November 26, 2015 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

Cannibis hits the mainstream

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Vol. 45 • No. 48 • November 26-December 2, 2015

Gay scooter Trans victims rider killed recalled at Day in hit-andof Remembrance run collision by Seth Hemmelgarn

gay man riding his scooter early Sunday morning near his home in San Francisco’s Sunnyside neighborhood was killed in a suspected hit-and-run incident. As police search for the person reDennis Nix sponsible, friends of Dennis Nix, 60, are describing the longtime certified financial planner as “curmudgeonly” and gregarious, and a well-traveled sportsman and community fundraiser. At 2:32 a.m. Sunday, November 22, a man the medical examiner’s office has identified as Nix was riding his scooter south on San Jose Avenue approaching the Monterey Boulevard exit when a light-colored sedan struck him, according to Officer Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman, who said in her summary that Nix was “pronounced dead at the scene.” In an interview Monday, Gatpandan said police didn’t have more information about the vehicle that hit Nix or the driver. Nix was a member of various LGBT sports clubs, including FrontRunners, the SAGA North Ski and Snowboard Club, and Northern California Rainbow Divers. He had just attended the FrontRunners annual holiday dinner before he was struck. Michael D’Arata, 62, Nix’s best friend and power of attorney, suspects a drunk driver hit him. “I’m pretty enraged by it, and even if the driver wasn’t drunk, I’m still enraged,” D’Arata, of San Francisco, said. “It was a hit-and-run. I just don’t know what kind of person would do that.”

‘A huge presence’

Like many others, D’Arata remembered his friend, who was originally from New York and moved to San Francisco in the early 1980s, for his big personality and his New York accent. “He was a huge presence,” D’Arata said. “It was like having New York City in your living room.” He said Nix was “loud” and “not the most diplomatic” but his heart was “as big as could be.” Explaining how his friend was community-oriented, D’Arata said, “Those were the values that were instilled in him, to be involved in the community, to participate, to contribute, to not take, but to give as much as you can.” See page 17 >>

by Cynthia Laird Tiffany Woods, center, flanked by Eden United Church of Christ pastor the Reverend Dr. Arlene Nehring, second from left, and Oakland City Councilman Abel Guillen, joined others in releasing balloons following the Transgender Day of Remembrance observance.

somber remembrance of transgender people who have been killed in the last year included some closure for one three-year old Oakland case as police announced that it had been solved. See page 16 >>

Bay Area World AIDS Day events set Jane Philomen Cleland

by Seth Hemmelgarn

The walk is a series of plaques from between Market and 19th ach year during World streets honoring LGBT rights AIDS Day, people take icons that was included in the time to remember loved 2014 Castro Street sidewalk ones who’ve been lost to the widening project. disease and those who continue Students from the neighborliving with it. Events are planned hood’s Harvey Milk Civil Rights throughout the Bay Area in the Academy and long-term HIV/ coming days marking the 27th AIDS survivors from the group annual commemoration. Honoring Our Experience are HIV transmission, the virus coming together for the day. that causes AIDS, continues to Small groups of students, occur, despite advances in presurvivors, and parents or school vention and drugs such as prestaffers will gather Tuesday exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. on both sides of Castro. Each During a conference call group will get a pail of colored with reporters last week, Dr. chalk. Gil Chavez, state epidemiolo“Inscribe is not a fundraiser,” Rick Gerharter gist and deputy director at the event coordinator George Kelly, Center for Infectious Diseases Rick Helm and Heriberto Puebla enjoy a quiet moment at the Circle of 55, who’s been living with HIV in the California Department Friends in the National AIDS Memorial Grove during the 2013 World for more than 30 years, said in of Public Health, said that there AIDS Day observances. a news release. “It is a gift from are 13 new HIV infections every our school and a great learning day in the state, or nearly 400 opportunity for our students. In San Francisco’s Castro district this year, per month. children who were born years after the height It is a celebration of remembrance and honor In contrast, Chavez said that at the height of the epidemic will come together Tuesday, for our neighbors and community. It is an acof the epidemic, there were 13,000 new cases December 1 with some of the people who knowledgement of the long-term survivors identified in the state in a single year. In 2013, survived. that offers healing and brings attention to the the most recent year available, there were 4,712 struggles and challenges that we still face today.” During the event called “Inscribe,” people newly diagnosed HIV infections in California, will be able to use sidewalk chalk to write on In an interview, HOE member Gregg Cassin, he said. the Rainbow Honor Walk the names of those 57, called Inscribe “a beautiful event.” World AIDS Day was started to bring attenthey’ve lost to HIV/AIDS. The event is from 10 See page 17 >> tion to the epidemic and to educate people. a.m. to noon.

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One pill contains elvitegravir, cobicistat, emtricitabine, and tenofovir alafenamide (TAF). Ask your healthcare provider if GENVOYA is right for you. To learn more visit GENVOYA.com

Please see Brief Summary of Patient Information with important warnings on the following pages.

11/18/15 12:20 PM

Brief Summary of Patient Information about GENVOYA GENVOYA (jen-VOY-uh) (elvitegravir, cobicistat, emtricitabine, and tenofovir alafenamide) tablets Important: Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with GENVOYA. There may be new information about GENVOYA. This information is only a summary and does not take the place of talking with your healthcare provider about your medical condition or treatment.

What is the most important information I should know about GENVOYA? GENVOYA can cause serious side effects, including: • Build-up of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis). Lactic acidosis may happen in some people who take GENVOYA. Lactic acidosis is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Lactic acidosis can be hard to identify early, because the symptoms could seem like symptoms of other health problems. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms, which could be signs of lactic acidosis: • • • • • • •

feel very weak or tired have unusual (not normal) muscle pain have trouble breathing have stomach pain with nausea or vomiting feel cold, especially in your arms and legs feel dizzy or lightheaded have a fast or irregular heartbeat

• Severe liver problems. Severe liver problems may happen in people who take GENVOYA. In some cases, these liver problems can lead to death. Your liver may become large and you may develop fat in your liver. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms of liver problems: • your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice) • dark “tea-colored” urine • light-colored bowel movements (stools) • loss of appetite for several days or longer • nausea • stomach pain • You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking GENVOYA for a long time. • Worsening of Hepatitis B infection. GENVOYA is not for use to treat chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV). If you have HBV infection and take GENVOYA, your HBV may get worse (flare-up) if you stop taking GENVOYA. A “flare-up” is when your HBV infection suddenly returns in a worse way than before. • Do not run out of GENVOYA. Refill your prescription or talk to your healthcare provider before your GENVOYA is all gone. • Do not stop taking GENVOYA without first talking to your healthcare provider. • If you stop taking GENVOYA, your healthcare provider will need to check your health often and do blood tests regularly for several months to check your HBV infection. Tell your healthcare provider about any new or unusual symptoms you may have after you stop taking GENVOYA.

GENC0004_BayAreaRprtr_9.75x16_Sprd.indd 3-4

What is GENVOYA? GENVOYA is a prescription medicine that is used without other HIV-1 medicines to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years of age and older: • who have not received HIV-1 medicines in the past or • to replace their current HIV-1 medicines in people who have been on the same HIV-1 medicines for at least 6 months, have an amount of HIV-1 in their blood (“viral load”) that is less than 50 copies/mL, and have never failed past HIV-1 treatment HIV-1 is the virus that causes AIDS. GENVOYA contains the prescription medicines elvitegravir (VITEKTA®), cobicistat (TYBOST®), emtricitabine (EMTRIVA®) and tenofovir alafenamide. It is not known if GENVOYA is safe and effective in children under 12 years of age. When used to treat HIV-1 infection, GENVOYA may: • Reduce the amount of HIV-1 in your blood. This is called “viral load”. • Increase the number of CD4+ (T) cells in your blood that help fight off other infections. Reducing the amount of HIV-1 and increasing the CD4+ (T) cells in your blood may help improve your immune system. This may reduce your risk of death or getting infections that can happen when your immune system is weak (opportunistic infections). GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. You must stay on continuous HIV-1 therapy to control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses. Avoid doing things that can spread HIV-1 infection to others: • Do not share or re-use needles or other injection equipment. • Do not share personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them, like toothbrushes and razor blades. • Do not have any kind of sex without protection. Always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom to lower the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood. Ask your healthcare provider if you have any questions about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to other people.

Who should not take GENVOYA? Do not take GENVOYA if you also take a medicine that contains: • alfuzosin hydrochloride (Uroxatral®) • carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®, Tegretol-XR®, Teril®) • cisapride (Propulsid®, Propulsid Quicksolv®) • ergot-containing medicines, including: dihydroergotamine mesylate (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal®), ergotamine tartrate (Cafergot®, Migergot®, Ergostat®, Medihaler Ergotamine®, Wigraine®, Wigrettes®), and methylergonovine maleate (Ergotrate®, Methergine®) • lovastatin (Advicor®, Altoprev®, Mevacor®) • midazolam, when taken by mouth • phenobarbital (Luminal®) • phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®) • pimozide (Orap®) • rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater®, Rimactane®) • sildenafil (Revatio®), when used for treating lung problems • simvastatin (Simcor®, Vytorin®, Zocor®) • triazolam (Halcion®) • the herb St. John’s wort or a product that contains St. John’s wort

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking GENVOYA?

What are the possible side effects of GENVOYA?

Before taking GENVOYA, tell your healthcare provider if you: • have liver problems including hepatitis B infection • have kidney or bone problems • have any other medical conditions • are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if GENVOYA can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking GENVOYA. Pregnancy registry: there is a pregnancy registry for women who take HIV-1 medicines during pregnancy. The purpose of this registry is to collect information about the health of you and your baby. Talk with your healthcare provider about how you can take part in this registry. • are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you take GENVOYA. – You should not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby. – At least one of the medicines in GENVOYA can pass to your baby in your breast milk. It is not known if the other medicines in GENVOYA can pass into your breast milk. – Talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby. Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Other medicines may affect how GENVOYA works. Some medicines may interact with GENVOYA. Keep a list of your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. • You can ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for a list of medicines that interact with GENVOYA. • Do not start a new medicine without telling your healthcare provider. Your healthcare provider can tell you if it is safe to take GENVOYA with other medicines.

GENVOYA may cause serious side effects, including: • See “What is the most important information I should know about GENVOYA?” • Changes in body fat can happen in people who take HIV-1 medicine. These changes may include increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump”), breast, and around the middle of your body (trunk). Loss of fat from the legs, arms and face may also happen. The exact cause and long-term health effects of these conditions are not known. • Changes in your immune system (Immune Reconstitution Syndrome) can happen when you start taking HIV-1 medicines. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that have been hidden in your body for a long time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you start having any new symptoms after starting your HIV-1 medicine. • New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before you start and while you are taking GENVOYA. Your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking GENVOYA if you develop new or worse kidney problems. • Bone problems can happen in some people who take GENVOYA. Bone problems may include bone pain, softening or thinning (which may lead to fractures). Your healthcare provider may need to do tests to check your bones. The most common side effect of GENVOYA is nausea. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away. • These are not all the possible side effects of GENVOYA. For more information, ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist. • Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.

How should I take GENVOYA?

Medicines are sometimes prescribed for purposes other than those listed in a Patient Information leaflet. Do not use GENVOYA for a condition for which it was not prescribed. Do not give GENVOYA to other people, even if they have the same symptoms you have. It may harm them. This Brief Summary summarizes the most important information about GENVOYA. If you would like more information, talk with your healthcare provider. You can ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for information about GENVOYA that is written for health professionals. For more information, call 1-800-445-3235 or go to www.GENVOYA.com. Keep GENVOYA and all medicines out of reach of children.

• Take GENVOYA exactly as your healthcare provider tells you to take it. GENVOYA is taken by itself (not with other HIV-1 medicines) to treat HIV-1 infection. • GENVOYA is usually taken 1 time each day. • Take GENVOYA with food. • If you need to take a medicine for indigestion (antacid) that contains aluminum and magnesium hydroxide or calcium carbonate during treatment with GENVOYA, take it at least 2 hours before or after you take GENVOYA. • Do not change your dose or stop taking GENVOYA without first talking with your healthcare provider. Stay under a healthcare provider’s care when taking GENVOYA. • Do not miss a dose of GENVOYA. • If you take too much GENVOYA, call your healthcare provider or go to the nearest hospital emergency room right away. • When your GENVOYA supply starts to run low, get more from your healthcare provider or pharmacy. This is very important because the amount of virus in your blood may increase if the medicine is stopped for even a short time. The virus may develop resistance to GENVOYA and become harder to treat.

General information about the safe and effective use of GENVOYA.

Issued: November 2015

EMTRIVA, GENVOYA, the GENVOYA Logo, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, GSI, TYBOST, and VITEKA are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. © 2015 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. GENC0004 11/15

11/18/15 12:21 PM

<< Open Forum

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

Volume 45, Number 48 November 26-December 2, 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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Jeff Adachi, call your office

an Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi must provide sensitivity training for his attorneys. Deputy Public Defender Kwixuan Maloof misgendered a transgender crime victim during the suspects’ arraignment in Superior Court Friday, November 20, in which a man and a woman are accused of assaulting a transgender woman. Maloof repeatedly referred to Samantha Hulsey, who was not in court, as a “man.” He seemed to suggest that Hulsey allegedly was “legally a male swinging at a female.” And, in a stunning display of ignorance, Maloof said, “Unless he’s had an operation,” Hulsey is still a man. Hulsey claims that the couple, Dewayne Kemp and Rebecca Westover, assaulted her on a South of Market street about two weeks ago. (Both Kemp and Westover pleaded not guilty.) The suspects, in separate jailhouse interviews with the Bay Area Reporter, said that Hulsey called Kemp, who is black, the N-word. Kemp admitted calling Hulsey, who is white, a “fag.” So, there is racial, homophobic, and transphobic name-calling shared by all parties. So why did a public defender add to the pile with his own anti-transgender references? It’s outrageous that an attorney whose salary is paid through public funds referred to a trans woman as a man. In San Francisco. In 2015. On the Transgender Day of Remembrance, no less. Maloof’s remarks in open court are out of character for the public defender’s office, which Adachi, a progressive ally, has run for years. And that’s partly what makes the episode so jarring. Adachi expects his attorneys to mount vigorous defenses for their clients, and that’s what they should do. Those charged with crimes are entitled to an attorney, and the public defender’s office here has some excellent

ones who provide top-notch legal servances all over the country last services and regularly get their cliFriday, participants read the names ents good plea deals or acquittals at of trans people who have died in trial. But Maloof stepped over the the last year by homicide, as well as line last Friday with complete lack others whose lives were lost. This is of respect for a human being. His a real crisis that has killed more than comments were unprofessional. 20 trans people in the U.S. so far this Even the assistant district attorney year. According to a recently released prosecuting the case expressed his report by the FBI about its 2014 Robert Fujioka objections. Assistant District Attorhate crime statistics, bias-motivated ney Blair McGregor told the court incidents based on gender identity that the defense was speaking from grew from 31 reported to the FBI in Robert Fujioka “cisgender privilege.” He said that 2013 to 98 last year. And that doesn’t Hulsey is “female gendered.” Kudos San Francisco Public include all incidents because it is Defender Jeff Adachi not mandatory for law enforcement to him for speaking up. The judge who presided over agencies to report them to the FBI. the arraignment doesn’t get off the hook eiThe Human Rights Campaign last week ther. Superior Court Judge Edward Torpoco released a statement on the FBI stats. It insaid nothing from the bench to correct or cluded a call to amend the Matthew Shepard reprimand Maloof. Governor Jerry Brown and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention appointed Torpoco to the bench last year. His Act to require reporting. It also called for an term expires in 2016 but barring a challenge, expansion of education and training initiatives he’ll continue to serve. Before his designed to reduce prejudice. These are both appointment, Torpoco, according good ideas, but probably won’t be implementto Ballotpedia, served as senior ed anytime soon. director and legal counsel supAlong with the FBI’s report is another one porting international projects for produced by HRC and the Trans People of eBay. He’s also a former U.S. atColor Coalition. Titled “Addressing Antitorney for the Northern District of Transgender Violence,” the report explores reCalifornia and former trial attorney alities, challenges, and solutions for both polifor the Department of Justice. At cymakers and community advocates. Writing the least, Torpoco should have in the introduction, Kylar W. Broadus, TPOCC corrected and scolded Maloof. executive director, noted, “Discrimination and This is about more than San stigma mean that transgender people not only Francisco values. Transgender face violence from partners, but we are also people, especially trans women of more likely to experience harassment and viocolor, continue to experience horrific violence. lence from police officers, in homeless shelters, Many regularly complain about mistreatment or when seeking emergency care.” – and misgendering – by police and other auIt’s unfortunate that this stigma was perpethorities who are supposed to help them. Now trated and perpetuated by an attorney in the we can add a deputy public defender to this public defender’s office. Mr. Maloof needs to list, and while he’s not Hulsey’s attorney, his be called out on his atrocious conduct. The comments about her are prejudicial. next time he appears in court for this case, he At Transgender Day of Remembrance obshould refer to Hulsey as the woman she is.t

To reach consumers, try online video marketing by Laurence Nathanson

2015 by Ascend2, nearly all found that online video marketing was a nline video marketing is successful medium to promoting drastically changing the way their businesses. According to this businesses are generating new group, one of the most cost effecleads and customers online. Until tive videos to produce is the comrecently, local businesses and medpany profile video, which provides ical practices who used any form a short overview of what the busiof online marketing primarily reness does and what it can offer to lied on their websites and possibly prospective customers or patients. posts to their social media sites to Companies and service providers Laurence Nathanson generate new customers and paare starting to realize that by havtients. Savvy businesses hired an ing a video profile, they can create expert in search engine optimization, or SEO, a much higher level of credibility and trust for a to get their sites ranked on page one of Google, prospective customer compared with anywhere prospective customers would then find thing that customer will read on their them based on targeted keyword searches. website. Businesses that utilize onHowever, as YouTube has become the secline video marketing report sales ond largest search engine on the web with over increases of over 25 percent 1 billion registered users, the online video tide How can online video markethas changed the way consumers obtain ining bring you more customers? formation. The majority of consumers today You may have the most comhas broadband Internet access and are used to pelling profile video, but if you watching entertainment content on demand are not delivering it to a targeted through services such as Netflix and Hulu. As audience at the point that they a result, a large percent of the content that conare searching for your product sumers access online is now video based. or service, it is like having a great billboard in Online video currently accounts for over the middle of the desert with no traffic driv75 percent of all Internet content and this ing by to see it. Since most consumers today number is continuing to grow. In just the past are viewing videos on YouTube, Facebook, week alone, 94 percent of consumers viewed Twitter, and other social media platforms, to an online video, and when a sample group successfully generate new business, your video was surveyed, most agreed that by watching a needs to be on these platforms too. Instead of product or service focused online video, it had thinking that prospects will watch your video a big influence on their purchasing decisions. on your website, you need to understand that This is great news from a marketing peryour video should be used as a lead magnet to spective. Online video marketing allows busigenerate traffic to your site, and not the other nesses to provide the most compelling and way around. persuasive information to their prospective Since Google owns YouTube, it gives prefercustomers in the shortest amount of time. It is ential treatment to online videos that are opalso the most successful electronic medium to timized for relevant keywords on the Google building relationships. search results page. Not only does this allow The brain processes visual information you to rank higher on the page, but a video 60,000 times faster than the time it takes to result is also displayed with a video thumbnail, process text. Customer retention rates after which generates over 42 percent more clickviewing a website are only around the 10 perthroughs than a regular webpage result. cent range, while video provides a retention Where most businesses fumble is that once rate of greater than 50 percent. they get the click-through to their website or onIn a study of 280 marketing, sales, and busiline video, they expect the consumer to immediness professionals published in September ately make a purchase or book an appointment.

The reality is that when most consumers land on a Google search results page, they are there primarily for one thing – to do research and not yet to make a purchase or get an appointment. It takes on average of seven to 10 times for a consumer to see a repeated message for them to make a purchasing decision. This is the reason why we see television ads over and over again, because eventually, those of us that are inclined to purchase the product will do so. Therefore, the primary objective of the profile video should be to generate a lead, not make a sale or get a new customer or patient. Once you have the lead, then with a systematic approach over time, using an email or text marketing campaign, you can generate new business. So, if you want to generate new customers on a monthly basis for your local business or medical practice, you need to incorporate a keyword optimized online video marketing campaign into your marketing mix. By doing this, you will be several steps ahead of your competition.t Laurence Nathanson is an internet marketing expert in San Francisco and runs Imagination Media, a video production and digital marketing agency that incorporates online video marketing along with several other customer acquisition strategies. Imagination Media produces high-impact, keyword-focused videos for businesses and medical practices seeking local customers, and then uses video search engine optimization (video SEO) to get the videos ranked on page one of Google. The company utilizes several other customer acquisition strategies including: YouTube advertising, email marketing, text marketing, Facebook advertising, and other social media marketing techniques to convert leads into paying customers for its clients. Contact Imagination Media today and mention this column for a free business review video when you initiate an online video marketing campaign for your business. Call (415) 940-7500 or email laurence@imagination.media.

Politics>>

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

List of out CA Statehouse 2016 candidates expands by Matthew S. Bajko

he list of out candidates seeking California Statehouse seats in 2016 continues to expand as the March filing deadline approaches. There are at least 12 gay or lesbian Democratic candidates seeking state Senate or Assembly seats next year, the majority of whom are running for office in southern California districts. The total has increased by three since the Political Notebook first reported in July on the LGBT legislative candidates running next year. So far no known out Republicans have announced campaigns, according to the head of a statewide group for LGBT GOPers. New to the candidates list are Sabrina Cervantes, a lesbian who is seeking to oust Assemblyman Eric Linder (R-Corona) from his 60th Assembly District seat centered in northwestern Riverside County, and Joel Fajardo, a gay man and current mayor of San Fernando who is running for the 39th Assembly District seat held by Assemblywoman Patty Lopez (D-San Fernando). Fajardo is a vocal opponent of the state’s high-speed rail project, arguing on his campaign site that routing it through San Fernando “would have devastating effects on the city’s residents and businesses.” Rather than build the bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Fajardo contends the money would be better spent on fixing and expanding the state’s existing transportation networks. Both Cervantes and Fajardo face uphill battles in their respective races. In the case of Cervantes, the district director for Assemblyman Jose Medina (D-Riverside) in the adjacent 61st Assembly District, she is running in a district that leans Republican but was carried by President Barack Obama by a 5 percent margin in 2012. Thus, she is attracting considerable support from Democrats and labor unions, including the Teamsters Joint Council 42 and the 22-member California Latino Legislative Caucus. Equality California, the statewide LGBT advocacy group, endorsed her campaign last week. “She is a dynamic young leader who will represent LGBT people, working class families, and all communities of the Inland Empire,” stated EQCA Executive Director Rick Zbur. As for Fajardo, elected to the San Fernando City Council in 2012, he first needs to survive past the June primary, where the top two vote-getters advance to the November election. Democrat Raul Bocanegra, ousted by Lopez from the Assembly seat in 2014, is running to reclaim it, so the general election race is likely to be a rematch between the two. In another Democrat-on-Democrat race, outgoing lesbian Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) announced in September she would run against state Senator Marty Block (D-San Diego) next year for his Senate District 39 seat. Atkins, a former San Diego councilwoman and interim mayor, had been raising money to run for Block’s Senate seat five years from now. Yet two months ago, Atkins claimed in press reports that Block had agreed to give up his seat after one term so she could run. Block admitted to reporters that the two lawmakers had discussed such an arrangement but insisted he never

Courtesy Cervantes for Assembly campaign Courtesy Fajardo for Assembly campaign

Assembly candidate Joel Fajardo

agreed to step down next year. As the Bay Area Reporter’s online Political Notebook column reported Monday, November 16, Atkins likely already has close to $1.6 million to tap into for her race against Block after combining the money she had raised in her 2020 Senate campaign account and the funds left over from her 2014 Assembly campaign account. Of the three out lawmakers who will be termed out of office in 2016, only Atkins is seeking to remain in the Legislature. Gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) has indicated interest in running to be the state’s lieutenant governor in 2018. Gay Assemblyman Richard Gordon (D-Menlo Park) is also termed out next year and has yet to indicate what, if any, political office he intends to pursue next. The state Legislature’s four other out lawmakers are all on the ballot next year. Gay Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) and lesbian Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) are both seeking re-election to their seats in the Legislature’s lower chamber. In the state Senate, lesbian Senator Cathleen Galgiani (D-Stockton) and gay state Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Los Angeles) are both seeking re-election to their seats next year.

EQCA announces early endorsements

EQCA has yet to endorse any of the current out lawmakers’ 2016 races, but it has thrown its support behind four of the out non-incumbent candidates running next year. Last week, as the B.A.R. noted in a November 16 blog post, gay San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener secured the group’s backing in his bid for the Senate District 11 seat, which includes all of San Francisco and portions of northern San Mateo County. Wiener and his board colleague, District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, are running to succeed Leno, who has endorsed Wiener to be his successor. In addition to its support for Wiener and Cervantes, EQCA last week also endorsed Bryan Urias, a gay man seeking the 48th Assembly District seat located in the San Gabriel Valley. He is running to succeed Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina), who is termed out of office next year. “His history of implementing pro-LGBT policies and his personal experience as an openly gay Latino man will make him an effective advocate for LGBT people and a strong potential partner for Equality California as we work to improve the lives of LGBT people and all the diverse communities of which we

Assembly candidate Sabrina Cervantes

are a part,” stated Zbur. In the summer EQCA endorsed gay San Diego City Councilman Todd Gloria, who is running to succeed Atkins in the Assembly and has her support. EQCA’s political action committee is working to elect LGBT candidates to the Legislature next year in order to replenish the ranks of the LGBT Legislative Caucus. It does not want to see the sevenperson caucus be reduced to just the four incumbents, all of whom are expected to be re-elected next November, in the 2016-2017 legislative session. “This coming election year is especially important to the LGBT community, as several members of the LGBT legislative caucus are terming out,” stated Zbur. “The current slate of EQCA endorsees will help us to maintain a strong LGBT caucus in Sacramento for the remainder of the decade...” EQCA has yet to endorse the four other out non-incumbent candidates running in 2016. Among them is lesbian Pasadena resident Katherine Aguilar Perez-Estolano, who is seeking the 25th Senate District seat. An expert in urban planning and transportation who serves on the California High Speed Rail Authority, Perez-Estolano is in a tough race to succeed termed-out Senator Carol Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge), who is supporting another candidate. “The San Gabriel Valley has been my home for nearly 25 years. As a parent, wife, small business owner, educator and resident, I have a deep commitment to our community and a diverse professional background that has prepared me to be your champion,” wrote PerezEstolano in a recent fundraising appeal to her supporters. Also facing an uphill election battle is Greg Rodriguez, who lives in Palm Springs with his husband, Alejandro, and his two adopted sons, Joshua and Zachary. The openly HIV-positive Rodriguez is seeking to oust from office freshman Assemblyman Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley) from his 42nd Assembly District seat, which covers most of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Mayes won election in September by his GOP colleagues to be the Assembly’s new minority leader. As for Rodriguez, he secured the backing of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund in October.t The Political Notes online column will return Monday, December 7. 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.

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<< Community News

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

Defense misgenders trans assault victim by Seth Hemmelgarn

s the couple accused of attacking a transgender woman in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood pleaded not guilty recently, the attorneys representing them repeatedly misgendered the victim. Dewayne Kemp, 36, and Rebecca Westover, 42, face charges including assault, along with hate crime enhancements, for allegedly attacking Samantha Hulsey near the Holiday Inn at 50 Eighth Street November 15. Kemp and Westover have said the incident started when Hulsey intentionally bumped into them and called Kemp the N-word. During their arraignment Friday, November 20 – Transgender Day of Remembrance – Deputy Public Defender Kwixuan Maloof, who’s representing Kemp, and Murray Zisholz, Westover’s court-appointed attorney, referred to Hulsey as a man

after they entered not guilty pleas on their clients’ behalf and as they tried unsuccessfully to get them released. In court Thursday, Maloof explained how Kemp had allegedly been trying to defend his fiancee. He said Hulsey is 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighs 217 pounds, and was “legally a male swinging at a female.” “When you have a man, I don’t care if he identifies as a man or not ... you’re a man,” he said. “You can’t swing at a woman like that.” Maloof, who said Hulsey has admitted hitting Westover, added, “I don’t care if that man is wearing a dress or not. ... He’s stronger, he’s larger, and he’s taller.” Zisholz made similar remarks, saying the “alleged victim is a male” who’s “stronger, taller, and heavier” than Westover. He said his client’s actions were “reactive in a self-defense manner,” and Hulsey was a “male” who was “assaulting a female.” Assistant District Attorney Blair McGregor criticized the defense’s use of “cisgender privilege” in repeatedly referring to her as a man and said Hulsey is “female gendered.” Asked outside the courtroom about how people in the transgender community would likely be horrified at his comments regarding Hulsey’s gender, Maloof said, “They can be horrified if they want.” She’s “bigger” and “stronger,” he said, and whether she identifies as male or not doesn’t make a difference. “Unless he’s had an operation,” Maloof added, Hulsey is still a man. He also said that “Samantha” is not Hulsey’s legal name, and she has a male name instead.

Incident details

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McGregor said the November 15 incident started when “transphobic comments” were shouted, including “faggots,” and “you are not women, you are men.” He said Kemp punched Hulsey four times in the nose, leaving injuries that police documented, and yelled, “faggots, you are sick-ass motherfuckers.” Maloof ’s account of what happened largely matches what Kemp and Westover told the Bay Area Reporter last week in separate interviews. They said they’d been walking down the street when Hulsey, who was with another transgender woman, intentionally bumped into them. When Kemp questioned her, she called him the N-word, Kemp said. He said he called her a “fag.” Westover said she threw coffee at Hulsey, and Hulsey punched her. Kemp then punched Hulsey repeatedly, and she swung back, he said. Westover said she also hit Hulsey. Video shows a cab driver getting out of his car and, without knowing what had started the incident, swinging his belt at Kemp, Maloof said. McGregor said Kemp told the man, “You fucking [N-word], you want to swing a belt at me? I will fucking kill you.” Maloof acknowledged that Kemp had made “a statement” toward the man. He also said that his client had made his statements “out of anger” after being called the N-word and seeing his fiance attacked, indicating the remarks had not been made “because of [Hulsey’s] sexual orientation.” When police arrived at the scene, Maloof said, Kemp and Westover approached them, and Kemp immediately told police he wanted

Courtesy ABC7

Victim Samantha Hulsey was misgendered by defense attorneys.

to file charges. Officers separated everyone, he said, and Kemp and Westover gave identical statements. Reached by phone this week, Hulsey said she wasn’t available to talk. She didn’t respond to a subsequent phone message.

Histories

Maloof said of Kemp, “his priors are not pretty,” but he’d been “trying very hard to stay straight” and had been “doing good.” McGregor said Kemp’s previous convictions include battery of a spouse or significant other and robbery. Court documents indicate that Kemp recently pleaded no contest to a count of possession of a controlled substance in exchange for other charges being dropped. In his recent interview with the B.A.R., Kemp said he was once convicted for an assault on a police officer in Sacramento. (He said the officer had choked him.) He became aggravated when asked for details of the incident, and refused to discuss his prior record further. Westover’s criminal history includes a robbery conviction. Citing the defendants’ histories and there being no mention in the police report of witnesses seeing anyone else as the aggressor, Superior Court Judge Edward Torpoco, who expressed a desire to move Friday’s lengthy hearing along, declined to release Kemp or Westover. City records list their bail as $623,000 and $373,000, respectively. Torpoco also granted protective orders for Hulsey and the cab driver, who also was allegedly victimized in the incident. Both defendants appeared in court in handcuffs Friday. Neither commented on the case, although Westover wept through much of her appearance. Their next court dates were set for Wednesday, November 25 for a prehearing conference and Wednesday, December 2 for a preliminary hearing. November 25 was also when another man accused of attacking Hulsey earlier this year was expected to get a preliminary hearing. In that case, which stems from January, Brodes Joynes, 55, allegedly tried to fatally stab Hulsey and called her and her then-partner “faggots” in an incident that started on a Muni bus. Hulsey was 24 at the time.t

Community News>>

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Marijuana enters the mainstream by Sari Staver

s marijuana goes mainstream, cannabis entrepreneurs are promoting their products by comparing them to brands already accepted by their new demographic, the well-heeled middle-class men and women who are demanding a larger selection, better quality products, and improved and more convenient shopping experiences. Dozens of such innovations were the focus of the two-day New West Summit in San Francisco, which promoters dubbed “the TechCrunch disrupt” of the cannabis business. With a $600 registration fee, the meeting attracted over 1,000 entrepreneurs and investors. The message was clear: with an increasing number of states expected to vote on the legalization of some form of cannabis – including California next year – entrepreneurs are lined up with new products to the already exploding $1 billion legal market. Investors, including investment bankers and hedge funds, are lined up to stake an early claim. Currently, 23 states and the District of Columbia have approved some use of cannabis. California, which approved the medical use of marijuana in 1996, already represents approximately 50 percent of the national market. Currently, as many as 10 ballot measures to legalize pot for personal use are under development in the state, with at least one certain to be on the ballot. The topic of legalization in California was first on the agenda, with panel members expressing cautious optimism that voters will approve a ballot measure legalizing recreational use of marijuana. Panel moderator David Downs, a conference organizer, noted that the previous attempt to legalize cannabis in California, Proposition 19 in 2010,

Sari Staver

Marijuana is going mainstream and is the topic of several magazine titles, including Dope and MG, which are new.

failed by a significant margin (46 to 54 percent) in part because supporters of the measure failed to unite the competing interests in the state. Longtime activist Debby Goldsberry, the executive director of Magnolia Wellness, a dispensary in

Oakland, said that if leaders of competing ballot measures don’t come together to back just one proposal, it was likely that recreational legalization would fail. Goldsberry is a board member of ReformCA, which is sponsoring one of the proposals. Panelist Ben Tulchin, a pollster for Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), said he believes a majority of voters are ready for a change in the “current system” of criminalizing the possession of cannabis. Tulchin, president of Tulchin Research, predicted that there was a “55 percent” chance that California would approve legalization in 2016. He urged activists to be sure to reach “swing voters” who don’t use cannabis but who want to be sure there are adequate protections and restrictions in any new law. Whether or not California liberalizes its current restrictions, dozens of entrepreneurs are already rolling out their wares. In San Francisco, where medical marijuana patients can choose from over 30 retail dispensaries, many consumers are switching to using delivery services, said Keith McCarty, CEO of Eaze, a smartphone app that links users to dispensaries that will deliver. McCarty, who noted that his firm is often dubbed the “Uber of cannabis,” said that the company’s technology expertise helps them gather customer data for the dispensaries. McCarty said the service is “always trying to improve customer satisfaction,” noting that orders “fall off” when delivery takes more than 35 minutes. Another delivery service, Meadow, can also link people with an online physician to approve their use of the medicine, eliminating the need to find a physician familiar with the procedures established by the state. A new marketing gimmick was announced at the conference by SPARC, a Mission dispensary that

calls itself the “Apple of dispensaries” after winning numerous design awards for its sleek interior. At the conference, SPARC announced a new line of artwork it is selling, co-sponsored with urban outfitter Upper Playground. In northern California, where many medical marijuana patients are aware of the popular farm to table trend in the food industry, Flow Kana is copying that model in the cannabis business. Founder Michael Steinmetz said the company is targeting “cannabis connoisseurs” who want to know more about the farmers and their growing methods. Flow Kana offers that “transparency” on its website menu and also pairs it with delivery, he said. A growing number of new cannabis consumers are women, said Holly Alberti, CEO of Healthy Headie Lifestyle, which is rolling out its service in California this year. Alberti said research showed that many women are “shy” about shopping in dispensaries. Alberti developed an in-home shopping program, similar to Tupperware

or Mary Kay Cosmetics, that has gathered tremendous interest, both among women who want to sell the products and among those anxious to schedule a party at their home. Alberti pointed out that sales of products such as vaporizers can benefit from a demonstration, which may not be available in a busy dispensary or head shop, where they are typically sold. The company does not sell cannabis, she noted. Spending more time educating patients is also a priority for Goldsberry. “That’s what’s so great about the new software” that streamlines operations in dispensaries, she said. “It frees up humans to do what we do best ... being human.” Technology is great “but I can’t do the jobs people do,” she said. “Spending time to give each patient a quality experience is very important. Technology is helping us to do that,” Goldsberry said. “Think about it. A positive online experience is good, but even better is a positive one-on-one human experience.”t

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<< Community News

t Trans employees open up about workplace issues 10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

by Sari Staver

ccomplished opera singer Breanna Sinclaire, recently honored by Out magazine as one of the top 100 LGBT advocates of the year, still worries when she applies for a job or meets new co-workers. “Look at these broad shoulders,” Sinclaire, 27, who recently completed her master’s degree on full scholarship at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, said in a recent in-

terview with the Bay Area Reporter. “When I meet someone new, are they going to think I look like a man?” Last week, Sinclaire was a panelist at a forum on workplace issues surrounding gender transition. The November 18 forum was sponsored by Pacific Gas and Electric Company with partners Transgender Law Center, the Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative, and Out and Equal Workplace Advocates. The event, which was open to the

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public, was designed to help employers develop strategies to create a more inclusive workplace and to share ideas with individuals considering coming out at work. In Sinclaire’s presentation, she said the “simple task” of filling out an application can bring up “awkward issues” for people undergoing transition. Sinclaire said she would typically answer a job advertisement using the name Breanna, which she has used for the past seven years. But when a job offer was imminent, and she had to fill out the formal application, she knew the employer could legally disqualify her for the job if she didn’t provide her legal name. “So at that point,” she said, “I have to start explaining.” Sinclaire, who has applied to join the San Francisco Opera Chorus, has dealt with uncomfortable situations since moving to San Francisco in 2011. During a stint as a sales associate at an antique store, she said that the gay men who owned the store were “incredibly supportive in every way,” but some customers didn’t want to work with her. Sinclaire said that she has also encountered hostility from a handful of women performers, “questioning whether or not I was a ‘real woman.’” Despite the progress in acceptance of transgender people, “we are all going to face people trying to ‘dock our T,’” she said, referring to people taking issue with someone’s gender identity. “Yes,” she said, “things are much better for me” recently. “But at my job as an employment services associate at [TEEI] I still hear a lot of really, really depressing stories” from transgender individuals facing discrimination or harassment. Other panelists described their concerns about coming out to co-workers. Paula diFalco, 60, a PG&E senior database administrator in San Ramon, had been known as Mike diFalco for 14 years at the company. But on October 22, after some encouraging conversations with PG&E employees who were part of the company’s Pride Network, “I thought I was ready to be Paula” at work, she said. “This was three years in coming,” diFalco said, explaining that she’d been cross dressing in her personal life but hesitated to “take the step” of coming out to co-workers. The response, she said, “was phenomenal.” All of her co-workers were accepting and supportive, she said. Since then, occasionally “people

Courtesy PG&E

Panelists Breanna Sinclaire, left, and Paula diFalco, who are trans women, joined David Patiño, who’s gender non-conforming, and trans ally Justin Knepper, a gay man, to discuss trans workplace issues at a recent panel.

will forget and call me ‘Mike’ or refer to me as ‘he’ instead of ‘she,’” diFalco said. “Hey, that’s OK, I do the same thing. I was Mike for almost 60 years, so of course we’re all going to forget.” While everyone’s journey to decide whether to come out at work is different, diFalco said that like many others, she was “worried and totally unsure what I would face. Would I be ridiculed? Could I lose my job? How could I bring up the topic without revealing the very information I was trying to hide?” DiFalco said her decision to “go ahead” came after she realized “how much happier” she was as a woman. “As a man, I was grumpy all the time,” she said. “I think the best way to describe me would’ve been ‘curmudgeon.’ Once I saw that my entire life could be better and happier for me – and for everyone I knew ... I realized I had to” become Paula at work. DiFalco was also encouraged by the positive response from her health provider, who gave her the “green light” to begin the transition process under medical supervision. “At my age,” she said, “that was a real question in my mind.” Once she started, and she had joined the Pride Network employee resource group, diFalco said she accepted an invitation to join some co-workers in downtown San Francisco for an after-work get-together. “I went home, changed into my Paula clothes, and showed up to the most positive reception I could’ve imagined. I will never forget that day ... how free I felt to be welcomed and accepted for the person who I was,” she said.

Other issues

Some different issues were brought up by panelist David Patiño, a former Google employee now

working at the Transgender Law Center. Patiño, who describes themself as gender nonconforming, said that issues came up when they went from being a student at Stanford to an employee at Google. “At school,” they said, “I was pretty much on my own and I didn’t have to explain anything to anyone,” But when they applied for a job, “I realized that there would be some new issues.” It turned out, said Patiño, that team members and management at Google “were amazing. It was just not an issue to anyone.” Still, when there were corporate events with a dress code, “I didn’t know what was expected,” they said. “Do I dress as a man? And, if so, can I also do my nails?” Patiño also asked co-workers to use the pronoun “they” when referring to them, rather than “he,” or “she.” People were accommodating, they explained; it was sometimes just a matter of reminding them. In closing remarks, PG&E’s Andrew Williams, an attorney who is an executive sponsor of the Pride Network, said he hoped the forum was successful in raising the awareness about the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming employees and to offer resources for support in developing policies. “As employers,” he said, they are at various stages and levels of creating policies that offer “a more inclusive environment.” “We recognize we have a lot to learn and plenty of work to do,” he said. Alissa Nelson, a program manager in behavior health at Blue Shield of California, said she found the forum “extremely useful” for her company as providers of health services. “We wanted to hear” from people transitioning what they needed and expected from their employers, she said.t

Killer in ’12 trans death ID’d by Seth Hemmelgarn

olice have identified the man they believe fatally shot a transgender woman in 2012 in downtown Oakland. Malique Parrott, the man police say murdered Brandy Martell, 37, was himself killed two months after Martell was shot at about 5 a.m. April 29, 2012. Martell, who lived in Hayward, had been socializing in her car with some friends at Franklin and 13th streets when she was killed. The Oakland Police Department announced Parrott’s identification last Thursday, November 19, via Twitter. Speaking at the Transgender Day of Remembrance observance Friday, November 20 at Oakland City Hall, Police Chief Sean Whent didn’t reveal details, but said officers “worked very hard” on the case. “I’m proud to be able to announce closure to a case that impacted the community,” Whent said. Betty Massey, 64, of Hayward, Martell’s mother, said Thursday, “I have been praying to God to just let me know who did it. When the officer

called yesterday, that was some support, and to be the best news I ever heard.” recognized as humans, Massey said Oakland too.” police Sergeant Brad Massey said she wasn’t Baker told her that Parbitter that it had taken so rott had been trying long to solve her sister’s to rob Martell and her murder. friends. A witness had “I’m just glad OPD Tiffany Woods come forward and identistayed on it and saw it Tiffany Woods fied Parrott, Massey said. through after four years,” She didn’t know when Brandy Martell she said. that was. Baker, who’d Martell, who’s been been handling the case remembered for her since the beginning, didn’t respond sense of humor and for being a role to interview requests. model, was once a peer advocate for Talishia Massey, 33, of Hayward, TransVision, a transgender program Martell’s sister, said, “I’m glad that at Fremont’s Tri-City Health Center. justice is served.” In a statement posted to FaceReferring to the number of transbook, Tiffany Woods, TransVision’s gender people who have been murprogram coordinator, said Thursdered this year across the country, day’s news “hopefully, provides Talishia Massey, who remembered some measure of closure for her Martell by her nickname, “Turfamily, friends, and community. To key,” and referred to her as a man, know that there is no longer a killer planned to attend the Transgender on the loose is pause for relief.” Day of Remembrance observance. Woods added that even though “There’s been a lot of death this “it took three long years to finally year” in the community, she said. identify the shooter responsible for “It’s been a couple years since my her senseless and hateful killing,” brother was murdered. ... It’s a hell she applauded OPD “for keeping of a lifestyle to live. I think they need Brandy’s case active.”t

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<< Travel

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

Taiwan boasts budding gay scene by Ed Walsh

was in Taipei earlier this month and I was lost. I was looking for the LGBT bookstore, Gin Gin, in the gay-popular district of Gongguan. I took the subway to the station closest to it. Google maps showed it was just a five-minute walk away. But unlike downtown, the street signs were all in Chinese. Outside the station, I stopped and asked a woman for directions as she was standing in front of her small women’s clothing shop. She didn’t know where it was but left her shop unattended as she led me to a couple of neighboring businesses in search of directions. When that didn’t work, she stopped a stranger in the street who knew some English who pointed me in the right direction. She dutifully reiterated his hand gestures so I wouldn’t get lost again. I found the store, which was just a couple of minutes away.

That experience was typical of the friendliness I found everywhere in the country, which very much extends to the LGBT community. Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, hosts Asia’s largest Pride parade, held during the last weekend of October. Taiwan may also soon be the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. Recent polls found that more than 60 percent there support gay marriage. For people under 30, that figure jumps to nearly 80 percent. Although proposed same-sex marriage bills have stalled, given the trends, all but the most die-hard opponents would have to concede that it’s not a matter of if but when. Youth support of gay rights was evident during Taipei’s 13th annual Pride Parade that coincided with Halloween this year. Organizers estimated that about 80,000 people turned out for the celebration. The majority of marchers and spectators

were under 30. The head of Taiwan Pride, Simon Tai, 25, told the Bay Area Reporter that many of the country’s older population live a closeted double life but the country’s youth feel free to openly march in the street. Taiwan’s gay acceptance has taken a sharp upward trajectory. Taipei’s first Pride was attended by just 500 in 2003. Now Pride is still organized by volunteers with a budget of a little over $60,000 that is raised mostly by donations and various fundraisers. The event has more than earned its keep by bringing tourists from other parts of Asia and all over the world to participate and join in on the party. Taiwan’s tourism industry hopes the country’s gay-friendliness will translate into more LGBT tourism year-round. It has plenty to offer visitors, from the modern cosmopolitan city of Taipei to the tropical beaches in the south end of the country. Taipei’s downtown is similar to Tokyo’s with buildings covered with giant brightly lit billboards and video screens. The city also boasts upscale modern shopping centers

Ed Walsh

Two men held a rainbow flag from a float during the recent Taipei Pride parade.

and a very lively gay nightlife scene. Plus, prices of things like restaurants, hotels, and cabs are about half of what you would pay in Tokyo or San Francisco, for that matter.

History

Taiwan was called Isla Formosa, or beautiful island, by the Portuguese explorers who first encountered it in 1544. You will still see references to Formosa throughout the island but you will see many more uences of the Japanese PUB: Bay Areainfl Reporter who Issue: 5/28occupied the island for about 50 Aston years, until 1945, after World War Client: The Japanese invested heavily in AD:II. Hotel Renew

infrastructure and education. Many Taiwanese claim Japanese as well as Chinese ancestry. Taiwan is densely populated, with more than 23 million people. It is about twice the size of Massachusetts but with almost four times that state’s population. The island is in Southern Asia, about 400 miles from Hong Kong. At the Taiwan Strait, about 100 miles separates it from the southeastern coast of mainland China. The Bay Area is a big market for Taiwan. Both the Taiwanese airline, Eva, as well as China Air and United,

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Community News>>

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

Tree lightings to ring in the holdiays compiled by Cynthia Laird

ceremony will take place Wednesday, December 2 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place.

oliday tree lightings will take place in San Francisco this week to usher in the season. All events are free and open to the public. Macy’s will continue its holiday tradition with the 26th annual great tree lighting ceremony Friday, November 27 at 6 p.m. in San Francisco’s Union Square. The reusable 83-foot tree contains more than 33,000 twinkling energy-efficient LED lights and 1,000 shining ornaments. Headlining the festivities will be singer and actress Jordan Sparks, who rose to fame after winning the sixth season of American Idol in 2007 when she was 17. Also performing will be Vocal Rush from the Oakland School of the Arts, the Transcendence Theatre Company, and the Contra Costa Children’s Chorus. San Francisco’s most recognized Christmas tree will be lit at the end of the ceremony, around 6:40 p.m. People can then visit the festive Holiday Lane on the seventh floor of Macy’s Union Square to see lavishly decorated Christmas trees, thousands of ornaments, and other embellishments for the home. Santa will also be on hand to listen to holiday wishes and be available for portraits in Macy’s Santaland, also on the seventh floor, starting Friday, November 27 through December 24. This year marks the eighth anniversary of the Macy’s Believe campaign, in partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, inviting children of all ages to mail letters

Helpers needed for SF Thanksgiving dinner

Crew Altizer

The Macy’s great tree lighting ceremony takes place Friday, November 27.

to Santa using the special in-store Santa mailboxes. Also located on the seventh floor, the mail deposited into the mailboxes is sent directly to St. Nick at the North Pole. And, for every letter, Macy’s will donate $1 to Make-A-Wish, up to $1 million. Meanwhile, a reminder to Castro residents that the Castro Merchants group will once again be ringing in the holidays with a Christmas tree lighting celebration Monday, November 30 at 6 p.m. at the corner of 18th and Castro streets. Bay Area Reporter society columnist Donna Sachet is set to once again play hostess to the festive event, which will include Santa Claus with his elf escorts and seasonal songs from the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and the Lesbian/ Gay Chorus of San Francisco. Finally, the Rainbow World Fund’s World Tree of Hope lighting

Tenderloin Tessie is seeking volunteers to help with the group’s holiday dinner for those in need. The dinner takes place Thursday, November 26 from 1 to 4 p.m. at First Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin Street (at Geary) in San Francisco. Tenderloin Tessie board president Michael Gagne said in a statement that volunteers are needed for Wednesday, November 25 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to pick up items from the group’s storage facility and pick up groceries (some heavy lifting required). Then on Thanksgiving, volunteers are needed for the following shifts: 9 a.m. to noon, set up and decorate; noon to 4 p.m., help at the dinner and the mandatory meeting around noon; 3 to 6 p.m., help with the last hour of the dinner and tear-down. People can sign up for multiple shifts and all volunteers will get a meal around 2. Finally, people are needed to take the decorations and other items back to the storage unit Saturday, November 28 from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Interested people can sign up online at www.tenderlointessie.com under the “Contact Us” tab on the left side of the page. Then scroll down to the “Volunteer” section. People can also call Gagne at (415) 584-3252 or call (415) 779-6285 or email tenderlointessiedinners@yahoo.com. Donations can be made via the website, under the “Support Us” tab.

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Gilead expands PrEP assistance; feds call for more hep C coverage by Liz Highleyman

44 Gough Street, Suite 204, San Francisco, CA 94103

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ilead Sciences recently changed its co-pay assistance program for Truvada (tenofovir/emtricitabine) for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis – better know as PrEP – allowing participants to use their full annual allocation upfront to meet an insurance deductible. “This program change enables greater flexibility for individuals in need of co-pay assistance for Truvada for PrEP and ensures the assistance we provide for Truvada is consistent, regardless of whether an individual needs access for prevention or for treatment,” Gilead spokesman Ryan McKeel told the Bay Area Reporter. As of November 6, the annual co-pay allocation of $3,600 can now be applied as participants choose, rather than being limited to $300 per month. This means a person can pay a larger amount early in the year to cover an annual deductible, which will help people whose monthly medication expenses are low once the deductible is met. Gilead’s Cara Miller added that the change was made in response to discussions with advocates about how to make the co-pay program work for more people with diverse insurance requirements. Community advocates expressed support for the new provisions. The change “will indefinitely help thousands who’d given up on ever being able to afford this revolutionary prevention tool,” said David Evans of Project Inform, who was among the activists calling for more

Some thoughts with the holiday approaching... Liz Highleyman

Protesters called on Gilead to lower the cost for its hepatitis C medications outside the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases conference in San Francisco earlier this month.

generous patient support. “We’d like it to cover all deductibles and we’d like for young people still on their parents’ insurance to be able to discreetly access the drug through Gilead’s medication assistance program, but we will keep fighting for that and this recent change is a really good step.” “Truvada is expensive and high deductibles have made it difficult or impossible for many people to get on PrEP,” David Knopf, a moderator for the widely used PrEP Facts Facebook group, told the B.A.R. “This is great news for those individuals, of course, and great news for HIV prevention.” In addition to the co-pay card for people with insurance, Gilead’s

Advancing Access medication assistance program helps uninsured people obtain Truvada. Changes to that program now allow participants to pick up medication at retail pharmacies rather than using a specific specialty pharmacy. Detailed information about both programs is available online at http://start.truvada.com/ individual/truvadaprep-copay.

Medicaid should cover hep C treatment

While HIV advocates praised Gilead’s PrEP assistance expansion, others criticized the high cost of the company’s hepatitis C medicaSee page 17 >>

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16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

The next day by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

n November 20, Transgender Day of Remembrance is marked with events, marches, letters from dignitaries, and so on. Die-ins are held, walkways are chalked, and in at least one location, San Francisco, City Hall is awash in the colors of the transgender flag. As it’s founder, I’m always surprised and humbled to see the reaction to TDOR every year. Then it is November 21. The lights change, the sidewalks are trod upon and power-washed, and life continues. We are next on a quest for turkeys and cranberries, or Black Friday deals as we careen headlong into a holiday season haze. I will often close my remarks on Transgender Day of Remembrance with a variant of a rather well known quote from Mother Jones. I’ll say something like, “Today, the 20th of November, we mourn the dead. Tomorrow and every day, we fight for the living.” You see, there’s one thing I’ve never talked much about the Transgender Day of Remembrance. When it started, I had a hope to see it help foster a culture of compassion within the trans community. I’ve hoped that, by seeing so many murdered at the hands of anti-

Day of Remembrance

From page 1

Police Chief Sean Whent told the crowd gathered at Oakland City Hall Friday, November 20 for the Transgender Day of Remembrance that a suspect had been identified in the April 2012 shooting death of Brandy Martell, an African American trans woman who had been socializing with friends in her car. It turns out, though, that the suspect, identified as Malique Parrott, was himself the victim of a homicide two months after Martell’s murder. The police announced the news the day before the event. [See story, page 10.] “It’s very poignant for tonight’s event,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told the Bay Area Reporter prior to the start of the observance. “Everyone persisted and didn’t give up. It brought a small amount of comfort and closure to Brandy’s community.” Speakers from the city, law enforcement, and other political leaders took to the podium commending trans people for living their lives authentically while decrying anti-

transgender violence, we’d see just how valuable and precious all of our lives are. Some days I am unsure if that message is out there. At the TDOR event that I spoke at, two of the speakers felt it necessary to remind those in attendance to treat their siblings in the community with respect. In between this, one of the main speakers took the opportunity to call out at least one attendee, while also speaking against Caitlyn Jenner. Jenner has not just been the fodder of speeches, having been discussed negatively in a number of transgender articles and throughout social media. I’ve seen others defend her, or at least her gender identity. Jenner is also not alone when it comes to being denigrated within the very community she very visibly joined in 2015. I think it is fair to note that Jenner’s life is a fairly charmed one. She does not have to deal with all I’ve faced, let alone what everyone named on Transgender Day of Remembrance faced. Yet we have a number of ways we can react, and a number of options for addressing what she and

others may or may not be doing. In the 1990s, Transexual Menace was a direct action group formed on the East Coast. Even with its provocative and sometimes-controversial work on behalf of the nascent transgender community, I still think of one of its slogans: Confront with love. In the 20 or so years since it roamed the earth, I feel that we have forgotten how to do that. So many of us were killed this year, and many others took their own lives. Depression and anxiety runs rife in our community, not only fueled by gender dysphoria, but by the harsh realities of life as a trans or gender non-conforming person in 2015. We may have greater visibility and greater rights, but there’s still plenty of hatred, violence, and discrimination dished out to each of us. We should be trying to keep our own community spaces safe, and offering support to all within our ranks. Again, this is not to say that people should be above reproach simply for being trans. It does mean that we should all consider carefully if we are calling out a person for their actions or opinions, or if

we are simply using the same tools as those used against us, and trying to tear down others in our midst to raise ourselves up. With us moving into the holiday season – which is itself a very hard time for those of us who have been disowned by family or friends – we should be especially vigilant about those within our community. This is a time to put our hand out, and grasp the palms of those in our numbers in need. I recently heard of an initiative from Holly Maholm, author of the book Brave In Ribbons. She has started her own program called Adopt-a-Transgender for the Christmas season. In short, she is offering herself up as a “transgender-adoptive-parent” to three random transgender folks who reply to her website at http://www.hollymaholm.com. I’ll admit, I first felt very unsure of the idea, but I wish I saw more similar actions. She may save three lives by doing this. How many lives get saved when we speak ill of each other? When you focus your energies in tearing down others, particularly those who are within your own community, or who may be wellmeaning-but-problematic allies,

how do they tend to react? Do they change, or do they double down, fighting you and others, or leaving entirely because of how they were treated? How does this build a coalition, and how does this make our community stronger? Also, how does that make people react to you? I’m not saying the world is a popularity contest, but do you really want to be the person people walk on eggshells around – or outright avoid – based on how you tend to treat others within the community? Bottom line: We’re not all perfect – I certainly am not – but I think we all want to do right. Unless someone is an absolute bigot and is unwilling to change, then we should welcome the opportunity to reach out, to teach, and to make things better. Yelling at people, calling them names, or slapping their hands away when what they offer isn’t enough for you is not always the best approach. We need to be that culture of compassion, and confront with love.t

trans violence. So far this year, more than 20 trans people have been killed in the U.S. Many more were killed overseas. In the most moving part of the observance, Tiffany Woods, who runs the TransVision program at Tri-City Health Center in Fremont and serves as an liaison to the Oakland Police Department, invited members of the audience to step forward to read the names of the deceased. Many spoke in first person, relating some details about the victim’s life. Other speakers also read names at the conclusion of their remarks. “This is a sad but necessary event,” Woods, a trans woman, said, adding that transgender people should not have to fear death while living their lives. Woods also spoke about the resiliency of the trans community and how it needs to “fight like hell for the living.” Alameda County Superior Court Judge Victoria Kolakowski, the first trans person elected to the bench in the country, said that every year the event gets harder.

“There’s no place I’d rather be tonight than here, yet I don’t want to be here,” she said. “We have, in the past year, had an amazing increase in visibility in the world ... and with progress comes backlash.” During her remarks, Schaaf said, “Let us fight for a community where people don’t just feel accepted, but feel celebrated. Who don’t just feel safe in some places or some of the time.” Oakland Vice Mayor and at-large councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, a lesbian, said that six years ago she got legislation passed that repealed a law barring people from wearing clothes of the opposite gender. She also touched on the next frontier of laws facing the trans community – bathroom access. “It’s important that we come together to make bathrooms safe for people and safe for all genders,” she said. Janet Halfin and Terry Washington, two of the event’s organizers, mourned the loss of Leioni Jackson, who recently died at Alta Bates Medical Center. They said they did not know what caused her death.

“I’m in this field to save lives,” said Halfin, who also works at TriCity Health Center. “We’re not second-class. I miss my cousin very, very much.” Washington, who said he’d known Jackson since third grade, said she would have been “very happy” about the Martell case being solved. City Councilwoman Annie Campbell Washington said that she was working in the mayor’s office three years ago when Martell was killed and started a task force in the mayor’s office to address crime in the community. Councilman Abel Guillen, who identifies as two-spirit, said he came with a “heavy heart.” “The sad truth is so many others who have died, we’ll never know their names,” Guillen said. He also brought up the fact that “our community members are detained by” Immigration and Customs Enforcement. City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney invoked her faith that “everyone is created in God’s image.”

“Every life matters,” she added. Kevin Dunleavy, chief assistant in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, said that the trans community has “a true partner” in his office. “The role and mission of the Alameda County District Attorney’s office is to promote justice,” he said. He introduced a video message from Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, who reiterated those themes and said that violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people is “not acceptable.” Representatives for Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) and Assemblymen Rob Bonta (DOakland) and Kansen Chu (D-Castro Valley) also spoke, along with officials from sponsoring organizations the Pacific Center for Human Growth, the East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club, Castro Valley Pride, and the Port bar.t

Taiwan

From page 12

fly nonstop daily to Taipei from San Francisco International Airport. The flight is a little over 13 hours.

The sights

The majority of visitors to Taiwan understandably spend most of their time exploring Taipei. As you would guess, that is also where the island’s gay life is centered. The biggest concentration of gay bars can be found in the Red House area. It is named after the red brick building that once housed a movie theater that was popular with closeted gay men. Now far from being closeted, the area around the building is clustered with smallish gay bars and a large open-air courtyard where everyone hangs out, especially on warm nights. For an up-to-date list of gay bars, saunas, and nightclubs check the Taiwan section of http:// www.TravelGayAsia.com. It is easy to get around Taipei without a car. The city has an extensive subway system that is fast, clean, efficient, and safe. The fare to most places in the downtown area is about 75 cents. The subway ticket vending machines have English directions and are

Ed Walsh Ed Walsh

The bustling night market in Kenting is in the southernmost point of Taiwan.

pretty easy to figure out. Most people speak enough English to communicate the basics. Just be sure to speak very slowly and use a lot of gestures. The most popular tourist attraction in the city is the Taipei 101 tower, deriving its name from its 101 floors. While it is no longer the world’s tallest building, it is one of the most beautiful. Its unique architecture is designed both to resemble a bamboo shoot and a flowering plant. The circles on

the side of the building symbolize Chinese coins, a sign of good luck and wealth. The building boasts the world’s fastest elevator, taking visitors to the observation level in 37 seconds. If the weather is good, you can go on the outside observation deck. A huge round metal ball is in the center. It is designed to counter the effects of the wind sway on the tower. Be sure to check out one of Taiwan’s world famous night markets.

Taipei 101 tower is the city’s top tourist attraction.

The Raohe Street Night Market in the Songshan district is Taipei’s oldest. Beitou, a suburban district, is where you will find the Yangmingshan National Park and many hot springs. The Kawaya Spa is probably the most gay-popular. If you are an art lover, be sure to check out the National Palace Museum that houses one of the largest collections of Chinese art in the world. Taipei also has the largest zoo in Asia. Taipei’s summers are hot and humid. Its winters are cool but it

Gwen Smith is not calling people out for calling people out. You can find her on Twitter at @gwenners.

Full disclosure: Alameda County Superior Court Judge Victoria Kolakowski is the wife of B.A.R. news editor Cynthia Laird

seldom dips below freezing. If you crave warmer weather, you can start in Taipei and head to the southern end of the country to the Kenting area. Winters there are dry and warm. It has a decidedly tropical feel, with towering palm trees and beaches. Kenting National Park is well worth seeing. It has a number of easy walking trails and an observation deck with a sweeping view of the southernmost part of the island. One of the main hikes goes through caves. Keep your eyes peeled throughout Kenting for wild monkeys. They are everywhere. Taiwan’s largest lake is in the middle of the country and is very popular with Chinese tourists. Sun Moon Lake doesn’t have beaches but features walking and biking trails along the lake. The lake’s modern sweeping dome-shaped visitors center with a reflecting pool offers the best view and the best photo of the lake. The lake is most popular for tour boats that take tourists to an island in the lake with a large Buddhist Temple and landmark statue. Taipei has a high-speed rail system that can reach speeds of 186 miles per hour. But you can’t travel See page 17 >>

t <<

Community News>>

World AIDS Day

From page 1

The Castro is “a place where we’ve grown up, where we’ve spent so much of our time,” he said. “The Castro has been a home to us, and where we’ve also experienced so much of our losses, so we gather in the Castro on World AIDS Day to remember our loved ones who we walked those streets with and to inscribe their names. To do it with other community members and young people and their families is just a really sweet way to honor all those losses, but also to honor what it is that we’ve walked through as a community.” The Shanti Project, which works with women who have cancer and with people who are living with HIV, is sponsoring the event. People who aren’t able to attend can have names added to the honor walk in chalk by leaving their loved one’s name and some of the person’s story on the Inscribe Facebook page, and the name will be added. For more information, visit h t t p s : / / w w w. f a c e b o o k . c o m / events/166253983718722/.

National AIDS Memorial Grove

The National AIDS Memorial Grove is well known for its World AIDS Day events. From 6 to 9 p.m. Monday, November 30, the annual Light in the Grove fundraising gala will feature dinner, music, and light displays. Warm attire is suggested. Funds raised through the event support the grove’s community volunteer workday program, where

Hit-and-run

From page 1

D’Arata said one example of Nix’s generosity was his fundraising efforts for the East Bay AIDS Center, where D’Arata works, especially his support of the center’s Connecting Resources for Urban Sexual Health project, which works “to help provide PrEP to young gay men of color,” among other things. For many years, D’Arata said, Nix was a senior manager for the former MCI Communications Corporation before deciding “he wanted to interact more with people.” In 2002, he left MCI and started working to become a financial planner, eventually earning his certification. “He went into financial planning because he wanted to deal with people one to one and help them make good decisions around their retirements and make good financial plans,” D’Arata said.

Gilead

From page 15

tions, which they say limits access to treatment. Gilead’s Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) and Harvoni (sofosbuvir/ledipasvir), as well as other new interferon-free treatments produced by other companies, can cure more than 90 percent of people with chronic hepatitis C in two to six months. Doctors and researchers at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases’ annual meeting

Taiwan

From page 16

to the very south of the country on the bullet train. It stops at about two hours from the southernmost point.

Nightlife

The aforementioned Red House area, at the Ximen subway stop, is home to more than a dozen small gay bars as well as the city’s de facto LGBT center, Gisneyland. The center’s logo sign looks like a Disneyland sign. The center provides health information and support for HIV and other health issues.

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

Hodel and activist Austin Padilla will be recognized for their work. A donation of $5 to $10 is suggested for all events. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. To purchase tickets in advance, go to http://worldaidsdaysf.brownpapertickets.com.

San Francisco’s Park Presidio United Methodist Church, 4301 Geary Boulevard, will mark World AIDs Day with “Testimony,” a series of events beginning Tuesday and ending Sunday, December 6. The opening ceremony will be

at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and will feature the unveiling of panels from the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was conceived in 1985 by Cleve Jones, known for his activism for LGBTs and people living with HIV/AIDS. In a news release, pastor Sandy Gess said, “Our philosophy is that faith is more than what happens on Sunday mornings. It is part of who we are inside and out. As an integral part of this Bay Area community, we want this week to be the most memorable activity we have sponsored this year. The AIDS Memorial Quilt is such a powerful symbol to this community.” At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, December 2, the Academy Award-winning film Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt will be shown, followed by a panel discussion. The film We Were Here: the AIDS Years in San Francisco will be presented at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, December 3. The documentary features survivors of the AIDS epidemic talking about its impact. A panel discussion will follow the film. From 6:30 to 9 p.m. Friday, December 4 and noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, December 5, the “Embodied Writing” workshop will explore verbal and non-verbal ways for people to express their own stories of the impact of HIV/AIDS. Saturday, people will be able to use chalk to draw on the sidewalk in honor of people they’ve lost to the disease. The closing ceremony, which is set for 7 to 10 p.m. Sunday, December 6, will include dance, poetry readings, and other performances. Also during the event, DJ Page

D’Arata said Nix had been thinking about getting a car. With all the things he was involved in, “it was too hard for him not to have a car,” he said. He said Nix drove a moped but he didn’t know what kind it was. “It looked like a piece of shit to

me, a little white thing,” he said. “It used to concern me,” D’Arata said, but Nix “was always super cautious,” and he wore a helmet. Katharine Holland, 52, of Mill Valley, said she’d cried herself to sleep Sunday night, but what she recalled first about Nix was his humor. “He just had this sense of humor that was always turned on,” Holland, who knew Nix mainly from FrontRunners, said. Despite all his achievements and the fundraising he did, he was “very modest.” But he was also “curmudgeonly,” she said. Holland recalled one fundraiser where Nix was one of the night’s biggest donors. She asked him to say something, and “in that New York accent,” he yelled out, “I don’t wanna say a goddamn word.” “He was his own little party going on,” she said. “He didn’t need to drink. He just had that fun attitude already.” Milo Hanke, 60, of San Francisco,

also recalled Nix’s mixed characteristics. He said he was “generous” but he also had a “delightful manner of complaining about things.” Hanke last saw Nix Saturday night at the FrontRunners dinner. They did a little “role reversal,” he said. “He was the one who was all sweetness and light trying to get me to stop complaining about something.” Steve Marshall, of San Francisco, who’s in his late 50s, called Nix, “funny,” “smart,” and “a loyal friend.” Marshall said Nix had been “with a partner for about five or six years, and let’s just say that since then, he had many devoted friends, some friends with benefits, and many admirers.” “We should all have those,” he said, laughing, and added, “he was beloved by more people than you can count. ... The world is a lesser place without him.”

Nix had been planning to visit his family this week in New York, including his 96-year-old mother, for Thanksgiving, D’Arata said. Plans now are for his body to be brought back for “a traditional Italian wake,” then cremate him and scatter his ashes in New York, San Francisco, and Cozumel, Mexico, where he liked to go diving, D’Arata said. A San Francisco memorial will probably be held in mid-December. A statement from the Golden Gate Business Association said that Nix had enjoyed helping LGBT small business owners, and had volunteered as a benefits counselor at Positive Resource Center, which works with people who are living with HIV/AIDS. The gay business group said it would “take a few minutes to remember Dennis” at its next Make Contact event Tuesday, December 8. For more information, visit http:// www.ggba.com.t

last week in San Francisco emphasized the importance of prompt hepatitis C treatment. Meanwhile, outside the conference at Moscone Center, activists with the San Francisco Hepatitis C Task Force, the Oasis Clinic in Oakland, and others held two protests calling on Gilead to lower drug prices and broaden its hepatitis C patient assistance program, as well as asking legislators to help improve treatment access. The high cost of the drugs and the large number of people living

with hepatitis C virus (HCV) – estimated at more than 3 million in the U.S. – has led many private insurers and public payers to restrict coverage by limiting treatment to people who already have advanced liver disease, requiring a period of abstinence from alcohol and drugs, or allowing only certain medical specialists to prescribe therapy. But guidelines from AASLD and the Infectious Diseases Society of America state that almost everyone with hepatitis C should be considered eligible for treatment.

“Unfortunately, many insurers – both private and public – are delaying access to new HCV treatments to patients until their disease has progressed and the liver is further damaged,” according to an AASLD statement released at the conference. “There is no medical evidence to justify that position and much to justify treating all patients.” “New direct-acting antivirals for hepatitis C will reduce hepatocellular carcinoma risk by treating patients before end-stage cirrhosis,” AASLD president Gyongyi Szabo

told reporters. “If we treat patients who already have cirrhosis, we can make the liver a little better, but the risk of liver cancer will remain.” On November 5 the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (known as CMS) issued a letter to state Medicaid program directors stating that they are expected to cover the new therapies without undue restrictions. CMS also sent letters to the pharmaceutical companies that make

Women are welcome in most of the Red House bars but the city’s lesbian bar, Taboo, is outside the Red House area. By the way, as is the pattern in most places, the smaller bars are busy early in the evening and the larger dance clubs are busy late at night. Nightclubs stay open until the wee hours of the morning. Taipei also has a number of gay saunas that also are busy in the early evening with the after-work crowd. The aforementioned Gin Gin bookstore and the nearby Love Boat shop are combination bookstores and gift shops selling LGBT-related items.

Accommodations

room for as little as $20. If you want to try a gay or gay-friendly homestay, visit MisterBnb. The site has listings for $20 for a room with a futon to more luxurious accommodations for three times that much. The Fleur de Chine is a good upscale option on Sun Moon Lake. It is near the temple and has sweeping views of the lake. It’s also one of the more expensive hotels in the area with rooms starting around $300, but you can find a budget hotel there for as little as $30. In Kenting, the Caesar Park Hotel features big rooms in a tropical resort setting, including a huge break-

fast buffet with rates that start about $150. You can find a budget hotel in the area for as little as $30.t

people come to help maintain the space, which is located in the eastern end of Golden Gate Park at the intersection of Bowling Green and Middle Drive East, across from the tennis courts. The funds also support the grove’s World AIDS Day observations and the Pedro Zamora Young Leaders Scholarship Program. Tickets, which as of last week were still available, start at $200 and include complimentary valet parking. Tuesday, the grove will host its 22nd annual World AIDS Day observance from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The program begins at noon and includes an invocation by Ryuko Laura Burges. During the observance, San Francisco’s leather community will be honored with the Thom Weyand Unsung Hero Award. Colleen Small, one of the community members who will be on hand at the event, said, “It’s an honor to have the leather community in general recognized for what we did. ... It’s good that the work that was done initially years ago in the middle of a crisis is being recognized now that many years have passed.” (Small, who’s also known as Queen Cougar, works in advertising and administration at the Bay Area Reporter.) Visit http://www.aidsmemorial. org for more information.

UCSF HIV Cure Summit

UCSF will host an HIV Cure Summit from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday. The free event will include an upDespite his achievements, Nix hadn’t gone to college. “That was always something that really bothered him,” D’Arata said, so for more than 10 years, beginning in 1983, he went to night school at San Francisco State and eventually got a bachelor’s in social sciences after taking “one class at a time.” The last time D’Arata saw Nix was Friday night. “I’m recuperating from a knee replacement,” D’Arata said, and Nix “insisted he was going to bring me dinner. ... He brought me my favorite pizza,” and they “bullshitted” the rest of the night, he said.

Other memories

Jan Brittenson

Dr. Steven Deeks, of UCSF, will speak at the HIV Cure Summit.

date from leading scientists on HIV cure research. Speakers will include Doctors Steven Deeks and Mike McCune, of UCSF. The UCSF AIDS Research Institute and the Foundation for AIDS Research, also known as amfAR, are sponsoring the event. Fashion designer Kenneth Cole, who chairs amfAR’s board, is also among those expected to speak. There will be a reception from 4 to 5:30. The event is at the Fisher Banquet Room, William J. Rutter Center, UCSF-Mission Bay, 1675 Owens Street. RSVPs are requested at http:// www.amfar.org/CureSummit2015/.

‘Testimony’ at Park Presidio United Methodist Church

If you want to live it up in style in Taipei, the five star Regent Taipei is one of the city’s finest. It is in the heart of downtown and a short 15-minute walk to the city’s popular gay sauna, Ainki Wow. The full service hotel has several restaurants, a rooftop pool, and basement gym. Rates start at a little under $200. The Hotel Quote Taipei is another great upscale option in the heart of downtown. Rates at that ultra modern boutique hotel start at a little over $200. If you are on a tight budget, the Cube Hostel offers a bed in a shared

Masks at Clinica Esperanza

San Francisco’s Mission Neighborhood Health Center and Clinica Esperanza, its HIV services clinic, will exhibit hand-crafted masks from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, December 3 at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission Street, in honor of World AIDS Day. The masks were created by clients, staff, and others as a way to express their experiences with HIV and their hopes for health. Along with the masks, there will also be a ceremony with a musical performance by Gale Sandoval, a Clinica staff member. The event is free, but donations will be accepted and the masks and other artwork may be purchased. Proceeds will help support this event in the future and the mission of the organization.

World AIDS Day gala in San Jose

In San Jose from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, the Health Trust will have a gala with dinner and entertainment. Proceeds will benefit the Health Trust AIDS Services. The gala will be at Silicon Valley Capital Club, 50 West San Fernando Street. Tickets start at $150. For more information, visit http://healthtrust.org.t

See page 18 >>

For more information, Taiwan’s official travel website is http:// www.go2taiwan.net. If you want to hire a tour guide as a solo traveler, couple, or group, former San Francisco and Los Angeles resident Peter Lee is a great choice. As a gay man, he can give you the inside scoop on the gay scene in the country as well as all the other stuff covered by the other professional tour guides. He can be reached through Facebook or by emailing peterleeusa@gmail.com.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

News Briefs

From page 15

Cable Car Caroling benefits aging institute

A popular holiday tradition will return to San Francisco Sunday, December 6 when the Institute on Aging presents its 31st annual Cable Car Caroling benefit. The fun starts at IOA’s offices, 3575 Geary Boulevard, and runs from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. This year’s theme is “From Generation to Generation.” Participants ride on motorized cable cars to bring holiday cheer to older adults and adults with disabilities in the community. Last year saw more than 350 people caroling to more than 700 seniors. Not only do seniors benefit from starting the season with the joy and holiday cheer brought by the carolers, but also the singers benefit in the connection they create with seniors. Organizers stated that singers meet on the day of the event, board the cable cars and, after caroling at each home, present seniors with a gift bag of hand selected goodies. People can help in several ways. They can purchase tickets and join in the event and after-party; they can sponsor a singer, those carolers who raise a minimum of $100 will be able to attend the event fee of charge; or they can make a tribute gift in honor to someone. Tickets are $60 for adults and $45 for seniors (65-plus) and students. For more information, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the31st-annual-cable-car-carolingfrom-generation-to-generationtickets-18207370736.

SJ police to hold women’s recruitment event

The San Jose Police Department will hold a Women in Law Enforcement career event Saturday, December 5 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 6087 Great Oaks Parkway in San Jose. This informational seminar will include meeting women police officers, learning how to prepare for testing, and understanding a background check. According to a news release, SJPD is hiring officers, 911 dispatch and call takers, and records and police data specialists. Check-in is from 8 to 9 a.m. To register, visit http://sjpdwomen. eventbrite.com. For questions, email sjpdrecruiting@sanjoseca.gov.t

Gilead

From page 17

these drugs – which include AbbVie, Johnson and Johnson, and Merck in addition to Gilead – asking about discount purchasing arrangements to ensure wider access. “[CMS] appreciates the work that manufacturers have done to bring new curative therapies to the market for our consumers, especially when such treatments address a major public health concern such as HCV,” the letter reads. “CMS is committed to ensuring that pharmaceutical treatments are available to Medicaid beneficiaries, when medically necessary. As the agency works with states on these matters, now and in the future, we cannot do that without addressing affordability concerns.” Hepatitis C advocates applauded the developments. “We are extremely gratified to see this strong guidance to state Medicaid programs regarding what NVHR considers highly discriminatory restrictions on access to hepatitis C curative therapy,” said Ryan Clary of the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable. “Some of the most egregious restrictions are directly counter to expert medical guidance on treating hepatitis C ... it is vital that the treatment of people with active substance use disorders be informed by evidence, not stigma or conjecture.”t

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551567

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: 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.

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

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

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: 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.

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

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 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR 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 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036762500

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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-15-551682

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.

In the matter of the application of: JOERI NICOLAAS MARIA ELISABETH MICHIELSEN, 302 EUREKA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JOERI NICOLAAS MARIA ELISABETH MICHIELSEN, is requesting that the name JOERI NICOLAAS MARIA ELISABETH MICHIELSEN, be changed to YURI MICHIELSEN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 19th 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

NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036744600

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036774800

The

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

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 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.

NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036774000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POPSONS, 998 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed B & M BURGER LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/12/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/12/15.

NOV 19, 26, DEC 03, 10, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036787300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TC CONSTRUCTION, 414 DETROIT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JUAN CARRENO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/04/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/18/15.

NOV 26, DEC 03, 10, 17, 2015

Classified Order Form

Deadline: NOON on MONDAY. Payment must accompany ad. No ads taken over the telephone. If you have a question, call 415.861.5019. Display advertising rates available upon request. Indicate Type Style Here

XBOLD and BOLD stop here

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 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036766900

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.

NOV 12, 19, 26, DEC 03, 2015

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Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036788500

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036797300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LANE, 11 MAIDEN LN, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a joint venture, and is signed RICHARD MA & URI ROGERS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/20/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/20/15.

NOV 26, DEC 03, 10, 17, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036791200

NOV 26, DEC 03, 10, 17, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036800100

NOV 26, DEC 03, 10, 17, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT NOTICE TO PROPOSERS GENERAL INFORMATION

The SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT (“District”), 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, California, is advertising for proposals to provide BROKER AND ON-CALL CONSULTING SERVICES FOR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS, Request for Proposals (RFP) No. 6M4425, on or about November 23, 2015, with proposals due by 2:00 PM local time, Tuesday, January 26, 2016, at the District Secretary’s Office, 23rd Floor, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, California, 94612 (mailing address: P.O. Box 12688, Oakland, California, 94604-2688). The Proposers are responsible to ensure that their Proposals are received at the time and location specified.

DESCRIPTION OF SERVICES TO BE PROVIDED

The District is soliciting for the professional services of a consulting firm or joint venture (hereinafter referred to as “Consultant”) to provide Broker Services to support BART’s Human Resources Benefits Department. Broker services will assist the District by providing expertise on matters such as health benefits administration, retirement and retirement medical, mitigation of damages, Federal, State and Local legislation, as well as provide assistance during the collective labor bargaining process. The Broker Consultant will be required to assist the District on other assigned tasks to support the District in its mission of providing comprehensive, high quality, and cost effective benefit plans and programs that provide optimum value to the District, its employees, and its retirees. The Consultant is responsible to provide a service team to be available for interactions with members of the BART Board, executives and senior management, human resources, and financial/ budgeting staff in a timely and responsive manner. Proposers should note that this Agreement is subject to the District’s Small Business Program that includes a preference of five percent (5%) of the lowest responsible Proposer’s price, up to a maximum of $250,000, for a certified Small Business Prime Consultant submitting a Proposal on this Agreement. Estimated Cost and Time of Performance : The District intends to make one (1) Agreement award as a result of this RFP. The District intends to enter into a five-year (5) agreement with the Consultant, with the option to extend the Agreement, for two (2) additional one (1)-year periods at the District’s discretion. The District estimates the total value of the proposed base five (5) year Agreement, and the additional two (2) one (1) year options – for a combined total of seven (7) years - to be in the approximate range of two million dollars ($2,000,000) to three million– one hundred thousand dollars ($3,100,000.).

Classifieds The

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PETIT BAZAAR AND BASH; PETIT BAZAAR & BASH, 237 KEARNY ST #9050, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALISON NEW. 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 11/18/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KL CAP; KL CAPITAL PARTNERS, 480 2ND ST #303, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed KL CAPITAL PARTNERS, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/02/09. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/19/15.

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Movers>>

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

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(Available on or after November 23, 2015) Prospective Proposers who are not currently registered on the BART Procurement Portal to do business with BART are required to register on the BART Procurement Portal on line at https://suppliers. bart.gov in order to obtain Solicitation Documents, updates, and any Addenda issued on-line and be added to the On-Line Planholders List for this solicitation. If a Prospective Proposer is a partnership or joint venture, such entity must register on the BART Procurement Portal with the entity’s Tax Identification Number (TIN) and download the Solicitation Documents so as to be listed as an OnLine Planholder under the entity’s name, in order for the entity to be eligible for award of this Agreement. 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 Wednesday, December 16, 2015. The PreProposal Meeting will convene promptly at 1:30 P.M., local time at the District’s Offices, at Conference Room 1700, 17th Floor at 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, California. At the Pre-Proposal Meeting the District’s Non- Discrimination and Small Business Programs will be explained. All questions regarding these programs should be directed to Cindy Chan, Office of Civil Rights at (510) 464-6574. Prospective proposers are requested to make every effort to attend this only scheduled Pre-Proposal Meeting, and to confirm their attendance by contacting the District’s Contract Administrator, Ron Coffey, telephone (510) 2874775, email at rcoffey@bart.gov , prior to the date of the Pre-Proposal Meeting. Proposals must be received by 2:00 P.M., local time, Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at the address listed in the RFP. Submission of a proposal shall constitute a firm offer to the District for one hundred and eighty (180) calendar days from date of proposal submission. Dated at Oakland, California this 19th day of November 2015. /s/ Jacqueline R. Edwards Kenneth A. Duron, District Secretary San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District 11/26/15 CNS-2818834# BAY AREA REPORTER

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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.

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amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and UCSFAIDS Research Institute invite you to the

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Monster mash

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Out &About

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O&A

Vol. 45 • No. 48 • November 26-December 2, 2015

www.ebar.com/arts

Master singers

The multi-talented actor and cabaret performer Jason Graae has the title role in Scrooge in Love!, a worldpremiere musical being presented by 42nd Street Moon.

Spirit of Ebenezer by Richard Dodds

Tenor Brandon Jovanovich as Walther von Stolzing in San Francisco Opera’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

he singer, actor, and overall funnyman Jason Graae has a dense resume that ranges from Broadway to opera, nightclubs to concert halls, television to cruise ships, and theater to CDs. “I’m on the road a lot to afford my fabulous life in Los Angeles,” he said. “I don’t see it much, but I hear it’s great.” His house is under the “HO” in the Hollywood sign, and “you can take that anyway you like.” See page 30 >>

by Philip Campbell

ichard Wagner’s nostalgic meditation on art and human relationships, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is his only comedy and also one of San Francisco Opera

David Allen

General Director David Gockley’s Top 10 favorites. Fittingly, the local premiere of Sir David McVicar’s thoughtfully subtle Glyndebourne 2011 staging, which opened last week at the War Memorial Opera House, features in the American impresario’s 10th and final season. See page 29 >> Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

How (Not) To Be a Man by Erin Blackwell

ennifer Siebel Newsom is the second wife of our very own ex-Mayor Gavin Newsom, a tall, handsome man with a gorgeous head of black hair who once stood back-to-back with me so we could determine just how much taller he was. About two inches. Gavin impressed me with his beauty and playfulness, as someone who wears his masculinity gracefully. Perhaps Jennifer thinks so, too. They married in 2008 and have three kids aged six, four, and two, with another on the way. That would be plenty for some women, but she has aspirations beyond the Mad Men model of wife and mother. Her second documentary, The Mask You Live In, is being screened at the Castro Theatre on Dec. 2 at 8 p.m. The screening will include a Q&A with Newsom by Joy Venturini Bianchi; and special guest Gavin Newsom; hosted by Mark Rhoades and sponsored by AT&T. See page 28 >>

Jennifer Siebel Newsom films her second documentary, The Mask You Live In.

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

Courtesy the subject

<< Out There

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

Lesbian love in midcentury NYC by Roberto Friedman

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esbian crime novelist Patricia Highsmith’s chilly, psychologically complex works have long appealed to filmmakers. Her Tom Ripley novels have inspired such different directors Wim Wenders and Anthony Minghella, while Strangers on a Train went right to the genius of Alfred Hitchcock. But only now has her single lesbian love novel, The Price of Salt (1952), come to the big screen. Director Todd Haynes’ film adaptation Carol (written by Phyllis Nagy) opens this Friday in Bay Area moviehouses. Highsmith biographer Joan Schenkar (The Talented Miss Highsmith) shared some of the backstory in a New York Times piece last week. “She was writing a novel of lacerating self-exposure and lesbian love in an era with little tolerance for either,” writes Schenkar. So fearless in many facets of her life, Highsmith shrunk away from the gay-liberationist implications of her second novel. She was “so shamed by her subject that she published the novel under a pseudonym (Claire Morgan); dedicated it, with exquisite misdirection, to three people who didn’t exist (Edna, Jordy and Jeff); left the country before it went on sale; and refused to acknowledge her authorship for 40 years.” Here’s a plot synopsis from press materials, to whet the appetite: “Carol follows two women from different backgrounds who find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York. As conventional norms of the time challenge their undeniable attraction, an honest story emerges to reveal the resilience of the heart in the face of change. A young woman in her 20s, Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is a clerk working in a Manhattan department store and dreaming of a more fulfilling life when she meets Carol (Cate Blanchett), an alluring woman trapped in a loveless marriage. As an immediate connection sparks between them, the innocence of their first encounter dims and their connection deepens. While Carol breaks free from the confines of marriage, her husband (Kyle Chandler) begins to question her competence as a mother as her involvement with Therese and close relationship with her best friend

Cate Blanchett plays the title character, a lesbian in love, in director Todd Haynes’ Carol, based on a Patricia Highsmith novel.

Abby (Sarah Paulson) come to light.” Here’s Out There’s suggested tag-line, which we offer the distributor for free: “Like sands through the hourglass, these are the Days of Our Lesbian Lives.” Coming to the Embarcadero Cinemas and other Bay Area theaters.

Maddin dreams

So much is opening this week that appeals to OT’s moviegoing appetite. Again from promotional press materials: “The Forbidden Room is Guy Maddin’s ultimate epic phantasmagoria. Honoring classic cinema while electrocuting it with energy, this Russian nesting doll of a film begins (after a prologue on how to take a bath) with the crew of a doomed submarine chewing flapjacks in a desperate attempt to breathe the oxygen within. Suddenly, impossibly, a lost woodsman wanders into their company and tells his

tale of escaping from a fearsome clan of cave-dwellers. From here, Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson take us high into the air, around the world, and into dreamscapes, spinning tales of amnesia, captivity, deception and murder, skeleton women and vampire bananas. Playing like some glorious meeting between Italo Calvino, Sergei Eisenstein and a perverted six-year-old child, The Forbidden Room is Maddin’s grand ode to lost cinema. Created with the help of master poet John Ashbery, the film features Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adele Haenel, Amira Casar and Elina Lowensohn as a cavalcade of misfits, thieves and lovers, all joined in the joyful delirium of the kaleidoscopic viewing experience.” Plays Fri., Nov. 27-Thurs., Dec. 3, at the Roxie Theatre in SF. On Sat., Nov. 28, Maddin will appear via Skype in conversation with Roxie executive director Dave Cowen. The exact time is TBA.t

Courtesy Kino Lorber

Udo Kier in a scene from co-directors Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s The Forbidden Room.

Adventures in nude travel by Ernie Alderete

’ve been to expensive nudist resorts in Jamaica and the Virgin Islands. There’s a completely nudist fully functioning city on the Mediterranean coast of France. When I attended Gay Ski Week in Whistler, British Columbia, several very attractive male skiers took to the slopes butt-ass naked! Maybe they had drunk one Molson’s brew too many. The temperature was about zero degrees, and I was bundled up beneath so many thermal layers that I looked like an animated sleeping bag. The current trend is getting naked in famous historic or natural places, like the lost Inca Citadel of Machu Picchu high in the Andes of Peru, the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or the rim of the Grand Canyon here at home. Something like the fleeting fad of streaking in the last century has been

Recreational nudity abounds in all temperatures.

taken to another level, facilitated by the universal availability of the cellphone camera. Local authorities, particularly in Muslim countries like Malaysia, are not amused! I can understand their negative reaction. Rich white Christian tourists come to their countries and disregard their laws, religion, and ancient customs.

Tourists are more likely to let loose, including baring all, away from home where no one knows them. Most of the tourists arrested overseas for public nudism have been Canadian, Aussie, and Kiwi. So what gives, America? Time to step up and show the world our bodies are just as good or better than those guys.t

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tis the Season for Science November 25 through January 3 The reindeer are back! Meet our Arctic friends and learn how they adapt to extreme conditions in this one-of-a-kind interactive experience. Plus, enjoy indoor snow flurries, music and other festivities at our annual holiday exhibit. Get tickets at calacademy.org

<< Theatre

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

Equestrian enticements by Richard Dodds

nyone with an addiction to beauty might consider getting a fix from the gang of horse-pushers on the waterfront. This gorgeous high comes courtesy of Odysseo, a followup spectacle to Cavalia, which twice before has pitched its enormous tent near AT&T Park. The new show successfully outdoes its predecessor in terms of equine and human derringdo, as well as sheer visual spectacle, with a Cinerama-style curved screen providing epic backdrops in a def so high that it’s hard to know where the screen ends and the contoured earthen stage begins. After some oohing and aahing as a single horse wanders onto the stage, soon to be followed by other seemingly unguided horses in one of the show’s “Liberty” segments, the riders and handlers arrive to create scene after scene of stunning imagery. Then, at one point in the first act, seemingly bursting from the huge screen, a phalanx of horses with riders in Cossack-style costumes comes descending down the hill (the company travels with 10,000 tons of its own dirt) that abuts the big screen upstage. This is the first of the numerous big-gasp moments that will follow.

A full-sized carousel may descend from the rafters, horses can arrive on stage at full gallop thanks to unseen runways on either side of the stage, riders in white silks arise like angels from the backs of horses into the air, and a lake forms on what had been the performing grounds through which the horses now exuberantly splash. What’s perhaps most magical is the seeming complicity of the horses in performing in alliance with each other and their human counterparts, who may or may not be directly at the reins. When a wayward horse in a riderless routine decided to leave the formation with some defiant shakes of his head, all eyes were of course on him rather than his behaving brethren. One of the performers quietly listened to his complaints, and after a few soft words, the horse agreed to rejoin the performance. This, of course, is from the human point of view, the notion of that bond between species that we can only hope is true. Press material for Odysseo promises a pampered offstage life for the horses, including free-range recreation and massages, and training methods “designed to ensure that the horses enjoy training and performing.” There are 65 horses, all male, in the

Color-ish Company

Cavalia’s Odysseo, a big-top spectacle that travels with 45 performers and 65 horses, is now performing in its big-top tent near AT&T Park.

company, and the program provides a name, breed, age, nationality, and specialty for each. Some are known by such basic names as Bud, Chief, Rocky, and Gus, but my favorites include Embaixador, Nezma, Furioso, and E-Vogue. On any given night, not all of the 65 will perform, with the moods of the horses taken into account before show time. Those who are performing get occasional breathers as acrobats take to the stage to showcase their distinct talents.

A troupe from Guinea in Africa specializes in backflips at ridiculous speeds, there are aerialists on furiously spinning hoops, and performers in spring-loaded appendages known as urban stilts that let them jump over the same hurdles as the horses. Many of the performers, unfortunately, tend to solicit applause, which puts a small damper on what would be forthcoming anyway, though perhaps diminishing as the same maneuvers are often repeated

in what can begin to feel like filler. A live band and a female singer perform new-age songs in a language sounding something like Esperanto by Enya. It’s in the Cirque du Soleil tradition, and there are other parallels to that institution since Cavalia’s founder and artistic director Normand Latourelle was a co-creator of Cirque du Soleil. But the Cavalia shows are less avant-gauzy than those from Cirque and don’t even pretend to have a story that is usually impossible to decipher at any rate. Ironically, perhaps, the most crowd-pleasing moments are those with the stunt patina of a Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, as saddled riders maneuver themselves over, under, and around the horses as they gallop across the stage. But unlike Buffalo Bill’s show, which recreated the slaughter of Custer’s Last Stand, Odysseo draws the audience into chanting “O walu guere moufan” before revealing that the indigenous Guinean words mean “No more war on Earth.” From the horses’ lips to God’s ears.t Odysseo will run under the big top near AT&T Park through Jan. 10. Tickets are $44.50-$289.50. Call (866) 999-8111or go to www. cavalia.net.

Brutalist force by Richard Dodds

hey did the mash. They did the monster mash. Or more accurately, the monster mash-up. In The Monster-Builder, Amy Freed’s play at the Aurora Theatre, you may detect influences from Ibsen to Dracula, Mel Brooks to Albert Speer, Marx Brothers to The Phantom of the Opera, and Faust to Frankenstein. It depends upon which minute of the play you’re watching. For most of those minutes, this theatrical hydra provides a heady stream of entertainment, losing its way only after Danny Scheie’s character has been dispatched near the end. Scheie plays a world-renowned architect with a brutalist vision that is both alarming and hilarious. Highbrows, at least those who don’t have to actually occupy his edifices, adore his work. His design for an Alzheimer’s facility included a maze that patients must navigate to get back to their rooms, and he is presently at work on his masterpiece: the Abu Dhabi Tower of Justice and Interrogation. Gregor Zubrowski lives in a tro-

David Allen

A young architect played by Tracy Hazas battles with a superstar architect played by Danny Scheie in The Monster-Builder at Aurora Theatre.

phy house filled with sharp angles that defies visitors to find a place to sit. His current trophy companion (a humorously spacey Sierra Jolene) invites a college friend (an appealing Tracy Hazas) and her husband (a testy Thomas Gorrebeeck), aspiring ar-

chitects themselves, to meet the great Zubrowski. With authoritarian graciousness, he regales his guests with his impossibly opaque theories on architecture designed to “stand between people and their preferences.” He’s amused by young architect Di-

eter’s socially conscious jabs, and he’s taken with Dieter’s comely spouse and design partner Rita in ways that go beyond convivial shoptalk. Matters have only a suggestion of the ominous, and before they become more so, there is a diversion into another style of comedy – perhaps it’s a taste of Christopher Durang – as Dieter and Rita try to land a remodeling job with a moneyed socialite (a merrily flaky Nancy Carlin) and her rags-to-riches husband (a gruffly comic Rod Gnapp). The idealistic designers need the job, but also want to apply their talents toward the civic good. They think they have found this project in restoring an old boathouse into a kind of community center, and all is going swimmingly until Gregor jealously snatches the project away. As the play progresses, Gregor’s evil core increasingly reveals itself and draws Rita under his spell. There then come some slapstick, inside-y architect jokes, murder, zany banter, and increasing suggestions that Gregor is not only a fascist but also one who had face time the Fuehrer himself. While Freed’s

stylistic zigs and zags are usually humorous within themselves, and Art Manke’s direction is in tune with that, Scheie’s performance provides the needed glue. As Gregor, Scheie channels his outlandish comic instincts into a more tightly wound container. But absurdity can only be held at bay to a point, as the playwright and the performer gleefully lessen the restraints. But there needs to be a payoff if shackles on even a quasi-reality are loosened, and here the play begins its stumble to the final curtain. A supernatural buildup fizzles with a weak reveal, and the purpose of a champagne-and-confetti last scene is unclear and certainly sends a mixed message of seemingly inadvertent ambiguity. As in, if there are any good guys, which ones are they? It seems to be a celebration of mediocrity and bad taste, which might be ironic, if the alternative weren’t a sadistic Nazi vampire.t The Monster-Builder will run at Aurora Theatre through Dec. 13. Tickets are $32-$50. Call (510) 8434822 or go the auroratheatre.org.

World AIDS Day special by David-Elijah Nahmod

he most startling revelation in HBO’s Countdown to Zero is an interview with former President George W. Bush, who recalls his commitment to fighting AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. President Bush raised the ire of millions during his administration when he ignored warnings about 9/11, pursued a war against Iraq, and publicly opposed marriage equality. But facts are facts. Pres. Bush also committed billions to researchers who were fighting the spread of HIV in countries like Rwanda, ultimately helping to stop the transition of HIV from mother to child in that country. Countdown to Zero is a special episode of Vice, HBO’s Emmy-winning newsmagazine. Co-produced by Bill Maher and Shane Smith of Vice magazine, Vice presents in-depth, no-holds-barred looks at a variety of topics. CNN correspondent Fareed

Zakaria serves as a consultant. HBO describes Countdown to Zero as a Vice “special report” that will premiere on World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, at 9 p.m. The episode will air in rotation throughout December, and will be available on demand on Dec. 16. Countdown to Zero opens with a collage of 1980s news clips that recall the horror and tragedy of the AIDS epidemic’s early days. We see emaciated gay men in their 20s and 30s, some of whom look like they could be in their 80s. Several are covered in Kaposi Sarcoma lesions, a rare skin cancer that led many early AIDS sufferers to a painful and horrifying death. We also see enraged activists demanding that critical, life-saving medications be made available. Older viewers might recognize the late author/gay film historian/AIDS activist Vito Russo (1946-90), who is sometimes unjustly forgotten by AIDS historians. Countdown to Zero is divided into

Courtesy HBO

Scene from HBO’s Vice: Countdown to Zero.

a series of segments that illustrate how doctors and researchers have fought – and continue to fight – to make HIV become the manageable illness it now is, and not the death

sentence it once was. They keep their eye on the prize: a permanent cure. Visits to AIDS-ravaged countries like South Africa and Rwanda are included. There’s also a segment

shot in the Castro, which was once the disease’s epicenter. Doctors at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle speak on-camera of the work they do and the amazing strides they’ve made, though they acknowledge that the battle isn’t over. Viewers will also meet Palm Springs resident Timothy Ray Brown, the first person to be considered officially cured of AIDS. The treatments Brown received are discussed. It’s hoped that what was done for Brown can be replicated in others. The importance of PrEP, a daily HIV-prevention pill, is also discussed. As Countdown to Zero shows, we’ve come a long way since July 3, 1981, when a New York Times headline proclaimed “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” It’s now possible to live with HIV. Will we see a permanent cure during our lifetimes? The scientists who appear in Countdown to Zero are hopeful.t

Music>>

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Igor Levit’s keyboard wizardry by Tim Pfaff

on’t think you’re just going to listen, passively, to Igor Levit’s new Sony CD set. If you know and care about the three sets of variations he plays – Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Frederic Rzewski’s 36 Variations on “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” – Levit will challenge half the ideas you have held about them, and do it with such confidence that you won’t just sit up and listen, you’ll sit up and think. The 28-year-old pianist takes everyone, surely including himself, so far out of any comfort zone with these high-water marks of the keyboard repertoire that you may think that the pieces themselves – or even his new recordings of them – have changed since your last hearing of them. It’s keyboard wizardry of the most elevated kind: not sleight of hand, and not remotely provisional; it’s pencil-crafted ideas rendered in India ink. Studio playing is rarely this live, musical thought even more rarely this assured yet improvisatory. The untrammeled concentration of Levit’s playing is precisely not transfixing. So deep is he into the

soul of the music that not a gram of its body, nor a single note or gesture escapes his attention, and thereby keeps the listener’s. You get the transport you want from this music, but none of it is glassy-eyed; as a listener you may not always know what’s happening to you, but you won’t be woolgathering. The mastery of his two previous recordings, of late Beethoven sonatas and the Bach partitas, made this third venture into the studio with as monumental a mission as this program somehow less preposterous. We who trawl the Internet for broadcasts of live Levit can affirm that playing of this assurance and authority is his norm, and not the alchemy of the engineers. It’s as if he doesn’t see the point of a wrong note, or a lapse of concentration. Connection of composer and listener at this pitch is equal parts muscle and madness, mediated by a mind of the finest quality. It’s an event when a pianist of any age and pedigree releases a recording of Bach’s Goldbergs, yet the critics who have weighed in so far have barely commented on them. Perhaps that’s because they are a kind of 4G Bach, if first generation was mid-20th-century “romanticism,” second was compensatory,

later-century “authenticity,” and third was the fusion of the two, perhaps best heard in the playing of Levit’s idol, Andras Schiff. With Levit, you aren’t even out of the Aria, its rhythmic freedom so supreme it can initially sound like displacement, before you know you’re in new territory: say, a genome, and its expression, its map. In my experience, only Yuja Wang can play this fast and maintain clarity, yet Levit, whose playing is not uniformly fleet, but not without urgency at any tempo, does her one better. The whitelight presto of the hand-overhand fifth variation is not a flurry of notes, the ornament-like flash of the 32nd notes notwithstanding. Rather, like the glistening avalanche of Variation 29, it’s an equation written on our side of the articulation of relativity theory. Contrastingly, the eight-minute (here) 25th variation has rarely been played less moodily, or with deeper penetration. The barely hidden joy of Bach’s revelry in counterpoint has rarely been spelled out in this spectrum of colors. The intricacy of ideas, piled atop and enmeshed

within one another, here finds its cognate in sound. The mysterious, sublime, late Diabelli Variations, now as rarely heard live as the late quartets, have amassed a reputation as quasi-mystical and, like the quartets, at the edge of what’s playable. But the air isn’t thin in Levit’s hurtling course through the composer’s magnifications and compressions of Diabelli’s “naive” (Levit’s word) competition waltz, and he reminds us that Beethoven, however physically deaf at the end of his life, first came to fame as a sorcerer of the keyboard.

My notes on the tracks devolved into a series of exclamation marks. Over the span of these variations Levit sounds out the mischievously Mozartian, the sublimely Schubertian, the singularly Beethovenian and the premonitorily, clamorously Bartokian. Pre-echoes, you could say, of the Rzewski. It could be accidental that this most gifted of young pianists is also the most openly, explicitly, courageously political. But it’s not. Follow him on Twitter and you hope the neo-Nazis are not doing the same. Rzewski has written new music for Levit, but it’s unlikely that any piece will prove more identified with him than the overtly political 36 Variations on “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.” I was in the student generation that actually sang the Chilean song at protest demonstrations, and I’ve had the fortune of hearing both Rzewski and Ursula Oppens play the hour-long work, an extended meditation on it, live, and so can confirm that Levit’s inclusion of it with the Bach and Beethoven is not a case of special pleading. Paradoxically, Levit’s People UnitSee page 28 >>

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<< Out&About

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

O&A

Thu 26 Holiday Ice Rink @ Union Square

Vacationary by Jim Provenzano

eekends off lead to lax living. Get out and see inspiring arts events. It burns calories!

Thu 26 10 Percent @ Comcast David Perry’s online & cable interviews with notable local and visiting LGBT people, broadcast through the week. Check for times on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ pages/10-Percent/66629477326 www.ComcastHometown.com

Holiday Ice Rink @ Union Square Enjoy skating, hot drinks and fun in the downtown center of holiday shopping. $7-$11. Skate rental $6. Macy’s Tree-Lighting ceremony Nov. 27, 6pm. Thru Jan. 14. Various times, 10am-11pm. 333 Post St. www.unionsquareicerink.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

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

Fri 27 Al Stewart @ City Winery, Napa The veteran folk singer-songwriter performs at the scenic winery. $67. 8pm. 1030 Main St., Napa. www.citywinery.com/napa

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.). 4214222. beachblanketbabylon.com

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 Jan 10. (866) 999-8111. Embarcadero at AT&T Park. cavalia.net

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

Foodies, the Musical @ Shelton Theater Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue of songs and sketches about food. $32-$34. Fri & Sat 8pm. Open run. 533 Sutter St. (800) 838-3006. www.foodiesthemusical.com

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

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. www.nctcsf.org

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

The Monster-Builder @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Bay Area premiere of Amy Freed’s dark drama about post-modern mega-architect Gregor Zubrowski, and design theft. $3-$50. Tue 7pm, Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Extended thru Dec. 13. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Nov. 27-29: Sing-Along The Sound of Music, hosted by Laurie Bushman and Sara Moore (1pm 7pm) Also Dec. 3, 4 & 6. Nov. 30: Win Wenders’ Portraits Along the Road (1:30, 7pm). Dec. 2: The Mask You Live In special premiere screening $10, 7pm. $11-$16. $10$15. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Scrooge in Love @ Eureka Theatre Jason Graae stars in 42nd Street Moon Theatre company’s restaging of the almost-forgotten musical comedy loosely based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. $25-$75. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri 8pm, Sat 6pm. Sun 3pm. Thru Dec. 13. 215 Eureka St. 255-8207. www.42ndstmoon.org

Fri 27 The Ten Tenors @ The Marin Center

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

The Ten Tenors @ The Marin Center The vocal group of ten tenors perform their Home for the Holidays concert. $30-$75. 8pm. 10 Ave. of the Flags, San Rafael. 473-6400. www.marincenter.org

SF Hiking Club @ Pomo Canyon Join GLBT hikers for a 6-mile hike, starting from the Shell Beach cove near the mouth of the Russian River. We ascend the Pomo Canyon Trail through the lush redwood forest flanking the south banks of the Russian River; return to Shell Beach to enjoy again its jagged seascape. Bring lunch, water, hat, sunscreen, layers. Carpool meets 8:45 at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. (530)330-5524. www.sfhiking.com

Sun 29 Abrazo, Queer Tango @ Finnish Brotherhood Hall, Berkeley

Thu 3

Enjoy weekly same-sex tango dancing and a potluck, with lessons early in the day. $7-$15. 3:30-6:30pm. 1970 Chestnut St., Berkeley. (510) 8455352. www.finnishhall.com

RawDance @ Joe Goode Annex Kegan Marling

Make this holiday seaso

Sat 28 Bright Half Life @ Rueff Room, Strand Theatre Tanya Barfield’s drama about two women whose lives together are interrupted, then brought together through time. Previews; opens Nov. 20. $35-$75. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2:30pm. Thru Dec. 6. 1127 Market St. 441-8822. www.magictheatre.com

Special guest star

Anna Trebunsk & Dmitry Chap

as seen on Dancing With The S

Bums, Broads and Broadway @ Z Below Word for Word theatre company’s Holiday High Jinx shows of dramatised stage readings of classic short stories, this time works by Damon Runyan, Joseph Mitchell and E.B. White. $20-$55. Thru Dec. 24. 470 Florida St. www.zspace.org

Crank @ Southern Exposure The annual juried exhibition of works by several Northern California artists in different media. Thru Dec. 19. 3030 20th St. 863-2141. www.soex.org

Date Night at Pet Emergency @ The Marsh Berkeley Lisa Rothman’s comic solo show about domestic hell, pet panic and trying to find a date night amid it all. $20-$100. Saturdays, 5pm. Thru Dec. 5. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. www. themarsh.org

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying @ Marines’ Memorial Theatre Frank Loesser’s lighthearted 1960s comic musical about climbing the corporate ladder gets restaged by Bay Area Musicals, the new local theatre company. $20-$60. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm. Thru Dec. 19. 609 Sutter St. 3402207. www.bamsf.org

ANNA - #1 on list of "Top 10 Hottest Dancing With The Stars Female Pros - past and present" or "Top DMITRY - Emmy nominated for Argentine Tango choreography on "So You Think You Can Dance" “A show that you will never want to end” —Marin Independent Journal "Gloriously varied, stunningly performed and beguilingly sexy: Forever Tango must be seen" —The London Times "The most magniﬁcent, romantic, exciting evening you can ever spend" —KGO Radio “An evening of Sheer Pleasure! Sensual, Elegant and Dazzling! —NY Daily News Take a SELFIE WITH THE STARS: VIP tickets include preferred seating, post show meet & greet and Forever Tango CD.

415-392-4400 • cityboxoffice.com • forevertango

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

Wilde Chats @ Sweet Inspirations Community Initiative’s weekly informal discussion group at the dessert shop. 10:30am-12pm. 2239 Market St. 621-8664. www.sweetinspirationbakery.com

Dec 20–Jan 1

Disney & Dali @ Walt Disney Family Museum New exhibit documenting the unlikely collaborations between Salvador Dali, the Surrealist artist and Walt Disney, the cartoon icon; curated by Ted Nicolaou. Thru Jan. 3. Also, Tomorrowland and other exhibits. 104 Montgomery St, The Presidio. 345-6800. waltdisney.org

Garden Railway @ Conservatory of Flowers New exhibit of floral displays inspired by the centennial anniversary of the 1915 Pan-Pacific World’s Expo, with SF scenes in miniature train and architectural installations with hundreds of dwarf plants. Thru April 10. Tue-Sun 10am-4pm. $2-$8. Free for SF residents. 100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park, 8312090. www.conservatoryofflowers.org

House of Floyd @ Yoshi’s Oakland The Pink Floyd tribute band performs rock classics at the stylish nightclub/restaurant. $26. 8pm. 510 Embarcadero, Oakland. (510) 2389200. www.yoshis.com

Jewel City @ de Young Museum Jewel City: Art from San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition ; thru Jan. 10. Also, Portals of the Past: Photographs of Willard Worden (thru Feb. 14); Royal Hawaiian Featherwork (thru Feb. 28); Between Life and Death: Robert Motherwell’s Elegies (thru Mar. 6). Other exhibits of modern art as well. Free/$25. Thru Sept. 20 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.famsf.org

Looking East @ Asian Art Museum Looking East: How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gosh, and Other Western Artists. Thru Feb. 7. Free (members, kids 12 and under)-$15. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. www.asianart.org

Maryanna Hoggatt @ Modern Eden Gallery The artist’s exhibit of quirky animal sculptures and paintings. Thru Dec. 5. 801 Greenwich St. www.moderneden.com

Out&About>>

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Mother’s Milk @ The Marsh Berkeley

Color of Life @ California Academy of Sciences

Literary Speakeasy @ Martuni’s

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. themarsh.org

Exhibits and planetarium shows with various live, interactive and installed exhibits about animals, plants and the earth; special events each week, with adult nightlife parties many Thursday nights. $20-$35. Mon-Sat 9:30am5pm. Sun 11am-5pm. 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

James J. Siegel MCs the reading series at the martini bar’s lounge, with poets Matthew Siegel, Liz Green, Roberto F. Santiago and MK Chavez. 7pm. 4 Valencia St.

Office Space @ YBCA A group exhibit of compelling visual art that visualizes 21st-century labor practices. Also, Won Ju Lim: Raycraft is Dead. Thru Feb. 14. Earth Machines : Exploring the environmental impact of our high-tech world; both thru Dec. 6. $5-$12. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

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

Donna Sachet’s Songs of the Season @ Beatbox The 23rd annual holiday concert includes our own On the Town columnist, plus performances by Sharon McNight, Abigail, Brian Kent, Dan O’Leary, Brenda Reed, and Vicki Shepard. Proceeds benefit AIDS Emergency Fund. $60 and up. 8pm. Also Dec. 1 & 2. 314 11th St. www.donnasachet.com www.beatboxsf.com songsoftheseason15.eventbrite.com

on sizzle!

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 magnetsf.org

NEAT @ Contemporary Jewish Museum You Know I’m No Good, NEAT: New Experiments in Art and Technology, Chasing Justice (thru Feb 21) , and Hardly Strictly Warren Hellman. Lectures and gallery talks as well. Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. thecjm.org

Tue 1 Figures and Interiors @ John Pence Gallery Group exhibit of gorgeous realist and modern impressionist paintings. MonFri 10am-6pm. Sat 10am-5pm. Thru Dec. 19. 750 Post St. 441-1138. www.johnpence.com

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder @ Golden Gate Theatre

kaya plin

The touring company of the Tony Award-winning musical comedy about the conniving heir to a family fortune. $45-$212. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat, Sun 2pm. Thru Dec. 27. 1 Taylor St. at Market. 551-2050. www.shnsf.com

Stars

Fr 27

The Kid Thing @ NCTC Lois Tema

Temporal Cities @ Tenderloin Museum

Sonja Thomsen @ RayKo Photo Center

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

Exhibit of abstract and figurative photos and installations. Thru Dec. 4. 428 3rd St. www.raykophoto.com

Wed 2 Alison Saar @ MOAD New exhibit, Bearing, the acclaimed artist’s sculptures of Black women as a centerpiece. Free-$10. Thru April 3. Museum of the African Diaspora, 635 Mission St. www.moadsf.org

Daily and Transcendent @ SF Public Library Dual exhibit of LGBT-themed photos by veteran photographers Jane Philomen Cleland and Rick Gerharter. Panel with the photographers, plus Cathy Cade, Tim Kingston and moderator Liz Highleyman, Dec 2, 6pm. Jewett Gallery, lower level. 100 Larkin St. Thru Jan. 3. www.sfpl.org

Group exhibit of works in various media depicting nature. Thru Jan. 30. 149 Gough St. 549-7046. www.julesmaeghtgallery.com

Panama Pacific @ Harvey Milk Photo Center

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

10 • HERBST THEATRE

Student & Faculty Concerts @ SF Conservatory of Music Frequent concerts in several forms (instrumental, vocal) by accomplished students and faculty. Free-$18. 50 Oak St. 503-6322. www.sfcm.edu

o.org • Groups 8 + save 25% call 844-4gotango Pacific Worlds @ Oakland Museum New exhibit focuses on the contemporary lives of and historic cultures of Pacific Islanders and California; thru Jan. 3. Also, Rituals + Remembrance, a Day of the Dead series of installations and performances, thru Jan. 3; and YoYos & Half Squares: Contemporary California Quilts (five women artists), thru Feb 21. Free/$15. Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Mon 30 Carl Linkhart @ Glama-Rama Salon The Vault of Broken Dreams, an exhibit of creative unusual paintings from the artist also known as Carl With Records, an early Angel of Light and Sister of Perpetual Indulgence. On view thru Jan. 3. 304 Valencia St. 8614526. www.glamarama.com

Victoria Theodore @ Yoshi’s Oakland

Julissa Rodriguez @ Qulture Collective, Oakland Pigment : A Redefinition of Beauty, an exhibit of the artist’s works, at the new multi-use café, gallery, workspace and community center . Reg. hours Mon-Fri 8am-4pm. 1714 Franklin St., Oakland www.qulturecollective.com

Fri 27

The classically trained singer-pianist (who’s toured with Stevie Wonder) performs jazz classics and standards at the release party for her new album, Grateful. $20. 8pm. 510 Embarcadero, Oakland. (510) 2389200. www.yoshis.com

Sing-Along The Sound of Music; see New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre

California Honeydrops @ The New Parish, Freight & Salvage The charming New Orleans-style soul-funk band performs two East Bay shows. $20-$25. 9pm. 1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. thenewparish.com Dec. 4, at F&S, $20-$25. 8pm. 2020 Addison St. www.freightandsalvage.org www.cahoneydrops.com

Dining Out for Life @ Sonoma Restuarants 80-plus restaurants in scenic Sonoma participate in the fundraiser where a percentage of your bill goes to local HIV/AIDS charities, including Food for Thought, Sonoma’s food bank. List online at: www.FFTfoodbank.org

Gay Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels

Into the Woods @ Jules Maeght Gallery

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. www.harveymilkphotocenter.org

Thu 3

Sun 29 Wayne Harris’ Mother’s Milk @ The Marsh Berkeley

The Mask You Live In @ Castro Theatre Screening of the new documentary that asks if ideas of masculinity are harming our culture; includes a Q&A with director Jennifer Siebel Newsom, with special guest Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. $10. 8pm. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.eventbrite.com

Rainbow Skate @ Redwood Roller Rink Weekly LGBT and friends skate night, with groovy disco music and themed events. $9. 8pm-10:30pm. 1303 Main Street, Redwood City. www.rainbowskate.net www.facebook.com/rainbowskating/

The Slut-kerchief Project @ Center for Sex & Culture Geana Sieburger and photographer Rosey Lakos’ project of modern depictions of the century-old meaning of a piece of fabric as denoting a “slut.” Thru Nov. 29. 1349 Mission St. www.slutkerchiefproject.com www.sexandculture.org

World Tree of Hope Lighting @ City Hall The Rainbow World Fund’s annual celebration of the holidays and global humanitarisn giving includes a concert by the Grammy-winning San Francisco Boys Chorus, host Cheryl Jennings, Mayor Ed Lee and Consul General of Japan in a peace crance exchange, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and others. Free. 5:30pm-8pm. 1 Dr. carlton B. Goodlett Place. www.worldtreeofhope.org

LGBT night at the former Sacred Heart Church-turned disco roller skate party space, hosted by John D. Miles, the “Godfather of Skate.” Actually every night is gay-friendly, including Saturday’s Black Rock night (Burning Man garb encouraged). Also Wed, Thu, 7pm-10pm. Sat afternoon sessions 1pm-2:30pm and 3pm5:30pm. $10. Kids 12 and under $5. Skate rentals $5. 554 Fillmore St at Fell. www.churchof8wheels.com

The Golden Girls @ Victoria Theatre The Christmas Episodes are performed by Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger and a drag queen/king cast of local talents. $25. Thu-Sat 8pm, Sun 7pm. Thru Dec. 20. 2961 16th St. goldengirlschristmas.eventbrite.com

Raw Dance @ Joe Goode Annex The intensely physical dance company performs their acclaimed 2013 work, Mine. $25-$30. Dec 3-5, 8pm; Dec 6, 7pm, Also 9-13. 401 Alabama St. (800) 838-3006. www.rawdance.org

Rhodessa Jones @ African American Art & Culture Complex The music-theatre-storyteller performs her solo show, Fully Awake, Facing Seventy: Heaven Betta Bea HonkyTonk! With a four-piece band. 8pm. 762 Fulton St. 292-1850. www.culturalodyssey.org

San Francisco Magic Parlor @ Chancellor Hotel Theatre David Facer’s solo magic show, The World of Paradox, entertains and beguiles. $40. Thu-Sat 8pm. Openended run. 433 Powell St. at Post. www.MagicParlor.blogspot.com To submit event listings, email events@ebar.com Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section, online at www.ebar.com/bartab

<< Film

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

The beekeeper’s daughter by David Lamble

n a turbulent if confusing film year containing a host of mixed messages, Italy may just show the way with a female-charged farm comedy that might possibly cop the big prize, a Best Foreign Language Oscar. A sleeper hit at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders, an Italian-Swiss-German co-production, recalls comic gems from the 1950s and 60s, a golden age of Italian film comedy, the era of Antonioni and Fellini. Only this time, the film comes with a perky coming-of-age story involving a 12-year-old beekeeper’s daughter. Fighting eldest daughter Gelsomina (a vivacious turn from newcomer Maria Alexandra Lungu) for command of the hives and the hearts of espresso-chugging filmgoers is a balding, hyper-macho Italian farmer, Wolfgang. Sam Louwyck imbues this sputtering would-be domestic tyrant with a hyper-comic charm reminiscent of Roberto Be-

Mask You Live In

From page 21

Before Jennifer Siebel Newsom got behind a camera, she put in her time as an actress, earning a certificate at A.C.T. and trying her luck in the cess pit that is the film industry in Los Angeles, starting in 2002, at age 28. Students of her work will enjoy fast-forwarding through the low-budget feature Till You Get to Baraboo (2007) on YouTube. In it, Jennifer plays “the ideal woman,” the one who got away, who returns to haunt a young man who has masochistically agreed to attend her wedding in Las Vegas, which literally makes him sick. Jennifer shows promise in this charming, existential bedroom farce, but one

Oscilloscope Laboratories

Scene from director Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders.

nigni. Wolfgang, a struggling tenant farmer whose landlord is threatening his bees with toxic pesticides, wants nothing more than to be his country’s prize-winning beekeeper. But life, the untamable nature of his pesky little insects, and the ideals, curiosity and TV viewing habits of

Gelsomina keep getting in the way. In an early scene, Wolfgang tries recruiting Gelsomina to his project by dangling an old childhood fantasy in front of her. Wolfgang: “If you work plenty, we’ll buy you a present, a camel. You used to want one.”

understands with hindsight that as an avenue for self-expression, acting was something she simply had to get out of her system. Acting on-camera was also a way to learn about filmmaking, and appears to be the only “film studies” on her CV. An erudite jock in high school, Newsom played on the Stanford soccer team while picking up her MBA. According to Wikipedia, she focused on conservation policy and third-world development, both of which are, of course, ideal areas of focus for the wife of an enlightened politician, which I consider our Lieutenant Governor to be. Who can forget those weddings in City Hall? What a man. What a metrosexual. It’s wrong of me, I know, to be talking about the husband of

the subject of the piece, but masculinity being the subject of the film, perhaps you’ll forgive me. The Mask You Live In is an evocative title that could apply to anyone living an inauthentic life, but the filmmaker is specifically attacking U.S. cultural norms of masculinity. Newsom is on a bullet-pointed warpath against forms of socialization that destroy boys’ emotional lives, be they parent, peer group, school, or the more elusive influences of movies, video games, and online porn. I got very sad watching this film – depressed, really. Everything she’s talking about seems only to have gotten worse since Adrienne Rich wrote Compulsory Heterosexuality (1981), the landmark essay documenting the systemic legal,

Gelsomina: “Yes, when I was a child. And, by the way, it’s against the law.” Wolfgang: “The law? Bullshit! Who’s gonna ever find it here?” The family, whose entire beekeeping operation doesn’t really meet Italy’s new farm-production sanitation codes, experiences a flirting-with-disaster meltdown moment when a year’s supply of honey winds up all over the barn floor just before the inspector arrives with his checklist. Next, an old buddy shows up to taunt Wolfgang over his inability to produce anything but female offspring. The solution to his boyless universe arrives when an urban social worker gives him the responsibility for raising a troubled German-speaking teen, but the strings attached to the boy’s stay pose additional problems. Director Rohrwacher, having positioned her little family agro-farce against a stunningly lovely piece of Tuscan landscape, subtly stacks the deck against their surviving a truly sticky predicament. Besides

bamboozling the health inspector, the family’s salvation lies in successfully competing in a wacky TV show hosted by a shimmering white-gowned personality (Monica Belluci). The hostess’ look provides the impressionable Gelsomina with dreams of a whole new career path, but this may come only over her furious dad’s dead body. Gelsomina: “If we take part –” Wolfgang: “In what?” Gelsomina: “In the selection, ‘The Land of Wonders.’” Wolfgang: “Like we need that bullshit!” All through The Wonders I recalled how my first taste of farmfresh produce (they didn’t call it organic in the 1950s) came from my maternal granddad’s field of freshly grown radishes. Thirty-three-yearold Tuscan native Rohrwacher here gives lovers of naturalistic big-screen storytelling the good news that what you savor is available for at least a week, beginning tomorrow, at Bay Area Landmark Theatres.t

medical, and moral coercion of women to comply with the norms of male dominance or face brutal consequences. It remains a galvanizing read. There are no radical feminist theorists in The Mask You Live In, alas, and no artists, but plenty of psychologists, doctors, and educators. Most of them flit by, but we spend time following Ashanti Branch, a young, black, burly, dredlocked teacher in Oakland, who conducts a simple experiment with his young charges. On the front of a paper mask they write words expressing what they show the outside world, like “happy.” On the back they write how they feel, which is universally “afraid.” Since boys or men are typically taught not to display vulnerability, this simple game dem-

onstrates a lifetime of alienation in store for males who don’t find a way to dismantle their own hypocrisy. The most compelling speaker is an old white guy named Joe Ehrmann, with the saddest face in the world. As a young man, to palliate his father’s expectations of manliness, he chose football as a place to hide. “You get to project this façade, this persona, the epitome of what it means to be a man in this culture.” At some point, the NFL player saw through that game. Today, he coaches football, not in a spirit of overdetermined masculinity, but “to help boys become men of empathy and integrity who will be responsible to change the world for good.”t Tickets: castrotheatre.eventbrite. com.

Scene from director Jennifer Siebel Newsom's The Mask You Live In.

Igor Levit

From page 25

ed (how grimly the dissonance now with Citizens United!) is both the most relaxed and most intense of the sets. The passages of “extended” piano sound are fully integrated into the “normal” vocabulary of the acoustic piano, somehow making them even more expressive in the process. Levit delivers the groans, shouts, slaps and whistles Rzewski’s score specifies with fire and ice of the coolest kind. Rage and defiance are never deeply buried. The music gets extravagantly dense and layered, again reminding us of Levit’s keen sense of the flow of a

core melody through the most rigorous of elaborations and contortions. He crosses genres into jazz and other styles exactly as Rzewski does, with an uncompromising, deeply respectful sense of the real meaning of “popular.” In the end what makes this unquestionably the great recording of The People United is Levit’s actual fantasia of the final variation, the Improvisation Rzewski invites, here a true culmination of this colossal piece. Levit has said this “ethical” works calls him out of the ivory tower, asks him, in the words of another Rzewski piece (“Which Side Are You On?”), “What sort of life am I leading?” Some pianists leave fingerprints on space and time.t

Film>>

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Men brawling in Paris by Erin Blackwell

aris, Ville Lumière, or “city which is light,” recently experienced a municipal game-changer on par with our 9/11, when seven young, virile, homegrown Islamic fundamentalists blew themselves up and shot a few hundred people lucky enough to be out on the town, of whom about 130 are dead as I write this. I have been getting up at 3 a.m. the past few days to watch French television coverage of this anti-imperialist carnage practiced in the heart of Western Europe. No mere entertainment can compete with the riveting retelling of these sad, sad events, but you might enjoy a virtual trip to Paris by sitting through Rififi (1955), at the Roxie Theater Nov. 27-Dec. 3. Rififi, a French riff on the Italian word for combat, rif, is a slang word for brawl. It’s pronounced ree-feefee as quick as you can. The title has been shortened from the novel Du rififi chez les hommes by Auguste Le Breton. The title song, sung in a nightclub against a silhouetted pantomime of stereotypical tough-guy behavior, is later reprised as a halfhearted rehearsal. You’ll be able to sing it on the way out if you pay attention and are so inclined. Sticking a self-referencing musical number in the middle of a movie distances the viewer from the action, signaling this is not an attempt to realistically translate the authentic toughbuy vision of Le Breton. There is, however, plenty of tough-guy language, or argot, a slang particular to the Paris demimonde, or underworld. And there’s tough-guy attitude from lead actor Jean Servais, who is one of those guys who’s pinned together by liquor and cigarettes; who, like a sloth, uses only the muscles absolutely necessary to make a move, and only makes those moves absolutely necessary. By himself he’s a bit of a bore, a bit of a sealed-off personality wrapped around so much pain he wouldn’t know where to begin, and so doesn’t. He gives a tragic performance in the classical tradition in a film with tragic aspirations. Rififi is a methodical, not to say plodding, step-by-step account of a jewel theft by a small gang of men working with the precision of ballet dancers, acrobats, or circus performers after preliminary stages of casing the joint and discovering the alarm can be disarmed by shooting fire extinguisher goop through its ventilation slits. Such details fascinate director Jules Dassin, as they have fascinated millions of

Meistersinger

From page 21

Co-directors Marie Lambert and Ian Rutherford, with Colm Seery re-creating Andrew George’s rustic choreography, make their SFO debuts, along with Sir Mark Elder on the podium. 90 instrumentalists, 90 choristers, 17 principal singers, 12 dancers and 19 supernumeraries join in the massive production. It takes a village to make a village, and by the end of the long (sehr langen) performance, the audience is part of the community, too. Bathed in a honeyed glow by lighting designer Paule Constable, designer Vicki Mortimer’s handsome costumes and sets, crowned by an impressive Late Gothic vaulted ceiling, cheerfully evoke smalltown life, updating the action from the 16th century to around 1813, the year of Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Leipzig, and when Wagner was born. German nationalism was, perhaps understandably, on the rise. By adopting a fresh historical backdrop, McVicar has smartly softened

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Scene from director Jules Dassin’s Rififi.

people who have writhed through the painstaking reenactment of the theft, filmed almost as if it were being committed in real time, as cops walking the beat start nosing around the building. This procedural aspect, while it builds tension, simultaneously reduces the film’s gravitas, focusing as it does on the performative aspects of the heist. Rififi is a long film, almost two hours, and the best part of it from a Parisophile point of view is the open-air views of Paris. As the Paris of today trembles under the terrorist threat from within, Roxiegoers are free to wallow in leisurely black-and-white panoramas of an imperial city which has not yet suffered a humiliating defeat trying to dominate Algerians. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (The more it changes, the more it’s the same.) Except now, in real life, the sons or grandsons of Algerians have brought that same battle-to-thedeath to the imperial city. Performative aspects are, of course, precisely what’s in the news this week, as Paris police confer with their counterparts in Brussels to reverse-engineer how a French national holed up in Brussels laid plans for an attack launched from Syria against a few soft targets in Paris, to avenge French bombing raids in Syria. Rififi chez les hommes. I really prefer the novel’s title. Men brawling. Brawling is the natural consequence of competition, as betrayal is of love, and murder is of honor. It’s not easy being a man. My heart goes out to them.t later, more ominous associations attributed to the opera. His treatment of the composer’s allegedly anti-Semitic stereotyping of the most rigid character in the story, Sixtus Beckmesser, is also kindly revisionist. The composer’s greatgranddaughter has admitted that the caricature might have been intentional, but time has long passed since the vainglorious scorekeeper has been so portrayed, and German baritone Martin Gantner, making a stand-out SFO debut, offers a wonderfully nuanced and gently amusing performance that replaces nastiness with universal human frailty. McVicar’s Die Meistersinger is all about love, the joy of music, acceptance of aging, and embracing new ideas in an overly ordered culture. We still feel uneasy when the central character Hans Sachs sings of “sacred German art” in the final act, but at least we know he is more concerned with poetic triumph than national supremacy. Heavy stuff for a “comedy,” and See page 31 >>

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30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • November 26-December 2, 2015

American kitsch by Brian Bromberger

Still Life Las Vegas: A Novel by James Sie, illustrated by Sungyoon Choi; St. Martin’s Press, $26.99. ll families have myths, navigating how they arrived at where they are now, with stories that convey a history dancing around truth, often embroidered by an embellished past. James Sie, the Chinese-Italian author of Still Life Las Vegas, notes, “I have found that finding the truth behind what happened is an incredibly dicey affair. You can never get at the actual truth, only people’s version of it.” In his debut novel, Sie attempts to figure out how we perceive truth and how it can be distorted by what we want it to be. The process of remembering often distorts the truth, but it can also help us cope with its grim realities. Despite being a hybrid novel composed of sketches and graphic illustrations, which you might think would give it a lighthearted charm, Still Life tells a dark story brimming with brokenness and crippling losses. Walter Stace, a 17-year-old aspiring artist, lives in Las Vegas with his deeply depressed father, Owen, who can’t even get out of bed. Walt is sole

caretaker for Owen. Their lives have been eclipsed by the disappearance of Walt’s Vietnamese mother, Emily, when he was five. She drove away, despondent, in her blue Volvo station wagon, heading for the Liberace museum in Las Vegas. Owen followed her there in a vain attempt to find her, but she remains elusive, perhaps lost. Walt, who had to grow up on his own, graduated early from high school so he could work a deadend job as a tour guide at a touristy scamlike Viva Las Vegas museum, to support his father. He hopes to get a glimpse of his mother in the crowds, despite not remembering what she looked like, nor even having a photograph of her. The novel becomes a mystery as Walt pieces together small clues as to what happened to his vanishing mother. Owen had been a Professor of Classical Studies concentrating on Greek mythology, and in his absent-minded distraction, had accidentally left his infant daughter Georgia in a locked car with the windows closed, killing her. Still Life is really three stories rolled into one: Emily’s roots, starting when she was five and became an accordion-playing prodigy despite the reservations of her foster

mother, Vee; Owen’s search for his wife after she left him; and finally, Walt’s coming-of-age self-discovery and the truth concerning his family history. Walt meets Chrystos and Acacia, a Greek immigrant brother and sister, who work posing as living statues at the Venetian Hotel. He is instantly attracted to the charismatic Chrystos (with his own tragic past), despite warnings from other people to stay away. Awakened to his sexuality, coming out is not traumatic for Walt, but serves as a sense of relief. He’s finding out for the first time who he is, so his life can begin. The gay aspects are underplayed, overshadowed by Walt’s desire to figure out what happened to his mother. Still Life illuminates the ways we grieve, how we make sense of tragedy and devastating loss, and how a broken family can escape a heartbreaking past. Sie manages to prevent the novel from caving in on itself, and balances heart-wrenching revelations with hope for the future. Choi’s drawings are charming and emotionally stark, but they seem gimmicky because they comprise only a tiny portion of the book. The multi-dimensionality of the format impedes the flow of the story, though it does advance the plot by dropping significant clues about the fates of the characters. The alternating voices of Walt’s, Emily’s, and Owen’s experiences are labeled “earlier,” “now,” and “later.” Despite the raw pain of every character, the story is moving. In deft strokes, Sie

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both skewers and celebrates American kitsch culture, with Las Vegas almost becoming a character infused with artifice and promise, as the city creates its own myths of reinvention. It’s hard to dislike a novel with a gay,

half-Vietnamese protagonist. Sie is a burgeoning talent, inspired by Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (with its alternating time shifts) and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (with its serious graphic tone). t

Jason Graae

From page 21

Graae is a trouper in the truest sense of the word, and while his near future includes guest-starring gigs with various symphonies in Jerry Harman tributes and nightclub dates with Broadway star and frequent collaborator Faith Prince, he also takes time for labors of love. Scrooge in Love! is one of those labors, and in this world-premiere musical sequel to A Christmas Carol, he plays a somewhat mellowed Ebenezer Scrooge as he navigates his post-epiphanal life. Scrooge in Love! begins its run Nov. 25 at the Eureka Theatre under the auspices of 42nd Street Moon. Previously, Graae starred in Little Me for 42nd Street Moon, has appeared at its fundraisers, and has known Artistic Director Greg MacKellan for years. “I just love the energy and spirit of the company,” Graae said of the group that stages unelaborate productions of seldom-seen musicals. Or, in the case of Scrooge in Love!, a never-before-seen musical. “When Greg called me and said, ‘We’re thinking about you to play Scrooge,’ my first reaction was that I was too young to play Scrooge,” Graae said. “And then I Googled him, and it says in the Dickens story that he’s in his early 50s. So actually I’m too old for Scrooge.” Nevertheless, the 57-year-old performer signed on because, beyond his affection for the Moon troupe, Graae is also a longtime friend of composer Larry Grossman, whose Broadway credits include Minnie’s Boys, A Doll’s Life, Goodtime Charley, and Grind. For one reason or another (but not because of the music, Graae would say), these were all high-profile failures. But Grossman did have a hit off-Broadway in the early 1980s with Snoopy!!!, in which Graae played the title role. “He’s one of my favorite people,” Graae said of the composer, “and his songs are just beautiful.”

Courtesy broadwayworld.com

Performer Jason Graae, right, married landscaper Glen Fretwell in 2014, and Tony-winning actress Faith Prince performed the ceremony.

In addition to music by Grossman, the new musical has lyrics by Kellen Blair and a book by Duane Poole. Jacob Marley is back in this sequel, along with a trio of new spirits who help guide Scrooge to a connection with the one true love he let get away. “It’s been a wonderful challenge to play him, because while he’s certainly happier and calmer, he’s still got some Scroogeness in him,” Graae said. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen the character anywhere, but I didn’t want to watch any of the movies because things stick in my mind, and then I start channeling Albert Finney or Jim Backus.” The score is “vintage Larry Grossman,” Graae said. “There’s like a period feeling to them, but also a freshness as well. My songs have a kind of motif throughout, and they are very conversational and very energetic.” Does he get the 11 o’clock number, the theatrical term for a big song that occurs late in a show? “I don’t know that I have the 11 o’clock number. I have, like, the 10:20 number,” Graae said. “It’s a beautiful ballad called ‘A Kitchen Built for 20,’ about his being alone in this big house. The spirits have something that follow that might be called the 11 o’clock number that’s really fun and sassy.” Graae grew up in Tulsa (“That’s ‘a slut’ spelled backwards, in case you

didn’t know”) and headed off to Southern Methodist as an oboe major. “I hated my teacher, so I transferred to Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and then that hateful, bastard, assface teacher also moved there, so I took that as a sign to put down the oboe and pick up at the start of The Pajama Game.” He headed straight to New York after graduation, and within a month was cast in a production of Godspell at Equity Library Theatre. “Scott Bakula was Jesus, and I think we all made $21 a week, but it was a very high-profile, showcase-y kind of thing,” Graae said, “and I got an agent from it.” Over the next decade, Graae created roles in three new Broadway musicals, but all were short-run flops. Hollywood has provided much steadier work, and he has guest starred on numerous series including Six Feet Under, Frasier, and Friends. New York may be his spiritual home, but Los Angeles is where he is planted. “It’s where my life is, where my husband is, and where my house is,” Graae said. “My husband, Greg Fretwell, and I dated for 16 years, and got married the summer before last, and Faith Prince was our minister. He’s a landscape architect, and I highly recommend sleeping with a landscaper. We have a great garden.”t Ticket info for Scrooge in Love! is available at (415) 255-8207 or at 42ndstreetmoon.org.

DVD>>

November 26-December 2, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 31

Cautionary tales by David Lamble

he collection Dishonored Bodies from Spanish filmmakers Juanma Carillo and Felix Fernandez contains nine cautionary tales of varying degrees of diabolical humor, suspense and erotic tension. We offer just enough of a preview to whet the appetite without spoiling the banquet in this sensual anthology from TLAReleasing. Dishonored Bodies The opening round involves a young man being erotically devoured, bloodied, battered by an androgynous/female partner. The piece is preceded by a quote from the philosopher Roland Barthes: “Explosion of language during which the subject manages to annul the loved object under the volume of love itself. By a specifically amorous perversion, it is love the subject loves, not the object.” The piece begins with a grating feedback loop and a series of digitally produced effects projected onto a well-muscled, 20something male torso. An androgynous figure starts to act on the subject from behind, and we see rivulets of bloodlike liquid gushing over the subject’s head. Scaffolding Two 20something gay guys live side-by-side in a small co-op building. One day they wake

Meistersinger

From page 29

Wagner takes his time making his points. McVicar’s rich tapestry is refreshingly audience-friendly, moving the action with a pleasing lightness. The comic moments are genuinely amusing. Without any cuts, Elder doesn’t rush things, but he also doesn’t dawdle. The gorgeous sheen on the strings is transparent enough to hear detail in the rest of the orchestra, and it is amazing how quickly the British conductor has mastered the quirky acoustics of the right side of the pit. English baritone James Rutherford took the enormous role of the philosopher-cobbler Sachs after Greer Grimsley cancelled. He is no stranger to the part. Looking and sounding a tad young, he has already proven himself in Vienna, Hamburg, and notably at the Bayreuth Festival (the sacred home for Wagner). It is good watching his relatively low-keyed portrayal grow in stature throughout the marathon, and his voice is clear and penetrat-

up to find that their landlord has erected scaffolding in front of their window terraces, blocking the view and causing these strangers to start talking to each other. The small talk quickly turns intimate and the guys are soon preening to make a good impression before slipping out onto their terraces. Fuckbuddies kicks off with a cigarette, a condom and two hunks in their 20s humping in the back of a compact car. It quickly turns into a case of too much information. The two naked guys begin riffing on variable mortgage rates as if they were reincarnations of Federal Reserve Bank guru Alan Greenspan. A big tip of the cock to actors Domingo Fernandez and Richard Garcia Vasquez. Consequences This B&W digitally enhanced video commences with a man on the left and a longhaired woman on the right of the screen kissing. For the next five minutes the images shape-shift, turning into a man/man smooch, then vaulting up and down Dr. Kinsey’s scale. Followed by a deeply sensual multi-partner haircut with an electric razor. I dare you to share this one with your hair stylist. By my count, a cast of 21, with a lovely electronic score by vex’D/Bent Frost. Wall or Muro This cruelly beau-

tiful piece finds two young male lovers arguing in front of a large blank wall. In less than five minutes the wall will read, “Already, I don’t love you!” followed by “Because you’re a coward!” Un Sensation de Vide This dance-music piece begins with the injunction: “Alright, everyone wear a mask. The music is the only truth!” The piece then bursts into full color, dancers in a reverie on the dance floor that eventually breaks into a fight and a wounded dancer on the floor, with the final titles: “An empty feeling!” 1941 Perhaps the most ambitious piece of the collection begins with aviator Charles Lindbergh’s Des Moines, Iowa speech denouncing the Roosevelt Administration’s push to take the country to war against the Fascist forces. Then, a collage of sounds including the German Wehrmact parade reviewed by Hitler, and a children’s masquerade parade in New Orleans. The net effect is a sound-collage version of “Guernica,” Picasso’s famous painting depicting the Fascist air raid against a defenseless Spanish town in 1937. Cannibals/Perfect Day This final coda ends with a restatement of the major themes on love, hate, peace and war. A minor masterpiece!t

ing. The long monologue in Act III was particularly effective, and one can easily picture him with the much younger character of Eva in a more romantic light. SFO debutante soprano Rachel Willis-Sorensen also makes her role debut as Eva, the most sought-after girl in Nürnberg. She may be from Richland, Washington, but she looks every inch the pretty mädchen. Her pure voice is bright and lovely, and her acting adds depth to an ordinarily rather bland part. SFO regulars were justifiably excited at the prospect of attending American tenor Brandon Jovanovich’s role debut as the young nobleman Walther von Stolzing. Talk about dream casting. Jovanovich has it all: a rich, ringing voice, good looks, magnetic stage presence and convincing acting skills. Despite an announcement cautioning he was soldiering through a slight cold, he didn’t disappoint. Two noticeable but slight cracks didn’t harm his strong performance. The final “Prize Song” came off without a hitch, probably aided by waves of

support coming from the transfixed crowd. Estonian bass Ain Anger, in his SFO debut as Eva’s father Pogner, is known internationally for his Wagnerian skills. His sturdy performance hopefully assures his return after Matthew Shilvock takes the reins from David Gockley. In the smaller parts of the apprentice David and his love Magdalene, tenor Alek Shrader and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke were predictably flawless. Cute as the buttons on lederhosen, they filled

the auditorium with big, beautiful voices, suitably scaled to their characters. Joining the three leads in the glorious quintet ending the first part of Act III, they helped to produce a sublime moment of transcendence. Space cannot allow mention of all the other master singers by name, but they really couldn’t have been bettered, and Ian Robertson’s choristers romped and sang with the best of them. The riot scene at the end of Act II was marvelous. The telling details in their interactions were big fun, and intelligent direc-

AC ANDERSON 2

torial touches illuminate most of McVicar’s warmhearted staging. If five hours and 40 minutes, with two intermissions, is unavoidably demanding, dedicated Wagnerites on both sides of the footlights still looked happy and energized at the final curtain. As David Gockley advises on the SFO’s website: Take a nap and have a light meal beforehand.t Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg continues in repertory through Dec. 6. Go to sfopera.com.

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retail land the changing neighborgay debate over y Francisco’s Hall Thursda scape in San land at City ion takes up hood will commiss s planning considered when the city’ ove three businesses appr whether to retailers. ing seek is ula Les Natali to be form bar owner y’s in the Castro gay burger Mar Castro open a Ham space at 531 approval to Patio Cafe n was launched in long vacant chai h of restaurant ugh the Sout Street. The 1972, altho in . cisco 2001 in tered San Fran property, tion was shut Market loca s down from Natali’s t Philz A few door to relocate his 18th Stree ro Cast ts front at 549 Phil Jaber wan into the store a shoe store, and been coffeehouse location had quarters for Street. The paign head tly, the cam Francisco). most recen David Chiu (D-San spin of n Assemblyman , the national chai its third And Soulcycle would like to open t, the Stree s centers, 400 Castro class fitnes Muni location at e the Castro San Francisco building abov s purveyor Diesel. former bank housed jean once that 10 >> station See page

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Market to the San Francisco Bay Area’s S do debuts most desired demographic audience! er Plaza re n r a W e n a J A

LGBT consumers spend more than their non-LGBT peers online, as well as at brick-and-mortar establishments and more likely to spend money on music and entertainment.* LGBT consumers in the U.S. spent an average of $4,135 at retail establishments in 2014, 7% more omes H t e than non-LGBT consumers, due largely to thefact that they made e w S , omes 10% more visits to retail establishments overHthe course of the year.* The City’s

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Vol. 45 • No. 48 • November 26-December 2, 2015

Sat 28 Mother @ Oasis

Nov. 26Dec. 3, 2015

S Gareth Gooch

hop-ortunities and party planning! Despite the holiday, or because of it, we’ve got an extra full plate of festive nightlife events that may help you dance off a few of those extra calories gained. Gobble up the fun!

Listings start on page 35 >>

Henry LeLeu/GLBT Historical Society

*P.S. They Loved You

Remembering an iconic Polk Street bar and restaurant by Michael Flanagan

hen we think of places that have built gay neighborhoods, restaurants may not be the first thing that comes to mind. We may think of clubs, bars and bathhouses. But much like Compton’s cafeteria was central to transgender history, there have been restaurants central to gay history as well. The *P.S. Bar and Restaurant at 1121 Polk Street was an anchor in the Polkstrasse for more than three decades and saw many luminaries, both behind and in front of its counters.

A staff photo for a holiday postcard, also used in a two-page ad for the *P.S. restaurant in the March 7, 1973 Bay Area Reporter.

See page 36 >>

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November 26-December 2, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 35

Throwback Thursdays @ Qbar

Hard Fridays @ Qbar

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

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

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle

Ladies of San Francisco @ Club OMG

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

Galilea hosts the new weekly “old school drag show” with guest performers and DJ Jack Rojo. $4. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

Tom Shaw @ R3 Hotel, Guerneville

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland 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

See page 38 >>

Darryl Pelletier

The accomplished cabaret pianist plays the Russian River resort for t-giving weekend. 8pm. Thru Nov. 29. 16390 4th St. at Mill, Guerneville. (707) 8698399. www.ther3hotel.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

Xcess Thursdays @ The Café Frisco Robbie and Persia’s dance and pop music night gets the weekend started, with gogo guys and gals, plus drink specials and guest DJs. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Fri 27

Al Stewart @ City Winery, Napa

Valerie Branch hosts Comedy Noir @ Balançoire

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

Funny Fun @ Club 21, Oakland LGBT comedy night hosted by Dan Mires. $10. 8pm. 2111 Franklin St. Oakland. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops

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

The bears go wild at the holiday underwear party, with DJs Rotten Robbie and Mike Biggz. $10. 10pm4am. 314 11th St. www.bearracuda. com www.beatboxsf.com

My So-Called Night @ Beaux

Boy Bar @ The Cafe

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

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

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

Karaoke Night @ The Stud

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG

“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

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

Bearracuda @ Beatbox

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

Club Papi @ Club 21, Oakland 20-year anniversary party for the hot Latin dance night, with Los Horoscopos de Durango performing, drag divas, and sexy gogo guys. $160-$15. 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St., Oakland. www.clubpapi.com www.club21oakland.com

Comedy Noir @ Balancoire

Dana hosts the amateur singing night, 8pm. 43 6th St. www.clubOMGsf.com

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

Thanksgiving Potluck @ Castro Country Club

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun

The dinner at the LGBTQ sober space; sign up, bring a dish, volunteer. 1pm4pm. 4058 18th St. www.castrocountryclub.org

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

Fri 27 Bearracuda @ Beatbox

Steven Underhill

Thu 26

The veteran folk singer-songwriter performs at the scenic winery. $67. 8pm. 1030 Main St., Napa. www.citywinery.com/napa

Fri 27 Club Papi @ Club 21, Oakland

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

36 • Bay Area Reporter • November 26-December 2, 2015

courtesy GLBT Historical Society

Rick Gerharter

Left: The *P.S. restaurant before opening for the day in the early 1970s. Right: The multiple-mirrored P.S. Lounge in April 1991.

*P.S. They Loved You

From page 33

Bob Damron is perhaps now best known for Bob Damron’s Address Book (aka the Damron Guide) , but in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, he started many popular bars in San Francisco, including Febe’s, Alfie’s and the Rendezvous.

In late 1969-early 1970, when Polk Street was known as “The Gayest Street in San Francisco,” he opened the *P.S. as well. Prior to becoming the *P.S., the location had been a French restaurant, L’Alouette, for nearly 50 years. From the early days, the *P.S. shared its kitchen with the Casa de Cristal, a gay Mexican restaurant on

Post Street also started by Damron. In 1971 he hired Bob Ross as a chef. It was while Ross was working there that he and his friend Paul Bentley came up with the idea for the Bay Area Reporter – a newspaper to spread information in the community more efficiently. In the early days of the paper, Ross’ work with the Tavern Guild, at the *P.S. and the B.A.R. kept him very busy (and were quite intertwined). In the early days of the restaurant, it was not exactly known for haute cuisine. An article from The San Francisco Chronicle in January 1974 was entitled, “P.S.: a Pleasant Place for an Unpretentious Meal” and noted that “the meals are not always served hot, the result of poor coordination of timing between the kitchen staff and the waiters.” The reviewer recommended both the hamburger (“…cooked exactly as I requested it, with no off flavors”) and the daily special. He also noted that they had a respectable variety of wines. Most importantly the article noted, “The Polk Gulch is Polk Gulch, and many of the customers at P.S. are gay, so if that fact bothers you perhaps you’d better stick with your neighborhood steak house.” Regardless of the reviews of the food, the restaurant was quite popular. In 1978, it was purchased by the owners of The Mint - John Adinolfi, George Sanders and Tom Waddell (not the doctor who started the Gay Games, with whom that he shares a name).

Henry LeLeu/GLBT Historical Society

Bob Ross shows off the meat selection in the *P.S. restaurant’s kitchen, in 1973.

This was probably due in part to its size. A 1980 B.A.R. article “When Does a Restaurant Become an Institution?” notes that the restaurant seated 135. Neighborhood foot traffic helped. Empress Marlena told me, “There were seven or eight bars within a two block radius of the restaurant.”

Another draw of the *P.S. was the characters who worked there. One of the main characters was the bartender Dixon Olivier, also known as “Polk Street Sally.” The 1980 B.A.R. article mentions he had been working at the bar since 1971 and had previously worked at other Polk Street institutions such as the See page 37 >>

courtesy GLBT Historical Society

Top: Vince Valenti was among the *P.S. piano bar talents, here advertised in the April 4, 1973 Bay Area Reporter. Bottom: Big Jimmy joined “The Show,” a talent line-up at the *P.S., according to this October 1972 ad in The Advocate.

courtesy GLBT Historical Society

Above: The menu for a 1970s “Thanksgiving feast” at the *P.S. restaurant. Right: The *P.S.’s second notable chef, Paul Defour went on to brief fame for his rotisserie products.

November 26-December 2, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 37

Courtesy John Hemm

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Courtesy John Hemm

Top: John Hemm (2nd right) and other wait staff in the *P.S. kitchen on New Year’s Eve 1983. Bottom: John Hemm as Marilyn Monroe with Iva Harper and Iva’s friend Bud at the *P.S. on Halloween night 1984 (his last night working there).

*P.S. They Loved You

From page 36

Yacht Club and the Q.T. Dixon, who was crowned Imperial Royal Crown Prince of San Francisco by the Imperial Court, was known by his coworkers and patrons as “the world’s oldest living sex object.” And though the bar was lively, it was still safe enough for Randy Shilts, writing in The Chronicle in 1982, to suggest bringing mom to the piano bar “when she finally comes to visit.” Likewise Ruthie Stein suggested in an article on sing-along bars (also in The Chronicle) that you brush up on Rogers & Hart and Cole Porter before visiting Bob Sanders behind the keys. But the visitor is warned “the reason the P.S. doesn’t have an open mike is that they’d all be grabbing for it.” By the 1980 article, the owners were trying to improve the cuisine at the *P.S. as well. They hired Executive Chef Surachai Rungpha (known as ‘Chai’ around the restaurant) onboard. Chai had learned to cook at his mother’s restaurant in Thailand and had been sous chef at MacArthur Park and Julius’ Castle when he came to *P.S. His specialty was Veal Vittoria (a relative of Veal Scallopini) as well as Chicken Piccata and Calamari Sciliana. I interviewed John Hemm, who worked as a waiter and tended bar at the *P.S. from 1981 through 1984. He recalled the camaraderie and the sense of fun.

“It was the most exciting fabulous place to work, with pretty waiters and gorgeous food.” Hemm pointed out that the bar was a few blocks from The Plush Room, and that often performers would come to the *P.S. for breakfast or after performances. He recalled seeing both Johnny Ray and Charles Pierce there. Janet Gaynor was a regular as was Valerie Harper’s mother (Iva Harper), Sylvester and pianist Frank Banks. Hemm said waiters were often hired on their looks. “You felt like a Playboy Bunny – it was a whole different era.” Pat Montclaire, who was working

at the Hideaway in Church Street Station, would do flower arrangements, and Leticia, who would go on to start her eponymous restaurant, worked next door at Casa de Cristal. A photographer who went by the name “Pictures by Polly” would take Polaroids for patrons, presenting them with their mementos of the evenings there. While Hemm was working at *P.S., Master Chef Paul Dufour from Le Trianon, La Cabane and Le Bourgogne replaced Chai. Master Chef Dufour was something of a celebrity himself. He had appeared on Dinah Shore’s talk show in the 1970s and had developed his own Vertical Roaster. Hemm recalls that he was an incredible chef and a lovely man as well. “We called him Papa.” There was a dark side as well, however. Hemm reminded me that the hustlers in that portion of Polk could be particularly threatening. He recounted a patron in his 20s who was chased into the bar because a group thought he was trying to cut into their business. Drug use was rampant. Hemm commented on how ironic it was to have a restaurant named Casa de Cristal in the neighborhood. The *P.S. provided valet parking for safety as well as convenience. In March 1986, the *P.S. restaurant came to a sudden end. In a story all too familiar in 21st-century San Francisco, Wayne Friday reported in the B.A.R. that the restaurant lost its lease and faced a near tripling of their rent. As Friday wrote, “That greed not only forced the closing of a tradition, but of course put a few dozen people out of work.” The story does not, however, end there. Late in 1990, Sweet Lips’ column became abuzz with news that the bar would be opening again, and on December 27, 1990, The New Belle Saloon moved into the space and reopened as the *P.S. It remained in that spot, and with that name as a piano bar, until late 1997. In 1998, Katie’s Cocktail Lounge followed (with many workers from the *P.S.), only to be replaced by Blur in 2004. The need for spaces like the *P.S. remain to this day. In just the last year, states have been passing “religious freedom” laws which allow owners to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in much of the country, and we occasionally read of same sex couples being asked to leave restaurants. But in this month of Thanksgiving, it’s important to remember there are other happier reasons to have these spaces as well. As Hemm told me, “It was a wonderful time and I’m glad I was there.”t Many images are courtesy of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society. © All Rights Reserved. No part of these images may be produced without the express written permission of the GLBT Historical Society.

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Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

FREE TO LISTEN AND REPLY TO ADS Free Code: Reporter

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<< On the Tab

38 • Bay Area Reporter • November 26-December 2, 2015

Femme, Xtravaganza @ Balancoire

Gaymer Meetup @ Brewcade

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

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

Sat 28 Industry @ Beatbox

Sun 29 Beer Bust @ SF Eagle

The classic leather bar’s most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. Beer bust donations benefit local nonprofits (Check the website for a list of recipients). 3pm6pm. Now also on Saturdays. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Big Top @ Beaux

Tue 1 Victoria Theodore @ Yoshi’s Oakland

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

Disco Daddy @ SF Eagle

On the Tab

From page 35

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

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

Public Image Limited @ the Chapel The pop-punk band, led by the irascible John Lydon, performs new and classic songs. $42-$45. 9pm. 777 Valencia St. www.pilofficial.com www.thechapelsf.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

Shenanigans @ Oasis The new monthly thematic costume party goes to the woods; dress up as your favorite outdoor creature. $7. 10pm-2am. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.shenanigans-sf.com www.sfoasis.com

Some Thing @ The Stud Mica Sigourney and pals’ weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Sat 28

La Bota Loca Halloween @ Club 21, Oakland Latin, hip hop and Electro music night. $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

Industry @ Beatbox Thanksgiving recovery dance, with DJs Russ Rich, Wayne G, and Jamie J. Sanchez. Proceeds benefit the AIDS Emergency Fund and Positive Resource Center. $20. 10pm-4am. 314 11th St. www.industrysf.com www.beatboxsf.com

Mother @ Oasis

DJ Bus Station John’s extra holiday weekend T-dance, with a tribute to the Queens of Disco, including Stephanie Mills. $5. 7pm-12am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.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

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, 10am11pm. 333 Post St. www.unionsquareicerink.com

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

Literary Speakeasy @ Martuni’s

Mon 30

James J. Siegel MCs the reading series at the martini bar’s lounge, with poets Matthew Siegel, Liz Green, Roberto F. Santiago and MK Chavez. 7pm. 4 Valencia St.

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

Monday Musicals @ The Edge

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

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

Epic Karaoke @ White Horse, Oakland

No No Bingo @ Virgil’s Sea Room

Drag Mondays @ The Cafe

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

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

Domingo De Escandal @ Club OMG

Mon 30

Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez and DJ Luis. 7pm-2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

Donna Sachet’s Songs of the Season @ Beatbox

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

House of Floyd @ Yoshi’s Oakland The Pink Floyd tribute band performs rock classics at the stylish nightclub/restaurant. $26. 8pm. 510 Embarcadero, Oakland. (510) 2389200. www.yoshis.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

Heklina’s weekly drag show night with different themes, always outrageously hilarious. Nov. 28, Katya ( RuPaul’s Drag Race ) hosts a wild night. $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

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

Soul Party @ Elbo Room DJs Lucky, Paul, and Phengren Osward spin 60s soul 45s. $5-$10 ($5 off in semi-formal attire). 10pm-2am. 647 Valencia St. 552-7788. www.elbo.com

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

Thu 3 California Honeydrops @ The New Parish, Freight & Salvage

November 26-December 2, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 39

Colson Griffith

On the Tab>>

Thu 3 After Dark @ Exploratorium

Wed 2 Absolutely Fabulous @ Oasis

Opulence @ Beaux

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s

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

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

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone). 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.dragatmartunis.com

Underwear Night @ 440 Strip down to your skivvies at the popular men’s night. 9pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

Tue 1

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

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 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

Kingdom of Sodom/Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Get nude as strippers do it onstage at the interactive sex party. $20. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Retro Night @ 440 Castro Jim Hopkins plays classic pop oldies, with vintage music videos. 9pm-2am. 44 Castro St. www.the440.com

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

Victoria Theodore @ Yoshi’s Oakland The classically trained singer-pianist (who’s toured with Stevie Wonder) performs jazz classics and standards at the release party for her new album, Grateful. $20. 8pm. 510 Embarcadero, Oakland. (510) 2389200. www.yoshis.com

Wed 2

Booty Call @ QBar

Absolutely Fabulous @ Oasis Christian Heppinstall as Patsy, Terry McLaughlin as Edina, plus Katya Smirnoff-Skky, Raya Light and a cast of queens perform scripts from the hit BBC comedy series. $25 ($200 champers front row VIP, sweetie!). 7pm. Also Dec. 4, 5, 8, 9, 20. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

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

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

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

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

See page 42 >>

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.

Tue 1 Cock Shot @ Beaux

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.

Steven Underhill

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.

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

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

40 • Bay Area Reporter • November 26-December 2, 2015

Showing our Thanks

Rich Stadtmiller

Some sexy fun with porn actor Brian Bonds at a Sept. 2015 SF Eagle beer bust for Tenderloin Tessie, a wonderful nonprofit that provides bountiful meals during certain holidays, including Thanksgiving.

by Race Bannon

t’s that time of year again when our country collectively celebrates being thankful. Since this column is focused on the kink and leather scene, I’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank the many people, clubs, organizations, events, bars, businesses, sex clubs, venues and projects that together contribute to the San Francisco Bay Area having what I consider the most vibrant and cohesive scene in the country. While expressing thanks is certainly nice, showing our thanks in some tangible way is even better. An important way to show thanks is to give financial support to those beneficiaries you feel add the most value to our scene, both locally and nationally. If you look at the history of various subcultures within the greater American landscape, as each subculture’s community matures it figures out how to support itself best. If you look at groups bonded by sexual orientation, ethnicity, faith and other such groupings, as they have matured they have created financial support mechanisms to benefit that group. Maybe it’s time the leather and kink scene did the same. I’m sure many reading this will say to themselves, “But we do support our scene,” and to some extent that’s true. But it’s not nearly enough to adequately support the progress we need to make if we’re to sustain and mature. What you’re about to read is likely to piss some people off, but it has to be said. I think in particular when it comes to our fundraising efforts, we give our money to outside beneficiaries more than we should. It’s noble to raise money for all sorts of causes and I’m not suggesting that necessarily stop entirely. However, when our own infrastructure is suffering so badly from lack of funds, it seems counterproductive to continue to primarily raise funds for others. If we are not ourselves stable financially, how can expect to be of much use to others ultimately anyway. It’s time we focus on ourselves for a while. As Guy Baldwin said in his 2011 keynote speech at the Leather Leadership Conference, “When is it our turn to be a worthy cause?” I say that time is now. Of course that’s my opinion, but I stand by it. One of the refrains I hear constantly from all kink sectors is how woefully underfunded they are.

Many entities operate on shoestring budgets while trying to do their best to make the lives of kinky people better in some way. I contend we can do better. Let’s start directing our money to the infrastructure that allows us to have remarkable opportunities to be our kinky selves. For businesses, such as bars and kink retailers, giving them our business is the best way to show how much we value them. That’s a fairly straightforward mechanism of support. Want your local bars and venues who host kink events or businesses that provide us kinksters with our gear to survive and thrive? Then give them your business. Want a unique social venue like Wicked Grounds to stick around? Then give then your business. Don’t complain if such gathering places and businesses disappear if you have not been giving them your business in the first place. Enough said about that. When it comes to the nonbusiness elements of our kink infrastructure, they often suffer even more from lack of funds. Clubs and organizations often form the central social glue that the greater community revolves around. Whether it’s a men’s group like The 15 Association, a women’s group like The Exiles, or an organization like TASHRA, they all need our financial support. Most of them run on little money and are hampered in what they can actually do for us because of lack of money.

Of course fundraising beneficiaries such as breast cancer, toy drives, HIV services, LGBT rights, and so many others are worthwhile causes. No one can deny that. At the same time, why is our own kink community not worthy of a good chunk of those fundraising dollars? In the same keynote speech alluded to previously, Guy Baldwin puts forth a theory as to why our leather and kink community continues to raise so many funds that flow out of rather than into our own scene. “But my favorite theory is that we’ve spent the last twenty years doing above-and-beyond-thecall fundraising because, at some deep level, we can’t shake the need to show the world what good citizens we perverts really are. To demonstrate with our endless generosity that even though we’re into twisted sex, we still share some important core values with the rest of the world. In short, I suspect we’re trying to buy off some shame we have about who and what we are, and how we are different.” There are many times I believe Guy is correct. I simply can’t otherwise fathom why we don’t spend more time raising funds for our own vital needs. We are just as worthy of a growing and adequately sustained community as anyone else. As but one example, which is admittedly a challenging fundraising objective, why are we not putting massive amounts of effort into See page 41 >>

Rich Stadtmiller

Attendees at The 15 Association’s 35th anniversary celebration, held in February 2015.

t <<

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Leather

From page 40

4. When we hold fundraisers, are we doing them in the least intrusive manner? Do we essentially force event attendees to participate in fundraisers rather than making it an option? 5. Are you supporting those who support you? Are you contributing to the organizations putting on

November 26-December 2, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 41

parties and events that you attend, creating community and a space for you in it? 6. Are you supporting organizations and projects you believe are working to make us better, fairer, stronger and freer? 7. Are we as a community adequately overseeing those nonprofits to which we contribute? Are we requesting to see their books or accessing public records to ensure that our money is being spent on what we actually want to support? Only you can answer these questions for yourself. If this column does nothing more than point out the need our scene has for more funding while also prompting individual contributors to carefully think about where they are donating, then I consider writing this a monumental success. Here’s an apt analogy to close out this column. One of the foundation precepts in the world of both selfdefense and first aid is to not become a casualty yourself when aiding others. Let’s not become a casualty. Let’s take good care of ourselves. Only then can we really have a firm foundation by which to adequately help others.t

raising funds to buy a building and create a leather/kink community center that would benefit us all? The spaces in which we can meet, socialize, learn and play are shrinking daily. Creating such a building would benefit everyone is a multitude of ways. I know there are some amazing people who have floated this idea and even put in some fantastic initial work on such a project, but I believe if it’s going to happen we need a massive and coordinated fundraising effort to make it come to fruition. And in case people think such a project is folly, I know of two similar projects in other cities that have been progressing quite well in their efforts to create a kink center. It can be done. So here are a few questions and thoughts I think we need to ponder as a community. 1. Are we raising a disproportionate amount of money for causes outside of our scene when many of our own institutions and needs are floundering financially? 2. Are we having too many fundraisers in the first place? Are we tying a fundraiser to so many events that it imRich Stadtmiller pacts the enjoyment of those in attendance? Food being served at the SF Eagle in Sept. 2015 3. Are you honestly weigh- as part of the annual Alden Spafford Progressive ing the value in what you are Dinner, one of the many events produced by the contributing when you hand San Francisco Bay Area Leather Alliance. over your money?

Race Bannon is a local author, blogger and activist. You can reach him on his website, www.bannon.com.

Leather Events, Nov. 26 – Dec. 12, 2015 Thu 26

Mon 30

Giving Thanks For Community @ Wicked Grounds

Ride Mondays @ Eros

Safe community space for the entire kink and queer community. Whether you are far away from family or just want to spend time with your chosen community, they are open for you on Thanksgiving. 289 8th St., 11am-7pm. www.wickedgrounds.com

Fri 27 Cigar Play Party @ Blow Buddies Back patio for cigar smokers and the entire club available for play. 933 Harrison St., 9pm-12am. www.blowbuddies.com

Sober Kink Together @ Castro Country Club Officially a CMA meeting, but open to all Anonymous 12-step Fellowship members, 4058 18th St., 9:30pm. www.castrocountryclub.org

Gear Party @ 442 Natoma Gear play party (leather, rubber, harnesses, etc.) for gay men. 442 Natoma St., $15 (requires $5 membership), 10pm. www.442parties.com

Sat 28 The 15 Association Men’s Play Party @ Alchemy A men’s BDSM play party. 1060 Folsom St., $15 for members, $20 for guests, 8pm-1am. www.the15sf.org

A motorcycle rider and leathermen night at Eros, bring your helmet, AMA card, MC club card or club colors and get $3 off entry or massage. 2051 Market St. www.erossf.com

Tue 1 World AIDS Day National Observance @ AIDS Memorial Grove

Mr. Edge Contest @ The Edge Men compete to be Mr. Edge. 4149 18th St., 9pm. www.edgesf.com

Mon 7 Ride Mondays @ Eros See Mon 30

Thu 10 Hole-A-Day Party by Hell Hole @ Powerhouse

The Thom Weyand Unsung Hero Award will be bestowed upon the San Francisco Leather Community for its 3+ decades of compassionate response to the epidemic. Nancy Pelosi Dr. & Bowling Green Dr., Golden Gate Park, 11am. www.aidsmemorial.org

Complimentary buffet with baked ham, sides and tasty desserts; door prizes and Wrecked Hole-ADay Music by Maestro RobertoJuan Gonzalez. 1347 Folsom St., 7-9pm. www.hellholesf.com

Fri 4

Sober Kink Together @ Castro Country Club

SCCLA Bar Schmooze @ Renegades Bar Informal social where friends, prospective members & anyone else who wants to relax, laugh, talk and hang out with like-minded people, 501 W. Taylor St., San Jose, 9pm.

Sober Kink Together @ Castro Country Club See Fri 27

Gear Party @ 442 Natoma See Fri 27

Sat 5 Alameda County Leather Corps Santa’s Slave Auction @ The World Famous Turf Club Holiday pot luck, slaves to bid on, Stela D Love and the Burlesque Boys will be on hand to entertain, Mama’s Toy Drive box on hand (so remember to bring and unwrapped toy or gift cards). 22519 Main St., Hayward, 6-10pm. www.aclcweb.org

Fri 11 See Fri 27

Gear Party @ 442 Natoma See Fri 27

Sat 12 San Francisco K9 Unit Holiday Puppy Park Annual Fundraiser Sniff and Wag social and professional pictures with sexy Santa Paws Dolan Wolf at Mr. S Leather, 11am-12:30pm with Puppy Mosh, gifts, stockings, raffle prizes and more at Levy Dance Studio, 1pm-4pm. Tickets and more information at www.sfk9unit.org/events

Leathermen’s Discussion Group @ SF LGBT Center Volunteer appreciation and holiday party. 1800 Market St., 4-6pm. www.sfldg.org

REMEMBERING

Mr. Marcus January 9, 2016 • 7pm • $10 SF Armory, 4th Fl, 1800 Mission St., SF 94103 21+ Adults Only Imperial Court & Leather Community Retrospective Slideshow of Marcus’ Life Entertainment • Refreshments • Cash Bar For more info email msqcougar@comcast.net Tel (510) 996-2235

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42 • Bay Area Reporter • November 26-December 2, 2015

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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

Thu 3 Humans @ Nightlife at the California Academy

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

Open Mic/Comedy @ SF Eagle Kollin Holts hosts the weekly comedy and open mic talent night. 6pm-8pm. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

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

Rookies Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Watch amatuer strippers compete by audience applause for a $200 prize. $20. 9pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 3976758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall The weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

Way Back @ Midnight Sun 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

San Jose:

(510) 343-1122 (408) 514-1111

From page 39

Miss Kitty’s Trivia Night @ Wild Side West

Wooden Nickel Wednesday @ 440

Gay Skate Night @ Church on 8 Wheels

Buy a drink and get a wooden nickle good for another. 12pm-2am. 440 Castro St. 621-8732. www.the440.com

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

After Dark @ Exploratorium Glow, a night-light festival of fun at the hands-on museum’s monthly adult party, with Light Orchestra by Benjamin James and Ka-Ping Yee; cocktails, dancing and a scenic outdoor veranda. $10-$15. 6pm10pm. Pier 15, Embarcadero at Green St. www.exploratorium.edu

California Honeydrops @ The New Parish, Freight & Salvage The charming New Orleans-style soul-funk band performs two East Bay shows. $20-$25. 9pm. 1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Dec. 4, at F&S, $20$25. 8pm. 2020 Addison St. www.thenewparish.com www.freightandsalvage.org www.cahoneydrops.com

Mary Go Round @ Lookout

Queer Karaoke @ Club OMG

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

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

Mazel Top @ Oasis Celebrate Hanucon at the gay Jewish men and friends/admirers party, with host Yuri Kagan, DJs Mo Tech and Goy Toy. $5. 9pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. Dec. 3, Feel the Force, with Star Wars-themed science demos, a live performance by Humans, with DJ sets by Johnny Hwin. $10-$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Glimmer @ Oasis Keshet, the LGBT Jewish nonprofit, celebrates the holidays, with a dinner, awards honoring Al Baum, Rabbi Tsipora Gabai and Ruth Messinger ($150 and up; 6pm), with Mazel Top, the dance party, afterwards (9pm). 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.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

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Thu 3

Tall, Hung, Handsome, Latin, Uncut. Call Jose 510-469-7324

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

Steven Underhill

FREE TO LISTEN

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Thu 3 Gym Class @ Hi Tops

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Shooting Stars

November 26-December 2, 2015 • Bay Area Reporter • 43

photos by Steven underhill Booty Call A

fter eight glorious glamorous years, Booty Call, the weekly Wednesday night of DJed dancing and diva fun hosted by Juanita More!, has reached its end. After this month, More! will move on to her other many nightlife adventures, and Qbar, the intimate bar with big fun, will replace it with a new event. 456 Castro St. www.qbarsf.com More event photo albums are on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife. See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at www.StevenUnderhill.com.

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