, Skype: heather.cassell, or mailto:oitwnews@gmail.com.

See page 14 >>

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

<<

Attorneys

From page 12

to veto the bill. The campaign was successful, said Senchyna. Phone campaigns are credited with blocking laws in a number of other states, she said.

Another advocate, Paulette Brown, whose son was also shot and killed, works with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group formed after the Sandy Hook tragedy to convince legislators, companies, and educational institutions

<<

Gun laws

From page 10

is supporting national efforts to tighten gun laws.

“We’ve been communicating with the Democratic leadership and members of Congress, particularly in the California delegation, to try to put together coordinated efforts with gun safety groups and members of organizations representing communities of color that have been heavily impacted by gun violence, just like the LGBT community,” he said.

He said his group would also focus on lawmakers from California, particularly Republicans, who’ve voted “the wrong way” on gun safety or who’ve been “part of the deadlock in Congress, where they won’t bring gun safety bills to a vote.”

Now that several of the gun bills it supported have been signed into law, EQCA is also looking at endorsing Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 63, also known as the Safety for All initiative, which is set to be on the state ballot in November.

Among other provisions, it would prohibit possession of large-capacity ammunition magazines and strengthen and require most people to pass background checks and get authorization from the Department of Justice to buy ammunition.

Zbur said EQCA is “generally going to be supporting everything that will have an impact on ending gun violence in California and across the country.”

Not everyone supports the efforts to tighten gun laws, however.

Pink Pistols

Dave Truslow, who’s with the San Jose chapter of the Pink Pistols, a group of LGBT gun enthusiasts, said in an email to the Bay Area Reporter that his group’s reaction to the new California laws “is the same as other firearms enthusiasts: enforce existing laws and enact laws that reduce crime – not criminalize law-abiding citizens. None of the bills Governor Brown vetoed or signed will make any impact on crime or violence.

Criminals don’t obey laws. None of the bills sent to Governor Brown have improved public safety elsewhere. There’s no reason to expect

<<

Lottery

From page 13

“It is one hurdle after another,” he said. “They are pushing minorities out and this LGBT housing probably is not going to be given to gay seniors.

I am not happy about that at all.”

The lottery for 55 Laguna marked the first time the city used a computer program to rank participants in order based on how they qualified under the four separate preferences being used to select the residents.

Roughly an hour after the doors opened that morning at 10 a.m., the ranking of slots was complete within a second of a button being pushed.

Benjamin stressed that “just because you get a housing preference doesn’t mean you automatically get a unit. Your age matters. Your income matters.” And she warned the crowd that the selection process “ain’t over. Once you are selected there is a whole other slew of documents requested of you.”

to support sensible gun laws. Brown, whose son died saving someone’s life, said she is now “in a club that nobody wants to belong to.”

In addition to the need to lobby politicians for sensible legislation, Brown also said that preventing violence “starts in the home.” And, she added, “If we don’t fix it at home, the violence will continue.”t For more information, visit www. smartgunlaws.org, http://everytown.org/survivors/, and www. momsdemandaction.org.

they will here.”

Truslow said the Legislature should instead “reinstate gun theft as a felony with a mandatory 10year minimum sentence” and ensure criminal prosecution of people who enable illegal transfers of firearms, among other measures.

“I’m disappointed and perplexed

by LGBT organizations such as EQCA that urge more gun control but fail to improve community safety,” he said.

“By contrast, San Jose Pink Pistols instructors are eager to conduct [Refuse To Be A Victim] safety courses to Bay Area LGBT groups. We teach tips and techniques versus urging authorities to disarm you.”

Nicki Stallard, a trans woman who runs the San Jose Pink Pistols and acts as a spokeswoman for the national group, has gained some attention for her criticism of Newsom’s proposal.

“Firearms policies should be aimed at criminals,” Stallard said in an interview. “Gavin Newsom’s policies will do nothing to disarm criminals.

What they will do is disarm potential victims” and “chill the rights of California gun owners on many levels.”

Stallard said that there are about 315 members in her meet-up group, and that the Alameda and San Francisco Pink Pistols chapters probably have 50 to 100 members between them.

Nationwide, she said there’s been “explosive” growth in the Pink Pistols but said the group doesn’t keep “tight” records to protect members’ privacy.

Zbur, referencing the National Rifle Association, said that Truslow’s reaction that instead of pushing new bills, legislators should enforce existing laws reflects “the typical NRA mantra.

We know how well that’s worked.”

He added there’s been widespread support for his group’s efforts on gun safety.

“Of the things that we have been working on, the thing I have received the most support from within the LGBT community and people thanking us is that we stepped up so quickly and elevated the issue,” Zbur said, adding that people have approached him in the street, in clubs, and at Pride events.

Because of the “overwhelming support,” Zbur said, “we know that this is the right thing to do, not only for LGBT people, but for California and the American public in general.”t The list of names and how applicants fell under each preference category will be posted online Thursday, July 14, at http://www.sfmohcd. org. Beginning Monday Mercy staff will begin contacting the applicants in their ranking order to schedule interviews to ensure they qualify for the units.

A wait list of up to 400 names will be created for the units available in the future based on the lottery rankings. While he landed in number 799 overall, Rudolph is number 180 under the third preference category for people who live in District 8 or near the project. He also is number 602 under the fourth preference for people living or working in the city.

“I am in the middle of the pack and I am sort of OK with that. I am not thrilled but OK,” he said. “I am a protected tenant in my apartment now, so I will fight to stay here until they build the next building. It would be nice to live in a landmark building like Richardson Hall with all the murals. But I will be OK.”t

t

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037117500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CALLAWAY LANDSCAPES, 101 27TH ST #10, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LEE BRITT CALLAWAY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/15/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/27/16.

JUNE 23, 30, JULY 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037116900

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The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/03/16.

JUNE 23, 30, JULY 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037143100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NADI’S CHARMES AND EVENTS, 349 CHICAGO WAY, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NADINE MANUELLE KPOKPA ZIHIRI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/15/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/15/16.

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JUNE 23, 30, JULY 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037145100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OPERATION ACCESS, 1119 MARKET ST #400, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed AMBULATORY SURGERY ACCESS COALITION, (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/20/95. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/17/16.

JUNE 23, 30, JULY 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037140100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HH MICRO, 5999 3RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed AMERITECH COMPUTER SERVICES, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/14/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/14/16.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-16-552231

In the matter of the application of: TINA BHUTANI, 350 EWING TERRACE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner TINA BHUTANI, is requesting that the name TINA BHUTANI, be changed to TINA BHUTANIJACQUES. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 30th of August 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037122400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ONE BOILING POT, 1155 TARAVAL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DIANE J. CHEUNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/01/16.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037148300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAN FRANCISCO BAY COMPUTER SERVICES, 4736 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed EDUARDO SANCHEZ & MICHAEL POHLABLE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/22/16.

JUNE 30, JULY 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037143900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KINGDOM RICE, 1337 SUTTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SAN FRANCISCO LIGHTHOUSE (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/16/16.

JUNE 30, JULY 07, 14, 21, 2016

ebar.com

JUNE 30, JULY 07, 14, 21, 2016

NOTICE OF INTENTION TO CIRCULATE RECALL PETITION

TO THE HONORABLE Mayor Edwin M. Lee: Pursuant to Section 11020, California Elections Code, the undersigned registered qualified voters of the City and County of San Francisco, in the State of California, hereby give notice that we are the proponents of a recall petition and that we intend to seek your recall and removal from the office of Mayor, in the City and County of San Francisco, California, and to demand election of a successor in that office.

The grounds for the recall are as follows: Mayor Ed Lee must be recalled immediately. His 5+ years in office have brought: 1) HOUSING CRISIS: destruction of rent-controlled and affordable housing stock, thousands of evictions, speculation bubbles benefiting developers; 2) WORSENING HOMELESS CRISIS: brutal encampment raids, scapegoating of the poor and mentally ill; 3) CORRUPTION AND INFLUENCE PEDDLING: allegations of perjury at the Ethics Commission, vote fraud, and campaign finance violations resulting in FBI investigations of City Hall; 4) PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC ASSETS: parks, roads, port facilities and transit; 5) SFPD KILLINGS OF PEOPLE OF COLOR: Alex Nieto, Amilcar Perez Lopez, Mario Woods, Luis Gongora Pat, and 17 more since 2011; 6) SFPD SCANDALS: Racist Text Scandals, Chief Suhr $1.5 Million corruption settlement; 7) PAY TO PLAY GOVERNMENT: frivolous revelries America's Cup, Super Bowl 50, Salesforce street closures; 8) TAX BREAKS FOR CORPORATIONS: Twitter, AirBnB, Google Bus tax breaks; 9) DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: highest rents in America, income disparity higher than Rwanda, loss of city and nonprofit workers, teachers, artists,working class exodus; 10) NEIGHBORHOODS THREATENED: SoMa, Chinatown, the Castro, Noe Valley, the Haight Density Bonus plan for citywide gentrification; 11) DISPLACEMENT OF LATINOS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS, Latinos pushed out of Mission, African Americans now 3% from 15%.

The printed names, signatures, and residence addresses of the proponents are as follows: Signers: 1. Erika McDonald; 807 Shotwell St. #3; SF CA 94110 2. Michael Murphy;1511 44th Ave; SF CA 94122 3. Dennis Wayne Fox; 1623 24th Ave; SF CA 94122 4. Carole Summers; 455 Sanchez; SF CA 94114

14. Linda Kahn; 720 York #107; SF CA 94110 15. Rodney Ewing; 720 York #107; SF CA 94110 16. Mark Kitchell; 105 Palm Ave #6; SF CA 94118 17. Ruth Sakheim; 105 Palm Ave #6; SF CA 94118

5. Michael L. Black; 455 Sanchez; SF CA 94114

18. Adrienne Fong; 750 Presidio Ave #207; SF CA 94115

6. Richard Stone; 3476 18th St #27; SF CA 94110

19. Mario Grillo; 242 Turk St #704; SF CA 94102

7. Robert B. “Barry” Hermanson; 2467 28th Ave; SF CA 94116

20. Will Brodhead; 15 Laidley St.; SF CA 94131

8. Amanda Owen-Walkup; 1050 Shrader St.; SF CA 94117

22. Bob Gorringe; 19 Knollview Way; SF CA 94131

21. Blank

9. Blank

23. Obo Help; 1531 Fulton St.; SF CA 94117

10. David Salaverry; 344 Jones St. #402; SF CA 94102

24. Jackie Barshak; 2067 10th Ave; SF CA 94116 25. Jane Logan; 60 Camp St; SF CA 94110

11. Francisco Herrera; 331 Peru Ave; SF CA 94122

26. Darrell Rogers; 2760 San Bruno Ave #8; SF CA 94134

12. Sylvia Rorem; 1772 LaSalle Ave; SF CA 94134 13. Karen Fleshman; 5 Galilee Ln #2; SF CA 94115

JUNE 23, 30, JULY 07, 14, 2016 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-16-552201

In the matter of the application of: HONG THU THI NGUYEN, 1433 SILLIMAN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner HONG THU THI NGUYEN, is requesting that the name HONG THU THI NGUYEN, be changed to MILEY NGUYEN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 16th of August 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 30, JULY 07, 14, 21, 2016 In compliance with FTA regulations, we are posting BART’s Proposed FFY 2017- 2019 Triennial DBE goal and methodology (Report) for 30 days beginning July 1. The Report is posted at http:// www.bart.gov/about/business/ocr.

We are especially interested in comments which discuss the availability of DBEs or non-DBEs in BART’s market area. If you think the availability differs from our Report, we want to know why that availability may differ for the next years from what is discussed in the Report.

Please include the following information with your comments: Your name Name of your business or organization Comment regarding BART’s Triennial goal or the Methodology used to obtain the goal.

Other relevant comment The goal methodology report will be made available during regular business hours of 8:15 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, at BART Office of Civil Rights, 300 Lakeside Drive – 16th Floor, Oakland CA 94612 for public review and comments for 30 days from July 1, 2016 through July 29, 2016. Comments may be made to Tim Lohrentz by email: tlohren@bart.gov, or mail your written comments to the address above or fax your comments to (510) 464-7585.

7/14/16 CNS-2900430# BAY AREA REPORTER

A copy of this notice and proof of service will be filed with the City and County of San Francisco Department of Elections.

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

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FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037170700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PSYCHIC HORIZONS, 970 VALENCIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CHURCH OF NATURAL GRACE (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/18/81. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/27/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VILLA AROMA, 801 GEARY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DAVID CHANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/11/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/11/16.

JUNE 30, JULY 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037146600

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037171000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: UNLIMITED AUTO TITLE LOAN, 1315 23RD AVE. #212 SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed LINCOLN EASY CASH (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/21/16.

JUNE 30, JULY 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037160400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JOE’S PICKLES, 46 SEWARD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOSEPH NORTON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/04/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/30/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037147400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PRIMAVERA REALTY, 60 GOLETA AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VERA KOPILENKO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/21/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/21/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037163100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ARMIN HAMMER PRODUCTIONS, 2200 CESAR CHAVEZ ST #99, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GARY STEVEN HOBISH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037161300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EXCEPTIONAL SENIOR PLACEMENT SERVICES, 3757 WEBSTER ST #106, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DAVID COHEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037134800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: A & M TOWING SERVICE, 150 TOLAND ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed THOMAS CHAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/26/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/09/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037151300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WICKED STICKY, 2636 JUDAH ST #135, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NATIVE ROOTS COOPERATIVE INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/24/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037165900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NAMI, 1830 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed R & L VENTURES LLC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/05/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037141300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ACCESS BIOPHARMA TRAINING, LLC, 660 4TH ST #323, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ACCESS BIOPHARMA TRAINING, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/12/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/14/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036542100

July 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

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This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MICHAEL DAVID NELSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/26/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/11/16.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ARIEL EXPRESS #2, 2359 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARTA S. FIGUEROA. 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 06/27/16.

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037151400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NOE VALLEY SMILES AND BRACES; NOE VALLEY SMILES & BRACES; NOE VALLEY SMILES FOR KIDS, 3932 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed JAFARI DMD INC. AND SIAMAK JAFARI DENTAL CORP (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/24/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/24/16.

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037171400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GREEN SPA & NAIL, 347 JUDAH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed HAO KIM LAM & HOANG CHUC PHUNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/07/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/11/16.

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JULY 14, 21, 28 AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037163500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FUELING STATION, 2436 POLK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LILLIAN W. WONG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/01/16.

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JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037146400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NORTH BEACH PSYCHIC, 527 COLUMBUS AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed HOLLY MARKS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/20/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/20/16.

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JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037145900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PICCIONE FLOREALE, 1254 MASON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed GENNARO PICCIONE & BELEM PICCIONE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/20/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/20/16.

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037146700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MONCLER, 212 STOCKTON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed MONCLER USA RETAIL LLC (NY). 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 06/21/16.

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037170800

ebar.com Legal Notices>> STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-037077700

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: GREEN SPA & NAIL, 347 JUDAH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by MUI CHANH VONG. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/03/16.

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037145400

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: A & M TOWING SERVICE, 150 TOLAND ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by ALSON HO. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/23/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LIMONCELLO, 1400 SUTTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ALIMENTO, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/11/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/11/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: N3XT, 340 PAGE ST #207, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ROBERT J. THOMAS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/20/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/20/16.

JULY 07, 14, 21, 28, 2016

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04, 2016

JULY 14, 21, 28, AUGUST 04,2016

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Latin lessons

Chambers works

25

Darling life

Out &About

23

O&A

22

20

Vol. 46 • No. 28 • July 14-20, 2016

www.ebar.com/arts

by Richard Dodds

L

Leslie Odom Jr., who recently left the cast of Hamilton, will make his Bay Area concert debut on July 23 at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek.

Argot Pictures

Christopher Boudewyns

eslie Odom Jr. had just won a Tony Award for playing Aaron Burr in Hamilton, but he was already putting the mega-hit musical in his rearview mirror. On the phone from New York a few days before his July 9 farewell performance on Broadway and a few weeks before his upcoming Bay Area concert debut, he talked about his big plans for this in-between time: “A few days just sitting on the couch.”

See page 26 >>

by Sari Staver

F

rom This Day Forward, a documentary exploring a family’s reactions when the husband begins living fulltime as a woman, opens on July 15 at the Roxie Theater. The film, which screened at dozens of film festivals worldwide over the past year, was directed by award-winning filmmaker Sharon Shattuck, who first learned her father Michael was transgender when her sister discovered pictures of him dressed in women’s clothes when the girls were still in grade school. But the family never discussed the subject, said Shattuck in a telephone interview, “because we were Midwesterners who didn’t talk about that sort of thing.”

See page 23 >>

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

Scene from director Sharon Shattuck’s From This Day Forward.

<< Out There

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

Return to the transgressive 1980s

by Roberto Friedman

T

he 1980s turned out to be a seminal period in gay literature.

Mega-successful gay authors like Edmund White, Alan Hollinghurst, and David Leavitt were following in the footsteps of pioneering gay writers like Gore Vidal, John Rechy and Andrew Holleran, writing novels exploring their own culture, and getting mainstream attention for it. Gay publishers, media and bookstores were experiencing a bit of a boom. Our gentle subculture was suddenly front-andcenter in the larger monoculture.

Meanwhile, those of us who were lucky enough to be here in the Bay Area in the 1980s knew there was a real creative ferment going on right around us. Writers like Robert Gluck, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy and Sam D’Allesandro were developing their own styles and fictive strategies in what would become known as the New Narrative

movement. They were part of a loose network of transgressive, non-traditional scribes that included Dennis Cooper in LA, Gary Indiana in NYC, and writers following their inspiration all over the place such as Eileen Myles, Bruce Benderson and David Wojnarowicz.

Add in a sudden pandemic of a potentially fatal STD, a reactionary federal government impervious to our plight, the ACT UP movement and other gay responses, and you have the ingredients for a true cultural moment. All of this is explored in The Soho Press Book of 80s Short Fiction, a new collection of gay and other stories edited by Dale Peck (Soho Press). As Peck writes in the book’s introduction, “Perhaps the only feeling more persuasive than alienation from the revanchist ethos of Reagan’s 80s was the refusal to succumb to it, to validate it or accept its judgments.

t

edited by Yours Truly. The book’s delicious cover contains a detail from Jess’ “The Mouse’s Tale” (1951/54), a collage created from images cut out of gay bodybuilding magazines from their Golden Age. Great artist, great art adorning great literary production.

Up on the roof

Writers found strength in the very traits that had been used to vilify them, and fertilized by desire and fear and determination, a new literature flourished in the tiny spaces between courage and despair.” Peck describes the parameters of his collection’s fictive universe as beginning with the first line of Brad Gooch’s story “Spring,” “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there,” and ending with the last line of Wojnarowicz’s story “Spiral,” “I am disappearing but not fast enough.”

The Soho Press collection is a Who’s Who of brilliant writers from the period. In addition to the authors cited in the second paragraph above, it includes fiction artists of such diverse backgrounds and narrative styles as Lynne Tillman (“Weird Fucks”), Jamaica Kincaid (“Girl”), Christopher Bram (“Aphrodisiac”), Patrick McGrath (“The Angel”), Dorothy Allison (“River of Names”), Sarah Schulman (“After Delores”), Laurie Weeks (“Debbie’s Barium Swallow”), Essex Hemphill (“Ceremonies”), Bret Easton Ellis (“The Secrets of Summer”), Gil

Cuadros (“Sight”), Randall Kenan (“Hobbits and Hobgoblins”) and quite a few others. That some of these talents were extinguished way too early only adds resonance and impact.

Another new collection has us looking retroactively at that fertile period for creative writers. Communal Nude – Collected Essays by Robert Gluck (Semiotext(e)) presents a whole world of nonfiction from the influential San Francisco writer, director of San Francisco State’s Poetry Center. The book includes Gluck’s manifesto for the New Narrative movement, appreciations of such powerful writers as Kathy Acker, Thom Gunn, Matthew Stadler and Aaron Shurin, and considerations of such larger issues as censorship, war and nuclear holocaust. It also includes Gluck’s own essay from a series of commissioned pieces on gay middle-aged life that he procured for the Bay Area Reporter in issues from 1998 to 2004. The pieces came from such exciting writers as Indiana, Myles, Brian Bouldrey and Richard Schwarzenberger, and were

Last Thursday night Out There was invited to the product launch of the Firefly2, billed as “the only vaporizer that reaches 400F in three seconds at the touch of your fingertips.” The party took place on the rooftop of the company’s headquarters South of Market. There we could vape to our heart’s content, enjoy gin on the rocks, meet the Firefly crew, and consider the constantly evolving skyline of modern, tech-obsessed San Francisco.

Entrepreneurs Mark Williams and Sasha Robinson founded Firefly in 2012 with the goal of creating the best vaporizer in the world. They met at the Burning Man festival, and Burner values of open-mindedness and artistic expression inform their endeavor. Vapables were provided by various dispensaries, but we brought our own and filled up a Firefly2 that was beckoning “Try me!” from its display table like a cake of suspicious origin beckoning to Alice in Wonderland.

We missed the usual signals of stash enjoyment: the smoke, the pungent aroma, the satisfying plume of exhalation. While the Firefly2 produced only a wispy mist from our gaping piehole, it did get the job done. We chatted briefly with Firefly COO Baran Dilaver, but soon succumbed to our general euphoria, following the DJ’s beats, and disappearing down our own particular rabbit hole. We came, we saw, we vaped. Thanks, Firefly!t

Murder made quiet

by Erin Blackwell

N

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ow that civil war has broken out in Dallas, we turn our attention to quieter methods of disposing of one’s foes. We look back fondly to the good old days, when Britannia ruled the world and only criminals and country squires had guns. The socalled Golden Age of murder mysteries ran between World Wars I & II, roughly 1920-39, and that can hardly have been a coincidence. One must always have a certain quota of death in one’s daily routine. Nostalgic for life before Hitler, one turns indolently to The Golden Age of Murder

by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins, $28) in hopes of losing oneself in the arcana of well-plotted demise. One is disappointed.

There are many things to recommend The Golden Age. Its title, for one, which suggests a broad and exhaustive study, a search for clues political and aesthetic, a delving into the psychology behind the urge to commit serial murder literarily, and some hunches as to why the vast reading public still curls up with “a good murder” instead of, say, a nice book of improving verse. A truly worthy study would include not only English but American, not to mention French – or as the insular Brits say, Continental – forays into the genre. The ideal tome would be logically ordered, with diagrams and in-depth analysis, ruthless, witty, efficient, and seductive.

Alas, The Golden Age fails to live up to its title, which was no doubt slapped on by a hopeful publisher.

Hidden in plain sight, appended as

a mere subtitle, is the author’s slightly more realistic description: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story. A more accurate title still would be, The Detection Club of London, from its inception in 1928 to the onset of World War II, plus any old thing I, Martin Edwards, decide to throw in, in order to meet deadline and satisfy my contract. This last I deduce from the scattershot writing, an inability to stay on topic, and that dead giveaway: large font. Alarmingly, footnotes appearing at the end of each chapter, in the same large font, are neither numbered nor otherwise marked in the text proper.

“The mystery” alluded to in the subtitle concerns the failed private lives of some, but not all, of the well-published names in English detective novels in the interwar period.

That’s a cute concept that Edwards fails to follow through on. He spends most of his time on Dorothy Sayers and Anthony Berkeley, who between them devised and led the Detection Club, but is perhaps forced to include Agatha Christie, who ended up as its president after the other two abandoned the genre. Christie never faltered, turning out genre-defying and -defining classics year after year.

How annoying that must have been.

How they must’ve wanted to kill her.

Unfortunately, some wonderful British mystery writers who were never invited to join the Club, because their books diverged from its strict criteria, are similarly excluded from The Golden Age.

As one slogs through Edwards’ disorganized jumble sale of biographical sketches (including some writers you’ll never read, or hear of again), plots of novels Edwards randomly selects, true crimes that spellbound the British public, arcane details of the Detection Club’s rites and rituals, photos of Club members and a facsimile of its Constitution and rules from 1932, gossip and shallow character analysis, and countless digressions leading up blind alleys like so many red herrings, one forms the vague impression that life between the wars in England was a bittersweet business.

Murder between friends in polite surroundings seems the ultimate tribute to a disappearing way of life in a declining civilization unsuited to industrial warfare.t

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Stir things up with Pink Martini and the San Francisco Symphony on two unforgettable evenings of live music with the wildly popular, selfdescribed twelve-piece “little orchestra.” Drawing inspiration from cabaret, samba, and jazz, S T O R M L A R G E leads vocals in collaboration with the SF Symphony on a performance sure to get you smiling, clapping, and tapping your feet to the music.

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Concerts at Davies Symphony Hall. Programs, artists, and prices subject to change.

Box Office Hours Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat noon–6pm, Sun 2 hours prior to concerts Walk Up Grove Street between Van Ness and Franklin

<< Out&About

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

O&A

Mon 18 Robert F. Santiago at the Foglifter reading @ Strut

Master Harold …and the Boys @ Aurora Theatre Athol Fugard’s award-winning drama about a South African white young man and his family’s Black employees. $32-$60. Wed-Sat 8pm. Tue & Sun 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru July 17.

(510) 843-4042. auroratheatre.org

Paintings & Drawings @ John Pence Gallery

Subtle & strong

by Jim Provenzano

C

ultural statements can be subtle or strong, enlivening or upsetting.

Expand your art horizons. For more events, visit us online at www. ebar.com. For nightlife events, check out On the Tab in BARtab.

Thu 14 Cabaret @ Golden Gate Theatre Randy Harrison stars in the Tonywinning revival touring production of Kander, Ebb and Masteroff’s classic musical set in a pre-Nazi Berlin nightclub, and based on the Christopher Isherwood book. $40 rush; $65-$212. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Fri & Sat 2pm. Thru July 17. www.shnsf.com

La Cage Aux Folles @ Victoria Theatre Bay Area Musicals’ production of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s nine-Tony-winning musical adaptation of the French film about a nightclub owner and his partner who try to hide being gay when their conservative in-laws-to-be visit. $20-$100. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru July 31.

2961 16th St. www.bamsf.org

Colette Uncensored @ The Marsh Berkeley Lorri Holt’s acclaimed solo show about the pioneering writer moves to the East Bay theatre. $20-$100. Thu 8pm, Sat 8:30pm. Thru Aug. 20. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Hal Sparks @ Cobb’s Comedy Club The star of Queer as Folk and numerous films performs his stand-up comedy act. $20; 2-drunk min. 8pm.

July 15 at 8pm & 10:15. July 16 at 7:30 & 9:45. 915 Columbus Ave. 928-4320. www.cobbscomedy.com

LGBT Chronicled: 1933-2016 @ Harvey Milk Photo Center

City of Angels @ SF Playhouse Cy Coleman and David Zippel’s Tonywinning film noir musical is produced by the acclaimed local theatre company. $20-$125. Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Sept. 17.

Kensington Park Hotel, 2nd floor, 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Flower Piano @ SF Botanical Garden Enjoy dozens of impromptu outdoor piano-playing entertainments, from classical, jazz and modern professionals to students and amateurs, in a 12-day installation at multiple areas of the beautiful garden; Saturday & Sundays have the most performers. Thru July 18. www.sunsetpiano.com/flowerpiano

From This Day Forward @ Roxie Theater Sharon Shattuck’s documentary about her transgender father, and her mother’s struggle to maintain their family. $10. 7pm thru July 21.

3117 16th St. www.argotpictures.com www.roxie.com

John Leguizamo: Latin History for Morons @ Berkeley Rep The award-winning comic, stage, TV and film actor performs his solo show about trying to teach his son about Latin history, with satirical takes on the Civil War, Aztec and Incan history. $35-$60. 8pm. Tue-Fri & Sun 8pm.

Sat 7pm & 10pm. Also Sun 2pm. Thru Aug. 14. 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. www.berkeleyrep.org

Group exhibit of photos documenting Bay Area LGBT lives. Tue-Wed 4pm8pm. Thu 1pm-9pm. Sat & Sun 12pm5pm. Thru July 16. 50 Scott St. www.harveymilkphotocenter.org

Unusual Movies @ Oddball Films Weekly screenings of strange and obscure short films $10. 8pm. Also Fridays. July 14: Revolutionary Black Voices. July 15: Shockumentary road safety films. 275 Capp St. 558-8117. www.oddballfilm.com

Fri 15 Bay Area Playwright’s Festival @ Custom Made Theater Readings of new works by six playwrights. $15-$90. Thru July 24. 533 Sutter St. www. bayareaplaywrightsfestival.org

The Rules @ Creativity Theater Dipika Guha’s play about three women who fall in love with the same man. $20. Thu 7pm, Fri & Sat 8pm.

Sun 3pm. Thru July 16. Yerba Buena Gardens, 221 4th St. www.sfplayhouse.org

Sell/Buy/Date @ Berkeley Rep Tony Award winner Sarah Jones performs a multi-character workshop presentation of her NYC-bound solo show about sex workers. $20-$40.

Tue-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru July 31. Osher Studio, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Sat 16 Approaching American Abstraction @ SF Museum of Modern Art See the restaged installations and new exhibits of Pop, Abstract and classic Modern art at the renovated and visually amazing museum, with two extra floors, a new additional Howard Street entrance, café and outdoor gardens. Free-$25. 10am8pm. 151 Third St. www.sfmoma.org

Beast Crawl: Queer Azz Folkz @ Feelmore, Oakland Sampson McCormick, Kin Folkz, Dazie Rustin Grego and others perform at the spoken word event, part of Beast Crawl. 8pm. 1703 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.feelmore510.com

China at the Center @ Asian Art Museum China at the Center: Rare Ricci and Verbiest World Maps; Extracted: a Trilogy of Ranu Mukherjee (thru Aug. 14); Chinese Laquerware (thru July 31), and more. Free-$25. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org

Colors of the Tenderloin @ Tenderloin Museum

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre July 14: The Postman Always Rings Twice (original, 7pm) and After Dark My Sweet (9:05). July 15: What’s Up, Doc? (7pm) and Moonstruck (8:50). July 16: The Muppet Movie (3:45, 7:20) and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (2pm, 5:35, 9:05). July 17: Raiders of the Lost Ark (2:30, 7pm) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (4:40, 9:10). July 20: Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (7pm) and Phantom of the Paradise (9pm). July 21: Opening night of the SF Jewish Film Festival (thru Aug. 7). $11-$16. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Opening reception of an exhibit of stunning paintings and drawings by Juliette Aristedes, Sadie Valeri and Elizabeth Zanzinger. 6pm-8pm. Thru Aug. 20. Mon-Fri 10am-6pm. Sat 10am-5pm. 750 Post St. www.johnpence.com

Exhibit of photography by Darwin Bell. Also, one-year anniversary party, July 16, 10am-9pm. Reg. hours TueSun 10am-5pm, $6-$10 ($15 includes walking tour). 398 Eddy St. 351-1912. www.tenderloinmuseum.org

Thu 14

La Cage Aux Folles @ Victoria Theatre

Ken Ireland @ Strut Re-Mastered, classical art works redone as gay erotica by the local artist. Thru July. 470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

Livewire @ Midway Gallery Opening reception for a group show of neon and other elements in sculptures. Also, This Swarthy Face in the 2nd gallery. 6pm-10pm. Thru Aug. 27. Wed-Sat 12pm-6pm. 900 Marin St. www.themidwaygallery.com

Low Hanging Fruit @ Z Below 3Girls Theatre Company’s production of Robin Bradford’s drama about four homeless women military veterans struggling to survive in LA. $20-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru July 30. 470 Florida St. www.3girlstheatre.org

Grand Concourse @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Heidi Schreck’s new witty drama about the volunteers at a community soup kitchen. $23-$35. Wed-Sun, thru Aug. 21, then in repertory Nov.26-Jan. 31. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Hearts of Palm @ Berkeley City Club World premiere of Patricia Milton’s political comedy about capitalism and romance. $15-$30. Thu-Sat 8pm.

Sun 5pm. 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley.

(510) 558-1381. centralworks.org

The Grace Jones Project, Dandy Lion @ MOAD Dual exhibitions of video, performance and artwork about the iconic singer and queer identity; and Dandy Lion: (Re)Articulating Black Masculine Identity. Free-$10. Both thru Sept. 18. Wed-Sat 11am-6pm.

Sun 12pm-5pm. Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St. at 3rd. July 15, 5pm: Finding the ‘I’ in Diaspora Bayview Pop-up at 4720 3rd St. www.moadsf.org

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Live in the Castro @ Jane Warner Plaza

Nice Jewish Boys @ Glen Canyon

The outdoor performance series returns, with varied acts each weekend. July 16: Market Street Railway. Castro St. at Market. www.castrocbd.org

Hike and picnic with members of the GLBT Jewish organization. 1pm. www.keshetonline.org

The Real Americans @ The Marsh Dan Hoyle returns with his hit solo show about the polarized sides of right and leftwing America. $25-$100.

Fri 8pm & Sat 8:30pm. Thru Aug. 27.

1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

SF Hiking Club @ Alamere Falls & Bass Lake Join GLBT hikers for a 10-mile hike at Point Reyes National Seashore; hike the Palomarin Trail to Alamere Falls for lunch. Carpool meets 8:30 at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. (510) 841-3826. www.sfhiking.com

Talavera-Ballon @ Spark Arts Exhibit of paintings by the San Francisco Peruvian artist. Thru July 31.

4229 18th St. 887-2207. www.sparkarts.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. Extended thru Nov. 8. 1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Strandbeest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen @ Exploratorium New exhibit of the amazing walking sculptures that resemble giant insectlike creatures. Thru Sept. 5. Free-$25.

Pier 15 at Embarcadero. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm (Thu night 6pm-10pm, 18+). 528-4893. www.exploratorium.edu/strandbeest

Sun 17 Anthony De Mare @ SF Jazz Center The solo pianist performs Liasons: Re-imagining Sondheim From the Piano, Stephen Sondheim musical theatre songs written for piano solo by a dozen prominent composers. $25. 4pm, 6pm, and 7:30pm. 201 Franklin St. www.sfjazz.org

Eating Pasta Off the Floor @ The Marsh Maria Grazia Affinito returns with her comic solo show about ItalianAmerican family life and her mother’s history. $20-$100. Thu 8pm, Sun 5pm.

Thru July 24. 1062 Valencia St. 2823055. www.themarsh.org

Ed Ruscha @ de Young Museum Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, an exhibit of the artist’s landscape/text paintings; thru Oct. 9. Also, exhibits of Bruce Davidson photos, Printed Stories, The Sumatran Ship cloth, and works by Kay Sekimachi. Free/$25. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.famsf.org

Mon 18 Foglifter Contributors @ Strut The queer literary arts journal hosts a reading with Nona Caspers, MK Chavez, Shideh Etaat, Kevin Killian, Roberto F. Santiago and Arisa White.

7pm. 470 Castro St. foglifterpress.com www.strutsf.org

Queerest Library Ever @ SF Public Libraries Hormel at 20: Celebrating Our Past/ Creating Our Future, a dual exhibit of archival materials celebrating the two decades of the LGBTQ collections.

Also, Bar Rags to Mainstream Press: San Francisco’s Local LGBT Newspapers & Magazines, at the Main Library, 100 Larkin St., 5th floor.

Thru Aug 7. 100 Larkin St., 3rd floor, and at the Eureka Valley Branch, 1 Jose Sarria Court at 16th St. sfpl.org

Tue 19 Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, a new multimedia exhibit about the prolific filmmaker (thru Oct. 30). Other exhibits about Jewish culture as well.

Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed).

736 Mission St. 655-7800. thecjm.org

Thu 21

Stroke @ GLBT History Museum

Wed 20 10 Percent @ Comcast David Perry’s online and cable interviews with notable local and visiting LGBT people, broadcast through the week. www.ComcastHometown.com

Smack Dab @ Strut Gay poet Robert F. Santiago and singer-songwriter Diana Regan are the featured artists at the eclectic open mic night. 7:30pm sign-up, 8pm show.

470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

Thu 21 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

Stroke @ GLBT History Museum Opening reception for Stroke: From Under the Mattress to the Museum Wall, Robert W. Richards’ exhibit of gay men’s erotic magazines from the 1950s to the ‘90s. $5. 7pm.

Thru Oct. 16. Also, exhibits Dancers We Lost: Honoring Performers Lost to HIV/AIDS, an exhibit of photos and ephemera, curated by Glenne McElhinney, about Bay Area dancers who died of AIDS. Thru Aug. 7. $5.

4127 18th St. www.dancerswelost.org/exhibit/ www.glbthistory.org

Summer Sampler @ ODC Theater Three-night series of works by Brenda Way and KT Nelson, with composer Pamela Z, and an expansive solo by returning dancer Private Freeman. $30-$45. 8pm. Also July 22 & 23.

3153 17th St. www.odcdance.org

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Music>>

July 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Future opera stars performing now

by Philip Campbell

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he 2016 Merola Opera Summer Festival opened last week with a beautifully prepared Schwabacher Summer Concert at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Ten Merola young artists selected from the 23 chosen from the US and four other countries to participate in the prestigious Opera Program made a terrific first impression on a large and enthusiastic audience.

Performing extended scenes from six stylistically varied operas, the young singers made good on their promise with substantial vocal assurance and surprising acting skills. Simply and cleverly directed

by Omer Ben Seadia, with a design team including subtly coordinated costumes by Christopher Verdosci, effective lighting by Jax Messenger, and hair/wigs and makeup by Marcello Donari, the physical production could not have run smoother.

Staged with only two set pieces – a tree for the first half, and a bed for the second – the show moved effortlessly through scenes ranging from the florid Baroque of Handel’s Serse to the astringent Neoclassicism of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, the Wagnerian Romanticism of Lohengrin and the death-defying coloratura of Rossini’s farcical Le Comte Ory. Conductor Eric Weimer showed a confident capability with wide-ranging repertoire, discreetly supporting the singers while producing a rich and detailed orchestral sound.

After a sparkling Overture from Serse, Brooklyn countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen immediately grabbed attention with a pitch-perfect rendition of the famous opening aria “Ombra mai fu.” Act I, Scenes 1-6 of the Handel score also introduced other singers who would reappear throughout the concert, but Cohen rightfully seized the spotlight with his one big opportunity to shine. Many find the countertenor voice an acquired taste; the young New Yorker, with his strong and vibratoless tone, should help win new fans.

Canadian tenor Josh Lovell, bass-baritone Nicholas Boragno (Newport Beach, CA) and Kansas City, MO mezzo-soprano Tara Curtis were offered more appearances throughout the night, and they got off to a fine start with Act II, Scenes 1 & 3 from the dryly cynical Stravinsky set. Lovell proved a vocally pleasing and comedically adept Tom Rakewell. The attractive young singer appeared to even greater effect in the title role of Le Comte Ory later in the show. Fresh and energetic, he made an indelible mark.

Likewise, Nicholas Boragno used his good looks and resonant voice to impress as the devil Nick Shadow.

Sardonic and cool, he was memorable and recognizable even as he shifted gears in several smaller roles in other scenes.

Good sport Tara Curtis wore a beard as Baba the Turk and allowed the Rake to humiliate her as she prattled on in character.

The talented mezzo-soprano got her casting revenge later, giving a stunning tour de force portrayal of the tortured Mother Superior in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.

Soprano Mary Evelyn Hangley (Long Beach, NY) got her star moment as the titular Arabella by Richard Strauss. Her focused tone and graceful stage presence made her reflective aria from Act I a special highlight.

Arguably, the biggest guns were brought out for Act III, Scene 2 of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Opening the second half of the bill, Canadian soprano Sarah Cambidge (Elsa)

and tenor Kyle van Schoonhoven (Lohengrin) from Lockport, NY filled their taxing responsibilities with apparent ease. Powerful force and heroic lyricism are a difficult pairing, but van Schoonhoven seemed unfazed by the dry acoustic of the Conservatory auditorium, and he thrilled with his fullthroated and sweet tone. Cambidge matched him with a bright voice, free of shrillness and charged with emotion.

The evening’s finale sparkled with the technique and comic abandon required by Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, Act II, Nos. 11 & 12. After singing smaller parts earlier in the concert, soprano Jana McIntyre (Santa Barbara, CA) engaged in a tug of war for vocal supremacy, with Josh Lovell playing the title character. Let’s call it a draw. Both drew hearty cheers from the audience and they were equally charming, even if McIntyre’s agility was truly breathtaking.

Mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven from Fayetteville, NC, also joined in the romp and made other notable contributions throughout the show.

Her first appearance in Serse was especially fine, and her pleasing tone has a nice edge.

The wealth of talent on display

certainly validated the legendary Merola Program’s worth, and it also affords a lot of fun, getting an early look at future stars. Some famous alums (in no particular order) include the likes of Patricia Racette, Leona Mitchell, Carol Vaness, Rolando Villazon, Dolora Zajick, Anna Netrebko, Joyce DiDonato and the late lamented countertenor Brian Asawa.

Next up in the Summer Festival lineup is gay composer Conrad Susa’s setting of poet Anne Sexton’s take on the Brothers Grimm, Transformations. Susa’s writing is self-described as ranging from Bach and Samuel Barber to Bossa Nova.

Performers from the 2016 Merola Program not heard in the Schwabacher Concert will sing in the intriguing work being staged at the SF Conservatory July 21 & 23.

Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte will be fully staged Aug. 4 & 6 at the Conservatory, and the whole ambitious season ends with the Merola Grand Finale at the War Memorial Opera House on Aug. 20. San Francisco has always been an opera town, and the performers found and nurtured by the Merola Opera Program are wonderful insurance of a bright future.t

Kristen Loken

Tenor Josh Lovell as Tom Rakewell in a scene from The Rake’s Progress by Igor Stravinsky.

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22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

Latin history lover

by Richard Dodds

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unny, you don’t look Aztec. To hear John Leguizamo tell it, he is equal parts Aztec, Incan, and Cherokee, with a little bit of Spanish served reluctantly on the side. In his mistitled solo show Latin History for Morons, this versatile performer largely recounts the decimation of indigenous people in the Americas – by the Conquistadors and their associates in the south, and by the colonies and then the federal government in the north. You’d imagine an uneasy friction for those with both victims and their victimizers as ancestors, but that’s not the road Leguizamo travels in the world premiere of his latest one-man show at Berkeley Rep. “I’ve got to reboot you about what you think of Latin people,” he says at the top of the show, telling audience members that they are all morons on the subject. He does say he also belonged in this category before his son’s school project led him to study up on the subject, as he displays a collection of impressive historical tomes from which he gathered facts that he said neither he nor his son had learned in school.

Leguizamo plays the fool enough himself to further help disarm an audience greeted with an insult.

Equipped with a chalkboard, the Colombian-born actor recounts

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of the Aztec emperor. with maps and numbers But Leguizamo is the devastation wrought by nothing if not a whirlthe new-world explorers, wind, leaping through plunderers, and enslavsometimes-dubious hisers. But sobering facts can torical data punctuated generally lead to jokes that with comically distorted can sometimes be sharp versions of Native Ameribut that are more often can dances that can leave obvious or curiously dated. him winded. Director “The Conquistadors were Tony Taccone, Berkeley like basketball players at a Rep’s artistic director, Kardashian pool party,” he helped Leguizamo hone says, adding that “Columthe material variously at bus was the Donald Trump comedy clubs and theatriof the new world.” There cal workshops. There are were laughs and applause some clever touches in for these topical references, the staging – Leguizamo and STDs seem always to whitening his hair with be a popular punch line, chalkboard erasers, for but not enough people one – but ultimately the seemed to remember Alec Kevin Berne strangely curated material Baldwin’s ranting voice feels forced into a format mail to his daughter to elic- John Leguizamo offers a Latin History for Dummies in his latest one-man show having that never quite rings true, it much of a reaction. After its world premiere at Berkeley Rep. and certainly doesn’t live all, it was an embarrassing up to its title. leak from nine years back He manically throws names and current and historical. He can Did you hear the one about the that long ago played out. numbers at his nonplussed son, who mine some good comedy from Indians who died because they got Leguizamo hangs his collection doesn’t really want his father’s help. his mimicry, but several recurring lost on the Trail of Tears? “It was of historical data on a weak thread, Curiously absent from his primer voices – notably his wife’s – are because even then, men wouldn’t claiming his fury of research came on Latin history, culture, and people surprisingly mundane. There is ask for directions,” says Leguizamo. about when his son couldn’t come is much acknowledgement that a equal-opportunity offense given in History class dismissed.t up with a personal hero for a school good chunk of it came from those his stereotyping, and Montezuma essay. Leguizamo thinks his 8thplaces that gave it its name – i.e., the emerges as a silly faggot enchanted grade son needs to get in touch with John Leguizamo: Latin History for Latinate countries of Europe. by the Conquistador Hernan Corhis roots, and find a Latino/a figure Dummies will run through Aug. Much of the 100-minute show tes. “My brother’s gay so I have gay14 at Berkeley Rep. Tickets are to write about that includes cultures has Leguizamo vocally impersonmunity,” the performer assures us $55-$60. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to that existed long before any Latino ating a swathe of characters both about his simpering impersonation berkeleyrep.org. presence set foot in the Americas.

Old Dogs return

by David-Elijah Nahmod

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or the past several years the popular Web series Old Dogs & New Tricks has reminded people that love and romance don’t end with middle age, and that men never change. Old Dogs has been enthusiastically received by gay men of a certain age who are thirsty to see relatable images of themselves onscreen. Sharp, insightful writing has helped draw in not only a sizable audience, but an impressive array of guest stars.

As Old Dogs prepares for what

creator-writer-star Leon Acord says will be the fourth and final season, a new Old Dogs mini-movie has been produced. Old Dogs & New Tricks: Where Were You When the Rights Went On? is now available for free viewing at YouTube. The special was produced in conjunction with the one-year anniversary of the historic SCOTUS ruling that legalized marriage equality nationwide.

“We’re a serialized dramedy that tries to take a humorous look at the perils and pratfalls of living in the shadow of the big 5-0 in the gay world, and in show business,” Acord

told the B.A.R. “Originally the show just focused on the four guys’ love lives. But after five years, three seasons and two specials, we’ve expanded to include their work lives, and in Muscles’ case, family.”

Al “Muscles” Carter (Jeffrey Patrick Olson) is Old Dogs’ resident hunk. Beginning with season three, his storyline included his relationship with his mom (Dark Shadows’ Kathryn Leigh Scott).

“I think we all have, or hope to anyway, good friends who are like family,” Acord said, reflecting on Old Dogs’ success. “We all age. And hopefully, we make folks feel just a little bit better about some of the compromises we all make in order to age healthily.”

Old Dogs’ cast includes a gaycommunity favorite. Rutanya Alda, best-known for her role as faithful housekeeper Carol Ann in the camp classic Mommie Dearest, is on hand as the equally loyal if somewhat bitchy Barbara Fierce, fierce in her devotion to her villainous boss Nelson Van Eddy (Bruce Hart).

“It’s fun to do because I play the person who can be nasty to support

my boss and give him an edge whenever I can,” Alda said, speaking to the B.A.R. from her New York City home. “I love the series because it depicts gay people as human beings in real challenges and situations. And it’s not hard to be loyal to Bruce Hart, a real sweetheart.”

Alda was helping to promote the Old Dogs mini-movie while also plugging her recently published book The Mommie Dearest Diary.

“I wrote the book because so many people were interested in what happened, and there were so many rumors that were not true,” she said.

“It is the only book written about the making of this cult classic.”

Alda promises that her Diary tells the true story of what that infamous film shoot was really like. “It’s a diary of my four months on the film,” she said. The book also reveals some unknown facts about her early life, coming to the USA from a displaced person’s camp after WWII. “I love working with Rutanya,” Acord said. “She’s old-school cool, with none of the pretense. A total trouper and an absolute doll, the anti-Dunaway!”

Acord said that the Old Dogs mini-movie includes remembrances of past guest stars, including openly gay Olympic diver Greg Louganis and gay soap opera stud Thom Bierdz (The Young & the Restless). He said that the series’ fourth season, now in pre-production, would indeed be the last.

“The season is written, and the last episode is a proper finale that is a definite end to the series. We’re still raising money for season four, and that is enough. I can’t keep asking people to fund the show. So unless I win Powerball – unlikely since I never play – I don’t see any way for me to change my mind.”

Acord did drop a hint that there might be more Old Dogs adventures down the road. “Bruce Hart will not let up on me,” Acord said.

“He very much wants us to do a feature-film version of the show a few years down the road. Sometimes I resist, but most of the time I like the idea.” We’ll have to wait and see.t Old Dogs & New Tricks website: odnt.tv.

courtesy ODNT

Brunch time on writer-star Leon Acord’s Web series Old Dogs & New Tricks.

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Fine Arts>>

July 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Tom Chambers on the edge

by Sura Wood

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ssembling the sacred, the beautiful, the dark and the dangerous, photographer Tom Chambers provides enough reality to anchor us in the known world, and a sufficient amount of the surreal to carry us far from home and trip the light fantastic. His imagery, which can conjure the golden shimmer of Renaissance art, Andrew Wyeth’s pastoral landscapes, or the cobblestone pathways of medieval European towns, tugs at the rational mind, while imploring viewers to put away the pocket Freud and drift away.

A Vietnam vet and graphic designer who grew up on a Pennsylvania farm in a family of artists, Chambers shoots color-saturated photomontages, constructing composites of eight to 10 images that achieve a harmonious incongruity through manipulation and digital wonder.

Themes+Projects Gallery is currently exhibiting selections from his two most recent series: To the Edge, shot in the wintry volcanic moonscapes of Iceland and accompanied by the poetry of Allen Chamberlain; and Animal Visions, which furthers the artist’s inquiry into the communion between little children and animals.

In “Edge of a Dream,” for instance, a powerful-looking white tiger ambles casually down a stone street of a Tuscan town alongside a child unfazed by the proximity of a wild beast.

Chambers actually photographed this jungle prince in a zoo.

The protagonists of his enigmatic fairy-tale narratives are adventurous, barefoot, tousle-haired young girls courting jeopardy as they venture into the mysterious, enchanted, untamed realms of nature and the animal kingdom. Set in a meadow, “Middle Light” is a romantic scene of a small, serene girl in a soft white sheath dwarfed and encircled by a trio of watchful wolves who appear to be protecting her from harm, maybe. “One Oar Out” finds a lone blond waif in a boat navigating

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Day Forward

From page 17

So in 2011, when Shattuck was looking for a subject for her first feature-length film, “I had all of those questions leftover from my childhood.” Five years ago, she pointed out, “You didn’t see much about transgender people in the media, and I wanted to see more about families like mine.”

The Shattuck story takes place in a small town in northern Michigan, where the family moved from suburban Chicago while the girls were in grade school. Michael, who had now become Trisha, was a landscape architect, and Marcia was a physician.

“I’d say I pretty much tried to stay in denial” about her father’s gradual transition. Several plastic surgery procedures made his appearance softer and more feminine, and he often wore women’s clothes in public, she said. Shattuck recalls one conversation, when she was in eighth grade, that let her know that her father’s transition was going to be a permanent change. “Sharon,” said her father, “when I walk you down the aisle at your wedding, I hope you won’t mind if I wear a dress.”

“Mind?” Shattuck said. “Yes, I would mind. I was confused, angry and very upset.” Those feelings would change when she learned the secrets her parents never discussed while their children were growing up. “I have an entirely new appreciation for my family.”

Growing up in a small town where everyone knew each other, “My sister and I were both absolutely mortified when my father began

ice floes in glacial blue water, and “Trickster” captures the unlikely sight of an older girl holding the outer edges of the impressive wingspan of a raven that Chambers still has stored in his freezer.

His pictures, with their feral imagery and intimations of the apocalyptic and the sublime, are Rorschach tests for the psyche. Take “Late for Dinner,” a 50-inch image resembling an old-fashioned watercolor illustration of a girl making haste up a narrow walkway to a hilltop castle shrouded in mist.

But where is she, really, and whom is she running from or toward?

“There are elements of reality and other things that are not quite right, but with photography, you want so much to believe it’s real,” Chambers explained in a recent interview. “I want people to make up their own stories and figure out what’s happening.” Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Sura Wood: The traditional definition of photograph is certainly expanding in the digital era. Do you think of yourself as a photographer?

Tom Chambers: I don’t. I see myself as a photo-illustrator or an artist who works in a photo-based medium.

Your imagery opens magic portals to parallel worlds. Did you seek escape or create alternate universes for yourself as a child, or even now as an adult?

I don’t remember if I had an escape mentality, but I do like Magic Realism. Elements that are unexpected or out of place excite me. I try to make images that are possible but improbable, which is in line with the genre.

Do you work from dreams?

Yes, from that place that’s somewhere between asleep and awake.

Why is it that your subjects are so often young girls on their own? wearing women’s clothes. Adolescence is a time when you want to fit in, and we knew that we were the subject of gossip everywhere,” she said. “It was very difficult for me.”

At one point, she recalls, her parents announced that they were going to separate and ultimately divorce, a move that never happened and also was never discussed. Subsequently, they decided to stay together.

In the meantime, Sharon Shattuck became an accomplished animator and filmmaker in New York City, with credits that include the Emmy-nominated Animated Life, which tells stories of scientific discovery using stringent journalism and paper puppets.

When she began shooting Day Forward, Shattuck interviewed a number of transgender families. But when she showed clips to colleagues, many encouraged her to make the film more personal, “to put more

courtesy the artist

“Icarus Falls,” a painting by Trish Shattuck.

I have a daughter. She’s 27 now, but when she was little, she was pretty fearless. And a girl in some unnatural background seems more vulnerable than a man would. It gives the image more of an edge, because you worry trouble might be imminent.

You appear to be inspired by the fantasy and menace of Grimm’s fairy tales. Marauding black dogs run in packs. There’s a big bad wolf out there with the primal energy, evil and sexuality that metaphor implies. Those early stories were also cautionary tales about the fate that could befall children who wandered too far from home, broke the rules, or were in some place they shouldn’t be. Remember what happened to Little Red Riding Hood?

Red Riding Hood is a good analogy. My grandmother, who was a painter, used to read those stories to me, and there was something about being that scared as a kid that has a lot to do with what I’m doing now.

The danger and menace is something I add because otherwise these images would be too sweet. I keep them edgy so people will feel uneasy.

At 20, you were in the Navy and stationed in Vietnam during the war. Did the experience change you?

I was wounded and given a Purple Heart – something you get for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But as a boy just off the farm, it opened my eyes. I remember thinking there’s so much more I want to do with my life. I hope I get out of here.

What’s up next?

I thought the last series was a little too upbeat, so I’m pushing toward something slightly darker. I’m experimenting with putting animalhead masks on human bodies.t Through Aug. 30. Info: themesandprojects.com.

of myself into it. The problem was that I really did not feel comfortable being the center of attention. I worried that my parents felt the same way.” But once she began filming them, “I realized my parents were so funny, warm, and articulate” on screen, “much more comfortable in front of the camera than I had imagined.” With encouragement from her team, Shattuck decided to shift gears and make the film “a family story. My Dad was very supportive of my project from the very beginning,” she said. Her Mom, “a very private person,” was hesitant at first, but became more talkative as time went on.

As the interviews with Trisha developed, Shattuck realized that an important part of the story was Trisha’s portfolio of paintings, created after she retired from landscape architecture. “Being transgender is just one small part of Trisha,” said Shattuck. “Being an artist was also really important, and I was able to work that into the film. Hearing Trisha explain the meaning of a painting gave me a whole new appreciation of her as an artist.

“Now, as an adult, having intimate conversations on camera about simple things like which pronouns my father preferred gave me a new understanding of what she was going through.” Both her father and mother opened up on camera about their decision-making process in deciding to stay together, Shattuck explained. “For me, the film is a love story. I hope that people will see that we’re as normal as any other family, just another variation.”

That’s the way Trish Shattuck sees her life now, too. “I’m extremely proud of Sharon’s film,” she said

Both images: courtesy Themes + Projects

Top: “The Trickster” Bottom: “Late for Dinner”, both by Tom Chambers.

in a phone interview. “I’m 61 now, and no longer concerned about being public.” Although transgender people “seem to be few and farbetween” in northern Michigan, “I have made many good friends, and feel accepted and welcome here. As a transgender person, I always carried a fair amount of fear about where I would be safe. I’m still cautious, but much less so. My own comfort level being a transgender woman improved immensely after I began

hormone treatment, which brought about a great feeling of being at ease.

I’m in a loving relationship with Marcia, I have a spot in society, and I’m able to express myself through my painting.

“When I hear of people who are struggling with their feelings about being transgender, I’d like them to know that it gets better if you can you find the woman or man within you, accept that person, and let them express themselves.”t

EXPLORE THE GAY WORLD

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

In cold blood

by Victoria A. Brownworth

“I

t was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

So begins both the 1859 novel and the fabulous 1989 BBC-TV production of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, starring James Wilby (Brideshead Revisited) and Jean-Pierre Aumont. The quiet intonation of these words in voiceover sets a tone for the two-part miniseries. The words resonate again and again: The best of times, the worst of times. Those words also set a tone for what portends to be what Arthur Rimbaud called A Season in Hell. Once again entertainment TV has been scuttled for a different drama playing out across our TV screens: the coldblooded killing of black people in America.

It’s a mere month since we were riveted to TV by the worst mass shooting in America, a shooting that has already receded into the national consciousness. That shooting of 49 LGBT Americans – the first and last victims black lesbians, the majority of victims Latinx – brought our community into the foreground for a nanosecond. We saw dozens of real-life LGBT people on our TV screens every day for more than a week, just like we see straight people 24/7, 52 weeks a year, every year of our lives. Suddenly, we knew what it was to not be invisible, but for the most terrible of reasons. We always have to die to be seen.

As we write this, two black men have been killed by police, literally as we watched on our TVs, one bleeding out right in front of us while the white arm of the police officer who shot him continued to point a gun through the window of his car.

Blood spread, so much redder than it ever is on TV cop shows, across Philando Castile’s white T-shirt.

Alton Sterling was shot while on the ground, pinned by two police officers, at point-blank range, in Baton Rouge, LA. Castile was shot inside his car after being pulled over for a routine traffic stop in Minneapolis, MN, a city we forever associated with Prince. Until now. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, recorded everything, including Castile’s final breath, on Facebook video as it happened, and it live-streamed on social media, then CNN. In the back seat of the couple’s car lay their four-year-old daughter. At the end of the video Reynolds, who had been bravely, preternaturally calm as she recorded each detail, breaks down at the enormity of her loss. From the back seat we hear the small toddler voice say, “It’s OK, Mommy. I’m right here with you.”

Were it written in a TV script, it would be edited out as over-the-top, too tear-jerking for the audience. If you haven’t seen it and your stomach is strong, watch the video at CNN. As we write this, a series of black, gay reporters are on TV talking about what it means to be black on the streets of America. We love LZ Granderson, an ABC contributor and often the most rational voice on ABC’s This Week. Granderson is insightful, funny as hell, has good

<< TV

t

of color (what do we always politics. As senior writer and say about this two-for-one columnist for ESPN, Granddiversity quota?) is conerson is no ordinary sports cerning. Yes, these are “just” columnist and commentator. fictional characters. But they He’s also the most visible are also representative of a openly gay sports journalist statement about our place in the nation. in the TV landscape. The When we see him on TV, Catch, The Family, Person we never think of him as a of Interest, The 100, Jane the victim. We think of him as a Virgin, The Walking Dead, vibrant voice we always look The Vampire Diaries (two forward to hearing. And lesbians), Code Black, The now, as he talks about these Magicians, The Expanse, The most recent murders of black Shannara Chronicles have all men his own age in America, killed off lesbian characters we realize how easily he, since January. Each was a too, could become another major character, and in the name in the cemetery, ancase of Vampire Diaries and other hashtag on Twitter. It’s Walking Dead, these are horrifying. shows which have been on Granderson said on CNN, air for many seasons and had “I’m tired of our never had a lesbian character streets being peppered with dead, Scenes from the Alton Sterling shooting, pinned by two police officers, at point-blank before.

Killing is and has always unarmed black range, in Baton Rouge, LA. been a national pastime people.

Tired in America. We don’t have of listening to combines the best of star David On July 1, a Change.org petition public executions, but we kill armed assailDuchovny (The X Files) as LA Det. began circulating demanding that many people daily on TV, and some ants describe how they Sam Hodiak, the impending horror Shonda Rhimes, creator and execmight say it inures us to real-life killfeared for their lives. of the Charles Manson (Gethin Anutive producer of Grey’s Anatomy, ing, and to its consequences.

Tired of being told ‘this thony) murders, and the race- and fire Williams for what the petition On July 8, Nightline aired a spehas nothing to do with politics-driven mayhem of the late called “a racist hate speech against cial report, Lethal Force, dedicated race.’” Those words and 1960s. Somehow, going back to a law enforcement and Caucasians.” to the extrajudicial killing of black the images on Diamond Reynolds’ time that seems, retrospectively, The petition also called Rhimes’ Americans interspersed with the video play together. It was the worst more harrowing than our own, with support for Williams’ speech “a developing story of the murderous of times. In a report for ABC on a different war (Vietnam) and a difblatant slap in the face to the entire rampage against the Dallas police.

July 7, Granderson talked about the ferent Republican danger (Nixon) human race.” The petition asserts, Some numbers were staggering: 560 impact of these killings on the black was, if not calming, at least familiar.

“If this was a white person making people have been killed by police in community.

We know the story, we know how the same speech about an African America so far this year. Of those, A black gay male friend of ours, a it ends. There are no surprises, just American, they would have been 40% were black. Yet black AmeriNew York TV writer, cried out to us nuances. fired and globally chastised, as they cans are only 13% of the total U.S. in a text after we send him the link, A scene in the July 7 episode should be, but there has [sic] been population. How can people not “There are so many different ways I presages the assassination of Robert no consequences to Williams’ acthink they are being targeted, as could be killed as a black gay man, F. Kennedy. Hodiak, whose close tions. There’s been no companies Granderson and Lemon pointed out and no one seems to care. Some friend is working for the Kennedy making a stand against his racist both eloquently and exasperatedly? days you think you can’t even leave campaign, introduces RFK to Horemarks, and no swift action conYet every day we watch scripted the house. You can’t even get in a cab diak. It’s Chekhov’s rifle. We know demning his negative attitude.”

TV in which characters are killed, or walk to the subway or just show by the end of the episode Hodiak Erin Smith, author of the petiand it’s our favorite form of enteryour black, gay face anywhere at all. will be conducting a homicide intion, noted that Rhimes had previtainment. If, as Byron Pitts reported Because you just don’t know. “ vestigation and the victim will be ously fired another cast member on Nightline, young black men are No one thinks of CNN’s Don the presidential candidate. for homophobia. We’re pretty sure nine times as likely to be killed by Lemon, the first out gay black TV It’s perfectly shot. Aquarius this was not something Smith appolice as anyone else, what do we anchor, as a potential victim. Lemon wisely avoids attempting to find an plauded at the time Isaiah Washingthink when we see a similar killhas won an Emmy, the prestigious actor with the same chiseled Irish ton was fired back in 2007, which ing on one of our favorite dramas?

Edward R. Murrow Award, and good looks of RFK, and instead we covered here. At press time, the We’re pretty sure Erin Smith isn’t other journalism awards. But, as he has the actor backlit by a nimbus of petition, which also calls for a boyputting together a Change.org petisaid on CNN July 8, he’s still black. photographers’ lights. We see only cott of ABC and cast members of all tion about it.

On his show CNN Tonight on July the silhouette of the man, and hear a of Rhimes’ programs, had garnered On July 8, Trevor Noah gave an 7, Lemon got into an argument with voice with the characteristic Boston nearly 26,000 signatures. Rhimes impassioned commentary on these a white guest, a law enforcement ofaccent. shrugged off the petition with a issues on The Daily Show. Noah, ficial who kept telling Lemon police RFK asks Hodiak, “What can we tweet, as did Williams. A day later, who as a native South African treat everyone the same and Lemon do about race relations?” as riots Alton Sterling was killed, reinforcknows a little something about doesn’t have to call police “sir,” as continued to rage throughout the ing the import of Williams’ speech. racism, was succinct. Referring to Diamond Reynolds kept doing with country. Hodiak responds flatly, We have said repeatedly that this the killing of Sterling, Noah said, the police officer in her live-stream “Nothing. People don’t change.” He column is, like this newspaper, first “Did you guys see the shooting that video. notes that all that can be done is to and foremost a political statement happened two days ago? Because Lemon, a Baton Rouge native like protect the good people and get the of intent: Call this The Lavender don’t worry, if you missed it, there Alton Sterling, said, “I’m an Ameribad ones off the streets. The episode Tube or LGBT Lives Matter. Dewas another one yesterday,” noting can, I shouldn’t have to do that. I ends with RFK’s assassination. spite our often-dual identities as Castile’s killing. “You know, the shouldn’t have to be ‘Yes, sir’-ing Then the 11 p.m. news came multiracial, multiethnic and mulhardest part of having a conversaanybody. I’m a grown you-knowon: 12 police officers shot in Dalticultural people, LGBT folks are tion surrounding police shootings what man.” The guest said he didn’t las. Over the course of the night, the most invisible on earth, which in America, it always feels like in have to do that. Lemon said, “I do it five had died. By morning, Pres. is why this column and this paper America, if you take a stand for because I want to stay alive. That’s Obama had spoken, Dallas Mayor need to exist. something, you automatically are why I do it. Now, my white counterMike Rawlings had given a press We watched a news segment against something else. But with parts don’t do that. They speak to conference with Police Chief David about Mama Dragons on PBS July police shootings, it shouldn’t have police officers in a way that I would Brown, and we knew that a man 7, Mormon mothers who are “fierce to work that way. For instance, never in a million years, and that angry over the extrajudicial killings protectors of their LGBT children. if you’re pro Black Lives Matter is the reality of it. I have to do that of black Americans “wanted to kill They were put to the test after the you’re assumed to be anti-police, because I want to stay alive.” white people, especially white police church hardened its stance against and if you’re pro-police, then you Astonishingly, the white guest officers.” He’d done just that. He’d same-sex marriages.” These mothers surely hate black people. In reality, kept interrupting and contradicting been blown up by a police robot were driven to act for their Mormon you can be pro-cop and pro-black, Lemon. “Let me finish, let me finafter a long stand-off. Another “lone LGBT kids who have attempted or which is what we should all be!” ish!” Lemon said. “As accomplished wolf ” scenario like the one from the committed suicide. They are trying There are voices to the contrary, as I am, and a man of color on telePulse nightclub who had a plethora to prevent more such deaths. Stories however, and none is more omnivision who is recognizable to many of guns. like this, with dead LGBT youth at present on the tube than Donald people, I have to do that because I the center, remind us again that the On June 26, the BET Awards were Trump. On the day Elie Wiesel died, don’t want to be shot and I don’t fight for LGBT visibility is a fight held. The gorgeous Jesse Williams Trump tweeted an anti-Hillary want to be killed. And I am someone for our very existence, and it’s also (he of the perfect abs and comememe featuring a Juden star on who is never in trouble. The only a full-time job. hither eyes), who plays Dr. Jackson top of a pile of money. He spent time I’m stopped is for something Over the past three months we’ve Avery on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, another five days on TV explaining stupid: riding a skateboard on the watched a dozen lesbian characters won the Humanitarian of the Year how it really wasn’t an anti-Semitic sidewalk. That’s the kind of crap I’m killed off on various dramas. We’ll Award. Williams gave a speech about symbol. stopped for, not for anything else. write about this in more depth black lives that was in the news the Every time we turn on our TV, “I comply because I want to stay later, but the point is: LGBT people next day because Williams called out we have fewer answers, only more alive. I call cops ‘sir’ because I want are easy to dispose of, in real life white people, white privilege, white questions. In the coming week we to stay alive. Still some of us die and on the tube, and many people, supremacy.

This line holds particular recommend the Olympic trials on even when we comply. When will it straight and LGBT, take their cues resonance now: “Even with videoNBC, FX’s Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll stop?” Philando Castile was stopped from TV. Witness the reality TV star taped evidence of police destroying starring Denis Leary, AMC’s Feed for a broken taillight. As Lemon who is the presumptive Republican black people, many freedom-loving the Beast, CBS’ American Gothic said: something stupid. nominee. That many of those lesAmericans remain unconvinced of a and BrainDead, and of course, stay We were watching NBC’s Aquarbian characters were also women systemic problem.” tuned.t ius July 7, the period drama that

t

DVD>>

July 14-20, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

So like Candy

by Brian Bromberger

A

ndy Warhol is often remembered for his quote, “Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” As a filmmaker, he gave Candy Darling, perhaps his best actress, her 15 minutes, which she voraciously seized, but her fame was very brief, and she is largely forgotten today. The documentary Beautiful Darling, just released on DVD by Corinth Films, wants to bring Candy back into the limelight, making a case that as one of the first transsexual stars she had a cultural impact. Despite a sad, unfulfilling life and career, as a trailblazer she paved the way for actresses like Laverne Cox and Alexis Arquette. Allegedly, Warhol came into a luncheonette where Darling was working as a waitress and said, “You should be an actress.”

But Darling had already made that decision as a child. To be a glamorous Hollywood movie star of yesteryear like her idol Kim Novak, whom she imitated in looks and acting style, was her driving ambition. The greatest role Candy Darling ever played was her own life.

Darling was born James Slattery in 1944, growing up in Massapequa Park on Long Island. He was

abused by an alcoholic father, and as an effeminate boy was bullied by other schoolkids. As a teen he began putting on makeup and wearing women’s clothes in public, a brave act as “female impersonation” was then illegal in NY. She started taking female hormones and remained a pre-op transsexual her whole life.

After Warhol discovered her, she appeared in two of his films, Flesh (1968) and the 70s feminist movement satire Women in Revolt (1971), becoming a regular at his Factory studio and part of the in crowd at Max’s Kansas City club. There she met avant-garde celebrities like singer Lou Reed, who composed his anthem “Walk on the Wild Side” as a tribute to her. At the height of her fame and a hair’s breadth from mainstream stardom, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, and Robert Mapplethorpe photographed her, while Tennessee Williams cast her as Violet in his unsuccessful off-Broadway play Small Craft Warnings, which closed in less than a week.

Yet she was poorly paid, forced to sleep on friend’s couches to survive.

Apparently she never had any major romances. Men loved her “but would have killed her had they known the

truth.” Warhol, whom Darling had envisioned as her Louis B. Mayer, got tired of using “chicks with dicks,” wanting “real women” in his movies, and dumped her. She appeared in a few lowbudget, forgettable films.

In early 1974, she felt a lump, thought she was pregnant, but instead was diagnosed with fatal lymphoma, perhaps caused by her abuse of female hormones. She would die on March 21, 1974 at 29, but not before famously posing for photographer Peter Hujar holding a rose in her hospital deathbed, never looking more beautiful and eternally young.

The other star of Beautiful Darling is her former roommate, confidante, and closest friend Jeremiah Newton, who at 16 met Darling and was permanently star-struck.

Having edited a book of her diaries (kept since she was 14) and letters, he approached director James Rasin to make a film about her life.

Newton is a producer and narrator, having recorded oral conversations with Candy, and after she died, interviewed her family and friends. He

met her mother, who had remarried to a homophobe with no idea who her son was (nor did she want him to know). She gave Newton as much of Darling’s belongings, papers, and ashes as he could carry, then burned the rest. The documentary follows Newton arranging her burial in upstate NY in the same grave as his mother, and eventually himself.

What makes the film so compelling is that in spite of hearing from Candy herself (her letters and diary entries are read by actress Chloe Sevigny, who, while not sounding at all like Candy, conveys her tenderness and melancholy) and vintage interviews she gave, and talking head commentary from Fran Lebowitz (“She was an actress every second of her life”), John Waters (“She put people off, but attracted them at the same time”), her director Paul Morrissey, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis, and others, Darling remains heartbreakingly elusive, her mystery never pierced.

This might be deliberate on Newton’s part, perhaps too much in awe of her

and ambivalent about telling her full story. It’s likely she had to prostitute herself to survive, a rumor Newton denies even as we later hear an audiotape of him admitting she had hired herself out to men. We catch her admissions that she felt like she lived in a prison, not having a job or a boyfriend to love, voicing her despair and loneliness. She was conflicted about her body and her identity. Yet she could courageously exclaim, “You must always be yourself, no matter the price. It is the highest form of morality.”

Beautiful Darling also serves as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of fame. For Darling there was a deep emptiness that couldn’t be filled by stardom. Newton is another casualty of celebrity. We never understand why he was so entranced by her (was it unrequited love?), with his own life revolving around her memory, obsessed with being a fan and caretaker of her legacy. Beautiful Darling is captivating, posing as many questions as it answers, with Candy Darling embodying the contradictions, challenges, and the joys of being her transsexual self, paying a huge price to be herself and pursue her dreams.t

Getting to the heart of Schubert

by Tim Pfaff

“I

want to go to heaven on this music,” the great pianist Arthur Rubinstein told a TV interviewer as Schubert’s C Major String Quintet played in the background. Perhaps Schubert himself did, having finished this high-water mark of the chamber music repertoire two months before he died. Sentimentality aside, chamber players and audiences have long known that they can go to heaven on the piece every time they play, hear or even think about it. Now that the “Stairway to Heaven” rights issue has been settled, the Quatuor Ebene’s urgent, surpassingly beautiful new recording of the Quintet, with guest cellist Gautier Capucon (Erato), has emerged as a new route of preference. It’s easily 2016 Record of the Year so far.

Whatever it performs, the Ebene has a way of getting to the heart of the music with playing that’s maximally intense without becoming overwrought – in short, that seizes and holds your attention without having to shred it. Simply describing their Schubert Quintet maneuvers a writer into oxymoron. It’s fiercely delicate; it’s bare-boned full-bodied; it’s immaculately detailed big-picture; it’s freely taut.

It doesn’t make the music sound “new”; it makes it sounds ineffably, uncannily right. No matter how many recordings of the Quintet you have, when you hear this one you think, “Yes, that’s it!” I, for one, want to go to heaven on this recording.

As it must be, the nearly mystical Adagio is the center of this performance, but what sets the Ebene’s performance apart is that it is entirely noise-free. There’s hardly any string vibrato in the yearning, leapingly lyrical upper lines; there’s never any harshness of attack or release in notes and phrases; the pizzicato lower strings never buzz or growl, and instead mirror the lines above in a kind of subdued, even submerged, watery reflection of them. The agitated central section doesn’t lacerate; it erupts from the deep. The movement slows ineluctably but almost unnoticeably, with no loss of its essence. The path

to the Brucknerian-Mahlerian Adagio starts here.

Perhaps most remarkable of all, the Scherzo is not a curled-fist-tothe-eyes awakening from a dream you want never to end. It’s bracing and raises gooseflesh, but without serrated edges or clumsy accents.

The drop into the rich, close-lined trio is natural and without unwanted incident, and for a few moments you’re back in the deepest murmurings of the heart. This is contact with something like “pure” music as direct as can be achieved through the medium of bowed strings. The concluding Allegretto, the most vulnerable to feeling banal after all that has come before, here marks a return to an Earth in which there is, consolingly, dance of the most vaulting, exuberant, ultimately breathless sort.

Seizing the opportunity of working outside the usual string-quartet literature, the Ebene finishes the disc with “new” Schubert, five of the composer’s songs sung by baritone Matthias Goerne in arrangements for voice and string quintet, in this case the Ebene plus bass player Laurene Durantel. “Der Tod und das Maedchen” and “Die Goetter Griechensland” are songs that, in Schubert’s own hand, morphed into great string quartets, or quartet movements. The other three, similarly haunting and death-drenched and hardly random in choice, are “Der Juengling und der Tod,” the gender-obverse of “Death and the Maiden,” and “Atys” and the more innocent “Der liebliche Stern,” ideally suited to the baritone’s penchant for melancholy and forthright delivery of ballad-like narrative songs.

Goerne’s substantial collection of Schubert songs, over eight volumes featuring different accompanying pianists (Harmonia Mundi), is one of the mandatory parts of any Schubert song-lover’s collection; in these five new songs, we encounter Goerne at his most velvet-voiced. The blend with this distinctive, subtle string complement is ideal. The musicians’ point is to present the songs as they might have been heard at a “Schubertiade,” private gatherings in Vienna salons where musicians

– amateurs in original, best sense, that is lovers, of music – and above all, friends of Schubert, met and made music with the instruments on hand. These songs have exactly that sense of improvisation, collegiality and, above all, enveloping warmth.

While we’re in the neighborhood, Florian Boesch, another baritone Lieder specialist renowned for singing as individual and searching as Goerne’s (and even more of a cult

figure), has released another volume in his ongoing series of Schubert recordings with pianist Malcolm Martineau (Onyx). Although not noticeably “themed,” the program is a carefully thought-out program of songs that reward being heard complete and in sequence.

Like Goerne with the Ebene, Boesch is on his best vocal behavior here, and the recorded sound, which has not always been ideal in this

series, is both true and sumptuous.

What Boesch’s audience particularly likes about the baritone is his willingness to dispense with beautiful sound for its own sake in the expression of feeling. To hear him at his most unrestrained, try his Wigmore Hall lunchtime recital of Schumann and Wolf songs, again with Martineau, which can be heard on demand and free, until Aug. 4, at bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b07j3vm5.t

I am the future of the LGBT community.

I was married to a wonderful woman for 30 years. Now it’s time to be who I really am. Now I’m happy, authentic, and dating a wonderful man. I read EDGE on all my devices, because I have a whole future to look forward to - and that’s where I want it to be.

The person depicted here is a model.

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<< Theatre

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 14-20, 2016

<<

Leslie Odom, Jr.

From page 17

Odom’s career as a performer has had enough rough patches, also known as unemployment, that leaving the profession was a notion that had occasionally surfaced.

But any of its residual flicker was extinguished when he became part of theater history in 2015 as one of the original stars of Hamilton – a Broadway musical with enough cultural impact that it kept the Treasury Department from replacing Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.

“I haven’t even had a moment to process how different my life is from a year ago,” he said as his rendezvous with the couch approached. “I need a little time to just unpack the many blessings I’ve been afforded this past year.” And then gears will be switched as Odom relaunches himself as a singer and recording artist.

The Bay Area will get the first viewing when Odom performs on July 23 at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, an off-site presentation by Feinstein’s at the Nikko.

“I hear the concert is selling really well, and I am so grateful to these people who are taking this journey with me,” Odom said. “It’s been 15 years that I’ve devoted to theater and television and stuff, and I can now see the fruits of my labor that Hamilton has offered in such a completely

Jiro Tcholakian

When he won a Tony Award last month for Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr. was already planning a career shift toward focusing on a singing and recording career.

healing and wonderful way. Now I want to devote as much time and love and work into the music thing.”

But don’t head to the concert expecting to hear anything from Hamilton or in the hip hop stylings that Lin-Manuel Miranda applied to early American history. A better indicator of what to expect can he heard on his recently released self-titled album that mixes together both classic songs and unexpected choices that gently sway in new arrangements and in Odom’s smooth jazz-flavored voice. A song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory feels at home next to “Autumn Leaves,” and songs from such miles-apart musicals as

Spring Awakening and Bells Are Ringing also fit comfortably together.

“Hamilton was really the different thing for me musically,” Odom said. “Hip hop is not the world I’ve inhabited before. The music on the album is much closer to the music I grew up listening to, the kind of music that I idolized.”

Leslie Odom Jr. is actually a rebooted version of an album of the same name he recorded pre-Hamilton with money raised from a Kickstarter campaign. “We had nothing but ambition and some love that we put into the album,” Odom said. It was so under-the-radar that the record label that approached him after Hamilton raised his profile didn’t even know it existed. But after Steve Greenberg, founder of S-Curve Records, gave it a listen, he offered Odom the chance at a do-over with an enhanced budget.

Some songs were switched out, and what was carried over was remixed for a more sophisticated sound. “We looked at hundreds of songs to get to the 10 on the album,” Odom said. “Somewhere along the way you find a feel, a key, a groove that suits you, and you just follow that thing and hope for magic.”

The work has paid off, and the album has already reached No. 1 on Billboard’s jazz charts. But before making its investment, the record label wanted assurances from Odom

WIN YOUR SHARE OF UP TO

$150,000!

that he was committed to taking his career in a new direction. “They said, ‘We think you have a talent, but you really have to put some weight behind this thing, put in the time on your music career.’”

Odom was ready to make the move, though the degree of his availability didn’t come into focus until recent months. “We were in contract negotiations about my possibly extending in Hamilton, and we decided on both sides that it might be best if I didn’t. That show is much bigger than all of us, so they certainly don’t need me to sell tickets. But that’s okay because it has been such a thrilling ride

Joan Marcus

Leslie Odom Jr. won the Tony Award for playing Aaron Burr in Hamilton, a musical that let him take new risks with his career away from the Broadway stage.

that I have no complaints.”

After he has used up his postHamilton couch time, Odom has time on the calendar to fill. He does know he will be back in the Bay Area in November for two performances for Bay Area Cabaret at the Fairmont Hotel, and he’s at ease with the uncertainties of his new career direction.

“I am very used to being out of work,” he said. “I’ve been a professional artist for a really long time, and Hamilton is the very first job I had for a whole year in my entire life.”

Before Hamilton, Odom’s highestprofile work was in the TV series Smash, playing a gay cast member of a troubled Broadway-bound musical about Marilyn Monroe. In its second season, he got more screen time as his character became romantically involved with one of the musical’s creators, played by Christian Borle.

“I didn’t want it to be titillating because I know as a black man how tiresome it is when people think that somehow the love that my wife and I share is exotic or is different or is less valuable than any other kind of love,” Odom said. “If you can believe this, what was most important to me about that portrayal was that it be boring.”t Leslie Odom Jr. will perform at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek on July 23. Tickets are $45-$85. Call (925) 943-7469 or go to lesherartscenter.org.

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Making Book

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35

On the Town

Shining Stars Vol. 46 • No. 28 • July 7-13, 2016

www.ebar.com ✶ www.bartabsf.com

by Jim Provenzano

A Shar G Photography

crobats, nautical bartenders, tasty cocktails and industrial chic marked the grand opening of Port, Oakland’s new GLBT bar on Broadway.

See page 28 >> The bar staff of Port Bar.

On the Tab B

ars open, bars face closur e, bars get protested and supported. What a week! It’s a tumbling arr ay of events, but we try to make sense of it, chronologically at least, in particular, lots of live mu sic for your ears.

July 14-21

Listings begin on page 32 >>

The Klipptones @ Top

of the Mark

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

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28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 7-13, 2016

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

Upper Left: Ribbon-cutting ceremony outside the new Port Bar. Lower Left: Patrons of the new Port Bar. Lower Middle: Guys galore at Port Bar. Right: Port co-owners Richard Fuentes (left) and Sean Sullivan (right) with BeBe Sweetbriar (center).

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Shar G Photography

Shar G Photography

Shar G Photography

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Port Bar

From page 27

Located next door to the iconic Paramount Theatre, and convenient to BART and other public transit, The Port welcomed guests on Saturday, July 9 after more than a week’s ‘soft opening.’

The 2000-square-foot space features a long bar that takes up most of the front area, a wall of multi-colored shipping container parts, various GLBT icon portraits high above, and a cozy dance floor in the back.

The Port joins Club 21 and Club BnB as the most known gay bars in the district, along with queerfriendly The New Parish.

Business and domestic partners Sean Sullivan and Richard Fuentes greeted guests at a pre-opening reception, where the new “Captain’s Cocktail List” included beverages with saucy names like Sailor Boi, Raw Top and Blueballs. The bar also serves beers on tap and in bottles and cans.

The opening event also included local and San Francisco luminaries like Empress Emma Peel and Emperor Salvador Tovar, Left Magazine Publisher David Helton, Gloss Editor Frank Fanucci, and singer-hostess BeBe Sweetbriar.

Along with a few sexy dancers later in the evening, Acrobatic Musical Magic duo Nikki Borodi and Glen

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July 7-13, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Saunders performed a standing acrobatic act.

The cocktails we sampled were tasty and zesty, and the crowd was diverse and enthused. And while the metal and concrete walls are stylish, the acoustic result made the music in the front room too loud for anything but shouted chat between patrons. Hopefully a varied style of events will welcome those hoping for more than the usual gay vibe.

Check out the newest LGBT bar before or after a show at The Paramount, or when you’re in downtown Oakland. Congrats, Port peeps! t The Port Bar, 2023 Broadway, Oakland. portbaroakland.com

Both photos: BARtab

Right: Patrons at Port’s opening night.

Above: Industrial chic at the new Port Bar.

Club BnB protested

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Signs and chants at a protest outside Club BnB in Oakland.

by Jim Provenzano

A

n alleged assault against two women patrons of Oakland’s Club BnB has led to outrage, arguments over just what happened, and two protests outside the nightclub last Saturday and this week.

As reported in News this issue, on June 28, Club BnB, formerly known as Bench and Bar, hosted Queer without Fear! A Pulse Victims Benefit.

After a stage show that included acrobats, Michael Chu, also known as DJ MC2, posted on Facebook, “Whatever was going on at the other end of the club was drowning out the performers on stage, someone got hurt, police and fire department showed up and whatever happened in that area was bad enough that the event was shut down. The irony is that this violent scenario transpired at an anti violence fundraiser for Orlando.”

But what violence occurred, and to whom, is a different story to management and patrons. According to protest and boycott organizer Alex U. Inn, founder of the drag king ensemble Kingdom, two women were shoved, dragged and hit as they were ejected from the bar.

Only days after the incident, Joe Hawkins, an Oakland Pride organizer in past years, was appointed Operations Manager at Club BnB. He posted a lengthy acocunt of the incident on the bar’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/benchandbar.

Hawkins wrote that the two women were drunk, belligerent, and that they and two others kicked and attacked bar co-owner Charles Bisbee.

“The bartender refused to serve the two women,” Hawkins wrote.

“At that point the taller of the two women attempted to attack Andrea the bartender. When Charles (owner) saw what was happening, he grabbed the woman that was attempting to attack the bartender and tried rushing her out of the back door, with the help of another bar manager. There were no ‘bouncers’ or security guards on duty that night because it was a small fundraiser. It was when Charles grabbed the woman that he was attacked. He was bitten and fell to the ground, he was then punched and kicked in the head by more than four women.

Staff had to rush to pull the women off of him.”

In a public statement posted on the club’s Facebook and Twitter

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Alex U. Inn (left) stands next to Robbie Clark, who spoke at the protest.

Oakland gay nightclub’s alleged assaults ire activists accounts on July 2, the bar management claims that it was their staff who were hit, kicked and bitten as the drunk women were forcibly removed from the bar.

“Club BnB is committed to ensuring that the club continues to be a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for everyone who wishes to visit,” the staff wrote. “Club BnB is also committed to an open dialogue around this incident and providing the space for anyone who feels that more needs to be said or done regarding this issue.”

After several public posts accusing the staff of assaulting the two women patrons, Alex U. Inn organized the first protest outside the club.

On July 9, about 30 people picketed both entrances of Club BnB on Broadway and the Club 21 entrance on Franklin Street from 7:30pm to 11pm. Club 21 is a connected yet different bar under the same ownership.

Starting at about 7:30pm, protest organizer Alex U. Inn and several others spoke with an amplified microphone from the bed of a rented truck parked next to the Club BnB entrance. The pickets with Black Lives Matter signs lasted for several hours. Chanting phrases and calling for a boycott, Inn said that, “Nothing justifies violence against women.”

At one point during the picket, according to Inn, bar owner Charles Bisbee shouted complaints and threats from the club doorway, but the protest remained peaceful. No arrested were made.

Speakers at the protest connected larger national issues of violence against people of color. Robbie Clark, a queer-identified Oakland resident, said, “There are not many spaces for queer folks in Oakland.

BnB was one of those places. For it not to be safe for Black people in Oakland, when we’re being murdered and lynched, is part of the perpetual violence. When we’re not being invisibilized, we’re being brutalized.”

A second protest took place July 11, but no updates were provided.

As of press deadline, the alleged victim(s) and their lawyer have not come forward or made a public statement.

Club BnB promoter Valentin Carillo wrote in a Facebook post, “The community needs to hear both sides of the story, not just the lies being told by Alex and people quick to jump on the bandwagon.

The girl refused to give the police a statement; that speaks a lot for itself. If she was such an outstanding citizen, she would have had no issue doing so.

“Trying to boycott an establishment, which has done more for the Latino and Black community than any other clubs or bars in Northern California, is just sad and even sadder as our clubs are slowly closing in the Bay Area.”t

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 7-13, 2016

Making Book The history of LGBT bookstores in the Castro

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by Michael Flanagan

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he closing of Books Inc. in the Castro last month and the opening of Dog Eared Books (489 Castro) where A Different Light once existed has gotten me thinking about bookstores and the literary world of San Francisco.

Reading has the function of both acting as a solace and informing.

Together with writing as a means of expression, it has been woven into the history of San Francisco from its very beginning. In the nineteenth century it drew writers like Mark Twain to our city. From the beginning gay and lesbian writers have been part of this: the gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard moved here in 1859.

I first became aware of the association between LGBT culture and bookstores in San Francisco when I was a teen. Howl by Allen Ginsberg was one of the first books with gay content I ever owned, and it was published by City Lights. The book was a great synthesis of gay history and publishing. The poem was first read on October 7, 1955 at The Six Gallery (3119 Fillmore), a gallery founded by six artists including gay poet Jack Spicer and gay painter/poet John Ryan. Shig Murao was arrested for selling the book at City Lights on June 3, 1957. Through the subsequent obscenity trial, the link between LGBT culture and bookstores was forever cemented.

The desire to have a communityowned source for LGBT books predates the first gay bookstore. Dorian Book Service was a mail order catalog published by Mattachine Society member Hal Call’s Pan-Graphic Press starting in 1958.

The catalog included a variety of titles such as I Am A Lesbian by Lora Sela, Sex Without Guilt by Albert Ellis PhD, the transcript of the KPFA broadcast The Homosexual In Our Society and books by Mary Renault.

Call would go on to open one of the first gay bookstores in the country, Adonis Books, at 348 Ellis in 1967.

Paperback Traffic was the first bookstore in the Castro to have significant gay content. It opened at 558 Castro in 1972 (it would later move across the street to 535 Castro). I asked Donn Tatum, who opened the bookstore with his partner Steve Lowell, to tell me about the store.

“We had readings of then-current gay literature (such as the Violet Quill group) and carried publications by gay writers that were just emerging from major publishers, as well as more radical publications from Gay Sunshine Press and Fag Rag (out of Boston),” said Tatum.

“We also carried emerging women’s literature. We also hosted avantgarde jazz sessions and sold general literature that would be of interest to San Franciscans. We had author readings and signings, introducing among others Armistead Maupin and poets such as Tom Gunn.”

Rick Gerharter

Rick Gerharter

Quentin Crisp reads at A Different Light Bookstore on Castro Street in June 1997.

John Weir signs a copy of his debut novel for fellow author Kevin Killian at A Different Light in February 1990.

Aside from the readings and jazz sessions, Paperback Traffic also hosted art shows (radical faerie artist Marshall Rheiner had an exhibition there in 1977) and housed Small Press Traffic when it got its start in 1974. Paperback Traffic closed in 1982.

Noe Books and News (2233 Market Street) was opened by Paul Boneberg and Joe Norton in the early 1980s. Boneberg said that at the time it was difficult to find books and magazines of interest to the community.

“We ordered every LGBT book we could and every magazine, including queer newspapers from other cities,” said Boneberg. “For activists, this was the only way to follow in depth what was occurring in other cities. This was particularly important when the AIDS pandemic began, as we carried the New York queer papers and others that provided coverage of the beginning of the pandemic in those cities. In big cities, you could find bookstores that carried them. But for people from elsewhere, having a store where you could find hundreds of LGBT publications was unique.

Many tourists came by to shop and talk and get a feel for the city and LGBT scene. Some didn’t even know they were a block from the Castro and we had to say, “You are in the Castro now. Just keep walking.’”

Konstantin Berlandt, a member of the collective that started Gay Sunshine, staffed Noe Books and News on Sundays. The store had an instore author event with Randy Shilts for his Harvey Milk biography, The Mayor of Castro Street, which was wildly popular, selling a couple hundred copies of the book in a day.

Walt Whitman Bookshop moved to 2319 Market St. from 1412 Sutter in 1982. It was opened as a gay bookstore on Sutter Street by Charles Gilman, a former teacher in the Oakland schools, in May, 1978.

It not only sold new books, but used books and antiquarian books as well. Walt Whitman was known for its author events.

Christopher Isherwood had an event at the Sutter St. store in June 1980 for My Guru and His Disciple.

Yorkers who moved to San Francisco and opened the store on September 1, 1987. The shop had a signing with Randy Shilts on November 16, 1987 which required armed guards because of death threats to the author of the AIDS history And The Band Played On. The store also featured many author signings including Dorothy Allison, N.A. Diaman and Eric Marcus, and community events with Ben Schatz (then of National Gay Rights Advocates) discussing AIDS and medical insurance.

Unfortunately, the bookshop was on the block which burned the Elephant Walk and other businesses in December 1988 and never recovered.

Moon Trent

Author events at the Market Street store included signings by William S. Burroughs, Anne Rice, Joseph Hansen, James Broughton, Daniel Curzon and Edmund White.

Gilman had some rather amazing events at the small space, including Armistead Maupin reading from Mrs. Miniver for Mother’s Day and actor Robert Coffman reading from Truman Capote’s “The Thanksgiving Visitor” and “A Christmas Memory” for the holidays.

Different Lights

Jack Kerouac (lower left) and Allen Ginsberg (right) at the Six Gallery public debut reading of Ginsberg’s epic poem “Howl,” October 7, 1955.

David Lamble, who worked at the bookshop, told Mark I. Chester in a B.A.R. article in May, 1989, “It was the center of numerous literary functions. If you were gay and had a book to talk about in San Francisco, you probably came to the Walt Whitman. Everybody who wrote books in the early to mid-‘80s came to the Walt Whitman as a matter of course. There was a lot of history in that shop.”

The bookshop survived Gilman, who died in 1987, but only for a few years. After a move to 1429 Polk Street, the store closed in the summer of 1980.

Love That Dares Bookshop had a brief but lively life at 506 Castro Street. It was opened by four ex-New

Rick Gerharter

A Different Light opened at 489 Castro Street in December 1987 and shortly thereafter the neighborhood’s literary community hit its stride. The first store was opened in Los Angeles’ Silverlake district, the second in Manhattan, and San Francisco’s was third. Richard Labonté took over as manager of the San Francisco store in January, 1989 and subsequently several literary series took place.

The gay writers series featured Kevin Killian, Darrel Yates Rist, Thom Gunn, Adam Klein, Steve Abbott, D.L. Alvarez and others.

The lesbian writers series featured Kitty Tsui, Suzette Partido, Dorothy Allison, Katherine Sturtevant, and Katherine Forrest.

Artwords was a series of openings by performance artists, musicians, photographers, painters and others. The Community Space Series opened the bookstore to groups and organization like ACT-UP, HomoCore, and GLOE (Gay & Lesbian Outreach and Engagement). The Social Studies Series featured lectures by authors like Tobias Schneebaum.

Ken White, a former manager of Books Inc. in the Castro, and publisher of the new Query Books, wrote on his new press’ blog about his time working at A Different Light.

“In those years of the ‘90s, the Castro was the center of an angry but vibrant community of artists,

Keith Stern

activists and writers. Dorothy Allison taught fiction to a writing group of baby dykes one day a week. Justin Vivian Bond, future cabaret artist extraordinaire, staffed the front counter. Employees Betty and Pansy partnered on the 1993 tell-all travel guide, Betty and Pansy’s Severe Queer Review of San Francisco.”

It was an amazingly vibrant time.

A Different Light changed ownership in 1999 and remained in business till 2011. When it closed, it was the last LGBT bookstore in California. Branches in Los Angeles and New York City also eventually closed.

Since 2000, the bookstore business has become even more difficult. Even before the internet, it was rough.

Said Lamble, “So much has happened that worked against the independent bookstore. It’s like Russian Roulette without the Russians.”

Reflecting back on his bookstore, Boneberg said, “The bookstore business is brutal.”

However, all is not lost. The relationship between authors and bookstores has actually improved.

Writer Kevin Killian said, “It has improved in incredible ways. Now bookstores are realizing that writers can be an asset to their business, instead of being unsightly if necessary signposts to the whole procedure of making money.”

We have lost much, but still much remains. Books Inc. Opera Plaza has welcomed the Perfectly Queer: LGBTQ Readings series, and both Dog Eared Books and Books Inc. have LGBT book groups. The Mission-located Modern Times Bookstore had, and continues to host frequent LGBT events. Castro health center Magnet, now Strut, hosts gay reading events, and gay and straight bars frequently host LGBT literary events.

Publisher’s Weekly reported that last year was the first year that bookstore sales rose for the first time in eight years. We are no longer in the gay publishing boom, but the bust may now be behind us as well.t The author would like to thank Donn Tatum, Paul Boneberg, David Lamble, Kevin Killian and the MSU Special Collections.

Jim Provenzano

Left to Right: Musicians Moon Trent (left) and Phranc at A Different Light in 1995; Authors Jean Lindau and Ellen Frye at A Different Light bookstore in May 1990; Sir Ian McKellan with author Kirk Read on the back patio at A Different Light bookstore in 2002; Artist Brontez Purnell reads to an appreciative crowd at Dog Eared Book’s June 20, 2016 grand opening.

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July 7-13, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 31

Ring my Bell

Steven Underhill

Donna Sachet with Leonard Oats, this year’s San Francisco Cable Car Bell Ringing World Champion.

by Donna Sachet

I

n our ongoing effort to blend our rich LGBTQ community with the larger San Francisco world, we jumped at the chance to serve as a Celebrity Judge for the 53rd Annual Cable Car Ringing Contest in Union Square last Thursday.

As you may know, the iconic San Francisco cable cars date back to 1878, but were very nearly eliminated in the 1940s and again in the 1980s as outdated and unsafe.

A resolute group of women’s civic groups under the leadership of Friedel Klussmann, and later the leadership of Mayor Dianne Feinstein, are credited with saving this historic mode of transportation, now the only moving component on the official National Register of Historic Places. Can you imagine San Francisco without cable cars?

This annual contest among the cable car crews has grown in popularity, drawing several hundred spectators to bustling Union Square on a sunny mid-day. A single motorized cable car was relocated to the square and a tent erected for the judges and other dignitaries.

Our amiable fellow judges included SF Fire Chief Joanne HayesWhite, SF Acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin, 1968 Miss Cable Car Jennifer deGrassi Williams, KTVU television anchors Sal Castaneda and Frank Somerville, KPIX traffic anchor George Rask, former 107.7 radio host Nikki Blakk (and her adorable dog), Sir Francis Drake Hotel doorman Tom Sweeney, and local comedian Will Durst whose wife Debi Durst served ably as emcee. Also in attendance were Mark Abramson, Neil Figurelli, Don Berger, and Fiona Ma. A fun amateur competition between three entrants, resulted in 96.5 KOIT radio host Freska and her young and vivacious entourage of singers and dancers winning the trophy and cash for their chosen charity in support of the victims of the Orlando tragedy.

Then came the main event with six cable car employee finalists competing and an enthusiastic crowd of supporters cheering them on.

Among the six was the first female competitor, Cassandra Griffin, with a winning smile and towering high heels that put this columnist’s daytime pumps to shame. Their various creative bell-ringing techniques and personal styles made our judging job a challenge, but in the end, SFMTA Chairman Tom Nolan announced Leonard Oats as San Francisco Cable Car Bell Ringing World Champion!

Turn-Abouts and banana splits

Sunday pulled us in several directions, but on the able arm of Kevin Lisle, we were able to attend a variety of events with aplomb. First up, 440 Castro hosted a mid-day celebration of life for Dave Wheeler, much loved community volunteer and former manager of The Edge, who died suddenly in May while on vacation in Italy.

Hundreds of friends gathered to support his husband Bert Hobbs and his daughter Amanda Wheeler attending from Columbus, Ohio.

These are never easy events to attend, but they serve a genuine purpose for those impacted by such loss.

Gary Virginia deserves much of the credit for organizing this warm and well deserved tribute, which included an ongoing slide show of photos of Dave and friends, towering flowers by CoCo Butter, and creole food from Rusty Gaspard. Personal stories from several close friends, a single touching song, and a rousing group toast completed the event.

Several of us went from there to join another group at Beaux for the monthly fundraiser of the Reign-

ing Emperor Salvador Tovar and Reigning Empress Emma Peel and their United Court of Love and Friendship. Drag performances, jello shots, raffle tickets, banana splits, and the usual Imperial shenanigans made for a lively afternoon.

Adding to the excitement was the entrance of several participants in the concurrent Ducal Court’s Royal Turn-About, when male title-holders appear in drag, much to the amazement and sometimes confusion of the general public.

Of special note were the stunning Creola Banquet LeTillia, last year’s Grand Duke T.J. Wilkinson, and the Reigning Grand Duke Aja MonetAshton. That event, hosted by The Edge, raised money for the Marin County AIDS Foundation and Success Center SF. Next, we headed South of Market to The Lone Star Saloon for the birthday celebration of Walter Vandernald. It was delightful to return to The Lone Star after a considerable absence to find the same warm bar staff, spacious patio, and sexy clientele we remember.

After a leisurely meal at La Folie, Walter’s husband Cory Vaughn gathered a sizeable group of friends, like Julie Jewels, Martha Vaughn, Donna DeTurris, Amy Karle, Scott Stokes, Brian Stamper, Paul Sasso, Mimi Osa, Jimmer Cassiol, and Rich Maxwell, for a casual evening of cocktails and conversation, a suitable end for our busy Sunday schedule.

After a brief post-Pride respite, we are preparing for an active San Francisco summer, full of sunny weather, street fairs, and fundraising galas!

Our next column will include reports from the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation’s Broadway Bares SF: Tech Tales at Club Fugazi, the Diana Ross concert at the Orpheum Theatre, and La Cage aux Folles at the Victoria Theatre.

Past that, we recommend a string of performances at Feinstein’s at Hotel Nikko, including Leanne Borghesi (August 5-6), Mame in Concert with Meg Mackay and Sharon McNight (August 11-13), Carly Ozard (August 18), and Spencer Day (August 19-20). We all bemoan the shuttering of so many live music venues; let’s support our singing friends with our attendance and applause!t

T.J. Wilkerson

T.J. Wilkinson and Jouke Lanning at the Ducal Court’s Royal Turn-About, held at The Edge.

WINNER Best Wedding Photographer

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<< On the Tab

32 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 7-13, 2016

Some Thing @ The Stud

Saturgay @ Qbar

Karaoke Night @ SF Eagle

Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. July 15: AnarKiki with punk songs galore. $7. 10pm-3am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

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

Sing along, with guest host Nick Radford. 8pm-12am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Sat 16

Speak Easy! Write Hard! @ Picán Restaurant, Oakland

Beatpig @ Powerhouse Juanita More and crew’s mixed fun drag/butch night, with DJ Stanley Frank; drink specials. $5 benefits Transgender Law Center. 9pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland Latin, hip hop and Electro music night.

June 11, Banda Tierra Del Sol performs live. $5-$25. 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Fri 15

Breastfest Beer Festival @ Marin Center

Fleetwood Mask @ Slim’s

This week’s On the Tab was edited for space.

Full listings available at www.ebar.com/bartab

Thu 14

Bulge @ Powerhouse Grace Towers hosts the fun sexy night. $100 cash prize for best bulge. $5-$10 benefits various local nonprofits. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Hal Sparks @ Cobb’s Comedy Club The star of Queer as Folk and numerous films performs his stand-up comedy act. $20; 2-drunk min. 8pm.

July 15 at 8pm & 10:15. July 16 at 7:30 & 9:45. 915 Columbus Ave. 928-4320. www.cobbscomedy.com

Kingdom of Sodom/Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Interactive strip and sex party with a cash bar. $20. 8pm. Stage show 10pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 3976758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge The weekly drag show with DJ MC2, themed nights, gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Our Lady J @ Oasis The gospel-sounding yet highly irreverent singer returns for a uniquely rousing concert, with guest vocalist Derek Scmidt. $20. 8pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.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

Sono Musette @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

Dancing Ghosts @ Cat Club Enjoy goth, industrial, Dead Can Dance giveaways at the monthly dance night. $5-$10. 9:30pm-2:30am.

1190 Folsom St. www.sfcatclub.com

The Fleetwood Mac and David Bowie tribute bands perform classics. $15$18 ($40 with dinner). 9pm. 333 11th St. www.slimspresents.com

Furries in the Wild @ Joaquin Miller Park, Oakland

Guy Ruben and Riley Patrick DJ and Daniel DeLage and Element Eclipse host the sexy night where loose shorts and floppy packages are welcome. $5.

10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom sT. www.powerhousebar.com

Gogo Fridays @ Toad Hall

Holly Penfield @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

La Gente, Planet Booty @ Great American Music Hall

The London cabaret sensation and former Bay Area singer returns for a glamorous night of music. $20-$40. ($20 food/drink min/) 8pm. July 16, 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.feinsteinsatthenikko.com

The Klipptones @ Top of the Mark The great local jazz band performs at the swanky lounge with a great view. $10. 8pm-1am. Mark Hopkins hotel, 999 California St. Also July 16. www.klipptones.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

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland

Ain’t Mama’s Drag @ Balancoire Weekly drag queen and drag king show hosted by Cruzin d’Loo. 8pm10pm. No cover. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.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

Enjoy a night of lively funk; The Hitsville Soul Sisters also perform. $16 ($41 with dinner). 8pm. 859 O’Farrell St. www.slimspresents.com

Mother @ Oasis Heklina’s weekly drag show night with different themes, always outrageously hilarious. $15-$25. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Night Vale, Erin McKeown @ Fox Theater, Oakland The award-winning theatre-radio show podcast includes music by the queer singer-songwriter. $27.50$32.50. 8pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.erinmckeown.com www.apeconcerts.com

Parker Milsap @ Slim’s Folk-bluegrass singer-songwriter performs music from his two albums.

Travis Linville opens. $16-$21 ($41 with dinner). 9pm. 333 11th St. www.slimspresents.com

Literary Speakeasy and Write From the Gut present a reading series with hosts James J. Siegel and Alexandra Kostoulas. 5pm. 2295 Broadway, Oakland. www.picanrestaurant.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

Sun 17

BeBe Sweetbriar’s Brunch Revue, Femme @ Balancoire Weekly live music shows with various acts, along with brunch buffet, bottomless Mimosas, champagne and more, at the stylish nightclub and restaurant. BeBe hosts, with live entertainment and DJ Shawn P. $15$20. 11am-3pm. After that, Femme T-Dance drag shows at 7pm, 10pm and 11pm. 2565 Mission St. at 21st.

920-0577. www.balancoiresf.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. July 17: RuPaul’s Drag Race star Kim Chi performs. $5. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.Beauxsf.com

Disco Daddy @ SF Eagle Steve Fabus and Kenny L. Kemp guestDJ at the popular disco tea party. $5.

7pm-12am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Katya Presents @ Martuni’s Our favorite Russian exile diva drag star hosts a night of song and cocktails, with guest singer Elisabeth Kessler. Tom Shaw accompanies. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. www.russianoperadiva.com

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone).

9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www. dragatmartunis.com

Underwear Night @ 440 Strip down to your skivvies at the popular men’s night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Tue 19

Bandit @ Lone Star Saloon New weekly queer event with resident DJ Justime; electro, soul, funk, house.

No cover. 9pm-1am. 1354 Harrison St. www.facebook.com/BanditPartySF www.lonestarsf.com

Gaymer Night @ Eagle 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

Hella Saucy @ Q Bar Queer dance party at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 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

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.

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

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

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre

Mon 18

Retro Night @ 440 Castro

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

Strip down as the strippers also take it all off. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com Jim Hopkins plays classic pop oldies, with vintage music videos. 9pm-2am.

44 Castro St. www.the440.com

Tap That Ass @ SF Eagle Bartender Steve Dalton’s beer night happy hours. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Black Magic

Midnight Show @ Divas

Fri 15

Gameboi SF @ Rickshaw Stop The gay Asian dance night grooves with dance, pop and Kpop. $8-$15.

9pm-2am. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle

Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night. No cell phones, please! $5.

10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

The fursuit enthusiasts gather for a fun outdoor BBQ with a great view; changing space, parking, no alcohol, BYO food and drinks. Free. 12pm6pm. Sandborn drive at Joaquin Miller Road, Oakland. www.frolicparty.com

Hot dancers grind it at the Castro bar with a dance floor and patio. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

Enjoy French pop and folk classics on Bastille Day with the vocalinstrumental ensemble. $25-$40. $20 food/drink min. 8pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. www.ticketfly.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge

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

Enjoy Latin, hip hop and electro, plus hot gogos galore, and a big dance floor. April 29: Violeta and Jacqueline La Gata. $10-$20. 9pm-3am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Music night with local and touring bands. $8. 9:30pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Enjoy plenty of beer and food at the benefit for the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic. $55-$65 1pm-5pm.

Fairground Island, San Rafael. www. thebreastfest.org

Fleetwood Mask, Jean Genies @ Slim’s

Freeball @ Powerhouse

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Red Hots Burlesque @ The Stud The saucy women’s burlesque show hosted by Dottie Lux has moved, with new acts. $10. 8pm-9:30pm.

399 9th St. Also Sunday brunch shows at PianoFight Theatre, 4pm. redhotsburlesque.com

The Regrettes @ Bottom of the Hill LA-based “cupcake punk” women’s quartet performs on a bill with Taco Cat and Burnt Palms. $12. 8:30pm. All ages. 1233 17th St. www.bottomofthehill.com

Sat 16

Furries in the Wild @ Joaquin Miller Park, Oakland

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On the Tab>>

July 7-13, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 33

Thu 21

Die Antwoord @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

Wed 20

Bone @ Powerhouse Weekly punk-alternative music night hosted by Uel Renteria and Johnny Rockitt. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

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

Floor 21 @ Starlight Room Juanita More! presents a weekly scenic happy hour event, with host Rudy Valdez, and guest DJs. No cover, and a fantastic panoramic city view.

5pm-9pm. Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell St. www.starlightroomsf.com

James Tormé @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The son of the late singer performs jazz vocal classics. $40-$60. 7pm.

Also July 21, 8pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.feinsteinsatthenikko.com

Latin Drag Night @ Club OMG Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez. 9pm-2am.

43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

LGBT Pub Crawl @ Castro Weekly guided tour of bars. $10-$18.

Meet at Harvey Milk Plaza, 7:45pm.

Also morning historic tours on Mon, Wed, & Sat. www.wildsftours.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

Peepshow @ Codeword Drag, burlesque and vaierty show wih Sophilya Leggz, Maggie Motorboat, Bobby Ashton, Arcadia Kane and Joie de Vivre. $7. 9pm-11:30pm. 917 Folsom St. www.codeword-sf.com

Pussy Party @ Beaux Ladies night at the Castro dance club.

9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Shit Talk @ Oasis Yuri Kagan’s naughty weekly comedy night with special guests. 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

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 21 Comedy Returns @ El Rio

Maureen Langan, Abhay Nadkarni (Guest Host), Julia Jackson, David Lawrence Hawkins, and Lisa Geduldig perform thought-provoking queer-friendly stand-up. $7-$20.

8pm. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

Die Antwoord @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium The popular South Afrikan techno band (“I Fink U Freeky”) performs.

Crystal Castles opens. $2.50. 8pm.

Civic Center Plaza at Grove St. www.apeconcerts.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

Nice Jewish Boys @ The Residence 3rd Thursday Happy Hour with members of the LGBT Jewish organization. No cover, discount drinks.7pm. 718 14th St. www.keshetonline.org

Stale Magnolias @ Oasis Don Seaver and Sean Owens’ drag parody musical blends Southern wit, green tomatoes and designing women. $25-$35 (VIP tables $225).

Thu-Sat 7pm. Thru Aug. 3. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

I am the future of the LGBT community.

I was married to a wonderful woman for 30 years. Now it’s time to be who I really am. Now I’m happy, authentic, and dating a wonderful man. I read EDGE on all my devices, because I have a whole future to look forward to - and that’s where I want it to be.

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 Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

The person depicted here is a model.

Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

34 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 7-13, 2016

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Symphony Sips II “I love Ratatouille,” enthused Claire Sprouse of the Tin Roof Drink Community, who recently masterminded a new bar program at San Francisco stalwart, Tosca. In honor of the oenophilic fine dining setting of the film Sprouse said, “I decided to use a classic French spirit made from grapes and then pair it with even more grapes: Lo-Fi Gentian Amaro.”

Mice may squeak, but rats wine!

“I also applied something I’ve learned from working with great French chefs,” said Sprouse, “A pinch of salt goes a long way to make flavors pop and come together.” Et voila…

Claire Sprouse’s The Good Life for Ratatouille in Concert Combine over ice:

A recent Star Trek score screening-performance by the SF Symphony.

by Jim Gladstone

P

lay us a few bars…and pour us a few drinks.

Welcome to the second installment of Symphony Sips: BARtab’s cocktail pairing program for the easily quaffable culture of the SFSO’s summer concerts.

Tonight and tomorrow night, the orchestra presents Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage—A Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration with excerpts from television and movie scores accompanying a constellation of clips.

Then, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, everyone’s third-favorite

Disney rodent fills the bill: Ratatouille in Concert features a live performance of the orchestral score, synced with a full-length screening.

With George Takei’s recent grousing about John Cho playing gay in the upcoming Star Trek: Beyond movie, we considered making our cocktail tribute a Sulu Sour.

Instead, mixologist and fan Michael Avulcan, uh, Avakian from Jasper’s Corner Tap opted to celebrity the healthy longevity of the franchise with Live Long & Drink, a summer concoction loaded with fruity –”Oh my!”– flavors.

Michael Avakian’s Live Long & Drink for Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage In a shaker, combine…

1 oz Vodka ½ oz Violette’s Liquor ½ oz Pomegranate Juice ½ oz Cranberry juice ½ oz Antica Carpano Sweet vermouth 2 Dashes Peychaud’s bitters Juice of ½ lemon After shaking, strain over crushed ice Top with Ginger Beer.

Claire Sprouse creates a cocktail.

1 ½ oz Lo-Fi Gentian Amaro 1 ½ oz armagnac Pinch of salt Stir. Pour into coupe glass.

Garnish with lemon peel.

The San Francisco Symphony performs Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage, Thursday July 14 and Friday July 15, 7:30 p.m. Ratatouille in Concert, Saturday July 16 and Sunday July 17, 2:00 p.m. www.sfsymphony.org/summer Michael Avakian will get you Trekked…but not wrecked at Jasper’s Corner Tap, 401 Taylor Street.

Claire Sprouse makes a stir at www.tinroofdrinkcommunity.com

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

July 7-13, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 35

Shining Stars Steven Underhill photos by

Broadway Bares: Tech Tails @ Club Fugazi

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uff stars of musical theatre, TV and cabaret got down to the buff at the first West Coast Broadway Bares: Tech Tails benefit for the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation, held July 11 at Club Fugazi (home of Beach Blanket Babylon).

Singer-entertainers David Hernandez, Jai Rodriguez, Cassandra Cass, glam local Kenshi Westover, plus Randy Harrison and his fellow cast members from the touring production of Cabaret, performed at the new San Francisco edition of the sexy strip show benefit. VIP audience members got to tip the gorgeous performers up close. $30-$100. www.reaf-sf.org More 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