December 29, 2011 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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New laws for 2012

Travel: Fort Lauderdale

ARTS

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13

Year in arts, 2011

The

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

Vol. 41 • No. 52 • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

Sober space seeks fiscal sponsor

SB 48 set to take effect

by Matthew S. Bajko

O

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

he Castro Country Club has once again won a reprieve, as the latest offer to buy its 18th Street building fell through.

But the sober space in the heart of the city’s LGBT district still faces an uphill battle to remain in its building. It continues to raise money to purchase the property as it seeks a new fiscal sponsor.

Rick Gerharter Baker Places has Terry Beswick told the club that as of July 1 it will no longer cover the sober space’s operational expenses. For the past 11 years the nonprofit maintained the club’s books, carried its liability insurance, and provided taxdeductible status.

It has also paid $6,000 a month toward the club’s rent and utilities, as meeting room rental fees and profits from the on-site cafe fall far short of operating costs.

“Baker Places never intended for the CCC to become a permanent program of theirs; they informed us three years ago and every year since that they wanted us to become financially self-reliant,” wrote the club’s advisory board in a December 19 email.

Baker Places Executive Director Jonathan Vernick could not be reached for comment.

Due to the holidays, he is out of the office and did not respond to an interview request by press time.

The club’s board has been working to either become its own independent nonprofit or find a new fiscal sponsor. It is in talks with a number of LGBT nonprofits to work out a deal by next summer. But club officials declined to specify the groups they had approached.

“We are in negotiations but I can’t talk about with whom because it is sensitive,” said board member Rebecca Prozan. “We just need to find the right home and we are on track to do that.”

Prozan remains hopeful the club will remain at 4058 18th Street.

“I really honestly believe we will stay on 18th Street. I have no doubt about it,” she said.

The club has raised nearly $200,000 for its Keep the Steps in the Castro campaign. The money is slated for a down payment toward the purchase of the building, which is listed for sale at $1.1 million, or if need be, for a new location.

The board wants to raise another $100,000 in 2012. It has lucked out in seeing the building remain available, as the latest offer See page 2 >>

Rick Gerharter

Sisters quick to help F

aster than Santa could get his sleigh to San Francisco, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence sprang into action last week after a five-alarm fire demolished an apartment building and damaged others near Alamo Square December 22. The Sisters held a benefit two days later, on Christmas Eve. Above, Sister Gina Tonic gives fire victim Scott Scharenbroich a reassuring back rub outside the Edge bar, site of a very successful clothes donation and beer bust organized by Sister Phylies Withe Litaday for the 60 displaced people from the fire. Sister Roma looks on. All stood in front of a portion of the five-pickup-truck-loads of donated clothes, toiletries, and other necessities. Further donations of money and clothes can be made by visiting http://www.alamosq.org.

ne of California’s most controversial new laws goes into effect January 1.

The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act – also known as Senate Bill 48 – requires that LGBTs’ historical contributions be taught in schools.

Anti-gay activists have proposed five initiatives aimed at gutting the law, but some students don’t seem to see anything wrong with it.

Skylar Keating, 18, a high school senior from Menlo Park, California, said the law would bolster what students learn. He’s had textbooks that include LGBT-specific history, he said, but “we’ve just never gone over it.”

Keating, who is transgender, said SB 48 would be helpful.

“I want to talk about the AIDS epidemic and how horrible it was to our community,” and about “how strong we’ve gotten,” he said.

Like Keating, Anna Sturla, 16, recently attended the 2011 Youth Empowerment Summit in San Francisco. Gay-Straight Alliance Network, which along with Equality California co-sponsored SB 48, organized the summit.

Sturla, who didn’t want her orientation See page 9 >>

Attorney general issues letter to lawmakers on medical marijuana

by Dan Aiello

J

ust a week after Assemblyman Tom Ammiano met with the U.S. attorney’s office to discuss federal raids on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, California’s attorney general has issued a letter to the state’s top lawmakers warning that attempts to pass statewide regulation of marijuana must not impede upon the will of the people or further provoke the wrath of the federal government.

“We have started a conversation,” Ammiano, an openly gay San Francisco Democrat, told the Bay Area Reporter of his meeting with Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California.

Ammiano called Haag’s requirement that marijuana dispensaries be 1,000 feet, as per federal law, rather than California’s 600 feet from schools, parks, and playgrounds, “entirely reasonable.” But Ammiano also warned that he would “continue to push back,” against what he sees as an arbitrary and irrational enforcement of federal controlled substances laws within the borders of the Golden State.

Ammiano called the U.S. Department of Justice’s concerns “a moving target,” and expressed his frustration that any legislative efforts to regulate the implementation of

Jane Philomen Cleland

Attorney General Kamala Harris

Proposition 215 might pass, only to be met by new concerns of the feds.

Prop 215, passed by state voters in 1996, legalized medical marijuana in California.

Since then, 15 other states and the District of Columbia have followed suit. However, the federal government does not recognize medical marijuana as legal medicine.

{ FIRST OF TWO SECTIONS }

In the meantime, state Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote a letter December 21 to top lawmakers – Senate Pro Tem, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and gay Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles) – and copied Ammiano and out state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), both instrumental in the medical marijuana debate. In the letter, Harris wrote that, following a series of meetings with groups representing the parties concerned with the state’s medical marijuana laws she concluded that any effort to regulate the compassionate use of marijuana in statewide legislation will be limited by the state’s constitution and by the response to such legislation by the U.S. Department of Justice’s enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act. “I am troubled by the exploitation of California’s medical marijuana laws by gangs, criminal enterprises, and others,” Harris wrote, explaining that the 2008 nonbinding guidelines established by her predecessor, Jerry Brown (now the governor), no longer are effective in a “more complicated” present day.

Harris reminded Steinberg and Perez that two legal “boundaries” limit the Legislature’s ability to regulate the issue.

First, said Harris, was the current precedent of the Second Appellate District ruling in Pack See page 9 >>

<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

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2012 brings new laws

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

he new year is set to bring several new laws affecting LGBTs. The legislation, most of which go into effect January 1, address a variety of issues, including protections for transgender people.

The statewide lobbying group Equality California co-sponsored most of the bills.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), a straight ally, wrote one of two new laws focused on the transgender community.

Assembly Bill 433 – the Vital Statistics Modernization Act – makes it easier for transgender people to get a court-ordered gender change and updated birth certificate.

Will Shuck, Lowenthal’s spokesman, said bills such as AB 433 are a matter of “basic fairness” and take care of issues “that seem like they should have been fixed a long time ago.”

The other piece of legislation primarily addressing transgender people is AB 887, known as the Gender Non-Discrimination Act. The new law, authored by out Assemblywoman Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), clarifies that “gender identity and expression” are protected categories in regards to employment, education, housing, public accommodations, and other settings.

State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) saw success this year with two EQCA-backed bills.

Senate Bill 48 – the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act – requires that school children be taught about LGBTs’ historical contributions, among other provisions. Anti-gay activists have proposed five initiatives aimed at gutting the law. [See story, page 1.]

The governor also approved the openly gay Leno’s Domestic Partnership Equality Act, SB 651.

That legislation corrects three differences between marriage and domestic partnerships, including axing a requirement that same-sex couples live together before entering

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Sober space From page 1

submitted by Deke Johnson was rejected after he reduced his asking price.

Johnson, whose partner is in rehab, planned to keep the club as a tenant but reportedly intended to evict the residents of the upstairs apartment.

The tenants include Terry Beswick, the club’s volunteer manager who receives a rental subsidy from Baker Places as compensation for his parttime work.

According to the board’s email, Johnson refused to provide written commitment that he would offer the club a long-term lease and/or leaseto-buy option in return for the club’s backing of the sale. He also publicly sparred with demonstrators outside the building that was recorded and posted on YouTube.

In the video Johnson tells the crowd he has no plans to evict the club but refuses to address what his plans are for the upstairs apartment. Beswick, in turn, tells the crowd he has spoken to attorneys and vows to fight his eviction “every step of the way.”

In an interview last week, Beswick said he and his two roommates would vacate the premises if it benefited the club’s future.

“But we are not there right now,” said Beswick, who added that, “I regret participating in that rally.”

Shortly after the incident, Johnson lowered his bid for the property, which was rejected, said Peter Stern, a lawyer for the trust

Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal

into a domestic partnership.

Out lesbian state Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) authored the Equal Rights Bill, SB 117, which Brown also signed. It prohibits the state from entering into contracts of more than $100,000 with companies that discriminate on the basis of the gender or sexual orientation of their employees’ spouses or domestic partners.

SB 182, the Judicial Applicant and Appointment Demographics Inclusion Act, ensures that voluntary data on the gender identity and sexual orientation of potential judges is gathered through the state’s Judicial Applicant Data Report.

State Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro) authored the legislation.

Another bill that Brown signed was SB 757, the Insurance NonDiscrimination Act. Authored by state Senator Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), the legislation closes a California loophole that allows some employers that operate in multiple states to discriminate by not providing the same coverage for domestic partners as they provide for spouses. Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes (D-Los Angeles) coauthored the bill, which requires that any insurance policy sold or issued in California must comply with the Golden State’s nondiscrimination requirements.

that owns the building.

“From the point of view of the sellers, we have an obligation to the beneficiaries to get the best price,” explained Stern.

It was the third time in two years that an offer to buy the building has fallen through, said Stern. The publicity around the club’s fate and public demonstrations have complicated any sale, he added.

“It has become a big deal, it is a political pinata I guess,” said Stern.

“We are not going to have anything closing in 2011, that is for sure.”

He nonetheless remains hopeful a buyer will emerge in the new year.

“Our trust is doomed to continue on into 2012. I am fairly confident we will have one or more offers,” said Stern. “It is my personal hope that whoever it is will want to see the club continue or help the club find another location.”

After Gerard Jian, who had owned the 1901 Edwardian building, died in 2009 the trust formed to dissolve Jian’s assets on behalf of three local nonprofits. The beneficiaries are St. Anthony’s Foundation, the Salvation Army and the San Francisco SPCA. The trust has rebuffed attempts by the club to enter into a long-term lease with an option to buy. And the beneficiaries, said Stern, have no interest in becoming the property owners themselves. The parties all prefer to find a buyer, he added.

“The video sounds like there is some warfare going on. That is not the way it is supposed to be,” he said.

The Protection of Parent-Child Relationships Act, AB 1349, allows courts to consider the relationship between children and their presumed and declared parents when determining parentage.

Assemblyman Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) authored the bill.

Assemblyman Marty Block (D-San Diego) authored AB 620, which addresses bullying and harassment in higher education.

In July, Seth’s Law is set to take effect. The anti-bullying law was named in memory of Seth Walsh, 13, of Kern County, who committed suicide last year after experiencing anti-gay harassment.

The legislation, also known as AB 9, was authored by gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). It tightens anti-bullying policies in California schools by ensuring that all schools have clear policies and shorter timelines for investigating bullying allegations.

For information on other bill sponsors, visit http://www.eqca.org.

Other bills Besides the EQCA-sponsored legislation, Brown also signed several other bills that address LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues.

One of those was AB 641, authored by Assemblyman Michael Feuer (D-Los Angeles). It amends the state’s long-term health care and nursing home benefits under MediCal, extending benefits to nontraditional families.

AB 673, by openly gay Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles), expands the scope of the Office of Multicultural Health to include LGBTs. Brown also signed SB 41, by state Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco). The bill authorizes the sale of clean syringes to adults at pharmacies statewide without a prescription. Access to clean needles has been an important tool in combating the spread of HIV, hepatitis C, and other diseases.

The Drug Policy Alliance and San Francisco AIDS Foundation sponsored the legislation.▼

“We are trying to just sell some real estate.”

Club officials said they are not yet ready to make an offer on the property.

They will be hosting a community meeting at 2 p.m. Sunday, February 5 at Most Holy Redeemer Church to discuss next steps.

“There is a chance if somebody else buys the building, we could have to close. The good news is we have enough saved now that we could go and find another location if we had too,” said Beswick, who remains encouraged that won’t happen.▼

Corrections The photo caption accompanying the December 22 story, “Occupy Castro activists speak out against supervisor” should have identified the person shown as Mark S., who declined to give his last name.

In the December 22 article, “Two local organizations awarded big grants,” the grant amount for the Brown Boi Project was incorrect. The organization received a $100,000 grant, payable in four $25,000 installments.

The online versions have been corrected.

On the web Online content this week includes the Out in the World column. www.ebar.com.

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Community News>>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Gilead requests HIV PrEP approval

by Liz Highleyman

S

outh San Francisco-based Gilead Sciences announced this month that it has submitted a supplemental new drug application to the federal Food and Drug Administration seeking approval of its Truvada combination pill for HIV preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. The company, which made the announcement December 15, has asked for priority review, meaning a decision could come as early as June.

Clinicians can currently prescribe drugs “off label” as they see fit, but official approval of Truvada PrEP would have implications for public health programs and insurance coverage.

“The data from clinical trials clearly show that taking Truvada every day and using condoms can be very effective in preventing HIV for people at highest risk for infection,” said Project Inform Executive Director Dana Van Gorder. “We believe in the right of HIV-negative people to choose the evidencebased prevention methods that best support their efforts to remain negative, and we urge quick FDA approval of Truvada for prevention.”

Gilead’s request is based on findings from a series of large

Liz Highleyman

Researcher Dr. Robert Grant

international trials of oral PrEP using Truvada or the medications it contains, tenofovir (sold separately as Viread) and emtricitabine (Emtriva). Overall, results have been promising but several questions remain unanswered.

The large iPrEX trial, which enrolled nearly 2,500 gay and bisexual men and transgender women in six countries (including San Francisco and Boston in the U.S.), found that daily Truvada reduced the risk of acquiring HIV

by 44 percent overall, with 36 new infections among men receiving PrEP compared with 64 among men taking a placebo pill.

Further data presented at the International AIDS Society conference this summer in Rome showed that risk reduction exceeded 90 percent for participants who had detectable drug levels in their blood, indicating good adherence.

“With 2.6 million new HIV infections occurring each year, and fewer than half of people with HIV receiving treatment, the world needs new and effective HIV prevention strategies,” said iPrEx protocol chair Dr. Robert Grant from the Gladstone Institutes and UCSF. “Men who have sex with men have borne an enormous burden in this epidemic, and have also been consistently at the head of efforts to help reverse it.”

Two other trials discussed in Rome – Partners PrEP and TDF2 – showed that the drugs in Truvada reduced the risk of HIV infection among heterosexual men and women in Africa by 60 percent to 75 percent.

In contrast, however, two studies of heterosexual African women have not seen a similar effect. The Fem-PrEP study of daily Truvada was halted earlier this year due to lack of effectiveness, as was an

arm of the VOICE trial testing oral tenofovir alone (the tenofovir/ emtricitabine combination is still being evaluated.)

Unanswered questions While Truvada PrEP appears highly effective when used appropriately by well-selected, high-risk populations, advocates and public health officials have raised concerns about practical effectiveness, long-term side effects, drug resistance, and cost and access.

PrEP trials have administered antiretroviral drugs as part of a comprehensive prevention package that also includes condoms and riskreduction counseling. Some experts suspect PrEP would not fare as well under “real world” conditions without such support; others worry that people using the drugs might think they are adequately protected and forego safer sex practices.

While Truvada is among the most widely used medications for HIV treatment and is generally safe and well-tolerated, the riskbenefit calculation is different when considering routine use by healthy HIV-negative people.

Studies have shown that the tenofovir component of Truvada can cause kidney problems and

bone loss in susceptible patients, and its longer-term effects beyond 10 years are not yet known.

Furthermore, it is important for people considering PrEP to be tested for HIV before starting and regularly thereafter, since using tenofovir/emtricitabine alone if the virus is present can lead to drug resistance that could limit future treatment options.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation issued a statement opposing Gilead’s bid for expanded approval, and questioned the “lack of transparency” of the FDA’s application process.

“We are disappointed that Gilead has irresponsibly decided to proceed with their application for an indication for PrEP despite the failed results from numerous trials,” said AHF president Michael Weinstein. “This is yet another example of a drug company putting profit before ethical conduct.”

AHF and others have expressed concerns about who would have access to PrEP and how it would be funded for HIV-negative people, especially given that many HIV-positive people in the U.S. and worldwide are unable to obtain antiretroviral drugs for treatment.▼

Lesbian seeks San Mateo harbor seat

by Matthew S. Bajko

W

ith little name recognition and a shorter than normal campaign period, Moss Beach resident Sabrina Brennan nonetheless garnered more than 61,000 votes in her 2010 race for a seat on the San Mateo County Harbor District board.

An out lesbian who owns her own digital graphics company, Brennan fell short by less than 10,000 votes in her bid for one of two seats on the oversight body. The election did see another out candidate, Robert Bernardo, come in first place.

Next fall three of the commission’s seats will be up for grabs, and Brennan is already laying the groundwork for another campaign.

“Both Robert and I filed on the same day; that left me with little more than two months to campaign,” said Brennan. “That was an interesting experience and not one I would want to repeat. I learned from experience it really does make sense to start campaigning earlier. Really, the earlier the better.”

The harbor commission oversees two marinas. The bayside Oyster Point Harbor is the site of a new ferry terminal connecting the Peninsula to Oakland and eventually San Francisco. It is set to open in 2012.

The other is Pillar Point Harbor north of Half Moon Bay, which has a beach frequented by surfers and a pier jutting out into the Pacific Ocean where fishermen sell their catch right off their boats. It is a fiveminute bike ride from Brennan’s home.

She said the same issues that led her to jump into last year’s race are driving her ambition to once again seek a harbor commission seat.

Her concerns run the gamut from water and beach pollution to how the district spends its funds and maintains its waterfront properties.

“I want to make it clear to people it is important the voice of the people influences the decisions the harbor

district is making. The community has concerns about it,” said Brennan, who lives one block from the ocean.

“It hasn’t been working as well as it could. Definitely, there is room for improvement there.”

Over the last year Brennan, 42, never completely ended her campaign. She has kept her website, http://www.sabrinabrennan.com, live with occasional updates. And she officially announced her 2012 bid on the site Monday, December 5. (A list of endorsements on the homepage is from her 2010 campaign, though Brennan expects those listed will also back her new bid.)

Shortly after last year’s election, Brennan attended a conference in San Francisco hosted by the New Organizing Institute, where she heard Jane Kim talk about her successful race for supervisor in the city’s District 6, which covers the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods.

“It was inspiring. She talked about how challenging it was for her and how much energy she put in to her campaign,” recalled Brennan, who married Aimee Luthringer in 2007 on Vancouver Island in Tofino, British Columbia.

“She was encouraging and said I

Sabrina Brennan

should do it again.”

This past summer she took part in a training for LGBT candidates the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund hosted in Chicago. She is now in the process of filing out her application to seek the group’s endorsement, which would allow her to tap into its national fundraising network.

She is also seeking more media attention this time outside of San Mateo County. During her first race she did not contact the Bay Area Reporter until after the election.

Asked why people outside the harbor district, and thus can’t vote in the election, should care about

who wins, Brennan said many people in the Bay Area use its facilities and thus have a stake in the race’s outcome.

“There is a very high chance you have used a facility before, even if you just come down to the harbor to buy crab off a boat or fish direct from a fisherman,” she said. ▼

<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

Volume 41, Number 52 December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Thomas E. Horn Bob Ross (Founder, 1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Scott Brogan Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Chuck Colbert Richard Dodds • David Duran Raymond Flournoy • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell John F. Karr • Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy David Lamble • Tony K. LeTigre Michael McDonagh • Paul Parish Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Ed Walsh • Sura Wood

ART DIRECTION Kurt Thomas PRODUCTION MANAGER T. Scott King PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland Marc Geller Rick Gerharter Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith

GENERAL MANAGER Michael M. Yamashita DISPLAY ADVERTISING Colleen Small Scott Wazlowski CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING David McBrayer NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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News Editor • news@ebar.com Arts Editor • arts@ebar.com Out & About listings • events@ebar.com Advertising • advertising@ebar.com Letters • letters@ebar.com A division of Benro Enterprises, Inc. © 2011 Published weekly. Bay Area Reporter reserves the right to edit or reject any advertisement which the publisher believes is in poor taste or which advertises illegal items which might result in legal action against Bay Area Reporter. Ads will not be rejected solely on the basis of politics, philosophy, religion, race, age, or sexual orientation.

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▼

A bad ban is back L

eave it to Republicans in Congress to turn back the clock on public health. No, we’re not talking about a women’s right to choose – which they are always challenging – we’re talking about a proven method of reducing HIV/AIDS transmission: making clean syringes available and free.

During the recent negotiations to keep the government operating, congressional Republicans were successful in reinstituting the ban on federal spending for both domestic and international needle exchange programs. While the ban doesn’t really impact California as much, it will have dire consequences in other parts of the United States and in countries around the world.

Until President Barack Obama signed a Democratic-sponsored appropriations bill lifting the restrictions two years ago, the ban had been in place for 20 years. Since then, of course, Republicans took control of the House following the 2010 midterm elections and the Senate inched closer to a GOP majority. Add to that the president’s inability to succeed at hardball politics, and the result is the return of a policy that will cost human lives. It’s that simple.

House Republicans passed restrictive language in three separate appropriation bills, and succeeded in getting two of the three bans in the House-Senate compromise bill that was voted on, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy organization.

For years research has shown a decrease in HIV/AIDS transmissions when injection drug users have access to clean needles. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Public Health Association are just some of the scientific bodies that have determined that syringe exchange programs are highly effective in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and

other infectious diseases.

San Francisco has led the way nationally with a successful needle exchange program that has been operating for years, thanks to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the private and city dollars that have funded it. Needle exchange sites are also located in other cities in the Bay Area. And in California, legislation that goes into effect Sunday, January 1, will allow pharmacies to sell sterile syringes to adults without a prescription. The law, authored by state Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and signed

by Governor Jerry Brown, will be helpful in stemming not only HIV infections, but other blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C. California is behind on this policy (Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a

similar bill last year) as 47 other states already allow pharmacists to sell syringes without a prescription. This no-brainer took a change in governors to implement. Yee’s bill is an option, not a replacement for syringe exchange programs, which serve those who often don’t have money.

Needle exchange is a proven and viable component of HIV prevention, especially in poorer nations. “The federal syringe funding ban was costly in both human and fiscal terms – it is outrageous that Congress is restoring it given how overwhelming and clear the science is in support of making sterile syringes widely available,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

For other nations, the restoration of the syringe ban will lead to more cases of HIV. Domestically, the ban will mean that more nonprofits will have to seek out and fight for private funding. It’s a lose-lose situation.▼

A victory for true safety in SF

by Morgan Bassichis

F

or many LGBT people, this New Year’s will be spent not with family and friends, but surviving the violence of life in a jail, prison, or detention facility, or awaiting deportation.

In fact, the terrifying possibility of lifealtering deportation is a daily reality for a growing number of LGBT immigrants in San Francisco.

Last month, Allan, a transgender Latino survivor of domestic violence and member of Community United Against Violence, bravely testified at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors: “I am afraid – my ex-partner could still retaliate against me by calling the police and falsely accusing my children of a crime. With Secure Communities, that means they would be deported ...”

Ironically, the source of this chilling fear is a failed federal program called Secure Communities, or S-Comm. The program is an unfair burden for local governments and was forced on San Francisco over our sheriff ’s strenuous objections. It deceptively uses the language of “safety and security” to target immigrants and tear families apart, and has deported tens of thousands of Californians in the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of people nationally.

But as the San Francisco Board of Supervisors affirmed in a crucial 8-3 vote earlier this month, we have the power to challenge S-Comm’s devastating impacts on community safety and defend the human rights of all San Franciscans. The board resolution recognized that we all lose when local police are entangled with federal immigration.

We are deeply grateful to out Supervisors David Campos and Scott Wiener for their support of this resolution, which encourages the sheriff and juvenile probation departments to further limit the use of local funds to respond to the immigration hold requests that S-Comm uses to sweep up immigrants into detention and deportation.

Some background: S-Comm automatically cross-checks fingerprints of everyone arrested for any reason with immigration databases.

Someone from Immigration and Customs Enforcement sends a request or “hold” to pressure local jails to detain community members for extra time – and at local expense – just so the person can be picked up for deportation.

ICE’s holds and S-Comm have become mired in scandal this year with revelations they have led to the detention of immigrant domestic violence survivors like San Francisco resident Norma, street vendors arrested for selling food without a permit, and also U.S. citizens like Antonio Montejano – all held past the time they otherwise would have been released.

Despite repeatedly telling officers he is a native-born citizen, Montejano was held in Los Angeles County Jail for four days because of the ICE hold. After the ordeal, his young son asked: “Dad, can this happen to me too because I look like you?”

That risk of profiling also hits home for many LGBTQ immigrants nationwide, particularly vulnerable to detention and deportation because they are more likely to come into contact with law enforcement.

Every week CUAV’s participants and members report negative interactions with police – including profiling and harassment on the street and false arrest in the context of domestic violence. Our most recent national statistics on LGBTQ domestic violence found a three-fold increase in the rate of both dual arrest (survivor and abuser) and survivor arrest from 7.1 percent in 2009 to 23.2 percent to 2010.

This is a problem from coast to coast, which is why over 75 local, regional, and national LGBT organizations – including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Lesbian Rights – signed on to a statement (http://www.cuav.org/article/11) co-authored

by CUAV in opposition to S-Comm. As Andrea Ritchie of New York’s Streetwise and Safe wrote on National Coming Out Day: “I need look no further than my own client files to put faces on ... who will be affected by

S-Comm: a Latino gay man falsely arrested for ‘lewd conduct’ based on a police officer’s entirely false accusation that he inexplicably dropped his pants as he took a walk in a park near his home in Queens, ... a Latina transgender woman profiled as being engaged in prostitution as she walked to the store ...”

And once sucked into the sprawling network of ICE’s detention facilities, immigrants face truly horrendous abuses. In April of this year, the National Immigrant Justice Center filed a suit on behalf of 13 LGBT immigrants detained

by ICE over allegations of sexual assault, denial of medical and mental health treatment, arbitrary long-term solitary confinement, and frequent harassment by officers and facility personnel.

As a result of mobilization and pressure from immigrant communities and their allies, local governments have sought to resist the growing integration of criminal legal and immigration enforcement systems: Outgoing San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey has been outspoken in challenging the program and amending his department’s policies. Counties like Santa Clara in the South Bay and Cook in Illinois have enacted even deeper reforms.

San Francisco’s stance despite ICE’s misleading spin is a beacon of hope for LGBT immigrants and all people who believe that real safety does not come through more arrest, deportation, or detention. The supervisors’ resolution gives strong backing to continue disentangling these systems and advancing a public safety agenda that focuses on building stronger, healthier communities.

It is one step closer to creating the kind of San Francisco where all of us can thrive in the year to come. ▼ Morgan Bassichis is the organizing director at Community United Against Violence, which was founded in San Francisco in 1979. CUAV works to build the power of LGBTQ survivors of violence to create safety in our lives and communities. For more information, visit www.cuav.org.

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Letters >>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Pleased with supe’s job I disagree that it was a rocky year for Supervisor Scott Wiener. Two articles and an editorial criticizing the job he is doing [“Rocky year greets Wiener,” “Occupy Castro activists speak out against supervisor,” and “A new year for bold ideas,” Editorial, December 22]? What do you have against him? I was a supporter in his election, even though he and I disagree on some issues of importance to me. However, since he has been in office, I am very pleased with the job that he is doing. He is hard working, really smart, and very thoughtful and considered in his decision making. He is accessible, responsive, and at every neighborhood event that I attend.

Just because a few extreme vocal activists in the Castro are still unhappy that their candidate did not win the election, that is no reason for a recall. I support his nudity ordinance, I actually wish that it had gone further, and it passed at the Board of Supervisors unanimously.

I am a dog owner and support his efforts to control dog walkers and to prevent the Golden Gate National Recreation Area limiting access by dog owners. I also supported his ballot proposal, Proposition E. It was a modest amendment to improve government, but it was not understood by the electorate. He was instrumental in the passage of Proposition B, the street repair bond, which lost at least once before. He worked with both labor and business to get it passed.

His proposal to turn an abandoned fenced off lot on Corbett Avenue into an open green space for the neighborhood is a good idea. If he proposed selling city property to a developer, he would have been criticized for being in the pocket of developers. This neighborhood has few open green spaces.

He passed the “Good Samaritan” ordinance even though he was told it would never happen. He was able to bring together tenant and property owner groups, when was the last time that happened in SF? Again, passing the Board of Supervisors unanimously. I live in the proposed Duboce historic district. He was at all the meetings, trying to address the concerns of the neighbors to make the district work for the residents.

He is doing a great job and addressing the concerns of all the residents of District 8. The district is more than the Castro.

David Fix San Francisco

Wiener’s good on entertainment Scott Wiener has stood up for the entertainment industry in San Francisco with real solutions. He has spearheaded an economic impact study that is due to be released in the near future. I am confident it will show that the nighttime entertainment industry deserves some respect because it contributes in a big way to the overall economic health of our city. We could have never done this study without Scott Wiener at the helm.

Scott has stood up for entertainment at every turn. I do believe that he thinks that San Francisco should be a great place for young and old alike to work, live, and play.

For his steadfastness on this issue I am very appreciative.

Now some may say that the entertainment industry may not be that important, I say that it is a billion-dollar industry that creates jobs, economic trickle down, and sorely needed relief for the citizens of our city. Along with the ballot measure he spearheaded to repair our streets this is just another example of the good this first year supervisor has accomplished.

Audrey Joseph San Francisco

[Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the San Francisco Entertainment Commission.]

A different perspective I need to comment on your recent Scott Wiener articles.

Sadly, when Ike’s Place moved from its former home across the street and right next door to my home, Ike did not make too many changes. Why? Possibly because it’s cheaper to get a carry-out sandwich permit. But the crowds kept coming, along with their trash and noise.

I phoned Wiener’s office numerous times. No calls were returned. I asked my neighbors. Same response.

Our Supervisor Weiner is not the dynamic public servant we needed at the time. After seeing him in the Bay Area Reporter at the Eagle closure protest, I finally wrote and said I guessed he only showed up when there are photo ops.

Then I got a response.

Wiener and folks said if I wanted something it would be best “not to insult” him. I responded that maybe if he wanted to get re-elected, it would be best to respond to and not insult his constituents. So ...

Ike, myself, neighbors et. al. finally met at Wiener’s office, adorned with his many Ivy League diplomas.

Nothing really happened.

Ike and I locked horns many times, but we managed to get along. But not before the problems of constant garbage on our stoop, name-calling, and even being badYelped. Ike, his staff, and our neighbors are helping solve the problem.

We all still believe that a proper restaurant space like the Patio or Home would be best for Ike’s, but in the meantime, we are doing our best.

Wiener is kind of clueless I guess, and maybe should

move back to the East Coast (the home of all those fancy diplomas).

Connie Champagne San Francisco

Pets and Wiener I am a pet store co-owner in the West Portal District of San Francisco as well as co-owner of a full-service animal care company. Needless to say, animals are my life, and according to the fact that there are more dogs than children in San Francisco, it is plain to see that they are many, many other people’s lives also. Recently, the GGNRA has been threatening to restrict or ban dogs from Crissy Field and Fort Funston, two extremely important pieces of land needed for exercising the city’s large dog population.

When other supervisors stood on the fence, or couldn’t be bothered to get involved, Scott Wiener took a stand for us.

He understands the needs for these spaces and has worked tirelessly to try and preserve them for all of our use. I sat in the public hearings that Supervisor Wiener called and was so impressed. Scott was strong and fair and at times, quite eloquent. He made it clear to all that were there that he was not going to back down or give in to a few fringe special interests, and maintained his commitment to do what was best for the city.

Supervisor Wiener also took up the banner for dog walker regulations, which was long overdue. Again, I was impressed with his willingness to listen and take all views into account. His fairness and empathetic nature make him a brilliant lawmaker. There are other supervisors who would not have bothered to take all sides into consideration and Wiener went above and beyond in this regard. It is shocking to me that people are not aware of what a good man he is. Having the pleasure of working with him on some of this legislation, I was able to get a good read on the kind of person Scott is and I must say, he is honest and thoughtful and measured, just the kind of person that should be in politics. I not only support Wiener as a supervisor, but one day, hope to be voting him in as our city’s mayor.

Alison Werger San Francisco

Community attacks its own I find it interesting that San Francisco is considered a very open, accepting city of all viewpoints and ideas.

That is until one expresses an idea that is in contradiction of some of the very vocal activists. And if you are a politician or someone in the public arena, you are held to standards and ideals that change, sometimes on a daily basis. I read the articles in the last issue of the B.A.R. regarding Supervisor Wiener with both amusement and a bit of sadness. Amusement because the articles contradicted themselves and sadness, because once again, this community is attacking one of its own.

I have known Wiener for a number of years and while not always agreeing with him, have found him to be thoughtful, open to dialogue, honest (and for a politician, that is an unusual trait), caring, dedicated, and selfless.

He understands that he represents all of his constituents and tries to balance their needs and concerns, not just the “squeeky wheel gets the oil” syndrome. It was interesting that so many people talked about the good job that he was doing on many of the issues yet the articles spent a large amount of time talking about his “nanny legislation.” I find the name appropriate because a large amount of that legislation is regualting the behavior of people acting like petulant, naughty children.

Wiener worked hard and helped pass Proposition B that will help upgrade streets for repaving, pedestrians and for bicyclists. He is also working on prevailing wage legislation that will help low income workers. His focus on issues like these demonstrate that he is working toward bettering the quality of life for all residents of San Francisco not just a few. I will agree that he has had a few missteps. But he is learning and we need to be there to guide and assist him.

I also find it ironic that a Facebook page has been started calling for a recall of Wiener. Why? Did he do something illegal? Was he caught cheating on his wife?

Did he trade public contracts for personal gain? No, he had the courage to continue to work on the things that he believed were right. Some did not resonate with voters and some did. And for the record, I checked that page.

It has 69 members. My question is, how many of those members actually live in District 8, which has thousands of registered voters. How many of those members live in other districts and hold their supervisors to the same standards? I also find it interesting that it is a closed group. If it is working on behalf of the public interest, then why not be open and let the public see.

My hope for 2012 is that the community spends its energy holding all the elected officials accountable to the whole community. We need to open dialogues, work together, and understand that compromise is usually needed in order to help everyone. Let’s work toward making San Francisco an open and accepting city, not just in theory but a reality.

Lenny Broberg Half Moon Bay, California

More letters are online at ebar.com. Click on “Opinion.”

<< Travel

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

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Fun in the sun, Florida style

by Ed Walsh

T

(((((((((

www.ebar.com )))))))))

he continued sluggish economy and the depressed real estate market in South Florida have a big upside for gay travelers to Fort Lauderdale. A Swedish investment group seized the real estate buying opportunity to purchase a couple of distressed buildings and transform the properties into the Royal Palms Resort and Spa, one of the largest gay hotels in North America. That 50-unit hotel opened in April.

The Swedes aren’t stopping with the Royal Palms. They are buying up a swath of properties along Fort Lauderdale Beach near the Royal Palms and turning them into what they are calling the North Beach Village, creating what may ultimately become the country’s newest gayborhood.

For more than a decade, Fort Lauderdale has been the undisputed gay resort capital of the east, with about two-dozen gay hotels and many more very gay-friendly ones. And as of a couple of years ago, it’s never been easier to get to Fort Lauderdale. Both JetBlue and Virgin America fly nonstop to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International from San Francisco International Airport.

Of course, the biggest draws to the greater Fort Lauderdale area are the weather and beaches. The unofficial gay beach is the Sebastian section of Fort Lauderdale Beach, where Sebastian Street meets the beach. About a half-hour south of Fort Lauderdale on the northern end of Miami Beach, the clothingoptional Haulover Beach also has a gay section.

Lay of the land Most of Fort Lauderdale’s gay resorts are located near the beach, while almost all of the gay nightlife is a 10-minute drive away in Wilton Manors, a city of 13,000 people. The city’s gay population is estimated to be about 40 percent. Wilton Manors has one of the largest LGBT centers in the world situated on five and a half acres, resembling more of a small college campus than an LGBT center.

If you are staying in Fort Lauderdale, it is a good idea to rent a car if you want to enjoy the Wilton Manors nightlife. The Fort Lauderdale airport makes it very easy. One shuttle bus takes you to the car rental center. Depending on demand, you can often get great deals on rental cars there. Usually the best bargains are found from car rental companies that do business away from the car rental center, so you will have to take another shuttle from the car rental center to get to their offices, but it could be worth it to save even more money.

Sights Fort Lauderdale is a city of

Ed Walsh

Sidelines sports bar staff, from left, Dean Knapp, Daniel Shannon, Matthew Soler, keep customers happy as they check out the latest scores.

canals, where the super rich literally dock their yachts in their front yard. Early on, developers dug the canals to create more waterfront property. You can get up close to some of those yachts and check out the homes of the 1 percent on the Jungle Queen Riverboat cruise, the Duck Tour, or by water taxi.

Unlike Miami Beach, there are no hotels directly on Fort Lauderdale Beach, so you can get a great unobstructed view of the ocean as you drive alongside the beach on the city’s most scenic street, North Atlantic Boulevard (A-1-A). You will also enjoy good beach weather year-round. Fort Lauderdale Beach is framed by wave wall sculpture that is artfully accented by a ribbon of neon light.

The National Stonewall Museum and Archives is a must for any gay visitor. It includes an archive of more than 5,000 items and an extensive LGBT lending library. You can browse current gay newspapers from all parts of the country, including the Bay Area Reporter. It has copies of the B.A.R. dating back to 1971. The museum’s exhibits include everything from the original “homosexual rights” protest signs in the pre-Stonewall days to signed memorabilia from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Admission is free and there is a free movie every Friday night. You can check out books or DVDs for a $35 annual library card fee.

Fort Lauderdale is also a good jumping off point for a tour of the Everglades. The Billie Swamp Safari is about a 90-minute drive away and offers airboat rides that will give you a glimpse of what much of Florida looked like before northern vacationers took over.

Las Olas Boulevard is known as Fort Lauderdale’s “style mile.” It was once a sleepy road to the beach but is now dotted with high-end fashion boutiques, art galleries, sidewalk cafes, and some of the best

restaurants in the state.

The Bonnet House Museum and Gardens sits on 45 acres across from Fort Lauderdale Beach. The historic home is also an art gallery. A guided tour takes you back into South Florida’s early days. By the way, Fort Lauderdale is a spring chicken. It didn’t turn 100 until this year.

Nightlife The greater Fort Lauderdale area is the undisputed gay nightlife capital of Florida. South Florida Gay News lists seven gay bars and nightclubs in Miami but 14 in Wilton Manors alone.

The gay nightlife area of the city is clustered around the Shoppes of Wilton Manors strip mall on Wilton Boulevard that is home to the city’s most popular gay clubs, Georgie’s Alibi and Atomic Boom. Georgie’s includes a restaurant, video bar, pool bar, and cabaret lounge bar.

Thursdays are famous for Long Island Iced Tea served in Mason jars.

Boom has a disco and a separate cruise bar.

The Manors opened up two years ago along Wilton Drive, just a few minutes walk from Georgie’s. It’s a 16,000 square-foot complex that includes a restaurant, martini bar, coffee shop, nightclub, and lounge bar.

Wilton Manors’ only lesbian bar is farther down along Wilton Drive and on the other side of the street from the Manors. It’s called the New Moon. The main bar includes a back open-air patio.

Bill’s Filling Station is across the street from Georgie’s and is popular with bears and, not surprisingly, has a huge beer selection. It has a dance floor, multi-rooms, pool tables, and darts.

Sidelines Sports Bar has 18 flatscreen TVs, three pool tables, three dartboards, foosball table, and has a very loyal following. While it’s mostly gay men, it’s also popular See page 9 >>

Ed Walsh

The periodical section of the Stonewall Archives includes the Bay Area Reporter, among other publications.

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Obituaries >>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

John Lawrence, figure in landmark gay rights case, dies

by Cynthia Laird

J

ohn Geddes Lawrence, the named defendant in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 landmark Lawrence v. Texas decision that overturned all remaining sodomy laws in the country, died November 20 in Texas. He was 68.

The cause of death was complications of a heart ailment, his partner, Jose Garcia, told the New York Times. Garcia declined to comment to the Bay Area Reporter, according to Dale Carpenter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who has written a book on the case, Flagrant Conduct, to be published in March by W.W. Norton and Company.

Carpenter, a former columnist for the B.A.R., said that he interviewed Mr. Lawrence twice for his book, and recently met with Garcia. Mr. Lawrence had heart surgery in 2010.

He had been very ill for several weeks, Carpenter said, but wanted to stay at home, where Garcia cared for him.

Mr. Lawrence was often referred to as the lead plaintiff in the Lawrence case but he was actually the defendant. The case started on September 17, 1998, when Harris County sheriff ’s deputies entered Mr. Lawrence’s second-floor apartment and reported that they walked in on Mr. Lawrence and Tyron Garner having sex. The men

Dale Carpenter

John Geddes Lawrence

were arrested and jailed overnight.

(Garner, who was never a partner of Mr. Lawrence’s but was a good friend, died September 11, 2006 at the age of 39 due to respiratory failure due to septic shock.)

Mr. Lawrence and Garner were convicted of violating Texas’ Homosexual Conduct Law, which made it a crime for two people of the same sex to have consensual sexual contact. Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund litigated the case through the Texas court system and eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court. Also serving as counsel in the case was Houston attorney Mitchell Katine.

Attorney Paul M. Smith argued the

Man pleads not guilty in pedestrian death

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

San Francisco man has pleaded not guilty in the death of a gay pedestrian in the city’s Duboce Triangle area.

Gregg Wilcox, 60, faces a misdemeanor charge of vehicular manslaughter in the case. Omid Talai, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said that Wilcox had been wearing a walking cast on his right foot when he allegedly struck William “Bill” Cox, 59, with his SUV on September 6. Cox, who had been crossing 14th street, died later that day. Wilcox entered his plea December 13, Talai said.

Wilcox, whose bail had been set at $10,000 and is out of custody, referred questions to Rafael Trujillo, his attorney. Trujillo called Cox’s death “a terrible accident,” but declined to comment further.

Officer Albie Esparza, a San Francisco Police Department spokesman, said shortly after the incident that Wilcox, whose identity hadn’t yet been released, was driving south on Noe Street and turning left

William “Bill” Cox was struck while walking in a crosswalk.

onto 14th Street when he hit Cox in the 14th Street crosswalk. Wilcox stopped at the scene, Esparza said.

The next hearing has been set for March 16 for pretrial conference.

If he’s convicted, Wilcox could be sentenced to up to one year in jail.

Assistant District Attorney Mary Plomin is prosecuting the case.▼

Obituaries >> Bradley Scott Moore September 27, 1954 – December 1, 2011

Our precious Bradley left us unexpectedly of natural causes. He was only 56. Friend, brother, uncle, and general crazy person, Bradley came to Oz from Rockford, Illinois 30 years ago and became a cook, record producer, and entrepreneur. He described himself as

“a lover of men” and love them, he did!

He is survived by his sister Heather; his friends, Shelley, Daniel, Mark, Wendy; and his dear Jallen – who are all sick with grief because of his passing, but grateful for having known and laughed with him. In keeping with his wishes his ashes will be spread in equal amounts over the floor in Blow Buddies and the Folsom Gulch. We love you Bradley and will never forget you. A celebration of his life will take place on Friday, December 30 at 6:30 p.m. Contact Jallen for details at (415) 720-1075.

case before the Supreme Court on behalf of Mr. Lawrence.

In a stunning 6-3 victory, Texas’ anti-gay law – and all remaining sodomy laws in the country – was found unconstitutional in 2003. The Lawrence decision overturned Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 Supreme Court decision that allowed states to criminalize gay sexual activity. The Lawrence decision established, for the first time, that lesbians and gay men are entitled to fundamental liberty and privacy rights under the Constitution. A statement from Lambda Legal on Mr. Lawrence’s death noted that the Lawrence case has been cited more than 600 times to date and that the decision continues to shape the evolution of LGBT civil rights law.

“John Lawrence was a quiet, unassuming and heroic man, whose courage shaped the LGBT rights movement, and we look back on his accomplishments with profound respect and pride,” Lambda Legal Executive Director Kevin Cathcart said in a statement. “The impact of Lawrence v. Texas is felt every time a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender person steps into a courtroom.”

Mr. Lawrence was born August 2, 1943 in Beaumont, Texas, and was a resident of Kountze, Texas until graduating from Kountze High School in 1961.

He served four years in the Navy and worked as a medical technologist in Kountze and Houston hospitals until his retirement in 2009.

Mr. Lawrence was preceded in death by his father, John Geddes Lawrence Sr.; mother, Elizabeth Van Schoubroek Warden; stepfather, Richard Bert Warden; and sister,

Brenda Gail Williamson.

In addition to Garcia, Mr. Lawrence is survived by his brother Charles Walton Lawrence of Kountze; sister Mary Jane Rodriguez

(Joe) of Kountze; and several nieces and nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends.

Funeral services were held November 23 in Silsbee, Texas.▼

<< Commentary

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

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Milestone anniversaries await in 2012

by Roger Brigham

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o nice of the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers to delight our Christmas Eve with double matinee victories to give us the perfect Darrius Christmas and Harbaugh New Year! And now, as the Niners and the Oakland A’s explore their real estate options in southerly suburbs, we look at the year ahead in sports.

First, let’s realize how monumentally and swiftly our world can change, seemingly overnight. Fifty years ago the Cuban missile crisis and Soviet leaders thumping shoes on desks had us believing atomic bombs were about to fall. Five decades ago,

Little League Baseball was strictly for little boys. Golf was played by white gentlemen on country club courses, their Stepford wives breaking only the slightest glisten of sweat while getting in a game of tennis before driving their station wagons to drop the girls off at ballet and the boys off at football. But over the next tumultuous decade, social change came with civil rights legislation, women’s liberation and free love, transforming our playing fields even as it changed our politics.

Expect memories of those decades past to be brought up repeatedly over the course of the next few years as milestone anniversaries are celebrated.

• Title IX, the landmark legislation that outlawed sexual discrimination in federally assisted educational programs, celebrates its 40th anniversary of passage in June. More than any other federal act, Title IX has given millions of girls a chance to discover their inner athletes and empower their lives through sports.

• The Gay Games, launched in San Francisco to increase selfrespect and sports awareness in the queer community, celebrate its 30th anniversary in August. Thousands of LGBT sports organizations have come into existence since the launch of the Gay Games.

• Twenty years ago, 1992 marked the last time the Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same year, and it also marked the only Olympic appearance of the

former Soviet-bloc of countries under the name United Team. As such, it was the athletic symbol of the last of the old Cold War politics that fueled the furor behind the East and West rivalries.

• Ten years ago, in 2002, the San Jose Saber Cats won their first ArenaBowl championships and the San Francisco Giants lost in the World Series to the Angels.

OK, so maybe we won’t celebrate those anniversaries.

But back to Title IX and the Gay Games.

Neither has the single moment cultural resonance of Jackie Robinson’s suiting up on Opening Day of the 1947 National League season for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break Major League Baseball’s unofficial but absolute color barrier, yet all three events did more than open up opportunities in sports for those who had been shut out.

They changed the way we look at sports, the way we look at ourselves, and the way we look at each other. They forced dialogue and argument. They exposed the ugliness and poison of everyday prejudices to the glare of media spotlights, radio microphones and television cameras.

The new year, 2012, is a bit of a milestone for my sporting life as well. It was 30 years ago that I became the only out sports editor at a major daily newspaper, so I’ve had a good first-hand seat from which to witness so much of the change going on in the locker rooms around us.

I’ve seen the golf clubs, one

Activist Bernice Sandler, left, filed the sex discrimination lawsuits that triggered the passage of Title IX 40 years ago. Olympian Dr. Tom Waddell founded the Gay Games 30 years ago.

by one, drop their policies of reserving prime tee times for male white collar workers. I’ve blasted professional and college teams when they have barred women reporters from team dressing rooms. I’ve seen the money rush that Title IX triggered lead to male athletic directors and coaches taking over so many of the jobs that once belonged to women. I’ve seen a gay community staggered by the sudden onslaught of the AIDS epidemic fight to right itself, reexamine its behavior, and rally to come together as never before in its history, with much of that unified spirit playing out on basketball courts and on softball fields.

I’ve seen the trickle of gay professional athletes following David Kopay’s venture out of the closet and onto the pages of the sporting press to let us know who they are and what they play. I’ve seen transgender athletes shed their own limiting perceptions about the athletic constraints their identities

put upon them to achieve glory and fulfillment in sports competition.

We enter the new year with fairer protections and laws in place for athletes at every level of competition than we have ever had in our history.

If 2011 was the year we stopped lurking in the closet; 2012 should be the year we start celebrating and performing in force on the field.

So make your New Year’s resolution one to draft a couple of your best buddies to join you in sports, especially if they have never played softball or basketball or tennis in their lives. Get them to jump in the pool with you or hit the weights at the gym. Jog with them on mountain trails or bike with them through Golden Gate Park.

There is no better physical activity to teach you solitude and self-motivation than recreational sports. But don’t go it alone. Next year, recruit a second baseman or a power forward.

Play ball.▼

It doesn’t work

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

I

n 1959 a comedy named Some Like It Hot hit theaters. It featured Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as a pair of musicians who happened to witness a Valentine’s Day massacreesque gangland shooting. Fleeing for their lives, the duo ends up disguising themselves as women and joining an all-female musical group.

While this was the third theatrical retread of this story – it was first a 1935 French movie named Fanfare d’Amour and a 1951 German flick named Fanfaren der Liebe – this was the first American version. It went on to be nominated for several Academy Awards, and is often at or near the top of any “best comedic films of all time” list. Some Like It Hot even became the basis for an unsold television pilot in 1961, a musical in 1972, and yet another stage adaptation in 2002.

In 1980, a television show first aired on ABC. That sitcom, featuring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari, was about two men who disguise themselves as women in order to secure an apartment in the all-female Susan B.

Christine Smith

Anthony Hotel. This show, Bosom Buddies, was linked to Some Like It Hot: the writers had envisioned a standard buddy comedy, but ABC would only green light it if the story included cross-dressing men à la Some Like It Hot. It was modestly popular, lasting two seasons on ABC, then getting some rebroadcasts on NBC in 1984.

In 1998, another sitcom came out on the Fox Network.

This one, called Ask Harriet, featured a sports columnist cross-dressing to take a job as an advice columnist.

The show was a midseason replacement and only made it through five of its 13 episodes.

Aside from these three examples, there have been scores of others, including Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Sorority Boys, One Of The Boys, Nuns On The Run, Juwanna Mann, Connie and Carla, and more. The common element of each is that a main character or characters take the role of the opposite sex in order to gain something – freedom, housing, employment, etc. – and along the way learn a lesson about how the other gender lives their lives.

The basic premise goes back much further than Billy Wilder’s 1959 film. The earliest example I could find was Shakespeare’s As You Like It, where Rosalind disguises herself as a young man to escape Duke Fredrick, and familiar hijinks ensue.

I talked with many people before working on this column, trying to find pop culture examples outside of transgender identities where this same story played out. A handful of examples emerged. Jack Tripper being a “pretend gay” on Three’s Company. The dreadful blackface of the 1986 movie Soul Man, and science fiction examples of aliens, enhanced humans, and robots passing themselves off as human.

All of these pale against the sheer number of “someone cross-dresses to get away with something” stories.

So why all the history?

Because next week, ABC will be unveiling a midseason replacement program, Work It, featuring two men who are out of work in the current recession. In order to find employment, they cross-dress to work for a pharmaceutical company.

See page 9 >>

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Community News>>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

SB 48

Shortly after the governor signed SB 48 into law this summer, Equality California, GSA Network and others formed a coalition to protect the legislation against anti-gay activists seeking to undo it.

The coalition’s executive committee, which has been interim, is disbanding. A permanent panel is expected to form.

Committee member David Fleischer, director of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center’s leadership LAB (learn, act, build), said it would take approximately $50 million to protect SB 48 if its opponents manage to get an initiative on the November 2012 ballot.

That amount is similar to what

each side in the fight over the Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban raised before California voters passed that anti-gay measure in 2008.

“We don’t really have, as part of our membership, a group of people who are ready, willing, and able to raise that chunk of money to launch a genuine campaign,” Fleischer said of the interim committee.

However, he expressed confidence others could raise the money.

“If this community was able to raise this money in 2008, I feel quite confident this community could raise this money in 2012,” Fleischer said. He said “a really smart goal” would be to gather the first $10 million in January and February.

Asked about raising the amounts of which Fleischer spoke, EQCA spokeswoman Rebekah Orr said she’s “concerned” about SB 48 supporters being able to raise that much.

“People have not been as tuned into this issue” as they’ve been with marriage, she said. She also cited the “brutal economic environment.”

SB 48 also addresses contributions by people with disabilities.

Teresa Favuzzi, an out lesbian who’s physically disabled, is the executive director of the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers and a member of the interim SB 48 committee.

Favuzzi said she’s leaving the panel because, among other reasons, “I don’t have the connections to individuals that are going to lead to the kinds of financial donations that are necessary.”

Most other committee members didn’t respond to interview requests.▼

cooperation to cultivate marijuana is the source of what has come to be known as dispensaries.

In her letter, Harris states, “strict constructionists argue the plain wording of the law only provides immunity to prosecution for those who associate in order to collectively cultivate marijuana,” while those not involved in the physical cultivation are not protected from prosecution.

The attorney general stated that others read the statute to expansively include all who are involved with

the cultivation and dispensing of marijuana for medical use.

Harris called the two interpretations “irreconcilable,” and stated that until there is a clear interpretation of the statute “uncertainty” for law enforcement and patients will continue to exist.

Harris also noted that marijuana “edibles,” food with THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, also were not defined by Prop 215, noting the amount of THC in such food products as cookies, infused drinks, cakes, and butter has no

standard portion established, nor are such food products regulated to ensure they are made in “a safe manner.”

“I hope that the foregoing suggestions are helpful to you in crafting legislation,” Harris concluded. “California law places a premium on patients’ rights to access marijuana for medical use. In any legislative action that is taken, the voters’ decision to allow physicians to recommend marijuana to treat seriously ill patients must be respected.”▼

and only a couple in Wilton Manors.

Most are clothing optional. The Casa del Mar was once a gay-lesbian mixed hotel but now promotes itself as a gay-friendly hotel.

As previously mentioned, the Royal Palms is the largest gay hotel in Fort Lauderdale. The upscale property maintains the art deco facade shell of the two original buildings and is white, modern and minimalist chic inside. It has two pools, one clothing optional and the other not. It also has a restaurant and bar. On the downside, unlike the other gay men’s hotels in Fort Lauderdale, it has no Jacuzzi and there is no free continental breakfast. By the way, the investment group that owns the Royal Palms also bought out the old Royal Palms

Resort, which has been in existence since 1991. That property was renamed the Lush Royale to avoid any confusion.

With 38 rooms, the WorthingtonAlcazar Resorts is the largest gayowned and -operated resort in Fort Lauderdale. The hands-on owner, Jim Durhan, can be seen working on the property every day.

His attention to detail helps keep the resort in pristine condition. An excellent, well-equipped gym is on the Alcazar side of the property.

This is a very social hotel where it is easy to meet new friends around the pool, at breakfast or the hot tub.

The Elysium is just across the street from the Worthington, and with 36 rooms, is another of the larger resorts in Fort Lauderdale.

The gay couple who own it also work onsite paying attention to the important details that keep a loyal repeat clientele.

The Grand Resort and Spa is among the more upscale of the gay resorts. It’s right next to the Worthington. Its front pool is not clothing-optional, but you can shed your bathing suit in the hot tub and patio in the back area. The Grand also has a wonderful full-service spa that is open to visitors and guests alike. If you use the spa, you can use the hotel’s facilities. The Grand also has a well-equipped gym.

The Cabanas in Wilton Manors is situated on one of the greater Fort Lauderdale area’s canals. You can borrow one of the resort’s kayaks and get some exercise while you

check out the area’s natural beauty.

There is also a sauna on property where you can warm up on the occasional chilly night in South Florida. Most of the gay nightlife in Wilton Manors is about a mile away.

the failed Ask Harriet, it’s a tired premise ginned up into a midseason replacement sitcom. It’s a comedy angle dating back to at least the 16th century, and trotted out scores of times in the last 50 years.

In fact, I think ABC is taking the “no publicity is bad publicity” tack with this show, knowing that a fair amount of its initial audience – and all of its initial buzz – will be from advocacy groups critical of the show. Honestly, do you think anyone is looking at the promotions and thinking it’s going to be worth their time?

So I figure that every press release,

every column (including this one), every Facebook post, tweet, or blog posting that speaks out against this is pure publicity for the show.

Many have commented that the show itself is not about transgender people, and does not in any way reflect transgender self-expression.

That’s fairly accurate. The main characters are men, identify as men, and are only dressing as women as a dodge. They’ve not gone through what most transgender people go through. Our lives are, quite frankly, generally not sitcom material.

Yet, as a transgender woman who

is under-employed in this economy, like so many others, I know that a show like this can and will impact how one is perceived when entering a job interview. It reinforces the cultural stereotype that transgender people are deceptive, the very heart of much of the discrimination and violence perpetuated against transgender people. This is the sort of thing, quite frankly, with which I can see schoolyard bullies – and plenty of grown-up bullies – making quite a bit of hay.

Should ABC air the show? If anything, I sure don’t see it sticking

around. Indeed, I expect it to be as long-lived as Ask Harriet. Maybe that’s for the best, too. Maybe, in the end, it dying a quick death may finally put an end to this tired subgenre. I won’t call for a boycott, but I wouldn’t shed a tear to see it removed nonetheless.

Meanwhile, perhaps the networks can look at doing some actual transgender stories instead.▼

From page 1

published, said LGBTs’ historical contributions aren’t taught at her high school in Davis, California.

However, she once wrote about slain gay icon Harvey Milk after reading Randy Shilts’s biography The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.

She said the book “opened my eyes to all this history I’ve never learned about before.” SB 48 will humanize LGBTs, allowing queer students to see themselves as being “worthy,” and shows straight students “these are people that are like me,” rather than merely stereotypes, Sturla said.

Gradual effects The new law was authored by gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and signed into law

by Governor Jerry Brown in July.

It’s set to take effect next week, but Tina Jung, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, said the state Board of Education couldn’t review new curriculum until 2015. She cited budget cuts that came during the administration of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“We really can’t get new textbooks into the classroom until 2017 or 2019, somewhere around there,” Jung said.

Teachers don’t have to wait for new textbooks, though, Jung said, since nothing prevents school districts from adopting new materials sooner.

Whatever local agencies do, Jung said “the bottom line” is that “It’s wrong to discriminate, and our

<<

Attorney general From page 1

v. Superior Court, which found that state regulation of large scale cultivation and manufacture of marijuana “stand as an obstacle to federal enforcement efforts and are therefore preempted by the Federal Controlled Substances Act,” of 1970.

Second, because the Compassionate Use Act (Prop 215) was adopted as an initiative statute, legislative efforts to regulate the issues surrounding its

<<

Fort Lauderdale From page 6

with women sports fans.

The Ramrod has a main front bar and an open-air back bar. As you might guess, its big demographic is the leather/fetish crowd. But it also attracts a general crowd that appreciates its delightfully downhome dive bar feel.

If you want to be with a big crowd, the Living Room is an expansive gay Friday night dance space in Fort Lauderdale. And be sure to check out the monthly pool parties at the Royal Palms Resort and Spa.

Accommodations There are a couple dozen gay men’s resorts in Fort Lauderdale

<<

Transmissions From page 8

Here we go again.

ABC has pulled out all the usual stops, even promoting the show with a poster featuring the two stars, shown from behind with hiked up skirts, at urinals. Any number of activists and advocacy groups have spoken out, calling on ABC to pull the show.

Like similar incidents, I personally have been reluctant to speak out about this show. I think this program has no future. Like

Ilsa Bertolini, left, and Kevin Gogin, from the San Francisco School District’s Support Services for LGBTQ Youth, spoke to an overflow crowd in the Alvarado Elementary School auditorium during the first LGBTQ Families Dinner held in the fall.

Rick Gerharter

instructional materials should not discriminate.”

“When you have a discriminationfree learning environment, kids learn better, and they are safer,” she added.

Officials would check for implementation of SB 48 during regular audits of schools, Jung said.

She couldn’t say how often audits would happen or provide many specifics of consequences if schools aren’t complying. She also couldn’t predict how much implementing SB 48 would cost.

Jung vacillated on her interpretation of SB 48. At one point during an interview, she said one newspaper had “incorrectly interpreted the law” by saying that it requires teaching about LGBT contributions. However, she repeatedly refused to say whether it’s accurate to say that the law requires schools teach about LGBTs’ historical contributions.

“I don’t find the word ‘mandate’ anywhere,” she said.

Specifically, SB 48 amends the state education code to read: “Instruction in social sciences shall include the early history of California and a study of the role and contributions” of LGBTs and others “to the economic, political, and social development of California and the United States of America, with particular emphasis on portraying the role of these groups in contemporary society.”

Among other provisions, the law also says that schools can’t promote discrimination against LGBTs, or adopt materials that reflect adversely on them.

In San Francisco, much has already been done to ensure the city’s public schools address LGBT issues. Kevin Gogin, program manager for the San Francisco Unified School District’s school health programs, said that information on SB 48 has been posted at a district website since September,

implementation are limited by the state constitution, which prevents legislative regulation that would “undo what the people have done.”

Despite these limits, Harris indicated the need for legislative intervention, describing “significant unresolved legal questions,” regarding parts of the initiative that allow for collaborative cultivation. While the initiative itself does not include the term “dispensaries,” Section 11362.775 of the Health and Safety Code that describes collective

at http://www.healthiersf.org/lgbtq.

In response to emailed questions, Gogin said that many San Francisco teachers are already teaching about LGBTQ historical contributions. He added that through “vibrant” gaystraight alliances and events such as Respect Week, “positive portrayals of LGBTQ persons are also promoted.”

Gogin said that district staff would review all of their programmatic, curricular, and professional development efforts in order to “solidify our efforts to create safer schools for all students.”

He also said that between September and December 6, the district’s Support Services for LGBTQ Youth reached over 90 kindergarten through 12th grade teachers and others for professional development.

“SB 48 was addressed at each of the trainings,” Gogin said. More presentations are coming, he said.

Pro-SB 48 committee changing

Eating out The city’s most popular gayfriendly restaurants are in Wilton Manors. Rosie’s Bar and Grill, Galanga Thai Kitchen and Sushi Restaurant, Georgie’s Alibi, Bill’s Filling Station, and the York Restaurant in the Manor complex are all gay favorites.▼ For more information, visit Fort Lauderdale’s official tourism board website http://www. sunny.org/glbt.

Gwen Smith apologies for any publicity she may have given this show. You can find her on the web at http://www.gwensmith.com.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

10 • Bay Area Reporter • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

Classifieds

t

Legal Notices>>

The

City and County of San Francisco January, 2012 Monthly NOTICE OF AVAILABILITY OF REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP)

The Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) is pleased to announce the availability of the RFP for 2012-2013 for Economic Development program under two funding sources: Community Development Block Grant, and San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.

The RFP will is available electronically on OEWD’s website at www.oewd.org and on MOH’s website at www.sf-moh.org. All proposals must be submitted electronically by 5:00 pm on Thursday, January 19, 2012.

Supporting documentation must also be received by OEWD by 5:00 pm on Thursday, January 19, 2012.

COMMISSION ON THE ENVIRONMENT Commission on the Environment Policy Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, January 9, 2012 at 5 p.m., City Hall, Room 421. Commission on the Environment meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 5 p.m., City Hall, Room 416. For more Information: Commission on the Environment can be found at this website http://www.sfenvironment.org/ our_policies/overview.html?ssi=10 DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT Plastic bags are harmful to our city’s environment. They often become litter and end up in the ocean harming our marine life. Plastic bags also cost the city millions of dollars each year. They clog street drains and sewer systems.

We cannot achieve zero waste by 2020 if we continue to use so many plastic bags. They are difficult to recycle and can contaminate our composting and recycling systems.

The solution is simple; when shopping, please bring a reusable bag with you. It’s that easy!

For more information visit: www.sfenvironment.org.

SAN FRANCISCO REDISTRICTING TASK FORCE ANNOUNCES SECOND ROUND OF COMMUNITY OUTREACH MEETINGS Over 15 Meetings Scheduled To Maximize Public Participation In The Redistricting Process The San Francisco Redistricting Task Force will be holding meetings in each of the Supervisorial districts to maximize public participation in the redistricting process.

The Task Force urges the people of San Francisco to attend the meetings, provide input and submit proposed district maps in compliance with established criteria no later than March 29, 2012.

The Redistricting Task Force must finish redrawing district lines before April 15, 2012.

The following community meetings are scheduled for January, February and March 2012: Please Note: The locations for the *SPECIAL MEETINGS* are still being determined. Location information will be available at sfgov.org/rdtf.

January Schedule: Regular Meeting Special Meeting Special Meeting Special Meeting February Schedule: WednesdayFebruary 1 Special Meeting Monday February 6 Special Meeting Saturday February 11 Special Meeting Friday February 17 Regular Meeting Thursday February 23 Special Meeting March Schedule: Thursday March 1 Special Meeting WednesdayMarch 7 Regular Meeting Monday March 12 Special Meeting Saturday March 17 Special Meeting Thursday March 22 Special Meeting Thursday March 29 Special Meeting

6pm 6pm 10am 6pm

Rm 406, City Hall District 11 District 6 District 10

6pm 6pm 2pm 3pm 6pm

District 9 District 2 District 1 Rm 416, City Hall District 3

6pm 6pm 6pm 10am 6pm 6pm

District 8 Rm 406, City Hall District 7 District 5 District 4 City Hall

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

nOTICE OF APPLICATIoN for change in ownership of alcoholic beverage license Dated 12/13/11 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : BENJAMIN MEAGHER SAPONE,WILLIAM ANTHONY SAPONE. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 433 S. Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94103-3629. Type of license applied

41- On-sale beer and wine – eating place dec 29,2011,jan 5,12,19,2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name: #A0329559-00 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as BEST IN TENSION,999 Sutter St.,San Francisco, CA 94109.

This business was conducted by an individual, signed Peter J. Donovan. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/09/10.

dec 8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033974900

statement file A-034011100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as P&D INTERNATIONAL CONSULTING,2619 18TH Ave., Apt. #2,SF,CA 94116.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Zheng Xiaohong.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/19/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-034000800

Legal Notices>>

WednesdayJanuary 4 Monday January 9 Saturday January 21 Thursday January 26

statement file A-034000700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as TK LIMO TRANSPORTATION,420 Oriente St., Daly City,CA 94014.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Tham Cheang Gip.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/13/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/13/11

statement file A-033983900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as PROPAGATE DESIGNS,2728 Mission St., SF,CA 94110.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Melissa A. Hawkins.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/05/11

dec 8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033978400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as BAY SUBS & DELI,2486 Sacramento St., SF,CA 94115.This business is conducted by a husband and wife, signed Sang Woo Lee..The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/01/11

dec 8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033985600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as INFINITY LIMOUSINE,845 Florida St., SF,CA 94110.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Corwin Chan.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/06/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/06/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033991700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as CORONA HEIGHTS CONSULTING GROUP, 1222 Clayton St.,#11,SF,CA 94114.This business is conducted by a general partnership, signed Mark Sloman.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/30/11

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ALBERS AND ABLERS, 197 Downey St.,SF,CA 94117.This business is conducted by an individual, signed John B. Albers.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/08/11

dec 8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033950600

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033987600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as DOCTOR’S LOUNGE,4826 Mission St.,SF,CA 94112.This business is conducted by a limited liability company, signed Rochelle McCune.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/15/11

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THAI HOUSE 530, 530 Valencia St., SF,CA 94110.

This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Krittiya Meeriyagerd.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/07/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/07/11

dec 8,15,22,29,2011 statement file A-033981400

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033979700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as POPSUGAR SHOP,111 Sutter St.,15th Floor,SF,CA 94104.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Sean Mecnew.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/02/11

The following person(s) is/are doing business as HOT COOKIE,407 Castro St., SF,CA 94114.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Daniel Glazer.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/01/11

dec 8,15,22,29,2011

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012

SURROGATE’S cOURT:STATE OF NEW YORK,COUNTY OF DELAWARE. IN THE MATTER OF A PROCEEDING FOR PROBATE OF THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF EUNICE E. RICHARDS, DECEASED. CITATION FILE NO 2011-233 The People of the State of New York by the Grace of God Free and Independent.

TO: The heir at law and distributees of Eunice E. Richards, decedent,to wit:TIMOTHY RICHARDS, said person being the known heir at law,next of kin and successor in interest of Eunice E. Richards,deceased,if living on August 13,2011,the date of decedent’s death,or if he died after that date,then to his executors,adminis trators,heirs,distributes and all persons interested in his estate,their names and addresses,if any,being unknown to the petitioner and cannot after diligent inquiry be ascertained by the petitioner.

YOU ARE HEREBY CITED TO SHOW CAUSE before the Surrogate’s Court of the County of Delaware at the office of the Surrogate in the Courthouse, Delhi, New York on the 23rd day of January,2012 at 9:30am,why the Petition for Probate admitting to probate a Will dated July 22,2004,and praying that Letters Testamentary issue to Victoria Merritt,who resides at 5494 State Highway 23 Norwich,New York 13815,should not be granted,relating to the real and personal property of Eunice E. Richards,deceased,who at the time of her death domiciled at 5494 State Highway 23,Norwich,New York 13815 in the County of Delaware, New York. Dated:12/12/11 Hon.Carl F.Becker, Surrogate Signed Lisa Loucks, Chief Clerk Attorney for Petitioner; Beth Westfall,COUGHLIN & Gerhart,LLP PO Box 2039,Binghamton, NY 13902 607-723-9511

dec 29,2011,jan 5,12,19, 2012 statement file A-033986900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as PAPER KITE FILMS,1226 46TH AVE.,#1, SF,CA 94122.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Anne Marie Fruit.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/06/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/06/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033994000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as ALBERT ELECTRIC,2735 39TH AVE., SF,CA 94116.

This business is conducted by an individual, signed Richard Albert Campbell.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/09/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033996100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as SMILE,1002 Scott St., SF,CA 94115.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Lawrence Lauterborn.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/12/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/12/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033996600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as FOG CITY NEIGHBORHOOD CAB DISPATCH SERVICE, 979 Bryant St.,SF,CA 94103.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Sonny Tam.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/12/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/12/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033996500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as FOG CITY NEIGHBORHOOD CAB DISPATCH SERVICE, 1407 Irving St.,SF,CA 94122.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Sonny Tam.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/12/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/12/11.

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033993500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as BRAND X ANTIQUES,570 Castro St., SF,CA 94114.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Timothy J. Flint.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/09/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/09/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012

The following person(s) is/are doing business as DOTTIE’S TRUE BLUE CAFÉ,28 6th St., SF,CA 94103.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Kurt D. Abney.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/17/93.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/13/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 statement file A-033961300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as TOMBOY PAINTING, 254 Montana St., SF,CA 94112.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Lydia S. Gonzales.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/24/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/21/11

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name: #A-0303656-00 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as BRAND X ANTIQUES,570 Castro St., SF,CA 94114.This business was conducted by an individual, signed Timothy J. Flint. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/01/07.

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name: #A-0336352-00 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as HOUSE 530, 530 Valencia St., SF,CA 94110.This business was conducted by a corporation, signed Krittiya Meeriyagerd. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/17/11.

Dec 15,22,29,2011, Jan 5,2012 notice of application to sell alcoholic beverages Dated 12/15/11 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : SM. CHENG INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1865 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94115-3607. Type of license applied

47- On-sale general eating place dec 29,2011,jan 5,12,2012 notice of application to sell alcoholic beverages Dated 12/22/11 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : CLUB OMG!,LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 43 6th St., San Francisco, CA 94103-1611. Type of license applied

48- On-sale general Public premises dec 29,2011,jan 5,12,2012 notice of application to sell alcoholic beverages

Dated 11/21/11 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are : GARFIELD BEACH CVS LLC,LONGS DRUG STORES CALIFORNIA,LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 1500, San Francisco, CA 94105 to sell alcoholic beverages at 351 California St., San Francisco, CA 94104-2412.

Type of license applied

20- Off-sale beer and wine dec 29,2011,jan 5,12, 2012 state of california in and for the county of san francisco file# cnc-11-548237 In the matter of the application of JOMO KENYATTA for change of name. The application of JOMO KENYATTA for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that JOMO KENYATTA filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to JESUS CHRIST. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 16th of February, 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012 state of california in and for the county of san francisco file# cnc-11-548303 In the matter of the application of RAUL TINAJERO for change of name. The application of RAUL TINAJERO for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that RAUL TINAJERO filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to RAFAEL RODRIGUEZ ALCALA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 23rd of February, 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012 statement file A-034002000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as SHOP SMART DISCOUNT STORE., 105 Sickles Ave.,#4,SF,CA 94112.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Josie Reyes.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/14/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/14/11

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012 statement file A-034004900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as WHITEHURST MOSHER CAMPAIGN STRATEGY & MEDIA, 660 Mission St.,Suite 200,SF,CA 94105.

This business is conducted by a corporation, signed John Whitehurst.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/15/11

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012 statement file A-033994800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as LOMBARD VALERO, 2601 Lombard St.,SF,CA 94123.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Ben Shimer.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/01/94. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/09/11

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012 statement file A-034007800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as READINGS BY NINA,803 Divisadero St.,SF,CA 94117.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Stephanie Wain.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/16/11

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name: #A-0299871-00 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known WHITEHURST CAMPAIGNS INC., 660 Mission St.,Suite 200,SF,CA 94105. This business was conducted by a corporation, signed Brad Witherspoon. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/17/07.

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012 statement file A-034005700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as COMMUNITY ACUPUNCTURE,2833 Washington St.,SF,CA 94115.This business is conducted by a corporation, signed Kristen Hansen.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/15/11. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/15/11

dec 22,29,2011, jan 5,12,2012 statement file A-034007400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as NIKKI BLACK,3901 19th St.,SF,CA 94114.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Nancy Kinnunen.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/16/11

dec 29,2011,jan 5,12,19, 2012 statement file A-034016600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as CONSULERIS,101 California St.,Suite 2710,SF,CA 94111.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Brian C.Browning.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/06/09. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/21/11

dec 29,2011,jan 5,12,19, 2012 statement file A-033993600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as RHOTECH SOLAR,130 Produce Ave.,Suite C,South SF,CA 94080.This business is conducted by an individual, signed Richard O. Rhodes.The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/09/11

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O&A

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Out &About

Fine art 2011

Music 2011

Hawaiian punch

The

Vol. 41 • No. 52 • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

ber an/We Weissm

& Scout Quinnford

g Releasin Rocket

www.ebar.com/arts

Artist Daniel Goldstein in David Weissman and Bill Weber’s We Were Here.

Jeanne Disson as Lisa, and Zoe Heran as Laure/Mikael, in Tomboy.

Tom Cullen and Chris New in Andrew Haigh’s Weekend.

T

he list of best films is again tied at the top, in a year with solid queer features, especially films exploring the wide world of gender. Think of them as a bumper crop of Castro Theatre thematic double bills.

1. Weekend: In the year’s crossover queer hit, Andrew Haigh introduces British lads of opposite temperaments who unexpectedly find themselves going steady over a couple of bumpy nights. The closeted Russell and the pranky Glen (“I don’t do boyfriends”) conjure at a dance club, and find themselves more than physically naked. As the two slug it out on queer hot-button topics, we root for this queer Before Sunrise couple to find a lasting bond.

1. (2) Pariah: Dee Rees plants an African-American baby butch (Adepere Oduye) in lovely limbo between a hot dyke Brooklyn club scene and the cell phone tether of her conservative parents. Rees creates saucy plotlines, such as Alike’s complex but positive relationship with her NYPD detective Dad, and the delicious irony that Mom, trying her best to end Alike’s “tomboy” phase, actually steers her towards a hot overnighter with a church lady’s daughter.

2. Tomboy: In Celine Sciamma’s lovely fable on how gender trumps everything as we enter the magic garden of adolescence, a 10-year-old is sitting in Daddy’s lap getting a playful driving lesson. Observing Laure (the impeccably androgynous Zoe Heran) interact with her loving parents and sassy but thoroughly feminine kid sister is getting a privileged pass to a childhood paradise immediately before the loss of innocence. With a whiff of Truffaut’s genius for capturing kids at play, Sciamma frames

Top 12 films of 2011

(& their shadows)

by David Lamble

Laure’s bold move as the new kid in town as she declares to a would-be friend, “My name is Mikael.”

2. (2) The Iron Lady: Abi Morgan’s bold script has Meryl Streep’s Lady Margaret Thatcher hearing voices and experiencing a full-bodied apparition of her late hubby Dennis. This darkly clever film is about class warfare – not Thatcher beating up on Billy Elliot’s coal-miner dad – no, class war among the Tories, as Thatcher misses few chances to humiliate the old Etonians in her cabinet.

3. 3: In Tom Tykwer’s postmodern comedy, an unwed but very old-shoe couple is trying to recharge their sex by recycling their favorite quarrels. Since this is a German comedy of rude manners – bi, hetero, queer, extremely explicit – with candid instructions on how to use and dispose of body fluids, stem cells and dead mothers, expect subjects that make you queasy before prompting howls of laughter.

3. (2) Private Romeos: Set in a military academy, Alan Brown’s all-male Romeo and Juliet commences as a classroom exercise, but soon the boys are living out the star-crossed lover roles, complete with luscious physical moments.

4. Gun Hill Road: This extraordinary queer youth melodrama features an MTF teen whose life is thrown into turmoil upon the prison release of a fiercely macho daddy. At 16, Michael/Vanessa

(the awesome Harmony Santana) is using the girl’s bathroom, starting female hormones and doing revealing poetry raps.

Director Rashaad Ernesto Green has us worrying about the fate of a beautiful girl forever awaiting a tsunami of macho violence.

4. (2) Romeos: A German film that matches Gun Hill Road in its honest and raw portrayal of how hard it is for a young person to switch genders is Sabine Bernardi’s frisky comedy about the travails of an FTM. There’s poignancy in Lukas’ late-night English Internet chats with comrades in transition, and growing doubts that he can earn his new body without losing his mind and old friends.

5. We Were Here: David Weissman and Bill Weber’s doc is cradled in intimate storytelling: five people who by film’s end feel like personal friends describe how AIDS challenged everything they knew about themselves and their adopted hometown.

Illustrated by heartbreaking video/photo albums of men who perished in the earliest days of the plague (including this paper’s AIDS obit issue), the film illustrates the human underpinnings for the “San Francisco AIDS model” that preserved a community until life-saving drug cocktails arrived.

5. (2) Jane Eyre: The 18th film of Charlotte Bronte’s chilly castle tale is a transcendently romantic, tragic, gothic ghost See page 24 >>

Staged in 2011: Theater year in review

by Richard Dodds

Kevin Berne

T

Judy Kaye starred as Mrs. Madrigal in the highly anticipated world premiere musical based on Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City at ACT.

his time of the year is soaked in seasonal aromas, whether as sense memories or in ongoing inhalation of fraser fir, gingerbread, roasting turkey, and Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds. But for me, with only a few toes as yet stuck in the fragrance-free world of digital media, the smell of moldering newsprint means the end of the year is nigh as I sit here surrounded by a year’s worth of Bay Area Reporters.

I still like flicking through actual pages to renew my bonds with the theatrical productions seen during the past 12 months, which feel more alive with the smell and feel and even the ink-smudged fingertips that an electronic database can’t provide. With senses thus recharged, here is how one theatergoer best remembers the year soon to be retired.

History repeating Gay social progress has been advancing at

such a rapid clip that playwrights are feeling the need to put it into perspective. Several plays produced locally during the past year looked at real-life homosexual provocateurs who were pursuing a right to a happiness that could result in loss of their life and liberty.

The unpredictable mind of playwrightdirector John Fisher, also known as Theatre Rhino’s executive director, came up with a war story just in time for the repeal of DADT. In Fighting Mac, we shuttle between the life of a gay soldier at home and in Afghanistan and the exploits of Sir Hector MacDonald, a Victorian-era war hero whose sexual interest in other men is vaguely tolerated until it dooms him. Fisher’s play was packed tight with both action and ideas that put passion into the fighting/loving men conundrum.

Jon Maran’s docudrama The Temperamentals looks back to 1950, focusing on a buttoned-down social revolutionary named Harry Hay. With help from his lover, the fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, he

{ SECOND OF TWO SECTIONS }

founded the Mattachine Society in 1950 to redress the legal and cultural wrongs aimed at homosexuals when few considered homosexuality other than a crime, a sin, or an abomination. Humor, drama, and politics were neatly packaged both by the playwright and in F. Allen Sawyer’s production at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

NCTC was also home to a world premiere that looked back at the early rumblings of the coming gay upheaval. Local writer and activist Jewelle Gomez, in collaboration with Harry Waters, Jr., focused in on a pivotal moment in the life and career of James Baldwin in Waiting for Giovanni. Rather than applying himself to furthering a black agenda, Baldwin disappointed many supporters and jeopardized his own career by publishing Giovanni’s Room, a 1956 novel that focused on a sexual affair between two white men.

Gomez deftly brought together scenes from Baldwin’s life and his work for an intriguing slice of history.

See page 25 >>

<< Out There

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

▼

Music for thirsty ears, 2011

by Roberto Friedman

H

ere’s a sample of recorded music that we listened to and enjoyed in the past year. As ever, there are no claims here to these being the best of anything, they’re simply the discs that made it into our hot little hands this year, and rewarded our attention.

Adele, 21 (XL). An anomaly: we actually enjoyed the most popular pop release of the year! When was the last time that ever happened?

Garrin Benfield, The Wave Organ Song (Garrin.com). “Oh, the walkin’ time blues!/ San Francisco’s got a way of wearin’ out my shoes!” – “Walkin’ Time Blues.”

Bjork, Biophilia (Nonesuch).

“Crystalline internal nebula,/ Rocks growing slo-mo,/ I conquer claustrophobia and demand the light.” – “Crystalline.” It’s pretentious nonsense, but it’s good pretentious

nonsense.

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Daphnis et Chloé by Maurice Ravel – BSO, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, James Levine; and Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Profanes et Sacrées – 20th-Century French Chamber Music (both BSO Classics). For the first live BSO recording on the orchestra’s own label, Levine writes in program notes, they chose Ravel’s beautiful ballet score, “a work that reflects one of the orchestra’s mainstream signature repertoires,” and one whose Suite No. 2 graced a program during the BSO’s recent appearances at Davies Hall as part of the San Francisco Symphony’s American Orchestras series. It’s all very perfumed and elegant in that French musical way, but we return more often to their French Chamber Music disc, which consists of familiar Ravel and Debussy, and more enticingly, unfamiliar (at least to us) works by

Henri Tomasi, Henri Dutilleux and Jean Francaix.

Kate Bush, 50 Words for Snow (Fish People). “The world is so loud. Keep falling. I’ll find you.”

– “Snowflake.” Also: Kate Bush, Director’s Cut (Fish People). Snow was our favorite pop album of the year. While all its songs concern frozen precipitation, from Bush’s son Albert McIntosh singing the part of a falling flake in the opener to Kate essentially shtupping a snowman in “Misty,” it’s the set’s slow, quiet procession that truly evokes a steady accumulation of the white stuff.

Caveman, Coco Beware (Orgmusic). “I don’t know where I am going,/ it seems like someone has lost their own mind./ What do they know?” – “Easy Water.”

Edwyn Collins, Losing Sleep (Heavenly). “Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down./ Sometimes I

wonder, what is my role?” – “What Is My Role?” sung in the unmistakable adenoidal tones of the former Orange Juice frontman.

Cannibal Dengue Fever, Courtship (Concord). “You, you wouldn’t understand,/ I’m famished for a man!/ Be my sacrificial lamb!”

– “Cannibal Courtship.” Cambodian pop meets LA surf rock for a most unnatural high.

Ana Egge, Bad Blood (Animal).

Erasure, Tomorrow’s World (Mute).

Gloria Estefan, Miss Little Havana (Verve). “As you’re dancing you look down and stare at your body./ It’s so confusing you sip on your drink./ Now you’re sweatin’ like everyone else at the party,/ But ecstasy ends quicker than you think.”

– “Heat.”

Foolproof Four, Apples of Our Allegiance (Praisethelaze).

Girl in a Coma, Exits & All the Rest (Blackheart).

Philip Glass, The Concerto Project, Vol. IV (Orange Mountain Music), including Dennis Russell Davies on piano and conducting the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in Glass’ Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

Lalah Hathaway, Where It All Begins (Concord).

Hercules & Love Affair, Blue Songs (Moshi Moshi).

Joan as Police Woman, The Deep Field (PIAS). “I found my dream tonight,/ but it’s not you. You’re my fantasy.” – “Forever and a Year.”

Barb Jungr, Man in the Long Black Coat (Linn). A fresh take on the Dylan songbook.

Karmacoda, Eternal (Sola Music).

Oh Land, Oh Land (Epic).

Shame, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sony). Add to Harry Escott’s score a motley lot that includes Glenn Gould, John Coltrane, Blondie, Tom Tom Club, Chic, Chet Baker and Howlin’ Wolf.

Wouldn’t you love to see them all in a room together?

Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What (Concord). “Love is eternal sacred light/ Free from the shackles of time./ Evil is darkness, sight without sight,/ A demon that feeds on the mind.” – “Love Is Eternal Sacred Light.”

Holcombe Waller, Into the Dark Unknown (Napoleon).

Yelle, Safari Disco Club (Yelle.Fr).

Young Galaxy, Shapeshifting (Paper Bag).

Final thoughts Best eye-candy of the year was a poster announcing the Fall 2011 home games of the Stanford Men’s Water Polo Team. A friend procured it for us – found posted over the urinals in the men’s lockers, it now proudly festoons the wall over our desk. It

features all 22 (count-em) starring athletes shaved down and oiled up in Speedos, pectoral muscles gleaming in the natural (?) light. Its catchphrase: “One hour is all we ask for!”

Best correction of the year is from The New York Times, from its Style section. “An article on Nov. 24 about the photographer Steven Klein misstated the year that the magazine Dutch published pictures showing men being brutally handcuffed by police. The photographs appeared in the May-June 2002 issue, not in 2003.

The article also erroneously included an American actor among the men shown in the pictures. Dutch did not publish a picture of Brad Pitt ‘kneeling and bare-chested, being brutally cuffed by the police.’ (The magazine identified the men as Travis, Adam Durocher and Eric White.)” But thanks anyway for the vivid mental image.

Best insight into Martha Stewart’s naughty mind was found last month on The Martha Stewart Show. Martha’s NYC studio audience erupted into laughter when she caught “rock star butcher” Ryan Farr off-guard by comparing pork casings to condoms. Farr joined Martha to make Chicken, Apple and Calvados Sausage from his new book Whole Beast Butchery, but the founder of San Francisco’s 4505 Meats got more than he bargained for. Let’s go to the transcript!

Martha Stewart: Describe what the casings are, this sort of skin-looking mess [holds up the sausage casings]. These are real pigs’ intestines?

Ryan Farr: Yes. They’ve been cleaned thoroughly, cured and brined, and you receive them in a salt pack or in brine, and it’s really important to rinse them and let them soak overnight. Then you go ahead and rinse them again.

How do you find the end?

It’s a bunch of different long ones all tied in one big knot, so you go ahead and just start pulling some out.

These are really like rubber balloons actually, or condoms.

I don’t know if I would want to use this as a condom, but – Oh, I bet they work. If they work for sausage – Yeah. It holds the meat in. ▼

▼

Fine Art >>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

Looking back at the art year 2011

by Sura Wood

Y

ippee! 2011 was a banner year at the museums. Yes, there were some misfires, but all in all there was impressive variety and gorgeous creativity on display in both homegrown and imported exhibitions at institutions large and small. Hats off to the Asian Art Museum, which emerged from its financial woes and brought Asian cultures closer through a pair of topnotch, impeccable presentations: Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance, and Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts. Add Pixar animator Sanjay Patel to the mix, who got his own gallery to weave his magic, and we say: please give us more of that! MoAD heeded the siren call of jazz and thrilled with a rhapsody of bold color in Textural Rhythms and a show featuring graphic works

by Romare Bearden. And then there was the sight of those thick, delectable layers of paint in the early work of Bay Area artist Joan Brown at the San Jose Museum of Art, and the elevation of the book to an art-form in The Art of the Book in California at the Cantor Arts Center. Distilling a Southern California wasteland of the mind, 1950s/early 1960s Hollywood, the LA of Chinatown, B-movies and old TV serials, mixed-media installation wizard Michael McMillen’s fiendishly clever, Rube Goldberglike contraptions and an abandoned shack with its own climate system, among other wonderments, were included in a retrospective at the Oakland Museum.

This was a year that saw notable transitions and changes looming on the horizon. The dynamic director of the Contemporary Jewish Art Museum Connie Wolf left her post and takes on official duties the first of the year at the Cantor Arts Center, likely giving that institution, which has of late been repackaging their permanent collections, a needed injection of vitality. The Andersons, a family of art collectors in the South Bay, donated a substantial gift of postwar American art to Stanford University, which will house the 121 works in a new building slated to open in 2014. And SFMOMA offered a sneak peak at plans for their new wing, a 235,000-sq.ft. expansion that should double the museum’s space. Completion is planned for 2016. We shall see.

Herewith with the low-downs and highs of the last year: Year of the Steins: You would’ve had to be missing in action not to notice the ubiquitous presence of Gertrude Stein, who was the subject of two concurrent exhibitions.

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories at CJM fleshed out the multiple personas, adoring orbiting satellites

The Museum of Modern Art/licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery) (1907), oil on canvas by Pablo Picasso, collection The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., from The Steins Collect at SFMOMA.

and jumbo ego of a woman who continues to wield formidable influence and who exercised a knack for self-promotion before the cult of celebrity became the monster it is today. It was a biographical complement to The Steins Collect at SFMOMA, the show I told everyone within earshot to make a point of seeing. The curators spent over six years researching and reuniting the prescient art collections of the expat Steins, who lived a romantic boho, cosmopolitan existence in Paris and shared their then-daring, avantgarde acquisitions at weekly salons.

The art itself was astonishing: early Renoirs, Bonnard’s deliciously sensual “Siesta,” numerous works

by Matisse before he was Matisse writ large, ditto Picasso – the list was long. The exhibition was exceptional on every level, making a coherent whole of what could have been a sprawling mass of artwork and shifting family alliances, and its brilliance didn’t dim with repeated viewings. Bravo!

Best museum exhibitions: The aforementioned Steins Collect and Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection at the Legion, a stealth show that didn’t arrive with the name recognition of the Steins, but was nonetheless an absolute gem. The pristine condition and exceptional quality of these handpicked works from the Golden Age of Dutch painting, whose absence of wear and tear made it difficult to believe they were painted 400 years

Rick Gerharter

“Portrait of Aelfje Uylenburgh” by Rembrandt van Rijn, part of the show Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection at the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

ago, qualified it as a stunner.

Best museum series: New Work at SFMOMA, especially an outstanding show featuring the unsettling work of both Klara Kristalova and Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, who moved the medium of ceramic sculpture beyond mug and ashtray conventions.

Best topical show: Afghanistan in 4 Frames: 4 Embedded Photojournalists Take Aim at the War at SFAC gallery.

Major missed opportunities/ let-downs: The Air We Breathe.

SFMOMA deserves credit for the taking a stab at the concept, but the

execution of this modest survey of the responses of artists and poets to the issue of marriage equality was underwhelming and disappointing.

It should have been a dynamic lightening rod of a project, but it was a dud; the dual SECA shows, also at SFMOMA – well, the less said the better; Picasso, a retrospective that rolled into town while the Musee Picasso in Paris was undergoing renovations, had beaucoup works

by Picasso, but they weren’t anchored with context, historical or otherwise. Curators assumed we all knew Picasso and could do without pesky biography, but alas, they were wrong; Balenciaga and Spain: I’m a big fan of costuming shows, but this one was too formal and subdued to inspire fashion lust. A gala brought out glittery socialites and fashionistas, but despite mild attempts to disguise it, the enterprise flaunted the lifestyles of the 1% in a way that was hard to ignore. (Even in the costly realm of couture, Cristobal’s prices were in the stratosphere.) Reportedly, one of the designer’s devoted clients locked herself in her boudoir after his death and wouldn’t come out for days. The rich are different.

Best gallery show: Michael Ajerman: Glossolalia at Toomey Tourell Fine Art. It’s impossible to overstate the furious vitality and van Gogh-like intensity that Ajerman, an American, London-based artist, brings to his oil paintings of inanimate objects, fantastical creatures and scenes of authentic humanity. A riot of bottomless deep purples, fiery reds and flaming oranges, reminiscent of primitive harvest rites, is applied to the canvas as if the artist’s life depended on it.

Leslie Shows at Haines Gallery was a close second.

Most unique “I can’t believe my eyes” exhibition: Pulp Fashion: The

Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave at the Legion. It may have sounded like yet another costume extravaganza, but it was unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Like an enchantress in a fairy tale spinning straw into gold in her magic workshop, the Belgian artist, a countess in her own right, transformed paper into a dazzling illusion of sumptuous, exquisitely detailed fabric, recreating elaborate trompe l’oeil gowns and Renaissance finery worthy of the Medicis, who weren’t exactly slumming.

Best photography shows: Francesca Woodman at SFMOMA, a potent legacy of a life cut short by suicide, and a fitting tribute to an awesome talent that lingers in the memory. This remarkable undertaking, a triumph for its gifted curator Corey Keller and a haunting experience for visitors, resisted the pitfalls and melodrama of its subject’s tragic biography; Ralph Eugene Meatyard at the de Young delved into the enigmatic psyche of a photographer obsessed with dismembered dolls and the disturbing psychological implications of masks. His pictures intimate that people have multiple faces, though the same could be said of the complicated man behind the camera, who also died too young.

Local treasures: A shout-out to an unsung hero, the wonderful exhibition lighting designer Bill Huggins, and to Timothy Anglin Burgard, FAMSF Curator of American Art. An incredibly knowledgeable, immensely articulate and gloriously fluent art historian, Burgard is a born teacher and willing to share. Erudite and a populist by temperament, he’s the guy surrounded by reporters hanging on his words at media previews, and he gives occasional pubic lectures at the museum that shouldn’t be missed.▼

<< Music

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

▼

Best classical discs 2011

by Tim Pfaff

T

he smallest surprise in the classical recordings world was that the end of the double Mahler Years (150th birth anniversary 2010, 100th death anniversary 2011) brought a surge of Mahler recordings. One that bridged the two years – Claudio Abbado’s Mahler 9th with his hand-picked Lucerne Festival Orchestra, recorded live in August 2010 and issued on DVD (Accentus) at the beginning of this year – counted as a dream recording, Mahler to the limits, in a searching, soul-penetrating performance.

Remarkably, that same festival produced another of the year’s towering recordings, of Beethoven’s Fidelio (Decca). Teamed with tenor of the moment Jonas Kaufmann and San Francisco’s beloved new Bruennhilde, Nina Stemme, Abbado led his all-around sterling cast, orchestra, and chorus through a live concert performance of Beethoven’s only opera – which in its hymn to freedom from political oppression seems timelier by the day – so good it could be deemed game-changing.

The controversial newly written spoken dialogue for this semi-staged performance notwithstanding, the music-making blazed new trails into a score we only thought we knew.

Although this wasn’t the year his star was born, Kaufmann had a stellar year, peaking with a Mahler Das Lied von der Erde with

Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic on the exact Mahler death anniversary (Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall) and the HD telecasts of his role debut as Siegmund in the Met’s new Die Walkuere. He was the only reason – but reason enough – to invest in the Zurich Tosca (Decca DVD), in which you can also experience that magic he whips up when not singing. In his savvy collection of Verismo Arias (Decca), with a deeply sympathetic Antonio Pappano leading his Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, he left no further doubt that he is a singer who can do anything he wants, that what he wants to do is unfailingly right, and that his voice will do whatever he wants it to do. Even before you add in the intelligence and the good instincts, the voice, like its owner, is simply so beautiful it makes you stupid.

Pappano, as versatile as Kaufmann and at this point one of the most important p e o p l e in opera, crowned a stunning year in the studio with a concert recording of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (EMI Classics).

Rossini’s last opera, another important work opposing political repression, is, despite the familiarity of a small part of its very long overture, rarely staged (never mind that the enterprising SF Opera performed it twice in the 90s). But with Gerald Finley, as important a singer as Kaufmann, in the title role, Pappano hit the apple at its core.

Handel is still so central to the present-day recording enterprise that this could be a Best of 2011 Handel Recordings column. But among the many fine offerings, the essentials were the searing Ariodante (Virgin Classics) led by Alan Curtis with Joyce DiDonato, and, at the other end of the Handel opera spectrum, the urbane comedy of his second, Venetian opera, Agrippina (Harmonia Mundi), in a biting performance led by Rene Jacobs.

The Liszt Year brought an even bigger pile of piano recordings than expected, Nelson Freire’s Harmonies du soir (DG) the best of the traditional ones, Marc-Andre Hamelin’s for

Hyperion the most virtuosic, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s The Liszt Project (DG) the most assertive about Liszt the proto-modernist.

But none gave deeper pleasures than Louis Lortie’s complete Annees de Pelerinage (Chandos).

A 10-CD set of late Renaissance master Thomas Luis de Victoria’s Sacred Music (Archiv) was the most important choral release of a year that had many. Recorded over a half-decade by Michael Noone’s Ensemble Plus Ultra, the motets, masses, and Magnificats, consistently transporting music, were sung with the same consistently high musical values.

Astounding choral music from 2007 by England’s Alec Roth showcased Jeffrey Skidmore’s Ex Cathedra choir in three large-scale choral works coupled with Shared Ground (Signum Classics), an exquisite set of meditations on the planet we all call home by Vikram Seth. The “libretti” Seth wrote for four Roth festival works were

published simultaneously as The Rivered Earth (Hamish Hamilton), and make absorbing reading on their own.

Best vocal debut CD was Nicholas Phan’s Winter Words (Avie), the young gay tenor’s splendid explorations of vocal music by Benjamin Britten, about which more is below.

ICA Classics scored a major hit in the historical category with its release of a 1958 Maria Callas La Traviata from Covent Garden that’s both the best document of Callas singing a role she was born to sing and arguably the best modern recording of the opera. Although Callas and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson shared no repertoire, both singers inhabited music like few others.

Hunt Lieberson’s 1991 Berlioz Les Nuits d’ete (Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra) shows her at her probing, otherworldly best, and, with PBO’s pungent support, it’s game-changing Berlioz. It changes listeners, too.▼

Born to sing Britten

by Tim Pfaff

I

nnocence and its loss are constant themes in the music of Benjamin Britten, the 20th century’s greatest gay composer to have remained in the active repertoire, and no singer in a while – and few at any time – have been as ideal for exploring that

dark passage than tenor Nicholas Phan. This rapidly ascending American singer, of Greek and Chinese parentage, has chosen two song cycles, Winter Words and Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, and a shrewdly chosen half-dozen of Britten’s folk song arrangements for his CD debut (Avie), superbly

accompanied by Myra Huang.

It’s the kind of recital disc that stakes a claim on you the first time out, the freshness of Phan’s voice radiating sensitivity, care for both the composer and the listener, and what can only be called sincerity. Yet what makes it compelling, and keeps drawing you back, is the way Phan weaves, almost imperceptibly, tendrils of that disturbing element present in almost all of Britten’s music, and an identifying feature of it, into all that beautiful singing.

A dip into the out Phan’s blog grecchinois.blogspot.com (as appealing a singer blog as that of Joyce DiDonato, with whom Phan is touring a concert version of Handel’s Ariodante with Alan Curtis) more than hints at what a fundamentally nice guy, and collegial artist, he is. And the video clips on his website go far in indicating what range he has as an interpreter.

But what this CD reveals is his capacity to reveal the worm in the apple, the bee in the flower, the spot on the dress without once having to abandon the bittersweet beauty that suffuses these songs. With the sole exception of the concluding folk song, “The Ploughboy,” which functions like an encore on the disc but also showcases the composer’s capacity for real, light-hearted fun, this is material, and singing, that bothers you in ways that matter.

Little surprise that there’s sinister stuff galore in Winter Words, composed shortly before The Turn of the Screw and set to poems of Thomas Hardy. In “Midnight and the Great Western,” Britten captured the poet’s pity for “the journeying boy in the third class seat,” off to a future he could not possibly comprehend (and

Facecollective

Tenor Nicholas Phan.

we don’t want to), and Phan finds the perfect blend of sympathy and dread in it.

In “The Choirmaster’s Burial,” Phan proves himself the master of the signature Britten melisma, the one on “seraphim” otherwordly but Britten’s use of the device throughout the song to depict voices from beyond a brilliant compositional stroke that Phan exploits sensitively. The subject of “At the Railway Station, Upway” is nothing less than the power of music, but because the poem is about a fiddler boy and a convict, Phan sings it in the barest narrative style, a canny way to express its simple meaning and a chance to yield the spotlight to pianist Huang, impersonating the fiddle playing.

Yet it’s in “Before Life and After,” the cycle’s last and finest song, that Phan shows his hand as a Britten singer to the manner born. He floats the line that can so easily turn to crooning in lesser singers, uses vibrato only sparingly but to

maximally expressive ends, colors lines such as “If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed” like a Flemish master – and delivers the entire song with such immaculate diction, word fused to note, that you can follow it without the printed text.

He’s stretched to what feels like his current vocal limit – this recording makes the prospect of how this still young voice might develop and open up truly tantalizing – in the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the first songs Britten wrote expressly for his lifelong partner, Peter Pears.

Six of the sonnets express aspects of the great artist’s late-life anguish at his unrequited love for the young aristocrat Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and they’re set to torturous music for the tenor (but not for the listener, who can grasp them at a first attentive hearing).

Phan has every note of this densely composed, mostly highlying music securely in his grasp.

The Italian is acid-etched in its clarity, the emotional weight of the texts is always apt without sounding calculated, and Phan lets the musical extremes become channels for heightened expression carried to the very edge of the breaking point. The singing is consistently thrilling, and the cycle flies by as I have never heard it before, seeming both shorter and more impassioned at every listening.

The quiet wonders of the disc are the folk songs, some of Britten’s most haunting music and revealed in all their simple wonders by these two fine young musicians.

The increasingly wandering piano accompaniment in “The Ash Grove” lends poignancy to the already achingly simple voice line, and the pair is devastating in the smoldering ache of “The Last Rose of Summer.”▼

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Music>>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

2011 knocks on 2012’s door

by Philip Campbell

T

he San Francisco Opera has recently called it a wrap for the fall (and winter) season, and the San Francisco Symphony is roughly at the midpoint of its wonderful centennial celebration.

Both organizations can boast of some glittering highpoints so far, but it seems they might have even more enticing prospects lined up for 2012.

It was a relatively choppy season at the War Memorial Opera House, with no real smashes to linger in memory. Still, even a bad night at the opera is never a total loss. If lukewarm is the strongest epithet observers can hurl at a production, we are reminded that praise for individual and ensemble efforts is a far more typical response.

The opening-night revival of the colorful production of Puccini’s Turandot designed by David Hockney proved a perfect case in point. The musical values remained high, and it was a treat to simply observe the pageantry. There might have been little to erase fond memories of stronger performances in the leading roles, but it was a show filled with grand climaxes and surprisingly intimate moments.

Adler Fellow Leah Crocetto’s brave portrayal of the slave girl Liu was especially touching.

Ever-present director Francesca Zambello (San Francisco Opera’s Artistic Adviser), hard on the heels of her triumphant Ring cycle, brought the world premiere production of Heart of a Soldier by Christopher Theofanidis, starring all-time favorite Thomas Hampson, to vivid life, but her efforts met with mixed reviews. In a time of such uncertainty for the arts, it still counted as a triumph of sorts.

Superstar soprano Renée Fleming got her chance at conquering the critics in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, and a handsome new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni came close to dramatic perfection with a strong cast and beautiful orchestral playing. Director Nicholas Hytner’s brilliant imagining of Handel’s Xerxes wowed the fault-finders, but the season finale, a wan revival of the aged Jean-Pierre Ponnelle Carmen, seemed more re-heated than hot.

Still, we got a chance to see rising star Kendall Gladen in a kittenish portrayal of the title role, and Brazilian tenor Thiago Arancam filled her hapless lover Don Jose’s uniform with uncommonly virile conviction.

Soon June will be busting out all over, and the Opera has a must-see

Christine Alicino

Composer John Adams’ Nixon in China and Absolute Jest, both coming in 2012.

event on the horizon. John Adams’ shockingly good Nixon in China is scheduled to open the summer season. Nixon is an opera for people who think they don’t like opera, and it proves again SFO General Director David Gockley’s ongoing loyalty to American artists. Verdi’s underrated Attila follows, and the season is rounded off with a new The Magic Flute designed by visual artist Jun Kaneko and sung in English. It doesn’t hurt that baritone Nathan Gunn will be appearing in the role of Papageno.

Class party The San Francisco Symphony is making the centennial season a nonstop cavalcade of events, concerts and associated educational opportunities. The “city that knows how” has had a world-class orchestra for 100 years, and the classy crew is still riding high with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas leading the happy celebration. The season is offering visits with distinguished conductors, renowned American orchestras, and star soloists, but most importantly, lucky residents are getting an appreciated reminder of just how good the band really is.

Watching and listening to old and new friends onstage is making it the very best kind of party.

Highlights of the season so far have included MTT’s return to Mahler with a glorious Third Symphony in September, and a particularly thrilling joyride through Stravinsky’s Petrushka later in the month. That concert opened with a much-anticipated SFS cocommissioned work by composer Thomas Adès and artist/filmmaker Tal Rosner, Polaris: Voyage for Orchestra. If it didn’t live up to the pre-publicity, it was an adventurous

Cory Weaver

Marco Berti (Calaf) and Leah Crocetto (Liù) in San Francisco Opera’s Turandot.

addition to the orchestra’s repertoire, and an echo of the old Edo de Waart era and the legendary New and Unusual Music concerts.

Speaking of Maestro de Waart, he returns to the podium in 2012 with concerts in mid-February.

Another former Music Director, Herbert Blomstedt (now Conductor Laureate) will precede him with two different but equally weighty programs. Mozart and Tchaikovsky are featured on one bill, and on Feb. 8 and 10, he will apply his famous mastery of Bruckner in performances of the immense Symphony No. 5. MTT has also shown us that he is no slouch with the Central European composers, and his leading of Brahms’ A German Requiem in November was an exquisite experience. It also offered a chance to savor SFS Chorus Director Ragnar Bohlin’s superb stewardship. While we never tire of MTT’s enthusiasm for the edgy and off-beat, he continues to prove his incredible range with insightful performances of the standard repertoire.

The return of the American

Mavericks series throughout the month of March puts us back on high alert for another welcome encounter with MTT’s more rebellious nature.

There will be a new score from John Adams called Absolute Jest (reason enough for anticipation), but there’s much more on the menu. Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra shares a bill with the rip-roaring A Concord Symphony (Charles Ives’ Concord Piano Sonata, orchestrated

by Henry Brant), and other concerts will feature music by Mason Bates, Morton Feldman and Edgard Varèse.

If your taste doesn’t run to the avant-garde but you still appreciate the unconventional, MTT is presenting Debussy’s large-scale Le martyre de Saint Sébastien complete with the beloved Frederica von Stade as narrator in midJanuary. Barbary Coast and Beyond: Music from the Gold Rush to the Panama-Pacific Exposition in May looks to be one of MTT’s patented concept entertainments, and the centennial season ends in June with the Beethoven Ninth and an appropriate Ode to Joy.▼

<< Music

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

▼

Seasonal soundtrack

by Gregg Shapiro

T

he retro album art for A Very She & Him Christmas (Merge), by the duo consisting of M. Ward and the ubiquitous Zooey Deschanel, gives listeners a good indication of what it is they are about to unwrap. The CD could have been recorded 50 years ago or yesterday. The Sammy Cahn/Jule Styne standard “The Christmas Waltz” (what is it about Yids and classic Christmas compositions?) opens the disc, and She & Him pleasantly pay homage to the Beach Boys with covers of “Christmas Boy” and “Little Saint Nick.” “Sleigh Ride” suggests a jaunt through artificial snow, while “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” sways more than rocks. Be sure to have the mood elevators handy for the borderline catatonic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “The Christmas Song,” as well as the lackluster “Silver Bells.”

After getting off to too much of a Mariah Carey-style start on their rendition of the wacky songbird’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” a cappella group Delilah redeem themselves on the first track of The Sing-Off: Songs of the Season (Epic).

Showcasing cast members from the third season of the NBC competition show The Sing Off, this 13-track disc mixes tunes from across the Christmas music spectrum, from contemporary favorites such as “Christmas Time Is Here” by Afro Blue and “Up on the Housetop” brilliantly reimagined by Dartmouth Aires to traditional carols such as “It Came

Upon the Midnight Clear” by University of Delaware Deltones and “Coventry Carol” by Sonos.

Like the Sing-Off disc, Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album, Volume 2 (Columbia) gets the snowball rolling with “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” a version that is different enough to make it a delight. But the remainder of the disc is as uneven as the branches on Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

Original/exclusive cuts written by committee (the generic Anders/ Astrom/Peiken tune factory) pale in comparison to the faithful readings of Joni Mitchell’s “River” (not too badly mutilated by Lea Michele) and the Waitresses’ modern Christmas masterpiece “Christmas Wrapping,” “Do You Hear What I Hear?” “Let It Snow” (given a gay peppermint twist by Chris Colfer and Darren Criss) and the unexpected inclusion of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

For those who never thought they would live to see the day when legendary singer/songwriter Carole King would perform a song from The Sound of Music, that day has arrived with A Holiday Carole (Hear Music/Rockingale). King opens her first-ever holiday album, produced by daughter Louise Goffin, with “My

Favorite Things,” and continues with delightful interpretations of festive favorites such as “Carol of the Bells,” “Sleigh Ride,” “Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday” and “This Christmas.” In addition, King sings three new songs co-written by Goffin, including the lovely “New Year’s Day.” The album’s centerpiece is a luminous rendition of the “Chanukah Prayer,” on which King is joined by Goffin and grandson Hayden Wells.

Employing studio trickery worth of Lady Gaga on the song “Yivonim,” the Yeshiva Boys Choir under the direction of Eli Gerstner and Yossi Newman sound like the holiest boychik band ever. Their album Chanukah (Indie Extreme/ Fontana), comprised of original selections, rocks (back and forth, I’d imagine) like davening frummers.

Joyous selections such as “Those Were the Nights,” “Shehechiyanu,” “The Chanukah Medley” and “Mizmor Shir” make the best use of the choirs’ talents. “Chasoif,” which sounds vaguely like “My Heart Will Go On,” and the faux head-banger “Haneiros” might leave a metallic taste in your mouth.

Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots, Velvet Revolver and various

drug busts fame, popped a fedora on his head for The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Atco/Soft Drive), a set of less than smoothly crooned holiday hits. It must have taken a lot for Weiland to screw up the courage for a project such as this, so take a moment to acknowledge that.

When you’re done, be sure to check out “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” the swinging “What Child Is This?” the original “Happy Christmas and Many More” and the island-influenced “O Holy Night,” but wisely avoid the rest.

Out sax-man Dave Koz’s second holiday compilation Ultimate Christmas (Capitol) draws on songs from both of his previous seasonal sets, including the jazzy twang of “Sleigh Ride” and the retro soul of “Please Come Home for Christmas” (featuring Kimberly Locke). It also expands his contributions to songbooks of the season with “Welcoming the Season (Prelude)” and “Welcoming the New Year (Coda).” Koz also includes the original “Eight Candles (A Song for Hanukkah),” a nod to his own heritage.

Culling tracks from various Christmas discs throughout his career going back as far as 1968,

the un-hip hip-hop of “I’m Into You” featuring the over-exposed Lil Wayne, and the generic dance of “Invading My Mind.” Lopez does manage to crawl out from under the rubble on “Until It Beats No More” and “Starting Over.”

When Sade’s domestic debut Diamond Life arrived in 1984, it was clear that Madonna was no longer the only one-named wonder winning over music-lovers. On the strength of hit songs “Your Love

Is King,” “Smooth Operator” and “Hang On to Your Love,” all found on the splendid double-disc compilation The Ultimate Collection (Epic), Sade dazzled listeners with the promise of more. For the most part, she didn’t disappoint.

Sade kept the strong songs coming with “The Sweetest Taboo” and “Never As Good As the First Time” from 1985’s Promise, “Paradise” from 1988’s Stronger than Pride and “No Ordinary Love” from 1992’s Love Deluxe. Eight years passed between albums, and Sade returned in 2000 with the Bob Marley-esque “By Your Side” from Lovers Rock. Then it was another 10 years before her next studio disc, Soldier of Love, whose title track was possibly her most daring musical departure.

The Ultimate Collection contains these and 19 more cuts, such as the unexpected Thin Lizzy cover “Still in Love with You” and the dreadful remix of “The Moon and the Sky” with the unnecessary Jay-Z, making this her most thorough anthology to date.

Country rock survivor Lucinda Williams is nothing if not prolific.

Since her groundbreaking 1998 comeback disc Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, she’s recorded five

The Classic Christmas Album (Columbia/RPM/Legacy) by Tony Bennett feels the most like Christmas out of all the discs in this column. The combination of Bennett’s voice and phrasing and the arrangements makes this a truly classic Christmas recording.

Standouts include the toe-tapping and finger-snapping “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” the groovy “My Favorite Things,” the warmth of “The Christmas Song,” “Christmas in Herald Square” and the previously unreleased “What Child Is This?”

As far as we know, football player turned singer Benjamin Utecht isn’t in the same wacko camp as that Tim Tebow fella, in spite of having recorded for Sandi Patti’s record label and releasing the “inspirational holiday collection” Christmas Hope (Green Hill), which includes a duet with Christian jazz (what?) singer Jaimee Paul on “Let It Snow.”

The disc also features a trio of collaborations with piano man Jim Brickman. Utecht’s voice is pleasant (way better than Scott Weiland’s), and his approach is dead serious (no fooling around for the faithful), if that’s what you’re looking for in your Christmas music.▼

Dishing the divas

by Gregg Shapiro

J

ennifer Lopez will do anything for our respect. Whether she’s taking a stab at being a fashion icon, a serious actress or a judge on an overrated TV talent show, she wants nothing more than to be valued for her talents, whatever they may be. And that’s what makes her recording career so puzzling.

Does she really need (or want) to be a singer? Look no further than

her unlovable new album Love?

(Island) for the answers. Why is it that when Cher was strutting her stuff – in rocker chick or disco diva drag – well into her 40s and 50s, she came off as timeless, while J Lo just sounds tampered with and tired?

Buried under production as slick and shiny as the CD booklet (and as gauzy as the photos), Lopez gives her most phoned-in performance to date. Check it out on the vocoder programmed “Good Hit,”

more studio albums, including her latest, Blessed (Lost Highway), never taking more than a few years off between releases. The Williams of “Passionate Kisses” fame is probably a thing of the past, with the closest we get to something almost upbeat occurring on Blessed’s fourth song, “Seeing Black.” For the most part this is a somber if occasionally uplifting record, as you can hear on the exquisite album closer “Kiss Like Your Kiss.”

Marianne Faithfull has long struck a balance between being an interpreter of other people’s songs and a performer of her own compositions. Over the course of almost 20 studio recordings See page 19 >>

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Books>>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

In the shadow of Kamehameha

by Tim Miller

photographs, maintaining family heirlooms, and performing oral histories of our parents and grandparents. Personally, I am very interested in the stories embedded in objects from the past, and what these objects mean to people today.

The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai’i by Glenn Wharton (University of Hawai’i Press, $19)

Y

ou all know the statue already, if nowhere else from the rapid-fire editing of the classic Hawaii Five-O opening credits. A massive bronze of powerful King Kamehameha I with his arm outstretched in that familiar Emperor Augustus pose and garlanded with leis.

The famous statue in downtown Honolulu is one of the state’s most popular landmarks, and has suffered through having its picture taken with millions of overweight tourists in Hawaiian shirts. Most are unaware that the statue is a replica; the original, cast in Paris in the 1880s, stands before the old courthouse in rural Kapa’au, North Kohala, the legendary birthplace of Kamehameha I. In 1996, NYC Museum of Modern Art conservator Glenn Wharton was sent by public arts administrators in Honolulu to examine the statue, and what he found startled him: a largerthan-life brass figure painted over in brown, black, and yellow, with “white toenails and fingernails and penetrating black eyes with small white brushstrokes for highlights.

It looked more like a piece of folk art than a 19th-century heroic monument.”

The Painted King is Wharton’s engrossing story of his efforts to conserve the Kohala Kamehameha statue, but it is also the story of his journey to understand the statue’s meaning for the residents of Kapa’au. This compelling book also made me consider the more general queer attribute of being drawn to preservation and taking care of things by tending cultural memory. I realized that I (the youngest gay sibling) am essentially the conservator for my family’s historical objects. The Painted King is a highly engaging and accessible look at “activist conservation” at work, wherever it may be found. I caught up with Glenn Wharton to speak about his book, queer conservation, and the complexities of communitybased cultural engagement.

Tim Miller: What pulled you to this powerful interest in Hawai’i?

There is a rich history of EuroAmerican gay men heading off to

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Dishing divas From page 18

and 45 (!) years, Faithfull has achieved legend status, and her latest disc Horses and High Heels (Naïve/Dramatico) maintains her standing. Produced by Hal Willner, who worked with Faithfull on the Strange Weather, Easy Come Easy Go and live Blazing Away discs, the 13 songs on H&HH won’t disappoint for their sheer diversity and for the way Faithfull makes herself at home in whatever setting she’s working. Co-written originals such as “Eternity” and “Prussian Blue” rank among her best achievements as a songwriter.

Faithfull’s renditions of Jackie Lomax’s “No Reasons” (which has more than a subtle suggestion of the Rolling Stones), Lesley Duncan’s “Love Song,” Goffin & King’s “Going Back” and Allen Toussaint’s “Back in Baby’s Arms” (on which guest backing vocalist Jenni Muldaur shines brightly) find her at the peak of her interpretive skills.

Let England Shake (Vagrant/ Island), PJ Harvey’s musical homage to her motherland, is one of the most riveting but

Author and conservator Glenn Wharton.

the distant corners of the world.

This tradition of queer cultural anthropologists, from Sir Richard Burton in 19th-century Africa to Tobias Schneebaum in 1970s New Guinea, with all the complex “going native” and Orientalist perils, has fueled gay culture for centuries. What led you to Hawai’i?

Glenn Wharton: I’ve always been attracted to Hawaiian culture, in part because of the falsetto singing, ukulele music, and storytelling through dance, but also because of the gentle nature of many Hawaiians that I’ve met over the years. As an island culture, everything moves more slowly. People in semi-rural areas like the one that surrounds the Kamehameha I sculpture embrace outsiders with warm aloha, but only after the outsider has proven that they have a genuine love for the culture and the land.

Gay identity often has this desire to look after, preserve or remember that connects strongly to that creative impulse, too. This book is not about you exactly, but I felt your humanness alive on every page. As a museum conservator, and in your life as a gay man, how does that impulse to tend things move through you?

There are certainly a disproportionate number of gays in the arts and other creative professions.

This includes art conservation and historic preservation. I’ve often wondered if there is something particular that attracts gay men to caring for cultural heritage. Perhaps there are links to the role that many of us play in our families of keeping

unsettling albums of the year. There is blood, gore and death everywhere.

Soldiers fall “like lumps of meat” while flesh quivers “in the heat” in “The Words That Maketh Murder.”

The xylophone in the title track might almost distract you from the “fountain of death” and the end of England’s “dancing days.”

The brassy charge woven into the fabric of “The Glorious Land,” a war cry if ever there were one, is strangely exhilarating, whereas the chanting and Mellotron in “England” only serve to call attention to the people who “stagnate with time.”

On Goodbye Lullaby (RCA), her fourth album and first in four years, prefab skate-pop chick Avril Lavigne sounds like she’s trying to distance herself from the snarling brat of her previous discs and grow up a little bit. After all, she is a 27-year-old divorcee. So a song

Tell us a little about your work with the Kamehameha I sculpture, and how it is that the community got so involved.

I was originally contracted to figure out how to return the sculpture to its 19th-century, goldleafed appearance, but quickly learned that many people in the community wanted to continue their tradition of painting it in life-like colors. It was a question of authenticity: do we honor the original artist’s vision or that of the people who surround it today, who honor it with a parade and gifts on Kamehameha Day? I saw the situation as ripe for community dialogue about relationships with the Native Hawaiian past.

We performed a multi-year project in which community leaders engaged artists, children, and elders in public discussion of the choice between gold and paint. I was able to participate in local activities such as stringing leis for Kamehameha Day. That put me in direct contact with older Hawaiian women and men who were more than ready to tell me their stories. I learned that the sculpture is a spiritual, economic, and political object that means many things in today’s multicultural, post-plantation present. I also learned of its amazing history. It was commissioned to honor Captain Cook’s “discovery” of the Hawaiian Islands, then it sank in a shipwreck on its way to Hawai’i in 1880, and was later recovered by a fisherman off the coast of the Falkland Islands.

It is such a beautiful, postmodern collision of this Eurocentric statue of the Hawaiian King Kamehameha in the classic Augustus Ceasar of Prima Porta stance. This contradiction would be the vehicle for the community discussions not just with the town of Kohala, but also with government authorities and your colleagues in museum conservation. Were you ever accused of “going native” in your decision to restore the statue in its painted form?

As I got deeper into the community, I learned there were many voices,

such as “Wish You Were Here,” perhaps the most mature track on the disc, sounds like the most adult recording she’s ever made.

But that doesn’t last long, because in “Smile” she sings about being a “crazy bitch,” blacking out and waking up with a new tattoo. She gets serious again on “Everybody Hurts” (not the R.E.M. song of the same name), as well as on “Not Enough.” And that’s pretty much how it goes, a serious-to-silly seesaw. ▼

and they didn’t all agree on the sculpture’s meaning or how to go about conserving it. Indeed, some of my colleagues on the mainland did accuse me of “going native” in that I was sharing professional authority with people who didn’t “understand art history,” and that we should honor the original artist’s intention no matter what local residents think today. Maintaining the rather quirky tradition of painting the sculpture in life-like colors that’s evolved since its 1883 installation was going a bit too far for some of my colleagues.

What did you discover as a gay man entering this other culture so intensely over many years?

Hawai’i is very gay-accepting.

People on the islands appreciate the sensitivity that often comes with being gay in our culture.

They distrust outsiders, but once they learn that you have good intentions, Hawaiians open up with big hearts and warm embraces. It took time to gain this trust, but eventually I did by

slowing down, getting to know people, and participating in community projects like making coconut puppets for a puppet hula about the history of the sculpture.

Many of the people I worked with were gay, but we rarely spoke about it. I think this is common in rural areas where everyone knows each other and their families. Word got around through the coconut wireless that I was gay, then that was that. We had a project of local discovery to do.▼

<< Out&About

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

Period of Adjustment @ SF Playhouse

O&A

Local staging of Tennessee Williams’ “serious comedy” about a man who brings his bride to meet his best friend. $20-$50.

Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru Jan 14. 533 Sutter St. near Powell. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Out &About

Winter Wonderland at The Endup with Liz Primo See Saturday Dec 31.

Ring it in

by Jim Provenzano

S

o, you’re lookng for something unusual for New Year’s Eve; something theatrical, something boozy, but not bruisy, something cruisy and schmoozy.

Make a resolution to end and start this year and the next by boldly going forth … somewhere else.

Pretty much every bar –gay, straight and in-between– will hold New Year’s Eve celebrations. So be brave. Try something new.

See December 31 listings for your various party choices.

And if you’re drinking, take a cab. See ya next year.

Thu 29>> Brett Kaufamn @ 5 Claude Lane Gallery Exhibit of unique multimedia works depicting gay icons like Allen Ginsberg, Harvey Milk and Oscar Wilde. Wed-Sun 11am-5pm.

Exhibit thru Jan 11. 5 Claude Lane near Bush St. 956-1310. www.5claudelane.com

Children of the Cockettes @ Oddball Film

The Secret Garden @ Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s popular children’s book. $19-$72. Tue & Wed 7:30pm.

Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Sun 7pm.

Thru Dec 31. 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. (650) 463-1960. www.theatreworks.org

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550

See the extended 90-minute rough cut of a new film about Thrillpeddlers, Trannyshack and Peaches Christ drag crews. $10. 8pm.

275 Capp St. Reservations recommended: 558-8117. www.oddballfilms.blogspot.com

The popular country western LGBT dance night. $5. 6:30pm-10:30pm with lessons from 7:00 - 8:00 pm. Also Sundays 5pm10:30pm with lessons from 5:30-7:15 pm.

550 Barneveld Ave. www.sundancesaloon.org

Hot Draw @ Mark I. Chester Studio

Will Durst Comedy Show @ Various Venues

Join a special holiday edition of the men’s sketch group, with a male model posing nude and in fetish-sexy poses. Reservations (day of only): 621-6294. 6:309:30pm. 1229 Folsom St. www.markichester.com

19th annual Big Fat Year-End Kiss-Off Comedy Show, with Durst, Johnny Steele, Debi Durst, Michael Bossier, Mari Magaloni and Arthur Gaus. Performing sketches and stand-up comedy that skewers the year’s events. Dec 29, San Jose Stage Company, 490 S. 1st St, San Jose. Dec. 30, Bankhead Theater, 2400 First St., Livermore. Dec. 31, Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave, Alameda. Jan 1, Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley. www.willdurst.com

Sat 31

Fri 30>> Anneke Eussen @ Highlight Gallery

Lea DeLaria at The Victoria Theatre

The Monster Show @ The Edge

Flemish artist’s unusual works (velvet-covered bicycles) and installed sculptures which transform spaces with visual deceptions. 6pm-9pm. Fri & Sat 12pm-6pm. Thru Jan 27. 3043 Clay St. 529-1221. www.highlightgallery.com

Bring It On @ Orpheum Theatre

Cookie Dough’s weekly raucous drag show with gogo guys. This week, ‘Disco Heat,’ a retro New Year’s pre-pre-Eve show.9pm2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Touring musical stage adaptation of the comedy film about competing cheerleading squads. $25-$85. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat Sun 2pm. Sun 7:30pm. Thru Jan. 7. 1192 Market St. at 8th. (888) SHN-1799. www.shnsf.com/shows/BringItOn

Our Vast Queer Past @ GLBT History Museum

Celtic Yuletide @ Marines Memorial Theatre

See the fascinating exhibit from the GLBT Historical Society, with a wide array of rare historic items on display. New mini-exhibit focuses on the legacy of activist and performer Jose Sarria. Free for members-$5.

Wed-Sat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Michael Londra ( Riverdance ) brings his heartwarming show of Irish music and dance to the US. Special Celtic holiday menu dinner and lunch deals at the Leatherneck Steakhouse and Lounge. $15-$100. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat Sun 2pm. Sun 7pm. Thru Jan 1. 609 Sutter St. 2nd floor. 771-6900. www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com

Umbrellas of Cherbourg, A Woman is a Woman @ Castro Theatre Double feature of French musical films; in French with English subtitles. $10. Cherbourg (3:25, 7pm); Woman (5:10, 8:45).

429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Santaland Diaries @ Eureka Theatre David Sinaiko performs the solo stage adaptation of David Sedaris’ popular short story. $20-$50. Thu-Sat 8pm. Matinees 3pm. 215 Jackson St. Thru Dec. 30. www.eurekatheatre.org

God’s Plot @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ commissioned play written and directed by Mark Jackson; an update on the 1665 satire on the King of England, enjoyed by early American Puritans, whose pious outward behavior comes under scrutiny as another form of theatre. $18-$27. Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. Thru Jan. 15. 1901 Ashby Ave. Berkeley. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

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New Year’s Eve @ Harry Denton’s Starlight Room Masquerade at Davies Symphony Hall

Fred Ross Project plays big band classics; plus DJed dancing with Dave Gillis. $200 champagne and full buffet dinner. $100 dance party w/ champagne. Sir Francis Drake Gotel, 21st floor, 450 Powell St. 395-8595. www.harrydenton.com

Xanadu @ New Conservatory Theatre

New Year’s Eve Blackout @ Lexington Club

The hit Broadway musical –based on the campy 80s Olivia Newton-John/Gene Kelly film about a mythical muse and roller skating rink– gets a local production. Special “Xanadu Fun-Pack” includes a cocktail/ soft drink, keepsake cup and souvenir disco ball necklace. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Jan. 15. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Have a lesborific new year at the intimate women’s bar; host/comic Sara Goodman, DJs Andre and Jenna Riot; champagne toast, 9pm-2am. No cover! 3464 19th St. www.lexingtonclub.com

Yes, Sweet Can @ Dance Mission Theater Sweet Can Productions’ acrobatics show, with live music, dance, theatre, and astounding feats. $15-$60. 8pm. Various times Tue-Sun thru Jan 1. 3316 24th St. at Mission. 225-7281. www.sweetcanproductions.com

Sat 31>> Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi Musical comedy revue, now in its 35th year, with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs.

Special New Year’s Eve shows at 7pm & 10:15pm include champagne and truffles, and post-show dancing for the late show ($65-$190). Reg: $25-$130. Wed, Thu, Fri at 8pm. Sat 6:30, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 5pm.

(Beer/wine served; cash only). 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Bearracuda @ Club Eight 6th annual New Year’s Eve party for the bear set and their pals, with DJs Brian Maier and Craig Gaibler. $20. 9pm-3am.

1151 Folsom St. www.bearracuda.com

Black & White Ball @ City Club Women’s New Year’s Eve party with live music by Critical Bliss, DJs Lori Z and her Z Roadshow, and lesbian comic Karen Williams. $125. Cash bar. 9pm-2am. 155 Sansome St. www.bettyslist.com

Bootie @ Mezzanine Adrian and Mysterious D rule the mash-up scene with a special year-end blend. 9pm3am. 21+. 444 Jessie St. 625-8880. www.mezzaninesf.com

Colossus @ World Gym

NYE @ Churchill

Sat 31 Go Bang NYE @ Deco Lounge Disco dance party with retrotastic tunes spun by DJs Steve Fabus, Sergio, Doc Sleep, Osmose, and Eddie House. $10. 9pm-3am.

510 Larkin St. at Turk. www.gobangsf.com www.decosf.com

Honey Soundsystem NYE @ Public Works Bulgarian music act KiNK performs live, with hot DJ sets from Jason Kendig, Ken Vulsion, Robot Hustle, Derek Bobus and P-Play. 161 Erie St. www.honeysoundsystem.com

James Judd @ Tika Masalas Host Jon Sugar (Gay Artists & Writers’ Kollective) welcomes Judd, the gay solo comedy performer, plus gay comic David Hawkins and hip hop singer The Archivez.

8pm-1am. 1668 Haight St.

Kim Nalley, Houston Person @ The Rrazz Room Jazz singer and veteran saxophonist share a bill on New Year’s Eve concerts. $75 and $150 includes champagne toast and postshow buffet. 7:30pm & 10:30pm. Also Jan 1, 7pm. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. 394-1189. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Lea DeLaria @ Victoria Theatre Theatre Rhinoceros presents the out and proud lesbian comic, who performs with her hot swing band for a night of jazz, Broadway songs and hilarity. $30-$35. 7pm & 9pm shows. 2961 16th St. at Mission.

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

Maharaja @ Asian Art Museum

Private open bar event with classic cocktails, punch bowls, small batch spirits and champagne toast at midnight; music by DJ Timoteo. $80. 9pm-2am. 198 Church St.

Orquesta La Moderna Tradicion @ La Pena Cultural Center, Berkeley Fourth anniversary New Year’s Eve concert by the vibrant Cuban Charanga band; dinner reservations available. $25-$28.

9:30pm-1am. 3105 Shattuck Ave. (510) 841-3800. www.lapena.org

Prohibition: NYE 2012 @ Supperclub Enjoy dinner, a balloon drop and New Year’s Eve celebrations with a 1920s Big Band-Speakeasy (and later, Global House) theme at the futuristic, Roman-bed style nightclub. $125. 7pm-1pm dinner then party. 657 Harrison St. 348-0900. www.supperclub.com

Rub @ Beatbox New Year’s Eve edition of the cruisy dance night popular with men. DJ Paul Goodyear spins tunes. 9pm-2am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com

Speakeasy @ Truck It’s a naughty semi-private affair at the lil bar on the other side of Folsom. Visit the website for password. No cover! Naughty fun and drinks and party favors! 8pm-2am.

1900 Folsom St. at 15th. www.trucksf.com

Teatro Zinzanni @ Pier 29 Closing night of Up in the Air, about a struggling radio station, stars Geoff Hoyle, blues musician Duffy Bishop, and a slew of amazingly talented acrobats, singers, musicians, a five-course dinner, and a lot of fun. $117-$145. Saturday 11:30am “Breve” show $63-$78. Wed-Sat 6pm (Sun 5pm) Thru Dec 31, when the show goes on hiatus for World Cup Sailing pier renovations. Pier 29 at Embarcadero Ave. 438-2668. www.teatrozinzanni.com

The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts, an expansive exhibit showcasing textiles, jewels and items from the heyday of the early Indian empires. Also, Sanjay Patel’s Deities, Demons and Dudes with ‘Staches: Indian Avatars ; Tateuchi Thematic Gallery, 2nd floor. Other special events thru exhibit run. $7-$17. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. Thu til 9pm. Thru April 8, 2012. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org

Texas Rose Dance @ Humanist Hall, Oakland

Sundance Saloon hosts its third annual New Year’s Eve party for cowboys and cowgirls, with line-dancing, two-stepping and a midnight balloon drop. $25-$30. $50 with dinner (6pm); advance only. 8pm-1am.

1231 Market St. www.sundancesaloon.org

Mango @ El Rio

Electric Energy Soiree @ W Hotel

Masquerade Ball @ Davies Symphony Hall

Heklina and Joshua J join forces yet again for a New Year’s Eve party with acts by Suppositori Spelling, Holy McGrail, Honey Mahogany and more. Upstairs, gogo guys shake it to grooves by John LePage and Joey Jinks. $20-$30. 9pm-3am. 375 11th St. www.joshuajpresents.com www.trannyshack.com www.DNAlounge.com

Dinner and dancing with the straights and tourists; how exotic. Prix-fixe dinner and a DIY Bloody Mary bar. Hosted bar 8pm10pm. DJ Yeasayer, live music by Capital Cities and DJ C-Lektra. Nibbly things, balloon drop, champagne, etc. $75-$150.

8pm-2am. 181 Third St at Mission. 7775300. www.Whotels.com

Festive New Year’s Eve party with a classical theme; 8pm cocktails, 9pm Symphony performs waltzes, polksa and period dances, with violinist Nicola Benedetti; 10:30 ‘80s dance party, Midnight toast, balloon drop. $85-$195.

201 Van Ness Ave at Grove. 864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org

“Let’s Get Physical” New Year’s Eve dance party with DJs Hector Fonseca and Luke Johnstone, plus a hi-energy disco room with DJ Matt Consola. $50-$70 ($110 four-party weekend pass). 9pm-6am. 290 DeHaro St. at 16th. www.guspresents.com

Country Western Dance @ Hotel Whitcomb

Sat 31 Go Bang at Deco Lounge

New Year’s Eve women’s party with food (spaghetti, veggie and meat) desserts, dancing, DJs Edaj, Marcella and guests, and fun. $15-$25. 8pm-2am. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com

Women and trans night of country western dancing with two-stepping and line dancing; music by Reggae Cowboi. $10-$15.

8pm-12:30am. 390 27th St. Oakland. www.texasrosedance.com

Trannyshack/Big Top @ DNA Lounge

Veronica Klaus @ R2: The Rrazz Room Lounge Local chanteuse performs jazz and cabaret classics with her trio in a special pair of New Year’s Eve shows at the new added venue next to the Rrazz Room. $45 7:30pm. $65 10:30pm. champagne, party favors and fun. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Winter Wonderland @ The EndUp Jai Rodriguez, Cassandra Cass, Liz Primo and dancers perform at a New Year’s Eve party with DJs Cuervo, David Hanress, Taj, Hawthorne, Ben Seagren and Dean Samaras; with host Patrik Gallineaux and drinks

by Stoli; complimentary RedBull, champagne, Avian tequila shots. 9pm-3am. Free before 10:30pm. $30-$40 after. Open Stoli bar till 11pm. RSVP at stoliparty@gmail.com www.theendup.com

The Wild Bride @ Berkeley Repertory Theatre Touring production of Kneehigh Theatre Company’s acclaimed Broadway show with music and dance that blends fairy tale dreams and humorous yet heartbreaking realities. New Year’s Eve show Dec 31 includes a champagne toast. $27-$82. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed 7pm (Dec 7, at 8pm).

Sat & Sun 2pm. Sun 7pm. Thru Jan 22.

2025 Addison St. (510) 647-2972. www.berkeleyrep.org

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Out&About >>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Sun 1>>

Wed 4>>

Burning Bowl Ceremony @ Unity SF

Animation Exhibits @ Walt Disney Museum

LGBT-inclusive church hosts a “clean slate” ritual; release unwanted “stuff” from your past to create the future you desire. 10am.

2222 Bush St. 474-0440. www.unitysf.com

See biographical exhibits about Walt Disney, early sketches and ephemera from historic Disney movies. Frequent lectures and film screenings. $5-$20. 104 Montgomery St., The Presidio. www.waltdisney.org

California Dreaming @ Contemp. Jewish Museum

The Last Drag @ LGBT Center

Jewish Life in the Bay Area from the Gold Rush to the Present, an exhibit about the lives of historic Western American Jewish people, from Levi’s jeans and Ginsberg’s Howl to Gump’s and LGBT synagogues.

Also, Houdini: Art and Magic. $5-$12. ThuTue 11am-5pm. 736 Mission St. at 3rd. 6557800. Thru Oct. 16, 2012. www.thecjm.org

LGBT quit smoking workshop; seven-session weekly course. You must attend first meeting. Do it! 7pm-9pm. 1800 Market St. 339-STOP. www.thelastdrag.org

Holiday Ice Rink @ Union Square Skate around shoppers at the ice rink in the middle of downtown’s busy Union Square.

A portion of ticket sales benefit Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco. $5-$10. 10am11:30pm. Thru Jan 14. Powell St. at Geary.

781-2688. www.unionsquareicerink.com

Beat by the Bay.

Mon 2 (Red) New Year’s Day @ Beatbox Belvedere Vodka and Beatbox present a fundraiser for the global AIDS nonprofit with DJs Tristan Jaxx and Joey Jinx. $10 and up donations. 9pm-3am. 314 11th St. www.beatboxsf.com/red

Mon 2>> 1991: Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath @ Oakland Museum of California New exhibit of Richard Misrach’s rarely viewed large-format photographs of the devastating fires 20 years ago. Thru Feb 12, 2010. Also, A Walk in the Wild, Continuing John Muir’s Journey, Bay Area figurative art, Dorothea Lange archive, Early landscape paintings, Gold Rush Era works, California ceramics. Gallery of California Natural Sciences. Special Dec 26 postholiday museums tore blowout sale thru Dec 31. $6-$12. 1000 Oak St. Oakland.

(510) 318-8400. www.museumca.org

Imaginarium @ Castro Tarts Exhibit of Don McCunn’s fantasy, science fiction-inspired photo portraiture at the bakery. Thru Feb 29. 564 Castro St. at 18th. www.deofsf.com/Castro-Tarts

Picklewater Clown Cabaret @ Stage Werk Theatre Fundraiser show for the clown and circus school. $10 and up. 7pm & 9pm. 446 Valencia St. at 16th. 571-9855. www.picklewater.com

Q Comedy @ Martuni’s Gay laughs with SF comedians Justin Lucas, Simone Campbell, Jennifer Dronsky with special guest host Pippi Lovestocking. $5-$15. 8pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.Qcomedy.com

Ten Percent @ Comcast 104 David Perry’s talk show about LGBT local issues. Mon-Fri 11:30am & 10:30pm, Sat & Sun 10:30pm. www.davidperry.com

Veronica Klaus at The Razz Room’s R:2

The Matter Within @ YBCA

Tue 3>>

Fascinating new exhibit of contemporary Indian art; installations, sculptures and other media. Don’t miss Sunil Gupta’s alluring gay photo series Love, Undetectable. Free-$12. Exhibit thru Jan 29. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.ybca.org

The Air We Breathe @ SF MOMA

Playland @ Conservatory of Flowers

New group exhibit of works by 30 contemporary artists and eight poets who explore the issues of legalizing same-sex marriage. Accompanying book will be on sale: The Air We Breathe: Artists and Poets Reflect on Marriage Equality. Also, Richard Serra Drawing, a retrospective of drawings by the artist known for his massive steel slabs; Thru Jan. 16. Paul Klee and Andrew Schoultz, an exhibit of works by the Bay Area artist in response to Klee’s drawings and prints; Thru Jan 8; and Sharon Lockhart’s Lunch Break, photos and installation of images of industrial workers. Other exhibits ongoing. Free-$18. 151 Third St. 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org

New exhibit of miniature trains and buildings recreating the Sutro Baths, Cliff House and Playland amusement park of SF’s yesteryears. $1.50-$5. Reg. hours Tue-Sun 10am-4pm. Thru April 15. 100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park. 831-2090. www.conservatoryofflowers.org

Sat 31

The Art of Dr. Seuss @ Dennis Rae Fine Art Fascinating exhibit of rarely seen prints, paintings, sculptures and a few of the more known drawings by Theodor Geisel, the author/illustrator of the immensely popular children’s books. 351A Geary St. 391-1948. www.dennisraefineart.com

The Two-Character Play @ Eureka Theatre Theatre Rhinoceros’ production of Tennessee Williams’ lesser-known drama about a brother and sister’s family saga and their life as an acting duo.$10-$25. Previews thru Jan 7 (opening night). Tue-Sat 8pm.

Sun 3pm. Thru Jan. 15/ 215 Jackson St. at Front. (800) 838-300. www.TheRhino.org

Sat 31

Beat by the Bay @ Ever Gold Gallery Exhibit of historic Bay Area Beat Era visual artists and archival material from selected galleries of the era. Wed-Sat 1pm-6pm.

441 O’Farrell St. 796-3676. www.evergoldgallery.com

Collected @ Museum of the African Diaspora Subtitled Stories of Acquisition and Reclamation, this new exhibit displays more than 100 objects that help narrate the struggles and contributions of African Americans in California. Thru March 4. 685 Mission St. at 3rd. 358-7200. www.moadsf.org

Cuban Connections: Near & Far @ MACLA, San Jose Group exhibit of photography by contemporary and historic Cuban artists. Free.

Wed & Thu 12pm-7pm. Fri & Sat 12pm5pm. Thru Jan 7. Movimento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, 510 South First St., San Jose. (408) 998-ARTE. www.maclaarte.org

Beach Blanket Babylon

Thu 5>> Get Lucky @ SOMArts Gallery

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s

The Culture of Chance, a group exhibit of multimedia art paying homage to artist John Cage’s 100th birthday. Thru Jan 26.

Tue-Fri 12pm-7pm. Sat 12pm-5pm. 934 Brannan St. www.somarts.org/getlucky/

Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gayfriendly comedy night. One drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

The Legend of Rex Slinkard @ Cantor Arts Center, Palo Alto

Queer Comic Artists @ Cartoon Art Museum Group exhibit of work by Burton Clarke (Gay Comix), Jaime Cortez (Sexile), Ed Luce ( Wuvable Oaf ), Jon Macy (Teleny and Camille),MariNaomi ( Kiss and Tell), Trina Robbins ( Wimmen’s Comix), Joey Alison Sayers (Just So You Know), Christine Smith (The Princess), Mary Wings (Come Out Comix), and Rick Worley (A Waste of Time). Free-$7.

Thru March 4. Reg. hours Tue-Sun 11am5pm. 655 Mission St. www.cartoonart.org

Country Western Dance at Hotel Whitcomb

Exhibit of art in various media and ephemera from the life of painter Rex Slinkard, a little-known contemporary of early Modern artists Marsden Hartley and George Bellows. Thru Feb. 26. www.museum.stanford.edu

Winter Salon @ Robert Tat Gallery Exhibit of vintage and contemporary photographic prints. Thru Jan. 28. Tue-Sat 11am-5:30pm. 49 Geary St. #410. 7811122. www.roberttat.com

To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com.

Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

Sat 31

For bar and nightlife events, go to bartabsf.com

<< Leather

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

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Folsom St. Fair comes early

by Scott Brogan

M

ark your calendars. It’s official. The 2012 Folsom Street Fair will occur one week earlier than planned. The new date is Sun., Sept. 23. Traditionally the street fair happens on the last Sunday of September. Apparently the City of San Francisco, in their infinite wisdom, gave the approval for Oracle to have their convention that same week. Naturally, Oracle snapped up all available hotel rooms this side of the Rockies. The only way for Folsom Street Events to ensure proper space for visitors, volunteers, and performers was to move the fair up a week. That means that Leather Week will begin on Sat., Sept. 15, and run through the day of the fair (again, Sept. 23). It’s mind-boggling to me that the city would approve Oracle over the Folsom Street Fair, which is the largest fetish fair in the world, and third largest street event in California. Hopefully the city won’t let Oracle have that last week in the future. For details about the fair and events, go to: www.folsomstreetfair.org.

Please help the SF Citadel move to a new location. After years at 1277 Mission, the SF Citadel is moving to 363 6th St. The Citadel relies on membership fees and event fees to help pay the high costs of doing business in SF. To that end, they’re having a special fundraising event, Wonderland – Down a New Hole, at the new location on Dec. 31 from 2-6 p.m. The goal is to raise at least 45k to help with the moving costs. Admission is $10, but be sure to bring extra money for the auctions and other events. Let’s help them move into their new space in style! The event will be followed by their New Year’s Eve Extravaganza at the old location (1277 Mission) from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. To clarify: new location: 363 6th St., old location: 1277 Mission. Go to: www. sfcitadel.org.

SF LDG 15th anniversary. The SF Leathermen’s Discussion Group [LDG] held their 15th anniversary celebration the afternoon of Dec.

Scott Brogan

Leather icon Guy Baldwin and Mr. SF Leather 2011 Darren Bondy enjoy the recent SF LDG 15th anniversary celebration.

17 at the LGBT Center on Market.

The event was attended by just about every breathing person in the community. We were treated to many sexy “Santa’s Helpers,” human Christmas Trees, hot Latin go-go boys, Barechest Calendar Men, food, drink, and each other!

LDG Program Chair Patrick Mulcahey and president Brian James introduced their new mentorship program.

This program will help fill the need expressed at last summer’s “Is Leather Dead?” community discussion.

After speeches by Race Bannon, Dr. Richard Sprott, and Erik Gibb, the first ever SF LDG Service Awards were handed out. The awards: Lifetime Service was awarded to Fakir and Chuck (of Blow Buddies). The “We Are Everywhere” award went to Leland Carina; “Best Friend” award to Suzan Revah; and “The Phoenix” award to the RMSF (Rubber Men of San Francisco). Congratulations to all on your well-deserved awards.

The SF LDG has gone through many changes since its inception in the late 1990s. Thankfully they’re headed in the right direction. Brian James put it best in his closing remarks: “This summer we asked

Courtesy SF LDG

“Human Christmas Trees” at the recent SF LDG 15th anniversary celebration.

‘Is Leather Dead?’ and you all told us: ‘Hell, no!’ However, it was obvious our community needed to be poked with a sharp stick, and that is exactly what our panel discussion did, very intentionally.

“I want to close our program today with a personal concern, and that is not that the leather community is dead, but I observe a community brotherhood that is in ICU and going fast. ‘Brotherhood’ See page 23 >>

Coming up in leather and kink Thu., Dec. 29: Daddy Thursdays at Kok Bar (1225 Folsom). Shot & drink specials. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Thu., Dec. 29: Underwear Night at The Powerhouse (1347 Folsom). Show your undies for drink specials.

10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Fri., Dec. 30: Truck Wash at Truck (1900 Folsom). 10 p.m.-close. Live shower boys, drink specials. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Sat., Dec. 31: All Beef Saturday Nights at The Lone Star (1354 Harrison). 100% SoMa Beef & Co. 9 p.m.close. Go to: www.facebook.com/lonestarsf.

Sat., Dec. 31: Wonderland, SF Citadel’s Moving Fundraiser at the new SF Citadel (363 6th St.).

Help the SF Citadel pay for their new digs! $10 donation. Please bring more for auctions. 2-6 p.m.

Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Sat., Dec. 31: SF Citadel New Year’s Eve Extravaganza at the SF Citadel’s current location (1277 Mission). $25. 8 p.m.-1 a.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Global Fund. 9 p.m.-close. Go to: www.beatboxsf.com.

Sun., Jan. 1: Men in Gear Monthly Party at Kok Bar. Leather and Gear beer bust. $8 if in gear, $10 if not.

3-7 p.m. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sun., Jan. 1: Castro Bear Presents Sunday Furry Sunday at 440 Castro. 4-10 p.m. Go to: www.castrobear.com.

Mon., Jan. 2: Trivia Night with host Casey Ley at Truck. Prizes, insane fun and ridiculous questions!

8-10 p.m. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Tue., Jan. 3: 12-Step Kink Recovery Group at the SF Citadel. 6:30 p.m. Open to all kink-identified people in recovery. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Tue., Jan. 3: Busted at Truck. $5 beer bust. 9-11 p.m.

Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Tue., Jan. 3: Pit Stop Happy Hour at Kok Bar. $1 shots on the hour. 6-9 p.m. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Tue., Jan. 3: Ink & Metal at The Powerhouse. 9 p.m.close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com

Sat., Dec. 31: Boot Lickin’ at the Powerhouse. The hottest Saturday night in SoMa. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Wed., Jan. 4: Nipple Play at The Powerhouse. Drink specials for the shirtless. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Sat., Dec. 31: Rub, New Year’s Eve 2012 at BeatBox (314 11th St.). DJ Paul Goodyear, hot men. $20 early bird, $30 via Eventbrite, $40 at the door (if available).

9 p.m.-4 a.m. Go to: www.beatboxsf.com.

Wed., Jan. 4: Wolf! at the Watergarden (1010 The Alameda, San Jose). For furry men on the prowl.

4 p.m.-1 a.m. Go to: www.thewatergarden.com.

Sun., Jan. 1: Truck Bust Sundays at Truck. $1 beer bust. Warm Bar, hot men, cold beer. 4-8 p.m. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Sun., Jan. 1:(Red) New Year’s Day Party at BeatBox. A dance that saves lives. $10, goes to (Red) for the

Wed., Jan. 4: Naked Buddies at Blow Buddies (933 Harrison), a male-only club. Doors open 8 p.m.-12 a.m. Play till late. Go to: www.blowbuddies.com.

Wed., Jan. 4: Bear Bust Wednesdays at Kok Bar SF. $6 all you can drink Bud Light or Rolling Rock drafts.

Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

▼

Karrnal >>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Best of the Year, part 1

by John F. Karr

T

he 2011 version of my Best of the Year announcements is going to take two weeks. First up, some books and an aside. And then I’d like to give everyone a little Christmas present.

Before I name my favorite books of 2011, however, I’ve got to tell you about one of a previous year’s best books. I don’t know why, but I never got around to reviewing it, and that’s nagged me to the point I’ve got to get it off my chest.

Kris – The Physique Photography of Chuck Renslow (Nazca Plains, paper, $39.95) was published in 2008 by an entirely obscure company. Its advertising budget seems to have been nil, so I’d never known about it until I stumbled on it accidentally, as one of those “based on your past purchases” recommendations at Amazon. Kris is an obvious labor of love by editor Joseph Bean, who has collected in 160 pages a fine selection of Renslow’s work, iconic physique studies of the leather guys, muscle men and just plain butch dudes he favored. The pics were originally published in those small physique mags of the 1950s and 60s, and it’s great to have them here in 8x10 format. Bean’s pertinent Introduction tells us much more about Renslow in a few pages than several hundred garbled

pages did in a more recently published biography. Best of all is the inside scoop on the models that Bean elicited from Renslow himself – a commentary of gossipy, juicy tales that’s rich in sociologic and historic impact. Yes, Kris is obviously low budget, and not as glossy as most other past-master photo collections have been.

While the B&W pics are crisp, some of the color shots are a little fuzzy. Still, the book’s a big serving, and may be the only Kris collection we’ll get. So I’m mighty thankful to Mr. Bean for the present of these fab photos.

What about the books of 2011? Best Biography is William E. Jones’ Halsted Plays Himself, with its pretty comprehensive view of a talented but conflicted performer and filmmaker – a man who got trapped in his on-screen persona, but whose L.A. Plays Itself is a milestone of gay erotic filmmaking. The Best Autobiography is Susie Bright’s witty and wise Big Sex, Little Death. Most pertinent to me were her adventures as a pornographer, and her thoughts on the subject are enlightening and disturbing. I hope to discuss them further.

Studsover40.com

Karrnal obsession David Griffin makes a swell Christmas package.

<<

Leather + From page 22

was coined in 1200s Middle English as the sharing of a common interest or quality, with the belief that all should act in harmony. To me, this implies a common code of ethics, sense of purpose and combined efforts. What I observe far too often today, some of which Race touched upon, has little resemblance to the historic definition of brotherhood.

“Our groups around the world are disappearing because of individuals’ need to stand out and ego, seeing our world in historical rather than future contexts, and not protecting one another as brothers, having each other’s backs.

I’d like to see us do more than raise money to care for our sick and honor our dead. Let us try harder to honor the living leatherman or

Scott Brogan

Tony Hunter greets arrivals at the SF LDG 15th anniversary celebration.

woman standing next to you, or trying to follow in your footsteps,

The year saw new photo collections from my favorites, with Tom Bianchi’s Fine Art Sex, Mark Henderson’s Poolside, Rick Day’s Players 2, and the near inundation of two books in one year from Howard Roffman, Private Moments and Paradise Found. Each was a valuable contribution in a singular style. But for me, they were trumped

by The Jim French Diaries, which surveys a lifetime’s work for Colt Studio. The huge book’s oversize format allows French’s photos an impact their initial magazine-size publication couldn’t. It’s like, Wow. I said I had a present for you, but first I’d like to talk about one that I get. Michael Lucas loves to give gifts, and accompanies most every movie he sends out with a bar of quality chocolate. I’ve wondered – is this a “Thank you for your consideration” gift? Or a bribe? I used to think that getting the movie free was bribe enough (and perhaps sometime I’ll talk about the ways filmmakers can exert influence on my reviews).

Now, as a prelude to actual sex, I like chocolate, especially with coffee – pulls the balls up tight, makes em feel fully loaded. Really enflames those lower chakras. But to indulge the combo before watching porn can make me so revved-up twitchy that I just wanna scan forward. No, before watching a sexo, what one actually wants is a joint. I’m not expecting Michael to send me one of those. But he sure hit the mark with his last gift, “A Touch of Sea Salt” dark chocolate. It was yummy.

So I say thanks, Mr. Lucas, for considering the effort of a reviewer’s consideration.

Over the years, I’ve found that my articles get more of a response when they’re more personal. So here’s the little holiday gift I promised – two things I’ll tell you about myself. I’m not for sale to minors. And all I’ve ever really wanted for Christmas was David Griffin.▼

if only you’ll let them.

“As I said at the July panel, I started with Anthony Williams at GMSMA in New York and watched that organization dissolve. Toxic isolationism was in part GMSMA’s downfall, as well as perhaps not cultivating the next generation of leaders. Toxic isolationism is far too entrenched in our organizations today. I reiterate what I said at the July panel: SF LDG will work to keep our eye on the needs of our future, the youth and newcomers to our community, so this same fate is not met in San Francisco. We will do this alone if necessary, for our generations to come. The road to a healthy, fertile and expanding brotherhood is working together for our common needs! Happy holidays and all the best to each of you in the New Year!”

Bravo, Brian!▼

ebar.com

<< DVD

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012

▼

Bound & gagged

by Ernie Alderete

T

he short single-disc DVD Bound Gods the Sampler is a good intro to the offerings from San Francisco’s own Kinkmen.com. The entire production is filmed at the old brick, castle-like San Francisco Armory on Mission St., an historic post-earthquake landmark which the smut producers purchased a few years ago. The sampler is composed of three segments pitting different masters against different slaves, oneon-one.

The first slave is firmly tied to a device with about a dozen vibrators dangling from long electrical cords overhead. Suddenly, the naked Master enters the scene with his penis fully erect and at attention.

But the novelty soon wears thin, as an immobile victim tortured

<<

Film 2011 From page 13

story from Cary Joji Fukunaga, with a captivating quartet of Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell and Dame Judi Dench: forever my Jane Eyre.

6. Circumstance: Maryam Keshavarz plants her girl-loving heroines firmly in the belly of the beast: 7th-century-worshipping, 21st-century pop/tech-obsessed Tehran. How do young lesbians survive in a society lubricated by theology, bribes and arranged marriages? The wealthy Atafeh finds a willing playmate in orphan Shireen. The girls bond around carnal pleasures and underground dance clubs. Trouble comes knocking in the form of Atafeh’s drug-addled brother Mehran: Reza Sixo Safai is deliciously smarmy, like a young John Cassavetes pimping Mia Farrow to the witches in Rosemary’s Baby. Fear, loathing and paranoia are tempered by exuberant scenes of young queers dubbing a pirated version of Milk.

6. (2) A Separation: Asghar Farhadi demystifies family life in urban Iran with this searing, absorbing drama that pits a troubled middle-class family – wife and husband feuding over the claims of their young daughter’s future vs. the care of his Alzheimer’s-afflicted dad – against a barely surviving, nominally pious working-class couple.

7. Harry Potter gets my vote for the decade’s best series. From

by a vibrator to his balls and cock dissipates the considerable momentum.

I found the next couple, Master Wolf and Slave Nomad, infinitely more exciting. This time the master actively captures his prey, rather than just finding him already conveniently immobilized.

The boy-next-door victim is in casual street clothes, while Master Wolf is in head-to-toe gleaming rubber, including a full-head mask.

Although we can see little more than two inches of skin, it’s enough to be able to perceive that the rubber conceals an extremely choice young man beneath. This master demands that his captive respect him, at which the young man initially balks.

I’ve seen a lot of water-sports scenes, but the one in this segment is one of the best! The still incognito

directors Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron, Mike Newell and the underrated David Yates, Steve Kloves’ faithful screenplays, an army of visual magicians, plus a British cast for the ages, the Potter team invented subtexts from Dickensian to Orwellian, allowing each episode to encompass the age of terror.

7. (2) The Black Power Mix Tape 1967-1975: The black power movement (Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale and Angela Davis) gets a major makeover in these remarkable Swedish TV tapes. Trust the Swedes to capture the human side of a collection of American rebels consistently demonized on the American boob tube.

8. The Ides of March: Some of the best political writing since Gore Vidal’s Kennedy clan-inspired The Best Man, another witty “liberal” knife-fight. In a series of cat-andmouse games, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, as rival campaign managers and dueling Falstaffs, use their girth, wit and way with meaty, cynical dialogue to lure Ryan Gosling’s Prince Hal into a trap before he can consolidate his power with George Clooney’s king.

8. (2) The Descendants: Alexander Payne’s mixed-mood comedy finds a deeply tanned, Hawaiian shirt-attired and recently cuckolded, wealthy Hawaiian attorney (an emotionally agile, Oscar-bound Clooney) hell-bent on undermining his inherited privilege by signing away his family’s land trust and maiming his comatose wife’s real estate mogul

Bound Gods

Van Darkholme, being singletailed by Rich Hawk.

master tosses his prey into a coffin-sized box in the floor of the basement, covered by a grill of solid iron bars. The bottom is squeezed in the trench, no more than threefeet deep, unable to do much more than squirm while his abusive master

pisses in his unwilling face. Although the victim commits the #1 cardinal sin of porn – he smirks – in this case it adds to the narrative as the master brutally smacks the ill-advised smirk off his clean-shaven face.

Is there actual intercourse in Bound Gods the Sampler? Yes, unlike some genre productions that concentrate exclusively on humiliation and degradation, there is plenty of deep anal penetration in this DVD, and tons of cum shots.

It’s hard to watch hardcore playacting without thinking about reallife torture, restraint and abuse, such as we were exposed to at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Do straight men get aroused torturing their helpless male prey? I would have to say yes, real-life torture must arouse physical same-sex passions. How far the perpetrators of real-life torture

and abuse act on those passions is anyone’s guess.

The setting at the old Armory couldn’t be more authentic or compelling. You’ll never be able to walk past the venerable building again without wondering what’s going on inside those thick fortress-like walls.

You can enjoy ever-so-brief free scenes from several DVDs from Kinkmen online, enough to tell if you’ll like the protagonists, and to grasp the set-up. But very little more. Best grab a copy of this little sampler to see if it’s your cup of tea. If you don’t like it, it would always make a good stocking stuffer for some pervert on your next Christmas shopping list. Someone gave me this copy, and I foolishly let it sit in a drawer for two years! www.BoundGods.com

Bill Cunningham photographs Vogue editor Anna Wintour in Bill Cunningham New York.

boyfriend.

9. Into the Abyss: Werner Herzog’s empathetic look at a Conroe, Texas drug-fueled murder spree offers a harrowing glimpse at the “closure” the death penalty gives crime survivors. From the deputy sheriff who guides Herzog around the crime scene to the former executioner whose nervous breakdown removed him from the loop, Herzog spares us little in this sorrowful take on Crime and Punishment in Rick Perry’s kingdom.

9. (2) Where Soldiers Come From: It’s the odd fate of Heather Courtney’s band of brothers – from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula tied by climate to Canada, by geography to Wisconsin but by politics to Michigan – to land in Afghanistan, a country whipsawed between Russia, Britain and America, “a wild, harsh, and broken land,” as Robert Traver, author of Anatomy of a Murder, once described his beloved U.P. But as Traver notes, “Murders [like wars] must happen someplace.”

10. Another Happy Day: In the ring with Ellen Barkin’s needy Mom

and Ellen Burstyn’s exasperated Grandma, rising star Ezra Miller turns his bipolar, drug-ingesting, cynical prep school dropout into a teen rage against the nuclear-family rebel with a host of sad causes. Sam Levinson’s comedy primal scream includes wary eye contact between Miller and veteran George Kennedy as Elliot swipes Grandpa’s painkillers.

10. (2) Carnage: Trust Roman Polanski to instill the sensation of house arrest as a hilarious metaphor for the fight waged by two couples over their brats’ playground squabble. While the grownups – the stellar Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz – initially play nice, soon the gloves come off and heavy weapons emerge: cell phones, projectile vomit and the disorienting effects of single-malt whiskey, producing an emotional undressing that blurs lines between power couples and political correct Brooklyn liberals.

11. Moneyball: This baseball screwball comedy, with its smart one-liners and workplace observations from writer Aaron Sorkin, is an almost-sequel to last year’s darkly funny The Social

Network. Old A’s fans, teary at the prospect of losing their darlings to San Jose, will rejoice to the raspy tones of their late radio guy Bill King, with his signature, “Holy Toledo!”

11. (2) Margin Call: Unlike Charles Ferguson’s excoriating financial meltdown doc Inside Job, Margin Call subversively humanizes its Wall Street pirates, allowing us to feel their pain, and momentarily value it above our own.

12. Pina: Dance fans will appreciate Wim Wenders’ hypnotic 3-D capture of choreographer Pina Busch’s pioneering modern programs. Wenders’ incendiary camerawork – full-body images, monorail-performed dances, dancers of all ages – allows us a sweaty proximity to art in action.

12. (2) Bill Cunningham New York: Richard Press’ spectacular bout of people-watching introduces us to an 80-something artist who takes death-defying chances to get his photos. Watch him cut off a Yellow cab on his Schwinn, an old-fashioned patrician celebrating individuals in traffic-stopping costumes.▼

▼

DVD >>

December 29, 2011-January 4, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

High drama

by David-Elijah Nahmod The Green (2011), director: Steven Williford (93 min.)

Trigger (2010), director: Bruce McDonald (78 min.) (both Wolfe Video)

A

low budget does not detract from the power of The Green.

The dark drama, which appears to have bypassed theaters and gone directly to DVD, offers a no-holdsbarred look at a lie that spirals out of control and nearly destroys a gay man’s life.

Handsome and accomplished New York stage actor Jason Butler Harner heads the cast as Michael Gavin, a high school teacher in a picturesque, riverfront Connecticut town. Gay marriage is legal, but Michael and partner Daniel (Cheyenne Jackson), together for 15 years, have not yet tied the knot.

At school, Michael is trying to mentor Jason (Chris Bert), a troubled student who’s being bullied on campus and at home. Whether or not Jason is gay is never made clear – the bullying at school is triggered by the perceptions of his classmates,

who make assumptions based on Jason’s friendship with his teacher. It all comes to a head when Michael is accused of having an inappropriate relationship with Jason. Within hours, Michael is tried and hung in the court of public opinion. His past is dug into, and his relationship with Daniel cracks under the strain. Few in town care if the charges are true or not, and in fact, the charges are false.

Though brilliantly acted by a powerful cast, The Green can be rough-going in spots. It’s not a pretty story, but it’s an honest accounting of what can happen when people close their minds.

The supporting players are as impressive as the two leads. Julia Ormond plays Karen, a lesbian Mom and the best attorney in town. She takes Michael’s case and becomes his friend.

Illeana Douglas, a big name in independent cinema and a staunch gay rights advocate, shines as Michael’s closest friend Trish.

On the day she finds out that her cancer has returned, Trish bails the besieged Michael out of jail. In a moving scene, Trish, facing the possibilities of a terminal illness,

has to remind an angry, browbeaten Michael that support is a twoway street. Karen Young, who had a nice role in the film version of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy (1988), gives a good performance as the long-suffering mother to Jason, herself trapped in an abusive relationship.

Strong acting also abounds in the rockand-roll drama Trigger, shot in Toronto. Molly Parker and Tracy Wright star as Kat and Vic. Ten years earlier, the two were music superstars, fronting the hard rock band Trigger. Over the course of one evening, they reunite for a woman-in-rock tribute concert.

Essentially a two-character theater piece shot on location, the film delves deep into the souls of two passionate women who have reasons to resent and love each

other. Though minor characters drift on and off, for the most part Trigger focuses on the long, intimate conversations shared by Kat and Vic. In the hands of lesser performers, this might not have worked, but Parker and Wright have done their homework. They know who these women are, and how they relate to each other. This is the bittersweet truth of female bonding, all too rarely portrayed on screen.

For Wright, Trigger serves as a tragic swan song. Shortly after the film wrapped, the longtime performer in Canadian avant-garde theater succumbed to cancer of the pancreas. Viewers might be able to see signs of the illness in the actor’s emaciated face. At one point Wright, speaking in character, talks about the spots recently found on her liver.

Quite a courageous last hurrah for a woman who must have known that her own end was coming.▼

Kevin Berne

Berkeley Rep hosted England’s Kneehigh Theatre and its darkly enchanting The Wild Bride, based on a Brothers Grimm tale.

Kent Taylor

William S. Brown (center) played legendary war hero Sir Hector MacDonald, a possible early casualty of DADT, in John Fisher’s time-shifting Fighting Mac at Theatre Rhino.

<<

Theatre 2011 From page 13

Time for recess After all this history, fun could also be the name of the game.

The Bay Area got a double shot of Xanadu, the Broadway musical satirically excavated from the foolish 1980 movie of the same name. The Retro Dome in San Jose was the first to tell the story that somehow combined Greek muses and roller disco, and it was only somewhat less fun in NCTC’s version that was a little bit light on the roller skating.

“The roar of the crowd” is a vintage phrase that combusted to life at the Victoria Theatre as an all-drag cast presented two episodes from The Golden Girls. Both were set at Christmas and dealt with gay subjects, and the cast led by the mistress-of-deadpan Heklina goosed every possible laugh from the old TV scripts.

American Conservatory Theater opened its current season with a just-for-laughs look back at the start of the Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman collaboration. Once in a Lifetime, lovingly and imaginatively staged by Mark Rucker, recalled the days when Broadway could afford huge casts whose only purpose was to keep the laughter coming – in this case at the foolishness of Hollywood in its panic over the miracle of

sound.

Flying solo San Francisco’s own Marga Gomez was wicked-funny in Not Getting Any Younger at the Marsh.

This seemingly rambling solo show about the psychological trauma of actually growing old(ish), where recognition and denial continue to butt heads, was one of Gomez’s best efforts in the mono form.

The always welcome Anna Deveare Smith returned to Berkeley Rep with Let Me Down Easy, her latest venture into playing multiple characters to explore a particular topic. This time it was health, health care, and attitudes toward death, and while this could be a dry and somber affair, Smith’s empathy for her real-life characters made it warm and inviting.

Berkeley Rep also hosted monologist Mike Daisey in two separate productions presented in repertory: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (presented before Jobs’ death) and The Last Cargo Cult. I only saw the latter, which made me regret missing the former. In Cargo Cult, Daisey never stirs from a chair but takes us on an amazing journey to a South Seas enclave that developed a religion around long-gone World War II planes that once dropped supplies.

The writer-performer is a man of

wondrous timing, startling vocal range, and a face that is fascinatingly expressive.

Musical instruments SHN, once known as Best of Broadway, maintained a steady stream of musicals that included such faves as Billy Elliot and Hair.

But the real class act of the series was Next to Normal, the funny-sadscary story of a wife and mother spiraling downward into manicdepression. The extraordinary Alice

Ripley repeated her award-winning Broadway role in the Pulitzer Prizewinning musical by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey.

TheatreWorks in Palo Alto had a low-key hit with the new musical Fly by Night, which looked at crisscrossing lives as the lights prepare to go out in New York’s big blackout of 1965. The engaging script and score by Kim Rosenstock, Michael Mitnick and Will Connolly could be sinister, comic, romantic, and suspenseful in short order.

The most anticipated new musical was, of course, Tales of the City at ACT. The musicalization of the first two books in Armistead Maupin’s classic newspaper serial/ novels about gay, straight, and transgendered life in a pot-happy San Francisco of the 1970s had some big Broadway and pop-star names behind it. Librettist Jeff Whitty and director Jason Moore, both veterans of Avenue Q, were joined by songwriters Jake Shears and John Garden from the Scissor Sisters. The ingredients didn’t always work, but the cast was engaging, and audience demand provoked several holdovers for what was a nice big wet kiss to San Francisco.

Star turns

Joan Marcus

San Francisco got to see Hugh Jackman in action before his concert show became the hottest ticket on Broadway.

The hottest ticket on Broadway right now has the name Hugh Jackman stamped on it, and thanks to SHN, we got to see him first. The handsome, charming, talented, and flirtatious Aussie manages to get a mutual love affair going on between him and the audience, and on opening night at the Curran, even a split up the seam in his pants was a cause for celebration.

Another SHN special brought

Kevin Spacey to town in the Old Vic-Bridge Project collaboration of Richard III, and it was an unforgettable performance for many reasons. Spacey was an unabashed spotlight hog, and if this could pull the Sam Mendes-directed play in wrong directions, it paid off big time after intermission when the actor went into warp drive.

Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup finally arrived at Berkeley Rep after being delayed so the stage and screen star could recover from knee replacement surgery. It was worth the wait, as the 79-yearold Moreno told of her unlikely and uneven rise to stardom, with gossip, reminiscences, musical numbers, and film segments lovingly put together by playwright Tony Taccone and director David Galligan.

Best for last Perhaps the biggest pleasure of the 2011 theatergoing experience is something you can still experience in 2012: The Wild Bride has been held over through Jan. 22 at Berkeley Rep. This Appalachian variation on a Brothers Grimm tale hails from Kneehigh Theatre, the inventive English troupe led by Emma Rice that previously sent us its enchanting adaptation of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter. On the most basic level, The Wild Bride is about the battle between purity and evil, but Rice and her collaborators have turned what could be a simple fable into a theatrical rendering of song, dance, movement, and simple but exquisite visual effects.

For anyone who loves the magic that only theater can provide, it’s must-see.▼

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