July 26, 2012 edition of the Bay Area Reporter

12

Fire destroys youth center

SFGH: It Gets Better

ARTS

3

21

Project: Lohan

The

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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971

Garcia discusses ACA, nonprofits

by Seth Hemmelgarn

M

ore than a year after taking the helm of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Barbara Garcia, the agency’s director, expressed optimism about the Rich Gerharter city’s future under the national Afford- Barbara Garcia able Care Act and also spoke of keeping an eye on the city’s numerous LGBT health-related nonprofits.

In a wide-ranging interview last week, Garcia sounded confident in how the city will fare under the national health care reform law, which was designed to cover more uninsured people and which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last month.

She said the Healthy San Francisco program, the city’s health insurance program for uninsured residents, “put us way ahead,” since “we already know who our uninsured are” and officials have worked to provide them with “medical homes.”

“Clients should see a seamless system of care,” Garcia, an out lesbian, said.

Garcia said she also wants to see more long-term planning.

When it comes to HIV/AIDS prevention, “San Francisco has always been on the leading edge.” However, since the epidemic affects virtually every state in the country, the city, known as a model of HIV care and prevention, “will continue to see a reduction” in federal funding, she said.

Earlier this year, Mayor Ed Lee said he would restore millions of dollars that were being lost in federal HIV/AIDS funds, including a reduced share of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act. The federal cuts hit in the fiscal year that began in July. Garcia noted there’s still a shortfall for 2013-14.

Garcia, whose agency’s budget is about $1.6 billion and whose annual salary is $259,000, met with the Bay Area Reporter on Thursday, July 19 at the health department’s Grove Street headquarters.

Among some of the work being done to prepare for the future, she discussed the city’s HIV Health Services and HIV Prevention Planning councils having joint planning meetings.

In a follow-up email exchange, Garcia said, “The panels are not merging as yet, but that is not off the table.” She added, “I hope, through joint meetings and planning processes, to ensure that we are preparing for the future of See page 16 >>

Vol. 42 • No. 30 • July 26-August 1, 2012

AIDS confab returns to U.S. M

by Liz Highleyman

ore than 23,000 researchers, service providers, policy-makers, activists, and people living with HIV gathered in Washington, D.C, this week for the 19th International AIDS Conference, the first time the meeting has been held in the U.S. since the 1990 confab in San Francisco.

The conference theme, “Turning the Tide,” reflects a sense of optimism that an end to AIDS is finally within reach if adequate resources are devoted to that goal.

“The story being told here this week is that scientifically, when it comes to AIDS, there is more light at the end of the tunnel than there has ever been in the three decades of the epidemic,” said conference co-chair Diane Havlir from UCSF. “The ability to prevent and treat the disease has advanced beyond what many might have reasonably hoped 22 years ago,” concurred Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose morning plenary session on Monday called for an “AIDS-free generation.”

The largest meeting of its kind, AIDS 2012 combines scientific sessions with a Global Village for community organizations and countless associated events including a display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall, the large Keep the Promise march before the open-

Rick Gerharter

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation organized a march asking leaders to “Keep the Promise” on the opening day of the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.

ing ceremony on Sunday, and the We Can End AIDS mobilization on Tuesday.

“We could not let this conference come to the U.S. without showing in some compelling ways that we will never end AIDS if

we continue to put profit for the few over the needs of the many,” said Julie Davids of HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, one of the organizers of the mobilization.

See page 10 >>

Protesters greet Obama in Oakland

by Elliot Owen

I

n response to the continued crackdown on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries by the U.S. attorney’s office, several hundred pro-cannabis protesters marched through downtown Oakland to ensure that President Barack Obama wasn’t the only one delivering a message Monday, July 23.

The visit to Oakland was the first that Obama has made since becoming president; as a candidate he spoke at a rally in the city in 2007.

Hours before the president appeared at the Fox Theater before 2,000 attendees for an evening fundraising event, storefronts in the area put up green flags to support the pro-cannabis rally.

As protesters amassed outside City Hall waiting to march, an early afternoon press conference was held by medical marijuana advocates two blocks away at Oaksterdam University, a marijuana educational facility raided by federal agents in April, to address the Obama administration’s attack of marijuana businesses legal under California law.

The commencement of the cannabis crackdown last fall has resulted in numerous medical marijuana dispensaries across the state being closed despite Obama’s 2008 promise to respect medi-

Elliot Owen

Jason David, whose son suffers from Dravet syndrome and is a patient at Harborside, spoke at the Oaksterdam press conference. Another patient, Yvonne Westbrook-White, right, also spoke about the benefits of medical marijuana.

{ FIRST OF TWO SECTIONS }

cal marijuana state laws and a 2009 statement from Attorney General Eric Holder that dispensaries would not be raided. The demonstration also came in timely response to U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag’s recent property forfeiture action against Harborside Health Center, a dispensary with over 100,000 patients and locations in Oakland and San Jose.

Standing before nearly 100 people at Oaksterdam’s press conference, Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside Health Center, called for an “immediate freeze” on all federal enforcement actions taken against medical marijuana organizations until the Department of Justice could conclude that only illegal operations were being targeted.

“Harborside Health Center is not only 100 percent compliant with all local regulations and state law,” DeAngelo said, “we set the gold standard for the distribution of medical cannabis.”

The effect of closing medical marijuana dispensaries on patients was underlined during the press conference by two individuals personally affected by medical cannabis use. Yvonne Westbrook-White, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and depended on OakSee page 16 >>

<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

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Housing suit involving Larkin Street is settled

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

local nonprofit leader whom the White House has recognized as a “Champion of Change” recently saw her agency involved in a lawsuit that settled with former housing program participants.

Sherilyn Adams, executive director of San Francisco’s Larkin Street Youth Services, declined to discuss many details of the case, but she defended her agency.

The suit, which alleged discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, among other claims, was filed in August 2011 in San Francisco Superior Court by youth who had resided at the Perramont Hotel, 2162 Market Street. A settlement agreement was reached in April.

Rick Gerharter

Larkin Street Executive Director Sherilyn Adams

Larkin Street pays $153,000 a year to the single-room occupancy hotel for rent as part of the Castro Youth Housing Initiative.

The complaint lists Subash Patel as the hotel’s owner. Peter and Santosh Patel are named as master lease holders and property managers. Dean Bonilla, Kailyn Bailey, and Devyn Pleasants are listed as the plaintiffs.

According to the complaint, Santosh Patel repeatedly called the plaintiffs and others names like “worthless bitch” and “stupid lesbian.” The documents also say, “he referred to male LGBT youth as ‘faggots’” and he refused to call tenants “by their preferred names and gender,” among other allegations.

The Patels also “caused and/or See page 6 >>

Sheriff’s Lt. faces domestic violence charges

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

ebar.com

gay San Francisco sheriff ’s lieutenant was set to be arraigned after being arrested in an alleged domestic violence incident last week.

Vincent Calvarese, 48, was arrested Thursday, July 19. He was expected to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon, July 25 in San Francisco Superior Court on misdemeanor counts of domestic violence-related battery, assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, and false imprisonment, according to Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office. It’s not clear what Calvarese’s relationship to the alleged victim was.

Calvarese, who’s been with the sheriff ’s department since 1994, is on administrative duty. Sheriff ’s de-

Courtesy SFPD

Vincent Calvarese

partment spokeswoman Susan Fahey said if disciplinary action is taken, it won’t be until after the judicial process is completed. Fahey couldn’t comment on whether Calvarese has been arrested or disciplined before, since that would be part of his personnel record. She said she didn’t know whether he has a partner.

He was released from San Francisco County jail at about 4:30 a.m.

Friday, July 20 on $10,000 bail.

According to SF Weekly, which first reported on Calvarese’s arrest, the alleged incident occurred at Gold’s Gym in the Castro district.

Gold’s general manager Blake Smith declined to comment.

Calvarese appeared in the 2009 documentary The Butch Factor, in which he discussed being out in the sheriff ’s department.▼

Jury convicts man in pedestrain death

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

San Francisco jury has convicted Gregg Wilcox of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in the death of gay pedestrian Bill Cox. Cox, 59, died September 6, 2011, hours after Wilcox struck him with his Ford Explorer in a crosswalk at 14th and Noe streets. Wilcox, 60, had been driving with his left foot because he was wearing a medical boot on his right foot.

During closing arguments Thursday, July 19 in San Francisco Superior Court, Assistant District Attorney Mary Plomin detailed how Wilcox had been negligent.

At one point, she showed jurors a bulky black boot and said if one had to react quickly “with this in the same area as the foot you’re driving with, it’s going to get in the way.”

She referred to a witness who, according to a police inspector’s testimony, had seen Cox walk “directly into the crosswalk without hesitation.”

Plomin said the witness had testified that Cox had done so before Wilcox started his turn. Even if he’d started crossing after Wilcox began turning, she said, Wilcox was responsible for the incident.

He “could have and should have seen that pedestrian walking into that crosswalk,” Plomin said.

Wilcox, a former Muni deputy director, took the stand during the trial. He testified that he had stopped shortly after hitting Cox and remained at the scene.

In closing arguments, Rafael Trujillo, Wilcox’s attorney, said there’d been “no objective evidence” in Wilcox’s testimony “that he was unable

Courtesy SFPD

Gregg Wilcox in his booking photo

to control that car with the boot using his left foot.”

Trujillo, who said “Mr. Cox created this hazard,” also disputed whether Cox had stepped into the crosswalk before Wilcox started his turn, rather than afterward.

The jury quickly reached a verdict, coming back with a decision Thursday afternoon.

Prosecutors were pleased with the decision.

“This verdict sends a clear message.

Everyone should be able to walk our streets without fear of negligent motorists,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a news release. “I strongly encourage the public to use common sense when driving a car.”

David Douma, a friend of Cox’s, was in court last Thursday. When Plomin projected a photo of Cox’s bloody body, he put his hand to his face and appeared shaken.

Afterward, he said Plomin had warned him beforehand about the picture.

“I shouldn’t have looked,” he said.

Wilcox faces up to a year in jail. His sentencing is set for September 21.▼

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Community News >>

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

Oakland queer youth space destroyed by fire

by Elliot Owen

O

fficials at an Oakland queer youth space are frantically trying to find a new location after the building they had been using was destroyed by a fire.

The fire broke out in the morning hours of July 8 and displaced a gem of Oakland’s queer community known as SMAAC (Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County), a nonprofit, multi-service safe space and youth center serving primarily LGBTQ youth of color. The blaze consumed the 50,000 square foot building the organization occupied in downtown Oakland at 1608 Webster Street.

The building’s significant damage pales in comparison to the void left by SMAAC’s displacement, as it is the only organization of its kind in the East Bay. The agency offers HIV prevention education, case management, peer advocacy, mentoring, and a drop-in center to over 1,000 queer youth and young adults between the ages of 14-24 annually.

Two fires had previously occurred at the same address but had been deemed electrical in nature. This last fire, SMAAC Executive Director Roosevelt Mosby Jr. explained, was not only the worst but the only one that hasn’t been explained.

“This was the first fire that wasn’t obviously an electrical fire,” Mosby said. “While I’m not really sure what occurred because nobody was in the building, there is an allegation that the space was broken into.”

The building’s landlord filed a police report but no conclusion about the fire’s cause has been made. The Oakland Fire Department did not return a message about the status of the investigation.

Instead of waiting the 18 months it would take to restore the building to

Elliot Owen

The windows are boarded up on the second floor of 1608 Webster Street in Oakland, which used to house the SMAAC center.

meet city code requirements, Mosby has started looking at other buildings in the downtown area and hopes to secure a new space for the 14-year-old organization by early August.

“I’ve got to get these kids into something as soon as possible,” Mosby said.

SMAAC operates in partnership with AIDS Project of the East Bay and receives $132,000 from that agency, Mosby said.

Sehline Ivanhoe, 35, a self-identified gender neutral person of color, knows exactly what SMAAC means to Oakland’s queer youth. Ivanhoe grew up a ward of the state, came out at age 19 and shortly after started attending SMAAC’s drag shows and dance parties.

“SMAAC was a place to find people in my age group that were struggling with similar things like depression, anxiety, PTSD,” Ivanhoe said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.

“You could go there knowing there wouldn’t be any judgment against you. This fire is disturbing and shouldn’t be swept under the rug.”

Oakland’s LGBTQ community is still reeling from the violent murder of Brandy Martell, a 37-year-old African American transgender woman who is now widely considered to be the victim of a hate crime. Police are still investigating that case. While the cause of SMAAC’s fire is unknown, it’s hard for some not to wonder if the latest was also a hate crime and, even if it wasn’t, why the destruction

of such an integral part of Oakland’s queer community isn’t garnering more attention.

Ebony Brown, 31, an intern turned paid consultant for SMAAC from 2010-2011, is disheartened by SMAAC’s temporary setback and alarmed by the lack of conversation surrounding it.

“That something of this magnitude could happen and have this level of suspicion around it and not take up more of people’s space, time, and energy is disturbing,” said Brown, a masculine-centered queer person of color. “I don’t think that politicians or city officials understand what SMAAC represents to queer kids of color in Oakland.”

Brown attributes the minimal at-

tention to both Martell’s murder and SMAAC’s fire to two things.

“Places like the Bay Area capitalize off being safe havens for the queer community,” Brown said. “Things like this don’t get the attention they deserve because it destroys the representation that people can come here and be safe.

“The second reason is the devaluing of experiences of people of color,” Brown continued. “The things that are happening to us aren’t as important as the things that are happening in other places. This highlights the systemic racism that continues to proliferate in our community.”

Jason Overman, communications director for Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland’s at-large city councilwoman, said that she is aware of the situation.

“We haven’t yet received figures yet, as this happened very recently – but Councilmember Kaplan is incredibly committed to working with them to make sure they have what they need going forward,” Overman said. “She is incredibly appreciative of their work in the community to provide services for some of the most vulnerable youth in the LGBT community – and we’ll continue to collaborate with them to honor and appreciate that work.”

SMAAC is currently maintaining an outreach presence at the AIDS Project of the East Bay located at 1320 Webster Street in Oakland. Mosby and the board of directors are urging people to donate to the organization in preparation for its reopening.▼ To donate, send a check or money order to SMAAC Youth Center c/o AIDS Project of the East Bay, 1320 Webster Street, Oakland, CA 94612. For more information about SMAAC, email smaacsed@aol.com.

<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

Volume 42, Number 30 July 26-August 1, 2012 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Thomas E. Horn Bob Ross (Founder, 1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Scott Brogan Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Chuck Colbert Richard Dodds • David Duran Raymond Flournoy • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell John F. Karr • Matthew Kennedy David Lamble • Michael McDonagh David-Elijah Nahmod • Elliot Owen Paul Parish • Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet Adam Sandel • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Ed Walsh • Sura Wood

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▼

Obama campaign out of touch T

he presidential election polls are close.

President Barack Obama or his presumptive GOP rival Mitt Romney are either barely ahead or slightly behind one another in the never-ending surveys of swing state voters.

Republican super PACS have been working furiously in support of Romney. Last month, for the first time, Romney and the Republican National Committee outraised Obama and the Democratic National Committee. Romney pulled in an astonishing $106.1 million in June, compared to $71 million raised by Obama during the same period.

In an email to supporters, the Obama campaign said that the president’s $71 million haul was “good news” but noted, “We still got beat.

Handily. Romney and the RNC pulled in a whopping $106 million.”

In May, Obama went on national television to say that he supports same-sex marriage. That, of course, galvanized his LGBT supporters and our allies. The president went on to raise millions at an upscale Los Angeles fundraiser. But now, two months later, the presidential campaign seems to be in a prolonged dead heat and Obama is being outraised by a rich guy who won’t even release his tax returns.

It’s clear that the Obama campaign needs all the supporters it can muster, which is why we were annoyed that this paper was not allowed to cover his Monday appearance at the Fox Theatre.

In fact, this was the second time it has happened; we were also shut out of his San Francisco appearance earlier this year. (The B.A.R. was allowed in to a campaign event in Redwood City in May, right after his comments on marriage equality.)

We received an email saying that “space is extremely limited, and we are not able to credential you to cover this event.”

The Obama campaign needs LGBT support, but doesn’t want coverage of the president’s campaign fundraisers in the gay press, even though we all know that these are pretty standard affairs where he riffs on the economy and throws barbs at Romney. What’s the big deal?

In the same vein, Obama was missed when he skipped both the International AIDS Conference and the recent NAACP convention in Houston – two constituencies that solidly support him.

The Obama campaign needs to get its act together. Far from leaving us out, the campaign should unleash a full-court press on LGBT voters. It should be reaching out to LGBT donors and continue to hold fundraisers promoted in the community. The president should make a stop at next week’s Unity convention in Las Vegas, where members of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association will be meeting with other minority press groups.

We can think of no better way for the president to shore up his support than to speak to organizations that include LGBTs, immigrants, and people of color.

Quote approval trend is wrong There’s another disturbing trend in this year’s presidential race: media outlets are expected, in most cases, to submit their quotes of the candidates (and some high-level staffers) for approval before publication. According to a story in the

New York Times, such quote approval is becoming increasingly common in Washington and on the campaign trail – even for interviews that are on the record.

This is a disservice to reporters and readers alike. If a politician or his handler says something on the record, that’s what it means: on the record.

There should be no reason to submit the comment for “approval,” because it is often altered and thus devoid of any real meaning, emotion, or substance. If we want that, we’ll quote from a news release.

The Times has acknowledged that it is guilty of caving in to the demands of the campaigns, as it is often a condition of the interview. We say this degradation of journalism needs to stop. If the news outlets all refused to participate in this practice, it would help to discourage the campaigns.

It’s just one more example of over-zealous staffers trying to keep their candidates on message and therefore overly scripted. Readers like the spontaneity of candidates’ comments and reporters do, too, because it is as close as we can get to honest glimpses of these people.

At the very minimum if this practice is to continue, it must be disclosed in the article so that readers know that the candidates had final control and approval over the shaping of his/her words.▼

The brain’s role in sexual orientation

by James Olson

I

t is somewhat ironic that with so many scientists trying to understand what causes same-sex attraction, a major find was made by accident while doing research for a book that examines how brain dominance affects human behavior. I like to think this insight into sexual orientation illustrates the power of whole-brain thinking, the subject of my book.

Here is what I found: There are four primary sexualities, not two: left-braindominant men, right-brain-dominant men, right-brain-dominate women, and left-brain-dominant women. Basically, each sex comes in two models, according to which brain hemisphere is running the show.

This understanding came about while examining a pair of lists I had created detailing the differences between left- and right-brain perspectives (what we see) and processes (what we do – behavior). I was seeking to discern what happens when brain dominance is reversed.

Sexuality is based in the brain, not in the genitals. When brain dominance is reversed we experience a reversal in perspective, and with it a reversal in sexual orientation. This theory complements existing physical-based theories (genetic, hormonal, and environmental).

If sexual attraction is a function of brain dominance, it suggests that the predisposition to homosexuality or heterosexuality is already present in one’s infancy, perhaps even at or before birth. In this case, homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice.

In building a description of how the two brain hemispheres affect us individually and culturally, I based my research on science. To support my observations of sexual orientation, I again turned to science and discovered that in numerous recent studies, neuroscientists have found that gay men and heterosexual women tend to exhibit similar responses to stimuli – as do lesbians and heterosexual men. Studies have also found that

key structures in the brains of lesbians and gays governing emotions resemble those of straight people of the opposite sex – and even that sexual orientation could be predicted with 95 percent accuracy based on the size of the corpus callosum (the largest connecting structure between the two brain hemispheres) and test scores on language, visual spatial, and finger dexterity.

The brain is split laterally into two hemispheres that complement one another. What one doesn’t do, the other does – because there is redundancy, science will find exceptions – but this is the rule. They are a team of specialists.

One might think that we use both sides equally, and some do, but most of us have a dominant hemisphere. And basically, it’s in charge. Call it a natural bias. This creates two types of people: one informed and acting based on the right brain’s advice, one on the left.

Most men are directed by their left brain.

They respond to its dualistic perspective and structure. Our left brain is strongly individual, aggressive, competitive, thing- and think-oriented, and separative.

Women are typically guided by their right brain giving them a collective-oriented view that sees reality in its wholeness, and as such, gives precedence to cultural life over individual life.

The right brain is attractive rather than aggressive, cooperative rather than competitive, and relationship-oriented rather than thing-oriented. It feels, and it tries to bring unity to everything, our ideas being an important example.

In some people however, this relationship is reversed, producing right-brain-dominant men and left-brain-dominant women. The rational response was to conclude that right-brain-dominant males see the world from the same holistic perspective that most females do. And since our behavior is based on belief, and belief (perception) is fed by perspective, the implication is this: a reversal in brain dominance reverses our perspective and along with it behavior, sexual desire included.

Thus, male or female, if your left-brain is

dominant, you see the world from a masculine perspective, develop a masculine perception of life, and respond to life as typical of straight males – attracted to women, for example (more or less, depending on both the degree of dominance you experience and cultural contributions).

Keep in mind that in describing sexual orientation we are trying to draw lines and differentiate where no lines exist. Our lines are artificial and arbitrary efforts used in an attempt to distinguish subtle differences along a vast continuum that we recognize as variation.

On the male side of the continuum the extremes range from effeminate to macho; on the female side, tomboy to ultrafeminine. People with same–sex attraction naturally experience this same variation. Sexuality is complex.

I don’t claim to have all of the answers – and there are undoubtedly exceptions – but this is a place to start.

Brain dominance is not always easy to identify. Proficiency in left- or right-brained activities is not the same as dominance. Vocational and cultural pressures – the equivalent of cultural dominance – may lead to a perceived identification that differs from one’s natural dominance.

Free tests are available by searching the web and at thewholebrainpath.com/blog/ under “links.”

Peace is best recovered by resolving conflict, which is most effectively removed though education. My belief is that by understanding what causes same-sex attraction we can remove some of the cloud of fear that separates us, and that this goal is most efficiently achieved when we use both sides of our brain.▼ Read the entire article “The Role of Brain Dominance in Sexual Orientation” at thewholebrainpath.com/role.html.

James Olson is an integral philosopher whose studies have included business, engineering, art, Eastern and Western religion, language, psychology, and sacred geometry.

He is the author of The Whole-Brain Path to Peace: The Role of Left- and Right-Brain Dominance in the Polarization and Reunification of America (Origin Press, 2011), which has received four national book awards.

▼

Letters >>

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Catholic gay group is the future Joe Murray is wrong about the Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry [Mailstrom, July 12]. It is not a homophobic organization with a “closet mentality.”

CALGM is a people-first ministry that bravely remains in the church despite seemingly constant pressure from internal and external critics who challenge their authenticity, loyalty, and motives. They stay, as do so many of us, for the simple reason that that is where the people are, the people who need us, the people who are our life.

CALGM is the future of the church. As CALGM insists, it is primarily concerned with pastoral issues. As it turns out, CALGM’s approach is also the best hope for eventually changing church teaching, as it sets up an official space in the Catholic Church for the witness of LGBT persons. It is significant that they stood up to the bishop when he asked them to stop saying “gay.” It is also significant that they refused to sign the loyalty oaths, which would have given the impression that they were siding with the bishop against the people they serve.

Eugene McMullan San Francisco

WOOF is a bad idea Bevan Dufty’s idea to pay former homeless individuals to foster “special needs” homeless dogs is ill-conceived and reckless [“PETA barking up the wrong tree,” Editorial, July 19]. Would Dufty entrust troubled foster children to these individuals? If not, why on earth does he think this arrangement is appropriate for dogs, who are also completely vulnerable and dependent on their caretakers?

Individuals in the Wonderful Opportunities for Occupants and Fidos program can’t provide a stable environment for themselves. It’s wishful thinking to believe that they will magically be able to provide the consistency, care, and specialized guidance that these at-risk dogs need. We can and should work to remedy San Francisco’s problems of homelessness, but Dufty’s plan is not a safe or effective way to fix either issue.

Steve Kehrli San Francisco

All hands needed to re-elect Obama I wish to address what seems like a throw away comment at the end of Bob Roehr’s analysis regarding President Barack Obama that is grossly unfair to the president and his team [“AIDS talk ignores gays,” July 12]. It is impossible to comment on why Ambassador Eric Goosby didn’t mention gays in his talk about AIDS, but a suggestion might be for an official comment from his office to be printed in your newspaper. That is not the issue I wish to address. The comment at the end of that article about the president’s staff at the White House and that “staff seemed more concerned with spin than with offering anything new” is so offensive to the president and his team when it is understood how much he has put on line in the battleground states by supporting gay marriage. As someone experienced with overseeing teams dealing with these battleground states I can tell you that the president’s campaign has lost support and votes from these all-important states. Not only is President Obama the first president ever in the history of the United States to support same-sex marriage while in office, he also ordered the Department of Justice not to challenge the Defense of the Marriage Act. This means that DOMA is all but dead in the water, which is of major importance to LGBT communities nationwide.

It is important for the LGBT community to understand that they need to be very active not only in supporting the president but in protecting their rights in this, one of the most important presidential elections in U.S. history. The simple reason is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens

United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows huge amounts of money to be donated into what we are now seeing as super PACs, one of which is headed by former President George W. Bush’s adviser Karl Rove. This should be a warning to the gay community and we should be seeing them rally now in huge numbers after what happened in the 2008 election with Proposition 8, but sadly we see nothing and the LGBT community could find itself undermined again by the right wing conservative base.

We know that Rove and company placed anti-gay initiatives on the ballots in several states to draw conservative voters to the polls.

We can speculate that Rove and company are behind Referendum 74 in Washington state to ban same-sex marriage that the legislature approved. This is a very successful Rove ploy to bring out the right-wing conservative base on Election Day, which will benefit Mitt Romney. Rove invented this process in the 2004 presidential election and it worked very well to help re-elect Bush.

California is a blue state but the gay community should get actively involved today. Wishing this will all go away is stupid. Depending on a Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay rights and marriage is fine but this should not allow for complacency. Also, to say Obama will sail through in this election is naive.

Various GOP-backed super PACs will raise perhaps more than $1 billion to defeat the president. Obama’s fundraising team being out-raised 3-1.

The gay community needs to get itself fired up real soon or it could find itself like it did in 2008 when the passage of Prop 8 caught people unaware as to how much damage big money can do to an election and a community’s civil rights.

Reading an article criticizing the president and his team in your paper without the hard facts just plays into the hands of Rove and company and makes it easier for them to buy the election process, which is what is going to happen on November 6 if the American public doesn’t wake up.

Patrick McDonnell San Francisco

Graphic details were too much I was disgusted by the extremely graphic excerpts of emails printed in the June 28 story on Larry Brinkin [“Brinkin arrested on child porn charges”]. The article suggests that these emails were sent by Brinkin, although he has not been convicted. The story makes a point of praising him as a pioneer for LGBT rights, before dragging him through the mud in the most shocking way imaginable.

Even if these excerpts appeared in a police report, publishing them in a newspaper serves no journalistic purpose. Printing them does three things. First, it biases the jury pool against Brinkin. Second, it does a disservice to the LGBT community, since these email passages demonstrate exactly the type of stereotype leveled at us by reactionary foes. Imagine how a heterosexual tourist picking up a copy of the B.A.R. on a visit to San Francisco would react on reading this story – they might think that LGBT people are so desensitized or over-sexualized that these types of passages do not disturb us. And finally, printing these passages disrespects all victims of child sexual abuse; those reading the story would be forced to relive the crimes perpetrated against them.

The only conclusion to be drawn from the reporter’s use of these passages is that he sought to inflame the reader, or far worse, titillate. In the future, more editorial discretion should be used in deciding what should be included in a story about an alleged crime that has barely begun to be investigated.

Carrie Wipplinger Oakland, California

Lazy Bear returns to Russian River compiled by Cynthia Laird

L

azy Bear Weekend is returning to the Russian River next week, and organizers have planned several days of pool parties, dances, and other enjoyable activities as the hirsute bears and their admirers gather for six days of summer fun, August 1-6.

Harry Lit of Castrobear Presents, which produces the party, is looking forward to the 16th annual event, he told the Bay Area Reporter in a recent phone call.

In addition to having fun, Lazy Bear Weekend is a fundraiser for nonprofits. Over the last 15 years the party has raised over $1.5 million for local, state, and national groups. Sales of the weekend’s popular bear tags go toward this fundraising effort. Tags can be purchased in advance for $105. The tags allow free entry to the pool parties and other benefits.

Headlining the weekend

www.ebar.com rampagebear.com via Lazy Bear Weekend

Bears and their admirers had fun in the pool at the 2006 Lazy Bear Weekend in Guerneville.

this year is Lady Bunny, who will perform Saturday night at the Veterans Hall. Bingo games and bonfires round out the weekend.

For a full schedule of events, visit w w w. l a z y b e a rweekend.com.

Panel on eroding civil liberties The Oakland Peace Center will host a program, “Our Vanishing Civil Liberties,” Tuesday, July 31 at 7 p.m. at 111 Fairmount Avenue (at 29th Street) in Oakland. The center is one block east of Broadway Auto Row. The evening includes a panel disSee page 16 >>

<< Commentary

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

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A birthday message

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

S

o today is my birthday, a bittersweet observance where we celebrate making it around the sun one more time, while secretly regretting all the things you wish you had accomplished by this particular age.

Or at least it is for me; your own mileage may vary.

As one gets older – when those things we euphemistically call “laugh lines” start to carve a path around our face, and while our hair starts to trade its youthful luster in for a larger and larger smat-

tering of gray – we begin to think more and more about where we’ve come from, where we’re going, and if we’ve picked up some wisdom along the way. We may even feel we’ve picked up some knowledge along the way that’s worth sharing.

And that is what I’m going to do today. It’s my birthday, and I hope you’ll be willing to indulge me in sharing a few things I’ve picked up over time.

Consider them my gifts to you.

The old adage about attracting more flies with honey? It’s totally true.

I feel so often that we spend much of our time yelling, vilifying each other over every slight, real or imagined.

This takes a lot of shapes. Perhaps it is that President Barack Obama has not done enough for us lately, or some other political move hasn’t come swiftly enough. In the spirit of birthdays, hey, I get that. We all only get so many years.

Or perhaps it is how those of us who are transgender feel slighted by the larger lesbian and gay movement. This happens too. Sometimes, this happens a lot. Don’t get me started, for example, on the last two decades worth of “work” done by the Human Rights Campaign.

By the same token, we sometimes turn the lens inward, attacking those within our community who we don’t feel unified with, or don’t feel understand the issues that matter most to this or that faction. That, too, sometimes holds water.

Indeed, it’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of times when righteous anger is justified, and one needs to take to the street, bullhorn in hand, and make some noise. But this isn’t – and shouldn’t – be an everyday occurrence. That’s not good for you, let alone does it serve your purpose.

People don’t like being told, over and over again, how wrong they may be. More so, they don’t like being told that they’re evil incarnate for every slight, no matter how small. Step back every so often and take a look, put yourself in their shoes, and try to treat others with the level of civility and respect you desire.

Sure, it won’t work every time: some people really are jerks. Nevertheless, if you show others at least the courtesy of treating them like an actual flesh-and-blood person, they may be willing to do the same. Go build bridges, rather than burning them.

Oh, and of course not every slight

<<

Larkin Street

From page 2

failed to adequately repair” conditions that included leaking sinks, mildewed rooms, and rodent infestation, the complaint says.

The filing says the plaintiffs are either lesbian, gay, or transgender.

In September 2010, the Bay Area Reporter reported that Pleasants said she had filed a complaint with the city’s Human Rights Commission.

Pleasants, who at least at the time identified as queer, said that her complaint wasn’t based on sexual orientation, but that other residents had filed complaints on that basis.

Court documents say Bonilla and Bailey are “recovering $10,000 or more in value by this action.”

Adams, an out lesbian, declined to say how much was paid to the plaintiffs, and whether Larkin had had to pay anything, citing a nondisclosure agreement the parties involved in the settlement agreed to.

“I’m not saying there was or wasn’t money,” said Adams. “I’m just saying I can’t talk about it at all.”

Adams said she and others “do this work in an environment of enor-

Christine Smith

is worth your time. Give the trolls just as much of your time as they deserve, and pick your battles. You’ll be the better for it.

A lot of the work of gaining rights – and this is not just true for transgender people – is in coalition building. It’s rare that a single person brings about change, even though we can point to plenty of people who are considered the leaders of this or that community.

Each of those people had to reach out to others, educate, and let them go out and recruit others to their cause. Martin Luther King Jr. was not standing out in front of the Lincoln Memorial alone: he laid the foundations years before, and built his coalition of like-minded people over time.

We in the transgender community are experts at dividing ourselves.

We differentiate ourselves from the larger lesbian and gay movement, we divide each other into subsets, we make our coalitions smaller and smaller. Meanwhile, we should be reaching out. We should learn to work together, not just among ourselves and not just to the larger movement, but to other communities too. The issues of women are the issues of transgender women.

The issues of people of color are the issues of transgender people of

color. Build allies, build friendships, and gain a broad, strong coalition.

As part of this – and this is where I really start sounding like someone who’s ridden this merry-go-round for a while – consider that while change does not come overnight, and sometimes we lose a battle here and there, we will eventually win the war.

It was only a few short decades ago that transgender people faced jail for presenting themselves in their preferred gender in public.

Careers could be ended, loves lost, and lives destroyed simply for daring to present one’s self publicly. We did not have the right to change our names or genders. There were no anti-discrimination ordinances. We quite literally had nothing.

We don’t have it all, today, but we’ve come a long way. We will continue to march forward, much like other communities before us. As long as we dare to dream, and do the work to make those dreams into reality, we’ll make it.

Will everything be better for all of us all of the time? No, not likely – but it is going to get better. We just need to keep working, and hoping, and making it happen.

We may sometimes feel defeated, but never despair. Even in the darkest moments, there is hope. That hope is what I most wish to offer to you on my birthday. Let’s build on it.▼

mously limited resources.”

“We are guided by the young people, and sometimes folks have an experience different than we wish that they did. We do the very best we can to address things as they come up, and address things if they’re not working,” she said.

She said program staff is at the hotel “frequently.”

The Perramont “is a good housing option for young people,” Adams said, and opportunities in the Castro neighborhood are “few and far between.”

The lease doesn’t have an expiration date and Larkin Street “could, with appropriate notice” end the agreement, she said. However, she said, her agency has “no intention” of doing that.

“Where would I house those folks?” she said. Fifteen units at the hotel are part of the Castro Youth Housing Initiative. The youth program has a total of 22 housing units.

The city provided about $426,000 to the initiative, or 66 percent of the total costs, in 2011-12 for case management and support services, according to Larkin Street.

Allegations denied

Gwen Smith thinks Harvey Milk was right. You can find her online at www.gwensmith.com.

Neither the Patels nor the plaintiffs could be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon, July 24. According to court documents, the Patels denied all allegations.

Citing a confidentiality provision in the settlement agreement, Stephen Collier, who’s an attorney at Tenderloin Housing Clinic and represented the plaintiffs, said, “I don’t know if I can tell you very much” and the plaintiffs “are similarly bound by the agreement.”

He said the case “was settled on terms acceptable to all parties.”

Thomas Gelini, who’s an attorney with Bennett, Samuelsen, Reynolds, and Allard and represented the Patels, also couldn’t say how much the lawsuit had been settled for.

“I have no permission from my clients to discuss the case,” he said.

However, he said, “It was an out-ofcourt settlement without any admission of wrongdoing or liability.”

Both Subash Patel and Jesita Inc. are listed as the owner of the Perramont, according to a city staffer. Both have the same Livermore post office box.

See page 17 >>

▼

Politics>>

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Gay councilman joins Berkeley mayor’s race

by Matthew S. Bajko

A

onetime major backer of Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, gay progressive City Councilman Kriss Worthington now wants to oust him from the office Bates has held for a decade.

Worthington, 58, announced his mayoral campaign Tuesday, July 24 at a noon press conference at City Hall.

In a phone interview that afternoon with the Bay Area Reporter, he said he decided to run because he believes the mayor has strayed too far right, backing developers over the concerns of residents.

“People have been talking to me about it for months. I always said, ‘Nah.’ I have a very happy life. I don’t need more work; I’ve got enough work as it is,” said Worthington.

But over the course of the last several months, Worthington said he has been alarmed at the direction Bates is taking the famously liberal East Bay city. A recent clash over a fall bond measure, where instead of earmarking money to deal with bay pollution the funds with be used for citywide street repaving, was the last straw, said Worthington.

“The more the mayor keeps voting the wrong way and twisting people’s arms to get them to vote the wrong way, the more it seems if nobody speaks up he is going to keep drifting in that direction,” he said.

“He certainly is extraordinarily popular to the chamber of commerce but not to a lot of small business people and progressives.”

Five other people have also indicated they intend to run for mayor this year. The filing deadline is August 10.

Bates is traveling out of the country and will not return home until early August. In a recent editorial he wrote for the UC Berkeley campus newspaper he accused Worthington of being a bully.

The two men’s current adversarial relationship is quite the role reversal from 10 years ago. Back in 2002 Worthington was among those calling on Bates, a former state legislator and county supervisor, to run against then-Mayor Shirley Dean.

At that time Worthington said he had contemplated taking on Dean himself. But in a move he now calls ironic, he helped recruit Bates.

“I worked very, very hard to get him elected,” recalled Worthington.

“I was up for re-election but I spent almost no time telling people to vote for me. My campaign message was get me a new mayor so we can get things done.”

Bates defeated Dean with a clear majority that year. And he has easily won re-election in his last three races, the most recent being a rematch in 2008 against Dean. Due to a voter-approved change that went into effect that year, the mayor’s term switched from being two to four years.

The split between Bates and Worthington became apparent in 2010 when Worthington, who was first elected in 1996, was running for re-election and the mayor backed his challengers. But under the city’s ranked-choice voting system, Worthington emerged the winner after a third round of tabulations.

The two political leaders have only grown further apart on policy fights ever since. They have clashed in recent months on legislation aimed at curtailing homeless people from congregating on city sidewalks, similar to San Francisco’s sit/lie ordinance.

Worthington sees the law, which

Jane Philomen Cleland

Kriss Worthington

will be before Berkeley voters in November, as a red herring and opposed it. Bates has backed it as a way to attract more shoppers to the city’s business districts.

The two also fought over the contract for newly appointed City Manager Christine Daniel, an out lesbian, which will grant her $250,000 if she is fired. Worthington, who backed the hiring of Daniel, opposed the severance clause. Bates argued it was fair and reflected what other Bay Area cities offer.

“I agreed with the people complaining if you get fired for messing up your job you should not get a quarter of a million dollars.

The mayor rammed it through and insisted it had to be that way,” said Worthington.

He ultimately voted to approve the contract after losing a fight to remove the severance language.

“I don’t expect the current city manager will get fired for doing a bad job. She is an incredible hire,” said Worthington, adding that the contract dispute with the mayor “is a commentary about him.”

Worthington is believed to be the first openly LGBT person to run for mayor in Berkeley. And should he win come November, Worthington would only be the second out person elected mayor of a Bay Area city.

[Gary Cloutier was sworn in as Vallejo’s mayor in 2007 but was ousted from office seven days later following a recount of the vote.]

In 1994 gay Berkeley resident Jeffrey Shattuck Leiter was appointed the city’s mayor following the resignation of Loni Hancock, who is married to Bates and is now a state senator. She stepped down to take a job with then-President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Leiter was seen as a caretaker of the office and agreed not to seek a full term, leading to the election that fall of Dean.

As for Worthington, if he loses the mayor’s race he still has two years left in his current council term.

SF lesbian nominated for national Holocaust council The White House this week announced that President Barack Obama plans to appoint seven people to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, including lesbian San Francisco resident Susan Lowenberg. The council is the governing body of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. President of the Lowenberg Corporation, an industrial real estate investment firm, Lowenberg is the daughter of the late William J. Lowenberg, a Holocaust survivor who was a major backer of the museum. She is married to Joyce Newstat, who was

an aide to former Mayor Gavin Newsom, and served on the city’s Planning Commission in the 1990s, including a one-year stint as president.

She sits on the boards of several nonprofits, including the Holocaust Memorial Education Fund; the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco; and the advisory board for the Horizons Foundation, a local LGBT grant-making agency. For the last five years Lowenberg has been a director of the Bank of San Francisco.

In a statement posted to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund’s blog, Lowenberg said she is “honored and proud” to carry on her father’s work.

“My father dedicated many years of his life to the creation of this great museum. As a survivor, the day the museum opened in April 1993 was one of the greatest days of his life,” she said.▼

<< Travel

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

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Courtesy Jazzkat’s Coffee Bar

Whitney Baskins, forefront, owner of Jazzkat’s Coffee Bar, with Blue Kangaroo Coffee Roasters owners and couple Cindy Wallace, background, and Flo Posadas, sampling the coffee in front of the cafe.

Portland, Seattle offer funky, hip time for tourists

by Heather Cassell

M

ake a cool escape to the Pacific Northwest’s Portland and Seattle, two cities that invite travelers to chill along the water be it lake, ocean, or river or explore the great outdoors in the wide open forests, hang out at a local coffee shop, or groove to the new sounds.

Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington both have reputations for being creatively “weird” in a way that residents have embraced and tout, but at the same time the cities are emerging as cultural centers, displaying a sophisticated edge without the attitude.

To be blunt, these cities offer urban and outdoor adventures at travelers’ fingertips without the stress.

Songstress k.d. lang was so charmed

by Portland that she claimed the City of Roses as her home earlier this year.

Portland Lang is already settling in and supporting local causes. In October, she will perform at a benefit for Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign produced by openly lesbian executive chef Sarah Schafer of Irving St. Kitchen.

Schafer, who serves up her dishes with love and passion, anticipates 120 people will attend the exclusive fundraiser to enjoy the delicacies she produces from the kitchen along with samplings of some of Portland and Washington’s best wines.

Portland’s queer community is fully integrated into the city; there is no gayborhood to speak of, but no matter what neighborhood LGBT travelers explore there are gay businesses that are thriving. Being LGBT is so accepted that raising the familiar rainbow flag rarely happens in the city.

June through the beginning of August is the queerest time in Portland.

Everyone is out and proud celebrating Pride from the traditional to individual groups (BearTown, Latino Pride, and Leather Pride) to the newly launched Queer Music Festival – now in its second year. Still looking to get in on the rainbowtainment? Head on up to Portland for Leather Pride on August 3-12 or enjoy the fall season at the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival or the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court’s Coronation Ball in October. In April, Portlanders paint the town red with the wildly popular annual Red Dress Party, and in May they get real with QDoc, the Queer Documentary Film Festival.

LGBT travelers can easily take an international weekend side trip from Seattle or Portland to Vancouver, Canada for Vancouver Pride (http:// www.vancouverpride.ca) on August 5. Just don’t leave your passport at home.

No need to drive or fly. Amtrak Cascades is a beautiful and easy ride from Portland to Seattle all the way up to Vancouver.

Portland is known for its roses and famed Rose Festival, a three-week event from Memorial Day weekend through mid-June, but the Rose City hosts a plethora of festivals from spring through the end of fall, such as the Oregon Brewers Festival, Art in the Pearl, Musicfest NW, Feast Portland: Food and Drink Festival, Wordstock, Portland Cocktail Week, and Portland Jazz Festival to name a few.

I rolled into Portland on the Tri Met from the Portland Airport, a very easy and inexpensive ride, to the funky cool and very gay-friendly Jupiter Hotel. The hotel is located just across the Burnside Bridge, minutes away from

▼

Travel>>

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Courtesy Visit Seattle

Seattle’s iconic Space Needle turned 50 this year.

downtown Portland and Chinatown, where Darcelle XV Showplace has given Vegas-style drag performances for 45 years.

The Jupiter Hotel offers a Keep Portland Queer package that is an introduction to LGBT sights, as well as discounts and other complimentary gifts in a welcome basket. The hotel also donates 10 percent of the proceeds of guests’ hotel stay (who request the package when making a reservation) to the Q Center, Portland’s LGBT community center.

The hotel’s partnership with Portland’s LGBT community is just one example of a team effort between Travel Portland, the Portland Area Business Association, and the Q Center to welcome LGBT travelers to the region. During Portland Pride in June, PABA and Q Center launched a new website http://www.queernw. com to complement Travel Portland’s queer travel page and other marketing materials available at the visitor’s center in Pioneer Square and the Q Center in the Mississippi Avenue neighborhood, said Barbara McCullough-Jones, executive director of the Q Center and Jill Nelson, president of the PABA. To get other deals to dine around Portland or see the city’s popular sights log on to Travel Portland’s website (www.travelportland.com) to get one of five passes that can save up to 30 percent off into the city’s biggest attractions from museums to the zoo.

Check out Portland Perks to grab up to $600 worth of savings at hotels, restaurants, stores, and more.

Easy living Getting around Portland is amazingly easy whether it is by bike – Portland is the most bike-friendly city in America with bike bars and cafes and boulevards that are car free – to public transportation, or even by car if you must. All I had to do was text a code to get up to the minute information about my next bus, streetcar, or Max train (by the way the Max takes riders directly to the Oregon Zoo among other sites). The city, which is divided by the Willamette River, is crossed by a total of 12 different bridges stitching up the city connecting the east and west sides of town.

The one thing that I continued to hear from Portlanders is that the region offers everything anyone can want from an urban center all within an hour. In a single day one can start by enjoying morning surf at the beach, a mountain hike or yearround skiing or snowboarding on Mount Hood, and tour wine country in the Willamette Valley, returning to Portland for dinner at a James Beard Award-winning restaurant.

That is one of the reasons why out bisexual tour guide Kieron Weidner, 32, of EverGreen Escapes decided to settle in Portland. Throughout the day we popped into the Q Center and checked out local LGBT businesses starting on Mississippi Avenue with its artisan shops. We stopped at Jazzkat’s Coffee Bar, owned by Whitney Baskins, a 44-year-old lesbian who moved to Portland from San Jose 15 years ago, that is located in the up and coming Hollywood District.

Baskins, the mother of a teenage

son, has become a staple in the neighborhood since opening the shop nearly three years ago. Her coffee is roasted by lesbian-owned Blue Kangaroo Coffee Roasters and local artists exhibit their work on the cafe’s walls, she said.

Around the corner from Jazzkat’s is Ritual Arts, an eco-friendly tattoo and piercing studio owned by queer transgender couple Jesse Enz and Shane “Seven” Wolfe, who are in their 30s.

The couple has enjoyed a great deal of success since they opened their body art studio a year ago, due to the support of the community, Wolfe said.

He echoed what other LGBT Port-

landers said they liked about the city, its diversity and open attitude toward people.

“I love Portland because of the diversity and the ability to be open and happy, because there are not a lot of places that you go where people smile at you when you walk down the street,” said Wolfe, a piercing artist.

We ended with wine tasting with Laurie Lewis, co-owner of the uber cool lesbian-owned winery Hip Chicks Do Wine in the Industrial district. Lewis is also the mastermind behind Portland’s PDX Urban Wineries, a collaboration of wineries that present wine tours around the city.

Portland spans 145 square miles and is home to nearly 2.1 million people in the metropolitan area, according to the U.S. Census. The urban growth hasn’t hampered Portland’s natural beauty. The city boasts that 37,000 acres of green space that includes 288 parks and 166 miles of trails. It is also home to the oldest international rose testing garden in the U.S., according to Travel Portland.

Portland got its roses from Georgiana Pittock, wife of pioneer publisher Henry Pittock. The city’s rose identity was cemented during World War I when European rose growers found Portland to be the perfect place to keep their prize blooms safe from bombs, I learned on a tour of Portland courtesy of Evergreen Escapes.

See page 17 >>

<< AIDS Conference 2012

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

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Optimism drives AIDS conference

by Bob Roehr

T

urning the tide together” is the audacious theme of the XIX International AIDS Conference that officially opened in Washington, D.C. Sunday, July 22.

“We’re talking about ending AIDS,” said conference co-chair Diane Havlir, a researcher at UCSF. Two powerful forces are driving that optimism. One is the huge scientific strides made in understanding the human immunodeficiency virus, and a belief that with time and money the remaining questions will be answered.

The other is success not just in creating therapies that can save the lives of persons in the wealthy nations of the world, but in generating the political and economic will to make those same treatments available to 8 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.

“The scientific building blocks” of treatment and prevention “have brought us to the point where we can be bold enough to consider the possibility of an AIDS-free generation,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been a leading figure in the fight against AIDS from the start of the epidemic.

“Now that we have the scientific capability, there are no excuses to not do it,” Fauci said. However, he also acknowledged ongoing “challenges” in the areas of creating a vaccine and a cure.

<<

AIDS confab

From page 1

Some still excluded The International AIDS Society, which organizes the conference, announced that the 2012 confab would return to the U.S. shortly after President Barack Obama lifted the ban on HIV-positive visitors in 2009, an effort begun under George W. Bush.

Sex workers and people who use illegal drugs, however, are still excluded

Carl Dieffenbach, Fauci’s deputy, was a bit more reserved in reviewing scientific questions that remain to be answered in searching for a cure that goes beyond treatments available today. When asked if the cure glass is half full or half empty, his response was, “We have a glass.”

Money is the big issue in Washington and agencies are struggling to avoid making real cuts. The National Institutes of Health is no exception.

The budget has been essentially flat for a decade, said NIH Director Francis Collins, “inflation has eaten away; we are about 20 percent down in terms of purchasing power.”

Rally

Bob Roehr

Dr. Anthony Fauci

The conference opened with a rally near the Washington Monument that was organized by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation under a theme of “Keep the Promise.”

“Presidents are not born, they are made. They have to be pushed into their greatness. They must be held accountable,” said television host Tavis Smiley who spoke at the rally.

“I just heard that Obama flew over us in his helicopter. I can’t understand why he’s not here with us,” said the master of ceremony for the event, comedian Margaret Cho. “The news that President Obama has elected to skip the International AIDS Conference speaks volumes,” AHF President Michael Weinstein said earlier in the week when the White House made it official that the

president would not attend.

In his place at the opening ceremony for the conference was Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She announced what the department news release called “a series of innovative public-private partnerships in the fight against the HIV/ AIDS epidemic.”

They were: “(1) using text messaging to improve patient management of disease; (2) partnering with a national pharmacy chain to develop an innovative medication therapy management; (3) creating a common, easy to use form for HIV patient assistance program applicants; and (4) launching online education modules to better train providers to treat people living with HIV/AIDS.”▼

under U.S. visa and immigration rules, a policy advocates protested throughout the week.

“We must repeal laws that violate human rights, including those of men who have sex with men, transgender people, sex workers, and those who inject drugs,” said Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), who has introduced a bill to remove these restrictions. “If we are ever going to see an end to AIDS in our lifetime, we have to involve all those populations

that must be a part of the solution.”

One key study released at the meeting shed further light on rates of infection among black men who have sex with men – the group with the highest incidence in the U.S. – that are not fully explained by risk behavior.

“All the research makes mention of poverty, homelessness, and lack of access to health care and quality education as major reasons for the exploding rates among black gay and bisexual men,” Kenyon Farrow of the

Rick Gerharter

Wyclef Jean performed at a rally sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which then led into a march calling on leaders to “Keep the Promise” on Sunday, the opening day of the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.

Praxis Project told the Bay Area Reporter. “I hope that future research will move from footnoting the reasons black gay men are so at risk to actually explaining how to end problems caused by structural racism that are making us so vulnerable to HIV infection and premature death.”

Sir Elton John, who addressed the conference on Monday, called for repeal of laws around the world that criminalize homosexuality, increase stigma, and hinder the fight against AIDS. As has become a tradition, conference attendees unveiled the Washington Declaration, a nine-point action plan for turning the tide on the epidemic that calls for, among other things, an increase in targeted new investments; expanded access to antiretroviral treatment for all in need; evidence-based HIV prevention, treatment, and care; and an end to stigma, discrimination, legal sanctions, and human rights abuses against those living with and at risk for HIV.

More resources needed No major medical breakthroughs were announced at the conference, but delegates heard about progress in areas ranging from HIV prevention to a cure. Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, received considerable attention the week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead Science’s Truvada combination pill for this indication.

Despite the sense of optimism about scientific advances and expansion of HIV treatment and services to more people in need worldwide, a dark shadow is cast by the ongoing global economic crisis that threatens to halt further progress.

“We must resolve together never to go backwards, despite the hard economic times we live in,” said conference co-chair Elly Katabira.

Tuesday’s We Can End AIDS mobilization highlighted the need for more resources and enlightened public policy to stem the tide of the epidemic. Approximately 5,000 activists making up five separate marches left the downtown convention center at noon, converging for a rally at the White House.

One group of protesters dressed in Robin Hood garb called for a small

tax on financial transactions, known as a Tobin tax, to fund AIDS care and other health needs worldwide.

Thirteen activists were arrested after tying red ribbons to the White House fence, including Treatment Action Group director Mark Harrington and longtime San Francisco activist Laura Thomas, deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, who was previously arrested there on World AIDS Day in 1989.

“We know we can end this epidemic and we have the tools to do it, but until our elected leaders have the will to end it and create the resources needed, people will continue to die,” Thomas told the B.A.R. “We can’t end AIDS until we end the war on drugs, which prevents us from providing sterile syringe access to all who need it, and which criminalizes people who use drugs, denying them access to the care and treatment they deserve.”

“The last time the AIDS quilt was stretched out by the Capitol, we came to the White House and scattered the ashes of our loved ones through the fence,” added Davids. “Yesterday we bound the fence with red ribbon and some of the tools we need to end the epidemic for all – funding, treatment, keys to unlock jail cells and open doors to housing, syringes and condoms, and symbols of human rights and justice.”▼

Correction The man accused in a Castro-area carjacking and stabbing incident was incorrectly Courtesy SFPD identified in the July 19 article, Antoine “Man charged Dilworth in carjacking, stabbing.” Defendant Antoine Dilworth, 28, was charged and has pleaded not guilty in the July 12 incident. Dilworth had given incorrect identification to police.

The name and photo of James Clark that accompanied our story last week have been removed from our website and the story has been corrected to reflect the correct identification.

Read more online at www.ebar.com

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

<< Community News

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

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SF General joins LGBT video campaign

by Matthew S. Bajko

S

www.ebar.com

an Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center this week became the first Bay Area medical center to unveil a video for the It Gets Better project aimed at LGBT youth struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation or gender identity.

With the release of the 11-minute video, which was posted to YouTube Tuesday, July 24, the staffers at the Mission-based health care facility became the latest group of colleagues at a local workplace to take part in the two-year-old campaign.

Last summer employees at the Exploratorium science museum released their own video, and in February, members of the San Francisco Police Department uploaded their taped message about being out law enforcement officers.

Danny Buskirk

Some of the participants in SF General’s It Gets Better video included, from left, Kris Mizutani, Vaughn Mouton, Sara Cole, Audrey Smith, Dave Staconis, and Gallo (who only uses one name).

It was the police video that served as a motivation for Kathryn Fowler, 51, an out lesbian and a nurse manager in SF General’s emergency room, to seek permission from hospital administrators to join the campaign. She then recruited LGBT colleagues who would be willing to share their coming out stories in such a public manner.

“Back when I was growing up we didn’t have anything like this. It is thrilling to know there are now more resources for young people,” said Fowler, who lives in San Francisco and has worked at SF General for 11 years.

The hospital’s video features a multi-ethnic group of employees, some of whom are straight, repeating the campaign’s mantra of “It gets better.” Spliced throughout are excerpts of more in-depth interviews with individual out employees.

Those featured include Nate Sharon, who transitioned from female to male while in medical school and recently finished his residency at SF General; psychologist Lee Rawitscher, who has been with his husband for 12 years and is raising a 6-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter; and nurse Audrey Smith, an out lesbian who began working at the hospital three years ago.

“I’ve had my own struggles with the topic,” said Smith, 25, who grew up in Berkeley and lives in Albany.

“It felt good to share my story.”

Since the project launched in 2010, created by Seattle-based sex columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage, it has taken on a life of its own. People gay and straight from around the world, whether politicians, sports figures, actors, musicians, or ordinary citizens, have produced their own It Gets Better videos.

There are now more than 2,500 videos that have been uploaded to the campaign’s page on YouTube.

Last year a book related to the campaign was published.

The success of the effort has also produced a bit of a backlash, with some LGBT youth questioning its effectiveness. Other critics have noted that accounts of LGBT youth committing suicide continue to generate headlines.

Backers of the project counter that the videos offer hope to not just youth but LGBT people of all ages who feel alone, isolated or unjustly treated.

“I think there are those it can

help, definitely,” said Smith. “We made it for them.”

Administrators and staffers at the public hospital are hoping their video will not only reach youth but also a far larger audience. It wants to let patients of any age know that they can be out to their doctors, nurses, and other staffers at SF General.

During a screening of the video held Tuesday afternoon for hospital employees, one staffer in the audience noted how a recent female cancer patient was reluctant at first to acknowledge a woman she initially identified as a blood relative was really her life partner.

“People don’t know it is safe to bring their partner with them to the hospital,” said the employee after seeing the video.

Hospital administrators see the video as a way to alert the public that SF General values the diversity of its staff and patients. For the last two years the medical center has been rated a leader in LGBT health care among the nation’s hospitals by the Human Rights Campaign in its health care equality index annual report.

The hospital scored well for adopting policies that protect patients and employees from discrimination, having equal visitation rights for same-sex couples and parents, and training its staff on LGBT patient-centered care. SF General has been a leader in LGBT health care since the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Dr. Sue Carlyle, who was named vice dean of the hospital this month, called the video “fabulous” and said it ties in to SF General’s approach to patient care.

“Our real mission is to provide excellent health care with compassion and respect,” said Carlyle, who is also a professor of medicine and professor of clinical anesthesia at UCSF, which jointly operates the hospital with the city.

Barbara Garcia, the out lesbian who is head of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, which oversees the hospital, was also pleased that the video had been made.

“That’s great,” she said last week when told the video would be unveiled.

Within less than 24 hours of being posted online the video had been watched nearly 2,000 times.

It can be seen at http://youtu.be/ LylPucCmbLM.▼

ebar.com

Read more online at www.ebar.com

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

<< Sports

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

▼

Not your father’s Olympics

by Roger Brigham

F

or the first time in history, there are more female than male U.S. Olympic athletes, even though softball has been dropped as an Olympic sport. Women, once not allowed to run in the marathon, will now be able to box. A pre-Olympic feature in ESPN magazine focused on the sexually charged atmosphere that is expected to engulf the Olympic Village for the next three weeks and require an advance order of 100,000 condoms. And as teams converged at the start of this week, Grindr, a social media app for gay men in search of hookups, crashed in the London neighborhood for 24 hours because of the overload of traffic.

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Let the Games begin.”

It’s anybody’s guess just how many LGBT athletes and coaches there are among the 12,000-plus who will compete in London, but several organizations have been trying to keep tallies on how many out athletes and coaches there are. The Federation of Gay Games, which is one of the sponsors of the Olympic Pride House and has a scholarship drive to help elite out LGBT athletes get to premier events, has probably the most comprehensive list, compiled from other news sources and internal connections. Heading into this week, the FGG list identified 25 LGBT athletes, coaches, and team support members, and that list did not even include Canada’s Chef de Mission Mark Tewksbury.

Only three of the active athletes on the list are men.

The FGG list can be found at http://gaygames.org/wp/events/ pride-house-2012/outin-london-2012/.

But while we are watching to see if Matthew Mitcham can repeat his gold medal performance in diving and, if so, will

Courtesy U.S. Air Force.

Volleyball player Kim Willoughby, seen here in a USA exhibition game in 2008, has recently trained with an LGBT club in Sacramento

NBC capture the poolside same-sex partner embrace it so famously missed four years ago, and as first lady Michelle Obama uses the Olympics as the opportunity to urge kids to get off the couch and exercise, we should remember that some of the best

sports opportunities for any adult would-be athletes exist right here in the Bay Area in the form of LGBT sports teams, from softball to rugby to water polo. (For the latest example, check out the results from the fifth annual Pride Track and Field Meet at http://www.pridemeet.org.)

Think you can’t get world-class competition? Think again.

See page 16 >>

Gay psychic at Gaia Festival

by David Duran

G ebar.com

ay psychic medium Jeff Baker will be coming to northern California next weekend to keynote at the Gaia Festival.

The festival, at the Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville (Mendocino County) is a three-day music and sustainable living fair featuring artists of many genres, each with a positive message. Through workshops and presentations speakers will host discussions on topics like environmental stewardship, communal living, plant spirit and psychedelic medicine, shamanism, and spirituality.

Baker is a producer of the festival.

“I am very excited about this unique festival, I am partnering with longtime friends for the Gaia Festival, which is a small town festival focusing on community, holding space for freedom and love, safety and joyous fun and the opportunity to spread this reality as far as we can,” Baker said in a phone interview.

He said that organizers would love to expand the festival but enjoy the smaller, more personalized event.

This year’s headliner is Michael Franti.

“We are also incorporating educational speakers and classes and a kid-friendly atmosphere to harbor or foster the experience of genuine love and acceptance equally for all,” said Baker.

Baker’s partners, Black Road Productions, have been having festivals on the “sacred and beautiful ground”

Jeff Baker

for the last 21 years. Previous to their successful festival adventures, they have been in the music industry for 40-plus years.

“They bring experience, love, gratitude, and knowledge for both music and consciousness,” he said.

The festival is a combination of music, fun, knowledge and tradition, experienced speakers and teachers.

Baker, 36, who will be teaching and speaking at Gaia said, “I am honored and humbled to be teaching some of the modality, reading for patrons and friends, and doing short healing sessions all weekend long.”

This festival also means a great deal to Baker on a personal note, as it was the beginning of healing for him with regards to the loss of his lover, Brett Allen Preston.

Baker just celebrated his 26th anniversary in the practice of empathic

healing, or “pushing through,” as he calls it.

“There’s no real official answer, it started for me when I started this life but I formally began practicing and training others in the modality when I was 11 years old,” said Baker.

Baker who prefers the title empathic, admits that under that description, comes psychic, medium, and paranormal investigator.

Baker has a thriving healing practice, which has mostly come from medical validation in journals, articles, and word of mouth.

“I love the healing work and it is definitely one of the most difficult functions of the modality and for sure the most extensive time wise,” he said.

“But I have a broad spectrum, healing, readings, medium ship, classes, lectures, government work, missing and murder cases, paranormal disturbances, haunts, production, writing, and many other adventures.”

Baker’s new production company, Burn It To The Ground, is currently working on the Gaia Festival, but also has a television show in preproduction, a series for the LGBT community, a haunted house production in New Mexico, three movies, and seven books in process.

Tickets for the Gaia Festival can be purchased for one day ($80), weekend ($185) or all three days ($195).▼ For more information on the Gaia Festival visit www. thegaiafestival.com. For more information on Baker, visit www.JeffBakerPsychic.com.

▼

Obituaries>>

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

Astronaut Sally Ride dies

by Cynthia Laird

S

ally Ride, who became the first American woman in space when she made the historic voyage aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983, died Monday, July 23 at her home in San Diego. She was 61.

The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, which Ms. Ride fought for 17 months.

Ms. Ride, who had a Ph.D. in physics, was also a lesbian, though that was not publicly known until her passing, when a statement from Sally Ride Science, of which she was CEO, noted that she is survived by Tam O’Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years. Ms. O’Shaughnessy is COO of Sally Ride Science.

LGBT leaders quickly praised Ms. Ride upon hearing of her death.

“Dr. Sally Ride, pioneering first woman and first #lgbt gay person in space, has passed away,” Congressman Jared Polis (D-Colorado) said in a message on Twitter Monday.

Allyson Robinson, deputy director for employment programs at the Human Rights Campaign, posted a message on the group’s website.

“Only upon reading her obituary did I learn she had spent the last 27 years of her life with her female partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy,” Robinson wrote. “Like many of her pioneering colleagues, the experience of being ‘first’ led Dr. Ride to value her privacy dearly, and I would certainly never fault her for it. I feel blessed to know that my hero and I shared a little more in common than I knew.

Astronaut Sally Ride

I just wish I’d known sooner.”

Ms. Ride was born May 26, 1951 in Encino, California. She was fascinated by science, and while a student at Stanford saw an ad in the student paper that NASA was looking for astronauts. “She immediately sent in her application – along with 8,000 other people,” said the statement from Sally Ride Science. From that group 35 new astronauts, including six women, were chosen, including Ms. Ride.

After extensive training she was selected as a mission specialist for the Challenger shuttle, which blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 18, 1983. Ms. Ride went into space a second time, also aboard Challenger, on October 5, 1984.

In January 1986, tragedy struck

the U.S. space program after the Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, killing all seven crewmembers. Ms. Ride served on the presidential commission that investigated the accident. Afterwards, she was assigned to NASA headquarters as special assistant to the administrator for long-range and strategic planning, according to the statement from Sally Ride Science. She retired from NASA in 1987.

In 2001 she founded Sally Ride Science to pursue her longtime passion for motivating young girls and boys to stick with their interests in science and to consider pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. The company creates innovative classroom materials, programs, and professional development training for teachers.

Ms. Ride was married to astronaut Steven Hawley in 1982; the couple divorced in 1987.

From 1985 until her death, Ms. Ride was partners with O’Shaughnessy, who was a childhood friend. O’Shaughnessy became a science teacher and writer, and later COO of Sally Ride Science.

The women co-wrote several books for children, including The Mystery of Mars, Explaining Our Solar System, and Mission Save the Planet.

In addition to O’Shaughnessy, Ms. Ride is survived by her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin, and nephew, Whitney; her staff of 40 at Sally Ride Science; and many friends and colleagues across the country.▼

Pride is a hit in Castro Valley

by Elliot Owen

C

astro Valley Pride was a hit this year. Held Saturday, July 21, the event drew around 350 people from the neighborhood and surrounding areas representing an array of ages and orientations. It was the event’s second year and although the organizing team has a few logistical kinks to work out for next year, huge strides have been made.

“There were more people this year,” said organizer Billy Bradford, 56 and a single father. “We had more of an idea about what to do based on last year and also some guidance from Oakland Pride people. Last year, we just made it up and didn’t have any idea what we were doing.”

Held in a parking lot at Castro Valley High School, attendance increased by around 100 people, which may not seem like much until you consider the approximate size of the LGBT community in the area. Same-sex married couples or partners make up 1 percent of the 22,448 households in the census area, which means that almost 80 percent of those couples might have attended the event.

Children ranging from toddlers to teens were also present in addition to LGBT allies who came to enjoy the festivities and stand in solidarity – a few quite literally.

Wendy Ledbetter, 37, stood for over an hour under the hot sun to hold a sign reading “We All Deserve The Freedom To Marry” in front of the venue. A few feet away, an anti-gay protester stood holding a homophobic sign. Ledbetter drove from Hayward and didn’t plan to picket that day but as long as the anti-gay protester was there holding his sign, she was there holding hers.

“I have gay and lesbian friends and I’m here to show my support,” said Ledbetter. “If he is going to stand here and protest against this event then we’re going to stand here and show our support for it. Everybody should be represented.”

Entertaining performances from

Elliot Owen

Cher impersonator Sasha Stephane strutted her stuff at last weekend’s Castro Valley Pride festival.

northern California’s most widely known Cher impersonator Sasha Stephane, a Hawaiian dance troop, the Oakland East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus, and rapper Xavier Toscano delighted the crowd throughout the day.

The event boasted 40 booths (up from four last year) including that of KCF Designs. Bradford gave a shoutout to K.C. Frogge, owner of the jewelry business, from the stage to thank her for being the first business to endorse Castro Valley Pride last year, and for being there again this year.

“As a designer and artisan it’s important for me to express my individuality and to use that talent to support other people,” Frogge told the Bay Area Reporter. “Being a lesbian myself, I think it’s really important. Last year, I got extraordinary reception from everybody and gave a portion of my proceeds to the following year’s event and I’ll do that this year, too.”

Prominent area political figures like San Leandro Mayor Stephen Cas-

sidy and Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley also made appearances as did state Senator Ellen Corbett (DSan Leandro), who gave the keynote speech and presented Bradford with a certificate recognizing his activism in the community. Although he couldn’t be there, out state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) sent each of the event’s youth organizers a “State of California Hero Proclamation” that were awarded to them on stage to their surprise.

“They didn’t know it was coming,” Bradford said. “Those kids are never going to forget that.”

While Bradford wishes that more people had attended, he optimistically looks toward next year to make that happen with the support of his community. Planning, he says, will begin soon.

“So many people came up to me and the rest of us during the event to thank us for doing it,” Bradford said.

“That empowers us to go forward.”▼

www.ebar.com

<< Community News

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

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Obama in Oakland

From page 1

sterdam’s student garden, attributed her ability to “get out of the house that day” to cannabis use.

Jason David, whose toddler son suffers from a severe form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome, said that after giving his child cannabinoid tinctures bought from Harborside, the epileptic seizures decreased significantly. He addressed the Obama administration directly: “You guys are trying to shut [Harborside] down,” David said. “What am I going to do after that? Go to the street where they don’t test it?”

Don Duncan, California director of Americans for Safe Access, reminded the crowd that medical cannabis was legalized by California voters in 1996

<<

Jock Talk

From page 14

“I think it’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with people,” said Kim Willoughby, a 2008 Olympic silver medalist in volleyball who has played the last season with the Sacramento Kings and Queens. “It’s the best training I ever did other than with the USA team. It really opened up my improvement on passing and defensive skills.”

Willoughby, 32, is straight, and currently preparing to play professional volleyball and basketball in Puerto Rico. She says she has fond memories of the Olympics but that there was an entirely different level of liberation in the LGBT-centric tournaments.

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News Briefs

From page 5

cussion on the erosion of civil liberties and what to do. Renewal of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, allowing indefinite detention without charge, is being debated this summer. The featured speaker will be Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

There is a suggested donation of $10, although no one will be turned away. The venue is wheelchair accessible.

For more information about the Oakland Peace Center visit www. oaklandpeacecenter.org.

New Spirit to honor 3 at Soaring Spirit Awards New Spirit Community Church in Berkeley will honor three people

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Garcia

From page 1

potential reductions and health care reform.”

Last week, the B.A.R. reported that out Supervisor Scott Wiener and transgender leaders announced that the city would be removing transgender exclusions in the Healthy San Francisco program. The Health Commission is expected to vote on the issue soon, which would remove the exclusions, although Garcia said it would take another year to year and a half to implement the changes.

In the interview, Garcia explained that requests for proposals and contracts would have to go out to Healthy SF providers.

Sexual reassignment services, treatment, and surgery would be covered for transgender patients once the changes are implemented.

Hormone services are already provided through the city’s Tom Waddell Health Center.

Affordable Care Act Whatever improvements the ACA brings, not everyone will be included by the federal government.

Undocumented people are among

to “treat symptoms for cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and chronic pain.”

“An attack on the access to patients is an attack on the patients themselves,” Duncan said.

Outside during the protest, a Harborside Health Center employee who didn’t want his name printed, echoed the point.

“Obama really needs to leave medical cannabis alone,” he said.

“The worst thing for a seriously ill person to have to worry about is where they’re going to find the medicine that’s bringing them relief.”

While the cannabis protesters had mostly dispersed by the time Michael Colbruno Obama arrived at the Fox The- President Barack Obama addressed supporters atre around 6:37 p.m., Occupy at the Fox Theatre in Oakland Monday night.

Oakland protesters picked up

“It’s so great that these people can be themselves and enjoy life as athletes,” she said. “It’s like another world. I’ve formed such great friendships with a lot of guys there.

They get to be themselves. They have such a great support system and they’re so open-minded. The level of volleyball is incredibly high.”

The Beijing Olympics seemed like a different world to Willoughby as well.

“I come from a town that has 800 people,” said the Louisiana native.

“For me to see so many phenomenal athletes was unreal. You meet a [Usain] Bolt or Michael Phelps and that’s a shock initially. The best memory is how welcoming, how open, everything is and being around some of the countries’ athletes.”

NCAA sanctions for Penn State

with its Soaring Spirit Award at its annual benefit Sunday, August 5.

Those being honored include Transgender Law Center Executive Director Masen Davis, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Victoria Kolakowski, and Bay Area Reporter news editor Cynthia Laird.

Laird, who is married to Kolakowski, previously served as moderator of the New Spirit board.

The benefit, under the theme “Unveiling Our Future” takes place at 1 p.m. and will be a summer picnic and ice cream social. It will be held at the Denniston Dining Commons in Parson’s Hall, 2450 Le Conte Avenue in Berkeley. There is no charge to attend the event, but there will be a silent auction and an opportunity to make donations to support the church.

New Spirit will have a special 12th anniversary worship service that morning at 11 a.m. just up the street

in the chapel on the Pacific School of Religion campus, 1798 Scenic Avenue.

On Saturday, August 4, the anniversary weekend kicks off with a benefit concert at 7 p.m. at the PSR chapel.

Grammy-nominated Steve Seskin will perform. Seskin has written seven number one songs, including “Grown Men Don’t Cry” and “Don’t Laugh at Me,” which was recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary and became the impetus for the Operation Respect/Don’t Laugh at me project, a curriculum designed to teach tolerance in schools.

Tickets for the concert are $15$25 sliding scale and are available at the door or online at www.brow npaper t ickets.com/ event/261196?date=680007.

those who aren’t set to be included under the new national law.

But the health department “has always made a commitment” to serving undocumented people, Garcia said, adding that “HIV doesn’t see a difference” between people based on whether they have documentation; they are included in Healthy SF. Last Monday, July 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of Truvada, a once-daily combination made by Gilead Sciences, for pre-exposure prophylaxis – better known as PrEP – to prevent sexual transmission of HIV. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is working with local public health departments to develop demonstration projects that will attempt to answer some of the outstanding questions about PrEP. The first two programs – in San Francisco and Miami – are expected to start in late August, according to Stephanie Cohen, medical director at City Clinic, which will spearhead the local project.

Garcia said officials are “just beginning” their work on the pilot.

Portions of the ACA have already gone into effect, like parents being able to keep their adult children on

their policy until age 26. Others, including the controversial individual mandate, which requires people to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, are scheduled to go into effect in 2014.

Saying it was able to move more quickly than its usual custom because of the depth of the third-party criminal and private investigations surrounding the Jerry Sandusky child abuse sex scandal at Penn State University, National Collegiate Athletic Association President Mark Emmert announced sanctions against the football program this week that include a fine of $60 million (to be channeled toward child abuse services), loss of all of the team’s football wins in the years the program failed to respond to the reports of Sandusky’s abuse, a reduction in the number of football scholarships, and a ban on post-season play for four years. The NCAA

East Bay Stonewall Dems seek award nominees The East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club will celebrate 30 years by

Monitoring nonprofits The health department pours millions of dollars into the city’s numerous nonprofits. One annual ritual is for many of the organizations to cry out for money, as elected officials scramble to cover shortfalls.

“When we go south, they go south,” Garcia said of the public funding on which many organizations rely.

Local nonprofits have sometimes appeared to be the victims of their own financial mismanagement and other problems, at least as much as they’ve been hurt by dwindling public resources.

Signs that an agency is in trouble may include the departure of the executive director, “inner conflicts” among board members, and the organization not being able to meet payroll, Garcia said. She said some agencies have been put on a “corrective action plan,” but nobody’s currently “at that level.”

She hopes that she and others

▼

where they left off and joined the hundreds of spectators raised to their toes to see the president enter the theater.

The Bay Area Reporter was not allowed inside the Fox, due to space limitations, according to an email from the Obama campaign.

Taking the stage at 7:56 p.m. to a deafening standing ovation, according to the pool report, Obama talked about his family’s hard-working background, a point he expected to resonate with Oaklanders.

He went on to explain that those who are willing to work hard, put sweat into their efforts, must be able to succeed in America.

“America is a place where

you can make it if you try,” he said.

The president advocated tax increases for the rich, noted the continued pullout of Iraq and then Afghanistan, said more money should be invested in the country’s educational facilities and that getting people health insurance through his health care plan is “the right thing to do.”

According to the pool report the president did not mention medical marijuana.

He also emphasized that it would take more than one term to see his vision for America through and called upon Oakland to help him.

Concluding his speech at 8:34 p.m., Obama said, “I promise you we will finish what we started and remind the world just why it is that the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth.”▼

left the door open for further individual sanctions pending the outcome of ongoing criminal cases.

In the shocked aftermath, sports commentators discussed whether the unprecedented action was an appropriate punishment for the institution’s failure to provide protection from children on its premises.

The fact that this is considered “punishment” at all is reflective of how warped perspectives tend to be in Division I football.

Penn State, for instance, will be allowed to have 65 football scholarships. That’s 20 less than most other Division I schools, but 65 more than any Ivy League school. The studentathletes already on scholarships may keep their scholarships or change schools if they desire. And the “loss”

of the 112 wins the Nittany Lions had been credited with from 1998 to 2011 is merely corrective bookkeeping, since the wins were recorded by coaches who had failed to do the most essential of their tasks: provide diligent and vigilant leadership with integrity.

In the days after the scandal became public knowledge, the late Joe Paterno famously said he “wished I had done more” to speak up and stop Sandusky’s crimes. In forcing Penn State to refocus its attentions for the next few years and reinvent its culture, the NCAA clearly is trying to avoid living with the same regret.▼

honoring 30 individuals who have fought for social justice and advanced the LGBT movement toward equality. Club leaders announced this week that nominations are now being accepted for the club’s Trailblazer Awards.

“In prior years, the club honored anywhere from one to four individuals,” club President Brendalynn Goodall said in a statement. “As the LGBTQQI community has exponentially achieved more milestones, we have increasingly felt the need to recognize many deserving individuals. That is why we chose to honor 30 folks as we celebrate our 30 years.”

Political action committee cochairs Michael Colbruno and Kriss Worthington, also commented that the club’s advocacy has won the LGBT community a seat at the table in appointed, elected, and hired po-

sitions. Colbruno is an appointed member of the Oakland Planning Commission; Worthington is a longtime elected member of the Berkeley City Council.

To nominate an individual, people should write a brief summary of what the person has done to advance the East Bay LGBTQQI community and include the name and contact information for that person; attach background materials such as newspaper articles, testimonials, or biographical information; submit the nominations by August 31 to eastbaystonewalldems@gmail.com or mail to East Bay Stonewall, P.O. Box 1209, Berkeley, CA 94701-1209.

More information about the club is available at www.eastbaystonewalldemocrats.com.▼

“can come up with some cost-saving measures,” she said.

Garcia spoke about pooling “back office” resources for agencies, which could mean multiple organizations sharing administrative and other resources.

Agencies with budgets of $5 million and under are the ones being targeted. Garcia said the process will be “long term” and an advisory group will be involved.

She also said she’d like to see a more manageable array of nonprofits in the city, and merging some organizations is an option.

However, she said, “I can’t force these mergers. They’re separate agencies,” and often act as “sovereign nations.” Additionally, many of the nonprofits reach populations that “we could never reach,” she said.

“You want that diversity, but you also want them to comply with what they need to get done,” Garcia said. “... I have to be responsible for the public dollar.”

One organization that required much of Garcia’s attention recently was Tenderloin Health, which served some of the city’s poorest residents, including people living with HIV and AIDS. The agency shut down in April after years of

struggling.

Tenderloin Health had long been “a very unstable organization,” Garcia said, and she’d spent “a lot of time” with the agency’s leadership.

However, she said the nonprofit has been “pretty close” to turning around until it learned it was losing more than $500,000 in federal funding.

Garcia bristled at questions about why she hadn’t said more publicly about Tenderloin Health’s troubles before it shut down.

“Why would I do that?” she said.

“My job was to try to stabilize” the agency, which she noted served some of the city’s “most vulnerable” people.

Many clients who had received care through Tenderloin Health were transferred to Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, another locally based nonprofit.

In response to an emailed request for comment on Garcia, APIWC Executive Director Lance Toma said she “holds such a high commitment to ensuring that client care is always driving her decisions. It has been inspiring to work with her and to be a partner to strengthen the safety net in the Tenderloin. San Francisco is in good hands under Barbara’s direction.”▼

Full disclosure: Roger Brigham is a board member of the Federation of Gay Games.

Matthew S. Bajko contributed to this report.

â&#x2013;ź <<

Community News>>

Portland, Seattle

From page 9

Foodtopia Portland is an emerging gastronomic paradise, serving up the freshest ingredients from the land and the sea, making innovative concoctions that surprise dinersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; taste buds.

Some of the eateries included the quaint Por Que No taqueria, where I grabbed a quick bite for just over $10, and more sophisticated establishments, such as Irving St. Kitchen (sister restaurant to San Franciscoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Town Hall, Salt House, and Anchor and Hope restaurants), Southpark Seafood Restaurant, and Mint/820. Even doughnuts have been made into a delicacy in Portland at Voodoo Doughnut (which my friend and I slipped in before the line quickly grew out the door). I only scratched the surface of Portlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s food scene, but I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go wrong with any choice I made.

While local foodies are proud of the award-winning chefs that call Portland home, residents boast of cheap eats at any one of its food carts, especially at Potato Champion located at the most popular food truck location, Cartopia, in Southeast Portland on Hawthorne Boulevard at 12th Avenue, locals told the Bay Area Reporter.

Next to food carts, happy hour is the most happening thing in town. As soon as the clock hits noon anyone of Portlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 32 breweries and plethora of bars and restaurants begin to fill up with locals enjoying handcrafted to imported beverages while socializing.

On my first night in Portland, I met fellow gay travel writer and Portland resident Andrew Collins, editor of Out City, to grab dinner at Mint/820 to see if we could catch out lesbian mixologist and owner Lucy Brennan before we hit the gay nightlife. Brennan wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t around, but we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t pass up the drink and food offerings on the menu. Unfortunately, Portlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lone lesbian bar the Egyptian Room, which became the Weird bar, closed last year leaving lesbians a bit thirsty. Some lesbian parties have popped up at local gay bars, which are thriving.

Collins and I opted for Crush, a gay-owned cocktail bar on my list, after touring some of the neighborhoods checking out the nightlife. The quiet bar is modern and charming, with friendly service and definitely has a feminine touch. There wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a large wine list to select from, but it did have Prosecco and because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a cocktail bar it offered a list of concoctions.

The next evening I met up with one

<<

Larkin Street

From page 6

Adams said Peter Patel is the hotelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s owner and operator. Santosh Patel is still with the hotel â&#x20AC;&#x153;to the best of my knowledge,â&#x20AC;? she said.

The initial complaint in August lists the Patels and Larkin Street as defendants. Subsequent court documents indicate that Jesita Inc. was added as a defendant, and that Larkin Street attempted to be re-

of my best friends, who moved to Portland several years ago, for a night out on the town. We were having such a good time enjoying each dish brought to us and catching up on the patio at Irving St. Kitchen that we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even notice the rain or how quickly time passed. Like its sister restaurants in San Francisco, Irving St. Kitchen has a modern, casual industrial atmosphere as well a sophisticated menu, signature cocktails, and an extensive wine list that attracts crowds.

After dinner we strolled through several bars checking out different scenes before ending up at the Doug Fir, the adjoining bar and lounge to the Jupiter Hotel, to listen to music and enjoy one last cocktail on my final night in Portland.

Print it The Emerald and Rose cities have an array of indie publications to keep the LGBT community connected.

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a magazine for everyone. Feminists will enjoy the fact that Bay Areaborn magazines Bitch and HipMama have called Portland home for at least a decade now and the City of Roses is home to three queer publications. Just Out, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s longest running LGBT newspaper, shuttered its doors after 30 years at the end of 2011 but was resurrected in April by Jonathan Kipp, who revamped the newspaper into a glossy monthly magazine. PQ Monthly, a news magazine, launched in February to fill the brief void left after Just Out closed. LGBT travel magazine Out City covers the northwest, including Portland and Seattle and Vancouver and Victoria in Canada.

Seattle isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t to be outdone by Portland. It boasts two LGBT publications, the long-running Gay Seattle News and an online news site, www.

TheSeattleLesbian.com, which started two years ago. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I love Seattle. I came out to visit and I moved here,â&#x20AC;? said Sarah Toce, a 29-year-old lesbian who is editor in chief of the Seattle Lesbian. Toce gets her best writing done at the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cafes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I really enjoy going out writing with my laptop and drinking my cup of coffee. The coffee is really good here.â&#x20AC;?

Seattle Once in Seattle, I headed downtown to the historic train station to meet up with my girlfriend. It was an easy three and a half hour scenic train ride on Amtrak Cascades.

Amtrak books up fast. The trick is to book early to get your assigned seat and pay the cheaper rate if you know

moved as a defendant, but it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t immediately clear whether the nonprofit had totally succeeded. Adams said, in the end, the mediation did include Larkin Street.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Lifelong passionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; The Champions of Change program recognizes people ranging from educators to entrepreneurs.

A July 10 White House news release refers to Adamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;lifelong passion to serve children and teens.â&#x20AC;? It also says

July 26-August 1, 2012 â&#x20AC;˘ BAY AREA REPORTER â&#x20AC;˘ 17

you are definitely traveling.

Amtrak is the best way to travel between $28 up to $50 per seat and it beats sitting in five hours of traffic on a freeway for what should be a threehour drive.

At the train station me and my girlfriend were whisked away to Washingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wine country by openly gay tour guide Dan Salvatora of Evergreen Escapes. Washington is the second largest wine producer in the U.S., nipping at the heels of Californiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famed Napa and Sonoma counties, Salvatora told us while we cruised across one of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s floating bridges into the mountains in our Mercedes tour bus (a signature of the tour company). Portland is known for Pinot Noir, Washington boasts of 60 different varietals produced by 800 different wineries, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s known mostly for Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and blends, he said.

After wine tasting we checked into the gay-friendly 9 Cranes Inn a block away from the Woodland Park Zoo in the artsy Phinney Neighborhood.

Perched near the top of a hill, our romantic, luxurious room included a deck and spa tub that overlooked Seattle and a gourmet breakfast that got us started for the next day. For a more urban experience, we stayed at the fun, funky and swanky Hotel Max in the heart of downtown Seattle where we easily walked to Pike Place Market, to the monorail to check out the Space Needle and the EMP Museum, and up to Capital Hill, the gayborhood.

Getting around Transportation is easy to navigate and plentiful in Seattle, but the first lesson we learned was not to ask anyone â&#x20AC;&#x201C; bell boys to bus drivers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for directions and make sure our smartphone was charged at all times. Unlike other cities where we have often found helpful locals on the streets, in Seattle they were more like the unhelpful magician behind the curtain in Oz. We were often left to figure out our own way until we found non-Seattleites who lived in the area to direct us the first few times we got lost and our smartphone ran out of juice.

Late at night when we werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t in the mood to take public transit or walk, cabs were plentiful. Travelers should be aware that when taking cabs they are responsible for bridge tolls and other zone rates. When we were ready to return to San Francisco we simply took the light rail a few blocks from Hotel Max for the 30-minute ride to the airport.

that under Adamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leadership, the nonprofit has grown its housing capacity by 50 percent and â&#x20AC;&#x153;earned national and international recognition for its innovative service model, and contributed to local, state, and national policy advancements for homeless youth.â&#x20AC;?

Adams called the honor â&#x20AC;&#x153;humbling and flattering,â&#x20AC;? and said it highlights â&#x20AC;&#x153;the need for continued attention at the federal level on the needs of homeless youth.â&#x20AC;?â&#x2013;ź

www.ebar.com

Savoring Seattle In spite of getting lost, we found our way to the Capital Grille and Capital Hill and our other culinary and fun destinations. The downtown classic steakhouse belongs to a family of restaurants of the same name across the U.S. and impresses, rolling out a menu and wine list that any culinary savant would appreciate.

We also discovered celebrity chef Tom Douglas, who owns 12 acclaimed restaurants in Seattle, including Dahlia Lounge and Serious Pie. For brunch we checked out Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cafe Campagne at Pike Place Market and renowned vegan restaurant Cafe Flora, owned by former Berkeley native Nat Stratton-Clarke, a 30-yearold transgender man. The restaurant immediately struck a nostalgic chord with me, recalling the once beloved Patio Restaurant that formerly inhabited the heart of the Castro. Yet, Cafe Flora is solidly in a neighborhood that has a very Berkeley vibe. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I love the people in Seattle. I think it is just a fantastic community and absolutely incredible,â&#x20AC;? said StrattonClarke, who has called the area home since 2005. It was the right move â&#x20AC;&#x201C; three years later he found himself owner of Cafe Flora.

Michael Hein and Tony Portugal, owners of the Yellow Leaf Cupcake Co., a gourmet cupcake shop, fell in love with Seattle and took the plunge leaving their high-powered health care careers in Los Angeles and turning their vacation destination into their home in 2008.

Following Portugalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dream to own a restaurant, the gay couple, who met at an Academy Awards event in 2007, settled on cupcakes. They opened the shop in the heart of downtown Seattle in 2010.

A great way to experience Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culinary fare is to take the Savor Seattle gourmet tour. The walking tour winds through the heart of downtown Seattle and Pike Place Market through some of its best restaurants.

Sea-Town attractions Seattle doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t slow down for the rain day or night. The city is bustling with events from the arts to festivals to the great outdoors to a thriving nightlife scene. Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s distinct

neighborhoods are really villages unto themselves offering something for everyone.

This year, Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s iconic symbol, the Space Needle, turned the big 5-0 and the city is celebrating throughout the year. Pier 57 welcomed a new attraction, a giant Ferris wheel that opened at the end of June and overlooks the water near the famed Pike Place Market.

Theater enthusiasts and fans of Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gay sex columnist Dan Savage might want to catch his latest creation Miracle!, a comedy about Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drag scene, running through August 25 at the Intiman Theatre (http:// www.intiman.org/plays-events/festival/). Art lovers might want to check out Bumbershoot during Labor Day weekend or ArtsCrush throughout October.

LGBT filmgoers might want to catch the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival October 11-21. Music lovers can become rock stars at the EMP Museum, producing their own recording. The museum is currently exhibiting Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses, and a photo history of the Rolling Stonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 1972 tour The Rolling Stones 1972, Photographs by Jim Marshall. It will be exhibiting the history of the black leather jacket Worn to be Wild: The Black Leather Jacket starting October 20 and running through January 20.

At night we headed up to Capital Hill where we hung out at the Wildrose bar, one of Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lesbian hot spots right around the corner from Purr, one of Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gay bars that was so packed it was impossible to get in. One thing we noticed is that gay women are on par with the gay men with nightlife offerings in Seattle. It was quite refreshing.

In reality, Seattle has so much going on it is best to surf through any one of the local publications, like the Seattle Gay News or the Seattle Weekly, or create an event itinerary at the Visit Seattle website (http://www.visitseattle.org/Visitors/Events). Also, save some money getting into Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most popular attractions by picking up a CityPass at the visitorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s center.â&#x2013;ź Full disclosure: Heather Cassell contributed to Just Out in the past.

Legal Notices>> City and County of San Francisco August 2012 Monthly Settlement with Money Mart/Loan Mart requires restitution to customers statewide over IUDXGXOHQW OHQGLQJ PDUNHWLQJ SUDFWLFHV <RX PD\ EH TXDOLĂ&#x20AC;HG San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Money Mart (also known as Loan Mart) have reached a settlement requiring Money Mart to repay California consumers who took out â&#x20AC;&#x153;pay day advanceâ&#x20AC;? loans. You may be eligible for repayment if: 1) you borrowed a pay day advance loan (sometimes called a â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cash â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;til Paydayâ&#x20AC;? loan) at a Money Mart store between January 2005 and July 2005, or 2) you borrowed an installment loan (sometimes called a â&#x20AC;&#x153;CustomCashâ&#x20AC;? loan) at a Money Mart store between July 2005 and March 2007. If you or someone you know may qualify for restitution, please call the Settlement Hotline at (866) 497-5497, or visit www.sfcityattorney.org to complete a claim form.

2IĂ&#x20AC;FH RI &LWL]HQ &RPSODLQWV 7KH 2IĂ&#x20AC;FH RI &LWL]HQ &RPSODLQWV 2&& LV WKH &LW\ DQG &RXQW\ RI 6DQ )UDQFLVFR 'HSDUWPHQW WKDW LQYHVWLJDWHV FLYLOLDQ FRPSODLQWV DJDLQVW 6DQ )UDQFLVFR SROLFH RIĂ&#x20AC;FHUV and makes policy recommendations to improve relations between the community and the police.

You are the starting point of civilian review. We rely upon you to bring to our attenWLRQ FRQFHUQV ZLWK SROLFH RIĂ&#x20AC;FHUV DQG ZLWK 3ROLFH 'HSDUWPHQW SROLFLHV The OCC is staffed by a diverse group of civilians who have never been San FranFLVFR SROLFH RIĂ&#x20AC;FHUV DQG LW LV D VHSDUDWH RIĂ&#x20AC;FH IURP WKH 3ROLFH 'HSDUWPHQW ,I \RX have a complaint you may make it: in person or by mail at 25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 700 San Francisco, CA 94102, by phone at 415-241-771, by fax at 415-241-7733, or at a district police station.

We can arrange a staff presentation to your school or community group so that you FDQ OHDUQ DERXW ZKDW ZH GR DQG KRZ WR XWLOL]H WKH 2&& SURFHVV <RX FDQ OHDUQ PRUH about us on our website at www.sfgov.org/occ Final Call for â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hearts in San Franciscoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Artists Bay Area artists have only a few more weeks to submit their renderings for the 2013 Hearts in San Francisco series. San Francisco General Hospital Foundation (SFGHF) DQQRXQFHV WKH Ă&#x20AC;QDO UHTXHVW IRU GHVLJQ VXEPLVVLRQV SDUW RI WKH HLJKWK DQQXDO +HURHV & Hearts Luncheon. The chosen heart artworks will be auctioned at the luncheon ZLWK SURFHHGV EHQHĂ&#x20AC;WWLQJ SDWLHQW FDUH DQG OLIH HQKDQFLQJ SURJUDPV DW 6DQ )UDQFLVFR General Hospital andTrauma Center. For more information contact Elaine Lan, elan@sfghf.net.

Artists are invited to download applications at www.sfghf.net and submit with renderings by the August 6, 2012 deadline.

Alert SF Alert SF is a free system that allows users to sign up to receive text and/or email alerts from the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) during an emergenF\ LQ 6DQ )UDQFLVFR 7RSLFV LQFOXGH PDMRU WUDIĂ&#x20AC;F GLVUXSWLRQV ZDWFKHV DQG ZDUQLQJV IRU WVXQDPLV DQG Ă RRGLQJ SRVW GLVDVWHU LQIRUPDWLRQ DQG RWKHU DOHUWV 7R VLJQ XS JR to: https://www.alertsf.org/.

The City and County of San Francisco encourage public outreach. Articles are translated into several languages to provide better public access. The newspaper makes every effort to translate the articles of general interest correctly. No liability is assumed by the City and County of San Francisco or the newspapers for errors and omissions.

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

18 • Bay Area Reporter • July 26-August 1, 2012

Classifieds

t

Legal Notices>>

The

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034439500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SYN2, 45 Rio Court, SF, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Serdar Yeralan. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/02/12.

JULY 5, 12, 19, 26, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034416100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PHOTOJIMSF. 1878 Market St. #201, SF, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Jim James. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/19/12.

JULY 5, 12, 19, 26, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034435000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EASY-RENTAL, 1779 35th Ave., SF, CA 94122.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed John Feely. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/29/12.

JULY 5, 12, 19, 26, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034427500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EDEN CAFE, 47 Franklin St., SF, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Su Yan Cai. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/26/12.

JULY 5, 12, 19, 26, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034433700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EARTH TU FACE, LLC, 36 Calhoun Terrace, SF, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed Earth Tu Face LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/19/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/12.

JULY 5, 12, 19, 26, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034429300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EAST WISH CONSTRUCTION, 74 Waterville, SF, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a husband & wife, and is signed Changxiong Zuo & Yanyan Zhuo. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/27/12.

JULY 5, 12, 19, 26, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034432500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MEXICOB, 4036 25th St., SF, CA 94114.

This business is conducted by a husband & wife, and is signed Rafael Trickett-Robles & Timothy Trickett-Robles. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/28/12.

JULY 5, 12, 19, 26, 2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name FILE A-034221700 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: EDEN CAFE, 47 Franklin St., SF, CA 94102. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by Angela Chang. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/23/11.

JULY 5, 12,19, 26, 2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name FILE A-031751400 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: STUDIO VOXPOP, 555 Arguello Blvd. #303, SF, CA 94118.

This business was conducted by an individual and signed by Justin Thomas Akers. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/05/09.

JULY 5, 12,19, 26, 2012

ebar.com

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF california, county of san francisco file CNC12-548755 In the matter of the application of: QI QI CHIN for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner QI QI CHIN is requesting that his/ her name be changed to QIQI JUNE CHIN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 6th of September 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF california, county of san francisco file CNC12-548780 In the matter of the application of: YESSENIA ZHOU ZHANG for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner YESSENIA ZHOU ZHANG is requesting that his/her name be changed to YESSENIA CHAIU. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept.

514 on the 18th of September 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034424000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: T.V. EYE, 1512 Broderick St., SF, CA 94115.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Daniel Paul Sneddon. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/21/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/22/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034419500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ALAN LIMOUSINE, 1950 Montecito Ave., Mountain View, CA 94043. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Hisham Adel. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/21/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034426600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CREEK SIDE HOME IMPROVEMENT, 300 Channel St. #23, SF, CA 94158. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Gregory L. Hall. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/25/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/25/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034441200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MYRIAD HARBOR, 146 Dore St., SF, CA 94103.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Rachael Yu. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/02/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/02/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034421100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PING AND MING 306, 56 Tucker Ave., SF, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Rui Wen Zheng. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/21/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034436900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SUPER NAILS & SPA, 3251 20th Ave. #234, SF, CA 94132. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed Anh Ngoc Thi Nguyen & Daniel Nguyen. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/29/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/29/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034443300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LEFT ANGLE RECORDS, 743 Wisconsin St. #Y, SF, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed Anna-K. Karney & William P. Ortiz. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/02/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/03/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012

notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 06/29/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: JAMES ROBERT ATTON, MATILDE PALOMA MUELA. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 428 11th St., SF, CA 94103-4316.

Type of license applied for

41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE - EATING PLACE July 12, 19, 26, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034428000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AL GRAF BAIL BONDS, 859 Bryant St., SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed Al Graf Bail Bonds LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/12/06. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/26/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034440100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SALEEMA BOUTIQUE OLD & NEW, 2420 San Bruno Ave., SF, CA 94134. This business is conducted by a husband & wife, and is signed Saleema Muhammad & Vincent A. Jones. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/02/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/02/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034405600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MINUTEMAN PRESS, 529 Commercial St., SF, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Edgewise Investments Inc. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/01/07. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/13/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034452000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CALI COMMUNICATIONS & WIRING, 775 Goettingen St., SF, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Calvin Laporte-Anderson. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/10/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034414900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SHAWNTE HAIR, 660 Market St. #204, SF, CA 94104. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Shawnte Fernandez. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/19/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034449100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OX, 498 Natoma St., SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Michael C. Phelan. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/09/12.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name FILE A-032766700 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: PING AND MING 306, 613 La Salle Ave., SF, CA 94124.

This business was conducted by an individual and signed by Rui Ming Zheng. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/10/10.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 notice of application FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF alcOholic beverage LICENSE Dated 07/19/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: JOHN LYELL DAMPEER. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 3853 24th St., SF, CA 94114-3840. Type of license applied for

41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE – EATING PLACE JULY 26, 2012

Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name FILE A-031806700 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: MAX CAB, 2121 Evans St. #A, SF, CA 94124. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by Steven B. Gee. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/26/09.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name FILE A-032512800 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: SUPER NAILS & SPA, 3251 20th Ave. #234, SF, CA 94132. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by Christine Nguyen.

The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/22/10.

JULY 12, 19, 26, August 2, 2012 notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 07/06/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: VIETNAM FOOD CORPORATION. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1406 Polk St., SF, CA 94109-4616. Type of license applied for

41 - On-sale BEER AND WINE EATING PLACE JULY 19, 26, AUG 02, 2012 notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 06/12/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: 7682 LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 313 Ivy St., SF, CA 94102-4310.

Type of license applied for

42 - On-sale BEER AND WINE PUBLIC PREMISES JULY 19, 26, AUG 02, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034459800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NATURAL PERMANENT MAKEUP LAB, 476 Grove St. SF, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Kim Mijini. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/13/2012. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/13/12.

JULY 19, 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034462000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE PALACE, 4460 Mission St., SF, CA 94112.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Thomas P. Lacey. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/16/2012. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/16/12.

JULY 19, 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034459600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: A FOTO VIDEO MAIL & MORE, 3041 Mission St., SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Dylan A. Siddiqui. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/29/2012. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/13/12.

JULY 19, 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034454600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MARC OLIVIER LE BLANC MOBAFOTO, 612 Alabama St., SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Marc B. Abonnat. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/06/2010. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/12/12.

JULY 19, 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034459300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ABULEY, 3 Bayside Village Place #317, SF, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Yixuan Ma. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/13/2012. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/13/12.

JULY 19, 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF california, county of san francisco file CNC12-548816 In the matter of the application of: BENSON DUY NGUYEN for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner BENSON DUY NGUYEN is requesting that his/her name be changed to BENSON DUY PHAM. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 514 on the 13th of September 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JULY 26, Aug 2, 9, 16, 2012

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034453800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GALAXY GLASS, 2806 28th Ave., SF, CA 94122.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Nardein Mirza. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/11/12.

JULY 19, 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034452800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KNOWNLEADER, 992 Portola Dr., SF, CA 94127. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed Ken Nangle & Mike Berg. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/01/2012. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/11/12.

JULY 19, 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME statement file A-034461100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SALDOCELL, 2640 Mission St., SF, CA 94110.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Alonso Morales. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/16/12.

JULY 19, 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 notice of application FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF alcOholic beverage LICENSE Dated 07/16/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: GLEN PARK THAI FUSION, INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 2922 Diamond St., SF, CA 94131-3208. Type of license applied for

41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE – EATING PLACE JULY 26, 2012 notice of application FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF alcOholic beverage LICENSE Dated 06/25/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: HOS BAR & RESTAURANT INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 2360 Van Ness Ave., SF, CA 94109-1872. Type of license applied for

47 - ON-SALE general EATING PLACE JULY 26, 2012 notice of application FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF alcOholic beverage LICENSE Dated 07/12/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: TLC FOODS VALENCIA, LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 581 Valencia St., SF, CA 94110-1114. Type of license applied for

41 – ON-SALE BEER & WINE – EATING PLACE JULY 26, 2012 notice of application FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF alcOholic beverage LICENSE Dated 07/18/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: FADED LLC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1607 Ocean Ave., SF, CA 941121717. Type of license applied for

48 – ON-SALE GENERAL PUBLIC PREMISES JULY 26, 2012 notice of application FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF alcOholic beverage LICENSE Dated 07/19/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: NEW BIG LANTERN INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 3170 16th St., SF, CA 94103-3363. Type of license applied for

41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE – EATING PLACE JULY 26, AUG 2, 9, 2012 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF california, county of san francisco file CNC12-548814 In the matter of the application of: NAM VAN NGUYEN & THANH THI NGUYEN for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner NAM VAN NGUYEN & THANH THI NGUYEN are requesting that the name NAM VAN NGUYEN be changed to NAM VAN PHAM and the name CALVIN DUY NGUYEN be changed to CALVIN DUY PHAM. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 514 on the 13th of September 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JULY 26, Aug 2, 9, 16, 2012

t

Read more online at www.ebar.com

July 26-August 1, 2012 • Bay Area Reporter • 19

Legal Notices>> notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 07/12/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: E.D.M. HOSPITALITY INC. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1653 Polk St., SF, CA 94109-3614. Type of license applied for

41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE – EATING PLACE July 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS

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Dated 07/23/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: WARREN J H LI. The applicants listed above are applying to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control at 1515 Clay Street, Suite 2208, Oakland, CA 94612 to sell alcoholic beverages at 1063 Market St., SF, CA 941031605. Type of license applied for

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41 - ON-SALE BEER & WINE – EATING PLACE July 26, Aug 2, 9, 2012 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF california, county of san francisco file CNC12-548815

E49

In the matter of the application of: QUANG DUY NGUYEN for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner QUANG DUY NGUYEN is requesting that his/her name be changed to QUANG DUY PHAM. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 514 on the 13th of September 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

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Vol. 42 • No. 30 • July 26-August 1, 2012

Looking for Lindsay Lohan

D’Arcy Drollinger plays Lindsay Lohan in his comedic docudrama Project: Lohan, which chronicles the actress’ frequents rises and falls.

D’Arcy Drollinger’s ‘Project: Lohan’ plays the Costume Shop

by Richard Dodds

I

t’s a story that practically writes itself. But one of the problems that writer-actor D’Arcy Drollinger has to face as opening night for Project: Lohan approaches is that the story insists on continually writing new chapters. Drollinger’s go is to chronicle acgoal Lindsa Lohan’s high-profile tress Lindsay cycles of rise rises and falls in a kind of docudrama that both feeds into o gossip sensationaland plays off I ism in the Internet era.

“This is living theater,” Drollinger said, “and the heat will go out of it when she’s not topG ping the Google charts or, God forbid, she dies. A few weeks ago, w found unconscious Lindsay was r in a hotel room, and our director u and said, ‘What are called me up we going to do if she’s dead?’ That conversatio is there.” conversation It turned out Lohan was fine, suff simply suffering one of her fre-

quent bouts of “exhaustion and dehydration,” and as these words are being written, she hasn’t crashed back into the headlines or any unfortunate trees. Project: Lohan is a tough show to freeze, the backstage term for declaring a production closed to further revisions, but Drollinger is hoping that the July 26-Aug. 19 run at ACT’s new Mid-Market performance space, dubbed the Costume Shop, won’t require any hurried rewrites.

An earlier version of Project: Lohan had a run last year at New York’s La MaMa Theatre. A new director, Tracy Ward, is helming the SF production, but Drollinger again takes the title role. “When I first started writing this, I wasn’t going to play Lindsay, but I got so involved in her that I felt I needed to take it all the way,” he said.

“I don’t look much like Lindsay Lohan, but I felt that I began to breathe her essence a little bit. I get to go from Carol Burnett-slapstick to a very fragile, dark place, and for a performer, that is kind of fun.”

Although Drollinger is the creator of Project: Lohan, he is quick

to say, “I didn’t write a word of it.”

All of the text comes from interviews, 911 calls, court transcripts, news stories, and recorded phone calls that Lohan’s father sold to a gossip site. “I started off by creating a timeline with as much content as I could find, and then weeded through it to build a kind of character arc,” he said. “I try very hard not to pull things out of order so we can understand where it all started to crumble.”

In addition to Drollinger, there are five cast members who play multiple characters, with genders often in reverse. “I feel this show is an example of a really good use of cross-dressing, because we deal with some hard issues,” Drollinger said. “Like the documentation of her parents’ court case when Lindsay’s mother was filing for divorce, and she alleges her husband threw her down a flight of stairs, slammed her arm in a door, and sodomized her in the basement against her will. We basically reenact that on stage, but we cross the genders, so what could possibly See page 33 >>

Kent Taylor

Peaches Christ offers chills & thrills

Irreverent ‘The Silence of the Trans’ plays the Castro Theatre

by David-Elijah Nahmod

W

hen the Oscar-winning chiller The Silence of the Lambs was released two decades ago, it came under fire for presenting a cross-dresser as a cannibalistic serial killer. In her new show The Silence of the Trans, which will be performed at the Castro Theater on Saturday, July 28, monstrous drag diva Peaches Christ tosses all that political correctness out the door and has a little fun with one of her favorite horror movies.

We spoke to Peaches’ alter-ego, filmmaker and horror buff Joshua Grannell, who assured us that there was nothing for the trans community to worry about. “Our friends who are transgender, drag

queens or transvestites understand that the show is a parody, a comedy. The film was protested because LGBT representations on screen were not as varied as they are now. And Silence of the Lambs is a popculture phenomenon. It’s a great, campy movie.”

“I extend a hand to the trans community,” said Sharon Needles, who co-stars in the show. “They’ve been dealing with a big struggle. But there is a big difference between language and intent. We are in the business of pushing buttons. We are equal opportunists who offend everyone. Drag queens are the clowns in our culture.”

See page 32 >> Peaches Christ (Joshua Grannell) burns down the town.

{ SECOND OF TWO SECTIONS }

Leonardo Herrera

<< Out There

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

The nice column

by Roberto Friedman

S

ome longtime readers of this column have accused Out There of being a Blue Meanie for calling out society matrons and preening politicos on their bad behavior in recent weeks. So this week we’re making a special effort to be nice, play well with others, hand out candy hearts and flowers, etc.

For instance: we’re often highly critical of the San Francisco Chronicle and its slippery journalistic ethics – having a prominent columnist, for example, who is simultaneously a power broker and lobbyist. So when he writes, “Cabbie told me about this great joint on Chestnut,” you: a) know he has a car and driver, doesn’t take cabs, and b) wonder how much that jernt is paying him for the squib. Fun to read?

Sure. Ethical? Non. And not very nice.

But we’ll get off our high horse, because we’re being nice today. The fact is that the Chron is just doing the best it can in very trying times for

print media. And they’re still able to publish some great stuff. We love the work of columnist Leah Garchik, for instance, and we think columnist Jon Carroll is the cat’s pajamas – in this case, Bucket. Top scribes both, backpage though they be placed.

See, aren’t we being nice? In fact, we’re prepared to go nicer.

Despite a tendency to run to misanthropy, Out There even has some nice things to say about the human race in general.

We love how a group of people will quiet down and listen, enraptured, should someone with a lovely singing voice vocalize for them. We love how people get so mesmerized by fireworks. Mankind has definitely come up with some spiffy recipes, e.g. spanakopita. OK, that about covers it.

We’re also proud of the nation’s newspaper of record, The New York Times, for evolving, in a few short decades, from never mentioning the words gay or lesbian to regularly featuring gay stories, gay writers, and gay weddings in its pages. The Old Gray

Lady has become, in effect, the Bay Area Reporter for the national scene!

Just last week, the answer to a prominent clue in the Times crossword puzzle was “same-sex marriages,” and other answers hinted towards this theme by placing “man” next to “man” in the grid. How gay-friendly was that puzzle? We “like” it!

We like all sorts of other publications, too, such as The New Yorker, which fills many happy hours when we would otherwise be out in the streets getting into trouble. TNY offers stories which go on for many dozens of pages. Thanks for piling up in stacks of unread issues in our apartment, New Yorker! Because of you, we have become quite magazine wracked.

But in a good way!

A few weeks ago the periodical published an appreciation of great modernist author James Joyce that ran on for only five pages. One passage told of Joyce’s first date with Nora Barnacle, in which “they walked to Ringsend, on the south bank of the Liffey, where she put her hand inside his trousers and masturbated him. It was June 16, 1904, the day on which Joyce set Ulysses. When people celebrate Bloomsday, that is what they are celebrating.” See, if it weren’t for The New Yorker, we would never have known that!

There’s so much else that we’re grateful for, we have reams of appreciation, but we really have to stop right now, as we think we’ve pulled an especially nice muscle in our groin.

▼

Steven Underhill

The San Francisco Chronicle’s trademark Little Man is beside himself with joyful appreciation.

Marriage menagerie A few weeks ago we briefly mentioned the new book Outlaw Marriages – The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples by Rodger Streitmatter (Beacon Press), but the book is worth a longer consideration. Journalist and cultural historian Streitmatter profiles same-sex unions who defied the cultural norms of their time to be with the partners they loved. In many cases, the pairs lived in secrecy. Here are some fun facts about a few of those couples.

Walt Whitman & Peter Doyle: Whitman not only revolutionized American poetry with his Leaves of Grass, he apparently was the sweetest sugar daddy you could ever want to spoon. He and Doyle met when the poet was a passenger on a Washington, DC streetcar where the younger man sold tickets. Doyle later recalled: “We were familiar at once – I put my

hand on his knee – we understood.

He did not get out at the end of the trip – in fact went all the way back with me. From that time on, we were the biggest sort of friends.”

Streitmatter translates: “Whitman going ‘all the way back with me’ meant that the poet stayed on the streetcar until Doyle ended his shift and the two men then spent their first night together.” We’d say that makes them both slutty McSlut sluts – but we mean that in the best possible way (see column theme).

J.C. Leyendecker & Charles Beach: Popular magazine and advertisement illustrator Leyendecker modeled his famous “Arrow Collar Man” on the “tall, powerfully built and extraordinarily handsome” Beach, who would become his lover.

Bonus factoid: it was Leyendecker’s younger brother Frank, also gay, who first hired the 17-year-old Beach to model for a commission. Good eye, little gay bro.

Greta Garbo & Mercedes de Acosta: “The highly cultured de Acosta taught the star how to speak, how to dress, and how to live in the style expected of cinematic royalty.”

She also advised Garbo “on which film roles to accept and which to reject.” Glad someone was Daddy in that relationship.

Aaron Copland & Victor Kraft: “The two men spent many of their daytime hours on the beach near the capital city [Mexico City], sunning themselves and frolicking in the water.

The playful, fun-loving teenager also enjoyed being photographed, and the smitten older man was more than willing to stand behind the camera as his winsome companion positioned himself in various nude poses.” Variations on a theme.

Other cavorting same-sex couples covered in the book include Alice B. Toklas & Gertrude Stein, Frank Merlo & Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin & Lucien Happersberger, Robert Rauschenberg & Jasper Johns, and Frances Clayton & Audre Lorde. If dynamic duos are your thing, seek out this volume for many darling examples.

OT playlist This week we’re listening to: Melody Gardot, The Absence (Verve); The Magnetic Fields, Distortion (Nonesuch); Busdriver, Beaus & Eros (Fake Four); Brian Eno, Music for Airports (Live) – Bang on a Can (Cantaloupe); and Puccini, Tosca – Czecho-Slovak Radio Philharmonia Orchestra, Alexander Tahbari, cond. (Naxos), prepping for the fall opera season. Always thinking ahead.▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

<< Music

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

▼

She’s a real character

‘Desperate Housewives’ Emily Bergl plays the Rrazz Room

by Richard Dodds

T

here are so few things to be sure of, but Desperate Housewives star and cabaret headliner Emily Bergl knows one of them. “I feel very confident that there is no one else who does Cyndi Lauper as Elaine Stritch,” Bergl said from New

York in anticipation of her July 2729 engagement at the Rrazz Room.

Costumed for the number in Stritch-evoking long-tailed shirt and black stockings, Bergl turns “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” into an homage to the iconic tough-cookie performer.

Bergl performs the number as part of her NY I Love You cabaret show com-

ing to SF following its Cafe Carlyle debut in May. The New York Times described Bergl as “fearless, talented, and whip-smart.” The Daily News called her “nuts.”

Bergl, who played doe-eyed prison-bride Beth Young on Desperate Housewives, is content to live with the catchall “quirky” as a descriptor.

“Within ‘quirky’ I can do a million different characters,” she said. “To me, cabaret has to be like a play or a musical. It has to have an arc. It has to have different characters. It’s putting on a whole show.”

She may be a flapper singing Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan,” a Doris Day-style band singer interpreting John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over,” or a tuxedoclad chanteuse spitting out Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” And she loves putting seemingly incongruous songs into unlikely segues: “Someday My Prince Will Come” leads into Lou Reed’s “I’m Waiting for the Man,” which becomes Prince’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover.”

In the end, the imagined dreamboat turns out to be a drug dealer.

“Nobody wants to see another person just sit on a stool and sing the same old songs for an hour unless they are really fucking good,” said Bergl, who laughed when it was suggested that her live CD recorded at the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room may be the only album recorded at the storied boite that comes with an “explicit” warning on iTunes.

That show was titled Kidding on the Square, which brought her to the Rrazz Room last year, and where she met her boyfriend, the SF bassist Daniel Fabricant, with whom she has a bi-coastal relationship. Fabricant will again be on bass, with G. Scott Lacy at the piano.

Bergl grew up in the Chicago area, and already had her Actors’ Eq-

Michael Creagh

Emily Bergl believes a cabaret show should be like a play or musical, and she will illustrate her notion at the Rrazz Room with NY I Love You.

Danny Field/ABC

Emily Bergl gained a new level of recognition thanks to her role as an oddball neighbor on Desperate Housewives.

uity card by the time she graduated from college in 1997. She headed straight to New York, and by 1998, she had landed her first Broadway gig. Hollywood provided her with a big break in 1999 as the star of The Rage: Carrie 2. The following years brought recurring roles on such TV series as The Gilmore Girls, Men in Trees and Southland, but her season on Desperate Housewives kicked up her public profile to a degree that surprised even her.

Playing the oddly malleable wife of Wisteria Lane pariah Paul Young is directly tied up with her cabaret work. Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry was in the audience at a benefit cabaret performed by members of LA’s Antaeus Theatre and was taken with Bergl’s rendition of Noel Coward’s “Mad About the Boy.” He then became the winning bidder for a prize that included a fondue dinner with Bergl. “He got the fondue, and he said he was going to write a part for me on Desperate Housewives called the Fondue Nazi, but I ended up playing Beth Young instead. I was supposed to die after five or six episodes, but I got a stay of execution.

“That the song went over so well

gave me a lot of confidence to do a cabaret show,” she said, “and then having the role on Desperate Housewives made people want to come see my cabaret work, which I call my passion project.” Another Bergl passion is Habitat for Humanity, and she will be hammering nails in Haiti with Jimmy and Roslyn Carter in November.

TV and movies help underwrite the passion projects, and her next bigscreen gig is the new Woody Allen feature set to film in New York and San Francisco in the coming months. She knows nothing about her role except the character’s name, which she didn’t want revealed, knowing Allen’s penchant for secrecy.

“When you audition for Woody Allen you don’t do anything, which is kind of liberating,” she said. “I met him for 25 seconds, didn’t perform a word of dialogue, and got the part.

I think my part shoots only in New York, which makes me sad because I don’t get to come back to San Francisco, but not too sad because I’m in a Woody Allen movie.”▼ Emily Bergl will perform NY I Love You at the Rrazz Room July 27-29.

Go to www.therrazzroom.com.

▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Theatre >>

Close shave

by Richard Dodds

R

ay of Light Theatre usually arises once or twice a year with a major production of a musical – though its choices of material are as unpredictable as the summer sun in San Francisco. The Full Monty and Jerry Springer: The Opera are among its previous offerings – a span of brashly Broadway to eccentrically British – and now it has undertaken the challenges of what is arguably Stephen Sondheim’s masterwork.

The results are a commendable if a somewhat theatrically dry rendering of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Sweeney Todd started off as a huge show in director Hal Prince’s 1979 original Broadway staging, and then was transformed into a stripped-bare version in John Doyle’s 2005 Broadway revival. Both worked exquisitely, revealing considerable leeway in the scale and physical resources required to reveal the dramatic heart of material that wends its way through a darky humorous, chillingly ominous story told mainly through Sondheim’s challenging music and dense lyrics.

The challenge of the score is well met by the Ray of Light cast, with musical direction by Robbie Cowan and with Sean Forte leading a four-piece ensemble from an onstage piano. It is in Sondheim’s lyrics where so much of the genius of the musical lays, and the performers have command of the often rapid-fire, tongue-twisting words, but they can get lost either from the acoustics of the Eureka Theatre or the variable talents of projection among the cast.

One performer for whom this is not a problem is Adam S. Campbell in the title role of the vengeful barber. He offers an imposing stage presence and a powerfully clear voice in his angry arias. Should Ray of Light ever decide

Claire Rice

Adam Scott Campbell and Miss Sheldra play uneasy accomplices in Ray of Light’s production of Sweeney Todd at the Eureka Theatre.

to take on Les Miserables, Campbell is a Jean Valjean at the ready.

In the story created by librettist Hugh Wheeler, adapted from a famous 19th-century penny-dreadful tale, Sweeney Todd has returned to a sooty, industrialized London after 15 years of imprisonment on false charges trumped up by a judge who coveted his wife. He hopes to find his wife and their daughter, but he is obsessed with exacting revenge on the corrupt Judge Turpin. In a macabre twist, as he practices his throat-slashing technique until he can get the judge into his barber’s chair, he allies with his landlady, who disposes of the bodies by grinding them into filling for her increasingly popular meat pies.

As Mrs. Lovett, Miss Sheldra has good comic instincts as the lovable if criminally insane purveyor of meat pies, though her character’s lyrics are among those most lost in the aforementioned acoustical problems. Mrs. Lovett has found an unwitting accomplice in her young, slow-witted assistant Tobias, whom Kevin Singer

presents in clear, broad strokes.

There is a concurrent story of young love between Todd’s daughter Johanna, now a young woman kept virtual prisoner by Judge Turpin, and the young sailor Anthony Hope, who had befriended Todd at sea. Matthew Provencal and Jessica Smith are fine as the young couple, as are Ken Brill as the lecherous judge, J. Conrad Frank who creates an unusually foppish Beadle, and Michelle Jasso as a beggar woman who becomes a key player in the interlocking stories.

Director Ben Randle’s work is competent, but the production does not create a particularly ominous aura that is so vital. There are also staging problems imposed by Maya Linke’s set, which misses in its admirable attempt at creating an industrial maze.

This is a Sweeney Todd not so much as Grand Guignol as so-so Guignol.▼ Sweeney Todd will run at the Eureka Theatre through Aug. 11.

Tickets are $30-$36. Go to www. rayoflighttheatre.com.

Music >>

Contemporary troubadour

by Tim Pfaff

S

how us in Paradise,” The Protector says to The Boy in the foreboding opening scene of Written on Skin, a new opera by gay composer George Benjamin that had its premiere at the Aix-en-Provence Festival on July 7. “The Protector” is commissioning an illuminated manuscript depicting his possessions – including his wife and her “still and obedient body.” This being opera, you know it’s only a matter of time – in this case not much, at least on the clock – before everyone is instead in Hell.

Our century’s finest opera and Benjamin’s second (and, at 95 minutes, first at full-length), Written on Skin is already headed for a halfdozen of the world’s opera capitals in this searching, uncompromising, and tirelessly inventive production

by Katie Mitchell. Against odds, there’s not a hint of cliche in Vicky Mortimer’s multi-tiered sets and mixed period-modern costumes. As if that weren’t good enough, the premiere performance is already viewable free on www.medici.tv (you only have to register), so pointedly directed for television (by Corentun Leconte) that you have the best seat in the house.

It’s fitting that the opera opened at Aix, because its story derives from the legend of the 13th-century Provencal troubadour Guillem de Cabestany, though librettist Martin Crimp, Benjamin’s frequent collaborator, has given it a contemporary (and timeless) spin while preserving its elemental, raw power. His words,

Pascal Victor/Artcomart

Part of the staging of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin at the Aixen-Provence Festival.

all clearly audible in this intricate score, brand themselves on the listener’s mind.

We know the illustrator only as The Boy, played by countertenor Bejun Mehta at his most luscious; and The Protector only as The Man, sung

by Christopher Purvis, Britain’s greatest acting singer, channeling a volcanic power that rises in the imperious character and ultimately gets away from him. The Man, observes the Boy, is “addicted to purity and violence.”

See page 31 >>

ebar.com

<< Fine Art

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

▼

Tumultuous connections

by Sura Wood

I

n 1929, fashion model and aspiring photographer Lee Miller showed up uninvited on the Paris doorstep of Surrealist/Dada artist Man Ray, adamant that he be her teacher. It would be the beginning of an intense, contentious, if not necessarily beautiful relationship.

Miller, one of Edward Steichen’s favorite subjects, and Ray (ne Emmanuel Radnitzky), who was 17 years her senior, started as mentor and student and soon became lovers. They lived together in Paris from 1929-32, a brief but volatile period that produced internecine fireworks along with collaborations and some remarkable works of art by each of them. Later, as Ray’s gifts

and handwritten letters to Miller demonstrate, they became friends.

A story of love, obsession, loss, creativity and competition, the tumultuous artistic and personal connection between these two powerful, difficult personalities, who orbited each other, struggling for equality and recognition in the case of the feminist Miller, and fighting for dominance on the part of the possessive Ray, provides the narrative underpinning of Man Ray/Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism, an intriguing exhibition now at the Legion of Honor.

Can anyone truly get inside the dynamic of a relationship, let alone one as complex as this one? How does one determine where one artist’s influence ends and another

begins? These are the tasks the show has set for itself. The traveling exhibition also strives to correct the record: Miller was not merely a muse, it asserts, but a full partner and collaborator, though the majority of the work here is by Ray. The show includes 115 paintings, drawings, sculptures, manuscripts, anecdotes about individual objects and their lives together as well as numerous photographs, some of them rare vintage pictures, fascinating portraits they shot of each other, and many instances where Miller is alluring, glamorous, naked, or all three.

The Surrealists were notoriously sexist, typical for the era, perhaps, but a step beyond Neanderthal. So Miller faced an uphill battle for parCourtesy of The Penrose Collection

“Indestructible Object” by Man Ray (originally made 1928, destroyed in Paris 1957, this replica 1959). Metronome with gelatin silver print of Lee Miller’s eye.

ity with a man who was already an established, card-carrying member of the French avant-garde when they met, and an ambassador to the glittery circle of artists he inhabited.

On the wall just outside the show is a portent, a life-size photograph of Miller shot from above in her Montparnasse apartment. Ray’s voyeuristic camera looks down on her coltish frame curled on the bed, an interesting vantage point that signals the power struggle that was looming or already underway.

Miller’s carbon drawings from 1930, “Untitled (Model with Daggers),” where an elegantly attired woman is pinned to a table by sharp implements, and “Untitled (Under the Bell-Jar),” a woman suffocating under glass, are clues to her state of mind.

The exhibition puts you smack in the middle of the world in which they circulated, and one of most exciting periods and places to be alive and creative: Paris in the late 1920s and 30s. A gallery showcases artworks by members of the couple’s bohemian coterie there. Pablo Picasso, who was attracted to Miller – her ethereal beauty was said to rival Garbo – painted six portraits of her, and he did a wonderful, seemingly dashed-off drawing on brown paper of Nusch, wife of Surrealist intellectual Paul Eluard. Also represented are Dora Maar, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder and Roland Penrose, who photographed some of the group pleasurably picnicking naked off the French Riviera, and later married Miller. On view is a clip from Jean Cocteau’s film The Blood of the Poet, in which Miller appeared as a statue that comes to life; the project sparked Ray’s jealousy, even though Cocteau was openly gay.

It may have been F. Scott Fitzgerald who said that people fall into roughly two groups: those who take things easy, and those who take things hard. Ray fell into the latter. Years after she left him, Ray mourned Miller and never got over her, maybe because she wasn’t willing to surrender. He enshrined her with a rage, bitterness, yearning and pathology worthy of Poe, casting her lips in solid gold. A color photograph of his well-known painting

“Observatory Time – The Lovers” (ca.1932) features those enormous beckoning lips in ruby red, hovering in a dawn sky over the countryside.

Haunted, at least by her body parts, Ray hung the painting above his bed while he worked on it so he could commune with it between dream and waking states.

To exorcise her memory, in 1932, he famously affixed a cut-out photo of her eye to a metronome in “Indestructible Object.” (A replica is displayed in the show.) Ray is said to have kept prints of Miller’s eye at the ready in his wallet should he encounter a metronome. The man knew how to suffer.

For her part, Miller initially thrived following the break-up. In 1932, she established her own photography studio in New York, an adventurous move for a woman at the time. A decade later she became a war correspondent, taking searing photographs as the only female combat photojournalist permitted to travel freely in the war zones, a have-camera-will-travel status she took advantage of. She shot “Revenge on Culture” during the London Blitz; the public shaming of four young female collaborators in Rennes; a half-dozen pictures in Leipzig of town officials and their families who committed suicide on the eve of the Allied invasion; the liberation of Dachau, in 1945, when she snapped “a mess of SS” floating amid dead dogs in a canal.

These images and others at the Legion offer a glimmer of what she was capable of. But, after returning to England, shaken by what she witnessed in the war and suffering from post-traumatic stress, she descended into depression and alcoholism, giving up photography for good in 1953, her photographs nearly forgotten but for the efforts of her son who resurrected her archive. Clearly, there are missing pieces to the underlying psychology of her story, but they’re not touched on.

Still, there’s the nagging question: Would major museums have mounted exhibitions of her work if she hadn’t once been connected to a famous man? (Through Oct. 14.)▼ www.legionofhonor.famsf.org

Avshalom Avital, courtesy the Israel Museum

“A l’heure de l’observatoire – les amoureux” (“Observatory Time – The Lovers”) by Man Ray (c. 1931, color photograph of 1964, after the original oil painting).

Read more online at www.ebar.com

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

<< Out&About

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

Sexy stuff at Mark I. Chester Studio

Thu 26>>

Fri 27>>

After Juliet @ Hastings Studio Theater

5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche @ Phoenix Theatre

American Conservatory Theatre’s student production of Sharman MacDonald’s blank verse drama about the lives of Verona’s famous families after the death of Romeo and Juliet. $15. Thru Aug 4. 77 Geary St. 6th fl. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Tides Theatre’s production of Evan Lindor and Andrew Hobgood’s comic play about a 1950s women’s social group’s McCarthyera secrets. $20-$38. Thu-Sat 8pm. Also extra Sat at 10pm. Thru July 28. 414 Mason St. #601. 336-3533. www.tidestheatre.org

Andrea Marcovicci @ The Rrazz Room Cabaret veteran performs classic American Songbook hits. $35-$45. 7:30pm. Wed-Sat 7:30pm Sun 5pm. Thru Aug. 5. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Animal Planet

by Jim Provenzano

A

nimals behaving humanely, and humans behaving beastly. We’re talking about cats, bears, furries, and the various hybrid creatures that show up on Folsom Street this time of year. Let out your inner animal, but watch the claws.

Acrocats

Furries in the Wild

Thu. 26: The Amazing Acro-Cats @ Boxcar Theatre Studio

Sat 28: Bay of Pigs @ The Factory

Samantha Martin returns with her remarkably talented, adorable performing house cats who perform stunts and jump through hoops… if they feel like it. They are cats, after all. $15-$20.

Wed-Sun 7pm. Also Fri 10pm, Sat & Sun 1pm & 4pm. Thru July 29. 125A Hyde St. www.circuscats.com

Fri 27: Open Studio @ Mark I Chester Studio See sexy, daring, erotic prints, sketches and other art at the SoMa spot for kink art. 7pm-11pm. Special digital portrait deals all weekend. Sat & Sun 11am-6pm.

1229 Folsom St. www.markichester.com

Enjoy hot beats and horny beasts at the official Saturday night event of the Up Your Alley Street Fair, which brings fetish to phallic fashion. DJs Russ Rich and Phil B provide the soundtrack to the cruisefest, which includes sexy demos, dancers, and play spaces. $30.

10pm-4am. 525 Harrison St. www.folsomstreetevents.org

Sun 29: Bear City: The Proposal @ Castro Theatre In the sequel to the popular gay indie film, the bears head to Provincetown; special cameos by Kevin Smith, Kathy Najimy and others. $10-$12. 11:30am, 2pm, 4:30, 7pm, 9:15. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Ballroom With a Twist @ Marines Memorial Theatre Dancing With the Star ’s Louis van Amstel’s new ballroom dancing stage show features DWTS’s Anna Trebunskaya, Jonathan Robert, Peta Murgatroyd, Dmitry Chaplin, plus performers from So You Think You Can Dance and American Idol’s David Hernadez and Gina Glocksen (Different performer line-up some nights). $49-$79. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Sun 6pm. Thru July 29. 609 Sutter St. 2nd fl. 771-6900. www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com

Bay Area writer/musician and handsomely bearded bear Brent Calderwood will read from his forthcoming book of poems, The God of Longing. The monthly open mic hosted by Baruch Porras-Hernandez welcomes queer writers and performers to its new home at the War Memorial Veteran’s Building.

Free. 7:30-9:30pm (sign up begins at 7pm). 401 Van Ness Avenue 4th Floor Suite 402. www.queeropenmic.com www.brentcalderwood.com

Steven Underhill

Sun 29: Up Your Alley @ Folsom Street The daytime boisterous beer, babes, bears, and butt-spanking street party takes place on Folsom Street between 9th and Juniper streets, Sunday July 20, 11am to 6pm. Donations taken at the gate. www.folsomstreetevents.org

Thu 26-Sun 29: Up Your Alley Weekend @ Kok Bar Carnal creatures will no doubt be at Kok Bar, which gets extra leathery and kinky with a weekend full of events; Thursday’s Leather; Friday, meet BigMuscle guys; Saturday’s a jockstrap party and Sunday it’s open at 12pm (and packed all day, as will be the Powerhouse!). 1225 Folsom St. at 8th. 255-2427. www.kokbarsf.com

Sat 28: Furries in the Wild @ Joaquin Miller Park Fans of animal costumes and those who wear them host the second annual Oakland outdoor picnic for LGBT furries and their pals; with DJs, food, redwoods casting shade, open fields, hiking and biking paths nearby. All ages. Alcohol allowed, but 21+. 12pm-7pm. Directions: www.neonbunny.com/furries/

Wed 1: Guide for the Modern Bear @ Past Perfect Travis Smith and Chris Bale discuss their illustrated gay book, a lighthearted foray into the ursine set, at the vintage furniture shop. 5pm-7pm. 2224 Union St. 929-7651. www.modernbear.net

Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles @ Castro Theatre

Retrospective touring exhibit of 150 photos by the artist who poses as different fascinating and obscure characters. Free$18. Daily 11am-5:30pm, except Wed. late Thu until 8:45pm. Thru Oct. 8. 151 Third St. www.sfmoma.org

Double feature fun flicks; parody of Star Wars (7:30), and Mel Brooks classic Western comedy (9:25). $7.50-$10. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Emily Bergl @ The Rrazz Room

Sweeney Todd @ Eureka Theatre

Cabaret and TV actrress performs her acclaimed Algonquin Hotel act, New York, I Love You. $35. 9:30pm. Also July 28, 9:30pm. July 29, 7pm. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Ray of Light Theatre’s production of the deliciously grisly Stephen Sondheim musical about The Demon Barber of Fleet Street , with a live on-stage orchestra. $25-$36. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm.

(Special Goth costume night July 28 with a post-show party; $30.) Thru Aug. 11. 215 Jackson St. at Battery. 690-7658. www.rayoflighttheatre.com

Thu 26

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier @ de Young Museum From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, the first exhibition devoted to the gay French fashion designer (previously shown in Montreal and Dallas), includes film and stage costumes and haute couture, prints, video clips and more. Also, Chuck Close and Crown Point Press, and exhibit of the painter’s printmaking works, (All thru Oct. 14). $6-$20. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm.

Other exhibits ongoing. Friday night special events 5:30pm-8:45pm. Thru Aug. 19. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park. 750-3600. www.famsf.org

Do Not Destroy @ Contemp. Jewish Museum Group exhibit of art in varied media exploring the relationship between Jewish traditions and trees. Free-$12. Daily 11am5pm Closed Wed. Thru Sept 9. 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

Enron @ Exit Theatre Open Tab theatre company’s production of the U.K. West End hit that combines the documentary facts of The Smartest Guys in the Room with the performance style of Avenue Q ; yes, there are puppets! $25.

Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Aug. 17. 156 Eddy St. www.enron2012.com

The Ettes @ Thee Parkside Cool rock/grunge/whatever band performs; they’re good. See ‘em. Nectarine Pie and and Warm Soda also play sets. $10. 9pm. 21+. 1600 17th St. 252-1330. www.theeparkside.com

West Coast premiere of D’Arcy Drollinger’s comic, ironic pop culture timeline show about the troubled actress turned media catastrophe. $25-$30 (got a DUI or parole card? Get $5 off!). Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru Aug. 19. 1117 Market St. at 7th. www.projectlohan.com

Queer Sex & Technology @ GLBT History Museum Hooking Up From the 1940s to the Present , a panel discussion about LGBT modes of meeting, creating communities, and also getting laid, with historian Martin Meeker, ( Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Community and Communications, 1940s-1970s ), queer theorist Juana Maria Rodriguez ( Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces ) and blogger Oscar Raymundo (Queerty). 7pm. 4127 18th St. 621-1107. www.glbthistorymuseum.org

Radically Gay: The Life of Harry Hay @ SF Public Library

Guide for the Modern Bear editors Travis Smith and Chris Bale

Aurora Theatre Company’s production of acclaimed Bay Area playwright Mark Jackson’s play about Maud Allan, the San Francisco dancer-actress who performed a notorious Dance of the Seven Veils. $34$55. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru July 29. 2081 Addison St. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

Musical comedy revue, now in its 35th year, with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. Reg: $25-$130. Wed, Thu, Fri at 8pm. Sat 6:30, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 5pm. (Beer/wine served; cash only). 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.).

421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Project Lohan @ The Costume Shop

Dogged fun at Up Your Alley Street Fair.

Salomania @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley

Sat 28>>

Festival of films about the Middle East, Israel and Jewish-Americans, at theatre in SF, Oakland, Palo Alto and San Rafael.

Thru Aug 6. Opening night at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St. www.sfjff.org

Fri 27: Queer Open Mic @ Museum of Performance and Design

Shattuck Ave at Berryman, North Berkeley.

(510) 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi

Jewish Film Festival @ Various Cinemas

Brent Calderwood

Cindy Sherman @ SF MOMA

Last few days of the exhibition that celebrates the remarkable life and work of activist Harry Hay, who laid the foundation for the modern lesbian and gay rights movement. Thru July 29. Jewitt Gallery, lower level, 100 Larkin St. 557-4400. www.sfpl.org

SF International Poetry Festival @ SF Public Library Four days of readings by poets from around the world. Kick-off party at Kerouac Alley in North Beach (7pm, next to City Lights Bookstore); Free. July 27, 12:30am5:30pm. Also Sat., July 28, 10:30am5:30pm. Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin St. Sun., July 29; North Beach Poetry Crawl 11am-8pm. www.friendssfpl.org

▼

Go Bang! @ Deco Lounge

Arctic Hysteria @ Bindlestiff Studios Berlin-based theatre company Kinderdeutsch Projeckte’s bilingual performance about the wild behavior induced by living in snow-laden polar lands. $15. Fri-Sun 8pm. Aug 4 2pm. Thru Aug 4. 185 6th St. www.kinderdeutsch.org

Kenny Yun @ The Marsh, Berkeley See a hilarious dictator parody in Yun’s Happy Hour With Kim Jong Il, a comedy work-in-progress, performed with live music by Candace Roberts, plus it’s free; $5 cocktails and food! Fridays, 6pm. Thru Aug 24. 2120 Allston Way, near Shattuck.

826-5750. www.themarsh.org

King John/A Midsummer Night’s Dream @ Forest Meadows Ampitheatre Marin Shakespeare Company’s production of The Bard’s action-packed royal drama, and the fairy-filled romantic comedy, in repertory. $20-$35. Season tickets $45$75. Dinner and pre-show talk $35. Fri-Sun 8pm. Some Sun matinees 4pm. Thru Aug. 12. 890 Belle Avenue, Dominican University of California, San Rafael. 499-4488. www.marinshakespeare.org

Marat/Sade @ Brava Theatre Thrillpeddlers and Marc Huestis’ production of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, Peter Weiss’ strange drama about 1700s French counter-revolutionary assassination.

Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. 2781 24th St. 863-0611. www.thrillpeddlers.com www.marchuesticpresents.com

Les Misérables @ Orpheum Theatre 25th anniversary touring production of Boublil & Schönberg’s legendary awardwinning musical based on the Victor Hugo novel about the French Revolution, in a new re-designed production. $30-$150.

Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat Sun 2pm. Thru Aug. 26. 1192 Market St. at 8th. www.shnsf.com

Noises Off @ Live Oak Theatre, Berkeley Actors Ensemble of Berkeley perform Michael Frayn’s hilarious backstage farce, where a play is performed three times, front, back and out of control. $10-$15. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru Aug. 18. 1301

The popular intimate disco dance night, with resident DJs Steve Fabus, Sergio Fedasz, welcomes special guest DJs Pat Les Stache and Richard Byrd, in a big Sylvester tribute, with an art/memorabilia installation. $5. Free before 10pm. 9pm-3am.

510 Larkin St. at Turk. www.gobangsf.com www.decosf.com

Gerry Takano @ River Reader, Guerneville Scholar presents These Walls Can Speak: A Russian River Primer to GLBTQ Places, a talk about historic clandestine queer spaces, and how many of them are being destroyed; sponsored by the GLBT Historical Society and the San Francisco Heritage organizations. 6pm. 16355 Main St. (707) 869-2240.

Man Ray/Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism @ Legion of Honor Photographs, paintings, drawings and manuscripts that explore the creative interaction between gay artists Man Ray and Lee Miller, two giants of European Surrealism. Also, Marcel Duchamp: The Book and the Box. Free-$10. Thru Oct. 14. Tue-Sat 9:30am-5:15pm. Lincoln Park at 100 34th Avenue (at Clement Street). www.famsf.org

Marvelous Wondrettes @ Fox Theatre, Redwood City Broadway by the Bay presents the bouyant show about four 1960s high school girls who share growing up stories and sing vintage hit songs. $20-$48. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru July 29. 2215 Broadway St., Redwood City. (650) 579-5565. www.broadwaybythebay.org

My Fair Lady @ SF Playhouse Modern stripped-down (11 actors, two pianos) adaptation of the Lerner & Lowe classic musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. $20-$50. Tue-Thu 7pm.

Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 3pm. Thru Sept. 29. 533 Sutter St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Occupy Bay Area @ YBCA New exhibit of activist art related to the Occupy protests. Exhibit $8-$10. Thru Oct. 14. Also, David Shrigley: Brain Activity, an exhibit of caustically witty sculptures and visual art. Free-$15. Exhibit thru Sept. 23. $8-$10. 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.ybca.org

Perverts Put Out @ Center for Sex & Culture Greta Christina, Sherilyn Connelly, Jen Cross, Juba Kalamka, Kirk Read, horehound stillpoint and co-hosts Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard read saucy sexy

▼

Out&About >>

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Royal Families @ SF Public Library

No Straight Lines Editor Justin Hall

Exhibit of photographs by Karen Massing of four years of pageantry and royalty in the LGBT International Court System.

Thru Sept.15. EHarvey Milk/Eureka Valley branch, 1 Jose Sarria Court at 16th St. www.karenmassingpix.com www.sfpl.org

Ten Percent @ Comcast 104 David Perry’s talk show about LGBT people and issues. This week, Perry interviews legendary poet, artist and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti about his new exhibit, Cross Pollination, at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. Mon-Fri 11:30am & 10:30pm. Sat & Sun 10:30pm. www.comcasthometown.com

Tue 31 >>

Life & Death in Black & White @ GLBT History Museum AIDS Direct Action in San Francisco, 1985–1990, focuses on the AIDS activist photojournalism of Jane Philomen Cleland, Patrick Clifton, Marc Geller, Rick Gerharter and Daniel Nicoletta. Selection of other LGBT historic items also on display. $5.

New expanded hours: Mon-Sat 11am-7pm.

Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Purple Rain, Pink Floyd’s The Wall @ Castro Theatre Two classic 1980s rock films; Prince’s melodramatic music-filled hit (7:30) and the art rock band’s nightmarish, partially animated blockbuster (9:40). $7.50-$10.

429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Thu 26 No Straight Lines Contributors @ Books Inc. Reading and signing event for No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics! Editor Justin Hall (above, center with superpals) is joined by contributors Ed Luce ( Wuvable Oaf ), Trina Robbins ( Wimmen’s Comix ), Rick Worley (A Waste of Time ), and Robert Triptow ( Gay Comix ) to celebrate the release of this new anthology. Free. 7:30pm.

2275 Market St. 864-6777. www.booksinc.net

selections of their writing. $10-$20. 1349 Mission St. www.sexandculture.org

Phantoms of Asia @ Asian Art Museum Exhibit of bold contemporary art with perspectives on life, death, nature and other themes. $12-$15. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org

La Quebradora @ Mission Cultural Center Curator Amy Pederson’s group exhibition about Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling culture, with videos, sculptures, paintings and performances (Wed nights 7pm). $5. Reg. hours Tue-Sat 10am-5pm. Thru Aug. 5. 821-1155. www.missionculturalcenter.org

Sea Stories Circle @ Hyde Street Pier We Players, the outdoor theatre ensemble that just finished a run of The Odyssey on Angel Island, hosts a reading series and open mic where people can share tales, poems, songs or read from a book, all about the sea. Free; soft drinks & cookies.

3pm-5pm. Aboard the Eureka. www.weplayers.org

The Silence of the Trans @ Castro Theatre Peaches Christ welcomes RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Sharon Needles at a drag show, serial killer costume contest, and screening of The Silence of the Lambs. $20-$45. 3pm and 8pm. 429 Castro St. www.peacheschrist.com www.castrotheatre.com

Tom Shaw Trio @ Martuni’s The prodigious local trio perform jazz and cabaret classics with vocalist Anne Marie Burgoyne. $7. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. www.TomShawTrio.com

Truffaldino Says No @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley Shotgun Players’ new production of Ken Slattery’s comic farce about an ambitious servant that combines Commedia Dell’arte and sitcom ribaldry. $18-$25. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. Thru July 29. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 8416500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Sun 29 >> Brett Thomas @ Castro Country Club

Reflections of My Mind, an exhibit of evocative nature photographs by the local artist, at the LGBT sober space. Exhibit thru August. 4058 18th St. www.castrocountryclub.org

LGCSF Fundraiser @ Tacolicious Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco hosts a fundraiser at the popular Mexican restaurant. $30 special menu. 6pm-8pm.

741 Valencia at 18th. www.lgcsf.org

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet and Harry Denton host the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.harrydenton.com

Mon 30>>

Damon McLay @ Magnet Exhibit of the artist’s expressive personal photographs. 8pm-10pm. Thru July. 4122 18th St. www.magnetsf.org

Wed 1>> 19th Century San Francisco @ Robert Tat Gallery Fascinating exhibit of vintage prints from the Bay Area’s early days. Tue-Sat 11am5:30pm & by appointment. Thru Sept. 1.

49 Geary St. Suite 410. 781-1122. www.roberttat.com

Candlelight Flow Yoga @ LGBT Center David Clark leads various yoga poses and practices, plus meditation and breathing exercises. Bring your own mat and water bottle, etc. $10. 7pm-8:30pm.

1800 Market St. www.4dbliss.com

The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle @ Castro Theatre Two noir classics $7.50-$10. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Thu 2>> Ailey Camp @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley Performance by more than 50 students at the annual intensive dance training workshops taught by members of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. Free. 7pm. Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave., UC Berkeley campus. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

Comedy Bodega @ Esta Nocha The weekly LGBT and indie comic stand-up night. This week, Keith Lowell Jensen, Jessica Sele, Kristee Ono, Johnny Taylor and Tirumari Jothi. 8pm-9:30pm. 3079 16th St. at Mission. www.comedybodega.com

Amy Stone @ GLBT History Museum The scholar discusses elections, gays and perspectives in her new book, Gay Rights at the Ballot Box: Voting on GLBT Issues From 1974 to Today. 7pm-9pm. 4127 18th St. 621-1107. www.glbthistorymuseum.org

Nick Ervinck @ Highlight Gallery Exhibit of strangely curious plastic yetorganic-looking sculptures and 3D prints.

Tue-Sat 11am-6pm. Thru Aug. 3. 17 Kearny St. 529-1221. www.highlightgallery.com

Saints and Sinners @ Visual Aid Exhibit of colorful multimedia works by David Faulk and Michael Johnstone in a site-specific installation. 57 Post St. #905. www.visualaid.org

Fri 27 Will Campa & Gran Union @ Yoshi’s Rousing Cuban cumba band, whose members dance, drum and sing, performs live.

Open dancing on the floor. $20-$40. 8pm & 10:30pm. Also July 28. 1330 Fillmore St. 655-5600. www.yoshis.com

To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com.

Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

For more bar and nightlife events, go to www.bartabsf.com

<< Leather+

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

▼

Dore Alley weekend is here!

by Scott Brogan

S

ure, I know that it’s now “Up Your Alley,” but I just can’t stop calling it Dore Alley. “Up Your Alley” sounds so, well, dumb. But what I think doesn’t matter because whatever one calls it, the weekend and the street fair are undeniable fun. So much so that if you go out and partake of any of the festivities or the street fair itself and you don’t have a good time, then you have a serious problem! For real!

Each year the weekend gets packed with more events, happenings, parties, and all other manner of festivities. The result is a full weekend for all of us. So full that this week’s column is a short one to make room for the extended calendar. Look to the end of the column for a listing of the weekend’s events. Have fun!

Real Bad: No, nothing really bad.

Just bad boys. The Real Bad Host Kick-Off Margarita Party at Beatbox a few weeks ago was a blast. Anytime Beatbox opens its doors for a Sunday afternoon event, especially with the wonderful weather we’ve been enjoying, is a good time. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love the Beatbox Sunday afternoon events. Sure, it’s not the Eagle, but what ever will be?

The Real Bad event was the official kick-off for the Real Bad party on Sun., Sept. 23 (right after the Folsom Street Fair).

Check out their booth at this weekend’s fair or go to their site, www. realbad.org, for details.

Lenny’s back in town: Yeah, sure. We thought Lenny Broberg had gone after that big 20th anniversary celebration

Scott Brogan

Bevan Dufty (r.) and his new beau Cory enjoy the Real Bad Host Kick-Off Margarita Party at Beatbox a few weeks ago.

several months ago, and all his talk about stepping down. Yadda, yadda.

He’s moved back to the city! He used to live somewhere south. I don’t know where. You know us city dwellers, if it’s not within our work/social radius, it might as well be overseas. Now he’s finally moved back to the city. In SoMa. God help us all! His housewarming last Sunday was a hoot.

Nice place, too. He even has decent taste in decorating. Imagine.

Seriously though, Lenny, we’re happy you’re permanently back in town. We look forward to seeing more of you!▼

Scott Brogan

Lenny Broberg (r.) and his buddy Erik at Broberg’s housewarming party last Sunday afternoon.

Coming up in leather and kink

ebar.com

Thu.-Sun., Jul. 26-29: International LeatherSIR/ Leatherboy & Community Bootblack 2012 at the Holiday Inn Golden Gateway (1500 Van Ness). Don’t miss the activities all weekend, including the contest on both Fri. and Sat. nights. Go to their new website, www.ilsb-icbb.com, for details.

Thu., Jul. 26: Dore Alley Weekend (aka Up Your Alley Weekend) begins! The Powerhouse, Kok Bar, the Hole in the Wall and other clubs will open early on Sun. Stop in and support our businesses! Rundown of the official events (go to www.folsomstreetfair. com/leather-week/ for details): Thu.: BLUF Annual Dore Alley Fair Welcome Dinner (6:30 p.m. at Don Ramon’s, 225 11th St.).

Fri.: Edge-ing w/Michael Brandon (9 p.m.-close at The Edge, 4149 18th St). Bearracuda SF – Dore Friday Underwear Night (9 p.m.-3 a.m. at Beatbox, 314 11th St.). Rubber Men of SF Meet & Squeak (7-9 p.m. at Bulldog Tattoo, 2275 Market St., Ste. 6). Up Yours

by Hell Hole Fisting Party (8 p.m.-2 a.m. at the Mr. S Leather Playspace, 385a 8th St.).

Sat.: 15 Association Men’s BDSM Dungeon Play Party (8 p.m.-1 a.m. at the SF Citadel, 181 Eddy St.). Bay of Pigs (10 p.m.-4 a.m. at 525 Harrison St.). Rubber Men of SF Back Dore Alley (5-9 p.m. at The Powerhouse, 1347 Folsom). SF Men’s Spanking Party (1-6 p.m. at The Power Exchange, 220 Jones St.).

Sun.: Up Your Alley Street Fair (11 a.m.-6 p.m., Dore Alley & Folsom, between 9th & 11th). Play T-Dance: Up Your Alley: DJ Craig Gaibler (5 p.m.-Midnight at Mezzanine, 444 Jesse St.). Rubber Men of SF Phoenix Twentytwelve Rubber Play Party (6-10 p.m. at the Mr. S Playspace, 385a 8th St.).

Note: The SF Citadel is now located at 181 Eddy St. Check out their website for their Dore Alley Weekend activities (including the Iron Dom Contest on Sat. afternoon): www.sfcitadel.org.

Thu., Jul. 26: Leather Party at Kok Bar. Shot & drink specials, go-go studs. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Fri., Jul. 27: Meet the Men from BigMuscle.com (plus BigMuscleLeather & BigMuscleBears) in person at Kok Bar. Verify your profile! 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Fri., Jul. 27: Truck Wash at Truck (1900 Folsom). 10 p.m.-close. Live shower boys, drink specials! Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Sat., Jul. 28: Up Your Alley In-Store Party at Mr. S Leather (385 8th St.). Drinks will be served. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Check them out on Facebook.

Sat., Jul. 28: Torque – Dore Saturday at Truck. 9 p.m.-close. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Sat., Jul. 28: Black Saturday Special Edition, Dore Sleezfest at The Powerhouse. Hosted by Mr. SF Leather 2012 Jesse Vanciel. 9 p.m.-close. Go to: www. powerhouse-sf.com.

Sat., Jul. 28: Boot Pig party at Kok Bar. Dylan is the featured bootblack. 3-7 p.m. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sat., Jul. 28: Durrty Dore Jockstrap Party at Kok Bar. Free clothes check. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sat., Jul. 28: All Beef Saturday Nights at The Lone Star (1354 Harrison). 100% SoMa Beef! 9 p.m.-close.

Go to: www.facebook.com/lonestarsf.

Sat., Jul. 28: Stallion Saturdays at Rebel Bar (1760 Market). Revolving DJs, after-hours fun! 9 p.m.-4 a.m. Go to: www.stallionsaturdays.com.

Sun., Jul. 29: Truck Bust Sundays at Truck. $1 beer bust. 4-8 p.m. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Mon., Jul. 30: Dirty Dicks at The Powerhouse. $3 well drinks. 4-10 p.m. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Tue., Jul. 31: Feminine Dominance: The Joy of Topping, taught by Rain DeGrey at the SF Citadel. 8 p.m.

Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Tue., Jul. 31: Ink & Metal at The Powerhouse. 9 p.m.close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Wed., Aug. 1: Pit Stop at Kok Bar. Happy Hour prices all night. 5 p.m.-close. Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Thu., Jul. 26: Rack Me Up: Panel discussion on breath-control play at the SF Citadel. $20. 8 p.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Wed., Aug. 1: Naked Buddies at Blow Buddies (933 Harrison), a male-only club. Doors open 8 p.m.-12 a.m. Play til late. Go to: www.blowbuddies.com.

Thu., Jul. 26: Gear Wear hosted by Luna SF at The Powerhouse (1347 Folsom). Celebrate your gear! 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Wed., Aug. 1: Nipple Play at The Powerhouse. Show off your nips for drink specials. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Thu., Jul. 26: Meat & Greet at Beatbox (314 11th St.).

Meet hot kinky pigs from around the world. 9 p.m.close. Go to: www.beatboxsf.com.

Wed., Aug. 1: Wolf! for Furry Men on the Prowl at The Watergarden (1010 The Alameda, San Jose).

Lockers are 1/2 price, 4 p.m.-1 a.m. Go to: www.thewatergarden.com.

▼

Karrnal >>

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 31

Erotic master

by John F. Karr

I

knew I was gay years before I could put any name to it. I must have been nine or 10 when the other boys called me a homo. They knew what I was several years before I did. (Similarly, I had no idea what it meant when they said that I squatted to pee; they also said I had a cunt, and I didn’t know what one of those was for at least another halfdozen years.)

There was something else I was, but didn’t know til I was way into adulthood, when Steven Saylor told me. As the editor of a popular gay magazine in the late 1980s, he hired me to write an article about John Waters. Despite, or more accurately, because of the filmmaker’s popularity, I dished him. Mine was certainly a minority opinion, and one which I’ve since reconsidered. After the article’s publication, amidst letters to the editor informing me I was an idiot, Saylor told me he knew I’d be reactionary. How’d he know that?

“You’re an iconoclast,” he said.

I must have heard the word before, but I’d never connected it to myself. And I was one. Steven Saylor had to tell me. And now I know something about Steven that you don’t.

Actually, it’s about Aaron Travis, who, in an alternate reality, is Steven Saylor. “Travis” was Saylor’s nom de porn back in the 80s when he wrote a slew of S/M and BD short stories and an (in)famous novel. All of them are currently way out of print, but in a happy development for Travis’ legion of fans, as well as those who are going to be able to discover the works, they’ve all become available as The Aaron Travis Erotic Library for your Kindle (or your Nook, if you’re a Barnes and Noble sort of reader). The best-known Travis one-hander is the novel of lust and degradation Slaves of the Empire. You probably don’t want to buy a used copy of the book for the $207 it’s listed for at Amazon, but should be glad to spring 10 bucks for an Amazon Kindle edition. There are 15 electronic Travis titles available, starting in price from $2.99 for shorter works, each with

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Written on Skin

From page 25

There’s a lot of “says The Boy,” “says The Man,” and so on, as the three principals all sing that continuity as well as their own lines, the effect of which, counter-intuitively, is anything but distancing. It also helps underline the opera’s pivotal transformation. The Woman is virtually mute when we first see her, trapped barely out of childhood in a marriage Sieglinde or Judith in Bartok’s Bluebeard might have envied, and kept illiterate (pivotal to the story) and barefoot. Through forces The Boy and his art unleash, she reclaims herself as Agnes, Barbara Hannigan’s enactment of which is as powerful a performance as I have seen on the operatic stage. It costs Agnes her life, which in this case looks unmistakably like freedom.

In exploring the death-dealing powers of Eros, this opera sits directly in the line that goes from Tristan through Lulu by way of Strauss’ Salome and Elektra, the

Aaron Travis, the author of S/M classics, aka Steven Saylor.

the book’s original cover.

Slaves of the Empire originally appeared in 1982, as a serial in Drummer magazine. It’s been through several trade and mass-market paperback editions over the years. One edition put it on the Advocate’s bestseller list (below Armistead Maupin’s Maybe the Moon, but above Madonna’s Sex). It’s the tale of blonde Barbarian identical-twin slaveprinces, the lust for them of the gladiator Magnus, and the ruthless Roman senator who threatens to destroy them all. Its sex scenes are beyond savage, with depravities that have not been matched since hatched

by Travis. Michael Bronski called the book “a high point of gay male writing in the second half of the 20th century.” I call it sensational.

I also had a lot to say in a 1991 article in the B.A.R. about a less depraved but no less sexy collection of stories, Wrestling Tales, and I take great delight in quoting myself. “Travis’ lewd and sassy smut is startling in its combination of wit and satire with gut-level, crotchpopping porn. This is pro wrestling the way we always dreamt it – a half-lock is sure to produce a

hard-on when Travis puts the men in the ring. Ripping off each other’s trunks, subjecting their conquered mates to unique brands of humiliation and throbbing penetration as the crowd cheers – these wrestlers go a good deal further than all the way. And what they do in the locker room is hair-raising! There’s rarely been porn as sexy and fun as this.”

One of the nifty things about these Kindle editions is that you can sample contents before you buy. So you can see real quick what critics have noted about Travis’ fine writing, beyond a sexual imagination that’s over-the-top. There’s an artist’s eye for detail and a historian’s knack for accuracy, psychological acuity, complex characters, and a deep and certifiably scary knowledge of S/M. The books stand beside titles by John Preston, Jack Fritscher, and most especially, the Phil Andros series by Sam Steward as classics of the genre.

Under his real name, Saylor has written over a dozen historical mystery novels set in the ancient Rome of Cicero and Caesar. He legally married his spouse, Richard Solomon, in 2008, and they live in Berkeley. When not writing, Saylor likes to keep in shape. Have you ever seen an author photo quite as enticing? www.aarontravis.net. ▼

last two of which it resembles in the inexorability of the score over a devastatingly short span. Without a trace of gratuitous sensationalism or an instant of nudity, this is the sexiest opera I’ve ever seen. The kisses The Woman lavishes on The Boy after challenging him to draw “a real woman,” and the ones The Man lays on The Boy – which we’ve seen coming since he swore, before there has even been a marital transgression, “I love The Boy” – are no “stage kisses,” and it’s a tribute to this astonishing trio that they can render these moments and still sing. In TV close-up, the scenes are scorching.

“Love’s not a picture,” Agnes calls out, “love is an act.”

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Benjamin’s score is how singable it is. It’s not tuneful in any platitudinous way, but every note and interval in the vocal score seems foreordained, and the fusion of word and note in the score helps the singers achieve the same.

Benjamin’s compositional voice – individual and hard-won, saturated

yet pellucid, inviting and ensnaring – has matured into something almost frightful in its transparency to its own larger purposes. It’s stealth art. You forget you’re in the theater, hearing music.

When The Boy first shows The Woman his book, the score is shot through with the textures of “early music,” but without crass borrowing and only whiffs of gamba. All sense of the contrived or the derived has been seared out of it like fat.

That’s not to say that this bold, original music doesn’t leave traces. There are hints of Berg in the opening measures, and as the score hurtles inexorably forward, Lulu, Debussy’s Pelleas, and greats gobs of Britten are in its rear-view mirror.

But unlike Agnes’ horrid last meal, they’re completely digested in Benjamin’s formidable brew.

The little we see of Benjamin in the pit, conducting the ace Mahler Chamber Orchestra, is telling. Not quite a microbeat, his is devoid of big, overpowering gestures – just a knowing plunge into the heart of the matter.▼

www.ebar.com

<< Film

32 • BAY AREA REPORTER • July 26-August 1, 2012

▼

Pagnol’s Provencal pastoral is rebooted

by David Lamble

M

arcel Pagnol apparently realized from an early age that we’re all blessed and cursed in complicated ways, ways known only deep down in the heart. Infatuated as a child during his family’s vacations with the rolling hills of the Provence district of Southern France, the novelist, playwright and filmmaker-to-be soaked up the virtually feudal codes that governed the prickly relations between shrewd peasants and a prideful gentry full of themselves. Ferocious tussles over scarce well-water transpired in the deceptively sleepy years leading up to WWI. As a teen, Pagnol absorbed an emotional body blow, the premature death of his mom. In The WellDigger’s Daughter, Pagnol bestowed that curse on the luminously beautiful, saintly behaving Patricia. In Daniel Auteuil’s remake of the classic, Patricia (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) is obliged to leap into the breach and be mom to her younger sisters while enduring a peculiar sort of chaste marriage with dad, the cagey if dundering blowhard Pascale (Auteuil). During a lunch break with his well-digging assistant Felipe (Kad Merad), Pascale confesses his irritation with his all-female household and his apprehensions about Patricia’s approaching the marriage age.

Felipe, a kindhearted soul who has long harbored a crush on Patricia, naively proposes that he be allowed to court her, an arrangement that would presumably leave the young lady in a double feudal bond, raising her sisters while obliged to sleep with an oafish older man she does not love.

Meanwhile Patricia has had a kind of magical encounter with the local rich boy/pilot Jacques Mazel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), whose

wealthy store-owner dad holds Pascale in distinctly feudal contempt.

In an almost farcical subplot, the bumbling Felipe becomes the unwitting accomplice to Patricia’s surrendering her virginity to Jacques, the lovers vanishing off into the countryside on the young man’s motorcycle. Auteuil – doing triple duty as actor-screenwriter-director, adapting Pagnol’s 1940 Vichy-era version – discreetly masks the physical encounter, but gives us full access to the young woman’s growing horror at her transgression: in the blinkered peasant world of her hottempered dad, where all things devolve into questions of class, property, propriety and honor, she is most certainly damaged goods. The lovers confront each other: the girl gently weeping over all she’s lost, including her role in mothering her sisters, while the young pilot, with his impending war service in mind, is almost blasé in urging Patricia to get with the anything-goes morality of a new century. The conversation begins with the lovers dueling over who wanted it more, and concludes with a pitiless assessment of the social gulf between them.

“You asked to stop.”

“I know.”

“Your scarf flew off.”

“I know. But there’s something you don’t know. The wind didn’t undo my scarf. I did. With the bike going so fast, I clung to you, and the scent of the wind made my head spin. I was scared of falling.”

“A declaration of love?”

“Or of weakness. I had never been so close to a boy before, but now –” “Now what? Don’t exaggerate. All young men and women go through this.”

“I can’t kiss my father and sisters anymore.”

“A little girl’s notions. If every girl reacted that way, families wouldn’t

Courtesy Kino Lorber

Astrid Berges-Frisbey plays the title character in director Daniel Auteuil’s The Well-Digger’s Daughter.

kiss much. If one of us has acted badly, I have. You’ve given me proof of your love.”

“But it proves I don’t deserve to be loved. Take me home quickly now, and forget all about it.”

“You don’t want to see me anymore?”

“Why bother? You’re rich, and I’m the well-digger’s daughter.”

Theatrical style Taking in this audacious reboot of an old-fashioned melodrama – first filmed by Pagnol in 1940 as Nazi boots crossed the Rhine, while Vichy collaborators ruled the rest of a shamed French nation – some will object to contrivances of plot and dialogue, as well as a distinctly theatrical style of acting by Auteuil. His Pascale

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sniffs and snorts, his face reddening as he alternately bullies and wheedles his opponents: his disgraced daughter and her baby son, whom he considers non-persons, as well as the missingin-action and presumed dead Jacques’ imperious and depressed parents, the wealthy Mazels.

The lovers are the movie, with Berges-Frisbey’s teary quivering nicely matched by pretty-boy model Duvauchelle’s surface charm. The very fact that he doesn’t summon up profound feelings actually reinforces the film’s point that the rich boy has an almost unlimited horizon of romantic options before the clouds of war roll in.

A provocative homework assignment for those planning to catch this one is to watch Claude Berri’s stirring remakes of the Pagnol “water wars” classics Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. The rousing, revenge-fueled melodramas – with Yves Montand’s nasty villain twirling his mustache, and Auteuil’s deliciously vicious career-breakout hunchback – provide highly entertaining clues as to why there might be so much bad blood between Pascale and the Mazels.

Pagnol, like his British Edwardianera novelist counterpart E.M. Forster, is a valuable guide to the shattering early-20th-century moments when feudal codes dissolved for hetero lovers – as may now happen for queers, trading in our once-outlaw freedoms for society-sanctioned marriage oaths. Just as Patricia and Jacques have to practically blow up their respective families to fulfill their love across once-impregnable class barriers, queer couples may soon find a vastly expanded dating pool, made up in part of people who may not identify as queer at all. The Well-Digger’s Daughter demonstrates just how well France’s first great filmmaker helped create and master a universal language of love. (Opens Friday.)▼

Silence of the Trans

From page 21

Who is Sharon Needles, who’ll be prominently featured onstage in the stage show that precedes the screening of the film that inspired it? “She’s an enigma,” Needles stated. “She isn’t real, so her back story isn’t true.

It’s not natural, it’s supernatural. It’s beautiful, spooky and stupid. Sharon is my baby, my pride and joy, my ultimate piece of artwork. She’s a downtown clown who happens to be dead.

But she doesn’t know that she’s dead.”

For Grannell, playing Peaches and staging shows such as these is a labor of love. Horror films have always been his genre of choice.

What’s most interesting about Grannell is how gentle and softspoken he is, as opposed to the monstrously over-the-top Peaches.

“Both are the real me,” he said.

“Peaches is an expression of my sense of humor, my outrageousness.

Peaches has been part of me for 1617 years now. Because of Peaches, I can wear crazy clothes and do outrageous things.”

The stage show is certainly in keeping with the Peaches Christ persona.

“People can expect a fully orchestrated stage show. A scripted musical theater piece, a straightforward play.

We’ve become more polished. A drag queen killer is killing the most famous drag queens, so Clarice goes to see Trannibal the Cannibal!”

The director/performer has fond memories of his Midnight Mass screenings, which were seen for many years at the Bridge Theater on Geary. He admits that age has contributed to the move to the Castro.

“I’m not getting any younger. Doing the earlier shows at the Castro is lovely! I miss Midnight Mass, but starting at Midnight was killing me.”

Kent Taylor

Peaches Christ (Joshua Grannell) wants to take your ticket.

For the immediate future, Grannell is teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. “I hope to inspire students to create rich characterizations where they can create great work.

Peaches made it possible for me to do these fun things.” He also has new films in preparation. His well-received feature-length horror film All About Evil is now available on DVD. It’s also aired on The Chiller Channel, which is available to Dish Network and Direct TV subscribers.

As for Peaches, she’s not going away anytime soon. After The Silence of the Trans, be on the lookout for Peaches’ 15th anniversary showing of the classic camp-fest Showgirls, which promises to be very naughty indeed!▼ The Silence of the Trans, starring Peaches Christ, Sharon Needles and the Midnight Mass Players.

Sat., July 28, 3 & 8 p.m., Castro Theater, 429 Castro St. Tickets: $20-$45.

▼

Film >>

July 26-August 1, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 33

Pleasure palace of the nouveau riche

by David Lamble

M

ovies, real movies with characters endowed with risible tics and foibles, are at their best when they’re funhouse mirrors, when they show us how foolish people like ourselves, but not literally ourselves, can be. In the very funny and decidedly embarrassing to its real-life subjects doc The Queen of Versailles, pro photographerturned-filmmaker Lauren Greenfield gets a nouveau riche family, the Siegels, to parade before her cameras during a moment they thought would be triumphant, but which, after the banana-peel slip of the 2008 housing crash, turns them into a poster family for spoiled, tasteless, bratty arrivistes.

In the film’s opening, David Siegel, the 73-year-old billionaire founder of a chain of vacation timeshare suites, introduces himself as a kind of latter-day Rodney Dangerfield. This “don’t-get-no-respect guy,” with an editorial assist from Greenfield, confesses to cultural/ political “crimes” that the likes of us are primed to see as hanging offenses – namely, that he was a big Florida supporter of George W. Bush, meaning, to paraphrase him, that he helped bring off the contested 2000 election and is in some way responsible for the Iraq War. That’s a mouthful, and before we even get to digest whatever was intended by this sly mea culpa, Greenfield rushes off and introduces David’s much younger “trophy” wife. Onetime beauty queen Jackie Siegel is the queen of the title, and a seemingly guile-free character, perfectly situated to draw in queens like us: so many queens, so little time. It is Queen Jackie’s disposition of David’s money that gives the piece its tang, its ability to confront and confound our mixed feelings for the runaway spending spree unleashed by the early-2000s housing bubble.

The core of the movie is the Siegels’ much-publicized decision to build a palace, the biggest house in Ameri-

<<

Lauren Greenfield, Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

David and Jackie Siegel are the subjects of director Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles.

ca, modeled after Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles.

The Siegels are raising eight schoolage kids, along with at least four poodle dogs and a household staff of 19, so maybe a palace is called for.

Frankly, it’s what’s projected for the palace and what’s actually in the Siegels’ modest 26,000-sq. ft. bungalow that inspire our shock and awe at Jackie’s spending sprees. Before the bubble burst, the Siegels aspired to upscale European booty, not unlike Orson Welles’ Charles Foster Kane.

By the time the stock market crashes and David’s company is cutting back, the family contents itself with all-youcan-carry Wal-Mart shopping forays.

Later, Jackie will engineer purging garage sales to assist her husband’s former employees.

It’s clear that Greenfield relishes her seemingly 24/7 backstage pass to the bursting of David Siegel’s bubble. The filmmaker interrupts domestic scenes of teens playing with their expensive toys and dodging piles of dog poop – it seems the creatures were never house-trained, but had an army of servants wiping their canine butts before the crash – to fill us in on the latest crisis in David’s collapsing financial empire.

Early satiric thrusts at the company’s hard-charging effort to rope ordinary folks into long-term contracts are replaced by tense views of David resisting his bankers’ demands that he liquidate the jewel of his empire, a Vegas showcase into which he has sunk $400 million.

Ultimately, The Queen of Ver-

Project: Lohan

From page 21

be a very uncomfortable scene becomes humorous.”

Drollinger, frequently seen in SF’s alt-theater scene before moving to New York 14 years ago, was waiting in a grocery checkout line, scanning a Vanity Fair cover story on Lohan, when the idea for Project: Lohan began forming. “It’s almost like the story of a modern-day Icarus who flies too close to the flashbulbs,” said Drollinger, who has moved back to SF. “I thought, what if I took something that seemed very fluffy, and, let’s face it, funny, and built it into something that straddles high camp and heartbreaking moments.”

Promotional imagery for the production is geared more toward its high-camp aspects, and Drollinger admitted to a bit of bait-and-switch.

“What I think makes the show interesting is that kind of sucker punch to the audience. The goal of the show is to be fascinated by its subject, and then take a minute to look at yourself looking at the show.”

Multi-media effects help toward this goal, with some scenes projected live on a big screen as they are being acted out. “It enhances the sense of Lindsay living a life with the media constantly watching,” Drollinger said. “We also do all the costume and hair changes on stage, which tries to give the feeling of being backstage on a movie set.”

Lohan has made herself an easy target for

Cindy Goldfield

Writer-actor D’Arcy Drollinger began thinking about a Lindsay Lohan show as he scanned a magazine in a grocery checkout line.

gossip mongering, but she has also displayed a resilience that has led her back into the ring for yet another round. “I don’t want to use her as a punching bag,” Drollinger said.

“She has this kind of Thelma-and-Louise fuck-you charisma that

I love. I want to make her fabulous and at the same time make a comment on the situation of celebrity today. The only way for this show to have integrity is not to judge her for her choices.”▼ Project: Lohan will run July 26-Aug. 19 at the Costume Shop.

Tickets, $25-$30, are available at www.projectlohan.com.

sailles’ lasting impression is of a possibly mismatched intergenerational couple who face a life-defining crisis with cameras rolling and very little affection left in the tank.

On the plus side, the kids appear to be all right, the girls making astute cheeky asides, the boys doing their best Rory Culkin buttoned-up-kid imitations. The Queen of Versailles asks the uncomfortable question of whether it’s fair for us to use the Siegels’ shortcomings and pridebefore-the-fall plight as cheap entertainment. If you say yes, well, it’s a very funny ride until right before the end, when it suddenly stops without properly concluding.

Back before the miracle AIDS cocktails, I was looking after a friend dying after a decade as a poster boy

for long-term survivors. Thinking Dan needed a few laughs, I popped in a tape of the best postwar satire on Americans moving to suburbia.

In Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are witty and physically silly, trying to stretch his 1948 15K middleclass ad-guy salary (very pre-Mad Men) to buy a small slice of heaven in bucolic Connecticut. A hilarious set-piece has Loy belting out “Home on the Range” in the shower while Grant shaves before a steam-clouded mirror. Their best friend – once Loy’s college boyfriend, the pipesmoking Melvyn Douglas – delivers a sardonic play-by-play on a possibly crumbling marriage, including a last-gasp attempt to expand the cluttered Gotham flat by hiring, gasp, a gay decorator. After an absurdist second act where Grant and Loy battle hetero bed death, greedy real-estate agents, builders, welldiggers and his need to create a nifty slogan for ham substitute Wham, Cary carries Myrna over the threshold – messing up a freshly varnished floor as a disgruntled workman snaps, “Hey, Mac, the Republicans ain’t in yet!”

My dying friend was riveted by Blandings, but not in the way I had hoped. What fascinated Dan was the suave Melvyn Douglas’ pipe-smoking. Before he died, Dan would take up a pipe, with nearly disastrous results for his caretakers. For me, though, many subsequent viewings of this comic gem have reaffirmed its ability to transport me back to perhaps the first modern American housing bubble, the brilliant trio of Grant, Loy and Douglas deftly recalling a time when American dreams weren’t always on the verge of a fire sale.

The Queen of Versailles, with its reality-show tricks and time-shifting editing dodges, is a diverting but faux tragic peek at a lost tribe that has misplaced its soul, before the cameras of an artist who still believes she was doing them a kindness. (Opens Friday.)▼

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ne of the more anticipated collaborations in recent memory, Little Broken Hearts (Blue Note) finds languorous jazz vocalist Norah Jones crossing the street to team up with Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton) on a dozen tunes. The partnership is at its most productive on a song such as “Say Goodbye,” where all the pieces fit together snugly as if the pair had been working together for years. We heard hints of this kind of ingenuity on Jones’ previous disc of original songs, The Fall. But on this disc, she takes a few more chances, as you can hear on “Out on the Road,” the funky single “Happy Pills” and the title cut. That said, there are a few occasions, such as “Take It Back” and “4 Broken Hearts,” where the energy level dips, as it is wont to do on a Jones disc. But for the most part, this is one case of heartbreak worth experiencing.

You have to wonder what was going through Feist’s usually brilliant head while she was making her latest record, the challenging Metals (Cherry Tree/ Interscope).

Especially since it is her first album since her lauded commercial breakthrough The Reminder, and comes after her remarkable debut disc Let It Die. Feist gets off to a decent start with “The Bad in Each Other.” The spooky “Graveyard” is brought to life by the female choir, while it’s the male vocals on the Kate Bushesque “A Commotion” that provide the spark. “Bittersweet Melodies” is so authentically retro that is sounds

instantly familiar. Unfortunately, the rest, while beautiful (as in “The Circle Married the Line”), is borderline boring.

Of course, it’s Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine who brings all of the essential elements together on Ceremonials (Universal Republic), the most magnificent of packages.

Ceremonials is that rare second album that incorporates and improves on all the components that made debut disc Lungs such a sensation. The dog days may be over, but Florence + the Machine will have listeners howling for more when they get an earful of alluring numbers “Shake It Out,” “No Light, No Light” and “All This and Heaven, Too.” On It All Starts with One (PIAS), Norwegian diva Ane Brun sounds like she’s been listening to her fair share of both Florence + the Machine (on “Do You Remember,” “What’s Happening with You and Him”) and Feist (on “Words” and “Worship” featuring Jose Gonzalez).

Fortunately for her, Ane has a strong and distinctive enough musical personality so that her own talents shine through.

Jesse Baylin sets aside the country/folk-pop of 2008’s Firesight for more of a retro style on her new album Little Spark (Blonde Rat/Thirty Tigers), and it suits her well. Songs such as “Hurry Hurry,” “Love Is Wasted on Lovers” and “Yuma” are fueled by a 1960s girl-group groove as appealing as it is effective. “The Wind” blows in on a different kind of breeze, and “Joy Is Suspicious” sounds like a lost Sam Phillips song.▼

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