March 23 2017 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

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LGBT seniors settle in at 55 Laguna

Meals on Wheels braces for cuts by Cynthia Laird

eals on Wheels of San Francisco is bracing for possible cuts now that President Donald Trump has released his proposed budget, but the chief executive officer stressed that cli- Courtesy Meals on Wheels SF ents should not panic. Ashley McCumber, Ashley McCumber a gay man who heads Meals on Wheels of San Francisco and is the board chair of Meals on Wheels America, told the Bay Area Reporter that they were not surprised by Trump’s budget plan, which the president announced last week. In it, Trump called for massive cuts to non-defense discretionary spending, including the Community Development Block Grant program. The block grants are provided to states and municipalities, which then use the money to help fund a variety of services operated by nonprofits such as after-school programs and some senior food programs. Millions of people in every state would be affected if the block grants are cut. Congress ultimately approves the federal budget, and the president provided his budget “blueprint” as he seeks to increase military funding and cut domestic expenditures. “We were not overwhelmingly surprised,” McCumber said of Trump’s budget plan. “Right now, we don’t know much.” McCumber also said that the bulk of Meals on Wheels of San Francisco funding comes not from the block grants, but from the Older Americans Act, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. If Congress cuts that funding, it would be “devastating,” he said. “If an 18 percent cut to the Older Americans Act takes place that would be devastating to senior meal programs everywhere,” he said. Meals on Wheels of San Francisco has an annual budget of just over $13 million, McCumber said. No block grant money is used, but the agency receives about half its funding from the government, and about half from fundraising. About 35 percent of the budget comes from OAA funds, he explained. In a statement, Meals on Wheels America said that some local programs rely on the block grant funds. “Details on our network’s primary source of funding, the Older Americans Act, which has supported senior nutrition programs for 45 years, have not yet been released,” said a statement issued by Meals on Wheels America March 16. The agency said it feared “millions of seniors who rely on us every day for a nutritious meal, safety check, and visit from a volunteer will be left behind” if there are cuts to OAA. “The best thing to take solace in is that OAA See page 12 >>

Vol. 47 • No. 12 • March 23-29, 2017

Openhouse Executive Director Karyn Skultety, left, sits on the rooftop patio at 55 Laguna as residents Ron Cordova and Robin Rheault talk with Amy Goodwin, the resident services manager.

by Matthew S. Bajko

aving lived for eight years in the Ambassador, a converted single-roomoccupancy hotel in the Tenderloin at the corner of Mason and Eddy streets, Ron Cordova had become inured to the constant whir of sirens outside his building. But since moving two days prior to

Christmas into 55 Laguna, the city’s first affordable housing development designed specifically for LGBT seniors, Cordova has had to adjust to the quietness of his new apartment in the former college building known as Richardson Hall on the edge of the city’s gay Castro district. “It is dead quiet,” said Cordova, 58, a gay man who is disabled and living with HIV.

“Since I have been here, I have heard one siren. Where I had been living, I heard sirens daily.” Last summer, Cordova entered the lottery to select residents for 31 units in the renovated building, a $16 million joint venture between Openhouse, the LGBT senior services agency See page 11 >>

Ting plans education campaign on gender-neutral bathroom signs

Kelly Sullivan

by Matthew S. Bajko

Ting has been working with Equality California, the statewide arlier this month Jordan LGBT advocacy organization that Davis was traveling with co-sponsored the state law, on a friends to Sacramento public education campaign about when they pulled off the highhaving proper bathroom signs. way in the city of Davis to make His office expects it will launch a pit stop. They found a Chevron sometime in April. gas station where they could use “If people aren’t doing it, it is the bathroom. because they are not knowing The service station had two about it,” said Ting. “Getting the single-occupancy restrooms. But legislation passed was the easy they still had signage marking one part, now we have to make the as male and the other female, in change a reality.” violation of a state law that went The law is meant to benefit not into effect March 1 that requires only transgender individuals, who businesses and government-run often face harassment or worse Kelly Sullivan buildings to mark all single-stall when using the bathroom that Signage at a single-stall bathroom at the Anza library branch in the toilets as for use by anyone. corresponds with their gender Richmond has not yet been changed to gender neutral. When she returned home, identity, but also disabled people Davis, a transgender rights activand parents who need to assist In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, ist, searched online for how to report the busitheir young children in using the restroom. Davis said the response she received illustrates ness as being in noncompliance with the state “Obviously, bathrooms are a critical part of how “it is going to be kind of hard, really, to law to Davis city officials. Her March 7 email everybody’s lives,” said Ting. “We all need to figure this out at the state level.” prompted a response from Michele Sharitz, use them. We also want to use bathrooms safely Asked about Davis’ experience, Assemblyman a police service specialist supervisor with the without harassment.” Phil Ting, (D-San Francisco), who last year auDavis Police Department. In crafting his bill with LGBT advocates and thored Assembly Bill 1732 requiring the genderSharitz replied that, “The City of Davis does not business interests last year, Ting specifically did neutral bathroom signage, told the B.A.R. that it currently have a municipal code on this matter to will take time for local officials to learn about the See page 6 >> enforce,” apparently unaware of the new state law. law and that they are required to enforce it.

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2 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

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Man on life support after Castro bar outburst by Seth Hemmelgarn

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gay San Francisco man who had been acting violently at a Castro district bar is on life support, and the man’s stepfather is attributing his condition to a sedative that he said first responders gave his son. Abel Marquez, 36, who reportedly had been drinking and using methamphetamine, suffered cardiac arrest Saturday night, March 11 after breaking a window and cutting himself at Hecho Cantina, 2200 Market Street. David Monroe, Marquez’s stepfather, who said Tuesday that hospital staff are keeping his son “alive with machines at this point,” said he’s “absolutely” sure that Marquez’s condition is the result of paramedics giving his son Versed, which is also known as midazolam hydrochloride and is often given to people before they undergo medical procedures. Marquez believes mixing the sedative with other substances in Marquez’s body has endangered his life. “Basically, they killed him,” Monroe said of his son, who’s married and is also known as Abel Florentino. “ ... They shot him up with that stuff, and two minutes later he was toast.” (Marquez’s husband was not available for comment.) According to a summary from Sergeant Michael Andraychak, a San Francisco Police Department spokesman, witnesses told officers that Marquez had entered the bar “chewing on a bag.” He took a telephone from a counter, “grabbed the cue ball from a pool table,” and “then struck the glass door, breaking it. He broke glass items on the bar, picked up a piece of glass, and cut himself on the wrist,” said Andraychak, who added that he couldn’t confirm the names of any

Courtesy David Monroe

Abel Marquez

people or businesses involved in the incident. When officers arrived, people were restraining Marquez on the bar’s floor. He was bleeding, and the floor was “covered in blood and broken glass,” Andraychak said. “Officers immediately moved in to restrain the suspect and get the civilians out of harm’s way.” Marquez “was tensed up and resisted the officers,” Andraychak said. When back-up officers got to the bar, they managed to handcuff him “and bring paramedics into the scene when it was safe.” Andraychak said that as Marquez was being prepared for transport to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, “he suffered a medical emergency. Paramedics initiated life saving measures and transported the suspect to the hospital, where he was admitted.” Monroe shared with the Bay Area Reporter draft fire department records that say as Marquez, who’d been handcuffed, continued to fight with responders, “this crew administered 5 mg Versed IM.” As responders secured restraints on Marquez, he “became limp.”

About two minutes after Marquez was given Versed, he was “noted to be apneic and pulseless,” according to medical records that Monroe shared. After he went limp, paramedics “began compressions immediately” and continued the compressions in the ambulance as they took him to the hospital, according to the fire department documents, which also say that after the Versed was administered, Marquez’s condition became “worse.” When Marquez arrived at the emergency room, he presented “for evaluation of cardiac arrest,” medical records say. He suffered cardiac arrest after emergency medical service providers arrived at the bar, according to the fire department documents. The cause is listed as “drug overdose.” Monroe said that medical staff have told him that Marquez had methamphetamine in his system, and the fire department report said alcohol could be smelled on his breath. Records don’t clearly mention methamphetamine or indicate how much alcohol Marquez had in his system. As Monroe pointed out, when one searches for Versed on Google, the result says, “Combining [it] with other substances, particularly alcohol, can slow breathing and possibly lead to death.” Jonathan Baxter, a fire department spokesman, declined to comment on specific details of the case, citing medical privacy law. Andraychak, the police spokesman, didn’t respond to follow-up questions about the incident, and police sergeants who Monroe said have come to the hospital didn’t respond to a phone message from the B.A.R. See page 12 >>

Diaz gets probation in assault case by Seth Hemmelgarn

avid Munoz Diaz, the San Francisco resident who was acquitted in 2014 of murdering another man during a sexual encounter, has been released from jail again after accepting a plea deal in a case where he was accused of disfiguring a man. Tuesday, retired Superior Court Judge Donna Hitchens sentenced Diaz, 27, to ﬁve years probation after warning him that a violation “no matter how minor will result in a prison term.” Diaz’s latest case stems from a November 29 incident in which police said Diaz handcuffed and bit a chunk out of another man’s scalp while impersonating a cop. In court documents, prosecutors said that he’d cut and disabled the victim’s tongue, put out one of his eyes, and slit his “nose, ear, and lip.” Police said both men had been hospitalized after the brawl. In February, Diaz pleaded guilty to false imprisonment in exchange for assault and other counts in the case being dismissed. Assistant District Attorney Andrew Clark said Tuesday that the victim in the November case is “supportive of this disposition,” but Clark said that he wanted to make it “abundantly clear that police, the probation department, the district attorney’s office, and the criminal justice system are very concerned

Courtesy SFPD

David Munoz Diaz

about the ability of Mr. Diaz to stay out of criminal trouble.” He said that “particularly after midnight,” Diaz poses “a risk to the community,” and “his trouble has resulted in injuries to people. We’re very concerned.” Deputy Public Defender Rebecca Young has attributed Diaz’s problems to late night drinking. She’s also said that in the November incident, he’d been defending himself. Hitchens said that Diaz’s probation term could be reduced to three years if there are “no new offenses and no violations whatsoever.” Among other conditions, Diaz “must participate in an individualized treatment and rehabilitation

plan,” comply with a midnight curfew, and wear an ankle monitor “to assure us he abides by the midnight curfew,” Hitchens said. He’ll have to wear the monitor for “up to a year,” but he may be able to get it removed earlier, she said. She also ordered Diaz to stay away from the victim. Hitchens ordered Diaz to next appear in court June 16 for proof that he’s enrolled in “psychological or psychiatric counseling.” Young said, “Mr. Diaz is very committed to getting counseling and to getting his job back.” In 2014, Diaz stood trial for the June 2011 death of Freddy CanulArguello, 23, in Buena Vista Park. During the trial, Diaz testiﬁed that Canul-Arguello had asked to be choked during a sexual encounter and that he’d accidentally killed him. Jurors acquitted Diaz of seconddegree murder but convicted him of involuntary manslaughter, among other charges. He was released in September 2014. In 2015, Diaz was arrested again for allegedly starting fires in the Castro district. He pleaded guilty in August 2016 to possessing an incendiary device and a count of seconddegree burglary. He was released in September after being sentenced to a year of mandatory supervision and being ordered to register as an arsonist for life, among other terms.t

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<< Open Forum

4 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Volume 47, Number 12 March 23-29, 2017 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita Thomas E. Horn, Publisher Emeritus (2013) Publisher (2003 – 2013) Bob Ross, Founder (1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman BARTAB EDITOR & EVENTS LISTINGS EDITOR Jim Provenzano ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko • Seth Hemmelgarn CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ray Aguilera • Tavo Amador • Race Bannon Erin Blackwell • Roger Brigham Brian Bromberger • Victoria A. Brownworth Brent Calderwood • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Belo Cipriani Richard Dodds • Michael Flanagan Jim Gladstone • David Guarino Liz Highleyman • Brandon Judell • John F. Karr Lisa Keen • Matthew Kennedy • Joshua Klipp David Lamble • Max Leger Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Michael Nugent • Paul Parish • Sean Piverger Lois Pearlman Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr •Donna Sachet • Adam Sandel Khaled Sayed • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Sari Staver • Jim Stewart Sean Timberlake • Andre Torrez • Ronn Vigh Charlie Wagner • Ed Walsh Cornelius Washington • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION Max Leger PRODUCTION/DESIGN Ernesto Sopprani PHOTOGRAPHERS Jane Philomen Cleland • FBFE Rick Gerharter • Gareth Gooch Jose Guzman-Colon • Rudy K. Lawidjaja Georg Lester • Dan Lloyd • Jo-Lynn Otto Rich Stadtmiller • Steven Underhil Dallis Willard • Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge • Christine Smith ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION Colleen Small Bogitini VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING Scott Wazlowski – 415.829.8937 NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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Don’t erase LGBT seniors P

resident Donald Trump appointed numerous anti-LGBT Cabinet secretaries and we are starting to see how some of them are wielding their influence to erase LGBTs. It was reported this week that the Department of Health and Human Services, overseen by anti-gay Secretary Tom Price, quietly removed questions on sexuality from two federal surveys. According to Services and Advocacy of LGBT Elders, or SAGE, the draft of the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants omitted questions that allow the federal government to assess the extent to which LGBT older adults are receiving federally funded elder services. SAGE said this was the only change the Trump administration proposed to the survey. The Associated Press reported this week that a second HHS-sponsored survey, the Annual Program Performance Report for Centers for Independent Living, also deleted a question on sexual orientation. The survey gathers feedback on counseling, skills training, and other services provided to the disabled. “A revised draft posted four days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration included a question on sexual orientation, but the survey was subsequently edited, with the deletion of the sexuality question the only apparent notable change,” AP reported. These are deeply disturbing developments at a time when such questions are becoming standard practice in jurisdictions around the country. In 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that requires a number of state agencies to collect LGBT demographic data. And San Francisco passed a similar ordinance that gives the city until July 1 to collect similar data. SAGE pointed out that the survey information is used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs funded under Title III of the Older Americans Act, including who is being served by such programs. Since Trump wants to decimate spending, and has complained about “waste” in various social programs, one would think he’d see the value of such data to assess their efficiency. Apparently not.

The LGBT community has fought for years to be included in such surveys, as well as the census, and some progress was made. Notably, the census still omits data on LGBT people, unless they’re in a same-sex marriage, and community groups have been pushing the government to change that. Now, however, it appears federal officials are not receptive, and in the process, are actively rendering LGBT older Americans invisible. “Now, it appears that the Trump administration wants to make believe LGBT older people don’t exist, by erasing them from this critically important survey,” SAGE CEO Michael Adams said in a statement. We join SAGE in insisting that the administration reverse this course. LGBT people have been in this country since its founding, and continue to be a vital part of society. Trump himself has said how proud he was that attendees at last year’s GOP convention applauded when he mentioned support for LGBTs. The White House wrote last month, “President Trump continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights.” This isn’t the first anti-LGBT policy change. It’s clear that the administration will roll back our progress, and will do so quietly, as in this case, or spin a competing narrative, as it did when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was reported to have expressed concern for trans students before rescinding Title IX protections for them. Don’t buy it. Deleting LGBTspecific questions from surveys about federal programs is neither respectful nor supportive. Trump should direct Price’s agency to restore the questions to the surveys.

Meals on Wheels

Meanwhile, Trump’s budget blueprint has proposed draconian cuts to non-defense discretionary spending, which includes the program that funds Meals on Wheels in many parts of the country. While it does not exclusively serve LGBTs, Meals on Wheels is a lifeline for those who depend on the meal delivery program, gay and straight alike. Thankfully, Meals on Wheels of San

Francisco does not receive Community Development Block Grant funding, which Trump has proposed to cut, but the agency’s CEO Ashley McCumber, a gay man, said that he’s bracing for other budget cuts. And if the Department of Health and Human Services guts funding for the Older Americans Act, the most vulnerable among us will suffer, and it will have a devastating effect on our local Meals on Wheels, McCumber told us in a phone call last week. As McCumber pointed out, “a meal is just a starter” to check on the well-being of seniors. Meal delivery also serves as a way to reduce isolation for those who are homebound, he noted. It also keeps people housed and healthy, which is less expensive than institutionalization. Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, defended the block grant cuts, saying – without any evidence – that the program was “just not showing any results.” However, numerous news stories over the past week, and interviews with people who run meal programs, contradicted that statement. Reporting in the New York Times, Aaron E. Carroll wrote that Meals on Wheels has been the subject of many peer-reviewed studies; and while these are not as robust as randomized controlled trials, they show that the program does, in fact, get results. “A 2016 study showed that participants in the Meals on Wheels program had lower loneliness scores,” he wrote. “A 2013 study showed that spending on services like Meals on Wheels was associated with less reliance on institutionalized care, because more people could live independently.” Meals on Wheels is worthy of government funding because it’s effective. And to those like Mulvaney who say it doesn’t show results, we’d beg to differ. A program that provides food to seniors and allows them to age in place is definitely better than spending government money for hospitals and elder care facilities. The money Mulvaney says will be saved by gutting the Community Development Block Grant program is merely a drop in the bucket of Trump’s $1.1 trillion spending plan. There will be no significant savings by decreasing programs that help seniors, children, and communities. t

‘Rent’ 20 years later by Gregory Forrest

recently saw “Rent” the musical during its 20th anniversary run. Twenty years? Time back then moved so slowly. Grief, sorrow, and visions of death were everywhere. En route to the theater, I thought of 30 names of people whom I’d known who had died. Once the show began and I heard those glorious voices, my mood shifted. Thank God new medications came out in 1996. Had they not, I would be dead. In the 1980s and into the 1990s doctors could not keep up with everything AIDS. They’d been as blindsided by AIDS as the rest of us. We, as gay men, paid attention to as many articles and news stories as we could. There was nothing in place for us except us. We took on roles because we had no choice. If we were not sick, we helped our brothers. We served as buddies, therapists, and support groups; delivered food; and provided rides to and from doctor’s appointments. We cleaned each other’s houses, washed dishes, prepared food, and did grocery shopping. We helped our friends first with our arm, then a cane, then a walker, then a wheelchair, and finally, in and out of bed. We held our friends up with one hand as they showered, standing on the other side of the shower curtain. We were it. We had nothing driving us except our abysmal terror and fear. We were dying. All of us were dying, one at a time and in large groups. Death was everywhere. Our gay men and lesbian women were the caretakers of our destiny. The endless elevator rides up and down at hospitals. We cradled the sick and dying as they cried. We told them it would be OK even though we knew it would not. We had to take people’s pets away from them. We tried not to break down. We, the caregivers, collectively cried. At the time, many gay men were disowned

Gregory Forrest

Gregory Forrest has been in the Bay Area for 20-plus years. He’s in his mid-50s, loves life, and is so grateful to be alive.

by their families. They were gay and thus didn’t exist. Families were generally not present or interested in helping their own children. After death took our brothers, “family” would appear. They often ignored us, took what they wanted, tossed the rest, and left. No interest in their son’s world or us. They seemed not to care. Often when a death occurred, that was it. No body, no funeral, nothing. Our friend was gone. We never got a chance to say goodbye. Never. Can you imagine? Witnessing all those deaths weekly yet having no time to grieve for any one person. We were grieving for everyone. Mass casualties – no graves. Each week more of our own were in the hospital. Our weekends now became filled with sadness, funerals, and memorial services. No one cared but us. Unbearable. Thank God we had each other; we fought because we had no choice. Horribly painful and

helpless memories. Would it ever end? My childish notion that the dead were at cemeteries comforted me. Once at the cemetery, the warmth of the Los Angeles sun enveloped my body and soul. The warm gentle breeze of the Santa Ana winds bristled through my hair. I’d walk up the incline of “my” hill. I’d tread lightly on the crisp manicured lawn. Each strand of grass was a rich and luscious succulent green. Upward, the cotton candy clouds in the rich blue sky greeted me. The beauty of this scene held, soothed, and comforted me. Grief enveloped my cells. There was so much darkness. Hospitals, nurses, doctors, disbelief, hopelessness, exhaustion. IVs, walkers, tests, X-rays, wheelchairs, our men were skeletal. This crying was deep guttural groans and moans. I had to try and let out my fear and sadness. An ocean of tears filled my eyes. My body quivered with this pulverizing grief. Too much. Make it stop, please. Who is next? Me? You? I just can’t. I wanted to stay here, in this spot. Peaceful and away from death, misery, and sorrow. I wanted to feel young and safe again. Those days were gone. I could no longer feel, even though in my early 20s. Life’s bitter experiences robbed me of the naivety of my youth. What about our new “gay freedom?” Hadn’t our elders just won this for us? “Gay Pride” was now “Gay dead.” We once again were the damned, doomed, and judged. Welcome to our “Gay Plague.” Desperate. Each day a dark cavernous pit. No ladder, tram, or elevator. No escape. Death’s presence loomed. I’ve surpassed my life expectancy many times over. The past no longer holds me captive. I will, however, never forget. I’ve survived. I’m still here and I’m so grateful to be alive. I want to impart this to our youth today. Collectively, we can fight. We did it then with pen, paper, and landline phones. Imagine what we can accomplish now. t

Letters >>

March 23-29, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 5

Love is tenacious

LGBTI people as LGBTI people have no homeland, we have no Jerusalem – our roots are everywhere and nowhere. The faint threads of our deep past – if carefully examined – hint at countless lives unbearable to imagine. I think of those roots of trees – the Junipers of the Sierra – whose roots twist and turn like nests of snakes to find some purchase on life in the granite – exploiting every crevice and crack, the tree hanging off a cliff, tenaciously willing itself to live. We are like that. Love doesn’t always win, perhaps it hardly ever wins, but there is no end to the story and life goes on, and love is tenacious, and creates itself again and again, hanging on and falling and growing all at the same time. What we tend to forget, or don’t say often enough with sufficient amplitude to realize it fully, is that this has never happened before in human history. It has never happened before that transsexuals and lesbians and gays and intersex and all the other variations and permutations of our glorious expressions of love and our deep selves have claimed a place in societies across the globe – have claimed a place of equal dignity to the heteronormative majority. I think we forget sometimes what a stupendous thing this is that has come to pass. Stop and consider the literally millions of individual acts of bravery and sacrifice over the last hundred years and especially the last fifty years that have brought this about. I wish every one of you living and dead could get a medal and award and a sash like the French would give for bravery and perseverance. We honor our heroes, both living and dead, but honestly – it took everybody, every one and kind of us who made those small or large decisions and sacrifices of safety and health and position, to assert your dignity into a hostile society in small and big ways to bring about this unprecedented shift in human society. There is this feeling I get sometimes reading or hearing my brothers and sisters interact. It is hard to pin down. It is something perhaps rooted in this feeling of how things haven’t turned out well or haven’t measured up to the dream: that “community” is at best a useful fiction, that solidarity hardly outlasts the first sop of assimilation or wealth or position, that naive assumptions of commonality can’t really bridge racial, national, and ethnic differences. And we watch as two generations die, businesses that were once vital fail, institutions falter or become corrupt – honestly the stuff of any society or the challenge of human life. And this underlying tone makes me think of our queer brother C.P. Cavafy’s words from his poem “The City”: “Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong/and my heart lies buried like something dead.” We have to step back and contemplate the true enormity of what has happened. The true enormity of what we, each in our own individual lives and loves, have unleashed upon the world. It has reached into every culture across the globe, waking our queer sisters and brothers up to what is possible. Please take 15 seconds and let that sink in. Each and every one of us has been responsible for it. Your life, no matter how difficult, or miserable, no matter how disappointing or makeshift, your life has mattered. Your life has mattered and matters now. Your life has turned a page in human history that has never been turned before. It cannot be turned back because this heart of ours – of all us together, no matter how buried or burned up or cut up or stomped on, this heart can now never die- it has become a root. If you were in front of me I would reach out and shake you by the shoulder till that sinks in.

Do us a favor, no more flavor

Alan Martinez San Francisco

Cotton candy, bubble gum, and popcorn are all treats

that kids enjoy. But did you know that tobacco companies put these flavors in their products to target youth? According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, most teen smokers start by being introduced to flavored tobacco products such as menthol cigarettes, chocolate hookah, and Swisher Sweets strawberry little cigars. Tobacco companies are targeting our young people, especially youth of color and LGBT youth, with products that are flavored to taste like candy, mint, and fruit, and we have to do something to prevent it. These flavors make youth more likely to start smoking, and these products’ candylike packaging is directed at kids and teens. Ecigarettes particularly come in many flavors like “gummy bear,” “horchata,” “chicken and waffles,” and “boba” that are aimed at youth, especially those in minority groups. Cheap pricing of these products targets youth further. A pack of cigarettes can cost $5 to $8, while a package of two packaged flavored cigars can be commonly sold throughout San Francisco for 50 cents – right at a teen’s price point. Flavored tobacco has similar negative health impacts as non-flavored tobacco, and can be more addictive than non-flavored tobacco. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smokers of menthol cigarettes are less likely to quit than smokers of nonflavored cigarettes. Also, widespread research shows that flavors are a key reason why teens start using e-cigarettes, and that non-smoking teens who start vaping are much more likely to be smoking regular cigarettes a year later. We at Breathe California’s Project E-NUFF surveyed 150 high school students in San Francisco. We found that two-thirds of the students who used blunts preferred flavored blunts, and that half of the students who used e-cigarettes preferred flavored e-cigarettes. The most common answer for why kids thought their peers used flavored tobacco was that “It tastes good.” Almost 90 percent of the students who thought flavored tobacco products were harmful also thought stores in San Francisco should stop selling them. We also conducted a focus group of adults in the Bayview about flavored tobacco and youth, and one participant notably stated, “Young people using these products ... don’t have to wait until they’re 21. It’s easy access.” Project E-NUFF wants San Francisco to adopt a policy that will protect youth by ending the sale of flavored tobacco in San Francisco. In 2009, Congress prohibited almost all flavors of cigarettes, but failed to end the sale of menthol cigarettes or flavors in other tobacco products. This policy would close that loophole in San Francisco and make sure that cigarette companies could not target kids with flavors in any tobacco products. It will reduce tobacco use among San Francisco youth, especially minority, disadvantaged, and low-income youth who are heavily targeted by the tobacco industry. Nearby, Santa Clara County has already ended the sale of flavored tobacco for all of its unincorporated areas, and Oakland is now considering similar regulations. New York City; Chicago; Minneapolis; Providence, Rhode Island; and Berkeley, California have already passed laws strongly restricting it. San Francisco, a city known for effective health and social justice policies, should join these leading cities and counties in positively affecting the public’s health by ending the sale of flavored tobacco. Flavors mask the taste of tobacco, but not the negative health effects. Please join the cause and support Project E-NUFF’s efforts at ggbreathe.org/enuff. Christopher Schouest, Victoria Laleau, Athina Leyba, Michelle Wu, Charles Ramilo, Randy Uang, Annam Janjua, and Christelle Etienne Project E-NUFF San Francisco

Berry to leave Out & Equal; Black honored at benefit compiled by Cynthia Laird

elisse Berry, who founded Out and Equal Workplace Advocates 20 years ago, announced that she will step down from her role as chief executive officer this summer. Meanwhile, Berry will speak at the organization’s annual Momentum gala Wednesday, March 29, where Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black will be honored as the “Champion of the Year.” In a March 15 email message, Berry wrote that she and the nonprofit are ready “for me to transition from our founding CEO to a role of adviser.” Berry founded Out and Equal in 1996. The agency is dedicated to achieving LGBT workplace equality. It works

Out & Equal CEO Selisse Berry

with executives, human resource professionals, employee resource groups, and individuals to provide leadership and professional development, education, and research to create workplaces free of discrimination. She said one of the highlights of her tenure

has been to see companies transformed into “embassies of equality.” “Together, we’ve seen more significant shifts in corporate policy on inclusion than anyone could have possibly imagined,” Berry wrote. The organization has launched a search for Berry’s successor. At Momentum, Berry is expected to give remarks about the state of LGBT workplace equality. In addition to Black, who created and wrote the recent ABC miniseries “When We Rise,” other highlights will include a performance by the Pointer Sisters, and appearances by Scott Nevins from Bravo TV’s “The People’s Couch” and out comedian Kate Clinton. The event takes place from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at the Westin St. Francis, 335 Powell Street in San Francisco. Tickets are $300 and can be purchased online at picatic.com/ momentum17. See page 12 >>

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<< Politics

6 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Lara launches bid for CA insurance czar

by Matthew S. Bajko

Democratic lawyer who was appointed to the vacant secretary of state position in 1994. Miller, however, lost his bid that year for a full term in the position, and in 1998, he again came up short in his bid for lieutenant governor. Lara was born and raised in East Los Angeles and graduated from San Diego State University with a double major in journalism and Spanish. After working for a number of years as a legislative staffer, he was first elected to the Assembly in 2010 and then to the Senate in 2012, becoming the first openly gay person of color to serve in the Statehouse’s upper chamber.

ay state Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) this week made his 2018 bid to become California’s next insurance commissioner official. Should he win the race, Lara would be the first LGBT person elected to statewide office in the Golden State. Lara, 42, made the announcement Tuesday, March 21, stating in a news release that he would stand up to Republican efforts to strip Californians of their health care if elected to the post, which oversees insurance companies in the state. “I’m running to be California’s next state insurance commissioner because I believe at my core that California needs a strong defender, and a counterpuncher, who will stand up to fight our bullying president, Donald Trump, and his increasingly reckless federal government on issues from health care access to economic security and more,” stated Lara, vice chair of the California Legislative LGBT Caucus. “If millions of Californians begin losing their health insurance because of actions taken by Donald Trump, I will be there to fight him tooth and nail at every pass.” Last month, Lara and lesbian state Senator Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) introduced the Californians for a Healthy California Act (Senate Bill 562) to create a universal health care system that would cover all 39 million Californians. Past efforts to establish such a system in the state have failed, and even with mounting public concern over GOP efforts to gut the federal Affordable Care Act, this year’s bill is sure to face strong opposition from insurance companies and others. The issue presents Lara, who was re-elected in November to a final four-year term in the Senate, a platform not only to boost his name recognition statewide ahead of next year’s election but also to focus public attention on the often overlooked role of the insurance commissioner. “As California’s insurance commissioner, I’ll work tirelessly to represent the great people of California, not the corporations, the billionaire class, the pharmaceutical or the insurance companies,” stated Lara. “I plan to work with anybody who is willing to come to the table, but

State Senator Ricardo Lara

my allegiance will always be first and foremost to the consumers, the patients, our working families, and our most vulnerable communities in our Golden State.” Three other Democrats have pulled papers with the secretary of state’s office to indicate their interest in the position and raise money for possible campaigns. They are former Assembly members Susan Bonilla of Concord and Henry Perea of Fresno, and Paul Song, a Santa Monica radiation oncologist and former leader of the California progressive group Courage Campaign. Lara is likely to be the only LGBT candidate running in a statewide race next year. Although gay former state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) pulled papers to raise money for a lieutenant governor bid, he is expected to announce his run for San Francisco mayor in 2019, later this year. To date no other LGBT candidates have pulled papers to seek statewide office in 2018. Gay former Assemblyman Rich Gordon (D-Menlo Park) is running for the district 2 seat on the Board of Equalization, the state’s tax oversight body. The two past gay candidates to seek statewide office in California both lost their bids. In 2014 gay former Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles) failed to survive that year’s June primary in the state controller race. The first out candidate to seek statewide office is believed to be Tony Miller, a gay man and

New CA AG slow to expand travel ban list

California’s new Attorney General Xavier Becerra, confirmed to the position in January, is off to a slow start in expanding California’s travel ban to cover additional states that have enacted anti-LGBT legislation in recent weeks. Nearly two weeks after South Dakota lawmakers signed into law a bill that allows private adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against LGBT parents, Becerra’s office has yet to say if state employees will now be banned from using taxpayer funds to travel to the Mount Rushmore State. In response to the Bay Area Reporter’s March 10 inquiry on if Becerra would do so, his office sent an email late in the day Monday, March 20, that said, “It is evaluating South Dakota’s legislation.” His office did not respond to the B.A.R.’s additional inquiry that morning if it would also place Kentucky on the travel ban list after its governor, Matt Bevin, signed into law a bill that allows high school and college student-run groups to bar LGBT people from being members based on religious grounds. Gay state Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), who authored the legislation creating California’s travel ban, did not respond to a request for comment this week on if Kentucky and South Dakota should be covered by the travel ban. Two months prior to its implementation on January 1, former attorney general Kamala Harris, now the state’s junior U.S. senator, had alerted state officials that her office intended to name Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee to the travel ban list. Her office had also added Kansas when the list was officially made public at the start of the year. The law is supposed to cover any state that has enacted legislation that discriminates against LGBT people since June 26, 2015 and applies not only to state employees

and elected officials but also the University of California and California State systems. The schools have said they will not schedule games during the regular season but also do not plan to restrict athletic teams from attending postseason games in the banned states, such as in the case of the UCLA basketball team’s NCAA tournament game Friday in Tennessee. According to the Sacramento Bee, the teams often do not use taxpayer money to travel to certain competitions. It reported this week that Assemblyman Matthew Harper (R-Huntington Beach), has asked the state Department of Justice to look into the matter, which it reportedly is doing. Meanwhile, LGBT advocates are asking UCLA to cover its NCAA trip with funds from boosters or other sources. Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur told the B.A.R. in a phone interview Tuesday that the statewide LGBT advocacy group expects more states will be added to the state’s travel ban list. But he cautioned the review process for doing so takes time. “We are confident the AG will conclude that the ban will extend to” South Dakota and Kentucky, said Zbur, whose agency will be honoring Becerra at its San Francisco gala fundraiser in May. “We know the AG is very committed to making sure California uses the tool to combat this wave of anti-LGBT legislation that is sweeping the states.” With a host of states set to approve anti-LGBT legislation this spring, questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the state’s travel ban as well as those adopted by several cities and counties in the state, such as Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. San Francisco not only adopted a travel ban but also will no longer do business with companies headquartered in states on its list. (Last week the city added South Dakota to the four states it had already put on the list, which are the same as those on the state’s banned list. It has yet to say if it will now add Kentucky as well.) Even if states enact laws that discriminate against their LGBT citizens, Zbur argued the travel bans serve a purpose. They provide another tool for advocates to use to argue against anti-LGBT legislation, he said. “We know that the fact the ban is in place in California has been one of the things folks in Texas are using to try to convince their legislators not to proceed with some of the anti-LGBT legislation being considered in Texas,” said Zbur. “We don’t have control over what legislatures

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra

will do, but for folks on the ground they appreciate this law is in place.” Cesar Zepeda, a gay Richmond resident who lost his bid in November for a seat on the East Bay city’s council, also believes the travel ban policies are useful. He and the other members of the city’s Richmond Rainbow Pride committee plan to ask their mayor and city council members to adopt a policy similar to San Francisco’s that would ban Richmond from using taxpayer dollars to pay for travel to, or contracts with companies in, states that have anti-LGBT laws. “These resolutions are backing people at the front lines and saying we have your back. That is hitting people in the pocket, but most important, is hitting people in their heart,” said Zepeda. “When you have a closeted young individual who lives in one of these states, for this person to know that not everyone in the country is like the people who live around his or her state, there is hope somewhere else and we are coming to help.” The Richmond group expects its resolution will be voted on by the city council and mayor in either late April or early May.t Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check ebar. com Monday mornings at noon for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reported on health experts’s doubts of seeing California create a single-payer health care system. Keep abreast of the latest LGBT political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes. Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 8298836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

Bathroom signs

From page 1

not make it punitive, meaning there are no fines imposed on businesses or municipalities that refuse to post the proper signage. Since the cost to order new signs is relatively inexpensive, complying with the law should be “rather cheap,” Ting noted. “When we designed the legislation, we didn’t want to make it punitive. This wasn’t about punishing people,” explained Ting. “We wanted to educate people and mobilize change. Now that we have the law, we can do it in a positive way.” The law did specify that local building inspectors are tasked with ensuring business owners and local governments are in compliance going forward when they inspect properties. “We had to do it in a permissive way to avoid huge state costs,” explained Ting. “Again, we know this wouldn’t solve every single issue over night, but we thought it was a

Matthew S. Bajko

Openhouse’s bathroom signs in the new Bob Ross LGBT Senior Center have gender-neutral signage.

huge step forward.” Even in San Francisco, which instituted its own local ordinance last summer requiring local businesses and city-owned properties to make all one-person bathrooms gender neutral, implementation has been uneven. For instance, Davis last fall reported to the city’s Department of Building Inspection that the

Anza Branch Library in the Outer Richmond had yet to post the right signage on its single-stall bathrooms. After Davis contacted the office of Supervisor Sandra Fewer, whose District 1 includes the library, in January about the signs at the library branch, an aide informed See page 13 >>

Community News>>

t Proponents argue for HIV criminalization reform

March 23-29, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 7

by Liz Highleyman

bill before the California Senate would change laws that make it a felony to expose someone to HIV, recognizing advances in the science of HIV treatment and prevention. The proposed legislation received strong support at a recent hearing at the state Capitol. Proponents say Senate Bill 239 would modernize existing laws in accordance with the latest research, promote public health, and reduce discrimination and stigma against people living with HIV. “These felony laws were passed during the dark days of the epidemic, when people were talking about quarantining those living with HIV,” bill co-author Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) told the Bay Area Reporter. “The laws single out people with HIV for uniquely harsh criminal treatment for the simple act of having sex – even if there’s no risk of transmission. HIV is a health issue, not a criminal issue, and it’s time to repeal these discriminatory laws.” Existing laws make it a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison for a person with HIV to expose another person through unprotected sex if the HIV-positive person knows they are infected, does not disclose their status, and acts with the intent to infect the other person – regardless of whether infection actually occurred. It is also a felony under certain circumstances for an HIV-positive individual to donate blood, organs, or semen to an HIV-negative person. Current laws treat HIV transmission more harshly than other serious communicable diseases. A study from the UCLA School of Law found that around 800 people in California came in contact with the criminal justice system due to their HIV status between 1988 and 2014, in most cases related to sex work. Black

Rick Gerharter

Naina Khanna from the Positive Women’s Network spoke February 6 in support of legislation to modernize HIV discrimination laws, sponsored by state Senator Scott Wiener, center, and Assemblyman Todd Gloria, right. Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, left, also voiced his support.

and Latino people and women were disproportionately affected. “Since [these laws] were originally written the realities of what it means to have HIV, as well as the possibility of transmitting it, have changed completely, with new medications when taken regularly normalizing life expectancy and eliminating the possibility of transmission,” Dr. Edward Machtinger, director of the UCSF Women’s HIV Program, said at the March 8 hearing. “This new reality requires a reassessment of the public health implications of HIV-related legislation.”

Bill would amend state codes

As the B.A.R. previously reported, Wiener and Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego), both gay men, introduced SB 239 at a February 6 news conference at Strut, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s health and wellness center for gay, bi, and trans men. The March 8 briefing, hosted by the Legislative LGBT Caucus, featured testimony from people living with

HIV as well as LGBT, public health, and civil rights advocates. “It’s time to really change from a fear-based approach to a sciencebased approach,” Gloria said at the hearing. “A couple of states have beaten us to taking this action, but I think if California can do it, certainly the rest of the country can take this step as well.” Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) and lesbian Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) co-authored the legislation. Co-sponsors include the American Civil Liberties Union of California, Black AIDS Institute, Equality California, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Positive Women’s Network-USA, all of which are part of the Californians for HIV Criminalization Reform Coalition. SB 239 would amend sections of the state Health and Safety Code and Penal Code to make transmission of a communicable disease – not singling out HIV – a misdemeanor if a person

knows they are infected, acts with the intent to transmit, engages in conduct that poses a substantial risk of transmission, and the other person does in fact become infected. If passed, the proposal would overturn previous convictions under the old law, as well as expunge related criminal records and allow a person serving time to have their sentence dismissed. It would also repeal laws that require people convicted of prostitution to be tested for HIV and increase penalties if they test positive. A penalty enhancement for HIV-positive people convicted of sexual assault would not be changed. Wiener’s communications director, Jeff Cretan, told the B.A.R. that the bill is scheduled for a hearing before the Public Safety Committee March 28, after which it would go before the Appropriations Committee and then to the full Senate for a vote.

Advocates support reform

Reform proponents say SB 239 would bring laws in line with current science, which shows that HIV-positive people who are on antiretroviral treatment with an undetectable viral load can live long and healthy lives and do not transmit the virus to others. In addition, the advent of PrEP, which reduces the risk of HIV infection by more than 90 percent if taken consistently, has changed the meaning of “unprotected” sex. “We know that people with undetectable levels of virus are very, very unlikely to transmit [HIV],” San Francisco Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, a gay man and the first out HIV-positive person to sit on the board, told the B.A.R. “Many people at risk for contracting the virus are using PrEP to prevent getting infected. These laws, which should never have been passed in the first place, fail to acknowledge

these new realities.” Proponents contend that HIV criminalization laws do not promote public health, but rather discourage people from getting tested, seeking treatment, and disclosing their status to sex partners. “HIV criminalization laws not only perpetuate discrimination against people living with HIV, they paradoxically discourage people from getting tested, since the laws create greater liability for those who know their status,” Eric Paul Leue, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade group for the adult entertainment industry that is a member of the CHCR coalition, told the B.A.R. Existing laws can also discourage vulnerable people with HIV from reporting sexual abuse and violence, according to Naina Khanna, executive director of Positive Women’s Network-USA. “A myth has been perpetuated that women are somehow protected by these laws, [but] they don’t protect us in any way,” Khanna said at the hearing. “These laws deter people from disclosing their status, they deter access to testing, they may deter people from seeking treatment, and consequently they actually increase risk for everybody. Policing and criminalization targets people of color, targets those who are unstably housed, folks who are homeless and on the streets, and people who are trans and gender non-conforming.” SB 239 is part of a national and global movement to reform laws that target people living with HIV. “SB 239 will go a long way toward eliminating a bias in the law and bringing California to the forefront in the effort to combat HIV-related stigma, discrimination, and criminalization,” Sero Project executive director Sean Strub told the B.A.R. “We can prosecute HIV or we can prevent it, but we can’t do both.” t

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<< National News

8 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Gorsuch offers few hints on views of LGBTs by Lisa Keen

nited States Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch grew testy Tuesday afternoon as Senator Dick Durbin (D-Michigan) questioned him on his views about LGBT people. Gorsuch later evaded Senator Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minnesota) questions about recognizing constitutional rights for LGBT people. When asked whether the Constitution provides equal justice for people regardless of sexual orientation, Gorsuch said only that “the U.S. Supreme Court has held single-sex marriage is protected by the Constitution,” but then he later refused to express his views about same-sex marriage, saying that, because of “ongoing litigation about its impact and its application right now, I cannot begin to share my personal views ...” Senator Mazie Hirono (DHawaii) took Gorsuch back to the question of his personal views, asking specifically about Obergefell v. Hopkins, the 2015 Supreme Court decision striking down state bans on marriage for same-sex couples. “My personal views don’t matter,”

said Gorsuch. “Obergefell is precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court ... [it] entitles persons to engage in single-sex marriage.” “That’s a right that the Supreme Court recognized, it’s a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is entitled to all the deference due a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. And that’s quite a lot,” said Gorsuch.

Choice of words

Most legal and political observers refer to the issue as “same-sex marriage” or, more precisely, “marriage for same-sex couples.” It was not clear whether Gorsuch intended any distinction by using the term “single-sex marriage,” but he used it during all his references to marriage for same-sex couples. In some respects, Monday and Tuesday’s confirmation hearings added very little to what is known about Gorsuch’s views on LGBT people. But they did demonstrate in person his ability to choose his words and manipulate his ideas deftly enough to avoid betraying the likelihood he would vote to limit the “impact” and “application” of the Supreme Court’s prosame-sex marriage ruling.

Gorsuch added few facts to his scant record on LGBT matters – a record that has prompted Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and other LGBT law groups to oppose his nomination. But he sounded defensive, and maybe even a little dismissive, when Durbin asked him about LGBT people. “What about them?” replied Gorsuch. “They’re people.” Durbin pushed back, noting that Gorsuch had said earlier that he had a record of standing up for minorities. “Can you point to statements [you’ve written] relative to that class?” Durbin asked. Gorsuch sidestepped, saying he tried “to treat each case and each person as a person.” “Not this kind of person or that kind of person,” said Gorsuch. “But as a person [deserving] equal justice under the law.” “Does that refer to sexual orientation as well?” prodded Durbin. Again, Gorsuch sidestepped. “The Supreme Court of the United States has held that single-sex marriage is protected by the Constitution,” Gorsuch said. True. But the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell did not address sexual orientation discrimination, per se, observers noted. Durbin also pushed Gorsuch to explain the degree to which the nominee agrees with his former dissertation supervisor – Professor John Finnis – who submitted testimony in favor of the anti-gay Colorado Amendment 2 and who equated homosexuality to bestiality. Gorsuch downplayed his relationship with Finnis and said he couldn’t recall the specifics of Finnis’ testimony for Amendment 2.

Courtesy Reuters

Judge Neil Gorsuch gestured during his Senate confirmation hearing this week.

Gorsuch, who hails from Colorado, did recall the name of the case that challenged Amendment 2, Romer v. Evans. Other Democratic senators pressed Gorsuch on his positions related to the legal status for LGBT people. Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) tried to find out whether Gorsuch may have been involved in Republican efforts to pass antigay ballot measures as a means of getting out the Republican base for incumbent President George W. Bush in 2004. Franken noted how Ken Mehlman, a gay man who was then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, put in a good word for Gorsuch to secure a job for him at the Department of Justice. Noting Gorsuch’s participation in the Bush campaign in Ohio – one of the states that passed an anti-gay ballot measure that year – Mehlman vouched for

Gorsuch, saying that they had been roommates in law school and that Gorsuch was a “true loyalist” to Lawyers for Bush. Gorsuch said he could not recall “any involvement in that issue during that campaign.” Franken pressed again, asking Gorsuch for his “personal views” on same-sex marriage. “My personal views? Any revelation of my personal views about this matter would indicate to people how I might rule as a judge, mistakenly, but it might,” said Gorsuch. “And I have to be concerned about that.” When Franken pressed once again, Gorsuch said, “My personal views – if I were to begin speaking about my personal views on this subject, which every American has views on, I would send a misleading See page 12 >>

Queer author reinvents Jewish history in new book by Michael Nugent

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local queer Jewish man has published a new book that reinvents Jewish history, his own family, the Talmud, and the Hebrew Bible. Andrew Ramer spoke about “Torah Told Different: Stories for a Pan/Poly/ Post-Denominational World” earlier this month at the Pacific School of Religion’s Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Berkeley. Ramer, 65, lives in Oakland. He is an ordained maggid (a sacred storyteller), teaches at USF’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, and is also the author of “Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories.” In all of his writings, Ramer is focused on telling stories. “My dad was a failed playwright, and my mom an unpublished poet, so I was genetically programmed to write stories,” said Ramer at the March 6 event. “Every book I’ve done starts with the regrets and leftovers from previous books,” he said. “I wanted to tell stories differently, create a distinct way of (re)telling stories. This book is a gift to my grandmothers, all of whom told me stories. The most true thing is a story, and we are a people of stories.” Ramer’s Jewish and queer identities are deeply intertwined. “My tradition is you have to tell stories. It’s a survival mechanism for outsiders,” he said. He has attended and spoke at the Gay Spirit Visions Conference in North Carolina for over 20 years. That conference transformed Ramer, he said, as he overcame his shyness and learned to use the Jewish outsider’s

Michael Nugent

Andrew Ramer talked about his new book at the Pacific School of Religion.

lens to tell gay, reimagined stories. In Jewish culture, a midrash is a re-contextualization of a story. Ramer said, “Even the Bible is a midrash, a retelling of even older stories.” In “Torah Told Different,” Ramer reinvented the Hebrew Bible, casting aside the two official Talmud (commentaries) and creates three new Talmud. Ramer does this to dismantle patriarchy and narratives, putting women back in stories where they used to be. Some of the Bible’s stories have bothered Ramer his whole life; one in particular is Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. “I thought this was not acceptable, so I rewrote it from a different perspective,” he said, sharing a tale of Abraham’s wife Sarah rejecting God’s request to cast her child down a well; this stands in sharp relief to God’s disappointment in Abraham for being ready to kill his son, forcing God to send down an angel at

the last moment to intervene. Another story recounts Elias’ humorous and touching modern day encounter with God while he is in the bathtub. When Elias mentioned he is only half Jewish, God replied, “Well I have no religion myself,” paraphrasing Gandhi’s quote. God also said, “I am particularly fond of non-gendered languages,” encouraging Elias to pick up Tagalog or another such language. The feminist and queer storytelling in the Bay Area deeply impacted Ramer. “Living in Oakland, I was sitting at parties listening to Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde speaking, and listening to them telling stories,” he said. “Some people write for now; I’m writing for after now,” he said. “I love playing with words.” Touching on the current political climate, Ramer said, “I’ve never heard so many people say they keep thinking they’re living in an alternate reality.” “Art is essential in such times, telling stories is essential. Is this the wakeup call we’ve been needing? It makes me think of AIDS, and all those alliances and clinics that were created, people that came together who otherwise would not have,” he added. “I use my privilege of resistance,” he said. “I’ve lived long enough with incredible teachers, where I gradually felt empowered to tell the stories inside of me that I’d felt too scared to tell previously. “So go and tell sacred stories – that will be the healing,” Ramer said. t For more information, go to http://www.andrewramer.com.

Community News>>

March 23-29, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 9

MA students take part in queer SF travel class by Charlie Wagner

t first blush, spending spring break studying queer San Francisco might seem a bit too much navel-gazing even for the average LGBTQ San Franciscan. But Sumi Colligan, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and her eight students just proved that assumption wrong. The story started two years ago when Colligan, who identifies as queer, reflected on how “San Francisco has a reputation for queer identity” and realized that an academic course might explore that idea in greater depth. As the MCLA catalog notes, “[Colligan’s] courses often incorporate queer content. She grew up in San Francisco, spent her formative years here, and has a passion for the city.” The result was “Travel 300: Queer San Francisco,” the title of the threecredit class Colligan created and MCLA offered for the first time for the spring 2017 term. The class first met January 18 and the eight students and their professor then spent two months preparing for their March 11-18 visit to San Francisco. Travel courses at MCLA require students to do extensive readings, prep work, and presentations. They are not like what most people would call a vacation, though the entire group stayed at the recently remodeled Beck’s Motor Lodge, a longtime favorite of countless LGBTQ tourists. For Queer San Francisco, the students were also required to create a short video of some aspect of their visit and to keep a journal of all sites and speaker presentations. Joe D’Alessandro, a gay man who’s president and CEO of the San Francisco Travel Association, told the Bay Area Reporter that he was impressed with hearing about the class. “San Francisco Travel aims to tell the San Francisco story around the world and queer stories are an important part of that mission,” he said in a phone interview this week. “This is a way a class like this should be. Taking a class like this without visiting SF would be like taking a foreign language but never visiting the country of origin.” The San Francisco sites and speakers were selected to “explore contemporary queer identities, subcultures, and activism,” Colligan wrote in the course description. Many of the students’ evenings were free but Colligan planned daytime itineraries that

kept the students busy. On Sunday, the day after they arrived, the students and Colligan attended a matinee performance of Beach Blanket Babylon for fun and then visited Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco for exposure to queer spirituality. Monday they joined Don Romesburg, Ph.D., a gay man who’s an associate professor of women’s and gender studies at Sonoma State University, to explore North Beach, South of Market, and the Castro, and participate in a queer treasure hunt he designed. Then they visited the Lighthouse for the Blind in Civic Center and later listened to a presentation on the intersection of queer activism and disability rights by Corbett O’Toole and Karen Nakamura. Tuesday, they toured the Women’s Building and met with development director Tatjana Loh, then visited the GLBT Historical Society Archives and heard a special discussion of AIDS history. They moved next to Maitri hospice, which provides end-of-life care for people living with AIDS and was started by a gay Buddhist monk, and went to Cafe Flore to meet with Trinity Ordona, Ph.D., an instructor at City College of San Francisco who teaches classes on lesbian relationships and queer communities of color. The group met in San Francisco with Sasha Buchert, staff attorney at the Oakland-based Transgender Law Center, and then went to the Tenderloin to visit St. James Infirmary, a peer-based occupational health and safety clinic for sex workers and their families. That evening, they attended a new play produced by Theater Rhino at the Eureka Theatre, “Flim-Flam.” On Thursday morning, they met at Cafe Flore with transgender historian Susan Stryker, co-producer of “Screaming Queens,” a documentary about San Francisco’s Compton Cafeteria riots in 1966. Next they toured the GLBT History Museum in the Castro and then attended a StoryCorps intergenerational dialogue with LGBTQ seniors at Openhouse, an organization serving LGBT seniors on Laguna Street. After dinner, the whole group went to the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts for two hours of queer square dancing.

Telling stories

Immediately after the StoryCorps event, several of the students and

one of the StoryCorps participants agreed to talk about their experience with the StoryCorps process and the Queer San Francisco course. Matty Blair is a senior with a major in sociology and a minor in anthropology and is from a rural part of New York, just over the state border from MCLA. The college itself is located in the town of North Adams, population 13,708, in the Berkshires region of westCharlie Wagner ern Massachusetts. Blair’s most vivid Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Professor Sumi Colligan, back row, left, memories of the week visited StoryCorps as part of her queer travel class. Students who traveled to San were from the visits to Francisco with her included Rachel Terlizzi (back row), Matty Blair, Kenny Rivera, Nina Merritt, Dee Davis. In front from left are Jade Schnauber, Declan Nolan, and the St. James InfirmaDirk Correia. ry and the Lighthouse for the Blind where “they talked about the with domestic violence victims so the early 1980s, even though he had intersection between LGBT issues he was also impressed with St. James been invited to prepare a program and disability.” Infirmary. on diversity. “The medical industry can be He said that he liked the differIn recovery since the mid-1980s, judgmental and the people we met ent stories during the StoryCorps Kominars, 85, described how he at the St. James Infirmary were sessions. He hopes to move to San met his current partner in 1985 at very inspiring,” Blair, a straight ally, Francisco after graduation because, a San Francisco sobriety convenadded. She was thrilled “to meet as he explained, “The second I was tion. He said he was pleased with his people who are activists through in San Francisco, I felt comfortable first StoryCorps experience and his and through.” and at home.” interaction with Rivera, to whom Dee Davis is a sophomore from The mission of the StoryCorps Kominars read two of his poems. Boston and a sociology major. project is to “preserve and share “If you’re open-minded, you cannot Davis, who identifies as pansexual, humanity’s stories in order to build come to San Francisco without experisaid that for her, going to college in connections between people and encing the energizing effect,” Kominars North Adams was her first time livcreate a more just and compassaid. “There’s a kind of breeze which ing in what she described as a rural sionate world.” Founded in 2003, flows through the streets.” community. StoryCorps does not have a specifiThe final day of the travel class “I grew up in a multi-cultural, cally LGBTQ focus but one of its was Friday, March 17. Colligan urban environment and did not core principles is “a relentless focus and her students started by taking have to deal with racism and hoon serving a wide diversity of parBART to Oakland to meet transmophobia,” she said, “and my ticipants.” The stories are recorded gender writer and health consulmother has always been proud of in an audio-only format and there tant Willy Wilkerson, MPH, for a my acceptance of all people.” is an option for participants to rediscussion of transgender issues She said that she was excited to lease their recording to be stored in and Wilkerson’s memoir, “Born read Colligan’s assigned and recthe Library of Congress. If people on the Edge of Race and Gender: ommended lists and then see “the the students talked with choose A Voice for Cultural Competency,” people they were talking about.” that option, Colligan’s students will one of the course’s required texts. After her visit to the MCC-SF, assist in indexing the recorded stoAs a final event, the group went to Davis observed that San Franciscans ries and will write a short descripBerkeley to meet a high school and seem less casual and less accepting tion of each. junior high LGBTQ youth group about religious beliefs but she was Sheppard Kominars, Ph.D., was at the Pacific Center for Human happy to recall the surge of optia participant in StoryCorps and was Growth. mism she felt after visiting the St. paired with Rivera. Kominars, a gay “It was an interesting juxtaposiJames Infirmary. man, had been seriously injured in tion to meet with the seniors in SF Kenny Rivera is a sophomore 1976 and the impact on his career on Thursday and queer junior high and social justice major and quickly and life was severe and permanent. and high school students in Berkepointed out that he had never been The continual pain necessitated ley on Friday,” Colligan said. “My beyond the East Coast. Rivera called strong prescription drugs and evenstudents learned from the older himself “first generation” since both tually led to alcohol abuse. And years generation one afternoon and were of his parents were born in Puerto after the accident, he was forced to able to transmit their own wisdom Rico, and said he came out as gay endure homophobia while he was and experience to an even younger in eighth grade. His mother works dean at City College of Chicago in generation the next afternoon.” t

<< Sports

10 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Columnist on the mend after health setbacks by Roger Brigham

aithful readers, I apologize for writing my sports column JockTalk only sporadically the past few weeks. After I had a blackout in early December, I have undergone numerous cardiac and neurological tests to rule out possible contributing issues. One plus is that it appears my heart health has actually improved since my triple bypass surgery in 2015. Increasing the amount of time I spent on peritoneal dialysis to 24 hours a day, my doctors and I were able to treat the blackout issue and I have had no recurrence. However, I then suffered simultaneous bouts of flu (despite getting a shot) and pneumonia (a hazard with peritoneal dialysis), then another flu-like bug. Throughout that I have been dealing with anemia, low blood pressure, loss of potassium and dehydration. Then, after I went to Bakersfield to coach at the boy’s high school state championship (I know, insane), I began showing signs of rapidly growing peritonitis, a bacterial or fungal infection capable of killing within hours. I am on the road to recovery now. I hope to be fully recovered within a matter of weeks, handling my renal issues with home hemodialysis. I’d like to praise the incredible work being performed by members of Team

Brigham: medical professionals from Wellbound of Emeryville Dialysis; and the staffs at East Bay AIDS Center, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, and Chabot Nephrology Medical. The care, compassion, competence and commitment they have unfailingly displayed has been to me, wondrous. There were perhaps a half dozen nights in and out of emergency rooms where we weren’t very sure I’d be waking in the morning. There have been times of excruciating pain. There have been heated discussions. I’m a headstrong patient. When push comes to shove, I’m prone to elect to head home for husband, cats, and Bernese Mountain dog comfort rather than stay in hospital for “monitoring.” To quote a prolific Twitter user, who knew health care could be so complicated? In situations such as this, I learn and rediscover my dependence on sports. Without the experience afforded me as sportswriter, athlete, coach, activist, advocate, and enthusiast, I’d be dead 10 times over. Most especially, without the crucibles of wrestling’s competition and coaching to hammer my character, I would not have the confidence to make the decisions I have had to make. Briefly, there are several types of dialysis. Peritoneal dialysis did not become common in medical

Roger Brigham

Roger Brigham kicks back while enjoying the spa-ish comforts of a local hemodialysis center.

treatment until the 1960s. In it, the vacuum of the abdominal cavity is flooded with a saline/glucose solution and, through one or more cycles of varying volumes and durations, pulls toxins from the blood. The fluid is then removed, taking toxins with it. Hemodialysis, whether done at home or in a treatment center, mimics more closely a healthy kidney. Instead of injecting a foreign

We are the future of the LGBT community. “The world still has its challenges but things are getting better. From the way we first met on line to marriage equality to our daughter’s upcoming Quinceañera our life together is more fulfilling every day. We keep up with events and entertainment on EDGE, because that’s where we see our future at its brightest.” The people depicted here are models. Their image is being used for illustrative purposes only.

fluid in to where normally a vacuum occurs, it pulls blood directly from the circulatory system to pass through an external filter and cycler. The “cleaned” blood is returned to the body. Peritoneal dialysis and hemo are usually used once kidneys have failed (mine keeled over in mid-2010). Peritoneal dialysis is believed to offer better results the first five years; after that, repeated infections and use tend to render PD less effective. But especially with advances in technology and improved machine portability, home hemo has become more accepted and has better chance of survival until an organ transplant is possible. I chose peritoneal dialysis in 2010 rather than either home or outpatient hemo because it best matched my life and need for self reliance – at that time. It would allow me to remain on the mat, demonstrating technical moves to my athletes. Now, home hemo suits me best. The medical folks around me, who knew how much I preferred peritoneal treatment, needed wrestling, and the times over the years I refused hemo, thought I’d insist on returning to peritoneal ASAP. They were shocked when in the blink of an eye I said, “Let’s go hemo – like, yesterday.” Most people have two healthy kidneys but need only one in order to live a normal life. Most kidney donations are from deceased organ donors. People who wish to donate a kidney while living have a few options. They can donate an organ directly to someone whose blood type and other factors match theirs. They can donate an organ to a transplant

facility, specifying a designated recipient be more up on the waiting list. About 6,000 living donor organ transplants in America are made each year, but thousands more die from renal failure before a suitable organ can be located. UCSF has been a world leader in enabling donations be given to living HIVpositive patients and HIV-positive patients accepting donations from “higher risk” bodies. Reality is, declining health prevents me from demonstrating moves. The past couple of years have consisted of coaching my assistants to teach my technique and my philosophy – and getting to know my athletes better through Socratic inquiries and genuine interest in the challenges life presents them daily. For a few years, I have questioned whether that was enough. Was I a liability or were they truly getting something out of my PEZ pellets of wisdom? My change of treatment now allows me the chance to do more and do it better. I can go to crack-ofdawn tournament weigh-ins rather than being strapped to a dialysis cycler in the wee hours. Renewed energy will increase my availability for my students and assistants. And more available to you, dear reader. More available to tackle the racism, sexism, transphobia, ageism, and homophobia that choke our sports lives. Must be getting better already – the advocate is back.t Information on donating kidneys is available at http://www.kidney. org. General information on donating kidneys and other organs is available at organdonor.gov.

Obituaries >> Lawrence Wing (Lon) Rand, aka Quentin November 7, 1933 – December 9, 2016 Lawrence Wing (Lon) Rand, aka Quentin, was born November 7, 1933 in Port Angeles, Wa s h i n g t o n and died unexpectedly December 9, 2016 in Hillsboro, Oregon. He lived for several decades in San Francisco and Oakland as a proud member of the LGBT community. Quentin is survived by half-sisters Marla Smith Daugherty and Juanita Rand, and their children and grandchildren.

Quentin’s passions were many but none greater than the world of music. He was a founding member of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Band & Twirling Corp, playing flute, piccolo, and sousaphone. He was also the band’s first archivist and chronicled its early history. He played in the band’s first concert in 1978, at Everett Middle School. This is where the band will perform its next concert, “Earth Songs,” Saturday, March 25 at 4 p.m. A tribute to Quentin’s life will take place during that concert. While living in Melbourne, Australia for a time, Quentin became a proud member of the Melbourne Rainbow Band. If you care to donate in Quentin’s memory, the family suggests the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band (visit http:// www.sflgfb.org) or kindly support your favorite PBS station. And know that somewhere Quentin will be smiling.

LGBT Seniors>>

March 23-29, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 11

SF LGBT senior agency welcomes new leader by Matthew S. Bajko

After landing a job as a research assishe ceremony Thurstant in a cognitive day to dedicate the science lab working city’s first housing dewith people recoversigned specifically for ing from strokes, she LGBT seniors will also met a woman who serve as a public debut for helped chart her caKaryn Skultety, Ph.D., the reer path into aging. new leader of Openhouse, “I was fascinated the leading service proby this woman’s Kelly Sullivan vider for LGBT seniors in strength. They wantSan Francisco. ed me to focus on New Openhouse Skultety, 40, stepped Executive Director what she couldn’t do, down as the vice presi- Karyn Skultety and all I could pay dent of health services at attention to was all the Institute on Aging to the things she could join Openhouse Monday, February do,” recalled Skultety. “She came up 13 as its new executive director. with ingenious ways to stay in her “I have been an admirer of Openhome. It is how I fell in love with house throughout my career in aging. It has been my life’s work aging services,” said Skultety, who helping people stay in their homes.” received her doctorate in clinical It is a key goal Skultety has psychology from the University brought with her to Openhouse, to of Massachusetts at Amherst and ensure LGBT seniors can age with earned her undergraduate degree in dignity where they are currently livpsychology and cognitive science at ing in the city. She plans to continue, Johns Hopkins University. and build on, the work Openhouse Skultety initially wanted to behas already been doing to achieve come a doctor, but switched careers that goal, from partnering LGBT after realizing she would never pass seniors with visitors who regularly the required organic chemistry socialize with them in their homes course, and even more importantly, and in the community to trainpassed out at the sight of blood. ing the staff at nursing homes and

LGBT seniors

From page 1

based in San Francisco, and Mercy Housing California, which develops below-market-rate housing. He landed on the waiting list at number 62. But since eight units had initially been set aside for people aged 55 or older who are living with HIV or AIDS at risk of homelessness, Cordova received a call from the city’s Shelter Plus Care program informing him it had an apartment for him at 55 Laguna if he wanted it. The program had been assisting him with his rent at the Ambassador. “Mine was the last unit to be rented. It was a Christmas miracle,” Cordova told the Bay Area Reporter during a visit last week to the building to meet some of the inaugural residents at what is being called the Openhouse Community at 55 Laguna. Despite anti-discrimination laws that prevented city leaders from restricting heterosexual seniors from applying to live in the building, 68 percent of the seniors who moved in identify as LGBT, according to demographic data that Openhouse has collected. Six percent of the residents identify as transgender, though Openhouse officials suspect the number may actually be higher. In terms of the residents’ ethnic makeup, 57 percent are people of color (15 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 17 percent African American, 15 percent Latino/Hispanic, and 11 percent other or biracial families). Openhouse said that the oldest resident is 90. The building consists of 10 studio apartments, 26 one-bedroom apartments, and four two-bedroom apartments for residents, plus an additional apartment for an on-site resident manager, who Openhouse said is Mercy Housing employee Lucinda Haas. The majority of the senior residents, 87 percent, live alone, while 13 percent are living with either a partner and/or other family members. Worried that one day he would no longer be able to maneuver up and down the set of stairs at his former apartment on Sanchez Street in the Castro, Richard Nodine, 72, entered the lottery for 55 Laguna. He lucked out and was chosen for one of the 16 units set aside for people already living within a mile of the project or anywhere in the city’s supervisorial

District 8. He moved into his new apartment on December 19. “The reason I was anxious to get in here is because I was living in a wonderful, old building but it had stairs,” said Nodine, a gay man whose third floor studio apartment, decorated with various African baskets and photographic prints, is easily accessible via an elevator. “I am fine now and have no problems walking, but I was concerned for my future. I not only had stairs going into my building but also in my apartment.” Robin Rheault, 55, a transgender woman, moved into her apartment at 55 Laguna last fall after receiving a call from the Shelter Plus Care program, which had been housing her at the Ambassador the past three years. At first she thought they wanted to relocate her to a different Tenderloin building, but the person explained it was for the senior housing development. (According to Openhouse, the city put the Shelter Plus Care program in charge of selecting the residents for the eight units that had been set aside specifically for seniors at risk for homelessness who are living with HIV or AIDS. The housing program, however, not only works with people who are HIV positive but also assists people who had been living on the streets or close to losing their home due to dealing with substance use or mental health issues.) “I clutched my pearls and ran. I grabbed my cat and my coat in my other hand and said, ‘I am here.’ ... . I really feel amazing being part of

Kelly Sullivan

Ron Cordova relaxes in his apartment at 55 Laguna Street.

assisted-living facilities on how to ensure their LGBT residents feel welcomed and supported. “I want to make sure every LGBT senior feels at home no matter where they are living,” said Skultety. It is also a recognition that the agency can’t build enough senior housing to meet the demand that exists. In a city known for its high housing costs and lengthy development battles, Skultety said Openhouse was “brave” to embark nearly two decades ago on a mission to build housing for LGBT seniors in the city. Several years ago the agency partnered with Mercy Housing California to open what will be a 119-unit affordable senior housing development. The residents of the first 41 units built in the renovated Richardson Hall, a former college building, are already settling in to their new apartments in what is now known as the Openhouse Community at 55 Laguna. Construction to turn the adjacent parking lot into a new building with an additional 79 below-market-rate units of senior housing will break ground at Thursday’s ceremony. It is slated to open in early 2019. The public will also get its first

chance at the event to see Openhouse’s new, permanent offices at 65 Laguna Street, known as the Bob Ross LGBT Senior Center due to a $1 million donation from the foundation of the B.A.R.’s founding publisher. A bronze plaque honoring Ross, who died in 2003, greets everyone who enters the front door. One of Skultety’s tasks this year will be to raise the necessary funds to build out the agency’s 8,000 square feet of additional space in the new building, which Openhouse plans to use for larger community events and classes. Five years ago the nonprofit launched what it called an expansion campaign with a goal of raising close to $8 million for construction costs and funding expanded services; Skultety said it has raised half of the money to date. With the opening of both the senior housing and its new offices, Openhouse is in an even better position to complete the fundraising drive, said Skultety. “There has been a lot of interest in what we are doing,” she said. One possibility she is looking into is if Openhouse should become a licensed provider of an adult day care center in its new space. It currently

doesn’t offer any licensed programs in contrast to other providers of senior services in the city. “It is important to explore if we should offer that next level of care,” she said. As the leader of Openhouse, Skultety, who is bisexual, oversees a budget of more than $15 million and over 150 staff members. She declined to disclose her salary; her predecessor had been making nearly $135,000 in total compensation, according to the agency’s 2014 tax filings. She lives in Noe Valley with her wife, Sarah Mark, the director of learning and development at Edgewood Center for Children and Families in the city’s West Portal neighborhood, their 7-year-old son, Quinn, and their daughter, Nova, who turns 4 next month. The couple, who met in 2005 and married two years later, again exchanged vows in 2008 when samesex marriage was briefly legal in California. They had been living in the city’s gay Castro district prior to moving over the hill into their current home. “We are your stereotypical twomom family,” said Skultety, joking they drive a Subaru and a Prius.t

this movement,” said Rheault, referring to the LGBT community. “We all need help, and it is nice to know that, at the end of the day, people have our backs. ... We really need this. The struggle is real.” Her new studio apartment is more than double the size of her previous one. Plus, being in a supportive senior housing environment, said Rheault, gives her peace of mind about aging as a single woman without her own children. “I spoil my nieces so they will take care of me,” joked Rheault, who grew more serious noting that she will turn 56 this year and is “closer to the end than the beginning. I want to know that pressure is gone.” She already has gotten to know her neighbors at 55 Laguna better than when she was living downtown, including four “trans sisters” who she said can knock on her door anytime. When Rheault grew depressed and didn’t venture out of her apartment for four days, another resident noticed and knocked on her door to insist she join her for a walk outside. “Even though it has only been a couple of months, we are building a sense of community,” said Rheault.

a new building with 79 units of affordable senior housing for people 65 and older, with 14 reserved for those at risk of being homeless, that will be built on what is now a surface parking lot next door to Richardson Hall. Thursday’s event will also mark the public unveiling of Openhouse’s new, permanent offices at 65 Laguna Street, known as the Bob Ross LGBT Senior Center due to a $1 million donation from the foundation of the B.A.R.’s founding publisher. A bronze plaque honoring Ross, who died in 2003, greets everyone who enters the front door.

Construction of the new building, which will include 8,000 square feet of space Openhouse will use for community events and classes, is expected to kick into full gear in August and last through 2018. The residents, who will again mostly be chosen through a lottery, should move in sometime in early 2019. “At 119 total units, this is the largest LGBT welcoming senior housing in the country,” said Karyn Skultety, Ph.D., who joined Openhouse last month as its new executive director. t

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With funding from Mercy, Openhouse hired Amy Goodwin to serve as the resident services manager for the building. In addition to providing case management and helping the residents sign up for various community resources, Goodwin has been programming activities for them, from music concerts to field trips. “This is my ideal population to work with and my ideal job,” said Goodwin, 29, a gay woman who graduated in May from San Jose State with a master’s in social work. “My goal is to help create a safe and welcoming community for everybody, but particularly a place where the LGBT residents can feel safe to be themselves and age with dignity.” The residents, leaders of the nonprofit agencies, and city officials will officially dedicate the opening of the building at a ceremony Thursday (March 23) at 3 p.m. It will also serve as the groundbreaking for the $40 million project’s second phase,

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<< Community News

12 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

News Briefs

From page 5

Leno to address LGBT Catholics

Gay former state Senator Mark Leno, who is considering a run for San Francisco mayor in 2019, is the featured speaker at a talk presented by Dignity/San Francisco Sunday, March 26 at 3:30 p.m. at Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1329 Seventh Avenue in San Francisco. Dignity/San Francisco is the local chapter of the national group for LGBT Catholics. Leno, who is Jewish, will speak briefly about his own spiritual journey but will mostly talk about faith and politics, organizers said. The event is free; parking is available in the lot across from the church.

Trans Day of Visibility

The Transgender Day of Visibility will be observed in San Francisco with two events next week. The Trans Employment Program at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center and Trans: Thrive at the Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center will host a free communitywide event Friday, March 31 at SOMArts, 934 Brannan Street. A reception starts at 5:30 p.m., followed by the program an hour later. This year’s honorees will be the Transgender Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project; Aria Sa’id, program director at St. James

Meals on Wheels

From page 1

has never been a partisan issue,” McCumber said. “There’s some reason to hope it continues to be bipartisan.” But McCumber said that across the country, it’s important for people to understand that the loss of block grant funding for some Meals on Wheels agencies would be a significant problem in those

Castro outburst

From page 2

‘He would not stop fighting the cops’

A Hecho bartender, who declined to give his name, told the B.A.R. that Marquez had “rushed in” to the bar at the beginning of the incident telling people to call 911 and saying “a bunch of gibberish, a nonsensical rant.” The bartender declined to say much more.

Gorsuch

From page 8

signal to the American people.” Then he reiterated, marriage for same-sex couples “is absolutely settled law.” But he also said he couldn’t share his views because there is “ongoing litigation about [Obergefell’s] impact and its application right now.” Klobuchar led Gorsuch through a dialogue to determine whether his professed preference for a strict reading of the text of the Constitution would prevent him from recognizing equal protection for LGBT people. He acknowledged the Constitution can be read to recognize Congress’ right to control the Air Force, even though only “land and naval” forces were written into the Constitution. He acknowledged that a woman could be president, even though the Constitution uses only male pronouns in reference to the office of the president. Given those concessions, asked Klobuchar, would Gorsuch be willing to apply this same approach to equal rights for minority groups, women, and LGBTs. “A good judge applies the law without respect to persons. ... I don’t

Infirmary; Tom Waddell Health Center’s Transgender Clinic; and videographer and advocate Gwen Park. TDOV was started in 2009 to lift up the accomplishments and victories of trans and gender nonconforming people while raising awareness of the work that is still needed to save trans lives. To register, visit http://bit. ly/2nHdCVf On Thursday, March 30, there will be a screening of trans YouTube star Gigi Gorgeous’ “This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous” at Twitter headquarters, 1355 Market Street. The event is from 6 to 9 p.m. and is free, though donations are welcome and proceeds will be used to support TDOV events. The screening in sponsored by TwitterOpen, the tech company’s LGBTQ employee resource group. To register, visit http://bit. ly/2nPjKaU

“Fighting Back,” in which intergenerational discussions will take place including veterans of those early groups as well as contemporary organizers. The first of these events is scheduled for Tuesday, March 28 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the museum, 4127 18th Street in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. Admission is free for GLBT Historical Society members and $5 for non-members. For more information, visit glbthistory.org.

Inforum panel on LGBT rights

in public schools; and potential executive orders that could adversely affect the LGBTQ community. Tickets are $25 for members ($32 premium), $35 for non-members ($42 premium), and $10 for students. The San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee is a co-sponsor. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit inforumsf.org.

Free concert at Tenderloin Museum

The Tenderloin Museum and San Francisco Recovery Theatre will present a free concert Thursday, March 30 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the museum, 398 Eddy Street. Night at the Black Hawk is a live jazz concert, and part of an ongoing series that reflects the lives and stories of the artists, musicians, and residents that lived in the shadow of the Black Hawk Jazz Club. Museum officials noted that with the loss of so many artistic and iconic figures in 2016, not to mention today’s unsure political footing, SF Recovery Theatre is pledging its commitment to provide a safe space for those who are still suffering, their family members, and those in recovery. SF Recovery Theatre is a grassroots organization that is funded by grants from the art and health communities in the city. The concert is open to the public; donations are gladly accepted.

leadership academy is now accepting applications. The academy is an innovative program to train the next generation of LGBT leaders in the Golden State. It will prepare 25-30 LGBT leaders in northern and southern California and the Central Valley as they seek appointments to state and municipal boards and commissions, as well as to corporate board of directors. For an application, go to http:// bit.ly/2mRQpeK The deadline is close of business Wednesday, April 12.

PRC named a lead beneficiary of AIDS Walk SF

Thirty years ago this month, the first chapter of the militant AIDS activist organization ACT UP was founded in New York City. At the same time, the AIDS Action Pledge was forming in San Francisco, emerging from earlier AIDS protest groups in the city, including Citizens for Medical Justice, Mobilization Against AIDS, and the ARC/ AIDS Vigil. The GLBT History Museum is starting a new monthly series called

Inforum, the division of the Commonwealth Club that produces events on pop culture and other topics, will host LGBT and allied leaders for a panel discussion, “LGBTQ Rights: What’s at Stake?” Wednesday, March 29 at the club’s offices, 555 Post Street in San Francisco. Scheduled speakers include Rick Welts, a gay man who’s president and chief operating officer of the Golden State Warriors; Mia Satya, a trans woman and community organizer; and Matt Haney, an ally who is a member of the San Francisco school board. Lesbian retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell will moderate. The panel is expected to talk about topics such as the anti-trans House Bill 2 law in North Carolina, the Trump administration’s decision to rescind protections for trans students

communities. “These services have impact, these programs work,” he said. He also pointed out that other Bay Area communities, such as Alameda County, “are behind the curve” when it comes to funding Meals on Wheels programs. “It’s not equal everywhere,” he said. Meals on Wheels of San Francisco serves about 3,600 clients in all programs. About 10 percent of its clients are under age 60. In a

partnership with the city and the local food bank, about 250 people per week utilize Meals on Wheels’ home-delivered grocery program. The rest have meals delivered. McCumber said that 8 percent of the agency’s clients selfidentify as LGBT, but he puts the figure higher, probably at about 15 percent. One of those is Bernie Granda, a gay man who has been a Meals on Wheels of San Francisco client for

three years. Granda, 90, said he has arthritis and can’t climb down the stairs of his home. “It’s excellent,” he told the B.A.R. in a phone interview last week. “I have nothing but praise. The deliverymen come in and put the food in the freezer and say ‘Hi.’” Granda, who retired from Bank of America, has lived in the city for 45 years. McCumber said that clients have been contacting the agency since

Trump’s proposed budget cuts were announced. “I was on CNN last night,” McCumber said March 17, “as a person who doesn’t want to scare seniors. I don’t want to tell seniors they’re not going to get a meal.” “Clearly, people are alarmed,” he added. t

Another man said that he’d seen Marquez on the floor being restrained by police. “He would not stop fighting the cops,” said the man, who also declined to give his name. Officers told Marquez, “Calm down, quit moving,” but “he was trying to fight the cops,” even as he was handcuffed, the man said. Fire department records say Marquez suffered cuts to his wrist, hand, and at least one finger. The behavior described in the

police summary “was very unusual” for Marquez, said Monroe. “He’s one of the most loving, caring guys you’ll ever meet,” Monroe said. When he went to bars, he’d buy other people drinks, “even strangers,” he said. “He’s very generous. I’ve never seen him violent, ever. I don’t know what happened that night.” Monroe said that since Marquez has been in the hospital, scores of friends have come to visit. A Facebook page established in his honor has 217 members, many of whom

have been posting messages urging him to “Wake up.” The last time Monroe or his wife spoke to Marquez shortly before the incident, “We didn’t notice anything unusual,” he said. As of Tuesday afternoon, Marquez’s condition was “worsening,” Monroe said, and hospital staff have had to give him more oxygen and increase a blood pressure drug. Monroe said that Hecho co-owner Jesse Woodward has been “very nice and cooperative.”

In a Facebook exchange with the B.A.R., Woodward said, “I don’t have any comment. It’s a very sad situation and the more it is in the press the more it hurts our name.” A Gofundme page (https://www. gofundme.com/abel-marquezfund) has been established to help pay Marquez’s medical bills and other expenses. Marquez’s family is asking any witnesses to the incident to send an email to globalhelp2@ yahoo.com.t

take account of the person before me. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.” It was a baffling response to observers. Everyone is supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law. But when a lawsuit challenges a law as disfavoring a minority, the important test in court is whether the law directly targets a specific and identifiable group of people. Lawsuits claiming discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, or other characteristics must prove the discrimination was based on the specifically identifiable characteristic. Later, Gorsuch appeared to revise and extend his remarks. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) noted that the nominee was being criticized for an article he wrote before he joined the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The article criticized “liberals” for filing lawsuits on “everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide” to achieve their “social agenda.” Gorsuch acknowledged that both conservatives and liberals make frequent use of the courts for redress. “The courts are very important place for the vindication of civil rights and for minorities,” he

said. “It’s a place where unpopular voices get heard the same as popular voices. In a democracy and the legislature, the majority wins. That’s not the case in courts. The best argument should prevail.” Gorsuch’s testimony was perhaps most revealing when he was asked about the constitutional amendment against unreasonable searches and how courts should apply that text in the age of modern technology. Gorsuch pointed to a case, U.S. v. Jones, in which police attached a tracking device to a suspect’s car. He said the court in that case looked at the original text in the Constitution to conclude that “attaching something to someone else’s property is a trespass ...” Thus attaching a tracker to a car without a warrant is an unreasonable search. “And the court held that, if that was a search 200 years ago, it would be today. Technology changes but principles don’t,” said Gorsuch. “It can’t be the case that the U.S. Supreme Court is any less protective of the people’s liberties today than it was the day it was drafted. We look back, we find what the law was at the time ... and we make analogies to our current circumstances. ...” Then he added this: “It is a very

different thing if you want to create a revolution in the area and change the law dramatically. That’s for [Congress] to do.” LGBT legal activists consulted for this article did not offer an interpretation of that latter remark. But it echoed the position taken by the late Justice Antonin Scalia (whom Gorsuch is to replace) when he dissented in the Obergefell decision. He characterized the Obergefell majority as creating a “social upheaval” rather than letting American democracy resolve the issue of marriage for same-sex couples. He said the majority was allowing “the policy question of same-sex marriage” to be resolved by the court and, thus, “violat[ing] a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.” Questioning of Gorsuch continues Wednesday and witnesses for and against his nomination are scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday. Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, will express the organization’s opposition to Gorsuch’s confirmation, at Thursday’s hearing. According to

HRC, Warbelow will note, among other things, that Gorsuch’s dissertation in 2004 “revealed that he did not think the United States Constitution protected the right to marriage equality.” She will also point to his joining a 2015 ruling on the 10th Circuit “against a transgender woman who was denied consistent access to hormone therapy while incarcerated.” In addition to opposition from LGBT legal groups, the Center for American Progress said it fears Gorsuch will attempt to “dismantle” landmark LGBT legal victories. The Republican-controlled Senate is almost certainly going to confirm Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) has said the full Senate will vote before the April 8 recess. t

ACT UP history at GLBT History Museum

LGBTQ leadership academy

The Equality California Institute’s

The Positive Resource Center has been named a lead beneficiary of this year’s AIDS Walk San Francisco. The event, which takes place July 16, raises money for numerous HIV/ AIDS nonprofits. As a lead beneficiary, PRC, which also includes the AIDS Emergency Fund and Baker Places, will receive up to $80,000 from the AIDS Walk San Francisco Foundation, the governing body. The money comes from AIDS Walk participants. Participants will also raise money for other nonprofits. “We’re thrilled to be recognized as one of this year’s AIDS Walk San Francisco lead beneficiaries,” Brett Andrews, PRC CEO, said in a statement. For information about participating in or contributing to AIDS Walk SF, visit sf.aidswalk.net/. t

To donate to Meals on Wheels of San Francisco, visit mowsf.org/.

/lgbtsf

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Community News>>

Bathroom signs

From page 6

her that the city library system’s facilities office was working with the city’s Department of Public Works on creating the proper signs for all library properties. The new signage has yet to be posted on the Anza branch bathrooms. Theresa Sparks, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s senior adviser for transgender initiatives, said once her new office in the LGBT Community Center is fully staffed and open in early April, she plans to check in with all city departments to make sure they are working to comply with the bathroom signage rules. Davis told the B.A.R. that in recent weeks she has noticed the proper signage has been going up at various bathrooms in not only San Francisco but also in establishments in nearby cities. “It is starting to but it is a slow process,” she said. “I actually was down in Daly City right before the state law went into effect and was in a store that had temporary paper signs over the gender-specific bathroom signage. This is a Dollar Tree, which is not an especially progressive chain, so I think the word is getting around.” Overall, Ting said he believes his bill has brought about positive changes already, not just in California but also across the country. “I think things have been going well,” he said. “Already, there is a movement across the state and country, with many private buildings and restaurants already transforming single-room restrooms into all-gender restrooms. I think our bill catalyzed that movement.” Two days after his California law took effect, business review site Yelp announced it was rolling out a new feature where users could note if an establishment had gender-neutral bathrooms. Business owners from across the U.S. can also edit their Yelp listing to indicate they provide such restrooms. Yelp is also adding a way for users to search its website and mobile app to locate businesses that offer such facilities. The news came a day after the company filed an amicus brief in support of the federal lawsuit brought by transgender student Gavin Grimm, whose local school district has barred him from using the boy’s bathroom. In a blog post announcing the initiative, Rachel Williams, Yelp’s head of diversity and inclusion, wrote, “At Yelp we thrive on inclusion and acceptance, and we hope that our support for Gavin’s case and the addition of this new business attribute will help our friends in the LGBTQQIA community.” Ting applauded Yelp’s decision, noting it will have a national impact. “It makes a huge impression,” he said. “It makes it just look normal.” If people encounter single-stall bathrooms that do not have the proper gender-neutral signage, Ting said they should alert his office about the situation as well as local authorities. He has been getting some phone calls already about signage that has yet to be changed. If it continues to be a problem, Ting said he is open to sponsoring additional legislation to ensure compliance with the state law. “If we see resistance against the law, then obviously we have to look at other enforcement options. We are hopeful that in California, this is a very common sense approach,” he said. “If you have a single-stall bathroom, it should be open to everyone, like it is at your home. At home, you don’t have gendersegregated bathrooms.” .t

March 23-29, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 13

Legal Notices>> NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF HARUYOSHI IIDA IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-16-299459

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of HARUYOSHI IIDA. A Petition for Probate has been filed by JUNJI SUZUKI in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that JUNJI SUZUKI be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: MARCH 20, 2017, 9:00 am, Dept. 204, Superior Court of California, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined by section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for petitioner: EDWARD S. MIYAUCHI (SBN 230553), MARSHALL SUZUKI LAW GROUP, LLP, 150 SPEAR ST #725, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105; Ph. (415) 618-0090.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-552820

In the matter of the application of: NICHOLAS STEVEN BIRTH, 2782 22ND ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110, for change of name having been ﬁled in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner NICHOLAS STEVEN BIRTH, is requesting that the name NICHOLAS STEVEN BIRTH, be changed to NICHOLAS STEVEN BEAR. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 25th of APRIL 2017 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037480800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EXPRESS PHOTO AND MAIL; PASSPORT DEPOT, 1388 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MICHAEL YOUNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 04/28/98. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/17.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037479500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CLEANING & MORE, 1015 CORTLAND AVE, SAN FRANCISCO CA, 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOSE D. ROMERO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/21/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/21/17.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037481000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: C PLUS TRAVEL, 2555 44TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MINGFENG WU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 07/11/16. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/17.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037477300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FOUNDATIONS R US, 1291 11TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOHN O. DONOGHUE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/17/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/17/17.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037483500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SANS DESIGN, 415 CLYDE AVE #106, MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94043. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SANS DESIGN LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/23/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/23/17.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037490200

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037489900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HI-VIS BRANDING, 8 NEWELL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed HI-VIS BRANDING (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/27/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/27/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PALAYAN’S ORIENTAL RUG CLEANING, 2115 VICENTE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SHANT PALAYAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/14/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/27/17.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037478800

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037486500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MEDIA NOCHE, 3465 19TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed DOS PULPOS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/21/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/21/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TENANTS BUYING REAL ESTATE, 870 MARKET ST #315, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed TENBUY CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/17.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037462300

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037493800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: MOONRISE TATTOO WATERS GALLERY, 446 TARAVAL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WATERS MELANDRES. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/07/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/07/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ROYAL INDIAN CUISINE, 1740 FILLMORE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BELLA FOODS INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/01/17.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-034571700

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037494500

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: AUERBACH GLASOW FRENCH, 225 GREEN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business was conducted by a corporation and signed by AUERBACH + ASSOCIATES, INC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/07/12.

MAR 02, 09, 16, 23, 2017 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-552810

In the matter of the application of: FNU KAREN, 2263 37TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116, for change of name having been ﬁled in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner FNU KAREN, is requesting that the name FNU KAREN, be changed to KAREN EFFENDI. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 20th of April 2017 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037501500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LALIGURASH JEWELLERY, 910 STOCKTON ST #12, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RAM KRISHNA LAKANDRI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/06/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/06/17.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037502100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FCA COMPANY, 579 GEARY ST, 2ND FLR, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GUILLAUME COUTHEILLAS. 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 03/06/17.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037494000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: RENE HEALTH, 5 THIRD ST #501, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BEN BEDI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/28/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/01/17.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037480500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE TRAINING ZONE STUDIO, 5332 GEARY ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CAN 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed FRANCISCO A. NIEVES. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/22/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/17.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037487000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HEIT CERAMICS, 75 MANCHESTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GAY LEAH HEIT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/24/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/17.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037491200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JAY HORNE, 1355 HUDSON AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JAQUITA HORNE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/27/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/27/17.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SILVER SPUR, 1914 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SHOTSKI LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/01/17.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037499000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: O/M, 1095 NATOMA ST #2, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed YOUNG DESIGN LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on NA. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/03/17.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-034401800 The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: TENANTS BUYING REAL ESTATE, 870 MARKET ST #315, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by RICHARD HURLBURT. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/11/12.

MAR 09, 16, 23, 30, 2017 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-552848 M

In the matter of the application of: KELLY ANN ELEK, 965 TERESITA BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127, for change of name having been ﬁled in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner KELLY ANN ELEK, is requesting that the name KELLY ANN ELEK, be changed to JAZMIN KELLY ELEK. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 4th of MAY 2017 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-552856

In the matter of the application of: MARINA MCCORD GELMAN, 646 CLARENDON AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131, for change of name having been ﬁled in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner MARINA MCCORD GELMAN, is requesting that the name MARINA MCCORD GELMAN, be changed to MARINA GELMAN-MCCORD. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 9th of May 2017 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-552851 In the matter of the application of: BRYAN BERNARD FINLEY, 130 CAINE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112, for change of name having been ﬁled in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner BRYAN BERNARD FINLEY, is requesting that the name BRYAN BERNARD FINLEY AKA BRYAN FINLEY, be changed to BRYAN BERNARD VILLASEÑOR. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 4th of May 2017 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037502900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SWEET SURRENDER STUDIOS, 1801 TURK ST #22, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RICHARD DOUGLAS SHARON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/07/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/07/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-552843

In the matter of the application of: ANTHONY STEPHEN WILEY-GREEN, 1147 HOLLISTER AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner ANTHONY STEPHEN WILEY-GREEN, is requesting that the name ANTHONY STEPHEN WILEY-GREEN AKA ANTHONY WILEYGREEN AKA ANTHONY STEPHEN GREENWILEY, be changed to ANTHONY STEPHEN GREEN-WILEY. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 2nd of May 2017 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037502400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SFWOOFPACK, 219 LEAVENWORTH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NATHAN E.GUIDAS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/06/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037483100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JIFFY DOG, 300 DEHARO ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALEX TAO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/23/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/23/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037483200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: JIFFY DOG, 2175 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALEX TAO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/23/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/23/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037501700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TYE’S BARBER SHOP, 570 MONTEREY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TYRONE D. POWELL. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/06/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/06/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30 APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037503800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: VIDEO/PHOTO EFFECTS FROM THE HOOD, 1883 PALOU AVE #B, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL EDWARD FARR. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/07/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/07/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037508700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DENIS ENGLANDER PHOTOGRAPHY, 687 2ND AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DENIS ENGLANDER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 01/01/16. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037509100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: DIG IT EVENTS, 77 SHOTWELL ST #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LUKE WEBSTER JOHNSTONE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037508900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BAY AREA EFFICIENT MOVERS, 1238 NORTHPOINT DR UNIT D, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94130. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed DZIANIS VASILEUSKI & GULZHAN BEISENOVA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/02/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037504000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: AGUILA DEFENSE TRAINING, 588 SUTTER ST #750, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed LYU LOPEZ & SEAN D. O’CONNOR. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/08/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017

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14 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Legal Notices>> FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037490600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: TENDER ROSE DEMENTIA CARE SPECIALISTS, 120 GREEN ST #200, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed TENDER ROSE HOME CARE, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 01/12/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/27/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037501100

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037519000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OFFICIAL BIZNESS STUDIO, 2200 CESAR CHAVEZ ST #A, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL MORGAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 07/14/16. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/20/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037517600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: INTERIM CMO; OXGN, 463 MISSISSIPPI ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed OXGN, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/06/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CREATIVE LICENSE CONSULTING SERVICES; INNOVATION STATION; CLCS, 183 STATES ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed STEVEN A. KOWALSKI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/17/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/17.

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037519700

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037511200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: EYEBROW STAR, 2649A MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PRABHA THAPALIYA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 11/01/16. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/20/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LIPSHTICK PICTURES, 34 6TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SERENA SCHULER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 02/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/13/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037510100

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037514300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: GLIIM, 5214F DIAMOND HGTS BLVD #352, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANDREW STOCKETT CAVALIER. 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 03/13/17.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BOOZEPHREAKS, 865 SAN JOSE AVE #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed BLAKE TUCKER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037508200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: NEW FORMALISM, 1501 LEAVENWORTH ST #7, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WEI-PEI CHERNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/09/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/10/2017.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037506900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: OCEAN VIEW SPA, 1632 NORIEGA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed RU HAI LIANG & ZHU MING LIANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/07/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/09/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037517200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: BLUE WATER TOWING & AUTO SERVICE, 7490 MISSION ST, COLMA, CA 94014. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed BLUE WATER TOWING & AUTO SERVICE INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/16/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/16/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037518100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PARTSMARKET; PARTSMARKET PRIME, 350 TOWNSEND ST #405, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed INTERNET 404 TECHNOLOGIES INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/17/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/17/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037513900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FLORE, 2298 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed FOCUS 415 CAPITAL INVESTMENTS GROUP INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on NA. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037511800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LIN’S ORIENTAL IMPORTS, 1520 TENNESSEE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed LINS IMPORT CORP (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 01/01/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/13/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037500800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CONSULERIS LLC, 101 CALIFORNIA ST #2710, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed CONSULERIS LLC (DC). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 06/11/14. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/06/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037512600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as: HOOK FISH CO., 4542 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed HOOK FISH COMPANY LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 09/15/16. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/14/17.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017

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The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as: OCEAN VIEW SPA, 1632 NORIEGA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by ZHU MING LIANG. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 12/30/14.

MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037501100

MAR 16, 23, 30, APR 06, 2017

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT NOTICE TO PROPOSERS GENERAL INFORMATION MARCH 13, 2017 SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS FIBER & WIRELESS COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES

Proposals must be received by 4:00 P.M., local time, April 10, 2017 with SUBJECT HEADER: “CCRP PROPOSAL” at TransitNetworks@bart. gov or via courier to the address listed in the Invitation for Proposal:

BART CCRP

300 Lakeside Dr. 11th Floor Oakland, CA 94612 Any questions regarding the Invitation for Proposal should be directed to TransitNetworks@bart.gov or BART CCRP, 300 Lakeside Drive 11th Floor, Oakland CA, 94612.

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MAR 23, 30, APR 06, 13, 2017 STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-036221400

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The following person(s) is/are doing business as: POTRERO NUEVO VENTURES LLC, 1032 IRVING ST #973, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed POTRERO NUEVO VENTURES LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed ﬁctitious business name or names on 03/15/17. The statement was ﬁled with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/20/17.

To All Interested Parties: The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (herein “District” or “BART”) will be requesting proposals to provide responses on FIBER & WIRELESS COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES. The Scope of Services and associated requirements are in the Invitation for Proposal.

The

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Thank you for your interest. Dated at Oakland, California, this 13th day of March, 2017.

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Real Jane Roe

Songs from the Woods

Vol. 47 • No. 12 • March 23-29, 2017

www.ebar.com/arts

Detail of “The Blue Window” (1913), oil on canvas by Henri Matisse.

For the love of Frantz by Erin Blackwell

s Americans, we are now thoroughly conditioned to making war on peoples on the other side of the globe, whose deaths we neither count nor consider. See page 24 >>

Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Pierre Niney and Paula Beer in Frantz

Puzzling out influence by Sura Wood

t sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie: a young art student encounters the work of an elder master, and his life and career are altered forever. But that is the actual reallife narrative that began in 1943, when Richard Diebenkorn, then attending Stanford University, See page 16 >>

New Century Chamber Orchestra jams with Chanticleer

by Philip Campbell

wo evergreen San Francisco musical institutions, New Century Chamber Orchestra and the male vocal ensemble Chanticleer, joined forces recently for a reunion in that other City of Light, Paris. See page 24

The male vocal ensemble Chanticleer performed at First Presbyterian Church, Berkeley.

Lisa Kohler

Jean-Claude Moireau-Foz/Courtesy of Music Box Films

Out &About

Parlor games

O&A

{ SECOND OF THREE SECTIONS }

<< Out There

16 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

One fraught phone call by Roberto Friedman

for SF Opera Lab in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater at the ut There was in the house last Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera. Friday night as renowned ItalIn La Voix humaine Poulenc set a ian soprano Anna Caterina Antext by the great gay poet Jean Coctonacci (with pianist Donald Sulteau. In it, a woman basically has a zen) performed Elle, the distraught breakdown during a long, desperate, character at the heart of Francis final phone call with her soon-to-be Poulenc’s La Voix humaine, along ex-lover. It’s melodramatic, but its with a program of French art-songs musical values redeem it. Poulenc’s piano score complements the narrative with exquisite tension and release. A vocal and dramatic tour de force, La Voix humaine requires a virtuoso performer, and in Antonacci it has found one. Her dramatic delivery, her astonishing vocalism and her emotional investment were all first-rate. Sulzen’s pianism displayed all of the piquancy, glitter and perfumery that Poulenc is famous for. Supertitles by Megan Young were projected onto the wall behind the performers in full stanzas, rather than by the Cory Weaver line, which suited the material. Soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci In the program’s first performs in SF Opera Lab’s production half, Antonacci and Sulzen of Poulenc’s La Voix humaine. performed Hector Berlioz’s dramatic ballade “La

Fine Art

From page 15

visited the Palo Alto home of art collectors Michael and Sarah Stein (brother and sister-in-law of Gertrude) and saw the paintings of the Henri Matisse for the first time. Lightning struck, but not all at once. It wasn’t until nearly a decade later, after Diebenkorn attended a Matisse retrospective in Los Angeles in 1952, and started moving from his roots in abstract expressionism to figuration, that he began incorporating elements of his hero’s approach in earnest. An enormous 1966 Matisse retrospective at UCLA with a whopping 300 pieces, some of them radical departures, was also influential.

Matisse/Diebenkorn, a new exhibition now at SFMOMA, chronologically charts the life-long impact of the French modernist on the quintessential California artist and founding member of the Bay Area Figurative movement. Consisting of about 100 artworks, including a revelatory gallery filled with extraordinary, incisive ink-and-charcoal figure drawings by both men, the show focuses on Diebenkorn’s development through four decades of his paintings. Despite his unabashed, self-professed admiration of Matisse, this is the first exhibition to place their paintings side-by-side. Their works are paired or exhibited in small clusters, accompanied by elucidating text, encouraging visitors to compare and make con-

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mort d’Ophelie” (“The Death of Ophelia”) and a series of art-songs including Claude Debussy’s trio of erotic melodies set to poems by Pierre Louys, Chansons de Bilitis; and Poulenc’s seven-part song cycle La fraicheur et le feu (The Coolness and the Fire), settings of verses by the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard, which the composer dedicated to Igor Stravinsky. In the sixth of these, “Homme au sourire tender” (“Man with the tender smile”), Eluard addresses the title character as well as a “woman with the tender eyelids, man with the freshened cheeks, woman with the sweet fresh arms,” and so on, and concludes, “There is nothing that prevents you, my masters, from testing me.” The relatively new Taube Atrium Theater is turning out to be a versatile venue for the type of chamberworks SF Opera Lab is presenting. The intimate seating and configuration of the space are changeable, earlier this year easily accommodating composer Ted Hearne and librettist Mark Doten’s oratorio The Source. Next SF Opera Lab will present the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth in their San Francisco debut (April 23) and members nections between the artworks for themselves in a scholarly “you decide” presentation. Although the two never met, and the places and times in which they lived were markedly different, they had much in common. Both were extraordinary painters, superior draughtsmen and sublime colorists with an interest in the relationship between interior and exterior space, as well as in the way forms are arranged and light is introduced onto the canvas. Both deliberately left behind changes, revisions and errors that occurred on the way to completing a final work of art. In many instances, they were also attracted to similar subject matter, the artist studio and women – in particular, often drafting their wives into service as models. Certainly, there are differences between them. For the most part, Diebenkorn, who spent much of his career as an abstract painter, adopted a larger format; generally, Matisse’s aesthetic was more opulent. It’s unlikely Diebenkorn would have been the same painter had it not been for his fateful encounter with Matisse. While there’s plenty of evidence to support that contention, inspiration is a complicated, often-indirect proposition. As Picasso once famously acknowledged, all artists are thieves. In this case, teasing apart the influence puzzle is an especially enjoyable, speculative pursuit. For example, the purplish-gray geometric building blocks of Diebenkorn’s “Ingleside” (1963), a cityscape referencing the San Francisco neighborhood of his youth, seem to subtly echo Matisse’s “Notre Dame, a Late Afternoon” (1902), a subliminal, somewhat surreal rendering of the great Parisian landmark in the bewitching violet hues of twilight. There are moments in this show when, if you looked quickly, you might mistake one artist’s work for the other, though details in their respective paintings might be quite different. Take the darkened indigo rooms with views to the outdoors of Matisse’s “Interior with a Violin” (1918), which has an overstuffed armchair and a peek at the beachfront, while a similar scene in Diebenkorn’s “Interior with Doorway” (1962) offers seating of

Oscilloscope Laboratories

Scene from director Ceyda Torun’s Kedi: real cats of Istanbul.

of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in ChamberWORKS (April 27). For SF Opera Lab tickets and information, visit sfoperalab.com or call (415) 864-3330.

Cat sense

Director Ceyda Torun’s Kedi, now showing in Landmark Theatres, follows the street cats of contemporary Istanbul, who are well-known as an adorable presence in the ancient city. On a behavioral scale, the kitties fall somewhere between feral and tame, but the film shows that they allow people to feed and pet them. Torun’s camera follows a handful of these proud furred

felines, and viewers get a sense of them as individual personalities. It’s a delightful acquaintance. We also meet the humans who become attached to these regal creatures. In the movie’s most harrowing sequence, one cat earns his restaurant meals by chasing a terrified mouse down into the Istanbul sewers. Using infrared photography, Torun films the thrill of the chase from the rodent’s alarmed perspective, its beady eyes fixed on the presence of its prospective predator. Perhaps the next such documentary offering could show things from a Turkish mouse’s point of view. Call it Redi.t

The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

“Woman on a Porch” (1958), oil on canvas by Richard Diebenkorn. New Orleans Museum of Art.

the austere folding-metal variety and a vista of the local gas station across the street. Then there’s the artists’ shared aptitude for blue, expressed in splendid paintings such as Matisse’s tribal turquoise “On the Terrace” (1912) and “The Blue Window” (1913), whose jewel-toned glass living room is one with the sky, except for a few splashes of tangerine and red. Diebenkorn chimes in with the powdery pale “Ocean Park #54” (1972) and the abstract “Ocean Park #79” (1975), an architectural rhapsody in Danish blue. The instructive art-historical case aside, the show is teeming with a surfeit of beautiful robust works. Two paintings in particular invite one into the frame. “Interior, Flowers, and Parakeets” (1924) by Matisse depicts a warm, homey space composed of patterned wallpaper and rugs gently colliding with a table adorned with a birdcage and a pastel blur of spring flowers, a setting that opens into a windowed parlor beyond. It’s shown near Diebenkorn’s less formal “Girl with Plant” (1960), where a woman, seated with her back to us, gazes on desert blooms curling toward a

infinitely deep, blue-green picture window on the right, an element that stops just short of dominating the composition, Each is superbly balanced, structurally complex, sensual yet restrained, and, well, perfect in its own way. It would be criminal not to mention Matisse’s improbably posed, cubist-inflected masterpiece “Large Reclining Nude” (1935). But if there’s a single knockout to be cited, it’s “Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad” (1965), which Diebenkorn created after a pivotal 1964 trip to Russia, where he took in impressive collections of Matisse at several of the country’s museums. It’s his most overt homage to the master, and what a spectacular beauty it is. A kaleidoscopic merging of indoors and outdoors, with sea and sky in azure and cerulean blue, and a prominent square of brightly-colored flowered patterning – a shout-out to the French artist’s fascination with wallpaper, opulent fabrics and fashion – it seduces the eye and electrifies the soul.t Through May 29. sfmoma.org.

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<< Theatre

18 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Existential enigmas at the B&B by Richard Dodds

hen a guest in her B&B asks the little-old-lady host if she “is a Christian or something,” she casually lets drop that she’s a Neoplatonist. “I don’t know what that is,” says the young man, but before an explanation can arrive, some other household matter must be addressed and the brief exchange is left behind. I didn’t know what is was either, and if you want to encounter one of Wikipedia’s longest entries, just look it up. And you still probably won’t really know beyond the fact that something called “the One” is considered both the source and end of all matter. It’s unlikely a coincidence that, in a seemingly throwaway line, landlady Mertis Katherine “Kitty” Graven refers to the tchotchkes that overwhelm her home as “matter.” This is one of the warrens found down the rabbit hole of Annie Baker’s John, now at ACT’s Strand Theater. It has the simplest of setups: a young couple takes a vacation to try to repair a rift in their relationship. Some may find the three acts and more than three hours it takes to tell this story to be excessive, but much like Mertis’ home, there is so much matter to take in, so filled with unexpected detours, and staged with such brave confidence in its moody

naturalism that time for this theatergoer became a non-issue. Several of Baker’s plays have been seen in the Bay Area, including The Aliens and Body Awareness, while her 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winner The Flick has yet to be staged here. John made its New York debut in 2015, with Georgia Engel (fondly remembered as Georgette on Mary Tyler Moore) playing the unfathomable B&B biddy, a role we are fortunate to have her recreating here. Engel’s purring voice, eagerly receptive countenance, and unflappable empathy disarm both us and her visitors, yet there is an undercurrent of disruptive power about the character as her guests are enticed into sharing long-suppressed fears and emotions. Maybe Mertis is bewitched, or maybe the house is haunted, but while the play teases us with suggestions of the supernatural, the bounds of reality are stretched but never punctured. The house is in Gettysburg, and the only guests currently in residence are there to see the historic sights. At least Elias is, with his girlfriend Jenny along to humor his Civil War passions. Their relationship has interludes of affection between passive-aggressive confrontations, leading to a horrific argument that Baker still finds a way to end with a surprise laugh.

Part of me wished early on that Elias and Jenny had broken up before the play began, so aggravating are their jabs. But then, for various reasons, they each spend time alone with Mertis that leads them into confusion and introspection that carries us into their contemplations as well. While Elias is off touring battlefields on his own, Jenny gets to meet Genevieve, Mertis’ cranky and blind best friend, who describes in detail her years of insanity that are now behind her – at least pretty much so. Elias has his own surprise encounter with Genevieve, but not before a casual conversation with Mertis in the home’s “Paris bistro” nook turns into deep metaphysical broodings. No character John appears on stage, but his importance is best not explained here. Ann McDonough has a steely intensity as Genevieve, for whom silence and talk, light and dark, are equally acceptable. As Jenny, Stacey Yen effectively plays the deceptively reasonable partner in her relationship with the testy Elias, while Joe Paulik bites into this character with an intensity that borders on outof-balance harshness. Director Ken Rus Schmoll uses some of the same quirky devices that original director Sam Gold used in New York, from

Kevin Berne

Georgia Engel as a B&B host welcomes guests played by Stacey Yen and Joe Paulik at the start of a vacation they will never forget, in John at ACT’s Strand Theater.

long silences that can make us feel like forgotten guests in the parlor, to having Mertis wearily pull open and shut the curtains between the acts of this play that resides in a world of WTF allure. Postscript: Don’t rush up the aisles as Mertis closes the curtains to signal the second intermission. There is a brief, weird and won-

derful monologue from one of the characters that adds to the headscratching in a play that may not need any more head-scratching moments. But such is life with John.t

story never stopped lurching erratically forward. It is her story that is most compelling, and takes over the heretofore-shared narratives for a long stretch of the second act. It has all the makings of a TV movie; in fact, it was, and we briefly see Holly Hunter accepting an Emmy for her portrayal of a flawed heroine. The catch is the movie stopped before McCorvey’s life became curiouser and curiouser. Loomer’s play takes us on that journey, and Sara Bruner is an ornery spitfire in the role of an opportunist, victim, and in yet another twist, a loving lesbian partner for many years. As Weddington, Sarah Jane Agnew brings a stately presence to the role of the ambitious lawyer who works with Linda Coffee as her second-fiddle lawyer, a role played with endearing mousiness by Susan Lynskey. Most of the cast plays multiple roles, with Pamela Dunlap taking McCorvey’s slatternly mother to horrifyingly hilarious extremes, Catherine Castellanos bringing heartbreaking patience to the role

of McCorvey’s long-term partner, and Jim Abele exuding an unctuous, seductive charm as an evangelist who makes it his mission to save McCorvey’s soul. Loomer’s play is part docudrama and part scenes of straight-ahead theater, efficiently directed by Bill Rauch on Rachel Hauck’s set that reflects those two theatrical styles. Nine chairs occupied by black-robed figures are positioned upstage at the start and the end of the play. The tenuousness of Roe v. Wade surviving in the coming years is implied at the end, but the potency of the play is its backstory and abundant ironies. Such as the fact that Sarah Weddington could afford to fly to Mexico for an illegal abortion, while Norma McCorvey, a.k.a. Jane Roe, was stuck in Texas, gave birth to three children, and never got her abortion.t

John will run at ACT’s Strand Theater through April 23. Tickets are $25-$90. Call (415) 749-2228 or go to act-sf.org.

Ballad of Norma McCorvey by Richard Dodds

the erosion of abortion rights, but her passion is orma McCorvey was the messy story – the sauno Rosa Parks, but she sage-making – behind didn’t need to be. While the neatly wrapped one Parks gave role-model statat the Supreme Court. ure to her historically defiant McCorvey and Sarah act of taking a seat in the Weddington, her lead whites-only section of a attorney in the case, are Montgomery city bus, Mcdueling protagonists in Corvey was simply an anonoften-conflicting memoymous pregnant woman ries and reenactments of who was known to the pubtheir date with destiny lic only as the first name in and its aftermath. The Roe v. Wade. Even at age 21, trajectories of their lives Jenny Graham when the machinations that are foreshadowed in early led to the landmark Supreme Sara Bruner, left, plays Norma McCorvey, soon scenes, with Weddington to be known as Jane Roe, as she meets with her Court decision on aborin suburban Austin with attorneys (Sarah Jane Agnew and Susan Lynskey) tion began, McCorvey had a women who could be at in Roe at Berkeley Rep. gritty history that had little Tupperware party but poster-child promise. who are learning how maybe not. Playwright Lisa Loomer But it does hold considerto explore their vaginas doesn’t pretend to be impartial in able dramatic promise, and while with a hand mirror, while McCorher play Roe at Berkeley Rep, and variations on the facts have come vey is raising hell at the Red Devil while graphic and impassioned out in fits and spurts after the case Bar in Dallas. Weddington was arguments are heard from both was decided in 1973, they were barely out of law school when she sides, her purpose isn’t to pry anyrelegated to footnotes to the main convinced McCorvey to be her Jane one from their opinions. There are event, the decision itself, which was Roe, and she has gone on to have cautionary notes sounded about the final word on the issue – except a dignified career. But McCorvey’s

Roe will run through April 2 at Berkeley Rep. Tickets are $25$100. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org.

Stripped-down Sondheim by Richard Dodds

art of the less-is-more paradox comes from the notion that if you want people to take more action, you offer them less. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes, less really is less. But in the Fiasco Theatre production of Into the Woods, the strategy works because it is imaginatively realized, playfully rendered, and fitting for material rooted in tales that always required imagination to take flight. Before debuting Into the Woods in 2014, the New York-based company had used its ensemble approach mainly to strip down and reimagine Shakespeare, but its production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 musical has found broad enough appeal to warrant a touring production playing top-drawer best-of-Broadway series. Its current locale is the Golden Gate Theatre. Because a cast of 10 plays 17 characters, frequently shifting roles

often with only small changes in the basic costuming, attention needs to be ratcheted up. This is a boon especially for Sondheim’s lyrics, which range from rat-a-tat cleverness to achingly poignant insights into the human condition. Lapine’s winking mash-up of familiar fairytales takes on added spins as the usually literally rendered staging opens up into a seeming informality that has the cast grabbing at props and costumes you might find in an overstuffed attic. Laughs are added, and few if any are lost, in directors Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld’s staging. There are admittedly moments when some sorting is needed to connect an actor with the character that he or she might be playing at any given moment, but it’s a problem that lessens as familiarity increases. Then there’s the fact of the diminishing number of characters to be sorted as the second act proceeds. That’s when the costs of

what it took to achieve “happily ever after” begin to mount. The tour of Into the Woods is the first Fiasco production in which members of the company who collaborated on the concept have been replaced by a new cast. It’s still very much an ensemble show, and it’s hard to single out individual performers among the versatile cast, who also occasionally accompany onstage pianist Evan Rees on an odd array of instruments. But perhaps the most memorable performance comes in a role usually played by anything from a fiberglass replica to a plywood cutout of a cow. In this version, Darick Pead, with only a bell around his neck to signal his species, delightfully plays Milky White. The beloved pet of Jack (of beanstalk fame) no more than moos, but his bovine-dense reactions are priceless, especially when the neighborhood baker is accidentally introduced as the butcher.

is a second act and we should be sure to return after intermission. I have never known that to be a problem with Into the Woods, but I do know people who have said they would have been satisfied without the grimming of Grimm. That, of course, is the entire point of the show – that there are consequences in our quests for personal satisfaction, and our gains can result in someone else’s losses. What defines family and community needs to be adjusted, and the overall humanizing effect of the Fiasco approach to the material arguably warms this message that has taken on a fresh Joan Marcus relevance.t

At the start of the show, in a move added for this production, a performer tells the audience that while it might not seem like it will be so, there

Lisa Johanson and Stephanie Umoh play Rapunzel and the Witch in Fiasco Theatre’s reimagining of Into the Woods now at the Golden Gate Theatre.

Into the Woods will run at the Golden Gate Theatre through April 2. Tickets are $60-$275. Call (888) 7461799 or go to shnsf.com.

Books>>

March 23-29, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19

Full-blooded frontiersmen by Tim Pfaff

was basking in that particular, inviolate glow known only to the reader who has reached the end of an absorbing novel – in this case Sebastian Barry’s Days without End (Viking) – when I learned, with a start, that it was St. Patrick’s Day. Barry’s narrator/ protagonist, Thomas McNulty, is a young Irishman come to America to escape the Potato Famine, and Irishness follows him everywhere. With no political heavyhandedness whatsoever, Barry populates his panoramic novel with refugees of all kinds seeking a better life on the vast, opening American frontier, alongside and not infrequently in conflict – and often open combat – with Native Americans, the “other side” in the Civil War (with Irish immigrants fighting in both armies) and the black people Ben Carson recently reimagined as migrants seeking a better life here. But by making all of his characters rounded, full-blooded human beings, he has accomplished that thing – inclusion, I think we call it now – that art, particularly fiction, does best.

The place he wouldn’t have had to go, but has gone credibly and appreciatively, is the inclusion of gays, not just as players among the others but as the novel’s two main characters, McNulty and “Handsome” John Cole, whose parentless past is sufficiently vague that he knows only that his ethnicity is partly Native American. That Barry has created this pair in part as a personal response to his own son’s having come out to him is a testament to the craft that has

twice short-listed him for the Man Booker Award and won him the Costa Novel Award for this book. The circumstances of the boys’ meeting are unromantic; they discover each other under a wagon while scavenging for food. But Barry boldly makes it love at first sight for both, a lasting relationship that at a particularly unlikely juncture includes their wedding ceremony, pre-Supreme Court by well more than a century. In a feat of higher narrative daring, Barry makes the men the loving “fathers” for a Sioux girl whose family they obediently if reluctantly help slaughter. Somehow that works, too, for the three characters and for the reader. Barry is walking a knife’s edge throughout, sentimentality threatening to swallow him up and incline gay readers in 2017 to disgorge his tale. In a book that is a catalog of dire circumstances at a Homeric level, these boys are the light, for each other and the reader frequently recoiling from their unrelieved hardships. There is none of the naked acrobatics of gay sex, but there is love and devotion, all the more plausible because, being always destitute and more often than not engaged in grisly wars, they’re hardly surrounded by temptation. Here’s the sex bit,

while they are in the army: “And then we quietly fucked and then we slept.” It strikes with the suggestive subtlety found in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. Still, Barry could not have brought it off without an element of othersexuality rendered with authenticity and, critically, humor. The first work the inseparable pair finds is dressing up as girls to dance in a saloon patronized by sex-starved miners, a situation Barry realizes with bravado. What grounds it is Thomas’ immediate recognition that wearing a dress suits him fine. “Funny how as soon as we hove into those dresses everything changed. I never felt so contented in my life. I was a new man now, a new girl. I was freed. I felt dainty, strong and perfected.” The power of it resurfaces in one of the book’s most remarkable passages, when the men are again working as entertainers, Thomas in drag, in a vaudeville show for roughnecks. After some uneasy moments wondering what they were seeing, “The crowd beyond the curtains now are clapping, hooting, stamping. There is a craziness in it all that betokens a kind of delicious freedom. They seen a flickering picture of beauty. All day they’ve labored, but for a minute they loved a woman that

isn’t a real woman but that ain’t the point. There was love in Mr. Titus Noone’s hall for a crazy foggy moment. There were love imperishable for a foggy moment.” Years of heavy soldiering later, Thomas reflects, “Maybe in my deepest soul I believe my own fakery [here, passing as a woman for safety in transit]. I feel a woman more than I ever felt a man, though I were a fighting man most of my days. Just a thing that’s in you and you can’t gainsay. I am easy as a woman, taut as a man.” Such leavening sweetness is offset by long passages recounting war, with its banal violence and bodily horrors. The writing is just shy of the nearly pornographic violence of Corman McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, without quite tipping into full Mel Gibsonmovie obscenity. And throughout, hunger of a rib-cage-rattling sort is described with an insistence to make you want to run out for – this St. Patrick’s Day, I guess, a McDonalds. “Hunger takes away what you are,” Barry declares soberly. But the writing is unflaggingly vital; sentence after sentence fragment leaps out with surprises. “Two soldiers walking under the bright nails of the stars.” It’s starry walking with them.t

manipulated arrangement. It is soon revealed that Paul likes to play increasingly dangerous sexual games. His yard is populated by eerie dark iron figures, and he has an impressively “assertive” endowment that seems to be the focus in these games. His nefarious intentions draw Rechy in with a brutal yank rather than a playful nudge. It is up to readers to determine if this serpentine story is derived from Rechy’s past or from his

imagination. At 85, Rechy’s gift for storytelling and erotic embellishment shows no signs of wear-and-tear. For readers who enjoy their gay novels provocative, unabashedly sexual, and unafraid to step outside of the bounds of traditional fiction, this is amazing news. Mysterious, intriguing, and brashly amatory, Rechy’s take on gamesmanship, power, domination, and deception is a welcome return to form for the author and a wild ride indeed.t

Temptation island Hollywood slut shuffle, the “entanglement of anonymous sexual encounters that only seldom extended even into morning, a situation I welcomed and guarded.” Rechy arrives on the island and is delivered into the care of this handsome, late-30s, youngerthan-imagined host: a stranger and a desperate distraction that seems like the perfect escape for a young man with sex on the brain. History proves that hasty, spontaneous decision-making

can prove a recipe for disaster. In this case, Rechy has his curiosity piqued, but more stimulation and treachery follow. He is introduced to the man’s mistress Sonya and his oddly coercive son Constantine (“Stanty”), 14, and after several afternoons spent lounging on the deck of Paul’s rustic house, sometimes in the harsh heat of day and other times basking in the “few seconds of blue light between dusk and night,” the precarious “truths” begin to seep into this carefully

by Jim Piechota After the Blue Hour by John Rechy, Grove Press; $25

small, solitary, tree-populated island squats in a Cerulean blue sea at dusk on the cover of John Rechy’s new novel, After the Blue Hour. It is deceptively serene and inviting, drawing unknowing readers into a boldly complex drama not unlike others in the Mexican American author’s oeuvre. It also resembles the book that put his name on the tongues of gay readers back in 1963 when, at 32, Rechy’s controversial debut City of Night arrived from the same publisher. By labeling this book “true fiction” on the title page, Rechy opens up the story to the scrutiny of memoir. He forces the reader to ponder whether or not the events of the novel actually happened to him. But this speculation only heightens the tension in a novel full of interpersonal intrigue and sexual dynamics. The narrator is named John Rechy, a writer whose titillating short stories have attracted the attention of an island dweller named Paul Wagner, who writes a fan letter inviting the author to visit his island retreat for the summer. It is 1960, and Rechy, a burned out 20something living in Los Angeles, has found himself adrift in the

FEBRUARY 25–MAY 29 This exhibition is organized by the Kimbell Art Museum in collaboration with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Presenting Sponsors: John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn, the San Francisco Auxiliary of the Fine Arts Museums, Diane B. Wilsey

Visit Legionofhonor.org for a free, in-depth look at the exhibition.

The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Claude Monet, On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt (detail), 1868. Oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, Potter Palmer Collection. 1922.427. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago.

Monet_Bay_Area_Reporter 3_24.indd 1

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<< TV

20 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Orange bully is the new dystopia by Victoria A. Brownworth

especially given the role of Trump apparatchik he’s been playing. McCarthy also has a new comedy series premiering March 29 on TV Land. Nobodies is about three Groundling alums trying to get one of their famous friends to star in a film they’ve written. McCarthy and husband Ben Falcone executive produce Nobodies, starring Groundling alums Hugh Davidson, Larry Dorf and Rachel Ramras playing versions of themselves. The show has already been picked up for a second season, so you know it’s fabulously funny, and we need comedy so much right now. Upcoming guest stars include the always-hilarious McCarthy pal from Bridesmaids and SNL Maya Rudolph, as well as Jason Bateman, Jim Rash and Nat Faxon. We aren’t sure how much all the satire and comedy about this administration have helped, but the good news is the press has snapped out of their delusional torpor of believing Trump is going to pivot into, well, a president. Now it’s “he’s lying” all the time. CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, a highly restrained veteran reporter, queried the other night, “Is it time to question the president’s rationality?” Stunning. On St. Patrick’s Day we had the twin debacles of the president of Ireland calling Trump out on immigration while Trump was holding a pot of shamrocks, and Angela Merkel giving him dagger eyes

ere we are in week nine of the new dystopia, where so much is happening that every day feels like dog years. Yet it’s impossible to look away from this chain-reaction accident and the spin-outs on cable news, comedy and pundit shows. The Americans used to be just one of the top five dramas on TV. Now it’s past as prologue. (The new season is incredible. This is a show you should binge watch if you’ve resisted it.) Scandal used to be somewhat overthe-top Washington insider drama. Now we nod along when we see someone being tortured, thinking: that’s probably happening. One thing we never miss now, after rarely tuning in during the Obama years, are the daily press briefings with Sean Spicer. They aren’t so much news (how can you take someone seriously who quotes Fox’s Sean Hannity as a source?) as they are such selfparody that they make Melissa McCarthy’s sketches on SNL look like straight documentary. Speaking of McCarthy (be still our hearts), she will be hosting SNL on May 13. McCarthy has hosted SNL before and has been spectacular. There are few comedians as good as she is right now. Her Sean “Spicey” Spicer is genius parody. It’s difficult to imagine anyone in the White House press corps doesn’t see McCarthy when they look at Spicer,

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we hope this next role for the majority of their works out for her and messy presser. We always she gets to expand her knew Trump would repertoire. If Cox is inmake a woman the deed playing non-trans leader of the free world. on The Trustee, it will We just thought it would be a big step for network be Hillary Clinton, not TV. Merkel. Week-to-week it feels Bill Maher took like LGBT TV remains a Trump to task on Real relentless game of catch Time after the Merkel up, which we are not visit, referring to winning unless we beTrump’s nonstop lies lieve network and highand “the rantings of a end cable don’t matter, demented manchild in which they clearly do. full makeup.” Why does While we just weren’t Courtesy NBC-TV no one ever mention the demographic for that Trump wears such Melissa McCarthy as press secretary Sean “Spicey” MTV’s queer-laden heavy pancake? Spicer on Saturday Night Live. high school drama FakThen Maher sat ing It, the show had the down with Andrew Irish, after playing a clip of Trump’s first intersex character Sullivan, gay libertarreading. “That’s very nice, that’s a (played by Bailey De Young), a ian and former Bush apologist, and very sweet thought. Only problem: full-on lesbian storyline, plus a Barney Frank, the most prominent Trump’s favorite Irish proverb is not lead gay character. It was charming gay politician in America, for more a proverb, it’s a poem, and it’s not and engaging in many of the same slicing and dicing. Maher called from Ireland, it’s written by a Nigeways Fox’s Glee was. Faking It, out Trumpcare, noting it was proof rian poet named Albashir Alhasssan. developed by out gay showrunner “Republicans never do anything but I’m surprised Trump even allowed Carter Covington, was cancelled in funnel money to rich people.” that poem into the country. But Irish, May after only three seasons and 38 Inevitably all three called out Nigerian, it’s an honest mistake. As episodes. (Glee ran for six seasons Rachel Maddow, the only lesbian in the Irish say, ‘Que sera, sera.’” and 121 episodes.) the pundit class, for her reveal of a What was that on one of our fave portion of Trump’s 2005 tax return, No doubt new shows, NBC’s This Is Us? Drop which pretty much everyone called Well, we saw this one coming in gay storyline with main character, the Al Capone vault reprise of 2017, from a mile off: CBS has cancelled kill it off with no real closure? This and which we admit we found unDoubt, the legal series starring was a big disappointment in an derwhelming after the 100k-retweet Grey’s Anatomy alum Katherine otherwise stellar show whose season hype on Twitter an hour earlier. Heigl and Orange Is the New Black finale was March 15. Spoilers ahead. Maher declared, “This was worse co-star Laverne Cox. The show deThis Is Us had the opportunity than a nothingburger. It was a helpbuted to low ratings and never got to address an older gay couple with Trump-burger.” a bounce, but CBS cancelling after Randall’s father William (Ron Sullivan declared Maddow’s reonly two episodes felt harsh. Surely Cephas Jones), who had been veal an epic fail and added his own Heigl and Cox have a fan base that presumed to be straight. Yes, we touch of misogyny, insisting it was would give the show a respectable knew he was dying of cancer from made worse because Maddow had a moderate rating over time? But no. the show’s very first episode, and bad attitude while doing it. “There’s We admit we were only watching yes, we knew he would die sooner a giant cloud of smug. Liberals for Cox and what the show might rather than later. But when the show have to be careful not to sound so do with her trans character, since introduced his former lover Jessie fucking condescending, smug, as if she was playing the only trans char(out gay actor Denis O’Hare), we they know it. And start engaging the acter on network TV. We saw some expected that to be a bigger storyother side and pursuing people.” glimmers of possibility in a couple line than it was. When Jessie called Frank clapped back with, “I think of exchanges Cox’s character had Randall (Sterling K. Brown) to tell you might want to teach by example with clients, but we’ll never know him he wasn’t coming to William’s on that.” Applause. where that might have gone. funeral, we felt very cheated. That’s Maher’s bottom line was wellThe show’s cancellation does how we often feel about this LGBT taken, however. “Let’s not weapraise some questions for us about landscape on the tube, like opportuonize Rachel Maddow.” Let’s not. expanding casts to include more nities keep getting missed. While we often find Maddow’s long LGBT characters. Just as ABC’s Were it not for reality TV, the inpreambles to her story like that lecGrey’s Anatomy adds a lesbian charimitable RuPaul and original shows ture we really didn’t love in college, acter for Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) in streaming venues like Amazon she usually takes us to a place we to be lesbians with, and devotes an and Hulu, we fear there would be need to go. Maddow, a native Calientire episode on March 16 to the fewer and fewer LGBT characters, fornian who graduated from Stanfight by a lesbian couple (one black, not more, despite the Emmy-laden ford with a BA in political science one Latina) to save their daughter’s successes of Amazon’s Transparent, before becoming going on to get the life, CBS cancels Doubt and USA Netflix’s OITNB or Fox’s Empire, equivalent of a Ph.D. from Oxford, cancels Eyewitness. which returned March 22 with a is one of the smartest people on TV. ABC’s The Catch added gay actor literal bang for the second half of Maddow appeared on The ToT.R. Knight to its cast when the new season 3. (Season five of OITNB is night Show March 15 and talked season debuted March 13, but he’s set to debut just in time for Pride about the tax return reveal. “Was playing a straight character. Fox’s on June 9, so we can look forward there a huge, damning bombshell 24 Legacy has Emmy winner Dan to some binging of the Litchfield in these tax returns? No. The bombBucatinsky (Scandal) as Andy, who lesbians in a few months.) shell here is that some of his tax rerevealed himself to be gay last week Finally, we got a little frisson of turns were made public for the first in a rather shocking reveal, but we’re pleasure on March 17 when, as we time when he’s been trying so hard not sure his character will survive tuned in for Nightline’s piece on to keep them secret,” Maddow told the current storyline. Meanwhile, the Manson family, which was chillhost Jimmy Fallon. Cox has landed a different network ing, we caught the comedian at the Our favorite comment du jour role in the forthcoming ABC series end of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Friday about Trump came from Seth The Trustee. nights Kimmel does reruns of bits Meyers on Late Night. Meyers The Wrap broke the news and from earlier in the week, so we were showed a clip of Trump in Nashnoted Cox will be a lead in the series fortunate to have seen Sam Jay, ville for another one of his weird playing Amanda Jones, “a largerbutch black lesbian comedian makstill-campaigning-even-thoughthan-life ex-con finishing out her ing her TV debut. She was hilarious, I’m-president rallies, where he led prison sentence by doing menial and her mere presence on our TV a chant of “Lock her up” for “Auld tasks for the police department.” gave us such a warm feeling. Lang Syne.” In the clip Trump deSharing top billing with Cox is At one point Jay talked about the clared he’d probably done more in Meaghan Rath, who plays the detecdisappointment of the November the first 50 days of his presidency tive Eliza Radley, for whom Jones election. Noting how “everyone kept than anyone ever, because hyperwill be working. saying America was so ready for a bole is his go-to. According to The Wrap, Cox will female president,” she paused, then Meyers sat for a second, dumnot be playing a trans character, added, “Really? Were we ready for founded, then said, “Trump has done which will be a first for her. Cox is a female president? Because a year more in the office of president after six feet tall, much taller in heels. And ago we weren’t ready for a female 50 days the way a toddler helps out in as we had noted about Geena Davis Ghostbusters.” Truth. the kitchen,” while the photo on the in The Exorcist (Davis is also six So for a resurgent resistance split-screen was of a child covered in feet tall), height can dominate the media (oh, and Erin Burnett and food with a spoon and bowl. small screen, which traditionally has Jake Tapper have been gloves off, Stephen Colbert called out few very tall people, especially not slamming it on CNN), fleeting Trump’s St. Patrick’s Day debacle women, on display. glimpses of LGBT characters, some with the Irish president in which Cox has been very good on great drama and the endless GotTrump haltingly read what he OITNB and was very enjoyable in terdammerung, you really must said was an Irish proverb. Colbert The Rocky Horror Picture Show, so stay tuned.t explained that the proverb wasn’t

TV>>

March 23-29, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 21

Hilarious side of gay porn by David-Elijah Nahmod

orn is notorious not for the graphic sex, but for the models’ lack of acting chops. Viewers have often cringed as the “actors” attempt dramatic readings of clunky dialogue during inane set-ups that segue into sex scenes, which are what the viewers came for. The sex may be hot, but the “plots” of these films are usually absurd at best. In Popporn, brought to us by gay actor-director Charles David in conjunction with his production company Border2Border, comedians, gay, straight, male and female, watch clips from gay porn flicks and offer their own tongue-incheek commentary about what they see. The results are often sidesplitting. In the episode titled “Cockbusters,” the Popporn comics have a great time roasting the horrendous acting in gay porn spoofs of mainstream Hollywood blockbust-

ers. Drag comic Conchita notes the “underacting” in Tarzan: A Gay XXX Parody, repeating the models’ poorly performed dialogue in her own breathy voice. In Star Wars: A Gay XXX Parody, Conchita notes “the elephant in the room,” the previously unspoken revelation that Darth Vader’s head looks like a dildo. “The only reason this guy was on the boat was because someone

promised him seamen,” notes another comic as he watches Tarzan. The zingers keep coming. Actual porn clips are shown, with animated fruits and vegetables used to cover up genital and penetration shots. This series was produced for broadcast TV, after all. “Straight2Gay” is a particularly memorable episode that pokes fun at the “gay-for-pay” phenomenon. “Gay to straight or straight to gay? It doesn’t matter because it’s going to end up with gay sex regardless,” one comic states wryly. The comics get enormous mileage out of a scene in which former college roommates get together to reminisce and to have a little fun, even though the jockier of the two insists that he’s “really married” and “really not gay.” “Has she not got anything better to do than interrupt her husband’s hot gay sex?” asks Lucy, the slutty puppet from the hit musical Avenue Q, when the “straight” dude’s wife returns home from shopping.

Final passage

by Brian Bromberger

“L

ife does not wait,” a mantra in the movie, encapsulates both the exuberance and sorrows of the characters in Jonathan, a just-released German DVD from Wolfe Video. Jonathan was deservedly voted the Audience Award for Outstanding First Feature at last year’s Frameline, with the Atlanta Out on Film, Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City Film Festivals awarding it Best Film. What would first appear to be a downbeat subject (terminal cancer), in PolishGerman writer-director Piotr Lewandowski’s debut effort, becomes a grueling exercise in exorcising the past yet finding peace and new beginnings through emotional catharsis. The cinematography of the German forest is visually opulent but haunting, and adds to the tension and allure of the dramatic conflict. 23-year-old Jonathan (Jannis Niewohner) is stuck at home in a remote rural German setting, working the farm and caring for his ill father, Burghardt (Andre Hennicke), who’s dying of skin cancer that has now spread to his brain. He is torn between wanting to escape to the city to be an artist and fulfilling his duties as a loving son called to shoulder an excruciating burden. His mother died in a car accident when he was a baby, and his secretive father refuses to tell him anything about her, leaving Jonathan with only old, worn-out photos. His aunt Martha (Barbara Auer) lives next door and has come back to help run the farm for Burghardt, with whom she is estranged. She also has no desire to dredge up past conflicts. Martha hires a young nurse, Anka (Julia Koschitz), to assist Burghardt in his final days. Her pixie haircut and carefree attitude immediately capture Jonathan’s attention, as she becomes a beacon of hope in

the midst of this repressed, funereal atmosphere. She becomes his girlfriend. Meanwhile, Ron (Thomas Sarbacher), Burghardt’s best friend, reappears after an absence of many years, to reconnect with Burghardt. He almost supplants Jonathan as his primary caretaker. Burghardt, who had given up and retreated into his bedroom, is rejuvenated by Ron’s presence, even deciding to forgo his medications so he can enjoy his remaining time. It turns out the two older men had been lovers as youths, unbeknownst to Jonathan. Jonathan gradually and resentfully suspects the truth about them, but wants to unlock all the family secrets, especially about his mother and the real cause of her death, before time runs out. By confronting this painful past, can the increasingly bitter, volatile Jonathan find any happiness for himself? Lewandowski deserves much credit for avoiding sentimentality. He doesn’t sugarcoat death. Some of the gut-wrenching scenes of the dying process will challenge the faint of heart, though a hospital

deathbed sex episode is simultaneously romantic and harrowing. Amazingly, the movie is not bleak, becoming ultimately consoling and redemptive by exposing the subliminal connections that tie families together even in their dissonance. The blue-eyed, blond, sexy but brooding Jonathan is well-inhabited by Niewohner. There are many rewarding clips of him with his shirt off, revealing a buff body and an aura of homoeroticism. Until he starts having sex with Anka, the viewer could easily assume Jonathan was gay. But Lewandowski has cleverly inverted the usual “gay son, straight father” paradigm so that the film becomes as much about death as final passage as a coming-of-age tale. Hennicke is superb as the tortured, repressed father initially unable to embrace dying and determined to shut out Jonathan until Ron gives him a new lease on the little time left. Koschitz reinvigorates the film with her portrayal of Anka as a vibrant life-force, outspoken and unencumbered. She can run naked in the forest, reminding us how precious life is. Her love scenes with Jonathan are candid as he channels his anger and grief into raw, almost animalistic sexual energy. Jonathan aches for the compromises we are all forced to make in the name of duty, loyalty, and compassion. The payoff at the end is worth the slightly overlong ride. LGBT audiences have much to anticipate in what seems Lewandowski’s likely stellar career ahead. Bittersweet, Jonathan urges us to embrace life with all its contradictions, anguish, and fragile beauty. We are richer for being immersed in this gentle yet gripping tour de force of LGBT cinema.t

One porn scene that’s genuinely funny on its own terms features popular Lucas Entertainment star Adam Killian, who’s definitely gay in real life. Adam meets with a doctor for some “conversion” therapy. He ends up boinking the doc. As the pair watches some straight porn – strictly for therapeutic purposes, of course – one comic informs viewers that there isn’t enough pussy in the world to make Killian straight. Nothing quite like the truth!

Bold, blunt, and politically incorrect, Popporn offers a lighthearted look at the gay adult industry. It’s the most fun you’ll have outside of hot sex. Six episodes were produced for the freshman season. A second season is now in the works.t Episodes can now be purchased at Vimeo on Demand: vimeo.com/ ondemand/popporn/203635650. Also available at Amazon and YouTube.

<< Out&About

22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Hamilton @ Orpheum Theatre The mega-hit multiple Tony-winning hip hop musical about President Alexander Hamilton makes its Bay Area premiere. $100-$868. Thru April 23. 1192 Market St. www.hamilton.shnsf.com

Out &About

O&A

Haters Roast: The Shady Tour @ Palace of Fine Arts

Sat 25 Concept Series 20 @ Green Room

Moving, pictures by Jim Provenzano

pring arts have sprung; driving dance concerts, eye-catching art exhibits, and stunning stage plays. See more on www.ebar.com. For nightlife events, see On the Tab listings.

Thu 23

Beartoonist of San Francisco @ GLBT History Museum Beartoonist of San Francisco: Sketching an Emerging Subculture, featuring art work by bear cartoonist Fran Frisch. $5. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistory.org

Classic & New Films @ Castro Theatre Mar. 23: Lost Highway (7pm) and In Cold Blood (9:30). Mar. 24: Vertigo (4K restoration, 7pm) and Last Embrace (9:25). Mar. 25: Vertigo (2pm, 4:30, 7pm) and Basic Instinct (9:15). Mar. 26 : Cinemania (1pm) and Vertigo (3pm, 5:30, 8pm). Mar. 27: Moonlight (8pm). Mar. 28: 20th Century Women (2:45, 7pm) and Certain Women (4:55, 9:15) Mar. 29: Manhattan (5pm, 7pm, 9pm). Mar. 30: Disposable Film Festival (8pm). $11-$16. 429 Castro St. www.castrotheatre.com

Daughter of a Garbageman @ The Marsh KGO host and stand-up comic Maureen Langan’s solo show about her family life, and the endurance of working class people. $20-$100. Thu 8pm. Sat 5pm. Thru March 25. 1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Eat, Pray, Laugh! @ The Marsh Berkeley Alicia Dattner’s comic solo show about a Jewish princess seeking a guru. $20-$100. Thu 8pm, Sat 8:30pm. Thru April 1. 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

John @ Strand Theatre American Conservatory Theatre’s production of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker’s drama about a couple’s increasingly strange stay at a bed and breakfast in historic Gettysburg; co-starring Georgia Engel ( The Mary Tyler Moore Show ). $20-$105. Tue-Sat 7:30pm. Wed & Sat 1pm. Thru April 23. 1127 Market St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Kilgallen/Jones @ Exit Theatre World premiere of Allison Page’s unusual thriller about the life and death of the 1960s writer and TV personality. $20-$30. Thru March 25. 156 Eddy St. www.theexit.org

Noises Off! @ SF Playhouse Michael Frayn’s hilarious farce, about the on- and offstage shenanigans in a theatre company, gets a local production. $35-$85. Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri&Sat 8pm. Sat 3pm, Sun 2pm. Thru May 13. 450 Post St. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

ODC Dance Downtown @ YBCA The prolific local dance company performs Brenda Way’s new What we carry What we keep, KT Nelson’s Blink of an Eye, and more. $25-$80. (Gala fundraiser Mar. 24) Thu-Sat 7:30pm. Sun 5pm. Thru April 2. YBCA 700 Howard St. odcdance.org ybca.org

Peerless @ Marin Theatre Company Jiehae Park’s dark satire of academic ambition, about twin girls who murder their way to the top of their class. $25$60. Thru April 2. 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. www.marintheatre.org

Silence: The Musical @ Victoria Theatre Cloud 9 Theatricals and Ray of Light Theatre present the Bay Area premiere of Jon Kaplan, Al Kaplan and Hunter Bell’s acclaimed unauthorized musical parody of the film/book Silence of the Lambs. $35-$45. Thu-Sat 8pm (Some Saturdays 7pm and/or 10pm). Extended thru April 1. 2961 16th St. 863-7576. silencethemusicalsf.com

Fri 24

Apocalypse, Please @ PianoFight Noelle Viñas and Kevin Vincenti’s new science fiction play about a computer programmer framed for the deaths of millions via futuristic cell phones. $25-$30. Thu-Sat 7:30pm. Thru April 1. 144 Taylor St. www.pianofight.com

The Baltimore Waltz @ Magic Theatre Paula Vogel’s award-winning satire about a whirlwind European journey in search of romance and a cure. $50-$85. Tue 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2:30pm. Thru April 16. Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd, Bldg. D, 3rd floor. 4418822. www.magictheatre.org

DIRT Festival @ Dance Mission Theater Dance In Revolt(ing) Times presents works by NAKA Dance Theater, Maurya Kerr, Jessica Recinos, Dexandro “D”, Rulan Tangen and Dancing Earth, Jesus Cortes and Cuicacalli, Jory Horn, and others. $20$25. 7pm or 8pm, Fri-Sun thru April 2. 3316 24th St. www.dancemission.com

Everything That’s Beautiful @ New Conservatory Theatre Center World premiere of Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder’s play about a gay couple whose child lives as a girl, until an accident disrupts their Midwestern life. $25-$50. Previews; opens Mar. 25. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru April 23. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. www.nctcsf.org

RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Bob the Drag Queen, Acid Betty, Kim Chi, Thorgy Thor, Jinkx Monsoon, Latrice Royale, Phi Phi O’Hara and Ginger Minj perform a bitchfest comedy show. $20-$150. 8pm. 3301 Lyon St. www.dragfans.com www.cityboxoffice.com

Holding the Edge @ The Marsh Elaine Magree’s solo show recounts a part of her life as a lesbian hospice AIDS nurse in the 1980s. $ Fri 8pm, Sat 5pm, thru April 1. 1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Into the Woods @ Golden Gate Theatre Stephen Sondheim’s fairy tale-themed musical about morals and hard truths gets a new narrator-free production. $75-$275. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed, Sat, Sun 2pm. Thru April 2. 1 Taylor St. www.intothewoodstour.com www.shnsf.com

Leaving the Blues @ New Conservatory Theatre Center World premiere of Jewelle Gomez’ commissioned music drama about the life of singer-songwriter Alberta Hunter. $25-$50. Wed-Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm. Thru April 2. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. www.nctcsf.org

Leela Dance Collective @ YBCA World premiere of Son of the Wind, a unique combination of Tap and Kathak dance. $35-$55. 8pm. Also Mar. 25, 2pm & 8pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 401 Mission St. theleelainstitute.org ybca.org

Leni @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Bay Area premiere of Sarah Greenman’s innovative biographical play about the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whose cinematic brilliance promoted the Nazi regime. $36-$65. Tue & Sun 7pm. Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sun 2pm. thru May 7. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

Roe @ Berkeley Rep Lisa Loomer’s rousing drama about the landmark 1973 lawsuit that legalized abortion, and the divergent personal journeys of lawyer Sarah Weddington and plaintiff Norma McCorvey (“Jane Roe”). $29-$100. Thru April 2. 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. www.berkeleyrep.org

Sat 25

Beowulf @ Aquatic Park, Fort Mason Chapel We Players, the innovative sitespecific theatre company, premieres a work based on the classic story, performed with Inkboat Physical Theatre/Dance and Rova Saxophone Quartet. $30-$80. Various dates and times thru April 16. 1100 Bay St. www.weplayers.org

Bling My Vibe @ Good Vibrations Jack Davis and Carol Queen cohost a vibrator/sex toy decorating workshop and contest to celebrate the company’s 40th anniversary; top three winner get Good Vibrations gift basket/cards from $100-$300! 4pm6pm. 1620 Polk St. www.goodvibes.com

Carey Leibowitz: Museum Show @ Contemporary Jewish Museum Exhibits about Jewish culture and by Jewish artists, including Carey Leibowitz: Museum Show ; thru June 25. Free (members)-$12. Fri-Tue 11am-5pm, Thu 11am-8pm (closed Wed). 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

Concept Series 20 @ Green Room Raw Dance’s 20th presentation of new dance works, this time by Margaret Jenkins, Nancy Karo, Alma Esperanza Cunningham, Nol Simonse, and Holly Johnston. Pay-what-you-can; coffee cupcakes, popcorn available. Mar. 25 8pm, Mar. 26 at 3pm & 7pm. War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, 401 Van Ness Ave., www.rawdance.org

East 14th @ The Marsh Don Reed’s multi-award-winning solo show about his unusual relationship with his father in Oakland. $20-$100. Sat 8:30pm, Sun 5:30pm. Thru April 15. 1062 Valencia St. www.themarsh.org

Matisse/Diebenkorn @ SF Museum of Modern Art New exhibit compares the art of Henri Matisse and Richard Diemenkorn. Also, exhibits of Pop, Abstract and classic Modern art at the renovated and visually amazing museum. Free$25. 10am-8pm. 151 Third St. www.sfmoma.org

Monet: The Early Years @ Legion of Honor New exhibit of paintings by the master Impressionist; thru May 29. Also, The Future of the Past : Mummies and Medicine, thru August 2018. Also, World in a Book, A Princely Pursuit and other exhibits. Free/$15. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave. 750-3600. www.famsf.org

Noe Valley Authors Festival @ Various Venues Signings, readings, open mic nights, panels, kids’ and LGBT events are among the many events with local Noe Valley authors. Thru March 26. www.friendsofnoevalley.com

Psychedelic Sex @ Center for Sex & Culture Psychedelic Sex from Buzz Bense’s Gay Stash: A Memorial Exhibition of colorful erotic art works by the late founder of Eros Sex Club. Thru April. 1349 Mission St. sexandculture.org

Tiny Dance Film Festival @ Roxie Cinema Detour dance’s fifth annual festival of new and favorite dance films;l 3 different programs Mar. 25, 5pm; Mar. 26 2pm & 5pm. $10-$15. 3117 16th St. detourdance.com/tdff roxie.com

Sun 26

A Billion Buddhas @ Asian Art Museum A Billion Buddhas: The Awakened Cosmos of Himalyan Buddhism (thru April 9). Other exhibits include Worshipping Women: Power and Devotion in Indian Painting (thru Mar. 26). Free-$25. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm. 200 Larkin St. 581-3500. www.asianart.org

LGBTQ Histories from the WWII Home Front @ Rosie the Riveter Visitor Education Center, Richmond Park indoor exhibit that showcases the lives of historic LGBT people. Open daily 10am-5pm. 1414 Harbour Way South, Suite 3000, Richmond. www. roseitheriveter.org

Stuart Timmons Celebration @ SF Public Library The late journalist, activist, author ( The Trouble With Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement) historian and Radical Faerie is commemorated with readings from his works, and other shares. 1pm3pm. Hormal Center, 3rd floor, Main Library, 100 Lakrin st. www.sfpl.org

Mon 27

Gay Mens’ Sketch, Larger Than Life @ Strut Group exhibit of works by past and current participants in Mark I. Chester long-running drawing group; also, Joseph Abbati’s exhibit of tapestries depicting local drag celebrities. April. 470 Castro St. www.markichester.com www.strutsf.org

Tiny Bubbles for Big Dreams @ Dzine Gallery Benefit party for choreographer Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, with dance performances, food from Kitchen Wisdom, wine, bubbly, cocktails, a silent auction, and live music with ahe Darren Johnston Trio; cocktail attire. $75-$125. 6pm-9pm. 128 Utah St. www.asimagery.org/tiny-bubbles

Tue 28

ACT(ing) UP: 30 Years of Direct Action @ GLBT History Museum Celebration of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, with a public forum on direct action, including veteran activists, led by ACT UP/SF alumni Crystal Mason and Mike Shriver. $5. 7pm. 4127 18th St. glbthistory.org

Ten Percent @ Comcast David Perry’s online and cable interviews with notable local and visiting LGBT people, broadcast through the week. Wed 7pm, Thu-Tue 11:30am & 10:30pm. www.ComcastHometown.com

Wed 29

LGBTQ Rights: What’s at Stake? @ Commonwealth Club Matt Hanery, Mia Satya and Rick Welts, with moderator Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, discuss the civil rights losses expected during the current rightwing regime. $10-$42. 6:30pm. 555 Post St. www.sfpride.org www.commonwealthclub.org

Queerest Library Ever @ SF Public Libraries Hormel at 20: Celebrating Our Past/ Creating Our Future, a dual exhibit of archival materials celebrating two decades of the LGBTQ collections. Also, Council of Elders: Portraits of Older Gay Men (thru May 4). 100 Larkin St., 3rd floor, and at the Eureka Valley Branch, 1 Jose Sarria Court at 16th St. www.sfpl.org

Thu 30

Blues is a Woman @ Freight & Salvage, Berkeley Wild Women of Song, from Ma Rainey to Bonnie Raitt, a concert with stories and images of early women in jazz and blues; CD release concert of the cast recording. $24-$26. 8pm. 2020 Addison St., Berkeley. www.thefreight.org

Needles and Opium @ Geary Theatre American Conservatory Theatre presents Robert Lepage’s innovative staging of his play combining the drug-fueled creative visions of jazz legend Miles Davis, and gay French filmmaker Jean Cocteau. $20-$105. Tue-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sat 2pm. Thru April 23. 415 Geary St. www.act-sf.org

Queens Read Celebrity Autobiographies @ Martuni’s Enjoy (unintentionally) hilarious excerpts from celebrity bios, read by Cruzin D’Loo, Migitte Neilson, ZsaZsa Lufthansa, Intensive Claire and, Tamale Ringwald, and Kylie Minono; James J. Siegel hosts. No cover; raffle ticket funds support Nomadic Press. 7pm-8:30pm. 4 Valencia St.

San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus @ Herbst Theatre Paradise Found, the Chorus’ new concert of dreamy songs, including music from South Pacific, The Wizard of Oz and more; with Na Lei Hulu Dance Company. $25-$65. Mar. 30, 31, April 1 at 8pm. Also April 1 at 2:30pm. 401 Van Ness Ave. www.sfgmc.org

DVD>>

March 23-29, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23

Maurice returns by David Lamble

here’s a moment in the movie version of gay author E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice that still packs an emotional punch over a century after it was conceived. The title character, an easy-going if intellectually shallow stockbroker who has enjoyed an active gay life in the permissive precincts of Cambridge University, suddenly faces the brutal reality of being dumped by his snob of a boyfriend. Maurice (pronounced Morris) Hall is dumbstruck when Clive Dunham informs him that he’s ending their relationship in order to mate with an as-yet unknown female. In the scene, Maurice (a quietly powerful turn from thennewcomer James Wilby) collapses in tears before the unfeeling Clive. “What an ending! What an ending! What’s going to happen to me? I’m done for!” Nervously backing out of the room, Clive urges Maurice to find himself a woman to marry. Maurice refuses, and the boys part. Maurice, abjectly miserable, is left to sublimate his desire by offering boxing lessons to slum kids. A diffident man in Edwardian England runs the risk of losing status and even his freedom if he follows his heart in director James Ivory’s elegant, erotically charged adaptation. Passion throbs beneath Maurice’s placid surface, an ardor first unleashed through his platonic affair with upper-crust university classmate Clive (Hugh Grant). Desperate to be rid of his desires at a time when homosexuality is outlawed, Maurice seeks help from a physician (Denholm Elliott) and a hypnotherapist (Ben Kingsley). But when he meets Clive’s handsome, roughhewn gamekeeper Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves), Maurice struggles to deny his own

nature. The second of three Ivory Forster adaptations (with A Room with a View, 1985, and Howards End, 1992), Maurice is an erotically charged drama in which social propriety, even with its promise of lifelong unhappiness, exerts a pull on Maurice that is hard to resist. The male leads are extraordinary. Wilby masterfully portrays Maurice’s struggle to come to terms with his true nature. Grant, as the handsome but cowardly Clive, nails one of his first important roles, projecting the callow charm of an aspiring politician desperate to cling to convention. Graves is both ravishing and relentlessly direct as Maurice’s ultimate romantic salvation, the cocky young gamekeeper Alec Scudder, refusing to bow to his social betters. Devotees of A Room with a View will also appreciate the return of a couple of skilled performers from the earlier film, including the openly gay actor/writer Simon Callow, who here triumphs as a fussy tutor who has a funny

scene with a grade-school-age Maurice in the film’s first-act prologue. The film benefits hugely from great acting and perfect locations. The English countryside and Clive’s storybook-beautiful estate shimmer under the patented Merchant/Ivory early-20thcentury decor and costumes. Most importantly, Maurice is a great gay love story with a happy ending, a condition that Forster always insisted was the only reason for writing it, and why it was written in 1914 but not published until after his death in 1970. Fans of Maurice are now twice blessed. First, with a 30th anniversary screening at the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival, part of a festival Tribute to Director James Ivory on Fri., April 14, 6 p.m. at SFMOMA, shown in a special 4K digital restoration overseen by Ivory and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme. Plus there’s the Criterion Collection Maurice two-disc DVD set, available at Bay Area outlets like Amoeba Records. DVD features: Disc 1 presents the film in a new high-definition digital transfer, enhanced for widescreen television. Disc 2 features chats conducted between 2002-04 with filmmaking partners Ismail Merchant and James Ivory and their associate Richard Robbins; The Story of Maurice, with screenwriter Kit Hesketh-Harvey and cast members James Wilby, Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves; over 30 minutes of deleted and alternative scenes demonstrate just how uptight the Edwardians were about “the love that dare not speak its name”; and a reconstructed opening sequence, with optional commentary by Ivory.t

Back to the baths

by David Lamble

his week we explore a real treasure from the vaults. David Buckley’s Saturday Night at the Baths (1975) is a quirky independent queer-themed comedy-drama that begins with a shaky stutterstep: a handsome but uptight “straight blond hunk” applies for a job playing piano for the live weekly variety show at Manhattan’s nowlegendary Continental Baths. SNATB begins with Michael (Robert Aberdeen) nervously slipping into the cavernous space that in the mid-70s housed a famous gay male bathhouse whose proprietor aspired for his club to be more than a world-renowned and very profitable sex parlor. Conducting Michael’s audition is the bathhouse’s manager, the effeminate but astute and talented Scotti (the screen

debut and possibly only film credit for bathhouse manager Don Scotti, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the sexy contemporary Italian-Jewish film actor John Magaro). As proof of the film’s authenticity, in the first six minutes of the 75-minute film there are cringe-worthy beats as some stereotypical drag queens put the make on Michael, who is uptight for reasons that will become movingly clear. From the get-go, Scotti reads who Michael really is, and spends the bulk of the movie trying to make him feel safe to be himself. For his part, Michael at first clings tightly to girlfriend Tracy (the very open and affecting Ellen Sheppard), while Tracy herself begins to enjoy the bohemian spirit around the baths and Soho’s burgeoning art-scene. SNATB’s real charm kicks in as Michael, Scotti and Tracy become a social trio, getting high on pot together, and each growing together in ways that would seem beyond the ambitions of this oddball film. It shifts into high gear in its third act as we catch a vintage Saturday night show featuring a sublime Judy Garland impersonator. SNATB includes both homo and hetero make-out scenes, gay sexuality beaming through a ballet-style sequence both erotic and sensual. Just as Clark Gable shunned undershirts in It Happened One Night, Michael, Scotti and other men in the film avoid wearing undershorts.

Ultimately SNATB becomes a delightful and poignant collector’s item, a must-have piece for its nowvanished 1970s spirit, poignant because many in the film’s cast may well have perished during the peak C of the AIDS epidemic. One of the film’s dizziest scenes is a gay/straightM football game in the park. Scotti and Y his merry queens cheat their way to a win over a frustrated gaggle ofCM macho men. MY This film is a loving homage to our queer forebearers, proof posi-CY tive that people are often considerCMY ably more than they appear or claim to be. It avoids the melodramaticK tics that shadow other bathhouseset comedy-dramas. Strangely, it’s absent from Vito Russo’s otherwise comprehensive The Celluloid Closet. Towards the film’s end, Michael has a moving speech recalling an incident from his childhood, when a loving moment with an older man was interrupted by a homophobic invasion led by his Air Force-enlisted dad. Michael: “The lesson of that story is that I learned not to put my hands on other men.” Scotti: “Did you love him?” “Yeah, I guess I did.” “You know, Michael, if it wasn’t for your old man, you’d be normal.” Be warned, there may be more than one version of SNATB circulating in our ever-diminishing number of DVD outlets. The one to look for contains such features as a pristine new film transfer and interviews with director David Buckley and Continental Baths founder Steve Ostrow. The musical score appears to owe a great debt to Eric Satie. (WaterBearer Films)t

2pub-BBB_BAR_030917.pdf

2/21/17

5:08 PM

<< Film

24 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Jean-Claude Moireau-Foz/Courtesy of Music Box Films

Pierre Niney and Paula Beer in Frantz, director Francois Ozon’s pacifist film in French and German.

Jean-Claude Moireau-Foz/Courtesy of Music Box Films

Director Francois Ozon on the set of Frantz.

Chanticleer/NCCO

From page 15

This is the second time both groups have combined to present a themed concert. The first collaboration, Atlantic Crossing in 2014, revealed the influence of Europe on American popular music in the 20th century. Americans in Paris, heard at First Presbyterian Church, Berkeley, reversed the voyage, and plunked the talented adventurers back across the pond, smack-dab on the Champs-Elysées. It proved a clever idea, and a fine chance for the conductor-less string orchestra and the “orchestra of voices” to show the range of their abilities with everything from classical and cabaret to the blue notes of Gershwin and the sensuous sophistication of Cole Porter. Not everything worked. There was a little too much New Age treacle in the arrangement of Fauré’s Pavane for orchestra and optional chorus, but that could be blamed on the truly awful poetry of Robert de Montesquiou and the ubiquitous familiarity of the beautiful melody. The Coda and Apotheosis from Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète (the composer spent years in Paris, though his ballet was commissioned for Washington, D.C.) sounded illtuned and poorly paced. Both works were on the first half of the program, and if I was engaging in some critical nit-picking, the enthusiastic audience responded with wholehearted approval. I

warmed more to Chanticleer’s lovely simplicity in songs by Maurice Ravel and Saint-Saëns’ Sérénade d’hiver. After spending intermission outdoors in the unseasonably balmy Berkeley night, filled with the fragrant scent of jasmine, we were all relaxed and ready for part two. It turned out to be slap-ya-maman good. Starting with cabaret songs arranged by Evan Price, sung in the style of French and American vocalists Blossom Dearie, Yvonne Printemps, Piaf and Josephine Baker, the gentlemen tore into their set with wit and beguiling charm. Some new male sopranos (countertenors) in the group scored especially well, managing somehow to swing without resorting to falsetto or excessive vibrato. Chanticleer, like the NCCO, is constantly evolving, and seeing these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed fresh young recruits amongst the ranks added zip to the entertainment. Violinist and Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg previously announced, after close to a decade, that she will step down from her role following NCCO’s 25th anniversary season in 201617. Her endearing and enduring worth featured prominently in the concert’s centerpiece selection, Gershwin’s Suite from An American in Paris, arranged beautifully by Clarice Assad. It was passionate and jaunty and tears-to-the-eyes wonderful. The musicians were in

Frantz

From page 15

We celebrate snipers in big-budget films, play video games in which everyone’s out to kill us, celebrate gun culture, and wonder why so many of our teenagers suicide. We have ceased to be a coherent culture, since we ignore the money we spend and the money we make on armaments. What chance does Francois Ozon’s pacifist film in French and German, with subtitles, have of finding an audience here? Frantz opens Friday at the Clay in San Francisco, Berkeley’s Shattuck, and Camera in San Jose. Frantz, the movie’s title character, is dead when

the film begins, and his death is the catastrophe that unhinges his small family circle. Frantz was a nice young German man drafted into the war to end all wars, WWI, and he was killed in its final year, 1918. He leaves behind a chubby mother, a white-haired patriarch, and a winsome fiancé, in a sober but respectable household in a town called Quedlinking. The surprise in this stereotypical set-up is that he is also mourned by a Frenchman, who was himself a soldier. Adrien is played with large eyes, weak mouth, and imposing physiognomy by Pierre Niney. The first shots are of leading lady Paula Beer walking along cobblestone streets in a hat and a handbag, buying a pot of flowers, and taking them to Frantz’s grave. He turns out not to be in his grave, having been scooped into a mass grave on a battlefield of the Marne, but the family needs a point of focus, as does the

film. The cemetery is beautiful, even in black-and-white, its plots widely spaced amidst shimmering spring grasses, under the whispering leaves of wise old trees who provide dancing shadows. His fake grave is where Anna first sees the French ex-soldier, who has come to lay flowers. The movie is slow to start, and throughout its 113-minute runtime lapses and relapses into a funereal pace, or do I mean melancholy. The theme of the film seems to me to be the profound European melancholy that Americans with their optimistic, can-do materialism have never understood. The beginning of the end of Europe was the beginning of the rise of the United States as the uncontested imperial force. Europe imploded with not one but two world wars, while Americans came to their rescue and made advantageous business deals. We got to play the good guys, an image most of us still actually believe in. Frantz is loosely based on a film by Ernst Lubitsch, the master of early Hollywood’s sophisticated romantic comedies, he of the Lubitsch touch. His 1932 film Broken Lullaby was a departure for the German immigré, being sincere, sentimental, and even serious in its pacifist message. The movie’s source was a three-act play by Maurice Rostand, a prolific man of letters and flamboyant homosexual in the Oscar Wilde mode. The play’s title boldly states a crucial plot point that Ozon chooses to keep secret until a third of the way through his movie, which is maybe why it takes so long to get off the ground. This elegy for European consciousness is shot in black-andwhite, with sudden subjective swings into color, notably when the missing man everyone holds in their hearts appears onscreen. The ratio of monotone to color is exactly opposite that of The Wizard of Oz, since the characters are stuck in their grief, in a familiar familial landscape instantly rendered unheimlich, or alien, by the senseless slaughter of the next generation. Briefly, in flashback, in dream sequence, or fleeting moments of wellbeing, color permeates the screen. These mood swings make this costume drama very much of the moment.t

complete harmony with SalernoSonnenberg’s soaring solos, and by the time the big melody rolled around, everyone was totally mesmerized. Standing ovations are usually overdone and insincere; this performance deserved the extended applause and cheers. The happy interaction between both ensembles was obvious throughout the entire show, and the concluding medley of songs by George and Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter had them all well-primed for some riproaring fun, starting with “I Got Rhythm,” serenading seductively through “Embraceable You” and “Night and Day,” and finishing big (though somewhat curiously) with “Strike Up the Band!” The energetic and bouncy last number was also performed as an encore. I was up for even more. Both organizations exemplify what is best about Northern California’s rich musical community. The level of talent is world-class, but the attitude is distinctly hip and American. That may explain why both longtime local groups keep on growing throughout the years, and also why they make such a good partnership when they jam together.t New Century Chamber Orchestra bids farewell to Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and celebrates its 25th Anniversary season with a festival of concerts coming up on May 16, 18 & 20.Info: NCCO.org.

Courtesy NCCO

Violinist and New Century Chamber Orchestra Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg will step down from her role at the end of this season.

On the Town

Shining Stars Vol. 47 • No. 12 • March 23-29, 2017

Stories in song A Blues is a Woman blends music and stories

by Sari Staver

group of highly regarded Bay Area musicians is launching their new ensemble theatrical concert at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley on Thursday, March 30. See page 25 >> The Blues is a Woman ensemble.

On the Tab

Mar 23-30

Jose A Guzman-Colon

hether you like your music live or DJed , your drag shows lipsynched or live (with sitco m or shadethrowing hilarity), and your gogos hot and/or heavy, plenty of nightlife fun awaits this week.

28 >> Listings begin on page

Sat 25 Jason Brock (L) with Katya Smirnoff-Skyy (R) @ Martuni’s

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

Serving the LGBT communities since 1971

26 • BAY AREA REPORTER • March 23-29, 2017

Blues is a Woman

From page 25

At the concert, the Blues is a Woman Ensemble will release its six-track original cast recording, Blues is a Woman, and perform the new concert, which highlights the powerful contributions women have made to the rise of the blues music. The six-woman band, each a professional musician, includes Tammy Hall (piano), Daria Johnson (drums), Ruth Davies (bass), Pamela Rose (vocal), Pat Wilder (guitar), and Kristen Storm (saxophone). The multimedia concert, which was performed before a sold-out audience in Santa Cruz in February, includes a scripted story about the history of women blues artists with rare historical film of the artists. The new production, according to Rose, in a phone interview with Bay Area Reporter, is a “hybrid with all of the elements of a blues concert,” with scripted dialogue “that comes off as an on-stage conversation as we walk through the decades and think about the racism and hard knocks that these women endured in the music business. “Whether you’re a concert goer or a theater person, I think you’ll be delighted. Bottom line is these are great musicians playing their hearts out.” While the ensemble does not identify as an LGBT band, many of the performers included in the historical review were lesbian or bisexual, including Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Libby Holman, Sophie Tucker, Alberta Hunter and Big Mama Thornton, according to Rose. Their new original cast recording, available for purchase on Amazon, features six songs, led by the title track, “Blues Is a Woman,” written and performed by Rose, with songs by Hunter, Sippie Wallace, and Peggy Lee. Following its debut in Berkeley, the show will open for a monthlong run at the Custom Made Theatre in downtown San Francisco this August. Details about that show will be announced on Rose’s website, www.bluesisawoman.com, later this spring. Tickets are selling fast for the March 30 pre-launch party, said Rose.

Singers commemorated in the Blues is a Woman concert include (from top to bottom) Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Big Mama Thornton, and Bessie Smith.

“We were thrilled with the reaction of the audience at our first show in Santa Cruz last month.” Rose said she hopes a national tour will follow, as it did for her earlier ensemble theatrical concert, Wild Women of Song: Great Gal Composers of the Jazz Era, which toured for six years following a successful local roll out in 2010. Rose, 60, grew up in Los Angeles. Her mother’s family had deep connections to the Vaudeville community in Chicago, so she grew up “listening to the American Songbook,” she said. “Music has been part of my life all along.” As a child, Rose said she always enjoyed singing and writing songs, but said, “I was fairly shy and introverted, so people who knew me back then can hardly believe I turned out to be a performer.” Rose’s performances began in the 1970s in Berkeley, where she studied 19th-Century History and hung out with musicians she met at college. When she offered the musicians songs she had written, they insisted she perform with them. “That’s how it all began,” she said. After college, Rose said she had a day job to support herself, including one at Green Apple Books in the Richmond. “I’d wander home at 10pm and passed by what were then some of the great spots to perform in the city,” she said, including Holy City Zoo and Last Day Saloon, both of which have since closed. Later, she was able to support herself with a career in musicrelated jobs, including some that involved singing jingles for the California Raisin Advisory Board, Taco Bell, and Super Cuts. The idea for the new show grew out of Rose’s experience performing her earlier theatrical concert, which celebrated the life and times of the women who wrote songs in the days of Tin Pan Alley. In 2010, Rose created a multimedia concert that showcased the works of some lesser known figures including Maria Grever and Ida Cox, as well as well known artists like Alberta Hunter and Peggy Lee. The show played to sold out audiences in London and Los Angeles, and also appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, Cal Performances, and the Stanford Jazz Workshop.