President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring the federal government will only recognize two genders – male and female – shortly after returning to power January 20, prompting criticism from LGBTQ activists. The order may affect passports that have the “X” gender marker that was approved in 2022 by the Biden administration. The order also has a narrow definition of male and female and declares that a person’s sex is determined at conception.
Trump rescinded 78 Biden-era executive orders on his first day in office, including two that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government and non-discrimination against LGBTQ people, which former President
See page 8 >>
Colfax stepping down from DPH
by Matthew S. Bajko
Having led the San Francisco Department of Public Health over the last six years during several global health pandemics and a continued decline in local HIV cases, AIDS expert Dr. Grant Colfax is resigning next month. He is the second high-profile gay leader of a city agency to depart in recent months as newly sworn in Mayor Daniel Lurie reshapes the local bureaucracy.
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Castro sees business changes as 2025 gets underway
by John Ferrannini
The Castro is seeing a number of changes for neighborhood business as the new year gets underway. The developments are a sign of rejuvenation in the LGBTQ neighborhood after the economic slump brought on by the COVID pandemic.
Perhaps the most prominent is the moving of a 45-year-old institution to the neighborhood’s most prominent block. The adult store Does Your Mother Know, started in 1979, has been at 4141 18th Street for 17 years; but as of January 18 it’s now at the former Body space at 450 Castro Street.
As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, the longtime Body clothing store closed in 2019 shortly after a fire. Last year, the space opened back up selling energy drinks, snacks and lingerie, and retaining the name Body.
Marc Graves, a gay man who is a manager of Does Your Mother Know, told the B.A.R. January 17 that the reason for the move is “mainly because our lease was up and we saw the space empty, and that we could bring life to this section.”
Asked if the move portends other changes for the store, like more or different products, Graves said that the managers will “pretty much keep everything the same.”
“We’re all pretty excited to be more centrally lo-
cated in the Castro to better serve our customers, community and getting to know the new neighbors,” he added.
Even businesses staying in place are also sporting new looks – the Mollie Stone’s Markets location at 4201 18th Street celebrated a remodel last week.
neighborhood is one of the most iconic neighborhoods in the world and we are honored to be a part of it.
“The people in this community is what makes it so great,” he continued. “Everyone truly has pride in and for this community.”
Elliott Stone, the chief operating officer of the chain, said at the January 17 event that “the Castro
See page 2 >>
Couple rendezvoused with gay history during their 50 years together
by John Ferrannini
The first same-sex couple married in Marin County 17 years ago celebrated another milestone last week – 50 years together.
But Michael Gonsalves had to put the party together several months before their actual anniversary of March 25, 1975, because he suspects it will be the last time his husband, Jim Campbell, will be able to celebrate the occasion.
Campbell, who lives at the San Francisco VA Medical Center at the former Fort Miley Military Reservation between the Richmond neighborhood and the Pacific coast, has Parkinson’s and dementia, Gonsalves said, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in the Vietnam War.
2017 Media Kit
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and raised in Petaluma. He moved to San Francisco seeking a more supportive environment in which to be gay. Campbell, 75, born in 1949, came to the city in 1974 by way of Seattle after his time serving in Vietnam. Campbell would befriend young men like Gonsalves and help them find jobs – or obstruct people trying to get them hooked on drugs, Gonsalves recalled.
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“He couldn’t talk, but he mumbles,” Gonsalves said, recalling the party that was held January 11 at 2 p.m. “He was very amused. It was a nice experience. I think he knew it was our anniversary. We have done so much to reach that goal after we struggled over the years.”
The pair met shortly after Gonsalves moved to San Francisco.
“One of the bartenders at a little disco bar on Polk Street introduced us,” Gonsalves said. “I was one of the guys hanging out in the doorways. I didn’t know they were hustlers.”
Gonsalves said due to the reputation of some
young men on Polk in those days, Campbell “followed me to see where I’d go and who I’d hang out with” for weeks before they’d actually been introduced.
“Back then most of the young guys that were there were there on business,” Gonsalves recalled.
Gonsalves, 69, is a Bay Area native, born in 1955
“He’d take them in, give them money for food, try to get them jobs, and he knew who the bad people were,” Gonsalves said.
He said early on the couple would tell strangers they were cousins – but an encounter with the late Supervisor Harvey Milk when the gay rights icon was registering voters in Civic Center Plaza changed all that. Milk encouraged them to never deny who they were, or their love for each other, Gonsalves said.
“That was when we told people we were gay,” Gonsalves said. “We didn’t make a point of it, but we told people. … I will never forget him telling me to be out and to be proud.”
Initially a security guard at the City Disco in North Beach, Campbell eventually started his own private security company, JGC Investigators, through which he played a key role in the city’s gay history.
Black Choreo Festival
Jim Campbell, left, and Michael Gonsalves, were married in 2008.
Courtesy Michael Gonsalves
San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, left, presented a certificate of honor to the Stone family, which runs Mollie Stone’s Markets.
From Mollie Stone’s Instagram
Dr. Grant Colfax
Rick Gerharter
President Donald Trump was sworn in in the U.S. Capitol January 20.
Reuters pool
Stone also thanked customers and employees of Mollie Stone’s, which posted to Instagram that “our grand celebration highlights our market’s glow up, which included new store light fixtures, remodeled floors and ceiling, 330 inches of video monitors displaying iconic San Francisco views, new check stands, bathrooms, a renovated parking garage, and more. We also maximized our store space with an enhancement of product variety including an abundance of local products and new offerings in the prepared foods section.”
New San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, a gay man who represents the Castro, was in attendance and welcomed the reopening.
Mandelman presented the Stone family with a certificate of honor from the board.
“It’s amazing it has only been since 2009 – I mean I guess that’s a long time but as you get older it seems like a short time,” Mandelman said. “You’ve really become part of the Castro and a Castro institution.”
Mandelman said the store’s employees are unionized.
“It’s not easy to run grocery stores,” he said. “This is actually a family that’s decided to live by San Francisco values. They’re not trying to have crappy labor relations. They’re actually doing it the right way. … I’m excited that you recommitted to the neighborhood in this way and I’m excited to shop in your store, and everybody else should too.”
Mollie Stone’s was closed for a day last June by the Department of Public Health due to a rodent infestation. It reopened the next day and the owners blamed construction, according to SFist.
Gyro Xpress, the Mediterranean late night spot at 499 Castro Street, also had a remodeling over the Christmas holiday.
Before the holidays, The Photo Booth Museum opened up at 2275 Market Street. It was chock-full of customers and passersby January 17, when proprietor Matt Dewalt, who is straight, told the B.A.R. that the community support has been “amazing.”
“We weren’t expecting this kind of turnout,” he said of the museum, run by the photo booth company Photomatica. “The goal is for people to explore old photo booths, analog photo booths, and also basic education on how things used to be.”
The museum boasts the country’s oldest analog photo booth, as well as a not-fully-operational booth dating back to the 1930s. Dewalt said the location is perfect for couples looking for a cute spot for their Valentine’s Day snapshots. For that purpose, Photomatica will be unveiling a kissing booth later this month.
Just down Market Street, as the B.A.R. previously reported, two queer women are opening up the first lesbian-themed bar the Castro has seen in decades. Sara Yergovich
and Danielle Thoe, business partners and friends, will be running the women’s sports bar Rikki’s at 2223 Market Street, with a timetable for opening in May or June.
Yergovich told the B.A.R. January 19 that timetable still holds.
“Since we announced the location on New Year’s Day, we have had an overwhelming welcome from other businesses and residents,” Yergovich stated. “We’re working on transforming the space and are still on track to open this spring. We’ll also be hosting watch parties at other bars before we open – anyone interested can stay up to date with our events by following us on Instagram @rikkisbarsf or through our website www.rikkisbarsf.com.”
Closures
But not everything is a business opening. Longtime neighborhood proprietor Lynett Spiegel told the B.A.R. January 17 that the 284 Noe Street location of Jeffrey’s Natural Pet Foods will be closing after 15 years at that storefront and 25 years in the
Weddings Romance Weddings R&omance
Castro. The company’s 1841 Powell Street location will remain open.
“The last day is January 26,” Spiegel said. “We have a DJ playing all day through 5 [p.m.] and La Mediterranee is going to be catering so we can say goodbye.”
Castro customers will be getting free deliveries from the Powell Street location for a time.
“The rent here is astonishing,” Spiegel said when asked the reason for the closure. “Renegotiating is not an option.”
Chadwick’s, a queer-owned bakery serving up fun buns at 2375 Market Street, permanently shuttered in November.
Lobby Bar, at 4230 18th Street Unit A, posted a sign that ownership will be transferred to Qcare Enterprises LLC. A Lobby Bar employee said the bar will decline to comment for now on the matter.
Terry Asten Bennett, a straight ally who is president of the Castro Merchants Association, shared a number of thoughts on these developments with the B.A.R., stat-
ing, “Obviously, we never like to see businesses closing” but that the association “is hopeful that the vacancies will be brief.”
“We are fortunate that the vacancies are with landlords that have been traditionally motivated to keep their properties filled,” she continued. “I am hopeful that these landlords are cognizant of the current economic environment. 2024 was a very challenging year and the threat of tariffs ranging from 25%-60% is only going to be further damaging to our economic forecast.”
Asten Bennett was referring to planned tariffs from President Donald Trump, who suggested 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, and 10% tariffs on Chinese goods, possibly beginning February 1.
“The remodels at Gyro Express and Mollie Stone’s are encouraging,” she added. “I am always excited to see businesses invest in themselves and therefore invest in the community.” t
Peña named as SF workforce director
compiled by Cynthia Laird Iowayna Peña, a former co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club, has been named director of San Francisco Workforce Development. The workforce division falls under the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and its executive director, Sarah Dennis Phillips, made the announcement January 7.
fluential Women in Bay Area Business.”
Peña, who is Black and Native American and identifies as a lesbian, started in the position Janu ary 6, according to a news release from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Her division trains and connects unem ployed, underemployed, and hard-to-employ residents to sustainable job opportunities in a variety of industries, the release noted.
Previously, Peña was the director of government affairs and real estate development for the San Francisco Giants. During her five-year tenure, she played an integral role in delivering phase one of the Mission Rock development project, a new mixed-use neighborhood along the city’s southern waterfront. She also led the launch and implementation of Mission Rock Academy, an apprenticeship program focused on training and placing residents from underrepresented communities in the building trades.
In 2023, the San Francisco Business Times named her one of the “Most In-
“Iowayna brings exactly the right mix of publicsector passion and privatesector know-how to supercharge our work creating pathways to good paying jobs while advancing equity and inclusion,” Phillips stated. “We are thrilled to have Iowayna join the city’s leadership team.”
Peña stated that her goal is to empower and support San Franciscans through innovative programs.
“I look forward to collaborating with businesses, educational institutions, and our community partners as we create and implement targeted, evidence-based programs that address the specific needs of our diverse labor market,” she stated. Peña has previous experience working for the city. She is a former legislative aide and district director for former District 10 supervisor Malia Cohen, who’s now the state’s elected controller.
“Having worked closely with Iowayna, I can attest to her brilliance and her commitment to improving the lives of all San Francisco residents,” Cohen stated.
Rainbow World Fund responds to SoCal fires
The Rainbow World Fund, an LGBTQ humanitarian nonprofit in San Francisco, has put out the call for donations to help victims of the wildfires in Southern California. Executive Director
Iowayna Peña
Courtesy OEWD
The Photo Booth Museum has drawn visitors since it opened at 2275 Market Street.
John Ferrannini
Rikki’s, a women’s sports bar, is on track for a spring opening, according to the owners.
John Ferrannini
Lucid aims to push the boundaries on streaming
by JL Odom
Not many 28-year-olds can say they were a professional athlete, top of their class at an elite university, an investment bank analyst, and a global business development lead and now have their own company. But Indy Sanders, founder and CEO of the tech startup Lucid, can.
“I don’t think there are any barriers within someone’s being or within the world that can prevent anyone from reaching the top of anything they want to achieve. I think the only prevention or blockage is your ability to push through,” Sanders, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, said during a Google Meet interview with the Bay Area Reporter.
Lucid is an artificial intelligence-driven wellness and media platform featuring works by an array of creatives, artists, and filmmakers. The company seeks to turn the current entertainment-streaming model of Netflix, Prime, Hulu, and similar subscriptions on its head with its offering of tailored, advertisementfree content based on users’ personality, mood, and other relevant data.
Headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, Lucid’s MVP (minimal viable product) beta launch took off in July 2023. Ever since, Sanders has been steadfastly promoting their company’s concept, iOS app, and intelligencestreaming model.
For Sanders, it’s all about perseverance – and an unwavering drive to succeed.
“If you find a way, then there’s always a next move. … That’s the mentality that I brought into the company,” they said. Setting the stage for entrepreneurship
Sanders is a former tennis player. Their days consisted of training for eight to nine hours and then heading to wherever they were staying, making themself something for dinner, and getting in some study time before falling asleep and doing the same routine all over again.
In terms of what Sanders gleaned from the experience, they said, “I basically was taken out of the systems that other people were in, which gave me a very different perspective on life, and I was very much trained as an athlete into this obsessive, hard-working behavior where you feel so deeply that whatever you put in you get out, and you know that mistakes are just part of the positive learning experience.”
For them, those formative years yielded two key benefits. “It was a combination of not being tied to the main structures of our world that constrain people – particularly constrain their own belief in what they can achieve and do for the world – and my ability to not feel deterred by problems and [instead] be like, ‘OK, let’s go. What can we do next?’” Sanders said.
A spinal injury ended their tennis career, but it didn’t lessen their ambition or self-discipline. Sanders pivoted from being a professional athlete to a conscientious student, enrolling in Loughborough University, a major sports university in England.
“I went there because I didn’t know how to engage with normal people that didn’t do sports, to be quite honest. So it was a nice transition,” Sanders said. After graduating top of their class and with a first degree (the U.S. equivalent to graduating summa cum laude) in politics, they gave law school a try, only to
find it wasn’t the right fit.
“Law was too much about reading and less about practical innovation using my mind,” Sanders commented.
For Sanders, realizing that the career wasn’t for them didn’t result in giving up; instead, it prompted them to try something new: the financial-centered world of banking. Their work in the industry included joining Houlihan Lokey’s mergers and acquisitions team as an investment banking analyst, going from legal books and trial practice to sourcing and making deals.
They shared, “I was looking at cool businesses across Europe and finding acquisition targets for our clients, and then starting off those M&A deals. So that was really good insight into looking at the later stage of a startup and going, ‘What is an acquirable startup? What does it look like? What are the patterns of growth?’”
The analyst job was followed by work at a small tech consulting company, State of Flux, with Fortune 100 clients – but, at the time, an indiscernible sales process.
“I went in as their first-ever dedicated sales person, and I basically ripped their system to sh*t and built a proper global growth structure, selling into Microsoft, Google, Chevron – [with] deals up to the millions,” said Sanders.
Their efforts resulted in the company’s interest in moving Sanders from the U.K. to New York, as head of strategic growth, to run operations globally; after a few years of driving sales and business development, they were ready to branch out on their own, with the idea of Lucid in mind.
Pushing the boundaries of streaming
Once downloading the free Lucid app via the Apple Store and opening it, a soon-to-be-user sees the wording “Enter Lucid” and registers via an email address and password. From there, the approximately 5-minute onboarding involves a personality assessment, featuring nine prompts, including “If you were an emoji…” and selecting one of a dozen featured emoji (e.g., peach, fire, crying yellow face); “You move into a new apartment … What’s the first thing you buy?” with paint, lights, speakers, sofa, or plants as one of the possible responses; and “You have more than 30 …” with the five options being books, tattoos, shoes, succulents, and bottles of alcohol.
“We really started honing in on exactly what people wanted, and then we uncovered, ‘Oh, it’s not just a content play here. It’s how do you connect people to content in a more meaningful way, and how do you integrate it into their lives in a habitual way that they don’t have to
make an effort towards, which is where all of our AI came in,” explained Sanders about the app’s development.
Post-personality assessment, Lucid’s AI “ghost” – depicted as the traditional white bed sheet figure – appears on the screen, putting together curated content based on the user’s selected answers to the prompts. The user can also have a conversation with the ghost, with the interactions serving as a means to further personalize their experience.
“You can say, ‘Hey, I’m feeling pretty low. I’m a Pisces. My partner just broke up with me. Help me elevate myself this evening, and lift my mood up and show me that there’s a reason to have faith in the universe today.’ And it will give you conversational reasoning as to what it’s curating for you and why, and then it presents it to you,” Sanders said.
Feelings such as love, calmness, and joy drive the film collections, with titles like “Kinetic Motion” and “Quiet Contemplation,” that Lucid’s AI ghost selects and recommends.
“We curate, not by genre, but by emotive. Like, ‘Does this content deliver some kind of emotive impact?’ And if it does, then we like it. We typically are doing the stuff other people aren’t doing, and we like that. We don’t want to be copycats of Netflix – we’re very different from them,” Sanders explained.
The curated content – art-oriented films of varying lengths – comes from numerous creatives, sourced by Sanders and their team, including Asia Stewart, Lucid’s founding artistic director and Sanders’ spouse.
“As Indy’s life and business partner, I see how committed they are to Lucid firsthand,” Stewart, a Black queer woman, wrote in an email to the B.A.R. “It is not an exaggeration to say that from the second Indy wakes up to the moment their head hits their pillow twenty hours later, they are thinking about Lucid. On many occasions, they’ve woken up during the middle of the night to do research or jot down notes for a new idea or feature. They are constantly assessing how they can refine Lucid’s apps to be reflective of the needs of filmmakers, artists, and audiences.”
Films on the Lucid app include “The Man of My Dreams,” written and directed by Tristan Scott-Behrends, a queer filmmaker who divides his time between New York City and Los Angeles.
Scott-Behrends’ nearly 6-minute film centers on a romance, with two lovers eating pizza slices together at a restaurant, spending time in a laundromat, and holding and kissing each other on a subway train. “How quickly strangers’ stares turned into smiles as they recognized the radiating love between us,” the film’s narrator says.
Scott-Behrends, whose works “Only Trumpets,” “Suckmeoff, Princess!” and “Lilac Lips, Dutchess County” are also part of Lucid’s film collection, described the platform as “filling a much-needed gap” for those in the film and performance industries.
“Curation is such an important part of any artist’s discovery, and Lucid is proving to be a trusted visionary connecting their audiences to compelling and provocative work that they may not otherwise be able to access. So many of the other platforms that artists working within performance or experimental film (use) have such strict censorship that work – particularly work from queer artists – often gets banned or pushed out of the algorithm,” he wrote in an email to the B.A.R.
Scott-Behrends appreciates not only Lucid’s hand- (or AI ghost-) picked content based on an individual’s interests and preferences but also the company’s willingness to pay filmmakers and other creatives for their contributions.
“I am really honored to be a part of this new venture, and with their financial model I anticipate that the money Lucid pays out to artists will allow us to continue to finance our work,” he commented.
Getting the word –and content – out
At the time of Sanders’ interview with the B.A.R., they were in Miami for Miami Art Week 2024; they had attended last year as well. The event draws myriad exhibitors and attendees and features various fairs and shows. For Sanders and their team, it’s an opportunity to get a firsthand look at people’s responses to Lucid’s content.
“Last year, we were in a really cool alternative show and fair where we were in this warehouse. … We had projections all over the ceiling, big chairs, and I was in there 12 hours a day with my team, and it was really interesting to see people walking in and absorbing our space and our content specifically. It was like the best customer discovery experience you could possibly have,” they said.
Miami Art Week is also a means for Sanders and the Lucid team – whose core members are Stewart; Millie Gibbons, founding AI engineer; and Max Roman, lead adviser and investor – to establish cultural partnerships with those in the art world, such as with the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), a nonprofit arts organization and one of the biggest shows at the event.
Sanders commented, “We don’t necessarily position ourselves as an art company; we’re culture[-themed], obviously, but what’s really exciting, I think, is being able to literally rub our shoulders in this event next to some of the top galleries in the world.”
And then there’s the palpable interest in Lucid from hotel groups, social clubs, and venues looking to amp up their spaces’ visual displays.
As Sanders shared, “They were saying, ‘We love your content. It actually has some kind of depth and meaning and has a draw to it. … The other content that we’ve showcased, printed artwork, or anything that’s an alternative to elevate a space just hasn’t hit in the same way. Are you guys going to do a corporate deal?’”
Sanders built out the tech to deliver in that regard, adding “consumer market” to Lucid’s growing list of customers, including art museums, film festivals, and other cultural organizations, as well as a future partnership with The Donum Estate, a Sonoma, California-based vineyard.
The positive reception to Lucid extends to recognitions such as a South by Southwest (SXSW) 2024 conference award that Sanders nabbed for “best speed pitch in media and entertainment.” Sanders and Stewart were also selected for Forbes’ “30 under 30 North America 2025 Art & Style” list, which recognizes the business achievements of individuals under age 30.
The right mentality goes a long way
Though millions of people are using Lucid’s app, cultural partnerships abound, and accolades are mounting up, building a business from scratch hasn’t been without its challenges, noted Sanders.
“It’s definitely harder being queer as a founder – fundamentally, ridiculously harder. I thought I could beat the odds,
and in some ways I do. But I like to say, if I was a cis straight white man and I had my background, I would be getting $20 million checks dropped in my lap by VCs all the time. And that, sadly, is not the case. I don’t have $20 million to play with right now, but I will,” said Sanders.
Lucid does, however, have certain major venture capital investors – including Antler, based in Singapore, and New York City-headquartered Techstars. According to Sanders, they raised $400,000 from these VCs, as well as from angel investors, including Roman, an ex-product lead at Netflix. They’re currently involved in a fundraising round “to fuel scaled growth” that will carry over into 2025.
Lucid’s investors are not only financially backing the company but also articulating support for Sanders’ ideas and work ethic.
“Indy is one of the most focused entrepreneurs I’ve ever encountered in my career. That, combined with their ability to learn incredibly fast, makes them just outrageously effective and able to execute quickly,” said Roman, a self-described “frequent and enthusiastic ally,” in an email to the B.A.R. Roman, who lives in the Bay Area, is a guest lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and was elected to the Piedmont Unified School District Board of Education in November, per Alameda County election results.
His sentiments about Sanders’ skill set and leadership qualities parallel that of Antler’s general partner, Jeff Becker: “Indy is a force. They are maniacal about the details that matter, an exceptional operator, and someone with top 1% resilience. This is the type of founder you always back,” wrote Becker in a comment Sanders shared with the B.A.R. Lucid team members conveyed views of Sanders’ along the same lines as Lucid’s investors.
“As CEO Indy strikes the perfect balance. They’ve built an inclusive, energetic workplace culture where exploration and spontaneity are encouraged, while also modeling really incredible work ethic, drive, adaptability and creativity,” Gibbons, who identifies as cis and straight, wrote in an Instagram message to the B.A.R.
“I think Indy’s unconventional path into this industry has made them a particularly resilient and driven founder, who also really cares about unlocking the potential of every member of their team,” she added.
Stewart described Sanders, her partner, as “incredibly strategic,” assessing it as a way of being derived from Sanders’ years on the court, racket in hand. “They can distill any problem affecting any area of the business into simple facts and quickly outline an efficient and effective solution that aligns with wider business goals. They push the team to be nimble and always embrace continuous innovation,” Stewart said.
Early in the new year, Sanders plans on scheduling a trip to Mexico with the Lucid team, where they can collectively work in mild weather – and also celebrate the success of Lucid thus far.
For Sanders, the life lessons learned from sports carry over to their approach to running a company.
“Your odds of winning a race are not defined by where you start in the race and what your odds are at the starting line. The odds are going to change at every single point along the way because other people are going to drop out. So the one thing you know for certain is, if you continue and you are one of the final people, your odds are going to be better, and you will have a much higher chance of succeeding,” they said.
“I think that that mentality kind of pulls you through every moment,” Sanders added. t
This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.
Lucid founder and CEO Indy Sanders
Courtesy Antler, Portfolio Conference 2024
People watch Lucid content at Lucid’s NADA Miami showcase 2024; featured still from İsmet Köroğlu’s “Gate29” (2021).
Dylan Mekhi
Obituaries >>
Episcopal trailblazer Rev. Robert Cromey dies
by John Ferrannini
The Reverend Robert Warren Cromey, who helped create the early proLGBTQ group the Council on Religion and the Homosexual and performed early same-sex marriages, died January 14. He was 93.
Reverend Cromey’s wife, Ann, told the Bay Area Reporter that he’d died in his sleep in an assisted living facility after having suffered a fall in early December.
“He was an Episcopal clergyman who tried to follow Jesus by welcoming all people,” Ann Cromey told the B.A.R. in a phone interview. “He did go to Selma, Alabama when Martin Luther King Jr. asked clergy to come to march. In San Francisco, he became convinced Christ was accepting of all people and he started speaking out in 1963 about the humanity of gay people, and he did it his whole career. Robert was highly publicized.”
Reverend Cromey was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York. A disciple of the heterodox Bishop of California James Pike, Reverend Cromey served as his secretary, and though he was straight, he was an early advocate for LGBTQ equality both inside and outside the Episcopal Church. In that endeavor, Reverend Cromey co-founded the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, an early homophile group that on New Year’s
Jeff Cotter, a gay man, said the fires have hit close to home, as his elderly father was evacuated from the veterans care home he lives in.
“As we face the aftermath of these catastrophic wildfires, it is crucial that we unite in support of those impacted,” Cotter stated in an email sent to supporters. “The ongoing crisis has disrupted lives, homes, and our community’s spirit.”
He added that RWF is “dedicated to rallying support for marginalized communities affected by this disaster.”
“RWF is partnering with local groups that are mobilizing to provide front-line aid,” Cotter stated. “RWF is focused on helping the undocumented and other vulnerable communities most impacted.”
To donate, go to rainbowfund.org or send a check to 4111 18th Street, San
Obituaries >>
Ralph A. Carlson
June 11, 1940 – November 26, 2024
Ralph Carlson grew up in Brooklyn and lived in Greenwich Village, New York before migrating with a family of long-term friends to San Francisco in 1976. He resided at his home on Hickory Street since 1980, where he passed away. A handsome man of tall stature, Ralph had served honorably in the military as a Marine. He enjoyed his longtime career in insurance with American Insurance Group. He was a powerhouse of exuberance and vitality, a force of spirituality, and uplifting affirmations. He enjoyed being home, yet Ralph was one of San Francisco’s personalities you couldn’t forget. His beloved sister and many close friends predeceased Ralph; he is survived by family in Hawaii, along with friends
Day 1965 threw a fundraising gala in the Tenderloin that was raided by police due to its pro-gay message.
The Reverend Jim Mitulski, a gay man who’s now pastor of Congregational Church of the Peninsula in Belmont, told the B.A.R. that Reverend Cromey demonstrated allyship by being arrested.
“They,” Mitulski said, referring to a number of straight pro-gay clergy in those days, “stood out and stood with us.”
Mitulski, who pastored the old Metropolitan Community Church in the Castro in the 1980s and 1990s, said since the clergy weren’t LGBTQ, they
Francisco, CA 94114. Specify “Disaster Recovery” when making a contribution.
Haring postage stamp unveiled
The late gay artist Keith Haring was known for his animated imagery and now one of his works is the U.S. Postal Service’s 2025 Love Forever postage stamp, which is currently available.
A USPS news release stated that the stamp features an untitled 1985 drawing by Haring that includes two moving figures reaching toward a red heart. It was a theme Haring returned to throughout his career, making several variations, each in his signature style, the release noted.
“The non-specificity of the figures allows a variety of people to see themselves in this stamp,” stated Antonio Alcalá, an art director for USPS who selected Haring’s work for the stamp design. “Partners getting married, celebrating an anniversa-
Nathaniel M. Henderson Jr. Sept. 21, 1968 – December 9, 2024
Nathaniel M. Henderson Jr., 56, passed away Monday, December 9, 2024, surrounded by his family at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, California.
Nathaniel Jr. was born on September 21, 1968, in Cairo, Illinois to Nathaniel Sr. and Mary (Lovies) Henderson. He was a Fairfield, California resident from 1980 to 2006. He relocated to San Francisco and pursued successful careers in human resource management, banking, business administration, and clinical medicine. For over 11 years his passion was working as a certified clinical medical assistant and phlebotomist, providing medical, psychological, and housing support for the privileged and underprivileged.
probably didn’t expect to be arrested, but nevertheless the incident brought attention to police mistreatment of LGBTQ people, and led to the end of routine San Francisco Police Department raids of gay and lesbian bars in the city.
“He was unwavering in his commitment to gay causes,” Mitulski told the B.A.R. “He was far more outspoken than many gay clergy were willing to be. He was very influential for me and other clergy in San Francisco. The Episcopal Church treated him at the time very badly. Now, they’re very pro-gay, but that’s because of what Robert did.”
Ann Cromey said that her husband “was threatened with presentation – a kind of Episcopal court – because he performed a marriage of two men. The threat came, and the bishop said, ‘don’t get any publicity,’ but Robert was not in control of the publicity so there was publicity anyway, but they did not present him. What Robert said to the bishop was, ‘I’ll see you in court with my lawyer,’ but that never came to pass.”
Reverend Cromey was the longtime pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church, at 1620 Gough Street on Cathedral Hill, and helped found St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, at 101 Gold Mine Drive in Diamond Heights.
Mitulski said Trinity was a thriving parish when Reverend Cromey was
ry, siblings sending each other a heartfelt greeting, or even party planners setting a positive tone for their event.”
Intended to evoke feelings of warmth and playfulness, the stamp’s release is perfectly timed for Valentine’s Day cards and can add sentiment and whimsy to letters, birthday or graduation cards, baby shower invitations or notes of thanks throughout the year, the release stated.
Haring’s pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture in the 1980s. His popularity grew from his spontaneous drawings in New York City subways, where his chalk outlines of figures, dogs, and other stylized items became widely recognizable. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1990 at the age of 31.
Customers may purchase stamps and other philatelic products through the postal store at usps.com/shopstamps, or their local post office. t
Robert William Sass
May 29, 1933 – September 10, 2024
Robert William Sass, a cherished husband, advocate, and adventurer, passed away peacefully at his residence in Sausalito, California, on September 10, 2024.
Born in Davenport, Iowa, on May 29, 1933, Bob graduated from DePauw University in 1955, demonstrating exceptional editorial prowess as the editor of The DePauw and securing the Pulliam Scholarship for journalism. He served as a first lieutenant and jet pilot in the United States Air Force before embarking on a 34-year career at Wadsworth Publishing Company, where he ascended to the position of vice president and board member.
there, and that the late priest enjoyed the company of LGBTQ people, whom, he said, “took him under their wing” and “helped him express himself in ways not part of his past experience,” for example, by teaching Reverend Cromey about incense and vestments.
Ann Cromey said that Project Open Hand was founded in Trinity’s kitchen during the AIDS epidemic, and that Reverend Cromey presided over the funerals of 72 people who died of AIDS complications.
Michael Reardon, a gay friend of Reverend Cromey’s, met him at St. John the Evangelist in the Mission district, where the retired priest became a parishioner after leaving Trinity.
“Before I met him in person – I met him on Maui one time with his wife Ann – I was in awe of him because I had known about his activism and his work in all parts of the city,” Reardon said. “He was an outspoken person with a great sense of humor, so I was in awe of his celebrity as I thought of him then, but he became a very, very close friend of mine.”
Reverend Cromey fell December 3, Ann Cromey said, and went to Sutter hospital on Van Ness Avenue. He then went to a Sutter in the Mission district and then to Central Gardens Post Acute before insurance stopped paying for his stay, at which point the couple paid $10,400 for a month in an assisted living facility. Ann Cromey said she didn’t think he was seen by a physician at either of the Sutter hospitals, though he was discharged by one before his time at Central Gardens.
She had their apartment modified so he could return home, but he died in his sleep early January 14.
“He did speak with one nurse practitioner at Central Gardens – as far as I know that’s the only medical practitioner he was seen by,” she said.
Sutter Health didn’t return a request for comment for this report.
“He was very brave,” Ann Cromey added. “People really did think he was crazy. Gay people were so unacceptable in those days. I think he was highly principled and not afraid of opposition.” t
Mark F. Herzog
passed peacefully from this world at the age of 68 on November 9, 2024.
A resident of San Francisco since the late 1970s, he spent his formative years in Apple Valley, Minnesota before making the Bay Area his permanent home. He is survived by his loving partner of eighteen years (married for eight), Ed Luce, sisters Mary, Kelley and Nancy, along with nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by parents Ernest and Catherine.
A survivor of the initial wave of HIV/AIDS infections that ravaged the city he loved so much, Mark was a devoted supporter and caretaker of friends who suffered from the disease.
The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 was a major turning point in his life, serving as an impetus to become and remain sober until the time of his death. He was a frequent presence at weekly AA meetings and acted as a sponsor to many of those who pursued recovery. Mark also co-facilitated a group for long-term HIV survivors at Alliance Health Project.
A lifelong student, upon early retirement Mark took classes at San Francisco State University for over a decade, eventually earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology in 2012. He continued his academic journey at City College until a few years before his passing.
Nathaniel Jr. is survived by his father Nathaniel Sr. of Fairfield; sister Carla (Covin) Henderson; niece Natalia (Covin) Jerome; nephew Jerry Covin; niece Jamie Covin; and great nieces Aaliyah and A’Myah Jerome; and his life partner of 19 years, Jerry Blume, and their fur baby, Pip. Nathaniel Jr. was preceded in death by his mother, Mary.
The family has scheduled Nathaniel Jr.’s celebration of life memorial for 1 p.m. Saturday, March 22, at BryanBraker Funeral Home, 1850 West Texas Street, in Fairfield. In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be sent to your local animal shelter.
Bob shared a fulfilling life with his husband, Larry Dark, whom he encountered in Key West, Florida, in 1991. Their union was characterized by a shared passion for sailing, music, theater, and travel.
A fervent advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, Bob dedicated himself to various organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, Pride Foundation, and the San Francisco Public Library’s James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center. His unswerving kindness, humor, and unwavering commitment to justice inspired all who had the privilege of knowing him.
In addition to Dark, Bob is survived by his cousin, Steve Sass, of Bettendorf, Iowa. His memory continues to serve as a testament to love, purpose, and compassion.
Mark’s other interests included aviation, astronomy, meteorology, home remodeling and travel. He was also very fond of complex LEGO sets, building an array of aircraft and construction vehicles over the years. He made regular pilgrimages to the Mall of America LEGO store in his hometown of Minneapolis, the last of which came just weeks before his death.
Mark served as the inspiration for the “Lil’ Papa” character in his husband Ed’s graphic novel series Wuvable Oaf, two volumes of which were published by Fantagraphics Books between 2015-16. He is also fondly remembered by fans as a fixture at Ed’s frequent convention appearances, manning the booth and chatting with attendees.
As a frequent recipient of lifesaving transfusions, Mark’s family requests donations be made to the American Red Cross, especially the gift of blood itself.
Mark F. Herzog, who was described as having a beautiful spirit by those who knew him,
The Reverend Robert Cromey
Rick Gerharter
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Trump repudiates trans people
Well, that didn’t take long. Only hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as the nation’s 47th president, he signed a slew of executive orders. He pardoned 1,500 people convicted in the January 6 insurrection, including those who attacked law enforcement officers; began to dismantle federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and sought to end birthright citizenship for children of some non-U.S. citizens that’s enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, among many, many others. The executive order that we’re concerned about, however, seeks to repudiate transgender people, and, if it withstands legal scrutiny, will cancel nonbinary people, including as it pertains to federally-issued identification documents. Draconian does not begin to describe this order. Trump even seeks to undo a landmark 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination because of sexuality or gender identity.
First, “sex” is defined as an immutable biological classification as either male or female. “‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” the order states. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
As trans journalist Erin Reed noted in her review, “Under Trump’s executive order, this section defines terms like ‘male’ and ‘female’ in ways that could fundamentally reshape how laws, policies, and regulations are applied throughout federal agencies. The practical implications are enormous. These definitions form the foundation for the rest of the executive order, serving as a directive for every federal agency to reinterpret and enforce their policies through this narrow and reductive lens. For instance, the Department of Education could use this definition to exclude transgender women from Title IX protections.”
In fact, gender identity isn’t even a thing under the executive order, which is titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” the order reads. “These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” Under definitions, the order states, “‘Gender identity’ reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.” The order goes on to state that within 30 days, the Health and Human Services will provide to the federal government, external partners, and the public clear guidance expanding the sex-based definitions found in the order.
What likely will adversely affect trans and nonbinary people are identification documents. And here, Trump’s order states that the secretaries of state and homeland security and the director of the Office of Personnel Management “shall implement changes to require that governmentissued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex (as defined above).” On Tuesday, some clarity was provided when the White House said the order would only apply to new documents, not existing ones. But, when people renew their passports or other documents, they will need to indicate the sex they were assigned at birth, according to a report by NOTUS.
The executive order is horrendous, and we encourage Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund to fight it in court. Lambda Legal said it is considering a lawsuit. And it was a Lambda client that received the first “X” passport a few years ago, after the Biden administration allowed people to self-identify their gender on passports with options of male, female, or “X.”
Regardless, it seems clear from the executive order that the “X” designation won’t be around much longer. Federal funds would no longer be used to “promote gender ideology,” as the order states. “Each agency shall access grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.” This could be interpreted to cease grants to organizations and agencies that serve trans and nonbinary people.
The other major part of the order concerns what Trump calls privacy in intimate spaces. Under this order, trans women could not be detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers. The secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department is tasked with preparing and submitting for notice and comment rulemaking policy to rescind the final rule entitled “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs,” (2016) and shall submit for public comment a policy protecting
women seeking single-sex rape shelters.
No federal funds shall be expended “for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” In other words, no hormones, surgery, or other treatment.
Intimate spaces designed for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity, the order states.
In another blow to trans people in the military, Trump rescinded a Biden-era executive order that allowed them to serve. Politico reported that while Trump has not reinstated the ban he implemented during his first term, revoking Biden’s order clears the way for that to be done. The Defense Department estimated there were about 8,000 transgender troop members in 2019, just before Trump’s first ban took effect, the outlet reported.
No Pride for administration
New Secretary of State Marco Rubio, confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 99-0 vote Monday, also wasted no time in shoring up the administration’s hostility to LGBTQ people. According to reports, Rubio, a Republican former senator from Florida, has instituted a “one flag” policy whereby only the American flag will fly at U.S. embassies and outposts at home and abroad. No longer will Pride, trans, or Black Lives Matter flags be flown, according to the order. (In addition to the U.S. flag, the prisoner of war/missing in action and the wrongful detainee flags will be allowed.)
“Starting immediately, only the United States of America flag is authorized to be flown or displayed at U.S. facilities, both domestic and abroad, and featured in U.S. government content. The flag of the United States of America united all Americans under the universal principles of justice, liberty, and democracy. These values, which are the bedrock of our great country, are shared by all American citizens, past and present,” the Rubio order states.
The Trump executive orders and the order from the State Department clearly show that the new administration is marching to the beat of discrimination and a heteronormative focus that is at odds with reality. LGBTQs have been present in society across the world for thousands of years, even when the terms weren’t universally understood or applied. It’s shameful that Trump, his cabinet secretaries, and staff are using the LGBTQ community to score cheap political points with a base that overwhelmingly would rather see lower prices and fair wages than obsess about who uses a public restroom or serves in the military. But, as we’ve written before, about half of the country is under the decidedly false impression that Trump will “make America great again.” The U.S., even with all of its problems, has always been a great country, and its laws and policies becoming more inclusive was just one example of that. t
Betrayed by our advocates
by Hank Trout
Mark S. King’s January 10 blog post on his award-winning “My Fabulous Disease” site made me aware of a new, and troubling, development in the class action lawsuit against pharmaceutical behemoth Gilead Sciences Inc.
For background: Gilead is one of the primary pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and marketing anti-HIV medications. One of those, Truvada, was very effective at controlling the virus, but it also caused horrible side effects, damaging the liver and attacking bone density. Gilead’s own studies confirmed that “an estimated 16,000 people would die, and 150,000 people would suffer kidney and bone injuries over a nine-year period,” as King wrote. Meanwhile, Gilead was also developing another drug, Descovy, which was just as effective as Tru vada but did not have the same side effects. Gilead chose to continue marketing Truvada for nine years, despite knowing that it had an equally effective, less harmful drug to replace it, knowing that patients were suffering kidney damage and loss of bone density.
vivors of HIV/AIDS who have lived with the virus for 20, 30, 40 years, or more, who are more likely to have taken Truvada and, thus, to be suffering the consequences. I am a 36-year AIDS survivor who took Truvada for about 10 years, who now suffers from advanced osteoporosis. I know several other men who took Truvada at about the same time who have suffered similar or worse physical damage traceable to the drug.
As if to add insult to injury, literally, comes a new development in the class action suit seeking compensation for patients who suffered liver or bone damage from the years they took Truvada. Over 24,000 patients have joined a class action suit seeking compensation from Gilead for the damage to their bodies they have suffered.
King again, “[P]eople with HIV taking the original drug suffered through broken bones and hip replacements and kidney complications. Oh, and some of them died.”
Gilead clearly put profits over people by continuing to market this damaging medication, knowing it had an equally efficient, less harmful alternative. That is unconscionable. As King quotes acclaimed HIV/ AIDS activist Peter Staley, “This is a level of evil we have never seen.”
Although this inexcusable action by Gilead affects all people with HIV, it is perhaps us long-term sur-
On November 25, 2024, some half-dozen current and past leaders in the community signed on to an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief in the case in support of Gilead and against the plaintiffs. Let me repeat, well-known people in the HIV community who have been acclaimed and rewarded as “leaders” in the fight against the pandemic just endorsed a predatory pharmaceutical company over the patients that company has damaged or killed. If that feels like a punch in the gut, good. It should. Worse still, when King contacted these leaders to ask about their joining the amicus brief, some ignored his attempt to contact them, some responded but declined to comment, one responded with a response that could have come directly from Gilead’s attorneys, and one, longtime AIDS advocate Phill Wilson – particularly egregiously – responded with a mea culpa tempered by asserting that he didn’t have
or take the time to do due diligence on the lawsuit. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise me as much as it does. As King and others have pointed out, “Big Pharma” has attempted to co-op activists and clinicians in the HIV community. As King put it, “From grassroots activists to clinicians to public health workers to more than one White House AIDS czar, our community talent pool has been depleted by a hiring spree pharma has been on for years. It is a strategy that puts our friends and former co-workers on the other side of the equation, blurring the line between advocacy and commerce.”
I cannot help wondering whether this fiasco, this blatant betrayal of us HIV patients, could have been avoided if only Gilead had talked with members of the community before it made the decision to withhold Descovy. I’m pretty damned certain that if Gilead had told us that they had a better, safer drug to fight HIV, we would have loudly shouted, “Hell yes, we want the safer drug!”
This is just one example of supposed leaders and allies in the HIV fight choosing to ignore the needs of us patients. It is this kind of neglect that led writers of both the Denver Principles and the San Francisco Principles 2020 to declare “NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US!” When we are left out of the conversation, we are left out of the solutions. Trite but true: if you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu. King’s gut-wrenching blog post explains this situation in greater detail, and I encourage you to read it. I will give him the last word here.
“And now some of our own community leaders have signed on the dotted line in defense of Gilead. This is infuriating. Our long-departed friends, the ones we marched beside and buried and mourned, surely are turning in their graves,” King writes. t
Hank Trout, a gay man, is a long-term AIDS survivor. King’s blog can be found at marksking.com
Hank Trout
Courtesy Hank Trout
Vice President JD Vance, left, applauds President Donald Trump on January 20.
Reuters pool
>> Community welcomes queer SF supervisor Fielder
by Matthew S. Bajko
In a nod to his being the first LGBTQ progressive leader elected to the District 9 seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors covering the Mission, Bernal Heights, and Portola neighborhoods, gay former supervisor Tom Ammiano administered the oath of office to queer District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder at the community swearing-in ceremony the young progressive politician held at Mission High School.
First elected to the board in 1994, Ammiano won election to his district seat in 2000 when the supervisors stopped being elected citywide. Gay former supervisor David Campos, who held the seat between 2008 and 2017, succeeded him.
Ammiano, who also was a state legislator, was one of the more prominent supporters of Fielder’s 2024 bid for the board seat. He told the Bay Area Reporter it was an honor to be asked by her to preside over her ceremonial oath, which he had Fielder write specifically for the moment and take with her left hand raised, saying, “Enough of this right crap.” (The winners of the supervisorial races in November for the odd-numbered seats on the board were officially sworn in on January 8 at their inaugural meeting at City Hall.)
He also said Fielder “is off to a great start,” having secured unanimous support among the 11 supervisors for her resolution recommitting San Francisco as a sanctuary city for immigrants introduced last week ahead of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House on Monday. Amid threats of sweeping raids to expel undocumented immigrants, supposedly targeting those who have committed crimes, Trump signed an executive order January 20 stripping the children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrant parents of their American citizenship, which was immediately the subject of a lawsuit filed by 19 state attorneys general.
“It is inspiring to old people like me. For older queer people like myself, it is inspiring because of the context we are living in,” said Guy, 82, noting that Fielder will be a fighter for social justice. “She is attractive to the next generation of young leaders we know she will lead.”
Noted LGBTQ historian, author, and transgender studies scholar Susan Stryker, Ph.D., also lives in District 9 near Bernal Heights and voted for Fielder. She supported her candidacy, explained Stryker, because she felt Fielder would represent her values at City Hall. “I just think as the city’s politics shift to the right, she is a rare beacon of hope,” said Stryker, adding of the 30-year-old politician, “it is thrilling to see her success at such a young age with great things to come.”
Fielder is the youngest LGBTQ community leader to win a seat on the Board of Supervisors. She is also now the third out supervisor to represent District 9 and succeeds former supervisor Hillary Ronen, a former aide to Campos and straight ally who was term-limited from running again in last November’s election.
“It is very gratifying to know there is a voice on the Board of Supervisors for these disenfranchised communities,” said Ammiano. “We need to make sure the community has her back. There is a lot of negativity out there.”
In her oath, Fielder pledged to “support and defend the vibrancy, inclusion and working people of District 9 in San Francisco against all detractors, foreign and domestic,” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the grassroots organizers that have laid the groundwork before me.” She also vowed “to fight for the elders, the youth, and the planet.”
Among those attending the January 17 event was Roma Guy, a longtime lesbian activist and former San Francisco health commissioner. She and her wife, Diane Jones, are coparents with Ammiano to a daughter and the grandparents to three girls.
Like Ammiano, the couple live in District 9 and voted for Fielder to be their new supervisor. Guy told the B.A.R. that seeing Fielder win election with 60% of the vote across the district’s three neighborhoods was “stupendous and over the top.”
She also said she is thrilled to see an out woman again on the board. It has been more than a decade since appointed bisexual District 5 supervisor Christina Olague stepped down on January 8, 2013, after losing her bid the previous fall to retain the seat.
Fielder’s victory in her board race resulted in her becoming the first out woman elected to the board since 1996 and the first out Latina to represent District 9. She traces her family roots to Monterrey, Mexico.
And with ancestral ties also to the Lakota and Hidatsa tribes of South and North Dakota, Fielder is the first Native American elected member of the city’s governing body and only second known to serve on it. (The first was appointed District 5 supervisor Vallie Brown who lost her 2019 race to continue serving in the seat.)
“My journey proves that you don’t need to be an extraordinary person to do extraordinary things. You don’t need to come from a powerful family. You don’t need to have lobbied for powerful organizations or have powerful connections to step up for your community,” said Fielder, who had a traditional Aztec dance troupe based in the Mission kick off the ceremony. “If you believe in public service. If you can imagine a different world from the one that you see around you. If you are impatient enough for change that is all you need to make a difference.”
She joins a historic bloc of four out members, serving alongside gay Supervisors Matt Dorsey of District 6, Joel Engardio of District 4, and Rafael Mandelman of District 8, whom Fielder helped unanimously elect as the new board president. Mandelman is the first gay super-
visor to serve in the powerful role since Ammiano gave up the gavel in 2003.
Mandelman attended Fielder’s ceremonial swearing-in, as did pro gressive Supervisors of District 1, District 11, and of District 10. Moderate Supervi sors and Danny Sauter were on hand, as were former supervisors Ronen and Dean Preston of District 5.
Mayor Daniel Lurie also dropped by the ceremony to give brief remarks before heading to another commitment. Acknowledging he and Fielder are unlikely to be in agreement on every issue, Lurie nonetheless pledged to work with her as he has done with all 11 members of the board.
“We are not going to agree on everything. But we can disagree without being disagreeable,” said Lurie, expected to be even more moderate than his predecessors, later telling Fielder, “Congratulations on this historic victory. You deserve it, and I look forward to working with you.”
He noted that he had already “snuck over” to greet Fielder in her City Hall office last week and in quire how she was doing. Such un announced visits he plans to con tinue with the supervisors.
“I know it is a shock,” said Lurie, alluding to the political divisions of the past that led to rocky relation ships between moderate and pro gressive city leaders. “It is a new day in San Francisco.”
He pledged to work with Fielder “to ensure the Mission District gets what it needs.” And Lurie rearticu lated his pledge that “the LGBTQplus community and immigrant community have an ally in me, and I know they have an ally in Supervi sor Jackie.”
In her remarks, Fielder pledged to be a champion “for a better world” beginning in the city. She pointed to housing, homelessness, and health care as areas she plans to focus on to ensure the policies coming out of City Hall benefit not just the wealthy.
“And in San Francisco’s most vital, vibrant districts, I intend to lead with a positive vision for the future, which is what we as San Franciscans have always believed in,” said Fielder. “Whether you are a single mother struggling with housing insecurity. Whether you were born and raised here and are fighting to keep your family here. Whether you are someone who migrated here, worked multiple jobs to send money back home to your family. Whether you are a homeowner working to put your children through college, I believe you deserve a District 9 and a San Francisco that works for you.” t
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San Francisco District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, left, was ceremonially sworn in January 17 in by Tom Ammiano, a former occupant of the seat.
Rick Gerharter
After the discovery of AIDS in 1981, it was unclear for several years what was causing it. Eventually, in 1984, it was announced to be a virus, which is now called HIV. But before then there were many theories the CDC investigated, and it was popularly theorized to be related to sexual promiscuity or drug use.
San Francisco had a number of gay bathhouses, but the lack of clarity as to the viral cause of AIDS, civil liberties concerns (sex between men in itself had only recently been legalized), and economic incentives led to fierce debate within the community as to whether these establishments should remain legal, or be patronized.
Thus, Dr. Mervyn Silverman, the city’s health director at the time, was hesitant to order the bathhouses to be closed.
However, in spring 1984, an ordinance was passed banning “unsafe” sexual practices at them, and in response the Department of Public Health hired undercover investigators to see if the bathhouses were in compliance, as Randy Shilts’ book “And The Band Played On” states.
The report documented that though condoms were available at bathhouses, patrons largely did not use them.
Campbell’s firm was contracted to do the investigation, hiring off-duty police to do so.
“Our neighbor was Tom Steel, an ACLU attorney, and he was fighting to keep the bathhouses open, and Tom and him almost went to blows,” Gonsalves recalled, referring to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Colfax announced Thursday that his last day will be February 7. A news release from the health department said SFDPH Deputy Director Dr. Naveena Bobba will serve as acting director until Lurie names a permanent replacement.
“I have had the privilege to serve the people of San Francisco, working to protect and promote the health of all San Franciscans,” stated Colfax. “Throughout my tenure we produced results, increased accountability and improved health equity while driving change. From COVID-19 to Mpox, the fentanyl crisis, to hiring a record number of nurses and passing two infrastructure bonds, we have built a stronger department.”
He added of his tenure, “We have accomplished much in the past six years, and there is no doubt that the dedicated, hardworking and compassionate staff at DPH will continue to deliver for San Francisco.”
Joe Biden signed on his first day in office in 2021, as the Bay Area Reporter reported at that time.
The gender order – titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” – states that “‘sex’ shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. ‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.’”
The Biden administration had interpreted federal civil rights statutes referring to sex as inclusive of gender identity.
But Trump has rejected that.
“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to selfidentify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers,” Trump’s order states.
Steel, a renowned civil rights attorney, died in 1998, according to his New York Times obituary.
In October 1984, Silverman cited the noncompliance of 14 bathhouses and sex clubs as the rationale behind ordering their closure; they reopened hours later. Later that month, a San Francisco Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order that shuttered nine gay bathhouses and sex clubs. In late November of that year another judge lifted the restraining order but imposed new rules on how the bathhouses and sex clubs could operate. No longer could they rent private rooms, unless they secured a hotel license, and employees had to monitor the sexual behavior of patrons.
After that, the gay bathhouses closed, and the rules for them weren’t
Former mayor London Breed had tapped Colfax to lead the sprawling local health department in 2019 following the resignation the year prior of lesbian former health director Barbara Garcia. She quit in 2018 after questions were raised about a contract granted to her wife’s employer.
For nearly four decades a gay or lesbian person has overseen the city’s public health department. It remains to be seen if another LGBTQ community member will be selected to succeed Colfax by Lurie, who also must name a permanent successor to gay former director of transportation Jeffrey Tumlin, who resigned as of January 1 leading the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
“As Director of Health, Dr. Colfax contributed to saving lives of San Franciscans during one of our city’s most challenging times. His dedication and work to the health and wellbeing of our city’s communities is remarkable,” stated Lurie. “His leadership has enabled to our recovery, and I thank him for his service to our city.”
lifted until 2021, as the B.A.R. reported.
Similar rules embedded in the city’s police code were removed by the Board of Supervisors last year.
Marriage
Campbell and Gonsalves left San Francisco in 1984, moving to the North Bay as they were disheartened by the epidemic. But they had another rendezvous with history in June 2008, when the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage for a brief window of time before voters decided to make it illegal again.
“We saw the news that it was legal to get married,” Gonsalves said. “Everyone ran down to the Marin Civic Center and there was a huge line. There were supporters, straight people coming down with roses.”
Congressmember Nancy Pelosi (DSan Francisco) praised Colfax as “an extraordinary public health leader.”
“From our city’s COVID response, to saving Laguna Honda hospital, to expanding primary care and treatment for substance use disorders, Dr. Colfax has led with a data driven, community-centered focus that benefits all San Franciscans,” she stated.
She was referring to mismanagement at Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center that led federal and state regulators to cite it for safety concerns and require the facility to move all 700 patients out in 2022. Two years later the facility had regained its certification and welcomed back its patients, as local CBS affiliated KPIX5 reported at the time.
As the city’s health director, Colfax continued to treat and support patients living with HIV/AIDS at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Under his watch, San Francisco recorded the lowest rate of HIV infections ever in 2023, at 133, and has had a dramatic
In San Francisco, participants in the People’s March went through the Mission District Saturday, January 18, as the Day of Resistance welcomed the new Trump administration.
While they were waiting in line, county officials announced they couldn’t marry same-sex couples just yet – the marriage licenses all said “bride” and “groom” and so they needed to print new ones.
While they were waiting, discussion veered to how long couples had waited for the historic day.
“They asked how long we’d been together, and we said, ‘33 years,’ and they asked the people in line if it was OK if we went first,” he said. The two were wed at the Frank Lloyd Wright garden at the civic center, in San Rafael.
“It was a very touching experience,” Gonsalves said.
Though Proposition 8, passed in November 2008, once again banned same-sex marriage in the Golden State, it became legal again in 2013 after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which upheld a federal appeals court decision that Prop 8 was unconstitutional.
But even before they were married, Campbell had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
“Eventually I had to shut down the business,” Gonsalves said, relating that through the years Campbell’s symptoms worsened.
The couple loved camping together, but now on trips, Campbell would get confused and, not remembering how he’d ended up in the car, think Gonsalves was kidnapping him and his dog.
Eventually, Gonsalves said he needed help from Congressmember Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) to get Campbell into a community living center for veterans at Fort Miley.
Supply didn’t increase with demand as Vietnam vets aged, Gonsalves said, leading to yearslong waitlists, and
reduction in syphilis and chlamydia rates, noted the news release.
“Dr. Colfax has provided exceptional leadership, guidance, and unwavering support to the department, his vision and strategic thinking were key to enhancing and expanding DPH’s ability to provide quality and life-saving care across San Francisco,” stated San Francisco Health Commission President Dr. Laurie Green.
Colfax graduated from Harvard College in 1987 and from Harvard Medical School in 1993. He completed his medical residency at UCSF and then was hired by DPH in 1997 to direct its HIV clinical prevention studies.
Between 2007 and 2012 Colfax had been San Francisco’s HIV prevention director, a position in which he instigated sweeping changes to how the city addressed the epidemic. He was an early advocate for a number of policies once viewed as controversial, such as rapid HIV testing and treatment on demand in order to lower patients’ HIV viral loads so they are less likely
of the 2024 campaign, a TV commercial with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” (referring to Democratic presidential nominee then-vice president Kamala Harris) aired over 30,000 times and in every swing state. A Future Forward PAC analysis found it among the most effective of the campaign, swinging viewers 2.7% toward Trump after viewing it.
NOTUS reports a White House official said Monday’s order was a first step and there’d be more moves on transgender rights to come. NOTUS reported Tuesday that the executive order is not retroactive. However, if government-issued documents need to be renewed, they must reflect the person’s sex assigned at birth, according to the white House.
without Huffman’s help, Gonsalves said he would have had to sell the couple’s Monte Rio cabin to pay for up to the $30,000 a month in private facility living expenses.
Huffman’s office did not return a message seeking comment.
Gonsalves said he visits a few times a week.
“I feel bad because I cannot be there every day,” he said. “When you spend 50 years with someone, it’s very hard. I do trust that they take really good care of him. I’d promised him, we’d had a conversation, and he said, ‘Please don’t put me some place.’”
When things had gotten to the point Gonsalves felt he had no other choice, his own health took a nose dive and he contracted Legionnaires’ disease, he said.
Having a golden anniversary on federal property came with hiccups, Gonsalves said.
“I got in trouble because we all did a toast with champagne,” Gonsalves said, saying a social worker told him it was against the rules to bring alcohol to the VA facility. “I told him if he [Campbell] knew that was the rules, he would’ve insisted on it.”
The party continued until after sundown. Among the guests was Gonsalves’ brother Mark.
“Jim looked really good,” Mark Gonsalves recalled to the B.A.R. in a phone call. “It’s quite an achievement – 50 years being together. He’s always been around, always been part of the family. Just a great guy and quite the jokester. I’m quite proud, and amazed.” t
to transmit the virus.
Those prevention approaches are now pillars of San Francisco’s Getting to Zero strategy aimed at reducing the number of new HIV cases by 90 percent come 2020. Colfax was also an early supporter of another part of the strategy, PrEP, the once-a-day pill that has proved effective at keeping people HIV negative when taken as prescribed. He did so at a time when many questioned its merits as an HIV prevention tool.
Colfax, who grew up in Mendocino on a goat farm, left northern California in 2012 to lead the White House Office of National AIDS Policy in the Obama administration. Two years later the nonprofit Programs for Appropriate Technology in Health, or PATH, hired him to lead its HIV/ AIDS and tuberculosis program in its South San Francisco office.
In 2015, the Sausalito resident became the health and human services director for Marin County. He served in the role until taking over leadership of SFDPH. t
incoming administration has prioritized limiting protections against sex discrimination and abuse. Their appalling approach denies science and will make life immeasurably harder for intersex, nonbinary, and, of course, transgender people.
“Lambda Legal secured the first U.S. passport with an ‘X’ gender marker for our brave client, Dana Zzyym, and we’ll continue to stand with Dana and all intersex, nonbinary, and transgender people to defend their right to identity documents that accurately identify who they are, and their equal protection rights against targeting and exclusion by their own government,” he added.
The order also states that “passports, visas, and Global Entry cards” have to state the person’s sex as the order defines it – at conception. The Biden admin-
“This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order continues. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”
istration had allowed self-selection of gender identity and an “X” marker on passports since 2022. The move comes after an election campaign in which Trump ran against Democrats’ policies inclusive of the transgender community, in particular, amid a resurgent nationwide backlash to LGBTQ rights. In the closing stretch
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund was quick with a statement.
“We are prepared to challenge them in court.” stated Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings, a gay man.
“We are exploring every legal avenue to challenge these unlawful and unconstitutional actions. This is not only about politics and ideology – but also about real people’s lives,” Jennings added. “The
It was unclear if Trump’s order refers to newly issued government identification documents or existing ones. NBC News reported that legal experts cautioned those traveling on passports with an “X” marker could be held up if they attempt to use it.
LGBTQ California legislative leaders also stated they would work to fight the executive order.
“President Trump’s executive order, while terrible, is not shocking,” stated
Colfax
Jim Campbell, seated, center, and Michael Gonsalves, touching Campbell’s shoulder, celebrated their 50th anniversary a little early with a party at the veterans center at Fort Miley in San Francisco, where they were joined by friends and family.
Courtesy Michael Gonsalves
<< Trump
Rick Gerharter
by Finbar LaBelle
The African & African American Perform-
ing Arts Coalition and K Star Productions present the Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now (BCF). From February to June, the festival will welcome the new year with its twentieth anniversary, showcasing a broad offering of events, installations, and performances. With the chance to witness over 16 Black choreographers, do not miss an opportunity to attend this landmark in the Bay Area’s dance scene.
Beginning in 1989 with Dr. Halifu Osumare’s Black Choreographers Moving Towards the 21st Century, in 2005, standing on the shoulders of BCM, Laura Elaine Ellis and Kendra Kimbrough Barnes debuted the Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now.
Highlighting the diversity of Black dance –from modern and contemporary to tap to hiphop and traditional African – this year, the BCF presents back-to-back weekends with unique events hosted in several venues across San Francisco.
“By having African American artists come together we can remember our contributions not just to dance but contributions ranging from science to math to visual art to literature,” said Laura Elaine Ellis, Black Choreographers Festival Co-creator. “We can celebrate ourselves. That’s why the festival should always happen.”
Healing
Dialing in on one of the many queer intersections of the festival, the Bay Area Reporter had the pleasure of interviewing Dazaun Soleyn, a queer
‘Black
Black Choreographers Festival
20th anniversary includes events through June
Box: A Photographic Memoir’
by Jim Provenzano
From urban protests to plaintive animal farm imagery, Dona Ann McAdams collection of photos and brief autobiographical essays in “Black Box: A Photographic Memoir” (Saint Lucy Books) offer a view into the artist’s life and work, their parallels, as well as her expansive and precise artistry.
From childhood memories of learning how to take care of horses to her urban photojournalism at performance spaces and nightclubs in New York City, McAdams vision extends beyond categorization or eras (1970s to today). Compositionally, her work rivals Diane Arbus (an early inspiration, she notes in an essay about a school trip
to the Museum of Modern Art), Robert Frank and other classic 20th-century photographers.
From the book’s cover image, dating back to 1955 with an infant McAdams staring into a glowing television screen, to a family portrait in 2023 (on a Vermont goat farm, where she lives with her husband, author Brad Kessler), McAdams works span decades.
Her prints have been exhibited, and are in the collections of, several major international museums, and she’s received multiple grants and fellowships. Her work has been published in Aperture, The New York Times, The Washington Post and many other books and publications.
In 1965, her first camera was a Polaroid Swinger, which she loved, but the film was expensive, so she moved onto 35mm later on.
In the Afterward essay (longer than all McAdams’ poetic entries), Joanna Howard defines the insights in MacAdam’s work:
“Dona Ann McAdams ‘Black Box’ is a work of exposure in all its richest connotations. Bringing to light – noticing that which is around her, an eye for detail, the fine print in memory. Her photographs are famous for their canny historical capture, but relationship between image and text is already present in her photographic archive, ample examples of the potential for meaning making between the juxtaposition of word with image: often cheeky, sometimes uncanny, at times harrowing or prophetic, and this book gives an opportunity for her to look at her life and practice in detail, and to expose their strange collisions.”
Little ditties
McAdams abbreviates her memoir into short essays that she calls “little ditties.” One of her unusual career beginnings was assisting her mother in a dentist’s office, noting that her first photos were of teeth.
Other essays recall her dad’s love of roadside hotdogs, and other nostalgia-twinged tidbits, like being expelled from a Catholic school. Most of the photos do not directly parallel the essays, but they serve as symbolic or metaphoric images. Some are specific, like the image of the massive dust cloud of the crumbling Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
Full disclosure: I’ve actually been photographed by McAdams at ACT UP demonstrations in the 1980s/’90s, and at performances at P.S. 122 where she was the house photographer for 23 years. Photos of much better-known performers like Diamanda Galas, David Wojnarowicz and Meredith Monk are included in the book.
McAdams talks about her encounter with David Bowie, which at first at the Mudd Club was only silent nods. But then he appropriated one of her prints of performer Ron Athey for a series of his own electronically-colorized images. Lawyers are referenced, and in the incident essay, she says
Robert Moses’ Kin dancer Raissa Simpson
‘Junior’s horses, Sandgate, Vermont’ 2001
Dona Ann McAdams’ intimate collection of stories and images
Dona Ann McAdams
Nakai
Alexis Sosa
Choreographer Dazaun Soleyn
Choreographer Algin Ford
‘Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play’
by Jim Gladstone
Writer
Keiko Green and director Jesca Prudencia cheerfully cite “Wayne’s World” and “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” as major aesthetic influences on “Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play,” which opens on Jan. 30 at the San Francisco Playhouse.
“‘Saved by the Bell’ and ‘Lizzie McGuire,’ too,” added Green during the pair’s recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter.
The show, set in 1999, is a kitschy genre mash-up underpinned with intellect and tenderness. Its wild knot of a plot centers on the coming of age of an awkward 14-year-old, Ami, whose self-perception is entangled with umami:
After learning that her Japanese grandfather invented the oft-maligned flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG), Ami’s vivid imagination leads her on a teen-tastic identity quest, spangled with references to anime, video games, ramen and other pop culture totems. It’s a Fantasian American odyssey.
In its 2023 world premiere at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, also directed by Prudencia, “Exotic Deadly” garnered reviews that called it “wildly funny” (The San Diego Union Tribune) and “a rollicking romp”(New Play Exchange).
“I started writing [“Exotic Deadly”] during the pandemic lockdown,” said Green. “Honestly, the only goal I had was to do something that would make me laugh. I was just writing for myself and I ended up with this play that seemed impossible to produce in so many ways.”
Creative possibilities
In addition to loads of jokes, Green’s mile-a-minute script includes elements much more commonly seen in movies than plays.
“There’s time travel,” said director Prudencia, “There are scenes that take place at the bottom of the ocean. There
black choreographer part of this year’s festival. In collaboration with artist Algin “Align” Ford, the duo will be working to create a multi-medium dance piece at MoAD entitled “Healing Intimacy.” Premiering Feb. 8, each iteration is different. The public is invited to attend one or all performance times at 12pm, 2pm, and 4pm with free admission on Community Day.
Tickets for Dance Mission Theatre and select MoAD performances range from $12 to $35. All other events are free, and while donations and RSVPs are appreciated, they are not required. This event is a perfect way to visit MoAD before they are closed for renovations from March through September.
Join these emerging choreographers for their site-specific activation of MoAD’s “Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors & Radical Black Joy,” an exhibit on display since Oct. 2, 2024, running through Mar. 2. The show investigates Black domesticity through reimagining décor and atmospherics.
With Soleyn and Ford entering the scene, dance, music, and audience participation accentuate the exhibit. In their interview, Soleyn anticipates a performance that will “activate the whole museum.”
Soleyn spoke highly of their cocreator, remarking on Ford’s substantial work in the Bay. First and foremost, Ford is a dancer, having performed in spaces such as SF MOMA and the Guggenheim. Leaving the Bay Area, they have continued to advance as a dancer, DJ, and videographer in the underground dance and ballroom scene of New York City. After ten years, Ford is thrilled to be back in San Francisco performing for the BCF for a third time.
are constant location changes.” (Also, bizarrely, there are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck).
“When I first read ‘Exotic Deadly,’”
Prudencia recalled, “It activated my imagination in an exciting way. I asked myself how I’d do it. And I didn’t know. Which meant it was worth doing. I don’t want to direct anything that I already know how to do.”
Befitting this boldly curious approach to her craft, Prudencia in 2017 was the first recipient of the Julie Taymor World Theater Fellowship, created by the groundbreaking director and conceptualist of ‘The Lion King.’
The award supported her through a year of independent travel in Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines where she studied a wide range of performance styles, including puppetry and masked theater.
She describes that experience as an opportunity to just soak in ideas,
without knowing how they might eventually inform her work. As it happens, some of the physical move-
<< Theater
Keiko and Jesca’s excellent adventure at SF Playhouse
ment of Japanese Noh dance unexpectedly came to mind as she was developing “Exotic Deadly”’s undersea scenes.
“Working with a collaborative playwright and an amazing creative team, we can make anything happen on stage,” said Prudencia, adding that it can be done without a Hollywood or Broadway budget.
“We’re not interested in spoonfeeding the audience. We’re asking them to bring their imaginations. And we trust that they’re smart enough to meet us halfway.”
Influential fun
“I love that Jesca draws from such a diverse toolbox,” said Green, whose plays, produced and developed by organizations including the Kennedy Center, and the Atlantic Theater Company, rarely hew to a single genre. “She is such a joy to work with.”
Green explained that Bay Area playwright Lauren Yee has also had a major influence on her work and career.
As an actor, Green performed in the world premiere of Yee’s “The Great Leap” in Denver and Seattle and later attended a workshop Yee conducted.
Family
Soleyn expressed particular excitement for how Ford’s experience in sound design will enhance the audience experience.
For Soleyn, “the festival is like family.” Ellis brought them into the BCF’s fold for their mentorship program in 2015. Their involvement with the festival has been mutualistic, as demonstrated by his enthusiasm for the upcoming project.
“Both Ford and I are grateful that Laura Ellis thought of us for this project, which is really about establishing a movement presence
The two went on to become friends and, recently, collaborators, working in the writers’ room of “Interior Chinatown,” the Hulu miniseries based on Charles Yu’s phantasmagoric metatextual novel.
And Green says that Yee’s semiautobiographical “King of the Yees,” which the San Francisco Playhouse produced in 2017, helped inspire the tone she’s aiming for in “Exotic Deadly.”
“When I read that play, I was like ‘Oh! I didn’t realize we were allowed to do this. We’re allowed to be really funny and fly by the seat of our pants and play a million characters.”
That loose-jointed playfulness and hellbent desire to entertain makes “Exotic Deadly” stand out from the glut of heavy, self-serious identity dramas that, frankly, have drained some of the fun out of San Francisco theatergoing in recent years. Sure, the MSG play is a message play; but the way its messages are delivered is delightful.t
‘Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play,’ Jan. 30-Mar. 8, $20-$130. San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St. www.sfplayhouse.org
within the museum for the whole day,” said Soleyn.
Many of Soleyn’s connections in the Bay Area, from San Francisco to Oakland to Hayward, have stemmed from the BCF. For them, there is a certain “preciousness” in being a part of something that continuously fosters him as an artist. Their work, as of late, revolves around standing witness to queer intimacy, creating a cathartic experience for both those on stage and those in the audience.
Soleyn and Ford, with a history of working together, feel comfortable embodying the tenderness they ex-
press on stage. The choreographers have been coming to rehearsals from many different angles. Soleyn’s architectural background, including a Master’s degree from the California College of the Arts, is immediately evident in the spatial and structural elements.
Queerness in dance
Soleyn’s dance work offers a deeply personal and artistic representation of Black queerness, whether they perform solo or choreograph ensemble works. Dance has always coincided with their sexuality, once pushing
against it and now working in perfect synergy.
There was a time in Soleyn’s life when they were “so afraid of being associated with the queer dancer that I completely walled myself off.” It was after studying in San Francisco at Alonzo King LINES Ballet that great art embraced queerness, as it so often does.
“When I was first involved with the BCF, I was in my early twenties and just coming out.”
Now, approaching ten years going, Soleyn brings an evolved expression of “authentic vulnerability with queer artists so that other people can witness our relationship in real-time. Our trust, our siblinghood, how we show up for each other, even across generations.”
The Black Choreographers Festival’s expansive programming speaks for itself. This rich and comprehensive calendar not only centers Black voices but also showcases the breadth of Black dance, a form often pigeonholed in American culture, spanning a wide range of styles and perspectives.
The BCF has a long history of fostering community and intergenerational, intercultural dialogue that certainly does not stop at the edge of the stage. With sections of the festival coinciding with Black History Month, the festival stands as one of the many ways to celebrate Black culture and modern artistry. Beyond just a series of performances, the BCF is a vital cultural force, enriching the community and empowering artists and audiences alike. It’s an experience that resonates long after the final curtain.t
www.bcfhereandnow.com www.moadsf.org
<< Black Choreo Fest
From page 11
Left: Dancer Gregory Dawson Right: Choreographer Deborah B. Vaughan
Devi Pride Photography
Vincent Gotti
Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer and Francesca Fernandez in San Francisco Playhouse’s ‘Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play’
Jessica Palopoli
Left: Director Jesca Prudencia and playwright Keiko Green in rehearsal for ‘Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play,’ at SF Playhouse
Right: Playwright Keiko Green in rehearsal for ‘Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play,’ at SF Playhouse
Both photos: Jessica Palopoli
Inaugural, bald
by Victoria A. Brownworth
From a creepy office psychodrama to the creepiness of the inauguration, plus Mormon reality shows and a dubious return on “Saturday Night Live,” we’ve got plenty of options for your viewing pleasure, or annoyance.
Office spaced
“Severance” is back, baby, and season two of the mesmerizing dystopian thriller portends to be creepier than ever.
Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a severance procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. This daring experiment in “work-life balance” is called into question as Mark finds himself at the center of an unraveling mystery that will force him to confront the true nature of his work… and of himself.
includes Emmy Award winner John Turturro, Academy Award winner Christopher Walken and Academy and Emmy Award winner Patricia Arquette, and welcomes new series regular Sarah Bock; on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
Cold reception
The big TV extravaganza this week was supposed to be Donald Trump’s second Inauguration. But Trump decided it was too cold to be outdoors. Not since 1985 has an Inaugur ation been held indoors, when Ronald Reagan – then the oldest president in U.S. history – decided it was too cold to be outside.
One way for Trump to get around diminished crowd size was to shift venues. Barack Obama held his 2009 Inauguration outside despite the frigid weather, but Trump decided to move his inside to the Capitol rotunda with just his billionaire oligarch donors, select electeds, and VIPs from other countries.
In season two, Mark and his friends learn the dire consequences of trifling with the severance barrier, leading them further down a path of woe.
Season 2 reunites the series’ original ensemble, including those beloved gay characters Burt and Irving, while welcoming new talent, like bisexual actress Alia Shawkat. The cast of stars
At least his new press secretary didn’t have to go on live TV and claim the crowd was the largest in history like Sean Spicer was forced to do in 2016. Trump also scuttled the traditional walk from the Capitol to the White House. Probably Melania didn’t have that in her new contract.
One of our close friends said it would have been fitting if the Capitol had been prepped to look like it did on January 6, replete with flung feces. What can one say to that?
Trump sent out 200,000 invitations to his Inauguration. The MAGAs who couldn’t afford eggs yet traveled to D.C. for the event that wasn’t got to watch on TV from their pricey hotel suites. What a huge eff you from Trump to the folks who put him back in office. Talk about FAFO. Seeing so many dejected red hats being interviewed one almost felt sorry for them.
Almost. And the price tag on the Inaugural balls was $15,000 per ticket, so no Snoop Dog or Carrie Underwood for those folks, either. Sad.
SN(eh)L
“Saturday Night Live” decided the best host for their opening show of 2025 was noted comedian, homophobe and transphobe Dave Chappelle. It was a bold choice to usher in the new season of “SNL 50,” and definitely in keeping with the Joe Rogan-courting bro turn the show has taken of late.
But in his 17-minute monologue, the longest in “SNL” history, Chappelle kept his anti-LGBTQ comments minimal as he focused on the Los Angeles fires, being famous and its repercussions, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Donald Trump.
In talking about the fires, Chappelle referenced all the conspiracy theories surrounding them and said, “If you were a rational, thinking person, you have to at least consider the possibility that God hates these people. Sodomites. That’s not true because, West Hollywood was unscathed. Because how can you burn what is already flaming?”
That was Chappelle’s one questionable queer reference. Smoking a cigarette throughout, Chappelle ended with a plea to Trump.
“Remember, whether people voted for you or not, they’re all counting on you. Whether they like you or not, they’re all counting on you. The whole world is counting on you,” said Chappelle, who has hosted the show three other times. “I mean this when I say this – good luck. Please do better next
Pithy ladies As the fresh hell of the new administration of the billionaire oligarchy begins, watching queer TV feels like a subversive act. Who could be more subversive than RuPaul Charles?
In “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Season 17, 14 new queens are on the stage to compete for the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar and a cash prize of $200,000 for the winner. In the premiere episode, the new cast of queens compete in “Drag Queens Got Talent” and there’s so much more. You love to see it; streaming on MTV.
“Lady Like” is the story of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” season 14 runner-up Lady Camden. This is a tale of trauma and resilience. Powerful, poignant, pithy and so engaging, British-born Rex Wheeler reveals how their Lady Camden persona grounded them and propelled them forward.
Narrated by fellow “Drag Race” star
Nina West, it’s on VOD.
time. Please, all of us do better next time. Do not forget your humanity, and please have empathy for displaced people, whether they’re in the Palisades or Palestine.”
So, for all the sound and fury signifying who-knows-what fresh hell from our new billionaire oligarch overlords, you know you really must stay tuned.t
Left: Adam Scott in ‘Severance’ Season 2 Middle: Dave Chappelle on ‘Saturday Night Live’
Right: Arrietty, one of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 17’s contestants
‘I’m Still Here’
by Brian Bromberger
There was an audible gasp at this year’s Golden Globe Awards ceremony, when the winner for Best Actress Drama was announced as Fernanda Torres. It was an upset since Nicole Kidman or Angelina Jolie were predicted the likely victors. But anyone who’s seen Torres in the Brazilian film “I’m Still Here,” (Sony Pictures Classics) wouldn’t be surprised, because she truly deserved the award, giving perhaps the best performance of any actor in 2024.
Shortlisted as Brazil’s nominee in the Oscar Best International Feature category, this intense, personal, political film, is directed by veteran Walter Salles (“Motorcycle Diaries,” “Central Station”). Based on true events that occurred in 1971 with repercussive effects for almost 50 years, this domestic drama (rather than a thriller) acts as a metaphor for the country’s trauma caused by the repressive military dictatorship which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.
Secret aid
It’s Christmas 1970 and we’re introduced to an upper-middle-class beachfront household in Rio de Janeiro. An architect and former congressman, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), lives with his wife Eunice (Torres) and five children in a seemingly happy life. He has recently returned to Brazil after a six-year self-exile following criticism of the military government.
Unbeknownst to Eunice, he’s secretly helping dissidents, coordinating package drop-offs, organizing safe houses, and assisting regime opponents. Their home was a cosmopolitan gathering place for intellectuals and artists brimming with culture.
Salles, the son of a diplomat, remembered fondly visiting their home numerous times as a child, one reason why he wanted to make this film and recreate their lives as a memorial. The source material is the memoir written by Marcelo Paiva, Rubens’s son.
They are preparing to send their oldest daughter to London to stay with friends, when in a shattering scene, plain-clothed army officials arrive to take Rubens for routine questioning, but he will never be seen again. Guards are posted so no one can leave or enter.
When Eunice seeks answers about her husband, she and her 15-yearold daughter are taken for inter-
rogation with hoods put over their heads. Eunice is detained (and intimidated) for 12 days forced to look through books of photos to identify people opposed by the state. She can hear the screams of other prisoners through the walls.
Back home she starts seeking answers about what has happened to her “disappeared” husband. The government claims he escaped and they have no idea about his whereabouts. They deny he was even arrested. Eunice feels helpless since she can’t even cash checks at the bank without her husband’s signature. A defining moment occurs when she asks the maid to find the key for their never-used
<< Dona Ann McAdams From page 11
she would’ve settled for simply sitting down for tea with Bowie. The image is not shown, but is accompanied by a blank page.
In 2005, McAdams returned to horses as a subject at the Saratoga Racetrack in upstate New York. Equine grooming and training images offer a stately attitude. The book and its accompanying essays are poetic, prosaic, and a beautifully distilled telling of the photographer’s life, career highlights and cathartic moments.
In her epilogue, McAdams shares an astute summation. “Photographs don’t speak,” she writes. “Photography is a silent art without explanation. Photographs can tell a million different stories, voiced and captioned by the viewer. These ditties are like songs meant as melodies for the photographs. Sometimes they have a relationship with each other, but often they do not. The ditties are as truthful as memory serves but memory fades and the Blarney runs thick in my veins. Yet this is as close to what I recall. To all within them, I hope I’ve done it right.” She has, in abundancet
Dona Ann McAdams’ ‘Black Box: A Photographic Memoir,’ Saint Lucy Books, $50, 256 pages. www.saintlucybooks.com www.donaannmcadams.com
Upper Right: ‘Selfportrait in rearview, Belcher, New York’ 2006
Middle Right: ‘ACT UP, Grand Central Terminal, New York City’ 1991
tyred Rubens, but on the gritty Eunice, showing how what happened to the families of the government’s victims, was a kind of psychological torture from not knowing the truth of what happened to their loved ones, along with the negative impact of denial and silence. What makes Eunice a heroine is her ability to create a type of normalcy despite the tumult and lack of resolution. She refuses to be defeated or cow-towed. She wants her family to continue despite the repression, but in her quiet courage wants to change the country, so no one else experiences what she has undergone.
Torres, in her restrained manner, trying to be present for the children, simultaneously reveals the silent grief and internal angst she’s undergoing. It’s a constant double-layered performance expressing all these conflicting emotions, but especially a sense of hope and resilience notwithstanding the pain and loss.
locked front gate, signifying the end of a carefree era. They are under constant surveillance.
Silencio
The movie jumps to 1996, when Eunice receives an official death certificate for her husband from the now democratic Brazilian government. A poignant postscript follows in 2014 with a now elderly Eunice (played by Torres’s mother Fernanda Montenegro, the first Brazilian actress to be Oscar-nominated for “Central Station”), in the throes of Alzheimer’s disease, cared for by her family, but she hasn’t forgotten Rubens. The film doesn’t focus on the mar-
She emotes feelings even when she’s saying or doing nothing. Torres is worthy of an Oscar nomination, which might serve as her sole accolade, since only two actresses in the 96-year-old Academy Awards history, have won for foreign language performances (Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard). With any justice, Torres should be the third recipient.
This sorrowful film could serve as a warning to governments who lie, are intolerant of opposition, scapegoat marginalized groups, and try to erase or rewrite history. Movies remind us never to forget and few have accomplished that task so nobly and with such harrowing devastation.t
‘I’m Still Here’ screens at AMC Kabuki 8 starting January 23. www.sonyclassics.com
Dona Ann McAdams
Dona
Ann McAdams
Dona Ann McAdams
Fernanda Torres in ‘I’m Still Here’
Sony Pictures Classics
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‘Mothers and Sons’
by Tim Pfaff
For those of us who consider the appearance of a new novel by Adam Haslett the equivalent of getting a new gospel, the authorial voice in “Mothers and Sons” (Little, Brown) is both familiar and strange. Nothing in its contents comes as a surprise except a certain clutter in the narration. No one’s happy, of course, but comedy, even the blackest, is not just absent but feels dismissed.
Haslett’s genius for something like ventriloquism in putting words into his characters’ mouths here restricts itself to two points of view. Peter Fischer, the son, addresses the reader in the first person, while Haslett narrates the story of his mother, Ann, in the third. It’s emblematic of the estrangement at the heart of the story.
Ann, who has left a calling as an Episcopal priest, now leads the proceedings at Verititas, a meditation retreat for women. A late-life lesbian, she shares as best she can the partnership of Clare, for whom she left her husband, a man stalked by the homosexuality of others.
Peter Fischer is a gay lawyer specializing in asylum cases, where dauntingly heavy caseloads mostly distract him from a hollowness associated with but not caused by his father’s death-bed confession –a quarter-century earlier– that he once attacked another man for coming on to him, physically touching him in the process. Peter’s primary diversion is casual sex. He summons Cliff in moments of emo-
Adam Haslett’s disturbing new novel
Author Adam Haslett
tional need and then runs from him when telltale signs of real connection begin to appear.
His circumscribed world is rocked by Vasel Marku, a gay asylum-seeker from Albania who somehow hooks Peter’s sympathy, a notch above the empathy he has with other clients.
An out gay man, Peter has previously avoided representing gay men, and here he frets that it may be sexual attraction that has prompted him to aid Vasel, when in fact the attraction is to something much deeper.
In the first of several prologues, one
for each of the novel’s four sections, the reader learns that for Peter the entire story is driven by his adolescent attachment to Jared Harlan, a handsome young man whose own sexuality remains indeterminate despite the strangling degree it, whichever it is, holds Peter in a fateful thrall.
Gay male readers will instinctively recognize both the power of Peter’s attraction, which throughout the rest of the novel he calls his “wanting,” and the coolness of Jared’s response that fuels it. Some of Haslett’s most compelling writing in the novel ad-
Might’ve missed music
by Gregg Shapiro
With so much music being released on a daily basis, it’s easy to understand how some albums can be overlooked. Here are some from 2024 that you might have missed.
Listening to Father John Misty (aka Josh Tillman) can be a religious experience (even for an atheist like me), especially when it comes to his brilliant album “Mahashmashana” (Sub Pop). The title is a reference to a Sanskrit word that means “great burial ground,” and yet this is some of the most vibrant music you are likely to hear.
Beginning with the near-epic (almost 10-minute) title track, with its mention of “the corpse dance,” Father John Misty once again showcases his affection for lushly orchestrated pop music with a retro bent. Just don’t get too cozy, because he slams us against the wall in “She Cleans Up.”
But that kind of sonic shift is temporary because he continues to pour on the disturbing beauty in “Mental Health,” “Being You,” and the Sinatraesque “Summer’s Gone.” However, FJM comes closest to nirvana on “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All,” an 8.5-minute scoop of vintage disco that should be spun in gay clubs far and wide.
www.fatherjohnmisty.com
A similar retro vibe permeates “Here in The Pitch” (Mexican Summer) by Jessica Pratt. Some queer lis-
teners may have first become aware of Pratt via gay singer/songwriter Troye Sivan’s song “Can’t Go Back, Baby” on which he samples her song “Back, Baby” from her 2015 “On Your Own Love Again” album.
As haunting as it is gorgeous, listening to the nine songs on “Here In The Pitch” is a little like entering a musical time machine. The arrangements are from an earlier era but still manage to feel fresh and captivating. It also helps that Pratt doesn’t sound like anyone else currently recording, which provides the songs with a distinctive personality. Standout tracks include “Better Hate,” “Empires Never Know,” “Nowhere It Was,” “The Last Year,” and “By Hook or By Crook.” www.instagram.com/jpblues/
Nashville-based ally Mindy Smith (who has a performance at an HRC benefit on her resume) is back with “Quiet Town” (Compass), the Americana singer/songwriter’s first album in more than a dozen years. Cited by Kacey Musgraves as an influence (something you can certainly hear), Smith at long last returns with one of the most powerful albums of her career.
The breathtaking “I’d Rather Be a Bridge,” described as “a plea for compassion and connection” deserves to become an anthem during these troubled times. Other notable numbers include “Peace Eludes Me,” the old-time country of “Farther Than We Should Have,” and the title cut. www.mindysmithmusic.com
dresses Peter’s fatal attraction to a deadly handsome boy who just might not care about anything but his indulgence in a charged scene that gives him a selfish pleasure.
Too much information
One of the signal strengths of Haslett’s work until now has been its fierce concentration, the way every word has mattered, every sentence has had its specific torque. Oddly, in “Mothers and Sons” he clutters his own path. Scarcely a noun lacks an adjective or an adjective its adverb. De-
scribing every step across a room in a non-consequential passage only slows the narrative. Cumulatively, the profusion of detail feels like make-weight. The only character who aggressively “speaks his truth” is Peter, who increasingly finds he is a poor judge of it. He “speaks” in sentence fragments that clot in the reader’s ear. Sentence after sentence begins with a dependent clause or, more usually, a conjunction. Together these tics of personality produce more confusion than is already at the core of Peter’s fraught thinking. Hanging over it all for the reader is a nagging feeling that, this go-around, the author is describing a book more than writing it. That’s certainly the way the relatively few “sex scenes” play out, told more than enacted.
That said, in the place of highminded reflections on desire and its discontents, here Haslett, like his protagonist, focuses on the “wanting,” a plainer expression of the forces that consume all his characters than anything hiding in philosophy. It’s the family secrets that bind the characters in profoundly uneasy relationships. Peter and Ann are not the only mothers and sons crowding this book, just the most stuck ones.t
Read the full review on www.ebar.com.
‘Mothers and Sons’ by Adam Haslett, Little, Brown and Company, 334 pages, $29. littlebrown.com adamhaslett.net
New albums by Father John Misty, Jessica Pratt, Mindy Smith & Sheila E.
If all you know of legendary percussionist Sheila E. is related to the time she spent in Prince’s orbit, then you only know a fraction of the story. A sought-after musician in her own right, she has released
several albums, including her latest “Bailar” (Sony Music Latin/Stilettoflats).
ona”), Debi Nova (“Possibilities”), as well as her parents Pete “Pops” Escovedo and Juanita “Moms” Escovedo, Sheila E. makes a long overdue return to form. www.sheilae.comt
Going out
DoublePlus arts and nightlife still exist in the bubble of Bay Area liberalism amid these stultifying absurd times. Art explores, nightlife endures, like the unstoppable Big Top Sundays at Beaux (see photo). Check out Going Out on ebar.com.
Left: Father John Misty Middle Left: Jessica Pratt Middle Right: Mindy Smith Right: Sheila E.
