November 19, 2015 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

French LGBTs mourn terror victims

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Afternoon Delight

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Vol. 45 • No. 47 • November 19-25, 2015

SF Pride shooting case settled

SF LGBT senior agency ramps up housing outreach

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

he nonprofit organization that runs San Francisco’s annual LGBT Pride parade and festival this week settled a lawsuit with a man who had sued it after he was shot at the Rick Gerharter June 2013 celebration.

Trevor Gardner, 25, Trevor Gardner of Los Angeles, had claimed that the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee’s lax security led to him being shot in the leg after a brawl broke out nearby that year. SF Pride officials said through an attorney that they had worked hard to secure the event and the shooting was “a random act of violence.”

Gardner had sought millions of dollars from festival organizers. Previous settlement talks had failed, and the trial had gotten underway last week in San Francisco Superior Court.

Tuesday, after jury selection had been bungled, attorneys in the case agreed to settle.

Reached by phone, they wouldn’t discuss details of the deal, citing the confidentiality of the agreement.

Asked why the case had settled, Ryan Lapine, Gardner’s attorney, would only say “because there was a settlement that was agreed to by the parties.”

Lapine wouldn’t say how much money Gardner would receive, or which party took the lead in reaching the settlement.

Last week, Lapine suggested to prospective jurors that the hundreds of thousands of people who attend the annual SF Pride festival should have to go through metal detectors and have their bags checked.

In a call Tuesday, he said, “It goes without saying I hope that security at the event conforms to industry standards and that there are no shootings in future years.”

Gardner, “a trained gymnast,” had been working as a model at the Tropicana Las Vegas booth June 30, 2013 when a “brawl” erupted nearby, resulting in Gardner being shot in the leg, Lapine said.

Maria Caruana, SF Pride’s attorney, said Tuesday, “I’d love to speak with you,” but “a couple of days ago, the court actually ordered that we not speak with the press about this case any further.”

Gardner consistently appeared in the courthouse with no obvious injuries, but Lapine said his client had continued to experience pain, and his ability to work is limited.

He also said that Gardner hadn’t been seeking punitive damages, but funds for medical expenses and other costs.

Gardner couldn’t be reached Tuesday for comment.

See page 14 >>

Construction continues on the 55 Laguna Street senior housing project.

by Matthew S. Bajko

O

penhouse, the San Francisco-based LGBT senior agency, is ramping up its housing outreach as it prepares to open next fall the city’s first affordable housing complex meant for LGBT seniors.

Crews with James E. Roberts-Obayashi Corp.

are turning the building at 55 Laguna Street, a block away from the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, into 39 units of various sizes meant for low-income seniors age 55 and older.

An additional unit is being set aside for the resident manager, while six of the senior units will be assigned to people living with HIV or AIDS and at-risk for or have been chronically homeless.

The lottery for those interested in living at the remodeled 55 Laguna building is expected to open in April or May of next year. Those who qualify and are selected to be tenants are expected to move into their new homes sometime in October.

See page 13 >>

Sheen comes out as HIV-positive

Rick Gerharter

by David-Elijah Nahmod

workers was public knowledge, but he and his handlers felt compelled to ollywood bad boy Charlie pay $10 million to keep his HIV staSheen, who was said to tus secret shows we have a long way be the highest paid actor to go combating HIV-related stigma,” during the long run of his sitcom said Brian Basinger, director of AIDS Two and a Half Men, came out as Housing Alliance/San Francisco.

HIV-positive in a no-holds-barred Basinger praised the actor’s deciinterview on the Today Show. sion to come out about his diagnosis.

The actor, known for his very “Charlie Sheen joins a select public battles with network execugroup of public people who lives tives, substance abuse issues, and a their lives fearlessly, out in the stormy love life, said that he’d been open, about their HIV status,” diagnosed with HIV, the virus that Basinger said. “I applaud that he is causes AIDS, four years ago. coming out of the HIV closet and I “I’m here to admit that I’m in feel for him for the public scrutiny Courtesy NBCUniversal fact HIV-positive,” Sheen, 50, told he is going to endure.”

Actor Charlie Sheen, left, and his physician, Dr. Robert Huizenga, Today Show host Matt Lauer. “I Basinger added that it doesn’t matappeared on the Today Show Tuesday, where Sheen revealed he’s have to put a stop to this onslaught ter how a person contracts the virus. living with HIV. of attacks and sub-truths.”

Tez Anderson of Let’s Kick ASS Sheen appeared serious on the (AIDS Survivor Syndrome), a supsince his diagnosis, practiced safe sex. “Every program. port and networking group for HIV, he said, is “a hard three letters to absorb.” time,” said Sheen, who acknowledged that he longtime HIV survivors, was less than pleased wasn’t sure how he contracted the virus.

During the interview it was noted that Sheen with Lauer’s interview techniques.

A portion of the segment also included Sheen’s has been accused of deliberately spreading the “All those questions from Lauer about ‘how physician, Dr. Robert Huizenga from UCLA, did you get it’ were stigmatizing,” Anderson told HIV virus, which he denied.

“I release myself from this prison,” Sheen who said that Sheen’s viral load is undetectable. the Bay Area Reporter. “Sheen felt such shame “Charlie does not have AIDS,” Huizenga said. that he spent millions of dollars to keep a secret told Lauer, saying that he’d paid out $10 million “He is healthy.” to blackmailers, some of whom were prostitutes that did not need keeping. Lauer seemed judgMany in the HIV community applauded with whom he’d had sex. Lauer asked Sheen if mental to me and doesn’t seem to understand Sheen’s candor and expressed dismay over the he was still paying the blackmailers. that condomless sex can be protected sex if fact that the actor had been blackmailed.

“Not anymore,” said Sheen. one’s viral load is undetectable.”

“The fact that we live in a society where the Lauer asked tough questions about whether See page 13 >> or not Sheen, who has remained sexually active actor’s substance abuse and employment of sex

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November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Jailed couple describes trans assault

by Seth Hemmelgarn

ver separated “to let them by.” he man accused of atAs Hulsey passed betacking a transgender tween them, she intenwoman in San Francisco’s tionally bumped them, Mission district Sunday he said. has told the Bay Area Re“I said, ‘Damn, noporter that the incident body says excuse me started when she bumped anymore,’” he recalled.

Courtesy ABC7 into him and his fiance and Hulsey turned around called him the n-word. and said, “Fuck you, [nSamantha Hulsey Dewayne Kemp, 36, and word], you can get the Rebecca Westover, 42, both fuck out of my town,” Kemp said. of San Francisco, are facing assault, Westover got “pissed off ” and hate crime, and other allegations splashed Hulsey with her coffee, he after an incident involving Samansaid, and that prompted Hulsey to tha Hulsey and Daira Hopwood, punch Westover in the face, knockwho are transgender, that occurred ing a tooth loose. at about 7:30 p.m. Sunday near the Wanting to protect his fiance, Holiday Inn at 50 Eighth Street.

Kemp punched Hulsey, who he said, According to Rae Raucci, a friend “still [had] the strength of a man.” of Hulsey’s who’s shared a descrip“I punched her maybe three or tion of the incident, a couple “acfour times,” he said. After his first costed” Hulsey and Hopwood “and punch, Hulsey was swinging at him, began shouting obscenities; the too, he said. woman threw a cup of hot coffee “Was my intention to create great at them, and the man punched Sabodily injury to this individual? No,” mantha in the face at least twice.”

Kemp said. “Was it to eliminate the Hulsey and Hopwood didn’t threat to my queen? Yes.” respond to interview requests. But Kemp said that during the inin separate jailhouse interviews cident, a Holiday Inn employee Tuesday, Kemp and Westover were emerged and “swung his belt buckle stunned by the case that’s being at me,” striking him in the shoulder made against them. and collarbone.

“It’s very unfortunate that a Police soon arrived. Kemp atmember of the transgender comtempted to explain what had hapmunity would use its political status pened and wanted to file a police to cripple two individuals who have report against Hulsey and the hotel nothing against [LGBT] people worker, but he said the officers at all,” Kemp, who’s straight, said. wouldn’t let him.

(Westover said she’s bisexual.)

Kemp acknowledged that he’d Saying that both he and Westover used a slur after Hulsey called him are three strike candidates, he added, the n-word.

“We do not fucking deserve to spend “I said, ‘Fuck you, fag.’ That’s all,” the rest of our lives in prison when Kemp said. we were the ones that were wronged.”

Westover, whose account of what Kemp said that the incident starthappened Sunday closely matched ed after he and Westover had finKemp’s, cried through much of her ished selling Christmas ornaments interview Tuesday. near the Civic Center BART station “I don’t understand why I’m in jail Sunday. They went to a nearby shop and nobody seems to care that this for coffee and then walked down individual assaulted me,” she said.

Eight Street to head home.

Westover said after Hulsey called Two people were walking close beKemp the n-word, she threw her hind them. coffee at Hulsey, ran toward her, and “They were already up on our asked her what she’d said. asses,” Kemp said, so he and WestoSee page 13 >>

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Noel ‘cautiously optimistic’ about Knoller’s appeal

by Ed Walsh

DECEMBER

INFECTIONS PREVENTABLE HIV DEATHS

WORLD AIDS DAY

R

obert Noel, the husband of Marjorie Knoller, the woman convicted of murder after the couple’s dogs killed their lesbian neighbor in 2001, told the Bay Area Reporter this week that he stands by his wife, is “cautiously optimistic” of her chances of her appeal, and that Knoller continues to suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the deadly mauling.

“I fully support her and am waiting outside the gate for her release, hopefully free of the conviction,” Noel wrote in response to an email request for comment. Knoller was convicted of second-degree murder after a jury sided with prosecutors who argued that the couple was culpable because they knew their two Presa Canario dogs were dangerous but did little to mitigate the threat the dogs posed to the public.

On Monday, November 16 the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals heard arguments from Knoller’s attorney, Dennis Riordan, who argued

1

STIGMA

GETTING TO ZERO CONSORTIUM WORLD AIDS DAY REPORT BACK

Pool photo

Marjorie Knoller sat in court as the verdicts were read during the 2002 trial.

that Knoller’s conviction should be overturned because the couple’s defense attorney, Nedra Ruiz, was effectively muzzled by the trial judge, now-retired San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren. During closing arguments, Warren exasperatedly threatened Ruiz with jail if she made another objection.

See page 14 >>

Tuesday, December 1, 2015 6:00 — 8:00 PM 25 Van Ness Ave @ Market Street, 6th floor Hear about San Francisco’s progress towards its goals of zero new HIV infections, zero preventable HIV deaths, & zero stigma. Plus, learn about our plans for 2016.

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4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

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RECEIVE Friday, November 27 – Sunday, November 29 Join us in celebrating 8 years of supporting the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy and in reaching our goal of $5000 in donations.

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<< Community News

t New SF General will provide state-of-the-art treatment

by Khaled Sayed

T

he new trauma medical center in San Francisco will provide state-of-the-art treatment when it opens this spring.

Called Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, thanks to a $75 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Pricilla Chan, the new hospital features everything from an expanded emergency department to a center for older adults.

The new 248-bed facility will provide a full complement of inpatient and outpatient, emergency, mental health, and rehabilitation services.

The trauma center will provide service to 1.5 million people and San Francisco and northern San Mateo County, including aroundthe-clock psychiatric emergency services.

During a media tour Tuesday, November 17, hospital staff showed off the building and some of the services it will provide. Officials projected that once it’s open, the hospital will be able to service 102,463 patients each year, and have interpreters for more than 20 languages.

The new hospital is next to the current general hospital.

The 58-bed emergency department is located on the ground floor.

It has six resuscitation rooms, each of which is attached to another room where staff can scan patients for internal bleeding. The ER is less than 10 feet away from the door where the ambulances will deliver patients, which allows for faster help. The ER can be converted to

Rick Gerharter

Dr. Renee Hsia describes the new CT scanner, one of two, which are now part of the emergency department of the new Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

100 beds in case of emergency or natural disaster.

The facility was built with an $887.4 million bond that was approved by voters in 2008. That money was used for all the construction and soft costs related to construction. On top of that, $170 million in equipment and furniture was also purchased, bringing the total cost close to $1 billion. Hospital officials said that the project has exceeded its $135 million fundraising goal.

Amanda Heier, CEO of the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, said that they received additional support from individuals, as well as foundations and corporations.

“It is a standard best practice to recognize donor support with naming opportunities. In relation to the incredible grants and support the campus is named after him.” Heier said, referring to Zuckerberg. She

Tree of Hope back at City Hall compiled by Cynthia Laird

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also pointed out that 3 percent of the total cost of the new hospital was spent on public art.

The tour showed that hospital staff will be organized into pods that can monitor the rooms. The arrangement of the pods throughout the hospital is designed in a circular pattern.

The second floor contains pediatric care and the family birth center, which includes labor and delivery suites, mother and baby units, and intensive care.

The seventh floor has an Acute Care for Elders department, nursing administration, and citywide disaster response. A rooftop garden is for patients and staff to enjoy and features 180-degree views of San Francisco.

According to Terry Saltz, rebuilding program director, the hospital was built on base isolators, which means that there is a slider that each building column sits on.

See page 14 >>

SF Zoo offers holiday treats

T

he Rainbow World Fund’s World Tree of Hope will be back in San Francisco City Hall this year, and members of the public are invited to the 10th annual lighting party set for Wednesday, December 2 from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

Last year, what city officials termed “a bit of a misunderstanding,” Rainbow World Fund, an LGBT-focused humanitarian nonprofit, would have had to pay $15,000 to have the tree in the Beaux Arts City Hall building.

After scrambling to find a site, Grace Cathedral opened its doors to the tree.

There was no communications mix up this year, and Rainbow World Fund Executive Director Jeff Cotter said the tree, which features origami cranes with wishes on them, will return to City Hall.

Last weekend, members of the social group Gay for Good began folding and “fluffing” thousands of the origami cranes with people’s wishes on them.

According to a news release from Rainbow World Fund, people can submit their wishes at http://www.worldtreeofhope.org.

Details for the upcoming lighting ceremony include a concert by the Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Boys Chorus at 5:30 p.m., followed by a Celebration of Hope at 6. Cheryl Jennings will emcee and Mayor Ed Lee and Jun Yamada, consul general of Japan, will exchange peace cranes. Other guests are also expected.

Following the lighting ceremony, there will be a party until 8.

City Hall is located at 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place.

Courtesy Rainbow World Fund

The World Tree of Hope is decorated with thousands of origami cranes that are inscribed with messages for peace.

New venue for ‘Songs of the Season’

Donna Sachet’s “Songs of the Season” holiday cabaret benefit for the AIDS Emergency Fund, returns for its 23rd year for three nights, Monday-Wednesday, November 30-December 2 at Beatbox, 314 11th Street in San Francisco. Doors open at 7, the shows start at 8.

Sachet said that an intimate cabaret space will be created at the venue, which will have comfortable seating for 200.

In addition to Sachet’s warm vocals, humor, nostalgic remembrances, and her instrumental ensemble, announced guest stars this year include Sharon McNight, internationally recognized singer, actress, and comedienne; Brian Kent, Billboard chart-topping singer and songwriter; and Dan O’Leary, a popular local singer from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.

For ticket information, visit http://www.songsoftheseason.net.

The San Francisco Zoo will soon be transformed into a winter wonderland, complete with reindeer and a holiday light display.

Beginning Saturday, November 21, people can visit Belle, Holly, Peppermint, and Velvet, the reindeer who will be staying at the zoo through January 2.

Zoo Lights returns to the zoo select evenings starting December 4 through January 3. From 5 to 8 p.m. people can enjoy the zoo under twinkling lights and experience the wonder of the holiday season. Admission is $8 for adult and $6 for kids aged 4-14. Children under 3 are free.

For more information about the zoo, visit www.sfzoo.org.

Real Bad promoters announce fundraising results

The Grass Roots Gay Rights Foundation, producers of the annual Real Bad benefit party that follows the Folsom Street Fair, has announced the fundraising results from Real Bad XXXVII. Once again, the party was a sell-out success, raising a record $217,000 for LGBT and HIV/AIDS beneficiaries that serve the community. Over the event’s history, more than $2.3 million has been donated to various community organizations.

This year’s beneficiaries, which will share the funds raised, including 100 percent of the money collected from general admission ticket sales, are: Project Homeless Connect, the HIV Story Project/ National AIDS Memorial, Let’s Kick ASS (AIDS Survivor Syndrome), the National Center for Transgender Equality, Project Inform, and the Castro Country Club.

See page 13 >>

H I V T R E AT M E N T C H E C K I N

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Visit treatmentcheckin.com to learn more.

©2015 ViiV Healthcare group of companies. All rights reserved. Printed in USA. 474301R0 September 2015

<< Open Forum

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

Volume 45, Number 47 November 19-25, 2015 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 • 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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Refugee panic sets in

T

he deadly terrorist attacks by ISIS in Paris last Friday have unleashed predictable responses from Republicans and isolationists who are exploiting fear and prejudice to hijack U.S. foreign policy. Yes, the shootings and suicide bombings were horrific: more than 120 people were killed and several hundred more were injured. But the blowback from GOP politicians is not surprising given the country’s long history of hostility toward foreigners. Since colonial times Americans have always distrusted anyone seeking to settle in this country.

As Huffington Post noted in a piece this week, in 1939 there was opposition to German refugees.

In the 1940s it was Jewish refugees. Americans opposed accepting refugees escaping from communist countries, and later from Vietnam. In the late 1970s Cuban Boat people were vilified, followed in the 1990s by Haitians. Last year it was children, fleeing the humanitarian crisis in Central America. So the loud cries against the U.S. taking in refugees from Syria are only the latest in a series of deplorable anti-immigrant sentiment by a country composed of immigrants.

At last count, mostly Republican governors in 27 states said Syrian refugees would not be welcome and it’s questionable whether they even have authority to bar them. A 1915 U.S. Supreme Court case ruled that aliens admitted by the federal government can live in any state – but that’s not really the point. These politicians want to stoke anger among their constituents to score points against President Barack Obama and Democrats, and more importantly, the panic over public safety that typically follows these terrorist incidents. Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, if terrorists can strike there, the thinking goes, they can strike anywhere. That’s probably correct. Keeping every Syrian refugee out of the U.S., however, won’t solve that problem. In fact, we’ve been victims of domestic terrorism on an unimaginable scale by young men raised right here in the U.S., whether they are motivated by racial hatred or mental illness.

California Governor Jerry Brown is one of the few voices of reason in this debate. On Monday the Sacramento

Bee reported that Brown advocates preserving “America’s traditional role as a place of asylum” but stressed the need for thorough vetting. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) made similar remarks, saying in a television interview that “California will not be one of those states” that turns away refugees.

Lost in the overheated discussion are nuances of identity and motivations forcing people to leave Syria. Some have helped the U.S. military and can’t return to their homes. Some do not want to live under an ISIS government. Some are Christians or follow religions that are anathema to ISIS. And it’s not just the politicians. Turn on cable news and the talking heads are equally nasty and offensive toward refugees. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple pointed out that on CNN Sunday, anchors John Vause and Isha Sesay spent six minutes blaming French Muslims for either not doing enough to prevent the attacks or for not doing enough after the attacks. They were berating Yasser Louati, a representative for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France.

“Sir, the Muslim community has nothing to do with these guys. Nothing,” Louati responded.

“We cannot justify ourselves for the actions of someone who just claims to be Muslim.” As Wemple noted, cable anchors “rarely call for the white or Christian community to answer for its inability to snuff out killings by their own, [but] that’s the standard that exists for Muslims...” No wonder Muslim communities feel caught in the middle.

t

Just before the start of the federal 2016 fiscal year October 1, Obama announced that U.S. immigration would hold 10,000 additional spaces for Syrian refugees. That’s a miniscule amount compared to the tens of thousands who have crossed into European countries, and some, like Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have called for increasing that number. The Organization for Refuge, Asylum, and Migration, or ORAM, called for the government to safeguard 500 of those slots for LGBTs. This week, ORAM Executive Director Neil Grungras is in Turkey, where he’s working to secure safety for a cohort of Syrian lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender refugees, some of the most vulnerable refugees facing life and death circumstances.

In a statement Tuesday, Grungras staunchly defended his agency’s mission.

“We cannot turn our back on the most loyal and vulnerable of refugees,” he said in a statement. “Not only do these refugees deserve our protection, but we also need them on our side, safely on U.S. soil.

“Knee-jerk, political reactions to this complicated situation do nothing but bring about harm to the long-term best interest of the United States of America,” he added. “These vulnerable populations of Syrian refugees in Turkey despise the Islamic State. They’ve watched their loved ones beheaded, their daughters raped, and those they care about hurled from buildings by this terrorist organization.”

Grungras also pointed out that the U.S. has the most stringent refugee screening process in the world today. The 10,000 additional Syrian refugees targeted for resettlement will be vetted by “multiple U.S. intelligence agencies,” he explained.

“If need be, the U.S. has the capability to institute even further interview and investigation-based screening procedures,” he said. “But to allow politics to drive this decision would be both morally repugnant and harmful to our country’s long-term security interests.”

Grungras is right. And most of those raising a ruckus know it. The majority of Muslims aren’t extremists and those who are fleeing Syria are just as terrified of ISIS as we are.

Let’s hope that calmer and more rationale heads prevail and that LGBTs will be given safe haven from the persecutions of ISIS and the Republicans.t

Parity needed to treat LGBTQ drug users

by Buster Ross

I

’ve spent the last four years at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, the nation’s largest nonprofit addiction treatment facility, with these last two years spent as our organization’s LGBTQ program director.

As part of my work, last year I co-authored a statistical analysis that appeared in the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services. Our data revealed that LGBTQ people in rehab for alcoholism and drug addiction had been to twice as many rehabs, and three times as many detoxes, as non-LGBTQ people in the same facilities. We also found that these folks had nearly one-and-a-half times the chance of having an anxiety disorder diagnosis, and the same with a depression diagnosis. They were three times as likely to report a history of sexual abuse, twice as likely to report a history of physical abuse, and twice as likely to report a history of emotional abuse.

In response to these findings, our leadership created the position I occupy today, and have supported me in creating a program that is the first of its kind. More recently we have began expanding that programming to support LGBTQ patients throughout our entire national system of care. In developing training and curriculum resources for our 11-state system, I was able to get institutional support to develop those resources for use by others in our field, at no cost.

The alarming disparity in outcomes we have uncovered won’t be reconciled by one organization improving LGBTQ services, or by 10 of them. Change will only happen when the entire field changes how it approaches the care of LGBTQ clients in drug and alcohol treatment.

Perhaps this is part of how we got to this point in the first place: by failing to address addiction in LGBTQ community with real parity.

On our website, we talk about LGBTQ

Courtesy Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

Buster Ross is the LGBTQ program director at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.

integrative treatment, which equally accommodates heterosexual, cisgender, and LGBTQ patients, emphasizing sensitivity for those in the early stages of “coming out” and in conflict about their identity.

Every component of treatment takes into account LGBTQ needs, using curriculum developed by Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation clinicians. Treatment acknowledges the trauma of living closeted, of family system rejection, and of anti-gay emotional and physical violence.

LGBTQ-integrative treatment is structured to focus on cooccurring disorders and trauma, addressing internalized homophobia and shame by creating an environment that supports healing in a setting that includes heterosexual people. Patients experience the community support and validation imperative to successful recovery.

But even with an integrated treatment system, I have been afraid. I have been afraid that I won’t be able to do it. And I now see clearly that my fear is absolutely valid. There is no way I can do

this alone; it’s too big a task. Even with the help of the chief professional officer of the American Counseling Association, the chair of the American Medical Association’s Committee on LGBT Issues, and the senior policy adviser of the National Association of Social Workers. Even with the help of the nation’s largest addiction treatment organization, the nation’s largest publisher on addiction, and the nation’s oldest addiction counselor training program. Even with the former head of the Oregon Addiction Counseling board, a board member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, and the authors of some of the most important books on gay affirmative therapy and sexual health in recovery. Even with the help of the University of Minnesota, Rutgers Center for Alcohol Studies, and the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School of Addiction Studies supporting CME/CEU accreditation and hosting of the training online. Even with face-to-face meetings with senior leaders at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to review the model, research, and curriculum.

Sometimes I get pretty depressed thinking about how far we have to go before LGBTQ culture and issues will be fully integrated and normative in drug and alcohol treatment. I worry that it will be like everything else in my life, a grand vision that just almost happened.t Mental health and addiction providers can sign up for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation’s LGBTQ-Integrative online training series launching in January and running through May 2016. Visit http:// www.hazeldenbettyford.org/lgbtq for more information.

t

Politics>>

November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

SF mayor leaves Harvey Milk SFO terminal stranded

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

he proposal to name a terminal at San Francisco International Airport after gay icon Harvey Milk remains stranded in the office of Mayor Ed Lee. After striking a deal in the spring of 2013 with gay District 9 Supervisor David Campos, who first floated that January the idea of naming the entire airport after Milk, Lee agreed to form an advisory committee that would recommend which of the airport’s four terminals should be named after Milk. The panel could also suggest names for the three other terminals, if it chose, as well as other airport facilities.

Milk’s election to a supervisor seat in November 1977 marked the first time an out LGBT person had won elected office in both San Francisco and California. Yet less than a year into his first term, Milk was killed inside City Hall the morning of November 27, 1978 along with then-Mayor George Moscone by disgruntled former supervisor Dan White.

In the ensuing years a number of city facilities – such as a school, public plaza, and recreation center – have been named after Milk, who had penned a political column for the Bay Area Reporter for several years prior to his election.

If Campos’ initial proposal had been adopted, San Francisco would have been the first city in the world to name its airport after an LGBT leader.

Yet the proposal to name SFO in honor of Milk, who would have turned 85 this past May, was met with mixed reactions, even within the LGBT community. Lacking the votes needed on the Board of Supervisors to move the idea forward, Campos struck the deal with Lee to name a terminal after the slain LGBT rights leader, with many suggesting it be the international terminal to send a global signal of support for the LGBT community.

Others have suggested selecting a person from the city’s Asian American community since SFO bills itself as a gateway to Pacific Rim countries. The names of Senator Dianne Feinstein and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, both San Francisco Democrats, have been floated as possibilities since they have secured federal funds for the airport.

Whose name would be attached to the various airport terminals and other areas would ultimately be up to the supervisors and the mayor to decide.

While the supervisors had named their four picks to the nine-person airport naming advisory body by early 2014, Lee has yet to name his five people to it. Asked about the delay this fall when he met with the B.A.R.’s editorial board, Lee indicated he would “very soon” make his appointments but did not indicate when.

At the October 2 meeting, Lee said he had spoken to SFO airport director John Martin, a gay man, about whom to name to the committee while on a tour in late September of the airport’s new control tower.

“We are naming people onto the appointment group of people and will compare notes about those names. It will be completed very soon,” said Lee, adding that, “We are committed to doing it. I can’t give

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On November 27, 2013, participants carried signs calling attention to the housing crunch during the 35th annual march to remember Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, who were assassinated on the date in 1978.

you a time.”

Lee said that Martin was working on a list of different airport facilities that could be named after someone to give to the advisory committee.

“We are going to have a body of people that will recommend naming of different parts of it. I think he has broken down different parts of the airport,” said Lee, who this month won a second four-year term as mayor. “We think that is right. We want that as part of the process.”

A spokeswoman for Lee did not respond to the B.A.R.’s inquiry Tuesday about the status of the mayor’s appointees. Nor did SFO spokesman Doug Yakel reply to the B.A.R.’s questions about the status of the panel or if Martin, who is reportedly looking to retire in 2016, was willing to serve on it.

Campos also did not respond to a request for comment this week.

The airport naming issue has taken a back seat to more pressing concerns confronting city leaders, such as the housing crisis and homelessness. Nonetheless, LGBT community leaders said it was time for Lee to name his committee appointees so the panel could get to work.

“It is time for them to quit talking about talking about it and get it done,” said Cleve Jones, a gay man who was an aide and close confidante of Milk.

Added Peter Gallotta, co-president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, “We would like for the mayor to seat this commission and continue the conversation of memorializing Harvey in that way.”

Gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, who co-sponsored Campos’ initial resolution to name all of SFO in honor of Milk, also said this week it is time for Lee to name people to the panel.

“Yes, I am disappointed it is taking as long as it has taken. It needs to move forward,” said Wiener. “If the mayor doesn’t make his appointments, we need to move forward anyway. I think it is clear there is support for this in the community, the board supports it, and it needs to happen.”

Milk memorial march next week

To commemorate the deaths of both Milk and Moscone, the Milk club is hosting the 37th Harvey

Milk Memorial March and Vigil next week.

The club has annually sponsored the event, which normally consists of a vigil and candlelight march in the Castro. On certain occasions, such as the 35th anniversary, the route has headed from the city’s gay district, which Milk represented on the board, to City Hall, replicating the march that occurred on the night of the progressive politicians’ deaths.

(At the request of Moscone’s family following the 2013 march, the club removed mention of the late mayor from the official name of the event but has continued to honor him at the vigil.)

This year’s vigil will begin at 6 p.m. Friday, November 27 at Harvey Milk Plaza, above the Castro Muni station at the intersection of Castro and Market streets. Jones and gay former state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) will be among this year’s speakers.

Following their remarks, there will be a processional by candlelight to Milk’s former camera shop and campaign office located at 575 Castro Street. Once at the site, the crowd will be asked to observe a moment of silence for both Milk and Moscone.

“The reality is San Francisco needs Harvey Milk now more than ever, I think,” said Gallotta. “Given all of the challenges and changes we are facing right now, from the affordability crisis to the rise of LGBT homelessness to the displacement of the low-income community and people of color, we need Harvey’s story as an example.”

Although this year’s march and vigil is taking place the night after Thanksgiving, Milk club leaders are hopeful there will still be a good turnout.

“We would like for people to come and be with us,” said Gallotta.

The Milk club has created an event page on Facebook at h t t p s : / / w w w. f a c e b o o k . c o m / events/1043370785683547/.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 on lesbian Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins’ large campaign war chest for her state Senate race.

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

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

<< Community News

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

SFAF hires health official; Strut plagued by delays

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

s the opening of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s Strut men’s health center in the Castro continues to be plagued by delays, the agency has announced it’s hired a longtime public health official to oversee its programs centered in mid-Market.

Tracey Packer, who’s led HIV prevention initiatives at the San Francisco Department of Public Health for more than a decade, will start at SFAF January 4.

Packer, 56, a straight ally, joins the organization as it continues to play a lead role in efforts to eliminate new HIV infections in the city.

SFAF, which is more than 30 years old, provides a wide range of free services to thousands of people a year, including HIV testing and prevention services, syringe exchange, and housing assistance.

“I’m really looking forward to supporting the great work that SFAF does, particularly with the clients and community reached

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through 1035 Market,” Packer said in response to emailed questions, referring to the nonprofit’s midMarket Street headquarters.

In its November 10 news release announcing Packer’s hiring, the organization said she’d have “primary programmatic leadership responsibility” for the site, serving clients through the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods, along with the Sixth Street corridor. The areas are home to many of the city’s poorest residents.

“If San Francisco is going to get to zero new infections, we need to engage with these community members in ways that work for them,” Packer said.

“SFAF does a great job and my goal is to provide support and resources to the staff to continue reaching this and other communities.”

Packer most recently served as the health department’s director of community health equity and promotion, where she managed a budget of $17 million. She also supervised more than 25 community-based organizations funded through city contracts and subcontracts, making her a familiar face for numerous local nonprofit officials.

In her new job at SFAF, which gets much of its $29 million budget from funds provided by the city, Packer

Jane Philomen Cleland

Tracey Packer

will oversee HIV prevention and care programs. She’ll also collaborate with representatives from the city and state, among other duties.

In SFAF’s news release, Neil Giuliano, the agency’s outgoing CEO, said, “Tracey is highly-respected in the public health world, and throughout her career has made significant contributions to the city’s response to HIV. We are ecstatic to have Tracey join our team, and I am confident that her leadership will serve our staff, our clients, and the community immensely in the years to come.”

Packer’s current boss, lesbian Health Director Barbara Garcia, expressed appreciation for Packer’s efforts.

“For 21 years Tracey Packer devot-

OPEN ENROLLMENT IS NOVEMBER 1, 2015 TO JANUARY 31, 2016

t

ed her career to serving populations disproportionately impacted by HIV, and she has made incredible contributions to San Francisco’s effort to eliminate new HIV infections,” Garcia said in an emailed statement.

“I am very proud of the work that Tracey has supported in the health department. ... I am glad that we will be able to continue to work with Tracey through our grant funding and partnership with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation to achieve the vision of Getting-To-Zero.”

Packer said her biggest accomplishment at the health department related to HIV/AIDS “has been to collaborate with community-based organizations, DPH staff, the planning councils, and other community members to implement the National HIV/AIDS Strategy in a way that I believe has been effective for San Francisco.”

Major work remains, though.

“We are close to getting to zero, but there are some groups that grapple with multiple challenging issues and we need to figure out the best way to incorporate HIV prevention and care while meeting their priority needs,” Packer said.

“As a community we will need to collectively address issues such as housing, mental health, economic issues. It will be important for DPH and the community to ensure that the federal funding stream continues so that San Francisco can reach See page 9 >>

FDA OKs new singlepill HIV treatment

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by Liz Highleyman

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he Food and Drug Administration has approved Gilead Sciences’ Genvoya, a new once-daily singletablet HIV regimen containing a new formulation of tenofovir that is easier on the kidneys and bones.

The approval was made earlier this month.

“Though current antiretroviral therapy is very safe and effective, there remain concerns about side effects for a small proportion of people and those side effects can sometimes be serious,” David Evans of Project Inform told the Bay Area Reporter. “The improved version of tenofovir contained in Genvoya will certainly provide increased peace of mind about kidney and bone toxicity to people living with HIV and their providers.”

Genvoya is a combination pill containing the HIV integrase inhibitor elvitegravir (sold separately as Vitekta), cobicistat (used to boost elvitegravir levels), emtricitabine, and tenofovir alafenamide, or TAF. TAF is a pro-drug that delivers the active agent, tenofovir diphosphate, to HIV-infected cells more efficiently than the current tenofovir disoproxil fumarate or TDF forSee page 11 >>

International News>>

t French LGBTs gather in shadow of terrorist attacks

by Gerard Koskovich

O

n the evening of Friday, November 13, I was in the city of Avignon in Southern France for the start of a historic weekend: The Etats Généraux LGBTI (National LGBTI Conference) was opening at Avignon’s ornate 19th-century city hall with a speech by Mayor Cécile Helle followed by a festive reception. More than 250 activists from throughout the country were on hand to take part in two days of discussions about the future of the LGBT movement following the successful campaign for marriage equality in France.

Celebrated stage director Olivier Py, head of the Avignon Theater Festival, also addressed the crowd, telling us that he had once thought of himself only as an artist who happened to be gay, but had come to embrace belonging to the LGBT community. The very notion of distinct communities often makes the French nervous, as they fear that identifying with such groups can produce isolation and separatism – yet Py received rousing applause when he reminded

<<

SFAF

From page 8

these important populations both with HIV prevention and care.”

The health department hasn’t selected a replacement for Packer, who said, “There will be a hiring process for the director of community health equity and promotion in the next few months.”

Asked whether SFAF had approached her about working there, or vice versa, Packer said, “There were a few times that this job opening was discussed and we began discussing the possibility in October.”

She said her salary at the nonprofit would be more than her current salary, which is about $122,000.

us that LGBT people have created “a beautiful community ... a community that has always been about love and about peace.”

We didn’t yet know that at virtually the moment when Py was speaking, a wave of attacks was underway 430 miles to the north in the French capital. Only as my friends and I settled in at a late-night restaurant across from City Hall on the Place de l’Horloge did the news begin to filter in. Checking the tweets on his smartphone, fellow activist Olivier Nostry told us about reports that gunfire had broken out in Paris. By the time we returned to our hotel, the nature of the events was clear: terrorists had struck cafés, a concert hall and sites near a major soccer stadium where a match was in progress, leaving behind carnage and a growing death toll.

A solemn but determined group of activists gathered the following morning at the FabricA, the headquarters of the Avignon Festival, where the meetings of the National LGBT Conference were set to take place. Police reinforcements in

Strut status

As part of the foundation’s leadership team, Packer’s going to be working closely with Tim Patriarca SFAF’s executive director for gay and bi men’s health and wellness, SFAF said in its news release.

Patriarca oversees Strut, the health center at 470 Castro Street that the nonprofit has been working for years to open.

SFAF had been set to open the center this month, but has faced delays due to the need for various inspections to obtain a license.

Andrew Hattori, a spokesman for the agency, said in an email last week in. that he didn’t have9.75 an opening date to share, since state officials still haven’t approved a license for the center.

November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Gerard Koskovich

Organizers of the French National LGBTI Conference hold a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the terror attacks in Paris.

Fourth and third from right: Erwann Le Hô and Christine Nicolas.

uniform and plain clothes were stationed at the entrance to provide increased security for the complex.

With activists filling the seats of the main theater, the organizing committee came on stage. Conveners Christine Nicolas and Erwann Le Hô stepped forward, and Le Hô addressed the hall. He stated that the conference would not be canceled

– and his brief yet moving words made clear why the work should continue despite the somber news: “We welcome you to the FabricA this morning with heavy and shattered hearts. ... Our thoughts this morning of course go out to the families of the victims. And we’re also thinking in particular of the activists from Paris who are here in Avignon

Corey Egel, a California Department of Public Health spokesman, responded via email Tuesday to questions about the status of Strut’s license.

San Francisco’s fire department notified state health officials last Friday, November 13 that the clinic “obtained fire clearance, which is required before CDPH can perform an inspection,” Egel said.

He said his agency was “assigning a surveyor to visit the facility.”

“Once the clinic demonstrates its ability to meet all required minimum standards for licensure, CDPH will issue a license,” he said.

The fire department didn’t immediately respond to an email from the Bay Area Reporter.

Elected officials are among those voicing support for Strut as the process continues.

“This center will be a great resource for the community, and I’m happy to do what I can to help with any state licensing issues that come up,” former city supervisor and current Assemblyman David Chiu (DSan Francisco), a straight ally, said in an emailed comment.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose District 8 includes the Castro, referred to the center as “critical.”

“As far as I can tell, Strut is on track and will open soon, and that’s very exciting for the community and for the neighborhood,” he said.

Wiener, who’s gay, added, “Getting through the state health de-

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this weekend. We hope that you have been able to hear from your loved ones and that all of them are safe.

“The terrorists will have won if fear overtakes us, if we hide in our homes, if we see others as representing danger rather than an opportunity.

“And that’s why we’re present today: to say that we are here and that horror will not overwhelm us. We are united. We are opening our doors, coming together, having discussions, exchanging ideas, getting to know each other in all of our differences, continuing to question ourselves so we can advance our movement. ...

“Those are the things we believe in,” Le Hô continued. “Those are the things that will thwart the plans of obscurantists and fanatics of all kinds. And that’s why we are here in Avignon this weekend. More than ever, as our friends from ACT UP say, ‘Action = Life.’”

The participants took up this call with working sessions on Saturday and with report-backs and discussion of strategies and goals See page 13 >> partment process, which involves other departments as well, is never simple or easy. ... It’s all going to be fine.”

Gay state Senator Mark Leno (DSan Francisco) wasn’t available for comment, but Leno’s staff has been in touch with CDPH several times to inquire about the status of Strut’s license.

CDPH protocol requires that any updates regarding the license go to the original requestor, according to Leno’s office.

Giuliano, SFAF’s CEO, is leaving the nonprofit after being named in August as the president and CEO of Greater Phoenix Leadership, a business group in Arizona. SFAF hasn’t selected a new CEO.t

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Community News>>

November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Analysis shows PrEP appears to work for trans women

by Liz Highleyman

T

ransgender women who were assigned to take Truvada in the iPrEx pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, trial had a similar overall risk of HIV infection as those assigned to a placebo, but participants who had blood drug levels showing consistent PrEP use appeared to be protected, according to a new analysis.

“This confirms what we’ve already seen in the community: that trans women benefit from PrEP, that our risks and barriers to usage are different than men who have sex with men, that most of us have had experience in the sex trades, and that our public health response needs to be holistic and culturally competent,” Dee Michel, HIV services manager and transgender services coordinator at St. James Infirmary told the Bay Area Reporter.

One of the study authors also confirmed the benefit.

“While this analysis did not include a large enough sample group to draw firm conclusions, we did find strong evidence pointing to efficacy,” said senior study author Robert Grant from the UCSF Gladstone Institutes. “Additional research designed specifically for transgender women is needed to confirm this finding.”

Grant and his colleagues performed an unplanned analysis of PrEP effectiveness and adherence among transgender women in iPrEx, comparing outcomes be-

<<

tween trans women and men who have sex with men (MSM). Findings were reported recently in the Lancet.

The iPrEx trial enrolled 2,499 participants in six countries. While most were gay and bisexual men, 339 participants, or 14 percent, were classified as transgender women.

These included people assigned male at birth who identified as women, trans, or “travesti,” or who used feminizing hormones. Just 3 percent of participants in the U.S. were trans women, rising to 15 percent in Ecuador and Peru, and 38 percent in Thailand.

Participants were randomly assigned to take Truvada or placebo pills once daily. After the randomized portion of the trial ended they had the option to receive Truvada in an open-label extension of the study.

Compared with gay and bi men, transgender women more often reported sex work or transactional sex (64 versus 38 percent), condomless receptive anal sex (86 versus 55 percent), recent sexually transmitted infections, and more than five sex partners during the past three months.

Transgender women had lower PrEP drug levels in their blood, showing they were less likely to take Truvada on a daily basis. Unlike the gay men – for whom those at highest risk of HIV had better adherence

Liz Highleyman

Researcher Robert Grant

– trans women who reported condomless anal sex tended to use PrEP less consistently. Trans participants who took hormones were also less likely to have protective drug levels.

“We think that one factor leading to lower rates of pill-taking may be due to either a fear of, or lack of information about drug-drug interactions between PrEP and genderaffirming hormone medications,” said lead study author Madeline Deutsch from UCSF. “For transgender women, their gender-affirming medications are a higher priority.”

Deutsch added that they do not know of any interaction with hormones or other biological factors that would affect how PrEP works for trans women, but more studies are needed.

Among all iPrEx participants, Truvada reduced the risk of HIV infection by 42 percent overall compared to placebo in the randomized study, rising to 92 percent among those with blood drug levels indicating consistent use. In the openlabel extension, no one who took Truvada at least four times a week became infected.

Among transgender women, 11 new HIV infections occurred in the PrEP group and 10 in the placebo group during the randomized trial – essentially no difference. Two more trans women receiving PrEP seroconverted during the open-label extension. Trans women were half as likely as gay men to have drug levels showing they took four or more Truvada doses per week. But among those who did, none became infected.

Investigators and community advocates agreed on the need for research and interventions specific to trans women.

“When transgender women take PrEP as prescribed, it appears to work, but to retain and encourage PrEP use, research should be con-

ducted and interventions should be delivered in gender-affirming environments,” said study co-author JoAnne Keatley, director of the UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender Health.

“If you’re an HIV-negative gay man you probably know tons of men taking Truvada, but that’s not the case among trans women,” Aria Sa’id, who works with the Center for Excellence and St. James Infirmary, told the B.A.R. “These new findings on PrEP adherence show we have to be innovative and creative about educating trans women about PrEP.” Others pointed out that trans women are not often part of research studies.

“Transgender women are classified as high-risk for HIV, but we continue to be an afterthought in research studies,” added Nikki “Tita Aida” Calma, HIV prevention program manager at the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center. “We want to be able to tell transgender women and men what to expect when they take PrEP, just like HIV prevention workers can when they work with cisgender men. We want to fully understand the barriers to PrEP adherence and efficacy for our communities so we can design the best programs to support them, backed by scientific evidence.”t

New HIV treatment

From page 8

mulation (brand name Viread, also in the Truvada, Atripla, Complera, and Stribild combination pills).

The new Genvoya coformulation is similar to Stribild, but with 10 mg of TAF replacing 300 mg of TDF. Gilead has also requested approval of a two-drug combination pill containing TAF and emtricitabine (which would be a successor to Truvada), and another TAF-containing single-tablet regimen with rilpivirine (a successor to Complera).

One of the most widely used antiretroviral drugs, TDF is considered generally safe and well tolerated, but it can cause bone loss soon after starting treatment and can lead to kidney problems in susceptible people.

TAF produces high drug levels in T-cells with smaller doses, which means lower concentrations in the blood and less drug exposure for the bones and kidneys. It may also mean lower levels in genital and rectal tissues, which could have implications for HIV prevention.

Importantly, TAF has not yet been studied for pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, in humans, and it may not work as well as TDF, which provides greater than 90 percent protection when taken consistently. Gilead is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a study of TAF and emtricitabine for PrEP in monkeys, company representative Marshall Fordyce said at a medical conference earlier this year.

Clinical studies

Genvoya was approved for previously untreated HIV-positive adults and children age 12 and older, and for adults switching from a current suppressive antiretroviral regimen who have no prior history of treatment failure. It is not recommended for people with severe kidney function impairment, but can be used by those with moderate impairment.

Genvoya approval was based on data from Phase 3 clinical trials enrolling more than 3,000 participants.

Two international studies did a head-to-head comparison of firstSee page 14 >>

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<< Sports

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

Predictable fallout from Rousey fight

by Roger Brigham

T

he level of idiocy surrounding Ronda Rousey’s first defeat in mixed martial arts has been astounding – but entirely predictable.

Acceptance of violence and sexism are all too prevalent in the world of sports, and Rousey’s defeat was a perfect storm showcase of both.

For those of you so otherwise preoccupied that you are unaware of who Rousey is or the media aura that has surrounded her, allow me to provide a quick snapshot.

Rousey, a former Olympic bronze medalist in judo, makes her living these days as a mixed martial artist.

In her brief career, she has gone undefeated in a dozen bouts, winning a string of them in a matter of seconds.

This led her to being declared the most dominant athlete in the world and an unbeatable force of nature in the sports media, where she has clowned with cowering talk show hosts, exchanged verbal jabs with the likes of Donald Trump and Floyd Mayweather, and been the subject of speculation as to whether she was getting a free pass on allegations of domestic abuse because she’s a woman.

All of which was, respectively, premature, idiotic showboating, and ridiculously ill informed.

Undefeated in 12 fights? Big friggin’ deal; those kinds of career starts in combat sports, choreographed or otherwise, are not unusual. And the dominance in a sport, which is actually a blend of widely different fighting skills, is no shocker either; bouts can be unpredictable and hinge upon how particular skill sets match up. So impressive, but as we say annually about Tony Romo, let’s not canonize her just yet.

The suggestion that she was guilty of domestic abuse came from her autobiography, My Fight, Your Fight, in which she wrote of slapping, punching, and tossing aside an ex-boyfriend whom she said took nude pictures of her while she was sleeping and then attempted to keep her from leaving. Reporters who for years were silent while male athletes they wrote about slapped, punched, and tossed aside their girlfriends and wives suggested that perhaps Rousey was as guilty as those male athletes but was getting a pass because she was a woman.

Then again, in none of those other incidents was it ever even suggested that the smacked-about women were taking nude pictures of their men and then preventing the men from leaving, so this is not so much comparing apples and oranges as it is comparing apples and Florida swamplands.

San Francisco Columbarium A cemetery for cremated remains in the City.

If it comes to pass, five will get you 10 that those commentators who say they can’t stand to see two women punching it out will tune in to it and air their expertise again the next day. Some guys just can’t help themselves.

Paris Gay Games reacts to attacks

MMA fighter Holly Holm knocks out Ronda Rousey in their November 14 match.

In any event, this particular hypefest came to an abrupt interruption Saturday, November 14 when Rousey was thoroughly crushed by similarly unbeaten Holly Holm, who landed a roundhouse kick to Rousey’s head in the second round of their UFC bantamweight title match, knocking out Rousey and sending her to the hospital for surgery.

This created a bit of a pickle for many male sports commentators who had grown accustomed to being able to praise Rousey and tennis star Serena Williams to showcase their entire knowledge of women’s sports. And it also provided an opportunity for many talking heads on sports radio to tell us that they love MMA but did not like the idea of seeing two women smashing each other in the face.

Couple of guys punching each other into oblivion, they are fine with. Hordes of men slamming into each other with concussive force so they can move a pointy ball forward six feet? They’re cool with that. But two women who, you know, should really be putting on makeup and

I

Meet Your Neighbors Gratitude is the heart’s memory.

wemix doand formingle ourselves dies with us.will one You’re What invited to with the people who day sharewe your San and Francisco address.

What dopermanent for others the world remains and isOpen immortal.

Wine & Cheese House Friday, July 19, 2013 2—5pm

We are grateful and filled with Pride RSVP Required: (415) 752-8791 to serve the LGBT Community and Loraine Court—San Francisco, CA 94118 for 1the confidence you have shown in us we are deeply grateful.

Our best Wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving!

Call Mary Regan (415) 336-2419 Reserve your niche in history!

Visit us at 1 Loraine Court, in the Richmond District Serving the LGBT Community with Pride!

cheering on their men, climbing into a ring and kicking each other in the head? How barbaric!

Before the fight, Rousey showcased her elegant side by belittling her opponent on Instagram, writing, “Fake ass cheap shotting fake respect fake humility bitch. ‘Preacher’s daughter’ my ass – I see through your fake sweet act now – you’re getting your ass kicked tomorrow, and I’m really going to enjoy the beating I give you #andSTILL.” It was an astonishingly correct demonstration of the difference between “you’re” and “your” – so rare these days in social media.

After the bout, Rousey was considerably more demure. As Mike Tyson has observed, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

Now organizers of mixed martial arts must come up with a new game plan and new media hype campaign to achieve their goal, which is to make money for themselves.

No doubt there will be a call for a rematch, a long exchange of yes and no, and an eventual showdown between the two unstoppable forces of nature again.

After the terrorist attacks in Paris last week left more than 100 dead and the city on lockdown, I wrote my friends with the Paris 2018 Gay Games to make sure they were all fine and ask if they needed anything.

They wrote back to say they were stunned but fine, and later issued a statement to Gay Games supporters.

“Friday, November 13, 2015 was a dark day for our country and for the entire democratic world,” they wrote. “The indiscriminate suicide attacks in Paris are increasing in the Middle East, America, and other European cities. These atrocious acts of barbarism attempted to attack the symbols that are the strength of our country. First, our republican values of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Then, the unique concept of ‘laïcité.’ which enables a diversity of spiritualities to live in society together, and finally, our way of life, ‘l’art de vivre,’ in cafes, theaters, and football fields. More than ever, Paris 2018 reaffirms its role as a major sporting, cultural, humanistic, and festive event capable of taking place in national and international harmony. More than ever, we want to unite the world with Paris in order to participate in changing the world with our values of diversity, respect, equality, solidarity and sharing.

Our organization brings together various diverse energies that will increase even more as we continue to unite – despite of and because of our differences - for the success of our ambitious project.”t

Anthology looks at disabled queers

by Belo Cipriani

Some thoughts with the holiday approaching...

t

t’s a sad state of affairs that abledbodied individuals have created a lot of the content about disabled people in popular culture. This is especially true in Hollywood, where most disabled characters are renditions of what someone imagines disability feels or looks like. Consequently, they have created a society where the disabled are dualistically romanticized and de-eroticized.

But once in a while, the disabled community is able to speak out – helping to debunk stereotypes – and one of these occasions is the book QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, edited by Raymond Luczak.

Luczak, who is gay and deaf, collected 48 contributors, ranging from ordained ministers to atheists, from civil engineers to cartoonists, and from essayists to poets, as well as a mix of people with both physical and mental disabilities – all

with memorable queer stories. The collection is comprised of fiction, memoir, and various styles of poetry. And while I normally don’t care for anthologies that jump from one genre to another, with this assortment, it actually works quite well.

Some of the works will break your heart a little, like Toranse Lowell’s essay “Learning the Words,” a piece about religion and abuse: “When I was 20, I wanted to die, when I was 16, I wanted to die, when I was 12, I wanted to die, when I was 4, I wanted to die.” While others will make you laugh out loud, such as Liv Mammone’s essay “Advice to the Able-Bodied Poet Entering a Disability Poetics Workshop.” The poet says, “I’m not your metaphor. Phantom limbs, deafness, or blindness as figurative language in your poems will result in unhinging my fucking jaw.”

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology is an eclectic mix of well-crafted stories that makes an important contribution to disability studies. The

A new anthology shares stories of queer people living with disabilities.

book retails for $30 and the e-book can be obtained through Kindle. For more on the book, you can visit the publisher’s website at http://www. squaresandrebels.com/.t Belo Cipriani is a freelance journalist, the award-winning author of Blind: A Memoir and Midday Dreams, and a spokesman for Guide Dogs for the Blind. He was voted best disability advocate in the Bay Area in 2015 by SF Weekly. Learn more at www. belocipriani.com.

Obituaries >> Edward W. Pocengal March 26, 1962 – November 6, 2015 Edward William Pocengal, also known as Ned, died peacefully in his home in New Haven, Connecticut November 6, 2015 after a battle against liver cancer. Born

on March 26, 1962 in Yonkers, New York, Ned grew up in Darien, Connecticut. He received his B.A. in English from Southern Connecticut State University. He was an avid reader of nonfiction. Until his illness, Ned had worked as a library cataloguer at Yale University for the last 15 years, having held similar positions at the University of New Haven. He lived in San Francisco for most of the 1990s.

A talented, serious gardener, Ned is survived by his life partner Thomas L. Red-

doch; his father Edward Pocengal of Jupiter, Florida; his mother and stepfather Nora and Thomas Ryan of Southport, North Carolina; two sisters; and two nieces.

In keeping with Ned’s wishes, arrangements will be private. If anyone chooses, the family suggests donations in Ned’s name to Animal Haven Inc. (89 Mill Road, North Haven, Connecticut 06473) or to a charity of their choice. Special thanks to Connecticut Hospice, family, and friends for providing loving care and comfort to Ned in his final days.

t <<

Community News>>

LGBT senior agency

From page 1

“Our focus is on educating the community about the eligibility of these units,” said Openhouse Executive Director Seth Kilbourn.

But due to anti-discrimination laws, the city is barred from setting aside the units solely for LGBT seniors. Anyone, no matter his or her sexual orientation or gender identity, is eligible to apply.

However, due to legislation the Board of Supervisors passed Tuesday, affordable housing projects will need to set aside 40 percent of their units for people who live within the supervisor district they are located within or live within half a mile of the project.

“The neighborhood preference decision needs to be in place before we hold the lottery for 55 Laguna,” said gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, who co-sponsored the rule change and whose gay-centric district includes Openhouse’s project.

“It is really important that LGBT seniors have a fair shot of getting into the 55 Laguna project, and the

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French LGBTs

From page 9

on Sunday. In a video posted on the conference Facebook page at the end of the first day of deliberations, Christine Nicolas emphasized the objectives of the gathering, which stood in stark contrast to the events in Paris the night before: “How can we continue evolving together, how can we continuing advancing the

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Sheen

From page 1

Anderson said that he was glad to live in a city like San Francisco that doesn’t judge sex or sexual acts, and added he’d never been ashamed of living with the virus. Anderson has been HIV-positive for 34 years.

“Charlie needs to connect with some of us long-term survivors,” Anderson said. “We can coach him on what living with HIV is.”

Oriol R. Gutierrez, editor-inchief of Poz magazine, called the interview “revelatory” and “an opportunity to explain the basics of

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News Briefs

From page 4

Keshet to honor Messinger at Glimmer

Keshet, a national grassroots organization that works for full equality and inclusion of LGBT Jews in Jewish life, will honor the outgoing president of American Jewish World Service at its Glimmer gala Thursday, December 3 at 6 p.m. at Oasis, 298 11th Street in San Francisco.

Ruth Messinger, the outgoing president of AJWS, will assume the new position of global ambassador at AJWS in July and will receive the Landres Courage for Dignity Award.

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Trans assault

From page 3

That’s when Hulsey “socked me in the face,” she said, and Hulsey and Kemp started fighting. Westover showed a reporter where the loose tooth was but said she’d been told not to push on it.

Westover, who said that the coffee wasn’t hot when she threw it, added that after the brawl between Kemp and Hulsey, she hit Hulsey.

Among other differences between Kemp and Westover’s stories, Westover said no anti-LGBT slurs had been used.

Raucci, who didn’t say how she knew what had happened, said Hulsey had “nasty cuts on her lips” and was treated at St. Francis Memorial Hospital.

Hulsey and Raucci had been partners in January when Brodes Joynes,

November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

neighborhood preference legislation will increase the odds that LGBT seniors are going to have a fair shot.”

To further increase the chances of seeing the 39 units be awarded to LGBT seniors, Openhouse is hoping to tilt the odds in the LGBT community’s favor by flooding the lottery with applications from LGBT seniors. It is shooting to have 4,000 LGBT seniors, at minimum, apply to live in the building.

“The reality is it is done by a lottery. It is a numbers game,” said Kilbourn. “The more people we can get into the lottery makes it much more likely a core of LGBT people will end up living at 55 Laguna.”

The same process will be used to select the seniors to live in an additional 70 units to be built in a new building adjacent to 55 Laguna that is expected to open in 2018. The age requirement for those units will be raised to people 62 and older under revised rules instituted by the state attached to the financing for the building.

“Everybody’s goal and interest is to see the LGBT community is well represented at 55 Laguna. The lot-

tery process makes that a challenge because of the housing crisis here in San Francisco,” said Kilbourn. “That is the challenge here. We have too few units and far too many people who need them.”

To achieve its goals, Openhouse in May hired Abby Krumbein as its new housing coordinator. It was able to do so because it’s sharing with the LGBT center a $220,000 two-year grant from the Mayor’s Office of Housing aimed at increasing the number of LGBT seniors applying for below-market-rate housing units throughout the city.

Last summer Openhouse also hired Manuel Martinez to be an information and assistance specialist, fielding many calls about housing, after receiving an $80,000 Aging and Disability Resource Center grant.

Because of the funding, Openhouse “has been ramping it up,” said Kilbourn, in regard to the housing assistance it provides. It has already compiled a list of 5,000 people who have expressed interest either in living at 55 Laguna or other supportive housing programs.

“We are able to focus on that list

in addition to adding to it,” said Kilbourn.

In advance of when applications for the 55 Laguna units become available next spring, Krumbein has been holding housing workshops three times a month. She has also begun meeting with staff at other agencies that provide services to LGBT seniors, particularly people of color and transgender older adults.

“We want to prepare people to apply before the lottery happens,” she said, later adding that, “We are definitely seeing interest mounting as time goes on.”

The 55 Laguna applicants’ maximum household income level will need to be 50 percent of the area median income. While the amounts will likely change come 2016, in 2015 for a one-person household the income cut off was $35,700 and for a twoperson household it was $40,750.

Openhouse has been fielding calls from people throughout the Bay Area who are interested in applying to live at 55 Laguna. It has also been hearing from current city residents concerned about losing their housing.

“Many folks are living in San Francisco but fear their rents will no longer be affordable or their apartments will no longer be accessible because of their mobility needs,” Krumbein said.

The agency has compiled a “Housing Resources List” it is making available to the public at its offices inside the LGBT center from noon to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Housing updates, affordable and senior housing lists, and waitlist information is also available in its reception area or on its website under “Housing Resources.”

Volunteers are also needed to assist Openhouse staff in spreading the word about the 55 Laguna project at community events and by calling those seniors who have expressed interest in applying to live there with updates about the lottery process.

For upcoming dates and times of the housing workshops, visit Openhouse’s website at http://www. openhouse-sf.org. RSVPs are required and can be made by calling Krumbein at (415) 702-3537.

Anyone interested in volunteering should also call Krumbein.t

movement, how can we avoid being isolated from one another, how can we sustain the value of togetherness? Those are the questions we have to address in the workshops.”

Nicolas also emphasized that developing responses to those questions “doesn’t mean speaking with a single voice. ... We’ll remain diverse – and that’s our strength.”

By all accounts, the conference was a success, laying the groundwork

for future annual gatherings and opening the way to better coordination of the LGBT movement in France. At present, the country has no organization equivalent to the National LGBTQ Task Force in the United States and no yearly national gathering for activists and organizers equivalent to the Task Force’s Creating Change conference. The discussions in Avignon may very well lead to ongoing coalition-building that

could create similar structures in forms adapted to the needs of French culture and the French movement.

Whatever the long-term outcomes of the National LGBTI Conference, the fact that the deliberations went forward in a productive way despite the shadow of very dark news from Paris was a forceful reminder that no one in France is prepared to give in to fear. Despite a range of opinions expressed in the workshops, one

common commitment was clear for all the activists who were present: our “beautiful community” in France will continue striving to build a society of greater openness and respect.t

HIV.” He agreed with those who stated that fear of stigma allowed Sheen to be blackmailed.

“The fact that Charlie Sheen felt obliged to pay people to remain silent about his having HIV speaks to the power of the sigma that remain surrounding the virus,” Gutierrez said.

Others took issue with Sheen’s past behavior.

“This man has made his entire life a reality TV show,” said gay Castro resident Patrick Henry, who has lived with HIV since the mid-1990s.

“He has personally bullied and publicly insulted dozens and doz-

ens of people, demonstrating zero restraint or shame. Believing his drug addled version of any event is like trusting Ted Cruz to tell you the truth,” he added, referring to the Republican senator from Texas who is running for president.

Others also weighed in.

“If I find out that a nice guy is HIV-positive, I don’t suddenly think he’s a jerk,” said Leon AcordWhiting, a gay man who is HIVnegative. “If I find out a jerk is HIVpositive, I don’t suddenly think he’s a nice guy.”

Neil Giuliano, the outgoing CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foun-

dation, felt that Sheen’s disclosure could greatly benefit the HIV community.

“Whenever a highly visible person like Sheen comes out as HIVpositive it starts conversations around American kitchen tables and water coolers,” Giuliano said in a statement. “This is an opportunity to get the facts about HIV and about ways that people living with HIV are portrayed that can be harmful. HIV in 2015 is not the same as it was in 1985.”

Chris Brown, director of health and mental health services at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, empha-

sized the need to end the stigma surrounding HIV. “Thirty-four years into the epidemic, treatments for HIV have advanced considerably, but perceptions regarding people who are positive haven’t,” Brown said in the center’s statement. “Here at the center we continue to hear horror stories from HIV-positive clients who face rejection and shaming from people who learn of their status.”

Brown observed how sad it was that someone as privileged as Sheen felt the need to hide his status for years, though he said that it wasn’t a surprise.t

The award recognizes individuals who display public courage as allies to support the full inclusion of LGBTs and others whose dignity is at stake.

The Landres Award will also be presented to Rabbi Tsipora Gabai, a longtime Jewish educator and spiritual leader in the Bay Area known for her inclusive and cutting-edge approach to education.

Also that evening, Al Baum, a gay man and founder of the LGBT Alliance at the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund of Greater San Francisco, will receive the Rosh Pina Award, which honors a Keshet leader whose extraordinary

contributions have provided the organization with a strong foundation to fulfill its mission.

“I am thrilled to be honoring three visionary leaders who have worked so tirelessly and effectively to advance the cause of LGBT inclusion in Jewish life and society at large,” Keshet Executive Director Idit Klein said in a statement. “I am keenly aware that our achievements rest on the shoulders of others, so it is fitting that we recognize these individuals who have played such an important role in laying the foundation for Keshet’s work.

We would not be where we are today without them.”

Messinger has decades of con-

tributions for LGBT equality and justice both in the U.S. and globally.

She is known for her leadership of the movement to end the genocide in Darfur and has a long history of activism for LGBT rights. She is a former elected official in New York City, where she advocated for the city’s first anti-discrimination bill to protect the rights of LGB people in housing, employment, and public accommodations. More recently, she successfully urged the Obama administration to appoint the first-ever U.S. special envoy for the human rights of LGBT persons.

Gabai is the first ordained rabbi from Morocco and the 21st-gener-

ation rabbi in her family. Since 2003 she has served as rabbi and head of the Judaic studies and Hebrew departments at Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito. Last year she created and led a special community-wide celebration for an eighth grade boy who came out as transgender.

Baum is well known in San Francisco’s LGBT community as a philanthropist. He moved to San Francisco in the early 1960s and has had careers as a city planner, attorney, psychotherapist, and real estate investor.

Tickets to Glimmer are $150 per person and can be purchased by visiting www.keshetonline.org/ glimmer.t

54, allegedly tried to fatally stab Hulsey and called them “faggots” in an incident that started on a Muni bus.

Hulsey was 24 at the time. (Joynes remains in custody. His next court date is Wednesday, November 25.)

The weapons used in the incident were fists and the coffee that was thrown, she said. When police arrived at the scene, she said, the first victim was bleeding from the face.

Gatpandan said a second victim, who wasn’t injured, is a 60-year-old man who came to Hulsey’s aid after she was attacked.

During the incident, statements were made about Hulsey’s gender identity and the second victim’s race or color, Gatpandan said.

Asked about police not allowing Kemp or Westover to file a report, Gatpandan said officers took statements from the two suspects, but she didn’t have information on what they’d said.

The first court date for Kemp and Westover was set for Wednesday, just before the B.A.R. went to press, city records show. Kemp was being held without bond. Westover’s bond

was listed as $166,000.

In his interview with the B.A.R. Tuesday, Kemp first said, “I would plead to nothing,” but then said, “I would plead to assault. Honestly, yes, I did assault that individual.”

Kemp, who denied making threats and said he hadn’t been carrying drug paraphernalia, raised his orange jail shirt to show a knot on his right shoulder from the belt buckle strikes, but it seemed to have disappeared, as there was no obvious wound.

As far as his criminal history, Kemp said he was once convicted for an assault on a police officer in Sacramento. (He said the officer had choked him.) He said he spent time in prison for it, eventually getting parole.

Kemp became aggravated when asked for more information about the Sacramento incident.

“I will end this shit so fucking

fast you have no i-fucking-dea,” he said, claiming the B.A.R. was trying “to demonize” him. He finally said he would continue talking, but he wouldn’t discuss his criminal history any more.

Westover said she was convicted 20 years ago of second-degree robbery in San Jose. She was paroled after serving years in prison, she said.

She said she couldn’t imagine pleading to anything.

“I don’t feel like I’m in the wrong, other than me hitting [Hulsey] back after he hit me,” Westover said, using a male pronoun.

Kemp and Westover both expressed a desire for video footage from the Holiday Inn to be shared, claiming it would support their case.

Gatpandan said she couldn’t discuss details from any video.

A call to the Holiday Inn wasn’t returned.t

Charges

Police booked Kemp on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy, and two counts of making criminal threats, all felonies, along with parole violation, possession of drug paraphernalia, and a hate crime enhancement, Officer Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman, said.

Gatpandan said Westover was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy, both felonies, a misdemeanor battery count, a count of being a convicted felon in possession of pepper spray, and a hate crime enhancement.

Gerard Koskovich is a San Francisco-based queer historian and rare-book dealer who spends several weeks in France every fall-winter. A version of this piece also appears in PrideLA.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

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New HIV treatment

From page 11

time treatment using either Genvoya or Stribild. After 48 weeks on treatment, 92 percent of people taking Genvoya and 90 percent taking Stribild had undetectable viral load.

After 96 weeks the response rates were 87 percent and 85 percent, respectively. Another clinical trial showed that 97 percent of people who switched from various combination regimens containing TDF to Genvoya maintained viral suppression through 48 weeks.

In all these studies treatment was generally well tolerated and the most common side effect was mild nausea. People who started on Genvoya had less hip and spine bone loss and more favorable kidney function tests than those who started on Stribild. Patients who switched from a TDF-containing regimen to Genvoya saw improvement in bone density and kidney biomarkers. However, people taking Genvoya had larger blood fat increases and were more likely to need

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Knoller

From page 3

Warren had grown weary of Ruiz’s courtroom theatrics that included the colorful defense attorney getting down on her hands and knees to stage how she said that Knoller heroically tried to stop the mauling.

Arguing for the state, Deputy Attorney General Peggy Ruffra conceded that Warren was wrong but that the “error was harmless” and that it wouldn’t have affected the jury’s decision because the evidence against Knoller was “very strong.”

Ruffra noted that more than 30 witnesses testified that they had felt threatened or had been attacked by the dogs in the span of just a few months.

Knoller was convicted of seconddegree murder and sentenced to 15-years-to-life. She was with the dogs during the attack on Diane Whipple in the hallway of her Pacific Heights apartment building. Noel was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and was released on parole in 2003. The case made LGBT rights history when Whipple’s partner, Sharon Smith, was allowed standing in a civil wrongful death lawsuit against Noel, Knoller, and the owner of the building where the attack occurred.

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SF Pride

From page 1

George Ridgely, SF Pride’s executive director, didn’t respond to messages from the Bay Area Reporter.

The trial, which had been expected to take at least five weeks, had already seen delays.

A jury had been selected last week but a mistrial was declared after an error was discovered in the juror questionnaire, according to court documents. A new jury was supposed to be selected this week.

Lapine said the settlement wasn’t related to the mishap.

Gardner has also sued Tropicana over the shooting incident. The status of that case wasn’t immediately clear Tuesday.

Eric Ryan, who was also shot in the 2013 incident at Pride, has also filed a lawsuit against SF Pride.

Ryan’s case is set for a case management conference in January.

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New SF General

From page 4

“There are 115 building columns set on 115 insulators that allow the building to move inside the foundation, so that the building can move 30 inches in every direction. We hope to get a gentle sway in major events,” Saltz said, referring to earthquakes.

The public can get a sneak peek of the new hospital during an open

lipid-lowering medications.

“As the HIV patient population ages there is an increased risk for development of age- and treatmentrelated comorbidities, including low bone mineral density and renal [kidney] impairment,” said study investigator David Wohl from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Given its demonstrated efficacy and safety profile, Genvoya represents an important new treatment option for a range of patients who are either new to therapy or who choose to switch treatments.”

Gilead set the wholesale price for Genvoya at about the same level as Stribild, $31,000 per year. The Fair Pricing Coalition welcomed this move, but urged the company to negotiate discounts for cash-strapped public insurance programs such as Medicaid.

“Most of these programs are in fragile financial shape and, when considering TAF-inclusive regimens, will require parity with the deeply discounted prices of the older coformulations containing TDF,” said Evans.t In his rebuttal to the state’s attorney Monday, Riordan said Noel and Knoller deserved to be convicted of involuntary manslaughter but that Knoller’s murder conviction was not supported by the evidence or the law. Riordan said that she did not show the “implied malice” required for the conviction because when she took her dogs for a walk prior to the mauling she would have had to have thought, “I could kill somebody on this walk and I don’t care.”

Noel told the B.A.R. that he expected the appeals court would rule on the case by mid-January but that Knoller thought the ruling would come by the end of the year. Both Noel and Knoller were practicing attorneys before their convictions.

Noel said that Knoller still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and that a PTSD stress reaction kicked in recently rendering her unconscious and unresponsive when prison authorities tried to transfer her from a prison in Chowchilla, in the Central Valley, to a prison in Corona, about 80 minutes southeast of Los Angeles. Noel said she was told they were taking her to the infirmary but instead drove her six hours to the prison in Corona where she was hospitalized and had to undergo surgery to have her gallbladder removed.t Lapine criticized a story in the B.A.R.’s November 12 edition about the trial. That story said that he had referred to some violent incidents that have been associated with SF Pride but weren’t directly related to the event. For example, the story said, he’d alluded to the 2010 killing of Stephen Powell, 19, at the end of the Pink Saturday celebration in the Castro.

Pink Saturday was for decades organized by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a nonprofit unrelated to SF Pride. The Sisters opted not to produce the party this year, citing concerns over years of violence.

Lapine said that he’d actually been referring to a different shooting that took place that year, within the Pride celebration’s footprint. It wasn’t immediately clear what incident he was talking about, and he declined to provide more details.

He also insisted that shootings from other years that he’d mentioned in court took place at the event.t house and ribbon cutting Saturday, November 21. Doors open at 10 a.m., the program will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., followed by a community celebration. The hospital is located at 1001 Potrero Avenue. Tickets are not needed, but people should RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/e/ ribbon-cutting-dedication-of-thenew-sfgh-acute-care-and-traumacenter-registration-18987251380.t

t

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551550

In the matter of the application of: CHUN FEN WANG & XIANG YANG HUANG, 1345 TURK ST #112, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner CHUN FEN WANG & XIANG YANG HUANG, is requesting that the name GUANG MEI HUANG, be changed to CHRISTINE GUANGMEI HUANG. 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 24th of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551608

In the matter of the application of: MIRNA ELIZABETH ZEPEDA ZEPEDA, 1783 PALOU AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner MIRNA ELIZABETH ZEPEDA ZEPEDA, is requesting that the name MIRNA ELIZABETH ZEPEDA ZEPEDA aka MIRNA E. ZEPEDA ZEPEDA aka MIRNA ELIZABETH ZEPEDA aka MIRNA E. ZEPEDA aka MIRNA ELIZABETH aka MIRNA ZEPEDA aka ELIZABETH ZEPEDA, be changed to ELIZABETH SANTELIZ. 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 December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551607

In the matter of the application of: DAYSI ARACELY ZEPEDA DIAZ, 1783 PALOU AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner DAYSI ARACELY ZEPEDA DIAZ, is requesting that the name DAYSI ARACELY ZEPEDA DIAZ aka DAYSI ZEPEDA aka DAYSI A. ZEPEDA DIAZ aka DAYSI ZEPEDA DIAZ aka DAYSI Z. DIAZ aka DAYSI DIAZ aka DAYSI A. ZEPEDA, be changed to DAYSI SANTELIZ. 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 December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551631

In the matter of the application of: ROBERT THOMAS MCCULLOUGH, 96 CRESTLINE DR #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner ROBERT THOMAS MCCULLOUGH, is requesting that the name ROBERT THOMAS MCCULLOUGH, be changed to MICHELLE MCCULLOUGH. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 24th of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036745600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: T & C REALTY INVESTMENT, 2147 14TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WAI CHUCK TAM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/26/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/26/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036741200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CIRQ, 355 SERRANO DR #1A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BRYAN DICKINSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/21/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/21/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036747100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: IRENE AVETYAN CONSULTING; IA EXPORT SERVICES; 759 17TH AVE #4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed IRENE AVETYAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/06/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/26/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036743000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE BIG TEASE, 447 SUTTER #428, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MITRA MASSIH. 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 10/22/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036737100

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036734000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WILL SWAGGER, 107 COLLINGWOOD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WILLIAM R. MARTIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/16/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036735000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAGE BAKEHOUSE, 1905 LAGUNA ST #307, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NICHOLAS LEE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/15/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/16/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036739600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ON MARS SALON, 210 FILLMORE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SUMMER MURASE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/21/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/21/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036742300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BAY-LA EXPRESS MOVING; NIMBUS MOVING & STORAGE; 1388 HAIGHT ST #57, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SAPIEN ENTERPRISES INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/07/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/22/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036741600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOFFS HANDYMAN; CASTRO HANDYMAN; 227 ROMAIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HOFFS HANDYMAN (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/10/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/22/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036743800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RAINBOW HANDYMAN, 227 ROMAIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HOFFS HANDYMAN (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 10/23/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551567

In the matter of the application of: LINDA MARGARET BERTHA GILLESPIE, 115 ANDOVER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110 for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner LINDA MARGARET BERTHA GILLESPIE, is requesting that the name LINDA MARGARET BERTHA GILLESPIE, be changed to ELGY GILLESPIE. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 514, Dept.

514 on the 21st of January 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036750400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CITYDENT, 15 CHICAGO WAY, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANTHONY GUERRA. 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 10/28/15.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036756400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CURB APPEAL ADDRESSING, 660 4TH ST #126, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL PHELAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/30/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/30/15.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036756700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KIRLEY PLUS, 1521 COLE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KEITH KIRLEY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/20/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/30/15.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036749900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WILD RUMPUS 2, 1226 20TH AVE #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SOPHIE HUET. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/20/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/20/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TIAN YUN CHIROPRACTIC CLINIC, 1752 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed VICTOR SHU & LIJUAN LIU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/28/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/28/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036749600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JOHANNA’S HOUSE CLEANING, 162 EDINBURGH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed HAROLD MARTINEZ & ADDONIS MARTINEZ. 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 10/28/15.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036760200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ESSENTIAL SKIN CARE CLINIC BY ROSA, 3303 BUCHANAN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed ROBERT MUSGRAVE & ROSA MUSGRAVE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/03/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/03/15.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036759200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LARED, 450 POST ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SF BAY GROUP LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/11/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/02/15.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036748400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: H2 AND CO, 2776 UNION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed HEATHER LUPLOW HARTLE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/27/15.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 26, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551513

In the matter of the application of: PING CHUNG YU, 1910 31ST AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner PING CHUNG YU, is requesting that the name PING CHUNG YU aka BING CHUNG YU aka JONATHAN PING YU, be changed to JONATHAN PING CHUNG YU. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 12th of January 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551664

In the matter of the application of: YU YANG, 2600 18TH ST. #11, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner YU YANG, is requesting that the name YU YANG, be changed to SUSIE YANG. 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 January 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT NOTICE TO PROPOSERS – GENERAL INFORMATION The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (herein “District” or “BART”) 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, California, is advertising for proposals for Consultant Services to provide Districtwide PostAward Small Business Supportive Services, RFP No. 6M5099, on or about November 10, 2015, with proposals due by 2:00 P.M. local time, Tuesday, December 22, 2015.

DESCRIPTION OF SERVICES TO BE PERFORMED The District will seek a consulting firm (“CONSULTANT”) for the purpose of the Post Award Districtwide Small Business Supportive Services (hereinafter referred to as the “SBSS Program”) to expand the pool of available construction and professional services firms qualified to participate as subcontractors on District contracts, and to provide ongoing support to such firms. More particularly described, the scope of services outlines Consultant activities necessary to successfully achieve the stated purpose.

WHERE TO OBTAIN RFP DOCUMENTS PROSPECTIVE PROPOSERS WHO ARE NOT CURRENTLY REGISTERED ON BART’S PROCUREMENT PORTAL TO DO BUSINESS WITH BART, ARE REQUIRED TO REGISTER ON THE BART PROCUREMENT PORTAL ON-LINE AT HTTPS://SUPLIERS.BART.GOV/ IN ORDER TO OBTAIN THE SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS, UPDATES, AND ANY ADDENDA ISSUED ON LINE AND BE ADDED TO THE ON-LINE PLANHOLDERS LIST FOR THIS SOLICITATION. PROPOSERS WHO HAVE NOT REGISTERED ON THE BART PROCUREMENT PORTAL PRIOR TO SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL, AND DID NOT DOWNLOAD THE SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS FOR THIS SOLICITATION ON LINE SO AS TO BE LISTED AS AN ON LINE PLANHOLDER FOR THIS SOLICITATION, WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE FOR AWARD OF THIS AGREEMENT. A pre-proposal meeting will be held on Tuesday November 17, 2015 at 2:00 PM in the BART Offices located at 300 Lakeside Drive, 15th Floor Conference Room No. 1500, Oakland, CA 94612. At the preproposal meeting, the District’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program will be explained.

All questions regarding the District’s DBE Program should be directed to Alma Basurto of the Office of Civil Rights at (510) 464-6388. Prospective Proposers are urged to make every effort to attend this only scheduled pre-proposal meeting.

Dated at Oakland, California this 10th day of November, 2015.

Patricia K. Williams Kenneth A. Duron, District Secretary San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District 11/19/15 CNS-2815725# BAY AREA REPORTER

▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINSTER ESTATE OF KEVIN MICHAEL SHEA IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-15-299254

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of KEVIN MICHAEL SHEA. A Petition for Probate has been filed by JOHN J. CULLEN in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that JOHN J. CULLEN be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority.

A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: NOVEMBER 23, 2015, 9:00 am, Dept. 204, Superior Court of California, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the latter of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined by section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for petitioner: JOHN J. CULLEN #42766, LAW OFFICES OF CULLEN & WOOD, 1 ESTABUENO DR, ORINDA, CA; Ph. (925) 938-2337.

NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015 CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551629

In the matter of the application of: AUTUMN CATRICE KENDALL EVANS, 5400 FULTON ST #203, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner AUTUMN CATRICE KENDALL EVANS, is requesting that the name AUTUMN CATRICE KENDALL EVANS, be changed to AUTUMN CATRICE KENDALL WYLDER. 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 31st of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551628

In the matter of the application of: KIMBERLY ANN STINER-ZERCOE, 5400 FULTON ST #203, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner KIMBERLY ANN STINER-ZERCOE, is requesting that the name KIMBERLY ANN STINER-ZERCOE, be changed to KIMBERLY ANN WYLDER. 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 31st of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036762500

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LAURA PERKINS EDITING, 601 VAN NESS AVE E602, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LAURA PERKINS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/01/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/23/15.

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NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036747400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MAI DO, 1581 WEBSTER ST #260, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NBC STATIONERY AND GIFT INC. (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/23/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/26/15.

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036765000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SHINE-N-SEAL EXPRESS CAR WASH, 367 BAYSHORE BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed BAYSHORE WASH 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 11/05/15.

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NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551657

In the matter of the application of: BENJAMIN LEE LARD, 236 WEST PORTAL AVE #120, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner BENJAMIN LEE LARD, is requesting that the name BENJAMIN LEE LARD, be changed to BENJAMIN SERAPHI SIGMA. 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 January 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

Call (415) 421-1893

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NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551676

In the matter of the application of: AMY MARSH MACIONIS, 900 FOLSOM ST #701, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner AMY MARSH MACIONIS, is requesting that the name AMY MARSH MACIONIS, be changed to AMY REVERE. 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 January 2016 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036774800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE PETSITTERS; THE PET SITTERS, 1624 YORK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ELAINE S. PEREDNIA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/01/84. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/13/15.

NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036775500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BRILLIANTLY STONED JEWELRY, 2229 15TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DAVID L. HONE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/11/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/13/15.

NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036770200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HEART OF SAN FRANCISCO AIKIDO; MAINTAINING MOBILITY; 365 VERMONT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANNE F. SABLOVE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/04.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/04/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RAY’S SWEET CORN, 601 VAN NESS AVE E315, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RUSHD ODTALLAH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/10/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/10/15.

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036766900

NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036752300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WEVIST, 2331 25TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KENNEDY W. WEIMAR. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/06/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/06/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: METRO APPLIANCE REPAIR, 1920 TURK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALEX SLIVNYAK. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/29/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/29/15.

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015

NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015

Notice of Availability for Parking Lot Operations The San Francisco Port Commission is issuing a Request for Proposals (“RFP”) to seek qualified Parking lot operators to operate surface parking lots in the northern waterfront located at SWL321, SWL321-I, SWL323-324, Pier 19½, Pier 29½, and Pier 33. The RFP package will be available for pick up at the Port of San Francisco, Pier 1, San Francisco, CA 94111 or download from the Port’s website www.sfport.com ( http://www.sfport.com/index.aspx?page=18) on November 6, 2015. For more information you may contact Bob Davis at robert.g.davis@sfport.com or Jay Edwards in writing at jay. edwards@sfport.com .

Submittals must be delivered by hand to the Port of San Francisco, Pier 1, San Francisco CA 94111, no later than 5:00 P.M. PST on Thursday, December 17, 2015.

26 Years Exp. (415) 794-4411 Roger Miller

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551682

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In the matter of the application of: JOERI NICOLAAS • Bank Reconciliations MARIA ELISABETH MICHIELSEN, 302 EUREKA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114, for change of name having • Budgeting/Projections been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said • Balance Sheet and Profit application that petitioner JOERI NICOLAAS MARIA ELISABETH MICHIELSEN, is requesting that the name & Loss Statements PHONE 415.861.5019 FAX 861-8144 PHONE 415.861.5019 FAX 861-8144 JOERI NICOLAAS MARIA ELISABETH MICHIELSEN, • Payroll Services/Sales Tax Filing be changed to YURI MICHIELSEN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said • Reporting to Authorities matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Rm. & Liaison with CPA 514 on the 19th of January 2016 at 9:00am of said • W-2 & 1099 Filing day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036765600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: XCEL STUDIOS; BOUTIQUE BON JOUR, 1995 CHESTNUT ST #308, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SUSAN SCOBIE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/30/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/05/15.

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Culture wars

Either Idina

Kid stuff

24

Vol. 45 • No. 47 • November 19-25, 2015

www.ebar.com/arts

Jake Heggie goes global

S p ot l i g h t o n

, Ida Lupino groundbreaker

by Jason Victor Serinus

I

by Sura Wood

A

ctress Ida Lupino, who appeared in nearly 60 films in her 48-year career – she was smitten with Bogart in High Sierra, a depraved murderess in They Drive by Night, and a pathological warden in Women’s Prison – was an anomaly. A woman who, with her husband, formed an independent production company, The Filmakers [sic], in the mid-1940s, she was a prolific triple-threat who wrote, produced and directed low-budget movies with a feminist bent that delved into sexuality and repression. Between 1949 and 1968, she directed over 100 television programs, from The Untouchables to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, at a time when few or no women did any of the above. At five-foot two,

20

Out &About

20

O&A

19

she was formidable, taking a novel approach to sexual politics of the time by having her film crews address her as “Mother,” in case there was any doubt as to who was in charge.

t is one measure of San Francisco-based composer Jake Heggie’s success that his songs, long considered the province of American artists, have found their champions in Europe. Thus, to a distinguished list of American recording artists that includes Frederica von Stade, Susan Graham, Jennifer Larmore, Jamie Barton, Nicolle Foland, Brian Asawa, Joyce DiDonato, Nathan Gunn, and Talise Travigne, we can now add renowned Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager.

Kirchschlager’s all-Heggie disc The Moon’s a Gong, Hung in the Wild (Avie), a collaboration with a longtime Heggie champion, Dutch pianist Maurice Lammerts van Bueren, has the best sound quality of any Heggie recording to cross my desk.

See page 19 >>

See page 26 >>

Sound artistry

by Roberto Friedman

A

rtist Janet Cardiff is interested in what she calls “threedimensional sound. It’s invisible, but it goes into your body.” Right now Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art [SFMOMA] are co-presenting Cardiff ’s immersive sound installation The Forty Part Motet in its California debut at Fort Mason Center, through Jan. 18, 2016. It’s the inaugural exhibition in Gallery 308, a newly renovated historic space that’s part of the center’s Building A. See page 18 >>

The Forty Part Motet (installation view) by Janet Cardiff (2015), at Gallery 308, Fort Mason Center, co-presented by Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and SFMOMA.

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<< Out There

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

<<

Out There

From page 17

Created in 2001 and considered Cardiff ’s masterwork, The Forty Part Motet is a reworking of Spem in Alium by English composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505-85) in a 40-part choral performance. Sung by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir, individually recorded parts play back through 40 speakers arranged in an oval formation. Visitors can walk through this “sound sculpture” listening to individual voices from the choir as well as the combined symphony of sounds, on a 14-minute audio loop.

Each speaker becomes, in effect, an anthropomor phized person in this virtual choir, just as the 16thcentury music “becomes a soundtrack to the city” as you look out the gallery windows, Cardiff said at the press preview last week. The artist said she’s interested in “the potency of music to move you,” and the spiritual and emotive qualities of her installation are very much in evidence. The Forty Part Motet is a truly sublime artwork that enters through a few senses.

Tickets are free and can be reserved at MotetTickets.org. Due to anticipated demand, visitors are encouraged to reserve tickets in advance. A limited number of sameday tickets will be available to visitors throughout the run.

SE Asian gay glances

If Paris is the City of Light, it seems sometimes that San Francisco is the City of Film Fests. Every year new and specialized ones pop up.

This fall sees the debut of the San Francisco International Southeast Asian Film Festival, produced by Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network [DVAN], coming up on Nov. 20-22. Opening night, Fri., Nov. 20, transpires at ATA in the Mission, followed by all-day screenings Sat. & Sun., Nov. 21 & 22, at New People Cinema in Japantown. This year is the 40th anniversary of the tragic and misguided US military meddling in SE Asia, and the film fest seeks to make connections “between wars then and now, overseas and on our streets.” Gender identity,

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love, and LGBT issues are not absent from the fest’s offerings. Here are a few films that come complete with a gangle (gay angle), described from press materials.

Big Gay Love (2014): “Jonathan Lisecki stars in this unconventional take on the standard Hollywood romcom formula, as a socially awkward gay guy in the stock Meg Ryan/Kate Hudson role, with a cult-TV heartthrob cast as his potential soulmate as they attempt to find Big Gay Love.” Director Ringo Le is an Asian American filmmaker who is of Vietnamese descent.

(11/22, New People) Finding Phong (2015): In directors Swann Dubus and Tran Phuong Thao’s documentary we meet Phong, who “grew up in a small town in the center of Vietnam, the youngest of six children. From the time he was a young boy, Phong felt like he was a girl with a mismatched boy’s body. Not until he moved to Hanoi to attend university at 20 did Phong discover that he was not the only one in the world with this predicament. His dream to find himself by physically changing sex becomes a reality several years later. The movie follows Phong’s struggle during these years, with excerpts from his intimate video journal, along with his encounters with family, friends and doctors, all of whom must come to terms with the boy’s determination to become a complete girl.” (11/22, New People) Two short films from the POV: First person documentary + panel program have gay hooks. Distance Between (9 min.): “Filmmaker R.J. Lozada has offered to be a sperm donor for a lesbian couple wanting to conceive. Since he knows he might not play an active part of the child’s life, Lozada’s documentary serves as a sort of love letter to the child, in an attempt to establish a paternal bond.” My Beautiful Resistance (8 min.): “Director Penny Baldado, owner of Oakland’s Café Gabriela, originally moved to the U.S. to live as an out lesbian because she felt that she couldn’t do that in her native Philippines. Her status as an undocumented immigrant becomes an obstacle as she attempts to establish her American life.” (both 11/22, New People)t

Courtesy Ringo Le

Scene from director Ringo Le’s Big Gay Love.

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Courtesy Swann Dubus

Scene from directors Swann Dubus and Tran Phuong Thao’s Finding Phong, coming to the SF Int’l SE Asian Film Festival.

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Theatre>>

November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Multicultural animosities all around

by Richard Dodds

N

ot even underwater, on BART in the Transbay Tube, could the events of Friday the 13th in Paris be swept from view. You could watch streaming live accounts of the growing body count in the palm of your hand. This was a train to the theater, where so often respite is found, yet by unnerving coincidence, this was not to be one of those nights.

Disgraced, Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play at Berkeley Rep, may be set in a luxury New York apartment handsomely designed by John Lee Beatty, but what its occupants are confronting have chilling resonance to what was happening overseas.

Like so many plays in which affable members of the affluent society come to blows, verbally or physically, the combustion starts with a dinner party at which peace reigns about as far as the appetizers. The two couples are clearly well-versed in multiculturalism. The hosts are a Pakistani-American corporate lawyer and his white-on-white wife, who is exploring Islamic ideology in her art, despite her husband’s disavowal of his birth religion. The guests are a secular Jewish art dealer and his African-American girlfriend who is a lawyer at the same firm as her host. A United Nations, at least through the fennel and anchovy salad.

Seemingly innocuous banter begins to prick away at veneers of a gloriously assimilated melting pot, and the cocktail-fueled characters begin to reveal resentments that are usually sequestered in some internal vault.

Escalating attacks are shared but not equally distributed. The focal character is Amir Kapoor, who has strategically let his law firm believe him to be Indian rather than Pakistani. While the others try to offer up some revisionist interpretations of the Quran, Amir will have none of it, describing the holy text as “one long hate letter to humanity.”

But the playwright suggests there is something primal in all of us that may well not ever be in full harmony. Yes, Amir admits to gasps, he felt a hint of pride on 9/11 for the cun-

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Jake Heggie

From page 17

Nor is the duo’s recital the only Heggie recording issued this year.

Released just in time for this review, Jake Heggie: The Radio Hour (Delos) features the John Alexander Singers and members of the Pacific Symphony in the world premiere recording of Heggie and Gene Sheer’s new one-act “choral opera,” The Radio Hour. Additional tracks include touching contributions from mezzo-soprano Graham. Also out this year is Heggie’s contribution to December Celebration (Pentatone), an anthology whose capsule review will be included in our annual survey of holiday discs.

If there is any question that this “local” and very out composer has truly struck it big, one need only examine the many performances of his work here and abroad. This season’s host of Heggie premieres includes the Dec. 16 San Francisco Performances West Coast premiere of The Work at Hand, written for the fabulous mezzo Jamie Barton; the Dallas and San Diego Opera premieres of Great Scott, Heggie’s second opera with Terrence McNally; and next May’s Seattle/San Francisco world premiere of Out of Darkness, an opera with Sheer that explores, among other things, the devastating effect of the Holocaust on the lives of two idealistic young male lovers in 1930s Berlin.

So how do the two newest Heggie recordings stack up? Some of Kirch-

ning success of his ancestral people, and in a fit of anger at the Jewish art dealer, he provocatively suggests Israel might deserve to be wiped off the map. The art dealer, after an angry shove from Amir, declares that all Muslims, secular or not, are barbarians at heart.

In a secondary story, a brief effort to help an imam arrested for possible terrorist connections lands Amir’s name in the newspaper and dashes his chance of making partner at Leibowitz, Bernstein, and Harris.

When the job goes instead to his African-American colleague and dinner guest, he shouts at her, “You think you’re the nigger here. I’m the nigger.” More gasps abound, and they won’t be the last.

At first, Akhtar’s dialogue is surprisingly wan in the bantering stage, and Bernard White as Amir and Nisi Sturgis as his wife don’t seem much interested in it either, in director Kimberly Senior’s production (she also directed the 2014 Broadway staging). Sturgis never does become a fully vital presence on stage, which is not true of the other performers.

White provides slowly revealed nuances to Amir, a character of contradictions he may not even realize he has. J. Anthony Crane is a bright presence as Isaac, the convivial art dealer, though he darkens ominously as a devastating collision approaches. The stylish Zakiya Young as Isaac’s girlfriend has a smaller role, but is the strongest voice of conciliatory propriety.

But prolonging that kind of peace is not the case the playwright is making. There are times to keep your mouth shut, Akhtar seems to be saying, but it is what festers unspoken that will ultimately hurt the most. At the end of the openingnight performance, following a traditional curtain call, the cast returned to the stage and, without a word, bowed their heads in silence.

The audience didn’t need words to understand what was being said of this sad day.t

Liz Lauren

In Disgraced at Berkeley Rep, a celebratory dinner party (with, from left, Bernard White, Nisi Sturgis, Zakiya Young, and J. Anthony Crane) turns into a raging cultural battle with Islam at its center.

Disgraced will run at Berkeley Rep through Dec. 20. Tickets are $29-$89. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org.

schlager and Van Bueren’s selections have been recorded before. The delightful three-song cycle Statuesque (2005), for example, was set down in its original chamber version by its dedicatee, Joyce Castle, on Flesh and Stone, a wonderful benefit CD for Broadway Care/AIDS Action that can only be ordered through their online store.

Happy to say, the European duo’s version is every bit as characterful and recommendable. Kirchschlager’s main strength is her ability to bring three famous statues to life through her abundant personality. She totally nails the swing of “Henry Moore: Reclining Figure in Elmwood,” the different voices of Picasso and his creation in “Pablo Picasso: Head of a Woman,” and the Jewish folksong melody of “Winged Victory: We’re Through.” The duo’s renditions, like the cycle itself, are a hoot.

On a different emotional scale are Kirchschlager’s eight selections from Song to the Moon (1998), which were created for von Stade (Flicka). Flicka may have recorded four of these songs on The Faces of Love, Heggie’s 1998 breakthrough disc for RCA/BMG that features an astounding list of Heggie champions accompanied by pianist Heggie and cellist Emil Miland, but Kirchschlager and Van Bueren duplicate only two of them. The Austrian mezzo’s characterful renditions are wonderful in their own right. For See page 26 >>

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<< Theatre

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

The importance of being Idina Menzel

by Richard Dodds

A

silhouetted woman strides onto a catwalk high above the stage, and as the spotlight makes its hit, she declares, “Hi, it’s me.” The character is actually talking on a cellphone, but it also feels like a personal introduction, and the audience erupts with applause. Pity the performers who follow Idina Menzel into this role, when “Hi, it’s me” may elicit a teetering response from night to night.

Menzel is recreating her Broadway role in the tour of If/Then, but only through January, when it will continue with a new star. But this is November, and we can start the holiday celebrations now. Menzel delivers in ways you’d expect for the Tony Award winner (Wicked) and the voice that gave us “Let It Go” from the animated Frozen. Yes, she takes the musical’s songs into the stratosphere, but the strength of her comic skills may come as a surprise, and she can rend our hearts as well when that time comes.

The importance of Menzel to If/ Then, beyond the very significant fact that it was written for her, was demonstrated when the producers ended the Broadway run when her contract was up rather than look for a replacement despite good business at the box office. The show itself is something of a skimpy affair that director Michael Greif tries to pump up to a Broadway scale, bringing in small crowds to sing and awkwardly dance to Larry Keigwin’s

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ly housing, or love-at-first-sight with a soldier just returned from the Middle East who happens to be a doctor.

The Manhattan that the characters sparsely occupy is mainly suggested by projections of subway maps and a few outdoor cafe umbrellas that are regularly wheeled on and off the glossy stage floor.

The story does have prominent gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters offered up in a matter-of-fact way.

Elizabeth’s best gal pal is a feisty kindergarten teacher, sparked to life by the delightful LaChanze, who couples with another woman (Janine DaVita) with differing results depending on whether we’re in Liz or Beth’s story. The same is true of Elizabeth’s bisexual college buddy and onetime lover, the affable Rent veteran Anthony Rapp, who also lands himself a handsome doctor (Marc de la Cruz). James Snyder is stalwart and steady as Liz’s soldierdoctor, and Daren A. Herbert projects slick charm as Beth’s romantiJoan Marcus cally interested boss.

Idina Menzel is recreating her Broadway role in the touring production of If/Then now at the Orpheum Theatre.

But all roads lead back to Menzel, and at this juncture in her career, it second-rate choreography, and the there isn’t a lot going on among the on whether it is Beth or Liz’s story can actually feel like a privilege to writers have overstuffed the score characters in Yorkey’s occasionally that we are following. Instead of be given an audience with her. But with songs that come with infernal clever book, which has an intriguing the road not taken, If/Then blends there’s no resting on laurels here, frequency. premise that’s bound to confuse you, together two roads that Elizabeth and Menzel proves she is worthy of Those songs by Tom Kitt and Brian at least at some point, no matter how could possibly take based on fates the roar of the crowd. And indeed, Yorkey (Next to Normal) are never closely attention is paid. beholden to little more than the the crowd does roar.t less than listenable, and often more Meet the soon-to-bifurcate Elizabreeze from a butterfly’s wings. than that. But too many of the songs beth (Menzel), newly returned to And both those existences seemed If/Then will run through Dec. 6 at are just generically pleasant, and not Manhattan following a painful dicharmed, at least at first: a top-echethe Orpheum Theatre. Tickets are $50-$212. Call (888) 746-1799 or go much required by what is happenvorce, and the object of instant job lon job as a city planner creating afto shnsf.com. ing among the characters. Not that offers and love bouquets depending fordable and environmentally friend-

The parent trap?

by Richard Dodds

H

uman conception is often the byproduct of another activity made pleasurable, presumably so the species carries on. But procreation by choice likely comes from more than the built-in urges provided by nature, and when pregnancy doesn’t or can’t happen, it can become an urgent issue for reasons that surround us as well as those inside us. There is dejection built into the word “childless,” which is heard

much more frequently than “childfree.”

This is a well-trod subject for fiction, film, and drama, and even the more delimited world of same-sex parenting has become a familiar topic. But Sarah Gubbins’ The Kid Thing, now at New Conservatory Theatre Center, adds unexpected layers to the choices facing two lesbian couples. The reasons for and against parenthood vary not only from couple to couple, but from woman to woman. And even the

Lois Tema

Two friends played by Kimberly Ridgeway, left, and Desiree Rogers, each part of a separate lesbian couple, find relations strained when parenthood enters into the conversation in The Kid Thing at NCTC.

/lgbtsf

characters do not always understand these reasons, at least not until all pretense is finally stripped away.

The Kid Thing, first seen in Chicago in 2011, opens with a dinner party hosted by the feminine Leigh and the mannish Darcy for their friends, the feminine Margo and the mannish Nate. These gender attributes are not assigned blithely, but are invoked by the characters themselves for reasons that become increasingly germane.

Plays that begin with dinner parties often launch on a familiar trajectory, and The Kid Thing is no exception. Lively banter swerves into more serious terrain, setting up the increasingly tense scenes that follow. In this case, however, even the early banter has an edge. The four have just returned from seeing the Michael Jackson tribute movie This Is It, and reactions to the late icon

vary from pedophile whose own children are “collateral damage” to a “celebrity tranny” to be enjoyed for his music and collateral weirdness.

Guests Margo and Nate have a surprise to drop on Leigh and Darcy, figuring it would be a happy coda to the evening. The well-grounded Margo is pregnant with an offspring that she and the childlike Nate plan to raise together, and while Leigh is aflutter at the news, hauling out seven flavors of sorbet and a bottle of champagne to celebrate, her partner Darcy only perfunctorily joins the celebratory mood. After the guests have left, Leigh is ready to reignite the back-burnered question of their own possible parenthood, and while never coming out and declaring she doesn’t want to be a parent, Darcy deflects the issue in ambiguous fashion.

Darcy, in her preferred attire

of suit and tie, is the play’s most compelling character, whose sardonic comments and reactions are enjoyed by the other characters, at least up to a point. It’s hard to imagine anyone better in this role than Desiree Rogers, who not only sharply delivers the lines but also is fascinating to watch for the nuances in both her verbal and physical reactions to what displeases her for increasingly complex reasons.

Director Becca Wolff confidently stages the play on Yusuke Soi’s set of simple elegance, and elicits a cast-wide set of fine performances. Sarah Coykendall gives the womb-ready Leigh a bright-eyed enthusiasm that gets close to mania in difficult situations. Kimberly Ridgeway provides a welcome stability as the pregnant Margo, and Jaq Nguyen Victor spreads a likeable See page 23 >>

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Books>>

November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Telling same-sex tales in Africa

by Tim Pfaff

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he power of Chinelo Okparanta’s novel Under the Udala Trees (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is not in the writing per se, or not solely in the writing. Neither is it wholly in its message, which is not just about the intolerance of samesexuality in Biafra, where it is set, or Nigeria, which has swallowed up Biafra, or in the Christianitystained continent of Africa as a whole. Rather, it is about the imperative that that murderous prejudice stop. In fact, the message occasionally interrupts the writing.

The book’s power is as a deed. However long it was in the writing, it appeared, ready to speak in its several tongues, the year after Nigeria’s president, the Orwellianly named Goodluck Jonathan, signed yet another African law criminalizing same-sex relationships, and even the support of them, in January 2014. In her Acknowledgements, Chinelo Okparanta, a writer not a stylist, credits “my predecessors, my guiding lights,” contemporary writers and teachers from Chinua Achebe to Marilynne Robinson (the second of whom, tellingly, she names twice). Two she does not mention, but whose work hers often recalls, are Ernest Hemingway and Maxine Hong Kingston.

Many of Okparanta’s chapters begin with what we once drily called local color. It’s especially helpful in a novel set mostly in the time of the central African war that gave us modern Nigeria and deposited in Western imaginations one single, guilt-inducing image: bloated-bellied, parch-lipped, starving Biafran children. Her scene-setting regularly made me think of that astounding opening paragraph of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, where a considerable list of things we normally think of as inanimate – rocks, fallen leaves and, on everything, dust – is borne along by yet other things we think of as inanimate – streams and winds – and an entire world, yet a specific place, is conjured. I didn’t have to Google udala tree, and come to think of it, still haven’t.

She names the udala, among many other African things that similarly don’t require hypertext, in the manner of the Biblical Adam and Eve – of whom we also hear plenty – naming their fellow creatures. So the way has been prepared, not that we’re necessarily still ready, when, in the very late pages of the book, Okparanta writes, “Legend has it that spirit children, tired of floating aimlessly between the world of the living and that of the dead, take to gathering above udala trees.”

“Legend has it” summons the opening of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, which begins with a story “you must not tell anyone,” a legend that informs the whole of that novel. Like Kingston, in her debut novel Okparanta is an adept at “talking story,” drawing dream, myth, legend, folk tale and newspaper headline into the fabric of her own narrative, seamlessly. In Kingston, it is the narrator’s mother – Kingston’s own mother become the larger-than-life Brave Orchid – who begins her cautionary tale with “you must not tell anyone.” So does the otherwise unnamed Mama, in a book rich with magical names, reign over Okparanta’s book, only at the end with anything like benevolence.

And like Kingston’s, Okparanta’s tone can reel from the incantatory to the hortatory without causing whiplash. In a rage over having to supply the background for her second book, China Men, for it to make sense to the reader, Kingston “plunked down” (her words) two pages of dry, unadorned history, dates and facts, in the middle of her book. Okparanta does it in smaller doses, with more controlled rage, telling us what we need to know, and occasionally preaching.

Ijeoma, our first-person narrator (at first almost as dry-duck-voiced as Kingston’s), is sent away from unsafe Ojoto to the outhouse of a grammar-school teacher and his wife in Aba, a safer town. There she meets Amina, an even more dispossessed girl of an outlying tribe, with whom she falls in unforgettable first love. (For the record, Amina is first mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 20, and they first meet on page 105. First there is childhood and its attendant horrors, only one of them war.)

Twice the girls are brought together, twice “discovered” by disapproving parties, which is too much for Amina, the too-muchness of which then torments Ijeoma, whose comeuppance is to be excoriated by her deeply ashamed mother, who prays aloud and quotes the Bible, as “an abomination.”

The older, wiser – too wise, it turns out, for her own good – Ndidi, a customer in her mother’s store, becomes Ijeoma’s introduction to adult female sexuality. After swearing her to secrecy, Ndidi takes her to a hidden gay meeting place, the curtained ground-floor section of a “regular” church. That taste of such liberation from the condemnation of her mother and her society is fouled when a raid of the club results in beatings and the horrific burning alive of the welcoming barmaid Adanna.

Okparanta handles lapsed time by allowing it to lurch forward deftly. Pell-mell, there is Ijeoma’s marriage to the manly but sensitive Chibundu, the birth of their daughter Chidinma, and Chibundu’s descent into violence over his discovery of Ijeoma’s hidden feeling for Ndidi, his demand that Ijeoma produce a son and her miscarriage precipitating her eventual retreat to her mother’s.

The author manages that trickiest of matters, writing sex scenes, with a keen sense of the characters’ pertinent mental and spiritual sophistication at the time. The tenderness with Amina, the ferocity with Ndidi and the submission to Chibundu’s

increasingly rapacious humiliation and frustration, all are handled with sensitivity alloyed with a fearless stepping into the feelings.

“If you set off on a witch-hunt, you will find a witch,” Okparanta begins a chapter. “When you find her, she will be dressed like any other person. But to you, her skin will glow in stripes of white and black. No matter how much unlike a witch she is, there she will be, a witch, before your eyes. The period of time after the church visit with Ndidi was the beginning of my witch-hunt with myself.”

The journey to selfacceptance, and love – more difficult, the author reminds us, at other times, and in other places during our time, when same-sex love seems alluringly, misleadingly secure – is charted in minute steps in this wisebeyond-its-years novel. “I acknowledge to myself that sometimes I am a snail,” Okparanta, through Ijeoma, writes. “I move myself by gliding. I contract my muscles and produce a slime of tears. Sometimes you see the tears and sometimes you don’t.

It’s my tears that allow me to glide. I glide slowly. But, slowly, I glide. It is a while before I am gone.”

In an arresting understatement near the end of her novel, Okparanta writes, “Some things can’t easily be explained.” But they can be written about. Told. And you can tell someone. And really, you must.t

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<< TV

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

Blood, guts & homophobia

by Victoria A. Brownworth

W

hat a time to be alive. Three political debates in one week, all post-election day? Who doesn’t love that? Political junkies like we are just revel in this stuff. Especially with gay suicides on scripted TV like Madam Secretary, Blindspot and Scandal book-ending the candidates in one week of TV. Let’s talk Hotel Cortez. On Nov. 11 the cast of Ryan Murphy’s most over-the-top season of his F/X series American Horror Story had a sit-down with reporters and dished the Hotel season. We have to admit, Hotel has been a little bit bloody for us. Did Lady Gaga’s Countess have to do that to Tristan (Finn Wittrock)? Did Dr. Alex (Chloe Sevigny) really bring The Baby back to the Countess?

One of our fave couplings this season has been Liz Taylor (not the Liz Taylor, but sort of) and boy toy Tristan. But as we know, Tristan belongs to the Countess, and sharing is so not in her wheelhouse.

Wittrock is such a good actor. His scene-stealing role as Dandy on AHS: Freak Show last season was the best in the season.

Out gay actor and Tony Award winner Denis O’Hare has been so good this season. He was nominated for an Emmy for season one of AHS, and it will be criminal if he’s not nommed again for this season.

O’Hare’s playing a character oh-sodifferent from any of his previous roles. As O’Hare told the Television Critic’s Association press tour, “I’m playing Liz Taylor, movie icon.

I’m not actually playing Elizabeth Taylor, but I’m playing a person who is inspired by the awesomeness of things like Butterfield 8 and Cleopatra and eye makeup like that.

I shaved my head for the part and other body parts.”

At the AHS set-side chat with re-

porters on Nov. 11, Oscar nominee Angela Bassett (Ramona Royale) said of her lesbian role this season, “Being in a sexual situation with the Countess, having to sign a nudity waiver about how it was going to go, that was the scariest [moment].”

Ramona had an affair with Gaga’s Countess. According to Variety, Bassett said that the iconic singer talked her through their over-thetop sex scene. Ever the jokestress, Gaga got Bassett a cake for her birthday (can you believe that body is 57?). The cake-topper? Bassett and Gaga having sex.

Wonder how Bassett’s longtime hubby, actor Courtney B. Vance, feels about that.

O’Hare also talked sex scenes. The erstwhile character actor apparently never had one until Hotel. Referring to his scenes with Wittrock’s Tristan, O’Hare said, “I had a sex scene this year, my first one ever, which I was terrified by because I’m a character actor. I’m not called upon to flash some ass, and that was uncomfortable for me.

I tried to make sure my sex partner was always blocking me.” Job. Well.

Done.

We keep hoping to see Liz Taylor get into the sack with Det. Lowe (the gorgeous Wes Bentley: we’ve wanted to see more of him since his malevolent turn on AHS: Freak Show with his amazing beard). That scene at the bar. Oh. My. O’Hare also said Hotel tapped into a lot of his own tortured history because of the character he is playing. “I am a 53-year-old gay man who had to come out in the 80s, when it wasn’t fashionable. I was a Catholic, so I had a very painful experience with being gay. This role was sort of putting the finger directly in that wound and forcing me to confront that.” O’Hare is now happily married, and he and his husband have an adopted son.

F/X

Denis O’Hare plays a person inspired by the awesomeness of Liz Taylor on the new season of American Horror Story.

So was there dish about Gaga?

Is she a diva? Hard to work with?

Cat-fights? Apparently, Lady Gaga is indeed a lady, and everyone loves working with her. She threw a big party for the entire cast and crew prior to the show filming to break the ice. She’s not a scene-stealer. Out gay actor Matt Bomer (Donovan) noted, “It’s interesting because you don’t realize what a huge cultural figure you’re working with.” Talking about his young children asking about Gaga, Bomer said, “Oh my god, am I cool?” Yes. You. Are. Speaking of cool, can we just say Jordan Smith is the star of this season of NBC’s The Voice? The unlikely star knocked everyone’s stilettoes off with his rendition of Sia’s “Chandelier,” and it’s been what the judges would call “an amazing journey” ever since.

We aren’t huge fans of The Voice, which has gotten a little too country for us this season, but we do love Smith, who could not be a more unlikely star. Smith got all four judges buzzing for him. All four gave him a standing O, and Gwen Stefani had to run over, give him a hug and tell him how amazing he was. Smith is the prototype for the bullied kid at school who was a little too gay, too fat and too geeky. We hope his rising star serves as a giant FU to everyone who gave him grief. He’s a semifinalist as of this week, so let’s hope he makes it to the final five.

Dark shadows

Smith’s success aside, it doesn’t always get better, as most of us who are LGBT know too well. It didn’t get better for any of the gay and lesbian characters spotlighted this week on the tube. Suicide remains the only alternative for some people, because homophobia and lesbophobia are still such a thing, and the closet is a dark place filled with demons.

On CBS’ Madam Secretary, one of Henry’s (Tim Daly) students at the War College alerts him that another student, Ivan, will be risking his life if he returns to Russia because he’s gay and a crackdown on homosexuals is happening. (Madam Secretary shadows the current state of global affairs closely.)

But Henry’s effort at bringing him in to defect backfires. After dressing in his uniform, Ivan, whose father would rather see him dead than gay, gets out his service revolver, and one shot to the head.

We watch the blood fan out in a halo around his head like a Russian religious icon. It’s a chilling moment when we realize, with Henry, what is going to happen. The careful dressing in the uniform. The message left on Henry’s voicemail. Henry racing through the quad and up the steps, two, three at a time, to Ivan’s room,

kicking in the door with the adrenaline of a man desperate to save a life.

Too late.

On the Nov. 12 episode of Scandal, Navid is a translator for the Imir of Bandar, a fictional stand-in for Saudi Arabia and a not-so-subtle reference to Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to the U.S., 1981-2005.

As he translates for Olivia (Kerry Washington) at a White House dinner, he tells her he wants to defect.

In a series of events he is forced to reveal state secrets first, but when they don’t appear to pan out, he is denied asylum and slices open an artery with a scalpel.

Olivia races to Navid in much the same way Henry races to Ivan.

We feel the adrenaline pumping.

When she breaks into the room to find him on the floor, blood pulsing out of him, we are certain he will die. So. Much. Blood. But thanks to Liv, who now looks Jackie Kennedyesque with her suit stained with Navid’s blood, he survives. His tearful revelation that he is gay is gutting and unexpected. Navid is more than willing to leave Bandar for America “to stop living in fear.” Tragedy is averted, but as lesbian and gay viewers know, homosexuals in Saudi Arabia and 75 other countries can be imprisoned and/or put to death for being gay. Iran has a particularly gruesome practice: enforced sex changes for gay men and lesbians.

So Navid’s is one life saved. But in the real world, there are many more.

On Greg Berlanti’s fabulous new NBC show Blindspot, Bethany Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) was just revealed as a lesbian. The revelation is tragic, because her lover, Deputy White House Political Director Sophia Varma (gorgeous Sarita Choudhury), ends up killing herself. Too many service revolvers.

The whole episode is about the perils of being gay: a black football star is being blackmailed for being gay by corrupt cops in a storyline that is entirely too realistic.

We appreciate seeing these storylines folded into some of the best of TV’s scripted dramas. We just wish it weren’t so easy for writers to say, “Hey, how about a gay suicide for this episode?” and everyone in the writers’ room knowing it will be hyperrealism 101.

This leads us inexorably to real life. We learned on the Nov. 12 CBS evening news that a married lesbian Mormon couple in Utah is fighting to keep their foster child. April Hoagland and Beckie Pierce were approved to foster a child months ago.

The baby, now nine months old, has been living with the couple almost from birth. On Nov. 10 Utah Judge Scott Johansen ordered that the child be removed from their home to “go to a heterosexual couple”

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because according to him, studies show kids do better with heterosexual parents than with homosexual ones. (Studies actually say there’s no difference.) Utah’s Director of Child Services believes this is Mormon overreach. The biological mother of the baby girl has requested that the child stay with Hoagland and Pierce.

An appeal of the ruling will be heard in December. But we would just remind everyone that children have been removed from lesbian mothers for decades. It hasn’t stopped. The politics of who gets to be a family hasn’t stopped. Witness the current political debate season.

We really liked the Democratic forum moderated by our lesbian in the media, Rachel Maddow. It was a good forum with tough questions (well, at least for Hillary Clinton), and the one-on-one format gave viewers a clearer picture of each candidate. Sure, Maddow is unabashedly feeling the Bern, but it still felt like we came away knowing more than we did coming in. It was good to know that Martin O’Malley is just as stiff and robotic sitting across from one interviewer as he is standing at a podium.

The GOP debate, though?

Wonkier than the CNBC debate last month, but softballing Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio is not the right play. At some point these sons of immigrants are going to have to address immigration. Then we’ll see if their numbers continue to rise.

Everyone talks about Jeb’s poor debate skills, but Trump hates the debates, and when the camera is not on him he seems to take lizard naps. We’re seeing Trump’s star fading, much as we believe Ben Carson is the truly crazy one on that stage.

Can’t you see him wandering the halls of Hotel Cortez in AHS talking about pyramids filled with grain, stabbing friends and hitting his mama with a hammer?

Because this debate was hosted

by Fox, the news you didn’t see was about Kevin Swanson. He’s an extremist “Christian” pastor and radio talk-show host whose anti-gay, antiwoman rhetoric would put ISIS to shame. Swanson hosted an event for the Republicans. Freedom 2015: National Religious Liberties Conference was a conference of “Christian” demagogues looking for their perfect candidate. Pastor Swanson wants gays and lesbians put to death by the government, which he says makes sense because other countries do it. Swanson has said that if his son were to marry another man (hmm, is his son gay and just not out of the closet yet?), he would “show up at the wedding and smear his body with cow manure.” Wow, he’s really thought that one out.

None of this kind of stuff happens for the Democrats. The Nov. 14 debate looked as sane and rational as the previous debate and forum.

CBS Face the Nation anchor John Dickerson was the central moderator for the Iowa debate, along with CBS political correspondent Nancy Cordes and well-known Iowa journalists Kevin Cooney and Kathie Obradovich. Before the event Dickerson told the Des Moines Register, “The goal of the moderator is to illuminate the views of the candidates on the issues that matter the most to voters, and you don’t need to be on the side of the party to do that.” Nice disclaimer.

No more debates until right before Christmas. On Dec. 15 what remains of the GOP candidates will joust in Las Vegas for CNN, and on Dec. 19 the Democrats will be in New Hampshire on ABC. So for the political Sturm und Drang, for the blood and the guts of AHS, for the dulcet tones of Jordan Smith, and for the next gay suicide story-line, you really must stay tuned. t

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Books>>

November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

YouTube sensation five in a Kindergarten production of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” with no problem making friends and sharing his vibrant personality with the world.

He writes of the horror of being forced to get braces at University of Michigan’s Dental School, until he dreamily “met the man who was going to be tightening them every four to six weeks”; coming out to friends and family (“So, yeah, I’m gay as fuck”); drug experimentation; and an engaging, lengthy chapter on the lovely evolution of Oakley’s re-

lationship with college boyfriend Adam.

Conversational in tone and witty without being overly bitchy, Oakley is at his best when addressing more taboo subject matter, such as the scatological eccentricities of his childhood, his propensity for being “a bit plump,” and overcoming the self-loathing that accompanied it.

There is fun yet mindless entertainment, as in Oakley’s ranking of cartoon men (Mulan’s Li Shang comes in at #4, since he “might be a bit bi-

curious, given that he seemed into Mulan when he knew her as Ping”), a silly section on unnecessary holiday traditions, how much he loves The Cheesecake Factory, and so on.

Oakley knows he has a responsibility to set an example for the tween generation, lisp and all, so this is as close as this book gets to humility: “I’ll never be a gay that every other gay can relate to, but if by being myself, lisp included, I’m a gay that one lonely 12-year-old gay in the Middle of Nowhere, with

his parted bowl-cut and inadvisable zip-up vest, can identify with and thus feel less alone, then I’ve done my job.” There are also some great pages on both his biological parents and stepparents.

Digested in small portions (recommended) or impulsively gulped in one sitting, Oakley’s tapestry of insights and observations can be intermittently entertaining and perfunctory. He offers a limited yet outrageous glimpse inside the man behind all that grandiloquence.t

by Jim Piechota Binge by Tyler Oakley; Gallery Books, $24 ith cover art awash in rainbow-colored, foil-wrapped candy and outspoken author Tyler Oakley’s platinum coif bursting through, what’s not to love? Go ahead and judge Binge by its cover since the same can be said of the material contained within, which spotlights Oakley as a seasoned raconteur and chatty gay who, at 26, has already led a colorful life. If you’re looking for brainfood or essays amounting to something more introspective, you may not be the target audience for a book that Oakley dedicates “for my people.”

These “people” perhaps include the young sensation’s 7.7 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, through which Oakley has become a pseudo-household name, a recipient of two Teen Choice Awards, and even scorer of an interview with Michelle Obama, who, he opines, inexplicably smells like “the haunting scent of hastily discarded, bruised apples.” Who knew?

In many respects, the book feels like only a partial reflection of Oakley. The author touches on the intimate, personal aspects of his life only from time to time, deflecting the rest with humor and schticky banter. Readers will receive the benefit of his youthful wisdom on subjects ranging from his “carnal thirst” for porn, growing up in a family with serious financial issues, his horrible driving record, and time spent living in the Castro district.

Adorable childhood photographs paint the author, born Mathew Tyler Oakley, as a cute, awkward blond kid (think child star Peter Billingsley from A Christmas Story) years ahead of his time, hitting the stage at

W

<<

The Kid Thing

From page 20

flightiness as the possibly parentally unready Nate. Nick Mandracchia plays the donor whose sperm impregnated Margo, and from whom Leigh eagerly wants the same service. Mandracchia, burlier than the dialogue suggests, nevertheless creates an amiable character thrust into a battle not of his choosing.

Playwright Gubbins distracts from the play’s core with an unnecessary subplot of spousal cheating, and the play ends on such a vague note that the audience sat quietly waiting for the next scene until the actors arrived for the curtain call. Even so, The Kid Thing is often quite funny, bracingly serious, and bravely revelatory.

Parenthood, it is often said, makes believers out of even the nervously reluctant. But the self-loathing that the play eventually reveals might be a stop sign worth observing.t The Kid Thing will run at New Conservatory Theatre Center through Dec. 13. Tickets are $25$45. Call (415) 861-8972 or go to nctcsf.org.

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After promotional period, or if any service is cancelled or downgraded, regular rates apply. Comcast’s current monthly service charge for Starter XF Triple Play is $136.99–$141.99 and for Blast!® Internet is $12 (pricing subject to change). TV and Internet service limited to a single outlet. May not be combined with other offers. TV: Limited Basic service subscription required to receive other levels of service. Internet: Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. WiFi claim based on November 2014 study by Allion Test Labs, Inc. Reliability claim based on 2014 FCC Measuring Broadband America report. Prepaid card mailed to Comcast account holder within 18 weeks of activation of all required services and expires in 90 days. Cards issued by Citibank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa® U.S.A. Inc. and managed by Citi Prepaid Services. Cards will not have cash access and can be used everywhere Visa® debit cards are accepted. Call for restrictions and complete details. © 2015 Comcast. All rights reserved.

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8/12/15 10:31 AM

<< Out&About

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

Out &About

O&A

Disgraced @ Berkeley Rep Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer- Prize-winning drama about cultural assimilation, Islamic imagery, and a family’s unraveling. $17-$61. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm.

Thru Dec. 20. Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org

Figures and Interiors @ John Pence Gallery

Fri 20

Theatre Flamenco @ Cowell Theatre

Pre-Stuffed

Klaus Handner

by Jim Provenzano

H

olidays hearken and hint at the annual ho-hum hilarity. Yet, entertainments abound, and even on Thanksgiving, outdoor exhibits open their branches for your company. For nightlifery, visit our BARtab section.

Thu 19 Cavalia @ AT&T Park The sweeping horse and acrobatic show returns with the new Odysseo. $44.50-$289. Tue-Fri 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Dec. 13. (866) 999-8111.

Embarcadero at AT&T Park. www.cavalia.net

Comedy Returns @ El Rio The monthly stand-up night this time features Michael Meehan, Lydia Popovich, Stefani Silverman, Nate Blanchard, and host Lisa Geduldig. $7-$20. 8pm. 3158 Mission St. (800) 838-3006. www.elriosf.com

Curse of the Cobra @ Hypnodrome Thrillpeddlers’ new Halloween season spine-tingling show offers terror and titillation! $25-$35. Wed-Sat 8pm.

Thru Nov. 21. 575 10th St. 377-4202. www.hypnodrome.org

Dhaya Lakshminarayanan @ Exit Studio The local stand-up comic performs her new solo show, Nerd Nation. $15-$25.

Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Nov. 21. 156 Eddy St. www.divafest.info

Franc D’Ambrosio @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The Broadway crooner ( The Phantom of the Opera ) performs his annual Christmas in New York cabaret concert. $25-$40. 8pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Kate Raphael @ La Peña Cultural Center, Berkeley The author of Murder Under the Bridge: A Palestine Mystery discusses her new book about a Jewish lesbian and a Palestinian woman detective.

7:30pm. 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. www.lapena.org

If/Then @ Orpheum Theatre Idina Menzel, Anthony Rapp and Lachanze star in the national touring company of Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Tony-nominated hit Broadway musical about parallel lives, chance and possibilities in contemporary New York City. $40$212. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Dec. 6. 1192 Market St. (888) 746-1799. www.ifthenthemusical.com www.shnsf.com

Megan Timpane @ The Marsh The film, stage and TV actor performs her solo show, Having Cancer is Hilarious! $15-$50. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 8:30pm. Thru Nov. 28. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Monstress @ Strand Theatre American Conservatory Theatre’s staging of Philip Kan Gotanda and Sean San José’s drama about FilipinoAmerican Bay Area life and struggles. $20-$100. Tue-Sat 7:30pm. Wed & Sat 2pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru Nov. 22.

1127 Market St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre

Opening reception for a large group exhibit of gorgeous realist and modern impressionist paintings. 6pm.

Reg. hours Mon-Fri 10am-6pm. Sat 10am-5pm. Thru Dec. 19. 750 Post St. 441-1138. www.johnpence.com

Inappropriate in All the Right Ways @ The Marsh Ann Randolph’s serio-comic solo show about family loss and death. $20-$100. Saturdays, 5pm. Sun 2pm.

Extended thru Dec. 13. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

The Kid Thing @ New Conservatory Theatre Center The local theatre company presents Sarah Gubbins’ witty play about the problems two lesbian couples face with an impending pregnancy. $25-$45.

Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Dec. 13.

25 Van Ness ave., lower level. nctcsf.org

Nov. 19: InForum event with Chef Tyler Florence (7pm). Nov. 20: Commando (7:20) and Rambo: First Blood (9:15). Nov. 21: Addams Family Values with Peaches Christ’s pre-show (see Sat.) Nov. 22: Goodfellas (2pm, 7:30) and Carlito’s Way (4:45). Nov. 23: Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (7pm) and Faraway, So Close (9:20).

Nov. 25: Hannah and Her Sisters (3:15, 7pm) and Broadway Danny Rose (5:15, 8:55). $10-$15. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

The lesbian Latina comic performs Mi Amor!, her solo show about the hilarious side of the 1980s in San Francisco. $15. 8pm. Also Nov. 21.

2857 24th St. www.monicapalacios. com www.galeriadelaraza.org

The Pandora Experiment @ Exit Theatre

The Monster-Builder @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley

Christian Cagigal’s unique and mysterious solo show with magic, illusions and spooky themes, returns in a new version. $20-$30. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Nov. 21. 156 Eddy St. www.theexit.org

Pound @ Brava Theater Center Marga Gomez’ hilarious satire solo show skewers lesbian cinema depictions with a cast of crazy characters. $15-$20. Thu-Sat 8pm.

Sun 3pm. 18+ only! Extended thru Nov. 22. Upstairs Studio, 2781 24th St. at York www.brava.org

Steve Cuiffo is Lenny Bruce @ Curran Theatre The actor performs a one-hour show as the legendary comic at the innovative on-stage shows at the inprogress renovated theatre. $50. 8pm.

Also Nov 20 & 21 8pm. Thru Nov. 21.

445 Geary St. www.SFCurran.com

Story Showdown @ Awaken Café, Oakland Storytelling by Baruch PorrasHernandez, Eric Darby, Casey Gardener, Mosa Maxwell-Smith, Dylan Gray, and Mic Ting; musical guest Jade Way; Wonder Dave hosts. $12-$15. 7:30pm. 1429 Broadway. www.awakencafe.com

Fri 20 Akram Khan Company @ YBCA Theater The London-based dance company performs the evening-length work Kaash, a hybrid work of traditional Indian and Modern dance. $40-$65.

7:30pm. Also Nov. 21. 700 Howard St. www.ybca.org www.sfperformances.org

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. Reg: $25$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.).

421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Monica Palacios @ Galeria de la Raza

Bay Area premiere of Amy Freed’s dark drama about post-modern megaarchitect Gregor Zubrowski, and design theft. $3-$50. Tue 7pm, WedSat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru Dec. 6. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

Olympians Festival @ Exit Theatre Annual festival of new plays with a theme of ancient gods and mythology, this year with 30 new plays. $10-$12.

Wed-Sat 8pm thru Nov. 21. 156 Eddy St. www.sfolympians.com

Pirates of Penzance @ Arts Passage Gilbert & Sullivan’s bouyant musical operetta gets an energetic new staging. $25-$65. Tue-Thu-Sat 8pm; Wed & Sun 7pm; Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru Dec. 20. Osher Studio, 2055 Center St., Berkeley. www.berkeleyrep.org

Shakespeare Goes to War @ Thick House John Fisher wrote, directed and costars in the new comedy-drama about a teacher who inspires a student in the 1970s, World War II prison camps, the anti-gay Briggs Initiative, and The Bard. $10-$35. Tue 7pm (Nov. 17 & 24 only). Wed & Thu 7:30pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm. Thru Nov. 28. 1695 18th St. at Arkansas.

(800) 838-3006. www.TheRhino.org

Stage Kiss @ SF Playhouse Gabriel Marin and Carrie Paff star in Sarah Ruhl’s new romantic farce that blends on- and offstage romance between actors. $20-$45. Tue-Thu 7pm, Fri & Sat 8pm, Wed, Sat & Sun at 2pm & 3pm. Thru Jan. 9. 450 Post St. www.sfplayhouse.org

Theatre Flamenco @ Cowell Theatre The world-famous locally-based dance and music company performs Ad Libitum: or How I Freed Myself From Chains, with flamenco superstar Andres Marin.$40-$75. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd. theatreflamenco.org

Transgender Day of Remembrance @ LGBT Center Gathering to commemorate transgendered people lost to violence.

6pm-9pm. 1800 Market. tdorsf.org

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Sat 21

Mon 23

Ada and the Memory Machine @ Berkeley City Club

Daily and Transcendent @ SF Public Library

Central Works’ production of Lauren Gunderson’s play about Ada Lovelance, 19th-century countess, metaphysician, daughter of Lord Byron, and the world’s first computer programmer; performed with original live music by The Kilbanes. $15-$28.

Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. Thru Nov. 22.

2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. (510) 5581381. www.centralworks.org

Addams Apple Family Values @ Castro Theatre Peaches Christ presents another hilarious drag musical show that precedes a screening, this time Addams Family Values; with Sharon Needles as Morticia, Heklina as Uncle Fester, plus Jinkx Monsoon, Peggy L’Eggs, Chaka Corn and other talents. $32-$140. 2pm & 8pm. 429 Castro St. www.peacheschrist.com www.castrotheatre.com

Bright Half Life @ Rueff Room, Strand Theatre Tanya Barfield’s drama about two women whose lives together are interrupted, then brought together through time. $35-$75. Tue 7pm.

Wed-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2:30pm.

Thru Dec. 6. 1127 Market St. 4418822. www.magictheatre.com

Craft Fair @ La Peña Cultural Center

Dual exhibit of LGBT-themed photos by veteran photographers Jane Philomen Cleland and Rick Gerharter.

Jewett Gallery, lower level. 100 Larkin St. Thru Jan. 3. www.sfpl.org

Material of Survival @ Magnet Artist Grahame Perry’s exhibit of works portraying the longterm struggle of HIV, shown in the new health space, including Every AIDS Obituary, a montage of 100’s of B.A.R. obits. Thru Nov. 470 Castro St. www.j.mp/hiv-survive www.magnetsf.org

Steven Saylor @ Book Passage The prolific gay author of Roman historical novels reads from and discusses his latest, Wrath of the Furies: a novel of the Ancient World, set in 88 B.C. 6pm. 1 Ferry Bldg. at Embarcadero. 835-1020. www.bookpassage.com

Tue 24 Panama Pacific @ Harvey Milk Photo Center Centennial photography exhibit of historic images from the 1915 World Expo. Opening reception Nov. 12, 4pm-9pm. Thru Dec. 23. 50 Scott St. 554-9522. harveymilkphotocenter.org

Get your holiday gift shopping done in one trip at the showcase of multicultural handmade crafts, cermaics, paintings, clothing, pottery and more, most at $30 and under; with live music, and food and drinks for pirchase. 10am-4pm. 3105 Shattuck ave., Berkeley. (510) 8492568. www.lapena.org

Temporal Cities @ Tenderloin Museum

Heroes & Villains Fan Fest @ San Jose Convention Center

Wed 25

John Barrowman (Torchwood ), Steven Amell (Arrow), Haley Atwell (Agent Carter), Karen Gillan ( Doctor Who), and many other stars of comic and scifi-themed TV shows and movies will be at this fan convention. $30-$850 (VIP celeb meet & greet packages).

10:30am-6pm. Also Nov. 22, 10:30am5pm. 150 West San Carlos St., San Jose. www.heroesfanfest.com

Sun 22 ASL Epic @ Sweet Inspiration The monthly LGBT-friendly deaf open ‘mic’ night, for hearing-impaired and others, with storytelling, rap, comedy, skits and more. 4pm-7pm. 2239 Market St. www.meetup.com/asl-294

Hope Briggs, Symphony Parnassus @ Herbst Theatre The accomplished soprano performs works by Bartok, Barber and other composers with the Bay Area symphony. $10-$75. 3pm.

401 Van Ness Ave. www.symphonyparnassus.org

Mother’s Milk @ The Marsh Berkeley Mother’s Milk: A Blues Riff in Three Acts, Wayne Harris’ new solo show set against his Southern Baptist upbringing amid the civil rights struggle. $20-$100. Sun 5pm. Thu 8pm. Thru Dec. 10. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

SF Hiking Club @ Point Reyes Join GLBT hikers for a 14-17-mile hike at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Carpool meets 8am at the Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. (707) 7203097. www.sfhiking.com

Exhibit of images, drawing and events about community in San Francisco.

Thru Dec. 17. Tue-Sat 10am-5pm. 398 Eddy St. at Leavenworth. 351-1912. www.tenderloinmuseum.org

The Nightmare Before Christmas @ Davies Symphony Hall Composer Danny Elfman and the San Francisco Symphony perform music from the popular animated Tim Burton film with a screening; Joshua Gersen conducts. $25-$160. 8pm. Also Nov. 27 & 28 at 8pm. 201 Van Ness Ave. www.sfsymphony.org

Reigning Queens @ GLBT History Museum New exhibit of 1970s San Francisco drag ball photos by Roz Joseph; with curator Joey Plaster, DJ Irwin Swirnoff.

Thru Feb. 2016. Reg, hours Mon, WedSat 11am-6pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Thu 26:

Thanksgiving Holiday Ice Rink @ Union Square Enjoy skating, hot drinks and fun in the downtown center of holiday shopping. $7-$11. Skate rental $6.

Thru Jan. 14. Various times, 10am-11pm. 333 Post St. www.unionsquareicerink.com

Wildflower Exhibits @ SF Botanical Gardens See autumnal fall foliage displays, trees and plants in various beautiful gardens specific to region, plus Fotanicals: the Secret Language of Flowers, an exhibition of photographs by artist joSon. Daily walking tours and more. Free admission on Thanksgiving! Optional donation $15.

Tours, lectures, classes and more.

Daily. Golden Gate Park. 661-1316. www.sfbotanicalgarden.org 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

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DVD>>

November 19-25, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Argentine journey

by Brian Bromberger

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“ ’m 23 years old. My name is

Geronimo, but people call me Jess. I hate my family. I hate my brother. I don’t know what to do with my life. Is this a trip or a dream?” So begins the unsettling first frame of Jess & James, an Argentinean film just released on DVD by TLA Releasing. The movie is billed as a sexually charged roadtrip, obviously inspired by one of queer cinema’s pillars, The Living End by Greg Araki, minus the AIDS element. Both Jess and James are drifting, trying to figure out who they are and what they want (sexually and otherwise), as well as where their lives may be heading, all of which is complicated by their relationship, which brings up its own identity issues.

Jess (Martin Kanch) meets James (Nicolas Romeo), and they have a sexual encounter that’s awkward and uncomfortable, as is often the case with first-time coupling. Jess has the most intense orgasm of his life, anally penetrating James, who looks both in pain (to the point of tears) and emotionally vulnerable, later asking for a kiss Jess is reluctant to impart (“I don’t do that with just anyone”). James, having stronger emotional feelings, tries to push Jess into defining their relationship, a major theme of the movie, which is divided into eight chapters charting their journey together. Jess, not open about his sexuality, is constantly rebuffing James’ PDAs. Despite just having met, eros is ignited as they strive to sort out what feelings they might have for each other.

James, a disgruntled waiter tired of living with his yoga-practicing but judgmental mother (“If you get AIDS, I’ll kill you!”), suggests a

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weekend road-trip with Jess to get away. Jess has a pregnant girlfriend who is pressing him into marriage (even though he claims he is not the father), so he is eager to escape.

Essentially stealing James’ mother’s car, with no immediate destination, they travel through the sparse beauty of the rural Argentinean Pampas countryside (reminiscent of Texas,

as well as the cowboy culture accompanying it).

They stop in a nameless small town and meet Tomas (Federico Fontan), a waiter who offers them a free lunch and acts as tour guide through the local area, allowing them to stay at his father’s house.

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Dark desires

by David Lamble

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anadian-based Spanish filmmaker Marcal Fores offers up a very dark student/teacher love affair under the title Everlasting Love. The DVD box from TLA Releasing has a cover shot with the student, Toni, displaying his comely chest while in the background a gray-haired older man gives a covetous glance the boy’s way. The front cover also contains the advisory, Warning: Contains strong sex. This packaging come-on is no cheat, but it is a tad misleading, for the real darkness contained at the end of this barely feature-length title (apparently shot in Spain) has little to do with violating sexual taboos.

The story kicks off with a simple premise. Carlos, a 50ish language teacher, likes to pick up twinklike youths for fun in the woods. But Carlos has a no-repeat rule. This rule causes a riff with Toni, a slender, charming lad with a low threshold for rejection and a dangerously unhinged group of friends lurking just out of sight.

I found the first hour of this erotic fable quite appealing, but was put off by the very dark ending, which involves some kinky behavior that’s way beyond my comfort zone. That said, director Fores (co-writer with Vicente De La Torre) has a good command of his story. My problem with the ending is akin to the problem I had with Austrian director Michael Hancke’s 1997 family horror story Funny Games, where a middle-class family is held hostage, tortured and murdered by two young louts with philosophical excuses for their atrocities. In 2008, Hancke offered a shot-for-shot American reboot that was just as unpleasant. In some ways, Everlasting Love comes

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off as if it were a Trojan Horse effort

by ISIS terrorists trying to add gays to their trail of victims.

The production values are excellent, in fact seductive to the point of luring the unwary viewer into territory he or she may regret sampling. The bonus features offer no explanation or mea culpa for the questionable material. Most defi-

nitely, buyer beware! Some critics have compared Everlasting Love to French director Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake, a better film that also gives outdoor sexual cruising the same worrisome beats that Hitchcock’s Psycho gave to motel shower stalls. I would like to see the same actors in a more tasteful story.t

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26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 19-25, 2015

Venezuelan detour

by David Lamble

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eath is God’s greatest betrayal!” This portentous catchphrase whirls through the mind of Eva as she drives from Caracas to join her husband and son for a vacation retreat in Liz in September (Wolfe). Car troubles intervene, and the kindly gas-station guy directs Eva to stay with a feisty group of lesbians while he puts her car up on the rack.

Venezuelan director Fina Torres (Woman on Top) provides a witty Spanish-language adaptation of a pioneering American lesbian play, Jane Chambers’ (1937-83) Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. An early80s lesbian gem made available to a wider audience, the story now takes in a wide range of contemporary concerns, such as assisted suicide and the right of non-lesbian-identified women to experiment with members of their own gender without having their adventures tagged with hostile, homophobic labels.

While there are risks involved in opening up a story for the screen, this well-acted, comically lively

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Ida Lupino

From page 17

The English-born Lupino got her first break helming a movie in 1949, when she replaced Elmer Clifton, the director of Not Wanted, a film she co-wrote and co-produced, after he suffered a heart attack. She was the first Hollywood actress to direct a film, and the only American woman to direct a film noir. Elizabeth Banks, Reese Witherspoon and Angelina Jolie Pitt are among the 21st-century actresses who have built on her model, generating and optioning interesting projects in front of and behind the camera that the industry rarely offers them.

Although Lupino was clearly a trail-blazer in a male-dominated field, few outside the insular world of film buffs know much about the extraordinary woman whose work Martin Scorsese once described as “resilient, with a remarkable empathy for the fragile and the heartbroken.”

“Her tough, emotional acting is well remembered, but her considerable accomplishments as a filmmaker are largely forgotten,” he wrote in a New York Times Magazine article shortly after her death in 1995. “She was a true pioneer; the [six] films she directed between 1949 and 1953 are remarkable chamber pieces, and a singular achievement in American cinema.”

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Jake Heggie

From page 19

those who do not have Flicka’s recordings of three songs from Winter Roses, which she premiered in 2004, the European duo’s rendition of “Looking West: Sweet Light” will send you to the Net to get Flicka’s chamber version on Flesh and Stone.

Essential listening are Kirchschlager and Van Bueren’s worldpremiere recordings of three songs from The Breaking Waves (2011).

These settings of poems by Sister

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Jess & James

From page 25

Both are attracted to Tomas, though Tomas likes James more than Jess.

Still, they engage in a menage a trois, unsure what that means for their relationship. Ultimately it will help them sort out their feelings and attraction toward each other.

There is a lovely scene where, on a secluded beach together, Tomas teaches James and Jess dance steps.

adaptation manages to lessen the soap-opera vibe of the story. A vibrant character dies from cancer in her prime years, as a straightidentified woman recovers from the cancer-related death of a young son.

Liz in September demonstrates how far women in “third-world” societies have come in coping with machismo.

Liz and Eva have their “cute meet” introduction down on a pier.

Eva attempts to fish, and Liz tosses her catch back in the lake, then teases with flirty banter. It doesn’t hurt that director Torres decided to shoot along Venezuela’s coastal beaches with their crystal-blue waters, a landscape that underlines the story’s overarching themes: birth, death, rebirth, and the ability of a new generation to expand the boundaries of erotic freedom.

Examples of how Torres has developed the themes from Chambers’ Bluefish Cove come in two beautifully filmed dream sequences that bookend the film. In the first, Liz is bobbing up next to a pier in her diving gear, chatting with one of her close friends. “I was born gay, no

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doubt about it. Later, when I started having experiences with girls, I turned even more gay. I liked it. I like women a lot. I like making love to women. Don’t you? When you think of me, Dolores, when I’m no longer around, you’ll remember me like this, floating.”

When a dying Liz tries to imagine a world without her in it from her hospital bed, the same thoughts take on poetic meaning. “Cancer. Sometimes the worst does happen. Why me? Why now? One dies, and that’s it. I don’t remember the departed.

Why would I be remembered?

When I’m no longer around, you’ll remember me like this, floating.”

At the core of the film is the vivacious Patricia Velasquez as Liz. Velasquez builds on the reputation she acquired on the pioneering Showtime TV series The L Word.

Astride her motorcycle or downing shots in bets with her girlfriends about her ability to seduce the straight girl Eva, Velasquez makes bad behavior entertaining. She’s so compelling many will wish Liz in September were a serial drama with more saucy chapters to come.t a chilling road movie that doubles as a cautionary tale about the perils of giving a ride to a sadistic serial murderer.

In the film, two friends (Edmond O’Brien, Frank Lovejoy), softie weekend warriors on a lark in the Mexican desert, pick up a fugitive killer (William Talman). Once in their car, he kidnaps and tortures the pair, intent on murdering them after he’s had his twisted fun and they’ve outlived their usefulness. Needless to say, he ruins their vacation. Some critics have noted that the villain becomes a male version of that familiar noir trope, the femme fatale, who teases and taunts her prey before ending him.

Reportedly based on a true story, The Hitch-Hiker “is a tough-asnails noir, and deserves the praise it consistently receives,” says longtime Roxie programmer Elliot Lavine.

“It’s the type of male-centric film associated with the noir style, which is what makes it so remarkable that a woman directed it. It’s a film any director, whatever gender, would be proud to have on their resume.”t

Ida Lupino: Forgotten Pioneer, a one-day event at the Balboa Theater this Sunday, Nov. 22, pays tribute to the artistic achievements of this groundbreaking woman by screening two of her directorial efforts from 1953, The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker, which turn gender roles on their head. In both movies, “Lupino was able to reduce the male to the same sort of dangerous, irrational force that women represented in most male-directed examples of Hollywood film noir,” wrote film historian Richard Koszarski in his book Hollywood Directors.

The Bigamist is a domestic, unhappily-ever-after melodrama in which Edmond O’Brien plays the duplicitous husband of the title, who leads a double life with one family in L.A., and another in San Francisco.

Joan Fontaine and Lupino (her only appearance in a film she directed) portray the two wives he deceives, at least for a while. The script by film and television producer Collier Young mirrored his complex personal relationships. He was married to Fontaine while working with Lupino, who was by then his ex-wife, business partner and the film’s director. It’s difficult to ascertain why Lupino had opportunities her female contemporaries and those who later followed her did not, but her entrée into the realm of directing might have been aided by her marriage to and professional

partnership with Young. Though they divorced in 1951, he served as the producer of Outrage (1950), which tackled the taboo subject of rape and rape

culture before the latter term was part of the lexicon.

Her icy, fast-paced venture into genre filmmaking, The Hitch-Hiker is

The Bigamist screens at 11a.m. on Nov. 22 at the Balboa Theater, followed by The Hitch-Hiker at 12:30 p.m. Both films will be introduced

by San Francisco Chronicle movie correspondent Ruthe Stein. Tickets are free, but must be requested in advance by emailing adam@ cinemasf.com.

Helen Prejean complement other Prejean settings that were recorded by the late Zheng Cao with Heggie and flutist Eugenia Zukerman on Flesh and Stone.

As characterful as their performances may be, Kirchschlager and Van Bueren’s recital is not a total success. The mezzo goes overboard on Heggie’s 1999 arrangements of “Barb’ry Allen” and “Danny Boy,” making the former sound like an ill-conceived parody of Lotte Lenya singing Kurt Weill. While Kirchschlager’s accent can be overlooked, the current state of her

voice is of concern. Kirchschlager’s softer notes are sometimes edgy, and the transition from mid-range to high is accompanied by a major operatic boost in production quality and volume that often seems at odds with the intimate content of the songs. She has developed an unfortunate tendency to hoot, and to sacrifice diction higher in the range for the sake of vocal production.

One singer to whom time has been kind is mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, 54 at the time she recorded her contributions to The

Radio Hour. Her voice retains its warmth, beauty, and ability to communicate reverence. The disc’s segue from Graham’s snippet of “He Will Gather Us Around” from Dead Man Walking (2000), written for her voice, to the premiere recording of the six-minute choral version (2003) is perfect. Equally recommendable are her contributions to two other world-premiere recordings of accessible choral works Patterns (1999) and I Shall Not Live in Vain (1995, rev. 1998). The latter includes a lovely handbell choir.

The Radio Hour’s Achilles heel is

the 39-minute, three-part “choral opera.” It would be nice to report that Heggie’s music lifts Sheer’s magical-thinking libretto beyond quasi-New Age pedestrian, but it doesn’t. The title character, Nora, may find her way though the “magic door” beyond same old-same old, and “ride on waves through limitless sky” to “a bouquet of possibilities,” but I couldn’t help thinking that I had just been handed one more affirmation tape repeating that clicking one’s ruby-red slippers three times can open the door to limitless realities.t

Bored of the provincial village, they invite Tomas to leave with them, but Tomas doesn’t want to abandon his father, whose wife had left him years ago. By this time, Jess has convinced James to travel to his estranged brother Pedro, who years earlier had run away with his older babysitter and was shunned by his parents and family. Eventually they reunite with a welcoming Pedro. Jess comes out to him and reveals James is his partner. What will life be for them now

that Jess and James have made a tentative commitment? Will Tomas play any role in their relationship?

This is one road movie that never quite arrives at its destination. Part of the problem is the script written

by Santiago Giralt, also the director, who is a prominent figure in Argentinean arts, a playwright, novelist, and actor. But we never really get to know what any of the characters is thinking or how their feelings are evolving. This is complicated by

the fact that the two actors playing Jess and James look alike and often it was hard to tell them apart, especially since they wore each other’s clothes.

The cinematography was often murky, wandering and diffuse, despite a gorgeous locale and two very attractive leads. The menage a trois was filmed in darkness, and you cannot tell one character from the other. The funky electronica score is also problematic, jarring in the

beginning and mellowing as their relationship matures. The film is redeemed by the natural chemistry of the two lead actors. You believe they like each other, and the initial sex scenes are realistic. Jess & James could have been the Argentinean Weekend (Andrew Haigh’s minor UK masterpiece of how a onenight-stand develops into a weekend idyll), but the opportunity to examine a sexually charged relationship over a short period is wasted.t

Hollywood actress and groundbreaking director Ida Lupino.

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Winterfest

On the Tab

NIGHTLIFE

DINING

SPIRITS

SOCIETY

ROMANCE

PERSONALS Vol. 45 • No. 47 • November 19-25, 2015

www.ebar.com V www.bartabsf.com

by Jim Provenzano

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The patio dance floor at Afternoon Delight.

courtesy Khmera Rouge

Xavier Lopez

or a fun airy dance party with no pretense and a warm welcoming environment, Afternoon Delight, the monthly house music party at Oakland’s The New Parish, celebrates its first year and the 30th birthday of its cofounder Justin Lenzi, aka DJ Justime, this Sunday, November 22.

See page 29 >>

The regal celebrations in Portland with the Imperial Council.

Evenings Out

by Donna Sachet

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lthough it seems ages ago, our close relationship with the Imperial Court of San Francisco compels us to give you a short report on the 50th Anniversary Golden Jubilee Gala of the International Court System that we attended in Portland in October.

See page 28 >>

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LEATHER

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

28 • Bay Area Reporter • November 19-25, 2015

headed home, having created their own Halloween memories, many documented on Facebook and elsewhere.

As Halloween itself arrived, we found ourselves doubled over with stomach pains one day and rushed to the emergency room for an appendectomy the next! Thus, no November 5 column, the first one missing in many years. Apologies to our loyal readers and our sympathetic editor.

But fear not; we are quickly recovering and will continue to provide our readers with the indispensable social news upon which they have come to depend.

Days after our hospital stay, we joined John Marez for the elegant GLAAD Media Awards Gala at the Hilton Hotel on November 7. We co­chaired this event for four years in a row some time ago, so we know well the tremendous logistics involved in this event for over 700 people with a complex moving program, on­stage personalities, entertainment, silent and live auction, and various VIP perks.

Recently, GLAAD has chosen to distinguish the San Francisco gala from those in New York and Los Angeles by emphasizing Bay Area innovations in social media, Internet

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Skye Patterson

Donna (right) with friends at a home screening of the documentary-in-progress 50 years of Fabulous: the Imperial Council of San Francisco Story.

On Wednesday, November 11, we Expect music from the SF LGBT hosted a house party to preview the exFreedom Band, the Gay Men’s Chotended trailer for David Lassman and rus, and the Lesbian/Gay Chorus Jethro Patalinghug’s film documenand visits from elected officials and tary 50 years of Fabulous: the Imperial Santa Claus himself.

Council of San Francisco Story. After That same night is Light in the months of research and filming, the Grove, the annual gala of the AIDS project is coming to a conclusion and Memorial Grove, with spectacular courtesy Leandro Gonzales needs final funding to be completed. lighting effects inside and out of a A predominantly young huge tent erected for the occasion.

Imperial and Ducal Court luminaries in a candid staircase pose at group gathered, includthe Portland gala. ing Rusty Best, Suzan Revah, Steven Satyricon, Skye tion and its 50 years of continuous Evenings Out Paterson, and Shelley Shaw, community service.

From page 27 demonstrating the interest of Halloween in the Castro may many younger people in the have all but disappeared, but neBack in February, San Francisco history of the LGBT movecessity is still the mother of inkicked off this year of celebration ment. vention!

For those desperate to with its own 50th Gala at City Hall, Just before we screened the display creative costumes, The attended by over 800 people and trailer, Jerome Goldstein & Richmond/Ermet Aid recognizing Jose Sarria, our Tommy Taylor arrived, proFoundation joined founder and the city viding a nice balance with Passport magazine that started it all. Porttheir decades of community and the Sisters of land was chosen to involvement and generosity.

Perpetual Indulgence host the final big event Watch for additional upcomto host Hollyween at of the year at the historic ing opportunities to view the Madame Tussaud’s Sentinel Hotel. extended trailer and to supWax Museum on More than 200 guests Steven Underhill port this project. This docuThursday, October 29. from chapters across mentary promises to be senArriving guests gave Daniel Franzese (second-right) MCed the continent were first sational!

Pier 39 tourists lots to the SF GLAAD Awards gala. greeted with Barefoot Tomorrow night, Friday, stare at dressed as ghoulish monsparkling wine at a VIP reception November 20, join the fun at sters, Hollywood legends, and in the Renaissance Room. We were the second annual Winter Onea healthy dose of Sisters. We were then seated in the Governor’s Ballvehicles, and the tech industry. This sie Party at Lookout starting at whisked up the elevator, emerging room for a gourmet dinner and formula has met with great success.

9PM. Suzan Revah is behind amidst political and entertainment marvelous program with an inEnjoying the VIP reception this naughty idea, so who knows superstars, some wax figures from credible line­up of speakers, includwere Frank Woo, Bill Wilson, Cip what may transpire? If last year’s the exhibit and some local party­ ing Queen Mother of the Americas Cipriano, Adam Sandel, Cameron event is any indication, there will goers. A favorite photo setting was Nicole the Great, founders of Stiehl, Tony Moraga, Timothy Lube plenty of onesies, from adora mock cable car leaving ample the Matthew Shepard Foundacas, Tiare Manutai, and many othSteven Underhill able to sexy and from elaborate window space for multiple poses, tion Dennis & Judy Shepard, lead ers. Daniel Franzese of television’s to slutty, as we raise money for encouraged by the free­flowing Stoli A fabulous moment from last year’s plaintiff in the marriage equalLooking emceed the night, Lenny the AIDS Memorial Grove. Best Drag Queens on Ice in Union Square cocktails and Barefoot sparkling ity case decided by the Supreme Broberg did a splendid job auctionOnesie Contest at midnight. wine.

Court Jim Obergefell, founder ing off a handful of super packages, Speaking of the future, San Everywhere we turned, there were of the Metropolitan Community including a weekend at the GramFrancisco has quite a holiday platters of bite­sized delectables and Church the Reverend Troy Perry, mys, and Ledisi lifted the entire schedule ahead and you’ve got And that same night is the first roaming waiters augmented the seSpeaker of the California Assemballroom in song. lots of gay events to choose from. of three nights of Donna Sachet’s lection.

GoBang! provided dance bly Toni Atkins, San Diego City The most remarkable thing about As soon as Thanksgiving weekend 23rd annual Songs of the Season music and Xavier Toscano sang a Councilman Todd Gloria, member this evening, however, was the fopasses, get ready to light the holiholiday cabaret, benefiting AIDS solo set that included songs from his of the Legislative Assembly of Alcus on the extraordinary power day tree in the Castro in front of Emergency Fund at Beatbox. newest release.

Among the mostly berta, Canada Michael Connolly, of the Internet to empower good Bank of America at 6PM on MonAnnounced performers include costumed attendees were Patrik founder of the Harvey Milk Founpeople, extend social justice, and day, November 30.

Sharon McNight, Brian Kent, and Gallineaux, Sky Paterson, Gary dation Stuart Milk, Names Project make positive changes in the Dan O’Leary.

Virginia, Michael Loftis, Beth Founder Cleve Jones, and Academy world. Awards were presented Thursday, December 3 Schnitzer, Ken Hamai, Sophie AzAward­-winning screenwriter (Milk) to many whose names we did starts the theatrical run of The ouaou, Leo Volobrynskyy, Omar Dustin Lance Black. not recognize, but who stand Golden Girls Christmas EpiAcosta, Oscar Enriquez, Phillip The speeches were outstanding in stark contrast to the much sodes at the Victoria Theatre, Michael Alvarado, and Beyoncé. and the sense of history was palpapublicized unbridled bullying, starring Heklina, Matthew No, no; that was a wax figure! ble. Fourteen members of the Impepredatory crimes, and ramMartin, D’Arcy Drollinger, At the peak of the party, Sister rial Court of San Francisco attendpant disrespect which the inand Holotta Tymes with a Roma gathered a judging panel to ed, including our Reigning Emperor ternet so often represents. special cameo appearance by choose the winning costumes, givKevin Lisle and Reigning Empress Megan Smith, Chief Techthis intrepid columnist on ing special recognition to group Khmera Rouge, as did six from the nology Officer of the United Opening Night. costumes (a herd of movie minCouncil of Grand Dukes and DuchStates and former Vice PresiThe following Thursday, ions), sexiest, and best overall. esses. We all left with a greater sense dent at Google, civil rights December 10, 8PM, it’s Drag Long before midnight, revelers were of the importance of this organizaactivist DeRay McKesson Queens on Ice, where some of and social media sensation the City’s best known queens Leo Sheng, who boldly docuwill take a spin on the Safemented his transsexual transiway Ice Rink in Union Square. tion on Instagram, Rongfeng Once again, we will not be a Duan & Tao Li, a loving lesbidrag queen on ice, but a drag an couple living in China who queen on mic, commentating flew to California to wed, and throughout the night.

Tyler Oakley, a 26­-year-old That weekend is Dance Along master of YouTube and one of Nutcracker: the Nutcracker of the most recognized faces on Oz at Yerba Buena Center, Satthe internet; each received varurday, December 12, 3PM and ious awards and recognitions.

7PM and Sunday, December Their stories were tied to13, 11AM and 3PM. Imagine gether by their incredibly posimashing up the Nutcracker tive and productive use of the fable and the story of Oz! Internet on behalf of the LGBT We’ll spare you any more community everywhere. We all event announcements until Paul Margolis left with a distinctly different the next column, but prepare understanding of the power A dazzling wintery costumed performer at last Donna Sachet (center) with costumed patrons of Hollyween now for a season of celebraof the Internet and with a little year’s Light in the Grove. at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. tion, generosity, and fun!t more optimism for the future.

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

November 19-25, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 29

Xavier Lopez

Patrons at a recent Afternoon Delight.

Afternoon Delight

From page 27

Celebrate Justime’s 30th birthday and the one-year anniversary of Afternoon Delight, the outdoor patio House music party, with DJs Allen Craig, Justime, Jeffrey Tice and DJ Black. Sunday, November 22. 3pm-8pm. The New Parish, 1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. (510) 444-7474. www.thenewparish.com

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Ryan Owens

“When I moved to Oakland, I thought it was time to do something here,” said Lenzi in a phone interview. “We thought we should do a Sunday T-dance. That way, people in the city could come out and have a good time and take BART home.”

Lenzi’s co-producer Josh Smith was also born and raised in the Bay Area.

The East Bay has long been a cultural alternative to San Francisco, and as more people are forced to live outside the city, entertainment events naturally become more popular.

“We were scoping out venues and found The New Parish to be great, and it’s only two blocks away from the 19th Street BART station,” said Lenzi.

The club hosts many emerging musicians, and various weekly and monthly events that are LGBTfriendly. The nearby Fox Theatre has been host to high profile music acts with a strong gay following (Grace Jones, Erasure and Scissor Sisters, to name a few).

While the nearby Club BnB and Club 21 cater to LGBT Latino patrons, and plans for Port, a new gay bar next to the Paramount Theatre remain in-progress, events like Afternoon Delight are keeping a few extra queer sparks of nightlife going.

“There’s sunshine on the dance floor,” said Lenzi. “The weather’s

been really good for every party. It rained once, but people were still dancing. They still have a good time, no matter what the weather’s like.”

Afternoon Delight usually takes place on each month’s fourth Sun-

THE RICHMOND/ERMET AIDS FOUNDATION PROUDLY PRESENTS

Ryan Owens

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day. “There aren’t many other competing events in San Francisco, so we’ve done pretty well,” said Lenzi.

The mission, he said, is to “create a safe and fun environement for queer people to congregate in the East Bay. It’s also important for us to keep House music thriving. We’ve created a space that’s truly welcoming to everyone. We can get together and forget about how messed up the world is. It’s inclusive and about the love, with a party atmosphere where people feel safe to be who they are.”

Some of the guest DJs Lenzi and Smith have booked in the first year include Olga T, Page Hodel and the dynamic disco duo Steve Fabus and Sergio Fedasz of Go Bang. For their one-year anniversary, Allen Craig, Justime, Jeffrey Tice and DJ Black will guest-spin.

“We work with people who have a history,” said Lenzi. “Joshua has been going out to so many events, connecting with old-school DJs.” Lenzi described how his event’s intent is decidely different.

“A lot of events have a kind of popularity contest or ego vibe, or a bit in ‘the scene.’ Our party is very much a counter to that, to be very inclusive. I feel like we’ve created a space that’s for the music. We focus on getting people into the mix.”

And gifts are by no means required from the young DJ, who’s hitting the big 3-0.

“This is a big birthday,” said Lenzi. “I’m excited to be getting out of my 20s, and moving into 30. And yes, the presence of others will be presents enough. I’ve been curating music for the last month, and I’m looking forward to dropping some epic grooves!”t

Top: DJ Black will play at Afternoon Delight’s one-year anniversary and Justime’s birthday party.

Middle: Tooting a birthday wish at The New Parish.

Bottom: DJs Justime and Joshua Smith at The New Parish.

Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

<< On the Tab

30 • Bay Area Reporter • November 19-25, 2015

Cornelius Washington

On the Tab Nov. 19-26, 2015

t

Fauxgirls @ Infusion Lounge Victoria Secret, Alexandria, Chanel, Mini Minerva, Kipper, Ruby LeBrowne, and Lulu Ramirez perform in the classic drag show; dinner seating 6pm. Show 8pm. No cover. 124 Ellis St. 421-8700. www.fauxgirls.com

Franc D’Ambrosio @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The Broadway crooner ( The Phantom of the Opera ) performs his annual Christmas in New York cabaret concert. $25-$40. 8pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

Full Frontal Comedy @ Lookout

Fri 20 Hardbox @ Powerhouse

Yuri Kagan and Valerie Branch cohost the monthly comedy night, with Yayne Abeba, Emily Epstein White, Mike Spiegelman, Ronn Vigh, Jesus Chuy Fuentes and Irene Tu. $5. 8pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland LGBT comedy night hosted by Dan Mires. $10. 8pm. 2111 Franklin St. Oakland. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Fri 20

Gay Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels

G

et on up, get on out, and get grooving to the multitude of opportunities for nightlife fun.

Thu 19

Bulge @ Powerhouse Grace Towers hosts the weekly gogotastic night of sexy dudes shakin’ their bulges and getting wet in their undies for $100 prize (contest at midnight), and dance beats spun by DJ DAMnation. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com

Circle Jerk @ Nob Hill Theatre Extra-hung Brazilian porn stud Rafael Alencar leads the very interactive downstairs party at the famed strip club. $10. 9pm. (See Rafael’s stage shows Nov. 20 & 21, 8pm & 10pm).

729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Comedy Returns @ El Rio The monthly stand-up night this time features Michael Meehan, Lydia Popovich, Stefani Silverman, Nate Blanchard, and host Lisa Geduldig. $7-$20. 8pm. 3158 Mission St. (800) 838-3006. www.elriosf.com

Confess @ Oasis

LGBT night at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the “Godfather of Skate.” Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm-5:30pm. $10.

Kids 12 and under $5. Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular sports bar.

10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Homo Thursdays @ Qbar

Bedpost Productions’ confessional storytelling series. $15. 10pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Franko DJs the weekly mash-up/ pop music night. No cover. 2 for 1 well drinks, 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.qbarsf.com

Everclear @ DNA Lounge

Karaoke Night @ The Stud

The Portland alt-pop band performs. $25 and up. 8pm. 375 11th St. www.dnalounge.com

“Sing Til It Hurts” the new weekly night with hostess Sister Flora (Floozy) Goodthyme. 8pm; happy hour drinks til 10pm. 10pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Lady Bunny @ Oasis The statuesque Wigstock founder returns with a new raunchy comic drag show, Pig in a Wig! $20-$30 (two-drink min.). 7:30pm. Also Nov. 20 & 21. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 7953180. www.sfoasis.com

Maria Konnor @ Martuni’s Open mic night (3rd Thu) with the cohost of Under the Golden Gate and her three-piece band. No cover. 6:308:30pm. 4 Valencia St.

Linda Eder @ Feinstein’s

The Monster Show @ The Edge

Throwback Thursdays @ Qbar

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

Enjoy retro 80s soul, dance and pop classics with DJ Jorge Terez. No cover.

9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

My So-Called Night @ Beaux

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle

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

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

The Polyphonic Spree @ SF Independent The retro-groovy band performs on a bill with Andy, Erased Text and Magic Cyclops. $22-$25. 8pm. 628 Divisadero st. 771-1421. thepolyphonicspree.com theindependentsf.com

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. $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

We Were Promised Jetpacks @ Great American Music Hall The Scottish alt-rock band performs.

Seoul opens. $25-$50 (with dinner).

9pm. 859 O’Farrell St. 885-0750. www.wewerepromisedjetpacks.com www.slimspresents.com

Xcess Thursdays @ The Café Frisco Robbie & Persia’s dance and pop music night gets the weekend started, with gogo guys and gals, plus drink specials and guest DJs. No cover. 9pm2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Fri 20

Ben Bacot @ Hotel Rex

Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes weekly drag show. $5. 10:30pm show.

3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG Dana hosts the amateur singing night, 8pm. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

The “Bass of the Bay” performs his holiday-themed jazz concert with Dave Austin and the Trio de Swing.

8pm. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com

Meet & Greet @ Chaps

Raging Fyah @ The New Parish

Boy Bar @ The Cafe

Mary Go Round @ Lookout

Meet Damien Alverez, Mr. Chaps Leather 2016, who will be competing for Mr. San Francisco Leather 2016.

7pm-9pm. 4057 18th St.

The roots, rock, reggae band from Jamaica performs. $15-$20. 10pm.

1743 San Pablo Ave. (510) 444-7474. www.ragingfyah.com

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

FREE TO LISTEN AND REPLY TO ADS Free Code: Reporter

Thu 19 FIND REAL GAY MEN NEAR YOU San Francisco:

(415) 430-1199 Oakland:

San Jose:

(510) 343-1122 (408) 514-1111 www.megamates.com 18+

Raging Fyah @ The Depot and The New Parish

t

On the Tab>>

November 19-25, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 31

Fri 20 Rafael Alencar @ Nob Hill Theatre

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

Dancing Ghosts @ Cat Club The monthly dark wave/goth/ industrial dance night, with DJs Xander, Sage, Miz Margo and Daniel Skellington. $5-$8. 9:30pm-2:30am.

1190 Folsom St. www.sfcatclub.com

Growlr @ SF Eagle Cruisy beary cub, chub and hunk night, with DJ Carlos Soulfront. $5.

9pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.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

Hardbox @ Powerhouse The boxing, MMA, sports fetish night returns, with DJs Gehno Aviance and Robert Jeffrey, gogo studs, fight demos, and giveaways. Wear boxers for a free drink. $5 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.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 new weekly “old school drag show” with guest performers and DJ Jack Rojo. $4. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland

Rafael Alencar @ Nob Hill Theatre

Lulu, Jacki, and Vicki cohost the festive gogo-filled dance club that features Latin pop dance hits with DJs Speedy Douglas Romero and Fabricio. $6-$12. 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

The super-hung Brazilian porn stud does his live strip shows. $25. 8pm & 10pm.

Also Nov. 21. 729 Bush St. at Powell.

397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Linda Eder @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The stellar pop and Broadway singeractress performs her new holiday concert, Christmas Where You Are. $80-$95. 8pm. Nov. 21, 7pm. Nov. 22, 3pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.ticketweb.com

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

Midnight Show @ Divas Weekly drag shows at the last transgender-friendly bar in the Polk; with hosts Victoria Secret, Alexis Miranda and several performers. Also Saturdays. $10. 11pm. 1081 Polk St. www.divassf.com

Red Hots Burlesque @ Beatbox The saucy women’s burlesque revue’s weekend show; different musical guests each week. Also Wednesday nights. $10-$20. 7:30pm. 314 11th St. www.redhotsburlesque.com www.beatboxsf.com

Some Thing @ The Stud Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Swagger Like Us @ Oasis Hip hop with a queer edge, with DJs davO (Double Duchess), Leah McFly, Queen Kyi. $10. 9:30pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.swaggersf.com www.sfoasis.com

See page 32 >>

ebar.com

El Mundo @ Empire Ballroom The new weekly Latin night at the Civic Center renovated nightclub features drag shows, gogo guys and gals, and DJed grooves. 9pm-3am.

555 Golden Gate. www.theempireroomsf.com

Party Nights @ Club BnB, Oakland Different events each week. 10pm2am. 2120 Broadway. (510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

Georg Lester

Comedy Noir @ Balancoire

I am the future of the LGBT community.

I’m gay.

I’m 22 years old and I’m an exchange student from Spain. Going to college here means a fun time, lots of hard work and getting to see new things.

It also means a chance to really be myself. My parents are supportive of my sexuality, and my host family here is a couple with two teenage boys. Nobody cares if they’re gay or straight. I’m excited to be part of a world where that can be true.

I am the future of the LGBT community. And I read about that future every day on my Android tablet. Because that’s where I want it to be.

Fri 20 Winter Onesie Party @ Lookout The person depicted here is a model. Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

<< On the Tab

32 • Bay Area Reporter • November 19-25, 2015

Fri 20 Swagger Like Us @ Oasis

Mascara @ Harvey Milk Civil Right Academy

Big Top @ Beaux

The monthly drag variety show for the Castro Country Club moves to the neary school. $10-$15. 7:30pm. 4235 19th St. www.castrocountryclub.org

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

Mother @ Oasis

Domingo De Escandal @ Club OMG

Heklina’s weekly drag show night with different themes, always outrageously hilarious. Nov. 21: A Thanksgiving Nightmare! $10-$25. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Saturgay @ Qbar

<<

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

On the Tab

From page 31

Soul Delicious @ Lookout

The Shes, Tulips @ Hemlock Tavern Riot grrrl-esque post-punk bands perform; Razz opens. 9pm.1131 Polk St. www.tulips.bandcamp.com www.hemlocktavern.com

Winter Onesie Party @ Lookout The annual fun pajama party, with a Best Onesie contest at midnight, raises funds for the National AIDS Memorial Grove. $5. 9pm-2am. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Sat 21

t

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

Soul Party @ Elbo Room DJs Lucky, Paul, and Phengren Osward spin 60s soul 45s. $5-$10 ($5 off in semi-formal attire). 10pm-2am. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

Sugar @ The Cafe Dance, drink, cruise at the Castro club.

9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez and DJ Luis.

7pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

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

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

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

Addams Apple Family Values @ Castro Theatre Peaches Christ presents another hilarious drag musical show that precedes a screening, this time Addams Family Values ; with Sharon Needles as Morticia, Heklina as ‘Uncle Fister,’ plus Jinkx Monsoon, Peggy L’Eggs, Chaka Corn and other talents. $32-$140. 2pm & 8pm. 429 Castro St. www.peacheschrist.com www.castrotheatre.com

Artumnal Gathering @ Bently Reserve The ninth annual Burning Man gala party, with VIP dinner (5:45pm), general party tickets, live performance, food, drinks and fun. $40-$120. 9:452am dancing. 21+. 400 Sansome St. www.burningman.com

BLUF @ SF Eagle Serious uniform men night, with Hot Boots and Bay Area Cigar Buddies.

9pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

La Bota Loca Halloween @ Club 21, Oakland SLatin, hip hop and Electro music. $5-$25. 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.club21oakland.com

Club Rimshot @ Club BNB, Oakland Get groovin’ at the weekly hip hop and R&B night at their new location.

8-$15. 9pm to 4am. 2120 Broadway.

(510) 759-7340. www.club-bnb.com

GameBoi SF @ Rickshaw Stop The monthly gay Asian dance night includes a pre-Thankgiving canned food drive. $5-$12. 9:30pm-2am. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com

Kike Adedeji @ Hotel Rex The talented singer performs music from around the world; cocktails and small plates available. $30-$50. 8pm.

562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com

Sat 21 Addams Apple Family Values @ Castro Theatre

Sun 22

Afternoon Delight @ the New Parish, Oakland Celebrate Justime’s 30th birthday at the outdoor patio house music party’s one year anniversary, with DJs Allen Craig, Justime, Jeffrey Tice and Black. $ 3pm-8pm. 1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. (510) 444-7474. www.thenewparish.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle The classic leather bar’s most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. Beer bust donations benefit local nonprofits (Check the website for a list of recipients). 3pm6pm. Now also on Saturdays. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Sat 21 GameBoi SF @ Rickshaw Stop

Queen of the Calendar @ Oasis The Men of the Bare Chest Calendar pair up with local drag performers in a special fundraiser; MC Sister Phyliss and a performance by Baloney male burlesque revue. $10-$15. 10pm-2am.

298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.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

t

On the Tab>>

November 19-25, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 33

Tue 24 13 Licks @ Qbar

The “lezzie queer dance party” brings out the femmes and butches. 9pm2am. 456 Castro St. 864-2877. www.qbarsf.com

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

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

Darwin Deez @ Rickshaw Stop

Sat 21

Clever pop singer-composer performs at the popular club. Charly Bliss opens. $12-$14. 8pm. 155 Fell St. www.rickshawstop.com

Artumnal Gathering @ Bently Reserve

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gay-friendly comedy night. One-drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.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

Meow Mix @ The Stud

Mon 23

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun

Drag Mondays @ The Cafe Mahlae Balenciaga and DJ Kidd Sysko’s weekly drag and dance night, 2014’s last of the year. 9pm-1am.

2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland

Honey Mahogany’s weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Monday Musicals @ The Edge Sing along at the popular musical theatre night; also Wednesdays. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing.

4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Mondays and Tuesdays popular weekly sing-along night. No cover.

8:30pm-1am. 6551 Telegraph Ave, (510) 652-3820. www.whitehorsebar.com

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room

Gaymer Meetup @ Brewcade

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

The weekly LGBT video game enthusiast night include 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

Opulence @ Beaux Weekly dance night, with Jocques, DJs Tori, Twistmix and Andre. 9pm-2am.

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Holiday Ice Rink @ Union Square

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s

Enjoy skating, hot drinks and fun in the downtown center of holiday shopping. $7-$11. Skate rental $6.

Thru Jan. 14. Various times, 10am11pm. 333 Post St. www.unionsquareicerink.com

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

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.

Strip down to your skivvies at the popular men’s night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

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

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Get nude as strippers do it onstage. $20. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 3976758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Retro Night @ 440 Castro Jim Hopkins plays classic pop oldies, with vintage music videos. 9pm-2am.

44 Castro St. www.the440.com

Switch @ Q Bar Weekly women’s night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

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

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

Underwear Night @ Club OMG Weekly underwear night includes free clothes check, and drink specials. $4.

10pm-2am. Preceded by Open Mic Comedy, 7pm, no cover. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Fri 20 Tulips open for The Shes @ Hemlock Tavern

Wed 25 Bedlam @ Beaux

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

2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

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

Booty Call @ QBar Juanita More! and her weekly intimate –yet packed– dance party; soon to end this month. $10-$15. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.qbarsf.com

Bottoms Up Bingo @ Hi Tops Play board games and win offbeat prizes at the popular sports bar. 9pm.

2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

See page 34 >>

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

34 • Bay Area Reporter • November 19-25, 2015

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So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall The weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

Way Back @ Midnight Sun

On the Tab

From page 33

B.P.M. @ Club BnB, Oakland Olga T and Shugga Shay’s weekly queer women and men’s R&B hip hop and soul night, at the club’s new location. No cover. 8pm-2am. 2120 Broadway, Oakland. www.bench-and-bar.com

Dirty Turkey @ Oasis DJs John Beaver, Philip Adrian and Andrew Gibbons help you get stuffed – on the dance floor. $5-$15. 9pm2am. 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Follies @ Oasis Holotta Tymes hosts the new weekly variety show with female impersonation acts, and barbeque in the front Fez Room. $20. 7pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Latin Drag Night @ Club OMG

San Jose:

(510) 343-1122 (408) 514-1111

Yuria Kagan’s comedy night, with Sean McKenzie. Laura Nelson, Adrian McNair, Drew Harmon and Matt Gubser. $5. 7pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

<<

Tall, Hung, Handsome, Latin, Uncut. Call Jose 510-469-7324

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Shit Talk @ Oasis

YOU WANT 2 PARTY TONIGHT? –

San Francisco:

Kollin Holts hosts the weekly comedy and open mic talent night. 6pm-8pm.

398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Darwin Deez @ Rickshaw Stop

415-730-9777

FIND REAL GAY MEN NEAR YOU

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle

Tue 24

24 HRS, 9", 27"W

Weekly screenings of vintage music videos and retro drink prices. Check out the new expanded front window lounge. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 8614186. 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

ebar.com personals

Thu 26:

Thanksgiving Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland Weekly LGBT and straight comedy night hosted by Dan Mires. $10. 8pm.

2111 Franklin St. Oakland. (510) 2689425. www.club21oakland.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar.

10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Thanksgiving Potluck @ Castro Country Club The dinner at the LGBTQ sober space; sign up, bring a dish, volunteer. 1pm4pm. 4058 18th St. www.castrocountryclub.org

Thirsty Thursdays @ The Cafe Drink specials, Top 40, gogo studs and no cover, 2 for 1 cocktails until 10:30pm.

2369 Market St. www.cafesf.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

Mary Go Round @ Lookout

Tom Shaw @ R3 Hotel, Guerneville

Mercedez Munro and Holotta Tymes’ weekly drag show. $5. 10:30pm show.

DJ Philip Grasso. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

The accomplished cabaret pianist plays the Russian River resort for t-giving weekend. 8pm. Thru Nov. 29. 16390 4th St. at Mill, Guerneville. (707) 869-8399. www.ther3hotel.com

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG Dana hosts the weekly singing night; unleash your inner American Idol.

8pm. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Want your nightlife event listed?

Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event.

Event photos welcome.

Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez. 9pm-2am.

43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm.

424 Cortland St. 647-3099. www.wildsidewest.com

Man Francisco @ Oasis The weekly all-male striptease revue with a storyline of San Francisco’s history, from the Gold Rush to the tech boom, performed by sexy local hunks, and MC mr Pam. $20 (plus optional $30 lap dances!). 9:30pm.

Extended thru December. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Wed 25 DJ John Beaver at Dirty Turkey @ Oasis

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Shooting Stars

November 19-25, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 35

photos by steven underhill

Winterfest T

he San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s annual Winterfest, held November 15 at City View at Metreon, featured art auctions, cocktails, cycling products and promos, biking pros and enthusiasts, a photo opportunity with the Golden State Warriors NBA Championship trophy. DJs ShOOey and Sinned spun grooves, and delicious eats were provided by Bicycle Bánh Mì, Sugarfoot Grits and Nopalito. For more info, visit www.sfbike.org/winterfest/ More event photo albums are on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife.

See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at www.StevenUnderhill.com.

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For headshots, portraits or to arrange your wedding photos

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com or email stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

BEST AVAILABILITY DEC 22 & 23

A uniquely San Francisco Nutcracker.

DEC 16–31

This December, join us as the lights dim, music soars, history comes alive, and a little girl dreams about a whole new world.

BUY TICKETS TODAY!

sfballet.org or 415.865.2000 LEAD SPONSORS

The Herbert Family The Swanson Foundation

SPONSORS

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MEDIA SPONSORS

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