March 8, 2012 edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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School lawsuit settled

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SF International Asian Am. Film Fest

Nightlife is big business in SF

The

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

Vol. 42 • No. 10 • March 8-14, 2012

HRC pick largely praised

by Matthew S. Bajko

T

he change in leadership this summer at the Human Rights Campaign is largely being welcomed by San Francisco LGBT leaders who hope it brings a course correction at the national organization.

Last week HRC’s board announced it had chosen Chad Griffin, a Los Angeles-based political Rick Gerharter consultant and fun- Chad Griffin draiser, as the successor to president Joe Solmonese. Griffin, 38, founded American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group that brought the federal lawsuit against California’s ban against samesex marriage.

When he starts this June, Griffin will have his work cut out for him in reaching out to LGBT people and groups in San Francisco.

Despite his role in the successful legal challenge against Proposition 8, Griffin is not well known among Bay Area LGBT people.

Besides increasing his name recognition Griffin, who was unavailable to comment for this story, will also be met with the fact that the DC-based HRC has had a fraught relationship with the LGBT community in the Bay Area for years. The list of complaints against HRC runs the gamut.

Among progressives, anger still lingers over how the lobbyist organization has handled transgender issues. Locals boycotted HRC’s 2008 San Francisco gala dinner to protest its backing a federal workers rights bill that did not include gender identity protections.

Griffin will be closely watched to see how HRC advocates for a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act once he takes the helm.

Writing on Facebook last week, local gay activist Jason Villalobos wrote of Griffin’s hiring that “wounds with the trans community still need to be healed or better addressed before the progressive faction of the gay rights movement even considers supporting HRC.” In a phone interview Gabriel Haaland, a labor leader and transgender activist who helped organize the HRC gala picket, said he is “hopeful” that Griffin can “bring a more representative perspective of our community” to HRC and that the decisions it makes under his leadership “resonate more strongly than they do now.”

Haaland, who said he didn’t know much about Griffin, hopes he makes it a point to See page 16 >>

Masen Davis

Julie Dorf

Mariah Hanson

David Harness

Pride grand marshal nominees announced Read story on page 15 >>

Kate Kendell

Sister Roma

Olga Talamante

Morningstar Vancil

Plans for TL Health clients announced

by Seth Hemmelgarn

A

fter weeks of virtual silence, the San Francisco Department of Public Health has announced transition plans for clients of Tenderloin Health.

The nonprofit, which serves some of the city’s poorest residents, including many who are living with HIV and AIDS, will close April 6, public health staff said in a Friday, March 2 statement.

Tenderloin Health, which is headquartered on Golden Gate Avenue, serves about 3,000 unduplicated clients. Officials say they have been working for a “smooth transition” to ensure their care isn’t interrupted. Many of the people the agency serves will go to Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, which is also located in the Tenderloin.

In the city’s statement, Health Director Barbara Garcia said she’s “confident that we have entered into agreements with excellent providers who will continue the important work begun by Tenderloin Health.”

The nonprofit’s board voted in December to close. That decision came about two months after the agency was notified that it was losing more than $500,000 in federal funding.

Tenderloin Health, which has been financially troubled for years, has a budget of about $6.4 million.

Officials didn’t publicly announce the decision to shut down until early January, after the Bay Area Reporter had been reporting on

Jane Philomen Cleland

API Wellness Center’s Lance Toma

the agency’s status for weeks. At least some of Tenderloin Health’s clients first learned of the agency’s closure from the B.A.R. Garcia said that officials had tried to find merger partners “and other funding options that did not come to fruition.”

The HIV Health Services, Housing and Urban Health, and HIV Prevention units of DPH have worked to create deals with other community organizations to ensure uninterrupted care, Garcia said. Primary care, case management, dental, and many other services will

{ FIRST OF TWO SECTIONS }

continue at the current site.

API Wellness Center will take over administration of the Tenderloin Area Center of Excellence, which involves the city’s efforts to provide care and support to people living with HIV in the neighborhood. Tom Waddell Health Center has also been a partner in that work along with Tenderloin Health and API Wellness Center.

Lance Toma, executive director of API Wellness Center, said that the services they’re taking over are similar to what they already provide. He didn’t know how many clients the agency would be getting.

“Our commitment is to ensure there is continuity of services for all of the HIV-positive clients that Tenderloin Health is currently serving through the Tenderloin Center of Excellence,” Toma said in an interview.

API Wellness Center, which has a budget of about $3.4 million, serves from 2,000 to 3,000 unduplicated clients.

Toma said his agency would get $540,000 annually from the health department that had been going to Tenderloin Health. He said they would try to retain as many of Tenderloin Health’s direct-service staffers as they can.

Those include mental health providers and behavioral health specialists. Tenderloin Health has about 38 paid staff.

Lutheran Social Services will take over emergency housing services for people living with HIV, according to the health department.

See page 16 >>

<< Community News

2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

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Dolores Park rehab plans met with good reviews

by David Duran

P

ebar.com

lans for a renovated Dolores Park received vetting from community members at an open house last week and the early reviews were positive.

The plans represent people’s decision making and bring together many ideas into one design. Community members were also encouraged to leave comments via sticky notes all over the designs, confirming their support and suggesting any further fine-tuning.

Last year, hundreds of people worked together in six workshops, nine steering committee meetings, and over 30 committee meetings to create the best possible plan for rehabilitating Dolores Park. At the February 29 open house, the project team shared the final drawings capturing all that deliberation and illustrating how Dolores Park will be more beautiful, comfortable, and functional when the project is complete.

The rehabilitation will be broken into three phases to assure that at least half of the park is open at all times. The current schedule calls for construction to begin in September, though that start date is still contingent on the completion of the environmental review and approval process.

Architect Maggie Judge of Hamilton and Aitken Architects was on hand to answer questions and present the final plans to the community.

“The current plan is really the result of the co-design process. We as a design team did not design the park, then present it to the community; we met with the community throughout the development of the plans and their input drove the development of the plan,” said Judge.

The community spoke up and told the architects where they most wanted to see the facilities built, and what could be improved about how the park currently functions.

“The challenge for us as designers has been to make the necessary improvements to the park while minimizing the perceived impact. From the architectural perspective, our challenge has been working the new construction into the topography of the site,” Judge told the Bay Area Reporter.

Two of the three new buildings will essentially be buried (the playground restroom is to be built into the slope of the hillside on the south side of the path to the new playground, and the operations and maintenance building is to be constructed under the new basketball court off of 18th Street).

One item that was not discussed was a proposal made previously for a pissoir, or “tastefully designed outdoor urinal” for the southwest ridge of the park known as the Gay Beach.

Judge said some design work had been done, but she did not know if it would be included in the project.

David Duran

Julia Goncalves and Mauricio Arce, who live just steps from Dolores Park, have been involved in the community planning process for the rehabilitation project.

If the Dolores Park renovations do begin in September, it means that for most of the next year and a half, residents will have to enjoy their picnics and sunbathing on only half of the park.

Crews will start working on the 20th and Church Street overlook, the 20th Street Muni stop, and the path between the playground and the promenade and picnic areas. The first of two phases will begin in February 2013 with the closing of the south side of the park, the west part of the promenade, the bridge and the Hidalgo statue overlook. That phase should end in August 2013.

The second phase will take place between September 2013 and July 2014, when the north side of the park will be closed, as will the east part of the promenade and the 19th Street entry plaza. Department of Public Works staff and the architects are optimistic that the work will continue to move forward on schedule and that no delays in the timeline are anticipated.

The recently renovated playground, which will open in late March, will stay open throughout the construction phases. The work at the Helen Diller Playground at Dolores Park was commissioned by the Friends of Dolores Park Playground and was a separate project from the Mission Dolores Park Rehabilitation Project.

Community view Mauricio Arce, 29, and Julia Goncalves, 33, live steps from the park

and have been heavily involved in the community open houses and meetings.

“I’ve received emails as well as a letter from the city regarding the rehab project. They are doing a great job keeping neighbors informed,” said Arce.

Goncalves was mostly concerned about the initial plans to have the entire park closed.

“When I first heard of plans to close the entire park during construction, I was very disappointed.

I’m glad they decided to only close sections of the park at one time,” she said. She believes that when parts of the park have been closed for some times, it has been manageable.

Parking is another situation Goncalves is worried about. “As far as the changes are concerned I must say I am worried that parking will become even more of a nightmare for the people living around the park.”

Both Arce and Goncalves are excited about the visual aesthetic as well as the increase in overall park safety. They are both pleased to have had the drawings and layouts posted around the park informing visitors of the changes to come.

“As long as the construction is structured and finished by the deadlines, I am all for the construction,” added Arce.▼ For more information on the Mission Dolores Park rehabilitation project, visit: sfrecpark.org/doloresparkproject.aspx.

Report sheds light on state judiciary’s LGBT makeup

by Matthew S. Bajko

A

new report is shedding light on the state judiciary’s LGBT makeup and has brought into stark relief how few out judges there are in California.

Of the 1,678 judges serving on the state’s courts, which includes the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, and trial courts, only 1 percent self-identify as gay and 1.1 percent as lesbian. There is one transgender judge and no known bisexual jurists.

“I am pleased to see more transparency in the reporting of representation figures for openly LGBT judges,” said Kelly M. Dermody, an out lesbian and partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein LLP. But Dermody, who is president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, added, “Unfortunately, these figures also highlight the significant work that remains to be done to achieve full diversity and inclusion on the bench.”

See page 14 >>

Bar Association of San Francisco President Kelly Dermody

National News>>

▼ Minnesota school district settles with student plaintiffs

by Lisa Keen

T

he National Center for Lesbian Rights joined with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education Tuesday in an agreement on behalf of six students with a Minnesota school district to take steps to prevent harassment of students who do not conform to gender stereotypes.

The agreement, announced Monday, March 5 by NCLR and on Tuesday, March 6 by the Departments of Justice and Education, ends two lawsuits in federal court against the Anoka-Hennepin School District.

One was filed by the DOJ and the other was filed by NCLR and the Southern Poverty Law Center in the U.S. District Court for Minnesota.

In Doe v. Anoka-Hennepin School District, NCLR challenged the constitutionality of the school district’s “Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy” that prohibited school staff “from offering support to LGBT students or acknowledging the existence of LGBT people.”

The Anoka-Hennepin School District, the largest school district in the state, serves 40,000 students in the Twin Cities area. Its website boasts that its “Character Education” program “teaches and emphasizes the core values of respect, responsibility, appreciation of diversity, integrity and compassion.”

NCLR said the agreement, which must be approved by a federal judge, promises the district will develop “significant new protections designed to prevent harassment of students who are or perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming, as well as those who have friends or parents who are LGBT.” The student plaintiffs, federal government, and the district have entered into a consent decree and the federal government will monitor the district for five years.

“The agreement specifically provides that teachers may affirm the dignity and self-worth of students and any protected characteristics of students, such as being LGBT, without running afoul of any district policy,” noted NCLR. NCLR said the agreement calls for the six student plaintiffs in NCLR’s complaint, all of whom were either gay or perceived to be gay, to receive a total of $270,000 in damages.

NCLR filed its lawsuit last July and the DOJ quickly followed with an investigation of a complaint that the district’s middle and high schools were unsafe for students who did not conform to gender stereotypes.

DOJ’s investigation included interviews with more than 60 people, including former students, parents, and staff. It found that some students were threatened with physical violence and verbal abuse on a daily basis, prompting some students to drop out of school and others attempted suicide.

“Students cannot learn if they are afraid to go to school,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez in a statement Tuesday. “Students cannot learn if they are being harassed and threatened. Students cannot learn if they are not free to be themselves. Students cannot learn if they feel that school administrators can’t and don’t protect them.”

“Bullying cannot be a rite of passage in our nation’s schools,” added Perez. “Instead, our schools must be safe and nurturing environments that promote learning and full participation by all students.”

Under the agreement, the school district has agreed to develop and

Courtesy NCLR

NCLR legal director Shannon Minter

implement a comprehensive plan for preventing and addressing student harassment of other students and to submit an annual report to the DOJ and Department of Education about its efforts. It also calls for adding personnel to help students who have been subjected to harassment and to ensure that the district complies with federal laws prohibiting harassment.

Contentious climate The agreement comes at a politically loaded time in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Legislature voted last May to put an initiative on the November 2012 ballot seeking to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

The friends and family of four teenagers who committed suicide in the district in recent years told a local newspaper that at least two of them were targeted specifically because they were either gay or perceived to be gay.

Yet Anoka-Hennepin’s policy, as revised in 2009, directed teachers and staff to “remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation” and leave such discussions to the students’ families and churches.

NCLR attorney Ilona Turner said, at the time the lawsuit was filed, that the policy singled out gays for exclusion and had a “direct” influence on the anti-gay atmosphere in the schools.

“Students get the message loud and clear that being gay is so shameful it can’t be mentioned,” said Turner. “And teachers are not sure they can even intervene when they see harassment.”

DOJ’s Perez said the school district was “very cooperative” in coming to an agreement.

NCLR legal director Shannon Minter said the district dropped its “neutrality” policy last month and in its place adopted a Respectful Learning Environment Curriculum policy. While the new policy “does not target anything to do with sexual orientation or gender identity or LGBT issues,” said Minter, “it provides general guidelines for how teachers and other school staff should deal with issues on which there are differing opinions.”

“We don’t think they need any policy at all, but we are thrilled that the ‘neutrality’ policy is off the books,” said Minter, “and the consent decree specifically clarifies that the new policy does not prevent teachers from affirming a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity. That provision was extremely important to us.”

The law firms Faegre Baker Daniels LLP, and Culberth and Lienemann LLP joined with NCLR and SPLC in their suit.▼

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 3

<< Community News

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

▼

Rick Gerharter

LGBT history on exhibit T

he GLBT Historical Society’s booth at San Francisco’s second annual History Expo, held March 3-4, included a timeline of significant LGBT events in the Bay Area. Roger Cook and Daniel Bao, far left, volunteered to staff the booth and answered questions about the work of the society. The

History Expo, organized by the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, showcased 32 local history associations, park support groups. and genealogy enthusiasts. The event, which also included historical films and appearances by local historical figures, took place in the Old Mint.

Nightlife major business for SF

by Matthew S. Bajko

S

ebar.com

an Francisco has long had an international reputation as a fun-loving city, and now city leaders have some idea of the economic boost nighttime entertainment provides.

The city’s “other 9 to 5” economy is a major contributor to San Francisco’s coffers, generating $4.2 billion in spending in 2010 and at least $55 million in tax revenue. The findings are part of an economic impact report the City Controller’s office released this week.

“Nightlife is a major source of jobs and also an economic driver for the city,” Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist, told a Board of Supervisor’s committee Monday, March 5 as he described the report’s conclusions. “These types of businesses draw people to San Francisco and pump money into San Francisco’s economy that otherwise wouldn’t be there.”

The data comes from restaurants, bars, nightclubs, art galleries, and live theater spaces that are open after 8 p.m. In 2010 there were more than 3,200 businesses that fell under the various categories, employing 48,000 people in San Francisco.

The bulk of the spending, nearly 80 percent, came from sales at restaurants. The controller’s report pegged spending at such establishments at $3.2 billion.

Bars and theaters accounted for 8 percent each, while nightclubs contributed 4 percent. Spending at bars amounted to $240 million, while nightclubs took in $220 million.

Nightlife advocates heralded the report’s release and view it as ammunition they can wield to fight back against policies that could negatively hurt entertainment businesses.

“We are thrilled with this study,” said Alix Rosenthal, co-chair of the California Music and Culture Association, a San Francisco-based lobbyist group for the industry. “We can now put a finger on the tax revenue and jobs created by nightlife businesses.”

Rosenthal told reporters at a press conference prior to the hearing that when politicians talk about “jobs, jobs, jobs” they should have entertainment venues in mind.

Jobs in the “other 9 to 5” could be higher, said Rosenthal, “if local and state leaders supported this industry.”

District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener called for the report last year shortly after he took office. A gay man who represents the Castro district, a major nightlife destination for locals and tourists, Wiener has staked out a role as a champion of late-night entertainment on the board.

Though he stressed that, “This re-

Jane Philomen Cleland

Chief Economist Ted Egan spoke about the findings in an economic impact report about San Francisco’s nightlife.

port does not in any way provide justification for nightlife spots not being accountable. We can support nightlife and at the same time say everyone has to play by the rules.”

At the news conference Wiener said he asked for the report so that politicians are not legislating entertainment “based on stereotypes,” but instead are “making data-based policy decisions.”

“The numbers are pretty stark,” said Wiener.

He also added that he hopes the report sheds light on how zoning decisions “can have a dramatic impact on nightlife.”

Wiener specifically pointed to the fighting over rezoning a portion of 11th Street as an entertainment district where housing would be a prohibited use.

“A plan for more housing there on 11th Street may end up driving out some venues,” said Wiener. “That may impact jobs and all these other benefits.”

But Jim Meko, a former member of the city’s Entertainment Commission, told the Bay Area Reporter in an interview that the report’s findings could undercut claims made by industry representatives about the economic importance of some late-night businesses.

He pointed to the relatively small slice of the economic pie that nightclubs contribute.

“I am not at all surprised nightclubs make up 4 percent of the spending,” said Meko, a gay man who chairs the SOMA Leadership Council and supports seeing more housing along 11th Street. “Nobody should be surprised most of the spending comes from people out of town and that most of the money is spent in tourist

trap areas. And most of that is done in restaurants.”

Yet Egan said nightclubs play an important role in attracting visitors who live outside of the Bay Area. In surveys the controller’s office conducted with people at various nightlife venues, 31 percent of tourists not from the Bay Area said nightclubs were their main reason for going out at night.

“It is an important contribution for what they spend in San Francisco and they spend more than San Francisco residents,” said Egan.

The report found that, on average, tourists spend $206 per evening, compared to $120 for Bay Area residents and $70 for San Francisco residents.

More than half of the $4.2 billion spent on nightlife came from people who do not live in the Bay Area, according to the report.

“If it wasn’t for these businesses drawing in tourists and other Bay Areans, we would be losing that money,” noted Egan.

The report did not break down patrons who answered the surveys based on their sexual orientation. But patrons at a number of LGBT venues, such as Castro nightspots the Cafe, Twin Peaks, and the 24-hour eatery Orphan Andy’s, took part.

The bulk of the city’s nightlife businesses are clustered in neighborhoods that have drawn LGBT visitors and residents for decades, from the Castro, Mission and South of Market to the Tenderloin, Polk and North Beach.

SOMA accounted for 14 percent of the spending detailed in the report, while the Mission, Potrero and Castro areas made up 8 percent.

“As a queer person, I know how important nightlife is culturally to us,” said Glendon Hyde, a gay man whose drag persona is Anna Conda.

As the neighborhood representative on the city’s Entertainment Commission, Hyde said his main focus is trying to bring residents and business owners together to solve problems.

He hopes the reports findings show that nightlife is not something people “should fight against.”

Wiener told the B.A.R. that the next step is to now review the city’s various codes governing nightlife businesses and see what changes, if any, should be considered so they are “less byzantine.”

And industry representatives are asking for additional reports to be conducted on the economic benefits that the city’s various street fairs and festivals generate. They were not included in the report released this week since each would require their own study, said Egan.

See page 5 >>

▼

Community News>>

Courtesy Oakland Police Dept.

Michael Davis

Courtesy Oakland Police Dept.

Nneka Crawford

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Courtesy Oakland Police Dept.

Randolph Wilkins

Occupy Oakland protesters face robbery, hate crime charges

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

hree Occupy Oakland protesters are facing robbery and hate crimes charges after allegedly attacking a woman and calling her anti-gay epithets.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s office has charged Michael Davis, 32; Nneka Crawford, 23; and Randolph Wilkins, 25, each with a felony count of second-degree robbery and a count of violation of civil rights “because of the victim’s status and perceived status as a homosexual.” They’ve also been ordered to stay away from the alleged victim.

Attorneys representing two of the defendants dispute the charges.

An attorney hadn’t been assigned to Wilkins as of Tuesday morning, March 6.

According to the Oakland Police Department, officers contacted the alleged victim at 6 p.m., Wednesday, February 22 after they responded to a robbery report in the 4000 block of Piedmont Avenue.

The woman told police she had been across the street from Wells Fargo Bank “near a small group of Occupy Oakland protesters calling for a riot,” according to a police statement.

The woman “suggested” they not riot in her neighborhood, police said.

Officers reported that three protesters surrounded her, battered her, and “yelled vulgar epithets regarding their perception of her sexual orientation.”

Additionally, her wallet was stolen, police said.

Documents from the Alameda County District Attorney’s office say the defendants called the woman a “’Dike’ [sic] and used additional derogatory slang terms for lesbians.” The records also say that she was physically injured.

Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland police spokeswoman, said she couldn’t discuss whether the victim was LGBT. She said that the woman hadn’t received any injuries “that would be treatable at a medical facility.”

<<

Nightlife

From page 4

The report does note that, “events and festivals generate a significant amount of economic activity for the city.”

It pointed out that the Folsom Street Fair attracts between 350,000 and 400,000 people to the annual leather fetish event, with 40 percent of attendees coming from outside of the Bay Area.

“Folsom is a major driver on its own,” in terms of economic impact, said Egan.

And a recent study done by San Francisco State University on behalf of Another Planet Entertainment estimated that the concert promoter’s Outside Lands Festival generates $60.6 million in spending in the city.

“Nightlife was under attack and now street fairs are under attack,” said Terrance Alan, a former entertainment commissioner and club owner.

The Bay Area Reporter isn’t identifying the woman because she’s the victim of an alleged hate crime. She could not be reached for comment.

Davis, of Richmond, and Crawford pleaded not guilty to the charges Monday, March 5. Wilkins was expected to be assigned an attorney and enter a plea Tuesday, March 6.

As of Tuesday, Davis was in custody in Glenn E. Dyer jail in Oakland on $125,000 bail.

According to the Alameda County Public Defender’s office, Crawford and Wilkins were both in Santa Rita jail Tuesday.

Yolanda Huang, the attorney representing Davis, said the protesters were leafleting and “engaging people in courteous, civil discussion” at Wells Fargo when the incident started.

Huang said the woman approached a group of protesters and “initiated a verbal altercation.” She said that the woman “started using racial slurs, like the N-word” and “accusing people of using crack.”

“Things got a little heated,” Huang said, and the woman grabbed the button on a demonstrator’s jacket. People told her to leave and also tried to restrain the woman, who was “smacking people,” by holding her hand, Huang said. She added that the victim had “prior relations” with some of the other occupiers, but she didn’t elaborate.

Huang said that after the woman used “the N-word,” one of the defendants said, “How would you feel if I called you a bull dyke?”

It’s not clear when exactly the defendants were arrested; police and other sources give differing dates.

Huang said the DA should dismiss the case and allow for a “civil compromise” and “restorative justice.” She also said that Oakland police are “trying to smear” Occupy Oakland.

John Viola, who’s representing Crawford, didn’t respond to an interview request. However, in a statement, he said, “These charges are part of a blatant effort” by Oakland police “to

An economic report looking at street fairs, predicted Alan, “would be very eye opening.”

DJ and party promoter Tom Temprano, a co-founder of the popular Hard French dance parties, told the panel that the report also overlooks the important role nightlife venues play in supporting the city’s vast array of nonprofits and community-based service providers. Most have lost significant public funding over the years and have received financial help from bars and nightclubs.

“As federal, state, and local governments have slashed funding, nightlife came out to contribute that back,” said Temprano, whose party last weekend raised $1,000 for art supplies at a local middle school. “We are here to be good neighbors just as other businesses are.”▼ The full report may be downloaded at co.sfgov.org/webreports/ details.aspx?id=1394.

discredit and intimidate activists.” He added that the incident has been “exaggerated.”

The preliminary hearing for all three defendants is set to begin March 16.▼

<< Open Forum

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

Volume 42, Number 10 March 8-14, 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 • Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy David Lamble • Michael K. Lavers Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Paul Parish • Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff Jim Piechota • Bob Roehr • Donna Sachet Adam Sandel • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Ed Walsh • Sura Wood

ART DIRECTION Kurt Thomas PRODUCTION MANAGER T. Scott King PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland Marc Geller Rick Gerharter Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith GENERAL MANAGER Michael M. Yamashita DISPLAY ADVERTISING Simma Baghbanbashi Colleen Small Scott Wazlowski NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

LEGAL COUNSEL Paul H. Melbostad

An inspired choice to lead HRC T

he Human Rights Campaign board pulled off a bold and surprising move last week when it named Chad Griffin as the next president of the organization. Griffin, who will start in June, is well known among California LGBTs for leading the fight in the federal Proposition 8 lawsuit. In 2009 it was Griffin who co-founded Americans for Equal Rights, the nonprofit that is behind the lawsuit, known as Perry v. Brown, and he was also responsible for recruiting the high-powered legal dream team of Theodore Olson and David Boies to argue the case, which they have done successfully so far.

Griffin will bring new energy to HRC and it couldn’t come at a more important time. Just last month three states passed marriage equality laws, adding urgency to their successful enactment. Granted, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie quickly vetoed his state’s law, and there are very real possibilities of referendums on the laws passed in Washington state and Maryland; but the fact that a majority of state lawmakers in those legislatures voted yes for marriage equality signals a quickly changing landscape and Griffin, as leader of the nation’s largest LGBT rights organization, likely will be quick to capitalize on these recent gains.

One of the best things about Griffin is his willingness to take on the establishment, and that includes the LGBT establishment. In 2009 when AFER filed its lawsuit on behalf of two California couples who wanted to marry, virtually all of the LGBT legal groups were aghast at this bold move. They had wanted to plod along, laying the groundwork for the “right” case. “Premature lawsuits based on the federal Constitution” could be “ill-timed,” read a joint statement in May 2009 signed by just about every national LGBT organization. That list included – you guessed it – HRC. And while the groups didn’t mention the Olson-Boies lawsuit specifically, the timing left no doubt they were referring to it. Tensions were so high at one point that Griffin’s legal team opposed the appointment of LGBT legal groups as intervenors in the case, leaving the LGBT community essentially out of the loop in a case that would directly impact it. But as the court case proceeded, Griffin and his litigators began to work with LGBT legal group leaders and a sense of teamwork grew.

While the Perry case is still advancing through the courts – and it’s not certain that there would be victory at the U.S. Supreme Court should the case be heard there – the rulings of the trial court and federal appeals court striking down Prop 8 are major legal victories for the community.

We expect Griffin’s tenure at HRC to be just as bold in challenging the status quo. And we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge

I

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that there are several other issues in addition to marriage that are critical to the LGBT community attaining equal rights. Chief among those is the hideous federal Defense of Marriage Act, which affects same-sex couples in numerous ways from obtaining health insurance to immigration. There is legislation to repeal the act in the Senate, but the House, controlled by Republicans, will be trickier.

Then there’s HRC’s long, tortured history with the transgender community, complete with backstabbing and reneging on promises related to gender identity being included in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The fallout from HRC’s 2007 debacle in this area (it caved and supported a version of ENDA that included only sexual orientation) still tears at the hearts of many trans people, especially in the Bay Area, where we have a large and politically active trans community. HRC is now on record as supporting a gender inclusive ENDA, and that bill has been proposed but is sitting around gathering dust because House Republicans will not call for a vote. There have been reports that President Barack Obama could sign an executive order for what is known as a “mini ENDA,” but the administration has not commented on that. We have editorialized before that we don’t think HRC ever saw ENDA as an economic bill and that a different lobbying strategy might have produced some movement on it. Griffin, known as a savvy strategist, might agree with us and re-energize the

conversation. Transgender people are typically underemployed – and unemployed – and having basic job protections would go a long way toward helping them in the workplace.

HRC must continue to work for and with the trans community.

No doubt Griffin will bring with him his fundraising capabilities, and that, too, is an asset. HRC has an annual budget of about $40 million. While easily the largest LGBT organization in the country, that figure is paltry compared to anti-gay groups that raise tens of millions of dollars. The LGBT community must level the playing field and when it comes to raising money, Griffin has a proven track record. He helped raise millions of dollars for AFER and the Perry case (Olson and Boies did not take the case pro bono) and we’re confident he will be successful.

Finally, Griffin comes equipped with intangible qualities that make him a potentially powerful leader. He has been nearly universally described by LGBT leaders as a smart, strategic person who can hold his own on television and when speaking out for LGBT equality. In this age of complete partisan gridlock in Congress and the hyper-kinetic volume of political discourse, we believe he is very capable of confronting the anti-gay forces that seek to deny us equality.

As the leading national LGBT rights organization, HRC is a big job with big responsibilities but we believe Griffin is up to the task.▼

Still second-class, even in divorce

by Esther Lee

Best Bay Area Community Newspaper 2006 San Francisco Bay Area Publicity Club

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n the same month the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Proposition 8 as unconstitutional and in violation of the Constitution, the Court of Appeals ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is in violation of Karen Golinski’s right to equal protection under the law to provide health benefits to her spouse. One month earlier, the same discriminatory law, DOMA, was cited against me in my divorce proceedings by my now former spouse.

The irony of a lesbian citing the homophobic inequality laws of DOMA in a same-sex divorce is not lost on me, or to the many people who knew our history as vocal marriage equality activists over the years.

Divorce is the painful and difficult chapter of many marriages. The impact and fallout of divorces like mine, where the family roles include one that is a traditional stay-at-home parent and a “bread-winner” parent, the financial disparity between spouses weighs heavily.

Thus, issues of fairness and the application of just legal decisions have great, lasting impact upon my life and the lives of our children. As a committed partner in a marriage of over 12 years, I made compromises and sacrifices when I chose to give birth to our two children.

I put my career on hold and raised children in a traditional family dynamic as a stay-at-home mother.

What most people are just learning is that DOMA, still the law of the land across the country, does not only prohibit the federal government from recognizing samesex marriages, it also negatively impacts divorce proceedings in states that have same-sex marriage rights. In my divorce case, it is being cited to deny my right to equal financial relief of spousal support income that would be rightfully owed to me if I were a heterosexual person.

Divorce, like a family death, has touched my life in a very painful way. With the introduction of DOMA to the California Superior Court in my divorce case, I was told, in no mistaken terms, that I am not equal under the eyes of our federal government and my family is still a second-class citizen in this country.

Ironically, I am being confronted face-toface with a discriminatory law impeding me and my children’s rights to full equality, in a year when historic marriage equality advancements are being made in various states.

I’ve learned many lessons about marriage equality since saying “I Do” many years ago, in a legally recognized same-sex marriage. Marriage equality is so much more than a fight for the right to wed the person we love.

As same-sex married couples, we try to make our relationships work, raise our families together, share a home and our finances together, often with the additional unfair societal and economic restraints, especially as

lesbians. And, as is the case for so many married people, often, larger-than-life situations interrupt that dream of maintaining a loving marriage and we find ourselves needing to part ways and dissolve our marriage and file for a divorce.

What we need to realize in our community, is that the struggle for marriage equality goes far beyond the right of marriage. It includes the right to go through the death of a marriage in a dignified manner, without having a homophobic law being cited to exploit an unfair economic advantage. Part of our larger struggle for equality is the basic right for all families, including my family, to be seen as equals under the law. Whether a family lives under a single household unit or in two households, whether parents are married or separated, we all want a more equitable and kinder world for our children to experience as equal citizens.

When a same-sex marriage ends, and divorce proceedings are skewed by the introduction of DOMA, this is not the case.

For most of my adult I have been an activist for the rights of my community. As I go through my divorce proceedings, there is no way I would be able to look into the eyes of my children, knowing I was confronted with a discriminatory law, unless I at least tried to fight this unfairness of being treated as a second-class citizen.

My children, ages 7 and 3, are a piece of me.

I am a part of who they are and who they will become. Whether we like it or not, they have now been thrown in to the same fight to be See page 17 >>

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Letters >>

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

Water works

Another definition of Santorum

Thanks for Matt Bajko’s well-written article about Restore Hetch Hetchy’s proposed ballot initiative regarding the modernization of San Francisco’s water supply [“Gay man helms Yosemite dam ballot fight,” March 1]. I’ve been doing some work with the agency over the past few months and have become an advocate for returning the valley to the national park system while guaranteeing the Bay Area a reliable supply of good water.

I thought the article was accurate about RHH’s and the measure’s opponents’ positions, but I’d like to clarify one thing. The initiative does not actually mandate destruction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam, but it would require the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to study ways of capturing – and conserving – water if and when the reservoir is eventually drained. As Bajko reported, the plan would be presented to voters in 2016 for a decision on whether or not to implement it.

I’d like to emphasize that the measure and RHH’s mission don’t challenge San Francisco’s legal right to the Tuolumne River as the principal source of water for San Francisco and its Bay Area customers. Rather, the goal is to bring the city’s century-old water plan into the 21st century.

If B.A.R. readers would like more information on the plan, there’s good background at www.hetchhetchy.org.

For those who would like to support the restoration efforts, RHH has an awesome backpacking fundraiser this summer in the Hetch Hetchy area called Muir’s March (www.muirsmarch.org). It’s worth checking out.

Regarding your editorial [“Santorum is in his own world,” March 1], Tom Brokow mentions in his book Boom! Voices of the Sixties that even Rick Santorum’s Senate colleagues sometimes had their fill of his “lecturing everyone on the superiority of his political ideology.”

Former Navy SEAL and Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska), not one for always following Senate protocol, once responded, “Santorum? Isn’t that Latin for ‘asshole’”?

One more reason to love the SEALS.

Cal Callahan Oakland, California

Charlie Spiegel San Francisco

Steve Evers San Francisco

If only Rock Hudson were alive Upon seeing Dustin Lance Black’s live play 8 telecast at the LGBT Community Center this past Saturday, I kept thinking how much had changed since the era of the closeted-until-almost-the-end Rock Hudson. There were Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Matthew Morrison – some gay, some straight, some who knows what – and so many others either playing gay or playing gay rights advocates in a massive statement of support. All reading from the Prop 8 trial transcripts in support of the American Foundation for Equal Rights and locally the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and hosted by Google. With the acknowledged top male Hollywood stars and other industry leaders participating, I wish Rock Hudson could have lived to see how we live today.

LGBTQ Family Night at the Y compiled by Cynthia Laird

O

ur Family Coalition will hold its 14th annual LGBTQ Family Night at the Berkeley YMCA Saturday, March 10 from 5 to 9 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults and children are free.

Our Family staff noted that for one night, the Berkeley Y and the coalition come together to celebrate LGBTQ families with the huge aparty.

Festivities will include dinner, swimming, kindergym, sports, arts and crafts, a Wii room, raffle, entertainment, and more.

(For swimming, all children must be accompanied by a parent in the water. Swim diapers are required for children not potty trained.)

Activities such as the kindergym and swim sessions will take place from 5 to 6, followed by a pizza party and announcement of raffle winners from 6 to 7. From 7 to 9 there will be entertainment, an art room, interactive wellness zone, and more.

Raffle tickets will be sold on-site for $2 each. Prizes include tickets to many local events, such as Aquarium by the Bay, Lindsay Wildlife Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. RSVPs are required and can be made by visiting lgbtqfamilynight2012.eventbrite.com.

The downtown Berkeley Y is located at 2001 Allston Way.

Crab feed in Concord The Rainbow Community Center in Contra Costa County will hold its seventh annual crab feed Saturday, March 10 from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Concord Moose Lodge, 1805 Broadway Street. The event features – of course – all you can eat crab, pasta, salad, and dessert. The dinner will also feature entertainment, raffle drawings, and auction items.

Tickets are $40 (plus a .99 processing fee) and can be purchased online at www.acteva.com/booking. cfm?bevaID=227861.

MCC-SF forums The board and staff of Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco have formed a planning team to review and evaluate the staff and board plan for the 2012-13 year at the Castro church. Two forums are being held to solicit input: Sunday, March 11 and Sunday, March 18.

Both will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. at the church, 150 Eureka Street. If people can’t attend the forums, they can leave comments in a suggestion box at church.

The staff and board will present the results of feedback at a meeting on Sunday, April 22 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the church.

For more information about the church, visit www.mccsf.org.

Openhouse book event Judy Rickard, the author of Torn Apart: United by Love, Divided by Law, which details her story of being part of a binational same-sex couple with her partner Karin Bogliolo, a citizen of Great Britain, will hold a book event Sunday, March 11 from noon to 2 p.m. (men’s group) and 3 to 5 p.m. (women’s group) for Openhouse at 145 Guerrero Street. There is no cost to attend, but Rickard said that donations to Out4Immigration are welcome and copies of her book that are sold that day will benefit the group.

Rickard will read from her book and there will also be a discussion.

LGBT inclusion in Israel A Wider Bridge will hold a forum next week entitled, “Rainbow Generations: Building New LGBTQ Pride and Inclusion in Israel.” A panel discussion will feature leaders from AILO, a new partnership of Israeli LGBTQ organizations working with youth, families, and educators.

The forum will be held Tuesday, March 13 at 7 p.m. at Congregation Sha’r Zahav, 290 Dolores Street in San Francisco. Speakers will address the changes taking place in Israel’s LGBTQ movement today; what it means to come out and live as an LGBTQ young person in Israel today; the at-

tack on the LGBTQ youth center in August 2009 and the community’s response; and building successful partnerships with local and national organizations such as schools, Israel Defense Forces, and others.

Congregation Sha’r Zahav is cosponsoring the panel, along with Congregation Sherith Israel, Keshet, the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco, and the Israel Center.

GSA meet-up in SF Gay-straight alliances in San Francisco are invited to a free meetup event that takes place Thursday, March 15 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, 100 Collingwood Street.

Attendees will learn essential GSA skills, make new friends, and share their stories and experiences, helping to build the GSA movement in San Francisco. The meet-up is cosponsored by GSA Network, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, EVRC, the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center, and the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.

Participants must register by Wednesday, March 14 at 3 p.m. and can do so by visiting www.gsanetwork.org. Click on “Events” then click on “Trainings and Summits.”

ACT UP exhibit at historical society A new exhibit, “Life and Death in Black and White: AIDS Direct Action in San Francisco,” will open Thursday, March 15 at the GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th Street in the Castro.

The exhibit, covering the period 19851990, focuses on the work of five queer photographers who documented the emergence of militant AIDS activism in the city. Works from Bay Area Reporter photographers Jane Philomen Cleland and Rick Gerharter will be featured, along with those by photographers Dan Nicoletta, Marc Geller, and Patrick Clifton.

The exhibit will be open through July 1. Next week’s opening reception takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. Museum admission is $5 (general), $3 California students (with ID), and free for museum members. ▼

ebar.com

<< Business News

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

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A queer eye for the fashion industry

by Raymond Flournoy

A

group of local queer entrepreneurs want to change the way the fashion world views beauty, and perhaps change the rest of society along with it. “We view ourselves as the civil rights movement of the fashion industry,” said Nick Navarro, co-founder and CEO of fashion house Melange.

The goal of Melange is to promote designers, models, and artists representing a diversity of ethnicity, body shape, and sexuality that Navarro believes is not reflected by the mainstream fashion industry.

“The industry has an outdated, homogeneous view of beauty,” said Navarro, “We want to be a catalyst for change.”

Navarro, who is Latino and openly gay, created Melange last year along with COO Talia Romano, who identifies as bisexual, and business officer Lani Wyche. During the past year, Melange produced two fashion shows, and is preparing for its third event later this month.

The March show will be held at Bossini (2855 Stevens Creek Boulevard, Suite 1251, Santa Clara) and will feature the spring and summer collection from Versace. Melange is holding a final model casting call this weekend in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and San Jose.

Beyond producing fashion shows, Melange is preparing to add an ecommerce section to its website where up-and-coming designers can market their creations directly to consumers.

The Versace fashion show is not open to the public. To inquire about being added to the guest list, and for information on the Versace fashion show model casting, contact Patrisha Bailey at patrisha@membersofmelange.com.

Fashionable icons This Friday evening, March 9, Castro clothing store Sui Generis will be hosting an opening reception for a new art installation entitled “Santos.” The event lasts from 6 to 9 p.m. and will be held at the Ille men’s boutique (2231 Market Street).

“Santos” is the work of local artist Mike Fernandez, who describes the series of portraits as “Vidal Sassoon mixed with religious undertones.” The exhibition will run until March 25, and opening reception attendees are encouraged to RSVP to events@suigenerisconsignment.com.

Levi’s equality T San Francisco-based clothing company Levi Strauss and Co. has shown its support for marriage equality by designing two T-shirts for the Human Rights Campaign.

One shirt shows a gay couple sporting a “Just married” sign, and the other features a lesbian couple, one in a mini-skirted wedding dress.

The two shirts are based on window displays from Levi’s New York stores, created during the run-up to the New York Legislature’s vote on marriage equality last year.

Although Levi’s has a boutique in the heart of the Castro at 525 Castro Street, the shirts are sold exclusively through the HRC Action Center (575 Castro Street). All of the proceeds from the $35 shirts go to support the work of HRC.

So long, Sydney!

Former owner of the End Up (401 6th Street) Sydney Leung is preparing to move away from San Francis-

Steven Kasapi

The HRC Action Center’s Colton Windsor shows off the new T-shirts from Levi’s supporting marriage equality.

co, and a fundraising event has been organized to bid him farewell.

The March 24 event will be emceed by Tita Aida and will feature performances by Josh Klipp and The Klipptones. The organizers also promise a closing jazz number

by Leung himself. The event runs from 8 to 10 p.m. and leads into the End Up’s monthly Shangri-La party.

The organizers are requesting a $10 donation for the event, and proceeds will be split between three charities: Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center (730 Polk Street), Transgender Law Center (870 Market Street, Room 400), and Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (www.gapa.org).

Corporate sponsors celebrate the center A wide variety of corporate and local sponsors have come together to help the San Francisco LGBT Community Center (1800 Market Street) celebrate its 10th anniversary this month.

The entire 10th anniversary campaign is presented by Target, which is preparing to open its first location within San Francisco later this year, with a second store to follow soon after. [For more on Target, see Political Notes on page 9.] The 10th anniversary campaign is also sponsored by State Farm Insurance, Levi Strauss Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, and Barefoot wine and bubbly.

The centerpiece of the anniversary celebration is Soiree 10, a party featuring performances by Marga Gomez, Veronica Klaus, and other local queer performers. The event will be held on March 24 at the SF Design Center (101 Henry Adams Street).

The lead sponsor for Soiree 10 is the California Pacific Medical Center. Other sponsors include a mix of national, mainstream cor-

porations, such as US Bank, QVC, and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, and smaller, local businesses, such as Paul Mathew Vineyards in Forestville, Boon Hotel and Spa in Guerneville, and San Francisco eatery Medjool (2522 Mission Street).

For a full list of sponsors and information on purchasing tickets, visit www.soiree10.com.

StartOut Awards debut The premiere presentation of the StartOut Awards occurs tonight (Thursday, March 8), in a soldout event at the W Hotel (181 3rd Street). The awards are intended to “highlight and celebrate exceptional and innovative entrepreneurs in the LGBT community,” according to a press release from the StartOut organization.

This year’s ceremony includes the presentation of four awards. The JPMorgan Chase Leadership Award will be presented to Peter Thiel, cofounder and former CEO of PayPal. Thiel, who was recently profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle, has contributed millions of dollars to the super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.

The Pillsbury Winthrop Advocate Award goes to Kathy Levinson, philanthropist and former COO of E*Trade and now involved with President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. Geoff Lewis, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Topguest, will receive the Wells Fargo Next Generation Award. And Ramona Pierson, founder of SynapticMash will accept the Google Innovator Award.

StartOut is a national nonprofit that describes itself as dedicated to “creating great LGBT business leaders by helping aspiring entrepreneurs start new companies, helping current entrepreneurs to grow and expand their businesses, and engaging successful entrepreneurs as role models and mentors for new entrepreneurs.” For more information, visit www.startout.org. ▼

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Politics >>

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

Company targets giving to SF LGBT center

by Matthew S. Bajko

A

s Target prepares to open its first stores in San Francisco, the national retailer is increasing its giving to local LGBT organizations.

The company upped its donations to the LGBT Community Center, which is marking its 10th year and has launched a $1 million fundraising drive. Target donated $50,000 toward the anniversary campaign and is sponsoring the center’s annual Soiree gala later this month at the $15,000 level.

Target first gave toward the event in 2011, and also donated $20,000 toward the center’s education initiative last year with the San Francisco Unified School District.

Center Executive Director Rebecca Rolfe told the Bay Area Reporter the organization is “very pleased” to have Target as a major donor this year.

“They have made a pretty significant investment across a spectrum of needs,” she added.

Molly Snyder, a spokeswoman for the company, told the B.A.R. that it is too early to disclose Target’s full plans for LGBT giving in 2012.

In an emailed response to a request for comment, Snyder only confirmed that the company is “honored” to be a presenting sponsor for the center’s March 2012 Soiree as well as its 10th anniversary season.

Target’s first donation to the LGBT center was in 2000, added Snyder, “before they opened their doors.”

“At Target, we’re proud of our long history of supporting the LGBT community through giving, volunteerism and event partnership and participation. Target was one of the San Francisco LGBT Center’s first corporate sponsors,” wrote Snyder.

The company has also been a ma-

National retailer Target, which has plans to open two stores in the city, has increased its giving to gay groups, including the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.

jor corporate sponsor for Out and Equal Workplace Advocates. Since 2010 Target has been a presenting sponsor for the San Francisco-based LGBT group’s Workplace Summits.

The donations to the Bay Area LGBT groups came as the Minneapolis-based company found itself the target of an LGBT backlash two years ago for donating $150,000 to Minnesota Forward, an independent expenditure committee at the time backing an anti-gay candidate for governor.

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel’s initial defense of the donation to the business-friendly group further inflamed LGBT activists, some of whom called for a boycott of the company.

The contretemps raised questions among San Francisco officials, who at the time were considering proposals for Target stores at the Metreon complex South of Market and a former Mervyn’s store on Geary

Boulevard at Masonic.

Steinhafel later apologized and promised to review how the company decides to make financial contributions. In a letter to his employees that summer, Steinhafel wrote, “Let me be very clear, Target’s support of the GLBT community is unwavering, and inclusiveness remains a core value of our company.”

Later revelations of donations to other antigay politicians added to the controversy. In response, Target created a policy committee to review and guide its political donations.

Its first meeting in 2011 to gather input was in San Francisco with representatives from various local and national LGBT groups, though it did not disclose who was at the meeting.

The company garnered more bad

press in the gay media last spring when it sued a San Diego activist group supportive of same-sex marriage in an attempt to prevent its paid canvassers from approaching shoppers leaving Target stores. A judge ruled the canvassers could be at the stores but had to stay 30 feet from the entrance.

The company’s actions also led Lady Gaga to renege on her deal with Target to sell a special edition of her Born This Way CD. As part of the contract talks, the singer had pushed the retailer to increase its giving to LGBT charities, according to an interview she gave to Billboard magazine.

In a separate interview with the publication, Target Vice President of Public Relations Dustee Tucker Jenkins disclosed the company had committed to donate at least half a million dollars to LGBT groups in 2011.

Before center officials agreed to team up with Target, Rolfe said they looked into, and were satisfied by, the company’s new giving policies.

Despite the hit to its reputation, Target continues to be looked upon favorably by many LGBT shoppers, added Rolfe.

“They made a commitment to address the criticisms that were made,” said Rolfe. “They are deeply engaged in the LGBT community and want to look at making a strong relationship with the local LGBT community.”

For several years the company had received perfect scores on the national Human Rights Campaign’s annual report on best places for LGBT people to work. But after the

national LGBT group began asking about transgender health coverage policies, Target’s ranking took a hit.

The company earned an 85 out of 100 score on HRC’s 2012 Corporate Equality Index. It lost points for not offering transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage as well as not providing the same “soft benefits,” such as bereavement leave and employee discounts, to same-sex couples as it does to heterosexual couples.

Target expects to open its first store within San Francisco’s city limits at the Metreon in October and plans to have the Geary location open before the 2013 Christmas shopping season.

Its closest locations outside the city are in Colma and San Bruno.

LGBT activists welcome seeing Target’s corporate giving benefit local agencies, but they also add the company’s donations do not mean it won’t face criticisms for any antigay moves or policies going forward.

“I think the center is a great San Francisco institution and it is deserving of corporate America’s support.

And if corporate America wants to support its work, I am happy the center is getting those contributions,” said Rafael Mandelman, a gay local Democratic Party official who joined the center’s board last year. “I don’t think that in any way means activists in the LGBT community are not going to continue to hold those corporations accountable.”

Gay Republican runs against Ammiano A gay Republican Party official has decided to take on openly gay state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) this year as he seeks re-election to a third and final term in the Legislature’s lower body.

Jason P. Clark, 31, a member See page 17 >>

More than birth control

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

I

n yet another attempt to derail health care, mainly aimed at the Obama administration’s rules for birth control coverage, Missouri Senator Roy Blunt (R) proposed an amendment to a federal highway and highway safety construction bill, S.1813. The amendment had very little to do with highways and a lot do to with playing politics.

Popularly referred to as the Blunt Amendment, the purpose of it was to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, allowing any employer with a moral objection to opt out of the coverage requirements of the bill. Currently, only churches are fully exempted from providing coverage. Religious organizations such as charities or religions schools can refuse, thanks to a move by the administration allowing them to do so – provided the insurance companies provide such coverage directly.

The Blunt Amendment was narrowly defeated by a 51-48 vote.

The focus, as I indicated above, was to go after birth control coverage.

As a result, women’s reproductive health, as well as birth control, has become a battleground overnight, with panels of male religious leaders being brought in to testify, as well as Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. In the case of the latter we’ve seen the story continue even after the defeat of the amendment, with Rush Limbaugh calling her a slut, and expecting “sex tapes” from Fluke in exchange for birth control coverage.

Now it’s important to note that while the bill was indeed aimed squarely at birth control coverage, the language did not stop there.

The bill would have allowed any employer, based purely on their own “moral stance,” to disallow any specific coverage. It becomes a much bigger issue than just the intended issue of birth control, and veers into the care of all people. More specifically, it could affect those who might refuse to treat some one because they are gay or lesbian, citing a “moral distaste” for homosexuality.

And more likely in the eyes of this columnist, it would allow transgender people to be discriminated against in health care circles, based on a care provider’s moral views.

Consider that many transgender people are prescribed hormones and other medications related to a gender transition. Many may also be on medications that, while not directly related to being transgender, may aid their quality of life – say an anti-depressant, or a medication for restoring lost hair. Those who may have recently had surgeries could have prescriptions for painkillers or other medications. Under the Blunt Amendment, coverage for these could potentially have been disallowed.

While it is also rare for an insurer to cover actual genital reassignment surgery or chest reconstruction, the Blunt Amendment would have given yet another out. Perhaps more importantly, it could have potentially been used to prevent needed medical care to transgender people regardless

of that care being trans related – simply because the person getting the care was transgender. An example might be a female-to-male who could need a mastectomy for non-transition reasons, who might see their claim disallowed because it could otherwise benefit their transition.

Such situations have come up before with insurers who do not cover transgender people, and the Blunt Amendment, again, would have simply given yet one more excuse.

A handy out, based on a supposed moral objection.

I want to assume that the Blunt Amendment – while it did deliberately and intentionally overreach – was not specifically targeting transgender health issues. It may well have been that someone, somewhere along the lines realized it could, but I don’t think it was a specific target intended by the bill. It seems pretty clearly to have been aimed at contraception, even though Blunt has made it clear that the amendment itself did not mention contraception by name.

Nevertheless, it is important to realize that while we may not have been the intended targets of this amendment, it could and likely would have affected transgender people across the nation. As a transgender person, it becomes all that more important not to just look at bills that would specifically target our interests, but those which could be otherwise be used against us.

Perhaps, too, we can see this as an opportunity. While this bill may not have specifically named us, it is a good reason to stand up and note our place in the wider spectrum of people who could have been harmed. It points out that bills that affect the health of women in this society may also affect transgender women – as well as

Christine Smith

transgender people of all stripes.

This is something so often forgotten. We so often focus on things that directly affect transgender people, forgetting that we’re part of a larger framework. When a law affects people of color, it also can affect transgender people of color, a bill that affects women can affect all women, transgender and otherwise, a rule involving disability can affect transgender people who are disabled, and so on.

When people fight for marriage equality for example, they are also – whether they know it or not – fighting for transgender rights, too. Trans people have often been

disenfranchised in that fight, yet have also typically been some of the first affected by Defense of Marriage Act-like laws. Redefining marriage to remove the need for gender specific language helps us, and we should support such a cause.

In my opinion, this should serve as a sort of wake up call to transgender people to be more involved in the broader discourse. Consider how you can help in issues beyond those specifically transgender – and make a difference.▼ Gwen Smith didn’t mean to be so blunt. You’ll find her on the web at www.gwensmith.com.

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

Read more online at www.ebar.com

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

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Election 2012>>

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

Santorum, Romney notch Super Tuesday wins

by Lisa Keen

T

heir positions on same-sex marriage haven’t changed, and Super Tuesday voting showed that the tightly packed nature of the four-man Republican presidential race has not changed either – except, perhaps, for a surprise comment Tuesday night by former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin that she might be interested in joining the fray.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won Ohio, Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia (where only he and Ron Paul were on the ballot), Idaho, and Alaska. His victory in Ohio was narrow, however, about 1 percent, creating fresh doubt among pundits that he can connect with working class voters.

Former Senator Rick Santorum won Tennessee, Oklahoma, and North Dakota.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won his home state of Georgia.

Romney also won the Washington state caucuses on Saturday with 37 percent of the votes, followed by Texas Congressman Ron Paul and Santorum with 24 percent each, and Gingrich with 11 percent. The Seattle Times reported that evangelical voters in that state did not appear united behind Santorum, even though that demographic has united behind one candidate in previous caucuses.

“Interviews with evangelical leaders, anti-abortion activists, gay-marriage opponents and other religious conservatives found them split among all four remaining Republican presidential contenders,” noted the Times.

But the CNN exit polls Tuesday night found Santorum taking a clear majority of votes from evangelicals in Ohio – 47 percent – over Rom-

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum

ney, who earned only 30 percent of that demographic. A Bloomberg News analysis said that “many” of the evangelical voters were motivated by same-sex marriage and abortion.

But contraception seemed more in the news, given the publicity around right-wing radio talk host Rush Limbaugh’s solicitation for a college student to post videos of her having sex with government-sponsored contraceptives “so we can all watch.”

Santorum is against contraception; Romney is for.

Interestingly, Gingrich toned down his opposition to same-sex marriage in Washington state, even though he signed a right-wing “Marriage Vow” last fall, agreeing to fight against same-sex marriage in all contexts. According to the News Tribune of Tacoma, both Santorum and Gingrich visited Republican legislators in the state Capitol the week after Governor Chris Gregoire signed a marriage equality bill. The Tribune said Gingrich “declined” to “outright reject” the new law and, instead, praised opponents for seek-

ing to put the issue before voters in November.

Romney picked up some important endorsements going into Tuesday, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

And CNN estimates Romney now has 404 delegates toward the 1,144 he needs to secure the Republican nomination. Santorum is in secondplace in the delegate count with 165, followed by Gingrich with 106, and Paul with 66.

Meanwhile, Palin, the former Alaska governor, has endorsed none of the four major contenders, except to say any would be better than Democratic President Barack Obama.

Catching her at a voting precinct in Wasilla, Alaska, CNN asked her whether she would allow someone to put her name in nomination for the White House at the GOP’s convention in Tampa, should none of the four current contenders be able to muster the delegates necessary to secure the nomination.

“I don’t close any doors that perhaps would be open out there, so, no, I wouldn’t close that door,” said Palin. “And my plan is to be at that convention.”

Jerame Davis, executive director of the national Stonewall Democrats group, issued a statement Tuesday night calling the Republican candidates “a field of nincompoops and homophobes.”

“Democrats,” he said, “can rest assured that they are the big winners again tonight.”

The Republican contest now shifts to Mississippi, Alabama, and Hawaii where voters will weigh in Tuesday, March 13, followed by Missouri caucuses March 17. The next big state, Illinois, holds its GOP primary March 20.▼

Villaraigosa endorses marriage plank in Dem platform

by Michael K. Lavers

L

os Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on March 7 endorsed a proposal that would add marriage for same-sex couples to the Democratic Party’s 2012 platform.

“It’s basically who we are,” he told Politico’s Mike Allen at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. “I believe in family values and I believe that we all want to be able to have a family and marry if we want to. I don’t think the government should be in that business of denying people the fundamental right to marry.”

Villaraigosa, who chairs the 2012 Democratic National Convention, endorsed the proposed plank less than a week after California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and 18 other lawmakers publicly backed it. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), California Attorney General Kamala Harris, and other Democrats have also endorsed the proposal.

A Boxer spokesperson told Bay Area Reporter that the senator would welcome Villaraigosa’s endorsement.

“I strongly support marriage equality and efforts to make that a reality for all Americans, including adding marriage equality language to our party’s platform,” said Boxer in a statement that announced her support of the proposed marriage equality plank in the party’s 2012 platform.

Villaraigosa also co-chairs a bipartisan coalition of 175 mayors that

Michael K. Lavers

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, left, and Politico’s Mike Allen at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on March 7.

includes San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates who support nuptials for gays and lesbians.

“We believe that the government shouldn’t be getting in the lives – interfering with the fundamental liberty, the fundamental right to have a family, to marry,” said Villaraigosa.

“It’s been amazing the number of people who’ve just said, let’s stop the culture wars. Let’s get the government out of that business. Let’s focus on what’s important: the economy, getting people back to work.”

Villaraigosa’s announcement comes less than a month after a three-judge panel with the 9th U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals upheld now-retired Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s 2010 ruling that found California’s same-sex marriage ban, Proposition 8, unconstitutional.

“I like to say L.A.’s a city that doesn’t care who your father is – in my case they don’t care that I didn’t have one,” said Villaraigosa in response to Allen’s question about his mayoral record. “With Judge Walker’s decision on marriage equality, they don’t care if you have two of ‘em. This is a city that says just do it.”

The announcement comes as sevSee page 17 >>

<< The Sports Page

14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

▼

Gay softball celebrates its 40th year

by Roger Brigham

A “camp” game will be played at 1 p.m. between the SFGSL executive board and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, followed by a 2 p.m. game between SFGSL and the San Francisco Police Department. The Cops versus Queers game has historic resonance to it. The first such game was played in 1973 and was introduced in an effort to deescalate tensions between the police department and the gay community; the second game, in 1974, was won 9-4 by the Twin Peaks team and was a watershed moment of community pride.

“We haven’t played it in years,” said Brown, who will emcee the day’s event along with SFGSL Commissioner Vincent Fuqua. “We decided it would be a good time to do it again.”

The day’s events will conclude with parties at eight sponsoring bars at 4 p.m.

The day before Sunday’s celebration, bowlers will protest the scheduled closure of Daly City’s Serra Bowl, home to the LGBT Wednesday Night Community League. Serra Bowl confirmed last week that it will close in April because its lease is not being renewed – the latest in a long list of lanes to close. A community gathering and

S

oftball and bowling, the two grand-daddies of organized LGBT sports, will engage in notable but dramatically different historic moments in the next few days. Softball will celebrate the brilliance of its past, while bowling marks the passing of one more longtime venue.

The San Francisco Gay Softball League will pull out all the stops Sunday, March 11, when it celebrates its 40th anniversary at Lang Field, located at Turk and Gough streets.

Entertainment will begin at noon with performances by the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, the Imperial Court of San Francisco, and Cheer SF. Representatives of the league’s 63 teams will march in a parade, proclamations from the Board of Supervisors and the mayor will be read, and the national anthem will be performed.

In a special moment, nine surviving original members of SFGSL will be honored with commemorative medallions: Mark Brown, Pat Conlon, Lou Gilmore, Paul Lynch, Joseph Ritchie, Skip Schafer, Norm Smith, and Bob Solomon.

Bounty ball

Mark Brown, one of the surviving original members of the San Francisco Gay Softball league, will be given a special commendation Sunday.

protest is scheduled at the facility Saturday, March 10, from noon to 3 p.m.

League spokesman Duane Flohra said the winter season will be shortened by one week because of the closure, and league play will continue at Classic Bowl in Daly City.

Currently the league has 28 fourperson teams. Anyone interested in joining can contact the league through its group page on Facebook, or email Flohra at duane300@hotmail.com.

The world of professional football has been all a-twitter the past week with the revelations that several teams, most notably the New Orleans Saints, have run under-the-radar bounty systems, in which players are paid cash for hits that knock opposing players out of the game.

Many players and commentators, while nominally condemning the process, have sought to downplay it by arguing that the practice is pervasive because it is part and parcel of the macho locker room culture of the NFL. I haven’t heard such a compelling defense since Mike Tyson’s lawyers fought rape charges against the boxer by saying that his reputation was so horrible and so repugnant than any sane woman should know what to expect if she went to his hotel room. It is the same line of reasoning that enables casual homophobia, sexism, and racism in the locker room and on the playing field.

Sports journalists, quick to show their lack of creative ingenuity by dubbing the scandal “Bountygate,” have been trying to parse whether players were being paid for clean hits or dirty hits, hits that stunned players or hits that knocked players out or seriously injured them.

As though that would really make a difference.

Look for the National Football League to come down hard on those it has caught if only to avert the public’s attention from the reality: professional football is a brutal, destructive game that leaves broken bodies in its wake for the amusement of the masses and the procurement of their entertainment dollars.

Suspending and fining the bounty boys is necessary, but it doesn’t begin to address the violence inherent in the game.

Sensitivity buttons The London Telegraph reports some Summer Olympic workers found the questions in a diversity and inclusion quiz they were given to be “patronizing” and “silly.”

Indeed, some of the “wrong” answers for the multiple choice questions are phrases so absurd in an effort to steer people to the correct answers that the temptation is almost overwhelming to choose them.

For example, one of the answers for the question of what do you do if a spectator tells you he was uncomfortable because he saw two male spectators holding hands is, “tell the person to stop being a homophobic idiot and walk away.”

The correct answer, of course, is plant a big wet one on his forehead and give him a sly wink. ▼

Despite arrest, little progress in death case

by Seth Hemmelgarn

M

PERSONAL TRAINER

bartabsf.com

ore than a year after gay San Francisco resident Jack Baker was found dead in his Nob Hill neighborhood apartment, the man charged in his killing has yet to face a preliminary hearing.

Baker, 67, was found stabbed, strangled, and beaten in his apartment at 1035 Bush Street in February 2011.

Last March, Waheed Kesmatyer, 25, who police said was Baker’s roommate, pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder.

Despite several appearances in San Francisco Superior Court where a date for a preliminary hearing was supposed to be set, no preliminary hearing has been scheduled. That didn’t change Monday, March 5, the latest court date.

Deputy Public Defender Hadi Razzaq told Judge Nancy Davis that attorneys were still waiting on “some outside discovery related to

Balance, Flexibility, Endurance and Strength Training

DNA,” referring to the process during which each side in a case obtains evidence.

He expressed hope that there would soon be progress.

“I think I heard the same hope the last time you were here,” Davis said. The last court date had been weeks ago.

Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia said there’s a lot of DNA involved in the case, and she indicated that the delay was related to testing the evidence.

The preliminary hearing date is now expected to be set April 4.

After Monday’s court appearance, Razzaq said that the proceedings are still in their “early” stages.

Asked to explain the delays, he said, “They’re not delays. We’re waiting for discovery.” He declined to comment further.

Approached as she left the courtroom, Garcia referred questions to the DA’s press office. Omid Talai, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, didn’t respond to interview requests for this story.

The medical examiner’s office, which completed its review of Baker’s death in December, listed the cause of death as “multiple traumatic injuries.”

Baker had “very deep lacerations with near decapitation” around his throat, the report says. A small knife blade was embedded in his skull, and there were long incisions on his face, among the more than 80 inju-

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christopher@phoenixtraingandfitness.com www.phoenixtrainingandfitness.com

Judiciary

From page 2

The data comes from a report released last week by the Administrative Office of the Courts. It is the first time demographic data on the gender identity and sexual orientation of California state judges and justices was included among the annual information on the ethnicity, race, and gender composition of the courts.

The council began collecting the data on race and gender six years ago. It began asking judges if they identify as LGBT this last year due to the passage of SB 182, the Judicial Applicant and Appointment Demo-

Courtesy SFPD

Defendant Waheed Kesmatyer

ries described in the document.

An electrical cord had been wrapped around his neck and what looked like ceramic fragments were found in one of his wounds.

Crack and marijuana pipes were found near Baker, as well as two broken knives. The toxicology report indicates that Baker had been smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol.

Police found blood smeared in several places at the scene, the medical examiner’s report says, including a bedroom and the elevator in the hallway.

Amy Filippini, who’s 56 and lives in Southern California, knew Baker graphics Inclusion Act. Authored by state Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), it was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011.

The bill instructed the Administrative Office of the Courts to gather voluntary data on the gender identity and sexual orientation of judges.

It is up to the individual justices to provide the information.

Thus, the numbers included in the report are not an accurate reflection of the LGBT makeup of the bench in California. While close to 58 percent of the jurists said they were heterosexual, 40 percent of judges and justices did not answer the question about their sexual orientation or gender identity.

for 25 years.

In an interview this week she said, “It’s sad, because this case is not high profile enough. ... I just keep wondering, ‘What is taking so long?’”

Filippini, who said she never met Kesmatyer, has said that the last time she spoke with Baker was in January 2011. She said that in one of their last conversations, she’d asked Baker if Kesmatyer was gay, and he said, “No, but I wish he was, because he’s cute.”

She said that she hopes that Baker isn’t portrayed as “some sort of pervert, because he wasn’t.” She can’t imagine what the motivation was for killing her friend, she said.

Filippini said that if someone were to attack Baker, he would have fought back. However, she said, he “hated physical violence in any way, shape, or form. ... He didn’t even watch the news, because it was negative.”

Baker had lent “a helping hand” to younger men before, she said, and she had urged him to be careful.

Monday, Kesmatyer appeared in court dressed in orange jail garb. He waved to his parents as he entered the courtroom, and again when he left.

The Bay Area Reporter has approached Kesmatyer’s parents several times. Outside court Monday, Kesmatyer’s mother, who broke down in tears during one previous encounter, said, “Please don’t bother me.”▼ “I am not surprised that the judges refused to answer. And secondly, my educated guess is that the majority of the judges who didn’t answer are white men,” said Chris Burdick, an out lesbian who is the Santa Clara County Bar Association’s executive director and general counsel.

In 2000 Burdick served on a judicial council standing committee tasked with looking at access and fairness issues in the state courts.

At the time the committee recommended surveying judges if they were LGBT. “We got feedback at the time that the judges weren’t going to answer See page 16 >>

Pride 2012 >>

▼ Pride names grand marshal, Pink Brick nominees

by Seth Hemmelgarn

T

he San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee has announced its 2012 nominees for the public choice for community grand marshals.

This year, the Pride Committee is looking beyond local and national borders through the theme “Global Equality.” Several nominees reflected on the topic as they look ahead to the June 23-24 Pride events.

Grand marshals typically appear in the Pride Parade. In addition to individual grand marshal there is an organizational community grand marshal. A Pink Brick prize also usually goes to a detractor of the LGBT community.

“Our grand marshal nominees are a diverse group of community leaders and activists who collectively have spent decades working to better the lives of LGBT people and to advance our movement for full equality,” Pride board Chair Lisa Williams said in a statement. “Honoring the people who fight for our community is a critical part of what Pride is all about.”

Public voting began Thursday, March 1, and people can now make their selections at www.sfpride.org.

The community selects one recipient each for individual and local organizational community grand marshal honors, and one choice for the Pink Brick. The deadline for receipt of all public polling ballots is March 31.

In April, the Pride board reviews and certifies the public polling results and honorees will be announced.

Individual nominees Individual community grand marshal nominee Masen Davis, 40, executive director of San Francisco’s Transgender Law Center, said he was “thrilled to be among such a great group of LGBT activists.”

“We find increasingly that our fate as LGBT people is shared across countries,” Davis added. “As I talk with other transgender activists globally, it’s very clear we have a common struggle and a common opportunity to extend human rights for all.”

In response to emailed questions, nominee Julie Dorf, a senior adviser at the Council for Global Equality

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15

and founder of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, said, “I’m delighted that ‘Global Equality’ is the theme this year.”

Dorf, who is 47 and an out lesbian, said the theme means “an opportunity to bring much needed public attention to horrific pending legislation criminalizing LGBT activities in Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria, and Cameroon, as well as in Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere in the world.”

Mariah Hanson, who’s produced lesbian events including Club Skirts Dinah Shore Weekend in Palm Springs, said that she was surprised to be nominated.

“It was really exciting,” Hanson, who declined to state her age, said in an interview. “I was honored.”

The out lesbian said she thinks the Global Equality theme is “appropriate.”

“We’re in a great battle,” she said.

“We’re making strides, but it doesn’t just stop here. We need LGBT equality all over.”

Hanson added, “I think people are getting it. ... We’re much more aware of each other, and the world is so much more connected” than it used to be.

Sister Roma, a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence charitable drag nuns, said that she was surprised by her nomination, too.

Roma, 49, also said that after she heard the good news, she grew sad as she thought about the friends she’s lost to AIDS. Those friends include the person who sponsored her 25 years ago when she first joined the Sisters.

“They should be here,” she recalled thinking. “... They should be experiencing the same kinds of things.”

However, she said, “I’m going to turn this around and make this for them.”

Roma, who’s gay and whose legal name is Michael Williams, also addressed this year’s theme. It’s easy to forget “how lucky we are,” she said, especially compared to places like Uganda. That country has become infamous for the “Kill the Gays” bill.

Other individual community

Pink Brick nominee Peter LaBarbera

Pink Brick nominee Maggie Gallagher

grand marshal nominees are David Harness, a DJ and producer; Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights; Olga Talamante, executive director of the Chicana/Latina Foundation; and Morningstar Vancil, a former Pride Committee board member.

They didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Toma said in an interview.

He added, “I definitely think our programs and services, while they began in San Francisco, our reach has gone across the country and throughout the Pacific and into the Asia Pacific region. ... It’s a wonderful kind of synergy we could bring as a grand marshal to promote the theme of this year’s Pride.”

Castro Country Club, which serves as a clean and sober gathering place in San Francisco’s famous gay neighborhood; and the national Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which works toward full LGBT equality within the military, have also been nominated for community grand marshal. People associated with the groups didn’t respond to interview requests Tuesday afternoon, March 6.

and his supporters “oppose homosexual behavior,” which they see as something “sinful” and “changeable.”

“We would hope you could have an actual debate on this issue and keep it civil,” LaBarbera, 49, said.

Not surprisingly, LaBarbera, who lives outside Chicago, won’t likely be at the Pride celebration.

“I don’t think I’ll be coming by to accept the award,” he said.

Pink Brick nominees Maggie Gallagher, a co-founder of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage; and officials with the Committee to Change AUSD School District, an Alameda group that opposes the inclusion of LGBT Americans in California schools’ instructional materials, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Other honors

Organizational community grand marshal nominees A diverse list of nonprofits is up for community honors this year.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California works to protect and advance LGBT rights and other civil liberties.

Daniel Galindo, an organizer for the group, said via a spokeswoman’s email, “We’re so excited and grateful to be among the wonderful organizations nominated. We’re proud of our long history standing up for LGBT Rights in the Bay Area and beyond, dating back to the days when police were still raiding bars.”

San Francisco’s Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, which is tasked in part with helping people who’re living with HIV/AIDS, is also up for a Pride honor this year.

“In our 25th anniversary year as an organization, I am thrilled that we are being nominated, and really excited to hopefully become a grand marshal,” Executive Director Lance

Pink Brick candidates The Pink Brick is perhaps one of the best-known Pride awards, but it’s not meant to be flattering.

Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, laughed when asked about his nomination.

“What an honor,” he quipped.

Others have given LaBarbera and his associates more serious designations. The Southern Poverty Law Center deemed AFTAH a hate group, to which LaBarbera objects. He said he doesn’t hate homosexuals, but he

In February, Pride’s membership began making nominations for their choice of individual community grand marshal. The membership will select an individual community grand marshal at its April 10 meeting. Becoming a Pride member is free, but voting rights don’t commence until 60 days after one’s application is accepted.

In addition to the other honorees, the Pride Committee’s board may select a lifetime achievement grand marshal, as many as three individual community grand marshals, and a national organizational grand marshal.

Pride’s electoral college, which is made up of former grand marshals, also selects an individual community grand marshal.

Grand marshals from 2011 included Aaron Belkin, who along with others successfully advocated for the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on gays serving openly; marriage equality advocate the Reverend Roland Stringfellow; Alameda County Superior Court Judge Victoria Kolakowski, and local organizational grand marshal the GLBT Historical Society.

The Pride festivities typically include celebrity grand marshals, as well. Last year’s guests in that category included Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis and transgender advocate Chaz Bono.▼

Woman denied communion receives apology

by Chuck Colbert

T

he denial of communion to a lesbian at her mother’s funeral has touched a raw nerve among LGBT Catholics even after the archdiocese issued an apology.

But first, the facts of the incident are perhaps best described in the words of the woman, Barbara Johnson, 51, who explained to local metropolitan media in Washington, D. C., what the Reverend Marcel Guarnizo said to her, “I cannot give you communion because you live with a woman, and in the eyes of the church that is a sin.”

His denial stunned Johnson, a lifelong Catholic and former Catholic schoolteacher, who lives with a partner of 20 years.

“I just stood there, in shock. I was grieving, crying. My mother’s body was behind me, and all I wanted to do was provide for her, and the final thing was to make a beautiful funeral, and here I was letting her down because there was a scene,” she told the Washington Post.

The setting, for what Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, called a “grievous error of one priest,” was a funeral Mass on Saturday, February 25, at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Not only did Guarnizo put his

Barbara Johnson was denied communion by a priest at her mother’s funeral.

hand over the communion platter, but also he walked away during Johnson’s eulogy. And he refused to go to the cemetery with the family for her mother’s burial.

“For Barbara Johnson, this is an utterly unbelievable and painful experience,” said DeBernardo of New Ways, a gay-positive ministry of reconciliation, healing, and justice for LGBT Catholics, based in Mt. Rainier, Maryland.

“The fact that it has resonated so strongly within the Catholic community shows that people are very

concerned. Gay Catholics are upset,” he added.

“What it tells me is there has to be a lot better pastoral training of priests, particularly on gay and lesbian issues,” said DeBernardo.

Lesbian feminist theologian Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., offered her assessment. “The Eucharist is a sacrament, not a political football,” she said.

“This terrible abuse of one family at a time of great pastoral need is but a snapshot of anti-LGBTQ theology in action. It is outdated, outmoded, and outrageous,” said Hunt,

co-founder and co-director of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual.

Based in Silver Spring, Maryland, WATER is a feminist educational center and social justice network.

The incident in Maryland continues to resonate nationally, raising other concerns and questions.

“It is hard to imagine a more heart-wrenching failure on the part of our church,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of Dignity USA, an advocacy organization.

“The reality is that this could happen to almost anyone of us, given escalating conflicts between pastoral care and the demand for adherence” to “a handful of socially conservative aspects of doctrine,” she added.

“Whether we Catholics use birth control, have remarried after a divorce, believe women are qualified for official ministry, or support LGBT equality, most of us hold several views that contradict official Roman Catholic teaching,” said DuddyBurke.

For its part, the Washington Archdiocese acknowledged in a statement that Guarnizo had acted inappropriately, saying, “Any issues regarding the suitability of an individual to receive communion should be addressed by the priest with that person in a private, pastoral setting.”

Johnson also received an apology

through correspondence from an auxiliary bishop.

“I am sorry that what should have been a celebration of your mother’s life, in light of her faith in Jesus Christ, was overshadowed by a lack of pastoral sensitivity,” Bishop Barry Knestout wrote.

Johnson told local media that she was satisfied with the archdiocesan apology, adding, however, that the damage done to her family and mother’s memory cannot be repaired.

Still, she does not want Catholics to walk away from a faith her mother dearly loved. “So many people have said to me that now they will never go back. That would break my mother’s heart,” Johnson told the National Catholic Reporter.

However, the Johnson family wants disciplinary action taken against Guarnizo. In a letter to him, she wrote, “You brought your politics, not your God, into that church yesterday, and you will pay dearly on the Day of Judgment for judging me. I will pray for your soul, but first I will do everything in my power to see that you are removed from parish life so that you will not be permitted to harm any more families.”

The Johnson family’s mission is “not to divide the church,” Johnson told NCR. “Our mission is to receive an apology from Father Marcel.” ▼

<< Community News

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

<<

HRC pick

From page 1

reach out to the transgender, working class, and poorer LGBT communities that have “often felt marginalized and, honestly, tokenized”

by HRC. “My experience has been that a lot of decisions HRC makes are quite controversial and divisive,” said Haaland, who in an op-ed in the Bay Area Reporter expressed disappointment that transgender and people of color leaders were apparently not among the top candidates for the HRC job. “I am open to seeing a new day at HRC.” Transgender Law Center Executive Director Masen Davis also told the B.A.R. that he doesn’t know Griffin well but looks forward to getting to know him and “seeing where he takes” HRC. “We as an LGBT community have a lot of issues we need to grapple with,” Davis said. “We need to make sure we have access to a full spectrum of civil rights for all members of our community.”

Davis is looking forward to talking to Griffin about how HRC “can

<<

TL Health

From page 1

Officials also said that HIV testing in mobile sites would be continued by the STD Prevention and Control Community-Based Testing Program, UCSF Alliance Health Project (formerly AIDS Health Project), and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Health education and risk reduction clients will be transferred to current providers of those services, including API Wellness Center, Asociacion Gay Unida Impactando Latinos/Latinas A Superarse (AGUILAS), Instituto Familiar de la Raza, and SFAF. Prevention with Positives clients will be transferred to Tom Waddell Health Center.

Tenderloin Health is also making arrangements for services not funded by the city, such as supportive housing locations.

In late February, Bob Rybicki, vice president of programs at SFAF, said his agency had been approached about taking some Tenderloin Health clients, but there had been “nothing definitive.”

He said he hoped the other nonprofit’s clients would be willing to make the transition. SFAF’s headquarters are on Market Street, just

<<

Judiciary

From page 14

it,” she recalled.

Burdick suspects that among the 40 percent who did not answer the question in the new survey are judges who are gay and lesbian and are still closeted.

“I find it really odd a significant number of judges refused to answer those questions. They are public officials and I think the public has a right to know what the demographics of the bench is to determine if the bench fairly represents our communities,” she said. “I am disappointed that so many judges would not respond because I think they have an obligation to, frankly.”

According to the data that was gathered, among trial court judges there are 19 lesbians, 17 gay men and one transgender person. The trial courts account for the bulk of the state’s jurists, and 638 did not provide any information regarding their sexual orientation and gender identity.

None of the 101 Court of Appeal judges identified as LGBT. Sixtyeight said they were straight, while 33 did not answer.

Somewhat tellingly, as there have

address more issues than they have historically.”

“I do not know how much exposure he’s had to transgender issues, and I hope he connects with transgender elders and organizations” early on, he said.

Anna Conda, president of the progressive Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, said he doesn’t pay close attention to the national group since “I don’t really agree with HRC on a lot of things.”

Conda, whose real name is Glendon Hyde, said he didn’t know much about Griffin. He suggested Griffin make addressing transgender rights and access to health care top priorities once he starts work.

Shane Snowdon, director of the UCSF Center for LGBT Health and Equity, also wants to see HRC make health issues more of a prominent concern.

“Given that I head the only LGBT office in a health setting in the country, I’m fervently hoping Chad will make LGBTQ health and aging a top priority,” Snowdon, a member of HRC’s Healthcare Equality Index Advisory Council, told the B.A.R. “HRC, with its impressive resourc-

es, could make a huge difference in health care for LGBTQ people in this country – I’m keeping my fingers crossed!”

Gay GOPers Gay Republicans have their own gripes with HRC’s partisan bent toward Democrats.

“I used to be a big HRC supporter and give money to them regularly,” said Dan Brown, president of the San Francisco Log Cabin Republicans chapter.

But over the years Brown said he disagreed with how HRC treated Republican politicians. He was also disappointed with the agency’s endorsement last year for President Barack Obama’s re-election and its launch this week of a website attacking Mitt Romney, who is expected to be the likely GOP presidential nominee this year.

“It upset a lot of gay Republicans when they went ahead and endorsed Obama’s re-election last year well before the primaries even started.

All they are doing is alienating a huge portion of the community,” said Brown.

He called Griffin’s hiring a “bril-

a few blocks away from Tenderloin Health. It may seem like a small distance, but Rybicki said the change could be challenging for some clients who are used to one area.

No clients appeared to be at either of the Tenderloin Health’s buildings on Golden Gate Avenue late Tuesday afternoon, March 6.

Uncertainty Tenderloin Health Executive Director David Fernandez, who joined the agency in November 2009, couldn’t say in an interview this week how much money the nonprofit receives from the city.

He also couldn’t say much about what would happen with Tenderloin Health’s debt.

The agency has about $1.4 million in accounts payable. Fernandez has said that the biggest chunk of that is approximately $680,000 owed on bank lines of credit.

He said this week that he didn’t know what would happen to the debt.

“We will probably have to dissolve and whatever legal things we have to go through related to that, that will be dictated to us,” he said.

Last year, Fernandez said his annual compensation was about $140,000.

This week, he wouldn’t share what his current salary is, but he said, “It’s been

cut pretty bad.”

He said he’s committed to seeing the transition through. He’s not sure what he’ll do next.

“I’ve been totally focused on my staff and the clients,” he said. “I haven’t really focused that much on myself.”

Since late December, Garcia, Fernandez, and Tenderloin Health board Chair Andy Chen have frequently ignored or declined interview requests.

Fernandez said that he and others

long been rumors that a lesbian serves on the California Supreme Court, one of the seven justices refused to answer the question. The remaining six, who are not identified in the report, said they are heterosexual.

One surprise among the findings is where the 37 trial court judges from the LGBT community serve. In Alameda County, there are two gay men, one lesbian, and one transgender judge. Yet only Victoria Kolakowski, the court system’s lone transgender member, and Judge Hugh Walker are open about being LGBT. A lesbian and a gay man serve in Contra Costa County, while Marin and San Mateo counties each have one lesbian judge. There is also a gay judge in San Mateo.

San Francisco has four lesbian and two gay male judges. Santa Clara had two lesbian judges.

The Bay Area, with 15 LGBT judges, accounted for the bulk of the total than any other area of the state.

Los Angeles County has the most judges of any trial court system. The tally found four lesbians and six gay male judges there.

The rest came from areas of the state considered conservative bas-

tions. There is one gay man in Imperial County, while Riverside has two lesbian judges and one gay male jurist.

San Diego has two gay judges. The remaining are in San Bernardino, which has three lesbian judges and one gay judge.

“It is really amazing the numbers for the Inland Empire, given it is predominately Republican,” said David Tsai, co-chair of the LGBT legal group Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, whose family is from Riverside.

But Tsai noted that both Riverside and San Bernardino are very large counties, “so it is not surprising there would be gay attorneys who would live there and that would result in gay judges.”

Considering all the other counties with zero LGBT judges, the ones that do have LGBT judges “jump out” when looking at the report, said Tsai.

“There are various reasons why people don’t want to answer it. There are still many people who are fairly conservative about revealing what they consider private parts of their lives because judges are so public,” added Tsai. “It could mean nothing more than that.”

Like other out lawyers the Bay

Jane Philomen Cleland

Tenderloin Health’s David Fernandez

▼

liant move” and hopes he continues to see the value in reaching out more to Republicans. One of the lead attorneys Griffin asked to oversee the federal Prop 8 lawsuit was Republican attorney Theodore Olson, which marked the start of a significant number of prominent GOP members coming out in support of same-sex marriage.

“At least have a dialogue with these people and at least not be constantly attacking them. I hope Chad will be able to do that,” said Brown.

“He has success working both sides of the aisle.”

For those who do believe in the work HRC is doing, they see having a new person in charge as helping to build bridges with the agency’s detractors on the West Coast.

“The relationship between the Human Rights Campaign and the local community has always been a complicated one,” acknowledged gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, an HRC Federal Club member who termed off the group’s national board in 2010.

Wiener, who spoke out against HRC’s handling of ENDA in 2007, told the B.A.R. that he believes Grif-

fin’s hiring is “very good news” and he will be able to “continue moving the organization in the right direction.”

Current HRC board member Frank Woo, who lives in San Francisco, called Griffin a “fabulous” choice and hopes he is able to address the long-lingering complaints HRC has faced in the Bay Area.

“I think it seriously may help if people hear what HRC is doing from a different voice. Probably Joe was tainted in the minds of some people,” said Woo, referring to the backlash Solmonese faced due to HRC’s ENDA stance five years ago.

“But if they hear about what we have been doing with transgender people at the corporate level, people are amazed.”

HRC has been doing a lot of work both locally and within California, said Woo, but its detractors often overlook its accomplishments.

“We have been doing a lot within the state but people still don’t want to believe we are doing anything,” said Woo. “I just hope people have a renewed look at us since a new person will be there. They might see things differently.”▼

had been “completely transparent,” but “there just wasn’t a lot more information to share.”

Asked about the lack of transparency, San Francisco Health Commission President Steven Tierney, who is openly gay, said Tuesday that he’d just met with Garcia to discuss having a more open community process. He also wants to look at “in an ongoing bad economy, what are the elements of a sustainable system of care?” especially among agencies serving LGBTs. Tierney said that he thinks “a seamless plan” to ensure clients continue to receive care is in place.

Like Tierney, gay Health Commissioner James Illig indicated that above everything else, he wanted to make sure Tenderloin Health’s clients were taken care of.

He said his concerns had been “alleviated” by Garcia stepping in, and he was surprised to learn of her and Fernandez’s reluctance to talk.

He said people should be open with reporters, especially when it comes to public health.

“It’s public,” he said.

API Wellness Center announced February 29 that through its Trans:

Thrive program, it would take part in the new TransformSF effort. The new collaborative is meant to provide a comprehensive network of HIV prevention and social services to San Francisco’s transgender community. The city’s health department is funding the effort.

Citing data from the city, API Wellness Center officials said that transgender people comprise less than 1 percent of the general population but account for 2 percent of people living with HIV and AIDS in San Francisco.

El/La Para TransLatinas, Instituto Familiar de la Raza, and Native American AIDS Project are also taking part in the collaborative.

Toma, of API Wellness Center, said the effort is separate from his agency’s involvement with the city around Tenderloin Health.

He said the annual budget for the collaborative, which is beginning this month, is approximately $450,000.

“I’m excited,” Toma said. “I think through a really amazing partnership we will be doing our best to meet the needs and address the epidemic of HIV in the transgender community in San Francisco.”

For more information, visit www. transformsf.org.▼

Area Reporter spoke with, Tsai said the numbers of judges who did self identify “are very low ... given what our population looks like in the state of California.”

Advocates for seeing more LGBT people appointed to the bench hope the report’s findings are a motivator for Governor Jerry Brown, who has the power to appoint people to court vacancies, to select more LGBT judges.

“Those numbers should be higher; this report sort of opens eyes,” said Tsai.

During his first term in office in 1979 Brown appointed the first openly gay judge to the state bench.

Since being sworn in to a third term in 2011, it is unclear if Brown has appointed any LGBT people to the bench.

In a report Brown’s office released last week, it did not state how many of the 768 judicial appointment applicants in 2011 were LGBT. Nor did it disclose how many LGBT judicial appointments he made.

His report next year should include data on the number of LGBT judicial applicants, as a requirement in Corbett’s SB 182 that the governor begin collecting that data kicked in at the start of 2012.

So far Brown’s office has yet to disclose that one of his judicial appointees is LGBT in the announcements sent out by his press office.

Last Thursday Brown did re-appoint San Francisco resident Michael Hersek as California’s state public defender. But the announcement did not disclose he is openly gay.

Burdick said it would be helpful to have more detailed information on how many of the LGBT judges are appointments to vacancies or won their seats on the court by being elected.

While it was known that some of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger judicial appointments were LGBT, the full picture was unclear because his press office did not include that information in press releases on the appointments.

“I think that Governor Schwarzenegger took into consideration sexual orientation in a positive way when he did his appointments,” said Burdick. “So I think that probably there were more lesbian and gay attorneys appointed to the bench during his term. You don’t know because it is not identified in the bio that comes out by the governor’s office.”

The full report can be found at www.courts.ca.gov/13418.htm.▼

API Wellness Center in collaborative effort

▼ <<

Community News>>

Guest Opinion

From page 6

treated with dignity, respect and equality – a fight that I am willing to fight for them and their future.

I never want to see them have to fight for the equal rights of their children. That burden is on my shoulder today – just as my parents’

<<

Villaraigosa

From page 13

eral lawsuits challenging DOMA are in the courts. A federal judge in San Francisco ruled on February 22 that the federal government unfairly denied health insurance to the wife of a lesbian staff lawyer with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals under the Defense of Marriage Act. A disabled Army veteran from Van Nuys last month filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs after her request for spousal benefits for her wife was denied. A group of

<<

generation fought for a better world for me and my generation to live in now.

This is what marriage equality is all about. I encourage all of us, whether partnered or not, to consider how we would treat our partner during a divorce and how we would want to be treated. To consider how unfair it is have our fed-

eral government look upon our relationships with prejudice, and how hurtful it is to have that discriminatory law brought into the final chapter of your marriage. We all deserve fairness within our legal system.▼

eight gay and lesbian service members and veterans maintain in a separate lawsuit they filed in federal court last October that DOMA specifically prohibits the military from offering their spouses access to on-base housing, health care, burial rights at national cemeteries, and other benefits that married heterosexual service members automatically receive.

The Obama administration announced in February 2011 that it would no longer defend DOMA in federal court. A growing number of LGBT activists, however, have become increasingly critical of the

president over his failure to publicly support marriage for same-sex couples.

Villaraigosa did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Obama’s position, but activists welcomed the mayor’s endorsement of the proposed marriage equality plank.

“Having the chairman of the convention on your side is testament to the importance of this issue,” said Human Rights Campaign spokesman Fred Sainz. “Mayor Villaraigosa is right – marriage equality belongs in the platform.”▼

Political Notebook

From page 9

of the Republican County Central Committee and the local party’s volunteer general counsel, pulled papers Tuesday to enter the race.

The vice chair of the local chapter of Log Cabin Republicans, a group for LGBT GOPers, Clark said he decided to run against Ammiano when it became clear the progressive Democrat would otherwise be unopposed this year.

“I think people in San Francisco really deserve a choice and a meaningful choice between two candidates,” said Clark about his decision to enter the race. “Given everything going on now with this state, we can’t afford to send the same people back to cause the same problems.”

The southern California native moved to the Bay Area in 1999 to attend UC Berkeley, where he earned a B.A. in political science. He earned his law degree from USF’s law school and now has a solo practice.

He has lived in San Francisco for the last eight years and last year was appointed to fill a vacancy on the local Republican Party’s oversight panel. In addition to his Assembly campaign, Clark will be seeking to be elected to his central committee seat on the June primary ballot.

It is the first time Clark, who is single, has run for elective office.

While likely to win his seat on the party committee, Clark has little chance of unseating Ammiano in the fall.

Democrats have a clear voter advantage over Republicans in San Francisco. And most GOP candidates gain little traction with the public or the press; the city’s only Republican officeholder is BART board member James Fang.

Clark said he plans to get his message across using social media, Internet radio stations, and Facebook.

He is also working on launching a campaign website.

“I hope to reach out and talk to as many voters as I can,” said Clark. “I find when I talk to voters, even if we don’t agree on political affiliation, there are a number of issues we do agree upon.”

He is the third gay Republican to run for state Assembly this year. In West Hollywood, Log Cabin member Brad Torgan is running in another district Democrats are expected to easily carry. Ralph Denney is once again running for a San Diego Assembly seat.

By virtue of their names being on the ballot, the trio will gain perks within the state Republican Party even if they lose in November. Chief among them is getting to name

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 17

Gay GOPer Jason P. Clark is running against Assemblyman Tom Ammiano.

delegates to the party’s convention where they can vote on the platform.

It is a strategy Log Cabin has used in recent years to try to exert some influence on the positions the statewide party takes. But so far they have had limited success in striking anti-gay language from the party platform.

In other local legislative races, gay Assemblyman Rich Gordon (D-Menlo Park) Wednesday made his bid for re-election to a second term official. Supporters joined him at the San Mateo County elections department as Gordon submitted paperwork to enter the race for the 24th Assembly District seat.

And this Friday night a $100-aperson fundraiser for gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) will take place at Castro club Trigger. After the bar had to temporarily close last week due to a dispute over tax payments, Leno’s campaign had told the B.A.R. the March 9 event was postponed.

But the club’s owner, Greg Bronstein, sent out an invite Monday night saying not only was the fundraiser a go, but Leno would be joined by a host of local officials.

Among those listed as attending are Mayor Ed Lee, District Attorney George Gascón, gay City Treasurer Jose Cisneros and gay District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener.

Out supes back SF voting change At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting out members Christina Olague (District 5) and Wiener threw their support behind a plan to scrap ranked-choice voting for citywide elections in San Francisco.

The charter amendment proposal from District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell received the necessary six votes to be heard by the board’s Rules Com-

Esther Lee is a longtime San Francisco resident and LGBT activist.

mittee before coming back to the full board for approval. It would then be placed on the November ballot for voters to decide on.

“This is not a progressive or moderate issue – this is a democratic issue,” stated Farrell. “Ranked-choice voting has confused and disenfranchised voters for nearly a decade in San Francisco, and it is time to return to the principle of one person, one vote.”

It is a scaled back version of a proposal Farrell and District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd had introduced that would scrap the instant voter runoff system for supervisor races as well. The new version would only apply to races for mayor, district attorney, sheriff, city attorney, treasurer, assessor-recorder, and public defender.

If no candidate secured a majority of votes in those contests in the November general election, then the top two vote-getters would face off in a December runoff. Elsbernd along with Supervisors Malia Cohen (District 10) and Carmen Chu (District 4) were the other three votes for the proposed charter amendment.

District 9 Supervisor David Campos, the board’s third out member, has opposed efforts to do away with the ranked-choice voting.

He had lobbied for keeping it but tweaking it so voters could choose more than three candidates, as they do now.

The rules committee is expected to take up Farrell’s proposal sometime in April.

Correction Last week’s Political Notebook jumped the gun on when the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro would elect Cliff ’s Variety general manager Terry Asten Bennett as its new president. She was nominated for the post last week and the confirmation vote will take place at the April 5 meeting. The online version of the column has been corrected.▼ Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check www.ebar.com Monday mornings around 11 a.m. for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column highlighted upcoming fundraisers in San Francisco for several out candidates.

Keep abreast of the latest LGBT political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ twitter.com/politicalnotes.

Got a tip on LGBT politics?

Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 861-5019 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

More news on www.ebar.com

Legal Notices>> STATEMENT FILE A-034104600

STATEMENT FILE A-034125100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EDWARD MARTINEZ FABRICATIONS, 79 Sharon St., SF, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Edward Martinez.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/31/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/03/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CARLO’S NOOK, 2919 24th St., SF, CA 94110.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Dean Clark. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/13/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT FILE A-034107200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MOTOR ARZT, 1023 Mission St., SF, CA 94103.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Carl Peters. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/06/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/06/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT FILE A-034113400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SNAPDOCS, 1369 Hyde St. #26, SF, CA 94109.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Stefani Herr. 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 02/07/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT FILE A-034113200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: A LINEAGE EDUCATION, 4309 Lincoln Way, SF, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Ali M. Salahshoor. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/07/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/07/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT FILE A-034111400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: STEVE BOECKELS AND ASSOCIATES, 270 Valencia #503, SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Stephen Boeckels.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/07/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/07/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT FILE A-034108400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FIORI DESIGNS BY SARINA, 60 29th St. #630, SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Sarina Safina. 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 02/06/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT FILE A-034117600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KRISHNA HOTEL, 2032 Mission St., SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed Sailesh Patel. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/24 /12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/08/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT FILE A-034121500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VINYL, 359 Divisadero St., SF, CA 94117.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Michael Musleh. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/09/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/09/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME: A-032932200 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: CARINA MOBILE, 210 Fell St. #4, SF, CA 94102.

This business was conducted by an individual, signed Tim C. DeBenedictis. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/26/10.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATEMENT FILE A-034125900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POISON, 2451 Bay St., SF, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed David Baxter. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/13/12.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/13/12.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE# CNC-12-548444 In the matter of the application of: CYNTHIA PATRICIA BONORRIS for change of name. The application of CYNTHIA PATRICIA BONORRIS for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that CYNTHIA PATRICIA BONORRIS filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to CYNSA BONORRIS. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 24th of April, 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted

FEB 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 SUMMONS DOMESTIC RELATIONS SUIT IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON FOR THE COUNTY OF LANE In the Matter of the marriage of SHANA L. TUCKER, Petitioner, and ALBERT A. TREJO, Respondent, to ALBERT A. TREJ0, home address 80 Beachside Ct., Daly City, CA 94015, work address 111 Taylor St., San Francisco, CA 94102.

The petitioner has filed a Petition asking for DIVORCE WITH CHILD. If you do not file the appropriate legal paper with the court in the time required (see below), the petitioner may ask the court for a judgment against you that orders the relief requested. NOTICE TO RESPONDENT: READ THESE PAPERS CAREFULLY! You must “appear” in this case or the other side will win automatically. To “appear,” you must file with the Court a legal paper called a “Response” or “Motion.” Response forms may be available through the court located at Lane County Courts, 125 East 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.

This Response must be filed with the court clerk or administrator within thirty (30) days of the date of first publication specified herein: 02/15/12, along with the required filing fee.

It must be in proper form and you must show that the Petitioner’s attorney (or the Petitioner if he/she does not have an attorney) was served with a copy of the “Response” or “Motion.”

The location to file your response is at the court address indicated above.

If you have questions, you should see an attorney immediately. If you need help finding an attorney, you may call the Oregon State Bar’s Lawyer Referral Service online at www.oregonstatebar.org or by calling (503) 684-3763 (in the Portland metropolitan area) or toll free elsewhere in Oregon at (800) 452-7636.

If special accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act is needed, please contact your local court at the address above; telephone number (541) 682-4020.

Certificate of Document Preparation. You are required to truthfully complete this certificate regarding the document you are filing with the court. I selected this document for myself and I completed it without paid assistance, signed SHANA L. TUCKER, 2555 Roosevelt Blvd. #22, Eugene, OR 97402, (541) 232-8150.

FEB 16, 23, MAR 1, 8, 2012 STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE# CNC12-548436 In the matter of the application of: EVELYN ISOBEL EMERSON for change of name. The application of EVELYN ISOBEL EMERSON for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that EVELYN ISOBEL EMERSON filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to EVAN LUTHER EMERSON. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 19th of April, 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted

FEB 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE# CNC12-548424 In the matter of the application of: DERA MARIE JONES for change of name. The application of DERA MARIE JONES for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that DERA MARIE JONES filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to ALANNA MARIE FOX. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 17th of April, 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted

FEB 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE# CNC12-548403 In the matter of the application of: JERRY ALLEN HOFFINE JR. for change of name. The application of JERRY ALLEN HOFFINE JR. for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that JERRY ALLEN HOFFINE JR. filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to JAY ARTHUR BEANAN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 10th of April, 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

FEB 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 STATEMENT FILE# A-034096700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CAMPUS EDUCATION, 40 1st St., 4th Fl., SF, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Ammon Torrence. 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 02/01/12.

FEB 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

18 • Bay Area Reporter • March 8-14, 2012

Classifieds

t

Legal Notices>>

The

Legal Notices>> statement file# A-034136900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: 3-SUM EATS, 360 De Haro St., SF, CA 94103.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed Jonathan Panday. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/1612. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/16/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034136800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MARKET & RYE, 68 West Portal Ave., SF, CA 94127.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed Jonathan Panday. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/16/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/16/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034143200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RECOVER YOUR THOUGHTS, 2730 16th St., SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Leah MacNeil. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/21/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/21/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034135900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THOMAS MADE, 1648 Leavenworth St., SF, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Thomas Li. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/14/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/16/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034134800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DE PLACE, 5700 Geary Blvd., SF, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Belinda Yu. 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 02/16/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034132400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AES WEB DESIGN, 995 14th St., SF, CA 94114.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Allen Siewert. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/15/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/15/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034114900 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOWES TAX, 3892 26th St., SF, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Mark Howe. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/12.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/08/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034140800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LIVING AMBIANCE, 2101 20th Ave., SF, CA 94116.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Alycia Moy. 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 02/17/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034132700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ST FRANCIS MARKET, 16 West Portal Ave., SF, CA 94127. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Venkata Tangirala. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/19/05. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/15/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034078400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CROWN MARKET & LIQUOR, 712 Geary St., SF, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Ali Mozeb. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/25/12.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 statement file# A-034131300

statement file A- 034181000

statement file A- 034132600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SLR TRANSPORTATION, 6222 3rd St., SF, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Mohammed Chadhery.

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 03/06/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RIDVAN KAYA, 1405 21st Ave., SF, CA 94122.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Ugur Y. Kaya. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/1512. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/15/12.

MAR 8, 15, 22, 29, 2012 Statement of abandonment of use of fictitious business name FILE# A-033898200 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: FIRST CUT, 813 Clay St., SF, CA 94108. This business was conducted by a general partnership, signed Dong Mei Li. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/20/11.

feb 23, MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 notice of application TO SELL alcoholic beverageS Dated 02/23/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: FARID TAWIL. 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 350 California St., SF, CA 941041402. Type of license applied

21-OFF-sale GENERAL MAR 1, 8, 15, 2012 state of california in and for the county of san francisco file# CNC12-548425 In the matter of the application of: GERARD ROBERT SMESSAERT for change of name. The application of GERARD ROBERT SMESSAERT for change of name having been filed in Court, and it appearing from said application that GERARD ROBERT SMESSAERT filed an application proposing that his/her name be changed to JERI SMESSAERT. Petitioner has also filed a petition for a decree changing petitioner’s gender from male to female and for the issuance of a new birth certificate reflecting the gender and name changes. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Room 514 on the 12th of April, 2012 at 9:00 am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted

MaR 1, 8, 15, 22, 2012 statement file A- 034140600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MATUREROOMMATES.COM, 5527 California St. #A, SF, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Patty Thomas. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/17/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/17/12.

MAR 1, 8, 15, 22, 2012 statement file A- 034130600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NIZARIOS PIZZA VALENCIA, 535 Valencia St., SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Yaser Awadalla. 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 02/14/12.

MAR 1, 8, 15, 22, 2012 statement file A- 034152100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ANNACOLIBRI, 1931 Buchanan St., SF, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Anna Yaya Kelleher. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/23/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/23/12.

MAR 1, 8, 15, 22, 2012 statement file A- 034157500

notice of application FOR CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP OF alcoholic beverage LICENSE Dated 02/28/12 To Whom It May Concern: The name(s) of the applicant(s) is/are: BUFFALO GIRLS 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 2193 Mission St., SF, CA 94110-1219. Type of license applied

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WHIPPED & BEATEN, 701 Taylor St. #502, SF, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Michelle Kelly. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/02/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/02/12.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MISSION OASIS PROPERTIES, 3118 22nd St., SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed James Boyd Lappin. 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 03/02/12.

788 Minna Street, #203 & #303 “Below Market Rate” 1BD/1BA for $260,983. 1st time buyers must qualify for income eligibility. Income max for apps are 1 person - $64,900, 2 persons - $74,150, 3 persons - $83,450. Unit monitored by Mayor’s Office of Housing and subject to resale controls. More info contact Andrew at Vanguard 415.321.7023 andrew@VanguardSF.com

MAR 8, 15, 22, 29, 2012 statement file A-034173300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE COOKIE BAKERY, 1035 Pacific Ave., SF, CA 94133. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Patricia Prislin. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/02/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/02/12.

MAR 8, 15, 22, 29, 2012 statement file# A-034174100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BAYOU BY THE BAY, 1599 Howard St., SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed Marisa Palen. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/0212. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/02/12.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EL METATE, 2406 Bryant St., SF, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited partnership, and is signed Francisco Hernandez. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/02/02. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/14/12.

MAR 1, 8, 15, 22, 2012 statement file A- 034159300

MAR 8, 15, 22, 29, 2012 statement file# A-034160500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TRU POWER COACHING, 236 West Portal Ave. #131, SF, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Simone Da Rosa. 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 02/27/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: WINE TASTING ON THE BAY, Pier 39 The Embarcadero Dock 1, SF, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed Melissa McDowell. 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 02/27/12.

MAR 1, 8, 15, 22, 2012 statement file A- 034156800

MAR 8, 15, 22, 29, 2012 statement file A- 034176500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FIRST CUT, 813 Clay St., SF, CA 94108. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed Dong Mei Li. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/14/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/14/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HAYES AUTO BODY AND SERVICE, 2401 Bush St., SF, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Joseph Ng. 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 02/24/12.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NEWCALI CONSTRUCTION, 465 6th St., SF, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Xiao Xuan Du. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/05/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/05/12.

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as GYPSY ROSALIE WIGS & VINTAGE, 1215 Polk St., SF, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Rosalie E. Jacques.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/27/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/27/12.

MAR 8, 15, 22, 29, 2012

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Vol. 42 • No. 10 • March 8-14, 2012

Gay themes in Asian American lives San Francisco International Asian American Film Fest highlights

by David Lamble

Joey (Patrick Wang) and Cody (Trevor St. John) in filmmaker Wang’s In the Family.

SF International Asian American Film Fest

T

he San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival turns 30 with five solid queer features: a game-changing heartland family custody drama, a touching coming-of-age tale in which an Asperger’s-diagnosed teen’s life is up-ended by the death of a beloved older brother, the revival of a pregnant mom/lesbian daughter comedy, a provocative spin on the horror genre, and an

absorbing sports doc focused on a lesbian Jeremy Lin. In the Family For three hours, freshman filmmaker Patrick Wang earns his grip on our emotions.

There’s a leisurely fade-in at the bedside of a lovable six-year-old who resists his cuddly nickname: “There ain’t no Chipmunk here!”

Chip enjoys a Capra-corn childhood with his not-necessarily gayidentified Tennessee dads. One of

those dads, Joey (Wang), numbs out when tragedy strikes, and buried emotional landmines surface during a meeting between Joey and his dead lover’s sister over the fate of Chip and everything this Asian American “Bubba” holds dear.

“You’re not going to believe this, but I didn’t find the will. Instead there’s this fill-in-the-blank deal.

He got as far as his name. Isn’t that hysterical!”

“Cody had a will. Joey, the house is in my name now. So that means there’s a mortgage in my name, too.

Cody left all his assets in my name so that he could see that Chip was taken care of, by me.”

“Ilene, this is from 2002. Chip was just a baby!”

“It’s his will, Joey, he had six years to change it, and he didn’t. It says, ‘Last Will and Testament.’ It’s not, ‘Fill in the blank.’ He knew what

he wanted. And you don’t have to worry about Chip.”

“Of course I need to worry about Chip. I’m his father.”

“It’s what my brother wanted, Joey, could you have a little respect for that?”

“I’m Chip’s dad!”

Wang keeps Joey in a low gear, surrendering the spotlight to his ensemble. Observe Sebastian BrodSee page 33 >>

Big stage, small stage San Francisco Ballet’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’

by Paul Parish

H

elgi Tomasson’s magnificent production of the ballet Romeo & Juliet opened its short run (through Sunday) at the Opera House Tuesday night.

This is a full-scale ballet a grand spectacle.

It’s a Romantic tragedy, one in which the full forces of a large orchestra, throngs of dancers, a ball scene, fight scenes to the death with dangerous sword-play, sumptuous scenery and costumes (by Jens-Jacob Worsaae) and all the ancillary theater arts are mobilized to tell a story, at the heart of which lie two young lovers who want to be allowed to

choose each other as mates for life. Without which, life is not worth living. The ballet stirs revolutionary passions in everyone in the audience. “Never again!” This ballet, in all its incarnations, has always meant a great deal to us queers, for obvious reasons, but it’s one where we have common cause with the rest of our world here: the emotions are grand, they fill a house that seats over 3,000, and they leave no-one untouched.

It’s hard to believe now, but before the advent of movies, the opera house used to See page 32 >>

Erik Tomasson

San Francisco Ballet dancers in Helgi Tomasson’s Romeo & Juliet.

{ SECOND OF TWO SECTIONS }

<< Out There

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

▼

Skip to the Lou, my darling

by Roberto Friedman

L

ou Harrison: A World of Music, an intimate portrait of an extraordinary American composer who followed his dreams with original gay style, had its premiere at the Castro Theatre this past Tuesday night, and Out There was in the full house. Trading a fastpaced New York career for a remote cabin in the woods to recover from a nervous breakdown, Lou Harrison (1917-2003) confronted his demons by writing beautiful music. Combining Western, Eastern and custom-made instruments built by his life partner William Colvig, Harrison’s artistic courage produced one of the great musical legacies of the 20th century.

Harrison could make a symphony orchestra or a gamelan orchestra sound pitch-perfect, and his melodic music is heard throughout director Eva Soltes’ film. Over 60 years of archival imagery help to paint a

comprehensive yet lyrical portrait of the man, his times and his legacy.

All proceeds from the premiere benefit Harrison House Music & Arts, an artist residency/performance program located in the innovative straw-bale house that Harrison completed in Joshua Tree, CA, one year before his death. Preceding the film at its premiere was a musical prelude performed by legendary composer/ musician Terry Riley on the Castro’s mighty Wurlitzer organ, followed by Soltes’ short video illuminating the history of artists and events at the Harrison House. Honorary event co-chairs were choreographer Mark Morris and San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, both of whom have been key supporters of Harrison’s work when it was decidedly out of fashion.

Lou Harrison: A World of Music will play the Roxie Theater in SF from Friday, March 9 through Thursday, March 15. Harrison’s Concerto for

Organ with Percussion Orchestra will be performed by the SF Symphony conducted by Tilson Thomas as part of the American Mavericks series beginning March 8-9 at Davies Symphony Hall. So lovely that Lou is finally getting his due.

Time travel The photography exhibit Arthur Tress: San Francisco 1964, which opened last week at the de Young Museum, will be reviewed in next week’s issue, so don’t miss it. Meantime we’ve been paging through the show’s excellent catalog and finding lots of old San Francisco to entice us. Fine Arts Museums of SF curator James A. Ganz writes in a catalog essay, “The San Francisco photographs were set aside and all but forgotten. The work did not figure into the traveling retrospective of Tress’ photographs organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2001.

The death of his sister Madeleine in September 2009 led the artist back to SF to organize her estate; in the process he rediscovered a cache of his vintage prints and youthful letters. The collection forms a veritable time capsule in crisp black-andwhite that retains the astonishing clarity of Northern California sunlight as filtered through Tress’ unique artistic sensibility.”

He developed and printed these negatives in a communal darkroom in the Castro before leaving SF in 1964. More about Tress and his work to come next week.

Late, great gay composer Lou Harrison, subject of a new documentary.

Four media moments 1. Last week Vulture.com writer Kyle Buchanan reported that actor “Leonardo DiCaprio is a friend of Dorothy with a passion for women’s shoes – but there’s more to the story, we assure you. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced today that DiCaprio led a group of angel donors (including Steven Spielberg) to purchase a pristine set of ruby slippers used in The Wizard of Oz, which will be put on display at the Academy’s new Los Angeles museum.” For a minute there we thought Leo was “dropping a hat-pin,” but it’s just more Oz cultdom. A Sing-Along Wizard of Oz, hosted by Laurie Bushman and David Hawkins, is coming to the Castro Theatre, March 23-25 and March 30-April 1.

2. A headline in last Sunday’s Home and Garden section on SF

Catalog for the Arthur Tress exhibition now at the de Young Museum.

Courtesy the artist

The mosaics of artist Michael J. Kruzich are on exhibit at the intimate café Tartine Talbot in Hayes Valley through March.

Gate declared, “Poufs Punch Up a Room.” “Well, of course,” commented Savvy Sam. “Are they just finding out that we’ve always been interior decorators? They actually mean those foot-rest things.” But Out There was busy picturing a bunch of beefy sisters putting their fists through the walls, ottomans be damned. See where our mind goes?

3. The Stranger media site from Seattle asked Metropolitan Life author Fran Lebowitz, “What, right now, is the biggest scourge in terms of manners?”

“Well, it seems to me, at least in New York, that every person on the street imagines themselves in a world of one, you know?” Lebowitz replied. “They come toward you, they’re not looking for you, you’re supposed to go around them, because they, of course, they’re not looking. Because they’re looking at that little thing in their hand – whatever it is – the iPhone or the Black-

berry, or whatever the thing is. And if you actually do bang into them, which you sometimes do deliberately, they seem startled. They act like they’re in their house.”

4. Best New York Times correction of the week: “An article on Feb. 19 about Margaret Edson, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, referred incorrectly to one of several interests that occupy her days now that she no longer focuses on playwriting. She does not read Dante in Italian every day, although she once did.” Slacker!

Endnote: Mosaic artist Michael J. Kruzich will be feted at an opening party for a show that, in fact, has been hanging for about a month now. The small cafe Tartine Talbot, 244 Gough St. in Hayes Valley, is getting their beer and wine license, and wants to have an art opening to celebrate. So their “grand opening” art and wine party will take place on Friday, March 23, from 6-10 p.m. We’re there!▼

▼

Theatre >>

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Two moms, a girl & their back story

by Richard Dodds

P

ianoFight, best known for interactive theater and sketch comedy, strikes a different chord in its latest production. The company is presenting the world premiere of Octopus’s Garden, a full-length drama about a family of two moms and their 8-yearold daughter. This is also the first full-length play by Seattle’s Scott Herman, who came to know PianoFight Artistic Director Rob Ready from a non-theatrical meeting on a surfing trip to Northern Ireland.

“We read the play in mid-January,” Ready said, “and we knew that this was a story that needs to be told now, not after two years of tweaks and readings.”

In Herman’s play, domestic normalcy seems to rule Lilly and Claire’s home as they raise Lilly’s 8-year-old Anna with all the white-picket trimmings despite the same-sex parentage. But their studied tranquility goes askew with the unexpected arrival of Anna’s biological father. a gay man, whom she has never met. The second act jumps back nine years to reveal the events leading to conception.

Devin McNulty is directing Octopus’s Garden, which will first play the Alcove Theatre (March 17-31) near Union Square before moving to Stage Werx (April 14-28) in the Mission. PianoFight, currently itinerant, is the group working to turn the former Tenderloin home of Original Joe’s into a theater and arts center.

Octopus’s Garden tickets are available at www.pianofight.com.

Bright days for Kushner It’s Tony time again. No, not the awards show, but the home-brewed Tony Kushner, who will be on local stages both as a playwright and as a person.

A Bright Room Called Day, which debuted at SF’s Eureka Theatre four years before the same theater unleashed Angels in America, is receiving a rare revival under the aegis of the Custom Made Theatre Company. And during the run, though independent of it, Kushner will be at Berkeley Rep, on a metaphorical couch, for some psychological diggings into his plays.

The Eureka staged A Bright Room Called Day in 1987, when Kushner was just three years out of graduate school. The setting is an apartment in 1932 Berlin, where a minor movie actress named Agnes provides a haven to a cadre of artists, actors, film-

makers, refugees, and homosexuals who want to fight the Nazi rise but can’t rouse themselves much beyond talking. Periodically during the play, an American character named Zillah brings the play into the 1990s with what Kushner calls “interruptions” that try to find ties between the past and her present.

When the Eureka produced the play’s premiere, Zillah offered her interruptions from her New York apartment. But when the New York Shakespeare Festival staged Bright Room in 1991, Zillah was delivering her rants on Reaganism and other American policies from the same Berlin apartment where Agnes had once lived. Kushner allows for either version to be produced, and there is even a no-Zillah edition that can be licensed though Kushner warns that it is less “dangerous.” Custom Made director Brian Katz opted for the Zillah-in-Berlin version to help push a “collision of time and space.”

Bright Room runs at the Gough Street Playhouse March 13-April 8.

Tickets and info at (510) 207-5774 or www.custommade.org.

Kushner himself will be at Berkeley Rep on March 23 for a staged reading of his play Terminating and a panel discussion with Kushner and several Bay Area psychotherapists about the psychological themes in his works.

The short play Terminating is, appropriately enough, about a patienttherapist relationship. In reviewing a 1998 production of the play, New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote, “Mr. Kushner’s spirited dialogue between doctor and patient, with the voices of their lovers thrown in as condiments, turns psychiatric free association into a floating metaphor for the transforming perspective every reader brings to every piece of literature.”

The performance and discussion is a benefit for the Psychotherapy Institute. Tickets are available through www.berkeleyrep.org.

Girl power An ambitious new theater group is debuting this month with an inaugural presentation of two full-length plays, staged readings of three more plays, and developmental readings of yet another three plays. The impressive opening salvo of 3Girls Theatre takes place at Thick House throughout March in a repertory schedule.

The titular figures of 3Girls are Suze Allen, AJ Baker, and Lee Brady,

Roy Zipstein

Tony Kushner will be on stage at Berkeley Rep for some psychological probing of his plays while Custom Made Theatre is staging his early play A Bright Room Called Day.

Andy Strong

Garielle Patacsil and Leah Sheksy play a lesbian couple comfortably raising an 8-year-old daughter (Nandi Drayton, center) when the biological father unexpectedly arrives in PianoFight’s Octopus’s Garden.

each of whom is a resident playwright of the new company as well as, respectively, the artistic director, the managing director, and the literary director. Baker and Brady are the authors of the main initial productions, and Allen is directing both of them.

Baker’s The Right Thing, which opens March 9, tells the story of a corporate executive, fired on charges of sexual harassment, who fights her dismissal in what becomes a legal whodunit. On March 18, Brady’s What About Ben? begins perfor-

mances with Marie Shell starring in and writing songs for a solo show about a widowed folksinger who wonders if she can invite a sexy tree-trimmer in the home that her husband Ben built. Staged and developmental readings by another nine playwrights will be mixed into the rotating schedule.

3Girls Theatre has a “mission to produce the work of women playwrights who write fresh, compelling, and entertaining plays.” All ages and viewpoints are welcome. “No feminist agenda, no political fish to fry, no multicultural mission, although we’re happy to include plays that are motivated by those issues.” In addition to its stage productions, 3Girls will introduce in 2013 a biannual playwriting competition under the title Girls Get It Up. For tickets and info on all 3Girls Theatre projects, as well as to connect with its leaders who are seeking collaborators, go to www.3girlstheatre.org. ▼

<< Film

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

▼

Odd bloke, odd couple

by David Lamble

W

hile Marie Losier’s provocative and intimate new documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, observing her title characters’ bid to become a single “pan-individual,” stands on its own as a singular piece of filmmaking, it helps to know the back story of its surviving subject, Genesis POrridge. Born Neil Andrew Megson in a 1950 Great Britain still suffering the privations of wartime rationing, this son of a traveling salesman would recall for an adult biographer (Simon Ford, Wreckers of Civilization) memories of his mom guiding him to school through a lush forest, memories that he would later revise to hint at life’s cruelties.

“Epping Forest was still untouched. Rabbits, squirrels and deer were always around. There were pools, frog ponds, deep shadows.

It was a magical place, and a favorite haunt, I learned later, for rapes, flashing and the dumping off of corpses.”

This perception of a fundamental dichotomy in the natural order of things, a world rife with injustice where a rebel could be punished, would be confirmed at Andrew’s private prep school, four years of “torture and bullying.” Young Andrew became an anti-Christian rebel at school, a lad destined to join a commune of pranksters later cited for soft-core porn collages that included portraits of the Queen. Megson’s rebels were convicted of indecent conduct towards Her Majesty and branded “wreckers of civilization” by a vexed Scottish MP. After making his mark with avant-garde bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, and adopting the moniker Genesis P-Orridge, Megson would embark on life as a transgender rebel, meeting his soulmate while sleeping in the basement of a dominatrix. Genesis employs the royal “we” as part of his bargain with Lady Jaye.

“We’d slept in the dungeon overnight, and when we woke up, we saw a light go on in a doorway, and this beautiful, tall blonde woman walked across the doorway. She was dressed in a 60s outfit, with a Brian Jones haircut, a cigarette in her hand – and gradually she got undressed and started to put on this fetish outfit.

We were riveted. ‘Who is that!’ And then strangely I found myself saying out loud, ‘If I could be with that woman, that’s all I want for the rest of my life.’ We went out that night, and we were together from then on.”

The relationship would last until Lady Jaye’s untimely death in 2007

Genesis P-Orridge in New York City, in a 1999 Polaroid photo.

of stomach cancer, a moment that comes off abruptly in the film, as sadly it did in life.

Director Marie Losier is a tiny woman, attired in bold black with white polka dots, with a voice so soft I crank my monitor volume to the max to hear our chat, an account of the seven years she spent with a de-

David Lamble: How did you find Marie?

Genesis P-Orridge: Lady Jaye had an intuition for these things. “We need to find someone now we’ve committed ourselves into not just dressing the same, doing makeup the same, but going into surgery as well. We really need to film, and we need someone who follows us everywhere.”

After making his mark with avant-garde bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, and adopting the moniker Genesis P-Orridge, Megson began life as a transgender rebel. lightful odd couple who became her dear friends. Losier found her film quite by accident at Manhattan’s Knitting Factory.

“Gen reading poetry was really impressive to me, and the next day I went to an art opening in SoHo and stepped on the foot of someone who happened to be Genesis.”

Losier’s 70 minutes at home with this pan-gender pair captures an intensity of feeling that could be off-putting to outsiders but somehow isn’t. Since the movie glides over large chunks of Genesis’ prior careers, our Hotel Prescott chat fills gaps dating back to 1960s Britain.

What do you see in the movie?

Marie saw something that no other filmmaker would have seen, she went deeper. Instead of oddness, she captured the fact that everything was built on our being in love.

Your prep school days come off like Malcolm McDowell’s schoolboy rebel in Lindsay Anderson’s If. At a gay film night at IFC New York, I picked If. It would be interesting to do a survey and see how many extreme artists suffered from humiliation, bullying and violence when young. You’re meant to become the leaders of Britain, hold on to our traditions and continue to invade other countries, steal their resources, leave them poverty-stricken and in chaos, and be proud to be British! That’s where we learned who the enemy was, that was my breeding ground for being an anarchic-liberalist.

Your introduction to rock?

My dad was a drummer, got my love of harmonies at school, and of course we were in Manchester, 15 miles from Liverpool, so the Mindbenders played at the dances, the Beatles were on the local bill. My dad would take me to Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Monk.

Your first band?

Early Worm in 1967. We recorded in my parents’ attic. That record was just released a year and a half ago, and it sold out in two weeks. We later played Hull, and for some reason the Hell’s Angels decided they liked us, and they would go nuts.

The energy of what we were doing at full volume just thrilled them. They became our roadies and protectors, our house their chapter house. The president of the Hull Angels gave me his bike as a thank you for letting them use the house. But we didn’t believe he really wanted to give it to me, so we said he could borrow it whenever he wanted. It was a bit too scary. My favorite memory of the Angels was a guy on a chopper with a huge Nazi helmet delivering food for my dog. It was a strange,

▼

Music >>

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 25

Shedding light & casting darkness

by Tim Pfaff

P

ierre Boulez’ recent recordings for DG have been a mixed bag, some of them showing the gay musical magus at his peak, others raising questions of why he has chosen to undertake the recordings in the first place, since often he has made earlier recordings of them that weren’t likely to be surpassed, and presto, haven’t been. Age may be a factor – the composer will soon be 87, though that’s not a particularly ripe age for a conductor, and Boulez seems vital and acute enough.

More likely, though, the variability has to do with the ever-shifting interests of the composer-conductor’s restless if rapier-sharp mind.

With his latest release, of Schoenberg’s Pelleas et Melisande, kicked off by the Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, it’s also difficult to see what his interests in this repertoire were at the time he took it into live concert at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall in 2003, leading the Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra. It’s as pellucid and staggeringly detailed as any performance by Boulez would be, and it knows where it’s going, yet it comes off as, if not quite underwhelming, underripe.

It’s not, whatever else is the case, a score that conducts itself.

Schoenberg wrote it at the urging of Richard Strauss in the first years of the 20th century, completing his tone poem in 1903, the year after Debussy’s opera on the Maurice

Maeterlinck poem – beyond any doubt one of the handful of the best operas of the last century – most likely luckily unaware that Debussy had composed his masterpiece. Though tonal and thoroughly late Romantic, it’s motivic in the post-Wagnerian way, with musical ideas corresponding to the major characters and themes such as destiny, the awakening of love, and watery death. But on another level, it also operates as a fourmovement symphony, and getting the layered musical architecture right is challenge enough without having to do that hardest but most fundamental thing in art: to tell a story.

No one has earned his stripes in the music of the Second Viennese School more honestly than Boulez, and he moves around the architecture of this vast, brooding work like the sage he is, both shedding light and casting darkness as the music asks. Yet this brooding, emotiondrenched music never quite gets under your skin, and you’re reminded that the “tone poems” at which Boulez has proved himself a master without parallel are not those of Richard Strauss, but of Bela Bartok.

Boulez respects the fact that this is essentially programmatic music, and the story is there for all to hear. But of atmosphere there’s little, and of color – so important to Maeterlinck and to Schoenberg, who was also an oil painter – there

are only vague hints. This is the most surprising of all, since in his recent reinvestigations of his own, protean, never-finished compositions – most of which have been revisited by Boulez himself, with the world’s top musicians, in his recent anniversary years – what has become clearer than ever is that what stands at the center of his greatest achievements is his own preoccupation with sound and color as the most precise

The sound of soundtracks

by Gregg Shapiro

I

f you saw The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius’ Oscar-winning silent film about Hollywood, you probably remember Ludovic Bource’s Oscarwinning score. If you had the same experience as this writer and the audience sat silent and rapt throughout the movie (a novel experience in this day and age), then you were probably able to appreciate the soundtrack and the way it artistically supported and communicated the emotions and actions on screen. The Artist: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sony Classical) belongs in the collection of every musiclover who appreciates a good movie score.

With Madonna safely (?) behind the camera for the Wallis Simpson/ King Edward VIII biopic W.E., we can rest easy at the prospect of not having to watch her futile attempts at acting. W.E.: Music from the Motion Picture (Interscope) features a lushly orchestrated and dramatic score by Abel Korzeniowski. If the movie is even half as good as the music that Korzeniowski composed, including the Philip Glass-like “Brooklyn Faces,” then it would be a step up from the director’s Filth and Wisdom. Because she can’t remain behind the scenes for too long, Madonna can be heard singing “Masterpiece,” the movie’s less-than-tour de force theme song.

Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead has branched out in unexpected musical directions with his movie soundtrack work. The score he created for There Will Be Blood earned him deserved acclaim. His compositions for the 1960s period piece Norwegian Wood (Nonesuch) are moody and effectual. Interwoven on the soundtrack

are three selections by avant-garde Kraut-rockers Can. Chico & Rita (Calle 54/Sony Music), from the Oscar-nominated animated movie of the same name, is easily the most exotic and entertaining movie soundtrack since the one for the Oscar-nominated animated

movie The Triplets of Belleville. The movie, set in 1948 Cuba, is an international love story about singer Rita (voiced by Limara Meneses) and piano player Chico (Eman Xor Oña), their tempestuous relationship and the role that music played in it. The soundtrack features Latin-tinged versions of songs by Igor Stravinsky,

the Gershwins, Comden & Green, Leonard Bernstein, Herman Hupfeld, Hoagy Carmichael and Cole Porter, as well as original compositions by Bebo Valdés, who performs Chico’s songs in the film.

For his latest stint behind the camera, actor/director John Turturro went in a documentary direction w his “musical adventure” with a about the melodic roots, trad ditions and influences of the m music of Naples, Italy, in Pass sione.

The 23-song original m motion picture soundtrack f Passione (Universal) feafor t tures an exceptional array of p performers and succeeds in g giving the listener a sense of t musical variety in Naples. the We Bought a Zoo, Came eron Crowe’s family flick s starring Matt Damon and S Scarlett Johansson, features m music from an unlikely source. Jónsi, the openly gay l singer of Icelandic band lead Sigur Rós, provides not only more than half-a-dozen new compositions for the score o From the Motion Picture on We Bought a Zoo (Columbia/ F Music), but also includes a Fox S Sigur Rós song and selections f from his solo debut album Go. E Even if you didn’t care for the film, this is a soundtrack that is w worth keeping in your collection.

The Paul Rudd vehicle Our Idi Brother is one of those movies iot t came and went pretty quickly that a the local multiplex. The Origiat n Motion Picture Soundtrack: nal O Idiot Brother (Abkco) feaOur tu a score by Nathan Larson tures ( Shudder to Think) and Eric (of D Johnson (of the Fruit Bats).

D. There are also vintage tracks by Carole King and Willie Nelson, as well as contributions by hipster acts such as Thao with the Get Down Stay Down and Generationals, and a new Mindy Smith and Daniel Tashian.

How happy are we that fashion See page 33 >>

of elements. Sculpted sound and saturated color. With this Pelleas et Melisande, there’s something almost claustrophobic about the mastery of the structure and architecture. Instead of being invited in to see what goes on there, we just want to get out to where the air is a little fresher and the colors more defined.

The CD begins with an even more puzzling and deflating Wagner Tristan Overture, presumably

fr from the same concert. In a note, B Boulez demurs from saying the p piece marks the beginning of musi sical modernism to make a more p precise evaluation of it: “the beginn ning of the chromatic era of our aage.” I think I take his meaning that th there had been chromatic music of o other kinds in earlier eras, but the aair of professorial correction unfo fortunately spills over into a fairly b bloodless Tristan Prelude with little o of its use charge. Generally speakin ing a lover of Boulez’s Wagner, I was o on tenterhooks to hear it, but now ssee the wisdom of his announced d decision not to conduct any more sstaged opera.

Since the Schoenberg Pelleas is a work worth knowing, I urge you tto seek out its DG predecessor, w with Christian Thielemann leadiing the orchestra of the Deutsche O Oper Berlin, a red-blooded, getu under-your-skin account now curiously deleted. Better yet, another recording with the Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra – a llater performance, from 2006, but earlier release, from 2009 – is on DVD (Medici Arts) and has a helpful 15-minute introduction to the work, showing some relevant art of the time (including Schoenberg’s).

It’s conducted by Claudio Abbado, Dionysus to Boulez’s Apollo, drawing from his young Europeans a masterful, form-conscious yet soulinvading performance. Not incidentally, the filler is Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.▼

<< Theatre

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

▼

Lois Tema

In a stage adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Maurice, the title character (Soren Santos, with book) learns about Greek views on love from a schoolmate (Alex Kirschner) in the New Conservatory production.

Loving Maurice

by Richard Dodds

D

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anger lurks when the quaint becomes relevant again. Take for example the title character of Maurice, E.M. Forster’s 1913 novel that the author insisted only be published posthumously, which occurred in 1971.

While friends and relations are repulsed by Maurice’s admission of homosexual feelings, despite his search for a cure, he looks to a hypnotist to turn him around. When the sessions fail, the hypnotist offers a rare bit of straightforward advice. Leave England, where homosexuality is illegal, for a country like France or Italy that had repealed sanctions against sodomy more than a century before.

Maurice wonders if England’s laws will ever change. “I doubt it,” says the hypnotist. “England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

In the stage adaptation of Forster’s novel, making its stately American debut at New Conservatory Theatre Center, that line of dialogue elicits a laugh. The bullet train of gay rights that has seemed so inevitably speeding forward faces the prospect that the next president of the United States will want to derail the train or even put it into reverse. Quaint may not be so queer anymore.

Forster had already written A Room with a View and Howards End when he wrote Maurice, and as in the earlier novels, class differences, the arrogance of the elite, and an advocacy of humanism are important parts of the novel and its necessarily simplified stage version. Throw homosexuality into the equation, and it is a weight that the carefully wrought societal checks and balances can scarcely handle.

Maurice was dramatized by Roger Parsley and Andy Graham in 1998 for SNAP Theatre, a British touring company focusing on young audiences. While Forster’s novel is dense with the characters’ complicated inner thoughts, the adaptation needs to hit the pivotal plot-points while still illuminating at least some of the unspoken motivations. Parsley and Graham do a credible job at this, though the contrivance of a happy ending of which Forster himself had doubts is

something that the adapters have little power to improve.

At New Conservatory, the classy veneer of Downton Abbey-type lifestyles is convincingly evoked in director George Maguire’s controlled but compassionate production. As the fatherless Maurice Hall, who learns about sexuality from misguided mentors, Soren Santos gives a beautifully understated performance that communicates passion, angst, and anger in delicate strokes.

Alex Kirschner strikes a good balance between ambitious hypocrisy and genuine friendship as Clive Durham, a Cambridge student who introduces Maurice to the concept of “Greek love,” but then refuses to consummate it. John Hurst does a fine job of creating three distinct older characters: a foolish teacher who tries to explain the facts of life, a family friend who recoils when Maurice admits to being “an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort,” and the hypnotherapist who declares Maurice “a congenital homosexual.”

There is good double-duty work from Hilary Hyatt as Maurice’s personable sister and Clive’s crisply efficient wife, and from Andrew Nolan as a Cambridge fop and a servant who breaks both sexual and social barriers for the increasingly fierce Maurice.

Lindsey Murray completes the cast in typical motherly tones as Maurice’s surviving parent.

The multi-scene play is presented on a largely empty stage attractively framed by Kuo-Hao Lo’s set. Jorge Hernandez’s period costumes are an asset, and while Josh Senick’s sound design often provides constructive musical underscoring, it can occasionally expand into melodramatic enhancement.

Maurice is in the Masterpiece Theatre style of drama, which is not a criticism. It takes us into a different world that we may envy for the luxury of its formalities and to be grateful for not having to live within its constraints – whether you are of the 1% or 99%.▼ Maurice will run at New Conservatory Theatre Center through March 25. Tickets are $25-$36. Call 861- 8972 or go to www.nctcsf.org.

▼

Society >>

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 27

Gays will party at the waxworks

by David-Elijah Nahmod

I

ts beginnings were formed in the tragedy of AIDS’ peak years. In 1995, bereaved moms Barbara Richmond and Peggy Ermet founded the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation in memory of their late sons, John Richmond and Doug Ermet, both of whom were lost to the virus. Barbara and Peggy turned tragedy into triumph when they launched a musical AIDS benefit to honor their sons and raise funds for AIDS services. Now, nearly two decades later, Richmond/ Ermet is a fundraising leader for a variety of AIDS service organizations.

Musical fundraisers such as Help Is On the Way have become a Richmond/Ermet staple.

On Saturday, March 10, Richmond/Ermet, in conjunction with the Rainbow World Fund, will host Gay Night at the Wax Museum at Fisherman’s Wharf. From 8 p.m. until Midnight, Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin, Sister Roma and Donna Sachet will host an unforgettable night of entertainment and dancing to benefit both organizations.

“I attended the first Richmond/Ermet Help Is On the Way many years ago, and have been a huge fan ever since,” Donna Sachet told the B.A.R. “To me, the late Nancy LaMott singing ‘We Can Be Kind’ epitomized the power of music over tragedy. We are all very excited about the first LGBT-

Jason Brock will offer cabaret stylings at Gay Night at the Wax Museum at Fisherman’s Wharf.

specific event at the Wax Museum, largely because most of us have only heard about it and never taken a tour.

I can’t wait to wander among Presidents, movie stars and historical figures while sipping wine and singing some crowd-pleasing songs. And if Brad Pitt joins in on a duet with me, who am I to object?”

Ken Henderson, executive director of Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation, told the B.A.R. that the event came about almost as a fluke.

“Jeff Cotter of Rainbow World Fund won a party at the Wax Museum. We thought, let’s make it a gay night!”

Henderson explained the goals

Donna Sachet will help emcee the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation’s Gay Night at the Wax Museum at Fisherman’s Wharf.

of the evening’s two beneficiary organizations. “We raise funds and awareness for AIDS organizations and services in the Bay Area,” he said.

“Rainbow World Fund is a disaster relief organization that helps to deliver medical supplies to third-world countries. They show the world that the gay community helps. They’re small, they have hardly any staff, yet they make an

DVD >>

Animal kingdom

by Gregg Shapiro

O

f all the classic sci-fi flicks, Planet of the Apes is probably the last one you’d think would need a remake. But that didn’t stop Tim Burton (shame on you!) from trying and casting Mark Wahlberg (ugh!) in the Charlton Heston (double ugh!) lead role in 2001. The original franchise, which began in 1968, went on to spawn four more sequels into the mid-1970s.

In Rise of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century Fox), we get a prequel of sorts.

Will (James Franco), a scientist employed by a greedy pharma outfit (is there any other kind?), has been hard at work in his San Francisco lab, working to create a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Will has a vested interest in the project as his once-brilliant pianist father Charles (John Lithgow) is being rapidly debilitated by the dreaded illness.

But the research is slow-going, es-

pecially after one of the lab chimps goes on a rampage and is killed during an all-important presentation to investors and other high-profile folks. But out of this tragedy comes the discovery of the dead chimp’s infant ape, whom Will names Cae-

sar, rescues from certain destruction, and raises at home in secret.

The CGI Caesar, who is smarter than the chimp, gives Will hope for a positive outcome with his lab work. Of course, disaster is only one or two bad decisions away.

When Caesar is taken away by animal control following a series of nasty run-ins with the neighbors, he finds himself in the presence of other apes, whom he eventually charms and then becomes their de facto leader. Once they exact revenge on their cruel hum man keepers, the rest of m mankind looks like easy p pickings, and rise they d do. If you smell a sequel b by the end, give yourself a banana. Bonus feattures on Blu-ray/DVD/ d digital copy editions incclude scene breakdown, d deleted scenes, a multtitude of featurettes ((such as “The Genius o of Andy Serkis”) and m more.

You have to hand it tto Robert Pattinson for ttrying to take roles that stretch whatever acting abilities he has outside of the twisted Twilight rrealm. In Water for Elephants (20th Century Fox), for example, based on Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel, Pattinson plays Jacob, a Depression-era, Ivy League veterinary medicine student forced to drop out of college after his parents See page 32 >>

annual bus trip to Latin America to deliver medical supplies.” The Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation is also a contributor to Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS. Maupin, Henderson explained, will

meet and greet attendees, while Donna Sachet, along with Jason Brock, will offer cabaret-style performances.

Then, for the spookiest event outside of Halloween, attendees can dance the night away in the Wax Museum’s Chamber of Horrors.

“The evening will be casual and informal,” said Henderson. “But costumes are welcome and encouraged.

Be as wild and as crazy as you want to be!”

Henderson hopes that Bay Areans will be on the lookout for Richmond/ Ermet’s upcoming Dances from the Heart: Bay Area Dancers United in the Fight Against AIDS on April 30 at Fort Mason’s Cowell Theater. “Dancers from a number of ballet and modern dance companies will participate,” he reported. “We want it to grow and be a signature event.”

But for right now, Henderson invites everyone to come to the Wax Museum to dance the night away while raising funds for people with AIDS.▼ Gay Night at the Wax Museum, Sat., March 10, 8 p.m. to Midnight, 145 Jefferson St., SF. Tickets: $50 VIP (8 p.m. admission) $30 general (9 p.m. admission), available at: http://bit.ly/xXyILU. Info: www. reaf.org, www.rainbowfund.org

<< Out&About

28 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

Thu 8>> Anna Antrophy @ Modern Times Bookstore Reading and discussion/signing by the author of Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-Outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You are Taking Back an Art For. 7pm. 2919 24th St.

Asian American Film Festival @ Various Theatres 30th annual international showcase of films from many countries, including some GLB & T-themed features: Two-Dad Families, Coming Out in a Burmese American Family, and the opening night film White Frog by gay director Quentin Lee stars Booboo Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Joan Chen, B.D. Wong, Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf ) and Harry Shum Jr. (Glee), March 8, 8pm at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St. Closing night feature Prison Dancer is also gay-themed. Special events and parties thru the festival closing night March 18. $11-$20. www.caamedia.org

Beauty and the Beast @ Center for the Performing Arts, San Jose

Symphony in C Major. $25-$95. 8pm. 401 Van Ness Ave. Also March 10, 8pm & Mar. 11, 7:30pm at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley; Mar. 13 8pm at First United Methodist Church, 625 Hamilton Ave., Palo Alto. 252-1288. www.philharmonia.org

The Pirates of Penzance @ Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, Berkeley Berkeley Playhouse adapts the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta as a post-apocalyptic punk extravaganza; think Terry Gilliam’s Brazil meets Glee. $17-$35. Fri 7pm. Sat 2pm & 7pm. Sun 12pm & 5pm. Thru April 1. 2640 College Ave., Berkeley. (510) 485-8542. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org

RAW Dance @ The Garage Resident Artist Workshop presents dances

by Aura Fischbeck, The Riley Project and Gretchen Garnett. $10-$20. 8pm.

Also Mar. 10, 16, 17. Here Now Dance Collective Mar. 14 & 15. 975 Howard St. www.975howard.com

Tues 13

Tragedy tomorrow

by Jim Provenzano

A

funny thing happened on the way to writing up this week’s events.

Dividing them into binary categories didn’t exactly work. Some of the best shows have equal parts comedy and tragedy. Others are pure pathos, while yet more are total laugh-fests. Take your pick. Laughing or crying; you know, it’s the same release.

Danú @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley Celtic band performs traditional Irish music. $20-$46. 8pm. UC Berkeley campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

Ebéne Quartet @ Herbst Theatre San Francisco premiere of the highly praised French music ensemble, who perform string quartet works by Mozart, Borodin and Ravel. $38-$60. 8pm. 401 Van Ness ave. 392-2545. www.sfperformances.org

Fri 9>> Body Awareness @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Aurora Theatre company performs Annie Baker’s comic play about a lesbian couple whose lives become unraveled by their new male housemate. $30-$55. Tue 7pm. WedSat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru March 11.

2081 Addison St. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

Marilyn Pittman

Dandelion Dancetheater @ CounterPulse

Marilyn Pittman @ The Marsh The veteran lesbian comic gets a little more serious in her solo show about her parents’ tragic murder-suicide deaths; but wait, it’s also funny. $15-$35-$50.

Thu 8pm, Sat 8:30pm, Sun 7pm thru April 15. Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia St. (800) 838-3006. www.themarsh.org

Ishi: The Last of the Yahi @ Zellerbach Playhouse Theatre Rhino’s John Fisher wrote and directed this touching drama about the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe. $10-$15. Thru March 11. Fri & Sat 8pm.

Sun 2pm. Bancroft at Telegraph Ave, UC Berkeley campus. (510) 642-8827. www.tdps.berkeley.edu

Mar. 10 - Adam Curtis @ ATA Gallery Other Cinema screens the compelling culture-critique short films of the British videomaker, who examines the tragic state of media corruption. $5.

8:30pm. 992 Valencia St. 648-0654. www.adamcurtisfilms.blogspot.com www.othercinema.com

Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar @ Buriel Clay Theater African-American Shakespeare Company’s stages The Bard’s classic tragedy of Roman intrigue and betrayal. $10-$35.

8pm. Sat 8 & Sun 3pm thru April 1.

African American Art & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St. at Webster. (800) 8383006. www.African-AmericanShakes.org

Lou Harrison: A World of Music @ Roxie Theater

Titus Andronicus @ La Val’s Subterranean

Maurice @ New Conservatory Theatre

Impact Theatre’s up-close production of Shakespeare’s most violent, gory drama spurts a lot of fake blood. Be prepared. $10-$20. Thu-Sat 8pm.

1834 Euclid Ave., Berkeley (510) 2245744. www.impacttheatre.com

Andy Graham and Roger Parsley’s stage adaptation of E.M. Forster’s pioneering 1914 novel about the romance between an aristocratic Englishman and a working-class groundskeeper. $22-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm.

Sun 2pm. Thru March 25. 25 Van Ness Ave. at Market, lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Thu. 15 - Life & Death in Black & White: AIDS Direct Action in SF, 1985–1990 @ GLBT History Museum

Mar. 13 - My Week With Marilyn @ Castro Theatre Michelle Williams portrays an otherwise uplifting moment in the life of tragic star Marilyn Monroe in the Oscar-nominated film. $10. 4:45, 7pm, 9:10pm. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Premiere of Eva Soltes’ documentary about the prolific gay 20th-century composer. $6.50-$10. 3117 16th St. 863-1087. www.harrisondocumentary.com

Merchants @ Exit Stage Left

Life & Death in Black & White

My Week With Marilyn

Innovative company premieres Arthur in Underland, an “atmospheric mystery” about an occult rock band obsession and sexual daring, set in 1980s Berkeley. $13-$24.

March 9-18, Fri & Sat 8pm. 1310 Mission St. at 9th. www.dandeliondancetheater.org www.counterpulse.org

The opening reception for the new exhibit focusing on the work of Jane Philomen Cleland, Patrick Clifton, Marc Geller, Rick Gerharter and Daniel Nicoletta, five gay and lesbian photographers who documented the emergence of AIDS activism in San Francisco. Free/ donations. 7pm-9pm. Reg hours: free for members-$5. Wed-Sat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

No Nude Men Productions’ staging of Susan Sobeloff’s drama about an artist and her financial consultant sister’s collaborative and lucrative scheme. $10-$25. Most Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru March 24. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/221334

Midnites for Maniacs @ Castro Theatre Jesse Hawthorne presents another wonderfully matched trio of flicks, themed Grunge Love! Reality Bites (7:15) starring Ethan Hawke, Winona Ryder, Janeane Garafolo and Steve Zahn (as a twinky gayling!); My Own Private Idaho (9:30pm) starring River Pheonix and Keanu Reeves as gay-ish hustlers; Freeway (11:30) Reese Withersoon’s stunning star turn, with a great cast, plus lurid 1990s trailers. $12-$15.

429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Philharmonia Baroque @ Herbst Theatre Cellist Steven Isserlis joins the ensemble to perfomr Schumann’s Cello Concerto, Mendelssohn’s The Fair Melusine and Bizet’s

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi 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

Blackness, Sexuality and Revolution in Cuba @ MOAD Author Jafari S. Allen discusses his groundbreaking ethnography, ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba, a study of race, desire, and belonging among Blacks in early-twenty-first-century Cuba, including Santeria rituals, gay men’s parties, hip hop concerts, the tourist-oriented sex trade, lesbian organizing, and HIV education.

Free-$10. 2pm-4pm. 685 Mission St. at 3rd.

358-7200. www.moadsf.org

Children of Paradise @ Castro Theatre Newly restored print of the 1946 classic set in the Parisian circus world of the 1840s. $10. 2:30, 7:30. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

The Cult of Beauty @ Legion of Honor

Broadway San Jose presents the touring company of the hit musical based on the Disney animated film. $20-$74.50. Tue-Thu 7:3pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sat 2pm. Sun 1pm & 6pm. Thru March 11. 251 Almaden Blvd. www.broadwaysanjose.com

Titus Andronicus

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Subtitled The Victorian Avante-Garde, 18601900, this new exhibit focuses on the British Aesthetic Movement; paintings, architecture and decorative arts. Free-$20. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Thru June 17. Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave. 750-3620. www.famsf.org

Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre

Alvin Ailey Dance Theater @ Zellerbach Hall Historic dance company returns for its annual residency, under the helm of new Artistic Director Robert Battle.

Three programs include works by Alvin Ailey, Ohad Naharin, Paul Taylor, Robert Battle and Ulysses Dove. $30-$80.

Tue-Fri 8pm. Sat also 2pm. Sun 3pm only. Thru Mar 18. UC Berkeley campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph. (510) 6429988. www.calperformances.org

The Real Americans @ The Marsh Dan Hoyle returns with his fascinating multiple-character solo show based on his cross-country trek into America’s red states and liberal cities. $25-$50. Fri 8pm. Sat 5pm. Sun 2pm. Thru April 14. 1062 Valencia St. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Smuin Ballet Showcase @ ODC Theater Choreographic works by 9 members of the popular local modern ballet company. $28.

8pm. Also March 10, 2pm & 8pm. 3153 17th St. 863-9834. www.smuinballet.org

Three’s Company @ Finn’s Funhouse D’Arcy Drollinger, Mike Finn, Laurie Bushman and Jane Wiedlin (of the Go-Gos) stage a live performance of two early episodes of the innuendo-laden ‘70s sitcom at the intimate home-theatre. $20. Fri & Sat at 7pm & 9pm. Extended thru March 10. 814 Grove St. at Fillmore (Alamo Square Park). Limited seating. www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/223125

True West, Buried Child @ Boxcar Theatre Gritty dramas of battling brothers and family secrets; the first and second of four Sam Shepard plays the company will perform in repertory thru April 26. True West and Buried Child thru April 7. $25$35, or $85-$120 full pass. 505 Natoma St. 967-2227. www.boxcartheatre.org

Sat 10>> Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley Ton Koopman is the featured performer at this concert of Early Music by Bach, including the Mass in B minor. $30-$95.

8pm. UC Berkeley campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

Arthur Tress: San Francisco 1964 @ de Young Museum Veteran photographer of classic black & white images gives a talk related to his new exhibit of rarely seen prints from San Francisco in 1964. Free-$10. Exhibit thru June 4, Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.famsf.org

Dance Night @ Magnet Partner dancing, lessons and social dancing in Tango and Swing. $10 donation. 7pm9:30pm. 4122 18th st. www.QueerJitterbugs.com www.magnetsf.org

Gay Night @ San Francisco Wax Museum Enjoy a night with stiffs, stiff drinks and live people, with hosts Armistead Maupin, Donna Sachet and Sister Roma at a benefit for the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation; special performances by Jason Brock, Xavier Toscano and Bebe Sweetbrier; DJ Chrisopher B. $50-$60. 8pm-12am.

145 Jefferson St., Fisherman’s Wharf. www.helpisontheway.org

Geezer @ The Marsh, Berkeley Veteran clown Geoff Hoyle’s solo show about a life in the theatre, aging and its problems and joys. Thu & Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm.

Thru March 18. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley.

282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Photography in Mexico @ SF Museum of Modern Art New group exhibit of historic prints documenting Mexican life and culture since 1920.

Free-$18. Open daily (except Wednesdays) 11am-5:45pm.; open late Thursdays, until 8:45pm. Thru July 8. 131 Third St. 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org

Top Shelf @ The Rrazz Room Motown quartet with singer-actors performs Uptown, Dowtown, an R&B musical. $25$30. 3pm. Also Mar. 18, April 21, May 5, June 16, July 3, July 10 & 17. 2-drink min.

Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Sun 11>> Live Free or Die @ St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church Screening of the documentary about Gene Robinson, the first openly gay person to become a bishop. Post-screening Q & A with retired Episcopal Bishop of Utah, Otis Charles and his husband Felipe Paris, who are featured in the film. Free with refreshments. 7pm. 101 Gold Mine Drive. www.saintaidan.org

Murray Perahia @ Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley Highly talented pianist performs a solo recital. $30-$75. 3pm. UC Berkeley campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph. (510) 642-9988. www.calperformances.org

Shando Darby @ Castro Country Club Opening reception for a fundraising art exhibit of the photographer’s meditative landscape prints. 1pm-3pm.

Exhibit thru April 30. 4058 18th st. www.castrocountryclub.org

Mon 12>> Daniel Dallabrida @ Magnet Exhibit of ceramic and décollage works depicting themes of AIDS survivors, activism and elders in the gay community. Thru March 28. 4122 18th St. 581-1613. www.dallabrida.com www.magnetsf.org

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Out&About >>

Ten Percent @ Comcast 104 David Perry’s talk show about LGBT people and issues. Mon-Fri 11:30am & 10:30pm. Sat & Sun 10:30pm. www.comcasthometown.com

Wallin & Barretta @ The Rrazz Room Vocal duo, with the Kelly Park Quartet, perform a tribute to Italian singers. 8pm. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 3803095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Tue 13>> Bouquets to Art @ de Young Museum Annual display of floral arrangements inspired by the museum’s art exhibits, with a trunk show of local crafts artists, a gala fundraiser and public viewing. $11-$21. (Seated lunches and other events $35-$55). Tue-Sat 9:30am-5:15pm. Thru March 17. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.famsf.org

Loot

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 29

Brad Goreski @ Books Inc. TV reality show personality and author of Born to be Brad: My Life and Style, So Far discusses his fashion guidebook. 7:30pm.

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

The Drag Show @ Various Channels Stu Smith’s weekly LGBT variety show features local talents, and not just drag artistes.

Channels 29 & 76 on Comcast; 99 on AT&T and 30 on Astound. www.thedragshow.org

Linda Purl @ The Rrazz Room Actress-singer ( The Office, Homeland ) performs songs from The Great American Songbook with a splash of jazz. $35. 8pm.

Also Mar. 14. 2-drink min. Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

A Wider Bridge @ Congregation Sha’ar Zahav Panel discussion featuring leaders from the Alliance of LGBTQ Israeli Educational Organizations (AILO), a new partnership of Israeli LGBTQ organizations working with youth, families, and education. 7pm. 290 Dolores St. www.awiderbridge.org

Wed 14>>

Comedy tonight W

hether it’s stand-up night in a bar, a club or a theatre, these acts will tickle your funny bone, and the lighthearted musicals and operettas share vintage mirth like a fine bottle of bubbly. – J.P.

Author of New American Haggadah discusses his anthology with Nathan Englander ( What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank). $10-$25. 7pm. Jewish Community Center, 292-1233. www.jccsf.org/arts

Enjoy a student production of gay playwright Joe Orton’s satiric British farce about thievery, religious fervor and middle-class silliness. $9-$16. 7:30pm.

Tue-Sat thru March 17. 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Sonoma State University. (707) 664-2353. www.sonoma.edu/performingarts/theatre/nowplaying.shtml

Moliere’s classic comedy –about a man who impersonates a physician to woo his girl–gets a zing-filled contemporary pop culture update in this co-production with Yale Repertory Theatre. $14-$73.

Tue, Fri-Sat 8pm. Wed 7pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru March 25. 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www. berkeleyrep.org

Thu 15 >>

Jade Esteban Estrada

Sun 11- A Funny Night for Comedy @ Actors Theatre Natasha Muse and sidekick Ryan Cronin host the monthly stand-up comedy night and late-night talk show format. Guests include Sean Keane, Mike Spiegelman and Brian Fields. $10. 7pm. 855 Bush st. www.NatashaMuse.com

B.O.O.B.S.

Mon 12 - B.O.O.B.S. @ Martuni’s Witty singing trio ( Leanne Borghesi, Jessica Coker and Soila Hughes) perform their gal-centric tunes and parodies, from Broadway to Meatloaf. $10. 7pm.

4 Valencia St. www.boobs-cabaret.com

William Shatner

Sun 11 - Shatner’s World @ Orpheum Theatre William Shatner ( Star Trek, Boston Legal, and lots of Priceline commercials) performs his witty one-man show It’s Shatner’s World: We Just Live In It. One night only! $40, $90, $300. 7pm. 1192 Market St. www.shnsf.com

Sun 11 - Sing-Along Pirates of Penzance @ Presentation Theater Lamplighters’ participatory production of the witty Gilbert & Sullivan operetta lets you sing along. $15-$30. 8pm.

2350 Turk Blvd, USF campus. 227-4797 (Also March 18 at Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek; March 24 at Dance Palace, Point Reyes). www.lamplighters.org

Sun 11 - Bijou @ Martuni’s Trauma Flintstone sings songs about her worldly journeys, with the Tom Shaw Trio. $5. 7pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market.

A Dangerous Method, Carnage @ Castro Theatre Michael Fassbinder and Viggo Mortensen as Jung and Freud in David Cronenberg’s cerebral film (3:15, 7pm). Also, Roman Polanski’s living room drama of battling parents dealing with their kids’ bullying problems (5:10, 8:55). $10. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Eiko and Koma with Kronos Quartet @ YBCA Forum Veteran butoh theatre duo performs with the innovative music ensemble in Fragile a performance installation, and Regeneration, an evening of three repertory works. $10free. 5pm-9pm. Also Mar.15 & 16, 5pm-9pm and Mar. 17, 3pm-7pm. 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.ybca.org

Becoming Britney @ The Retrodome, San Jose The comedy musical parody about a certain oft-crazed female pop star features Bay Area fave Leanne Borghesi (Anita Cocktail). $33-$44. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru March 11. 1694 Saratoga Ave. (408) 404-7711. www.theretrodome.com

Exhibit of Fayette Hauser’s rarely seen photos of the famed drag theatre collective. Cockettes film night March 17, 8pm.

Closing night party March 30. Exhibit hours Wed 12pm-3pm and by appointment. 708 Montgomery St. 296-9029. www.canessa.org

Jonathan Safran Foer @ Kanbar Hall

Loot @ Evert B. Person Theatre, Rohnert Park

A Doctor in Spite of Himself @ Berkeley Rep

Children of Paradise: Life With the Cockettes @ Canessa Gallery

Mon 12 - Q Comedy @ Martunis Comics Charlie Ballard, Karen Ripley and Texan Jade Esteban Estrada, plus host Nick Leonard, perform gaily funny stand-up. $5-$15. 8pm. 4 Valencia St. at Market. www.Qcomedy.com

Tuesdays - Elect to Laugh @ The Marsh Will Durst welcomes comic commentator pals to a new weekly political humor night. $15-$50. 8pm. Thru Nov 6. 1062 Valencia St. at 21st. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey’s

Human Rights Watch Film Festival @ YBCA Weekly screenings of films from around the world that focus on human rights abuses and freedoms. $6-$8. Mostly 7:30pm. Thru Mar. 29. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. 978-2787. www.ybca.org

Jody Watley @ The Rrazz Room Grammy Award-winning singer performs R&B, Jazz and Pop songs with her vocal elegance. $$0-$45. 8pm. Also Mar. 16, 8pm; Mar. 17, 7pm & 9:30pm. 2-drink min.

Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St. (800) 380-3095. www.TheRrazzRoom.com

Whoa Nellies, Jenni & The Jerks @ Thee Parkside It’s a swingin’ ‘60s dance party with the campy retro band and the fun 50s-60s doo-wop soul group. $7. 9pm. 1600 17th St. 252-1330. www.theeparkside.com

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

Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

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

Thursdays - Comedy Bodega @ Esta Nocha The new LGBT and indie comic stand-up night’s hosted by “Mr. Gomez” (retired Telemundo extra and associate of comic Marga Gomez). 8pm-9:30pm. 3079 16th St. at Mission. www.comedybodega.com

bartabsf.com

<< Leather+

30 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

▼

Jesse Vanciel is Mr. SF Leather 2012

by Scott Brogan

M

r. Citadel Leather 2012 Jesse Vanciel won Mr. SF Leather 2012 this past Saturday night at the Hotel Whitcomb, and Mr. Powerhouse Leather 2012 Brent Gannetta won 1st Runner-up. This is the third year the Citadel has provided a contestant, and their first win. The contest was the centerpiece of the annual Leather Alliance Weekend that began Thursday evening with the Contestant Meet & Greet at Mr. S Leather, followed by the Lenny Broberg roast/ tribute. Friday night featured the annual Leather Alliance awards dinner.

Top awards went to: Patrick Mulcahey (Man of the Year), Leland Carina (Woman of the Year) and Race Bannon (Philip Turner Lifetime Achievement). Go to www.leatheralliance.org for a complete list of winners. Congratulations to all!

The banquet room at the Whitcomb was literally standing room only Saturday night when emcees Donna Sachet and Lenny Broberg began the Mr. SF Leather 2012 contest with their usual sparkle. Five men competed: Stephen Charles (Mr. Homoto Leather 2012), Gannetta, Will Swagger (Mr. Edge Leather 2012), Vanciel, and Michael Zane (Mr. Hayes Valley Leather 2012). They were judged on: Leather Image/Speech, Fantasy, Pop Question (“jock”), Comportment and Pre-contest Interviews. Interviews were conducted in private by judges Tyler Fong, Leonardo Iriarte, Olivier Pratt, Anthony Rollar, Jorge Vieto, me, and Darren Bondy. Bondy is Mr. SF Leather 2011, and gave a heartfelt step-down speech. He has been an exemplary community representative all year.

Thank you, Darren, for continuing the tradition.

Due to the fact that I was the head judge for the contest, I’m unable to provide my usual pontifications. I

Scott Brogan

Jesse Vanciel wins the title of Mr. SF Leather 2012, receiving his patch from Mr. SF Leather 2011 Darren Bondy.

can say that all five guys were amazing, representing their titles and sponsors with pride. I have no doubt that Vanciel will successfully represent our community in the coming year. Next up: Vanciel competes at International Mr. Leather (IML) in Chicago this May. Lenny gets roasted: I planned to start the column off with the roast/ tribute to Lenny Broberg. After thinking about it, I realized that Lenny would prefer otherwise. That’s how he is. It’s this rare combination of dignity and class that led to the roast/tribute in the first place. No one is more deserving.

Since becoming Mr. SF Leather and IML in 1992, he’s been a tireless contributor to the SF gay community.

He has guided, mentored and even prodded many of us who have come along since. Lenny leads by example, which I think is the best way to lead.

I’ve never seen him be negative or a “hater.” If he has, it’s been in private,

which is where things like that should be in the first place (got that, Facebook queens?). In short, a true leader and a genuine role model.

The event was a blast. It was put together by Ray Tilton and Donna Sachet, and held at the ARC (www. tharcsf.org) thanks to the help of Kitty Glamour. Ms. Glamour provided the opening number following a presentation of the SF Police Department’s “It Gets Better” video. By the way, the SFPD was the first Police Department in the nation to create one. Why the SFPD? Well, Lenny has been an officer with the force since realizing his dream of becoming a police officer in 1995. He’s been instrumental in working with troubled youth and joining the Gang Task Force. In 2010, he was promoted to Inspector. I wonder if he doesn’t have one of those soap opera look-alikes, enabling him to be in multiple places at once? Sometimes that’s the only explanation.

Throughout the night a parade of speakers and emcees took turns vetting and teasing him. The highlights See page 31 >>

Coming up in leather and kink Note: The SF Citadel’s events are now at the new location, 363 6th St., SF.

(1354 Harrison). 100% SoMa Beef! 9 p.m.-close.

Go to: www.facebook.com/lonestarsf.

Thu., Mar. 8: Daddy Thursdays at Kok Bar (1225 Folsom). Shot & drink specials. 10 p.m.-close.

Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sun., Mar. 11: SF Men’s Spanking Party at the Power Exchange, a men’s-only event. Must be 18 or older.

This is for men into spanking and spanking fantasies, not an S&M event, although all fetish gear is welcome. $20. 1-6 p.m. Go to: http://www.voy.com/201188/.

Thu., Mar. 8: Bare Chest Calendar Contest at The Powerhouse (1347 Folsom). 8-10 p.m.

Go to: www.barechest.org.

bartabsf.com

Thu., Mar. 8: Underwear Night at The Powerhouse (in conjunction with the Bare Chest Calendar contest). $5 cover to benefit Project Inform. 10 p.m.-close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Fri., Mar. 9: Lick It hosted by Lance Holman at the Powerhouse. $5 cover goes to the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund. 10 p.m.-close.

Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Fri., Mar. 9: Truck Wash at Truck (1900 Folsom).

10 p.m.-close. Live shower boys, drink specials, loads of fun! Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Fri., Mar. 9: Jockstrap Party at Kok Bar. Free clothes check. Specials for those in jocks. 10 p.m.-close.

Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sun., Mar. 11: Truck Bust Sundays at Truck. $1 beer bust. Warm bar, hot men, cold beer. 4-8 p.m.

Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Sun., Mar. 11: Men in Gear Beer Bust at Kok Bar. It’s all about the gear! $8. 3-7 p.m.

Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Sun., Mar. 11: Making the Connection: How We Brought Leather and S/M Out of the Closet with David Stein at Mr. S Leather (385 8th St.). 2-4 p.m.

Go to www.sfldg.org Mon., Mar. 12: Trivia Night with host Casey Ley at Truck. Featuring prizes, insane fun and ridiculous questions! 8-10 p.m. Go to: www.trucksf.com.

Mon., Mar. 12: Dirty Dicks at the Powerhouse. $3 well drinks. 4-10 p.m. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Sat., Mar. 10: 4th Annual ADA (American Diabetes Association) Auction & Raffle Fundraiser at the SF Citadel (363 6th St.). $5 cover, plus whatever you can buy at auction! 2-4:30 p.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Tue., Mar. 13: You’re Going to Need an Enema for That! My Ways of Enema Play presented by Eve Minax at the SF Citadel. $20. 8-10 p.m.

Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Sat., Mar. 10: Kok Block at Kok Bar. 4-9 p.m. $50 pool tournament starts at 6:30. Cheap drinks!

Go to: www.kokbarsf.com.

Tue., Mar. 13: Ink & Metal at the Powerhouse.

9 p.m.-close. Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Sat., Mar. 10: Boot Lickin’ at the Powerhouse.

It’s all about the boots! 9 p.m.-close.

Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Sat., Mar. 10: Open Play Party at the SF Citadel.

8 p.m.-1 a.m. Go to: www.sfcitadel.org.

Sat., Mar. 10: All Beef Saturday Nights at the Lone Star

Wed., Mar. 14: Nipple Play at the Powerhouse.

Drink specials for the shirtless. 10 p.m.-close.

Go to: www.powerhouse-sf.com.

Wed., Mar. 14: Golden Shower Buddies at Blow Buddies (933 Harrison). Feel the need to tinkle?

This is a male-only club. Doors open 8 p.m.-12 a.m.

Play till late. Go to: www.blowbuddies.com.

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Karrnal >>

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 31

All-natural men

by John F. Karr

on Waters’ cock, and his energetic bouncing shows off the muscular clench of his ass cheeks so much that you can just feel the internal clench Waters is getting. The scene’s not the humdinger I’d hoped for, but you don’t want to bypass two hard-bodied blondes who indulge their lust with honed intent.

For Aubrey in truly sensational mode, you’ll want the new LucasEntertainment flick Horny Fuckers.

Aubrey’s partner is the jovial, robust Dirk Caber, who says Aubrey

F

ormer star performer Ray Dragon’s been rather low-profile about his business as a porn producer. His movies are quiet, low-budget affairs, which is fine by me. It’s the sex that matters, and Dragon’s movies are fairly reliable on that account.

He helps his performers by generally keeping plots at bay, and he eschews pushy music for the natural sounds of sex. He prefers to film adult gay men, and isn’t interested in breaking in straight guys or helping them earn a living. There is the possible exception of Girth Brooks, who is nonetheless a lively addition to the cast of Dragon’s latest film Highway 9, in which Brooks drives through some despondent rural backwoods, observing and/or having sex in funky little roadside motels.

I like the way Dragon treats his casts. He doesn’t seem interested in provoking “performances” from them, instead letting them go their way. The resulting events can feel understated, but they are never rote.

And sometimes, the slow simmer can bubble up into boiling. That doesn’t happen in Highway 9, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find the scenes effective. Particularly if you’ve been a fan of any of the cast.

Like perhaps Arpad Miklos and Vinnie D’Angelo, two performers who are currently in semi-retirement. Highway 9 seems to be Vinnie’s first movie since 2010, while Arpad has maintained a slim presence in several recent movies for Dragon and LucasEntertainment.

Versatile Vinnie’s most often a bottom. His listing at BigMuscle says he’s 37 years old (although the entry hasn’t been updated in two years; Al’s Gay Porn Stars site says he was born in 1977, which would make him 35).

Top man Arpad was born in 1967. A former chemical engineer, he currently escorts in NYC (for which he’s won yearly awards testifying to his skills in that service). He’s 6’ 2”, hairy and good-natured, although he’s more solid than effusive when performing. You may be glad to hear these two burly,

<<

Gavin Waters and Phillip Aubrey in a screen grab from Ray Dragon’s Highway 9: sex in a funky little roadside motel.

bearded dads have a scene together in Highway 9; if not explosive, it’s good. After topping Vinnie, Arpad cums a lot, and lets Vinnie suck his cock clean as Vinnie gets himself off.

Vinnie also appears in a three-way with hairy-chested, fatcocked Brooks and a similarly husky dude, Ben Stone, who plays eager bottom to both men. Vinnie spouts too many porn-isms, along the lines of, “You like that cock, don’tcha?,” but the scene’s okay.

What drew me to the flick was the pairing of two of my favorites, Gavin Waters and Phillip Aubrey. Former Marine Waters is a bi guy who brings alluring looks and lively sexuality to his scenes. He’s worked for any number of companies since his 2008 debut, and shows no signs of quitting. Aubrey’s career has ended, but he didn’t so much quit as defenestrate, when his relationship with Spencer Reed abruptly ended in a fit of domestic abuse that involved a knife and Reed’s subse-

quent need for stitches. Though no one will employ Aubrey, he’s not gone. Yet. Some unreleased scenes are coming our way, and I’m glad for them. Sure, I’m sad for whatever it was that happened between him and Reed, but I can still get hard over whatever happens between him and Gavin Waters.

Waters is in peak form for the scene, shaved and tautly muscled, with his skin a burnished gold. Aubrey, too, looks fine, and goes after Waters in an event that’s unhurried and indulgent. His sturdy fucking of Waters showcases his sleek swimmer’s build as well as his body’s flexibility. Eagerly versatile, he squats

Leather +

From page 30

had to be Sister Roma’s hysterical poem detailing her “dream date” with Lenny, and Queen Cougar’s presentation of a Louisville Slugger baseball bat that the late Mr. Marcus had engraved specifically for Lenny.

Where else but in San Francisco would you have the Chief of Police (Greg Suhr), a State Senator (Mark Leno), a City Supervisor (Scott Weiner), a recent mayoral candidate (our buddy Bevan Dufty) and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (among others) all in one place celebrating a Gay Leatherman? Is it any wonder we love it here?

Naturally Lenny had the last word. He spoke beautifully and eloquently. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. Thank you, Lenny, for your time, talents, help, and love.

I speak not just for myself but for everyone when I say that I’m proud to have you as a friend.

IMsL on the horizon: Don’t forget! The International Ms. Leather Weekend (IMsL) returns to SF at the end of the month (March 29-April 1). This event is for everyone regardless of gender, featuring classes, parties, shopping, onsite play spaces (including men’s, women’s and mixed dungeons) and the IMsL 2012 contest. If you haven’t been, you need to go. You won’t be disappointed. Go to www.IMsL.org for details. ▼

Leland Carina

Donna Sachet helps to roast and pay tribute to Lenny Broberg’s 20 years of service to the San Francisco community.

“is friendly, outgoing, and has an extremely smokin’ body.” He speaks truth, and is eager to put his mouth where the money is. With an edge of lasciviousness, the pair’s steamy flip-floppin’ tears it up, leaving Aubrey sweat-covered and happy.

Gavin Waters is also in Horny Fuckers, and you’ll enjoy his pairing with ubiquitous bodybuilder bauble Marc Dylan.▼ www.RayDragonVideo.com; www.LucasEntertainment.com

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

32 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 8-14, 2012

▼

DVD>>

Sinning for the Holy See

by Tavo Amador

T

he Church must be in this world, but not of this world,” explains the Pope (Leonardo Cimini) to the brilliant, morally suspect Father John Flaherty (Christopher Reeve) in Monsignor (1982), an entertaining look at corruption, personal and institutional, in the Vatican. It has just been been released in DVD. For all its grievous faults, the Catholic Church has often been a venue for upward social mobility. The great Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661), for example, was from an undistinguished family, but became Louis XIV’s de facto Prime Minister and arranged for one of his nieces to be the king’s first mistress.

Monsignor traces the rise of a smart young priest from a humble background. He’s ordained during World War II, becomes an Army Chaplain, serves in Italy, delivers the last rites to a soldier, and then, enraged, kills several Nazis – a direct violation of his oath.

Stunned and repentant, he atones by serving mass to Italians at a nearby ruined church.

He soon discovers the competition among the different nationalities within the Vatican. Bishop Walkman (Robert Prosky) recognizes Flaherty’s abilities. “You’ve got faith, you’ve got

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SF Ballet

From page 21

be the conscience of a community.

At least one European revolution was brought about by an enflamed audience, who spilled out of the opera house in Brussels after Auber’s La Muette de Portici and began rioting in the streets. Romeo & Juliet sits squarely in that tradition: Sergei Prokofiev’s great score, though it was written in 1935, was held back by Russian censors (and the fear of Stalin’s disapproval) until it was politically in line with the requirements of Socialist realism, so that every detail of the score tends to create loathing of the ugly, crushing power of social conventions and of family pride, while on the other hand idealizing the sweetness of young love. The first Soviet Romeo & Juliet swept all before it, enjoyed triumphs on every tour, and conquered London and New York in the 1950s, with tales of audience wonder and frenzy that have rarely been surpassed.

Juliet in that production was danced by the great Galina Ulanova – dancers themselves, when they saw her, went out of their minds – which is especially wonderful since she was already in her 50s but seemed truly 14 years old. Ulanova was very great, but part of this power to enthrall is Prokofiev’s,

brains, you’ve got balls. The American Church is no longer a colony of Rome.” He recommends him to the powerful Cardinal Santoni (Fernando Rey), who capitalizes on the young man’s degree in finance by giving him an important position. Flaherty quickly realizes that the Church isn’t making the returns on investments needed to fund its ongoing operations, including charitable ones.

A solution turns up unexpectedly.

Boyhood pal Ludo (Joe Cortese) is in Rome, working for the military commissary, and with his Sicilian fatherin-law Don Vito (Jason Miller) is making huge profits selling American cigarettes on the black market. Flaherty, intrigued, sees an opportunity for the Church to earn money. Cardinal Santoni is apprehensive, fearing such a venture “can harm the Church, if it becomes known.”

“It can harm Father Flaherty, never the Church,” replies the ambitious priest. Eventually, using Don Vito’s Swiss bank, Flaherty becomes the Vatican’s Chief Financial Officer, increasing its wealth dramatically. In recognition of his services, he’s given the courtesy title “Monsignor.”

Along with his questionable business practices, Flaherty also has an affair with a postulant nun, Clara (Genevieve Bujold), who thinks he’s with whose powers of creating melody, rhythm, character, and mood have made this score so strong, it can hold its own in the symphony hall with no visual accompaniment. I’ve seen Isaac Stern end a concert with “Juliet’s theme” for his last encore, leaving not a dry eye in the house. Prokofiev used brass to create unbearable dissonances which embody the ruthless tyranny of the ruling class, shimmering strings to evoke the lovers, and many special effects, especially the tenor sax, used to uncanny effect to evoke the feeling of being drugged, which makes Friar Laurence’s potions and poisons (on which the plot depends) utterly believable.

Every detail of the story is in the music. So all a choreographer has to do is not contradict Prokofiev. Many versions exist, and ours is very good.

The ball scene, where Romeo and Juliet first meet, is superb, as are the fight scenes, which are thrilling and (though choreographed) played for tremendous spontaneity. Choreographed with Tomasson by Martino Pistone, an experienced movie stuntman and stunt coordinator, swordsman, choreographer, and actor, these are complex street-fighting scenes that involve climbing the scenery and leaping down from heights, and require careful timing and hours of rehearsal

the American army. She learns the truth at a ceremony in St. Peter’s presided over by the Pope.

When Ludo absconds with millions in Church funds, the Vatican’s bank is threatened with a run and an SEC investigation. Cardinal Santoni’s rival, Cardinal Vinci (Adolfo Celi), seizes this opportunity to destroy Monsignor. Santoni persuades the frail Pope to give Flaherty more time. Monsignor asks Don Vito for help. The aging mobster agrees, but demands that he find Ludo, promising no harm will come to him. That promise isn’t kept, but Flaherty regains the stolen millions and saves the Church from financial and political debacle.

The potboiler plot illustrates what students of Church history have long known: that the Vatican, for all its claims to spirituality, is an intensely political, secular organization; that Cardinals, the Princes of the Church, compete for personal gain; and that they are fixated on the Pontiff: wondering how long he will live and who will succeed him.

In a revealing scene, Cardinal Vinci gloats, “You will never be Pope.” “I never wanted to be,” unconvincingly replies the defensive Cardinal Santoni. Obedience and loyalty are prized virtues. Betrayal of vows is forgiv-

able. Betrayal of superiors is not.

At the time the movie was released, the most shocking aspect was the affair between a priest and a nun, one with two willing participants. The film is prescient about sexual and financial scandals, although its writers could not have imagined how sordid and widespread both would be in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Erik Tomasson

San Francisco Ballet dancers Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada in Helgi Tomasson’s Romeo & Juliet.

with each combination of dancers, because they are actually dangerous.

Best of all, we have here a Juliet of world-class stature in Sarah van Patten, who performs Friday night (with Pierre Francois Villanoba as Romeo) and has been able to move audiences as Juliet since she was herself 15 years old, dancing in Copenhagen, where Tomasson spotted her and gave her a contract on the spot. She builds the performance from scene to scene so that nothing surpasses the moment in

the tomb when she comes back to life.

That first breath she takes as she lies there on her own sepulcher is one of the greatest moments I’ve ever experienced in the theater.

There are four couples playing the roles, all of whom are inspired by the roles and make them their own. Beyond that, the depth of casting SFB can boast is remarkable: this story is full of distinct characters, principal among whom are Romeo’s friends Mercutio and Benvolio; his enemy, the preening macho thug Tybalt; Juliet’s nurse, and both her parents; not to mention the wedding-party and the acrobats who take up such memorable time in the town square.

Ballet technique was developed to make the smallest gesture visible from a long way away – just as operatic

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Animal kingdom

From page 27

die in a car crash.

Taking a job with a traveling circus, Jacob soon becomes indispensible to August (a miserably miscast Christopher Walz) and August’s wife Marlena (Reese Witherspoon channeling Madonna – now that’s acting!). Rosie, the elephant in question, is ultimately the source of animal magnetism between Jacob and Marlena, leading to a stampede of complications. All in all this is an admirable attempt, but one, disappointingly, that does not succeed.

The more than an hour’s worth

Reeve, at his most attractive, is convincing as a man torn between spiritual and worldly rewards, including those of the flesh. Bujold, in a thankless role, is forced to deliver campy lines like “You violated my soul!,” a violation she clearly and understandably relished.

Prosky, Rey, and Celi are splendid, as are Cortese and Miller, the latter showing the amazing dichotomy between veneration for Catholicism and brutal criminal behavior.

Director Frank Perry moves the story quickly, wisely preventing the viewer from thinking too much about w what’s happening. The knowing screen screenplay is by Abraham Polonksy and W Wendell Mayes, from the novel by Jack-A Jack-Alain Leger. John Williams wrote the eeffective score. Billy Williams’ cinematography includes some good Rome locations. Theoni V. Aldredge designed the costumes, and Joe Chevalier and Carlo Gervasi the beautiful sets.

Monsignor is a guilty pleasure for which no viewer will want to repent.

It’s an enjoyable look at an institution that has long needed to reform itself before judging others and interfering in civil matters.▼ voices are trained to fill a large house, pointe-work lets a ballerina as tiny as Maria Kochetkova (who’s barely five feet tall) make her emotions known to the back of the balcony (where the sound is in fact at its best). Audience members do bring binoculars, in order to “see the faces,” but I say, if the dancer’s whole body does not show you how they feel, they’re not really dancing. And the great thing about SFB is, they really dance.

Meantime, across town also this weekend, at the other end of the spectrum, first-rate dancing on an intimate scale is happening at Z Space at Theater Artaud. The phenomenal dancer/choreographer Christy Funsch is showing a series of experimental solos in two formats. In the first act, the space will be divided up into booths, where audience members can see some of the Bay Area’s finest contemporary dancers up-close and personal – then again experience them after the space has been reconfigured for Act II. Among the players are the superb dancers Hope Mohr, Nol Simonse, Fredrika Keefer, Laura Elaine Ellis, Christy Funsch, and Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, who are among the very finest contemporary dancers living among us. The whole enterprise is the kind of thing that those who are looking to create new work for the big houses are looking to for ideas.

Funsch Dance Experience, Thursday through Sunday at Theatre Artaud (the old Continental Can factory, now converted), 17th and Mariposa Sts. in the Potrero district, SF. Show up at 7:30 p.m. to see a solo in private.▼

of special features on the two-disc Blu-ray/digital copy edition include audio commentary and a handful (or should that be trunkful?) of featurettes.

Available for a limited time, the Diamond Edition Blu-ray/DVD package of The Lion King (Disney), the celebrated Oscar-winning animated musical, featuring music by Elton John and Tim Rice, returns to be enjoyed by a whole new generation. Blu-ray bonus material includes four previously unseen deleted scenes as well as never-beforeseen bloopers, a deleted song, an extended scene, featurettes and more.▼

▼

Read more online at www.ebar.com

March 8-14, 2012 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 33

Books>>

Sensory overload

by Jim Piechota

By Blood by Ellen Ullman; FSG, $27

S

an Francisco novelist Ellen Ullman makes her current livelihood as a writer, but back in the late 1970s she held a rare occupation as a female computer code programmer at the genesis of the technological revolution. Now recognized as an amazing accomplishment, Ullman translated the “human side” of a computer programmer’s work into an acclaimed 1997 memoir called Close to the Machine, which was followed by The Bug, a dark, thrilling novel whose paperback edition coincides with the publication of this new novel By Blood, another major accomplishment.

Ullman’s latest is a departure of sorts, in that it doesn’t feature computers, computer coding, or

<<

tthe professor listens in on D Dr. Schussler’s sessions, he d describes so much more tthan the breezy words docttor and patient exchange.

W Whether it is the muted w whoosh of a tissue being eextracted from a cardboard b box or the “clicks and w whirring sounds” of a voice rrecorder or the slight “nylo lon upon nylon” tension of sstocking-ed legs crossing aand uncrossing, Ullman eemploys the delight of the ssenses to full use in a narra rative that amounts to an aamazing feast for the readeer’s imaginative mind.

In a brooding, suspensefu ful, sensory mystery that su surpasses the excellence of h her first novel, Ullman conti tinues to enchant and make Sa San Francisco proud to have h her as one of our own.▼

man herself is adopted) and her past as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

As the plot unravels, ramping up the narrative tension and a delightful sense of delusional confusion for the reader, more details unfurl about Dr. Dora’s own history, as both she and the nosy professor become enraptured by the lesbian patient.

Ullman’s prose is the seasoned work of a master craftsman: crisp, clipped, economic phrasing that reveals just enough to tease the mind and lick at the senses. As

Asian American

From page 21

ziak’s Chip nurture Dad, pouring out a Coke while uncapping Joey’s beer as Dad sits lost in grief. Brian Murray burns warmly as a courtly old-school lawyer who cuts to the heart of the case, a turn reminiscent of Joseph Welch’s cracker-barrel shrewd judge in Anatomy of a Murder. (Kabuki, 3/9, 13; PFA, 3/17) White Frog Hovering in a metaphorical zone shared with comingof-age gems like My Life as a Dog and The Squid and the Whale, Hong Kong-born, Canadian-raised director Quentin Lee’s fourth queercontent feature centers on the turmoil injected into the life of a young Asperger’s-afflicted Chinese American teen, Nick (The Twilight Saga’s Booboo Stewart), upon the death of his older brother/minder, Chaz (Glee’s Harry Shum Jr.). Suddenly Nick must navigate the boisterous pecking order of his bro’s old poker buddies; the disorienting chaos of Chaz’s secret project, a controversial teen drop-in center; and the gravitydefying uncertainties of sexual orientation in a socially conservative Christian family.

Lee, who has carved a singular niche among out gay directors with the genre-challenging works Drift and Ethan Mao, fashions a credible portrait of an Asperger’s kid rudely pulled out of his comfort zone by tragedy and a desperate need to achieve a degree of social autonomy. Lee praises his 17-year-old lead for allowing audiences to identify with Nick.

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programmers, and instead is a psychological thriller that follows a therapist (frustratingly nameless) who is forced to relinquish his university position during a hot summer in 1970s San Francisco (think Free Love and the Zodiac Killer, with Patty Hearst overtones). Disgraced by a perceived ethics violation on campus (“my banishment”), the professor rents office space in a shadowy building to take on new patients, but something else captures his favor quickly: the woman who rents the adjacent office to hold her own therapy sessions.

One particular patient of this neighboring psychotherapist, Germanic Dr. Dora Schussler, captures the professor’s attention, especially since he is able to clearly overhear their histrionic therapy sessions through the walls. Of particular interest is Schussler’s lesbian patient, a nameless woman who is at odds with both her adoptive status (Ull-

Soundtracks

From page 25

model-turned-actor Channing Tatum is in the midst of a full-scale career comeback? With a few movies that have already opened and several more to come, Tatum is having a terribly good year. Following in the Nicholas Sparks-esque footsteps of 2010’s romantic drama Dear John is The Vow, in which he co-stars with Rachel McAdams. Music from the Motion Picture The Vow (Rhino) is one of those compilation soundtracks that features a couple of pop classics (one slice of Meat Loaf and a Cure cut) framing a selection of tunes by cool acts including The National (on the digital version only), Lykke Li, Voxhaul Broadcast, OK Go and Phosphorescent, among others.

X-Men: First Class was a major disappointment, in spite of having man of the hour Michael Fassbender in it. With music composed by Henry Jackman, the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, X-Men: First Class (Sony Classical/Fox Music) doesn’t do much

SF International Asian American Film Fest

SF International Asian American Film Fest

Movie star Joan Chen appears in the 2005 film Saving Face.

“Booboo came in with an audition that was a little more autistic, so I directed him towards an interpretation that was more Asperger’s, from which he found a very convincing character. It so happens that my little sister was diagnosed with Asperger’s just two weeks into our production.

My family in Hong Kong was unaware of the movie, so you can see a kind of cultural zeitgeist at work.

Ultimately the message of the movie (written by sisters Ellie and Fabienme Wen) was one of acceptance.”

(Castro, 3/8 opening night, followed

by Gala at SF Asian Art Museum) A two-film spotlight on the work of the Chinese-born star Joan Chen (Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, Stanley Kwan’s Red Rose)

for the cause. “Rise Up to the Rule” is effective and will raise some pulserates.

Legendary film composers Franz Waxman (The Bride of Frankenstein, Rebecca, Sunset Boulevard), Max Steiner (Now Voyager, King Kong, Johnny Belinda), David Raskin (Laura) and Bernard Herrmann (Citizen Kane) are each given their due on the Classic Film Scores series from RCA Red Seal. One disc in the series is dedicated to Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis, and includes music from Dark Victory, All About Eve, Jezebel, The Letter, Beyond The Forest, Mrs. Skeffington and more.

When the ABC series Pan Am debuted in fall 2011, AMC’s Mad Men was no longer the ruler of the retro roost. Pan Am: Music from and Inspired by the Original Series (Verve) has the kind of vault-raiding that the Universal label family is famous for, featuring past and current artists such as Grace Potter, Ella Fitzgerald, Getz/ Gilberto, Sergio Mendes & Brazil 66, Connie Francis and Brenda Lee.▼

Nick (Booboo Stewart) in director Quentin Lee’s White Frog.

revives a 2005 lesbian comedy, Alice Wu’s Saving Face. A young Chinese American woman, caught between a suffocating Queens ethnic enclave and the fast-paced Manhattan world of lesbian love, spends a whole movie swiping her Metro Pass while juggling the needy women in her life.

Wu shows how hard it is to keep a girlfriend in a world awash with clueless older relatives. Wil is settling in for a hot girl affair when her still very attractive mother (Chen) shows up on her doorstep unmarried, pregnant and very much in disgrace. Wu says the core of Saving Face is a delicate daughter/mother dance around how the daughter’s homosexuality is going to affect and possibly free them both. (SFFS, 3/12) Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl

Chen’s own remarkable 1999 directing debut (banned at the time in China) depicts the pitiless fate of a young girl taken in by a kindly Tibetan horse-trader after being banished for “re-education” during the Cultural Revolution. (Kabuki, 3/9) I am a Ghost Hitchcock knew that sheer terror is best incubated in a banal setting, like kids harmed at recess (The Birds), Cary Grant attacked at a rural bus stop (North by Northwest), or Janet Leigh’s fatal relaxing shower (Psycho). In Bay Area queer director H.P. Mendoza’s domestically situated horror, a young woman (Anna Ishida) uncovers a most unsettling family secret while having her eggs sunny-side up.

Alone in her family’s impeccably furnished Victorian, Emily finds the

joint to be haunted, and alas, she’s the spirit. Mendoza up-ends some classic tropes – the ghostbuster remains invisible – while playing chilling mind games in cinema’s sunniest haunted mansion. Kudos for the full frontal nudity of a wellhung demon. (SFFS, 3/9; PFA, 3/10) No Look Pass Melissa Johnson dips into a feel-good zone with this true-life tale of an unlikely lesbian heroine who busts taboos to earn respect in a provincial German basketball league where Americans must either win or go home. Johnson’s cameras provide a rare look at several sheltered worlds. A Burmese immigrant mom insists that her still-closeted daughter submit to an arranged marriage, and a Harvard female coach gives profanity-laced pep talks that meet the Bobby Knight gold standard. (Kabuki, 3/11; SFFS, 3/14) Raymond The pick of the litter among five queer-themed shorts is Mark V. Reyes’ moving portrayal of a young man (Francis Lansang) who must overcome old animosities and disclose a terrible secret to his fractious family and to an alienated ex-boyfriend who’s already moved on. From the Where We Live program (Kabuki, 3/11; Camera 3, 3/17). This program includes Andrew Ahn’s Sundance-screened short First Birthday.

XXX shorts program features three lighter films: The Arrival, Fortune Cookie Magic Tricks and Looking for Jiro. (SFFS, 3/11; Kabuki, 3/14)▼ Info: caamedia.org

DVD>>

Screwball screw

by David Lamble

T

he mistaken identity comedy Is it Just Me?, newly out on highdefinition Blu-ray, wobbles badly between cringe-inducing satire and a true romantic’s need to find signs of intelligent life in the Southland’s craven boy ghetto. Blaine (sweet/ savvy Nicholas Downs) is a low-self-esteem, almost-pretty boy who’s fishing for love in the oil-infested waters of Web chat rooms.

Blaine’s waking hours are spent spinning a poetic personal column for a nitwit gay rag. An

online chat with a guitarstrumming Texan (David Loren miming a young Andy G Griffith) convinces Blaine tthat Xander’s his soulmate.

D Director J.C. Calciano’s ssmartest conceit has Xander m mistaking Blaine for his sexp pig roomie, Cameron. An aachingly sincere climax will eeither convince you that this is tthe new Big Eden or send you o out to rent the real deal, Jim F Fall’s delayed-gratification cclassic Trick.

Blu-ray special features are p pretty extensive for a queer in indie release: director/cast ccommentary, dating advice, ca cast interviews, scrapbook, d deleted scenes, cast auditions, o official and unofficial trailers, o optional English subtitles.▼

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

34 • Bay Area Reporter • March 8-14, 2012

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