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Nightlife fund gears up
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Sex-positive center planned
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Brontez Purnell
The
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Serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities since 1971
Effort underway to recall SF DA Boudin by John Ferrannini
Vol. 51 • No. 8 • February 25-March 3, 2021
With a mayoral eye on equity, Gloria looks to transform San Diego by Matthew S. Bajko
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group of residents has started the process to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Approval of the signature-gathering phase Rick Gerharter of the effort is likely to come in the next week, San Francisco according to the recall’s District Attorney Chesa Boudin lead organizer. As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, Richie Greenberg, a business adviser and activist who in 2018 was a Republican candidate for mayor, started a petition January 2 urging Boudin to resign after a parolee was allegedly responsible for a hit-and-run that killed two pedestrians in the South of Market neighborhood on New Year’s Eve. Greenberg’s petition garnered almost 15,000 signatures. “We decided to stop the petition and declare that this is a much bigger response than we could have imagined,” Greenberg told the See page 10 >>
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n the antechamber to his mayoral suite on the 11th floor of City Hall, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria has hung black-andwhite portraits of three deceased civil rights pioneers. Every day he goes into the building he passes by images of gay San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Georgia congressman John Lewis. “They are icons who each, I think, contributed to my ability to sit in this room,” Gloria told the Bay Area Reporter from the municipal building during a recent Zoom interview. Inside his office is a painting of Diego, the Chihuahua mix breed Gloria and his partner, Adam Smith, adopted after briefly fostering him last year. Now the “First Dog of San Diego,” Diego was rescued from a kill shelter in San Bernardino County by a San Diego nonprofit. “He is just perfect,” said Gloria, adding that the couple ended up asking themselves, “Why on earth would we return him to have someone else adopt a dog this amazing?” With City Hall off limits to the public due to the COVID pandemic, only a handful of people have beheld the visual acknowledge-
Courtesy Nicole Murray Ramirez
Courtesy Nicole Murray Ramirez
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria shares an award he received, which is a small bust of Harvey Milk.
ments to some of the issues his administration cares about, such as animal welfare and equality, said Gloria. “I brought a little bit of flair to the mayor’s
office but no one can see it. It is off limits other than to very few staff members,” noted Gloria. “When the time comes we will welcome back people to City Hall so they can enjoy those portraits and the painting of Diego and a few other things I have here to celebrate San Diego.” Late last year Gloria, 42, took his oath of office to become San Diego’s first gay elected mayor and first mayor of color. A third-generation San Diegan of Native American, Dutch, Puerto Rican, and Filipino ancestry, Gloria formerly served on the City Council and briefly held the mayoral position seven years ago on an interim basis due to the resignation of former mayor Bob Filner amid sexual harassment accusations. “The answer is colored by it not being my first time in the office or chair. But it does feel different, largely because of the pandemic and all the challenges we are facing,” said Gloria about how it feels to be mayor of his city. “It allows me to sit at the desk with greater confidence and clarity of thought in terms of what needs to be done and how to prioritize the multitude of challenges that come in the door every single day.” See page 11 >>
Presence of cremains may impact Lyon-Martin House landmark request by Matthew S. Bajko Courtesy SFPD
New Mission Station police Captain Rachel Moran, right, shared a moment with Heklina at the 2011 Pride parade.
Mission Station gets first female captain by John Ferrannini
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he San Francisco Police Department’s Mission Station, which also covers much of the Castro and Noe Valley, has a new head in Captain Rachel Moran. Moran started in the post February 20. A 25-year veteran of the force, Moran, 50, told the Bay Area Reporter February 22 that she thinks she’s the first woman to lead the station, which was subsequently confirmed by Matt Dorsey, a gay man who is the communications director of the SFPD. See page 11 >>
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ue to the cremains of lesbian pioneering couple Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin being interred where they lived in Noe Valley, historians are calling on City Hall to landmark the entire property. It would be the fifth city landmark specifically tied to LGBTQ history, if approved, and the first focused solely on lesbian history. But the city’s preservation advisory body is recommending that only the couple’s former two-story cottage located at 651 Duncan Street be designated a city landmark. It saw no need to include the adjoining garden plot where the couple’s cremains are located, which has an address of 649 Duncan Street. While the city’s planning department concluded the cremains did not add to why the property should be a city landmark, it did determine that the entire property deserves to be landmarked. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is arguing that the presence of the women’s cremains means the entire property not only should be landmarked but also considered a memorial site. “They made the conscious choice to scatter their cremains there,” Christina Morris, the trust’s senior field director in Los Angeles, told the Historic Preservation Commission at its
Courtesy SF Planning Department
Rocks, foreground, indicate where the ashes of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are interred on their former property.
February 17 hearing. The commissioners voted 6-1 to support only landmarking the Lyon-Martin House. Commissioner Aaron Hyland, a gay man who is its president, cast the sole no vote because he felt the entire property is worthy of being deemed a city landmark. Commissioner Chris Foley said the landmark request was “near and dear to my heart” because the life of his daughter, who came out as gay at age 11, was made better by the work of Lyon and Martin. While he agreed their home should be landmarked, Foley said he saw no reason for why the adjoining undeveloped parcel needed to also be part of the landmark designation. “This designation is really important,” said
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Foley, “but I think we should separate the lot. The lot with the cremains I don’t think should be part of it.” Commissioner Kate Black, who lived for nearly two decades in a “worker bee cottage” a few blocks away from the Lyon-Martin House, feared landmarking the undeveloped portion would limit the new property owners’ ability to construct their own residence on the site. “I see no relationship to this vacant lot to the importance of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin and the work they did,” said Black, noting she hoped a multi-unit building or a house with a secondary living unit would be built there. “Or whatever the family would like. We should make it as easy as possible for them to do so.” The Board of Supervisors is expected to take up the issue in April. Shayne E. Watson, a lesbian and architectural historian who co-wrote a 2015 survey of San Francisco’s LGBTQ cultural heritage that highlighted the historic significance of the LyonMartin House, told the Bay Area Reporter she was “frustrated” by the commission’s decision. An organizer of the Friends of the Lyon-Martin House group that formed to advocate for the preservation of the couple’s home, Watson said the group will be advocating that the superviSee page 9 >>
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