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Keeping score: GOPers fall short
Bridge club offers lessons
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Marga Gomez
Well-Strung at Feinstein's
The
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Since 1971, the newspaper of record for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community
Vol. 48 • No. 2 • January 11-17, 2018
Rick Gerharter
Kelly Sullivan
Mark Leno takes an oath as a candidate for San Francisco mayor, administered by Department of Elections manager Gregory Slocum, as supporters Tom Temprano, back, Bevan Dufty, and Rafael Mandelman look on.
Supervisor Jeff Sheehy
SF Supe Sheehy looks back on 1st year
SF mayoral race takes shape
by Matthew S. Bajko
S
aturday morning longtime medical marijuana advocate Jeff Sheehy was up early to mark the start of recreational sales of the drug in San Francisco. He helped usher in the historic moment at the Apothecarium, a dispensary in the city’s gay Castro district. It was the culmination of months of work for Sheehy, who as the appointed District 8 supervisor took a lead role at City Hall in pushing for the adoption of rules and regulations required before the sale of marijuana for recreational use could legally begin in the city. At moments during the – oftentimes heated – debate over the issue, it was unclear if the supervisors would be able to hatch out an agreement in time for sales to begin in January, as in many cities around the state the new rules took effect January 1. “It is a great first step,” Sheehy, the first person living with HIV to serve on the board, told the Bay Area Reporter during an interview in his supervisors office shortly before the end of the year. The extended debate over the issue resulted in many other matters he had hoped to tackle in the fall get pushed to the back burner. “I lost so much time on cannabis,” said Sheehy, who expects to continue to tackle the issue this year as local leaders work to iron out remaining concerns, such as where consumption should be allowed and if there should be a special city commission on cannabis. It is an idea Sheehy remains undecided on and questions if the marijuana industry should be treated separately from other adult-oriented businesses like nightlife venues and liquor stores. The feedback he has gotten from cannabis businesses is they don’t want to pay for the oversight body. “I personally haven’t made up my mind. I want to hear from the stakeholders,” said Sheehy. “The philosophical question is how do we want cannabis to evolve.” One priority in the new year for Sheehy is working with District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen to move forward with naming Terminal 1 at San Francisco International Airport after gay icon and former city supervisor Harvey Milk, the first LGBT person to win elective office in San Francisco and California. Ronen introduced the legislation last summer and expects it to be taken up by the board in the coming weeks. See page 15 >>
SF gets legal pot
A
fter a five-day delay, adult San Franciscans were finally able to purchase recreational marijuana beginning Saturday, January 6 after state and city officials approved licenses for a handful of operators. Above, customers lined up inside the Apothecarium in the Castro district, one
Rick Gerharter
of the first dispensaries allowed to open for recreational sales. Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and gay District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy joined Apothecarium officials in marking the occasion. Adult recreational sales of cannabis began January 1 in several other California cities.
by Matthew S. Bajko
S
an Francisco voters come June could elect the city’s first gay mayor, maintain the first black female mayor, or could instead send the first Asian-American woman to Room 200 at City Hall. By the 5 p.m. filing deadline Tuesday to enter the special mayoral election on the June 5 ballot, called due to the sudden death last month See page 15 >>
Podcast tells Mattachine story by Seth Hemmelgarn
A
podcast devoted to the founding and evolution of the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest homophile organizations in the United States, recently debuted. The 10-episode “Mattachine” podcast, available for free on iTunes and at http://www.mattachinepod.com, follows the story of the secret organization, which was founded in Los Angeles in 1950, and has been credited with spawning the country’s LGBTQ rights movement. “From a spark of inspiration in 1920s Chicago, through secret speakeasy-style meetings that brought together anonymous homosexuals,” the podcast uses FBI case files and other sources to examine the paranoia wrought by communisthunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, said a news release for the program, which launched January 4. The “witch hunt” eventually “pulled the communist queer activists apart, scattering the seeds of the movement,” the podcast’s creators stated. The podcast, which includes archival interviews with late Mattachine founder Harry Hay, highlights the stories of Hay and others “to uncover nuanced issues the LGBTQ community still struggles with today: internalized homophobia, misogyny, political pressure, anonymity, and assimilation,” the release said. Acknowledged by many as the founder of the modern gay and lesbian rights movement, Hay died in 2002 in San Francisco. In response to the Bay Area Reporter’s
Rick Gerharter
Harry Hay, center, celebrated his 90th birthday April 7, 2002 and was joined by Mark Garret, left; Hay’s partner, the late John Burnside, and the late author Stuart Timmons.
emailed questions, producer and host Devlyn Camp, who’s 25 and lives in Chicago, said, “I was out for almost a decade before I started reading about the Mattachine Society, and assumed I was pretty well-versed in queer culture. Reading these stories about our community opened my eyes to the problems that persist today. This show is certainly about how outside forces view the queer community, but it’s just as much about how we view ourselves. Studying history
is never a waste of time, especially when political pressure is coming down on us again under [President Donald] Trump. His administration is doing terrible things to our community, and we can learn how to fight him by studying what our ancestors did.” Camp, who’s genderqueer and uses third person pronouns, said they started their research and writing “about two years ago,” and recorded and produced the show during most of the last year. See page 5 >>
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