March 31, 2016 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

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Vol. 46 • No. 13 • March 31-April 6, 2016

Easter in the Park

People protest outside the North Carolina Executive Mansion in Raleigh, North Carolina, Thursday, March 24.

by Matthew S. Bajko

Lawsuit filed over North Carolina law by Lisa Keen

ambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Equality North Carolina filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday to challenge the constitutionality of a law passed last week to prevent local governments from protecting LGBT people against discrimination. The announcement came the same day that Georgia’s Republican governor vetoed a bill that claimed to protect the freedom of religious officials to decline to perform a marriage ceremony that violates their religious beliefs. ACLU advocacy and policy counsel Eunice Rho said there are “more anti-LGBT bills this year than in any other time.” She estimated that “almost 200” have been introduced. The North Carolina law and the Georgia bill are part of a concerted effort nationwide to pass state legislation that disadvantages LGBT people, experts said. Earlier this month, South Dakota’s Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed a bill similar to North Carolina’s, though it also required transgender people to use singleoccupancy restrooms or locker rooms. On March 22, Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback signed an anti-LGBT bill that prohibits colleges and universities from denying to any “religious student association” any benefit available to other student groups because the religious group requires members to “comply with the association’s sincerely held religious beliefs” and “standards of conduct.” More than a dozen states have considered or are still considering legislation directed against LGBT people. Two bills seeking to limit use of public bathrooms by transgender people failed in the Virginia Legislature last month, including one that sought to fine students $50 if they used the wrong bathroom. Similar bills died in Kentucky and Tennessee. The Illinois Legislature has a similar bill pending before a House committee. Other states considering laws relating to gender identity and/or religious justifications for discrimination against LGBT people include Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Washington, and Wisconsin. Massachusetts is considering a pro-trans bill; to provide “equal access to public places regardless of gender identity.” See page 6 >>

Anti-gay state laws aid push for CA travel ban bill

he Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence held their annual Easter in the Park party Sunday, March 27 at Hellman Hollow in Golden Gate Park. Along with the Hunky Jesus and Sexy Mary contests was the

Easter bonnet contest, which was won by Amber Alert, above, who is no stranger to the honor. Thousands of people gathered with the Sisters for a day of drag fun. For more photos, see Shooting Stars in the back of BARtab.

he nationwide backlash against anti-gay laws recently passed in Georgia and North Carolina is aiding efforts to enact legislation in California that would ban taxpayer-funded travel to such states, LGBT advocates say. Admonishment by Assemblyman a wide array of critics, Evan Low from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and sports leagues, led Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (R) to veto his state’s homophobic legislation on Monday. A similar onslaught of ridicule and scorn has been lodged at North Carolina after its governor, Republican Pat McCrory, last week signed into law a bill that overturns LGBT protections enacted by cities and other local jurisdictions in the Tar Heel State. It prompted San Francisco See page 7 >>

Honda protests LGBT detainees’ treatment Rick Gerharter

by Seth Hemmelgarn

ongressman Mike Honda (D-San Jose) and other lawmakers recently told the head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that efforts to improve treatment of LGBT detainees “fall short” of their goal. In a March 23 letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson highlighting sexual assault, “inconsistent” health care, and other problems, the lawmakers said LGBT people who are being held by U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement “are among the most vulnerable” in the agency’s custody, “and our policies must reflect the unique circumstances this population faces and protect them from mistreatment.” Transgender immigrants account for less than 1 percent of the people in ICE custody, but “they reported 20 percent of sexual assaults,” Honda’s office said, citing the Government Accountability Office. “DHS created a policy to protect LGBT detainees, yet not one of their facilities has implemented this policy,” Honda, who has a trans granddaughter, said in a news release. “Our treatment of our fellow human beings in this instance is a disgrace and not appropriate for the government of the United States of America. We are calling on Secretary Johnson to do the right thing.” The letter, signed by Honda, Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), and numerous others, acknowledged ICE’s Transgender Care Memorandum,

which sought to improve inmate based alternatives to detention for treatment, but said such efforts “still LGBT individuals whenever posfall short of fulfilling that goal.” sible under your existing discretionCiting a June 2015 House letter, ary authority, or where you deterthe lawmakers said, “transgender demine it is necessary for the safety of tainees face high incidence of sexual the individual.” assault. We are glad that the memoThe letter includes several quesrandum attempts to provide an intions, including what the timeline is frastructure for housing transgender for implementing for the TransgenRick Gerharter people based on their gender identider Care Memorandum. ty, but the lack of its implementation Congressman DHS spokespeople responded on any facility, and the fact that each Mike Honda to an email about the lawmakers’ facility can decide whether or not to letter by saying, “ICE is committed adopt the contract modification, undermine its to providing a safe, secure, and respectful envisuccess,” among other concerns. ronment for all those in our custody, including The letter also points to problems at Santa those individuals who identify as transgender.” Ana, California’s city jail, which ICE spokesThe agency added, “ICE officials trained people said “houses the overwhelming majority Santa Ana City Jail staff on LGBTI matters in of ICE’s detained transgender population.” July 2013, June 2014, and again in 2015.” The DHS’s “decision to transfer transgender women training included sexual assault prevention and detainees” to the facility “is a case-in-point for response, medical care, searches, and other conwhy a uniform policy is desperately needed,” the cerns. Refresher training is scheduled for April. lawmakers said. As a recent complaint outlined, A spokesman for the Santa Ana jail couldn’t they said, the jail “routinely subjects all detainees immediately provide comment for this story. to invasive and unreasonable strip searches due Meanwhile, New York-based Human Rights to its combined immigrant and local jail popuWatch released a report March 23 showing that lations. While ICE is required to consider such dozens of trans women, including people who’ve factors as legal representation, familial ties to the fled abuse in their home countries to seek asycommunity, place of residence, and where an inlum in the U.S., “are locked up in jails or prisondividual feels safest, reports indicate that transfers like immigration detention centers across the to Santa Ana are taking place involuntarily and country at any point in time. ... Many have been without regard for such factors.” subjected to sexual assault and ill treatment in The lawmakers said given “myriad” concerns, detention, while others are held in indefinite sol“we urge you to parole or utilize communitySee page 14 >>

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an Francisco police this week released a sketch of the primary suspect in the recent assault of a queer Duboce Triangle couple. In a recent interview, Dean Ayers, 44, said four men approached him and his wife, Mary Ayers, 45, February 23 on Sanchez Street, near their home. As the couple walked down the street, four men approached them. One of them talked about raping Mary Ayers – something to the effect of “We’re going to have a foursome with you. It’s going to be four of us on you,” Dean Ayers said. In a news release Tuesday, Officer Carlos Manfredi, a police spokesman, said “very grainy” surveillance video from the 100 block of Sanchez has been obtained that “shows the suspect verbally engaged the victims” and hit Dean Ayers “in the face, knocking him to the sidewalk.” Mary Ayers intervened and “was hit several times in the head, knocking her to the sidewalk, where she hit her head,” Manfredi said. “The primary suspect was the only person who engaged the victims and participated in the assault,” according to Manfredi. All four men

Courtesy SFPD

San Francisco police released this sketch of a man suspected in a recent attack on a queer couple.

ran off after the incident. Dean Ayers described the man who allegedly beat him and his wife as “stocky,” with “dark, curly hair” that went about halfway down his back. He was wearing either “a dark cap or dark hoodie” and black and white-checked pants, similar to chef pants. Ayers, who suffered a broken leg in the incident, said he thinks the

suspect is Latino, but he indicated he wasn’t certain. Mary Ayers, who was hospitalized for several days, was left with a traumatic brain injury. Park Station police Captain John Sanford held a community meeting Monday, March 28 to announce plans to address crime concerns in the Duboce Triangle neighborhood. Some residents said they’d never felt less safe in the area. Dean Ayers told the dozens of people gathered that police and others have been “incredibly helpful,” but he’s “terrified” about paying medical bills and other expenses. “I want my neighbors to feel safe,” Ayers said. “I want us all here to feel safe again.” A Gofundme campaign (https:// www.gofundme.com/helpfordeanandmary) has been established to raise money to help cover the couple’s medical expenses. Anyone with information in the case can contact Sergeant Rob Terry during business hours at (415) 2423000, call the anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444, or text-a-tip to TIP411 with SFPD at the start of the message. The incident number is 160160871.t

Trans coalition gets ED by Seth Hemmelgarn

coalition of transgender groups formed after a trans woman’s murder last year in San Francisco now has an executive director. Lexi Adsit has been chosen to lead the Trans Activists for Justice and Accountability Coalition, better known as Taja’s Coalition, which was created after the February 2015 stabbing death of Taja Gabrielle de Jesus, 36, in the city’s Bayview district. The body of James Hayes, 49, a suspect in her death, was found hanging in a storage unit a few blocks away from her apartment just after her killing. Police haven’t disclosed what the motive may have been. The coalition was formed to help address violence and housing needs, among other issues. Despite agreeing to an email interview, Adsit hasn’t replied to a list of questions sent to her, including the biggest challenge facing the organization, why the group is needed, and what her first priority is. She couldn’t be reached by phone, and on Facebook she unfriended the

Lexi Adsit

reporter who sent her the questions. Efforts to contact others associated with Taja’s Coalition weren’t successful. Information online indicates Adsit’s background is in line with her new job. According to a biography on UCSF’s Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, Adsit, “a fierce translatina,” graduated from San Francisco State University with a bachelor’s degree in women and gender studies. She founded the

Queer Yo Mind Conference, helped organize the International Trans Women of Color Network Gathering, and has worked on projects focused on trans women of color who are living with HIV. The city’s Human Rights Commission recently awarded the coalition a grant of $100,000 a year for two years. Theresa Sparks, the commission’s executive director, said the expectation is that the group will form a council of the area’s transgender organizations that will meet monthly “and come up with programing that everyone can agree on, and bring it to me or the city when they ask for future funding.” Sparks, a transgender woman, said it’s been “frustrating” that “we have all these different organizations that are working at cross purposes or redoing something somebody’s already done.” Now, she said, “I think that we’ll have a much more cohesive voice in the community” when talking to government agencies and others. Taja’s Coalition’s first report is expected in early April, said Sparks, who hasn’t met Adsit.t

St. Louis Outgames canceled by Roger Brigham

he 2016 North American Outgames, scheduled to be held in St. Louis starting May 29, were abruptly canceled this week with no explanation for the action given by organizers with the Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association. “GLISA North America is deeply disappointed by the cancellation of the St. Louis Outgames as it would have been a wonderful celebration of equality and friendly competition, learning and celebration,” Greg Larocque, president of GLISA North America, said in a statement published on the North America Outgames’ website Tuesday, March 29. St. Louis Equality Games, a subsidiary of Team St. Louis, had announced just two years ago that it would host the third North American Outgames and that it expected 5,000 participants in sports, conferences, and cultural events. But the previous two editions of the continental Outgames, held in

Canada, had each drawn participant was already exless than 2,000 participants pressing frustration, writand were founded on preing on the Facebook page. existing events. “I have sent countless Organizations such as requests for information Team San Francisco have and get no responses. Are officially supported contithere ANY venues set up? nental Outgames outside Such as, where will the of North America and swimming events be held, Western Europe, arguing Greg Larocque where will track and field that in underdeveloped be held?” wrote Hubert areas they served a useful mission Walt. “Is there a map and a schedule to bring LGBT individuals together, so we can coordinate which events but in developed areas already well we can see? Where do we buy tickserved by other LGBT sports opets? I registered months ago and tions they were not sustainable. have received zero information. Is This was the second cancellation this real or a hoax?” of a continental Outgames this year. The statement on the Outgames The 2016 Asia Pacific Outgames, website indicated that “paid registo be held in New Zealand, were trants will be contacted regarding canceled last October and replaced refund opportunities.” with the inaugural Proud to Play NZ “So sad,” Aukland’s Jan Cowan 2016, held in February. posted on Facebook. “I was looking Just within the past week, the forward to coming all the way from St. Louis Outgames was offering New Zealand to St. Louis to comdiscount registrations to bowlers, pete. My travel plans will need to be runners, and golfers on its Facebook canceled, airfares, hotel bookings. A page. But at least one would-be huge disappointment all around.”t

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Volume 46, Number 13 March 31-April 6, 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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North Carolina unleashes bigotry

he speed with which North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory unleashed bigotry on his state was striking. In less than a day he signed the anti-LGBT House Bill 2 after it sailed through the Republican-dominated Legislature. The new state law, which goes into effect Friday, prohibits municipal governments from enacting their own anti-discrimination ordinances, and was a direct rebuke to the city of Charlotte, which in February adopted a measure prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity. It proved that Charlotte is a welcoming place, one of a growing number of cities that wants its residents to be treated equally and to respect each other. All of that was undone in an instant – who knew that state lawmakers and a governor could act so swiftly over a nonemergency matter? – and reaction from across the country has been swift and unsparing. Once again, companies were persuasive by standing up and threatening to pull business from the state, as we saw last year over a bogus religious freedom law in Indiana. In Georgia, Republican Governor Nathan Deal on Monday vetoed the Free Exercise Protection Act, a misnomer that actually legitimized statesanctioned discrimination in the guise of protecting one’s personal religious beliefs. Media reports suggest that a flood of opposition from companies such as Coca-Cola and Apple had an effect, but that it was Hollywood’s threat to pull filming out of the Peach State that really had an impact. Every year, more businesses step up to rework anti-bias laws to cover LGBT workers and speak out when a state or local government passes an anti-LGBT bill. Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff is a leader who pushed hard in Indiana last year and was active in the Georgia effort. State and local government leaders are also keeping the heat on. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee last week signed an executive order barring city travel to North Carolina. He was joined this week by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and gay Seattle Mayor Ed Murray.

As we report this week, Santa Clara County has had a North Carolina travel ban in place since last year. But notably missing from the local reaction is Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. Last year Oakland did join other local governments in banning city-funded travel to Indiana. This time around, Schaaf ’s office has yet to issue a statement or respond to our inquiries. With its diverse population, including a large LGBT community, Oakland has missed an opportunity. And while we celebrate the veto in Georgia, we are alarmed by the North Carolina lawmakers who are so anti-trans that in one day they passed a law that prohibits people from using a bathroom that does not match the gender on their birth certificate. This forces trans women to use men’s restrooms, and trans men to use women’s facilities, both options that are potentially dangerous and unnecessary. The fear that trans women will act as predators in the ladies’ room is laughable and there are no incidents to legitimize this specious claim. In a weird twist, North Carolina lawmakers went further with HB 2, as it prohibits local governments from passing their own laws, like for example raising the minimum wage – a huge economic justice issue that should anger LGBT and straight North Carolinians alike. In short, McCrory’s signing of HB 2 has set his state back rather than move it forward. Legal advocates wasted no time filing a fed-

eral lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s law. The plaintiffs are two trans people: Joaquin Carcano, a University of North CarolinaChapel Hill employee, and Payton McGarry, a UNC-Greensboro student; and Angela Gilmore, a lesbian and North Carolina Central University law professor. State Attorney General Roy Cooper, a named defendant in the suit and a Democrat, said this week that his office will not defend the law, which he said is unconstitutional and harms North Carolinians without justification. The lawsuit also points out that under HB 2, LGBT people are second-class citizens who are undeserving of privacy, respect, and protections afforded others in the state. And it charges that the new law violates the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution because it discriminates on the basis of sex and sexual orientation and is an invasion of privacy for transgender people. Schools in the state could be especially hard hit because the lawsuit alleges that HB 2 violates Title IX by discriminating against students and school employees on the basis of sex. Last week’s events demonstrate that a backlash against LGBT people is well underway, but we must not give in to the haters and go back into the closet. In addition to our allies we need to stand up for ourselves. According to the ACLU, there are almost a dozen proposed laws that target LGBT people. The bathroom bills are very personal and that’s why trans people speaking out can have an impact. Unfortunately, things happened so quickly in North Carolina that the bill was on the governor’s desk before most people knew what happened. Most Americans don’t know a trans person, and it’s that fear of the unknown that is at the heart of much of the public outcry. However, it doesn’t need to be this way. Just as gays and lesbians had to come out publicly and speak up when confronted by harmful legislation, so must trans people themselves take a stand. Allies in the business community are important, but it’s by speaking directly to lawmakers, as trans students have done in several cases in recent months, that will humanize the issue.t

LGBTs still face immigration barriers by Yesenia Acosta

viduals still hold biases. Federal law protects LGBT couples from being denied immigration benefits based on their sexual orientation, but there’s always the possibility of encountering unfair or even hostile treatment from immigration officers. Same-sex couples applying for benefits should seek help from immigration attorneys or support from immigration advocacy groups to navigate the complex application process.

n the last decade, the LGBT community has made strides in a multitude of areas, including marriage equality, anti-discrimination laws, and one often overlooked issue: immigration. Until the key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act was overturned in 2013 by the U.S. Supreme Court in the historic U.S. v. Attorney Yesenia Windsor decision, U.S. citizens could Acosta not petition for green cards for their same-sex spouses. The immigration system ‘Proof of relationship’ requirements only recognized straight couples, leaving LGBT not so simple for LGBT couples foreign nationals with limited options to immiTo obtain a green card, couples are required grate to the U.S. to be with their partners. to undergo a vigorous interview process to Now, with the demise of DOMA and sameprove that their marriage is legitimate. Spouses sex marriage legal throughout the U.S., the have to provide a paper trail of evidence doors have been opened for same-sex couples showing the length and seriousness to live together in the U.S. Green cards are of their relationship, which can equally available to LGBT couples and straight include joint bank accounts, ascouples, and the application process is exsets owned together, mail sent to actly the same – in theory. For some, however, the same address, group photos, achieving green card status is not as simple in and testimonies from famreal life as it is on paper. ily, friends, and co-workers. It’s Perhaps due to a long history of discrimidifficult to obtain a green card nation, many same-sex couples have been if your relationship – or sexual hesitant to apply for immigration benefits, asorientation, for that matter – is suming there must be some sort of catch. As not public knowledge. an immigration attorney, I have had same-sex For straight couples in real relationships, clients refuse to give their names or even visit these requirements shouldn’t pose an issue. the office. LGBT couples still face logistical But many same-sex couples do not meet these roadblocks when applying for green cards that standards because they have been forced to straight couples do not have to deal with. keep their relationships quiet or completely hidden. Couples living in conservative areas Green card applicants or dealing with unsupportive family members can face discrimination may not have a large group of people to back It’s difficult to quantify how discrimination up their claims. Couples also may have misplays a role in the process of obtaining a green represented their relationships on documents card, but it’s an issue that many same-sex and government applications in the past, compartners consider. Thankfully, once DOMA plicating the issue further. was overturned, United States Citizenship and So far, the immigration system has not preImmigration Services officials were quickly disented a solution for same-sex couples who rected to begin reviewing green card applicahave difficulty meeting proof of marriage retions from LGBT couples, and they reopened quirements. In the meantime, LGBT couples formerly rejected applications at no charge. may need to be more creative when going But regardless of what the law says, some indithrough the immigration process. Records of

phone calls to each other, joint online accounts and travel records can serve as acceptable ways to show proof of a relationship if more traditional markers are not available.

Expired and temporary visas complicate the immigration process

Before same-sex marriage was recognized by the immigration system in 2013, there was no legal path to residency for international LGBT couples. Once their time in the U.S. was up, LGBT foreign nationals had to either leave their loved ones behind or risk deportation by staying in the country on temporary or expired visas. Many spouses chose to stay together, and a significant number of couples who are now eligible for green cards through marriage are stuck in legal limbo with unlawful paperwork. Activist groups have also urged USCIS to be reasonable when dealing with undocumented LGBT spouses, considering that, for decades, it was virtually impossible for same-sex couples to obtain green cards. In the larger immigration conversation, LGBT rights are often overlooked. Difficulty obtaining a green card is just one piece of the puzzle for LGBT people attempting to reside in the U.S. Transgender men and women detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are often mistreated, and homosexuality is still a crime in 75 countries. It is essential that LGBT immigration challenges are brought to light – it’s the only way to ensure that all people can be with their loved ones, no matter their sexual orientation.t Yesenia Acosta is an immigration attorney at the Law Offices of Scott Warmuth (http:// www.law888.com), with multiple locations throughout the Los Angeles area. She is a strong advocate for special immigrant application including victims of crime, unaccompanied minors, LGBT applicants, and asylum seekers.

Letters >>

LGBTQs have seen this story before

In the wake of the shockingly still increasing Donald Trump/Ted Cruz anti-Muslim rhetoric following the Brussels bombings, I finally got what we LGBTQ people particularly know about hate speech. (I’m tempted to say: “Call me slow.”) Hate filled speech from leaders creates an environment where others feel OK attacking, acting violently against and bullying people in the defamed group. Defamation legitimates actions. LGBTQ people have seen it when the speech is directed at us, so I believe we have some additional duty to understand these are not merely crazy rantings, and not merely causing violence at political rallies, but words which have violent consequences in multiple small attacks and acts against individual Muslims everywhere from emboldened individuals. And to use our particular experience to act politically and publicly to counteract the speech, violence, and politics. Because

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

we’ve seen (and lived) this story before. Charlie Spiegel, Esq. San Francisco

Sour note on hit comedy

The March 23 episode of Blackish hit a sour note. In the first minute of the show the wife picks up a biohazard bag from her son’s lunchbox on the kitchen table and says, “Jack’s lunch almost gave him AIDS.” I know she plays a surgeon on that show, but I find that joke highly offensive. And ignorant, because you can’t get AIDS that way. Early in its first season last year, Blackish has made an occasional “gay” joke in bad taste, too. Just feeling pretty disheartened after the sterling episode several weeks ago that dealt with race relations and law enforcement. Too many African Americans still have a big problem with homosexuals, to put it mildly. Zeke Krahlin San Francisco

Gay, lesbian candidates run for East Bay Dem party posts by Matthew S. Bajko

everal gay and lesbian candidates are running this June for Democratic Party leadership posts in the East Bay. In Contra Costa County, Concord residents Jeff Koertzen, chair of the county’s Democratic Party, Contra Costa and Greg Sanborn, the local party’s Contra Costa treasurer, are seeking re-election DCCC candidate DCCC candidate Gabriel Quinto to their seats on the Democratic Jeff Koertzen County Central Committee. Gay El Cerrito City Councilman Gabriel Quinto is also seeking reelection to a four-year term on the Contra Costa DCCC, while Richmond resident Joey D. Smith, an African-American lesbian who is an at-large state board member of Black Women Organized for Political Action, is running for a DCCC seat. Alameda County In Alameda County, gay Berke- Contra Costa ley resident Andy Kelley is seeking DCCC candidate DCCC candidate Andy Kelley re-election to his DCCC seat. Since Joey D. Smith first being elected in 2012, Kelley has “We have had a groundswell of served as the oversight body’s corinterest in people running for the responding secretary. The panel’s party,” said Koertzen, 47, an indeother gay member, Berkeley resipendent consultant. dent Joel Cohen, opted not to seek In the District 4 race that includes re-election. Koertzen and Sanborn, 11 people are Looking to join Kelley on the Alrunning for the five seats ameda DCCC are two wellallocated to it. Four years known lesbian Democratic ago there were five people Party activists: Berkeley competing for four seats. resident Cecilia “Ces” Ro“It is much more comsales and Oakland resident petitive. It might change Peggy Moore. the way we run for central Unlike in San Francisco, committee out where the race for DCCC here. We might seats attracts numerous elected officials and is often Alameda County have to start raisdescribed as a battle royale DCCC candidate ing some money,” said Koertzen, between the city’s moder- Peggy Moore who feels “fairly ate and progressive poconfident” about litical camps for control of his chances. “It is a dauntthe local Democratic Party, its purse ing task to run against that strings and endorsements, the East many people, so you never Bay contests are a far less heated affair. know.” Four years ago the Contra Costa Sanborn, 60, works as the treaDCCC race failed to attract enough surer for 14 county Democratic parcandidates to warrant there being a ties as well as various political action contested election in several of the committees through his company body’s five districts. Its 23 seats are the Diablo Group. He spent a dedivided between the five county sucade on the Alameda DCCC before pervisor districts. moving in 2008 to Concord to live Building up the party in the East with his husband. Bay county, which stretches from He became an alternate member Richmond along the delta to Brentof the Contra Costa DCCC and was wood east of Mt. Diablo State Park, elected four years ago to the comhas been a key concern for Koertzen mittee. He is seeking re-election to as chair of the Contra Costa County continue the political work he has Democratic Party and why he is done since the 1990s. seeking a second term on the DCCC. “I am dedicated to the Demo“We need to build the party, especratic Party, its ideas and principals. cially with the current presidential I want to elect good Democrats locampaign. We are seeing on both cally and encourage grassroots parsides a lot of people who feel disticipation in elections. And I want enfranchised with party politics,” to continue to work on community he said. “We have to pay attention projects that improve people’s lives,” to that and look at and see what we Sanborn said. are going to do and say we do hear Quinto, 54, who is HIV-positive that, we recognize it, and we want and Filipino American, told the Bay to make sure we represent you at all Area Reporter that he is the only levels of government.” LGBT person, as well as the only Koertzen’s efforts in terms of Asian or Pacific Islander, on the recruiting candidates to run for central committee from his District DCCC seats this year have resulted 1 in western Contra Costa County. in contested races in all five districts.

He was appointed three years ago to fill a vacancy on the DCCC. “My goal is making sure we get Democratic leaders who represent West County and Contra Costa County,” said Quinto, who was elected to his council seat in 2014. He and Smith, who is the vice chair of the Contra Costa Commission for Women, are among the eight people seeking the five seats allotted to Supervisor District 1. “My name will be first on the ballot and I do have name recognition being the only elected official on the DCCC ballot,” said Quinto when asked what he thought his chances are in the race. Smith, 47, has worked for more than two decades as a utility plumber and is now a supervisor. She became a non-voting associate member of the DCCC in 2014 and wants to now be able to vote on matters that come before the committee. “I have learned that I have a small circle of influence that I didn’t realize. People often are asking me, ‘What do you know about this?’ Then they want me to take their opinions to the decision makers,” she said. “I said, well you know, I may as well go ahead and throw my hat in the ring. ... As I became more involved, I realized I needed to lead by example by making what I do with civic engagement be something that is attainable for others.” Should Koertzen be reelected, he said he would likely seek another term as party chair when his term ends in January. “I will be evaluating that; it depends on how the election goes,” he said. “Certainly, I am interested in continuing to be chair, sure.”

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Alameda DCCC race

In Alameda the county party divides its DCCC seats among the five state Assembly Districts that fall within its boundaries. Just two of the districts have out candidates this election cycle, according to LGBT political leaders in the East Bay. Kelley and Rosales are both running in the 15th Assembly District, where 17 people are competing for seven DCCC seats. “I am running for re-election because I think we still have a lot of work to do to modernize the central committee,” said Kelley, 29, who is the youngest person currently on the DCCC and would continue to be should he win a second term. He recently left his job with Democracy for America, having tired of splitting his time between Washington, D.C. and the Bay Area, and is looking for a new job locally. A past president of East Bay Young Democrats, Kelley is the current vice chair of the Sierra Club San See page 14 >>

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<< Community News

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

Saving LGBT sites on new historical society ED’s to-do list by Matthew S. Bajko

s the GLBT Historical Society prepares to move its archives into a new location in San Francisco’s Mid Market district and continues to search for a permanent museum site, its new executive director is unsure how much time the nonprofit can devote to protecting and seeking landmark status for LGBT historical sites around the city. In a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Terry Beswick said his main priority right now is fundraising for the archival group, creating a vision for its future, and implementing that vision. “My big focus right now is shoring up the finances,” said Beswick, who was hired in January on a parttime basis. Having the historical society play a key role in the efforts to list LGBT historical sites on the National Register of Historic Places or be designated as National Historic Landmarks “makes sense,” acknowledged Beswick, adding that doing so “may be an opportunity for funding too.” But his first priority is to oversee the relocation of the archives this May and be unpacked before Pride weekend in late June. Once settled in to the Market Street space Beswick said he would likely have more time to assist with the efforts to preserve and protect the various sites and buildings deemed as having strong connections to the history of the city’s LGBT community. “I think it is appropriate and within the mission of our organization,” said Beswick, who had been overseeing the Castro Country Club and previously worked at the B.A.R. in the late 1990s as an assistant news editor. Beswick said he has been talking with local preservationists and archivists about various sites deserving of landmark status, such as the building at 273 Church Street that

Lawsuit

From page 1

North Carolina law

The North Carolina law, by far, received the most attention, largely because of its scope. The law, which takes effect April 1, prohibits transgender people from using a public restroom that matches the gender with which they identify and bars any local government from having an ordinance that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. North Carolina’s Republican Governor Pat McCrory signed the two-punch law on March 23 and the reaction was immediate and widespread. The National Basketball Association and the National Collegiate Athletic Association both issued statements saying the state’s new law might prompt them to withdraw upcoming major events from Charlotte. Carolina’s National Hockey League team issued a statement saying it is “devoted to providing a welcoming and respectful environment for all fans.” American Airlines, which has its hub in Charlotte, said, “Laws that allow such discrimination go against our fundamental belief of equality and are bad for the economies of the states in which they are enacted.” The board of aldermen of the town of Carrboro, North Carolina, passed a resolution reaffirming its support for LGBT people and called for the rainbow flag to be raised over town hall Monday. As reported on the Bay Area Reporter’s blog last Friday, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has banned city employees from any publicly funded travel to North Carolina on city business.

housed some of the first groups that responded to the early days of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. “I am very interested in preserving sites,” said Beswick, adding that he also has “a reasonable expectation some sites are going to get torn down. Then the question becomes how do we commemorate those sites? It is important that work be done.” Since 2012 the B.A.R. has been reporting on the lack of landmark status or protections for LGBT historical sites, whether in San Francisco, throughout California, or across the country. Two years ago the National Park Service launched an effort to begin documenting the country’s LGBT history, and as part of that initiative, called for LGBT sites to be nominated for listing on the National Register or be deemed national landmarks. Megan Springate, who is coordinating the writing of the National Historic Landmark LGBTQ Theme Study and proposed framework, due out this June, noted that the GLBT Historical Society “has been wonderfully supportive” of the park service efforts, not only hosting a meeting about the federal agency’s LGBTQ Heritage Initiative last spring but also helping several of the theme study’s authors with images and information. “They are absolutely a resource that I would recommend to anyone who is considering writing a National Register nomination, or who is interested in LGBTQ history and heritage anywhere in the United States,” Springate wrote in an email.

Society is the right agency

Many see the GLBT Historical Society as the right agency in San Francisco to take a lead role in the preservation and protection of LGBT sites. Its former executive director, Paul Boneberg, had told the B.A.R. last year that any landmark The Lambda-ACLU lawsuit says the North Carolina law violates the right of two transgender people and a lesbian to equal protection. ACLU attorney Chase Strangio said during a telephone news conference Monday that “this has been a really hard year” for the trans community, climaxing in the North Carolina bill attacking the rights of all LGBT people. Lambda Legal attorney Tara Borelli noted that Charlotte’s human rights ordinance, which passed last month and was the impetus for state lawmakers’ action, was carefully debated and considered, “in stark contrast” to the state Legislature’s “rush to target the LGBT community.” Borelli said the law violates the right to privacy of transgender people and violates various federal laws. On Tuesday, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said that his office “will not defend the constitutionality of the discrimination in House Bill 2,” according to a news release from the ACLU of North Carolina and other groups. Cooper is a Democrat and is running for governor this year against McCrory.

Georgia

The Georgia bill passed on close votes in the House and state Senate March 16. Since then, said Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, he has been hearing “insults” and “threats” from both supporters and opponents of the bill, including major corporations doing business in the state. “Some of those in the religious community who support this bill have resorted to insults that question my moral convictions and my character,” said Deal. “Some within the business community who oppose this bill have resorted to threats

Steven Underhill

GLBT Historical Society Executive Director Terry Beswick

nominations the society might support should wait, however, until after work on an LGBT historic context statement for the city was completed. That document, co-written by Donna Graves, a public historian based in Berkeley who is straight, and Shayne Watson, an architectural historian based in San Francisco who is lesbian, was adopted in November. It included a number of recommendations and next steps city leaders could take to protect LGBT historical sites, such as seeking local, state and federal landmark designations. The report included a list of 53 sites the authors determined might warrant official recognition, though they specified it was only a partial sampling. The document also suggested the city look at designating LGBT historic districts in North Beach, the Tenderloin, Polk Gulch, and the Castro neighborhoods, as well as along the Valencia Street Corridor, once home to many lesbian-owned establishments. Asked about creating LGBT historic districts, Beswick said, “It

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory

of withdrawing jobs from our state. I do not respond well to insults or threats. The people of Georgia deserve a leader who will make sound judgments based on solid reasons that are not inflamed by emotion. That is what I intend to do.” In his statement Monday, Deal suggested he was concerned that the legislation might “give rise to statesanctioned discrimination” and that he does not believe the legislation is needed to protect the faith-based community.

‘Biological sex’

Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and Equality North Carolina issued a news release Sunday night, saying they would challenge the North Carolina law in federal court. The law requires that all public schools facilities have bathrooms or changing facilities “designated for and used only by students based on their biological sex.” Biological sex is defined by what gender is indicated on a person’s birth certificate. It also

makes sense and is a good idea.” Another suggestion was for the city to place plaques explaining the history of LGBT sites or, if space allowed, to install larger interpretive display signs “especially for more important properties.” “I think the historical society is the logical community-based organization to be leading efforts at preservation,” Graves told the B.A.R. “They are already preserving, obviously, material related to LGBT individuals, organizations and events. And participating in efforts to preserve places seems like a natural extension.” Work is underway to seek federal recognition for four LGBT historic sites in San Francisco, as the B.A.R reported last week. Graves is writing a landmark application for the Women’s Building, while city preservation planners are seeking National Register listing for Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, the former home of the Japantown YWCA, and an as yet unnamed third location. In an email to the B.A.R., Watson said one way the GLBT Historical Society could support those and other landmarking efforts is to help explain the process and its benefits for the property owners, who can derail the nominations if they oppose them. “I really hope to see the GLBT Historical Society continue its dedication to the preservation of LGBTQ sites, not only in San Francisco but perhaps nationwide,” wrote Watson. “As one of the most respected and influential LGBTQ heritage organizations in the world, the primary role the GLBT HS could play in preserving important LGBTQ sites is community outreach, education, and perhaps serving as a liaison to property owners.” She also said she plans to discuss with Beswick the possibility of establishing an LGBTQ sites committee that could review properties to nomi-

nate and help shepherd them through the state and federal review process. “Another important role the GLBT HS could play is advocacy for important LGBTQ sites that have been proposed for significant alterations or demolition,” wrote Watson, who earlier this year appealed a review of a Mid Market development project that did not take into account the site’s LGBT history. Now that the city has uploaded a database of nearly 300 properties from the LGBTQ historic context statement into the planning department’s property information map, Watson suggested that anytime development is proposed for one of the sites an alert could be sent to the historical society. “From now on, if a property mentioned in our report is proposed for significant alteration or demolition, it should send up a red flag at the planning department,” she wrote. “One of the major steps in the environmental planning process is to alert stakeholders of projects that would impact sites associated with the community. Rather than being lost in the shuffle, those alerts could go to the LGBTQ sites committee at the GLBT HS for discussion.” There are other groups supporting the work to landmark LGBTQ sites, noted Watson, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, California Preservation Foundation, and San Francisco Heritage. One group that has already nominated properties to the National Register is the Rainbow Heritage Network. It is the country’s first nationwide LGBTQ heritage advocacy group, of which Watson is a founding board member. “There’s so much momentum behind LGBTQ heritage preservation that landmarking of LGBTQ sites in SF will happen with or without the GLBT HS’s support,” wrote Watson. “A lot of it will be initiated at the local and state levels.”t

declares that state law concerning “discriminatory practices” will “supersede and preempt any ordinance” or regulation of any local government. North Carolina state law does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. “This outrageous new law not only strips away the ability of local jurisdictions to protect LGBT people from discrimination, but it goes further and targets transgender students who deserve to be treated equally at school – not harassed and excluded,” said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin. Borelli said it’s not yet clear how the transgender bathroom provision in North Carolina will be enforced, but that many transgender students have made school officials aware of their special needs and legal activists have heard that some school officials are calling parents of transgender students to warn them that they will not be able to use the bathroom most appropriate to their gender identity. McCrory allowed the state Legislature to hold a special session just to consider the measure aimed specifically at an ordinance approved by the Charlotte City Council in February. The city sought to prohibit discrimination based on their gender identity. But the new state law, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, prohibits any local government from passing non-discrimination ordinances. HRC said legislators had only five minutes to review the bill before voting on it and that Democrats in the Senate walked out in protest, rather than vote on the measure. In a statement released March 23, McCrory called Charlotte’s ordinance a “radical breach of trust and security under the false argument of

equal access” and said it endangered the “basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings, a restroom or locker room.” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said 76 percent of transgender people do not have an updated birth certificate. Jennifer Pizer, law and policy director for Lambda Legal, said the law makes it impossible for transgender people to stay in school, hold jobs, or access public services because “as a practical and safety matter” they are barred from using bathroom facilities. The Legislature’s debate echoed remarks heard frequently during the recent battle over a non-discrimination ordinance in Houston. A referendum in Houston overturned a non-discrimination law there that prohibited numerous categories of discrimination, including race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. But in Houston, the referendum simply repealed the ordinance. In North Carolina, the new law repeals all existing local ordinances that prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination and forecloses any future local ordinances. According to HRC, North Carolina is the first state “to enact such a law attacking transgender students.” Kansas is bucking to be next. Kansas legislators on March 16 introduced bills to the House and state Senate that call for all public schools to label restrooms by gender and enables students who encounter “a person of the opposite sex” in their restroom or locker to sue the school for $2,500 for “each instance” and monetary damages for “all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered.”t

International News>>

t Berry makes the case for human rights to businesses by Heather Cassell

andy Berry, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy for the human rights of LGBTI persons, made the case for businesses to support LGBT rights around the world to leaders and allies of multinational corporations during an appearance in San Francisco. During a keynote speech to 90 senior LGBT and ally executives at Out and Equal Workplace Advocates’ ninth annual Executive Forum March 23, Berry appealed to the business leaders about why he believes they play a key role in advancing LGBT rights around the world. Berry also urged the corporate leaders to partner with the State Department by joining the Global Equality Fund and the newly forming Equality Business Advisory Council; lending their voice on behalf of LGBT rights worldwide; and understanding local culture and laws and their potential effects on business. He also stated that the State Department is readying to provide support to companies that work on behalf of human rights, particularly LGBT rights, where it can. “We need your partnership,” Berry, a gay man, said. “We know that governments that neglect or oppress sections of their population are both failing to use the full potential of their citizens and hampering, in fact, their own prosperity. “I firmly believe that businesses have a key role to play to ensure societal and cultural change,” Berry added. He noted that LGBT people who are able to be out in the workplace and company policies that benefit LGBT employees also improve corporate bottom lines within the U.S. “In the U.S. we’ve seen the influence businesses have had in supporting diversity and inclusion and pushing back against discrimination,” he continued. “It’s a major part of the equation.” Speaking to the audience during a breakfast gathering, Berry mentioned recent studies that clearly show the economic benefits for countries that decriminalize homosexuality and implement anti-discrimination legislation. He pointed to the World Bank’s 2014 study and the joint study conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA School

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

of Law and the United States Agency for International Development. “Each additional right that was implemented was associated with roughly a 3 percent increase in the gross domestic product,” said Berry. “That is enormous. “The business case is clear. It is articulated well and it should be consistently echoed in numerous ways and not just here,” he added. “It’s important for businesses now to take this message global.”

Better business globally

He posed the question for company leaders to ask of country leaders where they want to develop business opportunities. “If you really care about economic development, why would you intentionally thwart the ability of companies that you want invested in your country to do their best business?” he asked. “When you [business leaders] speak up you change the terms of the debate. You actually put governments on notice,” Berry said, quoting Vice President Joe Biden from his recent speech at the World Economic Forum, where LGBT rights were on the agenda for the first time ever. For the second year in a row Out and Equal’s conference took place as states initiated anti-LGBT legislation. In 2015, Indiana passed the socalled Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This year North Carolina, in an emergency legislative session in response to an anti-bias ordinance adopted in Charlotte, passed the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, effectively stripping protections for LGBT people in the workplace, schools, and other areas. While these are issues currently happening in the U.S., Berry urged multinational corporations to use their influence globally as the world becomes more interconnected. Making the business case, Berry noted the challenges, especially when deploying LGBT company leaders and emerging talent. Samesex marriage might be legal in the U.S. now, but overseas it’s a different story. The State Department is monitoring nearly 80 countries where same-sex relationships are illegal and, in some cases, punishable by death, he said. Sending gay employees to these countries with their families poses either serious personal obstacles or loss of that employee. Asking an LGBT employee to

CA travel ban bill

From page 1

Mayor Ed Lee to ban city-funded travel to the state, with the mayors of Seattle and New York City, as well as New York’s governor, following suit with their own travel bans. Unlike his counterpart in the Peach State, McCrory has continued to defend his state’s law, releasing a video message late Tuesday in which he decried other politicians from across the country for launching a “vicious, national smear campaign” against North Carolina. He also criticized his state’s attorney general for announcing he would not defend the state’s law in court; a number of civil liberties and LGBT rights groups filed a lawsuit against the legislation this week. The travel bans and threats of corporate boycotts are particularly effective tools when petitioning governors because of the potential negative economic impacts, said Daniel Zingale, a gay man who was a top official in the administrations of former California Governors Gray Davis (D) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). “I think you are right, economics

Rick Gerharter

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee ordered a travel ban.

are a powerful force. When a governor has to contemplate economic consequences for the states’ residents, employees and customers, it makes a difference,” said Zingale, a senior vice president for policy and communications for the California Endowment. “In this case it is a perfect storm of the loss of basic rights and the loss of economic opportu-

Rick Gerharter

U.S. diplomat Randy Berry addressed LGBT and ally business leaders in San Francisco.

make a decision where their career and personal life are in conflict because of anti-gay laws in countries is detrimental to companies. It costs companies talent and increases turnover rates that lead to increased investment in recruiting and training, which then threatens the stability of the businesses, Berry pointed out, adding that the State Department also continues to tackle the same issue. Selisse Berry (no relation to Berry), founder and CEO of Out and Equal, agreed, adding that she’s advocated for companies to do things to add another layer of protection when LGBT employees are sent around the world as a part of their professional development and career advancement. She’s encouraged companies to roll out anti-discrimination and other pro-LGBT policies globally; retain LGBT-friendly policies, such as domestic partnership policies – in spite of same-sex marriage being won in the U.S. to protect partners and family members – and have “LGBT realities” embedded in travel advisories. Those advisories should be transparent when placing LGBT employees in various countries around the world, she said. “It’s kind of a step, given that we don’t have equality yet,” said Selisse Berry, who opened an Out and Equal office in Washington, D.C. last fall to work with government policy makers and companies. Out and Equal deputy director Rachel Rubin said that the LGBT workplace advocacy organization works with companies on three different levels, from helping companies match corporate culture and policies with country laws to being nities, which I think is very compelling against these proposals.” The L.A.-based health care foundation sent letters last week to four corporations it holds stock in – Delta Air Lines, Home Depot, First Data, and HD Supply – that are based in Georgia and the governor’s office warning it would pull its investments if the law were enacted. It had sent a similar letter last year to Indiana’s governor, who had signed into law an anti-gay bill but then worked with legislative leaders to amend it due to the hostile backlash it generated. In a phone interview shortly after Deal had vetoed the legislation, Zingale told the Bay Area Reporter that the endowment was reviewing its several million dollars worth of holdings in companies based in North Carolina and would be mailing off letters next week to the governor and corporate leaders in the state. “We did weigh in, first and foremost, on our fiduciary responsibilities because we are concerned about our investments in discriminatory environments,” Zingale said about the endowment’s decision to take a public

a safe space for LGBT employees within the country to being an advocate by using its business muscle with government officials in the countries in which it operates. There is movement toward progress in some regions. Randy Berry pointed out that Mozambique, a southern African nation, decriminalized homosexuality in 2015 and recently the government of Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off of the coast of East Africa that is a popular vacation destination, announced plans to decriminalize homosexuality. “I do believe that the unique opportunity that is present in a number of countries around the world, the economic case, the business development case can be compelling and non-political, which is exactly where I believe we need to have this conversation,” said Randy Berry. “I think that there are a dozen states globally that are ready to do that with the right kind of encouragement, not the right kind of threat, but the right kind of encouragement to do so,” he added. Selisse Berry agreed, noting changes happening in India and the Dominican Republic. “I wouldn’t call out one country that has miraculously changed, but we are moving in the right direction,” she said. However, she added that while companies aren’t at the advocacy level yet, the people at the conference, which included representatives from corporations like Disney and Clorox, are the ones that are going to be making the “business case to people in India, China and Russia and also need to bring their whole self to work to really focus on their job and not on hiding who they are.”

The bottom line

“This isn’t just a matter of doing it because it’s the right thing to do. From a pure business stand point this is smart business; this is smart economics; this is smart development,” said Randy Berry. “Countering discrimination makes a corporation competitive by attracting and retaining top talent. It helps drive market innovation, win the business, especially with discerning consumers.” Randy Berry informed the business leaders that “corporations have a bottom line incentive to create a workplace where our community is accepted and valued for the people that we are.” “By creating an inclusive global

stance on the anti-gay laws in Indiana and Georgia. “At the same time, what is really happening when you have the business community and state and local governments and religious institutions and athletics and the arts and labor, virtually every sector of our society saying discrimination is unacceptable, that is really the force at work here. There is a growing consensus across all sectors, who often don’t agree on anything, that there is a bottom-line to discrimination.”

CA travel ban bill

The spotlight on the two Southern states comes as California lawmakers are being asked to adopt AB 1887, legislation authored by gay Assemblyman Evan Low (DCampbell) that would prohibit state-funded travel to any state with a law in effect that sanctions or requires discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. “The passage of such a regressive piece of legislation in North Carolina and the bill (that was) on the governor’s desk in Georgia obviously show the need for AB 1887,” said Jason Howe, spokesman for

work environment, this is an area where your companies have a tremendous role to play, where your policy is truly reflected in inclusivity both here at home and when you are operating external to the United States as well,” he said. “I really do believe firmly as we progress the business case, business involvement is going to become ever more important,” said Berry. “Our policy is going to be persistent there.” However, he noted that it isn’t simply businesses and government’s responsibility to promote LGBT equality globally. “It is clear in our interconnected and interdependent world that it is the responsibility of all of us: governments, civil society, and business, to work together to take a stand against discrimination and injustice,” he said.

WPA supports global decriminalization of homosexuality

The World Psychiatric Association issued a statement March 23 recommending global decriminalization of homosexuality. The association, which represents more than 200,000 psychiatrists from 118 countries around the world and 138 national psychiatric associations, provided six recommendations. They include: LGBT people should be regarded as “valued members of society” with “exactly the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens;” recognize the “universality” of same-sex expression across cultures; consider same-sex attraction, behavior, and orientation as “normal;” and acknowledge discrimination and stigma against LGBT people and the distress caused. It also called for the need for decriminalization of homosexuality; and more research for mental health of LGBT people. “People with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities may have grounds for exploring therapeutic options to help them live more comfortably, reduce distress, cope with structural discrimination, and develop a greater degree of acceptance of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” the statement read. To read the statement, visit http:// www.wpanet.org/detail.php?section_ id=7&content_id=1807.t Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at 00+1-415-2213541, Skype: heather.cassell, or oitwnews@gmail.com.

Equality California, the statewide LGBT advocacy organization that is co-sponsoring Low’s legislation. The Assembly Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up the bill, for a second time, at its meeting next Tuesday, April 5. Low told the B.A.R. this week that the actions taken by the Southern states are precisely why he introduced the travel ban bill. “It certainly demonstrates that, while in California we are a place of inclusion versus exclusion, discriminatory proposals are still occurring throughout the country,” said Low. “I would also argue that much of the dialogue and discussion around the backlash on these proposals in some of these other states, like North Carolina and Georgia, came from our corporate partners. And so without vocal opposition from corporations, from politicians, from average citizens, I think these bills would have flown through the legislature to the governors’ desks for his or her signature.” There continues to be debate over how Low’s bill, which would also apply to both the University of California and California State University See page 10 >>

<< Travel

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

Escape to New York for a cultural fling by Heather Cassell

y girlfriend and I were feeling the tug of New York pulling at us from 3,000 miles away, or it might have been my auntie, who lives in Manhattan, asking us to visit. You don’t have to twist our arms to escape to the Big Apple. We were overdue for our Broadway and museum binge. Not to mention checking out some of the restaurants on our list. We checked into our Airbnb rental on 19th Avenue around the corner from my auntie’s flat in Chelsea for a few days until her other guests departed. Chelsea is a great neighborhood. We got a taste of real New York staying in the cramped apartment, sleeping underneath the stairs. In spite of the situation, our host was gracious long before we arrived and full of advice, even though we’ve been around the New

York block a few times. You can’t beat staying in Chelsea. Now known as the gayborhood and filled with art galleries and cafes, Chelsea doesn’t take away from the neighboring queer historic Greenwich Village. Gone are the transgender ladies of the night and leather boys, along with the nightclubs that once filled the Meatpacking district. They vacated the narrow cobblestone streets half a dozen years ago when designer boutiques began claiming the area. Trendy restaurants with beer gardens and art galleries followed, paving the way for the new Whitney Museum. Chelsea Piers and Market, Eataly, and Union Square are all within walking distance. It’s easy to get to 42nd Street and Broadway for the theater, and to the airport on the Metro, the city’s public transportation system.

Take a bow

Gay actor Neil Patrick Harris stands to be corrected. Broadway is for the gays and the Tony Awardwinning Kinky Boots and Fun Home shouldn’t be missed. During our Broadway romps we’ve seen several plays or musicals where gay life was included. However, this is the first time we’ve seen two shows and one Off-Broadway play, Straight, that turned LGBT experiences into art, placing it front and center on stage for the world to see rather than character parts. Needless to say, Kinky Boots is fabulously fun and there isn’t a bad seat in the house. Actually, we advise sitting in the Mezzanine level or higher up to allow for an unobstructed view taking in the spectacular show. Kinky Boots was a winner from the get-go with the creative team behind the musical including gay playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein, who penned the script, and the upbeat songs and music that can’t be beat thanks to ally Cyndi

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Beth Malone, playing the grown-up Alison Bechdel, and Emily Skeggs, playing the teenage Alison, in Fun Home at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York.

Lauper. The duo created a fantastic musical adaptation from the 2005 British-American movie that is profound with its inspiring message just as much as it is enjoyable. It was refreshing to see lesbian PUB: cartoonist Bay Area Reporter Alison Bechdel’s bestmemoir, Fun Home, Issue:selling March 31, graphic 2016 Client:adapted Aston into a musical. It introAD: Hotel Renew duces audiences not only to her perSize: 5.75” x 11”coming non-bleed out story, but growing sonal Colors:up Fullwith her father’s painful story of DUE: being 3/25 a closeted gay man. Fun Home is a cerebral and nuanced musical that is “so lesbian” (read: processed) in the best way, from the songs to the staging at Circle in the Square Theatre. It is so good, that earlier this month United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power brought dignitaries from around the world – even those from anti-gay countries – to the show to help them better understand what it is like to be gay or lesbian and the difference between living out loud and proud and living in secret. Straight explores a similar question about living authentically and the choices people have to make in a modern day context. The play shows that even with marriage equality and being able to serve openly in the military, coming out isn’t always that simple. In millennial fashion the characters don’t necessarily want to label themselves because they don’t perceive the labels to be holistic of who they are and their relationships. The play twists and turns, leaving the audience talking at the end: who gets hurt, living authentically, and relationship investments are just some of the topics of conversation among theatergoers as the lights go up.

It’s hard to see everything showing on Broadway in a week, doubling up matinees and evening shows, but we gave it our best shot. During our Broadway run we also saw An American in Paris, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, and the Broadway opening night of The Humans. Beautiful is a good staple biographical musical about songwriter and singer Carole King’s early life in the music industry and rise to fame. The music was great and audiences leave the show feeling good. The Humans delves deep into the muddles of a frayed middle-class American familiy’s dreams. Today’s struggles and woes can be seen through the Blake family as they gather for Thanksgiving dinner in New York’s Chinatown in the eldest daughter and her boyfriend’s newly moved into and yet unpacked apartment. The family broaches the challenges of their lives while struggling to remain upbeat. It’s exquisitely executed in the writing and acting. I was blown away by An American in Paris simply by the choreography and set design that is so breathtaking with its invocation of the postmodernism art movement in postWorld War II Paris that the audience has an out-of-body time travel experience (at least I felt that way). More of a ballet than a musical, the stage adaptation of the 1951 Academy Award-winning Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron film is something every visitor to New York should attempt to see. However, the hottest ticket in town, Hamilton, eluded us and it was our own fault. We simply didn’t listen to our Broadway connection

Travel>>

before the rest of the world knew about Hamilton. Talking with some of our new theater friends next to us while waiting for Beautiful to begin they echoed the buzz about the hiphop musical. Theatergoers believe that its effect on musical theater will be similar to how Rent – the re-envisioning of the opera La Boheme into a rock musical – shifted people’s concepts of what a musical is and can be. That’s just a once in a generation type experience that shouldn’t be missed. The tickets are like platinum, being sold nearly a year or more in advance, according to media reports. (Pssst: Hamilton is going on tour and coming to San Francisco in March 2017, so if you can’t see it on Broadway, try to get tickets here.)

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Courtesy NYC & Co./Julienne Schaer

The new Whitney Museum, on the edge of the Hudson River and the High Line in New York’s Meatpacking district, offers eight floors of exhibits.

Strokes of creativity

After she got her fill of Broadway and restaurants, my girlfriend returned to San Francisco, leaving my auntie and I to hit the galleries, museums, and stores. The new Whitney Museum opened its doors in the Meatpacking district last May. The contemporary and modern art museum designed by architect Renzo Piano is perched at the start of the High Line. The building, with its clean lines and minimalist and modern structure, is a piece of artwork itself outside of housing an enormous collection that visitors can enjoy on eight spacious floors. Visitors can also enjoy taking in the view of the Hudson River on one side of the building and the view of Manhattan on the other. I happened to catch the “Laura Poitras: Astro Noise” exhibit, which is on display until May 1. Artist, filmmaker, and journalist Poitras’ first solo museum exhibition explores government surveillance using interviews and leaked classified U.S. documents provided by Edward Snowden and her own personal experience of being placed on a U.S. government watch list for a

decade after being seen filming eight minutes of an attack in a Baghdad neighborhood where she was staying with an Iraqi family and where a U.S. soldier died. She sued the government to get answers, only to be entrapped for years. The exhibit is thought provoking and a must see, even if you aren’t into government conspiracy theories. Stepping back in time, I ventured across the Hudson past the Statue of Liberty to Staten Island to check out the Alice Austin House. Austin was a turn of the century socialite and photographer who documented the immigrants and New York life in 8,000 images with the assistance of her friend Gertrude Tate, who lived with her for 50 years. The house preserves her extraordinary work as a documentarian and artist and serves as an exhibition space for photographers who continue in the same spirited vein as Austin’s work. Staten Island, which is reachable by the free Staten Island Ferry, is also experiencing a resurgence of culture, and probably most appropriately to the working class community, microbreweries have been staking a claim to the island.

Austin’s story is amazing and definitely worth the adventure, if not a well-deserved pint of beer for making the journey. Another discovery this time around was New York’s preeminent pop-up Gallery 151 in Chelsea. Housed on the ground floor in a real estate office, gallery manager Anna Gritsevich has an eye for talented artists. I happened to catch fine art photographer Anna Friemonth’s first solo show “Words for Women,” a tongue in cheek play on derogatory phrases, such as “sugar tits,” and “trophy wife,” aimed at women through highly stylized photographs. The exhibit recently closed, but check out Gallery 151 and keep an eye out for Friemonth’s work. History and culture buffs might be interested in checking out the Tenement Museum, Grand Central tour, the Sex and the City tour, the Center for Jewish History, and the Jewish Heritage Museum. Each museum offers unique and profound insights to the human experience in New York and around the world and who doesn’t want to reconnect with the fabulous foursome ladies See page 13 >>

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<< Community News

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

SF bathroom proposal heads to full board by Seth Hemmelgarn

proposal by a San Francisco supervisor to require local businesses and city-owned properties to make all one-person bathrooms gender neutral is headed to the full board after a supervisors’ committee recently passed it. The public safety and neighborhood services committee’s hearing Thursday, March 24 on gay Supervisor David Campos’ legislation came a day after North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed into law a bill

barring transgender people from using restrooms that don’t match their birth gender. The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups filed a lawsuit this week challenging the law, which also blocks other protections for LGBTs in North Carolina. [See story, page 1.] Campos said Thursday that his “common-sense piece of legislation” should have happened “many, many years ago.” Besides transgender people, “This bill will benefit many people in our community,” Campos said, includ-

EXPLORE THE GAY WORLD

Supervisor Jane Kim, who ing parents with opposite-sex chairs the public safety commitchildren, and seniors and people tee, voted along with Campos to with disabilities who have oppoforward the legislation to the full site-gender caretakers. board. Trans people and others have “It really is about dignity and faced harassment and threats respect,” Kim said. in restrooms, and Campos said Committee member Supervipeople “often think twice before sor John Avalos was absent. Suthey go to the bathroom. ... Going pervisor Norman Yee, who’d been to the bathroom should not put appointed to take Avalos’ place, anyone in danger.” wasn’t present for the vote. Both The District 9 supervisor Rick Gerharter are co-sponsors of the legislation, noted other municipalities alalong with Kim and Supervisors ready have such legislation, and Theresa Sparks, left, executive director Mark Farrell and Eric Mar. Gay passage of his proposal would of San Francisco’s Human Rights put San Francisco “on the right Commission, and Carla Johnson, director Supervisor Scott Wiener also supside of history.” of the Mayor’s Office on Disability, speak ports the proposal, as does the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Berkeley, West Hollywood, and at the public safety and neighborhood Campos’ legislation, which other cities have already enacted services committee hearing on gender is expected to be on the board’s legislation similar to Campos’, but neutral bathrooms. April 5 agenda, would allow busiSan Francisco’s legislation would ness owners to “create multi-stall be unique because it would inthe number of restrooms accessible bathrooms that are also gender clude an enforcement mechanism to people with disabilities.” neutral,” according to his office. through the city’s Human Rights Jordan Gwendolyn Davis, a trans Among other provisions, the legCommission and Department of rights advocate who spoke in supislation says, “while a person might Building Inspection. port of Campos’ legislation, noted choose to use an all-gender toilet “We are behind in some reAssemblyman Phil Ting (D-San facility, no one should be required spects,” Campos said, but San Francisco) recently introduced a to use an all-gender toilet facility Francisco’s would also be the “most similar proposal at the state level. because of their gender identity.” comprehensive.” That bill is set for an Assembly comAdditionally, at least one allTheresa Sparks, whom Cammittee hearing April 5. gender bathroom would have to be pos said came to him with the “Please pass this as soon as posavailable “on each floor in any new idea for the legislation “a couple sible, without hesitation,” Davis said building constructed on city-owned years ago,” said Thursday, “This of the San Francisco proposal. land.”t is a very important bill for many communities.” Referring to the jurisdictions in the U.S. that are trying to restrict transgender people’s access to bathrooms, Sparks said, “This is wrong. This should not be done. People need to go to the bathroom.” Carla Johnson, a lesbian who’s the director of the Mayor’s Office on Disability, said, “Everybody deserves the basic dignity and also the public safety” of having access to bathrooms. by Matthew S. Bajko “All that’s really required here is to change the sign” on single-user bathpenhouse Executive Director rooms, she said, and “You’ve doubled Seth Kilbourn will depart in May, four months before the San Francisco-based LGBT aging services provider expects to open the city’s first affordable housing aimed at LGBT seniors. Kilbourn, who announced his resignation early Wednesday afternoon, has led the agency since 2008. The nonprofit has yet to name an interim executive director, while its board plans to launch a nationwide search for a permanent replacement. In a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Kilbourn said he felt the timing was right for him to Seth Kilbourn step aside with the agency’s housing project, under construction at 55 Laguna, on schedule. decision about what is next for me.” “It has been a great eight years, In a news release, Openhouse and we have built together so much. board president Bill Scherer thanked I am very proud of the board and Kilbourn “for his leadership and staff and the accomplishments we passion in driving our mission formade together,” said Kilbourn, who ward. The enduring foundation that does not have another job lined up. we have built together means we “After eight years I wanted to make a can support the needs of our comvery conscious decision or planned munity for many years to come.”t

Openhouse ED announces resignation

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CA travel ban bill

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systems, would be overseen if implemented. It remains unclear which state official or agency would track anti-gay laws passed in other states and place them on a banned travel list. (The bill would not apply to travel necessary for the enforcement of California law, to meet prior contractual obligations, or for the protection of public health, welfare, or safety.) Low told the B.A.R. that the implementation questions would be answered as lawmakers review his bill. “Along the process we have an opportunity to have discussions on implementation and what that looks like and who will be in charge of keeping track of such states that have these discriminatory laws in place,” said Low. While the bill has no registered

opposition to it, answering the implementation questions is “the really tricky part,” said EQCA legislative manager Jo Michael. The judiciary committee could vote next week to pass the bill on to the Assembly Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review, added Michael, where those questions could be further addressed. The anti-gay legislation taken up in North Carolina, Georgia, and numerous other states this year is demonstrating the need for Low’s bill, argued Michael. “We have gotten to the point where it is clear to folks how important it is and how urgent it is to address what is going on in the country,” said Michael. While laws governing nonprofits bar the California Endowment from endorsing legislation, Zingale said See page 13 >>

Community News>>

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Bike share expansion planned for the Castro by Sari Staver

astro residents are enthusiastic about the San Francisco bike share program’s proposed expansion into the neighborhood, expressing hope that a location in Jane Warner Plaza might help solve ongoing problems with anti-social behavior there. The proposed expansion, announced last week by Bay Area Bike Share, calls for a dozen locations in the Castro and Duboce Triangle neighborhoods to be added to the program by the end of the year (http://www.bayareabikeshare.com/ expansion). This is the first of a fivephase expansion that will take the program from its current 700 bikes in 70 stations to 7,000 bikes in 700 locations in the Bay Area by 2018. The bike share program, operated by the private firm, Motivate Co., is continuing to seek neighborhood input while it prepares its final plans. The company will then seek city permits and hopes to have all locations operating by the end of 2016. Over the past year, Motivate has held public meetings with residents and businesses in the Castro and Duboce Triangle, according to Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz, the company’s outreach and communications manager. “Everyone has been very excited and nobody has been categorically opposed,” said Cosulich-Schwartz, the former business and program communications manager of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “We heard over and over again that people were especially pleased that we had proposed a location in Jane Warner Plaza.” The plaza, created in 2009 to honor the late Castro Special Patrol officer, has drawn widespread criticism from local businesses and neighbors, who feel that the transients who spend time there are discouraging tourists and locals from

coming to the neighborhood. safety features such as always-on The plaza is “totally being lights, reflectors, chain guards, abused,” said Andrea Aiello, exand bells,” according to their ecutive director of the Castro/ website. Upper Market Community BenCommunity activists have efit District, in an interview with suggestions about the program the Bay Area Reporter last year. implementation. “A bike share station will be Longtime Duboce Triangle positive for the plaza, in terms of resident Mark Scheuer, secretary activating it,” gay District 8 Suof the Duboce Triangle Neighpervisor Scott Wiener said. “The borhood Association and a more we can activate Jane Warner past president of the Friends of Plaza, the better. I’ve been a longDuboce Park, told the B.A.R. that time support of bike share and two proposed locations in the helped strike the deal, through neighborhood – one at Steiner the Metropolitan Transportation near Duboce and the other at Commission, on which I serve, to Sanchez and Market – each have expand it dramatically throughheavy traffic and “would not be out San Francisco. I’m thrilled the best choice” for bike stations. that this transformative project is The former would work better Courtesy Bay Area Bike Share moving forward.” around the corner on Duboce But installing a bike station This map released by Bay Area Bike Share Avenue and the latter, on the in the plaza may be difficult, shows potential bike share expansion sites sidewalk or in the parking lot of Aiello said in an article posted in the Castro and Mission neighborhoods. Chase Bank, he said. on Hoodline. According to AiScheuer said in several meetello, there are “very few” locations ings with bike share officials, or how much money they make.” within the plaza where anything DTNA members offered these While bike owners in San Franpermanent can be installed. suggestions, which, he said, “seemed cisco have been plagued with an inBike advocates are very positive to be received well.” creasing number of thefts, the bike on the program expansion. But when the new bike share map share program apparently does not. Chris Cassidy, communications proposals were issued, neither of “Only a very small number of director for the San Francisco Bitheir suggestions was incorporated, bikes go missing and never return,” cycle Coalition, an advocacy group, Scheuer said. said Dani Simons, director of comsaid in an email, that this phase of “It does make me wonder if they munications and external affairs for bike share’s expansion “looks great.” Motivate. “This is due to the fact “The challenge,” he added, “will that in order to ride the bikes you be to ensure that they are building must join the program, and we have our city’s first new transportation credit card information for everysystem in 40 years in a manner such one who joins. If the bike is kept out that it reaches and serves all San longer than 24 hours we can comFranciscans – not just those already municate with the riders to remind well-served by existing alternatives.” them to return the bike, and if it is Cassidy said, “It’s important that not returned we can charge for a lost people aren’t excluded from bike or stolen bike. We find this is a powshare by not having station in their erful incentive to bring bikes back neighborhoods, by being unable to into the system.” afford the fees, or by not having a Since the program began in the credit card, which may be necessary Bay Area, there have been seven acfor a membership. We’re eager to cidents with bike share equipment, see Bay Area Bike Share take these Simons said. “Bay Area Bike Share challenges head on, and develop a bikes are extremely stable and stursystem that gives people access to dy. They are routinely maintained this important new transportation by professional mechanics to check alternative no matter where they live

were really listening,” he said. Scheuer said some residents will “undoubtedly complain that the bike stations have taken up parking spaces.” According to the bike share program website, the “on-street stations typically ‘repurpose’ two parallel parking spaces, though we are exploring technologies that would allow for shorter stations in residential neighborhoods.” Ten of the 12 stations proposed for the Castro and Duboce Triangle are on-street stations. Castro resident Rob Roberts, in an email to the B.A.R., said he has been a bike share member for almost two years and was “pleased” to learn of their expansion. Roberts wonders, however, if the proposed Castro stations, “which are at much higher elevations than the majority of bike stands” will have a regular supply of bikes if people will tend to ride them down hill and return them to other stations. Roberts, referring to nudists who have gathered in the plaza, also asked about other reactions “when photo-shoots emerge of the Castro’s finest taking their clothes off and sitting on the bikes in Jane Warner?”t

USF hosts human rights film fest compiled by Cynthia Laird

feature works produced by USF students and alumni. The festival takes place at USF’s Presentation Theater, 2350 Turk Boulevard, at Masonic. For a full schedule, visit https:// www.usfca.edu/ar ts-sciences/ about/human-rights-film-festival.

he University of San Francisco will host its 14th annual Human Rights Film Festival, an event that seeks to promote awareness and discussions of global human rights injustices. The festival is free, open to the public, and takes place from Thursday, March 31 to Saturday, April 2. “It’s an excellent opportunity to learn about human rights through the power of film,” said Susana Kaiser, associate professor of media studies and Latin American studies, and the festival’s co-founder and co-organizer since 2003. “Our selection of films exposes and denounces human rights violations that demand immediate solutions.” Question and answer sessions following the screenings will give audience members a forum for discussing the issues, identifying potential solutions, and documenting successes in stopping abuses, Kaiser added. This year’s festival will address political repression, genocide, immigration, refugees, migrations, environmental destruction, mining and indigenous women, LGBT rights, and gun violence. Several of the films are award winners. Highlights include The Look of Silence, screening Saturday at 6:30 p.m. The film by Joshua Oppenheimer is about the perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, and a family of survivors that discovers how their son was murdered as well

Trans woman to stage visibility event

Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer

as the identities of his killers. American DREAMers, which will be shown Thursday at 2 p.m., tells the story behind the Campaign for an American DREAM, or CAD, a group of six undocumented youth and an ally who risk their freedom when they publicly come out as undocumented and walk 3,000 miles to the nation’s capital to organize for immigrant rights. The Black Panthers: Vanguards of the Revolution will be shown Thursday at 6:15 p.m. and is a feature documentary that includes eyewitness accounts from the first members who joined the organization, rank-and-file members, as well as the voices of lawyers, journalists, scholars, police officers, and former FBI agents. The three-day festival will also

A San Francisco transgender Mormon woman will hold an event to commemorate Transgender Day of Visibility Thursday, March 31. Bobbee Moore, 34, who is HIVpositive and disabled, said that she will be standing at Harvey Milk Plaza at Castro and Market streets blindfolded with a sign asking to finally be visible in the Castro and to hug her if she is visible to them. “With so many states debating the rights of a transgender person’s ability to use a restroom that is aligned with their gender identity, it is time for transgender people to be visible and valued as full humans deserving of safety in restrooms, housing, their workplace, and in public spaces,” Moore said in a news release, referring to a recent law passed in North Carolina that requires people to use a restroom that matches the gender on their birth certificates. Moore said that her event, which she has dubbed the “Blindfold Social Experiment,” will take place from 3 to 4 p.m.

SF Arts Commission to celebrate Maupin

The San Francisco Arts Commission will have a free community See page 13 >>

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<< Sports

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

Differences too great for one LGBT sports event by Roger Brigham

year ago the two organizations that stage competing quadrennial global LGBT sports festivals seemed to be on the brink of ending their decade-long feud. This month it became apparent that their differences of opinion and operations were too wide a breach to overcome. After the Federation of Gay Games announced at the beginning of March it was ending discussions

with the Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association about creating a new event to replace the Gay Games (first held in 1982) and the World Outgames (started in 2006), GLISA responded with letters to the FGG and to GLISA supporters, accusing the FGG of having “broken faith” by asking for information about GLISA’s assets and withdrawing from the single event discussions. Analysis of the FGG and GLISA letters indicates neither organiza-

“Jefty” Dern-Fisher 1993 - January 15, 2007

On Monday, January 15th, “Jefty”, with his three two-footed friends, Bob, Sunny and Gary by his side, was put to sleep. Born around 1993, he was originally rescued from the streets by an elderly lady. He was FIV+, so his expected lifetime was unknown. After caring for him with shots and a checkup, she put him up for adoption. Sunny saw her ad and adopted him, and in 1994 he was introduced to Bob. Originally he had no name, but on a rainy weekend trip to the Russian River, his name was found in the book Tim and Pete, written by the late James Robert Baker. Jefty, originally skittish, became a calm and warm companion over the years, although he never got used to being given a bath!! He also was very territorial, willing to go after any cat or dog in his space. In early 2000 he had to stay with Gary’s three cats for two weeks, and a fortress of cardboard walls had to be created to keep him separated from Gary’s cats who were just eager to be his friend! Last November, Jefty didn’t sound well, and it was found he had lymphoma. Medication, plus lots of loving care and attention, kept him going until his time was up. A few days later, a friend told us about the story Rainbow Bridge from petloss.com. We all now know he’s healthy again, and waiting for us to join him to cross Rainbow Bridge together. Jefty, we all deeply miss you!!!

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tion ever understood the other well enough to be able to work together on a single event. For instance, GLISA told the FGG that “it appears you have disregarded the feedback from respondents to the 2014 survey to create ‘one organization; one event.’” In reality, FGG membership supported discussions largely because of that survey and concerns expressed for a single event, but there was no way the FGG members, which for the most part are sports organizations, were going to be bound by a survey of mostly non-sports individuals and organizations about what should be done with something that was not even identified in the survey as being a sports event. GLISA also objected to a “risk analysis” process FGG requested. In teleconferences with the membership last year, the FGG board was repeatedly asked by the membership to gather sufficient information regarding the relative value of both organizations and both events so that it could best assess the risks and advantages to going forward with unified event talks. Without that information, it would have been impossible for either organization to make an informed decision guided by anything other than a prayer. For example, although financial reports have been made

public for the 2014 Gay its letter to its constituents Games in Cleveland and all GLISA indicates those are previous Gay Games, no the projects on which it ininformation regarding attends to continue to focus. tendance or fiscal outcome A further misunderof the 2012 World Outgames standing between the orgain Antwerp has ever been nizations seemed to be on published. how site selection for 2022 Although the informa- FGG site was to be handled while the tion request was made late in selection officer organizations were workthe most recent discussions, David Killian ing toward a unified event. well after both organiza“There were several small, tions had signed a memoranbut telling, indicators of the shifting dum of understanding pledgposition of the federation,” GLISA ing to work toward a unified wrote to its members. “For example, event and new organization, at two separate sports-planners’ it actually was a resurrection meetings, in August 2015 and Januof a request made by FGG ary 2016, members of the federation for shared information and board attending these meetings did outside professional assessnot, in fact, discuss One World Event ment in years past. GLISA in their meetings with sports planhad objected at that point as ners. In fact, they spoke only of their well, as those talks broke down. Gay Games, its history, its model, In withdrawing from one-world its delivery, when the GLISA board event talks, the FGG invited GLISA members attending the same meetto join the FGG to be part of its disings spoke only of One World Event.” cussions and decision-making going Site selection for 2022 was a forward. That was an invitation major concern raised by the FGG Team San Francisco has repeatedly membership as it would be confusmade over the past seven years while ing for potential bidders if they did urging the FGG to concentrate on not know what the event they were the Gay Games rather than merger bidding on would look like (World talks. GLISA rejected that invitaOutgames have major budgets tion, indicating it was an attempt dedicated to human rights conferto “subsume” GLISA. In reality, that ences; the Gay Games are focused invitation has always been accomon sports) or what the relationship panied by a pledge to support other would be between sanctioning body GLISA events, such as continental See page 14 >> Outgames and conferences, and in

North Carolina: The cost by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

n a special session, the North Carolina Legislature pushed through House Bill 2, delivering it to Governor Pat McCrory in roughly 12 hours. The governor signed the bill nearly as soon as it hit his desk, wasting no time on what must have been a vital law to be enacted so quickly. The bill, titled the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, is on its surface a reaction to the passage of anti-discrimination protections a month ago in Charlotte, North Carolina. That ordinance added citywide protections based on both sexual orientation and gender identity. “The basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings, a restroom or locker room, for each gender was violated by government overreach and intrusion by the mayor and City Council of Charlotte,” said McCrory in a statement released shortly after the passage of HB 2. “This new government regulation defies common sense and basic community norms by allowing, for example, a man to use a woman’s bathroom, shower, or locker room.” The bill goes much further, however, than simply nullifying Charlotte’s anti-discrimination protections: it removes any authority from municipalities across the state, requiring localities to rely on state protections that do not cover LGBT individuals. It also repeals protections for other groups in municipalities, such as veterans. The only explicitly covered classes in North Carolina are race, religion, color, national origin, biological sex,

Christine Smith

and in some cases age and disability. As expected, HB 2 prohibits the use of restrooms at schools and public institutions across the state by anyone whose gender does not match their birth certificate. It does not clarify how one would challenge a person in a restroom, or how that same person would respond. One has to presume that this “privacy” act does not extend to the privacy of transgender residents of North Carolina, who are now expected to answer to any challenge to their gender. Or, of course, people who are not transgender but who may still be challenged because someone else decides they are not masculine or feminine enough for a particular set of facilities. HB 2 also removed the ability of people to bring a civil suit over discrimination, even if the discrimination actually does fall within the categories explicitly banned under the bill. Oh, and for whatever rea-

son, the bill also prohibits “all local ordinances, regulations or resolutions imposing any requirements on employers pertaining to compensation of employees.” This is broad reaching, affecting minimum wage fights, leave, benefits, and even rights involving minors in the workplace. To push this bill through, the state spent approximately $42,000 to hold a special one-day session. Adding insult to injury, state Senator Tom Apodaca (R) is pressing to have Charlotte cover the bill for the special session – perhaps by taking the money from appropriations or other state funds the city would be expecting to receive. But the final tally on the passage of HB 2 does not end with the expense of this one-day special session. See page 13 >>

Correction In the March 24 article “Federal recognition sought for four SF LGBT historic sites,” a planning department staffer was quoted as saying that public historian Donna Graves had spoken to leaders of both Glide Memorial United Methodist Church and childcare provider Nihonmachi Little Friends, which occupies the building that once housed the Japantown YWCA, about the city’s plans to seek National Register of Historic Places listing for their buildings. Graves, however, contacted the Bay Area Reporter after the story ran to say she had not spoken to either group about their being nominated. The online version of the article has been updated.

Obituaries >> George Bartlett “Sunny” Fisher

November 14, 1967 – February 24, 2016 Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and known as Bart to his family, on arrival in San Francisco in 1983, he adopted the nickname Sunny. He

passed away at Maitri Compassionate Care after a valiant battle against cancer, after having survived AIDS. He was an incredibly talented artist, producing mixed media paintings of foils, films, and resins. He was generous to everyone, sharing what he could with those without. He loved animals and volunteered for Animal Care and Control. He also volunteered, until he became too ill, at the syringe access services program, serving as a peer outreach worker.

He is survived by his partner of 17 years, Gary; his mother, Becky; and sister, Darren; his ex-partner, Bob; his three cats, and all his friends. We all miss him terribly. A memorial celebrating his life will be held at the Circle of Friends at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park Saturday, April 2, at 1 p.m. Please make donations to the San Francisco SPCA in memory of G.B. “Sunny” Fisher.

t <<

Community News>>

CA travel ban bill

From page 10

it does support the intent behind Low’s legislation. “We do support the principal of state and local governments joining the fight against these discriminatory proposals,” he said. Low told the B.A.R. he has not gotten any indication from Governor Jerry Brown (D) on if he supports the bill. “What I am pleased to see are additional municipalities and other jurisdictions have passed proactive language in support of the same legislative intent” as his bill, said Low. Brown does not need to wait for the Legislature to send him AB 1887 to act. He could sign an executive order banning state-funded travel to North Carolina. “I would be ecstatic if the governor signed an executive order stating as such,” said Low. “Absent that, I believe that our role can also be part of the public dialogue to help make such an affirmative statement.” Spokespersons for Brown did not respond by press time to the B.A.R.’s questions on if he would issue such a

Travel

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

ban, backs Low’s bill, or has a preference for which state agency should be tasked with implementing it.

Local travel bans

By enacting his travel ban to North Carolina, Mayor Ed Lee’s goal was “to have other cities follow suit and have a cumulative impact on the economy of North Carolina and their bigoted decision,” Paul Henderson, a gay man who is the mayor’s deputy chief of staff and director of public safety, told the B.A.R. So far it has not convinced San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo or Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who like Lee last year had banned city-funded travel to Indiana, to enact travel bans to North Carolina. Schaaf ’s office did not respond to the B.A.R.’s request for comment, while a spokesman for Liccardo said the mayor would need to work with the city council to enact such a travel restriction. By press time Wednesday, Liccardo’s office had not said if it would do so. As it turns out, taxpayer-funded travel to North Carolina, other than for a few days earlier this month, has been banned in Santa Clara County

Rick Gerharter

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has been silent on the travel ban issue this year.

since last June. In response to the Indiana bill, the Board of Supervisors, at the request of gay Supervisor Ken Yeager, adopted its own travel restriction to states with anti-LGBT laws. In addition to North Carolina and Indiana, the county also banned employees from traveling to Arkansas and Michigan. “In an informal Internet search, I

found that many of the states listed passed ‘religious freedom acts’ that included clauses to allow discrimination based on religious objection including the Michigan adoption bill,” explained Maribel Martínez, manager of the county’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, in an email. According to the office of County Executive Jeffrey V. Smith, only one travel request has been denied since the travel ban policy went into effect. In August Medical Examiner Dr. Matrina Schmidt had requested $2,606 in order to attend the 2015 National Association of Medical Examiners Annual Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, in October. Smith denied the funding due to the county’s travel ban law, and the supervisors approved his decision. After the B.A.R.’s inquiries regarding Santa Clara County’s travel ban policy, the Office of the County Counsel this week announced it had updated the list of banned states. As of March 11, Indiana and Michigan were removed. North Carolina, which had also been removed from the list as of that date, was returned to it as of March 28. Arkansas remains on the

For cheap and fun eats we checked out SPiN, which serves up healthy bar food along with great cocktails and a good game of PingPong. The Ping-Pong social club, which is backed by actor and activist Susan Sarandon, is located in a former Woolworth store that once opened up into the subway station. That has long been closed off, but guests can still see the subway cars go by while hanging out. Need to grab a late night bite after the theater or clubbing? The Halal Guys at the corner of 56th Street and 6th Avenue have you covered with the best chicken and rice in Manhattan. My girlfriend and I did finally get a slice of pie, but not the traditional thin crust dripping with greasy cheesy goodness that you fold in half. We stepped up our pizza dining experience at Artichoke Basille’s Pizza and Bar where we got a three slice sampler (big enough for two to

share one order) with the artichoke, vodka, and pepperoni wedges that could be addicting. The pizzeria has several locations around New York and even one in Berkeley.

It’s challenging to find our obligatory slice of New York pizza every time we head to the Big Apple. The reason being is that there are so many amazing restaurants, not pizzerias (although there are great pizza spots too), to check out that in recent years we get to the airport and realize we never got our slice of pie. We tasted the world while we were in New York. High on our list were the acclaimed Red Rooster in Harlem, which only accepts reservations 30 days in advance and tables go fast (it is well worth stalking the reservation desk), and Michelin-

rated Junoon, which serves modern Indian cuisine. Both restaurants were exceptional, as expected. My girlfriend was only slightly disappointed that Junoon’s dishes weren’t spicy enough for her, but the food was still deliciously remarkable. Surprising discoveries we made were Almayass, the Gander, and Victor’s Cafe. Our dishes took us to the Middle East for Lebanese-Armenian cuisine that was bursting with flavor at Almayass; home to America for re-envisioned American cuisine at the Gander; and dreaming of Cuba, we had an authentic replica of a Havana dining experience at Victor’s Cafe. Brunching around town we checked out Westville, which includes vegetarian dishes, in Chelsea and the Wyeth Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Both restaurants put their own spin on American classics and offer up healthy options for health conscious diners.

honoring-2016-mayors-art-awardrecipient-armistead-maupin-tickets-23844032142.

The LGBT center proposed for Visalia in California’s Central Valley announced Easter morning that it had surpassed its $5,000 fundraising goal. According to a post on its Facebook page, the Source LGBTplus Center leaders said they had “crushed” their first effort to raise money by netting $5,442 in donations within 13 days. As the Bay Area Reporter reported March 17, the lead organizers of the center effort are two gay men who grew up in the area, then headed to two of the state’s main coastal regions for college but returned to Tulare County last summer. Visalia native Nick Vargas had been living in San Francisco, while actor Brian Poth, who grew up in Tulare, left

West Hollywood due to a family emergency and now lives in Visalia. After meeting through a mutual acquaintance, they became friends and decided Visalia’s growing LGBT community needed a space of its own to socialize and access resources. “We’re really excited about the results so far. And the enthusiasm for the center is more than we hoped for,” Vargas and Poth told the B.A.R. this week. “Now that we have our opening goal covered, new funds will go directly to needed services and desired programming. We can’t get started soon enough.” William Martin, a local businessman and straight ally, is leasing at a reduced rent to the center a basement space in the retail building he owns at 208 West Main Street in downtown Visalia. The center will begin moving into the location in April and is planning a public opening the first week of May. “We will have a series of open-

ing events that week. There will be a ribbon cutting ceremony and a fundraising dinner on May 6,” wrote Vargas and Poth in a March 28 email. “The day we open to the general public will be in the first week. We still need to figure out what day that will be.” The center also recently learned its initial 501(c)3 paperwork to be a registered nonprofit was approved, so it can now begin accepting taxdeductible donations. To learn more about the center or donate to it, visit http://www.thesourcelgbt.org or email Vargas and Poth at thesourceLGBT@gmail.com.

ors Bill de Blasio of New York and Ed Murray of Seattle, who is a gay man. The bad press and backlash from the aforementioned institutions prompted the governor to present an overly cheery assessment on HB 2 dressed up as a “Myths vs. Facts” document. The news release does an amazing job of answering only the questions it presents, in as couched a language as it can. By challenging the ability of trans students statewide to use appropriate gender changing facilities and restrooms, McCrory puts an estimated $4.2 billion in federal funding at risk by going against Title IX protections. In the news release,

McCrory’s office claims it will not face this, stating that HB 2 will not affect federal funding “according to a federal court which has looked at a similar issue.” The U.S. Department of Justice affirmed its position on Title IX protections for transgender students last June in a case in Virginia, seemingly in opposition to McCrory’s views. “Prohibiting a student from accessing the restrooms that match his gender identity is prohibited sex discrimination under Title IX,” stated the DOJ in that case. “There is a public interest in ensuring that all students, including transgender students, have the opportunity to learn in an envi-

ronment free of sex discrimination.” While the state has tried to limit who can sue, this will not stop legal challenges. The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Equality North Carolina this week filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court. This will be a further financial drain on the state. The cost of this bill, in the end, is not one of currency, and it is not a cost that will be borne by North Carolina, let alone taken out of funds intended for the city of Charlotte. As I said above, in some attempt to provide “privacy and safety” for non-transgender people, based on a

From page 9

of Sex and the City? You can get all the behind the scenes secrets and relive your favorite moments with On Location Tours.

Eat like a king or a queen

News Briefs

From page 11

event to celebrate gay author Armistead Maupin Tuesday, April 5 from 5 to 6 p.m. at Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Avenue. As previously noted, Maupin received this year’s Mayor’s Art Award, marking the first time a writer has been recognized with the city’s highest artistic honor. At the event, Maupin will appear in conversation with lesbian activist and author Jewelle Gomez. They will discuss a range of topics, including Maupin’s artistic process, his relationship to San Francisco, and his reflections on lessons learned throughout his life. Following the talk, there will be an informal reception in the arts commission’s main gallery, located on the ground floor of the Veterans Building. To register, visit https://www. eventbrite.com/e/celebration-

Transmissions

From page 12

Companies have spoken out against the bill, with statements from Bank of America, Lowe’s, Google, PayPal, Apple, American Airlines, and many others. The National Collegiate Athletic Association is raising questions about its desire to host events in the state and the National Basketball Association suggested that the 2017 AllStar game, scheduled for Charlotte, could be moved. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee opted to ban city staff from traveling to North Carolina at city expense. He was joined by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and may-

Visalia LGBT center reaches fundraising goal

list, while Mississippi and Tennessee were added to it on March 11. Arkansas and Tennessee are on the list for having laws similar to North Carolina’s that prohibit cities and towns from adopting local antidiscrimination laws that protect LGBT people. A 2000 statute that bans adoption by same-sex couples is why Mississippi is listed. “As you can see, since its passage, some states have been removed while other states have been added. This list is reviewed on a regular basis by county counsel, with special attention given during peak activity times for state legislatures,” wrote Martínez. “Should any other state pass similar laws to those already listed or any other law that discriminates against LGBTQ individuals or communities, it will be added to the list upon its passage.” Low, who’s hometown of Campbell is in Santa Clara County, said the county’s travel ban to states with anti-LGBT laws shows such a policy is workable and enforceable. “This is nothing new,” he said in reference to AB 1887. “But again, we join in the conversation that we will not use taxpayer dollars to subsidize discrimination.”t

Sleeping

We checked out the newest hotel in a long time in Union Square, the Hyatt Union Square, and the Hyatt Times Square, both of which opened in 2013. We also discovered the Sanctuary Hotel in Times Square.

Getting to NYC

We flew Virgin America into John F. Kennedy International Airport. Arriving late at night we suggest several options from private companies like ExecuCar to on-demand car services like the women-run She Rides or the obvious Uber or Lyft. Otherwise we are public transit girls hopping on the air train at the airport that connects with the subway.t

Cannabis job fair coming up

GreenRush, California’s largest cannabis job fair, will take place in San Francisco Saturday, April 30. Medical cannabis has been legal in the state since 1996 and there’s now an effort underway to place a measure to legalize recreational use of marijuana on the November

Geena Dabadghav

New Yorkers and visitors enjoy walking along the High Line, the above ground park that stretches from the new Whitney Museum in the Meatpacking district all the way up the west side of Manhattan and the Hudson River to 34th Street.

ballot. Several states have already legalized recreational marijuana, and cannabis is one of America’s fastestgrowing industries. “With unprecedented expansion comes demand for new jobs,” organizers said in a news release. The job fair will offer attendees access to every corner of the cannabis industry, from retail to technology, cultivation to manufacturing, marketing to genetics. Organizers said that every profession from within the industry will be represented. The job fair will be held 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Regency Ballroom, 1300 Sutter Street. Tickets are $4.20, or free for a limited time at www. jointhegreenrush.com with promo code “free.” To sign up, visit http:// www.eventbrite.com/e/join-thegreenrush-cannabis-job-fair-tickets-22676416773.t Matthew S. Bajko contributed to this report.

“bathroom predator” myth that has been disproven at every turn, trans people like me are not provided safety or privacy. The cost will come out of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals in North Carolina, now forced into further second-class citizen status, and declined even the most basic right to use a restroom appropriate to their presentation – and ultimately, I fear the cost will be measured in lives lost, not dollars spent.t Gwen Smith has her North Carolina friends in her heart and mind. You can find her at http:// www.gwensmith.com.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

Jock Talk

From page 12

and host organization (in World Outgames, there is little oversight or assistance once a host has paid its fee; in the Gay Games, committees of host and the FGG work together to share information and past experiences in the production of events). David Killian, site selection officer for the FGG, assured the members last October in Limerick, Ireland that largely because GLISA did not have a tested site selection process in place, site selection was going forward under the Gay Games name using established past practices.

Local bid talks resurrected

After the Bay Area Reporter published a report March 10 indicating that lack of interest by the city of San Francisco had stalled efforts on a San Francisco bid to host Gay Games 2022 – the 40th anniversary of when the first Gay Games were held in San Francisco – organizers and city officials resurrected talks regarding a bid. Local sports activists Ken Craig and Doug Litwin said they have met with representatives of the mayor’s office, are submitting a requested information document before an April

Political Notebook

From page 5

Francisco Bay Chapter’s Northern Alameda County Group. His reason for serving on the DCCC, said Kelley, is “to elect progressive Democrats,” particularly in “the more purple parts of the county” down in Dublin and Livermore “where we still have Republicans who can credibly win in the county.” Rosales, 66, a graphic artist, has previously served on the DCCC and in 2010 lost her bid to unseat gay Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington. She is the Northern California vice chair of the California Democratic Party’s Women’s Caucus and has been serving as a non-voting associate member of the DCCC since 2010. “As somebody who is really active in the Democratic Party, it is good to be able to vote when important issues come to the floor. You don’t feel included if you can’t put your stamp on what you are standing up for,” said Rosales, who escaped the Philippines during the rule of dictator Ferdinand Marcos to immigrate to the U.S. She told the B.A.R. she feels good about her chances in the race, as she is well known in local political circles and has lined up a wealth of endorsements. “I feel very confident, except running against incumbents, people always say it is very hard to unseat incumbents. However, I already am very visible in the community, so I am hoping that will help me as I have

LGBT detainees

From page 1

itary confinement,” the group said in a news release. The report – “Do you see how much I’m suffering here?” – is available at http://www.hrw.org.

San Francisco concerns

In San Francisco, the sheriff ’s department, which oversees the city’s jails, has also been addressing its treatment of trans inmates. Former Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi announced last year he planned to stop classifying transgender inmates who have not had surgery according to their birth sex. The existing policy has meant that many trans women are housed in men’s facilities. In an interview Tuesday, Eileen Hirst, chief of staff for current Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, said the agency hopes to start moving trans women into the jail that houses cis women in mid-April. New guidance posted last week

15 FGG deadline, and are seeking assistance from a local 501(c)3 nonprofit to make the bid. If the bid goes forward, a nonprofit organization would need to be in place by June 30 and a bidding fee of $2,500 paid to the FGG. By then Litwin will also be forced into a tough choice – whether to remain on the FGG board as marketing director, or resign to focus efforts on an SF bid. Killian said about 30 cities have expressed initial interest. In the meantime, registration is about to open for the 2017 World Outgames in Miami and the 2018 Gay Games in Paris. Miami has no information about how its sports will be run on its website, http:// www.outgames.org, but says it expects to launch registration in April for World Outgames 4, to run May 26 through June 4, 2017. Venue and tournament information is available for sports on Paris’ website, http://www.paris2018.com, for Gay Games X, to run August 4-12, 2018. Paris organizers said their registration system will open in May with a special early registration fee expected to be available online May 13-31; after that, fees will go up on a regular basis throughout the rest of the registration period.t good name recognition,” she said. Moore, 52, is one of 16 people running for 10 DCCC seats in the 18th Assembly District. A senior adviser to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf who ran her 2014 campaign, Moore is a longtime Democratic Party activist who worked on President Barack Obama’s campaigns. A onetime candidate for city council in Oakland, Moore has never ran for a DCCC seat until this year. “I thought it was time to do it,” said Moore of her decision to enter the race. “I have been engaged in the past few years in Democratic politics on the national, statewide and always the local level.” She pointed to the work she did with Organizing for America, the group that emerged from Obama’s campaign, as helping to educate her about the Democratic Party across the state. “I did a lot of work for the statewide party in my partnership with it as a political director for Organizing for America,” said Moore, adding that she intends to campaign hard for a DCCC seat. “I definitely will do the best I can to educate voters on what this body does. It is important to make sure we continue to have good leadership on this body.”t Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reported the who SF’s LGBT Dem clubs are backing in their city’s DCCC race.

by the National Prison Rape Elimination Act Resource Center “makes clear that housing transgender people based solely on sexual anatomy is not ‘case by case,’” according to a news release from the National Center for Transgender Equality and Just Detention International. “Instead, detention facilities must seriously consider all factors relevant to keeping a person safe, including their gender identity ... .” Chris Daley, who serves as Just Detention’s deputy director and has been working with the San Francisco Sheriff ’s Department on the issue, said in an email that the agency “is currently not in compliance with this guidance, but Sheriff Hennessy continues to push hard to increase safety for transgender people in her jails. I’m optimistic that we’ll see an interim housing policy that brings the department into compliance in the near future thanks to her commitment to this issue.”t

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-16-551899

In the matter of the application of: MICHAEL LEE WOODIN C/O GINA GEMELLO, SBN 282964, AIDS LEGAL REFERRAL PANEL, 1663 MISSION ST #500, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner MICHAEL LEE WOODIN, is requesting that the name MICHAEL LEE WOODIN, be changed to MICHAEL LEE BROKAW. 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 14th of April 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MARCH 10, 17, 24, 31, 2016 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-16-551921

In the matter of the application of: YIN FUN CHOY, 516 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner YIN FUN CHOY, is requesting that the name YIN FUN CHOY, be changed to CHRISTY YIN FUN CHOY. 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 28th of April 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MARCH 10, 17, 24, 31, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036970100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BOF COMPANY, 215 14TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BRENDAN O’FLAHERTY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/02/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/02/16.

MARCH 10, 17, 24, 31, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036955700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SKALLIWAGS PET CARE, 1186 FLORIDA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GLYNIS RADELMAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/16.

MARCH 10, 17, 24, 31, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036974400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EVENT SOLUTIONS, 118 TURK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARICHELLE S. DIZON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/04/16.

MARCH 10, 17, 24, 31, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036978500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TSM GENERAL CONTRACTOR, 5191 3RD ST #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed THOMAS STOCKDALE MILLER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/81. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/08/16.

MARCH 10, 17, 24, 31, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036978300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: METTA, 421 BRYANT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PAPERO INC. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/22/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/08/16.

MARCH 10, 17, 24, 31, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036979700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NAVAJO CARE HOME, 108 BOSWORTH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed REYNALDO SALAZAR & CONCEPCION R. SALAZAR. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/08/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/08/16.

MARCH 10, 17, 24, 31, 2016 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-16-551887

In the matter of the application of: TERESA HART LAU, 1339 20TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner TERESA HART LAU, is requesting that the name GREYSEN JOSHUA CHAU, be changed to GREYSEN JOSHUA LAU. 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 10th of May 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016

NOTICE OF FAMILY COURT ACTION IN THE FAMILY COURT FOR THE STATE OF DELAWARE IN AND FOR SUSSEX COUNTY FILE NO: CS16-01334

To: Robert Dervaes, Respondent Petitioner, Kristine Dervaes has filed a Petition for Custody against you in the Family Court of the State of Delaware in and for Sussex County on February 25, 2016. If you do not file an answer with the Family Court within 20 days after publication of this notice, exclusive of the date of publication, as required by statute, this action will be heard in Family Court without further notice. Petition No.: 16-06297 dated 03/09/2016, signed Thomas E. Gay, Esquire, Stumpf, Vickers & Sandy, P.A., 8 West Market Street, Georgetown, Delaware 19947. Phone (302) 856-3561 To: Robert Dervaes, Respondent Petitioner, Kristine Dervaes has filed a Petition for Divorce against you in the Family Court of the State of Delaware in and for Sussex County on February 25, 2016. If you do not file an answer with the Family Court within 20 days after publication of this notice, exclusive of the date of publication, as required by statute, this action will be heard in Family Court without further notice. Petition No.: 16-06597, dated 03/09/2016, signed Thomas E. Gay, Esquire, Stumpf, Vickers & Sandy, P.A., 8 West Market Street, Georgetown, Delaware 19947. Phone (302) 856-3561

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-16-551937

In the matter of the application of: JOANNE MICHELLE RAMIREZ, 909 FRANKLIN ST #7, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JOANNE MICHELLE RAMIREZ is requesting that the name JOANNE MICHELLE RAMIREZ, aka JOANNE M. RAMIREZ, aka JOANNE RAMIREZ, be changed to JOANNE MICHELE CUENCA. 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 3rd of May 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036959800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MAURI PHOTOGRAPHY, 1000 PENNSYLVANIA AVE #8, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MAURIZIO BRONZETTI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/25/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/25/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036989500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KING’S CONSTRUCTION CO, 319 HOLLOWAY AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PAK KIN LO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/14/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036977400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HRMONIK, 2261 MARKET ST #450A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANN JEAN-PHILIPPE DUTREUIL. 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 03/08/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036985200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DROMONE TRUCKING, 945 TARAVAL ST #142, SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed FECHIN MCCORMACK. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/10/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036991700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POKE BAR, 1355 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BLUBERD 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 03/15/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036983700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NORCAL CARPLANET INC, 2200 CESAR CHAVEZ ST #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NORCAL CARPLANET 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 03/09/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036993300

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036982100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BJ’S ELECTRIC BIKE TOURS; JB ROAD BIKE TOURS, 2715 HYDE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed AMERICAN SCOOTER & CYCLE RENTALS (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/09/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/09/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036992700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOL AMBIANCE, 5522 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed FLORAL AMBIANCE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/05/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/15/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036968801

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BRYAN ROBERTS SALON LLC; PRIMA FACIE, 561 CASTRO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed BRYAN ROBERTS SALON LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/11/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/02/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036988300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE LOST CHURCH LLC, 65 CAPP ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed THE LOST CHURCH LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036980200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE PAN AMERICAN, 730 O’FARRELL ST #11, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed MOJITO EFFECT LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/08/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/08/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036982300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: UNIVERSAL MARTIAL ARTS ACADEMY, 4348 3RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed UNIVERSAL MARTIAL ARTS ACADEMY (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/18/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/09/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036976000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CUSTOM FIT, 1844 MARKET ST, RETAIL #2, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CUSTOM FIT LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/07/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/07/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036951500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RADDISH, 3201 23RD ST #102, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed RADDISH INC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/22/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036951400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NOMA, 3201 23RD ST #102, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed NOMA LLC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/22/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/16.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016, STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-033314300

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: DIOGENES, 1000 PENNSYLVANIA AVE #8, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business was conducted by MAURIZIO BRONZETTI and signed by MAURIZIO BRONZETTI. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/01/11.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-034577300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUSHI HON, 2598 HARRISON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed MINS GROUP, 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 03/15/16.

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: DOLCI BEAUTY, 1521 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business was conducted by a corporation and signed by HOA - LAVIE BEAUTY INC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/12/12.

MARCH 17, 24, 31, APRIL 07, 2016

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Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036987400

The

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036998300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THUNDERDOG; THUNDERDOG DESIGNS; THUNDERDOG PET CARE, 4620 17TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ERIC FLANIKEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/02. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/11/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ROOH, 333 BRANNAN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed GOOD TIMES RESTAURANTS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037002600

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036469400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LA MOTO JAVA, 498 9TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed MIKE RITTER, ANALUCIA MERCEDES CARRERA & KIMBERLY DANNER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/21/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036998400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NOMAN COFFEE CO, 438 TEHAMA ST #B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed NICHOLAS DANBY, ALEX REYES, RUBEN MARQUEZ & DIEGO GOMEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/15/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036979200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE WOMEN’S BUILDING, 3543 18TH ST #8, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed THE WOMEN’S CENTER2 INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/93. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/08/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037003300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUSHI RAW #3, 682 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NEW CONCEPT SUSHI INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/21/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036984700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AD ART, INC; AD ART SIGN COMPANY; AD ART ELECTRONIC SIGN SYSTEMS; AA SIGN & LIGHTING MAINTENANCE, 150 EXECUTIVE PARK BLVD #2100, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed AD ART, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/30/03. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL, 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036989400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE PORK EXCHANGE, 1471 17TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SOALFOOD INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/14/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037003000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KAYLA JEANNE AESTHETICS, 1905 UNION ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed KNKI LLC, (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/24/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/21/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036990900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 9TH ST PUB, 399 9TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CITY COMMERCIAL INVESTMENTS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/23/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/15/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL, 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036998500

Classifieds

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: FLOURISH SKIN CARE AND WAXING, 1905 UNION ST #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by KNKI LLC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/06/15.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036992800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: INOODLES, 1650 HOLLOWAY AVE #SB106, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed INOODLES2 LLC, (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 03/15 /16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-035854600

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: KAZU TRADING CO, 1333 PACIFIC AVE #K, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by GARSON LAU. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/27/14.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036621100

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: YUMWOK, 1650 HOLLOWAY AVE #C134, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by INOODLES2 LLC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/07/15.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 STATEMENT OF WITHDRAWAL FROM THE PARTNERSHIP OPERATING UNDER USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-032269000

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: SUSHI RAW #3, 682 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business was conducted by a general partnership and signed by NEW CONCEPT SUSHI INC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/23/09.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037019600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: YOUNGS IMPORT EXPORT, 238 TEDDY AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JASON YOUNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/28/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/28/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036979300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GEMS, 120 PORTOLA DR #9, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GEORGIA MCDANIEL. 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 03/08/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037019800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LA PETITE NAIL SHOP, 601 KANSAS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BOI CAM CO. 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 03/28/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037005200

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Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037014300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAIGON BARBEQUE, 331 THORNTON AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed ACCENT HOAHUU DO; TINA LUONG; HOANG Q. NGUYEN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/24/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037007700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CROWDTORCH; LAUGHSTUB; TUNESTUB; ELECTROSTUB; 660 MARKET ST FLOOR 4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed VENDINI INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/03/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/23/16.

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037018000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HEALTHSHERPA; HEALTHSHERPA INSURANCE AGENCY; 530 BRANNAN ST #202, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed GEOZONING INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/06/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/25/16.

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MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037016200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SFREALESTATE.COM, 6033 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PHONE 415.861.5019 FAX CLEANING 861-8144 PHONE 415.861.5019 FAX 861-8144 SFREALESTATE ENTERPRISES (CA). The PROFESSIONAL – registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name 26 Years Exp. (415) 794-4411 or names on NA. The statement was filed with Roger Miller the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/24/16.

395 Ninth CAS.F. CA 395Street NinthS.F. Street

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037022300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POKE BOWL, 1250 OCEAN AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, 94112. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed POKE BOWLS INC. 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 03/29/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BLONDI’S; EUROGIRLS; EUROPINK; CALIFORNIA CATERERS; 537 JONES ST #2166, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VITA CAMPISI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/22/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/22/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WASH CYCLES, 2241 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CHACHINGLY 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 03/21/16.

MARCH 24, 31, APRIL 07, 14, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037003600

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037022700

MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037000400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: A-GAME EXPRESS LLC, 615 JOHN MUIR DR #420, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed A-GAME EXPRESS 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 03/21/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUNNY’S GLOBAL SHOPPING, 467 7TH AVE #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed QING ZHENG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/29/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/29/16.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PANERA BREAD, 301 KING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 95158. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed PAN NORCAL LLC, (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/07/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/18/16.

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MARCH 31, APRIL 07, 14, 21, 2016 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037002200

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Barbra story

Dragon tale

Nebraska voyage

Vol. 46 • No. 13 • March 31-April 6, 2016

www.ebar.com/arts

Premieres aplenty at NCTC

Out &About

O&A

The Roxie schedule promises some rare treats this month.

rash Ttrilogy

screens by Sari Staver

Harvey Fierstein’s Casa Valentina (seen here in its Broadway production) will open New Conservatory Theatre Center’s 35th season with a look at a 1960s haven where straight men could act and dress as women.

by Richard Dodds

ew Conservatory Theatre Center’s New Play Development Lab will be paying back on its investment with three world premieres in its 201617 season, ranging from a biographical drama about blues singer Alberta Hunter

to a contemporary take on the wartime bromance between Achilles and Patroclus of Ancient Greece. The slate of eight plays, recently announced by Artistic Director Ed Decker, is filled out with regional and West Coast premieres in addition to its fourth holiday production of Avenue Q. See page 24 >>

hree notorious, noxious and beloved 1970s comedies – Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living – will be screened at an upcoming John Waters retrospective at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St. in San Francisco, April 4-10. See page 28 >>

Matthew Murphy

Courtesy Roxie

Art comes to Minnesota St. by Sura Wood

o anyone who’s paying attention, it’s no secret that the landscape of San Francisco’s art scene is rapidly changing. Due to escalating real estate values, astronomical rents and flourishing tech companies willing to pay them, many commercial galleries have lost their leases and been forced to leave downtown, Union Square and 49 Geary in particular. Some have shifted to Oakland or other parts of the city; some are reestablishing their businesses online or have shut their doors entirely. See page 30 >>

Enrique Chagoya, “Somewhere Yesterday (Here and Now)” (2016), acrylic and water-based oil on Amate paper mounted on canvas, part of the exhibition Mindful Savage’s Guide to Reverse Modernism. Courtesy Anglim Gilbert Gallery

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

“EXHILARATING . . . IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST!”

—San Francisco Chronicle

OR PERF

CE MAN

APRI

A DDE

T 7P A 0 1 L

CREATED BY JON BEAVERS, KRISTOFFER DIAZ, CASEY LEE HURT, IAN MERRIGAN, AND RAMIZ MONSEF DIRECTED BY SHANA COOPER

ACT-SF.ORG | 415.749.2228 A.C.T.’S STRAND THEATER

<< Out There

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

What’s the buzz up on the roof?

by Roberto Friedman

ast week found Out There reeling rooftop as we attended the press unveiling of a new Rooftop Bee Sanctuary and Cocktail Herb Garden at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. Hotel General Manager Michael Pace led the tour on a rainy weekday night up to the bees’ new digs up on the hostelry roof. This involved taking the elevator to the 16th floor, attaining a terrace, then climbing a slippery steel ladder up to the roof. Beekeeper Roger Garrison’s hives are home to tens of thousands of the little buzzing creatures. Honeybees, these ones native to California, will fly up to three miles from their hives to find their pollen. The lazy ones scoot over to Huntington Park close by on Nob Hill, while the adventurous ones fly west to check out Golden Gate Park for the good stuff. The hives face southwest so that the sun wakes them up in the morning to go out and forage. Just like OT! The Clift’s bee program is a communal initiative with 10 other SF hotels. That’s a lot of honey. Back downstairs at the hotel’s over-80year-old iconic bar the Redwood Room, we dried off and dug into the new spring menu. The bees’ handiwork can be sampled in two new cocktails, and we did: the 49er Tea Time, black tea-infused whiskey, housemade honey syrup, lemon juice; and the Peerless Purple, housemade lavender-infused gin, housemade honey syrup, lemon juice, lavender

Courtesy Clift Hotel

Beekeeper Roger Garrison tends his hives at the Clift Hotel’s new Rooftop Bee Sanctuary.

San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas was invited by The New York Times to participate in their Look West

speaker series, talks designed to bring innovators in the arts, media, and technology onstage for engaging discussions with Times journalists before live audiences through the Western U.S. OT was in the house when the Times hosted the event in SoundBox last Tuesday, a conversation between MTT and Times classical music and dance reporter Michael Cooper. MTT, much missed in SF after three months off-podium, was his usual charming self, articulate and compelling when he spoke about the almost ineffable properties of classical music. Did it whet our appetite for some upcoming SFS concerts? It did. Through April 10, MTT is leading two weeks of programs in anticipation of the SFS’ tour to the east coast in April, which visits Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and NJPAC. The first week pairs Schumann’s

passion for singing was matched only by her lack of love. Marguerite opens on April Fool’s Day at Landmark Embarcadero. Marguerite is a fictional French riposte to an upcoming Hollywood film named for actual historical, hysterical personage Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944). You can find the real Flo-J on YouTube and judge for yourself whether there’s a voice there, despite her inability to stay on pitch, or whether she was lost in a dream of singing enabled by her wealth, vanity, and social connections. Whoever’s telling the

story, the delusional diva emerges as a complex character, equal parts idiocy and surrender, aspiration and ineptitude, folly and drive. There have been several stage plays, notably Peter Quilter’s Glorious! Perhaps the most mindboggling treatment is Donald Collup’s meticulous documentary Florence Foster Jenkins: A World of Her Own (2008). French actress Catherine Frot plays Marguerite as an enigma, which is poetic. Frot (the T is silent) has a fullmoon face, with great round cheekbones and lips reminiscent of Lillian Gish. She is not conventionally

bitters; as well as in new menu items such as Compressed Watermelon Salad with lavender-infused honey, pumpernickel crisp, chevre, and Sausalito watercress. The Clift’s Executive Chef Thomas Weibull is also offering AdoboStyle Baby Back Ribs with red cabbage & lemongrass mango slaw, a Vietnamese Chicken Bun with pickled veggies & garlic chives, and a Pixto Platter, tapas with house honey. Try them all out during the Clift’s Decompression Hour, Mon.-Thurs., 5-7 p.m. We came, we saw, we decompressed.

Talking music

Music drives her mad by Erin Blackwell

inging is the most personal of the arts. Your body is your instrument. You sing with the same vocal cords that laugh, cry, moan, seeking to transform brute expression into musical patterns. Nowadays, most of us get our music electronically, and singing has been outsourced to professionals whose performances are perfected digitally. Because of the social risk inherent in singing, many people are too terrified to try. A new French film tells the story of one rich white woman whose

NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER PRESENTS

“It’s seriously funny!” —NY TIMES

Join us for Thursday Night Trivia! Pre-show at 7pm Enjoy drinks, music and trivia fun HOSTED BY MARTUNI’S HEADLINER JOE WICHT APR 7, 14, 21

“This show will go down like ‘butta’!” — E N T E R TA I N M E N T W E E K LY

Robert Rushin will perform on Saturdays Apr 2, 9 & 16 at 2pm

Bill Swerbenski

MTT will lead two weeks of programs with the San Francisco Symphony.

My Gaze///Yr Gaze is a queer film series curated by Irwin Swirnoff on the first Sunday of every month at Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St. in the Mission. This Sunday, April 3, at 6

p.m., the series presents Speculative Genealogies and Precarious Futures, an evening screening of short films by Desirée Holman, Việt Lê, and Rudy Lemcke. Ready for their descriptions? They’re a mouthful! Fantastical and absurd, Holman’s Troglodyte (2005) investigates ideas of violence, sex, animism, and nurturance by animating a primal horde of chimp-like creatures. Lemcke’s (Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude (2014) poetically reimagines the Orpheus myth by juxtaposing his fantastical fairy world alongside Jean Cocteau’s queer classic Orphée. Việt Lê’s Eclipse (Ruby) (2015) takes viewers on a multisensory poetic journey of trans-diasporic movement and meaning accompanied by music from controversial, legendary musician Dai Lam Linh. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and guest curator Tina Takemoto. Free and open to the public.t

beautiful, neither is she plain. Something perfectly unworldly lights her features. Frot acts in this film chiefly with her eyes, which register not only emotion but such subtle shadings as a bewilderment that dare not speak its name. We can glimpse inside her sensitive regard a swirling tide pool of inchoate impressions and impulses vying for a grasp on reality that never comes. Marguerite is surrounded by men, who seem to be gay, maybe because they surround her, but in some cases turn out not to be, at least for narrative purposes. Her chief enabler is not her husband, who hates her musical pretensions, has a mistress on the side, and makes elaborate excuses involving a temperamental automobile for his inability to sit through the torment of her recitals. A fantastic character called Madelbos serves Madame in the triple capacity of chauffeur, photographer, and accompanist. He is played by Denis Mpunga, a Belgian actor of Congolese descent, with an intensity that recalls Eric von Stroheim’s butlering for Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, that masterpiece on the madness of make-believe. Mpunga never smirks. Marguerite is paralleled by a young woman named Hazel, a singer who has all the gifts the older woman

was denied: talent, technique, and naturalness. Hazel has a boyfriend, one of those men I thought was gay, a music critic who’s part of a young gang of avant-gardists who sincerelyironically enjoy Marguerite for her Dada dissonance. My favorite part of the film is Marguerite’s brief immersion in the world of experimental performance, singing “La Marseillaise” for an audience of anti-war anarchists. It’s a good niche for her. She makes an authentic contribution. Alas, she wants to be taken seriously by classical music snobs. Director Xavier Giannoli, working from a screenplay co-written with Marcia Romano, is not trying to make us laugh at a woman making a fool of herself. For that, Bravo. Neither does he offer any sentimental psychologisms for Marguerite’s outlandish attempts to pass herself off as a diva. Marguerite’s singing master, played by Atos Pezzini as equal parts dedicated artist, penniless con man, and compassionate guru, might or might not be responsible for her drift into madness. No matter. Fictional Marguerite, like her factual Manhattan counterpart, followed her dream where it led. As Florence Foster Jenkins said, “Some may say I couldn’t sing, but no one can say I didn’t sing.”t

Symphony No. 2 with three lesserknown Copland works, and the second week features Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with mezzosoprano Sasha Cooke and heroic tenor Simon O’Neill. From April 20-29 come guest conductor Pablo Heras-Casado’s two weeks, and as usual he brings programs featuring an array of composers. In the first week, he is joined by the amazing Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter, and during the second week, he leads the world premiere of much-buzzed-about composer Mason Bates’ Auditorium, an SFS commission. It’s time to attend the Symphony. Find tickets and info at sfsymphony.org.

Future shock

WRITTEN BY JONATHAN TOLINS DIRECTED BY REBECCA LONGWORTH STARRING J. CONR AD FR ANK

MAR 18–APR 24, 2016 BUY TICKETS AT NCTCSF.ORG BOX OFFICE: 415. 861. 8972 25 VAN NESS AVE AT MARKET ST

Courtesy of Cohen Media Group

Catherine Frot as the title character in Marguerite, directed by Xavier Giannoli, which opens on April Fool’s Day.

Theatre>>

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Boulevard of Streisand dreams by Richard Dodds

t what point does overcompensation turn into mania? Never, if you’ve got the bucks and a secure location. And if your name is Barbra Streisand, you may even be able to document, market, and feed that mania all at the same time. Welcome to the Babs Cave. Buyer & Cellar takes place in a quaint burrow of shops that Streisand had built beneath one of the buildings on her Malibu compound to house her memorabilia. It gets a chapter deep into her 2010 coffeetable book My Passion for Design, which offers photos and prose by Streisand, recordings of her meticulously good-taste makeover of the interiors that compromise her home, but playwright Jonathan Tolins (The Last Sunday in June) zeroed in on this one component. Tolins’ play was an off-Broadway hit of 2013, and it played the Curran Theatre the following year with original star Michael Urie. New Conservatory Theatre Center is now presenting Buyer & Cellar, and if the production seems a bit close on the heels of the original, it’s worth a revisit because the material is so darn funny and laced with sincerely poignant moments, and

Lois Tema

J. Conrad Frank plays an unemployed actor hired by Barbra Streisand to tend to her little shopping village in her basement in Buyer & Cellar, now at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

because J. Conrad Frank (aka Katya Smirnoff-Skyy), for whom the play was specifically chosen, brings his own finesse and shadings to the central character. The notion of your own private little street of “shoppes” with essentially only one customer is comic enough, but you need an outsider’s point of view to play off Streisand’s to create a piece of theater. And so Tolins invents Alex More, a mostly

unemployed actor in Hollywood recently fired from his gig as the mayor of Toontown at Disneyland, who is hired to dress like a merchant from some period-piece musical, keeping the collections tidy and dusted, and essentially just be there in case Streisand pays a visit. Alex finds he can draw out the warily private Streisand by embracing his role with his training in improv – creating heartwarming

backstories for the antique dolls, for example – and by providing a quietly empathic ear for the insecurities, resentments, and past hurts that always seem to be roiling beneath Streisand’s lacquered veneer. Something of a friendship develops, but we all know it’s built on eggshells and won’t sustain any deviation from the accepted scenario. The collapse feels contrived, and is one of the few missteps in Tolins’ script. Alex mostly talks to the audience, lending sardonic observations of his experiences. “The leaves on the trees shimmered like sequins on Liza Minnelli,” he notes on first driving onto the estate, before noticing the color-coordinated fish in the koi pond. Once inside, he immediately focuses on a mannequin wearing a costume from Funny Girl, the “People” dress, and Alex begins to feel like “a little girl in Fatima blinded by a vision of the eternal.” Under Rebecca Longworth’s carefully honed direction, Frank knows how to mix the outlandish with nuanced understatement. He tells us at the start that he doesn’t “do” Streisand – a specific impersonation, that is – and his moments recreating her appearances in the basement mall bring a touch of parody to words and emotions that are also

recognizably genuine from her interviews and public statements. Frank also plays Streisand’s somewhat thick husband, James Brolin, who makes a brief visit to check out his wife’s new confidante, but more fun are Frank’s recreations of conversations with his boyfriend, Barry, a struggling screenwriter who aims to puncture Alex’s increasingly glowing tales of his days with Streisand. It angers him that “this incredibly privileged, powerful woman still acts like a Dickensian victim.” Frank creates a strong contrast between the bewitched Alex and the cynical Barry while still maintaining humor in each. Barry’s condensed summation of The Mirror Has Two Faces is hilariously devastating and pretty close to the truth. Frank’s occasional stumbles over dialogue (at least on opening night) are more jarring than they might be in other circumstances. But this is also a testament to how fully Frank is able to pull us into the strange little world that his character gets to briefly occupy.t Buyer & Cellar will run at New Conservatory Theatre Center through April 24. Tickets are $25$45. Call (415) 861-8972 or go to nctcsf.org.

Faustian bargains by Richard Dodds

hatever may be a good definition for the opposite of linear, other than the reductive “non-linear,” a lexicographer might want to use Deal with the Dragon as a helpful example. Where the play starts and where it ends are recognizable as compatible bookends, but the 65-minute journey is almost giddy in its detours. Because the writing in its individual scenes is so evocative, and Kevin Rolston’s performance as all the characters so imaginatively detailed, we are happy to set off wherever he and his collaborator-director M. Graham Smith want to take us. A Best of the Fringe honoree in the 2014 festival, Deal with the Dragon has been further honed and is having its world premiere in ACT’s Costume Shop along the mid-Market corridor. While it’s not immediately clear that this is going to be a Faustian affair, it’s not much of a spoiler to reveal that it is. The ostensible setup in the first scenes

involves an aspiring artist, Keegan, and an assistant, Brenn, who is there to help him prepare for a chance at a museum showcase. While Keegan is meekly insecure, the man there to cater to his needs is a mercurial German who can erupt at any moment or be as sweet as honey. When Brenn receives an unsatisfactory cappuccino, he hammers away at the barista. “Listen to the milk,” he says with Teutonic authority. “Can you not hear her scream?” To comfort his childlike charge, he conjures a donut out of thin air and breathes sleep onto the artist with a huff and a puff, but not before telling him a bedside story. It’s a long and involved tale about a cursed little boy, and even diverts into the boy’s own fairytale creation within the fairytale. The framing story can be alternately light and dark, with a devil-like dragon ending it all on a cruel note meant to be a cautionary tale to Keegan: Don’t mess with a fire-breathing benefactor. But Keegan wants out from his obligation to Brenn, and we see

Kenny Yun

Kevin Rolston plays a variety of characters in the solo show Deal with the Dragon that follows two artists and their mysterious patron on a quest for success.

the results of a benefactor scorned. Brenn then turns his attentions to Gandy, who had been Keegan’s main competition for the museum’s patronage. And now it’s time for

a swerve into another storytelling journey. Although Gandy is not an alcoholic, he finds himself as a standin speaker at an AA meeting. Being a recovering drug and sex addict, he

knows the drill and talks about his addictions in both harrowing and hilarious fashions. One of his shared memories is of masturbating in a motel to thoughts of Oliver! villain Bill Sykes – “as you do,” he says, as if it is a common fantasy. And when he first heard the slogan “It gets better,” he just assumed it was about porn. Rolston creates a distinct personality with individual idiosyncrasies for each character, and altogether it’s a tour de force performance without necessarily crossing into bravura territory. Deal with the Devil offers a strange and meandering story that may not shine many fresh insights into Faustian bargains, and while its individual pieces don’t necessarily make for a tidy whole, those pieces are almost always able to pull us into each of their little worlds.t Deal with the Devil will run at ACT’s Costume Shop through April 16. Tickets are $25, and are available at dealwiththedragon. com.

Gay teen meets homophobia by David-Elijah Nahmod

irector Matt Sobel’s Take Me to the River is a dark, intense drama about a gay California teen’s disturbing weekend at a homophobic family reunion in Nebraska. As Ryder (Logan Miller) and his parents drive to the farm where Mom grew up, Ryder’s parents urge him not to mention his homosexuality to the relatives. “Are you not going to tell them you’re Jewish?” Ryder asks his Dad. But he agrees to keep quiet. Or does he? At the family picnic, Ryder parades in front of his conservative aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmother in his tightest shorts. His openly hostile cousins laugh at him. Only nine-year-old Molly (Ursula Parker) accepts Ryder. But when she emerges from the barn screaming and bloody, Ryder is suspected of abuse. The film then takes on a much darker tone as Ryder’s bitterly resentful, overtly “macho” Uncle Keith (Josh Hamilton) seeks to “make amends.” A bone-chilling sequence

Film Movement

Scene from director Matt Sobel’s Take Me to the River, opening at Bay Area moviehouses on Friday.

follows in which the “friendly” Keith invites Ryder to lunch, interrogates him about his life, then teaches him how to handle a gun. Beneath the fake smile and icy stare of Uncle Keith lies a homophobic monster. Hamilton is wonderful in this difficult role.

Director Sobel spoke to the B.A.R. about what he was trying to convey. “This is a coming-of-age story for our 17-year-old protagonist,” Sobel explained. “But unlike other films that touch upon those same pivotal

moments of maturation, it doesn’t end with him becoming galvanized or more sure of himself. He arrives in Nebraska with a black-and-white understanding of the situation and his family, quite sure of himself and his moral high ground, but leaves back to

California profoundly shaken.” Sobel said he hoped the story would start conversations among audiences. “By leaving negative space in the narrative, I wanted to invite viewers’ fears, assumptions and suspicions into the story,” he said. “The audience co-creates the film with us so that by the time the credits roll, one might turn to the friend they came to the theater with and discover that each saw slightly different stories. The film begs the question: Did I see what I wanted to see?” Sobel points out that this mirrors what happens onscreen as the story unfolds. “Just like the family members at the reunion, who didn’t see what happened at the barn, but based on their assumptions, are asked to make a snap judgment,” he said. “The film asks the audience to do the same.”t Take Me to the River opens on Fri., April 1, at Landmark’s Opera Plaza in SF and Shattuck in Berkeley.

<< Theatre

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

Blues singer Alberta Hunter is the subject of Jewel Gomez’s Leaving the Blues, one of three plays having its world premiere in NCTC’s 2016-17 season.

Del Shores’ play Sordid Lives will finally make its SF debut as part of NCTC’s upcoming season.

NCTC’s new season

From page 21

This will be NCTC’s 35th anniversary season for what was widely perceived as simply a gay theater in its early years, a designation that was consistent with the times but can no longer box in the work being produced. Officially, the theater calls itself an LGBQIA theater – the “A” standing for “allied,” a subset that may find only tangential intersections with the specifics of what was once broadly called gay theater. It’s all a reflection of a changing society, as new issues have arisen for former outliers and new outliers are pushing at frontiers that were hardly perceived 35 years ago. Here are the productions that comprise NCTC’s upcoming season. Both eight- and seven-show subscriptions (without Avenue Q) are now on sale, as are four-show packages with a choice of any four shows in the season. Subscriptions are available at (415) 861-8972 or nctcsf.org. Casa Valentina (Oct. 7-Nov. 5) Harvey Fierstein’s 2014 Broadway play about men in drag is definitely not along the hemlines of his Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage aux Folles, and Kinky Boots. The time is the early 1960s, the setting a rundown

AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER presents

“WONDERFULLY WEIRD . . . INSPIRES HOWLS OF LAUGHTER AND A RANGE OF EMOTIONS” Bay Area News Group

“STUNNING! COMICALLY ABSURD . . . A DEEPLY FELT EXAMINATION OF WHAT WE DO WITH THIS LIFE.” TheaterDogs.net

“NOTHING SHORT OF INSPIRED!”

Photo by Kevin Berne.

San Francisco Chronicle

by Will Eno Directed by Loretta Greco

MUST CLOSE APR 3 AT A.C.T.’S GEARY THEATER

ACT-SF.ORG | 415.749.2228

colony of vacation cabins in the Catskills, and its occupants eight heterosexual men who make an annual escape to this haven where they can act and dress as women. Based on an actual place, the play looks at the men relaxing into this safe space even as an issue that will divide them is introduced: whether or not to allow gay cross-dressers to join the group. Sons of the Prophet (Nov. 11Dec. 18) Stephen Karam’s play, seen off-Broadway in 2011, aims at being both funny about and sensitive to the tragedies that befall us all, and about how those tragedies are distributed in wildly uneven fashion. The play focuses on Stephen, a gay man with a host of unexplained physical ailments, who must struggle to keep the family together after a prank, and the subsequent trial of the young prankster, causes his father’s death in a traffic accident. On top of all this, a disgraced publisher sees her way back to respectability by encouraging Joseph to write a memoir about his family’s journey when she discovers they’re distantly related to Kahlil Gibran of The Prophet fame. Avenue Q (December) Despite billing last year’s production as its “furwell tour,” the adult puppet musical returns for its fourth holiday run at NCTC. Daniel’s Husband (January) Michael McKeever’s play, first produced in Florida last year, looks at a gay couple who are split over whether to make use of their newfound freedom to marry. Michael doesn’t want to be “as ordinary as straights,” while Daniel (and his mother) deeply desires to be part of a married couple. It turns out that these opposing points of view have consequences beyond the ceremonial symbolism. Leaving the Blues (March) Jewel Gomez’s biographical drama is the first of the three world premieres of the season to emerge from NCTC’s play-development lab. In this play with music, Gomez explores the life of blues singer Alberta Hunter. The backstage story is framed by Hunter’s comeback in 1977 at age 82, after leaving behind her music career to work as a nurse for 20 years. The play takes her back to her harsh beginnings through to new acclaim, all the while living her offstage life as a lesbian. Gomez previously explored writer James Baldwin’s life in Waiting for Giovanni, produced by NCTC in 2011. Everything That’s Beautiful (March) Another of NCTC’s world premieres, Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder’s play at first seems to be about a couple who allow their 8-year-old child to live as a girl. They relocate to get a fresh start, before other, darker reasons for the move begin to surface. Wilder, an Alabama native, is best known for her play Gee’s Bend. Sordid Lives (May-June) NCTC has produced other plays by Del Shores (Southern Baptist Sissies, Yellow), and the playwright himself has appeared locally with his one-man shows, but somehow the play that started it all is only now having its SF debut. The 1996 play, which became a cult movie in 2000, follows three generations of a dysfunctional small-town Texas family as they prepare for what promises to be a very embarrassing funeral. warplay (June) NCTC closes its season with the third of its world premieres. JC Lee’s play takes its inspiration from Homer’s The Iliad, specifically its characters Achilles and Patroclus, celebrated warriors in Greek mythology whose close relationship gets a contemporary retelling. Lee’s earlier plays have been presented at multiple Bay Area theaters, and he has also written for such TV series as Looking, Girls, and How to Get Away with Murder.t

Books>>

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Tearoom meditations from Calcutta by Tim Pfaff

t’s idle but tempting to speculate what would have been the effect on the writing and reception of Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You if every publisher in London had not, a decade ago, rejected Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart, just released for the first time in the US (Norton). What the two novels share, though Mukherjee does not lead with it, is a stark evocation of gay male public-bathroom sex. At least in Greenwell’s case, the reading and book-buying public of all genders has found this titillating. It had been thought by some, hoped by others, that mention of this timeless, borderless zone of urban gay life, with its tensions, longueurs and bad smells, had been consigned to the pre-gay-matrimonial past by the hookup apps that now put casual (as if it were) gay sex back where it belongs, behind the closed bedroom doors of promiscuous gay men. As they say in app world, Ha! By comparison with Mukherjee’s, Greenwell’s view of tearoom trade can seem like so much pixilated Japanese porn. The Calcutta-born writer, shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize for his second novel The Lives of Others, has inserted into his first – like Greenwell’s, a novel about weightier things – an entire epistemology of the pissoir, and alumni will recognize the complete syllabus. Where Greenwell celebrates, Mukherjee looks on with a more natural-scientific, taxonomyoriented eye at the manners and mores of “cottaging” (in British Empire nomenclature), though hardly without feeling. He has brought it up for a reason. The reason, it turns out to no one’s surprise, is Mother. “On nights when the sound of footfalls becomes few and far between, he sits there and thinks of his

Courtesy BBC

A Life Apart author Neel Mukherjee: three story-lines converge.

mother and the lost innocence of the word ‘abuse.’ At other times he just sits away the hours in his cubicle thinking, ‘What would you think if you saw me now? This, this stench of urine and disinfectant and cock, this is what I am, not what you wanted me to be.’ And he punishes her more by staying on another extra hour when he knows there won’t be anyone else visiting the public toilets that night.” We meet Ritwik Ghosh, an unbeliever quickly perceiving that he is not alone in that or much else, attending to the chaotic Calcutta cremation ceremony for his mother. He senses through the ashes and “the dark slurry of putrefying matter which is the Ganges” that to be an orphan may also be the starting block to freedom, not from a cycle of endless rebirths but from the endless trials of this life, now that Ritwik is responsible for a deadbeat family as stagnant as the Ganges delta. We shortly learn that his mother, in a manifestation of parental love the neighbors can’t get enough of, has beaten him senseless over every behavioral infraction, stopping only

when he is curled up into a foetal ball, to “straighten him out so that she could have greater access to his body.” For kicking. From wooden ruler or belt, “The fiery flowers bloomed rapidly across his legs his thighs his back his scalp.” “Whenever she punished him physically, she came into a new being. It could only be called blossoming, as though all the forces in her, concentrated so far in a tight bud, had suddenly unfurled in a terrible beauty.” The orphaned Ritwik escapes to England for higher education in English literature and anonymous sex in all its varieties. At the peak or nadir of his compulsive, escapebased cottaging, Ritwik has become both an expert and a connoisseur, marveling at toilet-stall graffiti that translates a famous Gerard Manley Hopkins metaphysical poem into “Batter my arse, three persons at the door.” It is “an addiction,” “a habit,” “a thrill,” with a fear of discovery – arrest – at its core. There’s more in store for Ritwik when he leaves Oxford, and with it his official identity as an actual

person in England. There’s streetwalking (casually and almost without premeditation, but dangerously, as an independent, without a mafia boss) and being kept by a fabulously rich Saudi, none of which makes for a boring story, at least in Mukherjee’s telling. But what makes this book so astonishingly rich is the fabulist’s way both Ritwik and his creator escape the escapes. Returning from his first foray into “street” sex, Ritwik is visited by a memory of a Miss Gilby, a minor character with a three-minute walk-on in a Bengali film, Gharey Biarey. “What if he told her story?” This would hardly be a 21st-century first novel if someone in it were not writing a novel, but instead of that being something merely stated, Mukherjee gives us Ritwik’s novel, as compellingly about Partition in Bengal in the waning days of the Raj as it is about the now-remarkable Miss Gilby, interleaved with the chapters of Ritwik’s present-day story. Mukherjee turns out to be a master of plot with no need to devise a juggernaut of a postmodern “pluzzle” when instead he can weave three

distinct plot-lines, all of them charged with suspense but none of them a head-scratcher. In a final measure of writerly guts, he makes the story-lines converge satisfyingly – and yes, tragically – at the end. Birds are a big deal, and books about Indian ornithology, particularly the ones by turn-of-thecentury Violet Cameron. You could pull every character in this novel off a lineup, but you won’t soon be forgetting Anne Cameron, who gives Ritwik free board in exchange for caring for her in her altogether fascinating dotage. In the bath, “Anne is a submerged bird, a creature of hollowness, all air and insubstantiality, the broken doll of her body accentuated grotesquely by the way the bath water reflects her limbs and shriveled dugs and torso into slightly skewed sizes and perspectives.” She’s the real thing as a crone, pissing into her sofa – “the hot, comforting trickle, the gathering wetness under and around her like a leaking amniotic sac” – and stashing gin. And she has a cat, Ugo. But like a Norn in Wagner’s Ring, she draws into her pithy being everyone’s stories, including, in devastating fragments, that of her gay son Richard, who blew his brains out in the very room in which Ritwik stays. I’d be remiss telling more. What kept happening to me as I followed the saga of Ritwik Ghosh, young and slight of frame, was experiencing anew the steady stripping away of innocence from a soul that never had the childhood variety in the first place. In adventure after Dickensian misadventure, what otherwise might be called “pure experience” – particularly of violence of all kinds, and moments of redemption just frequent enough – Ritwik is dragged kicking and screaming into the nightmare of real adult life. There have been few books I could not put down. A Life Apart is one.t

<< Out&About

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

O& A

Artastic by Jim Provenzano

Sat 2 Colossal @ SF Playhouse

ometimes, an art exhibit, author talk or play is so clearly a must-see that you end up lying weeks later, pretending that you did see it. Don’t be left out! Catch some art this week. For nightlife fun, check out On the Tab in BARtab.

The Unfortunates @ Strand Theatre

Marga Gomez @ Brava Theatre Studio

The amazing must-see darkly comic blues-gospel-hip hop musical tells of Big Joe, a tough-talking soldier cursed with giant hands, who must face his dead friends and battle a plague in the Underworld. $35-$95. Tue-Sat 7:30pm. Wed, Sat Sun 2pm. Thru April 10. 1127 Market St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

The popular comic and solo performer workshops her 12th new show, Latin Standards, about her father, and creative obsessions. $10. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm with post-show discussion. Upstairs studio, 2781 24th St. at York. www.margagomez.com www.brava.org

Uninhibited About Sex @ Jewish Community Center

Mothers and Sons @ New Conservatory Theatre Center

New series of shows, lectures, talks and more, all about sexuality. Thru May 31. 3200 California St. 292-1200. www.jccsf.org/arts-ideas/uninhibited/

Jessia Palopoli

Human Rights Film Festival @ USF Presentation Theater

Thu 31 The Addams Family @ Berkeley Playhouse Brickman, Elice and Lippa’s fun musical adaptation based on the Charles Addams characters. $25-$40. Various times thru April 17. 2640 College Ave., Berkeley. (510) 8458542. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley The iconic New York dance company returns for its annual residency and three-program concert series. $36$1450. Tue-Sat 8pm. Also Tue 3pm, Sat 2pm. Thru April 3. Bancroft way at Dana, UC Berkeley campus. (510) 6429988. www.calperformances.org

Three-day screenings of films from around the world. thru April 3. 2350 Turk Blvd. www.usfca.edu/artssciences/about/human-rights-filmfestival

Literary Speakeasy @ Martuni’s The popular new monthly literary series, hosted by James J. Siegel, this time features writers Kwan Booth, Ocean Capewell, Lewis DeSimone, José Luis Gutiérrez, and musical guest Dawn Oberg on piano. No cover or drink minimum. 7pm. 4 Valencia St.

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs; now with new characters like Sia and Bernie Sanders. $25-$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

The Boys From Syracuse @ Eureka Theatre 42nd Street Moon’s new production of of the classic Abbot, Hart, Rodgers musical comedy adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. $25-$75. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri 8pm. sat 6pm. Sun 3pm. Thru April 17. 215 Jackson St. 255-8207. www.42ndstmoon.org

Colette Uncensored @ The Marsh Lori Holt’s new solo show tells the story of the famed French novelist’s pioneering feminist life. $20-$100. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru May 14. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Flower Show @ Macy’s Union Square 70th annual large-scale floral exhibit in the department store, with special events thru April 3. 170 O’Farrell at Powell. www.macys.com/flowershow

Ghosts/Ships @ MOAD Cheryl Patrice Derricote’s new exhibit of works visualizing the global slave trade. Also, Alison Saar’s Bearing, the acclaimed artist’s sculptures of Black women as a centerpiece. Free-$10. Thru April 3. Museum of the African Diaspora, 635 Mission St. www.moadsf.org

Fri 1

Marga Gomez @ Brava Theatre Studio Kent Taylor

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Mar. 31: Fellini’s City of Women (6pm, 8:45). April 1 & 2: The Hateful 8, Fri 7pm, Sat 3pm & 7pm. April 3: Inherent Vice (2:30, 8pm) and The Master (5:15). April 5: Carol (2:45, 7pm) and Mustang (5pm, 9:15). April 6: Pierrot Le Fou (7pm) and Breathless (5:15, 9:05). April 7: Disposable Film Festival (8pm). $11$16. 429 Castro St. castrotheatre.com

Night Vision, Silence @ Z Below Word for Word, the company that performs great short fiction, takes on Emma Donaghue and Colm Tóibín stories. $20-$55. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Thru April 3. 470 Florida St. (866) 811-4111. zspace.org

On Clover Road @ The Rueff SF Playouse’s production of Steven Dietz’ thriller about a lost mother and daughter. $20. Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm. Thru April 16. Upstairs studio at The Strand Theatre, 1127 Market St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

The Realistic Joneses @ Geary Theater American Conservatory Theatre’s production of Will Eno’s Broadway hit comedy about neighbors whose language collapses as they struggle to know each other. $25-$105. Special nights thru the run. Thru April 3. 415 Geary St. www.act-sf.org

Friends of the SF Public Library’s 6th annual massive sale of books, CDs, DVDs and more. 10am-6pm daily thru April 3. Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd. www.friendssfpl.org

Timothy Stewart-Winter @ GLBT History Museum The Rutgers professor and author of Queer Clout discusses his book on the history of the U.S. gay rights movement. $5. 7pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

The Boys From Syracuse @ Eureka Theatre David Allen

An Act of God @ Golden Gate Theatre

Colossal @ SF Playhouse Andrew Hinderaker’s strikingly staged drama about a gay athlete, disability and recovery, with a drum corps and dancing football players. $25-$100. Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri &Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm, Sun 2pm. Thru April 30. 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Hamlet @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ new innovative production of the classic Shakespeare tragedy includes performers (who’ve learned the entire play) pulling their roles for the night from Yurick’s skull! Previews thru April 20. Wed-Sun thru May 15. In repertory June 10-Jan, 2017. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Sean Hayes ( Will & Grace ) stars in the touring production of David Javerbaum’s hilarious Broadway comedy about God, who explains, well, everything. $ Tue-Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm. Sun 1pm & 6:30pm. Thru April 17. 1 Taylor St. at Market. www.AnActofGod.com shnsf.com

Buyer & Cellar @ New Conservatory Theatre Center J. Conrad Frank stars in Jonathan Tolin’s hilarious solo show about an actor working in Barbara Streisand’s underground shopping mall. $20-$45. Previews thru Mar. 25. Thursday night pre-show trivia & piano with Joe Wicht thru April. Thru April 24. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. 861-8972. nctcsf.org

Dancers We Lost @ GLBT History Museum

Spring Big Book Sale @ Festival Pavillion

Thu 7

Fri 1

Regional premiere of Tony-winning gay playwright Terence McNally’s about the mother of a deceased gay man who visits his surviving partner, who now has a family. $25-$45. WedSat 8pm. Sun 2pm. thru April 3. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Opening reception for Dancers We Lost: Honoring Performers Lost to HIV/AIDS , a new exhibit of photos and ephemera, curated by Glenne McElhinney, about Bay Area dancers who died of AIDS. 7pm. Also April 3, 2pm. Thru Aug. 7. 4127 18th St. www.dancerswelost.org/exhibit/ www.glbthistory.org

Deal With the Dragon @ The Costume Shop Kevin Rolston performs his threecharacter solo show with a different take on gay lives. $25. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru April 16. 1117 Market St. www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/2194657

Feminists to Feministas @ GLBT History Museum Feminists to Feministas : Women of Color in Prints and Posters, a new exhibit of illustrations depicting LBT women of color from the 1970s to today. $5. Thru July 4. Reg, hours Mon, Wed-Sat 11am-6pm. Sun 12pm5pm. 4127 18th St. glbthistory.org

Hotel Burlesque @ Exit Theatre Red Velvet and Amanda Ortmayer’s new play about unlikely characters banding together to solve a murder mystery, before they too become ghosts. $15-$25. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru April 2. 156 Eddy St. www.theexit.org

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

Macbeth @ Berkeley Repertory Theatre “The Scottish play,” Shakespeare’s classic tragedy about a murderous royal couple, stars Conleth Hill and Frances McDormand. $45-$145. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru April 10. Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St. berkeleyrep.org

Marvin Werlin @ Strut Opening reception for the 86-yearold gay artist’s exhibit of paintings that blend contemporary style with mythological symbolism. 8pm-10pm. Thru April. 470 Castro St. strutsf.org

Take This Hammer @ YBCA New exhibit of nearly dozen local activist-artists who work in different media. Thru Aug. 14. Also, The Sprawl, the Amsterdam-based design team Metahaven’s immersive video installation about the mutation of propaganda. Free/$8. Thru April 3. Also, Kevin Cooley’s Golden Prospects, a visual survey of water and waste in California. $8-$10. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Sat 2 Art @ Lesher Theatre, Walnut Creek Yasmina Reza’s award-winning comedy about a possibly bogus high-priced painting gets an East Bay production by Center Repertory Company. $33-$53. Tue-Wed 7:30pm. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2:30pm. Thru April 30. 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. (925) 943-7469. www.centerrep.org

Hidden Gold @ Asian Art Museum Hidden Gold : Mining its Meaning in Asian Art, thru May 8. Also, China at the Center: Rare Ricci and Verbiest World Maps; Extracted: a Trilogy of Ranu Mukherjee (thru Aug. 14); Chinese Laquerware (thru July 31); Elephants Without Number (thru June 26), and more. Free-$25. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. asianart.org

Magnificent Magnolias @ SF Botanical Gardens See beautiful floral and foliage displays, trees and plants in various beautiful gardens specific to region. Expect amazing new growth and blossoms following the rainy days. Daily walking tours and more. Free-$15. Tours, lectures, classes and more. Open daily, 7:30am-sunset. Golden Gate Park. 6611316. sfbotanicalgarden.org

Other Cinema @ ATA Gallery Weekly screenings of unusual, rare and strange short films and videos. $8. 8:30pm. 992 Valencia St. 6480654. www.othercinema.com

Out&About>>

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Intrude @ Civic Center Plaza

OutLook Video @ Channel 29 The weekly LGBT TV show, with updates on current events. 9:30pm. www.outlookvideo.org

Oscar de la Renta @ de Young Museum Stylish new retrospective exhibit of the world-famous fashion designer’s gown on display, as well as archival photos and materials; Thru May 30. Other exhibits of modern art as well. Free/$25. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.famsf.org

Peter Murphy @ Swedish American Hall

Sat 3 Wicked @ Orpheum Theatre

The Bauhaus cofounder performs acoustic solo and classic tunes. $45. 8pm. 2174 Market St. www.swedishamericanhall.com

Pierre Bonnard @ Legion of Honor Painting Arcadia, thru May 15. Also, Sublime Beauty: Raphael’s Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn, thru April 10; also, World in a Book, A Princely Pursuit and other exhibits. Free/$15. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave. 750-3600. www.legionofhonor.famsf.org

Unearthed: Found + Made @ Oakland Museum Unearthed: Found + Made, featuring Jedediah Caesar’s geological sculptures; thru April 24. Free/$15. Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Australian artist Amanda Parer’s giant white inflatable rabbit sculptures hop into town along their world tour. Joseph L. Alioto Performing Arts Piazza, Grove St. at McAllister. Thru April 25. www.amandaparer.com.au

San Francisco in Ruins @ Tenderloin Museum Exhibit of paintings by local artist Jacinto Castillo depicting old San Francisco. Free/donations. April 4, lunchtime speaker Supervisor Jane Kim, 12pm. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm, $6-$10 ($15 includes walking tour). 398 Eddy St. 351-1912. tenderloinmuseum.org

Tue 5 Bring It Home @ SFAC Gallery Bring It Home: (Re)Locating Cultural Legacy Through the Body, a large group exhibit of works; thru May 7. Also, Susan O’Malley’s Do More of What You Love, thru May 7; Also, Enter: 126: Coalescence by Annette Jannotta and Olivia Ting; thru Dec. 17. Free. Tue-Fri 11am-6pm. War Memorial Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Ave. www.sfartscommission.org/gallery

Dave Eggers: Idaho @ Jules Maeght Gallery Solo exhibit of commissioned acrylic-on-wood art by the awardwinning, bestselling local author (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius). Thru May 7. 149 Gough St. 549-7046. julesmaeghtgallery.com

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

Natural Beauty @ Marin Center Natural Beauty: The Art and Artists of West Marin, a group exhibit of paintings, water colors, landscapes and paper works depicting Northern California. Thru March 30. 10 Ave. of the Flags, San Rafael. www. marincenter.org

Garth Greenwell @ The Booksmith The gay author of the highly acclaimed debut novel What Belongs to You discusses his work with local author Kevin Killian. 7:30pm. 1644 Haight St. www.booksmith.com

Literary Pop @ Doc’s Lab

Mon 4 Bouquets to Art @ de Young Museum Floral exhibits inspired by the museum’s contemporary modern art works, along with luncheons, talks and special events. $15-$85. Thru April 10. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park. famsf.org

Black Love @ Strut Speakers for BTA 2016: India Hicks, Designer and Entrepreneur Danielle Hahn, Rose Story Farms Annette Kunz, Occasion! Carolyne Roehm, Author and Designer Alisa Carroll, San Francisco Cottage and Gardens Panelists include: Christina Stembel, Farmgirl Flowers, and Allison Futeral, Crimson Horticulture Rarities

Check out the Bouquets to Art website for more information and to purchase tickets: deyoungmuseum.org/bouquets Floral display by Valerie Lee Ow; assistants: Robbin Lee and Morgan Carpenter of J. Miller Flowers & Gifts. Artwork: Richard Mayhew, Rhapsody (detail), 2002, © Richard Mayhew, Courtesy ACA Galleries, NY. Photograph by Douglas Sandberg

Poetry, music and more with African American queer artists Na’amen Gobert Tilahun, Beatrice L. Thomas a.k.a Black Benatar, Dominique Gelin, Lauren Wheeler, and Skyler Cooper. Free. 8pm. 470 Castro St. www. strutsf.org

Color of Life @ California Academy of Sciences Exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth; new exhibit focuses on vibrantly colored species of octopus, snake fish and other live creatures. Special events each week, with adult nightlife parties many Thursday nights. $20-$35. Mon-Sat 9:30am5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Duane Cramer @ Strut SF Rodney Ewing, Jamil Hellu @ Berkeley Art Center Dual exhibit of works exploring the challenging representation of the forgotten, including Flint, Michigan residents, and Syrian men executed for being gay. Thru May 8. 1275 Walnut St., Berkeley. (510) 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org

Second Time Around @ The Marsh Charlie Varon and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud perform Varon’s story-theatre work about seeking human connection in a high tech world. $35-$45. Sat. 8:30pm Sun 2pm. Thru April 17. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

SF Hiking Club @ Point Reyes Join GLBT hikers for a ten-mile lowland hike near the coast of Drake’s Bay at Point Reyes. There should be lots of estuary-related wildlife along this hike. Bring water, lunch, sturdy shoes, sunscreen, hat, layers, binoculars. Carpool meets 8:30am at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. 5961304. www.sfhiking.com

Wicked @ Orpheum Theatre Stephen Schwartz’ mega-hit Tonywinning musical based on the novel about the ‘other story’ of Oz and the witches Glinda and Elphaba. $80$238. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat & Sun 2pm. Sun 7:30pm. Thru April 16. 1192 Market St. www.wickedthemusical.com www.shnsf.com

Exhibit of photos by the prolific photographer, of men of color who are open about being HIV-positive. 3rd floor. 470 Castro St. strutsf.org

John Waters’ Trash Trilogy @ Roxie Theater Screenings of the camp classics Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living. $12-$30 (3-film pass). Various times thru April 10. 3117 16th st. www.roxie.com

Sun 3 Garden Railway @ Conservatory of Flowers New exhibit of floral displays inspired by the centennial anniversary of the 1915 Pan-Pacific World’s Expo, with SF scenes in miniature train and architectural installations with hundreds of dwarf plants. Thru April 10. Also, permanent floral displays, plants for sale, and docent tours. TueSun 10am-4pm. $2-$8. Free for SF residents. 100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park, 831-2090. www.conservatoryofflowers.org

Writers share stories, essays and works about the intersection of literature and pop culture, with Baruch Porras Hernandez, Lauren Wheeler, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Damian Ledbetter and Mandy Hu; hosted by Wonder Dave. 7:30pm. 124 Columbus Ave. www.docslabsf.com

Mayor’s Art Award @ SF Arts Commission Gallery, Herbst Theatre Author Armistead Maupin ( Tales of the City) is honored by the art commission; reception in the gallery, 5pm, followed by a 6pm onstage talk with Maupin and author Jewelle Gomez ( The Gilda Stories). 401 Van Ness Ave. www.sfartscommission.org

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered @ Contemporary Jewish Museum New exhibit of photos from the prolific documenter of Jewish life in eastern Europe. Thru May 29. Bill Graham and the Rock & Roll Revolution (thru July 5). Other exhibits about Jewish culture include In That Case: Havruta in Contemporary Art—Jenny Odell and Philip Buscemi, thru Jul 5; Lamp of the Covenant: Dave Lane and Pour Crever by Trimpin, Hardly Strictly Warren Hellman, ongoing. Lectures and gallery talks as well. Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. thecjm.org

Ronn Vigh’s Gay Bash @ Punch Line The local gay comic hosts a new monthly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night; first Tuesdays. $16.50. 8pm. 444 Battery St. 397-7573. www. PunchLineComedyClub.com

Will Durst @ The Marsh The political comic’s updated solo show, Elect to Laugh: 2016, adds topical jokes about the bizarre election season. $15-$100. Tuesdays, 8pm. Thru April 19. 1062 Valencia St. 282- themarsh.org

Wed 6 Cyrano @ Mountain View Center for the Arts

Tue 5

Armistead Maupin receives the Mayor’s Art Award @ SF Arts Commission Gallery, Herbst Theatre

Edmond Rostand’s play (translated by Michael Hollinger) about a large-nosed romantic go-between interplay and unrequited love, gets a swashbuckling action-packed production. $19-$80. Thru May 1. 500 Castro st., Mountain View. (650) 4631960. www.theatreworks.org

Fri 1 Marvin Werlin’s art @ Strut

Thu 7 10 Percent @ Comcast David Perry’s online & cable interviews with notable local and visiting LGBT people, broadcast through the week. www.ComcastHometown.com

Beautiful by Night @ Roxie Theater Beautiful by Night- A Tribute to Aunt Charlie’s, James Hosking and Vanessa Carr’s documentary about the drag performers at the Tenderloin bar; with performances by Colette LeGrande and Donna Personna, and Olivia Hart. $15. 7pm. 3117 16th St. www.roxie.com

Black Virgins are Not for Hipsters @ The Marsh Berkeley Echo Brown’s hit solo show about desire and doubt moves to the company’s East Bay theatre. $20$100. Thu 8pm Sat 8:30pm. Thru April 23. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Chamber Works @ Taube Atrium Theater Musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra curate two eclectic and intimate nights of music and song featuring the 2016 San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows, who perform works by Franz Schubert, David Conte, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Benjamin Britten, Joseph Haydn, Lou Harrison and Shinji Eshima. $35. 8pm. Also April 20, 8pm. Veterans Building, 4th floor, 410 Van Ness Ave. www.sfoperalab.com To submit event listings, email events@ebar.com Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section, online at www.ebar.com/bartab

<< TV

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

Telling the Robert Mapplethorpe story by David-Elijah Nahmod

hen Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89) died of AIDS, he had just achieved the fame and celebrity he had long yearned for. After his death he became a figure of enormous controversy. In the year of his death, a solo exhibition tour of Mapplethorpe’s photographs was condemned by the virulently anti-gay Senator Jesse Helms, who used Mapplethorpe’s photos in an attempt to cut federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. The controversy exploded when the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati was charged with obscenity and forced to endure a jury trial for displaying Mapplethorpe’s work. The museum was acquitted. HBO will premiere Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures on Monday, April 4. It’s a new feature-length documentary from openly gay filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, neither of whom has every shied away from controversy.

The film illustrates what people found so shocking and fascinating in Mapplethorpe’s work. Openly gay, Robert Mapplethorpe developed an intense fascination with BDSM, as well as with the bodies of African American men. A sizable portion of his work was devoted to these subjects, and the photos were graphic. But Mapplethorpe was no run-of-the-mill pornographer. He was an artist who took his work very seriously. His nudes, his penis photographs, and his depictions of hardcore S&M were always carefully staged and lit. Mapplethorpe may have wanted to shock and titillate, but he also wanted to move people emotionally with his work. He wanted people to think about and talk about what he was doing. People indeed took notice. Fenton and Barbato’s film looks back on Mapplethorpe’s life and career, beginning with his conservative Catholic upbringing in Floral Park, New York. Mapplethorpe’s sister and brother participated in the making of the film.

was the lover of Jack Fritscher, a writer and the editor of Drummer magazine, which served the BDSM community. Through newly shot interviews with friends, lovers, family members, colleagues and models, Fenton and

Barbato let viewers know who Robert Mapplethorpe was. He celebrated his sexuality. He hungered for wealth and fame, and was not above using people. But mostly, he took pictures. In addition to his graphic sexual imagery, Mapplethorpe became an acclaimed portrait photographer. Models Brook Shields and Debbie Harry recall their memories of him. The film opens with news footage of Senator Helms condemning Mapplethorpe from the floor of the Senate. “Robert Mapplethorpe, a known homosexual who died of AIDS, and who spent the last year of his life promoting homosexuality – look at the pictures!” Helms said. His hatred is all-too-apparent. This is a particularly powerful opening for the film in the light of a sweeping anti-LGBT bill that was passed into law last week in North Carolina, Helms’ home state. The next 100 minutes of the film are no less powerful. Mapplethorpe lived an extraordinary life. Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures preserves that legacy.t

St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “We are no longer limp-wristed effeminate drag queens usually put on television. Our image has changed overnight!” Kramer would lash out at Anthony Fauci, the federal government point-man on AIDS, calling him a murderer, even though, as Fauci noted, “We disagreed on how to do things, but not on what needed to be done.” His eviscerating comments could cause heads of pharmaceutical companies to shake in their chairs. This masterfully produced documentary makes clear that without ACT UP’s medical activism, those

drugs would not have appeared when they did, saving thousands of lives. With the reprieve, Kramer, long infected by HIV, went into a depression after realizing that men were continuing their old pre-AIDS-era sex habits, with Kramer screeching to audiences, “We are more than our cocks!” Most of the film is based on previous press interviews of Kramer and his friends/supporters, as well as those with the director Jean Carlomusto. They alternate with scenes of a fragile Kramer (cantankerous and bossy even when near death) in the hospital in July 2013, recovering from complications of a liver transplant brought on by years of battling HIV, cared for by his longtime patient lover David Webster. Before leaving the hospital in May 2014, they were married at his bedside. Today Kramer continues to write novels on gay American history. This emotionally wrenching film’s point of view is aptly expressed by a friend: “I’m alive today because of Larry Kramer. He was the pain in the ass everyone needed him to be, and there are thousands of men, women, and children who are alive today because of Larry Kramer. I’m very grateful for his life.” Love him or hate him, Kramer’s mark as “one of the men who won the war [against AIDS]” is undeniable.t

Robert Mapplethorpe was a controversial portrait photographer and artist.

Look at the Pictures follows Mapplethorpe’s early years in New York City, where he entered into a heterosexual relationship with poet/musician Patti Smith, who remained a close friend after Mapplethorpe came out. By 1977, Mapplethorpe

Larry Kramer stirs it up by Brian Bromberger

hen the documentary Larry Kramer in Love and Anger screened last year at Frameline, one could overhear audience comments such as, “I know he did great things, but I still can’t stand him!” This ambivalence about the complex Kramer is honestly explored in this film now available on DVD from HBO, distributed by Amazon. The opening scene is Kramer at the AIDS Forum in NYC, Sept. 1991, shouting, “Plague! We are in the middle of a fucking plague. Forty million infected people in the world is a fucking plague, and nobody acts as if it was.” Kramer reflected the sense of despondency of the time, with the near-miraculous protease inhibitor drugs still 4.5 years off. Kramer crystallized the rage many people felt about the lack of government response to the crisis. Kramer’s message was a simple one: the LGBT community must learn to be powerful or it was going to die. He didn’t care about being unpopular or called obnoxious. As a friend observed, “Larry’s qualities of being a scene-maker and a person who could spoil a dinner party became useful and heroic.”

The combative Larry probably had his source in his unhappy childhood, rooted in his hatred of his father. “He called me sissy all the time. We fought like tigers, and we screamed at each other constantly.” Having few friends, he lived in his own imagination, performing musical songs and plays in his bedroom. Larry had his first gay sex in 7th grade with a friend over several months, only to have him call Larry a faggot in front of their classmates. At Yale, flunking his exams and thinking he was the only gay student, he attempted suicide by swallowing 200 aspirin. By Larry’s own admission, his older brother/lawyer Arthur saved his life by getting him to his first shrink, with later psychiatrists convincing him he could like himself for who he was and didn’t have to change his homosexuality. Living in London during the 1960s, Kramer became an assistant to the head of Columbia Pictures, charged with finding writers and stories for movies, eventually crafting his own screenplays, including his Oscar-nominated script for Women in Love (with its notorious male nude wrestling scene). Inspired by his shrink to write a novel about the gay world, he penned Faggots

in 1978 about the fast-lane gay lifestyle in Manhattan and Fire Island. A morality tale saying “gay men’s emphasis on sex and treating each other like meat devalues us and makes love relationships impossible,” it resulted in Kramer being crucified by the gay press, who warned readers not to buy the book, which many saw as an act of self-hatred and a threat to the sexual freedom so hard-won by the community. When AIDS reached public consciousness in July 1981, Kramer became a leader by founding the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a service organization which distributed what little medical information was available. Then he published incendiary articles to shock the community out of denial by saying they had to stop having sex, “until we figure out if the disease was being caused by a virus and we were giving it to each other, endangering our lives.” His fiery and threatening rhetoric alienated his fellow GMHC members, who fired him. Exiled to London and turning life into art, he wrote his drama The Normal Heart to get his message out. He formed ACT UP, a civil disobedience group, in 1987 to gain access to new drugs/ treatments, with demonstrations (“street theater”) on Wall Street, the FDA, and most controversially, at

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Roxie screenings

From page 21

Known as “the trash trilogy,” the films are being screened “the way they’re meant to be seen: late at night, in a dark theater, in 35mm,” Roxie acting executive director Dave Cowen told the Bay Area Reporter in an interview. “Combining high camp with low comedy, featuring shocking sex and class commentary, these films remain as powerful, offensive and hilarious today as they were during their initial release,” Cowen wrote on the Roxie website. “We’re expecting a packed house,” said Cowen, noting that online ticket sales are brisk, and that half of the $30 passes have already sold out. Another Waters film, Polyester, drew a sold-out crowd on a recent Wednesday evening in February, a record attendance for a Roxie screening since Cowen took the helm last year. Roxie staff arranged for Warner Brothers, the film’s distributor, to print the infamous scratch-n-sniff “Odorama”

Scene from John Waters’ Female Trouble, screening at the Roxie Theater.

postcards that audience members used to get the sense of scents depicted on the film. Waters, who lives part-time on Nob Hill, has had many live performances in the Bay Area over the past three decades. He’s a member of the Roxie’s advisory board and

is filming an introduction to the evening. “I’ve been very surprised,” noted Cowen, “that with John’s following in San Francisco, there have been very few screenings of his films in See page 30 >>

Film>>

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Country music complete with charisma by David Lamble

“I

Sam Emerson, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams in director Marc Abraham’s I Saw the Light.

was a fool to wander and astray,/Straight is the gate and narrow the way./Now I have traded the wrong for the right,/Praise the Lord, I saw the light.” – lyrics by Hank Williams. It’s hard for anyone contemplating the life, the work and the untimely early death of the genius-level American singer-songwriter Hank Williams not to be moved to preach about his virtues and our mutual sins, about the glory, the folly and the inscrutable mystery of it all. The new film I Saw the Light (opening Friday at Bay Area theaters), which prompts these musings, is like most of humankind’s endeavors, flawed. But it’s also powerful, with a message of hope not easily found elsewhere. The late Hank Williams (193453) was, by most accounts, a hard man to bear. He was a man of intemperate habits and quick to anger, but also a man like Woody Guthrie, Abraham Lincoln, and Walt Whitman, who had tapped into some higher wisdom, into a truth he was largely unable to access except in his music. Hank Williams’ God-given talent was in some ways comparable to that bestowed on such other

Southern creative souls as Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman) or Flannery O’Connor (Wise Blood, A Good Man Is Hard to Find). In I Saw the Light, writer/director Marc Abraham allows actor Tom Hiddleston to act and sing the role of Hank Williams. The actor is sublime, the singing up to the job. We watch as Hiddleston’s Hank Williams goes through rocky marriages, starts to tap into his songwriting muse, gets called to Country Music Heaven, the Grand Ole Opry, and then, just as quickly as he rose, falls to earth, dying in the backseat of his Cadillac on the way to a concert. Dead at 29. There are some wonderful touches along the way. Every other man, singer, and potential rival in the film wears what was once called “the Brylcreem look,” a slickedback hairstyle that is so post-WWII American Gothic that it makes you laugh, and later may cause you to weep. There are no obvious LGBTQ characters in I Saw the Light, and the only African American onscreen plays a hotel doorman. The world of Hank Williams was a very white world, except that deep below the surface ran a current of emotion, soulfulness and truthtelling that

would inspire the likes of African American country/blues great Ray Charles. As with other great bio-pics, say Milk, in which a hetero-identified actor (Sean Penn) had to fully embody the transformative figure of a prophetic gay martyr, British-born actor Hiddleston’s embrace of the very American soul of Williams may point to or at least hint at a real change in our culture, a new national synthesis where neglected and maligned people are drawn into the American fabric, which itself may become a universal creed. Meanwhile enjoy this movie, which its creators wished to have you experience as if it were a single soulstirring ballad. Listen as a man you may never have heard of learns to do the thing that is so difficult for so many men. “Hear that lonesome whippoorwill,/He sounds too blue to fly./The midnight train is whining low,/I’m so lonesome I could cry. “I’ve never seen a night so long/ When time goes crawling by./The moon just went behind the clouds/ To hide its face and cry. “Did you ever see a robin weep/ When leaves begin to die?/Like me, he’s lost the will to live./I’m so lonesome I could cry.”t

of queer music. Both men have newly released albums of contemporary instrumental music. Composerpianist-keyboardist Etheredge, half of the gay duo Mark & Dean, writes and performs a kind of Sundaybrunch jazz on Connected (Vipaka). “Be Who You Are,” “For Your Love” and “Groovin’ with My Baby” are toe-tapping, head-bobbing

numbers. The 15 songs on Intimacy: A Collection (svensundberg.com) sound like what we used to call new age, with an emphasis on piano, electronic keyboards and synthesized beats. Liner notes recommend listening to the album “alone in relaxation, as background music for an intimate dinner or open house.” Sounds good.t

Another queer year

by Gregg Shapiro

he London Suede, returning with Night Thoughts (Rhino), its first new studio album in three years, has two unusual links to the LGBT community. Lead singer Brett Anderson identified himself as “a bisexual man who’s never had a homosexual experience.” Confused? It sure sounded like Anderson was when he said that in the band’s early years. From the androgynous couple macking on the cover of their major-label debut to Anderson’s indeterminate sexual persona, the band left its mark on the 1990s. That also included one of the strangest lawsuits in music history. Lesbian trumpeter and vocalist Suede, who had been using the moniker for years, sued the band over its use of the name Suede, and she won. Hence the addition of the word London in the title of the band for domestic releases. Night Thoughts refines the essence of the London Suede (minus original member Bernard Butler), including Anderson’s trademark plaintive wail on “Tightrope,” “When You Are Young” and “The Fur

and the Feathers.” The CD/ DVD set includes the Night Thoughts film. Music-lovers caught up in Sia mania owe it to themselves to explore earlier releases Some People Have Real Problems and 2010’s We Are Born Born. That way they can compare recent albums 1000 Forms of Fear and Sia’s latest, This Is Acting (RCA). It’s a career trajectory easily as fascinating as Adele’s. Sia, both songwriter and performer, has also written hit songs for others. But no one sings a Sia song like Sia. There’s enough to recommend about This Is Acting, including “Alive” (co-written by Adele), “House on Fire” (co-written by Jack Antonoff), and the dance-floor workout “Move Your Body.” One of the most awkward recordings of his legendary career, the ironically named Wonderful Crazy Night (Island) by gay rock royalty Elton John is neither wonderful nor crazy. Coming as it does after 2013’s strong The Diving Board makes it more of a disappointment. Co-produced by Elton and TBone Burnett, with songs co-written by Elton and longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin, and played by Elton’s old band, the album is so lackluster it makes you wonder who thought it was a good idea to release it. To be fair, the country comfort of “Blue Wonderful” might please gay NASCAR fans, “Guilty Pleasure” lives up to its name, and the strings on “The Open Chord” are a nice touch. Power (Atlantic/Big Beat) is just the right name for the five-song debut EP by larger-than-live Gleeva Alex Newell. Born to be a dance queen, Newell proves that he has what it takes beginning with the opening blast of “This Ain’t Over.” Also recommended are “Basically Over You (B.O.Y.),” “Devilish” and the easy-to-love “Nobody To Love.” The weak link in the short set is the generic “Shame.” Taxidermy (Producer Entertainment), the second album by gothy 2012 RuPaul’s Drag Race champ Sharon Needles, straddles the line

between disco and dark wave. Needles is more of a speak-singer than a belting diva, but that doesn’t necessarily work against the material. There’s a respectful cover of Cerrone’s “Supernature” (co-written by Lene Lovich), “Dead Dandelion,” “Glow in the Dark!” and “The Damned.” Mark Etheredge and Sven Sundberg represent an unexpected aspect

<< DVD

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 31-April 6, 2016

Films for the new baseball season by David Lamble

he 2016 MLB season kicks off under a cloud for Giants fans who have to endure their first season of this era without the services of twotime Cy Young winner, three-time World Series Champ, starting pitcher Timmy “the Freak” Lincecum. Across the Bay, the Oakland A’s are stuck with the aftereffects of General Manager Billy Bean’s counterintuitive trades. The smart money is betting that the A’s will again be also-rans in the AL West. For depressed Bay Area fans, the world of baseball on film starts to look especially inviting. What follows is a personal list of faves, some even with a smidgen of sex appeal. 42 (The Jackie Robinson Story) (2013) In a pivotal yet lighthearted moment, Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) has just broken organized baseball’s unofficial but viciously enforced half-century-long ban on African-American players. It’s 1947, and while he’s on the Brooklyn Dodgers payroll and making headlines for his brash, physically flamboyant style of play, Robinson has yet to be embraced by the other 24 white players. Sitting in the sanctity of the Dodgers’ dilapidated clubhouse, Robinson encounters one of his half-dressed teammates, star pitcher Ralph Branca (Hamish Linklater). “Jackie, how come you don’t ever shower until everybody else is done?” “I don’t want anybody to feel uncomfortable.” “Why don’t we shower together? [Uncomfortable pause.] That came out wrong.” Robinson’s story speaks to the watershed moment when a minority is finally let inside the temple, but not without a bit of nervous laughter. Bonus feature: Stepping Into History mini-doc. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)

Roxie screenings

From page 28

recent years.” Local film buffs definitely adore Waters. Filmmaker and impresario Marc Huestis devotes an entire chapter to Waters in an upcoming memoir. When Huestis began his career, he writes, “John Waters was my hero. I idolized him.” Huestis, who calls Female Trouble one of the best films of all time, recalls seeing it for the first time at the Roxie in the 1970s. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” writes Huestis. “The bravery, hilarity and balls of that film hold up to this day,” he said. Huestis returned to the Roxie every day that week, and, over the years, saw the movie on home video “at least 50 more times,” he said in an interview with the B.A.R. “My friends and I have memorized

Director John Badham provides a nostalgic and accurate-feeling account of the last glory days of Negro League baseball. It’s 1939: Hitler is gobbling up large chunks of Europe while Jim Crow segregation rules the South. In baseball this means that talented black ballplayers are forced to sing for their suppers playing pick-up games. The players here revolt against their African American plantation-style owner “Sally” Potter (Ted Ross) and play for half the gate before racially mixed groups of fans. With a stellar cast: Billy Dee Williams as pitcher Bingo Long (based on Hall of Fame hurler Sachel Page), theatre titan James Earl Jones as slugger Leon Carter (drawn from HR champ Josh Gibson). Director’s commentary. Sugar (2009) Oakland-based filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden create a poignant portrait of a young Dominican ballplayer who’s forced to reject the siren lure of his island nation’s favorite game and major cash cow. An old sage offers some advice: “Sugar, life offers many opportunities. Baseball gives you only one chance.” Transplanted to an Iowa of redneck teammates, country cooking and forbidden cuss words, Sugar’s inability to refrain many of the lines verbatim,” he said. “I especially love ‘Pretty, pretty,’ which is so appropriate when we see someone who’s gotten a bad facelift.” Twice Huestis produced A John Waters X-Mas, which sold out at the Castro Theatre. Huestis said his own early film work was inspired by Waters’ “trashy, bargain-basement aesthetic and subversive slant.” Filmmaker Joshua Grannell, aka drag queen Peaches Christ, is also a fan. Grannell, who wrote and directed the 2010 cult film All About Evil, said Waters came to the set one day for lunch. “I felt as though the Pope had arrived to bless the production.” wrote Grannell. “It’s a bit surreal becoming friends with a personal god like John Waters,” said Grannell, who was one of the guests at Waters’

from the ultimate taunt, “cocksucker,” produces bench-clearing brawls and a decidedly different American future. Cobb (1994) Arguably the Raging Bull of baseball films. Ex-minorleague-player-turned-director Ron Shelton gets an incendiary performance from Tommy Lee Jones as baseball’s meanest man, “Georgia Peach” Tyrus Raymond Cobb. Hated even by his teammates while one of the game’s all-time greatest hitters, Cobb battles childhood demons (his mom shot his abusive dad) and spills his life story to memoirist Al Stump (Robert Wuhl). Bonus features: Commentary by director Shelton, actors Jones and Wuhl; additional scenes; profile of Cobb biographer Al Stump; on the field with MLB pitcher/film actor Roger Clemens. Fear Strikes Out (1957) Anthony Perkins, then deeply in the closet, is over-the-top as 50s-era Boston Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall. Piersall battled mental illness during a 17-year playing career, and Perkins’ twitchy, haunted countenance lards in glittery subtext. It makes Perkins’ later breakout as Psycho’s Norman Bates seem like a light comedy turn. The B&W cinematography reinforces a sense of America’s Cold War/conformist age of anxiety. A great line by a domineering Karl Malden as Jimmy’s type-A dad after the Red Sox demote Jimmy to their farm team: “A man could rot in the minors.” The Bad News Bears (1976) Director Michael Ritchie allows a hilariously grumpy Walter Matthau to lead a squad of pre-teen misfits into the championship game of their regional little league. Matthau’s training regime includes having them watch him polish off a case of beer while passing out on the pitching mound. LGBT viewers may wince

at the little pepperpot actors’ attempts at homophobic cursing, but the film is mostly good clean fun, with a non-cliché final game. With Tatum O’Neil, Jackie Lee Haley, Vic Morrow. Off the Black (2007) Georgiaborn James Ponsoldt gets electric chemistry from his male leads Nick Nolte and Trevor Morgan as an unlikely father/son duo. Nolte, as harddrinking sandlot baseball umpire Ray Cooke, makes a most unlikely connection with teen pitcher Morgan (Dave Tiebel). The boy meets the ump after he and his friends vandalize the grumpy guy’s suburban home. While cleaning up wads of toilet paper from the trees, the pair start to look after each other. For all his faults Ray is a much better surrogate dad to Dave than the kid’s zombie-like father (Timothy Hutton). Ponsoldt shows his mastery at conjuring off-kilter guy chemistry, including the delicate handling of a moment where the kid mistakenly feels the old ump is coming on to him. Bonus features: Director’s commentary, making-of short. Bull Durham (1988) Manly stud Kevin Costner discovers his purpose in life as washed-up minor league catcher “Crash” Davis. Davis

Baltimore Christmas party last year. “It’s never going to be a totally normal friendship for me, because first and foremost I’m a fan,” he said. “Being a lover of all things horrific, I’ve enjoyed countless legendary moments of horror, repulsion, and violence courtesy of John Waters,” he wrote. In addition to the upcoming Waters retrospective, the Roxie schedule contains some other “rare treats,” said Cowen. On April 7, the theater will screen the documentary Beautiful by Night, a film that follows three older drag entertainers at the legendary Aunt Charlie’s bar. Cosponsored by the Tenderloin Museum, which had a sold-out screening of the film recently, the Roxie event will also include live drag performances by film stars Donna Personna, Collette LeGrande, and Olivia Hart, and a discussion with director James Hosking and cinematographer Vanessa Carr. Over the past year, the Roxie has made many improvements, said Cowen. Moviegoers “should see a night-and-day improvement in our digital projection capabilities compared with this time last year,” he said. “Both the Big and Little Roxie are sharper and brighter, and offer a crisp 2K high-definition picture in keeping with other local theaters.

We can now project DCP-based movies in the Big Roxie, the highest quality digital theatrical format currently available. We’ve also been able to retain our 35mm and 16mm projection gear, and have purchased the supplies necessary to keep them going,” he said. Both theaters have a new coat of paint, fully functional seats, and an improved website, with online ticketing and credit card sales now available. Cowen, previously director of information technology at Oakland’s Kapor Center for Social Impact, has also expanded the Roxie’s membership program, which has a variety of plans that offer free or reduced price screenings. There are over 170 members. The Roxie has also begun to sell beer and continues its laissez faire policy of “looking the other way” when patrons carry in their own food. “We want people to have fun,” he said, “and we are always looking for ways to make that possible. We do hope they’ll support us by visiting our snack bar,” he added. The Roxie, the longest continually running movie theater in the U.S., opened as the C.H. Brown Theatre in 1909. In its early years, the theater shifted its emphasis from second and third runs of Hollywood films to German-language films in the late 50s and early 60s. From

1968-75, it featured porn. In 1976, the Roxie Cinema was born, and since then it has featured independent films. Recently, Roxie’s community programming director Isabel Fondevila has focused on bringing Spanishlanguage films to the Roxie. In an interview with the B.A.R., Fondevila said she’s especially excited about several upcoming screenings: a Guillermo Del Toro double feature of Pan’s Labyrinth and Devil’s Backbone (April 14); Neon Bull, a Brazilian feature by Gabriel Mascaro (May 6-12); and a week of early Pedro Almodovar films (May 20-26). Local film programmers appreciate the Roxie as well. Jeff Ross, founder and director of IndieFest and DocFest, said, “San Francisco is losing historic businesses left and right, and we absolutely all need to step up and help the Roxie stay on solid footing. Unique films presented in a unique style is so rare in filmmaking.” “I can’t wait to check out the Roxie’s upcoming Waters series,” said Ross. “It will be great to see them on the big screen with a crowd of howling fans.” t

closed his flagship space on Grant Street after 45 years, is launching across the way from SFMOMA in October. Now the Dogpatch neighborhood, the site of the newly minted Minnesota Street Project, seems poised to become the latest arts hub. Located two blocks from Third St. at 24th, about a 25-minute ride from Embarcadero station on Muni’s Tline, the complex is comprised of

three main facilities offering affordable, below-market rates that are a boon to Bay Area artists and dealers: 1150 Minnesota St., a 100,000 sq. ft. storage and handling facility; 1240 Minnesota, a rambling, cavernous barn of a building with corrugated aluminum siding that houses studios for 27 long-term tenants, as well as short-term rotating spaces that can accommodate an See page 31 >>

Minnesota St.

From page 21

A number of gallery owners such as Catharine Clark, Todd Hosfelt, Brian Gross, George Lawson and Jack Fischer migrated to Potrero Flats, an area southwest of the Design District. Art dealer Larry Gagosian, renting the storefront of the Crown Point Press building, opens there May 18; and John Berggruen, who

finds his role when the organization sends him down to triple A Durham to develop the Durham Bulls’ chief asset, hot-to-trot pitching prospect “Nuke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins). The men clash over mentor Annie Savoy (career-reviving turn for then-40 Susan Sarandon). Ron Sheldon captures the big-fish-ina-small-pond feeling of a baseball town destined always to be one notch below the big show. No baseball film has ever approached the screwball-comedy antics of this wondrous acting trio. Bonus features: Dueling commentaries from director Sheldon and actors Costner and Robbins. Field of Dreams (1989) Phil Alden Robinson concocts a baseball fantasy comedy/drama centered on a simple Kansas cornfield. A farmer (Kevin Kostner) hears a voice intoning, “If you build it, they will come.” The “it” is a major-league-quality field, the “they” the members of the scandal-tainted Chicago “Black Sox,” whose players threw the 1919 World Series at the behest of gamblers. The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1998) This doc delivers the true-life story of America’s first Jewish diamond star. Hammering Hank Greenberg suits up in the mid-30s just as home run champ Babe Ruth retires and Adolph Hitler is suiting up his deadly team of brownshirts and SS thugs. Greenberg became an idol for a generation of Jewish men raised at a time when your religion determined your prospects for employment, as well as your neighborhood. Trouble with the Curve (2012) Clint Eastwood heads up a terrific ensemble (Justin Timberlake, Amy Adams, Matthew Lillard) in this tart comedy/drama about a grumpy exballplayer battling with his grownup baseball ex-daughter.t

Advance tickets ($8-$12) for John Waters’ Trash Trilogy screenings (April 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 & 10) are available at roxie.com.

t <<

Fine Art>>

Minnesota St.

From page 30

additional 20-30 artists a year. The two-story structure at 1275 Minnesota, an unprepossessing, brownishblack warehouse once occupied by a furniture-maker, and recently renovated by Jensen Architects, the firm that worked wonders on the David Ireland house on 500 Capp St, is now home to 10 contemporary art galleries – Rena Bransten Gallery, Themes + Projects (formerly Modernbook), Nancy Toomey Fine Art, Jack Fischer Gallery, Et al. etc., Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Bass & Reiner, Casemore Kirkeby, Anglim Gilbert Gallery, Ever Gold Projects – and the nonprofit San Francisco Arts Education Project. It also provides several temporary exhibition spaces for satellite or visiting shows, a kitchen for staff, as well as a café and a chi-chi restaurant coming later this year to lure the local community inside. The updated industrial interior has exposed ceilings, concrete floors, white-walled galleries of varying sizes and a glass breezeway on the upper level. Between the galleries, lining either side on the ground floor, is an atrium conducive to networking, socializing and special events. SFMOMA’s reopening in May, coupled with the comfort of traditional collectors and buyers with downtown, could make the jump to

March 31-April 6, 2016 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 31

a less-centrally-located venue felt-tip markers on crumpled a risky proposition. Parking is Tyvek and garbage bags, have somewhat easier than in other the visual quality of photoparts of the city, and the neighcopies. “Flag,” for example, borhood, near the 280 exit, is riffs on Jasper Johns, while in hopping and more accessible “Oakland Dragons,” a moto the Peninsula and younger, torcycle club hangs outside a moneyed South Bay collecBBQ Joint. Through May 14. tors. Whether the gamble will jackfischergallery.com. pay off – and all involved hope Nancy Toomey Fine Art: it does – only time will tell. Gathering Light is a group Here’s a summary of several show of contemporary artists inaugural shows. such as Gregg Renfrow, Larry Rena Bransten, who was Bell, Suzan Woodruff and the first to sign on, was at 77 Mara De Luca, whose work Geary for 27 years before movis loosely affiliated with the ing to a succession of other LA Light and Space movespaces. The gallery’s new show, ment, a groove characterized These American Lives, addressby shifts in color and light, es the elusive American dream, and translucent or reflective surveillance, inequality, racism materials. Through April 30. and the nation’s love affair with nancytoomeyfineart.com. cars, among other socioculturAnglim Gilbert Gallery: al touchstones, with a crew of Enrique Chagoya’s MindCourtesy of Ever Gold Projects heavy hitters such as Dawoud ful Savage’s Guide to Reverse Serge Attukwei Clottey, “Retrospective,” part Bey, whose portraits nod toModernism reclaims the viof the exhibition Hand to Mouth. ward the 50th anniversary of sual language and high color the 1963 church bombing in of lost ancient Mayan/preBirmingham; and Doug Hall’s Colombian pictogram books Potrero gallery and adding this new “Neighborhood Watch,” which with a smile and a soupcon of satire, one, where he’s presenting Seeing explores the impact of the proliferathrough collage, paintings and the Elephant, featuring the work of tion of cameras. Then there’s that drawings. Chagoya, a Stanford art Javier Arce, a Spanish artist appargleeful transgressor John Waters, professor, assumes multiple identiently partial to outlaws. The show who violates, albeit with sardonic ties and re-appropriates indigenous emanates from his investigation humor, sacred imagery of the Kenimagery, taking it back from modinto 1950s black biker gangs in the nedys deplaning that fateful day in ernists like Picasso, the greedy felon East Bay and grew to encompass the Dallas (“Grim Reaper”). Through who “borrowed” African mask icoBlack Panthers and the American May 14. renabranstengallery.com. nography for his Cubist masterpiecWest. Based on photographs, Arce’s Jack Fischer is keeping his es, and Henry Moore, who depicted sculptural drawings, executed with

versions of the reclining Mayan rain god Chac-Mool. The exhibition also includes new etchings based on Goya’s Caprichos. Through May 14. anglimgilbertgallery.com. Ever Gold Projects: Serge Attukwei Clottey. In Hand to Mouth, the Ghanaian artist makes his West Coast debut with large-scale, mixed-media assemblages and mask sculptures that bind multicolor shards from the discarded plastic water jugs that are currently choking his native country’s environment. Through April 30. sfaq.us/ ever-gold-projects. Eleanor Harwood Gallery: Kirk Maxon’s Gardens of Paradise, which references the psychic toll of U.S. military adventures overseas, sources photographic histories shot by combat photographers during the failed conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. Fragmented images are cut into the shape of leaves for delicate, layered foliage installations that also include wire sculptures of denuded trees suggesting amputated limbs. Through April 23. eleanorharwood. com. Themes + Projects: Arno Elias: The Lost Series, inspired by the world travels of this French painter-composer-photographer, is comprised of mixed-media, hand-painted photographs, some of wild animals, heightened with acrylic paint, gold/silver leaf, and diamond dust. Through April 30. themesandprojects.com.t

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Asteroids, Comets, and the Hard-Hitting Stories of Our Cosmic Origins

Explore the past‚ present‚ and future of our Solar System in a new planetarium show‚ now playing. Narrated by George Takei. Get tickets at calacademy.org

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SEXUALITY Vol. 46 • No. 13 • March 31 - April 6, 2016

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Andrea Marcovicci and Shawn Ryan Queens of Cabaret to Hold Court at Great American Music Hall by David-Elijah Nahmod

wo cabaret talents light up the Great American Music Hall next Saturday; Andrea Marcovicci and Shawn Ryan. See page 34 >> Shawn Ryan

Zoe Hunn

Andrea Marcovicci

Give Us Hope Miss Hope Springs ’

cabaret cool at Oasis by Jim Provenzano

tatuesque chanteuse Miss Hope Springs lives in a Las Vegas trailer park called Paradise, with her mother, Rusty (Rusty Springs; get it?). To make ends meet, she performs cabaret acts with a small band, or by simply self-accompanying on a piano. See page 37 >> Miss Hope Springs

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34 • Bay Area Reporter • March 31 - April 6, 2016

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Andrea Marcovicci performing.

Andrea and Shawn

From page 33

Andrea Marcovicci got her start as an actress, first gaining notice on the long cancelled daytime soap opera Love Is A Many Splendored Thing. She went on to appear in movies and on Broadway, and had a recurring role on the prime time series Hill Street Blues. But singing is what was in her heart. Eventually she put acting on the back burner and became a chanteuse, appearing on cabaret stages around the world. For more than two decades, she was the star attraction at the Oak Room inside the legendary Algonquin Hotel in New York City.

Her shows were usually sold out. Often clad in simple yet elegant gowns, Marcovicci enchanted audiences with her emotional renditions of the greatest love ballads and torch songs from previous generations. Now known as the Queen of Cabaret, Marcovicci will grace the stage of the venerable Great American Music Hall on Saturday April 9. She’ll be joined by Season 1 America’s Got Talent contestant Shawn Ryan, who Marcovicci calls “The Other Queen of Cabaret.” Marcovicci said in our interview that she was heartbroken to see the Oak Room close in 2012. “Twenty-five years is an unheard of run,” she said. “They turned it

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Shawn Ryan at the 2011 ‘Streep Tease’ show at the Great American Music Hall.

Steven Underhill

Oakland:

into a breakfast nook, which is a sacrilege. No one goes in there now. Corporate America loses sight of greatness again and again.” Marcovicci added that she was involved in a petition drive to save The Oak Room. “We had thousands of signatures,” she said. “We were proactive, but we didn’t win against corporate America.” It was through the cabaret world that Marcovicci and Ryan met. “I started to go to his shows and he’s been a big supporter of mine,” Marcovicci said. “I told him he was the other Queen of Cabaret. That cemented our friendship.” The openly gay Ryan is also an actor and filmmaker. Marcovicci recently played a role in his film Charlie, which is now available for download through Breaking Glass Pictures. In the film, Ryan plays a young man who goes mute when he decides to leave his abusive past behind. Marcovicci is cast against type as Charlie’s evil mom. Dynamic Duo Ryan said that part of his inspiration for the film came from an acting class he took. “If there was something you haven’t played but want to, write it!” he was told. Ryan also spoke of his musical inspirations. “I grew up with a lot of movie Andrea Marcovicci and Shawn Ryan at the 2009 MAC (Manhattan musicals,” he said. “That music Association of Cabarets & Clubs) Awards. always had strong lyrics. And if someone was home, we always had a record playing.” which was comprised of songs “I sang in the beloved Plush Ryan cited Glenn Miller, The written by women. Room for 20 years,” she recalled. She Beach Boys, Ella Fitzgerald and “San Francisco has always been also performed at the Music Hall Billie Holiday as among his musical my home away from home,” she in 1989 in Girls Night Out, a show idols. said. “I have wonderful memories Marcovicci is someone of the city. I jumped at the whom Ryan admires, though chance to come back.” he notes that they are different So what can the audience types of performers. expect from the Queens of “Her show is classical; Cabaret? it’s a real education, and “I’m going to torch a bit entertaining,” he said. “My and bring everyone down,” show is more improvisational.” Marcovicci said with a laugh. Marcovicci hopes her “I think it’ll be a wonderful performances will help keep evening of fun.” the Great American Songbook “I’m bringing a full band: alive. piano, bass and guitar,” said “It’s so important to educate Ryan. “There will be fun young people about the music original comedy material and of the past so it doesn’t get a lot of country. Sometimes I lost,” she said. “It’s nice for take new material and throw them to listen to songs they’ve in a jazz bass. You’ll hear us not heard, songs that rhyme really nailing songs and you’ll perfectly.” really hear the lyrics.”t Both performers are delighted to be returning to the Shawn Ryan and Andrea Great American Music Hall. Marcovicci: The Queens of “I love that venue,” said Cabaret, Saturday, April 9 at Ryan. “My first comedy show 8pm, doors open at 7. Great for Logo was shot there.” American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell Street. $25-35. $49.95 When Marcovicci takes includes dinner. to the Music Hall stage, The film Charlie costars Shawn Ryan and www.slimspresents.com she’ll be celebrating the 30th Andrea Marcovicci. www.marcovicci.com anniversary of her first San www.shawn-ryan.com Francisco performance.

On the Tab>>

March 31 - April 6, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 35

On the Tab

Manimal @ Beaux Gogo-tastic dance night starts off your weekend. $5. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Midnight Show @ Divas 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

Mar. 31Apr. 7

Pacific Mambo Orchestra @ Yoshi’s Oakland

e’ve got plenty of fun nightife including event lin’! on Friday, April 1; no foo

Pansy Division @ 924

Fri 1

Gilman, SF Eagle

Bulge @ Powerhouse Grace Towers hosts the fun sexy night. $100 cash prize for best bulge. $5-$10 benefits Groundswell Institute, the queer retreat camp. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar. 10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Mary Go Round @ Lookout Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes’ weekly drag show. $5. 10:30pm show. DJ Philip Grasso. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

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

Rock Fag @ Hole in the Wall

Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Fri 1

Friday Nights @ Oakland Museum The family-friendly night events returns, with exhibit tours, dancing, food, drinks, and live music. $7-$15. 5pm-9pm. 1000 Oak St. www.museumca.org

Gogo Fridays @ Toad Hall

Ain’t Mama’s Drag @ Balancoire Weekly drag queen and drag king show hosted by Cruzin d’Loo. Mar. 25 features Donna Personna and many other acts. 8pm-10pm. No cover. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.com

Boy Bar @ The Cafe Gus Presents’ weekly dance night, with DJ Kid Sysko, cute gogos and $2 beer (before 10pm). 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Comedy Noir @ Balancoire Valerie Branch’s weekly comedy night, where she embodies her faux queen character Pia Messing for some offbeat wit, along with guest performers. $5. 8pm-10pm. 2565 Mission St. www.balancoiresf.com

Fauxgirls @ Infusion Lounge The classic drag show moves to first Friday nights, with Victoria Secret, Alexandria, Chanel, Mini Minerva, Kipper, Ruby LeBrowne and Lulu Ramirez; optional dinner at 6pm, show 8pm. No cover. Reservations suggested. 124 Ellis St. at Powell. 421-8700. www.fauxgirls.com www.infusionlounge-sf.com

Hot dancers grind it on the bar at the Castro bar, with a dance floor and patio. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

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

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

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

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

Enjoy hard rock and punk music from DJ Don Baird at the wonderfully divey SoMa bar. 7pm-2am. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

The wacky sitcom about ‘70s roommates gets the local drag parody treatment, with Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger, Matthew Martin, Adam Roy, Sara Moore and Laurie Bushman. $25, $25 and $225 VIP tables. ThuSat 7pm. Thru April 1. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle Music night with local and touring bands. $8. 9:30pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

CarrieOnDisco guest-spins with the Poly crew. $7-$10. 9pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

The splashy fun circus Vaudeville dance and music ensemble performs their new show, Whoa, Man! $20. 7pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 7953180. www.sfoasis.com

Hard French @ El Rio The Honey Soundsystem crew guestDJs the fun soul-funk patio party, along with Carnita and Brown Amy; free BBQ while it lasts. $8. 2pm-8pm. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com www.hardfrench.com

Red Hots Burlesque @ Beatbox The saucy women’s burlesque show hosted by Dottie Lux. $10. 7pm-10pm. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Rita Wilson @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The actress-singer ( Girls, The Good Wife, Sleepless in Seattle ) performs songs from her second album, and popular favorites. $55-$75. ($20 food/ drink min.) Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ritawilson.com www.hotelnikkosf. com/feinsteins www.ticketweb.com

Some Thing @ The Stud Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. $7. 10pm-3am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Fri 1 Rita Wilson @ Feinstein’s

SWMRS @ Thee Parkside The Oakland-based teen beach punk-pop band performs; with The Frights and Pity Party. $13. 9pm. 1600 17th St. 252-1330. www.swmrs.band www.theeparkside.com

Latin, hip hop and Electro music night. $5-$25. 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www. club21oakland.com

Candy Kingdom @ Mighty

Fauxgirls @ Infusion Lounge

Eileen Zamora @ Hotel Rex

Fou Fou Ha! @ Oasis

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland

Fri 1

Enjoy disco groovy classics and new mixes with DJs Steve Fabus, Sergio Fedasz, Prince Wolf and guests Imfromull and vogue act SirJoQ Whitfield. $10 (free before 10pm). 9pm-3am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Pansy Division @ 924 Gilman, SF Eagle

Sat 2

Three’s Company Live @ Oasis

Go Bang! @ The Stud

The veteran cabaret singer performs Broadway classics, Big Band hits and jazz standards. $35-$50. Cocktails and small plates available. 8pm. 562 Sutter St. www.societycabaret.com

Polyglamorous @ Oasis

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge

The weekly hip hop and R&B night. 8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Grammy-winning band performs vibrant Latin music. $24. 8pm & 10pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

The veteran pop-punk gay band returns with music from their new album. April 1, 924 Gilman St., Berkeley (with Love Songs, Kepi Ghoulie and Laguna Screech). April 2 at the SF Eagle, 398 12th St. (Also April 3 at the LA Eagle). www. pansydivision.com

Thu 31

Club Rimshot @ Club BNB, Oakland

Glamcocks’ super-gay Burner-style costume dance night gets sweet. $12-$22. 10pm-3am. 119 Utah St. www.twitter.com/ glamcocks www.mighty119.com

Mack Avenue Superband @ Yoshi’s Oakland Soulful jazz band performs live. $24. 7:30pm & 9:30pm. April 3, 7pm & 9pm. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. (510) 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Mother @ Oasis Heklina’s weekly drag show night with different themes, always outrageously hilarious. April 2: guest performer Ginger Minj. $15. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Nitty Gritty @ Beaux Weekly dance night with nearly naked gogo guys & gals; DJs Chad Bays, Ms. Jackson, Becky Know and Jorge T. $4. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Powerblouse @ The Powerhouse Juanita More!, Glamamore and crew give a drag makeover to a selected man, this time Govinda. Guy Ruben spins groovy grooves; proceeds go to AIDS Housing Alliance. $5-$10. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

See page 36 >>

<< On the Tab

36 • Bay Area Reporter • March 31 - April 6, 2016

Fri 1 SWMRS @ Thee Parkside

Tiki Night @ Blackbird

Monday Musicals @ The Edge

The popular bar with a tasty unique drink menu hosts its second Hawaiian-themed night, with special drinks, guest bartender, DJ, and Tiki mug giveaways for best Hawaiian shirt. 8pm-close. 2124 Market St. www.blackbirdbar.com

Sing along at the popular musical theatre night; also Wednesdays. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Mon 4

Mica Sigourney and Tom Temprano cohost the wacky weekly game night at the cool Mission bar. 8pm. 3152 Mission St. www.virgilssf.com

Drag Mondays @ The Cafe Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko’s weekly drag and dance night, with 9pm RuPaul’s Drag Race viewings. 9pm-1am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland Mondays and Tuesdays popular weekly sing-along night. No cover. 8:30pm1am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 6523820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Gaymer Meetup @ Brewcade

On the Tab

From page 35

Saturgay @ Qbar Stanley Frank spins house dance remixes at the intimate Castro dance bar. $3. 9pm-2am (weekly beer bust 2pm-9pm). 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Sex, Drags & Rock n Roll @ Midnight Sun Mutha Chucka’s hilarious rockin’ drag night at the Castro bar, with Dulce de Leche, Kelly Rose, a gay wedding theme and more. 4pm. 4067 18th St. www.midnightsunsf.com www.MuthaChucka.com

Songhoy Blues @ Slim’s The Mali-based African pop & traditional ensemble makes a rare Bay Area appearance. $21 ($46 with dinner). 9pm. 333 11th St. www.slimspresents.com

Soul Delicious @ Lookout Brunch, booze, sass and grooves, with the Mom DJs, Motown sounds, and soul food. 11am-4pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Soul Party @ Elbo Room DJs Lucky, Paul, and Phengren Osward spin 60s soul 45s. $5-$10 ($5 off in semi-formal attire). 10pm2am. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

Sugar @ The Cafe Dance, drink, cruise at the Castro club. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Sun 3

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). 3pm-6pm. Now also on Saturdays. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Big Top @ Beaux The fun Castro nightclub, with hot local DJs and sexy gogo guys and gals. $5. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.Beauxsf.com

Domingo De Escandal @ Club OMG Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez & DJ Luis. 7pm2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Femme, Xtravaganza @ Balancoire Weekly live music shows with various acts, along with brunch, mimosas, champagne and more, at the stylish nightclub and restaurant; shows at 12:30pm, 1:30pm and 2:45pm. After that, T-Dance drag shows at 7pm, 10pm and 11pm. 2565 Mission St. at 21st. 920-0577. www.balancoiresf.com

The weekly LGBT video game enthusiast night includes big-screen games and signature beers, with a new remodeled layout, including an outdoor patio. No cover. 7pm-11pm. 2200 Market St. www.brewcadesf.com

Hysteria @ Martuni’s Irene Tu and Jessica Sele cohost the comedy open mic night for women and queers. No cover. 6pm-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St.

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room

Opulence @ Beaux Weekly dance night, with Jocques, DJs Tori, Twistmix and Andre. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.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 5

Block Party @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Sat 2

GlamaZone @ The Cafe Pollo del Mar’s weekly drag show takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Hard French @ El Rio

Jock @ The Lookout Enjoy the weekly jock-ular fun, with DJed dance music at sports team fundraisers. 12pm-1am. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Peter Murphy @ Swedish American Hall The Bauhaus cofounder performs acoustic solo and classic tunes. $45. 8pm. 2174 Market St. www.swedishamericanhall.com

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room 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

Sunday Brunch @ Thee Parkside

Karaoke Night @ SF Eagle

Bottomless mimosas til 3pm at the fun punk club. 1600 17th St. 252-1330. www.theeparkside.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550 Weekly two-stepping and line-dancing fun, with lessons and DJed music (not just country). $5. 6:30-10:30pm. Also Thursdays. 550 Barneveld Ave. www.sundancesaloon.org

Sing along, with guest host Nick Radford. 8pm-12am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany’s weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm, with 9pm RuPaul’s Drag Race viewings. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Cock Shot @ Beaux Shot specials and adult Bingo games, with DJs Chad Bays and Riley Patrick, at the new weekly night. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.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

Meow Mix @ The Stud

Sat 2 Mack Avenue Superband @ Yoshi’s Oakland

The weekly themed variety cabaret showcases new and unusual talents; MC Ferosha Titties. $3-$7. Show at 11pm. 9pm-2am. 399 9th St. at Harrison. www.studsf.com

See page 38 >>

Read more online at www.ebar.com

March 31 - April 6, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 37

I had the same struggle as a teenager as many with talking to my family about my sexuality. But I came out at around 20 years old, and it would have been very hypocritical for my parents to have an issue with it, working in the theatre as they did. They had many gay friends including Britain’s greatest ever drag artist Danny La Rue, so I was very lucky. You moved to New York, where you were signed to Click as a model. I remember seeing you in magazines at the time. That was an amazing era, Manhattan in the 1980s. Yes, I knew and hung out with Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat; both gone too soon. I did a lot of catwalk for Gaultier and Commes Des Garçons and worked doing print for Vogue and so on, both in the US and Europe. It seems I was really the first mainstream ‘top’ male model with a shaved head. It caused shock at the time. Now it’s a completely accepted look. It’s always wise to make the most of your flaws.

Left: Max Ellis Right: Richard Truscott

Left: Miss Hope Springs at the piano. Right: Miss Hope Springs onstage.

Give Us Hope

From page 33

But under the frost-white wig is a no less fabulous persona, Britishborn Ty Jeffries. The multi-talented actor, composer, writer and former supermodel has wowed audiences in the UK and around the world, and brings his Miss Hope Springs cabaret concert to Oasis on Wednesday, April 6. While some hilarious camp moments and a saucy wit are part of the show, Jeffries’ more subtle approach offers a different take on the usual drag show. As the son of the late, much loved British character actor Lionel Jeffries (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Rocket to the Moon, Camelot) and film director, Jeffries spent part of his young life in Hollywood with his dad. Educated at The Purcell School of Music in Hampstead, Jeffries’ musical talents were also encouraged by family friends and mentors Sir John Mills, screen composer Elmer Bernstein and Vangelis. Signed to a publishing deal with Elton John’s Rocket Music in his late teens, Jeffries had some chart success, and also worked with, amongst others, Chaka Khan and Neneh Cherry. While working as a pianist at upscale venues like London’s Ritz Hotel, the Kensington Roof Garden and Langhan’s Brasserie, Jeffries was discovered by Click Models in New York. Notable for his shaved head and tall good looks, Jeffries worked the runway and in fashion shoots for Jean Paul Gaultier, Paul Smith, Commes des Garcons and other designers. The London resident has performed in the West End as Miss Hope Springs since 2012, including two sold out years at The Crazy Coqs Cabaret in Piccadilly and other successful runs. Yet American audiences may still be unfamiliar with the performer, whose drag persona evokes Peggy Lee and Dusty Springfield. He answered a few questions about his illustrious career.

ladies of Golden Age Hollywood and that era of sophisticated cabaret; you know, the songstresses who took to the stage of the Hollywood Palace or, in the UK, Saturday night at the London Palladium. What I do is not parody, though. It’s an homage to those theatrical ladies of a certain age who have been through the mill and around the block and know a thing or two about life and love, success and failure. I’ve been writing music and lyrics since I was a kid, and I created the character of Miss Hope Springs five years ago to be the vehicle for everything I love to do. I’ve written an entire repertoire for her, several full shows in fact, which I have been lucky enough to work in over the last four years during my residency at London’s fabulous Le Crazy Coqs in the West End. Do you think British/UK audiences appreciate your more subtle performance style, perhaps more than U.S. fans? Most of our queens are a bit less subtle. Well, I have to say that, after the wonderful reception I received at the curtain of my New York City debut the other night at The Metropolitan Room, I think U.S. audiences are just as hungry for new songs and a fresh twist on the traditional cabaret genre, as those in the UK are. It’s subtle, yes, but the laughs are big and the emotional response from the audience to the more moving stuff is very real. I sing about universal things, heartache, aspiration and success and disappointment. Everyone knows about those things. My audience is very broad. Yes, I have a gay following, but I perform mainly

in places that are not what you would call ‘gay’ or ‘drag’ venues. So I have a very broad cross section of audience members; young, not so young, straight, male, female, gay, straight, bi whatever. It’s really not a drag show as such, so don’t come to it expecting that or you’ll be disappointed. It’s been called ‘gender illusion’.

actors and musicians, and how that figured in the creation of Miss Hope Springs. I grew up in Hollywood for a few years as a kid while Dad was making movies over here such as Camelot and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Shelly Winters and Shirley MacLaine came to dinner to sample my mother’s very British steak

Has the bittersweet aspect of your lyrics and performance anything to do with being an older survivor, a man who’s seen so much change and strife in the gay community? I am a naturally melancholic type, to be honest. And who cannot have been deeply affected by the tragic loss of so many beautiful men who had so much to give. We lost a whole generation of creative minds and creative forces, free thinkers and originals who were swept away in that grim tsunami. I lost many friends, and I often like to think that I am doing this for them. I’m keeping the flame alive, right there on the stage in front of mainstream audiences who don’t really have any idea how radical what I’m doing really is. They see me as a woman

This is quite different than most female impersonation acts. Can you discuss the inspiration for creating Hope? I think Hope is one part Blossom Dearie, as I accompany myself on the piano for all my songs, one part Peggy Lee, as I write all my own material. Miss Lee wrote a lot of her own, and one part Bea Arthur, as I am well over six feet and have a somewhat husky baritone timbre. Someone once said I don’t have the voice of an angel...I have the voice of a fallen angel, which I liked. Early Barbra, Piaf, Marlene, Lotte Lenya and, of course Liza, are all influences. Ty Jeffries in his 1980s modeling days, and today. You’ve performed at several prestigious venues. Is this your first time performing in San Francisco? This is my first time performing in the U.S. at all. So I’m very excited to play my favoritest city in the world. I hope they will like me. You lived in Hollywood when your father (Lionel Jeffries) was working there. Tell me how that experience of meeting famous

Jim Provenzano: I’ve watched several of your videos. You have a very subtle style, and all original music! What inspires the creation of your songs? Miss Hope Springs and Ty Jeffries’ albums Ty Jeffries: I’m inspired by the

and kidney pie; Fred Astaire and Alfred Hitchcock, too. I danced with Mr. Astaire down Sunset Boulevard one night after dinner at the Brown Derby when I was seven, and went swimming with “Herman Munster” Fred Gwynn, in his pool. They were both delightful unprepossessing men. Diana Dors, the British answer to Marilyn Monroe, was my mom’s best friend. I got a glimpse of the darker more fragile side of these legends. That’s what fascinates me; what goes on beneath the bright sparkly sweets-wrapper. Shortly after you started developing Miss Hope Springs, your father shared acting photos of himself in a drag role. Ha... I know he was in a St Trinian’s movie in the ‘60s in drag for a few scenes; not a pretty sight! Can you share a bit of coming out to your family, and moving on with your own performances and life?

Vaudelesque Productions

on stage, not as a drag queen, and they believe Miss Hope’s hopes and struggles are as real as their own. I love all kinds of drag and have great admiration for anyone who gets out there and is brave enough to be themselves, on stage or off it. I love the Oscar Wilde expression, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”t Miss Hope Springs (Ty Jeffries) performs at Oasis, Wednesday, April 6 at 7pm. $25. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com East Coast readers can catch Miss Hope Springs on the last leg of her US tour at Pangea NYC April 11, at the Metropolitan Room NYC April 14, at The Rrazz Room in New Hope, PA April 15, at The Duplex NYC April 17, and at The Lincoln Centre in a guest spot with original Cockette Rumi Missabu Miss Hope Springs returns to her monthly residency in London at The Crazy Coqs on April 24. www.misshopesprings.com www.facebook.com/ misshopesprings

<< On the Tab

38 • Bay Area Reporter • March 31 - April 6, 2016

Wed 6

On the Tab

From page 36

Floor 21 @ Starlight Room

Bedlam @ Beaux

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down as the strippers also take it all off. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Retro Night @ 440 Castro

New weekly event with DJs Haute Toddy, Guy Ruben, Mercedez Munro and Abominatrix. Wet T-shirt/jock contest at 11pm. $5-$10. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Bone @ Powerhouse

Jim Hopkins plays classic pop oldies, with vintage music videos. 9pm-2am. 44 Castro St. www.the440.com

New weekly punk-alternative music night hosted by Uel Renteria and Johnny Rockitt. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Ronn Vigh’s Gay Bash @ Punch Line

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops

The local gay comic hosts a new monthly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night; first Tuesdays. This month, Chantal Carrere, Casey Ley, Marcella Arguello and Pippi Lovestocking. $16.50. 8pm. 444 Battery St. 397-7573. www.PunchLineComedyClub.com

B.P.M. @ Club BnB, Oakland

Tinashe @ The Warfield The R&B-pop singer performs music from her second album, Joyride. $28-$40. 8pm. 982 Market St. www.facebook. com/OfficialTinashe thewarfieldtheatre.com

Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com Olga T and Shugga Shay’s weekly queer women and men’s R&B hip hop and soul night, at the club’s new location. No cover. 8pm-2am. 2120 Broadway, Oakland. www.bench-and-bar.com

Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Vicky Jimenez’ drag show and contest; Latin music all night. 9pm-2am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Underwear Night @ Club OMG Weekly underwear night includes free clothes check, and drink specials. $4. 10pm2am. Preceded by Open Mic Comedy, 7pm, no cover. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Sat 2 Mutha Chucka’s Sex, Drags & Rock n Roll @ Midnight Sun

The Monster Show @ The Edge

Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez. 9pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

The weekly drag show with themed nights, gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Man Francisco @ Oasis

Miss Hope Springs @ Oasis

My So-Called Night @ Beaux

Tue 5

The statuesque British drag cabaret sensation performs her show of original music. $25. 7pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Casey Ley at Ron Vigh’s Gay Bash @ Punch Line

Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night @ Wild Side West

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle

Una Noche @ Club BnB, Oakland

The highly interactive sexy stripper party returns for more debauchery. $20, with cash bar. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Latin Drag Night @ Club OMG

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

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops

Kingdom of Sodom @ Nob Hill Theatre

Juanita More! presents a new weekly scenic happy hour event, with host Rudy Valdez, DJs Vin Sol and Rolo. No cover, and a fantastic panoramic city view. Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell St. www.starlightroomsf.com

The sexy, funny weekly male burlesque show returns; choreographed by Christopher James Dunn; Mr Pam MCs. $20. 2 Two-drink min. 9:30pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Kollin Holts hosts the weekly comedy and open mic talent night. 6pm-8pm. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Pussy Party @ Beaux Ladies night at the Castro dance club. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Rookies Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Watch and vote as newbie strippers compete for $350 in cash prizes. $20. Show 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

I am the future of the LGBT community. I’m 26 and transitioning. I have a lot going on - I don’t need to be mocked, misgendered, or marginalized, and I don’t have time to hunt out news that matters to me. That’s why I read EDGE on my Android tablet. I’m being true to my future - and that’s where it will be.

The 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

Spring Gala @ Exploratorium Playful celebratory fundraiser at the interactive science museum, with open bars, food, desserts, music, dancing and more; creative cocktail attire, please. $75-$100. 8:3011:30pm. Pier 15 at Embarcadero. www.exploratorium.edu

Way Back @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of vintage music videos, and retro drink prices. 9pm2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.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 7

Besties Party @ Oasis The Bay Area Reporter celebrates its 45th anniversary, and the winners of the sixth annual Bestie Readers Choice Awards, with guest-host Shawn Ryan, Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger, performances by Veronica Klaus, Connie Champange, Jason Brock and Kingdom. No cover; hosted bar and food 6pm-7pm, show 8pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.ebar.com/besties2016

Bulge @ Powerhouse Grace Towers hosts the racy night with a $100 wet undies bulge contest at midnight. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Carnie Asada hosts a new weekly ‘90s-themed video, dancin’, drinkin’ night, with VJs Jorge Terez. Get down with your funky bunch, and enjoy 90cent drinks. ‘90s-themed attire and costume contest. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Nap’s Karaoke @ Virgil’s Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover. 9pm. 3152 Mission St. 8292233. www.virgilssf.com

Picante @ The Cafe Lulu and DJ Marco’s Latin night with sexy gogo guys. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG Dana hosts the weekly singing night; unleash your inner American Idol. 8pm. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels Groove on wheels at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the “Godfather of Skate.” Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5. Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Throwback Thursdays @ Qbar Enjoy retro 80s soul, dance and pop classics with DJ Jorge Terez. No cover. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Thump @ White Horse, Oakland Weekly electro music night with DJ Matthew Baker and guests. 9pm-2am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle Music night with local and touring bands. 8. 9:30pm. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie’s Lounge Disco guru DJ Bus Station John spins grooves at the intimate retro music night; 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar. 10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Want your nightlife event listed? Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event. Event photos welcome.

Tue 5 Tinashe @ The Warfield

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

Read more online at www.ebar.com

March 31 - April 6, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 39

Leather Ministry

Mufasa Ali

Left to right: Bay Area leathermen Patrick E. Mulcahey, Patrick Mulcahey and Men of ONYX members Mufasa Ali and Raymond Walker at the recent Leather Leadership Conference in Atlanta.

by Race Bannon

nyone who has been around the leather world for a while has heard a lot of words uttered related to some version of building community. Outreach. Building bridges. Inclusion. And many other canned phrases meant to represent some leather version of fostering community. All that is well and good. The reality, though, is that much of it falls flat. It simply doesn’t happen. We say the words. We have good intentions. But the community we purport to create and help grow stays much the same, or might be nudged along, improving in fits and starts almost in spite of the supposed community building efforts. I’m not trying to besmirch anyone’s or any group’s efforts at community building, and I’m not saying they are all failures. But it’s rare I find a way of looking at community building within our scene that makes a lot of sense to me. That all changed the other day when my friend Patrick Mulcahey posted on Facebook an insight spawned after attending a panel discussion led by ONYX (www. onyxmen.com) and Onyx Pearls (www.onyxpearlssoutheast.com) at the recent Leather Leadership conference in Atlanta. Patrick’s post resonated with me immediately. ONYX was formed and operates by men of color who enjoy the leather lifestyle. They do amazing work providing an informational and social organization to address issues specific to people of color who choose to project the positive aspects of the leather lifestyle and to support our community and economic initiatives. Onyx Pearls is a newer organization formed for women to promote and teach the values and principles of leather, what that means, and what it entails for women of color by women of color. Here is what Patrick Mulcahey posted that resonated so deeply with me when I read it. “I learned something at the ONYX panel Saturday, part of Leather Leadership Conference XX. Mufasa Ali and Daddy Rod have been teachers to me since before the day we met, but here was a roomful of ONYX experience and wisdom.” “And ONYX deserves to be –needs to be– studied, for its astounding and indisputable success in making ‘the diversity of the leather and kink communities’ less a lie we’ve been telling ourselves for forty years and more the beginning of a reality.” “So what I learned: Daddy Rod was talking about how the ONYX board and chapters go about the work they do in manifesting community, and he said, with a shrug, ‘We treat it like a ministry.’”

“Lightbulb moment. So simple but so resonant and complete. The ‘ministry’ is only this: showing up for the people you want to invite to show up for you. Three or four or ten of you suit up and head out to Club X’s Umpteenth Anniversary Fundraiser, you stay for an hour or the weekend, and your message is ‘We are family, shoulder to shoulder.’ If you keep at it and your efforts are not reciprocated, then you know your invitation has not been understood or accepted, and you start staying home. If the people you show up for start showing up and keep showing up for you, then you’ve changed everything: you’ve turned ‘your people’ and ‘my people’ into ‘our people.’” “The motherlode of the secret is right there, in those simple words: ‘like a ministry.’ Not like a party, but like something your heart and your values call you to do, even if you had other plans.” “It’s not a project we can leave to ONYX. But if we can pay attention, ONYX is showing us the way.” When I read those words, the same lightbulb that went off in Patrick’s head went off in mine. He was right. If we want to truly build a leather and kink community, we have to show up. Not give lip service. Not make speeches. Not post on social media. We have to physically show up to meet, socialize and bond with each other. We have to engage in our own forms of ministry. Call it something else if you want, but if you and others show up, are physically present and engaged, the magic of true community building is the end result. So simple. So profound. And the best part? It’s not rocket science. It’s not complicated. It requires nothing more than you or a small group of friends showing up at venues, events and social gatherings to be a live and vital presence.

Mufasa Ali, founder of ONYX, had this to say about their ministry approach. “Hospitality and being intentional about meeting the needs of our members is key. We are the village! People come and people go, but home is still there to nurture and provide when needed. Heart is key to ministry. With this notion we are drawing younger men to the fold. We see other clubs aging out and we don’t want to go down that road. Youth and newborns are important to sustain the mission and the vision to educate, empower and explore. Welcoming our sisters, the Onyx Pearls is also an intentional part of our support.” LadyD of Onyx Pearls told me a beautiful recounting of how the concept of ministry came to be part of her kink world view. “I grew up in a time where sexuality and spirituality did not cross. I had to resolve that conflict within myself first. Most women, especially my age, are taught what ‘good girls’ do and don’t do. My worlds collided when all of the things that I had been taught in the church didn’t match up with my life’s experiences and what my heart told me. If all gays are going to burn in hell, why did I find more love and acceptance among them than the hypocrites I sat next to in church? I cried out to God many nights and one day He answered simply, ‘Be Spiritual, not Religious’ (the title of my upcoming book). “It was healing for me and allowed me to minister to those in my lifestyle. I am an ordained minister and a hypnotherapist, and I realized to allow the spirit to help me to reach and teach others. I have learned that this walk is spiritual, and our ministry, and that I can be a spiritual and a sexual woman! Let the church say Amen!” Raymond Walker III, another ONYX member, offers yet another perspective on the ministry approach of Onyx.

“Beyond the ministry of showing up for others and hoping for reciprocity, ONYX also embodies a ministry of genuine welcome and hospitality. When I came to ONYX I felt nothing but welcome and love. As a transman I carried with me a sense of apprehension in the allmale space ONYX cultivated, but I

Top: Daddy Rod, Bottom: Rayn

Top: Daddy Rod of ONYX. Bottom: LadyD of Onyx Pearls.

soon after learned that my anxiety was unwarranted. These guys were real, open and genuinely wanted to know me and help me along in my leather journey. This is what I carry with me to give to others that meet me as a man of ONYX and a

man in leather, the very same loving hospitality extended to me.” Recently an ONYX Northern California/Northwest Chapter was formed, and they plan to promulgate their ministry style of community building to our area. Here’s what Daddy Rod said about that. “So at the moment, we are still focusing on the local leather friendly bars in the city (San Francisco) and events (Folsom/Dore Alley). But once we become established we have already talked about talking with promoters at Black/Latin/ Asian events where we might have a leather/kink-themed night and ONYX will be present. This will be our way to show our face, show what we are about, and be there to answer any questions anyone might have.” Bay Area leather and kink folks actually do the community building stuff fairly well. In my opinion, more than many other locales. We’re typically united, diverse and respectful of each other. However, even we can do much better. This concept of ministry within our scene is one I hope we’ll all embrace. Let’s show up for each other. Let’s go to events we might not normally go to and be a presence. Let’s get to know people from other walks of the leather and kink scene in which we might not normally commune. In short, let’s get out from behind our laptops and smartphones and get dressed, get out, mingle, talk and interact with fellow kinksters from all walks of our local scene. Leather and kink can thrive, grow, mature and improve. It just takes the intent of showing up and saying “I’m here, Let’s get to know each other.”t Race Bannon is a local author, blogger and activist. You can reach him through his website www.bannon.com.

For Leather Listings, please visit www.ebar.com/bartab

Rayn

ONYX brotherhood, Onyx Pearls and ONYX Associates at Leather Leadership Conference XX 2016.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

40 • Bay Area Reporter • March 31 - April 6, 2016

Tom’s Tom Club

Erotic artist’s home featured in new art book

Are all the motorcycles in front of Tom’s house a tip off to what’s inside?

by John F. Karr

or a full month now I’ve been flat on my back with my legs in the air. Well, one of my legs in the air. I had minor surgery on my foot, to relieve that reward for age, arthritis. Those little toe bones take an age to heal. So I’ve watched movies and read books, and then watched books and read movies, and become so catatonic that I can lie here for hours watching age spots materialize on the back of my hand. What I haven’t done is any porn. Amazing, isn’t it? My dappled hand has had no interest at all in its erstwhile over-active pleasuring duties. I wasn’t just disinterested in porn. I completely forgot it. Only one thing during my glazed-over confinement dispelled the mists to nudge my dormant libido. And that’s the sumptuous photo collection, Tom House—Tom of Finland in Los Angeles (Rizzoli; 256 pages, hardbound; $55). There is perhaps only one art museum in the world that displays a mounted postcard bearing the irresistible message, “I love the smell of manhole in the morning.” And that would be the nonprofit Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF), which resides in Tom’s house.

Tom’s man-cave

Once the home and workplace so Dehner did for Tom. Way back in of the much lionized Finnish artist 1978, he presented Tom’s art, as well who was born Touka Laakonen as Tom himself, at an exhibition at (1920-1991), the house has become San Franciso’s hot spot gallery, the the multi-faceted headquarters Fey-Way Studios. of the ToFF, which is dedicated That’s where I met him, along to protecting, preserving, and with Dom Orejudos and Robert promoting erotic art. Not only Mapplethorpe.The artist had Tom’s, but dozens of other gay worked for decades in obscurity, artists. It’s an archive, a museum, a and Dehner brought him to the light school, and, oh, yes, the host of of name-recognition, mainstream many a hands-on sex party. renown. Listen, I get around. I See page 41 >> cover the waterfront. So I can recognize in the ToFF one of the most perfect matings of low down and high minded. You can credit the ToFF’s publication of numerous anthologies of Tom’s work, as well as its seemingly unending merchandising of Tom of Finland emblazoned tschotskes, with leading the government of Norway to release a Tom of Finland postage stamp. Can you imagine the good ole U.S.A. issuing a commemorative stamp for pioneering gay American artists, like painter George Quaintance, or filmmaker Bob Mizer? The mastermind of all this has been Durk Dehner. Tom House, the book What Lenya did for Weill,

Read more online at www.ebar.com

March 31 - April 6, 2016 • Bay Area Reporter • 41

Art of all persuasions is mighty persuasive, as seen in Tom House.

Tom’s Tom Club

From page 40

Googling Eros Graphics, and both artist’s work in the Meatman series of gay comic anthologies. And some of A. Jay’s stuff will be included in the Queerest.Library.Ever exhibit which opens at the San Francisco Main Library on April 16. I’d sell my mama for a date with

almost any one of men depicted within the ToFF citadel. But I’m in a fog. Did I have a mother? I don’t think I even have a belly button. I’m just lying here with one leg in the air and the peg next to it rising somewhat unsteadily into a stiff salute to Tom House.t

And in spearheading the ToFF, he not only protected Tom from the unscrupulous pirates who for many years had cheated Tom of royalties, but also ensured Tom’s legacy. It was under Dehner’s watch that Tom’s work was included in the 1991 Whitney Museum’s Biennial. Dehner is credited with reclaiming Tom’s work, as the new book puts it, “from the ghettos of illustration and pornography,” which I think means got it reclassified as Art. And now, the house Tom resided in, a classic Craftsman style home on a leafy residential street in Echo Park, Los Angeles, is becoming registered as an official Los Angeles Cultural Monument. Its handsome, richly Left: In Tom House, there’s a chair with decorated back and cushion with woodworked interior needlepoint cock. Right: Tom of Finland, the artist, with his art. houses in every nook and cranny an amazing collection of Tom’s work, and that of many other artists. And the book, Tom House, surveys that collection room by room throughout the house, from dining room to dungeon. As befits a Rizzoli publication, it’s generous in content, and handsome in look. Also befitting is that it’s somehow masculine. I don’t think I’m anthropomorphizing the book to feel that way. It’s as if it were born and bound in leather. It’s a treasurable companion to whatever Tom collections you already own, and it doesn’t duplicate their contents. The color saturated photographs, by Martyn Thompson, are given full and double pages. And a witty and informative Introduction by Mayer Rus explains it all. The house has art everywhere, and of every kind. And cocks, everywhere, in every medium. There’s a porno quilted bedspread, a porno needlepoint pillow, studded leather items. The book explores Tom’s garret studio, and his closet, with its bundles of belt buckles and rows of heavy boots. It casts loving eyes on decoupaged furniture and a bar, and even a decoupaged ceiling. There’s statuary on every flat surface, and framed paintings, graphics, and photographs everywhere. Michael A. Rosen’s iconic photograph of Scott O’Hara in an act of auto-fellatio stands framed on a kitchen counter. The dungeon divulges dark splendors. Interspersed throughout are Tom’s preparatory sketches and unfinished drawings, many published for the first time. Checking out the profuse content within each photo is more fun than finding all the Ninas in a Hirschfeld drawing, and indubitably more arousing. But that brings up the book’s minor weakness. An index which provides identification for the art seen within the photos seemed extensive to me, but could, and should, be even fuller. You’d think an institution known as an artist’s archive would be slavish about such documentation. This won’t diminish your enjoyment of the book, but still, inquiring minds want to know. Among the artists represented I was glad to see several works by one of my favorite cartoonists, John Blackburn, whose Coley comics work me up on a regular basis. I interviewed him for a Bay Area Reporter article some 20 years ago. Boy, I better dig that one up for a revisit. And although it doesn’t mean he’s absent from Tom’s house, I didn’t see any representation of the wildly imaginative artist, A. Jay, who created Harry Chess: The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. You’ll find Coley by

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

42 • Bay Area Reporter • March 31 - April 6, 2016

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photos by steven underhill The Sisters’ Easter @ Golden Gate Park

ellman Hollow once again became filled with sunshine and festive garb, as thousands enjoyed The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’s annual Easter celebrations, which included kid-friendly activities at 11am, followed by performers (Mamma’s Boyz, BeBe Sweetbriar, Dottie Lux, Carly Ozard), the bestowing of ‘Sainthood’ on worthy community members, and, along with the Foxy Mary and Easter bonnet contests, the ever-popular Hunky Jesus contest. www.thesisters.org More event photo albums are on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife. See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at www.StevenUnderhill.com.

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March 31 - April 6, 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ Bay Area Reporter â&#x20AC;˘ 43

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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