December 6, 2018 edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

St. James' new home

Strike up the band

ARTS

'Help Is on the Way XVII'

Arts events

The

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Since 1971, the newspaper of record for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community

Vol. 48 • No. 49 • December 6-12, 2018

LGBT seniors grapple with end-of-life issues by Matthew S. Bajko

Rick Gerharter

BART director-elect Janice Li, left, smiled as she received a chrome-plated rail spike from BART official Paula Fraser at a reception Monday.

Li feted at SF event

by Cynthia Laird

anice Li, who was elected last month to the board that oversees BART, was celebrated at a reception for LGBTQ leaders and allies and said she is ready to get to work. Li is the first queer Asian-American woman elected to the transit board, and one of only two LGBTQ elected women in San Francisco. (The other is City College board member Shanell Williams, a bisexual woman who announced Monday she is running for District 5 supervisor and was at Li’s event.) Li’s District 8 covers the western neighborhoods of the city and includes the Embarcadero, Montgomery, and Balboa Park BART stations. Li, 31, will be sworn into office December 13 and attend her first board meeting December 20. In a brief interview Monday, December 3, in the Bayside Room at Pier 1, Li, who is advocacy director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said that she has been consulting with gay BART director Bevan Dufty, who was a key supporter of her campaign. “I’m shifting from hypothetical campaign mode to now having real conversations about 2019 priorities,” she said, adding that she looks forward to working with lesbian BART director Rebecca Saltzman, who represents portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and Lateefah Simon, a straight ally whose district includes portions of Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties. Dufty told the gathering that “transportation is the lifeblood of the Bay Area.” “I’m hopeful the next few years will be incredibly positive,” he added, explaining that with the defeat of the gas tax repeal on the November ballot, transit agencies such as BART won’t see vital revenue lost. He praised Saltzman, who was a Bay Area leader in the campaign to defeat Proposition 6. Suzy Loftus, a former San Francisco police commissioner who is now running for district attorney, told the Bay Area Reporter that she worked with Li on Vision Zero, the city’s plan to eliminate traffic deaths, when she was on the police oversight panel. “The strengths she brings to the BART board are that she collaborates,” Loftus said. “She is See page 5 >>

Jane Philomen Cleland

World Tree of Hope on display

he Rainbow World Fund held the lighting ceremony for its World Tree of Hope Monday, December 3, at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral and enlisted the help of drag queen Heklina and others to perform at the festive event. RWF Executive

Director Jeff Cotter told the Bay Area Reporter that the ceremony was “really wonderful.” The tree, which is decorated with origami cranes inscribed with messages of hope and peace, will be up through January 5.

h i l e enjoying her seventh decade on the planet, Donna Personna knows her remaining days are numbered. Yet the prospect of her Jane Philomen Cleland demise doesn’t scare her. Playwright Donna “The end ques- Personna tion. ‘The end.’ It’s not a touchy subject for me. I’m irreverent,” said Personna, a transgender woman who grew up in San Jose and now lives in San Francisco. “I have been on the planet for 72 years. I learned long ago this was going to come.” Personna, a beloved drag performer, playwright, and hairdresser, credits her Mexican heritage with teaching her that death is a part of life. She pointed to the annual Dia de los Muertos holiday – the Day of the Dead in early November – as one example of how, from an early age, she was taught to embrace See page 6 >>

Activists recall Briggs initiative

by David-Elijah Nahmod

ears before states voted to ban same-sex marriage, a California ballot measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools was soundly defeated at the polls, marking one of the first major victories for the LGBT rights movement. Veteran San Francisco LGBT activists recently recalled the defeat of the anti-gay Briggs initiative 40 years ago last month. “40 Years After the Briggs Initiative: Our Power in Speaking Up and Speaking Out,” was recorded for “The Michelle Meow Show” Thursday, November 29, at the Commonwealth Club. The show was co-hosted and moderated by John Zipperer, who manages the Commonwealth Club’s media and editorial departments. Zipperer pointed out that there was a whole generation of LGBTQ people, as well as allies, who have never heard of the Briggs initiative, which was Proposition 6 on the November 1978 ballot. “I grew up in Wisconsin and did not hear about this until the late 1980s, and that set off a number of questions that I’ve looked into over the years,” Zipperer said, as he introduced the panel. Zipperer read a portion of the initiative. “Anyone who is a public school teacher, a teacher’s aide, an administrator, or a counselor could be fired if they were found to have engaged in, quote, public homosexual activity, end quote, and this was defined as homosexual sex which was not discreet and not practiced in private

Rick Gerharter

Former state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, left, made a point during a panel discussion on the 1978 Briggs initiative fight with activist and former police commissioner Gwenn Craig and historian Sue Englander for the Commonwealth Club’s “The Michelle Meow Show” November 29.

whether or not such an act at the time of its commission constituted a crime,” Zipperer said. “And public homosexual conduct, which was defined as the advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging, or promoting of public homosexual activity directed at or likely to come to the attention of school children and/or other employees.” Zipperer then turned the discussion over to the panel, each one of whom shared their thoughts and memories of fighting the initiative.

“We were getting very upset at hearing all the homophobia that was attached to teaching and out gay people,” said gay former state assemblyman, San Francisco supervisor, and school board member Tom Ammiano. “The most serious homophobic remarks I heard were not necessarily on the playground but in the teacher’s lounge.” At the time of the Briggs initiative battle, See page 12 >>

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Community News>>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 3

Gay SF pastor arrested on child porn charges by Alex Madison

gay San Francisco pastor, who has historically fought for gay rights in the Lutheran Church, was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography, according to the San Francisco Police Department. The Reverend Steven Sabin, pastor at Christ Church Lutheran at Quintara Street and 20th Avenue, was arrested November 15 on three felony charges. Sabin, 59, was arraigned November 21 and pleaded not guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography and two counts of possession or control of child pornography, according to a spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. Private defense attorney Art Lipton is representing Sabin. Lipton did not respond to a request for comment from the Bay Area Reporter. According to an SFPD news release, the department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Unit began investigating Sabin in the fall after he was found to have been distributing child pornography through an online social media application. On November 15, the police searched Sabin’s home on the 1300 block of Market Street. “Investigators located a cellphone belonging to Sabin, which contained hundreds of child pornography videos and images depicting juvenile minors being sexually abused. During a subsequent search, investigators found that Sabin was storing child pornography on a cloud storage application,” read the news release. The pastor was released on his own

Courtesy SFPD

The Reverend Steven Sabin

recognizance November 16, according to court documents. “There is not sufficient probable cause to detain the defendant,” court records stated. A pre-trial date is set for December 19. The day after Sabin was arrested, Christ Church Lutheran posted a comment on its website. “We have learned of the arrest of Steve Sabin, who will no longer serve as pastor of Christ Church Lutheran,” the statement read. “We are concerned for, and ask for, prayers for all affected, including all victims of sexual misconduct and for the people of the congregation of Christ Church. We will cooperate fully with law enforcement. We have zero tolerance for clergy sexual misconduct and are committed to providing safe spaces for all children and youth in our church.” Church representatives could not be reached for comment. Sabin is known in the LGBT community for making headlines in 1998

after being kicked out of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for being gay. He later became pastor of the Sunset district church in 2001. As previously reported by the B.A.R. in a 2005 article that reported on the continuation of anti-gay policies in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Sabin was said to have “received a condemnation, trial, defrocking, and deletion from the official roster that gives pastors a pension fund and assembly vote.” After being booted, in the article, Sabin expressed his disappointment in the results of a four-year task force report that maintained the church’s policy against same-sex blessing ceremonies and non-celibate LGBT pastors, along with other LGBT Lutheran pastors. The church released ambiguous guidance policies referring how to discipline LGBT clergy in relationships, and their congregation, which urged bishops to use “pastoral discretion” over such matters, he said. Sabin was also featured in documentarian Pam Walton’s film that told the story of three religious leaders who experienced rejection after announcing their sexual orientation to the church. The 1999 article in the B.A.R. said Sabin had been, “outed by his bishop, supported by his congregation, and ‘tried’ by the national church ELCA (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) because he refused to resign.” The SFPD is asking anyone who may have had suspicious contact with the suspect to contact the SFPD Tip Line at 415-575-4444 or Text a Tip to TIP411. t

Sex worker clinic moves to SF health center

for the holidays

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by Liz Highleyman

t. James Infirmary, a peer-based clinic for sex workers and their families, has moved to a new location in the Tenderloin shared with other community health and social services agencies. St. James Infirmary held an open house in the new space Thursday, November 29. “This is a federally qualified health center with brand new facilities so that we can give our clients high-quality health care with our top-notch therapists and medical team,” St. James Infirmary Executive Director Toni Newman told the Bay Area Reporter. “Sex workers deserve the very same care that I get from Kaiser with my gold plan. I want to make sure they feel like I feel when I go see my doctor.” The new offices are located at the San Francisco Community Health Center at 730 Polk Street. The space is also home to Shanti Project and Project Open Hand, which owns the building. Formerly known as the Asian and

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Honey Mahogany, left, joined CeeCee Roberts, St. James administrative coordinator; Executive Director Toni Newman; and development officer James Martinez at a November 29 open house at the agency’s new Polk Street location.

Pacific Islander Wellness Center, SFCHC changed its name earlier this year to reflect a broader mission. Executive Director Lance Toma told the B.A.R. in February that the center is “committed to the API community, all communities of color, LGBTQ communities, and really, the queerest

among us.” “We are excited to be able to offer space to St. James Infirmary,” he said. “Our missions are closely aligned and we share a deep commitment to some of the most marginalized and vulnerable in our community and to See page 12 >>

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<< Open Forum

4 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

Volume 48, Number 49 December 6-12, 2018 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Alex Madison CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Tavo Amador • Race Bannon Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Brian Bromberger • Victoria A. Brownworth Brent Calderwood • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Belo Cipriani • Dan Renzi Christina DiEdoardo • Richard Dodds Michael Flanagan • Jim Gladstone David Guarino • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Max Leger Michael McDonagh • Juanita MORE! David-Elijah Nahmod • Paul Parish Sean Piverger • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Adam Sandel • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Tony Taylor • Sari Staver Jim Stewart • Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez Ronn Vigh • Charlie Wagner • Ed Walsh Cornelius Washington • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Max Leger PRODUCTION/DESIGN Ernesto Sopprani PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Jose Guzman-Colon • Rudy K. Lawidjaja Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd • Jo-Lynn Otto Rich Stadtmiller • Kelly Sullivan • Fred Rowe Steven Underhil • Dallis Willard • Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small Bogitini VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.829.8937 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 • jim@ebar.com Advertising • scott@ebar.com Letters • letters@ebar.com 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. Advertising rates available upon request. Our list of subscribers and advertisers is confidential and is not sold. The sexual orientation of advertisers, photographers, and writers published herein is neither inferred nor implied. We are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

Bush was not good for the gays I

n comparison to the terTask Force) told reporter Rex rible eight years of Ronald Wockner, “There’ll be lots of Reagan in the 1980s, durdemonstrations, and he’ll have ing which he did not utter no choice but to discuss the the word “AIDS” or provide U.S.’ discriminatory federal funding for what was immigration polithen the beginning of an epicies, which will be demic that would take hunthe focal point of dreds of thousands of lives, the conference. In the George H.W. Bush presiother words, he’s dency that followed wasn’t as chicken.” bad. But that doesn’t mean it It was Bush’s was great for LGBT people – 1992 re-election because it wasn’t. campaign, howWhile Bush did sign the ever, that would Ryan White CARE Act and have lasting conAmericans with Disabilities sequences, as he cozied up to Act (both of which benefitCourtesy AP homophobes like Jesse Helms ted LGBTs and people living Lesbian activist Urvashi Vaid and Pat Buchanan, empowerwith HIV/AIDS) those were protests George H.W. Bush’s ing them, and drew evangelilargely the products of a speech on AIDS in 1990. cals to the Republican Party, Democratic Congress, and, in where they remain today and the case of the CARE Act, the are one of the biggest obstacles AIDS activist community. In other words, Bush to forging bipartisan support on social issues like didn’t expend much political capital leading on gun control, climate change, and LGBT rights. the issues. Bush’s death November 30 at the age of 94 has prompted the all-too-familiar glossy memories in wall-to-wall media coverage. It’s unfortunate that mainstream journalists, pundits, and historians are so obsessed with the idea that politicians in the Bush years were more polite – and a time when policy was done in an established order – that they aren’t being truthful with an honest examination of his shortcomings as president. Yes, he was a World War II veteran and a decent man (so unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office), but Bush’s actions mostly ignored LGBT people or worked against us. He supported the military’s ban on gay troops and was confused by the concept of same-sex marriage – although these were widely held positions in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As the AIDS epidemic was ravaging cities across the country and around the world, Bush couldn’t bother to attend – or even send a video message to – the 1990 international AIDS conference in San Francisco. Robert Bray, then the director of public information for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (now called the National LGBTQ

Bush went so far right that the Log Cabin Republicans couldn’t even endorse him. (Sound familiar? Log Cabin didn’t endorse Trump either.) The lack of attention and adequate federal funding for AIDS in the early years of the epidemic cost gay men their lives. The federal government left it up to local jurisdictions to deal with the crisis. Only anyone who survived those horrible years knows what a bleak and scary time it was in this country – almost unimaginable today. For places like San Francisco, which set the standard with a robust system of care through both public entities like the health department and nonprofits, there was some hope in those early days – or at least a modicum of comfort as men wasted away. But in the majority of the country, people just died. The delay in federal help also slowed the research needed for new drugs, and that cost a lot of lives too. It’s unfortunate that Bush, who projected his “kinder, gentler nation” philosophy as the face of the Republican Party, did not do more when he could have for LGBT citizens.t

Dear Ms. Chenoweth, don’t sing with Mormon Tabernacle choir by Fred Karger

saw that you, Kristin Chenoweth, recently told the Salt Lake Tribune that you turned down our hope and request that you would cancel your three nights of performing with the homophobic Mormon Church’s Tabernacle Choir. Your refusal to side with the LGBTQ community came just four days after an op-ed that I wrote ran in the Tribune entitled, “Chenoweth Should Bow out of Tabernacle Choir Concert.” Did you know that just two months ago Dallin H. Oaks, of the Mormon Church’s First Presidency, stood in the very spot where you plan to perform next week, on the stage of the Mormon Church’s Conference Center? Oaks called allies of LGBTQ equality like yourself messengers of Satan. He intimated that because you happen to support the LGBTQ community you are doing Satan’s bidding by fighting for love and equality. Pretty strong words from the head of the Mormon Church. How offensive that must be to you and all your friends. That’s certainly not the kind of company that I would like to keep. And we at Rights Equal Rights hope that you won’t either. Oaks is not only in the First Presidency, but he is next in line to become church president, prophet, and revelator. This man of God viciously attacked the entire LGBTQ community in October just like he does every six months at the Mormon Church’s biannual General Conference. Many courageous people walked out of Oaks’ hate-filled speech two months ago. Mothers and fathers of LGBTQ kids, friends, siblings, and so many who just can’t stand to hear any more hate, any more shaming and bullying directed at people they love come out of the mouths of Mormon Church leaders. Kristin, won’t you stand up to this constant hate and walk out, too? We at Rights Equal Rights have been actually asking you for over a month

Kristin Chenoweth

to do the right thing and #BowOutKristin. I tried to go through your manager and delivered a letter to you at his New York office on Halloween. We never heard back. We launched our national appeal to you just last Sunday. Please open your heart and your mind to the thousands and thousands of LGBTQ Mormon teenagers and adults so impacted by Oaks’ remarks that day, who saved his most vile remarks for the vulnerable transgender community when he said, “God’s plan required opposition to gender transition and same-sex relationships ...” Just how many LGBTQ Mormons heard their president’s words that day from the stage of the Conference Center? According to experts, that type of rhetoric coming from leaders of the Mormon Church can cause a massive wave of depression and suicides, especially with young people. The Mormon Church is using you to try and

bury its 40 years of actions and hate against the LGBTQ community. It likes to have LGBTQ allies close by, all while it does everything in its power to take away our rights. This was just done in June when it allowed the artistic director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, Tim Seelig, to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It’s a shame, all done to try and mask all the horrific things it does and the epidemic of LGBTQ teen suicides. Kristin, you have been a staunch ally of the LGBTQ community for a long time. You’ve received honors from GLAAD, the Point Foundation, and, most recently, the Trevor Project. The leaders of the Mormon Church are well aware of all that you have done, especially speaking out against the bullying and shaming of vulnerable LGBTQ kids. You have done a world of good through all your action. If you perform with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir next week in Salt Lake City, you’re just sanctioning the decades of hate by Mormon Church leaders toward LGBTQ Mormons and the LGBTQ community at large. Is this the type of legacy you want to leave? Is this your message to all your LGBTQ fans? Do you really want to appear on the same stage where that kind of hate speech was just delivered by Oaks to a worldwide audience? We certainly hope not. Please do the right thing and #BowOutKristin and don’t sing with the homophobic Mormon Church’s Tabernacle Choir.t Fred Karger has been an LGBTQ activist taking on the opponents of equality for the last 12 years. He has focused on fighting back against the Mormon Church until it welcomes all LGBTQ Mormons and their families back into the church. For more information, visit http://www.rightsequalrights.com.

Politics>>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 5

SF says strike up the LGBT band by Matthew S. Bajko

hen it comes to having an official city band, San Francisco’s leaders say strike up the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band. At their meeting Tuesday, December 4, the supervisors voted unanimously 10-0, with District 1 Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer absent, to designate the world’s first LGBT musical group as the city’s official band. Once the board votes on the designation a second time next week, the ordinance will be sent to Mayor London Breed, who has already told the Bay Area Reporter she will sign it into law. “The unanimous support for naming the San Francisco Lesbian/ Gay Freedom Band the official band of San Francisco demonstrates just how important the band is to our city,” gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman told the B.A.R. As the B.A.R. first reported last month, Mandelman introduced the ordinance to make the LGBT band’s designation official and legally binding. “For 40 years they have been a cultural mainstay in San Francisco and have proudly represented us and our commitment to LGBTQ equality at events across the country,” stated Mandelman. “I’m looking forward to Mayor Breed, who is a huge fan of the band, signing my ordinance and making this designation official.” Doug Litwin, the band’s board president who has played both clarinet and percussion in it since 1985, said, “I couldn’t be happier.” The group plans to celebrate its forthcoming municipal recognition this weekend during its annual “Dance-Along Nutcracker” concerts. “It is very exciting; it is validating; it is affirming; it is a million percent positive,” said Litwin. “It has never been done for a group like ours as far as I know.” The marching group, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, has for 20 years referred to itself as the city’s official band. The honorific is even stitched onto the back of the band members’ baseball caps they wear at certain functions. It began saying it was the official band of San Francisco in 1998, when gay former supervisor Tom Ammiano deemed it as such in a proclamation he authored in honor of the LGBT musical group’s 20th anniversary. He did so again in 2003 on the occasion of the band’s 25th anniversary. When gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) served on the board, he too referred to the

Li Feted

From page 1

a very thoughtful advocate and is focused on getting results and less concerned with who gets credit. She’s smart and she’ll be effective.” Saltzman said that, when Li joins the board, BART will have a majority of women directors for the first time. She was also excited to have an out woman of color on the oversight body. “I supported Janice because of her expertise with the bike coalition and community,” she said. Brian Wiedenmeier, a gay man who’s executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, told the B.A.R. that the group’s more than 10,000 members are excited to see Li elected to the BART board.

Rick Gerharter

The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band marched in the 2016 Oakland Pride parade.

group as the city’s official band in a resolution he introduced that all 11 supervisors adopted. But the honorific remains purely honorary at the moment. As Mandelman explained at the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee hearing November 30, the designation won’t be finalized until the city adopts the ordinance. “It has been operating, in a sense, as our city’s unofficial official band,” noted Mandelman. The rules committee voted unanimously 3-0 to recommend that the full board affirm the special designation for the LGBT band. Self-described “band geek” District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani, a tenor saxophone player in a jazz band in junior high school, made the motion to support the ordinance. “You do bring joy into so many hearts,” Stefani told the band members in attendance that afternoon. The LGBT band has a storied history, with its first public performance pegged to when it marched in front of the late gay supervisor Harvey Milk in the 1978 Pride parade. Originally called the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps, its founder was the late Jon Sims, who also formed the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus that year. (The choral group’s first public performance was on the steps of City Hall at a vigil the night Milk and then-mayor George Moscone were killed inside the building the morning of November 27, 1978.) As much a part of San Francisco history – having performed at the inaugurations of mayors Art Agnos, Willie Brown, and the late Ed Lee – the LGBT band has taken part in seminal moments in both U.S. and LGBT history. It marched in the 1979, 1987, and 1993 marches for LGBT rights in Washington, D.C. and performed

at the inaugurations of Presidents Bill Clinton (on the sidelines) and Barack Obama (as an official parade contingent). In 1982 it was one of the seven founding member bands of the Lesbian and Gay Band Association, which now numbers 37 musical groups from around the world. For years it has performed during the San Francisco Giant’s LGBT game; last month it was invited for the first time to the Golden State Warriors’ LGBT night. “I am pretty sure we participate in more city activities and events than any other musical group, so I urge you to support this ordinance,” said Linda Werner, a member of the band since 1979 who plays percussion, at last week’s hearing. The last time the city officially declared anything, according to the city attorney’s office, was in 2000 when it made the California quail San Francisco’s official bird, 21 years after black and gold were made the official city colors. City leaders have also declared the dahlia as San Francisco’s official flower (1926) and “San Francisco” with music by Bronislaw Kaper and Walter Jurmann and lyrics by Gus Kahn the official song (1969). In 1984 the city made “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” with music and lyrics by deceased gay couple George Cory and Douglass Cross its official ballad.t

“Not only will she bring the perspective of a queer woman of color to the BART board, but she will also be leading as a person who bikes,” he wrote in an email. “Bicycle access to transit – and especially BART – is critically important if our region hopes to reduce its dependence on automobiles.” Gay city resident Joel Engardio told the B.A.R. the he supported Li. “She ran a great campaign and will represent the west side well. Her experience with the bike coalition is a great match for BART because we need to think about transportation in all modes,” he said. During his remarks, Dufty said that statewide LGBT advocacy group Equality California was a big supporter of Li’s campaign and noted that Michelle Meow, who serves on its

board, was in attendance. Li told the crowd that last week, on the 40th anniversary of the assassinations of gay supervisor Harvey Milk and mayor George Moscone, she joined the march from the Castro to City Hall. “We could only be there because of Harvey Milk,” she said. “I’m only here because of each of you. I have to work. I have to do a damn good job as BART director.” After Li’s remarks, Paula Fraser, BART’s assistant chief transportation officer who oversees San Francisco, presented her with a chrome-plated rail spike. Li urged BART passengers to contact her with issues. “Text me the literal shit that you see,” she said, in reference to the problems BART has with feces and other objects such as needles at some stations.t

Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http://www.ebar.com Monday mornings for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reported on the trio of out CA leaders advising Governor-elect Gavin Newsom on his gubernatorial transition. Keep abreast of the latest LGBT political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes. Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8298836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

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<< National News

t Bush’s mixed record on LGBTs

6 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

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hen the LGBT community thinks back on the life of President George H.W. Bush, its view of the decorated war hero and gentleman politician who spent years in the service of the nation is obscured. For the LGBT community, Bush left a mixed legacy. He did not do all he had the power to do to save the lives in a community ravaged by the deadly AIDS epidemic. But he did not obstruct the enactment of important legislation to bring some help to that community. And, like with so many others in public life, his feelings evolved over time from a place of hostility and disinterest in the LGBT community to a kinder, gentler place of acceptance. There will be many remembrances of Bush this week. His national funeral took place in Washington, D.C., and his remains will be interred at his presidential museum in College Station, Texas. President Donald Trump declared Wednesday, December 5, a national day of mourning for Bush, who died November 30 at the age of 94 from a form of Parkinson’s disease caused by strokes. During his years in power, first as vice president under President Ronald Reagan for two terms then as president himself for one term, Bush generally opposed equal rights for LGBT people and people with HIV. As president, from 1989 to 1992, Bush was accused by many civil rights activists of trying hard to appease such anti-LGBT figures as U.S. Senator Jesse Helms and other members of the far right religious base of the Republican Party. Urvashi Vaid, who headed up what was then called the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force during the same years Bush was in the White House, recalled Washington, D.C. as having a “very hostile climate politically for LGBT people.” “It was not as bad as the Reagan years,” said Vaid, “because we had a Democratic Congress we were able to work with legislatively. But the Bush administration was not our friend, it was not welcoming, and we did not have access, at least not at the front door.” And the Bush term “ended so badly,” recalled Vaid, with Bush “giving Pat Buchanan a platform at the Republican National Convention – even Log Cabin didn’t endorse him.” Vaid and Jeff Levi, who was the first full-time AIDS lobbyist during the Bush years, said some people give Bush too much credit for having signed the Ryan White CARE Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Hate Crimes Statistics Act. They note the legislation passed largely thanks to a Democratic Congress.

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End-of-life issues

From page 1

one’s mortality rather than fear it. “I am not worried about it. It doesn’t scare me,” said Personna, who graduated with honors from San Jose State University and, for years, owned her own hair salon in Cupertino, which she sold a while back but continues to cut hair at once a month for longtime clients. Born into a large Baptist family with 16 siblings, Personna remains close with several of her older brothers and their families in the Bay Area. She is confident she can rely on them in the case of emergencies or if her health deteriorates. “Some of my nieces said, ‘You can live with us,’” said Personna, 12:30 PM who has designated one of them the beneficiary of her estate. Her Plan B, however, is to move into a pueblo outside Guadalupe,

Courtesy ABC News

Former President George H.W. Bush

“The CARE Act was totally driven by Congress and the AIDS community,” said Levi. “It’s good he signed it, but there was no initiative coming from his administration for it.” Congress, he noted, had to routinely increase the budget for AIDS that Bush proposed. This reporter recalls the Bush administration touting an unusually high dollar amount as its “AIDS spending” proposal. But on further scrutiny, it became clear the proposal was inflated by counting funds spent through mandatory entitlement programs (for people on disability) as money spent on fighting AIDS. As the ADA was winding its way through Congress, Bush spoke in favor of the law prohibiting discrimination against people with HIV. “Once disease strikes,” he said, “we don’t blame those who are suffering. ... We try to love them and care for them and comfort them. We don’t fire them. We don’t evict them. We don’t cancel their insurance.” But two years later, during a reelection campaign debate, he blamed AIDS on “behavior.” “Change your behavior! If the behavior you’re using is prone to cause AIDS, change the behavior!” he said. In an interview with the New York Times that same year, Bush bluntly stated, “I can’t accept as normal lifestyle people of the same sex being parents. I’m very sorry. I don’t accept that as normal ... I don’t approve of that.” He appointed a lesbian, Anne Radice, to a prominent, albeit temporary, position as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. But during his re-election, the Bush campaign demoted a gay employee, Tyler Franz, after he criticized the Republican Party for its increasing hostility toward gay people. The campaign denied demoting him for being gay. And while Franz specifically did not blame Bush, he said senior campaign officials used crude anti-gay rhetoric and that he “overheard anti-gay statements ... throughout the campaign.” As Democratic challenger Bill Clinton became more vocal in Mexico where her Social Security check and personal savings will be worth more. “I want to spend the rest of my days in Mexico. I don’t want to die in San Francisco,” said Personna. “I am longing to go there.” Confronting the end of one’s life isn’t easy for the majority of seniors, whether LGBT or straight. Most have not declared an executor

support of equal rights for gay people, Bush became more vocal about “family issues,” a code phrase for opposition to gays. Jon Meacham’s Bush biography “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush” said Bush, in a 1988 audio diary entry, said he believed Americans “don’t want homosexual marriages codified.” But in 2013, the former president actively solicited an invitation to the marriage ceremony of a lesbian couple in his summer residence town of Kennebunkport, Maine. Helen Thorgalsen told New England Cable News, “When we were getting ready to get married, he kept asking where his invitation was. He was happy when he got his invitation.” The couple not only sent Bush an invitation but asked him to serve as one of their official witnesses. “I always felt he was an honorable person,” said Rich Tafel, who founded Log Cabin Republicans and still serves on its board of directors. “In the early years of his administration, I remember being hopeful as Bush signed the ADA, which protected people with AIDS from discrimination. He also signed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act. Also, Barbara showed symbolic support when she lit a candle in the White House window for PFLAG and held a baby with AIDS,” Tafel added, referring to Bush’s wife, who died in April. But the Republican Party’s embrace of such right-wing figures as Buchanan and Pat Robertson during the re-election campaign triggered a significant “shift” for Tafel. “Sadly, the last period of the Bush presidency was marred by his outreach to hateful anti-gay forces,” said Tafel. While Log Cabin had considered supporting Bush for re-election, it “instead found ourselves in aggressive opposition to the Bush-Quayle campaign’s sellout to the anti-gay forces in the GOP.” “I believe he was a decent man who found these issues new and challenging, but he sold out his principles by turning his campaign over to the Buchanan, [Jerry] Falwell, and Robertson forces,” said Tafel. “Had he remained a kinder, gentler president, I think he’d have been truer to himself.” During his presidency, Bush appointed Vaughn Walker as a federal district court judge. Many LGBT people and supporters criticized the nomination at the time because they believed Walker to be hostile to gays. Walker famously presided over the trial in San Francisco against Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that repealed the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Walker ultimately ruled the ballot measure to be unconstitutional. He retired one year later, in 2011, and acknowledged he was gay. t for their estate, let alone discussed with their physician what sort of care they want in their dying days. “It is rooted in the death phobia that North American culture has,” said Brian de Vries, a gay man and professor emeritus of gerontology at San Francisco State University who is a leading expert See page 10 >>

Clarification The November 22 article, “After PA synagogue shooting, Sha’ar Zahav to enhance security,” was updated online to clarify that Congregation Sha’ar Zahav president Nancy Levin identifies as a lesbian; that there are no other LGBT synagogues, though there are many that are LGBTQ-welcoming; that the

Reconstructionist Rabbinical College was the first rabbinical program to admit openly LGBT people, beginning in 1984; and that it was Copeland’s column in the J-Weekly where she wrote, “At my synagogue, I’ll take 20 Mennonites over armed guards.” The online version includes a link to that column.t

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<< Community News

8 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

SF, Oakland zoos decorate for the holidays O

akland Zoo is set to go big this holiday season with its annual ZooLights special event. ZooLights runs nightly, from 5 to 9 p.m., beginning Friday, December 7, through January 6. It will be closed December 24-25. Guests can ride the festively-lit gondolas up to the Landing Cafe, which will be open for the first time during ZooLights, for dinner and other holiday fare while enjoying spectacular Bay Area views at 650 feet above sea level. Also new is a Winter Wonderland attraction, where kids can visit Santa in his workshop. ZooLights features colorfully lit animal-themed structures that are situated throughout the zoo with Music in Motion, a laser-light show attraction each evening choreographed to popular holiday music. It is a family-oriented evening filled with traditional holiday activities. Admission is $10 for adults and

$9 for children. Parking is free. Oakland Zoo members receive a $1 discount. The zoo is located at 9777 Golf Links Road. For more information, visit http://www.oaklandzoo.org. The San Francisco Zoo will also have ZooLights, from 5 to 8 p.m. December 14-16, 18-23, and 26-30. It will also have special lighted displays, and people can visit Santa’s reindeer. Peppermint, Belle, and a new young male calf arrived last month and people can see them through January 1. There will be strolling carolers and tasty seasonal offerings. Admission is $10 for adults and $8 for children age 4-14. Kids 3 and under are free. There is no admission for zoo members and guardians. Parking is $10. The zoo is located at Sloat Boulevard and the Great Highway. For more information, visit http:// www.sfzoo.org.

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of death and dying, “Love, Loss, and Fire – A Camp Fire Benefit” will feature Bobby Jo Valentine, Chelsea Coleman, Scott Ferreter, Morgan Bolender, and other performers. Donations of any amount are requested. For more information, visit https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3909391.

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Courtesy Oakland Zoo

The Oakland Zoo will be decked out for ZooLights beginning December 7.

Breed announces Civic Center holiday events

San Francisco Mayor London Breed has announced several upcoming holiday events in Civic Center and City Hall. Family weekends will be held December 8-9, 15-16, and 22, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Civic Center. There will be free kids games and activities, including face painting and photos with Santa Claus. The Mayor’s Holiday Fair will take place Sunday, December 9, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Attractions in Civic Center Plaza will be complemented with activities inside City Hall, including photos with Santa, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa festivities, and a view of the City Hall tree inside the rotunda. As previously reported, the Winter Park at Civic Center Ice Rink is now open from noon to 10 p.m. daily through January 6. For more information, visit https://www.civiccentercommons. org/2018-holiday-season-in-civiccenter-commons/.

Historical society talk

Historian Jim Van Buskirk, Jack Collins, and Carol Seajay will talk about their lives in the 1970s and 1980s and the role of books in building the lesbian and gay and feminist movements Thursday, December 6, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th Street in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. In an email promoting the event titled, “We Built a Movement from Books,” Seajay wrote that for her, women’s bookstores played an important part of the movement. Van Buskirk focused on making queer space available in libraries, and Collins taught gay

and lesbian literature classes in the Castro under the auspices of City College of San Francisco. “Three different yet connected ways to shatter the silences about our lives and fuel our movements,” she wrote. Admission is free for GLBT Historical Society members and $5 for non-members. For tickets, visit https://bit.ly/2QHklZF.

Finn Town benefit for REAF

Castro eatery Finn Town will hold a benefit for the Richmond Ermet Aid Foundation Tuesday, December 11, from 5 to 10 p.m. at 2251 Market Street. The restaurant will be serving up steaming bowls of Cioppino for $30 per person and donate 10 percent of all food and drink sales to REAF. The nonprofit, which holds the popular “Help is on the Way” concerts, supports programs for HIV, youth, and hunger in the Bay Area. Complementing its version of San Francisco’s famous fisherman’s stew, the tavern will offer “Nonna style” bibs with salad and garlic bread included in the price. Raffle prizes, with all proceeds going to REAF, will include gift cards, specialty wines from the Finn Town cellar, and instant San Francisco celebrity status via a specialty cocktail named after the lucky winner that will be on Finn Town’s menu for a month.

Camp Fire benefit

A benefit for the victims of the Camp Fire will be held Wednesday, December 12, from 7 to 10 p.m. at the San Francisco Columbarium, 1 Lorraine Court. Presented by You’re Going to Die, a nonprofit that brings diverse communities creatively into the conversation

The LGBT aging film “Gen Silent” will screen Thursday, December 13, at El Camino Hospital’s Mountain View campus, 2500 Grant Road. The event, which is free, starts at 9:30 a.m. and includes the documentary, a discussion panel, and lunch and networking. Space is limited. Those interested in attending can register by calling 1-800-216-5556 or visiting www. elcaminohospital.org/gensilent.

Openhouse seeks artists for ‘living wall’ mural

Openhouse, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides services and housing for LGBT seniors, has announced it is seeking artists to create a mural as part of its “living wall” project to honor long-term HIV/AIDS survivors. The agency received a $250,000 grant from Gilead Sciences to build a living wall and mural in its new community center that is under construction at 95 Laguna Street. The center will occupy the first two floors of the new LGBTQwelcoming affordable senior housing. Six of the 79 apartments will be set aside specifically for long-term survivors of HIV. Tez Anderson, a gay man who founded Let’s Kick ASS (AIDS Survivor Syndrome), serves on Openhouse’s living wall tribute steering committee, which will identify a local artist to integrate an original mural into the permanent living wall installation. Openhouse Executive Director Karyn Skultety, Ph.D., a bisexual woman, said the organization is seeking artists living with HIV to apply for the mural commission. Interested artists who have experience in painting large murals can contact Charles Renfroe at (415) 702-3536 or crenfroe@openhousesf.org. They can also stop by Openhouse’s offices, which are located in the Bob Ross LGBT Senior Center at 65 Laguna Street. The mural and living wall are expected to be completed next spring, when 95 Laguna Street is scheduled to open.t

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ane Nakatani, center, spoke about the Honor Thy Children Foundation, which she and her husband, Al (who was sick and unable to attend), started to talk about HIV/ AIDS, especially to the Asian and Pacific Islander community, at the World AIDS Day ceremony at the National AIDS Memorial Grove December 1. The couple received

the grove’s Humanitarian Award. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s Vince Crisostomo, left, and grove Executive Director John Cunningham, joined Nakatani on stage. The Nakatanis started the foundation, and wrote a book, after losing all three of their sons, two from HIV/AIDS and one from homicide.

National News>>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 9

TLC files claim in Hernandez detention death by Alex Madison

detention. Familia will continue to organize and demand for the abolishment of ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, police, and all prisons.” Egyes told the B.A.R. that data show that LGBTs face higher rates of physical and sexual violence than any other group in immigration detention. The reports of Hernandez’s violent treatment in custody comes as President Donald Trump and his administration have made it harder for immigrants to seek asylum. Last week, Trump

Courtesy TLC

Roxsana Hernandez died in May while in an immigration detention facility.

and ultimately death. This is not acceptable.” The tort claim was filed Monday, November 26, in partnership with the Law Office of Andrew R. Free, the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, and Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement. The tort claim also reveals, for the first time, the results of an independent autopsy report, paid for by TLC, which found that “Ms. Hernandez endured physical assault and abuse while in custody. Specifically, forensic evidence indicates she was handcuffed so tightly as to cause deep tissue bruising and struck repeatedly on the back and rib cage by an asp or similar instrument while her hands were restrained behind her back.” California’s largest LGBT advocacy group, Equality California, circulated a news release last week condemning the brutal 9.75while in. in beatings of Hernandez

custody and is asking people to sign a petition that demands ICE release information regarding her death. The petition can be found at http://action.eqca.org/ justice-for-roxana. Some of the possible claims that the legal organizations will file against public entities include battery, negligence, assault, failure to protect, excessive force, intentional infliction of emotional distress, deliberate indifference, wrongful death, and failure to provide proper medical/mental health care. “We will continue to uplift Roxsana’s story and to continue to hold immigration enforcement accountable for her death,” said Jennicet Gutierrez, community organizer and advocate with Familia, in a news release. “We will continue to organize to protect the lives of all trans and queer migrants because what our community needs is asylum not

7.625 in.

n its latest step toward seeking justice for Roxsana Hernandez, a transgender woman who died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in May, the Transgender Law Center has filed a wrongful death tort claim against the state of New Mexico where Hernandez was held in detention. The claim is the first step in TLC’s eventual plan to sue ICE if the agency does not comply with its legal obligation to release information surrounding Hernandez’s death. “ICE is obligated to release information including the review and autopsy of Roxsana’s death,” Lynly Egyes, TLC’s director of litigation and counsel on the case, said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “We are waiting for the government to do their job.” Egyes added that ICE has surpassed its 30 days after death requirement to release the information. Hernandez, 33, traveled to the United States from Honduras in a migrant caravan through Mexico and arrived May 9 at the San Ysidro Port of Entry near San Diego seeking asylum, according to media reports. After being in ICE custody for about two weeks, she died from cardiac arrest May 25. Many immigrant advocacy groups claim Hernandez died because she was denied medical treatment. Hernandez was HIV-positive. “Roxsana came to the United States looking for safety and security,” Egyes said. “She was asking for help and protection, instead she was met with torture and being denied medical treatment

announced a proposal that seeks to require immigrants coming through Mexico to remain in Mexico until their asylum is granted. This is in direct conflict with the long-standing law that immigrants have the right to seek asylum in the U.S. and remain there until their case is approved. “We will fight for this,” Egyes said. “We want answers to what happened.” t

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<< Commentary

10 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

No place for any woman by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

replacement and noted that some “male inmates take hormone pills to enhance their breasts” – whatever that is supposed to infer. Pichardo de Veloz, 55, was on HRT due to menopause, but this was never apparently brought up. The nurse did question her about her gender and Pichardo de Veloz, baffled, stated that she was a woman. She was then sent to a doctor at the jail, who never examined her beyond asking a barrage of questions about her medical history. None of those questions, apparently, had to do with her gender identity or her hormone treatments.

n 2013, a woman from the Dominican Republic landed in Miami. While she was hoping to witness the birth of her grandchild, police had other ideas, arresting her on an outstanding drug charge. She was taken to the local jail and processed like any other female inmate. That is, until she was sent to the medical unit for a checkup due to her history of high blood pressure. The nurse in attendance noted that the woman, Fior Pichardo de Veloz, was undergoing hormone

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Nevertheless, this doctor took the nurse’s word, and reclassified Pichardo de Veloz as a man or, as the nurse put it in her file, “Transgender, male parts, female tendencies.” Pichardo de Veloz found herself transferred to an all-male jail and housed with roughly 40 male inmates who were, apparently, having quite a good time mocking and leering at her. She, however, was terrified. Too afraid to use the toilet in the facility, she urinated on herself. It wasn’t until hours later, when Pichardo de Veloz’s family began to question why she was booked into a male cell, that the error was uncovered. She was given a second examination, where male officers laughed at her. One even took a photo of her after she had disrobed. The ordeal shook Pichardo de Veloz. She sued, only to be told that prison staff could not be held accountable for negligence. An appeals court disagreed, and as of a couple of weeks ago, Pichardo de Veloz’s trial now has the green light to go forward. It’s a shocking case of negligence on the part of the attending nurse and doctor who seemed to automatically assume that this woman was a transgender woman and, by extension, deserved to be locked up in an all-male facility. I have little doubt that Pichardo de Veloz may indeed have a fairly lucrative day in court. I want you to consider this, however: if Pichardo de Veloz had actually been a transgender woman, her story wouldn’t be any different. Most of the news stories surrounding the case have focused on the negligence and callousness of the medical personnel, and that’s important. Nevertheless, consider for a moment

Christine Smith

that the treatment that she faced, and the very real fear of being assaulted in jail, is the daily reality of transgender people already in prison. According to reports, neither the nurse nor the doctor fully examined Pichardo de Veloz. Indeed, the nurse told an officer when Pichardo de Veloz was being rebooked as a male that “everything fell out” during this nonexistent examination, meaning that the male genitals that Pichardo de Veloz doesn’t actually have were seen by this nurse. It’s likely that many other trans inmates have been lied about. And many who may be postoperative have likely been left in all-male cells to be violated and harassed. The mistake was discovered when Pichardo de Veloz’s family came to the police and made it clear that she didn’t belong in a male facility. The same probably would have happened if she had been transgender, and the officers at the jail would have laughed at the family’s concerns even harder than the mockery Pichardo de Veloz endured. According to media reports, when Pichardo de Veloz was transferred to the

5/30/18 10:46 AM

End-of-life issues

From page 6

on end-of-life issues among LGBT seniors. There are an estimated 2.7 million Americans who are LGBT and 50 years of age or older. Of that age group, 1.1 million are 65 and older. By 2060 LGBT elders in the U.S. are expected to number more than 5 million. This generation of LGBT seniors differs from its heterosexual counterpart in significant ways, according to aging experts. Most of the LGBT seniors experienced discrimination not only in their day-to-day lives but also in medical settings due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBT seniors are oftentimes no longer in touch with their birth families, having been ostracized

Metro West Detention Center, she again insisted that she was a woman. The officer’s reply was telling: “You are a woman. Good luck if you’re alive tomorrow.” Any woman, transgender or not, would be as terrified as Pichardo de Veloz when locked in a cell with 40 male prisoners. According to a survey released in 2014 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were over 3,200 transgender people in U.S. prisons nationwide in 2011-2012, and an additional 1,700 transgender people in U.S. jails in 20112012. These people were nearly 10 times more likely to be victimized compared to their non-transgender counterparts. Pichardo de Veloz’s lawsuit against the jail staff and the county says that she was subject to “cruel and unusual punishment.” I agree – but this is the exact same cruel and unusual punishment that every transgender prisoner can expect behind bars. We live in a time when a mania surrounding transgender restroom use has enveloped the right – and like Pichardo de Veloz, many non-transgender women have been forced from women’s rooms. More so, in fact, that transgender people have. We may all end up too terrified to use those facilities, too. Indeed, the reality of Pichardo de Veloz’s experience isn’t merely that she was an unfortunate false positive that needs to be rectified, but that the experience of trans women in prison is an onerous one, fraught with peril not fitting alleged crimes. Trans women are women, just as Pichardo de Veloz is. Yes, our histories may vary, but so does the history of every woman – and putting any women in an all-male cell knowing that they may well be assaulted or worse is monstrous. t Gwen Smith thinks prison reform is a good start. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.

after they came out of the closet. And many don’t have a partner, spouse, or children of their own to rely on as they age. “The issues around aging alone are particularly meaningful in LGBT seniors,” said Lisa Krinsky, 55, a lesbian who is the director of the LGBT Aging Project at the Fenway Institute in Boston. And in the case of many older gay men, they lost their families of choice, whether it was their friends, partners, or spouses, to the AIDS epidemic. Thus, they are more likely to be aging alone. And if they are living with HIV, they are largely unprepared for their retirement years having believed they would have died by now. See page 11 >>

Obituaries >> John F. Downey Jr. July 24, 1942 – October 10, 2018

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John Downey, 76, passed away peacefully at home with his loving friends, Brian Finley and Stephen Lee, October 10, 2018. He was the son of John F. Downey Sr. and Frances (Marge) Downey. John, the world traveler, was born July 24, 1942 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a graduate of North East Catholic High School for Boys, Class of 1960. John also attended St. Charles Seminary. John started his career at Liberty Travel. He moved on to own a multi-unit travel agency, Dowco Travel, with his friend and business partner, Paul Connor. John decided it was time to move west, ending up in San Francisco where he worked for many years in the cruise industry as a regional director of sales for several

cruise companies. After leaving the travel industry, John teamed up with longtime friend, Paul Moffett. They rebuilt a shipping and mailbox retailer, PO Plus, growing it to a multilocation business. John was very active in Castro Merchants, as well as volunteering for several nonprofits. John retired to St. Petersburg, Florida. Unable to let the grass grow under his feet, he took a part-time job at the Tampa Cruise Terminal. John then returned to his roots, Philadelphia, to be with family and friends. His last known job during his retirement years was running a pet day care, which included his beloved pets Mr. Kat, Kaiser, Dakota, Pepe, and Molly. John was the beloved brother of Michael J. Downey and his late sister, Frances M. (Downey) Leopold. He was a loving uncle to Deborah, Michael, William, Lisa, Kathleen, Linda, Andrea, Michael, Kelly, Karen, Kimberly, and April. He was a gentle soul who touched the lives of countless friends around the world.

Community News >>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 11

Cannabis gifts sure to light up the holidays by Sari Staver

interested to come in to see this piece of art at the 2029 Market Street location. Sanchez said the Apothecarium is the only San Francisco dispensary that stocks items from Grav. For people who insist on keeping their equipment clean and spotless, Sanchez recommends a new bong

manufactured by the Canadian company, Brnt. Made of Canadian clay, the bongs can be placed in the dishwasher, she said. The handmade clay bongs are $200. Inexpensive gifts at the Apothecarium include $20 baseball caps – one “indica” and one “sativa” – and a selection of new cannabis-related books, most priced $10-$30. A oneday pop up on December 15 at the Market Street location will be an opportunity to buy a box of items to use with cannabis, called “Elevate,” sold by a local women-owned company. We also spoke to SPARC’s retail director, Robbie Rainin, about its holiday offerings. Rainin, a gay man, said the “best value” in the store is a fourpiece dab rig for $200. The package includes a glass bong and three nails. For a unique gift, Rainin suggested

a gift certificate for a two-hour arm knitting class at SPARC’s 1256 Mission Street location Sunday, December 16, at 2 p.m. where students can vape before, during, or after class. (The technique uses your arms instead of knitting needles.) Students will go home with a cowl scarf, Rainin said. Advance tickets are required: https://bit. ly/2RtvNc8. (While the link references a painting class, it is for the arm knitting.) SPARC, owned by gay cannabis entrepreneur Erich Pearson, also has a number of perfect stocking stuffers, said Rainin, including a $15 cannabis-themed vinyl record, produced with Juanita MORE!; a $10 jar of Salt Rox for cleaning glass bongs; and a $40 California cannabis hoodie. If you’d like to enjoy a cannabis gift with the gift recipient, how about booking a tour for two with GreenGuideTours. The company offers a

wide range of tours. There’s a free walking tour (with a suggested $10 donation). Others range from $29$80 per person and include the classic cannabis bus tour that features sightseeing and education; the two and a half hour bud crawl to dispensaries and lounges; and the pioneers of pot tour that the late Dennis Peron helped to design. We haven’t checked out these tours ourselves yet, but recent Yelp reviews all give the tours five stars. Lastly, there will be a free cannabis holiday party sponsored by the Brownie Mary Democratic Club Wednesday, December 12, at 6:15 p.m. at 847 Howard Street in San Francisco. Further details are on the club’s Facebook page, BrownieMarySF. t

life can be exceedingly difficult for LGBT seniors, according to aging experts, because of their lack of trust in their health care providers or not having close familial or social connections, leaving them without a family member or friend they can turn to and discuss how they want to be cared for as they age. “We know gay and lesbian seniors delay getting care,” said Kysa M. Christie, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System during a panel at the aging conference focused on palliative and end-of-life care for LGBT older adults. The reasons can vary, said Christie, from internalized homophobia and heterocentrism to stressrelated stigma and poverty. It is estimated that one in five LGBT

seniors, she said, “have no one to call in a crisis. Compare that to one in 50 for heterosexual seniors, so that is a stark difference.” Fox and Stewart interviewed 17 LGBT seniors living in the Midwest about end-of-life issues. The cohort expressed concerns about being a burden as they aged and largely had unfavorable views of health care settings, particularly religious affiliated hospitals. As one 78-year-old woman told the researchers, “Me and the medical profession do not get along,” recalled Fox. De Vries and his colleagues in the field of LGBT aging call the lack of discussions about one’s palliative care needs, from who will be one’s power of attorney to what a person’s advance directives are for their medical care, “the missing

conversations.” It is a subject that seniors must repeatedly address as their circumstances and choices may change as they age. “I like that it is plural, as once you have the conversation people think you are done with it,” said de Vries. “It is hard enough to have the conversation. And once you have it, you want to wipe your hands dry and move on. As if that is it; it is one of many conversations people need to have, I think.” For several years now de Vries has been involved in research in Canada looking at end-of-life issues among LGBT seniors. In one paper de Vries co-wrote, and is under review at the International Journal of Aging and Human Development for inclusion in a special issue on LGBT aging, he and his colleagues note that evading

end-of-life discussions “keeps death ‘in the closet’ – along with one’s hopes, fears, and wishes about their end of life.” The issue struck close to home for de Vries six years ago when his husband, John Blando, Ph.D., who worked as an instructor/adviser at SF State’s Department of Counseling, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The men, both 62 and together 33 years, began to seriously discuss end-of-life issues, such as how to care for each other, as they drew up their wills and estates. When they moved four years ago from San Francisco to Palm Springs and had to revise their wills, they also completed their advance health care directives and durable powers of attorney.

s we begin the first holiday season with legal cannabis, shelves are stocked with dozens of new gizmos for the pot aficionado on your list. We checked with the Apothecarium’s boutique manager Marcella Sanchez, who said the retailer’s gift boxes are a “fantastic value.” Sanchez, a lesbian, has put together three different limited edition gift boxes, ranging from $30-$100, with a wide variety of items inside, from flower samples to socks. You’d spend 50 percent more if the items were purchased separately, Sanchez said in a phone interview. Another unique item, great for the Jewish stoner on your list, but suitable for everyone, is a $400 glass bong in the shape of a Hanukkah menorah, with eight bowls to hold your flowers. Designed by the owner of the high-end U.S. glass company Grav, the Apothecarium has only two available, so Sanchez urges those who are

End-of-life issues

From page 10

Dearth of research

For LGBT seniors, living alone “sets them up to more likely need institutional care as one gets older,” said Daniel Stewart, a doctoral student and adjunct professor at Saint Louis University in Missouri. Stewart and his colleague, Brandy Fox, a Ph.D. student at the university’s Center for Health Care Ethics, presented their research on LGBT older adults’ end-oflife perceptions and preparations at the Gerontological Society of America’s annual conference, held last month in Boston. “There is not a lot of research on LGBT end of life,” noted Stewart. Talking about the end of one’s

For the holiday season, SPARC is selling gift boxes made by dosist.

Bay Area Cannasseur runs the first Thursday of the month. To send column ideas or tips, email Sari Staver at sari@bayareacannasseur.com.

See page 12 >>

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<< Community News

12 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

Briggs initiative

From page 1

Ammiano was a public school teacher. Ammiano recalled a “rag-tag group of activists” getting together. “I didn’t even know what a press conference was,” he said. “Most of the press was very snide, this was like a freak show to cover. The biggest pushback came from the closeted gay teachers and that was very painful.” He noted that the out teachers went to the school board and said that they wanted to be included in the district’s non-discrimination clause. “The board scoffed at us,” Ammiano said, adding that they marched in front of the school board office, joined by straight teachers. “About three weeks later the school board voted,” he said. “We almost fainted. They voted to include sexual orientation.” That was in 1975, and a few years later John Briggs, a conservative state senator, wrote the initiative to ban gay teachers. Gwenn Craig, a lesbian activist who served as the manager for the No on 6 campaign, worked alongside Ammiano and the late Harvey Milk. Craig recalled getting involved

Sex workers clinic

From page 3

provide primary medical and behavioral health care that is grounded in social justice.”

An itinerant history

St. James Infirmary, named after sex worker activist Margo St. James, started in 1999 at San Francisco City Clinic on 7th Street and opened its own facility at 1372 Mission Street in 2004, in what became a rapidly gentrifying South of Market neighborhood. When the landlord sold that building and St. James Infirmary was forced to move in 2016, the San Francisco Department of Public Health helped the clinic secure a space on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin, but it proved to be far from ideal. “We were under an SRO and we had leaks and roaches,” Newman told

Craig recalled the 1977 election of Milk to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who was the first gay person to be elected to office in California. It was at this time that Craig became a part of Milk’s inner circle – Milk mentored her when she was made media coordinator of this group of activists. “After becoming involved with him and with his campaign, when it was time to respond to what was happening in California, Harvey thought of me and my very good friend, Bill Kraus, as people who would do the job of managing the San Francisco arm of the No on 6 campaign,” she said. “People went into that campaign with a great deal of pessimism.

We had seen in that year of 1977 three cities overturn their anti-discrimination ordinances.” But, according to Craig, people were determined to defeat Briggs and she soon amassed a card file of 700 volunteers. It was a campaign in which, rather than just drop literature, volunteers knocked on doors and talked to people. Many of the volunteers were not yet out to their families or employers and were still grappling with being gay or lesbian. “To knock on a door and know that you’re there to talk about Proposition 6 on the no side meant that the person answering the door was probably going to assume that you were gay or lesbian,” Craig said. “I would think of all the volunteers as such brave souls to do this because they were so committed, they were willing to overcome any trepidation. They just felt it was so important.” They canvased all 500 precincts in San Francisco. “Because of that effort, and the kind of vote totals that we were able to put into the pot, I think it contributed greatly to our ultimate victory and defeat of the proposition,” said Craig. “The winning percentage was 58 percent.” Sue Englander is a bisexual lecturer and historian at San Francisco

State University. “We were a new generation of how to conduct politics,” said Englander. “What we brought to the campaign should really be a template for future struggles. Proposition 8 in 2008, in which Californians voted to say that marriage was only between a man and a woman, did not have that kind of a campaign and it was voted in, so lesson learned. We wanted to promote the kind of grassroots, vital campaign that involves people and gets them invested in a political idea and a political community.” Englander recalled handing out cards while she was canvassing. “The person you are talking to is a homosexual,” the card read. “And this is what a homosexual is. Please know that we are human beings, just like you” “We would give these cards out, door to door,” she said. “That year you could not turn around without seeing a speak-out, a rally, church meetings, Girl Scouts organizing for No on 6 – our tactic was ourselves, our organizing, our fresh way of doing things, and the communities that came behind us, which was unprecedented. It was a grand time for witnessing a gathering of support not just for this issue, but for the community, for the movement,

and for greater human rights in San Francisco. This campaign led to other types of movements, other types of initiatives.” Pat Tibbs, an 80-year-old lesbian who attended the talk, told the Bay Area Reporter that she greatly enjoyed hearing what the speakers had to say. “This is one of the best shows I’ve seen Michelle and John do,” Tibbs said. “It offered a powerful message that is still needed in the 21st century. Once I saw the subject I had to be here because they helped me come out in the middle of my life and I’m very grateful.” Craig told the B.A.R. that she also enjoyed the panel. “It’s good to reminisce with people like Tom and Sue who were there at the time,” she said. “It’s so easy to talk about things that we lived, the ability to do that today was very enjoyable.” The entire discussion, which runs 66 minutes, has been posted at the Commonwealth Club’s website: http://www.commonwealthclub. org. Click “Watch and Listen,” then choose “All audio.” The GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th Street in the Castro, is currently showing an exhibition about the Briggs initiative that runs until January 20.t

the B.A.R., referring to a single-roomoccupancy hotel. “We were there for two and a half years and lost about 40 percent of our clients, including people addicted to drugs and others who didn’t feel comfortable hanging out there.” The new Polk Street location features office space, counseling rooms, and a large community space where the open house – combined with an impromptu birthday celebration for Newman – took place. Medical facilities are shared with SFCHC. In addition to primary medical care, the peer-based organization offers HIV testing and prevention services including PrEP, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, gender-affirming therapy for transgender people, mental health care, case management, support groups, and harm reduction services including needle exchange and naloxone to

prevent overdoses. It serves people of all genders and sexual orientations and its services are confidential and free of change. Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and representatives from Mayor London Breed’s office were on hand to present proclamations recognizing St. James Infirmary’s pioneering work. Members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence offered a blessing on the new space. Agency staff explained why having a clinic dedicated to current and former sex workers and their families is so important. “St. James Infirmary was created by sex workers for sex workers,” said clinical director Chuck Cloniger. “When we talked with sex workers about their health needs, they often said that they never told their medical providers about their work. As a medical provider myself, having

all the information about a person’s life is really important. St. James Infirmary came into being to meet the unique health needs of sex workers and provide a safe place for them to be able to talk about their work and their lives.” Sex workers face an increasingly hostile national climate, including the passage earlier this year of the Senate’s Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the House’s Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, jointly dubbed SESTA/FOSTA. Advocates say the legislation makes it difficult for sex workers to connect with clients via websites and social media and has forced many into more dangerous working situations including street prostitution. “This has been the most aggressive year of legislation against sex work in my lifetime,” St. James Infirmary

deputy director Pike Long told the B.A.R. “This kind of legislation and stigma build on each other. So we think it’s more important than ever for sex workers to have a safe space, not only to get services, but also to connect with each other, share resources, and find ways to survive.” Raul Hernandez, the agency’s community engagement coordinator, stressed that the organization can’t do what it does without both the active participation of sex workers and the contribution of volunteers. For those who want to help, St. James will hold two volunteer orientations this week, one on Thursday, December 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. and another on Friday, December 7, from 10 a.m. to noon (RSVP to raul@stjamesinfirmary.org or 415857-2859). Looking further ahead, St. James Infirmary is planning a 20year anniversary gala June 2. t

me to think I could help them with this,” said de Vries. Asking for help isn’t always easy for LGBT seniors, noted the Fenway Institute’s Krinsky, even when they have family or friends who can assist them. She recalled talking once to a group of 20 older lesbians and asking them if they would be willing to go to the pharmacy for a friend. “Eighteen said they would go for someone,” said Krinsky. But when she flipped the question and asked the women if they would request help for themselves in getting their medications from the pharmacy, “only eight hands went up.” Krinsky refers to such a model of care as “horizontal caregiving,” where a circle of friends, neighbors, and/or co-workers rely on each other to look after one another. “We see tight families of choice taking care of each other as best as they can,” she said, “as people are concerned about how will I care for myself as I age.” Such a structure, she said, upends the heteronormative approach of relying on one’s biological family to provide caregiving. It is expected that a married straight couple’s children and grandchildren will look after them in their senior years and that responsibility is passed on with each new generation. “Right now, we have a vertical model of multi-generational caregiving,” Krinsky explained.

Challenges

“I asked Donna because she was traveling back and forth from the city to Cupertino on weekends to move in. She is here to be my caregiver.” Personna not only ensures Bowers makes it to his various medical appointments and takes his daily regimen of medications but also provides companionship. They also share many of the same friends and can reminisce about their younger days in the city. Bowers has designated an executor for his estate and thought about how he would prefer to be cared for at the end of his life. For example, he doesn’t want to be put on life support should it come to that. He expects to live out his days in San Francisco, though Bowers said if he could afford it he would spend the rest of his days in Paris or somewhere tropical, like Tahiti or the jungles of South America. Unafraid of death, Bowers is concerned about how he will die. “I don’t want to suffer,” he said. “I watched my former roommate go through weeks of suffering. I don’t want to go through that or have someone have to watch me suffer.” t

with the movement after Anita Bryant, a beauty pageant winner and pop music singer who was then a lifestyle ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission, ran a successful campaign to overturn a gay rights ordinance that had been passed in Dade County, Florida. “There were a lot of mass meetings and town halls that were happening in San Francisco in reaction to what was happening in Dade County,” Craig said.

Initial pessimism

End-of-life issues

From page 11

“These naturally involve deeper discussions about end of life – at least that was our experience,” said de Vries. “Of course, elements of end-of-life discussions have dotted our other conversations as we talk about our plans and hopes for the future. I will admit to some discomfort in some of these conversations – about raising issues that we both fear, about releasing strong emotions – but they ultimately rest on expressions of love and opportunities to share.”

‘Death cafes’

Since the couple retired to Palm Springs, de Vries has continued to work on end-of-life issues and helped launch a group called PALS, short for Planning Ahead for LGBT Seniors. It presents seminars where people can discuss a range of palliative care issues, from entering hospice care to planning one’s funeral. “We have a funeral home director come in who is gay and talks about his experiences and the issues and the complications he has seen and how they could be mitigated if people only planned ahead,” said de Vries. He also borrowed a concept from Britain known as a “death cafe,” where people meet socially to talk about death and dying issues. The gatherings are held at least once a month in Palm Springs and attract upward of 20 people or more. “What is so neat is it is an inyour-face approach to it. It is not a ‘passing away cafe’ or something

Aging expert Brian de Vries, right, with his husband, John Blando, Ph.D.

subtler. It is a death cafe,” said de Vries. “The idea is it just kicks the door open and brings it out of the closet and brings it into a public space and invites people who may not know each other to a safe space to have these conversations.” For those LGBT people who have thought about how to plan for their end-of-life care, they tend to focus solely on matters related to their death or dying and not the months or years leading up to their final days. As an example, de Vries said when he once asked a focus group of gay men if they had a will or written out their funeral plans, most had. Hardly any of them, however, had determined who in their life would take them to the hospital or pick them up when, and if, they were discharged. “It kind of provides an entry into this. It is a bit innocuous to ask someone, ‘I need a ride back and someone to sit with me for an hour, would you do that?’ People feel honored to have been asked and that someone cared enough about

Even though Personna lives in an LGBT-affirming city like San Francisco and has her family’s support, she is cognizant of the fact that there are still challenges that LGBT seniors must confront. “Because of my orientation it is totally different than a heterosexual family and their end-of-life situations. So many things are already in place for them,” she said. “By law you get things and your family connection is built in. My community, we have to build that and do the work. People my age usually don’t have what the heterosexual person has, like built in grandkids to come over and take you to lunch.” Five years ago Personna moved from Cupertino into the city to help care for her friend, Bill Bowers, 71, a member of the famed gender-bending group the Cockettes whose outrageously designed jackets became a must-have for rock stars such as the members of the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. Bowers, a gay man who is HIVpositive, had been living alone at the Derek Silva Community when he had a stroke that left him unconscious for two days in his studio apartment. After that episode, he moved into a two-bedroom unit so that he would have a roommate who could look after him. After he lost his first roommate to cancer, Bowers asked Personna to move in. “I can’t live alone,” said Bowers.

This article is the first of two looking at end-of-life issues among LGBT seniors. The second will examine how San Francisco is addressing such concerns. The series was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from the Gerontological Society of America, Journalists Network on Generations and the Commonwealth Fund.

Sports >>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 13

Santa Skivvies Run this weekend by Roger Brigham

he 10th annual Santa Skivvies Run to benefit the San Francisco AIDS Foundation will be held Sunday, December 9, in the Castro. The run is a 1.3-mile jaunt through the Castro neighborhood. Runners in holiday costumes or just their undies will check in by the Lookout bar at 16th and Market streets starting at 9:30 a.m., loop through the Castro, then end up on Noe Street between Market and Beaver streets. A strutting contest and block party there will run from noon to 1 p.m. The run is expected to draw hundreds of participants and has raised more than $500,000 since its start in 2009, SFAF said. “It’s an event that can only happen in San Francisco, and really only in the Castro,” said Chris Hastings, owner of the Lookout and founder of the run. “For a lot of people it’s become a tradition, allowing them to do something positive in a way that is really out of the ordinary.” Joe Hollendoner, CEO of SFAF, said, “Participants raise funds that are essential to us providing free-of-charge

Courtesy SFAF

People don their holiday attire for the 2011 Santa Skivvies Run.

health care services and support programs we provide to more than 25,000 individuals each year.” For more details on the run and information on how to donate, visit http://www.santaskivviesrun.org. For more information on SFAF programs, visit http://www.sfaf.org.

Sin City registration opens

Registration is open for 22 sports in the 2019 Sin City Classic to be held in January in Las Vegas. Organizers said details are being worked out for

registration in esports while diving and bodybuilding assess interest levels to determine whether their competitions will be held. “Athletes attending the Sin City Classic for the first time are going to be shocked – and hopefully thrilled – at the number of sports available to the LGBTQ athletes and at the size of the crowds at the nightly events,” said tournament director Ken Scearce. “The energy of the crowds at both the competition venues and the festival’s events is something that impressed so many of the first-timers at the 2018 event.” The multi-sport tournament was originally called the Sin City Shootout when it started as a softball tournament sponsored by the Greater Los Angeles Softball Association in 2008. Over the years it added other sports and steadily drew more participants. A year ago it was locked in a legal dispute with former tournament director Eric Ryan over ownership rights and also changed its name to the Sin City Classic. The 2018 event drew 6,500 athletes in 16 sports, Scearce said. The ownership dispute was resolved with a court filing on March 2, and Scearce said this

year organizers expect about 7,000 participants. “I was part of the original planning team discussions back in 2007 and have been part of the festival since the first one GLASA hosted in 2008,” Scearce said. “I was the commissioner of GLASA from 2009-2013, also serving as the executive liaison to the festival, so it was an easy transition to be appointed the festival director by our current commissioner. I am fortunate to have built a base of knowledge and relationships over the past 12 years.” The festival is the largest annual LGBTQ multi-sport event in the world. It does not have opening and closing ceremonies like the Gay Games and it does not move to a new host city every iteration. It is built around the tourism allure of Las Vegas as a travel destination and offers athletes a chance to compete hard, party hard, and meet athletes from other sports as well as their own. Each day of the event offers a magnet social event to bring athletes together.

“One of our core initiatives is to make sure athletes have a safe and fun place to compete and connect through sports,” Scearce said. “In 2018, we hosted a bar crawl as the main Thursday night event, our Friday registration event included several fun games and activities such as cornhole (the tossing game, not that other), and our Sunday closing party was hosted at a special events venue that included 32 bowling lanes. “All of these new events and venues created a fun way to connect through competition at night, not just the competition with their own sport during the day,” he added. “After the 2018 event, we realized we needed to add even more fun events to our social schedule because the athletes really enjoyed getting to meet the athletes from the different sports, and it’s hard for most venues to handle the size of interest from a festival of our size; hence, we have more event offerings throughout the four-day event.” For information about registration and activities at Sin City, visit http:// www.sincityclassic.org. t

Travel>>

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FEELING DIRTY? – Housecleaning Richard 415-255-0389

December 2018 Outreach Sign up AlertSF in your neighborhood. Simply text your zip code to 888-777. AlertSF sends text alerts following a natural disaster, major police, fire, or health emergencies, or significant transportation disruptions. AlertSF is provided by the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management. Visit www.alertsf.org for more information. GET FREE, TRUSTED HELP WITH YOUR CITIZENSHIP APPLICATION! The San Francisco Pathways to Citizenship Initiative provides free legal help from community immigration service providers at our free workshops. Resources for the citizenship application fee are available onsite. Volunteers needed! Learn more at sfcitizenship.org When: Saturday, December 15, 2018. Registration is open from 9:30 am - 12:30 pm. No appointment needed! Where: 1 South Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94103 Park Smart This Holiday Season The San Francisco Police Department wishes you a safe and happy holiday season and reminds you to Park Smart to help prevent auto burglaries: • Keep valuables with you, not in your vehicle. • Shopping? Hold onto your purchases until you leave. Thieves often watch parking lots to spot shoppers dropping bags off in their car. • Visiting? Check luggage at your hotel- don’t leave it in your auto. If your car has been burglarized, here’s what to do: • Is the break-in happening right now? Call 9-1-1 with your location and a suspect description. • Did the break-in already happen? Report the crime on the non-emergency line at 1-415-553-0123. You may request that an officer come to the scene. You can also call 3-1-1 and file a police report online at https://sanfranciscopolice.org/reports. Visit any San Francisco Police station to have your vehicle fingerprinted. Happy Holidays! On behalf of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, we want to remind consumers to beware of commonly used scam techniques during the holiday season. Whether you’re shopping for gifts or planning holiday travel, the following fraud prevention tips can help you avoid becoming a victim of fraud: • Be wary of travel deals from unaccredited individuals or websites that claim to have heavily discounted holiday travel fares. • Beware of fraudulent loan opportunities that target people seeking extra money during the holiday season. • Pay with a credit card as opposed to a debit card when making purchases online. Using a payment method with purchase protection can be a safeguard in the event of fraud. For more information visit our website http://sfdistrictattorney.org/consumer-fraud or call our Consumer Mediation Unit at (415) 551-9595. NEW ONE-DAY $5 MUNI PASS Want unlimited rides on Muni trains, buses and streetcars? Get the new one-day $5 Muni pass on MuniMobile (®). It’s the new way to ride Muni as many times as you like in a single day, for one low price! (valid through 11:59 p.m.)

35 PUC # 176618

Muni’s $5 Day Pass can be purchased through the MuniMobile app, available on iOS and Android. The MuniMobile app can be added to smartphones free of cost and allows customers to purchase single tickets on the spot without the hassle of waiting in line. Learn how to download, buy and store your Muni tickets at SFMTA.com/MuniMobile

CNS-3195867#

San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District - Notice To Proposers General Information

The SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT, 300 Lakeside Drive, 23rdFloor, District Secretary’s Office, Oakland, California, is advertising for proposals to provide Strategic Advising and Program Management Services For BART’s New Transbay Rail Crossing Project, RFP 6M8159, on or about November 30, 2018, with proposals due by 2:00 P.M. local time, Tuesday, February 5, 2019 at the address listed in the RFP.

DESCRIPTION OF WORK TO BE PERFORMED

The District is soliciting the services of one firm (“CONTRACTOR”) to provide Strategic Advising and Program Management Services all as specified in the RFP Exhibit 1, Attachment A, Scope of Services. The District presently intends to enter into no more than one, five-year Agreement, with a unilateral option to extend the Agreement for up to four additional five-year periods, for a maximum Agreement term of twenty-five years.

REQUIRED REGISTRATION ON BART PROCUREMENT PORTAL

In order for prospective Proposers to be eligible for award of an Agreement being solicited on the BART Procurement Portal, such Proposers are required to be currently registered to do business with BART on the BART Procurement Portal on line at https:// suppliers.bart.gov and have obtained Solicitation Documents, updates, and any Addenda issued on line so as to be added to the On-Line Planholders List for this solicitation. If a prospective Proposer is a joint venture or partnership, such entity may register on the BART Procurement Portal with the entity’s tax identification number (TIN) and download the Solicitation Documents so as to be listed as an on-line Planholder under the entity’s name prior to submitting its Proposal. If such entity has not registered on BART Procurement Portal in the name of the joint venture or partnership prior to submitting its Proposal, provided that at least one of the joint venturers or partners registered on line on the BART Procurement Portal and downloaded the Solicitation Documents so as to be added to the On-Line Planholders List for this solicitation, such entity will be required to register with the entity’s TIN as an on-line Planholder following the submittal of Proposals, in order for the entity to be eligible for award of this Agreement. PROPOSERS WHO HAVE NOT REGISTERED ON THE BART PROCUREMENT PORTAL PRIOR TO SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL, (OR FOR JOINT VENTURE OR PARTNERSIP AS DESCRIBED ABOVE PRIOR TO AWARD) AND DID NOT DOWNLOAD THE SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS FOR THIS SOLICITATION ON LINE SO AS TO BE LISTED AS AN ON-LINE PLANHOLDER FOR THIS SOLICITATION, WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE FOR AWARD OF THIS AGREEMENT.

PRE-PROPOSAL MEETING AND NETWORKING SESSION

A Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session will be held on Wednesday, December 12, 2018. The meeting will convene at 10:00 A.M. local time, in the auditorium of the MetroCenter, located at 101 8th Street, Oakland, CA 94607. At the Pre-Proposal Meeting the District’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program and Small Business Entity (SBE) Participation goal will be explained. Prospective proposers are requested to make every effort to attend this only scheduled Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session. All questions regarding the RFP should be directed to Mr. David Bui, Procurement Department at (510) 464-6383 or email: dbui@bart.gov. All questions regarding DBE and SBE participation should be directed to Fei Liu, Office of Civil Rights at (510) 874-7348 or email: fliu@bart.gov. Proposals must be received by 2:00 P.M., local time, Tuesday, February 5, 2019 at the address listed in the RFP. Submission of a proposal shall constitute a firm offer to the District for two hundred ten (210) calendar days from the date of proposal submission. Dated at Oakland, California this 27th day of November 2018.

Notices >>

CITYVIEW STORAGE PUBLIC SALE

Mon, Dec 17, 11am at Cityview Storage, 148 12th St, Building 225, Treasure Island, San Francisco. Sale of contents of Unit C14 belonging to Mr James Herrman. Cityview Storage LLC, mailing address 85 Columbia Sq, SF CA 94103. 415-517-7390.

/S/ Kofo Domingo Kofo Domingo, Chief Procurement Officer San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District 12/6/18 CNS-3198572# BAY AREA REPORTER

<< Legals

14 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-18-554392

In the matter of the application of: PHUONG TRANG THI PHAM, 1501 19TH AVE #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner PHUONG TRANG THI PHAM, is requesting that the name PHUONG TRANG THI PHAM, be changed to TRANG PHUONG THI PHAM. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 20th of December 2018 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038391100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NOMADNIGHTCLUB, 839 POST ST #107, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JAMES KEITH HARPER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/08/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/08/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038365700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE PARK GYM GEARY BLVD, 4801 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DAVID PARK. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/19/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/19/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038390400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GENESIS JANITORIAL SERVICES, 5734 HARMON AVE, OAKLAND, CA 94621. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed FRANCISCO J. MOLINA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/24/05. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/08/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038383200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HYDEOUT TALENT AGENCY, 1545 A PERSHING DR., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94129. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHRISTOPHER MCGREW. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/15/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/01/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038390900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EARLY CARE EDUCATORS OF SAN FRANCISCO (ECESF), 445 CHURCH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SAN FRANCISCO EARLY CARE EDUCATORS RESOURCE PROGRAM (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/07/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/08/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038389800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CINDERELLA BAKERY & CAFE - THE MISSION, 2937 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed 24TH CINDERELLA BAKERY, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/02/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/07/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29 DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038380100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FAMILY STONE CHOCOLATE, 1049 MARKET ST #103, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HSF HOLDINGS, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/29/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/30/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF AUDREY SUE WOO IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-18-302377

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of AUDREY SUE WOO. A Petition for Probate has been filed by BETTY J. YEE in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that BETTY J. YEE be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: Dec 11, 2018, 9:00 am, Rm. 204, Superior Court of California, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the latter of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined by section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for petitioner: Mr. Michael Yee SBN: 25881, Michael Yee Law Group, 4010 S Land Park Drive, #B, Sacramento, CA 95822; Ph. (916) 927-9001.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038387700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BREAKTHROUGH PERSPECTIVES, 950 LINCOLN BLVD #29095, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94129. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CTMG LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/06/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/06/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018

NOTICE OF SECOND AMENDED PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF ROSA ISABEL VALLE IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-17-300714

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of ROSA ISABEL VALLE. A Second Amended Petition for Probate has been filed by CESAR BONILLA III & DIANA BONILLA in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that DIANA BONILLA be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: Dec 11, 2018, 9:00 am, Dept. 204, Superior Court of California, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the latter of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined by section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for petitioner: Mr. Philip E. Carey, 555 University Ave., #116, Sacramento, CA 95825; Ph. (916) 564-0706.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038374800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CROSSROADS PIZZERIA CAFE, 1596 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed UNIVERSAL CAFE DELICANCIES LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/25/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/25/18.

NOV 15, 22, 29, DEC 06, 2018 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-18-554400

In the matter of the application of: SUMANA LAKSHMI VALLURI RAO, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner SUMANA LAKSHMI VALLURI RAO, is requesting that the name SUMANA LAKSHMI VALLURI RAO, be changed to SUMANA VALLURI RAO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 10th of January 2019 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038397100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JEFFERSON MACK & ASSOCIATES, 2266 SHAFTER AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JEFFERSON MACK. 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 11/14/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038398500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BITTIKER ARCHITECTURE, 8 LANDERS ST #203, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL BITTIKER. 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 11/15/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038399500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RILEY REAL ESTATE GROUP, 160 LANDERS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SHAWN MICHAEL RILEY. 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 11/15/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC, 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038394900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NEW 7 NAILS, 2611 A SAN BRUNO AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NEW 7 NAILS, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/01/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/13/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038397700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ART OF TECH, 2261 MARKET ST #317, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed EDUCATIONAL MEDIA ARTS, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/14/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/14/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038398600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TRIDENT REAL ESTATE, 3 STARK ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NORTH BEACH NATIVE INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/15/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038397000

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038395100

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038405500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE LINKS BAR AND GRILL, 3129 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed LYNKSTAR, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/20/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/20/18.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FILLMONIAN DARK PRODUCTS, 1049 MARKET ST, #403, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HSF HOLDINGS INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/20/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/20/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038400600

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-037881000

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038410200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: INNOC3NTS, 2035 35TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ZLMMLL, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/13/18.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SLEEP OVER SAUCE, 135 GOUGH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed MALTI INVESTMENTS LLC. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/15/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/16/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038402000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: QUICKY BURGERS, 4092 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed EYLUL LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/19/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/19/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-18-554429 In the matter of the application of: HALEN PAYNE WOOTEN, 4630A 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner HALEN PAYNE WOOTEN, is requesting that the name HALEN PAYNE WOOTEN, be changed to ADAM ELLIOTT NEWTON. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 10th of January 2019 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-18-554426 In the matter of the application of: TOMMY MINH HO, 972 ROLPH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner TOMMY MINH HO, is requesting that the name TOMMY MINH HO, be changed to TUAN MINH HO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 08th of January 2019 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038403300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOSTESS EXPRESS, 89 LOBOS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TONETTE DENISE PHILLIPS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/20/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/20/18.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038383700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RELIABLE CLEANING/MAINTENANCE, 391 ELLIS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANDREE DARNELL WHITE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/02/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/02/18.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038385500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LEXCO, 4297 23RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALEXANDER FRANKLIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/02/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/02/18.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038401600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RAYGUARDPROTECT.COM, 1430 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RAYMOND MICHAEL LEVESQUE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/19/18.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038402900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PHO LUEN FAT BAKERY & RESTAURANT, 110 LELAND AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KENT K. WONG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/17/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/20/18.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038390300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LISA’S LITTLE GARDEN, 932 MADRID ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed DINORAH OSORIO & GEORGE OSORIO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/07/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/08/18.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038399200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOMESCAPENOW, 580 CALIFORNIA ST, 12TH FLR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed ARBORISTNOW INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/30/10. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/15/18.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038402400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GOZU; ITTORYU GOZU, 201 SPEAR ST # 120, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed KOJIN SF LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/14/18.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PACIFIC COAST PERIODONTICS, 450 SUTTER ST #2400, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SOHYUN PARK, DDS INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/19/18.

NOV 22, 29, DEC 06, 13, 2018

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: PACIFIC COAST PERIODONTICS, 450 SUTTER ST #2400, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business was conducted by a corporation and signed by MARK J. WIESEN DDS A PROF CORP (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/06/17.

NOV 29, DEC 06, 13, 20, 2018 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-18-554444 In the matter of the application of: KELVIN EUCHARIS MATAU PETERIKA, PO BOX 280042, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94128, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner KELVIN EUCHARIS MATAU PETERIKA, is requesting that the name KELVIN EUCHARIS MATAU PETERIKA, be changed to KELVIN EUCHARIS PETERIKA MATA’U. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 17th of January 2019 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-18-554443 In the matter of the application of: ORLANDO TODD HOLMON, PO Box 401011, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94140, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner ORLANDO TODD HOLMON, is requesting that the name ORLANDO TODD HOLMON AKA ORLANDO JOCK TOLBERT AKA ORLANDO J. TOLBERT, be changed to ORLANDO JOCK TOLBERT. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 15th of January 2019 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038419500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TERUYA RAMEN, 3944 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed YINGHAN LIU. 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 11/30/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038419300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: K & M MANAGEMENT GROUP, 321 NOE ST #301, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MAX E. MENDOZA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/30/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/30/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038418300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CARNEY’S PLASTERING, 1485 BAYSHORE BLVD #114, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WILBERT T. CARNEY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/22/00. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/30/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038412100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RECRAFT, 240 SAN BENITO AVE #11, SAN BRUNO, CA 94066. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SALEEM AZAM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/26/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/27/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038410500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: J R STRAIGHT DRYWALL, 175 ORIZABA AVE. SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VALENTIN J. RODRIGUEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/26/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/26/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038412300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JANE RICHEY PHOTOGRAPHY, 70 CONRAD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LESLIE JANE RICHEY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/01/89. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/27/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038412900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOKNA, 639 44TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed AHMED GABALLAH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/01/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/27/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038414300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: QUARTET FILMS, 730 10TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CENTIGRADE INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/13/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/28/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038403900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HELIBITES, 1049 MARKET ST #103, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SFF HOLDINGS INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/20/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/20/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038404000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: S2H SUPPLY; S2H ELECTRIC SUPPLY; CONSTTANT, 1063 FOLSOM ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SPEEDY’S HARDWARE, (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/12/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/26/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038411100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CALIFORNIA DETAILING, 340 FELL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CALIFORNIA DETAILING INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/13/90. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/26/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038411200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CONNECT TELEHEALTH AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGY GROUP, 1849 GEARY BLVD #15502, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed DR. JESSICA GROBERIO PSYCHOLOGIST, A PROFESSIONAL CORP (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/26/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/26/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038419000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LAGUNA, 602 HAYES ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited partnership, and is signed LAGUNA HAYES VALLEY, LP. 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 11/30/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038413100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BENTE, 333 BEALE ST #8H, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed JLT INVESTMENTS, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/20/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/27/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038402200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOLIDAY INN FISHERMAN’S WHARF, 495 BEACH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed DCP SF COLUMBUS AVE OWNER LLC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/31/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/19/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038407400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JUST KIDS DAYCARE, 5731 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed JUST KIDS DAYCARE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/21/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038407600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JUST KIDS PRESCHOOL, 5727 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed JUST KIDS, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/21/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038412700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MAIDENSF; EXTRA NOODLES, 555 CALIFORNIA ST #4925, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed MAIDEN LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/27/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038394000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TWO SONS SANDWICHES, 2249 17TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed DELI SPOT DISTRICT, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/13/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038398200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ZHUO KITCHEN, 1380 9TH AVE., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ZHUO KITCHEN LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/13/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/15/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038413000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JANCHAY’S BISTRO, 400 WALLER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed JANCHAY THAI, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/27/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/27/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-038400400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAN FRANCISCO TOMORROW, 5537 MISSION ST #201, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SAN FRANCISCO TOMORROW (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/09/70. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 11/16/18.

DEC 06, 13, 20, 27, 2018

Bronx cheer

Swim meet

Lang view

Castro screen

Vol. 48 • No. 49 • December 6-12, 2018

www.ebar.com/arts

Both photos: Courtesy REAF

Stars shine for ‘Help Is on the Way XVII’ by David-Elijah Nahmod

“American Idol” alumnus Mikalah Gordon.

Courtesy Opera Parallele

Maureen McGovern rose to fame in 1972.

tars of stage and cabaret will perform on Mon., Dec. 10, at the Marines Memorial Theater in “Help Is on the Way XVII,” a gala fundraiser for the Richmond Ermet Aid Foundation. Founded more than 25 years ago by the late Barbara Richmond and Peggy Ermet, both of whom lost sons to AIDS, REAF envisions a world without AIDS, and stages performance events throughout the year as fundraisers for AIDS charities. Proceeds from HIOTW XVII will benefit Project Open Hand and Positive Resource Center. See page 22 >>

Christmastime in the concert halls by Philip Campbell

ecember is always a busy month. Between holiday parties, shopping and work, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. There is a real need for moments of live musical entertainment and personal reflection amidst the ubiquitous soundtrack of Christmas cheer. Luckily, there is something for everyone as we look forward to an exceptionally active calendar of concerts in San Francisco. See page 22 >> Mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti as “The Pilot” in Opera Parallele’s take on composer Rachel Portman’s stage realization of Antoine de SaintExupery’s novella “The Little Prince.”

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

<< Out There

16 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

Scott Chernis

SFJAZZ co-founder and artistic director Randall Kline hosted a “Listening Party” with Laurie Anderson last week as part of her five-night residency.

Laurie Anderson intensive by Roberto Friedman

P Holi da y &e t ick et s s Ev ’ r a Y e ! W O Ne w N LE

ON S A

GETTICKETS TICKETS NOW! NOW! GET

erforming artist-musician Laurie Anderson was Resident Artistic Director at SFJAZZ Center last week, during which she appeared in five consecutive nights of programming. Out There was there for all five events, as Anderson is our favorite living artist, our guiding light, our inspiration. At a “Listening Party” for SFJAZZ members last Wednesday night, she talked about her music, her art practice and her work process. She played excerpts from a recording to be released next spring, “Songs from the Bardo,” a setting of texts from The Tibetan Book of the Dead; and from a collaboration with Brian Eno commissioned by the Royal Danish Library. Anderson also regaled us with stories, her specialty. She recalled touring with a troupe of Tuvan throat singers who are able to project multiple pitches from their vocal cords through natural harmonics, overtones and some very developed throat muscles. She described performing at a castle some hours’ drive time from Lisbon. The Russian tour manager had neglected to provide transport back to the city, so after the show Anderson saw the Mongolian troupe begin the long walk back to the city. They would get there by morning. They were, after all, nomads. It got her thinking differently about time, she said, and about music. In last Thursday night’s “Songs for Women,” Anderson improvised on electric viola accompanied by

Bay Area jazz pianist Tammy Hall, and told stories. The songs were written with specific women in mind – her mother, choreographer Trisha Brown – hence the concert title. Spotted in the audience: photographer Danny Nicoletta, chanteuse Connie Champagne. Friday night’s “Lou Reed Drones” was an installation/performance piece performed at Grace Cathedral, curated by her late husband Reed’s former guitar technician Stewart Hurwood. Reed’s vintage guitars were placed against amplifiers in the cathedral’s chancel to create some very! loud! tuned feedback. We were encouraged to walk around the space as the harmonic drone changed according to our location. Anderson added her viola to the mix along with violist Eyvind Kang and saxophonist Ulrich Krieger. The four-hour piece was otherworldly, hypnotic. They handed out ear-plugs at the door. Saturday night’s “Songs for Men,” LA accompanied by drummer/ signal-treater Scott Amendola, was even darker, more textured. “I have a small jar of men’s tears, from the last war,” Anderson said. “It’s one of my treasures.” She sang “Love Among the Sailors,” and we realized it was World AIDS Day. “There is a hot wind blowing,/Plague drifts across the oceans./And if this is the work of an angry god,/I want to look into his angry face.” She told the story of Aristophanes’ play “The Birds,” about an earlier asinine scheme to erect The Wall – this time, a wall between the Earth and the sky, so that birds

could charge a toll for traversing it. This plan was not formulated by birds, but by greedy humans on their behalf. Finally, last Sunday night brought “Songs from My Radio Play,” a collaboration with avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith that was essentially one long guided meditation. While Frith made spacey music with his instrument, Anderson’s texts invoked “hypnosis, memory, old juke joints, canoe trips and love.” With her genius for music, visual art, invention, storytelling and performance, Anderson is an arts icon for our time. She is like Charlie Chaplin, Thomas A. Edison and David Bowie all rolled up into one. If our society had its values in the right place, to paraphrase her late husband Reed, we’d be putting up statues of her.

Life of Riley

Other Minds launched their 25th anniversary season on Wed., Dec. 5, at YBCA with a selection of piano works by Terry Riley, the composer himself performing alongside his longtime collaborator, Grammy Award-winning pianist Gloria Cheng. The program featured both notated and improvised works that spanned and offered a snapshot of Riley’s illustrious career. The highlight was “The Heaven Ladder, Book 7,” a 1994 work that marked Riley’s first return to notated composition in 35 years. Cheng featured on the world premiere recording of this work in 1998. The program also included the Bay Area premiere of “Cheng Tiger Growl Roar,” a newly composed work that Riley wrote for the pair. For info on the rest of their season, go to www.otherminds.org.t

Rick Swig

Laurie Anderson was accompanied by jazz pianist Tammy Hall at SFJAZZ Center.

To keep from slipping on the ice, polar bears have fur on the bottoms of their feet. You may have to hold onto a friend.

Now Open This holiday tradition packs a flurry of excitement you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find anywhere else. Experience the new outdoor ice rink, falling snow flurries, and more! Plus, explore the science behind the season and learn how polar bears survive in the Arctic. Open every day this holiday season. Save $4 per ticket when you buy online now through January 6. Get tickets at calacademy.org

29331-CAS-TisSeason-Polar Bear-Bay Area Reporter-9.75x16-11.29.18-FA.indd 1

11/28/18 5:32 PM

<< Theatre

18 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

Straight outa the Bronx by Jim Gladstone

traightforward, familiar and enormously satisfying, “A Bronx Tale” is the relatively rare contemporary musical that exudes winning sincerity more than winking self-consciousness. Now playing at the Golden Gate Theatre, this 1960s coming-of-age tale, adapted from Chazz Palminteri’s autobiographical one-man show and its excellent 1993 film adaptation, offers oldschool entertainment built around a core curriculum of sturdy moral lessons. Set in an Italian enclave of New York’s northernmost borough, the show has an urban stoop and doowop milieu that’s instantly evocative (and, at first, one may fear, derivative) of two other 21st-century Broadway hits, “Jersey Boys” and “Hairspray” (with which “A Bronx Tale” does share a racism-themed plot-line). But “A Bronx Tale” avoids the shadow of the Valli of glitz, and steers away from “Hairspray”’s more lighthearted aesthetic thanks to Palminteri’s nuanced main characters and a cast of committed, no-showboating performers. At the heart of the show is a platonic/paternal male love triangle among teenage Calogero (Joey Barreiro), his bus driver father Lorenzo (Richard H. Blake), and Sonny, the local mob capo (Joe Barbara), who lords over their block and holds court at the corner bar. The music, composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by Glenn Slater, helps audience members stay committed to the story. Integrating elements of street-corner a cappella, 1960s R&B,

and supper-club crooning deeply evocative of the era, the songs in “A Bronx Tale” are all original. They advance the plot and reveal aspects of the characters’ personalities. That’s a major contrast to other musicals set in the same era but built around preexisting hit oldies. While wellknown pop songs can help ensure a degree of commercial appeal, they often allow shows to use audience members’ personal nostalgia in lieu of strong onstage narrative. Menken doesn’t leave us with an indelibly hummable tune here, but Slater’s lyrics do much more than carry the story, they deliver a consistent linguistic buzz: “Carmelite sisters scream at their transistors every time the Bombers score”; lowlevel wise guys are “dumba than a lumpa mutts-a-rella.” Poetry like that is enough to make you forgive the boilerplate uplift of the show’s one false-note song, “The Choices We Make,” a choral finale that feels more like an Irish sea-shanty than Italian nostalgia. Like most of the music, Beowulf Boritt’s confidently simple sets work in service of the story. Translucent scrims of urban architecture and moveable towers that mimic the windows and fire escapes of tenement alleyways accentuate the tightly overlapping private and public lives of the characters, but never upstage them. In the show’s early flashback scenes, we meet Calogero at age nine (Frankie Leoni), when he’s largely naive to Mafioso morality. Lorenzo’s guidance to “Look to Your Heart” and live with compassion is somewhat lost on his son. After

Courtesy SHN

Scene from “A Bronx Tale,” now playing at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre.

comparing his honest, earnest, hardworking dad to Sonny, with his fancy car, free-flowing cash and revered neighborhood status, Calogero naively opts to emulate the bankrolled role model. “The working man is a sucker,” Sonny tells the kid, who in short order becomes his mascot, his errand-runner on a dead-end road. Blake is superb, evincing a beefy, sweet paternal masculinity. Barbara gives us a lived-in, off-the-cuff Sonny so deftly rendered that audiences are able to hate his outer menace while recognizing his inner mensch. Barbara gets the show’s cleverest song, “Nicky Machiavelli,” a statement of Sonny’s personal credo that’s also a nifty pastiche of “Mac the Knife” that he delivers with near-perfect Sinatra phrasing revisited in his second-act solo “One of the Great Ones.” Like Blake and Barbara, Leoni, who is 10, previously played his role in the Broadway production of “Bronx Tale,” and the experience

shows. Young Calogero is no onand-off opportunity for cuteness, it’s a substantial role with four significant songs. Not only is Leoni’s singing articulate, he also imbues the character with an endearingyet-charismatic swagger that crisply syncs with Barreiro’s physical interpretation of Calogero at 17. The pair sing and dance together in “I Like It,” quite convincing as the same person at different ages. (At some performances, Young Calogero will be played by Shane Pry.) As teenage Sonny, Barreiro is onstage for almost the entire evening. He seems a bit off-balance narrating the childhood flashbacks early in the show, but later, with his rough-and-tumble charisma as the youngest member of Sonny’s squad, and moony charm when smitten by Jane (Brianna-Marie Bell), an African-American schoolmate in the show’s romantic if over-accelerated subplot, he wins us over. His early

awkwardness is largely baked into the show’s slightly flawed structure. As originally conceived by Palminteri, “A Bronx Tale” was a monologue of his own reminiscences; nine- and 17-year-old Calogero representing the youth of the now-successful playwright-actor addressing his audience. Here, instead of the forced perspective of an accomplished adult narrator looking back, we get an average teenager describing his hardlydistant childhood. This otherwise loyal adaptation might have benefitted by taking a more linear approach to its storytelling. One also wishes that the tensiongenerating interracial teen romance were given more room to breathe. So much plotting is packed into the show’s second act that, other than Jane with her bold streak and Bell’s fine-grained singing voice, the black characters are left far less defined than the white ones. Also off to the margin of this boysto-men story is Rosina, Calogero’s mother (Michelle Aravina). But in a few well-slung zingers, a sharp reprimand of her son, and a shimmering second-act reprise of “Look to Your Heart,” Aravina gives her a distinct and memorable presence. These quibbles with “A Bronx Tale” are offered not so much as demerits but as wishful thoughts on how a pretty terrific show might have been “one of the great ones.” Still, pretty terrific is pretty terrific. Capiche?t “A Bronx Tale,” through Dec. 23 at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., SF. Tickets from $56: (888) 746-1799, www.shnsf.com.

Someday her prince will cum by Tim Pfaff

chaikovsky-savvy consumers will grock what’s going on right from the cover of the new Paris Opera and Ballet pairing of Tchaikovsky’s one-act opera “Iolanta” and two-act ballet “The Nutcracker” (BelAir). The pieces were first performed, together, on Dec. 12, 1892, in St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre. Of the two, “The Nutcracker” was the dud. Lost future royalties from it is my current explanation for the composer’s unsolved death. With this brilliant re-coupling, fans of director and set designer Dmitri

Tcherniakov may find their mouths watering for his forthcoming Wagner “Ring” at the Bayreuth Festival. This Paris double bill is a beaut. Tcherniakov’s claustrophobic “Iolanta” (cunningly so, in context) is updated to a post-Tsarist Russia somewhere between Khrushchev and the oligarchs, and set in the main room of the country estate where King Rene has ensconced his daughter Iolanta to keep her from learning she is blind. Although the cure, we’re told, is her really, really wanting to see, the music tells us the cure is love. The transposition to the manor’s main interior room robs the fai-

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rytale of some of its magic, but Tcherniakov promises to reward your indulgence by putting a Christmas tree in the corner, thereby first signaling Iolanta’s blindness by her identification – by touch, pricking her fingers in the process – of the star and angel ornaments. The cast is strong throughout, with Alain Altinoglu a sure dramatic hand and superb colorist in the pit. As often, the wonder is Tcherniakov’s uncluttered storytelling, so vivid you could follow the action without subtitles. Sonya Yoncheva’s fans will appreciate her immaculately sung, frequently affecting Iolanta, while those like me will wonder where the pathos became lost luggage among her careening repertory choices. Special mention also goes to Vito Priante as the Moorish doctor charged with fixing her vision (or else) and Elena (“Don’t call me veteran”) Zaremba’s perfectly gauged Marta. After a dramatically apt tentative beginning, tenor Arnold Rustowski’s Vaudemont reaches peaks of ringing ardor that had my eyes opening well before Iolanta’s. The segue to “The Nutcracker” is so seamless it’s hard to tell where the actual intermissions fell in Paris, if clearly not at the expansion bridge between the two works. A telltale, ghost-like, silent young woman, who had previously kept to the fringes of the action before insinuating herself into the shy embrace of the newly betrothed Iolanta and Vaudelmont, is promptly repurposed as Melisandelike Marie (Tchaikovsky’s Clara). The Christmas tree moves downstage as the Yuletide festivities and gift-opening begin. It’s stagecraft at its most advanced as Tcherniakov’s blocking morphs into choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Eduoard Lock and Arthur Pita without our quite registering the shift to dance.

One can no more fault directors from departing from Modest Tchaikovsky’s libretto than modern choreographers from bidding fond farewell to Petipa and Ivanov. Tcherniakov’s libretto – “Marie is in the middle of a horrifying landscape. Images of volatile, fragile civilization. Everything breathes death here.” – dissuades you from keeping an eye out for the sugar plum fairies, but theatrically, that moment well into the action is a coup de theatre. The estate, of which we’ve grown genuinely tired, is instantaneously decimated, and we’re suddenly, jarringly in some Babi Yar “Nutcracker.”

Marie (transfixing ballerina Marion Barbeau), plagued with more than a few doubles thus far, is as alone as Manon Lescaut on the Louisiana desert – until, finally, Vaudemont (the almost preposterously handsome, tall, lithe Stephane Buillon) appears. Their pas de deux, smoky in every sense, builds until, in the instant before its climax, Marie’s Prince falls to the ground, dead, departed or something. Missed, to be sure. We’re eventually transported to a sequence of bright new interiors, populated by scary giant toys that may presage Tcherniakov’s Fasolt and Fafner. The corps does some outright dirty dancing before reverting to balletic ensembles. Gleb Filshtinsky’s lighting nearly steals the show. Vaudemont reinserts himself into the festivities, raising the temperature far above a Russian Christmas, only again to fall literally flat after another mesmerizing meld with Marie. She is now unmistakably sola, perduta and abbandonata, until the naughty, awakening children lighten the spirits again. By the time the grown-ups reappear in this nearly childproof “Nutcracker,” you’ve been somewhere and back. If your holiday preference runs to the more traditional, there is a new, complete “Nutcracker” (audio only) from DG. Although recorded live in 2013, it’s the curious first fruit of a new partnership between the LA Philharmonic, now the world’s no-doubt-about-it most innovative orchestra, and classical music’s increasingly most retrograde record label, Old Yeller. Gustavo Dudamel is predictably perky. If you turn up the sound, lie back and think of Mother Russia, something noteworthy may happen to your nuts. But I assure you I am nowhere near done with Tcherniakov’s mind-altering “Nutcracker.”t

Theatre>>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 19

Family tides

Golden Thread Productions

He (Joshua Chessin-Yudin) and She (Sara Nina Hayon) in Golden Thread’s “We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War.”

by Jim Gladstone

ona Mansour’s emotional colloquium of a play “We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War” draws much of its appeal from the warm relationship between its two main characters. Their conversations make up most of the action, which takes place mainly in an arena for academic argument – a graphic band of green chalkboard arcs behind the playing area – and in the far more ambiguous realm of the sea. That these two characters are a woman in her early 40s identified only as She (Sara Nina Hayon) and her nephew He (Joshua ChessinYudin) is itself a pleasant surprise. Tall, lanky Hayon strikes a delicate balance between no-nonsense elder and highly sensitive peer, while beaky Chessin-Yudin effectively conveys a youthful layering of swagger over anxiety. It’s so rare to see detailed representations of this particular familial bond that this world premiere, by Golden Thread Productions at the Potrero Stage, feels refreshing

from the get-go. She and He clearly enjoy each other’s company, both as friends and family. During her occasional visits to San Diego, where he lives with his mother (her sister), they take pleasure in intellectual arguments, but are cautious about hurting each other’s feelings. She identifies as Lebanese-American; he as an ROTC student, then later a commissioned U.S. officer preparing for deployment to the Middle East. While not aware of any extended family in Lebanon, She is unsettled by the notion that he may have to “kill people we are related to.” He is a generation and a father’s genes further from their Arab heritage than she is, and with slight trepidation feels proud and prepared to take on whatever American mission he is asked to pursue. The duo’s tenderly contentious discussions of politics and philosophy take place during long, dogpaddling ocean swims. The saltwater provides a buffer zone between them, along with a raft of idiomatic functions. They tread water in trying to advance their arguments,

they don’t want to drift apart, they struggle with bottomless controversy, they are at sea. “The Pacific” is ironic. When a fog settles in, obscuring the beach, their uncertainly is articulated as, “Shore no more!” Mansour, too much! While the playwright’s conceptual elbow is oversharpened in these scenes, director Evren Odcikin and an impressive design team (Kate Boyd, scenery; Cassie Barnes, lighting; Mona Kasra, projection; Sara Huddleston, sound) soften its impact with a poetic visual approach. The flat green of the chalkboard takes on depth beneath a palimpsest of projected waves and the ambient sound of tides. Mansour and ChessinYudin glide about on backless rolling chairs in these aqueous passages, feet never touching the stage. The inventive effect, coached by movement specialist Slater Penney, is lovely but distractingly crotch-forward when the characters backfloat. Tre’Vonne Bell as The American and Adam El-Sharkawi as The Arab have commanding stage presence, but their brief roles are not so much flesh-and-blood characters as tools that She uses in support of her arguments. While She and He both make references to American military action in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, they don’t tackle political specificities. Despite being partly set in a seminar room, the play’s strength is not in the realm of intellectual education. “We Swim” is most successful in demonstrating that a balance between gently swimming around issues and bluntly talking can keep loving family members from going to war with each other.t

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Through Dec. 16. Potrero Stage, 1695 18th St., SF. Tickets ($28-$38): (415) 626-4061, goldenthread.org.

Exposing the charlatans

by Brian Bromberger

e live in the age of alternative facts, a euphemism for falsehoods. The same distinction could be applied to the honest fakery work of James “The Amazing” Randi, whose life and mission are profiled in the entertaining documentary “An Honest Liar,” first released in 2013 but given new life on PBS’ “Independent Lens” series to commemorate Randi’s 90th birthday. The movie can be streamed for free until year’s end on PBS’ website. It deserves to be rediscovered in the era when the U.S. President lies about events and a portion of the U.S. electorate believes him. Randi’s decades-long campaign to expose shameless charlatans and frauds seems more crucial today than during his heyday in the 1970s and 80s. Randi, born in Toronto in 1928, was inspired by the magician Harry Blackstone, who ran away to join a circus at age 17 to become an illusionist, following in the footsteps of his idol Harry Houdini. Vintage archival clips show the charismatic

Randi performing daredevil tricks such as hanging upside-down trying to squirm his way out of a straightjacket while a chanteuse sings “You’ve Got the Magic Touch,” timing his escape with the end of the song. He became known as the man no jail could hold, becoming a pop culture institution, appearing on TV’s “Happy Days” as himself. Randi came close to out Houdiniing Houdini with record-breaking breakouts from caskets and cages, but had a close call that almost killed him, trying to get out of a closed milk vat. Realizing he was getting too old to continue in the escape business, again following Houdini’s lead, he dedicated his life to exposing fakery. Randi was fine with magic as entertainment, observing, “Magicians are the most honest people in the world. They tell you they’re going to fool you, and they do.” But deception by people using trickery for their own gains was unacceptable. So Randi began exposing people like evangelical faith healer Peter Popoff, who claimed to heal ill people through God telling him the names and addresses of sick audience members. In fact his wife was feeding him this information through a tiny radio earpiece. Randi loved to go on “The Tonight Show” and publicly embarrass people like Popoff. His nemesis was telekinetic Israeli psychic sensation Uri Geller, who claimed to be able to bend spoons and keys with his mind. Working with NBC’s prop department, he rigged Geller’s live “Tonight Show” appearance so he couldn’t do his act “because the energy was weak.” In one of the great exposures in TV history, Randi showed audiences he, too, could

bend spoons with “magic.” Randi also wanted to foil spirit channelers like Ramtha, allegedly possessed by a 30,000-year-old spirit. He arranged for a Venezuelan teenager, Jose Alvarez, to become Carlos, a channeler coached by Randi, inventing false press articles about his psychic powers. Carlos became a sensation in Australia, then appeared on their version of “60 Minutes” to admit it was all a hoax. The intergenerational relationship between the two men has lasted for 30 years, culminating in their 2013 marriage. Randi publicly came out in 2010 at age 82. Randi’s “Project Alpha” grew out of his being upset at Stanford University studying and legitimizing Uri Geller. He convinced two associates, Michael Edwards and Steve Shaw (the mentalist Banachek), to pose as psychics who had telekinetic powers, to convince researchers they were authentic. At the study’s conclusion, Shaw and Edwards admitted they had cheated. Directors Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein interview Shaw and Edwards, who show remorse in leading on the researchers for two years. They raise the issue of whether Randi used unethical methods to deceive these well-intentioned scientists. There lies the deeper question about whether people care they’re being deceived. Randi says it’s easier to convince people of what they want to believe than of what is the truth. Randi is fond of commenting that everyone can be deceived. This is illustrated poignantly when the filmmakers reveal that Randi’s partner Jose was not who he said he was, and had adopted a stolen identity. Viewers are left wondering whether Randi was himself duped.t

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<< Film

20 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

December comes to the Castro Theatre

by David Lamble

ecember 2018 at the Castro Theatre is a collection of the fabled cinema palace’s greatest hits that should have something for every movie fan. “Suspiria” (2018) In 1977 Berlin, an American dancer (Dakota Johnson) meets a coven of Witches led by Tilda Swinton. A new work from Luca Guadagnino, the Italian director of last year’s gay classic “Call Me by Your Name.” Plays with David Gordon Green’s “final chapter” of John Carpenter’s cult classic “Halloween.” (12/7) “The Old Man and the Gun” (2018) Sundance guru Robert Redford claims this melodrama based on a true story is his swan song as a film actor. Story involves a 70-year-old bank robber (Redford) who keeps his hand in long past retirement time. With Sissy Spacek. Written & directed by David Lowery (“Ghost Story”). “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (2018) Melissa McCarthy returns as

Lee Israel, a celebrity biographer and cat-lover who turns to forgery when she falls out of favor and the bills pile up. Supporting performance from Richard T. Grant. (both 12/10) “Drugs: The Price We Pay” AIDS Foundation doc is narrated by TV/film star J.K. Simmons. (12/11) “The Lady from Shanghai” (1948) Orson Welles began rebuilding his post-WWII reputation with this thriller. He both directs and stars in a film that has gained its cache from Charles Lawton’s brilliant camerawork. Welles plays a rogue who joins Everett Sloan’s wife Rita Hayworth on a Pacific Ocean cruise. “Gilda” (1946) Hayworth returns with Glenn Ford in this Charles Vidor-helmed romantic thriller. Hayworth grabs the spotlight with a song: “Put the Blame on Mame.” (both 12/12) “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964/UK) This delicious black comedy from Stan-

ley Kubrick began as a serious Cold War thriller featuring a top-flight cast. Peter Sellers is triple-cast: as British captain Mandrake, as an American president, and as the title character, a truly mad scientist, the wheelchair-bound, Nazi-saluting Strangelove. James Earl Jones makes his screen debut as a young navigator assisting a crazed pilot (hilariously manic Slim Pickens) in plotting the course for a B-52 to reach its Russian target. “Being There” (1979) Hal Ashby helms Sellers’ final film, about a simpleton (Sellers) who fools rich people (Melvyn Douglas, Shirley MacLaine) into thinking he possesses supernatural wisdom. With Martin Dysart, Jack Warden and Richard Basehart. (both 12/13) “Home Alone” (1990) Macaulay Culkin is an 8-year-old full of mischief who is accidentally left behind when his family sets off on a holiday trip. Chris Columbus directs Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern as the maladroit burglars the kid keeps at bay. “Elf” (2003) Jon Favreau directs Will Farrell as one of Santa’s helpers who discovers he’s human, and sets off to Manhattan to meet his real dad. With Bob Newhart, Amy Sedaris, Peter Dinkage and James Caan. (both 12/14) “Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curitz helms one of the most astonishing propaganda films ever to emerge from Hollywood. With Humphrey Bogart in his most iconic role, as the American expat cafe owner Rick, who serves the cause beneath layers of witty cynicism. A singular supporting ensemble: Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and piano man Dooley Wilson, who

“plays it again” the film’s signature theme, “You Must Remember This.” “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938) Curtiz presides over Errol Flynn’s most iconic role as Sherwood Forest’s fabled resident. Helping Robin steal from the rich and give to the poor is a great studio cast: Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Eugene Pallette and Alan Hale. (both 12/15) “Bohemian Rhapsody” (2018) An outstanding bio-doc on the openly gay British rocker Freddy Mercury, known for such anthems as “We Will Rock You.” (12/16-18) “West Side Story” (1961) This modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet,” with tremendous gay male creative input, won 10 Oscars. (12/21-22) “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra’s lasting contribution to the culture stars Jimmy Stewart, just back from the war, and in love with girl-next-door Donna Reed. With Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, and Beulah Bondi. “A Christmas Story” (1983) Bob Clark directs an adaptation of Indiana-born Jean Shepard’s childhood nostalgia piece. Ralphie asks for Santa to bring him a Red Ryder BB Gun despite his mom’s warning, “Be careful, you’ll shoot your eye out!” With a spirited turn by Darren McGavin as his short-tempered dad. (both 12/22) San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’ annual “Home for the Holidays” Christmas Eve concert. (12/24) “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor star in the greatest of all Hollywood musicals. Kelly is a silent film star out of work as the movies learn to talk. Co-directed by

Kelly and Stanley Donen. “Xanadu” (1980) Gene Kelly’s final performance is helmed by Robert Greenwald and features Olivia Newton-John as a Greek muse of the dance who descends to Earth to inspire blond cutie Michael Beck. (both 12/26) “Some Like It Hot” (1959) Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis sparkle as indigent musicians whose lives are upended by the St. Valentine Day’s Massacre as Prohibition-era gangs shoot it out in late-1920s Chicago. They don women’s clothes to escape being rubbed out by a gang led by Spatts Columbo (George Raft). Marilyn Monroe steals all her scenes as the impish “Sugar Kane.” “The Apartment” (1960) Billy Wilder hits a career peak with this dark comedy about an ambitious insurance company clerk who scales the ladder at Consolidated Life by lending out his one-bedroom flat to superiors in the firm. Things come to a head when the key to the flat is commandeered by the boss Jeff Sheldrake, a chilly Fred MacMurry. Lemmon’s C.C. Baxter has a change of heart when his office crush, elevator operator Fran (magnificent Shirley MacLaine), nearly dies from a sleeping-pill overdose after she’s treated like a prostitute by the cold-hearted Sheldrake. Winner of five Oscars, including Best Picture. (both 12/27) “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968/ UK) Kubrick’s most celebrated work remains relevant and absorbing since it was adapted from an Arthur C. Clarke novel. This Castro engagement alternates in widescreen 70mm or special 4K digital formats. (12/28-1/1)t www.castrotheatre.com

Fritz Lang’s delusions of grandeur by Sura Wood

n undisputed titan of cinema, Fritz Lang was a genius at luring unsuspecting audiences into his claustrophobic, nightmarish universes. Over a half-century, this versatile, Austrian-born German director proved himself a consummate visual stylist, from his early Expressionist silent films and his successful stint in Hollywood to the final movies he directed in Germany that capped an illustrious career. From suspenseful spy thrillers, Westerns and crime movies to adventures and outer space fantasies, his films survey delusions of grandeur, the fatalistic pull of destiny, human frailty and the perils of technology. Epics, melodramas, war movies and pitch-black noirs, before there was a name for them, brim with events that unfold with an urgent narrative economy. There was seemingly nothing he couldn’t do. Take his monumental, two-part silent production of “The Nibelungen” (1924), based on the same 13th-century Nordic saga that inspired Wagner’s Ring Cycle. A triumph of artifice, orchestrating a confluence of costumes, sets, lighting, artful camerawork and special effects, it envisions a primeval epoch when fire-breathing dragons ruled the earth and a race of dwarfs bestowed magical powers. This sumptuous spectacle is included in “Fritz Lang and German Expressionism,” a two-part series dedicated to the filmmaker and fellow luminaries of German Expressionist cinema. The first installment, which opens at BAMPFA this week, focuses on his earlier work, with an emphasis on his German-language films and silent movies. The program features well-known Lang

fantasy, not a success in America, and Carl Boese’s reimaginwould be better-remembered than ing of the ancient Jewish all the other comedies, romances myth. Evocatively shot by and dramas of the silent years. “Metropolis” cinematogLang more or less invented the spy rapher Karl Freund, the film, but he also excelled in the sicautionary tale of a rabbi in medieval Prague who lets lent period in everything from the loose a homicidal monster seemingly oxymoronic silent opera that’s resurrected four cento bleak romances such as ‘Destiny’ turies later was a forerunner (1921),” a meditation on mortality that brought Lang international of James Whale’s “Frankenacclaim. Made after the death of stein” (1931). his mother and triggered by a childFittingly, the tribute hood dream, the episodic allegory charges out of the gate with moves between historical periods “Metropolis” (1927), Lang’s and locales from ancient Baghdad expressionist masterpiece and 17th-century Venice to Impeabout the dehumanizing imrial China. Its magic flying-carpet pact of corporate greed and sequences apparently prompted mechanistic labor conditions Douglas Fairbanks to pen the story on a futuristic society. Lines and star in “The Thief of Bagdad” of robotic worker-drones file BAMPFA (1924). into an underground factory Peter Lorre in director Fritz Lang’s “M.” A year later, Lang radically shifted while, 30 stories above in Art gears and tone with alacrity, directDeco skyscrapers, captains ing a pair of dark, feature-length of industry hatch their avatitles such as the Peter Lorre vehicle detective stories steeped in the malricious plans in penthouse offices. “M,” as well as more obscure ones Meanwhile, a witchy, crazed like the space oddity “Woman in the robot, who has been cloned Moon” (1929) and “Spies” (1927), from a saintly heroine of the a pulp-fiction precursor of Hitchpeople, dances like an evil cock’s British period. flapper gone mad, entrancRecognized early and aided by ing patrons of a decadent a meteoric rise, Lang, a contemnightclub – another terrific porary of G.W. Pabst and Ernst set-piece – and rousing the Lubitsch, was at the vanguard of numbed masses to revolt. the German film industry’s “golden Along with the staggerage” in the 1920s. The era proing architectural producduced Robert Wiene’s “The Cabinet tion design, which reflects of Dr. Caligari” and silent classics Lang’s training as a painter, by F.W, Murnau such as “Nosshe’s the most dazzling and feratu,” a desolate vampire saga set unforgettable creation in a in a Baltic village with Max Schreck project that then ranked as personifying the living dead; and an the most expensive in Geradaptation of the Faust legend that man history. conjures the supernatural in cin“If there’s one silent film ematic chiaroscuro and stars Emil BAMPFA everyone has seen, it’s ‘Me- Scene from director Fritz Lang’s Jannings as a cunning Mephistophtropolis,’” said film critic “Metropolis.” eles. These and other expressionist Richard von Busack. “It’s works figure in the mix, along with bemusing that this strange “The Golem” (1920), Paul Wegener

aise of post-WWI Berlin. They chart the rise and descent of Dr. Mabuse, a criminal master of disguise who brilliantly reinvents his identity at will, posing variously as a psychoanalyst, a stockbroker, a hypnotist, an agitator or a gambler. “With the creation of Mabuse – Lang was a Sherlock Holmes fan, and this was his answer to Professor Moriarty – he had a character that evolved from Victorian gentleman villain to the avatar of the Nazis,” noted von Busack. In 1933, Lang wrote and directed a sequel, “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse,” an essay in nihilism, menace, and paranoia, which he later said illustrated “Hitler’s processes of terrorism.” Swiftly banned by the Nazis, it was the last film he made in Germany before fleeing the country. Legend has it that he was summoned to the office of the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels, who offered him a job, supposedly extended by the Fuehrer himself, to supervise the Reich’s productions. “Suspecting a trap, and fearful the Nazis would discover the Jewish background of his mother,” according to historian Ephraim Katz, “Lang caught a train to France that very evening, leaving behind the bulk of his possessions and savings.” Though the details of that dramatic account have been disputed in some quarters, his narrow escape was Germany’s loss and America’s gain. Lang would take to the Hollywood studio system and its fondness for genre filmmaking better than most European émigrés who arrived on these shores. That chapter will be covered in the series’ second installment early next year.t Dec. 7-Feb. 23; bampfa.org.

TV>>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 21

Press violations on ‘Murphy Brown’ by Victoria A. Brownworth

is the season for indictments, fa la la la la, la la la la! There is nothing to put us more in the holiday spirit than a nice hot cup of Mueller’d tea and some prescient menstrual sponge Christmas trees at the White House. Melania is having a good long Madame Defarge laugh at someone’s expense. We were inventing new lyrics to “Last Christmas” with Trump and Putin in mind (you know you can hear it) while watching CNN and MSNBC pundits salivating on Nov. 29 over the 92 indictments. Awesome. Now we need an Advent calendar with a different member of the Trump team behind bars in each little window. It felt eerie, shifting from MSNBC to CBS’ Nov. 29 episode of “Murphy Brown.” The show took a cinema verité approach to Trump’s “enemy of the people” mantra. In the current climate, the episode was unsettling. While the Schadenfreude denouement to the stolen 2016 election has been heartening, the lived reality under Trump, particularly for women, LGBTQ and Latinx people, has been harsh and brutal at times. “Murphy Brown” took on the ways in which the schism within the nation has impacted the press and the chilling effect on reporting. Spoilers ahead: The episode, titled “Beat the Press,” featured veteran newsman Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto) attending a Trump rally. Trump (voiced by Bob Dibuono) spots Frank in the audience (Frank is a stand-in here for Jim Acosta) and calls him “fibbing Frank.” As he often did during rallies when he was campaigning, Trump tells his supporters to “let him [Frank] know what you think of him.” A cadre of red hat deplorables surrounds Frank, beats him and puts him in the hospital. There is real footage of a Trump rally intercut with the scenes with “Murphy Brown” characters. Frank’s actual beating isn’t shown, so that when Murphy (Candice Bergen) goes to the hospital, it’s quite shocking. “Murphy Brown” creator and showrunner Diane English was quoted in Variety Nov. 29 about the dramatic episode. English said, “It was something that we planned to do from the beginning when we first went into the writers’ room in May because of the angry rhetoric that was being directed toward the press, which I found shocking. Then it escalated from there as we saw journalists get body-slammed by a politician [MT House rep Greg Gianforte, who body-slammed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs], and we saw the president, at his rallies, encouraging all of this vitriol against the press and CNN in particular, even recently saying that he would admire somebody that would body-slam a journalist.” The sitcom skirts a fine line in the episode. There’s nothing funny about the beating of a 70-year-old reporter, yet humor is essential to every sitcom. But when Murphy’s son Avery (Jake McDornan), who works as the token liberal for a rival Fox-like network, goes to Altoona to interview those who were there for the beating and ask about their feelings, he gets beaten himself. This, unfortunately, is the one truly false note in an otherwise spoton episode. Avery’s punched by a woman who’s taller and bigger than he is, and she allegedly threw the first punch at Frank as well. If having a woman be the conduit for the violence is somehow meant to mitigate the concept of that violence, it does not. Plus it’s statistically inaccurate and offensive to suggest women are the source of violence in America. A feminist writer should know better. But “Beat the Press” makes some

CBS-TV

Newsman Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto, here with Murphy, Candice Bergen) is beaten up at a Trump rally in the “Murphy Brown” “Beat the Press” episode.

critical points. When Avery goes to speak to the Altoona Trumpers, he goes as a representative of the Fox News side of journalism. Their side. But what he discovers is that all press are anathema now, because of Trump. Reporters are indeed the enemies of the people to this huge swathe of Americans. That’s not the only issue the episode raises. The morning after taking care of her son’s injuries, Murphy is interviewing a representative of Trump’s Housing Department, and rather than ask her usual incisive questions, she equivocates. Later, she, Frank and her other colleagues sit at Phil’s having drinks and talking about everything that’s happened. The chilling effects of Frank’s and Avery’s beatings are clear. Frank is afraid to go back to work. He tells Murphy he never remembers things being this bad in all his years of reporting. Murphy realizes her waffling in the interview was all about her own fears over the charged atmosphere and what the repercussions might be if she challenged Trump’s guy, particularly after these two men she loves have been injured. She questions how they all move forward in this climate. In the final frame, we see them at the anchor desk (Frank is back with Murphy) and the lights dim. In the Thanksgiving episode, “Murphy Brown” had taken on ICE when Miguel’s (Adan Rocha) parents were taken into custody. Trump might be tweeting about Murphy Brown soon. Who can forget the headlines of Dan Quayle taking on Murphy Brown when he was VP? It will be interesting to see what the series does when Nancy Pelosi is back as Speaker and the Democrats have more power.

Lesbian youth

“This Is Us” has been an iconic series since it first aired in Sept. 2016. Now in Season 3, the series is taking some bold new steps. One is to make Randall and Beth’s oldest daughter, Tess, gay. In Season 1, Randall (Sterling K. Brown) discovered his birth father, William (Ron Cephas Jones), was gay. Although William died in the first season, because the show moves back and forth in time, Season 3 has revisited William’s gay history. Tess (Eris Baker) first reveals her questions about her sexual orientation to her aunt Kate (Chrissy Metz), and has a couple of conversations with her grandmother, Rebecca (Mandy Moore). The first conversation is tentative. Kate says Tess will be thinking about boys soon, and Tess says “or girls.” Kate makes a quick recovery and repeats, “or girls.” Tess makes her promise not to tell Randall, and Kate agrees, but says she knows they will be accepting and loving. When Rebecca raises Tess’ sexual orientation during a car ride, Tess is clearly upset that Kate has told her. But Rebecca explains that Kate wanted Tess to know there was someone

close by whom she could turn to. Tess rebuffs her offers to listen. Yet it is Rebecca who helps Tess tell her parents she thinks she might be a lesbian. Rebecca tells Tess that she spent much of her own life holding in her pain and hurt over various things, including the death of one of her children. She explains that it physically hurt her, giving her headaches, backaches, stomachaches. She doesn’t want that for her first grandchild. Randall and Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) are the parents we all wish we had. They would do anything for their kids. So when Tess finally tells them she might be a lesbian, they tell her they love and support her. They do everything right. She explains she’s been walking around in literal pain from not being able to talk about it and also not wanting it to become the only subject. At 13, Eris Baker is utterly believable as the smart, slightly nerdy, parent-pleasing newly teenage Tess. Her coming out is real, vivid, spot-on. There’s a girl she has a crush on. But since it’s a girl and not a boy, she can’t confide in anyone. Tess coming out is a curveball for Randall and Beth. They’ve handled the complexities of their foster child, Deja, with relative calm and ease. But they’re ill-prepared for the child they’ve raised from birth to step outside the very carefully constructed and somewhat programmatic world they’ve created for their children and themselves. “New Amsterdam” follows “This Is Us” on that mostly empty wasteland that is Tuesday night TV. We have a penchant for medical dramas, so we were lured in via the premise – New Amsterdam is based on New York’s Bellevue Hospital – and by the show’s proximity to “This Is Us.” White savior series (and “New Amsterdam” star Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) is the quintessence of that TV trope) generally just irritate the heck out of us. But there are elements of “New Amsterdam” that remind us of early “ER” and “Chicago Hope.” So we are still watching. For all of his white savior traits – mitigated by his having stage IV throat cancer (we would love to have “New Amsterdam” discuss HPV in men and the cancers it causes, but that hasn’t happened yet) – Max is still a highly engaging character. He’s messed up. He wants too much, he tries too hard, and he’s screwed up his marriage and his friendships. He’s relatable, even as he’s able to fix every problem like a medical McGyver. One focal point of the Nov. 27 episode was not Max, but Iggy (Tyler Labine), the gay shrink who runs the adolescent psyche ward at the hospital. Iggy is a kid whisperer who wants every child and teen to feel safe and be able to live his or her authentic life without being drugged up. The messaging in his character is perhaps the best of the series: kids are being put on tons of meds rather than given talk therapy and the space to work

out their issues. In one of the earliest episodes, Dr. Iggy got a kid off a raft of meds he’d been put on by court order of the school district. He’d punched another kid at school and hurt him badly. But the drugs were zombifying him. Iggy uncovered the source of the fight and got the kid off the meds. But it involved going back to court. And few kids have an Iggy in their corner. In the Nov. 27 episode, Iggy is counseling a trans teen and his parents. Shay has been transitioning for six months and now wants top surgery. But he’s just turned 14, and it’s too early. His body has to develop more so he can have a normal chest wall post-surgery. Shay’s hipster parents are supportive, but the thought of surgery feels drastic to them. It’s clear they aren’t ready to divest of the daughter they raised, even though they can’t say it. You can tell they view the top surgery as a door closing, rather than one opening. When they were unsure they could support it, Shay started a Go Fund Me account to pay for his surgery. Iggy talks to them gently, but firmly. His role is Shay’s advocate. Iggy explains to them, “Top surgery is the most common surgery for trans men.” But Shay’s father fears the finality, saying it’s “deeply unsettling.” Iggy counters, “Having a body that doesn’t reflect your gender – that can be deeply unsettling.” Iggy talks to Shay’s parents about how Shay was prior to transition, and we discover Shay was depressed and isolated. His mother admits, “My baby was 14, and he’d never felt like himself.” Iggy reminds them that “the positive changes in Shay since transition are undeniable.” Their conflicted feelings are presented as background to the foreground of Shay’s transition, and our allegiance is with Shay. So is Iggy’s, but there are factors that are beyond everyone’s control. When Iggy explains Shay will have to wait a year until his body has changed enough to accommodate the surgery, Shay doesn’t want to hear it. He freaks out. We know Shay’s a social media influencer with thousands of followers, he’s constantly updating on his phone. He decides to post that Iggy is a transphobe who refuses to allow him to get the surgery. Shay’s angry message goes viral and spawns hundreds of attacks on Iggy and the hospital on social media. The hospital does not respond well. Iggy is shocked and hurt by what’s happened. He meets with a contrite Shay, and tells him the attacks are not okay, that his husband and colleagues and family have all read the hundreds of messages defaming him. Shay says he knew what he was doing, but didn’t care. He explains that people are depending on him to get the surgery, and the first hint of the pressure Shay feels to be a leader for other trans teens is revealed, as well as Shay’s feeling he has to show a result to those who donated to his Go Fund Me for the surgery. Iggy tells Shay, “How and when you transition is your choice. You aren’t going to let some troll talk you out of it. You can’t let your fans bully you into it.” The best part of this storyline was how being trans was presented as normative. The issues involved were logistical rather than crises. Shay is a normal teen, subject to selfishness and fits of anger that are the hallmark of adolescence, as we all recall. Shay is content with being trans, he’s not depressed or suicidal. He looks, dresses and acts like any

14-year-old teenage boy. There’s no hand-wringing involved. Even the issues his parents have are presented as fixable, not insurmountable. As positive a storyline as Dr. Iggy Frome and his patient, Shay, provided on “New Amsterdam,” “The Conners” gets it wrong yet again. Becky (Lecy Goranson) is pregnant. It’s shocking news, as she had been told she couldn’t get pregnant. She’s older, she’s poor, she’s got a waitress job and no way to support a child. She runs into an old friend who’s a new mother, and hating it. This makes her even more doubtful. Enter two friends Becky knew at school, Bridgette (Ali Liebegott) and Maria (Gina Brillon). The lesbian couple wants a child badly. Becky goes to visit them and tells them they can have her baby. Bridgette is thrilled, and the two hug. But then Becky goes home and confides to her sister Darlene (Sara Gilbert) that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Darlene says they will all pitch in, and the baby will stay in the family. In the episode’s literal last two minutes, Becky tells Bridgette and Maria that she’s not giving them her baby. She tells them at the restaurant as she’s about to get off work, then says, “Don’t forget to tip!” to the sounds of the laugh track. A devastating moment for a lesbian couple reduced to a throwaway joke. Neither Bridgette nor Maria gets a line to say. They just sit there looking like two angry butches. Their hopes and dreams are on the discard pile, and we get no closure for them. It’s a shockingly terrible scene, and to our great disappointment, the episode was written by Liebegott, whose work we love. So we can’t even blame straight writers for this one. The San Francisco writer and producer has worked on “Transparent” throughout the series’ entire run and has authored several books, among other work. What were we supposed to glean here? That Becky is still a selfish, conflicted, insensitive woman who doesn’t see past her own needs of the moment? Was it necessary to throw a lesbian couple under the bus to make that point? We’re wildly tired of queerbaiting storylines, and this is yet another in an increasingly long list. We keep trying to like this show, but “The Conners” just won’t let us. So to watch the latest dominoes fall in Trump’s house of cards, for Christmas bake-offs and all things holiday, and for the occasional spoton LGBTQ storyline, you really must stay tuned.t

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<< Music

22 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

Young lovers by Philip Campbell

“Romeo et Juliette” live at Davies Symphony Hall in June 2017. MTT calls the epic work “a true sonic spectacular,” and the exquisitely refined and impassioned performances made good on his claim.

In-house label SFS Media recently released the thrilling musical adaption of Shakespeare’s great love story featuring a dream cast including Grammy Awardwinning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni, as well as the San Francisco Symphony Chorus under the direction of Ragnar Bohlin. From the furious opening notes of the Introduction and Prologue to the solemn closing “Oath of Reconciliation,” the sweeping drama unfolds with passion and majesty. Sasha Cooke is in glorious voice, plaintive and rich. Her frequent collaborations with MTT have created an artistic bond that shows her at her best. The same

could be said about colleagues Nicholas Phan and Luca Pisaroni, brilliant singers who have also become international stars and SFS favorites. The quality of the sound is breathtakingly full, and the highresolution recording is startlingly present. The live performance is captured with exceptional clarity. MTT’s interpretation is lovingly crafted, and his attention to detail occasionally smooths the drama, but Berlioz’s symphonic-choral hybrid is worthy of meticulous care, and the end result is both emotionally and musically satisfying. The SFS Chorus has also been carefully prepared to make exciting and beautifully blended appearances in the impressive choral passages. Their French pronunciation is idiomatic, and episodes like the revelers returning home after the “Festivities at the Capulets” show

personality and convincing involvement. The big symphonic set-piece, “The Capulet’s Garden, Love Scene” portrays the tragically fated lovers in the first innocent throes of romance with moments of shy hesitance and adolescent passion. The sheen of the SFS strings is underpinned with deep support by the full orchestra. The effect is wonderfully touching. Berlioz’s “Romeo et Juliette” has always been a favorite, cherished for its subtlety and sumptuous musical grandeur. MTT has a history with the young lovers, starting with his previous SFS Media release of the complete score of Bernstein’s “West Side Story.” In his penultimate year as Music Director, this latest encounter with the legendary couple becomes another sparkling jewel in the recorded legacy.t

performing,” Gordon recalls. “One by one, they came up and added a lash, and pink contour powder, and a necklace. Honey, I was a queen by the end of the night. Truly, I know how to be a lady because of drag queens.” Gordon said that after that performance she became friends with a boy who later died of AIDS. “It impacted me so much at such a young age, and I never forgot that,” she said. “It will continue to be my mission to find a cure. I never have felt close to my born family, but that night, I found my family. REAF is an incredible organization, and I am beyond honored to be a part of this night. REAF is creating awareness that in 2018, we still need a cure. “I got a call last year to play Melania Trump in this Off-Broadway show called ‘The Trump Family Special,’” Gordon said. “I created this little fan-base, so I made my Web series ‘Inside Melania’ that you can find on YouTube. It’s based on how I think Melania would act if she ever left Donald. My favorite episode is when she tries Uber for the first time. “I think because I never felt like the prettiest girl, I knew I could at least be the funniest,” she said. “It always got me out of being in trouble. I wanted to star in my own sitcom, so somebody recommended that

I try stand-up. After that, I was hooked. Nothing is more thrilling than making people laugh. My dream role is to play ‘Funny Girl.’ Barbra Streisand is my biggest inspiration.” Rising musical theater star Darius Harper, whose credits include “Kinky Boots” and “The Book Of Mormon,” is another performer who feels moved to return to HIOTW. “There was something about the spirit of San Francisco that stuck with me last time I was here,” he said. “It’s a really free place, and I was feeling really free at the time. Not to mention the dire importance of HIV/AIDS outreach Courtesy REAF and research funding. I’m happy to be back.” Rising musical theater star Darius Harper. Harper feels that it’s particularly important to supdisease, and it’s not over. There’s still port AIDS charities given so much more work to do, I know the anti-LGBT policies of the curthis first-hand. People are still dying rent administration and the threats today, in 2018. People are still being to cut AIDS funding. charged hundreds of thousands of “Organizations like REAF and dollars a year for medication, the Broadway Cares Fights AIDS are cost of living is enormous.” extremely important, especially Other performers include local right now,” he said. “HIV/AIDS is cabaret legend Sharon McNight, not only a gay disease, it’s a people

comic and cabaret bad boy Shawn Ryan, jazz great Paula West, and many others. An evening of spectacular entertainment is promised. “When I go out on that stage, I hope I can express my love for our community and also pay tribute to John Richmond, Doug Ermet, and all of our brothers and sisters,” said Gordon. “It is a difficult time for our community due to the current administration. It’s the reason I took my current job as the morning show co-host of the first LGBTQ radio station, I want to make our voices heard. I am only who I am because of the bravery and passion of the fighters before us. The love that Barbara Richmond and Peggy Ermet showed for their sons is incomparable. I hope I can always lead with that kind of love in my heart and the love I’ll leave on that stage.” “Help Is On The Way XVII” takes place on 12/10 at the Marines Memorial Theater, 609 Sutter St., SF. Silent auction in the lobby at 6 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m. Show starts at 7:30 p.m. Afterparty with the cast at Cliff Royal Sonesta Hotel in the Velvet and Redwood Rooms, 9:45 p.m.t

with Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser conducting the annual “Deck the Hall” concert featuring members of “Beach Blanket Babylon,” San Francisco Boys Chorus, Ian Robertson director, and many other young local performers. Coming up, in rapid and dizzying order: “Holiday Soul” with Vanessa Williams and Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Dec. 7 & 8. Annual Youth Orchestra Holiday Concert. Sunday matinee, Dec. 9, with Christian Reif conductor, and actor Richard Dreyfuss narrating Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” The night of Dec. 9 features Mariachi Sol de Mexico de Jose Hernandez in “A Merry-Achi Christmas.” Anyone who has ever experienced a Mexican celebration of the season can expect a wonderful night of joyous music-making. Erik Ochsner conducts another screening with live orchestra Dec. 11 & 12, when director Richard Curtis’ “Love Actually” gets the luxe SFS soundtrack treatment. Edwin Outwater wedges in between movie offerings, conducting members of the SFS in “Holiday Brass,” Sun., Dec. 16, 7:30 p.m. The big screen lights up again Dec. 19, 20 & 21 with a major presentation of John Williams’ beloved score for the original Chris Columbus “Home Alone.” Randall Craig Fleischer conducts Young Women’s Choral Projects of San Francisco,

Susan McMane director; the Ragazzi Boys Chorus, Joyce Keil artistic director; SFS Chorus, Ragnar Bohlin director; and the SFS. On Dec. 22, the Midtown Men (original cast of “Jersey Boys”) sing holiday hits and pop hits from the Beatles, the Rascals, the Turtles, Motown, and of course, the Four Seasons. The SFS doesn’t appear in this presentation, but it’s a safe bet to expect the talented quartet will bring a back-up band. The DSH Christmas roster wraps on Dec. 23 with Ragnar Bohlin conducting San Francisco Girls Chorus, SFS Chorus, Jonathan Dimmock organ, and members of the SFS brass section in “’Twas the Night: A Festival of Carols.” It sounds intimate and traditional as can be, which should ease everyone into Christmas Eve. But wait, there’s more: “New Year’s Gaiety: Peaches Christ and the San Francisco Symphony” arrives at DSH New Year’s Eve with members of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, HomoPhonics affiliate ensemble of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, comedian and vocalist Jane Lynch, Cheyenne Jackson, and Varla Jean Merman set to tear down the Christmas decorations. Edwin Outwater appears as conductor and co-emcee. Edwin and Peaches were the instigators behind last year’s “Holiday Gaiety,” and they’re rarin’ to go again!t

Hector Berlioz: “Romeo et Juliette,” Opus 17 San Francisco Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, music director San Francisco Symphony Chorus; Ragnar Bohlin, director Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano; Nicholas Phan, tenor; Luca Pisaroni, bass-baritone SFS Media Super Audio 2-Compact Discs (SACD); Downloads: Mastered for iTunes quality, 24-bit/192kHz Studio Master, and streaming via all major retailers

usic Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony recorded Berlioz’s

Help/Way

From page 15

HIOTW performers include Maureen McGovern, who rose to fame in 1972 when she sang the Oscar-winning song “The Morning After” for the classic disaster film “The Poseidon Adventure.” McGovern, who performed hit tunes for other films and made a name for herself on Broadway, has performed at many REAF concerts. She explained to the B.A.R. what keeps bringing her back. “I have been part of AIDS benefits since the early 80s,” she said. “Over the years I have lost many dear friends to AIDS. I will never forget them. I sing in honor of those we have lost and also in support of the great works that the REAF HIOTW concerts provide for men and women living with HIV & AIDS.” “American Idol” alumnus Mikalah Gordon has also done many AIDS benefits. She tells B.A.R. that her very first public performance after “Idol” was an AIDS benefit at which she was schooled in the art of dressing for the stage by drag queens. “I remember sitting in the dressing room with all of these beautiful drag queens who were also

December

From page 15

If you can’t go a month without opera, the San Francisco Opera’s delightful presentation of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” continues through Dec. 9 at the War Memorial Opera House. The classic Frank Capra film has been given the full SFO treatment and makes a great start to Yuletime festivities. sfopera.com Returning by popular demand, adventurous Opera Parallele makes the season bright with a fresh take on Rachel Portman’s charming musicalization of Antoine de SaintExupery’s beloved novella “The Little Prince.” Performances Dec. 7-9 at Marine’s Memorial Theatre in San Francisco of the Academy Award-winning English composer’s mystical opera come with a twist, in collaboration with the San Francisco Girls Chorus. A timely feminist touch has the principal characters played by women and girls. With digital magic, animated illustrations, and a cast of fantastical characters, Opera Parallele explores Saint-Exupery’s enchanted universe looking for answers to some of life’s biggest questions. operaparallele. org What would December be without a trip to Davies Symphony Hall and performances of Handel’s glorious sacred oratorio “Messiah?”

SFS

The Midtown Men will sing holiday hits at Davies Symphony Hall.

The beautifully decorated lobbies welcome listeners in for a holiday tradition that features returning English conductor Jane Glover, this year Dec. 14 & 15. Local favorite, tenor Nicholas Phan joins her with soprano Ying Fang, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong, baritone Joshua Hopkins (currently appearing at SFO as George’s brother Harry in “It’s a Wonderful Life”), and Ragnar Bohlin’s superb SFS Chorus. As long as you’re casting an eye on DSH, you should note busy San Francisco Girls Chorus will follow its Opera Parallele engagement with “Holidays at Davies” on Mon., Dec.

17, at 7:30 p.m. SFGC and Artistic Director Valerie Sainte-Agathe will present music from around the world, as well as traditional Christmas carols and Jewish folksongs. The legendary Kronos Quartet & Musae join them for the program, which includes the West Coast premiere of Michael Gordon’s “Exalted.” The San Francisco Symphony’s own slate of seasonal events could not be more eclectic, ranging from the traditional to outrageous camp. The month started with a screening of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” with the SFS, and continued

Tickets: www.reaf-sf.org/help-ison-the-way-for-the-holidays-xvii. html.

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Shining Stars Vol. 48 • No. 49 • December 6-12, 2018

Arts Events December 6-13

Whatever holidays you celebrate, enjoy the classic, traditional and irreverent arts events at venues around the Bay Area.

Thu 6

Cynthia Ling Lee’s Lost Chinatown @ CounterPulse

Listings on page 25>

Amy & Freddy

Holiday cabaret duo performs at Oasis By Jim Gladstone

“I

really love the Christmas music my parents used to listen to,” says Amy Armstrong. “Bing Crosby. Perry Como. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.” See page 24 >>

Aaron Lazar: playing Dad By Jim Gladstone

t’s been 18 years since Aaron Lazar last passed through San Francisco on a Broadway tour. A whippersnapper in the role of a swashbuckler, he played the Orpheum here in April 2000, understudying the lead role in Frank Wildhorn’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, his first big job out of conservatory. See page 24 >>

Aaron Lazar

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<< Cabaret

24 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

Amy & Freddy

From page 23

“My favorite holiday song is ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,’” offers Freddy Allen. “Judy Garland’s version always makes me cry. I’m also the rare person who actually likes ‘I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas’. It’s just silly, and I love it.” Do you hear what I hear? It’s the sound of seasonal sincerity. And you better think twice if you’re expecting anything less from the consummate piano and vocal duo Amy & Freddy, when they play at Oasis on Sunday, December 16. “I know it’s usually a drag-heavy venue,” adds Armstrong, a soulful belter who’s no stranger to risqué patter. “But I hope that people will be in the Christmas spirit.” The pair’s set will include a smidge of naughty in the form of Armstrong’s “12 Drinks of Christmas” parody and a rendition of the 1960s novelty “Pretty Little Dolly,” but mostly they’ll be serving nice. “I think that’s just who we are,” says Allen. “We’re both down-toearth people. We don’t put on airs or be fake.” While it seems de rigueur for budding young performers to explain that they aspire to express their “authentic selves,” Amy and Freddy have doing just that –no muss, no fuss– for decades. The duo has been playing together for 23 years, since meeting at an open mic night in a Chicago bar where Allen was at the keyboard. “I think the first song we did to-

Amy & Freddy

gether was ‘Le Jazz Hot’ from Victor/ Victoria,” recalls Armstrong. In 1998, already well-established as a duo in the Windy City, the pair was recruited by RSVP Vacations to perform on gay cruises. “Neither of us had ever been on a

cruise before,” recalls Allen. “I grew up watching The Love Boat,” remembers Armstrong. “I was ready to be Charo or Ethel Merman.” “After our first show on the ship,” remembers Allen, “more and more

people kept coming. They were adding chairs to the lounge every night until people were spilling into the hall by the end of the week.” To date, Amy and Freddy have performed on more than 80 cruises. By performing for vacationers at

night and socializing with them by day, the pair developed a unique intimacy with a geographically farflung audience. When they play concerts in San Diego or Provincetown or Columbus, Ohio, Amy and Freddy can quickly elicit a cozy camaraderie that’s not so different from what you find amongst the regulars at a piano bar. While their audiences feel a closeness to Amy and Freddy, the performers themselves say they’re truly family, a feeling that’s magnified around the holidays. “I’ve played with other musicians,” says Armstrong. “But there’s something to be said for performing with someone who, after 23 years, just gets you. Who understands what you want to bring out in a song. Music is so much about memories. I get really emotionally attached to songs. And I think audiences can feel that. Over the years, Freddy and I have seen each other through the loss of a parent, a divorce, so may life experiences,” says Armstrong. Both now have second husbands, and Armstrong officiated Allen’s wedding. “I remember one year after Freddie had lost his father. We each had one living parent; my dad and his mom. The four of us got together for Christmas and sat around the piano, singing all night.”t Amy & Freddy at Oasis, Sun. Dec. 16, 8pm. $27.50 - $40. 298 11th St. http://www.amyfreddy.com www.sfoasis.com

Aaron Lazar

From page 23

The New Jersey-born actor, currently based in Los Angeles, returns to the Bay Area under very different circumstances. Both offstage and on, in Dear Evan Hansen at the Curran through December 30, and a solo engagement at Feinstein’s at the Nikko on December 17. Lazar has grown into the role of a devoted and somewhat anxious dad. In Hansen, Lazar plays Larry Murphy, whose son and daughter are both deeply entangled with the titular character. The only adult male in the ensemble, Larry is a relatively small part, but one that comes with a powerful second act song (“To Break In A Glove”) that underscores the importance of caring male role models in young men’s lives. For half of each week when he’s at home, Lazar is a single dad to two sons of his own, ages seven and nine. Luckily, Hansen rehearsals and the tour’s first month-long engagement have been in Los Angeles, allowing him to maintain a relatively regular schedule with the boys before hitting the road at an admittedly touchy time. “Brotherly-love-wise, they’re right at that age where they’ve been pounding on each other, “ says Lazar, “ I just got them boxing gloves and we’ve all been taking lessons together, so hopefully that’ll redirect some of their energy.” Among the sweetest memories Lazar will take with him on the road is the Los Angeles opening of Hansen. “It’s the first time the boys have been old enough to come to the opening of one of my shows, which felt so special.” Shortly afterward, his elder son introduced Lazar to a school friend, saying, “This is my dad. He’s one of the most famous people in the world.” As it happens, Lazar recently spent the better part of 18 months with some of the most famous people in the world. He’s the stand-in for Benedict Cumberbatch in the Avengers: Infinity War and its follow-up, which shot concurrently in Los Angeles.

Aaron Lazar

“As an actor, you hesitate to do a job like that,” says Lazar. “But I had never worked on a $500 million movie and figured it was an opportunity to learn a lot working with great people like Robert Downey, Jr. and Chris Pratt while staying close to home. They were shooting for a year and a half, so individual actors have to leave and travel for other commitments. When Benedict was away, I was Doctor Strange, the full costume and everything.” That’s quite a change of pace for an actor accustomed to romantic music theater roles in the likes of Les Miserables, A Little Night Music, and The Light in the Piazza, all of which he’s played on Broadway, where he’s worked steadily for most of his career. Through the years, he’s also developed a significant side career singing with orchestras and performing solo concerts of show tunes like his upcoming Feinstein’s gig. Embarking on his first theater tour in nearly two decades, Lazar says the nature of road show life has been significantly changed by technology.

“Now we have a dedicated app for the touring company that we can use to check in, arrange housing, everything. We have a company Uber account so we don’t need to worry about transportation in the cities we play. I mean, we didn’t even use the Internet when I was in The Scarlet Pimpernel.” Technology will also make it easier for him to have more substantive contact with his boys from the road. As online amenities have made touring better, Lazar says that being on the Hansen tour will make his solo gigs better. “Normally, when I do my cabaret show, it’s just me and a pianist. But now a bunch of guys from the touring orchestra will be playing with me. We’ve worked out charts for a full combo. It’s going to be super cool.”t Aaron Lazar performs ‘From Broadway to Hollywood’ at Feinstein’s at the Nikko, 222 Mason St. Monday, 12/17, 7 pm. $24.50-$55. ($20 food/drink min.) www.feinsteinsatthenikko.com

Arts Events>>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 25

San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus @ Nourse Theater The chorus performs Brassy and Sassy, a concert of holiday music, with acclaimed coloratura soprano Marnie Breckenridge. $25-$110. 8pm. Also Dec. 8. 275 Hayes St. https://www.sfgmc.org/

Southern Lights @ Z Below 3Girls Theatre Company’s production of Lee Brady’s country music love story. $20-$45. Thru Dec 22. 470 Florida St. www.zspace.org

Sat 8 Dance-Along Nutcracker @ YBCA

Sat 8

Dance-Along Nutcracker @ YBCA

For full listings, visit www.ebar.com/events

Vampire Christmas @ Exit Theatre Stuart Bousel and Allison Page’s comic monster holiday play. $20$30. Thru Dec 15. 156 Eddy St. http://www.theexit.org/

Thu 6 Arcadia @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ production of Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece that explores mathematics, landscape gardening, Byron, and the undeniable power of the human heart. $7-$52. Thru Jan 6. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. www.shotgunplayers.org

Fri 7 Barbarella @ Exit Theatre

Another Hole in the Head Film Festival @ New People Cinema 15th annual festival of fun, unusual scifi, horror and animated films. $15-$160 (full pass). Thru Dec. 12. www.sfindie.com www.ahith.com

Cynthia Ling Lee, Melissa Lewis @ CounterPulse

Becky Hirschfeld & Dani Spinks’s stage adaptation of the comic book by Jean-Claude Forest and the campy ‘60s scifi film. $12. Thru Dec 15. 156 Eddy St. www.theexit.org/

The Bathroom Line @ SOMArts Cultural Center Radar Productions’ exhibit about intimacy, ritual, and public/private space, expressed in visual and text pieces by several queer People of Color artists. 934 Brannan St. www.somarts.org/

The Book of J @ St. Cyprian’s Church

The two artists perform Lost Chinatowns and I Dreamed Bruce Lee Was My Father, their works about Asian lives, stereotypes and icons. $20-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm, thru Dec. 15. 80 Turk St. www.counterpulse.org

Chanukah concert with Jewlia Eisenberg and Jeremiah Lockwood, with guests. $18-$22. 8pm. 2097 Turk St. www.sflivearts.org

Of Iron and Diamonds @ ODC Theater

The lesbian author of the new short story collection Lava Falls, reads from her Grand Canyon adventure story, and other works, at the outdoor/camping supply stores. Dec 6, 7pm: 2450 Charleston Road, Mountain View. www.lucyjanebledsoe.com

Claudia Russell and Bruce Kaplan with the Meredithc Axelrod Duo, perform blues, bluegrass and music in other genres. $18-$22. 8pm. 2097 Turk St. www.sflivearts.org

Keith Haring: the Boy Who Just Kept Drawing @ LGBT Center Afternoon of events celebrating the new kids’ book by Kay Haring, sister of the late great gay artist, with the author, Honey Mahogany, a kids fashion show and DJs Boomzilla and Pete Avila; all ages. 12pm-4pm. 1800 Market St. www.sfcenter.org haringdec8.eventbrite.com

Nutcracker Sweets @ Cowell Theater Mark Foehringer’s tenth annual concert of his colorful kid-friendly abbreviated version of the classic ballet set to Tchaikovsky’s music. Thru Dec 23. Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd. www.mfdpsf.org

Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s stage adaptation of the story by Jane Austin, with upper class and servants’ lives entangled in holiday intrigue. $39-$52. Thru Dec 16. 397 Milelr ave, Mill Valley. https://www.marintheatre.org

Works by missTANGQ, a ChineseAmerican multimedia artist and first-generation mystic-nerd. Free. 6pm-8pm. 80 Turk St. www.counterpulse.org

Lucy Jane Bledsoe @ REI Stores

Dirty Cello Duo @ St. Cyprian’s Church

The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberly @ Marin Theatre Company

The Incarnates @ CounterPulse

Catherine Galasso’s new work inspired by The Decameron. $30. Thu-Sat 8pm. 3153 17th St. www.odc.dance

Annual festive kid-friendly participatory concert and dance party, with jazzy live versions of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker performed by the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band; this year with a Harry Potter theme; tutus and other costumes available. $20-$45. 3pm & 7pm. Also Dec 9, 11am & 3pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. dancealongnutcracker.org

Sun 9 Tue 11 Sumiko Saulson at Perfectly Queer @ Dog Eared Books

Mike Pierce @ Spark Arts Opening reception for the artist’s exhibit of dyed scarved and silk fabric art. 6pm-9:30pm. 4229 18th St. http://www.sparkarts.com/

The Threepenny Opera @ SF Conservatory of Music Student production of the Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht musical about destitute Germans. Free. 8pm. 50 Oak St. https://sfcm.edu/events/ weills-threepenny-opera

Urban Abstracts @ Tenderloin Museum Opening reception for Patricia Araujo’s exhibit of urban paintings. 6pm-9pm. thru Feb 3. 398 Eddy St. http://www.tenderloinmuseum.org/

Fotohoto @ Strut Opening reception for photographer Fabian Echevarria’s exhibit of Latinx and Beyond models. 8pm-10pm. Exhibit thru Dec. 470 Castro St. www.strutsf.org

Hot Draw @ Mark I Chester Studio Erotic men’s drawing event, where donations buy socks for homeless aide groups, and the models wear socks (and not much else!). $20$25. 6:30pm-9:30pm. 1229 Folsom St. www.markichester.com

One Googol & One @ Brava Theater Center Aidaa Peerzada’s reimagining of the One Thousand and One Nights, with a modern perspective about historical injustices. $35-$45. ThuSat 8pm, Sun 2pm. Thru Dec 22. 2791 24th St. www.sfbatco.org

Kitka @ Kanbar Center, San Rafael The acclaimed women’s vocal ensemble performs their Winter Songs concert. $10-$30. 5pm. Osher Marin JCC, 200 North San Pedro Road San Rafael. www.kitka.org

Night Bloom @ Conservatory of Flowers New evening exhibit of nocturnal plants, with light shows and music. $20-$39. 5pm, thru Jan. 6. 100 John F. Kennedy Drive, Golden Gate Park. www.nightbloom.org conservatoryofflowers.org

Santa Skivvies Run @ Castro District SF AIDS Foundation’s annual fun outdoor run, where scantily-clad folks run around the Castro to raise money. Register $35. 9:30am-12pm. Donations/free to watch. www.santaskivviesrun.org

SF City Chorus @ Lakeside Presbyterian Church Handel’s Messiah sing-along and holiday fair, with a 20-piece chamber orchestra. $15. 6pm9:30pm. 201 Eucalyptus Drive at 19th Ave. www.sfcitychorus.org

Sprightly @ SF Public Library Weekly hangout for LGBTQ youth, with crafts, snacks and activities. 12:30pm-2:30pm. James C. Hormel Center, 3rd floor, 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org

Mon 10

Show Us Your Spines @ SF Public Library Radar Productions joins the LGBTQIA Center in presenting authors Kyle Casey Chu, Gregory King, Yaminah LaBelle and Marvin K. White. 6:30pm. 3rd floor, 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org

Christine Noll @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko

Wed 12

The Broadway actor-singer performs her new cabaret show, Am I Losing My Mind, featuring songs sung by some of the greatest Broadway female chaarcters (Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, Follies). $24-$55 ($20 food/ drink min.) 7pm. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. feinsteinsatthenikko.com

Bodyscapes @ Strut

Tue 11 Fever @ Center for Sex & Culture Fever: Documenting the Human Sexual Experience, a group photography exhibit curated by Anissa Malady. Tue 11am-5pm. Wed 10am-3pm, Thu 3pm-7pm and by appointment. Thru Dec. 28. 1349 Mission St. www.sexandculture.org

Perfectly Queer @ Dog Eared Books ‘Great Gift Books,’ with authors Sumiko Saulson, Jim Provenzano, and Colleen McKee, and cohosts Wayne Goodman and Richard May. 7pm. 489 Castro St. www. dogearedbooks.com

Queer as a Tuesday Night @ CounterPulse Ms. Carol channels the Ghosts of Queerness Past. Free/RSVP. 8pm. 80 Turk St. www.counterpulse.org

Group exhibit of art by the 50-Plus Network members. Thru Dec. 470 Castro St. https://www.strutsf.org

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics @ Commonwealth Club Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, The rev. Leah Daughtry and Minyon Moore discuss women of color in politics, the struggles and successes.. $8-$45 (with signed book). 7pm. 110 The Embarcadero, www.commonwealthclub.org

How to Make a Rex Ray @ GLBT History Museum Screening of a documentary on the late gay artist’s work, currently exhibited. $5. 7pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Thu 13 The Skivvies @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The musical comedy duo Molina and Cearley performs I Touch My Elf, with guest Nick Adams. $38-$75. ($20 food/drink min). Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St.theskivviesnyc.com

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<< Leather

26 • Bay Area Reporter • December 6-12, 2018

Race Bannon Eric Anderson

Rich Stadtmiller

for their monthly Code party. The brainchild of Edge bartender Erick Lopez, the monthly party gives leather and kink culture an ongoing home in the Castro. This Code had special significance because it was also a birthday celebration for Lopez. Erick is one of our local kink movers and shakers, not only through his work at The Edge but also through extensive volunteering. Happy birthday, Erick! Our city is better because you’re in it. Fast forward to the following Friday, November 30, and I ended up at Light in the Grove, an annual event held in the National Race Bannon AIDS Memorial Grove on the eve Race Bannon in the lap of his late of World AIDS Day. It’s a beautipartner, Kevin Lockwood, in happier ful event started by a candlelight days before Kevin’s passing from reflection at the Circle of Friends, AIDS in 1992. then a walk through a spectacularly-illuminated Redwood Grove to a warmly-lit banquet tent with by Race Bannon cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and a buffet dinner with special musical and chot turns out I’m writing this on reographed artistic performances. December 1, World AIDS Day. I www.aidsmemorial.org hadn’t planned it that way, but this Now, why am I putting this in my somber day can’t help but influence column that’s otherwise typically the tone of this week’s column. dedicated to leather, kink and other On this day I am remembering sexual and relationship radicals? It’s so many people, including my first to make a specific point. partner, Kevin Lockwood, who died I hear calls regularly from within of AIDS on October 12, 1992. He the leather and kink worlds to “be was a leatherman. He was kinky. visible” to make our scene welcomSan Francisco was his favorite erotic ing while educating others playground. He was the nicest man about us. But you know you could ever meet. His what? You can’t be visible life was cut short far if you only show up to the too soon. Unlike me, relatively smaller microhe can’t continue to cosm of just leather and enjoy the remarkable kink events. You must LGBTQ, leather, kink get out there and mix and sexual culture we enand mingle with a wider joy in the Bay Area. cross section of humanity. Kevin is of course not As I looked around the the only person any of approximately 600 Light in us might love who is no the Grove attendees, what I noticed longer with us. We all have those was the large number of them who people in our lives. What has been I recognized as part of our scene. impressed on me though on this Whether dressed in tuxedo, gown, poignant day of remembrance is suit, dress, casual garb, or the leaththat we should each of us grab on er me and my date wore, by leather/ to life hard and live it as fully, beaukink folks showing up and being tifully and vibrantly as we can. For present and “visible” at a non-kink kinksters, that means taking full adevent they made conversations and vantage of the many opportunities meetings possible that ultimately we have to commune and play with benefit us kinky folks too. If visothers of the kinky persuasion. ibility is indeed important, we need In that vein, on Saturday, Novemto go outside of our bubble or else ber 24, I decided to push myself off we’re just constantly preaching to my couch, out of the house, and into the choir. socializing amid the San Francisco Get up and go out. Yes, to leather kink world. I never regret when I do and kink events, but also to other that. Never. events at which our presence can be My first stop was to join the men seen and recognized. of Onyx Northwest at the PowerI had one more stop on Decemhouse celebrating the one-year anber 1, again at The Edge. There was niversary of their chapter’s founda meet and greet for the new Mr. ing. This was one of a few events San Francisco Rubber 2019, Alan that took place over the weekend as Gamrica. Alan is a joy of a human part of their celebration. being and follows in the footsteps of In addition to the Powerhouse last year’s impressive holder of that party, Onyx participated in a Gear title, Nico Watson, who was recently Up Go Out bar crawl, an art recepfirst runner-up at Mr. International tion, and showing of the Tom of Rubber. To give people a sense of Finland movie at Mr. S Leather. what it’s like to feel rubber on their Onyx is for men of color who body, Gamrica was gleefully dressenjoy leather and kink. Onyx proing grateful and excited bar patrons vides kinky men of color an inforfrom his own kinky closet. mational and social organization to Gamrica is taking this concept address their unique needs within even further by recently purchasthe overall kink communities. www. ing a lot of rubber gear in various onyxnorthwest.com sizes that can be used for the same Next stop was a stroll from Powpurpose at future rubber events. erhouse to the SF Eagle where BLUF What better way to tantalize and (Breeches and Leather Uniform interest newbie rubberists than to Fanclub) SF was hosting its Tribe dress them in some rubber for a few event. BLUF encourages men to hours, answer their questions, and come out and socialize in a heavallow them to commune with othily leathered, geared and uniformed ers having the same interest? sexy bar environment. I’m not always a big fan of overt During their occasional Tribe outreach into non-kinky realms. I events, monthly Leather Lounge feel the best way to garner newcomgatherings also at the SF Eagle, and ers is by attraction more than proother events, BLUF SF provides motion. Gamrica’s unique approach gatherings for men who enjoy the offers an example of effective outmore heavily decked-out version of reach that I’d like to see more kinkour scene. www.blufsf.com sters emulate. He attracted them to To finish out my Saturday trek rubber rather than tried to promote through kinky gay San Francisco, it. Bravo. I ended my night at the The Edge

Race Bannon

Living every kinky day

Phew. That’s a lot of events. But you know what? That’s just a fraction of what the Bay Area has to offer LGBTQ kinksters every week in this bevy of kink riches we enjoy. Go out. Mix and mingle with kinksters. There is so much going on for you to enjoy whether it’s bars, dances, classes, art, community projects, group outings or shopping, There is no excuse for any Bay Area kinkster saying to themselves “there’s nothing to do.” There’s a lot to do. Go do it.t

For Leather Events listings, visit www.ebar.com/events Race Bannon is a local author, blogger and activist. www.bannon.com

Race Bannon

1. Jon Fulton, Daddy Robert and Michael Pereira, three of the sexy men who attended the recent Tribe event at the SF Eagle produced by BLUF SF. 2. Some of the men of Onyx Northwest at their recent one-year anniversary celebration at the Powerhouse. 3. Mr. San Francisco Rubber 2019, Alan Gamrica, happily polishing some rubber at the recent meet and greet at The Edge. 4. Erick Lopez, Eric Anderson and Race Bannon at Code at The Edge. 5. You can’t tell who’s kinky or not as members of the local leather/ kink communities mingled with others at the recent Light in the Grove event at the National AIDS Memorial Grove.

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Nightlife Events>>

December 6-12, 2018 • Bay Area Reporter • 27

Nightlife Events

Mixer for Equality @ Lyft Headquarters Equality Federation hosts a reception for LGBTQ tech professionals, artists and nonprofit professionals. 6pm8:30pm. 180 Berry St. www.equalityfederation.org

December 6-13

Ror:Shok @ SF Eagle

Whether you’re lighting candles, perching under mistletoe, or glugging eggnog, the holidays in all their forms approach. Cheer up or simmer down, but enjoy the festivities. teven Underhill

Groovy grooves, Xmas at Askaban drag show, $10, 8pm-2am; preceded by Queer Leather Happy Hour (6pm9pm). 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Sun 9

Sat 8 Daddy’s Boy @ Atlas

For full listings, visit www.ebar.com/events

Fri 7

Onesie Xmas Party at the super-cruisy new space, with stuffed packages, bad boys and sexy Santas; clothes check. $10-$20. 10pm-3am. 415 10th St. at Harrison. www.daddysboy. eventbrite.com

Thu 6

Friday Night Live @ El Rio

Pound Puppy @ SF Eagle

Santa Skivvies Run @ Castro District

Enjoy the weekly queer and LGBTfriendly live acoustic concerts. $5pm. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

Drag Queens on Ice @ Union Square Ice Rink Safeway Holiday Ice Rink hosts the ninth annual drag show, on ice, with MC Donna Sachet. 8pm-9:30pm. Union Square, downtown S.F. www.unionsquareicerink.com

Holi-Slay @ The Café

Night at the Jewseum @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Celebrate Hanukkah’s fifth night at the museum’s fun party, with DJ Chlora, food, drinks and a cosmis fashion show. $8. 6pm-9pm. 736 Mission St. https://thecjm.org

Would You Be Caught Dead in That Outfit? @ The Stud Retro ‘70s and ‘80s wear with “maricones and mariposas” style, photos, fashion show, drag and style. 7pm-10pm. 9pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Mahlae Balenciaga hosts a viewing party of RuPaul’s Drag Race Holi-Slay Spectacular, with Frida Mon and Biddybee. No cover. 8pm-10pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Killer Queens @ The New Parish, Oakland All-women Queen tribute band perform; Material Girl (Madonna tribute band) opens. $15. 9pm. 1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. https:// www.thenewparish.com

MAnnie @ Oasis Drunk Drag Broadway’s comic drag parody of Annie the musical. $27-$50. 7pm. Also Dec 8 (7pm) & 9 (4pm). 298 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

The groovy night with DJs; combined with BLUF Leather Lounge 9pm-2am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

Prime @ Club Six Holiday-themed dance and cruise party for silver daddies and their admirers, with DJs Bo Bear and Neon the Glowbear. $20-$25. 10pm-4am. 60 6th St. https://www.eventbrite. com/o/trophydad-11423585232

Swagger Like Us @ The Stud Lady Ryan, Jibbz and DavOmakesbeats spin at Kelly Lovemonster’s night. 9pm2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Writers With Drinks @ Make Out Room Shawn Wen, Jennifer S. Cheng, MayLee Chai, Bryan Thao Worra, Alan Chazaro, Jaymee Goh and host Charlie Jane Anders. $5-$20. 7:30pm. 3225 22nd St. www.makeoutroom.com

Sun 9

Tue 11

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle

Cioppino for Charity @ Finn Town

10-$15 gets you all the beer you can drink, supporting worthy causes. 3pm6pm. T-Dance and rock drag show Apocrypha follows, 7pm-1am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. sf-eagle.com

Domingo De Escandal @ Club OMG Weekly Latin night with drag shows hosted by Vicky Jimenez and DJ Carlitos. (Comedy Open Mic 5:30pm). 7pm-2am. 43 6th St. clubomgsf.com

Nocturnal @ Halcyon DJ Alex Acosta spins at Ky Martinez’ ‘Extreme Xmas’ late-night party. $20$40. 3:30am-9am. 314 11th St. www.TheNocturnalsf.com

Puff/Polesexual @ The Stud Queer cannabis monthly event’s holiday drag party, with DJ Dank, raffles, and DJ Sergio Fedasz. $10. 7pm-10pm; followed by the pole-dancing variety show, ‘Zombie Christmas’ theme. .399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Renegade @ Atlas The popular new weekly super-cruisy party, BYO, clothes check and DJed grooves. $10. 5pm-8pm. 415 10th St. https://www.facebook.com/ groups/2094886877491354/

Santa Skivvies Run @ Castro District SF AIDS Foundation’s annual fun outdoor run, where scantily-clad fundraisers run around the Castro. Register $35. 9:30am-12pm. Free/ Donations www.santaskivviesrun.org

Mon 10 Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht. 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market.

Shining Stars

Seafood feast and benefit for the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation, with other tasty menu items, and raffles. $30 and up. 5pm-10pm. 2251 Market St. https://finntownsf.com/

Truck Tuesdays @ Atlas The weekly super-cruisy night, with clothes check. $5. 415 10th St.

Wed 12 Sequel @ SF Eagle Movie-viewing night celebrates the best of the worst; this time, Batman Returns, with sassy commentary. No cover, free popcorn. 10pm-1am. 398 12th St. www.sf-eagle.com

SoMa Comedy @ Oasis Showcase of new and veteran standup comics: Sergio Novoa, Frankie Marcos, Sue Alfieri, Greg Martineau, Coral Best, Justin Lucas, Sandra Risser, and host Roxy-Cotton Candy. $10. 7pm. 298 11th St. sfoasis.com

Thu 13 Barry Lloyd @ Sip Tea Room The accomplished pianist-singer performs and chats with Paula Heitman. $15-$30. 8pm. 721 Lincoln Way. https://societycabaret.com

Polyglamorous @ Phonobar Thank you party from the groovy dance party collective; no cover. 8pm11pm. 370 Grove St. www.facebook. com/polyglamorous.club/ https://phonobarsf.com/

Photos by Steven Underhill Light in the Grove @ National AIDS Memorial Grove

orld AIDS Day local commemorations included the annual Light in the Grove, the gala fundraiser held at the National AIDS Memorial Grove. Local luminaries, politicians and AIDS activists joined in, as dancers and The Klipptones entertained. www.aidsmemorial.org See more photos on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife. See more of Steven Underhill’s photos at StevenUnderhill.com.

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