February 13, 2014 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

Recalling 'Winter of Love'

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Vol. 44 • No. 7 • February 13-19, 2014

Conflict resolution for trans teen

Tenants demand eviction relief

by Heather Cassell

Contra Costa County juvenile judge has ordered transgender teenager Jewlyes Gutierrez to enter a conflict resolution program known as restorative justice to deal with a battery Jo-Lynn Otto charge stemming Jewlyes Gutierrez from a schoolyard fight last year. The judge’s decision was met with relief from Gutierrez, 16, and her public defender, Kaylie Simon. The district attorney’s office had charged Gutierrez with battery after the incident, but last Thursday, February 6, Juvenile Judge Thomas M. Maddock granted Simon’s request for the restorative justice program. The goal of such a program is to achieve reconciliation with the parties involved. Last November a cellphone video of a fight between Gutierrez and three of her classmates at Hercules Middle/High School went viral on YouTube. All four 16-year-old sophomore girls were suspended for two days from school while the West Contra Costa Board of Education worked on revamping its sexual and gender harassment policies. A week prior to the fight the board signed an agreement with the U.S. departments of education and justice to comply with Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination. Last month, Simon said that Gutierrez was “harassed and tormented ... due to her gender identity.” Gutierrez and her family members told the Bay Area Reporter in an interview last month that she has endured bullying for years. In the weeks leading up to the November 13 altercation, Gutierrez had reported previous incidents to school administrators with no response. She fought back, according to media reports, and allegedly hit one of her classmates who days before “spit gum in her hand” that was “full of salvia” and “threw it in my face,” she told ABC 7 News. Three teenage girls allegedly chased and attacked Gutierrez. Yet, a police report was filed and two months later Gutierrez was charged with a misdemeanor battery charge by Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney Daniel Cabral. When the charge was filed, Gutierrez’s sister, Valerie Poquiz, started a change.org petition in an effort to get District Attorney Mark Peterson to drop the charge against Gutierrez. That petition garnered more than 200,000 signatures. See page 14 >>

by David-Elijah Nahmod

Black HIV awareness day

Rick Gerharter

ctivists and HIV/AIDS advocates braved the rain Friday, February 7 to gather on the steps of City Hall to observe the 14th annual National Black HIV Awareness Day. The group later marched a few blocks to the Quaker Meeting House where a discussion was held to highlight the fact that blacks are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of new HIV infection in African Americans is eight times that of whites based on population size, with gay and bisexual men accounting for most of the new infections.

oncern over increasing rental costs and a spike in evictions led more than 300 tenants and their supporters to pack a school lunchroom last weekend as the Citywide Tenants Convention sought to harness frustration into political action. The convention was a culmination of several smaller gatherings that have taken place in San Francisco neighborhoods, including the Castro, over the past month. At those meetings, ideas for a possible November ballot measure have been discussed, but there’s no word yet on a specific proposal. Underscoring the importance of the February 8 confab at the Tenderloin Community School – and housing issues in general – five members of the Board of Supervisors were in attendance. Participants spent time brainstorming about See page 16 >>

Little gay visibility at Olympics by Lisa Keen

Costas pointed out that the president chose three openly gay here has been little in the athletes to be part of the 10-memway of LGBT visibility by ber U.S. presidential delegation to gay athletes during the first the opening and closing ceremofew days of the Winter Olympics nies, saying that seemed to be in Sochi, Russia, but television sending a message. Obama acviewers have seen high profile knowledged he was. political messages and two gay “There is no doubt we wanted inclusive television commercials. to make it very clear that we do There was also a surprise choice not abide by discrimination in by Russian games organizers, and anything, including discriminaone out athlete said it wasn’t a tion on the basis of sexual origood idea to protest at the games. entation,” said Obama. (The full It was Olympic organizers at interview is available at NBC’s the speed skating stadium who Olympics website.) chose to play the iconic gay anOne of those athletes, tennis them “YMCA” over the public Rick Gerharter legend Billie Jean King, had to address system during last Sat- San Francisco FrontRunners members Jon Cain, left, Richard withdraw from the delegation urday’s competition. And it was Ervais, and Marcus Valera showed their support for LGBT Russians because of her mother’s ill health; openly lesbian athlete Daniela during a small protest February 8 at UN Plaza in San Francisco. Betty Moffitt died February 7. Iraschko-Stolz of Austria who The Freedom Socialist Party and the Federation of Gay Games International Olympic Comreportedly told reporters, “I don’t organized the demonstration, timed to coincide with the first full day mittee President Thomas Bach think it’s a good idea to make pro- of athletic competition at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. seemed to chide Obama with tests here, no one cares.” his own remarks at the opening Most Americans are getting ceremony. Although he said the their Olympic coverage via NBC’s nightly broada taped interview by anchor Bob Costas via satel- Olympics are about “embracing human diversity casts of selected, edited events, as well as some lite with President Barack Obama. In that interin great unity,” he called on “political leaders of live coverage during the day. Although broadcast view, Costas asked the president why he, the vice the world” to “have the courage to address your of some of the first events began on Thursday, president, and first lady did not attend. Obama disagreements in a peaceful, direct, and political February 6, the most-watched programming said they all had busy schedules and “a lot going dialogue and not on the backs of these athletes.” started with the opening ceremony February 7. on,” and added that he hasn’t attended any other See page 16 >> NBC led its opening ceremony coverage with Olympics since taking office in 2009.

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<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Jane Philomen Cleland

Valentine’s gift for AIDS groups

lfredo Casuso, left, and his husband, David Perry, executors of the estate of Thomas M. Dross, hold an oversized check for $2.1 million that represents donations to HIV/AIDS and other organizations that were formally made Monday, February 10 in San Francisco. Agencies that received funds were: AIDS Emergency Fund, AIDS Interfaith Chapel at Grace Cathedral, Clinica Esperanza, Desert AIDS Project (Palm Springs), Family

Link, Food for Thought (Sonoma), Mazzoni LGBT Center (Philadelphia), Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and the San Francisco LGBT Aging Policy Task Force Outreach Report. Dross, 71, died of a sudden heart attack January 7, 2012. He moved from Pennsylvania to San Francisco in the 1970s and became a well-known advertising and marketing professional.

Hospital gardens produce honor for retired founder by Matthew S. Bajko

ired in 1982 as a gardener at San Francisco General Hospital, Joan Varney quickly realized that her bosses did not view the maintenance of the public medical center’s grounds as a high priority. “The guy who first hired me said, ‘Go out there and garden or whatever it is that you do.’ For the first couple of years I was with a crew of people into the status quo,” recalled Varney, 62, who grew up the suburbs of Portland, Oregon where her family’s property was dotted with various fruit trees. “They would say don’t buy tools or they will expect you to do work.” Yet a co-worker, Alain Kinet, and Varney had a passion for gardening and wanted to see more than just grass, shrubs and trees growing at the hospital, located below Potrero Hill in the city’s Mission district. “We started mixing it up,” recalled Varney, who noted that when she first arrived, “There were no flower beds or anything like that.” At first the co-workers scavenged plants discarded by the city nursery in Golden Gate Park. And when ordered to remove a decrepit children’s play structure, they used the old timber to create a border for planter beds in the area. “By the seat of our pants, we were just trying to do something in the beginning. For us, we wanted to make a difference generally in the

Irja Elisa Photography

Retired San Francisco General Hospital gardener Joan Varney will be honored this week for her work promoting a holistic approach to wellness.

landscaping,” said Varney. As the hospital became ground zero in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, patients would sit outdoors with loved ones or their doctor while they talked or comforted each other, recalled Varney. “There was an area of just pine trees, no planted anything, where people were putting milk crates under trees so they could sit there and have a conversation,” she said. “It became apparent there was a need for a place to sit in the loveliness of

the outdoors.” What emerged was dubbed the Comfort Garden in the southwest corner of buildings 80 and 90 near the chaplaincy at the hospital. Later a yearly event was held in the garden where the names of patients who had passed would be read aloud and attached to a floral stake in the ground. For years Varney also surreptitiously tended to a vegetable garden on the hospital grounds she planted in 1984 to answer a call from Project Open Hand, a food pantry and meal provider for people living with HIV and AIDS, seeking fresh vegetables. “I figured they would tell me no so I didn’t ask,” she said of her bosses. “I made sure I was getting all my work done and tended to the food garden on my own time.” She grew herbs, garlic, strawberries, and Myer lemons on the plot. Her secret venture came to an end in 2008. “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” said Varney. “I was very depressed after that happened.” Soon after a group of employees came together to create a new garden for what became the HeartBeets program. Dubious at first, Varney was soon proven wrong. Her coworkers not only had appreciated her work, they sought her advice on how to grow edible plants on the medical campus. See page 14 >>

B.A.R. columnist attacked in SF by Seth Hemmelgarn

he man who writes the Bay Area Reporter’s Jock Talk sports column was attacked in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood last weekend. Roger Brigham, 60, said that the February 8 incident started at about 8:30 p.m., shortly after a man he’d seen as he walked down 30th Street started yelling at him. Brigham initially thought the man, who he’d taken as a possible valet, might be asking for help “or thought I had a car for him to park,” so he turned to face him, he said in an email. The man kept shouting. Brigham said his recollection is “imprecise,” but the man said “either ‘You have a problem, faggot?’ or ‘You got a problem, punk?’” Brigham said the man approached him “very quickly” and

Courtesy Roger Brigham

B.A.R. columnist Roger Brigham

“slugged me on the right temple.” Brigham fell. The “next thing I knew,” his assailant “was standing over me, and several people” had come out of a

nearby restaurant, Brigham said. The man began walking down the street and soon turned on 29th toward Dolores. He said the man “made no demand for anything so I don’t know if he was going to rob me or was just out to slug me,” Brigham said. He said his keys and wallet fell to the ground when the man hit him. Brigham said he reported the incident to police, but he couldn’t locate the report number. He described the assailant as an African American man, about 6 feet and 35 to 40 years old. He had short hair and a “big,” “solid” build, and he was wearing a dark jacket and pants. Brigham said he had ringing in one ear, headaches from a concussion, and pain in his neck and lower back from the fall, among other injuries. He indicated he went briefly to a hospital to be checked out.t

Community News>>

t Trans advocates warn against silicone injections by Seth Hemmelgarn

or some transgender women, the desire for bigger breasts or curvier hips may lead them to consider something that may be dangerous – having someone inject silicone into their body. One Bay Area woman died last year after receiving such injections, and a San Francisco doctor who regularly works with transgender patients had strong advice for anyone contemplating the procedure: “Don’t do it.” Dr. Dawn Harbatkin, executive and medical director of the nonprofit Lyon-Martin Health Services, said that’s what she told a young woman who asked her about silicone injections last fall. “I completely understand why she’s interested,” Harbatkin said, but the injections are “incredibly dangerous.” The death of Amelia Lopez Zaguilan, 22, appears to illustrate that point. A friend said Zaguilan, who had been living in Oakland, died in a hospital near Sacramento last May after another trans woman injected her with silicone. The material eventually got into Zaguilan’s bloodstream, clogging her heart, lungs, and other organs, said peer advocate Cinthya Herrera. “All the girls know about the risks ... but sometimes we just want to be feminine and look good,” said Herrera. “Sometimes, you think it’s never going to happen to you.” Herrera, 33, who works at TransVision, a Fremont-based program for transgender women that had worked with Zaguilan, said Zaguilan died May 7. She said that her friend had gone to an unlicensed woman who lived in Citrus Heights, which is close to Sacramento, and who was practicing out of her house.

Sacramento County Coroner Kim Gin said her office is investigating the cause of Zaguilan’s death. Like Herrera, Lorena Martinez, 39, who also works at TransVision, said Zaguilan was popular, even though she had just moved to the Bay Area in recent years. “She had many friends, more than me,” said Martinez, and she was known for her “really delicious” Oaxacan tamales. Herrera said Zaguilan “would always make us laugh,” and would “always try to make fun of herself.” Zaguilan “wasn’t satisfied with her body,” said Herrera, especially her “big shoulders.” She said Zaguilan was tall and wanted to have “big boobs” and “a big ass.” Zaguilan got her first silicone injections to her butt from an unlicensed person in Oakland around November 2012, said Herrera, but she wasn’t satisfied with the results. She took a few months to save some money and then, around the last week of April, she went to the woman in Citrus Heights to get more work done on her butt. This time, “she was very happy,” said Herrera. Zaguilan sent photos of the results and planned to buy new clothes. Herrera said Zaguilan’s first session with the woman included four shots for a total of $1,000, which Herrera said was “a very good deal.” About four days after the first round, Zaguilan returned to the woman for more shots, according to Herrera, who estimated the second round of injections was another $1,000. Herrera said that afterword, Zaguilan told her, “I’m feeling bad.” The injector was giving Zaguilan medication, and Herrera asked her if she wanted her to pick her up and take her to the hospital. Zaguilan said, “No, I’m going to be okay,”

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Amelia Lopez Zaguilan in an undated photo

Herrera said. “You need to take her to the hospital,” Herrera said she warned the other woman. “If something bad happens, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.” The injector said she was afraid that if she took Zaguilan to the hospital “people were going to find out what she was doing” and “she was scared to get arrested,” said Herrera. The woman, whom Herrera knew only as Alejandra and who was originally from Mexico, was in the process of getting asylum, she said. Zaguilan told Herrera that she was starting to cough up blood. “I think the girl called an ambulance,” said Herrera, who stayed in contact with Zaguilan through text messages. “Everything is going to be fine,” Zaguilan told her. When she got to the hospital, she even remarked about a “cute” nurse. When Herrera arrived at the hospital, there wereT:9.75” “a lot of machines connected” to Zaguilan, she said.

Zaguilan could talk, but she appeared heavily medicated. A nurse told Herrera to call Zaguilan’s mother, who also lives in Oakland, because she was “really, really sick.” The first night Zaguilan was in the hospital, staff medically induced a coma. Zaguilan’s mother and other family members came to visit, as did many friends, over the next several days. Herrera was at the hospital with her friend almost the entire time. One week after Zaguilan entered the hospital, she died. “Her mom was devastated,” said Herrera. Herrera knew little about Alejandra, but she said many people think the woman has left the United States for Mexico.

Consequences

Health care providers cautioned against such silicone injections. “There are really long-term negative consequences to silicone injection, and our hope is that people don’t get injections,” said LyonMartin’s Harbatkin. The silicone “doesn’t stay where it’s supposed to,” she added. “It can move around” and “create deformities,” causing “painful” inflammation, Harbatkin explained. Herrera and Martinez, who are both transgender, had the injections years ago and they’re now causing pain, especially for Herrera, who said she gets “red patches” on her skin. Harbatkin, an out lesbian who’s been a physician since 1998, said it’s “pretty common” for older transgender women “to have had silicone injections,” and she still talks to patients about it, although people don’t ask about it “as much as they used to.” “I completely can understand

that people are trying to make their bodies look more feminine and that until very, very recently,” options for surgical treatment, “especially, have been incredibly limited,” and not covered by health insurance, she said. But many treatments and procedures are covered now, and Harbatkin advises against getting the injections, “no matter who” does them, even if licensed practitioners do them. Cassandra Hockenson, spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California, said the agency tracks complaints of physicians, but the agency wouldn’t have anything as specific as data on complaints related to silicone injections. Hockenson said there’s nothing the agency can do if someone who performed such injections has fled the country, but if a complaint is filed against someone for performing silicone injections without a license, “we will work with authorities, because that’s a crime.” She encourages anyone with questions or concerns to “notify us right away.” “We want to know if there’s a problem,” said Hockenson. “Even if someone is not 100 percent sure” a problem is reportable, “report it,” she said. The medical board’s website is http://www.mbc.ca.gov. Harbatkin encourages anyone who has questions to contact a primary care provider or Lyon-Martin at http://lyon-martin.org or (415) 565-7667. Melissa Jue, a spokeswoman for Dignity Health, which runs San Juan Medical Center, where Herrera said Zaguilan died, wasn’t able to confirm information on Zaguilan because of privacy laws. Zaguilan’s mother only speaks Spanish, and an interpreter wasn’t available for this story.t

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<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Volume 44, Number 7 February 13-19, 2014 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 ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Chuck Colbert Richard Dodds • David Guarino Peter Hernandez • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr • Lisa Keen Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble Michael McAllister • Michael McDonagh David-Elijah Nahmod • Elliot Owen Paul Parish • James Patterson • Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr Philip Ruth • Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Jim Stewart Ed Walsh • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION T. Scott King PRODUCTION/DESIGN Jay Cribas PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland Rick Gerharter • Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja • Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Scott Wazlowski – 415.359.2612 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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Tackling homophobia in the NFL

ichael Sam will need to be as skillful as he is covering offensive players on the football field if he hopes to make it to an NFL team as the first openly gay player. When Sam came out as gay over the weekend – the first Division I college player to do so – he drew high praise from LGBT groups as social media sites lit up with the news. But several pro football general managers – quoted anonymously, of course – painted a bleaker picture of Sam’s chances of being selected in the upcoming NFL draft. These general managers’ doom and gloom are hogwash – we’re in 2014 after all, not the 1940s when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. Yet their nude shower fears (“A gay guy will look at me!”) and worries of Sam creating a “distraction” clearly signal that there is still a gay barrier in professional sports. Sam, who graduated from the University of Missouri in December, is a top defensive lineman. He came out to his unfazed teammates last August, just as the college football season was beginning. Sam’s honesty about who he is certainly did not hurt Missouri’s record. On the contrary, the school, now in the powerhouse Southeastern Conference, went from 5-7 in 2012 to 12-2 in 2013. The Tigers won the Cotton Bowl this year in stunning fashion, with a gay player an important part of the team’s defense. Sam was the co-SEC defensive player of the year. So we can forget the handwringing about whether being gay means that a male athlete cannot perform at the top levels of professional or collegiate sports. And make no mistake, the SEC is almost like being in the pros. Speculation is rampant within sports media about what Sam’s disclosure will do to his draft stock. Before the announcement, which Sam made on his terms because it was evident that rumors were circulating, he was projected for selection in the third round. Now, some football observers say Sam’s stock is plummeting because no team wants to deal with an out gay player. Others say it might be no big deal. There were also disturbing reports that Sam was asked inappropriate questions about whether he had

a girlfriend, the same tactic that was used last year, according to some college players who were questioned by scouts at the NFL combine. That’s unacceptable. The Green Bay Packers is one team that has addressed the topic publicly. On Monday, according to PackersNews.com, head coach Mike McCarthy said that a person’s sexual orientation is not part of the organization’s draft process. Refreshingly, the team cultivates prospects who fit into its vision of a program and locker room. McCarthy said that general manager Ted Thompson is making preparations for this year’s draft, to be held in May, and said that the Packers would welcome anyone who can help the team improve on an 8-7-1 record and wild-card loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the playoffs. “I think you definitely have to feel he’s a courageous young man but my understanding is he’s a talented young player,” McCarthy said, according to the website. “We always from Day 1 talked about our program, about our culture. Ted is going through the draft process right

now and at the end of the day it comes down to good football players.” The NFL has a sexual orientation anti-discrimination and harassment policy that Commissioner Roger Goodell sent to all 32 teams last April. He might want to email it again, as some teams apparently didn’t get the message. On Sunday night as news of Sam’s announcement was unfolding, the NFL released a brief statement praising the young man for his “honesty and courage.” “Michael is a football player. Any player with ability and determination can succeed in the NFL. We look forward to welcoming and supporting Michael Sam in 2014,” the league’s statement read. Last year the suspense and anticipation in the NFL draft was focused on Norte Dame player Manti Te’o, whose story about having a fake girlfriend made headlines. He ended up being drafted by the San Diego Chargers in the second round. Surely an equally talented player like Sam, who was up-front with the people in his life last year and who this week came out to the world, will be selected by a team. If he isn’t, there’s no doubt that homophobia is the culprit.t

Another marriage equality milestone by Mark Leno

tempt to change. The first few couples, including Del ike thousands of others, Martin and Phyllis Lyon, I will forever rememhad already taken their vows ber Thursday, February 12, by the time I arrived. For 2004. The Assembly had the next five hours, thenheld its regularly scheduled Assessor-Recorder Mabel floor session that morning. Teng and I stood under the Immediately afterwards I dome of City Hall in its went to then-Speaker Fabimagnificent rotunda offician Nunez’s office to discuss ating the weddings of nearly with him my plans to introone hundred couples who duce the nation’s very first had traveled across town marriage equality bill. for the privilege of exercisAlthough the speaker was ing their fundamental right fully in support of our effort, of citizenship – to marry he questioned me about the the person he or she loved. Rick Gerharter wisdom of moving such a As the holiday weekend and bill forward at that time. It State Senator Mark Leno Valentine’s Day quickly had been just months since approached, couples Governor Gray Davis had were now travelsigned into law the very coning cross countroversial AB 205 which extended nearly all of try and across oceans to race to the rights, benefits, privileges, obligations and San Francisco to participate in responsibilities of marriage to registered dothat which is now known as the mestic partners. It was a presidential election “Winter of Love.” year and Republicans had already demonAnyone who was there that strated their intent to use marriage equality as a first weekend and the month politically charged wedge issue. There was even which followed will clearly reuncertainty within our small LGBT Legislative member the elation, joy, ecstasy, Caucus as to whether it was an appropriate and profundity of loving couples, previously time to move the bill forward since there was denied their very humanity, being allowed to no certainty that we had sufficient votes to pass say the simple words “I do.” it. In fact, Speaker Nunez shared with me that We will always be appreciative of Newsom’s he was hearing from a number of Democratic leadership and vision in recognizing the civil colleagues urging him to stop me as they were rights issue of our day and acting upon his afraid of political fallout in their re-elections conviction that our Constitution requires that that November if they voted for it while simuleveryone be treated equally under the law. It taneously not wanting to vote against it. is a simple concept that we in the queer comI thanked the speaker for his counsel and munity have been fighting for over the past concern but told him that my mind was 40 years. It took the mayor’s bold action, and made up and that the bill would be introCity Attorney Dennis Herrera’s defense of it, duced that morning. Immediately after doing to let the nation see the love and commitment so, I headed to San Francisco knowing that shared by same-sex couples. This country’s Mayor Gavin Newsom was about to break the debate about equal marriage rights had begun state law, which our bill, AB 1967, would atand there would be no going back.

My personal journey to the commitment of changing the state’s discriminatory law was heavily influenced by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s November 2003 decision. In it, the justices ruled that there is no constitutional basis for denying same-sex couples marriage licenses. They went on to say that our nation’s history has taught us that separate is seldom if ever equal. But they also said something I had never thought about before and will never forget. The court said that the only remedy to this identified discrimination is marriage and marriage alone. No parallel construct such as civil unions or domestic partnerships would do, they said, because it would perpetuate a destructive stereotype that suggests that there is something inferior and unstable about the way same-sex couples love. Our ability to love and our desire to love someone in an intimate and committed fashion is our common humanity, the thing that makes us human beings. The idea that our public policy and law-making would allow government to determine that some of us love better than others, seemed to me offensive and untenable. It was at that time that I decided, with the support of my staff, Geoff Kors, then at Equality California, and Kate Kendall and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, to fight a war over a word. Ten years later, with so many court decisions, ballot box battles, and legislative debates behind us, the public is now firmly with us. A recent Field poll reveals that Californians now support marriage equality by a ratio of 2 to 1. As Abraham Lincoln reminds us, “With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.”t State Senator Mark Leno (D) represents the 11th Senate District, which includes all of San Francisco and a portion of northern San Mateo County.

Politics>>

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Couples celebrate 2004 wedding anniversaries by Matthew S. Bajko

his Sunday, February 16, Helen Zia and Lia Shigemura will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their marriage in 2004, one of the more than 4,000 same-sex weddings that took place in San Francisco during what was dubbed the “Winter of Love.” It will mark the first time that the Oakland couple has viewed their ceremony a decade ago as being their “first real marriage,” said Zia. Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom had ordered city officials to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of state laws. The move shocked the nation and forced the marriage equality fight to the forefront of the LGBT community’s agenda. Tipped off in the morning of February 12 by friends in the office of the city’s assessorrecorder that same-sex couples would be allowed to wed that day, Zia recalled thinking at the time it would be some mass wedding for political show. She was stunned to see the news coverage that afternoon of the weddings taking place. “Little did we know,” she said. “It felt like my jaw dropped as I was thinking I can’t believe what is happening.” The couple ended up volunteering that President’s Day to help process the hundreds of marriage licenses being filed with the city, and at the end of the day, Zia proposed to Shigemura. “Fortunately, she didn’t say no,” said Zia. “We got to help 800 other couples get married that day and celebrated ourselves.” Since the California Supreme Court annulled their 2004 wedding, the women have viewed their second marriage on June 17, 2008 as the one to take note of each year. Due to the court’s ruling that summer, same-sex couples were able to legally wed prior to the passage that fall of Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment that reinstated the ban against same-sex marriage in California. (The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the anti-gay law on a technicality last June.) “We were just talking about this, that we should be celebrating our 2004

Rick Gerharter

Ten years ago, on February 15, 2004, the line of same-sex couples waiting for marriage licenses at San Francisco City Hall stretched around the block.

marriage, as that was our first real marriage,” Zia told the Bay Area Reporter this week. “We hadn’t because we would go through the joke of, ‘Well, what day are we celebrating?’” Over the years the women have marked various dates of significance, from when they first met and when they became domestic partners in 1993. With the 2004 wedding now reaching a milestone year, the couple is seeing the ceremony in a new light. That year, said Zia, “was the watershed, that’s what started all of this. That is what not only changed our lives but changed the world’s.” Marin residents Ed Swanson and Paul Herman will also be taking note this year of their 2004 marriage, the second of three ceremonies they have held. They usually celebrate the “least legal” of the three, said Swanson, their commitment ceremony from September 10, 1994. “When we committed to each other, that is the date we celebrate,” said Swanson, adding that their “legal marriage” occurred in October 2008. They decided to join the other couples marrying in 2004, Swanson said, but he viewed that ceremony more as a “political statement” than legal matrimony. “My feeling was someone had to bust a hole in the Berlin Wall and we had to make a run for it. If people didn’t show this was something we really cared about, they might think it wasn’t important,” recalled Swanson. “My feeling was we needed to

get as many people through that gap as fast as we could and I wanted to be one of them. Though I suspected we would be rounded up and shipped home, and that indeed was what happened later on.” The couple planned to mark the occasion at the City Hall celebration Wednesday night, February 12, hosted by Mayor Ed Lee and Newsom for all those who married in 2004. “I am so thankful for Gavin Newsom and what he did. I feel to this day he taught a lot of gay people how this was something that was possible,” said Swanson. “I think a lot of us had not had the vision to see this could really happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. It was kind of a wake up call, I felt, and for me what I want to celebrate.” The lines of couples who rushed to City Hall to wed that winter is what stands out most for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose office led the legal fight in state court against the state’s anti-gay marriage statutes and later was a party to the federal litigation. “I used to walk that line every day before I came up to my office to listen to people’s stories and see the joy in their face and what it all meant to them at the same time we were fighting for them in court during that time,” said Herrera. “It made it all the more real and reinforced we are on the right side of history.” For Steve Kawa, Newsom’s and now Lee’s chief of staff, and his husband, Dan Henkle, their February 13, 2004 wedding presided over by See page 14 >>

Panel to look at trans equity compiled by Cynthia Laird

ransgender equity and the possibility of a referendum on the November ballot that would repeal a groundbreaking California law will be the focus of the upcoming meeting of the East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club. Club officials said that the meeting, taking place Wednesday, February 19 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the West Berkeley Library, 1125 University Avenue (at San Pablo), will include information on the effort by antigay groups to repeal Assembly Bill 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act. The law, authored by gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), went into effect January 1 and aims to make sure that transgender youth can fully participate in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their gender identity.

The Privacy for All Students coalition has been working for months to repeal AB 1266. County registrars are now checking signatures that the coalition gathered. The antigay coalition must ultimately reach 504,760 valid signatures to qualify its referendum for the ballot. Those signatures must be verified by February 24. Panelists at next week’s meeting include Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center; Jenna Rapues, MPH, with the community health equity and promotion division of the San Francisco Department of Public Health; and activist Jae SzeszvkciTruesdell. Gay Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore and the Stonewall club’s board will moderate. Club members will also vote on an early endorsement for Joaquin Rivera, who is seeking re-election to the Alameda County Board of Education (Area 1); election of club

officers and board members; and a revision to the club’s bylaws.

American Legion post changes meeting location

Due to the ongoing seismic retrofit and renovation project under way at the San Francisco War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness Avenue, the Alexander Hamilton Post 448 of the American Legion has moved its monthly meetings to the Castro. Post Commander Mario Benfield said that the construction project will go on for another two years. In the meantime, Post 448 meetings will be held the third Sunday of the month in the Community Meeting Room above the Bank of America, 501 Castro Street. Meetings start at 2 p.m. For this year, meeting dates are: February 16, March 16, April 20, May 18, June 15, July 20, August 17, September 21, October 19, November 16, and December 21. Benfield said the space works well for the group and encourages members to attend.t

<< Business News

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

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Disowned by family, gay Trinidadian finds success in SF by Matthew S. Bajko

eated in the outdoor patio of a Castro cafe, Kieron Sinnette listened as a young man described how he had been living on the streets of San Francisco. The cold nighttime temperatures in early December had been particularly brutal, the man recalled. Handing the man his business card, Sinnette, 30, offered his assistance and told him to give him a call. It was not that long ago that Sinnette himself was struggling to make a go of it as a recent arrival to the city. “I heard it was a gay place,” recalled Sinnette, who arrived in town on a Greyhound bus on October 1, 2001 from Houston, Texas. “I bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco.” In the Lone Star State to attend Texas Southern University and living with his sister, Sinnette had found himself financially cut off by his family in Trinidad and Tobago when they learned he was gay. He was forced to drop out of college, scraped together $2,000 and headed west to start afresh. “I first stayed at a tourist hotel. Within two weeks I was out of money and trying to find work,” recalled Sinnette. “When I left the hotel, I didn’t know about anything.” He made his way to the main public library to search job listings. A librarian told him about an adult shelter nearby, and Sinnette lined up to try to nab a bed for the night. “You waited in line for a chair to sleep on. People were drunk, yelling all night,” he recalled. Upset with the experience, Sinnette spent the next night walking

Jane Philomen Cleland

Small business owner Kieron Sinnette spoke to guests at a party and awards event he recently hosted.

around the city rather than stay at the shelter. When he returned the following day, a worker learned he was 18 years old and suggested he try Larkin Street Youth Services, a nonprofit agency that houses homeless youth. On his second try Sinnette landed one of Larkin’s shelter beds. Within a few days he was assigned a permanent bed at one of its facilities, where he remained until his 19th birthday six months later. “It was extremely critical. Without Larkin I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “I was losing my mind at the adult shelter.” In time Sinnette landed a job with California Federal Bank and eventually was assigned to its Castro branch. He went from living in single-room-occupancy hotels to sharing an apartment with roommates in Visitacion Valley. In 2003, when the bank was taken over by Citi Bank, he took a buyout and went to work for the investment firm Oppenheimer and Company. With his new job he was able to afford his own apartment on Twin Peaks. At night he worked as a go-go dancer at the Stud bar’s Sugar party. He was also hired by Better World Advertising to appear in its homoboy HIV prevention campaign aimed at young gay and bisexual men and transgender women of color. “I was homoboy in those ads grabbing my crotch,” recalled Sinnette. In need of a change of scene, Sinnette decided in late 2008 to relocate to Honolulu. After a two-year stint living in Hawaii, Sinnette returned to San Francisco in December 2010 at the urging of his partner, Yariv Rabinovitch, whom he met one night at the Stud nearly a decade ago. Sinnette and Rabinovitch, who married last year, live in the Mission. Once again in need of work, Sinnette landed a part-time job with the Potrero Dogpatch Merchants Association. That led to his developing websites for other business associations in the city. By December 2012 Sinnette decided to go into business for himself and launched his own firm ProLocal to offer his services full-time to small business groups. Within a year he had grown his client list to 10 such merchant associations across San Francisco and now employs several staff members. He has been working with the Castro Merchants, formerly known as the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro, on its revamped website. And he used his connections with three Mission-based merchants groups – Mission Creek Merchants Association, Mission Merchants Association and North East Mission Business Association – to coordinate joint membership packages between them. “We’re all growing and getting the ear of City Hall,” stated Candace Combs, owner of InSymme-

try, a skincare and bodywork studio, who hired Sinnette’s firm to help her launch the Mission Creek Merchants Association. To better promote the Mission businesses to tourists and residents citywide, ProLocal worked with the three groups to create the first-ever Mission Guide. The brochure lists various places visitors to the neighborhood can shop, eat, and relax. By having ProLocal focus on dayto-day management issues, leaders of the merchant groups have more time to devote to their own businesses as well as address such issues as the encroachment of chain retailers into their commercial districts. “Kieron understands that our members are busy running their own businesses,” stated Mission Merchants Association President Don Alan, owner of Hemlock Tavern and Casanova Lounge. “By helping us with the daily operations, he focuses our energy on long-term strategy, networking, and building relationships both inside and outside the Mission.” In addition to finding professional success, Sinnette also reconciled with his family over the last seven years. The spark came when he called his grandmother back in Trinidad one day in 2006; she in turn encouraged Sinnette and his mother to speak by phone. “She forced us to talk,” he said. It wasn’t easy, as Sinnette recalled his mother asking him if he “was wearing heels and makeup now” during their first conversation. But a month later she came to visit, and despite their fighting everyday, “it was the beginning of our relationship coming back,” said Sinnette. Last year she stayed with Sinnette and Rabinovitch for six weeks. “My mom now is my biggest ally. We don’t fight anymore,” he said. As for his father, a former government official in Trinidad, he separated from Sinnette’s mother and has children with several other women. He knows his son is gay but chooses to ignore it, Sinnette said. “I talk to my dad. He tries not to let anything bother him,” he said. He plans to return to Trinidad later this year for the first time since he left 14 years ago. He expects the visit will be uneventful, as he has seen several of his cousins and other relatives during family gatherings in Brooklyn, New York over Labor Day Weekend several times now and his sexual orientation has not been an issue. “Yariv came with me to see my cousins coming from Trinidad. They were nice to him,” said Sinnette. As he continues to build his own business, Sinnette is looking to become more active within the local business community. In January Mayor Ed Lee appointed him as the LGBT representative on the Local Business Enterprise Advisory Committee, an oversight body that works with the San Francisco Contracts Monitoring Division. And he would like to write an autobiography about his experiences and travails to inspire others. “I had to pick up trash on Polk and Larkin streets to get money. It made me think I need to get my shit together,” said Sinnette, who credits his mother with instilling in him at a young age a sense of strength and composure. “I went to private Catholic school my whole life, so I have been well prepared. That is the basis of it, my parents spending money so I had a foundation,” said Sinnette. Even when his relationship with his family soured, he was not discouraged. His reaction, Sinnette recalled, was “I was going to show you I don’t need you if you are going to pull the rug from under my feet for being gay.” t

National News>>

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

CDC updates term for ‘unprotected sex’ by Chuck Colbert

n a move praised by HIV/AIDS activists and educators, organizational leadership, and medical researchers, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have agreed to stop using the term “unprotected sex” to mean “sex without condoms.” The agency will instead use “condomless sex.” The agreement came in a phone meeting coordinated by the Chicago-based HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, or HIV PJA, and allies on January 23. For some time now through an open letter, the justice alliance asked the CDC not only to “re-evaluate” its “language,” but also its “methods and recommendations regarding the sexuality and HIV prevention strategies of gay, and bisexual men and other MSM,” referring to men who have sex with men. More than 80 organizations nationwide were signatories to the letter. Sex without condoms is commonly referred to as “barebacking” by men who have sex with men. During a telephone interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Julie (JD) Davids, director of HIV PJA, called the agreement a “sea change.” “We thank CDC for their definitive commitment to changing language, and we look forward to working with them” to leverage CDC’s “leadership role to help community programs, and provide guidance for legal, political, and funding decisions that recognize the current understanding of HIV prevention and risk strategies, which are in part reflected in this change of language.” The significance of the change, she went on to say, is that “conflating sex without condoms” [and “unprotected sex”] is “inaccurate,” as well as “a dangerous oversimplification of the practices, challenges, and opportunities of HIV prevention as we know them today as we understand and are learning more and more about the proven efficacy of PEP and PrEP, the uses and implications of undetectable viral load in drastically reducing transmissions, and also the way members of our community choose on their own how to reduce risk.” She was referring to post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which are HIV prevention methods in which people who do not have HIV infection take anti-retroviral treatment soon after an at-risk exposure (PEP) or a daily pill to reduce their risk of becoming infected (PrEP). “Simply labeling as unprotected is false and doesn’t give people the information they need from the public health enterprise about combatting HIV,” Davids said. Davids was referring to risk-reduction strategies employed by gay men, with varying degrees of success, that include serosorting, which means having sex only with partners of the same HIV status, and seropositioning, which means topping only if HIV-negative, bottoming only if HIV-positive. A CDC spokesman, Scott Bryan, confirmed the changes and said the agency had recent conversations with HIV PJA. “As discussions about HIV prevention strategies evolve, the terminology needs to evolve as well – an issue the CDC has been aware of and assessing for some time,” Bryan said in an email. “In recent conversations with HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, we shared with them our ongoing efforts to align our messages with this changing HIV prevention landscape.” And as activist Sean Strub, author of a new HIV/AIDS memoir, Body Counts, said recently over the telephone, “Quite frankly, having an undetectable viral load possesses a lower risk of HIV transmission than

Courtesy Julie (JD) Davids

HIV Prevention Justice Alliance director Julie (JD) Davids

just using condoms.” Strub added, “So while there is a failure rate in condoms that result in HIV transmission, so far no one has even proven sexual transmission of HIV from someone known to have an undetectable viral load at the time of the sexual contact – not a single documented instance.” For his part, Strub lauded HIV PJA’s leadership in pressing the CDC. “It’s a welcome and overdo change and example of what we can accomplish when we work together as a community,” he said. Dr. Kenneth Mayer, medical research director and co-chair of the Fenway Institute at Boston’s Fenway Health, also hailed the CDC’s language change while fleshing out some of the complexities and nuances of risk reduction. “The decision by the U.S. CDC to change the terminology from ‘unprotected sex’ to ‘condomless sex’ is welcomed. ‘Unprotected sex’ conveys a sense of irresponsibility that may not accurately reflect a person’s decision about how to avoid HIV and other STD’s,” he said, referring to sexually transmitted diseases. “For example,” Mayer said, “someone in a committed monogamous relationship may decide not to use condoms after having been screened for HIV and STDs, and coming to an agreement with a partner about not engaging in intimate relations with others. It would be rare to refer to a heterosexual couple trying to conceive as engaging in ‘unprotected sex.’ “Moreover, since the FDA approval of tenofovir-emtricitabine [Truvada] for pre-exposure prophylaxis, individuals who engage in condomless sex may not be completely unprotected,” he added. “Nonetheless, even when people use PrEP, condomless sex may result in other health risks, like STDs, or pregnancy for women. But, by changing the terminology to ‘condomless sex,’ the behavior may be less stigmatized, and clinicians and behavioral counselors can work with clients to help them use all the tools available to improve their sexual health.” HIV/AIDS activist, educator, and blogger Mark King voiced praise for the CDC’s decision in clarifying terminology. “There are now a multitude of strategies that ‘protect’ people from HIV infection, and I’m thrilled that the CDC is recognizing that. Their previous definition limiting protected sex to sex with condoms gave a biased view of what’s actually happening in the real world,” he said, referring to “serosorting, sexual positioning, the precise sex acts involved, PrEP, and successful treatment.” All of them, he said, “qualify as providing various levels of protection [from HIV]. And a couple of them – undetectable viral loads due to successful treatment and the proper use of PrEP – actually provide more protection than condoms.” The CDC’s Bryan said that as the number of HIV prevention strategies increases the agency needs to continue to be precise and is being more clear in its language by using terms such as “anal sex without a condom” rather than “unprotected anal sex.” Leadership from local community

health organizations also praised HIV PJA and the CDC. “As a community-based organization fighting the HIV epidemic, we’re heartened by both the findings of the MMWR [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report] – that gay and bisexual men who know their HIV status have lowered sexual risk – and the CDC’s willingness to adjust their language,” said Lance Toma, executive director of Asian and Pacific Islanders Wellness Center in San Francisco. “The national data provided by CDC guides our work, and clarifying language related to sexual risk is critical,” he added. “The CDC must continue to partner and work closely with organizations so that we are able to more precisely target our prevention and outreach work. This will support our efforts on the ground to ensure we are all working toward an AIDS free generation.” API Wellness Center was not a signatory to HIV PJA’s open letter, said Stephanie Goss, communications manager. “We’re commenting

as community members affected by this decision, not as campaign leaders or coordinators,” she explained. Meanwhile, Neil Giuliano, chief executive officer of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, also voiced praise for the change. “Language is important, and at San Francisco AIDS Foundation we have been saying ‘sex without condoms’ for years because it more accurately reflects the current HIV prevention landscape,” he said. “More than ever before, people have an array of prevention strategies at their disposal that can be used in multiple combinations – from condoms to PrEP, undetectable viral load, serosorting, and seropositioning. In other words, ‘protection’ now comes in various forms, beyond only using condoms, and we applaud our colleagues at the CDC for updating their language to reflect that reality.” For his part, freelance journalist and HIV/AIDS educator Todd Heywood, based in Michigan, offered his thoughts in light of continued

HIV criminal cases. “There is regularly breathless reporting on how this HIV-positive person, or that one, had unprotected sex. That is presented as evidence of not only intent to transmit the virus, but also implied infectiousness,” Heywood said. “The fact is, condomless sex does not, in fact, imply anything other than a person did not use a condom. Rarely does the media, gay or mainstream, take the time to deconstruct the infectiousness of HIV, the role of treatment as prevention or other risk reduction options which do not include condoms,” he said. “The results, as Rea Cary noted in her State of the Movement speech at Creating Change, is the creation of good gays and bad gays, clean gays and dirty gays. It unfortunately creates a false dichotomy of safe and unsafe, which is no longer reflective of HIV knowledge,” Heywood added, referring to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s annual conference, which took place recently in Houston.t

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Patient model. Pill shown is not actual size.

What is COMPLERA? COMPLERA® is a prescription HIV medicine that is used as a complete regimen to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV medicines before and who have an amount of HIV in their blood (this is called “viral load”) that is no more than 100,000 copies/mL. COMPLERA contains 3 medicines – rilpivirine, emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate. It is not known if COMPLERA is safe and effective in children under the age of 18 years. COMPLERA® does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses you must keep taking COMPLERA. Avoid doing things that can spread HIV-1 to others: always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids; never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them, do not share personal items that may contain bodily fluids. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information you should know about COMPLERA? COMPLERA® can cause serious side effects: • Build-up of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency. Symptoms of lactic acidosis include feeling very weak or tired, unusual (not normal) muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold, especially in your arms and legs, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat. • Serious liver problems. The liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and fatty (steatosis). Symptoms of liver problems include your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice), dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored bowel movements (stools), loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach pain. • You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or serious liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking COMPLERA for a long time. In some cases, these serious conditions have led to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any symptoms of these conditions. • Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. If you also have HBV and stop taking COMPLERA, your hepatitis may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking COMPLERA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health. COMPLERA is not approved for the treatment of HBV.

Who should not take COMPLERA? Do not take COMPLERA if you have ever taken other anti-HIV medicines. COMPLERA may change the effect of other medicines and may cause serious side effects. Your healthcare provider may change your other medicines or change their doses. Do not take COMPLERA if you also take these medicines: • anti-seizure medicines: carbamazepine (Carbatrol, Equetro, Tegretol, Tegretol-XR, Teril, Epitol); oxcarbazepine (Trileptal), phenobarbital (Luminal), phenytoin (Dilantin, Dilantin-125, Phenytek) • anti-tuberculosis medicines: rifabutin (Mycobutin), rifampin (Rifater, Rifamate, Rimactane, Rifadin) and rifapentine (Priftin) • proton pump inhibitors for stomach or intestinal problems: esomeprazole (Nexium, Vimovo), lansoprazole (Prevacid), dexlansoprazole (Dexilant), omeprazole (Prilosec), pantoprazole sodium (Protonix), rabeprazole (Aciphex) • more than 1 dose of the steroid medicine dexamethasone or dexamethasone sodium phosphate • St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) If you are taking COMPLERA you should not take other HIV medicines or other medicines containing tenofovir (Viread, Truvada, Stribild or Atripla); other medicines containing emtricitabine or lamivudine (Emtriva, Combivir, Epivir, Epivir-HBV, Epzicom, Trizivir, Atripla, Stribild or Truvada); rilpivirine (Edurant) or adefovir (Hepsera). In addition, tell your healthcare provider if you are taking the following medications because they may interfere with how COMPLERA works and may cause side effects: • certain antacid medicines containing aluminum, magnesium hydroxide, or calcium carbonate (examples: Rolaids, TUMS). These medicines must be taken at least 2 hours before or 4 hours after COMPLERA. • medicines to block stomach acid including cimetidine (Tagamet), famotidine (Pepcid), nizatidine (Axid), or ranitidine HCL (Zantac). These medicines must be taken at least 12 hours before or 4 hours after COMPLERA. • any of these medicines: clarithromycin (Biaxin); erythromycin (E-Mycin, Eryc, Ery-Tab, PCE, Pediazole, Ilosone), fluconazole (Diflucan), itraconazole (Sporanox), ketoconazole (Nizoral) methadone (Dolophine); posaconazole (Noxafil), telithromycin (Ketek) or voriconazole (Vfend). • medicines that are eliminated by the kidneys like acyclovir (Zovirax), cidofovir (Vistide), ganciclovir (Cytovene IV, Vitrasert), valacyclovir (Valtrex) and valganciclovir (Valcyte).

COMPLERA.

A complete HIV treatment in only 1 pill a day. COMPLERA is for adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before and have no more than 100,000 copies/mL of virus in their blood.

Ask your healthcare provider if it’s the one for you.

These are not all the medicines that may cause problems if you take COMPLERA. Tell your healthcare provider about all prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, or herbal supplements you are taking or plan to take.

The most common side effects reported with COMPLERA are trouble sleeping (insomnia), abnormal dreams, headache, dizziness, diarrhea, nausea, rash, tiredness, and depression. Some side effects also reported include vomiting, stomach pain or discomfort, skin discoloration (small spots or freckles) and pain.

Before taking COMPLERA, tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have liver problems, including hepatitis B or C virus infection, or have abnormal liver tests • Have kidney problems • Have ever had a mental health problem • Have bone problems • Are pregnant or planning to become pregnant. It is not known if COMPLERA can harm your unborn child • Are breastfeeding: Women with HIV should not breastfeed because they can pass HIV through their milk to the baby. Also, COMPLERA may pass through breast milk and could cause harm to the baby

This is not a complete list of side effects. Tell your healthcare provider or pharmacist if you notice any side effects while taking COMPLERA, and call your healthcare provider for medical advice about side effects.

COMPLERA can cause additional serious side effects: New or worsening kidney problems, including kidney failure. If you have had kidney problems, or take other medicines that may cause kidney problems, your healthcare provider may need to do regular blood tests. • Depression or mood changes. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any of the following symptoms: feeling sad or hopeless, feeling anxious or restless, have thoughts of hurting yourself (suicide) or have tried to hurt yourself. • Changes in liver enzymes: People who have had hepatitis B or C, or who have had changes in their liver function tests in the past may have an increased risk for liver problems while taking COMPLERA. Some people without prior liver disease may also be at risk. Your healthcare provider may need to check your liver enzymes before and during treatment with COMPLERA. • Bone problems can happen in some people who take COMPLERA. Bone problems include bone pain, softening or thinning (which may lead to fractures). Your healthcare provider may need to do additional tests to check your bones. • Changes in body fat can happen in people taking HIV medicine. • Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that have been hidden in your body for a long time. Tell your healthcare provider if you start having new symptoms after starting COMPLERA. •

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit http://www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Additional Information about taking COMPLERA: • Always take COMPLERA exactly as your healthcare provider tells you to take it. • Take COMPLERA with food. Taking COMPLERA with food is important to help get the right amount of medicine in your body. (A protein drink does not replace food. If your healthcare provider stops COMPLERA, make certain you understand how to take your new medicine and whether you need to take your new medicine with a meal.) Stay under the care of your healthcare provider during treatment with COMPLERA and see your healthcare provider regularly. Please see Brief Summary of full Prescribing Information with important warnings on the following pages.

Learn more at www.COMPLERA.com

Brief SummaryBrief of fullSummary Prescribing of full Information Prescribing Information

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•

• COMPLERA phenobarbital (Luminal); phenobarbital phenytoin (Luminal); (Dilantin, phenytoin Dilantin-125, (Dilantin, Dilantin-125, COMPLERA does not cure HIV doesinfection not cureorHIV AIDS. infection You must or AIDS. stay You must stay Phenytek) on continuous therapy on continuous to control therapy HIV infection to controland HIVdecrease infectionHIVand decrease Phenytek) HIVrelated illnesses. related illnesses. – anti-tuberculosis – anti-tuberculosis (anti-TB) medicines: (anti-TB) rifabutin medicines: (Mycobutin); rifabutin (Mycobutin);

rifampin (Rifater, rifampin Rifamate, (Rifater, Rimactane, Rifamate, Rifadin); Rimactane, rifapentine Rifadin); rifapentine • Ask your Ask your healthcare provider healthcare if you provider have anyifquestions you have about any questions about (Priftin) how to preventhow passing to prevent HIV to passing other people. HIV toDo other not people. share or Do not share or(Priftin) re-use needles re-use or otherneedles injection or equipment, other injection andequipment, do not share and do not share – proton pump–inhibitor proton pump (PPI) inhibitor medicine(PPI) for certain medicine stomach for certain stomach personal items personal that can items have blood that can or body havefluids bloodonorthem, body fllike uids on them, like or intestinal problems: or intestinal esomeprazole problems:(Nexium, esomeprazole Vimovo); (Nexium, Vimovo); toothbrushes and toothbrushes razor blades. andAlways razor blades. practiceAlways safer sex practice by using safer sex by lansoprazole using (Prevacid); lansoprazole dexlansoprazole (Prevacid); dexlansoprazole (Dexilant); (Dexilant); a latex or polyurethane a latex orcondom polyurethane to lowercondom the chance to lower of sexual the chance of sexualomeprazole (Prilosec, omeprazole Zegerid); (Prilosec, pantoprazole Zegerid);sodium pantoprazole (Protonix); sodium (Protonix); contact with semen, contact vaginal with semen, fluids orvaginal blood. fluids or blood. rabeprazole (Aciphex) rabeprazole (Aciphex)

What is the most What important is the most information important I should information know I should know about COMPLERA? about COMPLERA?

– more than 1 dose – more of the thansteroid 1 dosemedicine of the steroid dexamethasone medicine dexamethasone or or dexamethasonedexamethasone sodium phosphate sodium phosphate

COMPLERA canCOMPLERA cause serious canside cause effects, serious including: side effects, including:

– St. John’s wort– (Hypericum St. John’s wort perforatum) (Hypericum perforatum)

•

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•

Registry. Pregnancy There Registry. is a pregnancy There is registry a pregnancy for women registry who for women who Severe liver •problems. Severe liver Severe problems. liver problems Severe can liverhappen problems in can happenPregnancy in take antiviral medicines take antiviral during medicines pregnancy. during The pregnancy. purpose of The this purpose of this people who takepeople COMPLERA. who take In some COMPLERA. cases, In these some liver cases, problems these liver problems registry is to collect registry information is to collect about information the healthabout of you theand health your of you and your can lead to death. canYour leadliver to death. may become Your liver large may(hepatomegaly) become large (hepatomegaly) baby. Talk to your baby. healthcare Talk to your provider healthcare about how provider you can about take how you can take and you may develop and you fatmay in your develop liver fat (steatosis). in your liver Call(steatosis). your Call your part in this registry. part in this registry. healthcare provider healthcare right away provider if you right getaway any of if you the following get any of the following symptoms of liver symptoms problems: of liver problems: • are breast-feeding • are breast-feeding or plan to breast-feed. or plan to Youbreast-feed. should notYou should not breastfeed if you breastfeed have HIV if because you have of HIV the because risk of passing of the risk HIV of passing HIV – your skin or the – your whiteskin partoroftheyour white eyespart turns of your yellow eyes (jaundice) turns yellow (jaundice) to your baby. Dotonot your breastfeed baby. Do ifnotyou breastfeed are takingif COMPLERA. you are taking COMPLERA. – dark “tea-colored” – darkurine “tea-colored” urine At least two of the At least medicines two ofcontained the medicines in COMPLERA containedcan in COMPLERA be can be – light-colored –bowel light-colored movements bowel (stools) movements (stools) passed to your baby passed in to your your breast babymilk. in your Webreast do notmilk. knowWe whether do not know whether this could harm this your could baby. harm Talk your to your baby. healthcare Talk to your provider healthcare about provider about – loss of appetite – loss for several of appetite daysfor or several longer days or longer the best way to the feedbest yourway baby. to feed your baby. – nausea – nausea Tell your healthcare Tell your provider healthcare aboutprovider all the medicines about all the you medicines take, you take, – stomach pain– stomach pain including prescription including andprescription nonprescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, medicines, vitamins, andliver herbal supplements. and herbal supplements. • Youlikely You may be more may be to get more lactic likelyacidosis to get lactic or severe acidosis liver or severe problems if youproblems are female, if you very areoverweight female, very (obese), overweight or have (obese), or have been taking COMPLERA been taking for COMPLERA a long time.for a long time.

• COMPLERA • Changes COMPLERA may affect themay way affect other medicines the way other work, medicines and work,•and Changes in your immuneinsystem your immune (Immune system Reconstitution (Immune Reconstitution other medicines other maymedicines affect howmay COMPLERA affect how works, COMPLERA and mayworks, and Syndrome) may canSyndrome) happen when canyou happen start when takingyou HIVstart medicines. taking HIV medicines. cause serious side causeeffects. seriousIf side you take effects. certain If you medicines take certain withmedicines Your with immune system Your immune may getsystem stronger may andgetbegin stronger to fight and begin to fight COMPLERA, theCOMPLERA, amount of COMPLERA the amountinofyour COMPLERA body may in be your toobody may beinfections too that infections have been that hidden have in been your body hidden forina your long body time.for a long time. low and it may low not work and ittomay helpnot control work your to help HIVcontrol infection. yourThe HIVHIV infection. Tell Theyour HIV healthcare Tell your provider healthcare if you start provider having if you new start symptoms having new symptoms virus in your body virus may in become your body resistant may become to COMPLERA resistantortoother COMPLERA or other after starting your afterHIV starting medicine. your HIV medicine. HIV medicines that HIV medicines are like it. that are like it. The most common Theside mosteffects common of COMPLERA side effectsinclude: of COMPLERA include: Especially tell your Especially healthcare tell your provider healthcare if you provider take: if you take: • • trouble trouble sleeping (insomnia) sleeping (insomnia) • an antacid medicine • an antacid that contains medicinealuminum, that contains magnesium aluminum, magnesium • abnormal dreams • abnormal dreams hydroxide, or calcium hydroxide, carbonate. or calcium If you carbonate. take an antacid If you take during an antacid during • headache • headache treatment with treatment COMPLERA,with takeCOMPLERA, the antacidtake at least the antacid 2 hoursat least 2 hours before or at least before 4 hours or atafter leastyou 4 hours take COMPLERA. after you take COMPLERA. • dizziness • dizziness •

•

a medicine to•block a medicine the acidtoinblock yourthe stomach, acid inincluding your stomach, including• diarrhea • diarrhea cimetidine (Tagamet), cimetidine famotidine (Tagamet), (Pepcid), famotidine nizatidine (Pepcid), (Axid), nizatidine (Axid), • nausea • nausea or ranitidine hydrochloride or ranitidine(Zantac). hydrochloride If you(Zantac). take one of If you these take one of these • rash • rash medicines during medicines treatment during with treatment COMPLERA,with takeCOMPLERA, the acid take the acid blocker at leastblocker 12 hours at least before12orhours at least before 4 hours or atafter leastyou 4 hours after you • tiredness • tiredness take COMPLERA.take COMPLERA. • depression • depression • any of these any of these medicines (if taken medicines by mouth (if taken or injection): by mouth or injection): Additional common Additional side effects common include: side effects include: – clarithromycin– (Biaxin) clarithromycin (Biaxin) • vomiting • vomiting – erythromycin –(E-Mycin, erythromycin Eryc, (E-Mycin, Ery-Tab, PCE, Eryc,Pediazole, Ery-Tab, PCE, Ilosone) Pediazole, Ilosone) • stomach pain• orstomach discomfort pain or discomfort – fluconazole (Difl – flucan) uconazole (Diflucan) • skin discoloration • skin(small discoloration spots or (small freckles) spots or freckles) – itraconazole (Sporanox) – itraconazole (Sporanox) • pain • pain – ketoconazole –(Nizoral) ketoconazole (Nizoral) Tell your healthcare Tell your provider healthcare if you have provider any ifside youeffect have any thatside bothers effect that bothers – methadone (Dolophine) – methadone (Dolophine) you or that doesyou notorgothat away. does not go away. – posaconazole–(Noxafi posaconazole l) (Noxafil) These are not allThese the possible are not all side theeffects possible of COMPLERA. side effects For of COMPLERA. more For more – telithromycin–(Ketek) telithromycin (Ketek)

information, askinformation, your healthcare ask your provider healthcare or pharmacist. provider or pharmacist.

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Call your doctorCall for medical your doctor advice for medical about side advice effects. about Youside mayeffects. You may report side effects report to FDA side at effects 1-800-FDA-1088 to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088 (1-800-332-1088). (1-800-332-1088). • medicines that • medicines are eliminated that by arethe eliminated kidney, including by the kidney, acyclovir including acyclovir (Zovirax), cidofovir (Zovirax), (Vistide), cidofovir ganciclovir (Vistide), (Cytovene ganciclovir IV, Vitrasert), (Cytovene IV, Vitrasert), How should I take HowCOMPLERA? should I take COMPLERA? valacyclovir (Valtrex), valacyclovir and valganciclovir (Valtrex), and(Valcyte) valganciclovir (Valcyte) • Stay under the • Stay careunder of your thehealthcare care of your provider healthcare duringprovider during What are the possible What areside theeffects possible of side COMPLERA? effects of COMPLERA? treatment withtreatment COMPLERA. with COMPLERA. COMPLERA canCOMPLERA cause serious can side causeeffects, seriousincluding: side effects, including: • Take COMPLERA • Take exactly COMPLERA as yourexactly healthcare as your provider healthcare tells you provider tells you to take it. to take it. • See “What is•the Seemost “What important is the most information important I should information know I should know about COMPLERA?” about COMPLERA?” • Always take COMPLERA • Always take withCOMPLERA food. Taking with COMPLERA food. Taking withCOMPLERA food with food is important to is help important get the right to help amount get the of right medicine amount in of medicine in • New or worse• kidney New orproblems, worse kidney including problems, kidney including failure, kidney can failure, can your body. A protein your body. drink Ais protein not a substitute drink is not forafood. substitute If your for food. If your happen in somehappen people in who some takepeople COMPLERA. who take YourCOMPLERA. healthcareYour healthcare healthcare provider healthcare decides provider to stop decides COMPLERA to stop and COMPLERA you are and you are provider shouldprovider do bloodshould tests todocheck bloodyour testskidneys to check before your kidneys before switched medicines to a new to treat medicines HIV thattoincludes treat HIVrilpivirine that includes rilpivirine starting treatment starting with treatment COMPLERA.with If you COMPLERA. have hadIfkidney you have had kidneyswitched to a new tablets, the rilpivirine tablets, tablets the rilpivirine should be tablets taken should only with be taken a meal. only with a meal. problems in theproblems past or need in the to past take or another need tomedicine take another that can medicine that can cause kidney problems, cause kidney your problems, healthcareyour provider healthcare may need provider to may need • Dotonot change • your Do not dose change or stop your taking doseCOMPLERA or stop taking without COMPLERA without do blood tests todocheck bloodyour testskidneys to check during your kidneys your treatment during your treatmentfirst talking withfirst your talking healthcare with your provider. healthcare See your provider. healthcare See your healthcare with COMPLERA.with COMPLERA. provider regularly provider while regularly taking COMPLERA. while taking COMPLERA. • Depression or • mood Depression changes. or mood Tell your changes. healthcare Tell your provider healthcare provider • If you miss a •dose If you of COMPLERA miss a dosewithin of COMPLERA 12 hourswithin of the 12 time hours you of the time you right away if you right have away anyifofyou thehave following any ofsymptoms: the following symptoms: usually take it, usually take your take dose it, of take COMPLERA your dosewith of COMPLERA food as soon withasfood as soon as possible. Then, possible. take your Then, next dose take of your COMPLERA next dose at of the COMPLERA regularly at the regularly – feeling sad or–hopeless feeling sad or hopeless scheduled time.scheduled If you misstime. a dose If you of COMPLERA miss a dosebyofmore COMPLERA than by more than – feeling anxious – feeling or restless anxious or restless 12 hours of the 12 time hours you of usually the time takeyou it, usually wait andtake thenit,take waitthe and then take the next doseatofthe COMPLERA regularlyatscheduled the regularly time.scheduled time. – have thoughts– of have hurting thoughts yourself of hurting (suicide) yourself or have (suicide) tried to or have triednext to dose of COMPLERA hurt yourself hurt yourself • Do not take more • Dothan not take your more prescribed than your doseprescribed to make updose for ato make up for a •

missed • Change Change in liver enzymes. in liver People enzymes. with a history Peopleofwith hepatitis a history B of hepatitis B dose. missed dose. or C virus infection or C or virus whoinfection have certain or who liver have enzyme certain changes liver enzyme changes This Brief Summary This summarizes Brief Summary thesummarizes most important the most information important information may have an increased may haverisk anofincreased developing risknew of developing or worsening newliver or worsening aboutliver COMPLERA. about If you COMPLERA. would likeIfmore you would information, like more talkinformation, with your talk with your problems duringproblems treatment during with treatment COMPLERA.with Liver COMPLERA. problems Liver can problems can provider. healthcare healthcare You canprovider. also askYou yourcan healthcare also ask your provider healthcare or provider or also happen during also happen treatment during with treatment COMPLERAwith in people COMPLERA without in peoplepharmacist without for information pharmacist about for information COMPLERA about thatCOMPLERA is written for that health is written for health a history of livera disease. history ofYour liverhealthcare disease. Your provider healthcare may need provider to may professionals, need to orprofessionals, call 1-800-445-3235 or call 1-800-445-3235 or go to www.COMPLERA.com or go to www.COMPLERA.com do tests to check doyour testsliver to check enzymes yourbefore liver enzymes and during before treatment and during treatment Issued: June 2013 Issued: June 2013 with COMPLERA.with COMPLERA.

•

• Bone Bone problems can happen problems in some can happen people in who some takepeople COMPLERA. who take COMPLERA. Bone problems Bone include problems bone pain, include softening bone pain, or thinning softening (which or thinning (which may lead to fractures). may leadYour to fractures). healthcareYour provider healthcare may need provider to domay need to do additional testsadditional to check your testsbones. to check your bones.

•

• Changes Changes in body fat caninhappen body fat in people can happen takinginHIV people medicine. taking HIV medicine. These changes These may include changes increased may include amount increased of fat inamount the upper of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo back and hump”), neck (“buffalo breast,hump”), and around breast, theand mainaround theCOMPLERA, main the COMPLERA Logo, EMTRIVA, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, GSI, HEPSERA, STRIBILD, TRUVADA, VIREAD, and VISTIDE are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. part of your body part (trunk). of yourLoss bodyof (trunk). fat fromLoss the legs, of fatarms from and the legs, face armsATRIPLA and face is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. All other marks herein are the property of their respective owners. may also happen. mayThe also cause happen. and long The cause term health and long effect termofhealth these effectreferenced of these ©2013 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. CPAC0074 10/13 conditions are not conditions known. are not known.

<< Obituaries

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Singer-songwriter Gwen Avery dies G

wen Avery, an African American lesbian musician who influenced the women’s music movement, died January 31 at Sutter Hospital in Santa Rosa. She was 70. The cause of death was complications due to surgery, said her friend and former partner Pier Macrae. Ms. Avery was best known for her composition “Sugar Mama,” which was featured on Olivia Records’ groundbreaking collection, Lesbian Concentrate, in 1977. Originally slated to release a solo album on Olivia, she toured with her label mates Linda Tillery and Mary Watkins on the Varied Voices of Black Women Tour, which also featured poet Pat Parker and Vicki Randle providing supporting vocals and percussion. Tillery, a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and producer, praised Ms. Avery. “Gwen Avery was an authentic blues and gospel singer,” Tillery said in a statement. “She was raised in a juke joint, where from an early age, she heard first hand, the sounds of Black Troubadours weaving tales of love, passion, frustration and pleas to God – any god, for release from Jim Crow, segregation, and the hor-

rible legacy of racism in America.” Ms. Avery stood apart in the women’s music movement: a woman of color who understood the connection between her grandmother’s juke joint and the women’s music movement of which Olivia Records was at the center. Ms. Avery was quoted as saying, “I dressed differently. I would wear satin suits and platform shoes with an Afro with neckties and beautiful silk shirts. They were wearing plaid shirts and blue jeans.” About 12 years ago, Ms. Avery said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that the same issues of race and classism that confounded the early feminist and gay rights movements also infected the women’s music scene. Olivia Records “broke her heart,” she said. Her solo album never came to be via Olivia Records, but she continued to work on the road until her debut solo album, Sugar Mama, was released independently in 2001. Judy Dlugacz, founder and president of Olivia, said in a statement that Ms. Avery was one of the “truly great blues singers of our time.” “In the tradition of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith a strong fearless woman with a soulful/sexy mes-

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Singer-songwriter Gwen Avery

sage. How crazy to try and critique Gwen Avery. She was as real and as brilliant as truly great artists are. We will miss her,” Dlugacz said. Tillery said that Ms. Avery’s unique style was her hallmark. “Lesbian yes, black woman yes, real-deal soulful singer, yes. Yet I wonder how many people really understood her gift?” Tillery said. “You would have had to listen to Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Mahalia to recognize the ‘time stamp’ that marked her unique style. She became the ‘Sugar Mama’ of women’s music, no longer a prisoner of love denied but a champion of love out in the open – raw and unashamed. That was her gift to us all.” Singer-songwriter and activist Holly Near said she has fond memories of Ms. Avery. “Gwen was bigger than life. Well, maybe just bigger than my life,” Near said in a statement. “I had never met anyone like her before. I had to fill up to my fullest self to meet her head on. She would bear hug me, her big laugh exploding in my ear and it was terrifying and terrific all at once. She laughed and poked fun and would catch my eye to make sure we were still good. We were. Teresa Trull and I and maybe others, I don’t remember, sang back up for her on her classic ‘Sugar Mama.’ I don’t know if she used my part. I was the wrong gal for the job. But she wasn’t.”

Near said the song is one of her favorites. “Many years later, I went to hear Gwen at a dive out in the little river town of Guerneville, California. As I sat at a funky table sipping a beer, I wondered how she was going to pull it off. How do you sing to a talking, distracted, drinking crowd of old hippies, bikers, and meth dealers. But she started to sing and all that fell away. I don’t remember all those other people at all. Just Gwen singing. Singing ‘Sugar Mama’ to me.” Terry Baum, a lesbian activist who has run for various political offices in San Francisco, said she was in the process of making a documentary about Ms. Avery. “And now Gwen has died and gone to heaven,” Baum said in a eulogy on her blog. “I don’t know if there really is a heaven, but I do hope that Gwen’s soul has found peace. She rarely found peace outside of music when she was in this

world. Oh, Gwennie, there is still so much I wanted to do with you. ... I’ll finish the full-length documentary now. I promise.” Ms. Avery spent the last decade of her life performing in the Russian River region, bridging the gap between the blues and gospel, continuing to thrill audiences with her distinct interpretation of the rich heritage of black music. Ms. Avery is survived by a brother, James. Macrae said that two memorials are planned. The Main Street Station in Guerneville, where Ms. Avery performed over the last few years, will have a memorial later this month or in March. In April, a memorial is planned at the Montclair Women’s Cultural Arts Club in Oakland.t To view a portion of Baum’s documentary about Ms. Avery, visit http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=eNo1d1ZDJfU.

Obituaries >> Gabriel Morales February 27, 1967 – October 16, 2013 Gabriel Morales Rangel passed away suddenly and tragically October 16, 2013 from an accident at his home in San Francisco. He was 46. A native of Guadalajara, Mexico, Gabriel studied medicine before moving first to Oakland in the late 1980s, and finally settling in San Francisco, a city he so dearly loved. After starting out in tailoring, Gabriel found his true passion in the restaurant industry. Working as a server over the years in many San Francisco restaurants including the Patio Cafe, Luna Piena, Baghdad Cafe, and Maya, Gabriel became a well-known and respected member of the food service community. Preceded in death by his father Juventino Morales, he is survived by his live-in partner of 12 years, Garey Hamel, his mother, six siblings, and numerous nieces and nephews both here in California and in Mexico. A celebration of life is planned for Saturday, February 22 from 2 to 4 p.m. at St. Aidan’s Church, 101 Gold Mine Drive, where he worked as a volunteer. All who knew Gabriel are welcome to attend and

participate. Rest in Peace, Gabi. Your kind and gentle spirit, and infectious smile, will be sorely missed but never forgotten.

Memorial set for Barbara Richmond A celebration of life for Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation co-founder Barbara Richmond will be held Sunday, February 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Rainbow Room at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street. Ms. Richmond died January 4 after a battle with lung and bone cancer. She was 88. Ms. Richmond and her childhood friend, Peggy Ermet, founded REAF in the early 1990s after their sons died of complications from AIDS. Ermet died in 2000. REAF produces the popular “Help is On the Way” concerts that have raised a little more than $3 million over the years to various HIV/AIDS organizations. The popular shows, which continue to be held, generally draw upon local theater and cabaret talent, as well as visiting performers who are starring in local productions. A brief program is planned for the memorial and people can share their remembrances of Ms. Richmond.

The battle for visibility by Roger Brigham

ith the Winter Olympics opening in a country where gay Pride is outlawed and in a town whose mayor says there are no queers, this was supposed to be the month in which we were to be quiet and invisible. Instead, two players in two of the most popular sports – American football and the international form known here as soccer – have come out of the closet to much fanfare. It would appear that theories on how the NFL would respond to having an openly gay player will now be tested. On Sunday, February 9, Casey Stoney, the captain of England’s women’s soccer team, told BBC Sport she was a lesbian. “I feel it’s really important for me to speak out as a gay player because there are so many people struggling who are gay, and you hear about people taking their own lives because they are homosexual,” she said. “That should never happen. How can I expect other people to speak about themselves if I’m not willing to do that myself?” Stoney, who has played in 116 games for the national team, including the 2008 Summer Olympics, is the first active top-level player in English football to come out. That same day, NFL prospect

Missouri’s Michael Sam and Britain’s Casey Stoney both came out this week.

Michael Sam of Missouri came out with stories on ESPN and in the New York Times and Outsports. Named co-defensive player of the year in the Southeastern Conference and a unanimous All-American, Sam was projected to be a mid-round draft choice before making his announcement. If he lands with an NFL team, he would become the first active NFL player to be out – 41 years after Dave Kopay became the first retired player in American men’s professional team sports to come out. Outsports’ Cyd Zeigler wrote that Sam had hoped to hold off on his

announcement until after he had performed in the NFL combine, February 22-25 in Indianapolis, but before the NFL draft, May 8-10. That timetable was moved up when it became obvious that several news organizations were aware of his sexual orientation and it appeared one of them would break the story. “I just want to make sure I could tell my story the way I want to tell it,” Sam said. “I just want to own my truth. I am an openly, proud gay man. I understand how big this is. It’s a big deal. No one has done this before. And it’s kind of a nervous process, but I know what I want to be – I want to be a football player in the NFL.” See page 13 >>

Community News>>

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

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The Reverend Terri Echelbarger of Peninsula Metropolitan Community Church, left, joined the Reverend Elder Darlene Garner, MCC moderator, and the Reverend Robert Shively in consecrating communion at Shively’s installation service as senior pastor of MCC-SF.

by James Patterson

Castro church, one of the first to minister to the LGBT community, has, after four tumultuous years largely without permanent leadership, installed a respected clergyman to lead it out of what one church member called a period of “wandering in the wilderness.” Congregants at Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco, part of the international Metropolitan Community Churches denomination founded in 1968 by the Reverend Troy Perry, celebrated the installation of the Reverend Robert Shively, 48, as senior pastor with a special service Sunday, February 9. The brass section of MCC-SF’s six-member orchestra heralded Shively’s entrance into the sanctuary with a baroque fanfare, popularly known from the 1976 Sylvester Stallone film Rocky. Shively told members red, for “fire and passion,” was the designated color for the service and many members, including the choir, wore red. He also invoked the image of the Phoenix, famous in Greek mythology for rebirth after death by fire, in the context of the church “rising from the ashes” after four years of difficulties. Shively said the current spiritual needs of the LGBT community include a need to re-connect in a disconnected community, to speak truth, and to provide a safe place where all are welcome and to extend safety to the broader community. Ministers assisting in the two-hour service included the Reverend Victor Floyd, who served temporarily at the church, and other local clergy. The Reverend Elder Darlene Garner, a representative of MCC Moderator Nancy Wilson, gave the invocation and consecrated Shively. Moderator is the global leader of MCC and Wilson is the first woman to hold the title. Jan Corlett, one of the first speakers, invoked California’s historic drought and said Shively’s installation would end “a long drought for our church.” Church member Maureen Bogues, chair of the pastoral search committee, told congregants it took the “committee just six weeks” to select Shively and the congregation approved him in October.

Jock Talk

From page 12

As soon as Sam’s announcement was made, Sports Illustrated and other news outlets began speculating how his disclosure would affect him in the draft, what kind of team could use the relatively smallish defensive end (6foot-2, 230 pounds), and how would players, coaches, teams, and fans react. Sam, 24, came out to his team last August and ran into no problems.

Leathermen were well represented at the service. Clad in leather with red tie, Patrick Mulcahey, program director of San Francisco Leathermen Discussion Group, referred to Shively as “Daddy Robert.” He said “goodness, honesty, humility, and unspoiled innocence” were among the new senior pastor’s qualities. He urged Shively to “take a public role in the community.” In a gold glittered red beard, Sister Jezabelle, of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, wore red habit with red and blue feather headdress and blessed Shively. She urged him to continue to expose bigotry and prayed for him to be “an inspiration for all in the parish.” Garner called on the church “to set aside past differences” and move forward with Shively. “Never apologize for seeing great visions and dreaming great dreams,” Garner told him. For Shively’s consecration, Garner and other ministers laid hands on him as he knelt before them. The congregation symbolically placed hands in his direction to participate in the sacred moment. Shively then rose to applause, foot stomping, and many shouts of Amen. Several church members wiped tears from their eyes and embraced loved ones as the joyful occasion concluded. Eleven-year MCC-SF member Albert Patterson (no relation to this reporter), shouted “Crazy!” and “Hallelujah!” near the service’s end. He said he felt energized by Shively, “who will unite the church.” Orchestra member Donny Lobree performed a Handel sonata for violin during the service. He said the installation was “gorgeous and felt like a wedding.” MCC-SF member Lynn Jordan, dressed in a Sgt. Pepper Beatles-era vintage ensemble complete with elaborate hat, bellbottom trousers, plush velvet jacket, and with a handbag embroidered “Royal Majesty” in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the band’s arrival in America, said the Phoenix theme reminded him of the 1973 arson of MCC’s Guerrero Street church. He said Pride Sunday 2014 will be the 35th anniversary of MCCSF’s presence at 150 Eureka Street. Installation highlights and Shively’s recent sermons are at http:// www.mccsf.org.t Nobody complained he was eyeing them in the showers. He was valued not just as a great player but a great team leader. He was named Missouri’s Most Valuable Player. But most of the media who were scrambling to catch up on the story relied on anonymous sources to talk about how teams will react to his disclosure. Sports Illustrated talked with several unnamed NFL player executives and their statements See page 14 >>

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14 ••BBAY 10 AYA AREA REAR REPORTER EPORTER • February February13-19, 13-19,2014 2014

Jock Talk

From page 13

paint a stark contrast to the acceptance the front offices have sworn they will have. Statements such as: “I don’t think football is ready for [an openly gay player] just yet,” said an NFL player personnel assistant. “In the coming decade or two, it’s going to be acceptable, but at this point in time it’s still a man’s-man game. To call somebody a faggot is still so commonplace. It’d chemically imbalance an NFL locker room and meeting room.” And: “I just know with this going on this is going to drop him down. There’s no question about it. It’s human nature. Do you want to be the team to quote-unquote ‘break that barrier?’” One coach called Sam’s announcement “not a smart move” and would affect his ability to sign a big contract. Numerous current and former players tweeted their support for Sam. A wrestler at Kent State complained on Twitter about the attention Sam was getting and engaged in a banter of homophobic slurs with

Conflict resolution

From page 1

Local officials and transgender advocacy groups reacted positively to the latest developments. “It should have been that from the beginning,” said Charles Ramsey, a longtime board member of the West Contra Costa Unified School District. “The criminal charges that were filed seemed to be unfair.” Ramsey called the incident “a real wakeup call” and he was appreciative that Gutierrez went public with her story, creating a nationwide conversation about bullying in schools, he said. The Transgender Law Center, which also advocated on behalf of Gutierrez, also praised the judge’s decision. “It’s wonderful to know that Jewlyes and the other students involved in this incident will be able to work together to find a resolution outside

Political Notebook

From page 5

Newsom is one of three anniversary dates they celebrate. They also had a commitment ceremony on August 12, 1995 and were legally wed September 6, 2008. “Each ceremony means so much to us,” said Kawa, who looks back on them now with smiles but recalls there were “a lot of ups and a lot of downs” over the last decade. “Unlike for other folks, we were a same-sex couple and it wasn’t a one-time shot. For us the third time was the charm but it was charming all the way through.” Wednesday current AssessorRecorder Carmen Chu announced

Gardens

From page 2

“It was so wonderful. All my cynicism went down the drain,” said Varney. For two hours each Monday morning prior to work, hospital staff help tend the gardens and harvest their bounty during the growing season. The produce is distributed to the hospital’s patients and neighbors that partake in its Wellness Center programs. Varney retired in 2013 and relocated a few months ago to Santa Rosa where she and her partner, Bob Besso, own a home. She is at work planting gardens and fruit trees on the property. Thursday, February 13, she will be among the three honorees at the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation’s annual Heroes and Hearts luncheon. “Joan stood out to this year’s com-

people who took offense; he was subsequently suspended from the team. Every argument that was ever used to prop up “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and Proposition 8 has resurfaced concerning the possibility of Sam being in the NFL, playing in NFL games and – shudder! – undressing in NFL locker rooms. Earlier, New Orleans linebacker Jonathan Vilma had questioned what would happen if a gay person were with him in the locker room or shower area. Well, let’s see. I covered college and pro football extensively in the 1980s and 1990s, was in the dressing room with naked bodies all around me, and nothing happened. I was there to work, not ogle. Sam was in the locker room throughout his high school and college career and nothing happened. He was there to play, not ogle. The way I see it, all of these players have had gay guys in their locker rooms – gay guys who lacked the courage or desire to be open and honest with them. Now they have a chance to have one who is open and honest. That’s an opportunity they should leap at.t of the criminal justice system,” said Ilona Turner, TLC legal director. “Young people belong in school, not in jail.” Kanwarpal Dhaliwal, community health director of the RYSE Center in Richmond, agreed adding that she believes the community-based restorative process will have a “better impact and outcomes” for Gutierrez and the other students as well as the community at large, she said. Debra Gutierrez, Jewlyes Gutierrez’s aunt and adopted mother, declined to comment for this article on advice from Simon. Simon didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from the Bay Area Reporter by press time. Gutierrez will appear in court before Maddock again in May to report on her progress in the program. She and her advocates are hopeful the battery charge will be dismissed, according to a joint news release from RYSE and TLC.t that her office in August had handed over the 3,955 historic same-sex marriage licenses that were recorded between February 12 and March 11 of 2004 to the San Francisco Public Library as part of the city’s official archive. The documents had been kept in boxes inside a vault at City Hall, as the B.A.R. noted in a 2009 article, while city officials determined what to do with them. Because California at the time did not recognize same-sex marriages, the Office of State Registrar inside the state Department of Health Services rejected the initial batch of licenses, 4,269 in all, and returned them to the city’s assessor-recorder office.t mittee because of her tireless commitment to promoting a holistic approach to wellness,” stated Lisa Hauswirth, co-chair of the fundraiser. “From creating a place for patients to find peace in the Comfort Garden to sharing the importance of natural foods through Project Open Hand, HeartBeets and the Garden Giveaway, Joan has consistently sought ways to share her passion and talents with the community.” The award, said Varney, is validation for her long-held belief that the outdoors can benefit the hospital’s patients. “We always thought of gardens as being healing to folks. We would get that kind of comment from patients but never anybody else so much,” she said. “When this award came I thought, oh my gosh, someone is seeing us as we would like to be seen – as contributing to the hospital and the healing process of patients who come here.”t

Legal Notices>> ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC14-550051 In the matter of the application of: ALHAJI JEFFERY KAMARA, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner ALHAJI JEFFERY KAMARA, is requesting that the name ALHAJI JEFFERY KAMARA, be changed to JEFFERY NATURE KAMARA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, 5th Fl. on the 18th of March 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JAN 23, 30, FEB 06, 13, 2014 SUMMONS (FAMILY LAW) ALAMEDA COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: SUGAN SUKSAWANG YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: ROSEMARIE DIAZ CASE NO. HF12627002 You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this Summons and Petition are served on you to file a Response (form FL-120 or FL-123) at the court and have a copy served on the petitioner. A letter or phone call will not protect you. If you do not file your Response on time, the court may make orders affecting your marriage or domestic partnerships, your property, and custody of your children. You may be ordered to pay support and attorney fees and costs. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the clerk for a fee waiver form. If you want legal advice, contact a lawyer immediately. You can get information about finding lawyers at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/ selfhelp), at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), or by contacting your local county bar association. NOTICE: The restraining orders following are effective against both spouses or domestic partners until the petition is dismissed, a judgment entered, or the court makes further orders. These orders are enforceable anywhere in California by any law enforcement officer who has received or seen a copy of them. NOTE: If a judgment or support order is entered, the court may order you to pay all or part of the fees and costs that the court waived for yourself or the other party. If this happens, the party ordered to pay fees shall be given notice and an opportunity to request a hearing to set aside the order to pay waived court fees. SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF ALAMEDA, 24405 AMADOR ST, HAYWARD, CA 94566; PREPARED BY DAN CASEY, LDA #120, SANTA CLARA COUNTY, 1261 LINCOLN AVE #201, SAN JOSE, CA 95125, PH (408) 295-6955; the name, address, and telephone number of petitioner’s attorney, or the petitioner without an attorney, is: ROSEMARIE DIAZ, 3955 VINEYARD AVENUE #44, PLEASANTON, CA 94566, PH (510) 706-5809 APR 17, 2012 Clerk of the Superior Court by S. DebacaArredondo, Deputy. NOTICE TO THE PERSON SERVED: You are served as an individual.

JAN 23, 30, FEB 06, 13, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035584600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SORRO SOUNDS AND MEDIA, 1302 HAYES ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MARTIN SORRONDEGUY RABOTTI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/07/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/07/14.

JAN 23, 30, FEB 06, 13, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035588000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: YUKI LASHES, 1840 TURK ST #7, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MINH DU DINH. 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 01/15/14.

JAN 23, 30, FEB 06, 13, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035598600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SWEET BEAN FOODS, 57 CHATANOOGA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LAURIE AGEE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/21/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/21/14.

JAN 23, 30, FEB 06, 13, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035597800

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035588500

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035599800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EPIC TRADING, 284 LELAND AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed RICKY WONG & MARCO LAU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/15/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/15/14.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BAMBINI MONTESSORI SCHOOL, 2042 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NORTH HILL LEARNING CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/21/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/21/14.

JAN 23, 30, FEB 06, 13, 2014 SUMMONS (FAMILY LAW) SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: HUAI CHEN YAP YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: ROVSHEN KERIMOV CASE NO. FDI-13-780509

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035611100

You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this Summons and Petition are served on you to file a Response (form FL-120 or FL-123) at the court and have a copy served on the petitioner. A letter or phone call will not protect you. If you do not file your Response on time, the court may make orders affecting your marriage or domestic partnerships, your property, and custody of your children. You may be ordered to pay support and attorney fees and costs. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the clerk for a fee waiver form. If you want legal advice, contact a lawyer immediately. You can get information about finding lawyers at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/ selfhelp), at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), or by contacting your local county bar association. NOTICE: The restraining orders following are effective against both spouses or domestic partners until the petition is dismissed, a judgment entered, or the court makes further orders. These orders are enforceable anywhere in California by any law enforcement officer who has received or seen a copy of them. NOTE: If a judgment or support order is entered, the court may order you to pay all or part of the fees and costs that the court waived for yourself or the other party. If this happens, the party ordered to pay fees shall be given notice and an opportunity to request a hearing to set aside the order to pay waived court fees. SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, 400 MCALLISTER ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. The name, address, and telephone number of petitioner’s attorney, or the petitioner without an attorney, is: IRINA AEROV, 789 CABRILLO ST., SAN FRANCSICO, CA 94102, PH (415) 387-9028 NOV 27, 2013 Clerk of the Superior Court by Timmy Kyu, Deputy. NOTICE TO THE PERSON SERVED: You are served as an individual.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035602500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KML ASSOCIATES, 274 15TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KENT M. LIM. 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 01/22/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035603400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RC LEADS, 2025 BRODERICK ST. #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHRISTOPHER JAMES PORTUGAL. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/23/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/23/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035603800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LOGAN POTTER SALON, 28 SOUTH PARK, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LOGAN POTTER. 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 01/23/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035610300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TRINKERS INTL., 888 BRANNAN ST. #1177,SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed TRINKERS INTL (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/27/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/27/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035611400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SENSATIONAL KIDZ, 2360 GREENWICH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SENSATIOAL KIDZ PEDIATRIC OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/27/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/27/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035598000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FITNESS URBANO, 250 DOUGLAS ST. #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed METAS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/21/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/21/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035595900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FLORAL IMAGE SAN FRANCISCO, 3031 W. MARCH LANE #230, STOCKTON, CA 95219. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed LNCJ, 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 01/21/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035605400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BARMATT, 1175 CHESTNUT ST. #304, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed OUT OF WORK SUPERHEROES LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/17/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/23/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035605900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TENDER, 854 GEARY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed 854 GEARY, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/15/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/23/14.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC14-550090 In the matter of the application of: GEYLOR RODOLFO BALMACEDA, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner GEYLOR RODOLFO BALMACEDA, is requesting that the name GEYLOR RODOLFO BALMACEDA, be changed to DILLON BALMACEDA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 10th of April 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

FEB 06, 13, 20, 27, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC14-550089 In the matter of the application of: SHIREEN YVETTE HUSAIN, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner SHIREEN YVETTE HUSAIN, is requesting that the name SHIREEN YVETTE HUSAIN, be changed to SHIREEN YVETTE WETMORE. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 3rd of April 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

FEB 06, 13, 20, 27, 2014 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC14-550086

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SITE FOR SORE EYES, 176 SUTTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed NEW VISION OPTICAL 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 01/21/14.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SURE ROOFING & WATERPROOFING, 118 SAGAMORE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SURE ROOFING SYSTEMS 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 01/27/14.

JAN 23, 30, FEB 06, 13, 2014

In the matter of the application of: DINO MARIO RENAUD, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner DINO MARIO RENAUD, is requesting that the name DINO MARIO RENAUD, be changed to NICHOLAS RENAULT. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 8th of April 2014 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JAN 30, FEB 06, 13, 20, 2014

FEB 06, 13, 20, 27, 2014

Read more online at www.ebar.com

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035625700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SHWE MANDALAY, 2107 32ND AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed HTUN MYAT OO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/31/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/31/14.

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February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

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<< From the Cover

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Olympics

From page 1

However, many people were attempting to find politics on the backs of the athletes, literally. When the German team entered the stadium wearing multi-colored uniforms, NBC co-anchor Meredith Vieira immediately characterized them as “rainbow-colored” but then

Tenants

From page 1

how to stem the rising number of tenant buyouts and evictions, including those done under the Ellis Act, a state law that allows landlords to get out of the rental business. The problem, as many housing activists see it, is that such properties are usually sold to developers and converted into condominiums. A giant map pinpointing Ellis Act evictions was on display in the front of the room. Hundreds of arrows illustrated how many such evictions have occurred across the city in recent years. According to housing activists, the escalating rents spurred on by the tech boom have forced many evictees out of the city or into homeless shelters. LGBT seniors, the disabled, and people of color have been particularly hard hit by the wave of evictions, they said. “Rents have increased by 72 per-

quickly added that, when the uniforms were unveiled last October, the German team officials made a point of saying they were not a statement in regards to Russia’s anti-gay laws. “So, if you’re thinking that this was a statement about that,” said Vieira, in an unusually strident tone, “it is not.” Last summer, Putin signed the antigay law that makes it a crime to “procent since 2011,” said Ted Gullickson, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. “Ellis Act evictions have quadrupled, up 140 percent from last year. There are five buyouts to each Ellis Act eviction. Buyouts are up 140 percent since last year.” When a buyout occurs, the tenant accepts a flat offer from the landlord to vacate the premises. Such deals are brokered outside the parameters of Ellis Act regulations, which means a tenant might accept less than the $3,000 to $5,000 payment as required by law when Ellis is invoked. Supervisor David Campos recently introduced legislation that would require landlords who use the Ellis Act to pay tenants more money to relocate. Speakers included Gum Gee Lee, 74, who’s family made headlines last fall when she, her 80-yearold husband, and their disabled 48-year-old daughter were evicted

mote” homosexuality to minors. The vague law means that such things as public displays of affection could subject LGBTs to fines or jail time. Although some activists had predicted gay athletes and their supporters might wear “P6” or rainbow pins during the Olympics to note the principle of the Olympic Charter that prohibits discrimination, there were very few clear signs of any-

thing gay on the televised Olympics. Openly gay snowboarder Cheryl Maas of the Netherlands took a fall on one of her runs and, after she stood the obligatory few minutes in front of a Sochi 2014 wall to await her score, she walked away holding her gloved right hand in front of the camera. Because Maas is gay and the glove had what appeared to be a unicorn and a rainbow-colored tar-

Rick Gerharter

Chandra Reddick was one of several longtime tenants facing an Ellis Act eviction who spoke about their situation at the Citywide Tenants Convention.

from the Lower Nob Hill apartment they had lived in for more than 30 years. Thanks to the intervention of Mayor Ed Lee (no relation) and housing activists, the Lees were able

to get several extensions on their eviction until a subsidized unit for them could be found. Lee spoke in Chinese through an interpreter. “Our ordeal lasted 18 months,”

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get on it, some interpreted that as a moment of LGBT visibility. Iraschko-stolz, the out Austrian athlete, said that she thinks Russia will take “the right steps in the future.” “I am here as a sportswoman,” she said, according to a Washington Post article. “I always say I’m together with my woman now and don’t have any problems, not in Russia or with the Austrian federation.”t she said. “It was a time of stress. I couldn’t eat or sleep. Is this how I was going to spend my last days? I was able to stand up because the community stood up with me. We need to stick together and fight.” The audience applauded. Blanca Reyes, who’s lived in her Mission district unit for 24 years, spoke in Spanish through an interpreter. She said she was given two months to move. “I am another victim of eviction,” she said. “This crisis is impacting me and my family – my daughter is in college and can’t focus on her schoolwork. I’m a caregiver for 14 elders. I need to show up with a smile, but I can’t because I’m constantly stressed. I want to tell Mayor Ed Lee and other elected officials that they need to stand up for us.” Chandra Reddick is a 10-year resident of 1049 Market, a building populated by low-income artists, all of whom are facing eviction. “We are tired of the racist, sexist, homophobic, classist eviction agenda,” she said. Attendees roared in approval. Tyler McMillian of the Eviction Defense Collaborative said his group handles 2,000 cases per year. “Our current laws have failed to protect tenants in their homes,” he said. “There’s a myth that it’s hard to evict tenants. Today we fight back against that myth. We need to write better laws to help people to stay in their homes.” At the conclusion of the speeches, attendees broke up into groups in order to brainstorm how they can best combat the evictions. Groups were conducted in English, Spanish, and Chinese and the meetings lasted for about an hour. After the sessions, Gen Fujioka, a civil rights attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, outlined the basic goals of the convention: take on the Ellis Act in Sacramento; get the city to do more to protect rental housing and call upon the Board of Supervisors to advance that policy agenda; and tenant resistance. In addition to Campos, supervisors who attended the convention included board President David Chiu and members Malia Cohen, John Avalos, and Jane Kim. There were some stories of tenants who successfully fought back when faced with an Ellis Act eviction. Three tenants, Marla Knight, Ian Couley, and Jo Tom, all of whom who reside in a North Beach apartment, had been facing eviction. They and their neighbors fought back and saw their eviction rescinded. “Get educated,” they advised the crowd. “Know what the Ellis Act is.” The trio received a standing ovation. There will be a Tenants March across the city on March 15. On February 18, housing activists will march in Sacramento to demand that state lawmakers do more to stem the tide of evictions.t

On the web Online content this week includes the Bay Area Reporter’s online columns Political Notes and Wedding Bells Ring; the Out in the World column; an article on Eric Holder’s announcement regarding LGBT rights; and a photo of state Senator Mark Leno’s cellphone kill switch bill presser. www.ebar.com.

Veddy British

Paige turner

House call

Out &About

O&A

The

Vol. 44 • No. 7 • February 13-19, 2014

www.ebar.com/arts

Purple valentine at the Castro Theatre by David-Elijah Nahmod

njoy a purple Valentine on Friday, February 14. On that most romantic of nights, master showman Marc Huestis will screen Steven Spielberg’s film of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple at the beautiful Castro Theatre. Actress Margaret Avery, Oscar-nominated for her performance as Shug in the film, will appear onstage for a live interview. The filming was the second time the actress encountered the director. See page 18 >>

Margaret Avery as Shug in director Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple.

Margaret Avery, coming to the Castro.

Colin Bailey takes the helm by Sura Wood

ast June, when Colin Bailey came on board as the new director of the Fine Arts Museums, it was a tough time for the institution. Bailey’s predecessor, John Buchanan, had died at the end of 2011, leaving the organization and its two venues, the de Young and Legion of Honor, rudderless for a year and a half. A slew of bad press, including a critical piece that ran in The New York Times, aired internal problems related to mismanagement, the dismissal of a prized curator and an ensuing lawsuit, and raised concerns about the controversial, some say too-powerful role of six-term FAMSF Board President Dede Wilsey, who was accused of nepotism after her son exhibited his photography collection at the museum. See page 27 >>

Fine Arts Museums director Colin Bailey. Rick Gerharter

{ SECOND OF TWO SECTIONS }

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<< Out There

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Winter books quiz

by Roberto Friedman

o the disappointment of both big-house publishers and selfpublished authors everywhere, Out There can’t guarantee that all review copies sent our way will eventually get reviewed. But here’s a fun game we can play with some of the books that pass our desk. See if you can match the excerpt (A. to K.) with the book (1. to 11.) Answers are at the bottom of the column, but don’t look, because that would be cheating, and as we all know, cheaters only cheat themselves. The excerpts: A. “One of the disadvantages of being so frank about one’s queerness is that everybody expects you to leer at attractive boys, so you try not to, out of perversity. There was one in the front row. He sprawled right back, wearing almost nonexistent shorts, with his legs naked to the crotch and wide apart. Whenever he asked a question, I had to keep my eyes high by a conscious effort of will.” B. “The incorrupt corpses are undoubtedly a big tourist attraction for churches and monasteries around the world. But it may not always be such a positive experience

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for the tourists. I know I’d be upset if I saw an incorrupt dead body and it was looking healthier and more attractive than me. For example, in 2000 when Blessed Pope Pius IX was dug up 122 years after he died, he was said to be in great shape and still smiling. Apparently death just agrees with some people.” C. “I tried frantically to lose weight, to fix myself quickly so I could keep my job. I tried not eating at all but couldn’t maintain it. I worked out at the gym and ran in Central Park until I couldn’t walk the next day. I thought about taking up smoking so that I would have something else to do with my mouth besides eat, but I hated cigarette smoke. I considered drugs; didn’t people on cocaine get really skinny? But I didn’t know how to buy drugs or know anyone I felt comfortable asking about it.” D. “Old queen in the locker room: ‘When you’re the prettiest one in the steam room, it’s time to go home.’” E. “While some feng shui teaching is sensible (throw out dead plants, toss an ex-boyfriend’s photograph), I wasn’t persuaded by its more doctrinal suggestions. But I understand the appeal of feng shui. Like Manichaeism, karma, and the Law of Attraction – true or not, it feels true.” F. “Restraints made with chap leather are soft, comfortable, and luxurious, but have a degree of stretch and are not very durable. Latigo and vegetable-tanned leather are harder and not as flexible, but produce a sturdier product. If the restraints will be under any amount of stress, I suggest using these.”

AE: (circle one:) Angela Maria Josh

(circle one:)

Steve

Staci Philip

Tim

Jane Deadline:

Barihunk couple baritones Dan Kempson and Zachary Altman are featured singers in West Edge Opera’s Something Sweet Valentine’s Date concert.

1. The Tastemaker – Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America by Edward White (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 2. Happier at Home – Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life by Gretchen Rubin (Three Rivers Press) 3. The Artisan’s Book of Fetishcraft by John Huxley (Greenery Press) 4. Liberation – Diaries 1970-1983 by Christopher Isherwood, edited and introduced by Katherine Bucknell, preface by Edmund White (Harper Perennial, paperback) 5. City of Night by John Rechy – 50th Anniversary Edition (Grove Atlantic) 6. Papal Bull – An Ex-Catholic Calls Out the Catholic Church by Dr. Joe Wenke (Trans Uber) 7. I Am the Beggar of the World – Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan translated by Eliza Griswold, photographs by Seamus Murphy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 8. The Tooth Fairy – Parents, Lovers, and Other Wayward Deities (A Memoir) by Clifford Chase (Overlook) 9. The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin (Harper Perennial) 10. Dancing Through It – My Journey in the Ballet by Jenifer Ringer, principal dancer, New York City Ballet (Viking) 11. See a Little Light – The Trail

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G. “The biggest but also subtlest clue was the intaglio ring depicting the classical scene of Leda being raped by a swan he wore on the little finger of his left hand. The myth of Leda acquired something of a cult among many writers and artists of the fin de siecle era, a symbol of forbidden desire and taboo practices that some homosexual dandies displayed as a sign that they existed outside the sexual mainstream.” H. “The first show as a trio was at the Rex Club in Paris, a 250-capacity basement club, a bit of a dive. We arrived, walked into the back area, and came face to face with our catering, which consisted of a mound of white rice, maybe twelve by eighteen inches, with cockroaches running all over it. This was not the fine Parisian dining experience I’d had in mind.” I. “Iris dropped the stick and the piece of lizard and said, ‘My mother taught me how to survive in this world. My mother said that each of us is like an M&M in a blender full of ice cream. We all try to avoid getting chopped up. We do most anything to avoid getting sliced, but in the end most of us get the chop and become nothing more than a part of the milkshake.’” J. “Hollywood – the fringe world beyond the movie lots. “Hollywood: Sex and religion and cops and nymphos and cults and sex and religion and junk – and sex and sects and flowers and junk and religion – fairies and nymphos and sick, sick cops – and sex.” K. “Our secret love has been discovered. You run one way and I’ll flee the other. My love is mine, and I’m his from afar. I’ll go with him even if he sells me in the bazaar.” The books:

ART APPROVED AE APPROVED CLIENT APPROVED

Margaret Avery

From page 17

In 1972, Avery had a small role in Something Evil, a spooky TV movie Spielberg directed during his salad days. When it came time to shoot The Color Purple 13 years later, Avery jogged Spielberg’s memory. He remembered her. Though a financial success, the film received a fair amount of criticism upon its release. African Americans picketed, expressing displeasure with Walker for daring to write a story in which black characters dabbled in lesbianism, and which also shined a light on spousal abuse in the black community. The LGBT community took issue with the film as well. “The gay community felt that the lesbian aspects of the story were glossed over,” Avery said to the B.A.R. in a telephone interview. Yet

of Rage and Melody by Bob Mould with Michael Azerrad (Cleis) Note: The books included in this little divertissement are not necessarily exempt from future coverage. We just enjoy offering samples from them.

Barihunks team up

West Edge Opera presents Something Sweet, the third in its holidaythemed concerts at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, on Fri., Feb. 14, at 7:30 p.m. The concert features some of the most lavishly romantic music ever composed, sung by some talented Bay Area opera stars – singers who are couples in real life. The featured couples are mezzosoprano Buffy Baggott and tenor Pedro Rodelas, mezzo-soprano Nicole Takesosno and tenor Adam Flowers, and “barihunk” baritones Dan Kempson and Zachary Altman. Sun Ha Yoon, a current Adler Fellow pianist at the San Francisco Opera, accompanies. The Piedmont Center for the Arts is at 801 Magnolia Ave. in Piedmont. The concert is sponsored by Anne Brandon and Rick Richetta of Alain Pinel Realtors. Tickets ($25 for adults, $15 under 18) are available online at www. westedgeopera.org or at (510) 8411903. Each ticket includes chocolate and a glass of wine or a soft drink. Answers to the book quiz: A: 4; B: 6; C: 10; D: 8; E: 2; F: 3; G: 1; H: 11; I: 9; J: 5; K: 7. t one of the film’s highlights remains the lovely sequence in which Shug (Avery) sings the jazzy “Miss Celie’s Blues” to a blushing Whoopi Goldberg, in her film debut. Both stars, along with Oprah Winfrey, received Oscar nominations for their work in The Color Purple. “You feel excited,” Avery said of the nomination. “I sat in the first row on Oscar night. I like to feel the ambiance of a room, and you miss that in the front, but I was so excited. We all wanted to do our best for Alice. Every time she came on the set I said, OMG, she’ll see me, I hope I do my best.” Avery recalled her casting process. “I was the last character cast,” she said. “I had four weeks to gain weight. Steven set me up with Bodies by Jake. The trainer worked me five days a week for 30 minutes a See page 26 >>

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February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Movies imitating art by David Lamble

he new documentary Tim’s Vermeer, courtesy of Showtime TV magicians Penn and Teller, asks and then proceeds in a hypnotically diverting way to answer the question, What does a fabulously successful digital inventor do for a second act? Born and raised in the Midwest and currently calling San Antonio, Texas home, the roly-poly graybeard Tim Jenison resembles a department store Santa on his day off. If Jenison were to take on Santa’s job, rest assured he would make all the toys himself, and find some way to deliver them down every chimney in Christendom. In this film, Jenison attempts to answer the question bugging the art world since the 17th century: How did Dutch master painter Johannes Vermeer create his photographically accurate portraits? How did this genius (1633-75) manage to “paint with light?” Despite a gay adolescence spent in the company of art-school boyfriends, I had never heard of Vermeer until called upon to review indie-film wunderkind Jon Jost’s 1990 quasi”hit” All the Vermeers in New York. This chamber piece, with its hothouse blend of improvised dialogue and ambitious young people trapped between the competing mantras of SoHo and Wall Street, demonstrated what a contemporary artist could pull off by applying Vermeer’s techniques to a modern story. A dozen years later, director Peter Webber took us back to the painter’s small Dutch hometown Delft, for a vignette attempting to explain the back story for the painter’s personal “Mona Lisa,” “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Jenison, inspired by a trade-show visit to the Netherlands where he saw Vermeers in a local museum, decides that he has cracked the mystery. He wants to prove his hypoth-

Shane F. Kelly, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Tim Jenison assembles one of the experimental optical devices he built, in Tim’s Vermeer.

esis by systematically recreating Vermeer’s studio inside a San Antonio warehouse. He uses his fame and fortune (from hatching techno innovations like the “Video Toaster”) as a hook to lure big names to his project. He gets an endorsement from queer painter David Hockney, and convinces Buckingham Palace to give him a peek at the Queen’s Vermeer, “The Music Lesson.” But our big bear ultimately must put his body and reputation on the line: can he, using the kind of simple optical device he thinks Vermeer used, come up with his version of “The Music Lesson?” Tim does produce his own Vermeer, or else there would be no movie, but is the effort – 1,825 days (5 years) from conception to fin-

ished canvas – worth a dozen bucks and 80 minutes of your time? For me, Tim’s Vermeer joins a small but special class of films, like My Dinner with Andre, Terry Zwigoff ’s Crumb, or Woody Allen’s Zelig and The Purple Rose of Cairo, that allow us to peek behind the curtain, to replace elitist notions of artistic genius with down-to-earth but still awe-inspiring explanations on how humble humans learn to soar – to converse, however briefly, with the gods. Some will resent Jenison’s geeky impulse to “debunk” genius, to bring a godlike Vermeer down from his pedestal, to reduce him to the status of a “tracer,” or God forbid, Norman Rockwell, who confessed to using humble technology to enhance his own photo-realistic

style for hundreds of Saturday Evening Post covers. The film, directed by Teller, and mentored and narrated by Penn, has its best moments as Tim shows us his painstaking process in the seven months it took him to finish his version of “The Music Lesson.” The time-lapse format gives the enterprise an almost Monty Pythonlike flavor at times – the number of days flashes by at the bottom of the screen as Tim doggedly persists to complete his first and surely his last painting. Among the questions he accidentally solves are why Vermeer completed so few canvases (35 to 40 survive), and possibly why he died so young. (Opens Friday.) The Monuments Men Fittingly, at least one Vermeer pops up in the

vast array of Nazi-stolen loot strewn across director George Clooney’s dutiful if uninspired attempt (cowritten with Grant Heslov) to dramatize Hitler’s brazen bid to steal Europe’s artistic treasures in the waning days of WWII. Based on the book by Robert M. Edsel with Bert Witter, The Monuments Men reverts to Hollywood’s time-honored device of having beloved stars impersonate “real people” in order to tell a story whose dimensions and implications exceed the ability of a single-sitting movie to corral. Clooney doubles as the film’s godlike narrator, Frank Stokes, informing us of Hitler’s bid to steal, first, art held by Jewish families, and then, just anything the SS could haul off for the Nazi leader’s proposed gargantuan museum in his Austrian hometown. In effect, Hitler would “edit” the entirety of European cultural history by what he chose to keep and display, or annihilate, a cultural genocide to match the human one unfolding in the camps. The enterprise quickly resembles the conceit of the Oceans 13 series: a band of hip brothers. This, in turn, reflects the ongoing joke of Frank Sinatra movies, where Frank was always Frank. The only way to avoid this celebrity wormhole is to elevate the entire proceedings to the level of high camp. Otherwise, Clooney having a drink with Matt Damon as they discuss their upcoming “adventure” becomes just another punchline in a movie-length put-on. The other problem with this Longest Day star system is the need for the movie to constantly update each subplot. Skip this one in favor of Richard Berge’s doc The Rape of Europa, or John Frankenheimer’s The Train, in which Burt Lancaster’s stationmaster tries to thwart a Nazi art train commandeered by Paul Scofield.t

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<< Film

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Imperial films by Erin Blackwell

ovie-going ain’t what it used to be. Films have gone digital. Rare is the exhibitor who will bother lugging film cans up to a projection booth when they can slip a DVD into a machine and press play. Is their resolution really better than my Mac laptop’s? How can local cinemas compete with the Public Library, which offers free three-week DVD rentals from a vast collection? These are questions film-reviewercum-programmer Ruthe Stein sets out to answer with her sixth annual grab-bag of foreign English-language films, the Mostly British Film Festival, starting tonight, Feb. 13, at the Vogue Theater. Stein, a frisky 40-year veteran of the Chronicle’s film pages, bought me a cup of tea on Sacramento Street, in a neighborhood called Presidio Heights. We were right down the street from the intimate, singlescreen, 250-seat, vintage 1912 Vogue Theater, one of two crown jewels, along with the Balboa, now run by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, founded in 2002 to preserve cinema’s footprint in this ever-shrinking town. We met to talk and so she could pass me two brand-new commercial DVDs. She was nervous about me getting them back to her, as they were back-ups

for the festival’s screenings. Mostly British could be called Entirely British, if we understand British to mean not only England, where it all started, but also the ruthlessly colonized neighboring countries Ireland and Scotland, and the erstwhile prison colonies Australia and New Zealand, as well as the great Indian subcontinent, aka the jewel in the crown, the one Queen Victoria was so chuffed about because it made her an Empress. These countries still suffer from the fall-out of British imperialism, and still crank out movies that are implicitly both an homage and critique of Britain’s dreadful obsession with race, sex, and class. Mostly British skews toward homage, actually playing Love, Actually on Valentine’s Day. (Friday, 7 p.m.) The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), directed by Martin Ritt in luscious black-and-white, is a sober, somber, sparse filming of John Le Carré’s breakthrough 1963 novel designed to depict the desperate real-life drudgery of spies, so unlike the sexist, cocksure, capitalist James Bond charades. Richard Burton had already met Elizabeth Taylor, but he still remembered how to act, and he’s simply thrilling in a mufflered, morbid, sneaky, scary Cold War kinda way. Even Claire Bloom is believable as an idealistic shelver

Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965).

of books who gets snookered into a cultural exchange with the East Germans. Need I say more? It doesn’t end well, and that’s to its great credit. (Sunday, 6:30 p.m.) The Hit (1984) was Stephen Frears’ directorial debut, and maybe that’s why Criterion added it to its otherwise prestigious list of DVD releases. I don’t know about you, but watching British hooligans misbehave in Spain to the tune of nearflamenco is my idea of a bad drug trip. Yes, the acting talent is on tap. But where’s the script? Yes, Spain is a gorgeous landscape, but we coulda had Don Quixote, we coulda

Scene from Stephen Frears’ directorial debut The Hit (1984).

had Carmen. Instead, this paean to modern Anglo sociopathy in the guise of a long drawn-out kidnapand-murder scheme seems like a paid vacation for a British film production. At 98 minutes, it’s an hour too long. But the really unforgiveable sin? Fernando Rey, Buñuel’s fetish, who might have injected some metaphysics, is filmed like an extra. (Sunday, 9 p.m.) Byzantium (2012) is a portentous title indicative of the sacrosanct seriousness with which Moira Buffini has adapted her play The Vampire Play to the screen. Sit back, relax, and wallow in two blood-bloated hours of a time-travelling mother-

daughter heterosexist vampire tagteam’s escapades in a gritty seaside town. What prompted the genius who brought us our all-time favorite hermaphrodite-inflected bloody IRA crime caper, The Crying Game, Neil Jordan, to direct? Maybe it’s an Irish thing. Maybe he liked the idea of an enterprising hooker-turnedbrothel-madam as a serial biter. But actress Gemma Arterton is no Miranda Richardson, and bite is just what this film lacks. Yawn. (Wednesday, 9 p.m.)t

into a tale of two families. One day, the small country hospital where their sons were born six years earlier informs both sets of parents that there was a mix-up in the maternity ward, and each took the wrong baby home. Dad #1, Ryota (handsome Masaharu Fukuyama), is a workobsessed big-city architect who never seems to have a day to spare for his homebound wife and their cute six-year-old son, Keita. Dad #2, Yudai (Riri Furanki), is a jovial slob of a shopkeeper who plays like another kid with his little brood, including nightly communal baths. At first, the aloof and shorttempered Ryota thinks like one of his millionaire clients: “I’ll just buy these bumpkins off,” and raise both Keita and Yudai’s 6-year-old, the slightly taller, more stubborn Ryosuke. But Yudai and his cheer-

ful wife resist offers of money and threats of lawsuits. Ryota is suddenly in the uncomfortable position of judging his own fitness as a human being, especially as a dad. Filmmaker Kore-Eda lets the details of the families’ daily lives accumulate slowly, like pebbles in what may turn into a beautiful rock garden. A father discovers just how much his non-blood-related son cares for him when he stumbles upon a treasure of digital photos the little boy has taken of him while he was napping or otherwise preoccupied. Gradually, a once-callous man comes face-to-face with his own demons, including memories of his own neglected childhood, in a sequence where an adult must beg a little boy for the privilege of being thought of as his Dad. See page 27 >>

MBFF runs Feb. 13-20, Vogue Theater, 3290 Sacramento St., SF ($10$12.50). Info: www.cinemasf.com.

Paternity issues by David Lamble

erhaps nothing is as much a shock to our sense of how things should be as a glimpse at how another so-called developed society deals with children in peril. A few years back, Japanese director Hiro-

kazu Kore-Eda floored me with Nobody Knows, a meticulously detailed moral thriller about a quartet of school-kids abandoned in a suburban Tokyo apartment by a mother who remarries and forgets all about them. With the punch of Vittorio De Sica’s Italian neo-realist classic

The Bicycle Thief, Nobody Knows trumps every do-gooder PBS doc in conveying just how little neglected kids matter on a planet groaning under the weight of 7 billion souls. In his latest child-centric tale, Like Father, Like Son, Kore-Eda offers a hint of hope as he plunges us

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February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Terrifying freedom by Richard Dodds

f you go looking for messages in Hir, you’d be well-advised to bring along a stenographer with a big pad. From its first moments until its final tableau, this new play by Taylor Mac at the Magic Theatre is densely packed with crashing sympathies amid the chaos of sudden liberation and upended gender hierarchies. To the victor go the spoils, and the spoils in this case can be a rotting reward. Mac was previously represented at the Magic in 2011, both as actor and playwright, in the nearly five-hour phantasmagoria The Lily’s Revenge. Mac does not appear in his new play, a densely packed two-hour production, and its setting is a simple middle-class house in a second-tier city. But both literally and figuratively, this home looks as if some force has shaken it violently before setting it back on its uneasy foundation. So much household debris has mounted in the house that the front door is no longer usable. “We were getting rid of stuff and stopped caring,” Paige tells her son before he abandons pushing at the blockade and gains entrance through the back door. Isaac is back home from three years of Marine duty in Afghanistan, and it is through his eyes we can see how the family

Jennifer Reiley

Nancy Opel plays a dangerously liberated mother in Hir, Taylor Mac’s play having its world premiere at the Magic Theatre.

home, and the family within it, has changed during is absence. While Paige still looks every bit the happy homemaker, she is surrounded by mountains of unsorted laundry, dirty dishes reaching out to the ceiling, and takeout food containers building new walls in the house. Isaac lets out a shriek when he views the mess, and then a louder one when he sees his father in a night-

Estate sale by Richard Dodds

t’s wild conjecture, but I wonder if playwright Marcus Gardley ever heard the “Movin’ On Up” theme song from The Jeffersons in his head as he wrote The House That Will Not Stand. There are moments in this world-premiere production at Berkeley Rep when we may feel we are approaching the mountaintop with Martin Luther King, only to get a wisecrack that the housekeeper played by Marla Gibbs might have fired at George Jefferson. And even the inspirational oration at the play’s end promises a movin’-on-up world even if it is decades, centuries, in the future. That The House That Will Not Stand is set in 1836 New Orleans also makes room for voodoo, African spiritual re-rooting, slavery, an occasionally reanimated corpse, pulpit-worthy polemics, and the largely forgotten interracial social construct known as placage. But in this handsome black household, run with the iron elegance of a Dowager Countess of Treme, high teas and costume balls are not unknown. That Bay Area playwright Gardley is able to interweave elements so seemingly disparate, and have these tones be able to spin without causing whiplash, is a remarkable feat of playwriting – almost like a dramatic variation on those variety artists who kept rows of plates spinning. Sometimes the plates do

fall, and there are places in the play when a moment or idea may crash, but soon another plate is spinning in its place in director Patricia McGregor’s crisp production. Until the Louisiana Purchase made New Orleans part of the United States and subject to its laws on race, prosperous white citizens could choose to start a second family by paying a kind of dowry to the mother of a fair-skinned mulatto or quadroon, in the parlance of the day. The crisis that sets all of those plot plates spinning is the death of Lazare, a white businessman who had acquired through a placage arrangement the woman who would become the mother of his three grown daughters. But the changing laws have nullified Lazare’s will that would have left the house and other parts of his estate to his second family, and a solution to this calamity is to market one of the daughters at an upcoming quadroon ball. It would be an easy solution, but Beartrice, for reasons that gradually emerge and will give moral heft to the play, is adamantly opposed despite her eldest daughter’s eagerness to land a rich, handsome, and white variation on a husband. Lizan Mitchell is simply fabulous as the imperious, no-nonsense Beartrice, still retaining the beauty and grace that drew the newly departed Lazare to her decades ago. Beartrice has a tart counterpart in the servant Makeda, and Harriet D. Foy shoots

gown, clown makeup, and a giant diaper. Paige is taking pleasurable, sadistic revenge on her abusive husband since his stroke. But that’s only the first chord in Paige’s uncharted, unchained melody. Her teenage daughter has begun transitioning into a gay man, further freaking out Isaac, but enforcing Paige’s own transition from her gender-assigned wife-and-mother role to a danger-

ously anything-goes philosophy. The playwright seems gleeful in keeping us off-balance as liberal kneejerk sentiments take us into ugly territories. Amid the unnerving swerves, Mac also provides richly sardonic humor based both in jabs at popular-culture paradigms and dialogue that isn’t so much about wisecracks as unwise self-revelations. Director Niegel Smith finds

out zingers with delicious deadpan insouciance. Tiffany Rachelle Stewart, Flor De Liz Perez, and Joniece AbbottPratt play Beartrice’s daughters with coming-of-age skittishness, while Petronia Paley has the dual role of a gossipy neighbor and an addled aunt mostly confined to her room. Ray Reinhardt brings powerful

bluster to the role of Lazare, who has a surprising amount of dialogue for a character we first meet embalmed and ready for burial. The House That Will Not Stand, co-commissioned with Yale Rep where it will later run, is a play that takes you to unfamiliar territories, and even as you get your bearings, it twists the plot in unexpected ways.

control and balance in a scenario filled with dramatic hairpin turns. The title of the play, Hir, is the gender pronoun now preferred by the sexually evolving Max, but Hir, the play, really belongs to Paige. And as Paige, Nancy Opel gives a brilliantly alive performance, a heady brew of joy and anger that can be scary in its intensity. Ben Euphrat offers solemn strength as the returning Marine, trying to take in some of the upheaval while fighting for vestiges of a once masculine-dominated environment. Jax Jackson plays Max with an at times endearing uncertainty of the proper degree of masculinity to be mustered. As the stroke-disabled Arnold, Mark Anderson Phillips offers a bravely convincing performance of a bashed man. Hir is billed as an “absurdist comedy,” and while those two words have applicability to the proceedings, the play has a mean streak of terror running through it. Freedom, in this case of restrictive gender norms, is a wonderful thing, but you can’t always color outside the lines without breaking a few crayons, or lives, in the process.t Hir will run at the Magic Theatre through Feb. 23. Tickets are $20$60. Call 441-8822 or go to www.magictheatre.org.

It can go for righteous heights or play for low laughs, but whatever it does, this House party is never boring.t The House That Will Not Stand will run at Berkeley Rep through March 16. Tickets are $29-$59. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to www.berkeleyrep.org.

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Lizan Mitchell, right, indignantly lectures two of her daughters (Joniece Abbott-Pratt and Tiffany Rachelle Stewart) in a scene from the world premiere of The House That Will Not Stand at Berkeley Rep.

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<< Out&About

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

O&A

Paula West @ Feinstein’s at the Nikko The renowned Bay Area jazz vocalist performs an all-new show with her fourpiece band in a special four-week residency at the elegant nightclub. $35-$50; $20 food/beverage min. Thu 8pm, Fri 7pm & 9:30pm, Sat & Sun 7pm. Thru March 9. Hotel Nikko lobby, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.feinsteinssf.com

Out &About

Sat 15 Sheri DeBow’s art

The Scion @ The Marsh Solo performer Brian Copeland’s new show focuses on privilege, murder and sausage in his retelling of the triple murder crime at the Santos Linguisa Factory. $15-$60. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Student and Faculty Concerts @ SF Music Conservatory Arthur Szyk and the Art of the Haggadah

Thu 13

Seasonalities by Jim Provenzano

he moon is full, Walgreen’s Valentines’ candies will be St. Patrick’s green by Sunday, and we press on. Rain may displease some, but our drought-wary majority should enjoy it. Wet, dry or simply moist, celebrate love, or its artistic non-caloric incarnations, at concerts, film screenings, even with an art museum’s naked art scavenger hunt. The options are quite lovely, if not a bit strange.

Thu 13 Arrows Awards @ YBCA Screening Room 2013’s best British commercials are collected in a 72-minute program. Feb 1315, 4pm, 6pm, 8pm. Also Feb 16 at 2pm, 4pm & 6pm. Yerab Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Arthur Szyk and the Art of the Haggadah @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Opening day for a new exhibit of 48 fascinating and richly detailed illustrations of Hebrew stories by the early 20th-century artist (thru June 29). Also; Jason Lazarus: Live Archive, an exhibit of unusual work by the Chicago artist who explores collective public archives, personal memory, and the role of photography and collecting in contemporary art and identity (thru March 23). Also, To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History (thru July 1). 2pm-5pm. Free (members)-$12. Thu-Tue 11am-5pm (Thu 1pm-8pm) 736 Mission St. 655-7800. thecjm.org

Betye LaVette @ Kanbar Hall The veteran blues-gospel vocalist performs in a rare local concert. $35-$45. 8pm. Jewish Community Center, 3200 California St. 292-1233. www.jccsf.org/arts

Company C Ballet @ Lam Research Theater The local contemporary ballet dance company presents its winter season, with a gala fundraiser concert and dinner. Dances include works by Susan Jaffe, Yuri Zhukov, Charles Moulton and Charles Anderson. $25-$48. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 6pm (gala performance; cocktail party, dinner). Sun 3pm. Thru Feb. 16. 701 Mission St. 9782787. www.ybca.org

Dance Brigade @ Dance Mission Theater The politically vibrant women’s dance company presents Hemorrhage: An Ablution of Hope and Despair, a dance installation that explores local and world politics. $15-$25. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 6pm. Extended thru Feb. 15. 3316 24th St. at Mission. (800) 838-3005. www. dancebrigade.org www.dancemission.com

Hir @ Magic Theatre World premiere of Obie Award winner Taylor Mac’s play about Paige, a mother determined to forge a liberated life for her two kids; Isaac, a discharged soldier, and Max, a third-sex youth. $20-$60. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Feb. 23. Fort Mason Center, Building D, 3rd floor. 4418822. www.magictheatre.org

Joe Gore @ El Rio The super-talented guitarist, who’s accompanied Tom Waits, Tracy Chapman, Courtney Love and many others, performs at the monthly Strung Out solo series. 7pm. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

Napoli! @ Geary Theatre American Conservatory Theatre presents Beatrice Basso and Linda Alper’s vivid new translation of Eduardo De Filippo’s poignant Italian comedy about a woman’s black market business during the tumult of World War II in Italy. (Special events include valet parking night Feb 12; Out with A.C.T. Feb 26) $20-$120. Wed-Sun various times. Thru March 9. 415 Geary St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

New and Classic Films @ Castro Theatre Feb. 13: Age of Consent (6:30) and Lolita ( 8:30). Sing-along Annie, 1pm, and Feb. 16, also 1pm. Feb 15, Miami Blues (6pm) and Scarface (8pm). Feb. 16, Baraka (5:05, 9pm) and Samsara (7pm). Feb. 17, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2:30, 8pm) and the first Hunger Games (5:20). Feb 19, Miller’s Crossing (7pm) and Barton Fink (9:10). Feb. 20, On the Waterfront new restored print (7pm) and The Night of the Following Day (9pm). $11. 429 Castro St. 621-6120. www.castrotheatre.com

Nora Chipaumire @ YBCA Forum The New York-based former member of Urban Bush Women, along with her dancers, perform Miriam, an immersive dance-installation work where the audience interacts with performers. $25-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Feb 15. Also, Feb 9, 11am-5pm, 50 Cent Tabernacle features Chipaumire, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Robert Moses. $0.50. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 979-2787. ybca.org

Feb 13, 8pm, $15-$20: violist Kim Kashkashian. Also a musical theatre workshop of Kander & Ebb songs, 8pm (also Feb 14, 8pm, 15, 5pm). Feb 15, 8pm: pianist Steve Bailey. Feb 17, 7:30pm, countertenor Ian Howell. Feb 18, 7:3pm, cellist Alisa Weilerstein. Feb. 19, cello department students, and piano students (separate concerts), both 8pm. 50 Oak St. 503-6215. www.sfcm.edu

Valentine’s Day with Cleis Press @ Books Inc. The Bay Area publisher welcomes three gay authors, the prolific Felice Picano ( Tales: From a Distant Planet ), comic/genre author Rob Rosen ( Vamp, Queens of the Apocalypse ) and Lewis DeSimone ( The Heart’s History) for a celebration of saucy sexy stories. 7:30pm. 2275 Market St. 8646777. www.booksinc.net

Victoria Loustalot @ GLBT History Museum The journalist and California native reads from and discusses her acclaimed memoir, This is How You Say Goodbye, about her gay father’s struggle with the closet and AIDS. $3-$5 (free for members). 7pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Fri 14

SEPTE

Ballet San Jose @ San Jose Center for the Performing Arts

Sinc synony 150 bre pivotal pe the jewe sev

Neoclassical to Now, the company winter season, includes George Balanchine’s Serenade, Jorma Elo’s Glow-Stop and Ohad Naharin’s Minus 6. $30-$105. Fri & Sat 8pm. Feb 16, 1:30pm. 255 S. Almaden Blvd, San Jose. (408) 288-2800. www.BalletSJ.org

Can You Dig It? @ The Marsh Berkeley Don Reed’s autobiographical solo show explores the 1960s: Beatles, Black Panthers, MLK, JFK and the KKK. $20-$50. Sat 8:30pm and Sun 7pm thru March 1. 2120 Allston Way. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

The Color Purple @ Castro Theatre Oscar nominee Margaret Avery makes an appearance and has an onstage interview at the screening of the film adaptation of Alice Walker’s bestselling novel, plus the new documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth, and a performance by BeBe Sweetbriar; produced by Mark Huestis. $11-$35. Gala event 7:30pm. Screening 8:45pm. 429 Castro St. 863-0611. www. markhuestispresents.com www.castrotheatre.com

Escabana in da Moonlight @ Live Oak Theatre, Oakland Theatre First’s production of Jeff Daniels’ comedy about the kooky residents of a deer farm. $15-$30. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun. 5pm. Thru March 8. 1301 Shattuck ave., Berkeley. (510) 981-8150. www.theatrefirst.com

This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with Bulgari. Curator’s Ci and Wells Fargo. Patron’s Circle: Jeri Dexter. Media Sponsor

Sautoir, 1969. Platinum with sapphires and diamonds. Formerly in the collection of Elizabeth Taylor. Bulgari Heri

Gideon’s Knot @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley

Magnificent Magnolias @ SF Botanical Gardens

Johnna Adams’ award-winning twoperson drama between a teacher and a problem student’s mother explores issues of personal responsibility, freedom of expression, bullying and blame. $32-$50. Tue 7pm, Wed-Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm & 7pm. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 8434822. www.auroratheatre.org

See blooming magnolia trees and exhibits. Special events include Feb. 14, Magnolia Cocktails ($40-$50, 5pm-7pm) and Magnolias by Moonlight ($20, 7pm-9pm) with tea and cookies, and a guided night-time tour. Also, daily walking tours and more. Thru March 31. Also, hundreds of species of native wildflowers in a century-old grove of towering Coast Redwoods. Free-$15. Daily. Golden Gate Park. 6612-1316. SFBotanicalGarden.org

Jerusalem @ SF Playhouse Local production of Jez Butterworth’s Tony and Olivier-winning witty British drama, where the values of losing ancient Celtic ruins vs. building council flats compare to the loss of family cohesion. $20-$100. Tue & Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm, Sun 2pm. Thru March 8. 450 Powell St., 2nd. floor. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Entertaining Mr. Sloane @ The Garage Skip Emerson and Vintage West Productions stage gay playwright Joe Orton’s dark satire about kept boys, elder abuse, murder and British incivility. $25. Thu-Sun 8pm. Also Sun 2pm. Thru Feb 23. 715 Bryant St. 586-8634. 715bryant.info

Josh Klipp and The Klipptones @ Palace Hotel The local jazz crooner and his band perform weekly shows at the hotel’s lounge, which draws a growing swing-dance audience. 7pm11pm. 2 New Montgomery. joshklipp.com

Healthier Living @ LGBT Center Openhouse presents weekly workshops for LGBT adults ages 55+ that share information and motivation. Weekly thru March 13. 10am-12:30pm. Community Room 306, 1800 Market St. www.openhouse-sf.org

LA DO

Julia Jackson @ Stage Werx Theatre

Thu 13 Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam Antoine Tempe

Children are Forever (All Sales are Final!), the solo performer’s comic show about motherhood. $15. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru Mar. 22. 446 Valencia St. www.stagewerx.org

Man in a Case @ Berkeley Repertory Mikhail Baryshnikov stars in Annie B. Parson and Paul Lazar’s theatre-dance-music adaptation of two short stories by Anton Chekhov. $45-$125. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed 7pm. Sun 2pm (Jan. 25 7pm). Thru Feb. 26. Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org

A Maze @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players present Just Theater’s production of Rob Handel’s play about three intertwined stories: a teenage girl recovering from a years-long kidnapping, a post-rehab rock band, and an artist dealing with his cult following. $25-$25. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. Thru March 9. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 214-3780. www.justheater.org

Out&About>>

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Monólogos de la Vagina @ Brava Theatre

Feisty Old Jew @ The Marsh

Porchlight Storytelling @ Verdi Club

Eliana Lopez, Marisol Correa and Alba Roversi star in a Spanish language production of The Vagina Monologues. $35-$45. 8pm. Feb 15, 5pm & 8pm. Feb 16, 2pm. 2781 24th St. 641-7657. www. brava.org

Charlie Veron’s new solo show about a fictional elder man who hitches a ride with surfer-hipsters, and rants about what he hates about the 21st century. $25-$100. Sat 8pm, Sun 7pm. Thru March 16. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

The Dating Show features awkward, funny and touching romantic tales from Rachel Balik, Russell RezaKhaliq Gonzaga, Al Lujan, David Jordan and Heather Marlowe. $15$20. 8pm. 2424 Mariposa St. www.verdiclub.net

On the Edge 4 @ SOMArts Cultural Center

Georgia O’Keeffe @ de Young Museum

Annual exhibit of erotic, mostly female, imagery by 26 photographers. $10. 4pm-9pm. Feb 15 1pm-9pm. Feb 16 12pm-5pm. 934 Brannan St. at 9th. www. eroticartevents.com

The Oy of Sex @ The Marsh Alicia Dattner’s solo show explores her life with ex-boyfriends, family, love addiction, and how they all sometimes clash. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat 8:30pm. $20-$100. Thru Feb 22. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Sun 16 Jonathan Biss

Tue 18

Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, a new exhibit of paintings focusing on the artist’s New York landscapes. $25. Thru May 11. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. www.deyoungmuseum.org

It’s Everything @ KOFY-TV Local nightlife host and singer BeBe Sweetbriar’s new streaming web talk show welcomes local celebrities. 7pm. Audience welcome at KOFY-TV, 2500 Marin St. BeBeSweetbriar.com

The House That Will Not Stand @ Berkeley Repertory

Liza Monroy @ Books Inc.

World premiere of local playwright Marcus Gardley’s historical drama about Creole Women in 1830s New Orleans who had common-law marriages with wealthy white men. $29-$59. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Also Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru March 16. Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 6472918. www.berkeleyrep.org

The author of The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took to Keep My Best friend in America, and What It Taught Us About Love, reads from and discusses her book, about same-sex and alternative marriage and unions. 7:30pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

Noontime Concerts @ Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral

Marga Gomez @ The Marsh Lovebirds, the lesbian comic’s new solo show, portrays an array of wacky characters, from different eras, each searching for love. $15$50. Thu & Fri 8pm. Sat. 8:30pm. Thru March 15. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Naked at the Art Museum @ Legion of Honor

OLCE VITA & B EYON D 1950–1990

EM B ER 21, 2013–FEB RUARY 17, 2014

ce its founding in Rome in 1884, Bulgari has become ymous with innovation and luxury in jewelry design. With eathtaking pieces, this exclusive US exhibition highlights a eriod in the evolution of Bulgari’s distinctive Italian style and elry loved and worn by celebrities and jet-setters, including veral from the legendary collection of Elizabeth Taylor.

Golden Gate Park • deyoungmuseum.org

Join in a sultry sexy scavenger hunt for art works that include nude figures. $20 per person, 2pm-4:30pm. Also, Andres Zorn, an exhibit of the Swedish master painter’s works; also, paintings by Matisse from the SF MOMA holdings, and permanent exhibits (ongoing). $10-$25. Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave. 750-3600. legionofhonor.famsf.org

The Speakeasy @ Boxcar Theatre Nick A. Olivero’s immersive up-close experiental theatrical spectacle, where audience members enjoy a three-hour retro-drama while gambling and drinking at a “speakeasy” dive bar. $60-$90. Thu, Fri & Sat, admission times 7:40-8pm. Thru March 15. (hush! Address provided for guests only!) www.boxcartheatre.org

Our Vast Queer Past @ GLBT History Museum See the exhibits, Vicki Marlane: I’m Your Lady, which displays video, images and ephemera documenting the pioneering local drag, cabaret and carnival perfomer, known for decades of performances. Thru Feb 28. Also, The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus: Celebrating 35 Years of Activism Through Song, includes archival materials from the historic chorus. And, Premarital Bonds: Creating Family Before Marriage Equality. Other permanent exhibits as well. Reg. hours Mon-Sat 11am-7pm (closed Tue.) Sun 12pm5pm. 4127 18th St. 621-1107. glbthistory.org

ircle: Mr. and Mrs. Carl F. Pascarella. Benefactor’s Circle: Mrs. George Hopper Fitch, Dr. Alan R. Malouf,

Queer Dharma @ SF Zen Center

itage Collection. Photograph by Antonio Barrella, Studio Orizzonte Roma

Monthly Zen Buddhist meditation and discussion group for LGBTQ people and friends, with speaker Jisan Tova Green. Free/ donations. 1pm-3pm. 300 Page St. sfzc.org

The Paris Letter @ New Conservatory Theatre Center Jon Robin Baitz’ drama concerns a Wall Street powerhouse who finds his personal and professional life threatened by the unraveling secrets of his past. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Feb. 23. 25 Van Ness Ave. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

The Pornographer’s Daughter @ Z Below Liberty Bradford Mitchell’s one-woman show tells her story of growing up on the fringes of an X-rated world as the daughter of notorious pornography pioneer Artie Mitchell; performed with the three-piece band The Fluffers; directed by Michael T. Weiss. $32. Thu-Sat 8pm. Also Sat 10pm. Sun 5pm. Thru Feb. 16. 470 Florida St. www.PDtheplay.com

Ubu Roi @ Exit on Taylor Cutting Ball Theater’s production of Alfred Jarry’s 1896 parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (the original premiere induced riots, and is considered a pivotal early experimental absurd comedy), newly translated by Rob Melrose. $10-$50. Thu 7:30, Fri & Sat 8pm, Sat 2pm, Sun 5pm. Thru Feb. 23. 277 Taylor St. 525-1205. www.cuttingball.com

San Francisco Symphony @ Davies Symphony Hall Feb 14, 8pm, the symphony performs works by Mozart, Sibeius, and Tchaikovsky. Feb. 15, 8pm. A Night at the Oscars, with performances of works from the scores of films The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur, Citizen Kane, An American in Paris and The Wizard of Oz. Feb. 16, 3pm, Paul Jacons, organ recital. Feb. 19, 8pm, works by Haydn and Rimsky-Korsakov (also Feb 20, 2pm, 21 at 6:30 and 22 at 8pm). Feb 20, 8pm, pianist Murray Perahia performs works by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin. $15$152. 864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org

SF Hiking Club @ Sweeney Ridge Join GLBT hikers for a 12-mile hike that goes along Sweeney Ridge, where in 1769 Portola became the first European to see SF Bay. From the cliffs of Mori Point on the Peninsula coast, the Farallons may be visible. Bring water, lunch, hat, layers, good hiking shoes, sunscreen. Carpool meets 9am at Safeway sign, Market & Dolores. 740-9888. www.sfhiking.com

Sheri DeBow @ Modern Eden Gallery Opening reception for Nightmares and Daydreams from Beyond Toyland, the artist’s first solo exhibit of beautifully creepy dolls and nocturnal creatures. Also, Nostalgia, a group exhibit of paintings and other works depicting the artists’ childhood toys. 6pm-10pm. Thru March 1. Tue-Sat 10am-6pm. 403 Francisco St. www.ModernEden.com

Sun 16 Igor Sazevich @ Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station Opening reception for an exhibit of the Inverness painter’s works, at the scenic Headlands arts center. 3pm-5pm. Reg. hours Wed-Mon 11am-5pm. 11101 Highway One, Point Reyes Station. www.galleryrouteone.org

Jonathan Biss @ Hertz Hall, Berkeley The acclaimed pianist performs works by Brahms, Kurtág, Chopin and Beethoven. $32. 3pm. Bancroft Way at College Ave., UC Berkeley campus. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

Mon 17 Ginger Snap @ Glama-Rama Exhibit of abstract sculptural works by the local drag performer and DJ, at the local hair salon. Thru Mar. 2. 304 Valencia St. 861-4526. www.glamarama.com

Linedrives and Lipstick @ SF Public Library The Untold Story of Women’s Baseball, an exhibit of images, and ephemera that, with text, tells the story of the world of women’s baseball since the 1870s. Thru March 16. Jewett Gallery, main branch, 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org

Brian Thorsett (tenor), Adam Cockerham (lute and theorbo), Danielle Reutter-Hannah (mezzo-soprano) and Natalie Carducci (violin) perform the music of Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, Stephen Foster and Benjamin Britten. $5. 12:30pm. 660 California St. at Grant. noontimeconcerts.com

Wed 19 David Toussaint @ Books Inc. The author of DJ: The Dog Who Rescued Me reads from and discusses his photo and story book about his recovery from depression, thanks to a loving dog. 7:30pm. 2275 Market St. 864-6777. booksinc.net

Smack Dab @ Magnet Poet and storyteller Blythe Baldwin is the featured artists at the monthly eclectic reading and performance open mic, hosted by Larry-bob Roberts and Dana Hopkins. Sign-up 7:30. Show 8pm. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

Yoga: The Art of Transformation @ Asian Art Museum New exhibit of visual art representing the 2,500-year-old health practice. Also, Proximities 3: Import/Export, an exhibit that explores Asian uses of commodities and ideas; thru Feb. 23. Special events include a Lunar New Year celebration Feb 2, and a Year of the Horse celebration Feb 9. Free (members)-$12. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. asianart.org

Thu 20 Geoff Hoyle @ The Marsh, Berkeley The veteran comic actor returns with his solo show, Geezer, a nostalgic meditation on his lengthy career and life. $25-$50. Thu 8pm. Sat. 5pm. Thru March 1. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. themarsh.org

The Music Man @ Berkeley Playhouse The East Bay youth theatre company performs Meredith Wilson’s Tony Awardwinning musical about a con artist and small town values. $17-$60. Thu & Fri 7pm. Sat 1pm & 6pm. Sun 12pm & 5pm. Thru Mar. 23. Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave., Berkeley. (510) 845-8542. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org

Pacific Orchid Exhibition @ Festival Pavilion The 62nd annual flower show showcases thousands of rare and beautiful orchids for sale, along with gardening retailers and other products. $13-$55. Feb. 20 gala preview (benefits the SF Conservatory of Flowers), 6:30-10pm. Feb 14, 10am-6pm. Feb 15, 9am-6pm. Feb. 16, 10am-5pm. Fort Mason Center, www.orchidsanfrancisco.org

Sat 15 Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt @ Downtown, Chinatown The annual urban adventure celebrates The Year of the Horse, with thousands of participants on teams searching for clues and prizes. $20-$50. Check-in 3:30pm. 4:30-9pm. Start at Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero at Market St. www.SFTreasureHunts.com

Thu 13

Entertaining Mr. Sloane

Wed 19 Blythe Baldwin at Smack Dab

To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication. For bar and nightlife events, go to www.bartabsf.com, and our new merged section, www.ebar.com/bartab

<< Lavender Tube

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Freezing through the Winter Games by Victoria A. Brownworth

e are definitely calling this the winter of our discontent. After several days in the dark with no heat out on the East Coast in an ice storm President Obama called the worst storm since Hurricane Sandy, we were yearning for the West Coast and the – oh, wait – drought and water rationing. Whither climate change efforts, oh leaders? Does all of California have to be on fire, and all the Midwest and Northeast encased in ice for those in Congress to get it? Obama said in the SOTU that climate change is no longer a matter for debate. So let’s move on before hell literally freezes over. Those scenes on the national news of millions without power, and millions more without water? That’s actually us, people, in February. Just imagine what it’s going to be like in July. Speaking of the political being personal, how about all the subversion at the Olympics, eh? If we couldn’t have Pussy Riot, we would be content with t.A.T.u., the faux-lesbian pop duo from Russia whose inclusion in the opening ceremonies in Sochi was a big FU to Pres. Putin’s anti-gay laws. Obama already offered his own metaphoric middle finger by refusing to attend the Games. The handpicked U.S. delegation includes former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (long-rumored to be a lesbian, but says she’s just a “straight workaholic”) and openly gay athletes and former Olympians Brian Boitano and Caitlin Cahow. Tennis great Billy Jean King had also been slated for the delegation, but was forced to withdraw two days before the Olympic opener when her

elderly mother became ill. Cahow won a bronze medal in 2006 and a silver medal in 2010 as a member of the U.S. Women’s Ice Hockey Team. Cahow told USA Today sports editor Christine Brennan, “I’m very proud to be representing the LGBT community. I think it’s just an honor in every possible way.” San Franciscan Boitano, whom we always loved on the ice, has long been a gay favorite, even making icon status with his own song on South Park, “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” Boitano was the first American to land a triple axel (yes, we’re a figure-skating geek) in 1982, and he brought home the gold in 1988. He also competed in 1984 and 94. Boitano had a show on the Food Network, What Would Brian Boitano Make?, and appeared on KQED’s Check, Please! Bay Area, as well as in several films. At Sochi, Boitano was succinct. “We feel very strongly about the official U.S. message: tolerance and diversity. Everyone knows why we’re here. We’ve made it obvious and quite public as to why Caitlin and I are supporting the delegation and are here. I think Russians know that, I think Americans know that, and we’re proud to come from a country who supports tolerance and diversity, and we stand strong.” Cahow told Brennan she was particularly aware of the millions in Russia’s LGBT community who would be watching the U.S. delegation. Cahow said, “If there’s one person sitting out there watching me on television and realizing that there’s someone like them out there, and there is the opportunity that one day you may feel safe and you can live your life, that’s what I want to be

able to do.” Cahow also said she was “grateful and honored to be part of a country that is shifting the dialogue.” Brennan said she liked how Boitano put it: “Just by getting off the plane we’re making a statement.” Elsewhere at Sochi, gay Dutch snowboarder Cheryl Maas raised a rainbow fist at a snowboarding event. We expect more such statements as the games continue. We also expect to “bring home the gold,” as Obama stated the Americans would do during his SOTU address. Athletes to watch are Lindsey Van and Sarah Hendrickson competing in the first-ever Women’s Ski Jumping event, another move toward gender parity in the Olympics. Athletes have lobbied to include this for years. Van, 29, has been competing in international events since 2002. Van was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, asserting that women were being discriminated against by disallowing the ski jump for women. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, and Van spoke out, calling the Canadian legal system “weak.” She also, in referencing the sexism of not allowing international female competitors to compete in a sport men competed in, said the International Olympic Committee were “like the Taliban of the Olympics.” Van goes into the Sochi Olympics with a gold medal in the World Ski Championship, having won eight Continental Cup victories. Ted Ligety is expected to win gold for the U.S. in giant slalom skiing. Meryl Davis and Charlie White are also to be watched. The ice-dancing pair are the defending world champions, and are hoping to be the first American ice-dancing pair ever to win gold. Other Americans to watch are Jeremy Abbott and Jason Brown in men’s figure skating, and speed

Faux-lesbian pop duo t.A.T.u. appeared at the Winter Games’ opening ceremonies.

skater Shani Davis, the first black competitor from any country to win gold in an individual sport in the Winter Games in 2006 at Turin, Italy. He won for 1,000 meter speed skating. He also won silver in the 1,500 meter skate. He has set eight world records, three of them still holding. He won gold and silver again at Vancouver in 2010. He’s a favorite for Sochi. For women’s figure skating there are three Americans: Gracie Gold, 18; Polina Edmunds, 15; and Ashley Wagner, 22. Wagner was the 2012 & 13 American titleholder, the first repeat ladies’ national champion since Michelle Kwan. Snowboarding champion Shaun White pulled out of the slopestyle competition the day before the opening, saying the Sochi track was too dangerous. The controversial move will cost the U.S. snowboarding team both a spot and a medal. We’ve loved the winter Olympics since we were very young, and there are amazing athletes to watch at Sochi.

Green Arrow

Meanwhile, the CW’s Arrow is fast becoming one of our favorite spot-the-LGBT-character shows (starring lesbian heartthrob Bex Taylor-Klaus, whom we loved as the young lesbian Bullet on AMC’s The Killing last season). The show is based on the Marvel Comics Green Arrow superhero series. Leading man Stephen Amell said on Facebook that Arrow would be taking a “mini-hiatus so people can grit their teeth and suffer through an Olympic Games marred by homophobia.” Amell’s comment has received nearly a million likes on his fan page. He has been a strong supporter of LGBT rights, saying of the Edie Windsor case last year, “Marriage should be available to everybody. Some of the most loving, powerful relationships I’ve witnessed have been same-sex couples. Equal rights for all.” And that’s another like. If you like superheroes, Amell doesn’t just play one, he also wants to be one. And who wouldn’t love a pic of the hunky Amell on their (Facebook) wall? Meanwhile, the episode prior to the hiatus featured Black Canary (Caity Lotz) coming out as bisexual. She revealed she had an affair with Nyssa al Ghul (Katrina Law). Oh yes. This is the first time female superheroes in a Marvel screen product have come out into the LGBT universe. There are LGBT characters in the comics, they just never seem to come out when they hit the screen. What’s up with that? In ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Victoria Hand (Saffron Burrows) has not come out. Yet in the comic she is an out lesbian. Sigh. So: good news about Black Canary (although she immediately went into lip-lock with Arrow). Fingers tapping about Agent Hand. We admit we stopped watching CBS’ Two and a Half Men after Charlie Sheen had his meltdown and was removed from the show. He was the glue that held everything

together, and cute as Ashton Kutcher is, he is no replacement for the deadpan hilarity that Sheen brought to his role. We wanted to try watching again when Amber Tamblyn joined the cast as Jenny, Charlie’s long-lost lesbian daughter. We really like Tamblyn, whom we loved as Emily Quartermaine on ABC’s General Hospital, as Joan of Arcadia, and in her stint on House. We have seen the last few episodes of Two and a Half Men, and it’s taken a gay turn. Tamblyn is fabulous as Jenny, a soft-butch ladies’ woman. Jenny is wry, deadpan, and a serial philanderer like her late father. John Cryer’s Alan is now playing foil to Jenny’s sexual conquests as well as Walden’s (Ashton Kutcher). Yet in a weird twist, Alan and Walden began playing gay to help Alan’s mother Evelyn (deliciously brutal Holland Taylor) land a new husband (Carl Reiner). Couple this (no pun intended) with Jenny and her latest babe, Brooke (Aly Michalka), and TAAHM is turning into quite the queer fest. On the Feb. 4 episode, there was this exchange as Jenny and Brooke are making breakfast: Jenny says to Alan and Walden that they are making breakfast and are very hungry. “Hungry hungry lesbos. It’s like Hungry Hungry Hippos, except we don’t eat balls.” “How do you know when you’ve won?” Alan asks as Brooke slithers over Jenny. “Trust me, you know,” she says. Later, Walden has a flat tire and Brooke starts to change the tire, explaining a former boyfriend showed her how. Both Walden and Jenny say “boyfriend” at the same time, Walden hopefully, Jenny disdainfully. “I thought you were a gold star!” Jenny says, referencing lesbians who have never slept with men. Yeah, it’s that gay now. We have a feeling we’re going to be watching weekly. Another show we rarely watch is Piers Morgan Live on CNN. We like watching Morgan take down gun nuts, but a little of his snide Britishness goes a long way. We missed his show with transgender celeb Janet Mock, but the Twittersphere was alive with discussion of it, so we waited for the next show where Mock claimed misgendering was the same as murder. We cannot possibly describe the two-part drama, watch for yourselves. But we will say that a close friend of ours who is a young transwoman said she thought Morgan was respectful, just asking questions like he always does, and she thought Mock “wasn’t helpful.” We just think if you are doing the talk show circuit to discuss your new memoir, people are going to ask you questions about it. We had trouble with Mock suggesting that underage sex work was a glamorous rite of passage for young trans women. We’ve covered far too many stories of transwomen sex workers being brutalized or murdered to think that makes any sense. But watch for yourselves. Something else that doesn’t make sense to us are these two tidbits: Democratic political pundit James Carville is going to Fox News, and gay American Idol alum Clay Aiken is running for office. This winter really is harsh on everyone, isn’t it? Rachel Fredrickson became the latest winner of NBC’s Biggest Loser before NBC headed into the Olympics. She went from 260 lbs. to 105, and in the reveal, gay trainers Jillian Michael and Bob Harper looked shocked when Fredrickson walked out looking almost gaunt after losing 60% of her body weight. Harper said he was stunned by her weight loss, and Michael looked gobsmacked. Was it too much? Fredrickson’s BMI was below normal, See page 25 >>

Music>>

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

A dozen divas by Gregg Shapiro

lue-eyed soul diva ZZ Ward is in possession of some powerful pipes. Coming closest to being Adele’s biggest Stateside threat, Ward is the complete package. Not only did she write (or co-write) all 13 tunes on her debut disc Til the Casket Drops (Hollywood), but Ward also sings the heck out of them. The title cut sets the mood, but it’s the thumping second number “Put the Gun Down” that blows the lid off the party. What’s important here is that Ward doesn’t come off as just another Adele adherent. She demonstrates that she has her own perspective, which comes through clearly on “Cryin Wolf” (featuring Kendrick Lamar), the retro ring of “Save My Life,” the acoustic “Last Love Song,” the stomp and shake of “Move Like U Stole It” and the golden blues of “Charlie Ain’t Home.” Sing to the Moon (Columbia) by Laura Mvula is one of those debut albums that announces the arrival of a major talent. Moon rises on the strength of Mvula’s marvelous voice, which can be soothing one moment and stirring the next (sometimes in the same song, as in “Like the Morning Dew”). Mvula raises the roof on the handclapping/foot-stomping gospel of “Green Garden,” then lulls us with comforting “Can’t Live Without the World.” And so it goes with the retro rhythms of “That’s Alright,” followed by the gorgeous “She” and “I Don’t Know What the Weather Will Be.” “Diamonds” brings the disc to a shimmering close. Dedicated to the memory of her late father, Patty Griffin’s cathartic American Kid (New West) is a heartbreaking song cycle of loss. With a voice that has long been able to reduce even the most stoic among us to tears, Griffin aims for five or more hankies with “Faithful Son,” “Highway Song,” “That Kind of Lonely” and “Gonna Miss You When You’re Gone.” Griffin provides relief on the drinking song “Get Ready Marie” and the raw “Don’t Let Me Die in Florida.” A remarkable achievement, American Kid is a vast improvement on the unfortunate misstep of Downtown Church. Jessie Ware comes from the tradition of blue-eyed British songbirds with 80s flair including Lisa Stansfield, Mari Wilson and Annie Lennox. The wisest move she makes on her excellent debut album Devotion (Cherrytree/Interscope) is to avoid treading on Adele or the late Amy Winehouse. Instead, Ware pays her respects to those who preceded her while putting her own unique spin on the sound. “If You’re Never Gonna Move,” “Running” and “Something Inside” best illustrate

Lavender Tube

From page 24

but not yet in the anorexic stage. But the show can’t really set contestants up to win $250,000 for losing the most weight and not think at some point a contestant might take it too far. That’s what happened here. We’re pretty sure that by the time the next season starts, no one will care one iota. The sudden, tragic death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman from heroin was the focus of all the tabloid TV shows last week. Showrunner and producer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) spoke out about sharing addiction stories with Hoffman in a poignant essay in Time. Sorkin talked about how the news of Hoffman’s death would save 10 lives, and that Hoffman himself had presaged this. On ABC, World News reporter Cecilia Vega had the Hoffman story

Ware’s mad skills as a performer and songwriter. The dance-oriented “Imagine It Was Us” definitely qualifies as a bonus track. Neon goth goddess Charli XCX co-wrote Icona Pop’s inescapable hit single “I Love It,” but don’t hold that against her. She saved the good stuff for her own debut album True Romance (IAMSOUND/Atlantic). “Nuclear Seasons” recalls Shona Laing, “You (Ha Ha Ha)” incorporates a giddy Gold Panda sample, and “Take My Hand” give Ke$ha a run for her money. Charli XCX gets emotional on “Set Me Free,” and it suits her. “So Far Away” goes the distance, and “What I Like” is a tasty tease. She waits until the thorny “Black Roses” to strut her dance-floor stuff. Don’t you just hate it when you discover that an artist may have blown her wad on her first or second album? Such is the case with india. arie. Occupying space on the same shelf as Tracy Chapman, Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill, india.arie hit it big with her well-received debut Acoustic Soul, with instant classics “Video” and “Brown Skin.” She maintained the momentum on the Grammy Award-winning Voyage to India, but faltered after that. Her latest, Songversation (Motown/Soulbird), is only a minor improvement. Still conjuring Stevie Wonder, Songversation opens with the instrumental “Soulbird Intro,” pure Wonder. “Nothing That I Love More” namechecks the soul legend, and “Flowers” could be a lost, late-70s Wonder tune. We get it, india.arie worships Wonder, but who doesn’t? Songversation is at its most compelling when india. arie “breaks the shell,” as she does on “Just Do You.” Grand dame Sarah Brightman continues her conquest for the classical crossover crown. Perhaps best-known as ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Webber’s muse (Phantom of the Opera), Brightman has been the reigning crossover queen for 20 years, blending operatic vocals and performance with a poporiented style. On Dream Chaser (Simha), she once again swirls the worlds of pop and classical for an out-of-the-world experience. Pop selections including Wings’ “Veand a little more. She revealed that her father, Raul, had been a heroin addict. “He was a heroin addict before I was born. He was a heroin addict when I was a child. And ultimately, it got the best of him.” Vega intercut Hoffman’s story with her father’s. We act like addiction is over in this country, but many of us are at risk. Hoffman thought he was over his addiction, but in interviews that ran after his death you could see that he still had a love for that high. A love that shut out his partner and their three young children. It’s America’s darkest secret, how many mothers, fathers, boyfriends, girlfriends and kids are doing drugs to self-medicate against their personal pain. So for the tragic and the hopeful stories we see on the tube every day, for the quest for those elusive medals and the protests of the civil rights abuses, for the hard-drinking Jenny and the sexy boys on Looking, you really must stay tuned.t

nus and Mars,” Sia’s “Breathe Me,” Sigur Ros’ “Glosoli” (English lyrics by Squeeze’s Chris Difford) and Elbow’s “One Day Like This” are all treated with respect. For a while there, it looked like Fantasia was going to be just another washed-up American Idol casualty. Recent public outbursts, including a homophobic rant, put what remained of her career at risk. But Fantasia is nothing if not full of surprises, and still she rises with

Side Effects of You (19/RCA), the best of her four albums. Fantasia introduces us to her inner Macy Gray on “Get It Right,” unleashes the Beyonce within on “So Much To Prove” and finds an island groove on “Ain’t All Bad.” Fantasia cusses up a storm on “Lighthouse” and makes good use of a Commodores sample on “Lose To Win.” Paula Cole once sang “where have all the cowboys gone,” but since the beginning of the 21st century, the same question could have been asked of Cole. Her time on Decca didn’t yield the same results as her successful Warner Bros. years. On Raven (675), Cole’s first disc on her own label, she deserves to return to the fore. From the Joni Mitchellesque “Sorrow on the Hudson” to the bouncy story pop of “Eloise” and more sonically daring fare such as “Imaginary Man” and “Red Corsette,” Cole proves she remains a songwriter of note. On Is Your Love Big Enough? (Nonesuch), Lianne La Havas

makes her mark in a big way. The raucous title cut smoothly transitions into the gorgeous “Lost & Found,” giving listeners an idea of La Havas’ flexibility. This is not Courtney Jaye’s first time at the music circus. Earlier, Jaye released an album on Island and had a minor hit with the song “Can’t Behave.” Her latest disc Love and Forgiveness (courtneyjaye. com) references the pop sound of the 1970s but adds a twist of twang (“Summer Rain”) for good measure. Jaye’s voice is the selling point here, powerful and pretty. As the title I Thought About You: A Tribute to Chet Baker (Concord) implies, Brazilian jazz pianist and vocalist Eliane Elias pays homage to the one and only trumpeter and singer. Snappy and jazzy as you’d expect a set of tunes linked to Baker to be, Elias is nothing if not reverent. The pleasure of the disc is in the nuances Elias uncovers in her interpretations, as well as hearing these standards with a subtle Brazilian accent.t

<< Books

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Save the children by Brian Jackle

A Song for Lost Angels: How Daddy and Papa Fought to Save Their Family by Kevin FisherPaulson; Fearless Books. $16.95 dare anyone to read the candid book A Song for Lost Angels and not be convinced that LGBTQ

people can be suitable parents. The devotion, attention, and unconditional love the Fisher-Paulsons showed to their foster children were staggering, and rival any that heterosexual parents show their sons and daughters. What sets their story apart is the devastating ending to their paternal journey. Experiencing an epiphany after

reading a fortune cookie in 1999, Kevin Fisher-Paulson, a Captain of the Honor Guard for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, and his partner Brian, a dancer and dance teacher, decide they want to have children. After a two-year period of paperwork and moving to a more kid-friendly house in a new SF neighborhood, the couple become foster parents of triplets born to a schizophrenic drug addict. All three babies weigh less than five pounds, and one of them suffers a punctured intestine, and requires surgery to repair a heart valve. They name the children Vivienne, Joshua, and Kyle, whom they hope eventually to adopt, assured by social workers that it is very unlikely that the birth mother, who has little maternal concern for the babies and had abused a previous child who had been removed from her care, would ever regain custody. They learn parenting by trial and fire, enlisting relatives, neighbors, and friends to help them. They learn how to feed the babies and change their diapers. There are milestones such as teething and a first Christmas with Kyle in an Oakland hospital in critical condition. Brian and Kevin, who now call each other Papa and Daddy, take turns visiting Kyle, singing Broadway show tunes (Gypsy) and TV theme songs (Gilligan’s Island) to him after intestinal surgery, learning how to change his ileostomy bag. Eventually Kyle’s intestine will be rejoined and his digestive system restored. Kevin writes, “The witty gay couple with lots of time for canapés

and cocktails had quickly turned into two sleep-deprived middle-aged men.” Colleagues and friends comment how more nurturing, gentler, and patient Kevin has become during his year of parenting. A few months later, a new social worker tells them she is urging reunification of the babies with their birth mother, believing the love of a woman, even a mentally ill, incompetent one, is better for the babies than the love of two men. The couple spend all their money on a lawyer to keep their babies, while the state pays three lawyers for the mother. In March 2004, they go to court with open acknowledgment that the birth mother is barely equipped to parent. But an unsympathetic judge decrees the babies be reunited with their mother and less-thanhonest grandmother. A new social worker argues the triplets will now have a “real mother” watching over them, “who will provide some morals, something two gay men could never do.” The scene where Fisher and Paulson surrender the children

to authorities is both heartbreaking and outrageous, the social worker’s car running outside while they race inside to retrieve the babies. The couple has been betrayed by a system meant to protect them and their children. They learn almost three years later that the triplets, having been abused, were removed from the birth mother and sent to live with a relative in Fresno. After two months, deciding not to give in to loss, malice, or bitterness, Brian and Kevin opt to try foster care again. In June 2004, they foster Zane, born to a crack-addicted mother, and two years later another boy, Aidan, is taken in, with both boys eventually adopted. By describing in personal, spiritually attuned (the couple are members of Most Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic Church in the Castro), often humorous detail their joys, struggles, and emotional highs and lows as parents, the couple makes the case that families come in many different forms, but the basic pattern of loving concern and sacrifice remains the same for all caring parents. California is one of six states that have protective anti-discrimination statutes in place for same-sex foster parents. Yet, as the Fisher-Paulson case reveals, these laws can’t protect from bigoted lawyers and social workers. Needed are not only a legal revolution, but a social one in how LGBT people are viewed as equivalent to heterosexuals, as proficient in all kinds of love as anyone.t

The lyricism of AIDS by Jim Piechota

Clay: Poems by David Groff; Trio House Press, $16 edicated to and greatly inspired by Clay Williams, Groff ’s partner of 17 years, Clay, a collection of moody, inspired verse, is a serpentine journey, a tour of the multilayered deliverance of love and the finite complexion of time, often viewed through the lens of a debilitating, stigmatized disease. An accomplished, award-winning poet and creative writing instructor at the City College of New York, Groff has produced a thin yet potent three-part volume consisting of 41 poems. These pieces flirt with the deeper, darker sides of life; they also memorialize the legion lost by the ravages of disease (“To Men Dead in 1995,” “Dead AIDS Poet Archive”). Just when the melancholy tones threaten to overwhelm, Groff inserts a comical gem, a sexy line, or a bitchy verse to reboot the reader’s heart and mood. Passionate expressions and dedications of true love can be found in the entertaining opener “Clay’s Flies,” where the author tends to

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Margaret Avery

From page 18

day. I also set my alarm for 2 a.m. and ate vanilla bean ice cream. As we shot, Steven allowed me to see the dailies. My arms were bigger, you could see definition. I glowed. Thank you, Jesus!” The Color Purple was a definite step up for Avery. “Before that I did B and Blaxploitation films,” she recalled. “To work on a really classy film set was fabulous.” As the film was shot, co-star Oprah Winfrey, already a popular fixture on Chicago TV, was beginning her ascent into super-stardom. “Oprah got syndicated during the filming of the movie,” Avery recalled. “She was shooting several

his partner’s experimental HIV medicinal regimen with the same fervor he uses to “pull Clay up behind a dune,/and yank his bathing suit to his knees” to deliver a blowjob, all while irritating sand flies buzz about them. His group tribute to four boyhood friends in “We Boys Pull Down Our Pants” forms a nostalgic homage to “boys inching into men,/becoming good at being hard.” Groff ’s lyrical eloquence is again on fine display in the couplet “Fire Island Song,” where he writes of walking the beach alone, remembering a lover who committed incremental suicide with “drink and drugs,” remarking, “It would be nice if you weren’t dead.” Groff singles out individuals in other poems like his octogenarian father, who is profiled in “My Father, A Priest, Pruning”; celebrated author Paul Monette (Groff edited Monette’s last two novels); his mother, whom he paints in delicate prose about her knee surgery and her life and death; and of course, his beloved Clay. Also profound is the collection’s shows a day, going back and forth between the TV studio and film set. We could see who she was becoming even then. Producer Quincy Jones remarked that Oprah was going to be a very powerful woman.” Avery reiterated what many African American actors have said: it’s often difficult to get cast. “You want to continue working,” she said. “But we were limited. There wasn’t a Tyler Perry or a Spike Lee in those days.” But talent won out, and Avery amassed an impressive list of credits in her post-Purple career. She currently appears as Gabrielle Union’s mom in the BET series Being Mary Jane. “My character has Lupus,” she said. “I hope that the show will raise awareness of the disease. I know people who have

closing poem “Epithalamion,” a piece limned with Buddhist overtones as it speaks to the eternal marriage of life and death, how death is ever-present in life, and the ways in which that bittersweet synergy becomes a part of us forever. As a whole, Groff ’s creation is a brilliant rumination on the human condition, whether it exists in a state of grace or is lost in the cruel clutches of disorder.t Lupus, and it can be devastating.” Avery says she’s delighted to be coming to the Castro Theatre, and invites people to come and greet her. She will be available for autographs at 6:30 p.m. In addition to Avery’s appearance and the film screening, the evening will include an excerpt from the new documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth. Filmmaker Pratibha Parmar will introduce the clip.t Purple is the Warmest Color: A Valentine’s Day Celebration of The Color Purple, Fri., Feb. 14, Castro Theater, 429 Castro St. Tickets ($35 VIP, includes entry to Ms. Avery’s signing; $25 includes film & stage show; $11 film only): www.ticketfly. com/purchase/event/447751. Info: (415) 863-0611

Music>>

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Doing Porpora proud by Jason Victor Serinus

ow many superlatives can you fit into one review before you either make a desperate dash for the thesaurus or simply cry, “Bravo?” Such is the dilemma faced while luxuriating in gay countertenor Philippe Jaroussky’s artistry on Farinelli Porpora Arias, his new CD with the Venice Baroque Orchestra that includes two duets with the incomparable mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli. On this collection of 11 arias written for Porpora’s star pupil, the fabled castrato Farinelli, soft and caressing selections alternate with wild romps. The recital opens with “Mira in cielo” (“Look up to Heaven”), an aria that puts Jaroussky’s coloratura mastery to the test. True, when he whips into a rapid string of high notes with a palpable fury that

Colin Bailey

From page 17

Into this morass stepped Mr. Bailey, a reserved, Oxford Universityeducated art history scholar with a specialty in 18th and 19th-century French art, who had served as Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Frick Collection in New York. A couple of weeks before moving to San Francisco, Bailey, who’s in his late 50s, married his partner of over 25 years, Alan Wintermute, an expert on Old Masters at Christie’s auction house. Diplomatic and well-spoken, the London native appears to have a mix of steely determination and wry humor that should help him navigate his new post, and perhaps restore FAMSF’s reputation, which has suffered of late. During our recent conversation, he expressed a love of Fragonard and Renoir, whom he’s written three books about, and touched on a range of issues confronting the museums he now heads. Sura Wood: How does one go from being the son of a London hairdresser to a life in the upper echelons of the art world? Colin Bailey: I was fortunate in that my brother was the musician, I was the academic. After studying history, I took a course at Oxford on French art history and found it so interesting I switched disciplines and continued to work on a doctorate in 18th-century French painting, hence my love of Fragonard. My first experience of American life was a year spent as a fellow in the paintings department at the Old Getty in Malibu. I went from living and working in Paris to learning to drive a car in Los Angeles. It was a big move. So began my North American career, my 13 years at the Frick, and my return to California. I think of myself really as American now. Is there a work of art you covet for the museum? I covet Chardin. Everything he painted was marvelous. And to own for yourself, if money were no object? A glorious painting by Watteau. Is there a museum show you’ve seen that particularly struck you?

Now playing

From page 20

Oscar Nominated Short Documentary Film (currently playing at Landmark Theatres): Facing Fear Director Jason Cohen’s parable on the possibilities of forgiveness opens on slightly out-of-focus shots of nighttime L.A. Two voices begin a haunting story that touches every angle on urban violence, from queer-bashing to the role of

recalls Bartoli at her best, he occasionally emits an unfortunate “eep” that reminds us that the falsetto voice has a restricted color palette. But once we accept this unavoidable limitation, we can only marvel at Jaroussky’s accomplishment. Regardless of whether Porpora’s compositions convey the nuances of character and emotion with the same exalted mastery as do Handel’s, Jaroussky’s sympathy with Porpora’s idiom is so total that, even before you read the translations, you will almost always know what an aria is about. Who cannot help but warm to Jaroussky’s gentle and loving rendition of “Sì pietoso il tuo labbro” (“Since You Speak so Sympathetically”) from Porpora’s opera Semiramide Riconosciuta (1729), or lose oneself in the caressing sounds of a dreaming lover’s heart? As must be obvious, I can’t. Although it’s clear

that the countertenor’s laudable capacity for long-breathed lines is taxed at the aria’s end, the singing at the beginning of the da capo section (recapitulation) is ravishing. Having heard Jaroussky and Bartoli together in Handel’s Julius Caesar at Salzburg last summer, I had already sensed what you’ll hear in their duets: these two superb artists love each other. Not only is the joy with which they launch into “La gioia ch’io sento” (“The Joy I Experience”) palpable, but it also seems to extend far beyond the aria itself. Bartoli is nonpareil in this music, lavishing each note and phrase with an excitement that captivates and delights. The sweet sorrow of her final “adios,” and the brilliance with which she so completely concentrates and

The Alexander McQueen at the Met. It was an unexpected hit for them. I found it unbelievably moving and beautiful, the poignancy of it, someone who was so gifted and so young. It was a brilliant installation. It was something I admired a great deal.

the President of the Board and the search committee that appointed me. It’s a harmonious one, and one that I nurture very carefully. We have tremendous leadership and support.

Where do you want to take the Fine Arts Museums? As an entity, we have the city’s most substantial encyclopedic art collections. The permanent collections are very strong, have been created over a century, and continue to be added to. We are in a good place. Museums are a little like ships: if they’re on a good course, you want them to stay on it. We’ve been able to attract a great collection of Native American art that will transform our holdings. We’ve just acquired a wonderful selection of prints by Richard Diebenkorn, gifts of Baroque and Nabis paintings, a painting by Edouard Vuillard, and wonderful African sculptures are coming in. As I’m sure you’re aware, the institution has been the object of public criticism. How do you plan to address this? By concentrating on all the good things we’re doing and have done. The robust exhibitions and displays we’ve had since I arrived in June were well in the making before I came, and we’ve had tremendous support and acclaim for them. We’re working to reinstall galleries and rooms in our permanent collection. The Salon Dore will open in April. It’s a tremendous addition to understanding French 18th-century art, and one of the most beautiful rooms in a museum anywhere. We’ve rehung the 18th-century French & Italian galleries at the Legion, and we’re going to do the same thing for the 18th-century British galleries. We’re introducing a mixture of ambitious temporary exhibitions that investigate less well-known artists or periods, and hopefully bringing in works otherwise not seen in the city before.

releases tension, are the mark of a supreme artist. Jaroussky doesn’t have her huge emotional range, but he comes close. Listen to the sublime ending of their other duet, “Placidetti zefiretti” (“Tranquil Breezes”), where

their voices intertwine like hovering cupids. The singing is so divine that it could convince many a Goddess and God that their work is complete. Under the baton of Andrea Marcon, the instrumental accompaniment is delicious. The energetic trumpet introduction to “Nell’attendere il mio ben” (“While I Await my Beloved”), the sweet guitar bridge in the second duet with Bartoli, and the sublime timbral contrasts are but some of the CD’s many delights. Jaroussky’s amazing long lines of seamless coloratura and entrancing vocalism served him well in his recent concerts with Venice Baroque at Cal Performances and the Green Music Center at Sonoma State. For those who didn’t make it, his wonderful CD offers a lovely taste of the real thing.t

In a recent article on MOCA, someone commented that artists and curators were looking for a good Dad in their new director. Is that how you see your role? That’s actually a phrase that makes me smile. Yes, I want to engage and encourage, but I also have a duty to make sure that we’re alive and nimble to take great opportunities where they’re offered to us. There have been a number of traveling blockbuster exhibitions, and it seems that whenever a French or Dutch facility is under renovation, we get a show. Can we look forward to more exhibitions curated in-house like the Diebenkorn? I’d like to be on record as saying that every show is curated. All of the choices – the way the shows are described, interpreted and animated and hung – are curatorially driven, and our staff is very involved in that. These projects are carefully thought through here. What about shows that you originate? We originated Hockney. We’re organizing a Keith Haring show that’s coming at the end of the year. We’re looking at exhibitions of 17th-century French art and 18thcentury European art. And yes, we are looking at projects that curators are generating in-house as well as collaborating on.

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What do you do in your off-time? We try to go to everything we can. I have a subscription at Berkeley Rep and ACT. We go to the opera and ballet. We’re keen to partake of the rich offerings here. I’m a big film buff. I love going to the cinema. I liked The Past by the Iranian filmmaker who did A Separation, which I loved, too.

I think it’s fair to say there’s a perception that Mrs. Wilsey wields too much influence. Has that been your experience? My primary relationship is with

I’ve heard you like to run. I try to go to the gym three or four times a week. I used to run up and down the hills to and from Crissy Field, but now, I’m afraid, I’m on an elliptical machine watching bad TV.t

punk music as a staging ground for street combat. Matthew Boger’s job as a guide at LA’s Museum of Tolerance began in a pool of blood, as his once 13-year-old queer runaway self was beaten into unconsciousness by 14 skinheads, led by a disgruntled product of the East San Gabriel suburbs, Tim Zaal. Miraculously surviving his kick in the head, Boger was startled by the fate of another Matthew. “In 1998, Matthew Shepard is beaten

and dies seven days later. At first I didn’t know why I felt so connected to his story. When he died, I realized why: I lived that night, this kid didn’t. His voice was silenced forever.” Bay Area resident Cohen takes an earnest stab at reformulating the myths from violent classics like American History X and A Clockwork Orange. This powerful view of a most unlikely friendship has a real shot at Oscar gold.t

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Fursuited furries dance at The Stud.

nimal AP lanet Furries find a place to Frolic

by Peter Hernandez

riving through SoMa some evening last month, you may have been flagged by a group of people in tall animal costumes, including a vibrantly-colored prehistoric bird, a striped bear and a sexy, slender fox. See page 2 >> Peter Hernandez

Last year’s Bear Weekend.

by Ray Aguilera

S SF Bear Weekend Returns, Bigger and Better

ince 1994, the bears have been descending on San Francisco on President’s Day weekend, and this weekend is no different. Bear aficionados who have been around for a while will remember the International Bear Rendezvous and its predecessor Bear Expo, but SF Bear Weekend is a grassroots event driven by social media, rather than a traditional sponsor or any of the trappings of a traditional bear event. See page 3 >> Wayne Bund

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

T. “Reveille” Rodriguez

What does the fox say? Ask him at Frolic.

Animal Planet

From page 1

Those late-night revelers –a burgeoning international subculture interested in fictional anthropomorphic characters with human attributes– were congregating in advance of last month’s “furry” convention, which occurred in San Jose and drew several thousand attendees. But at the historic Stud bar on January 11, some 200 furries and allies gathered for dancing, drinks and to

EDITOR Jim Provenzano DESIGNERS Jay Cribas, Scott King ADVERTISING SALES Scott Wazlowski 415-359-2612 CONTRIBUTORS Ray Aguilera, Race Bannon, Matt Baume, Heather Cassell, Coy Ellison, Michael Flanagan, Dr. Jack Fritscher, John F. Karr, T. Scott King, Sal Meza, David Elijah-Nahmod, Adam Sandel, Donna Sachet, Jim Stewart, Ronn Vigh PHOTOGRAPHY Biron, Marques Daniels, Don Eckert, Lydia Gonzales, Rick Gerharter, Jose Guzman-Colon, Georg Lester, Dan Lloyd, Jim Provenzano, Rich Stadtmiller, Monty Suwannukul, Steven Underhill BARtab is published by BAR Media, Inc. PUBLISHER/PRESIDENT Michael M. Yamashita CHAIRMAN Thomas E. Horn VP AND CFO Patrick G. Brown SECRETARY Todd A. Vogt

strut custom costumes ranging from a snake to that prehistoric bird that flapped his wings outside the bar. “Furries are a new community birthed from the Internet some two decades ago. We know how to party and we watch out for each other. Lots of people from the tech industry come here for fun,” said Aesop, who in costume is a manifestation of a childhood fascination with birds. By day he is a software engineer in San Jose. After talking, he turned to passing traffic outside the bar and flapped his wings. Aesop and others at the party said that furries are stigmatized by their novelty and by hypersexual representation in the media, which have portrayed them as lewd fetishists interested in grotesque sexual encounters. Salon.com posted an article in 2000 in which the author uneasily reflects on her subject, a “selfdescribed computer nerd” who has sex with stuffed animals. That article was referenced by two interviewees at that party as to blame for the confusion about furries’ mores. And last month, Silicon Business Journal suggested that furries were on an “acid trip” and enforced a “psychological realignment” on nearby office workers during the San Jose convention. But at the party, a more balanced scene unfurled among a diverse crowd of leather-clad men, fursuiters (furries wearing fur costumes), and shirtless dancers. Some sexuality could be seen on the dancefloor, where a man thrust his body against a slender lioness. But a pet-like affection abounded at the party, akin to tenderly petting a dog, and it appeared that many sought a furry warmth from each other. And many summed their participation as fun-seeking revelry. “I literally walked in and a guy asked me to have an Irish bomb. They’re so fun. They’re on the right path to being socially acceptable,” said 23-year-old Donnie Baker, a transgender female-to-male fetishist who wore a rubbery but kindlooking Rottweiler dog mask. He performs human-animal roleplay for Kink.com and designs furry costumes. Some interviewees said that their childhood plays a role in their interest in furries. “So many people here find mem-

Peter Hernandez

A striped furry stops for a photo at The Stud.

ories from their childhood and tap into that,” said a shirtless man named Cali Coyote. He reflected on the furry sensation he experienced as a child when rubbing his body against blankets. And Aesop, the bird flapping outside the club, reflected on his childhood. “I’ve always been a bird watcher since a young child. Now I’ve been a furry for over 20 years,” he said. Outside the bar, partygoers partook in “huggles,” a furry term for a snuggle-hug. They held each other closely, rubbing snouts and furcovered bellies. A man toting a fur costume around his waist enthusiastically spun illuminated yo-yos while another man cruised around the party in Heelys, or one-wheeled roller shoes. The youthful and playful air continued into the club, where the pool table was adorned in a fur blanket. Day-Glo paintings illuminated by black lights created a psychedelic environment. Electro and progressive house music was played by DJ AudioDile (like crocodile), who has DJed at a variety of fur conventions. DJ NeonBunny organizes the Frolic events, and has a website focusing on his events (www.neonbunny.com). Some people at the party were just getting started in the furry world. “This is a regular thing now after having celebrated New Years at the Embarcadero. I’ve been doing it for a few months,” said a goat furry named Hawthorne. He said that his character is interested in blank slates and traveling. He recently moved from the East Coast to work in the tech industry. Some furries wear IDs emitted by the International Furry Association. The badges, which were seen on most fursuited partygoers, identify their fictional character’s initiation date, nationality, birthdate, and show stamps similar to bumper stickers. Most fursuited furries wore these badges, which authenticate the furry as a true member of the community. Cali Coyote, who declined to offer his job or age, described his character as being interested in music and displayed on his phone a costume

Peter Hernandez

Cali Coyote, who is waiting for his $2,000 fursuit to be completed, poses outside The Stud.

Orzel Tastyeagle

Frolic’s NeonBunny DJs at The Stud.

that is being fabricated for $2,000. A self-proclaimed “confessional singer-songwriter” musician, Cali Coyote is finding an outlet for performance through the costume, which is a common event at fur conventions. For the time being, he was shirtless and wore a brown tail, coyote ears, painted whiskers, and a black nose. The dancefloor was populated with as many fursuiters as typical clubgoers. Some attended in support of furry friends and others were unfamiliar with the culture and happened upon the evening.

Makesh, who declined to state his last name, stood near the furcovered pool table with a group of friends. “I’m coming out of the closet, and I’m here with my friends,” Makesh said. He added that he’s not familiar with furries but that he’s “totally okay with it.” t Frolic happens every second Saturday of the month at The Stud in San Francisco from 8pm to 2pm, $8 cover, $4 in costume. www.neonbunny.com www.studsf.com

BAR Media, Inc. 225 Bush Street, Suite 1700 San Francisco, CA 94104 (415) 861-5019 www.BARtabSF.com NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media 212.242.6863 LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad Member National Gay Newspaper Guild Copyright © 2014, Bay Area Reporter, a division of BAR Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Peter Hernandez

A vibrantly-colored prehistoric bird at Frolic.

T. “Reveille” Rodriguez

Furry on the dance floor at The Stud.

t <<

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SF Bear Weekend

From page 1

Returning for its third year, SF Bear Weekend promises a chance for fun and frolic with all sorts of bears, cubs, and other creatures. Planned for the weekend are a series of bar nights, beer busts, dance parties, and other events designed to carry on San Francisco’s bear traditions. According to organizer Shaun Tierney, the idea for SF Bear Weekend came to him in 2011. “The idea hit me during the last International Bear Rendezvous. I looked around and seemed to me that much of the fun of IBR could still happen if we just decided to—well, party anyway.” And party they will. To celebrate Bear Weekend, there are events

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

spread across the entire weekend, starting with the Welcome Party on Friday, February 14 at SF Eagle, and going practically non-stop until Monday. In between, expect a wide range of events, from a Saturday beer bust at the Lone Star, to several large-scale dance parties, including the return of SF’s legendary Honey Soundsystem for a Saturday night blowout at Beatbox. Similar events often come with an official sponsor, schedule of events, and an expensive pre-paid “tag,” but the SF Bear Weekend website proudly boasts having none of these trappings of a traditional bear event. Tierney says that the loose format of Bear Weekend was based in his own experience with previous events. “My inspiration was largely based on the fact that I’d attended four

Shaun Tierney

Bears enjoying themselves at last year’s Bear Weekend.

IBR’s and never bought dog tags, went to official events or even visited the host hotel—though I did drop a scruffy cub off at his hotel at 4 a.m. once. To me, the fun of IBR wasn’t Kathy Griffin shows or Bear Bingo. It was the crowds of guys!” Fitting with its “2.0” logo, SF Bear Weekend is a reinvention of the bear event, relying on Facebook and the website (www.SFBearWeekend.com) to get the word out about the festivities. Without an official sponsor, anyone is free to create an event during Bear Weekend. Tierney says, “Anyone who wants to have a Bear Weekend event can put it on the schedule. The only requirement is they do their best to make it fun! Dog tags or any kind of paid registration just don’t fit into the simplified, ‘2.0’ structure that SF Bear Weekend has adopted.” In addition to the parties and events designed to bring people together, Bear Weekend will be connecting people via their website. New for this year is a BearMail chat feature that users will be able to access via smartphone. Guests will be able to go to m.sfbw.info on their phones to get an ID which they can write on their SFBW Name Tag. They can then send messages and photos to anyone else they see with an ID. There’s no official charity for SF Bear Weekend, but that doesn’t mean that Tierney and event organizers aren’t giving back. “Charities are encouraged to work together with promoters and venues to raise money at SFBW events,” he said. “In fact, I’d love to see more involvement from charities. Actually, I’d love to see more involvement from just about anyone! BOSF, which is a nonprofit, is having several events this year. Also some proceeds from Pound Puppy at the SF Eagle will be going to the SFPCA. “ We asked Tierney what makes SF Bear Weekend different from some of the other events on the bear social circuit, and he touted the event’s homegrown nature. “Hello? It’s San Francisco! We’ve got The Castro, and more gay bars than I’m even aware of!” Tierney added, “A community worked together to save its ‘Bear Weekend.’ If there’s one thing I want people to understand, it’s that SF Bear Weekend is about having having fun. That is, in fact, my sole motivation. The only thing I ask in return is that you come enjoy it with me. And bring five friends!” t SF Bear Weekend: Fri Feb 14-Mon Feb 17. For schedules and event listings, Visit www.SFBearWeekend.com.

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Last year’s Bear Weekend.

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Beat Me, Cupid

Celebrate Lupercalia instead of Valentine’s Day at San Francisco’s Sex Toy Shops by Michael Flanagan

oung men are stationed at the tops of hills, nude except for a goatskin loincloth, with a goatskin flog in their hands. As they run through town they flog strangers to bring fertility. That’s how the ancient Romans celebrated Lupercalia, a mid-February festival with roots going back to the Greek God Pan. Doesn’t that sound like more fun than St. Valentine’s Day, which celebrates a Christian martyr with hearts and flowers? And what better way to celebrate Lupercalia than to visit San Francisco’s stores for adult toys and entertainment? At Does Your Mother Know (4141 18th St.) the clientele covers the gamut. “It’s very diverse, some are into fetishes and some are more romantic (more vanilla). We have merchandise for lesbian, gay male and straight couples,” said Zack Delamorton, the store manager. Does Your Mother Know has an extensive lube section, which Delamorton says is the largest in Northern California. The newest and most popular vibrators for women are the Stronic Pulsators from Fun Factory. They have a wide variety of products including massage oil and scented candles and items “from a flogger to a feather” for all tastes. Does Your Mother Know started out as a card store, but made the transition to adult toys when it became clear text and email were becoming dominant forms of communication. The atmosphere in the store is warm, cheery and fun (with feather boas and corsets prominently displayed), so the lessons learned when they were a card store live on. Around the corner is Rock Hard, on 518 Castro Street. I think the store has a bit more of a male feel, but manager James Smith assures me they get lots of women clients as well (both Rock Hard and Does Your Mother Know benefit from tourists in the Castro). Sliquid and Liquid Silk are very popular lubricants with the ladies, while the Nature Lovin’ flavored lube with its familiar honey bear bottle is popular with all. Other popular items include the large selection of sexy underwear and the Ovo vibrators. “Women bring back their friends for the Ovo,” Smith assured me. And the Tenga eggs and Fleshlights are both quite popular masturbation toys for men as well. Safe Sex educators will be happy to hear that condom sales are doing very well at Rock Hard, too. Sexual and safe is always a winning combination.

Michael Flanagan

Ken Malkin at Rock Hard.

Michael Flanagan

The expansive lubricant selection at Does Your Mother Know?

as four stores in San Francisco. I stopped by the Polk Street store (1620 Polk) and store manager Alexa Joseph gave me a tour of popular items and special offers. They now offer lingerie, which is good for customers not ready for their first vibrator. “Lingerie changes frequently, so it encourages people to come back and see what’s new,” Joseph adds. Good Vibrations are very skilled at promoting items, so ask what the featured specials are when you stop by their stores. The staff is skilled in getting customers to tell them what they want. “I have to ask questions in a way that’s neutral to encourage more responses,” Joseph said. And if you stop by the Polk Street store, make a point to see the Antique Vibrator Museum. Vibrators have been around since the 18th century (they’re older than the United States), although they were initially designed to treat ‘female hysteria’ caused by the ‘wandering womb.’ There is an amazing variety of information here and it merits a visit. And it is an experience you can’t download online. Regarding online vendors, Joseph said, “it’s impractical to buy products online for such an intimate experience – you want to get something you can trust.” Fortunately Good Vibrations has both, and you can visit them online at www.goodvibes.com before your visit and explore what you are interested in. Popsex960 (960 Folsom Street) gives further evidence of how mainstream adult-oriented businesses have become. With large open windows and bright displays, this is not your father’s dirty bookstore.

Elegant bondage gear at Good Vibrations.

If you had any questions regarding the popularity of sex positive businesses, Good Vibrations will convince you that they are certainly popular, as well as warm and friendly. They celebrated the opening of their eighth store (downtown, at 189 Kearny Street) with a party on February 7, and have stores in Palo Alto, Berkeley and Oakland as well

Michael Flanagan

Celebrity sex dolls at PopSex960.

Reflecting on the change, manager Rick Crawshaw said, “It’s not as taboo. People are more open.” Crawshaw noted that Valentine’s Day brings out the freak in couples. “’Let’s buy some handcuffs,’ or ‘Hey, honey, tie me up,’” Crawshaw humorously added. “It’s a holiday that gives an excuse to explore.” The store gets its name from the notion that sex is now a part of popular culture, as in the sex tapes that so many pop culture figures are in. That certainly seems true, given the popular blow-up dolls in the image of many pop idols including Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber and President Barack Obama. “Republicans probably take that home and do God knows what,” Crawshaw adds. Popsex960 is across the street from (and owned by the same company as) Folsom Gulch (947 Folsom), a gay male-oriented adult store in a more traditional mode. But Folsom Gulch gets a little busier on Valentine’s Day too, Crawshaw thinks. “You might not find Mister Right, but you might find Mister Right Now. SoMa is still SoMa. It hasn’t gone away. There’s still a wild life,” he added. Perhaps it’s the right place to look for young man in a goatskin loincloth with a flog? t

The Brig Opens

If you’re looking for a new sexual adventure, the new sex space The Brig, opens February 15. Set at the former Play Space venue, above Popsex960 at 962 Folsom St. at 6th Street, opening weekend events take place Saturday through Monday, and the intimate venue with a jail theme offers slings, tables and various spaces for erotic play. Feb 15, the SF CumUnion Party is 10pmclosing. Feb 16, Bear Crawl 5pm-8pm, and Cock Ring 8pmclosing, with a free cock ring for the first 200 guests. $5-$15. Also, enjoy Naked Mondays Feb 17, from 9pm-1am. Look for more events soon, and check out their website www.BrigSF.com Although The Brig provides condoms and lubricant, you may want to try out the newest slick sexy product, Überlube. With a discreet steel container, and home-handy pump versions, this classy new Uberlube, a lube brings style stylish new to your sex play. lubricant It’s also good for athletes who want to avoid friction between their body and sports gear. Check ‘em out at www.uberlube.com.

Read more online at www.ebar.com

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Super & Imperial by Donna Sachet

roving that there is indeed a thriving LGBT community across the Bay, the Lighthouse Community Center fundraiser, Viva Las Vegas, on Feb. 1 drew hundreds to fill Hayward’s strikingly modern City Hall. We’ll be the first to admit that we rarely cross bridges, but this event had it all: bounteous buffet food, generous cocktails, casino gaming tables, silent auction, myriad raffle prizes, great entertainment from the Golden Follies and the East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus, and a divine spiral staircase that you’d better believe we used thoroughly. The Golden Follies is a group of mature women who perform Las Vegas type routines, complete with sparkly costumes, perky wigs, and robust choreography. We’re told their most mature member performing that night is 89 years old! You are truly only as old as you allow yourself to feel! The chorus provided happy music as well as some more touching anthems, reminding people of our recent successes and our long struggle. Our experience there was fabulous. Our host created a special dressing room, complete with dressing table, private bar, flowers, and a framed photo of Jose Sarria for inspiration. Amid the revelry, however, we were reminded of the recent death of Marvin Burrows, longtime community activist and champion of equal rights for all. Last week’s Super Bowl may have disappointed, but Super Sunday’s a Drag was an incredible hit. This special show included regular performers Holotta Tymes and Mahlae, along with two guest stars, Daft-Nee Gesuntheit and Paju Monro. The Starlight Room was

courtesy Danielle Logan

Imperial Court candidates JP Soto, Misty Blue, Ray Tilton and Danielle Logan.

packed and everyone left happy. Producer Michael Pagan suggested that Holotta and Daft-Nee perform the classic duet of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand and what a great idea that was! After eight years, this show continues to evolve and keeps the club packed every Sunday. The San Francisco Ballet got off to a festive start at the War Memorial Opera House, especially on the first of its Nite Out series last Friday with Helgi Tomasson’s bold staging of Giselle. The artistic side of this

story has been told elsewhere in this publication, but for a purely social standpoint, it was hugely successful. Our community was well represented by all ages, many facets, and dance lovers of all kinds. After the performance, things really heated up at the private, hosted reception in the Dress Circle Bar, when Principal Dancer Damian Smith and Corps de Ballet Dancer Shannon Marie Rugani joined the party. Your next opportunities to rub shoulders with your fellow LGBT ballet enthusiasts are April 4 with Maelstrom and The Rite of Spring and May 9 with Stravinsky, Balanchine, Robbins, and Glass.

We promised you complete coverage of the Imperial Court activities, so here we go! Four individuals qualified as candidates this year, two for Emperor and two for Empress, and each has three weeks within which to win your vote. Parties and fundraisers give you a chance to get to know them, leading up to voting day, Sat., Feb. 15, from 11AM-4PM in front of Project Open Hand in the Polk area, 1-5PM in front of Powerhouse in SoMa, and noon6PM at Harvey Milk Plaza in the Castro. You’ll sense the build-up in each of these communities over the next few weeks, as J.P. Soto and Ray Tilton compete to be the next

Emperor and Danielle Logan and Misty Blue vie for Empress. This 48-year tradition shows no sign of slowing down! The preeminent event comes at the end of February with Imperial Coronation. We keep reminding you because this is as grand as it gets and we don’t want you to miss out! Reigning Emperor Drew Cutler and Reigning Empress Patty McGroin have an incredible night planned for you at the Design Center, 101 Henry Adams Street, on Sat., Feb. 22, starting promptly at 6PM. Over 500 guests from across the continent will gather in their most ornate clothes, most fabulous jewelry, and most elaborate coiffures to celebrate another incredible year of fundraising, community involvement, and leadership. Join us! Last year’s inaugural Nitey Awards, recognizing the businesses and individuals who keep San Francisco night-life vibrant, was such a success that it is back again this year on Mon., Feb. 24, at the Castro Theatre. Expect a flashy red carpet, celebrity sightings, heartfelt acceptance speeches, and perhaps a dab of bitterness. Who knows? Categories judged by industry experts include Best Dance Club, Best Irish Bar, Best Late Night Food, and Best Adult Entertainment. Public vote decides the winners of Best Gay Bar, Best Neighborhood Bar, and Most Notable Drag Queen. This event has Audrey Joseph behind it, so you know you’ll enjoy it. Perhaps social columns such as this should only be about happy events, but we cannot let the untimely death of Stu Smith go unmentioned. A consummate gentleman, devoted friend, and tireless activist, Stu leaves the world a better place for having been in it and leaves us with bittersweet memories of kindness, humor, and energy.t

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6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Bf eON THE13T–A 20 February

★

Underwear Party @ Powerhouse Strip down to your skivvies at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

Fri 14 Angel Rock, Boomer Banks @ Nob Hill Theatre The sexy porn stud performs solo shows at 8pm, and is joined onstage by his real-life boyfriend, super-hung Boomer Banks, for 10pm live sex shows. $25. Also Feb 15. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Bad Girl Cocktail Hour @ The Lexington Club Every Friday night, bad girls can get $1 dollar margaritas between 9pm and 10pm. 3464 19th St. between Mission and Valencia. 863-2052. www.lexingtonclub.com

Fly Moon Royalty

Tue 18

appy Valentine's/Flag/Presidents' Day Full Moon weekend! If you have a day off, celebrate however you like. Dance nights, concerts and comedy await.

Thu 13 Comedy Thursdays @ Esta Noche The revamped weekly LGBT- and queerfriendly comedy night at the Mission club is hosted by various comics (1st Thu, Natasha Muse; 2nd Thu, Emily Van Dyke; 3rd Thu Eloisa Bravo and Kimberly Rose; 4th Thu Johan Miranda). No cover; one-drink min. 8pm. 307916th St. www.comedybodega.com

The Crib @ 715 Dance night for the younger guys & gals; DJ Kidd Sysko. Feb 13 Miley Cyrus concert tickets giveaway! 9:30pm-2am. 715 Harrison St. www.thecribsf.com

Dirty Talk @ Truck The upfront conversations with porn performers this time includes Angel Rock and his boyfriend Boomer Banks. 9:3011:30pm. 1900 Folsom St. www.trucksf.com

La Femme @ Beaux New ladies' happy hour at the new Castro nightclub, with drink specials, no cover, and women gogos. 4pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Fuego @ The Watergarden, San Jose Weekly event, with Latin music, half-off locker fees and Latin men, at the South Bay private men's bath house. $8-$39. Reg hours 24/7. 18+. 1010 The Alameda. (408) 275-1215. www.thewatergarden.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jockstrapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar. 10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Joe Gore @ El Rio The super-talented guitarist, who's accompanied Tom Waits, Tracy Chapman, Courtney Love and many others, performs at the monthly Strung Out solo series. 7pm. 3158 Mission St. www.elriosf.com

Jukebox @ Beatbox Veteran DJ Page Hodel (The Box, Q and many other events) presents a new weekly dance event, with soul, funk, hip-hop and house mixes. $10. 21+. 9pm-2am. 314 11th St. at Folsom. www.BeatboxSF.com

The Monster Show @ The Edge Cookie Dough's weekly drag show with gogo guys and hilarious fun. $5. 9pm-2am. 4149 18th St. at Collingwood. edgesf.com

My Sucky Valentine @ Feyboy Mansion Enjoy an alternative anti-romance yet sexy night with Fey Boy Collective and their friends. Events through Sunday. For info, dates and times, visit: www.feyboy.com

Nap's Karaoke @ Virgil's Sea Room Sing out loud at the weekly least judgmental karaoke in town, hosted by the former owner of the bar. No cover. 9pm. 3152 Mission St. 829-2233. www.virgilssf.com

Nightlife @ California Academy of Sciences Themed event nights at the fascinating nature museum, with DJed dancing, cocktails, fish, frogs, food and fun. $10$12. 6pm-10pm, 55 Music Concourse Drive, Golden Gate Park. 379-8000. www.calacademy.org

Pan Dulce @ The Café Amazingly hot Papi gogo guys, cheap drinks and fun DJed dance music. Free before 10pm. $5 til 2am. 2369 Market St. www.clubpapi.com www.cafesf.com

Paula West @ Feinstein's at the Nikko The renowned Bay Area jazz vocalist performs an all-new show with her fourpiece band in a special four-week residency at the elegant nightclub. $35-$50; $20 food/beverage min. Thu 8pm, Fri 7pm & 9:30pm, Sat & Sun 7pm. Thru March 9. Hotel Nikko lobby, 222 Mason St. (866) 663-1063. www.feinsteinssf.com

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle The weekly live rock shows have returned. 9pm-ish. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Tubesteak Connection @ Aunt Charlie's Lounge Retro disco tunes and a fun diverse crowd, each Thursday. $4. 10pm-2am. 133 Turk St. at Taylor. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

Thu 13 Paula West

Bear Weekend @ Lone Star Saloon, other venues

Shit & Champagne @ Rebel D'Arcy Drollinger's "whitesploitation" drag satire musical play kicks up the laughs; also starring Matthew Martin. $20-$25. Fri & Sat, 8pm. Extended thru March 1. 1772 Market St. at Octavia. www.shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com

Some Thing Mica Sigourney and pals' weekly offbeat drag performance night. 10pm-2am. 399 9th St. www.studsf.com

Sat 15 Beer Bust @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Beer only $8 until you bust. 4pm-8pm. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Sun 16 Alain Jackinsky DJs Rise

Enjoy a weekend of ursine fun, including Cubcake (see below), Reddroxx on Feb 15, and Bacon, Bears and Beer Feb 16, with a tail-end happy hour Feb 17. www.lonestarsf.com www.sfbw.info

Cubcake @ Lone Star Saloon Enjoy a special Valentine's Day edition of the bear cub and tasty treats event, with DJs Jimmy Swear and Spaz. 9pm-2am. 1354 Harrison St. www.lonestarsf.com

Fedorable @ El Rio Free weekly queer dance party, with gogos, prizes, old groovy tunes, cheap cocktails. 9pm-2am. 3158 Mission St. 2823325. www.elriosf.com

Go-Beaux @ Beaux Gogo-tastic weekly night at the new Castro club. Bring your dollahs, 'cause they'll make you holla. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Happy Friday @ Midnight Sun The popular video bar ends each week with gogo guys (starting at 9pm) and drink specials. Check out the new expanded front lounge, with a window view. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Hard @ Qbar DJ Haute Toddy spins electro beats; cute gogo guys shake it. $3. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Irma Thomas @ Yoshi's Special Valentine's weekend shows with the Soul Queen of New Orleans. $29-$44. 8pm & 10pm. Also Feb 15. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com

Jessica Fisher, Christopher M. Nelson, G. Scott Lacy @ Hotel Rex Society Cabaret presents the two vocalists and the pianist-singer in a special Valentine's Day cabaret show. $25-$45. 8pm. 562 Sutter St. 857-1896. www.societycabaret.com

Josh Klipp and The Klipptones @ Palace Hotel The local jazz crooner and his band perform weekly shows at the hotel's lounge, which draws a growing swingdance audience. Tonight, enjoy a special Valentine's Day concert of romantic tunes. 7pm-11pm. 2 New Montgomery. www.joshklipp.com

Latin Explosion @ Club 21, Oakland Eight bars, more dance floors, and a smoking lounge; the largest gay Latin dance night in the Bay Area. Happy hour 4pm-8:30pm. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Picante @ Esta Noche Weekly show with drag queens and the Picante Boys; hosted by Lulu Ramirez; DJ Marco. 9pm-2am. 3079 16th St. 841-5748. www.jceventssf.com

Pimps of Joytime @ The Independent Mirthful R&B-soul-afrobeat band performs. Myron and E open. $20-$22. 9pm. 628 Divisadero St. 771-1421. www.theindependentsf.com

Pound Puppy @ SF Eagle Special Valentine's Day edition of the kinky night, with DJs Taco Tuesday, Chip Mint and CarrieonDisco. 9pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi The musical comedy revue celebrates its 40th year with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. $25-$160. 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Bluf @ SF Eagle Breeches and Leather Uniform Fan Club's monthly night at the popular leather bar (3rd Thursdays). 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.bluf.com www.sf-eagle.com

La Bota Loca @ Club 21, Oakland DJed tunes, gogo hotties, drag shows, drink specials, all at Oakland's premiere Latin nightclub and weekly cowboy night. $10-$15. Dancing 9pm-4am. 2111 Franklin St. (510) 268-9425. www.club21oakland.com

Cub House @ SF Eagle Underbear night includes large & lovely gogo guys, a hot undies contest and photobooth. 9pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Opening Weekend @ The Brig If you're looking for a new sexual adventure, check out the new space. Weekend events take place Saturdays through Mondays, and the intimate venue with a jail theme offers slings, tables and various spaces for erotic play. Feb 15, the SF CumUnion Party is 10pm-closing. Feb 16, Bear Crawl 5pm-8pm, and Cock Ring 8pm-closing, with a free cock ring for the first 200 guests. $5-$15. Also, enjoy Naked Mondays, Feb 17, from 9pm-1am. Above PopSex960 at 962 Folsom St. at 6th St. Look for more events soon, and check out their website www.BrigSF.com

Sexy @ Billy DeFrank Center, San Jose RuPaul's Drag Race stars Honey Mahogany, Jade Sotomayor and LaGanja Estranja perform at this fundraiser for the San Jose AIDS Walk. Pollo Del Mar, Gerrick and Camille Tow host. $20-$30. 5pm-10pm. 938 The Alameda, San Jose. www.Rock4theWalk.com www.aidswalksanjose.org

On the Tab>>

Toga @ Club OMG DJ Shawn P spins tunes at this gay toga party, with punch, hors d'oeuvres, clothes check, gogo guys and intimate pants-free fun. Free before 10:30, $5-$10. Til 2am. 43 6th St. www.clubomgsf.com

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Honey Soundsystem @ Beatbox

Sunday's a Drag @ Starlight Room

The extraordinary DJ collective plays a special Presidents Day weekend event. 10pm-4am. 314 11th st. beatboxsf.com

Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.starlightroomsf.com

Jock @ The Lookout

Sun 16

The weekly jock-ular fun continues, with special sports team fundraisers. 3pm-6pm. 3600 16th St. www.lookoutsf.com

Beer Bust @ SF Eagle

Katya Presents @ Martuni's

The classic leather bar's most popular Sunday daytime event in town draws the menfolk. 3pm-6pm (Also now open daily 11am-2am). 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Best of the Bay Comedy @ Pa'ina Lounge Gay and gay-friendly comics Aiden Park, Justin Lucas, Casey Ley, Kimberly Rose Wendt, and Rajeeve Dhar perform stand-up with host Charlie Ballard, at the bar-restaurant. $10. 2-item minimum. 7pm. 1865 Post St. www.painasf.com

Our favorite Russian exiled drag countess hosts a monthly piano bar night, with guest singer Katy Stephan. $11. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market.

Liquid Brunch @ Beaux No cover, no food, just drinks (Mimosas, Bloody Marys, etc.) and music. 2pm-9pm. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

Piers Faccini, Dom La Nena @ Yoshis' The British singer-songwriter and the Brazilian cellist-vocalist share a concert. $20-$58. 7pm. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com

Thu 20 Zahra Noorbaksh at Comedy Returns

Mon 17 Cock and Bull Mondays @ Hole in the Wall Saloon Specials on drinks made with Cock and Bull ginger ale (Jack and Cock, Russian Mule, and more). 8pm-closing. 1369 Folsom St. 431-4695. www.hitws.com

Irish Dance Night @ Starry Plough, Berkeley Weekly dance lessons and live music at the pub-restaurant, hosted by John Slaymaker. $5. 7pm. 3101 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. www.thestarryplough.com

LOL @ OMG The intimate mid-Market nightclub celebrates its first anniversary with a new weekly night of comedy. 7pm-10pm. 43 6th St. 89-OMGSF. www.clubomgsf.com

Mahogany Mondays @ Midnight Sun Honey Mahogany's weekly drag and musical talent show starts around 10pm. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. www.midnightsunsf.com

Monday Musicals @ The Edge The casts of local and visiting musicals often pop in to perform at the popular Castro bar's musical theatre night. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Broadway Bingo @ Feinstein's at the Nikko

So You Think You Can Gogo? @ Toad Hall

Joe Wicht and Katya Smirnoff-Skyy cohost the weekly fun musical theatre trivia singalong night. Pull up a comfy chair or sofa, enjoy a cocktail or three, and test your Broadway knowledge. Kanpai Lounge, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. No cover. 7pm10pm. 394-1111. www.hotelnikkosf.com/feinsteins.aspx

New weekly dancing competition for gogo wannabes. 9pm. cash prizes, $2 well drinks (2 for 1 happy hour til 9pm). Show at 9pm. 4146 18th St. www.toadhallbar.com

Marissa Nadler @ The Chapel Ethereal vocalist, whose indie fundraising campaign has resulted in national attention, performs music from her new CD July. Donovan Quinn opens. $12-$15. 8pm. 777 Valencia St. www.thechapelsf.com

Miss Kitty's Trivia Night @ Wild Side West The weekly fun night at the Bernal Heights bar includes prizes, hosted by Kitty Tapata. No cover. 7pm-10pm. 424 Cortland St. 6473099. www.wildsidewest.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s

Trivia Night @ Harvey's BeBe Sweetbriar hosts a weekly night of trivia quizzes and fun and prizes; no cover. 8pm-1pm. 500 Castro St. 431-4278. www.harveyssf.com

Underwear Night @ SF Eagle Strip down to your skivvies at the popular leather bar. 9pm-2am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Way Back @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of vintage music videos and retro drink prices. Check out the new expanded front window lounge. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. midnightsunsf.com

Thu 20 Comedy Returns @ El Rio

Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone). 9pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.dragatmartunis.com

The monthly comedy night (now 3rd Thursdays) this time includes stand-up talents Diane Amos, Zahra Noorbakhsh, Ian Williams, Nathan Habib, and host Lisa Geduldig. $7$20. 8pm. 3158 Mission St. (800) 838-3006. elriosf.com

Sports Night @ The Eagle The legendary leather bar gets jock-ular, with beer buckets, games (including beer pong and corn-hole!), prizes, sports on the TVs, and more fun. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Fauxgirls @ Infusion Lounge The monthly drag show includes Victoria Secret, Alexandria, Chanel, Maria Garza, Mini Minerva, Kipper, Ruby LeBrowne, and Lulu Ramirez, and guest performers. Dinner seating starts at 7pm, show 8pm. 124 Ellis st. at Powell. 421-8700. www.fauxgirls.com

Tue 18 13 Licks @ Q Bar Weekly women's night at the stylish intimate bar. 9pm-2am. 456 Castro St. www.QbarSF.com

Gym Class @ Hi Tops

Thu 20

Block Party @ Midnight Sun Weekly screenings of music videos, concert footage, interviews and more, of popular pop stars. 9pm-2am. 4067 18th St. 861-4186. midnightsunsf.com

Fly Moon Royalty @ Legionnaire Saloon, Oakland The Seattle electro-funk duo perform their rousing music from their new EP, Unfinished Business. $5. 9pm. 2272 Telegraph Ave. www.flymoonroyalty.com www.legionnairesaloon.com

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey's Cocktailgate @ Truck

Rise @ City Nights

Suppositori Spelling's wild weekly drag show night. $3. 10pm-2am. 1900 Folsom St. www.trucksf.com

Presidents Day weekend dance party, with DJs Alain Jackinsky and Susan Morabito. 10pm-6am. 715 Harrison St. www.sfclubs.com www.zvents.com/san_ francisco_ca/events/show/369370599rise-alain-jackinsky-morabito

Disc0 Daddy @ SF Eagle DJ Bus Station John's popular post-beer bust disco night at the leather bar. 7pm12am. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

Full of Grace @ Beaux Weekly night with hostess Grace Towers, different local and visiting DJs, and pop-up drag performances. No cover. 9pm-2am. 2344 Market St. www.beauxsf.com

GlamaZone @ The Café Pollo del Mar's weekly drag shows takes on different themes with a comic edge. 8:30-11:30pm. 2369 Market St. www.cafesf.com

Hero @ Ruby Skye Presidents Day weekend T-dance with DJs Phil B and Jamie J. $25. 6pm-12am. 420 Mason St. www.industrysf.com www.rubyskye.com

Salsa Sundays @ El Rio Salsa dancing for LGBT folks and friends, with live merengue and cumbia bands; tapas and donations that support local causes. 2nd & 4th Sundays. 3pm-8pm. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com

Sundance Saloon @ Space 550 The popular country western LGBT dance night; enjoy fun foot-stomping twostepping and line-dancing. $5. 5pm10:30pm with lessons from 5:30-7:15 pm. Also Thursdays. 550 Barneveld Ave., and Tuesdays at Beatbox, $6. 6:30-11pm. 314 11th St. www.sundancesaloon.org

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

Ink & Metal @ Powerhouse

Narada Michael Walden

Red Hots Burlesque @ El Rio Women's burlesque show performs each Wed & Fri. Karaoke follows. $5-$10. 7pm. 3158 Mission St. 282-3325. www.elriosf.com

Rookie's Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Watch competitors shake it for a $200 first prize in stripping, or sign up yourself by 8pm. The audience picks the winner. $20 includes refreshments. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Enjoy cheap/free whiskey shots from jock-strapped hotties and sexy sports videos at the popular new sports bar. 10pm-2am. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. HiTopsSF.com

Narada Michael Walden Band @ Yoshi's

The multi-talented pop, rock, funk producer performs with his band. $25-$63 (with dinner). 8pm. 1330 Fillmore St. 6555600. www.yoshis.com

Underwear Party @ Powerhouse Strip down to your skivvies at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

Want your nightlife event listed? Email events@ebar.com, at least two weeks before your event. Event photos welcome.

Show off your tattoos and piercings at the weekly cruisy SoMa bar night. 10pm-2am. 1347 Folsom St. www.powerhouse-sf.com

Naked Night @ Nob Hill Theatre Strip down at the strip joint. $20 includes refreshments. 8pm. 729 Bush St. at Powell. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Trivia Night @ Hi Tops Play the trivia game at the popular new sports bar. 9pm. 2247 Market St. 551-2500. www.HiTopsSF.com

Wed 19 Ane Brun, Linnea Olsson @ Yoshi's Two outstanding vocalists perform in concert at the elgant nightclub-restaurant. $24-$62 (with dinner). 8pm. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com

Fri 14 Shit & Champagne Rob Sweeny

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

Boomer, Baby

Boomer Banks on love, sex and porn by Cornelius Washington

and Bruno Bond tagteam directed it. It was hard!

ottom line, Mr. Banks is The Man. Bum-rushed by photographers with his partner, the stunning Adam Rock, at a recent major recent event for Cybersocket magazine, namechecked in the New York fashion bible Paper magazine, and a Hookie Awards finalist; what next, levitation? Before his recent premiere performances at the legendary Nob Hill Theater, I caught up with him for this interview.

Is it a turn-on or stressful for you to rock the camera, sexually? It’s both and neither. I can’t really explain it any better than that. It’s work. Have you ever fallen in love with a scene partner? No!

Cornelius Washington: Boomer, your life is going up, down and sideways for you, all at once. So, I’ll try to be gentle. Are you ready? Boomer: I’m ready, and please, don’t be gentle. Do not be gentle! How did you come across your porn name? It’s so unusual. I borrowed it. It’s a long story, and the guy from whom I borrowed it say he wants it back. Well, if he thinks that he can do better than me with it,...good luck.(laughs) All I can say about your first performance tonight is I’ve never seen such joy on the audience’s face. It was just unrestrained happiness. You looked like you were having a ball. How was it for you? “Joy” is the right word! I’m just a big geek, a big ham. I just wanted to dance, feel the moment & make the crowd feel good, to hug them and fall naked over them, and make them smile and laugh. And tip! How was it watching yourself have sex 30 feet by 40 feet? Amazing! Awesome! Incendiary! That’s a good bourgeoisie word. It was very moving. I’m just very happy. Let’s talk a bit about your porn vs. private sexuality. What do you do privately, that you don’t do onscreen? I do everything, but, in my porn work, it’s just me performing. Whereas, in my private life, my heart is in it. My whole heart. In porn, I am responding, but, my heart isn’t in it.

Nob Hill Theatre ANGEL ROCK & BOOMER BANKS VALENTINE'S WEEKEND FEBRUARY 14th & 15th

ANGEL ROCK

FEBRUARY 14 th & 15 th SHOWTIMES @ 8PM & 10PM

BOOMER BANKS JOINS ANGEL

ion Raging Stall Photo Credit:

FOR ALL 10PM SEX SHOWS!

729 Bush @ Powell • Info Line: 415-781-9468 Sunday – Thursday: 11:30am – Midnight Friday – Saturday: 11:30am – 1:30am

Photo Credit: Hot House

www.thenobhilltheatre.com

What inspired you to do porn? The opportunities for both porn and escorting happened very quickly, and it’s been great. Raging Stallion and Falcon Studios presented me with a situation, and I went with it, and they’re great! It was just very quick and easy for me, on a certain level. With whom would you like to work in your next porn film? There’s this guy, who’s since retired from the industry. He was an ex-Marine, was back in the day. His name was Mason Jarr. Love him! Bisexual! In your scene with him, what would you do? I’d bust his hole. I’d destroy his hole! I believe you. Baby, what was the first porn film you ever saw? Easy question. Jarhead, with Mason Jarr. Whom do you admire, in the porn industry? My partner, Angel Rock. He’s so dignified, respectful, humble, polite and courteous to everyone, not just me. That’s something very rare in someone so young. He’s very secure

What are your onscreen limits? Off the top of my head, I don’t do scat or blood. Cornelius Washington

Please explain your escort work. It’s consenting adults doing what they want to do. I sell my time to gentlemen. I keep them company. Whatever happens in that time is private, personal, very interesting and, again, consensual.

Boomer Banks at the Nob Hill Theatre.

within himself. Are you the same guy, both offscreen and on? Absolutely. Very much so. I just keep my relationship private. Tell me about your first sexual experience. I was working retail, and this beautiful guy would come in to the store. After a few weeks worth of brief flirtations, he took me to his house. I was still in high school, and he had just graduated from another high school. He showed me his yearbook, and I recognized his face. The next thing I knew, he kissed me. One thing led to an oral thing. It was all too brief, on his part, but it was very beautiful. Let’s talk fashion. What female would you kill to dress? I love redheads! So, it would have to be Julianne Moore. By the way, who’s your favorite fashion designer? The late Alexander McQueen. It is obvious that he was a very creative and talented gentleman who was listening to the voice inside of his head. I saw his retrospective in New York (at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute), and that’s what made me decide to relocate from L.A. to New York. I saw his show and knew that I had to be there in New York, to pursue my career as a fashion designer. Darling, what’s up between you and Alicia Keyes? I love her. I’m a huge fan! I met her and she autographed my arm. I got it tattooed into my arm immediately! She’s very beautiful and she really moves me. Every time I see her, I think of Lena Horne. Alicia could easily be her granddaughter. Could you see yourself designing something beautiful for her? I know her publicist. That’s something we may be able to work out. She has her own sense of style. She’s an original. In her compositions, particularly. They’re very confessional. Now, back to porn. Of your films, which is your favorite? It’s called Hard Friction. It’s a very popular porn series. My scene partner was James Ryder. The series is very direct, to the point. Steve Cruz

Would you ever commit to a 100% monogamous relationship? Would you like to be married one day? For sure! Without hesitation! What are your sexual fantasies? I’ve done just about everything I’ve fantasized about. Now, I’d like to do it in a loving, caring relationship. Sex. Rough or romantic? Both, because that’s what sex is all about. I want a man to look me in the eye while we have sex. I want both an emotional and physical connection. What do you think with be gay porn’s next big trend? Safe sex will go to the next level. Seriously, it will get even hotter. I can see it happening. I can see you on top when it hits! With which celebrity would you like to hit it, on this new level? Liam Hemsworth, from The Hunger Games. I love his beard! He’s hot! Barebacking, pro or con? What people want to do to themselves is their own business, but, when you stop to really think about it, when you infect your sex partner, you also affect so many other people, families and communities. The strain and stress affect everyone. Sex with a condom is just as hot as sex without one, so, everyone should just be aware of the health issues, and how it really involves a whole lot of other people. What do you want people to see, when they watch your films? I want them to see a free spirit, and that I’m not just “dialing it in.” I want them to see a man who was no problems with his sensuality or sexuality, and that I really enjoy it. I also want to say that I’m very flattered about my fans and The Bay Area Reporter, its gay history. When I read about it, I was just so moved to be in it. You guys rock! t Angel Rock performs solo shows at 8pm, and is joined by Boomer Banks for 10pm live sex shows Feb 14 & 15. $25. 729 Bush St. 397-6758. www.thenobhilltheatre.com

Read more online at www.ebar.com

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Disappearing Acts

FalconStudios

Adam Wirthmore and Angel Rock rumble raunchy in California Dreamin’ 1.

by John F. Karr

ere we are, glad to find that when our last article urged RagingStallion/Falcon to sign Seven Dixon as an Exclusive, they already had. Dixon’s two new scenes are in the Hard Friction flick directed by Steve Cruz, Man Power! in which his solid bubble butt is fucked by Jimmy Durano, and in Tony Dimarco’s San Francisco Meat Packers. And, here we are, sad that the scene Liam Magnuson filmed for the new Falcon movie, California Dreamin’ 1 was his last with the company—and perhaps anywhere, as he says he’s retired. Although I’ll mention for your edification any wayward appearances from other sources that may truly be the last of his last. And here we are, impressed that besides delivering some traditional Falcon-style fun in the sun reveries, California Dreamin’ 1 attempts something new. The tech wizards at RS/F have to a large degree digitally erased the movie’s condoms from view, and announced that it’s “a completely safe sex movie that mostly appears to be a bareback release.” And here we are, confused. Doesn’t making safe sex fucking look like it’s bareback actually validate barebacking, while also removing the educational potential of condom visibility? I’d prefer that bareback movies tried to look like safe sex flicks, rather than the other way around. But I wonder. If condom-erasing became prevalent, wouldn’t I need to invent a new acronym to go along with CBF (CumByFuck) and OCS (OralCumShot)? Like maybe CNV, standing for Condom Not Visible. But first, I wanna know. Is this revolutionary, or just revolting? Is

FalconStudios

One last kiss and farewell—Donnie Dean’ (in red) is a fine partner for Liam Magnuson, in California Dreamin’ 1.

this serious, or just a stunt? Well, an “Official Statement” from RS/F president Chris Ward impresses us that the effort wasn’t just a bid for publicity. “As part of the ongoing debate in Los Angeles about condom use in porn, the state of California recently requested that companies make attempts to see what they could do to make condom movies which use production and post-production techniques to mitigate the visual of condoms which many viewers find distracting. We decided to see if this was possible.” The result, as seen in CD1, does minimize condom visibility. The sheen along the shaft is gone (doesn’t “sheen along the shaft” have a certain ring to it, like Drums Along the Mohawk). Unsightly wrinkles in rubber are gone, and the rolled up ridge around the open end rim is markedly reduced. But still, you can always see the condom. And that’s the reason we don’t have to go into charged debates about barebacking and all that. The RS/F condom erasure is interesting, but not much more than I say RS/F proba curiosity. So I’d won do it again. I’ve got to ably won’t wouldn admit, though, that I wouldn’t don think mind it if they did. I don’t viewer subverting viewer’s condom awareness is wise. But it sure helps the visual. Which is important, because although the CD1 is fine, I wouldn write home to mother wouldn’t about it. Somehow it seems BusiI ness As Usual. I’m impressed with the clarity of image as well as the weightlessness of cock during the multiple underwater sequences that are a specialty of movie the movie—and the guys have some impressive submersibles for the underwater camera to Liam Magnuson, left, with Donnie feast on. And Ryan Rose strikes Dean, rates the California Dreamin’ some iconic poses, shiny as a god 1 box cover for his last scene in the and towering above the side of a industry. swimming pool. I especially liked

the way his scene partner, Ray Han, quivers when he’s rimmed, his glutes rippling. You think Ray’ll cum right then. But then, zap, the standard Falcon editing zips us from this delicious rimming to somewhere down the line of deep fucking. Ryan’s a pile driver, Ray’s responsive, and it’s all very pretty, but somehow I didn’t think it was a big deal. Ditto for scenes with Ray Diaz with Lance Luciano, and even to an extent, for Donnie Dean with Liam Magnuson, who you know I’d view charitably. These guys connect well, and strongly project a sexy mood. I haven’t given DD his due in a couple movies; he’s a good performer, and especially so in this scene. He’s a punchy face-fucker, and an icon when standing in profile with hard-on. And whatta you know, fellas; the editor actually documents Liam’s insertion. Dean gives himself a slammin’ ride in the saddle, which results in (and this part’s for my friend, the acronym aficionado Jack D) a CBF for DD, a JO for LM, but no OCS for DD. I did pump it out for Adam Wirthmore’s scene with Angel Rock. Adam always excites me— his look, his feral sexuality. He’s such a manly kid. And Angel? He’s a slightly prettier version of Adam, and rumbles just as raunchy. Adam plays Lolito, giving Angel some cute cruise before cunningly laying down on his stomach and pulling his bikini off his butt, offering it up to Angel like the treasure it is, and bingo-bongo, Angel’s tongue does a samba up the chute. An underwater RC sure is scenic, and thankfully includes insertion, which is followed by Adam’s inevitable moaning as his anus achieves full comprehension of of Angel’s cock. We’re talkin’ girth. Back on land, Adam pops an explosive CBF, and Angel lands a glob or two of tasty spoo on Adam’s slavering tongue. Are you thinking at this moment whether the condom’s visible? t www.FalconStudios.com

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 13-19, 2014

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Read more online at www.ebar.com

February 13-19, 2014 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

Shooting Stars photos by Steven Underhill T

he Gay Vanity Wedding Show, held February 9 at the stylish Bently Reserve, drew LGBT couples from around the Bay Area, who sampled treats from caterers, cake-makers and beverage providers. Jewelry, wedding planners, and clothiers showcased their offering for couples-to-be, and those planning a big celebration after their City Hall nuptials. The day was topped off with a fashion show of gorgeous wedding dresses and handsome tuxedos, each for any gender. www.gayvanityfair.com

See more event photo albums on BARtab’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lgbtsf.nightlife and on www.StevenUnderhill.com

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For more photos, and to arrange your own wedding, headshot or portrait photos,

call (415) 370-7152 or visit www.StevenUnderhill.com