October 29, 2015 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

SFAF eyes more Castro space

ARTS

Rapp & Menzel

Costume kink

The

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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971

Vol. 45 • No. 44 • October 29-November 4, 2015

Housing main theme of SF election by Matthew S. Bajko

Prop I

While the city’s various pon a city with some of the highlitical camps are largely united est property prices and apartbehind Prop A, there is no such ment rents in the country, it unity when it comes to Propois no surprise that housing is the sition I, which would impose dominant theme in this year’s mua moratorium on housing and nicipal election in San Francisco. business development projOne indicator of how the ects in the Mission district for housing crisis is dominating at least 18 months. It is meant the city’s political discourse this to hit pause on projects that election season: five of the 11 neighborhood leaders contend local propositions on the Nowill further gentrify the largely vember 3 ballot are related to Latino district while City Hall housing concerns. develops a neighborhood staThe $310 million affordable bilization plan for the area by housing bond, Proposition A, January 31, 2017. Rick Gerharter has wide support but needs “It is not a change in supply, two-thirds of the vote in order A restaurant in the Mission district has a variety of campaign just a delay,” said tenant rights to pass. It would finance the signs in its window, supporting or opposing various housing-related attorney J. Scott Weaver, the priconstruction, development, ac- measures on next week’s ballot. mary author of Prop I who lives quisition, and preservation of in Noe Valley. He stressed that housing affordable to low- and its ubiquitous television commercials. the proponents “are not against middle-income households with priority “I think, as a city, the biggest disappointbuilding housing. But we want more density given to working families, veterans, seniors, ment – and it includes me and everybody and more affordable housing.” and disabled people. else – is I think the housing crisis has been Gay District 9 Supervisor David Campos, It would also help finance the reconstruction decades in the making,” Lee said during an who represents the Mission, worked with a coof the city’s dilapidated public housing stock editorial board meeting with the Bay Area alition of neighborhood groups to place Prop and fund a middle-income rental program. Reporter. “I don’t think we have done well on I on the ballot after the Board of Supervisors Mayor Ed Lee, who struck a deal with the Board building and rehabbing affordable housing in failed to support it this summer. His office of Supervisors to place the bond on the ballot, the city. With the expectation that is a way we See page 17 >> has been the face of the Yes on A campaign and can help a lot more people.”

I Khaled Sayed

Former interim sheriff Vicki Hennessy, left, makes a point during a debate with Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.

Trans policy becomes issue in sheriff’s race by Seth Hemmelgarn

an Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s plans to stop classifying transgender inmates who haven’t had surgery according to their birth sex have raised criticism from people in his department and has become an issue as he tries to hold onto his job. Mirkarimi, who’s in a tough race against retired sheriff ’s captain and former interim sheriff Vicki Hennessy in the November 3 election, made his policy announcement in June. He also plans to allow transgender women inmates to participate in women’s classes in the jail. Hennessy supports the policy update as long as there are elements such as training and buy-in from staff. “One of the most challenging issues concerns searches, and who will conduct them. The best practice recommendation is that agencies permit transgender individuals to make a choice at admission to be searched See page 17 >>

B.A.R. election endorsements SAN FRANCISCO RACES Mayor: Ed Lee Board of Supervisors: Dist. 3: Julie Christensen Sheriff: Vicki Hennessy City Attorney: Dennis Herrera District Attorney: George Gascón Treasurer: Jose Cisneros SF Community College Board: Alex Randolph

SAN FRANCISCO PROPS Yes on Props A, B, C, D, H, J, K No on Props E, F, G, I

Remember to vote on November 3!

SF set to adopt LGBT historic statement by Matthew S. Bajko

Based Subcultures in San Francisco, 19331979,” the country’s first LGBTQ historic wo years after a pair of local historicontext statement. It was written by Damon ans began researching San Francisco’s Scott and the Friends of 1800, a San Francisqueer past, their report documenting co-based advocacy organization that fought often overlooked chapters of the city’s histo protect from demolition the Victorian tory is set to be adopted by city officials. that is now incorporated into the LGBT Their hope is it will boost efforts to preserve Community Center at 1800 Market Street. various sites of particular importance to the Asked recently about shepherding their LGBT community. more expansive report toward its soon-toOfficially titled the “Citywide Historic be conclusion, Watson joked, “I am sleeping Context Statement for Lesbian, Gay, Bia lot. I have been feeling exhausted.” sexual, Transgender and Queer History in She added that, “The good news is I feel San Francisco,” the 381-page report will be like it is gratifying on many levels. Most imvoted on Wednesday, November 18 by the portantly, I feel like we have opened another city’s Historic Preservation Commission. window on history that has been shadowed Once adopted as an official city document, for so long.” it will assist with efforts to landmark, either Graves also told the B.A.R. she feels by the city or state and national programs, gratified “to have co-created something so properties of historical significance to the robust. But I also know that it is not the enLGBT community. cyclopedia we would all love to see.” As the Bay Area Reporter reported in May, Their report begins in the late 15th cenCourtesy GLBT Historical Society after obtaining a draft version of the docutury when European settlers first encounment through a public records request, the Two men share a romantic moment on a Ferris tered the berdache, meaning “kept boys,” report spans the centuries and features vari- wheel in front of City Hall in this undated photo members of local Native American tribes ous groups of LGBT residents who called the that’s included in the LGBT historic context who adopted the roles of the opposite sex city home, from Native American two-spirit statement. and faced eradication under Spanish mistribe members and gender nonconforming sionaries who arrived later. Chinese immigrants to various artists and which was funded by a $76,000 grant from The document then traces the introducservice members. the San Francisco Historic Preservation Fund tion of laws in the mid-19th century that tarAuthors Donna Graves, a public historian Committee, overseen by the Office of Economgeted people for “nonnormative sexual or social based in Berkeley who is straight, and Shayne ic and Workforce Development. behavior or acts” and the “homosocial activWatson, an architectural historian based in It builds off the 2004 document “Sexing See page 16 >> San Francisco who is lesbian, wrote the report, the City: The Development of Sexual Identity

{ FIRST OF THREE SECTIONS }

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<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

A festive 30th for Project Inform Rick Gerharter

roject Inform marked its 30th anniversary with its Evening of Hope gala Saturday, October 24 at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco. Guests enjoyed unique offerings, such as a Beauty Bar, where stylist Joseph Roland, above, did some last minute arranging to Juan Valdez’s hair. The 275 people who attended also got to hear a performance by Mx Justin Vivian Bond, who served as guest emcee. The event raised $170,000, with more checks expected through December. Executive Director Dana Van Gorder told the Bay Area Reporter that Project Inform, which works to make sure HIV and hepatitis C drugs are safe and effective and provides educational materials

on medications, is most proud of its work assuring that people with HIV and HCV and their representatives participate in decisions about all aspects of bringing HIV and HCV drugs to market. “The revolution that occurred with HIV was the insistence that people with a disease themselves guide the decisions that affect their health, and Project Inform was a part of that revolution,” he added. Today, the agency focuses its education efforts on making sure that newly diagnosed people have the information they need to make immediate decisions about their treatment options and overall health care. It reaches over 100,000 people a year.

St. James, TGI Justice seek new offices by Seth Hemmelgarn

ebar.com

San Francisco nonprofit that provides free medical services, HIV testing, food, and other assistance to sex workers is looking for a new home as the South of Market building where the organization has been based for 13 years is being sold. St. James Infirmary, at 1372 Mission Street, learned this summer that Mercy Housing California, the nonprofit that had just bought the building, is selling it. St. James now has less than three months to move. Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, which mainly helps transgender women who are in prison, shares space with St. James and will also move. “We’ve been told the longest we can expect to stay would be through early January,” said Stephany Ashley, St. James’ executive director. A recently launched Gofundme campaign shows that as the nonprofit looks for a new site in one of the country’s most competitive real estate markets, it has lots of support.

Rick Gerharter

St. James Infirmary Executive Director Stephany Ashley

The online crowdfunding effort aimed to raise $25,000 for renovations, relocation expenses, and other costs within 30 days. The goal was surpassed in just three days. With matching funds from an anonymous donor, the total amount raised is more than $50,000. Despite the impending move, Ashley is confident in her agency’s future.

“As an organization, we feel very stable and strong right now,” she said. “Our staff is really strong, our programming is really strong, and our budget is healthy. While this is certainly one of the biggest challenges we could be presented with,” St. James is “well-positioned to handle this.” The goal is to open the new facility “without any break in services,” Ashley, who identifies as queer, said. Mercy Housing California, which provides housing for about 8,000 households in the state, recently bought St. James’ building at 1370 Mission. Doug Shoemaker, Mercy’s president, indicated the sale is out of financial necessity. Shoemaker said his agency had been the building’s master lessee for about 15 years and is in the process of selling the site, along with neighboring buildings at 1340 and 1360 Mission Street. He said Mercy’s lease arrangement with the former owner had See page 16 >>

SFAF looks at more space for Strut by Seth Hemmelgarn

he doors to Strut, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s new gay and bi men’s health center, haven’t even opened, yet the agency is already exploring the possibility of taking over additional retail space in the Castro. SFAF is considering expanding into a former grocery store next to the center. The agency announced in September that it would open Strut, its new health facility at 470 Castro Street, in October. It now looks like the center will open next month. But the large open areas of Strut, which officials previewed for the Bay Area Reporter last month, may not be enough and SFAF officials are talking to city planning staff about possibly expanding into 468 Castro Street, which used to house A.G. Ferrari Foods. According to information filed with the planning department in midOctober, SFAF “would like to expand programming into the ground floor retail space of 468 Castro Street and use the space to host community meetings and events as well as to hold group meetings for various programs.” Andrew Hattori, a spokesman

Rick Gerharter

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation is looking at possibly acquiring the former A.G. Ferrari space, which is next to its new Strut men’s health center.

for the AIDS agency, told the B.A.R. that the process is in its “very, very early exploratory” phase, and Strut may not even need to expand. “We filed an application with the planning department to ask for a project review meeting,” which is “the first step,” Hattori said. The discussion was set for Wednesday, October 28. SFAF announced in 2012 that it would move the popular Magnet

program, which provides HIV testing and other services, and other programs in a new facility at 470 Castro, which had housed a video shop and office space. The agency is “still waiting for our clinical license” for Strut from the state’s health department so it can determine a specific opening See page 18 >>

CITY COLLEGE TRUSTEE ALEX RANDOLPH ▼

DISTRICT 3 SUPERVISOR JULIE CHRISTENSEN

SHERIFF VICKI HENNESSY

MAYOR ED LEE

ALICE B. TOKLAS DEMOCRATIC CLUB VOTE BY MAIL OR IN PERSON

Getting Our City Back on Track

AliceBToklas.org oklas.org

TREASURER JOSÉ CISNEROS ▼

CITY ATTORNEY A DENNIS HERRERA

DISTRICT ATTORNEY A GEORGE GASCÓN

Y V O TVE3 RB D NO

“

San Francisco faces many challenges including addressing our housing affordability crisis, improving our transportation infrastructure, and creating a more livable city. Alice’s slate, including two female first-time candidates that have already proved their leadership, will help the city move forward in 2016.

” ELECTION ENDORSEMENTS – Supervisor Scott Wiener

ELECTED OFFICIALS

LOCAL BALLOT MEASURES

ED LEE, Mayor

YES PROP A: Building More Affordable Housing

NO PROP F: Short-term Rental Restrictions

GEORGE GASCÓN, District Attorney

YES PROP B: Improving SF’s Parental Leave Policy

NO PROP G: Impractical Energy Restrictions

YES PROP C: Broader Lobbyist Disclosure

YES PROP H: Clean Energy Right to Know

YES PROP D: New Housing, Parks and Shops

NO PROP I: Mission Housing Moratorium

JOSÉ CISNEROS,▼ Treasurer DENNIS HERRERA, City Attorney VICKI HENNESSY, Sheriff JULIE CHRISTENSEN, District 3 Supervisor ALEX RANDOLPH,▼ City College Trustee

▼indicates that the candidate is LGBT

in Mission Bay NO POSITION

NO PROP E: Unworkable Requirements

PROP J: Historic Business Preservation Fund – no position

for City Meetings YES PROP K: Surplus City Property Regulations

Paid for by the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club PAC, FPPC #842018.

<< Community News

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

European AIDS confab highlights HIV treatment and PrEP by Liz Highleyman

esearch suggesting that a single potent drug may be enough to keep HIV under control was the biggest news at the 15th European AIDS Conference held last week in Barcelona, Spain. Other highlights included new European HIV treatment guidelines and a caution about bone loss in young men taking preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

New guidelines and access issues

Several presentations discussed the implication of recent research confirming the benefits of starting antiretroviral therapy as soon as a person is diagnosed with HIV – both for the sake of their own health and to prevent transmission. The European AIDS Clinical Society, which puts on the biennial conference, issued updated treatment guidelines last Friday, recommending that all people with HIV should consider starting treatment regardless of CD4 T-cell count. San Francisco was the first to make this recommendation, in early 2010, and with the release of the new EACS recommendations all major national and global guidelines now agree on universal early treatment for everyone living with HIV.

The European guidelines also moved a step ahead of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommending PrEP for at-risk gay men using tenofovir and emtricitabine – the drugs in Truvada – either once-daily or on an intermittent schedule. The “on demand” PrEP regimen that reduced HIV infection risk by 86 percent in the French Ipergay trial involves taking a double dose of Truvada during the 24 hours before sex, plus one more dose on each of the following two days. Research suggests intermittent PrEP does not work as well for vaginal sex, so the EACS recommendation applies only to anal sex. European guidelines have historically been more cautious than those issued by the U.S. government, so many were surprised by the intermittent PrEP recommendation. But reducing the number of doses would lower the cost – an important consideration for national health systems that require new therapies to be not only effective, but also cost-effective. “In Europe and the rest of the world we may only get PrEP through health systems at all if a high proportion of people use it intermittently,” UK PrEP advocate Gus Cairns told the Bay Area

HIV treatment

Liz Highleyman

UCSF researcher Kathleen Mulligan discussed bone density studies at the European AIDS Conference.

Reporter. “I think we should not expect people to use antiretrovirals for prevention the way they do for treatment – taking PrEP when you are at risk and not when you are not is likely to fit in better with a lot of people’s lifestyles.” PrEP is currently not available under the national health programs in European countries, spurring efforts to obtain generic versions of Truvada or its component drugs. “In Germany we will need official

approval of Truvada as PrEP by the European Medicines Agency before our Ministry of Health will even look into it, while in the UK the decision process is all about costeffectiveness,” said Nicholas Feustel, another PrEP advocate who spoke at the conference. “It’s all taking far too long. Therefore, PrEP activists across Europe are looking into the feasibility of (hopefully temporary) informal PrEP use and the legality of importing generic drugs.”

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT

PROP I

San Francisco’s Chief Economist took a close look at Prop I — the Housing Moratorium. He found that Prop I would lead to fewer homes and higher prices.1 For renters, it’s a double hit. Rents go up and available apartments are harder to find, adding to financial stress.2 And Prop I won’t do anything to prevent displacements or discourage gentrification. In fact, Prop I stops the building of 1,500 new homes including hundreds of affordable homes, and it doesn’t require building one single new affordable home.3

Join Supervisor Scott Wiener, Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, the Bay Area Reporter and many others, including: e e e e e e e e

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom Mayor Ed Lee Assemblymember David Chiu Supervisor Katy Tang Supervisor Mark Farrell San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Democratic Party

e e e e e e e e

San Francisco Young Democrats SF Housing Action Coalition The housing experts at SPUR Mission Democratic Club SF Bay Area Renters Federation Willie B. Kennedy Democratic Club Black Young Democrats of SF Sun Reporter

And say No to Prop I on November 3.

www.SFRealHousingSolutions.com Paid for by San Franciscans for Real Housing Solutions, No on I, sponsored by San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, the San Francisco Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, and housing builders FPPC ID# 1374554. Major funding by California Association of Realtors – Issues Mobilization Political Action Committee and National Association of Realtors. Financial disclosures available at sfethics.org 1

Read the report, “Potential Effects of Limiting Market-Rate Housing in the Mission,” here: http://www.sfrealhousingsolutions.com/report; 2 Table 7, “Impact on Housing Prices of a Moratorium and Indefinite Prohibition on Market-Rate Housing in the Mission,” of the report, “Potential Effects of Limiting Market-Rate Housing in the Mission,” City and County of San Francisco Controller’s Office, September 10, 2015; 3 Memo RE: Mission District Housing Moratorium, San Francisco Planning Department, July 2015.

While current antiretroviral therapy is generally safe and highly effective, there is always room for improvement, especially new options for people who have highly drug-resistant virus and those who cannot tolerate the side effects of widely used regimens. Pedro Cahn from Buenos Aires presented findings from the PADDLE study, which tested a two-drug regimen for first-time treatment containing ViiV Healthcare’s potent integrase inhibitor dolutegravir (brand name Tivicay) plus the inexpensive and well-tolerated nucleoside analog lamivudine (3TC or Epivir). This pilot study enrolled 20 previously untreated people who took dolutegravir plus lamivudine once daily for 48 weeks. HIV levels dropped rapidly after starting treatment, and all participants – including four with high baseline levels – had undetectable viral load from week eight onward. Two other studies simplified treatment even further, using oncedaily dolutegravir alone (known as monotherapy) as maintenance therapy for people who achieved full viral suppression on other regimens. One study enrolled 33 participants in Spain, while the other included 22 people in France. These were treatment-experienced patients, many of whom had extensive drug resistance or contraindications to using standard regimens. At 24 weeks after switching to dolutegravir monotherapy, 97 percent of participants in the Spanish study and 89 percent in the French study maintained viral suppression. It is too soon to widely adopt dolutegravir monotherapy or dual therapy – larger randomized clinical trials are needed first – but experts agreed that this is a promising strategy. “While antiretroviral treatment has gotten so good that some question the need for further research, there is still room to shoot for excellence, and ViiV has achieved that here, both for people new to treatment and those with few treatment options,” said David Evans of Project Inform.

Drug drawbacks

While modern antiretroviral therapy is generally well tolerated, it is not without its drawbacks. Three research teams presented results from substudies of the large START trial, which compared immediate versus delayed HIV treatment. As reported at this summer’s International AIDS Society conference in Vancouver, START showed that beginning antiretroviral therapy soon after HIV diagnosis led to better outcomes than waiting until the CD4 count falls below 350. One of the rationales for delaying treatment is to avoid prolonged drug toxicity, so the substudies looked at the effects of early versus delayed ART on bone health, lung function, and neurological performance. The lung and neurological substudies saw no significant differences, but the bone study showed that people in the immediate ART group had more bone loss at the spine and hip. Spine bone density fell by about 2 percent during the first year on treatment, but then stabilized. Hip bone density, however, continued to decline over three years. Another study also raised caution about the effects of antiretrovirals on bone health. Kathleen Mulligan from UCSF and colleagues looked at bone density changes in ATN 110, a demonstration project evaluating the safety and feasibility of daily Truvada PrEP for 200 young gay and bisexual men See page 18 >>

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Community News>>

t AHP raises over $325K at art auction

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

MAGNET IS MOVING! Starting in November 2015, ﬁnd us at 470 Castro St. We’ll have a new name and a new location, but you’ll still get the best sexual health services for gay, bi and trans men in San Francisco.

Jeff Chan

he UCSF Alliance Health Project said it raised a record amount at its recent fundraiser, which will help fund its HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ programs. Art for AIDS, a popular event for art lovers, designers, collectors, and philanthropists, raised more than $325,000 earlier this month. In 19 years, AHP staff said, the annual benefit has never brought in that much money. Dr. James Dilley, AHP executive director, praised this year’s organizers. “Our host committee and community advisory board members raised tens of thousands of dollars in sponsorships,” Dilley said in a statement. “And more than 100 extraordinary volunteers – plus all 57 AHP interns and staff – helped to make this year’s auction a grand success.” The October 9 event paid tribute to artist Rex Ray, and included 179 works of local and national artists that were sold during spirited live and silent auction bidding. One of the highlights was Eric Rewitzer’s “Godzilla,” a linocut of the monster lizard attacking the Transamerica building. Valued at $3,000, a bidding war pushed the final price up to $7,000. Rewitzer and his spouse, Annie Galvin, own 3 Fish Studios, a gallery in the Outer Sunset. Ray, a longtime Art for AIDS supporter who died this year and to whom the auction was dedicated, is known for graphically stunning collage and mixed media pieces, as well as paintings and a line of commercial products that have been popularized by SF MOMA. Friend and gallerist, Griff Williams, of Gallery 16, presented a tribute to Ray before the bidding on one of Ray’s collage works.

AHP provides HIV/AIDS counseling and testing, mental health services, substance abuse counseling, and therapy groups. The agency’s annual budget is $8 million. For more information, visit www. ucsf-ahp.org.

Halloween fun in Portola neighborhood

Portola Family Connections invites children of all ages and their parents to celebrate Halloween at its annual party, Halloween at the Carnival, Friday, October 30 from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at the agency’s offices, 2565 San Bruno Avenue in San Francisco. The event will feature a haunted carnival room, fortuneteller, photo booth, arts and crafts, games, storytelling, temporary tattoos, face painting, and a variety of themed treats. There will also be a Halloween costume contest for children and families with five different categories, so all guests are encouraged to wear a creative costume. “For 22 years, we have participated in the transformation of the Portola into one of San Francisco’s most vibrant, welcoming, and family-friendly neighborhoods,” said Maryann Fleming, executive director of Portola Family Connections. “Our community Halloween party will be a festive and fun occasion for everyone who comes.” There is a nominal charge of $2 per person (ages 12 and up) for Family Connections participants, and a $5 charge for guests and new participants, payable via Eventbrite or at the door. Children under 12 are free. An adult must accompany all children under 18. For more information, visit http:// tinyurl.com/halloweenatthecarnival. See page 17 >>

470 Castro Street

Collingwood St.

compiled by Cynthia Laird

470 Castro Street is just around the corner from Magnet’s current location.

Castro St.

Posing on the red carpet at the UCSF-Alliance Health Project benefit are Cameron Silva, Sergio Hurtado, Marco Carvajal, Matthew Simon, Andy Magliulo, Paolo Casumbal, and Adam Arsenault.

Cliff’s Variety

Magnet

18th St.

Please check our website for updated information about the move, hours of operation and opening date at magnetsf.org and learn about our new location at strutsf.org

STRUT AND MAGNET ARE PROGRAMS OF SAN FRANCISCO AIDS FOUNDATION

A Paid Study for People Who Are HIV+ Smallpox Vaccine Study

What A study to develop a vaccine against smallpox for people who are HIV positive Who HIV positive adults, 18 to 45 years of age, with t-cells below 500 Pay Participants will receive 2-3 vaccinations and up to $1350

Lazy Bear delivers

Details For more information, please call Erika at Quest Clinical Research – (415) 353-0800 or email erika@questclinical.com

LG Scott

arry Lit, with his husband, Allen Eggman behind him, presented checks Sunday, October 25 at the 440 bar in the Castro to beneficiaries of this summer’s Lazy Bear Weekend. A total of $50,000 was distributed to several nonprofit organizations, including the West County Health

Centers – Sonoma County; Face to Face and Food for Thought, also in Sonoma; Magnet, the gay men’s health center in the Castro; Variety Children’s Charity, the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund, the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, the Positive Resource Center, and Bay Positives.

www.questclinical.com

<< Open Forum

t Clinton should stop defending DOMA

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

Volume 45, Number 44 October 29-November 4, 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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illary Clinton just ended one of to set its own policy on same-sex marthe best weeks of her political life riage, urged passage of the Employby confidently presenting herself as ment Non-Discrimination Act, and presidential during the first Democratic maintained DOMA shouldn’t ‘provide debate and handily testifying before a an excuse for discrimination, violence House committee on the 2012 attack or intimidation against any person on in Benghazi, Libya. So why would she the basis of sexual orientation.’” choose to undermine herself by attemptOf course, we all know that the states’ ing to rewrite the history of the Defense rights argument is usually a way of of Marriage Act on her recent appearcontinuing prejudice and discriminaance on the Rachel Maddow Show? tion. It was the crutch Southern states Apparently, Clinton is not hewing to clung to to counter the civil rights the “quit while you’re ahead” strategy movement. But that’s what DOMA was in her effort to buttress support among about: using the states’ rights argument Rudy K. Lawidjaja LGBT voters. Instead, she’s pissing a lot to settle on DOMA as a compromise. of them off. And we’re talking about Hillary Clinton testified at a House hearing about the For her presidential campaign, Clinthe movers and shakers in the LGBT 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. ton needs to look ahead, not behind. Incommunity, those who used to work stead of reviving the history of DOMA, in her husband’s administration, and which is a widely acknowledged low case was unsuccessful, and later, in 2004, the leaders in the marriage equality and other point of Bill Clinton’s legacy, she and her crack first state to legalize same-sex marriage was movements. Universally, they have tweeted or team should be talking about equality for all, Massachusetts. made comments that Clinton was off base in especially in regard to employment, housing, Here’s the point: Clinton doesn’t need to her DOMA telling. and public accommodations. Next week in revise history on DOMA. The U.S. During last Friday’s appearance Houston, for example, voters could decide to Supreme Court tossed its key proviwith Maddow, a lesbian who undo a local LGBT non-discrimination law. sion in 2013 and this year the high was involved in activist work The campaign is eerily reminiscent of the ugly court legalized same-sex marriage here in the Bay Area, Clinton fight over California’s marriage law, Proposinationwide. Clinton herself came said that DOMA was a means tion 8, in 2008. Houston may be in a red state, on board to support same-sex to stop something worse, namely but it’s the fourth largest city in the country marriage in 2013. Bill Clinton, in a constitutional amendment proand home to a number of large companies so March 2013, finally disavowed the hibiting same-sex marriage. But this would be a terrible setback. law he signed in September 1996 at back in 1996, when DOMA was An issue that needs attention is the rash of the height of his re-election camsigned by President Bill Clinton, transgender women who have been killed this paign when he urged that the law the debate wasn’t about a federal year – at least 21 have been documented so far. be overturned, according to a New marriage amendment. Rather, The last couple of years have had an uptick in York Times story at the time. the political fight was focused on anti-trans violence, whether it’s related to “trans The Washington Blade, in a Hawaii, where a same-sex marriage case was panic,” domestic violence, or random violence. story on the controversy this week, reported, making its way through the courts. Anti-gay The fight for equality didn’t end when we “Nowhere in Bill Clinton’s 1996 signing statepoliticians were afraid that if the state Supreme achieved marriage. Clinton does a disservice ment of DOMA does he say anything explicit Court allowed same-sex marriage there, then to herself and to the LGBT community by tryabout him agreeing to the legislation to stop other states would be forced to recognize those ing to spin past issues to her benefit. It’s time a Federal Marriage Amendment. Instead, the nuptials. As it turns out, the Hawaii court to move on.t former president talked about a state’s right

For an honest price beats not at all by Starchild

ow refreshing to read a critic of sex work [“Virtual love, real life,” Guest Opinion, September 10] who does not advocate criminalization as the solution to what he perceives as a problem. What libertarian can fail to appreciate someone with enough tolerance in his heart to say, “Even Starchild though I don’t approve of this, I will not seek to have people fined or thrown in jail for it, and will instead rely on civil dialogue and non-coercive persuasion to make my case?” Mitch Halberstadt’s unusual critique deserves a response from erotic service providers in defense of our profession. Very well then – we can agree that sex work is work, and should be legal. This leaves the more philosophically interesting question of how society should regard it. Halberstadt suggests that sex work is a “colonization of intimacy” that involves commodifying what should not be commodified. Is he right? Or does prostitution deserve to be seen as an honorable, legitimate profession? I say it does. Prostitution is no more a threat to real intimacy than gay marriage is a threat to marriage. In many cases sex work creates a space where intimacy can occur. Seeing a sex worker can be an opportunity to have an intimate conversation with someone in a setting of client-professional confidentiality and share things you don’t feel comfortable sharing with others in your life. Maybe you’re recently single or widowed and feel unready for the demands of a new relationship or trying to meet someone for a tryst, but unwilling to forego intimacy altogether. Maybe you’re in a long-term relationship that’s lost its spark, but have other reasons not to split up, and feel safer with a “no strings attached” outlet. Or maybe you just want to feel sexual again, without any pressure to perform yourself. In such circumstances and many others is it unreasonable to turn to sex workers for intimacy? Is prostitution to sexuality what fast food is to food, as Halberstadt provocatively jibes? Hardly, when as he points out, one can easily pay hundreds of dollars to enjoy the “meal” in question. A “tantalizing Rentboy” worthy of the trade is more like a dinner served up by a skilled chef at an upscale restaurant. Sure,

unless you’re loaded you probably don’t want to go there every time you’re feeling hungry, but it’s nice to enjoy now and then. And let’s not forget this is the “oldest profession” we are talking about. Any commodification involved cannot be dismissed as the byproduct of a materialist modern society with screwed-up priorities. Sex work predates modern consumerism and its endless capacity to commodify by thousands, if not millions, of years. As a rentboy (I prefer the term companion, or sacred intimate as better embodying the spirit of my work), it may surprise some to hear me say that a world of free love would be wonderful. I would welcome a society with sex, affection, and intimacy abundant enough for everyone to satisfy his or her desires, even if it put me out of business. While I may be somewhat exceptional in this, my profession is not as inimical to the hippie ideal as it might seem at first blush. If those of you who find men desirable are honest with yourselves – and of course similar dynamics exist for other vectors of desire, but in keeping with the rentboy topic I’ll stick with men here – many of you will acknowledge that when it comes to spending quality romantic time with someone, you would prefer a partner who looks like Brad Pitt over one who looks like Danny DeVito (no offense to DeVito, who is a talented actor and no doubt possesses other admirable qualities). Halberstadt writes of growing up and embracing “complex commitments” in a world where we don’t all “share the same romantic vision.” But this language isn’t just “nuanced,” it’s vague and mushy. Let’s get down to brass tacks: Free love cannot work as a social model so long as we remain picky about who we choose to allow ourselves to see as “sexually attractive,” and open to physical intimacy only with those whose looks meet our “standards.” While a sex worker may require payment, he is usually willing to take virtually all comers. How many others in society are doing as much to step outside the dominant dating paradigm? In foreswearing rent boys, has Halberstadt turned to the “pudgy 55-year-olds,” or 65-year-olds, of whom he writes, to meet their needs for physical intimacy and sex along with

his own? And not just one such individual in a sexually exclusive pair-bond, but many? Only those who are themselves prepared to step up and satisfy the sexual and romantic needs of the horny or lonely for no compensation have a right to complain about the commodification of sex. In this context, commodification helps meet the needs of some of those who fall through the cracks of objectification or lookism – and vice-versa, as many sexy, but financially struggling, rent boys can attest. Reading Halberstadt’s story of adopting a kitten as a substitute for tantalizing rent boys (“real affection, all night, for 50 cents’ worth of cat food”), I am reminded of an almost certainly apocryphal but nevertheless amusing and illustrative anecdote about Winston Churchill and a certain lady. Encountering the beauty at a party, Churchill inquired whether she would sleep with him for £1 million sterling. Clearly flattered by the generous offer, after some blushing coyness, she indicated that she would. “Then will you sleep with me for £5?” he asked. “Certainly not!” she snapped at him angrily. “What kind of woman do you take me for?” “Madame,” replied Churchill stoically, “we’ve already established that. Now we are merely negotiating the price.” Whether one obtains affection for 50 cents’ worth of cat food, or a $5,000 wedding ring, it doesn’t change the fact that a material inducement is being offered in exchange for emotional and/or physical companionship. To imagine otherwise is to delude ourselves. (Though anyone who knows cats must surely be laughing at the idea of guaranteeing oneself “real affection, all night” for any amount of cat food!) None of this means real love and honest affection can’t exist. But it’s a myth that these things can only be present when there are no material considerations involved. We should stop pretending that relationships outside the world of sex work are necessarily purer or less affected than those contracted for by the hour, or that they aren’t similarly impacted by issues of class and disparities of wealth, power, and physical desire.t Starchild is a libertarian activist and erotic service provider in San Francisco.

Letters >>

Research refutes bathhouses add to AIDS cases

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Early theories about what caused AIDS that did not hold up to the growing body of evidence were discarded. Any claim today that “HIV does not cause AIDS” would not receive a serious hearing. So how is it that the Political Notes [“SF mayor ‘open’ to allowing gay bathhouses,” October 22] reported that some city and Department of Public Health leaders still need to consider whether bathhouses contribute to the spread of AIDS? The available research consistently refutes such a premise. My late colleague, Diane Binson, and I have conducted numerous studies that show that all bathhouses across the U.S. provide condoms and education; most also provide HIV testing and half provide STD screening. Our data from exit surveys of men leaving a bathhouse found that almost no risk of transmission occurred at the bathhouse; even men who engaged in high-risk sex in the three months prior to their bathhouse visit reported safer sex during their bathhouse visit. Thus, if anything, bathhouses facilitate safer sex not high-risk sex.

Using data from a random digit dial survey conducted in the mid-1990s, we looked for any indication that different bathhouse policies across four cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago) might translate to different levels of risk behavior among gay men. Risk behavior patterns across the cities were similar despite very different policies. Monitoring customer sexual behavior, the centerpiece of San Francisco’s policy, has no evidence of reducing risk behavior. Other cities have tried versions of monitoring, though only San Francisco enforces it today. Denver dropped staff monitoring of customers when it became obvious that the policy was not enforceable by either staff or public health officials. If politicians in City Hall or DPH do not want to spend the political capital that would be required to allow bathhouses with closed rooms to open in San Francisco, they should just say so. But stop pretending like it’s only a matter of protecting public health. William J. Woods, Ph.D., Professor Center for AIDS Prevention Studies University of California, San Francisco

Palm Springs voters to decide council seats, mayoralty by Matthew S. Bajko

oters in Palm Springs, the southern California desert hotspot long home to gay and lesbian retirees and a magnet for LGBT tourists, will be electing a new mayor next week as well as deciding two seats on the City Council. It is widely expected that the November 3 election will result in the third consecutive out mayor leading the city of roughly 47,000 residents. LGBTs are estimated to account for anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of voters. One of the leading candidates to capture one of the two council seats up for grabs next Tuesday is former San Francisco resident Geoff Kors, who moved to Palm Springs in 2011 after resigning as executive director of LGBT statewide advocacy group Equality California. The six-person council race includes incumbent City Councilman Paul Lewin, a straight LGBT ally seeking re-election, and gay Planning Commissioner J.R. Roberts, who in the late 1990s was elected to Sausalito’s city council and served a stint as mayor before moving to Palm Springs in 2001. The frontrunner in the mayor’s race is lesbian City Councilwoman Ginny Foat, while gay retired Navy Commander Robert “Rob” Moon has mounted a strong challenge to lead the Coachella Valley city. The two have raised the most money of any of the eight people seeking to become mayor, according to the latest campaign finance filings, with Foat raising a reported $250,000 and Moon netting close to $135,000. Foat, who would be the city’s first female mayor, also secured endorsements from a number of LGBT groups, such as the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, EQCA, and the Desert Stonewall Democrats. The candidate with the most votes come election night will be declared the winner. Also in the race is former mayor Ron Oden, whose election in 2003 marked the first time a gay African American candidate had been elected mayor. After Oden served one mayoral term and opted not to seek re-election, gay former city councilman Steve Pougnet succeeded him in 2007. But Pougnet has been embroiled in a conflict of interest scandal for much of the year due to the Desert Sun reporting in April that he had voted to approve a land sale to a local developer who was paying

the mayor for consulting ers because of the site of work. In May Pougnet FBI agents raiding Palm admitted he had “made a Springs City Hall.” mistake” in not recusing Desert Stonewall himself from that vote Democrats chair Ruth and announced he would Debra, a lesbian who not seek a third four-year moved to Palm Springs term as mayor this fall. 12 years ago, said the But he also insisted scandal surrounding that he had informed his Kors for City Council campaign Pougnet had resulted in a family months prior to Palm Springs City far more uglier campaign the newspaper’s report- Council candidate season than normal. ing that he had decided to Geoff Kors “It has created a lot step down as mayor when of nastiness and a lot of his term ends in Decemsuspicion,” said Debra. “I ber. The state Fair Politithink untoward and uncal Practices Commission necessary suspicion.” is investigating Pougnet, In addition to its backand last month, agents ing Foat, the LGBT pofrom the F.B.I. and the litical club endorsed Kors Riverside County district and Lewin in the council attorney raided City Hall race. Asked about the and seized documents attacks Foat and Lewin Foat for Mayor campaign from Pougnet’s home. have faced, Debra said The questions around Palm Springs the two politicians are City Hall corruption have mayoral candidate likely to weather them. been used in TV ads to at- Ginny Foat “I think they both will tack both Foat and Lewin. overcome the attacks to The hit pieces, though, resulted in win the elections,” she said. “But, yes, their own scandal over who paid it really has made it a much more diffor them, with the Sun reporting a ficult race. It is not a pretty one.” former consultant to Moon, who While EQCA solely endorsed disavowed any knowledge of them, Kors in the council race, the Gay paid to air the spots using a fake and Lesbian Victory Fund endorsed name. both Kors and Roberts, who is semiThe other mayoral candidates are retired and was the founding manneurologist Dr. Guy T. Burrows, aging director of the Palm Springs retired educator Ricky Wright, Art Museum Architecture and attorney Bob Weinstein, execuDesign Center, Edwards Harris Pative producer Bill Gunasti, and vilion, which opened in November. asset manager Mike Kors has raised $232,000 for his Schaefer. campaign, while Roberts has netAlso running for ted nearly $135,000, according to the two council seats the most recent fundraising reports. are registered nurse Both men have made addressing Anna Nevenic, dry ethics at City Hall a cornerstone of cleaning manager David their campaigns. Brown, and retired “My candidacy represents a giant business executive leap towards improving the necesJim King. The top sary transparency and accounttwo vote-getters in the ability for our city government in race will be declared the Palm Springs,” stated Roberts on his winners. campaign site. The ongoing cloud over the doAs for Kors, whose husband, ings at City Hall has impacted the James Williamson, was elected mayoral and council races in sevlast fall to the Palm Springs school eral ways, said Hank Plante, a gay board, he has pledged to push for longtime TV political reporter in the creation of an ethics and sunthe Bay Area who retired to Palm shine task force should he be elected. Springs with his husband several “I think the issues of ethics and years ago and moderated a recent conflicts of interest and transparcandidate forum on both races. ency are among the most important “The biggest impact on the elecwith voters. My experience, both tion from the Pougnet story is it has legal and legislative, will add a lot of heightened public interest, donavalue to the council,” said Kors, who tions and, I expect, turnout in the is currently working for the Naelection,” Plante told the Bay Area tional Center for Lesbian Rights as Reporter. “So far all the candidates a senior legislative and policy straterunning have taken in a combined gist. “Currently, there is no one with $1 million in donations – which is experience drafting legislation on an astounding number for a small the council. Given what has gone on town. Turnout may also break rein Palm Springs, people are looking cords. The question now is will for someone with that kind of expeincumbents be punished by votrience to serve on the council.”t

Barry Schneider Attorney at Law

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

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

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SAN FRANCISCO DEPUTY SHERIFFS’

“Serving the Deputy Sheriffs’ of San Fra

SAN FRANCISCO DEPUTY SHERIFFS’ ASSOCIATION, INC. An open letter to San Francisco voters from your D

“Serving the Deputy Sheriffs’ of San Francisco since 1952” SAN

Ross Mirkarimi is once again lashing out against his own diverse, progressive workf term asSHERIFFS’ Sheriff. FRANCISCOdisastrous DEPUTY ASSOCIATION, INC.

“Serving the Deputy Sheriffs’ San Francisco sinceSheriffs, 1952”who elected a progressive Unconscionably, he isof pretending that we Deputy

An open letter to San Francisco voters An open letter to San Francisco voters from your Deputy Sheriffs from your Deputy Sheriffs

somehow homophobic. This is just the latest shameless attempt to divert attention fr

Mirkarimi claims to be pro-women yet he closed the only female Recovery Program Francisco jails. The only new program he brought to the women was a sewing progr

Mirkarimi claims to be pro-gender nonconforming and transgender, but two years ag Ross Mirkarimi is once again lashing out against his own diverse, progressive workforce to distract voters from his program unit in the nation dedicated to individualized treatment and re-entry for gen disastrous term as Sheriff. and transgender inmates.

An open letter to San Francisco voters from your Deputy Sheriffs

Unconscionably, he is pretending that we Deputy Sheriffs, who elected a progressive gay man to lead our union, are Mirkarimi claims to from be pro-gay but has failed to utilize the many LBGTQI members somehow homophobic. This is just thelashing latest shameless attempt to divert attention his workforce embarrassing record. Ross Mirkarimi is once again out against his own diverse, progressive to distract voters from his and decisions concerning our own communities. SAN FRANCISCO DEPUTY SHERIFFS’ ASSOCIATION, INC.

disastrous term as Sheriff.

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Commentary>>

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Anomalies by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

n an interview with the Advocate, Kimberly Walton, assistant administrator of Transportation Security Administration’s Office for Civil Rights and Liberty, was asked about issues transgender people have had with the agency, including the recent experience live-tweeted by a transwoman, Shadi Petosky, in the Orlando International Airport. Petosky was held by the TSA in midSeptember due to an “anomaly” in her scan. Specifically, her genitals. While Walton could not speak directly about Petosky’s experience, as it is under investigation, she did address a lot of more general questions about how transgender people are supposed to be treated during screening. “Our policies and procedures focus on ensuring that all of our passengers are treated with dignity, respect, and courtesy,” said Walton. “With that said, we screen travelers as they present. So if a person presents as a female, they are screened as a female. If a person presents as a male, they are screened as a male. If our workforce is not sure, they are trained to discreetly and politely get clarification.” This isn’t what happened in the Orlando International Airport, according to Petosky’s Twitter feed. A TSA agent only identified as “Bramlet” demanded that Petosky rescreen as a male “or it was going to be a problem.” This was only the start of 24 hours of difficulties with TSA, local police, and American Airlines for Petosky. Petosky’s experience is by no means singular. Many other trans-

men and women have faced similar issues in TSA screening. Her experience led to a #TravelingWhileTrans hashtag on Twitter, revealing plenty of other stories. You see, as Walton stresses, TSA’s scanners, which she describes as “the best technology for the current and historical threat,” require that people be identified by the two traditional – or should I say “current and historical” – genders. TSA agents determine which button to press based on how a person presents. Instead of useful information about weapons and bombs, then, the machine spits out details about one’s body as “anomalies,” and you end up being “discreetly and politely” asked about it. I assume as discretely as Bramlet spoke to Petosky, no doubt.

A selfie that Shadi Petosky posted on Twitter shows she was upset by her experience at the Orlando airport.

fliers leads to a “not found” error. When asked about what transgender passengers can do to have a better experience, Walton suggested calling the TSA in advance, and requesting a private screening.

“Our policies and procedures focus on ensuring that all of our passengers are treated with dignity, respect, and courtesy.” –Kimberly Walton, TSA assistant administrator Of course, Walton has said many nice things about all the trans and LGBT organizations TSA is working with to make sure its policies are good for transgender people, and how it has been giving employees “Transgender 101” training. I have to assume that training has not made it to Florida. She also indicated that TSA is working on a website update to provide better information for transgender flyers – although the site’s past information for transgender

Oh, and one last thing from this interview: When asked specifically about the use of the word “anomaly” to refer to transgender bodies, Walton made it clear that TSA is changing that word. To what, however, is not yet known. I think that Walton, should she need to take a different position with the TSA, may consider public relations. The interview was very short on specifics, very tall on promises with a side order of doublespeak.

It turns out that TSA hasn’t had a large number of employees meet with LGBT organizations. In an Advocate story posted online this week, a spokesman from GLAAD’s trans project said TSA hasn’t met with the media watchdog group. The National Center for Transgender Equality has done some training, according to Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy, but it’s only been for a small number of TSA supervisory staff, not the agents who screen passengers. That information begs some questions. What is the TSA offering up as Transgender 101? Who prepared the materials? How many TSA screeners have actually been through the training? It would seem, from all the stories out there, that this particular “101” is not effective. I already stressed the obvious lack of “discreet and polite” treatment that Petosky and others have received. So many transgender people have spoken out about their treatment, and how it seemed more designed to publicly humiliate them than in any way allow them to hold onto a shred of their human-

ity. What does this Transgender 101 have to say about that, and how much is that respected by the rank and file if they cannot even follow this supposed policy of discretion? Indeed, I would suggest that TSA’s policies seem more like an “anomaly 101,” with us in the center of things. These machines that are, supposedly, “the best technology” should not need to work based on a person’s gender presentation. If the TSA is doing anything more than going through the motions, then it should be looking for weapons, not genitals. If it is geared toward gender, and declaring anomalies based on genitals and other body parts – binders, hysterectomy scars, and breast implants, for example – how is this keeping us safe while we fly? If the system worked, no one would feel they had to call in advance, or ask for special treatment. Then again, if the system worked, bullets and explosives would be the anomalies the TSA might pull you out of line for. So the upshot is this. TSA intends to largely keep going as it has, with a pretty page on its website to tell you how you can make it easier on agents to scan our transgender bodies, but officials will find a better word for it when they find anomalies on our bodies. I’m here to say, though, that the very fact they call the parts of a transgender person’s body an “anomaly” is the problem, and no as-of-yet-unknown euphemism changes that. These are not policies designed for transgender passengers, but for the TSA itself, and – in spite of anything said by Walton – this is not a positive change. It’s not a change at all.t Gwen Smith is regularly rescreened in airports. You’ll find her on Twitter at @gwenners.

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<< LGBT History Month

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

Photogs set to open SF LGBT portrait exhibit by Seth Hemmelgarn

wo photographers who have been chronicling San Francisco’s LGBT community for decades, from the height of the AIDS epidemic through the arrival of marriage equality, are set to open an exhibit of their work in November at the public library. Rick Gerharter and Jane Philomen Cleland, whose photographs regularly appear in the Bay Area Reporter, combed through years of photos for “Daily and Transcendent: 25+ years of Photojournalistic Portraits.” The exhibit, which formally opens at 1 p.m. Sunday, November 1 with a reception at the library’s Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street, focuses on portrait photography. It will remain on display in the library’s Jewett Gallery until January 3. As Gerharter, who’s 63 and gay, spoke about the exhibit, he ticked through a list of names of the 27 images in the show and said about a third of the subjects are dead from AIDS or other causes. “I wonder what it would be like if they hadn’t all died,” he said. “... My circle of friends would be quite a bit larger.” One of his photos is of AIDS activist Jeff Getty, who died of heart failure in October 2006 at the age of 49. Getty, who lived for years with AIDS, made medical history in 1995 when he underwent an experimental procedure and received a baboon bone marrow stem cell transplant that was ultimately unsuccessful. His death followed cancer chemotherapy.

Rick Gerharter

AIDS activist Jeff Getty, photographed in his Oakland apartment October 25, 1995.

Gerharter, who first approached the library about four years ago about doing an exhibit, for years has been filing away photos for a possible show. Among other factors he kept in mind when sifting through his work, he wanted to capture the range of the photos he’s taken from 1988 through 2011. But Gerharter’s first consideration, he said, was “I really had to like the photo.” Cleland, a 56-year-old lesbian who’s been taking photos in the Bay Area since 1987, had similar criteria for the work she selected. “I thought they were really strong images,” and she also picked photos that had cultural, historical, or political significance, she said. However, Cleland said, “Mostly I

Jane Philomen Cleland

A man, identified only as Derrick, participated in the Art March censorship and bigotry protest in San Francisco in September 1990.

just picked the ones I liked.” One of Cleland’s photos is of a man identified only as Derrick, who took part in the Art March censorship and bigotry protest in San Francisco in September 1990. The demonstration was held in the wake of the 1989-90 controversy over photography exhibits by Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe that were attacked by conservative anti-gay politicians and organizations. Some Christian

conservative leaders, such as the American Family Association and Pat Robertson, urged Congress to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts. (The museum where Mapplethorpe’s photos were to be exhibited received NEA funding and canceled the show.) Over the ensuing years, as Republicans took control of Congress, the NEA’s budget was drastically cut, though not entirely eliminated. Other targeted organizations in-

cluded Project Artaud, which bills itself as a pioneering arts complex and is located in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, and Research Publications, also in the city. Gerharter hopes the exhibit prompts visitors to remember the subjects and learn more about them. He’d also like to give people an idea of what photojournalists do, and “the importance of documenting all these people, this community.” Cleland noted, “I’m occasionally a witness to history being made,” and she’d like it if her portraits inspired someone to engage in activism or cultural work. The James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center and the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library are sponsoring the photo exhibit. “I’m grateful that the Hormel Center is hosting this photography exhibit of Rick Gerharter and Jane Cleland’s work,” Mike Yamashita, the B.A.R.’s publisher, said in an email. “Both have consistently documented our LGBT communities for the past several decades and I am proud to say that all along their photojournalism has been essential to the B.A.R. This exhibit allows the public to view other aspects of their craft.” In addition to the exhibit, Gerharter, Cleland, and others will also take part from 6 to 7:30 p.m. December 2 in “Daily and Transcendent: Creating a Visual History of San Francisco’s Queer Community,” a discussion of 25 years of queer history in the Bay Area. B.A.R. freelance reporter Liz Highleyman will moderate the program. For more information, visit the library’s website at www.sfpl.org.t

Joe Lobdell: Tragedy and triumph of a 19th century transition by Ray Simon

hen Joseph Israel Lobdell died in 1912 at the Binghamton State Hospital in New York, his death went largely unnoticed. Lobdell, who was known as Joe, was 82 and had been confined to mental institutions since 1880. In the intervening decades, his siblings had predeceased him. In his lifetime, Lobdell was a crack shot and a wonderful fiddle player. He opened a singing school and, for a while at least, found modest success with that business. There was some adventure in his life, too. Lobdell traveled west to Minnesota, where he guarded land on the frontier. Within the context of 19th century American social history, experiences like these were not uncommon, but one aspect of Lobdell’s life is extraordinary: He was born in 1829 as a woman, Lucy Ann Lobdell. Although Lobdell died in obscurity, he’s recently begun to attract attention. In 2011, for example, Bambi Lobdell, Ph.D., a distant cousin, published A Strange Sort of Being: The Transgender Life of Lucy Ann/Joseph Israel Lobdell, 18291912. And earlier this year, journalist William Klaber released a novel about Lobdell, The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell. It seems as if Lobdell’s time has come. Bambi Lobdell, who teaches gender studies and literature at the State University of New York, Oneonta, certainly feels that way. Her book includes both an analysis of Lobdell’s life informed by queer theory and transgender studies, as well as primary documents about him. Bambi Lobdell, who did not disclose her sexual orientation, regards Lobdell as a gender outlaw and argues that he is best understood as a transgender man. She acknowledged that this category was unavailable to Lobdell, but she believes that it most closely approximates his

understanding of himself and restores a modicum of dignity to him. “I use the word transgender, in its widest application, to mean not cisgender and not gender-conforming,” she said. For Bambi Lobdell, this isn’t simply an academic exercise. She contends that many of the issues confronting Lobdell, including societal expectations and gender roles, are still relevant to LGBT people. Lobdell’s history is important, Bambi Lobdell explained, because “it tells a story of how his otherness was framed as deviance and how his otherness was basically signaled by his gender presentation, his refusal to conform.” “So he crossed the boundaries of gender roles and gender presentation and sexuality, though the people back then didn’t realize that, because most people, including women in the 19th century, thought that women didn’t have any sexual desire,” she said. Fortunately for scholars, there are contemporary, written accounts of Lobdell’s life. Chief among them is a book Lobdell published in 1855: Narrative of Lucy Ann Lobdell, the Female Hunter of Delaware and Sullivan Counties, N.Y. In a 2012 podcast with Susan Rich, Bambi Lobdell described it as part melodrama, part feminist manifesto. One immediate result of the book’s publication was a measure of notoriety for its author. The “Female Hunter” became fodder for journalists. For the remainder of his life, whenever Lobdell ran into trouble, periodicals like the Stamford Mirror and the Jeffersonian mentioned the Female Hunter. Copies of the narrative are rare. Fortunately, Bambi Lobdell includes it in its entirety in A Strange Sort of Being. That’s partly because she conceived of her work as an academic textbook that could be adopted for college classes in gender studies and sexuality.

Significant transition

Courtesy Bambi Lobdell

Joe Lobdell

“I just packed it full of all sorts of gender theory and gender analysis and queer theory,” Bambi Lobdell said when asked to sketch its contents. Within Lobdell’s narrative, there are a few agreed-upon facts worth noting. To begin, Lucy Ann Lobdell was born December 2, 1829 just outside of Albany, New York. The family was poor, but Lobdell wanted an education. To pay for schooling, she was given some chores. That was how she learned to shoot, a skill she put to use at various times later in life. Around 1852, the Lobdell family moved to Long Eddy, New York. Roughly a year later, Lobdell married a man named George Washington Slater and gave birth to a daughter. Lobdell’s account depicted an unhappy marriage. When Slater abandoned them, Lobdell returned to her family, left her daughter with them, and slipped away one evening in 1854. Shortly afterwards, Joseph Israel Lobdell appeared in Bethany, Pennsylvania, where he opened a singing school. From this point forward, details of Lobdell’s life can be pieced together, if sketchily, from occasional newspaper accounts or court documents about him.

In retrospect, it appears that the writing and publication of Lobdell’s narrative marks a significant transition. For the remainder of his life, more than five decades, he used the name he’d chosen for himself and dressed as a man – except on those occasions when a sheriff or deputy tried forcing him to wear women’s clothes. The singing school attracted students, most of them the daughters of well-to-do farmers and businessmen from the provincial town. There is some evidence that Lobdell was well-liked by his pupils. According to Bambi Lobdell, someone once interviewed the descendant of a woman who had attended the school. “Apparently, a lot of women danced with Joe when he was a singing teacher,” Bambi Lobdell said. “And this one woman said she remembered her grandmother saying, ‘I can’t believe that’s really a woman; he was the nicest boy I ever dated.’” Problems arose, however, when Lobdell’s “identity” was revealed. He was chased out of Bethany by a mob threatening to tar and feather him. Undaunted, Lobdell headed west, arriving in Minnesota. Here he sometimes went by the name LaRoi. In Minnesota, Lobdell worked odd jobs and even guarded land for its owners. Lobdell’s physical courage should be noted: Minnesota’s winters were harsh, he was living on the edge of the wilderness with only his rifle to protect him, and clashes with Native Americans were always a distinct possibility. Once again, however, Lobdell’s “identity” was revealed. After a trial, Lobdell was sent back east to his parents’ home. Depressed and unable to find work, he entered the County Poor House in Delhi, New York, in 1860. It’s there, roughly a year later, that Lobdell met Marie Louise Perry. Perry, who had been abandoned

by her husband, arrived physically weakened and emotionally upset. Lobdell helped nurse Perry back to health, which restored his spirits, too. One night, the two escaped from the poor house and were married by a justice of the peace. Lobdell now had a bride, a woman about a decade younger than him. The couple was together for almost 20 years, but their life was not easy. They eked out a living doing odd jobs or survived on whatever food Lobdell’s hunting provided. Often, they lived outdoors in the thick woods of upstate Pennsylvania and New York. The couple was desperately poor and, consequently, always in imminent danger of being arrested for vagrancy. Lobdell’s life took a turn for the worse around 1878. Shortly after receiving a Civil War pension (Slater was killed in the war), Lobdell’s brother had him declared insane. In 1879, he was taken away to the Willard Insane Asylum in Ovid, New York. While locked up, Lobdell became a patient of Dr. P.M. Wise, who published a brief article about Lobdell in 1883. In that account, entitled “A Case of Sexual Perversion,” Wise related a telling statement from Lobdell. The patient, whom he insisted on viewing as a woman, told him that “she considered herself a man in all that the name implies.” Bambi Lobdell thinks people should take Lobdell at his word, something she views as paramount. “What I’m trying to do is give Joe back his voice, because – and this is another way it should resonate with people today – transgender people oftentimes are not allowed to tell their own story,” she said.t To learn more about Joe Lobdell, visit http://www.lucyjoe.com. Ray Simon is an editor and writer based in Philadelphia, who contributes articles on arts and culture to Philadelphia Gay News and other publications.

Travel>>

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

Walt Disney World offers an adult getaway amid family vacations

James LaCroce

The Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World James LaCroce

Members of Sbandieratori Di Sansepolcro wear colorful Renaissance costumes as they demonstrate Tuscan-style flag throwing at the Italy Pavilion at Epcot.

by Matthew S. Bajko

alking into the air-conditioned, lakeside Moroccan restaurant in the World Showcase section of Epcot, my husband and I found welcome respite from the scorching Florida weather during a family vacation this past August at Walt Disney World. Along with an hour of near solitude – there were only two other groups of diners at the Spice Road Table during our late lunch – to catch our breath after a morning of thrill rides in the theme park’s various Future World pavilions, we dined on a scrumptious spread of sangria, rice stuffed grape leaves, spicy shrimp, meat skewers, and a mixed vegetable platter. It was a rare chance to escape not only the heat but also the hordes of other tourists that had descended on Epcot that day. It may be billed as the happiest place on Earth, but the summer crowds, humidity, and temperatures hitting 90 degrees or higher can quickly melt away smiles on the faces of even diehard Disney geeks. (Full disclosure: we love the Disney parks and often getaway to Disneyland in Anaheim to celebrate birthdays or attend the annual Gay Days gathering held there the first weekend of October.) Yet by taking advantage of Disney’s advanced planning tools, and armed with some insider tips, Walt Disney World can easily offer adults traveling on their own an enjoyable getaway amid the vacationing fami-

lies with children. Throughout the four theme parks, two water parks, and the newly rechristened Disney Springs dining and shopping district, one can find top-notch live entertainment, unique bars and nightlife, and superb culinary offerings.

from the airport, including the option of having your checked luggage be delivered directly to your hotel room. Check-in can also be done digi-

tally, with your room number texted to you via your cellphone. And your Magic Bands, which are shipped ahead of time to those guests staying in a Disney hotel, are programmed to be your room key and used to gain entry to the theme parks. (They are also tied into the Fastpass-plus

system and can also be used to charge meals and purchases at stores throughout the theme parks, hotels, and Disney Springs.) Park property hotel guests also receive what are called Extra Magic Hours. On select days one of the See page 14 >>

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A key ingredient to making the most of a Walt Disney World vacation is to plan ahead, and with the debut two years ago of what the company calls Magic Bands, pre-planning one’s trip has become even more critical. Now guests can select fast passes, i.e. specific timed entry, for the more popular rides in all four of the theme parks months in advance of their arrivals. The three fast passes per day can also be used to secure set times for character meet and greets or access to special viewing areas for parades, fireworks, and certain shows. The pre-booked fast passes are restricted to one park per day, though once used, additional fast passes can be booked via kiosks inside the parks or via a mobile app based on availability. Guests who opt to stay in one of the Disney-owned hotels are given priority when it comes to how far in advance the fast passes can be secured. Those staying onsite can access the online Fastpass-plus service 60 days before their trip; for everyone else it is 30 days prior. The Disney company offers other incentives to prod people to book their stays at one of its own hotels. There is free shuttle service to and

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<< Travel

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

LOOKING FOR

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Walt Disney World

From page 13

four theme parks – the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom – either opens an hour early or closes later at night. With attendance reduced during those times, lines are significantly shorter at many of the roller coasters and other thrill rides that normally have long wait times of an hour or more. Thus, Magic Hours are a good way to ensure you get to ride or see your most desired attractions. The schedule varies throughout the year but is posted months in advance so people can plan their visit accordingly. This trip we stayed at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter in a corner room overlooking the Sassagoula River that snakes its way through the property and is plied by riverboats providing free transportation to the Disney Springs area. It is one of five moderate-priced Disney hotels and was a short shuttle bus ride to all four of the theme parks. Walt Disney World has eight deluxe Disney hotels, three of which are directly serviced by the resort’s monorail system, and five value Disney hotel resorts, which attract many families with young children. 12:30 One strategy my husband and I deploy to make the most of any Dis-

James LaCroce

The Gascon water fountain is a highlight in the Magic Kingdom at Walk Disney World.

ney vacation is to book at least one, if not two, sit-down dining reservations each day of our trip. We opt to tack on a Deluxe Dining package with our Walt Disney World hotel reservation and park passes as it allows us to dine at the nicer, more expensive table service restaurants. (The price does not include tips or alcohol.) Our meals, in turn, are much needed respites during the day en-

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joyed in the relaxed atmosphere of air-conditioned dining rooms. For an hour, at least, we can escape the crowds, enjoy a cocktail or bottle of wine (in the Magic Kingdom alcohol is only served at the Be Our Guest restaurant), and decompress. The one catch is you have to choose the restaurants you want to eat at months in advance and be flexible about dining times. Reservations for the table service eateries can be made 180 days ahead of your arrival, and if you don’t call that day, it is unlikely you will be able to secure a table closer to your trip. This vacation we thoroughly enjoyed our meals at Epcot’s Rose and Crown Pub in the United Kingdom, at Le Cellier Steakhouse in Canada, and at Monsieur Paul in France. The aforementioned Be Our Guest restaurant, themed to the Beast’s Castle from the movie Beauty and the Beast, was a visually stunning setting for our last dinner of the trip. The most disappointing meals turned out to be at Yak and Yeti inside the Animal Kingdom park, as each Asian-inspired entree was smothered in rice, and at the Irish-themed Raglan Road at Disney Springs, where the noise was deafening and made conversation impossible. Certain aspects of the new Magic Band system were aggravating and having to be so regimented in planning out a vacation comes with drawbacks. Since we were traveling with 14 people staying at different hotels, some offsite, not everyone was able to book the same Fastpassplus reservations. Thus, coordinating schedules in order to meet up inside the parks proved to be complicated. And with the family dinners we had set aside to be together, only once were we able to make a reservation for all 14 people to be seated at the same table. Overall, such hiccups proved to be minor. And we still had plenty of opportunities for spontaneity, such as the day we ended up at the Moroccan restaurant after our initial lunch plans changed. From reading on several Disney fan sites that not many people eat there, we figured getting a last-minute table shouldn’t be a problem. It turned out to be one of many (unplanned) magical moments of our weeklong trip.t For more information about Walt Disney World, visit its official website at https://disneyworld. disney.go.com/. To learn about the events planned for Gay Days Orlando 2016, which will take place May 31 through June 1, visit http:// gaydays.com/Orlando/Featured/. Two Disney fan sites that provide a wealth of information about the resort are http://www.mouseplanet.com/ and http://www. disneynewscentral.com/.

This page has interntionally been left blank.

<< LGBT History Month

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

Steven Underhill

PHOTOGRAPHY

415 370 7152

WEDDINGS, HEADSHOTS, PORTRAITS

stevenunderhill.com · stevenunderhillphotos@gmail.com

BE in the know! To get in the know, sign up for the Bay Area Reporter’s free weekly email newsletter. Delivered to your inbox each Wednesday evening, our e-newsletter is a blast! You’ll receive original reporting of local news, information, and entertainment from the nation’s longest continuously-published and highest circulation LGBT weekly. Sign up for FREE at www.ebar.com/newsletter

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

Historic statement

From page 1

ity among men” that existed during the Gold Rush days to the birth in 1910 of “an active gay network” of servicemen and civilians in the city “that gathered at private residences and bathhouses.” Cross-dressing by both men and women in the 19th and 20th centuries is covered, as are several of the more noteworthy Barbary Coast female impersonators, like Bothwell Browne, Julian Eltinge, and Ah Ming, whose 1892 obituary declared that “As a female impersonator ... Ming led all of his countrymen.” It delves into the role of bohemians, such as poets and lovers Charles Warren Stoddard and Yone Noguchi, and lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow in helping turn Jackson Square and North Beach into a haven for homosexuals from around the world. Later arrivals, such as poet Robert Duncan and his partner, visual artist Jess Collins, are included among the Beat generation who played a hand in attracting other LGBTQ artists to the city in the 1950s. The art gallery the couple helped co-found was where gay poet Allen Ginsberg recited his coming-out poem “Howl” in October 1955.

Birth of the bar scene

The birth and migration of the city’s gay and lesbian bar scene is documented from its early incarnation in North Beach, at places like Finocchio’s, Mona’s 440 Club, and the Black Cat Cafe between the 1930s to the mid-1960s, to its eventual spread south into the Tenderloin, Polk Street, Haight-Ashbury, South of Market, the Mission and Valencia Corridor, and the Castro, where it remains centered to this day. The women split the timeline in half, with Watson focused on the earlier decades up until 1965. One development she was especially taken by was the creation of sex space communities, such as bathhouses and cruising spots. “The development of bar spaces has been documented so well and so has the homophile movements. But

St. James

From page 2

been “a financial drain.” His nonprofit “regularly lost” $300,000 to $500,000 a year operating the building in which St. James is located, which also includes an English language school, he said. “In order to get rid of the lease, we had to buy the building,” which the

the cruising and hustling and kind of the edgy side of this history was fun for me to research,” she said. One section she added late in the drafting process was on the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, a left-leaning group that supported men discharged from the military for homosexuality being hired for jobs in the maritime industry. “I had no idea about it. I went and looked again at Allan Berube’s work,” said Watson, referring to a local gay historian who had begun looking into the union’s history prior to his death in 2007. “He was the only historian to document it in detail.” In her section detailing the more recent decades of LGBT history, Graves said one chapter she particularly found compelling centers on the work of the Langley Porter Clinic at UCSF, which she writes in the report was responsible for San Francisco becoming “an important center for the study of gender and sexuality in the 1940s and 1950s.” “It looms pretty large in transgender history, not just in the Bay Area but nationally,” said Graves. Two eras she documented that Graves found especially powerful were the early gay liberation movement and the early years of the AIDS epidemic. “A lot of the early gay liberation activists saw their work intimately tied to the work against racism and for economic justice for a new world. That was very inspiring,” she said. “In some ways, it echoes the kinds of complex issues about power we are trying to deal with today in San Francisco. Another part that was emotional to research was, of course, the AIDS section. I do think there could and should be more ways to make that story public for people.” To assist in the preservation and land-marking of important LGBT sites, the women created a how-to guide on how to navigate the city’s historic landmark designation process as well as how to petition both the California Office of Historic Preservation and the National Register of Historic Places to list a property on their registries.

Recommendations

nonprofit took on “a lot of debt” to do. “That is why we’re selling it,” said Shoemaker, whose agency usually has an annual budget of $12 million to $13 million. He wouldn’t say how much Mercy paid for the building, and he declined to say who the prospective owner is without their permission. All three buildings are being sold to the same party.

Citing public records, the real estate news site theregistrysf.com said MCC 1360 LLC, which shares Mercy’s address at 1360 Mission, bought 1340, 1360 and 1366-1370 Mission in May “for a total of $22.75 million.”

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The women concluded the report with five recommendations for further action to be taken to preserve and highlight the city’s LGBT history. Their suggestions include funding a citywide LGBTQ cultural heritage survey to create a comprehensive list of properties worthy of recognition and pursuing the registration of such sites as local landmarks or landmark districts and by the state and federal governments. Another idea they promote is for the city to install a historical plaque, and/or interpretative display, at sites where the historic property is now gone. Both women pledged to ensure their report doesn’t merely gather dust on a shelf at City Hall and intend to advocate for the land marking of various sites. “Hopefully, it will have a life as a tool for the planning department to check against as they are looking at potential development in San Francisco,” said Graves. “Likewise, the city, I think, might elect to assign either staff or resources to nominate sites as landmarks based on the research.” In delivering the completed document to the city and the community, Watson said she and Graves feel like they are also “passing the torch” on to others involved in pushing for official recognition of San Francisco’s LGBT history. “I think the fact this is going to be a part of the official city record ... you take a step back and it is pretty special. Because not too long ago, this would have been unthinkable,” said Watson. “On a personal level, I have been working on historic preservation for a while as a historian and a member of this community. This is my first time to research and document my own history so that is pretty special.” The Historic Preservation Commission meeting will begin at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 18 in Room 400 at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place. A copy of the LGBTQ historic context statement can be downloaded online at http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=3673.t

Loss and hope

Ashley said that among St. James’ clients, there’s been “a sense of loss and sadness, and a sense of anger, but people are also ready to have a bigger and nicer space,” and they’re feeling “hopefulness and positivity.” About 4,000 unduplicated participants receive primary medical care from the nonprofit. Additionally, the agency works with clients through its needle exchange and street outreach services. It’s too early to say what a new space will cost, Ashley said. Her organization has letters of intent “in process on a couple different spaces, but we’re still looking and fundraising and trying to get a clear picture of what we can afford,” she said. St. James’ budget is about $750,000. Ashley declined to say what spaces her nonprofit is looking at, but she said, “In a perfect world, we would stay close to where we are right now.” Among St. James’ clients are homeless and marginally housed people from the Mission, Tenderloin, and South of Market neighborhoods, and Ashley said that although staying in SOMA would be “ideal,” the agency is checking all three areas for a new site. San Francisco’s Department of Public Health leases St. James’ building, and the rent, which is approximately $45,000 a year, “is preSee page 18 >>

t <<

Election 2015>>

Sheriff’s race

From page 1

by male or female officers. This is a historical change of policy, as well as working conditions, and in order to move this policy forward, the administration must work with the staff in a way that stresses communication, transparency, education, and the dignity of the trans jail population,” Hennessy said in a statement released this month. She said she’s “concerned” that Mirkarimi chose to “change policy by issuing a press release” in September, “especially before meeting with and discussing the policy with those who are charged with its implementation ... “ “In my experience, I have always found that it is vital to engage staff at the beginning for successful and safe policy change, as those are the individuals who will be responsible and accountable for following policies on a daily basis,” Hennessy stated. Mirkarimi didn’t respond to emailed questions from the Bay Area Reporter for this story, including a question as to whether the trans housing policy has been finalized, as the B.A.R. reported in September. On September 10, Mirkarimi issued a news release indicating the programming aspect of the transgender policy was finalized and that the housing component was expected to be finalized by the end of the year.

Housing

From page 1

pointed to a report released Tuesday by the Budget and Legislative Analyst, which Campos had requested, that found the Mission has lost 27 percent of its Latino/Hispanic population since 2000, though citywide the number of Latino/Hispanic residents increased by 13 percent. The report also found that, since 2000, households earning less than $35,000 per year increased in the Mission by 25 percent. As for middleincome households earning between $35,000 and $99,999, the report found they decreased over the same time period by 13 percent in the Mission. Backers of Prop I contend the report bolsters their arguments that the city cannot build its way out of the housing crisis, particularly in the Mission. “In order for housing prices to have stabilized, we would have had to have built the equivalent of another city the size of San Francisco on top of our current city, which is

News Briefs

From page 7

Health officials warn of fake Xanax pills

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has issued an advisory warning people not to purchase the drug Xanax on the street, as there are counterfeit pills circulating that contain fentanyl, an extremely potent, short-acting opioid that can cause overdose and death. Officials said that from October 15-17 three people between the ages of 20-40 were hospitalized after ingesting a pill inscribed as “XANAX” purchased on the street. Two became critically ill. A fourth person was found deceased in the community, with the same pill on their person. Analysis of the pills demonstrated fentanyl; one also had etizolam. The source of the pills is unknown. “We know there is a dangerous counterfeit drug being sold on the street as ‘Xanax,’ and people should be very careful and avoid the risk of overdose and death,” San Francisco health officer Dr. Tomas Aragon said in a statement. The health department alerted physicians in the community to the problem last week. For people who do

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

But in an editorial meeting with the B.A.R. in early October, Hennessy said the policy was not finalized. In response to emailed questions in June, the sheriff, who had been working with transgender advocates and members of his staff long before he made his announcement that month, said that “prior to housing changes, a meet-and-confer will happen as required.” The Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, which is backing Hennessy, has recently told Mirkarimi that it has “significant concerns” about his plans and wants to meet with his office before “any final decisions” are made. Mirkarimi’s proposal would mean that trans women would no longer be housed with men. The same would be true for transgender men, but the jail population generally sees more trans women inmates. The sheriff has said that he hopes to start making the housing move before the end of the year. In June, DSA President Eugene Cerbone, a gay man, told the B.A.R. that he thinks Mirkarimi’s plan “can work,” but “it just depends on what the policy is and what he’s going to do. There could be some issues with it.” One problem Cerbone has is that he doesn’t consider people who have not had surgery to be transgender. “Transgender is you have the surgery,” he said. “What I know of someone who’s actually transgen-

dered [sic] is they’ve had the complete change.” Cerbone did not respond to a message seeking comment for this story. Hennessy has told the B.A.R. she disagrees with Cerbone’s statement about genitalia defining someone’s transgender status.

impossible,” stated Campos. Yet the report does provide ammunition to opponents of Prop I who counter any stoppage of homebuilding in the city will only exacerbate the city’s housing crisis and prolong skyrocketing prices. The Legislative Analyst’s office concluded that had an average of 15,300 housing units been added each year between 1980 and 2010 instead of the actual average of 2,011, then the median 2010 housing value in San Francisco would have been approximately $525,000 (in 2015 inflation-adjusted dollars) instead of the actual median of $839,357. “This moratorium will not stop a single eviction or create a single unit of housing,” argued gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, a vocal Prop I opponent. “People are going to want to live in the Mission whether the moratorium is in place or not. It will create more pressure for Ellis Act evictions and other efforts to get people out.” Another outspoken critic of the

measure has been Peter Acworth, Kink.com founder and CEO. His plan to turn the SF Armory building at 14th and Mission streets into an entertainment venue would be stalled by the ballot proposal, contends Acworth, and would result in the loss of at least 50 living wage jobs. “We’ll be stuck with an empty space for up to three years and no jobs,” stated Acworth. “It’s insanity, and I think is a good example of the muddled thinking behind Prop I.” Doubtful the moratorium would be lifted, Wiener added that blocking market-rate housing from being built in the Mission would result in even less affordable housing units as developers of such projects are required to either include a portion of units on site as below-market-rate or pay a fee to the city to create the affordable housing nearby. “I think this is counterproductive and it isn’t going to change the trajectory of the Mission,” said Wiener.

purchase prescription drugs on the street, or who are exposed to opioids, the department encourages them to have access to naloxone to combat overdose. Naloxone is not a controlled substance, can be prescribed by any licensed health care provider, and can be administered by witnesses as a first aid measure, the department said in its news release. Naloxone is also available at no cost from the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education, or DOPE project, which targets drug users and their friends and family via syringe exchange sites.

BTQ-inclusive, women-owned and youth-operated establishment. It employs and trains young women in Oakland who face significant barriers to employment. Sok said that the cafe, located in the collective space at 1714 Franklin Street, is Mamacitas’ first brick and mortar location. The retail shop will be run by S and T, a branch of Show and Tell lifestyle and concept shop, and will showcase goods made by queer artisans. There will also be a gallery featuring rotating queer-themed art exhibitions and a dedicated workspace equipped with ample outlets and tables for visitors to utilize for work or study. “At the core of our mission is the concept of economic empowerment, creating cycles of support within the queer community,” Wolfson said in the news release. “We want Qulture Collective to be an inclusive space where artists, makers, and performers will have a platform for their work, and where all members of our intricate, amazing community can come together to connect, create, and grow.” The grand opening week will run November 2-6 and the celebration will conclude with Reel Queer, the collective’s monthly film series, Friday, November 6 from 8 to 11 p.m. An opening reception for an up-

Oakland queer collective announces grand opening

Qulture Collective, a multi-use space and queer community platform in downtown Oakland, will open its doors for regular hours starting Monday, November 2. The collective, founded by three queer women, will feature a cafe, retail shop, gallery, and workspace and is dedicated to serving the queer and allied communities with a focus on building queer trans people of color visibility. In a news release, the founders – Julia Wolfson, Alyah Baker, and Terry Sok – said that the cafe will be run by Mamacitas Cafe, an LG-

Union complaints

Some have been complaining about how Mirkarimi’s plans have been unfolding. In a September 4 letter to Mirkarimi, Peter A. Hoffman, an attorney representing the DSA, echoed Hennessy’s comments about staff buy-in and other matters. Hoffman wrote, “While the association genuinely appreciates the department’s interest in respecting and accommodating the transgender community, the anticipated change” that would be brought by the housing policy “constitutes a significant change in working conditions that raises significant concerns” related to officers’ and inmates’ safety, among other worries. He added that his message served as the association’s “demand to meet and confer in good faith prior to the department making any final decisions relative to the proposed transgender classification policy.” He also requested all documents the sheriff ’s department has “concerning the housing and classification of transgender inmates.” In a September 14 letter, Hoffman

Other housing measures

The other hotly contested hous-

complained that while the sheriff ’s department hadn’t responded to his records request, “it has come to the SFDSA’s attention that you have elected to share the department’s plans with various media outlets, including the Huffington Post and the San Francisco Examiner.” (It’s not clear why the DSA attorney expressed surprise about the plans when the organization’s president had talked to the B.A.R. about them three months beforehand.) Hoffman included the Huffington Post and Examiner stories with his letter. On September 28, Undersheriff Federico Rocha responded to Hoffman’s letters and indicated the sheriff ’s department doesn’t intend to sidestep the DSA. “Insofar as the meet and confer demand, the department agrees that once the draft policy on housing of the transgender inmates is completed, we will notice the DSA so that we can move collaboratively to finalize those policies with the DSA’s input,” Rocha said. However, he added, “the only implementation of any aspect related to transgender inmates is allowing them to attend programs available to other inmates and does not involve housing. The moving of inmates is a part of deputies’ normal duties and is not a change to working conditions and therefore [there is] no need to meet and confer.” Rocha was dismissive of the news stories Hoffman had referred to, which

described Mirkarimi’s housing plans. “I would remind the association that many articles are written with various interpretations, assumptions, etc.,” he said, without saying either of the articles had been inaccurate. “Again, we look forward to working with the DSA on the transgender policy at the appropriate time and will keep the DSA informed as this progresses,” Rocha said. He also said that Hoffman needed to file an “official” public records act request with Mark Nicco, assistant legal counsel for the sheriff ’s department. In response to a B.A.R. email this week, Nicco said the department “has received a public records request concerning those issues,” and “I am in the process of responding to that request.” In an ad that the DSA has been running in the B.A.R., the organization said, “Mirkarimi claims to be pro-gender non-conforming and transgender, but two years ago he closed the only full service program unit in the nation dedicated to individualized treatment and re-entry for gender nonconforming, gender queer and transgender inmates.” Mirkarimi’s campaign hasn’t offered the B.A.R. any rebuttal to the ad. John C. Robinson, a retired sheriff ’s deputy who now owns a private security company, is also in the race. The B.A.R. endorsed Hennessy earlier this month.t

ing-related ballot proposal, as noted two weeks ago in the B.A.R.’s Political Notebook, is Proposition F. Primarily aimed at reining in the shortterm rental site Airbnb, it would limit homeowners who rent out rooms, whether hosted or shared, to doing so 75 nights per year. They would also be required to submit quarterly reports on the number of days they live in the unit and the number of days the unit is rented. The measure would also prohibit the listing of in-law units as shortterm rentals and allow people to sue hosting platforms. It would make it a misdemeanor for a hosting platform to unlawfully list a unit as a short-term rental. The other two housing ballot measures have not garnered nearly as much opposition. There is wide support for Proposition D, which would grant city backing to the San Francisco Giants’ redevelopment plans for Mission Rock, the portowned parking lot and pier adjacent to the waterfront AT&T Park. Although the project would exceed

height limits at the site, most opposition melted away after the baseball team agreed to increase the set aside for affordable units to 33 percent and then upped the percentage to 40 percent. “The political reality is we need to deliver on this project all the affordable housing on-site,” said Jack Bair, the team’s executive vice president and general counsel. Proposition K, authored by District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, would direct the city to use its surplus property for building affordable housing for the homeless, very lowincome residents, and for those with incomes up to 120 percent of the area median income. Projects with more than 200 units would need to set aside some of the housing for households earning up to 150 percent or more of the area median income. Kim, who pushed the Giants to increase their set aside for affordable housing, said the Mission Rock project “is the poster child for Prop K and what we can do on public land.”t

coming exhibition, Pigment: A Redefinition of Beauty, takes place Saturday, November 7 from 8 to 10 p.m. For more information, visit www. qulturecollective.com.

olic Natural Law tradition and the coauthor of What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense. He is completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton and JD at Yale Law School.

College forum to look at sexuality and the church

Fall festival coming up

Saint Mary’s College in Moraga will present “Sexuality and the Christian Understanding of the Human Person,” a timely discussion of contemporary notions of sexuality, gender, and the family and how those lived experiences are understood in the Catholic tradition. The forum, which is free and open to the public, takes place Tuesday, November 3, at 7 p.m. in the Soda Center at Saint Mary’s, 1928 St. Mary’s Road. The discussion will feature a conversation between two important Catholic voices, theologian James Alison and philosopher Sherif Girgis. Alison is the author of many books, including Jesus the Forgiving Victim: Listening for the Unheard Voice. As a leader in the Global Network for Rainbow Catholics, he is a public advocate for the full incorporation and acceptance of LGBT persons in the Catholic Church. Girgis is a philosopher in the Cath-

A new fall festival is coming to San Francisco next month from the team that puts on the long-running San Francisco Bazaar craft festivals. The Urban Epicurean Festival will take place Saturday and Sunday, November 7-8, from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Fort Mason Center. Admission is free. The Urban Epic Fest, as it is known, will feature the quality craft vendors SF Bazaar is known for, plus a wider array of local food and drink vendors. Foodies and holiday shoppers can sample and purchase local libations on the wine and beer mezzanine or enjoy specialty offerings from the cocktail bar and numerous food trucks. There will also be workshops that will be held on everything from cheese making to paper flower crafting. The festival will include a dedicated kids play area sponsored by local tech start-up Mommy Nearest. For more information, visit http://www.urbanepicfest.com.t

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

SFAF

From page 2

date, Hattori said this week. Health officials need to perform a site visit, and “to my knowledge” that hasn’t happened, he said. After programs move into the center, which has about 15,000 square feet of space, the nonprofit may need more room, Hattori said. “We’re looking at what our needs are and want to learn more about what [468 Castro] offers,” he said. “We really don’t know what we would have there.” City records indicate the space is 2,500 square feet. Because it is larger than 2,000 square feet, the nonprofit would have to apply for conditional use authorization. The news site Hoodline first reported the development. SFAF, which has a budget of about $29 million, also doesn’t know if 468 Castro is for sale or lease, Hattori said. The B.A.R. wasn’t able to reach anyone associated with the retail space. As for Castro merchants, the head of the local business group told the B.A.R. that no one from SFAF has yet approached his group.

St. James

From page 16

dominantly in kind” from the city agency, Ashley said. Health officials continue to help St. James, she said. “We’re in negotiations about what kind of support DPH can provide us in the future,” Ashley said. Like most organizations, the city agency has “limited resources,” she said, but “they’re being as helpful as they can.” Colleen Chawla, the department’s deputy director, said, “We have been in partnership with St. James for a long time. They provide really important services for a hard to reach population.” Whether the agency will be able to continue to help St. James with most of its rent “depends on what the space is,” Chawla said. “Every space is going to have its own unique attributes.” However, she said, “We’re definitely committed to St. James and making sure they find a viable option.” The nonprofit’s current space has “a little over 2,800” square feet, Ashley said. “We’re looking for around 3,000 or more.” She said “one of the most challenging” aspects of finding a new home in the current market is that “private landlords are very reticent to rent commercial space to nonprofits,” especially agencies like hers that provide direct services. Another problem is that many landlords don’t want to sign longterm leases, Ashley said. “We don’t want to have to do this again in three years,” she added.

AIDS confab

From page 4

(age 18-22) in 12 U.S. cities. The tenofovir in Truvada is known to cause a small amount of bone loss in older adults taking it for HIV treatment, but so far this has not been seen in the relatively shortterm studies of Truvada for PrEP. The researchers found that bone mineral density was lower than expected at study entry, falling below norms for people of the same sex, age, and race. By week 24 after starting Truvada, DEXA scans showed bone density at the spine, hip, and whole body, falling by 0.2 to 0.8 percent. Hip bone density continued to fall through week 48, but spine bone density started to increase. Men who had protective levels of tenofovir in their blood had greater bone loss than those with undetectable drug levels. These changes were statistically

“I really, really support the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and I really want it to remain retail,” Castro Merchants President Daniel Bergerac said Tuesday in a brief phone interview, referring to the A.G. Ferrari space. He said he would like to see something like a small food court go into the space, with perhaps six or seven vendors. When the AIDS agency announced its health center’s name in September, it had raised $12.2 million of the $15 million needed for programmatic expansion and renovation costs for the center. Hattori said that the most recent information he has is that the nonprofit has $2.7 million left to raise. All of the remainder will go toward operating programs at Strut. SFAF is also looking to replace outgoing CEO Neil Giuliano, who was recently hired as CEO of Greater Phoenix Leadership, a business organization focused on civic improvement initiatives. Hattori said SFAF has engaged the executive search firm Egon Zehnder to help with the CEO search process. A call to the firm wasn’t immediately returned.t

TGI Justice

TGI Justice, which subleases space from St. James, will be staying with the larger agency. Janetta Johnson, the group’s executive director, said that with a budget “well under $200,000,” her agency is one of the city’s “most underfunded organizations” and isn’t able to pay rent to St. James. Johnson noted that before sharing space with St. James, her agency had left San Francisco for “an industrial area” in the East Bay, making it challenging to access services. “People had some concerns about being out there,” she said, and some clients have been worried about the agency’s future move. In recent years, some nonprofits that had been based in San Francisco, including Transgender Law Center and Gay-Straight Alliance Network, have moved their headquarters to Oakland, where real estate tends to be cheaper, although that, too, is changing as the city attracts more market rate development and new companies, such as Uber. Asked whether there was any chance of them moving to the East Bay, Ashley and Johnson said, in unison, “No.” “We’re staying in San Francisco,” Ashley said. In a Facebook message, San Francisco Health Commissioner Cecilia Chung, a transgender woman, said both St. James and TGIJP “provide support and services to some of the most marginalized in our community. They represent the San Francisco values that have attracted so many of us to call this city home.” Contributions to the organizations may still be made at https:// www.gofundme.com/sjimoves.t significant – meaning they were unlikely to occur by chance – but it is not clear whether they are clinically significant. The eight fractures that occurred during the study were due to physical trauma (including a vehicle accident and a fight), with no evidence of fragility fractures due to weak bones. The concern in this study, Mulligan explained, is that young men are still developing, usually reaching peak bone mass around age 20. So not only did they lose a small amount of bone, they may also be missing out on their full potential bone growth, which could lead to problems later on. “We clearly need to keep monitoring the side effects of tenofovir in people taking PrEP, as safety has to be extra-stringent if taking medications for prevention, but the changes were very slight and not all in one direction,” Cairns told the B.A.R.t

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551615

In the matter of the application of: AMANDA MARIE MURPHY, 3367 17TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner AMANDA MARIE MURPHY, is requesting that the name AMANDA MARIE MURPHY, be changed to MANDY MURPHY CARROLL. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 24th of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036693800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: QIAN XI MOVING COMPANY, 220 LOBOS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHUAN SU XING. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/22/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/22/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036726700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MING CHI ASSOCIATES, 1599 HAYES ST P-101, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ZHIYAN WANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/09/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/09/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036703100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AJK MERCHANT SERVICES, 130 WAYLAND ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ZUHDI JAMAL KHALIL. 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 09/28/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036725200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AYNI LAW GROUP, 405 SANSOME ST 2ND FLR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CONNIE CHAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/09/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/09/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036725000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: STICKBOOK STUDIOS, 821 LEAVENWORTH ST #34, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KELLY CATHERINE LEWIS EASTMAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/09/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/09/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036706100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ALLSTARS CAFE, 98 9TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DARREN LE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/30/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/30/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036702400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PRECISION APPLIANCE REPAIR, 1776 SUTTER ST #210, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EDUARD KORENBLIT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/28/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/28/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036723800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUNSET DENTISTRY, 919 IRVING ST #101, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SOPHYA N. MORGHEM DMD, MS CORP (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/08/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/08/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036715600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HALLER ARCHITECHTURE & DESIGN, 1211 FOLSOM ST 3RD FL, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HALLER DESIGN STUDIO, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/16/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/05/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036711200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POINTS AND PINTS, 355 BERRY ST #210, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94158. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed RANDOM THEORY LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/13/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/01/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036722700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HARENDONG USA, 1886 18TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed NOVO INTERNATIONAL LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/08/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/08/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036710200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE FINE MOUSSE, 1098 JACKSON, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed PROOST LLC (CA). 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 10/01/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036723200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOLDEN GATE NEEDLEPOINT, 3310 SACRAMENTO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a limited liability company and is signed GOLDEN GATE DESIGN AND NEEDLEWORK LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/26/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/08/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036723700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FIZZEE’S BAR & GRILL, 3954 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed FIZZEE’S, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/08/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/08/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036721000

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036679900

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: SAN FRANCISCO IN FLOOR HEATING AND HYDRO SOLAR SYSTEMS, 518 24TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by RICHARD D. SEAMAN. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/15/2015.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551620

In the matter of the application of: YING JIE ZHENG, 605 BRUNSWICK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner YING JIE ZHENG, is requesting that the name YING JIE ZHENG, be changed to JESSIE JIE ZHENG. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 10th of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551516

In the matter of the application of: D MICHELE RAGLAND DILWORTH, 576 EUREKA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner D MICHELE RAGLAND DILWORTH, is requesting that the name D MICHELE RAGLAND DILWORTH aka DEBORAH MICHELE RAGLAND DILWORTH aka D MICHELE RAGLAND-DILWORTH aka DEBORAH MICHELE RAGLAND-DILWORTH aka DEBORAH MICHELE RAGLAND, be changed to MICHELE RAGLAND DILWORTH. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 3rd of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036736100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CARS BEAUTY; WATERLESS CAR WASH; 2315 20TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RUIRONG MA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/19/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/19/15.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036734600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HIGH ZONE PROJECT; LEDUS HUB, 515 JOHN MUIR DR #A323, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed FASHION BAG CO. LLC (CA). 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 10/07/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOLDEN STATE PLUMBING, 1675 EDDY ST #304, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DAN YI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/16/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/16/15.

OCT 15, 22, 29, NOV 5, 2015

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015

City and County of San Francisco Outreach Advertising November 2015

Stay Connected To the City through SF311

The SF311 Customer Service Center is the single stop for residents to get information on government services and report problems to the City and County of San Francisco. And now, we have even more ways for you to stay connected to the City with our SF311 App and SF311 Explorer website. The SF311 App lets you get information on City services and submit service requests on-the-go right from your smartphone. You can track your service requests through the app or through our new website, SF311 Explorer. Download the SF311 App from your smartphone’s app store and visit the SF311 Explorer at explore311.sfgov.org today!

Healthy Foods and WIC Nutrition Services at No Cost To You

Eating well during pregnancy is important. The Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Nutrition Program can help. WIC serves pregnant women, new mothers, infants and young children under five years old who meet 185% or below of the federal poverty income level. WIC benefits include nutrition and breastfeeding education and support, checks to buy healthy foods (such as fresh fruits and vegetables) and referrals to low cost or free health care and other community services. Enrolling in WIC early in your pregnancy will give your baby a healthy start. Also, WIC staff can show you how you and your family can eat healthier meals and snacks. Migrants are welcome to apply as well. San Francisco WIC has six offices throughout the City. For more information, call (415) 575-5788. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS FOR THE Terminal 3 Pop-Up Retail Concession Program

The Airport Commission has commenced the Request for Proposals (RFP) process for the Terminal 3 Pop-Up Retail Concession Program. This opportunity is comprised of one retail location measuring approximately 304 square feet, located in Boarding Area E of Terminal 3. The space will be move-in ready with fixtures provided, and will require minimal costs to start up. The successful proposer will be offered an agreement term of twelve months. This concession is intended for the nonexclusive sale of retail merchandise reflective of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. The Informational Conference is on Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. at the Terminal 2 Partnering Conference Room No. T2-2-205 at San Francisco International Airport. Please see http://www.flysfo.com/business-at-sfo/current-opportunities on or about October 23, 2015. For additional information, feel free to contact Trevor Brumm, Principal Property Manager, Revenue Development and Management, at (650) 821-4500, or via email at SFOConcessions@flysfo.com.

Board of Supervisors Regularly Scheduled Board Meetings November Meetings

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC –Tuesdays, 2:00pm, City Hall Chamber, Room 250. • November 3 • November 17

The City and County of San Francisco encourage public outreach. Articles are translated into several languages to provide better public access. The newspaper makes every effort to translate the articles of general interest correctly. No liability is assumed by the City and County of San Francisco or the newspapers for errors and omissions.

▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Legal Notices>> NOTICE TO CREDITORS OF BULK SALE

(Notice pursuant to UCC Sec. 6105 and 6106.2) NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that a bulk sale is about to be made. The name, business address of the Seller, is: MURA 450 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133 Doing Business as: MURA. All other business name and address used by the Seller within three years, as stated by the Seller, is MURA, MURA SUSHI and MURA RESTAURANT. The location in California of the chief executive office of the Seller is: 450 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133. The names and address of the Buyers are: XIAOYI ZHENG and ZIJUN WU, 450 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133. The assets being sold is generally described as: All stock-in-trade, fixtures, equipment, leasehold, and leasehold improvement of MURA restaurant business and are located at: 450 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133. The bulk sale is intended to be consummated at the office of: To & Associates, Attorneys At Law 311 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118 and the anticipated sale date is 11/19//2015. The bulk sale is subject to California Uniform Commercial Code Section 6106.2 The name and address of the person with whom claims may be filed is: To & Associates, Attorneys At Law 311 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118, and the last date for filing claims shall be 11/18/2015, which is the business day before the anticipated sale date specified above. Dated: 10-18-2015 Kit To, Esq. /s/ Kit V. To, Attorney at To & Associates.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036733400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 926 RACING, 742 KIRKWOOD AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CARLOS M. JIMENEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/15/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/15/15

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036726300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FOUNDATION CONSULTING, 5214F DIAMOND HGTS BLVD #808, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NICOLE BARAN. 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 10/09/15.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036727400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BLUE POPPY CONFECTIONS, 1914 47TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed PEGGY INGALLS & JENNIFFER INGALLS. 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 10/13/15.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036729200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RIPPLE, 268 BUSH ST #2724, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed RIPPLE LABS INC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/06/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/13/15.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036733900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOTEL VIA, 138 KING ST SUITE B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed COGAG GROUP. 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 10/16/15.

OCT 22, 29, NOV 05, 12, 2015 REQUESTING SUB-BIDS FROM QUALIFIED LBE/MBE/WBE/OBE

Subcontractors/Vendors for: City & County of San Francisco Bid Deadline – November 10, 2015 Audit Services. For information on the availability of plans and specifications and the bidder’s policy concerning assistance to subcontractors in obtaining bonds, lines of credit, and/or insurance, please contact our office. Crowe Horwath LLP, Anna Mardayan, 575 Market St, #3300, San Francisco, CA 94105 818.325.8467 (telephone number), 818.325.8567 (fax number) anna. mardayan@crowehorwath.com

OCTOBER 29, 2015 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551550

In the matter of the application of: CHUN FEN WANG & XIANG YANG HUANG, 1345 TURK ST #112, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner CHUN FEN WANG & XIANG YANG HUANG, is requesting that the name GUANG MEI HUANG, be changed to CHRISTINE GUANGMEI HUANG. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 24th of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-15-551608

In the matter of the application of: MIRNA ELIZABETH ZEPEDA ZEPEDA, 1783 PALOU AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner MIRNA ELIZABETH ZEPEDA ZEPEDA, is requesting that the name MIRNA ELIZABETH ZEPEDA ZEPEDA aka MIRNA E. ZEPEDA ZEPEDA aka MIRNA ELIZABETH ZEPEDA aka MIRNA E. ZEPEDA aka MIRNA ELIZABETH aka MIRNA ZEPEDA aka ELIZABETH ZEPEDA, be changed to ELIZABETH SANTELIZ. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 10th of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the matter of the application of: DAYSI ARACELY ZEPEDA DIAZ, 1783 PALOU AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner DAYSI ARACELY ZEPEDA DIAZ, is requesting that the name DAYSI ARACELY ZEPEDA DIAZ aka DAYSI ZEPEDA aka DAYSI A. ZEPEDA DIAZ aka DAYSI ZEPEDA DIAZ aka DAYSI Z. DIAZ aka DAYSI DIAZ aka DAYSI A. ZEPEDA, be changed to DAYSI SANTELIZ. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 10th of December 2015 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-036734000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE BIG TEASE, 447 SUTTER #428, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MITRA MASSIH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/22/15.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOFFS HANDYMAN; CASTRO HANDYMAN; 227 ROMAIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HOFFS HANDYMAN (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/10/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/22/15.

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

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

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

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RAINBOW HANDYMAN, 227 ROMAIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HOFFS HANDYMAN (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/23/15.

OCT 29, NOV 05, 12, 19, 2015

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Peaches' Halloween

Art meets tech

Out &About

Pirate play

O&A

Vol. 45 • No. 44 • October 29-November 4, 2015

www.ebar.com/arts

Taking the show on the road by Richard Dodds

t’s been reunion time for Anthony Rapp and Idina Menzel, who first worked together nearly 20 years ago as original cast members of Rent. Now they are on a post-Broadway tour of If/Then, recreating the roles they originated when the new musical opened in 2014. But a funny thing happened on the show’s way to New York. The Disney movie Frozen opened while If/Then was in out-of-town tryouts, and by the time they reached Broadway, Menzel’s recording of “Let It Go” had become a phenomenon. Her sudden superstar status helped power the musical past the largely mixed reviews. See page 25 >>

Anthony Rapp plays Idina Menzel’s bisexual best friend in If/Then, the Broadway musical now on tour with its original stars. Joan Marcus

Magical mystery tour Efrain Solis (Papagano) and Sarah Shafer (Pamina) in The Magic Flute. Revelers in a contemporary Halloween parade.

by Philip Campbell

he San Francisco Opera’s revival of visual artist Jun Kaneko’s eye-popping designs for Mozart’s The Magic Flute opened last week at the War Memorial Opera House for a run of performances playing through Nov. 20. First seen in a new English translation by SFO General Director David Gockley during the 2012 summer season, director Harry Silverstein’s good-natured staging, with unfussy and often amusing choreography by Lawrence Pech, remains a bright and cheerful entertainment. See page 24 >>

Gays take on Halloween by Brian Bromberger

rinning jack o’ lanterns, witches flying on broomsticks, leering skeletons, creeping black cats, scary ghost stories, ghoulish costumers parading the streets in search of tricks-or-treats: mention any of

Cory Weaver/SFO

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

NO COVER

ALL WEEKEND 225 Church Street @ Market • www.pilsnerinn.com

these images and we are transported back to childhood memories of the subversive night called Halloween. Within the last 40 years, following the lead of queer people, adults have rediscovered Halloween, and this mystical holiday is no longer the province of children. See page 28 >>

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015 100% Black CIIS: URW Clarendon T, Regular, 38.75/46.5pt (kern 10pt) PUBLIC PROGRAMS: URW Clarendon T, Regular,26.75/40pt (kern 10pt) URL: No url on logo, place on bottom of page

100% White CIIS: URW Clarendon T, Regular, 38.75/46.5pt (kern 10pt) PUBLIC PROGRAMS: URW Clarendon T, Regular,26.75/40pt (kern 10pt) URL: No url on logo, place on bottom of page

<< Out There

t Coming soon: a new SFMOMA by Roberto Friedman

MARIN CENTER PRESENTS

major Bay Area cultural institution has announced its return. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will reopen on May 14, 2016, after 31 months of closure. Last week Out There was part of a hard-hat tour of the expansion, still under construction. The Snohettadesigned space incorporates the renovated 1995 Mario Botta building, nearly triples the exhibition space, and offers impressive new entrances and public spaces, including an entire ground floor open to the public without gallery admission. Director Neil Benezra said the museum leadership has had both an art goal, the building of a truly great museum; and a public purpose, “to mean more to more people.” To that end, the museum has built its new space to accommodate the 1,150-piece Fisher collection, one of the most extensive post-WWII art collections in the world, and motivated the donation of 3,000 works to the museum in their Campaign for Art. Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture Gary Garrels gave us a virtual overview of the seven floors of art that will be open to the public in the new complex (floors 8-10 will house staff offices), then Snohetta architect and found-

Snøhetta/Steelblue, SFMOMA

Artist’s rendering of the renovated 3rd St. entrance to SFMOMA.

ing partner Craig Dykers gave us an actual tour of the new galleries and spaces. We have to admit, we were among the museum’s biggest detractors when they announced that the building would be closed for three years during the makeover. Why couldn’t they install their permanent collection in a warehouse open to the public, as NYC’s MoMA did during their renovation? The On the Go series of collaborative exhibitions were, we felt, overhyped in terms of how much of the collection was on display (a miniscule fraction of their holdings). Also, we were the only

Showcase Theater Series

BRIAN COPELAND

Henrik Kam, courtesy SFMOMA

member of the generally cowed Bay Area arts press to ask impertinent questions at their closing announcement, such as, How many people on staff (museum guards, installation crew, press relations) are being laid off during the interim? They never answered that one, because they didn’t have to. They’re a private nonprofit, not a public institution such as the Fine Arts Museums/SF. Finally, we felt (still feel) that the Snohetta design in some ways violates Botta’s original vision for SFMOMA. The grand staircase in the 3rd St. entrance has been demolished even though it was an integral part of the building’s atrium. Every up-and-coming architect would like to erase an existing structure in favor of his or her own vision. It’s the role of the museum director to stand up for his building’s unique features (i.e., the Botta staircase), and in this case, Benezra let the original architect and museumgoing public down. But we’re letting go of our preservationist stance. We’re being Zen about it. The actual integration of the Botta building with the Snohetta addition is seamless, the new facilities impressive. The signature oculus has been opened up and brings in more natural light. As Dykers put it, you can really see the Platonic forms of the Botta architecture stand out against the organic forms of the Snohetta building. It ought to be a spectacular rebirth. We’re looking forward to the reopening.t

THE SCION

Façade of the SFMOMA expansion (detail) by Snohetta.

Friday, Nov. 6, 8 pm

Old-school theatrics

“Gripping and hilarious...a brilliant blend of humor and pathos.” San Jose Mercury News

THE JEWELRY BOX Friday, Nov. 13, 8 pm

“Destined to become a holiday classic!” San Francisco Examiner

MARIN CENTER • SAN RAFAEL MARINCENTER.ORG

by John F. Karr

y every accounting, John C. Wilson should be better known, or better remembered, or be, as everybody and everything from yesterday’s reality-show star to string cheese is described these days, legendary. Instead, when Noel, Tallulah, Cole, and Me (Rowman & Littlefield, $65) came my way, I mistakenly recalled Wilson as some Broadway newspaper columnist of a bygone era. To my credit, I quickly got things right. You want legendary? John C. Wilson directed the premiere production of Kiss Me, Kate, and, shortly after that, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Those credits alone made me jump into Wilson’s memoir. It may be pricey (do the publishers expect limited sales?), but one is privileged to read Wilson’s own accounting of a career that touched all the major stars and many productions of a golden age of Broadway. Wilson titillates with fresh anecdotes about Beatrice Lillie, Carol Channing, Ina Claire, Tilly Losch, Ethel Barrymore, Gloria Swanson (“a wisp of steel”), and Alexander Woollcott (“Alex was self-opinionated and prissy, not to mention severely overweight and magnificently ugly”). I enjoyed a brief visit with

one of my heroes, Thornton Wilder, whom Wilson directed (“He was essentially a scholar, but once in the theater, he is an absolute ham”). Entire chapters detail the author’s adventures with Tallulah Bankhead, and most rewardingly, with the Lunts, in which the creation and performance of some classic shows is meaty reading. And of course, though it’s all-too-brief, the chapter on the birth and success of Kiss Me, Kate is a treasure.

Curiously enough, Wilson’s unpublished memoir spent some 50 years boxed up in a relative’s closet, only recently coming to light. The book’s editors (one is Wilson’s great-nephew and godson, the other a theatre historian) have added numerous photographs, plus boxes of helpful biographical and historical information about bygone people and plays, and asides of shorter comments within the text. I appreciate these as especially pertinent, but as they interrupt Wilson’s narrative, I’d have preferred them as footnotes. Yet these interjections are, for gay readers at least, the heart of the matter. Given the temper of his times, Wilson cannot say he’s gay. He cannot say he’s Coward’s lover, or mention sexual liaisons with Cole Porter, Ivor Novello, and other notables. What Wilson does say is, in retrospect, entertaining. Of his long-term rooming with Coward, or sharing a suite with him instead of having separate rooms as they tour Europe, he writes that “[Coward] is one who likes a steady companion around when he is in the mood.” And don’t we all? While remaining Coward’s bedSee page 28 >>

a voice so deep it can travel 600 miles.

Visit now! Closes November 29. With one of the deepest voices in the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x161; a blue whaleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s song can be heard hundreds of miles away. Hear them for yourself in the Whale Sound Chamber at this interactive exhibit. Get tickets at calacademy.org

Developed and presented by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. This exhibition was made possible through the support of the New Zealand Government.

24879_WhaleSong_BayAreaReporter_9.75x16.indd 1

9/9/15 11:28 AM

<< Theatre

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

Partying pirates on parade by Richard Dodds

magine a rowdy frat party taking over the Tonga Room and you might get some idea of Berkeley Rep’s latest show. The revelers are not an exclusive bunch; they want you to join in the party, stage boundaries be damned, and a tiki bar is both part of the set and open for business throughout the show. Apparently, this unruly crowd also belongs to a Gilbert and Sullivan society, blowing off steam in topsyturvy fashion. Welcome to The Pirates of Penzance, as told by the Hypocrites. This Chicago theater company has been deconstructing popular plays and musicals since 1997, and Pirates is one of the most popular pieces in its canon. Though abbreviated to 85 minutes, most of the familiar Gilbert and Sullivan songs are heard in one fashion or another. And the story remains the same, albeit with liberties often taken in the telling. The performances, the costumes, the set, and the staging are another matter, pirating away the tale of pushover pirates into a frenzied mash-up. But there is method to the mad-

kevinberne.com

Matt Kahler plays the Major-General in The Hypocrites’ Pirates of Penzance, a highly irreverent take on Gilbert and Sullivan now at Berkeley Rep.

ness taking place in Berkeley Rep’s Osher Studio, an open space with seating on risers on opposite sides and the action taking place on and around various structures and objects in-between. Director Sean Graney’s adaptation is carefully designed to look ramshackle, and some improvisation is indeed

a must, as it can be for audiences as well. Theatergoers who opt for “promenade” seating sprinkle themselves throughout the playing area, and must frequently relocate when their space is needed by the performers. Beneath the strings of party lights draped along the ceiling, the party

sensibilities can be contagious even for those resistant to theater requiring interplay with beach balls. But you don’t have to be a Gilbert and Sullivan fan to realize something is lost in the name of zany fun. After all, The Pirates of Penzance is already zany, and part of the fun is seeing it amidst traditional Victorian theatrical trappings. And when a performer has the talent and inclination to deliver a musical number in a way that allows the songs to be properly heard, you realize that something else has been sacrificed. This becomes most apparent when Matt Kahler gives forth with a very credible rendition of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern MajorGeneral,” the fast-paced patter song with tongue-twisting lyrics. Christine Stulik, as the Major-General’s daughter Mabel, uses a comic tremolo that can still connect with the music. The cast provides its own accompaniment with guitars, ukuleles, banjos, accordions, and various other musical instruments, pushing Sullivan’s music into ever-changing genres that span the decades. Stulik is also ever-changing, shuttling between the comely ingenue

Mabel and the middle-aged and not-so-comely Ruth. Both characters, usually played by two performers, are in love with pirate apprentice Frederick (Zeke Sulkes), who longs to be free of his servitude at age 21 so he can fight on the side of Her Majesty. But when it is revealed that he was born on Feb. 29 in a leap year, he is duty-bound to stay indentured for another 63 years. As the Pirate King, the inexhaustible Shawn Pfaustch rules not only over his scurvy lot, but also over the entire production as a kind of trouble-making master of ceremonies. Other cast members play double and triple roles, including pirates, police, and fair maidens in tutus and floral bathing caps. D’Oyly Carte this is not. But if you’re willing to take your Gilbert and Sullivan with a big dose of irreverence, or if you don’t give a hoot about G&S, you’ll probably be glad you came to this frat party.t The Hypocrites’ Pirates of Penzance will run at Berkeley Rep’s Osher Studio through Dec. 20. Tickets are $29-$89. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org.

Coming of age in Connecticut by Richard Dodds

fter Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper asked Tennessee Williams why he was always “plunging into sewers,” he set out to prove her wrong with A Period of Adjustment. But you don’t have to plunge too far below the surface of the marital comedy to find dark subtexts leading to a queasily happy ending. It’s unlikely that anyone was pressuring Eugene O’Neill to take a break from all those serious Pulitzer Prize-winning plays when he offered up Ah, Wilderness! in 1933. Any currents of O’Neill’s demons can only be inferred from an afterthe-fact point of view, when the characters in this coming-of-age story were darkly reimagined years later in the autobiographical Long Day’s Journey into Night. For theatergoers who bring these associations to ACT’s inviting production of the O’Neill comedy, there may be an added bittersweet frisson in this tale of Fourth of July with the Miller family in 1906. You don’t expect O’Neill to be funny – that is, funny without mordant undertones – but his talents in this territory are on display in ways that are variously

Magic Flute

From page 21

It is hard to say enough time has passed between productions, but the return engagement is welcome enough, and seeing Kaneko’s innovative graphic projections (the first all-digital SFO production) again with his fanciful costumes is still enjoyable. Opening night might have veered off-course due to last-minute substitutions, but replacing two ailing singers with a role cover and a standby from the ranks of SFO programs actually turned out to be an unexpected treat. The scheduled Queen of the Night, Albina Shagimuratova, and the First Lady, Jacqueline Piccolino, should be back on the boards at this writing, but sopranos Kathryn Bowden (Merola alumna) and Julie Adams (first-year Adler Fellow) filled their respective shoes without missing a step. Bowden got the biggest opportunity with her assignment of the Queen’s fiercely difficult arias. If she started a little softly upon her first appearance, she quickly warmed up.

sly, subtle, boisterous, and kind. Whether by design or default, Ah, Wilderness! opens with the forced joviality of a dusty drawing-room comedy. But this gives way to idiosyncratic human comedy of a family distinguished by its big heart. At the center of a calamity, at least in Miller family terms, is younger son Richard, a teen destined for Yale, who has decided to become a rebel. His mother is horrified to find plays of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw in his bedroom – Wilde is in prison for “bigamy,” avers older brother Arthur, while the grownups mumble and stare at their shoes. In the parlor, he can yell out, “Bring back the guillotine!” with little more than rolled eyes the result, but when he sends steamy love poems to his beloved Muriel, daughter of a leading businessman, it sets off a series of comic misadventures. Banned from seeing Muriel, the unworldly Richard ends up in a saloon drinking with a prostitute. The scene is funny in ways you might expect, but it’s how his parents hopelessly try to mete out a punishment for this dalliance that shows O’Neill mining the best laughs with a gentle, forgiving manner, as RichBy the time she faced those famous high F’s in the second act, she had taken full command of the stage. I was impressed by her performance in last summer’s Merola production of Menotti’s The Medium, and it is gratifying to see SFO management took notice as well. She was rewarded with a great challenge, and responded with triumphant assurance. Soprano Sarah Shafer is singing Pamina until Nadine Sierra steps back into the part next week after her own successful subbing assignment for Diana Damrau in the recent SFO Lucia di Lammermoor. As good as we know Sierra is in the part, Shafer’s strong, clear and expressive voice is also ideal, and she too is building a strong career at SFO. Her Rosetta in the world premiere of Tutino’s La Ciociara (Two Women) was especially memorable. Mexican-American baritone Efrain Solis makes his role debut as the randy bird-catcher Papageno, and his firm, resonant and appealing voice surpasses the memory of Nathan Gunn’s original interpretation in 2012. He makes the most of

Kevin Berne

Rachel Ticotin and Anthony Fusco play parents fussing over their rebellious son (Thomas Stagnitta, center) in the ACT production of Eugene O’Neill’s comedy Ah, Wilderness!

ard’s father uncomfortably bumbles through a facts-of-life lecture. Anthony Fusco is delightful as Ned Miller, Richard’s slow-to-ruffle father, capturing the nuances that can release the humor. The driving force of the production, though, is Thomas Stagnitta’s performance as

Cory Weaver/SFO

Albina Shagimuratova as the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute.

his lines and struts about the stage like a banty rooster. The broad humor and colloquialisms peppered throughout the translation work best in his earthy and endearing portrayal. Greg Fedderly’s burlesque clowning as the Moor Monostatos hasn’t

Richard, and the young actor ratchets up the energy with comically callow grandstanding, melodramatic heartbreak, and romantic swooning. Director Casey Stangl’s production, on Ralph Funicello’s stylishly skeletal set, finds the right rhythms, despite a reconciliation scene between changed noticeably since his previous appearance in the premiere cast, but that is all to the good. With the help of director Silverstein he creates a humorous take on a borderline offensive character. Second-year SFO Adler Fellow soprano Maria Valdes as Papagena is another who manages the vulgarities of the English re-fashioning with appealing sincerity. Her sunny voice and presence match the charming costume by Kaneko. The more serious aspects of the plot are treated superficially in this embodiment of Mozart’s allegory of love and mystical awakening. As if trying to add weight to the more philosophical moments, conductor Lawrence Foster (SFO debut) only slowed the pace. His beautiful fashioning of the Overture was a standalone pleasure, but it had little to do with the frivolity that followed. Also making his SFO debut, American tenor Paul Appleby’s Tamino grew in stature as the story unfolded, but his basically lightweight enactment was not helped by Foster’s grave approach. The Sarastro of bass-baritone

Richard and Muriel that can’t stretch its charm for the length of their repetitive on-again, off-again courtship. O’Neill is not known for his brevity, but any languor is only found here. In addition to Fusco and Stagnitta, memorable work is provided by Rachel Ticotin as Richard’s nervously doting mother, Dan Hiatt as a lovable tippling uncle, Margo Hall as a fussy but shrewd aunt, Rosa Palmeri as the stronger-than-shelooks Muriel, and Caitlan Taylor as the eager prostitute. But in this gentle world, a word like “prostitute” is never spoken, and where she works is simply called a “bed house.” And when Ned questions his son, asking if his intentions toward his sweetheart are carnal, it is rendered as, “Have you been trying to have something to do with Muriel?” We know that O’Neill knew that he had written a family fantasy (with color-blind casting here adding its own spin), but since he spread out the picnic blanket so smoothly, why not join him there for a spell?t Ah, Wilderness! will run at the Geary Theater through Nov. 8. Tickets are $20-$100. Call (415) 7492228 or go to act-sf.org.

(heavy on the bass) Alfred Reiter is more in keeping with the conductor’s speeds. The character often leans a bit towards pomposity, and the German singer made a strong impression with his deep and sonorous tone. No laughs there, but they aren’t in the text anyway. The Three Boys – Pietro Juvara and Michael Sacco and Rafael Karpa-Wilson in their SFO debuts – deserve special mention for their exceptionally well-sung performances, and Ian Robertson’s SFO Chorus, dazzling in Kaneko’s finery, filled the stage with customary vocal richness. Musical merits aside, the show is more about Kaneko’s whimsical imagination. The designs recall everything from colorful David Hockneys to Milton Glaser graphics, Japanese drama and early Star Trek. They are captivating, brilliantly illuminated by lighting designer Paul Pyant. If you haven’t experienced them before, they are certainly worth a visit. Hopefully more time will go by before the next viewing. How can we miss them if they won’t go away?t

Theatre>>

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Joan Marcus

Anthony Rapp is reprising his Broadway role in the SF-bound tour of If/Then.

Anthony Rapp

From page 21

“Idina is a force of nature,” Rapp said recently from Denver, where the SF-bound tour recently had its debut. “The tour probably would not have happened, certainly not on the scale it’s happening, without Idina being a part of it.” It will run Nov. 10-Dec. 6 at the Orpheum Theatre. It’s not just Rapp and Menzel reteaming for the tour, but also fellow co-stars LaChanze and James Snyder. “The four of us knew that we were going to do it before we closed on Broadway,” Rapp said, although when the show was first announced for the SHN season it came with no casting information. “It’s a little trade secret, but they like to parcel out information.” In the show, written by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal), Rapp plays Lucas, the bisexual friend of Menzel’s character who herself has a bifurcated trajectory. Newly divorced and arriving in New York without clear direction, Menzel’s Elizabeth becomes Liz in one road taken and Beth in another, with the results of these different choices woven throughout the musical. Rapp’s and LaChanze’s characters also have dual experiences in relationship to the Liz and Beth stories. “It’s like the same soul, but very different outcomes in their lives that affect them quite profoundly,” Rapp said. “So it’s exciting to delve into both worlds.” That LaChanze’s character Kate is a lesbian and Rapp’s Lucas is a bisexual is just part of the fabric of the show, Rapp said, with no particular spotlighting of this fact. “For me, that harkens back to Rent, with one of the hallmarks of the show was just simply having these characters not make anything about their sexuality other than being just who they are,” said Rapp. “At the time, that was rarer than it is now, but it’s still rarer than it should be.” Lucas’ romantic life is certainly a big part of the If/Then story, and while he is a rare major character who is identified as a bisexual, his love story is with a man. “Lucas is probably a little more gay than hetero,” Rapp said, “but some reviewers in New York said he’s straight in one of the stories and gay in the other. No, he’s bisexual in both.” Rapp can relate, having had relationships with both men and women, and he prefers to call himself queer rather than gay or bisexual. And like Lucas, he’s more gay than hetero. For the past 20 years, his romantic partners have been men, though he is currently unattached. “Something ended recently before I left for the tour,” he said. “I wasn’t

expecting it, but he felt he needed to move on, so I’m not going to argue with him.” Rapp will be back in New York in January when the original Broadway foursome leaves the cast, with new leads carrying it on from there. “I think people are definitely coming to see Idina, but hopefully by then the show will have been established, because it’s a little under the radar.” Rapp knows who will be replacing Menzel, though he’s not at liberty to say. “She’s no slouch,” he said, “but she’s more a Broadway than a household name.” Rapp worked with If/Then creators Kitt and Yorkey and director Michael Greif as they were developing Next to Normal, and the role of Lucas in their new show was fashioned for him. “Part of the reason I’m glad the tour is happening,” he said, “and not because I like doing the show and it’s a job, is because I believe in this piece, and this gives it a chance for more life to preserve its legacy. I think of this show in the world of Rent, Hamilton, Next to Normal, and Spring Awakening, shows that feel like they’re reflecting back life in an authentic way.” Greif also directed Rent, which helped make Rapp an overnight sensation despite the fact that he had been acting professionally since he was 9, when he joined the cast of the Chicago company of Evita. The following year, he and his mother left Joliet, Ill., to relocate to New York when he was cast opposite Michael York in The Little Prince and the Aviator. The Broadway musical ran for 16 previews before closing without an official opening. Fortunately, he was soon cast as Anna’s son in a tour of The King and I starring Yul Brynner that brought him to San Francisco for the first time. “My mother was a single-mom nurse, and she didn’t know anything about show business,” Rapp said. “She was the opposite of the typical stage mother. We just sort of put one foot in front of the other, and it worked out.” When Rapp returns to New York, he hopes to get his one-man show, in which his late mother figures prominently, back on stage. Titled Without You, it’s based on his book Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent. In the show, he punctuates the story with an eclectic collection of popular hits, traditional ballads, and several songs from Rent. “The singers who inspire me are people like Michael Stipe, Elvis Costello, and Peter Gabriel,” Rapp said. “They sound like themselves, like they’re not putting on a voice. They sound like their voice is coming from their core, their soul. And that’s what I always hope to do.”t

<< Out&About

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

O&A Out &About

Screaming Queens @ Phoenix Theater

Ghost Quartet @ Curran Theatre

Horror short plays with an LGBT bite, performed by Left Coast Theatre Company. $19-$25. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Oct. 31. 414 Mason St. lctc-sf.org

Dave Malloy performs his acclaimed song cycle about spirits; part of the Curran: Under Construction stage-side performances in the renovation-inprogress theatre. $25-$50. Oct. 28 & 29, 8pm. Oct 31, 7pm. 445 Geary St. www.sfcurran.com

SF Girls Chorus @ Mission Dolores The Grammy-winning chorus performs a concert of 17th-century Italian music with early music ensemble Tenet. $18$36. 8pm. 3321 16th St. Also Nov. 1, 4pm at First Congregational Church, Berkeley. 2345 Channing Way. www.sfgirlschorus.org

Thu 29 D’Arcy Drollinger in The Rocky Horror Show @ Victoria Theatre

Hallowin by Jim Provenzano

etween one month and another, the bridge between the entertaining and the entertained is only connected when you attend, and thereby win the holiday fun! For more nightlife Halloween parties, see On the Tab listings in BARtab.

Thu 29 Ah, Wilderness! @ Geary Theatre American Conservatory Theatre’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s lighthearted family comedy about young love, poetry, small town gossip, and coming of age at the turn of the century. $20-$100. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sat 2pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru Nov. 8. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Barbary Coast Revue @ Balancoire The third season of the popular cabaret show returns, with Danny Kennedy as Mark Twain, a cast of diverse performers. Thursdays thru November. $14-$64. 8pm. 2565 Mission St. at 22nd. www.BarbaryCoastRevue.com

Curse of the Cobra @ Hypnodrome Thrillpeddlers’ new Halloween season spine-tingling show offers terror and titillation! $25-$35. Wed-Sat 8pm. Thru Nov. 21. 575 10th St. 377-4202. www.hypnodrome.org

Dogfight @ SF Playhouse Bay Area premiere of Peter Duchan, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s musical adaptation of the film about a young Marine in the Vietnam era who dares to ask an “ugly” girl on a date, only to find empathy and love. $20-$120. Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm, Sun 2pm. Thru Nov. 7. Kensington Park Hotel, 2nd floor, 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Hollyween @ Madame Tussauds Passport Magazine’s fundraiser costume party for the Richmond Ermet Aid Foundation, with prizes for best costumes; hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, performances by Xavier Toscano; DJed music by the Go Bang! crew.. $30-$70. 6pm (VIP), 7pm-10pm. 145 Jefferson St. www.Hollyweensf.eventbrite.com

Inferno @ The Armory Hell in the Armory’s Halloween tour of the Kink.com sets, converted into scary adult-themed rooms. $35 and up. Hourly tours 7:30pm to 11:30pm. 18+ only. Thru Oct. 31. 1800 Mission St. armoryinferno.eventbrite.com

Jam-a-zon @ Oasis Maria Konner (Under the Golden Gate) hosts a musician improv night; grand piano, drums and bass set-up; bring your own other instruments, or sing. 11:30pm-2am. 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

John Grant @ SF Independent The innovative singer-composer who croons about ex-boyfriends and other subjects with noble flair, returns with music from his new CD, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure. Bright Light Bright Light opens. $20. 8pm. 628 Divisadero St. 771-1421. www.johngrantmusic. com www.theindependentsf.com

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

Monstress @ Strand Theatre American Conservatory Theatre’s staging of Philip Kan Gotanda and Sean San José’s drama about FilipinoAmerican Bay Area life and struggles. $20-$100. Tue-Sat 7:30pm. Wed & Sat 2pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru Nov. 22. 1127 Market St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

New & Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Oct. 29: Welcome to Night Vale, with authors Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink. $25-$40 (includes signed book). Oct. 30: Midnite for Manics presents Scream (7:20) and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (9:45). Oct. 31: Night of the Living Dead (3:30), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (5:20) and The Evil Dead (7pm). Nov. 1: 60th anniversary screening of Oklahoma! (2pm), E.T. The Extraterrestrial (6pm) and Firestarter (8:10). Nov. 2: Wim Wenders tribute, with The Goalies Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (7pm), Alice in the Cities (8:50). Nov. 4: Grandma and Irrational Man. Nov. 5: Drew Barrymore discusses her new book Wildflower (7pm). $10-$15. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. Oct, 29, Creatures of the Nightlife, with Peaches Christ, DJ Omar a drag show with Chaka Corn, Becky Motorlodge, Qween, and more, plus haunted house fun, and demos with bugs and dinosaur artifacts. $10$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

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

Pound @ Brava Theater Center Marga Gomez’ hilarious satire solo show skewers lesbian cinema depictions with a cast of crazy characters. $15-$20. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. 18+ only! Upstairs Studio, 2781 24th St. at York www.brava.org

The Rocky Horror Show @ Victoria Theatre D’Arcy Drollinger stars in Ray of Light Theatre’s production of Richard O’Brien’s classic trans-comic cult classic musical. $25-$36. Wed-Fri 8pm. Sat 7pm & 11pm. Thru Nov. 7. 2961 16th St. at Mission. www.rayoflighttheatre.com

Shakey Gibson’s Seductive Sirens @ Oasis Live cabaret drag show with Shakey Gibson, Halili Know and Siren Saphhire. $20-$30. 10pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. sfoasis.com

HeroMonster @ Fort Mason Center Chapel We Players’ new drama tells the epic tale of Beowulf, in a show created and performed by Nathaniel Justiniano and Ava Roy; original music by Charlie Gurke. $45. Thu-Sun 6:30pm (different times; check online schedule). Thru Nov. 1. Bay /St. at Franklin. 547-0189. www.weplayers.org

The Nance @ New Conservatory Theatre Center Douglas Carter Beane’s heartfelt dramedy about the real-life Vaudeville actor Chauncey Miles, who played effeminate stock characters before the 1939 pre-World’s Fair crackdown on burlesque. P.A. Cooley stars, with musical direction by Scrumbly Koldewyn. $25-$45. Thru Nov. 1. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Paula Poundstone @ Livermore Performing Arts Center The veteran comic, radio panelist and voicevoer actor performs her new comedy set. $16-$59. 8pm. 2400 1st St., Livermore. (925) 373-6100. www.livermoreperformingarts.org

Sail Away @ Eureka Theatre Noel Coward’s witty 1961 musical comedy, set on a cruise ship, gets a deft restaging by 42nd Street Moon. $25-$75. Wed & thu 7pm. Fri 8pm, Sat 6pm. Sun 3pm. Thru Nov. 15. 215 Jackson St. 255-8207. www.42ndstmoon.org

I L

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

Terror: An Artificial Presence @ Black Box Theatre, Oakland Oakland School for the Arts’ 6th annual Haunted House event with an ectoplasmic alien theme. $8-$12. 7pm. Thru Oct. 30. 531 19th St. oakarts.org

Unusual Movies @ Oddball Films Weekly screenings of strange and obscure short films. Oct. 29: Suck On This!, a selection of vampire short films and trailers. Oct. 30: vintage wacky Halloween short films. $10. 8pm Also Fridays. 275 Capp St. 5588117. www.oddballfilm.com

Fri 30 Arcane: A Tale of All Hallows’ Eve @ Cowell Theatre Company C Contemporary Ballet premieres a new Charles Anderson evening-length story ballet with steampunk chic, a live band and a narrator. $25-$55. Oct. 30 11am & 8pm. Oct. 31, 1pm & 7pm. Fort Mason Center, Buchanan St. at Bay. companycballet.org

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. Reg: $25$160. Beer/wine served; cash only; 21+, except where noted. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. beachblanketbabylon.com

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

Darren Criss @ Nourse Theatre

The person depicte

John O’Hurley @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The star of Broadway ( Chicago, Spamalot) and TV ( Seinfeld ) performs his stylish cabaret show, including Broadway classics and stories about his life and career. $50-$65 ($20 food/drink min). 8pm. Also Oct. 31, 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 777-8932. www.FeinsteinsSF.com www.ticketweb.com

The star of Glee and Hedwig and the Angry Inch performs Broadway classics, and tells stories of his San Francisco years, with host/ accompanist Seth Rudetsy. $50-$100. 8pm. 275 Hayes St. 392-4400. www.darrencriss.com www.cityboxoffice.com markcortalepresents.com/broadway

Gilbert & Sullivan’s bouyant musical operetta gets an energetic new staging by Berkeley Rep. Osher Studio, 2055 Center St., Berkeley. www.berkeleyrep.org

Planet Booty, Double Duchess @ Slim’s U Betta Werk, Witch, a special funk live music Hallow’s Eve concert, also with HiScores. $14-$40 (with dinner). 10pm-1am. 333 11th St. www.planetbooty.org www.doubleduchess.com www.slimspresents.com

Star Trek Live @ Oasis

Día de los Muertos @ SOMArts Cultural Center Today is the Shadow of Tomorrow, the annual juried group exhibit of Day of the Dead altars, installations and art works by Latino and Hispanic artists. Free during reg. hours. Tue-Fri 12pm7pm. Sat 11am-5pm. Sun 11am-3pm. Thru Nov. 7. www.somarts.org

Pirates of Penzance @ Arts Passage

Thu 29 Christian Cagigal’s The Pandora Experiment @ Exit Theatre

The scifi comic parody show includes a Star Trek costume night for the audience, then Heklina’s weekly drag show Mother, with cohost Peaches Christ, a costume party and contest. $20. 298 11th St. at Folsom. 795-3180. www.sfoasis.com

Out&About>> Looking East @ Asian Art Museum

Wilde Chats @ Sweet Inspirations

Still Life and Florals @ John Pence Gallery

Looking East: How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gogh, and Other Western Artists. Thru Feb. 7. Exquisite Nature: 20 Masterpieces of Chinese Paintings, and Woven Luxuries: Indian, Persian and Turkish Textiles; both thru Nov 1. Free (members, kids 12 and under)-$15. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. www.asianart.org

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

Group exhibit of stunning paintings of objects and flower arrangements. Thru Nov. 11. Mon-Fri 10am-6pm. Sat 10am-5pm. 750 Post St. 441-1138. www.johnpence.com

Halloween Park @ Alameda Point Pumpkin Patch

Fri 30 Darren Criss @ The Nourse Theatre

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Pick pumpkins on the lot of the former naval air station, with lots of kidfriendly attractions, plus adult fun with air jumpers, giant Zorb balls and food trucks. $20. Daily 10am-10pm. Thru Oct. 31. 2153 Ferry Point, Alameda. alamedapointpartners.com

I am the future of the LGBT community. I’m gay. I’m 22 years old and I’m an exchange student from Spain. Going to college here means a fun time, lots of hard work and getting to see new things. It also means a chance to really be myself. My parents are supportive of my sexuality, and my host family here is a couple with two teenage boys. Nobody cares if they’re gay or straight. I’m excited to be part of a world where that can be true. I am the future of the LGBT community. And I read about that future every day on my Android tablet. Because that’s where I want it to be.

Sat 31 Ada and the Memory Machine @ Berkeley City Club Central Works’ production of Lauren Gunderson’s play about Ada Lovelance, 19th-century countess, metaphysician, daughter of Lord Byron, and the world’s first computer programmer; performed with original live music by The Kilbanes. $15-$28. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. Thru Nov. 22. 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. (510) 558-1381. www.centralworks.org

Daily and Transcendent @ SF Public Library Opening reception for a dual exhibit of LGBT-themed photos by veteran photographers Jane Philomen Cleland and Rick Gerharter. 1pm. Jewett Gallery, lower level. 100 Larkin St. Thru Jan. 3. www.sfpl.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. themarsh.org

Houdini Séance @ Brava Theatre Enjoy a series of events about the magic and the supernatural, with Robert Strong, Paul Draper and others in a magic show ($10, 2pm), a panel on Skepticism & the Supernatural ($15, 5pm), and a Houdini Seane ($39-$69, 8pm). 2781 24th St. houdini-seance.com

Other Cinema @ ATA Gallery Weekly screenings of unusual, rare and strange short films and videos. Oct. 31: Zombie Apocalypse!, with trailers and clips by George Lucas, George Romero, undead and flesh-eating films and more. $7. 8:30pm. 992 Valencia St. 648-0654. www.othercinema.com

Rocky Horror Picture Show @ Davies Symphony Hall 40th anniversary participatory screening of the classic transvestite transsexual alien comic horror musical cult classic, with host Peaches Christ, the SF Symphony performing a onehour concert of spooky music with with Theramin player Dorit Chrysler performing Ed Wood themes and other music. Rocky Horror costumes encouraged. $15-$65. 7:30pm. Grove St. at Van Ness. 864-6000. sfsymphony.org

The sexy all-male weekly striptease revue includes a storyline of San Francisco’s history, from the Gold Rush to the tech boom. Extended thru December. $20. 9pm. 298 11th St. at Folsom. www.sfoasis.com

Won Ju Lim @ YBCA Won Ju Lim: Raycraft is Dead, thru Dec. 6. Also, Earth Machines : Exploring the environmental impact of our high-tech world, thru Dec. 6. $5$12. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Sun 1 Abrazo, Queer Tango @ Finnish Brotherhood Hall, Berkeley 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

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. 3456800. www.waltdisney.org

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

Pacific Worlds @ Oakland Museum New exhibit focuses on the contemporary lives of and historic cultures of Pacific Islanders and California; thru Jan. 3. Also, Yo-Yos & Half Squares: Contemporary California Quilts (five women artists), thru Feb 21. Also, Bees: Tiny Insect, Big Impact thru Sept 20. Free/$15. Reg. hours Wed-Sat 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). 1000 Oak St., Oakland. (510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Tue 3 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. Reception Sat., Nov. 7, 7:30pm. On view thru Jan. 3. 304 Valencia St. 8614526. www.glamarama.com

Into the Woods @ Jules Maeght Gallery Group exhibit of works in various media depicting nature. Thru Jan. 30. 149 Gough St. 549-7046. www.julesmaeghtgallery.com

Temporal Cities @ Tenderloin Museum 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

Wed 4 Betty Roi @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The local French-born chanteuse performs a concert of Edith Piaf songs, with historian Carolyn Burke. $20-$35. 7pm. Also Nov. 5, 8pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (866) 777-

Thu 29

Mon 2 Grand Opening @ Qulture Collective, Oakland The new multi-use café, gallery, workspace and community center opens. Reg. hours Mon-Fri 8am-4pm. 1714 Franklin St., Oakland www. qulturecollective.com

Reigning Queens @ GLBT History Museum

Olympians Festival @ Exit Theatre Annual festival of new plays with a theme of ancient gods and mythology, this year with 30 new plays. $10-$12. Wed-Sat 8pm thru Nov. 21. 156 Eddy St. www.sfolympians.com

Riverdance @ Golden Gate Theatre The Irish step dance company returns for its 20th-anniversary tour. $40-$160. Thru Nov. 8. 1 Taylor St. shnsf.com

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

Thu 5 David Perry’s online 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

13th Floor performs Jenny McAllister’s graphic novel for the stage, a stylized dance-play about gods’ power struggles and mortals’ retaliation in an epic test of wills. $15-$45. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru Nov. 15. 3153 17th St. www.13thfloortheater.org

Nicki Green, Caitlin Rose Sweet @ SMAart Gallery

Marga Gomez’ Pound @ Brava Theater Center 8932. www.FeinsteinsSF.com www.ticketweb.com

Carrie Brownstein @ Jewish Community Center Bestselling author Dave Eggers talks with the Portlandia co-creator about her new memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. $25. 8pm. 3200 California St. www.jccsf.org

Degenerate Art Ensemble @ YBCA Forum Predator Songstress, a dance-theatremultimedia performance fairy tale about an anti-heroine in search of her stolen voice. $20-$35. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru Nov. 7. 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

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

NEAT @ Contemporary Jewish Museum You Know I’m No Good, NEAT: New Experiments in Art and Technology, 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

The author of the acclaimed book Marie Equi: Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions presents a talk and slideshow about the pioneering lesbian political activist. $5. 7pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

The Broken Knife @ ODC Theater

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

Join GLBT hikers for a 7-mile hike through a wonderful place to see shorebird life and marsh habitats during autumnal bird migration. Bring binoculars, sunscreen, hat, layers, sturdy shoes, water, lunch. Carpool meets 9am at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. 650-740-9849. www.sfhiking.com

Michael Helquist @ GLBT History Museum

10 Percent @ Comcast

Portals of the Past @ de Young Museum

SF Hiking Club @ Coyote Hills Park

ed here is a model. Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

Man Francisco @ Oasis

Wed 4 Degenerate Art Ensemble @ YBCA Forum

Opening reception for a dual exhibit of ceramics visualizing queer bodies as vessels of nature. 6pm. Reg. hours TueSat 11:30am-5:30pm. Thru Nov. 21. 1045 Sutter St. smaartgallery.com

Suzanne Vega & Duncan Shiek @ Freight & Salvage Vega, the pop-folk singer-songwriter, and Sheik, the Grammy and multiple Tony-winning singer-composer, perform Songs From New York City: Bleeker Street to Broadway. $46-$58. 8pm. Also Nov. 6. 2020 Addison ASt., Berkeley. (510) 644-2020. www.duncansheik.com www.freightandsalvage.org To submit event listings, email events@ebar.com Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For more bar and nightlife events, go to On the Tab in our BARtab section, online at www.ebar.com/bartab

<< Books

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

T REAT YOURSELF TO AN EXCITING C ULINARY ADVENTURE WITH M ICHELIN S TAR C HEF SRIJITH GOPINATHAN

Spice Pot — Chef’s interpretation of traditional Indian street food with vegetables, tamarind chutney, and chickpea crackers.

Journey along India’s Spice Route by way of California at five-time Michelin star winner Campton Place. Chef Srijith’s cuisine masterfully blends the finest local produce with the richness of the region’s seasonal bounty. Enjoy a six-course Spice Route menu or indulge in our nine-course Degustation menu. For those with lighter appetites we offer a three-course Theatre Menu and Vegetarian Tasting menu.

Halloween

From page 21

Almost all our Halloween traditions can be traced back to the ancient Celtic day of Samhain, first day of the new year in the Celtic calendar. Now on Nov. 1, it’s the last day of the farmer’s year. By that time, all the crops had to be harvested and stored, and the livestock and sheep brought in from distant fields. This date was both an ending and the beginning of an eternal cycle, the most significant day of the Celtic year. As Jack Santino, a professor of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, writes in his book Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life, “The ancient Celts believed that Samhain, the midway point between the old year and the new, was the time when the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld. People gathered to sacrifice animals, make offerings of fruits and vegetables, and light bonfires to honor the dead, aid them on their journey home, and keep them (particularly the evil ones) away from the living. If due honor was paid them, the spirits might help them with their magic. During Samhain, all manner of beings were abroad: ghosts, fairies, and demons, all part of the dark and dread.”

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Because it was thought that the souls of the dead were roaming over the earth, food and drink were left out to placate them. Later, people dressed as spirits themselves, using mimicry as a magical defense, hoping demons would think they were demons, too, and be frightened away. These traditions are the antecedents of our present masquerading and trick-or-treating. Almost all our Halloween customs were introduced to this country in the 19th century by Irish immigrants who’d fled Ireland after the devastating potato famine of the 1840s. But it was LGBT people who transformed Halloween into one of our premiere gay holidays, through the Greenwich Village parade in New York and the former Castro Street Halloween celebration. Jack Kugelmass, an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has studied the Greenwich Village parade. He sees this carnivalesque celebration linked to the increasingly public nature of gay culture, offering par-

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John C. Wilson

From page 22

mate, Wilson was elevated from buddy to business manager. Tellingly, he traveled with Coward even when there was no business to be conducted. Having learned the ropes, Wilson began producing Coward’s shows, and almost casually slipped into directing, with notable success. Kiss Me, Kate may be famous for Porter’s score, but the original production remains (here’s that word) legendary for its high style. And of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos com-

ticipants a public license not only to misbehave, but to display oneself and one’s vision of the world, even to invent alternative traditions. For many years gay and lesbian people could not regularly crossdress or genderbend, and Halloween became an opportunity for them to express who they wanted to be, often in a campy or satirical manner. On Halloween one could adopt a new identity, however outrageous or flamboyant, but be safely hidden, even closeted. Also, by embracing pagan traditions, LGBT people gently mock religions that have ostracized them. In Kugelmass’ Masked Culture: The Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, Jeanne Fleming, a former director of the NYC parade, says, “Parades let people see themselves as a performance rather than as machines. It lets them see the imaginative side of Halloween. On the night of Halloween there are no social constraints. Parades allow different groups of people to get together in public. People can be as weird, as sweet, as mean, or whatever. They can look into their craziest mind, their deepest desire, and realize what that is.” Kugelmass sees these gay Halloween events creating a new culture. “For gay people, Halloween is a moment of utopian wishfulness, when their vision of the world has the possibility of moving from periphery to center, and capturing the hearts of an entire city with alternative visions, offering an expansion of the threshold of the sexual self into other domains.” By devising Halloween traditions, gay people affirm creativity, freedom, rebirth, self-expression, self-fulfillment, and enjoying life to the fullest in the face of death. Gay horror author/filmmaker Clive Barker once observed, “If we can somehow play with death, that empowers us and gives us a way to say we’re not going to give in. Gay men and women have been incredibly smart in using humor to take the sting out of death.” Santino lauds the achievements of Halloween revelers: “They are challenging, mocking, teasing, and appeasing the dread forces of the night, of the otherworld, of the soul, that becomes our world on this night of reversible possibilities, inverted roles, and transcendent turnarounds. They are reaffirming death and this place as part of life in a dizzying and exhilarating celebration of a holy and magical night.”t ments that Wilson “was geared to put the most exquisite taste into a show that was basically rowdy.” Along with the hits, Wilson candidly recounts his many, many flops. Most saliently, Wilson writes about the many legendary performers and productions in the first person and present tense. If Wilson’s writing has a decidedly old-fashioned cast — that of a gentleman at leisure taking a calm stroll through his career — that is not criticism. Indeed, that quality is to be savored. You want a cliché? They don’t make them like this anymore.t

Film>>

October 29-November 4, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Peaches is a Rocky Horror fan

Cast from a previous production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Courtesy the subject

Joshua Grannell is stage star Peaches Christ.

by David-Elijah Nahmod

cross-dressing mad scientist and his hunky, scantily clad creation will soon be holding court in the hallowed halls of the San Francisco Symphony. It all happens when drag icon Peaches Christ brings the queer cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Davies Symphony Hall. The night promises to be a wildly creepy and sexy salute to Halloween, one of the holiest nights on the queer calendar. You’ll get to do the time warp again with a musical pre-show, followed by a hosted screening of the film. Be there or be square on October 31 at 7:30 p.m. “For me, Rocky Horror was my version of an It Gets Better video

when I was a teenager,” Peaches Christ’s alter-ego Joshua Grannell told the B.A.R. “When I discovered John Waters films and Rocky Horror, my life was forever changed, and my view of the world was so much better. Rocky Horror showed me that there was a place for a freaky queer kid drawn toward drag and crossdressing. The overall message of the film is don’t dream it, be it, and it’s something I really took to heart.” The evening, Grannell said, was the Symphony’s idea. “The San Francisco Symphony reached out to me and asked if I was interested in doing an event like this, and I jumped at the chance,” he said. “They included me on the curation of the music that the orchestra will play as part of the pre-show, and

agreed with me that Latrice Royale would be a wonderful co-hostess.” Royale is a seasoned drag performer who came to national prominence through appearances on RuPaul’s Drag Race. She has since released a single, “Weight,” and has performed with Jennifer Hudson. Royale is also an ordained minister who performs same-sex weddings. Rocky Horror audiences can be quite rabid and rambunctious. At regularly scheduled midnight screenings of the film, audience members have been known to throw rice at the film’s opening wedding scene. Further into the film, hundreds of rolls of Scott Tissues are tossed at the first appearance of the character Dr. Scott. “From what I understand, the Symphony is not

creating a rule against this, which is amazing,” said Grannell. So what can attendees expect when the envelope-pushing Rocky Horror comes to the usually staid Davies? “You can expect to hear some of the best, most iconic horror movie orchestrations played live,” said Grannell. “There’s even Dorit Chrysler, a special guest Theremin player coming from Los Angeles to help add a little extra something special to the evening. There’s also a bit of local selections of spooky music that has significance specifically to San Francisco.” Grannell added that the spectacle and glamour of Royale were an added bonus, and encourages attendees to wear costumes. Peaches Christ has definitely come up in the world since she hosted midnight movies at the now-shuttered Bridge Theater on Geary Blvd. Peaches has graduated from the 400500-seat Bridge to selling out at the

1,400-seat Castro Theater, and now makes regular appearances around the country. The diva adds the prestigious Davies Symphony Hall as the latest feather in her cap. Grannell said it feels “kinda surreal” to appear at such important institutions. “These venues are as legit as it gets,” he said. “I built a career as a drag performer named after Jesus, screening cult movies with pre-shows that feature acts like mother-daughter mudwrestling. So it’s all really wonderful.” Grannell noted that he has also just hosted an event at the American Film Institute in Washington, DC. “It’s weird,” he said. Also, be sure to join Peaches for a spooky Halloween drag show at Oasis after the Rocky Horror event, which fellow drag icon Heklina will co-host.t

the music goes Technicolor Korngold, as it does in the music for The Kiss, tight playing and a lack of apology keep it from going off the rails. If your head’s in Wozzeck or Siegfried, this is no place to go. But faux, bottom-drawer verismo this is not. The singing is fine, with Kathryn Guthrie, as the maid Marie, a sufficiently beguiling second soprano that you’re pumped when Regine symbolically tosses her the bouquet (in fact an autographed LP) at the end. Janis Kelly, a soprano I’ve loved for decades, is fearless and un-selfconscious as the Prima Donna, the wholly appropriate wear in her silvery voice exquisitely balanced by a

performance of commitment and just the right amount of psychological depth. This is not Erwartung, though it’s within shouting distance of La voix humaine. I have colleagues who may savage me for saying that I count Rufus’ live concert performance of Berlioz’s “Absence” among the most moving renditions I know. One of the last concerts I heard in the US, at the Great American Music Hall in 1999, is a fond memory. I’ve largely lost touch with him since, and making my return by way of this fetching opera was like slipping back into a hot bath, with Marie seeing to it that everything was just right.t

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, hosted by Peaches Christ, Sat., Oct. 31, 7:30 p.m. Davies Symphony Hall, SF. Tickets: sfsymphony.org

Rufus in the opera house by Tim Pfaff

won’t broach the subject of whether Rufus Wainwright’s opera Prima Donna is autobiographical, because I can’t speak with certainty. Its creation was tangled up with the death of Wainwright’s mother, Kate McGarrigle, which colors everything. But its story of a beloved diva in decline – nay, planning (or postponing, or remembering) the onstage return/farewell – is one every opera queen, a company in which Wainwright certainly counts himself, knows. I’ll go first. “My girl,” Leonie Rysanek, managed a carefully timed farewell, especially for a singer of her generation, but there were some late Sieglindes and Emperesses that took fond memories to gild. At the other end of the spectrum, Beverly Sills, whose prime I missed by eons, absolutely leveled me with her Massenet Thais at the War Memorial in 1976, when her identification with the courtesan who feared the consequences of the loss of her physical allures proved genuinely heartbreaking. We live with these things. Wainwright composed Prima Donna on a high-profile commission from the Met that went wrong – surely one of those backstage stories that doesn’t lift the spirits – and resulted in a premiere at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, England, in 2009. BAM revived it. Now DG has released a new commercial studio recording made in London earlier this year.

Inspired, the composer says, by an interview Maria Callas gave to Lord Harewood, Prima Donna mints a Prima Donna who, such as she mimics any real-life singer, recalls Magda Olivero, for whom composer Francesco Cilea resuscitated Adriana Lecouvreur. Wainwright’s Prima Donna, Regine Saint Laurent, had her signature success as the titular Alienor d’Aquitaine in an opera composed for her. We meet Saint Laurent as she is preparing for a return to the stage after a six-year hiatus precipitated by a vocal mishap at the opera’s deuxieme, bringing us back to echoes of the Callas return/farewell, what with Olivero’s long, between-careers break rather more voluntary. The story, in two acts, is nifty, compact and in French. A music journalist (could this mirror Rysanek’s husband, Elu Gausmann?), who has adored Saint Laurent and Alienor d’Aquitaine since his conservatory days, asks about the

onstage fiasco, precipitating an encore of the crisis, nearly saving the day by joining her in an impromptu singing of the opera’s “iconic love duet,” only to have the soprano’s voice break in the same place. They save the day with The Kiss. I won’t spoil Act II, with its romantic and artistic reversals, ending with a whiff of Richard Strauss-like suggestive lesbianism. There are strains of Strauss in Wainwright’s score, as there are of Puccini, Cilea, and gaybies Barber and Menotti. But before the score gets written off as derivative, it’s useful to remember that commentators routinely default to the “sounds like X” formula. It’s a fine, sturdy score, serious and alive. Despite the temptations to lapse into kitsch, Wainwright deftly skirts cheap entertainment in deference to music-drama of unmistakable genuineness. He hits a perfect level of inflation. It’s not going to make me or you toss out our recordings of Lulu or Tosca, but Wainwright wouldn’t want us to. He wasn’t chasing that trophy. I’d turn to this opera any day in preference to any of the premieres the Met has shoveled onto the stage since, say, Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West. If Prima Donna were revived somewhere and I got press tickets, I’d go. There’s certainly no faulting the recording, the saturated yet accessible score beautifully rendered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under conductor Jayce Ogren. Even when

<< Fine Art

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • October 29-November 4, 2015

Experimental exhibitions by Sura Wood

n the 1960s a series of New Yorkbased projects, Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), merged engineering and art, with Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman among the participants. Fifty years later comes NEAT at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, which commissioned nine talented artists from the Bay Area, the epicenter of digital innovation, to take a “new” crack at the seminal concept by creating or updating their visual and sound installations, videos and interactive works. Playful and gimmicky but ultimately insubstantial, the resulting exhibition is not so much rooted as stuck in the 1960s/70s DIY aesthetic that inspired it, even though the technological tools are certainly more advanced than those of a half-century ago. Take Micah Elizabeth Scott’s “Eclipse.” Though it may be made of glass, 3D-printed plastics, handmade electronics and software, the nubby crystalline baby-blue ball with the surface of a lava lamp would be right at home in a disco, strobe-light flashing, or serving as a womb for another species’ progeny. Other pieces look like inventions cooked up in the garage on a Saturday afternoon, such as Paolo Salvagione’s Rube Goldbergesque “Rope

Fountain,” where what appear to be a half-dozen aluminum sanders are lined up, each connected to a looped automated rope that lifts and drops, coils and uncoils; they’re like a bunch of rogue vacuum cleaners gorging on their own cords, or electronic cowboys with no calves to lasso. Chief curator Renny Pritikin deserves credit for trying new things and stretching the definition of what belongs in a Jewish Museum, but his ventures so far haven’t been equally successful. A lot of morphing, flickering and buzzing goes on in the dark rooms at NEAT, but it suffers in comparison to the museum’s previous exhibition Courtesy of the artist and Hosfelt Gallery, SF Night Begins the Day, which was populated by imagina- “Voyeur III” (2007), mixed media by Alan tive works by younger artists Rath, part of NEAT: New Experiments in who skirted the edge of the Art and Technology at the Contemporary ponderous in their rumina- Jewish Museum, San Francisco. tions on the cosmos and the sublime. Here we get the dated hippie psychedelic of “Endem with a partner on the other side tangled” by Camille Utterback, large of the screens, bluish webbing matehanging scrims with a video projecrializes and recedes. The only thing tion of a chartreuse-and-tangerine missing is Iron Butterfly’s 1968 hit dream. When you move in front of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” playing in the flower-child imagery or in tanthe background.

scavenged from a Voyager probe. With its jerry-rigged, motorized base moving in a halting, jerky fashion and an explorer arm that ends in a flirty pink feather that could’ve come loose from a Folies-Bergere costume, it’s a metal salvage version of an ostrich that’s lost its way on the moon. Like something out of an old-fashioned optician ad, Rath’s “Voyeur III” resembles a pair of jumbosized bright red goggles. Their deep rims frame eyes that bat long lashes and follow you around the room. This is an artist who merits a show of his own. Through Jan. 17. Courtesy of the artist and MCD Art and Other Tactics: Contemporary Craft by Artist “Strange Little Girl No. 6 (fox) with Veterans and Without CamConstellation” (2013), kilnformed glass, ouflage, two separate shows mixed media by Silvia Levenson, part of that opened recently at the Without Camouflage at the Museum of Museum of Craft and DeCraft and Design. sign, feature works with political and psychological undercurrents. The exhibition It’s difficult not to fall hard for of art by vets covers WWII, Korea the witty salvage missions of Alan and Vietnam, but the biggest section, Rath, whose interest in robotics and in which survivors respond to the kinetic sculpture has produced enGulf War onward, has yielded some dearing contraptions like “Soon,” of the most visceral artworks; perwhose parts look like they’ve been haps the experience of it is still comparatively fresh. Giuseppe Pelicano’s ceramic “War Pigs,” a trophy wall of grotesque, horned pig heads reminiscent of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, is an out-in-the-open punch to the gut, while Jesse Albrecht’s “Abu G & Me & Jail,” a couple of primitive yet affecting ceramic dunce hoods “decorated” with faces and hangman’s rope, is a disturbing reminder of a horrifying chapter in American history most of us would rather forget. “The Truth (as filmed)” by Tom Pullin, a black skull on a fourfoot-tall circular wood platform, and “See the Truth,” a steel sculpture by the same artist of missiles ready to launch, suggest the specter of death and weapons of destruction, while Pam de Luco’s slightly subversive 40-page “Paper Doll Book” speaks to fantasies of war through a color photograph of a smiling woman in uniform, off on her big adventure, and cut-outs of a variety of military “ensembles” of the kind girls use to play dress up with dolls. In Without Camouflage, Silvia Levenson channels a disturbing past and memories of dislocation through the medium of glass. Raised in a politically active Russian-Jewish immigrant family that fled oppression in Argentina for refuge in Italy, and mentored by the FrenchAmerican, large-scale-installation artist Louise Bourgeois, Levenson deals with her personal history of domestic violence and feelings of childhood estrangement, alienation and fear in a recent series of installations, Strange Little Girls. The life-size glass figures, posed in handmade dresses and animal masks disguising their identity, recall Ralph San Francisco Chronicle Eugene Meatyard’s disconcerting photographs of masked children in the woods and dilapidated buildings. One such child in a white confirmation dress and fox head stands in front of an inky-blue map of the Bay Area News Group constellations. In another, “Baby Sheep,” she wears the glass head of a gray lamb and a schoolgirl jumper emblazoned with the words “Strange Theatredogs.net Little Girl,” suggesting she’s an outcast and everyone knows it. The masks emphasize the innocence of lambs to the slaughter. Works by IsTER A raeli artist Dafna Kaffeman, who exE TH Y plores the exasperating complexities EAR G of the Arab-Israeli conflict through S ’ . T. black wolves made of spiky needles A.C of flamed glass, and Invasive Plants, a series that intertwines botanicals and Arab and Hebrew words, are also shown. Through March 27.t

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Watching the detectives

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Scene from director Alberto Rodriguez’s Marshland, opening Friday at the Roxie.

by David Lamble

hose with a grasp of American TV trivia may recall the early nights of NBC’s Saturday Night Live when the show’s comic Chevy Chase would announce that the Spanish dictator “Francisco Franco is still dead.” For a couple of generations now, unfettered Spanish filmmakers have pretty much avoided the cultural black hole that was four decades of homegrown Spanish Fascism (193675). Now director Alberto Rodriguez has found a harrowing, gripping and subtly black-humor approach to pricking the consciences of 48 million Spanish citizens. Rodriguez’s sly police drama Marshland begins in 1980 with two Madrid-based detectives, Juan and Pedro, assigned to a missing persons case. Two teen sisters have gone missing from their home near Spain’s Southern marshes. Juan (Javier Gutierrez) is a grizzled veteran: a hedonist, an old-fashioned

gumshoe, with a violent streak and a propensity for getting the job done, cruelly, as befits the old regime. His younger partner, Pedro, is completely new-school: he would read somebody their Miranda rights if they applied in this society still recovering from Fascism. Pedro calls his new partner on the rough stuff, and phones his wife back in Madrid, a city he misses more and more as their investigation runs down darker and darker trails. With Juan on the job, no scene spools by without sudden violence and the hint of worse to come. While most of the harm befalls women and trampy teen girls, the most chilling moments come behind the wheel, as Pedro drives like a madman through the marshes on the trail of a suave gentleman with soft hands and a propensity for expensive cologne. As Juan and Pedro try to shake up the place and find a motive for what turns out to be two grisly torture murders, they find

themselves pursuing an increasingly elusive culprit. Rodriquez’s true subject is the moral recovery of Spanish citizens and the beginnings of a democratic civil society with laws that also apply to the powerful. What’s most engrossing about the film is its talented cast and crew’s ability to lead us down a series of rabbit holes until we’re confronted with some ugly truths that we didn’t see coming. After a while we don’t know whom to trust, but we’re happy to be able to upgrade our own moral compasses. We wander across a modern landscape where no act is unimaginable and where no deed goes unpunished, even if the nature of the punishment is perplexing. Bearing a distinct resemblance to late-career Hitchcock (the grisly pratfalls of his last British shoot, 1972’s Frenzy), Marshland is both entertaining and a leading candidate for a Best Foreign Film Oscar.t

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All’s fare by David Lamble

our years ago the acclaimed Iranian cinema artist Jafar Panahi pulled off a sleight of hand when he defied the Islamic dictatorship’s 20-year ban on his making films by shooting the entertaining appeal to humane values This Is Not a Film. He shot this feature-length work with his cell-phone camera, augmented by a colleague wielding a digital camcorder, technically not violating the clerical ban on his movie muse. Four years later, the ban still firmly in place, Panahi gets himself a job behind the wheel of a cab, and in the process gives us a leading Best Foreign Film Oscar candidate. Jafar Panahi’s Taxi allows Panahi’s tongue-in-cheek methods to flourish, in effect extending a witty middle finger to one of the world’s most repressive regimes. The random selection of Tehran fares in this Taxi illustrates life in this unpredictable 21st-century urban society. First up is a hectoring bully, a flashy-dressing loudmouth with a corrosive stream of opinions that begin with his enthusiastic promotion of capital punishment for any Iranian citizen tempted to flout the country’s feudal codes of conduct. With a patient female passenger challenging him from the backseat, the bully pontificates. Male fare: “A cousin of mine, he left the house and got in his car to go to work, only to notice all four tires had been replaced by bricks.” Panahi: “What make?” Male fare: “A really cheap car. Honestly, stealing such a piece of junk, if I

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were head of state, I’d hang a couple of them, just to shake them up.” Female fare (from the back seat): “Hang them? You’re quick to dispense with others’ lives. Maybe he was in need.” Male fare: “Our driver must be in even more need. Not to mention me. That’s no excuse.” Eventually the bully exits the cab, not before announcing his line of work: “My specialty is mugging!” The ride proceeds with the veiled woman and bemused cabbie shaking their heads in incredulity. But the film ride proceeds for another 74 minutes, and provides a funny/ scary portrait of a nation of nearly 81 million. A short, pushy guy attempts to ingratiate himself with his celebrity driver, revealing himself as a seller of bootlegged Western films. The taxi also becomes an impro-

vised ambulance as the victim of a bicycle accident gets a ride to the nearest hospital while his distraught wife howls in terror. Later, a self-assured schoolgirl demonstrates just how diverse an authoritarian society can be when you open the verbal spigots. Like so many of today’s mini-cam films, Taxi will probably be more arresting on the big screen, when it begins its Bay Area run Friday. Another amusing thing about it is how much Tehran resembles downtown San Francisco until the players start speaking Persian (with excellent English subtitles). If Panahi can survive his professional banishment and continue to make such poignant movies from the underground, our two cultures may actually start acknowledging each other before the turn of the next century.t

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e m u t Cos Kink by Race Bannon

Brian “Bolt” Donner (right) with his partner, Bryan Patrick (left), expressing their superhero selves at International Mr. Leather 2014.

Rick Gerharter

Brian Donner

ith Halloween upon us, it made sense to talk about some of the costume fetishes that have become a larger part of the overall kink scene. Leather, rubber and other more traditional fetish garb still dominate our scene, but there are other kinksters who are bonded around an interest in costume fantasies. There are a few such fetishes, but since space here is limited I’m going to focus on two – superheroes and furries. See page 38

The Rose , & Josie s Two well-loved performance venues remembered by Michael Flanagan

S The exterior of Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint which was at 16th and Market Streets, in late August 1998

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hortly after having moved to San Francisco in the early 1980s, I was introduced to the concept of gay stand-up comedy (as it was called then). I was working at a bookstore downtown and my coworker, Paul Phillips, had started performing at Valencia Rose as part of the duo Romanovsky & Phillips. The emcee for that night was Lea De Laria and the concept became crystal clear that night. See page 34 >>

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

34 • Bay Area Reporter • October 29-November 4, 2015

All photos: Rick Gerharter

Upper Left: Co-owner Ron Lanza stands in the front entrance doorway at an unfinished Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint in May 1990. Lower Left: Marga Gomez (right) gets a cheek kiss from a admirer following her performance at Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint in March 1998. Above: Donald Montwill, manager and booker, sitting in Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint, in February 1991.

The Rose & Josie’s

From page 33

As well as introducing gay comedy, that evening also introduced me to the Valencia Rose, where I spent many enjoyable evenings. The Rose, which was at 766 Valencia Street, was sort of an all-purpose community and performance center as well as being a café. It was started in January 1982 by Ron Lanza and Hank Wilson. In an April 1982 Bay Area Reporter article “Valencia Street: A Renaissance Starts” by George Mendenhall, Lanza said, “There is a special ambience here that we wish to

save. Our hope and belief is that it will not become a Castro Street or a Union Street. We hope we can keep this wonderful mix of people.” The origin of Gay Comedy Night (which was on Monday) came from Tom Ammiano. As Ammiano said in “A Funny Time To Be Gay” by Ed Karvoski, “I suggested to Ron and Hank that we do gay comedy there. They said, ‘What’s gay comedy?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. All I know is I go to straight comedy clubs and I try to be funny, and I talk about being gay and they want to eat my liver! I need a place to develop.’” Marga Gomez, who showed up at one of the Monday Gay Com-

edy Nights, said in her BARtab article about the Rose, “The Valencia Rose had the best audience a queer or queer-friendly comic could ever want.” The Rose was more than a performance venue, however. It also acted as a community center and a site for political organizing. Among the flyers I found at the GLBT Historical Society Archives while researching this article were those advertising

benefits for Cleve Jones and Dennis Peron’s candidacy, to the Democratic Central Committee and a benefit for Pat Norman for Supervisor. Another advertised a potluck Thanksgiving dinner for people with AIDS and their friends, sponsored by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Shanti Project. There was always some sort of political activity going on there on the second floor. It was where

I attended the first meeting of the Documentation of AIDS Issues and Research, an archival organization I went on to head for several years. It was, however, as a performance venue that it perhaps made its biggest impact. Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Dornacker, Charles Busch, Doug Holsclaw, Kate Clinton and Steven Grossman all performed there, and Jose Sarria and Hazel McGinnis performed there for the 20th anniversary of the closing of the Black Cat. When word spread that it was closing (the final night was November 30, 1985) there was much anguish. So it was with great fanfare that the article, “Valencia Rose To Be Resurrected as Josie’s” by Allen White appeared in the B.A.R. in October, 1989. There were some initial hurdles to be overcome as the Duboce Triangle Association was concerned about noise from a performance venue. But after their concerns were allayed, Josie’s opened in January 1990 with Donald Montwill (who had been artistic director at the Rose) becoming a partner in Hank Wilson’s place. Josie’s initial drive was to limit its focus, and Montwill told White, “The difference between this place and the Valencia Rose is this place will be a performance place only.” Josie’s Cabaret & Juice Joint was a spectacular venue at 3583 16th Street. Performers such as Tim Miller, Lypsinka, John Kelly, Charles Busch, Marilyn Pittman, Karen Ripley, Connie Champagne and Pomo See page 36 >>

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36 • Bay Area Reporter • October 29-November 4, 2015

Sustainable kink? Alt. versus arriviste cultures, and condoms

by Krissy Eliot

usually cover events run by those who dwell in the depths of the kink/polyamorous community, but this time, I thought it would be interesting to turn my attention from the usual anonymous anarchists, night-crawlers, and presumed damned that keep the San Francisco sex community juice flowing, and instead observe the outsiders: the vanilla folk, the day-walkers, and the well-off, as they play in the trend that is “sex positivity.” So I went to the launch party for Sustain, an environmentally conscious condom company from New York that recently released their products in the Bay Area. When I walked into the lobby of Hotel Zetta and the woman behind the front desk nearly broke her neck turning her nose up at me, I noticed that all was to be expected. The party was comprised of mostly rich, beautiful people, all blissfully laughing and drinking together, enjoying their herpes-free genitals, no doubt. It was a perfect reflection of the growing upper echelon of the city, where tech and business types get together to discuss how “comfortable” and “blessed” they are in casual conversation. I don’t describe those attending the party as “rich” to invoke feelings of disdain; I do so because A) it’s true and B) because it paints the picture that has forced me to confront a truth I have long been avoiding: The leaders in radical sexual change are shifting, not just in the Bay Area, but across the nation, and it’s time for the Damned to make room in the sex dungeons for the Blessed, no matter how much resentment the community may wield for big money. Before the party, I told some friends where I was going, and the news was met with eye-rolls. Sex companies run by privileged people who claim to understand true oppression is a touchy subject. And more upper class people throwing sex-oriented parties in the Bay doesn’t exactly cause elation — not just because gentrification has been

The Rose & Josie’s

From page 34

Afro Homos all performed there. Joan Jett Blakk had a late night series (“Blakk is Bak!”) called Late Nite With Joan Jett Blakk. It featured the first run of Robert Chesley’s Dog Plays and had photographic exhibitions in the café. One evening in particular stands out in my mind, a performance by Phranc as Neil Diamond called Hot August Phranc, which was just as wonderful as you would imagine. Josie’s was a vital performance spot in the heart of the Castro. On the side of the building was a mural entitled Life by Gretchen Rosenblatt which overlooked the burned-out site of the old Trinity Methodist Church and the Eureka Theater (which had been in its basement). I asked Larry-Bob Roberts, cohost of Magnet’s open mic night

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pushing sex event spaces out of the and keeping the culture alive have community is dwindling and all the city, but because there’s a perceived not been the elite — at least, not radicalism has moved online, local threat that well-off outsiders will historically. But that’s changing. activism is meeting its end. take over and negatively change the Last year, I did a story for the late I too lament the famous SF of the community that’s been San Francisco Bay Guardian on how past, most of which has been recolbuilt. local sex coverage has shifted from lected to me by longtime locals and This year, Kinky Saalternative to conservative. I interfamous novels I’ve read. This drives lon, a popular sex cosviewed the likes of ex-SFBG sex colme to perpetuate the image that the tume party, run by Polly umnist Andrea Nemerson, Center poor, artsy, alt types are still masters Whitaker, was referred for Sex and Culture founder, Carol of this domain. But it’s high time to by the London Times Queen, and of course, the Bay Area everyone admitted that gentrificaas a place for the “young, Reporter’s porn-reviewer-extraordition and economic troubles aren’t rich, and driven” to go naire, John F. Karr. All of them lajust affecting our buildings, but our and relax. Whitaker, mented a time where SF sex writing sexual landscape too. The activists who has also been a victhrived and functioned as a radical are dying out here, figuratively and tim of eviction, wrote an open letter force for change. Now that the local literally, with some of those from addressing what she said the original movement was a misrepresentation still whipping and buttof the community. fucking into their 70s, “Volunteers run our bless their hearts. community, which prides Never in my life did I itself on being inclusive think I would say this, but and authentic, and our the community should VIPs are the people who welcome the well-off into take out the trash,” Whitathe local domain, Sustain ker wrote. “There’s a story included. that San Francisco sex culThere’s no reason for ture is teeming with uberme or friends in the comrich, hedonistic Silicon Valmunity to resent people ley playboys…. The truth who are supporting sex is, as with most things in positivity and making life, a lot less salacious, and money at the same time, a little more complicated especially if their perspecthan this satisfyingly titiltives fall (mostly) in line lating template.” with the local communiWhitaker is right. ty’s goals. Sustain is hardly The idea that SF is a kicking anyone out, they’re rich, businessperson’s just moving their products wet dream, literally, is a in — and Sustain’s local popular thread in media. Krissy Eliot friends and owners are acAnd those responsible tually being progressive, so Jeffrey Hollender and his daughter Meika at a promofor sharing sexual knowlwe should recognize and tional reception for their Sustain Natural Condoms. edge, inspiring freedom, encourage that.

Sustain’s lubes are 95 percent organic, the condoms are made of Fair Trade-certified rubber, and their post-play wipes are 100 percent cotton. The company donates 10 percent of their pretax profits to women who lack access to healthcare and family planning. Sustain is also progressive because it’s a venture kept within the family, having been founded by entrepreneur Meika Hollender and her father Jeffrey, who was CEO of the household products company Seventh Generation for 20 years and has been speaking out about wealth inequality and taxing the rich for some time now. I’m not saying the community should be happy that their reputation and event spaces are threatened. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be so hard on those who want to celebrate in the local scene, especially since Sustain speaks out against shaming female sexuality, talks liberally about gays and anal sex, and is taking steps to protect the environment. I wonder if the kinksters can learn to embrace charmed newcomers while still preserving the alt integrity that’s nourished SF for so many years. And if they can’t, will the abhorred “Silicon Valley playboys” soon be the norm?t

with Dana Hopkins, for his thoughts regarding the importance of Josie’s. “There were performers that I saw for the first time at Josie’s that I am still a fan of to this day, like Varla Jean Merman and John Kelly. Joan Jett Blakk’s talk shows had amazing guests, like Kiki and Herb and Nao Bustamante… Ron Lanza gave Nick Leonard and me his blessing to continue Monday Night Gay Comedy after the closure of Josie’s, which we did at various venues under the name QComedy. Nick had been a cook at Josie’s and got his start doing standup at the comedy open mic at Josie’s.” Perhaps it was because it was in a more central location in the gay community, or perhaps the community had finally caught up with it, but Josie’s lasted more than twice as long as Valencia Rose. Even when it seemed as if it might be closing, we were never really sure.

affordable queer cabaret venue that was missing for 15 years.” We lost Donald Montwill in 2002 and Ron Lanza in 2013. But if you want to remember Josie’s or the Valencia Rose, I’m sure they would agree that the best way to do it is to stop by the Oasis or go see Marga Gomez in Pound at Brava Theater.t

In 1998 Lanza had an elaborate farewell party and then reopened two months later (after a deal with a restaurant fell through). In the last year it once again became a political hub as it acted as the campaign headquarters for Tom Ammiano’s writein campaign for mayor against Willie Brown (which was successful in that it caused a runoff election, but he ul-

timately lost to Brown). But finally the club really did close on December 31, 1999. And much as with the Valencia Rose, the closing act was Marga Gomez. The restaurant Starbelly currently occupies the address. Roberts echoed my own thoughts when he told me, “The recent opening of Oasis has finally provided an

Learn more about Sustain at www.SustainNatural.com. Readers can contact Krissy by email at thekrissyeliot@gmail.com and view her previous work at www.krissyeliot.com.

Rick Gerharter

Joan Jett Blakk (standing) and her sidekick, Babette, hosted a talk-variety show at Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint, in August 1994.