Family wants new look at 1985 cold case
by John Ferrannini
The cousin of a Black gay arts student found hanging outside the Concord BART station back in 1985 wants the case reopened. The initial investigation ruled the death of Timothy Charles Lee a suicide.
Frank Sterling, a 53-year-old Antioch resident, told the Bay Area Reporter that he held a memorial walk last month in honor of Lee, a Berkeley resident who was found dead November 2, 1985, at the age of 23. Lee is the son of Sterling’s aunt.
“Although I didn’t know him very well – we only hung out a few times – I feel like it could’ve been me,” Sterling said during a phone interview. “If it was me, Timmy would be fighting for me. That’s how I feel. I’m fighting for Timmy. I got to do it now because I feel like we’re the last chance for any accountability.”
According to the sole previous B.A.R. article on this case, published March 27, 1986, and titled “New Evidence of Suicide in Lee Death,” Lee’s family and friends maintained that he’d been lynched outside the Concord BART station.
At least one woman told police that she “heard screams and people running on the night of Lee’s death,” but changed her story under hypnosis, the paper reported. But what apparently clinched a ruling of suicide was Lee’s roommate, identified in the 1986 B.A.R. article as Russell Wright, changing his story and telling investigators that Lee was depressed and suicidal.
“I remember his depression and low-keyed behavior a week prior to his death,” Wright told investigators at the time, according to the B.A.R. article. “He seemed to be down and easily upset. On the night I called him at the BART station I tried to find a ride for him. … At the time I asked him what he was going to do. He said, ‘Maybe I’ll throw myself in front of a car. He hung up and that was the last that I heard of him.’”
The B.A.R. also reported there was a note purporting to be a suicide note.
The paper reported that the NAACP had brought in a handwriting expert from Los Angeles who said the handwriting in the note was not Lee’s, but Wright’s.
Wright maintained that Lee fell asleep on BART and ended up in Concord, then the end of the line, as the system was shutting down for the night. Wright said he tried to find a ride for Lee, but was unsuccessful.
See page 10 >>
JBreed leaves
office
on an LGBTQ high note
by Matthew S. Bajko
FA Noel Valley Christmas
udging for the first Noel Valley Holiday Window contest took place December 18 in Noe Valley and included gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), left, who joined his out colleague, District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, in considering the elaborately decorated facade of Salon Bello and the flower shop next door. Mayor London Breed served as a judge,
rom housing transgender individuals and addressing LGBTQ health concerns to paving the way for a return of gay bathhouses and finding a permanent home for an LGBTQ history museum, San Francisco Mayor London Breed is leaving office with a long list of LGBTQ achievements. Her mayoral legacy is likely to produce benefits for the city’s LGBTQ community for years to come.
as did Lyanne Melendez of ABC 7-TV. As the Bay Area Reporter previously noted, the holiday decorating contest was the brainchild of gay business owner Dave Karraker, who recently opened with his husband a branch of MX3 Fitness in the neighborhood. The winner for most elaborate window was When Modern Was; Terrasol was the runner-up, Karraker said.
“Whether it was my appointments or my investments or my policy changes or my willingness to stand up for the community as a whole in every turn, I am very proud that … I have done some really transformative things to really support the LGBTQ community,” Breed, the city’s See page 8 >>
Harvey Milk Plaza project still millions shy of total needed
by Matthew S. Bajko
The project to reimagine a public plaza and transit station entrance in San Francisco’s LGBTQ Castro district to better honor its namesake, the late gay supervisor Harvey Milk, is still millions of dollars shy of the total needed before work on it can commence. City officials and backers of the proposal are hopeful the bulk of the money will come from private donors.
Anywhere from $5 million to $15 million is still needed in order to fully fund the renovation of Harvey Milk Plaza at the corner of Castro and Market streets, gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman told the Bay Area Reporter. A better sense of how much needs to be raised will come once the construction drawings for the project are completed, he added.
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“The first thing for the project is finding some funds to just finish that work and then we can get an actual cost estimate,” said Mandelman in a December 19 interview. “The numbers we have are still kind of general estimates and they need to be more tightly nailed down. Then I think we need to have a conversation with the mayor and our state and federal partners whether there are any additional public funds. And we need to have a conversation with the friends and those who support the project about how much is re-
A rendering of Harvey Milk Plaza shows the familiar corner of Castro and Market streets, transformed and activated with a gathering around the new
alistic for them to raise.”
He was referring to the Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza booster group that for nearly a decade has championed a reimagining of the plaza areas built atop the Castro station for the city’s Muni subway system to provide a more fitting commemoration of Milk, his civil rights legacy, and the LGBTQ community he championed.
Brian Springfield, a gay man who’s executive director of the friends group, has said in several interviews this month with the B.A.R. that it has committed to raise nearly $8 million of the remaining funds needed, working off a figure of $10 million. He expects the city will be able to make up the difference.
See page 10 >>
Lea DeLaria
Mayor London Breed waved to spectators during the 2019 Pride parade.
Rick Gerharter
pedestal feature.
Courtesy Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza
Rick Gerharter
Timothy Charles Lee
From B.A.R. Archive
Program matches seniors with roommates
by Matthew S. Bajko
F
our years ago, at age 69, educator Henry “Hank” Machtay secured a 30-year mortgage to buy his garden apartment in the St. Francisco Square Cooperative Inc. in San Francisco’s Fillmore district across the street from Japantown. Initially built in the 1960s for members of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, its 299 apartments are spread across 12 three-story buildings clustered around landscaped plazas.
His two-bedroom, one bath unit cost $611,000. It is a short bus ride away from his job as a public school teacher. Machtay works in the Digital Communication Pathway program at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology, a high school overseen by the San Francisco Unified School District.
A gay man who moved to the city from New York in 1988, having spent a few years in Los Angeles earning a master’s in media from the University of Southern California, Machtay enjoyed living alone. But in addition to his mortgage payments and other costs associated with owning a home, Machtay also has to pay homeowner association fees that have increased since he moved in.
And he found it increasingly difficult to handle the upkeep on his house by himself. Learning about Home Match, a home sharing program for older adults under the auspices of nonprofit Front Porch,
Machtay decided to sign up.
“At first, I was hesitant about the idea of it. But I then realized there were crumbs on the floor. At 70, I used to be able to bend over and pick up the crumbs off the floor.
Now I am 73 and I can’t bend over,” said Machtay, who in the early 1990s worked as a typesetter for three years for the Bay Area Reporter.
“I thought it might make sense to have a younger roommate here who could wipe up the crumbs.”
Bringing on a roommate would also help him cover his housing costs, an issue that will become more astute when he eventually retires
from his teaching job. He was at first matched with a young man from Turkey who ended up leaving the country before he moved in due to needing to care for his ailing mother.
Then, sadly, Machtay’s best friend suddenly died in April, leaving his younger roommate in a precarious housing situation. The landlord gave him an eviction notice, so Machtay suggested he sign up with Home Match so they could be paired together.
After a bit of negotiating over how much rent he would pay, they came to $1,200 a month and an agreement on what duties around the house he
would oversee. (Machtay’s roommate, who is straight, did not want to be interviewed for this ar ticle.)
“Home Match wrote up the understanding. He is responsible for the kitchen, dishes, and gar bage,” said Machtay, add ing that he liked how Home Match handled the background check and other matters that come with finding a room mate.
in several Bay Area counties to remain in their homes by matching them with a roommate who can help cover their housing costs. It primarily works with older homeowners, with those seeking housing via the program typically in their 20s and 30s. Anyone age 18 or older with a room to rent or in need of an affordable living situation can access the program, which screens both homeowners and those seeking to rent if they are compatible with each other through lengthy interviews about their living preferences, from how tidy they are to if they have pets. Before anyone moves in, the two people spend time together sharing a meal to get to know each other. At any point in the screening process, either person can decide it is not the right match.
“The people in the process decide. We make introductions, not placements,” explained Luke R. Barnesmoore, who is queer and director of strategy for Home Match.
Home Match aims to assist the senior homeowners it works with
It has long taken into consideration the unique needs of LGBTQ seniors who seek out the program, asking applicants with a room to rent and those seeking housing about their sexual orientation and gender identity. If living with another LGBTQ person is a priority, they can register that with the program.
Report finds potential for Sacto historic district
by John Ferrannini
Areport identifying a Sacramento LGBTQ neighborhood as a potential historic district was approved by the City Council in California’s capital city December 3. The city becomes the latest in the Golden State to take steps to recognize the historic contributions of the LGBTQ community.
The potential district would include the Lavender Heights neighborhood, where there have long been LGBTQ establishments.
The City Council approved the historic context statement report unanimously and without abstentions.
As the Bay Area Reporter noted earlier in 2024, preservationists had been working on a historic context statement about LGBTQ history in Sacramento.
The work included surveying buildings and sites in the area to determine which are potentially historic and whether there exists a historic district in Lavender Heights, the city’s LGBTQ neighborhood, which is centered in midtown around 20th and K streets.
Sean de Courcy, the preservation director for the city of Sacramento,
had been approached by now-former Sacramento city councilmember Katie Valenzuela, a straight ally whose district included Lavender Heights, with the idea of making the area a historic district. At the meeting, he presented the findings – and the almost
400-page report – to the council.
“The goals of the project included documenting significant LGBTQ sites, events, and stories; engaging, educating and involving the public in the project; and enhancing Sacramento’s identity as an inclusive and forward-thinking city,”
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he said, adding that it was needed to fill the “gaps in the historical record” as to how the Sacramento LGBTQ community got its start.
To do so, de Courcy and others held community meetings to seek public input and worked closely with Preservation Sacramento, the Lavender Library, and the Sacramento LGBT Community Center.
William Berg of Preservation Sacramento said during public comment that he is “very proud of the results.” His organization also provided some matching funds.
The California Office of Historic Preservation provided $40,000 in funding to the city for the project. The city provided a $26,000 match for a total of $66,000.
“It’s not what people associate with historic preservation, which is about architecture,” Berg added. “This is about buildings, but it’s about the events that took place and the people associated with those events, and what events: the struggle of a community for acceptance, for rights, for justice, for survival, and also places of celebration of joy and community.”
Berg asserted that “without this project of historic preservation, a lot of these stories would be lost,” and pointed to the ongoing social ramifications of the movement for LGBTQ equality as evidence of a living history.
“The struggle is not over, but neither is the celebration or the joy,” he said. “Lavender Heights is a wonderful place for this city to stand together.”
is not only honoring the past but also inspiring future generations. This is about more than preservation – it’s about pride and ensuring that LGBTQ+ history is woven into the city’s broader narrative.”
The spokesperson added that the center is a “vital anchor for the community.”
“More than just a building, it is a living testament to the struggles, resilience, and triumphs of those who came before us,” the spokesperson continued. “When people walk through Lavender Heights or step through our doors, they connect with a legacy that celebrates diversity, fosters inclusion, and inspires progress.”
Mauricio Torres, a gay man who is vice president of the Lavender Library’s board of directors, stated to the B.A.R. that the library is “thrilled that the city has enthusiastically adopted the historic context statement.”
“An LGBTQ+ historic district in Sacramento would not only honor the struggles and triumphs of our past but also serve as a beacon of hope for future generations,” Torres continued. “At the Lavender Library, we know how vital it is to preserve and share our community’s stories – especially as we face growing challenges to LGBTQ+ rights, with trans rights under particular threat. Establishing a historic district would honor those who fought for our rights and send a powerful message that California’s capital stands as a welcoming and inclusive place, even in the face of rising hate.”
Applicants must meet the “Resident Selection Criteria” and be income eligible. Households must earn no more than the maximum income levels outlined below at 55% Area Median Income (AMI).
Applicantsmustmeetthe“ResidentSelectionCriteria”andbeincomeeligible.Householdsmustearn nomorethanthemaximumincomelevelsoutlinedbelowat55%AreaMedianIncome(AMI).
Lavender Heights
The Lavender Library and the Sacramento LGBT Community Center are both in the Lavender Heights neighborhood.
The Sacramento LGBTQ+ Experience Project historic context statement found that “by the 1970s, the foundations of a clearly identifiable, vibrant, openly gay neighborhood began to emerge in Sacramento.”
Applicationsmustbereceivedby5PMon12.31.24.ApplyonlinethroughDAHLIA,theSFHousing Portal-DAHLIAathousing.sfgov.org.PleasecontactKRESManagementforbuildinginformationat (415)-520-0855or affordable@theoaksf.com
Applications must be received by 5PM on 12.31.24. Apply online through DAHLIA, the SF Housing Portal -DAHLIA at housing.sfgov.org. Please contact KRES Management for building information at (415)-520-0855 or affordable@theoaksf.com.
A center spokesperson stated, “We’re thrilled that the City of Sacramento has adopted the LGBTQ+ Historic Context Statement.”
Units available through the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development and are subject to monitoring and other restrictions. Visit sf.gov/mohcd for program information.
UnitsavailablethroughtheSanFranciscoMayor’sOfficeofHousingandCommunityDevelopment andaresubjecttomonitoringandotherrestrictions.Visitsf.gov/mohcd forprograminformation.
“This isn’t just about preserving the past; it’s about acknowledging the vibrant and resilient community that has shaped Sacramento into the inclusive city it is today,” the spokesperson stated. “By adopting this statement, Sacramento
“Known as Lavender Heights, the neighborhood was centered around the intersection of 20th and K streets and the surrounding blocks, though its boundaries were not clearly defined and evolved over time with the growth of LGBTQ+-owned and LGBTQ+friendly business establishments in the midtown area,” the historic context statement continued.
Then-Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg spoke about the LGBTQ historic context statement report that the council approved December 3.
Screengrab
Henry “Hank” Machtay cooks in his kitchen as he talked about the Home Match program.
Matthew S. Bajko
Castro gay gift shop gets grant from HRC
compiled by Cynthia Laird
Agay-owned Castro business was one of the recipients of the Human Rights Campaign’s Queer to Stay grants, the national LGBTQ rights organization announced.
The program provides funds to LGBTQ+-serving businesses and business owners, HRC stated in a news release.
Welcome Castro, located at 525 Castro Street, was the only San Francisco recipient out of 30 awardees, according to a list from HRC. Owner Robert Emmons opened the gift shop and welcome center in April 2023 with a $50,000 grant from the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development to the Castro Merchants Association, as the Bay Area Reporter noted at the time.
HRC spokesperson Aneesha Pappy stated in an email to the B.A.R. that each recipient “received a meaningful five-figure donation.” HRC distributed $300,000 for this year’s iteration of the program, Pappy added.
Originally launched in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, Queer to Stay has reached $1 million in total distributed funding over the lifetime of the program, Pappy stated.
In an email, Emmons stated he received $10,000 and was grateful for the funds.
“Welcome Castro is honored to be one of the recipients of the Queer to Stay initiative, especially at this time when the Castro is facing so many challenges, including empty storefronts and the temporary closure
of the Castro Theatre for its renovation,” Emmons stated. “It’s been a difficult few years with the decline of many businesses that have drawn visitors to the neighborhood.”
Emmons added that the grant will allow the store to help others.
“This grant will help us to con
tinue to support the over 70 LG
BTQ+ artists, makers, and owned companies we represent in our shop as well as continue our community partnerships and create new opportunities, such as our latest partnership with Gays of National Parks,” he added.
In addition to Welcome Castro, Emmons also owns SF Mercantile in the city’s Haight neighborhood.
HRC President Kelley Robinson, a Black queer woman, stated that the Queer to Stay program fits with the organization’s mission.
“LGBTQ+ people deserve welcoming, safe spaces that are owned and run by us,” she stated. “LGBTQ+ small businesses not only pro vide needed services and employment opportu nities for the LGBTQ+ community. They also send a strong signal that LGBTQ+ people belong everywhere, in suburbs, big cities, and small towns across America. As extremist politicians continue to try and take away our rights and push us back into the closet, these businesses stand as a shining reminder that when LGBTQ+ businesses thrive, America thrives.”
As the B.A.R noted earlier in 2024, several large corporations have withdrawn from participating in HRC’s corporate equality index – long a gold-standard of gauging a business’s commitment to LGBTQ equality – as they look to downsize or end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The moves come as part of a backlash mostly led by conservative political leaders and corporate titans such as Elon Musk, who frequently disparages such policies in government as “woke” on X. In addition to Welcome Castro, two Oakland businesses received Queer to Stay grants. They are Cypress Midwives and Tender Bois Club, which also has locations in Minneapolis and Brooklyn, according to HRC’s release. Rafeal Newport, the owner of Cypress Midwife, stated she was appreciative of the grant.
“We, as the LGBTQ+ community, are the true experts when it comes to understanding our own needs,” she stated. “Our existence serves as a powerful reminder that being a business owner is not only possible, but achievable.”
Tenderloin Tessie
Christmas dinner
Tenderloin Tessie will have its annual Christmas dinner for those in need Wednesday, December 25, from 1 to 4 p.m. at First Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin Street (at Geary Boulevard) in San Francisco. A news release stated that all are welcome.
In addition to the meal, there will be entertainment; free haircuts by LoveCuts, a pop-up barbershop; a free gift bag; and free clothing from Tenderloin Tessie’s partner, the St. Anthony Foundation, according to the release.
As in past years, Michael Gagne, president of the Tenderloin Tessie board, stated that volunteers are needed for the event. Shifts are available on Christmas Day from 9 a.m. to noon, noon to 4 p.m., and 3 to 6.
Helpers are also needed Tuesday, December 24, from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Friday, December 27, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Both stints are for truck workers to get items from storage and then return them after the dinner, Gagne noted.
Hoping for responsive mayor
As a gay man living in El Cerrito, I am delighted that we have a Black lesbian as our mayor. [“El Cerrito makes history with new mayor, council,” December 19].
I hope that Mayor Carolyn Wysinger will be more responsive to constituents in her new role than in her prior role. During the past year I sent multiple emails and snail mail letters to then councilmember Wysinger requesting a meeting, either in person or virtually, and never received any form of response. I hope that she will be more responsive to constituents going forward.
Robert Emmons of Welcome Castro explained the significance of an aerial map of upper Market Street ahead of the businesses opening in 2023.
John Ferrannini
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Volume 54, Number 52
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Breed has been a strong ally
LGBTQ San Franciscans can count themselves fortunate that for decades the city’s mayors have been allies to the community. Former mayors Joseph Alioto, George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein, Art Agnos, Frank Jordan, Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, Ed Lee, and Mark Farrell have included us, in one form or another, in the political fabric that makes up this city. As times changed and the LGBTQ community made itself more vocal and active, political leaders took notice. The late Feinstein, who took over after the assassination of Moscone (and gay then-supervisor Harvey Milk), led San Francisco out of the darkness. Newsom, now California’s governor, made history when he jump-started the same-sex marriage movement. To us LGBTQ people, San Francisco has always been the shining light, the beacon that welcomes us.
Now, London Breed, the city’s 45th mayor who will depart Room 200 on January 8, leaves her own legacy, and it is a rich one. A protégé of Brown, Breed is a political moderate who nevertheless had bold ideas when it came to services and policies for the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender people.
Breed’s decision to include $6.5 million in the city’s budget in 2022 to end trans homelessness by 2027 will go down as a bold move to effect real change for a community that has long been subject to discrimination. Though the situation is better today – we’ll see if that continues after former President Donald Trump is inaugurated to his second term January 20 – transgender and gendernonconforming people have had trouble getting hired for jobs, which in turn often leads to unstable housing, food insecurity, and access to health care. Those three factors are critical for one’s success and well-being in our society.
“Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming San Franciscans are 18 times more likely to experience homelessness compared to the general population, and we know that the rates are even higher for our minority trans communities,” Breed stated at the time. “With one of the largest TGNC populations in the country, we not only must ensure that all San Franciscans have access to housing and essential resources through continued investments, but we can show the country that we continue to be a leader on supporting and protecting our trans communities.”
More recently, Breed championed the city buying the property at 2280 Market Street for
the future LGBTQ history museum. Working with the mayor’s press office, we were able to break that story in late September, as we’d been reporting on Breed’s commitment to the museum for several years. She budgeted money for that too, $12.5 million back in 2021.
“The Castro is the heart of LGBTQ culture in this city and this country, and it is the perfect place for a museum that will preserve and celebrate LGBTQ history, culture, and arts for generations to come,” said Breed in a statement shared exclusively with the B.A.R.
Then there’s the renovation of Harvey Milk Plaza, long considered the front door to the LGBTQ Castro neighborhood. It was Breed who included $25 million for the project in the $390 million infrastructure bond that voters approved in November. While the Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza do need to raise another $7 million or so before construction can begin, the bond money is crucial to the project’s completion.
residents. It should definitely improve the Castro neighborhood, which is slowly but surely emerging from the slowed economy brought about by the COVID pandemic. Taken together, the museum, the plaza, and the top-to-bottom renovation of the Castro Theatre are three landmarks that will really reinvigorate the Castro when they are completed.
All this is not to say we always agreed with Breed. In fact, we recall one stinging editorial in 2021 that elicited a phone call from the mayor. It was about a straight nominee to the Historic Preservation Commission that, had it been successful, would have resulted in no out people being on the important cultural panel. This was after she had nominated four straight people over a period to the panel, and chose not to reappoint two gay men.
Ultimately, the nominee withdrew and Breed appointed another gay man, whom the Board of Supervisors approved.
Truth be told, Breed and her appointments were kind of a mixed bag. In addition to the historic preservation commission dustup, Breed chose not to appoint an LGBTQ parent when she made her three picks for school board after the successful recall of three members in 2022. All were straight women. Two years later, only one of Breed’s appointees remains on the Board of Education. One was rejected by voters and the other quit earlier this year, resulting in Breed naming a gay man to the post, though he is not a parent. To her credit, Breed did appoint many LGBTQ people to boards and commissions over her tenure, and we’re not downplaying that in any way.
Overall, Breed’s time as mayor was a net positive for LGBTQs. While San Francisco has its share of challenges, Breed’s efforts to mitigate them sometimes came up against a Board of Supervisors that wasn’t supportive, or residents who were in sharp disagreement. That happens.
In a recent exit interview, Breed told us that the museum project is the accomplishment she’s most proud of in terms of her legacy with the LGBTQ community. Once the GLBT Historical Society gets it up and running, we expect the museum to be a draw not only for tourists, but for local community
Social alchemy
by Rikki West
While a student in the 1960s at UC Berkeley, I had denied my homoeroticism. But in 1978, anti-queer sentiment drove a California initiative to prevent gay people from teaching in public schools. The time had come to admit that I was as gay as springtime.
I had not recognized it earlier, despite the signs. With short-cropped hair and a wardrobe of jeans and work shirts, I liked to hang out at Berkeley’s Brick Hut lesbian collective. Way back in eighth grade, I was thrilled with disturbing rushes of warmth around girls, especially Kimmy Gibson. My mind would go blank and my cheeks would flame up whenever I tried to talk to her. Yet I knew this was a secret thing I could never speak of. To appear normal, I had straight sex well into my 20s, hoping the gay feeling would just go away.
To fight California’s anti-gay proposal, lesbian singer and songwriter Holly Near asked the hidden women’s community to “come out of the closet.” We needed voters to recognize that they already loved a gay person and trusted us around their kids. We were teachers, friends, grocery clerks, and family members. I gathered my courage and slowly talked to my people. Their responses were liberating.
“You know, I have lots of gay friends,” one colleague told me.
Another said, “Big secret. I already knew.”
Politics push us. A decade later, California politics drove me to join a Berkeley crowd of wild and wonderful women working to stop anti-gay initiatives. I felt at home. Once I came out, I quickly moved from “frozen with shame” to sharing with people close to me.
For years I still felt depraved, as though gayness were something to be ashamed of. With all my internalized homophobia, I am lucky I lived in the Bay Area, where the blend of progressivism, counterculture, and individual freedom made my coming out smoother than many others.’ But for all gays in this country, much has changed over the past five decades – and much has not.
Gays in hiding. In 1967, visiting Chicago with my dad, he pointed out queens on Rush Street and dykes in Old Town. In those days, many homosexuals lived in secret urban communities. I did not yet know that even more of us hid in plain sight, pretending to be normal.
Queer without fear. By the 1980s, gay groups and clubs gave us opportunities to hang out in supportive spaces. Enough people had come out publicly over the previous 15 years that society began to accept gayness as something within the limits of normality, edging on acceptable.
Then the AIDS epidemic hit us, and I forgot all about social stigma. Caring for our brothers became our lives’ focus; who cared what straight people thought?
Religion condemns us. But some straight people cared a great deal about us. Catholics and Christians continued to condemn us and forbid us membership in their communities or rituals. Anti-gay legislation appeared across the states. Eventually, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1993. U.S. marriage existed for straight people, period. The Pride movement. All was not lost. Soon we had celebrity role models on primetime TV and in major league sports. Dan Savage started talking straight about queer sex. In the 1990s, so many public faces came out, even I felt normal. Every family had a gay member, and in the early 2000s the Supreme Court decriminalized our lifestyle (Law-
As Breed packs up her office and returns to the private sector, she will know that the various projects and initiatives she started have made life better for the city’s LGBTQ residents.
Thank you, Mayor Breed. t
rence v. Texas, 2003). Pride celebrations, née Gay Days, appeared across the country, as we began to celebrate ourselves. Escaping from shame through uncertainty, acceptance, and defiance, I moved toward righteousness and pride. Gay marriage? To my astonishment, in 2004 gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts. State after state followed. In 2015, the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision ended bans against our unions. Gay marriage was protected in all states. (The court had legalized same-sex marriage in California two years before Obergefell.)
Backlash. The next year, 2016, the MAGA movement gained power and momentum. Hate crimes began to rise. Three friends of mine were excommunicated from their families of origin for being gay. Yet when Jill and I got married, everyone we knew, including the staff at our honeymoon hotel in Carmel, celebrated us without any apparent prejudice.
As queer life expanded to include a richer variety of gender and sexual expression, the backlash grew. In 2025, MAGA will take over both national legislative houses and the leadership of the executive and judicial branches. We gays are certainly at risk of losing rights of citizenship in some of the states. And we rise again. When that happens, we will rise again. Those of us who are “different” – by color, race, class, physical state, sexual preference, gender identity, or whatever – no longer live in the shadows. We are the ordinary people of the world. And we are out.
Even when we are outlawed, condemned, degraded, or publicly shamed, we won’t stop claiming our full untarnished humanity and the right to live by our own inner lights. All over the world people will look to the Bay Area as a bastion of liberty, lighting the way towards acceptance and pride. We will not go back. t
Rikki West, a lesbian who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, is the author of two memoirs, “Rootlines” and the upcoming “The Empty Bowl.” Connect with her at rikkiwest. com or rikki@rikkiwest.com.
Author Rikki West
Courtesy Rikki West
San Francisco Mayor London Breed Jane Philomen Cleland
t Politics >> 2024 op-art hops into view
by Matthew S. Bajko
To ring out 2024, the Political Notebook asked fashion designer Tria Connell to create a plush bunny op-art based on the ones she’s stitched up to fundraise for Mill Valley-based rabbit rescue SaveABunny, as featured in the Bay Area Reporter’s Pride issue in June. The lesbian longtime San Francisco resident, who’s taught beginning sewing to Academy of Art University students, hopped into overdrive, sewing up a gigantic Oryctolagus cuniculus hugging a nongender-specific human.
Titled “Shelter in each other,” the piece stands 46 and half inches tall and 52 inches across at its widest point. Her first art piece specifically designed to make a statement, Connell incorporated fabrics featuring rabbits and different LGBTQ Pride flag colors.
Two signs reading, “You will be hurt” and “You are not wanted” bookend the
piece, representing society’s animus toward LGBTQ people and mistreatment of rabbits. Just as LGBTQ people have fewer rights than their heterosexual counterparts, rabbits have less protections than dogs or cats even though they are the third most populous house pet, noted Connell.
“The outside world wants to hurt and kill them, but they are rescuing each other, basically, because they have so many things in common,” explained Connell of the embracing figures, with the person telling the hare, “You are safe and loved.”
Connell, who adopts and fosters rabbits, and also cares for an elderly Indian ringneck parrot named Bubu, conveyed that message to LGBTQ individuals via the Pridethemed swatches, such as the Progress Pride flag design forming a heart sewn
onto the rabbit’s chest.
Connell will raffle off her op-art and two smaller plush bunnies she created during a live New Year’s Eve drawing via her social media accounts at 2 p.m. December 31. To enter, people need to Venmo $5 to @tria-connell, with the proceeds split between SaveABunny
winner must pay for shipping costs.”
She can be found on Instagram, Tik Tok and Facebook all via the handle @ bea.dazzler.
Art: Tria Connel; composite image: Ernesto Sopprani
“We have had folks come to the program seeking housing and made statements that it was clear to us they harbored hateful views toward folks of protected classes and those folk have not been matched in our program,” said Barnesmoore.
And should issues arise once a match is made, the nonprofit provides support to help the people work out their disagreements and remain living together.
“It is fundamental to make sure these matches move smoothly once folks move in together,” said Barnesmoore.
In San Francisco, 75% of the people providing homes via Home Match are the primary tenant of the apartment they are renting and have a second bedroom they can lease out. Many have been in their units for decades, so it makes more financial sense for them to find a roommate rather than move out.
“Their cost is well below market rate. It is cheaper for them to stay in that apartment than move to a studio,” said Barnesmoore. “But they are aging, living on a fixed income and struggling with costs, so they need to
first Black female mayor, told the Bay Area Reporter during an editorial board meeting ahead of her leaving office on January 8.
She also expressed appreciation for the LGBTQ community, telling the B.A.R. that she felt supported by it during her time in Room 200 at City Hall over the past five and half years.
“I feel really proud and really honored that so much of what I did with the community has been respected and acknowledged and appreciated,” said Breed, 50, who grew up in the city’s predominantly African American Western Addition neighborhood. “I am really
sublet the extra bedroom they have to be able to afford that housing.”
Housing insecurity
Various surveys over the years have found housing insecurity to be top of mind for many older LGBTQ adults who fear being priced out of San Francisco and the Bay Area. The issue was highlighted by the recently released results of a statewide survey based on the answers of 4,037 older LGBTQIA+ adults living in California.
grateful for that, and I hope it only gets better and does not stop with what we have done but only gets better.”
It is a stark bookend to her political career, to date, that began with her ousting from office the first bisexual person to serve on the Board of Supervisors, appointed District 5 supervisor Christina Olague, in the November election of 2012. At the time, Breed was executive director of the African American Art and Culture Complex bordering the Fillmore and Western Addition neighborhoods. With Breed seen as the more moderate of the two, it raised questions among more progressive quarters of the LGBTQ community about what kind of elected leader she would be at City Hall. Yet, more than a decade later, Breed is
It noted that, “Social connections are important for the health and wellbeing of an individual over their lifespan. Isolation and loneliness are risk factors for a variety of negative health outcomes in aging, including worsened cognitive decline and mortality. LGBTQIA+ older adults may have challenges as they age in maintaining robust social networks due to a lack of acceptance from their family or community, and may also lean on support from within LGBTQIA+ communities.”
According to the report on its findings, titled “Survey of LGBTQIA+ Older Adults in California: From Challenges to Resilience,” about one in eight of the respondents reported worry about housing stability with a current place to live. More than one in five respondents reported worries about having enough money for nutritious meals, per the report.
Whereas their straight counterparts may be able to rely on children or their biological families for support, many older LGBTQ adults don’t have children, may be estranged from their biological families, and are seeing their chosen family members begin to pass away in their old age.
leaving office having forged close ties with a number of former leaders of the more progressive Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club.
Record of accomplishment
One of her closest allies in recent years on the board has been gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the LGBTQ Castro District at City Hall. They worked together on securing a new home for the GLBT Historical Society and the purchase of a property for what will be the city’s third affordable housing development aimed at its LGBTQ older adult population.
“I think she has an extraordinary record of accomplishment for the queer community,” said Mandelman, a former Milk club
“Solo aging, I think, is a fundamental reason why a lot of older people end up relying on our program,” said Barnesmoore. “We know for the older sections of the LGBTQ community, there are lots of folks who didn’t end up having children.”
Martha Knutzen, a lesbian just reappointed to San Francisco’s Disability and Aging Services Commission, noted addressing the housing needs for LGBTQ seniors has been a critical concern for decades. It came up during hearings in the mid-1990s the city’s Human Rights Commission held.
“It is definitely pronounced,” said Knutzen, adding that seniors living alone also face isolation and the health issues it can exacerbate. “Isolation, people should understand, is an actual health issue. It is one way one’s health is affected, and of course, it leads to early and premature death.”
While there is much governmental support and focus on keeping seniors safely housed in their homes, just as important is addressing their quality of life and ensuring they are not left home alone, said Knutzen.
“People might be living in their homes, but being able to connect to other people is absolutely essential
president. “I think she is not only comfortable with queer people and has genuine relationships with lots of folks in the queer community, she took these issues on as a priority for her administration.”
Martha Knutzen, a lesbian just reappointed to the city’s Disability and Aging Services Commission, told the B.A.R. that since she led the Milk club in the mid-1990s, there have always been mayoral administrations supportive of the LGBTQ community. But Breed raised the bar, she said.
“We have never had a more supportive mayor, and that is amongst extremely supportive mayors,” said Knutzen, who also serves on the Dignity Fund Oversight and Advisory Committee for the disbursement of local funds to support
to their lives,” she said.
Even if it is simply sharing a meal with a roommate or coffee in the morning, that personal connection “becomes really important for people,” noted Barnesmoore.
“It doesn’t need to be in-depth companionship where you see someone all the time,” he said. “Just seeing someone in the morning or when you come home and they ask, ‘How was your day?’ Little interactions like that are so fundamental to the mental health of all of us.”
Since his roommate moved in with him in July, Machtay told the B.A.R. that the situation has worked out well. While he had previously met him via his friend, Machtay was not well acquainted with him before having him move into his home.
With their work schedules differing, the two have the house to themselves at different times on weekdays. They see each other on weekends.
“I am very happy with it,” Machtay said.
Home Match works in Marin, San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. To learn more about it, visit its website at https://frontporch.net/live/homematch/#request-info t
social services for older people, adults with disabilities, veterans, and caregivers. “I think that since the mid-1990s, we became part of the structure of government due to electing gay and lesbian, LGBT people into office. Because of that, we were always members and a much-needed part of the coalition a mayor needed to win an election. Mayor [Willie] Brown and everyone after that have been extremely supportive of the LGBT community.”
While those various mayors “have been great,” said Knutzen, to her mind “Breed pushed that bar even higher. I have been very gratified for what she did for us.” See page 11 >>
Henry “Hank” Machtay stands in his backyard.
Matthew S. Bajko
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A March 20, 1986, Los Angeles Times article on the case also reported that a handwriting expert in Los Angeles suggested that Wright forged the note, but that local police discounted that theory and said Wright was never a suspect.
Wright said that he initially gave police a false statement in December 1985 when he described Lee as “basically” happy, the B.A.R. reported.
Asked about the B.A.R.’s reporting, which Sterling said he had not seen before the phone interview, Sterling said that the roommate’s changed testimony could’ve been “I feel like someone got to him,” Sterling said.
Sterling contends that the female witness who changed her statement under hypnosis had come forward to say she went out of her house to investigate the source of the screams to see several men standing around someone writing on the hood of a car.
When she was noticed, one person
in the group shouted and rushed at her, leading her to run back into her house and lock herself in before she heard more screams, running, and a car driving away, Sterling said. (The B.A.R. reported that one woman “heard screams and people running on the night of Lee’s death.)
Sterling also contends that there was a Ku Klux Klan-related stabbing of two Black people at a Concord bar the same night, which is confirmed by the FBI file on the Lee case .
He theorizes Lee’s death might be Klan-related, too.
Sterling maintains the inquiry that found Lee had died by suicide was a “sham investigation.” Asked why, he pointed to the woman whose statement changed under hypnosis, who said she saw a uniformed officer among those in the group around the car.
“It’s all speculation, of course, but it’s educated speculation based on looking at what happened during the time,” Sterling said. “Timothy had been awarded a $2,000 grant to study in a noted fashion
Bond measure passes
In the November election, city voters passed the bond measure Proposition B that included $25 million to pay for the bulk of the renovation work at Harvey Milk Plaza. But the current total cost of the project is estimated at $35 million, and the city’s public works department that will oversee its construction has told the friends group it needs to be assured all funding is in place for the project before shovels can hit the ground.
“They will not enter into the construction contracts until they have full funding, so they won’t break ground until full funding is in place or on its way,” said Springfield. “The friends’ amount of private dollars that need to be raised to cover construction costs related to memorial elements is around $7.8 million. We are working on that now.”
To date, the friends group has raised $125,000 toward that amount. In the new year it will be ramping up its capital campaign to secure commitments from foundations and other donors able to give a substantial amount toward the project.
Once it reaches about 75% of the amount it needs to raise, the friends group plans to then launch a small donor campaign to help it reach the final amount.
“The good news is the $25 million in Prop B really has changed the understanding of and momentum behind the project,” said Springfield. “I think people are really excited about getting it across the finish line.”
Springfield met with public works staff and Mandelman, who represents the Castro at City Hall, on December 18 to discuss next steps
To volunteer, contact Gagne at (415) 584-3252 (landline, no text), or email tenderlointessie@gmail. com.
Blood center seeks donations
Travel, seasonal illness, and winter weather have led to a decrease in the number of people donating blood. Vitalant is seeing a 20% drop in appointments when compared to the previous three months and is urging eligible donors to give in the days and weeks ahead, the agency stated in a news release.
Blood donations are vital to support patients undergoing surgeries, cancer treatments, and other medical procedures that do not stop during the holidays, according to Vitalant.
As the B.A.R. reported a year ago, new rules that went into effect in 2023
house in Milan. He was on the verge of realizing his dream of becoming a fashion designer. His family and friends had no reason to believe he was suicidal.”
The B.A.R. reported at the time that, “No one, according to [Concord Police Captain Bob] Evans, has been able to find anything about the supposed scholarship his sister had told police he had won to study fashion in Milan. All that was discovered, according to Evans, was that Lee had looked into paying for his own trip to Milan a year before his death.”
The B.A.R. also reported that Lee’s grades at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising had slipped, according to Evans, and were one A, two Cs, and two Fs. The Times had reported he had quit the school.
Sterling has 740 signatures on an online petition (https://www.change. org/p/reopen-the-case-of-timothy-leehold-the-concord-pd-accountable) asking the case be reopened.
“We must hold the Concord Police Department accountable for their mis-
for the project following the passage last month of the $390 million bond measure for infrastructure, public spaces, and street safety projects across the city. Public works spokesperson Rachel Gordon told the B.A.R. the timetable for the construction of the plaza is dependent on finding the funds.
“We are going to be actively looking at other funding opportunities,” said Gordon, such as grants for transit-oriented projects and other resources. “We are very heartened by the $25 million from the bond, but we want to make sure we have the money in hand before we start construction.”
In a phone interview last week Mandelman said it remains to be seen what more in public funding can be secured for the plaza project. State and city leaders are bracing for projected budget deficits in the years to come, and any local fiscal support for the plaza project will need to be approved by Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie.
“It is going to be a historically bad budget year,” noted Mandelman. “I am going to do everything I can to find the resources for this project, but we are going to need the mayor’s help.”
SWA, the global landscape architecture, planning, and urban design firm first hired by the friends group to work on the new design for Milk plaza, is projecting a construction start date in late 2026. It would mean a completion date in 2028, two years after Mandelman will have been term-limited out of his Board of Supervisors seat. It is unclear, though, if that timeline can be met, Mandelman told the B.A.R.
“That would be amazing. I think we should try to make that happen. At the moment, I have no certainty we will be able to,” he said.
SWA Associate Principal Daniel
allow more gay and bi men to be eligible to donate blood.
Under the changes approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, gay and bi men are no longer automatically selected for a separate screening process to see if they can donate blood. Now everyone who goes in to give blood is asked the same set of questions about their recent sexual activity, as the B.A.R. reported.
The questioning no longer asks if people are monogamous or in a monogamous relationship. Instead, they are asked about their recent sexual activity.
All who donate with Vitalant now through January 7 will receive a 1990s themed T-shirt plus a $15 gift card through Vitalant’s Donor Rewards program, the release stated.
January is also National Blood Donor Month, a time to raise awareness about the critical need for blood donations during the winter.
Upcoming blood drives include
handling and cover-up of this case and bring justice once and for all to Timothy Charles Lee and our community,” the petition states.
Sterling said, “I need the [Contra Costa County] DA, [California Attorney General] Rob Bonta, anybody that could look into this legally and decide ‘could it be reopened?’” but that “we haven’t made a formal request to speak with them but that’s coming up in the near future.”
Reached for comment, a Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office spokesperson stated, “The FBI is the investigating agency, so you’ll have to check with them to see if there’s new information in the case.” The B.A.R. reached out to the FBI after that, but did not hear back after multiple requests for comment.
A Bonta spokesperson said that while “obviously we knew about the initial situation … we don’t know people are asking about old cases unless they speak to the public inquiry unit.”
“Anything we receive we take seri-
Cunningham, a gay man who until a few years ago had lived in the Castro, told the B.A.R. “it seems feasible certainly” at this point for a new plaza to debut in 2029. He is optimistic of seeing the friends group be able to leverage Prop B’s passage to raise the rest of the needed funding to pay for the memorial aspects of the design for the new plaza.
“At this point there should be confidence with private donors that this project is actually moving forward. We hope others see the opportunity to contribute to this now it is a real project,” said Cunningham, who now resides in Oakland.
With his firm now contracted with the city to complete the drawings for the project, Cunningham expects to have them done at 90% in the next few months. Public works is delivering the plaza redesign on behalf of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
“The typical lifetime for a project like this is 10 years. We are tracking pretty true to that,” said Cunningham, as he has been working on the design for four years.
The plaza
Milk plaza is considered the front door to the city’s LGBTQ neighborhood. Its main entrance fronts Castro Street, with the plaza extending along Market Street to Collingwood Street.
At the moment much of the back half of the space is behind construction fencing due to a city-funded project to add a second elevator for the subway station at a cost upward of $30 million. It is on track to be completed in 2026, said Gordon.
When the elevator was first proposed back in 2016, neighborhood leaders had brought up also redesigning the plaza. It kicked off a lengthy process to come up with a
Thursday, December 26, at Corte Madera Town Center in Marin County from 2 to 6 p.m.; Sunday, December 2, at Gilman Brewing in Berkeley from noon to 4:15 p.m.; Thursday, January 2, at Palomares Hills Rec Center in Castro Valley from 2:30 to 6 p.m.; and Tuesday, January 7, at the Sunnyvale Moose Lodge, from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Donors can also give at one of the six donation centers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most Vitalant donation centers will be open Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, according to the release.
For more information, go to vitalant.org and use the Vitalant blood donor app or call (877) 258-4825
Creating Change headed to Las Vegas Days after the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., thousands of LGBTQ and progressive movement leaders and advocates will gather to plan the path
ously and we look at it and we’ll be able to reach out to them directly and state whether we will be reopening the case,” the spokesperson added.
The FBI file includes a letter to the bureau from the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California dated January 17, 1986, about Lee, contending that “we have been concerned that his death was not a suicide but murder motivated by race and/or sexual preference” and that the “Concord Police Department’s investigation was not adequate” and, in fact, was “disturbing.”
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Northern California stated December 12, “We looked into this but no one who is here now was here when this happened. We don’t have anything to add to your current reporting.”
Sterling said that “if this was a murder, and a group was forcing him to write a suicide note, if they were around Timmy’s age, they’d be 60-65 now.”
“They could still be alive,” he continued. “If we wait, people will be dying and get away without accountability.” t
new design for the area amid opposition from those who fought to preserve the plaza’s current configuration, as the B.A.R. has extensively reported on over the years.
The project aims to reconfigure the public parklet to make it more accessible and properly commemorate Milk, who was the city’s first openly gay elected official when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Eleven months into his first term Milk was assassinated, along with then-mayor George Moscone, by disgruntled exsupervisor Dan White.
While in office, Milk was a big supporter of public transit. The plaza was named in his honor in 1985.
“It has been really amazing to be a part of this and to watch how Harvey’s message is still influencing and bringing people together after all these years,” said Cunningham. “From an urban design perspective, this is huge for the Castro and rejuvenating the neighborhood.”
As part of the approved plans for the plaza, a new spiral podium feature is to be built at the entrance by the intersection of Castro and Market streets in a nod to its history as a gathering place for protests and rallies. A smaller stairway leading to the underground subway station would be constructed, replacing the wider one there today that undulates downward across most of the space.
A rose-colored, transparent overhang above the stairs and escalator that go to the Muni station would be used to protect them from rainwater. The color scheme is derived from that of the red-and-white bullhorn the plaza’s namesake famously used to rally residents of the neighborhood and the city’s larger LGBTQ community during protests held at the site and during marches that kicked off from it.
forward in a time of challenge and opportunity for the community. It’s the National LGBTQ Task Force’s annual Creating Change conference that will be held in Las Vegas January 22-26. According to a news release, this year’s conference is on track to be the largest ever, with close to 4,000 attendees; powerful plenaries; and numerous opportunities to gather, learn and share in community, including workshops, daylong institutes, and special events. All Creating Change programming and events will take place at the Rio Hotel and Resorts in its convention space.
The theme for the 2025 conference is “Rooted in Resistance, Power & Love,” and is a call to action emphasizing the importance of confronting injustice, harnessing the community’s collective power, and acting with love.
At CC25 in Las Vegas, organizers invite participants to explore how resistance nurtures the LGBTQ+ movement, strengthens its activism, and shapes its future.
A new enclosed space below street level will be used for a museum-like installation telling Milk’s story and that of the city’s LGBTQ community. The friends group also wants to incorporate into it sections of the concourse for the subway station.
“I think this project has so many opportunities still to evolve in terms of what story we are telling in the displays and gallery space,” said Cunningham. “What the content of those elements is precisely remains to be defined. The next level of development is working with the community on what is the story we are telling and how we are telling it. I am excited to move into that next phase of content development.”
Having lived near the intersection of 16th and Market streets where the new permanent home for an LGBTQ history museum will be, just two blocks away from Milk plaza, Cunningham predicted the combination of the two projects will be transformational, not only for the Castro, but the city as a whole. The new museum should be open as of 2027.
“I think these two projects are going to be a huge draw to our neighborhood for people locally, nationally, and internationally,” said Cunningham, who still patronizes his longtime barber in the Castro. “This will boost the strength of the Castro for many years to come, not only as a gay destination and source for gay tourism but also allies and beyond.”
Anyone interested in donating to the Milk plaza project should email Springfield at Brian@harverymilkplaza.org. There is also information on ways to give to the friends group on its website at harveymilkplaza. org. t
Featured guests include Tre’vell Anderson; Imara Jones; Mandisa Moore; David Johns, Ph.D.; Frenchie Davis; and Ada Vox. Kierra Johnson, president of the task force, and Anderson will discuss the state of the movement. Plenaries will be livestreamed on the task force’s YouTube channel. Additionally, in-person legal and advocacy support will be provided by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Transgender Law Center, and Oasis, which provides help to immigrants, the release noted.
Conference registration, which is $650, closes Monday, December 30 – there will be no on-site registration this year, the release stated. Discounted hotel rates are available, according to the task force’s website. There is also financial assistance available to lower registration costs.
For more information and to register, go to thetaskforce.org/creatingchange. t
<< Harvey Milk Plaza
2
“Although the origin of the neighborhood’s name is unknown, the color lavender was a reference to the popular association of the gay community with the color purple. Another name, ‘Fruit Flats,’ was reportedly considered for the neighborhood and showed the community’s sense of humor but did not catch on,” the statement read.
A survey of current and former buildings in the area – currently, in addition to the aforementioned community center and library there are five LGBTQ bars in the vicinity – found it qualified as a potentially historic district.
“The growing concentration of LGBTQ+ residents and bars created a sense of safety, acceptance, and awareness that contributed to the establishment of other businesses and institutions that transformed Lavender Heights into a full-fledged community,” the historic context statement stated.
Michael Nguyen, a gay progressive member of the oversight body for the local Democratic Party, told the B.A.R. the biggest disappointment he had with Breed’s time as mayor was her lack of support for social housing as called for by the Board of Supervisors following voters’ approval of a luxury real estate tax in 2020 for affordable housing. Otherwise, he commended her leadership during the COVID health crisis and moves she made to support small businesses and reviving the city’s commercial corridors post the global pandemic.
“I think she leaves a legacy of a lot of huge changes in San Francisco,” said Nguyen, also known as drag queen Juicy Liu who advised Breed on her selection of Oasis nightclub owner D’Arcy Drollinger as the inaugural drag laureate.
While there were a few bumps with her selections for prominent city commissions, at times overlooking out applicants for the roles, Breed made a number of high-profile LGBTQ appointments, such as naming the world’s first drag laureate. She also tapped Matt Dorsey, a gay man living with HIV and in recovery, two years ago for the vacant District 6 supervisor seat.
“I think history is going to reflect very kindly on Mayor Breed,” said Dorsey, who went on to win a full term months later on the fall 2022 ballot.
He recalled a comment that gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) had made at a fundraiser held earlier this year in the Castro LGBTQ district for Breed’s reelection campaign in the fall mayoral race, which she ultimately lost to Mayorelect Daniel Lurie. Wiener, a former supervisor, had said that Breed “just gets us as a community.”
“I think that is true,” said Dorsey, who stepped in as acting mayor on December 21 through December 26.
While the City Council adopted the report, it would have to take separate actions to actually designate Lavender Heights as a historic district.
The historic context statement concludes with a list of dozens of potential historic resources in Sacramento, Carmichael, and West Sacramento (in neighboring Yolo County, and temporary home of the Athletics baseball team).
George Raya, a longtime Sacramento gay activist, also spoke before the City Council, highlighting important historic stories.
“It was back in 1965 [gay attorneys] David Clayton and Rick Stokes started Americans for Responsible Citizenship,” Raya recalled. “Nationally, there were protests happening at the White House, picketing for LGBT rights, picketing Independence Hall, but in Sacramento they were picketing the [California] State Fair because they had put in to have a booth at the fair to publicize the work they were doing and when they found out it was an LG-
BTQ group, they voided the contract, so David and Rick and some others picketed the State Fair and handed out the brochures they would have handed out and got more publicity.”
Raya also recalled when, in 1970 as a student at Sacramento State University, “we sued the college because we wanted a campus LGBTQ student organization, and at the time the acting college president wanted to be the permanent president and Ronald Reagan was the governor living in the Fab Forties [neighborhood] and [Sacramento State acting president] Otto [Butz] felt he would not be appointed president if he allowed this.” Raya was successful in the suit .
“We get LGBT tourists coming to Sacramento,” Raya said, asking the council to vote to approve the report.
In her remarks, Valenzuela recalled that “this was a real partnership with staff.”
“This started as a simple question of whether Lavender Heights qualified as a historic district and with Sean [de
“She has been there, on funding for HIV-related priorities, which are obviously close to my heart, the GLBT museum and Harvey Milk Plaza projects, which I think is something that’s important for LGBTQ-plus history and I think it is something people know San Francisco for.”
Having just appeared with Breed in his district to announce a new facility for the Bay FC women’s soccer team on Treasure Island, Dorsey said, “I think there is a lot of legacies that she is going to leave that are very positive for the city.”
Wiener told the B.A.R. that Breed, whom he ended up dual endorsing along with gay former legislator and supervisor Mark Leno in the 2018 special mayoral election she won, has always been a “staunch supporter of LGBTQ people and she gets it; she understands our issues. We don’t have to explain anything to her because she understands and is very connected to the community.”
Gay District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio called Breed “a champion of
ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-24-559353 In the matter of the
DILLON, for
LGBTQ issues and our community.”
He also told the B.A.R. that, “History will be kind to her for all the good work she did as mayor leading San Francisco through tumultuous times. Mayor Breed planted many seeds that will be realized as our city comes roaring back.”
Transgender initiative milestones
Breed told the B.A.R. that she hopes to see the Lurie administration maintain the commitment she made in 2022 to end transgender homelessness by 2027. According to a recent update (https://www.sf.gov/ information/building-future-whereeveryone-thrives-ending-homelessness-trans-community-san) from the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, it provided $800,000 to transition earlier this year the Taimon Booton Navigation Center under the management of the San Francisco Community Health Center, ensuring it “can continue to provide safe and affirming shelter to
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE 2024-0405014
Courcy] saying, ‘We have an idea,’” she said. “I got to go to one of the listening sessions and it was just awesome to see the community gathered and sharing and how open you all were to their feedback and to Preservation Sacramento, and all the community members who participated in this – it wasn’t possible without you all.”
Valenzuela joked the tome was “light reading” and “weekend reading.”
She also said that it’s another example of Sacramento showing it’s a safe place for LGBTQ people even as the country takes a rightward turn.
“Sacramento has taken great strides to affirm our allyship and our leadership,” she said. “We are going to stay with you through what comes.”
Then-Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg agreed that Sacramento isn’t going back. (Steinberg’s term as Sacramento’s mayor ended December 10; at that day’s City Council meeting, Democratic former assemblymember Kevin McCarty was sworn in as the city’s 57th mayor.)
TGNCI+ individuals.”
The city is also working to open in 2025 a permanent supportive housing site for TGNCI+ youth. Along with housing, the residents will have access to a wide array of services, from case management and education to employment assistance and health care.
“Even though we made these investments and we made some significant changes, the fact is that again our trans community, in particular, will be under fierce attack, especially children,” said Breed, referring to the expected assault on trans rights under the incoming Trump administration.
“It is going to take a lot of courage and a lot more investments to defend that, especially in a place like San Francisco where we will be targeted.”
Looking back at the various wins for the LGBTQ community during her mayoralty, Breed said the one she is most personally proudest of is securing a permanent home for what will be the country’s first freestanding LGBTQ history museum. The GLBT Historical Society is expected to relocate its exhibits now housed in a small storefront on 18th Street into the second floor of the Market & Noe Center by 2027.
“It absolutely was overdue,” said Breed, and “necessary.”
In a move that even surprised officials with the nonprofit preservation group, Breed allocated $12 million in the city’s budget in 2021 to acquire a property for a larger museum and archival center. As the B.A.R. was first to report in September, it led to the city’s acquisition of the shopping center at 2280 Market Street at Noe Street.
Finalized last month, it will now be up to the Lurie administration to hammer out a lease with the historical society and another arts group that will help manage the property until the LGBTQ archival nonprofit can take possession of the 14,640 square foot parcel.
“San Francisco is an iconic city.
“The law of the land and the Constitution is that marriage is for everyone,” he said. “Marriage equality shows anyone who doubts we can change the arc of history together [that] it can change, but it can only change and remain changed if we remember who brought us here and the people who made that happen. … We will not go back in this community and this country. I don’t care what crappy ads they run across this country – this is important.”
Steinberg was referring to a TV commercial aired during the presidential campaign with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” (referring to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee, now presidentelect Donald Trump), which aired over 30,000 times and in every swing state in the closing stretch of the campaign. A Future Forward PAC analysis found it among the most effective of the campaign, swinging viewers 2.7% toward Trump after viewing it. t
And it always bothered me that, you know, the museum, the historical society in particular, they work really hard to maintain the history and to really elevate the conversation,” said Breed. “And when people come to San Francisco, they come to the Castro and they need to understand the history differently.”
Having overseen a cultural facility to tell the stories of the city’s African American community, Breed said she felt it was important for the LGBTQ community to have its own such home to tell its stories. It is why she sought to include the planned renovation of Harvey Milk Plaza in the bond measure on the November ballot, as it also ties in to telling the story of the city’s place in LGBTQ history. “As much as I love going to restaurants and bars, it’s not just about going to restaurants and bars. It is about the movement and what it has meant to open doors and to create opportunities and why San Francisco is that place,” said Breed. “It always bothered me that the stories have been told, some of the books have been written, but you don’t get the experience and understand it the way you should be able to understand it when you come to San Francisco unless someone did maybe an exhibit or something like that.”
Breed added that also of importance to her, “and this is another reason going back to the Harvey Milk Plaza and the need to finish that project because that will too tell the story, but it was so important to me that there was a place to tell the story so when you do come to the Castro and to San Francisco this museum will be a testament for why San Francisco is that place and why it is so important to honor that history, to talk about that history and to showcase that history like never before.”
With the city having considered a number of properties over the years for the new LGBTQ museum, “it has been a struggle,” Breed acknowledged. “I am so happy I got it done. I look forward to the day that it opens.”. t
of
and it
from
DILLON is requesting that the
CHRISTIAN DILLON be changed to JULIA DILLON SHOLTZ. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 16th of JANUARY 2025 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted. DEC 05, 12, 19, 26, 2024
ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-24-559352
In the matter of the application of CRAIG HALL, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner CRAIG HALL is requesting that the name CRAIG HALL be changed to ANSAR EL MUHAMMAD. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 16th of JANUARY 2025 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted. DEC 05, 12, 19, 26, 2024
Mayor London Breed signed legislation in September that landmarked the giant rainbow flag at Harvey Milk Plaza.
Rick Gerharter
by Gregg Shapiro
Sometimes, I can’t believe my good fortune. When I look at the list of musicians I’ve interviewed over the years, it makes me love my job even more than I already do. Over the course of those years, I’ve even had the honor of interviewing some of these performers more than once.
For example, I first interviewed Lea DeLaria in 2001, and then again in 2005. Nineteen years later, after so much has happened in Lea’s career, including her portrayal of “Big Boo” in the acclaimed Netflix series “Orange is The New Black,” I couldn’t wait to speak with her again. DeLaria will share her music and insights in “Out Rage” Jan. 18, 6pm & 8:30pm, at the Chan National Queer Arts Center, 170 Valencia St.
Gregg Shapiro: Lea, your cover of Neil Young’s “Philadelphia,” from your “Double Standards” album, still brings me to tears. Why did you choose to cover that song?
Lea DeLaria: The concept of the record
“Double Standards” was to take college rock/ alternative rock tunes that were standards and do them like jazz standards. Being a child of the seventies, eighties, and nineties, I obviously love that genre of music. There were so many songs on the list! We started out with a list of like 75 songs.
We whittled that down to 20, and then went, “Wait a minute, what about these songs?” It was kind of crazy. When we got to the final list, we looked at it, and said, “Who’s
Lea DeLaria
missing?” Bowie was missing, and so was Neil Young. We also realized we didn’t have a soulful ballad. The producer and I both said, “We should do Neil Young’s “Philadelphia.”
Because everybody always goes to The Boss’s “Philadelphia,” but I think this “Philadelphia” is way better.
I completely agree! I’m glad you mentioned Bowie, because your “House of David” album was released before the passing of David Bowie. Do you know if he was aware of it or heard it?
Oh my God, yes! He’s the reason the album got made. He died six months after it was released. Warner Jazz, the label I was on, went under, so I had to crowdfund it. I did a GoFundMe. When you go to people’s crowdfunding things, they’re like “Give me $20, and I’ll give you a signed something.” Mine was like, “Give me $100, and
I’ll fly to your town, and we’ll have lunch in McDonald’s.” Stuff like that. It’s me, right, it’s hilarious. We were doing just fine.
I think we asked for 32K, something like that, which is reasonable for a record of this size. We were moving along, everything was fine. Then one morning I woke up and I looked at it and we had surpassed…we had gotten all these donations during the night and had gone way past the 32K that I asked for; it happened overnight.
I was about to go on my social media and thank everyone for donating, say how happy we are that we’re gonna make this record kind of thing, and my phone rang it was my girlfriend at the time. She said, “Lea, David Bowie is tweeting at you.” and basically, I guess David Bowie told all his people to donate to this record, and that I was someone that should be doing this, basically.
Then, in even bigger support, when we re-
leased the album, we released the cover exclusively on David Bowie’s website. It really did help the sales. This record sold really well. He was in complete support. I did a residency at a little jazz club here in town, midnight shows of the David Bowie album, and his entire band came during the course of that residency. We were in the process of trying to get David there to see it, which he apparently really wanted to do, and of course, he died. That’s how much he was living his life until the end.
Janis Siegel of Manhattan Transfer fame joined you on your rendition of “Suffragette City.” In the recording, you even commented about sitting back and listening to her sing.
Like I’ve been doing my whole life.
Going Out
by Jim Provenzano
We survived 2024. Well, most of us did. Celebrate the new year as trepidatious an exercise it may be. Storm into (or away from) balloon drops and complimentary champagne in a plastic cup in this week’s Going Out. Either way, we thought we’d give some ink to our local music halls, bars and nightclubs that celebrate New Year’s one way or another.
Listings on page 15 >
D’Arcy Drollinger hosts Oasis’ 10th anniversary and New Year’s Eve party Dec. 31, 9:30pm-2am @ Oasis
Critical condition
by Gregg Shapiro
J
immy Erskine (out actor Sir Ian McKellen) is the titular character in “The Critic” (Greenwich Entertainment), now available on DVD, the feared and reviled drama critic for The Daily Chronicle, a “rightwing rag” in early 1930s London. Openly queer at a time when it was risky to be, he lives with Tom (Alfred Enoch of the “Harry Potter” franchise), who is both his lover and secretary.
Brooke (Mark Strong), the son of the Chronicle’s late publisher, is the man’s man now running the show. He’s on a mission to “economize,” trimming the fat to restore the publication to its most-read family newspaper status. Jimmy is among the “old guard” who risk being canned if they don’t show loyalty to the cause.
Bitchy Jimmy is tolerated by Brooke, but his relentlessly negative reviews of actress Nina (Gemma
Arterton), of whom Brooke is quite fond, lead the critic being told to “tone it down.” Brooke isn’t the only one who confronts Jimmy. Nina’s meddling mother Annabel (the ubiquitous Lesley Manville) and even Nina herself take him to task.
Meanwhile, insecure Nina has even more on her mind, including her affair with hot portraitist Stephen (Ben Barnes), who happens to be married to Cora (Romola Garai), the daughter of Brooke! But wait, there’s more! After a drunken Jimmy and Tom are arrested and jailed for performing an “indecent act in a public place,” Brooke forces Jimmy to agree to take an early retirement.
Vengeful as ever, and certain that “all men have secrets,” Jimmy sets out to destroy Brooke. His devious plan involves Nina seducing Brooke so that Jimmy can blackmail him.
Nina agrees when Jimmy promises to forever praise her future acting work, guaranteeing her a long career
Ian McKellen is ‘The Critic’
on the stage, as well as entré into society, invitations to parties, and the whole shebang.
Brooke becomes besotted with Nina. Tom expresses his disapproval to Jimmy about his nefarious plan. Stephen continues to pine for Nina, even though she refuses his ongoing advances. Cora, aware of the affair, throws Stephen out of her house.
In what becomes the turning point, Brooke and Stephen meet for lunch, possibly providing the fatherin-law an opportunity to talk some sense into his son-in-law. It is during this meal that Stephen reveals that Nina is the woman with whom he is having an affair. Brooke, smitten with Nina, does everything in his power not to let the shock and disappointment show on his face.
After this, there is a series of deaths (a suicide and a murder), and “The Critic” takes an increasingly dark turn. There is even something of a surprise twist involving Tom.
‘Babygirl’ Nicole Kidman’s dive into creepy compulsions
by Gregg Shapiro
I f you’re looking for an alternative to all the feel-good movie entertainment this holiday season, and you want something that will make you want to take a long Silkwood shower after watching it, I suggest “Babygirl” (A24). A depressing blend of sexual compulsion, infidelity, inappropriate workplace behavior, abuse of power, degradation, and heterosexual horror. The best thing that can be said about “Babygirl” is that the queer character far outshines her straight counterparts.
The movie opens with warehouse robotics CEO Romy (a tired Nicole Kidman) having sex with her playwright husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas). Afterwards, she sneaks off into another room where she finally achieves orgasm by watching porn online. To be fair, Romy has a complex background which includes being raised in a cult.
Aside from being unable to be sexually satisfied, Romy’s life, which includes a successful career, a city apartment, and a country house, and two devoted daughters; teen lesbian Isabel (Esther McGregor) and her kid sister Nora (Vaughan Reilly), isn’t too shabby.
However, everything changes when she encounters intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson, whom some
queer moviegoers may recognize from his portrayal of bisexual Frankie in Eliza Hittman’s awardwinning 2017 movie “Beach Rats”).
When they first cross paths, it’s on a busy NYC street where she watches Samuel calm an aggressive dog that has escaped from its owner. Later, in the office, when Romy meets the new crew of interns, he makes another lasting impression on her.
In case you couldn’t see it coming, they begin a clandestine sexual relationship. Samuel is the kind of hot, sexually confident, under-30 guy who is used to having women (and probably some men, too) throw themselves at him. For “Fifty Shades” fans, the sexual situations overflow with that kind of degrading treatment (minus the bondage), as Samuel reduces Romy to a puddle of her own juices.
But Romy gets sloppy, and soon, word begins to spread faster than her legs. After a confrontation with her assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde), who is also banging Samuel, and a humiliating confession to Jacob, Romy’s world spins out of control.
At the very least, writer/director Halina Reijn (who was raised by a gay father) deserves credit for creating a believable and positive queer character in the wise-beyond-heryears Isabel. Rating: C- t
McKellen was born to play this role as he imbues Jimmy with an ice-cold heart and an acid tongue. It’s hard to imagine another actor in the role. The rest of the cast is cer-
Tubular bells
What to watch or not to watch; that is the question. Our stalwart television columnist Victoria A. Brownworth shares her roundup of the best TV series and specials of the year, including Emmy winners and others.
“Baby Reindeer,” “The Bear,” “True Detective: Night Country,” and “Under the Bridge,” are among her mainstream choices, with queer series “Agatha All Along,” “Interview with the Vampire” and “English Teacher” among her top favorites.
Get queued up for Brat winter (Is that a thing? It is now.) only on www. ebar.com. t
Best of 2024’s TV shows
tainly serviceable, but all told, “The Critic,” directed by Anand Tucker, may hardly register with audiences. Rating: B-
Ian McKellen in ‘The Critic’
Greenwich Entertainment
Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid in ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ Jeremy Allen White in ‘The Bear,’ Katherine Hahn and Aubrey Plaza in ‘Agatha All Along’ AMC, FX/Hulu, Marvel/Disney
Harris Dickinson and Nicole Kidman in ‘Babygirl’
‘The People’s Joker’ Queer
by Joshua Polanski
“The People’s Joker” is proof that miracles do happen. Beginning as a re-edit of Todd Haynes’ 2019 “The Joker,” the superhero parody cinematic anomaly revolves around a transwoman, Joker the Harlequin (Vera Drew, who also directs the iconoclastic feature), as she looks to penetrate the Gotham media scene as a stand-up comedian and falls in love with the Mr. J (Kane Distler), who also happens to be trans. The character and place names may be familiar, but this is unlike any caped-crusader film so far. Films don’t usually look or feel quite like this.
The Batman (Phil Braun) still has Robbins, but these ones he sexually grooms. He’s also a closeted gay man whose big pockets fund a fascist technology state. All of this is on top of the film’s irrevocable affirmation of trans identities and queer sexualities, things that remain on the periphery, at best, of the major studios that make the superhero films being parodied. It’s an impossible film, made through crowdfunding and unexpectedly skating by potential lawsuits, that is now available for streaming all around the world.
The Harlequin’s path to acknowledging her gender identity began with
the infamous nipple scene in “Batman Forever,” a scene that had her wondering if all PG-13 movies made little boys want to be girls.
After voicing her gender dysphoria to her mom (Lynn Downey) for the first time, she is taken to the Arkham Asylum and prescribed Smylex, a drug that forces smiles regardless of mood. This bit about the drug – ruthless in assaulting the US healthcare system and its policing of gender performance – might be a dark horse for the most inflammatory and biting scene of the parody. It’s also a loving balance of the Batmanic tradition on the part of Drew to demean and down-right offend the powerful institutions that moderate day-to-day life.
The self-funded and artistically self-sourced film also adopts a queer style that mixes and matches various animation and CGI styles with liveaction filmmaking. There is no coherent or consistent look to Drew’s debut feature and that’s to the chagrin of the guardians of the house-styles that have kept superheroes in a chokehold (the non-fun kind) for decades.
Drew says fuck that and does away with the boring and flavorless house style the same way she does away with gender norms. The only time it doesn’t work is occasionally with the liveaction, where the framing sometimes
<< Nightlife From page 13
MUSIC/THEATER
American Bach
@ Herbst Theatre
NYE Baroque aria and duets concert with soprano Maya Kehrani and countertenor Eric Jurenas, $30-$112, Dec. 31, 4pm, 401 Van Ness Ave. www.americanbach.org
Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center
International music and dance concerts at the East Bay venue celebrating its 50th anniversary with a special schedule of concerts. Balkan New Year’s Eve concert with True Life Trio, Fanfare Zambaleta and Dodona, $35, 8pm. 1317 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley. www.ashkenaz.com
Bimbo’s 365 Club
Varied music acts in rock, jazz and pop perform. Tainted Love retro-pop NYE concert and party, Dec. 31, 9pm-2am. 1025 Columbus Ave. www.bimbos365club.com
Brick & Mortar
The Mission/SoMa nightclub hosts music acts in a variety of genres. NYE rager with The Casuals and DJs, $48, 9pm-2am. 1710 Mission St. www.brickandmortarmusic.com
The Chapel
Spacious venue hosts rock music acts. NYE with Dengue Fever, $50, Dec. 31, 8:30pm, 777 Valencia St. www.thechapelsf.com
appears to be shot for full-screen and cropped for widescreen, though it is fully possible the awkward framing is intentional and it just doesn’t land.
Masked affections
Her relationship with her mom never thrived, but, unlike her dad, the bridge was never completely burned down. In some ways, this is the heart of the film, and non-coincidently, it’s also where “The People’s Joker” is at its gayest. Her very relatable experiences related to expressing her full self in the presence of her mother are almost the only thing from her childhood (played by Griffin Kramer) that matters to the filmmakers.
She also comes back into the picture during Harlequin’s adult years, providing a comparative image of resilient (though ignorant and hurtful) love in the face of Mr. J’s demanding, selfinterested, and even abusive “love.”
The most touching moment, and one coming from a place familiar to many in the queer community, occurs with their mutual and heart-breaking acknowledgment that they don’t share a single happy memory together. But that’s a hard thing to have together when one person denies the full expression of identity of the other. Being
Dirty Dozen Brass Band @
Dear San Francisco @ Club Fugazi
The ‘high-flying love story’ weaves local history with acrobatic theatrics and live music by The 7 Fingers company, now with new cast members; Home for the Holidays shows thru Dec. 29; extended run. $35-$99. NYE shows at 5pm & 10pm, ($108-$192), 678 Green St. www.clubfugazisf.com
Feinstein’s at the Nikko
The upscale nightclub presents cabaret concerts. Paula West’s New Year’s Eve concerts, Dec. 31, 7pm ($71) & 10:30pm ($99). Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. www.feinsteinssf.com
Fox Theatre, Oakland
Elegant large theater hosts a variety of music and comedy acts. Primus NYE shows, $70-$240, Dec. 30, 8pm, Dec. 31, 9pm. 1807 Telegraph Ave. | www.thefoxoakland.com
Freight & Salvage, Berkeley
Music venue presents folk, rock, blues musicians and more. Tommy Castro and The Painkillers NYE show, $84, Dec. 31, 9pm, 2020 Addison St, Berkeley. www.thefreight.org
Great American Music Hall
Enjoy live music at the classic venue. Alie X NYE show with Pop Scene DJs, $45-0$120, 9pm, 859 O’Farrell St. www.gamh.com
The Independent Nightclub hosts upcoming and popular rock bands. NYE with Neal Frances & Planet Booty, and an open bar. $139, Dec. 31, 9pm, 628 Divisadero St. www.theindependentsf.com
SF Jazz
The acclaimed venue presents their concert series. NYE concert and party with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, $45-$130, Dec. 31, 8pm & 10:30pm, 201 Franklin St. www.sfjazz.org
Sweetwater Music Hall, Mill Valley
Intimate restaurant, nightclub and music venue presents all kinds of music, in the historic Masonic Lodge. Pink Talking Fish Meets The Beatles, Dec. 29, 8pm. NYE concert and party with Bluegrass band Hot Buttered Rum, Dec. 31, 9pm. 9 Corte Madera Ave. www.sweetwatermusichall.com
page 18 >>
seen is a prerequisite for love of any kind and “The People’s Joker” knows this well.
Queerness and non-hetero sexualities in superhero movies operate simply from an accounting standpoint.
A woman-loving-woman kiss here or there (or, more rarely, a male-on-male kiss) is very rarely more important than the dumb cameos these things use for clickbait, and they are also easily excisable for less-affirming markets. They are largely non-committal depictions of queerness, perhaps other than “Thor: Love and Thunder,” that allow Disney and Warner Bros to open new markets (the gays) without closing old ones (non-affirming audiences).
It won’t be too long before Disney+ gives viewers the option to automatically cut out the gay kiss in “The Eternals” or the queer innuendos in the aforementioned Thor film. It’s in this genre climate that Drew puts a “bleep”
over top of the Harlequin’s deadname upon every mention. “The People’s Joker” won’t allow its audience to ever see its protagonist as anything other than how she wants to be viewed: as a woman.
“The People’s Joker” is well on its way to being a nail in the superhero coffin the same way “Blazing Saddles” was for Westerns or “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” for musician biopics. Sure, westerns and musician bio-pics didn’t die with the satires. But they did put a new onus on the genres of record to push past bland generic reproduction or face new troubles in their box office domination. If we are lucky enough, “The People’s Joker” will do the same for the elephant of the 21st-century box office. t www.thepeoplesjoker.com
Vera Drew in ‘The People’s Joker’
Altered Innocence
Kane Distler and Vera Drew in ‘The People’s Joker’
Altered Innocence
The
SF Jazz
Rick Barot’s ‘Moving the Bones’ lyrical, compassionate,
by Mark William Norby
Combining melodic rhythms and personal reflections, Rick Barot’s “Moving the Bones” (Milkweed Editions, October 2024) triumphantly penetrates the heart with such gentle consideration that readers will be left with new understanding of what it means to be alive at this moment in time.
Covering huge topics like ekphrastic poetry, Barot’s poems stand as creative odes to ekphrasis wherein our emotions become his emotions and vice versa: “The ekphrastic act is a catalyst for observation, association, and dream. / It is like the flaneur’s arc of walking, seeing, and reverie. / I see you / move down the busy block before you have seen me and I look away, / to make another image in my mind, to have it take the force of the blow.”
Ekphrastic poetry is simply defined as poems written about other works of art; or one mode of artistic creation writing about another—a reflection of art back onto itself. In this style of creation, Barot sees a thing in its totality. In “Crosshatch 1,” he writes, “The ocean is so large it doesn’t have to know what it is.” And later: “I am a mud man. I am made of mud. I think of mud the way a lightbulb / is preoccupied with light, the way water is preoccupied with the shore.”
In “Crosshatch 2,” he writes beyond ekphrasis and into interpretations of states of aliveness or even lack of life: “Sontag. The books were as different as the seasons. It was winter, naked, / like what Sontag said on page 33: ‘Death is the opposite of everything.’”
Indeed, death is the opposite of right now. Barot displays the methods in which we see ourselves from one age to the next, a progression through life that bears witness to our mental capacity to wait for the self to feel. “My pants hems are heavy with dew. Am I a child again, am I old? / Or am I only who I am now, astounded at the transport of the body / from one end of time to another.”
Barot is a poet of great importance, his work is non-trifling, his self-attitude
From page 13
What made her the right duet partner for you?
Janis reached out to me through social media about two years before that. She said that she had heard my cover of Blondie’s “Call Me” because Gil Goldstein, who arranged “Call Me,” and is someone who I’ve worked with very closely, had played it for Janis.
She reached out to me and asked me if I would join her on stage because she and Gil had done an arrangement of Sondheim’s “The Story of Lucy and Jessie,” and wanted to know if I would do this duet with her.
I said I’d be happy, and then Janis and I became very good friends. In fact, I’m an officiant, and I married Janis’ son to his wife.
We’ve become very tight. Janis and I have done many duets together and we both are mean-ass scat singers, so she was the obvious choice. In fact, on her next record, which I think is coming out in the spring, we did a duet of “Down For Double.” Then I’m recording my next record called “Fuck Love,” and she’s going to do another duet with me.
I’m so glad you mentioned your next record because I know you don’t need to be reminded, but it’s been almost ten years since you released “House of David.”
It’s very difficult in the music industry right now. I’m just gonna be honest; I’ve also been really fucking busy. I do a lot of things and I’ve been doing all of them. It takes time to get music and arrangements together. I worked on that Bowie record prob-
earnest. He tackles the simple yet complex consciousness of being queer and alone that we have each lived through. He gains traction in being middleaged and seeing down both sides of the mountain, from youth to becoming older, not yet knowing what it fully means and what is beyond nowness.
In “The Mussel,” he writes: “One way of being hidden / is to be in plain sight, looking like a black rock / among other rocks in a streambed. Another way is to be small.” Who hasn’t known what it’s like to be queer and made small, to hide in plain sight, and (hopefully) to have stepped into the roar of coming out free and fully queer; even queerer.
Paradise you know Even queerer like Barot’s poem “Pleasure”: “You are told to believe in one paradise / and then there is the paradise you come to know. / The shoes lined up in pairs by the door / and the heard moving with its mysterious intent / across a dark
ably for three years. Those arrangements don’t just fly out of my ass [laughs].
My go-to partner of choice, Nette Mason, and I do these arrangements together. We work really fucking harder on them. And then I tweak them and do them in concert and tweak them some more, and then we go into the studio. It just took a while for us to come up with the concept.
The concept is “fuck love,” and it’s all love-gone-wrong songs. It’s getting the typical DeLaria treatment. We’ve got everything from a Betty Hutton song all the way to Dua Lipa. There’s a lot in this record. We’ve even got The Chicks! We’ve got this gospel version of “Goodbye Earl.” It takes time to get this together.
But every time we put a date in to record, I get a movie or I get a play [laughs], and it gets pushed. This has been going on for about a year and a half, which is actually good because we’d still like to tweak these arrangements a little bit. Hopefully, we will be recording at the beginning of next year, maybe even sooner.
Lastly, you also said something about a movie…
Oh, my God there’s so much! There’s currently a movie that’s on Amazon Prime it’s called “Holy Irresistible.” It’s a funny little independent film. I’m hilarious. I play a woman dying of cancer [laughs].
I’m the executive producer of a short called “Possum.” I’ve made four movies so far this year. I’ve got to make another one and I’m shooting a television pilot at the end of October. I’m in this movie called “Tow,” which has two Academy Award winners in it: Octavia Spencer and Ariana DeBose, and Rose Byrne, too. When I say I do a lot of things, I do a lot of things.
plain. The blue sky / which is the zenith of all colors / and the love of the man in the next room, / strong and rough as a hog’s back.”
Slightly beyond midway through the book, we feel the poet “Riding the BART train from Richmond to Freemont.” He is riding the COVID pandemic over the course of twenty-five pages. I had to stop, consider what I had taken on in the reading, and to reread in order to dig into the incredible value of his dedication to time in isolation—again, something we can relate to having survived the pandemic—and this itself is the subject: time.
And observation. “During the pandemic, I learned the half hour of sun that slanted / into one side of my room, the light like a giant wing. I would / lie on the floor and read heavy books, surprised by the legs of / furniture. The stumpy legs of a stool, the giraffe legs of a table. / On days when there was no sun, I sat there and looked up at / the window, at the sky
that was the color of a sidewalk.”
Barot touches on the gentleness of his mother recovering from illness; he dedicated “Moving the Bones” to the memory of his father Edgar Alvarez Barot; he lives in his life—we see the poet’s life as we understand our own; and in “Goodwill,” all of it comes together in these lines: “Then the sound / of children, the neighbor’s children, leading me / to that ladder within the self, with the boy / on a low rung, the man on the middle rungs, and the old man / above us, touching the leaves of the tree.” Poetry doesn’t get any better than this.
In many areas it reminded me of the work of Frank Bidart. But my first
thought reading Barot’s pages brought the work of Saint Augustine’s “Confessions” to mind—the personal emotions and feelings, the examination of the soul. I think what will reach you clearly in the book is a sense of life in its beginning, middle, and end though we may have far to go.
Check out more books from Milkweed Editions, a publishing house stirring the rich ocean of literature. I know Barot is grateful to have found them.
www.milkweed.org www.rickbarot.com
Do you think you might have another book in you?
I’ve been contacted. I think what’s gonna happen is this book is going to be a memoir. I think somebody needs to set the historical record straight, because there are a lot of there’s a lot of misinformation about our movement, especially what I would call my side of that movement which is more of the dykes and faggots and queers, oh my! Rather than the mainstream,
middle-class, assimilationist side of that movement. That’s what I’m thinking about.
But I’ve got to be honest. I’ve got a play/comedy special in my head that I think is gonna come first. I’ve got a television series that I’ve been pitching that I think is gonna come first. I’m not not writing, I’m just writing other things. t
DeLaria performs at the Chan National Queer Arts Center, Jan. 18, 6pm & 8:30pm, 170 Valencia St. www.sfgmc.org www.leadelaria.com
Lea
Lea DeLaria
Tina Turnbow
<< Lea DeLaria
Poet Rick Barot
Nightlife
From page 15
NIGHTLIFE
440 Castro
Friendly neighborhood bar has ample outdoor seating, indoor Monday underwear parties, and two bars. 440 Castro St. www.the440.com
ABBA Glitter Disco NYE @ The Great Northern Dancing queens, dig this scene, with glitter makeovers retro mixes, aerial performance and more. $49-$73, Dec. 31, 9pm-3am, 119 Utah St. www.thegreatnorthernsf.com
The Academy LGBTQ social club offers membership, plus public events, art exhibits, music, community talks, wine-tastings and more. 2166 Market St. www.academy-sf.com
AfterGlow @ Space 550 Comfort & Joy’s annual glowy NYE party, with live acts, multiple DJs (Adriana, Sergio Fedasz and many more, a cuddle room, and dancing. $50 and up, Dec. 31, 10pm-6am, 550 Barneveld St. www.eventbrite.com
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge
The intimate historic bar serves strong drinks and hosts frequent drag shows. 133 Turk St. Badlands
The historic bar hosts nightly dancing, drag shows, and Sunday Tea Dance. 4121 18th St.www.sfbadlands.com
Bar49
New Castro bar and restaurant hosts events, 49+ beer and wine selections, and weekend brunch. 2296 Market St. www.bar49sf.com
Beaux
Popular Castro club with drag entertainers, drinks and food, celebrates its 12th year. NYE party Dec. 31. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com
Blackbird
Classy Duboce area bar known for its artisanal cocktails. Gooch photo exhibit thru Jan. 2124 Market St. www.blackbirdbar.com
Blush Wine Bar
Popular wine bar also has a tasty food menu, live music events, too. 476 Castro St. www.blushwinebar.com
Bongo-O Bingo
@ Mission Cannabis Club
Get the buzz on 2025 a few days early with DJ Dank, Andelay! Andeley!, pot prizes, and music. $15 ($10 min. purchase), Dec. 28, 6pm-9pm, 2441 Mission St. www.missioncannabisclub.com
The Cafe Popular Castro nightclub with a dance floor and lounge areas, two bars, drag shows and gogo dancers on select nights; Picante Latin night on Thursdays. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com
Hole in the Wall Saloon
Local rock DJs like Don Baird play at the SoMa ‘friendly neighborhood gay biker bar.’ 1369 Folsom St.
It’s a New Day-Breakfast of Champions
@ The Great Northern 25th anniversary massive annual day-after outdoor party with dozens of DJs. $49-$120, 4am-9:30pm, 119 Utah St. www.thegreatnorthernsf.com
Jolene’s
SoMa queer and woman trans-owned nightclub and restaurant. U-Haul’s
Que Rico, Oakland
LGBT Latinx nightclub features fun drag shows, DJed grooves, and gogo studs. NYE party with Drag Race Mexico’s Horatio Potasio, Dec. 31, 9pm-2am. 381 15th St., Oakland. www.quericonightclub.com
Rainbow Cattle Company, Guerneville
The Russian River’s LGBTQ bar serves up local fun since 1979. 16220 Main St. www.queersteer.com
SF Eagle
Twin Peaks
Enjoy a great view and strong drinks at the historic tavern, now in its 50th year. 401 Castro St. www.twinpeakstavern.com
White Horse Bar
Enjoy indoor and outdoor drinks at the famous Oakland bar, now in its 90th year, under new ownership, hosts music nights, dance parties and more. 6551 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.whitehorsebar.com
Wild Side West
Castro Country Club
Sober space with meetings, events, art exhibits and a café. 4058 18th St. www.castrocountryclub.org
The Cinch Historic bar in the Polk district. 1723 Polk St. www.cinchsf.com Club 1220
Walnut Creek’s gay bar, with drag shows, karaoke and dance nights. 1220 Pine St., Walnut Creek. www.club1220.com
The Edge
Celebrating five decades, the bar NYE party should be fun. 4149 18th St. www.edgesf.com
El Rio
The popular bar with a spacious outdoor patio hosts multiple LGBTQ events, including a NYE party. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com
The EndUp
Historic SoMa nightclub hosts straight, gay and whatever late-night dance events. 401 6th St. theendupsf.com
Eros
SF’s queer sex club in a new location
(site of the historic Bulldog Baths), open daily at 2pm to 10pm-12am; memberships available. 18+ only. $10-$30. 132 Turk St. www.erossf.com
Feelmore Social, Oakland
New LGBTQ cocktail bar with a cool ambiance. 1542 Broadway. www.feelmoresocial.com
Fireside Lounge, Alameda Woman-owned LGBT-friendly bar with live shows, outdoor lounge, cool cocktails. 1453 Webster St. www.thefiresidelounge.com
Fluid510, Oakland
Nightclub blends LGBTQ, straight and fluid patronage. 1544 Broadway. www.fluid510.com
Fresh Start @ The Midway NYE party with DJs Charlotte De Witt, Chris Lake, The Blessed Madonna, Cloonee, ZHU, J.Worra, Austin Millz. $106-$500, Dec. 31, 9pm-6am, 900 Marin St. www.freshstartsf.com
Gilman Brewing Company
The bar hosts frequent LGBTQ events. 912 Gilman St. www.gilmanbrew.com
Ginger’s
The historic downtown cocktail bar has returned, with drag shows. NYE drag show with Laundra Tyme, Bionka Simone, Polly Amber Ross, Cream, Papi Churro, Dec. 31, 9pm-2am. Karaoke nights Wednesdays with KJ LaLa ($5). Wed-Thu 5pm-12am, 86 Hardie Place. www.gingers.bar
Golden Bull, Oakland
LGBTQ-friendly bar presents diverse live music acts and DJed events. 412 14th St. www.goldenbullbar.com Hi Tops
Popular sports bar with multiple TV screens, events, and an irresistible snack menu. 2247 Market St. www.hitopsbar.com
All-Black NYE party with DJs Frankie Fictitious and Livv, $20-$35, Dec. 31, 9pm-2am. 2700 16th St. www.jolenessf.com
Juanita MORE! + Mighty Real
NYE @ Phoenix Hotel
Ring in the new year at the heated poolside patio, and indoors, with David Harness, Juanita, Charles Hawthorne, and other DJs. $25 and up, Dec. 31, 8p2am, 60 Eddy St. www.eventbrite.com
Lookout
Castro bar and restaurant with a panoramic view. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com
Lone Star Saloon
DJed events at the historic bear bar, special events like Cubcake, plus regular nights of rock music and patio hangouts. NYE Extravaganza with DJ Sir Ellis, $10, Dec. 31, 9pm-2am. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com
Martuni’s
The intimate martini bar hosts music and cabaret acts. NYE sing-along. 4 Valencia St. at Market.
Midnight Sun
The popular bar celebrates five decades. 4067 18th St. www.midnightsunsf.com
Moby Dick
Popular neighborhood bar known for its colorful aquarium and tasty drinks celebrates 40 years. 4049 18th St.
Mother Bar
New women’s bar at the former Esta Noche is a welcome addition in the Mission. 3079 16th St. www.instagram.commotherbarsf
New Bohemia @ SF Mint
Vau de Vire Society and Opel Productions’ lavish multi-environment colorful array of live acts, music, dancing, and chill spaces. $58-$250, 9pm-3am, 88 5th St. www.eventbrite.com
Oasis
The multiple award-winning nightclub’s shows include: Baloney New Year’s 19th anniversary male burlesque shows Dec. 27-31, 7pm. Hole underwear night Dec. 27, 10pm. 10th anniversary NYE party with live music, drag, bubbly toast, $55 and up, Dec. 31, 9:30pm-2am; sparkly glam attire suggested. Oasis Open Ball vogue contest, Jan. 10, 10pm. Ongoing: Princess, the weekly Saturday night drag show, 10pm-2am (Cvnty Pajama Party Dec. 28). Reparations, the Fridays allBlack drag show, 10pm-2am. 398 11th St.sfoasis.comwww.sfoasis.com
Pilsner Inn
Historic neighborhood bar (since 1980) with an easy vibe, pool table, an excellent beer selection, and a spacious back patio. 225 Church St. pilsnerinn.com
Powerhouse Bar
Popular cruisy SoMa bar hosts many events, including a NYE party. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhousebar.com
QBar
The Castro bar and dance club has reopened. Cake, Saturdays with DJ Cip & guests. 456 Castro St. www.instagram.comqbarsf
The famed leather bar has numerous events. NYE with DADSF Kelly Naughton and Mondo Nexus along with DJ Mouthfeel for a night of Dirty Disco, Dancing and Debauchery for the 12th Annual New Gears Eve bash; complimentary champagne toast, free party favors. $10. 398 12th St. www.thesfeagle.com
Steamworks Berkeley
The award-winning bathhouse hosts special events, DJed nights, and a cruisy vibe. $5-$200 (6-month membership). 18+ only. Open 24/7 every day. 2107 4th St., Berkeley. www.steamworksbaths. com/berkeleyhome
The Stud
The historic bar has reopened at a new location with events each week. 1123 Folsom St. St. www.studsf.com
Summer Bar & Lounge, Oakland
New East Bay nightclub with drag shows, gogo dancers, karaoke and open mic nights. 526 8th St. www.thebarsummer.com
Town Bar & Lounge, Oakland
Intimate Art Deco LGBTQ bar serves up signature cocktails, DJed Fab Disq-O, first and third Sundays; dance nights, too. 2001 Broadway. www.goingtotownoakland.com
Trax
Historic Haight gay bar (since 1940!) serves up cheap and strong drinks. 1437 Haight St. www.traxbarsf.com
Historic lesbian and friends bar in Bernal Heights with an airy backyard garden (stairs). 424 Cortland Ave. www.wildsidewest.com
Zhuzh
New queer bar with a stylish retro vibe. 1548 California St. www.zhuzh.bar
For more event listings, see Going Out on www.ebar.com. t
Paula West @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko
Primus @ The Fox Oakland
New Bohemia @ the SF Mint
Juanita MORE! + Mighty Real NYE @ the Phoenix Hotel
Horatio Potasio @ Que Rico, Oakland ‘Dear
Qbar
January 22-26, 2025
Herbst Exhibition Galleries