March 3, 2022 edition of the Bay Area Reporter, America's #LGBTQ newspaper

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Grace Cathedral deacon

Anna Damiani dies

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Heklina Returns

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Vol. 52 • No. 09 • March 3-9, 2022

Rick Gerharter

Rick Gerharter

Nearly 500 participants marched in the 2021 People’s March in San Francisco.

SF City Clinic director Dr. Stephanie Cohen

As COVID pandemic eases, STD epidemic on the rise

by John Ferrannini

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ates of sexually transmitted diseases rose in San Francisco in 2021, according to a year-end report released by the city’s Department of Public Health.

Dr. Stephanie Cohen, a straight ally who is the medical director of DPH’s City Clinic in the South of Market neighborhood, told the Bay Area Reporter that “the impact of COVID-19 on sexual health services” led to statistics that were probably lower than the real rate of community infections.

“In 2021, we fortunately saw an increase in engagement with sexual health services,” Cohen said. “With that we did more tests in 2021 and, because of that, we did see more cases. Paradoxically, that’s a good thing. The bump in cases was largely a sign of recovery of testing and screening.”

But Cohen did acknowledge that the COVID-19 lockdown notwithstanding, STD diagnoses have been on an upward trajectory in the city, state, and nation for the last several years.

Jorge Roman, director of clinical services with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, told the B.A.R. it’s difficult to say which was a bigger factor in the rise in the reported rates.

“As a baseline, unfortunately, there’s an uptick,” Roman said. “I think it’s both. Both of those factors were important.”

Roman said that the AIDS foundation’s Magnet clinic at Strut in the Castro neighborhood keeps data on the positivity rate of the total number of tests it provides, which helps to paint a broader picture of the prevalence of infection among those accessing sexual health services.

The B.A.R. obtained this data, which shows the positivity rate for gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis at Magnet went down in 2021, after having risen 2020 from 2019 levels.

In 2021, the positivity rate for gonorrhea at the clinic was 5.17%, compared to 5.26% in 2020 and 5.09% in 2019.

These changes are more pronounced in the case of the other two major bacterial STDs. In 2021, the positivity rate was 3.56% for chlamydSee page 9 >>

SF to have 2 Pride parades

by Eric Burkett

Gooch

Imperial SF royalty crowned

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he Imperial Court of San Francisco’s annual coronation took place Saturday, February 26, at The Midway.

In back from left are Absolute Empress LVI Juanita MORE!, Emperor XLIX After Norton Mr. David Glamamore, and Emperor XXXVIII After Norton Stephen Dorsey. In

front, Absolute Empress XLI Galilea pins the crown on new Empress Ehra Amaya, who is next to new Emperor Brent Marek.

The new empress and emperor now embark on a year of appearances and charity work on behalf of the Imperial Council.

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an Francisco is expected to have not one but two parades Sunday, June 26, as the Pride event returns after a two-year hiatus and will be joined by the third People’s March.

And it’s not just San Francisco. As COVID-19 seems, once again, to be slipping into the background, numerous LGBTQ communities around the country are making plans to finally throw the in-person Pride parades they’ve had to put on hold for the past two years. Organizers are optimistic but, understandably, cautious.

Everyone, however, is ready for a party.

See page 10 >>

Calls for justice raised at SF vigil for gay man

by Adam Echelman

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ore than 80 people gathered in front of San Francisco City Hall February 26, calling for an investigation into the death of Jaxon Sales. Chants for justice echoed while, behind the crowd, visitors paid their respects to an altar of flowers and childhood photos of Jaxon Sales underneath a bare sycamore tree at Civic Center Plaza.

Angie Aquino-Sales and Jim Sales organized the gathering for their gay son with the help of the GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance and API Equality Northern California in order to elevate their demands that city officials reexamine the circumstances around their son’s death and to provide mourners with a space to come together.

The B.A.R. obtained a copy of Jaxon Sales’ autopsy report from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner stating that the 20-year-old had died on the morning of March 2, 2020 from an accidental overdose of an acute mixed drug intoxication, including gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), cocaine, and methamphetamine. He was found naked at the Rincon Hill apartment of a 41-year-old white man. His parents are asking for a more thorough investigation after hearing inconsistencies about the events surrounding their son’s death and experiencing delays from police and medical examiner officials.

Adam Echelman

Angie Aquino-Sales, left, and her husband, Jim Sales, speak at a vigil in San Francisco Civic Center February 26 for their son Jaxon, who died nearly two years ago.

Their online petition asking the medical examiner and the San Francisco Police Department to reopen the case has more than 53,000 signatures. In the petition, his parents allege that an official with the medical examiner’s office said that further investigation was not warranted because the “gay community uses GHB.” When reached by the B.A.R. last month, a spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office neither confirmed nor

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denied the statement to Jaxon Sales’ parents but said that an individual’s sexual orientation does not influence their medical determination.

While GHB is used recreationally by some gay men, it has also been linked to date-rape and murder. In a February 4 letter to SFPD Chief William Scott and Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Christopher Liverman asking them to more fully See page 10 >>

<< Community News

2 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

SF’s Maitri hospice hires new ED

by Eric Burkett

in the Castro’s Duboce Triangle neighborhood. here comes a time in “It’s an exciting orgaa person’s life when nization,” he told the Bay they’ve done what they Area Reporter in a phone needed to do and they interview, “and I’m over the want, instead, to do what moon about the mission.” they’re passionate about.

For Armentrout, 65, Michael Armentrout has who described himself as reached that point. a “mission-driven kind of Eric Burkett In January, Armenguy,” Maitri was a natural New Maitri trout, a gay West Virginia progression, he said, after Executive native, was hired as exdoing HIV care and eduDirector Michael ecutive director of Maitri Armentrout cation for much of his life.

Compassionate Care, a Sixteen years ago, when he 35-year-old organization moved to San Francisco providing hospice, short-term refrom Washington, D.C., he began spite care, and recovery support folworking at the AIDS Emergency Fund lowing gender affirmation surgery, then the Breast Cancer Emergency

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Fund. (AEF has since merged with PRC and is now called Emergency Financial Assistance. BCEF remains a nonprofit agency.) Like many gay men of his generation, Armentrout witnessed the deaths of many friends and acquaintances during the darkest years of the AIDS pandemic.

An accountant by training and a graduate of Duke University, the new executive director has been working in nonprofits, HIV, and gay civil rights for 40 years, he said. He’s served on numerous boards, including those of the national Human Rights Campaign and PFLAG. “That’s always been the place where I find lots of happiness,” he said.

Armentrout succeeds the Reverend

Rusty Smith, a gay man and Anglican priest who took the helm in July 2019.

Smith, whose last day at Maitri was February 24, was the fifth executive director at the organization in as many years.

“I specialize in organizational redevelopment, to help people refresh and fall back in love with their mission,” Smith told the B.A.R. in 2019. “I know the importance of developing the mission so that it’s relevant to its community’s condition. Maitri hasn’t lost its way – AIDS has changed. In my earlier years, AIDS was a death sentence. Now it’s not. Palliative care is an evolving mission of who we are. Nonprofits have to adjust to the people that we serve, or we become irrelevant.”

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Indeed, the organization broadened its outreach under Smith, expanding into restorative care, as well as recovery support for people following gender affirmation surgery. Armentrout inherits an expansion of those services with Maitri’s Affirmation Center. Currently in the works, the Affirmation Center will have three rooms at Maitri dedicated to providing pre/post-operative support to low-income people recovering from gender-affirming surgeries. Nowadays, more than 80% of Maitri’s clients come for short-term medical respite and restorative care or gender affirmation care, according to the organization’s website.

See page 3 >>

Borkon sworn in as newest Alameda County judge

by Cynthia Laird

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eter E. Borkon took his oath of office February6 24, becoming the newest out judge on the Alameda County Superior Court.

With the swearing in of Borkon, a gay man, the East Bay county now has 10 LGBTQ people serving on the bench, the largest of any in Northern California.

Presiding Judge Charles Smiley administered the oath of office after Borkon’s husband, Kristofer Konietzko, enrobed him in the plain black garment that is required. It is “unadorned,” Smiley explained, because it signifies exercising judicial authority and should be somber.

Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Borkon, an attorney, December 1. He is the second out man the governor has named to the Alameda bench; he appointed former law clerk Keith Fong last year. Newsom in 2021

Screengrab

Alameda County Superior Court Presiding Judge Charles Smiley, left, administers the oath of office to new Judge Peter E. Borkon during a virtual swearing in ceremony February 24.

also named his former chief deputy legal affairs secretary, Kelli M. Evans, to the Alameda bench. A queer Black woman, Evans took her judicial oath

last October.

During his brief remarks, Borkon, 50, thanked Newsom, judicial appointments secretary Luis Céspedes, his husband, family, friends, colleagues, and mentors. He noted his path to becoming a judge took some time. As the Bay Area Reporter previously noted, Borkon had first applied for a judicial appointment with former governor Jerry Brown and reapplied with Newsom’s administration in December 2019.

“Twenty-four years ago I moved to the Bay Area from a small town of 7,000 people,” Borkon said.

He said that his grandfather instilled the principles that guide him.

Those were “what did you learn today and how did you leave the world a better place?” Borkon said. The questions instilled the values of curiosity and looking out for others, he explained.

A graduate of Southern Illinois University Law School, Borkon first

arrived in the Bay Area in 1998 after being hired as a civil research attorney at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A year later he became a senior motions attorney for the federal appellate court.

In 2001, he became a principal at law firm Cotchett, Pitre, Simon & McCarthy. He joined Schubert & Reed LLP as an associate in 2005 and, two years later, became a partner and associate at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP in Berkeley. In 2019, Borkon, who resides in San Francisco, became a partner at the Oakland office of Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP. In the 2000s he co-chaired the Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom’s Judicial Nominations and Endorsements Committee. After applying to be a judge himself, Borkon found himself being interviewed by the LGBTQ bar association about his having the temperament to serve as a jurist.

Borkon is the second former board member of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel to be named to the Alameda court, as Brown had appointed Jenna M. Whitman, a lesbian, to it in 2018.

Having to leave his law firm and curtail his philanthropic work by becoming a judge is “bittersweet,” Borkon told the B.A.R. in a phone interview last year after his appointment was announced. He sat on the board of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and, in January, was able to help select the nonprofit’s new CEO, Tyler TerMeer, Ph.D., who started in the post February 14.

Smiley said that Borkon will be assigned to the Hayward Hall of Justice.

Borkon said that many people helped him on his path to becoming a judge.

“I pushed ... because of the community of people who cared for me,” he said. “Thank you for the opportunity.” t

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Community News>>

March 3-9, 2022 • Bay Area Reporter • 3

Gay SF native appointed deacon of Grace Cathedral

by Ricardo De Melo Matos

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gay San Francisco native has been appointed as a deacon at Grace Cathedral, the Episcopal church atop Nob Hill.

Miguel Bustos, a Latino man with a long history of public service, was installed last month as a deacon at Grace Cathedral. The 52-year-old Episcopalian was ordained and began his official duties February 13.

Born and raised Catholic in the Mission district, Bustos attended St. Peter’s Elementary School at 24th and Florida streets before graduating from Archbishop Riordan High School. He credits his early life, under the guidance of the Sisters of Mercy, for realizing his spiritual journey.

“I have always felt God in my life, and growing up as a Latino in the Mission, the church played an intricate role in our community, giving our people hope,” he said in an interview at Grace Cathedral on his first day working there.

Bustos talked about his first trip to Grace Cathedral as a kid. He went there to view a movie but said he felt insecure, and spoke of how he feared not being accepted because he was a kid from the Mission, and how that almost prevented him from attending. Now 40 years later, to be ordained the deacon at this same house of worship is, in itself, a powerful message

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Maitri ED

From page 2

Maitri’s focus has not really changed, said Smith in an email to B.A.R., but its focus of mission care has diversified.

“Maitri has been providing support for the transgender community who are HIV+ for years and years,” Smith said, “and that contributed to our un-

Ricardo De Melo Matos

Episcopal Deacon Miguel Bustos stands inside Grace Cathedral on his first day in his new post.

for those who may feel marginalized or underrepresented, he noted.

The deacon position is not fulltime, Bustos explained in a Facebook message. His day job is as chief of global initiatives and senior director of the Center for Social Justice at Glide, the church in the Tenderloin.

He noted that his almost four years at Glide have been an opportunity to encourage those around him to become more socially aware, especially when it comes to issues around race and justice. Bustos was quick to point out that his experience working for the late former Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Congressmember Barbara

Lee (D-Oakland), former President Bill Clinton, and former Vice President Al Gore was a “continuation of his dedication to social justice and a chance to work with people of influence who can create policy and have the power for change.”

Asked why he disavowed his Catholic upbringing and chose to become Episcopalian, Bustos attributed its welcoming sense of community. “The fact that women and LGBTQ+ people can be ordained and serve openly with a total embrace is a beautiful thing, and that has always been my perspective of what spirituality and religion should be,” he said.

derstanding of a gap in care for people who are not HIV+ and a recognition that we can do both well. There is a need and we have the knowledge, skills and experience to make a positive difference in a community that we already provide services to.”

Back in 2019, Smith told the B.A.R. he hoped to continue working until he retired at 70, but “significant health issues” and a husband who wants to spend

more time with him have prompted his departure at 65. But Smith didn’t just up-and-leave. He spent about a month working alongside Armentrout to help his successor settle in.

“It is a privilege to work alongside someone who knows what he is doing and why he is doing it,” Smith stated, “a real mission partner. I also think he is much smarter than me and I always try to hire smarter… always!!”

Bustos’ ordination process took six years. It started with a time of discernment with his congregation of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in the Mission district, which included three years with a local discernment committee and time with the Vestry. Afterward, Bustos’ postulancy was approved by Episcopal Bishop Marc Handley Andrus in 2019, which allowed him to start studies at the School for Deacons in Berkeley and field education at Church of the Epiphany in San Carlos, a city on the Peninsula. He was ordained a deacon for the Episcopal Diocese of California on December 4, 2021 and was assigned to be the Cathedral Deacon at Grace Cathedral.

The role of a deacon is important.

“On Sundays, deacons proclaim the Gospel, preach, and set the altar table for the Eucharist,” Bustos wrote in the message. “We are also the ones that do the dismissal at the end of the service by saying, ‘Go out into the world in peace to love and serve the Lord.’”

The Reverend Mark Stanger, interim executive pastor at Grace Cathedral, who’s been with the church for over 20 years, could not be more thrilled to have Bustos serving with his staff.

“Every community is incomplete in fulfilling their vocation, and we at Grace Cathedral feel very strongly the need to connect more closely with

the community,” Stanger said. “We’re grateful for the learning and the experience he’ll bring us to help us be our truer selves.”

Bustos summed up his role as that of a humble servant. “Being a deacon grants me the authority to go out and tell people they’re loved and that the church is with them,” he said. “To be able to let people know that they are loved and cared for is the greatest thing I can do as a deacon.”

Andrus, who is based at Grace Cathedral, said that he couldn’t be more delighted that Bustos will now serve at the church.

“The role of the deacon in an Episcopal congregation is to connect people to the needs of the world; no one is better suited to lead us at Grace into meaningful service with the people of our city than Miguel,” Andrus wrote in an email.

Andrus added that Bustos has been on a spiritual journey for many years, a journey that has always been integrally tied to his quest for justice and equal rights for all.

Bustos explained what he likes about his new post.

“The most rewarding aspect of being a deacon is being a bridge between the church and the world,” he wrote.

“As a bridge, I find joy and passion in letting those oppressed and marginalized by society know that they are loved and not alone.” t

“I’m really grateful to [Smith] as is our staff and board,” Armentrout said.

Smith’s decision to overlap his last month at Maitri with Armentrout’s first has helped produce “a seamless transition,” he added.

And there is much to do.

Armentrout faces “[t]he same challenges that all nonprofits in San Francisco face – too many people in need and not enough resources to meet

those needs,” said Smith. “We do not struggle because we do not have the tools to help people… we struggle because there is not enough money to support the tools that can help.”

Armentrout will earn $150,000 a year as executive director. Maitri has an operating budget of $3.2 million.t

<< Open Forum

4 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

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Why the queer community came out for the SF school board recall

by David “Gaybraham Lincoln” Thompson

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he recall of San Francisco school board President Gabriela López and Commissioners Faauuga Moliga and Alison Collins united the entire city in demanding competent leaders for our children, and it would not have happened without the LGBTQIA community. LGBTQ parents played a prominent role in the campaign because we know protecting our civil rights begins at school.

Here are the stories of some of the key players from our community.

For myself, I have lived in SF for 37 years with my husband, Luis Tamayo. We live in Bernal Heights with our 10-year-old son, Lucas.

In February 2020 Lucas screamed, “I hate you for making me go to Zoom school!” That day I went to my first school board meeting to learn about the reopening plans. Instead, I heard them debating whether to rename Abraham Lincoln High School, while having no plan to reopen his school.

I created the Gaybraham Lincoln persona to show LGBTQ community support for the recall in a very visual way, and to lambaste the total absurdity of this situation. If I didn’t laugh at it, I was going to cry, which probably wouldn’t have been a good idea in front of my depressed child.

Gaybraham went to work gathering recall signatures. It was a life-changing experience to meet so many San Franciscans from so many backgrounds pulling together for our kids.

And I was gratified to see a drag character adopted by friends far beyond our community and embraced as a symbol of San Francisco’s eternal spirit of love and community.

Cyn Wang

Wang is a San Francisco native whose family business, Wang Insurance, has been at 31st Avenue and Judah since 1979. Wang, her wife Tessa, and daughter, Sloane, live in central Sunset.

“As a very proud native San Franciscan, I believe the future of our city depends on the success of our public schools,” Wang wrote.

“SF has the fewest children of any major U.S. city, which makes me incredibly sad. Families who can afford it are either sending their kids to private school or leaving San Francisco entirely. Our city has proudly been a beacon of freedom and refuge for the LGBTQ community and for so many others, and was the birthplace of many civil rights and social justice movements. We must fight for quality public education so we can honor our history, truly deliver on equity, and make our city a place where families of all types are welcome.

“The recall was urgent to me because my daughter spent half of kindergarten and all of first grade out of the classroom learning via Zoom,” she added. “While I watched my daughter become despondent and lose interest in learning, to my chagrin I saw no urgency or planning from the school board to reopen. Instead, I observed the opposite: they declined to hire a consultant to develop the reopening plan, failed to address a $125 million budget deficit, misguidedly prioritized school renaming and Lowell admissions while classrooms remained shut, and doubled down on anti-Asian tweets.”

Joel Engardio

Engardio lives in the Lowell High School neighborhood with his husband, Lionel Hsu. He has lived in San Francisco for many years and helped organize a drive-through signature gathering effort to kick off the campaign.

“I’m not a parent, but good public schools are essential for a city to thrive,” Engardio wrote. “And I want San Francisco to thrive.

Everyone who lives here should care about having a competent school board because our city’s future depends on investing in families – and the first step is to have well-run public schools. The future of our city is at stake.

“Lowell High School is in my neighborhood, so I got up at 6 a.m. every Sunday to collect signatures for the recall,” he added.

“On the first Sunday, I stood at the curb with a dozen other volunteers. We had no idea if any cars would show up. Then 500 came! It was a traffic jam. Incredibly, on February 15, 2021, 95% of the voters in my neighborhood said yes to the recall – the highest percentage in the entire city.”

Courtesy David Thompson

David “Gaybraham Lincoln” Thompson was one of the colorful advocates in the successful recall campaign of three San Francisco school board members.

Shawn Riney

Riney has lived in SF for 35 years, currently in the Lower Haight, and works as a contractor for the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The recall became important to me the more I learned about it, because of the snubbing of Seth Brenzel,” Riney wrote, referring to a gay white dad that the board declined to appoint to the volunteer Parent Advisory Council. “I went back right before the recall and watched the emotional testimony of his supporters during public comment and was appalled to see Moliga smirking.

“The painting over of the mural and the breaking of CEQA [environmental] laws resonated with me due to my EPA work,” he said, referring to the murals at Washington High School. “I was really concerned about their arrogance and their inability or unwillingness to know the provenance and understand historical importance of that piece, and I’m glad they were recalled.

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t even have noticed much about this, but those two things were the impetus for my votes to recall them,” he added.

Siva Raj, co-lead, school board recall campaign

“I came out to my sons as bisexual after moving to San Francisco, a few months before the recall effort started,” Raj wrote. “A big part of the reason I moved back to live in San Francisco is because I didn’t want my kids to feel any less because their family was different from other dads and families.

“The school board meeting on February 9 was a complete shock to me – the commissioners subjected a gay dad (Brenzel) to two hours of public ridicule and rejected his candidacy to the all female half empty Parent Advisory Council,” he added. “I felt his rejection, personally – just like every parent watching did – queer or straight.

“It made me realize the school board had no intent to actually listen to parents and in fact was treating parents as the enemy,” Raj wrote. “Ten days later my partner and I filed the paperwork to initiate the school board recall. The school board has yet to apologize for how it treated Seth that day.”

Seth Brenzel

“My husband and daughter and I live in the Bernal Heights neighborhood, where we have been for nearly 25 years,” he wrote. “I supported the school board recall campaign because our school board did not prioritize returning the tens of thousands of students in its care to in-person instruction as soon and as safely as possible. The board’s misplaced priorities were first signaled by its failure to hire a (free to the district) consultant recommended by the superintendent, who would have helped the school district plan for safe reopening. This decision, made in June 2020, set the district back many

months in planning for safe reopening. As a result, most district middle school and high school students did not return to school for 17 months (until August 2021), and most elementary school students had only 10-12 days of in-person instruction in that 17-month period.

“The behavior of the board worsened as the pandemic wore on. Some board meetings did not even have planning for school reopening on the agenda,” Brenzel wrote.

“When the topic was on the agenda, it was frequently not addressed until many hours into the meeting, sometimes very late into the evening after discussions of myriad other agenda items. One such occasion was when my nomination to a volunteer district parent committee was discussed for nearly two hours, while hundreds of families and teachers were waiting to learn more about plans for schools to reopen. This lack of focus on urgent priorities also appeared in the board’s poor oversight of the district’s budget, resulting in threats of state takeover due to California regulators’ concerns about whether the San Francisco Unified School District was a ‘going concern.’ Throughout one of our city’s most challenging times, the board dithered, again and again, at the expense of the education and wellbeing of the very schoolchildren they were tasked to serve.”

Phil Kim

Kim is a proud gay educator and national education policy leader, supporting teachers in K-12 science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) instruction in public schools across the country. He lives in the Castro and twice ran for election to the school board came up short.

“As an educator, I know that academic achievement is one central component to an equitable learning experience,” Kim wrote.

“Educators and parents alike want to do right by our young people, supporting them in reaching their goals, and ensuring our district is held accountable to the outcomes for children. That conversation simply isn’t happening enough. We must refocus on the core responsibilities of the district, which includes academic success and effectively supporting educators.

“I want to be a parent someday, and I want to raise a family here in San Francisco knowing that the district is prepared to support us fully. It’s why I became involved in the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center and San Francisco Court Appointed Special Advocates,” wrote Kim, co-chair of LYRIC’s board. “We must do better. Our students and teachers depend on it.” t David “Gaybraham Lincoln” Thompson is a gay, 37-year resident of San Francisco who lives with his husband and 10-yearold son in Bernal Heights.

t

Politics >>

March 3-9, 2022 • Bay Area Reporter • 5

Laird reflects on 1st year Article in California Senate

by Matthew S. Bajko

H

Barry Schneider Attorney at Law Courtesy John Laird

State Senator John Laird

19 days later, a bill aimed at keeping the doors of the Watsonville Hospital open. It created the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District so it could buy the bankrupt medical facility serving a largely rural and agricultural patient population. A judge approved the sale in late February.

“We got it through in warped legislative speed,” noted Laird, adding, “I am determined that hospital is going to stay open.”

Lesbian retired judge joins mediation firm

Retired judge Angela Bradstreet is joining the mediation firm ADR Services as of Monday, April 4. She will be trying to resolve lawsuits involving employment issues, landlord and tenant disputes, and personal injury, business and commercial litigation.

As the B.A.R. first reported in February, Bradstreet stepped down from the San Francisco Superior Court last month after having served there for 11 years. She was one of three lesbians on the local bench and is a longtime advocate for increasing the number of women and LGBTQ professionals in the legal system.

Newsom has yet to name her replacement on the lower court. Due to judicial ethics rules, Bradstreet could not divulge where she planned to work until now.

“What really drew me to them is they are women-owned,” Bradstreet told the B.A.R. of ADR Services.

Its founder, Lucie Barron, has ties to the Commonwealth of Nations as does Bradstreet, who grew up in London. Barron was born in a German refugee camp to Russian parents following World War II and her family moved to Adelaide, Australia. As an adult she relocated to Montreal, Canada.

After moving to the U.S. with her then-husband, Barron founded her mediation firm in 1994 and grew it from one office in Los Angeles to having locations throughout California.

She told the B.A.R. she and her team “are so excited” to have someone of Bradstreet’s caliber join their panel of “neutrals.”

“I think she is amazing; I think she is such an asset,” said Barron.

As they are both immigrants, Bradstreet said she “felt an immediate connection” when she met Barron.

“She is very supportive of diversity issues,” said Bradstreet, noting ADR is a sponsor of the LGBTQ bar association Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom’s virtual gala March 4.

Beginning in 2016, Bradstreet took a lead in the local superior court’s highly successful judicial settlements program, winning praise for successfully settling or mediating hundreds of cases. She told the B.A.R. she is “really excited” to carry on that work in her new capacity.

“I saved the court seven years of trial time over the last two years by settling cases,” said Bradstreet. “It is what I love to do.”

New SF D8 supe aide

Following the departure last month of his chief legislative aide, Tom Temprano, to be the political director for statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality California, gay San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman has found his replacement. He will welcome Ross Green as his new legislative aide on March 14.

From Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Green had moved to Los Angeles before relocating to San Francisco.

He served as campaign manager for Anna Pletcher’s unsuccessful bid in 2018 to be Marin County district attorney and since then has worked as a director at the womenowned strategic communications consulting firm Kearns & West.

He joins Jackie Thornhill, a transgender woman, and Jackie Prager, the queer former director of the San Francisco Democratic Party, as a legislative aide in addition to Jacob Bintliff, a gay former city planning staffer. Thornhill is now handling issues related to the LGBTQ Castro district and Duboce Triangle, while Prager is the lead on Noe Valley concerns.

She and Ross are expected to divvy up the remaining neighborhoods that are part of Mandelman’s District 8 seat.

Bintliff oversees various districtwide land use and zoning issues.

It is unclear if one of the four will take on the role of a de facto chief of staff as Temprano had.

Correction

Last week’s column about gay California state Senate candidate Jamaal Gulledge should have reported he is the first man in his family to attend college and earn a graduate degree. It was also his older brother, not an uncle, who died last July. The online version has been corrected.t

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aving a mastery for how state government functions after three terms in the Assembly, and working in former governor Jerry Brown’s administration as his natural resources secretary, served gay state Senator John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) well during his first year in the Legislature’s upper chamber. Spending much of 2021 working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t as much of a shock for Laird as it was for his colleagues in their freshmen terms and completely new to the Statehouse.

“I felt lucky I had a 20-year history up here already and had many, many relationships. I think I had a very successful year as a result,” said Laird, who served in the Assembly for much of the 2000s and lost his first bid for a Senate seat in 2010. “I felt sorry for my colleagues who were new and never served in the Legislature before. They were really starting from scratch.”

The hardest part was the lack of inperson interactions with both his staff and constituents, recalled Laird.

“It was really different not being able to have staff in your office and having truncated hearings,” said Laird, “and not being able to meet inperson with constituents. It was very different.”

The flip side of his having legislative experience is it brings speculation on his leadership aspirations in the Senate. With lesbian Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), the first woman and LGBTQ legislator to hold the post, termed out in 2024, questions are already being raised on who will succeed her in the powerful leadership position.

As a number of senators are headed out the door this year due to term limits or are opting to run for other elected offices, Laird has already been fielding queries on if he wants to be leader of the Senate. He can serve through 2028 under the state’s term limit rules.

“We have one president pro tem at a time, and I am very supportive of the current one,” said Laird, who told the Bay Area Reporter that, “People are asking me. It is a permanent parlor game in Sacramento.”

Laird will be up for reelection in 2024 in a differently configured Senate district than the 17th Senate District seat along the Central Coast he currently represents. It now includes Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo counties, the coastal areas of Monterey County, and southern Santa Clara County.

Under the recent redistricting process Laird’s seat is keeping the same number. It is losing the Santa Clara County area centered around Morgan Hill and gaining part of San Benito County. State Senator Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) saw parts of her district end up in Laird’s, but rather than run against him, she is seeking the newly drawn 14th Senate District covering Merced and Fresno. Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger), who had planned to run against Caballero, is now opting to run in Senate District 16.

The new district map “works for me,” Laird told the B.A.R., “but I am really disappointed to lose some areas I love,” such as the Bay Area section in the South Bay. Last year, Laird got enacted several laws related to LGBTQ issues, such as increasing state services for people aging with HIV and cleaning up sections of the state code that only use male pronouns so they are more gender inclusive. While he isn’t carrying any LGBTQ-specific bills this session, he already scored a legislative victory for his district.

He introduced in January, and had Governor Gavin Newsom sign

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Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http://www.ebar.com Monday mornings for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reported on the transgender woman running for a San Francisco House seat.

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

Got a tip on LGBTQ politics?

Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

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<< Community News

6 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

t

Castro’s Rainbow Honor Walk names new inductees

by Cynthia Laird

T

he Rainbow Honor Walk, which posthumously recognizes LGBTQ history-making pioneers, has announced its third class of inductees who will receive sidewalk tributes in San Francisco’s LGBTQ Castro neighborhood.

They include Bob Ross, the cofounder and publisher of the Bay Area Reporter; jazz great Billie Holiday; trans leader Marsha P. Johnson; and marriage equality advocate Edie Windsor.

The project, which started in 2014, now has 36 plaques installed throughout the Castro, according to a news release from the all-volunteer board, with another eight scheduled for placement this spring. In 2021, the board unanimously selected San Francisco lesbian trailblazer Phyllis Lyon, who died in 2020.

Lyon and her partner, the late Del Martin, were the first same-sex couple to wed in San Francisco – twice, in 2004, which was voided, then in 2008 shortly before Martin died. The women co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis and published the Ladder, the first monthly lesbian publication focused on politics, fiction, poetry and connecting lesbians across the country. (Martin is already inducted in the honor walk in the first class.)

The board recently finalized the other 23 people who will make up the new class of honorees. The board now begins the process of raising about $150,000 to install the plaques. Each one costs about $6,000 to fabricate and install, according to the release.

B.A.R. publisher named

The B.A.R., which is at the tail end of its 50th anniversary year, had long sought induction for Ross (19342003), a gay man who launched the nation’s oldest continuously published LGBTQ newspaper in the U.S. in April 1971. The nascent queer community quickly turned to the paper to find out what was going on. Politicians started to seek support from the LGBTQ community – and the paper’s endorsement – and out leaders began to run for, and win, elected office. The gay late supervisor Harvey Milk was a political columnist for the paper.

During the AIDS epidemic, the B.A.R. became a source of news at a time when mainstream media outlets weren’t covering the disease. Ross served for many years on the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District board as well as the San Francisco Ballet board. His philan-

Holliday, courtesy Library of Congress; Ross, courtesy B.A.R.; Johnson, courtesy Biography; Windsor, courtesy ediewindsor.com

Jazz legend Billie Holiday, left, Bay Area Reporter publisher Bob Ross, trans leader Marsha P. Johnson, and marriage equality advocate Edie Windsor are four of the 24 new inductees into the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco’s Castro district.

thropic work included co-founding the old Tavern Guild, and he served on the board of numerous nonprofits such as the former AIDS Emergency Fund, Meals on Wheels, and the Castro Lions.

Publisher Michael Yamashita said he was glad Ross would be part of the historical project.

“I’m gratified that Bob will join other LGBTQ pioneers for this distinct recognition,” Yamashita stated.

“Besides co-founding the Bay Area Reporter 51 years ago, he was an influential community leader who participated in the founding of many early gay organizations like the Tavern Guild, the Gay Olympics [now Gay Games] and AEF. He was a philanthropist to many community, AIDS, and arts and civic causes, which his legacy continues to support through the Bob Ross Foundation.

“He was one of many pioneers who came to San Francisco and helped make it a haven and community for LGBTQ people everywhere,” Yamashita added.

Singers, filmmakers, and musicians

The honor walk’s release outlined those being recognized. Board president Donna Sachet stated that the list is a mix of people who are “quite famous” and others who are not as well-known, as has been the case with previous inductees. One of the reasons for the honor walk is so that passersby can learn a little history about LGBTQs and their contributions around the world as they walk along main streets in the Castro.

Among the more famous inductees is Holiday (1915-1959), the Harlem-

based singer and jazz legend who courageously made public a wide range of personal and political truths, notably recording 1939’s anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit,” widely considered one of America’s most influential protest songs.

Holiday was the godmother of Bevan Dufty, a gay man who is an elected member of the BART board and a former San Francisco supervisor who represented the Castro and is now a resident. In a text message to the B.A.R., Dufty said he was happy with Holiday’s inclusion in the honor walk.

“It’s just thrilling that my godmother will be part of the Castro,” Dufty wrote. “She had many women lovers and, if she were alive, she would be the most out and queer jazz icon.”

Another inductee is gay filmmaker Peter Adair (1943-1996), best known for 1977’s “Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives,” which offered a clear, detailed picture of the broad spectrum of the LGBTQ population.

Tullalah Bankhead (1902-1968) is another inductee. Openly “ambisextrous” and having relationships with men and women, the stage and screen actress, gay icon, and pioneering civil rights activist strongly opposed racism and segregation.

Esther Eng (1914-1970) was the first woman to direct Chinese-language films in the U.S. She is recognized as a female pioneer who crossed the boundaries of race, language, culture, and gender.

Marlon Riggs (1957-1994) is in the class. He was an award-winning gay Black filmmaker whose examinations of Black gay life boldly confronted racism and sexual repression, most notably with 1989’s “Tongues Untied.”

Jon Reed Sims (1947-1984) was the founder of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps (now the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Marching Band, which is the official marching band of San Francisco), the first openly LGBTQ musical group ever formed in the U.S. Sims was also the founder of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, the country’s first openly gay choral group.

Sophie Xeon (1986-2021) was a Grammy-nominated musician, record producer, singer, and DJ who reframed trans self-expression for millennials and Generation Z cohorts with her brash and “hyperkinetic” take on pop music.

Authors

There are several authors among the inductees. Gloria Anzaldua (19422004) was a Tejana-Chicana who wrote widely on feminism, queer theory, and marginalization. She’s best known for her groundbreaking books, 1981’s “This Bridge Called Me Back,” and 1987’s “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.”

Butch lesbian and transgender activist Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014) is widely recognized for her theoretical work on transgender history, her anti-racist activism, and as a fighter for social justice. Feinberg was best known for her first book, the novel “Stone Butch Blues,” and a nonfiction book, “Transgender Warriors: Making History.” Feinberg familiarized readers with transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer terms, pronouns, concepts, and politics.

Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was the first African American woman to have a play performed on Broadway and the youngest playwright to receive the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. Her ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, restricted access to her lesbian-themed correspondence, diaries, and other materials. In 2013, decades after Nemiroff’s death, the new executor of Hansberry’s estate released the materials to scholar Kevin Mumford.

He wrote about them for Out History.

Langston Hughes (1901-1967), a gay Black man, was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. His poetry, plays, novels, and columns gave fresh insight into the experience of Black men in the U.S. Playwright Larry Kramer (19352020) was a gay man best known for his play “The Normal Heart” and for his involvement in Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP. He also wrote the 1978 book “Faggots,” a parody of late 1970s gay life that was widely ridiculed

for its implicit criticism of promiscuity and recreational drug use, as the B.A.R. reported in its obituary. Many gay bookstores wouldn’t carry it.

Activists

Activists are represented in the class, including the aforementioned Johnson (1945-1992), who was known as the “Mayor of Christopher Street.” Johnson was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and co-founder (with the late Sylvia Rivera, who was inducted in the second class) of the radical activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, or STAR. The aforementioned Windsor (1929-2017) became an activist for marriage equality when she was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the federal government over its anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act. In 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a key provision of DOMA, which led to the Obama administration extending rights, privileges, and benefits to married same-sex couples.

Others are Gilbert Baker (19512017), an artist and gay rights activist who co-created the first rainbow flag.

As the B.A.R. has previously reported, Baker came up with a rainbow flag design that had eight colored stripes with the help of his friends Lynn Segerblom, who now lives in Southern California, and James McNamara, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1999.

One version also sported a corner section of stars to mimic the design of the American flag. Baker would go on to reduce the number of colored stripes to just six and turned the rainbow flag into an international symbol of LGBTQ rights.

Bobbi Campbell (1952-1984) was a gay man and activist who was the first to come out publicly about his AIDS diagnosis early in the epidemic. A public health nurse in San Francisco, his column in the now-defunct San Francisco Sentinel newspaper helped readers empower themselves. He was the 16th person in the city to be diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma and published photos of his lesions so that other gay men would know what to look for.

Carlos Jáuregui (1957-1996) was an Argentine activist who fought for the rights of the full spectrum of the LGBTQ community.

Xulhaz Mannan (1976-2016) was a Bangladeshi human rights activist and founder of the country’s first and only gay magazine, Roopbaan. He worked for the United States Agency for International Development and was hacked to death by unidentiSee page 10 >>

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t SF trans film fest among Horizons’ new grantees

March 3-9, 2022 • Bay Area Reporter • 7

compiled by Cynthia Laird

Service, Outlet of Adolescent Counseling Services and Daly City Partnership, and in collaboration with San Mateo County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services.

Finally, the Prism Foundation received $5,000. It works with the API LGBTQ+ community.

H

orizons Foundation has released its latest slate of grants through its community issues program, which supports grassroots LGBTQ organizations in the Bay Area. The 31 grantee partners are receiving over $400,000 for their innovative work and most focus on groups that are traditionally underfunded and underserved.

In a news release, Francisco O. Buchting, vice president of grants, programs, and communications for Horizons, stated that the grantmaking process was guided by the principles of trust-based philanthropy and included a review panel. The grants awarded are primarily for unrestricted operating support, he stated.

“These grants represent the first in Horizons’ updated grantmaking strategy, which prioritizes continued investment in grassroots LGBTQ organizations serving the transgender community, LGBTQ people of color, and bisexuals,” Buchting stated. “The strategy also prioritizes specific segments of the LGBTQ community, namely youth, elders, refugees, and asylees.”

The Transgender Film Festival received $15,000.

“What a powerful cohort of grantees that Horizons is supporting,” Shawna Virago, artistic director of the trans film festival, wrote in an email. “We feel honored that they invest in the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, as we celebrate our 25th anniversary this year.”

Other groups receiving $15,000 are: ABO Comix, which works with LGBTQ prisoners; API Equality Northern California, which organizes queer Asian and Pacific Islanders; the Billy DeFrank LGBTQ Community Center in San Jose; the Brown Boi Project, which works to create community among queer, trans, Black, and Indigenous people of color; Colectivo Acción Latina de Ambiente, which works with queer Latinx individuals; and Community United Against Violence, a social justice movement.

Additionally, $15,000 grants were awarded to Detour Dance, which creates community-based performances; East Bay Sanctuary Covenant’s LGBT Asylum program; Femme and Them LLC, which supports the needs of BIPOC on Occupied Lisjan Ohlone

Rainbow World Fund seeks donations for Ukraine Courtesy Facebook

Shawna Virago is artistic director of the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival.

Land in Oakland; In Lak’ech Dance Academy, which promotes artistic expression in the queer and trans community; India Davis – Sky Rainbow, an interdisciplinary art practice of film, dance, acrobatics, music, writing, and storytelling; Queer LifeSpace, which provides therapy services; Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, which uses films to fight bias and stereotypes; San Francisco Trans March; Solano Pride Center; Somos Familia, which builds leadership in the Latinx community; and Positive Images, an LGBTQ community center in Sonoma County.

The RYSE Center in Richmond received $12,500. It serves youth ages 13-21 in Richmond and West Contra Costa County.

Several organizations received $10,000 grants.

They are: Amor Para Todos, which joins with schools and communities to cultivate gender and LGBTQIA+-affirming environments; Dem Bois Inc., which provides economic aid to trans men of color to obtain gender-affirming surgery; Health Initiatives for Youth; LGBTQ Connection, which serves people in Napa and Sonoma counties; Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive, a Vallejo-based archive that preserves artifacts of transgender history; Peacock Rebellion, an East Oaklandbased group that works with trans and gender-nonconforming people of color; and the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, which has an LGBTQ elder-focused mission.

North Bay LGBTQI Families received $7,500. Star Vista’s Pride Center received $7,000 for the San Mateo County Pride Center that it runs in partnership with Peninsula Family

Courtesy B.A.R. Archives

50 years in 50 weeks: 2018 Rainbow flag co-creator goes public

A

year after the death of Gilbert Baker, who was widely credited with creating the iconic rainbow flag, a Southern California woman went public that she and another man actually helped Baker create the very first rainbow flag in 1978. In the March 29, 2018 issue, Lynn Segerblom said that the first flags were a collaboration between Baker, herself, and their friend James McNamara, who died of AIDS in 1999. Those first flags, created for that year’s San Francisco Pride parade, look quite different from the one commonly seen today. That first one had a rainbow flag design with eight colored

stripes. Another version sported a corner section of stars to mimic the design of the American flag. Baker would go on to reduce the number of colored stripes to just six and turned the rainbow flag into an international symbol of LGBTQ rights.

Segerblom didn’t deny that Baker was instrumental in turning the flag into a global symbol for LGBTQ people but wanted to make sure that her involvement wasn’t lost to history.

To read the issue, go to https:// issuu.com/bayareareporter/docs/ march-29-2018

Rainbow World Fund, the LGBTQ-focused humanitarian organization based in San Francisco, has announced that it is raising funds to support the LGBTQ community in Ukraine.

Russia invaded Ukraine last week.

Many people are displaced and over 100,000 have fled to Poland. The capital city of Kyiv is surrounded by Russian troops and Russia has placed its nuclear forces on high alert, noted RWF Executive Director Jeff Cotter in an email to supporters.

“Today we are unified with our world community in the concern for the people of Ukraine,” Cotter stated. “During this crisis, already vulnerable LGBTQ Ukrainians are even more at risk to be further marginalized and scapegoated.”

People can donate online at https:// bit.ly/3Iv3jsV. Checks can be sent to RWF, 4111 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94114. People should specify “Ukraine” when donating.

WEB: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1210623

Lesbian pioneers featured on library panel

Engaging new generations in the progress toward equity is the subject of a live and online panel discussion Tuesday, March 15, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Koret Auditorium at the main San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin Street.

LGBTQ+ historian, author, and filmmaker Robin Lowey will moder-

ate the panel, titled “Lesbian Game Changers,” which will include lesbian authors Jewelle Gomez and Carla Trujillo, and activist educator Crystal Jang. According to a news release, the conversation will include crucial discussions about feminism, queer culture, intersectionality, the need for intergenerational involvement, and how the COVID pandemic has affected the mental and emotional health of the queer community.

The women are featured in Lowey’s book, “Game Changers: Lesbians You Should Know About,” which is now in its second printing. It won best LGBTQ+ book in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the release stated.

Panelists will be sharing stories to elevate the discourse in the U.S. about the role queer history plays in advancing LGBTQ+ civil rights and social equity.

See page 10 >>

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<< International News

8 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

Singapore high court rules to keep law criminalizing gays

by Heather Cassell

S

ingapore’s top court has punted the country’s law criminalizing gay sex to parliament in a decision that activists called a “partial victory.”

In a February 28 news release, the Human Dignity Trust stated that while the court reinforced a moratorium on the arrest of gay men engaging in consensual, samesex sexual activity, it fell short of removing a discriminatory criminalizing law from the statute books.

Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon stated on behalf of the five-judge panel in its 152-page decision that the court was not “a front-runner for social change or an architect of social policy.”

The justice stated it was “a matter beyond our remit.”

The appeal court was the last legal stop for the case, Tan Seng Kee v. Attorney General, in Singapore’s courts. Hopes for decriminalization now rest with the country’s parliament.

The case was brought in 2018 by a trio of gay activists challenging Section 377A’s constitutionality and appealed the high court’s 2020 ruling.

Plaintiffs Johnson Ong Ming, 45, a disc jockey; Bryan Choong, 44, former executive director of Oogachaga, an LGBTQ mental health, social services, and education organization; and Dr. Roy Tan Seng Kee, 62, a retired general practitioner were inspired by positive developments in India.

India’s supreme court struck down Section 377, a similar British colonial-era law, in September 2018.

The combined cases in Singapore were the gay activists’ third attempt to strike down the law that criminalizes acts of “gross indecency” between men in the Southeast Asian island country.

The British colonial-era law enacted in 1938 criminalizes consensual sex between two men and “any man who abets, procures or attempts to procure such an act.”

The law applied to straight couples and women until 2007 when Singa-

Courtesy Ching S. Sia, Roy Tan/Facebook

Bryan Choong Chee Hong, left, Johnson Ong Ming, and Dr. Roy Tan Seng Kee filed three separate legal challenges against Singapore’s Section 377A of the Penal Code.

pore’s parliament repealed the law for them but upheld it for gay men.

Gay men can face sentences of up to two years in jail if convicted. The public prosecutor at the time stated the office wouldn’t enforce the law.

The court’s ruling concluded that the “entirety of Section 377A is unenforceable unless and until the AG of the day provides clear notice,” the Human Dignity trust stated.

Téa Braun, chief executive of the Human Dignity Trust, said in a video media statement after the ruling that Singaporean gay and bisexual men “are still effectively un-apprehended criminals and subject to a culture of shame and homophobia,” despite the court formalizing the removal of the threat of arrest.

Yet, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said, “They do not face any real and credible threat of prosecution under Section 377A at this time and therefore do not have standing to pursue their constitutional challenges to that provision,” according to Asia One, a Singapore-based news site.

Gay Singaporeans do not feel secure due to discrimination and the threat that a new administration could reinstate enforcement of the law.

The trio of activists and their team of lawyers filed separate claims stating the law violated Articles 9, 12, and 14 of the Singapore Constitution. The articles guarantee personal liberty, equality before the law, and freedom of expression, respectively.

Previous court rulings on challenges to 377A in 2014 and 2020 stated reform would have to come through parliament. The government’s determination that its office would not enforce the penal code law played a significant role in the court’s ruling.

Human Rights Watch stated LGBTQ Singaporeans’ “rights remain under threat” due to Section 377A in its submission to the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review of Singapore in 2021. HRW noted that many countries recommended the decriminalization of homosexuality in the periodic review.

U.N. member countries undergo a

review by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council every five years.

According to Human Dignity Trust, consensual sexual relationships between people of the samesex is criminalized [LINK: https:// www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbtthe-law/map-of-criminalisation/] in 71 countries around the world.

The death penalty is imposed or at least a possibility in 11 countries.

Gender identity and expression are criminalized in 15 countries.

LGBTQ and human rights organizations were disappointed by the court’s decision.

Pink Dot SG [LINK: https://pinkdot.sg/], an LGBTQ advocacy organization that produces the annual Pink Dot Celebration, called the court’s decision “a devastating blow to Singapore’s LGBTQ+ community,” in a statement following the court’s decision.

Clement Tan, a spokesperson for Pink Dot SG, told the New York Times that the ruling was “frustrat-

t

ing for those who were hoping for some real change.”

“Despite acknowledging that gay men should be able to live freely in Singapore, without harassment or interference, the court still hesitated to strike it down,” he said. “It now falls on parliament to deal the final blow to Section 377A.” Responding to the court’s ruling, 19 activist groups signed a statement protesting the decision, stating the “ruling fell far short,” reported the Times.

“Gay men could still face police investigations under the law and will suffer from discrimination,” the statement said.

Braun called upon Singapore’s government to repeal Section 377A, stating criminalizing gay sex has “no place in a 21st century democracy such as Singapore.”

Locally, activists said that they initially had been optimistic.

“I was hopeful for a moment when it was up for review that Singapore would join the 21st century in terms of recognizing LGBTQ communities,” said Madeleine Lim, founder and executive director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project in San Francisco.

She hoped the Singapore government would recognize LGBTQ people as a part of the country’s broader community when she heard that the court was going to announce a decision on 377A. Lim, a butch queer woman of color, immigrated from Singapore in 1987 due to being persecuted by the government for her LGBTQ activism.

Following the ruling, she simply said, “I actually don’t even feel disappointed, which is very sad. It’s painful. It’s hurtful.” t Got international LGBTQ news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at WhatsApp/Signal: 415-517-7239, or oitwnews@gmail.com.

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A longtime resident of the Eureka Valley, Castro and Mission Districts; a member of the Castro Merchants Association and a 25 year member of the Freewheelers Car Club.

At Duggan’s Funeral Service, which sits in the heart of the Mission, we offer custom services that fit your personal wishes in honoring and celebrating a life.

SF BDSM group marks 42 years

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Please call for information 415-431-4900 or visit us at www.duggansfuneralservice.com FD44

T

he 15 Association, a social and sexual fraternity for men who engage in BDSM, celebrated its 42nd anniversary with a dinner event at the Verdi Club in San Francisco February 25.

Fraternals, new and old, took the stage during the event and included, from left, Dustin Yeager; Lyle Swallow; Kevin Harding-

Eric Burkett

Troy; Robert Callbeck; Eric See; Jack Garcia; Mike Walker; Jeff Garner; Tyler Fong; Richard Widjaja; and Jim McHugh who celebrated the longest-standing gay male BDSM association in the western U.S.999

t

Obituaries>>

March 3-9, 2022 • Bay Area Reporter • 9

Longtime lesbian CA legislative aide Anna Damiani dies

by Cynthia Laird

A

nna Damiani, who worked for many years as a district aide for gay former state lawmaker Mark Leno, died at her Castro district home February 25. She was 65.

Ms. Damiani, a lesbian, was well known to community members and others for wearing her trademark purple or lavender attire.

In a phone interview, Leno told the Bay Area Reporter that Ms. Damiani worked for him during his entire 14 years in the Legislature, first in the Assembly, and then the state Senate.

“She was a marvel,” Leno said. “She had an indomitable spirit. She always represented our office with a big smile, huge hug, and was well-informed. She communicated her concern for the community in every action.”

Leno said that the two became “dear friends.”

“It was my great fortune to know Anna and work with her all those many years,” he added. “She was an inspiration.”

Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (DSan Francisco) called Ms. Damiani “a wonderful person.”

Ms. Damiani served on the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club board, which posted a message on Facebook.

“We loved Anna for her dry wit, exuberant laugh, warm heart, and passionate love of all dogs,” the post stated in part. “Anna could almost always be found in the mornings at Spike’s on 19th, usually surrounded

<<

STD epidemic

From page 1

ia, compared to 4.56% in 2020 and 4.16% in 2019. Syphilis last year had a 2.25% positivity rate, compared to 2.92% in 2020 and 2.18% in 2019.

For the city as a whole, every measured STD was more diagnosed in 2021 than in 2020. Gonorrhea cases were up to 5,259 from 4,109 in 2020 (in 2019 the number was higher than in 2021, with 5,571 diagnoses).

Male rectal gonorrhea cases were up to 1,812 from 1,160 in 2020 (in 2019 the number was lower than in 2021, with 1,562 diagnoses).

Chlamydia cases were up to 6,185 from 5,735 in 2020 (in 2019 the number was higher than in 2021, with 9,454 diagnoses).

Male rectal chlamydia cases were up to 1,867 from 1,565 in 2020 (in 2019 the number was higher than in 2021, with 2,428 diagnoses).

One innovation that may help with rectal gonococcal and chlamydia cases is the first condom that is specifically intended for use during anal intercourse. The federal Food and Drug Administration authorized the marketing of the prophylactics for the first time February 23.

“The One Male Condom is a natural rubber latex sheath that covers the penis,” an FDA news release states. “It has three different versions: standard, thin, and fitted. The fitted condoms, available in 54 different sizes, incorporate a paper template to aid in finding the best condom size for each user.

When used during anal intercourse, the One Male Condom should be

Rick Gerharter

Anna Damiani holds her resolution of recognition from San Francisco’s Commission on the Status of Women that was presented to her on May 17, 2017.

by her canine fan base, and always wearing purple. She was the living embodiment of the poem that she had displayed in her office, ‘When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple,’ a warning of nonconformity.”

Ms. Damiani, who at the time of her passing worked at San Francisco International Airport, had diabetes, but that didn’t stop her, as Leno noted. While she spent much of the last two years working remotely due to the COVID pandemic, Leno said that Ms. Damiani used her wheelchair to get to the bus then get on BART to arrive at the airport.

Gay Castro business owner Patrick Batt wrote in an email that he had seen Ms. Damiani in passing a couple

of weeks ago.

“I knew Anna by sight and, having worked for Mark, we always chatted and said ‘Hello’ when we encountered each other on the streets of the Castro,” Batt wrote. “She, always in some shade of purple, and fearlessly navigating the streets in her wheelchair.

This is sad news.”

Before working for Leno, Ms. Damiani worked for former assemblymember Kevin Shelley (D-San Francisco) for a year, according to a resolution presented to her in 2017 by the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women, commending her many years of service to the community.

Ms. Damiani also served as board

used with a condom-compatible lubricant.”

“The risk of STI transmission during anal intercourse is significantly higher than during vaginal intercourse,” stated Courtney Lias, Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Office of GastroRenal, ObGyn, General Hospital, and Urology Devices in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “The FDA’s authorization of a condom that is specifically indicated, evaluated and labeled for anal intercourse may improve the likelihood of condom use during anal intercourse.”

last year, the crystal meth epidemic in the Central Valley, when combined with homelessness and lack of access to medical care, is partly to blame for the statewide rise in syphilis cases.

Cohen was relieved that antibacterial resistant strains of gonorrhea haven’t materialized in San Francisco – yet.

“It’s an area of public health concern,” she said, adding that the city works with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “to monitor emerging strains of gonorrhea” because “we want to know if they’re out there and prevent their spread.”

Syphilis cases

Syphilis cases in San Francisco were up to 1,922 from 1,687 in 2020 (in 2019 the number was lower than in 2021, with 1,864 diagnoses).

Cohen said that syphilis is appearing in cisgender, heterosexual women more than before.

Female syphilis cases were up in 2021 – 195 diagnoses compared to 171 the year prior and 158 in 2019.

“We have been seeing this about four years now – rising cases of syphilis in cisgender women who have sex with men,” Cohen said. “What we saw in 2020 was an increase on the 2019 numbers. This is very concerning to us because when syphilis affects someone who is pregnant, it can lead to disastrous outcomes, such as prenatal death and birth defects.”

Fortunately, congenital syphilis cases declined from five in 2020 to two in 2021.

Dr. Ina Park, a straight ally who is an associate professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, told the B.A.R.

president of the Golden Gate Business Association, an LGBTQ chamber of commerce.

As president of GGBA, Ms. Damiani helped to publicize the organization. In a 2001 essay for the B.A.R.’s Pride issue, she wrote that LGBTQ business owners weren’t always welcome at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “Twenty-seven years ago, a group of LGBT business owners and professionals were looking for ways to increase business and market their products to a broader audience,” she wrote. “When they attempted to join the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, the reception was far from cordial.”

These LGBTQ business leaders went on to form GGBA, which became the world’s first LGBTQ chamber of commerce. Today, many queer business owners also belong to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

“The formation of GGBA was significant for several reasons,” Ms. Damiani wrote. These included economic empowerment and support.

Terry Beswick, a gay man who’s executive director of GGBA, said the loss of Ms. Damiani was heartbreaking.

“I’m personally deeply saddened at the loss of Anna Damiani, who has been a ubiquitous presence in my life and in the Castro for many years,” Beswick stated in an email. “She was president of the board of the Golden Gate Business Association in the early 2000s during a time of great change

and growth for the organization, and while also serving on the board for San Francisco Pride.

“She was a community leader for many causes who did not seek the limelight, but was the best kind of leader, the kind who sought to be of service to others,” Beswick added.

“Clad in her trademark purple, Anna could be counted on to show up and to lend support where it was needed most.”

According to the city resolution, Ms. Damiani made San Francisco her home over 40 years ago, “at a time when Anita Bryant led a political coalition to repeal anti-discrimination measures protecting the rights of the LGBT community in South Florida.”

She soon became a strong advocate for women’s and LGBTQ resources while working at Pacific Bell, where, as a technician and later operator, she served as shop steward for the Communications Workers of America and rose through the ranks.

The resolution noted that Ms. Damiani’s advocacy work at Pacific Bell led to strong support for domestic partner benefits “throughout Pacific Bell’s family of companies, an expanded marketing strategy for the LGBT community, and several statewide and local conferences designed to increase the power of women and members of the LGBT community.”

Ms. Damiani also held leadership positions in Bay Area Career Women, the UCSF Women’s Health Patient Advisory Committee, San Francisco Pride, and the Golden Gate Flyers.t

Don’t Think Know, also provides tests through the mail but is geared toward young women seeking a vaginal swab.

“We want San Franciscans to know

they have that access to confidential and private testing,” Cohen said.

See page 10 >>

HIV testing

The number of human immunodeficiency virus tests jumped from 2,670 in 2020 to 3,489 in 2021. The number of tests finding an acute infection went from two in 2020 to five in 2021, and the number of tests findWhen you plan your life celebration and lasting remembrance in ing antibodies (indicating a longeradvance, you can design every detail of your own unique memorial term infection) stayed exactly the and provide your loved ones with true peace of mind. Planning ahead When your celebration lasting same at 37. protectsyou your plan loved ones fromlife unnecessary stress and and financial burden, When you remembrance plan your celebration and lasting in Roman told the B.A.R. that poliallowing themlife to focus what will matter at design that remembrance time—you. in on advance, youmost can every cymakers can help decrease advance, the you canofdesign every detail of your ownand unique memorial detail own memorial provide Contact usyour today about theunique beautiful ways to create a lasting legacy prevalence of STDs in the commuatyour theloved San Francisco Columbarium. and provide loved ones with true peace mind.

Planning ahead nity by “realizing that sexual health your ones with true peace ofof mind.

Planning is part of essential health services protects your loved ones from unnecessary stress and financial ahead protectsProudly yourserving loved onesCommunity. from unnecessary burden, the LGBT and realizing that people in the allowing them focus on whatburden, will matter most them at thattotime—you. stresstoand financial allowing community need to be able to access sexual health services, like testfocus on what will matter most at that time—you. ing, without appointments.” Contact us today about the beautiful ways to create a lasting legacy Cohen wanted to tout that the FranciscousColumbarium. today about the beautiful ways to create health department already has atat-the San Contact home testing programs. One, Take a lasting legacy at the San Francisco Columbarium.

Me Home, provides kits through One Loraine Ct. | San Francisco | 415-771-0717 Proudly serving our Community. the mail including three-site testing SanFranciscoColumbarium.com Proudly serving the LGBT Community. for gonorrhea and syphilis. Another,

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FD 1306 / COA 660

Obituaries >> Garth Paul Sayers July 30, 1947 – January 28, 2022

Garth Paul Sayers passed away peacefully at home on January 28, 2022 with his husband and sister at his side.

Garth, also known as Paul, was born in Flint,

Michigan to Garth and Connie Sayers. In 1974 he decided to come to the Bay Area and settled in San Francisco, where he lived for the rest of his life.

He worked as an eligibility worker, station agent, and as a deputy court clerk III. His interests included classical music, playing the piano, bicycling, and travel. He traveled extensively in Europe. He particularly enjoyed mu-

seums and attending opera and concerts.

Garth Paul is survived by his loving husband, Urs Josef Iten; sisters Debbie (Jim) Haskell of Surprise, Arizona and Suzy (Fritz) Marin of Jackson, Michigan. He is also survived by aunts, nieces, and nephews.

A private memorial will be scheduled in the future.

One Loraine Ct. | San Francisco | 415-771-0717

SanFranciscoColumbarium.com FD 1306 / COA 660

<< Community News

10 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

<<

Pride parades

From page 1

San Francisco celebrants will hit the street – Market Street, that is – the last Sunday in June as part of its traditional two-day 52nd San Francisco Pride festival. This year’s celebration, themed “Love Will Keep Us Together,” comes after significant changes in leadership at SF Pride.

Former executive director Fred Lopez who, because of the pandemic, never got to oversee an in-parade in his two-year tenure, stepped down February 17. Succeeding him is interim Executive Director Suzanne Ford, the first transgender person in the leadership role.

For those looking for something a little more activist-focused, DJ and drag star Juanita MORE!, who just stepped down from her reign as Empress 56, is helping organize the third People’s March that is expected to take place the same Sunday. Following the Pride parade’s original route, the People’s March will begin on Polk Street, “led by Brown and Black and people of color,” MORE! said in a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

With a stronger focus on local arts and performers, and a notably smaller budget, the People’s March arose during the first year of the pandemic.

Unable to hold her usual Pride Day fundraiser party, as she had for the previous 16 years, MORE! and activist Alex U. Inn – a former SF Pride grand marshal and board member – organized the alternative event. Its start time and date isn’t finalized, as MORE! is in the process of securing permits, but MORE! expects the People’s March to take place the same day as its larger counterpart, as it has the past two years.

<<

Vigil

From page 1

investigate the case, gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) noted that GHB is, at times, used as a date-rape drug.

Two-year struggle

At the vigil in front of a diverse crowd of family, friends, and community activists, Angie Aquino-Sales shared new details about her two-year struggle to understand the circumstances behind her son’s death. It took seven days for the family to view Jaxon Sales’ body, she said, and the autopsy report arrived seven months after the medical examiner’s office had promised. These details add to the mounting concerns from the family, who have already called on the SFPD to question the 41-year-old man and an-

<<

Honor walk

From page 6

fied men posing as couriers delivering a package. A friend of his, Tanay “Tonoy” Mojumdar, was also attacked and killed in the incident.

<<

News Briefs

From page 7

The program is sponsored by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library in support of the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA+ Center.

Admission is free and access to the in-person event is first come, first served. Masks are required. To view the online program, register at https:// bit.ly/3IycgBN and receive an email

<<

STD epidemic

From page 9

Nationwide shortage of blood test tubes

The National Coalition of STD Directors is sounding the alarm that the tubes used for blood tests – which are

Plans in other cities

Farther south, there are big changes in store for Los Angeles Pride, scheduled for Sunday, June 12. After a two-year absence which, like San Francisco, meant not being able to mark its 50th anniversary, the parade is coming back in a new, old location. After years of marching through West Hollywood, the parade is returning to Hollywood itself, the site of the original route.

“LA Pride is thrilled to come together this year to commemorate the historic anniversary at the parade’s first and original location,” stated Gerald Garth, vice president of programs and initiatives for Christopher Street West Association Inc., in a news release.

“As a mission-driven and community-centered nonprofit organization, [Christopher Street] recognizes that LGBTQ+ experiences of Los Angeles are broader than just one neighborhood. Considering feedback gathered since the pandemic began, we are committed to creating experiences and access to our entire community, including many of those who have been most underserved and underrepresented.”

With the LA Pride parade moving back to Los Angeles, West Hollywood will hold its inaugural Pride festival June 3-5, with activities centered in and around West Hollywood Park, 647 N. San Vicente Boulevard.

In San Diego, organizers managed to keep events going throughout the year even if the pandemic forced them to cancel their bigger, annual parade in 2020. They did hold a smaller Pride march last July.

“We’re sort of interesting in that our pride organization is yearround and is also an arts and advocacy organization,” said San Diego Pride Executive Director Fernando Lopez Jr. That year-round focus enables the organization to run 35 different events throughout the year. It also helped to keep its finances in good shape, they said.

This year’s parade, themed “Justice With Joy,” is scheduled for July 16, one month later than celebrations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The parade will begin at the Hillcrest Pride Flag at University Avenue and Normal Street, and proceed for 1.5 miles until it wraps up at Quince Drive.

Heading north, Portland, Oregon will see an even larger event than the last one it held in 2019.

Organizers had introduced plans to increase their annual festival’s footprint on the city’s waterfront only to see them dashed because of the pandemic. Now, they’re moving ahead with that expansion, said Debra Porta, executive director of Pride Northwest.

“Barring the world ending or something, we are planning to be back on the waterfront for the full two-day Pride waterfront festival,” said Porta in a telephone interview.

Like its sister events throughout the country, Pride Northwest had to refashion itself to continue its work through the pandemic. Like San Diego Pride, Pride Northwest isn’t just about the annual festival but also engages in community work throughout the year.

“Our community was hit hard in Portland,” said Porta, a lesbian.

“We really sort of spun on a dime and our primary efforts were direct service.” The organization

other man, both of whom were with Jaxon Sales the night he died.

“There’s so many disparate facts,” said Angie Aquino-Sales.

After SFPD Chief William Scott told the B.A.R he wanted to meet with the family, Angie Aquino-Sales and Jim Sales reached out to his office, but they have yet to meet. As the B.A.R. previously reported, the city’s Human Rights Commission is working to facilitate a meeting between the parents and SFPD. Scott told the B.A.R. during a February 18 interview that he would like to sit down with Jaxon Sales’ family.

Scott also said during the interview that, right now, SFPD doesn’t have any new information on the case. Scott said “there is no statute of limitations on murder” and that, if foul play is suspected, police would investigate.

t

A contingent marched in the 2019 SF Pride parade.

Rick Gerharter

Upcoming Pride dates compiled by Eric Burkett

A

s cities gear up for in-person Pride celebrations, here are the dates of some of the more popular parades and festivals.

Los Angeles Napa New York City Oakland Palm Springs Portland, Oregon San Diego San Francisco

San Jose Seattle Sonoma West Hollywood

June 10-12 June9-17 June 26 September 11 November 1-7 June 12-19 June 9-17 June 25-26 and People’s March, June 26.

August 27-28 June 26 June 3-5 June 3-5

was also able to rely on a rainy-day fund they’d been building for the past 10 years. No small matter for an organization that raises 80 to 90% of its funding from its annual Pride celebration.

The parade will take place June 19 in downtown Portland; Portland Pride Waterfront Festival will run for two days, June 18-19.

As the B.A.R. previously reported,

new organizers in Oakland are planning for a PrideFest September 11.

There will not be a parade, and the exact location of the street festival has not been determined, though organizers would like it to be in the vicinity of the previous Oakland Pride event.

Other Pride organizations contacted by the B.A.R. did not respond to requests for comment. t

But he added that, as of right now, “we don’t have anything new.”

“We’re open to reopening,” Scott said.

Following the petition, a number of leaders have stepped up to help the Sales family. That list includes GAPA, APIENC, as well as the office of District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney and the Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention at the city Human Rights Commission.

Janice Li, the first queer Asian American woman elected to the BART transit board, also attended the vigil, as did Wiener, who wanted to personally meet Jaxon Sales’ parents and to express his support.

“I’m just so saddened and depressed about what happened to Jaxon and distressed about the lack of information,” he said to the crowd. He was grateful to the fam-

ily for coming forward to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

ous side too. Once, at Disneyland, he called out a security guard for racially profiling his family, which is Korean American and Filipino American.

His older brother, Alexander Sales, who is also gay, remembers sitting in the car with his brother, outside their home, when Jaxon admitted that he had written a letter coming out to their parents before burning it out of fear.

“I was the first one he came out to,” his brother recalled. Meanwhile, inside the house, their parents were wondering why it smelled like fire.

But that’s not what Angie AquinoSales is thinking of these days. What she misses most is the smell of coconut oil that her son used to moisturize.

“Whenever any of us get a whiff of that,” she said, “it’s Jaxon.” t

Artists and others

abstract expression.

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was a pioneering German physician and sexologist who was an outspoken advocate for sexual minorities in the early 20th century.

Charlie Parkhurst (1812-1879) was a famous California stagecoach driver in the Gold Rush era who was discov-

ered, upon his death, to be biologically female; decades before women’s suffrage was legal, Parkhurst voted as a man in the 1868 presidential election.

Dr. Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was a neurologist, naturalist, and historian of science who wrote of his experiences with some of his patients to inform and inspire others. He came out as gay

publicly in his memoir that was published shortly before he died, according to NBC News.

Those interested in donating to the Rainbow Honor Walk can go to http:// rainbowhonorwalk.org/. t

with the Zoom access link.

SPUR, the San Francisco-based planning and public policy think tank, has long had a membership structure for people to access its programs.

While it continues to have paying members, SPUR President and CEO Alicia John-Baptiste has announced that the majority of the organization’s

programming will now be free to the public.

SPUR has long been a gateway to accessing the Bay Area’s important conversations on housing, sustainability, transportation, urban design, and more, she noted in a recent email announcement. “We believe education about the issues that affect the Bay Area empowers people to take an active role in creating a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous

region where everyone can thrive,” she stated.

“But this education shouldn’t come at a price,” John-Baptiste wrote. “So beginning March 1, we’re making the majority of our programming free to the public.”

John-Baptiste stated that the change is the direct result of the ongoing generosity of SPUR members.

“Member support has long made change possible by driving our re-

search and advocacy,” she stated.

“Now it opens the door to a new audience of urbanists.”

The agency just released its spring calendar of programming. Check it out at https://www.spur.org/events/ list For more information about SPUR or to become a member, go to https:// www.spur.org/ t

used to test for syphilis and HIV – are a victim of the global supply chain crisis.

It was one reason why SFAF in January canceled certain services at Magnet, as the B.A.R. reported at the time.

“Blood specimen collection tubes are essential for providing routine, standard of care blood testing for

laboratory analysis, including sexual health testing,” stated Jennifer Mahn, the coalition’s director of clinical and sexual health, in a news release. “This shortage is leading to widespread disruptions in vitally important sexual health services.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Admin-

istration is urging labs to consider conservation strategies, which the coalition says will only hurt “as STI rates continue to skyrocket across the country.”

The coalition is calling on the Defense Production Act to be invoked to help address the shortage. As of

February 8 Magnet resumed PrEP follow-up appointments and routine STI and HIV testing appointments, as the B.A.R. reported. SFAF posted a note on its website that the services no longer needed to be on hold “due to COVID-19 surge-related supply chain issues.” t

An artist and others round out the inductee list.

Bernice Bing (1936-1998) was a recognized Bay Area painter whose work bridged her Chinese American background and her interest in modern philosophy, women’s issues, and

SPUR says most programs are now free

Stories about Sales’ life

As other family members stepped up to speak, the political demands faded behind stories of Jaxon Sales’ life. He was independent, they said, sometimes to a fault. His aunt recalled how Jaxon ran away from his home in Oakland and found himself in Los Angeles with just $20 in his pocket.

Standing in the audience, Julia Jung wasn’t surprised by the colorful stories. When they were in elementary school together, Jung remembers how Jaxon Sales pranked the school by pulling the fire alarm.

His mother remembered that day too. “Jaxon was definitely a jokester,” she said to the crowd with a smile. He was outspoken and often sarcastic but, as he got older, those jokes had a seri-

t

Legals >>

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22-556903

In the matter of the application of JESUS ELIAN SEPULVEDA, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner JESUS ELIAN SEPULVEDA is requesting that the name JESUS ELIAN SEPULVEDA AKA JESUS ELIAN LOPEZ be changed to JESUS ELIAN LOPEZ. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 103N on the 22th of MARCH 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039616500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SIMMONS ROAD CREATIVE, 3375 17TH ST #203, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NICHOLAS SIMMONS-STERN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/01/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039615100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as EMILIO ORLANDI, 2282 MARKET ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EMILIO GIRAUDBIT. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/27/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/31/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039618300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as MS. GOLDIE REED MINISTRIES, 327 MADISON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DENISE CARTER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/02/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/02/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039609700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as HARMONY BODYWORK AND ENERGY THERAPIES, 3882 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CYNTHIA MEIRI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/17/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/24/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039620500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as HOME RANCH LAND REALTY, 1160 BATTERY ST #100, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JUAN CHAVARRIA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/25/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/03/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039622300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as CORNERSTONE CONSTRUCTION, 955 WISCONSIN ST #4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SHANE O’REILLY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/03/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/04/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039617000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as RIDGELINE COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY, 1012 TENNESSEE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GENE CUTLER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/02/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039621000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as TURKEY & REUBEN, 1208 FUNSTON AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed MARA EZEKIEL & NOA SHNEORSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/03/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039623100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as TALISMAN SOUND, 1363 PAGE ST #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed JONATHAN RICHARD WILSON & JONAH SCOTT PERRY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/02/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/04/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039597200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as MAGIC WASH, 645 LARCH WAY, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed LEONID BEKER & YULIYA BEKER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/10/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/10/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039613800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as MIKAWA JAPANESE CURRY, 2435 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed SANHUA-HD, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/28/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

March 3-9, 2022 • Bay Area Reporter • 11

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039613600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as LA PAZ RESTAURANT, 1028 POTRERO AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed LA PAZ RESTAURANT, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/05/05. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/28/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039617600

The following person(s) is/are doing business as VEINWELL; PHYSICOS AESTHETICS, 100 BUSH ST #918, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed PHYSICOS AESTHETICS INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/02/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039620400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as SF CONNECTED CHIROPRACTIC, 476 MONTEREY BLVD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed DR. STANTON WONG, A PROFESSIONAL CHIROPRACTIC CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/03/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039616900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as VIDEOFAX, 1750 CESAR CHAVEZ ST #G SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed MINERVA PROFESSIONAL CAMERA SERVICES, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/30/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/02/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039623300 The following person(s) is/are doing business as GRAPHITEBUILD, 8 DELLBROOK AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed YNWA INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/07/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/07/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039624400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as JUPITER.CO; JUPITER GROCERIES, 1955 JERROLD AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed TALAR, INC (DE). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/09/20. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/08/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039615400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as BAY OF BURMA, 1174 FOLSOM ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed L-TERA LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/31/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/31/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039620700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as KONA’S STREET MARKET, 32 3RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed 32 3RD STREET MGMT LLC (CA), A GENERAL PARTNER OF 32 3RD STREET LP. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/03/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039614400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as CALIFORNIA STREET STAFFING CO., 235 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed TICKED TURTLE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/26/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/28/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039620900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SUGA STUDIO, 499 ALABAMA ST #112, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed USU (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/03/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039623400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as GOODBOI SERVICES; GIGGLE & GROW, 660 4TH ST #115, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed GOODBOI LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/07/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/07/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039622800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as TONIC BEVERAGE CATERING, 2565 3RD ST #313, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed THE FIRE SOCIETY, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/04/22.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-038276100

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as TONIC BEVERAGE CATERING, 2495 3RD ST #313, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business was conducted by a limited liability company and signed by DOGPATCH SF, LLC (CA). The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 08/22/18.

FEB 10, 17, 24, MAR 03, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22-556924 In the matter of the application of VANYA RENEE MORALES AKA VANYA RENEE COLE, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner VANYA RENEE MORALES AKA VANYA RENEE COLE is requesting that the names VANYA RENEE MORALES AKA VANYA RENEE COLE be changed to VANYA RENEE COLE. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 29th of MARCH 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22-556920

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039631400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as INDIAN OVEN, 233 FILLMORE ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed J MALHI (SF) CORPORATION (CA).

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/29/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/10/22.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039623600

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039626700

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039625000

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039631100

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039626400

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ARL RELIANCE LIMOUSINE SERVICE, 1801 39TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed WEIBIN LEI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/08/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039602900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PRISM GROUP, C/O COMPASS, 891 BEACH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DAVID PAUL BROWN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/18/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039627200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as TRISHINE, 676 GEARY ST #105, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JOMELYN CAOILE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/08/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/08/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039603600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as CORDON BLEU RESTAURANT, 1574 CALIFORNIA ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KATIE YU. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/15/95. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/18/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039629700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ORTHODONTIC CENTER OF SAN FRANCISCO; JANICE C. TAM, DDS, MSD, 2411 OCEAN AVE #102, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JANICE CAROL TAM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/01/01. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/11/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039628100

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039606200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SONJA CHENG DESIGN PRACTICE, 1463 19TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SONJA CHENG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/21/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039627500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as GIANTPIXELS STUDIO, 775 POST ST #511, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CHAD DEMOSS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/09/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039630700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as STUDIO RHYE, 3579 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110.

This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed MICHELLE LEE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/14/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039628500

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PACIFIC COCKTAIL HAVEN, 550 SUTTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by a limited partnership, and is signed 580 SUTTER STREET MGMT, LLC (ON BEHALF OF 580 SUTTER STREET LP) (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/02/16. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/10/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as AFRICAN OUTLET, THE, 4942 3RD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed JUDAH DWYERDAHLSTROM & HORGAN EDET. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/03/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/14/22.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039628700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as SF EXPEDITIONS, LLC, 1700 VAN NESS AVE #1038, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SF EXPEDITIONS, LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/02/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/10/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039627600

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as NOT LATTE, 2142 IRVING ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed HA TEA INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/09/22.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22-556923

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039628600

In the matter of the application of FNU NOMAN, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner FNU NOMAN is requesting that the name FNU NOMAN be changed to ARYAN SOLOMON. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 29th of MARCH 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22-556935

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ALCHEMY ARTS & HEALING ACADEMY, 2014 TARAVAL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed ABC SF HOUSING INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/11/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/10/22.

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039629000

In the matter of the application of MAURA DILLEY, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner OSCAR GOLDEN DILLEY is requesting that the name OSCAR GOLDEN DILLEY be changed to RHYS GOLDEN DILLEY. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 5th of APRIL 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as CLAY OVEN INDIAN CUISINE, 1689 CHURCH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed APPAM SF CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/30/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/10/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039629100

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as CLAY OVEN INDIAN RESTAURANT, 385 WEST PORTAL AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed N MALHI SF CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/29/15.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/10/22.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039632500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as LAHORE DE KHUSHBOO, 4445 3RD ST #310, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SHUMAILA ALI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/15/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/15/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039629200

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039628300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as INDIA CLAY OVEN RESTAURANT AND BAR, 2436 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121.

This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed COURTYARD SF CORPORATION (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/30/15. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/10/22.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as RISING, 612 C WISCONSIN ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JENNIFER BRYCE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/26/22.

The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/10/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

C

I TY

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

A N D

C

O U NT Y

OF

SAN FRANCISCO

Prepared by The Office of the Clerk of the Board Pursuant to Admin. Code 2 .81

Community Outreach Public Notice

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as KATHARTIC STUDIO, 11 OAKWOOD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KATHLEEN DONAHUE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/02/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/11/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039608900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as FINITE FACTORY, 339 COLLINGWOOD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JESSE KRISS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/09/22.

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039629900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as VALENTI DIGITAL, 1072 14TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed APPLIED PERFORMANCE SOLUTIONS, INC. (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/08/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ANGELIC TEAS, 58 WEST PORTAL AVE #524, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANGELICA JUANITA GROVER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/21/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 01/24/22.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SUZ BAX ART, 305 STEINER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SUZANNE BAXTER. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/08/22.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as LUCKY CAT STICKER, 158 FARALLONES ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KA YI LI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/07/22.

In the matter of the application of MARVIN MCNEALY, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner MARVIN MCNEALY is requesting that the name MARVIN MCNEALY be changed to MARLEY MARVIN ALOFATASI MCNEALY. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Rm. 103N on the 24th of MARCH 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

FEB 17, 24, MAR 03, 10, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039629300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ALCHEMY ART HEALING ACADEMY, 2014 TARAVAL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94116. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GEORGIA BUIE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/14/22.

MARCH 2022 The �edistric�ng Task Force has begun!

Every ten years, the boundaries of San Francisco’s Supervisorial Districts are redrawn to ensure that each district maintains equal numbers of residents. Members of the public are encouraged to par�cipate in the redistric�ng process.

The Task Force needs your input!

Tell the Task Force where to draw the San Francisco Supervisorial District lines!

As they convene, they will look to YOU and collect your opinions, ideas, and concerns around your District lines and the impacts to our communi�es.  �lease �isit the �ebsite �or the mee�ng schedule: h�ps://sf.gov/publicbody/2020-census-redistric�ng-task-force 

Create your own map using the Mapping Tool! Please visit the Redistric�ng website and look under the Mapping Sec�on.



Don’t have internet access? Visit your local Public Library! o You can find your local library and hours by visi�ng the redistric�ng website and looking under �Informa�on”. o Patrons can make computer reserva�ons at h�ps://pcbooking.sfpl. org/easybooking/ and entering their library card number and PIN. Bookings are available 120 minutes (2 one-hour sessions) per day. o The SFPL �eb Services Team has added a link to the Redistric�ng Mapping Tool on their homepage, which will appear on all Library computers for access.

Please check with the Office of the �lerk of the Board for informa�on regarding window flyers.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MEETINGS:  ��end mee�ngs Please see the website for specific direc�ons. h�ps://sf.gov/ public-body/����-census-redistric�ng-task-force  Submit comments by emailing rd�@sfgov.org or calling (415) 554-4445  �oin the email list to receive updates issued by the Redistric�ng Task Force. To sign up, go to sfelec�ons.org/rd�  Follow the Redistric�ng Task Force on Facebook and Twi�er: @RedistrictSF The City and County of San Francisco encourages public outreach. �r�cles are translated into several languages to provide be�er public access. The newspaper makes every effort to translate the ar�cles of general interest correctly. No liability is assumed by the City and County of San Francisco or the newspapers for errors and omissions.

SF.GOV/ES CNSB# 3560371

<< Legals

12 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT NOTICE TO PROPOSERS - GENERAL INFORMATION The SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT, 2150 Webster Street, Oakland, California, is advertising for proposals for ELEVATOR MAINTENANCE SERVICES (RFP) No. 6M4783, on or about February 16, 2022 , with proposals due by 2:00 p.m. local time, Tuesday, March 15, 2022, at the District Secretary’s Office, 10th Floor, 2150 Webster Street, Oakland, California, 94612. Proposers are responsible to ensure their proposals are received at the time and location as specified in the RFP. DESCRIPTION OF SERVICES TO BE PROVIDED The District is soliciting services for Elevator Maintenance at its headquarters located at 2150 Webster Street, Oakland, CA. These services will provide for all labor, supervision, management, engineering, training, documentation, materials, lubricants, spare parts inventory, tools, testing equipment and insurances and other resources as required to provide full and comprehensive preventative maintenance, adjustment and repair services for the elevator equipment covered by this agreement. PRE-PROPOSAL MEETING AND NETWORKING SESSION A Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session will be held on Friday , February 25, 2022 . The Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session will convene at 1:00 p.m. local time via a Microsoft Teams presentation. All interested parties must RSVP via email: Javier Peraza, javier.peraza@bart. gov by 12:00 p.m. on Friday, February 25, 2022, in order to participate in this Pre-Proposal Meeting. The email subject must include “RFP 6M4783, Elevator Maintenance Services”. Instructions on attending the Microsoft Teams meeting will be emailed upon receipt of RSVP. At the Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session, Prospective Proposersare requested to make every effort to participate in this one-time only Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session.

The District may only respond to questions at the submitted Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session by prospective Proposers that have RSVPed to the Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session. In order for the District to consider responding to those questions at the scheduled Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session, those questions shall be submitted until the day prior to the Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session by 5:00 p.m. local time, via email to javier.peraza@bart.gov, and the email subject must include RFP 6M4783, Elevator Maintenance Services. REQUIRED REGISTRATION ON BART PROCUREMENT PORTAL In order for prospective Proposers to be eligible for award of an Agreement being solicited on the BART Procurement Portal, such Proposers are required to be currently registered to do business with BART on the BART Procurement Portal online at https://suppliers.bart.gov and have obtained Solicitation Documents, updates, and any Addenda issued online so as to be added to the Online Planholders List for this solicitation. If a prospective Proposer is a joint venture or partnership, such entity may register on the BART Procurement Portal with the entity’s tax identification number (TIN) and download the Solicitation Documents so as to be listed as an Online Planholder under the entity’s name prior to submitting its Proposal. If such entity has not registered on BART Procurement Portal in the name of the joint venture or partnership prior to submitting its Proposal, provided that at least one of the joint venturers or partners registered online on the BART Procurement Portal and downloaded the Solicitation Documents so as to be added to the Online Planholders List for this solicitation, such entity will be required to register with the entity’s TIN as an Online Planholder following the submittal of Proposals, in order for the entity to be eligible for award of this Agreement. PROPOSERS WHO HAVE NOT REGISTERED ON THE BART PROCUREMENT PORTAL PRIOR TO SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL, (OR FOR JOINT VENTURE OR PARTNERSIP AS DESCRIBED ABOVE PRIOR TO AWARD) AND DID NOT DOWNLOAD THE SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS FOR THIS SOLICITATION ONLINE SO AS TO BE LISTED AS AN ONLINE PLANHOLDER FOR THIS SOLICITATION, WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE FOR AWARD OF THIS AGREEMENT. Proposals must be received by 2:00 p.m., local time, Tuesday, March 15, 2022, at the address listed in the RFP. Submission of a proposal shall constitute a firm offer to the District for one hundred eighty (180) calendar days from the date of proposal submission. Dated at Oakland, California this 16 th day of February 2022. _/s/ John Mazza ______________________________ John Mazza, Director of Procurement San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District 3/3/22 CNS-3558717# BAY AREA REPORTER

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT NOTICE TO PROPOSERS – GENERAL INFORMATION REAL PROPERTY APPRAISAL SERVICES FOR BART PROJECTS RFP NO. 6M4739 The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (“BART” or “District”) intends to engage the services of a consulting firm or joint venture (“CONSULTANT”) to provide Real Property Appraisal services for BART. Accordingly, BART is now accepting proposals (“Proposals”) from proposers (“Proposers”) for consideration for the selection of CONSULTANT(S) to perform the scope of services specified in this Request for Proposals (“RFP”). Proposals must be received by BART by 2:00 PM local time on March 29, 2022 Proposals shall be submitted to the following address: District Secretary’s Office San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District 2150 Webster Street, 10 th Floor Oakland, CA 94612 REQUIRED REGISTRATION ON THE BART PROCUREMENT PORTAL In order for prospective Proposers to be eligible for award of an Agreement being solicited on the BART Procurement Portal, such Proposers are required to be currently registered to do business with BART on the BART Procurement Portal online at https://suppliers. bart.gov and have obtained Solicitation Documents, updates, and any Addenda issued online so as to be added to the Online Planholders List for this solicitation.

If a prospective Proposer is a joint venture or partnership, such entity may register on the BART Procurement Portal with the entity’s tax identification number (TIN) and download the Solicitation Documents so as to be listed as an online planholder under the entity’s name prior to submitting its Proposal. If such entity has not registered on BART Procurement Portal in the name of the joint venture or partnership prior to submitting its Proposal, provided that at least one of the joint venturers or partners registered online on the BART Procurement Portal and downloaded the Solicitation Documents so as to be added to the Online Planholders List for this solicitation, such entity will be required to register with the entity’s TIN as an online planholder following the submittal of Proposals, in order for the entity to be eligible for award of this Agreement. PROPOSERS WHO HAVE NOT REGISTERED ON THE BART PROCUREMENT PORTAL PRIOR TO SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL, (OR FOR A JOINT VENTURE OR PARTNERSHIP AS DESCRIBED ABOVE PRIOR TO AWARD) AND DID NOT DOWNLOAD THE SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS FOR THIS SOLICITATION ONLINE SO AS TO BE LISTED AS AN ONLINE PLANHOLDER FOR THIS SOLICITATION, WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE FOR AWARD OF THIS AGREEMENT. PRE-PROPOSAL MEETING and NETWORKING SESSION A Pre-Proposal Meeting will be held on March 7, 2022 . The Pre-Proposal Meeting will convene at 10:00 a.m. local time via Zoom Presentation. All interested parties must RSVP via registering with the Zoom link included within the RFP or an email to: michael.lu@bart.gov in order to participate in this Pre-Proposal Meeting. The email subject must include “ RFP 6M4739 Real Property Appraisal Services ”. Instructions on attending the Zoom Presentation are included within the RFP. At the Pre-Proposal Meeting, the District’s Equity Program(s) will be explained. Prospective Proposers are requested to make every effort to participate in this only scheduled Pre-Proposal Meeting and Networking Session.

NETWORKING SESSION: On a separate date from the Pre-Proposal Meeting referenced above, the District’s Office of Rights will be facilitating a teleconference Networking Session for interested firms to meet with Potential Primes for subcontracting opportunities. The Networking Session will last for 8 hours (cumulatively) and interested firms will be given 5-minute time slots to introduce themselves to the participating potential Primes. The date of the Networking Session and participating Primes’ RSVP contact information can be found in BART’s Procurement Portal under the applicable RFP. Interested firms are requested to RSVP directly with participating potential Primes. Additionally, each participating potential Prime will present a Networking Session RSVP schedule to the District for confirmation prior to the Networking Session. Firms interested in participating in the Networking Session as a potential Prime are advised to contact Fei Liu, Office of Civil Rights, via email at fliu@bart.gov. /s/John Mazza ____________ Director of Procurement 3/3/22 CNS-3558682# BAY AREA REPORTER

TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF MOIRA HASTINGS SCHERE IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-22-305097

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of MOIRA HASTINGS SCHERE. A Petition for Probate has been filed by MEGAM HASTINGS in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that MEGAN HASTINGS 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 30, 2022, 9:00 am, Rm. 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 latter 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: SUTTER C. SELLECK (SBN 290247), 649 MAIN ST #102, NUMBER 107, MARTINEZ, CA 94553; Ph. (925) 899-9130.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF FRANCINE MARIE DOUGLASS IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES-22-305147

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of FRANCINE MARIE DOUGLASS. A Petition for Probate has been filed by MARCEL R. DUBONNET in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The Petition for Probate requests that MARCEL R. DUBONNET be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. 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 21, 2022, 9:00 am, Rm. 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 latter 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: BENJAMIN H. EAGLETON, ESQ (SBN 316167), EAGLETON|POTTIER, P.C., 915 HIGHLAND POINTE DR #250, ROSEVILLE, CA 95678; Ph. (916) 936-1973.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039643200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as EASY ACCOUNTING, 240 2ND AVE #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed KA KIT LEE. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/25/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/28/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039630600

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039635600

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039633200

INSURANCE AGENCY J&E AND REGISTRATION SERVICES, 2390 MISSION ST #101, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RAMON ERNESTO LOPEZ OCHOA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/18/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/18/22.

4 STAR THEATER, 2200 CLEMENT ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed CINEMASF INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/16/22.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SUGAR BY JENNIFER, 1618 UNION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JENNIFER SANCHEZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/10/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/11/22.

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039625400

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039643300

CNSBI_3558682.indd AM The following1person(s) is/are doing 3/2/22 business 11:26 as The following person(s) is/are doing business as8:18 CNSBI_3558717_1x12_030322.indd 1 2/28/22 AM

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039627800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as CAFÉ ZITOUNA, 430 TURK ST #909, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed NAJIB REBIA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/09/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/09/22.

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039635100

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ARGAO DESIGNS, 837 PERALTA AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LINDA M. ARGAO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/86. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/18/22.

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ON BEYOND, 1311 22ND ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed FIRST LAST AND ALWAYS (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/08/22.

The following person(s) is/are doing business as INKSPRITE DESIGN, 30 MARGARET AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94112. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed CESAR RAMIREZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 12/01/08. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/28/22.

FEB 24, MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039640900

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039624100

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SPLENDIFEROUS BUSINESS SERVICES, 2865 24TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed TIA MARIE PAQUIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/07/22.

AMENDED NOTICE OF PETITION

NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THE SCENT LIBRARY; VENICESA, 671 38TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed VANESSA TAM. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

ESTATE OF ALAN CHARLES VIRAMONTES IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: FILE PES22-305159

To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of ALAN CHARLES VIRAMONTES AKA ALAN CHARLES BEAR AKA ALAN C. VIRAMONTES AKA ALAN C. BEAR. A Petition for Probate has been filed by ALICE VIRAMONTES in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco.

The Petition for Probate requests that ALICE VIRAMONTES be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. 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 28, 2022, 9:00 am, Rm. 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 latter 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: KATIE LESTER (SBN 323579), KATIE LESTER ATTORNEY AT LAW, 770 L ST #950, SACRAMENTO, CA 95814; Ph. (916) 246-8331.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039637700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SANDY’S FAMILY DAY CARE, 793 O’FARRELL ST #6, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SANDRA GUTIERREZ FLORES. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/22/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039634500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as KONA LINEN AND DECORS, 429 BUSH ST #21, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SAFIAH BINTI BOYONG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/16/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/17/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039639600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as BIG CITY SOFTWASH, 1263 16TH AVE #3, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL THOMAS CAREY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/23/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039639900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as RALEY’S INTERIORS, 1339 10TH AVE #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PATRICIA LOUISE RALEY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/22/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/23/22.

t

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039642800

The following person(s) is/are doing business as EVERYDAY, 801 BURNETT #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed JOHN A. GRIFFIN & JENNIFER CURIEL. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/22/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/28/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039643100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as IZAKAYA DASH, 294 9TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed H24 SUSHI LOUNGE INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/28/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/28/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039643900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as APRIL REALTOR; APRIL DISTRIBUTOR, 204 VALENCIA ST #6, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed APRIL FINANCIAL, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/28/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 03/01/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039637300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THE COFFEE BERRY, 1410 LOMBARD ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94123. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed THREE BEANS COFFEE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039636900

The following person(s) is/are doing business as PIE PUNKS, 145 2ND ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105.

This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed ASCLEPIUS BEVERAGE CO. LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039636700

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THE GEEZ FREEZE, 3750 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed THE 3 G’S INVESTMENTS LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/02/19. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039634200

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SAN FRANCISCO DASH, 737 DIAMOND ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SUSHI NOE LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/16/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/16/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

STATEMENT OF ABANDONMENT OF USE OF FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME FILE A-039419200

The following persons have abandoned the use of the fictitious business name known as PALM AND MILK, 350 JUDAH ST #503, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business was conducted by an individual and signed by GERALDINE LECUYER LOUVEL. The fictitious name was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 07/22/21.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039636600 The following person(s) is/are doing business as NURTURED BEING MENTAL HEALTH, 2211 POST ST #300, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DENNICE IBARRA. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/28/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/22/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039641000

The following person(s) is/are doing business as BRIGHT SERVICES, 349 SAN CARLOS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EDGAR S. MOSQUEDA CRESPO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/24/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/24/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039630300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as HOOD TABLE TALK, 128 BLYTHDALE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94134. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed COMELIA JOHNSON. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/12/19. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/11/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039641800 The following person(s) is/are doing business as AEG7, 90 NIDO AVE #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ANDREA GAFFNEY. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/25/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/25/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-039640300

The following person(s) is/are doing business as BLACK GOLD GRIPTAPE, 801 BURNETT AVE #5, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94131. This business is conducted by a general partnership, and is signed GARY ROGERS & JOHN GRIFFIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 02/22/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 02/23/22.

MAR 03, 10, 17, 24, 2022

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3/1/22 10:35 AM

Devlin Shand

by Gregg Shapiro

L

Going Commando Juba Kalamka on his new music project Juba Kalamka (in the truck) with Commando bandmates.

contexts taking a lot of inspiration from the early 1990s Black gay performance troupe Pomo Afro Homos (the inspiration in part for the title of our album BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo).

There were serious elements to what we did, but we felt from the jump that self-seriousness would get in the way of what we were trying to do, which was bringing an “edutainment” element, or as elder Black folks would say – “fackin’ and crackin’” – was central to the project.

At the same, time there were ways that people were very interested and invested in what we were doing that were diametric to what we were trying to put across – and were steeped in homonormativity and respectability politicking relative to Black queer experience.

Of all the music genres to make a comeback in 2022, I never expected it to be “the perverse and anachronistic lens of nü metal,” as the music of Commando is described. Why was this style of music the right fit for your new musical act?

I think back to a conversation I had in 2002 with writer Michelle Tea about the queer hip hop scene that had been germinating online in the late 1990s and that came to life at the PeaceOUT Festivals and other shows around the U.S. To paraphrase, she said that what was cool about “homohop” as a notion was that it stretched the space of what was possible.

Hip hop and rap in the main is still pop music, so it very much adheres to the same retrograde cis-hetero-patriarchal narratives and tropes that rock, jazz, country, classical, and other genres do around racialization, gender, ability, class, sexuality, and the like.

Jose A. Guzman Colon

ong before Lil Nas X, Tyler the Creator, or Frank Ocean made waves as queer artists in hip hop (on major labels, no less), there was an entire movement of underground LGBTQ hip hop acts doing their part to pave the way in the genre.

Among those performers was Deep Dickollective, co-founded in early 2000 by queer Black activist and artist Juba Kalamka. Since that time, Kalamka has remained active in music in a vast array of musical outfits, as well as appearing in movies, and remaining active politically and socially.

Bay Area-based Kalamka’s latest musical outing Commando is the kind of band that earns the right to be called a supergroup, and a queer one at that. Featuring Kalamka, Lynnee Breedlove (of Tribe 8 fame) and Honey Mahogany (of RuPaul’s Drag Race renown) among others, Commando commands our attention with its rap-metal approach and thought-provoking lyrics. Juba was kind enough to answer a few questions in advance of the March 2022 release of Commando’s debut album on Kill Rock Stars.

Gregg Shapiro: Juba, in preparing for this interview, I went back and listened to Deep Dickollective’s second album The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes, which was the first time I’d been exposed to your work.

Considering the way that hip hop, and queer hip hop, in particular, has evolved over time, where do you see DDC’s contributions to the genre in the scheme of things?

Juba Kalamka: I think Deep Dickollective, for better or worse, served as a legitimizing force for some people, though that’s not something I’m always comfortable with. From the beginnings of the group, we were steeped in the parodic – picking at our postgrad smartass educational

Heklina returns Drag fave to perform a new solo show at Oasis Heklina

by Jim Provenzano

I

n an auspicious return to her former nightlife roost, Heklina will perform a new solo show with stories and live – yes, live singing– on March 10 and 11 at Oasis.

“It’s sort of the story of my life, told with songs by Stephen Sondheim, some classics made famous by Liza Minnelli,” said Hek-

lina (aka Stefan Grygelko), from her home in Palm Springs. Local pianist Tom Shaw will accompany her onstage.

“I wanted to challenge myself. I’ve done Trannyshack, Mother, films, podcasts, plays, so this is something new.”

Since the early 1990s, Heklina has been a mainstay in Bay Area queer nightlife. From the first irreverent drag nights at The Stud, to Trannyshack’s expansion at DNA Lounge that included annual contests, Heklina has

often hosted the most prominent drag and nightlife events which included her own numbers.

In 2015, along with D’Arcy Drollinger and other investors, Heklina opened Oasis in South of Market; the same building that once housed the original Oasis. The new nightclub has become popular for not only drag shows and DJed dance nights, but comic plays and musicals, cabaret concerts and community fundraisers. Heklina

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The melange of styles present in rap-rock and nü metal make it perfect for a variety of storytelling approaches lyrically, sonically, and emotionally. It’s been a good challenge for all of us to figure out how we want to expand our very different individual conversations on the same core of topics and form that into a coherent narrative.

Once I had a closer listen to some of the bands that were popular in the period I saw that the performances lent themselves to some of the same aforementioned deconstructionist parodics that I’d engaged with Deep Dickollective. By the time I met Andy and Travis (Andrews, guitarist of TLES) in 2017, DDC had been defunct for nine years.

In the meantime, I’d done a ton of performance art, appearing in queer porn features, and had produced several albums of electronic muSee page 16 >> recently sold her share of Oasis ownership and moved to Palm Springs, while still keeping a foothold on the Bay Area’s nightlife scene.

And of course, Heklina’s deadpan line delivery as Dorothy (Bea Arthur’s character) in stage productions of episodes of the classic sitcom The Golden Girls have become an annual tradition.

Having endured shutdowns, closures, and online DJ Zoom parties –“They never really worked,” admits Heklina, the time for a personal and in-person show is now.

“You know, things have changed,” she said of 2020’s early pandemic outbreak.

“We were all trying to pretend that everything was okay and that they said it was going to be temporary. I remember the early days of the pandemic, we were online, acting like it would be over soon.”

Now, with health precautions shifting yet again, while some may be understandably hesitant to attend nightlife events, many are returning to parties and drag shows with their proof of vaccination and facemasks.

“I’m really excited about my solo show,” said Heklina, who admits she is not a trained singer, but can carry a tune.

“I sent vocal tracks to Tom Shaw for tempo, and he replied, ‘Oh, this is fine, but what key are you singing?’

Heklina’s multi-tasking –including recently being a contestant on the TV game show The Price is Right– during her upcoming visit includes returning to host the 23rd annual The Mother Star Search ComSee page 15 >>

<< Theater

14 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

Colman Domingo’s ‘Dot’ at NCTC

by Jim Gladstone

C

olman Domingo got his first ever stage role at the New Conservatory Theatre Center. In 1991, while working server and bartending gigs as a recent arrival to San Francisco, he joined the cast of the Conservatory’s touring show, The Inner Circle, which brought a teen-centered look at AIDS to high schools throughout the Bay Area.

It was the start of an often brilliant, always questing career through which Domingo has carved out opportunities to express himself on stage and screen, not only as a performer (including stand-out roles in Passing Strange and The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway; Fear the Walking Dead, The Big Gay Sketch Show and Euphoria on television; and If Beale Street Could Talk and Zola on the big screen) but as a director, pro-

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ducer and writer as well.

It’s the latter that will bring the Philadelphia-born, now Los Angeles-based Domingo back to the New Conservatory next week, as the firstever San Francisco production of his play, Dot, officially opens a run through April 3.

“This is very important for me,” said the 52-year-old Domingo in a recent telephone interview with the Bay Area Reporter during which he discussed the local theater scene’s impact on his development as an artist.

“I honestly first came to San Francisco on a whim,” recalls Domingo, noting that while he had recently graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree, he had no particular career goal at the time. “One of my good buddies had left school the year before to go out to San Francisco, and he would just talk to me as if it was utopia, a place where you could just fly your freak flag. He was so elated over it and just encouraged me to come.”

“I had taken one acting class as an elective,” Domingo recalls of his college days. “It felt good to me, and my teacher was encouraging. He said he thought I had something, maybe I should consider pursuing it further. But I didn’t think I had the personality. I was very quiet and bookish.”

But from the time he took on his initial role at NCTC, Domingo was swept into a San Francisco theater scene that was open-minded, experimental and encouraged him to explore his creativity.

“I always tell people that it was like being in an incubator,” he said.

“I was allowed to cross-pollinate. I was always asking questions, which led to people asking me to direct readings and to write.”

My comrades

Domingo fondly recalls his collaborations with fellow fledgling artists –“my comrades” he calls them– who have gone on to become leading lights of the Bay Area stage community, including Margo Hall, Danny Scheie and Sean San Jose, who he says he still speaks with by phone several times a week. When San Jose was recently appointed as Magic Theater’s new artistic director, Domingo eagerly joined the organization’s board of directors. He’s even bringing San José on board as a story consultant for Dot. It was Doug Holsclaw, then artistic director at Theatre Rhinoceros, who encouraged the inquisitive Domingo to develop his first major work as a writer and dramaturg, giving him encouragement and studio space to create 1998’s Up Jumped Springtime. Domingo also performed in the show, a warmly reviewed adaptation of pieces from

Essentially Wear a mask Maintain social distancing Wash your hands Shop at Cliff’s

t

Lois Tema

Juanita Harris in Dot

Playwright Colman Domingo

Essex Hemphill’s groundbreaking Brother to Brother anthology of writings by gay Black men.

When he eventually moved to New York after a decade in San Francisco, Domingo says, “I had to take the Bay Area ethos with me: It was always about the work and the work ethic. Nobody put limits on me because I was Black or 6’ 2” or openly gay. The only thing I was limited by was my ability. Let’s say that in other places I had to introduce those ideas a bit more.”

Dot, which Domingo originally drafted over a focused three-week period in 2015, is the touching but surprisingly funny story of family holiday gathering during which the three adult children of the titular matriarch must come to terms with her worsening Alzheimer’s disease. In an antic tangle of narrative threads, Dot’s son, Donnie, and his husband are struggling with marital difficulties, her high-strung younger daughter is lamenting lost YouTube stardom, and a neighbor-

hood friend is having a soap operatic crisis of her own.

“There’s a lot going on,” acknowledges Domingo about the play, which was a New York Times Critics’ Pick in its 2016 Vineyard Theater debut. So much so, that AMC Networks –home to Domingo’s Fear the Walking Dead– is adapting it as a six-episode series called West Philly, Baby, planned to air next spring.

Domingo, who will write, direct and executive produce, says that despite the much bigger budgets allotted to television series, “I’m calling on a lot of the conventions of theater in the show –tricks of lighting, scenic design, layered visuals to suggest the point-of-view of someone with Alzheimer’s. I come from a basement theater background– making magic out of a tube of Chapstick and a sheet of toilet paper.” t Dot by Colman Domingo at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

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(L to R)The Shealy siblings, Donnie (Marcus J. Paige), Shelly (Kimberly Ridgeway) and Averie (Brittany Nicole Sims) in Dot.

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Film >>

March 3-9, 2022 • Bay Area Reporter • 15

Drag and anarchy Samuel Kay Forrest’s ‘HipBeat’

by David-Elijah Nahmod

S

amuel Kay Forrest’s new film HipBeat is well-intentioned even as it leaves a few unanswered questions.

Forrest, who wrote the film as well as directed it, also stars as Angus, a young radical political activist from Ireland now living in Berlin. What Angus’ activism entails is never quite made clear. He seems to spend a lot of time spray painting the word HipBeat on walls all over town.

Angus is on a journey of self-discovery. He’s trying to figure out who he is. He claims not to be gay, yet in one sequence he’s seen going down on another young man. Angus also likes to wear his girlfriend’s dresses.

Does he want to be a drag queen? Is he trans? These questions are never answered.

During one lengthy sequence, Angus chats backstage with a friendly drag queen. The drag queen gets the film’s best moment when she beautifully lip-syncs to a recording of Maya Angelou reciting her poem, “Phenomenal Woman.”

Some of the film seems amateurish. When Angus confers with the drag queen, the dialogue feels improvised and unscripted. The scene runs on too long. This has the opposite effect of making the scene feel ‘real.’

<<

Heklina

From page 13

petition on March 13 at Oasis, and the seasonal monthly dance party Daytime Realness at El Rio on March 20 with DJs Carnita and Stanley Frank.

“It’s my favorite party, with a lot of energy, and you know, we don’t see a lot of young people here in Palm Springs.”

Heklina did note that aside from the age variance and hot

Samuel Kay Forrest in his film HipBeat.

The same thing happens when Angus’ girlfriend walks in on him just as he’s trying on one of her dresses. The camera stays on them as they talk, and talk, and talk. Again, the seemingly unscripted dialogue and the scene’s overlong running time works against the film. What

should have been a revelatory scene becomes nothing more than an annoying bore.

Another scene which runs on too long features Angus meeting up with an old friend who he hasn’t seen in a number of years. They talk about free love as the young man en-

weather, it’s mostly easy living in Palm Springs.

“You just get so spoiled. You can drive anywhere, and you know if you’re running late you know you can find parking. It’s a lot easier than life in San Francisco.”

Asked about the extremely hot summers that many residents escape, Heklina mentioned her return to San Francisco and Iceland, her birth country, with its famous volcano that inspired Grygelko’s drag name Heklina.

“I love returning to Iceland.

But last time everything shut down just as I arrived.” Heklina’s hosted Pride events in Reykjavík, the country’s capital. “I’m their ‘queen who made it in America.’

On her 2020 visit, with travel limited and nearly everything closed, she noted, “I got to see so much of the country without any tourists.

That was a nice caveat. I was finally able to go around the country like I’ve not been able to do since I was a child the first time in years.” t

courages Angus to be himself and to follow his heart. As before, the scene runs much longer than it should have which renders the scene’s emotional impact meaningless.

Strangely, the audience is never told who this young man is or how he and Angus know each other. All

Heklina’s Grand Opening, March 10 & 11, 7pm, and The Mother Star Search Competition, March 13, 6pm; both at Oasis, 398 11th St. www.sfoasis.com

we find out is that Angus once stole a book from the young man, a deed that the young man appears to find perfectly acceptable.

The film does offer some fascinating looks inside the queer scene in Berlin. Angus frequents many of the city’s queer clubs, where drugs are made readily available and where people are free to have sex with whomever they choose. Boys dance with girls. Boys kiss each other. Girls flirt with each other, sometimes also indulging in kisses. Berlin is clearly a free and open city, where the Weimar Republic lives anew.

Berlin, as photographed by Forrest, is quite beautiful to look at. The clubs are appropriately dark and colorful and the streets and abandoned buildings where Angus sprays his graffiti have an almost Gothic feel to them.

Berlin as seen in HipBeat is a place where the sun never shines, making the city seem ghostly and spectral.

Forrest is not without talent. He’s good at creating a moody atmosphere which makes HipBeat fascinating to watch, flaws and all. But the auteur needs to learn how to edit himself so that scenes don’t run longer than they need to.

HipBeat is now streaming on You Tube, Google Play and Amazon Prime. t

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11th B.A.R. Talk focuses on arts

by Jim Provenzano

I

n our nearly final yearlong celebrations of the Bay Area Reporter’s 50th anniversary, our eleventh monthly online panel will focus on fifty years of arts coverage with former and current editors and writers. On Thursday, March 10 at 6pm PT, our Facebook page and YouTube channel will stream a live (then archived) panel with John F. Karr, the paper’s first arts editor, former arts editor Chris Culwell, freelance writer Philip Mayard, and current arts and nightlife editor Jim Provenzano as moderator/ producer.

Since 1971, the B.A.R.’s reputation as an essential forum for reviews and features in theater, film, music, dance and visual arts has expanded from a small community focus to national interest. Our reviews have been quoted by book publishers, film promoters and theater companies for decades.

The chat will include a slideshow of articles and ads through the B.A.R.’s five decades. https://www.youtube.com/c/BayAreaReporterSF https://www.facebook.com/BayAreaReporter/

<< Music

16 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

<<

t

Juba Kalamka

From page 13

sic and was producing other artists as well. Commando represented a new musical challenge and an opportunity to have some fun at the same time.

How did Commando, which boasts an amazing line-up of talent, including Lynnee Breedlove of Tribe 8 fame and Honey Mahogany, come to be?

Part of what was appealing for me when I came into Commando was that it already existed, had done shows, and had an identity already as a collectivized project. Though DDC was largely a creative collaborative process, the business of it – promotion, booking, recording, etc., was organized and driven by myself through the sugartruck recordings imprint.

The end product was great, but the process was an exhausting constancy of cat-herding, I wasn’t interested in doing that again.

Lynnee contacted me in early 2017 about meeting these two people he was working with on this band project. I’ve known Lynnee since 2001 and he’s been an amazing friend, colleague, and community advocate. We

Devlin Shand

Juba Kalamka and Lynnee Breedlove

toured together in the early 2000s and worked on a variety of other projects.

He convinced me to meet Andy and Travis at a cafe near my job. I

talked to them for maybe 30 minutes in which I expressed my reservations and they responded with all the right things. They were grown-ups in the way I needed collaborators to be at the moment.

Andy is really well-connected across a variety of musical and cultural communities, and it was largely through him and Lynnee that I have a context for other current members of the group. I knew of Honey from Drag Race and met her through her work in transgender health advocacy but learned about her music later.

The same would go for Drew Arriola Sands (lead singer of Trap Girl, founder/curator of TransgressFest) and Krylon Superstar – I knew of their group Double Duchess but didn’t make the association until meeting them.

The first single, “Hotel Essex,” pays homage to the late gay poet and activist Essex Hemphill, and the video features gay musician and activist Blackberri, whom we lost in late 2021. What do these two icons mean to you?

I saw Marlon Riggs’ 1989 videowork Tongues Untied for the first time

Let’s talk cannabis.

at age 19 (on the PBS series P.O.V.) in early 1990.

I knew I was bisexual at 15 but didn’t come out until 1995 at 25.

Tongues was my first context for Hemphill’s work as I didn’t get a hold of the Brother to Brother anthology until 1992. He and artist Wayson Jones perform the poem “Now We Think” as a percussive, multi-tracked “indigenization” of the phrase “now we think/as we fuck” as “nawathinkawafuh,” with grunts and glottal stops between the poem’s phrases.

I was blown away by it! It was hip hop, it was spoken word, it was the rhythm of my natal Africentrist/ Cultural Nationalist community in Chicago, a place that I came to understand as stridently conservative despite its “progressive” protestations and ministrations, and though I’d grown up with a lot of euphemistic homophobia grounded in family values style rhetoric, I hadn’t experienced pointed and vociferous antagonism from that space until the release of Tongues.

I remember seeing Blackberri (who was 46 when Tongues was shot) and being shook! This big, tall, graying Black man with bicep-length dreadlocks – I had just started my dreads.

He looked like one of my teachers. He looked like me. I pushed that down some more inside, which was hard be-

cause I was reading Windy City Times a lot and hearing about the poets and performers who’d been in the movie dying, and later Marlon and Essex.

I’d been in the Bay Area for about a month in early 1999, had been fired from a job, and was a day away from my first night sleeping outside (and a month in a Richmond shelter) when I ran into Blackberri while he was doing outreach. I had a complete fanboy freakout that he was really nice about.

We eventually became friends and colleagues and were neighbors for 16 years. He was a generous mentor to me and shared at length over the years a zillion backstories and adventures he’d had as a musician and activist in the Bay Area and beyond.

We’d worked on a variety of performance projects together and were planning to record. I approached him about being in the video for “Hotel Essex” in August of 2021, and he was down after I described it as a “Marcus Garvey-themed circuit party.” The scene in which he appears is an homage to the doo-wop scene, “Hey Boy Come Out Tonight,” where he is a colead vocalist. I think Hotel Essex was the last project he worked on in film as he was hospitalized about a week after shooting.

Read the full interview, with music videos, on www.ebar.com.

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hen Marga Gomez’ Latin Standards premiered at the Brava Theater Center in January 2018, not only did she do an interview with Sari Staver for our January 11 issue. Gomez also enjoyed a half-page spread in The New York Times’ Arts & Leisure section when her solo show premiered at The Public Theatre in downtown Manhattan in 2017.

The show, a tribute to Gomez’s father, a singer who performed in New York in the 1950s and ’60s, inaugurated the then-new intimate 80-seat cabaret room at Brava.

While Gomez claimed in our interview that this would be her last solo show, other than a return to stand-up comedy, the decades-long local favorite performer recently

restaged her “queer Cuban comedy drama” Spanking Machine for live and online-streaming audiences.

The 2018 article concludes, ‘As far as being a celebrity goes, Gomez admits she’s occasionally recognized in places like Whole Foods and Bi-Rite, where she usually shops. Depending on the day, “I’m sometimes happy to be recognized. “But mostly,” she said, “I’m a celebrity mainly in my own mind.” www.margagomez.com Watch Spanking Machine on the Latina Stream Queens YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/ UCZ_9P9uqUkan76dPeK4uYYg Read the 2018 interview at www.ebar.com/arts_&_culture/theater/254344

<< Books

18 • Bay Area Reporter • March 3-9, 2022

The work of sex

by Tim Pfaff

I

n an alternative, fair world in which every city had a fully stocked, brick-and-mortar gay bookstore, in the Literary Gay Fiction section these days there would be an entire subsection on Eastern European Rent Persons. But even in a decently stocked Barnes & Noble, the practiced gay reader strolling the aisles might find a finger instinctively lifting a book called Eleven-Inch off the shelf. We’d all get the reference: the Moby-Dick of dicks.

Eleven-Inch is Polish novelist Michal Witkowski’s ninth book, bracingly rendered by his regular translator W. Martin and recently published

t

Michal Witkowski’s ‘Eleven-Inch’ addresses sex as survival

in English by Seagull Books as part of its Pride List: “an eclectic collection of books of queer stories, biographies, histories, thoughts, ideas, experiences and explorations … celebrat[ing] the great diversity of LGBTQ+ lives across countries, languages, centuries, and identities.”

My Polish is rusty but I want to think that its original title, Fynf und Cfancyf, is Polish for 15, as in centimeters.

Witkowski wrote the first explicitly gay novel published in Poland, and his writing, not exclusively gay in content, has won a battery of awards in Europe. If Wikipedia is to be believed, his preferred identification is as “homosexual” rather than gay or queer. If he keeps writing like this, I’m fine if he wants to identify as a platypus.

Eleven-Inch is the picaresque chronicle of two teenagers on the lam from their politically oppressive and economically d e p r e s s e d homelands in Eastern Europe.

You could call them prostitutes or worse, whores, but then you’d be missing what is arguably Witkowski’s central point: they are survivors. Sex work is work.

If this was smut or even pornographically inclined, we’d get the scoop on every one of those inches, but like Melville’s whopper, it’s the more impressive and scary by just being memorably named. These are not boys who get what they’ve got coming any more than their wealthy scores deserve the revenge sex (and usually larceny) they get at the hands and other more fungible organs of the boys.

Nor is Eleven-Inch a novel marred by moralism, even of the inverted kind. It’s frank, yes, but neither prurient nor puritanical. In the operatic world of sex literature, it’s verismo, and if anything all too lifelike much of the time. The writing is unflaggingly clever, often funny, and occasionally savagely sad.

But like its subjects here, it’s unaccountably untiring. It’s not to say that I didn’t love every paragraph of this book to add that I had to put it down at almost every one of its narrative breaks to wipe my eyes, the tears by no means always those of laughter.

The principals are Milan (you can be sure the accent falls on the first syllable of that name) from Slovakia and Michal from Poland, the latter the super-endowed and not meant to be confused with the similarly named author unless it is. Milan is addressed as Dianka, a deliberate, terrible riff on Princess Diana, and Michal is, well, by now you know, further self-identified to Dianka as “your big mascot.”

Michal is as much swank and swagger as schwanz (German for dick), and his mission in life other than to penetrate and prosper is to help poor (in every sense) and anti-glamorous Dianka up her game as they weave their unfamiliar way through the hyper-affluent European Libel Belt of Munich, Vienna,

Donat Brykczynski, courtesy of Culture.Pl

Michal Witkowski

and – the promised land – Zurich.

This is hard for Dianka because, Witkowski writes, “Dianka sometimes feels like she’s her own baggage, her own rucksack. Her body bothers her – it’s an obstacle, a problem to be solved. If only there were some way to stash herself away in a train-station locker like her own extra bag.”

At its most quotable, the writing is shockingly original. With her Munich trick, whom she calls Trashmaster, “who didn’t even have a solid command of German, speaking instead in a misshapen Bavarian … Dianka usually spoke a variant of broken English. But they understood each other perfectly, chattering in pheromone.”

Michal spots a potential john thus: “he was standing like an orphan in the middle of the street, leaning forward, then backward, as if he were sleeping while standing.”

This is Mario Ludwig, who materially has everything literally twice over and can drink like ten regular Germans. At the end of their hair-

raising adventure, Michal deadpans, “I can tell you: Mario Ludwig died the death of a vagrant under a bridge.”

No one in this indefatigable novel has coming what he deserves. In a sordid post-Soviet world both unlike its American counterpart and a dead ringer for it, things happen and you move on. But never is the reader indifferent to any of the characters.

Still, there’s no escaping the likelihood that Witkowski perfectly gauges his intended audience: readers unimpressed by the monied classes but with a sweet tooth for money “boys,” not because the whores are having more fun but because on either side of the Iron Curtain –the old one or the new– all of us could find ourselves in their number, or longing to be, any day that fate twists the knife just right. t Eleven-Inch, by Michal Witkowski, translated from the Polish by W. Martin, Seagull Books. $24.50 www.seagullbooks.org

‘Sticker’ author Henry Hoke

by Gregg Shapiro

W

ith his breathtaking memoir Sticker (Bloomsbury, 2022), queer writer Henry Hoke challenges our notions and expectations of the genre and does it all in under 125 pages. Part of Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, for which he chose stickers, Hoke evokes our senses, emotions, memories, fears, and history, expressed in contemporary and urgent language that never fails to captivate; a necessary and important read for all.

Gregg Shapiro: As a memoir theme, how did you arrive at the one for Sticker?

Henry Hoke: After finishing my first novel, The Groundhog Forever, in 2019, I was seeking a container for a variety of short memoir pieces that had been bouncing around in my head, so when I saw Bloomsbury’s open call for Object Lessons proposals I decided on a unifying object and pitched. That first object (disk) was spoken for already, but I got some encouraging words from Chris Schaberg (one of Object Lesson’s editors), so I went back to the drawing board and chose sticker – an even more varied, nostalgic way in – and that one stuck.

Were the essays/chapters written in the order in which they appear in the book?

Weirdly, yes, for something so fragmented. I decided on the 20 stickers and outlined their chapters, arranged them like a mixtape, and wrote the book in sequence.

It helped to generally follow a bildungsroman format, as the pieces

progress in rough chronological order, the stories growing alongside me Almost every essay in Sticker contains a kind of “scratch-andsniff ” refrain or mantra.

This was my favorite part about writing the book, threading the recurring line “if [whichever sticker] was a scratch-and-sniff it’d smell like _____” into almost every essay to create a unity. As I detail in the “Blueberry” chapter – which is scratch-and-sniff specific – those smells are so deeply linked to memory that it helped me to imagine (and illuminate for the reader) what abstract or literal sensorial quality each sticker might have.

The book opens with the essay “Mr. Yuk,” about the poison warning sticker, and Mr. Yuk makes a return appearance in the “Constellation” and “Death to the Pixies” essays. Would it be fair to say that like every “first crush,” Mr. Yuk made an indelible impact on you?

Yes, his image is seared into my memories. Our first encounter with iconography, especially one tied directly to danger, is hard to shake. That was his brand and his lasting effect for little me.

Was it always your intention that the third essay “Wahoowa,” and “HH,” the final essay, would serve as kind of Charlottesville brackets for the book?

This was another musical impulse, like bookending tracks on an album, with “Wahoowa” and its litany of outside perceptions on the town, rendered in only direct

quotations – kicking things off, and then “HH” – and its exploration of how the town’s name was transmuted into a woeful signifier – functioning as a closer.

tied to my sense of self. It’s taken a long time for me to be okay with flux, to hold definitions at arm’s length, and use those arms to embrace wherever I’m at.

Did you know when you started writing the memoir that Charlottesville itself would become a character in the book?

Definitely. By default, whenever I’d write anything about my youth (especially The Book of Endless Sleepovers) I was low-key writing about Charlottesville, just as all memoir consciously or unconsciously reflects the place(s) where the writer was raised. The deeper purpose of this book was to engage with my hometown explicitly, my complex relationship to it, and how that shifted once C’ville entered the international spotlight in the wake of white supremacist terror and the murder of Heather Heyer. The city’s conflicts – centuries in the making – run parallel to those of America at large in this moment and many previous eras.

What do you think your cousin Tallulah Bankhead would think of Sticker?

Having read her (underrated) autobiography, I like to imagine I channeled a degree of her sardonic perspective and wit. I tweet in her voice @therealtallulah and I’d be more worried what she thinks of that [laughs].

Your queer sexuality, in the essays “Unicorn,” “Chiquita,” and “Death to the Pixies,” for example, is an essential component to the memoir.

Just as C’ville is inextricable from my upbringing, so is a struggle with gender and sexuality. Being bisexual and genderfluid means my identity is ongoing. I’ve spent my life mostly performing this journey of questioning through my writing, since the very beginning. My books have always expressed queerness via uncertainty and contradiction, and that’s because those modes are so

Have you started working on or thinking about your next book project?

I’m done with long-form nonfiction, probably forever. Sticker truly sapped that impulse. So, next up is a novel about Los Angeles, narrated by a mountain lion who’s as traumatized and in need of therapy as everyone else in our careening hellworld. www.bloomsbury.com Read the full interview on www.ebar.com.

Author Henry Hoke

Myles Pettengill

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Books >>

March 3-9, 2022 • Bay Area Reporter • 19

‘Frankie & Bug’ author Gayle Forman

by Gregg Shapiro

T

here are probably many readers of contemporary fiction who are familiar with the novels of Gayle Forman, including the bestselling If I Stay, which was made into a 2014 movie starring Chloë Grace Moretz.

For her latest book, a middleschool novel titled Frankie & Bug (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, 2021), Forman takes us back to the summer of 1987 in Los Angeles.

Bug (aka Beatrice) and her older brother Danny navigate the streets around Venice Beach, trying their best to avoid the skinheads.

When Frankie, the young trans nephew of Bug’s gay neighbor Phillip comes to visit, Bug makes

a lifelong friend, while learning new and important lessons about people and acceptance. As with so many middle-school and YA novels, Frankie & Bug has something to offer readers, young and old.

Gregg Shapiro: Gayle, I’d like to begin by asking you to say a few words about why you set your new Y/A novel Frankie & Bug in the mid-1980s?

Gayle Forman: The inspiration for the book was when I began thinking about my own childhood, and how certain injustices seemed to have improved with breathtaking speed, while others seemed mired in place, or even moving backward.

And this landed me in the 1980s, a time period that doesn’t feel that far off to me, but for today’s kids, is ancient history (indeed, the book is considered historical fiction).

By setting the book then, I could show readers what had changed, and what hadn’t, and also gave them a vantage point to understand Frankie and Bug’s and Phillip’s and Danny’s futures in ways the characters themselves cannot.

Because of its 1980s setting, the New Wave music of the time is highlighted, with shout-outs to Bono, Echo and the Bunny-

men, Oingo Boingo, The Cure, Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, and other artists featured on the LA radio station KROQ. Would this also happen to be a reflection of your own musical taste?

Oh, yes. Down to the argument over claiming which Duran Duran Taylor was mine. (I called dibs on John). KROQ was always on, and I won tickets on the radio more than once. When I waited tables, I once served the DJ Jed The Fish, which was a “major moment” for me!

Bug and Frankie are both fascinated by and frightened of the serial killer called the Midnight Marauder, and would probably have been fans of true crime podcasts, if they’d existed back then.

Is this character based on Richard Ramirez aka Night Stalker?

Yes. In the original draft, I had actually used the Night Stalker but it was proving too challenging to make his timeline work for my story and we also thought it might be best if kids did not Google what was really a truly terrifying psychopath.

At the heart of the book is Frankie’s revelation, a subject that is handled with grace throughout, including the Disneyland bathroom sequence. Please say a few words about your inspiration for creating and writing about a young, trans character.

I started this book in 2013 after, as mentioned, I began musing about the way things had changed.

I was thinking, particularly, for my queer friends who came of age (or, in many cases did not) during the AIDS crisis.

I knew immediately that the two main characters would be Frankie and Bug and that Frankie would

be trans. In 2013, we were just beginning to have a broader conversation about trans rights and nonconforming gender identities, and when those conversations came to the fore, I back-burnered the book for years because it did not feel right for me to invade that conversation. But then other events pushed me to write the book, but Frankie and Bug as characters did not change that much from the start. I leaned a lot on trans-masculine readers and friends for help with Frankie, particularly older trans men, who had lived through a world more like Frankie’s than today’s. They really helped me shape the story.

Frankie’s gay uncle Phillip is the victim of a gay-bashing at the hands of skinheads. Would it be fair to say that the skinheads of the 1980s were the precursors to the radical right movement we are seeing today?

Yes. And the precursor to the skinheads of the 1980s were the Nazis and before them. Alas, our history is rife with this kind of hate.

Also woven into the fabric of the novel are immigrant stories, including those of Bug’s Salvadoran father and Hedvig’s escape from Hungary. Please say something about the significance of that in the novel.

While I was thinking about how certain things had improved –LGBTQ rights, specifically– I was also thinking about what had not improved, particularly the treatment of refugees from Latin America.

The 1980s was the height of the Cold War, with much of Central and Eastern Europe under the socalled “Iron Curtain.”

author Gayle Forman

In Central America, the US and the USSR were fought via proxy wars, the US propping up some brutal dictators who oppressed and murdered their citizens, and led to a flood of refugees seeking the safer harbors of the USA. Today, we are seeing a new flood of refugees from Central America, many fleeing because of violence and instability that has roots in those proxy wars.

As we locked children in cages, I couldn’t help but think things have grown much worse than in the 1980s.

Have you started working on or thinking about your next book project?

Yes. It’s another middle-grade (book)! It takes place over a summer. It’s set in present day. So, I’ll have to figure some way around cell phones. It was so nice not having to work in the technology (in Frankie & Bug)! t Read the full interview on www.ebar.com.

A sesquicentennial soirée of scenes from all 14 of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas.

STAGE DIRECTOR: Nicolas Aliaga Garcia CONDUCTOR: David Drummond

CELEBRATING 150 YEARS OF

Going Out, Homing’s In’s online

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f you didn’t know by now, our expanded arts and nightlife listings have shifted and grown since before the pandemic. Whether you’re looking for a wild nightclub

party or a contemplative quiet art gallery to visit, we’ve got it covered, including a broad array of LGBTQ films to stream at home. Visit www.ebar.com.

FEBRUARY 19-20

Blue Shield Theatre, YBCA, San Francisco Tickets: cityboxoffice.com, (415) 392-4400

MARCH 5-6

Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts Tickets: mvcpa.com, (650) 903-6000

Earth can’t wait.

Sustainability is not enough—it’s time for something new. That’s why we’re on a mission to regenerate the natural world by restoring vital ecosystems across the globe.

It’s up to all of us to dive in and dig in to make nature wilder and healthier again.

Join us at calacademy.org/regenerate

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